More Marla

For those who couldn't get enough of Marla Olmstead (remember the toddler artist who was at the center of a storm of publicity, excuse me, hype, in spring of 2004 and, to a diminishing degree, over the last few years? I guess no one gets old on the web...she's still four years according to what I've seen...a refresher can be found here), she's back...with a movie!

The New York Times ran an interesting piece about Amir Bar-Lev's new film My Kid Could Paint That in its January 25 edition. The article purports to be about the ethics of documentary filmmaking, but for artfolk, it's so much more.

Miss Olmstead (to whom I don't mean to sound as patronizing as I must in this entry) attracts comment for so many reasons. She's financially successful at something few American understand in the first place, let alone understand well enough to know how its market works. It's possible to see her as a prodigy or as a victim of child exploitation. And best of all, it's possible to do any of these things _ and more - without really knowing anything at all about her work. That's what cultural commentators like best - art they can comment on without ever having to see....

But it's not really Ms. Olmstead I want to talk about; it's the way she's being talked about. It's interesting to note that on Ms. Olmstead's website (in a font I'd previously thought was reserved for missives from the bridge of the starship Enterprise) appears a message declaring that "start-to-finish video documentation [is now] provided for Marla's work". If, like me, you missed the scandal that followed her success - the insinuation that her paintings had been retouched by her father - this assertion of completely individual authorship seems, well...wierd.

Arguably, Hans Namuth's pictures of Jackson Pollock painting (see above) had more impact on artists than the canvases themselves. In his hyponotic dance around the perimeters of his work, artists saw new possibilities for how a painting aight be thought of. Now that there controversy swirls around the authenticity of certain pictures alleged to be Pollocks, one has to wonder if artists should be thinking - as Marla might have been (or, as someone might have been) - of setting up surveillance cameras to record each work's birth for the security of future auction houses.

What this is all about is how artworks remain - for many - relics of an object's time spent in someone's presence. Should we appreciate a Pollock or an Olmstead because of what it is, or because of who made it and how much assistance that person had? How far down the rabbit hole should we go with this? Should we get videos of Ms. Olmstead selecting her paint at the store, so we know her palette isn't determined by some corrupting force (some people feel the intrusion of others' color ideas very forcefully in late de Kooning...)? Should we watch her grind pigment, so we know it's not just a given from the manufacturer? Should we wait for her to outgrow her clothing and sell that instead?

Artworks are interesting to me precisely because they're not people. Because they offer the chance for people to construct ideas of themselve, not endless chances to repeat who they are. Reducing a work to a surname (I'm certain no one is looking for 'browns' on eBay...) strikes me as terribly limiting to the imagination of the artist.

So here's hoping Marla had some help on her canvases, and that she learned from her helper who she was and who she wanted to be.

Migrating

The decision is...use the new Google thing. For now at least. Hope you'll all keep checking in on us here.

Words words words or, a small flurry

In The Language Instinct, linguist Stephen Pinker tackles the myth that Eskimos have dozens of words for snow and its implicit assumption that more words for something means greater cognitive subtlety. Pinker's book is a great read, but not for every artist, so it was with a certain glee that I read a piece in today's Chicago Tribune discussing this artic legend.

One of the enduring myths of art education is that we're somehow smarter because we've sharpened our observational skills (or at least that was the myth when art students used to observe something other than the limitations of the assignments they've been given, but that's a topic for another cranky blog post...). I'll get back to this in a minute. Maybe what's going on here is a way of embracing Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, but I'm inclined to agree with DeKooning when he rhetorically asked, “was it such a smart idea for Monet to paint those haystacks?" Yes, art training can enhance observation (I’ve always loved this example of a study in which medical students noticed more on X-rays after art tutorials), but it seems to me a related problem – can we connect the capacity describe things we perceive with the idea of intelligence?

Language and thinking are so entwined because thinking finds expression in language. If one cannot express one’s thinking, one is assumed to be thinking poorly. And language – writing, speaking – is 700 lb. gorilla in the expression arena. Those of us who hope that other forms of making (maybe this is what Joe Deal is talking about when he refers to ‘Delta Knowledge’) can achieve some autonomy from language (that we’ll, for instance, stop talking about metaphor in visual art in such literary ways) can take a little relief in seeing the decoupling of words and ideas that Pinker indicates in the Eskimo snow-thesaurus myth.

Me - I'm not going to crack this glass ceiling I'm talking about. I can't see a way out of the language trap. But here's what I think: linguistic and visual expression intersect at the point where signs are made. Artists (and good writers) are capable of generating new signifiers that achieve conventionality rapidly enough to contain meaning. The newness of their way of addressing their subjects makes their expression appear enlightened...but the subject hasn't changed (it's still snow), just the way in which the artist puts it in the mind of the viewer. Call it snowblindness...or any one of a hundred other things.

Hmmm...should we migrate or move on?

It seems Blogger now requires a Google Account from its users. I'm loathe to make everyone who uses this site get another account so Google can track your movements around the web and market things to you, so I'm thinking of ending this blog and setting up a new one attached to my .Mac account.

There are several ramifications of this. Only I'll be able to initiate discussions (though I can set it up to receive comments). I'm sure .Mac isn't entirely innocent of tracking, but it won't require a password to participate in the conversation, but the .Mac site has a terrible URL. And I'm not sure anyone cares in the first place.

So please comment about this before January 22 when I'll announce the decision. Thanks.

New reading

Artist and critic James Rosenthal was a big hit with the Criticism Seminar students last summer. You will be glad to know he's started a blog of his own, Pocket Intellectual. You can check it out and post your comments. I don't think I'm letting anything out of the bag by saying James will be back next summer to work with the thesis year students, so read up. At least one teacher can be figured out...