glass works
Kevin Magee
> I honestly don't know of anyone working under state art demands; I know
> Dale Chihuli from years ago, he's been declared a National Treasure or
> some such, and he works according to his own rhythms and has extended
> glass in directions it hadn't gone before. I think you're applying theory
> and concept towards a past that at least as I can see is just not the case
> in the contemporary artworld here or abroad, but I may be overstating. I
> find discourses on regionalism valuable, Bourdieu, for example, or a lot
> of material in magazines such as Art Papers which I used to write for and
> which covers the south in a very astute way.
>
I haven't seen the Nation article you mentioned the other day, but isn't
pulling funding out of a museum an example of "state" or government or
local/city politics interfering with the making of art and free speech? But I
probably mean the term "state" art more metaphorically, adhering to accepted
codes of representation, whether or not the art is conscious of it, and also
projecting a possible development in the "state of the art," that as culture
becomes politicized, artists will be expected to be in control of their
representations, which invites questions about internal and external
censorship. Thanks for the compliment about my "applying theory and concept
towards a past," which I'm hardly skilled enough at, in terms of culture
theory, or art history, but I often wonder whether trying to represent the
past, or include representations from the past in an artwork, has an
anticipatory aspect to it, anticipatory of a future, where the content of a
work of art will increasingly be found within narrowing frames of
interpretation, kind of the reverse of that story about the museum guide
during wartime describing paintings that weren't there, having been moved to
safety, and having only the frames to go by. Language had to substitute for
the act of perception, what a task! Again, we see/say what they say/see. Is
the contemporary art world "here and abroad" the same thing, or are there
issues in this country specific to its social history which distinguishes the
discourse about culture here? What's the history of the "Sensations" show,
had it shown in Europe, what was the response, if any, there? Not that I'm
asking you to answer all these questions yourself, but if you know of any
articles or reviews I could look up . . . I have a book by Bourdieu on
photography, though I haven't looked at for a while, but photography itself
has had and continues to have a powerful influence on me, the idea of
collage-writing from books as a kind of photography of representations from
the past embedded there, though as always, to put it that way makes the
process sound more conscious than it is or ever can be. The hardest thing of
all for any artist to talk about is their intuitive intelligence, and it is
an intelligence, that absorbs stuff going on around them in the social
landscape, urban or otherwise.
Kevin
Alan Sondheim
on the Net about it, but I don't have the URLs. I'm not that interested
per se in that one way or another; there's been a slow leaking of funding
for the arts in the States which has resulted in the closing or narrowing
of all sorts of arts organizations, not just alternative. So there are
fights about funding and censorship and all that sort of thing; the art
itself continues to be produced and a fair amount finds its way into gal-
leries of all sorts of course, including alternative spaces and university
galleries which don't often have the same sort of censorship problems. In
any case the field is immense and varied as is the criticism and the ven-
ues for exhibition. If I were going to even try to approach everything
through theory I'd probably use a combination of pomo, decon, multicult,
and phenomenology, as well as - and this is the CRITICAL part - LOOKING AT
THE ART, TALKING TO THE ARTISTS AND CRITICS AND DEALERS etc. - because
otherwise I think it's very difficult to comprehend such a complex field
which is not so much institutionally-defined, museums notwithstanding. And
if I were living outside New York (and even here), I'd read the art mags
as much as possible - Art Papers, Artforum, Art in America, World Art,
October, etc. - but then that's my take on it, one of immersion - Alan
Internet Text at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
Partial at http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
Trace Projects at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
A. Ferraiolo
on this list honestly believe the SENSATIONS show is about artistic freedom?
Charles Saatchi is an ad man.
As Hilton Kramer wrote, Saatchi buys and sells art futures the way other
traders buy and sell pork bellies. He knows how to play the media with his
shock pseudo "art." He knew exactly the kind of reaction he would get
through blasphemy.
What would be the market value of this painting without this surrounding
controversy? What is it's market value at present?
You want to talk to artists? To painters? Go ahead. I challeng any of you to
go anywhere and present to any artist the idea of Charles Saatchi as a
defender of artistic freedom. I would love to be in the room with you when
you do it, in fact, I'd like the license on the peanut concession for that
circus.
There is nothing complicated about the issues surrounding this show. Ask
yourself the simple questions: Who stands to profit? Who's making the
money? How did they make it?
We have no one to blame but ourselves. See you at Christie's.
Kevin Magee
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"[T]he art itself continues to be produced and a fair amount finds its way
into galleries of all sorts of course, including alternative spaces and
university galleries . . . the field is immense and varied as is the
criticism and the venues for exhibition." The art world is really foreign to
how I work, if I can talk about my own writing in relation to a show in
Brooklyn, here, or anywhere else. Lots of interesting stuff must go on at
colleges and universities, as you mention. A couple of weeks ago not too far
from here, at Lake Erie College, there was a 48 hour residency where artists
and writers camped out and worked in full view of the public. This is only
the kind of event you can have at a public institution, but I'm interested in
some of the possible parallels with stuff that must go on in private
galleries or studios, digital cameras, photography, recordings, etc., I'm not
very current on this stuff, still dealing with a lot of information I've been
introduced to over the past months. Would an effort to document my own studio
as a parallel "port" to the event that's scheduled here represent what you
call an "alternative space"? What do you think? One reason why I'm not
participating in the show here is that I'm less and less interested in
performing in public, as we talked about in NY a propos Glenn Gould. But what
I write and how I write continues to affirm the materiality of writing, what
they used to call ecriture, which internet art probably feels it has
overcome, or left behind, or superceded, so I press pen to paper, working out
of books, working close to the original, finding expressive variations within
the act of copying, as among other things an affirmation of slow learning,
and I am a slow learner, always have been, and it probably has something to
do with childhood poverty, the humiliation and contempt you get exposed to,
and you counter that with proving your ability to learn, and absorb lessons
profoundly, like teaching yourself another language, which is what's
happening in the FM/petit maspero. The method of writing I'm describing might
be called Basics, as in the Basics of Drawing, or Basic Grammar, or the
Fundamentals of Thinking--titles you'd expect to find at a "polytechnical"
school--really an act of composition which in the act of composing itself
represents an act of solidarity with those coming to writing, or even going
from one language to another, or becoming bilingual, learning another
language so that the language you grew up in may absorb some of the nuances
of thought from the other language you're studying. Anyway, this is what
there would be to document, in addition to perhaps doing some recordings,
though I'm less and less interested in my own voice, and perhaps even doing
an on-line interview, all of this around the idea of a private studio space
interfacing with the on-line world, so I wanted to mention this idea, since
I'm out of it as far as web technology goes, and my first thought is to rent
a video camera and run it on a tripod, and photograph my studio, my books,
the walls, the windows, all to be developed later of course, when I get the
time and technology. Do you have any ideas on this? This sounds somewhat
opposite to your thought about "immersion," and of course I wouldn't ask if I
thought there wasn't the possibility that you'd disagree - Kevin.
Alan Sondheim wrote:
> The Sensations show was also a scandal in England; there's a lot of stuff
> on the Net about it, but I don't have the URLs. I'm not that interested
> per se in that one way or another; there's been a slow leaking of funding
> for the arts in the States which has resulted in the closing or narrowing
> of all sorts of arts organizations, not just alternative. So there are
> fights about funding and censorship and all that sort of thing; the art
> itself continues to be produced and a fair amount finds its way into gal-
> leries of all sorts of course, including alternative spaces and university
> galleries which don't often have the same sort of censorship problems. In
> any case the field is immense and varied as is the criticism and the ven-
> ues for exhibition. If I were going to even try to approach everything
> through theory I'd probably use a combination of pomo, decon, multicult,
> and phenomenology, as well as - and this is the CRITICAL part - LOOKING AT
> THE ART, TALKING TO THE ARTISTS AND CRITICS AND DEALERS etc. - because
> otherwise I think it's very difficult to comprehend such a complex field
> which is not so much institutionally-defined, museums notwithstanding. And
> if I were living outside New York (and even here), I'd read the art mags
> as much as possible - Art Papers, Artforum, Art in America, World Art,
> October, etc. - but then that's my take on it, one of immersion - Alan
>
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"[T]he art itself continues to be produced and a fair amount finds its
way into galleries of all sorts of course, including alternative spaces
and university galleries . . . the field is immense and varied as is the
criticism and the venues for exhibition." The art world is really foreign
to how I work, if I can talk about my own writing in relation to a show
in Brooklyn, here, or anywhere else. Lots of interesting stuff must go
on at colleges and universities, as you mention. A couple of weeks ago
not too far from here, at Lake Erie College, there was a 48 hour residency
where artists and writers camped out and worked in full view of the public.
This is only the kind of event you can have at a public institution, but
I'm interested in some of the possible parallels with stuff that must go
on in private galleries or studios, digital cameras, photography, recordings,
etc., I'm not very current on this stuff, still dealing with a lot of information
I've been introduced to over the past months. Would an effort to document
my own studio as a parallel "port" to the event that's scheduled here represent
what you call an "alternative space"? What do you think? One reason why
I'm not participating in the show here is that I'm less and less interested
in performing in public, as we talked about in NY a propos Glenn Gould.
But what I write and how I write continues to affirm the materiality of
writing, what they used to call ecriture, which internet art probably feels
it has overcome, or left behind, or superceded, so I press pen to paper,
working out of books, working close to the original, finding expressive
variations within the act of copying, as among other things an affirmation
of slow learning, and I am a slow learner, always have been, and it probably
has something to do with childhood poverty, the humiliation and contempt
you get exposed to, and you counter that with proving your ability to learn,
and absorb lessons profoundly, like teaching yourself another language,
which is what's happening in the FM/petit maspero. The method of writing
I'm describing might be called Basics, as in the Basics of Drawing, or
Basic Grammar, or the Fundamentals of Thinking--titles you'd expect to
find at a "polytechnical" school--really an act of composition which in
the act of composing itself represents an act of solidarity with those
coming to writing, or even going from one language to another, or becoming
bilingual, learning another language so that the language you grew up in
may absorb some of the nuances of thought from the other language you're
studying. Anyway, this is what there would be to document, in addition
to perhaps doing some recordings, though I'm less and less interested in
my own voice, and perhaps even doing an on-line interview, all of this
around the idea of a private studio space interfacing with the on-line
world, so I wanted to mention this idea, since I'm out of it as far as
web technology goes, and my first thought is to rent a video camera and
run it on a tripod, and photograph my studio, my books, the walls, the
windows, all to be developed later of course, when I get the time and technology.
Do you have any ideas on this? This sounds somewhat opposite to your thought
about "immersion," and of course I wouldn't ask if I thought there wasn't
the possibility that you'd disagree - Kevin.
<p>Alan Sondheim wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>The Sensations show was also a scandal in England;
there's a lot of stuff
<br>on the Net about it, but I don't have the URLs. I'm not that interested
<br>per se in that one way or another; there's been a slow leaking of funding
<br>for the arts in the States which has resulted in the closing or narrowing
<br>of all sorts of arts organizations, not just alternative. So there
are
<br>fights about funding and censorship and all that sort of thing; the
art
<br>itself continues to be produced and a fair amount finds its way into
gal-
<br>leries of all sorts of course, including alternative spaces and university
<br>galleries which don't often have the same sort of censorship problems.
In
<br>any case the field is immense and varied as is the criticism and the
ven-
<br>ues for exhibition. If I were going to even try to approach everything
<br>through theory I'd probably use a combination of pomo, decon, multicult,
<br>and phenomenology, as well as - and this is the CRITICAL part - LOOKING
AT
<br>THE ART, TALKING TO THE ARTISTS AND CRITICS AND DEALERS etc. - because
<br>otherwise I think it's very difficult to comprehend such a complex
field
<br>which is not so much institutionally-defined, museums notwithstanding.
And
<br>if I were living outside New York (and even here), I'd read the art
mags
<br>as much as possible - Art Papers, Artforum, Art in America, World Art,
<br>October, etc. - but then that's my take on it, one of immersion - Alan</blockquote>
<blockquote TYPE=CITE> </blockquote>
</html>
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r.l. whyte
relations people at most museums--his kind of promotional rhetoric is
ubiquitous in the artworld. It is so ubiquitous that many alternative
spaces speak that same langauge, even if they're not putting on
blockbuster shows. We can't forget that art is entertainment and that it
operates here within capitalism.
The issue is not Saatchi, there will always be Saatchis, but Giuliani, the
U.S. Senate, the state of arts funding in general, the expanding
jurisdiction of politicians over all of this.
Ryan
Ryan Whyte
but that they fulfill that function.
And in any case, art needs rich people like Saatchi--buyers, patrons, etc
Ryan, post-caffeine
A. Ferraiolo
I'm diverting the central issue of the debate from Guiliani to Saatchi.
I think it depends on how you view the show.
If you believe SENSATIONS is a pure artistic expression, or even an impure
artistic expression, if you think it's art --- then Guiliani is the problem.
If you think SENSATIONS is a marketing plan, then Saatchi's the bad guy and
his supporters are dangerously close to becoming shills for a latter day
P.T. Barnum. If you think the show is just hate speech . . . well, you're
aggrevated enough already and don't need me exploring your point of view any
further.
Wherever you stand, you might admit there's plenty of evidence for another
position. I certainly can't say Guiliani's critics are one hundred percent
wrong. But I do know that when people start defending Saatchi and this ugly
manipulation and division of public opinion on the basis of artistic
freedom, my skin starts to crawl. Of course, I also have serious doubts as
to whether Marilyn Manson is, in actuality, the Anti-Christ.
angela
>> controversy? What is its market value at present?
>>
>> You want to talk to artists? To painters? Go ahead. I challenge any of
Alan Sondheim
curated for galleries and alternative spaces and books and magazines, etc.
And there are always Saatchis, but that's not the point. I happen to like
the art a great deal. I've seen a lot of it way before Saatchi and this
particular show. Arthur Danto, who is highly respected and leftist, writes
well about it in the current Nation, as I've mentioned. And the problem
isn't Saatchi, or you might find that another problem, a perennial problem
in an artworld that has less and less public funding - the problem is Giu-
liani and the crackdown on funding and artistic freedom.
Alan
On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, r.l. whyte wrote:
> Sure Saatchi is an ad man, but so are most gallerists, so are the media
> relations people at most museums--his kind of promotional rhetoric is
> ubiquitous in the artworld. It is so ubiquitous that many alternative
> spaces speak that same langauge, even if they're not putting on
> blockbuster shows. We can't forget that art is entertainment and that it
> operates here within capitalism.
>
> The issue is not Saatchi, there will always be Saatchis, but Giuliani, the
> U.S. Senate, the state of arts funding in general, the expanding
> jurisdiction of politicians over all of this.
>
> Ryan
>
>
> On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, A. Ferraiolo wrote:
>
> > This thread --- it's incredible --- are we actually this naive? Does anyone
> > on this list honestly believe the SENSATIONS show is about artistic freedom?
> >
> > Charles Saatchi is an ad man.
> >
> > As Hilton Kramer wrote, Saatchi buys and sells art futures the way other
> > traders buy and sell pork bellies. He knows how to play the media with his
> > shock pseudo "art." He knew exactly the kind of reaction he would get
> > through blasphemy.
> >
> > What would be the market value of this painting without this surrounding
> > controversy? What is it's market value at present?
> >
> > You want to talk to artists? To painters? Go ahead. I challeng any of you to
> > go anywhere and present to any artist the idea of Charles Saatchi as a
> > defender of artistic freedom. I would love to be in the room with you when
> > you do it, in fact, I'd like the license on the peanut concession for that
> > circus.
> >
> > There is nothing complicated about the issues surrounding this show. Ask
> > yourself the simple questions: Who stands to profit? Who's making the
> > money? How did they make it?
> >
> > We have no one to blame but ourselves. See you at Christie's.
> >
>
Internet Text at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
Alan Sondheim
> from here, at Lake Erie College, there was a 48 hour residency where artists
> and writers camped out and worked in full view of the public. This is only
> the kind of event you can have at a public institution, but I'm interested in
> some of the possible parallels with stuff that must go on in private
> galleries or studios, digital cameras, photography, recordings, etc., I'm not
> very current on this stuff, still dealing with a lot of information I've been
> introduced to over the past months. Would an effort to document my own studio
> as a parallel "port" to the event that's scheduled here represent what you
> call an "alternative space"? What do you think? One reason why I'm not
> participating in the show here is that I'm less and less interested in
> performing in public, as we talked about in NY a propos Glenn Gould. But what
I like performing in public if it's something like guitar or shamisen I'm
comfortable with, but I wouldn't want to make art or write in public;
that's private and intense and would be impossible. I think by the way of
an "alternative space" as the usual meaning - the spaces that present
alternative art, that are somewhat publicly funded (i.e. don't rely on
sales for their existence). If I were you and not comfortable with partic-
pating, I just wouldn't participate; I've turned a lot of shows down for
things like that. Besides, your writing travels world-wide on the Net. At
one point, I was Artistic Director at Hallwalls artspace in Buffalo, a
major venue. I did the job terribly (can't hack administration) but one
thing which did come up - the future of the organization, and even then I
was arguing for more of an electronic/media presence - I envisioned a
gallery which could be literally in one room, but with world-wide connect.
And now we have the web which has at least some of this potential.
> I write and how I write continues to affirm the materiality of writing, what
> they used to call ecriture, which internet art probably feels it has
> overcome, or left behind, or superceded, so I press pen to paper, working out
> of books, working close to the original, finding expressive variations within
> the act of copying, as among other things an affirmation of slow learning,
> and I am a slow learner, always have been, and it probably has something to
> do with childhood poverty, the humiliation and contempt you get exposed to,
> and you counter that with proving your ability to learn, and absorb lessons
> profoundly, like teaching yourself another language, which is what's
> happening in the FM/petit maspero. The method of writing I'm describing might
> be called Basics, as in the Basics of Drawing, or Basic Grammar, or the
> Fundamentals of Thinking--titles you'd expect to find at a "polytechnical"
> school--really an act of composition which in the act of composing itself
> represents an act of solidarity with those coming to writing, or even going
> from one language to another, or becoming bilingual, learning another
> language so that the language you grew up in may absorb some of the nuances
> of thought from the other language you're studying. Anyway, this is what
Don't you think in a way the Net also represents a materiality of writing?
To the extent that the symbolic is a superstructure, i.e. not tied to
manual labor, but tied to the labor of signs which are grounded in manual
labor, the Net is an ideal (in both senses of the word) representation.
And there is just as much labor in typing a letter onto screen as there is
onto paper; the difference is that the very _invisibility_ of the sign is
manifest on the screen - it's bits and bytes, it travels, it comes to
rest, it's stored, it disappears.
> there would be to document, in addition to perhaps doing some recordings,
> though I'm less and less interested in my own voice, and perhaps even doing
> an on-line interview, all of this around the idea of a private studio space
> interfacing with the on-line world, so I wanted to mention this idea, since
> I'm out of it as far as web technology goes, and my first thought is to rent
> a video camera and run it on a tripod, and photograph my studio, my books,
> the walls, the windows, all to be developed later of course, when I get the
> time and technology. Do you have any ideas on this? This sounds somewhat
> opposite to your thought about "immersion," and of course I wouldn't ask if I
> thought there wasn't the possibility that you'd disagree - Kevin.
No here I agree; this would be of great interest. And you know, there are
webcams (which often tend towards sexual display) on 24 hours a day in
this or that space - some of them charge. I've seen almost nothing of this
but it seems to be a minor industry.
You might look into mp3 files which can be downloaded; also on trAce, I
think it is Elizabeth James, has put up a real audio file that streams
when you click on it. That would be worthwhile to look into - you could
write her (I don't use .ra much. Steven Meinking would know all about
this by the way - if he reads this, perhaps he'll reply).
Finally, why not record your own voice with the French? That would also be
part of the experience of the material, etc. In any case, look at Barthes'
writing (if you haven't) on "the grain of the voice" (also the title of
one of his books) which I find fascinating and probably connects your
thought with mine?
Alan
Kevin Magee
Oberlin. Utopia and Alienation: German Art and Expressionism, 1900-1933.
Parkweg, 1911. Schnee und Sonne, 1911. Fishing Boats, 1921. Autostrasse im
Taunus, 1916. Straight Canal, 1915. Bench in the Forest, 1917. At Walchensee,
1920. Cows in the Pasture, 1918. Ein Dorf, 1919. Bathing Scene Beneath
Overhanging Branches, 1913. Three Maidens on the Beach, 1919. Reclining Girl,
1912-1914. Girl with Black Hair, 1911. Union, 1900. Woman with Red Hair (Sin),
1902. Standing Female Nude (Eve), 1919. After the Bath, 1920. Toilette, 1908.
The Dance Among Women, 1919. Self Portrait, 1923. Self Portrait, 1924. Self
Portrait, 1922. Self Portrait as Soldier, 1915. Self Portrait with Stylus,
1917. The Hand of Death, 1924. Self Portrait with Easel, 1918. Self Portrait
with Hat, 1919. Head of a Woman, 1907. Portrait of Max Reinhardt, 1919.
Sposalizio, 1912. Reichsprasident Ebert, 1924. While Reading, 1914. Head of a
Man, 1918-1920. Der Sanger, 1911. Head of a Woman, 1912. Mary and Elizabeth,
1921. The Plowers, 1921. The Hero, 1934. Death and the Mother, 1920.
Declaration of War, 1914, The Prisoner, 1920. Street Worker, 1930. In the
Street, 1920-1921. Berliner Reise, 1922. Young Clown, 1929. Slaves, 1918. Snake
Charmer, 1921. Shooting Gallery, 1921. The Repast, 1932. Unemployed, 1925. Nude
Youth Seen From the Back, 1907. Standing Female Nude, 1900. Seated Nude, 1900.
Nude Man with Raised Arms, 1911. Nude, 1924. Nude, 1918. Reclining Nude, 1922.
Or: Schmidt-Rottluff; Gabrielle Munter; Lyonel Feininger; Kirchner; Heckel;
Covinth; Pechstein; Klimt; Schiele; Munch; Kollwitz; Beckman; Kokoschka; Nolde;
Jawlesnsky; Grosz; Hofer; Modersohn-Becker; Kolbe. Or: Oil on Canvas; Woodcut;
Drypoint on Handmade Paper; Etching and Drypoint; Lithograph; Graphite;
Graphite and Watercolor; Color Lithograph; Hardwood, Oiled and Painted; Etching
and Drypoint; Black Chalk with Traces of Watercolor; Black Crayon; Woodcut on
Japan Paper; Charcoal; Etching with Tonal Textures and Aquatint and Engraving;
Watercolor; Color Woodcut; Line Etching and Tone Etching; Pencil, Light and Red
Gray Wash on Tan Tinted Paper; Watercolor on Buff Paper, etc.
Art objects. All the heads in the portraits look weird after a while, like
they're floating in formaldahyde or something. But it's the stillness that gets
to you, (me/the viewer) that and necklace effect walking around in the single
room where the pictures are perched in their frames. What happens to time. What
happens to historical time. While these images were being made debates went on
in the newspapers and in congresses and somehow or another a war came and went,
and millions. . . . Not that it's bracketed out here, but the preciousness of
the effect is unnerving from the other end of the century. There's too many
shadows, and the emotions thrown on the figures soften the ground for
slaughter. The thought occurs that Vienna even made its contribution to the
war, among its propositions of human unhappiness, self torture, repression. At
least I'm throwing a few words at the work, though I'd rather write about how
the objects were made--oil and watercolor, woodcut, ink etchings, etc., not to
mention the paper the works are inked and painted on--despite being distracted
by the representations projected, miniatures, variations on the human face and
figure, several landscapes, intention all over the place, social and political
comment, even protest, they're "fighting the good fight." Some of the titles
reflect this. Expressionism never reminded me more of cartoon animation than
today. The technical uniformity applied to each image, and the obvious contents
and sub-contexts. There's no press of the social from outside the frames
containing the images here, and the spaces framed present visual matter more or
less insulated from where it came from, the noise of time. Suffocating, the
reaction, walking among them, the images, the human as victim, afflicted,
inflicting pain, conflicted, sacrificial. A kind of painting unable to document
and interpret sociality, the movement and mood of the large number. I'm
thinking of photography and cinema, video installations, digital forms, in
contrast.
The materiality of the 57 art objects in this exhibit would be found in
attention to how they're made, the weight of the paper, the kinds of ink, what
was a woodcut, why were so many paintings often accompanied by woodcuts, were
woodcuts a kind of less expensive xerox with which the artist circulated an
image of the original? The labor that went into some of the etchings is
obvious; many of these drawings were not done in a day. A lot of them remind me
of book illustrations, so perhaps the "book" is an unstated presence here, in
that quiet room in Oberlin, a historically-pressured form to say the least at
this point in time. At the point in time I'd arrived at yesterday, reading the
first hostile take on the glassworks thread, it felt good to get some air and
move physically across a space of about 30 miles, getting out of Cleveland on a
whim, paying a taxi $50 one way and a $5 bus return, about a dollar for each
painting viewed for a while, not a real long while, how long's a long while?
The ensemble effect of the imagination here reminded me of somewhere I'd been,
a version or vision of suffering humanity which seems increasingly dangerous to
me, almost as though it invites victimization, if the images a cultural moment
produces could ever be said to have this kind of effect on the social/political
sphere, and here I'd refer again to Berlau's photography (she also ran the film
projector on at least on play), however unknown to her in terms of intention or
authority, as an effort to stop or arrest (arreter) Brecht's expressionist
theater (read Althusser's review for a sense of the ashen-image being carried
on to the stage in the postwar years) by taking the production apart frame by
frame. Is her photography expressionist, or a documentary mode which records
Brecht's manipulation of expression? I'm more than ever inclined to believe
that she knew what she was doing, even if she wasn't conscious of what she was
doing (how many of the artists' in the Oberlin selection were conscious of
themselves of being artists to the point of being self-conscious, and how does
this impact on their images? - All the self-portraits, or self projected on to
other faces and figures.) How complicit is Kokoschka's art with the historical
fate of the young Jewish couple? (Sposalizio, 1912).
Photography is eerie in another way, it always has been. In its miming, or
mimesis, of the subject, especially if its subject is art, the means and modes
of the production of art, it can often be taken to resemble the very aesthetic
it wants to document and critique. There's the thought of Pica's snapshots,
which, though she photographs individuals, she doesn't frame them as isolated
or floating heads. She takes snapshots, not portraits. She is not a portrait
photographer, in fact she refuses the 35 mm, as standard to the production of
photographic images as oil and canvas or electric guitars. The installation she
constructs at the end of Drylongso is in an empty lot, and the snapshots are
posted on other stuff salvaged into the art space, the lot. There's at least
one tree, a kind of Mondrian tree, those early trees that record his looking at
expressionist landscapes and saying no way. So the frame for her artwork is the
neighborhood and the streets and the open air and the friends and family
members who come to view her installation. As expressive as her snapshots might
be, though someone might point out that there's a sameness to her miming the
mug shot, a mechanics in the repetition, as mechanical as the social system
responsible for the production of her subject, how she chooses to show her work
is crucial: she foregoes, or refuses, the gallery, and by extension the stage
and any other performative space, because that's where "they" do art, and she
isn't interested in doing that, doesn't want to reproduce that. It's a very
powerful anti-victimization message that comes through at the end of Cauleen
Smith's first film, now that I think about it, and it makes me think of the
possibilities in the interface between installation and internet, the local and
the international, the digital-cinematic image, and the spokenness of words,
the recorded or real-time broadcast as opposed to the self-present and
so-called "real" or "authentic" voice. A couple of issues I don't have answers
for at the moment, thinking about art, and the manipulation of images in art,
which some people call advertising, and others popular culture.
klm
Alan Sondheim
which ripples through the list of the works at the beginning - and I'm
wondering if you or anyone can point me to good sources about the recent
election in Austria, or could give details about what I gather is an
election of a proto-fascist government?
Thanks, Alan