Joe McDonough: What do 'the gallery world' and 'the art world' mean to you? Are they the same, or different? Could 'the gallery world' be said (in more or less terms) to be composed of individuals who are making their living through art (or at least attempting to do so)? Is it possible to work outside the gallery world and still make a living in the art world? Or will the art world always (at the end of the day) be intrinsically (/conventionally/traditionally/historically) tied to the gallery?
Ivan Liotchev: To begin to answer this question we first need to ask ourselves do we really need art? Is it and has it been integral to our development as humans? How would the world have developed without art? Do we want to envision such a world? My feeling is that in the timeline of human evolution, as soon as human beings reached the adequate intellectual capacity and/or curiosity they felt a desire to come to terms with their world within an abstraction which we now call art. So they started to record what they saw, what they lived…the bison they hunted, the lions they feared, prints of their own hands. The gift of intellect is very demanding and I think it was inevitable that humans reached a point where they needed to say ‘Look! Here I am. This is who I am.’ So in this sense, I think human beings need art not only to add decoration to their lives, but as an intrinsic and unavoidable aspect of existence. We also have the many links between artistic and scientific achievements which I’m not sure would have happened independently of each other. Consider Einstein’s discovery of relativity and Picasso’s discovery of cubism. Sure, both men didn’t know each other, but they were working with similar ideas about space and time. Then cubism’s influence on modern architecture is, I think, undeniable. Just look at a Frank Lloyd Wright. So, with such a dependence on art it is no surprise that it has become a big business. The gallery world, i.e. art market, has become a convenient haven within which art can be produced. Most young artists aspire to be part of this haven, but is its convenience and often-ruthless expectations a limiting factor in what kind of art can be made? For instance, we all kind of know what to expect when we walk into a commercial gallery. We expect to see a show. And this show we expect to be structured around certain ideas that we often refer to in the press release, which we also expect to be readily available for our informative needs. So with the press release in hand in tandem with the work we can expect to achieve a more or less cohesive understanding of the ideas being offered. I sense your question hints at the peculiar uneasiness that begins turning in your stomach if you for a second stop and consider just how structured and predictable this whole gallery going experience actually is. How often do you go into a gallery these days and actually say ‘What the fuck?’ I think the last time for me was Thomas Hirschhorn’s Cavemanman installation at Barbara Gladstone in New York, some ten years ago. |
Joe: Yes, well I was referring to the lack, I feel, of truly challenging artists these days. People who are being deliberately difficult, and not giving the easy answers, or any answers at all. I feel that most young artists I've been around feel this is not a wise platform to operate from because it marginalizes the artist. As a result of marginalization, the difficult artist is left out of the dialogue. Or maybe he's in the dialogue, but as some tangential sideshow. Less people know the name, because the name is not in as many shows. The reason for this exclusion (self-willed or otherwise) might just be what you're describing: most shows are predictable. I'd say a good 85% of art shows I've gone to or heard about in the last five years have been organized around a particular theme. And what is that? Yes, it's convenient, yes, it allows different artists to get together and show their work. But it's not difficult. It doesn't truly challenge me to think about circumstances in a different way. Instead, I feel shows like that present ideas and information, under the pretense of asking questions. When young career-minded artists get their reputation all tied into the matter it becomes a "publish or perish" ordeal where all that matters is how many shows one is in. Exposure. And as a result, quality loses over quantity. Yes, I agree: rarely do I walk into a gallery and go: "what the fuck?" But equally rare is going into a gallery show and being like "Holy Fucking Shit."
What do you think about themed group shows?
Ivan: My unease with themed shows is that they often follow carefully plotted paths of exploration. For example, doesn’t this sound familiar – ‘This work attempts to subvert generic Hollywood cinematic strategies within a web of painting, installation, and video.’ or, ‘Through its shocking sexually charged voyeuristic examination of several decades’ worth of feminist art this show challenges the notion of whether feminism can still exist.’ I think such phrases are idiosyncratic of the majority of press releases and artist statements we regularly run across. My problem with such statements is not with their ideas but with the fluidity and relative certainness with which the ideas are presented. Most press releases offer a summation or often downright explanation of what the work is attempting to do. I find this troubling perhaps simply because I have no idea what my work is attempting to do, much less any notion of how to go about verbalizing it in a statement. Perhaps I am simply hopelessly lost as I have been told on many occasions in art school. A tutor recently told me that the more aware I become of my intentions as an artist, the more effectively I will be able to convey them. And I thought, if I ever become aware of my intentions all I’ll want to do is happily die somewhere on a tropical island because I would have no reason to continue making art. I’ll just be going through the motions then and the mystery will be lost. I’m also not too keen on the idea of effectiveness, as in whether a painting is effective or how to go about making it effective. Because this would require a knowledge of what kind of painting you want to make, a knowledge of what your goals are. I’m a fan of painting in the dark, metaphorically and also literally! A kind of aimless wandering with nothing but blackness up ahead, and an eagerness, an absolute sickening desperation to get to the other side, whatever that other side may be, but all the while realizing that there probably is no such other side, but you still kinda dream that there is one. Because if you already know what your intentions are, what your goals are, then haven’t you already gotten to the other side? Or at least, and more likely, fooling yourself that you have?
Very often we talk of whether an artwork works or doesn’t. I get a better feeling when someone tells me that a painting of mine doesn’t work. Strangely I feel like I might be on the right track then. Because when people tell me that a painting works then I get all happy for all of about 20 seconds, and then it’s all sadness because I’m like well, I’ve done that and people like it…so what? Why should I make another painting? To reconfirm to myself that I can make effective work? Or dare I say it powerful work? Work that I know is able to effectively examine certain ideas, getting people’s neurons to go boom, boom, and thus engages in the greater dialogue? Because see, as pretentious as it may sound, I’m not sure I want to be involved in any dialogue. Or at least, I fear being consciously involved in a dialogue, but then again here you and I are, having this dialogue. But the difference with this dialogue is that it’s not about examining specific ideas relating to the work of say five different artists, but more about looking at the whole dialogue, the whole nature of this giant art bubble from afar, from outside the bubble. But is this simply a form of cowardly escapism, an abandon of responsibility? Or does it tie back to having something to do with a desire, and perhaps even a need, today, to make work outside of the art world, independent of the dialogue?
Joe: Absolutely. We've talked in the past about the 'stuckness' of the contemporary art world, how it seems to rely so much on internal reference. This self-referencing is often less literal (as in, name-dropping other artists), than it is endemic of a collective mentality artists are sheltering themselves under. On an almost conspiratorial level, there's a tacit understanding that the work is being produced for each other, and each other only. It's not a 'self-referencing' that exists on the surface ("Your work reminds me of Charles Ray."), but something that burbles under the surface, making people extremely uncomfortable when you bring such incongruities to their attention at openings. This has become the great taboo, because everyone knows that without the collective illusion, our work as artists is meaningless to the outside public, and has no application. Thus the creation of our proverbial bubble. You can become an 'art star' in today's market, but rarely will anybody outside of 'the art world' know who you are (including other artists operating in cultural realms like film, dance, music, and literature). But is that a good thing or a bad thing? To be so separate from the world at large (that we 'claim' to speak to)? Does public-knowledge of the goings-on in art really matter? Jackson Pollock was on the cover of Life Magazine in 1949 - the art world fit into the seams and fabric of that culture in way that it just doesn't now (here I'm speaking more specifically of American culture). But is this good or bad - for the art world to be more (or less) visible to the public eye?
Ivan: Well, to attempt at relative fairness, how much is the general public aware of say scientific research in the field of free radicals? If art is a closed-off bubble then it’s no different than science. The field of free radicals is composed of an extremely small, close group of scientists and yet their research into the way the body ages has brought about practical applications such as antioxidant creams that the image-conscious wider public is very much aware of. As it pertains to the art bubble, the question becomes two-fold: does it matter then that art today exists within a bubble if it can have resonance throughout the wider public? But at the same time, has it recently had such resonance and can we expect it to in the near future? Art stars like Matthew Barney and Takashi Murakami may go some way in answering the question, but I’m afraid that the percentage of the general public that would even claim to understand Matthew Barney’s work is on the slim side, to say the least. Takashi Murakami’s partnership with Marc Jacobs may be reaching the mainstream public and may be doing something thought-provoking like fusing the boundaries between fashion, high art, and low art, but how is this any different from what Warhol did? For me, Christo has been successful at engaging the wider public through perhaps a Duchampian strategy of shock and Cageian strategy of indifference. Of course it helps that he has massive funding and that he actually puts his work where it is practically unavoidable by the people, but people react to his work, and very often strongly. They actually have opinions. They may hate the work, and I think most do, but this is very much within the spectrum of what the work is trying to do. It wants you to have opinions; it wants to snap you out of a passive state of consciousness. And I think it is successful at this because of its indifference – it doesn’t tell you what it is about, it doesn’t point you in any specific directions, it doesn’t have a deliberate meaning. I’ve been sitting here for half an hour over my computer and am realizing it is very difficult for me to put into words what Christo’s works do, and perhaps this is why they’re good. They just create a simple alteration of space and time, no? Do you think this is what good work does…that at its heart it’s really just very simple?
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