Dumbing down?

I have been to a couple of different artist talks over the past week, one by Mia Feuer at Transformer (this show closes Saturday) and one by a panel of Christian Benefiel, Michael Enn Sirvet, and Katherine Mann at Hamiltonian (show is up for another couple of weeks). All of these artists work in abstract forms that seem to directly reference natural or man-made objects, although they transform these forms via scale, placement, and strange juxtapositions into things almost unrecognizable.

Both Feuer and Mann talked about cultivating chaos in their practices, Mann by pouring random pools of ink, Feuer by trying to overextend her own physical capabilities with the scale and complexity of her work. They talked about their desire to create these chance-directed situations that they then have to clean up and respond to in order to create their work.

However, both artists shyed away from the word “intuition” when describing their processes, and neither seemed to want to give their subconscious underworkings much credit. Instead, they talked about their efforts to regain control over the chaos in very pedestrian, physically oriented, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other terms. I have caught myself in this same kind of downplaying of my mental processes when talking about my work. Now that I hear what it sounds like, I am kind of annoyed. Isn’t being an artist having this really refined visual sense that allows you to create meaning through inarticulatable (is that a word?) means? Isn’t that skill what sets artists apart from everyone else? So why do we have a hard time giving credence to that ability? Why do we do the “aw, shucks, I’m just an ole girl who works with her hands and nice things come out of it, somehow” song and dance? Why do we strive to un-intellectualize ourselves?

What I've Been Thinking About: Geography

Seeing the Anne Truitt show at the Hirshorn took me back to wondering about the influence of geography and landscape on artists. Truitt is often quoted talking about how important the Maryland shore was to her work, her sense of color, proportion, etc. I had never seen very much of her work in person before, so I had had to accept this as a factoid without any other information to support it. After seeing so many of her works together in one place, I was really surprised by their specificity of color, shape, and line; this specificity helps me know that these artworks refer to something real out in the world.

I know that my work went off into wild, different directions when I moved to LA and got caught up in its pink light, palm trees, and neons.

So how will a new place change my work this time around? Jaime Castillo, a curator I worked with this summer, asked me that question in August. Here it is December and I don’t have a clue yet, except that working without a studio means finding materials that require only minimal clean up (sewing, drawing, digital photography).
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I just finished reading Peter T. Kilborn’s new book Next Stop, Reloville and am thinking about how I do and don’t fit into that category. (The book profiles the lives of families who follow one parent around the country/world in the quest for the ultimate corporate job.) On the surface I do, because I’ve moved to a new place every few years since, oh….college? 1997? However, this book focuses on the “relo enclaves” in the far suburbs of big cities, like Fairfax or Loudon Counties here near DC, or the Woodlands near Houston, or Alpharetta near Atlanta. The MO in these places for the people who choose to live there is to replicated over and over the same experiences, architecture, and social groupings to make life seem more stable, as if they aren’t really having to make radical adjustments in the way they live their lives every few years. That kind of lifestyle is anathema to me; I want to seek out the sights, tastes, and sounds that gives a place its uniqueness. So, even though I choose to live in city centers and seek out neighborhoods with more geographically-related particularities, I end up wanting to be in the same kinds of spots from city to city: old architecture with “character,” independent small businesses, coffee shops, and a general air of bohemianism. So maybe I really am a relo. Maybe an Indie-Relo, or something.
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I’ve also been listening to a lot of Bad at Sports, particularly the recent episodes about the Heartland exhibition at the Smart Museum, and interviews with Jonathan Watkins and Mary Jane Jacob. A common theme running through the episodes was the curators’ wish that geography become both key and unimportant for artists. That is, that artists no longer need to be in the centers of display (NY, LA, London, etc.) in order to be members of vital centers of productions (Memphis, Kansas City, Chicago, and Glasgow were mentioned). Their thinking seems to be that we all need to have a global view anyway, so your physical location doesn’t matter as much as what you do there, what you make of it.

As someone who recently left a center of display for someplace else, I hope they are right. However, I know and fear that for this model to be successful, it takes a whole lot more work on everyone’s part. But it’s good to hear curators espousing what hinterland artists have been hearing for so long, in this the Golden Age of Internet. Fingers crossed.

What I've Been Thinking About: Formalism vs. Conceptualism

I’ve been reading some discussions on the art blogs recently about formalism vs. conceptualism and the artist's intent, ginned up by Roberta Smith writing about Roni Horn at the Whitney Museum. (Scroll down to see Edward Winkleman's posts from November 10 & 11, and the review mentioned here.)

I used to want to draw a bright line between these two camps also. I believe my thinking was encouraged by grad school and the kind of art I saw in the Midwest and in the East. Those examples showed me that art was either beautiful, or heady, but hardly ever both at the same time.

My time in LA revealed that the distinction between the two kinds of art might be geographical, and is certainly a lot more blurry than I had once believed. I think schools in LA must convey the attitude that all art made now will be inherently conceptual, because it is made in a Post-Conceptualism world. We’ve all learned the lesson that art must mean something besides or beyond the way it looks, so we apply that lesson to all future creations and viewing experiences. Conceptualism can be fun, casual, and hell, even enjoyable to look at.

I was confronted head on by this problem when I was trying to wrap my head around MOCA’s Index show of California Conceptualism last fall. As a museum educator, I was grappling with how to introduce this work to elementary school students without having to give them a fat stack of books to read first. The problem as I saw it was: how are we going to deal with the art of ideas based just on what we see before us, since that is all we are gonna have time to go on in a one-hour tour? What I discovered was that kids approach Conceptualism the same way they approach any other kind of art. If they like to look at it, they’ll talk about why; if they think it’s boring, well, they like to talk about that too. For young viewers, form contains content.

Last night I went to an artist panel at Hamiltonian Gallery with Anne Chan and Michael Iacovone. They both seemed to be struggling with the Formalism vs. Conceptualism problem a bit too, though he more than she. Iacovone’s project was in part an effort to remove the artist’s hand, eye, and choice from image making via a series of arbitrary rules and random dice rolls. He seemed very concerned that the resulting photographs should not be aestheticized objects to be appreciated for their formal beauty (which they had in loads), but invitations for viewers to engage the city in a similar ruled based method (in order, with luck, to experience their everyday space in a new way).

I kind of wanted to shake him a little bit. Why are we still thinking that physical attractiveness is suspect, or that beauty and concept cannot work together to form a more perfect artwork? If Michael Asher can create a seductive pink plastic square and call it high minimalism, then dammit, I can enjoy looking at a well-made rule based photograph. In fact, that little bit of beauty is what gets me to look in the first place. So yeah, the artwork might be showing a little leg….but so what, as long as it follows through with complex ideas once it’s got my attention? Because as a viewer, what I see before me is all I really have to go on in the end.

(image is Michael Asher's no title, 1966, from MOCA.org)