Flamers: Political Art and The Critics
Photo courtesy of blog.wepay.com
“Is contemporary art politically useless?,” Martha Schwendener asks, as political art resumes its usual place in the white cube. She looks to the quiet reading list offered by “Occupy Your BFF” at Momenta Art; Hito Steyerl’s historicizing view of radicalism; and Apexart’s group show of artistically-appropriated protest materials. After spending a year in the streets fighting with OWS, she wonders how “Claire Fontaine‘s protest-style cardboard signs with text imprinted by smoke, or Tomas Rafa‘s video of European and American protest marches around racism, add to the experience or revolt—or how they might prefigure or inspire actual activism. Mostly, they retool it for art.”
2. Stephen Duncombe & Steve Lambert,”An Open Letter to Critics Writing About Political Art,” Center for Artistic Activism
On the flipside of Schwendener’s conclusion, activist Stephen Duncombe and artist Steve Lambert (who co-founded the Center For Artistic Activism together) criticize critics for inadequately addressing political art. Without offering any specific examples of critical failing, they complain in broad terms about all critics and outline a list of questions to consider (“What Medium and Why?” and “What Am I Missing?”)
“The critical response [to the Creative Time Summit] has “so far…been underwhelming: few critics attended and those that did had little substantive to say,” write Duncombe and Lambert, a presenter at said conference. But Mira Schor had a lot to say, and unlike many of the Creative Time presentations and its social media team, Schor addressed specific issues that weakened the overall efficacy of the event.
None of those criticisms had to do with aesthetics, so it’s strange that Lambert and Duncombe would decide that the problem is that critics evaluates formalism within political art, rather than examining the political action that the art motivates. “You are not alone in your ignorance,” they assure us. Pot, meet kettle. We recommend the two do a little additional reading, and take a look at Martha Schwendener’s review above.
3. Sarah Thornton, “Top 10 Reasons NOT to Write About the Art Market,” TAR Magazine
Seven Days in the Art World author Sarah Thornton won’t be writing about the art market any more. She published her beef in TAR magazine, citing ineptitude within the field as a major issue: for instance, you can’t “expose a vainglorious conman—one who has taken his clients for an unscrupulous ride in full view of 500 well-dressed auction goers—[when] the authorities can’t get their act together to investigate”.
Corruption aside, it sounds like she’s a little too smart to get stuck in a field full of “unbelievably stupid press releases”, “painfully repetitive” reporting, and of course, the idea that “money is the most important thing about art.” We get it, but boy, is this ever a loss for the fine art world.
4. Leah Ollman, “Review: Diego Singh,” Los Angeles Times
Leah Ollman has very few choice words for Diego Singh‘s first solo show. She calls out his abstract paintings scribbled over with CAPTCHAs a “kind of concrete poetry…that resonates on only the most superficial level.” She then goes on to makes fun of the gallery press release’s typical art jargon:
There’s more to chew on in the press release, which describes these paintings as “teas(ing) out the absurdity of the anti-subjective assertion of the text in Conceptual Art.By the end of her short review, Ollman has a few nice words to say about Singh’s other works, but given its placement, her comment seems tacked-on:
Abstract passages of color and line share the surface with the trompe l’oeil illusionism, the two painterly languages not clashing with any real force but at least generating some mild friction.Earlier this year, Singh was part of a group show at Regina Rex. We seriously doubt Singh’s work deserves a nail in the coffin, but he might have, in Ollman’s words, “a mixed bag of mixed messages” to deal with.
5. Ben Meyer, “Fine Arts Gimmick Lowers La Boheme at the Opera Company of Philadelphia,” theartblog
This one’s ten days old, but already timeless. Writing for theartblog, Ben Meyer describes what sounds like the fine art equivalent of Springtime for Hitler: the opera La Boheme, performed in front of an enormous moving slideshow of Impressionist paintings from the Barnes and Philadelphia Museum of Art. The production included additions like Puccini’s painter character “Marcello” signed to Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and an animated version of Starry Night. “[A]fter 20 minutes…sea sickness sets in,” writes Meyer. Here’s a sample of the suckage:
And there’s about 900 words more. Unlike Springtime, La Boheme closed after a five-day run. At least it made for a good read.The first act has a slideshow of projected Impressionist masterpieces as its background, which slowly pans from side to side or zooms in. At first, it seems like Marcello is painting Renoir’s “La Prairie” and “Woman with Fan” from the Barnes Foundation collection, since the pieces are projected onto a canvas prop as well as the wall behind him. But the unbearable slideshow continues as Marcello moves away from his canvas, severing any logical connection between the opera and the set projections. Furthermore, brightly colored depictions of spring seemed out of place when the characters were singing about freezing to death in the Parisian winter.
No comments:
Post a Comment