Random
Weird stuff inside holy places
If you live in a city, chances are you can walk into a gallery or museum and see something extremely weird on the floor. Pedestals are like easels, cloaked in antiquity — it’s not brilliant unless it’s on the floor. I used visit art galleries on Saturdays, a sorta tryst with culture as a full-time bureaucrat, shamefully bowing my head at the severe, stunningly attractive “receptionists” (dunno what to call them, those hot chicks sitting at the front) as I licked through the resume of whoever got his or her MFA. If there’s a tinge of resentment in my voice, I’m sorry, I’ve just put down too many Artforum essays completely confused about not what I just read, but why. If you need a “post-” to label it and a PhD to describe it, it don’t got that swing.
They say the art gallery is the contemporary church, that pristine place of ideals where you’re not supposed to touch what’s hanging on the walls. When people fill galleries with weird shit, they use the world “recontextualization.” When they throw a bunch of unrelated shit together, they call it “pastiche.” When a man shows up to the reception wearing a bow tie, it’s called “douchebag.” Artists are like politicians — they have a word to justify anything, abstract words you can’t respond to; their power and prestige rely on the fact that you’re not carrying their glossary.
People who tell others to “get a job” tend to have disappointing jobs, including myself. Perhaps we, having failed at our own dreams, don’t enjoy seeing more charming people be rewarded for putting weird shit on floors. Conceptual art is where philosophy meets commerce, inside an enormous room. I secretly want all these geniuses to get a job, but then what would we do on Saturdays? Who would kick us from the prosaic to the profound? Because deep down inside, before Artforum ruins it with a word Merriam Webster doesn’t even know, I do think it’s beautiful — probably. I just can’t put my finger on it (literally) like da Jesus on the wall. I just try to respect the situation around me, holding the price list of how much it will all cost, eyeing each “sold” red dot, those perfectly shaped drops of blood.
sometimes you don’t even need to go inside buildings
http://parisparfait.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c8d9f53ef010536c55cc2970c-800wi
sometimes you don’t even need to go inside buildings
http://parisparfait.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c8d9f53ef010536c55cc2970c-800wi
Beautiful said, about bleeding galleries…
Beautiful said, about bleeding galleries…
Cool. It reminds me on my Japan travel
http://merzmensch-in-japan.blogspot.com/2008/11/tokyo-art.html
Cool. It reminds me on my Japan travel
http://merzmensch-in-japan.blogspot.com/2008/11/tokyo-art.html
Not being able to put your finger on it is part of what makes art what it is, right? And trying to put your finger on it is what makes criticism what it is. I can’t read Art Forum, but I do subscribe just so I can look at the ads for gallery openings. Nothing excites me like white san serif type on a red page.
The thing about not putting your finger on it, though, that seems like part of what makes people so antagonistic about art. Not getting it, a person might assume either the work is bad or they’re on the outside of a joke, or they aren’t educated enough.
People ought to be like you — respect the situation around them — but I also wish everyone knew and valued the response: I like this and I don’t know why (or the inverse).
Not being able to put your finger on it is part of what makes art what it is, right? And trying to put your finger on it is what makes criticism what it is. I can’t read Art Forum, but I do subscribe just so I can look at the ads for gallery openings. Nothing excites me like white san serif type on a red page.
The thing about not putting your finger on it, though, that seems like part of what makes people so antagonistic about art. Not getting it, a person might assume either the work is bad or they’re on the outside of a joke, or they aren’t educated enough.
People ought to be like you — respect the situation around them — but I also wish everyone knew and valued the response: I like this and I don’t know why (or the inverse).
Strange — Temple’s Center City Philadelphia classes are held in the building beyond that giant Claus Oldenberg clothespin. When I taught a Wednesday night fiction writing class there, I’d look out the window and work that particular public sculpture into whatever smack I was talking about a story, always accidentally calling it a “paperclip,” inciting howls of ridicule . . . I was an exploited adjunct. If Temple wanted precise word choice, they could have paid better.
Strange — Temple’s Center City Philadelphia classes are held in the building beyond that giant Claus Oldenberg clothespin. When I taught a Wednesday night fiction writing class there, I’d look out the window and work that particular public sculpture into whatever smack I was talking about a story, always accidentally calling it a “paperclip,” inciting howls of ridicule . . . I was an exploited adjunct. If Temple wanted precise word choice, they could have paid better.
That balloon is a barthleme story.
That balloon is a barthleme story.
Jimmy, I get what you’re saying, and I’m glad you go to museums and respect and enjoy the art–but I feel like people tend to label discussion about visual art “pretentious,” (words in Artforum, labeling things “post”) but have no problem with in-depth discussions about theory in regards to writing, text analysis, etc.
I think we feel things are pretentious and over-mystified when we don’t have a background in whatever the subject is. We feel like an outsider so we tend to devalue the buzzwords that insiders use. My own vocabulary is much broader when it comes to visual art rather than writing–so I feel kind of like you a lot on this site when I read heavy theory discussions. But I don’t mind how people want to discuss it, so long as they’re discussing art–on any level. If that makes any sense.
Jimmy, I get what you’re saying, and I’m glad you go to museums and respect and enjoy the art–but I feel like people tend to label discussion about visual art “pretentious,” (words in Artforum, labeling things “post”) but have no problem with in-depth discussions about theory in regards to writing, text analysis, etc.
I think we feel things are pretentious and over-mystified when we don’t have a background in whatever the subject is. We feel like an outsider so we tend to devalue the buzzwords that insiders use. My own vocabulary is much broader when it comes to visual art rather than writing–so I feel kind of like you a lot on this site when I read heavy theory discussions. But I don’t mind how people want to discuss it, so long as they’re discussing art–on any level. If that makes any sense.
I don’t know… to me, the difference between a paperclip and a clothespin is… quite noticeable.
I don’t know… to me, the difference between a paperclip and a clothespin is… quite noticeable.
i get what you’re saying about labeling what we don’t understand as pretentious, but i think other arts like literature, music, film etc. are done with the intention of being ‘understood,’ like the value is derived from its communication — whereas with conceptual art, its value stems from not being understood.
i get what you’re saying about labeling what we don’t understand as pretentious, but i think other arts like literature, music, film etc. are done with the intention of being ‘understood,’ like the value is derived from its communication — whereas with conceptual art, its value stems from not being understood.
Yeah, that’s where I think the problem lies. I think much conceptual art is created for the same reason all art is created: to express something and be interpreted/understood/misunderstood/connected with/make you think, etc.–but some of the most high profile conceptual art gives the whole category a bad name because it aspires to nothing more than being shocking/baffling/cold/too clever by half/untouchable/made to make you feel small. You’re definitely right about that. (Though I have a lot of artist friends who would argue that communication isn’t the point of pure art, to which I would argue back, Ok, then why put your work out there? Why not just destroy it or keep it to yourself then? To which I’m sure they’d have a good answer but I’m not sure what it would be.)
I do think, though, that you can find examples of this kind in film or music or literature, too–I think it just comes off as most casually pretentious and “in your face you don’t get this ha ha” in visual art, because it’s got the reputation of being that way, anyway. And probably because it happens more often in visual art, because most publishers aren’t going to publish a book/producers promote a film or album that’s pure personal experiment because they can’t sell it. But in the visual art world, people will buy that stuff, often for more $ the more outrageously obtuse it seems.
Yeah, that’s where I think the problem lies. I think much conceptual art is created for the same reason all art is created: to express something and be interpreted/understood/misunderstood/connected with/make you think, etc.–but some of the most high profile conceptual art gives the whole category a bad name because it aspires to nothing more than being shocking/baffling/cold/too clever by half/untouchable/made to make you feel small. You’re definitely right about that. (Though I have a lot of artist friends who would argue that communication isn’t the point of pure art, to which I would argue back, Ok, then why put your work out there? Why not just destroy it or keep it to yourself then? To which I’m sure they’d have a good answer but I’m not sure what it would be.)
I do think, though, that you can find examples of this kind in film or music or literature, too–I think it just comes off as most casually pretentious and “in your face you don’t get this ha ha” in visual art, because it’s got the reputation of being that way, anyway. And probably because it happens more often in visual art, because most publishers aren’t going to publish a book/producers promote a film or album that’s pure personal experiment because they can’t sell it. But in the visual art world, people will buy that stuff, often for more $ the more outrageously obtuse it seems.
I dig this, Jimmy.
Also: three hours at the Tate Modern and I was having a nervous breakdown.
I dig this, Jimmy.
Also: three hours at the Tate Modern and I was having a nervous breakdown.
I think that conceptual art gets in trouble, or alienates viewers– art creeps/ patrons AND otherwise– is when the work is overly meta about all of the things you’ve listed here, the pros and the cons.
Funny Sean should mention that DB story. I remember reading it in a workshop where part of the discussion was about the willingness to go along with this obfuscated balloon thing, paragraph after paragraph, because DB always made you feel like you were in good hands, and having a good time (good hands as in DB’s not jerking you around just to jerk you around). I think when conceptual art is at it’s worst, most frustrating and off-putting when isn’t doing at least one of those things.
And Amber, in response to your friends, isn’t any artist making work that is ostensibly “conceptual” a douchebag and liar if they say communication isn’t part and parcel? This I hate so much when it comes up in galleries. Conceptual art = communication of a concept. Maybe not the thing itself, but there is an artist, an art, a viewer, and a concept. In that order, roughly. Without the communication the houseplant across the room from me could be making art.
Wait, but shit, I just communicated it to you. So it . . . is?
And, for what it’s worth, I think that casual audiences for are very often put-off by poetry because the same intellectually exclusive airs conceptual art/ists put on.
I think that conceptual art gets in trouble, or alienates viewers– art creeps/ patrons AND otherwise– is when the work is overly meta about all of the things you’ve listed here, the pros and the cons.
Funny Sean should mention that DB story. I remember reading it in a workshop where part of the discussion was about the willingness to go along with this obfuscated balloon thing, paragraph after paragraph, because DB always made you feel like you were in good hands, and having a good time (good hands as in DB’s not jerking you around just to jerk you around). I think when conceptual art is at it’s worst, most frustrating and off-putting when isn’t doing at least one of those things.
And Amber, in response to your friends, isn’t any artist making work that is ostensibly “conceptual” a douchebag and liar if they say communication isn’t part and parcel? This I hate so much when it comes up in galleries. Conceptual art = communication of a concept. Maybe not the thing itself, but there is an artist, an art, a viewer, and a concept. In that order, roughly. Without the communication the houseplant across the room from me could be making art.
Wait, but shit, I just communicated it to you. So it . . . is?
And, for what it’s worth, I think that casual audiences for are very often put-off by poetry because the same intellectually exclusive airs conceptual art/ists put on.
And if I hadn’t slipped onto the submit button before correcting a few things, one of those sentences would end thusly:
most frustrating and off-putting when IT isn’t doing at least one of those things.
And if I hadn’t slipped onto the submit button before correcting a few things, one of those sentences would end thusly:
most frustrating and off-putting when IT isn’t doing at least one of those things.
I see this post as one big missed opportunity to tell us something neat about the balloon.
I see this post as one big missed opportunity to tell us something neat about the balloon.
Taking my own advice, I did a little quick research. I haven’t read “The Balloon,” although now I want to, but below is the Wikipedia entry for it. It would be intreresting to know if the artist meant to reference the Barthelme story. If so, the balloon that once floated over Manhattan, and was the source of so much argument and interpretation, is now shriveled up in the corner of an art museum, but remains a subject of mystery and confusion, this time on a small literary blog.
Here is the Wikipedia entry —
One widely anthologized story from this collection, “The Balloon,” appears to reflect on Barthelme’s own intentions as an artist. The narrator of the tale inflates a giant, irregular balloon over most of Manhattan, causing widely divergent reactions in the populace. Children play across its top, enjoying it quite literally on a surface level; adults attempt to read meaning into it, but are baffled by its ever-changing shape; the authorities attempt to destroy it, but fail. Only in the final paragraph does the reader learn that the narrator has inflated the balloon for purely personal reasons, and sees no intrinsic meaning in the balloon itself, a metaphor for the amorphous, uncertain nature of Barthelme’s fiction.
Taking my own advice, I did a little quick research. I haven’t read “The Balloon,” although now I want to, but below is the Wikipedia entry for it. It would be intreresting to know if the artist meant to reference the Barthelme story. If so, the balloon that once floated over Manhattan, and was the source of so much argument and interpretation, is now shriveled up in the corner of an art museum, but remains a subject of mystery and confusion, this time on a small literary blog.
Here is the Wikipedia entry —
One widely anthologized story from this collection, “The Balloon,” appears to reflect on Barthelme’s own intentions as an artist. The narrator of the tale inflates a giant, irregular balloon over most of Manhattan, causing widely divergent reactions in the populace. Children play across its top, enjoying it quite literally on a surface level; adults attempt to read meaning into it, but are baffled by its ever-changing shape; the authorities attempt to destroy it, but fail. Only in the final paragraph does the reader learn that the narrator has inflated the balloon for purely personal reasons, and sees no intrinsic meaning in the balloon itself, a metaphor for the amorphous, uncertain nature of Barthelme’s fiction.
people don’t make art or write poetry or anything else for the purpose of making you feel stupid. i mean, maybe 1 or 2 people do, but why would anyone beyond 1 or 2 whackjobs invest their life into something for that purpose? if someone writes or makes ‘difficult’ art it’s because to them it is an exciting, challenging, creative endeavor. to think artists are only trying to confuse you or get off on being pretentious is superbly ungenerous. people write or make what they feel is important.
all art is conceptual, abstract, and requires an education to understand. as that guy said, this is not a pipe, because it isn’t, it’s a painting. and a movie of a train steaming toward you is not a train steaming toward you, even if you’ve never seen such a thing and you get scared of it. we understand a painting of a cow because we’ve been educated in what paintings of cows are all about, we learned about cow paintings and what they mean when our parents read us storybooks about the farm. if you don’t understand an art, then it’s probably because you haven’t been read enough storybooks on it.
people don’t make art or write poetry or anything else for the purpose of making you feel stupid. i mean, maybe 1 or 2 people do, but why would anyone beyond 1 or 2 whackjobs invest their life into something for that purpose? if someone writes or makes ‘difficult’ art it’s because to them it is an exciting, challenging, creative endeavor. to think artists are only trying to confuse you or get off on being pretentious is superbly ungenerous. people write or make what they feel is important.
all art is conceptual, abstract, and requires an education to understand. as that guy said, this is not a pipe, because it isn’t, it’s a painting. and a movie of a train steaming toward you is not a train steaming toward you, even if you’ve never seen such a thing and you get scared of it. we understand a painting of a cow because we’ve been educated in what paintings of cows are all about, we learned about cow paintings and what they mean when our parents read us storybooks about the farm. if you don’t understand an art, then it’s probably because you haven’t been read enough storybooks on it.
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