Art is what you can get away with.

My hard for ydrive recently crashed.  So I lost a bunch of work.  I’m not diligent enough in backing up my files.  BACK UP YOUR FILES.  I still have the film so it’s not a huge deal but I did drawings on the photos, and I lost that and all my source material.  Bummer, but maybe it is a blessing.  I certainly won’t be able to apply to grad school now, and maybe another year is what I need.  Get in some shows, get rejected by some, etc.

On another note, and in reference to the title of this page, I just came across yet another post over on conscientious in which Jorg Colberg slams Damien Hirst for being a hack.  To me, the fact that so many people hate Damien’s work with a passion, just makes it that much better.  I can’t remember the last time I loved or hated any of the work on Conscientious, it’s all just…nice.  Art that can put the art world in an uproar has got to be good. 

Hirst’s best known work “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” is a floating tiger shark in a tank of formaldehyde.  I don’t really understand how people can just write this piece off.  First of all, it is freaking cool!  And I mean that in the sense that an 11 year old boy means it when he first sees a dinosaur skeleton.  To walk up to a giant floating tiger shark in a place where you are suppossed to look at paintings has to inspire at least some sense of wonder, or are these people’s imaginations all dried up?  Furthermore, the title is often dismissed as a kitschy one-liner accompanied by an “excessive visual aid.”  I would have to have a pretty strong will to resist the implications of that title after reading it.  Personally, my brain launches into a thousand different directions.  The statement is a profound and simple truth of existence, that has far reaching implications.  To confront some thing’s non-existence with one’s present existence evokes thoughts on religion, souls, morality, the brain, individuality, fate, and consciousness, just to name a few.  The fact that there has never been anything that looks like the piece in an art gallery before, and the fact that the sale and appropriation of Damien’s work is such a circus, is just an added bonus.

Jane Hammond

I was doing some blog cruising the other day and came across the work of Jane Hammond.  You have got to go over and check out the big versions of her photographs.  The prints are silver gelatin so I imagine all of the manipulation is done in the dark room.  Here are a few of my favorites:

 

Peeps

Dan Boardman has two prints up on 20×200 but if you want one you better get there fast.  They’re selling like hot cakes.

 

Also, my friend Kati Gegenheimer has a website up with her Paintings and print work, which are amazing. I had to steal these using screen shots, I hope she doesn’t get mad.

 

On Art and Entertainment

My last post received a really great comment from Joe Heller (I don’t know if that link is him, but I like these cartoons), as well as a rebuttal from my good friend John Brown.  It made me realize that I should clarify some things, and maybe delve deeper into this issue.  I believe Joe and I are actually very similar in our outlooks on art, considering we both produce and enjoy it.  The differences I think are in how we understand certain words in my last post.  First of all, frivolous was a bad word choice on my part.  I believe that art has value, but no definable or singular purpose.  In fact, the definition of “Art” relies on purposelessness.  The modern definition did not come into being until the idea of “Art for Art’s sake” was first introduced in the mid 1800’s.  It is credited to Theophile Gautier.  This wikipedia link does a better job of describing the history than I can. 

 

Here is an example of the Art for Art’s sake idea in modern culture, and it’s collapse when viewed through history.  Some would say that a television commercial for a product is not art, while those same people may argue that the Sistine Chapel ceiling is indeed a great work of art.  They may claim this even though the work was commissioned by a higher power (as an advertisement of sorts).  They still may say this even though Michelangelo himself only agreed to do the painting if he could do the sculptures as well, which was his “true” passion. This is much like modern “artists” who take commercial jobs in order to pay the bills for their “real” art.  In this sense Michelangelo’s most famous work is a commercial…ba da ba ba Ba, I’m lovin’ it!  

 

Here is another example of how the definition of art has changed and is fluid over time.  Shakespeare is revered as one of the greatest dramatists of history, but how is he different from a modern film director, and furthermore what separates him from directors of Summer Blockbusters designed for mass entertainment?  Was his audience not entertained, and was that not their primary purpose for attending?  How can one now separate the two?  It can only be done through arbitrary value judgments, which do not have the ability to draw a solid line in the sand. 

 

Having always been sort of an iconoclast, I decided to claim the more shocking side of this argument, that art is frivolous entertainment, rather than the other claim, which is that frivolous entertainment, is art.  I brought down the status of art rather than raising the status of entertainment.  My intention is to strip the word entertainment of its negative connotations, and point out that the best things in life are entertainment rather than necessity.  Joe claims that art is not “simple entertainment,” but I never say that entertainment is simple.  To say that entertainment cannot “explore issues or concepts unable to be dealt with by both science and religion” is an absurd and unfounded claim.  It is a claim that cannot be made without a proven method of discerning what is art and what is entertainment, which is, as I have pointed out, impossible.  Joe lumps art and social relationships in with the survival needs of eating and sleeping.  There is a difference between desire and need.  Art is NOT necessary.  Love is NOT necessary.  Fun is NOT necessary.  There are certainly those that live without, but these are the things that keep us sane.  Introducing the idea of necessity to art is like introducing the idea of logic and proof to faith.  It negates itself.  With necessity art becomes nothing more than a didactic exercise stripped of all enjoyment.  

 

The enjoyment and experience of art is rooted in the idea of aesthetics.  To get a message across one does not need aesthetics, but in order to arrest the attention of viewers, to empathize with them, it certainly helps.  This is why commercials are beautiful, emotional, and funny.  Maybe the central “buy this” message of a commercial is not art, but aesthetics are used to help deliver that message.  Maybe the recycled, terrible (opinion of course, someone could think it deserves an Oscar) storyline of the latest Hollywood action film or romantic comedy is severely lacking, but that shot that gives you goose bumps of the explosion or the kiss is rooted in real emotion.  These aesthetics of popular entertainment follow the same principles of the aesthetics of high art, and therefore can theoretically illicit the same exact feelings and/or realizations.  The ability to empathize with one another through the mutual appreciation of all forms of aesthetics, emotional, visual, aural, and physical, lies at the root of artistic expression.  Art is one of (maybe the only) form of expression in which one can actually communicate emotions.  This of course can never be proven, that I feel what you feel or what he felt, but I have faith that it is the case.  

 

I believe that the reason why there is such a harsh line drawn between art, entertainment, and commercialism, is because of the vast array of institutions that rely on these categories to exist.  How could a museum exist if an interesting billboard could set next to a Jackson Pollock, and if a street sign from the 50s makes a more relevant cultural statement than the latest Alfredo Jaar piece?  Would a collector fork out 50 million for an original copy of Titanic, while buying the Cremaster series at Best Buy for $19.99?  When you really look at it though, the respective values of a great piece of high art and a great piece of entertainment are not that different.  For example, in 2006 a Jackson Pollock was sold for $140 million dollars to a single buyer, while The Beatles (The White Album) – The Beatles has sold just over 19 million copies in the U.S since its release.  The cultural value placed on these two great pieces of art is amazingly similar.  Such is the fate of art in capitalist society.  In order to exist and proliferate it must be commodified, compartmentalized, and profited on.  In a society where all art is a product only arbitrary lines can be drawn between the Brillo Box itself and a painting of it, they might even make the same amount of money in the end.  

 

The only way to destroy this categorization and commodification is to give out all art for free, which I am a fan of.  Radiohead recently attempted something similar with their “In Rainbows” release, asking the buyer to pay what they think it is worth.  This takes the power away from institutions surrounding the music and gives it back to the artists themselves.  It’s just too bad that some 60% of buyers thought it was worth 0 dollars.  I am actually in the process of working on a series that I would like to give away for free.  My idea is to send large printable files to anyone who asks for them.  Then they can do whatever they want with it, no restrictions.

 

What I am saying is that artists should start seeing their art and possibly marketing their art as entertainment.  One, because they must realize that the differences between art and entertainment are only an illusion of arbitrary categorization, and two, just to shake some shit up!  Why do photographers, printmakers, digital artists, and video artists imbue a piece of art with false preciousness by making an edition of it?   The medium in which they have chosen to work is designed for mass reproduction and the spreading of ideas.  Jen Bekman has started something like this with her 20/200 project, making prints more affordable to your average person.  I guess it remains to be seen if artists could make money this way.  If Alec Soth personally approved a large run of quality prints for $20 apiece, do you think he could make as much as he has on limited editions for $2000?  Who knows?  This means that buyers of art would have to change their reasons for purchasing.  One would no longer purchase because something is rare or is going to go up in value, but simply because they want to enjoy it.  I think this is a better way to spend money on art anyway.

More Series

A recurring theme on this blog is the discussion of the photo series.  Some of the most obvious series are typologies; photographing the same type of thing in different contexts.  Other series are tied together by aesthetics, subject matter, storyline, etc.  In any case I think the photo series is important.  I think it is important because the book is important, and also viewers will almost always encounter work one piece at a time, followed by or juxtaposed next to another.

 

I want to talk about the photo series in relation to our most popular art form, music.  The photo series or photo book is often compared to poetry, but that is an outdated reference.  It’s not that good poetry doesn’t still exist or that good poetry isn’t being written.  It’s that it is not as culturally relevant today as popular music.  I am partial to the idea of a full album as a piece of art (Although it is the time of the ipod,  djs, and Girltalk, the full Album may be culturally outdated as well).  Some of my favorite albums (in Chronological order) are, The White Album – The Beatles, Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space – Spiritualized, Kid A –Radiohead, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – Wilco .  All of these albums have great single songs on them, and the songs flow into one another quite naturally, and if not naturally, interestingly.  The thing that makes these albums so great is the variety on each album.  The ability to have a kick-ass rock song on the same album as a delicate lullaby and have it work is brilliant.  These albums contain a depth and variety that I miss in some photographic series.  A good example would be Grant Willing’s “Grand County.”  There are wonderful photographs in the series but the point of view is so consistent.  After a while you know what to expect, or at least how to expect it.  “What is he going to look at this way next time?”  The truth is though, that I work this way as well.  There is a great deal of ambiguity and non-specific narrative in my work, which are some of the worst things to read about in an artist statement… don’t really know what to do about that.  Once someone sees one of the pieces, they can have a pretty good idea of what’s coming up next.  I would love to do something where I can take wildly different photographs and have them work together.  A pink skull, a portrait, a b/w still life, a vibrantly colored landscape, an appropriated image, etc.  Basically I’m talking about Noel Rodo-Vankeulen’s “Nocturne.”

 

The last thing I want to mention on music and art is their respective places and therefore “purposes” in culture.  There is a solid line drawn between art and entertainment, far too solid in my opinion.  Music and movies, although readily admitted to be culturally important are still categorized as entertainment and are therefore frivolous.  Art on the other hand is constantly taken “seriously.”  Some claim that art has a purpose, that it is not frivolous entertainment.  I say it is… Art is frivolous entertainment, no different from the latest summer blockbuster or the biggest top 40 radio hit.  It’s all meant to make you feel.  How important it is, is up to the viewer.  Some would say that intention makes the difference, but Britney Spears probably has at least some of the same intentions as Mark Rothko did.  I don’t think this makes art any less valid or important.  Frivolous pursuits are what makes us human.  Something not needed, something extra than what life purely for survival gives us.  Art is pointless, there is no reason and no logic behind it.  In this way it has similarities to religion and the idea of faith.  The definition of faith is to believe something without proof.  Logic is not necessary, this makes it real faith, and real art.     

Travel and Collage

I’ve been traveling quite a bit lately.  First I drove some antiques from Salt Lake to Connecticut for Matt Bagwell’s parents in a u-haul (never trust an antique dealer by the way.)  Now I’m flying to Salt Lake, picking up my car, and driving to Oregon for the summer where I’ll be “working” for the summer.  

 

P.S. Here is a collage that I made from Youtube stills:

A Gathering, 2008

 

Bad-Acting and Wrong-Thinking

“So, I’ll tell you what I would like.  I would like some bad-acting and wrong-thinking.  I would like to see some art that is courageously silly and frivolous, that cannot be construed as anything else.  I would like a bunch of twenty-three-year-old troublemakers to become so enthusiastic, so noisy, and so involved in some stupid, seductive, destructive brand of visual culture that I would feel called upon to rise up in righteous indignation, spewing vitriol, to bemoan the arrogance and self=indulgence of the younger generation and all of its artifacts.  then I would be really working, really doing my thing, and it would be so great!  And it is going to happen, is already beginning to happen.  The question is whether or not we will recognize it when it catches our eye.”

-Dave Hickey, From “Frivolity and Unction” in Air Guitar

eff yeah..

Keith Sullivan

Failure as Destination

I was listening to The Microphones and Neutral Milk Hotel today.  I was thinking about the lo-fi sound; the fuzzes and pops, the slightly off-key singing, the less than perfect musicianship, etc., and I realized that this is what makes it beautiful.  Their failure is beautiful.  The implied impossibility of expressing themselves to the full extent of their vision is endearing.  It is like when a kindergartener writes you a letter and some of the letters are backwards, and the text slopes down to the right and gets squeezed on the edge of the page.  But through trying so hard you can see, and in some way better than looking directly at it, the true beauty of what they are trying to do.  It is like looking at a bunch of clouds passing over the sun.  All the cracks and different opacities and god rays are what are impressive.  Looking directly at the sun is just blinding.  In fact it’s impossible unless you are looking through some sort of filter, be it the clouds, sunglasses, or the atmosphere itself during sunset.  So if the source of art is pure beauty, or pure emotion, or pure something, then art is simply a filter put in place so that we can look directly at it.  Instead of art as a producer of beauty, it is a reducer, which breaks things down to a manageable size and intensity.

Four and Rit Memories.

Tubes and Ready-Made Collage (After Robert Rauschenberg)

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Factum I and Factum II by Robert Rauschenberg