
The following is a collection of thoughts which I was invited
to present at the University Art Asscociations Conference in Montreal,
Quebec October 2001.
Imagining Risk
When first asked to participate in this round table whose
umbrella topic was risk, my original thoughts were to discuss my skepticism
of the term in relation to abstraction. I suppose my skepticism of the
visual artist or perhaps more importantly the abstract artist as risk taker
stems from something of a dire institutional view or the art world. I feel
that for the artist to be participating in "risky art" - what
I would loosely define as an attempt to fashion change with the imminent
potential of failure - the artist must be working within a context that
sets the stage for risk to manifest itself. It is my position that the
contextual social arena in which the artist functions is established and
presently governed by corporate financial powers that have seemingly disfranchised
the chance to take a chance. Exterior circumstance ultimately defines if
what you do is risky on a public level - and therefore unfortunately, powerful
exterior circumstances can neuter the presence of risk.
These are hardly
radical observations thus far. But before you prepare yourself for a doomsaying
lament on the power of the buck over art, take heart -- contextual powers
are not necessarily fixed and can be shaken given the right conditions.
Before I continue I need to clarify that the context or social arena that
I am dealing with is North American and not a global absolute by any means.
While I'm performing some preliminary clean up of slippery terms let me
clarify the term abstraction within this talk. I am not using the term
in specific reference to a art movement nor do I use it to signify some
stylistic trope associated to a particular medium. I use it to describe
a sub genre of the arts that relies upon non literal/non representational
forms which intrinsically become its' content as well. Forms embodied in
a communicative medium (maybe paint, maybe sound) that functions as translations
in an alternative language. Though perhaps materially tangible -- it is
a type of fiction that attempts to present an alternate reality which through
viewer engagement will potentially elicit a reassessment of ones reality
or realities. It is the space of hidden metaphor, encoded allusions, -
its often those pauses that rest in between our words and text.
The heroic mantle of the artist as societal/cultural risk taker is a captivating
one but I've had increasing difficulty accepting. My jaded post modernistic
educated lenses seemed to take all the romantic zeitgeist away. So I have
asked myself recently where does the abstractionist - in my case the painter,
fit into the notion of art operating at risk?
From the relentless reminders of artists (often those who practice within
new media, some who deconstruct the "heroic" ones ) many have
come to accept the "intrinsic bourgeoisie nature of painting; that
it is a commodified object and something to experience by the privileged".
Yes -- it is deeply embedded within an institutional system and market
which stems from the gallery/museum/art magazine triad. It seems that for
work to move from the studio or street or alternative exhibition space
to a wider audience it is inevitably co-opted by the powers of dissemination
otherwise known as marketing and distribution. So within the attempt to
reach as many as possible with ones work and generate a viewer affect,
the work nestles itself more firmly into a power structure. What is worth
questioning here is the assumed equation for all art to be effective --
that equation being: the highest number of possible viewers = highest/best
/most wanted /most cherished possible affect. Big numbers always matter
in this culture. This is often considered as natural and right as rain.
None of this may be problematic unless one is attempting to deploy art
that is somehow risky and must operate under the radar. The pitfall lurking
here is, that the minute the work is noticed and has made the slightest
bump or crease in the social fabric as "risky" -- it stands to
be quickly disenfranchised and shopped out whatever its appearance or smell.
Saatchi - the PT Barnum of art and his traveling carni exhibition Sensation
come to mind.
"
And the strategy of imagining the nastiest perversion will not create a
situation which the system will not be able to sustain. I think its politically
wrong and I think its doesn't work. When you look at the art system for
example: perverse transgressions are directly organized by the establishment
to keep the market fluctuating and alive."
Zizek
Before one can peer down too smugly at the commodification of traditional
high art, the supposed alternative mediums fare no better in the face of
the marketing dollar. Those attempting to communicate or express through
means associated to lower culture - TV , the comic - can just as easily
lead to a system of celebrityism when their supposed subversive work starts
to actually be regarded. Within the structures so far presented the art
world and the entertainment world and fashion industry begin to conflate.
This is a vital consequence and important to note because it alters what
we - a viewing public -- come to expect from our artists/entertainers,
alters what the assumed responsibility is of our artist/fashion designers.
An artist whose communicative language is that of abstract form can exist
in these environments - but his/her works efficacy will not be dependent
upon its potential to be risky. This leads to an important reconsidering.
To question whether effective art - work that challenges us and moves us,
need be art that is taking risks, that is risky?? -- Is this another inherited
equation that we come to accept as right as rain?? Is this a necessary
precondition?
I would like to state that I do not believe that the artist has laid down
his gloves to fight for ideals or concerns. I am not reprimanding the artist
here. My contention is that within a democratic plurality of permissible
views laced with an underlying cultural belief that everything worth its
weight should be making you a dime, the art/entertainment/fashion world
leaves risk impotent and artistic purpose less clear -- so less romantically
pigeonholed as the visionary artist as a cultural Dan Quixote charging
at lazy bourgeoisie windmills.
It is hardly easy now for artists to discern any type of responsibility
to a society that most often demands they entertain and decorate. Under
this light the abstractionist is perceived as one who at worst supplies
us with eye candy, and at best a challenging aesthetic diversion. And ironically
-- those few who openly demand racier - riskier material from the arts,
tend to be more privileged and educated-- and it is often those about whom
the artist is most ambivalent. It begs the question whether art can be
risky if it is demanded as such by the consumer?? If I want to be offended
- how offended can I be? And therefore where is the risk? I see this as
more the satiation of a perverse hunger than sticking ones neck out.
What I am attempting to do in a quick and limited time frame is to present
a context in which the governing powers' grasp upon the art/entertainment
market is so powerful that the potential of it loosening its hold, ( or
at least altering its grip ) inevitably bears testimony to the sheer enormity
of the social blow that must cause such a dislodging. If the governing
institutions of power - corporate and political - that shape the context
under which art operates can neuter the potential of risky art - an art
that may elicit an unpredictable change in the way we regard supposed normalcy,
truths -- then by logic, -- the governing powers can relinquish control
if the conditions of change are there. I believe that these conditions
of alteration can manifest suddenly from an unexpected cultural/political
blow that violently rips at a societies sense of identity and basic fundamental
reality across levels of economy, class race and gender. This is very extreme
- monumental in fact - but I believe this may have occurred in the US in
September and has now placed the arts and its relationship to its audience
and power structure at a critical point. -- in the act of collectively
recoiling and reassessing priorities, new doors my be opened for the arts
to explore, while others may be briskly shut for fear of exploration. I
believe the abstract artist stands critically at this crossroads.
The greater the shock to the body politic the greater the need for triage,
for an immediate remedy. Within the hurried want of a calming reaffirming
medicine it may seem likely that what my be expected from the arts is a
reminder of a lost innocence suffered by the culture. A sort of Norman
Rockwellian homage to good days that will return if we all accept these
images as true. A type of peter pan magic that hinges on shared faith in
simple beliefs.
This is the presentation of nostalgia without memory.
It may seem premature and utterly over dramatic to suggest that the creative
exploration of pluralism and its inherent structure of contradictions is
in jeopardy. But these premature overly dramatic words have been historically
echoed before. And if the cultural embracement of a collective mentality
is deemed paramount by shaken powers, then I would hazard to guess that
the progressive artist now finds him and herself in a field where risk
is suddenly actual and necessary. But this places the abstract artist in
a dislocating space. If neither social public art realist nor dogmatic
literal political artist - what is to become of shifting metaphor, whispered
subtexts and indescribable eneffable forms that oscillate between reason
and nonsense - what becomes of from/content that usually despises the application
of direct meaning?
Working in this ephemeral world may be the riskiest of all.
It seems to me that the weakness and strength of abstract painting lies
in that it is not intended for a large audience directly -- and more importantly
it does not position itself as a simulated reality - a highly used term
which many self politicized works aspire to be for the sake of what is
felt to be transparent execution. Abstraction is a fictional realm to be
intellectually and emotionally played in. This demands effort from its
viewer. Not the type of effort needed to stomach the speedy consumption
of blatant messages but an effort to accept the dislocating psychological
affects of abstract engagement. It is this capacity of estrangement that
may either place abstraction in a renewed forlight. Current political context
may appear to necessitate the presence of abstractions elusive middle greys
as a relief from the predictable scripts of propaganda. But it may further
push it into the corner bound by terms such as 'utopic' 'romantic' and
'subjectively irrelevant'. Now may be the most appropriate time for complex
multidimensional work to spark the imagination of something obscure and
other - that which cannot be pinned or easily located. Under such conditions
abstraction is less a tangible commodified object as it is a psychological
location of free negotiation with ones personal realities.
The detractors of this type of work have and will more so in the near future
serve up the same arguments. Its form - visual language is cryptic, alien
and too difficult to warrant a place of potency in the public sphere of
engagement. The counter to this is to once again reassess the standards
by which we measure success or potency. Perhaps a few hearts and minds
touched, may be more vital than a cacophony of heads bobbing in agreement.
Maybe this does not and should not come down once again to numbers. Other
arguments may spike abstraction with the utopic label previously mentioned
- an attempt to wheel it back to high modernism and all the grunge that
collects there. A possible retort to this is that if utopic exists it is
only as a rhetorical adjective attempting to describe the sensation of
ones imagination creating a relationship between an abstract fiction and
the present reality for the sake of bringing new understandings. It is
not the literal laid out promise of an Avalon or the attainment of some
paragon of sensory height. We all know this by now, There is no need to
jump through those same tired academic hoops. We have moved on.
I have so far touched upon the roles and obstacles abstraction my face
from the influence of political motives. At this point it is important
to stress that the directions that the visual arts will take, conceptual
directions that may seem adversarial to abstraction and its concerns will
not only be in response to external conditions but be directed by artists
themselves. In a time when the arts and the conformist right are jockeying
for the eye and ear of the public --abstraction may well fall under refute
from its own community based on unexpected criteria. This may seem ludicrous
to predict as it is hardly shocking news that abstraction my become the
whipping boy of the progressive art community - no more shocking than the
notion that god is dead - so might as well throw abstract painting on that
pile. This bell has been rung before -- but its rebuke here may be on --
moral grounds.
The atmosphere of expectation of artists to somehow deal with a state of
social flux whose nerves are raw and open will likely be generated by artists/writers/curators
who feel that the importance of art is to serve a social function - and
this becomes a core moral issue. It is not far fetched nor paranoid to
predict the alienation of work that does not prescribe to what is deemed
-- the pressing issues of society at that time by the arbiters of culture
and taste. I believe the reasoning here is founded upon that the concerns/forms/language
of abstraction become to remote and to obscure to touch the daily life
of the common person - and therefore is something of an insult. This is
ripe for rebuttal as the generalization of who constitutes common and the
generalization of daily life display an obvious need for loose categorizations
to justify the admonishment of abstraction as irrelevant. The fact that
abstraction is not overtly literal or political (its name would suggest
this) yet capable of infiltrating the imagination and performing its own
type of covert double cross) marks it as risky in so much that it is unclear
how it will resonate. Within a current state where reality has been described
as "realer than ever" (post September 11th) yet shaky at best,
where people are apt to polar binaries and catch phrases -- the practice
of disrupting what one considers the bedrock of their beliefs (what is
just, natural, permanent, meant to be) through an undefinable visual language
may register as nothing less than cultural sacrilege to many in power.
Interesting that only months ago it most likely would have only been considered
only a cultural nuisance by the same detractors.
Thus far this discussion concerning risk, abstraction and its place in
a reshuffled public psyche has been on a ... abstract level. A place of
theoretical projection. I will leave with a brief telling example concerning
the architect Frank Gehry - an artist whose manipulation of form as content
locates him as an abstractionist - and considering his work and its abutment
to the mass - a risk taker. His manipulation of what we consider a building
to be, to look like, to feel like has enabled him to ignite the imagination
of those to think - and please excuse the pun - outside the box and consider
the potency of alternate forms and alternate contents. His building design
for the Guggenheim headquarters is lower Manhattan has received some admonishing
critiques in the wake of the World Trade Towers collapsing. Public criticism
has been that the design looks like the towers collapsing and should not
be built. This is not a shocking revelation or display by a public opinion.
It seems the public will consistently attempt to literalize the abstract
when confused, and in times of heightened insecurity fashion blunt symbolism
out of poetic metaphor. The poignancy of this was not in the critique --
it was in Gehry's defeatist response - a mumbled resignation of despair
that his design DOES look like the towers falling. The sad poignancy was
in the abstract artists incapability for he --- himself -- to imagine anything
else but rubble.
A response such as this is harrowing because it suggests that the artist
may feel they have to simplify their effect by translating their innovative
forms of expression - to commit a type of creative dilution.
From crisis of vision comes crisis of purpose and here in may lie the greatest
risk - creativity as casualty.
This is a time of risk now. The want for an aesthetic diversion is real
and the public anxiety that can proliferate seems to call for psychic bandages
- quick visual remedies which a collective mind can all agree upon. In
an accelerated rush for clarity, the time necessary for abstractions pondering
contemplation to register a new understanding -- may seem to take far longer
than ever now, but given the current state of conflicting realities and
bludgeoning one dimensional truths that bombard us, perhaps never has it
been worth such the wait.
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