Reblogged from Dec 14:
Productive Panel at Rupert Ravens Contemporary
The panel was advertised via e-mail less than a week earlier and still there was a great turnout. Here’s the original blurb, followed by a few notes that I took. The disclaimer here is that I’m not a journalist. I wrote down things that were relevant to my own concerns. I certainly didn’t write down everything, but now I’d like to share this portion. If anyone has corrections or additions, please send them to me and I will add them. -Ann
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When New is Old
Art After Meltdown
2007, 2008:
Damien Hirst, –120 MILLION in a night, Warhol (car crash) – 72 MILLION,
Lucian Freud (nude) – 25 MILLION, Richard Prince (nurse) – 8.5 MILLION…
November 2008:
Warhol, Lichtenstein, Murakami etc. – UNSOLD
In the documentary “The Mona Lisa Curse,” Robert Hughes traces the current celebritization/monatization of art to 1963 when the Mona Lisa was first exhibited in the US. “People came not to look at the painting but to say they’d seen it.”
Figurative painting, prosaic photography in contemporary museums now? Played-out Dada tricks, banality, and other lackluster convention, (often under the rubric of theory,) dominate as they historically have. Is it time for the term ‘contemporary’ to step down from the throne of the new, with a successor willing to hold tactile, polyvalent court? (with a sense of humor)
Of course, “there are some hedge fund guys with amazing collections,” mentions curator Renee Vara, but can the current liquidity squeeze foment reflection on where art goes from here? Money spent may connote ‘value,’ but are there other entities such as the Brooklyn Rail which can foster independent evaluation beyond the sacrosanct dollar?
Each of the panelists will discuss some artists whom they feel to be harbingers of stimulating future art directions.
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(Initially panelists were asked to highlight area artists whose work is important and relevant considering our country’s current fiscal state. From there the conversation evolved and some thought it best not to name names while others thought it was important to do so)
Mary Birmingham:
-Artists who are thinking expansively, people who are involved in a sort of personal accounting that raises or answers the questions “Where am I in the world?” In terms of scale, measurements and accountability. The paintings of Margaret Murphy and Amy Wilson and the satellite animations of J.G. Zimmerman were shown as examples as well as artists from her current exhibition Material Color on display now at the Hunterdon Art Museum
Robert Storr:
-This is part of the cycle. The last 15 years were unusual in their richness or fictional prosperity. Our current situation is of undetermined duration and undetermined depth. 9-11 was hopefully not the end of irony. Currently we may have lost some illusions but not all of them.
Phong Bui:
-Art is conditioned by the social/political climate. Successful art should be able to capture some juncture between the old and the new. Kirkegaard said “Why is it that we are born as originals but die as copies?” The film The Mona Lisa Curse which was sent to me, addresses this.
Pat Bell:
-A bad market may be better for the emerging artist because of the affordability of newness. The souls of the artists are more pure when they are starting out. They will make work that is less obvious.
Rocio Aranda-Alvarado:
-I’m in the position of having to curate 27 exhibitions, sometimes in just one year, on a very small budget. Sometimes you rely on artists to bring, install and pick up their work even if this is not how we necessarily want to do business. In this climate we find ourselves collecting works on paper.
Robert Storr:
-Art is judged differently in different climates but sometimes there are false oppositions. It is a false opposition to say that art must be valued either by its beauty or by its political and conceptual value.
Phong Bui:
-My grandmother said “If you live in a long tube, be thin. If you live in a barrel, be round.” Artists, especially those with fewer resources, are always adapting.
Robert Storr:
-Installation art is not attached to economic virtue. Judy Pfaff used to use free or available materials. Now she uses expensive ones. This is not necessarily based on the market. Installation art is much older than the New York art scene. Avoid mis-readings of history. Look at what an artist does with what they do have.
Phong Bui:
-Essentially it is the reviewer that generates the dialog. Initially no one wanted to cross the east river to cover shows. We adapted. We created The Brooklyn Rail.
General discussion & audience questions:
-Talking politically is very different than acting politically. Art always relies on dialog. This is difficult when the Bergen Record and the Star Ledger are not providing coverage of the arts in NJ.
Robert Storr:
-The way of turning that around is to DO THINGS. And then to present them with flair.
General discussion & audience questions:
-There is an absence of critical writing. Who is looking at what’s going on in New Jersey? There are four very important roles that art depends on: Artist, Critic, Collector, Curator. Artists can get their attention or exhibition through almost any organization but it will not survive without a way to create discourse, to carry on the conversation. How do we create coverage when the news outlets are not? We take it to the Web. We keep our own community informed and in discourse and if we do this via the Web as supposed to papers or pamphlets our audience is potentially a global one.
Nose-view. Looking down the center.
1995 exhibited at Pyramid Gallery in Rochester, NY
