Thinking About Art

Asking the viewer to do some work

To some extent all artists ask the viewer to do some work to find the reward that perhaps can be found when looking at a piece of art. With some pieces of art the reward is more immediate and easily found (just look at a pretty Monet, for example). Others are much more difficult (such as Rauschenberg's combines). Tyler touches on both of these today.

In a short review of the Combines, he states:

Robert Rauschenberg's combines are not, to use Marcel Duchamp's term, retinal. The eye isn't seduced by them, the way it is by, say Monet. They require a little bit of work. You must invest time into looking at them and then hope for a reward.

This seems like common sense to art viewers, right? But I wonder if artists understand this as well. Do artists operate under the assumption that all viewers are willing to work to find the reward that may or may not be hidden in the art?

(Do we really want to look at this?)

Did Rauschenberg understand that by making such "difficult" work that some percentage of his viewers would never invest the time it would take to "get it"? Or did he have a sort of egotistical approach and think that if a viewer does not invest time in his art they are unworthy of it anyway?

This is something I've struggled with. I've admitted to the fact that I'd rather undergo a root canal than to look at Cubism. The same goes for many of Rauschenberg's combines. I appreciate the significance of both (I loved reading Tompkin's biography of Rauschenberg) but I just don't want to look at it. And given our finite time on Earth, why not pass it by and go see something more immediately rewarding?

The argument can be made that the reward of Rauschenberg is so great that it is worth the time. Perhaps. But you have to get over that initial hump. It's a tough hump. I expect to face the same thing when I see the Whitney Biennial next weekend. I can see the visit lasting 30 minutes or 3 hours. We'll see!

In my own work, I've decided up to this point to not make it require a lot of work to "get." However, I've tried to build in subtle things that will reward a viewer who looks longer and who wishes to think as well as look. I'd rather not exclude a percentage of potential viewers from engaging with the work. I want to bring as many people in as possible.

It can be done both ways obviously. I'm just curious if artists truly appreciate the fact that the tougher the work, the smaller the audience.

Thoughts?

Oh Man... Fusebox is closing

This is what the DC art blogs have started talking about and will continue to talk about. Fusebox announced today that they are closing the gallery. The owners, Sarah Finlay and Patrick Murcia, are moving to San Francisco (Patrick got a great job offer). I'm so shocked, I'm almost speechless. Without a doubt Fusebox has been the top commercial art gallery in DC, in my opinion. The void that will be left will be huge. Who is going to step up and fill it?

Related: Man coverage; Grammar.police coverage

I'm extremely sad to see you guys go. You'll be missed. Good luck!

On a side note, their opening tomorrow night will be huge as a result of this. I can't wait to see the turnout.

Press release:

After a remarkable and rewarding five years, co-owners Sarah Finlay and Patrick Murcia regretfully announce the closing of Fusebox effective February 11, 2006.

As many of you know, Patrick Murcia, my husband and co-director of Fusebox, has for the past 5 years diligently balanced his demanding full-time position in the nonprofit housing world with his substantial responsibilities here at Fusebox. He now has an opportunity with his organization in San Francisco, and we, as a family, have made the difficult decision to close the gallery and relocate.

We can never fully express our gratitude to this community for its overwhelming support. We believe more than ever in the viability of Washington as home to a vibrant, internationally relevant contemporary art scene. We hope above all that our success has helped to affirm that potential. We are indebted to the other galleries and nonprofits on 14th for their collegiality, professionalism, and commitment to excellence; and for taking the risk to come here and create a critical mass of exceptional art spaces on the 14th Street corridor.

Of course, no commercial gallery can survive without avid collectors, and we have been so fortunate to work with an amazing community of intelligent, passionate people. These individuals deserve so much credit for substantially raising the bar in Washington--for zealously participating, for educating themselves, and for enthusiastically supporting excellent artists both within and outside this community.

Most important, we want to publicly express our deepest gratitude to the 18 artists who have been such an integral part of our lives for the past 5 years. Beyond providing us with a first class program, they have generously shared their time, their ideas, and their friendship. They have made it incredibly easy for us to realize our mission of furthering their careers. Every one of them has made huge strides professionally during our tenure representing them. We have every confidence that all of these extraordinary artists will continue to do great things.

Special thanks also go to our Assistant Director, Kevin Hull, for his uncompromising commitment, and to the many talented and ambitious young interns who have enriched our lives and helped in every aspect of the gallery’s operation--without them we could not have succeeded.

In closing, we want to reiterate that this art community has so much to offer and so much potential for continued growth and significance. We hope that any void we might be leaving will be quickly filled by another promising new gallery, and that this rich community of critics, curators, academics, gallerists, artists, students, and collectors will give them the same generous support and encouragement they gave us. Thank you one and all.

Sarah Finlay & Patrick Murcia

My Top 10 List from 2005

Top 10 lists are popping up all over the place right now. After resisting the temptation to do one last year, this year I succumb to the pressure. As Kriston noted in his list published at DCist, Top 10's are highly arbitrary endeavors. So, my caveat with the following list is that this Top 10 list uses any show I saw in the past year. The list is not limited to the DC area and it's not limited to gallery shows. I wish to share those shows that were most significant to me. Without further ado:

1. Andre Kertesz @ National Gallery of Art (DC)

This show still haunts me to this day. I can't stop thinking about what he was able to accomplish with such apparent simplicity.

2. Dan Flavin: A Retrospective @ National Gallery of Art (DC)

Beauty and innovation all at once. The show only was up for about a week in 2005 but it deserves the nod. I long for the warmth of those flourescent lights right now.

3. Cy Twombly Installation at Philadelphia Museum of Art

I doubt this really counts as a "show" so much as an installation, but this single room was without a doubt the most beautiful single room I stepped into during 2005.

4. Linn Meyers @ G Fine Art (DC) and Margaret Thatcher Projects (NYC)

These two shows solidified for me Meyers' standing as one of the top young artists working today. I can't wait to watch as museums begin snatching up her work. And her first museum solo... I'll be there!

5. Bruce Nauman - Raw Materials @ Tate Modern Turbine Hall (London)

Nauman accepted the daunting task of Tate's Turbine Hall and filled it with nothing. Well, nothing but sound. A bold move for a bold artist. Fantastic!

6. Logical Conclusions: 40 Years of Rule-Based Art @ Pace Wildenstein (NYC)

I missed the many museums shows focused on Minimalism in 2005. However, Pace Wildenstein helped me out by putting on a museum quality exhibition in Chelsea. Immediately when we walked in I said to my girlfriend, "WOW!" I think hours after we left I still had a smile on my face.

7. Shelley Spector @ Painted Bride Art Center (Philly)

Freedom of expression ran rampant throughout Spector's show. Simple beauty and heartfelt emotion carried the day here. This show still surprises me that I liked it so much. Its appeal was undeniable.

8. Jiha Moon: Symbioland @ Curator's Office (DC)

Moon's footprint was firmly established by this show. Sure, the $10,000 Trawick Prize helped, but most people didn't see that show. The many works included in this exhibition resolved any doubts. Moon is a real player!

9. David Ryan @ Numark (DC)

Though this show only occupied the small project space at Numark, Ryan's use of materials and the clean lines in the work struck a chord with me. I was so seduced by the work that for a moment the $4,000 price tag for each work didn't seem like much at all.

10. J.T. Kirkland: Studies in Organic Minimalism @ University of Phoenix (VA)

I can hear the catcalls now! How dare I include myself! Well, this show really had the most impact on me this year. My first solo show, it was a great learning experience and a wonderful opportunity to share my work with a larger audience. I think this show opened many doors for me and I hope to build on it this year.

What does the inclusion of my own show say about me, Lenny?

Honorable Mentions
William Betts @ Thomas Werner Gallery (NYC)
Barbara Probst @ G Fine Art (DC)
Scott Treleaven @ Conner Contemporary (DC)
Sam Gilliam's retrospective at The Corcoran Gallery of Art (DC)

For the amount of shows I saw in NYC over the course of the year, I think it's impressive that so few made my Top 10 list. I like that!

A Review: Wait (The Whisper Song)

At the risk of losing all of the credibility I’ve built thus far in writing art criticism (yeah, all of it), today I step out of the norm and write about something that struck me the other day while listening to hip-hop radio station 93.9. There is a rap song that is growing rapidly in airtime and many of you might be familiar with it. From what I hear, in fact, this song may be one of the more polarizing tunes to hit the radio waves in recent memory. You either love it or you hate. Which song am I speaking of you ask? Why of course, it’s Wait (The Whisper Song) by the Ying Yang Twins. If you have never heard the song, click this link to listen to it over the Internet (if that doesn't work just try Google).

If Washington Post chief art critic Blake Gopnik can harmonize for well over a thousand words about Italian gelato and not be fired, surely I can spend a few paragraphs discussing the contemporary artistic merits of The Whisper Song. Seriously, if there has ever been a more post-modern rap song, I’d sure like to hear it.

The Ying Yang Twins have built quite a reputation for themselves leveraging their wild personalities, unkempt appearances, and sounds that can only be compared to screams of a dying mammal of sorts. Therefore, it came as a complete and utter shock that after hearing the song several times on the radio without any identification of the responsible artists, I was amazed to find out it was the Ying Yang Twins. In all honesty, I've never found these guys to be very compelling. Well, that is until now.

Quite literally this is "The Whisper Song." With a very, very simple low bass beat in the background, all of the songs lyrics are “sung” in a whisper. There is almost no treble in the song. There are no female vocalists over-singing the chorus. There is no rat-a-tat-tat. The song has to be one of the simplest on the radio today. I would even go as far as to say it’s one of the simplest rap songs ever. Of course, this conclusion is based on purely superficial thinking: ultra-simple beat + whispering lyrics = simple rap.

But the song is far more complex when considered using the same thought processes one would use when thinking of contemporary visual art. The visual art world is presently inundated with over-the-top artists who will make use of any material possible to compose a beautiful image or to provoke a response in a viewer. It’s this mode of art making that has made many art enthusiasts numb to the current trends in art. It takes so much now to provoke even the slightest response. But whether or not the Ying Yang Twins knew it when they recorded this song, they have greatly succeeded in producing something that alters our experience of that to which we are accustomed. They have come up with something that, although it likely will not ever work again, is extremely successful today.

Whispering is something that is second nature to us. Whether we whisper a secret to an invisible friend as a young child, or we whisper sweet nothings into the ear of a loved one, whispered words are almost always secretive. The audience is rarely more than one person. For a whisper to be communicated successfully, the environment must be mostly silent. Whispering requires a certain closeness, both in terms of confidence between the two people and in terms of spatial closeness between the speaker’s mouth and listener’s ear. How many of these descriptions come to mind when you think of rap music? Probably few, if any. And now, maybe, you start to see the brilliance of The Whisper Song.

The song is not over-the-top musically. But it demands so much from the listener. When listening to the song, I frequently strain to hear it. As the song plays my other four senses gradually lose their reception as the body tries to make out the words. We are trained to take secrets and whispers seriously and we want to be in on it. By the midpoint of the song the lyrics are loud, in my head at least, as the volume never increases. They dominate our ears and thoughts. What should be a quiet experience no longer is. The simple up and down of the beat rocks us as the rappers’ words flow into our conscience. And all of this comes as a complete shock. I know rap music fairly well. I know what to expect from it. But the Ying Yang Twins refuse to give it to me. Although I can hear the melody in the whisper, I'm not certain if they put it there or if I'm putting it there myself. Regardless, they have altered my experience of a style of music that has become ubiquitous.

How many visual artists would kill for this type of accomplishment? How many artists have spent years and years trying to come up with something original? Perhaps whispering in music, even rap music, is not truly original (I hardly consider myself extremely knowledgeable of musical history). But to hear a full song that never deviates from the whisper, well, it was a shock to me. And while I'm being honest, I really have not paid much attention to the actual lyrics. For about a month now I have been wrapped up in the experience of the song. I'm afraid to know what the Twins are saying because it potentially (probably will) could ruin the song for me. I'm plenty content to give props to the Twins and credit them for a great experiment. They took a huge risk to release this song and I have a feeling that this post’s comments section will reveal wildly varying opinions of the song, that is, if you've heard it before.

A note to visual artists: although it seems that all the artists before you have mined every possible thing to make their art, you can be certain there is more to be done. Just don’t bother with the whisper. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s critically acclaimed cinematic installation, The Paradise Institute, where I last viewed it in the 2003 Corcoran Biennial, already leveraged it to near perfection. If the Ying Yang Twins can do it though, so can you.

Green with envy

This is not what I wanted to read while my solo show is up!! I mean, come on... $500 for tempera on paper is a good amount of cash for me. And instead that's what Congo is expected to get at auction on June 20? Stupid me for being, gasp, human!

Saltz Delivers Again

Jerry Saltz delivers another great article on artnet.com (via Village Voice). This one is about ArtForum's silly diary of a blog and the culture that allows it to exist. Go read it for yourself, but here are a few quotes I pulled:

These days it's not unusual for grad students to fret if a dealer hasn't picked them up yet, or for people still in school to already be making tens of thousands of dollars off their work while their critic-teacher is making next to nothing. Not long ago, in a group crit at Hunter, I was blathering to a student about how his work was skillful but kitschy. Throughout, he maintained a benevolent grin. The next day I learned that he had just signed with Leo Koenig and that Larry Gagosian wanted to buy a batch of his paintings. If I were him I wouldn't have listened to me either.

and this one...

Consider what the 34-year-old Walker Evans did two days before the opening of his 1938 MoMA survey -- the first exhibition in that venue ever devoted to a photographer. Evans didn't like how the curators installed his show, so he took down every photo, mounted a third of the pictures on cardboard and pasted them directly on the wall, then reframed and rearranged everything else. More artists need to act this way and take matters into their own hands. More are. Frankly, I don't think there's any choice.

"More artists need to act this way and take matters into their own hands. More are. Frankly, I don't think there's any choice." I think the same could be said about the current state of art criticism, an article about which I'll hopefully publish on DCist today or tomorrow. Bloggers are taking writing in their own hands... not to take away from the traditional print critics, but to compliment them.

Great post...

Erik at The View From the Edge of the Universe has a great post up about defining art and mastering your particular medium. He says some smart things and the idea behind the post fits in with the context of Thinking About Art.

If you don't already follow this photogrpahy-based blog, you really should.

BIG NEWS!!!

So my review on Dan Steinhilber's show at Numark Gallery has been generating a varied response. There have been a couple of true visionaries that break some big news... that news is that using everyday materials in art making is not a new idea. In fact, it has been around for almost a century (Duchamp, anyone?). Apparently, because it has been done before means we shouldn't do it any more. It's a tired idea.

What's the big news you ask? I hereby declare today "Put Down Your Brush, Chisel or Camera Day!" Painting, sculpture and photography have been around for much longer than a century so apparently all you unoriginal artists out there are wasting your time! Go to your local community college and learn how to edit video. Go to school and learn how to use various computer programs to make computer-based art. Just stop wasting your time!!

Originality is the true measure of a great artist... and none of you are original!!

(Note: This post is obviously in jest. To see what provoked it, go read some of the comments left on the Steinhilber review. What's ironic is that these people must think that saying certain work is unoriginal and therefore shouldn't be made, is an original idea in itself. On the contrary... What's even more funny is that I've never read a review of Steinhilber's work saying it was so original and I doubt Steinhilber himself would make such a claim. So who the heck cares? Haters! That's who!)

REMINDER: Artists Interview Artists

Though I feel the One Word Project was a great success, it seems to have lost some steam. Those artists who said they would participate but never did (I won't publish that list!) can still send me their writing and I will publish. But I can no longer wait for you. I'm going to start a new project... Artists Interview Artists!

Here's what I propose... This project will be open to any artist in any city. I ask that artists who want to participate in this project send me an email and provide five (5) interview questions that they would like to ask another artist. These questions can be about [almost] anything art related... I will exercise some editorial control when necessary. By submitting interview questions you are agreeing to answer some other unknown artist's questions. When I have received a significant number of interviews, I will randomly distribute them back out to the participating artists. I will ask that you answer all of the questions honestly. When I publish your response I will include images just as I did with the One Word Project.

As you likely know by now I find run-of-the-mill artist interviews to be incredibly boring. But there is a great possibility at attaining true insight into the artist's mind and I persist in trying to find the best way possible of getting inside. I know it can be very difficult to put words on your art but I encourage you to try. I think this can be an interesting little project. If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to leave a comment here or send me an email.

Craghead on Theory

For those who still aren't visiting Warren Craghead's blog, Drawer, on a daily basis, I wanted to share that he has jumped into the fray on art theory. He has some interesting thoughts and I thought I would pull out a few quotes that I very much agree with:

"A lot of art today relies on words to support it, to prop it up and give it the legs it should have by itself. This stuff is championed by curators, who are writers and readers and not always lookers, and too frequently good useful philosophy gets lost in jargon and labyrinthine crap."

and...

"What has bothered me is both the reliance on it to pump up boring art, and the use of it a bludgeon for those of us who don't value it as much."

None of this means theory doesn't hold value. But some of us just don't care much for it. What's the problem with that?