With that in mind Contemporary Calgary hosted a community-sanctioned packet titled “Never the Same: what (else) can art writing do?” The panelists, as expected, were the usual suspects predictably saying what’s expected of them (what else?), those pious and safe editors who abhor controversy while claiming the mantle. Their writers, we’re told, are “risk-takers, art historians, popular voices, and truth-seekers”. They’re pretending to be me? Not a chance! Give me a break; what they really do is abuse academic jargon in exchange for a horse’s feedbag! One celestial journal speaks Mumble, that obtuse language with lotsa big words; it’s good for avoiding ruffled feathers by saying very little in a grand political manner while praising the hand that feeds you.
Another Canadian art magazine seems desperate to signal virtue, even to drown in virtue on a coy note; they print biased and unverified tales, evidently false and arguably nonsense, believing it helps their brand to look politically correct (as if). With a highly educated crop of editors (and their risk-takers, art historians, popular voices, and truth-seekers) blinded by peer pressure and tunnel vision, most Canadian art magazines are irrelevant in spite or because of their academic argot. Again, exceptions prove the rule; some like Hamilton Arts and Letters actually break the mold and inform the community, Blackflash keeps an open mind and YYZ Artists’ Outlet is courting controversy in their review Decenter Redux. Disclosure; it includes an essay of mine.
Margaret Heffernan in “Dare to disagree” insists on the importance of speaking out. “The fact is that most of our biggest catastrophes rarely come from information that is secret or hidden. It comes from information that is freely available and out there, but that we are willfully blind to, because we don’t want to handle the conflict that it provokes. But when we dare to break that silence, or when we dare to see, and we create conflict, we enable ourselves and the people around us to do our very best thinking.”
Nor am I heartless, indeed I’m moved to tears of pity by Contemporary Calgary’s (predictable) cry for help; “what (else) can art writing do?” Obviously if you’re reading this you’re on the right track. There are voices out there other than the same old, same old. You’ve just refused to listen till now for a cognitive dissonance is unpleasant.
In Toronto, Luis Jacob’s assistants also cut pictures from art books to frame them and hang them without further explanation. This is done first to destabilize your viewing conventions, later to sell them to the A.G.O. or the National Gallery for an obscene sum. Destabilizing is a big word at the National Gallery of Canada; they use it a lot, it’s a cliché. Jacob has a budget for writers to explain why you were destabilized once again (yawn) … as if 40 years of destabilizing weren’t enough… please… can’t you just give it up, let it go? These strategies provide Jacob with a now unstable and wobbly public who are fed their own ignorance as humble pie, followed by a hefty dinner bill.
Luis is a high-earning artist and a salaried professor at U. of T; he’s also a well paid curator at the National Gallery of Canada… so none would dare question his OCADU lecture fee for an evening titled “What’s Your Disruption?” Actually a bourgeois grasp at street credibility, a real disruption would be unwelcome unless he was disrupting others, and yet Jacob as a curator should appreciate my article; it’s one hot disruption in Canadian art history right here on the Akimbo cultural platform. But I’m humane, I don’t want to hurt his feelings; at OCADU or TWP I didn’t disturb his evening, I didn’t rain on his parade, nor did I make him cry at his party even if he wanted to, but enough!
Since Jacob vacuums up artist and speaker fees, we are grateful his own time is not wasted even as he wastes ours. Has Hans Haacke’s ghost returned to map out this art system? To expose a postmodern insider-art trading strategy is a real disruption, an example to learn from and to conjure with; what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and chickens come home to roost. When artists and curators call for disruption they admire exactly this level of scholarly activism that’s a real paradigm-shift, so any touchiness at my words is obviously misconstrued and surely inappropriate.
If you read anything he’s written you’ll know that Luis Jacob is a literary genius. I’m astonished how well he weaves ideas, themes, and metaphors in a beautiful tapestry of thoughts. His writing puts mine to shame and if he restricted himself to writing books I would buy every one to enjoy late at night by the fireplace. Unfortunately Luis Jacob writes exhibition proposals.
Of course these proposals are so well writ they persuade juries his work is something special when regretfully it is not; it’s his writing that’s special whereas Jacob’s art is juvenilia. As a teacher, theorist, curator, lecturer, networker, he is too busy to be a practicing artist when art is anything you can get away with, and if anyone gets away with it, it’s Jacob.
Surely if he was to devote a year to studio discipline like performance artist Tehching Hsieh he’d do amazing work; we’re deeply troubled he doesn’t have the time, like so many contemporary artists too busy for the required hours of studio practice. Professional musicians don’t have that luxury. Canadian art is post-truth, postmodern, and post mortem… but technically once you’re outed you can’t go back into the closet.
So where is the art? It’s about denying our expectations of art, a seemingly brilliant repudiation of ethics. These cutout pictures and broken sticks will never be art; to claim them as such is then an extreme postmodern strategy, or would be if everyone wasn’t following the same trend. Conceptualists forget that when deceits are normalized it destabilizes the system and when the system’s destabilized it is dysfunctional, and then “nobody knows what art is anymore” as our curator wrote from the rabbit hole… so the public should believe what we’re told. This curating by low self-esteem must stop.
When pictures are cut from art books it’s not a viewing convention that’s destabilized but the public’s faith in whoever jerks their leash. Conceptual art is about the idea, and the idea here to turn the tables on an audience expecting something sublime; the idea is to shame them as a gullible public for their old-fashioned expectations. Subtly insulting your audience earns their respect, along with lectures on how important this work would be if you knew what it meant. Is this what we want of art? Luis belongs to literature; he should write books and following Lucian Freud’s dictum, act like a gentleman and leave art alone.
Lacking checks and balances to the Canadian curatorial system, this small flock of the fake who are monopolizing the reigns will entrench themselves, prosper financially, and influence art’s narrative for a long time. We’re looking at Fake Art dominating the Canadian landscape for decades to come, as if Trump ran the arts in Canada, while Peter Doigts are squeezed out of the country. Bite your tongue, Cassandra!
Marcel Duchamp said the Readymade was never art. In Duchamp’s words the Readymade was a mirage; people were foolish to think it was the real deal.(13) This suggests Farmer’s and Jacob’s projects lack legitimacy, based on misunderstanding and historical illiteracy, making no sense except as predation in a field where those two could not compete for lack of talent or skill. They don’t know what art is but they are clever and game the system. Everyone loses when scarce resources are thrown at tedious attempts to be clever, boring to all but the players themselves who of necessity insist it’s exciting.
Our critique of postmodernity now looks at a suburban university gallery curator rubbernecking her artistic side when she teams with a South American artist for a joint show at her own gallery; such ethics raise eyebrows. No word how artist fees were allocated (eyebrows again) but the budget had a carpenter build shelves inside the gallery and then… wait for it…. they had the exact same carpenter build the exact same shelves in the hallway outside the gallery! (At the same height too!) What’s not to love? I’m hysterical! Honest! Blake Gopnik’s blog mentions a better known Hispanic artist who did that exact same show in New York a few years ago and it was just as boring. How exciting! Who copied whom? Some curators fancy being an artist needs no talent or skill, no effort or vision; to have an idea is all… forgetting we all have ideas but few have the talent or the ability to make it real; and lacking both you can cause some serious harm.
Charles Desmarais was an influential curator during the 1990s at New York’s ICP, the International Centre of Photography. Later on, the San Francisco Art Institute Board of Trustees appointed Charles Desmarais school President, proof that while incompetence does gets promoted upward, the worst cases rise directly to the top. Charles Desmarais’ clinical scorn for creativity and his frigid disdain for aesthetics meant that over thirty years under his watch, photography was degraded to a tool whose main purpose is documentation. When postmodernity denies the prime value of aesthetics, photography is no longer art but a lens-based practice. We lost a lot of beautiful photographs, so many Grand Central Terminal 1930 by Hal Morey that were never born.
Another curator writes “since no one knows what art is anymore, it makes a curator’s job so much harder”. A fortuitous confession, I was, like… Facepalm! If you don’t know what art is, why don’t you just ask? You’re a top curator at a top institution; someone there should know… oh… unless you’re right… maybe no one does. Such laxity isn’t amusing; it’s an irresponsible failure, a crack running through the entire academic-curatorial network, badly in need of a fix. In every other profession they know what they are doing.
Oxford’s professor A.J. Ayers writes in Language, Truth, and Logic “the criterion we use to test the genuineness of statements is the criterion of verifiability. We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person if, and only if, they know how to verify the proposition it purports to express”.(16) Verifiability; without it a curator’s job is harder, you’re supposed to know what art is. All the money you spent on cut-out pictures and broken sticks, it used to be trash, now it’s art, only the experts know what’s what… curating by pretence and low self-esteem, good money thrown after bad… is that what we want from art? Meanwhile others paint on cardboard lacking canvas, they eat cake for lack of bread.
Heed the call for change when peasants gather with pitchforks and torches, with deadly art critique, or mustard and mayo. Once upon a time art meant a succulent roast chicken with salad, a French baguette, a glass of red wine. The Emperor’s new clothiers replaced that with cutout pictures, Styrofoam, and a glass of disruption. It saves money they said; you’d be surprised how few notice they said. People noticed. When a pinch of cayenne is added to food the zest is unmistakable but when cayenne is the main course the cook has clearly gone insane. There are no checks to abuse of power on the high seas of Canadian art.
I’ve been asked why an artist would speak ill of others in our line of work, but a polite silence over time bred invisible pink elephants crowding reality out the door. Our art stinks like a dead whale but as everyone feeds off the carcass so no one dares to rock the boat. Few dare provoke the powerful but in a corrupt scenario a person who desires nothing is literally invincible. Now you can see how the waters around you have grown, so you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a changing.
