YOKO ONO’S EARTH PEACE | MAPPING | BERT BENALLY AND AI WEIWEI IN THE DESERT ART VS. OIL | MARY JANE JACOB ON CURATION | LEXINGTON TATTOOS ITSELF Public Art Review Public Art Review Issue 51 • Fall/Winter 2014 • publicartreview.org

Barbara Grygutis • Issue 51 JR’s Big Vision • JR’s Art vs. Oil • Artists & Fabricators • Artists & Fabricators • Mapping

51 South Park Bridge Entry Monuments and Pedestrian Railing , Washington T: 520.882.5572 520.907.9443 Repurposed steel rocker arms from the historic 1930 drawbridge flank the approach. M: 3200 ft. of artist-designed railing is inset with original gears and other salvaged components. [email protected] BIG VISION JR talks about boundaries, limits, seeing barbaragrygutis.com $16 .00 USD Commissioned by 4Culture, King County Public Art Collection people, and being bold Fabrication: Jesse Engineering, Tacoma, WA Photo:Spike Mafford

Grygutis South Street Bridge PAR FINAL.indd 1 10/18/14 6:34 PM BOOKSBOOKS & MEDIA Publications and reviews

Fiery Passion Why do 70,000 people trek into the desert for Burning Man? It’s the art. BY SHAUNA DEE

BURNING MAN: ART ON FIRE Jennifer Raiser Photography by Sidney Erthal PUBLIC ARTPUBLIC REVIEW and Scott London Introduction by Larry Harvey New York: Race Point Publishing, September 2014 | VOL. 26 VOL. | NO. 1 NO. Much of the focus of Burning | ISSUE 51 ISSUE Man coverage in the media of | PUBLICARTREVIEW.ORG late has been the influx of high- end trailers with extravagant catered meals for the Silicon Valley elite. But the art at Burning Man, still the focal point of the weeklong annual festival, deserves documentation in a hardcover 86 art book filled with large, beautiful photos and compelling stories. BOOKS Burning Man: Art on Fire, by Jennifer Raiser, is just that book. Covering more than 200 works of art created by Burners in one of the most inhospitable of locations in the , the book provides an experience second only to being there. Through inter- views, stories, and photography, readers will witness the effort it takes to create work in this singular setting and gain a greater under- standing of artists’ motivations. In a sense, the art at Burning Man is the very essence of the festi- val, where individual works are pieces of the whole. The context of each piece is a pop-up in the middle of in Nevada, a city with a gift economy and utopian ideals, which fosters collaboration and true participatory art. There is no clear distinction between audience and artwork here. In September 2013, the year Raiser wrote about in her book, 68,000 people attended the festival, each one a participant in the grand creation, and ultimate destruc- tion, of the Burning Man. Whether you are one of the 68,000 or not, you will appreciate the illuminating perspectives presented in Burn- ing Man: Art on Fire. Also included in the book is an artist’s perspective from Leo Villa- real, an introduction from Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, and a forward by Will Chase.

SHAUNA DEE is the information and communications coordinator at Forecast Public Art.

TOP: Duane Flatmo’s El Pulpo Mecanico (2011) was a crowd favorite. Ingeniously fashioned from reclaimed scrap metal and salvaged items, this charming cephalopod spewed 200 gallons of propane flame—on a good night—from its eight articulated trashcan tentacles. MIDDLE: The UK–based architectural design collective Warmbaby created The Wet Dream (2011) to bring a whimsical representation of cooling English rain to heat-soaked Black Rock City. The structure housed a canopy of umbrellas to protect from the heat of the sun during the day and a 24-hour background audio of thunder and lightning, illuminated at night with LED rope lights. BOTTOM: Over 40 feet tall and made from powder-coated steel and

steel cable, Kate Raudenbush’s vision for Star Seed (2012) came almost fully All photos by Scott London. formed. “I imagined it falling from the sky and taking root, or as little rockets, filled with Burners.” BOOKS

That ’70s Art A glimpse into the world of art and artists during a turbulent decade BY CATHY MADISON

CREATING THE FUTURE: Art and Los Angeles in the 1970s Michael Fallon Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, September 2014 ARTPUBLIC REVIEW

Seldom does a book about art so fully capture not only | the ways in which history, 2014 FALL / WINTER culture, geography, and person- ality intersect to create art, | but also insight into how art PUBLICARTREVIEW.ORG both defines and influences our society. In this well-re- searched, deftly told story of a single decade in a singular city, Michael Fallon reflects on 87 far more than what happened BOOKS in Los Angeles in the 1970s. He sets the stage—the ebullient ’60s, when the sunny promise of the California Dream colored an era of modernism, pop art, and abstract expressionism—then escorts us through the turbulence of the next decade, scarred by events such as the Manson murders, the Kent State shootings, and Watergate, but enhanced by revolutionary art that presages the future. Los Angeles, long considered a remote art outpost by New York insiders, “had a penchant for merging and connecting diverse culture influences” and became “home to advancing pockets of cultural activity, many of which were connected to the churning local streets and its indigenous street-based cultures,” Fallon writes. Highway underpasses and bridge pylons inspired Chicano artists to embrace their muralist forebears. Women united in the feminist art movement. Happenings and performance art made news. Desolate industrial stretches became art parks; graffiti, surfboards, and hot rods became art. Fallon depicts the scene by profiling its artists, most of whom came from somewhere else. We see how their art sprang not only from their diverse backgrounds, but also from the unique, sprawl- ing amalgam of L.A. itself. Time and place can’t be divorced from their art; neither can their art be overlooked as a significant influ- ence on both.

TOP: At Burning Man, the suits Dadara’s “bankers” wore for the installation Transformoney Tree (2012) gradually shifted from dark blue pinstripe into painter’s overalls. BOTTOM: The Flaming Lotus Girls’ Serpent Mother (2006) was a 168-foot-long sculpture of a skeletal dragon-like serpent coiled around her steel egg, creating a protective circle inside which 100 people could gather. Most of Serpent Mother’s 50 vertebrae spouted six-foot-high propane-fueled jets of flame that could be activated in various patterns by participants at four separate locations, or activated at once by the artists using the “Wow” button. CATHY MADISON is a writer who lives in Minneapolis and Los Angeles. BOOKS

Painting the Town A Brazilian film explores street-art conflicts in São Paolo GREY CITY (CIDADE CINZA) Sala12 Filmes Directed by Marcelo Mesquita and Guilherme Valiengo

PUBLIC ARTPUBLIC REVIEW In São Paulo, Brazil, large-scale murals have a formidable presence around the city, where thousands of artists display their artistic talent in public spaces. Grey City gives viewers a close-up look at one influential street-art crew (including OSGEMEOS, Nunca, Nina, Ise, Finok, and Zefix) as they worked in 2007 to re-create a large work that had been painted | VOL. 26 VOL. over by the city. The Clean City Law was in effect, with a small team deployed to deter-

| mine which graffiti works were aesthetically pleasing and to paint over the rest with grey. NO. 1 NO. The film succeeds in addressing the tension that exists in cities with active street-art scenes | ISSUE 51 ISSUE about who determines what is art, and what should be erased, while exhibiting the process | PUBLICARTREVIEW.ORG of immensely talented artists following their passion of creating art for their community. —Shauna Dee

88 BOOKS Photos © Marcelo Mesquita and Guilherme Valiengo.

TOP LEFT: DVD cover of Grey City. BOTTOM LEFT: Scene from the movie. ABOVE: Scene from the movie.

PUBLIC ART

thrives in KANSAS CITY, Mo.

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EGAWA + ZBRYK, HOLUP, HUETHER, ZWEIG + EL DORADO INC., HARRIES + HEDER, Barnacles The River Ambit Prairie Logic Terpsichore for Kansas City BOOKS

Crossing Boundaries Though the artist is forbidden to leave China, Ai Weiwei’s works transcend international (and artistic) lines BY JESSICA FIALA

AI WEIWEI, SPATIAL MATTERS: Art, Architecture, and Activism Ai Weiwei and Anthony Pins, eds.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014 ARTPUBLIC REVIEW

Ai Weiwei, Spatial Matters: Art, Architecture, and | Activism approaches the work 2014 FALL / WINTER of contemporary artist Ai Weiwei through broadening | levels of scale. The essays PUBLICARTREVIEW.ORG begin by investigating single gallery installations, then expand outward to explore Ai’s architectural projects, video works that document 89 and map Beijing, and the global reach of his Internet-based activism. BOOKS As the scope of projects grows, the collection becomes increasingly intimate, resting finally in the online comingling of personal and public. Ai has become known internationally for ambitious projects and defiant gestures—installing 100 million handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds at the Tate Modern, dipping Neolithic vases in vibrant industrial paint, and photographing himself flipping the bird at monuments around the world. He has designed dozens of architecture projects and consulted on the “Bird’s Nest” stadium for the Beijing Olympic Games. Since 2006, Ai has cultivated a considerable online following, drawing the attention of the Chinese government, who shut down his blog in 2009 and imprisoned him for 81 days in 2011. Although restricted from leaving the country, his reach continues to expand online and through exhibitions organized remotely. His current exhibition, for example, which is not included in the book, is @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz, which runs through April 2015. TOP: Ai Weiwei’s Red No. 1 Art Galleries (2008). This collection is not a standard chronology or overview, BOTTOM: Ai Weiwei’s Study of Perspective—Tiananmen Square (1995). but rather collages, with interviews, photographs, essays, and republished blog entries—a portrait of the artist, his work, and his ongoing struggles with surveillance and censorship. Akin to a spatial The story told is one of emergence in public spheres from encounter, the essays lean in, back up, retrace steps, and forge new architecture to online communities, and simultaneous government paths, with the range of Ai’s work emerging and unfolding en route. attempts to silence and restrict the amorphous strategies of a The primary focus is material and spatial, emphasizing, for instance, contemporary artist. Viewed through a public art lens, the collection Ai’s incorporation of handcrafted materials and techniques into offers a range of vignettes featuring distinct modes of working in the his projects. But the human element arises as well, especially the public realm, while also getting at the impetus for such work—“the personal component of Ai’s activism which emerges through actions search to satisfy the demands of human survival and…the desire to such has his compiling of the names of school children who died in transform people’s conditions of existence.” the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, or his call for his Twitter followers to announce their real names. Time also intersects the spatial. Antique

Photos © Ai Weiwei Studio. Photos © Ai Weiwei materials are reworked into new installations while Ai’s recently JESSICA FIALA is a company member of Ragamala Dance and a built Shanghai studio is torn down by the Chinese government. program and project associate at Forecast Public Art. BOOKS

PEOPLE ARCHITECTURE

ELMGREEN & DRAGSET: ROCK THE SHACK: The Architecture Biography of Cabins, Cocoons and Hide-Outs Edited by Studio Elmgreen & Dragset Sven Ehmann, Robert Klanten, Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2014 and Sofia Borges, eds. Berlin: Gestalten, 2014 An artistic duo for nearly 20 years, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset invite Embracing the appeal of peace through min- audiences into their history and private imalism, Rock the Shack offers refuge for the life with this 600-page visual diary. Each individual burdened by too much space. Cover- full-page photograph tells the artists’ ing structures built in as few as 12 days—some

PUBLIC ARTPUBLIC REVIEW collaborative story since 1995. Previously handmade, some inspired by sixteenth-century unpublished pictures share behind-the- Japanese teahouses, others built with renewable scenes views of artworks, as well as and local materials, still more featuring surrealist portraits of Danish-Norwegian artists influences, and most built with careful attention to and colleagues. landscape, light, and sky—this collection soothes | VOL. 26 VOL. with clean design and large color photographs. PROJECTS | NO. 1 NO.

| TSCHUMI PARC DE LA VILLETTE ISSUE 51 ISSUE Bernard Tschumi, with texts by Jacques Derrida and Anthony Vidler

| NICK CAVE: Epitome PUBLICARTREVIEW.ORG Andrew Bolton, Elvira Dyangani Ose, London: Artifice books on architecture, 2014 and Nato Thompson New York: Prestel, 2014 Bernard Tschumi’s first project, The Parc de la Villette in Paris (1982–1998)—an “urban park for Nick Cave: Epitome compiles the artist’s the twenty-first century”—is presented with nearly famous Soundsuits with his sculptures 90 4,000 archival drawings, as well as photographs, and related performances. From the first models, and other project documentation. These, BOOKS suit—an array of twigs forming body armor along with essays by Jacques Derrida, Antho- in response to racial unrest—to the most ny Vidler, and Tschumi, provide the reader of recent, his works are captured in arresting Tschumi Parc de la Villette with a solid, broad photographs, essays, and quotes. Cave’s understanding of the project throughout its de- evolution along the intersection of public velopmental stages. and private, constraints and escape, is described in his own words: “I’m working VACANCY STUDIES: Experiments and toward what I’m leaving behind.” Strategic Interventions in Architecture Ronald Rietveld and Erik Rietveld, eds. THOMAS HIRSCHHORN: Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, 2014 Deleuze Monument Anna Dezeuze Churches, castles, hospitals, airports, prisons, London: Afterall, 2014 post offices—empty buildings are everywhere. Vacancy Studies views these lonely sites and Anna Dezeuze’s book examines Thomas structures from an optimistic angle: as rich Hirschhorn’s Deleuze Monument (2000), resources with potential for innovation and tem- a sculpture, altar, and library dedicated to porary reuse. The Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affor- philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Designed as dances (RAAAF) studio mines the intersection an artwork that never closes to visitors, the of architecture, art, and science to articulate controversial monument was vandalized possibilities within the international phenomenon and dismantled early. The author examines of empty spaces. the project’s timeline and reveals its vulner- abilities, along with larger, related artistic theory and practices.

WILLI DORNER: Bodies in Urban Spaces Willi Dorner Germany: Hatje Cantze, 2014

Dorner’s colorful, locally cast dancers VISIT PUBLICARTREVIEW.ORG twist, move, pose, and repose around courses through dozens of cities world- FOR MORE BOOK REVIEWS, wide. Strong photographs by Lisa Rastl, ARTICLES, AND VIDEOS. an appendix of participant names, maps, and “codes” of positions (flying, chimney, chaos bench, steps to heaven, and more) illustrate the story of these body-sculpture interventions. BOOKS

ENVIRONMENTS MISCELLANY

ART & ECOLOGY NOW Exhibition as Social Intervention EXHIBITION AS SOCIAL INTERVENTION: ‘Culture in Action’ 1993 Andrew Brown ‘Culture in Action’ 1993 Joshua Decter, Helmut Draxler New York: Thames & Hudson, 2014 and other authors Joshua Decter, Helmut Draxler, and other authors London: Afterall, 2014 Through thoughtful prose and placement of more than 300 powerful color illustrations, Art Begun in the early 1990s and developed with & Ecology Now describes the expanding trend community residents, eight projects formed of artists to explore nature and climate change. Chicago’s “Culture in Action,” a collective The featured art offers a wide range of responses challenge to the conventional understanding of that include documentation, reflection, activism, public art and disengaged plop art. From the Ex- and the use of the environment as raw material. hibition Histories series, which explores contem- Exhibition Histories

Nearly 100 artists and collectives are included, porary art that shapes the way art is perceived, ARTPUBLIC REVIEW all confronting current social, political, economic, Exhibition as Social Intervention documents scientific, technological, and ethical issues. and critically assesses “Culture in Action”; a new introduction and recent interviews are com- plemented by archived and contemporary texts. |

ECOLOGIES, ENVIRONMENTS, AND 2014 FALL / WINTER ENERGY SYSTEMS IN ART OF THE 1960s AND 1970s NETWORKS: James Nisbet Documents of Contemporary Art

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014 Lars Bang Larsen, ed. | PUBLICARTREVIEW.ORG Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014 More than an overview of earthworks, James Nisbet’s book explores the connections of ecol- The latest installment in the Documents of ogy and art in the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing Contemporary Art series on contemporary on , minimalism, and interconnected en- art issues, Networks aims at art and network ergies, Nisbet features a reconceptualization of theory from the 1960s forward. This volume 91 unravels creative threads before the origins of the

environmental art with work by artists such as BOOKS Allan Kaprow, Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Internet and reaches beyond the Net’s current Robert Barry, Simone Forti, and Walter De Maria. central status as dominant social connector.

SCALE

BIG ART / SMALL ART Tristan Manco New York: Thames & Hudson, 2014.

Maintaining a sense of wonder and a wide aesthetic, this survey reveals a meaningful exploration of art ranging from monumental to tiny. After an opening essay devoted to scale and separate introductions, half the volume is dedi- cated to grand works, while the other focuses on diminutive pieces. With each section organized alphabetically by artist, clever and whimsical pieces are presented via 288 illustrations and extensive text.

XXL ART: When Artists Think Big Elea Baucheron, Diane Routex New York: Prestel, 2014

XXL Art: When Artists Think Big shares stun- ning visuals and texts on almost 50 artists whose work embraces the adage “Go big or go home.” Featured artists include well-known names like Robert Smithson, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Richard Serra, and James Tur- rell, as well as emerging artists like Mehmet Ali Uysal, Florentijn Hofman, Aram Bartholl, JR, and OSGEMEOS. All tackle size and scale across Photo by Alain Fletias countrysides and cityscapes with spectacular, V is for Veterans by Stephanie Jaffe Werner boundary-pushing results. Town Hall of Miami Lakes, Florida mosaic and concrete 10' 7"h x 5'w www.stephaniejaffewerner.com BOOKS

Totally Plugged In REVIEW BY PETER PLAGENS

Originally published in Art in America, September 2014, pp. 71–73. Courtesy BMP Media Holdings, LLC.

YOUR EVERYDAY ART WORLD Lane Relyea Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013 PUBLIC ARTPUBLIC REVIEW

In the “everyday art world,” and modern museum rooms) wasn’t entirely destroyed, big cracks artists are always on the move, started to run through it. For example, Relyea cites a 1997 exhibi- | VOL. 26 VOL. disdaining not only art objects tion by Sharon Lockhart, Laura Owens and Frances Stark as a kind

| but any kind of artistic finality of mutual help arrangement that boosted the international mobility NO. 1 NO. whatsoever, making putative of all three. | ISSUE 51 ISSUE works out of mere schmooz- With the advent of global networks, a different cultural role— | PUBLICARTREVIEW.ORG ing, and turning the art world that of the glamorous slacker, akin to conventional showbiz celeb- into a string of floating cocktail rities slumming on reality TV—began to appeal to some artists. At parties disguised as seminars the behest of organizers Maurizio Cattelan and Jens Hoffmann, for (and vice versa). This EAW (as instance, Elizabeth Peyton, Olafur Eliasson, Pipilotti Rist and other I’ll call it for short) has been well-known artists famously sent up the convention of the big inter- 92 creeping up on us for the last 20 years or so. Now, according to Lane national invitational show by turning the tongue-in-cheek 6th Carib- BOOKS Relyea, an associate professor of art theory and practice at North- bean Biennial (1999) into a group vacation on St. Kitts. Critic, cura- western University, it’s here in its full networking glory. tor and now gallerist Carl Freedman (one of Relyea’s many quotees) Once, most artists made art objects in their individual studios wrote of a similar but more straight-faced event called “Traffic”: and sold them through retail shops known as galleries. More recently, many executed commissions for created-on-site physical Pleasure and enjoyment were not to be found in the exhibition works (with re-creation licenses that could still be sold by deal- itself but in the week-long gathering of the 30 artists involved. ers). But today a large number of key figures—Rirkrit Tiravanija, Under the auspices of an “exchange of ideas,” the artists talked, Tobias Rehberger et al.—perform cloyingly mundane public drank, dined and danced together whilst creating, preparing and services as, in the current argot, their artistic practice. French installing their different works. . . . The gathering was central to curator Nicolas Bourriaud, in his 1998 book Relational Aesthet- [Bourriaud’s] theme, awkwardly formulated as “the interhuman ics, essentially wrote the script for a thousand—for a hundred space of relationality.” thousand—social exchanges rechristened as artworks. “Artists cook and serve meals or re-create bars and lounges in galleries Such intellectual and touristic indulgence is part and parcel of and museums,” Relyea writes, “in an effort to conjure an environ- the EAW, often (wishfully) conceived as liberation from—even ment without marked-off frames or stages, only diffuse convivial- opposition to—old-fashioned cultural institutions and hierarchies. ity and atmosphere.” The work of others, such as Jorge Pardo and Travel and talk, Relyea says, are replacing rooted, isolated artmaking, the late Martin Kippenberger, tends to envelop viewers in instal- as artists use the pub and the street (in both their literal and figu- lations so pervasive as to be indistinguishable from “everyday” rative senses) to construct “platforms” from which they “offer up nonart experience. their projects or shows as participatory architecture for other artists A possible first, proto-EAW salvo against the old, product to operate within.” Whatever solitary creative musing artists still oriented, hierarchical, “fine arts” paradigm may have been inad- require can be got in transit: “Travel provides sanctuary, a prolonged vertently fired—Relyea cites Thierry de Duve as noting—by the interval to collect one’s thoughts, summarize, piece together an over- Museum of ’s 1959 show “Sixteen Americans,” which view,” Relyea says. (To tweak the great photography curator John included several of Frank Stella’s Black Paintings along with work Szarkowski’s remark about lectures, this would have been a better by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and others. That exhibition work of art had it been a longer flight.) gave artists the go-ahead to start thinking in terms of a show as a Traveling in the EAW is even more useful for networking. An kind of meta-artwork. The next dominoes to tilt, if not fall—slowly, EAW participant must have not only someplace to go, but someone over a couple of decades—were such “totalizing stereotypes” as to see when he or she gets there—preferably someone who can help Finish Fetish and Light and Space in Los Angeles. Identifiable with career advancement by connecting the participant with other movements of this sort gave way, as the semi-closed system of the people who can help with . . . and so on, into the night. That, in art world frayed into open, porous networks of itinerant artists turn, nudges the EAW toward the kind of faculty/former-student cobbling together ad hoc events as works of art. And while the old-boy cohorts informally operated by Ivy League law schools, and nearly universal white cube (artists’ studios, commercial galleries turns the primary purpose of graduate school into mapping out BOOKS

These days, an MFA degree might as well stand for “My Fat Address-Book.” PUBLIC ARTPUBLIC REVIEW potential networks. These days, an MFA degree might as well stand ism’s constant need to overcome and reinvent itself.” But he then for “My Fat Address-Book.” sheaths his sword and proceeds to speak of his disinterested interest in “how [post-studio art procedures] align with and articulate new | But an art world in which “to go where the action is means to be social and organizational norms and positions.” 2014 FALL / WINTER always on the go” turns out to be just as economically demanding as As chair of a prestigious art department with “theory” in its name, one based on staying put in spacious studios, slick galleries and pris- Relyea is understandably careful to avoid a blanket condemnation | tine museum offices. Simply put, travel costs money. Another guest of the new EAW. Although he seems to want to make a felony case PUBLICARTREVIEW.ORG expert—Marc Bousquet, the Emory University writing professor and concerning the ravages the EAW has wrought on the contemporary crusader for academe’s exploited part-timers—describes the unsalu- art scene, he writes—like a doubting medieval philosopher in a king- tary life of the poor adjunct faculty member: dom of belief—for two very different audiences. One group comprises academic colleagues and younger artists The network or flex-timer is in constant motion, driving from who might like to see an art world of finished products (whether 93 workplace to workplace, from training seminar to daycare, objects in inventory or custom-built for exhibition) largely decon- BOOKS grocery store and gym, maintaining an ever more strenuous structed, perhaps even replaced with an anybody-can-be-everything, existence in order to present the working body required by DIY network. For those readers, Relyea provides a narrative thread capital: healthy, childless, trained and alert, displaying an affect running from MoMA’s “Sixteen Americans” and 1971 Mel Bochner of pride in representing zero drain on the corporation’s resources. “Projects” exhibitions through the evolution of the big biennials into avant-garde versions of old TV variety shows, Andrea Fraser’s video- Such, too, Relyea implies, is the predicament of a struggling, peripa- taped sex with a collector, talky artists’ cooperatives in Glasgow, L.A. tetic neophyte in the Everyday Art World. and Cologne, and the “new bricolage” of such artists as Lara Schnit- The consolation prize for the EAW’s frenetically nomadic artists ger and Rachel Harrison (where, ironically, a ramshackle physicality is a revived romanticism, centered on the idea of just what, or who, might be turning things back just a bit toward objets d’art). artists are: “No longer did their specialness need to be named as Relyea’s second audience consists of skeptics like me (and, such, declared out loud and up front. . . . It could just be, accepted maybe, the author of Your Everyday Art World himself). For them, as some incontestable fact or mystery, a divine gift with which only Relyea occasionally shines a prosecutorial floodlight on the wider a lucky few are endowed.” No wonder, then, that at the art schools consequences of the advent of the EAW: where Relyea is invited to give critiques, “the painting students, all of them, across the board, don’t say they’re painters.” More- Today’s claims of romantic defiance too often look past the fact over, “they also don’t call themselves artists. ‘I do stuff’ is the most that our sense of expanded agency has been purchased largely frequent response. Or, ‘I make stuff.’ . . . All open-ended adaptabil- through an aggressive shattering and collapse of the larger social ity and responsiveness, no set vocation.” Artists still make objects, structure. Falling progressively into ruin, this is a scene that of course, tons of them—some selling for startling prices. But there belongs not to romance but to tragedy. are also, more and more, signs and markers of conceptual projects, or tokens of unfolding careers, rather than visual treasures that one He said it. I didn’t. would want to live with and value, in and of themselves. But only piecemeal, and seemingly reluctantly, does Relyea declare how smoothly—yea, creepily—the EAW fits into an entre- preneurial world stuffed with social media, smartphone apps, digi- tal startups, on-demand streaming entertainment, blogs and MOOCs (massive open online courses), yet populated by Dilbertish office workers who sift through endless streams of business data, as they labor without unions, without job security, without pensions and without bargaining power. Granted, right up front on page nine, Relyea writes, “The [Everyday Art World] network begins to appear less like defiance and more like the latest answer to capital- PETER PLAGENS is a painter and writer living in New York.