See you in a week (or two) ...


(image from prositedesigns.com)

The New Yorker weighs in on the new Matthew Barney/Björk vehicle, Drawing Restraint 9:

"The Simple Life" for a pair of self-important art-world celebrities. With a combination of lavish pageantry and industrial exertion, the Nisshin Maru, Japan's last whaling ship, sails off from Nagasaki Bay. Along with its crew, it carries two guests, Matthew Barney and Björk, who submit to elaborate rituals of tonsure, pomade, and dress at the hands of solemn bearers whose job it is to keep from laughing at their employers' airs. They partake of a classical tea ceremony in an unabashed display of Oriental kitsch that makes "Memoirs of a Geisha" look like an ethnographic documentary. As their berth fills with what might be water or whale oil, the couple lovingly carve each other up into human sushi. Barney, the director of this unbearably empty spectacle, has in effect filmed at great expense the couple's designer-sightseeing cruise, with little more skill and vastly more pretense than the average tourist.—R.B. (IFC Center.)

Ouch!

UPDATE: AFC has a more thorough dissection, warning that it's "by far the worst film he has ever made" and to "[t]ry not to barf before exiting the theatre."

Lynda Abraham's Compassion, which just closed (sorry kids, I should really write these things sooner) at the recently expanded Dam, Stuhltrager gallery in the Williamsburg section of Greenpoint (ha!), is a troubling but ambitious meditation on the societal capacity for behavioral rehabilitation.

The metal contraptions that represent the sculptural element of the exhibition are separate from a smaller room at the entrance to the gallery. This windowed room serves as a private lab-like observatory to the now inactive contraptions and also houses monitors displaying video archives of previous live-action performances involving the use of the devices. To further the simulation of a scientific, empirically-motivated experiment, shelved notepads are provided (but have been filled with the requisite nonsense from hipster passersby).

Gothic black and technologically retrograde, the "compassion" contraption (pictured above) resembles more of a medieval torture device than one of modern institutional study. The press release explains its function:

"The sculpture's body of pulleys, wheels, cables, seats and metal support structures bind two human subjects together over a water basin. Through video and drawings, viewers witness two people placed in the contraption, face to face, only the tips of their noses touching water. Uncomfortable, each tries to pull their head further from the water, but in doing so (by the design of the device) their partner's head will be submerged. Each will cause and witness the choking, gagging and struggling of the other. The struggle may continue for a while, as contempt transforms to compassion under the necessity to work together to end further suffering."

Assuming you missed the opening, we're left with the video archive of the performance, the sculpture/installation itself, and Abraham's text. It would be difficult to believe that her assertion that the devices are meant for positive social change is anything but ironical in intent. Participants are no more likely to become compassionate after repeated gothic-dunkings than if they were simply locked in a room together.

Instead, the aesthetic construction of the devices points to something darker -- the linking of modern/post-enlightenment efforts to engineer desired social behavior with the inhumanity of medieval punishment (or worse, torture). Either Abraham's utopian hopes for the device are naively grandiose with optimism or cynically ironic. The gallery's locale of too-cool Williamsburg can't help but reinforce the presence of the latter and suggests a depressingly fatalist, reactionary critique of the liberalist ideal of social rehabilitation.

(Compassion, by artist Lynda Abraham, was at Dam, Stuhltrager gallery in Brooklyn, New York, from February 17 - March 28th; Photo from damstuhltrager.com)

From João Ribas' interview with Klaus Ottmann, curator of the upcoming 6th Site Santa Fe Biennial (and art critic), posted at the increasingly relevant Art Info:

(João): You're curating Site Santa Fe without a curatorial theme. Why did you decide to keep the exhibition open and unmediated in that way?

(Klaus): I had concerns about doing another big, theme-driven group show because there have been so many. With all of these exhibitions--and I've done a number of them myself—they really end up being more about the curator and his ideas than about the art. I wanted to try to create an environment where the art can speak for itself as much as possible—where I would be more in the background. I'm still the curator, of course, but I thought that if you have the works without a theme, there's less filtering going on and there's more of a chance for the viewer to see the works on their own terms.

(J): Is that also why you’ve reduced the number of artists?

(H): Yes, that’s part of that. The other thing is that I didn’t want to install the exhibition in a traditional way, where you have one work hanging after the next work. I wanted to have more works by each artist, or at least have every artist separate in their own space, where there wouldn’t be any distractions. For that reason, I had to cut down on the number of artists, just in terms of the space. It’s not huge, and my predecessor, Robert Storr, had 54 artists in his biennial. I couldn’t fit more than 13 in it, so that’s the number that we ended up with.

(J): Why do you think there’s such an impetus for curators and institutions to create such intensively themed surveys?

(H): You even have the Whitney Biennial with a theme for the first time—they’re doing kind of the opposite of what I’m doing, which is good. I’m not saying that I’m smarter than everyone else, I’m just trying to do something different.

I’ve become, in the last two or three years, more and more concerned about this dramatic rise of art fairs and biennials all over the world, which do not provide an adequate way of experiencing art. I’m concerned with how they have become the primary place for a lot of people, including curators and critics, to see works for the first time. That’s troubling to me. I have no problem with the economic function of an art fair, but it is problematic when dealers are telling their artists to keep the best works for the art fairs or make works for the art fairs.

I wanted to show an alternative way of how works of art should be experienced, without a lot of interference, either curatorially or in terms of didactics. First and foremost, there should be an immediate experience, a sensual experience. Museums are going a little bit too far in the didactics these days. Art education is, of course, important, but it’s important not to give people the illusion that they could understand a work of art, because works of art can never be completely understood.... (emphasis added)

...continued at Art Info.

(photo from artinfo.com)

Press Release from Goliath Visual Space:

Tyler Green at MAN has the scoop on Jerry Saltz's reaction to the New Yorker's recent puff piece on Sotheby's glorified used-car salesman chief auctioneer, Tobias Meyer. Apparently he's not a big fan. Saltz writes (in an email sent to both MAN and the New Yorker):

"The New Yorker really drank the Kool-Aid in John Colapinto's wet-kiss to big-money fast-action art-heroes who sell art works to the highest bidder. How can someone conscientiously write an entire profile on Tobias Meyer, the chief auctioneer and worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby's, and not mention, even in passing, that contemporary art auctions are bizarre combinations of slave market, trading floor, theater, and brothel? They are rarefied entertainments where speculation, spin, and trophy hunting merge as an insular caste enacts a highly structured ritual in which the codes of consumption and peerage are manipulated in plain sight. Auctions are altars to the disconnect between the inner life of art and the outer life of acquisition, places where artists are cut off from their art. At auctions desire is fetishized, buying and selling become a sort of sacrament, art plays the role of sacrificial lamb, and the Ponzi scheme that surrounds it all rolls on. For The New Yorker to publish an article like this and not raise one discouraging word about auctions is more than a little discouraging; it is a sickening."

Fuck yeh!!! Jerry Saltz, fighter of the good fight. Edward_ Winkleman published his reaction on the subject in an earlier post this past weekend, but was much more conflicted in his reaction. He called it a "delightful peek into the methods and high drama behind contemporary art auctions," but expressed his slight discomfort with Meyer's declaration "that's my job, for the company and for my clients. To make art expensive." Winkleman asked: "So why does it stick in my craw?"

I responded, in the comment section of his post:

"Maybe the guilt of being an unabashed capitalist? I had a similar reaction. I think it comes from the way we try to convince ourselves that the existence of art is enabled by a socially-beneficial form of culture production. When we're reminded of the real impetus behind the art trade, it's embarrasing and temporarily ruins our idealistic vision of why art is important to society.

Artists who want to contribute to the cultural, aesthetic, or intellectual conversation of art, but find the propagation of a greed-fueled, unregulated capitalist market abhorrent, are left with the contradiction of being in opposition to the motivations of those (for-profit gallerists) meant to best serve their own artistic aims. Hell, even the motivations for many well-meaning gallerists themselves are in contradiction.

Perhaps a new model is needed.

[E.W. wrote in his post]: "What he is doing is not only fully legal, it's arguably good for the overall economy as well, creating more jobs, increasing the art market, and giving great opportunities to emerging artists."

Ahhh ... the infamous trickle-down effect. Sure, it creates opportunities for emerging artists, but only for those who grease the wheels of the market. When it happens that the "goal of the market" is in opposition to the "goal of the artist", the market always wins. Thus goes capitalism -- anything not contributing to the tit-for-tat exchange relation is discarded as irrelevant."

The piece was clearly intended to paint an adoring picture of the art auctioneer as glamorous, sophisticated aesthete. Some of my favorite passages were the somewhat creepily-obsessive and overly-thorough descriptions of his fashionable appearance and physique:

"Tall, slim, and with an erect carriage, he has longish, wavy hair, which he wears swept back from his high forehead. His eyes are a transparent blue, his chin delicate, and although he is forty-three years old, he looks at least ten years younger. His clothes are custom-made, by a retired Savile Row tailor, and he was dressed casually, but impeccably, in a moss-green sports jacket with yellow windowpane check and mustard-colored corduroys of a whale so fine that I initially mistook the fabric for velvet. A blue-and-white polka-dot scarf was loosely knotted around his neck.

Meyer's stylishness and physical beauty are legendary in art and design circles, and can reduce even experts on such matters to near-incoherence... "If Tobias was naked, he'd be stylish; it's not just his clothes. It’s that face.'"

Meyer's self-described role in his own words:

"What I love to do is put people in front of art and make them feel it, make them stop everything else they’re doing and experience it, deeply," ... "That’s how I make art expensive. And that’s my job, for the company and for my clients. To make art expensive."

I was reminded of something I once overheard from a dealer when I was buying my first car:

"What I love to do is put people in front of a car and make them feel it, make them stop everything else they're doing and experience it, deeply," ... "That’s how I make cars expensive. And that's my job, for the company and for my clients. To make cars expensive."

Meyer's clearly obsessed with his cross-town rivals, the Christie's clan:

"He once intercepted a truck filled with crates of Bacons [the painter, not the pork product - A.S.] bound for Christie’s, he told me. 'They didn’t get there.' He shrugged. 'But they would do the same.'"

And, he knows how to get his hand on quality art. In the auction business they call it:

"the three D's": divorce, debt, and death – human calamities that often compel collectors (or their survivors) to unload a few masterworks in exchange for cash. "I'm talking to lawyers and looking at transparencies, and it's a direct competition with Christie’s, and it’s all very hard-nosed," Meyer said.

But, lest we begin to think of Meyer as a backdoor-smarmy run-of-the-mill business trader, we’re reminded of his true place in our sophisticated, cosmopolitan society (with symphony conductors, dancers, opera singers?):

"...his auction book, which he keeps open in front of him on the rostrum and uses to guide him through a sale, much the way a conductor refers to a score while conducting a symphony."

Indeed,

"...Meyer's style at the rostrum was dynamic, almost dance-like;

'You need to be quite physically fit to do this,' Mitchell-Innes told me. 'It's a little bit like opera singing....'"

Don't forget about his deft, psychological manipulation:

...it was clear that Meyer's job at this point was less one of salesmanship than a kind of psychological enabling, with the goal of removing any lingering resistance the man might have to the thought of disbursing more than a million dollars for a bunch of welded girders.

What the fuck is salesmanship, if not "psychological enabling"? Meyer realizes that what he's really doing is selling status, and smoothing over any guilt the buyer might retain from their materialistic obsession:

"Owning art, unlike seeing it in a museum, is a very primal pleasure," Meyer said. "Having it there, close to you, something that you associate with great beauty or great emotional expression, something that you associate with a soul, or with status – owning it gives you another status – is very important..." Above all else, Meyer says, his task at this stage is to let collectors know that "desiring an object, desiring to own an object--that it’s O.K."

But Meyer will not be deterred. His obsessive competition with Christie's leaves him unimpressed with his 2004 sale of Picasso's mediocre "Boy with Pipe" for a mere $104 million:

"I know, but that was then!" He cries.

Assholes: Mr. President, recent news stories are reporting that your approval rating has hit a new, all-time low -- more Americans than ever before have lost faith in your ability to be their leader.

GWB(43): uuhhhh...

Assholes: The GOP rank and file are starting to become dissentious, sometimes even contradicting Dear Mr. Melhman's carefully constructed talking point memos.

GWB(43): hmmmm...

Assholes: Sir, even Jessica Simpson has publicly dissed your ass. We have to do something ... anything!!!

GWB(43): How 'bout we do one of them Operation thingy's?

From ABCnews.com:

'Operation Swarmer' Expected to Last Days

BAGHDAD, Iraq Mar 16, 2006 (AP) - U.S. forces and Iraqi troops launched what the military described as the largest air assault since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion Thursday, targeting insurgent strongholds north of the capital.

The U.S. military said the raid, dubbed Operation Swarmer, was aimed at clearing "a suspected insurgent operating area" northeast of Samarra and was expected to last several days. The Pentagon said 41 people were arrested but it was not clear if suspected insurgents put up any resistance.

Residents in the targeted area said there was a heavy U.S. and Iraqi troop presence and large explosions could be heard in the distance. The U.S. military said there was no firing or bombing from the air and the source of the blasts was not known.

"More than 1,500 Iraqi and coalition troops, over 200 tactical vehicles, and more than 50 aircraft participated in the operation," the military statement said.

The U.S. command in Baghdad said it was the largest number of aircraft used to insert troops and the largest number of troops inserted by air, although larger numbers of troops overall have been involved in previous operations.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable said no bombs, missiles or other ordnance were fired from the helicopters. He said more than 650 U.S. troops and more than 800 Iraqi soldiers took part in the operation.

Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, told reporters at the Pentagon the operation was not related to any anticipated outburst of sectarian violence in the area or a significant departure from previous military actions.

Abizaid said it was aimed at al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent cells although there was "no specific high-value target that I know of."

"I wouldn't characterize this as being anything that's a big departure from normal or from the need to prosecute a target that we think was lucrative enough to commit this much force to go get," he said.... (continued at ABCnews.com) (emphasis added)

So let me get this straight. This is the largest fucking air assault in the past 3 years, but it's not "anything that's a big departure from normal." Oh, and it's "not related to any anticipated outburst of sectarian violence in the area" and there's supposedly "no firing or bombing from the air" even though there's already been reports that "large explosions could be heard in the distance." I see, so we've just launched the largest air assault in Iraq since 2003, but we're basically not doing anything and we really don't have any reason to.

Clear as mud. Operation Distraction a full success.

God, I hate talking about Fountain -- really, is there anything left worth saying about it? I was a little shocked when Mr. Saltz took a stab at the topic a couple of weeks back (where, oddly enough, he deemed it the "manifestation of the Kantian sublime"). In my view, Duchamp's readymades were intended as (necessary) interventionist stunts while his real artistic legacy lies in works such as his Large Glass or Tu m' -- pieces meant to be taken seriously as art objects, while still carrying many of the anti-art characteristics of Dada (Duchamp, himself, even warned the viewer to beware of too many readymades). Of course, history would tend to disagree with me, as Duchamp's name has become inexorably linked with Fountain and its continued use as justification for many a cynical or ironical anti-artistic gesture. In a recent Slate article/slide show on the Dada exhibition at the National Gallery in D.C., Lee Siegel manages to articulate an idea about Fountain that has constantly nagged me:

But the context that once made the urinal appear funny or not has disappeared. There is nothing to outrage, and no one to liberate. A still life by Renoir can still touch you with poetry. But if the urinal neither subverts nor replenishes, what possible purpose could Duchamp's Fountain serve on a museum wall?

(emphasis added)

My answer: Aesthetically-impotent historical artifact. While I'm not endorsing that an artwork need attain a form of universal poetry to retain aesthetic value, I suspect that, rather than carrying any intrinsic formal qualities meaningful for today's viewer, the object itself is merely a placeholder for a conversation (albeit still vitally ongoing) about what art is or was. Further, is the object (Fountain) even necessary for this conversation to continue, and what would the world lose, other than a museum-quality historical document, if one of its many attempted saboteurs were to succeed in destroying it?

After such a thoughtful observation, Siegel gets stupid and offers some advice for the aspiring contemporary Dadaist:

So, if you are a young artist, and Dada relics strike you as being as irrelevant as the masterpieces they mocked, maybe you should adopt Dada's spirit even as you reject Dada's creations. Imagine a show of reproduced contemporary classics that have been treated as irreverently as Duchamp once handled the Mona Lisa. Mapplethorpe nudes clothed in Renoir jackets and foulards; a Jeff Koons basketball with a mustache on it; a Damien Hirst shark relocated to a urinal. If the right people laugh, you'll know you're making fresh tracks.

Nice try Lee, but we've had way too much of this kind of shit already; better to leave the artmaking to the artists.

Finally, props be to Tyler Green, for an observation about over-curated exhibitions, that I wholeheartedly agree with:

"...the Whitney Biennial is part of a maddening trend: The show's curators apparently believe that they have to be part of the show, that curator equals artist, that the curator should combine the work of multiple artists to create Mondo-Art.

'There seemed a particular urgency to make a bold curatorial statement about the current zeitgeist,' Iles and Vergne wrote in a curator's preface to the show. Wrong. Artists make art and artists may make statements. Curators show art. Artists and curators are not and should not be competitors. Curators should not set artists in competition with each other for a viewer's attention." (emphasis added)

What I'm wondering is, why are curators so averse to allowing artworks to stand on their own? Five or Six artists per floor-- sans wall text -- sounds about right to me.

(photo from slate.com)

Yesterday, from the A.P. :

UNITED NATIONS - Increasing violence has left hundreds of thousands of civilians in Sudan's Darfur region without food and facing the prospect of widespread disease and death within weeks, the U.N. humanitarian chief said Monday.

Jan Egeland said he fears that Darfur is returning to "the abyss" of early 2004 when the region was "the killing fields of this world." Since that time, he said, the U.N. humanitarian operation in the region has succeeded in saving lives.

But "2006 seems to be bringing us back to 2004," Egeland warned. "We're losing ground every day in the humanitarian operation which is the lifeline for more than 3 million people."

The primary reason, he said, is the growing insecurity for tens of thousands of civilians and the 14,000 unarmed humanitarian workers who are facing increasing violence from Arab militias, rebels, government forces and bandits, he said.

As a result, Egeland said, U.N. relief officials and relief organizations cannot reach more than 300,000 people on the Chad border in western Darfur and the central mountainous region of Jebal Marra because they are too dangerous.

These unreachable areas, he said, "will soon get massively increased mortality because there is nothing else but international assistance." He expected deaths to increase markedly within weeks.

At least 180,000 people have died — some estimates are far higher — and some 2 million have been displaced since the start of a 2003 revolt by rebels from Darfur's ethnic African population. The Arab-dominated Sudanese government is alleged to have responded to the revolt by unleashing the Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, who carried out sweeping atrocities against ethnic African villagers.

Egeland said the cycle of violence could be broken immediately if the government and rebels agree to a cease-fire proposal put forward Sunday by African Union mediators.

The African Union decided Friday to extend the mandate of its 7,000-strong force in Darfur for six months, when the United Nations is expected to take over. Egeland called for funding and logistical support, including helicopters, for the AU force so it can operate more effectively and try to prevent attacks and disarm the groups responsible.

He also called for more money from international donors for the 3 million people who need food, water and health services in Darfur — and 3 million others elsewhere in the country who need humanitarian relief. Donors have provided only one-fifth of the $1.7 billion the U.N. sought for Sudan this year, including about $650 million for Darfur.

"It's a test case for the world for having no more Rwandas and no more massive loss of innocent lives," he said.

Equally important, Egeland said, is security.

"There are tens of thousands of new displacements, both in Darfur and on the other side of border in Chad," Egeland said. "And there are attacks against humanitarian workers every week, again and again. Our colleagues are being hijacked, harassed, kidnapped. Our cars are being looted and it's become routine — and it is an outrage."

(emphasis added)

If Egeland is right, and Darfur is indeed "a test case for the world for having no more Rwandas," then it appears that (with at least 180,000 dead) we've already failed the test ... again. And yet the violence will probably get worse and the death toll will continue to rise, before a patchwork solution is finally gained.

The aspect that troubles me the most, considering the recent history of similar tragedies, is the blatantly unequal view of human suffering as reflected in international political policy (and why don't we hear more about this story from the MSM?). One only needs to reflect on the recent news of Slobodan Milosevic's death to remember NATO's self-proclaimed urgency for foreign intervention in the Kosovo/Serbia crisis in defense of its display of military power through a punishing strategy of death-from-above; or, as we are reminded on a daily basis, the Bush administration's insistence on saving the world from Saddam Hussein as justification for a violent campaign that has unleashed chaos and edged Iraq near civil war.

In the instance of both Kosovo and Iraq, the empirical data would suggest that the greater amount of violence, and greatest loss of life, have occurred after the U.S. and its Western allies came to the so-called rescue to avert human tragedy. Why is it that, in cases of extreme human tragedy as the result of violence, when foreign intervention from those with the greatest ability to help finally occurs, it often takes the form of more violence and rarely accomplishes anything other than additional destabilazation?

I hate to think that Chomsky is correct -- that Western intervention is predictably indicative of the cycle for expansion of hegemonic power -- because it would mean that Western civilization is fucked, and we're all headed for a massive downfall.

So here's my radical, if somewhat ridiculous, solution: Maybe it's time to admit that we, as men, have finally proven that we don't have any fucking idea how to run the world. We've been woefully unsuccessful at curbing the endless pattern of war and violence (not to mention having seriously fucked up the art world, among other things). Maybe it's time to give women a chance at the reigns.

How bad could it be?

(photo credits: top from tear.org.au, bottom from thehollandsentinal.net)

Oops, I meant to go to the art fairs this weekend, but somehow I got sidetracked and forgot all about the New York art world's biggest Barnum & Bailey style money-making art sellin' extravaganza. Instead I got the hell out of the city in search of the New Jersian countryside's simple pleasures of sunshiny miniature golf and general warm weather middle-class lo-brow alcoholically-induced merriment.

According to Artnet's Ben Davis, I missed the Armory Show's display of "art that is grand and easily digestible, superficially complex, knowingly artificial and/or coolly fetishistic." Dammit, I guess I'll have to catch that next year ... or maybe not. Looks like Mr. Furnas and Ms. Boesky got their wish and nailed down the coveted "sheer scale" award with their cooperatively-made pourthetic bloodfest, "Red Sea." (see AFC for photo).

Many of my fellow bloggers have stronger stomachs than I (and are apparently less tempted by Garden State diversions) and have braved through the crowded fusion of sweaty, black-clothed Chelseans, bombastic displays of the urgently now, and overpriced frou-frou condiments so that you don't have to. Sit back, grab yourself a drink of choice, and enjoy the keyboarded fruits of their tirelessly admirable labors (if you haven't done so already) with the guilty-conscience-soothing knowledge that you didn't miss a thing. The virtual art fair experience:

Art Fag City (who must have blogged herself ragged this weekend): Initial thoughts from the Armory; Scope mishap; Armory recap; Reasons you should have attended Pulse and avoided Scope (or vise-versa); Scope recap; and Scope PR frivolity.

From the Floor: Art fair overload; Scope mishap; Fair weekend weirdness; and Pulse picks.

Anonymous Female Artist: Edna's Don't Miss List; and the evocative and appropriately titled wrap up "Very Few Golden Nuggets in Huge Piles of Steaming Capitalist Shit."

Edward_ Winkleman: http://edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com/2006/03/jennifer-dalton-pulse.html.

James Wagner: Armory; Scope; and Armory, Pulse, Scope, Fountain, LA ART, DiVA.

Bloggy: Art fairs day one; and Don't miss Scope.

Heart as Arena: The Armory Show: Smartass Photo Essay.

FutureModern: "Fashion week" in the art world.

Artistic Thoughts: Armory-induced worms.

Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof's artblog: Armory; Scope; Armory; and Pulse.