Theory NOWTheory NOWA discursive site about the relevance of art theory now. Articles
This Is Not PoMo
2008-07-06 18:09:00 It is somewhat surprising yet altogether enlightening that extensively negative critiques of postmodernism continue unabated at the present date. Certainly it goes without saying that our chronological time is ?postmodern? as we negotiate ?late modernist? trends in nearly everything cultural, anthropological, technological, philosophical and theological. Yet the critical appraisals of postmodernism, at least in art and culture, seem determined to assert a reactionary position in as much as they call for a ?return? to older traditions and definitions. What is not as clear but what I would like to address is that the anxiety provoked by postmodernism reveals a suppression of ?new? thought by these critics apparently founded by fear. It appears to be fear of the teleological nature of reflection itself. As the shock of advanced theories on the ?social order? and its cultural manifestations has proved unfathomable and threatening to these critics it has surely caused an irruptive t...
By Proxy
2008-06-18 14:47:00 My proposal for the Daily Constitutional Summer Issue No. 6 (BY PROXY) will consist of a single page document created specifically for the issue and presented as a contest for readers. The page ?site? would need to be either the interior of the front or rear cover (or the rear cover itself) as paper stock would need to be glossy finish for dry erase marker. My original text is represented in my ?bisected process? so that only 50% of the text will be legible. (Examples are here.) Accompanying information provided in the foreword to the BY PROXY issue would invite readers to ?decipher? the text by filling in the missing portion of my bisected sentences. The use of dry erase markers is encouraged to facilitate erasure and ?corrections.? The first reader to submit a complete and correct decoding of the original text transcription would be the ?winner? of a ?prize? that can be determined by the Daily Constitutional.* This magazine specific work continues my text-based and interacti... More About: Proxy
Sublime Pie
2008-06-13 08:01:00 My 101 Conceptual Art Ideas project has drawn protests suggesting that ?it is the fartherest(sic) thing from being a true artist? and furthermore that ?leaving food at different places all over Washington, D.C.? is not art. Time constraints will not permit me a precise examination of exactly what being a ?true artist? entails, but I am inclined to consider both the nature of ?street? or ?guerrilla? artworks and the usage of food in art. My consideration of these topics has at least as much to do with educating critics of my ?diary? project (as well as readers of this site) as it does to briefly engage the possibilities for postconceptual work. Understanding that one?s opinions on art, particularly concerning conceptual ?street? art, may be partly based on subjective points of view, I endeavor as always to expand the public?s grasp of difficult work through their education about contemporary art through theory and art historical precedence.First, why food?Food has played an import... More About: Sublime
SUMMER 2008
2008-06-08 18:45:00 My Art Anonymous donation was purchased and the collector found this when he opened it:?101 Conceptual Art Ideas is an on-going project whereby the Artist (Mark Cameron Boyd) posts ideas randomly on 101 Conceptual Art Ideas at his discretion. The owner of this ?diary? will receive email notifications when new ideas are posted on-line. These emails should be printed-out and pasted into the ?diary? in chronological order.? And I launched Channel MCB on YouTube to document performances, installations and archival footage.UPCOMING:Daily Constitutional Issue 6, ?By Proxy? and ?Song for Europe? at The Athenaeum in Alexandria, opening 8/16/2008 . More About: Summer
End of Art Theory (as if)
2008-05-13 18:17:00 Administrator?s Note: Andrej Ujhazy is a BFA major at Corcoran College of Art + Design. He sent me the following essay via email and I post it here with my reply. Dear Mark,I am opting to once again form my essay into that of an email. Looking beyond the novelty of it, I find it to be a more accurate form of communication for my intentions. The voice is unambiguously mine, and the audience is also quite specific. Quite simply, it's easier for me to write to you without the anxiety of implying any expertise that I am not sure I have achieved yet that I find to be implicit in a more academic essay--missing the point is more ok in an email. Or less embarrassing, maybe.I'm not in a panic, as I have my thoughts, and I know where I want to go with them. However, there is an unavoidable sense of urgency as well, a sense that inaction now will not be good. The situation I am finding myself in may perhaps serve as a metaphor of sorts for the circumstances of "post conceptual art":"It's g... More About: Theory
Anonymous Art
2008-05-07 05:20:00 Occasionally exhibition opportunities arise that I cannot pass up. It might be the chance to expose my work to new audiences, or perhaps a curatorial relevance to my art practice will catch my attention. That said, the Art Anonymous fundraiser is not only a good cause but offers me the possibility of expanding the idea of anonymity into a unique project.For their first Art Anonymous fundraiser, benefiting the Corcoran College of Art + Design?s BFA Scholarship Fund, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Friends of the Corcoran asked artists to donate postcard-sized works for sale. The anonymity twist - all work is signed on the back so the artist remains a mystery - entices potential buyers with hopes of securing a ?name? artist?s work for $100. As reported on-line by a local publication, I speculated that most artists would donate smaller versions of their usual work. This means savvy collectors might be able to spot the ?name artist? even without needing to see the name and ?walk aw...
Ms. Heartney's Riposte
2008-05-02 19:45:00 In her reply to my letter (published in Art in America), the art critic Eleanor Heartney wrote:?It?s interesting to be cast as a low-brow basher of the intelligentsia. Apparently to be serious, it is necessary to shoehorn one?s observations on art into a version of postmodernism that has been reduced to meaningless jargon by the acolytes of French poststructuralist theory. As for Mr. Boyd?s objections to my article ? my point is that, while the postmodern interpretation of Prince?s art cited by Mr. Boyd may be standard fare in academic circles, it doesn?t seem to be a very accurate description of what is actually going on in his work. Prince?s turn toward painterly styles suggests motivations that contradict the rhetoric usually surrounding his work. The Guggenheim installation further distanced the artist from this postmodernist critique, repackaging him as a viewer-and-collector-friendly student of modernist painting. It would appear that like the beauty celebrated in various...
Monkey Business: Curatorial Practice, Pt. 4
2008-04-21 22:25:00 A vague sense of disquiet came over me when I first learned of Zwirner & Wirth?s ?recreation? of an important mid-1960s exhibition by Dan Flavin. The 1964 Green Gallery Show was purportedly the first time Flavin exhibited fluorescent lights alone as art. Flavin?s seven pieces were installed at Richard Bellamy?s space and as originally conceived dealt with the ?formal and chromatic relationships that were engendered by his fluorescent light works when they were shown together.?(1) Thus, we are encouraged by the curators of this new ?recreation? to accept that Flavin was also first engaging the consideration of his sculptures as a whole to be perceived within an architectural site.This is heady discourse within the Minimalist canon and if we agree on the chronology then 1964 might very well be the beginning of site specific sculpture, i.e., sculpture created for a particular space. Further distinctions in site specific work later evolved into two explorations: assimilative work in... More About: Business , Monkey , Practice , Monkey Business
Postnarrative Structure
2008-04-10 19:50:00 Film has been wedded to narrative from its inception. The essence of film, a succession of still images in sequence, implies linearity and the progression of a narrative. The elements of film involve both duration (time spent) and perception. Our perceptions of the sequential images of individual frames of film transform it imperceptibly into a ?story? whether we recognize a ?plot? or simply observe a succession of abstract images.Stan Douglas expands the narrative structure of film through his use of repetition to create variance within sequential imagery and sound. His Overture (1986) is simplicity itself, with archival (yet far from pristine) 16mm footage of a railway trip through a mountainous landscape viewed from the locomotive?s perspective. Frequent tunnels interrupt the flow of imagery as the train enters the darkness within, eventually to emerge and continue wending its way down the tracks. Coupled with this black-and-white footage is a ?narrative voice-over? which s... More About: Structure
Lee Weng Chat
2008-04-05 23:16:00 Administrator?s Note: Singapore art critic Lee Weng Choy recently engaged in an on-line chat with my 'Postconceptualism' class about his essay, ?Authenticity, Reflexivity and Spectacle or, the Rise of New Asia is not the End of the World?. This is my edit of our text-only discussion (thanks to Brock Boyts for technical assistance and his iChat transcription) with two brief bracketed interruptions for clarification. I especially want to thank Weng for waking up at 5AM to talk with us.Weng: So, shall we start with a question?Corey Cochran: I am most interested in the idea of Singapore as an entity and its cultural philosophy about art history/history itself. The complication of the philosophies ?the best of the East and West? versus ?Asian essentialism? are of particular interest. Yet, ironically I feel the disconnection of these ideas is irrelevant in today?s times. I question the need for the separation of the two. In today?s modern art market and current trends, art institutio...
Prince of Thieves
2008-03-24 03:36:00 It is doubtful that Richard Prince even cares what critic Eleanor Heartney wrote about his Guggenheim Museum retrospective in her Art in America essay. The Prince brand is tried and true in the annals of postmodernist culture and one more fey dismissal of his output is easily deflected by the reams of text in various critical studies, analyses and dissertations devoted to his importance to contemporary art.That said, I write with the wary recognition that even though Prince is generally regarded as a ?Leviathan? in the blue-chip art market his motives are still misunderstood and misrepresented in major art world publications.As example, I cite Heartney?s approach to the Girlfriends series (appropriated photos from biker magazines purportedly sent in by the biker boyfriends) as an ?either/or? proposition that presents Prince as either sleazy shyster or POMO poster boy: ?In their revelation of the squalid side of biker culture, do they offer grist for meditations on the psychology o... More About: Roland Barthes
Black/White Talk
2008-03-19 21:29:00 Recently, I joined Dorothea Dietrich and Reuben Breslar in discussion about Reuben's "Black /White " show at The Athenaeum. We now have audio of our talk here. More About: Talk
Ornithology
2008-03-12 11:51:00 It was 53 years ago that Charlie Parker died (ostensibly from pneumonia but more than likely from years of alcohol and drug abuse) while famously watching television. Legend has it that at the moment he passed, a tremendous thunder-clap could be heard in the skies over New York City. Also legendarily, the doctor who attended to Bird?s lifeless body estimated his age to be between 50 and 60 years old. Parker was actually only 34 - he would have been 87 this year.What more can be said about Bird? The fluidity of his saxophone lines, the blisteringly fast solos, the pure inspiration he called on to challenge himself to increasingly complex improvisations, often on songs played many, many times before ? all part of the lore of bebop. Yet perhaps not enough has been said about his truly unique and gifted way of ?borrowing? from existing chord structures to create new tunes. Several songs that Parker wrote are ?based on? the chordal changes of other jazz or pop standards, like Bird?... More About: Ornithology
What You Do With It
2008-03-07 18:05:00 The vulnerability of the art object is once again an issue. Harking back to the halcyon days of the late ?60s and the ?dematerialization? of the object, a current concern in art practice is whether or not an object can be both design-oriented (like commodity-status furniture - see Citizen :Citizen - or lamps ? see Jorge Pardo - and therefore absolved of tough theoretical inquisitions) and still be ?fine art.? One postconceptual view of the object, with a history that is easily traceable back to Bernar Vent, Alison Knowles, Lawrence Weiner and Mel Bochner, is the idea that a condition of indeterminacy resides in and around the object as a ?site? and that validation of the object as ?art? comes from other extraneous contexts. Various artists and curatorial practices have surfaced that elicit questions of the latent ability of an art object to contain any value, including but not limited to ?use value? and ?exhibition value.? Akemi Maegawa?s work, particularly her Size Matters serie...
Sham or Success?
2008-03-03 15:46:00 ?The continued expansion of a globalized digital network is redefining the postconceptual period. It fosters an invasive, but loved stream of super-saturated stimulation that one must learn to live with. The sheer amount of options available to anyone, anytime, has stripped ideas and objects of any proprietary qualities they once may have had. This model suggests that the increased scale in which we interact with the world presents an ethical dilemma for artists. Applied to how one defines art, as either a 'sham or a success,' I suggest that the new form of digital existence has nullified this type of judgment all together . . . The overstimulation and assault to the psyche of an individual manifests on many levels. By default a person absorbs so much more information than in previous epochs. To provoke shock, stun, confuse, bewilder, or to make one think in the 21st century is increasingly difficult. The atmosphere of our ever expanding and increasingly skeptical community is f... More About: Success , Sham
Lines of Flight
2008-02-25 00:09:00 Entrance into Reuben Breslar’s Black/White paintings requires a deft eye and the ability to discriminate between tactile surface anomaly and various historic referents fueled by his easy manipulation of media imagery. It is a practice saturated in postmodernist critique (simulacra and the hyperreal, dualities vs. binaries) and manifested within the battleground of representation. That Breslar’s very surface skillfully considers an approximation of digital information (sand grain as pixel) only adds to the potency of the paintings.Breslar engages in his acts of “deconstruction and reconstruction where history is appropriated through the use of photocopied images of historical events” through a complicated four-step procedure: “I make 3D sculptures out of the Xeroxes that I then photograph and paint.”(1) Plato (speaking through Socrates) held that paintings are twice removed from the world of “Ideal Forms,” representing things which were themselves mimetic. We mig... More About: Lines , Flight
Feminist Video Art as Forerunner to Postmodernism
2008-02-14 18:05:00 Administrator's Note: The following essay by Diane Blackwell, current Corcoran College of Art + Design senior and former Theory Now student, focuses on the importance of postmodernist theory on feminist video. Diane?s meticulous research on this topic directs our attention to further discursive analyses by multiple sources, and her passion for feminist video as a unique and continuing movement in contemporary art is skillfully represented in her writing. With great pleasure, I post it here for readers of this site. ?. . . since around 1970, it has been feminist responses and approaches to visual images that have provided some of the strongest, most polemical, and most productive theories and critical strategies to come out of any of the disciplines or modes of analysis associated with visual culture.?(1)Amelia Jones in The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, 2003.Two events in the 1960s caused a dramatic change in the way art was formulated; one was cultural, the other was techn... More About: Video , Forerunner , Video Art , Feminist
Disembodiment Theory
2008-01-21 22:53:00 At the end of Charles Mingus's "Open Letter to Duke," the alto sax player Johnny Hodges blows an apparent homage to Charlie Parker with quotes from Bird 's collaborations with the Afro-Cuban band of Machito. When I first heard Mingus Ah Um as a young man I was unaware of Bird's work in Latin-flavored jazz. It was 30 years later as I explored the depths of Bird's recordings that I discovered the South of the Border album that he had made with the Machito orchestra.I use this anecdotal memory to introduce my topic and illustrate a point: the linear and temporal narrative of influences upon individual artists requires full critical research and interpretation in order to establish art historical precedence and the origins of innovation, art movements and stylistic significance. Without critical and historic analysis, artists and their artworks appear as nothing more than a random sequencing of seemingly unconnected expressions and moments in time. Additionally, the cultural con... More About: Theory , Embodiment
Prayer & Menace
2008-01-17 00:29:00 "The Buddhist wan zi is an ancient symbol that signifies prosperity and good fortune, yet its meaning was transformed through its usage as the swastika by the National Socialist German Worker's Party. As the meaning of a word relates to its context so my use of the wan zi in Meaning is in the system (2005) considers how the meaning of a symbol can change through its historical, cultural or political context."From an original writing by MCB; © Copyright 2005.On Avenida do Almirante Lacerda, oddly just east of the Canidrome dog-racing track, sits Lin Fung Temple. Inside an inner courtyard awash in incense and prayer, I found amazingly ornate furnishings including a sand-filled stand for incense offerings that featured prominent wan zi along its decorative upper border.As a prime example of the fluctuation of meaning through cultures and history, the wan zi is exemplary of the contextuality of symbols, how the significance of a sign can be diverted through use and cultural, pol... More About: Prayer
Oriental Vegas
2008-01-11 12:38:00 In 1925 there was a huge explosion and fire in Macau's main fireworks factory. Afterwards, the local officials decided to relocate future fireworks facilities to the south on the less-populated isle of Taipa. Until then, shipbuilding and fireworks were the main industries in Macau but that was before gambling entered the provincial Portuguese colony.Currently there are thirty casinos in Macau, including Steve Wynn's new monster and the MGM Grand, with twenty more planned. In a country that was returned to the People's Republic of China in 1999, capitalism rules supreme with gambling as its chambermaid. Mao would undoubtedly be stunned at the lavish spectacle that is present-day Macau, second only to Las Vegas in gambling revenue, that circulates $5 billion in capital yearly.[Look for a longer post on contemporary Asian art when I return to the USA.]Image: Bank of China (on left) and Stanley Ho's new Grand Lisboa towering over the older Lisboa Casino. More About: Oriental
'Tis the Season
2007-12-20 11:16:00 St. Patrick 's Cathedral crucifixes made in China by women under terrible conditions. St. Patrick's pulls crucifixes."Kehinde's 'Paintings' might as well be ink jet prints, or a pair of air jordans. They are made in China from images that he emails to the same website or "atelier" your grandma does when she wants last years christmas card translated into a "real official" oil painting. Sure believe the art in america[sic] from a few years ago that says he has assistants 'only paint the backgrounds, but he of course saves the figures for himself' if you want... But if you would just open your eyes for a second you would realize that he is just another oppurtunist, if anything worse since he attempts to present himself as genuine, which itself is funny since entire tomes could be written on how ironic it is that he employs the new sweatshop labor to expose the horrors oh[sic] the old...But there's one question none of you are capable of asking, why didn't he just do this in th... More About: Season
The Evil Twin Narrative
2007-12-06 23:26:00 A few weeks ago a young curator asked my opinion on how one determines artwork worthy of purchase. Although the context of our conversation concerned informed art collecting, I realized this week after re-reading Suzi Gablik?s ?Pluralism: The Tyranny of Freedom? that a ubiquitous subjectivity pervades both collecting and exhibiting art. My personal response to her question on the nature of collectable art is undoubtedly influenced by my own judgments of taste. However, and this thought was provoked by the Gablik essay, should art making (and art collecting) adhere to any art historical narrative? A progressive narrative of art is especially relevant to Modernism. One can trace a solidly theoretical and linear history, proceeding from Impressionism to Post-Impressionism, from Suprematism to Abstract Expressionism. Yet it is right around 1956 that the Modernist narrative appears to grind to a halt as Pop Art interrupts the grand narrative of art as a progressive development of t... More About: Evil , Twin
Neo Flux
2007-11-29 18:49:00 ?The formalist project in geometry is discredited. It no longer seems possible to explore form as form (in the shape of geometry), as it did to the Constructivists and Neo-Plasticists, nor to empty geometric form of its signifying function, as the Minimalists proposed. To some extent, the viability of these formalist ideas has simply atrophied with time. They have also been distorted and bent to conform to the bourgeois idealism of generations of academically-minded geometric classicists. But the crisis besetting geometric art for the last two decades can also be viewed as characteristic of the crises that have beset formalisms of all kinds in the postwar era: those that precipitated the transition from literary formalism to structuralism and from structuralism to the post-structuralist re-examinations that have taken place in the work of such figures as Barthes and Foucault . . . the crisis of geometry is a crisis of the signified. It no longer seems possible to accept geometric fo... More About: Flux
Mark Cameron Boyd at Galerie Ingrid Cooper
2007-11-20 16:08:00 Administrator's Note: John James Anderson, DC artist and lecturer on fine art and new media at American University, George Mason University and George Washington University has kindly granted permission to re-publish the following review: A little over a week ago I traveled up the Rockville Pike to see Mark Cameron Boyd 's recent exhibition at Galerie Ingrid Cooper . Seldom have I ventured north into Maryland to view an exhibition, and I became a bit dumbfounded to learn the gallery was in the White Flint Shopping Mall. This would be curious, at least.Art in a mall conjures up images of strange poster/prints replicating paintings derived from movie stills and promotional advertising for movies: stuff to hang in a dorm room. But, the idea of selling and purchasing art in a shopping mall makes perfect sense. There is a high volume of foot traffic; people are going there specifically to spend money; and there is no limit to that money to spend. Down the hall a visitor may spend severa... More About: Erie
Beware the Supplement
2007-11-15 16:48:00 Administrator's note: Due to pressing matters requiring urgent attention I am republishing this post from November 2006.Much of contemporary art needs the supplement of theory to be approached, yet often a particular critical reading of an artist is rendered inaccurate by its theoretical position. Singaporean essayist Lee Weng Choy questions the privileging of ?only one reading? of an artist?s work and suggests that it is the contradictions in artwork that ?make it possible to speak to the work critically in the first place.?(1) I propose that even contradictions within a misguided critique of an artist can open the possibility of a different reading under close scrutiny. If we are to expand the discourse on contemporary art theory, we must question previously held yet problematic beliefs, always at the ready to re-write art history with supplemental critiques based on more stringent or diverse critical perspectives, especially points of view that counteract accepted and publish... More About: Paul Mc , Carthy , Supplement , Beware
(In)Appropriate Behavior
2007-11-09 19:43:00 If the process of appropriation has its roots in history, its narrative here will begin with the readymade, which represents its first conceptualized manifestation, considered in relation to the history of art. When Duchamp exhibits a manufactured object (a bottle rack, a urinal, a snow shovel) as a work of the mind, he shifts the problematic of the ?creative process,? emphasizing the artist?s gaze brought to bear on an object instead of manual skill. He asserts that the act of choosing is enough to establish the artistic process, just as the act of fabricating, painting, or sculpting does: to give a new idea to an object is already production. Duchamp thereby completes the definition of the term creation: to create is to insert an object into a new scenario, to consider it a character in a narrative.(1)Thus, Nicolas Bourriaud joins the growing legions of critics who continue to solidify Duchamp?s impact on art, especially conceptual art, nearly 100 years after his first readymad... More About: Behavior , Prop
Dolls Without Nipples
2007-11-02 18:29:00 Unlike previous female ?body artists? (Carolee Schneemann, Ana Mendieta, Hannah Wilke), Vanessa Beecroft does not to use her own body in her art but prefers using other female bodies for her work. Since 1993, Beecroft has presented various self-initialed and numbered tableau as ?performances.? These notably involve nude or near-nude models and feature accessorized fashion. Furthermore, the models? ?actions? are controlled by Beecroft?s ?orders,? i.e., ?do not move; do not talk, do not interact with the audience.? There are a number of ways to begin a discussion of Beecroft?s work but the emphasized components of nude femininity coupled with fragmentary and fetisihized fashion might raise one particular question: do some female artists re-enforce male objectification of women?s bodies through their sexualized imagery?In many of Beecroft?s performances the models wear high-fashion clothing such as the Gucci bikinis in VB35. This was intensely juxtaposed with a few completely nake... More About: Nipples , Dolls , Doll
Re-Positionings
2007-10-25 16:03:00 Two recent art items signal an intriguing possibility of a ?re-positioning? by both artists and critics which may also portend a groundswell of reassessment in art discourse. A brief article on sculptor Doris Salcedo?s Shibboleth (in Tate Modern?s Turbine Hall through April 6, 2008) described an installation that ?begins as a hairline crack in the concrete floor of the building, then widens and deepens as it snakes across the room.? In attempting to clarify the ?mystery? of her 548 foot-long work, Salcedo denies the importance of her work?s process, preferring instead to stress her interpretation of it: ?What is important is the meaning of the piece. The making of it is not important.?(1)Which struck me as a rather broad dismissal of the process of artmaking and a disingenuous presumption by Salcedo concerning an artwork?s ?meaning.? Salcedo is also quoted as saying the crevice ?represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of ra... More About: Position
Chris's Burden
More articles from this author:2007-10-18 14:28:00 The threat of violence and destruction is latent in much of Chris Burden?s early performance art and helped cast him as Southern California?s ?bad boy? artist in the 1970s. Working out of his Venice studio, Chris had himself shot with a .22 rifle, nailed to a Volkswagen roof, fired a pistol at an airliner, tried to ?breathe? underwater, crossed two ?hot? electric wires at his chest (above) and assaulted a television journalist by holding a knife to her throat.(1) These are difficult performance art pieces that Burden was keen to present as ?sculptures.? They have a mythic presence in ?body art? yet he has grown reticent to talk about them as he aged, apparently seeking to distance himself from his destructive early work. His evolving sculptural process began to explore the physics of stress and energy (Samson and Big Wheel) with a whimsical fascination with the ?gee whiz? of science. Yet the legacy of Burden?s body art assured that the possibility of imminent and unpredictable ... 1, 2, 3, 4 |
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