2008 Fall: Theoretical Constructions in Contemporary Art

" I knew that the world I was being offered was a sham "
I love this sentence and the way that Aaron Rose shows how the 80's was a time for many people to start making their own world. A desire for a real world encouraging what he calls " pure creativity in its raw form " .

Record covers, music, clothing, drawings, text, the street, was the information highway of that time and where you went to be found. When you were with your friends the emphasis was on shared activity; music, making images, constructing events, skateboarding and walking around putting up posters, there was activity and engagement, you were together.

This was a movement which had room for sadness ( human concern for the homeless), femaleness ( the inclusion of feminine voices), the power of destruction ( graffiti ), as well as humor ( design that is subversive in its cleanliness) while staying true to the spirit of rebellion. It is that very spirit and awareness which allows the author to acknowledge that as it ends, by being recognized, room is being made for unknown possibilities which we can count on to be exciting.

Hey I wanted to add this video of Mark Gonzales cause he is wonderful.

http://www.youngbabyrecords.com/

I did not live anywhere near California, in fact I only got there for the first time four summers ago on a family vacation, yet the work that came out of this generation of artists has been a huge aesthetic influence on me for many years. Reading this article almost made me jealous that I did not grow up within a thriving skateboard/punk culture; I feel like I completely missed out on an exciting art and music scene that generated so much of the work I love. Yet despite my distance, both location and generational, I reacted in strong agreement to Rose’s words, “Those galleries just felt like refrigeration units for corpses of art that had lost their meaning anyways. The whole point of what we were doing was to celebrate the vibrant art that we all loved, hang it up and have a party.� I respond most to visually vibrant work that is accessible and focused on exciting and innovative aesthetics, which then opens the door for more serious content and human compassion. Boring artwork in a stuffy gallery seems like the kiss of death and completely defeats my personal motives in art making.

I was fortunate in the past year to have gotten the opportunity to assist OchoLoco Press, run by artist John Wishman, in printing a portfolio of Chris Johanson prints. Chris and John are good friends from back in the days of San Francisco. They lived together, and with other artists, for many years in the Mission District. As I was helping to print, Chris was present, drawing on a screen. Him and John spent the whole three-hour session reminiscing and telling me countless stories from the “glory days.� They referred to people by their first names, as if I would know who they were talking about and burst into laughter over certain characters or events. There was even a story I wasn’t allowed to hear. I quickly picked up on the vibe of the times. I wished I could have been there. Their art was just a part of an entire lifestyle centered around art, music, parties and urban life.

All of the thoughts and stories of this article bring me back to the idea of art as community. These exciting movements are just derivatives of creative people with similar interests coming together without any other motive than to do what they love and share it with one another. Everything else, into the realm of the “high art� world, just snowballed after that. Shouldn’t this be what it’s all about?

Margaret Kilgallen is one of my favorite artists. I have looked at her imagery quite a bit, and love it simply for what it is. The bold, colorful images of strong women doing lovely, normal (yet somehow strong) things like surfing, walking and biking coupled with her obvious love of “things that show evidence of the human hand� is wonderful and unique. I never realized, though, how different her motivations were from her husband’s.

I really enjoyed reading about the author’s time spent with these two people, as well as how he laid out their differences. First he talked about how Barry really thought that “the act of destruction was where the power really lay in his creations.� In other words, he didn’t consider graffiti to be an art form, but rather that vandalism was “an artistic act.� Then, Rose went on to say about Margaret’s work: “There was a certain desperation in her works as well, but it was less violent than Barry’s. Hers was more about the human spirit struggling to shine in the face of a constantly more mechanized world.� These words really distilled for me the essence of why I love Margaret’s work. Aside from its beautiful references to folk art, printmaking, and personal craft, its attitude makes it extraordinarily powerful.

It is the attitude in all of this work that makes it powerful. I wonder what De Duve would think of it. Whether its Bansky, Spike Jonze, or Kilgallen, it is an innovative and revolutionary attitude that has caused these artists to gain notoriety. We’ve talked in class a number of times about what happens when avant-garde becomes successful, and I really enjoyed the way Rose talked about it at the end of his piece: “the avant-garde is a perennial state. Like the seedling of a plant, what is underground must rise to the surface... The world must continue to evolve in order to bring new life- and that’s a good thing.� I agree that its a good thing. I know its hard while its happening, and it makes people thing that their colleagues and friends are selling out, but only when what was subculture becomes “culture� can an new subculture evolve.

I had a lot of fun with this reading. Before this essay, I hadn't known much about the Skate/Punk/Graffiti culture, especially from the 80s and 90s, and especially as it pertains to the art world.

Rose says of his first major exhibition: "It was all very haphazard: stapled, tacked and taped to the walls...The artwork and installations were accessible, personal and filled with the human touch -- the exact opposite of how a gallery was supposed to hang artworks." Here, Rose raises the idea of reinventing the gallery aesthetic, which is normally supposed to be clean, sterilized, distant, and have a sense of authoritative, "hands-off" "sacredness." It was interesting to me to think that a more human, personal, and relatable gallery aesthetic could also carry a sense of "sacredness," and that a certain aesthetic recklessness, and even a disregard for aesthetic at all, could be an aesthetic. Rose says, "Little did we know at the time but a whole exhibition aesthetic, hung in a manner that mimicked and complemented the work on dispaly, was born from that show."

Rose says of his early years with his gallery: "There was, of course, still not a hint of notice from the art world." However, I wonder why, in starting his gallery, Rose didn't already consider himself part of the "art world"? Is fame necessary to be part of the "art world"? If you're interested in art, promoting art, and supporting artists, aren't you already part of the "art world"?

Rose mentions an artist named Harmony Korine, who "talked a lot about a new movement in art he was spearheading called Mistakism." Mistakism is "based on the theory that the only real magic in art was found in the accidents, that mistakes were where the real creative spirit manifested itself." Mistakes are good. I think that a willingness to make mistakes is beneficial to the philosophy of any artist. There is not only a certain humility in an ability to let oneself make mistakes, but such an ability also benefits the process of art-making -- the more mistakes we make, the closer we'll find ourselves to our artistic intention; or, as Duchamp might say, the closer our intention will be to our realization. Mistakes are good because they are necessary to the development of a successful project. I dont mean that we should deliberately try to make mistakes in our art work, just that we should love them when they happen.

I agree with Mel that "it is the attitude in all of this work that makes it powerful." It isn't necessarily the craftsmanship of their work that mattered to these artists, but the spirit of rebellion and the "irreverence and wanton disregard for property that's at the heart of graffiti." These artists are passionate and furious and hilarious, and that emotional energy and healthy antagonism drives their work more than what in me is an overwhelming concern for craftsmanship. Like Mel, I also responded to the section in Rose's essay about Margaret and Barry, and about "vandalism as an artistic act." Barry was of such a "revolutionary" mindset that he even wanted graffiti "kept illegal" so that he could retain a sense of artistic destruction and rebellion in his work.

I love the vision of everyone doing artwork, being creative, making their own visual noise instead of having it fed to them. As Aaron Rose says of the punk-skater-graffiti scene, the work was “being produced by the kids themselves, executed without any training, utilizing pure creativity in its most raw form.� We were discussing last week the fact that so many people believe they can’t draw or aren’t creative, since they’ve always been told so. The people in the scene Rose describes realized that this is a lie, they can make art and music that is unsanctioned and untrained, and that is not for commercial gain. And as Rose says throughout his article, it can be an injection of energy and life into art that has repercussions long after.

This also echoes Banksy’s utopian vision of a city with graffiti art and words blanketing its surfaces, made by whoever had the inclination, which actually does not sound so utopian to me. I’m conflicted about graffiti. With much of the graffiti I see, the point is only to put your tag up and aggrandize yourself, and it can be destructive. Artfully done graffiti is comparatively rare. In the Collin’s article on Banksy, she quotes a man who says of graffiti, “It annoys me, it frustrates me, because it’s just so ugly.� Yes, some of it is. But on the other hand I’m annoyed and frustrated by all of the advertisements I see everywhere, but there’s no thought of outlawing those. (Today I found myself staring at a billboard over my bus stop and I couldn't help but imagine climbing up the building and spray-painting something lovely over it, and how satisfying that would be.) I think the urge to graffiti is just a response to the already prevalent visual noise, and a way of making one’s mark one it, to not be lost in the cacophony. This is a healthy urge, to want to be more than just a consumer, to be creative and have your work seen and recognized by people. I know I have this same urge to share the fruits of my creative energies -- it’s what drives art.

It’s refreshing that Rose looks back on his particular scene without lamenting its passing, recognizing that other scenes have and will come to take its place, though it will continue to inspire and nourish new work. He says, "It is also becoming obvious that there will be a new generation of rebellious and inspired young people who grow weary of the tried and true and search for something as different, outrageous and lawless as we did when we began." And, "The world must continue to evolve in order to bring new life." He avoids the curmudgeonly attitude that the best is behind us, that our culture is only degenerating. In this way, and in its celebration of underground culture, this article which seems to be the antidote for Adorno and Horkheimer.

This was a pleasant article/story to read. It's nice to have a bit of entertainment as opposed to the onslaught of critical theory. Don't get me wrong the theory is good, it's just refreshing, for a change, to read something that I don't have to reread two or three times to understand. I love the revolutionary spirit of the punk/skate/graffiti culture. The idea that skating and graffiti, in particular, are based on the practice of breaking the law is quite an interesting one. Barry McGee talked of "vandalism as an artistic act." McGee believes that vandalism is where the true power lies, not the aesthetic of the graffiti itself. In the end, that's all that consumer culture has left us with. Much of the imagery of this counter culture has been adopted by the most benign companies.

Having worked in the graphic design industry for some time I have seen how designers gobble this aesthetic up and spit it back out on every main stream product. Because of this I feel much of this work has started to become a little stale. I knew that this style was on it's way out when the company that I worked for was doing work for Nickelodeon's Naked Brothers Band promotion on Caprisun Roaring Waters(what an awful design... thankfully we didn't design the base skew of this product). The graphics that were supplied by Nickelodeon in the form of a style guide were completely utilizing many of these aesthetic elements. I admit I have played my part in watering down this movement. It was for another promotion on Reeses Peanut Buttercup cereal called Puff my Crib. You can probably imagine what it looked like. That being said I as well as any other designer that bastardized this aesthetic, took my cues from the likes of Shepherd Fairy and many of the other Juxtapose artists.

I first heard about Shepherd Fairy back in the late 90s. I was totally blown away by what he was doing. The whole Andre has a posse thing and the subsequent obey campaign were so fresh and subversive. I loved how he was using the medium and language of advertising and design to subvert it. It looks like in the end he got seduced and gobbled back up by the very same commercial culture he was trying to subvert.

In response to Rowan’s statement:

Rose says of his early years with his gallery: "There was, of course, still not a hint of notice from the art world." However, I wonder why, in starting his gallery, Rose didn't already consider himself part of the "art world"? Is fame necessary to be part of the "art world"? If you're interested in art, promoting art, and supporting artists, aren't you already part of the "art world"?

I think Rose was referring to the more traditional galleries as the “art world� and himself more as the Art Center dropout, having described his experience as corporate training camp as well as a death sentence. Also claiming, “with the exception of my brief stint at Art Center, I knew nothing about the art world.� He describes his gallery as an experiment that was never meant to go as far as it did in the first place.

Rose sums up his essay with, “The fact that I am writing this essay is a testament to how far we’ve come. Back in 1992, I could never have guessed that any of this would mean anything to anybody outside of a few degenerate kids. The fact that two major art institutions are our co-organizers in this exhibition really blows my mind. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, however, on this wild and wonderful ride through creative blossoming, it’s that the avant-garde is a perennial state. Like the seedling of a plant, what is underground must rise to the surface. It is only there that a flower can bloom. The world must continue to evolve in order to bring new life-and that’s a good thing.�

Who would have thought that a skater punk from the burbs of LA would become ahead of his time exhibiting the hottest mainstream designers of the early oughts? And how the artists he was involved with evolved out of their own individual experiences, influenced not by the canon of fine art, but by the disillusionment of their American experience.

Work with a human touch reacting to the visual exhaustion of the then and now, like Chris Johanson that “was trying to make sense of a world around him that had completely gone mad� or the work of Margaret Kilgallen who “looked at a world as a place grotesquely oversaturated with information and images.� I partially grew up in this era, but in the burbs of the Midwest, I hovered on the borders of the skater subculture, and listened to the suicidal tendencies. I knew the magical energy of fitting in as an outsider and knowing Harmony Korine’s “belief that the freaks of nature in this world were actually God’s special people�.

I really enjoyed how all of these artists were rebelling against their parent’s generation and the mainstream of the eighties. How ironic that they would grow to become the mainstream and that their ideas would contribute to the post-modern era and post-post-modern era. And back to Korine, the Mistakist, how disappointed I was to see another
-ism. This echoed the full circle of that which rebels against the mainstream becomes the mainstream. This may contradict what I said about Banksy, but I’m willing to admit that my American experience is one of hypocrisy.

This article contained a couple artists that still to this day inspire the hell out of me. Namely Mike Mills and Harmony Korine, but not so much their aesthetic and content as their ideas and emotional courage they put into their work. I think the reason they are still making work and have established a prolific artistic career is the fact that they were a tight community in the beginning that supported and inspired each other while their individual roots were taking hold. I don’t feel that any of the artists have ‘sold-out’. The artists from this group that I still pay attention to continue to grow and challenge the cultural mainstream while now being a part of it. The sentence from this article that really resonates with me is ‘their originality stems from how they have taken these influences and redefined them to fit a larger pop-cultural perspective.�

I have to admit that one of my own personal artistic goals is to take a very sincere and intimate form of expression into a larger circle of beings through the use of multiples. Just like the zines that Korine and Gonzales made when they were younger that contained unique humor and ideas from their friendship with each other. Right now I’m super into the idea of the book as vessel, as multiple, as vehicle to bring a physicality and warmth to my work. I love the idea of an artist book of mine being read, held, and touched in the intimacy of someone’s bed under their reading lamp. I can’t think of any other art form that is experienced that way, except maybe music, when I think back to being a little kid laying in bed at night with my headphones on letting John Bonham’s drumset take me on a tour of ancient castles wielding drumstick swords and shields of golden crash cymbals.

What I love about Mike Mills’ design is that it has this cleanliness that is pleasing to the eye, but it is rooted in raw emotion that we can all relate to. One of my favorite artists’ books is ‘Humans’ by Mills from the Swiss press Nieves. The whole book is full of colorful and beautiful graphic design, but the last page contains a very personal journal entry written by the artist talking about his father’s death, working through personal depression, the constant rainy days recently, etc. Then when you look back through the book again, you realize that all the cheery colorful designs were created from words and descriptions from this journal entry. Man, that book really hits me. I love the juxtaposition of happy and sad put together. I think that is why I am so drawn to Brian Wilson with his heartbreakingly melancholy intrumentation covered with cheery and naïve lyrics. I love the phenomenon of laughing so hard you start crying. It is a moment that makes me feel so alive, your brain and your soul are being so overwhelmed that the most opposite emotional responses are triggered at the same time, and then uncontrollably pour out of your face. I was once told that my ‘portrait book’ artist book made someone’s roommate laugh so hard that tears rolled down their cheeks. I was so blown away and happy that something I created made someone lose control like that.
I am planning on talking about my love for Harmony Korine during my presentation, so I will save that for then. “I am that, thou are that, all this is that�.

Really great independent artist books press. www.nieves.ch
Mike Mills, Harmony Korine, Geoff McFetridge, Rita Ackerman, Wesley Willis....

This article was a lot of fun to read. Rose’s generous and positive tone invites the reader to sympathize with and take an interest in the movements and artists he describes. Judging by the previous comments, we don’t need to be convinced, since these are artists that have already influenced many of us. Margaret Kilgallen’s work has always been favorite of mine (I almost presented about her for the ‘artist whose work doesn’t relate to mine.) Her instantly recognizable characters convey so many subtle emotions while being so graphically simple. Rose, as a fan who knew these artists personally, provided an interesting perspective into their working life.

I was glad that Rose used his own personal history to talk about the larger scene that he’s representing. That first person immediacy gave a detailed context to the art he describes, even if it doesn’t match the life backgrounds of every artist in the essay. The first person perspective also reveals his biases in an honest way. So, in a way it’s forgivable that gives us so little in the way of balanced criticism. For instance, I was surprised at his one-dimensional portrayal of Harmony Korine’s “Spit on the Midget� idea. “By using humor, he was forcing people to confront their prejudices,� says Rose. Humor is a pretty subjective idea when you’ve got a caged midget on display as art. I would have thought he’d add a few words about the controversial/exploitative nature of the idea.

Finally, I was refreshed by his positive take on the transition from underground to high culture, even as I felt skeptical of his sunny outlook. He says, “Like the seedling of a plant, what is underground must rise to the surface. It is only then that a flower can bloom.� Maybe this sentence is a bit of a prank (the kind that you snicker about later when you’re drinking 40’s with your friends and telling them about your latest forays into the world of high art.) But I think Rose is being serious, even if his analogy is a bit cheeseball. And his observation is a comforting one in a way – in our world, there is a constant cycle of fresh ideas that are adopted, obsessed over, and finally historicized or forgotten. There’s no point fretting about it – it’s just the way things are.

I am not a fan of what Rose calls as Skateboard Art, or any of rebellious cultures, but it is exciting to read about enthusiastic emergence of a creative movement. (This growth of movement is, in my opinion, opposite of the rebellious culture.) The way how a style of art is integrated to a culture, into some people's way of life, demonstrates the potential of art we make. Rose shows this potential in such a positive tone that made me happy for the growth this art style has made.

On the other hand I am starting to question myself as we started to talk about “global vs. local�. Growth, in a simple observation, seems to be a good thing, but is it really? Is becoming bigger and more known always a good thing? My fear is that the original point will get lost and to “grow more� will become the main point. I questioned this when Rose concluded his introduction to Shepard Fairey by saying, “to date Shepard has created and stuck up literally hundreds of thousands of stickers and posters worldwide.� Making a lot of copies and spreading them worldwide is an accomplishment, but is that the point of this art? Rose believes that “there is rebellion in the blood of these artists, no matter where they are now or how their work has developed.� and I hope so too, in terms of having more meaning than to “simply grow�.

Growth without meaning is exactly what I fear and dislike about the mass-production (or mass-media). When the main point becomes “to grow. (note the period)�, then the aura and all the context of the medium becomes meaningless when it's received by the audiences, the medium's mission is accomplished as soon as it reaches a new audience. Graffiti and Skateboard Art was not emerged with a purpose to simply grow. The heart of “rebellion�, as Rose explains, must not get lost when it reaches the audience. In this sense, Barry McGee's stance gives me a relief. Graffiti has the current rebellious meaning precisely because it's illegal. The fact that many of the graffiti artists only carve out their signature, it has a tendency to “simply grow,� without any further point but to be recognized.

Hey Mel, thanks for sharing the video and the link!

As a teenager I would flip through my friends copies of Thrasher magazine, inspired by the macabre imagery that seemed to have no point but be cool and subversively beautiful. I drew this way for a long time. I remember in the mid-nineties when I first attended college part-time, being told that drawing graphically was not what was taught in a Fine Arts college. I drew that way anyway, and dropped out two semesters later, it was five years before I went back.

Just like Ben, I found this week's readings refreshing. They were easy reads, digestible, and I too, didn’t have to read them again and again to decipher them. I am really glad to see these artists and this era included in our academic experience, they have influenced many of us in our art making. Thank you Ali and Jenny.

And thank you to Rowan for commenting on the beneficial nature of mistakes in art making. Some our most powerful lessons are in our mistakes, from losing a certain look in our work or losing the time that bears no fruit. In my own work I have learned to appreciate my mistakes, and have incorporated what I can’t control into the work I am doing now.

Aaron Rose engaged me in his story. I am of his time(like a lot of us in this class) so we can all relate to the changing of the underground scenes in the 80’s through the 90’s and into today where everything is mainstream. I was not so much a part of any scene growing up, shyness kept me to myself, while it honed my observation skills, but I feel a part of the generation and a desire to be part of a movement that is “Post� nothing.

Rose is pointing to a time in history where change was happening and being captured in the moment. Of all the reading this one is sensitive to all people involved. There seems to be less fame and fortune dictating the outcomes of the artists and the work they are producing. These people are still rebellious and doing what they want, but I think they want fame and fortune. They at least want success in their endeavors thus giving action to this “Movement.� This writing isn’t about the discovery of finding a hidden art, or the ways this art is infiltrating society but about the artist and how it all came about. “Hang on and enjoy the ride� is how Rose put it; we are doing the best we can. I still may not like “Skater Art� but it is alive and a pulse in the world.

My favorite line was “Art School is a death sentence� and for Rose that is true. He appears to have had it together at a young age, therefore learning through experience, such as opening a gallery with no expectations. He was doing something he felt passionate about. This gave everyone something exciting to juggle with and change within. The structure of Art School would have changed the whole situation. That time was about action, not thinking too much or too heavy. This article really covered ground talking about what was happening on both coasts. This was an important time in Pop-culture history.

Sam, I think you've sold me on the idea of artist's books. Not that I was skeptical, it's just a medium I haven't delved into much, but I'm beginning to think I should. It is a really gratifying thought that someone could have a bunch of your art in hand to look at, to hold. We talk a lot about how to get work outside the gallery (or maybe we should get more people inside the gallery), and artist's books are a brilliant way to achieve this. Growing up in a small town in a sparsely populated state, I learned about photographers like Cindy Sherman and Robert Frank by going to the college library and perusing the photography book section, and in some ways I think that photography is best viewed in a book form, particularly since it is so series-driven.

...sorry I just realized that I said Mel when I meant Jennifer! I must have read Mel's name when I was typing it. Sorry! Thank you Jennifer!!