"Trash," according to Sabine Folie, chief curator at the Kunsthalle in Vienna, "has become a transcendental necessity." Folie, about whom I know nothing other than her absolutely perfect name, is writing in the catalogue of "'Dear Painter, Paint me...,'" an exhibition that recently toured Europe and included work by John Currin, the fly speck of a painter who has been stuck in many a New Yorker's eye since his mid-career retrospective opened at the Whitney Museum in November.
In a rational world, Currin's mousy imitations of old-master portrait styles would not earn him a freelance gig as a magazine illustrator, but we are living in a very different kind of world, where Currin and his ilk are showcased at the Pompidou Center in Paris, accompanied by an essay of Folie's titled "Meta-Trash," in which she observes that "there can no longer be any painting without trash." She hastens to add that "This observation does not exclude seriousness of intent.... The more everyday 'trash' invades and contaminates our pictorial worlds, the greater is the potential for the 'magical' quality of a work to emerge." I would take the lunacy of Folie's argument for a parody in a novel about the contemporary art world, except that this winter some version of Folie's turgid mix of hipster metaphysics and academic aggression has been circulating in just about every corner of Manhattan where people are talking about the paintings of John Currin.
Currin is a symptom. He reflects the cracked values of an art world where most of the people in charge no longer know what gives a work of art life. The unease or confusion that greets Currin's portraits of suburban matrons and young cuties and gay couples, which are larded with allusions to old master paintings and pop culture, is said to mark the emergence of a freshly off-kilter sensibility. Currin's lounge-lizard gambits are hailed for giving classical values a modern ironic twist. Robert Rosenblum and Peter Schjeldahl, writers so suave that they pass as something other than the connoisseurs of fashion that they are, marshal all their formidable erudition and literary ingenuity to make the case for Currin as a major player in the art historical games. In the catalogue of the Whitney show--which was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Serpentine Gallery in London--Rosenblum announces that "Currin knows his old masters inside out," and tells us how much he enjoyed touring the Metropolitan's permanent collection with the artist. Last year Currin himself curated a selection of masterworks at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, thereby proving that he likes Velázquez as much as the next guy. Currin certainly knows how to spritz ideas. He's got a line on everything, from photographs of models in Cosmopolitan to Cranach's Venuses and Eves. He dabbles with misogyny, but slyly, so that it registers as nouveau masculinity. And of course this pleases the guys in Tribeca, with their fashion-model girlfriends and steak dinners and cigars, among whom there might be somebody with the half-a-million bucks that you now need to buy one of Currin's paintings.
His admirers read the limpness of his work as a new brand of world-weary sophistication. I think the paintings are merely ill-focused. Whatever the knowingness of his allusions, classical structure and modern skepticism are for Currin not grand principles to be grappled with, but intellectual accessories, attitudes to be tried on for size like the latest rags from Jeffrey's. As a dissent from modernism Currin is a joke. The critique of modernism's rage for purity, which is as old as modernism itself, requires a gravitas that is beyond the reach of this prime-time buffoon. Currin's oft-admired "technique"--he is said to paint fur and hair especially well--would not have earned him an entry-level job in a painter's workshop three hundred years ago. Many of the poverty-stricken girls who painted flowers on porcelain plates in nineteenth-century French factories were more talented than he is. He is merely the latest sharpie to make a killing with the sodden heap of gimmicks that Eric Fischl and David Salle used to bulldoze their way to SoHo stardom in the early 1980s. His work is toxic--art pollution."
From "Beyond Belief" by Jed Perl. Originally printed in The New Republic
When some time ago the subject of John Currin as a painter was broached, I suggested the article Beyond Belief which can be found on The New Republic site – or, in its entirety here - after further consideration, it seems to me that more interesting than wasting any energy discussing “this flyspeck of a painter,” would be to begin a discussion on why SHARKFORUM has come into being, and how it is that all of you are here, without being eaten alive! (not that being eaten alive is necessarily a bad thing)
I'm wanting to talk about two sentences from the above:
“Currin is a symptom. He reflects the cracked values of an art world where most of the people in charge no longer know what gives a work of art life.”And let me add to this with - and I want you all to consider this - how have we come to a place where so many of the painters who are touted as being ‘important' are so flat out bad? I mean bad at this thing called painting – as in creating drama via simple and sheer plastic invention on a canvas? Every time I hear someone like Luc Tuymans (who by the way is a completely lovely man) talk about Julian Schnabel’s bullshit I just have to laugh. At least as a painter Julian on occasion actually takes chances and tries to do interesting things with the actual language of paint. You know that stuff that’s kind of oily and has pigment in it (or as Perl noted, “the hellbent fury of oil paint.") Maybe I just don’t get it, but it looks to me like Luc (or Elizabeth Peyton, with her amazingly mediocre, student level, illustrative confections depicting somewhat recognizable rock stars at up to $600,000.00 a piece) all done to the accompaniment of a chorus of cooing critics - that these people as painters, along with Currin and company, all kind of suck. So for me, the question is, how did they get to where they are? If they're so good, who says so?
Let me rephrase – and if you get nothing else from what I’m saying here, ask yourself one question: just how did we get from the heady, tumultuous and yet halcyon days of High Modernism, when "what is painting- and what painting is, the ‘thing’ itself, in all of its raging thinglyness, welling up," was being so brilliantly addressed, recapitulated via works like Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm, or de Kooning’s Easter Monday or Excavation, or Woman One, or Door To The River... how did we get from work of this ontological magnitude and artists of this kind of towering integrity and grit to say, Currin’s painting ‘Snow-bo,’ a painting that is nothing if not a second rate Norman Rockwell-esque piece of trite cutesy-pie smut that looks not unlike a poorly rendered Hallmark Christmas card. How did we get from someone as genuine and real as Willem de Kooning to this simpering, smug careerist, shoving his new born son’s scrotum in Richard Avedon’s camera lens, leaving only enough room for his pouty, petulant bad boy scowl? Hilariously, Mr. Avedon, even at the end, was at the top of his game and captured perfectly the seemingly not very bright Mr. Currin in fine, and revealing form. The picture in The New Yorker is indeed worth a thousand words.
(As a side note - for all of the musicians here at Sharkforum who may or may not be conversant with the topic here, its kind of like the question "what exactly is the path that leads from say Bob Dylan to a creature like Britney Spears," in all of her towering badassedness for instance.)
Its interesting: in Norman Rockwell’s illustration The Connoisseur – a mocking and somewhat condescendingly snide picture of a balding man in a suit contemplating a Pollock-like abstraction – we can now see a harbinger of what was to come. How the art world has indeed come full circle. How the mostly upper-middle class university trained denizens of all that is art, have managed through “a turgid mix of hipster metaphysics and academic aggression” to reassert what for them is comfortable, i.e.; certain plebian conceits and middleclass values as to what is ‘good.’ The urban equivalent here in Chicago could be something like the cultural criminality of razing the birthplace of that great American art form known as modern blues, Maxwell Street, and replacing it with a shit mall so all the northshore kids wouldn’t get too homesick while they are studying how to be artists at UIC, learning how to do what they are told. Indeed, a collapse in belief, a failure of imagination on a societal level or simply, The Revenge Of The Philistines.
I guess since they tore down his home, it’s only fair to ask, with all of their no doubt wonderful facilities and resources, has UIC produced even just one artist the caliber of Muddy Waters? Sorry, don’t think so. It’s kind of like MacDonalds –billions and billions served –but have they ever made a good one?
Lets face it, it takes a special and particular kind of stupidity, or mere cynical ambition perhaps, to think for instance that a maker of rather dead-in-the-water illustrations (done from photographs and made to be re-photographed for magazine covers, as almost all Rockwell’s were) can be compared to a technically brilliant painter like Soutine for instance, or Freud, or Kossoff. And yet today we have ‘critics’ like Dave Hickey for instance, smarmily suggesting that we should take Rockwell, hence Currin seriously in terms of painting. As Mr. Perl said, in response to this unfortunate and completely suspect concept (I paraphrase) “who told Mr. Hickey he knows anything about painting?”
But I digress. Now that we have this thing called the internet, we need to ask ourselves, do we really need the so called arbiters of what is important anymore? Their infrastructure, their being keepers of the gates, their angling for position no matter how inane or insipid their argument, as long as it means some form or another of influence and power are to be conferred upon them.... or shall we begin as artists to decide for ourselves what we think is cogent and relevant? I know it’s a tall order in an art world populated with so many chicken littles, but perhaps the idea of ‘question authority!’ is an idea whose time has come, and has some currency for the times and ground we inhabit.
I don’t know. Maybe its just me, but as a painter, I am really not so interested in some dried out hack of a department head at some institution (any institution), or anyone else for that matter, telling me what ‘the issues’ are, if you know what I mean.
Am I advocating some form of noble savage? Errr...of course not. But I am advocating for a world in which people know their places, and that artists, not art educators, not curators, not critics, should set the agenda. I know – what a concept huh?
Sharkforum is about artists, and others, creating their own context – both cyber- and site-specific. We have gotten this thing up and running, and that being said, The Shark is going to do exactly what it is that sharks do, which is swim around and chomp on things.
To be continued...
Amen!
Jed Perl is a courageous and gifted art critic. I read his article on J. Currin and subsiquent piece on Gerhard Richter, which we will undoubtedly get onto soon. Well, if there exists some symptom(s), obviously a maladie exists too. What Wesley has touched upon is infact an ArtWorld epidemic of sorts. Something both psychological and behavioral in nature.
By and large, our academies are not exactly the core of the fore-mentioned illness. Eventually we can pinpoint all the symtoms and manifestations and call out specifically those responsible. Business exists between academies and museum type institutions. Many academies educate individuals whom become historians, critics and curators. Then there exists those self proclaimed critics and curators, who may have had little art education and perhaps enough curatorial "on the job" experience coupled with financial wherewithal to persuade the less knowledgeable, create exhibits and finagle Museum appointments. We all probably know someone who fits this profile.
Glenn Grafelman
these are unfortunately true words. currin's work does reflect rockwell's comparably superior work in one sense - its disposable, and nobody should care.
Glenn -I'm afraid I disagree with you -the university art dept phenomenon -a development of the last 50 years or so -Ad Rhinehart referred to it as 'The Racket'.......has found a way to move away from rigorous studio practice into the much more easily taught realm of theorhetical discourse - with for better or worse, the artist Marcel Duchamp being placed on a pedestal as the reigning Adophe Bouguereau of our times, the current institutional salon-
remember, the two largest areas of financial activity in the artworld are I would imagine, art education, then art supplies -and further down the line, sales generated in the secondary market-
The ramifications and outcome of all of this has been largely I believe, catastrophic. -I want to suggest to all readers that you support The New Republic, their fine art and film criticism.
well Nancy, I like Alfred Leslie's early work myself -and have often thought he is the best of the de Kooning influence painters -coming out of the second generation -as I mentioned to you before, as fascile as he was at that time and as sexy as the paint handling can be, I don't think he ever arrived at the kind individuality and power that Joan Mitchell on a good night of work sometimes found-
-Damien Hirst:being the Carcharadon Carcharias that I am, I have never understood the esthetic choices of his wanting to pickle some second rate Tiger Shark....is he implying his audience is not sophisticated enough to gaze upon the cadillac of sharks?
-his photo-realist paintings -that he didn't paint, I kind of have a problem with images of lab animals suffering with needles stuck in their heads -hung in some rich creeps home -because its the cool, hip thing to do.......
I have to run off to work..but I do agree with your Joan Mitchell comment - much of her work is amazing and she's one of my favorite artists.
I believe I met you over a correspondence about both her work and her personality.
n.
Comparing Dylan and Brittany Spears isn't accurate or fair. There is a long history of girl groups and female singers that she is in the vein of. Meanwhile, there are still excellent musicians who follow the lineage (figuratively and literally) of Dylan.
Also, I thought Hirst pickled a Great White. Its hard to tell from this picture:
www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/graphics/postcards/la_hirsttank.jpg
-Michael -whether you agree with my analogy or not, few would disagree as to the degradation of the music scene- how it has been usurped by business- certainly Dylan wouldn't as he has spoken about it at length- -as far as a long tradition of lip-synching product in the guise of an actual musician -I'm sure Britney Spears is not the first -nor the last.
Its a Tiger Shark -btw
Michael,
I fear you've missed the point regarding Ms. Spears (it's Britney, y'all - don't pervert my cheap thrill with excessive T's and A's) and Mr. Zimmerman. They both exist within the dialectic of musical/cultural movement, and as such the comparison is apt.
One could just as easily question how someone as vapid as Britney Spears could co-exist with the brilliance of, say, Patti Smith, or Billie Holiday, or Bessie Smith, or PJ Harvey for example.
But the issue is music as a developing form, and as a result the comparison is dead-on. You're right, of course, that there are plenty of brilliant musicians, both male and female, who have followed Dylan.
dave
HEY NOW-
It's Britney - and she gots enuff T 'n' A widout you'se jamokes addin' in more.
BRITNEY.
-I think her 15 minutes are up here on Sharkforum -lets swim on...
Not until I see some cheap flesh. I don't care if it's real sugar, as long as it's sweet.
As a representative of the Great White Shark community here at The Farallons, I just can't go there with you. As you know, carcharodon carcharias is known for his discerning palate; there are standards to uphold.
First let me say that I am not a big fan of John Currin's work but I do think he is a good painter, not necessarily a horrible second rate fool, just a good painter. Let me put it this way: Let's pretend that John Currin is just your average 42 year old unknown painter working in Chicago. If you take his body of work and compare it to the other artists in the CAC I would say that Currin's stuff is pretty good...he probably would be the best painter that the CAC could offer. Next, let's put John Currin's body of work in any one of Chicago's established galleries that show younger to mid-career artists...again, Currin's work is pretty good and probably would be the best that gallery could offer. Next, put Currin's work in the MCA's 12x12 show...again Currin's work isn't bad and maybe the best that the 12x12 could offer. Now to make a point, compare Currin's work to Lucian Freud...Freud's work is great, he is a living master while Currin's work is just good, nothing special. I think the big problem isn't that Currin is such a bad painter it's that Currin's work (and Saville, Peyton, Schutz, etc.) has been elevated to be in the "great" category which it is not. He is not a great painter. His work should not be priced in the 600,000 range. He is not deserving of a mid-career retrospective -- but that doesn't make him a horrible painter...just a good one. The thing that is disconcerting to me is that if John Currin is such a horrible painter what does that say about most of the Chicago painters...?
Norbert, I beg to differ with you: -having spent quite awhile at the MCA looking at poorly applied impasto, blacks that even slathered with varnish go dead, ineffectual use of transparency - all stylistically done in anemic pastiches as Perl notes executed in fits and starts, badly drawn anatomy, and slack, poorly realized compositions -in a kind of painting that demands otherwise.........and most importantly, a bankrupt vision designed for one thing; success.........and I'm not meaning in terms of artistic accomplishment.........
I think you could rethink this one -here in Chicago -OK who comes quickly to mind; -Lorrie Hogan, the late Donald McFadyen, James Valerio, Maria Tomasula -to name just a few of the more realist painters -getting into more eccentric views of the human form, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, Peter Saul, Kerry James Marshall..... Robert Barnes, Paul Lamantia...all better painters in my opinion than Currin- in his arena......
I will give you, Currin would indeed be a standout at CAC, and as an emerging artist his work would be very well suited for a 12X12 exhibition.....
-
Wesley, I agree with you and the artists that you mention. (I also spent time with Currin's work at the MCA). My point was focussing more on the average Chicago painter not Nutt, Paschke or Marshall, etc. If Currin is considered a bad painter than I have seen bad stuff at the CAC show, local established gallery shows, Coyote, Contemporary Art Workshop, the MCA 12x12 show and I can go on and on...Again, I think Currin's body of work is just as good or better than the stuff I seen at the venues I mentioned...what does this mean? I'm confused--
Thanks Wesley, for bringing up so many important issues.
I'm always surprised by the degree to which mediocrity is rewarded in the arts. I've been disappointed by so many exhibitions which got great reviews but were, frankly, just pretentious posturing. (BTW, Currin is better than most, I agree with Norbert, he may not be great but he is good at least.) It is easy to point fingers the gatekeepers, the curators, academics, gallery owners, who are shockingly myopic, but artists have to share the blame. Too many of us are willing to play by the rules, repeat what our instructors and fellow artists have told us and get beaten up in the process. My sense is that we (myself included) are reluctant to try alternatives like artist co-op galleries because these venues are not taken seriously by the "art world."
Norbert, I was discussing Currin in his own context.........this is an artist working on a slightly different level than the venues you mention.....though I must admit, I can see his work doing quite well at the Old Town Art Fair.............
Wesley, I guess that is my point...I don't think John Currin, in his own context, is working on a different level than those venues I mentioned. Some curators and critics have elevated him to that level. If you take an average, good painter and elevate that painter to greatness of course the flaws would be more glaring and pronounced. Comparing an average painter to greatness doesn't make them a horrible painter - they shouldn't be compared like that in the first place.
But is the work at The Old Town Art Fair that much worse than what's in the galleries? Different, I'm sure...(Since I live in NYC I'm guessing that The Old Town Art Fair is an "amateur" exhibition where artists pay for booths.)
I see as much interesting work on the sidewalks of West Broadway in NYC as I do in the galleries in Chelsea. Okay, neither one is very satisfying but at least the street is less pretentious.
A couple of years ago I sold my own work on W. Bway, a very valuable experience,but that's the subject for a longer post.
Marilyn, the "Old Town Art Fair" really is bad while most of the work in the established Chicago galleries is good, solid work...not great, usually, but good. And that's what Currin, Saville and Peyton's work should be labeled as... good not great. It should be at the 10,000 price tag not 500,000. Things are just out of perspective right now --
I strongly agree with the gist of Wesley's entry (hence my from-the-hip "Amen" above)--- but would exemplify it with far more contemptible examples chosen from that group of "pushed" junk or "media" installation artists, rather than any painter, even Currin.
I agree there is an academy responsible for most of the current promotion of mediocrity (which I referred to in one of my paintings as "The Blind Promulgating the Tamed"). I would like, though, to draw a necessary distinction between scholars and academics. Not all, not even most of those involved in universities are academicians in the deplorable sense. That considerably dubious group is comprised of a small faction of sophistic self-promoters, rather loosely thrown together by their avarice after power--- operating on enforced consensus. The members form a kind of collective Le Brun by choice, and most are not involved in any real education --- more so a conglomerate of "other" art world functionaries, such as the "Kunstvermittler" I have discussed elsewhere here.
And for every Neo-Academician curator or professor or critic or artist or whatever there are a far larger number of genuine "articles." Granted, they don't currently have the upper hand, .........
“Don’t believe the hype …” Perl appears to be saying when talking about Currin, and if you get sucked into his own brand of “I know good art when I see it,” – Stephen Westfall, Mari Lyon, Jeremy Blake etc.- you’ll end up believing that Currin stole the art world’s virginity.
It seems to me that we’ve heard these arguments before with the obligatory finger pointing in the direction of everyone involved from critics to the rich upper eastside collectors who double as board of directors in major museums – as Perl said himself, “Currin’s supporters, and they are the same people who have pitched for Lichtenstein and Schnabel and Koons.”
So Currin’s paintings suck, so, so what? – “wouldn’t have earned him an entry-level job in a painter’s workshop three hundred years ago,” says Perl. What Currin has earned himself is a vacated seat in the pole position of an endless endurance race of “Who’s Next” in a voracious art world hungering for the next best thing. Hollywood and the music industry don’t have qualms about manufacturing and churning out the latest Star, why shouldn’t the art world do the same?
What is disappointing is that Perl fails to offer any solutions to counter this not so new trend terrorizing the perceived integrity of the art world. It seems to me that for every Currin disbeliever, there’s a convert ready to take up the fight. Who’s right who’s wrong doesn’t seem to matter as Perl’s fight for justice and equality in the art world – more of the pie for every good artist – is reduced to ineffective whining. It is just that, one man’s voice trying to stop a machine that has been in motion for decades – you can’t be both judge and jury if you want things to change.
What’s wrong with the art world? obviously raises many questions and points a lot of fingers at those who are the players and “bookies” of a commodity – the artists – they’re betting on. I would be curious to know how much of an influence if at all, from Lynne Warren’s point of view, the MCA experienced in organizing Currin’s Whitney show for example. However, I believe that we should also scrutinize an artist’s role and place and participation in the organizing and building of the art world. I believe it is less about moving oil and pigment around on canvas, as Perl says “You can give the canvas a workout and still be a stinko technician” – but is as he says, about a “belief” in art. I believe that Currin is part of the problem but not the whole problem. I wonder how many artists are infuriated by Currin’s lack of painting ability or their own lack of “position” in the art world? Jealously? Not entirely – but a desire to participate, I’m sure in the benefits. Perl says, “I have heard first-rate painters exclaim in wonder and in despair that if somebody would only start paying $500,000 for their paintings, they would gladly accept.”
I agree that artists need to decide for themselves what they think is cogent and relevant, but it is not enough if it is only within the art world that it has any relevancy. As it stands now, that “somebody” painters are referring to is an elusive beast and an endangered species – there are simply not enough of them to go around for each and every artist on this planet. Let’s face it as well, that there are other “centers” of interest that individuals can participate in and spend their money on - other than art or going to museums. If there is a current belief that art school doesn’t teach you anything from painting to marketing, and a huge fear of Academia running rampant, maybe it isn’t art school where we need to teach artists how to become just that. It’s obvious that education plays a major role in anyone’s life, knowledge is power it’s been said, and I believe you need to take that art “education” outside of the secular art world, take it down into the streets where it really matters and try to expose as many individuals as you can to an artist’s philosophy, way of life, beliefs and raison d’être. Though I wonder about the necessity to question the reasons behind how we got from de Kooning, Pollock et al to a painter like Currin, as I think even someone like Rockwell played a specific role in a specific time in history in America, serving a specific purpose and goal in creating and reflecting a certain vision of that America to its people and to the rest of the world. I believe part of it comes from a lack of raw material of artists of the calibre of de Kooning and company that exists in the art world today. It doesn’t mean that this raw material will not be discovered or mined, or is beyond the horizon, it just means that it may not exist in this particular moment in our history. Now that technology has shrunk the distance between individuals, it has also opened the flood gates to the infinite number of artists and artists producing works of art – the proverbial pond has now become an ocean.
Kevin Freitas
-Mark -I agree with your argument as it pertains to scholars -as for installation/media artists, which as you note have enjoyed quite a run -especially in the last decade and a half -with the advent of the 'superstar curator' model/ big art event (Documenta) productions...rendering art even more disposable..... why don't you write an article on the more egregious examples you allude to? Sooner than later would be good -we will post it!- "The Blind Promulgating The Tamed" -would be a terrific article title!
Kevin, I hardly think it is Mr. Perl's job to offer up solutions- he, is a critic- having said this, I would hardly call his tenure at New Republic ineffective- as I would also not describe his straight-forward, highly intelligent discourse as 'whining', obviously before any issue can be addressed, what the actual situation is must be understood. Jed Perl has written long, and brilliantly about art; what he likes, and what he dislikes. He has more than adequately and I would add courageously, described and discussed the climate that fosters careers such as Currin's. Also, facts dispute your contention as to what Perl considers important -manipulation and invention via the plastic surface is a rather large issue for Perl -as in the end, that is what if you are a painter it comes down to -and Perl is a painting critic -one who has spoken at length on this very topic... though of course he would consider any of this without belief as being merely fascile....I would guess he would consider the relationship of painting to belief as metonymy....Remember Kevin (and you seem to continually have a hard time with this-) -"its a bad day day when certain people treat their superiors with a contempt they haven't earned-"
Your comments on art education are good; right now I think many people in the art world are looking at the educational model of the last 50 years or so, the quality of artists that it has helped produce and are asking what has gone so wrong-, and I might add, is part of what makes it so relevant to ask how we got from de Kooning to Currin -as we now have for the most part people like Ms Folie -who are well versed in "hipster metaphysics and academic aggression" -and know almost nothing about painting/ the language of; not that they care, as they, are engaged in supplanting it with their own particular form of language -and paintings that are servile to and illustrate that talk, deciding for us what is important. Where is Wittgenstein now that we need him? I feel that your notion of taking it down to the streets is one I have put into practice for many years now: perhaps it is relevant to note, my discussion is not fueled by resentment but rather disgust hence anger. This anger has to do not only with how I feel I have at times been treated -but more, how I have seen people near and dear to me be crushed by the circumstances that prevail.... I do very well, and sell paintings for large sums of money.....large amounts but perhaps not obscene amounts- and, I have worked incredibly hard to be where I am -I feel comfortable and even grateful with what I have.....I would like to see more of my fellow artists struggle less, be freed from what Tony Fitzpatrick described recently as the almost feudal gallery system and I would add, overly aggressive art educators -who wield way to much power in deciding the outcome of what is shown at the museum level, hence what is supported and collected, but more on this later-
Having noted all of this, your comment on the paucity of raw material is I believe probably true....good is as Roth notes, scarce by definition-
beyond all of this, its nice to see you offer up less vitriol and more substance for a change, -
The Shark
A quick thought: Almost every "correction" in the history of art since the Renaissance, every revitalization after a moribund period, saw itself as a return to reality in some fashion. I would say every such renewal was indeed a return to the inspiration of the real, as uniquely interpreted by the artists. ("Reality" of course being that turn most deserving scare quotes, as Nabakov pointed out.) The Baroque after Mannerism is clear, Neoclassical after Rococo as well. But even less obvious developments --- Ab-Ex can be seen as reaching for the reality of subjective experience, after that period of somewhat attenuated post-Mondrian/post-Cubist abstraction, ... Pop as striving after cultural and/or social reality after the enfeebled reign of very late Ab-Ex copyists. Etc. At least that is one of my theories.
The point of this analogy for now ? --- If this is true, as I suspect, then we need a return to "reality" as inspiration in some form. Not necessarily a form of naturalism, (and I would say not that at all). But a innovative and distinctive rapprochement with experience, after the distended mannerism of the current artworld we all decry. How? Personal history? Daily life? hmmm ----
let us not forget that low quality does not only pertain to painters - take matthew barney for example... theres finally some negative views of his work floating around, people had to just get past the initial shock of a piece of art that is aesthetically pleasing. on the coagula website, there's a great article that very succinctly tears his work apart.
and it might be worth knowing that within the context of international art, painting has a much smaller slice of the pie than it used to. now a variety of new media seems to dominate.
James,
thanks for bringing up Blarney in this context. Fits perfectly.
I really enjoyed the Coagula piece on Blarney
especially the following line:
"Barney's "artworks" are the Happy Meal movie tie-in".
Perfect.
Yeah James, you are more than right.
"...and it might be worth knowing that within the context of international art, painting has a much smaller slice of the pie than it used to. now a variety of new media seems to dominate."
In fact, painting is still predominantly the complete outsider, one thing that (re-) attracted me to it --- with a tiny faction of previously painting-hating curators now "accepting" a bit of painting, if is clearly neo-naiv/purposefully inept/"bad painting", especially with a lot of terpentine.
I suppose that is what they can understand, giving them the benefit of the doubt, because they mostly spent their formative years in "groom for curatorial success" classes or "memorize terminology from the latest badly digested French philosopher" classes, where it was the maxim to denigrate any painting at all. Thus, never learning the fundamentals of seeing, never using them, and now trying to expand as best as possible with no knowledge or tools at hand.
But, yes, internationally (documenta, the biennales, etc.) are all still EXTREMELY painting-free). Spectacle art a la Paul McCarthy, gesture-installations and videos in monitors on the floor or in little black rooms still are the big shots, prize winners and "pushed" entities.
Pintophobia, the fear of painting. (I made up the word, but maybe Simone M can present is as one of her words of the day).
Yep!
Hey gang - thought I'd take a break from wrenching on the site to weigh in on this fascinating conversation:
The problem, as I see it, is a wholesale contempt for the concepts of proportion and context. I think Norbert's got it about right when he points out that Currin's pieces might look more interesting in, say, a small Wicker Park or Park Slope gallery. But indeed they do seem to embody a gross lack of proportion - in the relationship between subject matter and visual language, price and value (I'm sorry, but no painting is worth that much money), scale and substrate, yadda yadda.
And Mark - I'm right there with ya regarding historical "corrections," but I would submit that this move toward reality does not always equal a move toward the figure. Great art, like Soylent Green, is made of and for people: if it doesn't add something of value to our collective understanding of the human experience then it is destined to either pandor or condescend.
Isn't this preciesely what we witness in so many "young" artists (the category includes musicians and writers as well, as I've used it here) - an adopted sense of intentional fecklessness inspired by too many viewings of Tom Hulce as Wolfie? It is precisely this insistence on cynicism - an affect derived at as a social elective and not due to hard-bitten life experience - which plunges art into the depths of nihilism.
The reality, as I see it, is that all "art" movements require something to work against, coupled with an impulse toward humanism. In this sense I think what we're all driving at is an effort to more deeply understand Formalism.
When I think of form I think of a general concept of actualization and it's tangible representation - the form of sculpture, or painting, or film, for example. And it is in this manner that form is quite distinct from shape and/or composition.
In this sense form is pretty much a Platonic concept, and for my money this is the context in which Clive Bell was using the term.
Back to the pixel mine...
I have to somewhat pedantically comment on Sabine Folie's name. While I enjoy the insinuation in Perl's article, a joke actually, linking it to "folly," in fact her name in German is almost as auspicious in another direction. In German (and she lives in Vienna) "folly" is "der Aberwitz" or "die Torheit" --- or my favorite "die Eselei" (something like "the donkey-ing"). However, her name --- pronounced "sa-been-eh fohl-ee-eh") --- means plastic foil, usually in the sense of a transparency for an overhead projector. Still seems viciously allegorical!
I agree Dave about "the figure," images of humans --- although that has often been one viable variation, it has also often been a hindrance. As an adamant Anti-Formalist, though, I must differ with you there. Formalism was an escapist distortion in the opposite direction to current work, I feel, and therefore the progenitor of it in an Oedipal fashion. I think the "return to reality" thing I'm attempting to formulate (it is still in the works in my head) always involves forming a new tropaic/metaphoric interaction of artists' formal elements with lived experience. So, decidedly not Formalist, as they rejected all idea of content, at least in relationship to a works importance for history, or "significance" as was their buzzword. I believe that yes, we artists think IN and through our "tools," but we think ABOUT life.
My PhD dissertation, by the way, revolves around turning Formalism on its head --- trying to show that technical aspects are indeed a thought-tool-chest, but are of consequence only by way of their metaphorically associative use. So I'm already slanted in this direction!
Mark -I believe our thinking coincides, and that the model you describe really flings the doors wide open -limited only by what we are able to imagine and realize -for the sake of this argument in terms of painting -I would go further towards definition and, specificity -at the same time enlarging the scope of your tropaic idea (I believe you mean that in terms of 'foot'-) to include primarily metonymy and, synecdoche -both tropes perhaps more readily given to what can be perceived as formal considerations -whatever the concern -and I am meaning this as in 'life'...? As you state -decidely not Formalist; (giving irony a much needed rest) - not forgetting tropes of degree and charaterization - all employed and informed (of course) by the experiential-
Picasso said (and I believe he was meaning painting done in a grand manner no holds barred-)something to the effect of ' artists don't worry about looking like yourselves, you will never escape who you are' - but in a Kafkaesque sense, we should exercise the freedom of will to at the least, die trying; a romantic response to a condition- that of impending doom as in the concrete reality we inhabit and, our esthetic struggle played out in a concreteness made plastic, a realisim imagined- however construed -and by this I mean the realisim that first shows up in literary work perhaps in the writing of Cervantes/ the idea of the concrete re-imagined. And, translated into pictoral language, the proximity of the figure to the canvas: abstract/ artificial in that its is represented, or concrete and real as in the work being the culmination of, a figurative act. Any formalisim, reflexive of an existential imperative it describes.
The Shark
Keep up the great work on your blog. Best wishes WaltDe