Politicality

One of my brighter Art Center students came up to me today and seemed distraught. She told me she'd had a "discussion" with a friend in which they disagreed about the nature of art. Her friend suggested she go out and ask a few more people's opinions. The issue? They were debating whether or not all art is political.

Fortunately, my student was smart enough to know that the answer partly depends on what your definition of political is, but she seemed more than a little disappointed by the rapidity with which I said I thought, sure, art is political. (I guess I know what side of the argument she was making...). We talked about how, in Western art before modernism, all art was political in the sense that it reinforced the power of the church and state. In The Invisible Dragon, Dave Hickey convincingly talks about the art of the Baroque, for example, as a form of religious propaganda.

Things obviously get muddier the closer you come to the present. After all, what is political about a Pollock? An image like Lavender Mist (above) doesn't seem to have much to do with politics. Turns out that there may be plenty. Not too long ago, Louis Menand contributed an article to the New Yorker in which he addressed the oft-made claim that Abstract Expressionism was a tool of the CIA. I've been interested in this idea for a while - one of art my heroes, the poet Frank O'Hara, was involved in the development of international touring exhibitions of the art some have called political propaganda for American-style democracy. I'm fairly sure, based on my research, that he was as apolitical as they come (which I consider a fault, but that's another story).

What I realized (too late) that I should have said is that I don't think anything is inherently anything - things become meaningful based on how they are used. Art may not be intended to serve some political agenda, but once it leaves the artist's studio and belongs to the world, it gets put to use in ways the artist never imagined. Many people like to say they hate political art, but I think what is often meant by that statement is that they hate art which is overtly political - art that insists on being used in a certain way, like some craft objects insist on being used in certain ways by their use of certain forms and participation in certain traditions. It makes sense to hate art that is dictatorial as much as it makes sense to hate governments that are dictatorial.

Of course, this raises a whole slew of issues – how do we make sure the objects we make are put to uses we don’t find deplorable? Should we care? If we don’t care, are we immoral? I’d greatly appreciate your comments so I can pass them on to my student…

Final Presentations

I sent this out as an email earlier but wanted to make sure it was in a fixed place so everyone could find it:

I got the green light from Carol for us to meet in Room 808 from 12-2 to do final presentations of research findings. Everyone should plan on taking about ten minutes to present a paper or a summary of the semester's work, and should be prepared to answer questions. I will arrange for a computer and a projector for those whose papers are supplemented by imagery.
I would like to give a little thought to the speaking order so I can put people whose subjects are related close to one another. It would be extremely helpful if I could get a short abstract of the paper you intend to present before 12/2. I'll post a helpful little ditty about writing abstracts on the blog later today or tomorrow to make that easier.

Gaetano Pesce

Hi All, Gaetano Pesce is lecturing at the PMA this Friday, Nov. 18th at 6pm. Admission is 10$ w/ student ID, 25$ members, 35$ non-members. Check out www.philamuseum.org. for more info about him and his work. Best, Terri

Research

I've been asked to teach a class next semester at Art Center and I'm fishing for ideas. The class is called The Art of Research and it is a studio course that aims to close the gap between students' interest making and their familiarity with the context of their practice. It's not a history class, but a class that should give them some research methodologies they might take with them into their practice. Trouble is, how do you teach research without researching something?
I've been polling artists about the way they do research and what place it has in their practice, and I'll eventually share the findings with y'all, but if you've got a moment, could you tell me a little about the roll of research in your studio practice and how you go about it? This is all off the record - I'm not looking to hear so much about this class as about if this class has been helpful in the studio at all, and if so how, and if not, how might it be more so?
Thanks -

winter crit

Quick question, when we go up to Philly to present our papers, which I'm guessing should be done by power pont, do we also have a crit with the studio portion? Or is that all together? I'm trying to figure out what i should bring up there besides the paper. Then, do we write two new study plans for the spring? Any info will help. -deb

Time to give up on cool?

An amusing story from artsjournal.com today attempts to gauge the over-valuation of cool. It comes from the Times online and author Grayson Perry; an excerpt:

Few groups can be more conservative than teenagers who take coolness seriously: they pounce on difference; goodness is boiled down to the lowest common denominator of “correct” brands, bands and overwrought hair. What makes cool an immature value system is its simple hip/square, in/out, mingin’/blingin’ binary, while being adult is dealing with shades of grey and with compromise. With luck, as we mature we can trust our judgment about what feels good or bad. We can cast aside the crutches of cool.

This quote appears in the context of an article about how often the author hears artists described as cool when they are often wierdos with off beat obsessions that no one appreciates or understands. Until, that is, a mediating institution (gallery, museum, critic, publisher) steps in and transforms the outrageous into the exceptional, and now it's cool.
When I began to be active as a critic and curator, I would go to artists' studios and have mild panic attacks. Nothing looked finished, nothing looked real to me. I quickly realized that I had been brought up on museums and galleries, and that I had a pretty undeveloped digestive system for the kind of unprocessed art that one sees in a studio. I was sort of used to eating baby food and art in studios was too rich, too textured, too complicated for my senses, which were used to visual-Velveeta.
Since then I've learned that art is, in fact, truly un-cool. It gets made into cool by a number of forces and, increasingly, that makes it less interesting to me. I think of Macolm Gladwell's influential article, The Coolhunt and how things are less interesting when they have caught on, and how it's when they catch on that they become cool.
All this is to say that I think making a cohesive body of work, that aiming for the gallery, that looking at what one student referred to as "great art" in a recent e-mail (troubling quoting a faculty member), may be the wrong move. An artist friend of mine uses as his highest form of praise for a work the description that it looks "store-bought" as opposed to home-made. For me? Forget about the store. Show me the factory.

Free Space!

Erin sent this out, but I wanted to post a reminder that you should apply for this opportunity to get a free studio space from the Maria Walsh Sharpe Foundation. Go for it.

I'll be posting later about a new class I learned about the other day, one which focuses on integrating research into art-making practice. Hope all are well.

Damn, I got some good papers....

Congratulations on some interesting writing this time around. Highlights so far have included Keith's musings on artists in fiction and the way their training reflects on the way artists are really trained; Malese's observations about a Jewish ritual bath and its echoes in a performance by contemporary artist Marina Abramovic; Deb Yarrington's outstanding analysis of the evolution of fairy tales and conjectures about their place in contemporary society; Aubrey's biographical look at Hanry Darger; and Chris Houston's impassioned examination of the effects of celebrity culture on fine art.
I wish I could post the papers on line, as at several points your interests overlap and I think you could teach one another (in fact, almost everything I've read seems to address a feeling of rudderless ness in contemporary art, as if our training were inadequate, we lacked the common ground offered by utopian literature or the grounding offered by ritual, or that celebrity culture is corroding our impact on society. Again, I encourage you to use this site to exchange ideas and information. There is, after all, only so much I can teach you.
I'll be getting to the rest of the papers I've received soon, so hang in there. I just felt the good work I've seen deserved a shout from the West.

Ken Vavrek: Recent Wall Sculpture Rosenfeld Gallery 113 Arch Street Phila.Pa. 19106 215 922-1376 www.therosenfeldgallery.com. Show continues until November 27th  

My Mentors!

Both of my under-grad ceramics instructors are having an opening this First Friday, 11/4/05. Jack Thompson is exhibiting at Projects Gallery, 629 N. 2nd St. in Phila. Ken Vavrek, a founder of The Clay Studio is exhibiting at Rosenfeld Gallery, 113 Arch St. in Phila. I'll be posting the sites for the galleries and thoughts about the work soon! Try to catch the shows if you can. Vavrek's show has another reception on Sun., 11/6.