As
a studio artist, I've thought a lot about Grant Wood’s 1935 book Revolt Against the City and developed
some ideas that arise with contemporary art. After considering it in terms of my
own studio practice, of which I'll show many different examples of through the
presentation, Wood's idea of place has been an important aspect of my visual
art making and research. Imbedded within
this is my relationship to the art market and art's usefulness to a larger part
of society.
I
would not necessarily consider myself a Regionalist for a number of reasons,
but it bears stating the concept of Regionalism in Wood's own words for the
sake of this presentation. And I quote:
"Let me state the basic idea of the
regional movement. Each section has a
personality of its own, in physiography, industry, and psychology. Thinking painters and writers who have passed
their formative years in these regions, will, by care-taking analysis, work out
and interpret in their productions these varying personalities. When the different regions develop
characteristics of their own, they will come into competition with each other;
and out of this competition a rich American culture will grow." (Wood)
I
do see my own work as referencing the geographic, social, cultural, and
cosmologic location as the subject matter for my work—be it rural culture in
general, or more specifically Appalachia (where my father is from) or
Midwestern culture. Regionalism, as it
has manifested in my education of the history of art, is somewhere oddly
situated between an ideology of a group of artists working during the Great
Depression and an aesthetic and formal tradition of realist painting of rural
culture. I see my work more in line with
Wood's attention to his surroundings observing culture but do not take any
visual reference from the romantic realist paintings of Wood, Thomas Hart
Benton, John Steuart Curry, or other Regionalists.
Grant
Wood’s book interested me, though, as its utopic hints at an alternative to
what has now manifested as the art market.
Some of Wood’s ideas talk about an expansion of programs like the PWA
and regional schools of art run by the government. He saw the possibility with regionally
developed art as making the nation a stronger cultural player, in the sense
that when different regions have art programs they will likely compete with one
another, and the success and product of each of those regional programs will
continually grow and get better with competition. In other sections of the book, Wood discusses
the economic deterioration of the Depression as being an
"opportunity" for demonstration of the "artistic
possibilities" of the provincial Midwest.
While
there are community supported art programs, non-profits, and even charter
schools specializing in arts education, the predominant popular view of art is
dominated by the art market, separating those artists that are a part of it
from the more localized agents of contemporary art and practicing artists. It is not out of the question for a “local
artist” to become famous and nationally or internationally recognized in some
form, but the majority of your local artists are stuck between establishing
meaningful representation on a local level and making the means to live as an
artist.
Just
Wednesday Roberta Smith published an article in the New York Times about the
record-setting sale of a Francis Bacon triptych from 1969 at auction for $142
million dollars, topping 2012’s auction record of $119 million for Munch’s The Scream.
How does one resolve this in terms of Wood’s call for the
flourishing of local art practices? I do
not believe that it can be resolved. And
what has transpired since Wood's book seems even bleaker. Smith states:
“Auctions have become the leading indicator of
ultra-conspicuous consumption, pieces of public, male-dominated theater in
which collectors, art dealers and auction houses flex their monetary clout,
mostly for one another. The spectacle of watching these privileged few (mostly
hedge fund managers and investment-hungry consortiums, it seems) tossing around
huge amounts of money has become a rarefied spectator sport. These events are
painful to watch yet impossible to ignore and deeply alienating if you actually
love art for its own sake.
More than ever, the
glittery auction-house/blue-chip gallery sphere is spinning out of control far
above the regular workaday sphere where artists, dealers and everyone else
struggle to get by. It is a kind of fiction that has almost nothing to do with
anything real — not new art, museums or historical importance. It is becoming
almost as irrelevant as the work, reputation and market of the kitsch painter
Thomas Kinkade” (Smith)
I want to state critically that
Smith's writing reaffirms her own criticism simply by the vast majority of the
work she chooses to write about: there
is art for its own sake, it just won’t be shown in commercial galleries,
especially not in New York. The largest
part of Smith's writing involves contemporary art in museums and galleries in
New York. If there are these mythic
lovers of art for its own sake it is incredibly hard to find amidst all of the
grime of the art market. Galleries are businesses,
and relatively lucrative generators of revenue, and taste is determined by what
they are profiting from. Of course there
are a few exceptions--predominantly, I would argue, within the non-profit
organizations and smaller artist run spaces throughout the art world--but their
budget relies on donations and is often emulating aspects of the artwork
involved in the art market.
Grant Wood, then, is not off
base to write about the possibilities of visual art after financial ruin. The art market saw its own burst in the late
80's--and I still constantly hear comments about how difficult the market is
for my friends involved in galleries and other for-profit ventures. Indeed in the New York Times article written
by Smith about the Bacon painting quotes Christie's Auction House curator for
postwar and contemporary art Brett Gorvy as saying "This isn't a bubble--it’s the beginning of something new," (Smith)
inferring that auction prices are going to continue to rise (and the market is
going to continue to be inflated). After
the record Bacon sale, I came upon a photo essay in the Wall Street Journal
written by Geoff Foster comparing, dollar for dollar, an artwork sold at
Christie's recent auction to a baseball player's multiyear contract for a
professional baseball team. Roughly 1%
of the population has the money to participate in the skyrocketing art auctions
or donate money to the museums to buy and exhibit artwork; few regions can see a use for art in its contemporary
manifestation of an inflated market commodity. And it is exactly a commodity--look at
Detroit's bankruptcy and the rationale to sell DIA's collection. I may be verging on territory here that I
have little theoretical experience with; I’m no economist, but can only talk
from my direct experiences with the market.
To give some context with my
situation, I’ve made around $5,000 from sales of artwork since 2001, approximately
seven tenths of a percent of what the Bacon painting sold for. I’m not asking for pity nor am I claiming
starving artist status. I am productive
and have a healthy studio practice without monetary gain. I bring all of this up because my view is
that the art market, a hulking locomotive I can't help but try to understand,
is simply unsustainable and benefits a microscopic portion of the
population. I don't anticipate the art
market going away anytime soon, but I am building towards an idea that we need
an alternative for the betterment of art in society, for artists and the public
alike.
Now there are little revolts
everywhere, one that most people might be familiar with is the recent Residency
on the Streets of New York by the “street artist” Banksy—but Banksy’s work is
commodified as quickly as someone can put plexiglass on it. What is happening with these revolts, though,
in a profession so often interested in a false sense of the avante garde, is
that galleries and the market are commodifying things beyond fine art. I’m
not trying to make a qualitative statement of Banksy, but simply state the fact
that he (and Jeff Koons, Sherri Levine, Andy Warhol, and even Marcel Broodthaers
before him) have attempted to
discount and discredit the art market by exploiting it, but the machine keeps
going and increasing their prices. While
Banksy is also making interesting statements about authorship, particularly
with his film Exit Through the Gift Shop,
he is still a part of the money generating segments of the art world.
While this is neither my
subject matter nor my object matter, the art market is an aspect of making
contemporary art that is inescapable.
Smith would have us on a relentless search for art for its own sake—but
this has traditionally been applied to works that only refer to other works of
art, and have little to do with research—both visual and theoretical—and its
application in a studio practice.
As an artist I have started
thinking about materials and how they fit into this commodification of
artwork. Part of my practice involves
setting up situations that are then documented with a camera—in some ways, though,
I don’t even consider these photographs,
but pure documentation of something that was arranged in my studio and is now
gone. I occasionally use software to
double the image, or create a visually abnormal image. My materials are often basic building
supplies, scraps of paper and wood, and plants harvested from my yard. Most of my installations are for a specific
location and only exist for a short period of time in reality, and then in
photographed documentation. Recent
pieces have been as informal as painting on a downed branches and leaning them
against a fence, arranging construction supplies on a log, or spray painting
weeds that I pull from our garden--not many curators or collectors are willing
to come to Iowa, let alone to see what some crazy guy is doing in his
yard.
I am trained as a painter
and still hold dear the tradition of abstract painting—but the goal of my
practice, to a certain extent, is to make paintings based in visual and
theoretical research that is not determined by the art market. This aim is a bit premature in the sense that
I am just now, in my career, working with an art consultant and have never
worked (or been offered to work with) a gallery; but part of the mission of my
studio practice is to continue to make work that resists the commodification
that the art market relies on so heavily to determine the value and use of art. I am not exactly sure what my limits are or
where I would draw the line, but my parameters are to prioritize working with
individuals and organizations that have motives beyond monetary gain.
This last year I was
selected for two large-scale exhibitions that were also site-specific in the
sense that they will probably never manifest themselves again in another
venue. The Soothsayer was my first exhibition in a building of artists studios
called Box 13 in Houston, Texas. I drove
some of the materials down to Houston to install, but I also spent time around
the gallery, in a lower Middle class neighborhood where the light rail will go
through after its construction in 2016, collecting pieces, scraps, plants, and
other objects within a few blocks radius to make these installations. This amalgam of components from my yard and
the area of Houston around the gallery created an interesting dialogue between
two places. In the end, I'm not sure
that anyone could tell you exactly which parts where from where, adding to the
complexity of common statements like "where I am from" and
"where this is."
My most recent exhibition
was at DEMO Project, one of two contemporary art spaces in Springfield,
Illinois. DEMO, as its name implies, is
a small bungalow owned by the Springfield Art Association slated for destruction
in three years so that the SAA can build a new building in a working class neighborhood
just north of downtown. Run by young and energetic artists and recent graduates
from University of Illinois at Springfield, the gallery is temporary but an
incredible contribution to a community that has not prioritized contemporary
art spaces. I was happy to be offered
the exhibition purely for the location of the house, history of the
architecture (not unlike thousands of other bungalows built in the 40’s in the
Midwest), and the foreseeable end to it as a structure. Evensong
15 (caudex) took the form of a branching tree emanating from the fireplace
and stretched throughout the entire gallery/room. Though my work is rooted in abstraction, my
research deals with our relationship to place and how this manifests itself in
plants, building materials, and a connection to the physiography of my location,
including how all of these relate to deterioration and the break down of
materials. The ephemeral nature of
materials (and art galleries, in this sense) is incredibly important to my work
and thinking.
To conclude, I believe that
to truly support the visual arts and contemporary art making practice we need
to revisit it's usefulness in society. What
seems to be the most common answer to these problems (created in part by the
art market) is buying work from local artists, and this is partially true. Just like with food, buying locally has its
advantages. I believe there are ways to
be advocates without having to spend money, too—for one, we can all actively
participate in exhibitions, critically looking and thinking about the art that
is presented. Read press about
contemporary art and take advantage of the vast networks of alternative art venues
and publications--some of the most exciting things in contemporary art are
insensitive and are born out of absence or necessity. Dealing directly with artists is a good
method of interaction with their studio practice and their research. While some artists are less willing to talk
about their work with any depth, most artists do have something to communicate about their work, whether they are
comfortable with it or not.
Grant Wood states, in
regards to his proposed Government art schools throughout sections of the
country, that:
"…Annual exhibits of the work of schools of this character would
arouse general interest and greatly enlarge our American art public. A local pride would be excited that might
rival that which even hard-headed business men feel for home football teams and
such enterprises. There is nothing
ridiculous about such support; it would be only a by-product of a form of
public art education which, when extended over a long period of time would make
us a great art-loving nation." (Wood)
To think of contemporary art
on equal footing as high school or collegiate football is pretty far fetched,
but for the possibility of a broader acceptance of art in the United States, on
a regional level, I believe we need as dramatic of a shift away from the art
market as possible towards a more sustainable relationship between artists and
society, prioritizing thinking and making over the commodification of its
product.
Sources:
Grant Wood, Revolt Agains the City, Clio Press, Iowa City, Iowa. 1935
Roberta Smith, "Art is Hard to See Through the Clutter of Drawing Signs" New York Times, 11/13/2013
Click Here to see the video of the prints via Facebook.
