To make something already is a problem.
For, Tom and Cassandra contend, we should be past the myth of "the creative genius," past the myth of the artist as visionary, past the myth of the individual. An identity is the sum of a thousand biased and meaningless parts, from birth certificates to high school diplomas, from awards and prizes to testimonials and flattering photographs. You are your context.
Either that's the simplistic message of the show, or that's my simplistic reading of it.
I enjoyed Tom and Cassandra's show, and the first few times I walked through it I thought it was hilarious. But I don't think I agree with its central premise, if I'm reading it right. How useful and how true is it that you are your context? That idea has been around, and it comes around again now, asserting that the role of the artist is as curator, as collector, as archivist.
To make a mark on a canvas suddenly seems to betray your naïve subservience to the myth of your individuality.
Henry
1 comment:
With a bookshelf as well-stocked as Tom and Cassandra's I, too, feel naïve to have seen the same 'simplistic' reading of this show and I take the role of simpleton, questioning my understanding of the content, because I could swear that the very words used above to describe it were written or spoken in the show; I’m immediately suspicious of the mechanics of something that I think is explaining itself directly to me.
I suppose that it is small-minded of me to react negatively to work that interrogates me (as you can see that it is doing) instead of vice versa, but I don't find the answers I'm giving the work in reply to be very surprising and I feel as if I'm repeating words fed to me by the artists.
(This is not to mention my displeasure and unwillingness to accept sets of parameters applied to my life that the collected ephemeral indices of it bear witness to.)
The biggest questions for me are where this leaves the artists, why they would want to be there and where they can go from there. In the show (maybe because I’m trying to be an artist, myself) I felt trapped with the artists in an insoluble maze of self-reflexivity. The show is funny because they’re consummately attacking a myth (of genius) in the public imagination and (apparently) completely upholding it at the same time. I can even understand why they would want to be there: a question without an answer is unquestionable. It is, in some ways, very safe to be in this position (it is impossible to honestly tell what they think of the information or ideas that they're presenting), but only time will tell if it is a generative position for them to be in.
I wonder if the position can ever be escaped or if the Thomas Hirschhorns of the world will continue rephrasing their ameliorations without improvement and the Paul Chans will continue crossing out their 'lights' long after they’ve darkened the rooms they’re installed in.
At the same time, though, the need in art to make a tabula raza of the cluttered mess you’ve been given and begin again also has a long history to it. Erasing a De Kooning was the best thing that ever happened to Robert Rauschenberg and so too, do I suspect, will Cassandra and Tom become legends by laughing at (and with) the legendary.
joshua
http://www.joshuacaleb.tk
Post a Comment