I was perusing our local public radio website today and noticed something odd about the way they are trying to garner good page-rankings with search engines. Within the head of many HTML pages, meta-data may be placed that is intended to guide browsers and search engines - tell them in which language the page is written, indicate the presence of news feeds, and give some keywords that search engines can use to find and categorize the page. I would assume that KRCC’s site would employ such keywords as: Colorado Springs, public radio, news, npr, culture, arts, etc. to draw visitors who are searching for such things. Instead, I found this in their code for a story about a sweet, old woman who continues the tradition of colcha embroidery in the San Luis valley of Colorado:

replica watch, replica watches, ringtones url, url replica, replica rolex, replica, url, watch, watches, rolex, ringtones, free, topwatchsite, mforum, forumup, cartier, repwatch, bellross, quality, musihits, swiss, bell, designer, xanax, mobile

Might I suggest that they toss in “Britney,” “American Idol,” and “Boobs” if they really want to crank things up a notch?

When I was at the Ohio State University as a graduate student, I taught a few art classes ranging from basic drawing to a course that dealt with real and recorded time in art forms. I had both bright students, and some dim bulbs. The inconsistency in student quality made it hard to tell if my students were being straight with me, or if I was just involved in a strange performance art project that they schemed up.

A young woman in on of my classes was a good artist, but a mediocre student. She had a tendency toward sporadic attendance and had missed one Friday morning class, returning to school on Monday with apologies for her absence. She began, “I’m sorry I missed class on Friday. I had Anthrax.”

I began to think, “Where would she get Anthrax?,” “When is she going to tell me the punchline?,” and “Is this that 24 hour Anthrax bug that can be remedied with some Nyquil® and good night’s rest?”

She then followed that up with a tale of working her waitressing job that Friday night (obviously a quick recovery) where she was picked up by Jim Jarmusch and whisked away to a strip club, where Jim spent the night sucking on cigarettes and contemptuously exhaling streams of smoke while seething, “Corporate strippers.”

It’s too bad she didn’t try to pass that off as a performance. She may have received a better grade in the class.

To continue my post about art museums/galleries doing interesting things to connect with their immediate and global communities, I’d like to point out an institution in Colorado (of all places). The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar (The Lab) will be opening in Denver in September. The brainchild of Adam Lerner and developer Mark Falcone, the Lab will serve as a unique cultural center for the Belmar district in Lakewood, CO (a suburb of Denver). Belmar is another contemporary living/shopping area or the sort that has been cropping up around the country over the last 15 years. However, Falcone realized that if he really wanted to create a community, he would need to include a cultural center (other than a multiplex). Thus began the Lab.

Since May 2004, the Lab has been bouncing around available store fronts in Belmar with an occasional locally-based show and some innovative programming. Series range from lectures on contemporary art based on discussions with Adam’s Aunt Miriam, to The School of Music Reform in which guest lecturers take different approaches to make the music of contemporary reformers accessible. I am particularly fond of the barbershop quartet singing Björk.

My favorite series is Mixed Taste where “there are two speakers. The first speaks for a half hour on one subject (e.g. T. S. Eliot). They tag. The second speaker discusses a completely unrelated subject (e.g. fresh meat sausage) for the next half hour. Then, there are questions and answers of both at the same time. During the initial talks, the speakers are not allowed to make connections between subjects. During question-and-answer, anything can happen.” What is great is not just that this is programming I would enjoy attending, it’s that a lot of people enjoy attending these lectures. According to Adam, they had to start putting a cap on the number of attendees because they were getting too many people showing up. And it’s not just amazing that people like attending the lectures, it’s that they pay and the Lab has had to implement a cap. For arts programming not located in a major art hub, that is pretty impressive.

Starting September 16, 2006, The Lab will open the doors of its new building designed by Hagy Belzberg of Belzberg Architects of Santa Monica. This will also be the opening day of its inaugural exhibition: Isaac Julienâ??s film installation Fantôme Afrique, co-commissioned with the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Ellipse Foundation in Portugal.

The greater Denver area seems to be experiencing a bit of an arts renaissance lately. Not only will the Lab be opening this year, but there is the new Daniel Liebeskind-designed wing of the Denver Art Museum scheduled to open in October of 2006; the Museum of Contemporary Art | Denver will be erecting a new museum designed by David Adjaye; the Clyfford Still Museum will open its doors in 2009 to house the estate of the abstract expressionist; and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is in the middle of an expansion/renovation and has opened the FAC Modern. Now all it needs it part of the Art Basel franchise to set up camp in Aspen. Who do we talk to about that?

Living in the middle of Indiana has its perks: fireflies in the cornfields at night that make you feel like you’re driving through hyperspace, fresh air, no pesky urban hipsters to tell you how wonderful New York is and that you should really move there, and dirt cheap real estate. However, this also means that I am miles and miles away from major cultural centers. As a result my cultural scouting routines have had to change. Where I was once able to walk to Used Kids records to catch up on new music, I now have to turn to audio blogs, podcasts, and online music services. Where I used to be able to take the train to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and spend a couple of hours looking at art, I now have to subscribe to mailing lists to find out what is going on in the art world. I read about shows rather than attending them. I watch lectures from internet archives instead of attending them. I collect recipes instead of eating at nice restaurants. Don’t get me wrong, I occasionally get out of town and see art exhibits and attend concerts, but not nearly as much as I would like.

So, I have become a seasoned internet scout. I am on numerous mailing lists, my RSS feeds and podcast subscribtions are legion, and I have become a decent student of how institutions and individuals try to connect to the rest of the world. Specifically I try to pay attention to how museums and galleries promote their exhibitions and programming. There are a handful of institutions that I feel are doing nice things to shake up the traditional notion of how an art institution is supposed to act on the web.

• The Walker Art Center
  • I have long been a fan of the Walker’s attention to the needs of its audience. Their curatorial work, programming, and visiting lecturers have been a great boon to the Minneapolis area for years. Yet, they have always been distinctly aware of their influence outside of the frozen tundra of Minnesota. They now have regularly updated blogs discussing exhibitions, ideas, and events. In addition to their podcasts and archived lectures (most of these are poorly recorded, but informative), they also offer the option of calling up information on your cell phone where you can listen to Jasper Johns, Sarah Sze, or Kara Walker discuss their work. You may then pretend to have a conversation with them to impress your friends. “So, Kara, how are you? Yeah, I’m doing great. I’m here with some friends looking at your piece. Could you tell them a little bit about it? Great. You’re the best!” You then hand the phone to your friend.
• The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts / Contemporary Museum St. Louis
  • These two institutions share the same roof, some of the same ideologies, and a blog. I like their blog because the whole staff contributes (save the janitors, however, I think they should let the janitors blog). It helps to make transparent the inner-workings of a quality museum. If you do find yourself visiting the Pulitzer Foundation, be prepared for no wall text (I really like that), and creepy guards disguised as art students who silently follow you around (I don’t like that).
• Mixed Greens Gallery
  • I think that Mixed Greens is one of the few NYC galleries that tries to step out of the footprint of how NYC galleries typically act. They publish their own online magazine, blog, and allow you to create your own online collection of art.
• The Drama
  • According to their site “The Drama magazine is published four times a year and strives to provide an honest and considerate perspective on the ever-evolving world of contemporary art.” So technically they aren’t a museum or gallery, but I like what they’re doing. They are a DIY art publisher, putting out their friends’ work. I think my favorite (from what I’ve seen which is not much) is the Branch Gallery Coloring Book. Brilliant.

There are a number of others that I hope to highlight a little later. But right now, I’ve got to get my house in sellable condition. We’re moving to Colorado! Yee-haw!

YARD SALE, a short documentary from my friend Brad Barber, will have its Los Angeles premiere at the DGA theatre in Hollywood on Tuesday April 18th at 7:30pm. So for those of you who are in LA, you can’t pass it up because admission is free. It is being shown as part of the USC First Look program. Call ahead for reservations: 213-740-1153.

A second screening will be held at the Norris Cinema Theatre on USC campus on Saturday, April 22nd, 11:00am.

For more details, visit the YARD SALE website.

I have occasionally mucked around in some grey copyright areas — creating animations over television commercials and using images of art-gone-by for my Clip Art Project. So this story from ArtNet News about Andrea Blanch suing Jeff Koons struck a nerve:

In his decision, judge Louis L. Stanton of U.S. District Court found that Niagara was indeed a “transformative use” of Blanch’s photograph. “The paintingâ??s use does not ‘supersede’ or duplicate the objective of the original,” the judge wrote, “but uses it as raw material in a novel way to create new information, new esthetics and new insights. Such use, whether successful or not artistically, is transformative.”

[…]

Blanch, a 20-year veteran of the photo world — she started out as an assistant for Richard Avedon, and in 1998 published Italian Men: Love & Sex, a book of interviews and photographs — told Artnet News that she had discovered Koonsâ?? use of her image by accident, during a visit to his 2002 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. “At first I was flattered,” she said. She soon came to a different conclusion after thinking about the situation. “I really believe that if the person is living, you have to ask permission!”

I just don’t know that I agree with Blanch’s assertion that if I’m going to use a source material from someone living, that I need to send them a note to make sure it’s OK. As long as I’m not forging an artist’s work as my own, I see it as fair use of the public domain. I’m inclined to side with the judge who stated that if a work is used “in a novel way to create new information, new esthetics and new insights. Such use, whether successful or not artistically, is transformative.” This could, of course, raise the corpse of the discussion on Nike appropriating Minor Threat’s album cover for their skate tour. However, in that case, I don’t see Nike as trying to create a new esthetic or insight; only usurping the existing esthetic and information for their purposes.

I feel as though the grey area didn’t shrink so much as it just shifted a bit in its seat.

My friend Brad Barber’s documentary short entitled Yard Sale will be premiering in competition at the 2006 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, UT this weekend. Since I designed the documentary’s site for him (which I just finished a few days ago), he sent me an advance copy so I could see what the film was about.

It’s a nice little piece. However, I am biased since I’m his friend and I love yard sales. I recommend checking it out if you’re bumming around Park City during this next week. You can also view the trailer on the site.

Struggling to shed excessive sentimental mementos while preserving family history, the filmmaker considers broader issues of attachment, home movies, and first-time fatherhood. By exploring the eclectic, bizarre collage of discarded family belongings at yard sales, he attempts to clarify what’s really worth holding on to.

Screenings will be held:

• Sunday January 22, 2006 at 5:00 pm
• Wednesday January 25, 2006 at 3:30pm.

All screenings will be paired with the documentary Forgiving Dr. Mengele and will take place at:

Treasure Mountain Inn (TMI)
255 Main Street
Park City, Utah 84060

For more information on tickets and the competition, visit:

• www.slamdance.com
• www.yardsalemovie.org

Fits and Starts

Last month, DePauw University installed a sculpture by New York artist Marc Swanson in the middle of campus along a main walkway. The subject matter was innocuous enough – a leaping deer. Had the sculpture been bronze or rusting steel, I’m sure I wouldn’t be sitting here writing about it, but Swanson’s deer was encrusted with rhinestones, apparently a giant no-no for the upper-middle class. Entitled “Fits and Starts,” the deer emitted a shimmering rainbow aura when the light was right. It stood out from the sedate bureaucratic architecture and bland bronze effigies scattered across the campus and raised more than a few eyebrows. There were individuals that really liked the deer, and other who came to like it, but there were plenty of faculty and students alike who expressed their vociferous dislike of the deer and dubbed it “Disco Deer” and “Glambi” (my personal favorite).

It didn’t take long before name-calling and disgusted looks escalated to vandalism of the deer. Pictures surfaced on a website of students riding the deer in various states of dress and undress. First an antler was cracked, followed by another antler, then the legs, then antler tips went missing (no doubt trophies of a drunken night), all the while rhinestones were being shaved off of the deer’s hide and littered the ground around the sculpture like Liberace’s dandruff. Eventually the damage became so severe that the sculpture had to be removed for conservation and reevaluation.

Upon further examination of the deer, there was more damage to it than was executed by just a handful of drunk, naked students mounting it. The antlers were bent in such a way that it would have taken multiple people all pushing in unison in an effort to crack the antler off.

I would like to point out that DePauw University sits in Greencastle — a very rural city in west-central Indiana. It is generally very quiet. The student body is made up primarily of mid-western students from well-off families. “Fits and Starts” sat in Brooklyn for a full year before coming to Greencastle, IN. While in Brooklyn it never sustained heavy damage beyond normal wear and tear for an outdoor sculpture. Yet it did not survive more than two weeks in Greencastle.

There are a myriad of reasons* that have been mulled over as to why students would want to wreak such havoc on a piece of sculpture. Some claim that there wasn’t enough warning that it was going to be placed on campus and thus the emotional distress of seeing a shimmering buck on their morning walk freaked them out sufficiently to lead them to violent tendencies. Doubtful. Others state that they didn’t know that it was art. So, you don’t destroy art, but random landscape decorations are fair game. Some claim that they did not know that the deer wasn’t supposed to be mounted; that their art etiquette education was lacking so they did not realize that it wasn’t kosher to strip naked and climb atop a bejeweled deer or try to rips its antlers out. Hmmmm, no. Some blame the boredom that breeds within rich spoiled children who don’t have jobs or responsibility as the culprit behind such violent outlets. This feels much closer to the truth.

*These are all honest-to-goodness reasons that students have offered to explain the destruction of the deer.

Trophy

At the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, a bronze by Wim Delvoye was installed in their new sculpture garden this summer. The sculpture depicts two elk kissing and having intercourse, human style. At first, perhaps a few quiet and gasps escaped pursed lips, but there were no real public problems with the piece. The gallery staff didn’t hear a peep of complaint. After a short while the news media began to try to stir up controversy. Reporters were seen pounding the pavement near the sculpture pointing out the sculpture to passersby and asking if they were offended by the two copulating elk. Of course, the reactions were mixed and the story generated enough “controversy” for them to air it (thereby omitting actual “news” from their broadcast).

However there has been no graffiti, no broken antlers, no real damage to the elk. No one snapped off a trophy from Trophy to take home and mount to their wall. I’m sure there has been a fair amount of (ahem) mounting of the sculpture in the wee small hours, but no violent recourse by the student body or general public — just mild disgust and confused looks.

Why was a simple, morally inoffensive sculpture defiled, while another sculpture depicting a sex act in public remain unharmed? What elements and series of events are missing from the elk scenario that played out so harshly for Swanson’s deer? Because the elk are quietly making love in the back of a sculpture garden, no one violates them whereas Swanson’s deer sits smack-dab in the middle of campus? Did people sense the fragility of Swanson’s materials and thereby take advantage of its weaknesses whereas Delvoye’s bronze would require too much effort to damage? Was it because Swanson’s deer was unveiled during deer hunting season so it was fair game? There are some interesting aspects of the collision of human nature and art that are at work in these two stories. I’ll let you sort those out.

A common social ailment of Indiana is that the residents do not understand what constitutes a good garage sale. Most Hoosiers have nothing better to do with their time than to put up signs advertising their “5 FAMILY GARAGE SALE” and then sit in front of a small box of books and a few t-shirts Wednesday through Sunday waiting for someone to pay $5 for a very used copy of a Gideons Bible.

A couple of weeks ago, Maria and I stopped by a garage sale on the off chance that this one would actually have something good (I don’t know why we torture ourselves this way). We managed to walk away with some nice vintage wallpaper samples, a couple of trophies, and this:

At first I thought, “How kitschy. Paint by Numbers.” It wasn’t until closer inspection that I noticed what the subjects of the paintings were. Nudes! Yes, instead of learning how to paint the human form from a live model, you can fake it with a Paint by Numbers canvas. I gingerly slipped the rubber band off of the tattered box and discovered that there were three paintings all in various states of completion. One was finished and the other two were started and abandoned.

I couldn’t believe my luck! It was more than just kitsch, it was über-kitsch. I talked the seller down to $3 for the kit, complete with 30 year old paint, and strutted home. I really have no idea what to do with this now. I don’t want the pictures up in my home and I don’t want to finish them. I’m afraid that I’d ruin them.

Click on the images to go to my Flickr page to see some of the other canvases.

As is the case every morning, I opened up my newsfeed reader and skimmed over the hundreds of headlines that posted overnight. I have one folder called “Art Crap” that houses feeds from Art Blogs and ArtsJournal.com. I check it only out of obligation these days. I say obligation because I tend not to squalor in art world gossip, blasé informative pieces about who just filled the director’s seat at the [fill in the blank] Museum, and how much money a painting by a monkey just fetched at auction. I prefer to read honest, insightful writing about the possibilities of art that is being and will be made.

I generally skim over the headlines in my “Art Crap” folder but rarely ever click on a story or read further than two sentences in before I move along. This morning one headline caught my eye, not because of the content (heaven knows, it’s not because of the content). Only the headline caught my eye: “Has Saatchi Lost His Grip?”

Charles Saatchi has been a central art world figure as a patron and promoter of young contemporary British art. For the uninitiated, you have probably heard of him or at least exhibitions of his collections. The 1999 “Sensations” show at the Brooklyn Museum so tousled Mayor Giuliani’s hair… er, scalp… that he threatened to yank $7 million in municipal funding from the space. But enough about the past, let’s get to the present. Is Saatchi losing his grip? The Guardian article that posed the question didn’t seem to have any answers. Yet, I have one damning piece of evidence to suggest that he is losing his grip: His website (notice the link to my site under the “Miscellaneous” heading).

The man has clearly lost it.

Update (09/30/05): The link is dead, long live the link! Saatchi’s people pulled my link today. I guess there’s no jokes about Saatchi “losing it” in the Saatchi household. There are two ironies at play here: 1) I was actually poking fun at myself, not Saatchi; and 2) The condition under which Saatchi’s site will link to your site is only if you display a link to saatchi-gallery.cok.uk on your site. So once I actually linked to their site, they yanked the link to mine.

I’ll have a screenshot of the former link by Monday.

Update (10/03/05): The screen shot is here.

I was reading through ARTFORUM recently when I found myself tangled in the following run-on sentence from Benjamin Buchloh:

Figuration, for Ruscha, has always performed at least two functions: first, to oppose the formalist optimism of the modernists and Minimalists with a cool and sometimes callous reminder of the ramifications of abstraction in a world of advanced forms of consumer culture and its proto-totalitarian administrative corporate order; second, to signal that the triumph of an “abstraction” derived from instrumental reason had culminated in advanced forms of corporate or utilitarian architecture, whose primary consequences had always been the crass destruction of public space and social relations, and which had inevitably resulted in the negative sublime of ecological disaster.

It only took one sentence consisting of eleven lines and fifteen prepositional phrases to make me like Ed Ruscha’s paintings less.

I read Curating Now: Imaginative Practice/Public Responsibility a few years ago and just flipped through it recently to look at some of my notes. The text is taken from a symposium organized by the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative and later recorded in book form.

/ 1 /

Dave Hickey (in true Dave Hickey form) addressing a room full of curators and museum directors:

“Are you really accredited in aesthetic midwifery? I don’t know. And from whence do you derive your authority to function as patrons to a large, democratic culture? I don’t know. I also discerned another ambient idea, derived from this, that the curator is sort of a moral money launderer — that public institutions have all this dirty money coming from corrupt corporations, dealers, and patrons that magically passes through the curator, as the river of grace passes through the Virgin, and is thus transubstantiated by his or her ethics and passion and vision. This came as a big surprise to me — the idea that curators function as a screen of virtue through which the wicked money of commercial culture flows and is redeemed. In my view, this is nothing more than an arrogant institutional rationalization for intervening between the artist and the money. Just the sort of thing institutions accuse dealers of doing.”

I get more and more wary of curating as practiced by larger institutions. The curators become power brokers losing track of the public interest in favor of building their own resume while helping their employer keep up with the Jonses. All this is done for national and international recognition as opposed to really serving the institution’s community.

/ 2 /

Mari-Carmen Ramirez (Curator of Latin American Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) in response to a question concerning “the voices of artists of color” and “who decides how they enter” the public institutions:

“That kind of question presupposes that African Americans and Latinos, or whoever, are somehow vying or knocking at the door to enter into this big institution. That is very important, that needs to happen, and, certainly, it’s happening, but there is a lot more to be done. I also want to stress that these communities need to develop their own voices in their own spaces, in their own locales, and develop their own models. They need to think through what some of these issues in culture are all about and come up with an answer of their own. […] It’s not about where we locate them in this big pie over here that’s been going on for a number of years. That can happen, but it’s never going to change the picture completely. There needs to be another kind of reinvention taking place at the level of our communities.”

If public moneys are going to continue to fund art, then there needs to be a more democratic way of representing the public in museums and art centers receiving those moneys. I agree with that. But I’m glad that Mari-Carmen followed that up with stressing the importance of generating a new model instead of trying to be validated by the old one. However, putting the work of an “artist of color” in an old, white museum, bestows the artist with a modicum of public validation, but it also seems very colonial. The work still gets dressed up in the architecture of old, white men which recontextualizes the work more than the work recontextualizes its new digs. I’m not proposing art ghettos where everyone remains segregated, but I’m suggesting that new inclusive practices and approaches to exhibiting art grow from communities instead of subscribing to old, outdated archetypes.

/ 3 /

Mari-Carmen Ramirez addresses the issue of globalization and biennials:

“What we’ve seen is that, in the context of countries and regions that have suffered from chronic political and social situations that you may associate with underdevelopment, or something like that, where art institutions have never really been very solid, they’re, at most, very fragile, very vulnerable. This whole issue of globalization and integration into the circuits has imposed a series of pressures on those structures. You have museums that need to be responding to their communities, trying to catch up to this global ideal, and trying to structure their programs around MoMA, for instance, or other institutions, instead of really responding to their constituencies. […] We have to be very careful about not falling into the idea that, yes, because all these things are closer, and there is more of an exchange, that the situation has changed or that we really are engaged in some kind of global dialogue. We are very, very far away from that, and we need to be very aware of what the pitfalls are.”

There is too much emphasis on plugging artists into a global dialogue. Artists who are part of a “global style” may get more shows, write-ups, and spotlight, but where is the focus on individual communities? Here in Putnam County, Indiana, local artists are doing their best to be part of a larger dialogue by putting their work more in line with what they see in Southwest Art or Watercolor magazines since that is what they have available. Then the local museum does its best to exhibit the work in “traditional” museum ways. What happens is a sad, pale imitation of a system that doesn’t and can’t work with their location and budget. The flavor of place, upbringing, and beliefs is lost in the khaki puree of globalization.

DV Cassette Club will be part of Open Source / Open Ear, which opens July 28 and runs through August 11 at Mess Hall in Rogers Park (Chicago). The website states:

The objective of this show is to bring into focus diverse sound practices that resist conventional modes of production, distribution, performance or perception.

Homemade instruments, atonal noise experiments, self organized and improvisational models of collaboration and performance, technological detournement and reappropriated consumer objects suggest a sustained undercurrent of subcultural sounding activity, gathered here for critical reflection, exchange and experimentation.

This exhibition will accommodate a gallery installation of submissions and projects and a series of daytime workshops and evening performances. This will be accompanied by a website, small publication and compilation cd.

Tim Ivison is the mastermind behind Open Source / Open Ear, orchestrating the numerous events, happenings, and performances being put on over the two week duration. You can peruse the Calendar for events that may spark your interest.

Sadly, DV Cassette Club won’t be performing live (I don’t even know that I could without more equipment and five more people). But there are three songs that will worm their way into the show in some form. Check it out, and enjoy some sound.

Companies desperately scramble to reinvent themselves as cultural moods shift. For example, A&E was once the “Arts and Entertainment” network, but has since become the “Art of Entertainment” channel featuring shows like Dog the Bounty Hunter, Growing up Gotti, and T.J. Hooker reruns. The “arts” (read: rock music and movie celebrities) being relegated to a bleary-eyed corner of Sunday morning with drool on its pillow.

Identity shifts are a common response to the market, public, the board, etc. The public may be momentarily confused as Bravo slowly becomes the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy channel, but in time they forget what the original intent of the name was, “Bravo what?” A schizophrenic shift, even momentary, for a museum may go unnoticed by the general public, but it can be harmful in the long run as it negates the institution’s efforts and history.

This weekend I visited the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati. I looked forward to the trip after seeing all the press whirling around their new building designed by Zaha Hadid. The building is alright (reminds me of Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center for the Arts, but without a reason to be difficult to navigate), the furniture is comfortable and not distracting, and their pedestals and display fixtures are very different from the norm, but work well with the art and space. However, most art on display seemed out of place in a contemporary art center.

On the second floor is an exhibition entitled Multiple Strategies. This exhibition centers around the production of artists multiples, primarily as practiced in the 60s and 70s. The first few works I saw were created by John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Joseph Beuys. Slide Show is a curatorial exercise in the early history of slide projections as art (1960s to the early 1980s). The artists represented include Marcel Broodthaers, Robert Smithson, Yoko Ono, and Dan Graham.

The CAC website states that the Center “focuses on new developments in painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, performance art and new media.” It seems to me that a museum which purports to be a exhibitor of new developments should dedicate itself to exhibiting contemporary work and leave modernism to more dusty edifices. I understand that often the board requests that bigger names be exhibited to draw a crowd. And names get bigger as they get older. However if there were ever plans to do an exhibition of modernist work, why bother with the contemporary moniker at all? The Museum of Modern Art manages to circumvent it’s name and exhibit both modern and contemporary art by stating that contemporary art “informs our evolving understanding of the traditions of modern art” (I wonder how they rationalize the upcoming Pixar exhibition that opens right around Christmas). If the CAC is twisting that excuse to show Robert Smithson slides (both slides and Smithson are far from new) as he has informed contemporary work, why not look at it in a contemporary context instead of projecting it in the company of his contemporaries?

In an effort to expand its audience, the CAC seems to be undermining the nature of a contemporary arts center. They get it right in spots - no permanent collection, most shows feature actual contemporary artists, current architecture, etc. I really think I hit them at a bad point, but I’d rather hit a bad point because they were trying hard instead of resting on the cushy laurels of old names.

I am curious to see what will happen to the CAC as it ages - as the building becomes more of an artifact of the early 21st century, as the work it currently champions slips into history textbooks. Will it harbor nostalgic vestiges of the work in its exhibitions as it currently does, or will it forge ahead and show work that is contemporary of the now? I would hate to revisit the Center in a decade and find it referring to itself as the Comfortable Arts Center while exhibiting old T.J. Hooker reruns.

I suffer from a wandering eye for art. I have difficulty remaining faithful to a single artist or style. Part of my infidelity is rooted in the ever-changing fashion guard. Styles come and go, and artists who have inexorably attached themselves to a style may find themselves leaving with their mode. These artists are grounded only in the instance of their initial taste of popularity and ride the same aesthetic/stylistic horse until death. I find work by these one-note artists nice when I first discover them, but find their monotony tiresome after a few years (Jessica Stockholder and Vanessa Beecroft really need to branch out). There is no growth. So I leave them for someone new - someone with fresh promise (Oliver Herring is restless enough to keep me interested).

More often then not, I find myself jumping from artist to artist hoping that one of them will save me from banality, and keep me on my toes. I will sometimes just glimpse an intriguing piece while leafing through some contemporary art rag or in the moment before I delete an email from a gallery. I’m not necessarily interested in the artist’s name, just a sense of their exploration. If someone hits the nail on the head, I’ll try to track them down, but I am usually just looking for a stimulating current. I call this current Beatrice.

In Herman Hesse’s Demian, Emil Sinclair becomes infatuated by a woman he never meets. He merely pines for her from a distance. Emil sees her around town and projects his hopes for a better life and salvation upon her. He dubs her “Beatrice,” never discovering her real name (this is a blatant reference to the Beatrice who saves the spiraling Dante from hell by guiding him to paradise). In a way, Sinclair worships at the altar of Beatrice - the embodiment of all he wants.

The problem with membership in the Cult of Beatrice is relying upon an outside source for salvation and a transience in an approach artmaking. I am too swayed by currents in the art world. Someone is doing work that peaks my interest, so against my better judgement, I parrot aspects of their style. It’s too easy to get bored with my own work since I live with it all the time. It’s too easy to see the holes in my thinking. It’s too easy to become disenchanted by the seeming monotony of my work because I see it all the time. It’s too easy to overlook anything new that I’m doing since it came from me, so it couldn’t possibly be interesting. It’s too easy to look to the buffet of the art world and find bits of interesting ideas without committing fully to any of them. It’s too easy to just project my shifting ideas and ideals upon the notion of a Beatrice instead of living up to my own standards.

This is the crossroads I find myself at. I could become a card carrying member of the Cult of Beatrice by succumbing to the lure of curating - finding and promoting promise in others - or I could fight through my self-defeating tendencies to try to make something good myself. But for the time being, I’ve got to unpack all of my art supplies and fight off the hordes of ants that are vying for ownership of our new house. Thank goodness for practical tasks to aid my procrastination.

I had heard some buzz about the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) being open for AAM members on Tuesday and looked forward to seeing the new space. It wasn’t until later that I noticed the $45 price tag attached to the special IMA tour for AAM members. My perturbation was assuaged when I noticed an understated message posted on a bulletin board at the convention center. It noted that 47 AAM visitors could sign up to be bussed to the new IMA on Tuesday afternoon for a rushed one-hour tour of the building at no cost.

I tend to glory in free and cheap things and shun events or items that have a large price tag. I shop at thrift stores and garage sales, I refuse to attend a concert charging more that $15, and I hit the bargain matinees at the theaters. This got me thinking about a phrase that was repeated over and over again by IMA’s Director of Institutional Advancement and Chairman of the Board of Governors at a Monday AAM session: “Your heart is where you spend your money” (as strange derivation of “You value what you pay for”). They were touting this phrase as justification to have everyone spend money at/on the IMA - the public, the government, corporations, etc. This was also used as justification for the IMA’s newly instituted admission fee.

Another rationale for the admission price was brought about by findings from their surveys conducted at the mall. When people were asked why they didn’t visit the museum, a common response was, “It’s too expensive.” This was a misunderstanding since prior to the renovation, there had been no charge to visit the museum. The IMA took this to mean that since the public assumed there was a fee to enter the museum, they may as well institute one. The number of times the phrase “Your heart is where you spend your money” popped up made it sound as if the IMA staff were trying to convince themselves that the public would love the museum since they had to pay for it as opposed to the public gladly paying because they value art.

I value a good art experience, but I shudder at the idea of a monetary measuring stick by which everyone must stand before they gain admittance. There are hundreds of arguments for and against museum admittance fees, but I tend to favor free. To give the IMA credit, Thursdays are free as is parking. I do take issue with the $7 adult entry fee this year since there are only three of the ten collections currently on view - the American, Native American, and European Collections. The remaining seven collections will be opening on a rolling schedule through 2005 and 2006. You can pay full price to see 30% of the museum. That’s like tempting me with a juicy 16 oz. steak, and after paying for it I’m given the gristle and bone.

When our bus arrived at the IMA, we were greeted by a red carpet (that happened to have been left out the previous night for the important guests). I had never been to the IMA before because it had been closed for renovation since my arrival in Indiana last year. The first thing that struck me about the IMA was not the new addition, but the grounds. The museum is housed on 26 acres of lush lawns and thick wooded groves. The land previously belonged to J.K. Lilly Jr., the Indianapolis businessman, collector, and philanthropist, and still contains his 22-room mansion. I almost broke from the AAM pack to wander off through the trees and grass, but a miserable, cold wind was blowing and I was ill-dressed.

The new addition to the IMA was designed by Jonathan Hess of Indianapolis. The IMA board never seriously considered other architects. They wanted a local with museum experience, and they found that in Hess. He designed the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, and the addition to The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Where other museums have been hiring world heavy-weights like Santiago Calatrava, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, and Yoshio Taniguchi to re-envision their spaces, the IMA played it safe. Safe and cheap.

“I’m always a little concerned when architects put themselves first in the priority stream,” Hess says. “All of a sudden, the architecture becomes the art. I see our job as simply bringing some grace and beauty to the presentation.” Heaven forbid that architecture be seen as art. True, the IMA does not specialize in modern or contemporary art, so it is not a mandate that they push the limits of the architectural field, but it would be nice if they were within a mile of the envelope’s edge. My initial impression was that the building could nestle easily into a business park and be right at home. It has a clean, corporate, safety to its lines and structure. The landscaping surrounds and outshines the building leading me to envision it as elaborate offices for the park ranger.

Once inside, Lawrence A. O’Connor, the IMA’s interim CEO, sped us through the galleries (making sure that we knew of the gift shop and Puck’s restaurant for future purchases - heart and money, heart and money…). The galleries are what you would expect of a general art museum - boxy, right angles, etc. As someone who has had to wrestle with “daring” architecture, I can appreciate the simplicity of the space. There didn’t seem to be any poorly placed fire alarms or light switches (my pet peeve). There were some fairly large windows on the gallery walls that I’m sure will cause some consternation when positioning light sensitive works (which is just about everything). Generally, though, the building creates unimposing spaces in which to position art. I like it when architecture creates options for art instead of problems.

Overall, the IMA is not trying anything special. It’s trying to be just another museum. They have created a building with a smattering of landmark works, rooms of average works by known artists, a good regional showing, a generic and cheesy gift shop, and a Puck’s (which museums don’t have a Puck’s these days?). I just can’t help but feel disappointed when the $74 million could have been used to create a museum unique to Indianapolis. Instead, it was used to support the status quo.

Sidenote: Don’t get me started on their commissioned works. Yikes.

I should probably start off differentiating art museums from educational museums - science, nature, history, etc. I work at an Art Center. Educational museum culture is foreign to me. Art museums are typified by white cubes, where individual objects are allowed some room to speak for themselves. Educational museums are typified by Disneyland. The American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting, held in Indianapolis, is primarily aimed at the latter.

After I arrived at the Indianapolis Convention Center, checked in for the conference, and collected my funky smelling nylon tote bag (FSNTB) full of papers, brochures, and catalogs, I headed to my first presentation. On the way I played Museum Professional BINGO in my head:

• Museum Fundraiser/Marketer: typically a woman in her late 40’s-early 50’s with “funky” eyeglasses, short, spiky, dyed-red hair, dressed all in black except for a shock of color in her earrings/scarf/handbag.
• Museum Preparator: a man with greying hair, a rumpled button-down shirt tucked messily into his denim pants, sporting work boots or white sneakers.
• Historical Society Director: Man or woman with closely cropped hair, tweed jacket, earth toned outfit, and enough perfume/cologne to close an airport.
• Hipster Junior Staffer: dark plastic rimmed glasses, messy hair, pointy-toed shoes, neatly pressed pants (even if they are wearing jeans), and untucked shirt.
• Natural History Museum Education Developer: a woman in Björn clogs, a purposefully wrinkled skirt, plenty of polar fleece to guard against the freakishly cold air conditioning in the sessions, and just a hint of patchouli
• Museum Director/CEO: a man in a tailored suit, dry cleaned white shirt, conservative tie, and shockingly white hair and teeth intensified by his Oompa-Loompa skin tone.
• BINGO!

For weeks prior to the conference, I had scoured the pages of the AAM presentation catalog to find some interesting sessions to attend. Presentation after presentation was aimed at museum education departments and the marketing/fundraising departments that fuel the Disneyesque edu-tainment. Sessions entitled “What the Heck is Experience Design?,” “Transforming the Visitor Experience: Immersion Programs to the Max,” and “the Young and the Restless: Retaining the 20-to-30 Somthings After the Party’s Over” littered the catalog pages. Each offering was trying to sound pitifully hip by tossing off terms like “to the max,” and “what the heck.” I was half expecting to run across “Straight Up, Yo: How to Lure African Americans to Your Exhibits.” The first session I saw that seemed even vaguely grounded in reality was entitled “In or Out: A Crossroads for Exhibition Design” (despite resorting to the use of “crossroads” in its title).

This session set the tone for the rest of the conference. The presenters never spoke of the nuts and bolts of exhibition design, but instead waxed long about their companies that offered exhibition design services to museums. It was an infomercial and I was in the audience. These exhibition consultants were there shilling for themselves and educating us on what to do within our museums to prepare for their inevitable presence. “The public must be entertained and the youth must have recognizable brands, like Clifford, to lure them to museums,” was the thrust of their argument. One presenter even winkingly made a comment about the “Crossroads for Exhibition Design” being a Robert Johnson-esque experience where you make a deal with the Devil (exhibition consultants). Indeed.

I will agree that most people do not willingly attend museums on a regular basis. So what? Does the material have to be so dumbed-down and drowned out by flashing lights and interactive computer touch-screens to be enticing? Do museums have to spend millions of dollars expanding their buildings to make room for the trickle of visitors? Do education departments need to entertain in the ivory tower of the museum instead of getting out in the trenches and actually getting people excited about art or science? Education departments don’t seem interested in educating the public that art/science/nature isn’t scary and confusing, instead they seem more afraid that their institution will come off as stodgy. Objects are thought to need more pizzaz, more educational text, more edgy display backgrounds, more faux rock, more fake trees, more neon, more computers, more flat screen televisions, more interactivity, more, more, more! Museums are contextualizing objects to death, and it’s only getting worse.

My second session just reaffirmed my fears. The presenters spoke of hiring their companies to direct visitor polls and involve the community in museum decisions (despite admitting that they had already charged forward with their own agendas before consulting their public). Are we that out of touch with the public that we have to hire independent firms to conduct surveys in malls and over the telephone so we can know how best to serve them?

Numbed to vendor’s commercial advances, I made the rounds in the EXPO, nabbing every free logo-emblazoned goody I could get me hands on*. I was physically startled twice by frightening animatronic characters who were spouting off about electricity or the Revolutionary War with all the humanity of a politician. The majority of the EXPO was inhabited by merchants hawking audio tour guides or interactive animated presentations. There were a handful of art shippers/handlers and regional museum organizations, but the majority of the vendors who had set up shop were there to enhance the “visitor experience.” I was attending a conference not to participate in the exchange of ideas, but business cards.

* I made out like a bandit. I now have 15 ball point pens, 3 tape measures, 3 luggage tags, 1 compass/watch/carabiner, 1 multi-tool, 1 pair of white gloves, 1 sketchpad, and 1 exhbition catalog (retail $30).

This week I will be attending the American Association of Museums (AAM) conference, being held in, of all places Indianapolis — the Crossroads of America. I will be sitting in on a few presentations, visiting the newly expanded/renovated Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), and pondering how museum education departments took over the AAM conference (honestly, one third of the presentations this year are about “educating” the disinterested public about this “confusing” thing called Art).

In the meanwhile, read Indianapolis Star’s review of the new IMA addition and remodeling. It just strikes me as little sad that in the midst of major museum renovations with exciting face lifts that the IMA doesn’t even look like it’s trying. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll just sit here quietly and inconspicuously like an office building. It’s OK if people visit thinking that this is where they renew their driver’s licenses. I can live with that.”

P.S. Does anyone else find GM’s ad campaign for OnStar a little disturbing? “Hot Button?” “Push it Real Good?” Ew. So they first equate it with sex, then they have another set of commercials likening it to a seat belt and how it’s for your child’s safety. Double ew.

1. How can George Lucas not direct anything for 22 years (unless you count Paula Abdul’s “Rush, Rush” video), then put out two movies that are absolute poop and still have people lining up months in advance to see his next movie? Yes, I’m going to see it too. How does he have this power over me?
2. Why does shopping for a mortgage require an advanced degree in math?
3. In “A Something Else Manifesto,” (PDF download / 843 KB) Dick Higgins says, “When asked what one is doing, one can only explain it as ‘something else.’ Now one does something big, now one does something small, now another big thing, now another little thing. Always it is something else.” He goes on to say, “We can talk about a thing, but we cannot talk a thing. It is always something else.”
1. Talking and doing are two different things.
2. I often try to look at art in two ways: what the art is about and what the art actually is. Talking about art as a thing while considering it as a thing about a thing is like focusing simultaneously on a distant mountain and the bug at the end of your nose.
3. What the art is about does not alter what the work is. A painting of a pipe n’est pas une pipe, but is a painting.
4. Translating the medium alters the content.
1. How would the Cremaster series work as a Clash of the Titans style claymation? As a church produced roadshow? As an elderly woman living in a nursing home? Oh, the possibilities.
4. Why is Josh so funny and why doesn’t Joe post more?
5. Most social and economic systems can really only be successful on small scales.
1. Capitalism’s sphere is too big for its own good.
2. Maria and I will be forming the Independent Commonwealth of Newbraska and secede from the Union. Citizenship is attainable by invitation only.
1. The Independent Commonwealth of Newbraska has no geographic location.
2. The Independent Commonwealth of Newbraska will have a theme song. It will sound like the Magnum P.I. theme song.
6. The newscasters in Terre Haute need a big hug and a jolt of self esteem. Watching the news is like watching high school A/V geeks read the announcements at a pep rally.
7. What should the next incarnation of FWiC look like?
1. FWiC is not dead, but merely sleeps.
2. The old incarnation of FWiC outlived its interest and outside participation.
3. The new FWiC will be interview based.
4. Who should Team FWiC interview? How much clout does a no-name website have? Could we get Mr. T?
8. The world should buy more Blobbies.

As an undergraduate painting student in Utah, I had an instructor (we’ll call him Duane) who operated a small side-business renting artworks as set decoration to film/television companies shooting in the area. They told him what their tastes were, and he got it for them. Duane tapped on his colleagues, friends, and occasionally his students. Business was brisk. A few TV series and, because of the influence of Sundance, a number of independent films would use Utah as their backdrop.

The most notable of all of these television programs or films was Touched by an Angel. It shot primarily in Salt Lake City and its crew worked closely with Duane to make sure that each set in the show was adorned with artworks appropriate to the character who lived/worked there.

Duane casually approached me one day and said that he like the way my work looked. He asked if he could take some pictures of my paintings to show some people. I was uncomfortable with the prospect, but being young, poor, and eager to please, I agreed to the photo shoot. Throughout the process I was assured that it would all be very tasteful and I would be paid a small rental fee. This was my introduction to the world of art porn.

After Duane pimped my work to the Touched by an Angel team, they wanted two of my paintings to appear in the office of a soulless lawyer who would come to have a crisis of conscience through Roma Downey and Della Reese’s gentle, yet persistent, persuasion. Part of me was flattered that they wanted to use my paintings, but part of me was offended that my work was “soulless lawyer’s office” material. I didn’t feel too bad once I discovered that my friend Ai’s prints hung in Satan’s office.

Touched by an Angel had my paintings for two weeks after which they returned them with a check for my troubles. It seemed like such easy money. I loan them a painting and I get it back with a check attached. The only cost was the shame of the act that followed. I didn’t want to tell my art friends who would surely look down on my for selling myself so easily. I had to keep it to myself and hope that the footage would never surface.

I was never told what episode my work was featured in, nor was I told when it would air. I’ve never had the stamina to sit in front of Touched by an Angel longer than it takes to change the channel, so I’ve never seen my paintings on TV.

I imagine some day I will receive a late-night knock on my door. I will find no one there, but an an anonymous manilla envelope will be sitting on my front stoop. The envelope will contain an unmarked video tape and a note threatening a wide release of the video footage unless I leave a black gym bag of unmarked bills in the trash can at the northwest corner of the park. I will kneel in front of my television, tentatively take the tape out of its case, slide it into my VCR, press play, and watch in anxious horror as scenes from my sordid past glow in front of me: my paintings, a paper-thin plot, swelling awful music, and Della Reese’s wrinkled, smiling face. I was too young.

As I’ve poked around the art world online, I’ve stumbled across a few good sites for art talk, art presentations, interviews, and panel discussions. I really prefer audio and video material since I can listen to it while I work in my office, but the text stuff is nice to just sit and read occasionally. Now all I need is a wireless laptop so I can read the interviews in a more comfortable chair… or in the bathroom.

• Art Critical / Each month the National Academy and ArtCritical.com bring together three prominent art critics discussing four exhibitions on view in New York museums and galleries. The audio of their discussions are available for download: #1, #2, #3.

• Index Magazine / Founded by Peter Halley (yes, that Peter Halley) and Bob Nickas in 1996, and produced in Halley’s studio in Chelsea, Index features text interviews with figures in art, fashion, literature, film, theater, music, and the rest of that lot.

• The Kit / The Kit (apparently Chicago and Wisconsin based) conducts audio interviews with contemporary artists, critics and musicians.

• The Walker Channel / From the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Walker Channel features live webcasts of Walker programming (lectures, presentations, and readings by artists, scholars, and critics of contemporary art and culture) as well as an archive of past webcasts.

• WPS1 / Put out by PS1 MoMA, WPS1 radio combines “talk and music shows hosted by contemporary writers, artists and musicians with rare historic material that includes the entire audio archive of the Museum of Modern Art.” Personally, I have a hard time navigating their schedule but it sometimes it looks as though it has some tempting programming.

Feel free to let me know of any good resources that you’ve come across.

I’ve mentioned before how I feel about the importance of being a nice person regardless of your chosen field. But, since I work primarily with artists, and their attitutdes directly affect how my work gets done, I would like to point out some of the most genuinely pleasant artists I’ve met (this is far from a comprehensive list):

• Todd Chilton
• Lesley Dill
• Brook Dorsch (technically a gallerist, but one really nice guy)
• Pamela Fraser
• Matthew Goulish
• Ann Hamilton
• Patrick Ireland (Brian O’Doherty)
• Yun-Fei Ji
• Kate Joranson
• Stacza Lipinski
• Emily Kennerk
• Michael Mercil
• Judy Pfaff
• Dario Solman

Thanks for being good citizens.

Conrad Bakker, a Champaign-Urbana artist, has just launched a new aspect of his Untitled Projects as part of the 2005 DePauw Biennial at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center. Conrad created roughly 40 small paintings based upon eBay auction photographs of postcards that was sold from Indiana. The painted reproductions are sized and priced according to the original eBay images and auctions (approx. 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches).

Every day during the month of March and April, a painting will be put up for for a 3 day auction on eBay in the postcard category. As the paintings/postcards are sold, they will be shipped from the Peeler Art Center at DePauw University to the highest bidder as a simulated/genuine souvenir from Indiana. Any paintings/postcards that are not sold will remain part of the 2005 DePauw Biennial exhibition and will not be re-listed.

I suggest that you keep a close eye on them , but if any of you touch the Bear or the Star Trek postcards, I will find you.

Here are the links to the first ten auctions (if it’s crossed-out, the auction has passed and it’s time to count your losses and move on to bigger and better things).

• 03.01.05 / “Staten Island Ferry Statue Liberty 1980’s color postcard”
• 03.02.05 / “Vintage 1967 POSTCARD Chicago Wrigley Building Photo”
• 03.03.05 / “Old Vintage Ferris Wheel Postcard PC Vienna 1900 NR!!!”
• 03.04.05 / “mint NORTH AMERICAN P-51 D. Mustang postcard”
• 03.05.05 / “POSTCARD PHOTO OLD AQUAMAIDS OF CYPRESS GARDENS FLORIDA”
• 03.06.05 / “Vintage Postcard Santa Fe Chief railroad train photos 2”
• 03.07.05 / “2 VICTORIAN VINTAGE ANTIQUE CAT POSTCARDS COLOR CATS !!”
• 03.08.05 / “Jack Dempsey Autograph/Signed/Auto’d Postcard”
• 03.09.05 / “Vintage Postcard Kennedy JFK, Palm beach real photo !!”
• 03.10.05 / “Indy 500 Panoramic Postcard 1910”

View all items for sale by Untitled Projects.

More information and links regarding this project as well as information on other ongoing Untitled Projects can be found at: http://www.untitledprojects.com

As I have been spending the majority of my time working on my wife’s website, and getting shows put up and taken down at work, this poor, sad, little site has been painfully adrift. I think I just got to the point that I wouldn’t post because there was too much pressure built up. The holiday break is coming up and my wife’s site is running smoothly (as far as I know), so I’m buckling down for a redesign and using the typical new-years-resolution to recommit myself to doing more thoughtful writing. Ah who am I kidding. I’ll just be happy to do some writing.

Lately I’ve been ODing on the glut of “art blogs” out there, and frankly, I can’t take much more. If art blogs were food, I’d be malnourished and diabetic. They all seem to feed on/circulate the same sugary politics and gossip while jealously worshipping anyone who got an Arts Journal blogging gig. Given, there are a few out there that are earnestly trying to talk about art and what that could mean, but they are few and far between. The saddest part is that the most stagnant art blogs are written by artists. I would expect that from trained art historians who worry themselves with identifying existing and established trends and styles, but not from artists.

The beauty of blogging is that it’s typically done for free. That lifts the restraints of writing about safe art, safe shows, and safe topics. It allows the writer to riff without a net. The writing can be more personal. Art can be a very personal thing, and art journalism can just be too academic. Musing is fully allowed because there is no sponsor or patron who has the final call on whether it prints or not. I would prefer to read art writing that tries something different and fails rather than simply failing because it takes the path-most-traveled.

Now that I’ve set up myself for a fall, I’ll disappear until I relaunch the site. Stay tuned. And thanks for reading. Both of you.

It’s August. Young children are now mentally tallying up their summer vacations in preparation for the inevitable “What I Did for Summer Vacation” pictorial essay that is the punctuation mark at the end of summer. Here at FWiC we decided to delve in the idea of travel and vacations and muck around a bit.

Albeit a smidgen tardy (due to Girls Camp complete with chigger bites, harrowing employment issues, and a desperate need for sleep), the new FWiC is jam packed with good stuff this month. We have for your consideration a YooHoo drink box with wanderlust; e-postcards (you can send them to people you know, or don’t know for that matter); vacationing in the suburbs; an accidental tourist; killer beach logs; a really white doctor in Ghana; sisters in Japan, transglobal recipes; one person’s recollections of Pontiac, IL; proof that we were there; a musing on maps and Pacman; a portion of Dario Solman’s Air Files; and a slew of other things on the way. We just have too much material to throw it up all at once! Check back often as new projects surface, and others expand. So without further ado, behold the FWiC.

We would also like to put in a plug for future cycles of FWiC, so get your flirting juices flowing:

• September: Roots/Ancestry
• October: Selection
• November: Invention
• December: Coincidence
• January: New New
• February: Guest Curator/Editor
• March: Architecture
• April: Revision
• May: Manifesto
• June: Day Job

Art happens at the hinge between right now (this instant) and popular assimilation. There is a very short lag time between these two since there are guards on the watchtowers scouring the countryside for the new, the different, and the barely palatable. Most everything outside of that narrow hinge is artifact or pop product. There are aspects of art that may always remain art, or resurface as art. I count Jackson Pollock’s work as an artifact of the time. Even Matthew Barney’s Cremaster videos are, regardless of merit, artifact. But there remains in their works, a seed of earnestness and difference that belongs to art and probably always will. Like aesthetic Tupperware™, it can keep things fresh.

In a way it is the style that gets stale, whereas the real guts of the work keeps it alive. Concerning the surface treatment of art by artists Hal Foster wrote in his essay “Against Pluralism”:

Fashion answers both the need to innovate and the need to change nothing; it recycles styles, and the result is often a composite — the stylish rather than style as such.

Such is the style of much art today: our new tradition of the eclectic-neo. Ten years ago Harold Rosenberg saw the advent of such art: he termed it dejavunik, by which he meant art that plays upon our desire to be mildly shocked, piqued really, by the already assimilated dressed up as the new.

In a post-modern condition there is a ubiquity of permissions and a desire to sort through the centuries of history and information, the amount of which was never so readily available. This combination of permission and need for contextualization has ironically lead artists to recycle styles in hopes of reclaiming or understanding history. But this is mostly a reclamation of style in hopes that by talking the talk, the walk will be assumed. Hal Foster went on to say:

Modern Art engaged historical forms, often in order to deconstruct them. Our new art tends to assume historical forms — out of context and reified. Parodic or straight, these quotations plead for the importance, even the traditional status, of the new art. In certain quarters this is seen as a “return to history”; but it is in fact a profoundly ahistorical enterprise, and the result is often “aesthetic pleasure as false consciousness, or vice versa.”

What seems to be lacking in the art landscape is art. There is an earth’s lifetime of artifacts and institutions filled with cheap, touristy knock-offs that may look like other artifacts, smell like other artifacts, and may well be artifacts because of their artifice, but lack the oomph of art. (Pardon the use of onomatopoeic “oomph”, but it is difficult to quantify what makes a thing alive versus dead without resorting to guttural noises). Artists have been mimicking the avant-garde since they garnered the name “avant-garde,” yet is still passes for avant-garde in some circles because it has all the visual earmarks, but it mostly is missing real chutzpah. About this, Foster commented:

We have nearly come to the point where transgression is a given. Site-specific works do not automatically disrupt our notion of context, and alternative spaces seem nearly the norm. This latter case is instructive, for when the modern museum retreated from contemporary practice, it largely passed the function of accreditation on to alternative spaces — the very function against which these spaces were established. Today ephemeral art works are common even as ad hoc groups and movements. All seek marginality even though it cannot be preserved (thus the pathos of the enterprise). Certainly, marginality is not now given as critical, for in effect the center has invaded the periphery and vice versa. Here a strange double-bind occurs. For example, a once marginal institution proposes a show of a marginal group: the museum does so to (re)gain at least the aura of marginality, and the marginal group agrees… only to lose its marginality.

Part of the problem consists of the institutions that are “there to help.” Museums and galleries are limited in their ability and scope, architecturally and financially. That is all fine and good if the institutions and the represented artists are all in on the gag, but most are not. The in-vogue size of the walls, height of the ceilings, and the presence of track-lighting all publicize to artists what is expected of them — friendly product.

Marcel Broodthaers wrote on the cover of Interfunktionen, Fall 1974 that “artistic theory will be functioning for the artistic product in the same way as the artistic product is functioning as advertising for the rule under which it is produced.”

To further drive this concept home, I’ll point to Dave Hickey, who said to a room full of art professionals in response to the “Curating Now” symposium, 2000: “We all want artists to do what we want them to do to facilitate our practice.”

Artists produce artifacts because that is what institutions primarily deal in. Museums are too slow to respond to art while it’s still alive and has not yet passed into the realm of artifact. So museums show taxidermied work — a fashionable style-skin stretched over a familiar form, gussied up and domesticated for the general public so as not to endanger government funding.

This is a bit cynical. Art is occasionally exhibited outside the studio. Curators and gallery owners do spot things from their watchtowers that can straddle art and artifact well enough that their consciences are assuaged and their public is sated. This is rare. Possible, but rare.

In July of 1776 our forefathers bonded together to declare their independence from the unjust tyranny that plagued them. 228 years later, the newest cycle of FWiC has proudly unfurled its colors: we got a few family members together to break free of the bonds of aesthetic tyranny through projects about choreography. So the parallel is a little weak, but we hear Thomas Jefferson could cut a mean rug.

Rope jumping, a sci-fi battle against little white blobs, a music video, a sure-fire basketball play, Heart of Darkness (abridged), blurry pixie dancing, gardening, and a dance re-mix comprise the newest FWiC that is sure to make you stand up, place your hand over your heart, and be proud that we live in a country where people can cobble together a web site of such robust and daring quality. We are proud to say that FWiC is made in the US-of-ever-lovin’-A. Word.

P.S. We’re experimenting with a rolling format on FWiC. So instead of throwing everything up at the beginning of the month, we’re going to put up a bunch of stuff and then pepper the rest of the month with updates and new projects. So check back throughout the month for more FWiCitty goodness.

Excerpted from Hans-Ulrich Oberts’s comments in Foci: Interviews with Ten International Curators:

“Alighiero e Boetti is a pioneer of the idea of the exhibition as a network, and he anticipated the artist’s practice as both a global and a local one. He exhibited on an airliner, with the assistance of the Museum in Progress [Vienna], and he worked with art that was sent through the mail, as an exchange with different communities. But mostly he propelled me to think about artists’ unrealized projects. These are the most interesting. They could not happen within the often narrow parameters of exhibition conventions. This brings us back to the importance of listening to the infinite conversations with artists and architects and other practitioners whose unrealized projects can be a good point of departure.

“…there was a moment when artists were longing for such laboratory situations, not only within museums but outside of them. It’s not that these things were invented in the 90s. They took place in the 60s, but they were forgotten. In the beginning of the 90s there was a desire on the artists’ part to show their work differently, and now this has become a more frequent occurrence. An exhibition can take place in an elevator, a hotel, anywhere; it is the rule of the game, no longer a shift.”

My high school art teacher was always trying to pose philosophical questions to us (bless her heart). One such question was supposed to, I think, teach us about valuation and ethics in art. The problem was that she didn’t fully understand what she was trying to teach us, and so neither did we. The question she posed was the infamous, “If you could only save one artwork from a burning museum, what would it be?” We, of course, had a few questions of our own: “Which museum is it?” Any museum. “What about the visitors and guards?” They got out on their own. “Couldn’t we grab a few things?” No, just one. “If architecture is art, can’t we just save the museum and save all the art as a result?” No. “Don’t most museums have at least a sprinkler system or a halon gas system in case of fire?” This museum’s system has malfunctioned. “Don’t they have insurance?”

In late May, a warehouse in Leyton, east London caught fire and burned to the ground. This was not just any warehouse, but one owned by Momart, the nation’s largest art handler. The press has focused chiefly on the stored works lost in the fire belonging to Charles Saatchi, the primary collector of the Sensation era British artists. Artists whose work was reportedly lost in the blaze include Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Chris Ofili, Gavin Turk, Sarah Lucas, Patrick Heron, Gary Hume, Adrian Heath, Paula Rego and Gillian Ayres. Insurance claim values are expected to exceed £50 million ($90 million). All this occurred in the shadow of Picasso’s “Garçon a la Pipe” fetching $93 million at Southeby’s.

According to Ford Motors, my life is worth approximately $200,725 when sitting in a charred Pinto. I’ll adjust for inflation, valuing my life at $894,574.18: less than $1 million. I would have to bet my life on a horse with 93:1 odds to purchase “Garçon a la Pipe” or to pay for all the work lost in the torched Momart warehouse. Considering that the sum of the material parts for Tracy Emin’s “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963-1995)” would likely total about $300 (in a generous estimate), she sold it to Saatchi for £40,000 ($74,000), and I’m assuming she’s now asking for more than a million pounds in insurance money. This is Lewis Hyde’s “economic man” at work — cutting costs and increasing revenue.

In some ways I am very sorry that dozens of works by people were lost. But it was just art. As much as I dislike the work of the Chapman Brothers, Dinos put it well when he spoke of losing their piece entitled “Hell” in the Momart blaze:

“We’re having a bit of a disaster in the studio. There’s a flood. We’ve had fire and flood and now we are expecting pestilence.”

[…]

“If the insurers decide the fire is an act of God it’s going to be quite funny - that God destroyed Hell. In fact if that happens I will start going to church.”

[…]

“It’s only art - there are worse things happening around the world.”

More art will be made, and in some ways, the new art will be different as a result of the loss. The burden of history will be lighter without some of those works in physical form out there. Sure, the images will remain in books and magazines, and the lost works will take on a new legendary life as martyrs do when burned at the stake. But imagine a world without the actual “Mona Lisa” sitting in the Louvre. Imagine it lost to fire. The “Mona Lisa” is one of the most easily recognizable images in the world, next to the the Coca-Cola logo, due to its proliferation on T-shirts, postcards, and textbooks. The actual, physical loss of the piece would erase some age old boundaries in art production and reception.

I prefer to see Mona (as I like to call her) as the icon that she is. Imagine the loss of Mona as the loss of that entire generation of art. Or, imagine the loss of every work of art that is valued over $1 million. Where would that leave those of us remaining in that scorched cultural landscape? It would certainly free up a lot of museum real estate and raise the bar for what we could legitimately create.

Iconic works create a number of boundaries since they are, by nature, market commodities. The work can not be shared or viewed without the generous backing of wealthy individuals or corporations who donate or loan the works to public venues and/or allow the work to be reproduced for inclusion in publications for a fee. So the work is not accessible to the public without scads of money. No dough, no show. There is also a diminished connection between the artist and the viewer as there are a myriad of individuals involved in the acquisition and display of a single iconic work. Instead there is a vague inclusion in a much larger, and faceless community, but only as a paying customer or a subservient, less-powerful visitor. This places the viewer in the position of lone and lonely appendage to the greater art machine — never fully integrated, just a nub on the surface.

There are numberless possibilities behind a burning museum. Ed Ruscha’s “Los Angeles County Museum on Fire” recognizes those possibilities. There are certain “legitimate” avenues in contemporary art that are closed because we have works sitting in museums that have “been there and done that.” Rarely do recognized artists try their hand at truly classical techniques (most are lost anyway), and heroic compositions are only tackled these days by a robust sense of irony. Irony could finally sit it out for a little while, and allow for a modicum of sincerity.

Perhaps even the art market will normalize itself, keeping the cost of works down to an almost affordable level. This would allow for the purchase of real artwork for the average person’s home. No more would walls have to be decorated with “fine art prints” and posters that lack the nuances of the real thing. The viewer can more likely be an active participant in art exchange (both physical and emotional), and not just a nub.

I think I would let Mona burn, and save the fire. It was one of the first and still one of the best tools we’ve discovered for erasing boundaries.

I met Lewis Hyde a few years ago when he joined a seminar class I was taking for a discussion. I had only read a small amount of his writing at the time, mostly from his book Trickster Makes This World. He struck me as a bit of a romantic, trying to extrude true moral meaning from fairy tales and cultural threads. He would just meander into subjects and then back out when his theories wore thin. So I left his books on the shelf.

I’ve had a couple years to cleanse my palette and I have now come back to read The Gift. Now that I’m more familiar with his tricks and idiosyncrasies, I have no problem playing along with him and then filling in his gaps myself. The Gift has Hyde sifting through cultural ephemera, looking for evidence that the idea of “the gift” is what makes art and artists as opposed to a market economy. I’m willing to take that ride, for a while. I’ve had a belly-full of harsh realities and market economy lately. I’d like to hear from the other side for some balance.

A central theme of the book is that commodities (logos-trade) creates distinct differences within communities and keeps people in a power struggle, whereas gifts (eros-trade) draw people together, creating bonds and tighter communities.

The following excerpt is one that struck me today:

The synthetic or erotic nature of the giving of a gift may be seen more clearly if we contrast it to the selling of commodities. I should begin the analysis by saying that a commodity has value and a gift does not. A gift has worth. I’m obviously using these terms in a particular sense. I mean “worth” to refer to those things we prize and yet say “you can’t put a price on it.” We derive value, on the other hand, from the comparison of one thing with another. “I cannot express the value of linen in terms of linen,” says Marx in the classic analysis of commodities which opens his Capital. Value needs a difference for its expression; when there is no difference we are left with tautology (“a yard of linen is a yard of linen). The phrases “exchange value” and “market value” carry the sense of “value” I mean to mark here: a thing has no market value in itself except when it is in the marketplace, and what cannot be exchanged has no exchange value.

I would like to address this more fully in a later post I’ve been meaning to write for months. But for now, Consider this all to be a preface to an upcoming post. I’m a little intrigued with the idea of value vs. worth as commodity vs. gift and what happens when something with worth is made to have market value.

Hyde goes on to recount the dilemma the Ford Motor Company encountered in producing their Pinto during the 1970’s. Due to the precarious location of the gas tank at the rear of the vehicle, it has a tendency to rupture in low-speed rear-end collisions, spilling gasoline and risking exploding in a ball of flame and olive green vinyl. Ford did a cost analysis between the $11 safety device they could have installed on their cars and the amount they would have to pay out due to the 2,100 vehicles that would burn annually. Ford calculated the total amount of a human life (court costs, funerals, medical costs, pain & suffering, etc.) to be $200,725. If deaths were figured at 180/year, injuries at 180/year, and vehicle loss at 2,100/year, then they would save almost $90 million if they just left the safety devices off. So safety went by the wayside.

If we accept for a moment that a human life may be counted as a commodity, the story of the Pinto offers a picture of decision-making in the marketplace. The classic model of the market deliberation assumes an “economic man” whose desire is to increase his rewards and cut his costs.

My brother used to own one of those Pintos — pea green, of course. I remember many occasions when my five siblings would have to go somewhere, so my sister and I (being the youngest) would be crammed into the miniscule space behind the back seat of the Pinto. With our sweaty little-kid faces pressed up against the rear window, my brother would careen around town to get ice cream, go to a movie, or whatever. Now that I think about it, my sister and I were located directly above the lethal gas tank. Basically, the value of my little-kid life plummeted to $200,725 every time I squeezed into that car.

I wonder what I’m worth now. I have no health insurance, and I think my car is safe. I may have a small, free policy from graduate school that entitles my wife to $10,000 if I die right now. But that’s about it. I was worth more in a Pinto.

June is upon us, and with it comes a brand new cycle of FWiC chock-full of amateur goodness. Featured projects include: a demolition derby; relatives’ art; Mar-Tie, the avant-garde grandpa; Bad Art Night; the Clip Art Project; the first album by DV Cassette Club; amateur baking; and poorly rendered business signs. So pop-in, check it out, leave some comments, and share the wealth with your friends and neighbors. And if you are itching to contribute a project or two, upcoming themes are posted on the Submissions page. Take care, blast Mar-Tie and DV Cassette Club tunes from car, and keep toying with poor results.

A brand, spankin’ new FWiC (not to be confused with FVA) is now up for your perusal. I highly recommend it (although I am not at all biased). There is great stuff from Luke Albrecht, Nikhil Chopra, The Cult of Mr. T, Darbie Dray, myself, Josh Penrod (aka Conrad Uno), Maria Samuelson, Francis Schanberger, and Dario Solman. All of whom not only produced great stuff, but are great people to boot!

This month’s theme is Covert. Check it out, leave some comments, spark a discussion (but, please let’s keep it cool and rational), and feel free to submit something for next month’s cycle. Next month’s theme is Amateurs. Hey, who’s not an amateur? So let’s see some FWiC style submissions!

ARTnews recently published an editorial declaring “The 10 Most Expensive Living Artists.” Featured on this list are Lucian Freud, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Brice Marden, Bruce Nauman, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, and Cy Twombly. The second tier includes Chuck Close, David Hockney, Ellsworth Kelly, Anselm Kiefer, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Ryman, and Wayne Thiebaud. Although these lists consist of painters, sculptors, and artists who are both, the works that command the highest prices are typically the paintings. Johns, Rauschenberg, Stella, Koons, and Twombly all dabble in both 2D and 3D art, but their paintings fetch higher prices. So, roughly speaking, 14 of the top 17 most expensive living artists are painters. Painting gets the most press, painting gets the best real estate in art schools, painting fetches the highest prices at auction.

I am not setting out to debate the ethical merits or moral ramifications of art forms. I am talking pure social phenomenon and popularity, I am talking money, I am talking about self-proclaimed experts of cultural tides, I am talking polls and top ten lists, newspapers, magazines, television, talk shows, clip art, marketing, word of mouth, word count, dollar amount, notoriety, cliches and icons.

Painting has been enjoying a prime spot atop the art hierarchy for generations, its throne only occasionally overturned by sculpture. When painting is on top, sculptural trends lean towards painterly forms and compositions — David Smith’s work of the late 50’s for example. When sculpture steals the lime light, painting moves into sculptural representation — during the Middle Ages, paintings would often be rendered in black and white to resemble bas relief sculpture. When one class tops the other, the underdog takes on the characteristics of the other to glean some attention. Just like the Republicans and the Democrats (but who can really tell them apart any more?).

I’ve never really been one for a two party system, especially in art. I propose there is, and has been for quite some time, a third party. That third party is music. More specifically, I’d say that Rock and Roll can be more popular, democratic, and lucrative than either painting or sculpture. Consider a few points:

• Take another look at the list of expensive artists. It’s a boy’s club. Given, it’s a bit less misogynistic than a list of top grossing pop musicians (Eminem, Mick Jagger, Jay-Z, or the self-inflicted misogyny of Madonna), but there is still nary a woman to be found near the list.
• Is there a CD player in your house (if you’re a real lo-fi snob, turn tables count)? I’ll wager there is at least one. I’ll also wager that there is at least a small collection of music recordings. And if you’re anything like me, there is a bloated music collection that continually outgrows any shelving method. Now compare that with your holdings of paintings and sculptures, actual or reproductions, and the money spent on them compared to music.
• Glance around the contemporary art world. Many of the artists that are making waves are either in a rock band, have been in a rock band, or really want to be in a rock band. Many of the best rock bands have been formed by art school students. They may not be the most lucrative musicians, but they are very influential. I doubt many musicians feel they should watch a Matthew Barney video before sitting down to write or have paintings on the walls of their studio, but you’d be hard pressed to find an artist’s studio devoid of a CD player.
• The vogue in contemporary art is to have a “punk rock” aesthetic or attitude. Much of the art is inexorably tied to a musical culture, whether it be hip-hop, punk, garage, indie, or what have you. Painting is trying to look like musical culture.
• Musicians receive royalties for their work. Few artists get kick-backs when their work is resold at auction, unless you live in select areas of Europe. Australia is working to pass a bill to give artists resale royalties, but America has yet to enact such a mechanism.
• The music industry has a better system of distribution set up than the art world. Venues for record sales and touring are much more plentiful than galleries or museums.
• Music reproductions are viewed as entirely acceptable and even sought after. Reproductions of paintings and sculptures are often seen as cheap knock-offs unless the reproductions are limited editions. But the price tag drops significantly along with the cachet of owning one.
• Despite the high cost of CDs these days, they’re still more affordable than paintings or sculptures.

Perhaps “fine art’s” survival and evolution can be found in taking a few notes from the music world. Contemporary art’s mimicry of musical culture can end up its saving grace. A more grass-roots distribution system, a tasteful employment of reproductions, a resale royalty mechanism, and a good sense of fun could really help to enliven the fine arts and keep them from spiraling into the navel gazing, intellectual boredom imposed on them by the art world literati. It might even keep me from using words like “literati.”

Who buys PR like this?

“A revered art collection (based on the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia) becomes the focal point in a legal battle over race, history, art, and culture in this riveting new play by _______ [I don’t want to harvest any Google hits for this schlock]. When is the exhibition of art not just paintings on a wall, but a statement of larger social issues that asks us what it means to belong, to feel welcome, to be a part of the permanent collection we call humanity?”

“The permanent collection we call humanity?” I wouldn’t even buy this poop if it was a lump of purest tongue-firmly-in-cheek-fingers-crossed-behind-the-back-winking-like-you’ve-got-a-grape-nut-in-your-eye irony. Excuse me, I have to go wash out my aesthetic sensibilities.

It is with great pleasure (and a fair of amount of sleep deprivation) that I announce the launch of FWiC. FWiC is a new project started started by Maria and me as a venue to encourage unsafe practices and &