Picturing Politics: Artists Speak to Power

Picturing Politics: Artists Speak to Power, which I organized for the Arlington Art Center, is open! If you are in town, don’t miss the reception this Friday, September 5, 2008 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM, which should be a great party. I hope you’ll also have a chance to visit during a quieter time because all this outstanding work requires and rewards sustained attention. (The exhibition closes September 27.) If you’re out of town and/or can’t get there, the catalog is available from AAC [contact info is below].

The artists/collaborations are: Renee Stout, Mary Coble, Judy Byron, Randall Packer & John Anderson, Jefferson Pinder & Matt Ravenstahl, José Ruiz, Rick Rinehard, Alberto Gaitán & Victoria F. Gaitán, Lisa Blas, Wendy Babcox & Meg Mitchell, Helga Thomson, The Pinky Show, Benjamin Edwards, and photographs by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from the Independence Fund and the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum.

This show is an ambitious and courageous undertaking for the AAC, which deserves your support! (Images, clockwise from top left, by José Ruiz, Helga Thomson, Steve Danyluk, and The Pinky Show. )

Arlington Arts Center

3550 Wilson Boulevard,

Arlington, Virginia 22201

(703) 248-6800
http://www.arlingtonartscenter.org/exhibitions.htm

Romantics and Conceptualists

I am preparing an advanced art theory class over the summer called Contemporary Art Theory: Markets and Collecting for the University of Maryland in fall. It's taking me back to all that critical theory culture industry biz: I'm reading parts of Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment this week -- especially the chapter on Enlightenment as Mass Deception. For me, it 's tough going. Also threw me back to Heidegger, sad to say. But I found some help: Timothy Clark's Martin Heidegger, which is a very readable, comprehensive look at the philosopher's poetics. Heidegger is essentially romanticism on steroids in my view. Part and parcel of that romanticism is a bitter critique of instrumental reasoning that furnishes a basis for the dark views of institutionalized, commercialized culture later offered by Debord, Baudrillard, Foucault and Jamison -- all of whom, in one way or another, seem to provide aid and comfort to Conceptualism as a subversion of the mainstream uses and abuses of art.

I don't teach Heidegger in my regular Theories of Art class. It's not just because he's difficult and essentially wrong. Almost all art theory is difficult and wrong. I'm more concerned that reading Heidegger is just too laborious -- slogging through all the neologisms, and jargon to come up with insights that are more simply and emphatically stated elsewhere ... earlier in Nietzsche and later on, in Marcuse's The Aesthetic Dimension, which I like.

Anyway, the relationship of romanticism to conceptual art appears more complex in this context. They appear at odds on the surface, but they have a common gene -- the goal of truth bearing via estrangement or 'defamiliarizing' the familiar in order to counter a petrified, oppressive social reality. I put it this way:

With the Romantic era came the notion that artists have some special capacity to speak the truth; it wasn't until the age of Conceptualism that they bothered to do any research.

(at right, image from A Breed Apart, Hans Haacke, 1978; one of seven panels first exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, near one of British Leyland's factories. British Leyland declared bankruptcy in 2005; its brands are now owned by Chinese and Indian companies. A Breed Apart documents the company's complicity in South African Apartheid.)

The Artist's Journey into the Interior by Erich Heller (a proponent of German Romanticism and a teacher of mine at Northwestern, where he taught for many years); the cover is the often reproduced Casper David Friedrich painting, The Wanderer Above the Mists (1817-18). My favorite book of Heller's is The Poet's Self and the Poem: Essays on Goethe, Nietzsche, Rilke and Thomas Mann.

Victims of Communism/Victims of Memorials

Family came to visit this weekend and naturally they wanted to see the Victims of Communism Memorial (VCM). Well, no, they didn’t really. It’s just that I’ve taken them to all the other memorials and they hadn’t seen this one yet. In fact, they had never heard of it. (It's located at Mass. Ave. and First St., NW). It was dedicated on June 12, 2007 by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an organization established pursuant to HR 3000, sponsored by Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Senator Claiborne Pell, and Senator Jesse Helms (and signed by then President Clinton) "to construct, maintain, and operate in the District of Columbia an appropriate international memorial to honor victims of communism..." On behalf of DC, thanks.

To be fair, the VCM is far from the worst looking public sculpture in Washington DC. It’s not even the worst looking memorial. The competition in both categories is fierce and, perhaps, the subject for further discussion and disputation. (Have you ever really looked at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial at Judiciary Square?)

In case you did not gather from the image above, the VCM is a petite, intentionally crude version of the Statue of Liberty (SOL). It’s intentionally crude because, in true Society of the Spectacle (SOS) fashion, it is an imitation of a picture of a simulacrum of a representation. In short, the VCM reprises photographs of the 1989 Tiananmen Square copy of the SOL. This is beginning to sound all Iwo Jima in it’s complex relationships of copies to copies.

Oddly, onsite there is no discernible reference to the sculptor. A little research discloses its author to be Thomas Marsh of Orange, Va. According to his website, Marsh has done portrait sculpture of Betty White and Dick Van Dyke for Disney World, lots of religious statues and so on, all of which appear to be perfectly serviceable.

So much for the art and artist and on to the utterly loathsome, hypocritical, swollen bad consciousness of the whole despicable project. The VCM foundation claims that it’s a tribute to “the 100 million people who have been killed by communist totalitarian regimes worldwide,” which they pointedly describe as a 'holocaust.' On the sculpture’s base is inscribed, “To the more than one hundred million victims of communism…” (emphasis added). Well, that’s both more and less – bigger number, but 'victim' could mean anything, really – not necessarily dead. Not much here in the way of confidence inspiring precision, let alone documentation. To paraphrase Reagan, a million here, a million there, pretty soon you’re talking about real numbers. Why do I think these are the same people who would quibble over figures on Iraqi victims of the illegal US occupation down to the ones column?

The difficulties with the VCM are too immense and too complex to address in one posting. Can I just say that for Washington, where creepy politicians, capitalists and bureaucrats spent half a century supporting vicious fascist regimes, sponsoring death squads, encouraging, paying for, and directly ordering countless murders of democratically inclined left wing activists, labor leaders, and human rights workers all over the globe, this should be an unbearable stain. Except, it’s so small, so over the top in it’s misguided intentions that it’s really just kind of pathetic and ridiculous. I suggest a visit soon. Maybe 10:30 AM on June 12 for the anniversary celebration. There a lunch at Georgetown Law School afterward.

Judy Byron & Art Matters

Last Wednesday (November 28), Judy Byron organized and hosted a panel discussion called WHAT MATTERS: ART MATTERS -- An evening of conversation about making and presenting visual art in the District of Columbia. The panel was in connection with her current exhibition WHAT MATTERS, an ambitious installation of drawing, sculpture and sound recordings of women (who are also the models for the images in the show) conversing about life and priorities. You can participate by describing what matters to you. The exhibition is on view by appointment [judy@judybyron.com] until January 27; there are also more events coming up. (installation detail pictured; photo by Rick Rinehard)

At the panel, DCCAH Executive Director Tony Gittens described Commission programs and initiatives; Tim Davis, artist, teacher, and director of International Visions, Jayme McLellan, director Civilian Art Projects and I talked about our experiences in the world of Washington art. Mayor Fenty talked about art and community building and was able to stay for a summary of panelists major points. Photo by Rick Rinehard (from left, Mayor Fenty, Rex Weil, Tim Davis, DCCAH Director Tony Gittens, Jayme McLellan)

I first met Judy at a meeting she organized to establish a DC chapter of Artists Call Against Intervention in Central American, a group that sent art supplies to artists in El Salvador and Nicaragua and opposed illegal US support for death squads and the Contras during the Reagan years. The group was later memorialized by conservative critic Hilton Kramer in an overheated essay bemoaning the intervention of politics in art. He called it "an undisguised propaganda effort in support of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement in Central America." Well, as John Berger [more calmly] once commented, artists do not necessarily welcome "the intrusion of politics into art." On the contrary, it is adverse political conditions that force artists to engage the issues.

Cuba & Culture

Sign the petition for cultural exchange

with Cuba (and freedom to travel

for US citizens).

NBC Universal to Sell Young Women

"We want to create a virtual women's network where we go to market selling young women and affluent women in a way that virtually no one else can," NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker said yesterday in a conference call with reporters and analysts. (Washington Post, Business page 1, 10/9/07).

It would be tedious to enumerate all of the many things wrong with Zucker's statement. (Where are The Yes Men when you need them?)

Instead, I suggest a visit to WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. It's massive and it's required viewing. It also constitutes an interesting contrast to the Morris Louis show at the Hirshhorn. If you were trying to explain to someone the shift from modernism to postmodernism, now would be a good time. WACK! demonstrates that new forms of artistic practice come about by necessity. You can find here early examples of nearly all now familiar conceptual art strategies. Save time for the many, many films and videos. The show can easily consume a whole afternoon. Also, Linda Nochlin will speak at the Katzen Center on Friday, November 30 at 2:00 PM. I heard her speak in New York last winter; she was brilliant, witty and on the mark. (The image on the catalog cover is a detail from a Martha Rosler collage.)

Yuriko Yamaguchi at the University of Maryland

Yuriko Yamaguchi's exhibition at the Art Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park opens this Wednesday evening, September 26. I worked on the show as curator and writer, so I can't tell you how terrific the work looks without sounding prejudiced. It's a big show with new work -- only one piece has been exhibited in Washington before (and even that one in a different configuration). The Art Gallery's spacious quarters are a perfect venue. The reception is from 5 PM to 7 PM. Parking should be fine; there's also Metro Green line to campus. Photo by Chan Chao. For more information: http://www.artgallery.umd.edu/exhibit/07-08/yamaguchi/index.html

Work Ethics in Cincinnati

(Cincinnati, August 28, 2007 ) Procter & Gamble Co, headquartered in Cincinnati, announced that its chief executive received $27.7 million in compensation in the latest fiscal year....

(Cincinnati, August 29, 2007) Cincinnati's 2006 poverty rate was 27.8 percent. That's third-highest among major cities behind Detroit and Buffalo - according to a new estimate released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau....[For a family of four with two children the 2006 poverty level was $20,444.]

Can you help work this into my sentence on art theory? In any event, if you're playing the numbers, 27 looks hot.

One good sentence on art theory?

Now, gone again [to Ann Arbor] and back again. Preparing for my first art theory class of the semester. Trying to condense into one sentence the reasons for the explosion in art theory, critical theory, visual studies, visual culture, etc., etc. Why have these courses? Why is this important at all? Why does this discipline [essentially super-charged art criticism] always bleed well beyond the confines of art history and art practice? Here's a candidate for the sentence. It's awkward and portentous, I know. So help me out.

As the advocates of real power [centralized, integrated economic and military authority] * become more adept, more agile at the nearly instantaneous appropriation and assimilation of art's techniques, art criticism and theory become indispensable for analyzing and challenging power.

I'd also like the sentence to incorporate the sense of John Berger's idea that [paraphrasing] only ill-informed people think artists/critics welcome the intrusion of politics into art. Politics intrudes, period; it's already there and it's always been there. Also, the sentence should convey to students the ideas that (1) art refers to a vast array of practices; (2) since the cradle, they have been tickled, taught, comforted, persuaded, lied to, assaulted, smothered with art; (3) and

someone, please stop me before...

*Should I just use Ike's 'military/industrial complex?' Sounds too tendentious, right? And, who are the advocates? Corporate media, major political parties, advertising firms, lobbyists, public relations firms, [art museums?], etc. -- just follow the money.

Back from Cincinnati and Wisconsin

Thanks for asking. I was gone, but I brought you something. In Cincinnati, I attended the shoot for Bootsy Collins' new video. You know Bootsy, right? He's from Cincinnati, where he got his start at age 15 playing bass for James Brown (who recorded at the Queen City's famous King Records). Now Bootsy's settled there and has his own recording studio. My brother's a musician and teacher in Cincinnati and recently worked on a project with him. So, when Bootsy needed some young musicians for his Bengals music video, "Who Dey," he called Bruce. (The Bootzilla devoted Bengals fan.) I took some pictures. The setting is a tacky river boat nightclub on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. Those are real stadium characters around the margins. (If you click on the pix they should get bigger.)






ps: some more Bootsy sites:
http://www.funky-stuff.com/bootsy/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlHzHLGL60c&mode=related&search=
(this is a highly recommended campy funk Godzilla inflected weirdness)

Art and Inconvenient Truths

As it happens, I finished Kurt Vonnegut's novel Hocus Pocus (1990) and watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth on the same day, yesterday. The connection: both are tendentious, both are concerned with environment degradation. One is good art, the other is decidedly not and doesn't pretend to be. One is naïve and bitter, the other is slick and evangelistic. At the same time, one convincingly makes the difficult connections between damage to the environment and religious beliefs, capitalism, greed, racism, class pretensions, and Yale. The other, with the approximate scientific depth of your average commercial for a headache remedy, pulls heartstrings and concludes with a web link. Two notes on that: (1) Yes, I admit, Al Gore brought me to tears several times; KV manifestly did not –even though there's a hell of a lot more to weep about in Hocus Pocus; (2) If Vonnegut had written another novel, I think he would have ended it with "go to http://www.tralfamadore.net/" [don't click on that]. And, don't get me wrong – of course we all want to fix global warming [and save…what? In memory of KV, let's be clear – it's not necessarily the planet we're trying to rescue, but our own miserable species]. Could it be that, ironically, the right wing is correct about the ill effects of profound reform on life-as-we-know-it: the whole deal, the ship of state, the health of the economy, etc., is, in fact, hopelessly tethered to waste, militarism and the heedless exploitation of labor and resources? And so it goes... R.I.P. KV 1922-2007 (photo by Jill Krementz/cover design by Paul Bacon)
from H/P:
It was speech by God to Adam and Eve supposedly…"Fill the Earth and Subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the Earth."
_______________________
Cough.
_______________________
So the people on Earth thought they had instructions from the Creator of the Universe Himself to wreck the joint.

Artists and Authority

Is it true that artists are constitutionally hostile to authority? I just came across A Fine Madness (1966; 104 minutes) quite by accident, which makes the case. A young Sean Connery is poet Samson Shillito, who just can't abide employment, police, lawyers, responsibility, sobriety, ex-wives, psychiatrists, etc. He has a soft spot for Joanne Woodward though -- she's a waitress, who is Samson's meal ticket, manager and loyal protector. Unfortunately, but with the best of intentions, she hooks him up with a shrink specializing in creative types. Things seem to be working OK 'til Samson seduces the shrink's wife, played by Jean Seberg. (What a wrenching, tragic irony that Seberg in real life was pilloried and driven to despair by FBI dirty tricks in retaliation for her anti-authoritarian political views; she died by probable suicide in 1979). Anyway, when the Doc finds out, a lobotomy is scheduled. Oh yeah -- this is a comedy. I won't ruin the ending for you.

p.s. You can see an actual copy of an FBI planning memo that describes one particularly loathsome plot to defame and embarrass Seberg at this link (click on politics). The memo says: "Seberg has been a financial supporter of the BPP (Black Panther Party) and should be neutralized." Note that the memo comes from the FBI's 'Racial Intelligence Unit.'

More Intelligence: some list servs and feeds

Americans for the Arts has the really intelligent Cultural Policy Listserv. It's a once-a-week free e-mail briefing on a variety of issues, including government support for the arts, copyright, censorship, community arts, education and lots more, with links to pertinent sources and background. Sign up here. I'm guessing you already subscribe to artsjournal; if not, I highly recommend it for a vast amount of news, commentary and a family of the best arts blogs. One more? You can subscribe to the Village Voice arts coverage (or other sections) here.

Best of Intentions

Not surprisingly, given the name Central Intelligence Art, we have apparently attracted the attention of whatever spy agency tracks art theory. Onkafatso, code name of the agent assigned to us, though, in some weird inversion of the Stockholm syndrome, can't lay off commenting on my posts. And, he/she is certainly quite articulate (art theory literate spies are probably as difficult to find as those that understand Farsi, so we should be flattered). Now, Onkafatso is unhappy with my disparagement of artists' intentions – in one of my Serra posts I suggested that artists' intentions are not controlling in our analysis of the impact, experience, or social function of their work. (It's the last of 4 comments on that post.) Onkafatso thinks that if artists' intentions are not respected, it leaves the door open for art critics to make up all kinds of shit and, ultimately, to control the universe. But, I'm right. Artists' intentions are interesting, of course – and should be consulted. Nonetheless, if artists' intentions were determinative, African fetishes would cure river blindness, Byzantine icons would be portholes to the godhead, Frank Stella would be the incarnation of Caravaggio, and all artists would be great ones. Anyway, it's reassuring to know that deep in some airless, dark bunker, probably in the neighborhood of the Naval Observatory where you-know-who lives, someone is always listening and thinking. Thanks and keep those comments coming.

Ken Ashton at Civilian Art Projects

I visited photographer Ken Ashton's admirable show at Civilian Art Projects (CAP) late last week. It's a selection of images from his ongoing 'Megalopolis' series that memorializes the vast array of quotidian urban spaces we normally take for granted: backyards, alleys, warehouse districts and low-rise storefronts. He captures intense natural light (seemingly often daybreak or deep afternoon shadows), but the dramatic illumination is not so much for beauty or sentiment. Rather, it particularizes Ashton's subjects -- makes them fresh and real. We see our cities with the stone cold lucidity of a hangover. (You might not know that Ashton's work is included in two recent books: Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art, Selections from the of Julia J. Norrell Collection and Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 To The Present by Deborah Willis.) Lily Cox-Richard's looming, impressive 'At Stake and Rider', also on view at CAP, shifts attention from the urban present to the rural and the past. Fragments of classical architecture support an apparently calcified split rail fence that juts through the back gallery. Both artists will be at the gallery on Saturday, July 21st at 3 PM for a discussion and reception.

While I was at the gallery, I had an interesting talk with CAP's director Jayme McLellan about politics and art in Washington. More on that later. It is, however, noteworthy that CAP has already done some interesting programming on Darfur and on government surveillance. Both events were well attended, but there was very light representation from DC's art community. Strange… It reminds me of a piece I wrote a long time ago about politics and Washington art for the Corcoran's 1985 The Washington Show. No link for that - it was pre-web, but nothing's changed. Anybody remember The Washington Show?

Hirst Skulls, 'Nam Skulls & the Whitney's Summer of Love

On the subject of Damien Hirst's diamond encrusted cranium, here's an article in the Washington Post about GI's psychedelic painting and graffiti on VC skulls brought home from Vietnam. The photo by the Post's Gerald Martineau is available online, but not with the story. For now, the skulls are stored at Walter Reed's National Museum of Health and Medicine. (I told you to go to there, remember? But, sorry, the skulls are not on view.) Instead, a last minute loan has just been announced to the Whitney Museum for its Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era. That's false, of course, but you heard it here first, anyway. For that matter, Summer of Love, up until September 16, is required viewing. Check the film schedule before you go and plan to spend a couple of hours. (I especially recommend the documentaries: Peter Whitehead, Tonite Let's All Make Love in London, 1967, 70 min.; Paul Sharits, Piece Mandala/End War, 1966, 5 min.; Howard Lester, One Week in Vietnam, 1970, 3 min.; Third World Newsreel, America, 1969, 31:30 min.)

Re: macabre souvenirs, it's old news that Rumsfeld secured a piece of the plane that flew into the Pentagon. I prefer Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym's Buildings of Disaster (see, Design Intel sidebar). At any rate, souvenirs are, generally speaking, better than memorials. They take up a lot less space and accomplish more or less the same thing. The mall is getting crowded.

Serra, Serra: last call

Insightful commentary by Gainesville subterranean bodhisattva JCS claims Serra's recent work constitutes a monumental gesture of resistance to authority. It's an attractive, if romantic, idea and it's certainly consistent with Serra's intention. Nonetheless, I have my doubts. The flaw is that you need the Serra back story to make that argument: tough guy, against the odds, hostile public, etc., etc. (I'm sympathetic - my self-image was forged by TV and movie cowboys, too.) But artists don't get to decide how their work functions in society. The work functions on its own. An important part of the critical enterprise is to figure out the actual, on the ground, impact of specific works of art. In my view, Serra's scale virtually guarantees its future as just another (loud) phrase in the vocabulary of wealth and power. Another way of asking these questions is an old one (Benjamin's): what is, really, the political tendency of this work? Or Marcuse's: How does this work help to demystify institutions and relationships in society and , thereby, 'break the power of established reality (and those who established it) to define what is real'? Can 'Serra' (the brand) escape becoming an emblem of capital? As to net social impact, it would be interesting to compare Serra and Gordon Matta-Clark (the recent Whitney retrospective was fascinating) and, for good measure, add in Damien Hirst's new $100,000,000 skull.

Note: to follow up on an earlier post where I wondered why Wal-Mart had not seized the opportunity to sponsor the Serra MOMA retrospective – the actual sponsor is conglomerate LVMH / Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Serra, Sculpture, Serpents, Cincinnati

If you had been born and raised in Cincinnati like me, you would have been haled along to the ancient serpent mound near Peebles early and often by enthusiastic elementary school instructors, camp counselors, Sunday school teachers, troop leaders, parents and relatives. Made for an extremely dull day. Can't really see shit from the ground. Even aerial photos are pretty boring -- the most prominent feature is the contemporary visitors' walkway. Nonetheless, the adults always seemed to enjoy it and that kept them off our backs for awhile. And, the little maps are cool.

I remembered them yesterday as I was looking again at the Serra Guggenheim Bilbao photograph. All of which lends support to the idea about autocratic power and death.

For information call 1 800 BUCKEYE.

Speaking of Richard Serra...

In the language of art, work of this scale signifies two things (1) the aggrandizement of autocratic power and (2) death. These are the pyramids of the twentieth century. Perhaps each should contain a burial vault or, better yet, cryogenic chambers. (But, seriously, we don't care about earthly remains so much anymore. The secular version of the afterlife is "being remembered." And that's what museums are for.) Tell me I'm wrong because I love this work and it's important to me. Alert: The MOMA show runs only 'til September 10th. Given lazy summer attitudes, vacations, etc., that's going to slip by quick, fast, in a hurry. You can see a video walk through, along with Serra interviews here. Also - check out MOMA's video of Torqued Ellipse IV (1998) and Intersection II (1992) being installed in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (!) Sculpture Garden.

ps: did you know that Tony Serra is Richard's brother?

intelligent hoodlum

Hard to believe I bought this album 17 years ago. It still sounds terrific and the President still has the same last name. Just re-released this spring with Tragedy's other record in a 2-CD package. A Marly Marl production.