Resound

The Holland Project is hosting an exhibition this month of local artists who have been influential in the region. Included are some professors from UNR, some ex-professors, and some names who have made the local circuit and extended out from here, spreading what they’ve taken through observation from our plot in the high desert.
 
A lot of those involved were people I had heard of or knew and this was a good chance to finally experience their work. My girlfriend and I arrived a little past halfway through the reception to an array of familiar faces. The subdued conversation lent the room an atmosphere like the calm after rush hour and I thought to myself that we’d arrived just in time. I snuck between the circles of people, moving toward a corner where I imagine dust might accumulate if the staff were to neglect sweeping, and began my examination of the first of a series of artworks called “Untitled Sketches” by Robert Morris. It was no coincidence, I think, that I arrived at them first. They were simple and attractive. Of non-representational art, I find that I appreciate the simple kind most. It’s hard for me to sympathize with non-representational things. The objects tend to lose my interest as more and more elements are added, as the complex of relationships and references deepens. I try to appreciate them, and so spend a long time standing in front of them, but I’m often rebuffed. These pieces, however, were small structures, built out of folded paper, wood sticks, something that looked like a marble, and a little bit of red paint. The first was a mobile, reminiscent of something by Alexander Calder. I blew on it and it spun around, like something between a delicate weather vane and a drifting paddleboat, on a wooden skewer axis. The piece next to it was a stack of paper folded in quarters and unfolded. On the topmost sheet, each quarter had a word printed on it. I can’t quote them exactly, but somehow I think they all related to sickness. A small, shiny, presumably metal ball sat like a paperweight in the center at the vertex of the folds.

A prominent figure in the local art community came up and she commented how beautiful these tiny, fragile sculptures were. I embarrassed myself, saying “Yeah, I don’t really get them, but I like them, too…” In hindsight, there probably wasn’t much to get. They were as I’ve described them. Simple, elegant, kind. Standing there I fished for connotations of architecture, tipping points, shelters, beds, stilts, trying so hard to infuse them with meaning in order to feel like I had really pinned it down. Artists talk so often about how their work is trying to create conversations about this or that. I don’t think that serves much purpose except to make me uncomfortable actually trying to have a conversation about it.

Eventually I found my way to a group of pieces by Jim Mccormick. They seemed to be encaustic covered panels with the cut shapes of wood and twine arranged on the surface. I really enjoyed these. It was like finding figures in the clouds. The variety of texture was rich but not too intense that it was hard to look at. It was pleasant, earthy, warm, and maybe a bit haunting in the way that a crowd of mannequins in a dusty attic is haunting. There was some desolation there, but a happy humanity, too. One of the pieces reminded me of an elephant whose thoughts and attention followed along a strand of twine which led the eye toward a partial figure along the bottom of the composition, its friend I suppose. There was worry and grief in those surfaces. I liked that something so nonrepresentational could carry so much subliminal emotion in the arrangement of its contents. It was engaging.

I was impressed by the quality of work and thought throughout the gallery, but personal taste constrains what speaks to me. In so much of what was there I could feel the effort, time, and refinement that had gone into the production. It emanated from each object. At the same time, with some of it I could only get so far, could only break open a tidbit of the shell, could barely peak into the heart of it. But I suppose that’s the fun of art: in the trying to understand.

MFA Review

Toward the beginning of the semester, the MFA candidates held a reception for their recent works, a review exhibition, each occupying a section of Student Galleries South. The reception was full of people and it was difficult to really take in the art works as they were perhaps intended to be, with patience or an attentive eye. I’ve always found it difficult to really enjoy the art and usually view receptions as a social event where the goal is to interact more with people than with art. The front stage of the gallery is taken up by the audience, while the art tends to recede into the background.
 
There were, however, a few moments when the water parted and the stars aligned and I was able to sip on a beer beside a friend while together we perused the piece on the wall in front of us. But even so while this was happening there was an odd tension of not knowing whether what we were saying about Mahsan’s painting was right or not, whether we should continue to talk about this one piece or if we should move on to another. At what point should we consider the piece exhausted? Is art exhaustible? Such things as well as all other questions concerning the uncertainty of social engagement filled our minds. A few found their way to our lips and the conversation went on about “earthy tones” and “free expression” for a couple of comfortable minutes. The piece truly was beautiful in my opinion. What interested me most in her art was the hand of the artist. My personal concerns are in large part about the body, and so to see that come out in unique expression from an artist in the way of “style” always fascinates me. I want to see a unique balance between the artist and the surface, and I want to experience the interaction that happened in the creation process, to be able to feel what was on the artist’s mind as they changed what they saw in front of them.

In the previous room I’d seen Thom’s paintings. They showed something similar to Mahsan’s, being also abstract and full of expression. Most of the paint he used were swirls of black on white, though spots of color were dabbed here and there. Besides this there were color fields, more so window panes than blocks. The windows lacked the texture and dimension of the other areas of canvas. I call them window panes rather than windows because they were flat and had a lip around their edges, separating them from the rest of the painting as an area physically, the lip probably resulting from the use of masking tape. The paintings without the window panes would have perhaps been more interesting to me. I loved the gestures elsewhere, but the window panes seemed to be an attempt at color field painting, an experiment which came off as an unpleasant interruption without much function or necessity.
 
Overall the MFA Review impressed me. There were other artists involved as well, but one of the main things which stuck with me after the experience was the contrast between the works of these two. If it weren’t for the windowpanes, perhaps what was strong about Mahsan’s pieces would have been less striking. This bring to light the context of a piece or a body of work, not only in the world and art history, but also in the space it’s presented in.

Miss Representation

Newsom, Jennifer S, Regina K. Scully, Geralyn W. Dreyfous, Sarah J. Redlich, Jessica Congdon, Eric Holland, Svetlana Cvetko, Caroline Heldman, Condoleezza Rice, Dianne Feinstein, Dolores Huerta, Geena Davis, Gloria Steinem, Jackson Katz, Jane Fonda, Jean Kilbourne, Jennifer L. Pozner, Katie Couric, Lisa Ling, Meenakshi G. Durham, Margaret Cho, Martha M. Lauzen, Nancy Pelosi, Pat Mitchell, Rachel Maddow, and Rosario Dawson. Miss Representation. Sausalito, Calif.: Ro*co Films Educational, 2011.

Miss Representation is a documentary film which brings to light the way women are presented in the media by use of statistics, interviews, and critical examination of various media outlets. The film looks at the motives behind media representation and demonstrates how, following massive deregulations in the Reagan era, they became geared toward maintaining the economy and upholding existing power structures and established norms at the expense of representing actual reality to even a slight degree. In addition to this, the film shows the real effects which these limited portrayals have on the people who at this point have little choice in whether or not to consume media in one form or another. These effects range from mental anxiety concerning body image resulting self-abuse and shame, to the establishment of a standard perceived need for the regular use of beauty products. The film ends by making a call for action against the perpetrating media outlets.

Women Art Revolution

Hershman-Leeson, Lynn. W.a.r: !women Art Revolution. New York, NY: Zeitgeist Films, 2012.

Women Art Revolution is a documentary which follows the evolution of Feminist art through the 1970s. The documentary shows extensive interviews with a lot of the key players in the early feminist art movement, who, spurred in part by an atmosphere of civil unrest during and after the Vietnam war, each contributed to making radical changes in the art world. They recognized the inequalities in representation and saw how women were practically barred from art institutions. As a response they implanted their own DIY solutions, created alternative spaces in which to present their art, or used performance to bring to light the shortcomings of their society directly to their impromptu audience. 

The Art World According to Nathaniel

It’s difficult to extricate the art world from its current context as it is tied so intricately into the way things presently exist. Envisioning something new, proposing a different structure to the way art is made and consumed (though these ideas also fall within the staked out territory of the question), involves restructuring a lot of how we view the role of society in our lives and how we participate in it.

A simple way to start may be to list a few things I desire, what I think art should accomplish (and I do think that it should accomplish something, as in affect the world around it): Connection, participation, and growth.

Connection

I don’t think art should be exclusive. The way we approach establishing spaces, demarcating boundaries, within which a certain activity occurs, is in itself exclusive. I greatly value transparency and openness. Secluding art inside a gallery space automatically prohibits many from viewing it. It’s a container wherein certain values and norms can be upheld. It protects and maintains the cultural standards that have accrued through history around art.

To me, one of the rudimentary elements of human life is change, and to try to maintain standards is a futile task. There is, of course, a balance to be struck between change and permanence, but I think that our habit of demarcation and wall-building, good insofar as it protects our fragile bodies from the elements and the projectiles of open space, leans too heavily on the side of security at the expense of community, fluidity, and transparency. Art, to me, ought to be connected to the environment it exists within. I also think art ought to be for people. People exist in an environment which is constantly changing around them, whether that be on the micro-scale of the body or the macro-scale of the city, nation, or planet. Separating art within a timeless eternal white cube is to remove art from reality and create a fictional space which serves no function for people. These barriers must be recognized for what they are and modified accordingly.

Not only do the rigid, concrete walls which hold our established spaces in continence, they also rebuff anything foreign or unknown. The present art world maintains itself as an isolated body, not actively engaged with the “plebeian” world outside the gallery space. Its contents trickle down, so to speak, but only in distilled form. For the most part, this is a one-way communication, a monological dissertation intended to maintain the distinction of classes, even in supposedly democratic societies.

Participation

As the art world exists in disconnected space, it resists engagement with the culture. Participation in the art world is restricted to those who meet a set of prerequisites. The artist must generally be white, male, upper-middle class, educated to the level of a master’s degree, etc. Art which sells is that art which speaks to the privileged viewpoint, which doesn’t challenge the established norm. These norms are upheld by the exclusive spaces in which art is presented and its relegated status of commodity. As existing within a capitalist economy, art must cater to buyer and market. This contributes to the view that art has a specific and limited function: to be hung on a wall and passively observed. To consume art is to look at it. This precludes the possibility of active participation and limits what qualifies as art. Minimalism and abstraction pushed so far within the standard definition it became almost irrelevant to life. Art should not just engage a viewer, but should evoke something within them, should offer a counterpoint to the ubiquitous screen which pins people to their seats rather than stir them to active living, to inspire them to create or to affect their environment.

Growth

I want art to stimulate people, to make them aware that they are in a body which is a cell in a larger body, expanding infinitely. I want people to affect how and what art is made. Too often art is simply imposed. There is no conversation involved. I have immense admiration for someone like Rodin or Durer who makes truly beautiful, entrancing work, but such things are becoming less and less relevant. An isolated act in a world of so many people quickly meets a wall. Art can be beautiful and entrancing, but also inspiring, involving, and empowering. The viewer who only views only pushes us farther along the line toward ecological devastation. Change is needed, as enacted by people en masse. Toward this alternative end, art must invite participation and activity for the sake of collective growth. Art must not only instigate change, but must also be receptive to change according to the larger body.

I agree with much of what Suzi Gablik had to say in The Reenchantment of Art. The art world must don a new worldview and take on a new purpose if we, as artists, are to approach our work responsibly. Science has demonstrated that our behavior is leading us toward destruction. Art, on the other end of things, must demonstrate what effect our present behavior is having within an unrestricted context, not just on our isolated minds. It must connect us to one another, concretely in terms of space. We should create more fluid environments which invite instead of repel outside influence and let ideas move freely. We must be more actively engaged with our natural environment and invite the destruction of unnecessary walls. Our art-making and presentation should invite participation and interaction from others. Art should not push isolated viewpoints into the world, but should be receptive to the unique perspectives which lie outside the bounds of established conventions. These guidelines are intentionally vague – necessarily, for consistency with their content – in order to invite each person to interpret these words individually and carry them forward in their own particular way.

Regarding the Pain of Others

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Print.

Regarding the Pain of Others is a critique of the popular conception of photography as a more true representation of reality than other forms of art. Even in the cases of war photography, which she examines most in depth, what is captured in the image is taken by a photographer who has a specific intention, whether conscious or not. Also, what is contained in the photograph still requires interpretation when it meets the viewer’s eyes, regardless of how “objective” the image attempts to be. Sontag analyzes the psychology of the human mind, considering specifically how we are now able to experience the suffering of others so far removed from our daily experience. This creates a sort of fantasy about the very real lives of others and allows us to imagine possible realities far removed from anything we witness in our immediate experience. This diverse mental space is then manipulated by media outlets resulting in a greater degree of control by the limited sources of information. We see the worst of what humanity is capable of, but understand that it is far out of our own abilities to influence. Thus, within the modern mind, knowledge and impotence have come into an uncomfortable union.

Running Fence

Running Fence Christo's Project for Sonoma and Marin Counties, State of California 1972-1976. Dir. Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin, Christo, and Jean-Claude. Maysles Films Inc., 1977. DVD.

Running Fence is a documentary following the process of Cristo and Jeanne-Claude’s land art piece of the same name. The documentary shows the elaborate process of negotiation, collaboration, and building which the piece required in order to be pulled off. Even with all of the planning already done beforehand, the pair encounter legal difficulties and must do some maneuvering in order to accomplish the project which they had already begun. Most interesting about the work itself is perhaps the collaboration it requires, not only with volunteers to help with the construction of the fabric fence, but also with the people whose land the fence runs through. It brings art into their lives in a very tangible way, such that they must themselves examine what art is and what its function is in their lives, which is part of Cristo and Jeanne-Claude’s intended purpose with the piece itself.