Genetics

Considering that when I was a very young sailor in the Navy I almost drowned twice (ahhh... maybe alcohol had some small part in the near-drownings), I'm not the world's greatest aquatic Campello. Not by far... the genes certainly skipped me and all went to this Campello:

Note the windmill farms on the background? Those are the same types that Sen. Kennedy (who once stated "I strongly support renewable energy, including wind energy, as a means of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and protecting the environment") has been fighting to stop being constructed in Nantucket Sound because it would interfere with the view from the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod.

I think they look kinda cool.

Teaser

When the next exhibition schedule of the National Gallery of Art is announced, there will be a pleasant surprise in it.

Meanwhile, opening on September 16 at the NGA is the first comprehensive survey of Edward Hopper to be seen in the US outside of New York in more than 25 years. Currently at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the exhibition consists of about 60 oil paintings, 25 watercolors, and 14 prints.

What makes good art? Another view...

My good friend, and highly talented artist and Corcoran faculty member Mark Cameron Boyd responds to Jeffry Cudlin's off-the-cuff and elegant definition of what makes good art. Mark writes:

I listened with fairly rapt attention to your WAMU radio broadcast on Kojo’s show last Thursday. As I recall, my good friend Jeffry Cudlin’s improvised “definition” for “what makes good art” was delivered astutely and with the clarity of vision that undoubtedly comes from writing and thinking about art “professionally” as an art critic.

However, his recollected print version (that you published) differs significantly from what he said “off-the-cuff” and "on air." His “recalled” version notably featured Clement Greenberg as a touchstone which would have pricked up my ears if Jeffry had actually mentioned Greenberg’s name “on air.”

Nevertheless, in the printed version Jeffry’s implication is that Greenberg’s theoretical views chiefly concerned “specialization” and I find this is a bit confusing. I respectfully remind my esteemed colleague that it was the “self-criticality” which Clem championed that fully expanded upon his idea that an artist’s medium must “refer to its own method of construction and the characteristics of its component materials.”

Granted, an artist ought to critically consider one’s “method” within a chosen medium but more importantly in the Greenbergian view one must critically assess one’s use and furtherance of a medium; what can be done with one’s method to extend the possibilities of the medium and further the discourse of art?

I also suggest that Jeffry’s framing of the medium question (“Why is this object a drawing, painting, photograph, or sculpture? Why was that choice appropriate, or not appropriate?”) is more a question of “how,” as in “how does the choice of medium help or hinder an artist’s work?”

To open the dialog: does the “how” (chosen medium and method of execution) trump the “what” (idea or concept conveyed) in contemporary art? Duchamp would say, “No,” as would most Postconceptualists toiling in Marcel’s century-long shadow (Martin Creed, Douglas Gordon, Peter Friedl, et al) and I think Jeffry was hinting at this when he writes about un-named young Turks “winnowing out their problem set to a few spare material issues.”

I would like to complicate this line of inquiry even more by mentioning that conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth countered and refuted Greenberg’s analysis by saying that the object is conceptually irrelevant to art. Kosuth also expanded Duchamp’s other idea about the definition of art, when he wrote in 1969: “Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. . . Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art.”

Kosuth effectively shifted the focus from the specifics of a chosen medium to “question[ing] the nature of art.”

What I attempt here is to propose that we are already in a “post-medium condition” (Rosalind Krauss) and that all bets are off on medium-specificity, which would lessen the impact of “why” one made a drawing as a valuable criteria for “quality,” and that art is about the “definition of art” and the ideas that artists try to convey.

To address Jeff’s second qualification for “good art,” which concerns “material mastery,” requires an introduction of the postmodern confusion of “talent” and “creativity.” To equate one’s “mastery” of a medium as indicator of quality (“good art”) tends to misrepresent “talent” as a consecrated “academic” skill that can be “learned” and that “talent” certifies substance.

This is “old school” and currently out of fashion in our post-medium condition. I should cite Thierry de Duve’s words that, “Creativity is grounded in a utopian belief. . . that repeats itself with clockwork regularity . . . from Rimbaud to Beuys: everyone is an artist.” And “Talent. . . is inseparable from the specific terrain where it is exerted, which in the last resort is always technical. . . Creativity, by contrast, is conceived as an absolute and unformalised potential. . . one has creativity, without qualification; one is creative, period.”

Depending on your allegiances, “talent” can either be learned, taught or does not exist. Again, this is old hat, supplanted in the 1970’s when “critical theory” appeared (linguistics, semiotics, anthropology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, poststructuralism, et al) and as Duve notes, “theory entered art schools and succeeded in displacing – sometimes replacing – studio practice while renewing the critical vocabulary and intellectual tools with which to approach the making and appreciating of art.”

To be sure, Jeffry’s “definitions” are muscular, workable points for a discussion of “what makes good art.” But we are on unstable grounds if we mingle academia with Kantian judgment and mastery with metaphysics. I do agree with Jeffry’s last point concerning the artist’s “positioning” of themselves within the history of art.

However, he falls short of fully fleshing his “professional” responsibility in all this when he writes simply: “The task of the critic is to determine whether or not this positioning -- an argument made by the artist, and amplified, tweaked, or otherwise refined by the curator -- is valid.” Again, to ramp up our discussion, we might ask Jeffry to elaborate on the obvious (possibly covert?) power of art critics in “positioning” not only the individual artists but wholesale art “movements” within the grander scheme of “art history.” This obviously implicates the “written” version as more “manifesto” than improvised erudition but clarifications are needed for public consumption and understanding, in any case.

Best,

M. Cameron Boyd

www.markcameronboyd.com
theorynow.blogspot.com

Plan Ahead for Friday: Hirshhorn After Hours

Hirshhorn After Hours is an annual series of late-night events for locals interested in contemporary art, culture and music. Programming is presented throughout the museum and outside on the plaza. Exhibitions include: Takeshi Murata's short hallucinogenic films in the Black Box space for new media in the lower level; a last chance to see the lobby exhibition "Directions—Virgil Marti and Pae White" closing on July 29, and photography by Wolfgang Tillmans on the second floor.

Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Cash bar and dancing outdoors on the Hirshhorn's plaza. Detailed ticketing information at this website.

WHAT: Hirshhorn After Hours featuring musical performance by Great Noise Ensemble in collaboration with the opening night of the Capitol Fringe Festival.

WHEN: Friday, July 20, from 8 p.m. to midnight

WHERE: Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the National Mall (Independence Avenue at Seventh Street S.W.) in DC.

Haga Click

Essential differences

The Baltimore Sun's art critic is photographer Glenn McNatt, and he does a nice job in writing this piece on the Sondheim Prize and its latest prizewinner, Baltimore painter Tony Shore, who also came down last year to Bethesda to win the 2006 Bethesda Painting Awards.

In this Washington Post article, Michael O'Sullivan pointed out some key differences between Baltimore's Sondheim Prize and the DC region's Trawick Prize, focusing mainly on the exhibition venues for these two important prizes - the Sondheim is exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Trawick at the Creative Partners Gallery in Bethesda. O'Sullivan was correct in calling out this difference, but as the Sun's article points out, there are several other key differences.

For one, the Sondheim Prize is deeply interwoven and part of not only the city of Baltimore itself, but also of a major city wide art event: Artscape. The Trawick, which preceded the Sondheim by a few years, is run by the Bethesda Urban Partnership.

According to Baltimore's promotion office director Bill Gilmore, this year's Sondheim award was underwritten by the France-Merrick Foundation, a local philanthropy, and by gifts from local businesspeople. "The annual cost of the competition, including the award and the costs associated with paying jurors, mounting exhibitions and printing publications totals between $50,000 and $60,000, he said."

WOW!

The Trawick is totally underwritten by an annual endowment from Bethesda businesswoman Carol Trawick of $10,000. The total prizes total around $14,000 and the other funds are gathered from entry fees and from a $1,000 donation from Bethesda's Fraser Gallery for a "Young Artist Award." All costs associated with mounting the Trawick exhibition, including paying the three jurors, come from this pot, which I suspect is around $20,000 all together (I don't know the exact figures). Furthermore, although they have been approached, and called out here and in other places to add more funds to the Trawick, all the major businesses located and working out of Bethesda have essentially ignored the call as far as I know. I guess Lockheed Martin, and Comcast, and Marriott, and the Discovery Channel, and EuroMotorcars, and Chevy Chase Bank, etc. can't afford it.

Gilmore said this year's contributors included Walter D. Pinkard, a founder of the France-Merrick Foundation, and Amy Newhall. Bill Gilmore also stated that "Pinkard, Sandy Hillman and Nancy Roberts have also pledged to help raise an initial endowment of $500,000 to fund future prizes." And so the Baltimore people with the connections and the deep pockets to make the Sondheim Award become a yearly event have become involved.

As far as I know Ms. Trawick is the only backer of the Trawick Prize, although I suspect that the Bethesda area has more millionaires and multi-millionaires than all of the rest of Maryland added together. Where are they in pledging anything to the Trawick?

"We're certainly a lot closer to being an annual prize than we were a year ago," Gilmore said. "We kicked this off on a leap of faith last year and we have received some real support from people who have stepped up and said we want to help ensure the future of the prize."

That's the real difference: Baltimoreans have stepped up while Bethesdians (whose city for all intents and purposes is part of the Greater DC region) have not.

Elvis as a Nun

Below is one of my charcoal and conte drawings from a few years ago. It's a rather large drawing, about 40 inches by 30 inches. It is titled "Elvis and Buster Keaton, disguised as nuns, attend a Dan Flavin exhibition." It was sold many years ago.

"Elvis Presley and Buster Keaton, disguised as nuns, attend a Dan Flavin exhibition"
Charcoal and Conte on Paper by F. Lennox Campello