The dominance of the word

I really should be quoting this to get it right, but the thought is familiar enough that how eloquently it's expressed is really a matter of pitch not substance, but I've been thinking about an idea of communication linguist Steven Pinker puts forth when marvels about how the arrangement of bursts of air from our mouth or marks on a page and accurately and successful transmit an idea from the brain of one person to the brain of another.

While it would be wrong to take the miracle of language for granted, it would be, I think, equally wrong to assume that all communication must be based on this assumed outcome - that what is going on in the head of one person is transmitted accurately to the head of another. This notion seems especially troubling in art. (Maybe I'm just depressed because I get bummed every time I hear someone say he or she wants to 'make a new language' in his or her art - what's wrong with the ones that already exist? Who are you going to talk to in this new language? - and I heard that one in one form or another a half dozen times as I met with the first year grad painters yesterday). It's troubling because it defends an idea of stability of message that threatens some of the most important things art can do.

Art perhaps ought not so often be viewed so much as form of conversation, but perhaps more like a relay game. An artist observes something or invents it. She displays it (there is something etymologically suggestive about display, as if it were to cut off from play, but it's not that at all). Another person sees it. That person is now in the position of the artist, able to make through conversation, literature, or creative practice another thing. And on and on.

Of course the conversation model can't, and shouldn't, be utterly abandoned, but perhaps its dominance should be questioned a little more thoroughly. As if all conversations you’ve ever been invoved in went the way you wanted them...

Pictures of Pictures

One of the oddest things about going to the MoMA the other day was visiting the permanent collection and people-watching. I had heard so much about the building and the re-installation of the collection, but hadn't had a chance to visit. Clearly, the forces of reification had been successfully brought to bear on the works, as evinced by the number of people who whipped out their cellphones and started shooting pictures of their favorite works. (What, the bookstore stopped selling postcards?) I thought I would share these photos, taken with my phone.

I guess I can imagine sending photos to people live ("Look, honey! I'm in New York CIty and they've got a big Picasso!") but I can't quite see what one hopes to capture when one shoots a picture of a painting with the modern equivalent of a pinhole camera.

There were so many people milling around the galleries, and taking pictures - the cell phone came out in the galleries in which Picassos hung, and stayed out through the Impressionist and Post-Impressionists. Before that, one would see people posing next to large works while other took pictures of them. I wished I'd taken a picture of a teenager standing next to a large Warhol making the kind of gesture one sees at a heavy metal concert as her friends took her picture.

Perhaps I sound cynical, but I'm not. I really enjoyed watching all these people interacting with the art they were looking at, and the frantic duplication of the museum into pixels was ultimately moving. After all, before it says anything, photography says I was there, and if the museum is an important enough site to click, preserve, and share - as important as the smiles of people out for drinks or whatever we use cell phone cameras for - then something must be right with the world...

Art & Craft...

Back on the subject of Craft...

I had a chance this spring to be in the cultural Mecca of Northern Florida, Gainsville.

There was an interesting exhibit at the Harn Museum at the University of Florida …

A Closer Look: Art and Museums.
“This exhibition examines some key issues faced by museums in these areas of their operations. The exhibition is designed to inform visitors about the strategic decisions that underlie the presentation of art in museums, with the hope that this information will heighten the visitors’ critical awareness and enjoyment of those institutions”

The show was divided into five thematic sections: Defining Art, Collecting Art, Displaying Art, Interpreting Art, and Preserving Art. In the Defining Art area there was a display about art and craft.

This was the text panel was posted by the exhibit.

(What, I didn’t take a picture of the exhibit, just the text panel?)

Ants and Grasshoppers

So another summer begins in Philadelphia and I see that we've got a greater population of grasshoppers than ants. I expect things will get crazy as time goes on, but for now it's awfully quiet in the studios. What are we waiting for?
There have been a few people putting things together, but perhaps the the length of crits has cut into the desire to get going. The heat in the building is pretty bad. Maybe we should just go look at art rather than make it.