Art Insurance

Art is a Guaranty of Sanity, pencil inscription on pink paper by Louise Bourgeois. I received this in the form of a card for the holidays. Lifted my spirits, it did. Coming as it did at the dark time of the year, dark and cold. The sentiment an echo of my own year-end greeting years back when things felt particularily bleak. Two things you can count on: The Sun Rises. Art Saves.

In a few days, Grande Dame Louise Bourgeois, born December 25, 1911, will turn 96. Happy Birthday Madame, may you live long (you have) and prosper (yes, that too). I expect the reason she has fared so well is because of art. "Art is just one way of reaching an equilibrium—of becoming a sociable person," she said in explanation of this inscription. (ArtForum, Summer 1993)

"If the artist cannot deal with everyday reality, the artist will retreat into his or her unconscious and feel at ease there, limited as it is—and frightening sometimes. But since love excludes fear—suddenly if you are in love, you are not afraid anymore. This is amazing, but it is true."

So art is a refuge. She was speaking of a specific sculpture in this article, Precious Liquids. In this piece there is a coat (the unconscious she refers to above). Inside the coat there is a little dress embroidered with "mercy merci." Art arise out of this ground—this dress inside the coat—mercy, thank you, the saving grace of art. It's what makes it possible to go on, to reenter the fearful social context. And then there is love.

Just the balm needed at this time of year. Art ensures we make it through the dark and troubling times. Keeps us sane. And then there is love.

May we each live well and prosper in the New Solar Year.

Alternative to Alternative

Having written the previous post, I find myself still ruminating on the need for, the reasons for, the use of the word "alternative." Alternative is related to alternate: this or that, on or off. Alternative is defined, in fact, as one of two mutually exclusive options; if one is chosen the other must be rejected. Alternative is an oppositional word suggesting a binary situation. In common usage, of course, we say there are "many alternatives," but at the root of it is still this notion of only one way. For me or against me. For-profit or not. Straight or gay.

So I was looking for a poly word. Or a multi word. An inclusive rather than oppositional word. Polyoptional. Multivalent. Polyvalent. Optional implies choice. Valent refers to worth. Multifarious is nice. I dunno...

I don't want to dismiss the value of the resistance or opposition that is (sometimes) implied in the use of "alternative." I don't want to be pollyannaish about the art world (even if I am generally optimistic.) Like those that want to believe in "alternative," I have faith in diversity and I suspect that "alternative" says, I'm right, they're wrong more that it says, I question authorities, conventions, and categorizations.

I suppose what I am suggesting is a more nuanced way of speaking about art that doesn't fall into the trap of us against them—whoever them might be, let alone us. I also want to move myself out of my own presuppositions. So that if I encounter a gallery named, say, Three Bat Gallery, I won't immediately assume and dismiss it as a fly-by-night artist-run place filled with look alike art-school assignments any more than I might assume that a high-end place might have nothing earth-shaking to see. Sometimes the privileged old bats have a lot of shaking going on.

There are so many strands in art and so much of value. I want to foster this wide-openness, let it spill like a full-to-the-brim, wide-mouthed jar in an earthquake.

Sentimental Notion

Maybe "alternative" is just a sentimental notion. It has long been useful for selling art, but with the market so flush, nobody even needs it anymore. Yet people still want it, and live it, and have a kind of faith in it: the "it" that can't be mass-produced, can't be packaged for museums, can't even be made to make sense. —Holland Cotter, New York Times, Dec.1, 2007

Holland Cotter is writing about galleries, little galleries, not in Chelsea but on the Lower East Side, galleries which advertise as alternative. I wonder, is alternative alternative?

Seems to me, alternative is now like avant garde was to modernism: says unconventional, breaking limits, pushing boundaries—but really, isn't it all passé? Even in the toniest galleries—or museums for that matter, anything goes.

Alternative used to mean you'll find something different, something challenging to the status quo, something other than the mainstream. Something that the market won't bear. What is it now that the art market won't bear?

Seems to me the only thing that alternative can mean now is not-for-profit. Or is that what alternative really means? Is it a codeword for doesn't sell, makes no money? Well I'm alternative then, but not proud of it.



The sentimental notion that art couldn't, shouldn't make money is linked with ye olde Bohemian term avant garde. The marginalized outsider took a vow of poverty when he (yes, back then it was mostly he's) took up the standard against convention and advanced the line—that linear historical party line that demarked the boundary of accepable and subversive. Artists and gypsies pushed the boundaries of what was legitimate or desirable, and the Victorian ladies, evidently, said, Shame on you! And what artists and gypsies wanted—so goes the sentimental storyline—was to be free from the constraints of manners, rules, and obligations. The thought that followed was that market success had built-in demands: for saleable product (consumer-oriented) and always more (art that could be manufactured). Success resulted in legitimacy and stability and so it was just better to die young, avoid all pitfalls of making a capitalistic living.

Students and creative types still believe this. As Cotter says, "people still want it, and live it, and have a kind of faith in it." Whole neighborhoods exude it, a sort of sophmoric anti-establishment, self-righteousness dressed in machine-worn designer jeans and Peruvian woolen hats that says "of the people." Excuse me? And how are you different than everybody else on the block?

Being down on the street, flaneur, with the people is code for being progressive—the artist subverting commodification, or at least rankling her art-school tuition-paying parents. Art as critique, as against societal ruts and wrongs is another aspect of the avant garde breaking through to the new society—or at least breaking the limits of conceptuality and making aesthetic change (which ultimately brings about societal change). Now this is a notion of new and different that I can get behind. Seeing concepts in a new way, hearing stories I've never heard before, or the old ones told a different way in a different voice. This is a concept of new, different, alternative that is postmodern and always contemporary for it assumes always new particular ideas, views, voices—anything goes, everybody's welcome. The ultimate democracy.

So how alternative is alternative? Is it a necessary term? Seems to me, and I may be naive, but the art world seems more welcoming of radical, upside down, inside and other points of view than any world I know of. Seems to me the art world is an alternate world, a parallel universe, running on its own imaginative steam with a unique economy following a fantastical standard of its own making. It seems reduntant to say alternative art, alternative gallery. Better to be specifically descriptive: political art, feminist art, figurative, installation, found, narrative, video, conceptual, invisible. I mean, really. Alternative? Diamond encrusted skull. Now that's alternative. And I'm not joking.

Hands & Feet, Standing & Falling

In the installation by Douglas Gordon at SFMoMa, Pretty much every film and video work from about 1992 until now. To be seen on monitors, some with headphones, others run silently, and all simultaneously, there is a video of a hand, palm forward, abruptly coming at the camera, again and again. There are a lot of hands in Gordon's works, but this one reminded me directly of Bruce Nauman's piece of himself bouncing into a corner. I saw that one installed in the basement of the Berlin contemporary art museum Hamburger Bahnhof as part of the Flick Collection. [see photos above] Nauman falls back into a corner and bounces back upright and then into the corner again; again and again. Gordon is obviously, probably, most likely—why not—influenced by Nauman's early work, straightforward videos documenting performance. Maybe it doesn't matter if he were influenced or not, but more to the point they are in the same conversation of repetitive movement, the body, the gesture, on film. They could be in the same room, falling and bouncing and turning and gesturing, simultaneously together as they are in my head.



In the Bahnhof basement there was also Nauman's video of himself slathering himself black. Remember Gordon's piece, The right hand doesn't care what the left hand isn't doing? His hands are lathered in shaving cream and one hand shaves the other.


Displayed side by side, Nauman's films showed the continuity of the artist's body as work in much the same way as this installation of some 50 of Gordon's works in one dark room wove together, reflected and conversed together, a new whole that is the artist's body of work, work using body, movement, expression. I wonder if he was surprised, looking over these individual pieces done over the last 15 years, to see how repetition in one reflected the same movement in another? How they danced so well together, the shell-shocked man falling, the elephant falling, the hands gesturing, the hands and eyes opening, closing? It was beautifully choreographed as though on purpose which just goes to show the purposefulness of a person's being, of an artist's perspective, that streams through her life-work, the hidden intention.

Sausages and Ale

So what is it about sausages?

There are 300 sausages suspended (with sheep, shark and cow) in Damien Hirst's new installation, School: The Archaeology of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity, and the Search for Knowledge, created for the lobby of Lever House, NYC. Meat, ground and encased, then encased yet again in formadehyde and glass.

At the Moscow Biennale this year, the Blue Noses Group showed Kitchen Suprematism, sliced salami and bread arranged into abstract compositions on a kitchen counter.

Did it all begin with Wurstserie, the 1979 Sausage Series of photographs by Peter Fischli and David Weiss? Sausages dressed up in slices of deli meats - bacon and mortadella clothing and carpets and cups: a sausage world?

Wolfgang Tillmans photographed sausages in a pot. He also photographed man meat in hand - the ol' blood sausage, turkey neck, wiener, salami, boner, sausage. So there it is: that's what it is about sausage...

Sausage takes the cake.

Toasts n Trust

It is September. [Not really. It is October and I see I forgot to post this. Better late than never.]
Earlier in the month, Julian Schnabel received the 2007 Gucci Group Award for remarkable film achievement. The Gucci Group agrees with little ol' me: Schnabel takes the cake.
Upon receiving the award, Schnabel said, "Painting can be compared to life, but is about optimism and faith. Artistic expression is the embodiment of hope." hmmm, okay. Faith in the new and optimism that there are different—better even— ways of doing things; but hope..? "the embodiment of hope..." Hope is "expectation with confidence, trust." Schnabel says, "Artistic expression is the embodiment of hope."
Oh, I get it! Artistic expression, which relies on the creative act, is a demonstration of trust in the infinite possibilities of the universe, trust in the possible. Yes. Yes yes. Art Saves. Trust in Art.

Cellophane Matters

Little art spread wide.

Artists in Cellophane is celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Art*o*Mat next week with a swap-meet party - with bands! - in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, tobacco country, where the good idea was conceived. Yessirreebob, art from a cigarette machine was a very good idea! spread now to some 90 locations nationwide, machines dropping art the size of a pack of smokes. Ten Years Kerplunking Culture is their anniversary slogan.

Kilgore Trout claims cellophane is the stuff of the universe.

Clark Whittington noticed that the happy sound of crinkling cellophane inspires consumption. He made art, wrapped it in cellophane, stacked it in a vending machine. The Art*o*Mat was born.

After the first one, Whittington filled the next and the next with work of artists of all kinds, from all over. I myself have a pinhole photograph by Emily Long of Chicago from an Art*o*Mat in Santa Monica. You could too. Visit Art*o*Mat for an Art*o*Mat near you.