Zaph Mann on Art

A dog is tied up in a gallery, deprived of any food or water and left to die. A photographer cuts and pastes animal heads on other objects digitally, but bizarrely, only after she has killed them. Another artist records video clips of six animals being clubbed to death by sledgehammer.

This is irritating moral territory, one doesn’t want to provide artists and their sponsors publicity for work that’s of no artistic value, but if the exhibitions are ignored there is a tacit acceptance of them. Therefore it’s necessary to identify that the dog was captured, tied up and exhibited to die by Guillermo Habacuc Vargas; that the woman who finds it necessary to kill various animals before photoshopping them is Nathalia Edenmont; and that it’s Adel Abdessemed, as announced in this publication’s news last week, whose exhibit includes videos of animals being clubbed to death.

The argument has been made that these kinds of exhibit are justified if they challenge our sensibilities or confront our social, political and cultural norms. This is undoubtedly true and is sometimes valid. There is a case for shocking people so that an artist can intercede a new slant on some situation, directly or obliquely. But this can be done, and has been done, very effectively and many times, without having to kill anything anew. There is plenty of death out there to work with.

What is Edenmont’s point? Her promoters have even extended the usual justifications, speciously claiming that her work advances animal rights (a nonsense calmly and thoroughly debunked by Ellie Maldonado here). It’s seems that Edenmont’s work is ultimately so weak without the sensationalized fact of her slaughtering her subjects that it otherwise doesn’t merit much attention.

Vargas, who is one of six chosen artists for the Central American Biennial in Honduras, defends himself by stating that the dog was unwanted; a nuisance around the makeshift corrugated homes in a shantytown, and that he paid some children to help capture it. So what? Is he saying that because nobody cares about the dog he should be able to prove how little that matters? Whether or not he meant to, Vargas does almost make a point about indifference – the photograph of the emaciated dog in it’s last throes being ignored by gallery goers chatting, sipping and posing around, is disturbing. Point made, but justifiable? Where can you take this line of reasoning? There are plenty of people who no one seems to care about, some people don’t care at all about Sr. Vargas. And again, the art, the rest of the exhibit, the tomatoes and fruits, are of little artistic merit.

 

Only Abdessemed backs off the killings by saying that they ‘were to happen anyway’ and that he could not have prevented them. Hmmm, are we supposed to swallow the story that some farmer routinely slaughters an peculiarly odd mix of animals by sledgehammer? (Abdessemed ‘chose’ the six - a sheep, a horse, an ox, a pig, a goat, and a doe – from a wider number of animals – is this some sadistic ark?). This is guff.

Think how many blows would it take to kill a horse or an Ox? Even a goat would need several direct smashes on the skull to kill it. Abdessemed doesn’t claim to be exposing any cruelty that might be worthy of art, instead the press release from the San Francisco Art Institute in sickly prose declares that “the multiplicity of stimuli imbue the work with an instantaneous efficiency that circumvents categorization, making typical moral and cultural constraints seem beside the point.”

Beside what point? Not ‘social, cultural, moral, [or] political implications’ the blurb states, no… because “such questions [are] now verging on irrelevance”; oh really?

Better then to quote Morrissey of The Smiths, “It’s death for no reason and death for no reason is murder”.

Looking at this critically and realising what’s wrong here doesn’t require extreme animal rights activism or vegan sensibility. It’s the selfishness.

It’s been called psychotic narcissism but that gives it too grand a gloss for these sorry exhibits by artists who may be nothing more than sadistic fools. It’s selfishness through arrogance and self-glorification. The artists should ask themselves a simple question. Why not put myself in there, in place of the animal? Too shocking? Yes, and just as stupid, but without the shock these artists wouldn’t matter, and that’ is their real fear.

No surprise: Another major magazine hits the newsstands with a contemporary painting on it's cover, prompted no doubt, by the seemingly absurd, or merely unseemly, high prices being paid for contemporary visual art. This time though, it isn't one of the high-fashion magazines with a fawning nod of deference to the stupendous prices being paid; this time it's a serious news publication with an enraged critic; instead of fashion fluff, we have Jed Perl, the seasoned art critic of The New Republic, all salt and pepper, plainly stating that the current art scene is wrong, that it's rubbish, and that it must be stopped!

Plainly stated? Well not quite, it's a lengthy 6 page critique, but buried within the intolerance are some shrewd observations and also several great swipes to hold the reader; like these:

 

and...

'New York magazine recently profiled in a cover story called "Warhol's Children" one of these clowns [who] does collages incorporating his own semen, much as Warhol had his friends and hangers-on piss on canvases to create his "Oxidation" series.'

 

'Kiki Smith, whose dumb-beyond-belief Whitney show was full of the sort of neo-hippie baubles I wouldn't buy at Target for $14.95'.

_{Kiki smith Copyright - Whitney Museum, NY}

And Perl, perhaps too juicily, lays into some of his prime targets: Lisa Yuskavage he says, produces 'lesbo-bimbo figure paintings' ; John Currin

... 'defies accusations of misogyny by making the men in his paintings every bit as repulsive as the women.'

 

Six pages worth? Well, brief it is not, but it's worth the full dig: The main argument of Perl's is that as art becomes pure commodity, questions as to whether it has any virtue, or quality, disappear - so worthy or worthless artists thrive in a meaningless circus of 'Laissez-Faire Aesthetics' - his headline.

 

Does he have a point? Well a Sotheby's press release from May '06 boasts a total $128 million from one night's contemporary art sales. This included DeKooning and Lichtenstein going for $15 million a piece, but also Lisa Yuskavage's Honeymoon (1998), which went for $1,024,000. Is it worth it?

Lisa Yuskavage - Honeymoon 1998

The Philadelphia ICA describes Yuskavage as "[creating] images that simultaneously embrace and undermine traditional and formalistic painting methodology."

Hmmm... with an emphasis on undermining perhaps.

 

At that same auction a world record sale price for a photograph was recorded: Andreas Gursky's 99 Cent went for $2.48 million (see end of this article). But Perl's main targets are painters, he doesn't mention Gursky. As for John Currin, whose work is 'exposed' on the cover of TNR, that selection is one of his worst, and it is deliberately ironic - here is one of his better pieces:

 

 

_Left.

_{Park City Grill, 2000 - Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Justin Smith Purchase Fund, 2000.
Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York and Sadie Coles HQ, Ltd., London.
Photograph by Andy Keate.}

_{©2003 John Currin.}

Perhaps Currin is misrepresented by Perl, yet few (except the rich & famous buyers of Sotherby's) seem to really like his work, even balanced reviewers like Mia Fineman for Slate can't reconcile it, and I don't particularly like Currin's stuff either. However, contrary to what Perl implies, Currin can paint very well (better than Henri Rousseau for instance) - it's what he paints, that's challenged, but it isn't the non-experience one has with Yuskavage. They shouldn't be lumped together.

About halfway through his article Jed Perl acknowledges that he may be repeating the argument between high culture and popular culture, but he can hardly avoid it can he? And Perl almost gets caught up in the inevitable trap of saying that what he likes is fine art, and what galleries - such as David Zwimmer's & The Gagosian, put out, isn't fine - it's pop. (Here he touches on the subject of my prior post 'The collectors [make] sure that [shows are] ... sold out even before they open', but strangely fails to mentions the Saatchi & Saatchi machine. Perl struggles in defense of his critique only to slam back to great effect:

'I recognize that [such] taste ... is in part a continuation of developments that are now a generation old.... Yet there are differences between garbage then and garbage now. And claims that 60's art was self-consciously ironic, while contemporary is mocking nothing. Perhaps emptiness?

^{Gursky - 99 Cent © Andreas Gursky/Courtesy Phillips de Pury & Company}

After circling the fine art verses pop art several times (slamming the popularization of late Warhol & de Kooning along the way 'Warhol is the evil prophet of the profit motive' Perl finally hones his argument with some observations which do cut through as major concerns, even if they are not resolutely supported by the subjects of his ire, check this out:

'There is no struggle with distinctions because there is no recognition of distinctions. The result is a flattening of all artistic experience... it has left us with a weakening of all conviction, ... a reluctance to champion, or surrender to, any first principle. Laissez-faire aesthetics ...violates the very principle of art, because it insists that anything goes, when in fact the only thing that is truly unacceptable in the visual arts is the idea that anything goes.'

I'll admit that I'd be tempted to compromise if my paintings sold with six zeroes after the first numeral, rather than three, but Perl's distinctions are just as important to me. What I find distasteful in some of the work discussed above is that it is painted in a way that appears to be calculated to exploit, rather than being painted in a way that is authentic to the experience of painting. The soul of the painter is not presented to the viewer.

As for the corruption of art in market forces? Perverted, no. Subverted, of course.

_{To read Jed Perl's excellent criticisms visit www.tnr.com or pick up a copy at your newsstand.}

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Elvis Costello once put on awful and drearily didactic concert in which he choose to talk  most of the time rather than play his music. A row with some of the audience ensued, someone bellowing out: "If I wanted to be educated, I'd be in school, I paid to be entertained!" (expletives deleted)... So what to make of a theatre performance by an avant-garde dancer, paired with a major jazz keyboardist, that delivers a history lesson that spans the Civil War to the present and the struggle against slavery?

Janauary 1, 1864

I arose this morning twelve minutes after 5 - found it middling cold.
Thermometer ten degrees below zero, blowing strong.
No strangers here, but Adeline, the girls sewing at Maria's dress.
Men sitting around, too cold to work.

- from the diary of Elizabeth Conard Edwards

The phrase 'no strangers here' is code for the presence or not of a person fleeing enslavement in the South via the 'Underground Railway'

I am no fan of the vogue for 'historical' fiction, and was wary of the pretext of No Strangers Here Today - a collaboration between Portland writer/movement artist, Susan Banyas and L.A. jazz artist, David Ornette Cherry - but this documentary delivery of fact was surprisingly effective, expertly performed and should, I would argue, become an essential contribution to North American self-understanding. It seems that sometimes art and education can mix; you can have Grandma's cake, and eat it.

Susan Banyas

The work is inspired by Banyas's discovery of a diary kept by her Great Great Grandmother, Elizabeth Edwards, during the Civil War. The diary includes coded phrases suggesting Edwards's participation in the Underground Railroad movement which aided the escape of slaves to the north and eventually led to the abolition of slavery. Using these brief diary entries as the central theme Banyas has created a "monologue-with-movement about political engagement that dances between personal memory and American history from the Civil War to the present."

Cherry's presence was delightful, contributing without dominating the stark vulnerability of Banyas's demanding role.  Cherry is an advocate of playing the piano "like water" so it was fitting that he immediately conjured up memories of Roger Waters's  pastoral Grantchester Meadows compositions (Pink Floyd) to introduce Banyas in her childhood memories . At other times, in support of more menacing passages, he created a distant rumbling backdrop reminiscent of Moslem Gauze; and during the many nostalgic sequences he supplied melodic touches reminiscent of Abdullah Ibrahim (aka Dollar Brand). The discretion shown in his overall contribution would have been appreciated by his father, the late great Don Cherry, who specialised in such an approach.

    Edwards Farm, Ohio

No Strangers Here Today is a monologue, around an hour long, and in that undertaking Banyas is stretching it a little: There is some variety in the presentation, but it is limited - the use of a microphone for three speech out-takes was welcome but delivered little dramatic effect (the majority of her voice was expertly projected without amplification). One wondered if layering the performance with a little pre-recorded voice would have let her emphasise her talent for movement and mime; and if the addition of an occasional text projection across her body or backstage would have accented the material. Banyas told me that she sees the work becoming a documentary film, and that may be it's best reconciliation, nevertheless, this ambitious live endeavour carried well and stirred the audience.

* * *

I have been fortunate in my time to see performances by Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk and David Glass - I mention this because there were elements in Banyas's performance  that reminded me of each of them. Perhaps the most obvious influence was Monk's expressive dance; Bunyas interlaced the verbal dominance of the piece with numerous darting flashes of dance movement - at once suddenly distorted and twisting, or lifting into a ballet leap, or crouched in a primate defense.

March 29 (1864?)

Rained a little, snowed some, clear and windy in the afternoon.
Abbie is at Susan's boiling sugar water.
Swain is ploughing,
John chopping, Jesse doing sundrys.
No Strangers here.

- from the diary of Elizabeth Conard Edwards

David Glass is the less well known brother of the composer Philip Glass, the David Glass Ensemble have been producing remarkable physical and visual theatre for three decades (in one stunning London performance Glass single-handedly reversed my opinion about mime). Watching Banyas,  I wondered if she had studied with Glass, so strong was her mime - illuminating the simple letters she recited with flurries of economic gestures that brought visual shape to their contents.

There's certainly a political edge to this work that will appeal more to liberal states: Banyas links the past with the contemporary issues surrounding current US executive policy, and encourages the audience to "vigilance against economic, political, and personal tyranny" in the press release. It would be a great pity if this story didn't obtain widespread exposure in the very states where its relevance is more pertinent.

^{David Cherry}

The production next travels south to Los Angeles as part of the ALOUD series at the Los Angeles Central Library on February 25, 2007. I highly recommend you catch it: Banyas has created something of rare importance here and Cherry's soundscape contribution is worth the ticket price on its own. A word too for the discreet direction provided by Gregg Bielemeier and Gwynne Warner, my other comments not withstanding, they achieved the desired effectiveness on a tight budget.

Another mention must go to Bill Boese, whose lighting design was limited but stark, providing me with what I expect to be a lasting image; that of Cherry's large, dark face seemingly collapsing and rebuilding like chocolate cake mix as he played, contrasting with Banyas's lovely but pasty-coloured skin (the pie crust); the two together emulating the collaboration of those people, white and black who triumphed in the Underground Railroad movement, and those who today, continue to heed lessons from their history.

How many people are so remarkable that they reshape an art form?

In music, in painting, in dance, in film; in any sphere - there are really very few. But those few, those artists with an obvious 'genius' are worth our attention whatever our tastes or interests. Israel Galván is one of the few. 

Galván's art is Flamenco, but not as ever conceived before. Flamenco, even as it is made popular and promoted, has been in trouble, being either stuck or diluted: A contradiction frozen in formal delivery or laced into spectacular but ultimately meaningless fusions.

Galván is neither frozen nor compromised, he ripped himself free of the mold set by a traditional Flamenco family, satirized his way to the extreme edge of performance art referencing Dali, Bunuel & Picasso, and then turned back to drive deep into the heart of the Flamenco tradition and electrify it. In an irony of language, Galván has gavanised his art.

The eleventh Festival de Jerez concluded this last week and Galván took the honour of 'mejor espectaculo' of the main stage - the Teatro Villamarta. This in itself was something; I had last seen Galván in New Mexico¹ - in a small setting with minimal lighting and accompaniment - he was outstanding then, but how could he transform his quick dance statements to a large venue in a long, sustained main auditorium performance? Galván managed to pull it off, just about - with a brilliantly conceived, far-reaching show embracing, as great art often does, the personal within the apparent impersonal, social and political themes.

"Galván has something to say", commented a friend, a key reason for his significance and also one of the primary issues for the rest of Flamenco: They might have said, "Galván has something new to say", because in Flamenco many artists either have nothing to say, or have only the traditional laments and love songs to repeat.

What's wrong with that? What's wrong with unspoiled gypsy folk song? Nothing, to my mind, until it is removed from a club setting and set upon a vast stage where only a fraction of the audience can be said to be 'involved' with the performance. The festival organisers, showing some balls, actually closed the Jerez festival with Manolete and guitar accompaniment. Manolete has no frills, he just sings - marvelously, he's one of the very best, and he's fun too, but after 30 minutes many of the audience were clapping politely, after an hour they were bored or were leaving (an odd sight juxtaposed against the wild applause of knowledgeable enthusiasts seeming to clap them away). 

It seems to be an insurmountable situation: Performances in small venues cannot bring in sufficient cash to sustain a festival, while the main stages need to serve up the faire for wealthy tourists who don't want to know too much, but do want to be entertained.

Even obvious, proven talents such as Eva Yerbabuena were criticised at the 4^th Sadler's Wells (UK) festival in February for delving into experimental dance, inset with ballet motives, yet having to fall back to set-piece flamenco dance routines (otherwise - is it Flamenco?) and 'squadron' formations. No doubt the disaffected members of the Jerez audience would have preferred Yerbabuena or a spectacular dance show with an excess of musicians - some with 'interesting' instruments - and only brief 'Pavoratti moments' from the vocalists. The problem with the big flash shows is that they are empty vessels, Flamenco is a tradition that should stem from the soul, based on socialising, song (cante), accompaniment (palmas/guitar) and lastly dance (baile) that is spontaneous and in response to the song. The order is significant. The big stage shows are so much frocks, fluff and frenetic feet; the dreadful use of flutes, harps and such brings to mind the dreary fusions of 70's rock/jazz; and the alternative sparing modernist shows (invariably hiding behind Lorca's prose) are usually appallingly amateur and outdated.

Galván blows all these dilemmas away.

Performing alongside a great singer such as Terremoto, accompanied by Lagos (left) he allows the song to lead and responds with his innovative, lightning fast or still-life quips and sarcasms of dance accordingly. On the big stage at Jerez² he swept away the lack- lustre memories of fusions and frills to challenge the audience directly: here were carcases of beef hanging from the roof, here a huge video screen with the bull-ring audience projected and a lone cantaor (Enrique Morente) lamenting vulnerability, the crowd's mood, the inevitability of defeat with victory; and especially the intertwined nature of each to each. The theatre audience is the bull ring audience, which is society; the bull is the victim, or the performer; the bullfighter is another victim, who must perform, as must the dancer; the event is part of life, is fabric. 

The video occasionally zooms in on Morente - a 20 metre high face has impact even on the big stage.

But more than the expertise and vision that is portrayed with rare selectivity, is the individual genius that clatters forth from Galván's performance amid the scenes and musical backdrops - the man as the bull smashing barriers; the man as the torredor in a fight of wits; the man as just flash, as show off. Everything works at many levels, as self-criticism, as cynicism of the Flamenco world and traditions (as sold out or not), as social-political commentary, and with perhaps an ultimate irony, as pure entertainment.

In Flamenco the forces of commercialism in the service of Spanish tourism, have run conveniently beside the fortunes of many of the gypsy families who latch onto the fame and control with clannish entrenchment and abandoned principle. Flamenco can be like any other cultural commodity.

Galván faces up to all of this, and cuts swathes through the pap to reassert the core value, the 'puro', in a dramatically original way: His achievement threatens not only to breathe new life into Flamenco, but begins to transform the art form from within; even to rescue Flamenco from itself.

Israel Galván - if you ever have the chance, seek him out.

<sub>1 Festival Flamenco Internacional de Alburquerque, 2006

2 "ARENA", con la colaboración especial de Enrique Morente (en vídeo), Diego Carrasco, la charanga Los Sones y la Ensemble de Percusión de Andalucía.</sub>

Photographs courtesy official websites of Isreal Galván & Enrique Morente

 

 

 

This Earthbound transmission was recently intercepted by our art news satellite:

"It's Christmas dinner and Mother launches a tirade against the art world and its retinue of perverts (there are two young art students and two lifelong art struglers in the family, two are at the table): It's more of the same old story."

Well Mother knows best, of course, but who or what exactly is she finding repugnant? Is it what's associated with artists? The idea of struggling in poverty, of disillusionment and depression, of being an outsider? Our messenger could surely deal with that - every black-sheep struggles to fit in all year, family gatherings are more intense, but for everyone who deviates from the norm, 'fitting in' and justifying one's existence are part of one's identity.

"the art world and its retinue of perverts"...

Tragic Anatomies : Jake & Dinos Chapman

Perhaps the clue is in the retinue: Mother fears her fledglings might actually be successful and so turn out to be like those few rich & lucky bastards who were set up by Saatchi & Saatchi; who actually have a retinue. The YBA's¹ for instance; yes it's Brit-Art types she despises. She doesn't like it that they've made millions off gimmicks and pop celebrity, snapped up the decaying manor houses and are now throwing film-sized parties with pop/film/football/porn degenerates all over the tabloids. It's Jagger & Marianne Faithful all over again.

Oh Mother, tell me more...²

But oh, come on Mum, those 1990's shocko-jocko-artists deserve some credit: They found something new after modern/post-modern/ppm art was all declared dead. And they made art into money - magic!

Tracey Emin: My Bed  

OK, the art = sliced carcasses, maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head, elephant shit and unmade beds with soiled panties... but there was some good stuff in that scene, and there still is.

But Mother, she's not having any of it (unless you get rich).

Dark days indeed, preempted in 1984 by Suzi Gablik: "To the public... modern art implies a loss of craft, a fall from grace, a fraud or a hoax."³ I'm not American, so I struggle with the 'grace' issue, but what better subject to illuminate the fraud on all sides: Of those pretending, those advocating and those consuming, oh god, whatever that product is you're selling... The thing is, great art can sometimes be produced by fraudulent people, while honest, hardworking artists don't necessarily produce anything of significance.

Gablik went on to write: [...The modern artist] has to contend with [challenges over] the authority and authenticity of what he does. And that's always true I reckon.

There's already been an organised challenge to the YBAs by a group calling themselves Stuckists⁴ - a bunch who prefer the figurative over the conceptual (with Mother's approval no doubt) but guess how they'll behave when they get famous...  It's just that when people get rich and start acting like prats their work, and whatever they claim about it, starts to look like a con or a conformist act. We don't want their personalities, but the entertainment industry does, and while the art remains what it was, the perception shifts followed by  Mother's tar brush.

And that brush really should be burnt, because for all its eccentricities, there is no more prevalence of perverts in the art 'world' than there are in the suburbs, and probably less than in the clergy, or indeed, the 'world' of politics. Even when offensive, art needs to assessed by intention and effect, judged by its gratuitousness or it's importance as reflection of life. A few years on and a lot of the YBA's work diminishes, but some, like Racheal Whiteread's "negative space" sculptures, leave a lasting and profound impression.

Rachel Whiteread : House

From out here in the out here of alternative perspectives there's a view to appreciate all art, despite the proclaimed frauds and freaks and perverts. They walk the streets invisibly while Mother sanctions another window display, but the mannequin winks behind her, while inside a group of black sheep form a herd behind a new label. 

We'll be dropping in on planet Earth again soon, but for now, unfortunately... Mum's the word.

¹YBA's: Young British Artists | ²Syd Barrett (Pink Floyd) Matilda Mother ^{CDP 0777 7 46348 2 5} | ³Suzi Gablik: Has Modernism Failed? ISBN 0-500-23391-8 | ⁴Stuckism