MY IDEOLOGICAL MOOD

To Matthew Jackson who knows all the books Ilya Kabakov illustrated.

Kasimir Malevich’s Black Square came from the set of Russian Futurist Opera Victory Over the Sun that premiered in 1913 at the Luna Park in St Petersburg. This moment identifies a theatrical narrativity at the heart of modernism. The primary meaning of this gesture is the announcement of a new totalizing social project and a projection of the same into the realm of the social reality with all its possible outcomes. This moment of unknowing and potentiality of new lifeworlds inside the social is synonymous with the demonic behind romanticism of every Hegelian social gestum—namely the conception of the aesthetic state. The feeling that accompanies this kind of moment is the feeling one must aim to invoke within artworks.

The anxiety that we feel today comes from a dark lack- a nervousness that bubbles on the surface of things that is almost atmospheric¹. This anxiety comes primarily from the lack of totalizing social project. The discomfort is subtle but ever present. It is also subconscious since capitalism does not have knowledge of proposals for working socialism or a historical memory of what that means. Another anxiety comes from the chiastic tension between what saturates the capitalist visual field (what we see) and what we do not see and know is happening—namely outcomes of western mastery of death: torture, rape, murder and the rubbling of landscapes by blowing up of buildings, aerial bombardment and ground invasion.

The lack of sight or the presence of filtered vision presents the affect of the falsely enlightened, a borderline melancholy that keeps the symptoms of depression under control with engagements: getting on a train to go to work in spite of anything that might happen and after everything that might happen². All energy is invested in repelling the memory of childhood naiveté that imagines the extraordinary and denying the somatic reality of this symptom. The real and mediation of the real have no effect on this kind of body. I have realized that appropriating images from the culture industries does not do the work of politics. The gestures of slapping a couple of TV moments together into an ironically clever comment on pop culture as well as sole imitation of sleek production techniques is highly suspicious. Even the images of real violence do not inspire anything but closing of the eyes. I do not believe these kinds of gestures can be political because the subversiveness of these gestures is suspect due to their tendency for endless consumption, regurgitation and reingestion.

I propose the gesture of critical regression through false enlightenment by the means of reenchantment. I propose the futurist minor gesture that will inhabit the space between modernism and post modernism--of anti-spectacular unfulfilled futures (future interiors). Theatricality of modernism can be transposed from its own time where it could be understood as a kind of touchy-feely globalism into the present where it will point to a lurking catastrophe. Only by using history as an elastic topological object—namely employing spatial narrative to embody the failures of twentieth century can we begin to advance toward the political. The approach of this kind of modeling is to produce truth through hallucinatory aspects of media without reducing the same to surface effects of an interface³. This kind of work must use the material form to create separate worlds with separate rules of gravity where politics are enacted to produce a kind of mental theatre. This work creates anti-spectacular hermetic worlds that describe archaeologies of futures that did not happen. Enter the materialized spatial event.

1. Sloterdijk, Peter: Spheren III

2. Slpterdijk, Peter: Critique of Cynical Reason

3. Kittler, Friedrich: Gramophone, Film, Typewriter

Creation museum.

This is an excellent tour through the new creation museum in Kentucky. It just proves all of the "back-woods" stereotypes of the blue grass state are terribly-terribly right on.

Check out the museum here.

Break Out The Vaccine

It's time to get this blog running again.

Bird Flu Strikes Again

BIRD FLU RISES FROM THE ASHES!

FORMFIT 2006

End of the year exhibition
Studio Art, Film, Video, and Photography UIC MFA students:

Basma Al-Sharif, Brandon Alvendia, Shannon Benine, Isak Berbic, Wendy Jo Carlton, Emiliano Cerna-Rios, Derek Chan, Vanessa Churchill, Samuel Field, Kenyatta Forbes, Charlie Fornia, Trevor Gainor, Alex Grant, Rick Gribenas, Hugo Michel Hernandez, Anneka Herre, Dennis Hodges, Marianne Hurum, Ika Knezevic, Kirsten Leenaars, Marie Martino, Harold Mendez, Michael Robinson, Sze Lin Pang, Tzu Ping Shie, Selina Trepp, Faith Veenstra, Anna von Ribbeck, Stina Wirfelt, Justin Witte

May 5th, 2006 7-10pm

The Great Space
5th floor, CUPPA Hall
412 South Peoria Street

d.j. and refreshments will be provided

The final draft (straw)

In one of my initial posts Stevie attached a question: what do I really like? I will take this entry to explore the subjects of what I like. I like Bruckner's 9th, Nielsen's 5th, Alexander Mainz french horn engineering, loyalty in people, dirt wrecking, Sokolov, Bulgakov, Quine, Marko Lulic, the Adriatic sea, my grandmother's inability to cut trees, Boris, Pelican, Isis, Mastadon, polar wolves, Melvins, Ilya Kabakov, Vuillard, Buren...but most of all I hold dear: precision. I appreciate when people say things they mean in a precise and defined way, honestly, with imagination and skill. I also admire complex expression and I enjoy unfolding it when the content demands it. I will give my time to any art or written work because I hope to encounter corollary practices in all disciplines. It is for these reasons that my final blog will address the listed entry as an antonymic praxis. The entry is red and my comments are yellow.

I love pictures of kids playing.

Someone(Jilian?) posted:

Monday, April 17, 2006

just thinking...

okay, so members of the class seem to think referencing theorists when speaking of their work is what will make them (who: theorists or members of class, anyhow: theorists are relevant and members of class reference them in hope to make points clearer if the points were made less clear by this act you should have asked for analogical clarification) relevant. this to me is nonsense (back at you). What does your work tell about yourself (Does what you write tell about you?)? what makes your work different/unique/revolutionary?(I am not pretentious enough to claim that for any practice today) is your work formally/aesthetically appealing (my work reeeeeeealy pretty)? a couple of class sessions ago a student(name) in the course said something along the lines of, "i just didnt find any of the works within the magazine very interesting or good"(as Mr. Robinson pointed out we never really discussed that and again if you wanted to discuss it you should have done it by speaking up), what does that mean. so aesthetically they were not your type of work( example?)? that means jack shit to the rest of the world - give us something else...why are they uninteresting to you? that very same day (date, or magazine presented) another student(name) in the class mentioned that the artists within the texts didnt seem to have a philosophical or theoretical basis in their ideas and therefore their work (artist or theorist) was garbage - more or less. but the problem is - who said that (what?) was the case. people in this class (who?) read one article (from now on every time you do not specify I am going to write: S?) in one magazine(S?) or one interview(S?) in one magazine and think they (S?) know everything(S?). rooting yourself (S?) in theory adn philosphy is part of higher education reading requirements and discourse for a reason - and to me that reason is to expand your mind, challenge yourself to understand something denser, think about something differently, and hopefully in the process help shape the way you think(I agree ) . not mirror the way you think, not to allow you to survive off anothers words (again who is this: you?), but by taking what you've learned and formulating your own opinions your own theories to live by. so, newsflash everybody: originality is much more interesting than listening to someone play the name game - to the student(who is this directed at?) in class that siad that the artists in teh magazine didnt know shit - that they werent reading the writings of intellectually challengin thinkers (who said that?)- How do you(S?) know that? just because they didnt reference their educational background in an interview asking about a specific exhibition or expanse of work doesnt say that they are unknowledgable. frankly, if i was to read an artists statement or interview that is fully loaded with quotations from what they have read in their past i would be impressed for a moment and then i would laugh...because frankly that doesnt make you or your work important/interesting, ive read those people(S?) too as have many others(S?). sorry, i realize im raving but im just frustrated i guess - sure art criticism (the whole point of the course is great and necessary) but let me hear just once what is enjoyed by the class, who is an 'interesting' artist, what theories you have developed based on your educational background (again you might have provoked this conversation by speaking). and most of all i just wish i could hear someone in the course speak from their heart about what they love in art (this course is not about the love of art-- it is about the lack of criticality within the field of art criticism), in an artist...where's the poetry that should come from living your dream and striving to make it in something that to you(S?) holds all the importance in the world. i guess as an artist im a simpleton and a romantic(def 1:Imaginative but impractical; visionary: romantic notions. def 2: Not based on fact; imaginary or fictitious. Dear poster whoever you are and if you are Jilian as Stevie wrote then this is addressed to you,
I would have to go with def 2 for you. I know the names of everyone in this class because I wrote them down when they were introducing themselves. I do not think that you should write if you do not plan to devote some time to think about it a bit more. This us-and-them-ism is quite boring. Actually your writing is quite boring as well. Maybe you could show some trace of your own original, different, revolutionary thinking since these are the qualifiers of your worldview, or maybe give some, any evidence that you were actually in class when discussion took place by mentioning one name, one title or one date. Specificity is important for both artwork and writing. I do not mean to be ironic, I mean this in the most sincere way possible; maybe you should read up a bit) - shoot me.

---on another note...i couldnt help but watch the 'squid and the whale' and think about the son in reference to this course: a young boy who learns to admire his pretentious, ill-mannered, and actually ill-informed father just to try and sound smart and elitest --- it doesnt work out (who is this pointing at?).

i did not mean to avoid confrontation by not naming names but in all sincerity, i dont know your names. (how about signing your post then?)

I have not heard these (what you listed) concerns in class. Verbalizing them would have alleviated some of your frustration. I am disappointed that you haven't engaged with the rest of the class and now that the class is over, your entry is pointless as well as mine. I just hope that you know that I feel you short changed us by not participating.
Sincerely,

Falcon (IKA)


and done.

FINAL CLASS ASSIGNMENT

Questions.

Michael Robinson wrote:

1) In his “Critical Reflections” article for Artforum, Boris Groys writes that artists “protect themselves against theoretical commentary in the hopes that a naked work of art will be more seductive than one dressed in a text.” How do people feel about this assertion? I would argue that I see a lot of artists striving to do the opposite: protect their work with grounding in specific texts. Agree/disagree?

In order to answer my distinguished colleague’s excellent question I will use two examples within contemporary art. First I will explain how the work of Matthew Ritchie is an example of an artist attempting to add critical weight to his work by grounding it in text. Second I will point out how the popularity of what is often dismissed as “idiosyncratic personal narratives” in work is the result of a large group of artists reacting against their MFA educations that promote that type of grounding.

Matthew Ritchie creates paintings, sculptures and installations whose patterns and structures are based on M theory. M theory you ask? That sounds smart. Oh it is, two letters smarter the K theory. According to Wikipedia, “M-theory (sometimes also called U-theory and occasionally MU-theory) is a theory of physics, which is believed to incorporate and generalize the various superstring theories.” Don’t ask me to explain it, but don’t ask Ritchie either. Ritchie Admits gaining most of his fundamental knowledge of string theory from abandoned textbooks that he found in the apartment building he used to manage in Brooklyn. However a few random textbooks are enough to discover a hand full of cool looking diagrams or illustrations of fractals. Taking these images and throwing in some good ol’ mythology and chance Ritchie makes intricately laced work that seems to percolate with knowledge and gravitas, or in this case stringytas. But really the work is nothing more than an extremely elaborate variation on those diagrams and illustrations that caught his eye in Brooklyn. That is not to say they aren’t beautiful. Beyond being beautiful the connection to quantum physics that his work purports to have helps to remove it from pure aesthetics. It adds a weight to him and his work that helps to separate him from other artists. “ Mathew Ritchie? Oh yeah he’s one of those smart artists not just some hack who’s good at mixing warm and cool colors. I mean his work is really about something”. But is it? And why should it matter if Ritchie only uses his Jedi Quantum powers to come up with imagery?

The increasing herds of artists being corralled through our country’s various MFA programs are taken as a sign of the professionalisation of the artist. Often this professionalisation is talked about in terms of art students adapting their practices in order to be successful within the commercial market. It is however also causing artists to adapt to the academic market. As there are more and more willing MFA students there are more universities willing to educate, and in many cases profit from them. But as these universities expand their arts programs they also expect that those programs adapt themselves to the existing academic framework of the university. Studio work becomes research, and your artwork becomes your thesis. Discussions morph into “panel” discussions. Let’s be honest research on why red looks good next to green does not really fly. And a thesis on why texture is cool does not really catch a dean’s eye. So artists begin to figure out how their work could be discussed in this new environment. Some of them find that their work does fit quite well, others are able to develop an academic language in which to talk about their work, while some may just throw on the coat of a given idea or approach in order to navigate the system. This academic professionalisation is not only occurring within the universities but with most grant-giving organizations. With increasingly less governmental support for the arts the few remaining granting bodies have to choose from a larger artistic population. How should they decide? How can you choose the best from so many diverse artists? “Well hey look at this, this guy makes junk about String theory. That sounds worthwhile.” Like I mentioned earlier some artists do make work that actually deals with ideas and theories that are at home within the academic arena however many artists like Ritchie just find a way to package their work that way.

On the other side of the spectrum are artists like Claire Rojas or Amy Cutler who are making extremely pretty work that claims to offer nothing more than personal narrative. These artists like so many others currently working seem to be making work that directly opposes academic professionalisation. The growth in quasi naive art making is understandable. It is painful to hear artists struggle to place their work in academically valid contexts. It is even more painful to try and do it yourself. Watercolors of women with pianos strapped to their backs or plaid shirted men hunting tigers are on the other hand not painful to look at. The narrative elements seem to suggest some grander purpose than pure decoration, but one that can’t really be known or understood so it doesn’t really have to be explained or worried about. These artists just use the narrative as a frame work for image making, just as Ritchie uses the universe as a structure for image making.

In the end I agree with Jonathon when he explains that there are artists who use text as a crutch and those who use nakedness as a crutch. (A naked crutch?) But what is the third way? On her blog Selina Trepp, to refer to yet another classmate, talks about the importance of balancing concept with intuition in the making of work. I agree completely. The best work I see is not immediately explainable or weighted down by a specific theory or idea, nor is it simplistic and pointless. The kicker is that it is difficult to get to that space, and in the process of trying to reach that ideal of art making an artist can expect to make work that could fall into either category.

Questions

For everyone:
Should we take Rosen's article as a diagnostic for a kind of audience we expect to see and purchase our work? Should we consciously cater to their psyche? How are we to interpret this article in regards to our practice? Are the bourgeois who can afford therapy, cable, parent coaching etc. our only public? Historically both criticism and art are petit-bourgeois and bourgeois practices. Are we overpraised americans as well? If yes, how?

We are Family

This blog entry is dedicated to Saul Thomas, Anthropology PhD student currently doing his field work in China.

I was sitting in the kitchen today with my housemate Andrew and talking with him about "The Overpraised American." After several attempts to start my blog entry, I was banging my head against the table repeatedly, but thinking, there is something very familiar about this article. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The symptoms of this strangeness include pop sociological superficiality, grand generalizations on the state of the collective American psyche, and the overriding air of moralizing without any suggestions of how these problems can be fixed.

And then we googled: turns out that this funkiness comes from the fact that Christine Rosen is a member of the preeminant neoconservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, which has supplied a great many staffers and position papers to the Bush administration in its attempt to shape public policy. Maybe the information about the publics we are encountering should not come from such an unreliable source as Christine Rosen. I cannot pretend to understand what this essay has to say beyond superficial praxis and inventory that deals with the problems that a certain class of people encounter everyday. Sure, entertainment and the culture industries cross class boundaries in ways that surpass what one might call the ritualization of visuality into pathologies that result from “passive personalized entertainment.” I think it is clear that we are no longer in the beginning stages of pathologies resulting from entertainment, as this article seems to assume. We are now at the point of nearly 30 years since Lasch’s book, and to merely update it is anachronistic. In her use of vernacular riffs as praxis, Rosen seems to treat this problem in the same light that one might treat something obscure and trivial. Her lack of serious engagement with the experience of the real present is what Annette Lavers calls “the opposite of good writing, not necessarily bad writing, perhaps just writing.” Benjamin Buchloh once wrote, "One of the preconditions of the successful operation of the current discourse of institutional and economic power is thus: that it be able to sever all links with the reality principle of history [i.e., history as structured by class domination], and that meaning and history be constructed according to the topical needs of the moment. And today, under prevailing conditions of cultural anomie and amnesia, traditionalist (not to say reactionary) definitions of cultural production can be asserted all the more readily since all contradictory evidence can be repressed." Apparently for Rosen, social inequality does not exist, just an ambiguous, unified force that exerts pressure on all, but especially on members of her own class. And let’s not forget that religion does not possess a monopoly on moral discourse; the moral stance that Rosen’s employers see as deriving from religious tradition is more likely to exist within an affirmation of atheism, according to Slavoj Zizek in his lecture “The Ignorance of Chicken: Who Believes What Today” at the U of C last Wednesday. Another point Zizek made was that we need to perform rigorous theoretical analysis of the present if we are to advance in our understanding. Sure, the influence of the entertainment industry is not likely to disappear, but what is Rosen doing other than collecting a paycheck? The whole article reinstalls a moralizing, patriarchal, right-wing version of familial normativity, in a stay-at-home-with-your-kids, go-to-church, and be-a-good-woman-by-being-a-good-mother kind of way. Given her professional profile, that seems to be the only “solution,” since she offers no other in the article. The Bush adminstration's moral apparatchiks would eat it up.

About the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the think tank that cuts Christine Rosen a check every month or so:

“The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) was established in 1976 to clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues. Its program includes research, writing, publication, and conferences.

EPPC affirms the political relevance of the great Western ethical imperatives--respect for the dignity of every person, individual freedom and responsibility, justice, the rule of law, and limited government. It maintains that moral reasoning is an essential complement to empirical calculation in the shaping of public policy.

Although these convictions alone do not make EPPC unique, certain aspects of our approach set us apart from other public policy organizations.

First, we deal openly and explicitly with religiously based moral values in addressing contemporary issues. We work to clarify the ways in which principles shape the choices that political leaders must make in our democracy.

Second, we analyze the moral reasoning and public policy positions of organized religion. We hold that religious bodies ought to be subjected to thoughtful scrutiny precisely because they are--or should be--the custodians and renewers of our most deeply held values.

Third, we strive to deepen and broaden public debate on the ordering of our society and its relationship to the rest of the world, especially in areas where the positions of strident single-issue groups have received inordinate attention in the media and in the academy. While working to advance our own ideas, we actively seek to foster a wiser moral and political debate across ideological barricades.”

40000

Is a work of art only accessible to all audiences if it is blunt and obvious? Should artists be concerned with making work that can be quickly read by a viewer who gives the piece no more than a few seconds of their time? There was nothing about David Coyle’s paintings that required an advanced knowledge of contemporary art or theory from the viewer however they did require that the viewer give the time and effort to actually look at the work. Far from relying on just grey and black most of Coyle’s paintings used delicate color juxtapositions in order to manipulate the space within the paintings. The giant gargoyle did at first look like a bad large grey painting, however if you gave it some time, I’m talking just a minute or so, you would notice that the painting had a surprising dimensionality and weight to it. The gargoyle seemed to vibrate as if struggling to break off of the flat surface of the canvas. What was all the more interesting about the piece is that the subject matter, composition, and unexpected color all suggested that it should not work and yet it did. Now I spend a lot of my time looking at and thinking about painting, so perhaps I notice these things more quickly than other people, but when I read a densely written article or book about a topic that I am not intimately familiar with I do not assume that it has nothing to say only because I do not understand it after my initial read. Instead I work under the assumption that I need to give what is written more of my time and thought in order to understand it.

Coyle’s paintings for me were simply about what they required of the viewer. In all of the magazines we have read this year it is obvious that less and less is being required of the viewer in art. There is a glut of showy and decorative painting being made and promoted, work that does questions paintings role in contemporary art. I could see Coyle’s work as attempting to counter act that work simply by the way it is painted. Perhaps because it stands against the current trend towards easily consumed pretty painting the work is confrontational. But of course you would have to actually spend time looking at the paintings in order to notice this.


LAURA OWENS

Although, I did enjoy the paintings in the exhibition I found it curious that Coyle would position his work in opposition to the work of artists like Laura Owens. I found a number of similarities between Coyle’s work and Owen’s paintings. It is true that Owens uses much brighter colors and possibly “happier” subject matter, although there are few things happier than a snowman, I see her work just as, if not more, demanding on the viewer than Coyle’s. Coyle’s strategy of erasing narrative by using random subject matter also seems to be the same used by Owens. Perhaps one difference is that Laura Owens does not pretend to be doing anything other that exploring paint as a language while Coyle seemed to frame his work in a more conceptual way that did not necessarily line up with my experience with the work.


TOO CRITICAL?

I agree that as artists we can all gain a great deal from an ongoing critical discussion. Unfortunately there seems to be a contradiction between this ideal and its practice. I understand that no one wants to shit where they eat but we have to be able to discuss the work of our peers and others without it being taken personally. A comment, or posting that is critical of a work or of an idea is not a personal insult or attack but instead one half of a discussion. We can not really create a healthy discussion about work if we say that there needs to be more criticality and then complaining that it is rude to be critical. I’m not saying we should be mean, criticism made with the intent of insulting, discrediting, or belittling an individual is childish, however discussion about an artist’s work that raises valid questions should be encouraged and not misread as disrespectful or negative. Too often in art communities stupid arguments and pointless stand offs are created because people are unable to separate the discussion about a concept or artwork from the person. I feel that the discussions we as a class have had in the class and on our blogs has a times been a very good example of a healthy critical discussion and am confused when that discussion is dismissed for the reasons I mentioned above.

In Defense of the Critic

Critics are not in opposition to the artist, they are concerned with creating a discussion with the artist. Would art be any different from craft without the critic? It is important to have individuals who are willing to analyze, discuss and promote the work of artists. The critic's role is not to stop us from enjoying things but to make us think about what it is we are enjoying.

HEART IN THE RIGHT PLACE

"What a stupid occupation, to spend all one's time stopping us enjoying things, or else making us blush for what we have enjoyed!...That is what the critic does." - Diderot, "On Criticism," in _Isolated Thoughts on Painting_.

Stanley Cavell, in his book of essays _Must We Mean What We Say_ traced aesthetics as the youngest of the principal branches of philosophy, only two hundred years old. In describing the project of aesthetics, he argues that "nothing further seems to be agreed about it, not even whether it has the right name, nor what the name should be taken to mean, nor given its problems, philosophers are particularly suited to venture them." Coincidentally, with the rise of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline, a new field of discourse emerged as well, namely art criticism, championed by Hagedorn, Diderot and Baudelaire. Cavell continues to try to place aesthetics as a problem that seems to be concerning all practitioners as well as critics of fine art. He then points out that there is a suggestion that there is something common to the arts and that they all "tolerate such an activity; and that itself may incite philosophical reflection." He goes on to say that it is not clear what the subject of aesthetics is or shall be, since the epistemological enterprise of aesthetics has only one conclusion, that artworks aim to appeal to the experience, the concepts, and the conflicts all people share. The project of aesthetics is closely tied to the project of art criticism, in so far as they both are at times unsure of their objects of focus, which range from the artist, the work artists produce, the discourse that surrounds a practice, or the audience response to that work and its discourse manifestations. Charles Harrison has skillfully described the levels which criticism can take in his exercise on writing criticism. They range from subjective one-line value judgments, to formal analyses, to anthropo-historical analysis, to structural analysis, to cultural studies. This exercise perfectly illustrates the crisis within the language of criticism and the language of aesthetics as well. Who is competent to write about artworks? What kind of writing encapsulates the formal, conceptual, and historical properties of an artwork without taking advantage of its discursive potential for purely academic narcissism? Is it possible to do that? If an artwork is supposed to incite a response that traverses its physical presence, its abstract, conceptual structure, and its sublime remainder, is there an art criticism to adequately transcribe it?
I would argue that the crisis in both canon-driven aesthetics and art criticism as a discourse have to do with the notion of historical and disciplinary project. The irreversibility of paradigmatic shifts within art points to a structural problem if we look at art criticism as discourse beyond mere indexing of contemporary art practices. With each paradigmatic shift the whole field of discourse recalibrates in the light of new development and this shift does not only effect the way we look at the subject of criticism, it renders the previous way of thought a matter of historiographical inquiry, it renders the past criticism as past itself. The critic of the past stays behind with his temporally frozen referentness within an outmoded set of values, within definitions that no longer stand. To conclude, the only claim of criticism remains its service to the present.
The absence of common vernacular and critical language intersect undermines the project of art criticism today. If criticism still holds as its mission the communication between a particular art practice and its audience and informing the legitimate viewpoints of both, there can be no doubt that criticism has lost its primary mission-to create a discursive plane between the artwork and the public. Unfortunately criticism has not lost its object, artwork is still being made. It has lost its public and public was all that made criticism a valid enterprise. This is why it seems almost logical that today's art magazines serve a purpose of a list, a document, a referent, since without a public criticism has no function. Raphael Rubinstein laments that even if there was a good critical practice (his) the critics no longer have an authority they had. This authority had to do with the imperative of making history by merely writing on the issues concerning the public for the public and the loss of critical currency is endemic to the dismantling of the coalitional social by the culture industries. The loss that criticism allowed by failing to adjust and preserve its only trope-its address to the audience.
Somehow I feel that this question of audience is in the end crucial for both the artist and the critic. There is a disjunction between the public, the critic and the artwork and the very phenomenon of artist writing about his or her own practice points to that disconnect. Practitioners write about the difficulty of making for the public that knows no difference between a piece of advertising and a work of art in the language they use to engage with both. In the absence of criticism practitioners no longer posit themselves within a cannon- they write about the structural difficulty of having one. The acanonicity of contemporary art is a component of every contemporary practice whether an artist wants it or not. And who in the public that criticism lost wants to read about difficulties of making art instead of looking at art? How are the critics supposed to reach these publics? After the advent of modernism who in the public including practitioners is willing to trust an art object long enough to stay with it until it reaches its full effect? So many times this trust has been betrayed. The loss of critical language is only a manifestation of this treason. The mass public ritualizes the visual elsewhere. They ritualize where they will understand only by looking. There are no voices strong enough to tell them why that is no longer enough.
The project of criticism might not be retrievable. As Art & Language puts it "Having your heart in the right place is not making history." It is clear that no matter how good the diagnostics of theoretical discourse and criticism are, mapping out the problem is no longer enough since it confines the inquiry outside of the class-conscious social . All one can do is hope the criticism will see an image of a feasible future and calibrate itself toward that future and if the end of such action does not bring about a practical outcome all the effort was idealistic ideologizing (or as Art & Language puts it "monkeying about").

P.S.
Diderot criticized his own portrait by Michel Van Loo in 1767 Salon as an idealization. The communication model was established in 1700's. Habermas defines it as an exemplary network of ideal speech situation. Habermas theorizes the rationalist project of enlightenment by using Diderot who was its poster child. Anyhow, that does not discredit Diderot in any way. I just think that it is important to acknowledge we no longer live in 1700's.
P.P.S.
In case it does not come out clear: I do not favor Habermas. I feel that he is like the Archbishop of Canterbury who verbalizes his faith without any content support (a comment made by Terry Eagleton). Habermas is liberal at best and a wolf in sheep's clothing since he was a product of the Frankfurt School. I appreciate his Frankfurt School colleague Marcuse much more, especially his article "Eros and Culture," I.E.: The Cambridge Review, 1, no. 3 (1955).

David Shrigley

Another good link.

MUSEUM OF BAD ALBUM COVERS

Great Link

LOAD THE CANON!

Even if it were possible at this point to create a new canon that would unify the conversation of contemporary art I would be against it. I understand the desire to unify the masses in order to counteract the negative effects of the capitalist marketplace, after all I'm a communist, but I'm not sure how helpful a contemporary canon would be. It seems to me that strictly defining the elements and objectives of "high art" does not unify a artistic community but instead segregates it. There are the chosen artists who are working within the constraints of the canon and then there is everyone else. The question then is if those working within the canon are truly moving any sort of discussion or understanding of art forward. While Frank Stella was painting "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II" R. Crumb was creating "Fritz the Cat", and Henry Darger was close to beginning his work in an upstairs apartment in Chicago. All of this work was going on simultaneously but only Stella's was considered part of the fine art discussion, even though both Crumb and Darger have arguably had greater influence on contemporary visual culture. A "fractured" art world filled with artists creating idiosyncratic works may make it difficult to identify the artistic concerns of the day. It also allows us access to a rich and diverse discussion where we have to evaluate each work on its own terms instead of holding it up to a score card, and I think that is a good thing. It is a good thing because it requires that we as viewers really engage with and question the work we see. It is also good because we as artists are not restrained into to making the same work.

Johanna Billing at Kavi Gupta

Besides the video pieces there is a really excellent exhibition of Sarah Nesbit's paintings in the project room. Sorry guys but you have to go see the exhibition to talk about this one.

Angelo Mosca

Usually when I see work online I imagine it to be larger than it actually is and am disappointed when I see the actual smaller scale. Although I was disappointed with the scale of Mosca's work it was not because they were too small but way too big. The subject matter and handling of these paintings is very intimate, and it would make sense for the scale to also be intimate. The large scale of most of the work in the show blew apart the light touch and lucid quality of the paintings. What also confused me was the "crappy" nature of Mosca's canvases, I think that they were all warped and many of them had smashed corners as if they were dropped. The work was not all disappointing however, I did really enjoy the two small pieces in the front of the gallery. Those two pieces were great, and small.

Edouard Vuillard's "Sunlit Interior" (1920)

When looking at Angelo Mosca I cannot help thinking about my favorite interior painter Edouard Vuillard. The elegant sensibility of spatial definition and dislocation through textural difference in Mosca's painting (especially the mentioned 2005 "Couch" (Divano)) comes from the same place as Vuillards. Edouard's interiors as well as Mosca's tend to fall apart and come together constantly and chiastically. At times eye cannot focus and ground in the picture plane, but not in an annoying, restrictive way. Instead, eye keeps searching and most importantly stays in the intimacy of the interior. I always prefered Vuillard's light pallete paintings and I feel that this is also why I enjoyed looking at Mosca. Thanks Stryker.
Also, this is another of Vuillard's interiors more representative of his textural space.

City Wide Critique: Angelo Mosca

Stealing the idea from the blog mentioned below I am going to start posting images of artwork from Chicago area exhibitions each week. Hopefully some of the work will create interesting discussions, all I ask is that you don't be stupid or pointlessly cruel in your comments. This first image is from the current Angelo Mosca show at Wendy Cooper Gallery.

painternyc.blogspot.com

Clink on this link and enjoy bashing New York artists like Hope Atherton. Seriously, it is a good blog and there is even some good discussion in amongst the zingers.