Terry Atkinson “moves,” delineating, in his parlance, a method of “betting and trying.” In some ways, this exhibition begins in 1974, the year Terry Atkinson left Art & Language, the By 1975 Atkinson was making drawings and group he co-founded in 1966. paintings of soldiers and battlefields from the This individuation, the shift from “we” to “I,” is First World War. These works were based on the origin of the artist “Terry Atkinson,” known audio and video interviews Atkinson conducted also on occasion as Terry Actor, Terry Mirrors, with veterans of the 1916 Battle of the Somme Terry Dog, and Terry Enola Gay. Atkinson’s and materials archived in the Imperial War longstanding commitment to group practice Museum in London. They were not however and the dispersion of authorship was ultimately exercises in historical documentation. “What broken by a shift within A&L that he perceived I was trying to comment upon was the general as one from the “social space of a group to that point about the transmission and construction of a caucus.” For Atkinson, 1974 also marks of history and the specific point about the a period in which Conceptualism calcified, transmission and construction of the history- “marshal[ing] the resources of an official reporting artist. Included in the construction history… and foreclosing the provisions of of the latter was the reflexive function of the theory which it had done so much to plenish.” history of the formal resources and means of representation of, for example, history painting: Atkinson’s decampment is worth emphasizing and going reflexively further and further in, a as artists, especially those whose names are history painting of a modernist painting about synonymous with canonical positions in art, the problems of painting and linked, the finding don’t often bag their own authority and ardently of some sort of formal resources to harangue change course. Easier is the kind of artistic the rapidly ossifying historical transmission and maintenance and consistency we come to expect construction of Conceptualism.” of the successful. “Artists are marketed as a kind of culturally militant version of a sacred figure, Becoming “The War Artist” was not an the entrepreneur.” Atkinson writes, “They are attempt by Atkinson to make himself feel more ‘radical’ and ‘challenging’, an immutable centre comfortable as an artist; it was an attempt to of self-confirming truth, and their market, toe a comparison between a cultural front and logo, and brand, are promoted much in the a warring front. “Avant-garde”, after all, is a same way as any other consumer item.” By ’74, term whose strange and ironic history is largely Conceptualism to Atkinson was a cloak that the militaristic. William Gass writes, “From the teething artist could try on. He was eager to main body of an army in medieval times, two break with it, while “retaining the supply lines smaller units were detached: one protected the from critical theory.” rear during retreats, or from surprise attack, and sent stragglers back and deserters; the other The exhibition is comprised of multiple comprised a line of scouts who went ahead to material, formal, and textual elements. seek out, test, and estimate the enemy. By the Sometimes these elements appear autonomously, 16th century, when the term was first applied assuming the familiar form of a didactic, painting, to a literary movement, the avant-garde had drawing, or even minimal sculpture, and in become seditious, because its enemy turned out other instances these elements are combined to be the very army it was supposed to serve.” on one surface, or appended to each other as As a “history-reporting artist” Atkinson was paratexts. Atkinson is a prolific writer, and pre-occupied with the history of himself as his work is rarely, if ever, free of its own auto- an artistic subject, and how his subjecthood exegesis or unloving self-criticism. Atkinson’s had been ideologically arrived at. Atkinson project could be described, without a syllable speculates that when depicting history, the of disrespect, as a series of unresolved strategic question of how to represent is perhaps not as pressing as the question of how to “represent use of ideological and formal material which the representer.” The representers in Atkinson’s established Western Modernism considered to drawings often give their testimony in prominent be rubbish, and I suppose, equally resonantly, titles. At times, these titles grow into long texts, dangerous political rubbish.” even diagrams, with the desired effect to lower expressivity and put some pressure on the This is perhaps most apparent in the conventional and subservient relation between exhibition in Desert: an aide–memoire before picture and title. While you could see this as memory (2013–2014), a series of eighteen a vague postmodern address of “how pictures drawings which conflate a hot issue—our recent mean; through what technical and cognitive Gulf Wars—with a very cold and distant one, skills…” Atkinson’s titles/texts are much more Rommel, the WW2 German tank tactician, unwieldy, humorous, and defiantly open-ended. and his Afrika Korps. Here, Atkinson’s mind In a painting on paper from 1979, he uses the moves naturally into the malformations of the title to comment on the “history-reporting realities he was never a part of. Gruesomeness self” as an instrument of political and social and debasement are constants, but they never conditions: get his entire attention. The horrificness of war Narrative Dispute: the New Zealand Hat – three minutes is there, but it is unfelt. They are too ready after this moment the hat fell off the branch! (No, that isn’t true!) with affect and absurdity after the violence Well, O.K., three to four minutes then (No, that’s not has passed, too weird with their mixture of true either)… distance and amateurism for us to not see the A narrative anecdotal index of ‘being’ a British artist artist making them. When Atkinson draws he (1980). Auckland infantrymen watching ‘working class’ (1917) does not hope himself to be Goya, however ‘bourgeois’ (1958) infantrymen of the deluded the thought. Everything depends in Bedfordshire Regiment march by. these works on our taking the drawings formal Early summer evening, Somme area, Summer 1917 un-seriousness, seriously, or just seriously Conte and gouache on paper / 49 1/2 x 75 / 1979 enough. They are not parodies—the term is too final, but the drawings are handled playfully Another way to launch an account of these by an artist for whom so much is at stake— drawings and paintings would be by pointing Empire, War, the ideological constructions of to a basic, yet enigmatic aspect: that is, their history, and the class of the corpses. It seems formal orientation to us as viewers. One might truly part of Atkinson’s way of proceeding instinctively sense that in each, the way through that artistic labor and a representation of the the material is not straightforward. The viewer working, warring class come towards some must accept they are looking at cover versions such managed confrontation. As Atkinson sees of Socialist Realism. For Atkinson, Socialist it, the class of the historical war painting has Realism was a way to about face Conceptualism, changed. Awe at the triumph of a painted scene its exultant confidence, and roots in Western of military technology or victory is long gone, Modernism. “Social Realism was Western art’s but laughter at the painting’s class concerns, most conspicuous ideological opposite…I was or distaste for its heavy breathing, or boredom seeking, as far as I could tell, that this work with its solemnity, or confusion (even perhaps should mark itself out as a self-conscious resentment) at the macabre all remained intact attempt to break out from what I considered for the “progressive” audience. by 1974 as the narrowing preoccupations of Conceptualism… I was looking for a set of both The art-historian T.J. Clark, a friend and formal and, I use the word guardedly, expressive colleague of Atkinson’s at University in resources which Western Modernism claimed to the late 1970s writes, “Most British painting is be its opposite; claimed to see as ideological a genteel endeavor. Why? The answer derives, detritus…So in making the WW1 pictures I think, from painting’s unique vulnerability to it seemed to me that I was, perhaps, using a its patrons. Painting, from the 1860s on, was perfectly respectable avant-garde strategy; the the central modernist art—I follow Mallarmé Indexing, The Atkinson,E xcerpt from Terry. 1 Moves and The War World The Ruins of Conceptualism . Dublin, The I reland: I rish Museum of Modern Art, 1992.

Excerpt from Atkinson, Terry. “Materialism, Excerpt from Atkinson, Terry. Fragments by Jove!,” Block, No. 1, 1979. of a Career: Selected Retrospective Work 1966–1999. Silkeborg, Denmark: Silkeborg Kunstmuseum, 2000.

Excerpt from Atkinson, Terry. Mute. Copenhagen, Denmark: Galleri Prag, 1988.

Greasing. Paragraphs on grease.

1) Grease the axle. 1) It is asserted by the wise guys of art criticism 2) Grease the Henry Moore Medallion for proper art that representation (or is it figuration?) leads to behavior. conservatism of practice. This is true enough. 3) Grease seriousness. But what are we to make of the figurative state of 4) Grease the European Treasure House. abstraction? Hoorah for our serious art historians 5) Grease The Wall. of the social referents of autonomous surface, of 6) Grease The Diamond. conceptual audacity (swoon), of technical daring 7) Grease the Brit. (double-swoon). 8) Grease Rock n’ roll. 2) Grease is the perfect material for contemporary 9) Grease consciousness. art practice. And how is this, we ask ourselves? 10) Grease . Because grease is a perfect resume of the shift 11) Grease God (in John Milton’s vision heaven towards consumption as its own justification! was landscaped—perhaps by God himself! It is Really! rumoured God is still a he!) 3) Grease is the perfect material of socialist realism. 12) Grease language (in John Milton’s vision God Because of its working class associations. The spoke—from whom did God learn the language?) local car mechanic. (but how about Formula 1, 13) Grease the autonomous surface. Silverstone, etc.? Within the next decade we will 14) Grease the materials of art. see the Leningrad Glasnost Grand Prix!) Please 15) Grease the practice. don’t try to be ironic, rather try and make a noble stereotype out of the material of the car mechanic. 4) The attack on complacent dichotomies is Using grease. complacent. Fake the attack! Grease it! Then make a double-fake! A double-fake! What’s a double- 1) The material of the avant-garde greasers. fake? 2) Grease—the new material. 3) Grease as a repository of the potentially oppositional. Chortle! (Be serious now! Grease is Uses for grease. entering the portals of serious art histories of the social referent.) 1) Grease for the career. 4) Grease as a disaffirming material—will it ever dry? 2) Grease for the opportunity. I don’t know, but I can find out. From Castrol for 3) Grease for the going-on. example. Castrol the art object consultants. 4) Grease for Dion diMucci. 5) Grease is the perfect material for a successful art 5) Grease for the remembrance of the Great war—to career. keep the history slipping. 6) Grease, the perfect material for the civilization of 6) Grease for lessening the leaven of irony. senior common room culture. 7) Grease for the sake of grease sales organizations. 7) Grease is the perfect material for making copies. 8) Grease for democracy. 9) Grease for Tom Paulin’s Permafrost breakfast. 10) Grease for the Revolution (being serious, but don’t let them know you’re being serious—the real test will come soon enough—and in an October not in an art practice. Grease to distinguish work from wishful thinking.) Excerpt from Atkinson, Terry. Mute 3. Sorø, Excerpt from Atkinson, Terry. “A Note on the Denmark: Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum, 1992. Grease Works to Primitive Robots Series of these pieces. Although the projected image software program Works 1986 to 2000.” Unpublished, Artist’s was fixed and repetitive in the Dublin version, on other future Personal File, Leamington Spa, England, 2011. versions the program might be capable of changing hour by hour, or day by day, from site to site, etc. Such flexible programs I have yet to pursue. A computer software program continuously changing and developing its content—text, image, audio resource, whatever—is the aim of some of my current work. The analogy that I adopted when conceiving the Grease Works was the hardware/software distinction in computer sci- The first work to use projected image software with a ence. I wanted to make a series of works in which the works synchronized audio tape is Terry Mirrors. It was first installed would continue to produce themselves (or at least aspects at the exhibition Circumstantial Evidence, curated by David of themselves) after they had left my (the artist’s) relations of Green and Peter Seddon at the University of Brighton in production. An early group of Grease Works was the Warhol November 1966. The slide program was synchronized with an Chair works, where the hardware/paint/trough construction audio tape (a monologue by Terry Mirrors about Terry Mirrors is treated as the hardware upon which the software (grease) qua installation) that scrolled down a computer screen as text, is implemented and runs. Grease, being the relatively vola- the screen set into a tableaux upon which ran the projected tile material it is, continued to shift and move according to image program. The text was also printed out in the space of such factors as variation in temperature, and how vigorously the gallery. the work might be stored, hung, and shifted from one site to another. Accordingly, I conceived of the use of grease as the These software entrants (implemented by whatever deployment of a continual software program. technology) are an attempt to model an artistic agent (sub- ject). These works may be seen as representations of a rep- Since I conceived of the given model of the artistic resenter. They make representations of an artist, or perhaps subject (this model first learned in my case in art school in it should be called an ‘artist”? Hence one way of looking at the late 1950s) as running (implemented) in the body of the these works is as agents/subjects rather than as objects. If artist, then, accordingly, the works I made in the late eighties my current preoccupations with genetic algorithms, automata and early nineties I viewed as an attempt to increasingly focus theory, etc. are at all predictive of future work, then they may upon the works as modeling the artistic subject himself/her- entail more direct involvement in computer science/artifi- self. It is clearer now than it was then that the Grease Works cial intelligence/cognitive science than hitherto. One of the are a sustained attempt to make a work which is a kind of problems for me is that such engagement necessarily entails automaton, and to use grease as a kind of continuous moving further study of areas of mathematics that I am just starting to agent of alteration long past when the work leaves the artist’s approach. Such study is time consuming, and in my case at studio and is therefore an agent of continuing production. In least, exhausting. the later eighties and early nineties other series of works also preoccupied me and sometimes intertwined with the Grease Along with constant production of drawings since 1992, Works (e.g. Enola Gay Works, Mayor of Leipzig/Jacques I am making paintings that incorporate a computer monitor Louis David Works, Mute Series), and all four series had running a software program (usually a text) imbedded into particular works that crossed into one or another of the other the tableau. This feature has been a characteristic concern series. The boundaries between the various series are porous of certain works since 1996 and these works act as a kind of in this respect, with the software programs (grease) occasion- bridge, in the sense that it is securely tied into a technology ally becoming intra-series works. (painting), the ontology of which safely chaperones the work as “art.” As noted earlier, I count studies (notes, texts, draw- The later Grease Works (after early 1992) were lapped ings) as work equal to paintings, installations, etc. The idea into a second software program possibility. The grease was that the work, or at least some of it, hangs both in and out of the initial software program. The second program was the art has interested me for a long time. It seems to be a space introduction of projected image technology onto the hardware/ where some productive questions might be raised. software technology. The first works to propose using this second software technology (projected image technology) Be this as it may qua painting and drawing (perhaps in were five or six late Grease Works drawings (Two Software this context they should be termed ‘painting’ and ‘drawing’), Greaser Nos. 1 to 6, 1992–93). Many of the works to follow it seems that both slide-projection software and computer were designed to use the projected image and/or computer software offer some purchase upon the notion of an agent software text and image programs, and at this point, many of that reflects and comments upon itself, including, obviously, the works were left as drawings. The first work to be realized the history of any given genre or technology. These reflexive from the drawing stage using a projected image software and iterative functions seem to be solid reasons for furthering program was Work by a Split-Brain Artist at the IMMA-Glen my work for—it should be stated clearly here—the purpose of Dimplex Prize Nominees exhibition at the Irish Museum of developing the practice rather than as a career. Not the least Modern Art in Dublin in March 1994. This particular realization of the historical aspects that the work may comment upon, is was based on a plan-drawing and notes, a characteristic form the avant-garde model of the artistic subject (AGMOAS) in all of my working process in this body of work. I consider these its burgeoning reproducible repetitive versions. drawings/plans/notes just as significant work as I do instal- lations, paintings, etc. Given a suitable opportunity I would like to realize a number, perhaps even all, of the variations of Excerpt from: Atkinson, Terry. “Avant-Garde III,” Unpublished, Artist’s Personal File, by then fully-fledged public relations instru- became more concentrated and reliant on the springboard for the entire direction of the institutions themselves. An expansion not transmission in which they were engaged, Leamington Spa, England, 2011. ments shaped for managing The Relations of organized labour as the US was pulled into US economy which reached its most extreme only required of the old bureaucracies as not least the art schools. The cognitive traffic Production (hereafter ROP) of the art world. World War II after Pearl Harbor. By the time and ardent corporate form in the noughties new art institutions were built and older ones of the art schools is increasingly the cogni- of victory in 1945, the organized US labour until the sub-prime mortgage crash in 2008. extended, but also, from the entry of a new tive traffic of corporate exchange. Fine art There are a number of prominent conditions movement was a powerful industrial force By 1960 the widening income inequality pat- managerial class into the art milieu in the degrees now are shaped much more closely that constitute the current managerial hege- that maintained its strength throughout the tern was well established. The idea was to 1980s. These art consultants operated not to some degrees in art business studies—a APPRAISAL mony of the AGMOAS. The first is the class forties and into the fifties. During this time remove from the corporate concept of market only intra-art world but in an advisory role kind of art practice business degree. Degrees nature of mass communication itself. This corporate institutional ideology, which had any restraint that Rooseveltian and wartime with the status of ‘experts’ as the term con- are oriented more to avant-garde product- I recently read a claim that Conceptual Art has a long post-World War II history. This brought on the crash of 1929 and the resul- political and social institutions had placed sultancy suggests, between the art world and imitation and less to critical independence. of the sixties “was one of the decisive move- history warrants some further commentary tant Depression, lost much of the power and upon it. By the seventies this corporate mis- civic government and corporate formations, Most outcomes of collector friendly degree ments of the twentieth century.” By which I below, but to summarize it the following is impetus it enjoyed in the twenties until the sion was more or less fulfilled. From the fif- not least in the realm of what has come to be courses, which seem to be not unusual these take it is meant that conceptual art is a de- worth noting. The center of both the ROD end of World War II. But the corporate fight ties through to 2008, accumulation of wealth called ‘public art’. Art consultants, again as days, are exercises in public relations. The cisive movement in twentieth century art and ROP of the art world shifted in the fif- began immediately after the end of WWII occurred much more through dispossession the name implies (consultancy in this context art schools’ fear of ideology is itself ideology practice. In this same article a director of a ties from Paris to New York. It was a shift and gathered in strength and in deceptive fi- than through investment. Throughout the US is a catch all term), were consulted in matters since the claim to be non-ideological, to tran- famous museum of modern art, is quoted as from a French speaking culture to an English nancial manipulation throughout the late for- the wealthy enhanced their position by sim- of designing civic cultural projects and rec- scend ideology, is itself an ideological claim. saying that Conceptual Art “radically chal- speaking culture, and whilst French capital- ties and fifties. It was patently clear by 1946 ply appropriating a greater share of existing ommending, commissioning and placing art It echoes the ideology of corporate business lenged notions of the art object.” [1] For the ists were never imperialist slouches it is a fact that corporate interest in the US was out to wealth at the expense of the rest of society. works in public spaces. They operated as ad- which has always claimed ideology to be present staying with the idea that this claim is that in the twentieth century English became change the political climate of the legacy that The US led concept of the AGMOAS was not visers, gauging the feasibility of projects and grubby and presented all left wing political meant as some kind of compliment, it does, the most emphatic language of corporate Roosevelt’s administrations and the require- an inconsiderable cultural player in this ap- the use of both corporate and civic funds in opinion as such and claimed itself, corporate for me at least, turn out to be a back-handed capitalism. By the sixties, the managerial ments of organizing a wartime economy had propriation. As it turned out in 2008 even the such projects. Moreover by the eighties civic political opinion, to be above it. This latter one, since I think this claim seriously over- structure of was an English- placed upon US economic structures since investment part of the economy fell apart.[5] funds passed increasingly through and into claim is itself a febrile symptom of the ideo- estimates the long-term impact of sixties speaking managerial hegemony, and it was the corporate led disaster of the Crash of However it is important to relate that one the hands of corporate formations. In respect logical character of corporate self-interest. Conceptual Art in respect of what Conceptual already showing every sign of morphing into 1929. In 1956, for example: thing the forties corporate raiders were happy of the outcomes of the built urban environ- It is in this framework that the common art Art might have achieved. Sixties Conceptual the Corporate Tyranny. to maintain and extend from the inherited ment the art consultants are an integral part school claim that art transcends a grubby link Art may have challenged notions of the art “J. Warren Kinsman, chairman of National World War II organization of the US econo- of the corporate conduit. Whether naively or to social concerns is easily absorbed into the object, but, as things turned out, it did not By the early sixties the CIA had invested, Association of Manufacturers PR Advisory my and state apparatus was the national se- not, they are active agents of the Corporate ideology of corporate business transaction. challenge, radically or otherwise, notions of since the late forties, millions of dollars in the Committee and vice-president of DuPont, curity state. The CIA was created in 1947, Tyranny. It should be noted that some mem- The Corporate Tyranny is just as ideologi- the avant-garde model of the artistic subject. Western cultural front of the Cold War. It is reminded businessmen that ‘in the everlast- as was the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both bodies bers of this new managerial class wore two cal as any socialist collectivism, and more But I guess hyperbole is a frequently occur- worth reiterating that not only had the regu- ing battle for the minds of men’ the tools of were formed to consolidate and extend the hats, they were not infrequently both consul- unjust than many since it is symptomatic of ring characteristic in the rhetoric of individu- latory authorities of the AGMOAS settled PR were the only weapons ‘powerful enough reach of security services and military or- tants and artists/art teachers. Certainly since a society in which an unequal and income- als whose institutional jobs require them to and become established but these regulating to arouse public opinion sufficiently to check ganizations into the US state. Thus the state the sixties both artists and art teachers have widening gap is the norm. favorably represent the works the institutions authorities were now English-speaking; a the steady, insidious and current drift towards formed legacy from World War II was not habitually, and predictably as increasing re- acquire. It would be a perverse, or a very language change that would ensure the domi- socialism.’” Well before this in a January a more powerful labour representation and ceivers of corporate largesse, taken a consid- A fourth condition assails the AGMOAS courageous, individual who mounted a seri- nance of corporate culture as the dominant 1950 radio broadcast, six months before the greater income equality as it seemed might erable part in shaping the AGMOAS into its though it is different in character from the ous social critique of the works he or she center of both the ROP and ROD of art. opening of the Korean War, Guy Nunn of the be the case in 1945, but greater security and current servility in front of corporate power. three conditions set out above since it is either purchases or accepts into the collection United Automobile Worker warned Detroit military intrusion in the US state apparatus. By the time this new managerial class of art claimed that this condition rests upon certain of the institution he or she is appointed to More will be recounted further on in these re- area workers of this “highly organized and By the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 consultants emerged the AGMOAS was al- limits of human cognition and perception. Its direct. Challenging the object in the sixties marks on this change from a French-speaking systematic attempt to poison the minds of the military security state apparatus and cor- ready heavily and increasingly corporately effects are strongly intertwined with and con- was relatively easy. Challenging the avant- culture to an English-speaking culture and its workers against liberal government.” Again, porate profit making were fully joined at the regulated and manipulated, but like any class tributory to the social conditions produced by garde model of the artistic subject (hereafter implications for the attainment of a corpo- in January 1956, Kenneth R. Miller of the gun-slinging hip. This is the most marked of managers the consultants were eager to the other three conditions, not least because AGMOAS) has proved much more difficult. rately dominated culture, but I’d like to first National Association of Manufacturers pro- example of what Naomi Klein calls disaster promote their function within the corporate the communities addicted to the AGMOAS Still to this day, we await an adequate articu- focus on the struggle in the US itself between claimed that: capitalism. The character of disaster capital- hierarchy. This kind of careerism gave and manifest a tacit refusal to admit there may lation of AGMOAS. It seems very unlikely the representatives of labour collectivism and ism can be summarized as something like: continues to give even more impetus to the be such a limit. If this fourth condition is the that individuals, say museum directors, will the representatives of corporate individual- “One of the gravest threats to management’s inflict a disaster on a culture and country, corporate regulation of the AGMOAS. case, then it is a condition placed upon the mount a critique of the lauded model and ism. The aim of the latter it should be remem- right to manage is the vastly increased size say Iraq, in order to create as near as pos- AGMOAS as much by our biological limits characterizing virtue of twentieth century art- bered is to fashion a collective subject who and power of organized labor.” This latter sible an unimpeded field for US (or Western) Characteristic of the two previous conditions as our social conditions. Thus, if it is the case ists the museums are founded in order to col- rejects the notion of a collective subject. In sentiment could be taken right out of the corporate investment and profit. Military ex- is the inflationary liberal rhetoric that has then this limit, until it is admitted, is equally lect. If Conceptual Art had anything going for the US, this increasingly depended on who mouths of Reagan, Thatcher and Tim Bell penditure, one of the big contract resources been, and continues to be, issued on behalf as debilitating as any of the social conditions. it, it was those few brief few years in the late gained greater access to the emergent mass thirty years later in the eighties. [4] It was pa- for corporate expansion, was, and remains, of the AGMOAS. Standing in sharp contrast Thus once again, if it is the case then it is a sixties when it sufficiently attempted to de- communications in the US in the two decades tently clear in 1946 that corporate interest in a good index of the increase in income in- to this rhetoric is a third condition that is permanent condition. Since it is a biological regulate the AGMOAS (not simply to attempt after World War II. As it turned out, and not the US was out to change the political climate equality. On the Western cultural arts front particularly applicable to British art institu- limit then any amount of social change will to revise, convert or expand the model) but an surprisingly in a capitalist culture, the class of the legacy that Roosevelt’s administrations a significant part of this corporate tyranny tions starting in the 1980s, although it does have no effect upon it. Steve Gould, with attempt to liquidate it. By the mid-seventies a nature of mass communications was decided and the requirements of organizing a war- was the increased corporate regulation of strongly intertwine with the second condi- regards to the ‘visual’ arts, describes what he conceptual artist was a pretty standard regu- by which class had the greater financial re- time economy had placed upon US economic the AGMOAS [6] Corporate power by the tion outlined above. Following the US pat- argues to be this limit as follows: lated version of the AGMOAS, thoroughly sources, for financial resources were a gate structures since the corporate led disaster of eighties had so vastly increased in confidence tern, British art institutions, and this includes absorbed into the conventional and increas- not only to access, but also ownership, and the Crash of 1929. and impudence to sufficiently turn into the British art schools, became more and more “This perpetual striving for novelty may ingly corporative twentieth century narrative the character of its consequent development. Corporate Tyranny. This was due in no small dependent on corporate funds during the grant us joy forever if a limitless array of po- of the avant-garde. By the eighties it was [3] In response to the Great Depression, This was the corporate revisionary campaign measure to the forty year long close liaison eighties. This inevitably meant these insti- tential styles awaits discovery and exploita- easy to see that the AGMOAS, and with it not Roosevelt’s New Deal shifted the productive to restore worker ideology to the pre-1929 between corporate power and CIA power. tutions tailored their projects and bureau- tion. But perhaps the world is not so bounte- least the alleged conceptual artist, was a man- potential of the US economy away from pri- Crash state and resurrect an order of society cratic shape to their corporate masters. The ous. Perhaps we have already explored most aged public relations exercise, the art world vate enterprise toward government structured in which widening income inequality would A second condition of the highly managed ideology of corporate business increasingly of what even a highly sophisticated audience political order of the day. [2] The Relations organizations and an increasingly strong la- become accepted as the norm regardless of character of the AGMOAS is the expansion shaped the ideology of the art institution and can deem accessible.” of Distribution (ROD) of the art world were bour movement. The federal programmes the standard capitalist recessions. It was to be of the established managerial class in the art consequently the resources of ideological Gould is suggesting a limit. He calls the point “… then a third category of creative arts does answer the question ‘How is the value laden being radical or progressive? As suggested being manipulated. Thus, as suggested above, artists and especially Abstract Expressionists. of this limit the ‘right wall’ and he explains face a potentially painful dilemma based on term ‘cognitively substantial’ to be defined?’ a couple of lines back, attached to questions there is a paradoxical sense in which corpo- For the CIA, opposing Stalinist socialist real- it in contradistinction to another point that our decision to adopt an ethic of innovation There does seem to be a presumption in the such as these is the further question: what is rate collectivism promoted the corporately ism was worth a serious pitch. Frances Stonor he calls, logically, the ‘left wall’. This lat- that awards greatness only to those who de- claim that good or great art is ‘challenging’ a necessary and sufficient condition of at- collective version of individualism in the ser- Saunders interviewed a CIA agent Donald ter point is not a limit but a starting point. vise a novel style (a criterion not always fol- and ‘radical’. In some way, ‘cognitively sub- taining the status of being radical? Or can vice of attempting to gain corporate collec- Jameson involved in the pitch. He reported The ‘right wall’ refers to cultural change and lowed in Western history, but very strong at stantial’ work is granted the equivalency of notions of such conditions still be cogently tive supremacy. Many of the artists who came the following. the limit that governs it; the ‘left wall’ re- the moment).” ‘imaginatively substantial’ work. All too of- applied to the AGMOAS? Whatever the an- to prominence as Abstract Expressionists fers to Darwinian evolution and is the point ten, in the art schools no attempt is made to swers to questions such as these, it is the case had previously worked on projects set up by “We recognized that this was the kind of art from which it evolves. Gould insists the two As stated above, the notion of the artist being define such terms as ‘imaginative’ and ‘cre- in natural Darwinian evolution that there is Roosevelt’s New Deal and some had been that did not have anything to do with social- processes are distinct. His usage here can ‘radical’, ‘challenging’, etc. presumes the ative’ and therefore no attempt is made to no movement toward greater complexity, no members of the American Communist Party. ist realism and made socialist realism look be summarized through another quote as AGMOAS to be progressive in some fairly grade them. This passes over the problem of positive movement towards progress. Gould The changing social framework which pow- even more stylized and more rigid and con- follows: marked sense. This prescriptive idea of being what ‘imaginatively substantial’ may mean, puts it as follows: ered the move from socialist collectivism to fined than it was. And the relationship was progressive has nothing to do with aspiring in the sense that imaginative activity is, pre- corporate collectivism seems to have been exploited in some of the exhibits. Moscow “The baseball example speaks of an en- to the achievement of a more just society or sumably, a form of cognitive activity. “The most impressive contrast between natu- hardly noticed since embracing and cham- in those days was very vicious in its de- croachment upon a right wall of human a more cognitively substantial critique of the ral evolution and cultural change lies embed- pioning individualism seems to be the name nunciation of any kind of non-conformity limitations; the history of life invokes an ex- practice as practice, the latter of which might The claim that being avant-garde implicitly ded in the major fact of our history. We have of both the game of disguising the embrac- to its own very rigid patterns. So one could pansion away from a left wall of minimal well be a critical contributor to the former. means being radical is an art world man- no evidence that the modal form of human ing of corporate collectivism and the game quite adequately and accurately reason that complexity. In this second example, I viewed To the contrary, the application of the notion tra. Whether such a claim can now offer up bodies or brains has changed at all in the of embracing and allegedly developing the anything they criticized that much and that life as expanding passively into a rightward of the artist as career celebrity contributes anything in the way of cognitively substan- past 100,000 years—a standard phenomenon AGMOAS. This embrace can easily incor- heavy-handedly was worth support one way domain of increasing elaboration—but I to more than just the maintenance of an un- tial work is what is in dispute. According to of stasis for successful and widespread spe- porate individuals developing or holding out or another. Of course, for matters of this sort never addressed the principle that some con- just society. It is an instrument of its further Gould, reaching or approaching the ‘right cies, and not (as popularly conceived) an odd a liberal political outlook. As far as the more [it] could only have been done through the straint might eventually limit the spread by expansion. The primary economic charac- wall’ is what he calls reaching or approach- exception to an expectation of continuous conscious party in this transaction, the CIA, organizations of the operations of the CIA at acting as a right wall.” teristic of such a society is an ever widen- ing a ‘full house.’ Nevertheless, the concept and progressive change. The Cro-Magnon was concerned, this was a happy coincidence. two or three removed, so that there wouldn’t ing income gap (and it is worth keeping in of the avant-garde does seem to represent a people who painted the caves at Lascaux and Many examples of this post WWII historical be any question of having to clear Jackson Gould’s baseball example suggests a physi- mind that in a society organized according to belief that there is such a thing as cultural Altamira some fifteen thousand years ago condition are now on hand, and have been Pollock, for example, or do anything that cal limit, whilst the ‘novelty’ example with neoliberalist dogma every aspect of life falls progress and staying within Gould’s termi- are us…” on hand for many years. Eva Cockroft’s es- would involve these people in the organiza- regards to the visual arts suggests a cognitive under the concept of economic attribute). The nology but contradicting his argument, there say showed this. Perhaps one of the most tion—they’d just be added to the end of the limit. But perhaps it is worth reminding our- AGMOAS has been actively used by corpo- is, according to champions of the AGMOAS, Thus it seems that Titian, Turner, Picasso et conspicuous ones concerns the roles of both line…If you had to use people who consid- selves that the cognitive limit is established rate power to promote this kind of society. always a ‘new house’ to be built. Thus the al. achieved whatever they achieved with the Nelson Rockefeller and Clement Greenberg ered themselves one way or another closer to by the structure of the brain. Presuming there For the purveyors of the AGMOAS, to be matter seems to turn on whether the con- same brain power as an artist (if we agree promotion of Abstract Expressionism. During Moscow than to Washington, well, so much is indeed a right wall and the right wall has progressive is not simply to merely believe cept of the avant-garde can be re-assessed they are artists) who preceded them by fifteen the late forties Abstract Expressionism had the better perhaps.” been reached, then, at best, all current fine art that the range of accessible styles cannot ever and redefined, or whether the concept of the thousand years or so. Perhaps then it may been fiercely attacked in the houses of the practice would be a kind of cultural mainte- be exhausted, it is to believe, at the same avant-garde can be ditched altogether and the be that we will have to be content with the US government. One particularly vocal at- As early as 1939, Clement Greenberg started nance. This seems to be something like the time, that a cognitively substantial style is not model of the artistic subject reinvented on repetition of maximal excellence. But the tack dog was a Republican Senator from to attempt to sort out the rationale for what situation Gould is proposing in respect of even a necessary condition required of the a different base, or whether it can, in some fact that we can conceive of an avant-garde Missouri named George Dondero. Dondero he called enlightened patronage in his ar- his penchant for classical music. If it is the AGMOAS. One way to attempt to sidestep way, be re-evaluated such that it requires only seems to suggest that as a species we are not declared “All modern art is communistic, ticle Avant-Garde and Kitsch in Partisan case that fine art practice is cultural mainte- this issue is to claim that ‘style’ rests only cultural maintenance, which, in turn, may content with such repetition regardless of Cubism aims to destroy by designed disor- Review. Whilst the article bears the imprint nance then there is no such thing as the cul- on ‘visuals’ and not on language-formulated then be held to be the same thing as reinven- whether we can overcome it. To be so con- der. Futurism aims to destroy by the machine of Greenberg’s solacious 30s Marxism, it also tural progress when and where it is suggested questioning, where ‘visual’ is held out in con- tion which, I would argue, is just a descrip- tent with maintaining our culture seems to myth…Dadaism aims to destroy by aping the entreats an entry point for enlightened pa- by the current application of the concept of tradistinction to ‘cognitive’. But obviously tion of the present state of the AGMOAS, suggest something contra our curiosity as a primitive and insane. Abstractionism aims tronage, which in the late 40s was soon to be the avant-garde. Thus with this view fine art accessible styles and cognitively substantial despite the rhetoric of its advocates that it species. But the contest between collectiv- to destroy by the creation of brainstorms... used by the CIA. One of the most promising practice at its best is a repetition of maximal styles may not be the same thing, not least is ‘challenging’, ‘radical’, whatever. At this ism and individualism, and the confusion it Surrealism aims to destroy by the denial of openings for the CIA to become ‘enlightened excellence. Warhol is, at best, only as good because we can always ask, accessible to point the fourth condition of Gould’s biologi- engenders, remains imbedded in the sociopo- reason.” Dondero’s claims were shared by patrons’ was provided by Moscow’s cum- as Manet, and Manet is at best only as good whom? Remote as it may appear to cultural cal limit becomes subject to interface with litical conditions of the AGMOAS. Certain a cabal of other figures within Congress and bersome reaction to modern art, and these as Goya, and so on. This poses a telling ques- experts, it is perhaps at least worth acknowl- the sociopolitical character of the other three of the cultural mandarins who promoted the were sympathetically and widely reported in ‘enlightened patrons’ were not only fronts but tion for the concept of the avant-garde. The edging the possibility that styles accessible conditions. Suppose the AGMOAS is primar- American version of the AGMOAS came out the conservative press. Modern artists were often honorary and frequently active agents question then arises as to what more precisely to a cultural expert and held by the cultural ily formed by sociopolitical arrangements firmly against socialist collectivism and were proclaimed to be ‘ultramodern’ and to be un- of the CIA. Both the ones who were aware the concept is aimed at. Since devotees of expert to be inaccessible to those the cultural and not biological limits. Such a formation in close liaison, whether they knew it or not, aware of being instruments of the Kremlin. and the one’s who were not aware of being the concept of the avant-garde have never expert may rank as a disinterested agent or would pose questions about such matters as with the CIA. As far as the culture bosses at This latter claim emerges as particularly iron- conduits of CIA patronage and governance, seemed to be very clear about the distinc- an outright philistine, may be no more cog- both the concept of ‘natural talent’ in relation the CIA were concerned the AGMOAS was ic considering what the last thirty years has constituted, by the late 40s, a considerable tion between cultural maintenance and cul- nitively substantial than the styles accessible to the AGMOAS and the oft-claimed univer- a Cold War instrument and had a specific disclosed about the role of the CIA in using part of Greenberg’s ‘umbilical cord of gold.’ tural progress, then can cultural maintenance to the alleged philistine. This is because the sal transcendence of art objects. The forma- important advantage attached to it, the indi- modern art and the AGMOAS as an instru- [8] Greenberg could not, apparently, envis- and cultural progress be counted as the same styles valued by the cultural expert become tion also poses the question: why aspire to viduals conforming to the AGMOAS did not ment of their Cold War confrontation. The age the possibility of the ‘umbilical cord thing? [7] In much of the writing which con- repetitious as they approach the right wall. become an artist in relation to the AGMOAS? have to be cleared for security purposes. Such CIA sidestepped the issue of confronting the of gold’ (ROD) regulating and defining the cerns the concept of the avant-garde in the Or to put it another way; styles valued by the The first raises the question of whether or not individuals need not necessarily be, but could likes of Dondero by adopting measures that ROP. He saw it as a separate and discriminat- nineteenth and twentieth centuries and up to cultural expert, as they become repetitious the term ‘natural’ is a socially constituted be, entirely innocent of their manipulation by were clandestine in relation to such philistine ing but necessarily comfortable (that is non the present there is a strong implicit sugges- and approach the right wall, may be no more category whilst the second is clearly a social the CIA. And those, if any, who were aware conservatives. They also wished to avoid be- intrusive upon the ROP) distribution system. tion that the AGMOAS is a progressive mod- cognitively substantial than those styles val- definition. Suppose in secondary school a of being manipulated by the CIA either did ing publicly linked to any of the American Whilst writing as if the ‘umbilical cord of el of the artistic subject. The nomenclature of ued by those who the cultural expert ranks as pupil is claimed by her teacher to be ‘natu- not see it as manipulation and may well have artists who brandished a liberal leftie rhetoric. gold’ follows the production of the artist, ‘challenging’ and ‘radical’ in characterizing philistines. It is difficult for the cultural expert rally talented’ in, say, drawing and painting; approved of it, or did not care, at least in the It was an act of avoidance which was linked there is ample evidence that artists follow the artists is a symptom of this presupposition. when s/he frames it in this way to avoid being then is the matter of being able to draw or sense that they gave, for example, greater to the need to avoid confrontation with the ‘umbilical cord of gold.’ Not bad for a per- With regards to the visual or creative arts, condescending. It seems before you can ask to paint ipso facto a necessary but not suf- priority to the exposure of their work being likes of Dondero. Thus they were compelled son who had once guarded Trotsky. Socialist Gould expresses the following view. the question ‘Accessible to whom?’ you must ficient condition of attaining the status of promoted, than they did of disapproving of to act clandestinely when promoting modern Realism was one of the specific targets of and Nietzsche in this—precisely because it offered a means to convert “the image/voice/ the reproaches of American art cultural man- of the agency’s deputy directors (1950-51). winks toward actually changing the system. What change seems to hovered constantly, constitutively, on the edge text residue” of the history works into a more amount to is the replacing of one figure by another to occupy the darins. A clear CIA imperative was– if you William Burden was also a close associate identical job within an identical capitalist ideological framework. of complete assimilation to an upper-class ethos explicit concern with “inscription…and a kind think you can beat them then don’t join them. of Rockefeller, working for the CIAA during 6. David Harvey notes one vivid event in the Corporate Tyranny’s of aesthetic novelty, refined cuisine, ‘daring’ of mark-recording art-grunt.” The exhibition Socialist Realism was an easily located target the war. He was also president of the Fairfield investment in cultural projects as follows: “ They also invest in not so much because it was so servile but Foundation, another CIA front. Burden be- cultural capital through sponsorship of museums and all manner of entertainment. The closeness was a threat, and contains six examples. Fabricated on site, these because it was such a low-grade cognitive came President of MoMA in 1956. Burden cultural activities (thus making the so-called ‘cultural industries’ a favoured strategy for urban economic development). When most artists succumbed to it.” These war works Greasers consist of standardized construction practice. In the wider culture game much ensured Rene d’Harnancourt was given a Lehman Brothers tanked, the MoMA in New York lost a third of its sponsorship income.” (David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital describe both the grunts in the trenches and materials and petroleum grease. The majority more elusive to locate by American art cul- near autonomous status in deciding what and the Crisis of Capitalism, Profile Books Ltd, London, 2010.) tural mandarins with alleged socialist sympa- kind of operations the Museum should con- the history painting as belonging to one and are previously unrealized and are based on a thies was the role of the various CIA cultural duct. D’Harnacourt remained as a Director at Harvey describes the relation between corporately supported cultural projects and the general urbanization of capitalist culture the same class system. Put frankly, the subject number of theoretical propositions and sketches fronts. But then Greenberg himself was in MoMA until 1967. Frances Stonor Saunders’ as follows: “Quality of urban life has become a commodity for the CIA line of agency, whether or not at book seems to prove beyond a doubt that those with money, as has the city itself in a world where consum- of these war works is more the ideological Atkinson worked on between the late 1980s erism, tourism, niche marketing, cultural and knowledge based first he was aware of it. Certainly it would be MoMA was a CIA culture front from the mid- industries, as well as a perpetual resort to the economy of the arrangement of art and history than it is war. and mid 1990s. Monumentally minimalist and hard to believe he was not fully aware of it, forties right up until the collapse of the Soviet spectacle, have become major aspects of urban political economy. With an economy that now relies more and more on consumerism Perhaps it seems perverse to use limbless geometric, the works are undeniably ‘art grunt’ at least after the mid-sixties when the maga- Union in 1989. But, as already stated earlier and consumer sentiment as its driving force (it accounts for 70% zine Encounter was exposed as a CIA culture in these remarks, Eva Cockroft’s article, writ- of the economy in the contemporary United States, compared to grunts to discuss art, but Atkinson would argue compared to the verbose Atkinson we find in 20% in the nineteenth century), the organization of consumption front in a very public array. But the case for ten in 1974, was an earlier piece of convinc- through urbanization has become absolutely central to capitalism’s that Conceptualism’s exclusion of political or the drawings and paintings. They are an attempt Greenberg knowing earlier rests on the fact ing research which made a forceful argument dynamics.” (David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis of Capitalism, . militaristic labor has been far more harmful. at trying to model the artistic subject through that the Museum of Modern Art (hereafter that MoMA was a CIA front institution. Profile Books Ltd, London, 2010 ) MoMA) in New York was a CIA cultivat- It is in the phenonomenon described in the latter passage cited basic materiality and crude automata. Adopting NOTES from Harvey that the burgeoning boom in expanding and build- ed institution, not least because of Nelson ing Museums of Contemporary Art during the nineties and early Between 1974 and the mid 1980s Atkinson the hardware/software analogy of computer noughties can be accounted as an integral part, perhaps flagship Rockefeller’s strong links to the agency. The 1. Glenn D. Lowry, Director of MoMA, New York. projects, of “the organization of consumption through urbaniza- produced several distinct series of drawings and science, their shaped wood slats serve as Rockefeller Foundation itself was one of a tion”. The ‘ace café’ projective item, seemingly obligatory for 2. From its earliest days, Conceptual Art perhaps had an uncom- number of funding fronts for the CIA. MoMA every new or developed MoMA project, is perhaps one of the paintings that proposed the figuring of histories primitive motherboards into which the unstable fortably close relation to promotion by logo and branding. Moves clearest demonstrations of the relation between contemporary art was co-founded in 1929 by Abby Aldrich such as alleged expanded-object and post-object (text works for culture and the “organization of consumption through urbaniza- both “hot” and “cold.” The hottest emerged in materiality of axle grease, the “wetware,” is example) were heavily marketed as a kind of furor-image of the Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefeller’s mother. tion”. Tate Modern, for example, exhibits (perhaps a pun is intend- concept of the avant-garde as ‘progressive’ and ‘radical’.. Texts ed) the entire set of characteristics noted by Harvey; consumerism, response to the maelstrom of an imminent right- inserted. In later works, such as Two Software Stonor Saunders notes the following. requiring what might be called the heavier type of cognitive ap- tourism, niche marketing, display of the products of the cultural plication were absorbed into a brand promoted as, say, post-object. and knowledge based industries and, not least, the economy of the wing political culture. Take the Blue Skies series Greaser 1, a second software component is Cognitive work on the text took a lower position than identity of spectacle. The Turbine Hall itself and the projects realized in it are “… (Nelson called it ‘Mommy’s Museum’). object-type. At this point branding of work type became more a pretty vehement example of the latter. and its channeling of neocolonial exploitation; added in the form of a projected, scrolling Nelson was a keen supporter of Abstract important than study of work—obsessive career promotion began to take priority over a cognitively worked practice. or the “Irish Works” and their phantasmagorias text, which reads like a didactic explication of Expressionism, which he referred to as ‘free 7. The distinction between cultural maintenance and cultural prog- ress is not widely drawn, nor discussed, in day-to-day art school 3. There has been no more glaring and, in the end, more exposed of Republican paramilitaries wiring plastic-bag the terms and conditions of the work and its enterprise painting’. Over the years his pri- practice. The concept of progress itself is subject to little, if any, a case of the abuses that an overly centralised neoliberal control analysis, whilst the arguments and discussions about which artist vate collection swelled to over 2,500 works. of the media can effect than the case of the Murdoch family’s explosives in bunkers in Armagh; or the “History exhibition: is and which is not ‘progressive’ occupies countless hours and col- ownership of News Corporation, which they intended to use as Thousands more covered the walls of build- umns of print. There is a tacit framework imbedded, since at least C4 At an appropriate temperature grease will turn to a the springboard to make their case for ownership of BSkyB. James Snap/ Happy Snap” series of family vacation the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth, behind all this ings belonging to the Rockefeller owned Murdoch’s attack on and claim moral supremacy over the BBC in liquidy oil state. chatter that there is an achieved model of the artistic subject that his address at the Edinburgh festival a few years ago is now starkly snapshots, burdened with the portent of nuclear Chase Manhattan Bank.” is progressive. Frequently maintaining the culture is presumed, in- historically contrasted with hacking the phone of Millie Dowler by variably undeclared, to be progressing the culture. The distinction his media hoodlums at News Corporation. war. The “betting and trying” of these works, C5 Abu Dhabi is the largest oil producer in the United From MoMA a whole network of CIA con- between cultural maintenance and cultural progress perhaps war- rants much more concentrated attention than it is presently given. the transition between the distant event and the Arab Emirates. nections stretched out to embrace, regu- 4. Tim Bell, now Baron Bell of Belgravia, mandarin of the adver- tising industry, helped found Saatchi and Saatchi, leaving in 1987, 8. Greenberg seems to have first coined this memorable phrase late and corporately absorb the AGMOAS to found his own agency. Bell was a close adviser to Margaret newly synthesized and transmitted reportage, in his essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch in Partisan Review in 1939. Thatcher in all her election campaigns. He was seconded to the C6 The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), throughout the Cold War. This now, viewed Despite later withdrawing from the full ramifications of his argu- National Coal Board during the National Union of Mineworkers led Atkinson to conceive of himself as some ment in this essay the art world-cum-art market has tended to currently estimated to be worth $875 Billion, is the from the early part of the twenty first century, strike of 1984-85, where he was virulently active in encouraging demonstrate the power of wealthy collectors as an ‘umbilical cord the non-striking miners in Nottinghamshire (let’s not mince words kind of “information processor” or “semantic world’s wealthiest sovereign fund in terms of total is one of glaring concrete outcomes of the of gold’ with the art world supinely collaborating in the process with Baron Bell—the Notts scabs). The latter, it should be remem- of ensuring the increasing prominence of the neoliberalist finance asset value. transfer of ‘art capital’ from Paris to New bered, soon after the end of the strike, suffered the same fate as engine,” whose production was written in to capital funded equation, artists as celebrities = artists who are their striking opponents. Bell was noted for his special manipula- York (both in Marx’s sense and in the sense wealthy, thus mirroring the social framework of another part of the a historical feedback loop. His embrace in the tive encouragement of the anti-strike activist known as “Silver cultural industries, the entertainment industries. There does seem, C7 The Human Rights Watch report titled “The Island of ‘the capital city of’). During World War II Birch,” whose real name is Chris Butcher. During the strike, and especially since the eighties, to be some strong connection be- WWI works of the expressive resources “of maybe still for those who are old enough to remember, in the of Happiness”: Exploitation of Migrant Workers on Rockefeller had led an American government tween economies producing wealthy celebrity artists via wealthy South Yorkshire mining villages where I originated, as I was con- collectors and the neoliberal view that money can and should be a proxy ‘Socialist Realism’” made way in the Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi. intelligence agency titled the Coordinator stantly reminded when on visits to my mother who still lived there made out of money. of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA). In the at that time, Silver Birch was known as “Dutch Elm Disease.” He early to mid 1980s for a more “mechanized” fifties both Tom Braden and Allen Dulles was promoted and funded by rabid free-marketeers and neoliber- C8 A work made of grease (that is, uncontained) als, not least the Daily Mail. Just to press a certain point, Baron conception of the artist Terry Atkinson. The briefed Rockefeller on the agency’s proj- Bell has carried out work for the Pinochet Foundation. can, no doubt, be curated and exhibited—with ects and aims. In 1954 Rockefeller was ap- subsequent paintings and texts became “some suitable temperature control and a stable physical 5. The dreams of the neoliberals seemingly never stop. Today pointed Eisenhower’s special adviser on Cold capitalist economic forecasts remain increasingly gloomy. The kind of prosthetic device linked… to my body, environment it may perhaps even enter a permanent War strategy and he chaired the Planning British economy during the course of the writing of this essay has collection, where it may be absorbed by the undergone a double dip recession. The Bank of England predicts the producer.” Coordination Group, the function of which a decade of, at best, further economic sluggishness. Many banks, Corporate Tyranny. was to oversee all Security Council deci- it turns out, have been fixing the LIBOR rate to their advantage and it follows, obviously, to the disadvantage of small businesses sions, including CIA covert operations. John and ordinary punters. The neoliberal culture turns out to rest on It is at this juncture that the material of Hay Whitney (known as Jock) was a close preserving and increasing the interests of the wealthy through sharp financial practices and not a little fraud. Whilst through all grease made its way into Atkinson’s work. This text is an excerpt from an iteration of Two friend of Rockefeller and a long term as- this many neoliberals have, reluctantly, forfeited their bonuses, sociate in the CIAA during World War II. just to compound matters a majority of the British people’s elected Searching for a way to further the analogy Software Greaser 1, as shown at mumok in representatives refuse a public enquiry into the wangling of the Whitney was also a long imbedded trustee of LIBOR rate. The matter of sharp banking practices being inves- of the “semantic engine” as an autonomous Vienna in 2013. Open-ended, it is scratched out MoMA. Whitney had strong links to the CIA. tigated by politicians is yet another neoliberal dream come true One of those links was William Jackson, one since it keeps the interests of the banking class within the orbit of program—what one might call today a “media and re-written each time Two Software Greaser the political class. At the present juncture, there are only nods and system”—he landed on the “visceral spreads 1 is shown, suggesting the accumulative nature and emissions” of grease. This volatile material of the work’s potential readings. Unlike the drawings and paintings, the unchecked growth of speculation and greasers are not static and suggest a different privatization coincided with the construction form of figuring history. They are autonomously of new forms of labor, and new notions of the “self-reporting,” by which to mean, the work working subject. For Atkinson this is far from reports its own production and distribution. The irrelevant; the “progressive,” “radical,” and volatility of the grease, the environmental factors “challenging” artist, the defacto “Avant-Garde such as temperature variation, or the movement Model of Artistic Subjectivity” is a nascent neo- of the work from the floor to the wall, or one site liberal entrepreneur, a businessy artist, who he to another, means the work continues to change claims, with characteristic Chomskyian aplomb, once Atkinson has relinquished control. The is well part of the Corporate Tyranny. In tune hardware frames the movement of the grease as with the bureaucratic aura of the acronym, he a figurative gesture, mimicking the convention surmises: “The AGMOAS is now a corporate of the accident in abstract painting, those marks audit.” made without rules, without any notion of ‘the painting’ preceding the painting. Atkinson puts Terry Atkinson was born in 1939. He lives in it simply, “the greased troughs generate quite a Leamington Spa, England with his wife, artist lot of decorative and extraneous incident.” Sue Atkinson, with whom he has frequently collaborated. This is Atkinson’s first institutional What remains at stake here for Atkinson solo show in the United States. is a critique of how artists arrive at not only aesthetics, but identities. The Greasers evoke the idea that the “given model of the artistic subject” runs “implemented in the body of the artist.” This is a confusing idea at first. For Atkinson, artistic subjecthood is an overbearing TERRY ATKINSON convention that pre-empts decisions to make art, or to be an artist. It is a construct that is November 8–December 21, 2014 deeply tied to social, economic and political Curated by Richard Birkett relations. He highlights a specific construction Greaser Fabrication by Brian Thackeray, of this artistic subjectivity as having dominated Adam LaBrie, and Harry de Rham the development of twentieth-century Western culture, what he terms the “Avant-Garde Model Thanks to Sue Atkinson, Cooper Campbell, Flynn Casey, Tony Chrenka, of Artistic Subjectivity” or AGMOAS for short. Drew Ingersol, Oskar Radon-Kimball, Atkinson has been writing about the AGMOAS Charlotte Linton, Jeff Moast, Oscar since the early 2000s, though versions of this Oswald, Nick Ivy Royal, Dave Smith, paradigm have appeared in his writing since the Henk van Streepen, Nic Tammens, Sean Tatol, Brighid G. Thomas mid-1970s. The program would not be possible In these texts Atkinson has increasingly without Yale Union’s members, volunteers, The Martin Family, Schwab articulated his own biographical position within Charitable Fund, The Andy Warhol the narrative of the AGMOAS. He has also made Foundation for the Visual Arts, The apparent the model’s intrinsic links to the rise of Autzen Foundation, The Foundation neo-liberalism. The year 1974 loosely coincides for Contemporary Arts, The James & Marion Miller Foundation, The with the full dissolution of the gold standard, Meyer Memorial Trust, The National the advent of a fully floating currency, and the Endowment for the Arts, The Oregon last gasps of a growing welfare state in the UK Arts Commission, Umpqua Private linked to a Labour government that within Bank, Work for Art five years was unceremoniously banished from YALE UNION power by Margaret Thatcher. The subsequent 800 SE 10th Avenue, Portland, OR