Visual Arts

Can writing do justice to the art of Tino Sehgal, or should we only make utterances? How do we preserve Sehgal's work, or is there nothing to preserve — only an endless series of originals? Even after three months, there are still so many questions: Is this good? New? Propaganda?

In 1956, the Situationist Guy Debord called out for an "educative propaganda," on account of "the emergence of productive forces that necessitate other production relations and a new practice of life….that must encompass all the perpetually interacting aspects of social reality." Who knew such serious education could be so funny? So tongue-in-cheek? Though, physical comedy has always been a social leveler.

And it takes up space, which makes it sculptural, where "we mold and shape the world in which we live" (Joseph Beuys). Not unlike planting thousands of trees or moving a mountain of sand. Only without the trees and without the mountain of sand.

Yet, we are not deserted. All is not lost. Between production and de-production, between absence and presence, between object and viewer, between you and me, an endless reverberation. A (sub)liminal sublime.

The way you keep singing the song you woke up with in your head. The way each movement can be broken down and put back together. The way you know what this is before I even have to tell you. It's not a headline but a broadcast--a conditioned choreography in which the audience is on/in demand.

Your attention need not be long, but should you accept the invitation — should you give of yourself the time and place — you will see this is not a "dance problem," per se, like a man bouncing in the corner. It isn't even about the not-so-hidden camera rolling on the floor. No, it has to do with something more sustaining.

In a 2001 interview, the artist Mel Chin described his remediation project Revival Field (1991-94)--a Superfund site-specific work that took place at Pig's Eye Landfill on the outskirts of St. Paul, Minnesota--as "driven by some kind of poetry. That poetry of plants having the capacity to transform a system...[yet it] was also driven by pragmatism. I think you have to have both."

What is the poetry of Tino Sehgal? What is the pragmatism? The answers are in the questions, I think, but they are also between the lines. And what we will be left with, what will remain, will soon blend into the landscape and be invisible, but still here.

Images:

Joseph Beuys, La rivoluzione siamo Noi, 1972, phototype on polyester ink, ink stamp; edition 7/180. Published by Modern Art Agency, Naples, and Edition Tangente, Heidelberg. Alfred and Marie Greisinger Collection, Walker Art Center, T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1992

Francis Alÿs, selection from Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains), 2002-2003, acrylic, graphite, masking tape on vellum. Collection Walker Art Center, T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2004

Bruce Nauman, Bouncing In The Corner, 1968, Video. Collection Walker Art Center, T.B. Wlaker Acquisition Fund, 2002

Dan Graham, Roll, Filming Process, 1970, Super-8. Courtesy of Andre Goeminnie Collection, Nazareth, Belgium

Mel Chin, Revival Field, 1991-1994, Pig’s Eye Landfill, St. Paul, Minnesota. Courtesy greenmuseum.org

Minneapolis painter Frank Gaard, who last shared his perspectives on the Walker Expansion and our Kiki Smith exhibition, returns to guest-blog on Cameron Jamie.

This is very a strange exhibition. At first I was put off by the touchie-feely faux Pierre Alechinsky drawings–so many of them, too. My companion tells me that Jamie is based in Paris but comes from Los Angeles, which is a good clue given the huge cultural disparity betwixt the two locations. The wrestling video put me off: more men are bad, men are stupid etc. Misandristry, it’s like the layup rather than the three pointer. Men as a gender have been taking a beating for decades, and in general some of us deserve it, but short of Paul McCarthy I haven’t seen this much man-bashing in a while. And, too, the ethnocentricity of the work (forgive me for being so 90’s), I think it would be nice to leave Joseph Beuys and his crew forgotten for a time, leave the hares be and let the dead painters have their delusions.

It’s not to say that I didn’t find things in the exhibition that were entertaining and beautiful; it may just be I’m getting old and less hip. (Hey, I still think Mike Kelley is a young artist!) Besides who am I to question the wisdom of the cognoscenti who deem Mr. Jamie the flavor of the moment? I do like the Cave which has to be the creepiest sculpture I’ve ever experienced–the darkess and the texture of that plastic building material–ugh!–and those creepy bird pics. It’s that Gothic thing that Paris has in spades, all those spikey gargoyles and the whole sort of Baudelairian dankness. Icky, I felt great urgency to get out of that thing and back to the sweet comfort of the black guard who gave me the too-dim lantern in the first place. I wanted to warn some children but, hey, if mom and dad want them to experience something that weird, it’s none of my business. But I have to admire Jamie’s chutzpah to make such an unhappy sculpture. This is one of the cases where I really understand why I am so puzzled by sculpture. It’s good sick fun but is that all there is, mon ami?

The outsourced portraits, created at Jamie’s direction by street artists, of course, I found just sweet as rhubarb pie. And the Goth photos? I do my vacuuming with Marilyn Manson’s music. It’s a genre that’s hard to resist and you know you are listening to something that Dick Cheney thinks is sick. And that maybe the point is that sickness isn’t such an awful thing if it’s cultural rather than physical. The way Los Angeles hits people can be an indicator of an aesthetic proclivity. Many of my most favorite artist comrades are based in Los Angeles; as dystopias go, LA has everything one needs to create an otherness that is still home and horror both. Jamie brings together some very contradictory elements sometimes, as with the big film poster they really kick ass.

Other work: the Halloween photos are so abject that you want to run upstairs to the Arbus show to see what Halloween was really like! But Jamie’s young and when he’s on he’s really a pisser. A small group of photos (what we once called snapshots) of a Michael Jackson impersonator wrestling is a case in point. To me the piece was fabulous–beautiful color and some suspension of ego, like, yes, this is art and I get pleasure here. So what can I say? He’s the sum of his influences, and maybe he has a while to go before he outstrips those influences, but hey that’s just my opinion an artist who works a different beat, who just isn’t all that interested in culture that seems to be marginal by design. After all I have my own technicolor nightmares to contend with. Bon Apetit, it’s what we used to call an acquired taste only I think it’s more raw than cooked.

Minneapolis painter Frank Gaard, who has a solo show opening at Flanders Contemporary Art April 1, continues guest blogging with his perspective on the architecture of the new Herzog & de Meuron Walker expansion.

I remember an artist in Soho calling the then-new Barnes Walker, “Martin’s Loft,” after former Walker director Martin Friedman. When you take a look at those seven galleries you can easily conceptualize them as lofts, with all the amenities necessary to institutional architecture, of course. So not only does Mr. Barnes square the Guggenheim of Mr. Wright, but he adds the space once found on Spring Street in the days before Prada and Gucci took over Soho.

My thesis: each half of the new Walker represents different epochs in the history of contemporary art, much as the towers of the famed Chartres Cathedral were built in two different styles three centuries apart. The Barnes Walker gives us the certainty of Minimalism and formalism whilst the Herzog Walker gives us the diversity and uncertainty of the field today. The tower of the Barnes building is very Apollonian, and the stumpy Herzog tower our Dionysiac structure, with a vertiginous theater inside (Dionysus being the G-d of theater and wine). What the blending of these two structures yields is a short Cliff Notes version of where we came from and where we are going.

I like to call contemporary art from Don Judd to Paul McCarthy the post-Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Era. Herzog built a museum for such uncertain times. At first seeming like a movie set (German Expressionist style or a Wagnerian opera set), the Herzog Building is very theatrical. Watching Kara Walker talk with Mssr. Vergne from the highest balcony in the new theater, you do know you are in a tower, a tower within another tower like an egg in a nest. Myself, I feel like I have a destination, a place I feel at home and at sea in this place. The future is never exactly like the plans we made for it. Martin Friedman gave us a sort of Manhattan Walker, very Uptown, very I-got-drunk-with-Marcel-Duchamp-and-Marty-Friedman, etc. (lofts).

This new Walker combines the flat Walker (RECTANGULAR) and the new bumpy Walker, and in between you get the passages where the architects negotiate the relationships between the two buildings. The street facing Hennepin now is a giant window on the first level. The back connection, near that brown staircase (for nudes to descend natch) is a glass wall too. This connecting point is what gives the building its form: two larger structures separated by their linkage.

The gallery where the Sigmar Polke painting of Autumn and her daughters hangs is the fulcrum of the whole complex, it’s the connection between the galleries but it’s also the most beautiful room to see contemporary art in the area, it’s neutral aesthetic space where Charles Ray and Anselm Kiefer dwell. I think it’s best when towers are at a distance from once another, this space is where the soup is made. This is the mixing spot. But that purple-brown brick staircase at the back of the gallery of minimalist art is a thing to enjoy. No, I just think it’s hard to make a and b get along.

And the gardens are yet to come. The building was designed to have the landscaping visible at certain sites, like a background or a spectacle outside the windows. This Herzog does windows, mon ami. So the new Walker is still a work in progress. But we are lucky to have this place, this dreamy realm we give many names, this new meta-Walker will outlive its critique.

The new galleries based on Barnes’ galleries are slightly taller and finish at the floor more sweetly. I noticed the height looking at some of those enormous vertical silkscreen paintings of Andy Warhol. The walls do seem so white, like church. But we do love these things, like the Warhols or just that the circus has a brand new bigger tent.

Beauty is half the value of its utility, the second half is invention. If something works, it becomes more beautiful. One function of architecture is to build structures that will also be useful to the future occupants. …..of the Walker’s new tower, its humility, its humor and its humanity--its shiny stumpy splendor.

Kiki Smith Kourai 2005

Frank Gaard’s long history with the Walker began with his first solo show, Viewpoints--Frank Gaard: Paintings in 1980. Represented in the permanent collection by five paintings and a series of notebooks, his most recent involvement includes a 2004 commission to create a billboard in downtown Minneapolis. He agreed to share his thoughts on the new exhibition Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005.

I once heard of a collector who only collected things that were colored black. All the most famous artists had black works in their collections; indeed, when hard times came they made even more black-colored art. The painter who told me this story was an abstract painter who has horses to feed and has made quite a lot of black paintings. This is a preface to the Kiki Smith show at Walker, which is very black (and white), and it’s sculpture of a personal type, but still obviously well financed (bronze even, oi!).

I enjoyed the show and the company of my dearest love, Pearly, who tells me her dreams. As here with Ms. Kiki Smith, I was taken with a dreamy work at the very back of the exhibition. Five nude women carrying wolves over their shoulders, the piece is flat on paper from Nepal and is partly collaged and drawn with a marker of an indeterminate type (perhaps a felt-tip?). The images are curious, as they open a Pandora’s box of imaging. The image most Early Christians would have recognized as Jesus The Good Shepherd (a clothed man with a lamb on his shoulders ), this was how the Christ image was coded, and the reverse is true in the piece named Kourai where the shepherds are nude females and decidedly Pagan (check out the girl fur twixt these women’s legs, exquisite drawing, worthy of Georgia O’Keefe) and the animals are wolves not lambs or calves (as with Greek Kourai).

The return to the pagan world, the Pre-Christian era, is also in other art: Matisse and Picasso made hay on this conception of a Mediterranean new paganism. But Kiki Smith’s work herein speaks to an even earlier utopia, the Greece where the nude human figure appears as an ideal boy (or girl), (boys first because they were the ones most desired for fucking by the ancient Greeks), and where better to see these sculptures than in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (recently redecorated)? Maybe there were five women in the piece? The thing is, it’s a brilliant statement about the culture we arise from, i.e. Greek, and the paganism that has returned as terror. The destructive maelstrom of our world at this moment on a cold night in February, this work is the image of a truer past for our culture born of women and the wolf who becomes our/her child. In some ways this work is brilliant, utterly, even if the artist only sees my p.o.v. as an alternative interpretation; for me, it’s this idea of an alternative culture myth of origin that is exciting. What if instead of a sweet adolescent Jew with an errant lamb upon his shoulder, the new image was several nude women with wolves? Different outcomes from different myths of origin. Maybe we do inherit the wind and the poison of our war-making and our development model! Maybe every art work is a scream and a laugh; a pre-christian era--think about it, good spot for artists--invented architecture, painting, sculpture, theater, philosophy. All we are saying is give art a chance.

Kiki Smith is an artist who makes fabulous things and things more perplexing. Oddly it reminds me of myself (minus the color); this sort of genius or yo-yo, who can say? But my suspicion is when she’s on (insert musical metaphor here), she’s genius incarnate. But when she not, she’s not. This goes to an idea I think is rather in the mix of late that art-working is, as W.B. Yeats once suggested, a fragile mood, that what it is that makes creative action is delicate. And this runs through the work, this mood of creation (carving a pelvis from stone!). I like to see an artist, in this post-minimalist time, who has courage and let’s her feelings flow--and doesn’t depend on sentimentality; that’s where a lot of us fail. We get too obsessed with mortality, when it’s better to dance on the devil in the pale moonlight.

The black everywhere in the show is a key measure of the artist as sculptor. It’s not that she besmirches the Walker’s wedding-dress white walls but rather that she’s making the most of that whiteness. Kiki is smart; the woman thing was there for her at the beginning. That’s how I first saw her images in Avalanche (I think) but all the artists who liked Eva Hesse’s art, myself included, saw the other myth of creation, the juicy one, Babylon and the fires in Baghdad. De Sade is a philosopher as much as a fiction writer, and maybe the world is tumbling towards a new Babylon? Kiki Smith creates discourse, she opens the windows and lets in possibilities. Her limits are shown in the presence of her genius, she’s so fucking human. And she’s not finished; hell, she’s younger than me by 10 years.

Postscriptus: Hmmm, I don’t like sculpture very much (I’ve been painting since 1960). For a while I ran an organization called The Anti-Sculpture League. I’m just telling you this since the artist herein, Ms. Kiki Smith, is primarily a sculptor. I don’t hold it against her that she’s a sculptor, but I think it’s better to make flat things. They are easier to store. I guess I just don’t get sculpture. Why make a crow when they are everywhere already?