Art of Armor

As the name implies, Art of Armor recently opened at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, gives us a broad look into the aesthetics of samurai armor.  The exhibition features more than 140 objects from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller collection, including armored horses carrying combat-ready samurai in full regalia.
Having come to appreciate armor through my love of ukyio-e prints I was aware of how artfully they were portrayed in print media but I wasn't prepared for the staggering detail observed in a large scale exhibit of actual examples. 

Kuniyoshi - The last stand of the Kusunoki at Shijô-nawate under a hail of arrows in 1348 (1857)

Nor would I have been surprised to learn that artists had taken liberties to embellish the amount of decoration to add drama to the action of a print. Nothing could be further from the truth as the detail and elaboration of each samurai's armor was a masterpiece of collaborative efforts that would difficult to capture in its entirety. 

Breastplate detail

Artisans required to manufacture these armors included metal workers both forgers and decorative, braid makers and embroiderers, painters and sculptors, in short an army of artists to make the suit of one warrior.  Each suit in the collection is a riot of color texture and the style of each is unique, which is perhaps partly due to the preferences of the curators and the original collectors Ann and J. Gabriel Barbier-Mueller.

faceplates

Some items are clearly ceremonial and some purpose built as protection or weapon but all show an attention to artistry that have helped the samurai to transcend cultural roots and become embedded in our collective consciousness.

The other purpose of the ornamentation is identification.  While rank and file warriors needed little more than a badge on the helmet or breastplate and perhaps a flag on their backs the men of high rank wanted to be identified, both to their men but also to be recognized so that their deeds of valor could be noted.  In times of peace samurai of wealth and rank could commission highly eccentric designs.

helmet

Although far removed from the era of the samurai and now subject to our romantic notions gleaned from popular culture this exhibition is certain to raise a renewed interest in the actual lives and times of samurai in feudal Japan.

Samurai - Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier- Mueller Collection on view in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts through August 4th.

m the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection

A Little More Babel

 ...And damned if there aren't problems in Art World.

Kalicorp Art Mysteries, Issue # 2, detail page 2

I continue to find interesting tangents to my last post; so based on discussions that took place on my Facebook wall, here are a few more links to ponder.

This first one from by Simon Doonan writing for Slate.

Doonan who describes himself as author, fashion commentator, and creative ambassador for Barneys New York titles his piece "Why the Art Word is So Loathsome"   He goes on to list eight ways in which the emperor has no clothes.  I think he has some pretty valid points but wonder what actually came first when he claims that exhibitions began resembling Barney window displays in the late 70's.  Quoting item #4, "Artists put down their brushes and stole my objets trouves, my staple guns and glue guns." 
As inspirational as the window displays at Barneys tend to be I still find slightly more authentic expression coming from artists when it comes to installation pieces. 

 
Then "Why Slates Takedown of the Art World is Totally Wrong", by Jillian Steinhauer for Hyperallergic points out that most of these complaints are sweeping generalizations guaranteed to get everyone nodding their heads yet shows more about a lack of curiosity than a real critique. Reacting to Doonan's remark that: "...artists like to be controversial and piss people off", Jillian reminds us that , "Most importantly, telling artists that they should shut up and fall in line for the good of the children is basically a way of relieving art of all its potential value and saying it doesn’t or shouldn’t matter."

 After all the death of art has been predicted for many of the same reasons since Hegel wrote Lectures on Aesthetics in 1818. 

Or when Duchamp created the Fountain.  Or when Jackson Pollock began flinging his paint on a canvas...or...my personal favorite, Hirst's world wide exhibition of spots.

I'm reminded of Joseph Beuys' great piece Explaining Paintings to a Dead Hare, when confronted with easy dismissals of artists currently at work.

The point being art is damn robust and simply because someone finds that it is a messy, imperfect and difficult to unravel doesn't make it any less vital than at any other point in history.

Carolee Scheemann - Interior Scroll

 Personally I find that the explaining of art and it's loathsomeness or what it should be or not be....or why it remains as important as ever to be difficult but even a cursory glance through my fellow artists websites or Facebook pages reveal that great and important work is being made every day.

So as writers keep writing about art, artists in turn will keep revealing what it is.

Tower of Bable

 Arts criticism in graphic novel form from Evertson, Shulman and Vanden Eynde.

Kalicorp Art Mysteries #3 (detail page 7)

Or...perhaps the better title is "Who hijacked the Bollocks?"  Lately I've been geeking out to the flip side of making art and thinking about those who write about art.  Over the course of the rise of the Internet we've seen the decline of the print media and fewer dedicated arts writers in print.  Blogs, Internet versions of former print titles and more alternative net niches now fill the void, but not without the soul searching of those that write for a living.

Just for fun I'm listing a few of the links I've read over the course of the last month.

Critic Dave Hickey calls it quits on arts writing: from GalleristNY (interview with Sarah Douglas)

On why he hates group shows, contracts and other forms of art-world bureaucracy, why art critics have no power"

More on Hickey by Edward Helmore and Paul Gallagher in The Guardian.

Excerpt - Criticism is..."calcified, self-reverential and a hostage to rich collectors who have no respect for what they are doing."
Excerpt - On collectors - "They're in the hedge fund business, so they drop their windfall profits into art. It's just not serious," he told the Observer. "Art editors and critics – people like me – have become a courtier class. All we do is wander around the palace and advise very rich people. It's not worth my time."

Predictably this is followed by artists and fellow critics shouting don't let the door hit you on the way out. This Charlie Finch post from Artnet is typical.

Good essay by Jackie Wullschlager in the Financial Times on critics, jargon and collecting.

"...the faster and louder the art world spins, the more it harbours doubt about its obvious froth and mediocrity.  And that doubt hides behind two things: prices and professional jargon."

Also in the news (news in the art world at least since the rest of the world is concentrating on Lindsay Lohans latest meltdown) was Sarah Thortons top ten reasons to quit writing about the art market.

Hint - it's boring, repetitive, unhelpful and it doesn't pay enough.

 Plus it involves a painful level of pandering. Kalicorp Art Mysteries, issue #5 - detail page 12

Recently New York Times art critic Ken Johnson faced accusations (and an online petition calling for more sensitivity) amidst of buried racism and sexism.  Kyle Chayka gives us the lowdown on the blogazine Hyperallergic.

So while the critics sort out their brave new world artists will go on doing what we always do; bemoaning the market and taking criticism poorly while kicking back with wine and espresso after a day in the studio.

Seeking Kali Artist Collective in Paris (Susan Shulman, Ria Vanden Eynde and William Evertson)

PS - The first five of the limited edition Kalicorp Art Mysteries are almost sold out.

Thorns in the Garden

_Still image from video for The Alternative Experimental Flower Show

Opening March 25th at Mobius, Boston

Video and installation on view through the 28th

_Something is a bit prickly here. Although Thorns in the Garden is the title of a video installation I'm working on for next weeks exhibit at Mobius in Boston, it might also describe the thorn in the art garden that the recession has uncovered. Or maybe the shaking of a paradigm. The way we view the structure of the art world seems on uncertain footing. Whether brought to light by the recession or by the shifting vantage of our perceptions, artists are again commenting on the system, making works about the system or calling for the outright destruction of the system. I say again, because just as soon as art paradigms are in place they are knocked down; with many art careers built on the premise of turning the academy on its head. Most often changes can be seen as self-reflective as art re-evaluates its own nature. Lately, I wonder if this change may have more to do with the artist role in society than leading the next -ism.
_In my last post I pointed to a Roberta Smith critique becoming a call to arms for many disenfranchised artists. The Peter Schejeldahl review of the Skin Fruit exhibit at the New Museum also calls out an art system as fragile as the financial institutions deemed too large to fail. “…the posturing of “Skin Fruit”—roughly, noblesse oblige, laced with a left-libertarian raciness—cannot long deflect the mounting potency of class resentment.”

_The art world will receive no bail out but instead face a 'sort out'. The New Museum’s tack of mounting a trustee’s collection is probably a reflexive ‘make do with less’ approach to mounting a major show. The Burton exhibit at MoMA doesn’t seem to be taxing its bottom line either while providing entertainment. The sort out may not be a mirror world version of Wall Street, where the players immediately return to awarding each other giant bonus packages shortly after bringing the world economy to a grinding halt, but instead may have to face a ground up reassessment starting with the actual producers; the artists.
From personal experience, social networking on blogs and Facebook has provided me with more insight into sorting and categorizing the arts than all my years of art school. I am getting recommendations filtered through the eyes of fellow artists. Granted there is plenty of self promotion (most of us don’t have the luxury of not promoting) but aside from a few artists spamming their work, over the last several years I have found quite a few artists who make great recommendations of other artists to watch and shows to view. While they aren’t usurping a critic or curator role they are providing an educated eye.

This article caught my eye. The Coming Barbarism. I'm always up for a bit of culture jamming mischief although I fear the pendulum is so far into corporate control that it may never return. Still, this is interesting in light of the mildly subversive art that became a serious type of commodity in the latest economic bubble. I think some collectors want to be celebrity artists themselves. Humm?

Another example of artists working on their universe is the #class taking place at the Winkleman Gallery. Starting with the premise of an ongoing discussion into art and its discontents, Jen Dalton and William Powhida have created a freewheeling overview of our collective anxieties.

_Food for thought for all of us, but this does seem to be a time of retrenching and rethinking our roles. Howling sansculottes may not wish a return to the superstar system.

The Alternative Experimental Flower Show is open from March 25th through the 28th at Mobius, located at 725 Harrison Avenue in Boston. Stop by if you are in the area. Mobius is a premier artist group that has provided experimental artists a venue for over thirty years. The exhibit is curated by the Mobius green thumb Cathy Nolan Vincevic.

Distinctions?

_With so much to choose from how do we make distinctions?

_Distinctions or Dichotomy: the panel topic at the Verge Art Fair last Saturday (3/6/10) came about to further the discussion that arose in the wake of critic Roberta Smith’s “Post Minimal to the Max” article in the February 14^th 2010, New York Times. The panel, organized by artist and writer Camilla Fallon, sought to take on two sentences that have sparked a great deal of discussion in blogs and most especially Facebook.

“What's missing is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand. A lot but not all of this kind of work is painting.” – Roberta Smith

Smith’s article seemed to strike a chord with many who feel overlooked by art world institutions built on blockbuster shows by a handful of superstar artists. I think the undercurrent sentiment is that these shows lack a vitality, the art is phoned in, and… move over because I have some really good work that would look just as good given the chance.

Overall my reaction was a feeling that given the brevity of the topic sentences there is much more to be said here. The panel could only begin to un-spool a few of the threads that are contained in Smith’s thought. Not the least of which is the observation that Roberta Smith has herself written positively about some ‘big box’ shows and bad boy artists.

The panel had some internal debate concerning corporate art; also an onion of many layers. In simply trying to define this big box feeling we have to decide if we are referring to the ubiquitous stainless sculpture in front of a corporate headquarters, the way in which artists are selected by major institutions or the way in which certain big name artists manage their careers. (brand might be a term that applies here as well) On the latter point Jeff Koons was held to be the current poster boy.

Panelist Peter Reginato made a point of describing that the opposite of good art could be great art. Perhaps that point being that the acceleration of college arts programs is funneling plenty of good artists into the system with nowhere to go. Plenty of good art is being made but the dearth of opportunity makes great art the true pearl in a sea of oysters. My experience of the NYC art fairs this past weekend seemed to bear this out. While my NY colleagues seem found plenty to dislike (the art was by turns either boring, derivative, too crude, too polished etc) for me it all seemed ok – not to much standing head and shoulders above any other. So, essentially an ocean miles wide and inches deep.

Yet the panel seemed in agreement that perhaps we are taking to much away from the statement concerning intense personal necessity. All of us present; and most were artists, seemed inclined to believe that this is probably true of most artists despite differing amounts of talent or resources.

Writer and critic, John Haber, provided an invaluable historical record concerning the hand made rubric that certainly calls into question the very notion of why handmade is the banner we should all be following. Just as well, speaking for myself as I don’t consider myself a painter but rather work in a variety of media depending on the idea I’m concerned with at the moment. Thus my personal work can alternately go through extremes of total digital assembly to intense handcrafting.

Another topic that surfaced was the role of museums, with discussions ranging from the explanation card hanging next to many works to institutional survival strategy during the recession. Actually Lisa Becks comments on the tendency of these little cards to focus on process actually detracting from our appreciation later hit home as I attended the art fairs and gallery representatives would “sell’ me by turns on the either incredibly tedious, or inventive, or traditional methods the artist employed.

Matthew Rose collages at Red Dot Art Fair

So for all the fervor witnessed on the Internet this may not signal a return to the lone artist laboring on blank canvas. There are institutional concerns, money concerns and concern with the role of the critic’s ability to sort through the multiplicity of art venues. While we may well get a shot at the 15 minutes on the stage for many even that may be pushing the envelope. Judging from my own reaction to visiting six of the twelve art fairs concurrently running I felt like I was speed dating artists. I wouldn’t be making art, writing about art and viewing art if it wasn’t out of intense personal necessity, but after two days of nonstop viewing even I could only spare artists 20 – 30 seconds to make an impression. Such is the nature of the beast.

Distinctions or Dichotomy was moderated by artist and writer Camilla Fallon with panelists Jill Connor, John Haber, Lisa Beck, Peter Reginato and Dennis Kardon. Thanks to all for the enjoyable discussion!

Let it Go

big smiles

** Damn I’m having a hard time peeling off those smiley red wax lips. You know the ones from your misspent youth when donning a pair was sure to produce a chuckle. (even from aunt Mary who is anything but) Another holiday extended family get together has passed into history and my smile is in danger of cramping.

I’m reminded of Frank Zappa’s autobiography describing similar sentiments concerning holidays where he would disappear into his studio before his brain geysered.

On my families side I’ve only got 92-year-old mom who mostly nods, smiles and then inserts some peculiar memory from deep inside her dementia. Small fragments of never forgotten slights or embarrassments, but luckily Karen’s family usually concern themselves with steering me into more profitable and practical pursuits. Though if I'm not quick enough to accept advice conversation rotates to family members who are more practical, profitable or gossip worthy.

C’est la vie. Perhaps material for an artist book someday. Or perhaps I need to reconfigure our Hallmark® lives with my own line of greeting cards with their attendant holidays. “Dada days” speaks to me as a way for families to experience role reversal as the artists get to offer suggestions on how to modify standard occupations. Preferably ones that take as much knowledge and dedication as the arts. The engineers can build nuclear trombones; hedge fund managers trim the topiary and lawyers…well perhaps they can argue amongst themselves with sign language.

Bill's "Squirrel" ©09

I think the problem is that since most people once had a picture posted on mom’s fridge or visited a museum they feel the need to offer suggestions. Or perhaps so much of contemporary art is a very rarified acquired taste that is just inaccessible during a casual get together and thus needs to be simplified. So when I hear aunt Mary ask, “what are you working on?”… The response should actually be what’s going on in my second job; not that I’m working out hypertext links for a series of digital works on the theme of insects so they can be experienced non-linearly. Yes, I should simplify my life with simple wording.

And just in – Bravo Network is holding open calls for reality show artists. Yes, in the vein of Project Runway or Top Chief a new series to catapult an unknown but ‘talented’ artist to the forefront of TV art lovers all across this great nation. I’ll have to pass on this because from the questionnaire I can tell I’m not enough of an eccentric.

Q. Have you ever been convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor? Yes No (circle one) If yes, please give dates and details. Use the back of this page or attach additional sheets if necessary.

A. If anti war protest arrests aren’t good enough I’d be happy to commit something more spectacular if I can be on your show.

Q. What if a branded corporation wanted to use your art in their advertising; discuss your perspective.

A. Oh please pick my art; just tell me who your sponsors are and I can suck up like you wouldn’t believe.

No I’ll pass.