Janusz Welin: Well, just know that there is a long historical narrative of people who think that art that relies too heavily on its institutional baggage is, as you say, coded and insular. Lots of people have fought that fight and to some good ends.
I think, over time, you have confused the baby with the bath water: history is not your ‘enemy’, the status quo, complacency, people who swallow a historical narrative without wondering who wrote it, who supports it and who uses it to prop up bullshit... That is your enemy.
If I were you I wouldn't be focusing on why art sucks... I'd be focusing on how you insist on being the exception and not gobbling up the status quo... and showing all these scared kids where the bullshit is... how if they saw real bold art they'd shit their pants and run... I mean, why is Patti Smith loved and famous? Is it because she makes pretty things and follows the rules? No, it's because she kicks your fucking teeth in and calls it Christmas! People support her because she lives a super epic life of authenticity... People honestly crave that and can instinctively see dynamic authentic people.
I thought it’d be good if I tried to summarize the position I think you've taken so far... I mean, we're kind of starting in the middle here, right?
Joe: Uhh, yeah... sure... give it a try...
Janusz: So, what I've heard you talk about in the past, in the most generic version possible, is that you are often unsure if artwork actually works... whether it actually does its job... That for you, it promises to fill some Utopian need but that it totally fails, or it's more of a question; it's as though I hear you asking does it totally fail, in part because people are so engulfed in the mechanism of the art world... including graduate schools and art historical references as well as the more obvious market forces like galleries and art fairs... and how do museums, curators, biennials etc., fit in? In other words, is it just like a closed club that doesn't leave room for something really imaginative or great to happen... Oh, and then, even if something did happen, that it would only be made for a closed loop of people, so what would be the point anyway?...
Is that about right?
Joe: In a way, yes. I am consistently agitated and unsure if art works. Even though I'm not sure what "job" art is supposed to do exactly, I do worry that something is missing. I'm not sure art's quote-unquote "job" can have a unified application. I know you've spoken in the past about good (ideal) art that effectively "changes the world". In this sense, you have equated "job well done" with utopia. I'm not so sure about this, primarily because I don't think utopia can or will exist; it's very abstract to think about. I'm not concerned with utopia. But I am a fervent supporter of questions and new thoughts. And how do new thoughts arrive? Through questions, through the act of questioning. If this occurs on a closed loop of people then.... well, you just have to think of it as ripples in the pond: small at first, but concentrically bigger. Maybe the most value you can have in the world is to change one person's mind.
Some of the stronger artistic experiences I've had are when people have gotten really pissed off at me, only to thank me later; this is the exfoliation of real dialogue... in which old ideologies must be sloughed to make room for new.
I think my weirdly personal attachment to art comes from feeling that art is, perhaps, the last field available to us for true experimentation. This is why the constraints and homogenizations of the current art world (stretching from how work is displayed, to how it is taught and talked about) never fail to give me stomach aches. I sense that there is something truly good about art, yes. But at the same time.... there's something kinda wrong with art, with how we're experiencing it in 2010. I mean, don't you agree? Shouldn't there always be something wrong with art? Shouldn't there always be a case in which art, one way or another, isn't doing "enough"?
Janusz: First, I don't think art can "change the world," not in the sense I think you are suggesting. No more than changing a child's diaper changes the world: It is a rearrangement of material, which can chafe when done poorly and can ultimately, have a lasting effect, if done well consistently.
I think the contention you have brought up in the past is this: is art a good means of relating to the world? Or is it a waste of time, given the fact that so much of its consumption and production is homogeneous...
I don't think there is anything 'truly good' about art, I mean, I could say the same about any field but there is a lot of room in the dialogue of art-making, a lot of room to exercise a lot of positions and ideas. This makes it a potentially great way of understanding and experiencing the world and its people. Meaning stems from context, and the context of art has an extremely wide spectrum, which can potentially afford people something other modes of production can't.
I was a guest critic at Pratt's sculpture department recently and the issue came up of how can one take action when it's so extremely difficult to understand our time, to gage our cultural climate; students wondered how they could take a position, how they could move any given dialog when our culture feels so flooded with information and context… This is a very common dilemma; how does context function to create meaning when there is a nauseating overabundance of the stuff? I think the myth I enjoyed as a child has been deflated dramatically; the idea that culture was one entity that we all could take part in and respond to has been replaced by the realization that we can't have a stable perspective from which to act... That there's so much context that it fragments rather than unifies experience. But I feel that good culture can have a magnetic force, which can create temporary hives of challenging shared experience, rather than a myth of a single monolithic ideological or aesthetic force called 'the West' or something like that. That's what I think art has the potential to do… to challenge that myth and create dialogue.
Now, that is Utopian... (And when I say 'Utopian drive,' I'm just talking about the impulse to make the world a 'better place...' and yes, I'm totally aware of how romantic that is, but my model of romance looks a lot like Nietzsche's flux, which I like because it's heartbreakingly brutal.)
Joe: If I may, I'd like to flip the discussion back onto art schools and their relationship to the market. You’ve spoken in the past about art schools causing the vast majority of students to become more timid and conservative as they reach the upper echelons of the institution (with obvious professional considerations looming). Can you describe that more? Unpack the idea of “safe”/ “conservative” art, as you see it. What do you think is the mechanism within art schools that causes this? Why is there a mechanism within art schools that causes this?
Janusz: There are lots of reasons students tend towards conservatism in their practice, for example, when you and I were in school, for one thing, all the kids were Reagan babies, which meant we were all probably more conservative than we thought we were. Skipping a bunch of these reasons (people sticking with the devil they know, teachers being hired because their work sells, so their strategies are less likely to address commodity politics, the fact that, like with standardized tests, the establishment of a 'style' is one of the few ways a student can be evaluated...), skipping these, your question actually steers back to what I was speaking about above...
During the mid nineties in American art schools, I think there was a drive for a while that pushed professionalization over just about everything else. This ran simultaneously with the tendency towards a very heavy emphasis on post-structuralist and post-modern cultural theory in the MFA curriculum.
A friend once described the logistics of this, saying students were encouraged to always have their work refer to two things: art history (in the hopes of enticing curators), and to currently successful artists (so as to help collectors understand the work's relationship to the market, not to mention to give gallerists talking points.)
Now, on paper, it's not actually a terrible strategy, If your goal is to build an audience and find a way to support your practice, these are pretty savvy strategies. But in many instances, in practice, I've heard this experience described as 'soul crushing'.
I think there is something very fragile and human about art-making; one of my favorite artists and people is Andrea Fraser, who started scripting crying into her performances because she so deeply questioned her role as an artist, as part of the institution she critiques. There is something very raw that needs to happen to develop rich artwork. |
