contemporary monkey

Eberhard Havekost; every heard of him? Me neither. Knowing who he is, at this point, is unimportant as he’s unlikely to be remembered by anyone in say 10-20 years. But Eberhard Havekost deserves a look, if only to be example-boy for What’s Wrong With Contemporary Art.

Let’s get the process out of the way first. Eberhard Havekost (I just love saying the name, for no other reason than it sounds like a maker of pencils), takes a photo snapshot of something. Usually anything. The snapshot is then filtered through Photoshop. For those of us who use Photoshop quite a bit, know not to touch any of the filters because filters are simply for the technophobe, the blind, and the creatively bereft. Unless of course you’re eight years old, then it’s brilliant because it’s subversive in a childish sort of way, and it puts you well on the road to revolution. But if you’re not eight, like most of us, using filters is sentimental at best, and sad and overwrought at worst.

After the Photoshop filter dabbling, Eberhard Havekost moves onto, believe it or not, painting! Eberhard Havekost paints, using his newly Photoshopped photo, on canvas. Just like real painters. To some extent I see the irony in the process; like old media taking back the streets from new media, and hey, if you think you’ve got gestures down Mr. Photographer, you just haven’t seen an Eberhard Havekost. This seems to be a trend amongst Germans. Gerhard Richter does it, and because some folks refer to him as the 20th century’s greatest living artist, his work is probably a magnet for others to photo copy. How ironic (or does that, because I’ve found it to be ironic, make it no longer ironic - I never know with these things). Usually in these instances it’s a big pissing contest between art and photography.

Richter's "Reader"...image of an image.

Anyway, we digress; back to Eberhard Havekost. I bring up the subject, not only because, again, I like saying Eberhard Havekost, but that I’ve just popped into London’s White Cube recently in hope of all hopes to find something that captures the imagination. Instead, I found Eberhard Havekost. After about 15 minutes inside, I make haste to the handy leaflet at the front of the room. It starts off:

“The point of departure for my paintings”, Havekost commented in a recent interview, “is an emotional quality or a factuality - in other words, something I can feel.”

Whenever art people say things like, “point of departure” it means they’re the type of person who searches for an explanation to every part of their lives and woe betide the unlucky person standing next to them. Here’s my own example: “The point of departure for my breakfast this morning was a strange and vacant sort of empty feeling I witnessed in the pit of my stomach.” While most of us are getting on with life, and finding art in the everyday magnificence of life itself, others have nothing better to do than to seek out meaning in the minutia.

To get right to the art, here’s a glimpse of Eberhard Havekost at The White Cube:

Eberhard Havekost: they all look like this

There are nine of these trees, and they all look the same. It’s almost not worth the bother to put a nail in the wall for any of it, really. The point for Eberhard Havekost is to photograph a tree in winter, from different angles, at night, and then apply a Photoshop filter. He then uses theses abstract images, and effectively paints a realist image of the blurred image. Let’s pause to hear from the White Cube’s web site: ”

“… increasingly Havekost uses the photograph as a starting point or base structure.”

[For anyone before Andy Warhol, we would have called that either copying, or just being lazy. Here it's euphemistically called a starting point.]

“…a material quality distinct from the photographic original.”

[Um, yes, that's why we call it painting, and not alt-photo.]

“The resulting atmosphere is spooky and surreal: the trees sway and droop, the greens hang like thick ooze from the pendulous branches.”

[Spooky and surreal? Really? My first thoughts were: monochrome, grey-green, dull, multiplicity for no real reason. I'm not sure this is even art school material.]

“The tree is, of course, one of the oldest motifs in Western art: with ‘Gast’, the artist has created a proliferating forest that seems to haunt this rich history, a gang of spectres that persist in provoking awe and wonder.”

[Oh right, that's where the spooky and surreal come from. Now I'm with you. Still, it isn't spooky, and it isn't haunting. It's really just navel gazing, and dull. If you want to navel gaze, Mr. Eberhard Havekost, find something of higher value to society, like the CERN particle accelerator, or unravelling cryptic Mayan symbols, or, what makes Jaffa Cakes so good.]

“Havekost enacts a process of de-materialisation and re-materialisation, from thought to object. And when confronted anew, the process is reversed again: the painting now provokes a range of interpretations and associations in the mind of the viewer.”

[I don't know if you know this, but that's what "us viewers" do with all art.  Reinterpreting your work isn't a mind-boggling, just-stumbled-upon theme that you've opened our eyes to.  We ALWAYS do that.]

Generally I see what Mr. Eberhard Havekost is doing, but the result is fairly vapid in intellect, and aesthetically mute.  Focusing on subject matter, and “filtering” is the point of being an artist, and rendering an interpretation is the enjoyment of the viewer. Welcome to life as we know it Mr. Eberhard Havekost, how does it work on your planet?

Attention all aliens from extragalactic nebula outside Earth’s Solar System (third planet from our sun, in the Galaxy called the Milky Way). Consider this a human plea for what was at one time, righteously ours, and to many people, fondly remembered.  We would like to have our Russians back please.  The ones that were on Earth before the black hole of what was known as the Soviet Union, where those of us on the outside were completely blinded by a lack of hard data, while those on the inside were vacuumed up by your molecular-level, cell-parsing tractor beams.  There are 180 million of them - you can’t miss ‘em.

Before the Frost of Irrelevancy: Kandinsky

For those of us Earthlings devoted to the subject of art, and who were forced observers from beyond the Iron Curtain (look it up, it’s too depressing to describe here), there are more than 70 years which cannot be accounted for.  It’s during this massive time void that we suspect you’ve taken our most significant Russians and hoarded them for yourselves.  For this self-serving act, we can’t blame you, but we’d like them back now.

Prior to our Western Earth Year of 1917, our collection of gifted Russian artists included Kandinsky, Chagall, Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, and more.  Now we’re left with the heap that’s thrashing about the walls inside the London art gallery, Calvert22.  Gutov, Khanyutin, Zakharov, are all speaking visual gibberish to us with no claim on story-telling.  These androids seem to be using your indecipherable language on us, and have yet to master the ability to communicate with what we call “Homo Sapiens” or “man”.  Maybe you can make sense of this twisted jabbering, but they might as well be speaking Martian to us (ref: Mars, the fourth planet in our solar system, with no life form…the reference to Martian language is a obviously a glib remark, because, oh forget it).  Let’s make it a straight swap: you give us our soulful, complex, but engaging Russian artists back, and in return you can have what ever’s inside Calvert22.

Video seems to be their choice of parlay with us, possibly because of your presumption that all human beings drink a form of electricity through reflected-light screens and energy-emitting monitors.  Only some of us, e.g. Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson and Peaches Geldof, are able to accomplish such a feat, but assume that most of us cannot.  What’s more, your Russian replicants seem to enjoy duplicating each other’s work by using our black and white video format to shed light on their bleak, cheerless, barren land, with a life short on human emotion.  If that is indeed the point of their art, they had me at ten seconds of the first video.  The rest of the works were simply superfluous.  Next time, have your automatons draw straws and send down a single humanoid, armed with just one of his human videos, limited to 15 seconds in length (preferably shorter).  Oh, and can you beam down the latest human that resembles Kandinsky, or Malevich so we can remember what Russian artistic talent was like, before your photon-separating magneto-pulse device chemically reduced our Russians to their component parts.  You’re going to be in a lot of trouble if you can’t put them back together.

In order to further assist artists with their efforts in gaining a following and thus increasing their importance to the brotherhood of man, I thought to create a mathematical model that explicitly describes a winning formula.  “Simian’s Theorem of Grasp” is a useful device for eliminating those individuals, who, in the end, don’t matter enough to the lonely artist, while optimizing the number of people in the world who do.  We can all do with a little closet cleaning, and to no-one is this activity more important than to the starving artist.

Simian’s Theorem of Grasp states that

x = y - (a + b + c + d);

where the constants and variables are explained to the forlorn artist as follows:

a = you, and, with the possible exception of Grayson Perry, is always constant at 1.  Realistically, if you hope to have a chance with your art, your influence should attempt to reach beyond this lonely number.

b = your friends (variable in number, decreasing with time, and usually insignificant in this filthy business of art.). This group will never tell you that your art is rubbish, and will therefore most likely lie to you when asked by you, “This art, do you get it?”  Your friends are one thing, your friends in art are quite another.  In fact, your true friends will probably thank you for literally leaving them out of the equation.

c = art patrons.  These individuals are usually quite wealthy in cash, but poor in judgement in matters of art.  People in this group can include British bankers, Russian oligarchs, American hedge fund managers, Mexican drug runners, and Charles Saatchi.  When we speak of those with “more money than sense”, it’s this group of whom we speak.

d = sycophantic art culture hangers-on (similar to “b” above, but even less significant in the art scheme of things).  Those in this group act differently than variable “b” in that the number may actually increase with time if you’re represented by powerful, yet delusional, agents.  Please remember however that knowing more of the wrong people doesn’t help you with your goal of making a real difference in the world.

y = everybody on planet earth; including those hard to count tribes in Indonesian jungles.

x = this is perhaps the most important of the variables: this the magical number of willing individuals who seek to derive meaning, or feel emotion, or exhibit love toward your art.  This group can include those that, unprompted, unpaid, and unrehearsed, say they like your work.  The higher this number, the more influential you will be to mankind.  This variable is the antithesis of a,b,c and d combined.  Think of x as the Jedi knights, while a,b,c and d are, well, you know who…

Success in art is really this simple.  It’s been proven to be true by those that have high “x” factors, such as Anish Kapoor, and perversely proven true by those, such as Damien Hirst,  with high “c” and “d” factors.  Please be advised that, because of its greater potential, “x” can be an extremely large number.  The wise artist will use this to his or her advantage, and will soon find that the c’s and d’s of the formula soon become useless and trivial.

fashion faux pas: le beret est essential!

Forget about the art, the point of London’s annual Frieze Art Fair is to be an affected part of the art. It’s now my favourite thing about this typically posy British art fair - the living, breathing, accountants during the week, cool guys by weekend, semi-conscious sculptures milling around casually as cute art collectors. What other industry can you think of where the civilians come dressed like the heroes? Do you dine at your favourite restaurant in checkered trousers? Shop at the supermarket in an apron? Drop into a Birmingham Gentlemen’s club without a shirt? There’s real magnetism going on amongst the art crowd, but I doubt it goes the other way. Damien Hirst probably doesn’t dress up like an account executive, or a gallery girl (Grayson Perry on the other hand…).

best dressed man: Grayson Perry

Even that most witless and dim of the homo sapien, the English football supporter, is aware of la limitation de la couture du moment. There is no plumber that will slink to his seat in a rowdy, Chelsea versus Arsenal derby, catwalking to his seat in silver football boots and multi-coloured Petr Cech helmet. Art collectors and followers, however, are a brother from another mother. Looking around at Frieze, you’d think the typical West End Londoner was a card carrying artist. I’ve known only a few real artists, but they don’t, and never have, looked anything like the people ambling thoughtfully, but purposefully, amongst the merchandise on offer at Frieze. I don’t think I’ve even seen a single artist profiled in a magazine that looks anything like Friezers. However, as artists are busy creating stuff from messy material, they tend not to be wearing anything that screams Selfridges. In England, you probably couldn’t tell an artist from a farmer; so why is it that the hangers-on of the local art community feel the need to look so pseudo-arty? It’s not as if someone is going to ask them to dive into the thick of things to re-create a cor-ten sculpture, or add their own vision of Man’s Inhumanity to Man.

There is an undisclosed art-drone uniform, and the Frieze-ettes seem to have let slip the particulars amongst the membership. The time spent sorting out hair-do’s, scarves, beards, ponytails, colourful trainers, £300 distressed waistcoats, and that tattiest of all ensemble piece: the French beret, is time spent not doing something else. Like looking at, and talking about, art. On the positive side, at least they smell nice. Not like those filthy artists.

James Turrell; probably somewhere not very near you

Just how far would an artist go to alienate his followers, to the point of eliminating even the mildest of interest in the work?  I can guess your first response.  I’m discounting the witless wonders who produce harebrained art while claiming canonical importance, when nearly every left and right brain thinker (not including the sycophants of course) will disagree loudly.  They get more attention than deserve.  Take any old example, say, The Turner Prize, which consistently awards finalist-status to some or other oddball in the hopes of gathering steam for said oddball, along with oddball prize.  That’s far too many ears and eyes paying attention in my view.

I’m talking about an artist, followed by a knowing bunch of art-heads, deliberately making it arduous for anyone, let alone a handful of hangers on, to even find the produced artwork.  John Baldessari once burned all of his studio’s work in the 1970’s.  That’s the kind of oblivion-seeking I’m talking about; a real deal ender.  Unfortunately, Baldessari spent the following 20-30 years building up another oeuvre, kind of defeating the purpose really.  I don’t think his heart was really in this conceptual, guess-where-my-stuff-is-now, business.

Through the September issue of Art Review, I may have found the next Catch Me If You Can personality that really knows how to shake off the scent.  The artist is James Turrell, and his mission, for the past 30 years, has been to build a naked-eye observatory in an extinct volcano - that he bought - in the Arizona desert.  He’s nearly finished - it opens to the public in 2011.  Imagine how many fans he must have had over the years before they sort of forgot about him, or worse, died.  Should you ask that much from your support team, to wait out death?  Donald Judd worked not too far away (in distance and loneliness) but at least Judd surfaced every once in a while, and crated his work to a museum or ten.

The good news is Turrell just opened another project, so for those who can’t wait another two years (you should be ashamed of yourself - you’re nearly there!) you’ll be able to witness the wonders of Turrell in relative real time.  This project is named The James Turrell Museum, of course, and was built by one of Turrell’s long suffering fans in California.  A wine maker, by the name of Donald Hess, who no doubt has 30-year old wine stored somewhere in honour of the (potentially) Grand Opening Weekend and Beard Trimming, has been “collecting” Turrells since the 1960s.  Collecting in this case is a big stack of books with directions on assembling the final design, which in this case is exactly none.  Apparently, Hess never got around to any of it.  I guess the name Turrell is an antithesis to the word “exhibition”.  As in, my agent promised me this wicked solo gallery show in Chelsea, but this credit crunch really Turrelled me.

Inside the building, the works are more ocular science and 1970’s grooviness than art.  The rooms are psychedelically lit with various colours of light, both natural and manufactured.  Walking through each colour chamber requires your greatest, age-old hippie tricks to appreciate the strange sensation.  Art Review describes the space as “pre-history” , which nobody really understands, but from the sounds of it, has the making of being inside a Hopi Indian smoke tent with charged-up iPods of Yes or Pink Floyd or Flotation Toy Warning if you’re really current, floating through your ears.  The whole thing strikes me as belonging to a bucket list for burned out, space travelers from the 1960’s, but it’s not art.  Unless you count the drugs and music and Hopi Indian smoke tent along with it.  No, this is just a friendly reminder of a trip from the good old days.  Hey, come to think of it, this project would have been really really useful about 30 years ago!!

Still, it would be good to get an eyeful of the whole thing, except for one essential fact: it’s in Argentina.  Seventeen hours by car from Buenos Aires, 20 from Santiago, Chile.  Assuming you make the trip, what if you get there and it’s closed?  How do you explain that to your travel insurance company?