The Tears of Things

Not Art Bloggers @ All

by Jerome du Bois

On March 31st, Franklin Einspruch of artblog.net posted "Art Blogger Panel Discussion." Excerpt:

I have now either witnessed or participated in three panel discussions on art blogging in the last six years, and in all of them the conversation turned to remediation, answering questions like: how much time do you spend on your blog, are you an artist or a writer or a critic, how many hits do you get, do you know who reads you, and so on. The New Yorkers in attendence [sic] at Art Bloggers @ Red Dot asked the same questions as Miamians in 2004, from which I draw no inferences except that the medium still mystifies. The audience had around forty people in it, so folks are interested.

My first reaction was, Franklin sure has gotten lazy. "The medium still mystifies"? I used to think this guy was used to thinking by the inch --and he used to. And then: Forty people? in New York City? And finally: Franklin had three extended openings to change the course of the conversation, yet the same questions persist.

Then I moved on to other things, but I returned to Franklin's blog, as I do regularly --out of kindness, I suppose-- and below the conference posting I found a comment by one of the moderators of this conference that pissed me off to no end. Since then, I've been following the meager follow-ups on the various blogs of the moderators, panelists, and some participants. Catherine and I have watched both parts of James Kalm's video of the conference. Most of these people live in or around New York City, or the Eastern Seaboard. I spent some time examining these blogs -- and then more hours talking with Catherine --a hell of a lot longer than the Art Bloggers @ Red Dot conference itself-- and you know what we concluded?

Out here in Phoenix we sometimes talk about people from Bumf*ck, Egypt --blinkered unreflective hicks who do not engage the serious times we live in, or wrestle with the mortal stakes which should guide our lives and shiver our souls, even in art; people who think that life is but a joke, heads bobbing, smiley nodding, in a soothing communal tuning: let's be positive, let's be safe. And now whoa daddy, here's a whole gaggle of these gassing geese gathering in New York City itself, the so-called capital of ironic sophistication, and they call themselves art bloggers. I call these panelists pikers, small beer, imposters and pretenders, and if you're interested I'll give you my reasons.

* * * * *

The artblog.net comment that bothered me so much came from Joanne Mattera, one of the moderators of the conference. I'll fisk it:

The first question I tossed to the panelists was on journalistic standards with regard to research, writing, editing--Journalism 101, basically.

Well, what was the question? Not "was on," "with regard to" --what the hell was the question? I had to go to "the minutes," posted days later on Mattera's blog, for the actual question:

What is our responsibility personally to good writing and journalistic integrity in our own blogs and within the blogosphere in general?

Answer: Write the best, truest, and clearest you can, no matter how long it takes; maintain the highest standards for facts and honesty; and call others in the blogosphere on their bullshit, as I'm doing right now. But that's all basic, isn't it? It's a vapid question.

The title of the panel, the reader should know, was "The Impact of Bloggers on the Art World." These people are really up on themselves, and fooling themselves, when they know the answer is that there has been no impact and this panel didn't do much to help. I'll say more below, but for now consider the likelihood of this headline coming across the Bloomberg wire: "Blogger's Criticism Causes Hirst's Skull To Crash; George Michael Announces Emergency Concert Tour with Bono."

To continue:

Ed Winkleman had a great response, saying something to the effect--

Wait; if it was such a great response, why don't you remember it better? I know I'm nitpicking, but I tend to when I run across stale filler like "something to the effect" instead of what should have been there: a verbatim response taken from a transcript of the conference.

--that his readers were his editors, and if he makes a mistake, he's immediately called on it. We all agreed that the nature of the medium allows us to post changes immediately.

Why isn't Ed Winkleman his own editor, so his readers don't need to correct him? Why doesn't he bust his chops to get everything right to the best of his ability before he posts anything? And since this kind of correction between the publisher and the public is not at all unique to the "nature of the medium" --it's been going on since at least 1801; read American Aurora-- why is this piddling observation given first place in Mattera's first comment on this conference? This is Journalism 001.

But what really made me mad came next:

Paddy Johnson talked about the consequences of what she writes. I can't give you quotes as I was busy moderating, but the essence was that it's one thing to post a less-than-flattering comment and quite something else to have to run into the objects of your derision or scorn.

Catherine and I have been criticizing artists (local, national, and international), gallerists, curators, collectors, arts administrators, and institutions like Creative Capital, the city and state arts commissions, the art museums, the two newspapers, and Arizona State University for over five years now, and we have paid a very high price for it, professionally. We've slammed Thelma Golden and Kara Walker and Beverly McIver for making money off the mau-mau. We took Jeanne Greenberg-Rohatyn to the woodshed. Four years ago, as I declined a job offer at the Phoenix New Times, I skewered the guy who's now the editor of the Village Voice. We've ridiculed sacred guru James Turrell and pseudoscientist-artist Matthew Ritchie. I've pointed out the laziness and egotism of the public art of Dennis Oppenheim and Donald Lipski. After four years, my piece on Santiago Sierra is still the #11 on Google for that antihuman creep. There are many more examples. Heide Hesse. Jon Haddock. Sandow Birk. We are blackballed in this Valley and beyond because of our criticisms, and probably because of our pro-American politics as well. We can't get a venue anywhere. That's the culture we live in.

And talk about running into people? Lightweights. You'll get no sympathy from us. We have been assaulted because of what we have written and stood behind on The Tears Of Things. (But we've grown beyond it, forgiven our enemies, and turned the other cheek, as they say. What a liberating experience that is. You all ought to experience what it's like to have to turn the other cheek. We wouldn't want to keep the goodness all to ourselves.) Phoenix artist and amateur boxer Hector Ruiz has challenged me to go a few rounds with him because I criticized his hypocritical sellout soullessness. We get pseudonymous emails irregularly which threaten us with physical violence "if we show our faces in public." We never go out in public unarmed. How about you, Paddy Johnson? Do you have to go out strapped because of what you've written on your blog? I doubt it.

Last year a sleazy blogger who works for the local giveaway dirtrag which owns the Village Voice viciously attacked my wife in print, going on in awful detail, attacking her physical existence, her very being, in misogynistic, misanthropic vituperation. All because he saw us in public. Nobody bothered to object, and some even urged him on. That ever happen to you, Joanne Mattera, Sharon Butler, Paddy Johnson? I doubt it. And what would you do if Tony Ortega signed off on a smear job on you? After all, you've got a jewel of a piece about this new artist who sorts M&Ms by color, and VV would be perfect for that, yes?

So when I read Paddy Johnson's one-and-two sentence "criticisms," sweeping a whole show like Red Dot away with "it's mostly a wash"-- why should this carry any weight at all? Why should she feel any threat from anyone? Who would be afraid of anything she wrote? She didn't write anything.

Picture this: She's afraid she'll be at a party, talking to someone new, and say that Jeff Koons is an overblown hack. The other person asks her name, and then says that he's an assistant to an assistant to Jeff Koons. And Paddy Johnson leaves the party and walks the streets until dawn wondering if she has any future at all in The City anymore . . . Shit. The first thing I saw on her blog was a screen capture of a soap opera scene of the Koons show at the Broad in LA; she even reproduced some of the dialogue.

That's real deep, Ms. Johnson. When you write two thousand wise and unforgettable words about Damien Hirst's unignorable, sophomoric "School," and slam Aby Rosen for his awful judgment -- when you castigate Gavin Brown for backing the career of smirking nihilist Urs Fischer -- when you and your buddies move beyond the moribund target of foggy pomo writing from the Whitney "lessness" curators -- when you New York art bloggers mount a boycott of Chinese art and the Chinese Olympics -- then you might be worth paying attention to. Until then, you're not much to write about. You're living in a la-de-da world where someone like Dash Snow is important, where you'd give a lot for the cell-phone number of Banks Violette's tattooist.

Better yet, picture this: the person at the party guides you to a quiet corner, then raises their hands imploringly and, with eyes as crazy as sweat bees pressed up against glass, tells you that you can't talk that way because --"listen to me very carefully" --big breath-- "PEOPLE WON'T LIKE YOU."

That's the horror that haunts these people, and they ought to admit it. Who's going to tear up a MacArthur Fellow? Who's going to say Creative Capital sponsors crap? Who's going to risk going against the grain of granter$? Or department heads? Not these people. But we do.

Welcome to the New Wild West, panelists. This crew seems to live in the City of Lites, but life is mortally real out here, where rebarbarization sharpens its teeth daily, where the trajectory is to see how low, ugly, and skanky you can go. We fight it, while others wallow in it. We defend and promote human dignity, the human spirit, imagination, independence, reason, the individual, the religious drive, restraint, respect for women, expert handwork, excellence in craft . . . And these "art bloggers?" What are they about?

Someone named Olympia Lampert writes on her blog:

If I slam you and say that your art is insipid and uninspiring, I will not be ashamed of saying so. If I think you're the bees knees and the next big thing, enjoy it for what it's worth-- for after all, what the hell do I know. But one thing can be promised. I will have an opinion always, and I will share it with you. There will be no holding back. I believe that is the job of a critic. I am not here to make friends, nor enemies. If one leans on the side of either, so be it. For every friend I make, I will have 5 enemies, and for every enemy I make, I will have 5 friends. So I can't do math, but what I can do is share what I feel is from my heart mixed with the knowledge from my brain.

Empty huffing and puffing. And she wants to be taken seriously. (This person has a journalism background.)

On Joanne Mattera's blog she has as a description under her blog's name:

Guaranteed Biased, Myopic, Incomplete and Journalistically Suspect

And she wants to be taken seriously. Then I read on the meager, scattered comments post-conference, this:

In a post about the panel discussion at Red Dot, Harry reveals that his "favorite part was bloggers recounting their favorite big-traffic headlines. Who can top 'How to preserve a chocolate Santa b*tt pl*g?'"

And they all want to be taken seriously. Mattera's first comment ends this way:

We also talked about whether we were writing critically or reportorially--or doing something else altogether--and many on the panel lamented the diminishing amount and quality of print criticism.

A false distinction. First you report, then you criticize. You can't analyze what you haven't first described. As for the bitching, simple answer: write better; write so good they'll never miss print criticism. Write so good you'll revive print criticism.

By now, there is nothing unique about a blog, nothing new to say about its form, structure, or function. It's a magazine or a diary or a journal or a calendar or all of that. It's great, and I'm thankful for all the genius that went into it, and continues to do so. But the whole point of their enterprise is make the interface transparent and painless, so you're not looking at the finger, but the moon.

At least two of these panelists said elsewhere that they prefer not to read long essays on the screen. No good reason at all, except it's clear they're just lazy and unused to sustained concentration.

So much for my comments on the first comment, which are directed not just at Joanne Mattera and Paddy Johnson but all the members of the panel: Ed Winkleman, Carol Diehl, Carolina Miranda, and Sharon Butler.

There's so much more to say, but let's run it back to zero for a start.

Art bloggers. This handful of people think they represent art bloggers. In Kalm's video and Mattera's minutes we hear a string of irrelevant statistics about how many blogs are created every second, and even if art blogs are a tiny percentage of the total, the number is significant. But did Mattera et al reach out to any of these thousands of art blogs? As far as I can tell, and as the content of the conference reveals, no.

Here's what could have happened to make this conference more representative, but didn't. At least a month before the conference the core group sends out emails to everyone they know who runs or knows about an art blog, worldwide. They specifically ask, "Do you know of an art blog that we might have missed?" They compile a list. Then they sent out solicitations for questions. They compile the collected questions, omitting duplicates, and send out that list, which will generate more questions. (I'm sure topics like China would arise.) After a few rounds diminishing returns sets in, and a final, distilled list goes out so that people can prepare notes for the day of the conference.

Everyone gets to contribute. The panelists edit the contributions. On the day of the conference --which should be at least four hours, not an hour or two-- a detailed agenda goes out to all possible interested parties, so everybody will literally know what page they're on. You'd have podcasts and laptops and live feeds; you'd have people responding, in real time, from all over the place. They wouldn't have to be there. You'd have gatekeepers to control the information flow. None of this happened, even though at least four of these people are professional academics, who should know the stultifying sludge that clogs most of these kinds of meetings. But they did nothing to update, streamline, and liven up the process.

But all this is shouting into an empty hole. Watch Kalm's video (Part I). Most of it is wasted on self-introductions. (This was supposed to be preparation for the conference itself.) It's all about the wonder of these people, none of whom is spellbinding, that's for damn sure. I was reminded of an array of uncooked bread loaves ranged around that conference table, soft dough, soft voices, soft jobs, soft thinking . . .

And technically, it's as if Mr. Kalm doesn't know how to do a series of static screen capture head shots with the biographical information printed below each one, next, next, next, thirty seconds, now we know who we are, and now we're on to substantive things. Instead, we have to hear every little squib --"Oh, you're Franklin?"-- "I'm Franklin."-- as if they're trying to foreground this friendly, fuzzy, positive vibe.

It isn't working. It's insipid, smarmy, and a waste of time. But that's all these people have displayed, instead of ideas and imagination, instead of passion and anger and righteous indignation. So everything's fine in their art world.

There was also a shocking faux pas in the second part of the video --shocking to us, not to the people at the meeting-- which illustrated how rudely provincial and insensitive supposedly urban, educated folks can be. It was when Sharon Butler said that she once got someone's gender wrong, and then, as she passed the microphone, she pulled it back (to get a laugh?) and said, "It was a foreign name, I couldn't tell." And she did get a laugh; but we didn't laugh, we cringed. We reran that part to make sure we heard it right. First, she should never had referred to the person's gender until she was sure of it; Journalism 101. But in the global 21st Century, in the middle of a polyglot city, when you need a glossary just for the restaurant names, you'd think there would be more sensitivity, instead of this patronizing, neo-colonialist tone. Didn't she say she was a professor? Has she never encountered unusual student names? It was a cheap, ugly shot, and nobody called her on it. And people call us racist.

(This scene also reminded me of a meeting I had once with a roomful of art writers for the now-defunct shade magazine. One woman referred to "James Turrell's girlfriend." I interrupted to say, "Doesn't she have a name?" And she said yes, but it's hard to pronounce. And everyone but me laughed. This was five years ago.)

At the end of Mattera's minutes of the meeting, she writes:

We didn't get to the big questions-- Are we mainstream yet? Do we want to be? What is the future of art blogging?

So it becomes clear that the focus is on the blogging part, not the art part. After listening to the video and reading whatever I can about this conference, the only artwork mentioned was a Paul McCarthy obscenity.

It's very difficult for us to take these people seriously, if these are what they consider The Big Questions.

While they fantasize that they might have a choice about going "mainstream," they don't work on anything to get there. Instead, they go all swoony when Tyler Green mentions their two-paragraph posting, making sure all their friends will hyperlink it. Catherine and I have worked for weeks and months on pieces about snuff art, the use of animals in art, and the use of live people in art, only to set them aside because they're so emotionally taxing, so psychologically draining. But these people don't even try. They could have hosted the definitive symposium on "School," for example, and if they had any chops at all they would have flayed Hirst into strips --in retribution, for so has he done to so many helpless creatures. Someone should have compacted Martin Creed at Bard. But no, they're too busy squinting at their friend's 12x12 abstractions, or comparing early and late Eisenmann.

Aren't the embattled moral dimensions of art as it is practiced today more important to these people that how many hits they get, how much time they spend on their blog, or who reads them? Discuss. If you want to be read, to be important, to make any kind of difference in the wide world, you won't get there with skanky headlines and linky roundups and two-paragraph reviews. We aim high, and though our aim is true we haven't made a dent in this decadent culture in five years. But we aren't about to let art -- the quintessential human activity, evolution's conundrum -- get drowned in the abbatoir without a fight.

I know that Catherine and I work on the wrong side of history now, but the day ain't over yet: we believe that history has shape and meaning and purpose, and a need for balance, and that beyond the shallows of comic-book nihilism lay deep waters of significance. Sailing through the sea of stars, we look out for them.

Posted by Jerome at April 7, 2008 09:00 PM | TrackBack