Steve Slatin on tue 6 apr 04
I seem to get trounced pretty badly every time I get into the 'is it art' battle, but (showing just how foolish I am) I have a comment to make about Adelaide Paul, and others of her
school.
Art is constantly being redefined. Its purposes have been different, historically, than they are presently. Some of the historic purposes of art are not now necessary (like providing religious instruction to illiterate masses, or providing a likeness of the deceased in an era when there were no photographs), others are unpopular in some circles (like creating a sensation of dread, or a fear for ones own mortality).
Artists in our era are looking for new purposes to art. When public agencies decide to put a small percentage of the building cost of public buildings into art, artists adapt their own interests to accommodate the new funding mechanism. Daley plaza in Chicago is a fine example -- zoning called for open space, funding put money out there, and BOOM! There's the world's biggest Picasso. Filling the space became its own motive, just as covering the walls once was for those who sought the patronage of kings.
The commonality of literacy changed everything. Art changed, and extremely detailed paintings of outdoor scenes became commonplace. Photography changed everything. Art changed again, and 'literal' painting was replaced with impressionism. Impressionism burned itself out (after you've seen those Monets of the water lillies, and Renoir, what else can you aim for?) and different schools of art-think developed.
Artists searching for a role who studied older art found many examples of art that turned your stomach -- German alterpieces with real torture in the martyrdom of the saints, Breughel the Elder's detailed and profoundly disturbing fantasies of moral punishment, etc. Running away from the traditions of Renoir et. al. they decided to pursue the idea that art didn't have to be pastel, impressionistic, and pretty. They also saw that the moral education formerly included in pre-impressionistic art was no longer necessary. They began to create works of art that turned your stomach, (like the dissected sheep). For lack of anything else to teach, they taught the lesson "Here's something you've never thought before. Now think!"
And thus we got works-of-art-that-make-you-think. (Hereinafter to be referred to as the school of WOATMYT.)
Some of the artists of this school are very talented (though more appear to have little actual skill) in their media of choice. Some have vision that reaches out and really does touch you (though many do not). Some of the visions are stomach-turning, but nothing more. No biggie, there have always been more hacks than real, authentic, talents out there.
Adelaide Paul is someone who, in Victorian times, would have been described as "clever with her fingers." She can pursue a half a dozen different arts or crafts successfully in her lifetime, if she can but figure out how to make a living at it. She needs notoriety to be a financial success, though, and she is seeking that by doing "happenings" instead of demonstrations. Her 'happening' at NCECA was a huge success, I gather, at getting people talking about her (self-promotion, a la Warhol or Jeff Coons). And it made people think, whether there was actually something there to think about or not.
As a WOATMYT, its artistic success has to be evaluated on its own terms. Did it make you think? As a happening, it has to be evaluated by its success at the targets of happenings; self-promotion, publicity, and so forth. Did people talk about it? Did it arouse indignation, admiration, or both? I guess from everyone's responses that she succeeded by both standards.
The theory of the happening is that the artist creates the environment for something to happen, and something does, in which the audience need not be a passive viewer. Dumb happenings are easy to create (Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl was a great example, if possibly inadvertent). If my appraisal is correct, and Paul was doing a happening, it would have been entirely appropriate for others to take part. Any number of things could have been done, or said, to add to the event. I am reminded of a movie review of the first screening of a Yoko Ono movie, in which dozens, or possibly hundreds of women had their posteriors filmed, just standing there, one at a time, and the sound track was each woman talking about how she felt about having her bottom immortalized.
The movie was, according to all reports, dull beyond words, and you have to remember here that most of the reviewers were men, who normally would have found anything involving nudity immensely interesting. About a half hour into the first screening, it seems, a bored man jumped up from the audience, ran to the screen, and started to rub it where the then-current posterior was in view. It was the high point of the movie, and an authentic happening.
Personally, if I'd been there I'd have been tempted to join her on the stage and play a harmonica, or something. After all, crocheting is easy, but how many of you can integrate harmonica-playing into your art? Now *that's* something to think about!
We should not condemn Paul for her demo. Her piece with a ceramic (or rubber) plucked duck (or chicken) with a water pipe coming out of its mouth must be some kind of anti-carnivore statement, and you can get that much out of it without having anything explained to you, though I always think of rubber-chicken jokes myself. We should learn from it, and (if we wish to be known as artists) emulate her. After all, we speak highly of a certain talented ceramicist who wanders through public places wearing robes and followed by his young, gushing, female acolytes. (No. And I don't know why you think I'm speaking of *him.*) She's mastered the P.T. Barnum part of art, and we should thank her for that, if nothing else.
-- Steve Slatin
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