What’s the Deal With Curators?

by C.J. Stahl

In Roland Barthes' From Work to Text, the author draws distinctions between what he refers to as work and text. While a work may result as the product of creative energies, it is bound to its physicality. The work exists in and of itself, we may consider genre novels in thinking of work. The text transcends the physicality of the surface of the page. The text is traversal in its existence, originating in dialogue prior to any particular work; it is not constrained by authorship. Furthermore, the text finds continuity in the active dialogue of others. While there are other particulars Barthes uses to distinguish between work and text, the traversality of text and its rejection of filiation, speak directly to the inherent nature of text. As an artist, Barthes' thoughts have moved me to consider the relationship of the artist's practice to that of curatorial practice. 

What is the function of the curator within the context of Barthes essay? While the traditional role of providing a theoretical framework to a particular exhibition may still stand as an expectation, one may be inclined to accept the notion that curators are artists working within a theoretical media. Likewise, it is becoming common for artists to dabble in curating exhibitions. Is the artist-as-curator different from the curator-as-artist? Some might argue yes, insinuating the artist-as-curator is first a producer of the art/art object, but if we are to conform to Barthes’ notion of text, it is not the object that carries meaning but its context. Is it time to renegotiate the titles of artist and curator? Will the text persist without the curator, or is it time to do away with the title of artist?

You can find a full text version of From Work to Text at:
http://areas.fba.ul.pt/jpeneda/From%20Work%20to%20Text.pdf

Blogs Are Easy

by C.J. Stahl

This truly is the digital age. With Amazon “generously” allotting eligible Kindle e-books to be shared for a one time period of fourteen days, it seems like the tradition of actual book sharing is coming to a slow death. That’s not to say you can’t borrow Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus off a book buddy for a period of time until they forget about the arrangement and you walk away book in hand, scot-free. It does mean, however, that all of you fancy individuals with the newest, weirdest book readers will be substantially limited in your sharing abilities. I’ve never been good with, or cool enough to, keep up with the latest in technology, but I did just start using Google Reader, so today we’re going to talk about blogs.

Blogs are sharable, can be incredibly content-heavy and/or just really enjoyable. Let me take a moment to shamelessly ask you to PLEASE SHARE THIS BLOG! Okay back to business. Few trivial things truly make me feel as good as when I’m able to recommend a blog to someone who’s never heard of it before, or when someone shares a blog with me that I end up loving. This of course is dependent primarily on two necessary factors: the blog is actually good and it is relevant to the individual’s interests. As I’d stated earlier in regard to technology, I’m never at it’s cusp. Throughout my life this has also been true for most art and culture as well. When I really think about it, most of the art, music, and culture that I truly identify with has come as some type of inheritance.

Most of us were probably taught long ago about the importance of sharing. It’s likely, in these silly economic times, that deep in our hearts we are at once scared to share for fear of running out of our necessary resources. Now, we have been moved to share, because it’s getting easier and easier to see that we are all in this together (at least 99% of us are in this together) not to mention we want our voice heard and we have realized we need to share to have this happen.  
So without further adieu, here are a few of my favorites blogs:

Edward Winkleman is incredible, hands down. He is the owner/gallerist of Winkleman Gallery in Chelsea (http://winkleman.com/ this is the gallery site), and he is incredibly close to his blog. You can typically expect one substantial post a day, with the exception of weekends, ranging in topic from contemporary art and its institutions to politics. Other than being wonderfully intelligent, the greatest characteristic about Winkleman’s commentary is that there is always a well developed sense of personal ethics that you can pick up on, whether he’s discussing the Occupy Wall Street movement or the commercial art market (in which he is quite comfortable critiquing and in giving his insider perspective). If you aren’t already familiar, do yourself the favor and check out Ed’s blog. http://www.edwardwinkleman.com/

Art Fag City, voted the Best Art Blog by the Village Voice for 2010 is another excellent choice. Led by widely published editorial director Paddy Johnson, Art Fag City’s focus is New York art news and reviews. This could sound limiting but AFC has a pretty wide range with a lot of fresh, young voices writing for it. Multiple posts a day and a “links” post from Ms. Johnson will add up to enough daily content to make your eyes burn. http://www.artfagcity.com/

Hyperallergic describes themselves probably best: “a forum for serious, playful and radical thinking about art in the world today.” I just recently started following this blog, and so far I have not been disappointed. Hyperallergic covers a broader geographical range than Winkleman and AFC, and tends to be more inclusive of what can be recognized as subcultural influence. If you enjoy both high contemporary and that which is influenced by street art and illustration, Hyperallergic does a fantastic job of covering various trends seamlessly. Multiple posts a day and a touch of mouthy commentary makes reading about sometimes heady work really refreshing. http://hyperallergic.com/

If you’d like to share any of your favorite blogs with the staff at IN THEORY, we’d love to receive your suggestions. Feel free to email us at pafagradjournal@gmail.com
Who knows, maybe we’ll put together one of those lists.

Jayson Musson: The Language Weapon

*This Thursday, November 10th, 2011, The Visiting Artists Program will be hosting Jayson Musson in the Hamilton Auditorium of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he will speak at 11:45am.  Email visitingartists@pobox.pafa.edu for more information.

"Mastery of language affords remarkable power."

“The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. What matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be.”

“I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos -- and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo.  I am black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia.  I am truly a drop of sun under the earth.”

These three quotations come from two major texts of psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, and Black Skin, White Masks.  His lifelong searing criticism of colonialism is as relevant today, and we ought to see artist Jayson Musson's project as an illuminated subplot of Fanon's work.

Musson, a.k.a. Hennessy Youngman is, to borrow a colleague's phrase, like the Ali G. of the art world.  Except where Ali G. thrives off the veil of being the stupid guy in a room of 'important' people in order to highlight his victims' prejudice, Musson intersperses an ignoramus 'hood' persona with moments of lucid, shaming intellectual diatribe.  To speak to the first Fanon quote from above, Musson's project grabs hold of language as a weapon to be mastered and controlled.  Language is a subject itself in his performances.  Ali G's is a mastery of social behavior: his comments are the seeds that unleash the clumsy human folly around him.  The domino effect takes its course.  It is a brilliant act of foresight and leaded questioning.  But Musson does not have the same privilege that Sacha Baron Cohen has, for the art world is a subtler beast for a provocateur.  There are very few white supremacist skinhead arts leaders; not many campaigning pro-life gallerists; relatively few extremist evangelical artists and curators.  Musson has to go straight for the throat in his online Youtube channel Art Thoughtz and most recently in his satirical audio tour, titled The Grand Manner in the Historic Landmark Building at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  His comments on certain paintings, many of which depict events or people in early American history, include, "The cross is boss", and "A white man gotta do what a white man gotta do" (on the slave dealings of Governor Morris and Robert Morris).

His most recent public appearance was at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.  This particular comment  made by Hennessy was answered with a fairly icy silence:   

"Museums should heed this trend [of alternative marketing plans] and begin aligning themselves with causes in order to work against decades of bad PR from institutional critique which have painted museums as self - interested institutions, a place where hedge fund managers donate their art collection in order to boost the value of their own collection, and that’s bad, that’s not good…"

In conversation with the second Fanon quotation above, Musson's indictment of the greedy runoff bred within the museum is particularly apropos in light of the ongoing Occupy protests.  One of the problems with these protests, however, is their vague handling of language and message.  At this stage in the game, language is not being used to its maximum, debilitating effect, and neither is action.  Fanon says "no matter how devastating the consequences may be" action must be taken.  His project was filled with irreconcilable rage; he never hid it.  Musson's institutional critique begins to get at that sensibility, but I wonder which end he is after exactly: comedic satire, or foundational change?

Musson is black, and this is the central tension in his project: his exaggerated routines push us to ask the question that embodies the stain of racial exclusion in art: why should the Art World (read upper middle class, educated, white people) trust the art history lessons of a rapping, Ebonics- speaking black man from the hood of Philadelphia?  That we ask this question illuminates our own conditioned prejudice and the inherent racial and socioeconomic inequalities in the commercial and academic quarters of fine art.  Like Fanon, Musson's character is defiantly proud of his blackness, and highlights the gap in understanding between the intellectual white man and black culture; his caricature widens that threshold.  But where Fanon describes the black man in "total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth", Musson seems to say through his alter ego Hennessy that urban black culture is, through most lenses, a complete aberration in the Art World.  We are forced into the opportune position of reexamining where, and from whom, we get our information from, be it a scholar, a text, or a museum label. 

Works Cited

Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, 1961

Ibid, Black Skin, White Masks, Editions de Seuil: Paris, 1952

http://www.youtube.com/user/HennesyYoungman

Announcements: Opening Reception for 'Out in Out' this Friday

Courtesy of the Facebook post by Master of Fine Arts Candidate Katrina Funk:


What is Drawing?
It is our wish that each drawing will consist of the ingredients that are similar to those of human beings – an epidermis, an outside, a surface - that introduces and reveals a life being lived within, enticing and
encouraging others to look harder and inquire more, to better know the interior – the energy, personality, mind, spirit, and soul – so that the life-
affirming dynamic relationship between what-we-can-see and what-we-cannot-see in your drawings will inspire in us something about those same qualities in all of us - how we look because of who we are and who we are because of how we look – just like drawing, just like art – Out In Out.

Featured Artists:

Jannalyn Bailey
Phillippa Beardsley
Jessica Braiterman
Matej Branc
Gretchen Diehl
Diana Dodson
Kirsten Fisher
Katrina Funk
Eric Huckerbee
Adam Lovits
Ana Maria Gomez Lopez
April Loveday
Sofya Mirvis
Cynthia Oswald
Sarah Peoples
Ana Rankin
Brian Spies
Susan Stromquist
Chelsea Thoumsin

Come to MBN Studios this Friday from 6pm-10pm for the opening reception!
725 North 4th Street, Philadelphia PA 19123

Art Without Clothes: Public Displays in Philadelphia

A large-scale historical object with metaphorical value, rearranged to be aesthetically captivating, and reused in a way that supports politically correct global movements (ie. going green), set in the plaza of a fine arts institution of considerable symbolic grandeur: check.

I say this not to belittle nor mock PAFA alumnus Jordan Griska's "Grumman Greenhouse" public sculpture in the Academy's Lenfest Plaza, but to argue how expected and easy its conditions are.  It is even, for a simulated plane crash, cheerful.

In 1917 Marcel Duchamp stunned the Society of Independent Artists when he anonymously submitted a urinal turned upside down and signed 'R. Mutt' for exhibition.  All works would supposedly be displayed, and he resigned from the organization when his piece was refused.  Duchamp's "Fountain" was a brazen gesture of institutional critique and a blow to the artist as godly creator (and by relation the work of art as unique, aesthetic masterpiece).  It was officially the first in the genre of Ready Made sculpture.  Griska's reappropriation of the 18,000 pound Grumman S2F tracker military aircraft is a fascinating foil to Duchamp's heroic display.  Where Duchamp's was, in a sense, anti-aesthetic, Griska's is just the opposite: the plane, as if it were an art school manikin being positioned into something evocative and art-worthy, is reassembled to look like it is gracefully diving head first into the ground.  It really takes on an anthropomorphic quality, with the bend of the cockpit resembling the broken neck of a bird.  The wings twist in a way that would not be physically likely in the event of a real crash.  It is important that Griska had no intention of rendering a crash at all; rather, his project is one of transformation.  The point, in contrast to Duchamp's, is that the Grumman S2F is dead scrap (it would have been thrown out had Griska not purchased it) in its original form and must be laboriously changed to resurrect it.  Where with "Fountain" the artist as god-craftsman is dismantled, in "Grumman Greenhouse" it is inevitably reaffirmed, in a poignant way; Griska literally becomes artist-as-savior.

What I am missing in this piece is any public recognition of irony that these conditions necessitate.  The plane is a tour de force of formalist arty language: perspective, linearity, sumptuous curves, dramatic negative space.  To add to this, a sustainable garden will be created within the plane's interior.  Life is beautiful.  But it isn't.  Innovation and transformation is absolutely essential to sustain mankind's ever-larger footprint, but art, by its nature, has the peculiar privilege to not do this (as Duchamp made clear).  It can look backwards, forwards or just stay still, and I think Griska's project- and its reception- does not take this into account.  There is something inevitably morbid about the installation: the plane was an anti-submarine aircraft flown during the Cold War, among the most unnerving periods for Americans of all ages; it is now depicted in a contorted landing but without any signs of damage at all, and delicious and pretty flora will be growing inside soon enough; after dark, it is eerily ghost like, a shipwreck of sorts, and we stare at it with the inevitable curiosity one experiences during a traffic accident.  These are fascinating qualities of the piece that have not been tackled within the window of commentary and media exposure thus far.

In "Living Room War", author Michael J. Arlen writes of television, "I can't say I completely agree with people who think that when battle scenes are brought into the living room the hazards of war are necessarily made 'real' to the civilian audience...It seems to me that by the same process they are also made less 'real'...tamed, by the enveloping cozy alarums of the household".  The thought resonates spookily with Griska's installation, in the enveloping and cozy Lenfest Plaza.  I wonder if it will be left to the audience to embody this sense of irony.

       

Works Cited

Arlen, Michael J., "Living-Room War", New York: Viking Press, 1969, p. 8

Installation specifications and other relevant facts gathered from Joann Loviglio's coverage, at http://www.ydr.com/state/ci_19156554