Issue #16 is now posted. (thanks simpleposie #1599)
ArtFag's review of the disastrous Power Plant Toronto show "We Can Do It Now" is totally hilarious. That dude can really write! I can particularly relate to his critique of the hair-raising bike ride which always seems to set the tone for a trip to the lakeshore art zone.
Jennifer McMackon put up an important and useful link on simpleposie to a 1987 essay by Elke Town about the Power Plant's first Toronto show. It's interesting how little has changed. Says Town: ...the Power Plant miscalculated the amount of interest and importance invested by the Toronto art community in the gallery and its opening show. It is for this reason that the opening exhibition looked as though it had been imported from Toronto and had all the sparkle of a glass of flat champagne.
Why are the Power Plant's Toronto shows consistently unsatisfying? The Power Plant is an international institution, so when they do Toronto shows we Torontonians expect to see curations that we would be proud to represent us on the world stage. But as far as I know these shows don't ever tour. I don't think the PP sees them as amibitious productions, rather more like tossing bones to appease the locals (and getting a bunch of art up cheap without shipping fees and travel costs). The results are tawdry.
In We Can Do This Now (augh, that's a painful title!) the utter lack of context and the fact that the works don't relate to each other in any way at all simply overwhelms the art.
But I disagree with ArtFag that the bulk of the artwork in the show is bad. ArtFag dismissed Kristan Horton's fabulous kooky graphic-novel-ish narrative about building a nuclear power plant in the basement. Tania Kitchell's snow sculpture thingy could be great if it was crosstalking with other weather works, or other plastic works, or other assemblages or something, and not hung weirdly over a door like some kind of cheapo x-mas bauble. I'm not a big fan of Ian Carr Harris, but these smallish works sure didn't sing from their spot tucked away in the back corner, and Martin Bennett's mechanistic paintings of urban wildlife are quiet and conceptual and got completely screwed by being scattered about as if they actually were squirrels in a park and not cerebral reflections on representation and abstraction. As someone who wants to learn more about curating, I actually found it instructive to see an exhibition that so clearly fails because of the curation, and not because of the art.
Simpleposie also links to an Artforum review of We Can Do This Now, that takes the curatorial premise—that Toronto art is in an ambitious phase these days because we are putting up a lot of fancy new buildings—at face value, and then holds up the artworks unfavourably against it. Just exactly the worst case scenario.
ArtFag aptly describes the Toronto response to We Can Do This Now as "orgies of umbrage-taking." I've stayed away from writing about the show til now, because, frankly, I don't think it's worth the fuss. It really is an appalling flop, but there is other great Toronto-based programming in the city, notably at York Quay Galleries, right next door to Power Plant, where curator/director Pat Macaulay does a bang-up job of exhibiting Toronto artists in conjunction with artists from afar in an engaged and ongoing dynamic dialogue. We give the Power Plant more credit that it has earned by making such a big deal out of their sad attempts to represent art in this city.
It's sort of endearing that anyone seriously thinks we are rising to the occasion of all that new arty architecture going up around us. I can hardly wait for the AGO's new Frank Gehry design to be finished so that they can start the fundraising efforts to replace it - or at least purchase those curvy bits that they couldn't afford in the original budget.
This work, or a version of it will be part of Fiona Banner's upcoming show at the PP.
I hope my html works.
Do you think they'll hang 'em where the LJ's pigeons used to be?
No html - Ok then.
Paste this into your browser - http://209.34.87.106/media/Parade%20copy_0603271252476.jpg
This work, or a version of it will be part of Fiona Banner's upcoming show at the PP. Do you think they'll hang 'em where the LJ's pigeons used to be?
here tis.
Thanks Sally.
reminds me of Robert Adrian X.
Chris Burden owns toy war implements suspended from ceilings, etc. (not that I think it's a good idea).
owns?
example.
It started I think with his pro-Reagan piece called "The Reason for the Neutron Bomb" which was 50,000 matchsticks on nickels (positioned like cannons on tanks) meant to represent all the Soviet tanks poised to overrun Europe. The series included these Subs that the Dallas Museum bought (and probably rarely shows).
Robert Adrian X's paper planes (first exhibited1984) seem to predate Chris Burden's cardboard subs but actually that's not even the point. I'm not down with this idea of artists owning concepts and media. It seems like Fiona Banner is probably pretty consciously riffing off Burden, but if it was unconscious, would that invalidate the project? Isn't it informative and interesting when different people come up with similar projects?
I'm looking at Robert Adrian X's bio and I'm missing the all the big museum show tours and attendant publicity that took his paper planes out to a broad international audience.
It's not a question of who did it first but who did it famously and aggressively over time.
The reasons for Fiona Banner doing Chris Burden again (that I can come up with) would be sheer inattentiveness to the work of a heavily promoted artist, some kind of Sherrie Levine-like statement, which was already done by Sherrie Levine, or some kind of cheeky reinterpretation (not sure--what's written on the walls here?). None of those strike me as good enough reasons to pull out the monofilament and start stringing up toys.
I liked her phonebook-sized book with all the dialog for five Vietnam movies, though.
Also, just to keep belaboring this, it's festival fodder (Burden, too).
The nth degree of exhaustion of the monofilament school is the artist Cai Guo-Qiang, he of the flying wolves.
You dismiss a Canadian/European artist who hasn't made a big enough blip on the international art radar to register in USA, but then you decry "festival fodder." It's hard to understand where you are coming from with this.
http://www.amisimms.com/moncoz.html
Can one do things obscurely and aggressively over time?
I think it would be so cool if there were an artist who could suspend objects mid air in the gallery - through the power of his or her mind alone!
Case in point, Susy Lake's work predating and being the big influence for Cindy Sherman.
You mean with the Miraculous Power of Psycho Command! I gave that book to Sally, she should be able to do that by now.
Everything happens in time LM!
Psycho Command sounds like a good read - I bet it's pretty technical.
I believe Burden is known in Canada and Europe, too.
Where I'm coming from: suspending war toys from the ceiling is hokey, doing it twice is double-hokey.
"Hokey" meaning corny, easy, obvious, but also straining for effect.
Psycho Command is a very technical book, there are a lot of charts, so that's why I gave it to Sally.
Reminds me of when I was forced to see Miss Saigon. I spent the whole show muttering "where's the helicopter?" "Where's the fucking helicopter". When the damn thing finally appeared (making more of a racket than I was) an elderly man sitting next me pointed at it and said "there's your helicopter"
Monofilament aside, cinema does it better. After Dr. Strangelove, the military aircraft trope is just a really hard one for sculptors and painters and the like to work with. It never stops anybody though.
John Dickson did some funny ones recently. He carved them out of wood and used fiberfill pillow stuffing for jet streams.
On the other hand - sorry Sally for thinking up such inane comments - but Monofilamenta would be a great name for a biennial. I can see it now...
I love John's work LM but Stanley Kubrick stands alone.
Don't forget Frank Shebageget:
http://www.ottawaartgallery.ca/exhibits/2003/3/frank_shebageget-en.php
I like this piece a lot, the planes are lovingly hand-made, not just slapped together from plastic kits.
If I accepted the idea that artists own things like this (which I don't), I would say that Cornelia Parker "owns" monofilament.
J., I just misread your comment as "...the military aircraft trope is just a hard-on for sculptors and painters..." which is pretty much how I feel about what I see as mostly fetishisation. I like these other planes by Robert Adrian X better.
Tom, of course Burden is more famous than Robert Adrian X, but fame doesn't dictate where artists find points of connection and dialogue with one another. I'm not big on festival fodder either.
Rob, it seems like the ottawa art gallery's website is taking a little break right now. Hopefully the link will be active again soon.
"fame doesn't dictate where artists find points of connection and dialogue with one another."
Noble sentiment, along with "love thy neighbor" and "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's."
As a practical matter, I believe artists like to find what they think is their own schtick, which includes surveying the universe of more famous stuff out there so they don't look unoriginal. In New York (sorry) we call that knowing who "owns" what. It's a form of shorthand, not an Ayn Randian war cry.
Like, I could make abstract paintings on crunched up automobiles, but if I knew John Chamberlain did it I wouldn't go there because i don't want to look like a hack with no ideas.
In a world where Marxist principals of sharing were applied to all intellectual property this deference to better-known work would be vulgar, but we don't live in that world. People make distinctions. They rate things. The pejorative "copycat" is still out there. Sucks but there it is.
Also, I didn't say Chris Burden owned monofilament, I said he owns "toy war implements suspended from ceilings, etc. (not that I think it's a good idea)."
In a world where "marxist principles of sharing" applied to all intellectual property, we'd have some pretty bad-ass planes to hang from our monofilaments:
http://www.airwar.ru/photo/3m/3m_2.html
No it's not a "noble sentiment." It's a plain ordinary statement. All of us are influenced by tons of artists who aren't famous around the world. I know we don't want to look stupid by inadvertantly making the same work as someone else, but when it happens I really don't think it matters who is more famous in terms of who literally owns the work. In terms of who it becomes associated with well then yes of course that happens. But the lesser famed person can stick to their guns as far as I'm concerned, and that's good for the discourse too. Happens in Science - two people come up with the same discovery but the first to publish gets the credit (in one case I just heard about, they both published next to each other in the same issue of the same journal and the theory got named for the one that was first on the pages) but on lesser scales of fame the community continues to recognise the other dude as well because there is something to learn not just from the work but from the fact that two people came up with it, and a comparison of differences and similiarities. This isn't Marxist its just information passing on several levels, and it happens in art too (even in New York, I bet).
Rob I think we'd need some new kinda monofilament. Mabye even multifilament.
LM, thats a funny as hell helicopter story. congratz on getting the marquee space. shine on crazy diamond.
i think the idea of ownership does exist as tom describes it and thats ok. see collage. its great to work in a crowded milieu but important to distinguish yourself. to advance the medium on everyones behalf. the ownership baton may then be passed along for reasons of excellence and distinction within the field. however this is a rather modernist notion my favorite not quite dead yet horse.
Scan from The Miracle of Psycho-Command Power
(now we know how L.M. is making all those glitter gifs...)
I like it when vvork posts images that involve similar practices and materials taking place in different countries. It's the most interesting when one work succeeds where the other fails. Because all the artists are contemporary there isn't that currency of institutionalized fame to distract me.
I come to ownership from a slightly different angle. I'm all for healthy gleeful larceny.
It's interesting that all this started because Jennifer made a visual connection between Fiona Banner's work (coming to the Power Plant) and Luis Jacob's pigeon piece in We Can Do This Now (the only work that shone in its installation), which was an explicit tribute to Michael Snow's geese hanging at the Eaton Centre.
 
Rob's Frank Shebageget link is working now. Funny how much the piece resembles all these other airplane works, at least from the photos, but seems to carry its meaning within a completely different set of parameters. Good beaver pun. From what I see and read, I like the piece a lot. The history of Native communities has been particularly bound up with the Beaver and its sister aircraft. They are at once a source and a symbol of transformations in the economic and social configurations of these communities, changes that range from federal policies on northern aboriginal development through local economic shifts and intercultural interactions. The Beaver holds a share in both native and nonnative history and identity in Canada.
An untitled work from Pudlo Pudlat, probably done in the 60's - just as another context for aircraft. (and Canada geese and pigeons) I'll be doing a front page post of his work soon.
nice!
If the work is bad then the redundancy points out a real problem with the underlying assumptions. This means one or both artists have wasted people's time. It's not enough to say "fantastic experiment"--someone had to drive, walk, or ride to the museum to see the same thing twice and be bummed out.
As you know, "its just information passing on several levels" rhetoric with no attempt to critically assess the "information" drives me crazy and "owns" seems to be objectionable to you so I'd like to stop here--it's your page so you get the last word, though.
last word? okay let me try and clarify my position.
I never set out to critically defend Banner's work, nor am I motivated to do so now. I am defending three very simple (banal, even) things:
The fact that I am more influenced as an artist by Robert Adrian X than by Chris Burden.
The fact that artists often riff off one another to interesting effect.
The fact that it can be informative when different artists indpendently come up with similar ideas.
My critical stance* is that I reject implications that the canon must function on the basis of exclusion. I think art discourse is positively challenged, and strengthened by the fact that there are more artists making interesting work in the world than we can possibly keep tabs on. Looking at all these different airplane artists opens a lot more doors than dismissing them would.
One critical trajectory born of this process might go something like this:
Artists who festishize military technology in their work may express an anti-war position yet at the same time they reveal their own lust for the icons of power. In the case of both Banner and Burden the amibvalence of this position seems problematic, especially if the work is designed to have big wow-factor impact internationally. In the case of Robert Adrian X, the fact that his airplane installations include massive hand-held paper planes indicates a sensitivity to his own techno-lust. Because this ambivalence is acknowledged, I am less inclined to read the work as a form of artist-intiatied power-grabbing, and more inclined to see it as a comment on the fact that those of us who participate in militarized societies may be implicated in the actions of those societies.
This complicit relationship to technology shifts when the artist using airplanes comes from a colonized indigenous community. In this context, Frank Shebageget's Beaver installation is quite eloquent. These little float planes are a symbol of the instrusion of technologised society into wilderness and traditional native lifestyles. But that intrusion happened a long time ago, and the float plane also represents a connection to the rest of world, supplies, mobility, livelihood and survival. Of course the name of the plane, Beaver, makes a sad resonant connection back to the natural world.
I would argue that Shebageget's careful crafting of each plane implies a similar fetishization to what we see in the work of Banner, Burden and Adrian X, but in this context the statement of complicity with the technology belongs in the context of a people who are often seen as separate from, and oppressed by, the society that generates that technology. The politics of this piece, while complex, are evident and poignant.
I'm tempted to bring in more examples, for instance the spooky-in-hindsight sculpture by Michael Richards—a sculpture of a man being pierced by airplanes titled "Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian"—who was killed in the World Trade Centre attack, or the drawing by Beirut blogger Mazen Kerbaj of Sponge-Bob Square Pants riding a falling bomb Dr. Strangelove-style. It's even tempting to speculate on Fiona Banner's motives behind Parade. Is she riffing on Burden? If yes, what does it mean for an English artist in 2007 to redo an installation by an American artist from 1987? If no, what does it mean when an English artist in 2007 comes up with the same idea as an American artist from 1987? While I'm not drawn to either work on its own, the fact that there are two of them makes me much more curious about the phenomenon of artists categorizing military machines, and much less likely to dismiss either of them.
* I've participated in arguing this criticality thing to death several times on simpleposie. Anyone interested can get themselves all lathered up by reading this thread or this thread, or this thread.
I don't think it's dead yet.
good point.
i once made a model of a lear jet, and painted it gold, as a project for boyscouts, i lost points for having it be gold.
i feel of monofiliment paintings the same way as i feel about 20 foot long photographs, looks pretty but whats teh point, i dont understand why michael snows geese at eaton center are such a big deal, i havent even noticed them while feeling fat at h&m
this guy, though, is the king of plane art
http://www.alan-mann.com/planes/index.html
(i think a work fails or succeeds on the level that it can be assumed quickly by the forces of capital, so burden fails, but ortega, who did that great volkswagen monofilament peice, succeeds, because toyota made an ad of it)
How does Burden fail - his work is emulated and tinkered with all the time?
I think Anthony is talking Alberta-Speak with that force of capital argument.
The Canada Geese occupy some legal history here that is before Anthony's time, with Michael Snow's lawsuit over the Xmas ribbons that they tried to put on them one year.
only kind of sort of, im speaking alberta, i dont think burden works v. well, mostly because its both immediately absorable, and impossible to extroplate in any interesting ways
Please do, go on...
im not talking about this forever, just this thime and place with this art, i think that work that broadcasts as "successful" is easily reproduced by mechinchal means, that its ideas can be ripped off in any number of ways, that work that dropped off as unsuccessful can be picked up by a million different people doing a million different things, and makes money.
(ie nauman and rachel white read, warhol and everyone, cindy sherman and vanessa beecroft, koons and everyone, burden and the monofilament crowd)
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Issue #16 is now posted. (thanks simpleposie #1599)
- L.M. 2-11-2007 4:50 am
ArtFag's review of the disastrous Power Plant Toronto show "We Can Do It Now" is totally hilarious. That dude can really write! I can particularly relate to his critique of the hair-raising bike ride which always seems to set the tone for a trip to the lakeshore art zone.
Why are the Power Plant's Toronto shows consistently unsatisfying? The Power Plant is an international institution, so when they do Toronto shows we Torontonians expect to see curations that we would be proud to represent us on the world stage. But as far as I know these shows don't ever tour. I don't think the PP sees them as amibitious productions, rather more like tossing bones to appease the locals (and getting a bunch of art up cheap without shipping fees and travel costs). The results are tawdry.Jennifer McMackon put up an important and useful link on simpleposie to a 1987 essay by Elke Town about the Power Plant's first Toronto show. It's interesting how little has changed. Says Town:
In We Can Do This Now (augh, that's a painful title!) the utter lack of context and the fact that the works don't relate to each other in any way at all simply overwhelms the art. But I disagree with ArtFag that the bulk of the artwork in the show is bad. ArtFag dismissed Kristan Horton's fabulous kooky graphic-novel-ish narrative about building a nuclear power plant in the basement. Tania Kitchell's snow sculpture thingy could be great if it was crosstalking with other weather works, or other plastic works, or other assemblages or something, and not hung weirdly over a door like some kind of cheapo x-mas bauble. I'm not a big fan of Ian Carr Harris, but these smallish works sure didn't sing from their spot tucked away in the back corner, and Martin Bennett's mechanistic paintings of urban wildlife are quiet and conceptual and got completely screwed by being scattered about as if they actually were squirrels in a park and not cerebral reflections on representation and abstraction. As someone who wants to learn more about curating, I actually found it instructive to see an exhibition that so clearly fails because of the curation, and not because of the art.
Simpleposie also links to an Artforum review of We Can Do This Now, that takes the curatorial premise—that Toronto art is in an ambitious phase these days because we are putting up a lot of fancy new buildings—at face value, and then holds up the artworks unfavourably against it. Just exactly the worst case scenario.
ArtFag aptly describes the Toronto response to We Can Do This Now as "orgies of umbrage-taking." I've stayed away from writing about the show til now, because, frankly, I don't think it's worth the fuss. It really is an appalling flop, but there is other great Toronto-based programming in the city, notably at York Quay Galleries, right next door to Power Plant, where curator/director Pat Macaulay does a bang-up job of exhibiting Toronto artists in conjunction with artists from afar in an engaged and ongoing dynamic dialogue. We give the Power Plant more credit that it has earned by making such a big deal out of their sad attempts to represent art in this city.
- sally mckay 2-11-2007 10:49 pm
It's sort of endearing that anyone seriously thinks we are rising to the occasion of all that new arty architecture going up around us. I can hardly wait for the AGO's new Frank Gehry design to be finished so that they can start the fundraising efforts to replace it - or at least purchase those curvy bits that they couldn't afford in the original budget.
- L.M. 2-12-2007 7:53 am
This work, or a version of it will be part of Fiona Banner's upcoming show at the PP.
I hope my html works.
Do you think they'll hang 'em where the LJ's pigeons used to be?
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-12-2007 6:32 pm
No html - Ok then.
Paste this into your browser - http://209.34.87.106/media/Parade%20copy_0603271252476.jpg
This work, or a version of it will be part of Fiona Banner's upcoming show at the PP. Do you think they'll hang 'em where the LJ's pigeons used to be?
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-12-2007 6:35 pm
here tis.
- sally mckay 2-12-2007 6:45 pm
Thanks Sally.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-12-2007 7:03 pm
reminds me of Robert Adrian X.
- sally mckay 2-12-2007 7:28 pm
Chris Burden owns toy war implements suspended from ceilings, etc. (not that I think it's a good idea).
- tom moody 2-12-2007 9:43 pm
owns?
- sally mckay 2-12-2007 9:51 pm
example.
It started I think with his pro-Reagan piece called "The Reason for the Neutron Bomb" which was 50,000 matchsticks on nickels (positioned like cannons on tanks) meant to represent all the Soviet tanks poised to overrun Europe. The series included these Subs that the Dallas Museum bought (and probably rarely shows).
- tom moody 2-12-2007 9:52 pm
Robert Adrian X's paper planes (first exhibited1984) seem to predate Chris Burden's cardboard subs but actually that's not even the point. I'm not down with this idea of artists owning concepts and media. It seems like Fiona Banner is probably pretty consciously riffing off Burden, but if it was unconscious, would that invalidate the project? Isn't it informative and interesting when different people come up with similar projects?
- sally mckay 2-12-2007 10:27 pm
I'm looking at Robert Adrian X's bio and I'm missing the all the big museum show tours and attendant publicity that took his paper planes out to a broad international audience.
It's not a question of who did it first but who did it famously and aggressively over time.
The reasons for Fiona Banner doing Chris Burden again (that I can come up with) would be sheer inattentiveness to the work of a heavily promoted artist, some kind of Sherrie Levine-like statement, which was already done by Sherrie Levine, or some kind of cheeky reinterpretation (not sure--what's written on the walls here?). None of those strike me as good enough reasons to pull out the monofilament and start stringing up toys.
- tom moody 2-12-2007 10:42 pm
I liked her phonebook-sized book with all the dialog for five Vietnam movies, though.
- tom moody 2-12-2007 10:46 pm
Also, just to keep belaboring this, it's festival fodder (Burden, too).
The nth degree of exhaustion of the monofilament school is the artist Cai Guo-Qiang, he of the flying wolves.
- tom moody 2-12-2007 11:00 pm
You dismiss a Canadian/European artist who hasn't made a big enough blip on the international art radar to register in USA, but then you decry "festival fodder." It's hard to understand where you are coming from with this.
- sally mckay 2-12-2007 11:10 pm
http://www.amisimms.com/moncoz.html
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-12-2007 11:14 pm
Can one do things obscurely and aggressively over time?
- L.M. 2-12-2007 11:19 pm
I think it would be so cool if there were an artist who could suspend objects mid air in the gallery - through the power of his or her mind alone!
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-12-2007 11:21 pm
Case in point, Susy Lake's work predating and being the big influence for Cindy Sherman.
- L.M. 2-12-2007 11:21 pm
You mean with the Miraculous Power of Psycho Command! I gave that book to Sally, she should be able to do that by now.
- L.M. 2-12-2007 11:22 pm
Everything happens in time LM!
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-12-2007 11:23 pm
Psycho Command sounds like a good read - I bet it's pretty technical.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-12-2007 11:26 pm
I believe Burden is known in Canada and Europe, too.
Where I'm coming from: suspending war toys from the ceiling is hokey, doing it twice is double-hokey.
- tom moody 2-12-2007 11:27 pm
"Hokey" meaning corny, easy, obvious, but also straining for effect.
- tom moody 2-12-2007 11:29 pm
Psycho Command is a very technical book, there are a lot of charts, so that's why I gave it to Sally.
- L.M. 2-12-2007 11:29 pm
Reminds me of when I was forced to see Miss Saigon. I spent the whole show muttering "where's the helicopter?" "Where's the fucking helicopter". When the damn thing finally appeared (making more of a racket than I was) an elderly man sitting next me pointed at it and said "there's your helicopter"
- L.M. 2-12-2007 11:35 pm
Monofilament aside, cinema does it better. After Dr. Strangelove, the military aircraft trope is just a really hard one for sculptors and painters and the like to work with. It never stops anybody though.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-12-2007 11:40 pm
John Dickson did some funny ones recently. He carved them out of wood and used fiberfill pillow stuffing for jet streams.
- L.M. 2-12-2007 11:47 pm
On the other hand - sorry Sally for thinking up such inane comments - but Monofilamenta would be a great name for a biennial. I can see it now...
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-12-2007 11:52 pm
I love John's work LM but Stanley Kubrick stands alone.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-12-2007 11:56 pm
Don't forget Frank Shebageget:
http://www.ottawaartgallery.ca/exhibits/2003/3/frank_shebageget-en.php
I like this piece a lot, the planes are lovingly hand-made, not just slapped together from plastic kits.
- rob (guest) 2-13-2007 12:52 am
If I accepted the idea that artists own things like this (which I don't), I would say that Cornelia Parker "owns" monofilament.
J., I just misread your comment as "...the military aircraft trope is just a hard-on for sculptors and painters..." which is pretty much how I feel about what I see as mostly fetishisation. I like these other planes by Robert Adrian X better.
Tom, of course Burden is more famous than Robert Adrian X, but fame doesn't dictate where artists find points of connection and dialogue with one another. I'm not big on festival fodder either.
Rob, it seems like the ottawa art gallery's website is taking a little break right now. Hopefully the link will be active again soon.
- sally mckay 2-13-2007 4:28 am
"fame doesn't dictate where artists find points of connection and dialogue with one another."
Noble sentiment, along with "love thy neighbor" and "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's."
As a practical matter, I believe artists like to find what they think is their own schtick, which includes surveying the universe of more famous stuff out there so they don't look unoriginal. In New York (sorry) we call that knowing who "owns" what. It's a form of shorthand, not an Ayn Randian war cry.
Like, I could make abstract paintings on crunched up automobiles, but if I knew John Chamberlain did it I wouldn't go there because i don't want to look like a hack with no ideas.
In a world where Marxist principals of sharing were applied to all intellectual property this deference to better-known work would be vulgar, but we don't live in that world. People make distinctions. They rate things. The pejorative "copycat" is still out there. Sucks but there it is.
Also, I didn't say Chris Burden owned monofilament, I said he owns "toy war implements suspended from ceilings, etc. (not that I think it's a good idea)."
- tom moody 2-13-2007 9:49 am
In a world where "marxist principles of sharing" applied to all intellectual property, we'd have some pretty bad-ass planes to hang from our monofilaments:
http://www.airwar.ru/photo/3m/3m_2.html
- rob (guest) 2-13-2007 4:37 pm
No it's not a "noble sentiment." It's a plain ordinary statement. All of us are influenced by tons of artists who aren't famous around the world. I know we don't want to look stupid by inadvertantly making the same work as someone else, but when it happens I really don't think it matters who is more famous in terms of who literally owns the work. In terms of who it becomes associated with well then yes of course that happens. But the lesser famed person can stick to their guns as far as I'm concerned, and that's good for the discourse too. Happens in Science - two people come up with the same discovery but the first to publish gets the credit (in one case I just heard about, they both published next to each other in the same issue of the same journal and the theory got named for the one that was first on the pages) but on lesser scales of fame the community continues to recognise the other dude as well because there is something to learn not just from the work but from the fact that two people came up with it, and a comparison of differences and similiarities. This isn't Marxist its just information passing on several levels, and it happens in art too (even in New York, I bet).
Rob I think we'd need some new kinda monofilament. Mabye even multifilament.
- sally mckay 2-13-2007 6:32 pm
LM, thats a funny as hell helicopter story. congratz on getting the marquee space. shine on crazy diamond.
i think the idea of ownership does exist as tom describes it and thats ok. see collage. its great to work in a crowded milieu but important to distinguish yourself. to advance the medium on everyones behalf. the ownership baton may then be passed along for reasons of excellence and distinction within the field. however this is a rather modernist notion my favorite not quite dead yet horse.
- bill 2-13-2007 7:07 pm
Scan from The Miracle of Psycho-Command Power
(now we know how L.M. is making all those glitter gifs...)
- sally mckay 2-13-2007 7:32 pm
I like it when vvork posts images that involve similar practices and materials taking place in different countries. It's the most interesting when one work succeeds where the other fails. Because all the artists are contemporary there isn't that currency of institutionalized fame to distract me.
I come to ownership from a slightly different angle. I'm all for healthy gleeful larceny.
- L.M. 2-13-2007 9:58 pm
It's interesting that all this started because Jennifer made a visual connection between Fiona Banner's work (coming to the Power Plant) and Luis Jacob's pigeon piece in We Can Do This Now (the only work that shone in its installation), which was an explicit tribute to Michael Snow's geese hanging at the Eaton Centre.
- sally mckay 2-13-2007 10:47 pm
Rob's Frank Shebageget link is working now. Funny how much the piece resembles all these other airplane works, at least from the photos, but seems to carry its meaning within a completely different set of parameters. Good beaver pun. From what I see and read, I like the piece a lot.
- sally mckay 2-13-2007 11:04 pm
An untitled work from Pudlo Pudlat, probably done in the 60's - just as another context for aircraft. (and Canada geese and pigeons) I'll be doing a front page post of his work soon.
- L.M. 2-13-2007 11:19 pm
nice!
- sally mckay 2-13-2007 11:42 pm
If the work is bad then the redundancy points out a real problem with the underlying assumptions. This means one or both artists have wasted people's time. It's not enough to say "fantastic experiment"--someone had to drive, walk, or ride to the museum to see the same thing twice and be bummed out.
As you know, "its just information passing on several levels" rhetoric with no attempt to critically assess the "information" drives me crazy and "owns" seems to be objectionable to you so I'd like to stop here--it's your page so you get the last word, though.
- tom moody 2-14-2007 1:32 am
last word? okay let me try and clarify my position.
I never set out to critically defend Banner's work, nor am I motivated to do so now. I am defending three very simple (banal, even) things:
The fact that I am more influenced as an artist by Robert Adrian X than by Chris Burden.
The fact that artists often riff off one another to interesting effect.
The fact that it can be informative when different artists indpendently come up with similar ideas.
My critical stance* is that I reject implications that the canon must function on the basis of exclusion. I think art discourse is positively challenged, and strengthened by the fact that there are more artists making interesting work in the world than we can possibly keep tabs on. Looking at all these different airplane artists opens a lot more doors than dismissing them would.
One critical trajectory born of this process might go something like this:
Artists who festishize military technology in their work may express an anti-war position yet at the same time they reveal their own lust for the icons of power. In the case of both Banner and Burden the amibvalence of this position seems problematic, especially if the work is designed to have big wow-factor impact internationally. In the case of Robert Adrian X, the fact that his airplane installations include massive hand-held paper planes indicates a sensitivity to his own techno-lust. Because this ambivalence is acknowledged, I am less inclined to read the work as a form of artist-intiatied power-grabbing, and more inclined to see it as a comment on the fact that those of us who participate in militarized societies may be implicated in the actions of those societies.
This complicit relationship to technology shifts when the artist using airplanes comes from a colonized indigenous community. In this context, Frank Shebageget's Beaver installation is quite eloquent. These little float planes are a symbol of the instrusion of technologised society into wilderness and traditional native lifestyles. But that intrusion happened a long time ago, and the float plane also represents a connection to the rest of world, supplies, mobility, livelihood and survival. Of course the name of the plane, Beaver, makes a sad resonant connection back to the natural world.
I would argue that Shebageget's careful crafting of each plane implies a similar fetishization to what we see in the work of Banner, Burden and Adrian X, but in this context the statement of complicity with the technology belongs in the context of a people who are often seen as separate from, and oppressed by, the society that generates that technology. The politics of this piece, while complex, are evident and poignant.
I'm tempted to bring in more examples, for instance the spooky-in-hindsight sculpture by Michael Richards—a sculpture of a man being pierced by airplanes titled "Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian"—who was killed in the World Trade Centre attack, or the drawing by Beirut blogger Mazen Kerbaj of Sponge-Bob Square Pants riding a falling bomb Dr. Strangelove-style. It's even tempting to speculate on Fiona Banner's motives behind Parade. Is she riffing on Burden? If yes, what does it mean for an English artist in 2007 to redo an installation by an American artist from 1987? If no, what does it mean when an English artist in 2007 comes up with the same idea as an American artist from 1987? While I'm not drawn to either work on its own, the fact that there are two of them makes me much more curious about the phenomenon of artists categorizing military machines, and much less likely to dismiss either of them.
* I've participated in arguing this criticality thing to death several times on simpleposie. Anyone interested can get themselves all lathered up by reading this thread or this thread, or this thread.
- sally mckay 2-14-2007 3:43 am
I don't think it's dead yet.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-14-2007 5:34 pm
good point.
- sally mckay 2-14-2007 6:41 pm
i once made a model of a lear jet, and painted it gold, as a project for boyscouts, i lost points for having it be gold.
i feel of monofiliment paintings the same way as i feel about 20 foot long photographs, looks pretty but whats teh point, i dont understand why michael snows geese at eaton center are such a big deal, i havent even noticed them while feeling fat at h&m
this guy, though, is the king of plane art
http://www.alan-mann.com/planes/index.html
- anthony (guest) 2-15-2007 5:15 pm
(i think a work fails or succeeds on the level that it can be assumed quickly by the forces of capital, so burden fails, but ortega, who did that great volkswagen monofilament peice, succeeds, because toyota made an ad of it)
- anthony (guest) 2-15-2007 5:18 pm
- bill 2-15-2007 6:14 pm
How does Burden fail - his work is emulated and tinkered with all the time?
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-15-2007 6:18 pm
I think Anthony is talking Alberta-Speak with that force of capital argument.
The Canada Geese occupy some legal history here that is before Anthony's time, with Michael Snow's lawsuit over the Xmas ribbons that they tried to put on them one year.
- L.M. 2-15-2007 7:58 pm
only kind of sort of, im speaking alberta, i dont think burden works v. well, mostly because its both immediately absorable, and impossible to extroplate in any interesting ways
- anthony (guest) 2-16-2007 12:55 am
Please do, go on...
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-16-2007 1:15 am
im not talking about this forever, just this thime and place with this art, i think that work that broadcasts as "successful" is easily reproduced by mechinchal means, that its ideas can be ripped off in any number of ways, that work that dropped off as unsuccessful can be picked up by a million different people doing a million different things, and makes money.
(ie nauman and rachel white read, warhol and everyone, cindy sherman and vanessa beecroft, koons and everyone, burden and the monofilament crowd)
- anthony (guest) 2-17-2007 12:04 am