NAE MAGAZINE

LETTERS act! The global community has come from Dear Editor, bathing in the light of stained glass to wonder at the message, to consider ‘the medium as the message’ in the cyber world of social media and Although I found the content of NAE of the mobile tablet. June 1st serious and weighty, it was mainly Two weeks previously VW had given a talk depressing in terms of the present state of our entitled ‘The Art Business or the ‘business; culture; based as it was on yesterday's well worn of Art’ exploring the conflict in Art between philosophies and art practices, most of which interpretations of its use by the ‘State’ and are already much written about and known. the cost to the individual. From Courbet being It focused on presenting us with a rear view politically exiled from France to Greenberg mirror on history, which is now questionably of and Rothko visiting St Ives to the more recent little use to us, since that door was effectively phenomena of approved and disapproved artists closed in 2012, that is if one is facing forward. from the regime in China. The talk highlighted Three years on from the close of the time the work of Robert Hughes and his ‘Mona cycle known as history, we already have one Lisa curse’ and the Kennedy dynasty – very foot in tomorrow, although not yet fully in past appropriate! An image of the Mona Lisa in a veil history. was one of beauty and potency, demonstrating Just as all the rules of art were changed from how art is absorbed by all the people. Impressionism onwards, we now stand on a So If Art is for the Rich then it did produce an similar transitional time bridge, that will lead interesting statement from a representative of to the new post historic situation in 2032. Falmouth University who did not wish to give Only those with imagination and vision can his name: “Falmouth and the system produce sense the hints on how we are to proceed; ‘Fake Professionals’” for the new production maybe by that time we will have become values of flooding world markets with ‘bulk simplified. werk’ rather than works of spontaneous John Charles Clark individuality on a smaller scale Why did the art world collapse in 2012? (ed) If there is an Art for the Poor then as one artist put it; it is “… instinctive and magical, akin to a primitive experience”. Editor, To conclude; the question was never answered but it is good to talk, listen, hear, meet and see A talk to discuss the question of: ‘The Future with Redwing on the rise as a free space for of the Arts in Cornwall’ at Redwing Gallery, discussion, exhibition and debate whether the Penzance. message is understood or misunderstood, either The panel introduced themselves but failed to way leads to new meaning. answer their own question! Instead the talk was Vaughan Warren (PAINT: Painters Against opened to the floor too soon and the audience Negative Institutionalised Thinking) from notes were left to try and define who or what exactly taken during the NAE talk. the panel were talking about. Vaughan Warren Vaughan Warren (PAINT) asked ‘Who is Thank you for response. Pleased to hear of your Art for’? The Rich or the Poor? This was previous meeting in Redwing. One small correction an important stance as the discussion led if I may suggest. I spoke of the structure of mainly by DG was a tirade against Nick Serota the art World the nature and distribution of (Tate) retiring to Cornwall and cohorts of Patronage, I did not tirade against Sir Nicholas manufactured artists following him to flood Serota. I attempted to point out that London will the tourist art market. He accused the people of define the Cornish Art scene in the future. We all not reading criticism and that people only saw know how and why. Hopefully without beating a with their ears, yet Patrick Heron stated that dead horse of neglect which is true and painful to the English ask what does Art mean, and when watch. We can pay attention and with a creative focus. Also I did say a number of times Art is for he (PH) says this or that they say of course, but everybody, maybe you did not hear. (Publisher) nothing could be further from the truth! DG should also be aware of ‘visual language’ in this Cultural Political argument. The people Editor, may not read but they see and some think and It was a rare pleasure indeed for me to attend 3 NAE MAGAZINE

the gathering at Redwing Gallery on the evening 13th to introduce us to The NAE and to listen to you and Daniel speak and to buy New Art Examiner the 2 issues available. I briefly mentioned to you that between Derek Guthrie, Publisher and co-founder 2007-09 I co-edited with Lisa Stewart, and wrote some articles for Artichoke magazine. Tom Mullaney, US Editor Our mission was to help marginalised and [email protected] unknown artists/creatives in Cornwall to find Annie Markovich, US Managing Editor a voice. [email protected] In 2013 I worked as a volunteer at Redwing Gallery but gradually became disillusioned Daniel Nanavati, UK Editor with the dictates and inclusion in every [email protected] exhibition of work by one of the directors, who Roland Gurney, West Cornwall Editor seemed intent on their own self-promotion rather than that of ‘outsiders’. Since then I Contributing Editors have moved on from promoting marginalised John Link, Michigan artists/creatives through the magazine and David Houston, Georgia by curating exhibitions, to concentrate on my Donald Kuspit, New York George Care, UK own work. To make ‘proper’ art (Cornish use Frank Corrigan Oxfordshire of proper). Briefly: I have been living in West Cornwall WEBSITE: since 1987 and returned to painting in 1990 www.newartexaminer.net whilst working for Lyn le Grice (the doyenne UK Cartoons of decorative stencilling) whose reputation John Dunbar Kilburn helped me to find decorating work for among Jonathon Xavier Coudrille others Rose Hilton and Monica Wynter, it was whilst working for Rose in her home at Distributor, Ingrams Botallack that I was shown Roger Hilton’s ‘Night Letters’ and saw some of his paintings Cover Image: Theaster Gates Stony Island Arts Bank,,Chicago in situ, including a rare mural which I photo Tom Harris. photographed before covering it in tongue & grooved panelling. Inspired I sought out his Would you like to write for whole body of work in books catalogues and the New Art Examiner? exhibitions. At that time I had little awareness [email protected] of the burgeoning creative community in Cornwall and in particular the so called The New Art Examiner is indexed In : Art Bibliographies Modern, Art Full Text & St.Ives School, so it was with great pleasure Art Index Retrospective and Zetoc that I ‘discovered’ Peter Lanyon, Bryan Wynter et al. UK Office: These past 25 years I have painted Rosehill, Altarnun, Cornwall. PL15 7RL. UK. US Office: in exclusion in Mousehole,exhibiting 13213 S. Commercial Avenue, Chicago, Illinois occasionally and have some work in private 60633.USA. collections but have never received any constructive criticism at all, other than from Inquiries: Frank Ruhrmund who rather than reproduce [email protected] [email protected] the notes handed to him prior to a show as [email protected] he usually does, once wrote that“*Roger Davison’s use of line to delineate a space is All Letters to the editor will be striking.”* brief but flattering and not very printed without editing. helpful really. [email protected] Roger Davidson Send all letters to: [email protected] 4 NAE MAGAZINE IN THIS ISSUE ARTICLES SPEAKEASY

CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL, CLOSURE OF THE CONTEMPORARY Tom Mullaney 6 CRAFTS COURSE AT FALMOUTH, CORNWALL A TALE OF TWO HOUSES Rob Gawthrop 16 Alex Cornacchia 9 BOOKS BERLIN ART FAIR George Care 20 Zombie Politics & Culture in an age of Casino Capitalism by Dr Henri Giroux

EDITORIAL Daniel Nanavati 22 In Teaching We Cannot Trust Creativity & Art: Three Roads to Surprise by Daniel Nanavati 5 Dr Margaret Boden Ai Weiwei Exhibition George Touche' 32 Derek Guthrie 18 INTERVIEWS EXHIBITIONS Hans Ulrich Obrist in conversation with the LYNETTE YOADIM-BOAKYE Hairy Who Frank Corrigan 30 Annie Markovich 4 BERT MENCO Toni Carver, publisher St Ives Times & Echo Diane Thodos 11 in conversation with the UK Editor 26

CARTOONS Jonathon X Coudrille John Kilburn The creation of Abstract Impressionism 29 Arthur Truebrush 25 All cartoon or graphic images welcome. The subject must be on the state of the visual art culture or the personalities involved.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

The New Art Examiner is a not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to examine the definition and transmission of culture in our society; the decision-making processes within museums and schools and the agencies of patronage which determine the manner in which culture shall be transmitted; the value systems which presently influence the making of art as well as its study in exhibitions and books; and, in par- ticular, the interaction of these factors with the visual art milieu. 5 NAE MAGAZINE Hans Ulrich Obrist in Conversation with the Hairy Who Annie Markovich Managing Editor, Chicago

In 2014 Art Review named Hans Ulrich on WFMT on art criticism, one of the artists Obrist the most powerful figure in the field, joked, “Harry Who?" but Obrist, a forty-six-year-old Swiss, seems The Hairy Who artists', Karl Wirsum, Jim less to stand atop the art world than to race Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Art Green, Suellen around, up, over, and through it.” Rocca, Jim Falconer, work is characterized During EXPO Chicago, Obrist was “in by riffs on muscle-building magazines, raw, conversation with the Hairy Who” who were aggressive, brutish caricatures of humans and anticipating the fifty-year anniversary of their surrealism. Chicago collectors embraced the first exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center Hairy Who, hook, line and sinker. They had in 1966. Obrist engaged in examining the already amassed significant collections of group’s importance to art history in Chicago Surrealism. and beyond. While the Hairy Who artists were describing The standing-room-only space at Navy Pier their experiences, Hans Ulrich jotted notes was packed with eager young artists who sat and intermittently fired away questions at the on the floor in their effort to catch every word panelists. The last question Ulbrich asked was of the conversation. Obrist began by reflecting how digital communication has affected their on Studs Terkel, Chicago's most eminent work. writer and mentor in oral history, asking if the Nilsson said her work can now grow in size as participants would join in making a portrait of enlargement is possible as well, as she works the movement, emphasizing the importance on paper. Green referred to the Surrealists and of memory. how we accept things that are not what they Obrist asked Gladys Nilsson, a leading seem. Wirsum said digital is Art to the nth member of the Hairy Who, “How did art come degree. to you?" She began by relating childhood Ulrich ended the conversation with a few memories of always drawing on a card table. words from Rainer Maria Rilke’s, “Advice Nilsson studied engineering in college. to a Young Poet” on the importance of Without a penchant for math, she pursued ascertaining the depth of one's commitment: graphic design, an important aspect of her "Withdraw into yourself. Explore the reason that watercolor paintings. Chicago was the base bids you write, find out if it has spread out its for Nilsson’s painterly career, in particular roots in the very depths of your heart; confess to the School of the Art Institute, where she yourself whether you would have to die, if writing encountered Whitney Halstead, artist, critic, should be denied to you. Above all, ask yourself educator, art historian and author. in the stillest hour of the night, "Must I write?" Karl Wirsum spoke about his experience at Dig deep into yourself for an answer." the Field Museum of Chicago, the role of Following Ulrich, Nilsson suggested artists comic strips, mezzo-American and Japanese should really listen to their inner core and just prints effecting his graphic style. Obrist asked work. Green offered these words, “Have the who were the Hair Who and what was the courage to follow one’s own inner self.” Echoing movement about? the same sentiment, Wirsum said to go with The story of how they got their name goes your enthusiasm and follow no tempting something like this. While talking about formulas. Harry Bouras, host of a weekly radio show 6 NAE MAGAZINE In Teaching We Cannot Trust

Daniel Nanavati UK Editor

It is nothing new to say that human beings are pattern makers nor that patterns help us If a new Picasso were to create the structures within which be build exhibiting on the streets of society. The art world is such a structure. It relies upon two very important pillars. I am Montmartre they wouldn't not going to say one of them is money. There notice. is nothing that doesn't rely upon money in our nations. Even our politics long ago gave of teachers trying to recreate the YBA way to being nothing more than arguments for a new generation, as they were made over money management. through Goldsmith College. They are being The first pillar is one of command and taught to tilt at windmills and think they control. In this issue you will read about are controversial. But they have been made Falmouth Art School that has pretensions to into no more than money makers. Artists be a university, who have closed courses so used to fight and die in revolutions or, at as to manage the money making elements of the very least on occasion, cause them. The their teaching better. The fact that they have corporate control of the modern art scene is closed their contemporary crafts course which as restrictive in who it considers to be artists has a long illustrious history, seems, and is, and who it does not as the old Academies. an invidious, corrupting decision. Students are, to take Professor Henri Giroux's If you teach art you should want your phrase, winners of zombie degrees churned students to understand the entirety of out on a Brave New World conveyor belt. their subject. But the roundness of the art Part of this control is the fact, as Toni Carver education in the UK of the 1960s has long mentioned in my conversation with him, gone. It might be that crafts are not as sought that curators no longer go out and look at after by collectors as other art forms and it what is being created. Now curators of major might be there is not so much money to be institutions only deal with their trustees, made in crafts ... I don't know. What I do donors and collectors. If a new Picasso were know is there will be no student graduating exhibiting on the streets of Montmartre they from Falmouth who might make the leap (if wouldn't notice. it is truly needed) with their crafts to make * them worth more, to elevate them in the public consciousness into the art market. The discussion of Creativity & Art: Three That an inspired, creative student will make Roads to Surprise by Professor Boden in this significant what their teachers consider issue fascinatingly suggests that with all our insignificant today. That possibility is now philosophising on art, what will stop artificial dead. intelligence being creative in the way human beings are is the simpler fact that artificial life The second pillar leads from this but is does not have a metabolism. the one that matters more. The artists's themselves are no more than commodities 7 NAE MAGAZINE CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL

BIENNIAL EXPO IS JUST FOR ARCHITECTS; ARTISTS SUPPLY THE PUBLIC’S VOICE Tom Mullaney US Editor

“The Architects are Coming!”, “The Architects are Coming!” is the rallying For 96 days, Chicago is the cry for the citywide exposition Chicago architectural center of the is hosting now through January 3, 2016. For 96 days, Chicago is the architectural world. center of the world. has been glowingly positive with no It is fitting that this city, the birthplace attempts, to my knowledge, to critique of the skyscraper and bold urban the installations or the roughly two designs by architecture icons-- dozen expressions (both modular and Burnham, Wright, Sullivan and Mies textual) of transgressive ideas against van der Rohe--should host the Chicago past and contemporary practices. Architectural Biennial. Chicago was also The scale of the Biennial is impressive. It a key birthplace of The City Beautiful is taking place at seven sites throughout movement following the 1893 World’s the city, with the Chicago Cultural Center Fair. as its headquarters. Walking throughout Chicago thus holds a special place in the city’s former main library, one’s architects’ imagination and the call to impression is of total transformation. participate drew visionary ideas from Never in my memory has the building hundreds of architects. The result is been so alive. Installations fill its four an exhibition featuring more than 100 floors of galleries and public spaces, chosen architects spread across five including one striking installation on a continents. Unlike previous gatherings, ramp between floors. There is even a fewer than a third of the installations are private garden outside the library’s front from the United States. entrance consisting of tree leaf “walls” and sawed-off barks as sitting stools. As an ambitious organizational feat, kudos must be given to the co- The Biennial is a smorgasbord of events curators, Sarah Herda, head of the beyond the installations. There’s a Graham Foundation (dubbed “the CIA series of Tuesday Talks with panels of Architecture”) and Joseph Grima, of architects, designers, curators and founder of Space Caviar and director scholars, a film series, lectures by of Ideas City. Herda said that, with no prominent architects from around the defining architectural “ism” in the world world and late-night performances. today, they chose to give free rein to a This inaugural event draws its name wide diversity of current architectural from a famous 1977 gathering of ideas. architects at the Graham Foundation, Since the expo helps boost Chicago’s convened by Stanley Tigerman, stature worldwide, it has been embraced designed to free architecture from the by City Hall, a boatload of corporate stranglehold of Miesian dogma at the sponsors and local media. The coverage time. It too called its gathering “The 8 NAE MAGAZINE

Most of the models will never be realized since they are too speculative or idealistic and of no interest to developers Two projects that buck this trend deserve praise. The fourth floor's Sidney Yates Gallery contains scale models of three modular, low-cost homes. One, by Tatiana Bilbao of Mexico City, is a five- room house, designed after obtaining input from potential residents as to their Studio Albori 'Makeshift': Photo Tom Harris preferences in the home’s features. Bilbao’s firm designs modular homes State of the Art of Architecture”. costing between $5-8,000, thus filling a Among the rebels (who have since pressing need in Mexico City which has achieved international success) who a housing deficit of nine million units. were part of that so-called architectural Another on the main floor is a project “mosh pit” were Robert Stern, Richard from Jeanne Gang’s Studio Gang. It Meier, Helmut Jahn, Peter Eisenman, offers a detailed plan for situating James Sterling, Ben Weese and a police station in the midst of a Tigerman. neighborhood, surrounded by a park After several days of touring the and community activities, counter to the Cultural Center, along with a visit to current model of isolating police stations artist Theaster Gates enterprising and away from communities they serve. The provocative Art Bank on the South Side project name, “Polis Station”, borrows at 68th St. and Stony Island Ave., I from the Greek term for community emerged with a number of impressions. Architecture is a humanistic discipline As I entered one gallery, I heard a voice and architects, according to one emanating from inside a lighted white exhibitor, should be considered “public column hanging from the ceiling. The intellectuals”. Among contemporary woman asked “What is the relation of architects, Tigerman, Gang, Martin architecture to reality?”. Based on my Felsen of Chicago's Urban Lab and tour of the Cultural Center, my answer is British architect, David Adjaye (featured “Not much”. in an exhibit at the Art Institute) deserve that label. Their designs take a The expo is promoted as a gesture of site's full social and economic context civic engagement that allows the public into account. to see the building ideas of today's global architects. However, the building Architecture’s public are its clients- contains too many models, drawings -mainly real estate developers and and installations that fail to engage that government bodies. Nothing gets built audience. Most are highly conceptual, without financing. Thus architects too speculative visions and, unless one often are beholden to the dreams and reads the detailed wall texts, the ideas dollars of developers whose notion of get lost. public space usually consists of “how high can I build” and “what's the sq. This seems an architecture show for ft. return”. Some exhibits expose architects with little input from the architecture’s enabling role in urban public. My reaction was echoed by renewal and community displacement another writer, Nick Cecchi, writing in New City. “Much of the programming Two more promising, publicly-minded, ignores the city’s own inhabitants”. projects by visual artists relate to the art part of architecture. Amanda 9 NAE MAGAZINE

elite. Much rarer is that which honors the makers of black culture (jazz and the blues) and the fruits of their creative expression. Building on this premise, Gates quotes the words of rapper Jay-Z, “Build the space you want to rock in”. Tell that to Skidmore, Owings. A final exhibit relates to the host city, titled “Bold Scenarios for the City of Chicago”. It contains a number of proposals by local firms but two, in particular, epitomize opposing viewpoints Ultramoderne BP Winner 2015 on building for the future. Williams’ project, titled “Fields of Color” “The Alternate City”, by David Brown, embraces the interstices between art, notes that the city owns 15,000 vacant architecture and design. lots. The city could put those properties to much better use by offering them to Williams, a trained architect, chose residents, the neighborhood, developers eight houses on the South Side of so that they can revitalize the city and Chicago and painted them different add to the tax rolls. colors—red, purple, yellow, black, pink--according to what she terms a The other is the standard model by “culturally-coded color palette”. Besides Port Urbanism--build higher and make giving abandoned houses a fresh coat another bold addition to the skyline. In of paint, Williams wonders what color an era of global housing inequality, this signifies gentrification and what color plan proposes adding a two-mile strip suggests poverty. She seeks to generate west of Lake Shore Drive (since building a conversation around the inequality east of the Drive is prohibited), pushing of the two Chicagos — the black South the Drive into Lake Michigan. Side and predominantly white North Side This strip would be filled, block after and suburbs. block, with an uninterrupted span of The exhibit that has generated the what appear to be 50-70 story high-rise most media attention is artist Theaster towers. The selling point is the added Gates’ Stony Island Arts Bank. Gates, revenue our city desperately needs. who has catapulted to fame in less than No mention of any despoiling of the a decade, purchased an abandoned, lakefront. The model makes Chicago deteriorating bank from the city and look like one of those instant mega- remodeled it, at a cost of millions, to cities in China. Port Urbanism’s proposal serve as a culture lab for its south-side proves the observation that architecture residents. is often something done to people. The bank is 17,000 square feet and Guess which one stands the greater contains the archives of Johnson chance of ever being built? Most likely Publishing, the publishers of Ebony and the one oblivious to public space. That Jet magazines. It also houses the vinyl highlights a major problem affecting collection of 6,000 records of Frankie American architecture today: the loss Knuckles, the “Godfather of House of the public realm and its capture by Music” which originated in Chicago in the venture capitalists. 1980s. [email protected] Gates is explicit about the bank’s Tom Mullaney is the New Art Examiner's Chicago purpose. “Who has the right to amazing editor. His articles have appeared in The New culture?” The highest culture, he notes, York Times, Art and Antiques, Chicago Magazine becomes the domain of the wealthy and The Chicago Tribune. 10 NAE MAGAZINE Outside the Architecture Biennial A TALE—AND THOUGHTS--OF TWO HOUSES Alex Cornacchia

“A wall pitted by a single air rifle shot.” That was the sentence the Museum of Modern Art received from artist Lawrence Weiner. The interpretation was up to them. They could write it as is, fake the scene it described, or, most straightforward, just shoot the wall. Encountering the works of Sarah FitzSimons and Amanda Williams, two artists featured in the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial, is like witnessing two people who have read the same Weiner sentence turn around to construct the distinct worlds each envisioned. Given the same prompt, obvious connections would arise. But the revelations would be in the divergence of details. On Oak Street Beach, where sand and water Color(ed) Theory,” the last house in a series of meet, there’s a two-story house, entirely eight by Amanda Williams empty. That’s FitzSimons’s “House.” It’s a Michigan, an endless stretch of blue, in the typical Midwestern home, if typical means background. having sand for floors, air for walls, and a roof of open sky. In terms of physical material, In this context, “House” becomes a vessel to “House” consists only of aluminum poles fill with plans, hopes and grand ideas. After and joints that outline a three-dimensional all, this city on a lake began with people who structure. Not all that useful for living, but dreamed of building something new as well. great for dreaming. About nine miles to the south, where It’s a good place to South Lafayette meets West 57th Street in dream. On a sunny Washington Park, there’s another house. weekend day, It’s two stories, with a small front porch and wedding parties four clapboard walls. In a city of nearly three aren’t an unusual million residents, it somehow stands isolated sight, strolling from the buildings around it. Like “House,” through nearby it’s entirely empty. It’s also Flamin’ Hot Milton Lee Olive Cheetos Red. Park on their way This is part of “Color(ed) Theory,” the last to take pictures. house in a series of eight that artist Amanda They smile in front Williams painted in colors that reflect the of the Chicago black urban experience on Chicago’s South skyline with Lake side, colors like Pink Oil Moisturizer Pink and Currency Exchange Yellow. Collectively, Sarah Fitzsimons' the colors form a cultural code, markers of installation 'House'. 11 NAE MAGAZINE

poverty immediately recognizable only to In this conversation, the more compelling those who’ve lived or seen it. voice emerges. Williams has hit on a critical As in “House,” they’re reduced to their cultural moment, when the Black Lives Matter outer frames, what remains when you movement is reminding us, yet again, how paint something all one color. But these little this country values its citizens of color. aren’t places to fantasize about. Vacant and Her houses' vibrant palette shouts to a nation slated for demolition, their emptiness begs that is violently trying to maintain silence. questions: Who lived here? What did they They refuse to fade from view. mean to this community? What stories are This might make some people uncomfortable. going untold? Williams uses color to stimulate I’d say that’s a good thing. It’s also where a conversation about what color denotes “Color(ed) Theory” and “House” diverge most. poverty and which speaks of gentrification. “House” has initial appeal but lacks the power Though only tenuously connected by the of necessity as “Color(ed) Theory” does. It’s Biennial, “House” and “Color(ed) Theory” art, far from a center of wealth, for the people feel, in many ways, like they’re in dialogue who are living there now. It forces those of with each other across the city of Chicago. privilege to reckon with how they can build It’s a conversation about the fact that, their American Dreams while, for others, that between 2000 and 2010, downtown saw 79% promise started out broken. Williams' houses population growth, while Washington Park are provocative, grounded and art we need lost 17% of its residents. more of. They call attention to how an empty building Williams fired Weiner's bullet, so to speak, on a beach at Oak Street signifies someone into the wall. I hope the shot rings long after moving in, or something bigger being built the Biennial ends. while, in the latter location, it will probably be left to fall apart, torn down, or become BA graduate of Vassar College in psychology the next candidate for redevelopment. They and art history, Alex Cornacchia lives and question who gets to decide what has value writes in Chicago, her newly-adopted city. and what that value even means.

Coming in the January issue Volume 30 no.3

John Steppling Art of Identity John Link, contributing Editor, Art and Identity Richard Shapland Three Royal Academy exhibitions, Anselm Kiefer, Richard Diebenkorn and Ai Weiwei and what they teach curators about the visual experience.

New regular Features: TranArtlantic Diary. Jonathon Xavier Coudrille, Helston UK and David Black, New York, USA in conversation about the art world. CinemArt. Introducing youtube and film reviews withTanya Lee Rennick of the Pearl Clubs, London VerbiArt debunking art-speak with Sarah-Jane Marsden, tutor Helston Art College, Cornwall, UK.

Book review of Hannah Rothschild The Improbability of Love by Dr Angeline Morrisson

12 NAE MAGAZINE Memory, Melancholy and Dreams: The Poetic Art of Bert Menco Diane Thodos

I still know those cries of the soul. They lie at Chagall’s early the breast and in the throat. The mouth wants modernist works to open wide and let them out, but all these are were filled antiquities, yes, Jewish antiquities originated with flights in the Bible in a biblical sense of personal of fantasy experience and destiny. I remember. I must. and illogical -Herzog by Saul Bellow transpositions that were rich Because I remember I despair. Because I with symbolic remember I have a duty to reject despair. meaning. They -Elie Wiesel expressed the precarious lives Humor is one of the best ingredients of survival. of the Jewish -Aung San Suu Kyi Diaspora, often relating the difficulties of The faces are sweet and bitter, charming and Suitors their everyday grotesque, with expressions inoculated by existence a dreamy calmness. Enigmatic characters with poetic humor and mystery. Many of his dwell in realms of fractured fables, mixed up characters take to flying in the skies in an myths, and bizarre fairy tales that scramble unstable and dislocated world that becomes a religious imagery, symbols and cultures with springboard to mystical fantasy. A tradition more than a little alluring grace for all their of fantastic and surreal art can be found in strangeness. The Dutch artist Bert Menco Jewish authors like Isaac Bashevis Singer, makes images that are elaborate theaters Bruno Schulz and Franz Kafka, for whom staged by his subconscious, filled with the the individualistic “universe” of the artist- illogical and surreal associations his mind poet becomes it’s own introspective “truth” invents. His work is related as much to with it’s own “logic”, it’s own surreality. particular 20th century traditions of Jewish The “universe” has become dislocated and narrative art as it is to the medieval imagery seeks to find deep purpose and meaning of Northern Europe. Two different exhibits again, but through non-logical esoteric present the range of Menco’s art and it’s “truth.” Menco’s visual narratives owe much deepest preoccupations. His show at Temple to this literary background, bridging past Solel in Highland Park reflects themes related and present through subconscious fantasy to the artist’s Jewish identity and the tragedy and attempting to bind them, with all their of the Holocaust, while the Re-invent Gallery lyrically absurd as well as rich implications, in Lake Forest displays a dazzling array of into his own poetic dream world. The face of works that continue aspects of this theme Kafka in Menco’s The Golem is superimposed while addressing the complexity of human on the old Jewish cemetery in Prague. A chain and sexual relationships. of dancing figures in Rondo, beginning with One of Menco’s influential precursors is Marc life and ending with death, are overlaid on Chagall who was born in 1887 in the Eastern Menco’s enlarged self-portrait. Both compress European city of Vitebsk, part of Belarus. meanings and symbols with a mingled 13 NAE MAGAZINE

folly. Menco’s imaginatively conceived menu of “tarot card” characters presents a parade of humorous allegorical subjects featuring Madonnas, harlequins, angels, devils, jesters and zoological hybrids. Like Ensor, Menco enjoys filling up every space in his painting and prints. The multiplication of faces, decorations, and symbols in backgrounds or borders lends a whimsical sense of mystery through their sheer obsessive repetition. Prints shown at the community house of Temple Solel explicitly deal with the artist’s personal consciousness of his Dutch-European and Jewish family background regarding the Holocaust and WWII. I was born just after the war that divided the century in half. My mother and her family survived the bombing of Rotterdam, though only she and my grandmother survived the Holocaust. My father’s immediate family was completely annihilated, but my father survived the war, rescued by French communists. My parents met while they were refugees in Switzerland; they married on May Day 1945. Madonna-of-the-Prairie-2008-copy.jpg (Contemporary Impressions: The Journal of the American Print Alliance A Self Portrait “Inside Out” simplicity and complexity. Fantastic scores By Bert Menco, Fall 1998 p.6) of flying figures in Messengers, Fireflies, Suspended and The Origin of the World are Menco often uses collective historical, attracted, like moths to a flame, around a literary, or symbolic figures to confront central large female figure with whom they disquieting and existential questions of loss are trying to make contact. Each has a story to and suffering perpetrated by the Holocaust. In tell that is filled with emotional ambiguities, the print Shylock, Acta Fabula Est (The Play secrets, and spatial contradictions. is Over) the artist displaces the anti-Semitism inherent in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Menco’s work is also deeply influenced by the Veniceonto the “Final Solution” of the 20th art of Northern Europe, particularly Flemish century. Shylock and his daughter Jessica are art. He was inspired to become an artist after reunited in a concentration camp as they join seeing the prints of Rembrandt (1606-69) a ghostly mass heading to the gas chambers. in his native Holland. Menco’s work absorbs much iconography from Christian medieval Their plight is heightened by the commanding art, focusing a particular interest in the finger of a guard pointing to their doomed style of illuminated manuscript drawing and destination and by the intense blackness of paintings. This medieval mood is reinforced the mezzotint print surface. Bathed in dark by the “antique” look of the etching medium. despair, this work powerfully exudes an aura His elaborate mezzotints, which work from a of collective guilt upon the perpetrators velvety dark surface through greys and into of genocide. Rotterdam, May 14, 1940 white, emphasize this medieval Gothic aura dramatizes the destruction of the city’s most effectively. Menco also admires work of central church licked by feathery flames. the Belgian artist James Ensor (1860 – 1949) Once again the elaborate burnishing method who is well known for his portrayals of bizarre of the mezzotint technique adds an uncanny masks that come to life as wildly grotesque sense of haunting nostalgia and loss to caricatures. These peculiar beings are the tragic scene. Arnhem, September 17, featured in humorous and excoriating satires: 1944 allegorizes the British air invasion of allegories about human stupidity, venality and parachuting soldiers who took part in the tragic and failed Operation Market Garden. 14 NAE MAGAZINE

Both prints are filled with refugees carrying religious equality and justice can ever be bundles, bags, children, babies, suitcases, and possible. Behind Walls depicts a young man rolling wheelchairs and buggies. They are also and woman in motley dress running joyously a reminder of the tragic dislocation and up on top of a wall. Below crouch several men uprootedness that the Jewish Diaspora had to resembling the artist in old age in what seem endure for centuries. There is an undeniable to be the striped uniforms of concentration melancholic resignation in Menco’s figures. camp inmates. Even the parachuting soldiers in the Arnhem They cover their ears as if as if to block print look like helpless puppets on strings. consciousness of an unimaginable horror that These figures have internalized a sense of will be their destiny. Two opposite pathways being alienated, isolated, and dislocated. appear: either the horror of genocide will The work keeps alive both a personal repeat itself or the chain of life will continue. and an historical consciousness not only There is also a latent sent of guilt and fear about the disastrous events of WWII but which the darkness of the past projects on the also subliminally about the rejection and next generation. persecution of the Jews in Europe throughout history. The Re-Invent Gallery show continues some of the same themes discussed, but with a In another print God the enlarged profiles lively breadth of wit and humor aimed at of a man and woman gaze into each others the complexity of human relationships and eyes from opposite sides. A bearded man the instability of meaning in myth and in rabbinical garb, God, stands between religion. In The Virgin Birth of Lucifer a them, bearing a crate of decapitated heads “Madonna” holds a cute devil baby on her on his shoulders. The profiled man wears a lap. In Adoration another “Madonna “in a face of placid resignation while the woman feathered headdress and a spiny blue costume expresses deep despair. Through a remarkably embraces a small green horse. Even as he simple staging Menco expresses the weight pays homage to the art of the Church, Menco and burden of Jewish history, it’s suffering, plays with the idea that faith based “truth” and the ultimate evil of genocide. In The can be turned upside down by the pretenses Golem the enlarged head of the writer of its own “logic.” The print Shedding turns Franz Kafka is projected over an image of headstones, representing the old Jewish Bound cemetery in Prague and where the historical figure of Rabbi Yehuda Loeb (1520-1609) stands with outstretched arms. It seems as though he has resurrected Kafka as the “Golem”, the contemporary representative of a long Jewish history who is called upon to write about existential questions that continue to haunt our modern conscience. References to Christian and Jewish art and church iconography from Christianity abound. In Synagoga et Ecclesia a woman holding a Menorah representing the Jewish faith wears an expression of open innocence. “Ecclesia,” the Church, smiles slyly to herself while balancing a cross and sword under each hand, contemplating whether or not to use her inherent destructive power against her fellow sister. Surrounding them is a frame of fantastical faces: strange mascots from a gothic past. For all their elaborate and whimsical appearances, each face is cast in a shadow of gloom, with piercing expressions that seem to wordlessly ask if indeed real 15 NAE MAGAZINE

anxiety into an absurdly comic phenomenon as four male characters are swamped by a whirlwind of hair flying off of their heads. Freckles presents the profiles of several sweetly becalmed faces defaced by a riot of spots. It seems as though a bad case of the measles has gone wild and decorated everything with a manic profusion of polka dots. Each image presents a way of comically and obsessively coping with disorder, uncertainty, and anxiety. A perceived world of absurd, unpredictable situations is confronted by humorous and fantastic twists of the imagination. A great many works in the show emphasize complexities inherent in male/female relationships. Chagall’s art often expresses the theme of happiness and fulfilment in sexual union: it is sincere, simple and sensuous. The painting Annunciation presents a similarly themed fantasy. But sometimes Menco’s couples are frustrated from being able to find fulfilment. There is a strong desire for love and companionship, but somehow the possibility of intimacy and emotional contact is thwarted. In the astonishing print Pairs a gridded panel tells its story in a cartoon-like sequence. This kind of sequential storytelling is reminiscent of work of Charlotte Salomon, an artist who painted a “graphic novel” Drops autobiography about her life hiding from but to no avail. Women seem to be the ones the Nazis until she was captured and died with transformative or mystic powers while in Auschwitz. In Menco’s graphic “story” men are the audience and attendants to her a brilliant theatrical array of male/female alluring but often strange presence. conflicts is presented along with other In the painting Shaman a bald woman tries humorous “pairings.” to make some kind of desperate appeal to a Sometimes the body of one falls apart or kingly ruler in motley dress. Women with exits the scene, sometimes one is upside shaved heads often appear in Menco’s work, down while the other is right side up. The bringing up multiple associations. The dislocation of life has become too extreme shaved head of Joan of Arc from the famous for there to be peaceful resolution, but it 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc by does throw his actors into puzzling and Carl Theodor Dreyer is one source, but the fantastic situations. Women seem to be image of a bald woman undeniably brings powerful figures that embody mystery to mind the shaved heads of women from in relationships. They have become both concentration camps. Both become symbols attractive idols and a source of anxiety for the of religious persecution and suffering. Is the male attendants trying to get her attention. shamanic woman a wish fulfilment to be Many of these small figures surround a single able to alter history as she pleads before the iconic women in works like The Origin of king? Does she embody mystic power that has the World, Suspended, Death and Dunces, been bestowed by her suffering, giving her an Cats and Mice, and Holding Off. The women unworldly strangeness and otherness? are sometimes sly and designing but also Utrecht-Chicago is a work about leaving wistful and sad. The men around her plead for Holland, the old world, and seeking a new attention, wishing to placate her melancholy, start in a new land. The two cities merge in a 16 NAE MAGAZINE divided landscape of buildings featuring two those from the past that he still carries with figures floating in the center. One is the artist him. Musical Chairs symbolically presents as a young man with angelic wings, while the questions about Christian religious history. other depicts himself as an anxious old man A woman wearing what appears to be to be in a wheel chair. They alternately symbolize a nun’s habit dangles five children’s heads the grief and depression of the past and the from strings that hover over four small bodies positive youthful energy of hope for the below. It is clear one child will lose – will not future. get a body for its head. Which path will be the artist’s fate? The “nun,” representing the church by Will tragedy or good fortune prevail? symbolic implication, has the power over Manipulation comically extends the theme life and death in deciding the children’s fate, of conflict in relationships and the question and plays with their heads as though it were of who holds power and control. A master just a game. The Rue de la Morosité (Street puppeteer manipulates a hand puppet that in of Morosity) is an unforgettable image filled turn manipulates others, with the smallest with acerbic and depressive rancor. A cluster and least powerful ones engaged in passionate of people with hollowed eye sockets walk argument. The puppet play comically presents down the steep perspective of a narrow street. a shrewd critique of power and its excesses, its It seems to be a specific memory of the streets desire to control others with the predictable where Menco grew up in Holland, filled with results. claustrophobia and depression about the Some of the small prints present memorably tragic past which memory will not hide. compelling messages in their imagery. Fifty Like the contemporary artists R.B Kitaj and Balloons depicts the artist leaping into space Irving Petlin, Menco presents consciousness with fifty small faces on balloons attached to about Jewish identity and history as seen his back. Because he holds a party horn the through his own life and percolated through work seems to be about celebration. But the the uniquely imaginative, surreal and esoteric many faces behind him seem to subliminally configuration of his subconscious. Chagall’s tell another story symbolizing memories of work became melancholic after WWII, unable to cope with the unspeakable murder of 6 million Jews and the loss of the rich culture they once spread throughout Europe. The melancholy in Menco’s work is an attempt to confront and mourn this profound loss. At the same time the imaginative power of the Jewish narrative tradition and surrealist modernist influences in his work present a path that can express the absurdities of life through humorous contradictions. Poetic and irrational “daydreams” become a means of coping with the tragedy of history and a way to recreate the world again from within oneself. The flexibility of Menco’s artistic identity comes from understanding his own personal history as a means of self- realization, a way forward that connects to life, survival and a way to endure. Originally published in Neoteric Art

Diane Thodos is an artist and art critic who lives in Evanston, IL. She is a 2002 recipiant of a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant and is represented by the Thomas Masters Gallery in Chicago and the Traeger/Pinto Gallery in Mexico. Repulsion 17 NAE MAGAZINE

Each issue the New Art Examiner SPEAKEASY will invite a well-known, or not-so- well-known, art world personality to write a speakeasy essay on a topic of interest – whatever it may be. Falmouth University, Cornwall Closes Historic Contemporary Crafts faculty because there is no money in crafts - Rob Gawthrop

The closure of the degree course in Chancellor contemporary crafts at Falmouth University has closed or was the highest profile closure since the suspended ten demise of Dartington College of Arts. Crafts undergraduate and Fine Art were the founding subjects of and twelve the Falmouth School of Art which became post-graduate courses, (not including the Falmouth University following the merger and Dartington taught masters programme, which relocation of Dartington. ended in 2010 with fifty students receiving The widespread protests against the closure MAs). The MA Fine Art: Contemporary demonstrated the course’s high standing and Practice, for which I was the coordinator, international reputation. The reasons for was closed a year ago and the MFA which closure were supposedly economic as reported was meant to replace it has been recently in ‘The Times Higher’ on the 4th December ‘suspended’. The ‘range of metrics’ was 2014 and satirised there a week later in Laurie used selectively in order to give rationale Taylor’s Poppletonian quoting Falmouth and to keep within employment law and University’s senior deputy Vice Chancellor make particular staff redundant. Since 2009 Geoff Smith who cited ‘heavy space the University has been restructured three utilisation’. Contemporary Crafts was one of times. Between 2010 and 2014 there have three undergraduate courses being closed, been twenty-three academic redundancies, the others being Digital Media and Theatre. including myself but excluding Dartington The message from the Vice-Chancellor’s office staff not relocating to Falmouth. A similar explained that: number is expected over the current academic year. Additionally the two deans, six associate "Each of our current courses was considered deans, the director of research, four (of against a range of metrics such as enrollment six) heads of trends, market share, financial profile, graduate department Original Building now in employment statistics and National Student and a pro-vice- private hands. Survey scores. All of these factors - external and chancellor have internal, quantitative and qualitative - were left ‘voluntarily’ combined and carefully considered in order to or been made deliver the project’s conclusions." redundant. This The conclusions do not consider their artistic is during a period and economic contribution to the region, the of increasing development of research for the University student numbers. (which is also being restructured), their Of staff who are intrinsic educational, critical and artistic losing or have value or the impact of closure on staff or lost their jobs, student well-being. around two- thirds were over There have been other course closures fifty-five and at (though these did not gain as much least six were attention as contemporary crafts) but were University and as significant. Since 2010, Falmouth’s Vice 18 NAE MAGAZINE

College Union branch officers. Although new Breakfast Briefing 21st November 2013) academic staff have been appointed, these This ‘convergence’ point is 50%, if a course have mainly been young, on lower incomes costs more than 60% it would then be at risk or as 'associate lecturers’ - hourly paid, zero- of cessation. If a course costs less than 50% it hours contract, but no guaranteed hours. would produce ‘profit’ that could then be kept. When I stated that a University’s purpose was The fact that different courses have different the creation and dissemination of knowledge requirements is of no relevance. A ‘chalk by way of education, research and practice & talk’ course needs no space, technical for public, social and artistic benefit, the facilities or technicians (IT, student services Vice Chancellor Anne Carlisle replied “You and classrooms being provided centrallmouth are working for the wrong University”. In and Exeter Universities). A practical course fact in a number of internal publications requires studios, technical facilities etc. the Vice Chancellor has indicated a move all of which are ‘costed’ and have to be to an academic portfolio “that is better able budgeted for, such courses are therefore more expensive. Not only does ‘financial We will require all convergence’ give reason for course closures but is being used as a tool for central control substantive teaching staff to and micro-management. evidence the maintenance of This financial model makes a major contribution to what has been described by their professional currency Pacal Gielen and Paul De Bruyne in Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm as “the catering and industrial connections on regime [which] is in fact the carrying out of a political ideology, i.e. that of neoliberalism”. an annual basis. Although universities in England are to advance our ‘Top 50’ ambitions and that generally exempt charities and ‘not for profit’ speaks of our continuing journey from an the coalition government relaxed the rules to ‘Art School’ to a globally-oriented Creative permit ‘for profit’ institutions to be able to Innovation Hub”. A hub doesn’t sound much apply for University status and to introduce like a university either. The same document ‘competition’. This policy introduced a also proposed new Schools including ‘The competitive business model where education Real Business School’ and ‘The Games is turned into a commodity and students into Academy’ which gives an indication as to consumers; a model that many university where the University is heading. managers see fit to attempt to imitate and for staff and students to conform to. This The main device at Falmouth University for is however, an imaginary model that would ascertaining the continuance or cessation of not last in the ‘real world’ that the self-same courses is ‘financial convergence’. Heads of managers frequently refer to. In another department are given budgets based on the Falmouth University ‘Breakfast Briefing’, student fees for each individual course they the assistant deputy vice chancellor made are responsible for. From these budgets they a presentation that included the following are expected to pay for all teaching, technical points: and administrative staffing, technical facilities, space, materials and other on-costs • We will require every course at Falmouth to for each separate course. offer an Entrepreneurship Module developed in partnership with Falmouth Business School "The need for convergence to be achieved over the period of the 2012-17 Strategic Plan. This • All academic departments should establish an means that in a 9k fixed fee environment those Industry Advisory Board programmes that incur higher expenditure need • We will require all new course proposals to to develop business plans to achieve the median be developed in partnership with one or more (convergence) point in order that they are high-level industrial partner not indirectly being cross-subsidised by other • We will ensure that every course at Falmouth programmes and other fee-paying students." graduate 70% of their students at least to 2.1 (Falmouth University Vice-Chancellor’s 19 NAE MAGAZINE

or 1st degree classification and critical discourse. The forthcoming • We will require all substantive teaching staff to government Green Paper as proposed by Jo evidence the maintenance of their professional Johnson The University Minister in Cameron's currency and industrial connections on an government will include the introduction annual basis. of a ‘Teaching Excellence Framework’ (TEF) that will be directly aligned to course fees (Alan Murray, Falmouth University Vice- while at the same time rules will be relaxed Chancellor’s Breakfast Briefing 29th April 2015) for private providers to become Universities, ‘Requirements’ such as these are counter to validate their own degrees and charge university principles of academic freedom. whatever fees they want. The closure of Course structures have meaning as much as highly respected and effective courses and their content and as such should be under the the loss of experienced and committed staff control of academic staff in partnership with demonstrates a cynical disregard by those students, technical and other support staff. responsible. Higher Education for public benefit is under threat and has to be fought Falmouth University’s Vice Chancellor is politically. intent on changing both staff and courses (by closures, curriculum, structures and introducing new low cost courses) Rob Gawthrop was formally Director of Art at Dartington to create a different type of institution. College of Arts and Coordinator of the MA Fine: Contemporary Such instrumentalisation of education Practice at Falmouth University. and managerialsim undermines creativity

Ai Weiwei - Exhibition Royal Academy of Art Derek Guthrie

Al Weiwei is the darling Beijing in which the Chinese occupy ... for the moment. Yet, child and poster artist of pundits could illustrate the as before, we have to see the the Western Art World. I corruption of Western Culture. glass ceiling being controlled am not passing comment on Art is always political and by the gatekeepers. There are his art, just the system. He even if one thinks, while in always gatekeepers. As we says, "Everything is Art and front of beautiful sunset, this are told, Al Weiwei deals with everything is political." is not so, one has not escaped his gatekeepers with much We, as sluggish, and self the encoding embedded in our support from the West. This centred Westerners, are genes and culture. Education reminds me of the 70s hit quite happy for Al Weiwei to and class background inform "Jesus Christ Super Star, with cause trouble for the Chinese the politics of the show place its refrain 'How we wonder government. In so doing we where we may exhibit. The what you are?' use the activities of this artist definition, the forming of the In terms of Ai Weiwei we look to comfort ourselves with an idea of freedom, is the illusion for an answer. inbuilt narcissism. We are and vanity of most of us. The NAE will have a review more advanced and liberal Dear friends this is my of the Al Weiwei show , I may than the Chinese government. struggle also, I am not exempt. disagree with the writer. The So where do we look for our The Chinese government, only way I keep my sanity is to dissenting artists? Maybe just as Western governments, keep the conversation alive ... Banksy? But is Banksy a good moves its pieces around the 'Without Fear or Favour'. artist ? I like to imagine a chessboard of exhibitions. More later. major show of Dismaland in Finding the next square to 20 NAE MAGAZINE

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21 NAE MAGAZINE Berlin Art Fair George Care

Berlin Art Fair actually lasts not a week but just five days. It is an event which stretches The significant fact that across the whole of central Berlin with, for emerges from these crowded instance more than 40 openings on just one evening. It comprises several separate art halls with a welter of visual fairs; the ABC fair itself comprises works display units and ingenious from a hundred separate galleries and from 17 different countries. Another complete section installations is the priority is the POSITIONS fair, a similarly large event given to current social and spread across several large halls. Little wonder therefore that the brochure introduction by political events. Christiane Meixner says, “Kunst kann schoen anstrengend sein”-art can certainly become Perhaps, the artist that attracted the most stressful and hard on the feet too as there is attention was Cindy Sherman. Her show such a wide variety of art on display and such displayed more than 60 photographs from a large quantity to see. There are, after all every stage of the renowned American artist’s some 400 galleries in Berlin. lengthy career. Sherman played both subject The significant fact that emerges from these and artist by turns displaying herself as a crowded halls with a welter of visual display magazine centrefold, film starlet, or unhappy units and ingenious installations is the housewife, uncannily mimicking cultural priority given to current social and political stereotypes. She also experiments in exciting events. Much of the art on display concerned ways with the tropes of art history within her ecology, relationship issues, gender identity, conceptual portraiture. Famed for the quiet media simulacra but, significantly, as the horror of some of her images, these were refugees were streaming into Bavaria there works throughout her career which have been were installations that addressed designing collected by the octogenarian Berlin collector, buildings of safety. As I write this review Thomas Olbricht. The works shown included today, I have just heard that the Berlinische the remarkable black and white “untitled film Gallery will be making entry free to stills”. immigrants escaping from the Africa and the US artist Paul McCarthy exhibited at the Middle East. Schinkel Pavillon, a magical venue designed by the Bauhaus architect, Richard Paulick, once an official city guest house of the GDR. McCarthy worked with his son Damon for the Volksbühne a program of walk-in installation, film, performance, music and painting, "Rebel Dabble Babble Berlin"(described as a meditation on archetypes and Oedipal tensions within family dynamics) accompanied by concerts, performances and discussions on Viennese Actionism, was curated by Theo Altenberg under the motto "existence Palace". In the Schinkel Pavillon Paul McCarthy’s work dealt with the human body and its transitions; going to sleep, life Collectors Room_Cindy Sherman and death, presence and illusion. Photo Alexander Rentsch 22 NAE MAGAZINE

there have been something like 200 spaces around the city which retain the oddness and originality of an era when William Reich was being read in communes. Two are worthy of special mention. A park wall in Görlitzer Strasse in Kreuzberg has designed an outside project called “Kleister” or wallpaper paste. A group of photographers have stuck posters of their pictures on a park wall. The result will be marked soon by sun, rain, graffiti and theft! Another exhibition of interest because of its connection between places and images was the work of Stefan Schneider at Kurt- Kurt in the district of Moabit. One of images taken of old wooden boats on the beach at Dungeness has a particular lyrical charm. The whole art week is a tribute to the importance given to art in the capital city. The Art Week largely runs outside the exhibitions in the main galleries. However, the exhibition at the delightful Berlinische Galerie called “Radikal Modern” shows the incredible redevelopments of buildings and planning in general since 1960. The recovery Alicja Kwade at Theoretisches Gebilde of this city from the years of Nazi terror, bombing and Cold War division by The Wall Many Berlin collectors grant the general is a tribute to the courage and imagination of public access to their spectacular collections, its inhabitants that have recovered and built a “Sammlungen”, during Berlin Art Week. Once new life from out of the rubble of the past. the interest of writers like Walter Benjamin and Stefan Zweig, this tradition is continued by wealthy software developers and Parisian architects. They all experience pleasure (Zeigefreude) in showing their magnificent assemblies. Naturally, their interests vary from concept art to retro-charm. The venues are equally spectacular from the brick dominated Backsteinarchitektur of what was once a margarine factory with magnificent views over the Spree, to the claustrophobic walls of a former bunker now covered with works by Ai Weiwei (here) and Alicja Kwade. (here) One of the encouraging developments during the Berlin Art Week was the emphasis placed upon independent and non-conformist work. There are many happenings taking place throughout the week and some of these may be referenced on You-tube. When I left Berlin, after a two week stay, I had to pay something like an extra 50 Euros in city-tax. I feel a little better about this now having discovered that one of its uses is to support a diverse network of Free Berlin Project Spaces. Since 2009 23 NAE MAGAZINE Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism. by Professor Henry A Giroux. Daniel Nanavati

Professor Giroux's enlightening main points wanted. are present in the introduction, expanded in Money is a system and like each chapter, revisited in each chapter's final all systems it has no ethics paragraphs, in the conclusion and throughout unless we put ethics into the text. It is a little like being hit over the it. I was at university at head with a hammer. I sense he thinks that is the time of Thatcher, that most zombie of all exactly what America needs. zombies to use Professor Giroux's term, who I certainly wondered how George W Bush's believed the right of money to make money fraudulent first election was allowed to pass irrespective of human concerns was the without a single protest march. But though purest form of society. The modern nation this book's words are filled with intelligent is to be run like a shop which gives life and anger I think the writer's final call to 'let's meaning to everything else. My weblog get back to talking' is utterly liberal and will accrued 100,000 unique readers per annum achieve nothing. which proves there are infinite ways to say as much. There is a mode of terror ... The problem with simple insights is that that ... wipes out the creative there are only so many ways one can say the same thing. Though many agree that Marx faculties of imagination, was right about the capitalist boom and bust memory and critical thought. cycle, his wider thoughts on political culture were wiped from history by the tyranny of Supreme Court Judge Lewis Powell's Memo of Soviet Communism. But the search for a 1971 accompanied growth in powerful not- fairer way of dealing with money is still with for-profit foundations, taking over liberal us. That search has a dirty name in America, academia and promoted a money agenda. it is called socialism, but what America has These foundations (and I suppose think- today is a plutocracy not a democracy, and not tanks) provided the power base for Regan to even a plutocracy of individuals but one of win the 1980 Presidential race. His emotional corporations finding individuals in their own debate, describing monetarism as a true image and likeness and placing them into the American principle and controlling the media, House of Representatives through campaign is all part of the ruling elite's descent into contributions. American style fascism. He doesn't say it but I can agree with Professor Giroux when he Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh are neoliberal says: neo-fascists. “... a pedagogy of social and political I am not American. I recall Prime Minister amnesia works through celebrity culture and Thatcher using unemployment to manage the its counterpart in corporate-driven news, workers, wide scale theft of public utilities television, radio, and entertainment to produce a and companies built up over generations, culture of stupidity, censorship, and diversionary schooling being touted as the place for spectacles.” (p9) and again children to be taught to be what managers “There is a mode of terror rooted in a neoliberal 24 NAE MAGAZINE market-driven society that numbs many people just as it wipes out the creative faculties of Democracy is fragile and its imagination, memory and critical thought." (p12) fate is always uncertain. What I have to point out to him is that money is a perfect extension of our natures. We opinion, has seeped deeply into the art world. can discuss these matters as we have been This casino art market abuses artists, misuses taught to discuss but the mass population the esteem in which artists have historically do not discuss, they react. There is a 'social held, buys effect and controversy, and uses death' (Giroux's brilliant phrase) that comes art students as canon fodder in the illusion of about when people know something is wrong, non-existent professionalization. sensing they are demeaned and denied the Professor Giroux shows us how the screen gifts that their talents promise them. To find image has become the post-modernist version the answer and identity they resort to TV and of the Roman Colosseum in a discussion about supporting their local football team. the popular show 24: As money describes human beings we have “Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan went to to admit to the fact that the 'rich' are us with California to meet with the producers of the money, nothing less and nothing more. Money show. He told them that promoting illegal is the eternal zombie (not the people), the behavior in the series '… was having a damaging deathless, blood soaked vampire. Those who effect on young troops.'” (p61) possess most of it derive their living-dead Orwell's phrase in Animal Farm 'Four legs (what Professor Giroux calls hyper-dead) good, two legs bad' is echoed by Henry Giroux status from its virus like infection in the when he says “Consumers are in and citizens human brain. The result, as he points is that: are out.” (p68) “It is difficult to imagine that anyone looking “There is an undeniable pathological outcome at a society in which an ultra-rich financial when the issue of national security becomes elite and megacorporations have the power to more important than the survival of morality control almost every aspect of politics- from itself resulting in some cases in the deaths of who gets elected to how laws are enacted-could thousands of children - and with little public possibly mistake this social order and system of outrage." (p74) government for a democracy.” (p16) There is no doubt since the beginning of The most important lesson from this book is history almost all regimes have carried this his belief that: out but the vital fact throughout Professor “Democracy is fragile and its fate is always Giroux's Zombie Politics and Culture in the uncertain.” (p46) Age of Casino Capitalism is the last phrase * … 'with little public outrage'. His ambition is to bring debate back into the schoolroom The lies given by politicians in avoiding the and campus. Teaching criticism is part of his torture issue probably has more to do with answer from which I disagree. To achieve a the money they lost after September 11th well educated citizenry by providing them 2001 and exacting revenge. A loss that every with free education, money will remain a affected corporation itemized and assessed. permanent seducer of the brain. There are The support given to the banks but not the many rich predators that still occupy the people is a scandal for Professor Giroux. The cultural landscape. journalist Upton Sinclair pointed out in the 1929 Great Crash that the day after the first Christopher Hitchens idealistically once said jolt, more money poured into the market in we don't need leaders. They are the problem. an attempt to stabilize it. When the prices We should govern ourselves within the rule of were stable the richest investors sold out and law. extended their wealth. The same is happening Not being able to 'read' the world, not caring today. if Muslim children are tortured or bombed as Professor Giroux's phrase the 'culture of collateral damage in the war with terrorism, cruelty' evinced in almost all the social not investing in helping citizens leave their decisions taken by the Bush regime, in my tented homes are all acts, as Professor Giroux 25 NAE MAGAZINE

points out, of disengagement. Professor Giroux argues that American kids on drugs Among the industrialized are a result of casino capitalism. nations in the world, the Self-criticism is not an option as personal needs overwhelm the wider vision of the United States ranks first in nation's social issues. billionaires and in defense “This is a politics in which the undead- or, more expenditure and yet ranks aptly, the living dead- rule and rail against any institution, set of values, and social relations an appalling twenty-ninth in that embrace the common good or exhibit infant mortality. compassion for the suffering of others.” (p32) No matter how far back the reader goes into true vision of America. history, the reader will find they ignore the Professor Giroux shows us that: nation in favour of their personal needs. The "Among the industrialized nations in the world, essence of modern finances is that money the United States ranks first in billionaires makes money underpinned by land ownership and in defense expenditure and yet ranks an and real estate. appalling twenty-ninth in infant mortality." * (p115) The incarceration of mostly minority children This is possibly the most vile and horrific in America bears heavily on Giroux's soul. statistic in the entire book and one which “How can we reconcile the rise of zero tolerance shows the Government's priorities are all laws in schools with the presumption that skewed by the logic of money. He doesn't say schools should be places where young people can but others do, that modern Government is no feel safe and receive an education that prepares more than an exercise in banking. them to be thoughtful, critical, and socially Professor Giroux sees a way forward: responsible citizens when such laws impose “...it is up to those who are willing to assume harsh penalties for often trivial infractions, a measure of civic courage and social increase rates of suspension and expulsion, responsibility to come together and say enough disproportionately target African American is enough, and then mobilize to force Obama youth, push poor young people out of school and to take seriously what it might mean to live up often into the criminal justice system?” (p114) to the principles of both an aspiring democracy The idea that dropping out of high school is and, yes, the Nobel Peace Prize.” (p160) kicking the system is not working. Though it He believes democracy itself is under attack is a hard road it may be the route to becoming and that teaching how to critically analyse a free thinker. An idea cherished and pursued what we are being told is the way forward. I in Chicago by Studs Terkel, Nelson Algren and disagree to a large extent. Jane Addams. Everyone of us has a serious of assumptions Informal social networks suggested to the and prejudices that are not learned in school paranoia of Joe McCarthy insurrection and but at home and in our neighbourhoods. revolution. Therefore a shadow has been Many are taught to debate. They are taught permanently cast on free-thinkers. how to strongly defend positions they don't America is the country that defeated believe in. Communism. Since that is the only other What we really need to teach is how and when social system that can exist in the minds to challenge our assumptions and prejudices of those opposed to Professor Giroux's way and to be prepared to be self-critical. of thinking about society; justice, history Professor Giroux's book can be read by any and the world must be on the side of capital. of those he mentions as being virulently Dissent from this obvious conclusion must opposed to the 'State' intervening to help the be punished. This is why so many people unemployed and homeless. Having read him believe Obama to be a Muslim, why members they will reject everything he says despite of Congress can incite violence and why Fox the well researched and accurate statistics. Corporation's version of America is the only 26 NAE MAGAZINE

Fascism always comes with certainty, degree of intellectual uncertainty. Yet as American or otherwise. casino capitalism has corrupted the whole of Education is a key to the future but it is a long society it has corrupted the art world. What term venture. Between the time envisaged then can we say of the well known artists by Professor Giroux and now we need other in this moment before Professor Giroux's answers. More so when you consider high more ideal democratic society? Is Koons no school debating chambers and university more than a celebrity? Are the Young British debating chambers will work in different time Artists false flags? frames to produce the citizens the country needs. These self-critical thinkers would be the first population of ethical thinkers ever to Professor Henry Giroux has the McMaster have lived as a nation. University Chair for Scholarship in the As I have been brought up by a writer and Public Interest. Zombie Politics and Culture worked among artists all my adult life I would in the Age of Casino Capitalism is published say this level of deep introspection already by popular Culture and Everyday Life series exists in creative people who live with a high in 2010. Arthur Truebrush Turns into a superBrush hero

27 NAE MAGAZINE Toni Carver, Editor of St Ives Times & Echo in conversation with Daniel Nanavati

DN: I want to talk about the decline of St Ives TC: In the 1960s this was a prevalent view of in the art world but I suppose first we should Newlyn School painting. What these painters talk about how it came to be a flowering of found, though, was that life in Cornwall artists to begin with. was hard, as was rural life elsewhere. TC: What flowering are we talking about, Fisherman drowned, boats sank and miners there were several? They come in waves in St died underground, wives were widowed Ives. and children orphaned. Frank Bramley’s Hopeless Dawn and WHY Titcomb’s Primitive DN: I suppose I am referring to the post Methodists are more a sort of Victorian social Second World War period. realism than romantic paintings but, of course TC: Which is mine and Derek Guthrie’s time, nature can be idyllic too. of course, the St Ives ‘Modern School’ period, DN: Were these new arrivals welcome in St but I don’t think you can look at St Ives then Ives. without looking at its longer history. Cornwall saw Artists’ Colonies founded here from the TC: The Cornish have always been adaptable mid-1800s part of a major, but very poorly and welcoming. Local people modelled for the documented, international movement in art. artists who became respected for their skill of With the arrival of the railway, Newlyn and ‘head and hand’. A tradition of ‘open studio’ St Ives had became very important from the show days started so artists could let the 1880s. There’s your first flowering. local people see their work and this fostered a mutual respect. Persuaded by Whistler, James DN: How did this come about? Lanham stocked artist's materials, opened TC: Post the Industrial Revolution art practice studios and began picture framing for pictures had become city oriented and studio based. transported to London for Royal Academy Artists decided to get out and seek ‘an exhibitions. academy of nature’ and paint in the open ‘en DN: A regular cottage industry. plein air’. They may have been inspired by the example of earlier painters like JMW Turner, TC: Hardly ‘cottage’ when you think that later who incidentally had visited St Ives. on St Ives firms transported DN: And this ‘movement’ was international? Hepworth's TC: Yes. It links us to artists’ colonies like: sculptures to Woodstock, Yaddo and Provincetown in exhibitions the States; Concarneau, Pont Aven and around the Barbizon in France and Scandinavian and world. It was German colonies like Skagen and Worpswede one of the respectively. An artist might spend several things about years in several colonies. Major 'St Ives' artists Hepworth that during this flowering were people like Helene she always used Schjerfbeck and Anders Zorn, Scandinavians: local tradesmen as well as Americans and the Brits. and that was appreciated. DN: Coming from cities did these artists have a romantic view of what nature is actually Barbra like? Hepworth: 'Dual Form' 28 NAE MAGAZINE

during the war evolving techniques for covert coastal and cliff assault. It was very creative stuff and dangerous. They designed all sorts of kit, knocked up by a local blacksmith including the ‘gripfast’, a 'death-slide' [zip- wire] rigging anchor that works on sand and is still in use today. Night landings practised in the dark on St Ives beaches would leave a few soldiers suffering from hypothermia and they were taken into the Gas Works, which stood where Tate St Ives is now, to warm up. If Tate ever leaves St Ives the building would make a fine military museum. This town is rich in history. DN: So this was going on around the artists here in the war. And how did their flowering happen? TC: Nicholson was excellent at promotion. Elizabeth He gave ‘marketing’ a lot of attention. Art Adela was his profession and believed the artist Forbes: should be professional in his approach. Many 'Louise artists don’t understand this, they just want Breton Girl" to paint and they really don’t know how to sell their work. Ben & Barbara founded the DN: So the 19th century history of St Ives Penwith Society of Arts, breaking away from made it the obvious choice for Ben Nicholson the St Ives Society in 1949. The Penwith and Barbara Hepworth? was the marketing vehicle for the St Ives TC: In that it paved the way for a ‘second Modern movement. They were also active flowing’ between the wars, perhaps. The in the community. Nicholson won the first St Ives Society of Artists (founded in 1927) Guggenheim International painting prize in and its Secretary Captain Borlase Smart re- 1956 and used this new found celebrity to established St Ives international reputation try and persuade the council to build self- between the wars. Ben Nicholson, Barbara contained studio-flats for artists. Hepworth and their triplets came to St Ives DN: Really? Who would have been in charge in 1939, ahead of the London blitz. They of them? had friends here and were welcomed into the Society, despite the reservations of the TC: Sadly, it never got that far. The council traditional painters. Nicholson knew Cornwall told him it was a nice idea but they would well and had been down in St Ives in 1928 have to build their quota of council houses when with Kit Wood he ‘discovered’ the before his idea could be considered. primitive local painter Alfred Wallis. DN: So how did he proceed. DN: I read somewhere in one of your articles TC: Splitting from the St Ives Society, the that they read and admired D H Lawrence Penwith attracted all the younger avant TC: Lawrence is part of the history of artists guarde, abstract and modern artists all, and writers coming to live in Cornwall. I generally, like minded. Collectives attract have a copy of a letter the military sent to buyers, institutions and media. Lawrence ordering him out of the County. DN: I have heard that caused trouble? Patrick Heron and Karl Weschke were minds TC: Well it was patently elitist. Nicholson of information on Lawrence, certainly. divided the Penwith into three classes: A for DN: So the history and the creative energy ‘advanced artists’, B for traditional painters was already here? and C for craftsmen. This was immediately TC: Very much so and not just for painting. A divisive. For artists recently returned from Commando training unit was based in St Ives the war: Peter Lanyon, Sven Berlin and 29 NAE MAGAZINE

Hyman Segal - looking for a more egalitarian society - ‘selection’ had a different meaning and unpleasant overtones. Additionally, they realised they’d been manipulated away form ‘the old society’ which, despite traditionalists knocking the avant guarde, had been generous to them, giving them their own space to exhibit in the crypt below the society's main gallery. DN: To my way of thinking, groups forming is not a sign of weakness but of intellectual vigour. TC: Very much so. The Penwith grew from strength to strength throughout the 1950s and early 60s and this is the ‘flowing’ Derek remembers. It was a terrific time but art was only one aspect. St Ives became the summer sojourn for British ‘beatniks’ experimenting with existentialism, reciting Ginsberg and quoting Kerouac. Jonathan Xavier Coudrille opened the first folk club in Cornwall in his father, Francis' St Ives studio ahead of a massive folk revival throughout Cornwall. Ben Nicholson by Mabel Pryde DN: When did it decline? TC: Art? Slowly from the mid-sixties as the 1964 with the death of Peter Lanyon. St Ives founding generation of the Penwith began was in the doldrums, briefly. St Ives artists to age and lose influence. Younger, newer disappeared into their studios and kept members, took over the reigns who inherited themselves to themselves for a few years. the elitist attitude but little else. The But, this all changed circa 1980 when old Penwith began to treat Associate members 'modernist' hands like John Wells, Willie quite badly which was noticeable to a wider Barns-Graham, Patrick Heron and Terry public. Particularly as many associates were Frost were still active and able to help recent producing much more interesting work that arrivals create another ‘flowering’ in the full members were. mid-80s. It was a bit of a renaissance for the surviving 'moderns' which included artists DN: Ego kills the artist? like Sandra Blow and Trevor Bell returning to TC: It certainly can. But if you want to look St Ives and a flowering for a generation able to for a defining moment, then I would suggest put egotism aside and bring the Tate to St Ives 1975. In 1975 Barbara Hepworth, Bryan to celebrate the ‘Modern School.’ Wynter and Roger Hilton all died. DN: Well you wrote somewhere St Ives is the DN: But losing three artists in one year could only place in the world associated with an not be the only reason for the demise? major avant guarde art movement. TC: In the perception of the public, TC: That was a quote of Patrick Heron’s. institutions like Tate and the media ‘Art died 'St Ives is only place that is not a capital in St Ives in 1975.’ city or great metropolis to lend its name to an internationally renowned movement in DN: Yet you feel it didn't? twentieth century art’. : No. The reality was there was a lot TC DN: That is very interesting. So you are of good work being produced in St Ives, it saying the art world changed. was just that the focus was no longer on the Moderns or the Penwith. You could say TC: It did. 1975 represented a full stop to the end of DN: Around St Ives? the St Ives Modern period. Some would say 30 NAE MAGAZINE

TC: There was a moment in 1980 when St Ives were looking for. A flowering, certainly, for artists began looking again at each other's the commercial galleries. I remember walking work - of whatever genre - with interest down Fore Street in the '80s with a gallery and respect. Importantly, asking about and owner from Shoreham. Suddenly he stopped investigating the art colony's past and finding and said. "I've just realized, I've just walked new roots. After the Tate Britain St Ives past more galleries in five minutes than there exhibition of 1985 the spotlight turned once are in the whole of East Sussex!" And, there are more on St. Ives. People came to St Ives to find a hell of a lot more here today! out 'what was happening now'. Exhibitions (laughter) were mixed and St Ives had to explain this new 'pluralist' scene which also prompted the growth of the commercial galleries in the town. Toni Carver is the Proprietor of The St Ives Printing & Publishing Company and Editor DN: Another flowering? of The St Ives Times & Echo. His St Ives TC: More of a Golden Age, really. Perhaps newspaper archives, a major source of Tate's the new 'Arcadia' the 19th century 'colonists' St Ives art chronology, date from 1889.

31 NAE MAGAZINE

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Frank Corrigan

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was born in London (1977) of Ghanaian parents. She attended St Martins School of Art & Design (1996/7)Falmouth Art College (1997- 2000)and the Royal Academy Schools (2000-2003). She is represented in several public collections including Tate UK, MoMA New York and Royal Academy UK

possibly first and foremost a critique of art history, yet one of the most compelling narratives of the show is the struggle to fully render black skin in Dutch oil pallets - taking his show seems to be an attempt to the black figure from background exotic Tmake art history uncanny - to offer token to the central concern, and in doing so us comfortable signifiers of academic moving from the rough shod approximation portraiture and then to take away the of dark skin to a primary exhibit. The dearth reassurances that we might find in a national of paintings of black people makes the task a gallery. The effect is to disorient and disarm challenge and while Rembrandt and Rubens the viewer by placing us in a situation both made at least one serious study of dark for which we have no confidence in our skin, the majority of depictions in academic expectations. By playing the usual tropes figurative painting are a 'black magus' in against themselves the artist highlights our a crowded scene that lack the devotion to assumptions, and inhibits the complacency the subject found in portraiture. It seems and lazy viewing that we might settle into in that Boakye is not only exploring the social a ticketed museum. history of art, but also searching for a pallet then, and her journey takes her from El Greco A central thrust seems to be the unravelling to Manet. of the unconscious. The compositions are distinguished by their shared ambiguity. The references are usually ironic: The While every figure is black, that is the Casper David Friedrich pastiche gives 'the only thing we can be sure of. Neither the counter' an irony: the figure looks out on backgrounds nor the figures' dress, features, what might be a dramatic wasteland. 'Curses' or pose give any clear indication of time, looks like an El Greco in its brushwork but place, social class, or any other demographic paints an ordinary scene in the style of his that is so often the crux in art history. This rapture. Manet's Olympia is swapped for uncertainty infects the viewer - a few of an indeterminate figure lain topless with the images had features that looked to me an arresting title: 'yes officer, no officer'. as though they were painted from white The reference point I found most engaging, models, and I left not sure if this were true though, is the nod to Goya in the paintings or if it reflected my own schemas and biases. 'Hightower' and 'Confidences' - there is grace Further, if this was something I brought to in using the ashen black tones of the great the painting - where did it come from? Was protest painter. it my own, a contingency of my experience, Other writers have seen Modernism in or a component of a vast ideology shared by the anti-realism of her compositions, but others? The experience of not having clear I rather think there is something closer to signs by which to prejudge is highlighted Mannerism in these paintings. The same here by how unusual and uncomfortable it is. impasse - the sense that we have arrived at The use of explicit academic references is the end of art history - afflicts this work. The 32 NAE MAGAZINE

Mannerists felt that all of values? the problems of painting Yoadim-Boakye is grappling had been solved and were with this question and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye therefore left with nothing doesn't yet have the answer. to do but ghastly virtuosity Disdaining the sloppy art 2nd JUNE – 13th SEPTEMBER 2015 copying the achievements of 'expression' without of the recent past. And structure and the cheapness "VERSES AFTER DUSK" Yoadim-Boakye's painting of mixed media she has has a similar problem. tried to find in painting a SERPENTINE GALLERY, The show reflects a crisis in way to produce excellence. London UK artistic and aesthetic values Her rejection of the myth that is well known yet of sui generis creativity poorly understood. 'Being is admirable, and the an artist', having devolved willingness to invest her into a lifestyle choice, work heavily with reference has been undermined by points is much to be rampant philistinism. YBA preferred to 'spontaneous' and chums/children have art, but she does not Images overseen the final stage of seem to have yet found an value entropy from visual original voice. Opposite page; arts. The contrivance that Yoadim-Boakye is a cut Left: Highriser anything can be art was above many of her peers - cute for a time, but is now painterly, knowledgeable, This page: Top: Yes Officer, No Officer just soul sapping. And deft, and clever. Yet without where there is a value gap, the name-puzzles and the other values will supplant. Bottom : racial politics, the paintings Curses Money, the pushing of on display - in themselves thin political agendas, and - don't have the boldness controversy have all had or impact to invigorate their day in the sun. And a viewer. Students who now artists, obsessed with 'have got to live in London' the ridiculous question will like it - because it's "what should I be making?", easy to talk about and the are like sprinters looking stories (enchanting verse over their shoulder: self- allegories that accompany conscious self-saboteurs. the paintings) are exciting This is the problem that - but the serious problem artists making work of how to make brilliant art today face: how do I make today remains, and this is a original, thrilling, vibrant, good study, but it isn't the even beautiful work in solution. an art world 'liberated' of 33 NAE MAGAZINE Creativity & Art: Three Roads to Surprise by Dr.Margaret A. Boden C.B.E. George Touche'

Professor Boden's threefold theory of 'creative surprise’ as three surprise' provides a frame for understanding different forms how surprise translates to creativity and of creativity. The how creativity relates to the visual arts. She first produces elaborates on the forms of creativity and unfamiliar their cultural relations to traditional fine art, combinations of conceptual and computer art. Her discussions familiar ideas. The on creativity and computers raise questions other two forms of regarding our knowledge of human creativity, creativity explore while also considering how computers might and transform have a creative life of their own. Though her the conceptual chapter on metabolism stresses the limits spaces of the to strong artificial life (what she terms human mind and A-Life), Professor Boden is open to the idea of the categorical styles of aesthetic possibility. computer creativity. She recognizes computers Respectively, she labels these forms of improve our understanding of the cognitive creativity as combinational, exploratory, and faculties and organizational complexities of transformational. Finally a distinction on the human mind that interact – sometimes cultural values – also norms and beliefs – can with computers – in the creative process. affect aesthetic cognition and expression, Professor Boden defines creativity and while also leading to disagreement on formulates the groundwork for her threefold whether an idea or artifact is valuable. theory. Formally, creativity is defined (p. Professor Boden’s theoretically concise 29): second chapter “Creativity in a Nutshell” “Creativity is the ability to come up with ideas also addresses artificial intelligence with or artifacts that are new, surprising, and respect to the different forms of creativity. valuable.” She recognizes that computers are relevant and that AI can map conceptual spaces of The connotation of all imaginable ideas and the mind to enable hypothesis testing on artifacts implies that creativity is open in the structures and processes of thought. She capacity – encompassing great scale and then remains “open” as she fairly addresses scope, while entailing both breadth and the arguments for and against computer depth. For Professor Boden, creativity is not creativity. Her line of inquiry follows from a a property of an elite faculty, but instead quote: an aspect of human intelligence that enters “If and when I mention creativity in computers I all aspects of life. She addresses the novel am asking what aesthetically interesting results or the new by distinguishing psychological can computers generate, and how? and Just creativity (P-creativity) from historical what might lead someone to suggest that a creativity (H-creativity): something new particular computer system is creative, for a specific person or something new for or that its functioning is somehow similar to all human history. A new discovery for a creativity in human beings? In that sense, I’m person (P-creativity) is most relevant for content to leave the question of “real” computer understanding the processes of creative creativity open. And if art necessarily surprise. As suggested by the subtitle of involves creativity – a reasonable, if not a the book, she specifies ‘three roads to 34 NAE MAGAZINE strictly provable, view – then (in that sense) I must leave the question of “real” computer art As nothing is intelligent if it open too.” is not alive prospects for an Most directly, she assesses generative art intelligently self-replicating in terms of its origins in cybernetics and general systems theory and its reliance on but non-metabolizing cosmic digital computing and methods of A-Life, computer life remain doubtful while distinguishing different types of generative art by technique and experience. In her distinction between computer- artists and audience participants. Aside from generated art and computer-assisted art the differing valuations of the actual art she touches on philosophical and emotional objects, the basic interaction is a creative concerns about the aesthetic value of art experience. The sociology of values and the produced by a computer versus art produced social psychology of mind are relevant for by a human being who uses a computer as understanding the nature of the interaction an aid. She evaluates autonomy, integrity, event. They also hold the potential to explain and authenticity in the contemporary art how aesthetic valuations of computer art vary world – as artists, computers, and audience in the minds of different groups of artists and participants have come to interact. Arguably, audiences. the nature of the interactive event itself – Professor Boden references values with other mediated by computers – is a new, surprising, concepts of cultural sociology throughout the and potentially valuable expression of book. Whereas ‘new’ has two meanings and transformational creativity. ‘surprising’ has three, values vary between The chapter on metabolism are – as she and within cultures over time. For Professor suggests – the most challenging to integrate Boden, this openness is important to the meaningfully with the book as a whole. It contemporary disagreements on aesthetic focuses on the concept of metabolism to quality and the potential changes in audience address the question of whether strong A-Life appreciation for computer art. is possible. Metabolism is a defining feature She highlights the traditional cultural of life where higher levels of structural order distinction between the aesthetics of fine emerge from origins of lesser degrees. She art and the affordances of craftwork, which argues that metabolism is problematic for are practical and grounded functionally in A-Life proponents who believe in a virtual evolutionary biology. The standards observed existence. Evo-artists inspired by A-Life in the crafts make them useful within a wide research on evolution believe that programed range of cultural contexts, but render them computers can create a genuinely authentic less surprising and arguably less creative virtual life in cyberspace. For Professor minded in comparison to fine arts. She Boden, strong A-Life is impossible because recognizes the cultural distinction in the virtual creatures displayed on monitor screens professional and occupational boundaries and existing in cyberspace lack the material that separate the fine arts from craftworks. embodiment and biochemical processes that Yet, she emphasizes that such boundaries necessitate metabolism. She does support lack conceptual clarity because the categories digitally coded information processes that of reason are difficult to define. For example evolve and adapt, but do not metabolize. the Bernini fountain sculptures of Rome are As nothing is intelligent if it is not alive symbolically valued illustrations of visual prospects for an intelligently self-replicating beauty that also had practical functionality but non-metabolizing cosmic computer life in the history of the city. A more modern remain doubtful in her view. example of unclear categorization might be Perhaps most interesting is the category the Red House located in outer southeast of interaction art. Countless questions London, England – an arts and crafts of computer autonomy and aesthetic movement home designed by William Morris authenticity emerge from observations on who with architect Philip Webb and art the computer-mediated interactions among critic John Ruskin placed quality value on handmade craftworks, as opposed to those 35 NAE MAGAZINE

mass produced by industrial machines of orientations, the modern age. She acknowledges a history normative of shifting identity in arts and crafts, expectations, and while avoiding any imperative for static belief systems. She categorization. points out that The chapter on conceptual art addresses there are complex specifically the shocking challenge to interrelationships the romantic view of art as an aesthetic between auto- expression by an elite few. A value-laden didacticism and elitism forsaken by connoisseurs and artists creativity that make alike when the culture of modernism reacted it hard to say in a against romanticism and postmodernism clear cut manner eventually proclaimed death of the author, whether autodidacts or artist. Professor Boden elaborates on the are more or less cultural and psychological tensions that AI. creative than he underpin the unorthodox values suggested by Alejandro Zorrilal Cruz formally educated. several modern to contemporary conceptual [Public domain], via She suggests artists who – for better or worse – have Wikimedia Commons further that changed the nature of art itself. The fountain creative capacity toilet sculpture and other ready made objects is partially contingent on psychological of modern social criticism by Marcel Duchamp processes and mental resources that may are shocking in their exploit of disgust exist among members of some autodidact when compared to the Baroque beauty of a subcultures but not others. The factors of Bernini fountain or to the high renaissance cognition inferred from observed behavior and versatile mannerist aesthetics of say of the defiant autodidact reasonably differ a Michelangelo. Claes Oldenburg’s “The from those of the unschooled autodidact who Hole” that was quickly dug and refilled in exhibits the determination to improve life Central Park of New York City challenges the chances through disciplined education of self. conventional orthodoxy on the basic stuff of In all, the focus on autodidacts illustrates the artwork – where the stuff of the hole seems complexity of creative thinking in general. to have been the philosophically absurd The book elaborates further on the creative absence of stuff. Professor Boden draws on topics involving the relational qualities of these examples to acknowledge that the values and mind. However she does not combinational creativity of the unorthodox scientifically explain or sufficiently model conceptual art has had a qualitative effect the interactive effects. While recognizing on changing societal evaluations and mental that science does study cultural values, perceptions of art in general. she stresses their elusive quality and the difficulties encountered when explaining or justifying them. As for the human mind, she Her discussion of autodidacts addresses computers in terms of machine is meaningful because the self- mapping of cognition and suggests that AI has improved our knowledge of conceptual educated are from separately spaces and mental processes involved in identified subcultural groups, thought. She even acknowledges that the images generated by the AARON software such as the unschooled or the of abstract painter Harold Cohen has helped defiant. Cohen to model his own cognition in the creative process, while initiating aesthetic- Her discussion of autodidacts is meaningful minded changes in audience evaluations of because the self-educated are from separately the computer drawing and coloring program. identified subcultural groups, such as the Yet, the book does not focus primarily on unschooled or the defiant. These groups science and modeling as such. Readers are similar in some standard regards (i.e., with social psychology backgrounds may self-educated instead of formally educated), appreciate deeper conversations using but differ culturally in terms of value mental models to address the interactions of 36 NAE MAGAZINE cultural values and the human mind – and the contemporary effects that computers have in Computers, however, do not mediating those interactions. have the strong AI capacity Emile Durkheim argued for a science of to sustain a life of their own society to observe functional institutions of value that represent norms and beliefs of the – even though they do mimic collectivity, which differ when comparing the and influence our cognitive solidarity and consciousness of a traditional community to that of a complex modern reasoning capacities society. Durkheim observed social facts, such as marriage or suicide rates, as measured Durkheim and Parsons on deviance or representations existing external to an convergence in values and norms – as those individual, but exercising influence on an sociological arguments couple with Professor individual. Also in ‘functionalist’ tradition, Boden’s psychology to distinguish by process Talcott Parsons later wrote on social systems the defiant autodidact from other autodidacts. and structures of action to emphasize cultural Finally, a background conversation on Mead values and conditions of random wants and would perhaps inspire comparative inquiry ends that distinguish voluntary action from on the effects of computer mediations the base utilitarian calculus. between artists and audience participants Concerning the mind, George Herbert Mead in contemporary interactive art. How do – also before computers – had established predictability and unpredictability of roles grounds for symbolic interactionism in the and identities in computer interactive art study of meaningful communication. Mead’s today compare to the symbolic interactionism social behaviorist inquiry in 'Mind, Self, of Mead – where imaginative pre-computer Society' addresses questions of how and why minds had used symbols to designate objects, respondents of differing values and status rehearse actions concerning objects, and group backgrounds respond differently to a select alternative decisions to make on objects certain stimulus and how the mind reconciles while considering the roles of others that those differences in the organization of the influence the organization of self in actively self within society. Accordingly, the mind is a coordinated social environments? process of imaginative rehearsal that connects Of course, other sociologists and the self to society through participatory role psychologists have contributed to our taking, which allows a person to converse in understandings of culture and art. Pierre symbolic meaning with many others and to Boudieu theoretically encapsulates the see the self as an object through the eyes of dynamic relations between social systems many others – in philosophical agreement and social actions by focusing on the with the “looking-glass self” of Charles internalization of the system in the embodied Horton Cooley. Through the process of person of practice who resourcefully uses imaginative rehearsal, the mind can develop forms of capital (cultural, social, symbolic, a stable conception of an organized self and economic) in assorted fields of action. His a sense of a generalized other that relates the “Rules of Art” is an exemplar on the genesis, self to the full community of group attitudes structure, and change of production and that constitute society. preference in the literary field. Wendy Professor Boden might have enriched several Griswald in “Cultures and Societies of a section of her book with conversation on Changing World” conceptualizes cultural these sociologists and social psychologists. objects as expressions of shared meaning She could have elaborated on Durkheim that are audible, visible, or articulated. and Parsons as she recognized values in her She illustrates a cultural diamond with definition of creativity – where the patterned representations of input and output yet open-ended nature of value diffusion boundaries that account for creation and through distinct cultures and subcultures reception of cultural objects and that enhance can breathe creative life into the imagining knowledge of links connecting cultural of ideas and artifacts. Her discussions of objects to the larger social world. Sherry autodidacts then might have referenced Turkle at MIT focuses in psychoanalysis on 37 NAE MAGAZINE

human-technology interactions to argue nevertheless, that the social psychology to that computers change what we do and how the interactive event itself is the foundation we think about what we do. The point here of the creativity and that the mediating is that these scholars have contributed to computers are the props that initiate the new conversations on the relational quality of forms of the basic human interaction. For art cultural values and the human mind, as and creativity more generally, mediated or experienced interactively by members of not by computers, an interactive mind that different groups and – as socially studied is open to distinct cultural values leads to a by Turkle – mediated by computers that are more pleasant aesthetic discovery than does tools, but also more than tools in their effects the inordinate closure ensured by the absence on our personal cognitions, emotions, and of self-organizing metabolism in the strong interactive lives. A-life platform – as she concludes (p. 252): The deep conversations on cultural values “Without independent grounds for doing so, we and interactive mind breathe life into should not drop metabolism from the concept the definition of creativity established by of life. Nor should we weaken our (third) Professor Boden where – philosophically in interpretation of it. On the contrary, we should tune with the corroborating limits to the acknowledge it as a fundamental requisite of the logic and epistemology of science itself – sort of self-organization that is characteristic of cultural values are the vital open factor and life. In sum: metabolism is necessary, so strong interactive mind is where discovery of the A-Life is impossible.” new takes place on the roads to surprise. Yes, advanced computer technologies indeed have mediated human communications in the contemporary world of culture and art. After all, computers have had interactive effects on our minds as we have reorganized ourselves George Touche' earned his sociology PhD to communicate free of spatial constraint at Texas A&M and worked full time as a through global social media. Computers, research associate at George HW Bush however, do not have the strong AI capacity Presidential institute. to sustain a life of their own – even though they do mimic and influence our reasoning capacities, while expanding our social Margaret Ann Boden, OBE, (born 26 networks to interact with members of other November 1936)[1] is Research Professor cultures and subcultures. of cognitive science at the Department of informatics at the University of Sussex, In my read of 'Creativity & Art', the where her work embraces the fields interactive computer art is the focal interest of artificial intelligence, psychology, with the most potential to creatively philosophy, cognitive and computer transform our aesthetic cognitions science. and expressions. We must remember,

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