A Long Note About Emails, and A Challenge
We started this weblog to stir the nest, or nests, in this Valley of Tears -- nests of critical complacency, of curatorial laziness, of incestuous legitimization between gallerists, art schools, publications, curators, collectors, writers, and artists. What a cozy, somnolent scene we have found.
Everybody loves everybody and every artist does the best work of their career at every stage of their career. Everybody getting awards. Everybody cutting-edge and avant-garde. Everybody do Biennial. Everybody significant. Everybody talking to their pockets, everybody wants a box of chocolates and a long-stemmed rose. And -- everybody knows-- they’re getting them.
But it’s just wrong. And we are going to show you why -- with reason, with reasons, and with chapter and verse.
We do street-level, street-smart art criticism, based on a combined seven decades of looking at the actual stuff, reading about it, making it, and thinking about it. We are not academia nuts. Obfuscation go bye-bye. You won’t hear “referenced” or “foregrounded” or “Other” or even “textual.” That show closed, didn’t you hear? Even Stanley admitted the Fish flopped.
We say that it’s time for you -- and now we are talking to every single artist, curator, and gallerist in electron range, beginning in Arizona -- to personally get back to taking responsibility for what you say, and for what you put out in the world.
No matter what you make or fake, you talk, don’t you? But do any of you -- it’s difficult to tell from some of your emails -- know how to write?
And that leads to a few comments about the trickle of emails -- six! -- we have received so far, because . . .
We sent out about 8,000 well-crafted, pungent words into the blogosphere, including Abortion Is A Lifesaver and Shoot Through Tears and When I hear the word community, I reach for my car keys; plus du Bois kicked two dead men around (Mel Roman and Primo Levi); King called a couple of artists (Mark Rubin-Toles and Jon Haddock) sociopathic snuff freaks; we condemned fundamentalist Islam; and this is what we got back:
1. The rancid whiff in the faint praise of the word nice, and its analogues:
It’s nice to have another [who?] critical voice in town.
It is good to see someone taking phoenix seriously.
The critical voice is great to hear and is truly a welcome addition to the Valley of the Sun art scene.
It’s nice to see a [sic] some truly critcal [sic] writing.
And you think it’s “nice” -- a patronizing, dismissive word -- to see some truly critical writing. I’m surprised you recognized it, since you have not published any of it for the last few years. [And I made a couple of snide remarks in closing.]His reply:
I’m not going to enter into a dialogue with you about whether or not JAVA contains articles of a critical nature. Perhaps you should look at a recent issue before you pass judgment.
An advertisement for Will Bruder’s new ooga-booga ego-boost in Tempe, disguised as an “article” and an “interview.” As with Shade, most of this urban stuff is about infill -- real estate development.
An advertisement for Apple/Macintosh [yes!] disguised as an appreciation article by Mr. P-Body. The next thing is to hook up the Macs with the hydroponics and the lounge bars . . . somehow . . .
A celebratory article about the return of classic burlesque, as if further female humiliation is a welcome thing.
The art review -- okay, here is where we find out “whether or not" [did you know that’s redundundant, Robert? 'whether' implies 'or not.'] --where was I? Oh -- whether JAVA contains articles of a critical nature.But the art review, by James Palazzolo, is really a casual history of the local g2 art gallery, and right now I will quote every instance of description or critical description of works of art in this article:
In my pieces [Fort Guerin talking] I critically examine the underlying social and psychological truth of the content, often in humorous format. This examination occurs in several forms: layering images and colors to reveal and conceal meaning, testing influences of space of subject matter, simplifying and/or exaggerating figures, and composing content to deviate from the ordinary while maintaining its existence.
He’s talking as if he invented these notions. You still awake? Okay, John Tuomisto-Bell works in “figurative bronze sculpture.”Upon my visit to the unassuming G2, a giant Tuomisto-Bell sculpted head nearly four feet in height greeted me at the door -- an item of allure that Trent [Guerin] hopes will tow people in off the sidewalk. . . [T-B’s work] has “always focused on violence and the social issues of man.”Jeff Wilson: “My latest body of work incorporates cast bronze and fabricated steel. I use these materials primarily because I enjoy the patina characteristics of them.” On display will be Objectscapes and Stemma and Quate, both made from bronze and steel that are, foremost, “studies of three dimensional form.”
Stop the presses! Did he really say that his sculptures are, foremost, studies of three dimensional form? Is this guy an adult?More F.Guerin: His pieces, Beauty Queen and Young Love are watercolor and pen on paper that display a black humorist vision of nostalgic moments. With an attitude that “nothing is sacred” [What a notion!] Fort paints about any subject, from erotica to advertisements -- from human to animal.Also on display will be photographer Ron Bimrose, a Tempe resident whose abstract works juxtapose images and media that comment on “our bout with, or use of, time and place.” [That explains everything.] Bimrose’s photographs compliment [sic] G2’s mission to explore contemporary ideas and emotions through the work of younger artists who are testing new waters.
And that’s it for art for JAVA June; judge for yourself.
The writer waves her phrase like a wand -- “Your gallery interpretation of names is interesting at best” -- and that’s it; no supporting statements. In fact, the rest of the email, in its entirety, is: “Next maybe you will list all those with the ‘very straight forward’ names that give credence to the individual artists.”
Meaning: this gallerist/artist wants us to advertise for her friends. We are surprised she didn’t whine about us not hot-linking all the art spaces who have websites while we were in the middle of making fun of them.
Because our gallery interpretation of names was funny at best and interesting at least. Between the two there’s a reasonable question: did it bite?
4. Another note about this email (and several others): the rudeness. No salutation, no greeting, no introduction; not even the scintilla of a notion that she and common courtesy ever shook hands. No closing signature. Who sent this thing? We dunno. Just the feeble jab and the ad pitch.
Fair warning, then: emails are subject to publication. And a lot more.