Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Like Michael McClure, the mystique of abstract expressionism fascinated me. It still does. This came before Andy Warhol introduced mass production into art, when the artist still agonized over a painting or sculpture like Giacometti over the perception of distance. To these artists, art was a life-force. It is true, of course, that they dreamed of fame and fortune, but they took it as a dream, and, having nothing to lose, they painted what they felt, not what the market requested. That was in the beginning. Although many of the abstract expressionists were active politically, little of this seeped into their actual work. I'm wondering whether direct political practice in the arts is what in later generations watered so much of it down into clichés. Most of it is not on the level of Goya, after all. It's not even the mythic fabric of Beuys' life. -Joel - Original Message - From: Alan Sondheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WRYTING-L@listserv.utoronto.ca Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 9:10 PM Subject: Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld I think re: the art of the 70s - there were people like Tony Rickaby and Smithson of course who worked publicly; it was also an era of public sculpture. I'm not sure the dividing lines are this clear at all - look at Buren, Beuys' coyote piece, etc. There was a lot of political/conceptual art in the 70s as well; it's just not that well-known now as the canon- makers are busy rewriting history/working through 'genre.' - Alan ( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - revised 7/05 )
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
- Original Message - From: Alan Sondheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WRYTING-L@listserv.utoronto.ca Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 11:09 AM Subject: Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld of course but was it ever different? abstract expressionism grew out of other movements, there are artists we think are good and artist we don't think are good. i do think you might be romanticizing, or pollock for example might have been romanticizing. -Of course I'm romanticizing! Artistic practice is romantic. Or else, why do we do it? i also want to mention that for many of the conceptualists i've known, or performance artists, or what-have-you, art has been just as much of a challenge and obsession and investigation, just as difficult, if not more so since so often new media were and are also brought into play -Of course you're right. -Joel On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Joel Weishaus wrote: Like Michael McClure, the mystique of abstract expressionism fascinated me. It still does. This came before Andy Warhol introduced mass production into art, when the artist still agonized over a painting or sculpture like Giacometti over the perception of distance. To these artists, art was a life-force. It is true, of course, that they dreamed of fame and fortune, but they took it as a dream, and, having nothing to lose, they painted what they felt, not what the market requested. That was in the beginning. Although many of the abstract expressionists were active politically, little of this seeped into their actual work. I'm wondering whether direct political practice in the arts is what in later generations watered so much of it down into clichés. Most of it is not on the level of Goya, after all. It's not even the mythic fabric of Beuys' life. -Joel - Original Message - From: Alan Sondheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WRYTING-L@listserv.utoronto.ca Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 9:10 PM Subject: Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld I think re: the art of the 70s - there were people like Tony Rickaby and Smithson of course who worked publicly; it was also an era of public sculpture. I'm not sure the dividing lines are this clear at all - look at Buren, Beuys' coyote piece, etc. There was a lot of political/conceptual art in the 70s as well; it's just not that well-known now as the canon- makers are busy rewriting history/working through 'genre.' - Alan ( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - revised 7/05 ) ( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - revised 7/05 )
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
There is one word for myself that I feel/think in regard to Jenny Holzer's work: progammatic, or programmed. There's a lifeless quality to it, in part because it takes stock phrases heavy with oppressive words, meanings, associations, and counters them with what are the stock phrases one could counter them with, or is taught to counter them with. The phrases are scripted out of one feels a mechanical method of "deconstructing" or "detourning" etc etc a given huge directive or statement. The odd thing is that the counter statement to me has the same oppressive weight as what it purports to lay bare and weaken. This is the programmatic aspect--the pieces feel like they have been run through a machine programmed with what are, if one did a statistical analysis of accepted phrases used to counter repressive words and phrases, with what are the most expected counter words and phrases. They are designed to elict the exact responses often given to them--which in themselves are also programmed with many of the same words, phrases and concepts about overturning opressive language. They are recongized by that which they know they will be recognized by. It is a closed system --just as are the closed systems it purports to subvert, transgress etc. The Holzer pieces are designed very calculatedly to be acceptable to the academic and art-review/theory worlds and also those of grants for works in public places. Reading much of the critical work of her works, is reading exactly what the work prorammed for its own response. To say it again,it is as oppressive and closed a system as those it pretends to critique. There is a phrase I like much: they became what they beheld The Holzer pieces to me become what they beheld. Another form of oppression. Another vocabulary of control. If they were truly critical of things, they wouldn't be given all this space, both public and critical. They fit perfectly into the world and responses they are made for. They design their own critical responses--the language used in writing about them has already been set up to be produced by the works. Which which were themselvesset up by critical/theoretical lnaguages learned in/from art history etc. The system is repeating itself to itself, hooked on its own words and counter words. Now the critical and public response become what they beheld: The carefully designed Jenny Holzer phrases. They set up carefully the staging of their critical responses and also the staging of their public appearances. It's very calculated and pushes all the right buttons--or cash register keys if I may be cynical a moment. The works themselves, or Holzer--betray a cynicism of their own. They know exactly what to say and do to make people think they are thinking fresh and critical thoughts that reveal to them truths about the phrases they are hammered with in the evironments physical and virtual. There is something there for everyone--the art critic, the academic, the boards of trustees, the judges in Venice, the public they are imposed upon--something which makes each one think--ah! these piecesare making me think critically! Ah--I am being told what I am being told to look for in what i am being told. Ah!--how GOOD this is!-- and at the same time there is nothing for anyone but those in power, those making money off this-- they became what they beheld. It is not populism but eiltism--an elite critique of the elite that masquerades in an elite fashion as somethingfor the same old oppressed--the public. That the calculated cleverness of Holzer has to be recongized in an elite language of criticism and theory lifts it to the level of the high moral standards of much public works: that it is GOOD for you. How GOOD it is to be thinking these thoughts! How GOOD we are to recognize the messages of anti-messages in these pieces! How GOOD is the order of things! Yes! How GOOD is the order of things! They became what they beheld. Yes! they are representing our country in Venice! Yes! how GOOD we are!From: Lanny Quarles [EMAIL PROTECTED]Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CATo: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CASubject: Re: Rebus 01Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 21:21:39 -0700No Joel, You LIVE it...- Original Message -From: "Joel Weishaus" [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: WRYTING-L@listserv.utoronto.caSent: Monday, July 18, 2005 9:01 PMSubject: Re: Rebus 01Here's a woman who represented her country in Venice as the best it has tooffer, has had books published on her work, etc. I must not be a snob. Imust be a super-snob! Or, maybe I just don't suffer mediocrity.-Joel- Original Message -From: "Lanny Quarles" [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: WRYTING-L@listserv.utoronto.caSent: Monday, July 18, 2005 7:49 PMSubject: Re: Rebus 01I think the flatness is intentional in Holzer. This isn't "literary" work..Much of itinvolves context and as well a kind of stylisation of affect, there's noostranenie,of any of the tropes of modernist or
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Oh,Alan, I understand for most people the work is liberating and exciting.That's fine with me, really. I am just saying for myself it is very oppressive. It is the same drums being played a slightly different way.Then it becomes a brand name. Power, theory etc: I mean the language in it and the ways in which it presents itself to be recognized is a power situation. I see those works and I feel like I am supposed to salute. Truly! And I refuse to salute. To me it is telling me how to be liberated etc. The feeling in it to me is one of an eltistism. "I know better--and you know better, too, because you see this in me." The "alternative spaces"--Franklin Furnace etc--are part of the world they are "alternative" too. It does for me have to do with "goodness". It is all very ethically edifying for all concerned. "It's not only good, it's good for you". It is a very American mission in many ways. Or, of a certain ethical sort--I can see why it does represent the USA in Venice. It shows what a free and goodsociety we are I suppose. Again, I do know many find it the ways you do, exciting and liberating. I just know for myself, it is very oppressive. I feel like I am being told how to be good in my thinking and what is good for me and al the rest. In a funny way I feel like it is trying to tell me it knows how oppressive all this set up is--and will liberate me--so that I will see in it (the works) the truth.(And the light and the way for all I know.)I will be very excited and grateful about this. But I am not. I do not fully know why, it is just a feeling from deep inside. I don't have any quarrel at all with people who feel the other way. I just know for myself the works are really oppressive and confining. I see them and walk the other way. I don't want to march in (their) line, that's all. From: Alan Sondheim [EMAIL PROTECTED]Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CATo: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CASubject: Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheldDate: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 02:47:30 -0400Wow this is incredible. First of all Holzer showed for a long time only inalternative spaces like Franklin Furnace which had nothing to do with artworld theory or power at all. She distributed work for free at that point.My take on her work is diametrically opposite yours; there's nothingunfortunately to talk about... except to say that she has excited numbersof people in the past and present; I think she's an absolutely brilliantwriter.- Alan( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt -revised 7/05 ) Find just what you're after with the new, more precise MSN Search - try it now!
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
i'd rather see a giant robotic poseiden-aquarium full of jet black mermen-dandies with phosphorescent gill-lace sauntering down fifth avenue declaring an invasion by Atlantis. Ah the trident, how its titanium sings in the asphalt!
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
yes, Atlantis. the true liberated space. On 7/19/05, Lanny R. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i'd rather see a giant robotic poseiden-aquarium full of jet black mermen-dandies with phosphorescent gill-lace sauntering down fifth avenue declaring an invasion by Atlantis. Ah the trident, how its titanium sings in the asphalt!
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
- Original Message - From: Alan Sondheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WRYTING-L@listserv.utoronto.ca Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 11:47 PM Subject: Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld Wow this is incredible. First of all Holzer showed for a long time only in alternative spaces like Franklin Furnace which had nothing to do with art world theory or power at all. She distributed work for free at that point. Pasting slogans around town to get noticed. My take on her work is diametrically opposite yours; there's nothing unfortunately to talk about... except to say that she has excited numbers of people in the past and present; I think she's an absolutely brilliant writer. She's the American Idol of the Art World. Thirty million people voted. -Joel
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Alan--I did say some reasons I find these (Holzer works) oppressing: they are telling me what and how I should think to think critically about the system they are produced from. Also I find oppressing the "goodness." quotient. That this is good good for you. I am supposed to be morally edified in some way by thinking along the lines these pieces are telling me to. See! I am GOOD because I am showing you how BAD billboards advertising dominant ideological phrases etc are. Isn't that GOOD? It just reinforces what people already think in many ways. It is reaffirming of an ideology about the ideology from whence it came. In a certain way, I find this very patronising, and I refuse to be patronized. Being patronised is another form of oppression-- The self righteousness is oppressive. That's part of the "goodness" factor.The "dry ethos" you note that they are "selling". I just find all of this very oppressive and confining. As Joel noted, the works have tons of big books about them and were "our" representatives at Venice. It's part of the American mission--to educate and edify--along the right lines--lines of righteousness included-- As I said, this is my personal response, I'm not tryng to convince anybody of anything,or educate andedifyany one. God forbid! One more fool to suffer! Just registering a vote of protest. It's odd you find them oppressing; I'm not sure why myself. There's ofcourse a whole tradition of aphoristic writing from Marcus Aurelius andearlier through the Schlegels, Karl Kraus, etc. It's not meant to be takenliterally. With Holzer it talks about the language that produces them;they're self-contained, edgy, verging on truth. But they're also playfulin many cases such as the 42nd Street installation. They're words becomearchitecture among other things, and that's fascinating. And on occasionthey borrow from advertising, selling nothing but dry ethos. -Alan -( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt -revised 7/05 ) With MSN Spaces email straight to your blog. Upload jokes, photos and more. It's free!
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Everything is pathology, except for indifference. E. M. Cioran I pride myself on my capacity to perceive the transitory character of everything. An odd gift which spoiled all my joys; better: all my sensations. I have decided not to oppose anyone ever again, since I have noticed that I always end by resembling my latest enemy. E. M. Cioran By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing. E. M. Cioran Consciousness is nature's nightmare. E. M. Cioran Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves. E. M. Cioran It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late. E. M. Cioran Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain, and the universe a geometry stricken with epilepsy. E. M. Cioran Nothing proves that we are more than nothing. E. M. Cioran Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety ; refuge among anemic ideas. E. M. Cioran To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten. E. M. Cioran We derive our vitality from our store of madness. E. M. Cioran
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Self righteousness is oppressive. Sounds just like a Jenny Holzer apho. I just wonder how you feel about Leon Golub then.. or someone like Simon Norfolk and his Chronotopia images of Afghanistan. Are these then oppressive as well? I thought this little essay was an interesting capsule about the eighties milieu: In contrast to the reticence and insularity of art influenced by Minimalism and Conceptualism in the 1970s, much art of the 1980s assumed the form of public addressfrom Jenny Holzer's use of the Times Square news ticker to broadcast elliptical and vaguely threatening strings of text, to Krzysztof Wodiczko's night-time projections of symbolically charged imagery onto the facades of museums, public buildings, and corporate headquarters. The infamous culture wars that raged at the end of the decadepitting conservative politicians such as Jessie Helms against artists such as Andres Serrano and organizations like the National Endowment for the Artsreflected this increased visibility and the socially directed nature of its subject matter: sexuality and identity, repression and power, commodities and desire. Yet painting also returned with a vengeance after languishing in relative obscurity during the 1970s, reasserting all the myths of originality and authenticity that were under attack in the media-based works of the Pictures Generation from the same moment. Painters such as Julian Schnabel and Sandro Chia mixed expressionist brushwork with a panoply of historical references comparable to the stylistic pastiches seen in the postmodern architecture of Michael Graves and Philip Johnson. The art world expanded accordingly to accommodate the return of salable art: galleries groomed their stables of artists like racehorses, while collectors jockeyed for the inside track on the next big thing, and the auction houses provided a perfect arena for conspicuous consumption. At the same time, however, artists' collectives, alternative spaces, and artist-run galleries sprang up, with activist groups such as Gran Fury or Group Material (the latter whose members included Felix Gonzales-Torres [1996.575]) staging guerrilla events or multimedia exhibitions that focused attention on topics avoided by the mainstream media such as the AIDS crisis or U.S. military intervention in Central and South America. There was also fluid and fertile interplay between the worlds of art, music, film, and performance seen at venues such as the Mudd Club and the Kitchen in New York. Nan Goldin's photographs (2001.627; 2001.336.1) of the early 1980s summarize the underlying ethos of the period: the schizophrenic alternation between a cool detachment and an aggressively confessional style, an exuberant do-it- yourself attitude that masked formal dexterity with the enthusiasm of the amateur, and the recognition that the way one lives life is an inherently political act. The scale and ambition of photographically based works also increased in the 1980s in recognition of the medium's inextricable ties to mass culture in advertising and entertainment. Jeff Wall made his highly staged pictures to be shown as light-filled transparencies of the kind seen in airport terminals and bus stops; he composed his images with all the obsessive detail and narrative suggestion of a film director on location, while also referring to the socially oriented canvases of nineteenth-century French masters such as Courbet and Manet. Wall's work straddled the worlds of the museum and the street, and was enormously influential later in the decade, especially for the work of Thomas Ruff and the German photographers of the Düsseldorf School. Other artists, including John Baldessari and Christian Boltanski, appropriated banal vernacular photographsfrom movie stills to family snapshots, respectivelyand integrated them into larger arrangements that commented on the erasure of cultural memory. Recently the subject of much critical reappraisal, the art of the 1980s can now be seen in retrospect as a powerful synthesis of the personal and political, as well as an implicit rebuke to the hollow conformity and historical amnesia that characterized the Reagan era. Films such as David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) and Todd Haynes' Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) explored the dark underbelly of the American dream, while artists such as Robert Gober (2000.115) and Mike Kelley pioneered the nascent form of installation art in works that dealt with repressed infantile fears and wishesthe explosive material that haunts the unconscious psyche. It is this art that becomes relevant again in the context of our own troubled time. plus a whole lotta cocaine!
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
You got that right. -Joel - Original Message - From: Lanny R. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WRYTING-L@listserv.utoronto.ca Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 9:12 AM Subject: Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld i'd rather see a giant robotic poseiden-aquarium full of jet black mermen-dandies with phosphorescent gill-lace sauntering down fifth avenue declaring an invasion by Atlantis. Ah the trident, how its titanium sings in the asphalt!
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Cioran is a strange bird, as he was pathological, yet my studio is feathered with his writing. -Joel - Original Message - From: Lanny R. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WRYTING-L@listserv.utoronto.ca Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 1:00 PM Subject: Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld Everything is pathology, except for indifference. E. M. Cioran I pride myself on my capacity to perceive the transitory character of everything. An odd gift which spoiled all my joys; better: all my sensations. I have decided not to oppose anyone ever again, since I have noticed that I always end by resembling my latest enemy. E. M. Cioran By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing. E. M. Cioran Consciousness is nature's nightmare. E. M. Cioran Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves. E. M. Cioran It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late. E. M. Cioran Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain, and the universe a geometry stricken with epilepsy. E. M. Cioran Nothing proves that we are more than nothing. E. M. Cioran Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety ; refuge among anemic ideas. E. M. Cioran To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten. E. M. Cioran We derive our vitality from our store of madness. E. M. Cioran
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Not objecting at all to your vote of protest. But I honestly don't think these are supposed to be edifying in the slightest; they're not maxims to be taken at face value as far as I know... - Alan ( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - revised 7/05 )
Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
I think re: the art of the 70s - there were people like Tony Rickaby and Smithson of course who worked publicly; it was also an era of public sculpture. I'm not sure the dividing lines are this clear at all - look at Buren, Beuys' coyote piece, etc. There was a lot of political/conceptual art in the 70s as well; it's just not that well-known now as the canon- makers are busy rewriting history/working through 'genre.' - Alan ( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - revised 7/05 )
