contemporary monkey

Diane Arbus: how did she get them to stare like that?

Now that digital photography is ubiquitous, everyone can, and does, shoot photos. Without difficulty, we conveniently take shots of our friends, who are more than willing subjects to pose for the moment. Our insane family members, who will only open up to us because they have to, easily give up their privacy while we have them at their weakest hour. But not everyone can get the best out of an unfamiliar, and potentially unwilling, subject. Asking complete strangers to stop for a quick snap is hardly going to happen, especially if you’re asking a team of leather-clad Hell’s Angels to pose for you.

Diane Arbus, the American photographer, resolved to capture these difficult and brazen shots, and she didn’t have the advantage of a tiny, unobtrusive digital camera in her pocket. She was able to get what she wanted through sheer will and canny persuasion.  I imagine Arbus to have been the kind of friend who would have been willing to go up to anyone to start a conversation. She’d have been very useful to us boys at about the age of 16.

At the Nottingham Contemporary, a sizable collection of Arbus’ photos are on display, albeit in a very low, almost sleepy light (I suppose it’s for the sake of the now decades-old prints). The evidence is fairly clear: Arbus could penetrate any group of outsiders from the 1950’s and 60’s, and let’s face it, that’s about the time when outsiders were at their zenith. Arbus wasn’t at all an insider to any of these communities of exotics. She grew up posh, while in another world, her photographic subjects inhabited what would have been a no-go zone for her and her kind.

By instilling confidence between her and the circus freak, nudist, or any other nutter/oddball on the other side of the camera, she was able to make friends through the assurance of professionalism, and get the straight-on shot that the subject rightly deserved. Imagine if you did that now? You’d probably be dragged by heavy chains behind some hillbilly’s pickup truck, or be sucked into an awkward, experimental religion you had no idea existed until a few short minutes ago. It’s not the kind of thing most sane people do these days.

Diane Arbus’ art is more about trust than about the subjects she shot, or the photographs themselves for that matter. But these days, these contemporary days, we could probably use more trust between divisive groups of war-mongering gangs. We need a Diane Arbus for places like Isreal, Afghanistan, Fox News, Millwall Football Stadium. Well, maybe let’s start with Israel and Afghanistan and see how that goes before attempting an all-or-nothing game at Millwall.

ground zero for paradise

While the popular cry for the slow demise of Earth has been heard from every person, state, corporation, and politician for the past two decades, the Garden of Paradise appears to be handling it like a tough old grandmother. Think of a place on Earth that sees minimal human imprint. A green, square patch of pure, awe-inspiring, not a Rainforest Cafe in site, natural hunk of land. It’s still out there, despite the over-worked contortions and knee-jerk spams from the doomsday machine that is global media. Sure, plenty of bad news, with oil spills, mud slides, slowly advancing tsunamis, over-fishing countries, land-pillaging corporations, because that’s what sells subscriptions and page impressions. While the fear mongering certainly has a foundation, it’s good to see that ever-present Nature still presses mankind between thumb and forefinger, no what matter what we throw at it. The Garden of Eden, it appears, has seen tougher foes than the likes of us.

The artist Sergio Vega thinks he’s located the original Garden of Eden: ground zero for paradise on Earth. Using a document called, “Paradise in the New World”, the coordinates for which are said to be located in Brazil, Vega films the natural and makes a comparison with the unnatural (that would be you and me). The state of Mato Grosso has been claimed as the centre of all Earth’s beauty, which, if you believe Wikipedia, that non de-foresting but sometimes questionable web site, translates to “thick woods”. I reckon the Amazon is as good a place as any to call the centre of beauty as we know it.

In Vega’s current exhibition at Birmingham’s IKON Eastside, entitled, “Paradise: Real Time”, he underscores nature’s influence on one of its dependents: man. Through multiple, and very large, high definition video images, it’s apparent that the mother of all form, line and colour holds sway over us in not only what we build, and how we build it, but what we do when we’re not busy destroying each other. Tower blocks in urban landscapes mimicking palm forests. Brightly saturated clothing imitating tropical birds, and Birds of Paradise. Bee-like tribal dance rituals stirring up mini tornado clouds of dust. My take away is that, while the human race endeavors to suck the life out of the planet, we often don’t recognise the force of strength coming the opposite way. I found the scenes to be a very positive, and pleasantly refreshing take on the Man versus Nature debate that usually leads headlines. Unfortunately, the gallery notes would have you believe otherwise - another reason to consume art before the usual suspects lead you in their pre-determined, and biased, direction.

Local wildlife wearing Brazilian football jersey

It’s one of only two problems I had with this exhibit. In its gallery notes, IKON Eastside magnifies a “deterioration of the area’s natural beauty” when contrasting the side-by-side images. While certainly a valid, if not stale, viewpoint, it shows a true dramatic pessimism to emphasize what’s wrong rather than what’s right. The gallery notes chose to reflect despair and cynicism: “Rainforests, animals, insects and rivers - all filmed in real time - are projected across multiple screens around the gallery, juxtaposed with scenes of urban development, logging and local poverty.” After viewing beginning to end, I must admit not seeing any scenes of logging, or very much deforestation in general. If anything, the point made was toward the results from human progress, somewhat uninspired compared with natural beauty. As for poverty, it saw it more as a screen-shot for the natural way life is led in the Amazon, rather than an emotional tug for someone who isn’t donned with a Ralph Loren Polo shirt, clutching a chilled Coca-Cola, perched on a pink Vespa. Set closely adjacent to each other, the urban versus nature video images, if anything, suggests a dominion over mankind. More awe-inspiring than distressing.

The second problem with the exhibition is its overuse of the phrase: “Real Time”. The video wasn’t at all in real time, it was simply real, filmed in another time. It obviously reflected something that already happened, possibly recently, but who knows. Still, I think the artist missed a trick by NOT having a real time camera, or two or three, placed in choice areas that beam back real time images countering the urban with the natural. I understand this system would only work in a few time zones left and right of the Amazon, but even if delayed by half a day, the scenes would be closer, and truer, to our own daily lives, than what’s being claimed in the gallery.

But those are the only two problems I had with the piece. Let’s continue with the positive vibes and simply say it’s satisfying, finally, to see nature winning an innings or two. Even if we know the opponents (again, that’s you and me) to be more determined.

Ikon Gallery's summer offering of everything

Ikon Gallery violated one of my pet peeves from cultural institutions by organising a retrospective of its own existence. Ordinarily the realm of magazine publishers through distribution of anniversary issues, releasing new content is fairly non-existent. It’s like going to your granny’s 90th birthday where she recounts her memories of every year. In the end, it provides the average citizen a good reason to give it a miss. Especially in the summer.

To be fair, San Francisco’s MOMA is doing the same thing this summer, with the vast space of the museum devoted to its collection. Entitled, “75 Years of Looking Forward”, SF MOMA sneaks around the obvious reference to the past by assuming the collection was made for future generations. A neat trick, but it’s the same result as that of magazine publishers: an easy, and less interesting, content generator.

Usually these things are “activated” as they say in not very good art-speak - produced, as the rest of humanity would say - for revenue producing purposes. If National Geographic magazine, for example, has a 125th anniversary issue, other than the ad sales people who are thrilled beyond belief to have an accelerator to reach their target, it matters much less to readers. Because museums don’t profit much from this type of strategy, my guess is that someone at gallery central had a brilliant idea that didn’t pan out at the last minute, and the historical closet was raided for second-best ideas.

The Ikon summer show, entitled “This Could Happen to You: Ikon in the 1970s”, is Part Two of what probably retroactively became a bigger idea. Part One, as no doubt it will now be called, was a show exhibited in 2004 based on Ikon as a seed of an idea: “Some of the Best Things Happen Accidentally: the Beginning of Ikon”. Extrapolating to the future, my guess is that, sometime around 2015 we’ll see something like “Life Under Thatcher: How the Ikon was Plunged into Darkness”.

When these sorts of things pop up, in whatever medium they exist, my strategy is to blitz through the the event like Hitler in 1930s Poland. It won’t be important to remember the artist, because, like 95% of contemporary artists, most were forgotten in the memories of the public about 5 years after their arrival. Instead, I found two over-arching themes for this show: 1. drugs and 2. stuff.

The Ikon adds too much intellectualism into the drug addled days sandwiched in between the revolutionary 1960s and consumerist 1980s. Describing an animated piece by Ian Emes for Pink Floyd, the exhibition guide reads, “…it chimes in with a kind of abstract painting that came to the fore in the 1970s, hard-edged, flat and large-scaled, essentially formalist in its proposition.” Um OK, but really it was all about the drugs and watching the colours bleed and dance and bounce around our brains. Oh to be young and naive like the kids in the galleries these days.

“Stuff” was represented throughout the exhibition via not painting, but not sculpture either. The result of two floors of exhibits suggest the typical 1970s artist had tired of traditional art media. Canvas that is more sculpture than painting; medical equipment that bears no relation to its title; spray guns loaded with paint in place of brushes; drug-induced images resulting from reflections off a car bonnet; variants of the colour green on horizontal canvases. And of course the Pink Floyd animation, with, oddly, individual cells on display (something you’d more likely see in a Disney/Warner Brothers store of the 1990s).

An Ikon recap for those who have a summer to be using up, and have no time for indoor activity: drugs, stuff, materials, history, remembrance, waiting for part three, and when do the hallucinogenics kick in, are my take on 1970s art in Birmingham. Sounds like the 1970s generally.

Palais de Tokyo: where caring goes to die

Thank the Art Gods on High for someone in the universe who is watching over each and every one of us gallery hustlers and museum freaks who just don’t have enough time in the day. Enough time in the day to pore over, wrestle through, sneer at and wonder through as much contemporary art as our brains can digest (if that’s what brains could actually do). It can’t all be absorbed by one man on a stiff budget in an average lifetime of wine, art and song. No one person can do it all; gallery-hop like they’re an escaped banker, buying airline tickets like its beer on a Friday afternoon. For that, we are hereby and forever in your debt, kind sir or madam, M. Curator, for what is probably the least impressive collection of art in the known and unknown universe: the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. You have killed my soul. Prepare to die.

I give you, the fellow art traveller, full permission to strike it off your list of places to see before you leave this earth. I can confidently state that the Palais de Tokyo is not part of any travel diary with the words “un-missable, must-have, once in a lifetime”. Or, if it must remain on your bucket list, surely its just and true place is behind the largest sisal twine ball in Darwin, Minnesota. It might then all make sense, this crazy life of yours. Ball of string: check. OK then, we’re off to Paris for the one cultural dustball that will finally put me six feet under. Who wants whiskey?

Having just returned from visits to both the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville De Paris and the Palais de Tokyo (they are separated by only a cafe - of course they are, it’s Paris). The difference couldn’t be more stark. French roast on one side, decaf on the other. On the Musee d’Art Moderne side: a thriving art hive of busy public-ness, of well-intentioned learning for French and non-French alike, of well-lined walls and floor space with, well, modern and contemporary art. Administered by friendly locals throughout (are we still in France?), I am amongst the coherently curated thread of an argument, an idea, a point posited by the curator, using pieces from the Musee d’Art Moderne’s collection and non-collection alike. Fortune has looked favourably upon me, for I have used my depreciating roll of money wisely. I shall eat this evening.

Musee d'Art Moderne de Paris: warning, contains more life

On the other hand, and the other side of the cafe, there’s the Palais de Tokyo. A static storehouse of forgotten and rotting art pieces, watched over by what appear to be three former bank security guards on holiday; standing, smoking, chatting with each other in France’s most ill-fitted suits. They look more at home inside a Metro underground station.

And of course, there’s the art - sort of. While the programme title promises a solitary thought by way of its title, “Dynasty”, the truth is the pieces appear to be more “We give up, see what you can do with it”. The video and wall lighting installations are either not working, or possibly that’s the point of the show: the ‘dynasty’ of 21st century western values, slumped to an unworkable heap of electrical cords that someone has pulled from the wall. Nobody is even trying here. Alongside the pieces are the lazy curator’s old friend, the unhelpful and completely worthless label, “Untitled. Mixed Media. 2010″. Gee thanks, now I completely understand where I am in the universe of modern man. The continual struggle for meaning and identity.

The Palais de Tokyo itself, the building that is, not the vacuous anti-life inside, is a promising space. It’s not polished, it’s not shaped like a former power station, and it’s not designed by a 21st century starchitect. It’s simply a beat-to-hell space, and a very large one at that. Unfortunately, the space is so large it reveals the weakness of whomever is supposed to be upholding the responsibility of public service. Unless you count driving foot traffic over to the Musee d’Art Moderne as a civic duty. Which, in this case, I’m willing to support.

Ad publication with some (cryptic) text

Take comfort, common man and woman, in knowing that the world’s finest museums and galleries are thinking about the plural “you” and your struggles in appreciating art. Don’t get the wrong idea, it’s not that they’re interested in your opinion. If they wanted that, as the saying almost goes, they’d box it up in a happy meal and demand that you swallow it whole. Instead, they’d rather suffer uninterrupted arguments between each other on strategies to get John and Jane Q Public (that’s you) into their world of Art of the Now, also known as contemporary art. They see the writing on the wall, and it says museums and galleries are for the likes of Lord and Lady Thickbottom, with their moneyed mansions, vast networks of wealthy friends, and Job-like patience to brave out the insane ranting of the world’s maddest and most mis-understood artist. Said writing-upon-wall also say museums are definitely not for most taxpaying suckers like you. Don’t blame me, you’re the wall writer.

Meanwhile, over at the (pick your favourite) music festival, (pick your favourite) 3D cinema, (pick your favourite) restaurant, concert hall, reading club, jazz house, cable show, or whatever else consumes the time of contemporary man and woman, people are discovering culture elsewhere. The endless sea of once common pounds sterling and dollars from 2006 are getting sucked down the drain of debt and bill paying, and nobody is finding the stopper anytime soon. Seems the precious museum and gallery are last on the list of invitees to the new economy of hunker down and turn the lights off.

For it is in the Summer 2010 edition of the Great Big Fat Book of Art Gallery Ads, or as they prefer to be called, ArtForum, where the condition of the present day museum is put before several insiders. By several, I mean 27. They are nothing if not thorough, these ArtForum publishers, and if they don’t have an ad from every single New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo gallery in their pages, I’d be shocked and disappointed at the same time. Of course by insiders I do NOT mean those that walk “inside” a museum or public gallery, flummoxed by what the artist considers to be art, with absolutely no clue as to why he or she bothered to re-construct this considerably sized mass of metal in the first place. By insiders, I refer to those that are currently museum staff, museum architects, museum owners, museum suppliers (or if you prefer, artists), as well as those anchored just off the tropically perfect island of Museumland: auction houses, universities, and even an ArtForum publisher. It’s like asking the owners of vinyl record stores what their views are on the iPod.

Art insiders are keenly aware of the problem, with the solution being a complex cocktail that includes you: Mr. Average and Mrs. Medium. Contributors of the issue use words like, participation, democratization, interaction, even “polyphonic exchange” (that’s discussion to you and me). They get the new media; the twitter, the google, the facebook, with their coarse and vulgar “inclusive” environments; they just have difficulty doing anything about it. It’s not that they lack intelligence, social commitment, heaps of money, to get you to see it their way; they simply forgot to ask you. Your phone must have been off.

The breed of people who buy Art Forum, however, don’t usually include the rough and unwashed of the world, which fits them snugly into the vertical market of art and academia. You’d only read ArtForum if you were interested in art. Not necessarily the appreciating of it, but the running of it and ensuring its bolt-hold onto exclusivity. If you’re a commercial gallery owner, you’d “read” ArtForum to ensure your ad is well placed upfront, well ahead of your competitors’ ads who are covertly stealing your well-placed clients. Unfortunately, museums and galleries are usually held in the public trust, so it’s quite obvious someone is missing from ArtForum’s jabbering on the state of play, and that “missing someone” is you. You and your small minded, limited thinking, shrinking bank account, politically correct choices, bringer of screaming children into the public realm, BlackBerry habit of typing at the wrong place and wrong time, burden of a citizen. But thanks for the tax dollars, Joe, we promise to spend it wisely.

After reading about half of the 27 essays (I’m not reading all of them - some aren’t even using this planet’s languages), it appears that the business life of a museum and gallery knave is one of hand-wringing and foreboding. Recommendations span from Crank up the Revolution (Olafur Eliasson) to the Capitalists are Coming to Replace the State (Jeffrey Kastner). By all accounts, you’d swear the museum system in the western world is crippled. Most essayists in this issue see the function of the institutions as an intermediary: provide the stage for what artists are currently producing. If the primary role of the museum is one of negotiation between you and the artist (or artists if you’re “polyphonic” enabled), then apparently the museum isn’t doing its job. I think we could have told them that if they’d just ask.