I am stoked and a bit daunted to be participating in a session on appropriation at this year’s Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference. It will be this coming Friday at PS1, as part of the NY Art Book Fair, and will take place in the Performance Dome:
2:00-3:30 pm
Appropriation and Intellectual Property
Debates on the the legal complexity of appropriated imagery have resurfaced in light of a recent lawsuit between artist Richard Prince and photographer Patrick Cariou. Artists Greg Allen and Eric Doeringer and lawyer Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento will discuss notions of “fair use” and “transformation” with our digital culture, as well as the question of how copyright law should adapt to rapidly evolving artistic practices and whether copyright law might constitute a medium in and of itself. Organized and moderated by Stephen Bury.
I hope you can come to the Fair, of course, because it is amazing. And while you’re there, I hope you’ll come by the session. It’s a big dome, and it’ll feel even bigger if it’s empty. CABC Conference Sessions [nyartbookfair]
image: from DJ Francois and Juan Atkins’ performance during the MoMA PS1 Kraftwerk Festival, via timeout
I knew vaguely of Laurence Sterne’s The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman‘s importance, and I did see Michael Winterbottom’s wild 2005 film adaptation, but I’ve never read the book itself. So HOLY SMOKES, PEOPLE, Mourning Pages!
Sterne wrote and designed Tristram Shandy [1759] not just as a story, but very much as a reading experience. Which is why the death of the parson Yorick in Vol. I is followed by a page printed solid black. It’s usually called [by Shandyheads] The Black Page.
But as Duke comp lit PhD candidate/blogger Whitney explains, it’s most typically called a mourning page, and Tristram Shandy is the first time a mourning page was deployed in fictional writing. Lachrymae, 1613, Joshua Sylvester, image via folger.edu
Whitney has pulled together an incredible assortment of mourning pages, which usually appeared at the beginning of a book as a memorial to a deceased king or the author’s patron.
They sometimes had text or a crest, or designs or illustrations, but a solid monochrome monolith of black was not unheard of. Except, of course, by me.
In 2009 the Laurence Sterne Trust organized an exhibition titled, The Black Page, for which they solicited 73 artists to create their own interpretation of the black page. The artists ranged from John Baldessari to Kenneth Goldsmith to Lemony Snicket.
I think that by now, three+ years later, the artificial suspense has played out, and the Trust can go ahead and reveal the identities of the artists of each work on their little blog. Diapsalmata: Tristram Shandy & the art of black mourning pages [whitneyannetrettien via bibliodyssey, I think] The Black Page [blackpage73.blogspot.com]
Well look what I unearthed while reorganizing my books in storage. The Fall 1966 issue of Art Voices, a short-lived magazine that, I swear, I bought for the articles.
Seriously. It’s the issue where Robert Smithson & Mel Bochner published “The Domain Of The Great Bear,” their photo-essay/article-as-art expedition through the Hayden Planetarium. I mean, sure, you could read it in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, but don’t you want to see it printed slightly bigger?
Anyway, in the short features section up front, right before Lawrence Alloway’s essay on early space age films, is this awesome story by pioneering downtown journalist Walter Bowart about a secret, artist-run tattoo parlor called Apocalyptic Tattoo. It’s not turning up online anywhere, so I’m putting the whole, short, thing after the jump:
From Allan Sekula’s response to Nato Thompson’s “Debating Occupy” roundup in Art in America [Jun/Jul 2012, on scribd, which oy]
The “art world” is a small sector of culture in general, but an important one. It is, among other things, the illuminated luxury-goods tip of the commodity iceberg. The art world is the most complicit fabrication work-shop for the compensatory dreams of financial elites who have nothing else to dream about but a “subjectivity” they have successfully killed within themselves. Thus the pervasive necrophilia of the art system. Alfred Jarry spoke at the turn of the 20th century of a “disembraining machine.” We can speak now of a “self-embalming machine.” Hook yourself up to the dripfor the antiquarian future.
When the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to quash the ‘Prague Spring’ (a series of economic and free speech reforms that liberal-minded Czech communist leaders enacted), the people of Prague were overwhelmed and could not resist militarily. So they did the next best thing: they painted all their street signs white. For eight months the Soviets could not arrest resistance leaders, shut down pirate radio and television stations or break up organized meetings, all because they couldn’t fucking find them.
Which is true? I guess? The Wikipedia entry for the Prague Spring cites Paul Chan. But from his Mar. 2007 Artforum text, “Fearless Symmetry,” [which only shows up on Google in this wonky page and] which ends like this:
But how do we verify, following Rancière, the efficacy of our practice? How do we test the work so that we know it is something made that has become more than something simply made? If we use Rancière as a departure point, perhaps a confrontation is in order. That is to say, the place to verify the practice of equality in the pursuit of a form of freedom (which seems to me like a pleasing if wonky definition of art) might well be a confrontation with a force of order that divides and partitions the ghostly whole back into measured forms of understanding and consumption. If the work is indeed a work, it will resist this partitioning at every turn and claim for itself the autonomy that can come only from the practice of imagining the presence of this now not-so-secret equality in every line, shape, color, and sound. Confronted with such a presence, the police order that longs to divide in order to own can only blush: out of frustration, out of confusion, perhaps even out of fear. But tell me-honestly-when was the last time you blushed looking at art?
Whoa also this, same question to Kara Walker, from the Frieze thing:
I like to think of Donald Judd’s Marfa complex as exemplifying the strivings of White patriarchy. But that’s just me; I don’t think he intended that.
American grain-fed beef will still remain the number one choice of Americans who dine out. Health food fanatics with bogus credentials will continue to slam producers and consumers of beef for destroying the environment and the health of children who are supposedly being poisoned by red meat when organic vegetables, tofu and soy milk are their answers to the world’s health problems. More and more pressure in the form of increased year around recreation demand by citizens cloistered much of the year in their Wasatch Front and Southern California neighborhoods will test the patience of ranchers and farmers in the valley who find their gates left open, livestock scattered, sprinkler pipes shot full of holes, crops trampled by four-wheelers and fences cut so hunters can get closer to that “real good hunting spot.”
…
One thing that won’t change is that there will always be some young men or women who are willing to sacrifice guaranteed vacations, retirement programs, forty-hour weeks and twelve holidays a year with pay, just for the challenge and satisfaction of being a rancher/farmer. The drive or motivation to be a provider of food and fiber for a nation is still alive in a few young people in Grass Valley. May that hunger to work with the soil and the beasts never be lost or destroyed.
excerpted from Verl Bagley’s extensively researched history and future of “Beef Husbandry in Grass Valley,” p. 222 of the impressive if not quite comprehensive Grass Valley History, Including the Communities of Box Creek, Burrville, Greenwich, Koosharem, published privately in 2005, which I saw a heavily used, duct-taped copy of near the register at the Koosharem Cafe the other day. And when I inquired about it, the lady helping me called down to the store to see if they had a copy. And then she called over to Carol’s place, and sure enough, Carol had a copy I could buy, did I know Carol? And that’s when I had to confess that until she said it on the phone just then, I was unsure how to pronounce Koo-SHARE-em, we were just on a quick, first family history visit. But Carol was right down the road, and sure enough, she answered the door with a copy, and was surprised to take money, didn’t I pay down to the store?
In any case, an unexpected and invaluable resource for my research into the contentious history of irrigation in and around Burrville.
[L]ike all insular civilizations, [RG]’s evolved in a certain direction, it’s developed hard-and-fast attitudes about what’s beautiful and proper, and a corresponding need to defend those attitudes. It’s putting on a show, and it does what it knows how to do. The result is that it feels a little unbalanced to outsiders, in the same way as, say, ice dancing, or dog shows, or a lot of judged activities.
This notion of competition, judgment and the pursuit of perfection within an insular world happens to be a minor fascination/obsession of mine. At some point probably 10 years ago, after surfing past yet another aerobics world championship on ESPN3, I started a posterboard spectrum, which I changed to a 2×2 grid, and then just a bubble chart. All the sports and “sports,” I can find are laid out on it, from bodybuilding to dressage to cheerleading to college marching bands [both historically black and not]. Rhythmic gymnastics is there, too, in a cluster with regular gymnastics, synchronized swimming, ballet, drill team, and child beauty pageants. Here’s Phillips again:
There is, in the contrast between the poise and seriousness of the athletes and the princessy kitsch of the setting, something really kind of dark and wonderful. Just imagine it: devoting your life, mercilessly and with absolute commitment, to the task of dancing with little twirly clubs to a synth-folk soundtrack while wearing a spangled bathing suit designed to look like ladybug wings. Imagine doing that as well as it can humanly be done, being the person who embodies that accomplishment. I’m not making fun of anyone; I find it strangely noble.
I find it WTFcrazy. With two daughters of my own now, it feels like my parental prime directive is to steer these kids as far the hell away from these freakshows as possible.
I mean, how can it be that less than ten years after Chris Rock identified keepin’ his baby off the pole as a father’s only job, there is a petition by an Irish member of the International Pole Dance Fitness Association [which is different from the World Pole Dance Federation] to make pole dancing [or “Vertical Bar Dance”] an Olympic sport?
I haven’t figured it out yet, what it all means, but the more you think about it, these kind of esoteric, competitive evaluation systems are everywhere, and the desire to excel within them is, too: business, politics, religion, literature, art. Is the only difference popularity, which is apparently just a function of time?
Maybe to achieve a Theory of Every WTF Thing requires looking beyond the gut, cultural affinities of a judged system, to its language, attempting a close read of the texts it produces. Phillips again:
RG has its own language, which non-RG initiates mostly perceive as a series of ultrasonic clicks and emoji hearts. What, for instance, is the precise distinction between the tournaments Miss Valentine 2012 (Tartu, Estonia, February 10-12), Pearls of Varna 2012 Academic (Bulgaria, July 2), and the 4th International Waves Cup (Germany, March 24)? I have read the rulebook in effect for the Olympics, the 125-page Code of Points: Rhythmic Gymnastics 2009-2012 [pdf], and let me tell you — you thought football had a lot going on. Between the aggro-ballet terminology (fouetté, entrelacé), the extensive use of pictograms, and the radical linguistic uncertainty (“The French version is the official text,” the front cover proclaims, in English), this thing reads like Finnegans Wake as drafted by the unicorn debate team.
Yes. RG has its own language. Just like everything else. And it has roots in aggro-ballet, and there are 43 words for ribbon twirling.
So the top hundred or so international sport and “sport” federations’ codes, preferably in print, to fill a bookshelf, and then to begin the data-intensive synthesis between them all. I’ll get right on that. Sparkle Motion [grantland via @felixsalmon]
So tomorrow evening, Friday, I’ll be speaking at Printed Matter. If anyone reading this is in town and interested, I hope you’ll stop by. Bring a fan, though; it gets hot in there.
Eric Doeringer and I will be discussing appropriation and artist books, though he’s already won the night, merch-wise, thanks to his two new titles he’s launching. Fellow Prince appropriator Hermann Zschiegner will be moderating.
The whole evening, which starts at 6:30, is part of HELP/LESS, Chris Habib’s frankly awesome-looking show of authorship, originality, reproduction, and appropriation, which is taking over the whole store this summer. If you can’t make the talk, you should still swing by to see the show. Eric Doeringer + Greg Allen/ Book Launch + Discussion [printed matter’s facebook invite for the event] HELP/LESS, curated by Chris Habib [printedmatter.org]
Previously, related: Untitled (300×404), a print after Richard Prince Canal Zone Richard Prince Yes Rasta: The Book
In the summer of 1994, MoMA installed a new work by James Turrell, A Frontal Passage, for the first time. I’ve seen it so many times since, now I can’t remember the experience of seeing it for the first time. But I do remember the experience of seeing Turrell’s one-man show at ICA Philadelphia in 1993, where I’d just started business school. There were a couple of light spaces, plus an anechoic chamber piece, some of his early corner projections, and a big table model of Roden Crater [which, frankly, made no sense at that diorama scale, and felt entirely, confusingly speculative, equal parts California real estate development and Richard Dreyfuss’ Close Encounters dining table.]
Anyway, while going through some envelopes full of slides [!] last night, I just found a MoMA Film schedule from July 1994 with some notes on it. And now I remember that I camped out in A Frontal Passage for a while, just standing in the corner, listening to peoples’ reactions, and then wanting to write them down. So I headed out in search for the first piece of paper I could find:
A Spanish mother and son awed into silence whispers.
“I don’t like this. I can’t see. I’m not going down there.”
“What is this? Is it so bad, he doesn’t want it seen in the light?”
A family comes in Grandma waits outside. Then the father goes out, gets her guiding her by the shoulders. She looks for a second or two, and then he guides her out.
Son to dad: Is there a floor?
Two elderly British ladies ask a guard, “Where’s the dark room?” He excitedly shows them the way. He stands at the hairpin turn his white shirt a beacon. “Hold onto the rail.”
“What’s the purpose? Where are we going?”
“Ladies, can you see me?” Some general jostling around the corner.
The eager guard: “And here it is.”
“What is it? A statue? Is that a statue?”
“No, that’s a man.”
I laugh and somewhat regret my intrusion.
“It’s the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“A little piece of heaven,” says the guard.
“Is that what it is?”
“I’m waiting for God to come out, I have some things to tell him,” smiling.
“Laddy, in World War II it was dark all the time. That’s what it reminds me of,” as they head back into the hall.
In the main gallery, “Oh, it’s so bright.”
“I remember when they said we could turn the lights on. It was so bright then.”
Last year I wrote a piece for Humanities Magazine about considering Ray and Charles Eames as artists, not designers. I don’t mean by rewriting history or retrofitting a contemporary definition of artist onto them. It’s just that I think there’s a lot of insights to be gained today by adding them and their studio and their collaboration and their output to the discussion of contemporary artistic practice.
Of course, the fact that the Eameses made a molded ply sculpture in 1943 and showed it at MoMA in 1944 kind of complicates my “they weren’t artists but” conceit a little bit.
But just a little. The show at the Modern was called Design for Use, and was curated by Serge Chermayeff, so about as all-applied and non-art as you could get.
Even though it couldn’t be more useless. And so it was shown on a pedestal, like a sculpture, away from the array of useful products. Also, it nominally has a front [top].
And though Christie’s East decided it belonged in an “Important Design” auction when Chermayeff unloaded it 1999, this time around it’s in–oh, it’s in decorative arts & design. Guess I had my browser tabs confused for a second.
But then, this is how they’re pitching it, after basically attributing its form to Ray’s Arp-meets-Hofmann paintings:
Despite their furnishings being successfully received, Charles remained frustrated at the absence of suitable plywood molding technology — a situation that was to alter when, in early 1943, the Eames’ received a commission from the U.S. Navy to produce lightweight plywood leg splints — the first ever fully three-dimensionally molded plywood structure. Embracing the opportunity to experiment with professional industrial molding equipment and high-strength waterproof adhesives, the Eames’ created a series of hand-guided machine-made forms, structures and sculptures, including the present example, that must be regarded not solely as experimental industrial products, but as resolved artistic expressions that were to define the identity of post-war design.
Ray Bradbury reading a poem, “If only we had taller been,” at JPL in 1971, just as Mariner 1 was about to go into orbit around Mars. Here’s the text, which was published in a collection of Bradbury’s poems, When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed, in 1973. [via boingboing] UPDATE: A reader, Sara, noticed differences between the version of the poem Bradbury read in 1971, and the one he published in 1974. Sure enough, there are a few additional lines, and a tweaked word or two. Interesting.
303 Gallery is pleased to announce our first exhibition of new works by Richard Prince since 1991.
Some people see leaves falling from a tree and see it as, leaves falling from a tree. Others see it as an inexhaustible mystery of the signified from the mundane closed-off simulation of a world sign.
The world is intolerably dreary. You escape it by seeing and naming what had heretofore been unspeakable.
Naming the unnamable and hearing it named.
These paintings should be shown to the man from Mars.
And it goes on with a refreshing WTF-ness that clearly had to be the artist’s work, not the gallery’s. [That it reminded me of some crypto-poetic, surreal, and increasingly cultish press releases from the early days of the shuttered Daniel Silverstein Gallery only reinforces my impression that Lisa & Mari or whoever did not come up with this stuff.]
What still left me scratching my head, though, was a passage from Richard Prince’s deposition where he totally hates on press releases, even when they’re written well. Patrick Cariou’s lawyer Dan Brooks asked Prince whether he agreed with the press release Gagosian director Louise Neri wrote for Canal Zone [pp293-8 or so]:
DB: But do you find this to be an apt description of your paintings in the Canal Zone exhibition?
MS BART [Gagosian’s attorney]: Objection to form.
RP: It’s not necessarily the way I would have described it had they asked me to write the press release. But I don’t write press releases and I don’t read them.
DB: And this is the first time–
RP: I find them — sorry.
MS. BART: No, you were talking. He interrupted you.
DB: Go ahead.
RP: I find press releases incredibly silly and boring, and I just don’t — I’ve never wanted anything–because they’re really just trying to hype the work. And I don’t particularly like to get involved in that.
DB: And, again, this is the first time you’re seeing this press release?
RP: This is the first time I’m seeing this.
And so I was kind of amazed that Prince would actually write something for a press release. And so I, like a lot of folks, read it and wondered what it all means.
And it means that I, like most people, haven’t read enough of Richard Prince’s writings, because if we had, we’d recognize the press release as excerpts from the artist’s ongoing accumulation of quips, quotes, comments, and Deep Thoughts, which he has termed, “Bird Talk.”
There are a few mentions of it online, and Prince quotes it on his book tumblr, Fulton Ryder, but I can’t yet figure out yet when Bird Talk began. The range of texts, though, shows it to be a living document. One comment about audience [“I would imagine my immediate audience are people just like me. People who are thirty-five.”] sounds like it’s from 1984. A rare book dealer’s catalogue description for a proof of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow comes from 2003. Most bits sound like Prince’s observations [“Heavy metal is retriabalizing. (sic)”], but there are two [uncredited] Marshall McLuhan quotes, a reference to a 1965 Ad Reinhardt interview with himself, and at least one fantastical speculation [“Vermeer lost over one hundred paintings in a ship wreck.”]
Which means Bird Talk could be seen as a miniature Atlas or Arcades Project on the one [ambitious/generous] hand, or as Prince’s fridge door on the other. Whatever it is, it’s a useful and highly accessible primary source for the artist’s thinking, and even his work [“Rephotography could be a form of re-adjusting sensory bias.”] Which almost no one has ever quoted or discussed; on almost every quote I checked, Prince’s own website was the sole Google result. Bird Talk [richardprince.com] Fulton Ryder, Prince’s bookstore/imprint/gallery/tumblr [fultonryder.com] 2010 Prince interview mentions Bird Talk–and the Cariou case [russhmagazine.com]
And speaking of big universes and small worlds, I’m starting to listen to the 1991 recordings of John Cage’s Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse), and just ten minutes in, I’m reminded that Cage’s childhood friendship with the unorthodox-but-nearly-canonical Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley is the most unlikely Mormon/modern music connection since La Monte Young [grandson of Brigham].
Without intending to, I’m going from lake to lake
Salt air
Salt Lake
Hugh Nibley
I hadn’t seen him since high school days
I asked him what he thought about other planets
and sentient populations.
“Yes,” he said, “throughout the universe.
It’s Mormon doctrine.”
We’d said goodbye.
I opened the door of the car,
picked up my attache case,
and everything in it fell out on the grass
and the gutter.
His comment:
“Something memorable always happens.”
Which, hmm, if it only served to get me into a transcribing-and-posting mind for the next excerpt Cage read, then it’s worth it:
Things we were going to do
are now being done by others.
They were, it seems, not in our minds to do.
Were we or they out of our minds?
But simply ready to enter any open mind
any mind disturbed enough not to have an idea in it.
on closer inspection, beneath the dripping paint which adds such texture to the surface of Untitled (Portrait), it becomes clear that the entire background is comprised of images of the supermodel Kate Moss either topless or wearing a bikini top. Untitled (Portrait), then, is a contemporary palimpsest, a conceptual layer cake of imagery which allows Prince to juxtapose a range of seemingly discordant materials in order to play a complex game with the recognisability of celebrities from the art world and indeed the world in general: Pollock, Moss, and of course Prince himself.
The auction house namechecks Pollock, and goes on about Prince’s de Kooning paintings, which he’d just completed in 2007. But the action paint-on-tearsheet collage Kate Moss painting is very similar in medium and process to the first work Prince made from Patrick Cariou’s Yes Rasta photos. Canal Zone, 2007, Installation shot at Eden Roc Hotel, St Barth’s, late 2007
The piece, actually titled Canal Zone (2007), consisted of a loose grid of 34 or so overpainted pages torn from Prince’s copy of Yes Rasta, mounted on a board, and exhibited in a small show at the Eden Roc Hotel in St. Barth’s over the Christmas/New Year holiday in 2007. Prince had purchased Cariou’s book at a local shop, and then began writing, sketching, and painting in it over the course of his annual visits to St. Barth.
The Kate Moss painting seems to have been made in a nearly identical way, from similar source material–reproductions of highly aestheticized, black & white photography–at about the same time. It’s not a stretch to imagine Cariou’s photos taken–or at least simulated–by Steven Klein, just more of the same genre Prince is already working with.
Can I just say, it’s only a couple of weeks in, but I’m loving Richard Prince’s blog. [And loving Anaba all over again for linking to it. Thanks, Martin!]
Not really a blog, I suppose, but more of a journal. Some notes. They feel pretty perfect, though, very authentically him, for better or worse. Generally for better, though.
I’ve been going especially deep on Prince for the last few weeks as I try to prepare the script for a live reading/restaging of the artist’s Cariou v. Prince deposition, which was won by some lucky bidders at Art Fag City’s benefit auction in February.
That means turning the 400-page, seven-plus hour transcript into a couple of hours of informative, relevant, and hopefully entertaining highlights that accurately communicate the real issues of the copyright infringement lawsuit; and that capture the key elements of Prince’s history and practice, and how this Canal Zone series fits into it. Even in the totally oddball pressure cooker environment of a deposition, where basically every question is adversarial, leading, and contested by the other lawyers in the room, Prince’s reality comes through. He’s not cynical, but he is a pessimist. He has very clear, even compelling insights about his work and his controversial methods. He’s occasionally funny and awkward and pissed. A human, an artist, not a construct or a brand.
I keep meaning to go through the Canal Zone Richard Prince Yes Rasta book and post some highlights. Maybe in relation to this staging, I will. Meanwhile, here’s one: Dan Brooks, the lawyer for photographer Patrick Cariou, who questioned Prince, definitely seemed to be operating under the hypothesis that Canal Zone was conceived as nothing but a giant moneymaking venture. In various times and ways, Prince rather convincingly refuted that, I think, but never more powerfully than when Brooks asked about a film pitch, and Hollywood, and turning Canal Zone into a video game:
DB: Where do the video game rights come into this pitch?
RP: Is that–are you asking me–you’re asking me?
Q: These are your words in the interview?
A: Right.
Q: What did you mean?
A: I think I was thinking about the fact that I know nothing about video games and–but my–all my stepson’s friends play them. And I felt that there might be a possibility to–I had seen some of the graphics involved in some of these games when they play, and I felt that the different tribes that take over the different hotels and they kind of, you now, it was just a thought. And I think I ran this by Michael Ovitz and he loved the idea.
Q: So you viewed this whole thing as an extremely commercially successful potential venture, paintings–
A: the pitch?
Mr. Hayes: Objection.
Q: Paintings, movies, and video game rights, right?
Mr Hayes: Objection as to form.
A: No, I’ve never thought that what I do or what I produce or what I put out will ever, one, sell.
I’ve made art for 34, 35 years and nothing sold. What I–my experience in terms of what i make, it seems that a lot of people just couldn’t dig it. And to tell you the truth, it was not one–when I put up the Canal Zone show at Larry Gagosian’s there was not one review in any newspaper, in any magazine. And I find that incredibly unsuccessful.
Q: But weren’t some of the paintings sold before the show even opened?
A: They were sold, yes.
Q: For millions of dollars?
A: I wouldn’t characterize it for millions. For a couple million dollars, there were two paintings I believe that were sold before the Lehman Brothers meltdown, yes, there were two paintings that were sold for approximately 2-million dollars.
OK, maybe the two million dollar part undercuts the never selling part a bit, but the point is, it’s not about the money, people. It’s getting Roberta over there to write about your show.
