What in the World is Art: An Example from the Field

A few days before the 2012 Whitney Biennial opened, a web page with the museum's logo, template, language and a similar url (www.whitney2012.com instead of www.whitney.com) announced the institution's decision to give up on certain "generous corporate donations" by terminating its partnership with the Deutsche Bank and Sotheby's. According to this release by resigning from such benefits the Whitney was acknowledging and, especially displaying its role in upholding "a system that benefits collectors, trustees, and corporations at the expense of art workers" (I would add art lovers). The Whitney was taking a stance against the Deutsche Bank's corporate conduct (the bank just settled a legal dispute of $202 million for reselling knowingly shaky mortgages between 2007 and 2009) and deploring Sotheby's recent internal policies (the lock-out of its art handlers while making record profits and increasing its director's revenue from $2.4million in 2009 to $10.3 million in cash and benefits in 2011).

The world of art is a weird one that exists through the belief that certain "things" have magical-like forces over us. Often these magical qualities are explained by using intellectual concepts, discussing production prowess or expressing notions of aesthetics, while actually most of these "things with agencies" gain their aura through the tricky powers of financial markets. So for a museum to use its own existence to reveal the inner-workings of this weird cosmology - for instance museums may use artists because their sponsors need to sell things that may gain value if the museum uses this artist's work - was impressive, almost as impressive as good art. That excitement, however, lasted only until I learned the website was a hoax and experienced the Whitney biennial's overall blandness.

If that fake virtual press release was the most creative project to come out of the Biennial, I'm also excited to say that their hoax is part of a series of fake press releases and that their latest has just denounced the Whitney’s recent actual request for donations from blue-chip artists of work valued over $500,000.

More Post ArtFair Thoughts: Mateo Rivano and the Nature of Art

Mateo Rivano's agYU installation at Art Toronto

Since Art Toronto isn't a massive multi-fair enterprise it offers something Miami's forthcoming late november and early december events - including but not limited to SCOPE, Photo Miami, Pulse, Verge, DesignMiami, Art Basel Miami Beach - can't, and that's diversity under one roof. 

In Toronto there's a weird medley of anything that defines itself as art - emerging street artists, bucolic oil landscapes, neo pop collages from China, Muybridge collotypes, Damien Hirst hearts, abstract Canadian icons or newly hyped things.

Which comes to my favorite point: how are all these different things all considered art?

For example Mateo Rivano's installation at the Art Gallery of York University was my favorite booth. Collecting found frames or books from vintage stores, trash bins or the street, this Columbian artist then fills them with doodles, drawings and colors. Not limited by medium he also works with animation, installation, the street and sculpture. The way he talks about his work is neither highly conceptual or simple production. If I try to boil down with the simplest of reasoning why I like his images: they are pleasant funny narrations with an aesthetic I like. 

Now if I try to boil down with the simplest of reasoning my take on the "weird medley" mentioned in the second paragraph of this post it goes as such: the tacky landscapes with the unmissable touch of orange, pink or purple; the crappy Chinese photo collages of Western 'icons'; the simple and so important Muybridges; the overrated and flatly boring but highly lucrative butterflies by Hirst; the captivatingly abstract and poignant Ron Martins; and the somewhat too glittery new stuff by Kim Dorland.

But all of it is art. It was all shown at a fair, made with intention, possibly bought after a powerful interaction and packed with care.

After a Triennal Downtown and Biennale Midtown, a Dynasty in Paris: are young artist getting better or are institutions changing?

I went to the collaborative curatorial exhibition Dynasty by the Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d'art Modern in Paris earlier this month.

I was particularly interested in seeing, what feels like, yet another manifestation of an established art institution's lust for showing work by emerging new talents - some of whom, may or may not, be the next biggest thing and some of whom, may or may not, have anything but youth to convince you their presence in these shows is legit.

With the recent Whitney Biennale and the New Museum Triennal as American examples of this fashionable trend, I was wondering how the French version would compare, and, if, in my short review for Corduroy I clearly found the Parisian version of the concept better concocted, with my visit I also started to wonder how 'new' this thirst for young new art really was?

Obviously throughout art history young age never obstructed recognition or hype, and so clearly that isn't what is new here - there are dozens of examples of artists that were recognized, revered and admired before they hit thirty - by 27 (age of his death) Basquiat had amassed quite some fortune and been honored with numerous gallery retrospectives, by the age of 24 Picasso was selling to Leo and Gertrude Stein and throwing fancy diner parties in Montmartre, and by age 29 Michelangelo had a few exploits under his belt including two chef d'oeuvres La Pietá and David (respectively done at 24 and 29) and 4 years working for the at the Medici family (which he left at age 17).

So artists can be artists before they are older than Jesus for sure, yet has something changed in the way our institutions - these large, highly profiled centers - are portraying them? Portrayed more for their emergence and youth, as much as their art and craft? In 1953, the Guggenheim Museum held an exhibition entitled "Younger European Painters" on the then new and exciting expressionist movement, in which many were over 33 - like Pierre Soulages, 34 or William Scott, 40. Unlike Dynasty, though, it seems youth wasn't what brought these painters together but rather the unity of their aesthetic - and in a way accessorily a particularly young one at the time.

A second difference seems to be the role the institutions are starting to embrace. If Basquiat was world-renowned with gallery representation and enamored collectors by his death in 1988, it was only four years later that the first museum - the Whiteny - curated a solo exhibition of his work. Could it be, then, that today our large are institutions partake in and expose a 'selection process' that once was more hidden - with gallerists, critics, a bit of time and artistic self-doubt that led certain artists to become part of a certain canon and others not as much?

My short review on Dynasty: http://www.corduroymag.com/events/a-dynasty-in-paris/

(images: All taken at Dynasty - Upper: in the Musée d'art Modern de la Ville de Paris Imaginez Maintenant by Robin Meier and Ali Momeni; Lower: in the Palais de Tokyo, a work by Julien Dubuisson entitled Visite Exterieure d'une Grotte)