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Via bloggy, Christie's, and Sir Reggie Dwight's collection comes this Harry Callahan image, titled Collage, Chicago, 1957, a small gelatin silver print. An uneducated guess is these are superimposed negatives of an array of photos spread out on Callahan's wall or floor (which may or may not actually have been glued together in real space). Interesting the way the photo picks up the rhythms of the Abstract Expressionist painting of the time--e.g. Mark Tobey, Bradley Walker Tomlin. Back then this was was just considered "art" but now we see it as all of a piece with 50s textile design and magazine illustration. What will the "art of today" be all of a piece with, I wonder?
In the comments to an earlier post, Aaron Yassin says: "Although I don't mind a few New Dumb Little Paintings here and there (some of them can be pretty cute) I'm not as sympathetic as you or Jerry Saltz are to the genre. I'm actually more mystified by the continued proliferation of the form and view it as one more sign that we are really in the midst of a mannerist period." He asks what I think is important about the genre.
First, don't give too much weight to Saltz's opinion since he has what art historiographer James Elkins calls a "positionless position" on art. The brief for bad painting, however, has remained fairly strong since it was first identified by Marcia Tucker and others in the late 70s. Here's the gist of an argument: Technological developments in "imaging" (first photography, now digital tools) are in the process of making painting as historic as hot lead typesetting, whether we like it or not, and there are only two ways it can go now. It can merge into technological practice and/or it can be the most idiosyncratic, unco-optable form of personal expression. "Mannerist" implies decadence but idiosyncratic personal expression is absolutely vital and essential in a world dominated by mass-(re)produced media. Jim Shaw's "Thrift Store Paintings" show at Metro Pictures was a landmark because it harnessed the power of many individuals' "one good painting" (good meaning punchy or hard-to-forget) and also presaged the role of the artist as curator of such phenomena, an increasingly common practice on the Web. I could go on but that's it in a nutshell. To me, "mannerism" is the postmodern AbEx painting at Von Lintel gallery in Chelsea.
In this post Adam Greenfield points out a recent bit of Eyebeam reBlogging to illustrate the damage that resyndication feeds could do to Google ranking and giving-credit-where-credit-is-due. Specifically, when Eyebeam reBlogged an item about Jim Davies' Pac-Man Paintings Page, it did not assign the primary, "top of the post" link to the original source but rather to a downstream reblogger. Thus, instead of clicking surfers through to Davies' page, the top link takes them to a secondary source. Greenfield believes such practices muddy the web waters and fears that ultimately a reBlogger could beat out Davies, the content originator, for top Google ranking.
I was the reBlogger at the time so here's an explanation. First, in defense of the Eyebeam reBlog software, it does give the reBlogger a choice which link to use for "top of the post" status, so it's not purely robotic. I chose the link I chose (we-make-money-not-art's reblogging of the item) because w-m-m-n-a had picked and (as best I can recall) resized the photo accompanying the Davies plug and added (admittedly very slight) editorial commentary. I figured that since Davies was being reBlogged so many times he'd ultimately get his due (which at the moment appears to be slashdotting), and I'd give credit to the reblogger who packaged the item in a way most to my taste. And, to be perfectly honest, I thought Davies' art was topical and only mildly amusing so this was my way of hedging a critical endorsement.
As far as Google getting skewed by my capriciousness, jeez, who cares? It's an erratic search measure at best and plain screwy as a measure of intellectual worth. Thanks to Google, my current largest hit-getter is a drawing of gay furry porn I linked to over two years ago, to make a minor point about, ironically, the vernacular side of the Web mooting earnest new media initiatives. As far as I know, I'm the only person who ever linked to it, and it gets disproportionate attention because Google Images pulls it up as an example of the hugely popular "yaoi" (male-male manga) search term. That comes from the URL, not me--I didn't even know the term in June 2002 (in fact, I thought the furries in question were a male and a female). I guess my point is that sometimes it only takes one link to make something "a hit," and getting credit as a "discoverer" of an artwork can result in a tidal wave of unwanted traffic. Not quite the same, honor-wise, as publishing an article in a peer-reviewed journal, for either the critic or the critiqued. To conclude, as David Byrne once said of the government, "Don't worry about Google."
From Daniel Albright's Quantum Poetics (Cambridge University Press 1997), p. 191:
For several years before writing Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, Ezra Pound had earned money by writing criticism, with varying degrees of good humor and bitterness. Much of this criticism was published pseudonymously:I am writing regularly for [Orage, editor of The New Age] as B. H. Dias and Wm. Atheling. The former on art, where E. P. would be hopelessly suspect of Vorticist Propaganda, and the elderly Atheling on music because no one writer should publicly appear to know about everything. These wind shields are to be kept secret. Dias only puts over as much as the N[ew].A[ge]. reader is supposed to be able to stand. (Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts, p. xxii [1918])Clearly these personae are conventional critics generated by a general subtraction of talent, vigor, and idiosyncrasy. (Though of course they still managed to give a good deal of offense--particularly because of Atheling's invectives against the piano.) Atheling is elderly, while Dias is--at least on a few occasions--a fuddy-duddy horrified by certain advanced Modernist ideas, such as those of Ezra Pound. As Dias wrote to The New Age:There is no use arguing with these people. There is no use trying to make them understand [that]...sculpture...is an art of form, whose language is form... Mr. Ezra Pound attempted some such explanation in your paper years ago; it only produced a riot. But, then, he expressed himself very badly and in the jargon of his horrible vortex. (Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts, p. 36 [1918])