Birthdays ...

Richard Serra, 2008 (b. 2 November 1939)

John Berger, 2009 (b. 5 November 1926)

Campaign Art

NOROMNEY (2012) ~ Etching © Richard Serra.

This is among the pieces contributed by Artists for Obama as campaign fundraising treats.

Richard Serra on the Effects of Witnessing the 9/11 Attacks in NYC

In The New York Times today there is a story on the opening in Paris of a solo exhibition of new and old work by sculptor Richard Serra. This passage caught my eye:

Mr. Serra, who lives in TriBeCa, was there on Sept. 11, 2001, and in its aftermath. He was horrified by his own voyeurism, he said, as he and others watched people in the burning towers throw themselves to their deaths, hand in hand.

“People were silent, other people jumped, and people on the ground moaned in unison, like a Greek chorus,” he said.

It had a great impact on him, he said, talking of the random quickness of life, a new desire to be considerate. “You need to keep your wits about you, and you have to acknowledge everyone around you,” he said. “Before, maybe I didn’t. But we’re all here and here together. It made me a stronger person. But also I think a little more open and generous one.”

If only Serra were the median American - not just in terms of talent and creativity, but in terms too of the ability to respond with openness and generosity in the face of horrifying adversity. Instead we get fear and anxiety and in politics, of course, those who are completely willing to exploit that fear and anxiety.

More on Invidious Distinctions

Last night I had the pleasure of introducing Steve Kurtz who was lecturing at the University. I thought it might be useful to post my remarks. So, with apologies for the length, here they are.

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Introductory Remarks to a Lecture by Steve Kurtz
24 January 2008

We in the contemporary west confront powerful, pervasive pressures to gerrymander the world in such a way that two of our central practices, art and politics, occupy separate, distinct domains. These are pressures that artists, for a variety of reasons - some admirable, some less so - find it difficult to resist. Artists who do approach the frontier of art and politics seem anxious when doing so, even when they themselves are well-established, working in recognized media, and so seemingly less susceptible to criticism and recrimination. Consider a couple of examples.

In the run-up to the 2004 elections, sculptor Richard Serra designed this striking poster that proclaimed “Stop Bush” against the background of a stark abstract depiction of the notorious image from Abu Ghraib of a hooded prisoner standing on a box, arms extended, wires dangling from his fingers. While the politics here are obvious, when queried about the work Serra insisted that it was not “art.”

Elegy to the Spanish Republic #34 ~ Robert Motherwell (1953-54)

Conversely, over the course of several decades Robert Motherwell produced by some counts hundreds of large, powerful, abstract paintings, each entitled “Elegy to the Spanish Republic” followed by the relevant number. While these paintings clearly constitute a massive artistic undertaking, in a 1959 lecture discussing the canvases Motherwell declared that he himself had “no special interest in politics.”

Serra and Motherwell, each from a different direction, seem to struggle mightily to keep art and politics at an appropriate distance. There are, however, dissenting voices who urge us to resist that temptation. For example, in a 1946 essay, George Orwell reminded readers that:

“The opinion that art should have nothing to do
with politics is itself a political attitude.”

And in an essay published just this month, writer, critic and activist Rebecca Solnit notes that:

“Apolitical art and artless politics are the fruit of a
divide-and-conquer strategy that weakens both;
art and politics ignite each other and need each other.”

As member of the Critical Art Ensemble, our speaker this evening Dr. Steven Kurtz has persistently sided with dissenters like Orwell, Solnit, and others in ignoring the common divide between art and politics. That much at least is clear from his title - “Crossing the Line: Interdisciplinary Work in a Society of Fear.” I cannot possibly so much as sketch the entire body of work that the CAE collective has generated over the course of two decades. Suffice it to say that they have produced books, performances, interventions and visual pieces in several media. Their work has appeared in numerous prominent cultural institutions in both Europe and the U.S. They have won a number of awards for their work, including the 2004 Leonardo New Horizons Award for Innovation and, most recently, the 2007 Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Prize from the Andy Warhol Foundation.

I want to focus briefly on what I think is a crucial feature of Steve Kurtz’s work with CAE. For what is striking about that work is not just that it crosses the lines purportedly separating art from politics, but how it does so. I take as a point of departure a remark by South African artist William Kentridge who, in characterizing his own work, says:

“I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of
ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures, and
uncertain endings; an art (and a politics) in which
optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay.”

That is an ambitious agenda. It seems to me that by pressing critical questions, challenging standard narratives, and advancing alternative interpretations, Steve Kurtz and his collaborators approach the intersections of art and politics in very much the fashion Kentridge sketches. Theirs is hardly a message of optimism. In the most recent of their half-dozen books Marching Plague: Germ Warfare & Global Public Health, for instance, CAE details how various agencies - including corporations, government bureaucracies, elected political representatives, medical centers, the media, the military and, yes, universities - in various sometimes blatantly corrupt, always threatening combinations, partnerships, and alliances have established overlapping political-economic interests in generating and sustaining an atmosphere of fear in the post- 9/11 United States. There is a daunting, systematic character to the forces that they depict. I for one, find it difficult to sustain much optimism in the face of their analyses and, especially, of Steve’s recent travails.

On the other hand, as their name implies, the collective remains committed to criticism rather than nihilism, activism and resistance rather than despair or resignation. In just the opening pages of Marching Plague the CAE, if sometimes only tacitly or by way of contrast, invokes a panoply of criteria in light of which they (and we) can ground our criticisms of and responses to the depredations of powerful agencies and alliances. I have in mind here the way CAE gesture toward conceptions, however besieged they may be in practice, of individual autonomy, publicity, transparency, reality, truth, health, usefulness, sanity. In keeping with these criteria, their project is not to tell readers and audiences what to think but simply to prompt us to think and reflect and to afford us with resources that will make that reflection productive.

In 1927 philosopher John Dewey, himself extremely skeptical of efforts to gerrymander art and politics, noted that:

“The function of art has always been to break through the
crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness.”

By focusing our attention on the contemporary sources of what we take to be conventional and routine, CAE adopts a challenging task, namely to demystify the workings of power and the origins of our common fears and apprehensions. In so doing they strive to avoid the extremes of both naive optimism and disabling nihilism. For their efforts they have achieved well-deserved recognition from those receptive to their critical perspectives. They also have attracted attention from powerful entities - including the FBI and US Attorney - who, seeing the CAE’s work as a threat, have taken it upon themselves to police the bounds of art and politics. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Steven Kurtz who will speak to us this evening about his work with CAE and what happens when one does cross the line.

Tilted Arc Revisited

"I don't think it is the function of art to be pleasing . . . Art is
not democratic. It is not for the people." ~ Richard Serra

Sculptor Richard Serra uttered these impolitic remarks during the controversy the erupted following the installation of his Tilted Arc in NYC in 1981. It is a view for which I have some sympathy, but which I also find quite troubling. I suspect that Serra no longer subscribes to the views he stated here. No matter for my purposes. In The Guardian yesterday were two stories that revisit the themes raised by the Tilted Arc dispute. The first has to do with the ongoing controversy in Aldeburgh (U.K.) over a sculpture by Maggi Hambling dedicated to the memory of composer Benjamin Britten [1] [2].

The Scallop (2003), Maggi Hambling. Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 2005.

The second story focuses on the rather vituperative arguments revolving around the architectural design proposed by Jan Kaplický (co-founder of Future Systems) for the planned National Library in Prague [1]. Here is what the projected building would look like:

Each of these projects re-crosses Tilted Arc terrain, demonstrating little progress over a quarter century. So, I thought that perhaps in might be useful to reconsider Serra's remark as a way of clarifying my thinking on some of the general issues involved here. I agree with his first sentence, think the second is dangerously ambiguous, and disagree with the third. Let's go sentence by sentence.

"I don't think it is the function of art to be pleasing.": It is an historical fact that much art is not pleasing, if by that one means it is beautiful or otherwise aesthetically appealing. This is among the themes, for instance, of Arthur Danto's The Abuse of Beauty (Open Court, 2003). One might try to claim that public art should be held to more stringent standards in this regard, but several of the examples that Danto offers of pretty disgusting religious iconography appeared in what at the time were "public" buildings, namely cathedrals. So whether, Hambling's sculpture or Kaplický's design are "pleasing" seems beside the point. Often this seems like a pretext, when in actuality, objections to this or that project are grounded elsewhere.

"Art is not democratic.": There are several (at least) ways to interpret this remark. (1) Making art is often not democratic insofar as it presupposes levels of talent, skill, discipline, sensibility, and so on that are not equitable distributed or widely attainable. (2) The distribution of art tends to occur through institutions - both elite institutions like galleries, museums, performance halls, etc. and 'the market' - that present high barriers to entry in both cultural and material terms. (3) The production and display and assessment of art typically is not, and certainly should not be, determined by either majority rule or market forces. (4) That said, and in part due to nos. one through three, art can inadvertently be democratic, or can contribute to a democratic culture, insofar as it sparks debate and dissensus in society and polity.

"It is not for the people.": Here the issue for me is who counts as 'the people' or 'the public' or 'we.' This is an unavoidably political matter. It is not simply a matter of 'taste' or sensibility. One might write off the Prague controversy in that way. Yet it seems that complaints about art generally or public rt in particular need not have anything to do with its aesthetic qualities. This becomes clear when we speak simply about siting issues. In the case of Tilted Arc, it commonly is observed that the most vocal parties to the debate were those most directly concerned (employees in the Federal Building in NYC) who had to walk around it or who worried about criminals (even 'terrorists') lurking behind it. But Serra's work was, after all, sited on Federal, not local or state, property. Similarly, opposition to Hambling's The Scallop seems to reflect less the aesthetics of the piece itself than discontent with its location (on what is seen as a rare stretch of pristine beachfront). Opponents think it spoils their view of the ocean as they stroll on the beach. But why are the residents of Aldeburgh or those who work in a particular building accorded special standing in these debates. Surely their word should count for something. But it need not count for everything. Indeed, it is not clear that those folks should have either the first or the last word.

There are a lot of loose ends here. Mostly I just offered some top-of-the-head ramblings. Perhaps I will come back to this at some point.