Thanks to the folks at Creative Time, this installation will finally open in NYC at the end of this month. Here is the press release:
Playing the Building, a 9,000-square-foot, interactive, site-specific installation by David Byrne, will transform the interior of the landmark Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan into a massive sound sculpture that all visitors are invited to sit and “play.” Byrne’s project will consist of a retrofitted antique organ placed in the center of the building’s cavernous second-floor gallery that will control a series of devices attached to its structural features—metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes. These machines will vibrate, strike, and blow across the building elements, triggering unique harmonics and producing finely tuned sounds. As Byrne explains, it is an elaborate system for “activating the sound-producing qualities that are inherent in all materials.”
Playing the Building marks the first time in decades that the second floor of the Battery Maritime Building will be accessible to the public. The space will be open and free to all visitors on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday throughout the summer of 2008. Everyone will be invited to sit at the organ, tap on the keys, and create a unique array of sounds that travel through the space. In addition, David Byrne and Creative Time will invite guest musicians to challenge his creation through a series of performances and jam sessions.
A new page on davidbyrne.com contains more info on this project, including the location and hours, pictures, videos, interviews, and all that.
Here Lies Love Continues…
Cyndi Lauper came in to the studio last week to sing 1½ songs for the Here Lies Love album. She was about an hour and a half late to the session, so I fully expected to be in for some prime diva behavior. But, as I’d run overtime on the earlier brass sessions, it all worked out great, and Cyndi gave an amazingly fine-tuned performance. Not only is she a wonderful singer from a technical point of view, but she can tailor her attitude and performance to suit the character and the character’s emotional state.
This is exactly the skill set I need for this project. After giving Cyndi the back-story on a particular song and establishing the context of the lyrics, I would give directions like, “Yes, she’s a little angry, but also heartbroken and confused.” Cyndi would then incorporate these complex emotions into her performance with seeming ease. She’d ask, for example, “You want more anger in this verse?” And sure enough, she’d dial a little more in. Very impressive.
I’m in Dallas — or more accurately, Richardson, a silicon suburb north of the city — to meet with David Hanson, a maker of realistic (i.e. human) looking robots.
We’re collaborating on a piece that, if all goes well, will be part of a group show at The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid this summer. Some time ago, the curators invited me to be part of a tech-oriented art show, and I suggested approaching Hanson to make a singing robot for which I would write and record a song.
Hanson’s robots flirt with the uncanny and test our notions of what it means to be human. They have rubbery flesh made of what he calls frubber, with tiny wires on the inside that pull the “skin” to mimic human facial expressions (to an extent). Some of them can also make eye contact and some can carry on a weird dialogue, adding to their profoundly disturbing nature. Part of what makes this human likeness so creepy is our instinctive desire to empathize with the robots and to ascribe to their behavior human motivations and even emotions.
As a result, Hanson’s machines make us wonder how much of our interaction with our fellow humans (and animals) is based on instinctual empathy. We believe that behind the actions, words and facial expressions of the people and animals we encounter there is a life force and a consciousness. But the robots force us to ask how much of that is presumption on our part.
I was curious whether a singing robot might push these reactions even further. We often assume that singing is “from the heart” — or at least some part of it is. I myself believe that it is and it isn’t: it’s both a developed skill (to emote convincingly), and a true outpouring of emotion, as the physiological effect of singing is by nature more connected to the lizard brain than to the rationalizing frontal lobes. The fact that singing can engage both parts of the brain makes it maybe the least likely thing one would expect a robot to do.
There have been other singing robots. For instance, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL sings “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)” as he is powered down. The scene demonstrates HAL regressing from independent thought to mere parroting, and was not meant to be a kind of expression of HAL’s feelings.
Before leaving for Dallas, I wrote and recorded a short song in New York, something I believe is passionate, over the top, and extremely emotional sounding. The song is sung a cappella.
Getting down south had its share of setbacks. Due to some McDonald-Douglas planes having untreated technical problems, three successive American Airlines flights were cancelled. The reason was never given at the time. They would say things like “we can’t find a crew.”
I eventually arrived in Texas and drove from the massive Dallas-Fort Worth airport (it’s larger than Manhattan) across the flat plains of northern Texas. The gracefully curving highways were the color of the surrounding earth — a sort of warm beige. After about twenty miles, I turned north on Highway 75 on what might be the mightiest and most awe-inspiring interchange I’ve ever seen. At least five levels of roads are stacked up, all swooping over, under and around each other as if in some mighty concrete mating dance. It’s a truly incredible work, graceful, and of a scale so large that it is impossible to see the whole thing from any one vantage point.
When driving on the upper levels, you are almost completely unaware that you are arcing and swooping and curving in a ballet with all the other vehicles exiting and merging down below. You simply see the curve of the road ahead, and some signs alerting you of approaching merging lanes and future exits.
I ate dinner at the Renaissance Hotel. The restaurant’s only other diner sat off in the distance. I’m currently reading Temple Grandin’s book Animals in Translation, which seems appropriate for this project. She’s a highly functioning autistic person who claims her autism has helped her to better understand and empathize with the animal point of view.
From the door to my hotel room I could see across the atrium to the identical rooms on the other side. The building’s massive scale, warm moody lighting, and repetitive pattern of doors, plantings, and balconies felt more like some very peculiar temple than a place to sleep. Within this strange temple, all individuality is erased, all ego lost, and, as with many religious sites, one experiences transcendence, a sense of being part of something beyond and greater than oneself.
In religious practice, this glimpse of a profound truth would be channeled via word, sound and symbol to join a pre-established system and set of myths. In this case, one wonders where such channeling might lead? To the world of meetings, creative business exchanges and exciting capitalist enterprises?
The next morning I went to Hanson’s studio, located in an office/industrial park called The Telecom Corridor, where corporate headquarters for companies like Texas Instruments, Samsung, Ericsson and AT&T abound. One building — of a new type springing up here and there — houses data archives, so it has no windows. It’s beautiful in a strange way.
It’s like being in a new world where humans are merely visitors. We work to secure the data and take care of it, like worker bees for machines.
I arrive at the studio, which is on a street called West Executive Drive. The studio itself consists of a reception area, a conference room and few workshops. Some workshops are dedicated to hand-sculpting the heads and faces that will be cast in the fleshy frubber that Hanson has invented. Others are littered with servo motors and laptops that tell the partially assembled robots what facial expression (or Viseme, as Hanson says) to display and how to move their heads and arms. It’s a scene from a thousand science fiction movies, which is pretty exciting to actually walk into.
I proposed that I be videotaped singing the short song, enabling Hanson and his crew to study the series of head movements and facial expressions that I instinctively produce when performing. I do a number of takes, some with more movement, some with less. A few of the robots have mechanical arms, so I do a couple performances moving my arms like I normally would when singing. The robot — which doesn’t resemble me, by the way — won’t mimic my particular mannerisms, but will instead render the performance of a typical singer.
I also suggested that I write and record a version in Spanish since the audience in Madrid will be mainly Spanish-speaking. So, while the wire “tendons” are being attached to the inside of the skin, I hole up in the empty conference room and come up with a Spanish verse that might work.
Just as in the English language, some words and phrases can sound strange and awkward in Spanish. Moreover, the use of melody can place the non-native Spanish speaker at even greater risk. For instance, a melodically emphasized syllable effectively accents the vowel, which, in some cases, conjugates the word into the past tense, or changes its meaning entirely.
To be sure I hadn’t inadvertently done any of that, Thomas, one of Hanson’s collaborators, took me to meet a poetry teacher fluent in Spanish at the nearby UT Dallas (a school that originated as a Texas Instruments Research & Development facility). I sang what I had written for her and she helped with a few phrases. Sadly, I discovered that two of the lines didn’t work at all — though most of the others did — leaving me with a little homework to take back to New York. But, once complete, I’ll be able to record the Spanish version, too.
We returned to the studio, and eventually Hanson’s crew of assistants and collaborators drifted off to their homes and day jobs and I went back to the towering atrium by the side of the highway. That night, Kevin — a Hanson collaborator and production manager — and his boyfriend Carter hosted a BBQ at their traditional Dallas bungalow. (The bricks used to make Dallas bungalows and many newer houses as well are the same color as the highways.) The inside of their home is filled with their paintings and artwork, some of which leans against the walls or lies stacked in piles in the various rooms. One painting displays the Kool Aid pitcher man brandishing a bundle of dynamite. Others show a young Shirley Temple making a cute expression and wielding a butcher knife. These latter paintings have been popular so Kevin will paint more of them.
Hanson once did a stint at Disney in LA, which is no surprise since the Magic Kingdom calls on sculpting and molding skills like his for their theme park needs. While there, he began to develop Frubber, but didn’t work out all the problems and get a patent until after he left the Kingdom. I hope they don’t steal the formula; the Disney folks are rumored to be ruthless. Hanson also worked at the LA studio of artist Paul McCarthy. Although McCarthy’s work leans towards the obscene and scatological, the molding and sculpting techniques are probably not much different than those employed at the Disney parks. The crossover between McCarthy and Disney is, I think, significant.
Heather, a former Hanson employee, said over BBQ that she’s heading to LA this week to apply for similar work. There’s a circle of modelers, engineers and artists mixing technology with artier impulses. They float between the art world, theme parks, Hollywood, and high-tech AI conferences.
Hanson went to RISD, the same art school I briefly attended. Early on in his attendance, Hanson wanted to mix his tech and performance interests with more traditional art techniques and skills. But the school strongly discouraged this, since they lacked a department capable of overseeing that kind of work.
I had a similar experience. While working on a photo-based semi-conceptual art project, I was advised to try my luck in NYC instead of trying to fit in to the school programs. “We don’t teach this stuff,” they told me. At the time it was very frustrating, although in retrospect it turned out to be good advice. And at least I managed to acquire some valuable drawing skills while there.
Hanson and I decide that all programming and adjustments for the English song should be complete within two weeks. In the meantime, he’ll send me a video of the work-in-progress. Once I finish the Spanish song, I might revisit Dallas to facilitate programming Julio’s face for this alternate version. The robot’s body should be ready two weeks later, and then we’ll decide whether the arms will move, whether the head will bob in time with the song’s meter, and whether the torso will sway just a little to the (implied) beat. That leaves us a month to solve any additional problems and install in Madrid — the opening is in June.
I have my fingers crossed. If it all works — even forgoing some of the more ambitious ideas — it will be pretty astounding.
Some robot and artificial intelligence labs discourage and frown on work like Hanson’s. According to his detractors, building robots to mimic human appearance and expression is for the most part irrelevant. More significant investigations will explore what actions the bot can accomplish. Can it learn? How does it process sensory information? In what ways can it react to its environment? Hanson’s work may be less academically rigorous, but it does probe at some sensitive areas that traditionally focused engineers and theoreticians might prefer not to think about.
I pick up Malu, and we have breakfast at a funky, charming little place in Silverlake. As we eat, the couple next to us are chatting while busy knitting. Both of them! The coffees we have later at Intellegencia are incredible. This seems to be common knowledge — the place is filled with hipsters waiting patiently to order. The sun is shining, and the hyper-colorful exteriors of the Salvadoran markets and clubs remind me that this city has pockets where a wonderfully crazy mixture of all different kinds of people end up living in more or less in the same hood. I’m not sure the disparate layers of Angelinos actually mingle and cross paths very often — as sometimes happens in old NY neighborhoods in transition — but the visuals are great and the availability of authentic regional foods is incredible.
Afterwards, Malu and I go together to the Murakami show at the downtown Geffen Contemporary museum, notorious in some circles for having a Louis Vuitton boutique right in the middle of the museum — just for this show. Murakami designed some versions of the LV handbags a few years ago, and has also had his anime eyeball pattern printed on them alongside the LV logos. These designs are also presented on canvases, as works of art.
Other rooms display the copious amounts of merchandise that Murakami has produced — T-shirts, plastic figurines, toys, CD covers — so the mix of art and commerce is pretty fluid and seamless. To some of us, this mix is scandalous, sort of, but to M it isn’t even worth a mention. It’s a non-issue. I tell her that some people find the mix of art and luxury branding disturbing, and I get a strange look. There were lines to get into the museum and lines just as long to get into the Murakami gift shop. (NOT the LV shop, which has turned over a reported thirteen million in goods, no part of which goes to the museum. I’ll bet the curator who made that deal won’t work again in LA any time soon.)
It’s a hugely popular show, mostly filled with kids around Malu’s age and slightly older (in their twenties I’d guess) wandering around the museum-cum-recombinant psychedelic manga universe. Not everything he did is cute. As is common in the okatu and manga world, there is sometimes a pervy undercurrent of nerdy sexual obsession. Some short videos on a plasma screen show a CG character — an adolescent alien boy with no hair, a huge head, and beady eyes — obsessing over the uniformed Japanese schoolgirls in his midst. In one piece, he returns home after school and lying in bed he remembers a girl classmate and as a result his (plaid?) pants poke up. His face gets a look of confusion and horror.
Other fabricated mannequin-like sculptures show a manga boy spurting a massive steam of jism out of his hard on.
The front of a transformer girl’s body — her breasts down to her pinkish red vagina — flips forward on a hinge, and there are little dragonfly wings on her back. The rest of the stuff is pretty cute, though fragmented and freaky, as only the Japanese can do.
Some of the relentless merchandising seems out of control, like the infinite variations of the DOB character on t-shirts and everything else, its jellyfish eyes arrayed on any imaginable surface. But some of it is truly inspired — little teeny figurine versions of some characters were given away inside candy boxes sold in Japan. Like luxury arty Crackerjack prizes! And the carpet in the video screening room is a subdued pattern of flowers with his smiley faces in the middle of them.
Tonight the Grammy Awards will take place. They’re held at the Staples Center, a huge downtown sports arena, which, I am told, explains why downtown seems so lively today. The talk is all about Amy Winehouse’s substance abuse problems, and which megastars will give good moments on TV. The dire situation of the record business is never mentioned, not once.
We attend a gala opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, a massive new wing of the County Museum here. C has many, many pieces in this new wing, so they flew her out for this. (Eli Broad has amassed more of her work than any other collector.) The County Museum is situated on a massive park site off Wilshire Blvd, which is also the location of the famous tar pits. As you approach the museum complex from the east, one of the pits is plainly visible — a small black lake can be seen just off Wilshire Blvd. A white statue of a struggling wooly mammoth sits within it. The animal is depicted lurching and crying out, so we can imagine the theoretical scenario.
When the rains fall, these bubbling ponds of tar and oil emanating from beneath the LA geology become covered in a thin layer of water. Long ago, prehistoric critters, seeing only the aqueous top layer, would wade in the pond thinking it was comprised of fresh water, inevitably becoming stuck in the black goo. Nearby, a covered pavilion houses a dig that has continued for decades, uncovering lots of bones and fragments. Somehow, the sight of giant beasts stuck in tar pits amidst the backdrop of LA’s extreme luxury and urban sprawl seems a too perfect metaphor: big lumbering creatures lured to their demise by what they think is a lovely sparkling fresh water pond…or something like that.
Outside the museum entrance, valet parking attendants await newcomers, systematically arrayed so that no one has to wait too long to be relieved of their car. We have a rented Prius, and I overhear one of the parking guys asking another if he knows how to drive it. (They don’t start like regular cars.) Guests are immediately dumped onto the red carpet and I ask C if she wants to let the photographers get some snaps or just run for it. Too late — a young woman quickly attaches herself to us and makes us stop every few yards, allowing pack after pack of photographers to get their snaps. I’m kind of game, up to a point. At each stop, I urge us on after enduring a minute of flashing bulbs. C is taken aback, blinded by the barrage of flashes, which I suspect she must have also endured at the various NY fashion shows she has attended; but this is more drawn out and structured.
The actual entrance features a collection of vintage cast-iron lampposts from LA County, painted light gray by Chris Burden. I read about these somewhere. He bought them when he heard that these and other bits of civic detritus were being sold or auctioned, and then he stored them on his Topanga Canyon property. Now he has declared them a “piece” and I assume has sold them to the museum, or to Eli Broad, the developer who funded much of this wing.
The elevation of an individual’s personal collection of curios to the status of an artwork in it’s own right seems increasingly common these days. Recently, a NY gallery featured an artist’s collection of kitsch sculptures of a monkey holding Darwin’s skull. It seemed like an eBay collection to me — charming and wacky if I saw it at someone’s house, but presented as a stand-alone artwork?
The artist Francis Alÿs did a similar thing last year at a museum in NYC, where he presented his collection of found paintings of the same Mexican Saint. Some were refined, some crude, and they filled the whole place — again, a sort of eBay collection as an integral original work. Or not. My friend Ford has some wonderfully eccentric collections: grotesque clown dolls and paintings, a whole series of bottles made to look like logs, yardsticks.
Jim Shaw, the LA artist, did something vaguely similar years ago when he presented his collection of paintings he’d picked up in thrift stores as “his” show. (This was pre-eBay.) It was great, and the book of these paintings was and still is inspiring. He picked out the weirdest and most disturbing, the creepiest and most surreal artistic attempts I’d ever seen. In a sense, the show was really about his eye and sensibility — and the objects had obviously been diligently accrued over quite a few years. Together, these paintings suggest a mass of dark, twisted creativity lurking beneath the amateur Sunday painter — a deep strangeness informing some “unprofessional” art making. The intimation is such that this unusual and powerful creativity also lurks beneath the country at large. It was a powerful show.
We wander around the throngs of black suited elderly men, and women dressed in unusual gowns. I comment that the age of the folks at this gathering made me feel young.
We aren’t yet allowed into the new museum wing — that prize would be saved for later. Instead, we are herded into a huge enclosed tent the size of the Parthenon, through a dark, covered passage, containing small, isolated pools of light.
The new wing is the pink and blue boxes seen below (shouldn’t those colors be reserved for Miami?) and the tent is the big gray thing behind them. The other wings of the museum are over to the right, and further over are the tar pits.
Photo: J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times
Inside the tent, huge white cubes the size of small houses hung from the ceiling, the BCAM acronym on their sides, and some abstract projections undulating on their bottom surfaces. We found our seats and were served some food as various speeches congratulate Broad, Renzo Piano (the architect of this extension), and others, one after another.
Afterwards, Lionel Richie, Nicole’s “father”, takes the stage and sings about being easy like Sunday morning. I head to the restrooms. Kind of shocking that a place purporting to support innovative and groundbreaking contemporary art plays such middle of the road music. Well, OK, if they’d asked me to perform while people finished dessert and networked, I’d have said no, so maybe it’s not that surprising. And maybe contemporary music requires an investment of time and a bit more focus and involvement — whether it’s academic, quasi-classical, post-rock or electronic — than the average work of contemporary art. So maybe that explains the disconnect as well.
Lionel and Co., leave the stage and a second smaller platform descends from the ceiling, hosting a piano player and a fiddle player — and maybe a third musician? — playing a version of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir! Duh duh duh — duh duh duh — go the grand chords, while the violin (it sounds like there is more than one) does the Indo-Arabic fills and licks that lend that classic rock tune its exotic identity. It’s a great song, but not what I expect to hear right now. And this slightly lounge version of it — though still powerful — is less than thunderous. It’s been somewhat tamed, even though it’s still a nicely weird surprise.
It’s not long before the little stage ascends once more to prepare for the coup de théâtre — the wall of the tent separating us from the new wing suddenly drops (a trick I’d seen in quite a few Kabuki shows) to reveal a walkway leading to the huge, illuminated buildings. On either side of the walkway there are some fiddlers made up like the blue man group, only these ones have bald heads painted red (to avoid copyright infringement?) They’re situated on either side of the walkway, on a lower grassy area, on a grid of little plinths, sawing away as the Zeppelin tune continues.
The museum wing is enormous. There is more space inside than in two of the major NY museums put together, or so I hear. On the outside it’s nothing spectacular — it will never be an architectural destination or a landmark like some other recent museum structures. But the building does its job. The large rooms are easy to understand and to navigate; they don’t distract or try to upstage the art, which is a relief these days. Even the stairs have been moved outside (a possibility in LA). So other than a large elevator, the whole building appears to be display space. Many artists, including C, have gigantic rooms devoted to (mostly) Broads’ collection of their work over the years. He seems to have collected some artists’ works in depth, seemingly ignoring others all together. Maybe, as is rumored, this is only a small sampling of his holdings, and this is just what he has decided to put on view here now.
In other cities, like Miami, some major collectors have built their own independent museums – separate from any city institutions — to display their private collections and curated shows of newly acquired work. They don’t have to contend with other board members or museum directors. Here at the LACMA wing, things are fuzzier — it is clearly a Broad showcase, but it’s also a county institution. Yet, the works don’t belong to the museum, they’re on loan.
The evening’s elaborate spectacle was, I suspect, the work of the folks who usually do “industrials,” its lavish fanfare the type usually reserved for trade fairs and at corporate shareholder events. I’ve always wanted to attend one of those, as they often employ the most advanced spectacle technology and money is generally no object. These things are deigned to hype the product, produce oohs and ahhs, and entertain the armies of shareholders and board members who have traveled from far and wide to attend. It’s true industrial theater: auto-ballets, smells, massive screens, sound and light are typical, so I hear. The public is never invited, but I still think maybe one day I’ll get to see one. I guess I am seeing one. (I had storyboarded my version of one for possible inclusion in my mid-80s movie True Stories, but that scene didn’t happen.)
I suspect that a spectacle on this scale can be ordered up pretty easily from one of those outfits, though I’d like to think that someday, someone might say, “Hey, why don’t we have one of the artists, or a contemporary theater director do the spectacle?” Julie Taymor is a no brainer. Or Robert Wilson (though the dinner might then go on for five hours). Or David Lynch. Or Peter Sellers or….
Same issue as with the music, I surmise. Why not make it as contemporary and groundbreaking as the art on display? Funny how things can be compartmentalized that way.
I finished (sort of) a 3.5-minute video during the tutorial. The video is comprised of shots of the weird concrete park across from the Javits Center, over which I inserted an improvised voiceover about some vague time and country where traditional religion is outlawed and human sacrifices are performed regularly in a concrete outdoor temple. I cobbled together some abstract footage I’d already had, and shot a little more during my stay, and the voiceover was an attempt to give a kind of narrative linkage. C and I read the narration and we’re seen in silhouette a couple of times. It’s crude, but it IS a little piece, so I’m pretty thrilled. On the last day I learn how to do little titles and how to output the “finished” piece. Good timing.
After four or five days of continuous snow — which kept the airport here closed — the sun comes out and we leave on time. We arrive in LA in the early afternoon and I text Malu who is anxious to meet up. She’s way downtown at her dorm, so I suggest that as our time is tight, she meet us at the hotel where I’ll order her some room service lunch, and then we can hang out.
We all head off to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and M loves the room with 3-D images of X-rayed flowers (i.e., The Floral Stereoradiographs of Albert G. Richards). Neither she nor C has ever been here before, so the mixture of the real (the stereoradiographs are comprised of a single image and don’t require the use of a special viewer) and the imaginary (dioramas and letters regarding an imaginary opera singer’s spectacular exploits, for example) is a bit of a head twister at first. “Wait, THAT is real, I’m sure, but does that mean THAT might be real too?” The answers to such questions are never given, and the succession of dark Victorian rooms with eccentric, spotlit displays creates a mood of time warp and possibility.
One room has a new exhibit of paintings of all the dogs that the Russians sent into space. Are these real? Yes, I think so, but I’m not sure if they are mid-century Russian paintings, or more recent ones. Laika is given pride of place, or course, but there are a whole slew of them, all mutts, posed for their heroic portraits. They were gathered from the streets of Moscow, we are told, and trained to wear doggie pressure suits and to withstand the G-forces during the launch. Many of them returned as well, one of whom later sired a litter of puppies. She had company on her voyage — another dog, two rats, forty mice, and some greenery.
Went up to MASS MoCA — the contemporary art center in far western Massachusetts —where my friends Terry and Jo Harvey Allen were showing a music theater piece in progress about Antonin Artaud. It’s a great piece, covering the period when Artaud completely lost his mind and was strapped to an iron bed in a straightjacket in the hold of a ship. He was being sent back to France after causing trouble in Ireland, where he lived out the rest of his days in an insane asylum called Rodez. (Oddly, his asylum days were also very productive!) Prior to his trip to Ireland he’d been to Mexico, intent on visiting the Tarahumara Indians and joining their peyote ceremonies, which he did. They thought he was nuts too.
I’ve read Artaud’s short books on theater — they’re great, and were hugely influential. Apparently he wrote a lot more. Some of it went pretty far out and is not suitable for reading aloud in the office.
Terry wrote some nice new songs for this piece. One is called “Do They Dream of Hell in Heaven?” His wife, Jo Harvey, was the sole actor. She wore a bright red wig and white makeup with thin red lips. She told elements of the story from multiple points of view, cackled ominously, and occasionally quoted Artaud.
In the galleries, there was a huge Anselm Kiefer show and one by an artist Spencer Finch. But I lingered longest in the Jenny Holzer room, which has two incredibly powerful projectors at each end scrolling the text of a poem by an eastern European poet Wisława Szymborska (who won the Nobel Prize in ’96). The room is massive — almost the size of a soccer field — so it’s a bit like stepping into the opening sequence of the Star Wars films where the text scrolls, recedes and distorts into the distant star field.
In this picture you don’t see the nice distortion so much, as the text bumps over the ceiling beams and the giant bean bag pillows. But you can see the overlapping effect of the projections coming from either side.
Holzer has other pieces in the back room, including reproductions of US government PowerPoint slides outlining the plans for Iraq, pre-invasion. In retrospect these look frightening in their naïveté. On the wall hang enlarged reproductions of US government documents about torture and the Cheney decision to adopt a “gloves off” approach. (Which experienced military personal admit does nothing to produce reliable intelligence.) The projected poems may relate to these, but truthfully it’s a little hard to read the poem texts, though I’m not complaining. (But it would have been nice to have the poet’s work available in the bookstore.)
Likewise, it would be nice to see a catalog of the work of Jarvis Rockwell, who had an amazing show here some years ago. C and I stopped at his late dad’s museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts on the way home. His dad is Norman Rockwell, the famous illustrator. From a pretty early age Jarvis collected action figures. But unlike a typical collector, who might normally want just one of each, Jarvis had a new, rather curious method — he wanted to create crowds. In an interview with artist Laurie Simmons, he mentions that he has eighty identical Burt Reynolds figures. Here is a crowd of Ewoks at a business conference.
Photos: Christine Fichera
About this photo, Jarvis writes: "That's essentially my father and me. My father is tied to a tree, with a light set up. I'm standing in a coracle with a pacifier in my mouth and the coracle has no prow, so it just floats like a lily pad. E.T. is reading from the book."
There were more nice stories. In one, his dad visits him in NYC. Jarvis goes to his father’s hotel room to find him sitting on the bed with a postcard of a de Kooning and one of a Piero della Francesca on the pillow. And he's looking at them: "I don't know," he said. "I just can't . . . I just don't understand."
To be fair, his dad never saw himself as an artist but an illustrator, at least according to Jarvis. The implication is that rather than following interior artistic impulses, Rockwell instead saw himself as performing a job for the client, most famously The Saturday Evening Post. Norman often used local townspeople and family members as models in his work. At first he may have had them sit in costume (he had lots available) and with props. But soon he just photographed the various types and characters individually. For example, he would cast an audience for say, a boxing ring scene, or perhaps a telephone lineman, and then photograph them and any other characters, and even the backgrounds all separately. Only in the finished work would he join them all together.
For one illustration in which an elderly woman and her grandson pray in a diner before eating, Rockwell had his assistants photograph a number of views out the diner window. (Suitably, he chose an industrial landscape from Pittsburgh.) Most of the remnants of his work process are not on view, although one image shows Norman posing Jarvis for a “home from college for the holidays” themed painting. (Norman must have had to come up with endless holiday themed scenarios for these magazine covers.) Jarvis’s back is towards us and he’s holding a small suitcase. Norman stands behind Jarvis facing the camera, making an entirely exaggerated welcoming gesture. I guess I can see why more of these are not on view, but they’d make an amazing show. They relate to a lot of contemporary work— probably more so than the paintings.
Some of the illustrations verge on cartoons or caricature, but maybe those were simply in his casting choices. Appropriately, a show in an adjoining gallery featured contemporary graphic novel work by Will Eisner, Jessica Abel, Crumb (!) and even Howard Cruse, who famously did a series called Stuck Rubber Baby that dealt with being gay and with race and civil rights.
Norman’s caricatures and painting technique reminded me a little of the contemporary artist John Currin, who recently did a bunch of “porn” paintings. Rockwell never did any overt sex pictures, and even if he did we’ll probably never see them, as the folks here have a pretty tight grip on his legacy. But I can imagine what they might be like: a tangle of naked limbs in the hay for example, with some gingham dress partly visible on the floor, and from a side window a freckle faced boy peeks in, mouth agape.
The other day I was watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on TV with my mom and I noticed that there was a Jeff Koons bunny float/inflatable balloon in the parade! The humongous silver balloon was a blow-up replica of one of his shiny stainless steel versions of kitschy children’s toys. It was a bit of a shock: while the contemporary art world and some museums are a big deal these days, they’re still the preserve of a certain social set. And the audience for the Macy’s parade (on TV and on the streets), would seem to be contained in a separate circle in that particular Venn diagram.
C said that Tom Otterness had one last year, which makes perfect sense as his pieces are clever and funny and kids love them. The Koons balloon, not having a face and all, is kind of scary for the little tykes. We joked about what would come next year — a Richard Serra balloon? A big inflatable version of a twisty slab of rusty steel floating down Broadway?
What’s going on here? Who paid for this? These things must cost a fortune and I can’t find out who underwrote this thing. Who decided a Koons balloon should be included in a parade focused on children and children’s favorite characters? (The other balloons were Shrek, Mr. Potato Head, Kermit, Snoopy and Pokeman.)
I suspect that, as with all branding urges, once a product catches the eye of the public (or a specific subset of the public) and sells, then other consumers — in this case collectors and museums — will want the same thing, or as close to it as possible. Art dealers and collectors might then tactfully urge a successful artist to make more pieces like the one successfully branded, as the “brand”, the icon, is easy to sell and easy to identify. Within such a model, a successfully branded artist might go on to make more or less the same piece over and over again, with slight variations.
We applaud this stick-to-a-good-thing in a classic English shoe, a stapler, or a band saw, but in art it’s mystifying.
Oddly, in the fashion megaverse and some other retail areas, a brand, design or image accepted and successful amongst a tiny (usually wealthy) social demographic means that it will inevitably be desired by those lower down on the social and economic ladder, either via logo imprinted items, knockoffs, counterfeits or copies. The fact that the hoi polloi will now be interested in the item makes it naturally less interesting to the elite. It will go out of favor, and becomes last year’s model, soon to be relegated to the closet or the giveaway pile. If it’s too popular, it can’t be cool anymore. As a result, the creative folks, the designers, feel pressure to come up with a new and different line to appeal to these elites, and as quickly as possible. That’s why it’s called fashion.
Sarah R. suggests the development of fashion trends can occur in reverse as well. This happens all the time, as subculture style is appropriated and adopted by the designers or elite/wealthy, and then sold back to the masses. A classic example is of course the punk style of the mid-70s — by 1977, Cosmopolitan had a fashion spread featuring plastic and safety pins (the punks of course initially borrowed the safety pin from the working class culture where it was used to correct ill-fitting/torn clothing). The article ended with "To Shock is Chic" — so much for subversion! We see this again and again over the past 30 years: grunge fashion for instance, made it on to the runways in the nineties, and the big eighties revival started with street culture before it hit the couture houses. Today corporations have coolhunters to identify trends, and the designers look to them to tell them what will sell. She thinks the emergence of trends is less unidirectional and more of a multi-sourced dialectic these days. And the faster trends are identified, the faster new ones emerge.
Happily, this system of economic and social snobbery (along with the rapid appropriation of designs by the hoi polloi) has become a prod to innovation and invention. The designers and the creative teams have to constantly stay one step ahead of the knockoff merchants and the taste of ordinary folks. Elitism — a natural Darwinian part of sexual selection — is, in this system, a goad to creativity. Not only in the fashion world, but for anything that can be fetishized: electronic gadgets, video games, bands and singers, cars, bikes, and restaurants.
Oddly, it doesn’t seem to work that way in the realm of contemporary art. In the art world, once an artist succeeds in branding his or her name, the system seems to favor steering the artist towards the repetition of that object, with slight variations, for decades. The incentive for innovation and change isn’t there for some mysterious reason. With success, creativity often (not always) comes to a halt, and production begins. To be fair, there are plenty of exceptions, but the numbers that follow this rule are astounding — at least to me. Maybe my definitions are misaligned with those of everyone else?
Perhaps the explanation for this exception lies in the fact that art is not mass-produced, not in the same way as fashion or cars are anyway. Each object is somewhat (albeit subtly) unique, and if purchased, resides in the ownership of a collector or a museum — an individual or a single entity — and its public availability henceforth restricted. So, in order for the whole little art world to consume this brand, it can take decades of production by the artist and his or her staff. These days, Jeff Koons can have a bunny in the Macy’s parade, Richard Prince can print images on Marc Jacobs dresses, and Murakami can design the icons on Louis Vuitton handbags, which only reinforces the art brand as icon. The artist’s status is “safe”, possibly even enhanced, because the “originals” remain forever in limited supply and can only be afforded by a wealthy “discerning” few. However, it’s one thing to be enhanced by luxury goods and another to be featured on cereal boxes, and ads for hair products.
In the last few months there have been a lot of articles in newspapers and magazines about the danger that the new art bubble will burst. Recent auctions at Sotheby’s and Christies would either confirm or deny whether the ever-rising, astounding prices for contemporary art will continue to head skyward. The articles ranged in their positions, and most were simply about the bubble itself and what it means to contemporary art.
It was interesting and a little sad to me that most of the focus in these articles — and there have been lots of them — was on the sums and not the content of the art. But, as more than one writer implied, in many cases the money has become the content. In The New Yorker, Calvin Tompkins quoted a gallerist who stated that the value of artwork is now tied to its monetary worth, which means what it sells for at auction. In this system, you are a better artist because your work sells for more money. (Everyone knows this can’t possibly be true — monetary value is about desire, status and scarcity and not about quality. But according to this gallerist, this is the way it is right now.)
Souren Melikian, the auction writer for The Herald Tribune, was the only writer to offer an opinion on the quality of the some of the works on offer. He was scathing, intimating that a Van Gogh was not a very good one, and that a Picasso was “from his cartoon period”, which was not meant as a compliment. He didn’t venture into the contemporary territory too much, though he did submit that Hugh Grant’s Warhol (a portrait of Liz Taylor) was grossly overvalued in the press. The implication was clear: according to Melikian, our valuation criteria for art have become skewed, and money and the auction houses are responsible.
In particular, Melikian worried about the auction house practice of offering guarantees to favored customers selling “important” works. Assuring a customer a dollar amount for the work, whether it is sold or not, is a way for one auction house to grab a customer and a work from another house. In effect, the auction house buys the work and then becomes the seller. In Melikian’s words, “This is a flawed system. It distorts the principle of an auction that is supposed to be an open contest between sellers and buyers, with the auctioneer as a neutral arbiter.”
Of course, there are always fashions and trends in buying art, old and new. Various movements go in and out of favor — some artists become newly appreciated and others are forgotten. That’s where, on a longer time scale maybe, the art world is similar to the fashion world, although it’s dealing less with new creations and more with preexisting works.
An article by Jori Finkel in the Sunday NY Times mentions that certain powerful galleries are providing financial assistance to fund museum shows of their artists at museums (which increases the value of the work). And many of the same galleries now publicly engage in the practice of either bidding up the works of their artists at auction, or buying the works at premium prices, also a way of keeping the perceived monetary value of a work high. (If suddenly one can get the work of a premium priced artist for much less than the ascribed value, the value of ALL that artist’s work — much of it held by esteemed collectors, or the galleries themselves — will drop). This practice, not exactly Kosher, was once semi-secret though insiders knew it went on. It hardly makes for a level or objective playing field. Now, as with many things in the Bush era, formerly hidden practices are brazenly played out in open. The idea of shame has disappeared, probably because in a market driven, dog-eat-dog world, any practice that benefits you is in turn reflexively defined as legitimate.
Of course, the museums deny that their curatorial decisions are affected by the money coming in from galleries, but that’s simply too silly to believe. While the galleries may not be dictating what artists the museums show (though that does seem to happen), the internalized decision process among museum directors and curators cannot help but be affected by what is financially feasible. Some women don’t up and announce that they are attracted to a man because he has money — they just naturally find him more “attractive” and “interesting”. The knowledge of the money figures in some calculation performed by the amygdala region of the brain and voilà, one feels differently, strangely attracted.
One wonders if the quality work by emerging artists who fall outside of the circus tent will necessarily get lost. Some emerging artists are thrown into the limelight perhaps a little too quickly, with detrimental effects. Take some of the bands from the nineties: early on their work was overvalued and written about extensively, leaving them no time or room to develop as the branding process had already been set in motion.
The money amounts are truly astounding. In a speech delivered at the Burlington House in 2004, Robert Hughes, quoting Picasso’s biographer John Richardson, asserted, “[…]no painting is worth $100 million dollars” (though $100 million dollars isn’t worth $100 million dollars any more). He claims that these amounts inevitably distort the perception of any piece of art.
All that said, I find there is still a lot of interesting and inspiring work being done. In some cases the flood of money has allowed some lesser-known artists to be seen and funded, and in other cases the money carrot may unconsciously inspire some creative types to make stuff that they otherwise wouldn’t. Despite all the shouting, noise and crap, one can choose to look the other way and see something genuine and fascinating.
Walking around town I have to constantly remind myself it’s Halloween. It might explain that woman in a white gown across the street — isn’t her makeup unusually white? And the couple in front of me as I walk to the deli — the woman sort of looks like a Raggedy Ann doll. They’re really not that far from how people normally look around here. And where’s the Birdman?
Speaking of scary…Bush’s nominee for Attorney General still refuses to call waterboarding torture, amongst many other sleazy things. He’s clearly an apologist for the policies of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush. And if the Democratic congress passes this man — who by nature of this absolution puts the US and its citizens in harms way, to say nothing of the boys in the services — they will be as guilty as he is. It goes without saying that the Bush crew does NOT support our troops, providing every justification to render our soldiers the pariahs and targets they are fast becoming.
Martin Puryear
Went to see a MoMA show surveying the sculptural works of Martin Puryear, old and new. In my opinion it’s incredible. I found his work both beautiful and moving. I got choked up.
They sculptures are all wood mixed with other materials, partly abstract but with recognizable elements and shapes too: wheels and an axle from an old fashioned cart, but giant; an old wooden wheelbarrow; baskets, upside down and out of scale; fishing nets, the kind used by native Americans; yokes, fence posts, ploughs, tools and their handles, worn into smooth biomorphic shapes with use and age. The works evoke the lyrics of gospel songs and spirituals, and the novels of William Faulkner and Flannery O‘Connor.
There are references to the history of Africans in the New World, to traditional African cultures, to farming, working the land and making things by hand — the way one comes to know one’s tools as if they are extensions of oneself, the way they almost come to have a life of their own.
The pieces are calm, but highly charged, both conscious and comfortable with what they are, but also aware that there are layers to get lost in.
None of this is obvious — the scale has been changed and the references are not right upfront or blatant, instead embedded in the shapes and materials, in how they must feel to the hand. (There were more “Do Not Touch” signs than I’ve seen in a long time — maybe they knew the urge to touch these would be strong).
Here is an outdoor piece that wasn’t included in the show, though there was one sculpture with one of these impossible needle like trees that seem to point to the sky just as its diameter dwindles to nothing.
Shared a talk at the new Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston about art and sexual selection with the evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, author of the book The Mating Mind. He spoke first, laying the scientific groundwork for sexual selection and his proposal that creativity is one of many fitness indicators. For Miller, “reading” creative works — artwork in this case — is a way of determining social standing and genetic fitness. I followed on from this, dealing with specific examples in the art world and the ways art movements and styles contort themselves in order to signal to the desired parties that they may be a good match.
Miller was concise and clear; I was rambling and, well, maybe less clear. With practice I can get my part of the show more together, I know.
At the dinner afterwards, there was a sigh of relief that we didn’t cynically dismiss all contemporary art as a sham and a con game played by the elite, though we came pretty close. I think we said that, yes, to some extent, contemporary art appreciation is a game and tactic of the moneyed classes, who use their ‘knowledge’ to distance themselves from the hoi polloi. But, that doesn’t make the creativity any less vibrant, wondrous and enjoyable — sometimes. Other times, in my opinion, it’s pure game playing.
I began my part of the talk saying that when I moved to NYC, I was incredibly shy and socially crippled, but I could sense that my creative abilities, if anyone liked them, might be a way to make connections. I wanted to give a practical instance of creativity used for social leverage and as a genetic indicator, as described by Miller. An Italian couple at dinner expressed relief on hearing my story, as they described their son as being in a similar social situation. However, they seemed a little shocked and dismayed that my creativity didn’t start working in my favor until I was in my mid-twenties. I did say it helped me in high school too — it got me out of gym class.
The new ICA, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is lovely and practical, despite being situated in an area of Boston that is a weird urban wasteland. From what is called the backside, which is actually the main entrance, the building is nondescript, except for the glowing translucent plastic clerestory encircling the top, much like those on the galleries of Jay Jopling and Larry Gagosian.
On approach, the museum seems a lonely structure in the middle of a sea of parking lots. Yet once inside, the water and the bay are in almost constant view, and the asphalt and traffic cones are forgotten. Lots of interior glass walls, even a glass-walled elevator, allow views through much of the building so you are constantly reminded of the water lapping on the other side. The exhibition spaces are practical white boxes, and there are enough of them to have a few different shows running simultaneously. (There is a wonderful design show and a Louise Bourgeois show up now.) At night, the auditorium where we spoke has the glittering bay lights as a stage backdrop, and the media center — tiered rows of Macs facing a window — was a very cool space with an angled window framing the water such that there is no visible horizon line. As an effect, it’s a little like those James Turrell rectangular opening pieces. Here it is, pre-Macs.
I was drawn to the view, but frightened of it at the same time. The rows of Macs are linked only to an extranet with info about the exhibits. I can’t imagine too many people hanging out there, except to experience the room. Maybe another use can be found for it?
This part of Boston was formerly the docks and the shipyards. A little closer to town, across a bridge, there is an area of warehouse buildings that was formerly the center of the New England wool trade. These big old brick mill buildings have since been converted into funky offices. When the wool business moved elsewhere, the shipping area became a handy place to build highway interchanges, bus and rail yards and cloverleafs. Now the highways wrap the area like a tangle of spaghetti, while a few isolated buildings have been plunked down in the concrete expanse — a massive convention center and a hotel to accommodate its visitors, and a couple of other lone structures sit surrounded by half-filled parking lots. The ICA is one such structure, its galleries cantilevered over the water.
I was told that most locals feel this area is far away, though I walked here from the South Street Amtrak Station in 10 mins. One wonders if continued development will work, with the barricades of highways a constant impediment to connection and integration. But the area is right next to the city center, so it seems inevitable that it won’t stay this empty for long.
Did my “How New Yorkers Ride Bikes” event at Town Hall last night. It worked. The thirteen “acts” ranged from serious, to musical, to gag-like. Lots of thanks due to Rhonda Sherman at The New Yorker who made it happen, and to Gregory Mosher who directed the evening. He kept the proceedings flowing smoothly and kept on top of the cues and the lighting and the running order. Half of the block of 43rd St. was closed off to allow for the valet bike parking that Transportation Alternatives organized. Valet bike parking!
We brought in the Young at Heart Chorus — a seniors’ group whose members are all over 72 years of age — to sing Queen’s “Bicycle Race.” As a finale, they did a couple of Talking Heads bits and I joined them for the encore to sing a new song of mine. During the soundcheck, I got all choked up listening to them sing the opening choral bit from “Road To Nowhere.” I got choked up at other bits too — Jan Gehl, the urban planner who helped make Copenhagen and some other cites around the world more livable, gave me a heady emotional feeling of optimism and hope as he ran through his presentation in the tech check.
Eddie Gonzales and the Classic Riders came on stage with their customized Schwinns, playing their amazing array of modified horns to a Hector Lavoe tune. Well, there were a lot of acts: some serious city agency folks, some films, some literary bits, and some lock breaking.
As the Y@H Chorus was already in NYC, the Paris Bar at the Grammercy Arts Club booked them for an afternoon show the following day, before they flew off to perform some shows in Ireland. (They’ve been popular in Europe for a while.) There they did a longer set, which was deeply moving, sometimes hilarious, and always wonderful. With them, every lyric takes on new meaning: Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia” (of course), The Flaming Lips’ “All We Have Is Now,” Coldplay’s “Fix You” — well, you can imagine. They ended with a version of “Forever Young” with their fists in the air. The hipsters at the Paris Bar were completely won over, I think.
