The
Year That Was:
Marching Toward the Millennium
by
Therese Schwartz
[Part
One]
In the season of
1997-1998, I left my studio every Saturday and made the rounds of galleries
in Soho, Chelsea, 57th Street. and Uptown. I saw the work of 293 artists in
240 shows. I did not include museums, private spaces or studios. All of the
shows were listed somewhere and open to the public at regular hours, and,
of course, the work shown also represented the taste of the gallery
involved.
Twenty-five years
ago I wrote a series of articles for Art in America titled "The
Politicization of the Avant Garde" which recorded the art and the
activities of artists in the 1960’s and early 70’s. Although I am a
working artist, not a critic or historian, I have an obsessive interest in
what motivates us and what kind of art is produced in a particular time and
place. It’s my theory that artists are the true mirrors of a time –
that although they naturally share in the social-political climate of a
period, they also convert it into form. Recording this process in history
creates the most reliable archives of a time. I decided to take one year in
these last 1990’s and make a record of what I saw. I chose the season
ending June 1998 for my study. I know that the present is not a time of
break-throughs, and that each of the last years of this century is very
much like the one before it and the one following.
We could label
today’s culture The Age of the Individual; there are no nationwide
passionate causes, and no Art Revolutions. Artists are not marching in the
streets with others, or riding buses to raise hell in front of the
Department of Justice. For some who might have joined fights in the past
there is now fitness and food, but from what I saw this past year, we
haven’t all settled for that. Searches and changes go on in studios every
day; but by individuals, independent and solitary.
Experts who added
another verse to the "painting is dead" lamentations were wrong
again. Painting outnumbered all other media by three to one. Sculpture and
Installation were about even, and Video, Photography, Drawing and
Performance made a small minority. Sources came from everywhere: movies,
nature, science, science fiction, myth, politics, rock, fashion – a fair
exchange since so much content of cinema, television and advertising comes
from the wild art of the 60’s and 70’s. This diversity was by no means
a free-for-all. Whatever its quality, work shown was impeccably executed;
galleries rarely included amateurish attempts, however sincere. Considering
the cost of gallery operation today this is no surprise. Resembling the
political climate of the country, a strong center characterized the
philosophic intent of almost all work seen. There were few strong
statements, protests, or "throw away" art objects. In one area
there was a noticeable change in style, and that was in installations.
Installation and
the Stock Market:
Installation is the
youngest member of the exhibition family. It first appeared in the 1960’s
as simple collections of found or handmade objects assembled to express an
idea visually. But in the 1990’s, and coincidentally with rising Wall
Street fortunes, some of the shows were designed to look like Broadway
block-busters. They were big, glitzy, furnished with expensive props, and
obviously needed healthy investments of money, labor and commercially
produced products.
Matthew Barney’s
show (Barbara Gladstone) derived from his film "Cremaster 5."
The film was not shown with the work, and so it will not be discussed here.
In a locked room were a triptych of photographs of Harry Houdini the
magician, a glass coffin containing white manacles, and five live black
pigeons dressed in white capes. (A notice assured viewers that the birds
were perfectly comfortable.) A huge stepped structure made of clear plastic
filled another cavernous area, and was surrounded by guarded space equipped
with an alarm system. A separate gallery was hung with large production
stills taken during the filming. They pictured mythic personages, the
"Water Sprites," androgynous pastel figures posed against bright
flowery backgrounds.
Kenny Scharf’s
brilliant presentation (at Tony Shafrazi) reflected significant sources of
popular entertainment – Hollywood and Las Vegas. The walls were hung with
large paintings in glaring neon-colored paint and over-life-size cartoony
figures were casually placed here and there. Bright lights and rock music
created an atmosphere which was both upbeat and thoroughly unreal. A
structure, like a Forties trailer, was lined with black shiny stuff, had a
floor covered in Mylar, and walls decorated with a collection of chochkas
– souvenirs, toys, photos, cards, all hung any which way and covered with
bright pink paint.
Todd Siler
(at Ronald Feldman) took a different view of the world, and his offering
dealt with the human brain. With a stated theme of "Changing
Minds," he covered the walls with large paintings of abstracted skull
sections, and filled all space with drawings, prints, photographs and a
book, all on the same theme. The centerpiece was a roughly constructed
teepee-like structure, but the expansive nature of the installation was
demonstrated at the opening by the appearance of celebrated jazz musician
Ornette Coleman and his group, who played music written for the show; every
Saturday afterwards a Coleman combo performed.
I include Barbara
Kruger here (at Mary Boone) because all parts of this show had to be
read together to comprehend the agit-prop content. One room held a group of
giant sculptures made of a plaster-like material, which depicted famous and
infamous characters of the 1950’s and 60’s. They were satirical, sharp,
and true to subversive sentiments of that time. There was J. Edgar Hoover,
an enemy of all deviation, clothed in a short dress, dainty socks and
shoes, and a fetching Marilyn Monroe posed over the standing figures of
John F. and Robert Kennedy. Huge photographs of other public figures
dominated the adjoining gallery, one of Eleanor Roosevelt, and all were
underlined with typical Kruger homilies. And as part of the presentation, a
real bus, decorated with similar slogans, toured the streets of Manhattan
for a month.
David Bunn
and Matt Mullican, conceptualists, designed installations which were
theatrical, dramatic, and based on the subject of books. Bunn (at
Brooke Alexander), in his first appearance in New York, presented a massive
collection of bookworks, sheets of poems and videos, all of which stemmed
from the discarded card catalogue of the Los Angeles Central Library. He
rescued and now owns the catalogue, and this show was made largely from
cards reconstituted into new books. There were also poems written on old
catalogue pages, and a video – altogether several hundred pieces aptly
titled "Here, There and (nearly) Everywhere."
Matt Mullican’s
show (also at Brooke Alexander) took the expansion of Conceptualism even
farther and it became academia writ very, very large. This
presentation, saturated with huge charts and dense illustrations, awed this
viewer, but its possible relevance remains somewhat beyond reach. Mullican
has worked on his "New Edinburgh Encyclopedia" for six years, and
this show is based on the 449 engravings he made for the sixteen volumes of
the encyclopedia. The process used was complicated and skillful, and the
erudition truly impressive.
Jason Rhodes’s
installation (at David Zwirner) is in another place, and it isn’t
academia. He is concerned with disorder, debris and possible chaos, but his
style – designed to look that way – is not a result of haphazard
thought. Much care must be taken to make credible chaos, and this show
which was crammed into a limited gallery space made its point. Intricate
machines moved and writhed, there was constant noise and one felt irritated
and restless while avoiding treading on the hose, the pipes and industrial
debris that covered the floor. This show, which could be seen as thrown
together any old way, actually needed the same careful planning and
complicated manufactured props as any of the installations described here.
These enhanced
installations all needed substantial support for their creation, even
though some were obviously aimed at a comparatively small and select
audience. The fact that they were there to be seen is indeed a true
reflection of this time.
[The Year That Was:
Marching Toward the Millennium will continue in Issues #2 through #4.]
Therese Schwartz,
an esteemed artist known for her geometrically based panoramic collages,
has had numerous solo exhibitions, both domestically and internationally,
including: Humphrey Fine Art in New York City; Bucknell University;
The Salt Lake City Art Center; Barbara Friedler Gallery and Howard
University in Washington, D.C.; Galerie Fabian Walter, Basel, Switzerland;
Galeria Casa Negret, Bogota, Colombia; Rutgers University; and at
the ARCO International Art Fair in Madrid. Her highly regarded works
can be found in museums, corporations, and private art collections,
among them: The Brooklyn Museum of Art; The Corcoran Gallery of Art;
Syracuse University Art Collection; Herbert F. Johnson Museum; Edwin
A. Ulrich Museum; Ciba-Geigy Corporation; Barnet Arden Collection;
Phillips Memorial Gallery; Women's Interart Center Museum; Advanced
Elastomer Systems; Pepsico Corporation; Monroe Geller Foundation;
and the Huntington Museum. An accomplished essayist, Ms. Schwartz
has written feature articles in such publications as: Art News,
Arts Magazine, Women Artists' News, and Art In America,
where she contributed a four-part series entitled "The Politicization
of the Avante-Garde," which continues to be widely used as a
research tool for art historians.
