Complete Criticallity

Thanks to a heads up from an artist friend (JT), I just finished watching Robert Hughes’ 2009 documentary for the BBC, The Mona Lisa Curse. I enjoyed it on many levels, first of which was to find Mr. Hughes still in the land of the living and very much the sardonic curmudgeon. This extended video rant can be found on Youtube.com in twelve pieces, making it about an hour and a half long. The transplanted Australian critic displays his hot knife through butter dissections of contemporary art but in this work he turns it on the business of art, particularly in the way commodification has overtaken the main objective of fine art mirroring Wall Street’s carnivorous merger and acquisition mantra from the 80s up through today.

Hughes marks the Mona Lisa’s trip to the Metropolitan Museum in 1963 as the point when art shifted from a cathartic exchange of philosophy device to a mere commercial product with great investment potential. Leave it to crass post-colonialists to corrupt the purity of individual expression. The folk who stood in line to glimpse Leonardo’s spectacle did so on their own terms, most armed only with the knowledge that this was an important painting without any extra information. It was an experience similar to the nascent television offerings of the day. Americans are notorious for ignoring precedents as well as skipping historical lessons. What more was needed to be known considering Nat Cole sang about the painting ten years earlier. The U.S. in 1963 was still flexing its post war muscles while basking in the glow of a healthy atomic economy. Anything needed could be manufactured or simply purchased and shipped over. The mentality of the time allowed for quick fulfillments to any lack. At the time, the country was even producing its own modern art, eclipsing the need for old, musty European versions.

The Critic bemoans the rise of monetary value over emotional content in art and commiserates with the artist Jim Rosenquist over today’s sad state of affairs. The importance of Sotheby’s 1973 auction of the Scull collection is pointed out and images from a documentary of the event are screened which shows Robert Rauschenberg going up to Robert Scull after the event and administering a stern admonishment. Scull responds by stating that the fortuitous hammer prices will benefit the artists, as well. Warhol’s factory production and diminishing standards of quality are noted, as is the obsessive collecting of Andy by a Saudi mega-billionaire and his son. Damien Hirst is Hughes’ ultimate whipping boy for the exorbitant price tags and insipid lack of traditional artistry.

I found The Mona Lisa Curse to be entertaining for its quick and informative pacing but found that acid analysis on Hughes’ part to be most reassuring. At the close of the documentary, I was filled with the urge to tell Mr. Hughes, “Well, what did you expect?” The critic shares some of the blame for today’s speculation in the art market. His book and film, both with the same name, The Shock of the New (1981), displayed the progression of modern art from the mid-1800s through the 1980s. The film series based on the book is more telling as it begins at a pedestrian pace, gaining momentum as it covers all the ‘isms of modernism until it becomes a near stroboscopic blur of contemporaryness. The directorial structure of the documentary presages the shift in the control of cultural power from salons to artists to patrons to museums to collectors to multinational financial corporations.

Hughes truly shows his years when he dismisses Damien Hirst and his formaldehyde-swigging ilk based upon the lack of artisanal skill and inability to insert significant pedagogical content. Hirst, Koons, Prince and their brethren function in an ether created by a post-postmodern economy. An economy not simply based on production and consumption, or even supply and demand. Production of art is secondary to producing an aura around art. Reality TV is a phantasmal echo of the conniving and manipulation of Art. The art of this latest generation lies not within the brush, or even in the hand that wields it. It resides in the mindset that can create a commotion about an object, roil the waters of adorers and imbue it with a scent of theatrics. Oh, and within this cloud of popular lust there is a kernel of an object, complete with title and date, dripping in sarcasm, vacuum sealed within a prophylactic shield of systemic endorsement.

Today’s museums lament their current inability to compete with investment-minded collectors, but their historical existence is less than that of Modernism. The Patron has been the unseen hand that has guided, and continues to guide, the creation, collection and display of art. The Artist has been the indentured object maker far longer than the autonomous creative force of most of the 20^th century. The social services remain the same; it’s the pimp that changes over the ages. Rauschenberg, Rosenquist and Lichtenstein may have missed out on the money train in the beginning, but ultimately Robert Scull was right, crass as he may have been in saying so, the artists did benefit. The pop artists did it by controlling production. They limited their exposure through galleries and they began to keep part of their own art. This type of homemade retirement plan presented the following generations of artists a business plan on which to build. Self promotion as spectacle, popular culture reified as invested content combined with modern manufacturing created an opportunity for the modern day P.T. Barnum.

After all is aid and done, The Mona Lisa Curse lays out a depressing representation of art and the business of art in today’s landscape. But this inflated art bubble will burst and this economic event will occur for several congruent reasons. Art purchased for reasons devoid of aesthetics is indistinguishable from any other portfolio asset. The piece is tethered to the ebb and flow of monetary economies. Content is inconsequential. If the market that includes art investment fails, all the inclusory contents are absorbed by creditors. If the creditors end up with confiscated art, how will they be rated in order to classify them for liquidation? Judgments may have to be made on such crazy notions as quality of construction, artist skill or even socially significant content.

ELAPSED MEMORIES

This week, I went back to the place that ultimately corrupted my career path, Cal State University of Long Beach. I went there intending to learn how to paint expressively, as that was the end-all of artistic endeavor at the time. As a new student, I could not get into the painting studio classes so, in light of having taken one intro printmaking class at community college, I planned to bide my time with a few more similar courses until I was eligible to unleash my sardonic brush onto the painting world.

The printmaking department proved to be more inspiring, while proving to be constantly challenging, than the painting faction. It certainly did have an us against them atmosphere with the painters in a desperate battle to keep the Neo-Abstract Expressionism flag from falling under the dust of the unseen upstart Post-Modernists looming just beyond the horizon. The printers suffered from no such conservative constraints, we had free reign to try new things as soon as the basic processes were mastered.

Dick Swift was the first instructor I had. He was a pioneer in contemporary printmaking, primarily etching, and he wasn't about to let you ignore that point. His continental methods contrasted greatly with Cynthia Osborne. She was the one that drove me to try new things, and I would often try something ridiculously stupid, if only to prove that it was possible although usually useless in the end.

These photos mark the first time I've been back in about ten years. Since then, the department moved to a building next to the old studio, taking up the entire bottom floor.

This is a long shot of the litho room, taken from the silkscreen end (silkscreen is nearly always shunted off to one side).

The screen table in the foreground arrived while I was there and I helped to assemble it, the one-arm assembly and counterweights are currently rusting outside in the courtyard.

These are the two large litho presses. The tympans hang on a neat system on the wall between them. I used the Griffin press mostly, the Takach (Garfield) arrived the last year I was there but I used it enough to learn to buy one of my own later on.

This is a one hundred year old Fuchs and Lang cast iron press. This baby had a notorious bed wobble as it traversed under pressure. It would get progressively bad as it neared the end of its travel. The shop was open 24 hours back then (it still is today) and one night, with a critique the next day, the studio was packed with students all through the night. One girl was using this press trying to squeeze out some images for the crit and was working as fast as she could in the wee hours. The longest vertical bar in the picture above is pulled down to set the pressure on the litho stone. Well, with all the rushing and considering the nasty wobble the press bed had, the pressure bar (also known as the Devil's Tail in olden print times) snapped up and cracked this girl on her temple. Never had a full studio been so quiet. I regret that I can't remember names, but the girl was laid out cold and we thought she bought the farm at first. After a trip to the hospital, she turned out to be OK, plus she got a pass on that crit.

The old graining sink made the transition but I don't recognize the solvent cabinet.

These are the same instructions for graining stones from 27 years ago!

These plates are from the second lesson in Dick Swift's etching class. Twenty four small zinc plates (2" x 3"), each with a different technique. Two, perfectly matched prints, pulled from each plate were turned in inside a little manila folder. Nearly half the class would drop the course when this assignment was presented.

He was very serious about etching.

This was the best etching press in the studio. We also had a Laguna and a Brand press, but this little English beauty was the best suited for the sizes we worked on. Once you got the big wheel going, the inertia would carry the bed through its length, as if it was motorized. A little contact on the outer edge of the wheel and it would slow it down pretty as you please. On night, Rock (that was his studio nickname, he was a merchant marine) bet us that he could stand inside the wheel and make a complete revolution. The group that was there urged him to not try it, but... He spun until his head was pointing down at 4:00 o'clock when he did a headfirst Superman dive onto the concrete. I have been very fortunate to never hear such a sickening thud ever again. Rock rose from the floor, grabbing his head, while we were about to try to find some help (no cellphones back then) he kept insisting that he was OK and damned if he wasn't. We never let him live that down and I don't believe anyone from the school ever suspected anything.

This is an old Leach press (made in LA) from the 50's. The roller assembly and furniture was gone when I was there. I used it only once and that was enough. The poor thing is little better than a boat anchor.

These rollers were there when I was. I sure hope they have some real ones stored somewhere.

This is the current etching hotplate. We had a huge restaurant hotplate that we would clean up and use to have potluck cookouts. these were done late at night or early for breakfast or we would have starving art students pouring in. I hear they still carry on the communal cookout tradition, but with barbecues in the courtyard.

Speaking of courtyard, this shot shows the entrance to the Litho/Silkscreen studio. But what could that be under the little table?

Why, it's me! They currently number the stones in the studio (how common!) but way back when, Cynthia would name them all. I was lucky enough to earn a stone because...

I grained and backed piles of them when I was there! The printmaking department received a couple gifts of stones, some from Gemini GEL. We hauled them to the school in a convoy. One grad student used his little Toyota Hilux truck and the weight of the stones forced a monkey grip plug (look it up!) to pop out of a tire. The truck was so heavy, we had to unload it on the highway so it could be jacked up to change it. There were stacks of stones piled in the old courtyard. After prepping some of them, it was possible for anyone taking litho at that time to have a stone large enough to print a full sheet (22 x 30 or 30 x 40) that semester.

I was happy to see the new facilities but I could not help but to seek out the old bits and pieces surviving from my days there. The few students that were there while I was poking around are as avid and dedicated as the bunch I remember. The community of printmaking trumps the lone gunslinger of painting, in my opinion. Discoveries are shared, events are group projects and tradition is wedded to innovation under printmaking.

The experience of learning how to make art through printmaking at Long Beach has set the tone for my career. The connections I made then have certainly helped and I can't imagine having to limit myself to a single medium as a form of expression.