MarkWork
ART & CULTUREArchive for February, 2008
Artist as TOOL
Brooklyn, NY is getting closer to sprouting its vision for the 21st century with a design by the international architecture/art star Frank Gehry. Gehry’s complex of buildings will amass housing, shopping and a sports arena. For the obvious reasons in America there will be no cultural component for the arts. One might argue they already have the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a museum anchored into the park. Isn’t this enough for the city who is second to that of Manhattan? I think differently, Brooklyn is the city that houses the most artists per acre of any soil on this planet! It is like the corn industry in the middle of America, once it took root, it has become infectious and grows like a weed. In New York it started at the first subway stop out of ‘the city’ and now it is at the tenth or more. People are trying to hold onto a certain neighborhood status even though they are over nine stops out of the real center.
In recent months I have been reading, from California, the horror and tragedy of certain artist occupied buildings in Brooklyn. No, the news never seems to break from a building in Manhattan because the high economy has helped push an exodus of the cultural producers(artists, writers, dancers, actors and designers) from the island over to the mainland of Brooklyn. Cheap rents, space, pioneering neighborhoods and a sense of community have attracted the shift. Soon Manhattan will be secured and occupied by the international portfolios of the super wealthy and the tourist. Sad as it seems it has become closer to the truth in just the two years since I have relocated from Brooklyn. The issue is getting the attention of the city government and they have formed teams and entertained meetings that try to understand the consequence of this plight.
Why do I go into this stuff? Well, it is based in a theory that I have concerning the artist as tool and I use tool in the most degrading way. After the success of Soho and then Tribeca, each have become valuable neighborhoods that artists originally pioneered, the developers got smart. The developer uses the artist as a bookmark and allows them the fiction of a few productive years in a post industrial loft space. During this time the renter usually has no heat or very little (business hours), cold water (that is likely positioned in the communal hall) and no conveniences on the street. If they build it, as artist triumphantly do, the rest will come. Wow! Does this not describe the last decade? The devastating conclusion to this NYC story is that the developers do not renew leases and start fixing everything from the sidewalk to the stand pipes and put it all up for sale.
The district of D.U.M.B.O. (down under the manhattan bridge overpass), Brooklyn turned overnight and now you can get chocolate from Jacque Torres and Starbuck’s coffee for the other hand. In the past you would not be lucky to find a quart of milk in this district. Yes this is a neighborhood with a few barriers(the expressway, Farragut projects and the East river) that prevent a scene like Willaimsburg from spilling so far out but it created what all developers would like to happen, demand over supply. Taking this into account I firm up my belief that this is the real future of New York City. ‘No man is an island’, cries out from my childhood, and I wonder if it is the artists that find the island for the man to take control over, and every step of the way the man hides behind the ‘good’ work they do for the arts? It definitely appears to be going this way and I think this can be viewed as a critique of the frantic art collecting going on currently with the contemporary art world. Here is an idea maybe they should start having art and design fairs in the neighborhoods these artists live? I then wonder who would be empowered by this sustainable way of creating an economy around the arts?
SAVE robert smithson’s spiral jetty, 1970
This is one of the worst examples of America caring for its public art. It brings sadness to my mind. Thinking…feeling the slightest chance this seminal work will be harmed. Think about the future for once America!
look at this site for more info- www.spiraljetty.org
my sent letter(please send yours)-
February 7, 2008
Jonathan Jemming
Public Lands Policy Analyst
Public Lands Policy Coordination Office
5110 State Office Building
Salt Lake City, Utah 84114
Via email: jjemming@utah.gov
RE: Application #8853
Dear Mr. Jemming,
I full heartedly object to anything happening in and around the seminal work Spiral Jetty by the artist Robert Smithson. This work should be cherished by the state of Utah and this includes its government officers. One would never propose to drill near the Washington Monument. I view this artwork as a comparable monument to a different era of American history. To further my objection I would like to bring Utah’s attention to the tragic death Robert Smithson had fall upon him and the consequence of this is a very limited body of completed public work. As a citizen of this country I plead with the state of Utah to find it within themselves to be a generous steward to a grand vision for all in the global landscape.
The Spiral Jetty brings me hope and inspiration. It is a work that has vision well beyond its time of creation. As the world turns to repairing itself from the destruction of 20th century industry, the Spiral Jetty reclaims that space in its beautiful location (Great Salt Lake) and presents the viewer with a glimpse of something bigger. Just as nature has allowed the Spiral Jetty to come back to its magnificence so should the state of Utah. Make a statement and allow the federal government the opportunity to preserve this truly spectacular piece of Land Art from the 20th century.
Sincerely,
MarkWork
let’s talk about WOOD…
I have not been able to shake the impression Martin Puryear’s survey show at MoMA, NYC had on me. I will first back up and describe that I have been educated by the 90’s art canon where youth and concept held vogue and the sculpted object and artists like Martin Puryear had many naysayers. I will set out in this essay to discuss the subjects of quality vs. quantity, craft, Conceptualism, authorship and sustainability.
Martin Puryear’s work contains a confidence in form and finish while allowing its completed state to hold on to the organic. It becomes ‘timeless’ without diluting its core natural state of rough textures, shaped dimensional boards and muted colors from the landscape . There is no reason not to place it on the same museum floor as Brancusi’s ‘Bird in Space’ and the Futurist’s ‘Running Man’. Puryear looks to the object to sum up the whole of culture and ones placement in the built landscape.
We are in the 21st century, one might proclaim, and I feel this makes Puryear’s work stronger. As current trends have been removing ‘Craft’ from the title of art colleges and museums in the United States. Puryear is able to hold the chisel and be relevent in contemporary culture. He confronts the ‘Walmart’ attitude of this country with his quality over quantity. His chisel cuts through the current climate of art as Marcel DuChamp did with his early urinal as readymade, both utilitarian tools sculpt humanity into a manageable, viewable form that takes hold of history and the exhibition space.
My complaint immediately upon leaving the exhibition was it had not shown many examples of what he has been doing since the early survey shows of the 80’s. Later I came to dismiss this on a couple of levels, one being my education around the arts compared to that of most museum visitors (especially at MoMA), also upon reflection it presents some of the issues concerning sustainability and authorship. Andy Warhol was prolific because he whole heartedly embraced commercialism and the appropriation of most things. Puryear spends his time differently. He understands the importance of sourcing the correct and sustainable material and other hours are spent sharpening the tools and understanding the species of wood. The work makes me feel he has an obligation to making a mark with his own hands, as an African American artist who is old enough to understand where his race has been and how important it is that he is able to use his hands for his own pursuits.
Less is More can have profound implications right now on the planet. It brings to mind a quality dinner that one sits down for hours to enjoy with company and slow savory food opposed to say the car seat experience of having a processed meal of fast food that you regret immediately after and for the years to come. Puryear’s exhibition taps directly into these concerns. It begins with the sparse installation and the varying sculptures (not drawings, photos or studies) that have been amassed across decades. The eye slows starting with the partially exposed process of the construction and then it follows the sculptures angles and turns and finally rests on the dense, muted colors of the finish. Time stops and Puryear’s work holds strong as evidence of progress in a nation, culture and planet.
