THE Art Economist VOLUME 1 / ISSUE 4 / 2011 THE

Art Economist CONTRIBUTORS

David W. Galenson is a professor in the department of Economics at the University of Chicago and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has been a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology, MIT and the École des Hautes Études in Paris. He was recently appointed as the Director of the Center for Creativity Economics at the Universidad del CEMA, Buenos Aires. In 2008, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in fine arts research. He is the author of Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, Harvard University Press.

Drew Hammond is our Beijing Bureau Chief and has lived in China for a decade. He has lectured on Contemporary Chinese Art for the University of Toronto's Faculty of Landscape, Architecture and Design, and for the Graduate Faculty of the China Art Academy. He is a consultant on Contemporary Chinese art for the new ACE Museum, and for B.A.S.E (Beijing Architec- ture Studio Enterprise) in Beijing's Caochangdi Arts District.

Bruce Helander is an artist who writes on art. His work is in over 50 museum collections, including the Guggenheim, Whitney, Metropolitan, LACMA and SFMoMA. His work recently was included in Christie’s auction of the estate of Dennis Hopper. He is the former publisher of Art Express magazine and Vice President for Academic Affairs at RISD, and is a former CHAIRMAN AND PUBLISHER Fred Alger White House Fellow of the NEA. His latest book, Learning to See—An Artist's View on Contemporary Artists, was recently

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Bruce Helander CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Julie L. Belcove, named an Indie Award Finalist. DEPUTY EDITOR Gary Walther David W. Galenson, Anthony Haden-Guest, ART & DESIGN DIRECTOR Daniel Ellis Donald Kuspit, Brook S. Mason, Marisa J. Pascucci is the former Curator of American Art at the Norton Museum of Art, curator of the Everson Museum of MANAGING EDITOR Susan Hall Kara Walker Tomé, William Warmus Art, Syracuse, and associate curator of collections and exhibitions at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. She was also ASSOCIATE EDITOR Marisa J. Pascucci CONTRIBUTING WRITER Elizabeth Sobieski the exhibitions coordinator for The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where she was also a curatorial assistant at the ADMINISTRATION MANAGER Karene Telesca CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Museum of Contemporary Art. FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT Drew Hammond Amy Arbus, Harry Benson, Neke Carson, EDITOR AT LARGE Leslie Alexander Jonathan Exley, Christopher Fay, Ralph Gibson, Elizabeth Sobieski is a screenwriter/producer based in New York and Los Angeles, who also writes on art-related subjects ONLINE EDITOR Anna Celander Michael Price, Priscilla Rattazzi, Kim Sargent VIDEO EDITOR Tyler Sargent CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Philip Burke, for such publications as New York magazine, the New York Post and Cosmopolitan. Julie L. Belcove served as deputy editor of ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT Camila Helander Rollin McGrail W for more than nine years, where she conceived and edited the magazine’s annual art issue. She is now a freelance writer EDITORIAL RESEARCH Jill Miller based in New York. Leslie Alexander is a New York-based artist who has shown in the US and Europe, including at Grace RESEARCH ASSISTANT Christopher Hurbs PUBLIC RELATIONS Borgenicht and Jack Tilton Gallery. She has also been an art advisor to both corporate and private collectors for 25 years. FINANCIAL RESEARCH Renee Gibson Fitz & Co She serves on the Boards of Directors of BRIC Arts/Media/Bklyn and chairs the visual arts committee, and is an ex officio of SPECIAL PROJECTS Carole Newhouse 535 West 23rd Street S10H New York 10011 the Brooklyn Museum. Gary Walther has been creating magazines at the intersection of wealth and connoisseurship for CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Andy Ruppanner Tel 212-627-1455 Fax 212-627-0654 30 years. He has been the editor-in-chief of Departures, Expedia Travels and ForbesLife. Anthony Haden-Guest is a British- OPERATIONAL SUPPORT MANAGER Christine Winfield Email: [email protected] American writer, reporter, cartoonist and art critic based in New York and London. Financial Times, The Art Newspaper, Vanity BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Colin Ruppanner Fair and The Daily Beast are but a few of the notable publications that have carried his byline. He also is the news editor of SUBSCRIBER SERVICES MANAGER Todd McCoy LEGAL COUNSEL PROOFREADER Judith Wilkis Levine, Plotkin & Menin, LLP Saatchi Online, and earned a New York Emmy for writing and narrating a documentary entitled, “The Affluent Immigrants.” TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR Sanjay Connare New York, New York Neke Carson is an artist and regular contributing photographer for “The Styles of the Times” section of The New York Times. His photographs were presented in a solo show at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Booksellers. Titled “Portraits from the Closet,” the exhibition featured photos of the closets of such creative Subscriptions and Subscriber Services: www.thearteconomist.com types as John Waters and Deborah Harry. Brook S. Mason is the US Correspondent for The Art Newspaper and is a contribut- or call Toll Free 1-877-890-7618 ing author to The International Art Markets -The Essential Guide for Collectors and Investors. Donald Kuspit was the winner of the prestigious Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism (1983), given by the College Art Association. For editorial submissions or comments contact Professor Kuspit is a Contributing Editor at Artforum, Artnet Magazine, Sculpture and Tema Celeste, and the editor of Art Criti- Susan Hall: [email protected] cism. He has doctorates in philosophy and art history, as well as degrees from Columbia University, Yale and Pennsylvania

The Art Economist State University. He has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Fulbright Commission, National Endowment for Corporate Office the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation and Asian Cultural Council, among others. Michael Price is an inventive photographer 410 Evernia Street, Suite 119 who has documented events from New York to Miami for over twenty years; he has worked for a variety of publications, West Palm Beach, Florida 33401 including Time magazine, Business Week, Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone. Amy Arbus has been a New York-based Tel. +1 561-655-1313 Fax + 1 561-655-8835 photographer for over 25 years. She has published four books of her pictures. Additionally, her work has appeared in over www.thearteconomist.com one hundred international periodicals, including New York magazine, Aperture, The New York Times, People and Rolling Stone. Ralph Gibson is considered a master of fine art photography, producing over 40 monographic books of his photos. His The Art Economist is a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors works are included in over 150 museum collections around the world, such as the Metropolitan, Museum Ludwig and

The Art Economist is a Registered Trademark Israel Museum. He has received numerous fellowships, including the Guggenheim Foundation and 3 from the NEA. Harry The Art Economist is not affiliated in any way with the London based The Economist weekly magazine, The Sports Benson is a Scottish-born photojournalist who has witnessed and documented some of the most important moments in Economist, The Wine Economist, The Engineering Economist, as well as other publications that include the word pop culture and world events. He toured with the Beatles in America in 1964, and has photographed every US president “economist” in their titles. The Art Economist is an evaluative opinion magazine. On a best efforts basis, we strive from Eisenhower to Obama. He was contracted with LIFE magazine for 30 years and is now with Vanity Fair magazine. His for accuracy. We are not responsible or liable for clerical errors, ranking errors and mathematical calculations. The opinions expressed in The Art Economist by contributing writers with bylines are solely their opinions and are not photographs have also appeared in Newsweek and Architectural Digest. Rollin McGrail has contributed illustrations weekly necessarily that of the publication. All content of this magazine is copyrighted and may not be reproduced without to The New York Times and Washington Post, and is a frequent contributor to Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Forbes, U.S. News & World the expressed permission of the publisher. Written portions of the magazine may be reproduced and or quoted Report, Esquire and Vogue, among others. Priscilla Rattazzi was born in Rome, Italy, and moved to the United States in 1974; Ruth Asawa, Untitled S.065, early 1960s, Copper and without permission for certified press reviews only. All computations and evaluations contained in this publication currently, she lives and works in New York. She studied photography at Sarah Lawrence College, and later was an assistant to brass wire, 97 x 17 in. (246.4 x 43.2 cm), © the artist, are proprietary in nature; and are compiled based upon data and information developed by The Art Economist to photographer, Hiro. Her work has appeared in such magazines as Redbook, Self, The New York Times Magazine, Donna, Vogue Photo: Hudson Cuneo, Courtesy Rena Bransten Gallery. give the most accurate assessment evaluation, but that these figures may not be reprinted, published, manually or electronically distributed without the express written consent of The Art Economist. Italia and Amica. She is the author of five photography books. Kara Walker Tomé is an arts writer and independent curator of innovative exhibitions through her company, Art Site Projects. Formerly the Director of Education, Docent Training and West Palm Beach – New York – Santa Fe Public Programs at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Florida, she received her master’s of fine arts degree from Printed in the United States of America CalArts (California Institute of the Arts).

8 THE ART ECONOMIST THE ART ECONOMIST 9 THE Art Economist VOLUME 1 / ISSUE 4 / 2011

4 ON OUR COVER – BY DONALD KUSPIT

6 LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER

10 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

12 Working Women Artists: 2011 Status Report BY BROOK S. MASON A reassessment of the female players in the contemporary art world; confronting the age-old question, are women continuing to be held 42 back because of their gender?

16 High Performance BY ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST With numerous Performance art exhibitions hitting the New York gallery and museum scene, here is a look at the history of Performance art, including recent shows of Hermann Nitsch and Terence Koh.

20 THE LIST / PROFILES

42 Liza Lou Beads the World BY ELIZABETH SOBIESKI A look at the dazzling, social-political work of Liza Lou (#191 on The List) and her unique ability to turn craft and beauty into highly sought after 48 work in today’s contemporary art market.

48 Philipp Lachenmann and the Spaces Between BY DREW HAMMOND Among the most progressive artists creating today are those who virtually stand outside the market due to their choice of medium and manner of their works' display. Should collectors leave video installations like those of Philipp Lachenmann's to the big museums? Or is it more interesting to reconsider what to collect?

54 Joel Shapiro Aces the Base: An Accumulation of Experience BY ELIZABETH SOBIESKI A visit to the massive former-power plant turned studio of sculptor, Joel Shapiro (#269 on The List), and a look at his four decades of 54 international accolades, museum shows and public installations.

This page from top: Liza Lou, Kitchen (detail), 60 ARTISTS TO WATCH Ellsworth Kelly, Orange Diagonal, 2008 1991-96, Room made of glass beads, wood, wire, Oil on canvas, two joined panels, 87 ¼ x 60 in. (227 x 152 cm), © Ellsworth Kelly/Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York. plaster and artist’s used appliances, 168 sq. ft., 70 A SELECTION OF UPCOMING INTERNATIONAL ART FAIRS (15 sq m). see p.42. Philipp Lachenmann, Space Surrogate II (GSG 9), 2003, Digibeta, 8 min., 72 FLASHES OF LIGHT loop. see p.52. Joel Shapiro, Float, 2009 and Was Blue (detail), 2010, Wood, casein and cord, 74 PINK SHEETS Installation dimensions variable. see p.59. China Star LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

We have a favorite takeout joint in our neigh- rary market is now also shared by borhood called the China Star. That’s about as Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai. close as most people get to something genu- China’s economic strength as the inely and directly related to the visual aroma second highest global power in of China, as the menus are printed in Chinese 2010 boosted its art market and and most of the waiters speak only Mandarin, made a name for itself around the except for the woman manning the phones, world with leading galleries and who still struggles to explain the entrees in museums supported by the gov- English. The fare is fresh and authentic, and ernment and Chinese collectors years ago we mastered the use of chopsticks who seem as patriotic as they are to provide a measure of authenticity; not sur- eager to support local artists. Drew prisingly, you start to feel hungry again a few Hammond, our foreign correspon- hours after consuming an order of chow mein. dent stationed in Beijing, first pre- Unfortunately, there has been a regular portion dicted this enviable development of bad news reported about securing consumer in his provocative article from our goods “Made in China,” as a common com- premiere issue, titled Rags to Nou- plaint about these imported products, ranging veaux Riches (subscribers can read from tainted drywall and powdered milk to it on our website). In a recent con- lead-based toys and medicines, is that these versation with him concerning the of the provinces. No knowledgeable person mond’s fascinating report in this issue. The Above film still: items can make you very sick. The good news, latest news, he offered a number of close to the Chinese art market is expecting this setting was partly inspired by the famed Walt Philipp Lachenmann, SHU (Blue Hour Lullaby), 2002/2008, Film/Video Installation, 12 min. 30 sec., loop, High Definition though, is that the People’s Republic of China “on-site” observations: “In Hang- trend to diminish or abate in the foreseeable Disney logo of Sleeping Beauty Castle and the Video HDV/HDCAM/16mm Film, 2 soundtracks optional. is producing a large number of talented and zhou, on a road along the banks future. On the contrary, there are a number of stars circling it. Not only is the image a beauty Camera: Philipp Lachenmann and May Rigler, visual FX & “unspoiled” influential artists that are finding of the West Lake, stands the most Andy Warhol, Mao, 1972, synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink Chinese cities with populations of ten million and an animated one at that, but it provides Postproduction: Matthias Neuenhofer, soundtracks: Gerriet K. Sharma and Wolfgang Voigt/Kompakt Label Cologne, their way into our list of top 300 earning, influential fine art university in the on linen, 82 x 64 in. (208.3 x 162.5 cm), Courtesy, The Brant Foundation, whose names most in the West have never a convenient metaphor for my letter from the Greenwich, CT, © 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Soundmix: Alexander Peterhaensel, Courtesy of Philipp Lachenmann. living artists, and you are not feeling hungry nation, the China Academy of Art. Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. heard of, and now they all have collectors.” editor: stars getting brighter overnight that are for more soon after acquiring a work by this It is perhaps no coincidence that, Therefore, if you could look upward into now demanding our attention and are not what foreign fraternity of exciting image makers. The flanking the academy on both the night, beyond the hazy glow of Manhattan’s they always appear to be. If you are peering This film still depicts the California Correctional Institution Andy Warhol was mesmerized by fame and notoriety, and so when he appetite for fresh Chinese talent is now headed sides, are luxury auto dealerships: skyline and the distant coast of California to the up into the midnight sky in April, you will be in the Mojave Desert, which provides the infamous learned that Richard Nixon, the avowed red-baiting, anti-Communist, out of the wok and into the wild fire of the Porsche, Bentley, Aston Martin. Far East, you would have a sense of the vast gulf treated to an unusual array of constellations SHU: Security Housing Unit, Level IV, and is designed to would travel to visit the leader of the world’s largest country, the artist international art market. For example, accord- Zhang Peili, the conceptual artist between a once “forbidden city” surrounded by that form Cubist abstract shapes. You eventu- provide maximum coverage for solitary confinement, immediately created a series of garish portraits of Chairman Mao. partly as life sentences. The lights in the sky are digitally ing to published reports, more than half of the and a professor at the academy, These images, at the time considered shocking and “unpatriotic,” a great wall of isolation (which now seems to ally can find the Big Dipper by looking to the composed of hundreds of single airplanes arriving in flight 2010 global Top 10 Contemporary artists are who himself drives a rather are some of his best known subjects. No one could have possibly be shrinking) and filled with rising stars, and a north, and just beyond you will discover three corridors in the early evening when the electric lights Chinese, compared with just three Americans: prosaic vehicle despite an upcom- realized at the time that China would reach an unprecedented turning traditionally open art market on the other side diagonal stars close to each other that form are gradually turned on and the barbed wire-wrapped Basquiat, Koons and Prince. So, the announce- ing major retrospective of his work point in the international art market by becoming the front runner in of the world, eager to expand contemporary Orion’s belt. If you are searching for Arcturus, compound prepares for the night. The film was partly auction revenue. The Warhol Mao works, which at first Andy couldn’t ment that China now ranks FIRST, ahead at the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, says, trade routes to increase business and utilize one of the brightest stars in our galaxy, it’s the inspired by references to an eclectic line up of classic film seem to give away, today are ironically among his most sought after of America and the UK, in terms of fine art ‘They must be selling those Aston the fresh energy of a growing frontier. wrong time of the year to see it. For a growing topics, such as War of the Worlds, Antonioni's Zabriskie silkscreened portraits. auction revenue, should not come as a big sur- Martins. They change the ones in The thematic film still illustrated here of a and glowing reddish star in the Far East that Point, Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Jackson Pollock's Drip prise. After a steady climb, China jumped from the window about twice a week. twinkling evening sky above a remote prison now seems to be getting brighter by the day, Paintings, Van Gogh's Arles series, and the tradition of third place (previously occupied by France) in They only do that when they are sold.’ They gallery in Beijing’s 798 Art District. This year, in the Mojave Desert is during the “blue hour,” it is the right time to focus your telescopic the German Romantic landscape painting. 2007 to first place in 2010, ahead of the grand are sold despite that, with luxury sales taxes their profits were approximately $3 million US a period where the compound prepares for the attention towards China. � masters of the art market since the 1950s. in China, they cost about $1 million US. But according to an informed source. This might night when the lights are gradually switched Now, China accounts for over 33 percent of the real difference is that now consumers of not seem an immense sum, except for the fact on. Approaching aircraft beacons appear one —BRUCE HELANDER global fine art sales, versus 30 percent in the Aston Martins and all the other flash rides that the gallery’s clientele almost exclusively is after the other like burning meteors, slowly New York City US, 19 percent in the UK and 5 percent from that tool around Chinese cities are also in the from the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. gathering to drift and float. This image pro- the birthplace of modern art, France. Remark- market for art…Two years ago, inexperienced Throughout China, art collecting is spreading vided by Philipp Lachenmann, the producer of ably, the expanding nucleus of the contempo- entrepreneurs new to the art world started a beyond Beijing and Shanghai to the newly rich the film/video installation discussed in Ham-

10 THE ART ECONOMIST THE ART ECONOMIST 11 Pictured opposite page & this page: Philipp Lachenmann, Stills from: Alice.M, 2010, HD Video, split screen installation, 9 min. 30 sec., loop, Courtesy of the artist.

PHILIPP LACHENMANN HD video, described the process filmmakers still conventionally call equally well be served by other media—the central visual M.O. of and the Spaces Between undercranking and overcranking (i.e., running the film through the the work, that of a figure eventually revealed to be a reflection, is a BY DREW HAMMOND camera at speeds faster or slower than the conventional 24 frames device that has appeared in countless films, most skillfully, perhaps per second in order to effect an illusion of fast or slow motion). among the earliest, and certainly with greater signification, in Orson With unconcealed fascination, as though it were a discovery, Viola Welles’ presentation of Everett Sloane in the trailer for Citizen Kane. laboriously described to the interviewer this simple process and the With all due respect to the acquisitions committee of the Scot- origins of the term in early hand-cranked cameras, even though the tish National Gallery of Modern Art in 2003, this method of using practice was commonplace by the time of Mack Sennett’s Keystone a time-worn movie device, not as a post-modern “quotation,” “ap- Kops comedies in 1912, and probably self-evident to every first-year propriation,” or allusion, but as the formal corollary of a theme to ather like the relation, love and money, when it comes to generally is more understandable considering that even many cel- film student and Los Angeles resident ever since. To be fair, knowl- which its relation either is obvious or spurious—this is not the sort art and money, some discrepancies are quite natural, and ebrated works in digital media simply failed to equal—much less edge of film technique is by no means necessary in order to make of slip one would ever find in an artist of the moving image as so- others are downright mysterious. To the latter category, we surpass—the early film experiments of Man Ray and Hans Richter a work of art worthy of the name, but neither does a grasp of tech- phisticated as Philipp Lachenmann. But before we consider why this R may assign the extreme discrepancy between the explo- (much later: Brakhage), and the experimental moments of the great nique that is too elementary inspire confidence in the art “genre.” is the case, it is worthwhile to have a potentially shocking glance at sion of technological innovation in the field of image-making since narrative filmmakers such as Welles, Mizoguchi, Bergman, Fellini, This naïve wonder has not exactly destroyed the market for Bill the auction record. the advent of the computer (including digital image-making and Antonioni, Eisenstein, his foil, Tarkovsky, and, arguably those of Viola. Although it is a fact that, but for two exceptions I have found, For the sake of argument, consider a somewhat arbitrary and altering apparatus), and collectors, who, with rare exceptions, con- Godard himself. Despite that, in fact, there was hardly a single inno- all auction sales for Viola have been for still images. Until a zealous subjective market snapshot of some of the most celebrated artists tinue not to know quite what to make of artists who create in new vation attributed to the French New Wave that is not to be found in reader proves me wrong, Viola nonetheless seems to enjoy the dis- of the medium. We begin with Nam June Paik (1932-2006), the media and generally to ignore in the marketplace even rare works Jean Vigo’s documentary of 1930, Á Propos de Nice. Nevertheless, the tinction of having a work of his sold at auction for the highest price artist many credit with the invention of video as an artistic medium, of unqualified power. predominance of undistinguished works does little to explain the yet paid for a video installation: $532,934 in 2010 for Surrender and whose works appear in dozens of the world’s most important This condition surely is not due to a failure of courage or acumen limited market for the moving image. After all, works of the highest (from his Passions series), a color video diptych on plasma flat panel institutions. And yet, in ten years of auction results, this writer could among museum curators, who, for years, have filled museums with quality are rare in any medium, and this has ever been the case. If displays. Often, the identity of lucky buyers eludes even the eye find only four video pieces offered among 153 works auctioned. even more videos than the quality of some works would seem to anything, rarity ought to make the best work even more prized. of The Art Economist, but evidence seems to indicate that it was a Videos are the works without which the artist perhaps might have merit. It was Godard who, perhaps after an initial exposure to MTV, Occasionally, an embarrassing condition arises when the forma- private collector who acquired the work, another edition of the remained unknown instead of an art world household word. Videos said that, “Video means I see, but increasingly it is the medium tion of artists often excludes basic film technique. In a radio inter- same one acquired earlier by an institution, the Scottish National and video sculpture installations are the museum works. Without of those who refuse to see.” But, despite some legitimate concep- view to coincide with his video installations at the Getty in 2007, Gallery of Modern Art. The acquisition occurred despite that—ad- these, the market might never regard his graphic work as worthy tual differences between digital and film media, Godard’s reaction Bill Viola, who usually shoots in 35mm film and then transfers to mittedly, leaving aside other themes of The Passions series that might of attention. And yet of the four video works listed, one remained

48 THE ART ECONOMIST THE ART ECONOMIST 49 unsold, and another hardly counts as a video work since it is a multiple with a video component. But there are nearly 150 sales of paintings, etchings, serigraphs, posters and other works in graphic media. Vito Acconci, one of the most daring and original of American artists, also a video pioneer, apparently has not had one video work sold at auction in the ten years of records that I have seen. Matthew Barney, purveyor of the macabre neo-Baroque, has never had sold at auction a single edition of The Cremaster Cycle for which he is known. At auction, one finds innumerable still images from the moving picture cycle, stills and other works identified as “prints,” “Cibachromes,” “silkscreens,” “photo- engravings,” “serigraphs,” “lithographs,” etc. In 2004, there was even a hearty soul—I hope not his gallerist, Barbara Glad- Left: stone—who paid $400,000 for a C-Print still from The Cremas- Philipp Lachenmann, ter Cycle, the sort of image that went unsold a few months later, Stills from: Alice.M, 2010, HD Video, split and continued to sell several times thereafter at prices about 40 screen installation, 9 min. percent lower than their anomalous high, but no signed and 30 sec., loop, Courtesy of certified originalCremaster DVDs or screen installations have the artist. turned up at auction. Right: Douglas Gordon, a Turner Prize winner known for 24 Hour Philipp Lachenmann, Alice.M, 2010, HD Video, Psycho, one of the most celebrated moving image works of the split screen installation, decade, has had sixty-four works at auction, almost all photos, 9 min. 30 sec., loop, but only one sale of a work of moving image, the medium for Courtesy of the artist. which he is most known, Scratch, a DVD installation of 2001. I repeat: one work. Inevitably, it will occur to the wary to object that the moving In the first place, Lachenmann’s moving image work either is only opposed screens would make it impossible for the viewer to inhabit image works simply do not come up for sale. But history shows possible in a digital video medium or, at the very least—given the the space between the opposed images that itself is related to one of that it is invariably true that when there is a market for such works’ conceptual aspect—video is the only way fully to manifest all the principal themes of the work. work, it does come up for sale. In cases where even the galleries the works’ inherent aesthetic tensions. Without video, it would be nearly impossible for the depiction are not willing to release the work to the market, then it is only This is not only because the works of the installation series, of a projector on one screen to present the illusion of projecting an because they perceive no demand and fear to devalue other of despite their overt serenity of aspect that sometimes evokes children’s image onto the opposing screen, thereby affecting multiple layers of the works’ revenue streams. tales or allusions to conventional Disney images, only barely conceal illusions of representation and reality that serve as corollaries to the It is more interesting to ask why it is that there is practi- a palpable violence that derives from information about their real fantasies of the violent ideology the structure was designed symboli- cally no market for such work among private collectors who are subject matter. Film may be the medium of fictional violence; but cally to house. Moreover, the video medium is necessary in order the backbone of the art market. I, for one, do not believe that video is the medium par excellence of real violence, the violence of to generate adequately a tension with the analogue film medium. this is a matter of concerns over the reproducibility of digital warfare, terrorism and the chronicle of crime, the medium by which The latter not only is present on the audio track with the sound of a media. A collectible original or exemplar of a limited edition real violence disseminates on the internet, via satellite, ubiquitous mechanical projector, but also appears in various guises throughout documented, signed and certified ought to have a market value portable devices and on broadcast media throughout the world. the work, including the depiction of a projection of Hans Richter’s as an artifact that defies any imitation, even if the imitation is exact. often, video artists have failed to make works that are fully integrat- Although it is beyond our present scope to attempt to do justice to Rhythmus 21, reputed to be the first “abstract” film. It is worthwhile to recall that photos are reproducible, even those ed with their choice of medium. As with any of the plastic arts, the all the installations in the series, an example of this peculiarity to the The sense of false serenity that belies an underlying violence is that already have been printed; and with the aid of computers, even choice of medium ought to be indispensable with regard to a work’s medium is the video installation on two opposed screens, Alice.M, even more palpable in successive installations. In the tour de force, reproductions of existing prints can rival the image quality of an conceptual aspect. In the past, video art could exploit the inher- a title that contains a Joycean pun or, for that matter, a Ducham- Space Surrogate I (Dubai), the artist has constructed an entire moving original print. It is also a fact that it is only recently that the market ent immediacy of the novelty of instant playback. Its inferior image pian pun that combines allusion to Alice in Wonderland with “ism”— picture of 30 minutes from a single news photo of a jet on a desert has recognized “art in the photographic medium” as distinct from quality automatically yielded a degree of distortion that enabled the which in this case easily can comprise surrealism, but which most runway. This is the jet that hijackers took in 1977, with the stated mere photography, that, de facto, formerly was excluded from fine experience of the viewer, as in Bacon’s famous phrase, “to return it pertinently can refer to Communism, since the piece is shot in the aim of freeing from prison members of the Red Army Faction ter- art exhibition, on the grounds that it depended too much on what to reality with greater force.” empty “futuristic” Niemeyer-designed headquarters of the Commu- rorist group in exchange for the lives of the civilians aboard the air- was already there, and was therefore insufficiently contrived by the But we are long past this stage in the history of the digital moving nist Party of France. Here, the allusion to violence resides not only craft. Before our eyes, the image undulates like a mirage in a desert artist to be able to transcend illustration. image and, with radical improvements in quality of the digital in the opposition of the screens, and the sense that their contrasting heat wave. But part of the nature of a mirage that occurs in nature Only with the implicit recognition of the conceptual potential moving image, together with the sort of software and computing images seem, alternately, to dominate and consume each other. Vio- presupposes a temperature anomaly that allows the viewer to per- of the photographic image, did it become conceivable for photos power one can bring to bear on such images, video, for a time, para- lence is also concealed in the way the architecture is allowed to evoke ceive a distinction between an apparent undulation in a distant part by certain artists to occupy their rightful places in museums, in the doxically had lost its original raison d’être as a medium, and began a temple of messianic ideology, a fantasy reflected in the remoteness of the field of view, and a visually stable surrounding in the space same halls that housed masterpieces of painting, sculpture and in- to fall into the arbitrary, the banal, and to approach mere illustration. of a moon distant at first and finally, in the opposing screen, project- between the viewer and mirage. Here, unnaturally, every constituent stallation. And only then, did the world begin to hear of six and This is only one of the reasons why Some Scenic Views, Philipp ed onto the dome of the structure so that the man-made architectural of the image near and far undulates as though the threat of violence even seven figure prices for photographs that, once, either had no Lachenmann’s series of moving image installations recently at the fantasy of ideology and the embodiment of fantasy in the natural concealed in the image’s external condition had infected all reality market, or for which such prices were unthinkable. Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin, reveals not only a consum- order fuse into a single disconcerting inexorability. and perception with a mirage—by definition, an evocation of a false The real reason this has not yet happened with video and similar mate aesthetic achievement on its own merits, but an historic leap for In the case of Alice.M, it is practically incidental that, as a matter perception that stands in tension with the extreme and urgent reality moving image media probably has less to do with the short-sight- the medium, analogous to the most pivotal developments in concep- of sheer mechanical necessity, were the piece to be on film rather of the event. edness of collectors than with the fact that, until most recently, too tual photography that finally afforded the medium full artistic status. than HD video, a pair of projectors placed in the middle between

50 THE ART ECONOMIST THE ART ECONOMIST 51 Philipp Lachenmann, Space Surrogate II (GSG 9), 2003, Digibeta, 8 min., loop, Courtesy of the artist, Photo: Veit Landwehr. Philipp Lachenmann, Space Surrogate I (Dubai), 2000, Digibeta, 31 min. 30 sec., loop, Courtesy of the artist, Photo: Veit Landwehr.

Space Surrogate II (GSG 9), is an extreme slow motion 8-minute but a moving image, in order to slow it down, the task was to sepa- plastic arts concerned their mutually exclusive temporal conditions: ever seems on the point of revealing itself, but never actually does moving image digitally constructed from a five-second film of nine rate each of the 120 frames of the original and digitally add comput- in reality, time never stopped; in the image, time never moved. The reveal itself. This is more than a poetic way of referring to aesthetic members of the German anti-terrorist force, GSG 9, crossing the er-generated frames between each of the “originals” so as to increase moving image, that reveals itself in time and therefore resembles tension as a precondition for artistic status—which the expression field of view at an airport in Turkey while awaiting orders to respond the number of frames to 11,500. music and drama, evolved two classes of time treatment. One was also implies—it is a way of recalling that much of the power of art to the 1977 hijacking evoked in Space Surrogate I. Most immediately, In the case of the jet, the digital effect invests the still image with the compression of time, the “invisible cutting” of Hollywood film resides in its sense of dynamic potential. the work signifies the same excruciatingly prolonged terrorist event, the illusion of both spatial and temporal movement; in the case of the editing. The other was the capture of “real time,” the province of If quality is a genuine criterion for collector interest, can the with agents of the violent retaliatory capacity of the state. GSG 9 footage, the digital effect reduces the movement of the original video reportage and Tarkovsky’s aesthetic of the sequence shot. market for the best video work continue to be far over the horizon? Considered together, these two works exhibit between them the to a slowness that renders the movement so barely perceptible that it Through a variety of means, Lachenmann’s works defy both classes Udo Kittelmann, the intrepid museum director and curator whose tension of every conceivable formal opposition. The latter is in black approached stillness. Rather than investing the moving images with of moving image time treatment by investing his images with tempo- earlier curatorial choices include a Golden Lion win at the Venice Bi- and white, the former in color; one an image of several men, the a time they already possess, the process saps real time from them. ral dynamics entirely contrived by the artist in order to reflect the the- ennale, and who fast-tracked Some Scenic Views so that it could open other a single machine; one in an urban industrial environment, But the application of these techniques is not only a means to matic content of his enterprise. In this way, the works transcend the at the museum within six months of his go-ahead, has never lost the other seemingly isolated in the desert; one with a fixed subject, compound a variety of tensions. The works also evoke a number inherent limitation of video and photography of “relying too much his sense of irony about caprices of the market: “We know that the the other in movement, one in long shot, the other medium shot of fundamental aesthetic themes. One of these has to do with the on what is already there.” In the same stroke, they also elaborate aes- market is not reflecting the really important artists—maybe a third approaching ever closer, etc. What is more, the terrorists, whose question of the appropriate nature of representation. Modernism, thetic criteria that are only possible in the digital video medium, with of them at most.” As if to dispel the notion, a faint smile crossed his act’s intended power and effect derives from its public exhibition, which makes a “cameo” through the Hans Richter film inAlice.M , the added result that the artist’s choice of the medium necessarily face: “It’s more interesting to see the audiences: how they loved it.” � are masked by their concealment in the aircraft. The antiterrorist presented an aspiration for art to dispense with any referent, thereby transcends its mere presence in the overall scheme of the work. squad, whose power and effect presuppose their concealment and to become autonomous by representing only itself. But in most of Invariably, the treatment of time involves a spatial correlative. The PHILIPP LACHENMANN CURRENTLY IS REPRESENTED BY GALERIE ANDREAS BINDER (MUNICH). anonymity, have their features exposed in the work. Some Scenic Views, a “fictitious” formal aspect of digital effects is em- artist characterizes this aesthetic principle of his work by means of the The contrasting manner of digital treatment of the two works bedded and fused with real images so that it is nearly impossible, German compound word, , “the space between.” For DREW HAMMOND IS OUR BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF AND HAS LIVED IN CHINA FOR A DECADE. AT CO- Zwischenraum LUMBIA, HE STUDIED NEO-CONFUCIAN THOUGHT UNDER THE LATE PROFESSOR WING-TSIT CHAN. bears the tension of a similar opposition. With a single frame of despite the occasional tell-tale trace, to know where computer gen- Lachenmann, the space between is first and foremost an interest in the HE HAS LECTURED ON CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO'S FACULTY source material, the artist digitally has fragmented the image into erated fiction ends and the real begins, or vice versa. This radical space between the viewer and the object: “How do you create space? OF LANDSCAPE, ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN, AND FOR THE GRADUATE FACULTY OF THE CHINA ART hundreds of discrete constituents that are each invested with in- synthesis between fiction and reality is not only a matter of opposi- Either it is there and you fill it, or you focus on what is between.” ACADEMY. HE IS A CONSULTANT ON CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART FOR THE NEW ACE MUSEUM, SOON TO OPEN IN LOS ANGELES, AND FOR B.A.S.E. (BEIJING ARCHITECTURE STUDIO ENTERPRISE) IN dependent movement in order to effect the illusion of the mirage tion to the Modernist illusion of autonomy; it constitutes an asser- Implicit in this interest is an aspiration for art to illuminate fea- BEIJING'S CAOCHANGDI ARTS DISTRICT, WHERE HE DIRECTED A RESEARCH PROJECT ON THE THEORY with its accompanying sense of the passage of time, even though the tion of the determinism of the digital video medium. tures of reality that are ever before us, but which yet remain unseen, OF PERSPECTIVE IN CLASSICAL CHINESE PAINTING. original still source is “frozen” in time. Time poses another important theme in these works. Tradition- that art can promise a revelation that transforms our vision of reality. Since the source of the GSG 9 sequence was not “frozen” at all, ally, an obvious distinction between representation and reality in the It suggests Borges’ dictum that the aesthetic act is a revelation that

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