On the Eighth Day They Critiqued the Ethnography
Sarah Thornton came full circle Tuesday, offering her take on the art world in CalArts room F200, the site of chapter two and Michael Asher’s infamous critique class. (The class is so mythic, that the twelve-hour critique Thornton sat in on and described in the book morphed to fifteen hours in the lecture).
Last night the room was being used for the visiting artist lecture series, and in the back of the room next to the video camera that records the presentation, were remnants of the previous iteration of Post Studio Art.
Most interesting was the focus on validation in each of the overlapping magesteria depicted in the book. Besides California Institute of the Arts' classroom, other chapters focused on a meeting between MOCA and Blum & Poe at Murakami’s studio, the Venice Biennale, the Turner Prize and the like. In the case of the commercial spaces, validation can take the form of pounds sterling; in the case of Artforum, caché (and a premium) comes with ads placed in the first 30% of the magazine.
What seems evident to me—though not explicitly referenced in the book—is the anxiety that is the evil twin of validation. For the auction houses, it can come form setting the estimates too high and having work bought in. For gallerists it can come from selecting a stable that isn’t picked for biennials or awards, and from being pushed down the rungs in the art-fair-satellite hierarchy.
While Thornton did speak of this anxiety among collectors, my sense is that in the most opinionated curator or magazine editor is a poker player unsure enough of her hand that she’s forced to play her poker face. If Artfoum sees a risk in putting a younger artist on the cover, then it seems they’re more comfortable seconding than nominating. And if—according to Rhonda Lieberman—Artforum is an amalgam of upscale tastemakers and windbags, the former should obviate the need for bloviators if the makers of taste believed in the own credibility.
There were several “days” missing from Seven Days in the Art World: notably, not-for-profit spaces and Thornton herself. It might bee seen that the Paul Brach Visiting Artist Lecture Series was an attempt by Thornton to insert herself in the CalArts critique machine, and by emerging relatively unscathed, receive her own gold star of validation.
On my way out I stopped to briefly look at the artwork left from Michael Asher’s last class. The piece was the simulacra of a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) that seemed to describe the hazards of the sheet itself along with the vitrine in which it was encased.
Full circle indeed.
she remarked it was a fifteen hour critique that day.
ReplyDeleteoops, should have finished the sentence.
ReplyDeleteThe Bookforum review says, "Described by the Daily Telegraph as “Britain’s hippest academic” (which is akin to calling someone “Bosnia’s cuddliest war criminal”)..."
ReplyDeleteAs funny as her presentation was, she came across as disingenuous. She painted herself as an art world neophyte, (probably so we'd go easy on her) but in an interview she said, "I studied art history as an undergraduate and worked in a gallery before I went on to do my PhD, so my interest in art is longstanding."
With all her note taking in the presentation, I expect we'll be fodder for her broad brush.
There is a significant difference between having an interest in art and being an art world insider. When I started researching the art world, I knew no dealers, collectors, or auction house people personally. I had a few friends from my undergraduate days who were curators and art historians, but that was the extent of it. I had a job at an art gallery in Montreal in the summer of 1985. It was pretty menial and my most insiderish moment was writing a letter to the sculptor George Segal. Sorry you thought I was disingenuous. Sometimes there is no pleasing some cynics!
ReplyDeleteAll best,
Sarah
Looking over the bookforum review and reading:
ReplyDelete"It’s also the only place where professors like Michael Asher (profiled in “The Crit”) train young people to produce “situational interventions” into culture that will make them millionaire pop stars virtually overnight."
I can't help but question why Calarts was the chosen school and Post Studio the chosen crit. [It most likely resides in the fact the individuals like Durant and Muller have 'run the gauntlet' as it were] But this isn't the implication of the course as its teacher would have it. With this quote it seems it was under our noses all along:
Michael Asher avoids the market by forging art stars!
Ha
My logic had little to do with the success of a few students. In order to follow the conceptual structure of the book (in which every chapter is an event in a key institution of the art world), I needed a "day" in an art school. I suspected that the chapter should be set in LA because educational establishments are the distinguishing feature of the LA art world. As I went around LA interviewing people, I kept puzzling over what the hell could be my event, then Fiona Jack invited me to her Crit. As soon as she mentioned it, I realized my problem was solved beautifully. Not only was this a narrative event upon which to hang all the interview material I'd gathered (about teaching and becoming artists), it didn't feel the slightest bit arbitrary because Michael's class is the most extreme, iconic version of its type. Just as Venice is to Biennales, so Post-Studio is to Crits.
ReplyDeleteBest,
Sarah
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI follow the use and significance of Post-Studio in the logic of the extreme and iconic within your presentation of each of the seven; however, to posit the course/chapter amongst observations on market trading, advertisement, "collectoring", and cocktail art-talk appears forced.
The chapter seems to focus more on the thing Post-Studio is conceived as (a degree on a CV) and less on what its intention provides (a space to think, speak, and develop a confidence of position).
Even though your response at the lecture eschewed the "how-to-succeed by knowing where-to-be" question that someone asserted the book as having, the brevity of these events for which the chapters examine do so in the same voice, and thusly, in my eyes, create a suggested lineage with Post-Studio as a system not clicking in whereas a UCLA system might. I realize your research brought you to Calarts over other LA institutions and to Post-Studio for the obvious longevity and effect its had on generations of artists-once-students. But it just seems alien sitting in between an auction and an art fair.
(By-the-way, this is the Adam you met with at Calarts three years back. We discussed the class, and you photographed some little chairs in my studio.)
“School and the media are inherently discursive institutions, sites within which discourse becomes a locus of symbolic force, symbolic violence. A communicative relation is established between teacher and student, performer and audience, in which the first part, as purveyor of official ‘truths’, exerts an institutional authority over the second. Students and audience are reduced to the status of passive listeners, rather than active subjects of knowledge…Like home, factory, prison and city streets, school and the media are sites of an intense, if often covert, daily struggle in which language and power are inextricably connected.”
ReplyDelete-Alan Sekula, School is a Factory
Having logged in five semesters of Post Studio Art over my two degrees, I have to say that there's been an unavoidabe change in the rigor and intelectual focus in Asher's class.
ReplyDeleteIn the mid-'80's, there was a sense of Marxist-tinged idealism--that thoughtful consideration of the context of artistic production and display could forge a practice that would hold its own against the influence and lucre of the "six other days." In some ways, conceptualism and the institutional critique became the logical outcome of both minimalism and progressive political discourse.
Somewhere along the way, cultural reletivism made any number of positions valid avenues of artistic pursuit. Post studio art became a merit badge to be earned, and attending the class became more about endurance than content. People who didn't want to answer the question, "Why the fuck are you painting?" didn't attend the class. Now days, the question is no longer asked.
Adam, you and I can remember when a pink silkscreened self portrait (with the artist posed like an elephant) became the object of critique. A couple hours into the class made it seem that the current crop of Asherettes were more into showing off their ability to inject content into an empty vessel than pursuing a line of critical thinking.
Granted that UCLA would be a better "fit" with the market-oriented approach of most of "7 Days," Asher's class' transformation to iconic status speaks volumes about late capitalism's ability to comodify the Marxist critique, and the willingness of middle class art students to go along for the ride.
What a deplorable world we participate in.
ReplyDeleteTo speak of my reasons for participating (in my way) in Post-Studio for the years I did was neither to be fooled or let pass injection works or uphold the Marxist idealism of the 80's. I attended simply to think and problem solve. Of course, I just work with MFAs; I don't have plans to become one. So, perhaps I approach the dialogue differently because I could/can only speak of it outside of the discussion in class.
Michael wound up placing you in a privelaged position, outside of Friday's conversations. Like the Sekula quote a couple comments above says, "language and power are inextricably connected."
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested in hearing what the current crop of Asherettes think.