4 Oct - Exit through the Gift Shop

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Ben and I saw Exit Through the Gift Shop at the Center for Contemporary Arts - the Banksy film we believed to be about street art and the arguably most famous street artist of all time, Banksy. Banksy, whose identity is a mystery, rose to international celebrity and acclaim with major exhibitions, movie star collectors (Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Christina Aguilera to name a few) and works being auctioned at Sotheby's in the mid six-figures. In classic "Banksy" irony, during the second day of the first Sotheby's sale that included his work (which was selling far beyond its six-figure estimates), Banksy updated his website to show an image of people bidding on his work the first day of the auctions with a caption stating "I Can't Believe You Morons Actually Buy this Shit" (pictured above).

Perhaps a continuum of a commentary to expose the commodification of street art in the extreme, the film Exit through the Gift Shop is startlingly not really about Banksy at all. It features the amateur film maker Thierry Guetta, who innocently and passionately takes to the streets to create THE seminal street art film from the "inside." He gets so "inside," however, that he becomes enchanted with the street art life and decides, with Banksy's encouragement, to abandon filmmaking to become a street artist in his own rite. The resulting project is a monumental-scale solo exhibition. Entitled “Life Is Beautiful," the production - it can hardly be called an exhibition - is a grotesque demonstration of what a man with a team of talented artists (for Guetta made none of the work himself) can accomplish. As aptly described by Jeanette Catsoulis of The New York Times "garnering a cover story in LA Weekly, (the show) appears to be a display of blatant knockoffs and cut-and-paste pop trash that’s nevertheless fawned over by gullible collectors."

Easily comparable to the film Untitled, Exit through the Gift Shop is a testament to the lemming-like behavior of many art collectors and critics. If the show is big enough, if it garners enough attention in the press, if it is perceived to be the next big thing, people will come and pay ridiculous prices simply to be considered in the loop. In one scene, before the show opens, the hype has drawn such attention that collectors are calling Guetta to pre-order works to the tune of $35,000 and beyond. Madonna commissioned Guetta to design the cover of her album of greatest hits. Again quoting The New York Times, "Banksy, who seems both gratified and embarrassed by his Frankensteinian role...mischievously exfoliates the next-big-thing hunger and the posers who pursue it".

Catsoulis, Jeanette. "On the Street, at the Corner of Art and Trash." New York Times. April 16, 2010.

28 September - Untitled the Movie

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Ben and I just watched Untitled (the movie) again. The film is a brutal satire of the contemporary art world and the first time I watched it, as the former curator of the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA) and as a current curator of LAUNCHPROJECTS, it hit me to the core of my contemporary art conundrums. It was almost too painful to watch, and I seriously contemplated hating this film. To add to my pain, previous to watching it I had accepted the dubious honor of introducing it for audiences at the CCA. I nearly called CCA's Film Director to back out of the deal. But then I thought about it. And this is the introduction that I gave (omitting the welcoming preamble).

This movie is too true, to painful to ignore. The protagonist of this film creates brooding new music that brings to mind “art bands” such as internationally celebrated artist Mike Kelley’s band “Destroy All Monsters,” and John Cage’s 1952 composition 4 minutes 33 seconds of which three minutes are performed without a single note being played. Installations in Untitled’s fictitious gallery include Maurizio Cattelan style taxidermy sculptures (pictured above, right) and contemporary ready-mades a la Marcel Duchamp such as post-it notes, blank walls, and push pins. A light bulb installation immediately calls to mind Martin Creed, the artist who won London’s prestigious Turner Prize in 2001 for an installation of an empty gallery with a pair of flashing lights.

These are all real art objects, real art starts. The pressing question became HOW do these artist become famous, important, and valued? Matthew Barney covers the walls of the Guggenheim in vasoline and scales the museum, Tracey Emin presents her slept-in (and horrifically dirty) bed, Felix Gonzalez Torres places a pile of candy and a string of lightbulbs in an exhibition space, Marcel Duchamp obtains a urinal, signs and titles it Fountain. All of the above are celebrated as paradigm-shifting moments in art. How did this happen?

It is admittedly hard to accept challenging art. I remember a few years back, standing in front of a Richard Tuttle installation at the Museum of Modern Art asking myself, HONESTLY, as a curator, if Tuttle had submitted a proposal to me as an unknown artist, would I have given him a show?

The contemporary art curator often translates into exhibitions objects that have yet to be defined, much less understood. As Betty Parsons, the first dealer to promote abstract expressionism, described “You can’t put something that’s just been done into history; you’ve got to talk about its creative impact for the moment. A new work by a new artist is not history. It is the present”.

In this movie we see Madeline, the sexy adventuresome art dealer, convincing collectors to purchase seemingly farcical and ridiculous objects of art. While laughing at the absurdity, however, my mind strayed to Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings—drawings he never himself executed. The collector buys instructions, sometimes detailed, sometimes not, and the drawings are carried out by other artists or art students. Talk about a tough sale, but LeWitt is one of the most prestigious and sought-after artists in the world.

The fact is, as an art collector, museum curator, or dealer, it is tough to distinguish innovators from charlatans. Innovators challenge what we believe art to be in such a way they can easily look like pretenders. Charlatans with the right backing and publicity can make it to fast notoriety—smashing and popular success.

Marcia Tucker (pictured above) was the first female curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art and was fired for her innovative approach to the arts and for her solo exhibition of Richard Tuttle. Audiences complained bitterly that it was not art. Tucker went on to found the New Museum, one of the most important contemporary art museums in the world. She forged a career of challenging audiences, and receiving excruciatingly bad press all the while.

Tucker once made an observation that I will leave with you as we turn to the film. “If cutting edge works of art were truly devoid of significance, why should the world of artists, critics, writers, argue, swear, and fight over them? The question answers itself; the trouble is the works do possess significance. They are significant of the spirit of change that within and about us, the spirit of unrest, the spirit of striving". This film, I would argue, is a silly yet shrewd continuum of that debate.