Alberta Oil Sands #6 Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, 2007 / Courtesy of the Artist

It’s often impossible to fully understand the big picture of industrialized development from the limited perspective of the consumer. Each day most of us go about our business, driving to and from work, using plastics made from petroleum, enjoying foods shipped from thousands of miles away, without a thought of the very resource that makes this all possible—oil. The impact of oil has consistently appeared in the work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky for well over a decade. Burtynsky’s photographs often soar into the air, freeing us from our limited perspective, offering us the ability to better understand the scale and impact that this material has on contemporary life. It is only through this expansive perspective that we begin to understand the magnitude and consequence of our actions. Daily Serving founder Seth Curcio was able to speak to Burtynsky by phone about his current exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, titled Oil. The conversation roamed from Burtynsky’s research and his own relationship to oil, how he uses scale and perspective to shape our understanding of the industrialized world, and what lies ahead with the future of oil.

Seth Curcio: In the introduction to your book Oil, you said, “In 1997 I had what I refer to as my oil epiphany. It occurred to me that all the vast man-altered landscapes I had pursued for over 20 years had been made possible by oil…” Since that time you have spent a decade and a half documenting the impact of oil consumption globally. How has this ongoing project shaped the way that you interact with the world, especially in regard to oil consumption?

Edward Burtynsky: At that point, I had spent 16 or 17 years trying to find the largest events possible around mining and quarrying. I was interested in places that we had collectively engaged, and that illustrate scale. I realized that the scale that I’d been photographing could only have been achieved through the combustive engine and a readily available fuel, such as oil.

These ideas led me to consider the things that are around me, from the fuel in my car to the road that I am driving on, to the plastic container that was in my hand. They are all produced with oil. As I started to look around, I asked myself what’s not oil? and that became the more interesting question. It was at that point that I began to close the chapter on mining and open the chapter on the oil landscape. That started my research representing the extraction and refinement of oil, the urban worlds and events produced as a result of oil, and the end of the line — the final entropy and physical result of oil consumption.

Oil Fields #22 Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada, 2001 / Courtesy of the Artist

Through this I was fully aware that I was involved in the consumption of oil too. You simply cannot live life in the modern world without the usage of oil. We are all, in some way, participating in the material and resource. But, I’m always trying to find ways to mitigate my own consumption and impact. I planted a forest in 1985 and have since cared for it as a gesture to offset my carbon usage. I’ve always been careful to purchase fuel-efficient cars, and each time I fly, I purchase from offset companies. It is always my hope to be able to offset my usage through these means.

SC: As an individual, our limited perspective often prohibits us from seeing the larger picture of our impact on the planet. Literally, shifting our perspective to 1000+ feet above the ground can drastically change how we see the world. For me, this was strikingly evident in the expansive aerial photograph Highway #5, Los Angeles, California, USA. Can you talk a little about perspective and access as it relates to your work?

Highway #5 Los Angeles, California, USA, 2009 / Courtesy of the Artist

EB: When you stand at ground level, a real hierarchy begins to form. Everything in the foreground of the picture becomes dominant and hides everything behind it. The middle just becomes irrelevant at eye or ground level. But, then I realized that as you move up a bit, things begin to reveal themselves and you get a real sense of the relationships between the foreground, middle ground, and background. The descriptive power of the elevated point of view becomes so much more interesting than the view from the ground. From this point, you really get the chance to understand the scale of the landscape or how much of something is there, like how many cars are backed up behind you or how many planes are parked together. You get to see and really understand scale from the elevated viewpoint. And for me, that is a way that I can describe the system in which we organize certain things on such a large scale.

Highway #1 Los Angeles, California, USA, 2003 / Courtesy of the Artist

EB: I do believe that an image has to be visually compelling to address the kind of landscape that will challenge us and make us ask the important questions. I think that artists don’t really have the power to change the world, but we do have the power to raise questions about the world that we are creating. In my heart, I feel that as artists we can hold a mirror up to society and help reflect upon exactly what we are doing and what type of world we are creating. All types of artists have the ability to take on this task. We must take on society and examine the condition of the human experience, and make sense of it as an individual and as a collective society. You are simply not going to get this type of storytelling directly from science. It is the role of the artist to tell this type of story. It’s inherent in the creative arts to reflect where we are going in a way that perhaps has not been thought of before. And, aesthetics is a portal though which people will enter to explore these notions. But, if the work is not visually interesting enough for them to enter, then you won’t be able to communicate anything at all to the viewer.

SOCAR Oil Fields #6 Baku, Azerbaijan, 2006 / Courtesy of the Artist

SC: Your images are simultaneously seductive and agressive, instantly placing the viewer in the question-asking role. This prompts one to consider their own place within the image, and how one’s own culture and daily activities contribute to a much larger problem. Paul Roth has said about your work “the subject is not oil…These photographs are about man, and what he as made of this earth.” While the gravity of this resource is certainly evident throughout your pictures, I feel that the effects on humanity are most profound in the portraits found in the group The End of Oil.  Since you were on the ground engaging with people whose lives are directly impacted by man’s use of oil, I wonder if you connected with humanity in a way that was not possible in your more distant aerial photographs? Did making those portraits change the way you thought about man, and what he has made of this earth, as Roth suggests?

EB: When I went to Bangladesh it was if I stepped back in time and was in the middle of the industrial revolution. Many of the people there were engaging in the most filthily, hard, arduous work that can be conceived. I felt that I went back in time because I could never see this type of work in my culture, as that moment had long passed. These men were working barefoot in a scrapyard, cutting metal with a torch and no eye protection, and inhaling clouds of asbestos with no respirators. They are taking part in the collateral damage of western off-gassing. It’s a fifthly job, cutting down massive ships that are technologically obsolete for our purposes. But, to see these people barefoot and still holding a shred of dignity in these types of jobs, I felt that at some point it is important for humanity to enter this project and for viewers to see humans engaging with the end result of our impact, as opposed to those who participated in the beginning of the narrative. I thought it was important to show humanity in a very unfortunate situation, even as they are attempting to better themselves, so that the first world can really see exactly who is doing our dirty work. And, that is why I wanted to have people appear and at that particular point in the narrative.

Shipbreaking #23 Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000 / Courtesy of the Artist

Overtime, it has become more apparent to me that these aren’t as much landscapes, as they are places that illustrate the systems such as how we extract oil from the ground, how we ship it, and how we build infrastructure to move machines around. The work is about trying to find a way to represent all of the systems that we have created to enjoy the benefits that the internal combustion engine and oil have afforded us. The images are not really about the singular place; they are a stand in for the ways that we have changed our landscape to accommodate all of these things — this new way of life.

SC: Absolutely. The impact is so invisible to the western world. There are such small moments where we can see the effects of our culture on the rest of the earth. This brings to mind the times that we do get to see our actions unfold — like with the gulf oil crisis. Considering that you had been working on this project and related projects for well over a decade when the Gulf oil crisis happened two years ago, what went though your mind when viewing those images and video on TV? What is your reaction to the incident and all that has occurred in that region since?

Oil Tanker and Refineries Pasadena, Texas, USA, 2004 / Courtesy of the Artist

EB: I went and photographed that area right after the situation occurred.  I had been working on a project about water and I thought that this is a perfect example of an immediate oil and water event that was loaded with implications that were real and happening right now. I thought this would give me a change to see these all-important liquids in our life in an unexpected and unwanted marriage. It was like the Frankenstein story, where we did something and really didn’t fully understand the risks; we drilled to 23,000 ft – 5,000 ft of water and another 17,000 feet of bedrock to get to the oil. And, then to have it all go bad and lose control of the well. It’s like when doctor Frankenstein creates life and then it turns on him and becomes a menace. The same scientists are then trying to contain it and get back into the lab, but its not that easy. It really is the process of science over reaching and then losing control. It’s a lesson that we keep repeating — not fully understanding the risk and moving forward anyway. Imagine if this repeats itself in drilling conditions in the artic. If there were a spill in the winter, there would be no way of reaching it, it would just gush all winter long and could very well completely destroy the artic. Imagine the mess that we would all be in then. The idea of an error occurring in the artic is a real nightmare. The Gulf has 35,000 wells. They are not new at this, and they have every bit of technology, help, and resources available at their disposal to help solve the problem. Now the artic is a completely different situation. With all of the resources available, it still took 3 months to stop the oil in the Gulf! In the artic, who is there to help? Who is there to save the day? Nobody. So, it is a scary thought that we would advance into this region in our pursuits of this material.

SOCAR Oil Fields #4 Baku, Azerbaijan, 2006 / Courtesy of the Artist

SC: There is so many issues with the inevitability of another spill at the magnitude of the gulf oil crisis. But, the western world is so detached from the actual production of oil that it can seem out of touch.  We just know that we still need it, and therefore, another site will be built. Another type of technology will be invented to reach another pocket of oil. This brings me to the lanscape pictures that you made under the umbrella of the End of Oil. They are so striking and haunting. These images really get to the essence of  not only the impact of our consumption of oil, but also the waste we leave behind. However, we know that now matter how many of these sites are used and abandoned, inevitably another will open to satisfy out needs. So, seeing these images actually makes me consider the future of oil. I’m curious about what your discoveries have led you to think about the future of the man-made world in regard to this material? What do you see on the horizon?

VW Lot #1 Houston, Texas, USA, 2004 / Courtesy of the Artist

EB: I see it in terms of peak oil. It is not a question of if, it is a question of when. Its not like peak oil is going to stop. It’s just like the 1974 peak oil problem, it crests and no matter how much you pump it can’t keep up with the public demand. All of the sudden you see supply go in one direction and demand go in the other. Then, you get market adjustment; the prices go up to help reduce demand. Its like playing ping pong on a moving train, the price goes up and down, but really its always moving up and going forward. When we average it out, it will move from $100 to $200, $300, $400 per barrel, and that is what it will look like at different price points. As the price goes higher more people will be left behind. Less people will be able to drive, fly in an airplane, and oil consumption will be left for those with more capital, while the rest of us deal with massive inflation. And, third world countries could be completely out of oil, leaving them with huge amounts of social unrest. In countries like China, you can see them purchasing oil fields and natural resources from anyone that will sell, as they know that they don’t have many of their own natural resources. They are stock piling from locations around the world in preparation of their expanded development.  And, there is going to be a lot of tension globally as we begin to hit peak oil again.

Breezewood Pennsylvania, USA, 2008 / Courtesy of the Artist

But, there is something that we here in the west can do. It  is called losing our addiction to oil. I feel that we could reduce our consumption by 30% through conservation – raising the fuel average to 50 miles per gallon in cars, producing alternative energy, and reducing the huge tax cuts to oil companies and giving them to green energy developers. There just hasn’t been the right emphasis put in the right places yet. Historically, big infrastructure changes have to come, in part, from the government. Just like it did with when we needed to add telephone lines, highways, and hydro development – it all came from the government. And, if we are going to make these changes in relationship to our oil consumption, if we really want sustainable alternative energy, the government has to be there. It has to create a level playing field. It’s got to put oil in the same place as alternatives, and quit giving benefits to oil over alternative energy. Tax people for carbon consumption, and alternatives start looking really good. We all play a part in this.

“Carmen seemlessly weaves her personal narrative into an article that wrestles with notions of performance, image, and control. Within this context, she is able to address so many issues relevant to visual art, while confronting the politics of contemporary culture.” -Seth Curcio
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Lori "Lolo" Jones, HBO’s "Real Sports" in 2012, discussing her status as a virgin.

I am consumed by the Olympics. I’ve been counting down the seasons until the summer of 2012 and the days until July 29th. When the Olympic Games are being televised, I schedule my work and social life around watching my chosen events (gymnastics, swimming, and above all, track and field). This is a good moment to include the information that I was competitive runner, starting to train seriously even before the onset of puberty. Though I no longer participate in the sport and haven’t since I finished college, I revel in the one time, every four years, that it is performed internationally at its highest levels, and that other people care about it enough to watch it unfold in their living rooms.

One of America’s great hopes in track and field this summer in London is a hurdler by the name of Lori “Lolo” Jones. Though she is a few years older than I, we overlapped during our time in college; I was competing for UCLA when Jones was attending Louisiana State University (a longtime sprinting powerhouse). I never met Jones, but she once tried to steal my friend’s football-playing boyfriend, so I never thought that highly of her character. Athletically, however, she is an animal. While at LSU, Jones was a three-time national champion and eleven-time All-American in the 60- and 100-meter hurdle events. Once out of college and a pro athlete, Jones was the first woman ever to claim back-to-back World Indoor titles in the 60 meter hurdles while setting an American record in the process. How to describe these feats? Imagine being born with the right physiology, sense of purpose, and ability to absorb and withstand pain. Imagine being better at something than thousands of people who are really good at that same thing. Imagine being a woman, who, in front of the whole world, is unafraid of winning.

Lolo Jones, I must add, is quite beautiful. She is of French, African-American, Native-American, and Norwegian descent. She has wide cheekbones, green eyes, and a warm, easy smile. Her body is incredibly toned and muscular, but doesn’t tread into androgyny, as is the case with many Olympic-grade female sprinters. Being wildly attractive doesn’t hurt in winning her commercial endorsements — such as one from the oil company BP — magazine pictorials, and general mass appeal. But given her winning record, I can confidently say she would have accrued this attention anyway. Jones is an unmistakable champion. And, as the world learned a few months ago, she is a twenty-nine year old virgin.

Jones in a promotional photograph for Red Bull, one of her sponsors, 2012.

Much has been made of Jones’ May 22 proclamation of virginity, announced of all places on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryan Gumbel during a segment called “Olympic Sacrifices.” “It’s something, a gift I want to give my husband,” Jones said, continuing: “This journey has been hard…It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Harder than training for the Olympics. Harder than graduating from college has been staying a virgin before marriage.” She was at once self-deprecating and awkward in her delivery, clumsily justifying her choice to “remain pure” as a response to the dissolution of her parents’ union (they broke up after being together for twenty years and never marrying). She ends the segment by saying, “I guess I want that Norman Rockwell picture.” Since the interview, her Twitter followers (Jones generally posts between two and five times a day) have risen 40 percent, and her story has been picked up by People magazine, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, among many others. Donald Trump, who has 1,320,454 followers on Twitter at the moment, wrote: “Lolo Jones, our beautiful Olympic athlete, wants to remain a virgin until she gets married — she is great.” The first comment under the YouTube clip of the interview, which I urge you to watch, reads: “Finally somebody that does the right thing!!!!!!!!!”

In light of this (largely) positive response from the public, Jones’ dissenters are quick to bring up the fact that she has posed, scantily clad, for several magazines.[1] Most recently, she was photographed fully nude and in a coy pose for ESPN Magazine, which has anointed her the “sexiest female Olympian.” But this is a tired argument, isn’t it? I’m less interested in the fact that Jones promotes a highly sexualized image of her body despite claiming moral virtue; Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, and a plethora of other teen pop-tarts drained anything interesting or unpredictable about this “look-but-don’t-touch” sexy schoolgirl subterfuge in the late 90s. There is something decidedly more complicated and problematic about Jones’s recent declaration, and that shifts the critical conversation. Jones is not a pop star — a person whose very career hinges on the strategic contradictions of their public image. Rather, she is something less packaged and more aspirational, yet still bound up in the world of the bodily performance: a championship athlete. And not only any athlete, Jones is our great hope, who, barring injury, will likely win several gold medals in a few weeks.

“A boxer is his body,” wrote Joyce Carol Oates in her seminal 1987 book On Boxing,[2] and the same could be said of any Olympic-caliber athlete — particularly those who compete independently of external equipment or an immediate team structure. Jones has trained six hours a day, six days a week, for the past twelve years. That is almost 25,000 cumulative hours. Can you imagine that reality? Jones is training as you read these words on your computer screen. She is wholly accustomed to a life of the body — life as body, Oates would argue — which is punishing, ecstatic, and that above all, taps a primal consciousness.[3] How then, in a profession dedicated to pushing the boundaries of physicalized performance, is one to consider the disavowal of sex and suppression of desire? I am not sure I have the answer to this, but it’s a question worth asking.[4]

Jones poses in the pages of ESPN Magazine.

I have to admit, it is difficult to set aside here my belief that celibacy until marriage is a patriarchal anachronism that entails withholding (primarily female) sexuality as a weird prize. I can’t possibly do better on this than Emily Shire of Slate magazine, who wrote, on May 31st: “It’s disheartening that [Jones’] choice to remain a virgin is not for her own sake, but someone else’s. If virginity is commodified into the “perfect gift,” it becomes about a woman pleasing a man rather than herself, and it is difficult to picture the determined and forceful Jones being that submissive in any other aspect of her life.” However, the concern of this essay — the entanglement of abstinence and the athletic body — is not political as much as it is cerebral. In her HBO interview, Jones stated that maintaining her virginity was “harder than training for the Olympics”, and it’s an interesting comparison.[5] Both activities demand discipline over bodily desire, though in different, if oppositional, forms; athletic discipline requires the willing application of self and body, while the discipline of celibacy requires its continued refusal. Jones’ sexual status is of course her choice, but needless to say, it appears to me as perfectly incongruous with the virtuous rapture and abandon of athletic life.

Some people believe that Jones is not in fact a virgin. But who cares? She has publicly stated that she is, and that is what matters. Of course, if she weren’t a woman, much less a beautiful woman, her sexual status would not command so much media attention, not be considered the ‘prize’ that it is. Ultimately, Jones should decide if she wants to win the trophy, or be one. It’s a consequential distinction of which she appears dangerously unaware.

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[1] On May 25th, Twitter-user Taylor Maddox wrote on Lolo’s wall: “Respect n appreciation 4 ur purity, but I can’t wrap my mind around the body pics. Seems incongruent to ur strength and Christ :/)”, to which Jones responded: “go to a museum & look at naked pictures/statues of ppl & its considered art but what I did is not? u see no parts exposed.” http://twitter.com/lolojones

[2] Oates, Joyce Carol. On Boxing. New York: Doubleday (1987): 72.

[3] In his 1994’s essay, “How Tracey Austin Broke My Heart,” David Foster Wallace wrote: “It is not an accident that great athletes are called “naturals,” because they can, in performance, be totally present: they can proceed on instinct and muscle memory and automatic will such that agent and action are one.” In: Foster Wallace, David. Consider the Lobster. New York: Little, Brown and Company (2005): 154.

[4] In thinking more about matters of sexual economy and ritual, I turn to Michel Foucault. I was amazed to realize that he in fact dissects the connection between athleticism and abstinence in some depth in The History of Sexuality: Volume 2, writing: “A moral victory which the athlete needed to win over himself if we wished to be capable and worthy of assuring his superiority over others; but also that of an economy necessary for his body in order to conserve strength, which the sexual act would waste on the outside.” It’s a bit limited for my own purposes, as Foucault refers only the restrictive habits of male athletes, e.g., a regimen of non-ejaculation pre-competition. Still: fascinating! In: Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure. New York: Vintage Books (reprint 1990): 120. 

[5] Interestingly, the use of the word “purity” in relation to Jones’s body stands in direct opposition to the recent, rampant steroid use in the sport, often referred to as “being dirty.”

“Ruth is great at grounding the crux of her review in a way that is accessible and concise. This article demonstrates her ability to illustrate things clearly without relying on pure description, as she is good about situating the work within an art historical context.” -Catlin Moore

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Decision Altitude 11, 2012, courtesy of Thomas Robertello Gallery.

In skydiving, the term Blue Skies, Black Death originated from the parachute infantry motto “Mors Ab Alto” in Latin, or “death from above”. To skydivers, it can be regarded as a greeting / farewell, or to indicate a fatality during a skydive. Yet, the exhibition BLUESKIES/BLACK DEATH by Noelle Mason at Thomas Robertello Gallery in Chicago is not about skydiving nor death. It is a metaphor more closely aligned with the articulation of linear narratives in a nonlinear practice . For Mason “Mors Ab Alto” is more an understanding of presence and absence, or in reflection of David Hume’s perspectives on  immediate sensations in parallel to “impressions” (as if in wax) of sensations.

Decision Altitude 6, 2012, courtesy of Thomas Robertello Gallery.

In otherwords, the metaphor  functions as a movement between representation and abstraction, emphasizing the beauty, power, and emotional resonance possible when opposing notions act in collaboration. Some of Mason’s work offers a somewhat recognizable portrayal of skydivers filtered through artistic interpretation, and others are distilled vague forms, with minimal or unexpected colors, characterizing abstractions. All works are eloquently expressionistic renderings that are open to layered translations.

Incident Report: 40 Years, 2012, courtesy of Thomas Robertello Gallery

On first impression, the collection of photographs “Decision Altitude” and photogravures “Incident Report” are representative of the jump, flight, power and consequence all blurred into rushing air and moving body parts. In skydiving terms, the photo works are close representations to “Ground Rush”, the optical illusion that the ground is abruptly rushing up to meet you, which occurs if you free-fall past your usual altitude before opening the parachute. But in art, the skydive becomes as much about material strategy as a source of interest. In the context of the exhibition, Mason highlights the unusual content of each work by listing skydiving among the materials. This strategy transforms an action into more than a conceptual mechanism.  The skydive becomes an expressionistic tool much like a paint brush. Allowing Mason to flip our expectations and  enabling us to look at things differently, to consider materials anew and to create formal configurations which become significant on purely formal grounds.

Colorado River Delta, 2012, courtesy of Thomas Robertello Gallery.

To further emphasize Mason’s articulation of representation together with abstraction, the works “Colorado River Delta” and “El Paso/Ciudad Juarez” (part of the series “Ground Control”) are displayed alongside “Decision Altitude”. Visually, these pieces do not work together. Because their material processes are so different, their aesthetics in such contrast, initially they appeared to be from a different artists. However, on realization the two bodies of work are displayed in collaboration, Mason’s abstract language and connections slowly fall into place. “Ground Control” (exhibited on the floor) reveals itself as a body of work with  heavy socio/political content, dealing with barriers, technology, poverty and need. In contrast, “Decision Altitude”(on the walls) is the result of a sport, an exhibition of wealth and freedom.  Together these two bodies of work combine because of their conflict. One cannot talk of wealth without poverty, nor freedom without limits. The display of contrasts not only resonates through the concepts behind the works, but it pulls through into the visual discourse, where the work on display jars for attention, while in the same moment needs the other to be fully recognizable.

El Paso/Ciudad Juarez, 2012, courtesy of Thomas Robertello Gallery.

Yet, what all works agree upon is the mode of translation. Mason is less concerned with storytelling and more preoccupied with the process of establishing connections, associations and transformations. She carefully balances in the gray area between abstraction and representation, opening up layers of interpretations and breaking down barriers not only between media, but amidst  disciplines.

“In Weaving, Not Cloth, Bean offers a nuanced and penetrating treatment of Bradford’s work, conveying its material richness and extraordinary tactility.” -Emily Macaux.

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The difficulty in viewing photographs of artwork is that the camera flattens the object in its focus, relinquishing subtleties in order to capture a whole. Because his oeuvre is very subtle indeed, Mark Bradford’s work requires a viewer’s presence to be fully appreciated. Very little of the slender lines of collage, delicate papers built up in thin layers or washes of paint almost completely sanded away is apparent in reproduction. Each of the more than forty of Bradford’s works now on view at SFMOMA calls out to be felt, if not by the hand of the viewer then by the eye. They elicit a state of tactile vision, a reminder that visual perception is also connected to the faculty of touch.

Mark Bradford, Potable Water, 2005; billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, and additional mixed media; 130 x 196 inches; collection of Hunter Gray; © Mark Bradford; photo: Bruce M. White

In the scholarship regarding his work, much has been made of the condition and location of Bradford’s studio practice. He grew up (and still lives) in South Central Los Angeles, a mainly black neighborhood mythologized for its urban decay. Bradford worked at his mother’s hair salon before attending art school, learning skills that he would adapt to his practice: hard work, repetitive actions and tactile processes. He gleans his materials from the posters, billboard papers, and hair salon permanent-wave end papers that are still part of his environment. And while all this information surely contributes to an important analysis of his work based in socio-economics, race and culture, it ignores the physicality and lushness of the actual surfaces and the connection of Bradford’s work to textiles.

Mark Bradford, Value 47, 2009–10. Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, carbon paper, nylon string, and additional mixed media on canvas; 48 x 60 inches; courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; © Mark Bradford; photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Up close, the dense materiality of each piece intrigues with a kind of sumptuous dissolution; there is tension between order and chaos, rigid geometries and decay. Layers and layers of papers and paint built up over time manifest the tactile nature of his working process, while the sanding between layers wears away the visible to the point of ruin. Each surface affirms Bradford’s physical presence, because these are techniques that can only be achieved by putting sinew and muscle in service of production. Though he calls them paintings, Bradford’s work more precisely exists in the productive space between painting, collage, and textiles. Many of the smaller and mid-scale collages are built on stretched canvases, allusions to the image-framing and containment of the traditional painting. However, several larger works are created on unstretched canvas that adds a layer of dimensionality to the form. For example, the surface of You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You) undulates like fabric—it’s not really flat at all—and the edges are ragged and crusted with cracked paint. Though I include a photograph of the work below, the camera fails to capture the tangible thicknesses at the edges of torn papers, the white areas sanded smooth, the divots and pockmarks in the grids, or the directional marks of a brush dragged through thick gel medium. These surfaces create the haptic character of the work.

Mark Bradford, You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You), 2009. Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, carbon paper, acrylic paint, rice paper, and additional mixed media; courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; © Mark Bradford; photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Moreover, Bradford’s methodology and compositions echo weavings and piecework. As with textiles, the surfaces of Bradford’s work are created by obsessive repetition, much like a weaving is created by passing the shuttle back and forth on the loom. Bradford carefully slices billboard papers and posters into fine strips and layers them densely. From a distance, these arrangements of horizontal and vertical strips resemble the over-and-under patterning of a woven cloth. Likewise, the use of permanent-wave end papers in repetitive sequences across the surface calls to mind the geometries of quilts and other fabric constructions. Combining the visual motifs of textile forms with the visual tactility of the haptic creates a connection to textiles that other analyses have overlooked.

Mark Bradford, Grey Gardens, 2010. Acrylic gel medium, carbon paper, newsprint, acrylic paint, caulking, and additional mixed media; 60 x 72 inches; courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; © Mark Bradford; photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Since not much has been made of the work’s connection to cloth, I was eager to ask Bradford about this perceived reference to textiles. During our conversation in one quiet gallery of the museum, the artist confirmed this relationship, stating that his mother and grandmother were seamstresses. Bradford remembers his mother’s lessons of choosing fabric. “I grew up touching,” he told me. “I would find a fabric that looked good and [my mother] would tell me, no, it’s not good fabric, just feel it.” In the museum the eye acts as a surrogate for the fingers, passing over each ripple, raw edge, or smoothly sanded surface. The haptic nature of Bradford’s work combined with the compositional reference to textiles creates an altogether visceral experience of looking at weavings that are not cloth.

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Note: the exhibition Mark Bradford continues across the street from SFMOMA at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The work pictured here is on view at SFMOMA February 18 through June 17, 2012. The exhibition at YBCA runs from February 18 through May 27, 2012.

“Danielle Sommer‘s #Hashtags series continues to be thought-provoking, but I especially enjoyed her take on the firing of former LA MOCA curator Paul Schimmel and the idea that it’s mainstream American culture that is truly insular. -Bean Gilsdorf.

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My day job (radio production) can complement my night job (arts writing), but there are times when weeks pass without the twain meeting. At our Los Angeles-based talk program, MOCA’s loss of former curator Paul Schimmel did not go unnoticed, but neither did it tantalize, at least not until my senior producer saw the following headline: “Museums Are About the Art, Not Racking Up Big Numbers on Crowds and Revenue.” The article, written by Blake Gopnick for The Daily Beast, rails against a recent op-ed by Eli Broad in the Los Angeles Times, in which Broad defends MOCA in the language of a business institution striving “to grow its client base” (Gopnick’s wording), or “make MOCA a populist rather than an insular institution” (Broad’s wording).

Gopnick argues “that museums should make [great] art available—to the absolutely largest number of people who are looking for that kind of thing, and not for something else.” And while Gopnick’s thinking has issues of its own (elevating some forms of art and artists over others), I agree with his overall point. Showcasing great artwork should be an art museum’s first goal, even if it draws fewer numbers and leaves the institution open to a charge of ‘insularity.’

I don’t think it’s the art institutions that are manifesting signs of insularity, however. Oh, sure, I understand and even agree with the logic behind wanting to make MOCA more “populist,” which for Broad apparently means accessible, but the adjective “insular” is misapplied. The word, from the late Latin insula, or ‘island,’ means “uninterested,” at least in cultures or ideas outside of one’s own experience. If anything, it is the population that MOCA hopes to attract which time and again proves itself insular, only interested in the most spectacular art exhibits, or exhibits immediately reflective of its own experience, instead of those that attempt to open a window into a different (and perhaps more challenging) way of thinking about the world and its surroundings.

Curators like Paul Schimmel are the middle ground, not a force for insularity. In fact, the saga of Schimmel and MOCA reminds me of another curatorial conflict from the early twentieth century, that between art historian Aby Warburg and his librarian and assistant, Fritz Saxl. The eldest son of three, Warburg was born into a well-to-do Jewish banking family in mid-19th century Hamburg. As such, his role should have been to take over the family business for his father, but on his thirteenth birthday, Warburg offered this position to his youngest brother, Max, in exchange for the promise that “Max would buy him all the books he ever wanted.”[1] Max kept his promise; by 1914, Warburg had amassed somewhere in the vicinity of 15,000 volumes, most of which were related to history, art, psychology, and religion. These volumes became the Kunstwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg – a research institute located in Hamburg that attracted scholars from all over Europe and America – and, eventually, the Warburg Institute, one of the more important art-historical think tanks of the last century.

Before Saxl stepped in, however, Warburg’s project was just too messy, too overwhelming – an unfiltered investigation of “the role of the coining of images as a process of civilization,” with no order outside of Warburg’s own “law of the good neighbor,”[2] which he used to organize the thousands of texts in his library. “Although grouped under such general rubrics as anthropology and art history, both the various sections and the books within them were arranged according to their ability to engage with the books on either side of them.  A line of speculation opening in one volume was attested to or attacked, continued or contradicted, refined or refuted in its neighbor.  Each book was to answer or ask a question of the one next to it.”[3]  Warburg’s system — though inspired — was a nightmare to negotiate, and alienated many of his visitors until Saxl imposed a cataloging system of his own.

A romantic might read the tale above and extrapolate that I mean Warburg to stand in for Schimmel, but in reality, Schimmel has more in common with Saxl: known for shows that offered “critical, scholarly investigation[s] of contempoary art,” Schimmel helped provide context to contemporary art, arguing for its relevancy and providing the inroads that allowed visitors to make intellectual (and emotional) connections to the artwork on display. In these ways, curators like Schimmel are the true antidotes to the stubborn insularity of American popular culture. While I agree with Eli Broad’s desire to see a financially stable MOCA, he should be just as concerned with the museum’s potential to churn out less challenging exhibitions based solely on spectacle or supposed confluence with mainstream culture — while it might draw higher numbers at first, this kind of curatorial plan could also backfire, leaving the public even more disinterested in contemporary art than they are already.  We haven’t run the piece on what museums are for yet, but based on past experience, I predict the sound of crickets from our phones.

“Working humor into art criticism is incredibly difficult, but Amelia does it in a way that is tasteful and relevant.” -Catlin Moore

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Nope.

One of my favorite occurrences in the Art world is when an artist acknowledges the viewers’ expectations, and actively denies them. In a time seemingly ruled by art with the highest sensational value, I can’t help but root for the heroic and/or obstinate people unabashedly making minimalist conceptual art that allows for none of the easily digestible catharses one might hope for. This is not to say that the work is underdeveloped or shallow; I think a closed door holds as much if not more mystery, potential narrative and freedom to expand upon than an open door through which we can clearly see everything. It is the same “closed door” potential that completely saturates Edits, the current exhibition of Jason Kraus’s work at Jessica Silverman Gallery.

Inside the gallery, the installation is seductively minimal and almost entirely monochromatic. Extracted pieces of Kraus’s studio walls hang mounted in frames, the dry-wall marked with the charcoal smudges and traces of the artist’s process. A large-format, b&w photograph titled An Empty Space documents the void created by hundreds of drawings made on Kraus’s studio wall, where the charcoal that escaped the paper’s surface marks off the edges of the absent pieces of paper. The Serra-esque drawing board learning in a corner reinforces the trompe l’oeil effect of An Empty Space; the two objects acting as the signifier and signified of something that is much more abstract than the expected tangibility of a sign, such as a chair.

The real star of the show, however, is the pairing of two wooden crates locked with combination locks, and a framed envelope that Kraus mailed to Jessica Silverman, the gallery owner. Completely unassuming, the crates (probably) hold all the drawings that we see the traces of in the surrounding works. The corresponding envelope contains the combination that opens the locks on the crates. This is a simple enough concept: there is a lock, and there is a combination that opens the lock. The punch-line is that the two pieces may never be acquired by the same person, ensuring that the drawings will never be revealed. Now, I have to admit that the inner-brat in me loves this restriction. As I see it, basically Kraus is saying, “Oh, you wanted to see the art we’re talking about? Too bad.” Of course, the work absolutely should not be pigeon-holed in the sort of school-yard teasing with which I indulgently associate it. The dialog between the works in the show also heavily references the performative act of making art, emphasizing that the process can hold just as much importance as the final product.

Edits is not a show for anyone looking for an easy entry point or sensational reward from the viewing experience. It is not obvious, and demands that viewers release their typically tight grasp on what part of the art-making process we think should be presented. It is also not overly pretentious; the work does not pretend to be something that it’s not. Instead, Kraus expands the aura of the show through omission, and shows the viewer, “This is what I want you to think about.”

Edits is on view at Jessica Silverman Gallery from 7 September­­–20 October, 2012.

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Zhan Wang, My Personal Universe, Video still, 2012. Image courtesy of UCCA, Beijing.

In The Savage Mind (1962), Claude Lévi-Strauss made a case for “the intrinsic value of a small-scale model” of art, legitimising the art of the miniature because it “compensates for the renunciation of sensible dimensions by the acquisition of intelligible dimensions”. The miniature or the microcosmic representation is, as Lévi-Strauss rationalised, a schematic reduction permitting immediate intelligibility, because it essentially constitutes a bona fide experience between viewer and work on a metaphorical level.

Zhan Wang, 2012, My Personal Universe, Installation and Video View. Photo: Courtesy of UCCA, Beijing.

My Personal Universe (2011-12) at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing was Chinese conceptual sculptor Zhan Wang’s endeavour to do just that, in a re-imagination of the first millisecond of the universe’s genesis to its present evolved state, articulating this momentous event in an exhibition through an artistic process whose scale seemed to mirror its colossal significance. As the dominant scientific explanation for the origin of the universe, the Big Bang theory hypothesises that all matter and energy existed in an infinitely small point of infinite density, and in an inexplicable moment, began to expand outward continuously, forming the vast cosmos as we know today. Drawn to the concept of initial states of being, Zhan sought to evoke the earliest moments of our universe through a carefully planned explosion of a boulder in China’s mountainous Shandong province, recording the blast and its aftermath in a two-minute film capturing the event in extreme slow motion. Collecting all 7000 fragments of pulverised rock, Zhan made stainless steel replicas of each one, suspending them in the exact formation in which they landed after exploding.

Zhan Wang, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, image courtesy of STPI.

Zhan’s Universe (2012) at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute is materially and thematically fashioned after My Personal Universe, employing – in a vastly scaled-down version – similar artistic processes and reiterations of the physical dimensions of shattered rocks. Lacking the flashy pizzazz of its predecessor and constrained by certain spatial parameters, the mode of production and the materials differ in this show; rocks were shattered with a sledgehammer instead of a dynamite, and later re-assembled as aluminium-coated replicas on paper slabs and on highly polished mirrors. The original rock fragments were pounded by hand into fine sediment and mixed with cotton pulp to produce a solid paper base; the resulting effect is one which reveals the natural mineral pigments of clay, slate and granite.

Zhan Wang, 小宇宙 My Universe 27, 2012 © Courtesy of Singapore Tyler Print Institute.

In both iterations, Zhan’s works encapsulate energy in its basest, most raw form at the moment it is discharged, serving as the genesis metaphor for the conceptualisation of art: the primordial, choatic sea of colliding ideas on which artistic process and practice are established. Universe is not a crystalline model of time or one that demands a fixed vision of scientific history; it is rather, focused on an infinitesimal moment that has no witnesses but about which countless speculations have abounded. Zhan’s works are also built on a premise that is inherently contradictory: he destroys only to (re)create; the resulting assembly of rock fragments are near-negligible visual cues demonstrating an outcome of a significant event – the cosmos that we understand today – to the audience. However, it is the scientifically unrecorded events – the existing theoretical conjecture surrounding the details of the universe’s formation – that force us to delve deep into the universe of our own imagination.

To some extent, the resulting effect of the Universe series is one that seems to casually pitch the presumptuous confidence of scientific authority against the deep uncertainty and unknown variables yet existing in the vastness of space – that yet lies beyond humanity’s comprehension. If Universe then, strives to unhinge the rote dependence on scientific observations and hypotheses for explaining natural phenomena, its subtle emphasis on creating a framework which allows ambiguity is a seductive idea because it leaves the mysterious where it needs to remain: in an inscrutable realm of wonder and reverence.

***

Conceptual Sculptor Zhan Wang (b.1962, Beijing,China), graduated with a Master of Fine Arts (Sculpture) from The Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. He has exhibited extensively in major museums and galleries across the world including the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Saatchi Gallery, London; Kunst Museum, Bern; MoriArt Museum, Tokyo and the Asia Society Museum, New York.

Universe will be on show at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute until 28 April 2012.

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Help Desk is an arts-advice column that demystifies practices for artists, writers, curators, collectors, patrons, and the general public. Submit your questions anonymously here. All submissions become the property of Daily Serving.

Your counselor, hard at work.

What is the most effective way to build a relationship with galleries and eventually have your work shown? Do you simply walk in with a portfolio of works/images and try to convince them of how great you are? Do you go to show openings and schmooze with gallery owners?

Sneak attack! Imagine that you are a kindly gallerist, minding your own business (literally) and making a few phone calls to chat up some nice collectors, when suddenly there is an eager artist at your desk with a portfolio. He wants your attention RIGHT NOW, though he does not have an appointment, though it is obvious that you are busy working. Put yourself in the dealer’s shoes: even if this kid is the next Jean-Michel Basquiat, are you likely to give him a solo show, let alone a second glance? No, what you are going to give this guy is a swift boot to the rear end.

You won’t get a gallery by pouncing on an unsuspecting dealer.

The most effective way to build a relationship is to build a relationship. Go to openings, yes, but do not schmooze because schmoozing is yucky and gallerists can see right through you. Instead, look at the art, and then think about it until you find something intelligent to say, and then go say it to the gallerist (and also to the artist, please, who is standing awkwardly to one side hoping that someone will say something–anything–intelligent to her this evening). Is there a question you have about the work? Did it make you think of something you saw, or read, or experienced? Go have a conversation, because conversations are the best way to build relationships.

To convince someone you’re great, be great. Give a damn about art that’s not your own. Do your research and know a little something about the gallery and its artists. Show up to the openings and be a friendly face. Be kind to others, and work with integrity.

Do you see how utterly deranged this cat looks while on the hunt? An artist on the desperate schmooze looks about the same.

Notice that I haven’t said anything yet about how to get your work shown. Well, that’s because Edward Winkleman (of Winkleman Gallery, godblessum) has already answered your question. He very generously takes everything that goes into finding a gallery and sums it up into five steps, which I quote below:

1.) Do some honest and serious thinking about where your artwork belongs in the art market.

2.) Do some serious research to find the program that best fits your artwork within that market.

3.) Don’t make mistakes that will discourage you.

4.) Work toward a short list.

5.) Once you have an “in,” so to speak, then let the gallery know you’re interested in having them consider your work.

This is the short version. The longer version, the one you’re going to go read right now, all the way down through the bottom of the comments thread, is here: http://www.edwardwinkleman.com/2007/04/one-more-time-with-feeling-seriously.html

And don’t forget that good manners never hurt anyone. When you get your gallery, be sure to send Edward a thank-you note.

Gustave Courbet, The Artist’s Studio (L’Atelier du peintre): A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Artistic and Moral Life, 1855. Oil on canvas,141.33 × 235.43 inches

I am a painter. I have had what I consider two successful solo shows in the region where I live. Some of this success is due to the highly saleable quality of my work. I’d like to do something different. My dealer is open, however I’m nervous about interrupting my momentum. How can I try out something new without alienating my supporters?

I don’t blame you for being nervous. You’ve taken the time to produce a body of work that has received attention and support, yet you want to create work that is different from your oeuvre. The question looms: if you take this left turn, will you undermine the hard work that you’ve already done?

Let’s turn this question around. What do you stand to lose if you don’t follow your lights? What opportunity might you miss? What artwork might the world never see? Do you think you will be satisfied in five, ten, or twenty years to look back on work that played it safe? All good art has been produced by taking some risks, whether they be emotional, physical, or financial. I think you owe it to yourself as an artist to explore the notions that are kicking around in your mind. There’s also the potential payoff elicited by the chain reaction that change puts into motion: risks require bravery, bravery builds character, and character makes good artwork. My friend Stephen always says, “If it doesn’t feel risky, you’re not doing it right.”

Mark Tansey, The Innocent Eye Test, 1981. Oil on canvas, 78 x 120 inches

And while I’m quoting, I’d also like to share the words of a former boss, who once said to me “All change is difficult.” This is absolutely true whether the change is for the bad or the good. The difference here is that you already know what has worked for you in the past, so you have the ability to mitigate some of the risk and awkwardness that comes with change. You can be brave and still be pragmatic. Consider your options: could you continue your current body of work while making some of the new pieces on the side? Or perhaps you could go to a residency and immerse yourself in the new experiments for a month. If you don’t have access to such a program, can you create a week or two of uninterrupted studio time for yourself? It’s possible to try out the new work from where you are in your career and not suffer any adverse effects.

The fact that your dealer is open to the idea is a very good sign. If she has been in the biz for a while you should trust her instincts. While these new ideas may seem very different to you, I’m willing to bet that they are connected to your prior work in some way, either materially, formally, or conceptually. If the new body of work is good, your dealer can help you to frame your narrative and market the work in a way that emphasizes the natural progression from old to new. Let your dealer handle the public’s expectations and make the work that is calling out to you.

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Wall labels. Curatorial text. Titles (or un-titles, as the case may be). At what point do the words surrounding an artwork serve the work, and at what point do they disrupt it? This week #Hashtags wraps up Rob Mark’s “The Museum On My Mind,” a meditation on the role of museum commentary and what it means to “know” a piece of art. For refreshers, see Parts I, II, and III.

Part IV: Play is the thing

Can a museum nurture struggle, channeling it toward expression, rather than relieve struggle, channeling it toward resolution? It can, perhaps, if it acknowledges that the artwork, rather than its commentary, is the most able narrator, producing a text that both incubates and channels struggle. Can the museum tolerate an object naked of its label? It can if it is willing to recognize the visitor’s capacity to guide him or herself, to collaborate with the artwork to devise his or her own narrative. What might draw a person to an artwork stripped of its commentary? A museum that seeks to transform habitual museum behaviors into a playful struggle, and commentary into engaged community.

Installation Image, About Face (May 23 - February 28, 2013), Courtesy Pier 24 Photography. Image credit Tom Connor. Pier 24 posts no gallery text or wall labels.

Resonance and Wonder

Cultural historian Stephen Greenblatt identifies two experiences—“resonance” and “wonder”—that can arise in the museum. Resonance—“the power of the displayed object […] to evoke in the viewer the complex dynamic cultural force from which it has emerged”[1]—reflects the meaning of an object in its time and place, the making of the object and its meaning to its maker. No longer does the object fit in my hand or appear on my wall without the sense of how it might have fit in another person’s hand or hung on another person’s wall. It is equally important, however, to conceive the object’s meaning independent of its context, which is, in a sense, the meaning Greenblatt applies to wonder: “the power . . . to stop the viewer in his or her tracks, [and] to evoke exalted attention.”[1] Wonder can tell us something too, but this something often dissolves when the museum seek to reclaims context.

To what extent is wonder a necessary condition for resonance, just as it is the necessary invitation to struggle? To what extent does wonder, itself, achieve its own sort of resonance? The museum acknowledges the social, political and art history of the object, the encrustation of the experiences that molded and patinated it. Yet it arbitrarily—if unintentionally—signals the end of that accumulation with the object’s installation in the exhibition, signing that finale with an explanatory label. Art starts as a connection beyond the artist’s self, but it—and its context—extends not only to the visitor, but to others in the visitor’s life, both in the moment and on into future. Art that inspires wonder also inspires the desire—even the demand—to share that wonder. Wonder, like resonance, also resonates. This experience, marked by the desire to share, is substantial and enduring; the nonresonant one is impermanent, even superficial. What endures is what remains dynamic—not static: insight that comes out of experience, out of a struggle to comprehend.

How to Behave in a Museum

Follow me into a typical exhibition of paintings or photographs. A large wall plaque tells the story of the exhibition, the story that motivates the curator. Hanging at eye level are the artworks, each piece equidistant from its neighbors, each attended by a small label. Some labels continue the narrative of the opening wall plaque.[2]

The momentum of the crowd in front of Paolo Veronese's "The Wedding at Cana" (1563). Collection of the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photograph by Sonia Calzà, 2008. Image courtesy of Creative Commons/Flickr.

A line of people hugs the walls of the gallery. Its one-way momentum is relentless, ruled by some culturally determined number of seconds in front of each piece—and each label. This community standard also impels each visitor to surrender the primary viewing space to the next visitor. Even with audio-, smartphone-, or ipod-tours, technological alternatives that might free visitors from the physical label, the experience remains linearly structured and cognitively skewed. This practice of traveling sequentially, as if on a conveyor belt wending around a gallery’s perimeter, label by label, seems to derive from the expectation—concretized over generations into unconscious visitor habit—that every one of the (many) words and every one of the (too) many objects on display is worthy of attention and necessary to the exhibition’s story.

Under these conditions, bodies become nothing but vehicles of transportation. Sensation whittles down to sight, sight whittles down to information-gathering, and information-gathering whittles down to contextualizing. All of these museum practices, habits, and regulations[3] suggest that attention ought to be measured in seconds rather than minutes, the same sort of seconds I might spend skimming an article and glancing at its illustrations. Claustrophobia-inducing at worst, exhausting at best, the temptation to narrate plus the compulsion to inundate stifle both works and participants, refusing them the space to breathe; to feel, think, experience, and express. Resonance triumphs over resonating wonder, but both suffer for the victory. No wonder labels are known in the trade as “tombstones.”

“The first thing to do would be to take some away,”[4] John Cage recommended. The second thing would be to re-embody the visitor, to grant visitors the license to see what they see, follow where they are drawn, happen upon what they discover, and omit what seems extraneous. To concentrate in one place for minutes, fly over vast stretches in seconds. To play.

Installation view of "Rolywholyover A Circus" at MOCA California Plaza, September 12 through November 28, 1993, photo courtesy of MOCA.

How to Roll Wholy Over the Museum

In 1993, Cage collaborated with Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art curator Julie Lazar to create Rolywholyover   A Circus, a traveling “composition” whose conditions of creation suggest alternative ways of being in a museum. For one of the composition’s four “movements,” the “museumcircle,” 21 museums within a 30-mile radius of Los Angeles submitted lists of 10 objects they would be willing to lend MOCA. Cage used chance operations to position the works selected by lenders.[5] For another movement, the “main Circus,” which was comprised of artwork and ephemera of artists who were important to Cage, Cage and Lazar again used chance operations to position each work—including into a storage area—and determine how long it would remain in that place. Lazar notes that not every work moved every day, but in her catalog essay, she quotes Cage as exclaiming, “The basic idea . . . is that the exhibition would change so much that if you came back a second time you wouldn’t recognize it.’”[6] By doing so, Cage offered visitors the opportunity to write their own commentary, at their own pace, in their own space.

No less carefully constructed than the conveyor belt, Rolywholyover sought to conjure attentive play rather than a focused study. More precisely, it invited focus, study, even struggle, into the playground of the exhibition by letting the visitor discover his or her own pathway and by cultivating surprise as an active force in experience.

In her essay for the Rolywholyover catalog, poet and philosopher Joan Retallack explores Cage’s conception of play, which, she says, unfolds “at the moment of any disruption of habit.”[7] Retallack invokes the British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, who said: “Playing is an experience, always a creative experience.”[8] In an exhibition, meaning materializes in the space of play, the territory between internal fantasy and external other, during which imagination “must literally take chances, playing with the concrete hypothetical, the experimental ‘what if.’”[9] Within the protected playspace of the museum, each visitor struggles with the otherness of the artwork. But this sort of struggle is sweet, because it does not demand a particular outcome, just a satisfying one.

Installation view of "Rolywholyover A Circus" at MOCA California Plaza, September 12 through November 28, 1993, photo courtesy of MOCA.

Cage had realized what many contemporary curators don’t (or may not): that the museum’s truest self emerges as “playground”: not as an entertainment complex or an educational establishment, but as a place where visitors dynamically engage with artwork, with other visitors, with the exhibition itself.[10] As Retallack also suggests of a Cage poem, the museum can “[invite] a practice or reading that enacts a tolerance for ambiguity and a delight in complex possibility,”[11] as much with the structural language of the exhibition itself, as with the literal language of the label.

Winnicott says during psychotherapy, which he defines as “two people playing together,”[12] “the significant moment is [when] the child surprises himself or herself,”[13] not when the therapist interprets the child’s activity, an act that results in the child’s “indoctrination” or “compliance.” Although curators do not wield the power of psychotherapists, the museum—with its art historical, aesthetic, and other contextual interpretations—risks producing such acquiescence. It wields authority both as commentator, whose disembodied words hang in parity with artworks, and as cartographer, whose mapped pathways overdetermine movement. Here, the experience of indoctrination and compliance replaces play and surprise—a “playing together” with the artworks—substituting them with the ensnarement of the visitor in, as Winnicott puts it, “the creativity of someone else.”[14]

The Incubator

But the stakes are even higher. According to Winnicott, play “is always on the theoretical line between the subjective and that which is objectively perceived . . . This area of playing is not inner psychic reality. It is outside the individual.”[15] This is much like the experience of an artwork that induces wonder, which like play, knows that it is a subjective experience that nonetheless provokes the desire to assert claims of a shared reality, of the make-believe world of play or, as aesthetic philosopher Immanuel Kant suggests, the unprovable claim of the universal truth of the subjective aesthetic judgment.[16] This desire to claim as shared what is not shared, and to state it out loud to others, however, creates a space of possibility. It is a space in which my passionate assertion, confronted by your skepticism, opens up not only a space between us—how can it be that you don’t agree with what feels to me to be self-evident?—but also a space about us, a container for a conversation in which no conclusion can ever be either right or wrong.

What would this conversation look like, sound like, feel like? Like another sort of Rolywholyover. Not a chance-determined curation, but a crowd-determined commentary.[17] Not a conversation with the disembodied authority of the label, but a facilitated conversation that frames the artwork as what it is (an experience) and viewership as what it is (an engagement with a community of other viewers, including curators). The product of such crowd-determined commentary is as much the crowd as it is the commentary.

Imagine the gallery at the end of an exhibition occupied by three computers and a projector, many comfortable chairs, maybe even a couple of final artworks. A museum curator sits at one computer typing. In real time, the projector flashes blocks of this extemporaneous exhibition commentary onto the wall. The curator invites visitors to read the projected commentary, engage in a conversation about the commentary or the exhibition, or use another computer to enter their own commentary, which is then projected beneath the curator’s. The curator stops composing when visitors type. Other visitors watch, chat with the commentators or each other, read a transcript of all the commentary on the third computer, or browse reference materials: the catalog and floor plan, and related books. Some visitors write comments on large post-its and stick them to the wall. The curator, overhearing conversations, might even prompt these postings, encouraging people to “solicit assent”[18] and, in doing so, discover dissent, even friction. Freed from labels and wall plaques when they proceeded through the exhibition the first time, visitors are able to re-enter and re-visit the exhibition after having experienced the commentary in this gallery, this “incubator.” Those with an unquenchable thirst for pre-viewing commentary can visit this room first.

Installation view of the “museumcircle” in "Rolywholyover A Circus" at MOCA California Plaza, September 12 through November 28, 1993, photo courtesy of MOCA.

I am not suggesting something completely new: docents routinely encourage conversation, some museums include hardcopy or digital “guestbooks,” and others provide post-its. What I am suggesting is that the visitor and the exhibition are both best served when the commentary the visitor first encounters is not the label or the wall plaque but her or his own language, and when visitors have the opportunity to share that language with others toward the production of commentary.

Each week, the curator posts commentary summaries—including the curator’s own contribution—both on the exhibition’s web page and on the gallery wall. The museum might also compile a searchable, downloadable PDF of the proceedings, including all the comments and an overview of the process, prefacing it with a synthesis of some of the more compelling ideas.[19] But the value of the undertaking is not in this document. Rather, it is in a structure that separates the experience from the language about the experience. It is in a space where this language is not only found but also made. It is, last, about a collaboration between artwork-in-action and the lives of engaged visitors.

Installation Image, About Face (May 23 - February 28, 2013), Courtesy Pier 24 Photography. Image credit Tom O'Connor. Pier 24 posts no gallery text or wall labels.

[Conclusion]

John Cage once asked the composer Virgil Thomson “Which solution I should choose?” for a “quandary” he faced. Cage said Thomson replied, “We define ourselves . . . by making our own decisions.”[20] The choices we make are unique; they tell us—as much as they tell others—who we are. They are us. This, it would seem to me, is the enterprise that museums should prioritize: the building of selves. Not only selves constructed using the knowledge of art historical or political or social context, but selves that emerge from the process of choosing, engaging, interpreting, and interacting. Selves that emerge from wonder first, then resonance, and arriving finally at a resonating wonder.

If, as I said many Parts ago, the museum is both the kindest and the cruelest parent, it can also be Winnicott’s “responsible person.”[21] It is the invisible force that protects the playspace but avoids entering into the play, the caregiver that does not instill compliance but nurtures the resilience to engage in the productive struggle with uncertainty, with ambiguity, with play. In fact, the role of protector of the space is consistent with the traditional role of curators as guardians of their collections. The problem is not the curator, whose collection-building, caretaking, and interpretive functions are crucial, but the incursion of commentary—wall plaque and label—into the space of engagement.

“If you work with chance operations,” Cage said, you are shifting “from the responsibility to choose . . . to the responsibility to ask.”[22] The enormous responsibility of the museum, then, is less to convey visitors along a single pathway of a pre-determined narrative than to create a playspace shot through with infinite and complex lines of flight along which we might propel by choice, toward that tentative state we call selfhood.

Rob Marks writes about the nature of the aesthetic experience and its effect on self and society. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley and in visual and critical studies from the California College of Art. Marks recently won the Hannah Arendt Prize in Critical Theory and Creative Research for his essay, “The Site of Imaginative Contention.”

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I witnessed at least a handful of passerby pause in front of the glass-front façade of the Jones Center in downtown Austin, Texas. They shuffled through pockets and bags to find their iPhones, quizzically documenting the two unusual objects on view. How much contemporary art stops people dead in their tracks, not to scoff and mutter “well, I could do that,” but rather to ponder “how did he think to do that?” or perhaps, more importantly, “why?”

Installation image of "Nick Cave: Hiding in Plain Sight" at the Jones Center, AMOA-Arthouse, September 28–December 30, 2012. Courtesy of AMOA-Arthouse, Photos by Eric Nix.

As I had never seen any of Cave’s video pieces before, so I excitedly welcomed the opportunity to view this facet of his practice. It is through these video pieces that the significance of his history as a dancer with the famed Alvin Ailey Dance Company in New York becomes explicitly palpable. Aesthetic works of art are activated in these videos, where dancers – both trained and amateur – don Cave’s elaborate soundsuits and demonstrate the visual and auditory spectrum achievable when these pieces are in motion. In Drive By (2011), dancers in various ensembles move in and out of the stark white frame, sometimes digitally multiplying, other times joined by additional characters. The aestheticizing quality of Drive By is in contrast to the earlier Clowning (2004), in which a series of brightly-clad, carnivalesque characters descend upon a Chicago street fair. People on the street readily engage with these whimsical figures, highlighting Cave’s concern with accessibility – in terms not only of the work itself, but its placement within the public sphere.

Installation image of "Nick Cave: Hiding in Plain Sight" at the Jones Center, AMOA-Arthouse, September 28–December 30, 2012. Courtesy of AMOA-Arthouse, Photos by Eric Nix.

The most recent piece in the exhibition is the 8-foot tall, wall-mounted object, an elaborately constructed net of detritus. As the museum’s security guard smartly remarked, Untitled (2012) echoes Jackson Pollock’s all-over paintings, skeins of threads and twigs weaving chaotically through the metal frame. The tongue-in-cheek sensibility intrinsic to Cave’s soundsuits is apparent here too; cheesy porcelain bird figurines perch precariously throughout the piece with a single white cat positioned in the lower corner, peering upward.

Though a small exhibition, Nick Cave: Hiding in Plain Sight provides an excellent vignette of the artist’s practice, highlighting the intriguing relationships that can develop from a truly multidisciplinary approach. The exhibition is on view through December 30 at the Austin Museum of Art-Arthouse.

We are pleased to begin our Best of 2012 with a piece from the L.A. Expanded column written by long-time DailyServing contributor, Catherine Wagley. Catherine has written for DS since 2006, and contributed weekly with the L.A. Expanded column since January of 2010. As the column reaches its full three year anniversary we are sad to say that 2012 marks the end of L.A. Expanded. However, we are happy to see Catherine continue her writing practice through various national publications, and an occasional contribution to to DailyServing. Catherine has added an immense wealth of content to our site – 223 original articles to be exact – and for that, we are forever grateful.

Today we bring you two articles from the L.A. Expanded column in 2012, You Go Crazy and Seductresses at Family Dinners, selected by Catlin Moore.

“Catherine is just a master at weaving together the topical, sociopolitical, and personal while extrapolating the major themes of her subject with amazing clarity. These two articles are  perfect examples of that skill.” -Catlin Moore

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L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast
A column by Catherine Wagley

Installation view of Friedrich Kunath's show at Blume & Poe. Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe.

I was slapped by a child named Sam who must have been 4 years old the last time I visited Friederich Kunath’s show Lacan’s Haircut at Blum & Poe. Sam was playing with his sister on the bright yellow carpet in the first gallery — each subsequent gallery has bright carpet too, orange then red. He had been fondling one of the oversize oranges with squinty eyes and pointy nose when we locked eyes. Then, after a pause, he sort of sashayed over and slapped me on the hand. It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t gentle either.

A woman who wasn’t his mother called him over in that too sweet I-have-something-serious-to-say-but-don’t-know-how-to-talk-to-children voice. So I thought she had seen what just went down, but, probably, she hadn’t because what she said was, “I just want to congratulate you, Sam. I saw you looking at that painting over there and most children wouldn’t be able to do that for that long without touching it. I was impressed by how cultured you are.” I thought, better to touch a painting than randomly hit people, and since when does repressing tactile urges make you “cultured”?

Friedrich Kunath, "You Go Your Way and I'll Go Crazy," 2012, Digital video. Courtesy the artist and Blum and Poe.

The Kunath show, oversaturated in the best way, has sculptures of big enamel and resin loafers as well as the oversized fruit, and old-fashioned rendering of bearded men sleeping under trees or explorers on horseback sharing canvas space with cartoon characters and psychedelically colored polygons. In the back video gallery, You Go Your Way, and I’ll Go Crazy plays. It’s a video in which a tall guy who looks like a slightly glamorized version of South African writer J.M. Coetzee works in his studio, fondling the oranges just like Sam did, talking on a rotary phone that’s not plugged in to anything, wading into a pool fully clothed, standing nude over the San Gabriel Mountains, hitting tennis balls against some of the paintings that are in the exhibition. It’s insane, but in a smooth and subdued way, which is why being slapped by a preschooler while perusing this show felt kind of like par for the course.

I left at the exact same moment Sam, strapped into a car-seat, was pulling away, riding in a station wagon. We locked eyes again – I swear – and he waved.

Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Attese 58 T 2 (Spatial Concept, Expectation 58 T 2), 1958.

A few days later, at the opening of MOCA’s Destroy the Picture, I was backing away to get a better view of  a painting by Lucio Fontana, when I backed right into a regal older woman with soft hands. I know about her hands, because when I apologized, she grabbed my hand and squeezed, and said, “No, I’m sorry.” I like this, actually, the random physical contact while art-looking trend. It intensifies the whole experience, and an occasional slap might be worth it.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Salome Receives the Head of St. John the Baptist, c. 1609–1610, National Gallery, London, England, photo © 2012 The National Gallery, London

Thanksgiving is not the time of year you realize you disagree with the people you love, but it often is the time you suddenly decide you want to pick the fights you’d usually avoid. My sister called yesterday from Washington, where she was with one branch of the family. She described a dinner conversation in which most people at the table agreed: surrogate motherhood was, essentially, a form of human trafficking.  “I thought, good thing Catherine isn’t here,” Martha told me.

In Atlanta, where I am with another family branch, talk about Petraeus and his “frumpy” wife Holly – thankfully, the friend-of-family who used that word did acknowledge “frumpiness” does not excuse infidelity – led into the conversation I’m sure families the country over were having: was the CIA chief’s affair Paula’s (his mistress’s) fault or the general’s? We were split down the middle: half believed unwaveringly that Paula Broadwell was an ambitious seductress, and the rest of us were just appalled that the other half could really think the way they did. My grandmother, who was not on my side of the argument, said on the drive home, “Well, it will be interesting to see how your opinion changes as you have more experiences with men.” What did that mean? As I got older, I would come to realize that men have no agency in the face of seduction?

Caravaggio's Salome Receives the Head of St John the Baptist hanging at St. Mary's Abbey

I thought about all that – men, agency, war and seduction – when seeing Caravaggio: Bodies and Shadows the week it opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show includes work by the ever-dramatic 16^th century painter Caravaggio and by artists he either trained or influenced.  There are a few paintings of classic historical seductions in the show, or, rather of the spoils of seduction. One is Caravaggio’s own Salome Receives the Head of St. John the Baptist. In it Salome, the girl who danced so beautifully for King Herod that he promised her anything she wanted and who asked for St. John’s head because her mother told her to, holds John’s head on a platter. She looks uncomfortably, sadly away. The whole image is dark: blackness in the background, dark shadows across the left sides of the faces of Salome and the two men with her. It’s also awkward. The man brandishing a sword hold John’s head out toward the platter Salome is holding, his arm cutting across the frame. Another man lurks in the background. No one makes eye contact with anyone else. Even St. John, though dead, seems to be averting his eyes.

The “Salome” entry in Wikipedia says “Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female seductiveness,” and in my experience they do, but the politics of that situation would have been awful for everyone. Salome, as far as I know, had nothing personal against John. The girl had just gotten in over her head, and somehow ended up with some power over a man with more power than most people alive  dream of having.  Herod, according to the Gospel of Mark, had no plan to execute John the Baptist, but he hadn’t really considered the stakes when he’d given so much leverage to Salome, and now he had made a promise and how could he backpedal? “And the king was struck sad: yet because of his oath, and for them that sat with him at table, he commanded  [the head]  to be given,” writes Mark.

This, I imagine, is how most tragic seductions have gone down since the beginning of time, Paula’s and Petraeus’ being no exception. They’re unwieldy and everyone’s fault and embarrassing in the aftermath. Caravaggio’s Salome is all that, but I’m not sure bringing it up at dinner would have made an ounce of difference.