More thoughts on the problems of reality
So, as a practical matter, when something real is your medium or your concept, how do you show that you are not just the mute recorder of reality? Have you taken reality, done something to it, and then done something else to it? Have you really done anything at all?
To take an instance from an artist I love, Burtynski's shipwrecking photo below.
For me, I love this photo (and series of photos) in large part because I love industrial form. I love old factories. I love new factories. I love the giant fans at the con Ed station not far from here. I love silos. It happens that Burtynski also is using his choice of subject to make his argument about "nature transformed through industry." But is the argument being made, and if so, is it being made by Burtynski? I think it's fair to ask if the photograph is doing any work, because most thoughtful people are as likely to think about "nature transformed through industry" when looking at the photographs as they would be looking at the real things. And as likely to think "wow that's really cool looking" and leave it at that.
By contrast, Chris Verene leaves clues in his photos that point to his intention and his intervention. (BTW-Chris is a friend of mine)
My Twin Cousin's Husband's Brother's Cousin's Cousin, above, is a great example. Chris didn't photograph just any moment. The photo may or may not be posed, but it is definitely composed, and with purpose. By bringing his intention into the photograph he puts himself into the equation, and that alters it. You can't ponder this image without wondering if he asked the adults to whirl the kids in tandem, and how many times did he snap a picture before he made his art. His photographs are warm and respectful, which could be easily dismissed along with their beauty as objects if he didn't consistently make his mind manifest in the work.
It's a question that can be fairly asked of a lot of art. David used his style of representation to make political statements (masculine linear clarity-good, rococo curlicue-bad), but what was Ingres doing? Maybe this is a little unfair, since the model for art was so different back then. So let me take a pot shot at an artist who can take it. What is Banks Violette doing? I don't know about the average random reader of this blog, but I went to high school with metal heads. I see the tropes, I recognize the tropes, I can even expand from that small universe to the occasional but common experience of getting wrapped up in a subculture's mythology. Saw that in high school. His reconfiguration of reality isn't inducing any thought that the originals didn't do just as well the first time around, which makes me think that the metal heads and me are doing all the work here.
But it doesn't have to be that way. I hate John Curin's work, but he's doing something with the medium of reality. I have really mixed feelings about Kara Walker (envy, love, disappointment), but she's sculpting perceptual-, art history-, and historical-reality into an amazing body that works as hard as anyone looking at it.
And then there's the artist who triggered this conversation in reality over a week ago. Johnston Foster had a great show at RARE last month, a bizarro golfing heaven. His work is roughly mimetic, and it wouldn't work otherwise. Like a lot of current work in Chelsea, his installation (or group of sculptures) starts with a specific, researched, subculture. But instead of playing amateur anthropologist and just documenting rich men playing golf, or taking fragments of golf culture (plaid for instance) and throwing it around the space da da style to provoke some randomized meaning-making, he took their reality and ours and made art out of it. Nothing was taken as a given. Even the q-tips in the trash can were recreated from other materials. And he didn't stop at just recreating the world of rich white golfers. The evidence of the life I live in, and that he presumably lives in, literally builds another reality of Santa-sleigh golf carts, tire-eagles, trophy holes, in a crazy clash of privilege, delusion, consumption, aspiration, and waste.
He took reality, did something to it, then did something else to it.
thanks to J. Saltz for putting Jasper Johns' quote in a review, and thanks to Fisher6000billion for digging it up for me after I had lost it.
So, as a practical matter, when something real is your medium or your concept, how do you show that you are not just the mute recorder of reality? Have you taken reality, done something to it, and then done something else to it? Have you really done anything at all?
To take an instance from an artist I love, Burtynski's shipwrecking photo below.
For me, I love this photo (and series of photos) in large part because I love industrial form. I love old factories. I love new factories. I love the giant fans at the con Ed station not far from here. I love silos. It happens that Burtynski also is using his choice of subject to make his argument about "nature transformed through industry." But is the argument being made, and if so, is it being made by Burtynski? I think it's fair to ask if the photograph is doing any work, because most thoughtful people are as likely to think about "nature transformed through industry" when looking at the photographs as they would be looking at the real things. And as likely to think "wow that's really cool looking" and leave it at that.
By contrast, Chris Verene leaves clues in his photos that point to his intention and his intervention. (BTW-Chris is a friend of mine)
My Twin Cousin's Husband's Brother's Cousin's Cousin, above, is a great example. Chris didn't photograph just any moment. The photo may or may not be posed, but it is definitely composed, and with purpose. By bringing his intention into the photograph he puts himself into the equation, and that alters it. You can't ponder this image without wondering if he asked the adults to whirl the kids in tandem, and how many times did he snap a picture before he made his art. His photographs are warm and respectful, which could be easily dismissed along with their beauty as objects if he didn't consistently make his mind manifest in the work.
It's a question that can be fairly asked of a lot of art. David used his style of representation to make political statements (masculine linear clarity-good, rococo curlicue-bad), but what was Ingres doing? Maybe this is a little unfair, since the model for art was so different back then. So let me take a pot shot at an artist who can take it. What is Banks Violette doing? I don't know about the average random reader of this blog, but I went to high school with metal heads. I see the tropes, I recognize the tropes, I can even expand from that small universe to the occasional but common experience of getting wrapped up in a subculture's mythology. Saw that in high school. His reconfiguration of reality isn't inducing any thought that the originals didn't do just as well the first time around, which makes me think that the metal heads and me are doing all the work here.
But it doesn't have to be that way. I hate John Curin's work, but he's doing something with the medium of reality. I have really mixed feelings about Kara Walker (envy, love, disappointment), but she's sculpting perceptual-, art history-, and historical-reality into an amazing body that works as hard as anyone looking at it.
And then there's the artist who triggered this conversation in reality over a week ago. Johnston Foster had a great show at RARE last month, a bizarro golfing heaven. His work is roughly mimetic, and it wouldn't work otherwise. Like a lot of current work in Chelsea, his installation (or group of sculptures) starts with a specific, researched, subculture. But instead of playing amateur anthropologist and just documenting rich men playing golf, or taking fragments of golf culture (plaid for instance) and throwing it around the space da da style to provoke some randomized meaning-making, he took their reality and ours and made art out of it. Nothing was taken as a given. Even the q-tips in the trash can were recreated from other materials. And he didn't stop at just recreating the world of rich white golfers. The evidence of the life I live in, and that he presumably lives in, literally builds another reality of Santa-sleigh golf carts, tire-eagles, trophy holes, in a crazy clash of privilege, delusion, consumption, aspiration, and waste.
He took reality, did something to it, then did something else to it.
thanks to J. Saltz for putting Jasper Johns' quote in a review, and thanks to Fisher6000billion for digging it up for me after I had lost it.
posted by gypsy_kat at 6:17 PM
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