I Do This, I Do That

There is a good degree of willfulness wayside in our times. It is the notion like Modigliani, who once threw a girl and negation in Sweeney’s work—a of a rakish dilettante and dandy that friend out of his apartment window paramount motivation for him is to Spencer lives out, updated to the pres and then told the police who arrived to “frustrate the audience and myself.” ent, when penises and heavy metal cart him off: “Hey, I’m an artist. I have From America Again, echoes of youth, when not- referents are as safe as milk, and you different morals from people like you.” entirely-thought-out rebellion always usually don’t end up in jail (à la There’s also the drug infused “poor IN EVERY EDITION OF PARKETT, TWO CUMULUS CLOUDS, ONE FROM seems like a good idea. But Sweeney Oscar Wilde) for alleged sodomy. me”-ness of someone like Jean-Michel AMERICA, THE OTHER FROM EUROPE, FLOAT OUT TO AN INTERESTED is a grown-up. As for the sex acts he Sweeney’s art (lately manifested mainly Basquiat. On the opposite end of this PUBLIC. THEY CONVEY INDIVIDUAL OPINIONS, ASSESSMENTS, AND MEM gleefully portrays in his work, he is fully in paintings and drawings, but during spectrum are artists who are permitted ORABLE ENCOUNTERS — AS ENTIRELY PERSONAL PRESENTATIONS OF allowed to go ahead and physically d o his young career also including video, to be insufferably boring and academ PROFESSIONAL ISSUES. those things whenever he wants (but, sculptural installations, and perform ic. I’m thinking of the Neo-Geo painters for the most part, he doesn’t). This is ance) cannot be fully appreciated as a fairly recent historical example of OUR CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE ARE fESSE PEARSON, EDITOR OF “VICE” because buggery outside of the paper, until one has learned something of this. Some of these artists ruined the MAGAZINE, AND ERIC TRONCY, ART CIRITC, CO-DIRECTOR OF LE CONSORTIUM away from the drawn image, becomes Sweeney’s persona. His work and his enjoyment of perfectly good geometri DIJON, AND CO-CURATOR OF THE LYON BIENNALE 2003. something else entirely. Spencer seems reception lie in neither a retinal nor a cal paintings by indulging themselves to be more interested in depicting the cerebral place, but instead in an expe in the cultural theory that was in vogue act on a piece of paper and showing it riential and weirdly humanistic place. in the eighties, throwing around Bau to you than actually trying to do it to To know him is to love him. drillard and Foucault the way their paint you for real. For better or worse, artists who ing forebears threw around drunken This attitude is part of what places achieve a good degree of notice are punches. Spencer in a lineage of artist personal granted leeway in their bad behavior. The tradition of personality em I Do This, ity types that has fallen sadly by the An extreme example of this is someone braced by Spencer Sweeney is much I Do That THE PERSONALITY ARTIST A N D HEAVY METAL DANDYISM S O«3 Ï-o In Spencer Sweeney’s drawing UNTITLED and the genitals are drawn in loving o JESSE PEARSON £ (2002), three nude male figures are ca detail and with considerable craft. The vorting in a wintry forest. The first, col spitting up of subconscious fixations, ored ice blue, has angel wings and is melded with strange details that are I £ anally penetrating the second, who has drained of liquor, lies behind the an- too bizarre to be entirely subconscious, I green skin, four testicles, two penises, gel/fucker. And, lest we forget, the speaks volumes about Sweeney’s method. female breasts, red high heels, and a king/fuckee is flashing the peace sign He is one of the few young artists to § a. kingly mane and beard. The third fig as if to say, “It’s OK—I’m enjoying this.” day to embrace a standpoint of simul 05 ure, seen only from behind, wears a At first glance, this appears to be taneously knowing, not knowing, and 8 chef’s hat and mysteriously wields a the product of a perverted (albeit pre pretending not to know where his ideas % spatula. A discarded bottle, presumably cocious) adolescent boy. The sex act come from. 8 PARKETT 69 2003 180 1<S1 more fun, inclusive, and sexy than all quires a broadening of the academy’s the token boy member. Actress cast a English historical references and nov rience with and abiding love for it. This metal in Sweeney’s art, and it is where this. The true dandyish artists of at least view of what constitutes the art world jagged and frustrating shadow on the ice Satanism—into their work. Banks is because the symbols of countercul he finds his most successful works: the the past thirty years are rock stars, and artistic practices. It seems that the downtown art world of the late nineties Violette, an American artist who lives tural music are some of the most exemplification of Baudelaire’s idea of whose life is art. Think of Marc Bolan, a creative people who most share this and early 2000. They were known for and works in New York, is particularly loaded and pure signs in human cul the flaneur, Sweeney drifts and gathers sultry little elf covered in silk scarves, or persona are not other painters, or even acerbic and petulant attitudes and in graceful with metal music symbols—a ture. When kids start to scribble band ideas from his interactions with daily David Bowie as Sweeney’s forebears photographers. The punk rock/rap fighting during interviews, as well as dash of demon warrior here, a touch logos or doodle scenes inspired by life. Since he personally tends to re more than the artists who defined post- group A.R.E. Weapons (who used to be for exciting and confounding perform of white pentagram there. Bjarne Mel- their favorite bands, they are learning turn like a prodigal son to metal and Pop Art as it slid into concepts and more of a performance art thing, with ances. In one, the members pounded gaard (Australian born, lives and works how to use symbols, those four black punk iconography, it bubbles into his Minimalism. Figures further back in his late nineties/early millennium shows blank canvases against their heads, ex in Oslo) is another artist who pulls off bars or a circle “A” can carry countless drawings and paintings in an organic lineage are Baudelaire, who saw the at galleries like Pat Hearn and Gavin ploding fake blood packets and becom the synthesis of heavy metal ideas into meanings, contexts, and variations. The and exciting way. dandy and the flaneur as heroes of the Brown’s Enterprise) are very akin to ing gory messes (shades of heavy metal his work, especially in his menacing ink doodling of metal and punk kids is A rallying cry amongst purists in the modern world, and Tristan Tzara (after Sweeney in their attitude and the pro head-banging, but we’ll get to that a bit drawings of lank-haired and made-up as important in their development as heavy metal music scene is “death to he founded Dada and before he ignobly jection of their creative acts. In their later). During another performance, heavy metal boys. when they learned the alphabet, and false metal.” This motto, while reeking retired to Surrealism and lyrical po time in New York, they’ve morphed Sweeney’s contribution was to have his Referring to heavy metal in art is a much more sophisticated. The lesson a bit too much of sober rules, is none etry). Baudelaire’s enthusiastic take on their aesthetic from the darker side of friend, the Japanese artist Taka Hiro slippery proposition and one instance they learn is clear: pictures can be theless helpful in defining what is city life and popular culture—that it’s indie, to mustachioed sleaze ball, to Imamura, sing the Rolling Stones “Salt when the old adage “If you don’t eat it, hugely provocative. metal orthodoxy. It keeps fans and something we should let wash over us, their current and best-sounding incar of the Earth” in his heavily accented you can’t shit it” holds great weight. At the same time, punk and metal bands constantly on the alert for sus picking and choosing stimuli as demo nation, which lies somewhere between English, accompanied on guitar by Authenticity, the right to speak of doodling is akin to automatic writing. pect motivations and tourists. A similar cratically as we like—greatly informs teenage metal head and Top 40 hip Sweeney. With its venomous attitude, something only if you’re coming from Just as the brown paper cover on a instinct could be helpful in the art the personality category that Sweeney hop. All along, however, they have Actress seems to have served as an a very particular standpoint with a par teenager’s Algebra 2 textbook becomes world. Categorical knowledge of the falls into in his everyday behavior and maintained a public artistic stance that image-cultivation finishing school for ticular voice, was a favorite weapon of covered in a mosaic of band names, history of any subject isn’t necessary to in his art, where his alphabet of signs is mirrors Sweeney’s and can best be de Sweeney. It was also perhaps a caution hard line political correctness in the symbols, drawings, and lyrics, so do the derive influence from it, but in the case intensely personal and occluded—even scribed as sexy flippancy—very similar ary tale against all-out negativity, as he eighties and nineties.

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