Ingrid Schaffner
That Someone
I once invited him for cocktails in Paris. He rang
my doorbell at 9 rue St. Romain, to say that "he had
come to say that he could not come," and then he left.
But a new idea will appear
and someone will always
say, "Duchamp first suggested that," although
where or when they will not remember.
- Julien Levy, "Duchampiana," View (Marcel Duchamp
Issue), March 1945.
David Robbins
At the Center for Contemporary Acquisitions, panic! In its exhibition schedule
a hole, no less unsightly for being small, had opened: A contemporary
artist had up and cancelled on them. Cancelled! Word spread through
the CCA's offices as fast as would news of some Biennial's invitees,
and for the better part of an hour bedlam darkened those white halls.
After the junior curatorial staff had managed to revive all the interns,
a tough old bird of a chief curator emerged from her office to address
the youngsters, most of whom still lay where they had fallen.
Lorgnette Danvers. During her forty-five years in the contemporary art
game, what hadn't she seen? At the risk of overstatement, not much. And
now, just as the junior staff had hoped she would, she stood before the
troops unfazed, an Omar Bradley in Claire McCardell. In a voice steady
as the MacArthur Foundation's income she reminded the still shaken neophytes
that, indeed, ugly episodes such as this can be the price of working with
good, living artists: inevitably, a few of the rascals will be secure enough
to pull this sort of stunt. Granted, a most rare event it was--thankfully!--but
from time to time it did happen, and when it did there wasn't very much
a helpless art institution could draw upon in the way of retribution--that
is, other than such tried-and-true gestures as, say, publicly deaccessioning
every stick of the offending artist's work at the various stops of the
Antiques Roadshow. Lorgnette Danvers chuckled darkly. There'd be plenty
of time for fun later on. Oh yes.
The old curator lady now let her art-hardened eyes sweep the stricken faces
before her. Her pitiless gaze induced a second fainting spell in one of
the interns, and nearby samaritans moved to give assistance. Leave her
be! barked the seasoned curator, the kid'll be alright, eventually--and
if not, well, not everyone's meant to be in this business. The samaritans
backed off. Lorgnette strode the floor like a senator with NRA backing.
You pretty things best worry about yourselves, she commanded, 'cause you've
got a decision to make--the most important decision some of you will ever
make. Are you going to let this little bump in your career path--a cancellation!
pfaw!--prevent you from putting on one humdinger of an art exhibition?
Alright, sure-- we've got no theme, no roster, no design for the announcement
card. But in the name of Picasso, people, consider what we do have. We've
got this space--and a handsome space it is, too. Seventh best space east
of the Catskills, according to Dawdle magazine. That's not all. We've got
a mailing list that could choke a horse. We've got the phone number for
Sunrise Liquors, and they deliver. What's more, we've got a charter that's
firmly committed to mounting new exhibitions of contemporary art every
two months. You think they have charters like that in China? Achh, why
am I even wasting my time with...--you kids don't know how good you've
got it! When I picture your ancestors, fleeing the hardships, the persecutions,
the arrogant curators of the Old World.... Coming to these shores with
nothing in their pockets but a few sticks of charcoal and some crumpled
sheets of Strathmore. Fixative? They didn't have money for fixative! Forced
to give up their hopes of becoming artists, were most of them, forced to
sell rags and pickles and lightbulbs, forced to buy up the strip malls
and multiplexes and cable-TV operations which, they could only pray, might
pay for the kind of education that would enable you, their unborn grandchildren,
to participate in offering the world a higher grade of icon. And now you're
going to desecrate their memory, insult their efforts, spit on their hopes
just because one little artist has pulled out of one little exhibition?
Pausing, Lorgnette reached inside her blouse to draw out her favorite meerschaum
pipe, the one with the bowl in the shape of the Whitney. Westermann himself
had carved it for her. Feeling its smooth surface now induced recall of
his chiselled abs, and she shuddered inside. Where was I? Oh yes, she said,
that's what the CCA's got. Question is: what have you got? CCA's not going
anywhere. CCA's going to be right here. Question is: are you? Don't bother
looking in your fancy art history books, your livres d'artist, your catalogues
raisonÈe for the answer to that one. Lorgnette tapped the bowl-end of the
pipe gently against her breast. Here, she said. The answer's in here. She
coughed the merest gossamer of a cough.
When she had finished, the room was quiet as a Sunday in Bruxelles, the
only sound in it being the faint whine of helium escaping from the inflated
sculpture of copulating PokÈmons left over from the previous exhibition.
The staff looked at each other, their vision no longer blurred from tears.
Timidly at first, then gradually gaining in conviction, one after another
the members of the CCA staff rose to their feet and declared their solidarity.
Brave little soldiers! A show there would be! Tossed berets momentarily
clotted the air up by the ceiling ducts while, down below, one wise old
lady curator touched a flame to her meerschaum. The staff hugged as Lorgnette
drew deep and frowned with satisfaction. These kids were alright. Art looked
to be in pretty good hands for a while yet.
But ma'am, what will we show? asked the littlest intern.
Who speaks? Identify yourself, child.
Patina, ma'am, if you please.
Well, Patina, we'll just have to work on that, won't we? CCA-A-A-A-A huddle!
The clash of perfumes inside the huddle was as nothing compared to the
clash of ideas.
Millenium! squeaked one curator--how about a millenium theme? The staff,
milleniumed out, groaned in unison.
Identity? floated another curator. Gender and race and all that sexy icky
tribal stuff. And is tattooing still popular?
My vote is for some of that furniture art!
Hypnotic painting? Post-hypnotic painting? Pre-? Re-? De-?
Cyber! We simply must do cyber. Cyber's not only today and tomorrow, it's
the day after that!
Round and round the proposals went, no one idea gaining a quorum. For the
better part of two days the CCA staff remained in that huddle. Lorgnette
relished making things as difficult as possible: Are we curators mere surrealists,
blithely juxtaposing any two objects and resigning ourselves to whatever
spark they generate? We are not! She insisted that, just as a good lawyer
never asks a witness any question he doesn't already know the answer to,
so too a good curator knows in advance the contours of the meaning-set
a grouping of objects will establish. Meaning likes to be coaxed into view,
she purred.
In the end, it turned out to be Patina, the littlest intern, who broke
the deadlock. Hers was a modest idea, yet to the weary ring of CCA curators
something about it seemed right and true, not to mention doable.
The show opened two weeks later. In the east gallery, a video projector
showed the 1934 version of the film Imitation of Life (directed
by John Stahl, starring Claudette Colbert). On a wall in the west gallery,
another video projector showed the 1959 version of the film, directed by
Douglas Sirk, starring Lana Turner. Copies of both films were offered for
sale at the reception desk.
Carolee Thea
The German Canteen (from the Sheila stories)
World War II bunkers here make excellent art galleries and an insignificant
memorial for the Holocaust stands near the square where vendors assemble
to market produce on weekends.
One rainy Saturday morning in late October, after covering the Firenze
Biennale, I caught the days last train out of the Florence station
before a railworkers strike. The exquisite journey through the Italian
and Austrian alps was tainted by an uneasiness I felt, brought on by my
fixation on Hollywood World War II films, and Claude Raines, George Raft,
Debra Kerr et al. The train broke down three minutes from the Austrian
border and for two hours we sat abandoned by the strikers. Eventually we
eased into the Austrian station where border guards got on, one of them
had a limp and wore an eyepatch. I was told that this was a routine check
for the illegal migrants now emerging from the Baltics and Turkey.
Two hours later in Munich, I was met by my young German friends who whisked
me off to a friends studio. Later we all dined at a restaurant at
the top of the park where the infamous 1972 Olympics were held.
The next day, Wolfram, Sabina and I toured galleries, museums and eighteenth
century architecture. One cluster of historic buildings was the site where
Hitler made his first speech and Nazi troops rallied and marched. Then
we went to the open air market to buy food for the dinner. Trying to communicate
with a fruit vendor, I asked in English, Perhaps you have a variety
of apples called Fuji or Braeburn, they are crisp, not too sweet, and are
grown in New Zealand? His effort to so attentively decode my description
was a success, and he packed half dozen in a sack for me. Later, I chopped
them into a dessert for our dinner party.
The German Canteen was always convened by Rochelle, the bestial matron
of our camp. In a teutonic recitatif she screamed orders to Duji and me.
Rochelle had had tuberculosis of the hip leaving one leg shorter than the
other for which she wore a special shoe with an elevated sole. Rochelle
and her mother always argued with each other in her upstairs bedroom. They
lived next door so when I heard them, Id run to a rear window of
my house to eavesdrop. I imagined her mother was stretching the stunted
leg on some contraption to correct the asymmetry.
Rochelle limped into the German canteen (located under the porch) screaming
unknowable German/Yiddish words like Schweinehund, Dum-kopf, Shtom a bebel,
and fur dompft Juden aross. We came running. She was our commandant, and
made us to submit to and perform water tortures and other benign interpretations
of the heinous crimes that had been inflicted on our European relatives.
I always played the victim, Rochelle the commandant, and Duji the blind
facilitator.
Duji was crosseyed and wore thick glasses with a corrective metal patch
surrounding one lens. She also had trouble seeing out of the unoccluded
eye and clumsily bumped into things. Only three years old, she took orders
better then me. I was, as usual, the perfect victim.
The dinner guests arrived. Hacky, an architect, was the son of a Munich
city planner. He came alone. His girlfriend, a curator for the Inge Goetz
collection, was off on a job in Milan. Suzanna and Jorge, a dress designer
and gallerist, were fashionable and funny. Martin, an audio expert, designed
huge exhibitions. After the tenth bottle of wine, our conversation became
incoherent and I drifted dreamily into a self composed Beethoven chorale
laced with Brechtian venom. Slipping away from Sabinas party, I went
to bed eavsdropping the talk and then lulled to sleep by its din. More
than once I was wakened by Sabina and Wolfram screaming at each other in
German about their relationship. At 5 A.M., bleary and confused by the
rancor, I blindly limped into the kitchen, bumped into a stool, and with
hands on my uneven hips, I screamed "Shweig! schweinehund."
Dorothy Krasowska
We could assume that this juxtaposition
before us performs a similar task. Both sculptures
are abstract and very much about materials. But despite
their similarities, they contrast sharply. The Charles
Long piece is very visceral. Even the name, The Sweat
Smell of Success is reminiscent of a body and all
of its excess.
It hangs from the wall like a leather sack filled with
hardened fat. The Donald Judd construction, however, denies
the body. Its solid, straight
surface is controlled and calculated as though manufactured in an industrial
warehouse, not an artist's studio. The juxtaposition of these works
also poses questions of gender. When Eva Hesse produced work similar
to this Long piece in the 1960's, critics automatically labeled
it as feminine, because
it evoked the body. Meanwhile, those same critics associated Judds
work with masculinity because it alluded to the machine. Would the Long
piece still be considered "feminine" even though it was
produced a man, and thirty years have passed since the initial Hesse
critique?
After examining the pieces, it seems rather apparent why
the curator selected these two particular sculptures for
this exhibit. However,
this juxtaposition
was not planned. Chance placed these two works that brilliantly oppose
and complement one another in the same gallery space. Originally, Apex
Art had scheduled a completely different show, but that fell through.
Luckily, there was enough time to arrange an alternative, but
that also fell through.
Finally, Apex was left with no time and an empty room. Quick thinking
and the help of a few friends created this solution. The pieces
by Judd and
Long happen to work well together; they happen to create a dialogue
with each other. This juxtaposition is a fluke.
But if you
ask me those are the best kinds of juxtapositions - unplanned
ones. And perhaps I am not alone in this belief...
Artist
Christian Boltanski would remove the staples from German
World War II magazines in order to separate the pages.
He would
find that pulling
contiguous pages apart gave their images new meanings. No longer were
advertisements for food with beautiful, smiling women situated
next to articles about
the home, but sometimes things like tanks accompanied the pictures
of buildings.
In the introduction of his book The Return of the
Real, Hal Foster and a conceptual artist stand around contemplating
a Minimalist
sculpture made
of four wood beams laid in a long rectangle, witha mirror set behind
each corner so as to reflect the others when they notice
a little girl skipping around the room.1 This juxtaposition of
the girl and the sculpture
forced Foster to realize that despite (or in spite of) his many years
of examining art, these Minimalist spaces intimidated him, and
he hid behind
theory because he was afraid to participate.
I use the last example
not just because of the Donald Judd before you, but also because
Minimal art in general forces us to look
around for other
things to insert into its space. It demands accidental juxtapositions
instead of calculated ones. It proves that an experience with
a work of art does
not always have to be intersected with a point made by an astute
art person. That is not to say that sometimes a clever interpretation
is not enlightening.
But lately, it seems that the opinion of the curator is valued over
the works themselves. The public immediately blames the curator
rather than
the art when the latest Whitney show does not fulfill expectations.
Curators mold our interpretations of pieces they display. They
decide what is
placed beside what, and therefore, how the viewers should respond.
It is more
productive when the audience can relate the art to the world around
them. This allows the art to pertain to life - to life outside
the gallery
space.
1. Foster, Hal. The Return of the Real. Massachusetts:
MIT Press, 1996. |