Cindy Sherman, "Untitled #96" (1981), chromogenic color print, 24 x 47 15/16″ (61 x 121.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Carl D. Lobell © 2012 Cindy Sherman

If only you knew how to talk about Cindy Sherman you’d feel better about throwing yourself into the ring with all the art pundits and critics who have been falling over themselves to give kudos to the current MoMA retrospective which covers her 35 year career from when she was good until now.

You’d think it would be easy to talk about Cindy Sherman since the experts who have championed her work for decades have provided so much material. And the show’s been up since February 26, so you’ve all had a chance to get an eyeful of the critics’ latest panegyric ululations.

But the talking points are many and although there’s a consensus— we like her — there’s a lot of hot air circulating around the reasons why. On top of that, there’s not a lot of room, or tolerance, for dissent.

The thing is, we like her so much that we have to say so in hyperbolic gusts. Don’t be stingy now, folks: we think she’s the most famous, most accomplished, most inventive and most popular artist ever to have breathed oxygen. Tack an “arguably” on to the front of all or any of those if you’re willing to back it up, even as we secretly hope we won’t have to. Otherwise, stick to adding “possibly” and then say THEE instead of “the” so that it still sounds like you mean it. Because you have to really mean it.

After that you’ll probably have to get specific.

The Bullet Points

Cindy Sherman, "Untitled" (2010), installation view at The Museum of Modern Art, 2012. © 2012 Cindy Sherman

First things first, I say, dusting off my hands: I’ve written FEMINIST on the blackboard and, for all of you in back, that’s a period after that loaded categorization ‘cuz that’s the end of it. We will not be discussing this anymore, so if you disagree — tough titties. You’ll just have to lie low and snipe from the margins where we can all ignore you.

Say that since her earliest works, she’s lent a “feminist POV” to her seemingly innocent appropriations* of pop iconography. Talk about her depictions of women as though by storyboarding them she’s saved their “tragic” lives. And never mind how pungent with well-aged condescension all of that is. We have no time for real criticism and we’re way too postmodern to accept the obvious fact that we’re judging these fictional women.

Cindy Sherman, "Untitled Film Still #6" (1977), gelatin silver print, 9 7/16 x 6 1/2″ (24 x 16.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder in memory of Eugene M. Schwartz © 2012 Cindy Sherman

Remember this: women who use themselves as subjects, or who present themselves as objects, or who depict the follies and failures of other women for falling victim to objectification, are all assumed to be feminists. This is largely because irony, in all post Pop Art, is assumed. So you bet your boots that the orange girl, that photo of a charmer lying on the floor, all lit up with dreams and the fire of youth, is NOT objectification; it’s ABOUT objectification. (Psst: Don’t say what it IS; say what it’s ABOUT.)

And those overly made-up “society portraits” are depicting women who we “empathize” with as “victims” of a society with onerous youth and status obsessions and the relentless image marketing that spurs them on. I’m warning you, don’t EVEN go there if you think all that sounds a bit high and mighty. If it seems like some people, particularly rich older ones are getting a pie in their already too cakey faces, well: then you’ve just got it all wrong. This is feminism and Cindy Sherman is their knight in shining tinted moisturizer.

By the way, here’s a bit of fun. After you gas on about how feminist these images are, list Ms. Sherman’s celebrity boyfriends. Everyone does it. It’s not hyprocritical at all. Steve Martin, David Byrne, Robert Longo, Richard Prince.

Enough.

It is crucial for anyone who talks about Sherman to say that her career has been an exploration of roles and role-playing — gender roles, most centrally, but also social and even existential roles.

Yes, I said existential, but you can just say that her dark period is underrepresented at the MoMA because it’s about aging and bodies and death. You can also note that the horrid, shallow collectors won’t buy those images and that the benighted MoMA went wrong in reflecting that capital-driven sentiment.

BTW, you’re not going to spoil the fun by pointing out that it’s easy as shit to get prosthetic limbs to resonate. Put ‘em anywhere and they scream love and death. Just try it. Pull off a doll leg and stick it in a tree. Sammy Beckett roll over! A few entrails and a plastic vajayjay and we’re knee deep in the absurdity of the human condition.

It’s been very cool lately to state as a fact that Cindy Sherman’s work is performance art and to claim that those who see her as an image-maker, are missing the point. That means that in order to come off as someone who knows how to talk about Sherman, you HAVE to discuss the DIY aspect of her art and tick off a litany of artistic roles that she plays (anything but “photographer”). She’s a screenwriter, playwright, comic, actress, director … fluffer — you name it. Next time I talk about Cindy Sherman, I’m going to say she’s a puppeteer and watch people nod like bobble-head dolls in an earthquake.

Installation view of the exhibition "Cindy Sherman" at The Museum of Modern Art, 2012. © 2012 Cindy Sherman

Move from there to a meta-statement about how her many self-imposed roles echo and transcend the roles that she masks and unmasks in her imaginary “subjects.” Now you’re really talking about art.

Although the later Cindy Shermans are about a subtle as a fry pan across the chops, you are obliged to speak about them as though they were quite clever. Even The New York Times’ esteemed Roberta Smith talks about Sherman “allowing the seams to show” as if these garish pictures were Renaissance puzzles full of innuendo and steeped in mysticism when actually they are broad, flat-footed and downright ideologically lazy.

Cindy Sherman, "Untitled #475" (2008), chromogenic color print, 7′ 2 3/8″ x 71 1/2″ (219.4 x 181.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman

Just keep in mind that you are not allowed to say that. Instead you’re supposed to say, that Sherman builds photos with a sort of wink inside of them — a detail that gives the lie to either her role as manipulator or to the charade that the subject is involved in … act like you’re a real Sherlock Holmes to be spotting these whopping clues.

Sigh. I know it’s getting really exhausting. All this head-nodding while dissent stands all the while before you, a veritable elephant with pajamas on, painted chartreuse and playing In A Godda Da Vita on a squeaky violin.

While you’re praising Sherman’s mischievous subterfuge, say things like “finger on the pulse” and gush about her powers of observation. Gushing will give you a chance to do the very best thing you can ever do while talking about art. Free associate.

This is where you climb up on the back of a certain detail and then you ride out the implications, symbolism and historic connections until your pony drops. Look to Jerry Saltz for the very best free-association skills. Here’s a sample:

“Fashion helps Cindy hide in plain sight; in turn, she plays havoc with fashion. She is our greatest female impersonator… Sherman delights in the mortification of the self, reveling in it like an epicurean at dinner; I see her as a spawn of De Sade and Rabelais, Daumier and Hogarth. Her survivalist instinct and relentless inventiveness make her a modern-day Scheherazade. Sherman’s art is that of someone saving her own life in a mostly male art world, working from deep instinct, ferocious imagination, assertion, self-defense, all while fashioning an elaborate tapestry of grand visors, demon clowns, Beau Brummels, and Valkyries; frazzled club girls, crinolined courtesans, dandies, macaronis, hippie chicks in Hiawatha fringe, Hollywood housewives, and other women fighting for their places in the world. Sherman is a warrior artist—one who has won her battles so decisively that I can’t imagine anyone ever again embarking on a lifetime of self-portraiture without coming up against her.”

This sort of verbal athleticism takes practice (and a whole lot more enthusiasm than most of us are capable of. You should not attempt it unless you’ve sucked down had a few Red Bulls.

The Skinny

Cindy Sherman, "Untitled #264" (1992), chromogenic color print, 50 x 6′ 3″ (127 x 190.5 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman

Can’t stand the consensus anymore? Hell, me neither.

I’m just going to say it: I love the early 1975-80s Cindy Sherman and dislike most of the rest. This is decidedly NOT COOL. The early stuff is just too pretty for most critics to admit liking very much because we’ve come to fear that loveliness precludes depth: but I’m not afraid of beauty. The film stills and centerfolds are subtle and gorgeously resonant of Hitchcock and that pervasive, never failing sense of feminine self-consciousness, that was such a part of our movie and pop culture experience. They are evocative, in an alarmingly sweet way, of sexual games and impending mystery and even danger … I see them and I think: this is before she decided to pull out all the stops and do flat out slapstick.

Oh well, truth will out. I hope you’re happy. That is not at all how one should talk about Cindy Sherman. Dammit.

Cindy Sherman continues at MoMA (11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan) until June 11.

A design rendering of Jeff Koons's "Train" at the High Line (image by James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Jeff Koons, via the High Line Blog)

With plans in the offing for Jeff Koons’s astounding “Train” to dangle preposterously over the heedless noggins of visitors to the High Line, it might just be a good time to polish your talking points regarding the “greatest” of all kitsch artists, so here is a helpful guide.

The very first step in mastering the Koons casual party patter is to state that the man is a “polarizing figure.” Letting everyone know that you know this will help you either stay in your comfort zone or come out swinging.

Attitude

Next, you’ll want to choose your preferred ’tude from the menu below:

• Hate him: “He’s a crass businessman usurping good taste, a purveyor of deliberately shallow iconography pawning off his sleazy wares on an irony-soaked public that wants to have its banal cake and eat it too. Not an artist so much as an idea man, his work is actually realized by a huge staff of assistants. What’s more, the stuff he makes is gaudy and meaningless.”
• Love him: “He’s a curator of pop culture, an aficionado of fun and a rarity —  a fine artist with a sensibility that’s unapologetically attuned to our taste for sleek, flawless, manufactured items. An artist in the great tradition of the Renaissance, he does indeed have a huge staff of assistants who, under his demanding eye, create items that are finely crafted and polished to perfection. What’s more, the things he makes are celebratory.”
• Amused by him: If your audience is jaded or nonconfrontational, or just plain stupid, the default is to have no opinion. (In fact, keep this in mind as a general #h2taa rule: stay above it. You are way too savvy to go around having opinions. Smile, roll your eyes and adapt a slightly cynical “whatevs” kind of shrug.) Now that you know what the two opinionated sides will be saying, it should be relatively easy to claim that you “understand” both points of view. “Sure, it’s not deep stuff, but hey, the man knows how to make it pretty.” Then steer your way to the bar.

Mr. Big Stuff

Jeff Koons surrounded by reporters and art critics at the press preview to his rooftop show in 2008 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (photo via flickr.com/artcomments)

Koons’s humongous “Train” will be a full-size (70-foot) replica of a 1943 Baldwin 2900 steam locomotive, and is expected to weigh a few tons. It will dangle from a crane specifically designed to pin the monstrous bulk securely to our skyline.

Koons' "Puppy" (1992) at the Bilbao Guggenheim (via flickr.com/lightsgoingon)

In this sense, the proposed sculpture falls squarely into a common Jeff Koons trope: he likes to play with scale, making mundane subjects loom large. Key Koons words here: “play,” “scale,” “mundane.” These contain a decidedly pro-Koons message, implying that the artist is creating a sort of social commentary. But pro-Koonsians will keep their cultural references big and glib: commercial = desire, nature = comfort, shiny = reflection, technology = attainment, sex = happy and big = exhuberant. In fact, everything’s a fucking big-ass birthday party for humankind.

If you hate his work, then you are disgusted that he continues to make large-scale, gaudy, easily digestible stuff: big porn, big balloon dogs and flowers, big terrier pups made of flowers and big valentines hanging from huge shiny ribbons. Of course, you’ll point out, manufacturing big things resonates with the lowest common denominator — you know, the people who love roadside attractions like giant hot dogs and ice cream cones.

The only reason tony collectors of blue-chip art entertain this Trump aesthetic is because Koons has made a very successful career out of massaging only the very finest lizard brains, convincing them that his high-cost visual jokes are valid social commentary. As for this giant train, you’ll say, don’t get you started. How much thought went into that? Either the man’s a drooling toddler, or he’s just out to make big bucks recycling the same tired big-cute-thing schtick. Or both.

Either way, one can have one’s doubts. Sticking to the middle, you can always support the haters and still earn points with the lovers by remonstrating against the tin-eared approach of those High Line officials who think it wise to dangle powerful symbols of precarious construction work over the heads of war-torn New Yorkers. We’ve had our fill with cranes already, in case the (no doubt well-meaning) nonprofit Friends of the High Line hadn’t noticed.

Money

Surely what the High Liners have noticed is money. Whenever one talks about Koons, one is talking about money. And whenever one talks about large public artworks, one is also talking about money. On the High Line Blog, you can get the low down on the money talk:

“Like other recent major public art works in the city, such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates, and like the High Line itself, Koons’ Train has the potential to bring significant economic revenue to the City of New York that would far exceed the cost of construction. The Gates cost $21 million, but generated $254 million in estimated economic activity for the city, increasing restaurant business, hotel occupancy, attendance at cultural organizations, and foot traffic at local businesses and attractions.”

Changing the Subject

Nothing says kitschy, I mean Koons, quite like a giant cartoony hanging lobster in the palace of Versailles, where he had an exhibition in 2008. (via flickr.com/laurent_gilot)

Jeff Koons is notorious for being sued. He has, in fact, been sued several times and has won one case. Call that Blanch, short for Blanch v. Koons. The point is, he steals things.

If you hate him, this provides proof that his work lacks imagination.

If you love him, this shows that he’s at the forefront of appropriation art; Blanch provided pivotal leverage for the future of this genre.

Neutrals can always choose to crack a joke about the gorgeous irony behind Jeff Koons, frequent defendant, recently turning plaintiff in a case (settled out of court) against a small gallery/gift shop that was selling balloon dogs. Said plaintiff pilfered the particulars of a popular party prop, whose intellectual property he then proposed to protect.

What’s next, you might ask, sue Tonka?

This move from “Train” to big stuff to money to lawsuits brings me to another general #h2taa rule: change the subject. The purpose is to deflect controversy. Everyone loves funny stories about big shots suing little guys, so neutrals and haters should keep a grab bag of these subject-shifters ready for “Train” conversations.

The Koons balloon dog story made big headlines for its obvious irony. But the fact is, appropriation artists are as likely to sue as any other owner of intellectual property. In fact, big-name artist like Koons, Damien Hirst and Shepard Fairey, all of them appropriation artists in one sense or another, often sue. Shep’s eager legals sued some poor schmuck for making a doll with an “Obey” tagline. Hirst bullied some poor young street thug who’d photoshopped one of his works into a collage.

In fact, one of the most recent lawsuits of this type posits big shots John Cale and Lou Reed of The Velvet Underground against even bigger shots, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts: the Velvets are laying claim to Andy’s iconic banana.

Want to change the subject altogether? It’s always safe to say you love Warhol.

Summary

Talking points:


• Koons – polarizing figure; choose yer ’tude
• Pop culture and banality
• Businessman, money
• Manufactured art/assistants
• Mr. Big Stuff: scale
• Cynicism vs. happy birthday
• High Line Park: public attractions and money
• Scary cranes
• Funny lawsuits like Hirst and Shep
• Andy Warhol

#h2taa Rules:
1. Stay above it — You are way to savvy to go around having opinions.
2. Change the subject — The best way to deflect controversy.
3. Say you love Warhol — Who doesn’t?

Allison Hester, "Michael Lorenzo Urie 1980" (2011), pen on Arches (all photos by author)

Walking into the Marianne Boesky Gallery’s summer exhibition I Bleed Black, the first work I saw was a small drawing of actor Michael Urie, best-known for his role in the television series Ugly Betty. I knew I was in trouble.

However, the art was not even the most worrisome part of the exhibition. The bizarrely academic language in the gallery press release made me want to tear up the sheet of paper in front of the sweet-looking gallery assistant.

Maybe its just me but I feel like recently there has been a rash of press releases from galleries that are so academic that they are barely comprehensible. I think galleries need to reevaluate what they want visitors to get out of their press releases.

Made up of mostly Marianne Boesky employees from art handlers to registrars, I Bleed Black features a range of artistic mediums and focuses such Elizabeth Miseo’s ceramics and Nicholas Brooks’s installation of a video of a woman masturbating that is housed in a black plastic tent inside the gallery with a sign “Adults Only.”

I was at first curious about the origin of the seemingly goth title “I Bleed Black.”  Some googling led me to a song by the LA doom metal band Saint Vitus. It also led me to countless sites declaring “I Bleed Black and Gold,” which being Pittsburgh-born and-raised made me wish the show was about Pittsburgh sports fanaticism.

Ted Riederer, "The Collectors" (installation shot) (2011), oil on canvas

Even though it was not about bleeding black and gold, I’m still not sure what “bleeding black” has to do with any of the works in the show. The press release is no help, reading as one of the most confusingly academic press releases I’ve ever come across.

Originally, I was supposed to review the actual art in the I Bleed Black exhibition but being fairly unremarkable, the totally irritating press release overtook the show.

Having spent two years in an interdiscplinary Master’s program, I can recognize when the writer is using terms like “societal pressure” and “societal norms” to cover the fact that they’re not saying much of anything. The press release reads:

Emphasizing the power of the individual, I Bleed Black suggests the working artist’s struggle to overcome or transcend the outside factors inherent in society, religion and politics. The individual, steadily seeking an evolved state of being, attempts to create only for himself and deny the influences of the outside components that are inherent in the duties or responsibilities of the day to day.

Um … what?

Stating nothing about the art itself or the artists involved, the press release has paragraph after paragraph repeating the same thing about the artist’s struggle between personal expression and everyday social norms.

Having written a few press releases in various internships, I question who this is written for. The collectors? Art historians? Art critics? I have no idea.

Ethan Minsker, "Rich Boy Cries for Momma" (2010)

As shown in other articles I’ve written, I don’t particularly like when the art in the exhibit can’t back up the lofty language in the press release but this is just absurd, considering I’m not exactly sure I understand what is meant by “steered by an ambition that manifests itself in the routine of the everyday.” I’m also not sure what it has to do with Ethan Minsker’s book Rich Boy Cries for Momma.

In the end, I became so frustrated with trying to figure out the meaning of the show that I walked out of the gallery and began to explore the street art surrounding the closed Chelsea galleries.

Works by street artist RAE on 22nd Street in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.

One work that caught my eye were these works by RAE on 22nd Street, reminding me of two-dimensional drawings of Alexander Calder’s wire sculptures of faces. More exciting and even more art historically relevant than the works in I Bleed Black, RAE’s multiple drawings did not need an unintelligible press release to promote their worth.

So to all the gallery press release writers, please stop the overly academic language that sounds like you are trying to up your word count for a college essay.

Marianne Boesky Gallery’s I Bleed Black closed on September 1, 2011. Lucky you.

One of Roa’s best pieces — even by his own admission — during his Brooklyn sojourn. (click to enlarge)

It’s a perpetual refrain among street art watchers that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to street art but I don’t subscribe to that theory. As soon as the warmer weather hits, New York in general — and Brooklyn in particular — always seems to explode with new visual energy that suggests street art still has a lot of life left in it.

This is my highlights for the year with tons of Flickr and blog links that will take you for a tour around the web.

Best in Show

Adam Wissing, Kenny Komer, and Boris Rasin’s street art poster mashed up the New Museum with the Jeff Koons-designed yacht for Dakis Joannou with the New Museum (click to enlarge)

The most notable contributions this season were the door pieces by Ema and Kid Acne (more here, here, here & here) who worked in unison to saturate the street art scape. Their pieces weren’t very loud or large but they were ubiquitous, diverse, and always well-placed — they proved that quantity doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice quality.

Another notable player was El Sol 25, whose large scale mash-ups showed a new level of skill that I hadn’t previously noticed in his hand-painted images, but that coupled with their ability to stay up without being disturbed on some major spots (1, 2) made him a force to be reckoned with.

Adam Wissing, Kenny Komer, and Boris Rasin may not really be dedicated “street artists” but they sure made a splash with their creative mash-up of the Jeff Koons-designed yacht for Dakis Joannou with a PR-ready image of the New Museum. They brought a new level of Photoshop expertise to a field that is still dominated — for better or worse — by hand-drawn works. They get a special award because the word on the street is that the trio were contacted by the New Museum who didn’t like that they consciously blurred their luxury brand.

Sometimes there are moments in street art watching when you say to yourself, “I wish I did that!” And last month, TrustCorp was the target of my latest bout of street art jealousy. The group pulled off what I consider the biggest coup of the year with their placement of a very witty “Islam Welcome Here” sign at the site of what has come to be known in the right-wing media as the “Ground Zero mosque,” even though it is really called the Cordoba Center. They struck at the height of the anti-Cordoba hysteria, and their pro-tolerance message even confused Fox News. TrustCorp gets an A+.

Big Boys, Big Problems

In terms of big street art brands, we have to mention that Banksy blew into town during his movie premiere a few months ago and, unfortunately, he seemed to bring his b-game to New York (1, 2, 3, 4 … ) stenciling images that didn’t seem all that worthy of his reputation. Even though his New York street pieces may not have been his best, it was still a little sad that they were quickly covered up by graffiti writer Omar (who is apparently a middle-aged old skool graff’er trying to get back in the game) and others. We shed a tear … but moved on.

Even when Fairey’s mural on Bowery & Houston was covered up it couldn’t catch a break from the graff’ers (photo via Luna Park)

Shepard Fairey was also in New York for Deitch Project’s swan song show titled May Day, and the LA-based artist got in trouble with the city’s Department of Buildings when it wasn’t obvious if the Deitch Wall he plastered with his distinctive manner of collage was an advertisement for his SoHo show or an art work — sorry, dude, you can’t have it both ways.

Fairey’s Houston mural was also a magnet for angry graffiti writers, who did everything possible to mess up his mural — including punching huge holes into it. It almost makes you wonder if Barry McGee’s piece for the same wall was a peace offering to the graff community.

Top, The original Fairey wall piece at the beginning of May, Wiliamsburg, Brooklyn (photo by Jake Dobkin); bottom left, Obey gets graffiti’d up by Poster Boy & others; bottom right, Specter “Law & Order: SUV”-ups the Fairey. (click to enlarge)

Speaking of Fairey, yesterday I noticed that one of his crew’s Williamsburg murals has been altered in such a crafty way that I had to go back to make sure it was in fact not in the original mural image. Props to the street artist remixer, most probably Specter, who, according to The Street Spot, devised similar interventions on pieces by Swoon, Faile, Bast & Skewville. I should also mention that Specter produced a series of fantastic sculptures (another one) that were definitely a high point of the past six months.

The Os Gemeos twins were one of two truly world-renowned global street artists to avoid graffiti haters and their (sanctioned) mural — painted last month — continues to stand tall in Chelsea. Swoon is the other street artist that graff’ers seem to like, and her cut outs continue to wow though there’s nothing really new here.

Certainly Notable

In terms of other noteworthy additions to the streetscape, here are some quick links that give you a taste of the riches that were there to be had.

There were the sanctioned pieces by Belgian street star Roa who was in town for his solo show at Factory Fresh. His monochromatic large-scale animal murals in Astoria, Bushwick, and Williamsburg were beautifully executed and striking.

White Cocoa turned heads with her distinctive drawings, like this one in East Williamsburg.

White Cocoa seemed to come out of nowhere, and her hand-drawn portraits were particularly riveting for their sense of movement (1, 2, 3, 4).

Overunder took care to place his striking pieces (1, 2, 3, 4) on color backgrounds to give them a sense of vibrancy.

Aakash Nihalani pulled off a geometric intervention on a stop sign in DUMBO that even bent looked pretty arresting.

Dan Witz is a veteran of street art but he hasn’t been slowing down. This year he is back at his super-realist hijinx that are often overlooked by the uniniated (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 … ).

The big (street art nerd) news of the season is that the inevitable has happened and some anonymous talent in Greenpoint grew tired of the Dick Chicken and Pussy Ham’s mating ritual and decided to take matters into their own hands to consummate the very public courting and turn them into Chicken Ham.

Various & Gould of Germany had a show at Brooklynite earlier this year and during that period they made sure to give the citizens of New York a taste of their colorful creativity, which included (I think) jugglers, plumbers, and composite figures that I can’t even pretend to characterize.

Other visitors of note were Brits Sweet Toof and Nick Walker, Paris-based Jef Aerosol, French artist Ludo (1, 2, 3), Dolk from Norway, and Melbourne-based Miso was also in town with her Art Deco-inspired wheatpastes (1, 2).

Primo at the Lorimer L stop. (click to enlarge)

A few talents that pulled off a few eye-catching pieces were Veng of Robots Will Kill, Alison Corrie, Dude Company, Elbowtoe, and Primo (1, 2).

Showta was everywhere this year but the quality of his work oscillates between pretty damn good to meh.

Paul Richard has been up to his conceptual street art antics again, and his signs near various unsanctioned works have been getting funnier and funnier.

Sometimes I come across things that I can’t figure out, and this sculpture on Driggs Avenue back in April was short-lived but pretty impressive in that it explored a whole new direction for street art sculpture. Kudos to whoever it was by.

I also want to mention that Brooklyn-based Faile, who has been pretty dull in the last few years, up’d their game recently and I started noticing them again. Though, if you ask me they really need to shake things up a bit (1, 2, 3, 4).

One last thing, Mr. Brainwash arrived in the spring for his vanity gallery show in the Meatpacking District, but thankfully TrustCorp let him know that his brand of shlocky street art isn’t really welcome in them these parts.

Politics on the Street

Who knew Che & Mussolini worked so well together. (click to enlarge)

I was rather sad that there was only one really good New York street art response to the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but thankfully it was rather clever (if not perfectly executed) — it was also anonymous.

In terms of politics, there was no one more provocative that an artist whose name I don’t know. Whoever he is (and I’ve been told it is a he), he combined the figures of Che Guevara with Benito Mussolini to create a few memorable images (separate, combined).

Unfortunately, someone told me that the regular street art peeps don’t like him very much (“he looks like a cop,” someone mentioned) and his stuff got covered up in some nasty ways — though the intensity of the splash on his piece on Roebling Avenue makes me wonder if there isn’t some anti-communist or anti-fascist anger involved in the vandalism of the vandalism.

Originality Award

This octopus is obviously a New Yorker (click to enlarge)

And now finally, the hands down winner of the unofficial Hyperallergic Street Art Originality award goes to a brand new anonymous piece by MRtoll [thanks Luna Park for the tip!] that I’ve been obsessed with since Hyperallergic publisher Veken Gueyikian spotted it last Sunday morning. It depicts a blue octopus eating a slice of extra cheese pizza — how’s that for excellence in subject matter.

The small piece, which is glued in place on a quiet stretch of North 8th Street in Williamsburg, has a marvelous Futurama meets Rosemarie Fiore feel to it. Sure, it’s hilarious, absurd, and doesn’t have a chance in hell of surviving the streets of New York (I give it two weeks), but it’s one of those unusual finds that makes you fall in love with street art … yet again.

It just goes to prove that it’s never dull in New York and everyone fits in.

A view of Swoon's "Switchback Sisters" show at the Deitch Project's space in Long Island City (photo by Luna Park & used with permission)

Now that the ethical issue of Jeffrey Deitch’s appointment as the Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles has dissipated a little (though there’s still the issue of his personal art collection that remains unresolved), I want to discuss possible meanings of his appointment and where they can — and in some ways, I hope will — lead.

One issue in particular that interests me is the assertion that Jeffrey Deitch had a seminal role in introducing street art to New York. That point has come up again and again probably because it’s one of the primary things that distinguishes his art tastes from those of his gallery dealer peers. It’s a funny thing to hear as someone who has been a careful observer of street art but who usually avoids his gallery. Even though Deitch Projects exhibits the work of artists who are considered “street artists” (Keith Haring, Chris Johanson, Barry McGee, Dash Snow, Swoon, and more recently Os Gemeos and Shepard Fairey) I never really cared for his gallery’s take. It may be a surprising thing to say considering how much time and money he spent developing his stable in the field, but while he appeared to revel in the carnivalesque of street art, he always seemed to do it in a way that robbed it of its weird quirkiness, it’s unpredictableness, and ultimately any bite.

A view of the wall across from the Deitch Project's space on Wooster. (click to enlarge)

When he showed the work of Swoon it felt sanitized, even if it was intensely beautiful. The wall at the corner of Houston and Bowery, which is curated by his soon-to-be-closed gallery (it debuted with a resurrected Haring mural followed by the current Os Gemeos mural) feels precious in the same way that his gallery shows do. The very public spot is flooded with light that makes it appear luxurious, expensive and … well, that word again … sanitized — all things I don’t usually associate with street art. Perhaps it should be expected when street culture collides with high-end gallery culture.

I’m not discrediting what he accomplished as he was able to bring street art to a demographic that hadn’t purchased it before, but he wasn’t the only one. In my opinion, his biggest contribution to the field was the street art outside his gallery, which street artists clamored to fill. Those walls hosted some of the best stuff in that neighborhood and their proximity to Deitch makes me think it was more than coincidental.

But what I can’t stomach is the false notion that he had a major role in street art’s triumphal “arrival” to New York. It’s a falsehood that even Roberta Smith regurgitated in her article in the New York Times a few months ago:

An early advocate of graffiti art in the 1980s, he has more or less introduced New York to its vibrant successor, street art, which originated in San Francisco in the 1990s among artists on the fringe of the skateboard scene.

Too bad it isn’t true. Roberta Smith, who is normally a really interesting critic, has had difficulty with writing about street art before. When she reviewed the Os Gemeos mural she seemed at a loss and resorted to boring descriptions of what she saw with no insight and no critical perspective. I’m guessing she really meant to say that Deitch introduced street art to her slice of the art world at the time but she doesn’t say that. And even that isn’t entirely true.

One of the “Beautiful Losers” (via)

What did Deitch really do? He packaged the “Beautiful Losers” group out of the Bay Area, which included McGee, Johanson, Fairey, for high-end consumption.

The fact is that street art was truly invented in New York, where the perfect storm of an exploding graffiti scene, a sophisticated art scene, a movement to empower nontraditional voices, and a plethora of derelict public spaces sowed the seeds of a movement that was ready to flower. Even if by the 1990s the city’s street art scene was less active it never went away.

For those interested in the early period, a great source is Allan Schwartzman’s Street Art, which was published in 1985! Most of those images will look familiar to street art lovers today. That early generation did things that look remarkably current (versions of wheatpastes, illegal public interventions, culture jamming, … ) and their talent will surprise you. They are an unsung generation and only a few names are familiar to today’s art world, including Jenny Holzer, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, but I hope that changes. The fact that they are not well-known today is why we often see street art that isn’t in fact original but lauded as such by people with no sense of history about the scene (for instance, compare John Fekner c.1980s to unknown artist c.2009).

Left: Don Leicht with one of his “space invaders” he created with John Fekner in the early 1980s at the cutting-edge Fashion Moda in the South Bronx; right: a work by street artist Space Invader on the streets of London, April 2010.

While it’s great to have advocates of street art, like Deitch, in all levels of the art world, let’s not rewrite history and claim he accomplished something he didn’t.

Which leads me to another issue I’ve been thinking about, namely what is Deitch really trying to accomplish? I felt like he gave us a clue in the New York Times profile of artist William Powhida last December:

Jeffrey Deitch, founder of the high-profile New York gallery Deitch Projects, which sponsored a murals project here in addition to its booth, argued that the show’s slick commercialism and the emphasis on celebrity artists simply reflected a broader shift. He described it as “the collapse between the avant-garde and mainstream pop culture.”

He added:

“What’s happening is that there is this completely new audience of young people who are coming to art in the way they used to come to rock music or hip-hop. That’s a very positive thing.”

I have been thinking quite a bit about these paragraphs since I read them online. They seem to reveal a lot about the gallery owner-cum-museum-director’s ambitions. My instinct says it is about creating a new strata of the art world, which has the same relationship to fine art as television has to cinema. We have to face one thing, street art is not the same as what we have come to define as contemporary gallery art. It’s not that street art may not aspire to the same status but that it isn’t always as substantive. The rebellious world of street art simply plays by a different set of rules that involves memes, placement, and populist discourse, to name a few of the distinctions that make its voice powerful and unique. Like all generalizations, these are not always true.

Would Isa Genzken’s “Mutter Mit Kind” (2004) make any sense on a Brooklyn street? (via www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk)

The fact is that they are not the same thing and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Often street art looks more traditional than contemporary fine art, in that wheatpastes and poster, can feel almost conservative in their aesthetics, and much of contemporary art would lose its power and status if it was removed from the white box and placed on the street. Imagine a work by Isa Genzken at the corner of N7th and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg — it would be dull and forgettable. Placed in a gallery, Genzken’s work is “activated.” It requires the context of the white box to make it relevant. When street art pioneer Dan Witz began his career in the 1970s, he told me during an interview last year that he experimented by placing objects on shelves around the Lower East Side. He used found objects — batteries, plastic caps, anything really — but no one seemed to realize they were art and since he (or anyone else) ever documented them they disappeared into the ether. Only when he started painting super-realistic objects like hummingbirds on derelict spots around the neighborhood did people start to notice. In a recent conversation with street artist Gaia, he emphasized the point, “You need it to look like ‘art’ so that people don’t overlook it on the street.”

What I’m suggesting is that the language of street art and fine art represents two parallel avenues that may cross, blur, and energize one another but they lead to different destinations, even if sometimes they end up in the same zip code. People talk about Shepard Fairey as a major figure in the street art movement, but his aesthetics don’t interest me as much as his creativity at finding new modes of cultural distribution. Fairey distributes posters online that sell out in a matter of minutes. Other street artists do the same, this is pretty amazing, and they often do it without a gallery system or even an outside service.

If Deitch can find a way to expand the art world and incorporate new groups, modes of production, and ideas into it, I’m all for it. The man has an obvious knack for promotion. He can make things that others may dismiss feel exciting and interesting to a general audience — that’s his skill. The art world today is bigger than ever. In the 1940s, New York’s art world numbered only a few hundred people, by the 1970s (according to Tom Wolfe’s snarky The Painted Word) it numbered a few thousand, and today it is probably in the tens of thousands, if not more. With the bigger industry and audience there will have to be a way to feed their hunger for art. Like what happened with cinema during the advent of television, new forms will emerge. At first they may seem awkward and puerile, but eventually they will mature and be a force in their own right. Today, in the era of reality TV, art house cinema still exists, as does the Hollywood blockbuster, the experimental film, and YouTube. They are all parallel, though some may not stand the test of time. But contemporary art is just that, about now, and the more the merrier in my opinion, but don’t expect all of it to be good.

General view of Baltimore street before Gaia’s intervention (via Google Streetview) (click to enlarge)

The scroll (click to enlarge)

Coming across a work by Gaia on the street is a special experience. His work is intelligent, emotional, well-executed, and informed by the wider world. He looks beyond pop culture, where most street art gets stuck. His linocut prints and drawings, often of animals, are beautifully rendered and react to the intensity of the urbanscape and its manmade fauna.

His latest wheatpaste, “St. John” (2010), was recently unveiled in Baltimore’s Reservoir Hill neighborhood and is one of his most lyrical to date. When I first saw the image, I didn’t realize it would be the subject of an experiment that I’d been eager to try since first meeting Gaia back in 2008. At the time, I was interviewing him for an article I was writing, and we discussed the possibililty that street art criticism could be directly engaged with art on the street. The excitement over the idea seemed to spring from our mutual interest in exploring the limits of street-based visual dialogue. There are precedents for this type of street level critical engagement, though the existing examples are either anonymous or tongue-in-cheek — neither strategy appealed to me.

Gaia approached me to put our idea into action, and I immediately started working on a piece that would appear next to his work.

It felt daunting at first having never seen the art in person but what became clear to me was not what I wanted my companion piece to be but what it shouldn’t be, namely ironic or sarcastic. I treated this experiment with the utmost seriousness.

From a pedestrian’s angle (click to enlarge)

Good criticism has the same aspirations as art, it seeks to illuminate ideas but only after a process of exploration and reflection.

Street art tends to exist in neglected spaces that are often, according to Gaia, “reactivated with a new kind of attention that does not find its generation from within the delinquent property owner, but instead from the exterior of autonomous artists.” How does the critic fit into this relationship, if at all? Words on the street have a natural association with advertising and , which have trained us to see text in public as a way to sell something. I wanted the art criticism I was preparing to appear removed from the commercial world. It wasn’t going to be a quick and easy read.

Close-up of the top portion (click to enlarge)

Can criticism on the streeet activate the viewer in ways that an art work cannot? I wanted to spend time explaining the historical allusions in the work and propose ways of interpreting it without restricting other ways of seeing the art.

While it is true that street art often lives in neglected spaces, it is also true that these places are also quite volatile. They are transient zones that change based on whim.

There is another reality I was clear about in my mind. I am not a street artist, I am a critic, writer and blogger, my medium is text and images, without both components my work feels incomplete.

What resulted from my exploration is “Natural Apparition.” After the text was complete I decided that it needed to be printed in black and white (which seems well-suited to the nearby wheatpaste) on letter-size pages that should be posted vertically so that they appeared like a scroll robbed of its spindles. It was something that should be revealed all at once and not incrementally.

The document is signed with my Twitter handle. It is filled with art historical references. It places “St. John” in a continuity that emerges from myth. By looking elsewhere for his artistic language, Gaia’s work was well suited to my critical companion piece. I’d like to think of my work as a friend to “St. John,” connecting it to the rest of the world.

A critic friend mentioned to me the other day that Baltimore has excellent art museums (Baltimore Museum of Art, Walters Art Museum) that are very well attended by the local population. It was a fact that makes me curious about the reaction to my text, and how it may impact the reaction to Gaia’s wheatpaste. I wonder if someone will reach out to me via Twitter to ask what it means … probably not, but serious criticism that is draped in secrecy and anonymity can be tiresome. The great thing about the life of art on the street is that there’s never an easy answer but a lot of questions.

Read “Natural Apparition” here.

Gaia’s Juxtapoz post on the collaboration here and on Vandalog here.

Left to right, “Natural Apparition” and Gaia’s “St. John” (2010)

The unfortunately titled Skin Fruit has already opened on the platinum coast of downtown Manhattan, formerly known as the Bowery. And guess what, not everyone is happy. I know, I know, you’re shocked.

Last weekend while avoiding the art fairs, I spotted a fantastic street poster in Chelsea that lampooned the New Museum and its newfound taste for caviar. Adding to the already hilarious poster was the fact that someone had slapped on a sticker of Hargo’s fantastic CA$H FOR YOUR WARHOL campaign on top so that it appeared as one of the blocks of the structure. It was the type of moment that made me realize how much I love the streets of New York, so full of life … and discontent.

Since my discovery I’ve been looking for the image’s source. I asked street art photographer Luna Park for a possible answer, and she was at a loss after pointing out the poster’s high production values (and no name attached to it) excluded the usual street art suspects.

The infamous poster (click to enlarge)

I wondered if the poster was the work of Bruce High Quality Foundation and their spoof culture, but those guys are so eager to be co-opted by the art system — oh wait, they already are — that I doubt they would flay such a powerful art institution publicly and with such panache!

I finally tracked down the image hidden on the website of Shellac, a New York-based company that does post-production for films.

After a quick phone call, I discovered the brilliant campaign was the brain child of three friends, Adam Wissing, Kenny Komer, and Boris Rasin. The same crew was also responsible for the fantastic wild posting campaign last fall that pitted incumbent New York mayor Michael Bloomberg against fictional millionaire Monty Burns of Simpsons fame.

“It was fun to run an out of touch millionaire against an out of touch billionaire,” Adam said during our phone chat about their first street project that garnered major attention and was part of the Art in Odd Places festival last fall. “We like Bloomberg but he’s changing the rules of the game [for better or worse] and we want to point that out.”

Their latest campaign is a dig at the New Museum and they use the museum’s own ad slogan, “New Art, New Ideas,” against them. “The New Museum says they are about new ideas, but Jeff Koons is the biggest artist out there and so establishment. He’s curating the collection of Dakis, who is one of the biggest collectors, and the value of his collection will go up. There are so many levels to this and it is all being shown in a nonprofit museum. I’m excited to see the show but it’s not ‘new ideas,’” Adam says.

Do the New Museum's pens lie? (image via newmuseumstore.org) (click to enlarge)

Like their previous campaign, the trio aren’t interested in politics as much as pointing out the obvious problems.  “It’s more about creating a dialogue and finding fun and interesting ways of getting people talking about things,” he says.

“Kenny and Boris are more involved in the art world, I’m more of an outsider,” he explains.

The group posted the posters across the city the day before the press preview at the New Museum. They thought about releasing a statement about their campaign but chose not to. “We want to create a dialogue, it’s not about ‘check out our work,’” he says.

If the campaign is obviously critical to art world insiders, the posters impact may be harder to discern for non-art world peeps. A friend of mine on Twitter posted a photo of the posters this morning. When I asked him if he knew the source, he responded that he “had assumed they were done in-house.” Adam wasn’t surprised when I told him that my intelligent Twitter buddy didn’t understand the spoof immediately. “We were debating if it was too similar to the New Museum’s own branding or not,” he says.

Part of me wonders if people simply think the institution has no ethics anymore and will do anything for splash and attention.

The Anti-Establishment poster mashes together the absurd coloring of Dakis Joannou’s Jeff Koons-designed yacht, the New Museum’s iconic (and expensive) structure with a sentiment many of us are wondering for some time now, “Oh, New Museum, when did you become so establishment?”

But even if people don’t get it, it’s really really funny.

Fuck Google, indeed.

5) F.A.T. Lab’s FUCK GOOGLE Week (2010)

Recently F.A.T. (Free Art & Technology) Lab held a week-long series of posts “themed around evil mother Google” during Transmediale10 in Berlin.  This included the now-infamous alleged GPS-bugging of a Google Street View car, custom Firefox themes, and even an instructable on building your own Street View car to fight back against the corporation.  (see also a recent Cargo Collective design campaign).

Vimeo link: Fuck Google Week roundup

4) Constant Dullaart, YouTube as Subject / YouTube as Sculpture (2008-ongoing)

In addition to having the best possible name for a digital conceptual artist, Constant Dullaart’s body of work consists of manipulating with contemporary methods of online viewing and production.

His YouTube works draw attention to the user interface that mediates the majority of Internet video traffic in the Western world, whether by sculpturally mimicking the effect of a loading video or by taking the “Play” icon to a rave.

3) Charles Broskoski, Films (2008-ongoing)

Broskoski’s Films is a daily streaming video program with a difference — there are no moving images to be found, only the subtitle tracks.

Broskoski’s film choices are suited to his audience and include new classics, such as Ghostbusters and Terminator 2, so that anyone who was young in the 1980s or early 90s may actually be able to identify by quotes alone.

Make sure to visit his paintings gallery while visiting the site.

The Internet's answer to the best items for contemporary assemblage: "tinsel, inflatable object, marble, hair, fluorescent lights, ball, water, image of a cat"

2) Ben Schumacher’s Portfolio

Fittingly hosted on a free Blogspot account, Ben Schumacher’s portfolio holds a number of gems situated right at the intersection of Internet art and contemporary sculpture.

He presents a number of clever conceptual pieces, from a contemporary assemblage sculpture crafted according to the specifications of a Yahoo! Answers query to an iStockPhoto image of pool water printed on top of a pool cover. Schumacher merges the preoccupation with the cheap and every day by fashioning a number of his sculptures and wall pieces out of materials from IKEA and Walmart.

A view of “www.fromthedarkpast.com” by Rafael Rozendaal

1) Rafael Rozendaal, COLORFLIP.COM, FROMTHEDARKPAST.COM, INTOTIME.COM, NEKROMISANTROP.COM (2008, 2009, 2010, 2010)

No conversation about contemporary Internet art is complete without Rafael Rozendaal.

Chances are even if you haven’t heard his name you’ve visited one of his websites in the last few years. His particular blend of pop aesthetics and flash animation have made his works popular, though how he treats each website as an individual piece adds an interesting layer.

Purchasing a Rafael Rozendaal piece entails purchasing the domain name as well as the art associated with it, and the website must remain visible to the public (the collector’s name is placed in the Title bar).

A photo of Fauxreel's controversial Vespa Squareheads series (photo via Unurth)

For a while now, people often cite Dan Bergeron, aka Fauxreel, as an example of a street art sell-out. Why? Because back in 2008 he partnered up with Vespa to post 324 seven-foot-tall Vespa Squareheads wheatpaste ads on the streets of Toronto and other Canadian cities as part of an ad campaign that combined his characteristic “photograffiti” style with a very commercial addition ― Vespa scooter handles.

The AntiAdvertising Agency blog characterized the project this way:

It’s a modern classic tale: corporate gas-guzzling motor vehicle manufacturer wants to up the street cred with some ads by a jen-yoo-wine member of the underground, who enjoys to eat of the food, and voila—instant edginess. Marketing gold!

Jonathan Goldsbie of the Toronto Public Space Committee said:

It’s pathetic. It’s anti-democratic. They [Vespa] believe that public space is just a blank canvas for a sales pitch.

It wasn’t just bloggers who had a problem. Some wondered if the action provoked a backlash among members of the public who started to scrawl messages on Fauxreel’s less commercial street work.

This week, Sebastian Buck of Unurth published a very fascinating interview with Fauxreel, who is obviously an intelligent artist with a lot to say. Buck asks about the controversial series and receives this provocative response … I reproduced the whole answer since it feels like a complete thought:

I definitely think artists can work commercially and with a conscience, however, I think that if you are going to do this you should be aware of the differing motivations and you should try to make the commercial project provoking to the public in some respect. Because I like blurring the lines and playing with the public’s perceptions in some of the work I create, I immediately realized that the difficulties surrounding an illegal street campaign completed by a commercial interest would be a perfect fit for me. So I approached the Vespa Squarehead project with the goal of raising questions about the role of advertising in public space, examining the grey area between street art, graffiti and advertising and attempting to make connections between products and people’s identities. If I can complete a series of work that will pose and examine these types of questions and it will allow me to make some money at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with that in my opinion.

Will working on a project like that endear you to the public? Probably not, and for me that’s okay. I think the notion a great deal of the public holds, is that street artists should all fall under the same political leftist umbrella and they should all be anti-capitalism. This is certainly untrue (think about Banksy or Shepard Fairey as businessmen and Princess Hijab as a right wing street artist) and it would be boring if it were. Although the simple act of placing up illegal artwork can be said to have political connotations, if the work in question is a stencil of Talib Kweli or a paste up of fried chicken, the work is then purely aesthetically based and not political at all.

In terms of drawing a line between street art and street advertising and deciding what distinguishes the two, I am not the one to be judging that. I am far more interested in the overlapping areas in between and engaging with audiences who appreciate work that challenges the political status quo associated with street art, or art in general, as well as talking to fellow artists who understand these nuances and who utilize them within their work and their approach to developing their practice and essentially their brand.

I admit to being intrigued by Fauxreel’s framing of the debate. He seems to understand that the nature of street art ― and I’m not talking about graffiti ― has changed from its once revolutionary origins as a voice of the dispossessed. But what I don’t understand, and perhaps many street artists and street art critics are trying to understand (myself included), is what is the street artist’s claim to public space if it isn’t for raising public consciousness or communicating an individual voice to a larger audience? Why would a street artist think they can profit off of public space so directly and still retain the respect of the community? Are they mimicking the corporate world’s continuous land grab for public space?

People like Jordan Seiler at Public Ad Campaign have long been critical of illegal ads and their encrotchment on our lives, so how does this hybrid form of advertising fit in?

The only major advantage for artists, other than the monetary aspect, is that artists caught putting up these hybrid works may potentially be charged as illegal advertisers rather than artistic vandals. The penalties for the former are far less than the latter.

A vandal thinks Fauxreel is a sell-out vandal (via Illegalsigns.ca)

There is a fear in this hybridization and where it could lead. Two years ago, Posterchild, an anti-ad activist in Toronto, had this to say about Fauxreel’s hybrids:

If street art becomes associated with guerrilla advertising, we will lose a lot of support. One of the few things that street art has going for it is that people see it as something of a “Voice for the Voiceless.” This generates some sympathy. That sympathy will disappear when the perpetrator is thought to be aggressive companies pushing even further into our lives. Also, I worry that the end result will be closing/licensing of even more of our public spaces. Shutting out street artists.

The whole interview on Unurth is well worth a read.

Paddy Johnson wins the day!

Paddy's web juice put her over the top. Which goes to prove, don't fuck with an art fag.

After hundreds of votes and dozens of comments on the post, on Twitter & on Facebook, we are happy to announce that Paddy Johnson has been declared the official winner of the first ever Worst. Press. Release. Ever. competition. The press release for Olivier Zahm’s exhibition at New York’s Half Gallery is officially the worst press release.

The art blogosphere’s favorite art fag has crossed the finish line victorious with a whopping 72.3% of votes. Congratulations, Paddy! Today is your day in the sun and drinks are on us tonight!

We asked Paddy Johnson for comment on her victory and she replied, “I feel great. I think this is the art world taking a stand against Oliver Zahm.”

Lyra Kilston was unavailable for comment and did not return our calls.