Flashback Friday: It's Interesting, But Is It Art?

Ten Years Ago Today

Ken Burns' documentary Jazz has so much to say about so many things that a once through experience of watching is not enough. Race relations and the American experience are but one of the threads that weaves through this story about music and musicians. Another thread is how the reclusive edge of the avant-garde jazz scene bled into the broader culture in so many various ways.
 
Yesterday was the last episode in the Robert Hughes documentary Shock of the New, which the Duluth Art Institute so graciously shared at the Zinema 2 downtown. While watching this film series, which explores how modern and post-modern art came to be, I couldn't help but see parallels with the music scene. Many of the problems were similar. What is important? What is good? Who determines value? If the public likes it and it's popular, can it really be great? (This was Updike's complaint with Stephen King.)
 
When the narrator in Jazz put this out there I had to set it down in writing because of all that it conveyed. The basic truth, Artie Shaw concluded, is that popular music has little or nothing to do with musical values at all. “I still wanted to play music and the audience was saying, ‘Play what you’re playing. Over and over. We like that.’ They never could understand that what they liked was something I did on my way to getting better. That record that they liked… became a millstone, became an albatross around my neck.”
 
So yesterday, we watched the final installment of our series, which was really more like an addendum. The original series appeared circa 1980. This last piece was produced post-9/11 in 2005. Hughes' aim, he stated, was to discuss "what was good, what was bad and why it is important to know the difference." Just because something is novel and new doesn't mean it is vital or important or good.
 
To make his point he has us join him as he visited with Jeff Koons, whom he said was probably the most successful living American artist. Koons used to be a commodities broker before leaping headlong into the art scene. Koons is an American artist who built a reputation around reproducing banality it seems. It's hard to take him seriously, but he's audacious enough to suggest with a straight face that he is simply a modern equivalent of Michaelangelo. Certainly he's learned a thing or two from Warhol about how to capitalize on his chosen path.
 
It just so happened that a couple days ago someone shared with me a link to Morley Safer's 60 Minutes segment on Contemporary Art. And look who's in the limelight... It's Koons. His fifteen minutes evidently didn't end here. (Be honest, does this excite you or turn your stomach?)

In late March, in the midst of Hughes' film series there was a guest lecturer at UMD who presented his take on developments these past 150 years in the art scene. Greg Volk, an art critic and curator himself, gave a lively and thought-provoking overview from a bit more esoteric perspective. Volk's fascinations end in a space that was different from Hughes' final pronouncements and ruminations.
 
Volk's heroes are artists like Katharina Grosse, Ayse Erkman and Roman Signer. Each was following a path into uncharted personal territories without boundaries. But I couldn't help simultaneously hearing in my head Morley Safer's take: "Who are these people trying to buffalo?"

Hughes comes full circle back to draftsmanship and painterliness. His heroes in the end are very different: Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Paula Rego. "Painting is about stories," Hughes stated. He dislikes the fast art of modern times as much his distaste for fast food. And he finds sensationalism appalling.
 
What I liked about the way our series was presented was that each week ended with a little discussion period which sometimes had almost as many insights as the films themselves. A couple weeks back one of the points made afterward was that all these various movements from Cubism and Dada to Pop, Minimalism and Conceptual art were helpful for artists today in that they were now free to pursue their inner vision in any direction they wanted. As Duchamp once pointed out, however, only posterity will decide what was important. Right now, we're standing too close to the oyster.

 
What's your take?

Flashback Friday: Four August Stories from Six Years Ago --The Creative Class, Basquiat, Robert Hughes and Olympic Sex

This summer I have been taking an inventory of all my blog posts during the past 11 years. It's been an interesting investigation, rummaging through 4000 blogs posts along with some of the comments they engendered. Here are the intros to five of these from August 2012.

Fall of the Creative Class
August 1, 2012
Last week a Facebook friend posted a thought-provoking critique of Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class. For those who care about these things, and I realize a lot of folks don't, the article addresses the current relationship between the arts and contemporary culture, and challenges certain beliefs regarding the economic value of art in society. The article, by Frank Bures, is titled "The Price of Everything." It's popularity may be due to the fact that it attempts to knock over one of our newly erected sacred cows.
READ MORE

Olympic Sex
August 2, 2012
I intended to write about the "art" of the Olympics this morning, but I have a friend who mentioned that he doesn't read my blog as much as he used to now that I write so much and so frequently about art. If it says "Art" in the title he skips that day. So today I'm throwing him a bone, something more in keeping with the prurient interests of our fans while remaining wholly up-to-the-minute and relevant culturally.
READ MORE

Was Robert Hughes Right About Basquiat?
August 9, 2012
Yesterday it was announced that former Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes passed away at 74. His perch at Time and a television series that sought to explain the development and history of modern art all served to make him better known than most art critics. L.A. Times writer Mike Boehm called him "a sometimes lacerating reviewer who may have commanded a larger audience than any other art critic in history."
READ MORE

The Leisure Class and the Arts
August 17, 2012
Every now and then I make observations that I do not know fully how to process. One of these is in relation to our notions of wealth and poverty, and especially wealth and the arts.

It occurred to me as I was reading the diaries of Andre Gide that his "situation" was far different than mine. The Nobel Prize winning French author produced 80 books, many of which were self-published small circulation pieces that were shared with friends. Some diary entries mentioned playing piano for six hours during the day. When he traveled to Tunisia he had fourteen large trunks of belongings. In short, he was not like me. He was from a different class of people.
READ MORE

* * * *
I discovered another place where there is art on display. Check out the Protein Pub in the Board of Trade Building across the street from the Y on First Street.

THIS WEEK 
Mark your calendar for the Downtown Duluth Arts Walk (Friday) the a new show at the Barn in Wrenshall called Free Range Trials. FYI Eris Vafias is the August artist of the month at Beaners. Check out my own paintings at Goin' Postal in Superior and Art on the Planet. Both these Tower Avenue venues deserve more traffic from the Duluth side of the bay. To quote Karin Kraemer, whose Duluth Pottery space in Lincoln Park looks fab, "It's just a bridge. Get over it."

Meantime, art goes on all around you.  Engage it.

American Visions and Other Events Worth Noting

You'd think Northlanders would hibernate for the winter. The weather can be so very unreliable, interfering with the best laid plans. For some reason we keep our calendars full anyways, knowing that at any time we may have to make an adjustment. But we don't let it slow us down. 

Here are some ideas you might want to pencil in for the weekend of February 8 and 9 which is just around the corner. Then I will talk about the American Voice film series that kicks off this Saturday morning at the Zinema 2.

On the 8th, there will be at least four art openings. Nora Fie's inspired Love Your Local Artist III will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Superior Public Library, with 31 artists showing their work this year. That's impressive.

At 6 p.m. the Washington Galleries will be opening its doors for Bound to the Light II, an exhibit featuring new work by photographer Ryan Tischer whose nature images are always spectacular. Also on Friday evening will be a show at Ochre Ghost and the Bitters show at PROVE and I hear rumblings that Art in the Alley down on Superior Street may be joining these three downtown galleries for these second-Friday celebrations.All I'm doing here is noting the fuzzy details for the moment so you can stamp it on your calendar.

We're not done yet. Make sure you get your Saturday established, too. Up at UMD the Proctor DECA team and Duluth Rotary 25 are pushing to set a new Guinness Book-worthy record for number of snow angels at one time. The target is 9,000 and Duluth/Superior, we need your help.  The event is being called Angels with a Cause and the gates will open at 9:30 with snow angel action to happen at 11:00 a.m. sharp. I do hope we'll see you there.

Saturday evening, if you're not yet exhausted,  Love at the Snoodle VII will be a-happening, with special guests including our local fire dancers. The theme of this year's show is Touch Me, in which artists have created art that you can touch. The Snoodle is at 7101 Grand Avenue out by the zoo. There will be an after-party at Beaners.

American Visions
One of the most exciting art events last year in the Twin Ports, of which there were oodles, was the ten part film series Shock of the New which was shared at the Zinema 2 theater by Annie Dugan and the Duluth Art Institute. Not only did we get an exciting overview of modern art, each segment was followed by lively dialogue led by various leaders from UMD, St. Scholastica and the local arts community. These dialogues were sometimes as stimulating as Hughes was dramatic.

Beginning this Saturday morning Duluth Art Institute has once again paved the way for the public to get a better appreciation for what has been happening in the art world with yet another Robert Hughes film series. Hughes called his American Visions series a "love letter to America" as he shows us the manner in which artists have responded to the natural wonders that surround us here, covering everything from early Spanish architecture to 1990's flabberghastation.

If the series is even half as good as last year's Shock of the New, it will be an enriching experience not to be missed. Anyone with half an inclination to learn more about the place of art in America will do well to join us over the next ten weeks, 11:00 a.m. Saturday mornings in the Twin Ports #1 theater for cool
.
See you there!

Culture or Trash?

I just finished reading James Gardner's 220-pge skewering of the postmodern art scene, Culture or Trash? The subtitle reads, "A Provocative View of Contemporary Painting, Sculpture and Other Costly Commodities." Written by a former art critic for the National Review, the book is well researched and and well written, thus making it an easy read with plenty of anecdotes to hold one's interest for the duration. Any artist who has been involved in the arts since Warhol's Brillo boxes hit the scene will recognize many of the names and be familiar with some of the stories.

The first chapter explores how painters and sculptors went from being blue collar chaps to becoming superstars and celebrities. Historically, in the Renaissance era, being a painter was comparable to being a ditch digger. Da Vinci attempted to give importance to painting because it was generally ill thought of and vulgar compared to poetry and music. The only thing worse than painting, in the arts, was to be a sculptor. Da Vinci admired sculptures but dissed those who did them as being "mere stonecutters." So Gardner, former art critic for the National Review, strives to address this turn of events that has resulted in artists being so revered today.

I was surprised at how few reviews there were of this 1993 diatribe on Amazon.com. Two, actually. Here is a section from the first:

James Gardner's "Culture or Trash?" is a well-written, intelligent, and well-placed criticism of the twisted, ill-conceived, and philosophically indefensible practices of the Western "art world." Just as relevant today as when it was published six years ago, any dyed-in-the-wool bohemian who can muster the guts to read this one all the way through will doubtlessly suffer much cognitive dissonance, as page by page, cherished art world illusions are stripped bare.

That's pretty strong stuff. It certainly captures the tone of the book. The second reviewer helps with particulars.

Postmodernism: In contrast, it is critically important to a Postmodernist that he be so identified. He defines himself by what he is not. First and foremost, he is not a Modernist. He is in fact an Anti-modernist. As long as a work of art rejects Modernism, it is Postmodernism. A sculpture of plastic vomit: They weren't doing that 15 years ago, so it's Postmodernism. Three basketballs floating in a water filled aquarium: They weren't doing that 15 years ago, either, so it also qualifies.

Although Postmodernism is at the core of his discussion, he includes discussions of most of the other 20th century schools such as Minimalism, Contemporary Art, etc.

What is revealing, according to Gardner, is that there are so many artists producing this stuff, so many agents representing them, so many galleries and museums showing this "art," and, most surprisingly of all, so many people willing to shell out very large sums of money to own and display it.

As part of his answer to the question that is contained in the title, Gardner states: "Postmodernism is . . . . the reduction to absurdity of this artistic rebelliousness . . . . rebelliousness pursued for its own sake." 

My personal problem with Gardner's book is that he's chosen throughout to make blanket statements that discredit his own authority. On page 18 he writes, "Who are the artists about whom it is now possible to be energetically enthusiastic? The art that is revolutionary is not very good, and the art that is good is certainly not great." Over and over he reminds us that we live in something akin to the dark ages as far as art goes. He declares that we've witnessed "a depletion" of "civilization's powers of creativity."

I would counter that just because one reads art magazines praising some rather strange and esoteric installations that this is the only kind of art being created in the world, or that it's all done tongue-in-cheek with no serious purpose other than to be different. He laments that there is no talent, and I would suggest he get out a little more and see that the world is awash with talent.

Gardner asks why art seems less impressive today than when Da Vinci was painting. I'd suggest that there are many ways to answer this, first noting that there really are some fine painters doing Renaissance-style realism. Keep in mind that there were no cameras back then so draftsmen and painter were very important to kings, queens and others seeking to leave something of themselves for posterity. Cameras today have replaced that function. But it's more than that.

Nevertheless, the author does raise a lot of good questions, many of these the same that artists themselves have asked. Chapter 2 shines a spotlight on the art world, primarily from 1960-1993 when the book was published. On page 42 he brings us stats on the auction houses. In 1959, the ten most expensive paintings sold that year went from £275,000 to £48,000. In 1987-90, the top ten paintings went for $82 million down to a paltry $26.4 million. The latter were primarily 20th century painters, the former set included only one. Today's art auction sales figures are as shocking as Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon when it first appeared.

The second chapter of the book explores the role of post-modern philosophers and their influence on the arts. The anecdotes are many, and like other stories throughout the book, it reads like a typical junk mail appeal that condenses all the bad in the world into one concise ten page letter designed to have us send money to fight the ACLU or the Religious Right or whatever the cause of the day is.

The stories are well-sketched, and examples abound of art that seems altogether strange to the common sense lives most folks live. I remember reading reviews of Chris Burden shows in ArtForum while in college. In one event he had himself nailed to a Volkswagen, crucifiction-style. In another he did a performance called Shoot where his compatriot fired a rifle at him, shooting him in the arm. These kinds of events have been legion the past half century. Gardner takes aim at the critics who praise it all as if anything different of new were wonderful.

People like Jeff Koons were an easy target, as well as others whom Gardner cites who are already forgotten. Koons famously sold some cheap vacuum cleaners for a small fortune as art and floated basketballs in tanks of water for art's sake, not sport. "To my knowledge," Gardner writes, "he has never made a work of art that was formally or even spiritually ambitious." For some reason, Koons is a strange animal in the freak show section of the art scene, an anomaly of sorts.

I did learn a few things from this book, however. That Ayn Rand did not believe photography could be called art. That Frank Stella did not paint all his paintings, but had assistants do the laborious work of painting his designs. That the German artist Rudoplh Schwartzkogler, who made a film of himself cutting off his penis one inch at a time (as art), did not actually do this, for it was a hoax. (I read it in an art mag in college.) His name, like others cited in this book, has been pretty much forgotten.

 A review of this book by the Kirkus Review was also on Amazon.com where it was compared to shallow kvetching. "For serious, balanced, and truly provocative studies of contemporary art, see (Robert) Hughes's Nothing if Not Critical (1990), or Arthur Danto's Encounters and Reflections (1990) and Beyond the Brillo Box (1992).

Meantime, life goes on.... Let's keep wrestling with the meaning of it all and see where it leads.

Was Robert Hughes Right About Basquiat?

Yesterday it was announced that former Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes passed away at 74. His perch at Time and a television series that sought to explain the development and history of modern art all served to make him better known than most art critics. L.A. Times writer Mike Boehm called him "a sometimes lacerating reviewer who may have commanded a larger audience than any other art critic in history."

Boehm's obituary tribute is packed with insight and a fitting summary of his life.

The critic rose to star status by introducing television audiences to the development of 20th century modernism in "The Shock of the New: A Personal View," an eight-hour series that ran in Britain in 1980 and the United States in 1981. Hughes became known for blasting new art-world luminaries such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, and Jeff Koons, artists he felt exemplified the triumph of the marketplace and celebrity over the modernist creative standards he cherished.

His primary complaint: popularity shouldn’t be equated with quality. Boehm's piece goes on to say...

After Basquiat, who helped spearhead the entrance of graffiti-influenced painting into the museum world, died in 1988 of a heroin overdose, Hughes' critique ran in the New Republic under the headline, "Requiem for a Featherweight." Basquiat, he wrote, was "a small, untrained talent caught in the buzz saw of artworld promotion, absurdly overrated by dealers, collectors, and no doubt to their future embarrassment, by critics."

Of this I will say more in a minute.

Hughes’ series, when I watched it this spring, stimulated a whole range of thoughts that coupled with other inputs including this one from Ken Burns’ Jazz when telling Artie Shaw's story.

The basic truth, Artie Shaw concluded, is that popular music has little or nothing to do with musical values at all. “I still wanted to play music and the audience was saying, ‘Play what you’re playing. Over and over. We like that.’ They never could understand that what they liked was something I did on my way to getting better. That record that they liked… became a millstone, became an albatross around my neck.”

So one question I have is this: was Jean-Michel Basquiat doing graffiti art on the way to getting better at developing and expressing a vision? Or was it a means to another end: more cash for stash? As Basquiat biographer Phoebe Hoban demonstrates, Basquiat was exploited, and others became millionaires from that exploitation.

Hoban begins one of her chapters with a pointed Robert Hughes remark. “What strip mining is to nature, the art market has become to culture.” Quantity is what made people rich, and fast. When Picasso died in 1973 a journalist declared that Picasso had produced 4,000 masterpieces in his lifetime. Warhol retorted, “I can produce 4,000 masterpieces in a day.” Indeed, the formula was a good one for both Warhol and Basquiat, the veteran cynic and the fresh face from the streets.

The art world isn’t the only scene that got bent in the Eighties by the influx of capital. Sports had become equally corrupted. In his last book before passing Howard Cosell stated that sports gambling was a 250 billion dollar a year business. Losers get exploited to line the pockets of bookies and gaming houses.

Even collegiate sports has been stained by it. College football is big business and the schools know it. A primary reason the Penn State scandal failed to come to light sooner than it did was because so much was at stake. Penn State's reputation had to be preserved in order for the golden milk to keep flowing.

It has frequently been noted that art can often be a mirror of the times. H.R. Rookmaaker takes this premise as a given in his Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. For Hughes, the whole art scene itself served as a mirror of something bigger than itself, and his magnification lens explored every detail of it.

On the other hand, what if Hughes was wrong about Basquiat? I find his paintings fascinating, liberated, original. How important is the training Hughes references in his critique? Can training override instinct and ruin originality by firming up the lines that we’re not permitted the color outside of?

I really don’t have answers, just more questions, some of which might never have occurred to me had it not been for Robert Hughes.

It's Interesting, But Is It Art?

Ken Burns' documentary Jazz has so much to say about so many things that a once through experience of watching is not enough. Race relations and the American experience are but one of the threads that weaves through this story about music and musicians. Another thread is how the reclusive edge of the avant-garde jazz scene bled into the broader culture in so many various ways.

Yesterday was the last episode in the Robert Hughes documentary "Shock of the New" which the Duluth Art Institute so graciously shared at the Zinema 2 downtown. While watching this film series, which explores how modern and post-modern art came to be, I couldn't help but see parallels with the music scene. Many of the problems were similar. What is important? What is good? Who determines value? If the public likes it and it's popular, can it really be great? (This was Updike's complaint with Stephen King.)

When the narrator in Jazz put this out there I had to set it down in writing because of all that it conveyed. The basic truth, Artie Shaw concluded, is that popular music has little or nothing to do with musical values at all. “I still wanted to play music and the audience was saying, ‘Play what you’re playing. Over and over. We like that.’ They never could understand that what they liked was something I did on my way to getting better. That record that they liked… became a millstone, became an albatross around my neck.”

So yesterday, we watched the final installment of our series, which was really more like an addendum. The original series appeared circa 1980. This last piece was produced post-9/11 in 2005. Hughes' aim, he stated, was to discuss "what was good, what was bad and why it is important to know the difference." Just because something is novel and new doesn't mean it is vital or important or good.

To make his point he has us join him as he visited with Jeff Koons, whom he said was probably the most successful living American artist. Koons used to be a commodities broker before leaping headlong into the art scene. Koons is an American artist who built a reputation around reproducing banality it seems. It's hard to take him seriously, but he's audacious enough to suggest with a straight face that he is simply a modern equivalent of Michaelangelo. Certainly he's learned a thing or two from Warhol about how to capitalize on his chosen path.

It just so happened that a couple days ago someone shared with me a link to Morley Safer's 60 Minutes segment on Contemporary Art. And look who's in the limelight... It's Koons. His fifteen minutes evidently didn't end here. (Be honest, does this excite you or turn your stomach?)

In late March, in the midst of Hughes' film series there was a guest lecturer at UMD who presented his take on developments these past 150 years in the art scene. Greg Volk, an art critic and curator himself, gave a lively and thought-provoking overview from a bit more esoteric perspective. Volk's fascinations end in a space that was different from Hughes' final pronouncements and ruminations.

Volk's heroes are artists like Katharina Grosse, Ayse Erkman and Roman Signer. Each was following a path into uncharted personal territories without boundaries. But I couldn't help simultaneously hearing in my head Morley Safer's take: "Who are these people trying to buffalo?"

Hughes comes full circle back to draftsmanship and painterliness. His heroes in the end are very different: Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Paula Rego. "Painting is about stories," Hughes stated. He dislikes the fast art of modern times as much his distaste for fast food. And he finds sensationalism appalling.

What I liked about the way our series was presented was that each week ended with a little discussion period which sometimes had almost as many insights as the films themselves. A couple weeks back one of the points made afterward was that all these various movements from Cubism and Dada to Pop, Minimalism and Conceptual art were helpful for artists today in that they were now free to pursue their inner vision in any direction they wanted. As Duchamp once pointed out, however, only posterity will decide what was important. Right now, we're standing too close to the oyster.

What's your take?