The Case for Anonymity

As much as it's not supposed to be beneficial to the work when one relinquishes all power of presenting it to the institution it's being presented in, I think that this (the presentation of a piece in a gallery for immediate sale or in a museum for view) is the only occasion when employing labels and binders can consistently work.

 

When I think about labels, my first thought is of 'Entropy,' the sixth floor show a month or two ago of work by Esteban Cabeza De Baca and some SVA alums. It is true that the amateurish way they executed the production of those labels contributed to how genuinely awful the whole experience was, but it's also true that the labels' basic functionality worked against the paintings on view: though they (in some ways) acted to protect Esteban in that they separated his work from the others' predominately inferior work, they also revealed the immaturity of a bunch of young art students not yet in possession of the responsibility necessary to title a piece of art. The titles given to the pieces and listed on labels next to them made the worst of the work very literally even worse than it had to be and I think that something very similar would happen in any other student show, even if the labels are made more professionally (I should mention Sonia Finley's excellent museum-quality labels in the basement of the Integrated Curriculum show as a contrary exemplary instance of label-making). I just don't think that we, as developing artists, are yet applying titles to things that deserve or can withstand the scrutiny a labeling system brings.

 

When a piece is put into a gallery it is put there because it is expected to sell and it is expected to sell (one would hope) because there is something about it that it is worth being bought for beyond it's allegiance to a market trend; that there is a reason one would want the work. When a piece is put into a museum it is put there because (one would hope) it is worthy of being preserved in antiquity for future generations to see; that there is a strong reason one would want the piece to be available for viewing past its current age. In both institutional instances there is a sense of unimpeachability that attends the work on display: it is work from artists who have arrived and are now making work strong enough to withstand or benefit from a title, even if that title is simply 'Untitled 1'.