"Seven Days in the Art World," and One Day at the Hess Art Museum

There is no date.  Some people say it was the 1860’s.  It could have started in the Renaissance.  Perhaps it began in Venice, or maybe later, in Paris or New York.

Art got loose.  It found a hole in the fence.  And it wouldn’t -- anymore -- be judged by how gently the artist draped painted lace falling over a hand, or the shadow thrown past a vase, or those columns receding in perfect order, diminishing to a horizon line.

And as everybody began to chase after Art, and put it back in some kind of order, two things happened.  A bad thing, but also a couple of good things.

The bad thing is that auction houses, blue-chip galleries, and art fairs are now the arbiters of artistic “worth.”  Art is only valuable when someone buys it. And what makes people pay more for one painting rather than another?  The artist’s text: the lengthy bio, the MFA, the awards, the “buzz.”  The written lists and hype now trump the actual image (see posts here from January 20, 25, 31 and February 8, 2012). 

So, continuing with that bad thing that happened: I just read Seven Days in the Art World.  It isn’t new -- Sarah Thornton’s research was done in 2004-2007 -- but she was allowed into all the back rooms the rest of us can’t find. And I suspect that not very much has changed since the book was published. Here are a few examples of what Thornton found.  As she sits in on a critique at CalArts, Thornton says the students say that using words like “creative,” “beautiful,” “sublime,” and “masterpiece” are all “embarrassing,” so these terms are not allowed.  No “value judgments,” they say (65).  But if not here, where?

Thronton interviews the finalists for the Turner Prize of 2006, a very small world, with overlapping text. One artist, Tomma Abts, who eventually won the prize, tells Thornton during the process that “I have been part of the London art world for eleven years …. There are 4 artists nominated [for this prize] every year. I always know at least one.”  Both Abts and another of the four finalists, Phil Collins [not the drummer], were awarded the Paul Hamlyn Award, both showed at the Istanbul Biennial and both showed at the Wong Gallery in New York.  The Turner Prize is such a major award that betting shops give odds on the winner.  And yet, it seems the choices, year after year, don’t range very far afield.  Thornton also writes a chapter on her visit to the offices of Artforum, where she talks to the editors and to one of their contributors, Tom McDonough, an Associate professor of Art History at the State University of New York at Binghamton.  McDonough says that critics “reward work not because they think it is the most important work being made … but because it’s a little corner that they can own” (170).  It’s not even really necessary to comment on this, is it?

Thornton watches the preparation for a 2004 auction at Christie’s and then sits in on the auction.  The interviews in her auction-house chapter seem more moderated,  the stated opinions more circumspect, but, still, the manipulation of the art market becomes clear.  One of the people Thornton talks to, Josh Baer, says that “without auctions, the art world wouldn’t have the financial value it has.  They give the illusion of liquidity …. If people thought they couldn’t resell … many wouldn’t buy a thing” (26-7).  The sales placed in an order according to what will sell and raise the level of excitement, as a staff member confirms: “we lay out a sale commercially. If we laid it out art-historically -- chronologically or thematically – it would probably bomb.  The first ten lots have to go well …. At around Lot Twelve or Thirteen, we’d better be entering a serious price point” (27).   The auction seems more and more orchestrated, the crowd worked in hushed tones.  An art consultant says that “People want to become part of the lifestyle …. To collect contemporary art is to buy a ticket into a club of passionate people who meet in extraordinary places, look at art together, and go to parties. It is extremely appealing” (34).  Thornton ends the chapter with this discouraging observation: “Even if the people here tonight were initially lured into the auction room by a love of art, they find themselves participating in a spectacle where the dollar value of the work has virtually slaughtered its other meanings” (39).

So that’s the bad thing.  So, now that art cannot be judged by chiaroscuro, or perspective, or established models of how to paint velvet, or a chalice, or the perfectly-proportioned body, is there a good thing that comes of this freedom?

A good thing: freedom.  Robert Motherwell said that the Abstract Expressionist artists thought that, since no-one cared what they did, they could do -- anything. 

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? How do you not care, as an artist, that the art world is so insane, and that no-one cares what you do?  

“Work engenders work,” Georgia O’Keeffe said, so that’s one good thing an artist can do: work, work in freedom.  Work, and not care how many or how few people see it or buy it. You don’t want your art to be like the art in the student critique, where no-one can say that it is “beautiful.”  You don’t want a critic to seize upon your work and award you a prize just because she has backed you into ”her” corner.  You don’t want your art to be a piece of a box-tour “lifestyle,” just another liquid possession.  Just keep working.  Maybe learn to play the accordion or knit or box, too.  

Another good thing that can come of this wide-open field is the ability to see art in open studio weekends, in cafés, in galleries, and … wineries.  We went to Napa and, up a residential and then increasingly twisty and fragrant road, we found the Hess Winery and Museum.  And they are not kidding.  It is a small, perfect museum.

We were directed up a stairway, carefully tucked with lots of glass and steel inside a massive stone building.  The art on display, we were told, is about 20% of Hess’s collection; he has other museums in South Africa and Argentina and another is planned for Australia.  We stopped along some drawings and paintings by John Connell, an artist born in 1940 who lives in Maine. The painting below, “For Yr Little Autumnals,” is from 1987. It isn’t actually in the gallery, but it is typical of the painted work by Connell:

Connell blends words, sometimes the title of the piece, and roughly-inked and painted figures or abstract shapes, on paper. The paintings and drawings were filled with an apparently spontaneous energy. My favorite title was “Pumpkin with Breath Knocked Out.”  Connell says the idea of “Wabi” is “my aesthetics, sensibility and inclination” and he quotes Jen No Rikyu: “Beauty concealed under a wretched surface” (Hess Art Collection catalogue, p. 82).  Alongside some of the drawings were small statues of Buddhas, like these, taking on the character of sandcastles:

And then there are more works lining the landing and we turn into the first room and there are huge paintings by Theodoros Stamos and Robert Motherwell, and then, continuing on, Frank Stella, Per Kirkeby, Anselm Kiefer.  We are already overwhelmed.  Among the Motherwells is one I had never seen. It looks like a combination of a Rothko and a Mondrian, with a purple stripe left, red blocks of color upper and lower right, and grey and black stripes in between.  Totally uncharacteristic of Motherwell … but then, next to it, as if for reassurance, is an “Elegy to the Spanish Republic, No. 160.”  Then we came to a room filled with 3 types of works by Andy Goldsworthy: “Surface Tension” from 1993, “Earth and Snow” from 1995, and “Rock Pools” from 2000.  I don’t expect to see Goldsworthy indoors.  This is one of the best installations I have ever seen, by anybody, anywhere. Here is a photograph by Paul Kirchner from the catalogue (spread over 2 pages):

The rocks on the floor are real rocks that have been placed in a kiln and transformed.  The hanging at the end of the room is “horse chestnut leaf stalks connected with hawthorn thorns” and it’s an amazing, delicate structure.  But then we arrive at a wall of Francis Bacon paintings: a triptych, a “Study of Pope Innocent X (1965)” and maybe the most perfect Bacon ever,  “Study for a Man Talking” from 1981:

The forms behind the figure are crisp, the shredded receipts at the man’s feet sufficiently mysterious, the suit blocked loosely in, with all the wear and tear of life etched into it.  The face is coming forward and receding, moving and blurred, flushed and graying.  And the catalogue gives us a single quote from bacon: “One wants to do this thing of just walking along the edge of the precipice.”  And the painting does just that.

There is also, by the way, a roomful of Rauschenbergs, really fine, and some work by George Baselitz.  There was another discovery for us, Frank Gertsch, a Swiss artist, both figurative and abstract, wood cuts and a piece made with “mineral pigment with Damar varnish used as a binder.”

I tried to find out how it was that Donald Hess found all these works of art, because each work represents its maker accurately and each one astonishes.  I never did find it.  Hess is to be congratulated for throwing the doors open. 

Art got loose. And these two good things -- making art, no matter what, and seeing art, no matter where – can, if we let them, more than balance out the bad things in the current art-as-commodity world.

Image vs. Text, Part Three: In Which We Try to Establish Some Criteria for Abstract Art

I have been looking at the “image vs. text” question (see posts from January 20, 25, 31 and February 8). I find that what is lying just underneath what I have said, is this: “text” over-determines matters in the art world. And it is empowered in this way because we do not trust “image” without its accompanying (nemesis) “text.” When we see the image -- alone -- we have no way to determine whether or not we should care about the painting in front of us.  Without text, we are down to the old joke, “I know what I like.”  Without text, it’s all up for grabs. 

Text shows us the way to paint, where to attend art school, who our mentors and influences should be, who ought to be shown and sold in a premiere gallery, what to acquire for our museums, what interests collectors, even what we might be saying when we are in front of a work of art.  Without text, it’s all totally arbitrary, floating, unfixed.  Text gives us authority and a fixed, mostly scrutable art world.  But what nobody says, out loud, is that text is flawed. The world, as the term ukiyo-e would tell you, is floating. Consider the case of the art forgery.

There are four ways to authenticate a painting: provenance; scientific testing of the materials; fitting the work in question into the artist’s oeuvre; and “a connoisseur’s eye” (Patricia Cohen, “An Art Trove’s Authenticity Goes to Court,” The New York Times online, February 12, 2012).  A court case has surfaced over paintings “by” Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Jackson Pollock, Giacometti, and Barnett Newman.  Over a period of ten years, a Long Island dealer brought first one, then two, then more paintings to the Knoedler Gallery; none of the art came with the usual papers, but that didn’t seem to matter. Over time, the gallery and the Daedalus Foundation and the National Gallery of Art (and even the artist Frank Stella) examined the lot and pronounced them to be genuine. But, soon, the Motherwell pieces, titled as if they belonged to his “Elegy to the Spanish Civil War” series, came under scrutiny for problems with “signatures and styles,” and the Daedalus Foundation shifted its opinion: these were now deemed forgeries, and all the paintings acquired from the little-known Long Island dealer were called into question. The Knoedler Gallery has closed; they say the closure is not due to this case (see the article and photographs: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/22/arts/design/20120222-fake-paintings-compared.html?ref=arts ).  As paintings become more and more valuable -- Christie’s has recently, across three separate auctions, sold three Motherwell Elegies, at prices ranging from $2,144,000 to $2,919,500 – artists, auctioneers and galleries find that the desire to forge works and the resulting need to authenticate has created a little fear and trembling. The Pollock-Krasner Authentication Board dissolved in 1996. The Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, faced with lawsuits, is no longer accepting new pieces to either include in the catalogue raisonné or to (literally) stamp with DENIED.

But the four methods of authentication all deal with text and not image. The provenance is all text: first, the labels from the back of the canvas indicate the date the work was painted, or where it was exhibited, and then the papers, testifying to the original acquisition, past ownership and sale prices, previous dealers’ evaluations, perhaps a note from the artist or the biographer.  None of the pieces at Knoedler came with any of this.  The collector had acquired the pieces directly from the artist, it was said, or from the artist’s own dealer; they had been in storage.  It was said.  When the pigments were tested, the researchers found paints not yet in use at the time the work was created. Not a problem, the dealer said, the artists were given the newest sample pigments to try; it happens all the time (Cohen). More text. Then, the third method of authority, fitting the work into the artist’s other series: simple. Works are uneven, but each series, each new piece, will share characteristics with previous or concurrent work; the titles would take care of any doubts.  And, last, the connoisseur’s eye; we now know what happened there -- every eye was fooled.  

It was Plato who said that if we knew what we were looking for, we would be all the more able to see it [“Suppose that a short-sighted person had been asked by some one to read small letters from a distance; and it occurred to some one else that they might be found in another place which was larger and in which the letters were larger --if they were the same and he could read the larger letters first, and then proceed to the lesser --this would have been thought a rare piece of good fortune” The Republic, Book I].  If we are looking for and expect authenticity, because authenticity excites us, we will find it.

If, on the other hand, a painting called “Untitled, 1950: After Jackson Pollock” appeared at your local coffeeshop, hanging between the comfy chairs, looking just like a Pollock, but the artist’s name was, say, mine, and the sale price was listed as $650, there wouldn’t be a problem.  If you liked it, and you had the $650, fine. But if you were paying $300,000, as the gallery did, or $3,000,000, as a collector did, for an “undiscovered” Pollock with the simpler name “Untitled, 1950,” then you’d want the Jackson Pollock signature -- and the provenance. You’d want the text.  And mine wouldn’t have any text … in fact, worse, it would be trading on Pollock’s lifetime of text.

And everyone in the art world trades on text, because text creates “value” for a painting.  It is the only way we know to create value. It is also the only way to create the canon of artworks, the chosen few that we love, and teach, and discuss, and visit in museums. There are no objective criteria that guarantee that the beauty, or ugliness, or power, or authenticity that we see in a painting is … “real.” 

But it is still beauty, or ugliness, or power, or authenticity, isn’t it, if we see it?  I have walked through painting studios at a college and seen a fabulous thing, in progress, by a twenty-year-old; but she doesn’t have any text yet.  Intrinsically, the work is beautiful, to me; I like the application of the paint, the subject matter, or lack of it, the figure-ground blending … but extrinsically, outside of itself, out there in the world, the painting has no value at all.  If she ships it through the mail to her great-aunt in Brixton, she can only insure it for the value of the materials.

Outside of the monetary value, is there any other reason to go straight to text? I could argue that when I am standing in front of Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, I like to think of her walking from 27, Rue de Fleurus to Picasso’s studio in the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre.  I like to think of the painter and his subject speaking in broken French over eighty or ninety sittings, and wonder about the influence they exerted on one another during the time it took to make the painting. I would like to see how many faces of Stein there were before Picasso crossed out the last one and replaced it with a mask.  Part of a painting’s value is its history, the fact that the text confirms that this is, in fact, the painting based on an Ingres, the painting where we can just see Picasso’s brushstrokes at the edges of the chair, this is the painting that was wrapped up in Paris and driven by Stein and Toklas over to the Ain for safe-keeping during World War II.  Text can ensure a kind of romance.

But.  Is there any way, at all, that we can establish a way of SEEING that is based on ... SEEING? We can try. Look at the two paintings below. One was painted by someone with an acre of text, the other with, perhaps, a window-box full of text.  Draw up some criteria to judge them.  See which one engages you, but be prepared to explain why. On my next visit, I will talk about some ideas of my own for discussing image and tell you which painting … is which.

What's It All About, Alfie?: On Abstract Art and the Question of Meaning

Here are two paintings from the year 1824. The first is a "Seascape Study with Rain Clouds" by Constable:

This certainly could be an abstract work by a contemporary artist, hanging somewhere in Chelsea. The second is by Caspar David Friedrich, "The Sea of Ice":

Again, if I had not yet seen this, and someone told me that this painting was in a gallery in London, just completed by a young German artist, I would be impressed.  Both of these works are actually likely to have been studies: of light, of form, of the layering of paint. They contribute to each artist's practice, and yet neither is really characteristic of the major works of these men.  I find them moving. And yet, I have friends who belittle abstract art, who, when they are faced with a work by one of our contemporaries that seems as "abstract" as these, laugh, or think of them as "studies" for something more significant, as works with no meaning, as mere decoration. I have seen a sweet little old man point his umbrella towards the center of a huge De Kooning and say "There, there's the lighthouse. And the rock is just over here."


I remember an interview with Robert Motherwell on PBS, where he said, at one point, very slowly and forcefully, that "If the abstraction, the violence, the humanity was valid in Abstract Expressionism, then it cut out the ground from every other kind of painting."  And we look at a Motherwell, "Elegy to the Spanish Republic XXXIV" from 1953-4, measuring 80 x 100" (think here of scale):

When you have been in a roomful of Motherwells,  it is impossible to deny their "violence" and "humanity." They are not decorative. They are meant to evoke feeling. I knew someone who worked for Motherwell once, who, fresh out of art school and trying to become a famous painter, asked his new teacher a series of questions. And Motherwell, a very articulate and learned person (Stanford, Harvard, Columbia), fed up, said, finally "Don't talk to me about theory.  *#%$  theory. Go home and astound me."  Abstract art may provoke theory, but it isn't made out of it.

It can be easy to walk right past a painting and not even try to take it in: it's too hard, it's too late in the day, it seems a silly exercise, people say. And yet, and yet. Take Mark Rothko.  Here is a work of his from 1954, called "Homage to Matisse" (who had just died that year):

Matisse is right there. Rothko said that "there is no such thing as a good painting about nothing."  He meant, he said, to express "tragedy, ecstasy, doom ..." through his work.  Rothko's work does not reproduce well. It must be seen. He created it through transluscent layering, and, when you stand in front of one, you can see the colors peeking through, the way memories appear, unbidden. The paintings reverberate in real life. There is a DVD called "Rothko's Rooms" which is a pretty powerful introduction to his complexities as a person and to the aims of his art.  Kirk Varnedoe said that "Rothko may make us think anew about the evening sky, but having once thought about the evening sky, we think about Rothko differently."

Josef Albers created a series of works over years, working through the way that colors could show us the way to see.  Art and science were one, for him, and he worked through endless combinations of colors, sometimes with only faintly observable changes from one to the next, all in the same shapes, squares nested inside of squares.  Below is "Study for Homage to the Square" from 1970:

 

Even in digital reproduction, we can see something happening here.  As I thought through my list of abstract painters, I had no luck finding anyone who painted in the void. I can't think of anyone who didn't have recourse to feeling or meaning as the paintings developed. Not anyone. Albers may have said it best: "Learn to see and to feel life; that is, cultivate imagination, because there are still marvels in the world, because life is a mystery and always will be. But be aware of it."

And so I leave you with one last view, of a Northern California winter sky:

Francis Bacon said, "You know in my case, all painting ... is an accident."

"I foresee it and and yet I rarely carry it out as I foresee it .... It becomes a selective process what part of the accident one chooses to preserve"  (quoted in Theories of Modern Art, Chipp & Selz, p. 621).  True! I once saw a film of Robert Motherwell and an assistant readying a plate for a run through the press.  Motherwell dripped a few last bits of paint onto the plate, looked at it, and had the assistant rub off some  -- but not all -- of the excess. It's all about the choices we make as artists and viewers.

One summer in Paris, in 1994,  we saw Joan Mitchell's paintings at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume. It struck me, first, that they were so large that she would need a ladder. Or several. And, second, that she had made no allowance for a mistake. Each brushstroke was accounted for.  Here is a close-up of the kind of work I mean, "Two Pianos," from 1980, which is, in full, 110 x 142":

We once lived near a talented and inventive glassblower named Gary Zack.  One of his "mistakes," he thought, was a wide shallow bowl, rimmed with colors, with a small abstract glass form clinging from the center to the edge; it was not perfect because, as he was finishing it, it came out of symmetry and pulled slightly to one side. He rejected it; we loved it, and brought it home, and kept it through two moves, but the movers broke it during the third move.  The accident was beautiful to us.

So, as I am re-working paintings, I find I make mistakes that I wipe away, and then I make a few that I keep. Here is one of the keepers, a tiny detail, but it adds a fluid line in a rigid spot: