A Sign From Dia: Proposed Oil Drilling Near the Spiral Jetty?

An urgent email has gone out with a call to action. It seems that Pearl Montana Exploration and Production, LTD, submitted a drilling application for an area called West Rozel in the Great Salt Lake. This was picked up by the Friends of the Great Salt Lake, and they contacted Nancy Holt. I received her forwarded email:

> Dear Friends,
>
> Yesterday I received an urgent email from Lynn DeFreitas, Director of Friends
> of the Great Salt Lake, telling me of plans for drilling oil in the Salt Lake
> near Spiral Jetty. See Attachments. The deadline for protest is tomorrow,
> Wednesday, at 5PM. Of course, DIA has been informed and are meeting about it
> today.
>
> I have been told by Lynn that the oil wells will not be above the water, but
> that means some kind of industrial complex of pipes and pumps beneath the
> water and on the shore. The operation would require roads for oil tank
> trucks, cranes, pumps etc. which produce noise and will severely alter the
> wild, natural place...

The issue at hand is that the proposed drilling site is withing eyeshot of Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. Alook at the drilling application shows that the staging area will be Little Valley Harbor, about 50 miles away by my best guess. One can't be seen from the other.

I remember from my visit to the Spiral Jetty years ago. An abandoned mobile home--all shot up, an old half-buried pick up truck, and the remnants of a wooden oil exploration jetty that dotted the landscape. The rusted equipment brought to mind Smithson's Tour of the Monuments of Passaic and the pier Entropy and The New Monuments. I'm sure Smithson viewed that same dilapidated jetty next to his that was under construction. I expect thoughts of entropy danced through his mind too. Thirty years later (after my visit) I've read that Dia has removed the debris, too impatient for its eventual decay.

For those who are opposed to all oil drilling on principle, that's another story. Living among the oil rigs of Long Beach, I'm willing to accept the anti-aesthetic, for the benefit of oil that hasn't been shipped from the other side of the planet.

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Some Paintings at Bergamot Station

Lat night I attend Michael Asher's opening at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (more on that later). Beforehand I stopped by Track 16 for a look at the Doug Harvey-curated painting show. As expected the LA Times' Christopher Knight--official fluffer of painting's corpse--gave the show rave reviews.

I couldn't help but think of some of the feelings I had while looking at paintings this Summer at the Venice Biennale. Most of the work on canvas that held my attention was the stuff by earlier generations of painters. For those who were involved in the historical conversation around painting--before it became historical--it makes sense to continue the conversation. Likewise, the strong work at Bergamot Station came from the older artists. Mat Gleason had a different take on the age skew of the show when he blogged, "Doug Harvey Mines the AARP." His take makes sense when you see he curated "8 under 28," at Gallery C. Mat goes on to say:

Many of the artists in the show told me off the record that the sum total of Doug’s curating was to say “Give me a big painting. Real big.” - so you understand that the show is more about Doug Harvey overhanging pictures as a reflexive defense mechanism against being criticized. Paintings are placed on walls they will just fit on, there, the end.
Like a drunk frat boy looking at the hot sorority girl and mumbling “Tits. Big Tits,” the fact that Ninety Five percent of these paintings are terrible doesn’t matter – they’re all just so big, that is all that matters. The sorority girl’s personality and possible STDs don’t matter, it is just the club she is in and the size of those headlights.

But who am I to cast stones when I harbor my own artistic paraphilias? Only this (which I've typed before): my personal view is that the idea comes first. The next step is to find the best way to express that idea, and THEN pick up a brush, or chisel, or video camera, or whatever's necessary to express that idea. I think there are people in the show who do this, from oldsters like Jim Shaw and youngsters like Mike Chang. I also love the incongruity of Monica Majoli's watercolors paired with queer kink and lush landscapes.

There was plenty to look at that was worthwhile, but like last year's Venice or Documenta shows, the show looked like the curator thew everything into the pot, and hoped that there would be something for everyone to like. But where's the curating in that? Even Mr Knight thinks there was an "absurdly large" number of works in the show.

Afterwards I kept thinking of the title of the show, "Some Paintings." It's a riff on the Stones' song from their Some Girls album. Like painting, the Rolling Stones where at a point in their career where it seemed that musical tastes had passed them by. I was in high school, and everything from disco to punk covered musical tastes from the pandering to the profane. Rather than fade away, the Rolling Stones covered the genres with the album's Miss You and Shattered.

There's a metaphor in there somewhere: is the medium of painting is the old, wrinkled, but still rockin' Keith Richards and Mick Jagger? Or like disco in the 70's, it's what sells.

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The Visible Dragon

"What's the next big thing in art?" seems to be the question that has echoed through CalArts' institutional halls for nearly forty years. The proto-movements that have emerged (and floundered) since Post Modernism's critical redundancies (Sensationalism anyone?) have only captured a small fraction of the art world's hearts and minds. In the now apocryphal story, Dave Hickey was asked about the next big thing in art way back in the 90's:

A question from the audience rouses Hickey from a soporific haze: he is asked to name his predictive choice for the "Issues of the Nineties." His response-in a word, "beauty"-served to silence the assembled graduate students and academics, and his answer, "just hovered there, as well, a word without a language, quiet, amazing and alien in that sleek institutional space-like a Pre-Raphaelite dragon aloft on its leathery wings."

In the years since, I've often read and heard similar words of wistful longing for the return of lush and seductive images.

It is almost as if the art object should function like an inverted Advent Calendar of my youth: behind each paper door was some sensual treat: a bit of chocolate or shiny trinket, leading up to Santa's grand prize. Instead of hiding behind a door, those visceral moments of pleasure are fixed to the surface. Mixed in with the linseed oil, they catch light and reflect it back into some devouring retina.

On the other hand, there's art without the beautiful freebie. I was chatting with a classmate this week, and I called it the Hans Haacke school of anti-aesthetics. For those whose art education was predicated on formalism, there was always the beauty door that let them enter the work. If the artist doesn't include the beauty door, that viewer bounces off the piece, unable to enter, rubbing his head and walking away.

In Noah Chasin's review of Invisible Dragon, he cites Hickey's example of Mapplethorpe:

Hickey wants us to find rapture in Mapplethorpe’s own erotic submission, the sublimation of his sexual will into visual expression of in unconventional subjectivity, in order to see how we, too can give ourselves over to unbridled desire...

As one who derives no small amount of bliss from his rejection of all that is fashionable within the art academe, Hickey still believes, romantically, in a categorical understanding of beauty as the precondition for pleasure. But Mapplethorpe’s images make clear the fact that beauty is not about visual pleasure, but the visceral sensations (pleasant or otherwise) that spontaneously erupt from within the narrative frame. Hickey writes eloquently of the consequence of beauty, but ultimately pays too little attention to the beauty of consequence.

Or the beauty of relevance. Hickey, Knight, and others readily jump at the chance to poo poo stuff made by artists working or educated in academic institutions, yet it is this kind of intellectual residency found in some MFA programs that allow the art maker the chance to acquire some content to infuse into their forms, while holding the art deciders and their filthy lucre at bay.

Us 2008 CalArts MFA are still in the process of planning our cotillion. Most likely, our group show will take place in Los Angeles' Chinatown. This morning I was thinking about our show, and came up with my personal theme: The Visible Dragon. Consider it a reaction to beauty without consequence, or the next step after idolizing the invisible.

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My Vegan Drinking Buddy for President

Four years ago talk was of folks preferring Bush over Kerry because Bush was someone that they could see having a beer with. Perhaps there is something to this. I would much rather have a beer that comes with an intelligent conversation and a person who isn't going to shove their religion down my throat. In addition, I think that beer would go down much easier if their political positions closely matched my own. On the other hand, some Americans prefer a night of heavy drinking where you wake up in a pool of vomit in a Kennebunkport jail cell. Go figure.

While John Kerry endorsed Barack Obama, Bob Kerrey backed Hillary Clinton. What's so interesting is his qualified endorsement:

Former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey was candid about his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, despite what he admitted was an affinity for Barack Obama’s less doctrinaire politics.

But discussing the importance American voters place on a candidate’s personal likability, Mr. Kerrey said: “If you’re talking about having somebody in your living room every day for four years — on the television — people are going to have to like listening to them. In that category, I like Obama better.”

Once again, we have a voter picking a candidate by some criteria other that how well the candidates political positions match their own:

After several friends had e-mailed him a link to an Internet quiz that uses a checklist of issues to determine which candidate a participant matches up best with, Mr. Kerrey said, he “broke down and tried it.”

So, did his answers add up as an Obama person’s?

“No, actually, I was ‘Dennis Kucinich,’ ” he said.

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The Boneyard, Where Old Jet Aircraft Go to Die

Over the holiday break Robert and I passed through Mojave, CA and took a tour of their famous airplane junkyard AKA, The Boneyard. Because of the dry weather, parts of the Mojave airport are used for long-term storage of jet aircraft, like the mylar covered Air Canada plane above.
We also saw a fleet of these DC-9s, left to moulder after Air California went belly up in 1987.
Here's a really old Southwest 737. Check out the old super skinny (and probably super loud) nacelle on the Pratt and Whitney turbofan!
It looks like they were in a hurry taking the front door of this Lockheed Tri-Star; its Rolls Royce engines are long gone too.Sorry for the crappy photos. Not enough left for me to figure out what this was. It might be a 757, with the twin 0ver-wing emergency exits.
Fly DC Jets no more. Born in Long Beach, died in Mojave.
I hear that this can happen to your car if you park it overnight in a bad neighborhood.
These last two pics (above and below) are of an old KLM 747 that were leased to Air Algeria for hadj flights after it's prime. Driving by I thought that it's only a matter of time before one of these old clunkers crashes with 400 Muslims on its way to Mecca and the Christian right gloat.
If you're interested in taking a tour or the Mojave Airport aircraft graveyard, drive (or fly) out to the Mojave Airport. Below the control tower is a coffee shop with good food and friendly service. Each table has a speaker where you can hear the control tower radio. Just tell your waitress you want to tour the boneyard, and she'll direct you to the office. I think they charge ten bucks a person.

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Broad Prematurely Withdrawals, Leaving LACMA Unsatisfied

Via the NYT:

Eli Broad has decided to retain permanent control of his works in an independent foundation that makes loans to museums rather than give any of the art away. The decision is a striking reversal by Mr. Broad, who as recently as a year ago said that he planned to give most of his holdings to one or several museums.

Long assumed to be at the top of the list of potential recipients was the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which next month is to open the $56 million Broad Contemporary Art Museum.

Coming on the eve of the opening, the decision is a potential embarrassment for the Los Angeles museum. It was widely criticized in 2001 for mounting a major exhibition of works from Mr. Broad’s collection without having secured a promised gift of the works, an act that is prohibited at many prominent art institutions because it can increase the market value of the collection.

The decision also has far-reaching implications for the way museums interact with big donors.

Chatter on the Cybernet: A good discussion at Ed Winkleman, Govan attempts a positive spin, LA Curbed, MAN talks to BAF, and Time. Plus many more, and more to come.

My thoughts posted to Ed Winkleman's:

I have this sense that Broad took what he learned in real estate development, and has applied it to art. The value in a plot of land comes from what it is in proximity to: resources to make it viable (like water and roads) and for lack of a better term, being in view of the sublime. The WPA built great lodges on the rim of the Grand Canyon and in Yosemite to allow the general public access to the sublime, much like our public art museums do. Since these public lands have yet to be privatized, Broad buys a parking structure in a nondescript section of downtown Los Angeles, and donates funds to the building of Disney Hall. Now the parking structure has a view of the sublime and can be developed at a higher price point.

Likewise Broad can contribute funds to the BCAM at LACMA, and through institutional proximity, increase the value of his collection.

Like Walt Disney he's given buildings to CalArts. Walt saw CalArts as a factory to turn out workers to produce the art to be monetized. Broad has done the same at UCLA. It all seems quite shrewd, in a capitalist sort of way.

A similar thing has gone on when Blum & Poe (and other galleries) used MOCA as a way to increase Murakami's price point. The platinum-leaf covered Oval Buddha is now featured prominently in MOCA's newsletter, adding to the works significance and value.

With the death of art criticism (from the beginning of Ed's post) to the lack of curatorial independence for museums, we seem to no longer have any outside arbiter of taste.

The measure of the sublime is now located in the price.

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Primary Choice: Deciding on a Presidential Candidate

Thanks to my personal panopticon--the site meter--I've noticed and increase in traffic from people doing Google searches for websites that are supposed to help voters pick a presidential candidate. Since the primary voting season will be over in a few months, I assume these searches are being done by undecided folks with an choice nigh. In this month's Los Angeles Magazine, John Powers sums it up quite well:

When I ask friends which presidential candidate they like best, they usually say John Edwards. When I ask whose election they’d find most thrilling, they nearly all tell me Barack Obama (though they wish he’d stop being so damn drab during the debates). When I ask who they actually agree with, most laugh and say Dennis Kucinich. But when I ask who they think is going to get the nomination, they all say Hillary Clinton—often with an audible groan.

Which makes me wonder about the triangulation and rationalizations that people go through when making this choice. (Using the example above) If Kucinich best matches your political views, what would make you vote for someone who disagrees with your views? I expect for some voters, they realize they are voting for someone who will run against the candidate nominated by the other party. For others, I believe it's a desire to vote for a winner.

This seems to come across in David Brooks recent op/ed piece in the NY Times.

Iowa won’t settle the race, but the rest of the primary season is going to be colored by the glow of this result. Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity — the primordial themes of the American experience.

And Americans are not going to want to see this stopped. When an African-American man is leading a juggernaut to the White House, do you want to be the one to stand up and say No?

Yes, America loves a winner! Even Ed Winkleman, a fellow blogger of art and politics (and an Edwards supporter) seems to be caught winner's fever. I watched the YouTube video he posted--Obama's Iowa Victory Speech--and I couldn't help but notice the lack of specific content. His message seemed to be one of hope, and as my grandpa never said, "Hope in one hand, shit in the other, and what are you left with?"

The three top-tier Democratic candidates, all heavily covered and promoted by the media conglomerates that bring you news and entertainment, and provide you with your connection to the Interweb, will do little to change the status quo. In the speech, Obama talks about hope and change, and equates Iowa voter's choice and hope with that of civil rights demonstrators (about 12 minutes in). This seems a bit disingenuous, when the implied change is more akin to switching from Coke to Pepsi. Obama supports increased military spending. How does the continued writing of checks to Halliburton and Blackwater support real change?

My hope is that when voters are attempting some sort of calculus of picking a primary candidate, will bring another variable into the equation. There are a few candidates out there
who, as Bill Moyers put it, "Speak truth to power." My vote is to keep those voices alive and part of the political process. A vote for a lower-tier candidate will keep the conversation going up through the party convention. I've contributed to both the Gravel and Kucinich campaigns (on my paltry graduate assistant salary). Whether you send a C-note or a Hamilton, continued finances for their campaigns will keep independent candidates in the debates, and perhaps a position closer to one you actually hold will be heard.

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Practice Makes Perfect

Roberta Smith had a linguistic bone to pick with some of the language that gets attached to art making (in particular, the term 'practice'), and her article seems to have gotten Andrew Bernardini's and Tom Moody's panties in a wad. Andrew responds:

The word held a special appeal for me. Rather than just a person who made things, luxury items for a a well-heeled clientèle, a practice didn't have to make any thing. It could, but it didn't have to. A practice was about doing, a focus on process. The work of an artists was not necessarily to make things, but to do things. When I started hearing artists (not critics, professors, or philosophers, but artists) say practice, the word was electrifying.

So in the process of making stuff came up in my conversation with Nicholas Grider. I may have said 'inside joke' but I also remember saying 'hermetic.' Having a large gap between my undergrad and graduate years, I know what it's like to make something and have it hang on a wall for a quarter of a century. As Julian Schnabel said on the radio today (comparing art to movie making) art is static. It is the world around it and the people that revisit the art that changes. I think about how works age, comparing Dan Flavin's tribute to a failed presidential candidate and a Russian painter-architect. I wonder how many kids today even know who George McGovern is, and how that knowledge changes the valence of the work.

Which is partly why I questioned making art about current art market high jinks and how that effects the current crop of graduate students. I'm trying to think of artwork that addressed the declining market of 1987, or which graduates were showing work, but if any was being made, I don't remember it. Which brings me to Mr. Moody's comment:

A historian might use "Duchamp's practice" to distinguish something the artist did from something he thought or wrote, e.g.: "It is a matter of scholarly debate whether chess merely informed Duchamp's theory or could be considered part of his practice."

As for a grad student saying "My practice"--yes, it sounds pretentious as a description of two years' worth of work and is probably the phrase that set Smith off. But one wonders why a Times critic is hearing that. (my emphasis) Could it be because hot grad students are considered the only viable players in the current art market? Maybe that's what she's really mad about.

Which is sort of creepy, in a 'guy in a trench coat on the playground' sort of way. Why is a critic from the Times hearing that--L.A., New York, or otherwise? Aren't there artists outside of grad school making interesting art that they can type about? Personally I'm here to talk to faculty and my peers and have the luxury to experiment in ways that I may not if I'm making objects to sell to pay my student loans. Grad school is a great opportunity. If I wanted to play to the market, I could have easily skipped this step.

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Ansel, Andy, and I

This holiday break Robert and I stopped by Manzanar between our Basque dinner in Bakersfield and a visit to the airplane boneyard in Mojave.
Back when it was being used as an internment camp Ansel Adams visited the site and photographed the same monument.
After the war, most of the buildings were sold off as war surplus. At the Visitor's Center gift shop they had copies of Andrew Freeman's book for sale. He took pictures of some of the buildings in their current condition, including this one near Jawbone.
On our way to Mojave we stopped to take pictures of the same building.
It had been badly vandalized since the previous photos were taken.
That got me to thinking about other famous photographs, like Ansel Adam's picture of a cemetery monument near my house in Long Beach. I visited the site when I first moved here, and found that the oil drilling platforms were long gone and a bank of green trees now covered the hill. The scene was quite bucolic, verdant, and restful. A few months back some vandals toppled the angel, inadvertently returning some emotional angst to the scene.

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