GAUGING YOUR SUCCESS AS AN ARTIST

Many artists are their own worst enemies and gauge success by how much work they sell. However, the sales of an artist’s work has little to do with success. Many great artists made their work for decades without any sales. Some of these artists are very prominent figures in the art world today like Mike Kelley, Ed Ruscha, , Bruce Nauman and many others who may not have broken out yet. The most Avant-Garde work is usually rejected. Because it is so unorthodox, it has difficulty being understood by dealers, collectors and patrons alike. Nonetheless, that should not keep one from continuing to work and experiment.

It is also unfortunate that many progressive innovators never get discovered because they don’t live and work in or New York. Yet, those are the places in America artists must make a stand for themselves in order to further their careers. Ellsworth Kelly was a mailman who made his based on abstract shapes created from cast shadows he would see while delivering mail. Would you call him unsuccessful? I think not.

Artists often continue to beat themselves up and grow bitter and filled with envy as they watch the art world champion other artists over the course of their careers. If they are lucky, many of these artists end up teaching in educational institutions, the rest toil miserably in nine to five jobs making little more than minimum wage. One can understand how they would become cantankerous and disgruntled with this system in place. I empathize with them. But I send a word of caution to my fellow artists in this predicament. Don’t pay attention to others’ successes and don’t give up. The former fuels the fire of disdain and the latter destroys you forever. Even if you don’t produce much work, so long as you are conceiving new works and documenting them in sketchbooks you are making progress.

One should also remember how many artists experienced enormous success in the eighties only to be dropped by the art world in favor of the goopy gloppy sloppy art of the early nineties. Think of artists like Jack Goldstein, David Salle and Andres Serrano, to name a few. Their change of fortune in the marketplace didn’t make them failures. Many artists from the eighties have resumes that include some of the most prestigious galleries, museums and private collections in the world. Yet many of them might feel like they have fallen from grace.

Goldstein, for one, gave up and committed suicide even after being featured on the cover of Artforum. This is the worst thing that we artists could do to ourselves. I was a student of Jack’s near the end of his life and care for and miss him immensely. We must be kind to ourselves and be grateful for what we have and had and realize that if we keep at it we will have it again, and if we don’t, so what? The important thing is to be true to your vision, to be true to yourself, and most of all be true to the work. If you are only motivated by money, fame and recognition then you probably shouldn’t be an artist. It is only when we take personal inventory of ourselves do we see the truth and from that we can grow. So I implore all the artists who feel overlooked or envy the other guy or gal and say, Focus on your work and everything else will fall into place.

As John Baldessari said in Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia (67-68), “Art is often all about who sold what, and how much was sold. New York is the toughest town in the world; everybody is there to make it. You can compete with your students about the work you produce, but to compete about money is a losing proposition. You can’t use money as an index of quality; that is a fallacy. That will drive you crazy.”

THE GREAT WHITE SOAP

The white cube is one way to refer to a Gallery or Museum space. Four white walls, a ceiling and a floor are all that are required to create one of these places. It’s within these spaces that everything we know for certain becomes uncertain. It is between these walls where the constructs of our society are taken apart and reformed. What is an Art Gallery really? It is a space where all ideology, social structures, cultural norms and values are abandoned for the sake of an artists and their viewers. It is the artist who reconstructs all notions of reality on his or her own terms inside four perpendicular walls. Sure, some spaces are rectangular, triangular, narrow, tall, cramped or huge but their purpose remains the same. That purpose is to challenge our notions of what art is and to express the human condition in new and exciting ways. Truly avant-garde artists know this and utilize it to their advantage. Avid collectors and the wealthy thrive on this sanctuary where the predictable becomes unpredictable, where the familiar becomes unfamiliar, and where experience can transcend the grueling monotony of everyday living.

These sorts of spaces came into their prime during the last century as a response to the cluttered spaces of the French salons of the nineteenth century and to accommodate the scale of the Abstract Expressionist movement. The salon style of hanging is now known as a convention of hanging artworks in such a manner that all the negative space of a wall is utilized. You don’t see it very often anymore, but it is still used — particularly by collectors who have little wall space left and many works they wish to display. How one chooses to display an artwork after it has been purchased is solely at the discretion of the buyer, despite the fact that some artists will insist that their works only be shown in a particular manner publicly. The white cube as I am describing it is not to be confused with those artworks sometimes classified as Post- Minimalist. Nor with Michael Fried’s treatise Art and Objecthood published in Artforum in 1967. Fried’s contention that was at odds with Modernism’s emphasis on non-illusion and “flatness” and had more to do with spectacle or “theatricality” was severely flawed. Otherwise Fried, too, would have had to separate the writings of Clement Greenberg on Modernism from the huge canvases of Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock, which were theatrical by virtue of their scale. Every art historian knows (whether he or she admits it or not) that Art History ended with Minimalism.

Art History started with the cave paintings of Lascaux in France that crudely depicted how to hunt. It progressed to portray the illusion of reality in full color on a two-dimensional plane or monochromes in three-dimensional space. Art was romanticized, politicized, elongated until the invention of the Daguerreotype photo print process. It was this invention of chemical magic that unchained Art History to begin its journey backwards till there was nothing left but line, shape, color and form. All of which had no hidden meaning except to aggrandize the fundamental principle that less is more.

The “Less is More” aesthetic was already explored by early twentieth century artists like Malevich with his Black Square, 1915 and later by Ad Reinhart with his repetition and colorization of that same form. In the Sixties, artists like Robert Morris, Tony Smith and Donald Judd put the finishing touches on the idea of art history progressing. We had a clear conclusion to Art History, as we know it. More recently artists like Tom Friedman and Jeppe Hein have reinvented it: Friedman with his remote controlled cube Zombie, 1997 and Hein with his Flying Cube, 2004. Both of these works are brilliantly executed and unique in their own way, no matter how derivative the objects themselves.

Artists are always rewriting the rules of engagement for the viewer. That is why the Billionaires pay so much for something intangible, forever hoping that it is truly new. They already own ten or more of everything in almost every category. That is why they covet things like Chris Burden’s self-crucifixion on a Volkswagen Beetle or Mike Kelley’s stuffed animals, boom boxes and afghan rugs. They need something to shake them up and confront their perception of what the “real” really is. Like Jean Cocteau, they say to artists: “Astonish me!” The only problem is that for forty-two plus years we have forgotten what we started, mostly because those earlier generations of collectors have passed on and have been replaced by Art Fairs, the Nouveau Riche and Euro-Trash. It is my unabashed opinion that we and all our co-dependents need to be brought back to our senses. It is time to end this schizophrenic-free-for-all-trope- a-dopa, as I like to call it, and get back to the basics. Basics that consist of groups of artists bound together by camaraderie, aesthetics and/or ideologies during specific time frames and re-establish a linear progression of Art History as we used to know it. If not, we will continue to bathe in dirty water, be enslaved by taste, and innovation will be in ever short supply.

THICK VS. THIN

Throughout my lengthy career as an art student one thing has always fascinated me. When it comes to there is or should I say has been an enormous amount of prejudice by art critics at large, for paintings that lack a variety of thicknesses on their surface. Why is this? What is wrong with a flat surfaced painting? What that is, is as ominous as an old tubed radio, completely vacuous. I have found enjoyment in both varieties. But the level of disdain that painters have endured while working in the former methodology is quite confounding.

In the last decade or so several artists have made quite a bit of work in this tarte tatin fashion. When in actuality it is just Americanized pie alamode. The pie alamode can be thrown together in five minutes while the French tarte tatin takes twenty minutes of preparation and at least forty-five minutes to bake all the way through. These painters I am referring to make works that probably will never dry completely. They are very reminiscent of some artwork in the background of a photo shoot in Home and Garden magazine or worse, a featured Martha Stewart segment on the Home Shopping Network. Tomory Dodge and Allison Schulnik are two painters who sour the tongue. Dodge’s oversized over-priced gallons of paint are spread around like a textured wall in Diego Rivera’s villa in Mexico. Dodge and Schulnik's paintings are so formulamatic and visually uninteresting that it really makes one rethink the proposition of what a sacred work is supposed to look like. Why anyone would pay the prices that these paintings sell for is like a housewife buying a gourmet pastry at an expensive bakery. This simply leaves my palate with a flavorless bite.

If either of these artists had a true voice and we’re savvy enough to fill the void left in their paintings with a clue to some content with the use of a consistent or clever titling system, then maybe, maybe I could appreciate the connections made between the two. But neither of them does and changes their titles in one body of work to the next like a prostitute changes her outfits from one evening to another. My point here is there is nothing better about a painting because of how much paint is on the surface. What makes a great painting is not just its visceral qualities but also its message. If there is nothing to say then it makes the artist a mute, or a mime act.

JACK GOLDSTEIN X 10,000 AT ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART

Jack Goldstein x10,000 at Orange County Museum of Art summons Goldstein’s spirit from the grave. The very best Tales from the (Curatorial) Crypt do a fairly decent job of historicizing Goldstein’s art; while hearsay, gossip, and rumor continue to confound his life. Jack Goldstein was in the first graduating class of the John Baldessari-led Cal Arts. After receiving his MFA, Goldstein followed his mentor’s logic; he moved to with fellow Cal Arts alumni Troy Brauntuch, , , and David Salle. Goldstein was co-founder and major artist at Metro Pictures, a collective of the above- mentioned artists that teamed up with , , Cindy Sherman, and Richard Prince. Goldstein was the mascot. This small group defined one of the most prominent aesthetics of the period. He was also creator and destroyer, arrogant but generous. What Would Goldstein Do? Younger artists who emulate Goldstein perilously endeavor to re-define an unidentifiable answer to an ultimate question; so let’s imagine Goldstein’s off-the-grid desert trailer time-out in the nineties as part of his own tortured journey. His sabbatical was a sort-of fortification retreat, after making it huge and then loosing it all. Goldstein crashed hard, and he took it all to heart; like suddenly being dumped by a mind-blowing lover. He hit rock bottom, re-read Kant by candlelight… he tuned in, turned on, and dropped out.

Curator Phillip Kaiser’s exhibition conjures images of otherworldly natural events, out-of-body fantasies, and awe-inspiring spectacles. The artist’s physical presence is powerful in all the work, especially the immense paintings. It is disturbing to me that Goldstein was criticized so much for the absence of brush marks in his (air) brush paintings. At seven by nine feet, Untitled, 1981, is an image of a lone bomber on an inky black background silhouetted by bright bursts of light, spiraling white tracers, and billowing lacy smoke. It’s a foreboding image of a midnight air raid. Goldstein’s painting is elegant eminent danger; and it shall be death raining down from above, not glowing fireflies on a warm summer night. Goldstein’s big pictures radiate intense physical energy and possess a powerful psychic presence. This energy is evidence of the artist’s spirit, but it is situated at a distance, so it feels detached. It is unquestionable that Goldstein’s paintings are some of the very finest of his time. His large-scale works are the best image-object- iconographs of the New Image Art or so-called Pictures Generation. In New York’s east village industrial sized lofts, Goldstein revisited monumental Abstract-Expressionists scale, albeit with photorealistic cinematic images. His canvases were immense and the surfaces were exquisitely painted. Goldstein directed his assistants to produce hundreds, rumored to be as many as five hundred paintings!

Kaiser’s show essentially feels imbalanced, because there is too much space devoted to films and not enough to paintings. He gives generous volumes of white walls to twenty-one paintings; however, I would have liked to see fewer film projectors. Chrissie Iles included many of the same films at the Whitney Museum. As a consequence, many of Kaiser’s film selections felt redundant. I also noticed that The Jump, 1977, is presented as crisp digital video instead of grainy film. Why? Where’s the original 16mm film? Another nit-picky curatorial point of order: Goldstein’s short films were originally presented as a reel of shorts, shown one at a time, as quick bursts of light in dimly lit spaces. Is that not possible in a formal museum situation today? They were never meant to be experienced simultaneously as a pair of radio staions crossing one another’s signals... did Goldstein intend the Metro Goldwyn Mayer lion’s roar to be heard with Shane barking? I don’t think so. Plus, in ten years in New York City, Goldstein produced four times the number of paintings than he produced works in other mediums over his 30-year career. Yet, this curator decidedly devoted half of the galleries to everything but paintings. Of the paintings on view at OCMA, all are at least seven foot high; others are as large as twelve and one-half feet wide. Stunning. But I wondered where are all of Goldstein’s best paintings stowed away? Germany? Maybe someone needs to organize an exhibition of just paintings. YES PLEASE.

About a decade ago, Graduate Chair Richard Hertz, Curator Julie Joyce, and 1301PE’s Brian Butler facilitated Goldstein’s resurgence back into the Los Angeles scene. Joyce and Butler organized amini- retrospective at the Luckman Art Gallery; meanwhile, Hertz wrote Jack Goldstein and the Cal Arts Mafia, and Goldstein was on the cover of Artforum. Goldstein momentarily bathed in a new limelight; then suddenly plunged into darkness. Goldstein foreshowed this tragic event in his work, The Jump. A brilliant flash of light and then gone. His death was untimely; and Goldstein contemplated his life and his career on his family Tree of Woe. In his last public lecture at Luckman Gallery, Goldstein offhandedly offered a particularly salty illustration of his disenchantment with the crash and burn logic of the eighties art and commerce: -One minute you’re on Adnan Khashoggi's yacht, doing coke... the next minute nobody knows who you are. Khashoggi’s yacht, the Nabila, was the largest in the world at the time and was used in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again. No doubt Goldstein was on the Nabila. Nevertheless, his quip is quite telling. Decades later, he was still bitter. Even though Goldstein was back on top, sadly, he was still adrift. Especially with regard to not knowing exactly how and where he would navigate amidst the art market’s rough seas of his late-career comeback. Instead of including so much tittle-tattle about bitterness, loss and tragedy in regard Goldstein’s out-on-a-limb career, I would have preferred to put finger to keyboard reviewing a long overdue comprehensive retrospective exhibition. One that included an accompanying catalogue raisonné containing volumes on Goldstein’s legacy; tomes on how Jack was an immaculate, poetic, iconographic, and a deeply influential Los Angeles artist.

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Throughout the years I have come across some varied ideas of what it takes to be an artist, most of which focused on the individual voice of the artist. Some might think that the voice is secondary to materials and process while others believe it is primary. It is common knowledge that most critics and art dealers don’t pay too much attention to an artist’s statement when art schools and graduate programs take the contrary position. One chairperson at a well known art school in Los Angeles believes it is not the responsibility of the artist to fully understand their work; while another chairperson thinks that an artist must know precisely what a work will mean and convey to the viewer before even purchasing a canvas or paint brush.

But the question to my readers is: Is it imperative an artist knows what their future piece will mean to a viewer before going into production, or is it acceptable to figure it out as you go along, or maybe months or years after you completed the work? For me I have mixed feelings on the subject. On one hand, I can identify with the former perspective; but, from my own experience, I find myself working in the latter manner on many occasions. This rings true for many of my colleagues as well. I mean, if an artist knew exactly what the work was going to say from the get go; then what would keep them involved throughout the process of creation? Does the creative act begin in the mind and the artwork becomes only a mindless process of rote production? Where is the spontaneity in that approach? Where is the opening for a happy accident? How do you put any emotion into a work so predetermined? These sorts of questions are ultimately the sorts of things that come through a work that is coldly, and calculatedly produced.

For this demure art aficionado, either way of working is a valid method to produce work. But how many times have you gone to a museum or gallery exhibit and just felt totally empty, or wanted to puke? Then, afterward you read some cryptic diatribe that underpins all the disjunctions and cacophony that rattles off so many rhymes and reasons that completely transform your interpretation of the work. Some call this the apology; others call it sandbagging the viewer. After all, isn’t it ironic that art schools are so focused on five-hour critiques while the art world is all about five hundred word reviews or three thousand word smoke-filled prologues to some museum catalogue. In the end, it really doesn’t matter. Some things will never change. The challenge to you my devoted reader is this: If things were different, then the status quo gets challenged, and something new arises from the dust of fluff pieces. It really is up to us. So if you want things to be different, then stand up for your beliefs; and when the echo of all artists’ voices are heard, appreciated and respected, only then will the stonewall fall.

SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS @ LACMA: ANCIENT MEXICO VS. TEN-MILLION DOLLAR ROCK

On a recent trip to LACMA on the last Free Thursday, I found myself immersed in the exquisitely jeweled tools and monumental sandstone works of Children of the Plumed Serpent: The Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in Ancient Mexico. Amazing stuff. “Have you seen the rock?” a fellow museum patron inquired, as we studied Codex: Selden, pigmented paint on twenty panels of deerskin. An illuminated text describing the ancestry and cultural history of the Selden settlement, it is a work that has never-before-been-seen-in-the- states. So valuable a work that two private security guys were hired to personally escort it on the flight from London to LA. I turned to my new friend and muttered, “No, man… not yet… I’ll catch it on the outs.” Casually wandering back through the truly remarkable pieces in Children of the Plumed Serpent, I imagined Levitated Mass looming just outside. Whoa, I got excited. Massive. Heavy. Scary. Neat idea. Let’s see it.

Like some rouge glacial erratic deposited on the museum grounds behind the Resnick Pavilion, Levitated Mass is an immense irregularly shaped, but not particularly interesting ten-ton boulder that is purposefully poised on the edges of retaining walls supported by a slow inclined double-ramp corridor of concrete. Engineering and construction of the rock’s football field long concrete ramp ensured that it was an easily accessible formally resolved museum-display piece. The rock sports fangs of steel that bite the upper edges of the retaining wall, anchoring the great stone to its long cement ramp. It’s massive pair of welded one- inch-thick plate steel hardware screams, “THIS FRACKIN’ ROCK’S NOT GOING ANYWHERE!!!” Levitated Mass is basically a scaled-down spatial negative of Heizer’s seminal Double Negative; and Indiana Jones definitely wouldn’t run from that rock. It’s a pebble on a wedge of concrete. It’s hardware keeps it grounded, and it does not have an effect of levitating at all, especially with all the bulky steel hardware. What should have been an incredible experience of a most impressive work by a rightfully masterful artist, ended up just feeling like a bad family trip to the Magic Kingdom. Kind of like waiting in nail-biting anticipation, and then being disappointed after riding Magic Mountain for the first time ever.

Don’t get me wrong it is a leviathan of a rock, and a helluva statement. In-situ, however, it is an experience of a very formal display of a huge chunk of rock. This humble writer’s experience of Levitated Mass was reduced to a very orchestrated and mediated quasi-spiritual car-camping experience, like driving through an ancient coastal Redwood in Humboldt County. Essentially it feels more like excessive big-art political posturing by one of the largest cultural institutions in Los Angeles. Relaxing next to the gurgling La Brea Tar Pits, I considered Levitated Mass off in the distance roughly framed by nasty SoCal architecture. I thought, “Man, I’d be more awe-inspired kayaking in the La Jolla Caves.” At least in the caves, there is the thrill of the great white that was recently spotted lurking in the waters near the shore. Levitated Mass is a minnow bite thinking it’s a great white. It’s busted. And I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid. Apparently the LACMA board did, because Levitated Mass broke the $$$ bank. Levitated Mass levitated LACMA into a fix, because several drastic cuts were made in the museums staff just days after LACMA’s smoked Heizer’s giant rock. Quick fix, please. What will be the withdrawal effects from Levitated Mass, you ask? My guess is for starters the former museum staff’s temporary suspension of disbelief. WTF? But, hey! Those talented former staffers will for sure get better opportunities at other institutions, and they’ll have a great big-busted rock story to tell.

THE DOCENT

During the last forty years we have become increasingly subservient to the role of a docent while viewing exhibits. Granted we could choose to abandon the group and wonder a museum space by ourselves, but that is not our nature. True art lovers get enthralled with the discourse a docent can muster on their countless number of trips through a space. This is of little consequence to us an avid viewer. Yet, I must admit that I enjoy a knowledgeable docent during my museum excursions. Many times they can shed some light on some blurred issues with an artist or an individual piece of art. Really it is more exciting to wonder a museum with a knowledgeable host who has a knack for public display and be charming beyond ones notion of the word.

However in today’s modern world that illusion is just as it seems. An illusion. Why, you might ask? The reason is that good docents are under-appreciated by their gatekeepers at the museum. So much so that the majority of museums today refuse to pay them or opt to sell you a recorded interpretation by some elite debutant.

Ironically the recorded representation of an exhibit can be very informative, it is however very impersonal. Last time I was at LACMA I could not interact with many enthralled viewers while moving about the space as they we’re hypnotized by their expensive headphones illustrious telling of the works chronology. What I witnessed is a large majority of the population choosing this new form of curatorial education. I think this is cool but what is unsettling is my inability to meet my fellow viewers as they are immersed in a pedagogical diatribe full of speculation and usually inadequate to ensure the proper impression of the work. Or the opposite, a docent recording that over stimulates the mind while the work rests in an un- comprehensible state. Never the less this is what has become the norm. Honestly it is more consistent and personalized. So, I guess my beef with it is the lack of connectivity with people you share a common interest with. With everything today becoming more and more automated, out-sourced, or simply deleted, it is of no surprise that its influence has penetrated the Museum walls.

Museum walls are a magnificent place. A place where anything is possible; a place where ideologies can be put aside; a place of true experimentation in the realm of human experience. The museums walls are the cathedrals of our society where a lifetime of achievement can be displayed, organized and exhibited. A chapel that reflects different themes and most importantly, allows an artist to unwrap their own mind and create new rules in which to experience. The museums role is crucial to our society and we must respect it as being sacred and yes, at times, profane, or most of the time distant and out of reach. Regardless of how complicated it may get inside a museum’s walls you can rest assured that there is an artist out there who has spilled their guts for glory and fame. However they are not the ones chosen to be delivered in that amazing fruit basket enclosed by perpendicular walls.

The Museum space is sacred and sometimes I think they have a responsibility to champion work that is truly Avant-Garde and ahead of a pact of galleries.

THE PLIGHT OF THE ARTIST: HOPELESSLY OPTIMISTIC

Many of my writings here have turned a magnifying glass on how commerce and the business of art have compromised the artist. The reason for this is I have a deep sense of empathy for the struggle an artist endures to realize their vision. The frequent stints of extreme poverty; the sacrifices made in the name of their work. As artists most of us have endured extreme hardships and occasionally become troublesome to our benefactors. Some artists spend a lifetime building a body of work that ends up becoming a burden on their descendents or get thrown out after an estate sale. The children relishing in the destruction of the work as they feel they we’re neglected in exchange for a mother or father whose passion was so strong, compulsion so hypnotizing that nothing else seemed important to them.

To be a great artist means turning your back on the people you love without even knowing you did it. It is like a disease that overtakes you like Tuberculosis or Polio. Many incredible artists make mountains of fantastic work but never muster up the courage to go to Los Angeles or New York; very sad indeed. Many great artists are flamboyant, belligerent and socially awkward. However to be successful in the art world today one needs to be charming and have a strong inclination for how to work a room and be very savvy in understanding the power relationships around them. Difficult to do when many of them are so pretentious and nefarious it makes one ill. Yet that is how it is done. Unfortunate for all those artists who have those skills and the work to back it up but they live in Timbuktu and have shows at their church or local YMCA. Every year an army of artists graduate from thousands of Art Schools, Colleges and Universities worldwide with very little chance of being discovered. Honestly they probably have a better chance of getting hit by lightning. It really is a lottery. So many variables have to exist in order for someone to be noticed. Most of which depend on the state of the economy, where you went to school, and who put in a good word on your behalf.

You might say ‘I am OK with that’ as it is more important to be true to the work. I would reply absolutely, do what you think is right by yourself, and the work. I would also add a note of caution though, and say don’t hate those who accomplish things you thought you didn’t want. Just remind yourself, I did not want to be a part of that anyway, what do I care. In the end it doesn’t really matter. All that really matters is making the work. For it is making the work that gives an artist true satisfaction, true happiness and allows us to transcend our dismal realities. There is no better feeling then getting the intangible out of our minds and into the physical world. The finished work devours our view with the product of our labors, that engulf our senses and produce spasms of joy, sometimes-even fulfillment.

TSE, TSE ON TOP

Shirley Tse’s recent show Vital Organs and Other Stories at Shoshanna Wayne Gallery is a delightfully refreshing orgy of eclectic materials that sparkle in the viewer’s eyes like a cleanly cut diamond. Adding a series of new materials to compliment her already prolific exploration of plastics, Tse courageously explores the readymade. Intertwined together each delicious piece gives a clue to personal objects that are so unique and carefully arranged about the space that you get goose bumps. Her complex narrative negotiates the viewer’s sense of righteousness and that of the urban or (sub) urban indentured servant role as a woman. The artist spreads her vital organs all about the room, with an aesthetic so original it sits prominently with fellow

Los Angeles based artists and innovators Tim Hawkinson and Sandeep Mukherjee. Strung up to the ceiling Vital Organ looks like a mangled feminine mannequin, chopped up, strapped back together, and precariously balanced by the ribbons of bondage, as they statically jerk and pull the victims torso about the viewers gaze. Off to its left, is an awkwardly balanced colorful piece comprised of synthetic interpretations of a mountain high stack of dishes with meatballs and orange spaghetti. Right behind these is Geo, two pieces mounted to a base shaped like dragonflies or a two handed modest helicopter to lift one away from the mundane and into the sky of desire and fulfillment. Perhaps out of an attempt to escape the house of sticks or cards if you will. Flimsily put together Amber room, consists of a simple rectangular armature with translucent plastic shards attached to its core. It is emblematic of feebleness and tries to overcome this with a passive title insinuating a grander, less transparent space. Instead of containing the body politic, one imagines our heroine stretching upon the ballerina bar that has been cornered and sequestered from the other Vital Organs and Quantum Shirley Series. Across the wall are synthetic flowers titled Soft Dark Upheaval, which leads the viewer to reexamine this cross section of unreal representations of the minds tendency to get consumed with the ordinary and become illuminated through thought. Bleeding Heart, comprised of resin and copper chain, is a carefully calculated piece that describes a fractured network of synapses. Vital Organ distorts the memory (foam) and manifests itself in terms of the familiar out of context of its domestic origins.

One is subtly reminded that Tse’s work is itself a representation of the inner mind of the artist; the vast majority of it on view at the frontal lobe. The West gallery Vital Organs and Other Stories and Quantum Shirley Series represents the conscious, while WUD (World Upside Down) in the East Gallery presents itself as a web infested place of tumultuous memories, hidden caverns, or should I say the unconscious reptilian brain centers. The collaboration video by sculptor and video artist Dana Duff creates the ambient emotions that are so inherently visible in the objects of Tse’s in the main space. An entire room is dedicated to the fact that there are plenty of fish to be caught in the stream of emotion no matter how turbulent the ride underwater maybe. Regardless, if this was intentional or not, for me Duff’s video is right on target; and Tse has made a significant shift in her approach to materials and magnificently constructs the workings of the conscious mind and how that interfaces with your unconscious, physical health, and of course your Vital Organs.

IS WHAT AN ART OBJECT IS WORTH MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE?

Some time ago I mentored under a very opinionated critic who had several maxims when it came to being a successful artist in today’s dynamic arena. He had many maxims; second of which was to never sell art from your studio when you have a gallery already. The first maxim he told us was the Art World does not consider any artist better than another. Yet it is the first maxim I am a bit suspect of. This came from a man who was the executive editor of one of the largest art magazines worldwide. For me what was so difficult to comprehend was the notion that one artist’s efforts are no better than another. Are all lawyers the same? I think not, but you better believe that the majority of them will bill you $300 an hour. Is that the case with us the artists? I doubt it.

Three types of people buy high art: One who decorates a new home or redecorates an existing home. Two, who uses art as an investment with the pure intent of selling it after purchase within 5-10 years for a 1000% or more profit. Three, because you are a rich eccentric/crazy, bored and addicted to collecting anything from stamps to nineteenth century prosthetics. The gist of the matter is no one knows what is valuable or not. If an important collector buys your work then others will follow suit, regardless if the work merits any attention at all or moves the buyer in any manner whatsoever. Neither eye, heart nor mind. Another element that clouds the air is the game of manufacturing value upon objects that hold no fortuitous value for the viewer’s retina; a Duchampian staple of today’s art school graduate elite. The truth of the matter is that when an avid collector of Matisse paid significantly more for a particular Picasso work made Picasso the most famous artist of the time at that moment in art history. Up until then Matisse was the most expensive painter living in the world. This is in part due to the ignorance of many Art Historians from the Rosenblum School of curatorship. I was in a seminar last year at the College Art Association where they showed that the majority of all-major Art institutions are run by NYU graduates. Rosenblum had a delusion about Modernism starting in the 18th Century and rather than view art in time specific movement he encouraged today’s schizophrenic free for all.

Rosenblum got it wrong and all the fools went along. It is rather unfortunate that this is how things are but, who am I kidding. It has always been this way, at least since World War II. The bottom line is no artist is equal on any level. Most are atrocious, some are OK, and some are outright amazing. But as a whole, none of us are equal. Period.

WEST MEETS EAST: THE ROARING 80’S

During the Reagan years our economy was on steroids. We were getting our first injection from the personal computer business and video game markets as well as the rich got extra rich with the slashing of the capital gains tax, which ultimately led to the bankruptcy of America by displacing the burden of funding the government from business and the wealthy investor to Joe six-pack. Not everyone remembers the hay day in the eighties Art World. What a lot of folks don’t remember is the abandonment of a renaissance period and replacement with the antithesis of the period in the 90’s. The eighties was a balls out Billboard sized extravaganza of art created out of the collision of the Cal Arts Mafia and the Sherman/Longo crew; this coupled with art writers who were exploring the relationship of making connections between French theory and objects they witnessed in the salons. The word of the era was Iconoclastic. The reality was larger than life. Think of how many artists who we’re discovered and exhibited during this time. The list is long and deep. Some are firmly in place, Blue Chips if you will. Others fell out of grace and hide in obscure places.

Which leads me to a key point I would like you to think about; and that is: Is art history only made during a booming economy? Because I can list an army of artists from the eighties but not so many from the nineties. Same thing with the 40's and the 60’s come to think of it. But just for arguments sake lets say it is true. What then? Is one doomed at the outset just because when they turn 24 or 25 with their MFA in hand a body of work at their side because of a recession? At least Van Gogh made a large body of work before he passed on. During the late seventies and early 80’s there was an art school out by Magic Mountain that had some as well. Magic, that is. It had a solid sense of what it was and they turned the Art world upside down. They we’re able to do this by implementing a curriculum that emphasized the appropriation of various aesthetics while illustrating a hodge-podge of French critical theory. To get an idea of how deep the list goes here is a small sampling; Mike Kelley, Julian Schnabel, Jack Goldstein, Lari Pittman, and David Salle.

Now when Goldstein and crew met up with Longo and the gang; this underground movement had made it to the main stage in a really big way. That’s right I said it, underground. Longo was a cab driver and Goldstein was a museum security guard. Two likely characters in a Hollywood action movie to pull off a heist in the New York Art World. Yet these two did it with their work not through an unempathetic greed induced extravaganza. Well, unless you count Johnny Mnemonic. What I mean to say is that High Art really peaked in the eighties. That eighties movement was predicated on corporate sponsorship and the utilization of specialized skilled craftsmen orchestrated by the artist in order to create a finish fetish perfectly sound object.

THE WOLVES OF ART STREET

Recently, while sorting through an old box in my garage, I came across a list of ’94 studio allotment at a prestigious grad school; out of twenty-four students, thirteen of us currently are or have been represented by major galleries. The mid-90’s posse was an interesting group, and it included, but was not limited to many art stars. As it so happened, a couple of current bright art stars had just graduated right before I arrived. Who else? Who knows? The art grad-school to six-figure income success formula developed out of the wavering flux of unmentionable nouveau-rich collectors’ taste that was being completely consumed by a shop-till-you-drop and get-the-next-big-artist-first mantra. The LA Art institutions’ stamp of approval formula to art stardom is permanently in place now. It is even outsourced, and can easily be (l)earned at many graduate M.F.A. programs nationally; but you’d better have a trust fund.

Back in the 90’s, some prominent graduate programs accepted students who were basically hobby artists; they were richy-pants pseudo-intellectuals from elite educational institutions, who had earned bachelor’s degrees in a variety of different disciplines like anthropology, biology, English, political science, and the like. It is to this day like it was back in the day; some grad school faculty would bring in students with a historically exhausted aesthetic. They would make sure that each student knew as much as possible about any other artist in art history who had ever worked in a similar manner, with a similar strategy; and then they’d encourage them to synthesize ideas with one or two adjacent aesthetics. The faculty made sure that the students exhaustively read and catalogued every image of the work of the artists that their work looked similar to. Then they had the students re-evaluate the intentions behind the work within the historical context of their personal sub-cultural artsy aesthetics. The graduate advisors didn’t really care what your work looked like, how it related to prior historical sources, so long as you could state your artistic intentions in a completely different way from the original sources. Most important to the LA institutional art stamp-of-approval factory-formula for success-thing was the critical language attached to your work. For the written thesis, the students would chart a path backwards, showing all antecedents of their work; even though there might be visual similarities, the important thing was that their intentions were completely different.

This approach to teaching art making is just re-codifying tropes; it is not breakthrough innovation. Art History of the last century surely has many overlaps and simultaneous successes of different styles and meanings; but for all intents and purposes it was a series of merit-based artists who bonded together, had each other’s backs, and made democratically distinguishable movements. We are still stuck in a Neo- Dadaistic fin-for-yourself, feeding frenzy that is predicated on who you know, and what parties you attend. The saddest story here is that the system has no vehicle to save all those tens of thousands of grad degree artists, there’ just not enough quality work and only a few good galleries to boot.

Basically, the art school industry in Southern California is the fuel that fires the economic furnace of the galleries and auction houses in New York and abroad. LA’s dilemma is the success of a few generations of artists trained here and then became legendary elsewhere. LA is a victim of its own success. How did this happen? Most LA folks don’t really give it a second thought, and just go with the le-chic status-flow, happily picking up their 50% at our local LA Gallery. LA’s success happened by accident at first; basically the planets lined up… but now, that little success story has been abused and misused, and is now the underlying mechanism for all the monkey wrenches being thrown into the renewed potential for true success of LA art. No, it’s not for the gloriousness of Great art; but oh contraire, it’s in favor of most predictable profit and success. Cha-ching! LA is fueled by the taste of a few at the expense of the majority, who are coordinating with one another in cigar filled back rooms. This humble writer hopes that someday soon hardcore LA collectors will finally wake up and start to focus on innovation and not repackaged history. The world doesn’t need any more geometric over-sized color swatches. However, if there is still someone willing to pay 6 figures for one of those ones, then you’re going to continue to see this video on replay.