On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 5:11 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote:
> 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 > > I don't want to sound cynical, but I wonder if Mr. Miller was unwilling to "pay the price" of recognition, i.e., go and ask the "gatekeeper" VERY NICELY ala Tosca: - Quanto?..............................Il prezzo?
