As the Election Year Heats up: A Few Thoughts on Our Noisy, Noisy Democracy

A comedian told a joke once about how so often, when he paused to reflect on his life thus far, he realized what a jerk he had been about five years ago. After doing this several times over the course of a few decades (realizing that five years prior he had been quite the jerk), it finally dawned on him that he's more than likely being quite the jerk right now. That's why older people tend to be more quiet, he said. They've figured this out.

I think of that joke every time I catch myself in a position I had never imagined I would be back when George W. Bush was the President. Back then, I was convinced....convinced mind you....that GWB was not only the worst president the country had ever seen, ripping apart the very fabric of our democracy with his executive over-reach and arguably criminal wartime actions, but perhaps even evil enough to seize the power needed (or stage some national crisis) to get himself back into office for a third term, and perhaps more. He's stage a coup if he had to, I was nearly convinced.
I remember truly believing he was as close to a dictator as any president we had ever had and that he represented a real threat to our way of life. It was horrible to watch from my blog-and-Sunday-Morning-news-chat-show perspective. There in real time was the dismantling of the American experiment, to be replaced by a living Orwellian nightmare.

But then, of course, in 2009, George W. Bush vacated the White House, calmly permitting a member of the opposition party to take up residence there. Yes, the damage had been done, but Bush had exited...his reign was over.

Today when I hear the kind of rhetoric coming out of respected conservative quarters about President Obama, I recognize my own feelings about Bush 6 years ago. I realize that as insanely over-dramatic as they're being about Obama, I had been about Bush, and that if they're jerks now, that means I was a jerk then.

But what to do with that epiphany has not yet become clear to me. I don't believe I should have simply sat quiet while Bush misled the country into a costly war. I don't believe I was wrong to march and protest the horrendous Homeland Security Department's formation or the anti-American "Patriot Act." And, as I wrote frequently in this blog, I still think Bush should stand trial for war crimes, particularly for authorizing torture, even though I'm no longer sure there are three 6's tattooed on his forehead.

And so perhaps the point of my epiphany was to realize that those opposed to Obama's policies should speak up as well.  It's not only their right, it's essential if our democracy is going to creep forward. God knows I don't know everything. Obama doesn't know everything. What if, from our mutual vantage point on the questions most hotly contested issues (healthcare, banking regulations, taxing toward a more sensible level of income equality), we are...gasp...mistaken. Opposing view points help keep each side more honest and encourage more carefully developed policies. 

If there was no opposition to, for example, The Patriot Act, how much more limitation would a shaken government have placed on civil liberties than they did? Not that I was even remotely happy with the outcome. Just that it could have been (and without protests probably would have been) much worse.

And so, as Teams Obama and Romney begin flinging the mud in earnest, I steady myself for a noisy, noisy campaign season. The only thing I'll humbly remind those inclined to join in the ruckus is to remember that some day, about 5 years from now, you'll probably have an opportunity to reflect on your behavior during this period. It will, I'm sure, be refreshing to discover that you hadn't actually been that much of a jerk.

"Internet’s over, people. Maurice Sendak just won."

 

http://npr.tumblr.com/post/22652463770/nprfreshair-hwentworth-internets-over

In Praise of Choosing to Be an Art History Major

An oldie but a goodie:

An American businessman was at the pier of a small Belizean village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large lobsters, and a slew of red and yellow snapper. The visitor complimented the Belizean on the quality of his catch and asked how long it took to bring it in.

The Belizean replied only a little while. The American then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish and lobster?

The Belizean fisherman said, "I get up early and watch the sun rise, then I fish a little, come home and relax, play with my children, have a big lunch and take a rest with my wife. In the evening I stroll into the village where I sip cashew wine and play music and sing with my friends. I have a full and busy life."

The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave Belize and move to Mexico, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."

The Belizean asked, "But how much time will all of this all take?"

To which the American replied, "15-20 years."

"What then, Gringo?"

The American laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions of dollars."

"Millions? Then what?" 

The American said, "Then you would retire. Move back to a caye in Belize, where you would get up early and watch the sun rise, then fish a little, play with your grandkids, have a big lunch and take a rest with your wife. In the evenings you could stroll to the village where you could sip cashew wine and play music and sing with your friends."

There is nothing wrong with being driven to achieve in business. Some among the driven people have greatly improved the quality of life for all humanity (even as others have inadvertently generated new challenges for us), and no one should stand in the way or pooh pooh someone else's dream so long as the dreamer isn't infringing on any one else's rights. If you wish to get an MBA and work hard for 15-20 years, building an empire, by all means, carry on with your bad ass self.

Just don't imagine that your dream makes you superior to your fellow human beings who have a different dream. 

In what Adam Davidson (in his review in The New York Times) suggests may become the most hated book of the year, former Bain Capital (Mitt Romney's company) executive Edward Conard outlines his argument for why Americans should be happy about the growing wealth inequality in our country (in a nutshell: because it proves the economy is working and because we're all benefiting from it). There are three basic elements in Conard's argument (quotes are Davidson's words): 

1. "[T]he superrich spend only a small portion of their wealth on personal comforts; most of their money is invested in productive businesses that make life better for everyone."
2. When those investments are successful, Conard "concludes that for every dollar an investor gets, the public reaps up to $20 in value" [note others suggest it's considerably less than $20...others argue it's more like $5 value].
3. "[W]e should all appreciate the vast wealth of others more, because we’re benefiting, proportionally, from it"

I would quibble with a few of the implied conclusions from this argument. One example Conard uses in particular suggests he's cherry picking examples and then looking at the economy less holistically than a more rigorous scholar would: 

He looks, in particular, at agriculture, where, since the 1940s, the cost of food has steadily fallen because of a constant stream of innovations. While the businesses that profit from that innovation — like seed companies and fast-food restaurants — have made their owners rich, the average U.S. consumer has benefited far more.  [emphasis mine]

A more holistic look at this particular example would need to consider the exploding obesity among the average US consumer, the costs associated with that obesity (in human, medical, and financial terms), and whether indeed the benefits are that significant. One can argue that just because food is cheaper doesn't mean people have to overeat, and of course they're correct, but there's no question that there's a direct relationship between cheaper fast-food and obesity among children.

A more holistic look at this particular example would also need to consider the implications of seed companies' patent enforcement practices. What has humanity gained when a few conglomerates have complete control over the pricing of seed? More importantly, what Conard sees as a relatively short-term benefit stands to become a long-term nightmare.

But in a vacuum, I would agree that the public benefits from wisely invested money and so again I say, if that's your dream, carry on with your bad ass self...go invest that money wisely.

But consider stopping short of viewing what it takes to achieve that dream some sort of universal religion. And most definitely stop short of proselytizing and/or moralizing from that religion's morally questionable point of view.

What's probably going to propel Conard's book to become quite hated is his disdain for people who don't view life's purpose the same way he does:

A central problem with the U.S. economy, [Conard] told me, is finding a way to get more people to look for solutions despite [the] terrible odds of success. Conard’s solution is simple. Society benefits if the successful risk takers get a lot of money. For proof, he looks to the market. At a nearby table we saw three young people with plaid shirts and floppy hair. For all we know, they may have been plotting the next generation’s Twitter, but Conard felt sure they were merely lounging on the sidelines. “What are they doing, sitting here, having a coffee at 2:30?” he asked. “I’m sure those guys are college-educated.” Conard, who occasionally flashed a mean streak during our talks, started calling the group “art-history majors,” his derisive term for pretty much anyone who was lucky enough to be born with the talent and opportunity to join the risk-taking, innovation-hunting mechanism but who chose instead a less competitive life. In Conard’s mind, this includes, surprisingly, people like lawyers, who opt for stable professions that don’t maximize their wealth-creating potential. He said the only way to persuade these “art-history majors” to join the fiercely competitive economic mechanism is to tempt them with extraordinary payoffs.

“It’s not like the current payoff is motivating everybody to take risks,” he said. “We need twice as many people. When I look around, I see a world of unrealized opportunities for improvements, an abundance of talented people able to take the risks necessary to make improvements but a shortage of people and investors willing to take those risks. That doesn’t indicate to me that risk takers, as a whole, are overpaid. Quite the opposite.” The wealth concentrated at the top should be twice as large, he said. That way, the art-history majors would feel compelled to try to join them.

What Conard seems to have no grasp of is that many people are not tempted by extraordinary payoffs. The necessary sacrifices and uncertainty seem ludicrous to many people. The ultimate purpose of an extraordinary payoff (most frequently imagined to be an early retirement that enables one to focus on one's passions from a point of security [Conard himself retired at 51 and now envisions spending his life being, as Davidson phrased it, "a public intellectual"]) strikes many as moronic, given how true security is a myth (just ask Steve Jobs) and the rest of that imagined payoff (living one's dream) is often theirs to be had throughout their entire life, not only after they've retired.

Isn't it smarter to live your life, like the Belizian fisherman, so you get to do the things you enjoy without having to wait 15-20 years doing things you don't enjoy?

Unless you enjoy the sort of business Bain Capital is in, why torture yourself? 

I know, I know, because the wealthy investor is helping humanity. Accidentally at best, mind you, and certainly not always, and certainly not in a way that is accountable to those who can't afford their products (or even for those who can afford their products, as in companies who make consumers sign contracts that prevent them from filing class action suits, etc.), and certainly not at the cost of profit whether the public need is great or not, and often certainly not without risks to the planet and the public's health, and certainly not in conjunction with the best principles of democracy, and certainly ....you get the idea. The suggestion that they're doing God's work is more than a little bullshit. They're trying to get insanely wealthy, and sometimes others benefit from their efforts and sometimes others don't. None of which supports Conard's claim that they deserve even more money, to my mind.

Conard strikes me as a man blinded by his own success. The hilarious irony of him wishing now to spend his retirement teaching others and being perceived as a public intellectual will surely occur to him one day.  If he's lucky, when it does occur to him, he'll be able to reach out to a few art history majors who can help him contextualize and/or channel that epiphany into something more productive/creative than an existential crisis.

More Fair Logic

No one knows.

That's the response you most often hear when the question "What do you think the coming week is going to do to the New York fair landscape?" crops up. And it's cropping up so constantly as the week begins that the answers are overlapping and like cacophonous sound waves cancelling each other out to some degree, leaving a numbing white noise in their wake.

With regard to the main fair, Frieze New York, everyone seems to think the location is the big variable, and how easy it is (or isn't) to get on or off Randall's Island may determine the inaugural version's success. Will you take a cab, the train, or try the ferry? seems to be another common question. (A friend of ours born and raised in New York, more than 70 years ago, has never been to Randall's Island either, so he was no help in deciding how to get there. And he's probably more typical than not, which gives non-New Yorkers some idea why the location seems such a big unknown.)

No one doubts the fair itself will be high quality. No one doubts New York has the bandwidth for more great art. Short of Art Basel opening up shop in New York, though, I don't think any other event could have caused this much commotion, anticipation, or uncertainty in the Big Apple. At least where the contemporary art market is concerned.

I've mused on all this recently, but to be honest it feels as if it's all shifting so quickly, I personally can't get enough feedback on what it all means. One thing is clear, we're in a tumultuous art fair era, and experimentation is the order of the day. Clearly things will need to settle, but how they settle is being worked out even as we speak.

Murat and I are in an interesting (though, perhaps not far from in the Chinese curse sort of way) position to observe this evolution. Collaborating with 6 other galleries to play with the model in Miami, and having started our own small, niche fair in New York and London, even as we participate in more established fairs and other innovative models, we're monitoring it all on the iPad and iPhone even as we are finalizing plans on the laptop, all the while trying to remain as flexible and rested as possible in the non-online world (so, you know, we can actually visit or work the fairs). We're certainly not bored.

What we're noticing though from our particular position, very gratifyingly, is how experimentation in particular seems to be paying off. Especially when the experimentation is driven by galleries' needs and the realities of both viewing art and selling it. For two examples I can report on firsthand, traffic increased significantly at SEVEN in Miami this past year, and sales jumped dramatically at Moving Image New York this past March (with several galleries eventually grossing more than 10 times the participation fee). More than increased traffic or sales, though, is what seems a growing awareness that hybrid models (whereby, for another firsthand example, one art fair is invited to curate a film series within another art fair, as happened with Armory Film) are paying off (again with an emphasis on meeting the needs of the galleries and with an eye on better viewing experiences).

We're not alone in our wish to experiment, obviously. No experiment has been a more brilliant triumph, in my humble opinion, than Independent. It simply looked and felt fantastic this year. I heard sales were stronger as well.

What's in store for the galleries participating in fairs this week? We'll know soon enough. Personally, any effort that brings quality and excitement to New York is welcome in my book.

Opening Tomorrow : "Loughelton Revisited," Curated by Barbara Broughel, at Winkleman Gallery, 6-8 PM

Installation view of "The Double Bind," an exhibition
at Loughelton Gallery, New York, in 1987.

Loughelton Revisited 

Curated by Barbara Broughel

April 27 - May 26, 2012 

Opens April 27 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM 

Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present Loughelton Revisited, a group exhibition curated by artist Barbara Broughel, featuring work by Polly Apfelbaum, Richard Artschwager, Gary Bachman, John Baldessari, Paul Bloodgood, Barbara Bloom, Leonard Bullock, Chris Burden, John Dogg, Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, John Franklin, Jack Goldstein, Lisa Hoke, Win Knowlton, Annette Lemieux, Amy Lipton, Suzanne McClelland, Peter Nagy, Marianne Nowottny, Tom Radloff, Josef Ramaseder, Richard Rezac, Walter Robinson, Barry Schwabsky, Kunie Sugiura, Carol Szymanski, James Welling, Sue Williams, and Thomas Zummer.

In 1986, with her gallery partner Amy Lipton, Broughel founded the Loughelton Gallery in New York’s East Village, curating works by dozens of artists into group shows with topics ranging from schizophrenia to the formation of the universe. Whether targeting the inarticulate meanderings of “post-modernist” discourse, the pseudo-sacred status assigned to high-brow painting, or the aloof impenetrability that sometimes passed for conceptual rigor, Loughelton’s shows were often conceived with a healthy irreverence, to counter or challenge the blind assumptions of the moment. The gallery’s pokes were not just gratuitous but also serious and pointed, and often delivered with humor, pathos, or even political urgency.

Nothing was too banal or too sacred to be part of the dialogue. Clement Greenberg visited the gallery in 1986 to “see for himself what his dilemma was,” when Loughelton opened Greenberg’s Dilemma, an exhibition of works by artists combining formalism with Pop Art. With tastes leaning toward work that was witty, formally elegant, conceptual but accessible, the gallery’s program engaged with the surrounding art world, contemporary discourses in the philosophy of language, avant garde film, and underground music.

This exhibition includes many of the original works which were exhibited at Loughelton Gallery, as well as artworks by other artist/curators whose orbits intersected with the gallery's, including Peter Nagy who co-owned and curated Gallery Nature Morte, Colin deLand, the proprietor of American Fine Arts, and John Baldessari, who curated a show for Loughelton in 1987.

Barbara Broughel is an artist based in New York and Connecticut, with an extensive history of exhibitions. Over the years, Broughel's work has taken a variety of forms, often presented as installations and investigative projects, including games, films, video-works, sculptures, photographs, paintings and drawings. Her work has been shown at various museums internationally and in the United States, including the Queens Museum of Art, Aldrich Museum, CT, Katonah Museum, NY, San Jose Museum, CA, the Hermit Foundation, Czech Republic, Kilkenny Castle, Ireland, Kunstmuseum des Kantons Thurgau, Switzerland, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland, and many others. She has had commissions in Europe, the United States and the Far East, including installation works at the Sanskriti Institute in New Delhi and at Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam, Holland.

For more information, contact Edward Winkleman at info@winkleman.com

The Digital Dialog || Open Thread

In response to the question raised in yesterday's post about regionalism (i.e., Could there be such a thing as conceptual regionalism?), self-declared "Generic Artist" (who lives in self-declared "Quaintsville" [i.e., no where near a major arts center]) suggested:

Maybe a long time ago people from Quaintsville were less informed on current conceptual trends, but that's certainly not the case now. You can be typing away in Elk River Idaho, working on your MFA thesis from a top conceptual University via correspondence. Most people have access to all of the same information.

To assume that an artist is less involved in progressive dialogue simply because they're in Quaintsville is highly dismissive. Everyone is on Facebook. Everyone Tweets. Everyone blogs. We all know what color tie Jerry Saltz wore to the last opening. Quaintsvillagers have their finger on the pulse.

And while I certainly agree that the Internet has facilitated a much wider form of connection than we've ever had in human history, the depth of that connection remains in question, in my humble opinion.

Indeed, in a great op-ed in the Times a few days back, Sherry Turkle (a psychologist, professor at M.I.T., and the author of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other”) argues that while technology has permitted us to connect, it has also essentially killed conversation:

Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of this. But it’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference.

We are tempted to think that our little “sips” of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places — in politics, commerce, romance and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.

Connecting in sips may work for gathering discrete bits of information or for saying, “I am thinking about you.” Or even for saying, “I love you.” But connecting in sips doesn’t work as well when it comes to understanding and knowing one another. In conversation we tend to one another. (The word itself is kinetic; it’s derived from words that mean to move, together.) We can attend to tone and nuance. In conversation, we are called upon to see things from another’s point of view.

FACE-TO-FACE conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits. As we ramp up the volume and velocity of online connections, we start to expect faster answers. To get these, we ask one another simpler questions; we dumb down our communications, even on the most important matters. It is as though we have all put ourselves on cable news. Shakespeare might have said, “We are consum’d with that which we were nourish’d by.”

All of which both rings true to me and makes me question the value of the so-called digital dialog, particularly as it feeds a conceptual art practice.

Of course, as soon as I say that, the old question "do I have to move to New York?" rears its head, and there are clearly enough examples of artists with successful careers living in other places to suggest the answer is no. But, and with recognition that he/she was merely making a lighthearted point, it should probably be emphasized for some people that knowing what color tie Jerry Saltz wore to an opening (sidebar: I have never seen Jerry wearing a tie, but...) is not the same as face-to-face feedback from sources you trust about the ideas and experiments you're wading through in your studio.

Consider this an open thread on the value (or limits) of the "digital dialog."

My Epiphany about Regionalism || Open Thread

OK, so this is not a well formulated idea yet. I suspect it has the potential to be viewed as insulting to some or make me sound like the worst of snobs, for which I will preemptively apologize. That's not my intent here. But to get a conversation started about it, I'll throw it out there anyway.

Last year, Murat and I almost bought a house upstate. We were almost in contract, we had been preapproved, had the lawyers lined up, etc. etc., but something told me we should clear our schedules, sit down and crunch the numbers again more granularly, do some serious soul-searching, and be sure before we signed.

After that process, we decided the timing wasn't right. Among the factors bringing us to that decision were how busy we are with the gallery and Moving Image, and admitting that it would be a constant struggle to find time to get up there.

This was a few weeks before Hurricane Irene caused the terrible flooding upstate that wiped out so many fabulous houses and village main streets in the region. The only bridge to the house we almost bought was washed away as well. As much as it broke our heart to hear the tales from the people we knew up there who had their property damaged, we were also somewhat relieved about our decision.

But with Summer approaching (seriously, it is...), almost no weekend goes by that we don't pine for what might have been. We imagine ourselves, after a busy day of working on the house and garden, relaxing on the porch, watching the sunset, or lighting a fire in the fireplace and falling asleep watching an old movie. Ahh....

You see, we like the area we almost bought in a lot. In searching for a house (we must have looked at 60), we have spent a fair bit of time up there. We like the people up there, the pace of life up there, and the gorgeous scenery. We probably have overly romantic views of it, in part because we don't (yet) own there (and, for example, didn't have to clean up after the flooding or fret about our investment, etc. etc.), but somehow the region has got into our blood.

And so, when I got an email recently about a gallery show in the upstate region, of paintings of the scenery up there, my heart jumped a bit. I really wanted to see that exhibition. Even though I didn't know the artist, and though the few images I saw suggested the work was well done, but not necessarily going to rock my world, the fact that the work was about something I care about...about a place I really like...made it seem really special to me.

It was a very odd realization for me, too, when I figured out why I wanted to see that show. It was ONLY because it was painted in and was about the region I like. The art snob in me, always seeking out the "universal" or widespread appeal of artwork, was essentially told to sit down and shut up by the would-be gentleman farmer (WGF) in me, whose knee-jerk reaction to the invite was "I'd love to own a painting of that mountain range."

And then it hit me, that this feeling was a unique appeal of artwork that we would classify as "regionalist," and not just of representational regionalism, but of artwork created in and reflecting the lifestyle and mind set of a subsection of the world better than any of the international, universal work out there ever could. Yes, its specificity is perhaps also one of it's "problems" from a critical point of view, but the WGF farmer in me didn't care. He responded viscerally to the work, or at least its subject matter, and wanted to see more of it. It was its specificity that made it special and desirable.

Even if Famous Artist X were to travel to that region and paint the same subjects, I don't believe I would have been as immediately intrigued by an exhibition of the work. There was an element of local hero worship in my response to the announcement. But more than that, there was an emotional attachment that overwhelmed my carefully cultivated big city cynicism, battling back the voices sneering "if the exhibition were worth your time, you'd have heard of that artist before" or "how silly would that look on the wall next to your {Famous Artist Y}?"

That immediate emotional attachment, though, was exquisite (before I began deconstructing it, anyway). It was genuine and intense. Those are not two words I often use to describe my response to work I see at internationally renown galleries or even contemporary museums. Which isn't to say the regional work is more accomplished or deserves to hang in said museums more than the work one typically finds there. But it's not nothing, either.

Consider this an open thread on what regional art can do that work created for an international audience cannot.