Some Advice from Artists

As I’m running off to watch the semifinals of the World Cup (no, the tournament did not end when the U.S. lost), I thought I would just include some useful advice from some famous artist, for artists and for life in general …

“Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” Pablo Picasso

“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” Vincent Van Gogh

“Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.” Salvador Dali

“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” Leo Burnett

“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” Jack London

“Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” Charles Mingus

“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.” Voltaire

Banksy in NYC

The infamously secretive British street artist Banksy is spending the month of October doing a "residency" in the streets of New York City. While the author is less than impressed with his calling out of the City for failing to rebuild the Twin Towers, you can find 20 of his pieces here: CNN

Art Basil

An interesting polemic against the contemporary art world recently appeared in Slate: Article. The author argued that the modern art scene, a term I avoid based on confusing a period with a moment, has lost its barometer and become a meaningless and ironic blend of artists' elitism and greed. While I think interesting art is still being done today, I do believe it's true that too much contemporary art is fundamentally uninteresting, so steeped in irony and inside jokes that it has nothing to offer the audience beyond a more rarified version of the quotationalism and hyperirony of The Simpsons and Family Guy. Popular culture has replaced the struggle for quality humor with an "I get it" appropriation of other popular culture and cheap, often potty-oriented humor. It is a huge remix culture where the more you watch, the more you get the jokes and can laugh along to the perpetual reverb. Is the contemporary art scene that much different? Many artists exist in the post-pop-art genre that appropriates some text from popular culture and then alters it in some way (often without any clear purpose, as with Mr. Brainwash, Peter Max or much of Jeffrey Koons). Others seek to critique popular culture and the spectacle, but often in ways that are either too easy or too obstruse. In either case, they have become part of the spectacle that art is supposed to critique (at least in modernism). In cases like Art Basil, they are at the epicentre of that spectacle, at least as it exists for the monied class. Again, I do believe there is interesting art out there, but I often go to openings with friends here in Los Angeles or, when I lived there, back in New York City and smile and talk to the artists as if I find it interesting -- while I tend to just be looking for the free booze and food. Here is a small smattering of art from recent shows: Flavor Wire.

Extra, Extra ... the Spectacle Triumphs Again

This week debate continued on the fiscal cliff, Netanyahu announced more settlements in Palestine (which was just recognized by the United Nations), we continued to debate Susan Rice as a potential Secretary of State and a photographer for the New York Post published an image of a man seconds before he was hit by a subway (USA Today). The first obvious question is why he would take a picture instead of trying to save the man, Ki-Suck Han. The second is whether the Post should have published the image on the cover. 

Neither question is new. The Post has been criticized for years for their covers and sensationalizing of the news, as are most tabloids. The only thing that makes this exceptional is whether the press should show someone right before they die. If it is related to war or in some way brings something worthwhile to light for the public, I see nothing wrong with it. In fact, the way the U.S. mainstream media tends to censor itself regarding the consequences of war is substantially more irresponsible than this image, to me (as for example respecting the Bush administration's ban on showing soldier coffins during the Iraq War). But it is troubling not only that the photographer would focus on the shot over the human being in front of him, but that the Post saw nothing wrong with making it the cover image. The other issue, of the photographer's responsibility, is more interesting. We obviously don't know the whole story and whether he would have been putting himself in peril by trying to rescue Han. But it is certainly troubling to think that he would first consider getting the shot. On the other hand, this is what photographers do, as any great one will tell you.

And the photographer is not the first to elicit condemnation for his inaction. There was the photographer in Columbia who took a picture of a young girl right before she died in freezing water. But in that case there was no way to save the girl and the image did help pressure the government to respond to the tragedy. More famously, was the British photographer who took the picture of the young African child crawling back to the refugee camp as a condor stood behind waiting to eat the emaciated body when he died. The photographer in that case won a Pulitzer, but later killed himself from the guilt of recognizing what he had done (or failed to do). In this case, the sensational nature of the inactivity seems equally troubling, at both the individual and social level.

It is really just the latest manifestation of the spectacle society, where the representation of reality stands in for that reality and we increasingly live in a mediated world of images that refocus the world in the capitalist/consumer culture mold. An event doesn't really happen until the media reports on it, a movie/tv reenactment is made or it is posted on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Events are packaged, framed for maximum effect and then sold to the public as if this were reality itself. And we increasingly seem to see the world through those lenses, unable to distinguish between the underlying reality and the representation of it in images, sounds and words. The controversy will soon dissipate (it sort of already has) and in its place will only be the image of a man moments before he dies. From a purely artistic or social science perspective, it is a compelling image that can give us insight into our greatest fear -- death itself. But at a broader social level, it shows the way the spectacle continues to reach into every aspect of our lives and, in my mind, reminds us of an underlying sociopathology that has imbued itself into the American soul.        

A Simple Personality Test

I have come up with a five question personality test:

1. Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen?

2. Godard or Truffaut?
3. Van Gogh or Picasso? 
4. Amelie or City of Lost Children?
5. Dostoevsky or Kafka?

I think you could tell a lot about a person from these five questions ...

Art in the Age of Creative Exhaustion

Performance art is again pushing the proverbial envelope into new and exciting places with a live birth on stage. Artist Marni Kotak, who previously reenacted her grandfather's funeral, the night she lost her virginity and teenage masturbation on stage has decided to bring the magic of childbirth to a Brooklyn gallery that may or may not be near you. While some will decry the bad taste of the event or invoke the tired ole "this ain't art" argument, what's more interesting to me is how emblematic this is of the rather limited vision of art these days and the ways reality television and social networking culture have influenced the entire cultural landscape. 

Interestingly, Kotak argues that she doesn't like social networking sites because they take time away from authentic experiences with family and friends. I agree with the thought, but have to wonder how having a baby in public in any way challenges the social networking logic of sharing the intimate details of our lives with anyone and everyone we know (or at least kind of remember from that night at the bar three years ago or that random meeting in the elevator on a rainy Thursday afternoon in November 2007). Does rendering an event in public really give it more authenticity, or is it merely a new way of mediating our experiences and creating a world where the only thing that seems to legitimate experience is sharing it with others. 

At the deeper level of deconstructing art itself, it does continue the rather tired postmodern penchant for calling anything and everything art. When the dadaists argued that "only stupid people see beauty only in beautiful things" and started the anti-art movement, they were making a profound statement about the elitism of avant-garde art and our rather limited aesthetic tastes. But one wonders if pop art wasn't really sufficient to make the point complete. Do we really need to create a world where every experience is called art if it is placed in the confines of a context that can be labeled artistic? Has creativity completely devolved into various incarnations of appropriation? And what does this augur for our collective future? I believe that art is answerable to no one but the artist themselves, but do sometimes pine for those days of modernist yore when artists were actually trying to say something profound and maybe even change society.

Ceci n'est pas une femme

Rene Magritte reminded us almost a century ago that a painting is not a thing itself but a re-presentation of that thing. So the Mona Lisa smile that has garnered out attention for several centuries now is but a representation of that enigmatic woman we have never been able to meet in the real world. Sure we have written songs about her, people have made the pilgrimage to the Louvre just to stare at her surrounded by throngs of other tourists and separated from us by a huge glass encasement and the painting has been reproduced in books, posters, prints and on the Internet. But we might soon be able to move from the dessert of the virtual to the DNA of the real, as archeologists in Italy are seeking to exhume remains they believe are of the original model: Telegraph. The woman, Lisa Gherardini (a Florentine wife of a rich silk merchant) is believe to be housed in a tomb beneath a convent in Florence. But I wonder if the mystery that surrounds her really adds to the aura of the painting and its transcendental quality. Will we destroy her allure if we know who she is? Does her wealth and status undermine the rather radical nature of his framing and subject at the time? Will people be heading off to wherever the cranial remains are ultimately housed rather than the famous Paris museum? I'm not sure; and I'm not sure I care, but I suppose it does provide a respite from the disaster of the dessert of the real we live in.

On a slightly related note, a woman attacked a Gauguin painting in the National Gallery in Washington DC last week, screaming "This is Evil." The painting, Two Tahitian Women, portrays, you guessed it, two Tahitian women, both topless. While many feminists have faulted Gauguin's paintings for exoticizing these native women he often took as lovers, my guess is the woman thought the painting was evil because it dared to show the naked breasts of women -- a clearly unnatural sight that is destroying the very fabric of American society. Thank God we have defenders of decency and religious rectitude around to protect us from seeing those shameful symbols of sexuality and, um, our sustenance for the first several "sinful" months of our lives!

Postmodern Art

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see the new exhibit at the Guggenheim. It provided a sometimes interesting engagement with the evolution of photography and video, and their strong relationship to the past: www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view-now/haunted-contemporary-photography-video-performance. What interested me most about the exhibit was a subject I have been discussing with an MFA student who is doing an independent study with me this semester: the necessity of mediation in much postmodern art. Picasso once said that art is a lie that tells the truth. Yet modern art, though sometimes difficult to decipher, attempted to tell that truth without the necessity of additional mediation. Since the 60s, and definitely more recently, that need for mediation has seemed to increase. Art in galleries, museums and that sold to collectors have always had different goals and different audiences. But one trend that seems much more pervasive is the necessity of explanation to make the art understandable to audiences not "in the know" (and even some in it). In other words, the producers of art, who are generally influenced by the audience they are doing the art for (though arguably more in recent decades), are taking a more active role in attempting to influence not only the way we see and be in the world but how we see their art.

Art has always been about new ways to see the world, offering re-presentations of reality that reflect different perspectives, views, languages and the like. As Marcuse argued, art can be seen as a form of the "great refusal" -- an instrument to step outside the dominant discourse and rationality of a given epoch. Yet much PM art is about deconstructing perception itself, the production of art and how it is produced and received. Much of the language employed toward that end revolves around irony and self-reflexivity. As many have argued, this has lent it a more elitist stance toward the world, where experts/critics are the main arbitors of quality and the public needs the aforementioned mediation to understand it. What is gained and lost in this process? I think one thing is the ability to contemplate art as it is -- without that mediation. We lose our space of receptive autonomy, as we are oriented toward the prescribed meaning, or at least the assumed meaning of the interpretors (in the case of museums). It seems to follow a larger trend in society to expect and almost require that mediation. Something is not real until it is instantiated within the media culture and given form that is manipulated by the delivery vehicle (e.g., film, television, commentators, etc.) Art seems to be increasingly following this trend and it may be a further point of concern for those worried about creativity and critical thinking. There is still a large fount of creativity and critical thinking among the creative class, but what of everyone else. It is clear that we have expanded the ability to be creative for larger audiences (through the Internet) and to expand those involved in defining what quality work is (ala YouTube and so many other sites). Yet is creativity called into question when art becomes too self-reflective and when audiences come to expect an explanation of what they are seeing or hearing?

Many sites are poping up these days to give the public access to contemporary art online. Here is one: http://www.sightunseen.com/.

Art as Propaganda

Mark Laita is a New York/Los Angeles artist who has just released a new book, "Created Equal." In the book he juxtaposes images of ordinary and famous people based on his journey across the 48 contiguous states over a 7 year period. He explains: "‘I photograph what I love about my country, which is the American. By that I mean the individual who is shaped from more than 200 years of liberty and independence missed with all the successes and failures that America has experienced in its short life. So here is a collection of these creatures. Tragic and wonderful, great and ordinary, they stand proud and ready for scrutiny.’” (http://www.faheykleingallery.com/photographers/laita/press/created_equal_new_work/laita_pr_cenw_frames.htm).  Look here for the images: http://flavorwire.com/gallery/12-30-09/index.html. He further explained in the original 2006 exhibit, "At the heart of this collection of portraits is my desire to remind us that we are all equal, until our environment, circumstances or fate molds us and weathers us into whom we become. America’s extremes seem to be getting more severe. The chasm between the rich and poor continues to grow; the clash between conservatives and liberals is stronger than ever; even good and evil seem more polarized. Created Equal attempts to remind us that we are all connected, no matter how separate our paths may be.” While I think the pictures are interesting and provocative, I am troubled by the racial dynamics of many, the underlying ideology he seems to be invoking and what appears to be a mocking portrayal of the ordinary and (extra)ordinary. Do we really need art right now that seems blatantly racist, tacitly sexist and celebrates the "American dream"? All art is implicitly valid in whatever it is attempting to do, but I find this trite and trivial and silly in its rather naive invocation of equality (while more interesting in exploring the increased polarity of American society).  

Reflection at the Speed of Light

In the film LA Story, there is a scene where Steve Martin skates through LACMA, one of the art museums in town. His friend videotapes the adventure until they run into his burgeoning love interest. An interesting article in the New York Times today, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/arts/design/03abroad.html?th&emc=th, ponders the significance of the way we look at art in museums these days and whether many don’t secretly dream of roller skating or, maybe more appropriately, skateboarding or rollerblading through museums to maximize what they can see and the “efficiency” of the visit. To be more specific, the article looks at the ways many of us don’t really look at art anymore. We take a snapshot, glance at the work or run to the famous piece, like the Mona Lisa. I have a friend who follows this trend, almost running through an exhibit in a museum or trying to see the entire collection in a couple of hours. I’m more of a meanderer and often sit down to really look at art I like; but I guess that puts me in the minority these days.

Really I think the question of a changing relationship to art in museums relates to a larger social trend – the inability to focus on much of anything. Martin Heidegger once decried the loss of the power of art that came with its reproduction, arguing that the transcendental relationship with art can only be experienced firsthand. Today, mediated reality seems to trump reality on a daily basis. We have twitter and facebook to keep constant tabs on others and keep them abreast of the minutest details of our lives, multiple reenactments of almost any significant event (think of how many Iraq War movies have already come out), advertising peeking out at us from every corner, background or foreground noise everywhere (I entered a movie theatre a half hour early last night, and they already had previews running) and essentially the “multitaskination” of our entire lives. Doing one thing at a time, for any prolonged period of time, is a bête noire to contemporary sensibility, at least in American cities. One must walk and talk, text and talk, drive and text, eat and read, have seven to ten programs opened at once on the computer, multitab our way through the Internet, etc. ADHD has become a cultural pandemic and it is not just a problem for kids.

But what is the bigger significance? By disavowing the importance of focus and time to really contemplate and explore aesthetic and material reality, what is lost? How does this relate to the simplification of American political discourse? What does it mean for democracy and social interaction? Can it undermine the ability to have meaningful relationships and friendships if one has 800 friends on facebook that need a few seconds of attention every couple of months and we are all texting our way through evenings rather than really talking to each other? Why is it that so few (including me) can have a linear conversation these days? Lost in the struggle to fit more and more information and experiences into one day and one lifetime might be the ability to actually enjoy those experiences. Could it be that an hour in front of one painting isn’t a waste of time? Hard to say as I sit here writing a blog entry that will soon disappear into the ether of tomorrow’s yesterday.