Elizabeth Streb is great--even the Slam 6 show, which by Streb standards is not so great, is great.

Circusy, yes. Addicted to superheroes, yes. Is all of that pretty corny? Yes.

But corny is real, and people often have to talk like they are superheroes if they are going to act at all like superheroes, and I do think that Streb understands that the space in between the superhero dream and actually achieving the superhero reality is the right space for her to play.

Streb is about presentation, performing, and is trying (IMO) to distance itself from PM dance and "movement research". Great. Action Lab, not Movement Lab.

But she understands that she needs this space of relative artifice to do something totally real. Something more real than what Simone Forti is doing. Art that cleaves to reality either plays to high Chris Burden stakes or winds up being awfully thin and brittle. Real existence is boring. Flying, on the other hand, is not boring at all. It's a dream, and the most beautiful Streb piece ever dealt with the reality of flight (it ends in a thud) with grace and transendent joy because it wasn't about the thud. It was about the brief moment of each dancer realizing a totally great superhero dream. The thud just became what they were willing to endure to get there.

Showing both sides, showing the work, is elegant and complex, and we are ready to accept the existential burden of our dreams. But it is fair of Streb to allow everybody at least a shot at transendence.

Note for myself: steal this, this moving from small to huge. How does she start with a small physical problem (how do dancers dodge this cinderblock? How do I get them to fly? What's with this strap, this wheel? What can it do?) and make it into something universal?

Commitment with entire body and mind is the first answer that comes to mind. Knowing that there is a dream is the second thing. It's about trying to do something that you can't do. It's fundamentally about failing. I should probably remember this. There is something so comfortable and mundane about the atomosphere at the space, something so off-the-cuff and inclusive about what they are doing.

The only road that makes sense for talking about this is the inside-to-outside road. The total disclosure in the service of total self abandonment road. This road describes the space *between* my ego and the hugeness that I see. In this space between, I can only see the world in terms of what I *cannot* do about it. The space between is full of events that are out of my control. I am watching:

Fantastic glimpses of Total Global Destruction!
Operatic histrionics!
Hyperbole!

And I am: Chicken Little!

So in the interest of starting on this road, I must disclose that I am tired of constantly overcoming years and years of trying so hard to take myself seriously. I was taught by old modernist men that if you make something heavy enough, you will be taken very seriously. I see that weight does not equal respect, but I must admit that I started this absurd lifestyle of heavy lifting because I wanted the respect they were selling.

I can release myself of that respect, that firm purchase on solid ground, that weight. And I can talk about what is out of my control, because I am not in this for respect anymore. I am in this for discovery.

...And to aggravate, not soothe, my deep fears about the world as we know it ending in our lifetime. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I have been thinking about something that's going on in my own work--the problems of representation and process, and what happens when you combine the two.

I tend to represent a thing or event--a city. getting thrown. Driving. But when I think about how to represent it, I don't tend to think of the image or the thing itself. I tend to think about how I am representing it. Am I gluing a bunch of little things together? Overloading an armature with rubber? Growing crystals?

This creates an abstraction of the thing itself, and I want to think that this is useful, that it gets to how it feels and not just how it looks. That it involves the body.

But when I think about this, I also think of Charles Ray and his low payoff problem. Meticulously re-creating a car or a tractor by hand is a beautiful process. But when you see it, it's hard to see the process and how it creates an abstraction.

Just throwing it out there. All this talking about other people's stuff and art history was just bummin' me out.

wheee!

don't know where to start, but you can start by reading my posts from the last couple-or-so of blogskies. ... NOW!
so what are we left with? i'm hoping to put to bed the argument about cynicism, because it IS pervasive, and i would like to tuck it in alittle. make it comfy and tell it 'sweet dreams'. [lost about 20 minutes of blog writing there. mental note to save the blither before i try to do anything else!!!]
cynicism will get you everywhere. the highest manifestations of art are soaking in cynicism and sarcasm: 'tristram shandy' by stern, joyce's 'finnegan's wake', duchamp, picasso, the folks at the first 'arte de refuse', dare i say even currin, to make this a holistic blog, i'll touch music: the atonalists and minimalists and cage. they're all making a joke. the question is, who get's the damn joke? how much investment is there in even understanding the language which the joke is told in? hello, 'relevance', how are you? our cultural conundrum [to bring it all the way back] is that the impact of wit is lost. wit flies around looking for a place to land, and the target used to be much wider than it is now.
so, we've got a double edged problem. on the one hand, i've got the hiccups. but that's not important. on the other hand, we've got a culture that separates the 'knowing' [elite, educated, worldly] from the huddled masses very efficiently through poor education, crapulent economy, etc. and on the other hand, we've got a mass of half smart people [artists] trying to do something relevant by splashing around in a very big pool... and alot of them are trying to be and do something half-smart [cynical] and reach beyond their limits [the failure of cynicism: shear stab-at-it and i'm-so-much-better-ism] when they're set up to fail becaue of the previous hand that took away any entre' to begin with. currin succeeds because he's forced a nail through a cultural moment in a way that appeals to a broad member of the elite.

with all the remove: cultural boarders and no-man's-lands and economic segregation, it's no wonder we are flooded with creative work that doesn't make relative sense... we're living in a disconnected time. the problem of cynical artwork is that it either re-establishes or invents a culdesac of elitism. if it's re-establishing, it runs the risk of sinking into the muck-bottom with the rest, or competing with the best [previous establishers]. if it's inventive, well god help it, it's on its own and may be ringing in a super-secret about giving, like the ramones. either way there is a risk, and [here we go again] as with all good jokes, timing is everything.

lala

When I say "cynical" in that lazy way, I am talking about a certain *kind* of taking advantage of the way things are--a getting over that I think is specific to the information-saturated world we live in right now. This behavior is similar to John Currin's exploitation of a specific art scene, but differs in effect and motivation.




Compare John Currin's paintings of extremely large breasts to any Karl Rove Moment, from the Racism Exists And We'll Rebuild New Orleans Even If It Takes A Kerjillion Dollars Speech to the endless Terror Alert Distractions. Both are extremely selfish calculations of what people will want to see (or what will get people riled up), and both Rove and Currin are interested in power and influence. But Kat, you are right. Beyond that, there are very few similarities.

First of all, Currin is the first to admit what he is doing--he's not lying to anyone. Currin says that he exploited a hole in the gallery scene. Currin admits that he is using art history so that he can make interesting paintings, even as he learns how to paint. I don't think Currin really understands how weirdly sexist his paintings are, but he seems to be very aware of their potential to caress you and slap you at the same time.

More important, Currin is involved in a reciprocal game *with* the art world, in which everyone wins. He gets to learn how to paint. But he also puts a fresh set of eyes on a specific history of painting. Ideally he learns something about men and women. But even if he doesn't, we all get to learn something. He gets rich. And we get a rich, freaky experience that at least gives us a lot to talk about. (Gypsy_kat, I know that you don't like Currin's work, but will you admit that it's at least worth your time to tear it apart?)

Even if you don't like the work, nobody winds up being the loser. He gives and takes.

Rove, while he is equally terrier-like in his ability to find and bury his nose in an opportunity, is not playing *with* us at all. Rove's Magic Spin Machine is, of course, an instrument of lies. We are winning in Iraq (no photographs of caskets allowed). We should be in Iraq in the first place (it was never about WMD's, this is about the war on terror...). We are compassionate conservatives (but we will make sure every single marginally poor person gets into a ton of predatory credit card debt and can't file bankrupcy).

No actual needs are filled. Worse, thousands of people are hurt. Of course, art can't take away your food stamps or kill your son, and this does make the comparison somewhat unfair, but bear with me. This Magic Spin Wheel, or The Spiraling Shape That Makes You Go Insane (thanks, They Might Be Giants) wouldn't work if Rove was the only one doing it. The fact that the Bush adminsitration is *capable* of convincing *anyone* that, say, they care about the poor people in New Orleans, is part of a larger system--a Bullshit Age. It's everywhere. Credit card companies and banks are adding all kinds of crazy fees because they can. Every month I seem to be disputing some bill that is wrong. My college students don't believe (or believe in) anything. And I am not just saying that.

And I absolutely see an art market caught in the grip of the same Spiraling Shape. And while I would love to flabbily call it cynical, it's more than that. It's duplicitous. To get back to your context argument, Kat, it uses the gallery/nonprofit space/museum context to push the most conservative, academic work *as if* it were actual, cutting-edge thinking work. It does this by making curators the driving 'intellectual' force at the expense of artists' voices; by harnessing artists to money (the AIM program is a particularly perverse example); by worshipping young artists record-label style.

Sure, artists who want to have a conversation (even a cynical conversation) lose. But more important, the value of the entire enterprise is lost. Why look to an elitist visual art machine that is sucked into the same lying machine as everything else?

Yes, Kat, I see your point about the laziness of the word cynical. And you're right. The fact that John Currin is a cynical motherfucker does not make his paintings any less weird or interesting or surprising to me. And you are right. I don't find Thomas Kinkade any less cynical than John Currin.

And I also agree with your larger point, that cynicism itself is social awareness and a willingness to exploit that often creates good art.

And for that matter, I don't necessarily want art to be fair, kind, accessible, or any of the other qualities that I value in people.

I do like Currin's work even though it is rooted in an extreme cynicism, is often sexist, relies an awful lot on art-historical inside jokes, and for that matter is often bad painting. I like it because it's endeavoring to do something to me. Because it's manipulative. Because it catches me in a human moment, loving the experience of looking at things I shouldn't like.

Currin's work wouldn't work if it weren't cynical.

So what's the next step, Kat? Lead us to the precise place...

On Cynicism
It seems to me that "cynicism" has become a code word for things we don't like, and because it has drifted from its origins and become this nebulous swear word, as soon as it enters any discussion all the questions in that discussion become unanswerable. Cynical really means either the belief that all people are motivated by selfishness (a belief that I find a lot among people who decry art as cynical) or behavior that is calculating and selfish. Is a lot of art at some level calculating and selfish - of course. But John Currin is a perfect example of an artist who is openly calculating and selfish. He has even said publicly that he started doing figurative painting because no one else in the New York art world was doing it so it was a good strategy for getting noticed. A choice based on pure calculation and selfishness that has produced paintings that almost anybody can like. Accessibility and generosity can also be cynical. Does that in itself make Currin's art bad art? Fisher6000, I know you like his work. Does his cynical strategy sour his work for you now? I don't think so.
The point of this is that I agree that a lot of art currently showing is lacking somehow, but I think that using the word "cynical" actually keeps us from really finding out what it is we object to. The word is morally loaded and vague. To really grapple with the issue we have to be first neutral and precise, so that we can identify without judgment what we want, what we have, and whether the demand for what we want is reasonable.

Surprise.

I want art to surprise me. Especially sculpture. I want some kind of distinction between art and stuff that is deft and surprising, that is more than just context.

Minimalism's flat-footed resistance to traditional elements of surprise (ie. composition, transcendence) was surprising.

Conceptualism's negation of the object and the way it cleaved art to theater and poetry was surprising. Robert Irwin's manipulation of experience was surprising.

When these tropes became the academic standard, they stopped surprising anyone.

What's the history on this? Because I have this kinda crotchety conviction that the art market used to revolve around surprise, and that it now revolves around youth. Getting back to Kat's assertion that the frame of art is culturally determined...is our culture changing? As times get more uncertain, are we becoming less tolerant of surprise?

If the frame of art is culturally determined, then what is our culture like right now?

Working in the park has been an incredible art appreciation lesson for me. It's a weird intersection. On one hand, shows are curated to fit the Chelsea (okay...Williamsburg) template. On the other, the primary users of the park are neighborhood folks who size up the art and react with a mixture of curiosity, *very* occasional wonder, head scratching and contempt. I do not want to write a brief treatise on the elitism of the NY art market. That's shooting fish in a barrel.

But really--if the frame of art is culturally determined, and yet our culture (not just the Socrates Sculpture Park regulars, but everyone) finds visual art that is made for the galleries right now strikingly irrelevant, then what is going on?

Are the young artists flowing out of ColumbiaUCLAYaleCalArts and into the galleries onto something so "avant garde" that the general public is just too behind to notice what's going on?

Are these artists of their time and showing us something we don't want to see?

Or are they saying what very young people whose families can afford a very expensive education with no sure future prospects would say?

Is this not a valid question because it is obvious that the Emperor has no clothes and visual art is completely irrelevant?

Back at that intersection of Socrates Viewer and Socrates Curator, I find it hard to discount either side. Socrates choses what everyone else chooses--they are dipping from the same overflowing well that Sculpture Center, DAC, the AIM program, LMCC, and all the other nonprofit spaces are drawing from. These relationships and repetitions alone are a strong cultural determination, right? So these choices must be relevant--curators must actually be working as arbiters of what is visually important right now, right?

On the other hand, I am at a loss to explain the cynical, janky formalism (and its little brother, illustrative conceptualism) that currently reigns the scene. Sure. After seven years of art education, paired with a few more years of leading undergraduate critques, I can talk about the formal elements of Roy Stanfield's Untitled pieces of plexiglass currently stowed in the basement of Sculpture Center. But why should I have to?

To get it over with: this work is the logical end of Donald Judd's Specific Objects line. But without any sense of planning or composition, the hand of the artist, a sense of manipulated material, or for that matter even a title, what is the point of trudging across the Pulaski bridge on a Sunday to look at it in person? It's not that it's formally bad--it's interesting formally. And it's not that it's irrelevant. It fits tidily into the last interesting sculpture debate (sad to say, we haven't really had a good thought since Michael Fried and Donald Judd duked it out), and definitely chooses the popular side. It is a set of theatrical objects that sit there and refuse to become something else. They don't transcend. Even though the material is transparent, the work just sits there and defies your every attempt to make something of it.

So what is Stanfield doing, apart from doing it right? Not much. The work itself is mean, meager. It has no entry point beyond Judd. It has no sense of urgency. It communicates nothing other than its art-historically determined right to exist. Does it share a secret? Heal a wound? Ask a question? Make a connection? Does it kiss, fuck, caress, wink at or slap a viewer?

If one of my college students made a Stanfield, I would be impressed because it would mean that this student was listening during my slide shows. But it does nothing but point to the page where its existence is the next logical step in a devolution of art's relevance to the general public that I am sure would sadden even Donald Judd.

Like most of the people I talk to at Socrates while they throw the ball for their dog, I want more from art. Is this the way it is? Did Donald Judd finally put the last nail in the coffin for sculpture? Is it true that we cannot have a new discussion about sculpture that moves past or through the Fried/Judd Rumble In The Jungle?

Or am I asking the wrong questions to the wrong people? Maybe there are lots of people out there having the discussion, but nobody gets to see the discussion because curators tend toward the safest, most academic iterations possible?