The Complex 1980S, Viewed by 47 Artists
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THE NEW YORK TIMES, SuNdaY, NOvEMbER 6, 2011 WE 12 ARTS | WESTcHESTER Sherrie Levine, Christian Boltanski, Barbara Ess, Mike and The Complex 1980s, Doug Starn, Mark Morrisroe and Clegg & Guttmann. Concerns about the body driven Viewed by 47 Artists by the AIDS crisis and by psychoana- lytic theories of the “abject” and the “uncanny” are also present: Robert Gober’s creepy plaster “Sink With a Drainboard,” from 1984, Mike Kel- ley’s sculpture made with used stuffed animals and a blanket, and Rona Pondick’s pink spheres embedded with yellowed rubber teeth and scat- tered on the floor. What is left out of this show could fill several art history books. As the Guerrilla Girls, a feminist collective that thrived in the ’80s, pointed out in their posters, books and “interventions,” the art market of that period supported the usual suspects of acclaim and fame: white men. A photograph in the catalog of a group of mostly male artists, posed at Mr. Chow restaurant in the early ’80s, supports this claim. And yet, the catalog also opens up into richer and more fruitful territory. JOEl OTTERSON Mr. Newsom’s reminiscences of the ’80s art world, from an art student’s The 1980s were a complicated de- perspective, end with a poignant story cade for American art. New York was about meeting Keith Haring when Mr. back from the brink of bankruptcy, Haring was clearly suffering from the but gentrification was killing bohemi- JEff KOONS disease that would eventually kill him anism. The art market flourished, but (again, AIDS). Mr. Trezzi’s experi- it also created a lopsided demand for mental essay juxtaposes two strains painting and other market-friendly of thought: one about collecting as aRT mediums. Art an art form; the other about what it stars were means for artists to seriously collect REvIEW born, but artists art. The first considers how collectors, were dying of from the Medicis to the current crop, mARThA AIDS. All of “influence the course of art history,” SchwendeneR this serves as a while the second looks at artists from backdrop for Marcel Duchamp, who supported “Circa 1986” at the Hudson Valley himself by art dealing, to “creative Center for Contemporary Art in collectors” like Hans-Peter Feldmann Peekskill. and Maurizio Cattelan. The show features 65 works by 47 Ms. Honold’s round table with the artists, made between 1981 and 1991, and was organized by John Newsom, Astrid Honold and Nicola Trezzi: a a decade buffeted by painter, a curator and an editor. The RIcHaRd PRINcE works are all drawn, however, from wild decAde aIds, marketing and six private New York collections, On view in “circa 1986” clockwise including that of the founders of the from top:“compact disc Stereo love minimalism. art center, Marc and Livia Straus, and Seats (Hot Wheels),” 1988, by Joel Otterson; “Two ball 50/50 Tank,” their children, Ari and Sarena. collectors provides the most sym- Collectors tend to focus on 1985, by Jeff Koons; “little bathers,” 1990-91 (plastic, wax and rubber pathetic view of all. We are told of “things,” objects that can be bought teeth), by Rona Pondick; untitled struggling young professionals buying from galleries rather than more (cowboy), 1989, by Richard Prince. art on layaway — and, much later, ephemeral forms, like performance getting disgusted with art-fair feeding art. And because collecting involves RONa PONdIcK 2,” from 1989. The work consists of of it here. Rick Prol was an assistant canvases by lesser-knowns like frenzies in the new millennium. We money, market values get confused learn about trips to the “dangerous with other concerns. a yellow industrial box mounted on to Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of the Walter Dahn, Jiri Georg Dokoupil, the wall, which parodies Minimalism most revered American painters of James Brown, John Walker, Peter East Village” and educating oneself You are confronted with this via art magazines — even if “much immediately upon entering “Circa from earlier decades and stresses art’s the decade. Interestingly, there are no Schuyff, David Row and Dieter commercial allegiances with an LED paintings by Mr. Basquiat, who died Hacker. of the art criticism was aloof and 1986,” where a Jeff Koons sculpture pedantic.” We are informed about the stands just inside the door. Mr. light meter that registers its changing of a drug overdose in 1988, in “Circa Critics like to pit the “bad” market valuation. 1986,” but Mr. Prol’s large canvas, “I postmodernism of ’80s expressionist differences between “buyers” and Koons’s market machinations were as “collectors” and the responsibilities much a part of his work in the ’80s as Minimalism is also a foil in several Have This Cat,” from 1985, is an apt painting, represented by artists like other works here: Nancy Dwyer’s surrogate, complete with a primitive Mr. Schnabel or Mr. Kiefer, with of taking care of artworks once you the objects themselves, and his steel own them. There are a few eye-rolling and glass tank with two basketballs “Fate Built,” from 1986, a sculpture figure set against a bleak cityscape the “good” postmodernism of artists made of Formica on wood; Moira marked with graffitilike scrawls. who used photography and video as moments, when the word “genius,” floating in distilled water from 1985 which was theoretically banished by is a seminal text in his post-Pop Dryer’s casein-on-wood assemblage, Another hero of the period, David well as painting, often referring to which tilts out from the wall; Richard Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in critical theories by Jean Baudrillard, postmodern critical theory, pops up, sculpture-as-commodity aesthetic. and when Mr. Koons is mentioned in Nearby is a work by Ashley Bick- Artschwager’s Formica and wood 1992, is represented by a painting Michel Foucault or Roland Barthes. “mirror”; and Allan McCollum’s that also traffics in Pop-primitivism. Works by artists in this later group- the same sentence as Moses, Buddha, erton, who channeled the ’80s obses- Michelangelo and Einstein. sion with consumption and branding line-up of urnlike forms. Commodi- “Excavating the Temples of the New ing are included in “Circa 1986.” ties are showcased in Joel Otterson’s Gods,” from 1986, includes Native There are bright Cibachromes by But for all its biases and omissions, into sculptures like “Still Life (The “Circa 1986” uses its material well. Artist’s Studio After Braque) No. “Compact Disc Stereo Love Seats American and Meso-American art Sarah Charlesworth that juxtapose (Hot Wheels),” from 1988, a unit motifs, but also collaged dollar bills, sacred and profane imagery; a classic It is a baldly idiosyncratic show in cobbled together with cheap furniture a global map and nature illustrations. “Untitled (Cowboy)” “re-photograph” which the risks, rewards and reminis- “Circa 1986” is at the Hudson Valley cences of the collector are showcased Center for Contemporary Art, 1701 plugged into a compact disc player There are competent, if not stellar, from 1989 by Richard Prince; and a that blasts music. paintings by other luminaries like — sometimes even outshining the Main Street, Peekskill, through July Jenny Holzer sign with words spelled Painting was a central collecting- Julian Schnabel, Elizabeth Murray, out in red LED lights, as well as work on view. 22. Information: (914) 788-0100 or quarry in the ’80s, and there is plenty Ross Bleckner and Anselm Kiefer and photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, hvcca.org. .