Thursday April 15

On Tax Day, I saw a pile of kick ass art. Most of what I saw were further examples of hybrid multiples.

I started at the Louise Bourgeois at Barbara Krakow. There are approx 8 double spreads of Twinrocker paper printed with intaglio plates and letterpress. These were printed by Peter Pettengill of Wingate and are then hand painted over by Louise. The images weren't very evocative to me, but these were not prints, or more importantly should not be tied to printerly rules. Who cares if there is a layer of intaglio under the drawings? They're work better if you consider them unique works of art rather than some type of multiple. Yet they are editioned. The other complication is that they suggest a book in their presentation. Yet their individual voices are what Louise was pursuing. I'm not sure why this wasn't a book, but whose going to tell her that she could push her work further?

Second was Anthony Greaney's gallery. Currently up is a quick show of some of the greatest hits from his galleries short existence. Daniel Ellis has an object on exhibit that I thought was a painting the first time I saw it, but turns out to be an ink jet print for lack of better word. Does it make it a print? Printers would hate you if you said so. What's the difference between it and a digital photograph? Just because it doesn't use a lens to make the image? They both are built up of 1's and 0's and are filtered through some kind of adobe product probably. It's just a bit squishy how this will be received. He could clearly make multiples of this, but chose not to. An ink jet doesn't sound sexy and raises the archival issue for collectors.

Later I watched Joan Jonas perform at MIT, where they gave her an award for being one the awesomest peoples ever, and right they should. Her work last night was about glaciers and pulled text from an Hilda Doolittle epic poem, the title of which I didn't write down. It was performed at a desk with a video monitor over her hands, involved many of the same sounds, methods, and themes found here. The drawings are not on paper. They are not for sketches. The video is not for posterity. They are not the finished work. The performance is not to be looked at, but viewed through the monitor. Where is the work located in this? Which part of this is the thing?

Her work is performance for video, but has to be live. How does one document this ethically? Should there be a recording of the various people working on the performance and on the video screen? Should you be able to produce copies of the screen image as the work? Are the various flat images on paper/transparency/actual objects important to the object, or are they incidental? Meaning, would the institute purchase the pictures used under the camera if they bought the work? She raises more questions than I have answers.

Either way, along with some great people to hang with, it was a wonderful day.

Ethics of teh moneys

Yup. Now we will barely look at the deep end. I have no idea what really goes on at such large institutions, but the reality is that if you want to run something larger than local, something where you can present art that is bigger than some cats you've met or the 2 galleries that your grad school friends founded-- you need to have a budget. This budget gets out of hand quickly. One minute you found a tiny gallery with friends the next you have a massive budget that is dependent on private and public funding, run a few non-profit spin offs, and 26 years later are "a contemporary art powerhouse."

In the case of the Whitney... we have some giant budgets, egos, and well, everything. Imagine. When you consider the ethics involved with the decision making process, it would be staggering. Lauder's $131 million ties the hands of the institution and proves the point that money talks in the art world. Yet it also gives the institution the flexibility to use the money to make choices. It seems that they've made choices already though.

They're making payments on a space in case they want it. It's only 600K a year, but still. Imagine the wrestling match behind the scenes.

Obviously, there are disadvantages of starchitecture and few if any of the rewards. But the Whitney finds itself at a cross roads. I hope that the numerous egos involved put the institution first when deciding how they will proceed. I have no opinion about rebuild/move/etc, but it's clear that they do not want to keep things status quo.

Oooh more conservation nerds

Art Power

Been reading Art Power from Groys. His On the New section brings another example of ethics v. morals. The collecting museum needs to protect, present, and keep the object alive for an unnaturally long period of time. From a handbag made of an emu shell to an egg tempera painting, all objects are ethically cared for. This, again, does not mean that the collections manager or the conservation specialist uses holy water or prays for the soul of the object. The conservation of objects, their upkeep has to fit within the objectives and responsibilities of the museum, the conservation staff, and the public. As conservators have worked with contemporary and ancient works longer than the average curator/other art professionals, and should have a deeper understanding into the issues of how an object should be preserved, one should listen to the conservator and trust in their abilities to pursue the correct actions.

As every Pollock is supposedly about to fall off their supports, and keep the conservation staff busy, we can look to them as an example. Each "new" Pollock that enters the world is quickly given a few tests on a physical level. These tests are non-intrusive and are compared to the texts that increase daily. Sometimes it becomes obvious that the former conservation needs to be removed in order for the work to be revealed to the viewer. The earlier conservation is not morally questionable, but rather indicates that the conservators professional ethics and material sciences are growing closer.

This gap is real, and you can see this in most conversations with conservators. They are often using jargon like "pre-established methodology" which means "I like using certain toys in the lab" or asking "Whose responsibility is it to authenticate artwork?" which means "Don't blame the conservator if the curator presents this as a real Pollock, we're pretty sure it's not real". But, again, this is not a question of their moral fortitude. It's a question of their professional methods and goals. Their participation in the museum's ethics is to keep the work on view as much as possible and as close to how the artist intended, however they interpret that goal.