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:
- 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
