DECONSTRUCT – PERCEIVE – ACT – QUESTION

Speaking of young artists, I recently ran into the young, formerly-Toronto based curator Alissa Firth-Eagland, who had been living in Europe for the past two years and who was back in town for a few weeks of studio visits before taking off again.

Firth-Eagland, second from left, with her fellow participants of the Curatorial Training Program. Image: ecoledumagasin.com

She handed me a copy of one of her recent publications, The Learning Public, which she co-edited with Veronica Valentini from Milan. It was published on the occasion of a round table, back in May, which corresponded to an exhibition called How not to make an exhibition at the international cutarorial training program Ecole du Magasin, in Grenoble, France. The round table was titled How to Act in the Public Sphere, the participants were The Bruce High Quality Foundation and the French artist Clarie Fontaine.

The publication is clearly intended as a work of art. On its cover is a story of Bruce and Claire, but the story asks the reader to consider: “What if this text is a public space? Yes. This one.”

Members of the Bruce High Quality Foundation. Image: nytimes.com

Inside, a manifesto of sorts from the BHQF, whose mission, on their website, HERE, is, in part “to resurect art history from the bowels of despair.” Discussing what they term the learning public, or the public that exists in order to validate art history and the art market, they put forward the idea that that this public has relinquished its power because they have “misconstrued the battle for power over what art is as a battle between the private and public sectors. Currently, the most significant and creative remodeling of art’s institutions are coming from the private sector…”

It goes on to say that this is because the private sector is more creative, more willing to take risks, acts like an engaged student. Nonetheless, the private sector “still instrumentalizes art for profit.”

Their goal? “To position the learning public of art in such a way that it can engulf the public and the private…to understand art through the educational frame.”

Claire Fontaine submits an allegorical text, using her words “to address her own powerlessness in today’s messy apolitical world”.

The exhibition poster, courtesy Alissa Firth-Eagland.

The exhibition was designed to offer alternatives to established systems of learning by putting into question their coercive aspects.  It’s interesting - especially in light of the last post on Hugh Scott-Douglas - how young artists and curators are thinking about and reacting to the market, how it is formed and what their place is within it.

For more information – in French – please see the website HERE.

More on Alissa Firth-Eagland, is HERE.

The other day, I did a studio visit with the young artist and very recent OCAD grad (2010) Hugh Scott-Douglas.

I had seen his ceramic sculptures at a collectors home and fell in love with them. They were mid-sized, off-balance ovals and loopy shapes that were roughly modeled but heavily and sophisticatedly glazed. Some, he showed at Clint Roenisch’s gallery in a 3-day exhibition this spring, had working light bulbs in their ends.

Hugh. Image: VoCA

I was expecting to see sculpture when I arrived, but Hugh’s tiny studio room was hung with paintings, which he was preparing for an upcoming show in L.A. (One of many shows this year, a testament to his ambition and social networking skills, but that’s another post, coming soon.)

Some ‘bad’ paintings by Hugh Scott-Douglas. Image: VoCA

He explained that while he studied in the sculpture program at school, he now worked in other media, mainly since he could stack more paintings together than he could store his extremely fragile, unfired clay sculptures.

A sculpture by Hugh Scott-Douglas. Image: verykunst.com

We spoke at length about his practice, mostly about ‘bad’ art, and the ‘willful idiocy’ that some young (and less young) painters have been bringing to their practices in recent years and which he is himself investigating.

I’m also interested in the idea of ‘bad’ art – in fact, what I loved about Hugh’s sculptures is the dichotomy between the off-kilter shapes and rich, heavy glazing. I love how much ‘bad’ art looks wonderful inside a white walled gallery. I love how clumsy execution is magically balanced by the artist’s intention. Of course, when artists make ‘bad’ art, it’s a deliberate move, a way of investigating new possibilities, or, as Raphael Rubenstein mentions in THIS article (that Hugh sent to me) a way of ignoring the ‘impossibility’ of painting.

His inspiration wall. From Mark Rothko to Tonya Harding - that’s kinda great. Image: VoCA

His tools. Image: VoCA

I feel it’s also a reaction against the market. From THIS article “Waxing Durr” in the quarterly publication Art Lies, on what they term “retard art”: “Posed as an act of passive market resistance, this recent slackerdom ultimately occupies a position of privilege and luxury, highlighting the market’s ready recuperation of any production, even the most retarded.”

Another of Hugh’s ‘bad’ paintings, soon to be shown in L.A. Image: VoCA

Check out Hugh Scott Douglas’s website HERE.

I think he’s definitely one to watch.

VoCA contributor and artist book collector Bill Clarke is back with a third installment from his collection, this time of books that take the form of exhibition catalogues. Check out parts one and two HERE and HERE, and part three, below.

“Recent Snow”: Michael Snow That/Cela/Dat, 2000. Image: canadianart.ca

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VoCA contributor and artist book collector Bill Clarke is back with a third installment from his collection, this time of books that take the form of exhibition catalogues. Check out parts one and two HERE and HERE, and stay tuned for part four, coming this week.

Moderna Museet exhibition catalogue, 1968. Image: courtesy Bill Clarke.

Bill Clarke edits Magenta Magazine Online, a great new publication which you can read HERE.

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Here’s a fascinating article by Ben Lewis from Prospect magazine. It’s definitely worth reading.

In it, he presents the case for “compelling parallels between much of the contemporary art of the last two decades…and French rococo, a movement that extolled frivolity, luxury and dilettantism, patronised by a corrupt and decadent ancien régime.”

Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. Image: rawartint.com

“Boucher’s art represented the degradation of the baroque school’s classical and Christian values into a heavenly zone of soft porn, shorn of danger, conflict and moral purpose. Similarly, (Damien) Hirst’s work represents the degeneration of the modernist project from its mission to sweep away art’s “bourgeois relics” into a set of eye-pleasing and sentimental visual tropes.”

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His highness the Aga Khan, with his Order of Canada. Image: archive.gg.ca

1. His Highness the Aga Khan will participate in the Foundation Ceremony to mark the beginning of the development of the Ismaili Centre, the first-ever Aga Khan Museum for Islamic Art and Culture, and their Park, in Toronto’s Don Mills area.

Read more HERE.

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Click HERE for a questionnaire with Vancouver artist Jeff Wall in this month’s issue of Frieze magazine.

“I get so much from looking at great works, but some days – or even some months – I get more from not looking at them. You experience the art also by being away from it and not seeing it.” - Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall, The Destroyed Room, 1978. Image: tate.org.uk

Also, HERE in Art + Auction, Souren Melikian writes on the shifting perceptions in the Old Masters market, where mediocre works are achieving great prices, thanks to scarcity of the real gems.

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Piotr Uklanski, Jeppe Hein and Jim Lambie are among the artists who will create art works for the public to interact with, at a new IKEA store in Moscow.

Jim Lambie’s floor at MoMA. Image: apartmenttherapy.com

The art is part of a mixed-use plan for IKEA, where new developments will “fuse culture, commerce and leisure.” Plans for the site includes shops, restaurants, an ice-rink, as well as an Ikea flat-pack furniture store.

Could this idea be the start of something big for the Swedish retailer?  And if so, what impact, if any will it have on the art market?

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In Edmonton, a writer’s despair over provincial arts cuts is both convincing and less so on Government arts support.

“Alberta artists have taken the latest news of a 15-per-cent cut (to the arts) in their stride”, says Marliss Weber in SEE magazine.

Andrew Rucklidge, Sleeper, 2009. Image: courtesy the artist.

She continues, “Art allows us to express ourselves, which is an innate human desire. Without access to art, without the ability to write and draw and act and make music, or consume all of the above, we seriously limit the effectiveness of our communication abilities. We also limit our ability to persuade, to entertain, to connect with each other.”

Can’t argue with that.  She makes some good points in her article, and yet, while cities need the arts in order to thrive, her insinuation that the arts will cease without government support is troubling.

Read the full article HERE.

There will always be art, with or without government support and there should be absolutely no doubt about that.

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The debate continues.

Barnett Newman, Voice of Fire, 1967. Image: gala.univ-perp.fr

Yesterday, VoCA reader Earl Miller posted a comment HERE in response to the post ‘Should VoCA be More Critical?’ He says that, given the amount of ‘bad’ art in the world, it’s important as an art journalist to find art that he likes or feels is important, but flawed.

We were inspired by Miller’s comment, a topic which is something that VoCA spends a lot of time thinking about.

It is perhaps useful to turn it into a question – which is more important to write about, art that the critic ‘likes’ or art that is “important for its stature, timing or positioning?

For that matter, does the critic automatically like art that is important?

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