Art Vent

Letting the Fresh Air In

2007

November 12, 2007
Today, going to the city, I finally listened to music again after not wanting to disturb the memory of the casual, slightly unplugged Yo La Tengo concert at Mass MoCA Saturday night. Yo La Tengo, who I first heard at Maxwell’s in Hoboken around the time of their inception in 1984, may have the best career of any band—steady and long-lasting—while the music, which runs the gamut from mellow to hard rock, is changing and experimental. They were among the first of the cool indie bands—it’s possible they invented the genre—and are still as cool and indie as ever, with a whole new audience of teenage fans. The opener, however, a Vermont folkie who goes by the name of Dredd Foole, was dread-full (he set himself up for that). His off-key yowling sent me fleeing to the lobby for tea and a very satisfying chocolate mousse. I’ve heard some of the worst openers ever at Mass MoCA, which is sad when you think about how many excellent musicians there are in the area. I also wish they’d give more thought to the music they blast to indicate, along with the house lights, that the show is over—it can be a shock to the system when you’re in a Yo La Tengo haze.

Then today was the last day of the Asian Art Fair. Son Matt has just returned from accompanying his friend, British DJ Adam Freeland, on a tour of China, and reports that Shanghai is the cultural capital of the universe, with architecture that looks like Blade Runner times ten and the most stylishly dressed women anywhere. The Asian Art Fair, a particularly manageable pier show, convinced me that the vogue for Asian, especially Chinese, art is more than a fad. A deft merging of old images and ideas with new sensibilities and media, much of the work was light and—gasp!—aesthetic, compared with Western art, which seems destined to drown in a dreary sea of academic conceptualism.
November 11, 2007
I’m throwing out old magazines, and just couldn’t let this go unmentioned before consigning it to recycling—the Sex issue of Time Out/New York (Oct. 5-12), which, if you missed it (and you’re lucky if you did) is like a Mad Magazine spoof of a listings magazine as edited by Larry Flynt. It has suggestions on where to go and what to do if you want all your orifices filled at once or fantasize about being raped, and the magazine paid for a staffer to go to a legal brothel in Reno and report on his experience. And I just wanted to know what time the Whitney opened! Really, sex hasn’t seemed this disgusting since I was ten. The editor later said, “If you do a sex issue and no one cancels, you’re probably not doing your job,” the idea being that if you’re not into porn you’re a prude, and he’s just as happy to have all prudes cancel. What I want to know is, where is feminism now that we need it?

I’ve been able to find additional reasons to cancel my subscription, however, one being that it comes a week too late, and another is the stupidest review of anything I ever read (in the Oct. 18-24 issue, which I’m also tossing)—Mike Wolf’s review of Radiohead’s In Rainbows where he devotes the first two thirds to a rehash of the band’s decision to release the album on their own (totally old news by then) and when he finally gets down to the music says, “Admittedly, I’m not a big Radiohead fan, though the group’s ongoing ability to make cryptically sweet alternative rock is admirable” and “it’s safe to say that Radiohead fans, an unwavering lot, will be satisfied with both the music and the near-certainty that they each paid a fair amount for the artist’s work.” If he dislikes the music and wants to subject it to a critique, fair’s fair. But this is akin to an editor assigning a writer who doesn’t like raw fish to review a Japanese restaurant…“Those who like sushi would probably enjoy the iku-tama but I’m not into that sort of thing, so I’ll give it one star”—or how about a book review that reads, “I’m completely bored by murder mysteries, but if I weren’t I’m guessing Robert Ludlam’s new thriller would be a page-turner…”


On the other hand perhaps I should be glad, because it opens up whole new possibilities for art writing such as, “Personally I dislike overwrought gestural paintings by Saatchi-promoted British artists, but those who don’t will relish Marlene Dumas’s upcoming retrospective at MoMA”…I think I’ll try it.
November 10, 2007
In New York magazine this week (Nov. 12) is an article about art advisor Kim Heirston who, it says, has “helped old money and new get into the market.” It describes how, “In recent years, she’s put her clients’ money—and her own—in such emerging artists as Piotr Uklanski, Urs Fischer, and Ugo Rondinone. Over the mantel of her art-stuffed, all-white living room is a purple metallic ‘tinfoil’ painting by Anselm Reyle….Today she’s long on Baselitz. ‘Almost all of my clients have one or two Baldessaris in their collections,’ she says… ‘Most of my clients have a Ruscha…’ And, of course, she’s tried to make everyone buy a Reyle.”

Hmmm. The article suggests that the value of Heirston’s Reyle has gone from $10,000 to $600,000 in two years. Is there no conflict of interest in collecting and trying to get other people to buy the same artists, thereby raising the value of your holdings? (Oh, Carol, you’re so old-fashioned…conflict of interest? Nobody cares about that anymore!) I also thought a good art advisor helped clients develop their tastes, but here, where everyone owns the same thing, taste doesn’t seem to be an issue. Someone likened the current art market to the Dutch tulip craze of the late 16th century, where outlandish speculation in tulips and bulbs caused huge numbers of people to lose their shirts. It used to be that the price of art was relative to its influence on other artists, its value to the culture, something that was determined over time. Back in the day—oh, say, a decade ago—it took ten years for an artist’s work to reach the auction houses. But in this speeded up market—and it is a “market,” no longer a “scene”— the only measure is hype. It reminds me of when I was a little kid and my friends and I exchanged trading cards. I’ll give you two kittens for a bunny. Three for a Baselitz.
November 7, 2007
Writing articles about Marisol and Louise Nevelson (as I have recently for Art in America--although when they’ll be published is anyone’s guess), both of whom based their work on scavenged materials, made me realize that one of the things that made art in New York so rich during the sixties, seventies and eighties was that the artists lived in the industrial neighborhoods of SoHo and Tribeca, where tons of free stuff—the refuse of manufacturing concerns—was available on the street every night. Artists use what is at hand, and with that in mind I turned to what’s most plentiful in my life at the moment—spam. My friend, Carol Gingles, was the one who came up with the idea of writing poems with spam, so now, instead of opening Outlook with a sense of dread, I think, “Oh boy, maybe I have some spam! I hope it has the word ‘penis’ in it.”

For those who missed the open mic in Housatonic last night, here is my first effort:

Market investor alert
Home based business opportunity
Users to create
Interpersonal divide

I was looking for you
We will lead you to your new sexual life
Sex can
End the annoying obesity now
Quick, grab this
The students he’s seen
Use such tools
All with the goal of
Enjoyable
Credit points

I may be mad but I’m not mistaken
Don’t miss out on your chance to become
A real penis
And go across campus
Explaining constructions to a living pig
Most appropriate
Quality replicas
Give her a satisfying smile every time you fuck
November 5, 2007
Again, I'm always looking for more distinctions so we can sort through the plethora of art out there and begin to make the judgments that have been so lacking. I found a quote from this 2007 lecture written by Walter Darby Bannard on gallery owner Edward Winkleman's blog, and the complete text is available on WDB's archive. "Art is condensed life." I love that.

Art is condensed life. The artist works his materials against immediate circumstances and applies what he has in his head against what he has already done, reaching down to the extraordinary harmonic integrity of life itself to fashion something that is narrow, safe, permanent, and which deliberately circumvents transitory utility in order to create a dynamic equivalent of life itself. Art comes from a place that’s deeper than words and ideas and things. It goes out to the same place in the viewer. The work itself is the point of contact, the spark that jumps between the poles. It yields a special kind of recognition and pleasure, but does not submit to rational explanation.

Every artist tries to bring that core experience to the surface encoded in his or her art, but few succeed. After all we’re not talking about “art” but great art. Great art is what drives this enterprise. If it were not for great art, we would not be sitting here. Mediocre art and bad art are something else…Most art is just surface noise. The world is jammed with this stuff.

Once we accept that there is such a thing as good art and bad art and that art has value for us then we are forced to conclude that the judgments we make about it are not individual exercises of taste, but functions of how well we get what the art has.
November 4, 2007
Each year when it comes time for Art Basel/Miami, I make plans to go, don’t go, while it’s on I’m glad I didn’t, and when my friends come back with tales of fun, fun, fun, wish I had. This year is no different. I was invited to be part of an art performance that involved making a drawing in public and ultimately declined, thinking that I would feel like a performing seal. My decision was bolstered by a quote in last week’s (Nov. 5) New York magazine from Chuck Close who said: "I hate art fairs. I think that for an artist to go to an art fair, it’s like taking a cow on a guided tour of a slaughterhouse. You know that sort of thing goes on, but you don’t want to see it."
November 1, 2007

From my studio bathroom window I have a nice view of my neighbor Sonny’s yard, and can watch as he putters about. Retired, he has made home maintenance a fulltime job. What I want to do is catch him throwing dead mice over the fence. Stanley, who mows our grass, finds two or three every week, as does Marjorie, who comes up on weekends, always in the same place. Sonny also tosses over the twigs from our birch tree that land on his lawn and occasionally rocks, which screw up Stanley’s lawnmower. I have fantasies about what I’ll say once I catch him like, “Hey, Sonny, were you a cat in a former life?” or “I really appreciate the rocks because I can use them in my garden, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do with the dead mice.” However given that this is the same man who threatened to shoot Marjorie’s dogs if they barked, chances are I’ll say nothing. Last week, Stanley told me, Sonny was out with the leaf blower steadily blowing the leaves over the fence until he came to the end of our yard...and blew the rest into his nephew’s.
November 1, 2007
From my third floor studio bathroom I have a nice view of my neighbor Sonny’s yard, and can watch as he putters about. Retired, he has made home maintenance a fulltime job. What I want to do is catch him throwing dead mice over the fence. Stanley, who mows the lawn, finds two or three every week, as does Marjorie, who comes up on weekends, always in the same place. Sonny also tosses over the twigs from our birch tree that land on his lawn and occasionally big stones, which screw up Stanley’s lawnmower. I have fantasies about what I’ll say once I catch him like, “Hey, Sonny, were you a cat in a former life?” or “I really appreciate the rocks, because I can use them in my garden, but I’m not quite sure what to do with the dead mice,” however given that this is the same man who threatened to shoot Marjorie’s dogs if they barked, chances are I’ll say nothing. Last week, Stanley told me, Sonny was out with the leaf blower steadily blowing the leaves over the fence into our yard until he came to the end…and blew the rest into his nephew’s.

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