Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Alan Sondheim
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.
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.
- Alan
( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt -
revised 7/05 )
justin...@gmail.com
devoted to an advertising monoculture. as in, i'd rather see a jenny
holzer set-up than any number of *other* brand-name monoliths.
On 7/19/05, David-Baptiste Chirot <davidb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Oh, Alan, I understand for most people the work is liberating and exciti
ng.
> 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. T
hen
> 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 liberat
ed
> etc. The feeling in it to me is one of an eltistism. "I know better--an
d
> you know better, too, because you see this in me." The "alternative
> spaces"--Franklin Furnace etc--are part of the world they are "alternativ
e"
> too. It does for me have to do with "goodness". It is all very ethicall
y
> 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
> good society 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 t
he
> 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 mysel
f
> the works are really oppressive and confining. I see them and walk the ot
her
> way. I don't want to march in (their) line, that's all.
> ________________________________
> Find just what you're after with the new, more precise MSN Search - try
it
> now!
Lanny R.
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!
justin...@gmail.com
Alan Sondheim
course a whole tradition of aphoristic writing from Marcus Aurelius and
earlier through the Schlegels, Karl Kraus, etc. It's not meant to be taken
literally. With Holzer it talks about the language that produces them;
they're self-contained, edgy, verging on truth. But they're also playful
in many cases such as the 42nd Street installation. They're words become
architecture among other things, and that's fascinating. And on occasion
they borrow from advertising, selling nothing but dry ethos. -
Alan -
Joel Weishaus
From: "Alan Sondheim" <sond...@PANIX.COM>
To: <WRYT...@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
Lanny R.
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
Lanny R.
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 address—from 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 decade—pitting
conservative politicians such as Jessie Helms against artists such as
Andres Serrano and organizations like the National Endowment for the
Arts—reflected 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 photographs—from movie stills to family
snapshots, respectively—and 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 wishes—the
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!
Joel Weishaus
-Joel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lanny R." <soli...@HEVANET.COM>
To: <WRYT...@listserv.utoronto.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 9:12 AM
Subject: Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Joel Weishaus
with his writing.
-Joel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lanny R." <soli...@HEVANET.COM>
To: <WRYT...@listserv.utoronto.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 1:00 PM
Subject: Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Joel Weishaus
-Joel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lanny R." <soli...@HEVANET.COM>
To: <WRYT...@listserv.utoronto.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 1:42 PM
Subject: 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 address-from 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 decade-pitting
conservative politicians such as Jessie Helms against artists such as
Andres Serrano and organizations like the National Endowment for the
Arts-reflected this increased visibility and the socially directed
appropriated banal vernacular photographs-from movie stills to family
snapshots, respectively-and 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 wishes-the
Alan Sondheim
Jeffrey Deitch? - Alan
( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt -
revised 7/05 )
Alan Sondheim
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
Alan Sondheim
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.'
Joel Weishaus
d
me." It still does. This came before Andy Warhol introduced mass produc
tion
into art, when the artist still agonized over a painting or sculpture l
ike
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 fortun
e,
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, l
ittle
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, afte
r all.
It's not even the mythic fabric of Beuys' life.
-Joel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Sondheim" <sond...@PANIX.COM>
To: <WRYT...@listserv.utoronto.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 9:10 PM
Subject: Re: Rebus 01--became what it beheld
Alan Sondheim
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.
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
- alan
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.
Joel Weishaus
From: "Alan Sondheim" <sond...@PANIX.COM>
To: <WRYT...@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, w
hy 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 mo
re
so since so often new media were and are also brought into play
-Of course you're right.
-Joel