March 26, 2007
Dazed And Confused In The Glittering World
Indigenous Evolution, 2005, by Rosemary Lonewolf and Tony Jojola, ceramics and blown glass. Permanent installation at the Heard Museum. Photograph © 2007 Catherine King.
by Jerome du Bois
So much contemporary art is beyond parody that, when I try to describe it, I feel like someone stuck with explaining a lame joke. The upside is that, since so many people take it seriously, there's a lot of material to poke fun at, which is healthier than seething with anger, I have learned. Sometimes it gives Catherine and I the opportunity to point to art that really is worth attending to. Which is not the case with --here he is! there he goes!-- Steven Yazzie trundling by in his cute l'il art car, trying to draw and steer at the same time.
Where to begin? Usually art writers draw on precedent first, just to show they know something. Okay, well, Chris Burden did the vehicle part of the notion better in 1977, with his B-Car. As for drawing under unusual constraints, Matthew Barney has been doing it since graduate school. It's a dumb idea, but that never stopped anybody, including once-local sweat artist Angela Ellsworth. Now we need someone drawing while skydiving, while underwater, while pursued by a bear . . .
No no no, Heard Museum curator Joe Baker explains; I'm missing the point. It's about being an American Indian:
For decades, Monument Valley was used as a backdrop in Hollywood Westerns that depicted American Indians in racist terms. These films fed into a mythology of the American West in which Indians were either stoic noblemen or fierce savages. In “Draw Me a Picture,” Yazzie challenges these stereotypes of Indian identity by re-envisioning this landscape from a fresh, alert vantage point.
From the driver’s seat of a self-styled art car, Yazzie winds along a red dirt road into Monument Valley while simultaneously creating drawings-in-motion of the dramatic red rock formations passing by. Powered only by gravity, the art car is “part sculpture, part rolling studio” according to curator Joe Baker. “Fitted with an attached easel, [the car] allows the artist to be in motion while drawing the advancing landscape.” The entire process is captured on film.
“Draw Me a Picture” shatters outmoded thinking about Indians by offering a new representation of this well-known American landscape. According to Baker, “through his actions and urgent drawings of Monument Valley, [Yazzie] reclaims this picture, making it his own by creating images that are free of expectations and stereotypical gestures of ‘Indianess.’ The final result is drawing that is alert to self, place, and time.”
The final result is drawing that doesn't look even a smidgeon like Monument Valley, and an Indian so swathed in safety devices --white helmet, reflective jumpsuit, red warning flags-- you'd think he was a porcelain doll. We've come a long way from counting coup, apparently. (I know, I know, that wasn't the Navajo.) And Joe Baker's trumpeting hits all the pomo flat notes: shatters outmoded thinking --reclaims this picture-- making it his own-- alert to self, place, and time.
From the only published review of this exhibition, I learned that the inclusion of the silent film The Vanishing American, with its shame-on-you-white-man theme, was Joe Baker's idea, not Yazzie's. If you browse Yazzie's web site about this Drawing and Driving project of his, he displays no obvious political overlay in his descriptions. He did this driving thang in Maine, and as far as I can tell that silly stunt was apolitical (and without a helmet). As for Joe Baker, his predictable political credentials were loudly evident in the "Holy Land" exhibition. Now, take away the Indian/racist scrim at the Heard exhibition, and what have you got? Something even thinner, no?
But wait --there's more.
I have a soft spot for the Navajo, having lived up there, primitively, a long time ago. They don't beat their women down, and their elaborate cosmology pays due respect to the awesome world. In fact, they say that traditional Navajos call this world, their Fourth World, the Glittering World.
The Glittering World. Yes, that's the way it looks to me, too. Reality is grainy, made up of trillions of hard little bits, combined in inexhaustibly beautiful ways. Not only that, the procession --and evolution-- of humanity through four worlds harmonizes nicely with Lee Smolin's cosmological natural selection, for which I also have a soft spot.
Instead of attacking the straw man of Hollywood, which left off racist depictions of Indians quite a while ago, Joe Baker (and Yazzie, if he's so inclined) could draw attention to the real dangers to continuing Navajo identity: Mormons, Adventists, Pentecostals, and the Native American Church. And don't forget the package of selfishness and greed --the way to make money-- that First Man sent the bird back to the drowning Third World to retrieve.
Veering back from the whole Indian schtick, leaving Steve Yazzie in the dust (what else is there to say about his gimmick, except that he should consider a variation --pole-dancing at SMoCA in May?), and anyway more generally . . .
[II] The Heard Museum is famous for its collections of indigenous art from around the world. Catherine and I made three long visits in the past few months, renewing a long-neglected acquaintance with the place, taking hundreds of photographs, and what struck us most deeply --and thankfully-- was the total lack of irony in the indigenous work. The art and artifacts face the world, and stand up to it, and glow with their hard-earned lives. (Catherine adds here, "We didn't even have any expectations, and we were blown away.")
Ironically, some of the Museum's curators (and preparators) for the past few years have felt the need to draw more contemporary audiences, so they turned their backs to the lessons of the indigenous art (some of which is contemporaneous), to try on some pomo shoes, get dazed and confused, and the contemporary art suffers by comparison.
We saw a pared-down version of "Holy Land," at the tail end of the exhibition, but the three centerpieces were still there:
1) the de la Torre brothers' trashy-trailer fused with Olmec head, insulting America while ripping off Jasper Johns and Ed Keinholz;
2) an inexplicable installation consisting of the following: a wall of red plastic ice coolers, one side of which had been cut open in a giant circle; six feet away, a vertical constuction of C-clamps of various sizes, like a wizened Stankewiecz; six feet further, a powerful mounted floodlight casting a shadow of the sculpture into the circle; that's it, that's the piece!;
3) An Israeli artist's piece called, I think, Tree House. In two parts: a wall-projected video of its construction, with the ectomorphic artist, bare-chested, well-bearded, and wearing baggy blue-and-white swimming trunks, uses sprockets, ratchets, and bolts to construct what you see on the floor next to the video projection. It's a bare mattress, and what rises awkwardly from its head is no tree house --there's no space to lie down-- but instead a spindly and starving wooden dream. I've built children's playground equipment that was far more complicated.
Catherine and I believe that every one of these contemporary pieces suffers in comparison with the objects highlighted above in the paragraph marked [II].
We leave readers to make their own comparisons.
* * * * * * *
Post Notes:
All photographs taken from Catherine's extended piece on the Heard Museum, still in preparation.
If Mr. Baker or Mr. Yazzie or anyone wish to comment, choose your words carefully.
March 15, 2007
March 14, 2007
Four Years of Tears
by Catherine King
Ain't it funny how time slips away? The Tears of Things reached its fourth anniversary yesterday. They have been four rough years, for sure, emotionally and professionally. I needed growth through pain like a hole in the head, but growth, and pain, are what I got.
Looking back on these past four years, from March '03 to March '04, to March '05, to March '06 'til today, I can trace the progression that I'm going to relate to you, dear reader. I think about Time even more obsessively now. I've always been compulsively busy ("Stop, take a break, relax," they would say to me), but these tendencies have become even more pronounced, as one can see in the Hand and Time pieces on which we've recently posted.
It's my compulsion for thoroughness that's motivating this retrospective. I'm taking some time out from a number of projects, such as the 2007 Spring Fashion Board Banner, Volver, The Fullness of Time and Grow-In-The-Dark, all of which you'll be able to see in the very near future. But now is the time to ponder the changes in the Tears and discern its consistencies. Come back with me through time and revisit Jerome and I as we've struggled with our Cosmic Issues since we began The Tears of Things . . .
We were more of a blog back then, meaning we had open comments. And we wrote a lot about the local art scene. Actually, Jerome did all of the writing, in the beginning. The first post was about Mel Roman at the now-defunct Studio Lodo. Jerome related local art to international politics, but he also wrote about the whole world of Contemporary Art-- from Sharjah to Sweden.
Jerome's second post, a review of Leslie Dill's exhibition at SMoCA, was very meaningfull for me. Before we visited this exhibition, in April of '03, I didn't feel very confident about art writing and art criticism. Jerome is the expert on late Twentieth Century American Art. Getting ready to view the show, and driving over to the art museum, I felt inadequate to comment or judge.
But as we entered the exhibition, I determined that I would approach the famous artist's work as if I were a blank slate. I didn't need to know all about Damien Hirst or the Dematerialized Art Object in order to have a valid impression of Dill's dinky doodles. I had found a stance. This was the exhibition that freed my critical voice. Jerome wrote the review, but I contributed a lot of opinions. I was beginning to feel empowered as a culture writer, thanks to Leslie Dill's hokey Hallmark renditions.
What is authenticity in art, people? Well, some of us know it when we feel it. And I'm a sensitive, so that's my key to criticism. Not to mention a lifetime of work in Graphic Arts and a Masters Degree in Secondary Art Education. Anyway . . .
During the Tears' first year, I was confident enough to write an extensive review of another show at SMoCA-- HairStories-- premised, believe it or not, on the trials and tribulations of having kinky hair. Jerome also slammed the ridiculously recreational SMoCA in "Pizza Nights, Paint-by-Numbers, and Proud of It." Wait a minute, mark your calendars-- Jerome has just informed me that SMoCA's next exhibition will feature Steve Yazzie painting as he pole-dances! Don't want to miss that. Bring all your friends 'cause everybody knows it's all about heads in the door for SMoCA.
We weren't too far along with the Tears when we got some coverage in The Arizona Republic. John Villani called it correctly when he said that sacred cows better watch out because Jerome and I were taking no prisoners in our local arts coverage. But that was just the beginning . . .
Villani was covering our blog in that article, although we also had a physical gallery at that time. What fun it was to make The Last Time tableau installation in a street-level display window! We posted photographs of it on The Tears of Things as we began to feature more of our own art. Visitors could look at some of Jerome's sculptures, such as It Was Worth It (and it has been).
The Tears of Things was conceived in a dark old haunted apartment. I began making photographic collages of the paranormal phenomena that presented itself there and we posted those in the early days. Then we moved to a house with a big yard which began to feature in more and more of the illustrations on the blog.
I got into flower arranging and Jerome convinced me to post pictures of them. The flower photos continued for nearly a year. At first I photographed the arrangements inside then got a better camera and took the flower arranging outside. Of course I had to take advantage of the natural light. But time moves on, changing 'Things. The only arrangements I make these days are yearly tributes to the victims of September 11, 2001. Come by every year on that date and you'll see my latest.
Trying to be as conscientious as possible, I felt I had to be responsible to our readers and review the Arizona Art Biennial '03. Hey, nobody else was. Not even ole Richard Nilsen. How can an art writer overlook something as glaringly basic as that? Too much work, maybe. He surely wouldn't have been put off by the disappointing art there. More likely he just didn't want to burn any bridges. Burning bridges is dangerous business and it's not for the faint of heart. Nasty little people, like Marlyn Jones, come crawling out of the woodwork to snipe at one.
Naturally, we were racking up quite a collection of enemies by this time, what with our irreverent attitude towards the "creative class." Don't forget our politically incorrect anti-Islamic rhetoric. We deferred to no one. Also, we refused to be anonymous, or to tolerate anonymity. These characteristics enraged all the tough little twits who didn't have the balls or ovaries to sign their names to their twisted opinions. And so e-mails and comments became issues and festering thorns in our sides.
But it's exhilarating to speak truth to power and so we decided long ago to keep on keepin' on. Shut up and go away? Not on your life. We have paid for our forthrightness, but obviously have determined the the pain is worth the price because, as you can see, we have never retracted a single word.
The second year of Tears brought out more major themes and artworks. We began writing La Pionera and the New Mango, our online novel about contemporary Cuban artists, entrepreneurs, mystics and political prisoners withstanding life on their island as they defend themselves against elite American art brokers. This piece has been lovingly placed on the back burner as Jerome and I struggle to survive these dark times here in the USA.
Looking back on it all, we were railing against so much, it's no wonder we got worn out. Besides the Bentley Projects fiasco, there was the Scottsdale Unified School District's Islamist curricula agenda, and the ASU Art Museum's disingenuously anti-American exhibit, paradoxically called "Democracy in America." My spirit, which at first took the title and premise of the exhibition literally (the way spirits always do), was nearly destroyed by the way the shameless curators and funky artists had their way with the sacred concept of Democracy.
That's academia for you-- they're the worst. Jerome and I lifted the covers off the cancerous saturation of "the dispositions" in our nation's educational system. Jerome wrote a lot that year about these zombies. At the same time, we posted many pieces on the worthless art scene around here, in our extensive Pride of Phoenix expose. Needless to say, we burned a ton of sage during this frightfull period.
But we persevered with our efforts to elevate the dialogue. On the brighter side, I proudly finished the Psychedelic Leprechaun. I custom made this dress and Jerome liked it so well that he posted a portrait of me wearing it. It was the beginning of the Portraits of Catherine series. We should have figured that people would make sport out of appropriating my images and that is just what happened, on the discussion board at Angela Johnson's Labelhorde.
Local fashion posers like Andrew Brown of Soldierleisure paused in their t-shirt silkscreening long enough to mutter and sputter in a couple of emails, then run away, gradeschool-style.
Speaking of gradeschool-style, it boggled us to figure out why a group of adults needed to form a Writers-Bloc clubhouse. This one still puzzles me. Do mature people really need to hold each other's hands for moral support and inspiration in order to write? Because Jerome and I are hanging out here on the drop edge of yonder just pouring our hearts out with no encouragement or compensation at all. We made a decision a long time ago to keep our sidebar sponsor-free. That is one way that we retain our integrity.
So Jerome and I had to take on some local fashion-groupies, along with a few of the valley's spoken-word loudmouths. The things people say. Then of course Jerome could not let Amy Silverman get away with her Phoenix-bashing without coming to the defense of the town we love. Yet another blackball for The Tears Of Things.
It must be said that just as the privileged academics feel they must tear down the country every chance they get, so the "creative classes" endlessly complain about the city that unfailingly gives them everything they want on a silver platter. Poor little Beatrice Moore and the thugs in that skanky downtown arts organization that doesn't deserve to be named here.
All along, whatever the subject, we have asked specific questions. But nobody addressed them. Not one. The mostly anonymous replies would just attack us, but nobody has answered, for example, "Where Is The Arizona Art Blog?" There still isn't one, despite the endless "burgeoning." Probably because nobody's being paid to create an art blog. (Another question, which we haven't posed before, is "Whatever happened to the Phoenix Artist Storefront Program?" You see, if we were still interested in the local scene, we would pursue why the "materials are now undergoing revision." For almost a year. Sounds fascinating, but that's somebody else's job now.)
The Tears developed some emblematic features during the third year. We began to create what we termed "digital net art." Jerome made Recite, Settle, A Pagan Christmas Card, Everyverbeverreverberates, Constanza Dolorosa and Life Bow: The Endless Arc. We couldn't help but start the ubiquitous Pink series, It's Not a Rose-Colored World and Wearing Pink Won't Make It So. In the Fall I made my first set of Fashion Boards. And the parrots came into our lives, so now we regularly posted our nature photography, as well.
I would characterize our fourth year as being fragile and spooky. I guess you'd say we had extracted ourselves from the toxicity of the contemporary art world, as well as the local scene. The Other Side had become an overwhelming presence . . .
Cats, birds, trees, orbs, spirits, nature and the supernatural became our sphere of being. And so there was the Felines & Phantoms series, many pieces about parrots-- individual portraits and digital collages such as Crazy Quilt of the Parrot Goddess II and The Birds Looked ThroughThe Window At Me As If I Were Living In A Cage.
I created a number of paranormal collages-- Gingerbread Gothic, The Hidden Observers, The Good Neighbors, The Tree of Everlasting Life. Jerome and I began to collaborate again, as King & du Bois, on pieces such as The Dying Time. He continued with electronic work-- The Duchampagram, Disjarring Spirits, and my raving favorite-- the brand new Two Nows in Platonia.
Also brand new is the Cosmic Joke series-- different for us and very therapeutic, with the humor and all.
Although we've withdrawn from the local scene for the most part, we occasionally take in a museum show. Couldn't help but comment on Mesa Contemporary Art in The Desert as Wasteland, and Phoenix Art Museum's big reopening in Images of Humanity.
One never knows where one is going to find inspiration. I confess I downloaded Jon Haddock and Deborah Sussman Susser's dopey, immature and shortsighted comic from New Times a couple of weeks ago. I'm so sick of these spoiled brats complaining about how they're way too cool for Phoenix (like Amy Silverman did in her vanity New Times piece). But I actually got something out of Deborah Sussman Susser's vanity New Times piece. Now I know how I want to frame my rave review of the Heard Museum. It's going to be the first installment in my series "Ten Things I Love About Phoenix."
We have lots of plans and projects, so we'll be around for the forseeable future, Goddess willing.
March 11, 2007
Two Nows In Platonia
Two Nows In Platonia. Digital photocollage by Jerome du Bois from photos by Catherine King. © 2007.
For an explanation of the title, the reader needs to consult Julian Barbour.
March 10, 2007
March 09, 2007
March 08, 2007
Man, It's Really Dead Around Here Tonight
Paranormal Photography © 2005 Jerome du Bois.
Third in The Cosmic Joke series. See sidebar.
March 07, 2007
March 06, 2007
So What Did You Do Last Night?
Paranormal Photography © 2007 Catherine King. From a photo-based work in progress titled The Fullness Of Time.
March 01, 2007
A WOMAN'S REACH
A Woman's Reach. Digital Photocollage and Collage. 38" wide. © 2007 by King & du Bois
Detail here.
by Catherine King
This collage took its title from a poem by Robert Browning: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?” Seeing as the photograph is of my hand, though, Jerome and I decided to paraphrase the line.
The online search engine tells us that Browning's words suggest that, to achieve anything worthwhile, a person should attempt even those things that may turn out to be impossible.
While not untrue, I have more possible interpretations as applied to King & du Bois' latest piece.
This piece is about extending oneself by sheer will, as in morphing, changing oneself however necessary in order to accomplish, let's say, a task that one has set for oneself. It's about reaching farther than is ordinarily possible, or doing whatever it takes, because one refuses to accept limits.
So it's also quintessentially human, in that it's about the age-old desire to make a mark, to have some kind of an impact. It expresses the attempt of one soul to reach out, and in doing so to try one's hardest both to contribute and to communicate.
The image is timelessly mysterious, like those self-portrait handprints made by our cave-dwelling ancestors. All they left is proof that they, too, tried to touch their surroundings . . .
But, on the other hand, we all know that our efforts inevitably lead to unifying with our surroundings. We disperse and melt until there's nothing left.
The image is also postmodern -- it refers to fractals, of which everything is made, we now know. Like a tree, with fingers like leaves, the hand's development is always outward, upward, forward, making contact, solving problems, and creating beauty.