The thing I didn't understand, and perhaps William can explain it,he became a guard ar the Dia Art Foundation in Chelsea,possibly in the late nineties. When Dia closed its Chelsea space in 2004," his severance pay was generous enough to allow him to continue renting an East Village studio and apartment without having to look for another job." Is this the usual thing-get a job at a nonprofit display space and if they have to close you get ample severance? Kate Sullivan
-----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, Sep 30, 2012 4:42 pm Subject: Re: today NYT Fine, Chris, I'm not going to argue with you. My friend John Miller does not feel slighted, I'm sure. His attitude may be similar to your own. Yet I always detect a bitter tone in your comments. That's different from just being damned mad. I don't quite get your comment about taxes. But it always puts me on high alert when someone gets upset about taxes going for art or artists. Lately, people here who hate taxes tend to be those who should be paying a lot more. A lot more! They scream against 'redistribution' but moving capital away from concentrated and non-useful pools of wealth is exactly what is central to democracy, and good for economic health as well. I don't think the true-blue sincere artists examine the market and look around for gaps to fill or plan to adjust their work to some perceived notion of what might sell. They are obsessed with some idea and need to work with it. The point of my comment about Wade was that he did his thing for his own reasons and someone, a curator, etc., decided it fit what they were projecting as the next step. Artists, if they're lucky and good, find a way of working that's right for them. If someone notices, fine; if not, annoying but also fine or OK over the long haul. I think the American power class is doing better than ever. Super-Rich idiots are filling the cultural space. If the name of the game when it comes to power is the freedom and wealth to do just as one pleases, to be both political and economic anarchists, the American big shots are winners. I like Canada, or I should say Canadas, but I sure get sick of the holier than thou attitude that comes down from there. The best and worst thing about America is that its made up of many very different cultures and values, each contentiously trying to claim the American Myth for itself. The Myth fits none of them. It fits Hollywood and 1950s TV and pulp literature. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: caldwell-brobeck <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, September 30, 2012 3:10:08 PM Subject: Re: today NYT Re. Wade Guyton at the Whitney, I guess my own take on it would be "So what?" If John Miller (whoever he is) feels slighted because he was really there first, maybe he should find a more personal form of expression, and stop playing in the pool where talent and skill mean so little. Or maybe he should just get better at pulling strings. The only thing that would really bother me is if it was being paid for with taxpayer dollars, but I don't pay American taxes (well, not very much), so it's not my problem. I think there are a lot of things in life one just can't do very much about - in this case the decline of the American power class, symbolized by the art they seem to enjoy, and the art establishment that caters to them. Canada is only a few steps behind. But there are things in life one can do to make it richer and more satisfying, and one builds art on that. Today, I spent a lovely afternoon with a delightful model I haven't seen since May; tomorrow I continue on a series with a friend who has been going through breast cancer treatment; later in the week it's work with a couple of performers from the Halifax Circus. I'll never be rich off this (but I'll survive), and I'll never be famous, but I am content with the way the work is progressing, with the techniques and ideas I am exploring, and I am very happy with the people I work with. Whether some big money curator somewhere decides what I do is, or is not, art, is entirely irrelevant. What is important is whether I can create something that means something of value to those around me. Cheers; Chris On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 4:14 PM, William Conger <[email protected]> wrote:
No, my point is that he's not a sculptor, no matter how a monument is
made,
until someone else, a curator with status abd power, says so. The Institutional Theory. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, September 30, 2012 1:35:19 PM Subject: Re: today NYT Today "ANYONE "can create a bronze monument, any size,of anything in a few weeks or months, and be called a sculptor, if he can cover the cost. AB ________________________________ From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2012 8:11 AM Subject: today NYT Take a look at today's NYT article on Wade Gayton. He's having a solo show at the Whitney. He doesn't paint or draw but makes 'paintings' by computer, printing out images he takes from everyday print ephemera. The curator of the show says "Wade speaks to the way images travel across out visual culture -- on our computers, Iphones, televisions and books". Please note the art-speak. What the curator could have said in ordinary language is, "Wade copies images from popular culture on his big digital printer". My point here is that we shouldn't blame the artists for doing transgressive stuff or making what seems to be silly, vacant art. There are always artists who are doing every sort of stuff but we never hear about them because no one is paying them any attention at all. It's the gatekeepers, the curators, who pick and choose artists through the templates of confabulatedart-speak. When the curator says, "Wade speaks", he implies that Wade has a thoroughly intellectualized or analyzed position, a stance, from which he issues a philosophy of culture and visuality. It's phony. Wade himself says he never liked drawing and thinks painting is too hard (acting out his inner Warhol). But admitting a slacker attitude as an artist is exactly the key, the push-button, to provoke intense concentration by the curator. But Wade really simply copies images from papers and magazines, book endpapers and the like according to whim. His fancy printer can blow them up to gargantuan scale (extremism at work) and the curator can present this ephemera as high art (extremism of intentional conceptual re-contextualization). There's an artist here in Chicago, John Miller, who has been doing similar computer and big digital printer art for several years. Few have seen this work outside of colleague artists. No Whitney curator has called. No big collectors are pasting his stuff to their dining room walls on Park Avenue. The article on Gayton makes it pretty clear that he has changed the course of painting! No, the curator is trying to redefine painting and Gayton came to his attention and thus exemplifies what the curator has already decided is the 'next inevitable step' (a Greenberg phrase, I believe). Meanwhile John Miller piles up hundreds of huge digital 'paintings' done before Gayton bought his first pair of trendy red tennis shoes, that curators ignore. The curators make art, not the artists. The artists and their work are merely the specimens the curatorial
creativity,
the footsoldiers used by imperialist, unaccountable curators. You go,
Wade!
wc
