The Vera List New School Art Collection Writing Award

Be critical as well as imaginative! Begin, for instance, with a close AWARDS JURY 2012–2013 examination of the artwork and consider formal elements, the A rotating panel of judges selects four winning entries—two $400 Carin Kuoni, Director, Vera List Center for Art and Politics Call for Entries historical context of the work, and the artist’s biography—these first place awards and two $200 second place awards. Winners are 2012 - 2013 are details that might have influenced the creation of the work announced online in The New School News early in the spring Joshua Mack, Vera List Center Advisory Committee and inform its interpretation. What attracts you to the artwork The Vera List New School Art Collection Writing Awards are bestowed semester. Winning entries will be edited by a professional editor Rosemary O’Neill, Associate Professor of Art History, you chose? Perhaps the work reminds you of a familiar emotion annually to students at The New School for the best essays inspired and published in next year’s edition of this award newspaper School of Art and Design History and Theory, or event, or perhaps a small detail of the work can be expanded by works in the university’s art collection. The awards were established as well as online at veralistcenter.org. Parsons The New School for Design to reveal a new theme. When you construct your response, choose in 1996 by the late Vera List, a life trustee of The New School, and a medium and style that communicate your ideas about the art- Robert Polito, Director, Writing Program and MFA in Creative are directed by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. The compe- work’s themes, presentation, and, if you’d like, even the context VERA LIST CENTER FOR ART AND POLITICS Writing, The New School for General Studies tition is open to students across academic disciplines and in all New of The New School’s collection. School divisions, and encourages submissions in a variety of media. Founded in 1992 and named in honor of the late philanthropist, Silvia Rocciolo, Curator, The New School Art Collection the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School This year, in addition to prose and poetic responses, the judges Wendy S. Walters, Assistant Professor, Literary Studies, GUIDELINES FOR ENTRIES is dedicated to promoting the discourse on the role of the arts will consider submissions that revisit the notion of “the essay,” in society and on their relationship to the sociopolitical climate Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts and do so through non-text based media such as film, photography, Any student currently enrolled in a New School division is eligible. in which they are created. It seeks to achieve this goal by organizing And a student representative to be determined. visuals, music and sound, architecture or the Web. For the current Text entries should not exceed 2,500 words. public programs that respond to the pressing social and political award cycle, you are invited to identify an artwork in The New issues of our time as they are articulated by the academic community School Art Collection that relates to Thingness, the Vera List Center’s Time-based or audio submissions should be approximately three and by visual and performing artists. The center strives to further Contributions © 2012 the authors current focus theme, and submit to the competition a visual or to five minutes in length. the university’s educational mission by bringing together scholars Published August 2012 by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics text-based entry inspired by the work. “Thingness” is the term used For two-dimensional and three-dimensional submissions, and students, the people of New York, and national and international www.veralistcenter.org for the Vera List Center’s multi-faceted, two-year inquiry into the restrictions are flexible. Please e-mail [email protected] and audiences to explore new possibilities for civic engagement. For a list nature of our material world. In order to counter the pervasiveness Graphic Design: LeAnne Wagner inquire for details. of programs and further information please visit veralistcenter.org. of social media and the embrace of virtual realities and disembodied Illustration: Rachel Levit existences, the Vera List Center’s programs on Thingness call for All submissions must be submitted via the Vera List Center website Production Supervision: Amber Moyles a comprehensive and new understanding of the relationship www.veralistcenter.org/category/writingawards. THE NEW SCHOOL ART COLLECTION For additional information please visit: between objects and people that might provoke more responsible, veralistcenter.org/category/writingawards Please note that all submissions must list your name, mailing and The New School has long defined itself as a center for civic dialogue ethical, and ecologically sound politics. email addresses, phone number, university program in which you and aesthetic and intellectual experimentation. Sharing these Artworks that relate to Thingness might depict an actual object, are enrolled, and your New School student ID number. characteristics of its founding institution, the University Art employ methods or media that highlight the depth of our connec- Collection is an arena where issues and ideas relevant to the times The artwork that inspired the essay must be clearly identified by the tion to objects, or they might comment on the material conditions are explored and confronted in a creative and engaged fashion. artist’s name, the work’s title and date, and its location on campus. of our lives or environments. There are more than eighteen hundred To date, the collection numbers approximately eighteen hundred works in different media by emerging and established international works in The New School Art Collection—you may choose to Entries must be received by Monday, February 18, 2013. consider, for example, Claes Oldenburg’s Soft Scissors, exhibited contemporary artists. Installed in the public spaces and offices on the fifth floor of 560 Seventh Avenue. throughout The New School’s campus, many of the works evidence a social commitment to issues of our time.

out that, in an environment that supposedly has the history of color in the city’s many monuments, an African-American of Maryland, it’s possible that there’s another history that’s not freed man on the base of the city’s Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument. being talked about.”3 In challenging a singular or authoritative He’s a seated, half-clothed figure raising a hand and displaying interpretation of history, Wilson explores objects as containing broken shackles. Similar to Untitled (Pride & Prejudice), Wilson uses Fred Wilson and the a multitude of meanings, or memories. To make this leap from repositioning as a means of empowerment. He leans the passive, Color Metaphor “meanings” to “memories,” it’s important to note that possessing seated figure forward on a tilted platform so that he appears to Memory of Objects memories does not necessitate that the object be conscious or be standing up. In his hands, he holds a flag of collaged African Justin Allen capable of recalling said memories. Instead, we can understand flags in celebration of the African diaspora. Perhaps proving Eugene Lang College it as containing a storage of memories created in its production Wilson’s point as to the power and complexity of interpretation Inspired by David Hammons, African American Flag, 1989 Hillary Bliss and use that are activated in our remembering, latent in the object and memory, the project met with an uproar of controversy 2011–2012 Second Prize Creative Response New School for Public Engagement, MA in Media Studies with the possibility of being forgotten. and was cancelled in July 2011. Inspired by Fred Wilson, Untitled (Pride & Prejudice), 1993 2011­–2012 First Prize Critical Response The sculptures that make up Untitled (Pride & Prejudice) don’t In his work, Wilson demonstrates how we are active participants Yellow strikes Blue until Blue bruises green. Red come from a museum collection, but were instead, as the wall text both in imbuing objects with meaning and in interpreting and doesn’t dim or pale with misery or fear, and Black describes, lawn ornaments found in Atlanta, Georgia. The common extracting meaning from them. Understanding the complexities batters White until White bruises black. Instead 1 “I would like to think that objects have memories.” —Fred Wilson material of concrete allows for a cohesive sculpture despite their of their meaning, how and why they were built, used, and viewed, of the abrupt truth, America salutes the idea that What would it mean to consider the inanimate objects that disparate subjects. The bottom, a classical Greek or Roman male helps us better understand the forces behind them and the no hand holds the brush, that no whitewashed surround us, that we make and use in our daily lives or preserve figure, stands on a base decorated with stylized foliage. Nude complexities of humanity. For Wilson, the meaning of objects past pushes the action. Black invades white space and revere in museums, as things capable of memory? What are except for a cloth tied round his hips and shoulder, the man stands is malleable and ripe for interference. They each hold a memory faster than the flight from the inner city where blood the implications of the thought structure Wilson proposes? To better contrapposto with left hand clutching a bow and right reaching bank of meanings, and though hateful and offensive memories mixes shades by clack or bang and Black beats Black, understand what the artist Fred Wilson is calling the “memory” over his shoulder for an arrow. The fact that it was a lawn ornament should be actively corrected, they should not be forgotten. becomes blacker, in the creeping glare of headlights of objects, we can look at a specific work of his on display in is testament to the kitsch level of classical Greek or Roman The goal is not erasure but an embracing of the multitude. as white as crack. Instead of the abrupt truth, little the lobby of The New School’s 66 Fifth Avenue building. There, iconography. It’s a whitewashed and at times lazy reference to the It’s a process of re-contextualization that involves at its very white lies twist black history like noosed necks and in a lobby corner that’s easy to overlook despite its surrounding ideals of beauty, democracy, and high culture. One need only look core an act of remembrance. kinky hair to blackout X-istances. But freedom, abstract at the concentration of Greek-revival architecture in Washington and American as Blues, allows for revision of color. glass walls, is Untitled (Pride & Prejudice) 1993, a concrete sculpture 1 Sollins, Susan, Susan Dowling, Matthew Ritchie, Fred Wilson, Richard consisting of two previously separate statues. What at first glance D.C. to understand how thoroughly this iconography is entrenched Tuttle, and Roni Horn. Art 21: Art in the Twenty-First Century: Season Three, appears to be a boy sitting on the shoulders of man, is actually in our sense of American democracy. The little black boy, on the Structures. Alexandria, Va.: PBS Video, 2005. a seated black boy in overalls precariously balanced on the head other hand, is an exercise in American racism. The docile figure 2 Stein, Judith E. “Sins of Omission: Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum.” of a classical male figure. with his demure smile, tattered overalls, and coyly stacked feet Art in America. October 1993. is what Wilson calls in the wall text an “infantilization of the black 3 Buskirk, Martha, Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, and Fred Wilson. Made in 1993, the artwork comes a year after Wilson’s influential man, a denial of the rage black males felt over their humiliation “Interviews with Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, and Fred Wilson.” exhibition, “Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson” and abuse at the hands of the dominant white culture of the time.” October 70 (1994): 98-112. Print. at the Maryland Historical Society in conjunction with The It doesn’t matter how many people pass this sculpture ignorant Contemporary in Baltimore, Maryland. Using the Historical of this meaning. The memory of the meaning is still a part Society’s collection as his materials and the forms and traditions of the object and remembered powerfully by some. of museum display as an artistic medium, Wilson created a powerful critique of institutional and racial bias forever changing museology. At the core of Wilson’s practice is the power of placement, By displaying ignored artifacts of slavery and exposing charged and so the positioning of the boy on top of the man is essential. telling gaps in the museum’s collection, Wilson “raised the historical Again in the wall text, Wilson notes that it’s a rarity for the races consciousness of all visitors and revealed to people of color how to appear together in American monuments and memorials. they have fared in the world of museums.”2 When they do, the black figures are invariably below the whites. This composition reinforces the narrative of whites as virtuous In this exhibition, we can see how Wilson illustrates the complexity liberators in the story of emancipation. By placing the boy on top of meaning by pairing artifacts together in ways that catch the of the man, Wilson’s intention is more than a passive reflection conditioned museum visitor off guard. He uses this element of on racism and kitsch. It is an active attempt to create new meanings surprise, that we see again in Untitled (Pride & Prejudice), as a means and structures of thought and to rectify the problem of narrow, of exposing and challenging traditional interpretations. In “Mining singular meanings. Throughout the wall text, Wilson uses words the Museum,” Wilson labeled a traditional museum vitrine filled of action to describe his purpose. He writes that the “work is with silver goblets and decanters “Metalwork, 1723-1880” and about readdressing the balance of power and race relations” and placed a pair of slave shackles in the center, quietly amongst the that the positioning of the boy is both an act of defiance as well opulence. The busts of non-Marylanders Henry Clay, Napoleon as an attempt to “deprogram” his psyche. Bonaparte, and Andrew Jackson are presented beside empty pedestals of non-existent busts for Harriet Tubman, Frederick In 2007, Wilson was commissioned by the Cultural Trail to Douglass and Benjamin Banneker, all African American Marylanders create a monument in downtown Indianapolis. It was his greatest of historical importance. In describing his intention behind “Mining opportunity yet to intervene and re-contextualize the black figure the Museum,” Wilson has said, “I’m not trying to say that this is the in large-scale public monuments. His proposal, E Pluribus Unum history that you should be paying attention to. I’m just pointing (Out of Many, One), called for a recreation of the only person

His mom taps his arm and looks back with disappointment like There’s a truck horn and a sound like paper crumpling into the Jacob’s doing something horribly wrong. “Please stop,” she loudest microphone. Jacob sticks his head and chest far out the seethes. In the tone that shrinks Jacob’s bones, she says window to look back. The lady’s car is clasped between two of “Maybe your face will get stuck that way,” and asks, “Would trucks, pressed flat as play-doh between a table and hand. Teeth Giants you like that?” Jacob lurches to his seat, sits up straight, hugs his seatbelt around

“I’m using oomph,” he tells her. “I’m giving this all my energy, himself, and clicks it into its cradle. His dad continues driving. Rebecca Nison as much as I feel I can.” Jacob likes using Mr. Torano’s words. His mom looks out the window and gasps. She shrieks, “Richard, New School for Public Engagement, MFA in Creative Writing Hearing them come out of his mouth, in his voice, he feels like look. Richard, we should stop and try to help,” but his father Inspired by Ann McCoy, The Four Alchemical Doors, 1992 a grown up; all Mr. Torano’s words sound more real than his. turns back, looks, turns forward, and continues to drive. 2011–2012 First Prize Creative Response Jacob says he wants to see something else instead. “That can be practiced in more productive ways,” his mom tells “Someone will help, but there’s nothing we can do about it. “But this is what you’ve always wanted to see,” his mom him. So Jacob sits up straight and glares out the window with That guy will need an ambulance. We’ll just hold up traffic.” Jacob makes faces out the car window, pressed behind the jumps in, encouraging. a choking regret for all the potential waves he could be collecting. passenger seat where his mom sits, telling his father to slow down Jacob wants to say, ‘It’s not a guy, it’s a lady. She had a pretty face He tells himself it will be okay; in a few minutes she’ll forget His father pushes him over to the T.rex, and as he does, his his driving. His face fills the open window, and air surges around and pretty eyes and she watched me with them.’ He wants to and chatter to his dad, and then he’ll continue with his faces. footsteps echo like he’s important and to be obeyed, the way his cheeks with the gentlest violence. Today, the Healeys are ask, ‘Why will she need an ambulance? Will she be okay? She’s Watching the New Jersey Turnpike, he tries to distract himself. Principal Murphy’s shoes sound when he walks down an empty headed to the Museum of Natural History. Today, Jacob rattles not dead, right?’ But he is terrified anything he says will show Clouds puff from the factories; people in their cars talk or sing hallway. His father stares up at the massive bones. “I’m bored with excitement to think he’ll see dinosaur bones for his first them all that this was his fault. So he sits up stiff, says nothing, or stare ahead still as dolls; electric towers stand like large cages; of these,” Jacob says. “I don’t want to look at them. They’re just time. From the time he was a much smaller Jacob in his crib, and stares into the back of his mom’s seat, hoping she will turn fat wires thread pole to pole and tower to tower, sewing the big dead things.” He hopes his father will understand, that he his father taught him all about star clusters, the human body, around and tell him not to worry, that everything will be alright, road together. won’t have to argue or explain. extinct species, and how trees grow. From the time Jacob could that these things always appear much worse than they actually are. ask questions, he craved only hear about dinosaurs; how big, how After a few minutes of this, his mom’s already calm again and When seven cars have passed and she hasn’t said a thing, a feeling Marveling at the bones, his father laughs, “You must just ferocious, how many kinds, how they lived here, right where talking to his dad about how there are so many trucks on the road enormous and terrible tumbles through him. This is more fear be feeling shy with all your heroes around.” he could touch the ground, how it was possible none survived. today. Jacob jolts with excitement as he recreates his pig face and than he’s ever felt. He’s more afraid, he thinks, than that time Jacob wants to look away from the bones because they’re skeletons pushes his head through the open window, into the day. he broke his ankle on the trampoline. Much more, even, than This ride thrills him, too, because he’s already gathered two waves that used to have bodies and used to breathe and can’t anymore. when he trapped himself in the basement last winter for a whole from people in cars with his legendary pig face—the masterpiece After maybe six cars pass, there’s nothing. So he tries another And he can’t say why, or everyone will know what he’s done. hour and thought he’d never be found. Jacob remains silent all of all ugly faces. Stretching his nostrils up with his thumbs, he face, a great new one he’s been working on for awhile. He shows So he stares at the ground, and he thinks of the pretty lady. the way to the museum, looking straight ahead, yearning for his scrunches his eyelids so they look wrinkled like unmade blankets, his teeth and pushes his cheeks forward with his hands so his He remembers how she looked at him like she was figuring mother to tell him the lady will be alright, hearing her instead his mouth hanging open sloppily. He wants to collect five more mouth looks like a little box. His eyeballs rotate in quick circles. him out, like she knew him. She was alive and she smiled. talk to his dad about how crowded the museum will be today, waves by the time they reach the museum—because he’s seven Two cars pass after he starts this, and he’s already collected the dad’s clients, where they’ll eat dinner tonight. The image of her car invades—the whole thing a shriveled years old, seven’s his favorite number, and a wave is the supreme another wave. This one comes from a man with long hair catastrophe; all a mass of metal entrails; its body inside out like gesture of acknowledgement. and a big mustache. And he gathers two more, just like that. In the museum, Jacob tries to forget what happened earlier today chewed-through metal meat; the trucks the teeth of giants, For Jacob, each wave feels like winning. when he and his dad laugh at the still, stuffed animals behind For a long time, while he guesses fifty cars must have passed by, her car a sliver of food stuck between them. glass. He imagines he’s wandering the wild, that he’ll hunt he’s not getting any waves. Maybe, he thinks, he’s not giving From two lanes away, a lady driving a car looks at him. She’s these animals for food and it’ll be easy as opening a refrigerator. When he looks up, Jacob is overcome by a craving to climb up the enough oomph—a word Mr. Torano, the music teacher, taught pretty and she smiles mildly but seems far away, the way people Though he can’t touch the giant gems because they’re separated T. rex bones, to grab onto the notches of its leg and pull himself them this week. He explained it meant giving as much energy do when they’re thinking hard about something they loved a long by glass, he watches them shine onto his fingers, claims to his up the way he sees his dad do on a ladder sometimes. How he as you felt you could. Sometimes, Mr. Torano said, imagining time ago. From behind the glass of her closed window, she looks mom he knows how much money each one is worth, and thinks wants to swing from the ribs! He could make it all the way across yourself in a situation that makes you very happy or very angry straight at Jacob, but she doesn’t wave. Higher, higher, Jacob pulls about how he would steal them if he were a pirate. When the dinosaur’s body in less than a minute, like he’s been practicing or very strong can help you sing better, help you give a song— his nostrils up then spreads them further apart. She stares. Jacob they reach the dinosaur bones, Jacob’s father begins explaining at recess on the monkey bars. Just to stand on its skull would be or anything at all—more oomph. tilts his head side to side, sticks his tongue out as far as it reaches. extinction. Jacob’s heard this same lesson many times since he triumphant—to rest there awhile and watch all the people below, She stares. He changes his face, pulls his cheeks back as far as Jacob wants to practice using oomph, hoping it will earn him was a smaller version of himself in the crib. “Some people think to slide down its spine and then smash the whole skeleton until they will go. No wave. Now she gazes as if she knows him, like more waves. He thinks of Mrs. Chipmunk, his first-grade teacher. a giant asteroid came out of the sky and, kablam!, hit the earth. the bones don’t look any different than branches and sticks. she’s opening him up and figuring him out. Jacob thinks she can’t Jacob’s mom would probably make him tell you her real name A huge collision. Some say that’s why all the dinosaurs here But if he can’t do that, he can’t just stand here. know him because he doesn’t know her, and he’s been making isn’t Mrs. Chipmunk—it’s Mrs. Chimmerak. What Jacob would died, why all that’s left of them now are the bones, like what these faces and no one could recognize him like this. Not Mr. He can’t just stand here because all the dead things in the room tell you is that between her two front teeth there’s a gap almost you see here.” Torano. Maybe not even his mom. tower so much larger than the living people in it. He can’t stand the size of a whole tooth and when she talks, she spits across the Jacob grows quiet. His dumb joy dims. He remembers the car here among dead things unless he can climb them like they are classroom, that the spit’s like a soccer ball shooting right through This pretty lady does not look away. She looks only at Jacob. accident earlier and wants to be far away from bones right now. his very own playground, unless he can stand on top of them like a goal, straight into the next field. He believes that the spit always So he continues performing, and her gaze thrills him. Being When he tries to stalk past them, his dad rests his hand on they are nothing but tree-houses, unless he can believe they never lands on him, that it’s on purpose.Thinking of Mrs. Chipmunk’s watched makes him feel like apple trees grow in his belly. She’s Jacob’s shoulder. moved or felt or breathed. spit on his cheek, Jacob remains resilient, staying true to the face staring. Jacob needs her to wave at him. He’s grabbing the tops and wagging his tongue with so much oomph and so much pride of his cheeks like they’re fruit he intends to pick off a branch— “All this time you’ve wanted to see this, and now that we’re here, But Jacob knows he cannot do these things. He can only hug his he feels like his face takes up the whole window and maybe the and she’s gone. you’re getting grumpy? Look,” he says, “there’s the T.rex,” and his face arm around his stomach, look into the dead dinosaur’s missing entire road. grows bright with elation for Jacob. His smile is wide as a canyon. face, and stand still as the bones.