Collectives: radical rehash?
Interesting article by Holland Cotter (like him or lump him, he tends to raise good questions - except around Islamic art; at CAA, I sat in a panel that lambasted him for his perpetuation of stereotypes, but I digress....)
The Collective Conscious - New York Times
Still - I think he dropped the ball on this one.
I like the idea of these artist's collectives operating under fictional names of artists and dealers; creating false media projects to comment on the infiltration of propaganda into the realm of popular culture (like a trailer and movie publicity posters for a fictional film starring Penelope Cruz and Ewan McGregor); or using biotechnology experiments to raise awareness about genetic engineering and organic food production. Call it "activist art" or as one group (titled: 0100101110101101.ORG) call it, "media actionism" - the result is I think a fascinating rethinking of 1970s performance and action art with a 21st -century twist. But the concern with breaking away from the commodification of art, and the artist-as-celebrity which were major issues for artists in the 70s, still remain and this history should be acknowledged.
Now when I discuss performance art in a classroom, I always talk about the way in which the fantastic Japanese Gutai movement has been so marginalized in the art history annals. We revisit their work and ultimately determine that our *now wiser* and enlightened global view helps to situate these artists in a more elevated position vis a vis western performance art.
But this last statement is obviously naive - because this whole article is about American artists - as if this phenomenon a. does not have a history in global performance art and b. emerges only from the US.
I can't believe, for instance, that he didn't even mention the Raqs Media Collective based in Delhi whose work has received "international" recognition at two Venice Biennials and is now included on the Peace Tower at the current Whitney Biennial. At Venice in 2003, they were the sole representation of India. Not too mention numerous other shows around the world combining installation, video, textual analysis, photography, and fiction, mapping urban physical and psychological spaces. [see one video still above from Building Sight: Curatorial Project for On Difference #2]
If we truly have moved away from dismissively marginalizing non-western artists, then why comment on a "new" artistic phenomenon without at least acknowledging that the work of artists in our own backyard is in constant dialogue with the work of artists elsewhere in the world?
The idea of the artistic collective is neither new nor "American" - until western critics learn to break out this centric approach to contemporary art (beyond tokenism), we're doomed to repeat the art historical mistakes of the past.
posted by Moksha @ 10:41 AM
2 Comments:
Thanks for the link to this article and your thoughts. What's interesting to me is that really the article isn't just about American artists--there are Italians, he mentions (off hand) artists from Benin, other artists who work in both Berlin and New York.
It's not that they aren't "international" it's just that one end of that "inter" must, by definition, be--not america, but--New York.
Perhaps this is because he's writing for that extremely parochial local newspaper. So we could forgive him his myopia. or not.
this I think is the root of this problem. there's a certain token internationalist flavor in his article that still eschews anything that isn't mainstream and establishment enough to be in Manhattan itself.
Like his counterpart, Thomas McEvilley, who often does write about India, although from a very western-centered perspective still, Cotter raises very interesting questions. But it does feel insulting to have these critics "dabble" in the non-west rather than taking art from outside New York seriously.
Perhaps as an art historian studying the contemporary/modern art of India on its own terms, I get frustrated with the double standard: I must know every minor detail of every fringe artist ever to set up a studio in Chelsea, but they seem to be able to overlook mass movements in Asia, from groups like the Raqs Media collective to major schools like Gutai. And we should pat them on the back for knowing about folks like Murakami and Xu Bing. I imagine it's even more frustrating as an artist.
I definitely agree with your comments re the NY centricity of the contemporary art world. Even in this article, the mentions about artists who work outside of the States is tokenist - none of the work Cotter discusses takes its context outside of NY. Or maybe it does and he just doesn't see it.
What really irks me is the sense of 'origin' that tends to occur in these types of articles that highlight new trends, concerns, techniques, etc in cont. art.
By ignoring other places (in the US as well as the world), we have the false impression that all of these artists act within a vacuum.
And in the months or years to come, once the non-NY work is "discovered" it is inevitably downgraded as derivative.
That's not only an unfair perspective of contemporary art, it's one that is often reified by art history.
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