www.chrisstiegler.com

On view at Greene Naftali is a wonderful new painting by Ellsworth Kelly titled Green Relief.  It’s in line with much of Kelly’s ouevre being both bold and graphic while questioning the modes of painting.  I have always thought of Kelly as the master-painter of the late New York School, or Post-Painterly Abstraction, or Late High-Modernism.  His pictures, specificaly this one, always seem pertinent.  Kelly, perhaps the oldest artist on view in this group exhibition centered around painting’s longevity, imparts a message of balance to show that toils and follies with gestural brushwork and conceptual trickery.  The large green shape sits atop a shock of white canvas.  There is a gentle hint of space.  But it is largely about the limitations of painting as a media.  Once again, masterful Ellsworth presents a calm and sobering view of a media that will never die.  Thankfully, the audience is astutely attentive.

 I must apologize for my poor writing schedule these past few weeks.  Rest assured that the summer is a slow time for all things art related with the vast majority of the clientele on vacation.  And so, in the coming months, be expecting a steady stream of art thinking.  I will be closer to and more involved with the art world as it enters into its first season amidst recession.  It will be noteworthy.  So there will be notes.  Thanks. 

Canada, a small art space in New York’s Chinatown, has had the benefit of attracting decent artists and a fair share of good press.  On view there now is a fantasical show about the birth of creative ideas - namely sculpture - by Jocelyn Shipley.  Basically the show displays  florescent, naturally inspired forms built out of industrial material with googly-eyes that are potential works of art.  It is cute to a point, but never really all that interesting.  The nature of the work is not made any better by putting it under a black light either.  Shipley’s kitschy appreciation for childhood references does develop a playful aesthetic, but the work stops there.  As viewers, we are left with almost no emotion or empathy for these things - which is odd since they have eyes.  ¶Canada’s founder, Sarah Braman, is the author of a more successful show at Museum 52.  Like most 3D work these days, her’s is borne out minimalist appreciation of industry and our cultures obsession with cheaply made things.  In the vein of Chamberlain, who mashed car detritus together to create poetic balls of metal, Braman combines veneered desks, pick-up truck hoods among other materials to similar ends.  It is as much an essay on our disposable culture as it is about our penchant for reminiscence.  All the things she uses to build these structures seems to be venerated with a heartwarming past.  They are not simply affixed, but conjoined by collective history.  This is the stuff that we all had and we all lost or disregarded.  But Braman’s point seems to be that we are stuck with this crap.  It is all garbage, but unfortunately, its also our culture.  ¶These two shows explore a dichotomy of contemporary sculpture; that between the potential and the kinetic.  Shipley’s work is rooted in what our culture is going to create, our artistic future.  Unfortunately, the show falls short of grandiose claims and instead locates our impending culture in childlike stories of ‘art-in-waiting.’  Braman, however, is exploring our current moment by exploring the things that we have already made, used and discarded.  ¶Potential unfolds precariously in the face of history.  Its too easy to fantasize about what’s next.  What is needed is a careful examination of where we are in light of where we came from.  Examining our garbage seems a good place to start.  

An artist named Taylor McKimens, under the influence of abject comic strips, has made a swamp creature and put on view at Deitch Projects.  It is a funny Thing that comes out of the long line of underground comic-book aesthetes made famous by R. Crumb, made high art by Philip Guston.  The imagery is rural by choice, but in an almost ironically condescending manner.  The style seems born out of good fun, but the subject matter seems to be fun at some peoples cost.  It’s worth it though. 

 It was a warm day in March when I received the phone call from a head-hunter asking me to interview.  As a recent graduate of a Master’s program, this phone call could mean my break into the commercial art world.  This interview would surely roll into one at a major gallery and I would surely be offered the position.  What transpired thereafter was something of a different tale, one with more venom and shock than I was prepared to handle.  Although the initial interview did, in fact, lead to one at a major gallery, a power greater than us had set the course.   ¶The First Interview: The morning of my meeting, I had to work by day job at a cafe.  So at 5AM I left my apartment equipped for a quick nap, costume change and ultimately, the interview.  I had, the previous evening, picked out an outfit, shaved and prepared my self emotionally for the events of the next day.  After my shift ended at 1PM, I napped in a friend’s apartment, changed and made my way toward Middle-Manhattan.  The office was in an unimpressive building on a shared floor inside of another company’s suite.  Lackluster is an understatement, but without judgement I went forward.  I met with a squeamish man whose aired on the side of condescension with almost every sentence.  He perused my resume, gave me pointers and, with an air of disinterest, asked about my future plans.  He told me to lie during the interview.  That it was bad idea to mention my very real plans of finishing a PhD within my lifetime.  I was only supposed to talk about my supposed ‘love’ for selling paintings.  ¶After the interview portion was over, we talked about the possibiltiy of me doing  freelance work through their company. To keep me on file for such positions I would need to fill out tax forms.  While completing the standard 1099, my interviewer ‘helped’ me out by completing some portions himself.  So, when he initially asked about my birth-date I thought nothing of it and replied “June 7th, 1982.”  The next question was, shockingly, “Does that make you a Gemini?”  Stunned, but still a little anxious, I confirmed and continued filling out the form in front of me.  My only thought was, “Is this interviewer sweet on me?”  I wanted to know why he asked such strange question when another inappropriate one came my way.   ¶”Is that a water or air sign?”  ¶I couldn’t believe where this was going.  I was not even sure where it was headed, but I knew it had to end.  So I calmly replied, “I’m not sure, and I don’t know why you are asking.”  His response was a quick and obviously insincere “Just wondering.” ¶From that point on, the meeting was curt and businesslike.  He told me the company that I would be interviewing with, when the meeting might take place and what to expect. I was excited by the name of the art-dealership, because it was one of New York’s biggest and most well-known.  In the end I nervously thanked him, we shook hands and I left the office.   I viewed it as an opportunity to meet with a noteworthy company and for that I guessed that this first round had gone well, weird questions or not.   ¶The Second Interview:  Prestige and showmanship in the art world goes the distance.   In preparation for my big day, I bought a suit and new shoes.  As before, I rehearsed a wealth of questions and possible directions in which the meeting could head.  I took the day off of work, had a good breakfast and maneuvered to Manhattan.  It was a warm late-winter Saturday and my meeting was at high-noon.  I found the dealership easily, having checked Google-Maps multiple times the night before.  And before I knew what was going on I was knee-deep in bad interview.  ¶It all hinged on organization.  It was the belief of the interviewer that I was unqualified because my organization skills were lacking.  I spent my time and energy trying to impart that I was, in fact, an organized person and that I had the experience to prove it.  Unfortunately my case seemed to be falling on disinterested ears for everything I said was met with another question unrelated to my answer.  To outside listeners it might have seemed that we were not talking at all, but instead, having different conversations.  It was apparent that the opportunity was slipping away from me and that I was not going to be offered the position.  And, had it ended there, I would have walked away lightly bruised.  Much to my surprise, it was not over.  ¶With a piercing stare, my interviewer held up a printed 8 1/2  by 11 sheet of paper saying “This is how I know your organizational skills are not where they need to be.”  Had the sheet been my resume, carefully edited to included only the glaringly relevant information, I would have been understanding.  Unfortunately, it was not my name, printed large above the text, but rather my birth-date; June 7th, 1982.  The information that followed was a poorly done astrological chart complete with indecipherable columns of hocus-pocus.  I was dumbfounded by the production of this little sheet.  I was perturbed when it occurred to me the interviewer had been referencing it throughout out meeting.  But I was disgusted and saddened when my resume was stapled to it.  I watched as two metallic teeth sank through my credentials so as to affix them to superstitious malarky.  The interview ended there.  ¶By this time I had earned two Bachelor’s degrees and a Master’s, all related to fine art.  I had worked, albeit in brief stints, domestically and abroad in museums and galleries.  Throughout my adult life I have held other posts to make ends meet, all of which were tackled with simple hard work.  Sadly, none of it mattered up against the date of birth.  That arbitrary date of a cesarean-section, scheduled 26 years ago, had levied my fate to this interviewer.  No amount of intellect or business acumen could undo what human biology set in motion.  Like all young professionals, I had to face an unfriendly interview with a big company.  Unlike most, however, my abilities and work history were not a deciding factor.   I am still fond of my birth-date and its approaching anniversary.  Only now I see it as the date that saved me from working for a ‘distracted employer.’  

Photo Essay Bingo 

 New York’s Spring art auction season did not echo the performance of the contemporary art market.  Christie’s and Sotheby’s have, again, accrued hundreds of millions of dollars selling some of the finest pictures to be sold.  The names of the big tickets remain the same: Warhol, Freud, Bacon.  The buyers are, by and large, the same.  But so are the sellers.  The undercurrent here is one of inclusion, but not exclusion.  Or, if you have the money at auction, you can get anything.  And business is booming. ¶Looking at the sick half-sibling of the auction house, the contemporary market, things are not doing as well.  The reports from the art fairs are reserved at best.  People, apparently, weren’t buying.  At least not the big ticket pictures.  Smaller art fairs, such as Chicago’s NEXT fair, which focused on less expensive art, seemingly outdid bigger comparators, like ArtChicago, according the Baer Faxt.  The more obvious symptom is the closing of galleries around the country.  The market is recoiling slightly as purse strings drawing shut.  ¶Auction houses are where easily salable picture come up again.  A large element of risk is gone, vanquished by a series of connoisseur checkpoints and market research.  The primary market is the proving ground for art.  There are infinite reasons why art objects don’t sell and so the risk is omnipresent. ¶Tough times are ahead for every industry.  Art, like other luxury goods, was afforded some lag time.   But, as the world’s money weathers the storm, so to will art.  One good thing to note: a flush of any market leaves the strong and talented and so we may well be in for a creative explosion.  Just remember that Weimar Germany was equally as creative.  So that explosion may not be a renaissance.

Coming Soon

The fatal car crash that ended Pollock’s life was a stun to the still fledgling American post-war art.  His power and prowess dominated over whole legions of painters who saw him as a beacon of sorts, toward a new and more enlightened American mind.  Pollock, like no other painter before him, was as wide an influence during his life as he was after his death.  Fellow painters would mimic his gestures and methods in hopes of uncovering something for themselves.  Scholars and thinkers would dissect his actions in search of information, clues.  ¶Within a few years of his death, two art historians began to grapple with his legacy.  Enrolled together at Columbia University, under the tutelage of Meier Shapiro, Donald Judd and Alan Kaprow began to unravel the legend behind America’s first Master Painter.  Both scholars understood Pollock’s work as an endgame for art, and in that, saw his legacy as the roots of a coming harvest.  Although these two men approached his concepts with different ends in mind, each revered Pollock.  As such, both were perplexed and excited by the prospects of an American art after its first great hero.  ¶Today, sadly, we will enter a similar cycle of unwinding influence.  On Monday night Robert Rauschenberg died of heart failure.  On Tuesday, newspapers and scholars will eulogize a man responsible for so many changes within American art.  In the months and years to come, a multitude of readings into his legacy will surface, along with exhibitions, magazine articles and web-posting like this.  ¶Simply put, Rauschenberg represents the second benchmark for our American Modernism.  Together with Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg’s work from the late 1950’s marked a sea change by widening the spectrum of influence to encompass the world at large.  Today, these two artists are refered to as Proto-Pop for this advancement.  It was they who broke apart the hermetic formalism of post-war abstraction to allow for a bit of worldly sentiment.  Johns took the more serious and heady route by catering his art to the introspective game of art-production and its many tricks.  Rauschenberg, on the other hand, was more actively lighthearted while remaining intellectually driven.  Some of his earliest works playfully questioned the difference between painting and sculpture or performance and printmaking.  At his best, he defined a new sense of interdisciplinary art-making by seeking new ways of mingling the media.  At his worst, he reworked and restated the same ideas, as if using himself as a popular culture reference.  At all times he was an exceptional artist.  ¶And so, in the wake of this loss, how will art maneuver?   

A mechanized waterfall running, partially, against gravity -  a large spinning disc attached to a gallery ceiling that reflects the floor below - a thin veil of mist, lit by Fresnel theater lamps, that seemingly dances in front of the viewer.  These are some noteworthy works on view at PS1 Contemporary Art Center by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson.  With names like Reverse waterfall (1998), Take your time (2008), and Beauty (1993) its apparent that Eliasson’s work is cerebral yet obvious.  But this, I feel, is the point.  ¶For a few generations now, at least since High Modernism took hold after the Second World War, art and culture has been split into two camps, that of avant-garde and the other, kitsch.   Most famously defined by Clement Greenberg in his 1939 article “Avant-Garde and Kistch,” the terms have come to represent a loftier brand of culture and its more common associate, respectively.  When kitsch had Norman Rockwell the avant-garde heralded Jackson Pollock.  Since then these two camps have held each other off by entrenching themselves in their arbitrary differences. However, sublty there have been some changing tides.  With Pop-Art kitsch found an inroad to progressive art circles, and with appropriation and citation the avant-garde found a way to occupy both realms.  ¶This all may seem unrelated, but this polarity, or rather its blending, is what has been so compelling about the works on view at PS1 as well as the concurrent exhibition of Eliasson’s work at the Museum of Modern Art.  These displays get closer to combining the two camps then much other recent art.  The thesis of Mr. Eliasson’s work is seemingly easy to grasp because he is merely asking his viewers to look, to notice and ultimately to see.  Topically, it may seem as though these questions are irrelevant as the works are, in fact visual.  Unfortunately, it is a comment that is all too necessary in institutions like MoMA, PS1 or San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, where the exhibition originated.  It is a commonality within these or similar places to see people preoccupied with wall labels, famous names and quickness.  Museum-goers speed through galleries, stopping only for moments in front of ‘notable’ works, while overlooking the majority of the room.  It seems that they are merely looking for celebrity artworks or the one’s they were told to view.    ¶Eliasson seems to be gunning for a change by making people, connoisseurs or not,  spend their moments within the gallery looking around.  What is more compelling, however, is the work’s ability to stunt the viewer’s thoughts.  These finely tuned instruments of perception are predominately about being, rather than thinking.  That is where the kitsch elements stake their strongest hold.  Like other examples - low-brow television or pulp fiction - these art-objects force mental relaxation by honing in on the simplicity of experience.  While standing under the exhibition’s title work, Take your time (2008), its hard to think of anything but one’s orientation in relation to the large spinning mirror above.  Similarly, Room for one colour (1997) on view at MoMA, which eliminates all color by washing the area in a mono-frequency light, shocks the audience into noticing only its respective color.  People paused and took photos in the midst of each work, but not so much as a ‘portrait with a famous painting.’  Instead, they were recording their immediate environment, as one would do on a mountaintop or riverbed.  The whole exhibition is partially about this simple, half-numb realization¶It is not, however, all about taking note of the obvious things.  That is merely the first step.  Eliasson, like other successful artist, creates works with fluid meanings.  Its hard to say if he’s speaking on the state of our environment or merely how we view the world.  More likely it is a little of both.  Like most other people from the developed world, Eliasson is informed on a plethora of topics and well read in a fraction of those.  As such, his works take on the responsibility of parlaying that to his audience.  It may sound daunting or even presumptuous, but the works very seriously appear to be addressing the world at large much more than they outwardly claim to be.  The simpleness helps foster this versatility by making only quiet references and also hiding any outright agenda.  Shining elipsoidal reflector spotlights - the particular form of theater lamps Eliasson employs throughout the show -  through fog to create a perfect 3-dimensional grid is as much about the form it creates as it is about seeing the lights in the fog.  Similarly, the glowing ceiling in The natural light setup (2008), which cycles through a variety of white lights, is about experiencing the color shifts while also referencing other light-based artists like James Tyrell or James Whitney.  ¶Perhaps the most important aspect of this body of work is its ability to cue both reactions, that of stunted admiration for one’s surrounding and also the tidal-wave of references and considerations they elicit.  By allowing for such simultaneity, Eliasson is the blending of avant-garde and kitsch.  Where once art was dilineated between the two categories, this stuff may, in fact, inhabit both.