Future Maps for these Territories
The New Year’s holiday inevitably brings about remembrances and prognostications. 2011 saw me celebrate a decade in the same studio, and as I sat around looking at works in progress and planning for the New Year (figuring out new works, and considering the more daunting task of trying to resolve what’s already been started, discarded, or just left sitting around) I was also considering my New Year’s day trip to the art openings in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I started thinking more and more about the (very) long-term affects of changing economic conditions, and how the seemingly continual search for space affects artists, and where that search may lead.
In a year that saw the birth and subsequent suppression of the Occupy movement focus attention on corporate machinations, it is hard not consider the footprint of corporate interests in finance, real estate, and art when considering any such potential future. The early fiction of William Gibson seems to particularly apply, with his simultaneous exploration of the corporation as quasi-governmental power[1] and interest in art and design. Any attempt at articulating a future will be more a snapshot of the author’s present[2] more than the future[3], but Gibson’s Sprawl fiction[4] presents a future for art that is in some sense already here. Artists are measured in a stock market-like system of fluctuating points, up and down. The actual works of art are purchased by reproduction[5], and then safely crated away in secure storage, possibly never to be seen before being resold. Scholarship is privatized as well[6], with the heads of the new oligarchies serving as patrons (and also demanding favors) in a model reminiscent of the medieval kings. His setting for the market of the art world is likewise eerily prescient. Marly Krushkova[7], the disgraced owner of small gallery for emerging[8] art contrasts with Picard, the international gallery manager who treats art as any broker would their preferred commodity. Setting aside motivation, the contrast between the power and wealth available in the realm of the blue chip as compared to those working from purer motives is stark.
By comparison his artists Slick Henry[9], Rubin Stark[10], and the artificial intelligence discovered at the end of Count Zero[11] are represented in a romanticized fashion that make them seem more outsiders than careered artists. Their creative drive is an unsullied internal need. (Only Stark has representation, and fully engages the market for his creations. In this sense he actually comes the closest of the three to representing a successful artist working within today’s art world.[12]) Aside from their collage based practice and their affinity for cast off materials, these characters share an affinity for living and working in repurposed industrial spaces. These are a future version of the light-industrial lofts that became the new model for the artist’s studio in the Post-war art world.
Whether the size of these new spaces allowed or caused artist to dramatically change the scale of their work[13], what is evident is that the work produced in these spaces is peculiarly of these spaces: just as the scale and materials of pre-war modernism seem particularly suited to a Parisian garret, the paintings of the New Yorks school swelled to match the space available in an urban center with a surplus of raw, light-industrial space. Contemporary art has seen the loft space institutionalized as grad studios in MFA programs and this as affected how the art is made. Construction is an ad-hoc affair with considerations of craft in construction[14] giving way to a direct and immediate engagement with the work that assumes that problems of logistics, transport, and storage can be solved after the fact. Artists will be keenly aware of their own space, and often build work that just fits in or out the door by a matter of inches, but these measurements are unlikely to consider future doors in different neighborhoods that the work may need to get in.[15]
I’ve always considered the migrations[16] of artists in New York to react like quicksilver to pressures relating to the cost of space. Artists[17] form the leading edge of gentrification in the city, following the arteries of transportation through to under-used (or under-capitalized) light industrial spaces that could be taken over for idiosyncratic ends. The post-war bohemia of Greenwich Village was pushed into Soho and from there into (generally) Tribeca and lower Manhattan and out to Dumbo and through to harder to access areas like Red Hook or the Navy Yards. Another tack flowed to the East, from Village and out into Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Long Island City and into Bushwick.[18] It appears that artists are following the subway lines to anywhere there is cheap space, which was usually “the next stop out” from a popular neighborhood. Established residential neighborhoods formed a natural bulwark to an influx of artists, providing the rents were high enough. If the neighborhood tended to be lower income, or zoned for mixed-use, it was only a matter of the next financial boom until the indigenous residents who didn’t own found themselves forced out, soon to be followed by the artists who couldn’t afford the rising rents. Leaving aside the contemporary socio-economic implications and looking to the future, what sort of changes and evolutions can we expect in art and the art world as economic pressures continue to exacerbate the problem of a finite amount of urban space?
Gibson’s artists find themselves in extremely out of the way locations[19], but are able to interface with culture and patrons virtually via technology. Presently artists still feel the need to gather[20], but space is becoming more and more limited and the influx of new, young artists into the same limited, urban territory will eventually subject the makers of objects to evolutionary pressures that will affect where and how art is made. Artists never left working in their apartments, and post-studio and conceptual practices may become increasingly popular urban practices to accompany works at a more modest scale.[21] Another avenue would be a longer, more desperate migration that can be observed in other species struggling with dwindling local resources. Other smaller urban areas connected by similar transit options are one option[22], yet will face the same pressures from outside industries. These factors will only increase as rural populations contract, but with a retreat to urban centers new spaces will open to colonization by artists. Strip malls and abandoned big box stores of the twenty-first century will present similar floor plans possibilities to their light industry counterparts of the twentieth century. With a proliferation of mobile connectivity and social media artists will be able to take advantage of cheap real estate as working space trumps the ability to grab a drink or quick meal with a fellow artist.
Looking back on the crowds that crammed into Norte Maar or spilled out onto the sidewalk in front of Storefront on New Year’s Day, the implication (or threat) to artists is probably greater to the underrated social community that surrounds long hours alone in the studio rather than any specific need for space; after all artists will still find a way to make things under the most pressing limitations. Nevertheless I can already envision a future version of Loren Munk, traveling so far that he’s nomadic and without time to paint, his work documented digitally via GPS and JPEG like a cyberpunk Richard Long, trekking out to and mapping the remains of a Walmart that was once home and studio of a now famous artist…until he or she was priced out and now the space is occupied by a bohemian descendant of Sam Walton. Even in the future, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
[1] Gibson’s future is the ultimate in corporate privatization, with national governments collapsed and corporate conglomerates wielding their own private armies. Nevertheless there must be some organizing and mediating principle, as evidenced by the wild global urban infrastructure his characters must navigate.
[2] Gibson acknowledges as much, writing that “Nothing acquires quite as rapid or peculiar a patina of age as an imaginary future” in the introduction to Burning Chrome.
[3] The Sprawl trilogy seems rather light on smartphones, and the graphics available to his cyberpunks and the animations that represent the web belong more to Atari than one where the imaging of Avatar is out of date. In this regard Neal Stephenson grafted the appropriate bandwidth onto Gibson’s corporate future in his novel Snow Crash.
[4] The novels Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and the stories collected in Burning Chrome.
[5] Gibson’s holograms are a sexier antecedent to today’s JPEGS.
[6] In the future of the sprawl there seems little room for museums, and I imagine that community outreach programs were cut when the government fell.
[7] In Count Zero.
[8] In Gibson’s world, this means dealing with original works, presumably by living artists. There is little money in it, unless one gets extremely lucky, but there is the visceral, direct appeal.
[9] In Mona Lisa Overdrive.
[10] In ‘The Winter Market’, included in the Burning Chrome collection of stories.
[11] Spoiler alert.
[12] Although his work and character seems like a precursor to Slick Henry, as if the more career savvy artist had to be tamed to get along with his new neighbors and relations in the subsequent novel. Also of interest is that he has an agent, and not specifically gallery representation.
[13] Like any other nature vs. nurture argument the answer is probably “a bit of both.”
[14] Speaking generally, and certainly not of larger projects fabricated with the aid of specialized technicians, who generally need to have their shit straight to survive working with artists…
[15] This is a benefit to the much maligned practice of art going directly into storage after it is bought. Artists are at least free to make anything, and sell it, without worrying about where it is going to fit. In my experience far fewer collectors have huge garage-style roll up doors into their residences than you might think.
[16] Or, if you prefer, relocations. The constant movement of artists has a whiff of refugee movements about it, in a distinctly first-world way of course.
[17] In this case, young or emerging artists working to establish themselves. Older artists who have consolidated their position within the art world will probably have similarly consolidated their position in real estate. Likewise they are more likely to have family commitments that keep them from the young person’s game of pioneering.
[18] And of course some also headed West to New Jersey or North into the Harlem and the Bronx, and individual outposts or colonies thrive almost everywhere, but migrations are a matter of populations, not individuals. Chelsea remains an interesting outlier as artists have been there since at least the 1940’s or 50’s (deKooning had a studio there for awhile), but despite its proximity to Greenwich Village* it has never really had a status as an “art neighborhood” until the galleries moved in. If some future historian is looking to pinpoint where capital and galleries bifurcated away from artists, this is probably the point.
* Despite the rallying cry of the time, artists did head above 14th Street. Hipsters are notoriously unreliable that way, and of course there wasn’t an art museum that far south anyway.
[19] Low Earth orbit, or New Jersey.
[20] Following the split noted between the populations of artists and galleries in #18, it is interesting to note that galleries are exhibiting the same behavior, just within their own “species”, rather than with artists.
[21] Mira Schor’s call for an new intimate art may become a reality in light of working and exhibition space reducing (which can be seen a bit in smaller spaces on the Lower East-side downsizing from the blue chip Chelsea hangar). See “Modest Painting” in “A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life.”
[22] Potentially leading to a version of Gibson’s Boston – Atlanta Metropolitan Axis.
Sealing Off the Wonder of the Sublime.
My review of Byron Kim’s exhibition Night at James Cohan Gallery is up now at Idiom.
Manners on the Ground
The sentiment that the expansion of the art world is detrimental to artists is not exactly a new meme. Exposés and biographies of the art world past often contain a throw away lament about how things have changed, and not for the better. However for as often as anyone claims how much better things were in the “good ol’ days” it is never addressed that their halcyon time was being similarly decried by someone else who saw it as further evidence of a slow descent into an abyss. While Jerry Saltz and Mira Schor understandably garnered the most notice for their critique and response to the Venice Biennale, a similar sentiment was also expressed by Joerg Colberg in his look at how advanced technology and amateur practice are affecting professional photography. Even collectors can’t help but get in on the action, as Mickey Cartin weighed in on the increasing difficulty of finding art he likes. You can practically cut the condescension and generational bias with a knife.
What strikes me about these arguments is just how much blame for the art being exhibited and the state of the market is being laid at the feet of artists and their education. This seems particularly troubling in light of the fact that the first three are teachers within the current system that pushes young artists to get an advanced degree and incur similarly advanced student loan debt.[1] The complaint that young artists emerge from their education looking like polished, inoffensive professionals who are unwilling to rock the boat of the commercial system is the flip side to the critical trope that young artists start showing too soon and don’t mature enough before engaging the market. Both positions privilege the elder critic’s position in the art world, alternating between ease of digestion and a respite from the blandness it engenders. The irony for these teachers to address then is that their students are emerging from their classrooms with looming loan obligations that paid their own salaries. To then complain that these artists are far too historically aware[2] and that in trying sell their work they are compromising their critical faculties is tone deaf at best, and hypocritical at worst.[3]
While to his credit Mr. Saltz lays some blame at the feet of the curators and institutions that present the work (after all the artists were selected to be in the Venice Biennale), it is a stretch to turn the conventional acceptance on show at the “State of the Art World” as an indictment of the adventurousness of young artists. Just as the site[4] of Venice is circumscribed, any artist showing there is established to a certain degree; this is not a place to find notes from the underground any more than you would expect to find rumblings of uncertainty on a greatest hits album.
That art is going the way of dog breeding and is refining itself into an aesthetic cartoon of academic discourse relies on a negative characterization of Mannerism that ignores its value within art history. [5] Mannerism is the necessary counterbalance to and consequence of artistic freedom divorced from prevailing requirements for art. The first Mannerists reacted to the technologies that established naturalism within Renaissance painting and sculpture, laying the groundwork for future expressionism. This cycle is replayed within the narrative of Modernist progress as photography freed painting from the necessity of utilitarian representation. The new Mannerism comes out of the end of Modernism’s progress of formal reduction and an embrace of the possibilities inherent in Post-Modernism. If artists are freed from pushing a historical narrative forever forward they may instead focus on individual interests. The risk of such terrain[6] is that there is little in the way of landmarks for artist, critic, or collector to aid navigation between what will last and what is merely fashion.[7] Such uncertainty portends a large degree of floundering in both production and discourse, but also provides fertile ground for new and unexpected directions to emerge from[8]; it becomes the responsibility of the critic and curator to tease out threads and trends that are suddenly much less apparent. Just as the “death of the author” corresponded to the “birth of the reader”, the passing of the Modern and immediately Post-Modern into a new Mannerism portends an era where art is not yoked to past narratives, and the new ones will be constructed by artists free to move in any direction.
But this freedom necessarily means that old revolutions will be carried forth haphazardly at best. Ms. Schor’s complaint that “the farther you get from the generative decade of the 60s and yes the 70s, the worse it gets” echoes the frustration of other first generation social activists and feminists that those that followed them are not getting with the program as they laid it out. So while social justice and a commitment to progressive or radical political causes may remain strong within the self-identified arts demographic, why should these artists be expected to shoehorn such issues into their practice? Surly the historically aware students in Ms. Schor’s classroom are aware that a lot of bad art was (and is) made when political content trumped aesthetic concern; that such art achieves far less in the way of real-world impact than direct action would naturally lead pragmatic, organized professionals to compartmentalize any political labors where it would be expected to do the most good and focus their time in the studio on work that is personally fulfilling.
Similarly, young artists will have seen that the market is capable of commodifying any practice or output[9], and that the previous generations of artists who have made supposedly “uncollectible” work now have objects, relics, documentation, or certificates to sell[10]. Critique of the market has turned into another subject that an artist may engage with as they would gestural abstraction in painting, the machined surfaces of Minimalism, or the media construction of gender. As with other movements and interests in art, the first generation to tackle these interests stands rather tall; unless a young artist is personally invested in critiquing the market (or its attendant systems and structures)[11] they will be working well trod ground with little reason to do so, and less conviction. If the hand wringing that accompanies a Mannerist field of operations in art is the product of a profound uncertainty of how to apply judgments, then the worst course for artists to follow would be to engage with their physical or conceptual material halfheartedly.
While Mr. Colberg’s critique focuses on photography, which as a medium moves between “high” art and commercial assignment, his bias is not dissimilar to Ms. Schor’s. He eschews any gross condemnation in favor of a well-rounded analysis of the market forces acting on the supply of images but ultimately suggests that an emerging photographer should consider the earning potential of more his or her more established peers as they try to establish themselves within the professional ranks. [12] Young artists[13] are navigating a new market and simply do not have the luxury of taking the same path as their elders. The ground has shifted.
Where the others approached from the point of view of the education system that feeds the art world, Mr. Cartin’s starts at the final destination, the gallery spaces in the epicenter of the art world. His concerns of how a surplus on the supply side of the art market can drag down the overall quality contained within[14] smartly meet Mr. Saltz’s concerns about the final product but Mr. Cartin is maddeningly vague about just which artists and galleries are pushing soulless art onto ignorant “consumers” (one can assume that it is the art someone else may happen to value or love[15]). While education remains a wished for panacea, it is not likely to correct for taste and systems of value which is what ultimately “ails” the art market. So as the terrain for production and criticism has been leveled to Mannerist smear across many potential sites, so has the market; the genteel market where a few self-styled in the know intellectual elites all attended the same openings has been replaced by the boisterousness of the bazaar[16] where competing worldviews are made neighbors by commerce. The inherent value of the current system resides in the multiplicity of viewpoints available, where many voices can be heard and different tastes (no mater how extreme) may find their own space in which to operate. The consequence for viewers of art is that the overall space of the market becomes extremely cluttered and confusing. More work is required to finally stand in front of art that was worth the effort to find, and because it’s more work, the work needs to better to validate that investment. This sets a near impossibly high standard for entry[17]; only Athena came forth so fully formed.
The central issue then is not of the privileging the judgment of critics (these, or any other others), but in not recognizing that the art world has undergone a tremendous change and growth to its fundamental structure that is leveling points of view.[18] My concern is not in limiting the scope of criticism[19] but in challenging the expectations that artists, especially those young and emerging, will limit themselves because of it, and especially when it comes from a position of another’s self interest. If there is a petite revolution in the emergence of a new Mannerism it lies in expecting that everyone involved (artists, critics, curators, and collectors) accept that no matter how dear their point of view may be, there is an equal and opposite measure that may and will be argued; what has turned is that this is a strength, rather than a limitation.
[1] In the interest of full disclosure, I’m still paying off the loans I took out during the course of my MFA studies.
[2] It should go without saying that if said artists did ignore recent art history in their practice they would be excoriated for that, too.
[3] Everyone wants a funky, messy art world that’s full of characters until they’re responsible for the financial planning of said characters later in life. It’s pretty easy to say that someone else should get out and man those barricades.
[4] In such a limited and sinking geographic space it is impossible to complete a representative survey, especially when that is not the intention to start with, and Venice as a site doesn’t have the flexibility of space for emerging artists to set up their own parallel or counter programming in a meaningful way. See my earlier essay ‘Site Specificity’ for a more complete explanation on my use of the term ‘site.’
[5] I do love me some Pontormo.
[6] You really could call it a desert.
[7] Although this risk is always evident; one only need go back to the last chapter of any published history of the art world’s recent to (then) current history to find that the number of artists mentioned who remain relevant or important falls off dramatically.
[8] In thinking of the fertilizer content of any such ground, please reconsider Sturgeon’s Law.
[9] I mean if Tino Seghal has a saleable commodity, come on.
[10] You don’t see a lot of aging coneptualists making ends meet working construction.
[11] See the work of Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida.
[12] To be fair this applies more to work for hire arrangements that do not have an easily analogous counterpart with in the art world,
[13] And Mr. Colberg’s position vis-a-vis the market for photography does correspond quite nicely to the complaints being leveled against emerging artists and the sector of the market that supports them.
[14] At least I think this is his general concern. Most of his essay is spent leveling a generic complaint about some corner of the art market (young artists, galleries, other collectors, art consultants) and then saying that he really can’t fault them for their behavior.
[15] Perhaps the greatest leveling of the post-modern age is to reduce the ‘other’ from a discreet coding of separation based on race, gender, or sexuality into a judgment on the quality of one’s purchases. As it turns out the joke is on Barbra Kruger.
[16] Boisterous in point of view, if not in actual market dealings; everybody has a back room after all.
[17] Mr. Cartin is comparing emerging artists to exhibitions by Sol LeWitt, Louise Lawler, and Picasso after all.
[18] If not the influence of established power structures and money; some things still fall at rates more closely associated with astronomical gravity.
[19] In the desert I propose all things are equal, even if in truth some things are more equal than others.
On Copyright (Part 3): Authors, Artifacts, and Money.
Any discussion of appropriation as a valid procedure for making art must also address competing authorial concerns. It cannot be ignored that Richard Prince, Shepard Fairley, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, or even Andy Warhol did not attract litigation to their work until a lawsuit looked profitable. As the contemporary art market expands and the price for works by established artists moves north of six figures, I think we can expect more lawsuits regarding intellectual property, especially as other industries of media production struggle to be paid for the content they provide. Put not so subtly, determining authorship determines who gets paid.
The structure of weak copyright I propose allows that an artifact that is transformed by fair use[1] becomes a new work with the transforming author assuming complete authorial rights.[2] This aligns with the intent of copyright law to benefit the culture at large by allowing more work to be available to the public, but my reading runs counter to what I find to be one of the most common arguments against fair use, namely that such weak enforcement against appropriation would lead to a less cultural production as authors would cease working for fear of not be paid for it. I simply do not find this argument convincing, and there is nothing beyond anecdotal speculation to support such an assertion, and even then the “original” author would not be forced out, only forced to compete: Levels of education have continued to rise, allowing a shift to an economy based on information and creation rather than labor. Simultaneously the culture at large has continued to elevate the celebrity status of all manner of authors[3] across the culture, making attempts at a creative career that much more appealing. As mass culture continues to push ever greater numbers towards producing cultural products there is also a rising population of trained information producers who are streaming out of graduate schools armed with MFAs and looking to break into their chosen field. This creates a much more Darwinian competition within the culture as the monetary resources available cannot support everyone. Thus some will leave to pursue more lucrative avenues, but there are plenty ready to take their place.[4]
Such pressure can be keenly felt in arenas where advances in technology have lowered the technical threshold for entry into the professional ranks; Joerg Colberg makes the case for these effects on photography, but similar effects can be seen in music and film.[5] As competition increases, it only stands to reason that authors would look to maximize any revenue streams they can, and enforcing strong intellectual property rights is a way to do that without actually expending much additional effort. This makes sense both evolutionarily[6] and culturally[7], but it is only a short-term solution. [8] If said authors are going to continue to survive, it will be for what they produce that is of value; resorting to cultural protectionism only applies pressure to the system in such a manner that will encourage (or outright force) further testing of the limits rather than chastised acquiescence. Instead of being so concerned with controlling all facets of their work’s cultural interaction, they should focus on what is of value that cannot be used by others.
For artists[9], this is not the absolute aesthetic value of any single work[10]. While there will always be some objects that are more desirable than others, the notion of the single masterpiece has eroded and given way to a holistic assessment of the artist’s oeuvre. What provides any given artifact monetary value is its place within that corpus, and the artist’s (continued) engagement with it. Thus if an artifact is copied or appropriated by others, it does not weaken or detract from the original or its markets; such use affirms the cultural importance of the original work and increases its value.[11] When the New York School grappled with Picasso’s influence, it didn’t reduce his influence; it took succeeding generations of investigation that had little to address in his work one way or the other.[12] The work is important within a prescribed context, and the overriding interest of the relevance of that context is to avoid being ignored above all else.
The misconception that the monetary value of any single work follows from its aesthetic value is what prompts those that have had works appropriated to look to the new artifact for licensing fees or monetary damages. Just as parent looking at an abstract painting may think that their kid could do that, these authors see something that looks like their work and think that it would’ve been easy enough to do, and so that they should receive their cut. But just as a toddler or adolescent is not actually going to turn abstraction and the established order of the art market on its ear, the original authors were not going to provide the culture with these works: Designers were not going to reproduce their packaging on stretched canvas or plywood boxes; the Associated Press was not going to turn a photo for hire into a poster and then wheat paste it across the country as both graffiti and iconic political speech; Patrick Cariou was not going to combine the subjects of his photos with pin-up girls, guitars, and a post-apocalyptic narrative and then blow them up to 10 feet with layers of canvas and gestural brushwork. Even if they wished to, these objects would not be worth much if anything, even if they could find a venue. Cowboys photographed for cigarette ads, science toys for children cast in bronze twenty feet tall, or origami diagrams blown up on canvas and colored in with paint are not displayed in galleries because of what they are, but because of who made them, and what they made in the past, and what they will make in the future. An Australian fisherman or British electrical supplier is unlikely to find a buyer for his taxidermied shark because there is no context that adds value to his artifact and without the authorial context conferred by the artist’s oeuvre, all you’ve got is a decaying shark.[13]
Regardless of court decisions or appeals, appropriation will continue to play a role in cultural interaction and creation. As technology advances and makes it easier for new authors to make and distribute their work, and interact with and appropriate the artifacts of others, the law will have to deal with an ever-increasing number of cases regarding the copyright of intellectual property. These are not now, and will not be, aesthetic arguments. Lawyers and money will continue to be sent by all with interest into the fray as culture continues to become a top export and sector of the economy… hopefully guns won’t be seen as necessary to secure these resources.
[1] See the previous essays in this series.
[2] In arguing for fair use I am primarily dealing with appropriation by artists; these new rights would allow the new author to sell their work and control the copyrights of that artifact, but would not allow them to circumvent the rights of the “original” author. This is enforced by making fair use satisfy requirements of cultural comment, reporting, or parody that is not met by the likes of advertising or design. The reduction ad absurdum argument that non-art users would simply claim to be a kind of art does not strike me as either practical or likely. In this regard any such art practice would still need to operate within the structures of law and behavior of those industries (commercial TV, music, etc); claims to art are not a “get out of jail free” card…
[3] Using “author” in the technical sense I have used in the past essays to stand for the producer of any cultural artifact, from artists, photographers, writers, musicians, actors, directors, and on the line right on down to the level of celebrity for celebrity’s sake found in the lowest rungs of reality TV, god help us all.
[4] I must say I do not find such a migration to be any great loss. Anyone not driven to continue making their work (and finding a way to make it profitable) is likely not making something all that interesting anyway.
[5] Of course this affect also happens in older media like painting or writing, it’s just that for being rather simple technologies that are over 5000 years old, the process has stabilized. Although keep in mind that the market that sells the products of that technology does continue to change.
[6] As they are able to gain more resources with less overall effort.
[7] As they are able to institute and enforce a social order that places a primary concern on their interests.
[8] To say nothing of the cost they inflict on the culture by circumscribing the fair production of others and ultimately limiting cultural output.
[9] Those working as authors within the “art world” or ancillary and related fields, rather than the complete range of cultural producers.
[10] As if such a thing could ever be considered absolute in the first place.
[11] An exception may be made for satire, which if properly executed can puncture the importance of the original and harm the market for the original, but such take downs are rare, and are much more obviously legally protected use anyway.
[12] identified by the point where art turns from “modern” to “contemporary.”
[13] And two million seems steep for just a shark.
On Copyright (Part 2): The Ornithology of Copyright
Art’s commercial interests as commodity poses challenges not faced by academic, educational, or informational interests that are on firmer legal footing regarding fair use; it inhabits ambiguous territory as it often fills many or all of the above functions, depending on the work and intention of the artist. Furthermore, art’s historical link to free speech places it at an interesting legal nexus between copyright and the first amendment. While we may make allowances for artistic vs. commercial intention with the artifact, the gray areas art operates in places a difficult burden on both sides as it remains nebulous and ultimately invites legal clarification.[1] My argument in part one of this essay is that fair use by transformation or critique creates new cultural artifacts with similar rights to their authors as those enjoyed by the “original”[2] author, and that this turnover and remixing is ultimately good for the culture by introducing new works that would not otherwise had been created.[3] The quickest argument cum complaint that is lodged is the “how would you feel if…” appeal, as if I am proposing a set of standards that I (or other proponents of weaker copyright enforcement) think should apply to everyone else. Consider this an exercise in applying a “what is good for the goose is good for the gander” approach.
I certainly am not advocating for the “death of copyright.” A quick look at my website or this blog shows that I specifically claim the copyright for my paintings and my writings; arguing for a weak application of copyright law doesn’t mean that I’m advocating a free for all where anything can be appropriated by anyone else for fun and profit… but at the same time I do not think that authoring a work grants said author exclusive control over all of its cultural interactions. When authors release their work into the culture they must also accept that it has an effect on the culture and may in turn be used or commented on by others as a part of the culture.
Again, the mechanism that allows for fair use is transformation. For instance if this blog was merely turned into a printed book by a third party I would not be defending that as fair use. Likewise shifting an artifact between digital and analog media is not transformative; the argument put forward by some advocates of music and file sharing that said change is enough to warrant fair use protection ignores that they are only shifting between storage media, but the consumption is essentially the same. Text is read, music is listened to, and movies and TV shows are watched. Here art’s occupation of a middle ground of experience and consumption poses problems to the amount of control allowed over an artifact, but ultimately the transformation can be compared against the intent of the original. The difference lies between an attempt at counterfeit or the use as a source, and how the new author puts the work forth. If who is valued as the author has not changed, then the use is likely not fair.
Of course where large sums of money are involved, “fair” becomes a loaded term; in this argument the connotations must be set aside for the benefit of the greater cultural good. Any attempt to set the acceptable use of the law as shield for “the little guy” is misguided; the law cannot function as such and sets the system up for further complications and ultimate failure. The success and intent of copyright to advance cultural innovation will stem from its democratic application, so let’s examine how the quintessential little guy in the art world (me) [4] would react if an artist like Richard Prince (for example) turned his appropriating eye towards my own work.
The largest problem would be the manner and intent of the transformation. As a painter my work is probably harder to directly reproduce than, say a photograph; the physical surface of a painting has an ecriture, depth, and material reality that can’t transfer from reproduction. In that regard, the method and accuracy of copy would comment directly on my original work,[5] with any discrepancy in size, material, or other distortion serving as an artistic change that serves to differentiate a new cultural artifact.[6] Now in such a case it would certainly be nice to be credited by Mr. Prince,[7] but in such a case whether or not he decided to do so may have to do with how he came across my work, and how he perceived it as a source. With most artists working within a framework of appropriation there is little attempt at hiding sources because artifacts are chosen for their anonymity and commonality within their larger visual experience.[8] While it might be galling to see my efforts reduced to mere anonymous source, it would ultimately be my own responsibility to publicize my work.[9]
It must be noted that the current state of my career does put me at an advantage in that my work is not widely distributed, so that any attempt to reproduce it to a convincing level of simulation would almost certainly require my help, and therefore permission. As any work moves further into the culture and increases in popularity the author necessarily looses some amount of control over it. This loss of control increases if the author’s chosen medium intends itself to reproduction; the ease with which authorized copies are (re)produced also make facsimiles easier to mine as raw material. However the same ease of reproduction offers a boon in spotting the intent of someone making use of intellectual property for ends of counterfeit or fair use. The question comes down to “what kind of bird is it?” Is what is being offered being passed as the original, or does it proclaim something new? If the latter, it is beneficial to the larger culture to let it take wing, and see where it might go.
[1] Unlike other writers, I don’t see it as an immediate problem that the courts would render judgments based on intent (this is what they are designed to do in other aspects of law); rather it is the poor application of such decisions that would lead to a constriction of definition (i.e. what is legally allowed as “art”) or poor legislation from lawmakers that is a greater concern to me.
[2] I know, here we go again. This implies a weak enforcement of copyright law where an author is only entitled to enforce their rights with regards to the original artifact, not all subsequent iterations and permutations of it.
[3] Except in the most extreme cases, the application of ecology to culture implies a suspension of value judgments about the content of the contribution as such judgments are almost sure to be entirely subjective.
[4] And as an artist, I certainly count as “the little guy” in so far as success, influence, and sales of my work stand.
[5] In the tradition of Rauschenberg’s Factum I and Factum II this wouldn’t necessarily be an original comment or idea to explore, but that isn’t the standard, and there is value in turning an idea over and continuing to think about it (ahem).
[6] Even this isn’t a new idea; in fact it’s already been applied to Richard Prince’s work.
[7] Largely because my own career could use the publicity.
[8] Duchamp excluded.
[9] Although I would have to concede that a lawsuit appears to be a great way to get the publicity ball rolling.
On Copyright (Part 1): Towards a Theory of Fair Use.
Following my previous post regarding my thoughts on the Cariou vs. Prince decision commenter “Cruising” has argued some points that I feel require both a more careful refutation and explanation of my point of view. Photo blogger Joerg Colberg has also posed questions about the nature of appropriation in relation to intellectual property that I feel tie into a more general explanation that expands beyond just Richard Prince’s Canal Zone paintings. While my focus is on the artistic rights of both “authors” and “appropriationists”[1], I will still inevitably need to venture a bit deeper into the details and opinions of the law. In such cases I must profess that I am by no means an expert in this (or any other) area of law[2], but my intent is to provide a theory of fair use in artistic production rather than a breakdown of the legal details of copyright that would certainly be handled better elsewhere.
Of course the central problem is that fair use is almost designed to be unclear, and decided on a case by case basis.[3] What one side may see as “an anomaly” that “has some major problems in its application of the law” will likely be viewed by the other side as a victory and proper application of the law.[4] While this inevitably leads to judges deciding what is fair use,[5] it is likely a better state of affairs than having legislators attempt to make that decision. There’s a reason the laws and decisions have evolved as they have; anything where subtle twists of intent and reference can change the legal rights of an artifact[6] (be it image or object) will always have people pushing the envelope and probing the margins to see what the limits really are. In this regard, the lack of precedents in prior cases that were settled also provides an ambiguous relation to the law as both sides may see the settlement as a victory.[7]
In working towards an understanding of fair use it becomes important to balance the intent of copyright with a reasoned value of allowing others to use protected intellectual property for free. If the intent of copyright is to encourage innovation and creativity by making sure that the creators are paid for their efforts, then any reasoning for fair use must supply a corresponding value to the culture at large. In focusing on artistic and cultural production[8] I find the balancing value of fair use in the intent of the copyright statute itself and in the responsibility that authors have within the larger cultural ecosystem. As authors put their own creations out into that ecosystem (and expect its protection under the law), they must recognize that their works have an impact on that larger system that may similarly be commented on by others. If the intent of the copyright statue is to encourage innovation, then fair use is the mechanism that allows sanctuary enough for the work of new authors to be made out of the old and promote the growth of the ecosystem as a whole.
In my previous post I pointed to Prince’s transformation of Cariou’s originals by his artistic process. The response that simply changing media is not enough to claim fair use is certainly true, but at the same time that should not grant the original author the right to shepherd the artifact through all its cultural interactions. For all the discussion of Cariou as the “little guy” and Prince as the “bully” making a lot of money for selling his paintings, it would be all too easy for large corporations or governments to use copyright litigation to limit speech they found objectionable or threatening. There is a difference between a cultural interaction and a commercial one. Art occupies a gray area where its commercial interests as commodity poses challenges not faced by academic, educational, or informational interests (that are on less contested legal footing) as it is in somewhat ambiguous territory in serving many of the above functions. Furthermore, art’s historical link to free speech places it at an interesting legal nexus between copyright and the first amendment; that there are (sometimes vast) sums of money exchanging hands over the product does not eliminate the broader interest to protecting free speech. Artifacts and cultural products from The New York Times to most Hollywood major motion pictures all involve large amounts of money going out and coming in as profit. That artists may also be making large amounts of money from works that feature appropriated elements that exceeds that of the author of the source material is not a reason to set a poor precedent.[9]
Employing a standard of transformation requires that an actual change to or comment on the form or content of the original[10] also allows the original author to maintain his or her ability to monetize their intellectual property.[11] In most cases the appropriated artifact was either a mass-produced common object or copied in a manner that does not affect the unique original; the resulting artifact is new, and something that would not have been made by the original copyright holder. These artifacts are the product of work that adds to cultural ecosystem; in this regard authors who claim copyright infringement against transformative works are aligning themselves in opposition to the intent of the copyright statute.[12] While licensing fees do support authors of all types, and the bias that appropriationists could simply license the properties is oft stated, that road has already been shown to be creatively limiting and would set the stage for post-hoc censorship as anyone with a copyright claim to limit art or speech via an onerous license. Art (as opposed to purely commercial ventures) is a different animal, it should no more be licensed and limited than any other form of speech, political or otherwise.
Popular music has already suffered a chilling effect in the face of restrictive copyright control, and it seems that the art world can expect to see more lawsuits, some patently ludicrous, as authors try to control the creative output of others, limit their work’s cultural interaction, or simply make money off other artists interacting with the artifacts that make up their own world. Copyright is meant to foster a roiling cultural interaction that produces new and competing ideas, not partition it off like the aisles and shelves of a Wall Mart.
[1] It should be clear that the opinions I ascribe to these labels for the purposes of this discussion are far more malleable and varied in practice.
[2] Especially the relative differences between copyright, trademark, and patent law that can all theoretically affect legislation over intellectual property.
[3] The United States Copyright Office’s own webpage on fair use advises that “If there is any doubt, it is advisable to consult an attorney.”
[4] For instance the exceptions granted to large corporations like Disney who would otherwise have seen certain properties pass into the public domain strikes me as an egregious miscarriage of the intent of the law.
[5] And by extension who gets paid.
[6] Used here to describe anything made by an “author,” to cut down on needing to endlessly type out long descriptive phrases that still aren’t really exact enough.
[7] It should be noted that the music industry appears to have taken a stance that they are much more concerned with not having any precedent established than with winning any particular case. Cases where a fair use defense might go against them are almost certain to be settled or dropped. Any decision that established a broader precedent for fair use would be a much greater setback than the monies paid out in a single case.
[8] As opposed to the standards allowed for reporting, excerpts, and scholarship that are more clearly allowed for in the law.
[9] And it should go without saying that large corporations or governments will certainly walk through any loophole that is only opened with the intent of protecting the “little guy.”
[10] In this regard Sherie Levine’s work is an excellent example of just how subtle such transformation can be. In rephotographing the work of Walker Evans there was little, if any, physical transformation. However her project and exhibition used those images to comment on a male dominated art world and genderized notions of creativity and genius in a manner that completely changed the reading and intent of the works.
[11] This is the difference between appropriation and stealing someone’s wallet. In Mr. Colberg’s example the owner of the wallet is going to have hard time spending the money that was cut up and glued to Oooga, oooga (21st Century Capitalism). The same would apply if his hypothetical appropriation artist simply shoplifted the paint used to make the painting.
[12] Often by the mechanism of demanding money from artifacts that use their own works as sources, but that they would not or could not have made. In these cases it strikes me that artists simply are not guaranteed to make a living from their work, and that if they were not suing artists their claims would be filed with nuisance suits.
What appropriation means to me and mine
Unpacking the specific details of Patrick Cariou’s lawsuit against Richard Prince and his dealer Larry Gagosian for infringement of copyright is a complicated matter. More informed writers have already tackled it; writing for Artnet, Joy Garnett provides a great set of links to opinions from some of the different camps. She’s also continued to cover the debate on her own blog, as has Greg Allen (who has gone so far as to compile the relevant court transcripts into a book). My concern here is not to cover the legal issues, but instead to offer the view of an artist who is outside the debate.
I have always been ambivalent about appropriation as a tactic in art. As a painter who was focused on abstraction, systems, and process, I was never particularly concerned with the conceptual point being made by artists like Richard Prince or Sherie Levine. It was simply outside my practice. I also assumed that as someone who did not appropriate the works of others that their legal issues where far removed from affecting me. My sense of entitlement as someone who creates original work certainly played into this sentiment, but as the saying goes “I didn’t speak up when they came for the appropriationists…”
As with most debates where law and politics start throwing their weight around within the art world, artists will find themselves defending people or art they may not like to the benefit of a greater ideal. Mr. Prince may be an asshole, his work may be ugly, and he certainly made a lot of money[1] selling paintings, but none of those are reasons that he should be denied protection under the law[2]. At least part of the problem appears to be that the law is a mess. Prince and Gagosian relied on the ruling that protected Jeff Koons for their definition of fair use[3], a notion that seems to have been thrown out (or through) the window by Judge Batts’ ruling. Since these rulings seem to contradict one another, and because most cases of this sort get settled out of court in a manner that denies a clear legal precedent, it makes it much easier for commentators on all sides to apply their own ideas of what’s fair to the exception of actual law, and it seems like at least having a clear statute would be to everyone’s benefit. Until then individual artists, photographers, designers, and any other interested parties are going to be making it up as they go along.
This disagreement seems to mostly break down along the lines of artists as “appropriationists” and photographers and designers as “creators” (although the categories are certainly by no means set in stone). Fair use is the sticking point[4], with proponents of appropriation pointing to the transformative nature of their processes and the original creators claiming the rights of their original material. I believe that art should be given a wide berth from legislation and that the immense monies generated by the art market are not a reason to see art suffer unnecessary limitations.
This follows from how I parse authorship. A collector buying a Sherrie Levine rephotograph of a Walker Evans print knows they are buying a Levine. Anyone who saw the actual work at Metro Pictures cannot miss the context of Levine’s project, and certainly isn’t buying Levine’s photo in lieu buying a Walker Evans[5]. If such “almost same” works are protected I don’t see how Prince’s works are not transformative[6] of Cariou’s photos. The poster child for the argument that Prince hardly transformed or altered Cariou’s photos is the side by side comparison of the two images of a Rastafarian (to which Prince added Neil Young’s guitar) found at the top of Ms. Garnett’s artnet.com article. However in art the image is not the art, and the transformative nature of Mr. Prince’s enlarging, printing, collaging, and painting is a lot more evident when comparing the actual photo to the actual painting. The difference becomes even starker when you compare The Gagosian Gallery webpages that archive installation views of the exhibition. Unless the Rastafarians that Mr. Cariou spent so much time with included quite a few constantly naked women fond of striking poses from pin-ups and pornography[7], I don’t see how he can claim that Mr. Prince didn’t transform his original photos[8].
The argument I see from the other side[9] is that a restrictive enforcement of copyright laws would not hurt art, it would only make for more “original” art and thus be good for everyone, artists and audience. As a counter-argument I’d like to propose that we look no farther than how the enforcement of copyright has affected the production of Hip Hop and sample based music. The initial music that came out of this collage aesthetic was unbelievably complex, so much so that it may be impossible to suss out all the source recordings of early tracks by Public Enemy and others. Compare that to the sonic simplicity that copyright enforcement has brought on with more recent productions as Hip Hop artists simply cannot afford to purchase the rights to a veritable library of beats to produce a single track, let alone a whole album. The differences in production and distribution between painting and music may put the comparison fundamentally unsound legal ground, but it is at least a real world example of how the production of art has been affected. In contrast those who would argue that copyright enforcement is good for art are relying on an empty platitude that sounds nice in theory but does not ring true in practice.
Truth be told, I did not care at all for the Canal Zone exhibition. I only spent the 3 minutes it took me to circumnavigate Gagosian’s Chelsea hangar and scan the works to realize I had a better uses for my time than examining Mr. Prince’s view of an apocalypse from the isle of St. Barths. But one of my central beliefs is that bad art is just as deserving of protection and respect as the art I happen like. This is all the more the case when powers of law are invoked, as they far reaching and often unintended consequences will have long term implications beyond just a disagreement of aesthetics or taste. My own work has now moved in the direction of using found or appropriated texts, something I would not have expected back when I first considered the work and strategies of Levine and Prince. As far as art is concerned, even if they say they’re only coming for the appropriationists, the effect will be on all of art.
[1] The adjective “obscene” may apply, depending on your own feeling.
[2] It is referred to as “equal protection” for a reason, it cannot only apply to nice people who make pretty work that they don’t sell.
[3] And apparently not much else.
[4] Or more accurately is the intellectual sticking point used to argue about money.
[5] Even if such a collector did hang a Levine in their house and claim to own a Walker Evans, it wouldn’t change the material truth about that particular photo, and the artist can’t be held responsible for such misuse.
[6] In form, if not in content. See Joy Garnett for a discussion on the transformative nature of Prince’s painting process in relation to Cariou’s photos in the larger context of mechanical reproduction and the Cariou v Prince & Gagosian depositions and decision for comments on Prince’s intentions and the judgment against their comment (or lack thereof) on Cariou’s originals.
[7] I haven’t had a good look at Cariou’s Yes Rasta book, so it’s an honest question, but my guess is that the porn is from a separate source(s).
[8] Or how the legal teams representing Prince and Gagosian could fail to get an actual comparison entered into the record. Or how Judge Batts could then also determine that Mr. Prince’s work is not somehow transformative or a new thing. Life is full of little mysteries like that.
[9] I think it’s pretty clear that I’ve chosen a side here by this point.
Intent or Artifact: Richard Serra’s Drawings.
I will confess that I have long had a fascination with the drawings of sculptors. Drawing as a medium is immediate in a way no other medium is; a mark on paper direct from the artist’s hand is about as close to thought or intent as you can get. Where a painter’s hand will leave an equivalent gesture from drawing to painting (think of Terry Winters or Brice Marden), a sculptor (may) have an interesting turn as the marks turn to towards the artist’s thinking in three dimensions. There was something to a drawing with the directness of a schematic, something only as refined as it needed to be yet dealing with idiosyncratic manufacture that spoke to me, but in a dialect I couldn’t quite fathom.
Richard Serra’s drawings approached this basic interest from the opposite horizon. His sculptural output seems to be about taking the basic language of art that is regularly commanded by drawing (line, volume, mass, gesture) and transposing it into sculpture (and from sculpture, one could argue, to architecture). A product of the late 60’s, Serra’s early concerns dovetailed with larger questions raised by the reductiveness of late Modernism in a way that could not help but engage painting. His early installation works of paintstick on linen stapled directly to the wall could easily be called paintings if the artist wanted to. (And matches the polished and otherwise anonymous metal wall reliefs of painters like Ellsworth Kelly.)
Abstract Slavery (1974) is a monochrome masterpiece of subtle orientations of mass, angle, and material that communicates with little in the way of vocabulary beyond the considerable work of making it. One edge is trimmed perpendicular to the floor, and the irregular plane suggests a cut into space that remains flat on the wall. The scale and irregularity alter the viewer’s space with a shove, which is about as direct as communication gets.
As a retrospective of his drawings organized by the Menil collection opens at the Metropolitan Museum, viewers will get a chance to see a less trumpeted side of the artist, his commitment to process. Serra’s drawings are not composed pictorially, but of an intent to act on a space or material. Since his heralded list of verbs and his under-recognized process based works of splashing, scattering, and other action on found industrial material that preceded his props, the artist’s commitment to the materials and process has not been as explored. Large bends in steel plates are not always talked about for the work of their making, but it is clear that the artist approaches them in this fashion, as would the ship builders whose steel plants help manufacture the pieces. Likewise his approach to his drawings exhibits a particular rigor that does not necessarily privilege the object.
Laura Gilbert’s look at the provenance and dating of the material that will be on view strikes me as utterly beside the point. The “installation drawings” simply do not exhibit any concern with finicky notions of a precious object or the artist’s hand. It is likely that anonymous assistants did a good deal of the manual labor of applying heated paintstick to linen, and it seems much more appropriate to consider those pieces of linen as no more special than a particular plate of steel or lead. Any minor surface inflection is beside the point, and with them dates of production or concerns about whether they are originals or copies. They are, as the artist bluntly states, material.
That is not to say that the Mr. Serra has discarded any care about his work in favor of some ephemeral notion of the dissolution of the art object; how could anyone with such an obvious dedication to weight and mass? I continually find myself thinking about his early work To Lift in MoMA’s collection. Made by the artist simply grabbing a piece of vulcanized rubber and lifting it up off the floor so that the sheet could support the weight of its new found (sculptural) volume, it is as direct a gesture as drawing can get. My engagement with the work comes from my day job as an art handler tasked to pack and crate works for shipment. Looking at the task of crating the sculpture with little information other than the picture, I wondered if the volume needed to be crated, or if we might just be shipping a flat piece of rubber that would be “re-lifted” for the exhibition. There was also the chance that nothing would be sent, and a new piece of rubber would be trimmed to size and lifted, duplicating the original (an exhibition copy).
Any of these courses of action would potentially fit within Mr. Serra’s practice. As it turns out I was able to talk to a colleague who had designed a crate for the work, one that supported a very aged fold of vulcanized rubber (a decidedly non-archival material that does not age well). I asked after the possibility of replacing the rubber, and it turns out that the artist was unconcerned with change in the material over time, looking at it as a natural process in the life of the piece. In the end the matter is one of an artist with a realized and considered practice working through his concerns through an engagement with materials and the process enacted on them; just as some bent plates sitting in a steel yard in the Bronx do not a Serra make, some new linen, paintstick, and staples do not change the artist’s intentions on the space around him, or us.
My List
As the little tempest in a teacup that is some artists on Twitter finding Modern Art Notes Tyler Green’s Art Madness Bracket rather light on works of the post-war art that wasn’t produced by white males, noted art writer Sharon Butler solicited alternative lists that were published on her Two Coats of Paint blog. I submitted my own list as did several other artists, writers, and critics. I found the entire exercise to be very interesting; looking at the other lists I had quite a few “Oh, how could I leave that work off?” moments. In other cases it allowed me to gain a slightly more subtle understanding of another artists own work, development, and interests. I found drawing up my own list to be fairly eye opening; some artists that I hadn’t consciously thought about for awhile wound up having a lot of pieces on my first draft (that I had to cut 3 Bruce Nauman works was a surprise). In other cases I found that artists that were important to me didn’t have a singular work or even series that stood out in proportion to their overall career (or against the other works I listed).
In the end I approached my list as I think the individual writers who rank baseball prospects do. It has to be considered a snapshot of what I think right now, it is not the same list I would’ve produced a year ago and may change even in the near future. It also almost certainly contains a bias towards works that have influenced me in the past and work that I look at and consider in relation to what’s going on in my own studio now. I think this was a consideration for all of the artists who participated. As one of my primary issues with Mr. Green’s list is that focusing on individual masterpieces was one of the systematic biases that lead to so few women making the list, I made much broader allowances than he or his co-jurors did.
1. Pollock Number 32
2. Judd 100 works in milled aluminum
3. Ellsworth Kelly La Combe
4. Joseph Beuys Arena
5. Smithson Spiral Jetty
6. Gordon Matta-Clarke Splitting
7. DeKooning Excavation
8. Frank Stella The Marriage of Reason and Squalor
9. Cindy Sherman Untitled Film Stills *
10. Judd Untitled 1962
11. Serra Belts
12. Nauman South American Triangle
13. Roni Horn Paired Mats – for Ross and Felix
14. Terry Winters Good Government
15. Brice Marden The Grove Group *
16. Gober Silly Sink
17. Richter October 18th *
18. Christopher Wool Apocalypse Now
19. Glen Ligon Untitled (Text paintings) *
20. Paul Thek Technological Reliquaries *
21. Matthew Barney Cremaster 3
22. Eva Hesse Untitled 1970
23. Catherine Opie Untitled (Icehouse series) *
24. Blinky Palermo To the people of NYC
25. L. Bourgeois Spider 1997
26. Felix Gonzalez Torres Untitled (Perfect Lovers)
27. Nauman Corrider Installation (Nick Wilder Installation)
28. Flavin Untitled (Marfa Project) 1996
29. Barry LeVa Continuous and Related Activities
30. Maya Lin Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial
31. Julie Meheretu Goldman Sachs Mural
32. Wade Guyton Untitled 1997 *(kind of)
Works marked with an asterisk point to series or bodies of work that are so closely related that I think pulling out a single work is beside the point.
My last changes were removing Martin Puryear’s Bask in favor of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial and cutting Moria Dryer’s Random Fire. The works that just missed were Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series, Rachel Whiteread’s House, Bruce Conner’s A Movie, Robert Frank’s The Americans, Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet, and Mark Bradford’s Scorched Earth. Clearly some of these works will be seen by others as more deserving, or “better”, but the point is that they just aren’t to me. I’m not arguing that Wade Guyton’s Untitled is of greater historical importance than Frank’s masterpiece, but The Americans doesn’t hold any interest for me or my practice. On the other hand I still find myself referring back to that painting of an “X” that was run through a big Epson printer, and thinking about how it has changed how I approach ideas of text and touch in my own painting. Similarly, early on I toyed with the idea of adding John Beech’s Make in the last spot on the list. I wanted the end to point towards a new work that had recently affected me and caused me to reconsider a broad swath of the art I was seeing around me every day.
At the top I still have Pollock and Judd. I wanted to put Judd’s Chinati Foundation (the entire Foundation and everything in it) ahead of even Pollock, but that wouldn’t really have been in the spirit of the list or the response to Mr. Green. As it stands, Pollock’s drip paintings in total represent a great deal to contemporary art, and I think one of the major differences between post-war European and American art turns on the different spaces in painting and process he opened up with these works. I can oscillate between Number 32 and Autumn Rhythm, but I prefer the stark graphic quality of the uncorrected black enamel on cotton duck. That it all starts with drawing appeals to me.
It has also been interesting to hear suggestions to what we missed. John Powers noted that Jay DeFeo’s The Rose was left off everyone’s lists. (If women are denied the admission of genius that would “let them produce a singular masterpiece, she’s an excellent example of an opposite bias – she produced that single masterpiece, but is otherwise not considered for not having a more level career.) John Morris pointed out that I missed any reference to street art, and that Henry Darger perhaps should have been listed. I’ll speak to street art at another time, but Darger would’ve presented an interesting case. My own list is remarkably light on figuration (even in the photography), and Darger also raises the issue of “outsider” art. It’s a different angle, and one I don’t have an answer to, but considering everything from his opus as a single work would turn notions of art’s canon on it’s head.
Obviously I’m completely missing Johns, Rauschenberg, Rothko, Guston, Barnet Newman , and Warhol. This exercise has me reconsidering John’s White Flag. (I still think the Ballantine Ale Cans are a fairly lame joke, however.) With the others, I still just don’t come back to them anymore. I think all of these artists produced great works, and they’re works that I love, but they’re not something I relate to day to day anymore. John Powers has written an excellent repudiation of the concept of the masterpiece itself in response to the uproar. Looking over the lists the other artists provided, I think that may point to where artists are going to take art. Less masterpieces and more work is more democratic after all. If more voices is deemed a good thing then maybe shouting down the masterpiece is a good use of breath.
Bracketology
Although I am not a basketball fan, the NCAA tournament has always represented the turning point where winter turns to spring. I have no interest in March Madness or associated workplace gambling; my sport is baseball and the annoyance posed by my co-workers trying to get me to go in on the office pool really only means that opening day is around the corner…
This is the second year Tyler Green has given his readers a set of brackets ostensibly for the art world. Last year he pitted the America’s abstract painters against one another (Cy Twombly beat out Ellsworth Kelly for the crown), but this year’s version is a bit more problematic. He aims to present a tournament of the greatest post-war works of art, but has instead managed to expose just how ingrained some of the systematic biases that haunt art and its attendant institutions can be.
Looking at his selection of 64 works of art, you’ll find only 3 works by women: Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 0, and Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. On the other hand, most of the (very) old white males of the art historical canon are represented multiple times. Ruscha, Serra, and Judd are found twice; Richter three times; Johns, Rauschenberg, DeKooning, Pollock, and Barnet Newman four times; and, perhaps fittingly for this kind of popularity contest, Warhol leads the pack with five works. That’s more than half the total bracket represented by only 10 (white) men.
Mr. Green did not generate the list of works himself; he amalgamated a seeding selection from five guests (two of whom were women) to get the final brackets, but the process is his, and despite facing complaints from myself and others (on Twitter) he has chosen to defend these results as given by the process he set up. I have suggested (in an exchange on Twitter) that such results may point to a flawed process and that as the organizer he could have made some changes, but his response was “Why on earth would I presume I’m so smart I should overrule the five other (distinguished) people I invited to contribute?”
An exercise of this sort, intended to be lighthearted and in good fun, is bound to contain most of the works that populate the very end of a mammoth art history textbook. The broad outlines and movements of post-war and contemporary art will be illustrated with a few key works, as space allows. If women and minorities are not well represented, whose fault is that? The makers of the list only picked personal favorites and had them compiled after all. If Joan Snyder, Helen Frankenthaler, Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou, Ana Mendita, Anne Truitt, Agnes Martin, Lee Krasner, Lynda Benglis, Carolee Schneemann, Judy Chicago, Howardina Pindell, Elizabeth Murray, Dorthea Rockburn, Mona Hatoum, Yayoi Kusama, or Louise Bourgeios (to name just a few of the notables from the same time period as most of the works on the list off the top of my head) weren’t the favorites of these critics and curators, why is that necessarily a problem within the context of this harmless little game?
The answer is that because Mr. Green’s game has managed to illustrate quite succinctly how easy it is to exclude women and minorities and still have everyone involved remain blameless. Whether it be a small lark of a bracket or the larger art world, it is too easy to point at a system or process as an excuse without actually examining who set up the system or how. It may be “just a game”, but games allow us to distill and process some of life’s messier and complex interactions into a simpler form that is more comprehensible for its abstraction. In short, they make it easier to see what is fair, and I think it becomes very clear that the system as devised is not (either in the brackets or the art world).
At least in the case Art Maddness II, the problems are easier to identify and fix. Looking at the list I think it is evident that there are shifting evaluations based on lax guidelines. If it makes sense to consider Cindy Sherman’s entire Untitled Film Still series and Gerhard Richter’s Baader-Meinhof paintings as a single entity, why does Jasper Johns need three different flags? Is Three Flags really that different from Flag? Similarly, how different are the DeKooning Women or any of the Newman zip paintings? Is the point to consider groundbreaking work or major statements? Isn’t Vir Heroicus Sublimis so closely related to Onement I that context that they can be discussed in the same breadth? Pollock’s individual drip paintings are different enough, but isn’t their scope related to the collective breakthrough they represent?
Lest I be accused of not presenting an alternative, I find that I only need to look at another rite of spring, one that relates to my own sporting interest and would not require any great investment to change. Every spring Baseball America ranks the top 100 prospects in baseball’s minor leagues. It is every bit as contentious as any other interested battle of minutiae, and their process is remarkably similar to Mr. Green’s. Each of their writing staff compiles a list of their opinion of the top prospects, and the results are compiled in a spreadsheet. However instead of that being the end of it and having the final list generated by having Jim Callis hit ‘print’, the writers get together to look at the raw results and debate and argue for them. They curate the list, revising and reconsidering so that there is, if not consensus, then at least a sense that the biases and idiosyncrasies that arise from such a small sampling of opinion can be removed and that the final list is stronger. Mr. Green could have had a simple conference call with Michael Auping, Kristen Hileman, Dominic Molon, Ed Schad, and Katy Siegel to see where duplicate works that present the same idea could be reconciled, and to see what deserving works that may have been left off could take the place of the duplicate.
To be inclusive may have been a bit more work, but it is disappointing that a writer who purports to hold himself to high standards and certainly holds others to similar account did not make the effort. The tournament hosted by Modern Art Notes is a small offense, but the reason to speak out against such minor infractions is to hold the larger system to account. That “it’s just a game” shouldn’t be an excuse if we don’t want “it’s just art” to be a similar refrain.
