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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Matthew Collings had a great article in the March issue of Art Review trashing the movie Modigliani along with Lust for Life, Pollock, and other films that represent artists in the "debased romantic tradition of the sentimental tortured charming impossible boy-man" Here's more:
Anyone used to looking at painting and having an understanding of what its about in historical terms and as a crafted object can see immediately that the art in Modigliani, which is all inept in the same way, is a mess, incoherent bundles of signs that say 'Modern Art'. But at the same time this pseudo-art is ambitious in a horrible way. Its statement is 'I am impressive. Look at me'; not 'I am the result of a ceratin type of serious endeavour, involving both the past and the present, in which the artist as a man takes a back seast in terms of ego and pride — that kind of thing simply doesn't help make forms cohere and colours harmonise; so basically you've got to knock it on the head if you want to be any good.' Instead we get something truly base. A supposedly great masterpiece by Picasso is unveiled amidst a lot of hoopla, everyone gasps at the audacity, the genius, etc, while 'Picasso' does a little proud, moved, humble but also arrogant smile, as if to acknowledge, 'Yes, I am the sex and art king of all time, but I also concede I owe my greatness to a long line of geniuses going back to Raphael, whom I listen to over my shoulder while working in my atelier!' That is, a part truth — Picasso's indebtedness to history and tradition — becomes a whole lie: art is for social climbing, for intimidating the other guy.
The next show at MOCCA (opening Saturday) is going to be good. Donigan Cumming is a strange cat who makes strange videos. Peggy Gale guest curated the exhibition. Gale herself has an interesting story. She's been Canada's expert on video art pretty much since the medium was invented. In the early seventies she curated a comprehensive cross-Canada show at the AGO called Videoscape. Back then, video art tended to be conceptual and performative, exploring the possibilities of real-time and the seeming physicality of video itself. Said Gale in her 1977 essay for Parachute, "[Video] is not 'over there,' projected away from us onto a wall or screen as is the case with film. Rather it is 'here;' it projects it's message from within, as would a person who is interacting directly with us. As such, video has a presence which demands attention."
Video art has come a long way since the single-shot days of the early 70s. No longer a reel of magnetic tape, conceptually tied to television and performance, video has become a diffused-yet-integral component of the contemporary multi-media environment. Gale, with her prevailing interest in narrative and the tangibility of ideas, is still pushing her writing and delivering insights into the medium. Hence a show by Donigan Cumming, who's work is multi-layered and challenging, twisting fiction and documentary together in a tight and disconcerting weave. His works feature people living with poverty, old age, and substance abuse. The viewer is confronted with too much intimacy: the saggy flesh, toothless maws, and abject living conditions of some very down and out people. We are invited to peek into a strange relationship between Cumming and his subjects. He is too close, in fact the narrative of desperation seems to belong to the artist as much as it does to his characters. Is this fiction, document or exploitation? If fiction, why the painfully acute level of realism? If document, why is the artist himself so present in the work?
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Says Gale, "When I was asked to curate this show I felt I could say something that hadn't been said yet. It was very hard to nail it." And nail it she did. The exhibition is accompanied by a vivid publication, more an artists' book than a catalogue, that visually puns with pixels and window screens, nutting around with the contemporary construction of video images while at the same time presenting poignant pictures of sad reality. Gale's essay is elucidatory. Here's a quote:
"The relationships between Cumming and his accomplices are complex. Some have become his friends, and stay in regular touch; others surface only in the photos and video works. These touch on the tradition of "concerned photography" with its probing of issues and personal trauma; the resulting images, however, are far from the beautiful photographs that appear no in photo-journalism, as eloquent, even seductive, studies of famine victims or war zones, inner city violence or environmental decay. Ironically, the gritty realities to which we are introduced in Cumming's work, may not be all that they appear, nor even be honest portraits. Facts conflict. They insist on something other than direct or "true" documentation, despite the profusion of information and nuance that they display. Yet while Cumming's work has been reviled on occasion as obscene—that is, offensive or abhorrent to prevailing concepts of morality or decency—the work is highly moral and engaged, and very far from inciting lust or depravity. Insofar as his images are "offensive" one must look not to the artist's intention but to his departure from the sanitized world of contemporary advertising and so-called lifestyle modes. Sex and violence? Not here. Offensive to the senses, disgusting, loathsome, foul? Only from a certain (blinkered) point of view."