The History of the World Vs. Your Aesthetic
Erik Bakke
p>Coming to grips
with a strong minded artist’s aesthetic can be difficult. And when this
aesthetic is offered along with a super abundance of cultural and historical
references the task can seem overwhelming. Three recent exhibitions in Manhattan
make this point overt in that each exhibition contains hundreds of items where
any of the items taken alone could produce its own course of study: Carol Bove’s
Experiment in Total Freedom at Team Gallery; Avis Newman’s selection of
drawings from the Tate The Stage of Drawing: Gesture and Act at The Drawing
Center; and Thomas
Hirschhorn’s Cavemanman at Barbara Gladstone. The fourth exhibition John
Beech’s recent sculptures and drawings at Peter Blum is a different animal;
it also presents an artist with a highly developed aesthetic, yet here the myriad
of references and influences that the viewer might consider in considering the
development of the exhibition remain unnamed.
Carol Bove’s
Experiment in Total Freedom includes low value contrast ink drawings on vellum
of beautiful women (works with titles like Mia, Bianca, Twiggy); numerous installations
of furniture or shelves (the wood and chrome constructions appear to be period
pieces from the 60s or 70s) on which rest books, magazines and other objects;
silk threads strung into patterns over nails in the walls; typed texts; books
incorporated into installations and as installations; photo collage; a curtain
of thousands of sterling silver beads; a silkscreen; garden flowers; and a publication.
Despite numerous
works the exhibition feels more powerful than crowded. Bove take a massive experiment
in refined cultural dredging and use it to transform the gallery into an alchemist’s
library.
One work of the
over two dozen in the exhibition is Adventures in Poetry, 2002 (wood and metal
shelves, 29 books, 10 magazines, plexiglass photo cubes, collage, hardware, 34
x 86 x 10 inches). A look at some of the contents of the three shelves that make
up the structure of this piece brings to the fore the viewer’s anxiety at
being confronted with an amount of information and a number of associations suggested
by this information that are impossible to digest.
On the bottom shelf
a book with a cover that reads “The Radical Therapist: The Radical Therapist
Collective Produced by Jerome Agel therapy means change not adjustment”
rests on top of another book entitled the New Avant-Garde. Next to it is a book
held upright and open to the viewer. An image of what appears to be a self-immolation
appears on the double page spread and on the right hand page is the text,
“Laotze:
Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in molding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness;
Thus we are helped by what is not,
To use what is.”
There is a font
change and another text on the same page, “Electric circuitry is Orientalizing
the West. The contained, the distinct, the separate—our Western legacy—are
being replaced by the flowing, the unified, the fused.”
There is another
font change and once more text,“The west shall shake the east awake… while
ye have the night for morn…”
On the far left
of the bottom shelf are five books standing upright with their spines visible
to the viewer: The Time of the Assassins,
Henry Miller; The Black Woman an anthology, edited by Toni Code; Simulations
of God, John C. Lilly, M. D.; LSD, Edited by David Solomon; Civilization and
Its Discontents.
On the middle shelf
between two open books, black and white images on both of the two page spreads,
is a selection of three books between metal book holders: A Skeleton Key to Finnegans
Wake, Campbell & Robinson; The Morning Breaks; Modern Film Scripts Blow-Up
Michelangelo Antonioni.
On the top shelf
lying flat, next to some magazines, are the books Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching; The Communist
Manifesto; I Seem To Be a Verb; The Satanic Bible, Anton Szandor LaVey; The Thief’s
Journal, Jean Genet.
In a small frame
resting on the above books is a small type written sheet with a list of seventeen
descriptions of “Earth” — each separated by a comma. The list
begins with “Burnt Italian Earth” and includes “Cyprus Earth,
Dark Earth, Gold Earth, Persian Earth, Japan Earth and Roman Earth” and
ends with “Yellow Earth.”
There is more and
the associations between the book titles alone are fodder for endless speculation
while the introduction of a list typewritten—one surmises, by the artist—descriptions
brings the artist’s hand to the forefront. The viewer must acknowledge the
artifice of the artist—that not only have the choices of material for the
sculpture been deliberately chosen by the artist but that all in the end folds
into her particular aesthetic. What makes the work difficult and compelling is
that it leaves much room for endless discussion among decadents and dilettantes
while at the same time suggesting it is its own harmonious whole above and beyond
the facile discussion of its parts.
Though many of
the works in the exhibition contain no text at all the words on the covers of
the hundreds of paperback books in the exhibition go a long way in locating many
of the art works’ cultural reference points as being from the 1960s and
soon after. The force of the book covers’ texts is worth addressing by example:
“l’amour the ways of love text by Colin Wilson 70 full-color photographs
by piero rimaldi;” “The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence
John Cunningham Lilly, M.D. Adventures in a controversial new world of communications
with a key to understanding alien intelligence;” “I Am Curious (yellow)
The complete scenario of the film by Vilgot Sjoeman with over 250 illustrations;”
“The Most Influential Book by the Most Debated Man of the Decade… ‘The
Most Important Thinker Since Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and Pavlov’
—New York Herald Tribune MarshallMcLuhan Understanding Media: The Extensions
of Man ‘The oracle of the electric age,’ Life ‘The oracle of the
New Communications’ Newsweek;” “60 hours that transform your life
est erhard seminars training;” “Black Rage William H. Grier One of
the ‘most important books on the Negro to appear in the last decade.’
-The New York Times;” “The mind-expanding new sourcebook on The Twelve
Keys of Awareness Lehman Hisey Keys to Inner Space An Open-Ended Guide to Occultism,
Metaphysics, and the Transcendental Self-Hypnosis and Meditation Tarot Symbology
Rhythmic Breathing Color and Sound Astrological Signs Polarity vs. duality Tao
and Acupuncture Gurdjieff Teachings The Zen Way LSD – 25 Experience The Chakras
and the Seven Seals Spirit Beings and the Mediumship of Mark Probert ‘A
heady sampler of the main trends and teachings…something for everyone.’
Library Journal;” “A Human Potential Book Person to Person The Problem
of Being Human Carl R. Rogers and Barry Stevens with Eugene T. Gendlin, John
M. Shlien, and Wilson Van Dusen;” “Touching The Human Significance
of the Skin Ashley Montagu;” “The Book of Mirdad by Mikhail Naimy;”
“Over two million copies in print Soul on Ice Eldridge Cleaver;” “Gestalt
therapy Verbatim Frederick S. Perls, M.D., Ph.D. An action approach to deepening
awareness and living fully in the Here and Now as experienced in workshops at
Esalen Institute;” “Games People Play, Eric Berne M.D.”
The prevalence
of books immediately can bring on the sensation in the viewer of unpreparedness
to analyze the work. “I’m not prepared for the test. I haven’t
done the reading. I cannot participate,” the viewer may think. The truth
is of course that one’s understanding of culture is always inadequate if
the goal of viewing installations like those of Bove’s, or as will be discussed
Hirschorn’s, is to be able to contextualize all possible references.
For Bove’ Experiment in Total Freedom a book list of the several hundred
books in the exhibition was not readily available. But even if the viewer wonders
how to participate in such an experiment if the books haven’t been read
the exhibition title itself seems to offer permission not to read any of the
books ever. And furthermore the drawings like that of the “it girl”
Twiggy, because of the lack of text in the work, can easily be viewed without
the uninformed viewer feeling encumbered by their ignorance. Of course art can
only be understood through an understanding of the culture in which it exists,
so some knowledge of the culture of the era which Bove takes as her topic has
to be had to understand the most general context of the show.
All this without
mentioning the history of conceptual and installation art that also informs the
work. Knowing that The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence was published
in 1967; that I Am Curious (yellow) was originally a Swedish film, also of 1967,
about a young woman exploring her consciousness and her sexuality; or that a
quote by Laotze would also relate to the decades of the 60s and 70s in the United
States as during that time Taoism increased greatly in popularity, all this,
helps the viewer understand that Bove is, if nothing else, using material from
these particular decades past as part of the media of her art if not exploring
herself the many would be paths of self discovery trodden during these times.
In the end even if the viewer decides that The Book of Mirdad (first published
in 1962; recently republished in 2002) isn’t worth reading in any decade
the historical moment the works reference and the subdued minimalist aesthetic
(refined enough to almost recede behind the references) Bove has developed to
present the works are inextricably intertwined. The viewer is left to struggle
and is the better for it.
Thomas Hirschhorn’s
recent exhibition at Barbara Gladstone raises some of the same questions as Bove’s—and
books once again are central to the questions. The gallery’s press release
described the exhibition fairly well, “The work transforms the entire gallery
space into a series of artificial cave “rooms” containing books, furniture
and other paraphernalia evidencing the presence of a hermetic inhabitant. Unable
to reconcile his utopian ideal of social equality with the injustice and economic
disparity he witnesses in the world, this fictitious caveman has retreated from
society into this space so that he may realize his obsession: “1 Man = 1
Man.”” Here Hirschhorn’s over-the-top “I don’t give
a crap” junk aesthetic mostly surmised in the vast structure of cardboard
and not so neatly applied duct tape does well to put an emphasis on would be
content over the decadent collectible.
This said it seems
a safe bet that Hirschhorn could not give a reasonable account of the content
of each of the books in his Cavemanman exhibition. Though not available on Barbara
Gladstone’s Website a list of the books strewn throughout the space was
available at the front desk. The following is the contents of the first page
of the five page list of over 200 books. A curiosity of the list, for which the
artist cannot be held responsible, are its spelling errors. The Politics, Aristotle;
The Laws, Plato; Republic, Plato; Gorgias, Plato; Spinoza A Life; Steven Nadler;
Ethics, Spinoza; Hobbes A Biography, A. P. Martinich; Hobbes, A Very Short Introduction,
Richard Tuck; Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes; A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume;
Selected Essays, David Hume; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David
Hume; Political Writings, John Locke; An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
John Locke; The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, Rousseau; The
Social Contract, Rousseau; Rights of Man, Thomas Paine; The Complete Essays,
Michel De Montaigne; Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift; Critique of Pure
Reason, Immanuel Kant; The Prince and Other Political Writings, Niccolo Machiavelli;
The Discourses, Niccolo Machiavelli; Thomas More, Richard Marius; Utopia, The
Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity, Imaginary Communauties, Philip
E. Wegner; Pensees, Pascal; Nietzsche The Man and His Philosophy, R. J. Hollingdale;
The Bird of The Tragedy (sic) [perhaps, The Birth of Tragedy], Nietzsche; Beyond
Good and Evil, Nietzsche; Human, all too Human, Nietzsche; The World as Will
and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer; Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault;
The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault; Ethics, Michel Foucault; The Portable
Hannah Arendt; The Cambridge Compagnion to Hannah Arendt, Edited by Dena Villa;
Existentialism, David E. Cooper; Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre; Myth
and Meaning, Levi-Strauss; Masculine Domination, Pierre Bourdieu; Marx, the Young
Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory, Warren Breckman. Here if
the point of the exhibition is to point to the possibility of contemplating democracy
one might feel compelled to get started on this reading list. But the value of
the exhibition is not in providing a course of study but, as with Bove’s
Experiment, providing an aesthetic and works of art which encourage the direction
of thought the works’ topics suggest without being of the language of those
topics. As with all substantial works of art these installations have a level
of import that goes beyond saying, “they are about investigations of freedom
so they are good.”
In speaking about
his Container Sculptures John Beech says in his catalogue of 2001, “I am
interested in the form too much to make a painting that’s just a rectangle,
and I’m interested in painting too much to make forms that aren’t somehow
about painting as well. I want to bring the resonance of abstract painting to
the inside of this container. These sculptures are stylized trash dumpster made
out of plywood and painted on the inside with a single color. These are not small
works. Green Container / Kit, 2000 is 103 1/2 x 46 x 66 inches. Beech’s
comments would be gratuitous coming from a less careful or less talented artists.
But his considered, painted constructions and drawings which often use the least
glamorous of utilitarian, banal, urban objects as their starting point (dollies,
trash dumpsters, parking lot bumpers) offer a rare demonstration of a personal
aesthetic which embraces investigations of contemporary content while exploring
a significant understanding of form, hue, volume, texture and scale and the history
of the investigation of these concerns. Beech’s Small Rolling Platform #34,
1998 of Plywood, enamel, rubber, and casters (4 x 10 1/2 x 8 inches) offers two
casters affixed to a piece of wood with a handle-like hole cut into it on which
is placed a bit of rubber mat. The wood is painted with some greenish paint which
doesn’t cover the entire work but leaves off casually yet deliberately with
a drip here and a scraggly edge there. About as whimsical as Beech’s work
gets is Small Rolling Platform #43, 2001 which comprises a flat disc of metal
with a hole cut out of the center (the metal is painted baby blue) with two casters
on one side of the bottom of the disc and two other casters protruding out of
the top of the disc on the opposite side from the two on the bottom. One couldn’t
use it as a skateboard as there is always a lame edge bumping on the ground no
matter what side is turned up. The metal supports for the casters have been painted
bright orange and the enamel paint has slopped onto the wheels—not in a
messy way but in the way an abstract painter directs paint while letting it make
marks and even spill in a fashion most in accordance with its nature as paint.
Without being frivolous it is easy to see similarities between the work of Willem
de Kooning and Beech. There is some connection between Beech’s palette in
#43 and that of de Kooning’s post 1963 when he left Manhattan and began
painting woman on the shore. And like de Kooning Beech lets comedy enter into
his work as the soft side of tragedy. Beech’s lightness of hue and the ridiculous
nature of some of his less than utilitarian objects are tempered by the conviction
of their authoritative shapes not to mention the solid craftsmanship which is
the foundation of their construction. If you were going to have an artist build
you a house in which you had to spend the rest of your days one would take de
Kooning and Beech over Pollock any day.
At Peter Blum Beech
showed a number of photo drawings. Many of these took the form of a photograph
of a dumpster with the image of the dumpster painted over in paint. One of the
painted sculptural works on display at Blum was Rotating Painting #028, 2000
(plexiglass, enamel, plywood, rotating hardware 48 1/2 x 5 5/8 x 50 1/2 inches).
This painted sculptural work of a large acrylic disc projecting from the wall
and mostly painted with green paint left the viewer hungry for more Rotating
Paintings, or some of his Container Sculptures or his Projecting Paintings or
Bumpers or Rolling Platforms.
Rotating Painting
#028 exemplifies Beech’s process where he is”…trying to make the
painting immediate without taking (…) precautions…” Process and quirks
of material are revealed while at the same time Beech takes extreme care in limiting
the elements included in the process. A carefully crafted support holds a disc
of plexiglass of a carefully determined size while a very particular color, quite
deliberately chosen, activates a field of play where certain accidents of paint
flow are allowed to happen. Beech says, “It is a collaboration with the
materials and tools of making something. I’m not trying to master a trade.”
In answering a question of Alexander Nagel’s (in the interview in the catalogue
from which all Beech’s statements quoted here have come) Beech speaks about
the openness of his project, particularly the rotating painting surface, taking
a number of forms “…that makes them open in other ways. the rotating sets
up a way of painting that is not giving you a single correct viewing position.
There’s no up or down. there’s no front or back. Both sides usually
have some paint covering. Often I paint them in one position and then install
them in another. You can see the back of the paint surface through the Plexiglass.”
What puts this discussion of Beech’s work in the context of the exhibitions
discussed above is how one could discuss a lexicon of possible references to
both painting and sculpture (not to mention critical theory or aesthetics) while
standing in front of his paintings/sculptures, and what puts his work apart in
this discussion is that none of these references are overt.
The British artist
Avis Newman has put together an exhibition not of her work but of 300 years of
drawings from the Tate collection. The exhibition at The Drawing Center has 151
drawings on its walls. The Stage of Drawing: Gesture and Act offers up so much
history and so many possible associations that once again the viewer is somewhat
at a loss. One has the initial impression of being surrounded by a wealth of
great drawing. And then encouragingly, and much the same can be said for the
efforts of Bove, Hirschhorn and Beech, one is stimulated by the intuited cultural
appropriateness of the artist’s effort to learn more.
For one viewer this may lead to a study of the political circumstances of the
period in which Aubrey Beardsley’s created his drawings for another it may
be an investigation of Richard Hamilton’s own investigations of the work
of Marcel Duchamp (Hamilton’s Reaper works are some of many highlights in
this exhibition) and for another viewer the whole experience may boil down to
discovering the works of Heneage Finch Aylesford.
Avis Newman in an interview with curator Catherine de Zegher describes the worth
of the process of confronting histories of which it is impossible to have complete
knowledge, “I scrolled through the data files from top to bottom, bottom
to top: a list cataloguing works from A to Z without chronology, endlessly undifferentiated,
equal. Outside history. Vertical, before my eyes was the record of a museum’s
collection. I chanced upon works that suggested alliances regarding drawing that
maybe I would not have come across if I had approached the task as a coherent
and predetermined project.”
