This is the third and final post on the Adaptation Syndrome panel discussion.
STARRING - Richard Roth, Susan Glasser, Myron Helfgott, Dominique Nahas, and Bill Fisher!
SPECIAL CAMEO APPEARANCES BY - Gerald Donato and John Ravenal!
Unfortunately, I have misplaced my notes and can only relate the gist - feel free to leave a comment on what you recall.
Richard Roth - Richard was good. He used The Misfits story of the death of the West and myth of the cowboy as a metaphor to talk about the death of painting and the myth of the painter. Richard has some serious issues with painting, and seems genuinely unaware of how completely he has bought into the myth of Duchamp, but if it was 1988 I would think Richard was a genius.
Finally, after close to two hours, the individual panelists had finished speaking and an actual panel discussion was bagged in favor of jumping straight into questions. Susan Glasser broke an uncomfortably long silence by saying "I don't get it". I think she was speaking for most of us in that much of the work in the show seemed unrelated to the curatorial dogma (thanks anonymous commenter) which seemed unrelated to most of what the individual panelists had to say.
Bill Fisher then took the microphone and went a little nuts with a very aggressive "I don't give a fuck if it's bullets in aluminum or bullets in bluejeans", what's the difference, and shit something. Fisher was sitting about five rows directly in front of me so I had a great view of John Ravenal down front whipping around with the most incredulous look on his face. Gerald Donato, who never says a peep, shouted "Shut up!" from all the way down front!
Myron Helfgott said some very smart things about artistic intention and "why not bullets in bluejeans". He started with Roth but ended with Nahas, who in an apparent defection from the panel stated agreement with Helfgott.
This panel has ended up being the talk of the town! Anybody who can recall the details or remembers something differently please post in the comments!
The Adaptation Syndrome exhibition closes March 13th - Thanks to the Hand Workshop and the Ryans for making things interesting!
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5 comments:
Dear Martin,
I am really disgusted with your blog. I don't really think you know anything about the artworld, you seem to just want to participate in it tangentially and allow your ridiculous commenters to judge it from afar. If you want your opinions to count then JOIN IN THE ARTWORLD. Otherwise you are too minor to bear.
Good Luck,
CD
Dear Damian,
You are omnipresent. How do you do it? You are bound for greatness. I like you a lot.
TO chronic doodler
Thank you for your participation in the artworld by responding to this "art" blog. Although you seem to have failed to relate this experience to art. Blogs may be on the outer edge of the "artworld," but I must say this one is still part of what you call the artworld. I'm not too sure if any artist today actually like the term artworld anyway, so you can stay in "your" artworld if you want, but I enjoy all the company I can get in any "so-called" artworld.
Thanks again,
- too commom
Thank you Too Common. You have caused me to stop and think. You are right. The art world is many worlds existing in many places simultaneously. I was just in a bad mood yesterday. It's fun to get fired up.
Hi Martin.
Great blog.
I just wanted to share some quotes from the lecture.
Roth:
"Meaning is embedded in every object, every social transaction."
"High culture once had use value."
Nahas:
"The network of relations between paintings can become the essence of a painting"
I also want to add my point of view concerning Susan Glasser's comment about not "getting it".
At one point she said that she didn't understand why the work included in the show was not simply "appropriation". Based on Dinah's comments about "primary experience" and her later emphasis on the formal characteristics of the work, well...it got me to think about the work from a more modernist perspective. For me, the word "appropriation" usually implies commentary or opinion. I found the work in this show to be very passive...not really saying anything about anything, its sole purpose to exhibit the human response to constant visual input. Guns, decorative explosions, barcodes? Maybe the show would make more sense if exhibited in an Anthropology Museum?...or a human behavioral study?
Although, I do agree with Susan that the statements made by the curators and the artists could have been coordinated better.
-V
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