Wealth and fame, he's ignored. Action is his reward.

Spiderman was always a hero of mine.

To see him portrayed so disrespectfully, by people of a different culture, is almost too much indignity to bear…

How dare they!?!

I had not intended on blogging further on this subject, but the events of this morning compel me.

As you know, I had dropped off my own wry submission, unbidden, to the “National Portrait Gallery” show at Latitude 53 under cover of a rainy Saturday morning, where it was soon discovered, and later included in the show. When I learned the news, I went to the opening to see for myself. Both the framed picture and the forged letter hung on the wall, and although the letter was signed “Harper” and the picture was signed “Mutt”, the gallery hung only the word “Anonymous” along side. Since my gambit had succeeded, I though it was fair time to reveal the name of the piece, and the artist, so I sent that information to the official National Portrait Gallery email address, and posted the same on the blog here [dutifully copying Lat53's own label format conventions].

Then, a few days later (June 15, 2010 3:12:59 AM MDT, to be exact), I received an email, and then another, from the person most usually billed as the “curator” of the exhibition, Fish Gr-something or other.

I hear you’re claiming the anonymously-dropped and thus-hung Harper.

This, we can discuss.

o<

Of course, I naturally suspected that I could never hope to have a work of mine selected for a Latitude 53 show under my own name, which is why the work had to be submitted anonymously. But this was the first hint I had of how open they were about such bias: this was the beginning of the hastily-built case for why it can only be hung if it is anonymous, that it somehow doesn’t ‘work’ anymore if a name (any name, mind you, of course, not just mine, don’t you know…) were attached to it. It would be a travesty, I tell you, for the artist to get credit for this work, lest they take away from the magic of anonymity, or the possibility it was, um, really sent by Harper… No, no, they couldn’t possibly be so shameless as that, I thought.

780-xxx-2287 (edited for privacy)

Noon?

o<

The last being the body of an email with the subject line, “You need to call me“. I myself felt no such “need” at all, and he didn’t bother to explain why I might. Perhaps sensing this himself, he added more messages minutes later:

Subject: Particularly

Your motivations regarding the project.

Receiving these messages at a little after 8 am, I responded to this last clear request.

“Shits and giggles, Fish.
What else do you need to know?”

His reply was terse.

Your phone number.

Ooh. A little too terse for that early in the morning, I thought. I replied,

Well, it’s early still, and I have a newborn, so I’m not giving you my home number. Is that alright with you?
Again, what would you like to know?
I’m happy to talk via email…

Indeed, our replies were speeding back and forth within minutes of each other, all while allowing me to attend to other things. It seemed like this would be a great way for a writer such as Fish and myself to communicate. Fish, it seemed, felt otherwise.

I’d rather talk on the phone, if that’s all okay with you.

Again, I was puzzled by his reply, which seemed to be entirely ignoring what I had said previously, and for no clearly stated reason, with the only clearly unstated reason being that he did not want any record of his words as he would like to speak them, so would have to work at being more careful in writing. But, it was he that seemed to want something, so it was not up to him. My reply:

No, thanks.

Fish did not take this defeat happily.

Well, just to be clear: communications regarding the project go through me and, again, I’m at 780-xxx-2287.

It seemed to me he got that information across just fine in the email, and he offered nothing else, so with that, I would have been happy to let it rest with this reply.

Great, Fish. Thanks.
I sent the label info to your info@npgallery.ca address. I trust I can use that line of communication in the future as well.
Cheers,
Ryan

This seemed like a rather uncontroversial closing, as that does seem to be the only email address listed on the NPG’s own website. Surely accommodating my preference for communication via email isn’t some sort of deal-breaker, I thought. Evidently, it aroused exclamation from Fish, judging by the punctuation of his quick reply.

The phone number I sent you is the line of communication I’d kindly ask you to use. 780-xxx-2287. Thank you!

He was insistent that I call him at his number if I wanted to talk to him, seemingly forgetting all the while that I DIDN’T want to talk to him, he wanted to talk to me, which I told him would be fine, if he would kindly do so via email. Alas, this was beginning to become an Abbot and Costello routine, and it’s no fun being the straight man. Rather than point out his blunder, I replied:

As you wish, Fish.
p.s. come on down to Common Sense this Sat. afternoon. We’re opening a landscape show, with a nice variety of work, so I’m sure you’ll see something that appeals to you, being a landscape artist yourself.
Perhaps I’ll see you then,
Ryan

I noticed his photos from the show, and sincerely thought, as someone with artistic ambitions, he might genuinely like to see the show. He replied,

Heard about it, sounds cool. I know SEE is doing a preview of the show – when is it up until? I’m out of town thsi weekend …

I don’t think he ever did make it to see the exhibit while it was up, but he may have been busy indeed, I’m sure, with his diverse dabblings. Suddenly, it seemed Fish had a change of heart, and sent this lengthy reply of a different sort altogether:

Subject: In the meantime

Let me just say that we really appreciated the piece, particularly in the context of it being left at the door anonymously, a porch baby to nurture. What I mainly want to discuss with you in a more face-to-face manner is how affixing a name – any artist’s name – to this specific work weakens its power considerably. What was really engaging, as one example, was hearing questions about whether the document was legitimately from the PMO. Or considering its ambiguous political intention. Put a “mine” on that and it’s demystified. The show is weakened at a random juncture after the fact, which is a concern.

Now as an artist, I understand how one would normally want to get credit for work, and ways to ensure this are by putting one’s name on the back and coming and checking on the hanging and label before the show opens, as examples. Or having any prior contact whatsoever would also do in a pinch.

But there is a specific context in which it was left on the gallery’s door, which is to say anonymously. With an incumbent story. A good one, too.

This is fundamental, mandatory, to the piece’s central strength, the intimation the prime minister himself could have arranged for its unseen disposal. This is more important than the artwork itself – that which the art creates, including the myth. To come at it after the fact and claim ownership is, I hope you don’t mind me saying, a great disservice to the original spirit of the work that got it up on the wall in the first place. A spiritual hijacking. I’d have to ask, honestly, how does the art community – as if correcting a gallery mistake – benefit by having the portrait suddenly owned by an individual? It seriously cheapens the effect.

I’d really rather discuss this subject with you on the phone, especially to assure you that having said what I said about ownership claims, we don’t mind anyone claiming to have done it, or promote it, or throw it on their CV, etc., as a clever bit of gonzo subterfuge. Tactically, I believe this would be more endearingly and succesfully done after the show’s run, but this is my opinion.

But within the context of the gallery, I’d much prefer it stay as it sits – an exciting and comical mystery to fresh eyes.

I also understand you blog – if you were going to quote this, I would ask you do so in this email’s entirety. Thanks, Ryan.

o<

My reply:

Hey Fish,
thanks for taking the time to let me know your thoughts, for the record. I too have thought quite a bit about the piece, as you might imagine. The anonymous drop-off was, and remains, a time-based event for a particular audience, intentionally limited to those involved with the organization of the show. The fact is, it was indeed found anonymously-submitted, and it was enjoyed by you, and others no doubt, for that reason. That’s great It lead to the questions you raise about its origins. That was the idea. You decided to include it in the show. That was totally unexpected (normally, things left on doorsteps don’t make it into exhibits at most galleries!), but great, too. I’ve never been in a show at L53 before!

Now that you know where it came from, it changes that original context, but that too is the intention of my piece. Now, that original audience of the anonymous submission have a NEW series of questions raised. This was part of my intention for the piece.

Knowing the fact that I am the artist of the piece does not fundamentally change the supposed “mystery” of whether it came from the PMO (obviously, we all knew it didn’t, but that is the fiction inherent in the letter from “Stephen”, which remains signed by him).

Of course Harper didn’t paint it himself (of course, nobody “painted” it, because it’s obviously a photographic print of a photoshopped Ingres), but, if he WAS behind it all, of course he would have hired a Canadian artist to do the commission.. so, why not me? I’m a Canadian artist! It would seem, in hindsight, that I’d be the natural choice, considering I’m the one who actually did make it, after all.

You’ll notice, in the bottom left corner of the image, the piece is signed “Mutt R.” This, as you no doubt are aware, is an homage to Marcel Duchamp, himself an art-prankster of sorts. He submitted works under the name “R. Mutt”, but, I believe the labels still usually bear Duchamp’s name, not the fictional pseudonym.

In short, I disagree with you that having it labelled “anonymous” is “fundamental to the central strength” of the work itself, otherwise, the work itself would be irrelevant, and literally anything dropped off anonymously would be acceptable for inclusion in your show, which I doubt is the case. The anonymous drop-off had its effect, but that moment has passed. I’m sure you can see that most of the merit of the piece itself lies in the image and the letter, which are both obviously fictions… so, what you’re suggesting is, works of fiction are destroyed if people know they are not really true. As I say, I disagree strongly.

I have no doubt this much is true; that, if the work arrived bearing my name, it would not be included in the show. Perhaps that might give you some indication of the main, central, fundamental reason my name was not included originally.

But, it is your show, of course. Perhaps you’d prefer the label to say “Mutt R.”, since that is in fact how the piece is signed on its front. Perhaps you’d like to add the title that I’ve given the work, which enhances the piece somewhat, in my opinion. But, who am I to say, hey?
Perhaps you’ll leave it as it is.

Sights To See at Common Sense runs until July 19.
Ryan

Fish responds;

Absolutely appreciate pranks, and, yes, we did catch Duchamp. Obviously I’m not saying works of fiction are destroyed by revelations. But they can certainly be lessened. Let me be clear. I’m not alone in prefering the work as originally submitted.

Wish I had more time to get into this today – know this, though. A number of casual spectators were concinced letter was real.

Something else you can consider is I almost immediately guessed who was behind this and we ran it nonetheless.

Under the name, you know, Anonymous.

o<

I replied:

Ha!
The idea that it might have REALLY come from the PMO is more hilarious than I could have hoped…. I figured most folks would have the sort of suspicions you claim, and bust me right away.
And yes, I’m sure many people besides yourself would prefer it if I never claimed responsibility. Folks I know think it’s a pretty funny gag, either way.
Of course, I don’t mean to spoil all the fun we’ve shared. That’s why I figured I’d wait until after the opening (I attended, and signed the guestbook “Anonymous”) to send you the full label info, and let you all in on the joke. Then, I made my rather low-key announcement on my blog (gotta serve my readers!) on the weekend. I’m not planning any other blogging on the subject, despite this interesting dialogue.

Do what ever you want, Fish. I did not expect the piece to end up in the show (hanging in Todd’s office, maybe…), but now that it is, I thought you’d all be big enough to accept the prank as pulled, and (grudgingly) give credit where it’s due.

Perhaps you’ll have to answer this question (more questions raised! What an issue-exploring jackpot!) for yourselves: what’s more important, the artist’s intentions, or the curators’?

Peace,
Ryan

Fish did not respond to this last message, but added:

A number of casual spectators were concinced letter was real.

Pardon the spelling error – “convinced,” of course …

Anyway, gotta run! Talk soon, I expect.

o<

Defying those expectations, we did not talk soon. I haven’t heard from Fish again. The show went on, the curator and the gallery refused to put up the correct title information of the work, or any of the other usual information the other works had with them, never mind any credit naming the true author of the work. Against my expressed wishes, it remained on display anonymously. I visited the show a few more times during its run, and even ran into Todd there, but he didn’t mention wanting to talk to me about anything, and neither he nor anyone else from Latitude 53 ever contacted me about the show again. The exhibit’s run came to an end, but that weekend I went to Vancouver for a little over a week. Upon returning, I had half-expected to have a message of some sort from the gallery or the curator telling me to pick up my work, or asking to include it in a future run of the show somewhere else, but there was no message. So, this morning I drove down to the gallery to pick up the work. As I entered, I saw the gallery was in the disarray indicative of being between shows. The receptionist was on the phone, on a personal call, it seemed, and was in no hurry to get off. I didn’t enter the spaces, as I thought that might be rude, since the gallery didn’t appear open for viewing as such.

Eventually, the young woman got off the phone, and I told her I was here to pick up my work, which was in the portrait show. “Which work”, she asked. “The supposedly ‘Anonymous’ one”, I said.

“Oh, you’re Ryan.” She did not seem like, let alone say, she was in any way pleased to meet me. She didn’t offer her own name. She then went on to assert that, although Todd would “probably” give me my work, she was “not prepared to do so”, as Todd wanted to speak with me about the work. Strange, but, ok, I thought. Todd can bring me my work, I suppose, and we can speak about whatever he likes. But, she then said, Todd was not in.

“Well,” I said, “I’ll take the work now, since that’s what I’m here for, and Todd can talk to me later.” That seemed simple enough to me. Clearly, they knew without a doubt, via my lengthy correspondence with the curator Fish, that I had made the work, as her immediate ejaculation of the name “Ryan” attested to, although I had never met this person. But she insisted that she would not “allow me” to have it. This, along with repeating irrelevant claims of “not being prepared” to give me my own work, alerted me to this person’s mistaken sense of her own place in the matter before her: she failed to appreciate that I neither required her “preparedness” or her consent to claim my own property. At that moment I thought I saw it from a distance, in its small golden frame, lying in the gallery a few steps away. “I suppose I don’t need you to be ‘prepared’ to give it to me, whatever that means, if it is sitting right there, I could just take it now, and Todd can call me about whatever he wants,” I offered. “That’s not it,” she replied, “That’s work for a different show”, and as I looked again, I now realized that this was a different frame, more black than the gold one bearing my work.

I asked her if she thought I should call the police to intercede. She said yes, and offered the use of her telephone. I was dumbfounded: how can this person be this stupid? “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “You’re seriously not going to give me my work, which you know is mine?” I pulled out my driver’s license. “There, see? RYAN MCCOURT. You know that’s who made it, right? That’s me.”

“I’m not getting into who made it. It was left here anonymously, and Todd will probably give it back, and I’m not prepared to hand it over to you, ” she replied.

“Then call Todd,” I said, wearily, the red mist descending…

She trudged off for a tele-council with the Todd. I waited in the reception area, amazed at the hints that perhaps the work might not be returned at all, that it was somehow up to their whim. Although my opinion of these people was already so low, it seems they still plumb further, searching greedily for the nadir of oblivious unscrupulousness.

She returned. Somehow, through the guiding words of Todd, she managed to make the unknowable mental preparations necessary for her to stop being a bloody nuisance and give me my fucking shit already.

“It’s been a real pleasure, Ryan”, she said, handing me my work. She somehow refrained from spitting in my face, but she could not hold back a cartoonishly overwrought sarcasm with each word she uttered.

“Gosh,” I said, “It’s lucky I can’t recognize sarcasm”. But, I didn’t really mean it. I meant the opposite, or something like that. She said nothing in reply. For a moment, I could do nothing but gape at this person, who went from swollen-testicled defiance to shutting the fuck up in far too great a hurry for her own liking. “Is there something else?”, she demanded snidely. Half in jest, and half in lamentation for her lack of wits, I asked, “No apology, hey?”

“I hope you have a LOVELY day”, she replied, no more sweetly, with bitterness twisting her face.

“I won’t wish you the same”, I said as I left. I meant it. “Whoever you are…”

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, by the Grace of God and the Constitution of the Dominion, Prime Minister of Canada, Protector of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Calgary Southwest, Mediator of the Notwithstanding Clause. 2010 ink-jet print on glossy photo paper 8 ½” x 11” Ryan McCourt

New arrivals this week to the

Cassady McCourt Collection:

February 24: Nude 1 (B.R.), Franklin Einspruch, 2006.

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June 29: Nude 3 (C.A.), Franklin Einspruch, 2005.

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February: M.L. on the Cushions in the Studio, Franklin Einspruch, 2004.

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November: K.R. with Mirror and Self Portrait, Franklin Einspruch, 2003.

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December: A.F. with Goddaughter 1, Franklin Einspruch, 2002.

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Richard Whitehouse, an artist from Ohio, is constructing a piece called The Rape Tunnel. A gallery installation, the artwork consists of a long narrowing tunnel that can be walked through. He’s promising that anybody who enters it during the exhibition, he’ll attempt to rape.

I go to studios to fall in love with art. Over several decades, I have had both fleeting and permanent relationships with artworks created by many of the members of ECAS who are exhibiting in the 2009 annual exhibition. A visit to a studio or vibrant show leaves me energized and hopeful, and, in Edmonton, terrific art still can be had for pocket change relative to the big purchases of the everyday. Living with art is divine. Blank walls make for a blank life.

When I asked one of my children which trumps which, painting or writing, the answer was painting. The reasoning was that reading is fleeting—read it once and it’s gone—but a single artwork can be revisited like a good friend in an evolving relationship. Art changes with mood—the light both outside and inside the observer can alter the effect of a picture or a sculpture.

The disconnection between the art produced and the personality of the artist can be profound. The nicest of artists can be responsible for the most insipid art while the rogues and rascals often make the art that enhances a day. Painter Jules Olitski’s explanation was that perhaps an artist funneled his redeeming human qualities into the art itself with little left for a pleasant personality. Not only was Caravaggio a convicted murderer but he threatened to kill anyone who copied him.

One of the flagrant misunderstandings of 1950’s Abstract Expressionism or Action Painting is that the art resulted from physical action alone and was little more than theatre. While the hand of the artist was evident in the work, the term Action referred to decision-making really in its purest, existential sense of self-actualization. The hard, contemplative decisions made during each step or sequence in the process of painting or sculpture would determine the “look” of the end product. These decisions emerged from the artist’s self, his or her mind, heart, soul and skill. This fluidity yields to the element of surprise. An honest artist has no idea what the final work will look like although magic is obligatory.

Step by step decisions likewise fuel the art of ECAS members putting it shoulder to shoulder with other traditional art of the distant or recent past. Art is stronger than all of us because it’s either art or it isn’t. ECAS members don’t need to turn gallery spaces into their own personal rumpus rooms with the detritus of installation. Their argument is with the corruption of standards that undermine a constantly morphing art world. Their protest comes in the power of an artwork meant to be eyeballed only and not buffered by the blah-blah of “text”.

To ECAS, art is diminished when used as an aid to a temporal cause. The only way to effect change in the world is to affirm the dignity of the individual, a dignity that can reside in art if it jives with the eye to set all the other nerve endings on fire. For nearly two decades, the growing numbers of ECAS members have survived nasty assaults from far and wide on modernism, formalism, beauty, classical ideals, call it what you will. They hold to the longest traditions of art-making with tenacity. Despite Caravaggio’s paranoia, no two artists ever make art exactly the same way and good and surely great art is the best way to probe, understand and celebrate the possibilities of the individual.
Take a good look!

© 2009 Lelde Muehlenbachs

“A bop on the nose most always counts as feedback but could only ever be considered criticism if your boxing coach ran out of ways to get it through your thick head that your guard was down when it should be up. When challenged, if you’re unable to prove you’re right or unwilling to admit you’ve been proven wrong, then you’re asking for a proverbial beating. If you can’t tell the difference between feedback and criticism, then you’ll get thrown out of the ring altogether.

“So then, if you can’t tell the difference between coach, opponent, and enemy, you’ll be tipping at windmills for the rest of your career.”

So posted I on Prairie Artsters this [last] evening, where blog-owner A. Fung’s angst over the state of art writing and critical dialogue in Edmonton has finally reached a head and recent comments have been deleted and reined in to moderation (and with extreme prejudice, I understand). Mine was too good a comment, I thought, to throw into the ether of internet deletion, so I’ve recycled it here to springboard a blogpost of my own. On anonymity and criticism and sense-making, no less.

No amount of ‘feedback’ ever seems to uncover what Fung actually means to tell us, because she relies herself upon maintaining the very anonymity she is complaining about – not that of her own person, obviously, but of those she means to upbraid. She is evidently either very hurt or very pissed-off, but refuses to say out loud, and not because she doesn’t know, whom it is in Edmonton’s art crowd that so perturbs her. For years now Amy has been chiding unspecified artists for their baleful discourse and “lack of context“, so it’s understandable she’d confuse a coach for her opponent and an opponent for her enemy.

Anonymous comments only matter insomuch as they’re unattributable: no big problem for negative ones if only because that alone is sufficient reason to discard them. Any of us can accept any other’s statement as true, false, or not-even-wrong at our own discretion, but without a gift of discernment or sufficient practice of the same a blogger must rely upon some extrinsic system to sort and assess comments – some people tally pros & cons, for example, while others poll their acquaintances. Anonymity by itself, though, is not a burden on truth.

And so, not knowing who to blame for her lack of insight, and all in the single first paragraph of Prairie Artsters: Art Criticism (linked above), Fung resorts to vague, not-even-specious pronouncements:

• …there is always an overwhelming pull to hear the negative…
• …those who want to make art simply need to grow a thicker skin…
• Art is meant to be shared in the public arena…
• …it will be scrutinized, speculated, celebrated, and judged no matter what.

Tipping at windmills with such naive earnestness, she’s just begging for public pretermission – which, I’m shocked to discover, art columnists can not just weather but thrive through. Such strained efforts to communicate as Prairie Artsters specializes in have left me very well practiced at ignoring the column and website altogether and leaving VueWeekly unopened week after week. Yet, adding insult to injury, I find her vapid opinions cropping up in place after place; Amy Fung’s work seems to be proliferating (publicly funded by CC-ACDI, I’m to understand). This, along with her repeated refusals to acknowledge lame dicta not to mention errors of logic or grammar [a quick scan of Prairie Artster comment threads should adequately substantiate this], leaves me flummoxed.

By itself the low-hanging fruit in Fung’s Art Criticism post is abundant enough to pull down not just the tree, but her entire orchard. There’s no use criticizing her publishing editors, given what they must have to sort through each week. Besides, the art scene – and the visual arts in particular – is worldwide the dumping ground for all manner of lesser professionals and would-be intellectuals. (If you think that claim outrageous and hard to prove, I think you’ll find disproving it very much more difficult.) Taken as a whole contemporary visual art – and related writing in particular – is easily the most efficient ‘qualitysink’ ever created by humans for humans. Standards of excellence have been abandoned to the mineshaft while proofs of competence are only required insofar as they further the many causes (or lobbies, if you will) that feel the need of awareness-building and fund-raising.

We all know that other arts industries have each their own unique problems but, except editorially, we don’t generally drag that baggage into our city papers’ or alternative weeklies’ culture sections. Starred restaurant reviews, wine and beer reviews, movie reviews, CD and concert reviews, book reviews, play reviews, fashion reviews, even video game and travel reviews rely upon clear, sensical and ultimately verifiable written declarations about the quality of human experience. Simple enough, in its way: “I liked it, you may like it too.” Why not in the visual arts? What have painters and sculptors done to deserve the converse: opaquely written, nonsensical and contrived writing that has no relation to actual experience? “It references the politics of identity.”

Some culture writers provide a better read simply because they are better wielders of the language; some lesser writers make for good reading because they’ve had cultural experiences worth sharing. Very few of either seem to be available for reading anywhere in the English-writing world these days. Both types have one thing other than a topic or an editor in common: generous amounts of self-criticism. It is an attitude of self-criticism even more than received criticism that motivates good work, and it is good work that generates good results, and good results that we appreciate most. Simple to merely say, I know myself by practice.

Edmonton’s weekly-published visual-arts writers demonstrate no such journalistic integrity – neither the well-written nor the well-reported kind, never even mind the true kind. Show me even one local art writer that exhibits any two of the three, and I’ll eat crow on this: their articles are either on-message-sponsored-adcopy-it’s-true-I-read-it-myself; or just-the-facts-as-told-me-by-the-artist; or just-a-little-throwup-in-my-mouth.

I’d stop the art presses altogether, if I could, by invoking the proverbial wrench. Instead I find I’ve only two responses left to me: silence, which by posting this I’ve now broken, or invective. So, all you aspiring art writers, take the punch in the gut for what it’s worth.

Via the pointed head of Ken Johnson @ the NYT:

“Outdoor art isn’t what it used to be. Once it honored heroic individuals and upheld values that whole populations could embrace. Today, excepting memorials like the Vietnam veterans wall, outdoor art serves rather to divert, amuse and comfort.

A striking illustration of that old-new dichotomy straddles East 60th Street and the southeastern corner of Central Park. On the north side, temporarily installed in Doris C. Freedman Plaza by the Public Art Fund, is “The Ego and the Id,” a big, brightly colored sculpture by the Austrian artist Franz West. Its two parts, made of roughly welded-together pieces of aluminum, form lumpy, spindly loops rising 20 feet in the air. One is painted glossy bubblegum pink, while the other sports a coat of yellow, green, blue and orange patches. In places near the ground, the loops morph into round stools on which people can sit. Judging by the reactions of passers-by and their clambering children, this infectiously cheerful work is a popular attraction.

Meanwhile, on the south side of the street, on an elevated, neo-Classical stone pedestal, is a bigger-than-life gilded-bronze sculpture of the Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman. Riding on horseback, he follows a female figure in billowing robes, an allegory of Victory. The monument has been here since 1903. On a recent sunny day there were lots of people on the plaza in front of the sculpture, but most were watching a group of athletic young men performing gymnastic dance feats to loud hip-hop music. It seemed a safe bet that no one there knew or cared who the man on the horse was or who made the sculpture that honors him….”

[Of course, it seems a much safer bet that nobody there knew or cared who made "The Ego and the Id", either, or knew the pretentious title of the work, for that matter. So, Ken sort of misses the mark, here.] Johnson continues:

“The creator of the Sherman monument, Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), was the pre-eminent American sculptor of the 19th and early 20th centuries. His career is the subject of an indoor show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Including miniature cameo portraits, exquisitely sensitive relief portraits of upper-class women and children in marble and bronze and a monumental marble figure of Hiawatha, the exhibition of almost four dozen works from the museum’s collection displays a kind of traditional skill and idealism that practically no one possesses anymore.”

[Of course, lots of artists possess the general sort of idealism and skill that Johnson is talking about here, but they're not the artists that are hailed by his New York Art World: no, Ken Johnson himself cautiously reserves the word "masterpiece" to describe the blown-up balloon animals of Jeff Koons.] Johnson continues:

“The big problem for outdoor art is the absence of any consensus of values in our pluralistic, multicultural society. It’s hard to imagine a public sculpture of a hero today that would not be regarded by one faction or another as partisan. As an unscientific sampling of art in the public realm this summer confirms, contemporary outdoor art tends to offer unobjectionable, mildly decorative or entertaining and relatively empty experiences.”

Decorative, empty, yes… but why “unobjectionable”? OF COURSE this crap is objectionable! I object! I object!

And so does Craig Ferguson. He’s figured it out:

[Via Telegraph.co.uk]

In art as in politics, people have begun to see through the charade to the emptiness that lies beneath, says Janet Daley.

By an extraordinary coincidence, two of the most spectacularly successful confidence tricks of the late 20th century are now reaching their endgame within a mile of one another. In Downing Street, the phantasm that was New Labour is disintegrating: having lost Tony Blair – the Great Illusionist, whose personality seemed somehow to make its vacuities and contradictions credible – it is now being exposed as an opportunist scam. Meanwhile, in Trafalgar Square, the cultural fraud which began as a decadent joke by Marcel Duchamp nearly a hundred years ago – that anything can be art providing there are enough conspirators who claim that it is, and enough suckers who believe them – is playing a final, nihilistic hand.

Then again, perhaps it is not a coincidence at all. These two systematic deceits were, when you think of it, quite similar in both their ends and their means. What we are seeing is the simultaneous collapse of politics that isn’t politics, and art that isn’t art. Both of them had managed, with quite startling effectiveness, to replace the actual substance of their occupation – governing in the case of New Labour, and the creation of works which reflect, and comment on, the human condition in the case of contemporary art – with superbly professional public relations, dazzling, but meaningless rhetoric and brazen self-justification which was sustainable so long as it did not over-reach itself. But with over-confidence came the fall. The palpable failures have been followed by public outrage.

…

Over in Trafalgar Square, the growing disgust that is now enveloping Antony Gormley’s inflated absurdity of an “artwork” has an air of resigned contempt. The relentless parade of exhibitionists who have been licensed to disport themselves like talentless buskers in one of Britain’s most magnificent commemorative spaces, is the least of it. The accompanying panoply of building site structures, wire fencing and safety netting, security and broadcasting paraphernalia has taken over roughly a quarter of the square that was Charles Barry’s memorial to a great moment in this nation’s history of defying foreign tyranny. And what is this ugly travelling circus celebrating? The logically nonsensical idea that there is no distinction between art and life: a proposition which, were it actually believed, would put an end to the possibility of making art at all. (If everything is art, then nothing is.)

For many who have been simply bemused or faintly exasperated by the defiant narcissistic vacuity of contemporary art, the Gormley project, with its appropriately inane title, One and Other, is a step too far. It is the defiling of a civic space that belongs to the country – which stands for something which many people suddenly feel, perhaps to their surprise, should be treated with dignity and respect. It is not fanciful to suggest that across the minds of many of those onlookers who have hurled sarcastic epithets at the occupants of the fourth plinth, may be running the thought: what sort of country have we become that we allow our national monuments to be treated in this way? Does such an absence of historical pride and dignity possibly bear some connection to the collapse of national self-belief? And a further corollary: is it any wonder that we have so much difficulty persuading the children of immigrants that they should feel proud to be British?

I don’t know the answers, but I do know that it is pretty much beyond inconceivable that the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, say, could ever be turned into a platform for performing (or non-performing) nonentities who were encouraged to believe that their mere existence was an art form. (And the US has famously had rather less difficulty persuading its immigrant population to feel pride in their American nationality.)

Now you may feel that this sort of irreverence that Britain manifests towards its history and its institutions is really a sign of healthy cultural confidence. Much the same sort of claim was made in the 1960s when it was fashionable to plaster the Union Jack over everything from carrier bags to coffee mugs: it was salutary that the symbols of patriotism and national glory should not be accorded a kind of quasi-mystical status. Engaging in “flag worship”, giving sacramental significance to the icons of nationhood was a sign of insecurity or, worse, a sinister quasi-fascist tendency which could turn vicious
in a moment.

Of course, there is something in this. British insouciance can feel very grown-up and sophisticated – and yet, and yet. When does playful impudence slip over into cynicism and alienation? How large a gap is there between not-taking-things-too-seriously and discovering that you no longer know how to take anything seriously? How much can you mock your own history before you become disdainful of it?

So here we are in this state of both disillusion and awakening. What have we discovered? That the easy solutions lead nowhere. In politics, the argument that you didn’t have to make hard choices because you could have two opposing things at the same time, ended by achieving nothing.

And in art, the idea that you didn’t need to use skill or craft or insight to create anything – you just had to drag a bit of “life” in off the street and display it – was finally exposed in all its emptiness. Now at least we know that what we actually need is real politics which changes the world instead of just rearranging words, and real art which involves an individual imagination observing, reflecting and depicting the life with which we are all trying come to terms. It’s a start.

Last weekend I flew out to Port Moody to attend the 2009 Wearable Art Awards red carpet gala performance. I shot a bit of low-res video at the event: though it’s tough to make out much detail, it gives an idea of the charming venue, and the fashion-show flavour of the evening. Entries to the 2009 Wearable Art Awards came from across Canada, the United States, Japan and Mexico. I’m glad I could make it out to see the show.

Today, I am pleased to both discover and announce that one of my sculptures, The Helmet of Laocoön, has been awarded the 2009 Wearable Art Award in the Headdress Category, sponsored by the City of Port Moody. Thanks go out to the jurors: Stuart Sproule and Barnaby Killam of Redflag Design, Vancouver; Sam Carter, Associated Professor and director of the Emily Carr Institute (“ECI”) Foundation; and Gayle Ramsden, a textile artist who teaches at the University of the Fraser Valley; also, much thanks to event organizers, the Port Moody Arts Society, and especially Wearable Art Awards Coordinator Natalie Purschwitz.

“As for beauty, the opposite of kitsch, recent decades have not treated it kindly. That’s particularly true in the visual arts. Perhaps a large public still believes in the idea of beauty, but that same public mostly ignores (and is ignored by) the highly professionalized world of art critics, professors, curators — and selfconsciously serious artists. “Beautiful” ceased to be an adjective of praise in the art world decades ago. It’s become the virtue that dares not speak its name. There are now more people writing about art than ever before; what they are not writing about is beauty.”