H2TaA has moved to Hyperallergic.com
How to Talk about Art (H2TaA ) has been The Art Machine’s slowly growing manual for those who wish to master artspeak as practiced by art critics, art educators, galleries, dealers, copywriters, and journalists.
Now, H2TaA has moved from The Art Machine’s umbrella and into the arms of Hyperallergic.com. You can read the first installment on Hyperallergic at: How To Talk About Art (#h2taa): Jeff Koons Edition.
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About the Column:
Originating with the need to validate and describe artwork which was no longer narrative and which relied more and more heavily on inside jokes and academic references, artspeak has grown into its own with a lexicon that is comprised, not only of tropes and catch phrases, but of technical, scientific, and otherwise borrowed terms which have been adapted to its own needs. “Virtual space”, “gesture” ,”intervention”, “appropriation”: these are all words which used to be safely housed in the worlds of aesthetics, dance, psychology, and legal documents and are now used to create press releases for anything from sculpture to performance to collage.
It is my opinion, that many people who feel they can’t talk about art, much less speak TO it, are actually lacking a background in artspeak. H2TaA seeks to span that educational gap.
I also believe that by studying artspeak, one can pull the mask off artspeak-agents and reveal the mechanizations behind the catalogs and pamphlets, bringing to light an artist’s laziness of imagination, or a curator’s dependance on slang and technique, or the general trade tendency to make excuses for work that is overly subjective (or too academic) to be enjoyable. In brief, an interpretation of wall cards can shed light on all of the unnecessary posturing that has led to the elitist view that contemporary art is somehow beyond the ken of the public when it is, actually, beyond the ken of EVERYONE.
Learning H2TaA is just another way to bring art out of the academic tool box and into the light.
How to Talk About John Chamberlain: Say “ARTICULATED”
Get yer H2TaA hat on for the Guggenheim’s John Chamberlain: “Choices”, a ten years on the planning and two in the making retrospective that opened yesterday. Enjoy: it’s lovely stuff for sure, but don’t forget to chitter chat as well.
Notice that John Chamberlain called his paper bag scrunches “articulated wadding” — this was a man who knew how to talk about art. So take your cue from him.
Remember to say “articulated” and to speak about how the works look folded and soft. Chamberlain, himself a wordsmith, compared them to a sex tossed bed, but you will come off savvier if you reckon that some of his delicately articulated folds look like renaissance drapery.
Other cool ways to show you’re in the know: talk about color and balance, of course (it the case of some of Chamberlain’s larger works, you may even do well to note how their careful balance had to be propped by art handlers with studiously crafted wedges that match the Gugg’s flooring) but don’t stop there: these works are often feminine, flowing, and even contain flower-like petals and layers, so referring to bouquets and hats will behoove you.
Also do note that the man was once a hair-dresser. In fact, curator Susan Davidson even called some of the works “coiffed” so you might as well go all out with contrasting the man’s feminine side to the usual tropes about his peers and the noted art genre of the day, abstract expressionism, being so very masculine.
How to Talk MAD Art
Hennesy Youngman talks MAD art in this brief but PACKED video
Rule #7: Learn to Say “Recontextualize” and “Wall Power” Like a Pro
Stephen Shows How It’s Done.
Stephen Colbert’s Raging Art On: part 1
Stephen Colbert’s Raging Art On: part 2
Stephen Colbert’s Raging Art On: part 3
Stephen Colbert’s Raging Art On: part 4
Rule #6: Throw in a Praxiteles
Jeff Koons, at the 2010 Whitney Gala and Studio Party, listing the “influences” for his latest oil paintings and marble works :
“Dali, Manet, Velazquez,
Titian, you know…
DaVinci, Praxiteles.”
H2TaA: Rule #5: Say ‘SUBVERT’
“Avant-garde movements have historically originated among groups of artists whose work is devoted to new and experimental concepts that subvert institutional values.”
-Taken from the self-righteous puffery on the Burning Man site
The thing about ‘subversion’ is that it sounds incendiary. It makes the artist sound like some dark hooded anarchist lobbing moltov cocktails at “institutions” like museums and galleries. Nevermind that most artists, just like you and I, are taxpayers and renters and enjoy monetary rewards and institutional kudos much as the next guy.
When you talk about art, especially OUTSIDER art, you should strike a tattooed, masked, roof-clinging pose. A quilting bee should come off looking like a sit in, for instance. Finger painting becomes art “busting out of the academic stronghold of commercial enterprise.”
Always pair ‘subvert’ with power language, give us an inside and an outside, and spray it all down with the stink of capitalism.
Please remember to keep the metaphor consistent: the artist that subverts will not tag, or paint, or spray grafitti, nor is he any longer a “street artist”: for godsakes that sounds like he’s selling portraits next to a dude who’s hawking warm cashews. No, the incendiary hero who shuns monetary reward and cares not about a legacy (until she’s old as Maria Abromovich) will create “interventions.”
And your subversive artist, well now, she doesn’t steal or borrow or even pay homage to anybody: no: she “appropriates.”
The kindlier avant-garde might gently “deconstruct” your normative ideas and your gender biases, but the heroic ones will bust the door down and “lay claim to” their wrongfully subsumed identities.
Look forward, until we finaly grow the hell up, to a few more generations of talk about “tearing down established (insert bad things like boundaries, definitions, categories, institutions)” and/or “challenging (insert oft challenged ideas like gender, race, class).
TALKING POINTS
$=Bad
Capitalism =$=Bad
Commerce = Bad
Trade = Good
Academic = Bad
Spontaneous = Good
Commodification = Bad
H2TaA: The Rules 1-4
Rule #1: Say ‘Gesture’
Here is one example of how to say ‘gesture’ that I took from the Dia site:
Beuys intended the Kassel project to be the first stage in an ongoing scheme of tree planting to be extended throughout the world as part of a global mission to effect environmental and social change; locally, the action was a gesture towards urban renewal.
Note in the above example that one gestures “towards” something. We used to say it was a “nod at”, or that it was a “symbol of” but since Jackson Pollock spattered paint all over a canvass and the art world had to find words to harness that new method, to talk about it and make it comprehensible, they began to use the word “gesture.” Gesture became a crucial tool for legitimizing art that lacked a clear subject, composition, or even, often, color scheme.
Pollock’s art became “gestural” and gestures were suddenly very important and ubiquitous. And now, really, you MUSt use that word once every other time you talk about art even if you’re stuck talking about some dreadful still life.
Rule #2: Say “Appropriate”
To appropriate means to take, and the subject being taken from seems to have no authority in the matter. It’s therefore a defiant power move as opposed to a vile sneaky theft or plagerism.
If I “appropriate” something, I make it my own and use it to my own ends.
I will speak later about how important it is to come off like a marxist/feminist anarchist when you get all art theory on someone’s ass. But for now we’ll just focus on the art world’s eminent domain: “appropriation.”
Here’s how the great prankster artist, Maurizio Cattalan wields it:
“Was Warhol robbing Marilyn [Monroe's] identity when he painted her? And what was Cézanne doing? Robbing apples? In art, all you can do in the end is appropriate that which surrounds you. So it is never a robbery. At the most it is a loan. Unlike thieves, artists always give back the stolen goods.”
Rule # 3: Pretend location matters
Say “Site Specific” and “mise-en-scene” : In fact, throw a bit of french in like that whenever you can. Or use the local language of the artist or the show’s location — that will add a layer of charming irony to your patter. And being multi-lingual will set you up as an intellectual. (It’s always best to make sure no one’s questioning your authority when you talk about art.)
Those are the first Three Rules for now. I’ll introduce “Urgency” soon: I’ve done a post about “urgency” in the past. I suspect “urgency” is the new “gesture.”
Just got an e-mail from White Columns re: “An Unmissable New York Reading” it opens with a quote from one of the artists on the roster for the event:
“Passion in writing or art—or in a lover—can make you overlook a lot of flaws. Passion is underrated. I think we should all produce work with the urgency of outsider artists, panting and jerking off to our kinky private obsessions. Sophistication is conformist, deadening. Let’s get rid of it.”
~Dodie Bellamy, from ‘Barf Manifesto’
“Urgency” is the latest hue and cry among the avant garde of a yet unnamed movement in the arworld that is pushing a resurgence in subjectivism — drive driven art, passion and necessity as virtue.
Rule # 4: Say ‘URGENT’
Let’s work hard to coin a new term for this so we can amend the text books. I’m putting in my vote for: URGENT art. Too obvious? Duh!
Like the Depends of the creative community, our galleries and pundits, collectors, and even artists, are hoping we can absorb the urgent flow of uncontrolled effluvia that should be drilling into us in the upcoming months. We can only pray for a few Dargers.
Well, we needed SOMETHING to replace “gesture” — and “interventions” just don’t sell as easily as the all blood sweat and tears you can blarf onto a canvas. More for your money: why collect pictures of re-enactments when you can pick up a pack of whimsy at the art fair?
Thing is, I’m rooting for more visuals in my visual art. I think I’d really dig some really poignant, really voyeuristically appealing canvasses. I think I’d prefer them to all the ugly, visually dull, eggheaded, artist-statement-dependent stuff I’ve been forced to look at.
If I can’t have my conceptual art and see it too, then maybe I’ll settle for the inside of somebody’s closet.
State of the Artspeak
The fact is…that altogether too much contemporary art is comprised, almost solely, of talk.
