November 24, 2000
Issue No. 7
archive

We are pleased to announce a working relationship with nyartsmagazine.com which has agreed to carry Maverick in its Press Releases folder. It is a site well worth visiting with superb and diverse resources. Also, my coverage of the Montreal Biennale 2000 is currently on view at ArtNet.com.

You may note that there has been some delay since the last issue of Maverick Arts. That worst case scenario, a computer crash, bigtime, put we out of action for a couple of weeks. Again, thanks for your many and wonderful responses.

Global Conceptualism
Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s
Mit List Visual Arts Center
Through December 17

This dense and daunting exhibition, including works by 130 artists from six continents, was originally organized by Jane Farver for the Queens Museum. She enlisted the help of twelve curators; Stephen Bann, Chiba Shigeo, Claude Gintz, Laszlo Beke, Carmen Ramirez, Peter Wollen, Terry Smith, Margarita Tupitasyn, Okwui Enwezor, Sung Wan-kyung, Gao Minglu, and Apinan Poshyananda. There were also two project managers in addition to Farver, Luis Camnitzer, and Rachel Weiss.

Together they have produced a 280 page catalogue, published by the Queens Museum of Art, which sets a new standard for research of this rich and diverse movement of international artists which has been described as the most significant to emerge since Cubism.

With so much work on display in a relatively modest space, and so many individual curators providing a diversity of viewpoints, there was an inevitable chaos and cacophony as one toured the exhibition. Rather slowly, as there was such a formidable amount of text to absorb. And, given the nature of the work, very little meaning and content was evident to the eye. Not much of the work, or documentation on view, was aesthetic in the usual sense. There wasn’t much in the way of eye candy, but a dose of heavy calories in terms of food for thought.

It seemed entirely appropriate that such a complex and insightful exhibition would be presented at MIT. In keeping with its international reputation for research and development in the sciences, it is also fitting that it serve as a laboratory for the visual arts. This has indeed been its historical mandate demonstrated by the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, which was founded by Gyorgy Kepes more than a score of years ago, and the renowned Media Lab, with a more commercial focus, founded by Nicholas Negraponte, who has recently resigned as its director.

But, ironically, under the directorship of Kathy Halbreich, who went on to become the director of the Walker Arts Center, and Katy Klein, who followed her, now at Bowdoin College, in regard to the arts at MIT, the left hand didn’t seem to talk to the right hand. The List followed a different agenda that seemed to have relatively little to do with either MIT or the Boston arts community.

Thank, thankfully, has changed rather dramatically now that Farver has taken over as director of the List. Significantly, she has brought Global Conceptualism to Boston/Cambridge, with a brilliant series of related lectures and gallery talks.

On Saturday, December 2, at 2 pm, for example, Okwui Enwezor, a Brooklyn based, South African curator, will speak at the List. In addition to the current exhibition he will also discuss plans for other projects including the documenta 2002, in Kassel, Germany, the second Johannesburg Biennial, and The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994. We are planning to attend his presentation and there are plans for an interview that we will report on at a later time.

With such an important exhibition available and free to the public, many students have been touring the exhibition from all over the New England area. I have sent all of my classes and asked them to write short reviews as well as several questions to be discussed in class. The results have been just amazing as well as their complaints. One of the most telling comments was a very sincere student who reported that after studying the works and labels for a couple of hours, was, "completely exhausted." I can relate to that. For most of them this show was a lot of work. Compared to their experience at the van Gogh show that I had assigned earlier in the semester.

Most of all it encouraged them to ask questions about the very nature and definition of what is art. They were troubled by the poor production values of many of the documentary videos and photographs. Was the video of the famous performance of the Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, to be considered as ‘the art." Or, a document of the art. And, a lot of women wanted to know, "was she being violated?" Or, "Why was she allowing herself to be violated,"

In turn, I asked the students (some of the more precocious ones) whether they considered the Matthew Brady, Civil War photographs, as works of art? Further, is the Zapruder film of the Kennedy Assassination, a work of art? Is it arguably the greatest and most important example of film in the 20th century. What then to do with the Rodney King beating video. Is that art? In support of that argument, it was included in a Whitney Biennial and Adrian Piper has incorporated it into her work.

So is it possible that there is a work of art when it is not intended? Is Mr. Zapuder an artist, for example? Even though he never went on to make a single other work. Is he any less an artist than say, Maya Lin, who more or less is known for a single piece, the Vietnam Memorial. And is the person who produced the Rodney King video an artist? Yes, in the sense that this short piece has become embedded in the visual data bank of an entire nation. In the sense that, for example, one may say, Tet Offensive, and vividly recall a specific image. Or WWII, and conjure up Iwo Jima, or a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square on VJ Day.

Well then, anything and everything is art if I say it is? Sure, why not. More and more I am coming to think that most of what is actually called art, really isn’t. That if you are trying to make art that is isn’t art then perhaps, it isn’t very good art. And that, most artists who call themselves artists, because they call themselves artists, aren’t artists.

Because it isn’t about the ego. It’s about the work. Which is why Julian Schnabel, for instance, sucks. Because it is so much about posture and so little about art. Easier examples might be say, Peter Max, or some other schlockmeister. But it could be Andy Warhol, or Jackson Pollock, or Picasso, or anyone who makes art and is an artist. Like you and me. Why not. We must learn to try not to make art so that our art may indeed become art.

In that sense Duchamp may be the most important artist of the 20^th century because he wasn’t. An artist. That is. And, what is so fascinating, confusing and galvanic about this exhibition is that it isn’t about art. It is about spirit and survival and politics. So much of it wasn’t seen or by so few and under such limited circumstances. There wasn’t any wine and cheese at the vernissages. It wasn’t shown in galleries or acquired by museums and collectors. Most of it wasn’t for sale or intended to make the career and reputation of the performer or fabricator. Tellingly, the vast majority of the 130 exhibitors and their works were unknown to me. One, Yoko Ono, became famous by marrying a Beatle. Not that I hold that against her as so many do. If anything, I have an enormous respect for her, her survival instinct, support for others, and that she and John used their fame and influence to work for peace.

The issue of intention is fascinating in this exhibition. What are the works about and what was the motive behind them. What kind of life have the works had once that they are no longer the domain of their creators. Do they belong to the world, all of us, or do they belong now to someone specific? Do they have value and are they collected? How do you measure their importance and impact? The questions are, perhaps, more important than the answers. And, there is the sense that another team of curators might have assembled a very different exhibition with other examples. Why, for example, are the Vienna Actionists not on view. And, where is Joseph Kosuth, or Vito Acconci? Or how much I would have like to have seen more of Guy Debord and the Situationist International, or more of Yves Klein. Where were his videos.

But with so much on view, and so many discoveries, why quibble?

There were so many discoveries. The Wei Guangqing, Suicide Series, from 1988 that seems to have anticipated the mood and events of Tieneman Square. A Korean, spelling out DMZ in a series of snap shots of GIs and their families, by Kim Yong-tae (1984).

Arguably, Willem Boshoff, was not making art when he produced, Kleinpen, 1979, a text in tiny script which he produced while in prison in South Africa. At the time is was a means of survival, a tactic to stay focused and sane, wheras, today, it is a priceless artifact in the Ruth and Martin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry in Miami. It seems somewhat ironic that some institution now, owns, this work that is the apartheid equivalent of the Book of Kells.

And my students are puzzled and intrigued by the thermos containing, Snow of Last Year, by Miklos Erdely. Since we are not allowed to open the sealed thermos bottle how are we to know that it still contains snow. It is like so many unknowable mysteries like god and love. Or, as some of my students put it, "What’s art about that?" That is, indeed, the question.

Street Talk

Hail and farewell to Miroslav Antic. He has resigned his position at the Museum School, sold his Cambridge Gallery, packed and, as of December 1, moved to Florida. He has a gallery in Boca Raton, which is selling his works briskly enough that he intends to live on his work, every artist’s dream. Until recently, he was represented by Creiger Dane Gallery in Boston, which has since closed. Before leaving town, after decades here, he was talking with several Boston dealers about potential representation. He is one of the most colorful and widely admired artists of his generation and we hope to lure him back to attend a group show I am planning for next season, Los Quatros Grandes, with Domingo Bararres, Gerry Bergstein and Bob Ferrandini. It’s a guy thing.

That bad girl from Allston, who with her husband maintains a castle and vault of horrors, Cynthia von Buhler, has sent me a card and note featuring her latest performance work, The Countess, at Lilli’s December 2, 608 Sommerville Avenue. The color postcard features the attractive artist wearing a t-shirt that reads, "Fuck you, you fuckin fuck." How poetic. We will enjoy what she has to say at Bill Arning’s ABCD panel at MIT. Hope she washes her mouth out with soap before then.

Boston was well represented at the Havana Biennale. During the Thanksgiving break there were groups from Massachusetts College of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. One of the leaders of this visit was the Cuban born artist, Maria Magdalena Compos Pons, known simply as, Magda, by her friends. She invited us to join the group but it wasn’t possible on short notice. Still, we hope to visit Cuba soon and it is high on our wish list. We will be eager to hear news of the experience of our colleagues.

Boston Gallery Hopping

Mary Sherman
Godzilla (Reduced to Frames)
Lillian Immig Gallery
Emmanuel College
Through December 14

Dominating the center of the gallery space is a disjointed stack of oddly tilting and cavorting frames, supported by several thin props, that form the skeleton of the dematerialized monster of Japanese film, Si Fi, fame. Surrounding the "monster" on the floor are a series of tinker toy, colored assemblages that reference the army fighting off the angry beast which is tearing up the metropolis.

It is somewhat odd that such fiercely deconstructive abstract work, challenging that non man’s (or woman’s in this case) land between painting and sculpture, has such literal and illustrative a story line. It is a manner of relieving some of Sherman’s familiar, deadly earnest intentionality with just a dash of ironic tongue in chic.

Her, "sculptures," often in the form of relief, but this time, free standing have elements of color which imply the process of painting but she deliberately makes them rather crusty and on the less than sensual end of the chromatic spectrum. She favors odd and earthy, or acidic greens. The point of view seems as much about ending art as making it. There is a kind of, "art is dead, painting is dead," bravura to her work. Rather in the mode of, "Art is dead, long live art." In that regard the work is both romantic and philosophic all of a piece. The work tends to both turn you off, at first take, and then, slowly, turn you on as it provokes a lot of questions and process about the very nature of painting. Is the frame, painting. What happens when the paint is on the frame and not in the space that it defines. It is about the edge and not the center. Up is down and down is up and all that.

David Moore
Montauck Series
Ron Rizzi
Cumulus and Mirror
Both at Gallery Naga
Through December 23

The abstract, monochromatic (somewhat but not quite) paintings by David Moore are among the most skillful and exquisite currently being created in Boston, a community noted for its richness and depth of painters.

He certainly belongs on any short list, (fingers of one hand), of the city’s best abstract painters.

This time he has produced a series of gouaches on paper. The dominating motif is a ever so thin stack of slowly modulating, horizontal pin stripes. In some instances, such as a brilliant work in an off yellow, like an ever so subtle Albers study of closely valued squares, or the late Ad Reinhardt, the gradations meld into a single field. It takes a meditative eye to focus on the gradations. This is not likely to happen during a wham bam gallery visit but it is the kind of work that one would long to live with and absorb and decode over a lifetime. Oddly, few collectors have risen to this challenge. What are they waiting for. The color that would most complement these stunning works would be lots of little red dots.

On the other hand, good heavens, the ever evolving enigma of Ron Rizzi. His superbly crafted figurative paintings, youngsters groping around in the dark, against uniformly black backgrounds, continue to tantalize. Dese Yutes, as Joe Pesci would say, are so, like, deep. An exception is a girl somersaulting against an expanse of brilliantly colored, richly textured, bright blue sky. Everything else is Baroque chiaroscuro, like Caravaggio. But without the content.

In his own words, the artist says, "In our image -saturated culture, the art of looking thwarts a meaningful exploration of subjectivity, the commodification of experience interrupts community and provokes indifference and the spectacularization of suffering represses mourning." There’s more, but you get the idea. Whatever happened to the good old days when artists used to say, "My work speaks for itself."

Samuel Bak
In a Different Light: Genesis in the Art of Samuel Bak
Pucker Gallery
Through December 31

I’ve saved the worst for last. Normally I wouldn’t bother to review such schlock. This artist’s work combines elements of Biblical illustrations with snatches of Michelangelo’s figures in the Sistine Chapel, with elements of the most maudlin and kitsch aspects of third generation surrealism.

The poetry of this work rival’s Rod McEwen ( is that how you spell it, it’s been so long I forgot) or maybe Kahlil Gibran. And the turgid, maudlin color, and cloying academic rendering, oi vey.

What prompts me to write this review is a response to the full monty treatment this exhibition received in the Boston Phoenix. A cover story, no less, in glowing detail, by the Phoenix arts editor, Jeffrey Gantz. This specialist in medieval English literature is oddly the arts editor of the Phoenix, a weekly tabloid that in its earlier incarnation was referred to as the "alternative" and even, "underground" press. In reality it was always a weekly shopper which bought into its avant-garde credentials by running a competitor out of business, the Phoenix, buying it out, ditching its unfortunate early title, Boston After Dark, and then emerging as the born again, Phoenix. Some of us were not fooled. But apparently, Gantz, who thinks that the bourgeois Pucker gallery is the, Best in Boston, panders their lowbrow shows to an unsuspecting, Hip, ahem, audience. When we visited the Pucker Gallery the Gantz review was blown up and hanging in the window, as well as xeroxed as a take out. But, frankly, I didn’t spot any of the Newbury Comics crowd.

So, just who is Gantz writing for? Surely not the Phoenix audience. And, how things have changed since David Bonetti, Ken Baker, and yours truly, were the regular arts writers.

Fortunately, when not covering the Old Masters (and a few nearly dead ones) the avant-garde Phoenix assignments are dished off to Randi Hopkins and Christopher Millis. They are both interesting writers. But, it seems, Gantz keeps the really plumb assignments to himself. Thanks be to got.

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