Where did I get this idea that by living in Austin I was missing out on some great art scene going on in New York? If Chelsea is any indication, nothing could be further from the truth.

Tuesday was gallery day, and after being snubbed by a special event going on at the Studio Museum in Harlem, I spent the afternoon traipsing from one academic little gallery to the next, watching the dead, dead eyes of the other gallery hoppers as they dutifully made their way through the downtown crud district. So much art, so little life. I did enjoy all the self-important, bespectacled gallery attendants who barricaded themselves behind those high receptionist booth walls. They sort of peek over the tops of their computers like little marmots to see you're Somebody, but realizing you are Nobody, they silently go back to their important emailing. They are magical.

That doesn't mean that I didn't find some stuff that I thought was worth seeing:

Lincoln Schatz's "Convergence of Memory" at Bitforms was inspiring and transformative. Among so much art that seems based on denials (denials of generosity, denials of affect, denials of meaning), I like what a lot of the digital artists are doing. I find that their work tends toward the generous and unabashedly inquisitive end of the spectrum. Schatz's "Inter-view," which consisted of a series of monitors that display your own image in realtime intermixed with the ghostly images of other visitors who have come to look at the same monitors, made me aware of the social space around that artwork in whole new way. It transformed seeing from an individual into a communal activity. (left, Schatz's "Inter-view," 2004)


Amy Cutler's paintings and drawings on paper at Leslie Tonkonow are delicate, disturbing and dizzying all at once. And Joey Slaughter's work at Capsule reinterpreted landscape in a cool way, not only through paintings, but also in cartoony sculptures that poked fun at manufactured commodities. (right, Slaughter's "Lily Pads/Element & Host," 2004)


There's a lot of bad drawing out there. You know what I mean, the self-conscious, intentionally jokey, inept look. "Look, ma! It's irony on paper!" It's another kind of denial; it's easier to hide behind intentional ineptitude than it is to be vulnerable, attempt grace and fail. It's like the artist is poking you in the ribs and saying, "I can see that this is stupid art, which means that I'm obviously morally superior to it." It's a very, very safe way to make art; it keeps you from having to reveal yourself. When one or two guys (yes, guys) were doing it, it was an interesting strategy. Now that it's a tidal wave in gallery after gallery after gallery, well now it's just aped mannerism.

Speaking of which, I walked into Tony Feher's show at D'amelio Terras and was instantaneously bored. Art about recycling trash. OK concept, but I prefer the massive junk sculptures found in public lots around the East Village (I don't know if these still exist). Similar concept, much better execution. (right, Feher detail "The Wart on the Bosom of Mother Nature")


My spirits were lifted by Bernar Venet's rolled steel sculpture at Robert Miller Gallery. Kind of swaggering, macho modernism, but I didn't care. It was still cool. (left, Venet's "94.5-degree ARCx13," 2004)


Some other recommendations: Nzingah Muhammad at Esso--engaging photography marred by so-so processing. Donald Locke at Skoto Gallery--postcolonial mixed media. Figurative drawings at Denise Bibro that mostly look like anything you'd find in life drawing classes anywhere in the world, but include the exquisite pencil drawings of Costa Vavagiakis. The rear gallery at COFA, which had a lot of understated, small beautiful things.

Chelsea cured me. It wiped out the last little bit of New York mystique that was lodged in my brain. New artists here are no better and no worse than just about anywhere else. There's this tendency to romanticize the great art world "out there." The work isn't any better, there's just more of it. More good, and whole heck of a lot more bad. Was it this way when I lived here 7 years ago? It must have been, but what did I know back then; I paid more attention to writing and was having a hard enough time keeping up with all the pointless novels being written. (right, Carson Fox, "I Know About Your Broken Heart," at COFA, 2004)


The rain has moved in today. Today is Whitney Biennial day, too. I'm undeterred. I'm vowing to be relentlessly optimistic.

In the 2 years since I was last here (in New York City) and 7 years since living here, this place looks a lot different. The city hasn't change; I most certainly have. Not too long ago, I considered it an absolute certainty that I'd someday come back to live here or someplace nearby. More to the point, I considered it some kind of destiny, as if not coming back would have amounted to some kind of failure. (right, Brian's spacious Carroll Gardens crib, almost like gracious southern living.)

Things change a lot in a year.

I'm driven more now by happiness, personal fulfillment and good art. That is, making good art. It took me 7 years to realize that that has almost nothing to do with New York City. The city's totally lost its spell over me. That's nice and makes it a lot more enjoyable than the filth, noise and congestion would otherwise indicate. (left, the microkitchen, the price you pay for a living room)

Recommended: Super Size Me, the film by Morgan Spurlock, which I went to see with Brian the other night. It takes a potentially trite topic--that junk food is bad for you, surprise!--but he approaches it with a lot of humanity and makes it funny and watchable. It would not have been nearly as interesting if he had been some food snob coming down off his throne to preach to the masses about their disgusting eating habits, but this guy genuinely likes a good Big Mac, so you know, he's a real person.

Given all the recent hub-bub in Massachusetts, this seems like a timely announcement. Harold Chaput, president of the Austin Museum of Digital Art, is marrying--that's right marrying--his sweetheart of 2 years, Kazuki Kinjo. Kazuki is a citizen of Japan, Harold of the US, and they'll be marrying in Kenora, Ontario, Canada (something to do with being close to Fargo, North Dakota). This, I believe will be a quickie justice of the peace type affair, but they are planning a more elaborate affair at some point in the future. Did I mention that Kazuki is a man?

Congrats, guys!

Traveling to New York on Saturday. On the agenda:

Wouldn't you know it? First the PC gave me all kinds of problems, now the Mac has gone and died altogether. At least I think it has. This will be absorbing my time most of the day.

In the meantime, I suggest you read Iconoduel's response to my last post. It's right on the money. It's hard to grind an axe against ersatz confrontationalism in art without appearing to be against critical stances on the whole, but Dan has done a good job of teasing out the differences.

Also, take a look at Peat Duggins's notebooks again if you haven't already. They're brilliant and can be seen in person at Testsite.

I've wanted so desperately to believe in the Stray Show, Art Chicago's autistic stepchild, mainly because Austin's own Fresh Up Club made an appearance there last week. But the blogosphere has not been particularly kind to it. Caryn Coleman from LA's Sixspace seemed rather on the fence and she likes everything. Dan Hopewell at Iconoduel dealt the Little Show that Could a cutting slice here, as he is wont to do. Sounds like something I'd write only backed up with actual knowledge. (I assume Dan somehow missed Piwonka's painting "ETA Good Friday.")

Among other things, Hopewell seems annoyed by a kind of misguided politicism he sees as prevelant in much of the work, some kind of knee-jerk critical stance that all too often has nothing behind it. I've seen a lot of this work, work that is angry and screaming and yet saying nothing, offering no discernable vision.

One of the great community organizers of the 1930s was a Chicago man named Saul Alinsky. He wrote a book called Rules For Radicals, which I suggest to just about anyone interested in peeling back the gloss of romanticism that has developed around the 60s in favor of understanding the real mechanisms of social change. When I first came to Austin, fumbling around in my political Neverland, several people suggested his writing to me, though at the time I thought they were saying "Sololinksi."

Anyway, Alinsky recounts an anecdote about a power plant--or some such undesirable facility--being built in a neighborhood, and about seeing the plans before construction began. He points to a spot on the blueprint. "What's that?" he says to the architect. "Oh, that's the Sit-In Room," the architect answers. "For protesters." The room came equipped with comfortable chairs, snack machines and televisions. They knew the protesters were coming, might as well give them a place to sit.

This is what happens when the status quo learns to manage the very counterculture that would claim to destroy it. It makes room, it provides comfortable chairs, it contains it as a safe little commodity. The way out, Alinsky said, was always to get outside of the experience of your "enemy." If he expects quiet, you give him noise; when he expects war, you give him peace.

Many of the radical art strategies of the 60s, 70s and even 80s have fallen into a similar state of impotence, having long been placed in comfortable chairs and given snack vending machines. So many of the shock tactics (brutal nudity, bodily fluids, almost anything gay) have by now become trite, the political lines interchangeable from work to work, artist to artist. And yet you find them employed by artists graduated fresh out of art school. Just like you find that same unwashed hippy chick with the tambourine and the peace sign standing out in front of the capitol building every time the government does something bad. As if that's still the way to make change. As if the world hasn't undergone dramatic transformation in the last 40 years.

Reacting to the Sit-in Room, Alinsky suggested buying stock in the company and influencing shareholder meetings. Make change by operating outside of the "enemy's" experience of you.

Art conservatives have it easy. Tradition justifies itself. You don't have to be new and different, because those are not your claims. Artists interested in engaged political visions have it a lot harder. Every new strategy has a limited shelf life before it's absorbed by the status quo. And that shelf life is getting shorter all the time.

Those who are keeping track will be shocked and amazed to learn that I am still working on the same illustration project from last year. A project that should have taken 4 weeks is now going into...I don't know how many months.

Anyway, whatever doesn't get finshed this week has to wait another 2 weeks because next Saturday I'm off to New York for a trip to the Whitney Biennial and then DJ Spooky's show opening at Paula Cooper.

current music: Virginia Rodrigues, Nos

Alright, so did you see that repulsive ignorant moron from Oklahoma sit there in the senate and pontificate about how we're all out of line for getting pissed off about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib? Drove me right into the arms of Moveon.org, it did.


If you get a chance to watch the video of that statement, that's the best. Watch the woman directly behind him and to his left. As he starts vomiting out his ignorance, first she looks confused, then she looks mortified but trying to maintain poise, then she starts looking around like, "Am I the only one hearing this? Am I in the twilight zone?" Then she just gives up and her eyes pop out, before finally regaining her composure. It's a great moment in history. See it on The News Hour with Gwen Ifill. Apparently, Republican John McCain, who was captured and tortured in Vietnam, got up and left the chamber.

So I wrote a letter to Inhofe, because, well that's the kind of thing I do. I'm skipping over my state (Texas) senators as a lost cause. But I'll jot off a quick letter to the pres. before tearing some shit up.

For What It's Worth:

http://inhofe.senate.gov/
Sen. James Inhofe
453 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-3603
Phone: 202-224-4721
Fax: 202-228-0380

How happy we are that local hero-gallery The Fresh Up Club is representin' at The Stray Show in Chicago. How sad we are that financial limitations forced Laura to stay behind to nurse a bum wrist. How pissed off we are that nobody in the press even seems to be paying attention to Art Chicago, much less the Stray Show.

Well it was quite the lovefest between Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel this morning on Face the Nation; I thought they were going to start making out at any moment. Shockingly, the politicians came off as more eager to get to the truth than the journalists, who were just hunting, hunting, hunting for a sound bite.

Joe Biden finally says, "Fine! You want me to say Donald Rumsfeld should go? Then yeah, he should go, but that's not enough!" What is this, clarity from an elected official? He actually worked in the word "dammit" somewhere, but I can't remember where. Next thing you know we might actually have to come to grips about being in Iraq in the first place.

current music: Pat Boyack, Voices from the Street

Tried something new for the 5x7 benefit show for Arthouse. Big mistake:

I don't want to leave the impression that Brad Tucker and I just stopped talking like that. We've been emailing each other back and forth, quite amicably. (He did remember me after all.) One thing he mentioned is that because I posted my opinions about his work on the web, he felt entitled to reply, especially when he feels my (or anyone's) comments are so off-base. He'll get no argument from me. That to me is what good criticism should do--start a conversation.


Also, here's the scoop on a new Greg Piwonka painting (at right). It's called "ETA Good Friday." Seen for the first time in public right here. Okay, maybe not, but that's the myth I'm creating anyway. I think it's right on like almost all his stuff I've seen before. It might be confusing that I have this opinion, given my recent tirades about "sloppiness" and craft and such. To my mind, Piwonka's stuff is an example of what can happen when a certain artlessness really works. Incredibly expressive and what my former painting teacher calls "felt-through."

Despite the title, this piece was inspired by Sun Ra. Turns out Greg is an afrofuturist. Who knew?

current music: The Roots, Things Fall Apart

Come to find out someone has been systematically reposting entries from this blog over at the Glasstire bulletin boards for months now. And, as I've been told, it was "widely assumed" that I was the one making those posts.

Listen folks, don't believe the hype. Anybody who knows me knows that I am deeply interested in engagement, conversation and dialog. I don't just throw grenades into crowded rooms and then walk out, leaving everybody to wonder what just happened there. Such was the effect of these posts in that context, no follow up, no give-and-take offered.

Of course, it was all of my most vitriolic, angry posts that were reposted. All the better to heighten the "crazy person" effect, unspoiled by any of the more nuanced and tamer posts. Anyway, what's done is done. I've realized that my own reputation is now completely beyond my control.

current music: Joni Mitchell, Blue

How many times does this thought go through my head every day in different contexts: "It bothers me that there are no other black people here; but it bothers me even more that it doesn't bother you."

As if on cue:

Hi Cinque,
I read your comments about my work in the Altoids Collection show at ArtHouse. I am glad to see that you took the time to write about my work, and I would accept your criticism if I didn't feel that you were way off in your judgements. First of all, I am not concerned with recreating mundane objects. I didn't make the carved wood exercise bike(Conrad Bakker did), and my skateboard with floppy discs is not about transforming the mundane through a paradoxically high level of craft. You mentioned Duane Hanson's sculpture, and in reference to him, your comments seem appropriate. I don't think that the craft of Warhol's Brillo boxes is executed at a particularly high level, but Warhol's craft is sufficient for its own needs. (right, Brad Tucker's "Pools," 2000)

You certainly could take issue with the craft of my work and its apparent sloppiness. You wouldn't be the first person to expose "half-ass" or "slacker qualities" in my work. However, don't impose onto my work your conventions about what my work ought to be: "you gotta be spot on and really transform the objects by putting their very mundaneness right up against the high level of craft and attention paradoxically paid to them." Please, I want nothing to do with that. I don't have either the patience or the desire to make meticulously rendered sculptural objects like you suggest. Nor do I want my project to be as calculated as you prescribe. Instead, I am interested in making objects that reflect improvisation and sponeneity. While craft is very important to me, the level of craft in my work will vary in relation to what I determine is appropriate for each work I make. Have we met before? You mention my smile as if it is familiar.
Brad Tucker

Brad,
I gotta say, I am always simultaneously amazed and delighted when anybody gives a shit what I think, but I'm so happy to have these kinds of exchanges. And yes, we have met--at Sala Diaz one night last year. I recalled you being a really nice guy and enjoying meeting you. But you probably met a lot of people that night, and I wouldn't expect you to remember me in particular.

Here's the deal: when I look at art, your motives and intentions as the artist are irrelevant to me. All that's out there is the object, the thing itself, and I can impose anything I want to on it. That's what audiences do, they impose a lifetime of experiencing, seeing and living. Or at least that's what people who trust their own intellects do. The remainder read wall plaques and artist statements to find out what they're supposed to think. It's nice when artists can articulate what they're after, but when I'm standing before a work, I really couldn't care less. The thing has to articulate for itself.

I don't suggest you do anything other than what you're doing. Really, I don't. I will, however, have my reactions and they will be honest and thoughtful ones.

Thank you for clearing up the Conrad Bakker confusion. That was sloppy writing.

And thanks for starting this dialogue. I'm sure I'll see you around. Next time I'll make a point of walking up and re-introducing myself.
ch

I want to talk about criticism. The other night, my friend Paul and I went to see the delicious puff pastry that is Stereolab and I ran into the lovely Jennifer, whose art I have discussed on this blog (Jan. 18). She says, "Hey I was on your blog today," and after a few uncomfortable moments of mutual cringing, she says, "You're so negative! I was reading it and thinking well, what does he like?" We laughed about it and I told her to send me an email, telling me what she really thought since a crowded concert hall wasn't necessarily the best place to discuss art. I'm still waiting for that email.

Actually I had supplied the word "negative" earlier on in the conversation and now I regret it. Because I'm really not negative; I'm critical. Very critical. And frankly if more people were as critical, the art world wouldn't be in the pathetic, impotent state it's in.

There's been a lot of talk in the art press and the blogosphere about the state of art criticism. Prompted by this article at the Lebrecht Weekly, Franklin Einspruch at Artblog.net touched off a whole debate about the sorry state of art criticism in Miami. And his complaint holds true to a great extent for Austin and of course for the US in general.

Simply put, we don't have a culture of meaningful art criticism in this country. The great majority of art reviews and discussions in print are either of the totally neutral describe-and-present variety, or the kind of wide-eyed, gee-wiz "how'd they do that?" variety. Very little dares to question the basic assumptions of the artists, and even less attempts to situate a particular artist, show, style or subject in a larger social or historical context. It's almost as though the artist can shovel off any bullshit they want and most critics will politely confine themselves to discussing whether the colors harmonize or not. I exaggerate, but you see my point. (left, still from Jeremy Blake's "Reading Ossie Clark," 2003. It's hard to recognize the really brilliant stuff when everybody's going around saying everything's good.)

This is to say nothing of the reporting of arts events, such as the reorganization of a museum for example, which are so often treated with kid gloves; a polite little interview with the curator who spouts off about how wonderful this all is and the reporter dutifully writes down that the world is wonderful and art is wonderful and the museum is wonderful and etc., etc., etc. Meanwhile they've told you practically nothing about the way the world works.

So I agree with Franklin that a shakeup in the critical world would be a good thing. Unfortunately, Franklin falls into the trap of calling for more "negative" reviews. This puts him in the untenable position of having to defend negativity as a positive value, which it's not. Being negative is just being negative, and many of the comments on his blog react with that sentiment.

The problem is the whole positive/negative dichotomy. We ought to think instead in terms of critical vs. non-critical. Non-critical writing is basically a cheerleading routine. Every once in a while it may dip into "I wish the artist had used blue instead of green," but is otherwise full of flowery praise, usually capped off with some hugely overblown falsehood about how seeing this art will change the way you think about the world, which is seldom the case.

The fundamental impulse behind this type of review is often to "support" what is perceived as a weak local art scene. The thinking is that it's important to get people out to these shows, to stimulate an interest in art and that the way to do that is to lie to them about how wonderful it is. In short, it's a con job that treats the general public like gullible children.

Critical reviews on the other hand treat the art, the artist and the audience with respect. They assume that people can handle the truth, that they in fact crave the truth. Nobody wants to be told that a video installation is magical and revolutionary and whatever else if it's really just mediocre or worse yet, irrelevant. People can see that their experience of the art isn't matching up with the lobotomized review of it.

So people are used to reading about art as written by castrated journalists who don't want to piss anybody off. No wonder then that my writing, which shows its fangs, comes across as "negative." So few people ever write like this. Or I should say, so few art world insiders of which I am a card-carrying member ever write like this. Outsiders say this shit all the time and they get skewered for it, bullied by the art intelligentsia as country rubes who just don't know what's good for them. (right, still from Aida Ruilova's "Untitled," 2002. I consider it an obligation to call out bad stuff when I see it.)

Tyler Green by way of Terry Teachout talks about the importance of the positive review here. Fine. But I believe it's equally important for critics to point out bad stuff and why it's bad, particularly in visual art where audiences have been systematically bullied into mistrusting their own instincts for three generations. It's not the critic's job to make sure art thrives--that's the artist's job. It is the critic's job to tell the truth about the world in all its complexity.

That's what British arts journalism does so well, and East African, by the way. Hand in hand with a rave about English coastal architecture, you also get a treatise on why the fall of communism has led to 20 years of boring Eastern European art. That's important. It helps us understand the world better and our own lives. So, so far beyond just saying whether something is "good" or "bad." Limiting oneself to "positive only," as Teachout implies, cuts out a whole area of understanding lived experience.

The truth is it's only in the past year or so that I've had such strong opinions about art and writing about it so much has helped me distill my ideas. This doesn't come easily to me, this vociferous language, this kind of direct speaking. I've spent most of my life being the "nice guy," the one who could find some redeeming quality even in the worst crap. Call it getting older, call it getting smarter; whatever it is, the more I think about art, the stronger my opinions and the more excited I get about separating the wheat from the chaff.

I'd love to hear feedback about this, y'all.

current music: Joni Mitchell, Hejira