Paul McCarthy’s ‘Balloon Dog’ (2013) by the north entrance of Frieze New York (image: John Berens/ Frieze)

Art fair coverage, it’s almost always the same. The collective malaise of journalists and bloggers is palpable. This year, Blouinartinfo.com is offering an iPad mini to whoever can “contribute their craziest, most experimental ideas for covering an art fair”. Initially, fair malaise is countered with hype – and everyone swallows it up. It begins with the mad scramble for free fair tickets as the pressure and expectation mounts on art worlders to go. As the hype dies down, one accepts that all the excitement is over a glorified shopping mall. There’s the spectacle of fashionistas squinting at artworks, and the rich men who ogle at them from behind. Then there is the banal analysis that follows. What were the estimated sale figures, who did well, who didn’t, which gallerists dropped out and why? Almost all of this analysis is useless because it is purely speculative.

I’m not one of those naïfs who deride the confluence of art and money, but I do loathe when fairs attempt to mask what they are. Take the rise of event programs for instance. For a while now, fairs have also begun to host lectures, ‘projects,’ and temporary installations. These events are either an excellent way to break open the art fair mold or a cynical attempt to assuage those who think fairs are all about the money. The artists who are commissioned for such projects often play off this tension. This year at Frieze New York, artist Liz Glynn has installed a secret speakeasy on site. Those who find it (along with a special key) will get to watch bartenders showing off magic tricks in-between mixing drinks. Cecilia Alemani, the Curator of Frieze Projects, has described it as an installation that “creates a dialogue with the architecture of the tent itself “, a superfluous statement that could just as well describe how the fair’s toilets were positioned. If Glynn’s installation is meant to be wryly antithetical to the fair’s other VIP amenities, it will cease being so once the same crowd discovers it.

Frieze New York launched last year, and in a stroke of marketing genius, settled upon Randall’s Island as its location, squeezed in-between Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens. Completely side stepping any noxious debate about which borough to set up camp, the organizers have branded the fair as an adventure into unknown territory. I took a cab from Long Island City and asked the driver when he last took a fare to Randall’s Island. “About ten years ago” he replied.

Arriving at the southern tip of the fair tent, it took me a good 10 minutes to walk up to the North entrance. As I approached, Paul McCarthy’s Balloon Dog (2013) loomed into view, an 80 foot tall parody of Jeff Koons’ dog sculptures, the joke being that whilst Koons’ sculptures are painstakingly made to look like balloons, McCarthy’s dog actually is one. It was the fair’s way of breaking the ice. It told you to relax and accept the absurd theatrics within. Don’t overthink anything. Problem is, McCarthy’s work completely eclipsed the other sculptures scattered around the island.  From what I saw, very few visitors made the effort to journey beyond the confines of the tent.

As with last year, the ongoing controversy is the fair’s decision not to pay its staff union wages. The teamsters apparently protested with a huge balloon of a rat, but on this particular night, they were nowhere to be seen. The controversy for the most part, remained confined online. I later read that the artist Andrea Bowers displayed letters in support of the teamsters. “I see this as a larger system of exploitation in the art world that includes more jobs becoming unpaid internships, artists being denied payment for their labor, real wages going down and benefits being lost”. Principles aside, the fair treatment of workers is a lost PR coup for Frieze, an opportunity to rise above and set an example to the rest of the art world.

The first twenty minutes of any fair is a haze, a complete sensory overload. You’re suddenly enveloped in noise. Bad art and good art meshes together, punctuated by the occasional celebrity appearance. It takes a great deal of effort to slow down, put your phone away, and focus the eye. Once you repress the urge to identify the artists you already know, you start to concentrate on what actually appeals to you.

The least fussy stands appeal the most, Maureen Paley’s being a great example. Paley’s stand was spacious and minimalist. It left you wanting in the best possible way. Among the works displayed were two photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans and a spooky life-like mask by Gillian Wearing. Victoria Miro exhibited a sumptuous portrait by Alice Neel entitled Abdul Rahman (1964), which deservedly appeared in a great deal of pre-fair press. The silliest work was Tom Friedman’s Untitled (Pea), a styrofoam sculpture of a pea. I wondered how many people missed it in between his sculptures of oversized sweets and a giant pizza.

The worst work on display was a parody of Umberto Boccioni’s sculpture ‘Unique Forms of Continuity in Space’ (1913) by Francesco Vezzoli. This version remained true to the form of the original, save for a pair of high heels added to the figure’s feet. It typifies the contemporary art cliché of riffing off art history in the most listless and ill-conceived manner possible. The result is a gaudy, overpriced one liner.

A couple of hours later, I discovered the exit of Glynn’s speakeasy. As some visitors slipped out, the door locked firmly shut behind them. Two minutes later, we found the entrance and knocked. A small shutter opened and a doorman gazed out. After some deliberation, he instructed us as to how to find a key. “There is a man with curly hair, almost clownish looking. He is wearing a white shirt. You’ll have to find him”. Was it put on? Maybe. Nonetheless for the last hour of the night, I stopped concentrating on the art and scanned the crowds for curly haired men. The fair theatrics had finally beaten me.

Tom Friedman, ‘Untitled (Pea)’, 2013 (image author’s own)

“We’re one family, and all the waters in the world are our global bathtub”. A simple, but nonetheless sweet concept for an artwork. Florentijn Hofman’s giant rubber duck reminded me of the Friendly Floatees incident of 1991, the subject of Donovan Hohn’s book, Moby Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of them.

www.florentijnhofman.nl

Richard H. Rush, ‘Art as an Investment’, 1961, published by Prentice-Hall (image: amazon.com)

One of life’s great pleasures is the serendipitous discovery of a book. I especially love finding non-fiction and how-to guides. Such guides, though they appear obsolete, can be rich with historic revelation and insight. Imagine discovering your parent’s school textbooks. The content remains accessible and yet completely alien at the same time.

The coffee table at my office has a neatly stacked pile of books for visitors. These include the exhibition catalogue for the Postmodernism show at the V&A, a Gerhard Richter monograph, and the Tate’s catalogue for their 2011 Barry Flanagan exhibition. Hidden at the very bottom of the stack, I found a dusty, hard cover copy of Richard H. Rush’s Art as an Investment, published in 1961. None of my colleagues had any idea as to how it got there or who brought it in.

Art as an Investment is a snap shot of the late fifties art market in New York, when contemporary galleries were to be found on Madison Avenue and secondary dealers lined the cross streets around 2^nd and 3^rd avenues. The book is absolutely fascinating because its analysis narrowly precedes the sudden rise of the contemporary art market in the sixties. Rush, who passed away in 2011, had written a great deal on collecting. He is also well known amongst car collectors having written copiously on the subject. During his life he served as an advisor to President Harry Truman and the oil magnate John Paul Getty. In 1994, a library at Edison State College in Florida was named in his honor. The book’s dust jacket depicts Rush and his wife Julia with their art collection.

The most involving passages describe the Rush’s joint endeavours to unearth works by old masters and follow up on their finds. Despite their stamina, Rush notes that they occasionally succumb to “painting nerves” (caused by “looking at too many paintings in too condensed a period of time”).  Rush’s ethos on collecting is positively egalitarian:

“(Contemporary art) appears to be so technical, so intellectual, and so abstruse that only those with a very advanced education and deep emotional and intellectual understanding of art can even look at a painting…nothing could be further from the truth”.

In other passages however, Rush’s sincerity reads amusingly, especially to modern readers. Describing German Expressionist painting as representing all the negatives of human experience, he notes that you can still find “pleasing, impressionistic landscapes” that “could not mar the décor of any home”.

The book invariably focuses on the collection of old masters. Later movements such as Impressionism and Post-Impressionism are referred to as “the controversial schools” (a reputation now somewhat obfuscated by contemporary standards). In a couple of dedicated chapters Rush observes that a market for contemporary art is slowly developing though he is reticent to make any firm conclusions:

“Whilst there exists a great demand for Abstract painting and there is little question that this type of painting is in vogue in the year 1961, this school may already be over the top in the public preference…Fifty years is time enough for testing public taste. In one hundred years the style is often ‘out of date’ and not until two or three hundred years have passed is the art of quality a treasure once again”.

Rush’s cautionary principles, for the most part, remain valid, despite an art market that presently gorges on hype and speculation. Ironically, Rush may have unwittingly contributed to this very development. What is most arresting about ‘Art as an Investment’ is how Rush visually illustrates the changing monetary value of art.

Six years after the publication of Art as an Investment, Peter Wilson, the then chairman of the board of Sotheby’s launched the Times-Sotheby art index.  The index graphically charted the cost of paintings and thus equated art with other commodities such as oil and gold. Historically, the notion of art as an investment commodity is very young. After all, the Mona Lisa wasn’t painted with the intention that its value would exponentially increase. Wilson’s index implicitly promised that the changing value of art could be calculated with a scientific exactness.  Contemporary art by living artists leant itself best to fulfilling this promise. Unlike the market for old masters, there would be far less of a need for expert verification. Living artists could verify whether a work for sale was really theirs. The production and output of young living artists could be controlled, manipulated, and monitored far more accurately.

Graphs from Richard Rush’s ‘Art as an Investment’. The chart on the left displays the percentage of price increase for German Expressionist paintings. The graph on the right displays the changing prices for works by Nolde, Munch, Kokoschka, and Kirchner.

In Art as an Investment, Rush charts the monetary values of particular movements by focusing on the prices of its most prominent artists. For example, focusing on the prices for works by Kirchner, Kokoschka, Munch, and Nolde he notes that the market value of the Expressionists rose from a base of 100% in 1950 to 1586% by 1960. Rush’s rudimentary graphs and diagrams prefigure Wilson’s index, demonstrating that such a conceptualization of art as a commodity was already in place in the early sixties. Wilson’s index cemented this conceptualization into the popular imagination. It has now become commonplace for a collector to review the worth of the world’s top artists in much the same way as an investor would peruse the NASDAQ. A simple web search will bring up hundreds of artist indices at a click. By 1961, an ineludible logic had been set into motion. As art was described as any other chartable commodity, art dealing gradually began to adopt the reprehensible behaviors associated with market trading (price inflation, speculation, manipulation etc.). Rush’s maxim that “only a very foolish man would buy a painting without thoroughly understanding the market price for the artist “remains ever true to this day.

Installation shot, BANK, ‘Press Releases (London)’, 8th-10th January 1999 (image: john-russell.org). In the late 90s the British art collective BANK staged two exhibitions of press releases, the first in London and then New York. Annotated with BANK’s criticisms, the releases were faxed back to the galleries that authored them. New York gallerists were particularly offended, many leaving agressive voice mails for the group.

Last week, my girlfriend and I went to the Sean Kelly gallery in Midtown to view an exhibition of work by Anthony McCall. I haven’t seen McCall’s work in the flesh since his solo exhibition many years ago at the Serpentine Gallery. Trying to recall exactly when this was, I scanned the gallery’s press release (which doesn’t mention it) only to discover something far more interesting. I found myself stupefied by the opening sentence of the release. I actually re-read it out of sheer disbelief:

‘Sean Kelly announces Face to Face, featuring new and historic work by Anthony McCall’.

‘Sean Kelly announces’. Not ‘Sean Kelly is pleased to announce’, or ‘Sean Kelly is thrilled to’. Just ‘Sean Kelly announces’.

The cynic in me rejoiced. The use of ‘pleased to announce’ in press releases is an irritating non sequitur. Why wouldn’t the gallery be bloody pleased?

At just over a page, the release efficiently describes McCall’s works in an objective manner, devoid of any obscure technical terms. This plainly written release was one of the best I have ever read. Kudos to whoever penned it at Sean Kelly.

The language of arts press releases has been the subject of increasing critical attention. These neatly stacked sheets of paper play a huge role in how art is discussed, criticized, and sold. A few months ago, Alix Rule, a critic and PhD student at Columbia, and David Levine, an American artist, coined the term ‘International Art English’ to describe the prevailing grammatical orthodoxies of arts press releases. In a highly focused study, Rule and Levine analyzed almost fifteen years worth of copy distributed via e-flux (e-flux was used on the basis that it has the highest readership by members of the so called ‘art world’). Amongst their observations were:

-IAE has a distinctive lexicon: aporia, radically, space, proposition, biopolitical, tension, transversal, autonomy.

-An artist’s work inevitably interrogates, questions, encodes, transforms, subverts, imbricates, displaces.

-IAE’s literary conventions actually favor the hard-to-picture spatial metaphor…(e.g.) “Matthew Ritchie’s works…elegantly bridge a rift in the art-science continuum”

It’s a brilliant article as well as a perfect antidote against the frustrating opacity of art speak. Rule and Levine’s approach has a coy and clever logic. Press releases belittle their readers with an intellectual veneer, so it makes perfect sense to fight them on this very front by countering with a rigorous linguistic and grammatical analysis.

Whilst Rule and Levine’s approach is unique in its approach, it isn’t the first to critique ‘art speak’. My personal favorite is Brian Ashbee’s 1999 piece for Art Review, entitled ‘Art Bollocks’ (Art Bollocks being a far more risible term than IAE). The British art critic David Lee, editor of the wonderfully mutinous Jackdaw adopted it for a regular column in which the month’s worst offenders are quoted verbatim. The magazine’s website includes a list of highlights uttered throughout the noughties.

Ashbee was one of the first to realize that art speak has a subtle oppressiveness. It discourages critical thinking by exuding authority. It relentlessly aims to cement the apparent importance of an artist. In doing this, it is hoped that any subsequent criticism will be effectively neutered. If an artist appears to be important, the implication is that they must be, and if you disagree, well, that’s just your opinion.

Ashbee’s article greatly complements Rule and Levine’s. Whereas they analyze the use and abuses of language, Ashbee highlights typical techniques. These include:

-Describing an artwork as being situated between two polar attributes. Thus, it can’t be criticized for being either (e.g. the work is both ironic and sincere).

-Suggest that if an element of the work appears to be mediocre or lazy, it must be intentionally so.

-Don’t state facts or opinions, state concepts, because concepts are non-specific. Unlike its execution, you can’t fault an artwork for having a ‘bad’ concept.

Art bollocks becomes its own sort of rabid dance, impossible to engage with or hold down. The implications for art criticism are grave. Whilst press releases undoubtedly foster the worst offenses of Art Bollocks, its digressions have long been seeping into criticism and art historical discourse. To quote Rule and Levine: “…criticism has become nothing more than ‘highbrow copywriting.’ Critics, traditionally the elite innovators of IAE, no longer appear in control. Indeed, they seem likely to be beaten at their own game by anonymous antagonists who may or may not even know they’re playing”. Art Bollocks can be found in all facets of the art world; galleries, magazines, foundations, and even museums. Writing for Hyperallergic, Mostafa Heddaya criticized a recent lecture at the Guggenheim for co-opting IAE in order to skirt issues of human rights abuses in the United Arab Emirates, a reminder that the use of language is not always a trivial issue.

Young students and graduates whose first jobs are for commercial galleries and non-profits often perpetuate its offenses (I shuddered to find an example of Ashbee’s ‘neither/or’ rule on my own blog). The phenomenon runs hand in hand with two broader developments in the art world; postmodernity and the rise of PR and marketing. Postmodernism has unmasked art as a mere sociological label. Anything can be art if it’s deemed so. Thus, there are no real principles or guidelines as to what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘bad’ art. Your judgements are simply the sum total of your own aesthetic beliefs. Theory has thus sapped the conviction out of art criticism.

Marketing has reduced artists to a collection of branded USP’s. Damien Hirst equates with skulls, butterflies and death. Ai Weiwei is your go to Asian dissident. Koons is king of kitsch. The result is a sort of protectionism of niches. Art Bollocks dictates how you should interpret artists’ work. It sets the tone and then continually enforces it. As our culture has become increasingly and frenetically visual, branding has offered us a simple way to categorize and subjugate artistic developments and personalities. This simplification is great for the art market and the press but completely debilitating for criticism and discourse.

Galleries need to sell, so it’s safe to assume that literary veracity isn’t their highest priority. But to sell, the artist must first be deemed important. A deluge of press and publications will logically follow the championed artist. The student, art historian, and critic need to treat these as primary sources, not secondary. Your role is to stand apart and assess for your own, not to be co-opted by an exploitation of aesthetic malaise. You should rue the day when art historians rely on press releases for research and gallerists brazenly utter the term ‘USP’. That day has long been here.

Emoji Art History: Simple fun or signifier of branding in the arts? (Image: http://ladiesupfront.tumblr.com)

Front cover of ‘Pussy Riot! A Punk Prayer for Freedom’, 2013, The Feminist Press

For those who are or aren’t familiar with the plight of punk band Pussy Riot, Pussy Riot! A Punk Prayer for Freedom, published by The Feminist Press, is an excellent introduction. A trim 150 pages, the book includes key excerpts from the band’s trial, selected song lyrics, letters and poems, and tributes from individuals such as Yoko Ono, Bianca Jagger, and Justin Vivian Bond.

Pussy Riot made headlines last summer when three of the bands members, Maria (Masha) Alyokhina, Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina (Katya) Samutsevich were charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” Their forty second performance of Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away! at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, proved one performance too many for the group who formed in order to critique Vladimir Putin’s presidency. Footage from the performance was used with another shot at the Epiphany cathedral in Yelokhovo to create a video distributed online.

In late October 2012, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were sentenced to two years imprisonment at separate prison camps where they are permitted four conjugal visits per year. Both have children. Samutsevich is currently free on probation after her defense argued that she did not technically take part in the cathedral performance, as guards had prevented her from unpacking her guitar.

The strength of A Punk Prayer to Freedom is its elucidation of the band’s motives, especially their emphasis on the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and Putin’s government. As Alyokhina stated in court, “I never thought that the ROC was meant to call for faith in any president; I thought its only role was to call for faith in God.”

Throughout their testimony, the trio criticized the overt politicization of the ROC on state television: Patriarch Kirill’s explicit endorsement of Putin, the use of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior as a “flashy backdrop,” and Kirill’s assertion that “Orthodox Christians do not attend rallies.” Patriarch Kirill, the current Patriarch of Moscow and all of Russia, has himself been embroiled in a number of national controversies, his ownership of a $30,000 Breguet watch being a recent example (not least because of his vow of poverty).

Pussy Riot’s forty second performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior ranks as one of the most effective political interventions of recent times. Although their performance was curtailed, it didn’t matter. Their intervention was public and accessible (as with all their performances) and all that was required to document it was a video camera. However, it was the state’s overly excessive reaction to their performance that drew international attention to Pussy Riot’s cause, throwing a harsh spotlight on Russian politics. In her closing statement during the trial, Tolokonnikova wryly quoted from Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, ”It is putting a very high value on one’s conjectures to have a man roasted alive because of them.”

Was Pussy Riot’s performance indelicate to Orthodox Christians? Perhaps. Was it hateful hooliganism? No. There was no violence or desecration, nor was any animosity directed at believers. Pussy Riot made a point of staging their performance outside of service hours with very few visitors around. The testimony offered by “injured parties” is laughable. A security guard at the Cathedral claimed he couldn’t work for two months afterwards. When asked to clarify how the performance insulted her, a candle seller at the cathedral reasoned, “they had dresses that bared their shoulders and were very bright in colour, and very contrasting!…And their tights were different colours!…The pain has not let up.” When asked by Tolokonnikova whether “feminist” is a swear word, the same witness responded “it is if it’s said in church.”

The publication fails to address the various political persuasions of Pussy Riot’s members. Many consider themselves committed anarchists, and based on their agenda, one can assume that the band members are secular. These associations were exploited by the prosecution at Pussy Riot’s trial. It also put some of their members in an awkward position when western artists championed their cause. As one anonymous member put it, “we’re flattered, of course, that Madonna and Bjork have offered to perform with us. But the only performances we’ll participate in are illegal ones. We refuse to perform as part of the capitalist system, at concerts where they sell tickets.” Little is also made of Pussy Riot’s connection to Voina (War) an art collective infamous for their provocative performances of which Tolokonnikova and Samutsevich were active members. Together, these facts complicate the broader appeal of Pussy Riot as champions of feminism and democracy. On the other hand, these exclusions in the publication have the benefit of narrowing the reader’s focus onto the trial itself.

As to be expected, the tributes section is a mixed affair. Generally, the briefer contributions are more arresting and inspiring to read. The exception to this rule is Vivien Goldman’s entertaining passage focusing on Pussy Riot’s methods and aesthetics. Bianca Jagger’s contribution briefly widens the publication’s scope to discuss other courageous dissidents such as Jafar Panahi and Owen Maseko.

The most electrifying passages are the translated closing statements by Alyokhina, Tolokonnikova, and Samutsevich. Eloquent, fervid, and reasoned, these speeches will retrospectively be regarded as key contributions to the oratory of human rights. In her closing statement, reflecting on the OBERIU poets, Tolokonnikova states, ”the price of participation in the creation of history is immeasurably great for the individual. But the essence of human existence lies precisely in this participation. To be a begger and yet to enrich others. To have nothing, but to possess all.”

Upon the trial’s closure, the final lines of Alyokhina’s closing statement were the most widely circulated, reproduced and re-tweeted for all the world to read. Whilst undoubtedly inspiring Pussy Riot’s supporters, Alyokhina’s words also serve as a mantra for dissidents world wide. ”All you can deprive me of is my ‘so-called freedom’. This is the only kind that exists in Russia. But nobody can take away my inner freedom. It lives in the world, it will go on living thanks to the openness (glasnost), when this will be read and heard by thousands of people.”

The preface states that proceeds from the sale of ‘Pussy Riot! A Punk Prayer to Freedom’ will support the fund for Pussy Riot’s legal defense.

Kii Arens, ‘Pussy Riot’, 2012, matte lithograph, 24″ x 18″ (lalalandposters.com)

Front cover of Lucy R. Lippard’s, ‘Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972′, originally published in 1973

Lucy R. Lippard’s career trajectory has run from academically trained art historian, to critic, curator, and feminist activist. Eschewing definition, Lippard has described her methodology as “simply one thing leading to another.” Initially a critic, she rejected conventional art criticism on the basis of its “so-called objectivity” and lack of contact with artists and their practice. During the 1960s, she became a key figure and commentator on Minimal and Conceptual art. Her book Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object (1973), was the subject of a survey exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, entitled Materializing Six years: Lucy R. Lippard and the emergence of Conceptual Art. Her pioneering Numbers Shows (1969-1973) are understood to have complicated the definition of curating. “Radicalized” by a trip to Argentina in 1968, Lippard joined the Art Workers Coalition (AWC) in January 1969, campaigning for artists’ rights, against discrimination, and in opposition to the Vietnam War. She went on to co-found a number of organizations including the Ad Hoc Women Artists’ Committee (1970), the Feminist art journal Heresies (1977), Printed Matter (1976) and Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention In Central America (1984).

‘Changing: Essays in Art Criticism’ (1971) marks your ambivalence with art criticism. You’ve cited the rejection of Clement Greenberg’s elite patronization of artists, complicity with art market interests, and the avoidance of a rigid and systematic methodology as reasons for your move away from criticism. What do you make of the argument that criticism is under threat and is it worth saving?

As long as art is worth saving, good criticism will be too. That was a personal choice for me; after the first few years as a working critic, I realized this was not where I wanted to spend my whole life. I’ve always enjoyed sniping from outside to try to improve what’s going on inside.

Each chapter in ‘Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object’ covers a year between 1966–1972. Why did you choose to focus on this date range?

I’ve described the book Six Years myself as a curatorial effort, though a pretty encompassing (some would say undiscriminating) one. I focused on that range because that’s how I lived it, or was living it. And because my energies were going into feminism and I wanted to be sure the conceptual moment was fully documented.

What has been your level of involvement with the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition, Materializing Six Years?

I had little to do with the Brooklyn Museum show though I gave it my blessings. I handed it over to two very capable curators (Catherine Morris and Vincent Bonin). I was really pleased with the results.

Installation photograph of ‘Materializing “Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art’. Courtesy Brooklyn Museum

Of your first ‘Numbers Shows’, 557,087 at the Seattle Art Museum, Peter Plagen’s of Artforum wrote: “There is a total style so pervasive as to suggest that Lucy Lippard is in fact the artist and that her medium is other artists”. You’ve always denied that you were an artist, though numerous commentators have remarked that your shows blurred the boundaries between artistry and curating. Were you aware of a potential blurring of the roles at the time?

Yes, for me the blurring of roles was the most exciting part of conceptual art. It was a wide-open time and I think we actually did open up the artworld, though not to the extent we’d hoped. I collaborated with several artists on pieces (Bob Barry, Doug Huebler, David Lamelas, etc) but I did so as a writer, not a visual artist. If the times allowed artists to be writers, there was no reason why writers couldn’t play too.

You’ve frequently described your 1968 trip to Argentina, when you were invited as part of a jury at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, as a key moment in your activist development. What insights did you gain during this trip?

I juried a show at the Fine Arts Museum in Buenos Aires with French critic Jean Clay. We weren’t allowed to see artists during the jury process and in the last day or so we were let loose and Jorge Gluzberg took us to a small town on the way to Tucaman where we met with the Rosario Group which was doing Tucaman arde at the time. I was deeply impressed by their commitment to social justice above and beyond their artmaking and when I got back home I dove into antiwar activities and then the Artworkers Coalition.

Your only ‘real job’, as you’ve described it, was as a Library Page at The Museum of Modern Art. Did later working with the Art Workers Coalition (AWC) present any strains amongst your former friends and colleagues? Or did you find that a number of museum staff were sympathetic with your aims? I suspect that a great deal of artists and arts professionals today would be apprehensive about critiquing major institutions in such a public way.

I never felt any conflict when I picketed the Museum on various occasions – with the AWC, with feminists, with the MoMA staff union. My friends there were on the same side. I agree that risk taking is not as common now as it was then, but I was already a freelancer and had no interest in ever working at MoMA again so I was taking no personal risks.

With hindsight, how do you assess the tactics of the AWC? Were there any actions you particularly approved or disapproved of? What did you make of Tony Shafrazi’s defacement of Picasso’s Guernica? Is the defacement of an artwork an acceptable form of protest?

I didn’t like Tony’s defacement of Guernica and that was his own action, not the AWC’s.  But the AWC didn’t veto anything anyone did. Most of the actions were as effective as they could be in that context, especially those involving the ‘And Babies’ poster.

A number of the demands the AWC leveled at museum’s have since become a reality: free entrance one day of the week, later opening hours, the appointment of artists as trustees. Where do museum’s fall short today and what additional demands ought to be addressed?

I haven’t lived in NYC for almost 20 years and really have no idea what goes on in the museums now. MoMA is certainly a very different place than it was in my day, when curators, guards, and flunkies like me were all on a pretty much first-name basis.

As part of the Ad Hoc Women Artists’ Committee (independent of the AWC) you successfully campaigned for more women to be represented in the 1970 Whitney annual (there were double than the previous year). Your tactics included fake press releases and the projection of work by women onto the museum’s exterior. Is it true that the FBI investigated?

The FBI knocked on Poppy Johnson’s door. She was one of Ad Hoc’s founders and was only 19 or so. I think they thought her youth made her more vulnerable, but she asked them if she had to talk to them and when they said no she slammed the door on them and called the rest of us. So they picked the wrong target.

In Galisteo (New Mexico) where you have lived since 1992, you continue to contribute to local politics and activism. What have been the most critical lessons that you have learned from activism since the late sixties? 

I have a poster on my wall that says “Nothing About Us Without Us Is For Us.” That’s an important lesson for organizers.

Which artists and activists do you particularly admire at the moment?

I admire everyone who is out there trying to make the world a better place. Occupy was a wonderful interlude and brought inequality to the fore in American public life. A truly important accomplishment wherever it goes from here.

How are you currently involved in local activism? 

My life in rural New Mexico over the last 20 years is very different from my life in the East VIllage, Bowery, Lower East Side, and SoHo.  The village of Galisteo has a population of 250. It’s very very quiet, with no commerce. The issues here are all land-related, watershed restoration, village planning committee, County Open Space committee, stuff I’d never have considered as an activist in the streets of NYC. And I’m in the 17th year of editing my monthly community newsletter, El Puente de Galisteo, which I founded. That’s my real community activist work, raising issues, printing pieces on local passions (birds, development, road widening, oil and gas incursions, new residents, cultural trespassing, family histories). From my little house off the grid (on solar) I look out over vast rangeland and mountains and mesas in the distance, across a local highway. I hike alot with my New Mexico Brown Dog (i.e. mutt). I write a lot. I read a lot. I see friends a lot. My partner and I love road trips (he was raised in New Mexico). We had an Occupy Santa Fe for a while, which was exciting but didn’t last. Political art is rare here, though the environment is a major concern. The New Mexico economy is reliant on the military, tourism, real estate, history, and Native people, dead and alive.

Finally, what have been your most recent projects and what are you currently working on?

SInce 2010 I’ve published a tome (Down Country: The Tano of the Galisteo Basin, 1250-1782) on the abundant archaeology and history of the area, with photographer Ed Ranney. This spring another archaeology book comes out about Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde with photographer Peter Goin, called Time and Time Again. And I’m just finishing Undermining, a hokey little book, parallel visual and verbal narratives about the politics of land use, land art, adobe, water, coal, fracking (and the kitchen sink) in the New West. Next in line is a history of the village from late 1700s to present. I still live on freelancing, as I have all my life, writing essays, and singing for my supper all over the place. I’m almost 76. So far, so good.

Lucy R. Lippard (Image: CCS Bard)

Bella Klein & Daniel Paterson, ‘Ivy House’, 2012, rc print, 4 x 5 Feet (copyright the artists)

Many gallery exhibitions are just too neat. The frames are lavish, the wall tags faultless, the press releases perfectly stacked. You suspect that the show’s priorities are out of whack. Too often the ambition for museological perfection results in a staid, mausoleum of a show. Trailer Obscura is exactly the opposite. The show is declaratively rough and tumble, and thus true to the ethos of artistic experimentation.

On view at Slag Contemporary in Bushwick, the exhibition presents the collaborative photography of two recent Concordia graduates, Bella Klein and Daniel Paterson.  The duo converted a trailer into a giant, mobile, camera obscura, capturing images along the road on two separate trips; from New York to Prince Edward Island, and from Montreal through Detroit and down to Bloomington, Indiana. The resulting images capture desolate factories, homes and eerie marshland.

Bella Klein & Daniel Paterson with their trailer/camera obscura (copyright the artists)

On display are eight large photographic works, two in colour, the rest in black and white. There are no wall labels, titles or text, and each print is simply tacked onto the wall. The conceit of the show is briefly summarized in an accompanying catalogue. Devoid of the usual art speak and puffery, the exhibition encourages the viewer to focus on the display. In this case, the lack of context makes the photographs all the more intriguing.

By virtue of its inversed nature, negative photography evokes certain illicit and sinister qualities. What you’re witnessing is a stolen record, our own chemical solution to cheat time itself. Klein and Paterson accentuate these feelings by composing their shots in a simple, cold, and impassive manner. The works’ titles (once you know them) are similarly impassive; Detroit street, Toronto trees, Portland bus. The artists approach, from their technique to presentation, is a refusal to expound.

Bella Klein & Daniel Paterson, ‘Detroit House (red)’ 2012, c-print, 40 x 30 inches (copyright the artists)

In a country so caught up with prosperity and equality, images of destitution are particularly sensitive. The city of Detroit has become a byword for US economic failure and neglect. Detroit House (2012) sears in red and orange hues as if aflame. The negative image underlines every recess and texture of the house, rendering it all the more tangible. In Portland Bus (2011) the vehicle is transformed into a metallic, hollowed carcass.

The works feel like documented gravesites. The decision to roughly tear the edges of the prints and leave them unframed is thus entirely appropriate. Whilst the sites of Klein and Paterson’s work are in a decrepit state, there remains a current of stubborn perseverance. Detroit House, as fragile as it must be, solidly and confrontationally fills the frame. It serves as a resolute and unflinching reminder of economic failure and tragedy. The artists’ seemingly impassive framing of these sites is really an affirmation of their emotional power. In short, the images speak for themselves.

Trailer Obscura is a small and modest show that succeeds on the power of its work. Nothing extraneous is required. Klein and Paterson’s fascination with the fundamentals of photography is both palpable and infectious. One imagines the freedom and flexibility that their trailer provided in framing and exposing their shots. Above all, it is the confluence of documentary and experiment that makes the works so exciting to view.

Bella Klein & Daniel Paterson: Trailer Obscura, Slag Contemporary, Bushwick, Jan 18 – Feb 9 2013

Jackie Chang, ‘Signs of Life (Faith/Fate)’, 1999, ceramic and glass mosaic, 102 x 204 inches (photograph: author’s own)

No artwork is ever perceived the same way twice. Jackie Chang’s Signs of Life (1999), a series of glass and ceramic mosaic murals, makes a virtue of this. Commissioned by the MTA, the work can be found at the interchange between Metropolitan Avenue and Lorimer Street station in Brooklyn (the L and G lines). The work is rooted within the Conceptual art tradition of exploring language and semiotics. Designed to reward repeated viewings and rumination, it’s the most effecting artwork I have encountered on the New York subway.

The work comprises of six sections, each consisting of a pair of words accompanied by a single image. Three of these sections use words that can be read in conjunction (for example, ‘It’ and ‘Self’ can be read by the viewer as ‘itself’. The other two pairs are Use/Less and Man/Kind). It’s tempting to read the remaining three pairs dualistically, but the relationship between these chosen words is far more complex (These include ‘Same/Sane’, ‘Faith/Fate’ and ‘History/Your Story’).

Jackie Chang, detail of ‘Faith/Fate’ (left) and ‘The Face On Mars’ (right)

‘Faith/Fate’, is the most visually prominent of the murals. It features a precariously balanced rock which strongly recalls the ‘Face on Mars’, a photograph of the Martian surface taken by NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft in 1976 (pictured above). The photograph is the most infamous example of pareidolia, the psychological phenomenon of finding patterns and shapes amongst random visual stimuli.  This striking image has authored all manner of responses, from internet memes to conspiracy theories. Chang’s subtle nod to the image beckons us to view her work in much the same way, to find our own readings within her chosen words and images.

Part of the fun with these works is imagining what other commuters might be thinking as they walk by and analyze the work. Are you the type to find pareidolia meaningful? Does finding patterns within the world give you faith? Is it fateful that you perceived the image a certain way? Perhaps the patterns you find tell you more about yourself, or how you’re feeling on a particular day (a sort of Rorschach test for subway commuters). Faith/Fate, constructed at the heart of the passageway, is in many respects the key section of Signs of Life because it sets into motion our contemplation of Chang’s other pieces.

Jackie Chang, ‘Signs Of Life (History/Your Story)’, 1999, ceramic and glass mosaic, 102 x 422 inches (photograph: author’s own)

The typography selected for each pair of words adds to our interpretation. The most amusing is Data Seventy used for ‘History/Your Story’. It immediately articulates a sense of Sci-fi silliness, deflating the grandiosity associated with a subject such as History. History as Chang insinuates, has as much to do with you as it does with dates and famous figures. The selective use of typography is thus highly manipulative. Along with the images Chang chooses, they steer our interpretations based on our own cultural quirks, which begs the question of whether the effect of certain images can be broadly shared by an audience.

Jackie Chang, Signs of Life (Same/Sane), 1999, ceramic and glass mosaic, 102 x 204 inches (photograph: author’s own)

Part of the works’ appeal lies in the simplicity of its graphic elements. Compared to the advertisements that plaster the subway walls and trains, the work is positively austere. Its innocuous presentation is intended to stir the viewer. It is an anti-ad that retains advertising’s provocative qualities. Take ‘Same/Sane’ for instance. Is sameness (i.e. routine) the route to sanity or antithetical to it? Is ‘Man’ ‘Kind’ or do you believe that humanity is at base barbaric? For the pessimistic viewer, the term ‘Mankind’ is thus revealed to be deeply ironic. The word pairings can be interpreted in endless ways.

The works position in a passageway is key to its inception and purpose. A space where you wouldn’t normally stop, it represents the grind of routine, unexamined life. For regular commuters, the work is especially effective because it confronts you in a different order at different times of the day. Here is a commission that cleverly engages with its audience and subtly works its way into your consciousness. Signs Of Life is an affirmation that introspection can arise in the unlikeliest of places, and perhaps when you’re least expecting it.

Jackie Chang, ‘Signs of Life (History/Your Story)’ (detail), 1999, ceramic and glass mosaic, 102 x 422 inches (photograph: author’s own)

Jackie Chang’s official website

MTA official website: Art for Transit

MoMA Unadulterated (main site screenshot)

MoMA Unadulterated is an audio tour of MoMA’s key collection pieces as discussed by a panel of kids between 3-10 years old. Cy Twombly fails to impress (‘all you have to do is try to write your name in a bad way and then scribble all over’) whereas Ed Ruscha’s OOF (1962) rates highly (‘a person can make that sound when he falls on his tushy…OOF!’).