Constantin Brancusi’s “Endless Column” in the workshop (1909); right, John Powers, “Die Die Die” (2007)

“Sculpture is dead.” — John Powers

“Nothing grows under big trees.” — Constantin Brancusi

Left, Carl Andre Family Plot, Quincy, Massachusetts; right, Chris Burden, “Exposing the Foundation of the Museum”(1986)

“A thing is a hole in a thing it is not.” — Carl Andre

“What should replace the missing object?” — Wassily Kandinsky, Reminiscences

“The world is like a hole and the hole itself is not hollow.” — Kazimir Malevich, God Is Not Cast Down

Left, Daniel Buren, “Eye of the Storm” (2005); right, Janet Cardif, “Forty Part Motet” (2001)

“Let us throw away monuments, sidewalks, arcades, steps: let us sink squares into the ground, raise the level of the city.” — Tommaso Marinetti and Antonio Sant’Elia, “Manifesto on Futurist Architecture”

“I’m interested for the most part in what’s not happening, that area between events which could be called the gap. This gap exists in the blank and void regions or settings that we never look at. A museum of different kinds of emptiness could be developed. The emptiness could be defined by the actual installation of the art. Installations could empty rooms not fill them.” — Robert Smithson, “What is a Museum” (1967)

“Minimal art was only trying to answer Pollock’s challenge and to capitalize on what lay latent and undeveloped in his work – that is, to expand the holism and purity into communal practice. If Pollock had been the prophet, minimalism was the church … The practitioners of pop art were farting in church.” — Robert Morris, “Size Matters” (2000)

Left, Image from Dario Gamboni’s “The Destrucion of Art” (1997); right, A view of Celso’s “Art Burn” at the Miami Art Fairs (photo by Hargo) (click to enlarge)

“ … The dead were burnt and their ashes placed inside of the sacred totem poles … Slaves used to be sacrificed in the post holes.” — Kalervo Oberg, The Social Economy of the Tlingit Indians

Left, Robert Smithson, “Partially Buried Woodshed” (1970); right, Cornelia Parker, “Dark Matter: An Exploded View” (1991)

“When Christians built Churches on the sites of pagan sanctuaries, incorporating the old capitals and columns in their naves, they were behaving as Hercules had with the Nemian lion, or Athena with Gorgon. In the hero’s relationship with the monster, what matters is this: … To kill the monster means to incorporate it in oneself, to take its place.” — Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

Left, Michael Heizer, “Double Negative” (1969); right, Philip Johnson’s Kunstbunker (1965) at the Glass House compound in New Canaan, Connecticut.

“Speaking of the hidden by means of the hidden, Is this not content?” — Wassily Kandinsky, Complete Writings

Left, Dirk Skreber, “Untitled Crash 1” (2009); right, Donald Judd, “Untitled” (1968)

“I looked around at everyone bathed in the blood red light of the back room. Dan Flavin had conceived his installation in response to the mounting death toll of the war in Vietnam. No one in the backroom was slated to die in Vietnam, though few would survive the cruel plagues of a generation.” — Patti Smith, Just Kids (2010)

Left, Tom Friedman, “A paper representation of the artist violently torn apart” (2000); right, François Girardon, “Louis XIV - foot fragment” (1699)

“We dropped abstraction off its sacred throne ’and spat on its altar.” — El Lissitzky, “Abstraction in the Twentieth Century”

Left, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled - Orpheus, Twice” (1991); right, Robert Morris, “Two Columns” (1961)

“And finally, above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and had a good purpose and that is why I made art.” — Felix Gonzalez-Torres in an interview with Tim Rollins (1993)

A sign yes … but from what? (image by the author)

Lost and hungry is not a good combination. Imagine driving in an unfamiliar place, stomach growling, and not exactly sure how close or far away you are from any landmarks. Many miles ago you’ve dropped all your pretenses about needing to eat all-organic food and your concerns about maintaining your diet. Your diet has been compromised. The urgency of hunger is upon you. The onward-stretching road seems like a dim and unhappy place, and you’re starting to wonder if previously chewed gum still contains enough calories to sustain your energy.

Then suddenly you see it, a huge billboard with the words: MCDONALD’S NEXT EXIT. At that moment, you’re probably not thinking about the fact that it’s typeset in Arial without consideration for negative space, that it lacks attractive colors or that it’s just not a very nice-looking billboard. No, all you see, blazing from atop the trees and urban wasteland, is a glorious sign from God telling you all you need to know at that very moment.

Now, if said billboard had been dressed up with lovely graphics, scripty fonts, beautifully-lit interior photos, and text describing their new value menu in great specific detail, you may not have noticed it. You’d still be driving along, wondering how you’re going to find a place to eat. The ugly billboard has arrested your attention by screaming essential information to you as plainly as possible.

Sometimes, ugly design is really what we’re looking for.

While the definition of ugly is subjective to some point, there is a collective understanding of what is pretty to look at versus something that gets the job done. The kind of ugly we’re talking about here isn’t about what’s in or out of vogue. It’s a visual product demonstrating the essential purpose of design: to communicate and get a point across.

This is where we start to see the two different priorities in design. Form versus function. Form being “oh, this is lovely” and function being (as Larry Cable so eloquently puts it) “git er done.” Ugly falls into the category of function by default, while beauty is the form which builds upon it. For those who are dessert-lovers, let’s just say that “pretty” is icing on the “ugly” cake.

Function must proceed form. Design and creative briefs almost always begin with a statement of purpose and desired message. Not a checklist of color palettes, typographic choices or whatever. Those design elements are absolutely a part of it, but are subsequent to a higher priority.

I sell potatoes. My primary objective is to have you buy my potatoes, and I don’t care if you paint “POTATOES” (or “POTATOS” for that matter) on wood or metal or on your torso or just paint an image of a potato — I just want people to know I’ve got potatoes.

No matter how you pretty things up, it’s still just a potato … umm potatoe — apologizes to former US Vice President Dan Quayle (via politicalhumor.about.com) (click for reference)

But suppose potatoes become endorsed by Justin Bieber for some weird reason, and they become the hottest ingredient in town. Kids and teenage girls go crazy over french fries (I know, it’s a stretch), hash browns, baked potatoes, perogies, potato chips, you name it. So I paint my sign in bright colors, slap some Comic Sans on there with a blown-up pixelated image of Bieber’s face that I found on Google Images.

The potato fad gets picked up by Dolce & Gabbana, and potatoes become the new statement of the year. I drop the family-friendly look and hire someone to design an immaculately-kerned Potato Sans for my unique typeface, which will be etched onto pristine sheets of high-polished platinum.

By now, potatoes have risen in value to the point that they’ve flooded the stock market. What goes up must come down, so inevitably the potato market becomes ruined and no one wants them anymore. What else can a poor potato-seller do? So, I find the largest surface-area possible and paint in big red letters, POTATO LIQUIDATION SALE ALL SPUDS MUST GO 90% OFF ALL MERCHANDISE.

Bankruptcy ain’t pretty. Neither is my sign, but in the end, I just want people to know that I’ve got potatoes.

Obviously, this is a ridiculous analogy, but in design (signs or not), getting a message across is the ultimate goal. Graphic trends come and go; beautiful or in vogue styles are afterthoughts that eventually fade or are replaced by other fashions. Designs remaining steadfast for so many years are often the ones that are unashamedly base and cut out the frills. You can’t negate the worth of beauty for utility, but when you’re starving and lost, function always triumphs over form.

Editor’s note: This nonfiction story by Nancy Agabian explores the intersection of art and science and was written in response to her recent performance at “Wonder Cabinet,” which we wrote about on April 19. Occidental College, where the event took place, has posted photos from the event on their Flickrstream and we’ve reproduced some here with their permission. For your convenience, we’ve also attached a PDF version of Agabian’s 4,500-word story (without images) for those who may prefer the convenience of an electronic reader, computer or just to print out.

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People at A Wonder Cabinet, which was curated by Remsen Bird Artist in Residence Lawrence Weschler, in Thorne Hall at Occidental College on Saturday, April 24, 2010. (Photo by Marc Campos, Occidental College Photographer) (via flickr.com/oxyphotos)

Sometimes I have strange feelings for my computer. In the 13 years since I set up an email account, I have had a wide ranging series of emotional experiences while facing a screen. In the early days of email, I wrote long letters to friends, like the ones I used to write by hand and send through the mail. I received long letters too: messages of friendship and love and the occasional breakup, though these missives have become increasingly more brief and less frequent since Facebook. Through my writing, I’ve connected to communities — lesbians in Armenia, disaffected teenagers in Rochester, and immigrant writers in Queens (where I now live) — on my computer. I’ve written a memoir on it, which required that I carefully and honestly analyze my life over a period of nine years. I’ve cried while working on my computer, summoning up painful life experiences and learning of terrible tragedies. I have also received a lot of good news on it: word of grants and awards and new opportunities. Lately, with this recession coinciding with mid-life crisis-ish concerns, I have felt addicted to the computer, just waiting for some more good news to arrive to get me out of my predicament: at work, I’m an artist trapped in an academic’s body. I get paid to usher young students into institutions of higher learning. This means that instead of fostering creativity, I sometimes get stuck preaching academic objectivity. So when I got an email from writer Lawrence Weschler asking me to resurrect Guitar Boy for the “Wonder Cabinet” at Occidental College in Los Angeles last April, I jumped on it. Guitar Boy was the folk-punk/performance art band that I had formed with artist Ann Perich in LA when I had lived there in the 90s. I wasn’t exactly sure what the Wonder Cabinet was, but Ren (as he is known by his students and friends) was one of my favorite professors in grad school; I was confident it would be a worthwhile event.

Weschler won a National Book Critics Circle Award for his book Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences, a tome that illustrates and documents parallels in visual images and world events, often in the most uncanny, unfathomable ways. He has also become an academic impresario as the director of the New York Institute of the Humanities, putting together events with films, lectures and discussions on such topics as modern reportage, comics as art, and relations between religions. Sometimes they get funky, such as people who are crocheting a model of the coral reef. When I Googled his name with the term “Wonder Cabinet,” I discovered that the event relates to one of his books, Mr Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder. The nonfiction book is about the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, an odd little place with real exhibits (like microscopic sculptures mounted on the heads of pins) and fake (a bat that can fly through matter but gets stuck in a lead wall eight inches thick). In the book Weschler gets into the beginnings of the museum in the late 16th and early 17th centuries when collectors started displaying curiosities in their homes. These Renaissance cabinets or rooms were called Wanderkammern, or Wonder Cabinets, and they included things like supposed horns of humans and Madonnas made out of feathers and other weird items both real and suspicious. It was a time of the “New World,” when the West met up with the East and elsewhere. In a way, the Museum of Jurassic Technology calls up this time period, with its creator David Wilson presenting exhibits that appeal to our sense of wonder. As Weschler puts it, “The visitor to the Museum of Jurrasic Technology continually finds himself shimmering between wondering at (the wonders of nature) and wondering whether (any of this could possibly be true). And it’s that very shimmer, the capacity for such delicious confusion … that may constitute the most blessedly wonderful thing about being human.”

The entrance to Thorne Hall at Occidental College (Photo by Marc Campos, Occidental College Photographer) (via flickr.com/oxyphotos)

Weschler, as a modern day collector of curious people and ideas, started creating day-long events called “Wonder Cabinets,” coordinating connections between artists and scientists in homage to the ways that art and science were more unified during the Renaissance. “In fact, with the rise of the Internet and social media we may be returning to an era in which scientists and artists, historians and digital innovators have all kinds of things to say to each other,” Weschler says in the press release for the event at Occidental, where he is an artist-in-residence. I thought of the role of the computer in my life as a writer; I tend to get distracted by digital innovation, on Facebook and celebrity gossip websites, instead of creating with it anything of wonder. Also, I wasn’t sure how Guitar Boy would fit into the program, but I didn’t question too much, since Occidental was going to foot my travel bill to Los Angeles.

I had decided to move there twenty years before, as a college senior majoring in art, when I had read in ArtNews or Artforum about the burgeoning LA art world; two days after graduating in 1990, I drove across the country (from Boston) and lived there for nine years. It was in Venice, my old neighborhood, that I had found an artistic home. Now upon my return, after living in New York for eleven years, I couldn’t believe how exotic Venice looks: palm trees and bouganvillea and jade plants growing outside. I would walk down Venice Boulevard from my apartment to go to work at a printmaking studio run by self-proclaimed Modern Primitives. And completing the triangle of home, work, and art was Beyond Baroque, the literary center in the old Venice Town hall where I started writing. Previously in college, at a seven-sister’s school, I had trouble expressing myself among all the well-spoken young women, except when I could escape to the silent realm of the painting studio. In the multicultural 90s of LA, I was now given the means to tell my angst of growing up Armenian American. I suddenly became aware of my existence as a person with a past, walking around Venice. I made performances from the insane/drug-induced propositions that were uttered to me by various sun-addled men as I shuffled by in my cut-off jean shorts and Doc Martens, just 22 years old and still squishy in my body. In my art, I became subject and object at the same time.

Guitar Boy’s Nancy Agabian and Ann Perich perform in front of hundreds of people during Lawrence Weschler’s “A Wonder Cabinet.” (Photo by Marc Campos, Occidental College Photographer)

Ann Perich was drawn to this subjective-objectedness, too. A musician and mixed media artist, she saw me doing a performance wearing a dress made out of rocks on Valentine’s Day, ca. 1997. I am sure I was spilling my guts about being alone, bisexual and Armenian — the subjects of all my performances. She called me on the phone the next day and said she could relate and proposed we collaborate musically. I was like, Hey, I’m kind of tone deaf, but Ann didn’t mind. In her garage, she played a dulcimer with a pickup or a Casio keyoboard, and I sang improvised words, sometimes providing accompaniment on a screechy violin. We eventually called our collaboration Guitar Boy, since we did not play guitars nor were we boys; before the millenium shifted, it seemed critical to comment on the appalling way that popular music had been dominated for decades by the same type of instruments and people. I also wanted to make songs about topics other than love or longing or whatever sexual disco dittie was playing on the car radio. So we composed songs about Norman Rockwell, the Kmart Portrait Studio, and lactose intolerance, playing to small but knowing audiences at performance art spaces, dive bars, and Jewish delis. Our claim to non-fame was a folk-punk tune called “Don’t Fall Off the Getty Center (It’s a Long Way Down)” that people just went bonkers over. The Getty was so mammoth and lofty — literally and figuratively — that it seemed unlikely to contain it as a subject within a song, never mind tear it completely down. Its narrative lyrics were classic David and Goliath: an impoverished contemporary artist pitted against the most wealthy museum in the world; it hit the consciousness of the underclass of struggling artists in LA just at the right moment. To celebrate, we wore outrageous costumes: old prom dresses, middle-aged lingerie, mini-skirts made of clear plastic shower curtains — how Lady Gaga would dress if she were limited to a thrift store budget. I basked in the attention of our locally contextual stardom, a new kind of subject/object.

For some reason, when I moved to New York to go to grad school shortly thereafter, I gave our CD to Lawrence Weschler. In college I had read Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, his book on Robert Irwin, the text that was probably more influential (than the art mags) in sending me West after graduation. I was taking a class with him called “The Fiction of Nonfiction” in which he showed us words in nonfiction pieces that were delicately and deliberately chosen to create moments of poetry. He was the first professor I had in grad school who spoke about writing as if it were an art form, rather than a medium to record the thoughts in our minds which were supposed to come out in such a way that no one would ever second guess our intelligence.

One day I was meeting with Weschler in his office, and he told me he couldn’t reconcile my person with my prose, since I was so mousy in class and I was so outspoken in my writing. The first of my family to go to grad school, and newly transplanted from the-opposite-of-New-York, I didn’t feel comfortable that I could reveal my thoughts in class in such a way that no one would second guess my intelligence. I gave him the CD as a way to say, You thought my writing was out there? I must have had some kind of faith that Weschler would get it. Sure, he looked academic, with his beard, glasses, and a corduroy blazer with leather patches on the elbows, and he was a Pulitzer nominee and former New Yorker staffer. But he also told us that he had grown up in LA, had gone to school at Santa Cruz, and had started out as a writer for the LA Weekly. I liked that he made fun of articles in which the writer goes out of his way to stick to journalistic standards of objectivity, to such an extent that he can’t even acknowledge his own existence, with phrases like, “It was noted that … ” or “Mr. Jagger was asked … ” Likewise, popular songs, though they often use the first person, often try to tell a universal truth, and as such, veer away from anything grounded in specific personal experience, dealing instead with cliché. But specificity brings out the universal — that’s what I learned from “Don’t Fall Off the Getty Center,” anyway. I thought Ren would like Guitar Boy’s specific songs, and he did.

We have kept in touch over the last ten years since meeting in his class, and now he wanted Guitar Boy to play at the “Wonder Cabinet.” He had invited an art historian with a theory that Norman Rockwell was a huge pervert, and our song about him would work perfectly, but it turned out the guy couldn’t make it. Ren had also been hanging out at the Getty Research Institute and playing our song around their offices, I imagined to rouse morale. But we still didn’t seem to fit in with the theme of science and art very well.

I tried to put aside this concern when I got to Ann’s house to rehearse. She now happened to live in the same Venice neighborhood that I did, composing music for theatre and art projects and working at a law firm for her day job. She looked the same as she did ten years before, still wearing her white girl dread locks. For three days, in between her work schedule, we practiced and laughed. The songs came back to us easily, engraved in our brains. But Ann thought it was weird that we were going to play at what seemed to her like a stodgy academic affair. Stuck doing academic grunt work, I saw things a little differently. I have been to many a stodgy academic affair and usually artists aren’t invited nor consulted. It sounded like a fun and funky event to me, though I was still confused as to how we could contribute to the theme of science and art converging in our present era.

On the day of the Cabinet, we arrived in time for the lunch break and set up our musical instruments and did a little sound check. Our little Casio keyboard sounded bizarre amplified back to us in the massive space. We were in Thorne Hall, once of those classic academic spaces, long and wide, that one usually does associate with boring lectures. But the first lecturer we heard, Walter Murch seemed kind of cool. He is an Oscar-winning sound mixer and editor, but his side interest has brought him here to give a Power Point presentation about the similarities between the ratios of the orbits of planets and moons to the frequencies of notes in octaves. Or something like this. It is interesting for about 45 minutes, especially when he talks about the early astronomers who believed that God wouldn’t create imperfectly measured orbits. But I start to lose the thread of his hypothesis, as he continues to give more complicated technical info in a series of charts. Ann gives me the “I told you so” look.

The next guy up is Ken Libbrecht, a physicist from Cal Tech who photographs snowflakes. He has a North Dakota accent and is quite earnest about describing his process. He explains how he lays out a piece of white foam core when it’s snowing to catch the flakes, transfers them to a slide, then gets out his special microscopic camera to photograph them, his hands freezing the whole time. The photographs themselves, projected onto the massive screen at Thorne Hall, are colorful, transparent designs, multifaceted works of art. The audience oohs and ahs. It is very wonderful to see a world that we live with but don’t know in detail. At some point, he tells us that he uses filters on the photographs, to add dimension to the flakes; otherwise, they’re just clear crystals in black and white. Then he says he didn’t use Photoshop, right as he admits that he used Photoshop to doctor the particular image on the screen and the audience laughs. He is an odd and likable character. For no reason at all, he says as a kind of conversational tic, “I have lots of photographs of snowflakes,” like a kid showing you his collection of marbles.

The snowflake guy outlines the various components of snowflakes. He uses words like “sectored plates,” “duck feet,” “six sentinels,” and “stellar dendrites” to describe the formations. He shows us some flakes that have stuck together that look like lattice work. One fun fact I did not know is that some flakes are made out of needles and hollow columns — two flakes might form at the end of one long needle. The longer a flake has to form, the more developed it will be. Besides time, the two main factors in shaping flakes into patterns are temperature and humidity.

At some point he shows us some man-made snow; after some of the elegant, intricate, fern-like flakes we have seen, the man-made flakes look totally crude, like misshapen clods of dirt. The audience chuckles. It made me realize that people just can’t ever be superior to God. But then I have to give humans credit, since they have created incredible moments of genius; some might cite Bach or Van Gogh or Patti Smith. But something about seeing those primitive man-made flakes reminds me of how I cringe when I see old paintings I have done, or read texts I have written years ago, or watch films that I thought were great as a kid, only to find as an adult they are completely sophomoric. (Rent “Breaking Away” if you want such an experience.) Everything we make seems retarded, unless it has something of God in it, I guess.

The snowflake guy decided to make his own flakes in the studio, I mean laboratory, with equipment that can control the temperature and humidity (or saturation). He shows us proof sheets of flakes taken at various temps and saturation points. He describes how he can watch the flake forming on his monitor, and thus adjust the temp and saturation as it’s growing to alter formations, to get more ducks feet or plates or stellar dendrites. It is at this moment that I realize the science/art connection. This guy sounds like an artist working in his studio, playing around with his media. He is filled with wonder.

But, he is human, too. His lecture goes on maybe half an hour too long. Ann and I are zonked out from sitting in the dark air conditioned auditorium for three hours straight. At the break we head outside to the California sunshine and walked around the campus to stretch and get psyched up to perform. In the meantime, the artists took the stage. Lauren Redniss was showing her project about Marie Curie. Matt Shlian was discussing folded paper. Ryan and Trevor Oakes, college-aged-looking twins had these pen and ink line drawings that were set inside concave shapes; in the green room backstage, I stuck my head into one and told them that it was cool.

Before we went on, Ren insisted that I watch a film that David Wilson had given him by a Soviet Armenian filmmaker, Artavazd Pelechian. It just happened to be April 24, Martyrs Day, the day of commemoration of the Armenian genocide. I felt a bit guilty for getting gussied up in clashing tights and an animal print leotard with a tail and gallivanting around on such a sober date, so I was relieved he took a moment to honor the day. The film shows a flock of sheep being guided through a tunnel. It’s in black and white, and at one point, one of the sheperds loses a sheep in a river with many rapids. He dives in after it, and you watch him holding on to that sheep as they keep getting sucked under, his feet disappearing into the waves. It is incredibly poignant.

At Ren’s request, we start with “Victim” (“I’m not gonna be a victim anymore”) which ties into the subject of the film, with its echoes and suggestions of genocide; then I give a little speech about wonder being the opposite of genocide, since genocide is stupidity and hatred taken to its ulitmate form. The “Wonder Cabinet,” I explain, values and studies and loves the unusual, so we’re going to celebrate unusual and tortured artists today. We sing a song called “The Artist’s Way” (with a chorus of “We’re all artists, we just don’t know it”), and the one about Norman Rockwell (“Norman, oh Norman, you weren’t normal … ”). Sitting on chairs next to each other, I make sure to yell and scream in the right places, and Ann plays her dulcimer with dramatic flourishes. But things aren’t going well. We’re making tons of mistakes; it’s the worst time we have played, when in rehearsal we were doing so well. And the audience doesn’t match up with my memory. The Cabinet-eers seem dead; there are far fewer numbers from when the snowflake guy gave his talk. They’re just sitting there catatonic instead of looking delighted. I remember moments of glory from the Guitar Boy days, when I once had a bowl of Matzo ball soup sent to the stage at Canter’s Kibbutz room, and Ann and I played an homage to it, to the tune of “Girl from Ipanema” (“Large and round and spongy and starchy, the Matzo ball soup at Canter’s is yummy”) or the time when Sonny Bono died and we paid tribute to him to the tune of “Sunny” (“Sonny, thank you for the Sonny and Cher show. Sonny, you had a really really really big nose.”) Thinking about it now, I realize those inspired moments were few and far between. There were many times, I am sure, when audiences just stared at us, not knowing what to make of us, like they are now.

I feel very disconnected from this audience. So as part of our onstage banter, I tell Ann that we don’t belong here. I ask her, “Do you think they think we’re weird?” Someone from the audience yells out, “Nooo!” and he sounds like Weschler. “Judging by the weirdos we’ve seen here today, I’d say we do fit in,” she says, and the audience laughs. I tell Ann that we’re old, and outdated, and we’ve been taken out of context, the way that items in a museum are often plopped into a sterile environment; this is the segueway to “Don’t Fall Off the Getty Center.” When we launch into it, people wake up a little bit. I have updated it with some lyrics about how the Getty can’t hold onto any museum directors, because these poor souls always have to report to the head of the trust to make any purchases. I purport that it is fundamentally a stingy place because of the cheap legacy of J. Paul Getty himself, who let his grandson’s ear be cut off by kidnappers and later demanded that his son, the boy’s father, pay him back the ransom.

Nancy Agabian speaks to the crowd after her performance. (Photo by Marc Campos, Occidental College Photographer)

Afterwards, old friends appeared, people I hadn’t thought of in a while, and we got caught up and reacclimated our eyes to each other. We are all invited to the Occidental president’s house, where we eat tacos and talk about the event and reminisce. My friend Jennifer Gentile, a filmmaker and set decorator, was telling us about the Oakes twins and how they identified a more accurate way of drawing perspective by acknowledging human biology and structure.

They reminded the audience that when we see an image, we don’t see it as a rectangle in an unobstructed frame; in fact our noses usually get in the way, but our visual cortex works to leave it out. So they compose images within a series of small sections, which are measured to be the same width as the space between their two pupils. They also believe that we experience space spherically and thus, the surfaces that we draw on should be concave. Jen said the talk was mind blowing, given that the artists twins; here you have two different people with four eyes working out a theory on perspective. I found it interesting that the subject made its way into what’s meant to be an objective process.

As a nonfiction writer, I often have to think about subjectivity and objectivity and how they play out in writing. When you are a subject, you act. An object is acted upon. To be objective often means remaining completely separate from the action, to just observe, like an emotionless scientist. Being subjective doesn’t just mean being a subject of a piece of writing, but inserting yourself into the action to acknowledge your limitations to see a subject clearly. Embracing the subjective means embracing your humanity. Maybe God is objective, the ultimate omniscient observer, but humans can never be anything more than subjective, no matter how hard they try to play God. And yet God is in the details, the ones that we create. So are artists human and god, subjective and objective, at the same time?

The university has been structured around subjectivity and objectivity, with its different disciplines, categorized and separated from each other: colleges of science, colleges of liberal arts, colleges of arts. In English departments, you have people dissecting literature like frogs, and you have kids getting inspired to compose their own poems. I started teaching English because I needed a job after graduate school; as a performance artist, I had always hoped an MFA would give me more stability to get a salary and benefits. Academia was a refuge I entered only because public arts funding had been drying up for a while. I found my English students weren’t looking for a wacky artist, and neither were my employers. But I did the best job I could, since I liked my students, and I didn’t have a big beef with academia: it encouraged having an open mind, something artists have to rely upon. Artists sometimes need to do research, and they have to stretch their minds around new information in order to inform their work. Academia also focuses on having a discipline, which artists need when they go to their studios every day. In a way, I am creative with teaching, structuring writing exercises around readings. And I bring my performance persona into the classroom to improvise during lessons, based on the students’ comments. So as an event — and as a tradition — the Wonder Cabinet reminds me that there are even more possibilities for bringing together the disparate parts I have been struggling with: the sober, objective professor, and the crazy, impulsive performance artist.

At the after-party, some of the Getty research fellows approached us to buy our CDs. They really liked our Getty song and they gave us some dirt about the institution, which warmed my heart. I started to feel like it all now made sense, the reason for Guitar Boy being here, the convergence of our songs with the topics and projects of the day. We were the entertainment for these art and science nerds. Jennifer said that today was essentially a day about people who are weirdos, and we exemplified that most directly, with our bizarre songs. She saw people who became totally committed to an idea that might not be especially popular, hip, or even practical. I was happy that I had kept Guitar Boy’s flame burning. For in essence, creativity — whether scientific, artistic, objective or subjective — is a wonder.

Terry Richardson without his signature glasses (via Terry Richardson’s Diary)

It started in Paris during the second week of March. When New York-based artist and famed fashion photographer Terry Richardson ran into the Danish model Rie Rasmussen at a fashion event, he found himself confronted by the latter. According to Rasmussen, she accused him of abusing his power to exploit young models for his overtly sexual images, upon which Richardson fled the scene and later called her agency to complain. This in turn prompted Rasmussen to vent more publicly.

On the surface, Richardson’s body of work, which aside from his more commercial assignments is explicitly sexual, does not necessarily help his case. Blurring the line between art and pornography, he is far from pursuing mainstream goals. In addition, he puts himself in the middle as many of his images show him actually having sex. To those who are less inclined to look at his overall mission of establishing a complex exhibitionist portrait of himself and his surroundings, he might simply appear as a pervert. While his critics label him mundane and mono-focused, his admirers see in him a contemporary mélange of Diane Arbus and Jeff Koons, whose dedication to portraying the everyday fringe made of porn stars, supermodels, transsexuals, hillbillies, friends, and pets to celebrities, is wholehearted. To create work that has no taboos (in particular if it comes to sex or religion) in a society that is filled with them, will always cause a stir. However, if paired with such a serious accusation as abuse, an artist like Richardson has to face something else: an unleashing of emotion and criticism long held back. If this package comes with some sloppy reportage the mess is made.

Ultimately, who knows if Richardson truly abuses his power on his set. Would he be the first in the fashion industry to take advantage of young aspiring fashion models who long to spike up their career and dream of their first magazine cover? Of course not. As an observer and a female writer, the last thing I would like to do is jump to someone’s defense whom I do not know personally and who might turn out to be guilty. What I believe however is that as long as nothing has been proven, everyone’s innocence should remain intact.

In the meantime, what interests me in this case is how the story has unfolded in the media. How it went from the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal online, to a large variety of online forums and private blogs. On March 11, The New York Post cited Rasmussen verbatim: “I told him what you do is completely degrading to women. I hope you know you only [bleep] girls because you have a camera, lots of fashion contacts and get your pictures in Vogue.” On March 16, Jamie Speck, who once worked with Richardson in the past, stepped forward. On The Gloss, she ended a lengthy account of their photo session by reflecting: “As much as I’d like to think he went especially mad for my unique brand of non-emaciated sex appeal, it’s likely that he approaches all girls the same way: gauge the situation, drop some names, take out your trouser monster, and see what you can get them to do.”

Since these reports emerged, the web has been abuzz, mainly with unsubstantiated anonymous postings. A typical example can be found on The Fash Pack, which stated on March 20 (without naming names) that “an increasing number of members from all levels of the fashion industry are coming forward to say they’ve felt violated by the photographer, or that they know someone who has.” As a response, Richardson made a statement on March 20 on his own website, writing that he was “really hurt by the recent and false allegations of insensitivity and misconduct.” He stressed: “I’ve always been considerate and respectful of the people I photograph and I view what I do as a real collaboration between myself and the people in front of the camera.” How much flawed reportage can twist your arm can be seen in the case of the Wall Street Journal. On March 23, Elva Ramirez in the context of an interview review involving fashion designer Marc Jacobs, falsely labeled Richardson’s statement above as an outright “apology.” Only those who bothered to click the indicated link were able to identify what it actually was: a defense of his character.

Mental and sexual abuse are very serious crimes, which demand thorough investigation. To spread these rumors as facts in magazines, papers and on the Internet and with that, causing damage to someone’s reputation, should not be taken lightly and if proven false should have repercussions.

A stage installation by Martin Kersels at the 2010 Whitney Biennial (photo: Whitney.org)

I’m trying to sleep at the Whitney. I rest on a white pillow, a white bath towel covering me. On my head I wear a plastic grocery store bag, the handles tied under my chin, two rubber bands on either side of my head cinching the plastic into a pair of ears. I’m supposed to be a mouse.

It’s cold at the Whitney in the little room in the lobby by the elevators. Here, Martin Kersels has designed a sculpture in the shape of a stage upon which performances can be created. Entitled “Five Songs,” it’s hard to evaluate as a work of art while I’m sleeping on it. Five semi-fantastical stages are painted black, white and orange. There’s 1) a go-go dancer booth atop some speakers, attached to 2) an oval-shaped black table, which I am sleeping under, connected to 3) another stage with upside down chairs supporting it, leading to 4) one made of glass that holds our props, from which 5) a very small stage protrudes that looks like the bow of a ship. The part I am sleeping on is made out of wood and is surprisingly comfortable.

I am not just supposed to be a mouse, but Gregor Samsa when he is sleeping, before he awakes to realize he is a “dung beetle”, in Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” Melinda told me that I really have to sleep so that it will look realistic. If I can’t sleep, I have to give up my post to one of the other mice/performers. I nod my head at her; when I have worked with her before I have similarly enjoyed traveling to another absurdist world. I used be a performer and she is a dancer and a choreographer whose last name is Ring. Her piece is called Mouse Auditions.

Martin Kersels, "Study in Orange & White #4" (2009). Colored pencil on paper. Courtesy Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, Paris, and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York (via Whitney.org) (click to enlarge)

At first it’s not so hard for me to fall asleep. It’s true I am excited because this is a performance, and people are watching, but I am also experiencing the first day of my menstrual cycle which at age 42 is exhausting. Like Gregor, I am also stressed out and need a break. I considered not coming today, because I am supposed to cook a lot of food for a baby shower tomorrow, and grade 35 papers, and I couldn’t imagine wearing the costume — a pair of flimsy white longjohns — in my condition. But I had promised Melinda and I am not the type to shirk responsibility.

The lights are bright at the Whitney, so I cover my eyes with my arm. To sleep at the Whitney Biennial, I am drifting, drifting; when you think about it, it’s just a room, not so special if you can’t even fall asleep in it. And yet, the reason I ultimately forced myself from Queens today was that I don’t know when I’ll have this opportunity again; I am not going to let a baby shower or my menses or my job take over my life to such an extent that I cannot sleep at the Whitney while appearing to be a mouse. Breathe in, breathe out. Lately I have been meditating to hold onto myself in the classroom, where I have to perform every day. But it’s job performance, not play.

I actually teach “The Metamorphosis.” Students are taken by it; even in this age of computer-generated video games, they don’t normally imagine a man who transforms to a cockroach. Sometimes when analyzing the message of the story, they write about how important it is to take care of onself before helping others, even family. No one ever says, “Sometimes I feel like a giant bug.” I guess they don’t want to admit such a thing in a classroom. When all the students have left, I tend to beat myself up. I think I understand why Kafka created Gregor. Ironically, by turning into a despicable creature was he then allowed to rest, to be taken care of, only to feel guilty about it: he became an even grosser version of himself, till he turned to dust.

I want to think that this is what is happening at the Whitney, but willingly. As far as I can discern, most of the other mice were previously dancers or actors in their twenties, white and female. As the performance progresses, they seem to lose their playful edge. Some of them simply disappear.

What’s happening is that the mice are holding auditions for a performance that will never happen. So they are giving each other motivational tips on how to speak like Gregor when he is trying to communicate, his language garbled and incomprehensible because he no longer has human vocal chords or a tongue. I can’t sleep with all their racket. So I get up and tell another mouse she can take my place.

All of a sudden I’m on top of the stage auditioning, and there are a bunch of Whitney Biennial attendees milling about. I stare down at the script and do my best imitation of a cockroach. A few of the attendees walk out, which I hope attests to how disturbingly I have transformed into a mouse/bug. When I am done, the woman who is playing the director auditioning mice tells me, “That was great.” It’s a strange moment. I feel accomplished, and yet I just heard Melinda telling her to act positive, the way directors do during auditions.

Afterwards, the mice are chatting. One mouse expresses that it was a satisfying experience because even if you auditioned badly, it made for a good performance. But I feel thankful for the opportunity to become Gregor. I can’t believe this story has actually entered the canon. Gregor is so one-dimensionally a victim, his selfless portrayal over the top, that it shouldn’t be relatable. But then, people had such different relationships to family duty in previous generations. Still, Kafka didn’t even want the story published, his best friend going against his wishes to burn all his writings after his death. Perhaps we value the work so much because it it came from an artist who did not subject himself to the demands of an audience or the market. Or maybe the story expresses something so fundamentally human that we cannot accept it coming from a contemporary. According to Wikipedia, Kafka thought it was funny.

After I take off my plastic bag ears and put on my day clothes, I head over to the coat check. I hear a familiar voice and turn my head to see David Brancaccio dropping off his coat. When I had a TV I often watched his show on PBS on Friday nights. I am awestruck; he is actually talking about coats in the same tone of voice he uses on air. Emboldened from revisiting my performance persona today (a lady in the lobby who sounded vaguely German told me afterwards, “You play well!”), I so very much want to go up to him and say “Hi David Brancaccio!” As I approach, I take a look at his companion, a woman about my size in slacks and a black jacket. They’re deciding which floor to start on, and I don’t want to interrupt.

I’ve been wrong about reality. It’s not that I won’t have a chance to perform at the Whitney again. It’s that I now can’t afford admission to see the Biennial, and tonight was my opportunity to enter for free without waiting. I decided I was too tired to stay. Outside, it’s Friday night, and the endless line to get in the one time a week without an entrance fee winds down Madison and across 75th Street, into the cold March darkening.

The first time I arrived at Song Zhuang’s incoming bus stop, Ma Yida was waiting for me on an electric bike that was the same rust color as the bus station. Ma is a photorealist painter who moved to Song Zhuang in 2006; he rents out one of the shabbier studios in the village for around $150 per month.

Song Zhuang’s distance (at right) from central Beijing.

Ma’s studio is a rundown version of a traditional Beijing courtyard house, a rectangular dwelling at the rear of a large open yard space, surrounded by a high wall. The space inside is cluttered and confused, filled with old still life subjects, pots of drying paint, and a bed thrown into a corner. A bunch of puppies chase around their mother on the floor. The dog is a tiny Pomeranian-looking thing and Ma points out that her bark is loud. All the artists in Song Zhuang raise dogs to protect their studios from would-be art thieves, a phenomenon particular to the village.

Where Ma Yida raises Pomeranians, painter Tang Jianying employs an enormous Tibetan Mastiff to guard his studio. Any visitor to Tang’s place is greeted first by the rattling of the barred door outside and the vicious barks of the Mastiff. Tang says the dog’s friendly once you get to know him, but I wasn’t too inclined to find out. The studio is a bigger space, a warehouse closer to “downtown” Song Zhuang complete with high ceilings, floodlights, and a pool table.

A characteristic work by Yue Minjun (via colectiva.tv)

I was told that Old Tang is a “gatekeeper” for some of the most famous artists living in Song Zhuang, such international art stars as Fang Lijun and Yue Minjun, known for his manically grinning absurdist characters. If Tang approves of a guest he passes them on to the big boys. I didn’t get lucky in that regard, but Tang was enough of a story by himself. In 2002, he left his wife and family in western China to come to Song Zhuang and live as a painter. He now sells his pictures of brushy human faces trapped behind bars through galleries in the United States and England, as well as in China. He certainly does alright.

Lu Lin’s place is even nicer than Old Tang’s, the warehouse ceilings perforated by skylights, a personal assistant on call, cigarettes from Shandong, and green tea in glass teacups at the table. He paints towering canvases that move between traditional Chinese painting and modernist abstraction, swooping dashes of bright color over quiet passages of watercolor washes. He sells them himself, preferring to work outside of the mainstream Beijing art world of the 798 District and commercial galleries.

Song Zhuang looks like a ghost town on the outside but a half-mythical utopian community from the inside. Young artists trying to make it in China’s burgeoning art market camp out in tents pitched in friend’s studios. A few scattered Europeans down mugs of beer outside the restaurants on the main drag. Everyone is working, everyone is talking, and everyone is sleeping with each other. Imagine New York’s mythic Cedar Tavern expanded to a whole town of dreamers.

The photo essay was shot in Summer 2009 during a three-week trip to Beijing.

Riding just off the main road of Song Zhuang with Ma Yida.

Ma Yida standing with a completed portrait outside his mother’s home in Song Zhuang.

Ma Yida with his dog, crouching in the cluttered space of his studio.

Painter Lu Lin’s studio, complete with office suite and personal assistant.

A new gallery and studio complex under construction in Song Zhuang’s outskirts.

A wall covered in completed paintings in Tang Jianying's Song Zhuang studio.

Standing in the courtyard of Ma Yida’s studio, strewn with scrap and art detritus.

A gate leading to Song Zhuang’s main road, home to the village’s restaurants and stores.

"Rowing and Strolling" at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (by Rob Shenk)

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about being an art historian is being asked, “Who is your favorite artist?” or “What is your favorite kind of art?” These questions are always difficult for me to answer honestly in less than a few sentences. Perhaps because I am a talker, or because on any given day or even hour, my answer may be different. My frustration heightens with the questioner’s following claim, “Impressionism is my favorite.” Honestly, this statement just pisses me off more than anything else about being an art historian. First, I tend to suspect the familiarity with art of anyone who quite proudly makes this claim about Impressionism. I mean, how can one know the Ghent Altarpiece, the theatricality of Bernini’s sculptures, or the exquisite brushstroke of the Chinese artists, and still claim that Impressionism is a reigning favorite? I tend to think that those who make this claim only know Impressionism … or really only know the word Impressionism. But, instead of coming down hard on those who may simply want to have a discussion about art, it is really Impressionism, or more precisely, Contemporary Impressionism that irks me.

"Wheat Field with Cypress" at the Metropolitan Museum (by Randy OHC)

As a professor of art history, I get a wonderful opportunity to introduce art to those who are at least interested enough to enroll in my class. At the beginning of each semester I tell my students what an art history professor once told me: “If you like nothing, you have no taste, if you like everything, you have no taste.” Students are immediately relieved to know they are free to express their dislike of a work of art. What I do expect though is their respect of all the works and to honestly engage them. This way they can develop a coherent reason why they like or do not like something fully equipped with a knowledge and sincere admiration of the art.

Each of the past 10 years or so I’ve taught, I’ve confessed to my students my dislike of Impressionism. I offer a small explanation, but never wanted to take too much time from the works of Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, Degas, and others. Because of this, I’ve never really taken the time to truly reflect on my dislike for this style of painting. Up to now, I have been able to take cover under my own position at the front of the class, as well as find a safe haven with art critics and writers who tend to agree with me or at least understand. This little art bubble in which I comfortably live was recently popped when I was invited to rant about Impressionism.

“Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette" at the Musée d'Orsay (by Steve & Sara)

The truth is I love beautiful things too and I really do understand the attraction to the pastel colors and the beautiful landscapes and the pictures of pretty people on holiday. And I admit there have been times while in a gallery, I’ve been caught off guard, jaw-dropped in front of a Renoir. After spending time thinking about what I don’t like I found that it is not the work of the 19th century French Impressionists I dislike so much, but the contemporary painters who have adopted this painting style to market as their own.

What some fans of Impressionism may not realize is that the original Impressionists were rebels. These artists were rejected by salon. Rather than adopting a painting style accepted by the salon, many continued to explore the color and light captured in painting amid harsh criticism. These artists were well trained in painting as well as knowledgeable of art’s history. Artists like Manet consciously engaged history with paintings like “Luncheon on the Grass” and “Olympia” presenting new ideas of representation. Rethinking painting’s realism with a focus on the formal elements of light and color on a canvas and engaging past paintings, the French Impressionists present themselves true lovers of art and willing to challenge the eye of the French salon.

"Impressionism" at the Metropolitan Museum (by Randy OHC)

The difference between those artists working in the 19th century and many of their followers working now is simple. Contemporary Impressionists fail to take any risks at all. Instead they safely tap into a market secured by the popularity of Impressionism. Rather than challenging an accepted aesthetic, many are simply marketing what is known … what is safe. I have met a number of Contemporary Impressionists who do not seem to be even slightly familiar with their 19th century founders let alone works from other periods. Their inability to identify a specific French Impressionist or the artist’s work at first astounds me before it disgusts me.

Again, like most, I love beautiful things and I love art. Ironically, this puts me at odds with Contemporary Impressionists. As much as I may believe these painters love art and may even admire Monet, their participation in Impressionist painting workshops, copying the French artists while claiming ownership to a moment of inspiration, and refusing to take risks is a mockery not only of Impressionism, but of art. Their branding of Impressionism along with calendars, mouse pads, and refrigerator magnets cloud the real beauty of Impressionism as a movement. But most important, such marketing renders too many of us an inability to recognize beauty throughout art’s history.

Lady Gaga & Francesco Vezzoli at the MOCA NEW 30th anniversary on November 14, 2009 in LA. (Photo by Michael Caulfield/Getty Images North America)

The age of celebrity art has dawned and no one is a better example of that high-end marriage between the haves and the haves than pop singer Lady Gaga. It has been a long time coming for the maven of the dancefloor, whose every move feels like a tribute to 1990s club kid culture.

It’s a love affair that began for the pop princess back in 2004 when she penned this essay on Spencer Tunick for college. In it she discusses Michel de Montaigne’s “Of a Monstrous Child,” and summarizes what she sees as evident in the essay:

For the deformed, there is an ownership of one’s difference, an ownership that is visible and undisputable.

And this is how Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, Lady Gaga’s real name, connects the French thinker’s ideas to the work of Tunick, who is known for his landscapes of naked people:

The perceptions of the nude and the deformed both manifest out of a concept of the social body, and the ideological contrast and visible conflict that is created in their presence.

I know, deep. I’m just encouraged that Gaga is interested in these ideas. I wonder what Shaq’s take on Tunick and de Montaigne is?

Click here to view the embedded video.

More recently, Gaga performed at the 30th Anniversary celebration of MOCA last fall, which was orchestrated by her gala escort Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli, who is famous for making celebrities work for free. The event is described by the LA Times:

The centerpiece will be a live, five-minute production number called “Ballets Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again),” in which Lady Gaga will debut her new ballad, “Speechless.”

She’ll play a Steinway grand piano painted in spin-art style by Damien Hirst. Her hat was designed by architect Frank Gehry, and she and Vezzoli, who also has a part, will don masks created by filmmaker Baz Luhrmann and his production designer wife, Catherine Martin. For company, Gaga will have a dozen dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet, who will be wearing costumes created by Vezzoli and Miuccia Prada, head of the famous fashion house.

Talk about celebrity overload. The only thing they didn’t mention was if David LaChapelle was going to be snapping photos and if Thomas Keller was catering.

To her credit, Gaga has repeatedly called her work “performance art” — isn’t everything nowadays? — so her forays into art don’t feel contrived, but legitimately interested. Vezzoli described the November 14 event, which featured Lady Gaga this way, “They basically offered me a social ritual as a blank canvas to be turned into an artwork.” It’s nice to have deep pockets.

And now her latest foray into online performance has her pairing up with Canadian Terence Koh, who designed her pearly outfit for the 2010 Amfar benefit and orchestrated her “performance” that evening … it included her standing on top of her piano for 40 seconds.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In a video titled “88 Pearls,” which appears on Koh’s YouTube channel, Koh and Gaga are counting pearls. Get it, isn’t it hilarious? Not really. I assume the number 88 refers to the number of keys on a piano, but that’s up for interpretation.

Koh & Gaga counting pearls for a pearl necklace? (via Gagadaily)

Koh’s whole YouTube channel, called Terence Koh Show, includes oddly staged moments like this which pretend to be intimate insights into people’s lives but in reality feel contrived. He includes A-listers on his channel, naturally, including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Marina Abramovic, and like Vezzoli, Koh’s works feels like an insider celebrity-obsessed world that should probably step outside and get some fresh air.

While I may not be the biggest Lady Gaga fan, I certainly feel that Ms. Germanotta should diversify her taste in art. The world of art is great, and she should look beyond the starfuckers in the crowd.

The stairs leading to the front doors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Photo via new-york-tourism.com)

Approaching the Museum

The Metropolitan Museum's entrance hall (Photo via NewYorkTravelPlanning.com)

Arts institutions often tell us to expect great things from what they house. Take the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for (an extreme) example. As you approach it on Fifth Ave, the first thing you see is a monumental stair case leading up to huge doorways flanked by towering columns.

If you make it up the two dozen steps, past the columns, doors, and security, you enter a vast breathtaking atrium. Crisp air and a bustling public give you the energy you need to survive the final ascent to Art. You buy your ticket, drop your stuff off at the coat check, and head for the grand stairway, flanked by stern, imposing columns. Light pours from above and a saintly masterpiece awaits you at the top.

These various architectural elements convey to the visitor that what is inside is important. Just as a cathedral’s towering spire draws the eye heavenward, so the marble stairs lead the visitor to a beyond whose clean, often white, walls flush the soul of distracting impurities, prepping it for the imprint of a holy vision. The museum, like a bodyguard, basks in and enhances the rays of importance exuded by the things it protects.

The Metropolitan Museum's central staircase (Photo via bridgeandtunnelclub.com)

The Museum’s Mood

When you are finally face-to-face with an artwork, you should be in a certain mood. Subtle awe mixed with tinges of curiosity and overflowing with reverence. This mood will often be sustained by the tall, flush white walls, simple flooring, and boxy rooms with plenty of light. Hushed speech echoes faintly throughout. A meditative calm soothes a soul raised to such heights. The museum sets the mood; its architectural monuments to universality drain you in preparation for the heavenly ceremony. You’re ready to receive what you’re promised.

You are promised Art, and that is what you get in droves. Works line wall after freshly painted wall, works from different eras and styles, of various philosophies, schools, and sensibilities. Accompanying each piece is a superficial note on its origin and significance. The mind is quickly muddled with conflicting ideas and opposed moods. Overwhelmed by the clutter, and pressured by the architecture’s demand that you be aesthetically exalted, you quickly read the note, glance at the work, and, if you aren’t distracted by another artwork, confirm that the various features of the work mentioned in the note are, indeed, features of the work. The note says the painting is important, but it does nothing for you, and, well, there’s hundreds more down the line. You snap a hasty photo and move on. That photograph says little more than “I was here” — a kind of passive-aggressive graffiti emerging from a boredom-bred impulse to react against an oppressive system. What else is one to do in the face of inevitable disappointment, in the grip of spiritual, intellectual, and aesthetic underachievement? One must, after all, achieve something!

From the Museum to the Street

I document the museum-induced frenzy of art-photography, which is international in scope. (Left) Mao at the Met; (Right) Mao at Berlin's Hamburger-Bahnhof Museum. The NY Times recently discussed the phenomenon of people obsessively snapping photos at museums. Click on photo for the article. (Photos by the author)

This is not a new problem. French poet Paul Valéry lamented the museum’s effect on the experience of art. In “Le problème des musées,” he complains about the museum’s clutter and decontextualization of art. The clutter induces a reigning “cold confusion.” Bold masterpieces outshine smaller neighbors that also have a strong claim to appreciation. As one observes a dark and overbearing Titian, one cannot get that simple yet striking Morandi out of one’s mind. The clutter induces a frenzied state of overstimulation and before long you feel like you’ve been online for three hours clicking link after link, or like you’ve been trying to decide which deodorant among the thousands to buy: this one smells nice; oh, but this one is cheaper; yet this one is more environmentally sound; and, well, I usually get this one. How did you end up on a website that sells glamour posters from the ‘80s?  Why are you staring blankly at a Cézanne, glancing at the information card, then at the Cézanne, then back the card? Why are you taking a photo of something that you failed to live up to? As Adorno puts it in “Valéry Proust Museum,” “One does not know why one has come — in search of culture or enjoyment, in fulfillment of an obligation, in obedience to a convention. Fatigue and barbarism converge.” And, alas, one never really finds that holy place so promised by the columns, stairs, and the $20 admission fee.

A different response, championed my Marcel Proust, is to ignore the art’s demands. Forget the information cards, the tourist guides, the artist’s intentions, and the historical context. Art becomes the sounding board of subjectivity. Instead of battling the fatigued disappointment and dejection, Proust changes the standards of viewing. He makes the paintings his own, illustrations of his life, notes to and from friends. It takes an unusually committed and resilient perspectivalist to make it past the architectural monuments to Universality with a firm sense of one’s individuality. But if anyone could do it, surely Proust could.

Few of us are Proust. One solution would be to respect and cultivate that graffiti-approved impulse to tag museum art with your digital camera: explore and promote street art, which largely avoids these problems. There is no museum to set the mood. By taking art out of the museum or gallery and putting it on the street one solves the clutter problem (barring certain oddities like the Candy Factory which attempt to reinvent it). If you want information about a piece in the street you must seek it out. It’s not waiting there for your wandering eye. The normal viewer knows nothing about the artist’s intentions or the context of production, and when so many of the works are anonymous those intentions might be practically inaccessible. One is often forced into Proustian perspectivalism. Make of it what you will, it’s yours to love in your own way. And take a decent photo. It might be gone tomorrow.

Perspectives on Post-Museum Art

It is easy to underestimate the extent to which we project our views and values into the works we find on the streets. And it is easy to overlook the fact that very different views can be projected. In a previous article I offered a (particularly pro-street art) reading of the late “Hell, No!” stencil at Bowery and Prince. But a person with different values might naturally see that black (rainbowless) stencil as anti-gay propaganda that rejects such a prominent public display of a gay pride symbol. In fact, I once heard a rumor that homophobic religious zealots protested Rondinone’s artwork with large signs exactly like the small “Hell, No!” stencil, which raises suspicions about the true origin of the little artwork.

Elbow Toe, "I Need Health Care," (2009) (Photo via Jake Dobkin)

I imagine most of us who saw Elbow Toe’s recent comment on health care reform read it as an approval of reform. But the piece lends itself to alternative, totally contrary, readings. By making a spider say she needs healthcare, one might think that the artist is implying that it’s absurd to think that everyone needs health insurance, or that it is the first step on a slippery slope to healthcare for dogs and cats (or Wilbur). Another reading might be this: that the claims of the underprivileged (the spiders) to affordable healthcare are totally unwarranted, as unwarranted as a real spider’s claim to need healthcare. The Right can have as much fun with this piece as the Left.

In a time when it seems impossible to fix the obviously broken health care system and pro-gay legislation is shot down by any coward with a political sling shot, we need these messages to ring loud and clear. Political street art that preaches to the dueling choir is just reciting the Book of Revelation.

Herein lies street art’s predicament. Where art is freely enjoyed — free to view, free from interpretive constraint, free from the institutions of preservation and appreciation — it is also freely abused, not only by viewers but also by artists themselves. How many “street artworks” have you seen that obviously have infinitely more meaning to whoever produced them (or perhaps to the artist’s close circle of friends) than they could possibly have to anyone else? Is that art or a diary entry posing as art? Must post-museum art purchase its freedom at the price of interpretive uncertainty and critical and artistic license? If so, I might think twice before venturing beyond the museum.

Drawings of John Yau (left) and Jerry Saltz by Phong Bui placed on top of Jasper John's "Three Flags" (1958).

In the February issue of the Brooklyn Rail, editor John Yau takes on New York Magazine‘s art critic Jerry Saltz and his characterization of America as “big, bright, shiny, colorful, crowd-pleasing, heat-seeking, impeccably produced, polished, popular, expensive, and extroverted—while also being abrasive, creepily sexualized, fussy, twisted, and, let’s face it, ditzy.” Yau asks, “Is this ‘our America?’ Or is this Jerry Saltz shilling for Jeff Koons?”

In his essay, “The Difference Between Jerry Saltz’s America and Mine,” Yau goes on to call Saltz an apologist for Koons and suggests that all Saltz is doing is indirectly celebrating Koons’ – and his own – narcissism.

Yau also accuses Saltz of badly riffing off classic New York critic and poet Frank O’Hara. Judge for yourself.

Saltz on Koons:

[Koons] is also the emblematic artist of the decade—its thumping, thumping heart.

Koons’s work has always stood apart for its one-at-a-time perfection, epic theatricality, a corrupted, almost sick drive for purification, and an obsession with traditional artistic values. His work embodies our time and our America: It’s big, bright, shiny, colorful, crowd-pleasing, heat-seeking, impeccably produced, polished, popular, expensive, and extroverted—while also being abrasive, creepily sexualized, fussy, twisted, and, let’s face it, ditzy. He doesn’t go in for the savvy art-about-art gestures that occupy so many current artists. And his work retains the essential ingredient that, to my mind, is necessary to all great art: strangeness.

Frank O’Hara on Jackson Pollock’s “Blue Poles” (1952):

Blue Poles is our Raft of the Medusa and our Embarkation for Cythera in one. I say our, because it is the drama of the American conscience, lavish, bountiful, and rigid. It contains everything within itself, begging no quarter: a world of sentiment implied, but denied; a map of sensual freedom, fenced; a careening licentiousness, guarded by eight totems native to its origins (There were Seven in Eight). What is expressed here is not only basic to his work as a whole, but it is final.

The whole article is a great read and my favorite line is:

Imagine that—a work of art—or “demanding pet”—that costs “upwards of $75,000 per year” to maintain. In other words, Puppy exists somewhere on the spectrum between a Hummer and a private jet.

Priceless and beautifully characterized.