New addition

Just a note to point out that we've added Boot Print to our links on the right edge of the page. Check 'em out. We liked the fact that they felt responsible to

"...Art beyond the known institutional walls, geographical art centers, and parameters of the Artdome."

because who can resist that?

As always, we welcome suggestions for links and readings.

Required Reading

As a teacher, I've been interested in finding alternatives to big heavy text books for a long time. When I was a student, I always admired the professors who arranged their classes with course readers drawn from media sources and relevant excerpts from various books. This seemed to suggest a higher level of specificity about a class - as if its materials were too timely for the slow-moving textbook publishing industry. So when I started putting together classes, I started making readers. First came Xerox packets, then CD-ROMS and websites. Now I podcast parts of lectures and run a handful of course-specific blogs. I do all this because I think it will help - but I'm sure the textbook publishers think they're helping by concentrating info in one volume, too.

All this comes up because of two things that came across the radar recently - one is an article by Stuart Silverstein in today's Los Angeles Times (Panel Studies the High Cost of College Texts) about hearings into "inflated" book prices. The other is the announcement of a call for papers for a panel being organized by William Ganis of Wells College at the next CAA. "Beatified but not Canonized" proposes scholars look to the last pages of out-of-date art history books to see who the smart money was on at the time of publication. The panel plans to consider how the history of once-acclaimed/ now-obscure artists reflects larger political and aesthetic values. Hmm. Interesting.

What makes these things interesting to me is the combination of two things - first, the assumption that text books are overpriced in the present and, second, that their value might actually increase when they are out of date. I have a small shelf on my bookcase dedicated to wacky art histories that never made it -- books that try to explain abstraction to readers in the 40s, things like that. When students complain that textbooks cost too much and lawmakers start advocating for internet sources, we should pause and think what we'll lose when we trade in the text for the surging tide of internet communication. Information - they say - wants to be free. And it is...if you go to the library where it's usually on reserve. Online, nothing will ever go out of date because revisions will erase the bad information...along with any sense that history is a constant argument over whose story makes the most sense of the facts.

When I think about all the effort I put into learning how to teach when I was a student, I think I might cry. I realize now that teaching is (at best) a partial project for anyone. All one can do is try to coverone's beat adn hope everyone else your students see is doing his or her job, too. But students don't expect that kind of scattershot approach, and they have a right to expect more. Not more accurate or relevant information, but more about how to learn in the first place.

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...

Should we need a laugh...

Save this piece from McSweeney's for Criticism Seminar next summer...or read it now if you need a laugh:

An Art History Professor Explains to his 4-year-old Daughter Why The Fair Market Value of Her Picture is Actually Far Less and that of a Thousand Words , by Ethan Ryan

It's not like this in my home. Really.

Things I wish I'd seen...Notes on the Remote and the Invisible

I suppose it's maudlin to post about a show I couldn't get to, but I wanted to remark on the Tauba Auerbach show that just closed at Deitch. Or rather, I wanted to remark on the sadness I have for not seeing it. Sometimes you find out about these thigs too late, sometimes they're three thousand miles away. This looked like something I really should have seen...if only to make me feel stuck in my ways and unoriginal. Now and then, a kick in the pants like that is good thing. From the images on the Deitch site, one can see that Auerbach's work is playful with language, if not staggeringly original in its maneuvers or approach to the subject.

Perhaps because I’ve been reading thesis papers and thinking about influence and context a great deal, I feel rather without context these days. I read Steven Millhauser’s story, In the Reign of Harad IV, in a recent New Yorker a few days ago and it’s been haunting me. In it, the master miniaturist (I don’t pretend to that level of authority…) realizes the potential for his craft and embarks on a journey into the invisibly small. At the conclusion, two students come to see his recent work and there is - literally – nothing to see. It’s too small. They compliment him on it nonetheless, and the master miniaturist

…returned with some impatience to his work; and as he sank below the crust of the visible world, into his dazzling kingdom, he understood that he had traveled a long way from the early days, that he still had far to go, and that, from now on, his life would be difficult and without forgiveness.

This is what I thought being an artist was – finding that thing that you want to see, whether anyone wants to see it or not, and making it visible…if only to yourself. As I think about the humor and charm of Auerbach’s work, I find myself at once humored and charmed and slightly annoyed. Playing in the same field with language, I’m not too terribly interested in the kind of cleverness I see in that work. But I’m interested in something it contains or reflects.

And so, with some impatience, I must return to my work.

2006 MFA Thesis are online

Candidates for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics, Painting, and Sculpture are in the final stages of completing their Thesis Exhibitions. Cards have begun to go out, and Thesis Papers are being recieved. You are invited to review the thesis papers by visiting the class website.

The receptions for the Thesis Exhibitions will take place Friday, December 8 from 6-8pm at the University of the Arts Galleries and Saturday from 5-8pm at Highwire Gallery, 1315 Cherry Street in Center City Philadelphia.

Texas...and something about "mess"

One of the many things I remember Dario Robleto saying when he spoke at UArts was that he liked being in Texas because it was a stand-in for all of American culture. Of course he didn't say this was necessarily a good thing, but it took a turn for the worse recently, if we're to believe a recent report in the New York Times describing the suspension of teacher whose student complained about being exposed to nude statues on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art (no nudes on their home page...).

Yes, this is another example of the idea that one upset parent can derail the education of hundreds of students. Yes, this is an examples of how conservatives bent on speaking their minds can intimidate a school and the media (reports that Dallas television stations broadcast pictures taped at the museum's collection with black boxes concealing their sculpted naughty bits hints at how salacious, sensational, and ultimately cowardly local coverage of the event has been). But what's really interesting to me - as a teacher - is the way a cowardly administration can decide that such a complaint is an occasion to reprimand a teacher for past transgressions (as frivolous as "wearing flip flops" (the Times takes issue and reports that the art teacher wore sandals).

Although one gets the feeling that the Times article was intended to depict a Texas in which conservatives wield scary power over teachers and school administrators, it left me thinking more about the expectations to which education is held these days. If no child is left behind, it’s because we’re too afraid to go anywhere with our students. The complaining parents’ argument (I can only infer because they aren’t interviewed) appears to boil down to “Little Timmy got something on the museum trip which we didn’t expect to find bundled into an education and for which we refuse to pay.” Never mind that it’s unsafe to assume that liberal education is goal of any district, it appears now that schools are expected to be in the business of keeping students from experience and knowledge. The uncontrollable assets exceed the narrow limits of what passes for education and expose children to possibilities their parents might not recognize. At all levels, education now appears to be more oriented toward certification than the development of critical thinking, and this is yet another example of that phenomenon.

And, if you followed the above link and want to play devil’s advocate (wait, who am I alienating with that?) by reminding readers that it was the child who complained to the parent about the nude statue, by all means, remind away. I maintain that children are interested in making their parents happy and in combating the institutions in their lives that challenge stability, e.g. school. The complaining parent no doubt thinks his or her little angel has been brutally scarred by the experience. Thank heaven legions of future kids in Marlboro country will almost surely be spared the spectacles of human anatomy of inappropriate footwear, as this will surely linger in one form or another until school budgets are discussed in the next legislative cycle.

Spin Art

It's been years since I "liked" making a painting in any way I could explain to someone. I don't consider this tragic, I consider it rather a good sign. I like feeling like my work is work. But today I made some paintings I enjoyed. I made spin art.

Eventually, no matter where I'm teaching, I seem to come across a crit that includes a statement like, "I like it, I had fun making it" as a defense of the work in question. As if liking anything ever mattered in any professional sense. When are people going to realize that art is not there to make artists happy? I take is as a manifestation of entertainment culture that young artists tend to gauge the success or failure of their work by the pleasure its making gave them. Entertainment culture or maybe vestigial therapy culture – after all, the pleasure principle also works nicely with the idea that one should be 'releasing' things through one's art.

Spin art was great fun not for its expressive products (how expressive an they be?) so much as for the formal opportunities I'd never noticed before. I realized that the spinning paper is like a potter's wheel, and that a line pulled straight out from center would result in a spiral on the surface. I realized that even with kindergarten tempera paint, simple color chords could be made. I remembered that keeping the ground available was a good way to keep some energy in the picture.

Of course I'm familiar with Damien Hirst's spin art paintings, and I'm not about to give up my pain-in-the ass methods for a frolic at the fair. I'm not even going to claim special status for the works I'm talking about - I wouldn't even think of them as sketches in any real sense. They’re more like color swatches or something – sort of like pure research rather than applied research. But they are fun, for whatever that’s worth.

Words

Somewhere in the middle of today's studio visits, after I described a painting as being like a date with someone who tells you all about herself before the appetizer has reached the table thus killing any further conversation, I found myself thinking of what I don't say in crits out here that I do say in crits at Art Center. What follows is an evolving lexicon of critical terms that have little or no purchase out here. I imagine this post will grow once I apply myself to the problem (or when someone from there reminds me of all I've left out).

Bling: I realize this may not be a word I'm expected to use in crits anyway, but we seem to be suffering a drought of bling in art in Philadelphia. The word has immense currency among my students, and is applied to photography, product and transportation design, film and fine art. As in its original use, it indicates a level of polish and seductive surface that is intensively attractive. It can be contrasted against other terms of desirablity (like the overworked sexy of a few years ago) not only for its trendiness, but for its embrace of fashion as a positive aspect of a work's content.

Research: This is a problematic term that has been tossed around here a lot lately, usually in a context like I wanted to make this and did a lot of research.... Research is arguably the thing an artist needs to do these days, a self-justifying activity that has no apparent discipline and appears to be quantified only in variations of "lots". To me, research in art is evidence the other major art-making paradigms are not in use - those of inspiration or self-expression. Historicaly, these have been dominant principles of art practice. In the inspiration paradigm, artists were conduits of messages from religious (and later more worldly) authority. The Romantic era replaced this model with the self-expression paradigm, wherein the artist essentially looked inward, rather than upward, for ignition in the studio. Now, we have seen a surge toward looking outward and backward - through research - for fuel.

Guy Art: Jon Fortmiller's Intelligent Designs

Perhaps it's the news that Floyd Landis is in trouble for "test[ing] positive...for illegally high levels of testosterone" that has me thinking of the studio visit we paid to Jon Fortmiller in the middle of Denise's Vandeville's weekly debauch. For those who've not been there, Jon is hard at work on a troop of plaster monkeys who are occupying themselves, as monkeys do, by flinging poo, masturbating furiously, and same-sex coupling. John basked in the enthusiastic support of his classmates for this work, which he regards as critical of frat boy behavior, and got an especially warm crit from alum Romi Schroeder-Falzone for depicting maleness with such conviction in a culture and art world where the female form is so ubiquitous as to be a trite, formal device rather than a body.

The humor and wisdom of Jon's displacement of human male carnality on to other primates notwithstanding, I think it's time to complicate this critique before the discourse on Guy-Art at UArts gets over-determined. From my perch among the faculty, this seems like the most exaggeratedly raunchy year I've seen since I got here four years ago. I've been in crits framed by S&M, seen the most articulately painted breasts the school has had on view in perhaps decades (painted by both male and female painters, and generally played witness to what has been a more playful and frank atmosphere than we've had around here in a few years. Who threw open the windows?

But guy-ness appears to be everywhere all the sudden - here's what Roberta Smith observed in a piece in today's Times on summer shows in Chelsea:

Chelsea’s group-show summer fray can evoke a farmyard with a surplus of roosters. This was especially the case last summer when male artists and curators seemed to dominate, along with a plethora of Conceptually-based black-on-black appropriation art. At the time the term “boys in black” came to mind, and to a certain extent they’re back.

But it should be remembered that gender is a nuanced thing, not a start division. Lest we fall in to the mirror trap of objectification, perhaps we ought to think twice before getting serious about a formula that reads something like male=sexual=aggressive=primitive. What is lust and who gets to express it openly? What's the meeting ground between the intellectual discourse of gender and rather-more-difficult-to intellectualize arena of sex? (An amusing photo-essay on maculinity can be found at a blog by Graham Milton.) As tired as people might be of the sensitive metrosexual male, essentializing masculinity as restrictively as femininity has been circumscribed isn't necessarily the solution.

Newsletter Pitches

Criticism students - these are the ideas that came over the transom for the newsletter. I've put a few remarks in after each one to help shape the piece, but we will be talking about these and discussing progress on July 19 with me and on July 21 with James Rosenthal. At the end of the list, I've put in some things that no one pitched that are worth considering, so let me know if youy want to change tracks.

Melinda Steffy - "I'm writing a feature on the Bike Parts show at Nexus, a fund-raising auction for a non-profit bike organization, especially considering the dynamics of a non-art organization using 'outsider' art to raise money."

gerard suggests - the big question here may be about the social usefulness of art, and in some ways the story is in line with the debate between Croce and Oates. Do such things diminish or help art? Another example might be the vogue for using art to address issues of violence, as in Goods for Guns

Denise Vandeville - need written pitch!

Aubrey Navarro - need written pitch!

Paul DeMarco - 1. 600 words: Review of Charles Long’s recent ICA exhibit Gone Formalism in the context of his recent UARTS lecture using a completely arbitrary set of standards and condition.

gerard says: Good. Go for it.

2. Table and 400 words: A brief review of Philadelphia area MFA programs based solely on the available promotional materials. Areas of interest will include: program focus, demographic, goals/mission, accessibility, etc.

gerard says: This is good – I assume the schools are Arts, Tyler, Penn and PAFA. The sooner you can specify four-to-six criteria the better, because then the designer can ration out the space for the table.

Jason Pemberton - need written pitch!

Fred Holcomb - "I plan to write one 1200 word newsletter article on the current “grid” show at Gallery Joe. The use of the grid can be both bold and mundane. But after a half century of minimalism, what more needs to be said of it.? The show is not a historical review. Having recently read Rosiland Krauss’s comments on the grid in her 1981 “The Originality of the Avant-Garde…,” I am particularly interested in this exhibit. After the class discussion yesterday, I agree to shorten the "grid" review and add another gallery review. I mentioned the Black Mountain show in class but am now leaning toward the William T. Wiley show at Locks, but haven't seen it yet."

gerard suggests - the histoircally conscious approach to the Gallery Joe show sounds good, and it can probably be addressed n less than 750 words. If you drop the Black Mountain show, some one else should pick it up, but I would encourage you to choose between the Locks and Mayer shows based on your interest in the work.

Mike Reenock - "I intend to write a descriptive piece about Philadelphia painter Robert Goodman’s studio. This piece will be focus primarily on the physical aspects of Goodman’'s studio and its role as something other than merely a “place to paint.”"

gerard suggests:This sounds like a good feature, it's a profile, but it's not. Perhaps we can run it under a department heading like "studio view". The folks in publicaitons who are designing our newsletter said photos are good, and I'll give you the specs. The one caution I have is that you go with an open mind. It's possible that the studiois just a place to paint for some artists: always try to approach your writing as an open question that can be proven or disproven through research.

Chris Houston - I plan to review the current show, Dialogues: A Group Exhibition at the Sande Webster Gallery, 2006 Walnut St., July 5th though August 23rd. The show opening is Friday July 14th.

gerard suggests: it would be good to articulate hte angle of this piece as soon as possible. Is it reportage (this happened, I saw it)? Or in some way critical?

Vanessa Juriga - Is writing about Woodmere Art Museum's members' exhibit. need written pitch!

Walter Plotnick - I plan write 6 short reviews, mainly focused on art in the Philadelphia Northern Suburbs. Four of which will be reviews of work that are presently on display at various galleries. Two will be studio visits, seek peeks of new work....behind the scenes of established artists who happen to live in the Northern Suburbs of Philadelphia. First, Anthony Lent, Senior Professor at F.I.T in NYC. Second Jon Clark, Professor & Chair of the Glass Dept. at Tyler School of Art.

Jared Udell - "The article will be a converstation with artist Adam Parker Smith. Adam recieved his MFA at Tyler and has been showing and teaching throughout Philadelphia. He is another painter gone hybrid, who creates soft sculpture which are shown along with his drawings and a paintings. Adam is represented by Peng Gallery. This past month he has made the move to NYC. I will discuss his time in Philadelphia and his decison to move to New York.

I see parallels in our goals and I am interested in this for my own experience, and to hear about the pros and cons of both art worlds; NYC and Philly."

gerard replies: We've already talked about this not being so much an interview or profile as a piece in which the phenomenon of the artist who migrates to NY is addressed through the example. Because this is the point of the article, I think you should back off the description of his work and focus on his decision to move, the contributing factors that influenced it, and what it's lead to so far.

Terri Saulin - "I would like to write a piece discussing the chasm between fine art and craft. Specifically, ceramic art and sculpture. I plan to interview Jeff Guido from the Clay Studio, either Ken Vavrek or Jack Thompson, perhaps Paula Winokour during my critique this wed. I am also interested in a poetic reading of the Louise Bougeois show at The Fabric Workshop."

gerard replies: This is very, very good. Jeff is a good source, and Paula would be great. I would remember that a good argument is usually built on three points, and choose your interview subjects carefully to express those ideas. I assume we're talking about two things - an essay on craft (a feature? 600-800wds?) and a poetic review of Louise Bourgois (200-400wds.)?

Other things to think about: Louise Bourgeois @ Fabric Workshop/Lonnie Graham @ Fabric Workshop/ Zoe Strauss July 19 slide show/ Stories based on access to visiting artists (Ellen Harvey!)

Under the Influence

Tonight is the first of our film screenings. and I've been interested in addressing the question of influence for some time now. It seems that now is time.

The Oxford American Dictionary, in defining influence, offers the following word history:

ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French, or from medieval Latin influential| ‘inflow,’ from Latin influere, from in- ‘into’ + fluere ‘to flow.’ The word originally had the general sense [an influx, flowing matter,] also specifically (in astrology) [the flowing in of ethereal fluid (affecting human destiny).] The sense [imperceptible or indirect action exerted to cause changes] was established in Scholastic Latin by the 13th cent., but not recorded in English until the late 16th cent.

The operative word in the definition since the 16th century seems to be imperceptible or indirect, that the influence of one thing on another is observed by a third party, more than recognized by the changed subject. Somehow or another, that connotation of mysterious or imperceptible action still resides in the word, which perhaps explains why it feels so much like someone is dragging his finger nails across a blackboard when he names his “influences” in a critique or statement.


Influence is, I assert, being too narrowly understood and converted to a neutral, almost clinical term in such instances. When citing their influences, artists often sound more like bibliographers than introspective critics of their practice. In almost all cases, it would be more apt to say “I admire so and so’s work…” or “I have tried to steal this or that property of so and so’s paintings…” (a valuable attempt to re-think this problem came from Keith Gruber in his March 10 post on this blog.) Using the word influence generally allows the artist to behave like an infected person, one who cannot take responsibility for the reference to other art or ideas in his or her work (the word, influenza actually entered the English language from Italian in the mid 1700's by way of the root that influentia, a medieval forerunner of influence).

But artworks are not sneezes, scabs, or otherwise to be confused with the results of infection. They are, if anything, discursive objects and most of them are made with the intent to act in this capacity (those that are not made to do this but instead are selected from all the other objects in the word to function like this are called “found objects”…but that’s another essay). Disregarding the responsibility to intent diminished the force of a work. This doesn’t mean unconscious or spontaneous allusions are impermissible, it means that they should be rigorously and thoroughly understood by the artist as soon as they are identified so their power can be harnessed and directed where the artist wants to employ it.

I’m especially keen to hear form the artists who responded to the call for participation – Jane Irosh, Joe Nanashe, Isaac Resnikoff and Paul Falzone - because they have been thoughtful and deliberate in our correspondence and have indulged me by trying to understand how talking about movies might be a roundabout way of talking about their work.

It doesn’t seem that we’re going to get over the essentially pathological discourse of art practice that dominates contemporary art any time (more obsessive drawings, anyone?) but perhaps we start to be more specific about our relation to the world around us, what enters our making processes through which doors, and how it is greeted.

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.