danielflahiff_journal

Weltanschauung: The Wind in the Trees

The Weltanschauung, Ignatius J. Reiley spoke of, if you haven't already guessed or if you've forgotten your high school German, is a kind of personal world view. Yesterday I had a confirmation of sorts of my current weltanschauung. I'd picked up a translation of Montaigne's 'Essays', and flipping through the collection literally 'at random', I read this passage from "Of idleness":

"Lately when I retired to my home, determined so far as possible to bother about nothing except spending the little life I have left in rest and seclusion, it seemed to me I could do my mind no greater favor than to let it entertain itself in full idleness and stay and settle in itself, which I hoped it might do more easily now, having become weightier and riper with time. But I find-

Ever idle hours breed wandering thoughts
                                                                --Lucan

"--that, on the contrary, like a runaway horse, it gives itself a hundred times more trouble than it took for others, and gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monsters, one after another, without order or purpose, that in order to contemplate their ineptitude and strangeness at my pleasure, I have begun to put them in writing, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself."

And the moment for me took on the aspect of revelation. I shit you not. The experience of, 'seeing as in a mirror, dimly' my own reflection, reminded me of one of the things that first attracted me to art and literature; a process of discovery, of learning to be human.

Montaigne wrote this passage in the late 16th Century and it is just as relevant today as ever. Not in the term 'idleness' per se, but more specifically, in the false industry of instant information availability.  For example, do something like Google your name--'chimeras and fantastic monsters' indeed!

This is not the idleness artists need. What we need, what I need, is to be still; to listen to the wind in the trees. Godard said we need more films with wind in the trees. I trust Godard. I've got to go back into my DVDs and find the scene. Was it "Helas Pour Moi" or something much earlier?

Here's one from YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwrLmtlo1e0

A Dog's Guide to the Olympic Sculpture Garden

On a bright, cold Sunday afternoon, the opening weekend of the Seattle Art Museum's new Olympic Sculpture Garden, my dog Parker took me for a walk among the grand, shiny and brand new additions to Seattle's waterfront. Parker is an eleven-week-old, yellow-labrador mix--a puppy really--still not fully in control of her bladder, but she is surprisingly conversant in the area of contemporary art. What follows are exerpts from my interview with her:

DANIEL Rumor has it that you actually liked the Olympic Sculpture Garden (OSG) contrary to some of the comments you've made recently.

PARKER What comments? Who's been talking? Was it the cat? You can't trust cats, you know.

DANIEL Did you not say that the OSG was a missed opportunity for Seattle, and that choosing second-rate work by internationally known artists was just a timid attempt by SAM and her patrons to get taken seriously in the international art community?

PARKER I didn't say any such thing. What I said was, choosing to include Richard Serra's "Wake" was about as daring as an outing to a Medina dog-park; it may have seemed like a nice idea at first, but when confronted with the reality, the well-behaved blandness of it all was a dissapointment.

DANIEL Can you explain?

PARKER Sure. And let me be clear, Serra's work is not the only culprit in this debacle, but he is arguably the most well known artist of the bunch and provides a convenient jumping-off point. For instance, let's do a run-down of the work in the garden; Kelly's "Curve XXIV" an immitation of his 1970s work: Caro's "Riviera" 1974; Pepper's "Perre's Ventaglio III", 1967; Nevelson's "Sky Landscape I" 1983; di Suvero's "Bunyon's Chess", 1965; Calder's "Eagle" 1971; Smith's "Stinger" 1968 ('99) and "Wandering Rocks" 1967. See the pattern?

DANIEL You've just listed an internationally known roster of talented, brilliant and influential artists.

PARKER Right. But it is also a list of artwork--8 out of the total of 16 sculptures on view at the OSG--that were made over 30 years ago. 30 years! It is also a list of sculpture that has been easily digested, is equivalent to decoration, and appears to have come out of storage [aren't they mostly Virginia Wright's? or are they the Shirley's?] only to be plopped down in the middle of a lawn.

DANIEL In all fairness, Nevelson's piece is just over 20 years old, and frankly, I find your lack of gratitude offensive...

PARKER You're missing the point. Here we have an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the history of art, or at the very least 'art in public places', or less heroically, to the unique character of the city of Seattle, and what have we done? We have simply imitated hundreds of other cities in this country, made a list of well-known artists and/or took any and all donations we were given by the old-guard, art patrons of Seattle, and plopped them down in the middle of some million-dollar real estate on the waterfront.

DANIEL But as you must know by now, the reaction to the Garden has been overwhelmingly positive. The paths are crowded even on weekdays, and the Garden is getting rave reviews from all across the nation.

PARKER And Mussolini was a hero to the majority of Italians in the 40s...

DANIEL That's not entirely true, nor is it a fair comparison. It is ridiculous.

PARKER I'm hungry.

DANIEL You're not tracking, Parker.

PARKER No, but consider for a moment even the most contemporary work on view here--aside from the Serra piece. Roy McMakin's "Love & Loss" 2005, appears to be an advertisement for his design firm, and Teresita Fernández "Cloud Cover" 2004-6, looks as though a group of b-tier, mall architects had a little money left over after construction and asked themselves, "Hmm. What would spice up an outdoor hallway in Seattle? I know! Colorful clouds!"

DANIEL Fernandez received a MacArthur "genius" award!

PARKER Did you bring any treats? I'm really starving.

DANIEL So then I take it my information was wrong. You do not like the OSG after all.

PARKER Actually, quite the contrary. I do like the garden. But just the garden, not the sculpture.

DANIEL What do you mean?

PARKER Just stop for a moment and look at the space! This is an urban dog's dream; grass--fresh cut grass--and wide open spaces. WEISS / MANFREDI Architecture did an outstanding job creating a park from this waterfront wasteland. The dreamy zig-zag path, the seamless bridge over Western, the integration with the beach and all those STICKS!--oh, and did I mention the views? Just fabulous. And now that they've seasoned this feast-for-the-eyes with a little art, I've mapped out my rest-stop routes to most of the smaller sculptures, and found the ideal corners on which to leave my mark.

DANIEL Very nice.

PARKER Actually, there is one sculpture I like. No, love!

DANIEL Let me guess; Roxy Paine's "Split".

PARKER What's not to love? A 50 foot stainless steel tree! This piece should have been placed on the crest of the hill where Calder's "Eagle" sits. It could have been iconic, emblematic, a picture-postcard installation symbolizing the bright, technological future of Seattle, not to mention art in the landscape. The piece is so simple even a dog could get it.

DANIEL So would you consider the Olympic Sculpture Garden a success or a failure?

PARKER I'm not able to make sweeping generalizations like that. I'm a dog. A hungry dog. What I can say is that regardless of what I think about the art, the politics, and the 'future of art in Seattle', I will still use the space on a regular basis. And like most of the dogs in this city, after the initial fracas is forgotten and all that is left is a park with some structures to climb, tag, or piddle on, I too will say to my best doggie pals, I kinda like this place after all, don't you?

Now please give me something to eat before I piddle...

   

Michael Darling's Seattle and Is Provincial a Bad Word? @ The New Museum

Hot coffee, warm slippers, frost on the grass outside. Surfing blog posts while still half-asleep, I arrived this morning at Regina Hackett's great post on Michael Darling, the new curator of contemporary art at the Seattle Art Musem, and two of his recent purchaces; Whiting Tennis' "Bovine."  and Pedro Reyes' "Evolving City Wall Mural"

The choices have Ms. Hackett "concerned":

"I'm in the raised eyebrows camp, among those who are not cheering. I doubt Corrin (Darling's predescessor) would have chosen this sculpture (Bovine) for SAM, not because it's challenging, but because it isn't. It reeks of frontier nostalgia and trades in wild West stereotypes. It's shabby chic without the chic...

"Bovine" is one thing, but isn't Darling responsible for Pedro Reyes' "Evolving City Wall Mural" in the park's pavilion? Reyes sees it as a tribute to Mexican muralists early in the 20th century, but it lacks their passion, politics and point.

It's not fair to judge Darling on a few early choices, but I'll admit to being concerned. Another thing: He's nice, and nice curators finish last at SAM.

My immediate reaction was to post this:

"The "Bovine" choice should not come as a surprise. Remember Darling's comment to Jen Graves in April:

"...there are artists who have Seattle roots but have not been shown there much, like Matthew Day Jackson, who now lives in New York but was in Seattle, and still has that Seattle ethos. He has a piece [a life-size covered hay cart draped with state flags called Chariot (The day after the end of days)] in the Whitney Biennial..."

And in describing the "Seattle ethos", Darling says,

"Well, he is politically progressive, I think he would consider himself a feminist, and he has an ecological sensibility, an awareness of the land. He's down-to-earth, not pretentious, not New York..."

And while it may be true that "Bovine", "...trades in wild West stereotypes. It's shabby chic without the chic."--an opinion I tend to agree with--contemporary art in Seattle does not [and in my opinion, should not] look like a carbon copy of Los Angeles, New York or anywhere else. Let's see what Darling can come up with out here in the wild West. If the fantastic "Superflat" is any indication, his vision will be anything but another attempt to look like everything in the Contemporary Art Rags...

"Art Rags"?! The same publications I read, looking for former classmates to envy (as I chose to work primarily in commercial art for most of the last decade to pay off outrageous art school debts, rather than slog away in the Echo Park trenches. But we've been over this...)

Okay, I confess; I was feeling a little defensive. Having recently relocated BACK to Seattle after ten years in Los Angeles, I am still doing my own re-evaluation of what  location can and/or should mean in my work, particularly as I am now re-animating my own art (Art) practice from outside the "center" as it were.

The question, really, is one of provincialism--or more politely, regionalism. Ms. Hackett's concern is quite the opposite of what one might expect. Rathern than fearing that Darling might foist an LA-centric agenda upon this fair city, Hackett seems to fear the opposite; that Darling might be planning a hopelessly irrelevant provincial agenda for SAM. That once again, a major opportunity to put Seattle "on the map" might be squandered. But maybe I'm projecting. Let me explain...

The New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC recently presented a panel discussion titled, "Location, location, location or Is Provincialism a Bad Word?"

Some obvious insights:

1. Saskia Bos, Dutch curator and Dean of the School of Art at The Cooper Union for the last 15 years:

--"if you don't ever leave New York City you run the risk of becoming provincial."

--being "outside" is a choice due to modern transportation and communications

--"outside" is not determined by location

     2. Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic for The New York Times:

--provincialism "is not an issue in this country, except for New Yorkers...who still believe in the idea of a cultural center or magnet."

--quoted Rem Koolhaas from '96, "New York is dead. This is the right time to go."

Easy things for people who live in NYC to say. Kind of like the rich saying that money does not matter.

Some observations however, were not so obvious:

     3. Roger Buergel, curator and Artistic Director of Documenta 12:

--"we must get rid of exhibition formats which are inadequate to what we are now seeing."

--"the notion of the place of the subject has become central again."

--"to extend the notion of  exhibition also to the display of subjectivity in every day mediality..."

--"fragmentation is no solution."

--"give them what they really need...what they really need is never what they want."

So, not every insight was on-topic. But the gist of the argument was, hey, it's okay if you don't live in NYC or LA or Berlin because the top curators are looking for diversity, not watered-down ARTFORUM clones, but a new way to open up ideas around "looking", "subjectivity", and "the exhibition".

Isn't this just what everyone outside the "center" wants to hear?

I would love to be able to accept the "centerless" idea at face value because then I would not have to listen to the part of me that thinks that moving AWAY from the "center" --as I recently did (away from the people, publications, parties, museums, galleries) when you are trying to establish your art career is professional suicide.

So why did I move? (Excuse the indulgence) The answer is simple; emotionally and physically I function much better outside the "center", I have small children that I want to raise in a house with a lawn, something I cannot affort in the "center", and philosophically I DO believe that we are moving toward a "centerless" system. I am one of the one's who could not work in the din of the city and the art-world action/party/scene. We have only been here in Seattle seventeen months and already I am much more productive and my work is far better, if I do say so myself. Maybe I can even get off the meds.

Getting back to the Hackett post, I suggest we give Darling the benefit of the doubt and assume he is a supporter of the "centerless" ideal. I trust he will try to bridge that gap between local idealogy/iconography and the broader, global language and history of art.

The challenge is no small task. It is rather like having the vision of Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith who, in 1929 chose to publish a fourth novel by a thirty-two-year-old failed poet about the slow decline of a once prominent southern family. A story which had all the elements of the cliched southern tale. Cape and Smith saw something else:

"When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."

from The Sound and the Fury , W. Faulkner