The Curse of Critical Laziness

(image to come!)

Modern Art Notes (MAN) yesterday mentioned the critical reception of Amy Sillman's exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. in the Washington Post.  The review by Michael O'Sullivan is symptomatic of many, many other reviews that appear in newspapers across the nation as it seems some critics simply lack understanding of the art they are assigned to review.  It is almost as if they write a review to match how their audience might feel about a certain artist, which is not the job of an art critic.  It is lazy, it is intellectually dishonest, and it is a disservice to the readers of the Washington Post.   I've restrained myself more than once from citing specific examples, but the review in the Washington Post is so unbelievably bad that it cannot pass without strong objection from myself.  Construing Sillman as a conceptual artist is completely inaccurate, she's an abstract painter and later on is described as such.  O'Sullivan frames his assertion as if the artist describes herself as a conceptualist, writing: "The artist, a rising star in the contemporary art scene, calls it "conceptualism." I say it's a gimmick."  This is quote mining, giving no further context what else she said.  O'Sullivan appears to not understand the difference between conceptual art and the method an abstract artist might use to produce their work (see inspiration).  His lack of knowledge, obvious at the outset, is further paraded.  "Rather, the artist says, they're "investigations" of the space between figuration and abstraction. More artspeak? Yup."  What is O'Sullivan's objection to this simplest of explanations (this is not artspeak, if you as a critic don't understand what figuration and abstraction are and how they relate to each other you should not be writing on art) of what her work is about?  The transposition of the three-dimensional onto the two-dimensional has been a concern of abstract art since Picasso and Braque continuing through Gerhard Richter and most likely, will continue to be.  Which is the point that O'Sullivan laments he cannot find.   At the end of the review one is left with the feeling that O'Sullivan has no vocabulary or understanding of abstract art.  O'Sullivan seems adrift in a sea of abstraction without any recognizable realism to anchor him.  Thus he searches desperately for "any visual clues that connect one image to its source."  He laments that the paintings look "like inanimate objects," which they are.  Under the accompanying image to the article he writes "Amy Sillman's "investigations" of the space between figuration and abstraction lack depth," in what sense does he mean 'depth'?  I'm sure he means it pejoratively, but in abstract art one doesn't want depth, and it comes out as an unintended compliment.  At the end of his article, besides confusing High Conceptualism with Sillman's work yet again, O'Sullivan tries to take another swipe at her through quote mining her own words and only ends up looking ignorant yet again.  He's implying that portraiture would be more interesting than abstraction and so tries to negatively spin Sillman's quote: "It's basically just moving from being in a relationship with those people to being in a relationship with an oil painting."  Sillman is essentially re-phrasing a Pollock quote, and O'Sullivan can't even pick up on that, or understand it, instead implying that this is why in his book her paintings lack "passion."  From beginning to end this article lacks knowledge of art, bungles vocabulary, misrepresents Sillman and never gives exact reasons for his own distaste for the work. Sharon L. Butler at Two Coats of Paint, suggests that O'Sullivan "might be more comfortable writing for the sports section."  Others have thought this a little strong, but I think she is exactly correct for the reasons I have just mentioned, if you don't understand basic tenets of 20th century art you shouldn't be writing about it, you should be writing for sports.  It's a disservice to the readers, the artist, the paper and the field in general.  

Britain's Museums One Step Ahead- Again

I recently wrote about museums admissions policy here in the United States and how I believe that museums should move towards the model that has been adopted in Britain and is having a trial run in France, that is making museums, especially art museums, free.  Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes echoed some of my sentiments, citing comments from the director of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City to the effect that they were noticing a downturn in attendance of  20- and 30-year-olds.  Both Green and I are not shocked at this revelation considering it costs $20 to get in the door at MOMA.

Today's Sunday Chicago Tribune had an article relating again directly to this issue of further involving 20- and 30-somethings in the cultural landscape and their cultural heritage.  According to the article, some London museums are participating in a late night programs, events that mix culture with standards of evening entertainment.  As the author of the article, John Lee, put it: "It's 9 p.m. at London's cavernous old Natural History Museum, and I'm leaning against a marble column, beer in hand, under the watchful eye of a giant fossilized fish."  

This got me thinking.  I know that monied corporations, or even parents, can rent out the Field Museum for a corporate event or a birthday sleepover, so why not have late night modeled after the British?  The thought of sipping a Goose Island 312 under the Field's Tyrannosaurus Rex, Sue, sounds pretty fun and certainly unique.  Chicagoans are rightly proud of their cultural institutions like the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium and the Art Institute, we also spend more money per-capita on alcohol, by far, than any other city in the U.S. so why not try out a late night program that makes these institutions a fun, social place to hang out?  Everyone needs a break from the omnipresent plasma TVs, blasting music, and unremarkable decor that plagues so many bars, making the name the only thing different about each one.  

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) already has a program like this in place, their First Fridays.  On the first friday of each month, the museum stays open until 10 at night and has live entertainment, a cash bar and free hors d'oeuvres, well, free with the $15 admission (or $10 in advance, $7 for MCA members).  The MCA is also realizing its potential as a meeting place for singles as well, as they have "the world's only iMac G5 digital dating bar," whatever that is.  Regardless, the MCA is on the right track of bringing more people into the museum and showing that it can be an active, vibrant, community meeting place.  Lowering or eliminating the cover charge would only assist this goal.  

Chicago is far at the forefront of the three major American cities (LA, New York, Chicago) in its museum admission policies.  While most museums offer free or discounted admission times (usually underwritten by a corporation, since the federal government long ago checked out of financing), Chicago has the Museum Passport, available at all Chicago Public Libraries (these are given out first-come, first-served, though).  Chicago also experimented with free admission during the entire month of February for several museums.  We're on the right track, let's keep opening the doors of our cultural institutions.

Reconsidering Karen Kilimnik

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA), recently opened Karen Kilimnik from the Philadelphia Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) on February 23rd and will be open until June 8th. The show opened to heated debate in certain quarters, and received a poor review in the Chicago Tribune, which can be read here. What is it about this show that has sparked such heated debate and is Kilimnik an artist unworthy of attention as some would have us believe?

Karen Kilimnik The Hellfire Club episode of the Avengers, 1989 Courtesy of 303 Gallery, New York & Institute of Contemporary Art. Photo by Aaron Igler at ICA

After reading much about Kilimnik I decided to investigate the show for myself, bracing myself for the worst. The Kilimnik show replaces one side of the Collection Highlights exhibit on the top floor of the MCA. Upon first entering the "scatter-piece" The Hellfire Club Episode of the Avengers (1989) is, well, strewn around. This piece establishes some basic themes and methods throughout the rest of the exhibit: perceptions of glamor and fantasy, the use of assemblage and installation, and a marked confusion of fantasy and reality.

The bulk of the exhibition is found next in the long, wing gallery. Prior to visiting the exhibit I had read several reviews and expected to see nothing but paintings, the objects of much scorn. However, the work in this room showed a range of practice from assemblage to drawing to photography and video, with Kilimnik often incorporating unusual media to suit her purpose. Wondering where the hated paintings were I took in the apparently ignored output of Kilimnik.

While it has been hard for some to discern the thematic content in Kilimnik's work, in the main gallery of the exhibition they emerged clearly. The fascination with with glamor and beauty in general and especially related to celebrity, and typical (almost stereotypical) girlhood interests like ballet, fashion, fixations on "it" boys and imagination. These themes surfaced most overtly through both the drawings and installations. A fake dinner party with the pink panther, illustrated fantasy stories about being an internationally famous Russian ballerina or a child who never became a model, all concealing more than a hint of the macabre.

However the most interesting theme that presented itself was that of an underlying violence and the methods of dealing with trauma resulting from it. Most poignant in this respect was I Don't Like Mondays, the Boomtown Rats, Shooting Spree or Schoolyard Massacre (1991), a scatter piece that featured target silhouettes, bullseyes, chicken wire and a toy gun. I don’t think that this piece was intended as a memorial to school violence but as a reaction to it. The toy gun is a mainstay of children’s play but placed in this context the boundary between violent fantasy and reality is challenged. The haunting unreality of children committing murder is underscored by the artifice of the materials displayed. Plastic guns and flimsy targets belie the reality of our increasingly violent times. The conscious artifice of the “bleeding” holes in the wall echoes the violent fantasy drawing of children but also its distance from reality. In this way the reality of violence has been repressed into an unreal, dreamlike state, the end product of a mental defense mechanism.

The themes of repression and violence was continued in other works. In the video gallery the 1989 film Heathers, a film about students plotting to murder their classmates and ultimately trying to blow up the high school, is stretched to six hours. Snow was a repeated motif in many images and is appropriate: snow whitens, brightens, covers and dulls its surroundings. Snow covers up ugliness. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the White Witch suspends the land of Narnia in eternal winter, similarly Kilimnik uses snow and has a professed interest in witchcraft (another topic all together). In photographs showing street-level entries to houses Kilimnik added white acrylic paint the images to transform them in a quiet snow bound scenes. Any unpleasantness in the image of the house is repressed through the addition of snow. Another photograph, contained within the red room in the modern Architecture (2007), depicted a dead squirrel on the street with the title Just Resting. This indicates the general way trauma is denied, death does not exist, only a deep sleep like Snow White (another frequent allusion of Kilimnik's). Likewise, the scatter-piece Smallpox (1991) was totally hidden out-of-sight behind the cube structure for the red room. . . Containing fake blood, powder and the kinds beauty marks that were used to conceal the physical signs of the disease, this piece overtly hinted at covering up a trauma, this time through physical means.

While much has been made over the paintings in the red room. . . I don’t believe I shall address them at all, at least not now. Criticisms of the paintings seems more based on the fact that someone has trespassed onto the sacred ground of oil-on-canvas than any criticisms of substance. My point here has been to draw out themes in Kilimnik’s art that others have claimed don’t exist at all and to show that Kilimnik’s painting is only one part of her varied output. If anyone has anything constructive to add about the paintings or these themes I would welcome those comments. Finally, much has been made of Kilimnik at the MCA and my fears that it would veer close to the tendencies of certain so-called Young British Artists were assuaged. I was disappointed to miss the soundtracks that accompany both I Hate Mondays. . . and The Hellfire Club. . . on my first trip and then several weeks later they were still silent, with the guards clueless as usual about why the sound was off. If an artist mixes a soundtrack or chooses a certain song to accompany the display of a certain artwork then it should be included or else it seems that one is doing a disservice to the artist and artwork. The MCA should fix this problem.

The Neverending Hirst Media Blitz

Do we need more? If last year's media blitz surrounding Hirst's "For the Love of God" seemed like much ado about nothing that would never, ever end, the skull encrusted with diamonds apparently appears as the cover for April's Artforum (I have yet to receive mine, so cannot confirm).

Cover: Damien Hirst, For the Love of God, 2007, platinum, diamonds, and human teeth, 63⁄4 x 5 x 7 1⁄2".

Fortunately, it is at least accompanied by a very appropriate header: Art and its Market. I have previously put forth that this is indeed the simple function of the piece: as a bellwether for Hirst's art market share, ensuring he remains expensive. Hirst's tired rhetoric that he is investigating the "big themes" of death, birth and life is almost irrelevant when one examines the powerful market influences that this piece symbolizes and exerts.

For those of us that were bored with Hirst's product the minute it was shown and have become increasingly irritated at the attention it has received since, while other art virtually ceased to exist, I have a suggestion. Like most things in life, the Simpsons provides the perfect advice, coming straight out of "Treehouse of Horror VI" from the vignette "Attack of the 50 Foot Eyesores." When giant advertisements come to life and start destroying the town, the only way to stop them is to stop paying attention to them. "Just don't look," is the advice to the people of Springfield and my advice to everyone sick of Hirst's hype.

Anxious about Addition

Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times

After reading through multiple reviews of architect Renzo Piano's extension, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art I have to say that I am somewhat anxious about how the addition to the Art Institute of Chicago will turn out. They were, at best, only slightly disparaging. You can read the reviews in New York Times here, Los Angeles Times here, and the New York Review of Books here. The picture above picture from the NY Times is the frontal view of the museum which illustrates one of the many problems cited, that is, the huge dull walls facing the street which gives the museum a hulking and monolithic feel. The palm tree-on-blue is actually are giant banners hung on scrims, presumably to disguise the weightiness of the exterior.

Considering that Piano's "Modern Wing" addition to the Art Institute of Chicago is opening in 2009, these lackluster reviews are probably causing more people then just this author some anxiety. However, I think that the pitfalls in LA will be avoided here in Chicago. To see the plans for the building click here. The frontal facade, facing Monroe St., will be sheer glass which allays concerns about a weighty and boring entry. The dull, hulking wall criticized in LA here will be turned to the Metra train line that bisects the museum and as such will be needed and appropriate.

This is not as daring architecture as Piano's Pompidou Centre was, but that's alright. The proposed design is classical and elegant modernist architecture and as such is perfectly in step with both the collection and the institution. It would be odd for this respectable and historic institute to have a really radical addition. The Piano addition is essentially updating the language of the classical Beaux-Arts hall that is the original building of 1893. The Piano is likewise reserved, rectilinear, and displays the art in natural light. For modern art, this building seems to fit the bill both for the art and the institution, for a contemporary art museum Piano may have been too conservative for LA.

Check back for updates, time will tell as the building takes shape over the next few months.

Worth the Price of Admission?

The New York Times released its special section on museums today, which acknowledges that art exists beyond New York City. There are a number of interesting articles but I would like to focus on one comment in particular from the Times, initially singled out by Tyler Green in his Modern Art Notes blog:

At the Museum of Modern Art [referred to as MOMA hereon], Glenn D. Lowry, the director, said that it was just as important to know who is not coming to the museum as it is to know who is.

"It's what you're missing," he said. While entry information and other data showed that a healthy number of college students visited the Modern, "we were not drawing as many of the 20- to 30-years-olds that we hoped," Mr. Lowry said. "So we went out to determine how to better communicate with them."

Green offers advice to the director and really most NYC museums:

"I'm happy to tell MoMA why it isn't drawing as many visitors in their 20s as they'd like: Because MoMA charges $20 for admission. When you set an admissions fee that high, one of the visitor groups you're almost certainly going to impact is young people.

For years I've argued that by charging $20 for entry, museums are cannibalizing their future audiences. According to Vogel's story, MoMA has discovered that process may be underway."

As a 20-30-year-old who recently visited the New York museums (Guggenheim, MOMA, the Met) I can confirm that admission prices are way too high for my demographic. It becomes a major financial burden to visit these institutions, deterring many and taking the focus from self-improvement or anything like that, to the pocket book. For instance, should I have to pay the whole admission price to the Guggenheim when it's under construction, it's between major exhibits and the collection is not installed in the circular rotunda (my main reason to go, to see the art on the famous slanted ramp) and the secondary exhibits include a whole show of New York grade schooler's art?

Britain implemented free admission to its national museums in 2001 and reported a rise in visitors of more than 60%, whereas Sweden ended free admission at its national museum and saw attendance drop by 20% (Article in New York Times). The same Times article focuses on the French national museums which are experimenting with free admission (for certain groups) for six months.

Unfortunately current thought in the museum world regarding admission prices is almost polar opposite to the trend in Europe is and admission setting is encouraged strongly by the industry wide association, the American Association of Museums (AAM). According to their November/December issue of Museum News, Shannon Oster writes enthusiastically about charging admission in her article "Charge Now-Here's How":

I would argue that charging a price to visit a museum may not only attract more devoted patrons but actually induce other patrons to take the visit more seriously to psychologically justify the admission price.

As evidence of this theory Ostner oddly cites a study done on Zambian villagers using a water purifying tablet less when it was free and more when they paid a "very modest fee." Couched in business-speak Ostner relies heavily on predicting the psychology of the patron, concluding that when $20 is on the line the visitor will want to get their money's worth. Ostner essentially says that people who can't easily afford museum admissions will go on alternate days when the institution is free (assuming both availability of the visitor and the existence of free admission times (thanks Target Companies and Chase Manhatten!)). Ostner doesn't address the possibility that the visitor just doesn't go at all.

Well according to the director of the MOMA the facts are in and charging an admission, especially one of $20, does deter visitors from the museum. According to Sweden charging admission reduces audience significantly and conversely according to Britain and France eliminating admission results in startling gains.

People want to enrich their lives through museums, admission fees do not create a motivation for learning only an obstacle to attendance.

I'm sure I will be writing more on this in the future.