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Marina at MoMA

This past week I saw the Marina Abramović show at MoMA.Thrice. (Once on Tuesday, for the opening, again on Friday, because I had the day off, and again with friends on Sunday.) Originally from Yugoslavia, and now based in New York, Abramović is one of the pioneers of performance art, and she continues to perform, long outlasting her peers of ordealism-- Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Bruce Nauman-- who have ceased performing and moved onto other media. She uses the body and her body to explore ritual, endurance, state of consciousness, and the relationship between artist and audience. 

The show begins on the second floor with the title piece, "The Artist is Present," a performance in which Abramović sits in silence at a table in the middle of a large, taped off square. Viewers  may participate by entering the square, one at a time, and sitting silently across from her for whatever duration they choose. Abramović remains there every day that the museum is open, (six days a week), from the time the museum is open until the last visitor leaves, an exercise in meditation, in endurance, in control and perception of the passage of time. 

Curatorially, I found the second part of the show, on the museum's sixth floor, somewhat problematic. The galleries include archives of Abramović's past performances in chronological order. Photographs, videos and objects-- remnants of performances-- are included in addition to reenactments of five pieces by other performers. In 2005, Abramović performed "Seven Easy Pieces" at the Guggenheim-- reperformances of five significant works by others, and two of her own. The work addressed the inherent ephemeral quality of performance, and the difficulty that exists when attempting to archive it, but breaks with the "purist" view that the immediate nature of performance means that it should not be documented at all; instead she treats performance as one would treat a musical score. Abramović's decision to have her own works reenacted is consistent with her message from this past work, and I am personally interested in the idea of archiving ephemera. However, I found it distracting to have these reperformances side by side with the videos and photographs of the original performances. It took away much of the power that comes with a live performance; often the performance is only thing in the room—the audience comes specifically to view it. But this was not the case here. Thus, the energy that is so much of what Abramović's works are both about and rely on, was missing. I don't object to the reperformances themselves, but I think that they would have been more powerful if they were separated from the relics of the original performances-- in their own rooms, or even together in one room.

Additionally, I wondered why they chose to reenact "Nude with Skeleton" at all. In Abramović's original performance, she lies nude, a skeleton draped across her body, rising and falling with her breath. A video at MoMA (the quality jarringly different, clearer, than the other video shown, perhaps because it's on LCD screens rather than projected) shows her cleaning the original skeleton. But the skeleton used for the reperformance appears to be plastic, and upon inspection of the wall text, it's revealed to be a "replica." Why not go further? Why not replace the nude performer with a mannequin? The difference between performance art and theater is that in performance art, the blood is real. The reenactment of "Nude with Skeleton" was theater.

That said, go see "The Artist is Present." Sit across from the artist and focus on your breathing, your consciousness, and on hers. Exchange energy. Look at archives from previous works. Watch the video of "Rest Energy," in which Abramović grips a bow with the arrow pointing toward her, and ULAY, her partner and collaborator, holds the arrow to the bowstring with his fingers, and then they both lean back until the bowstring is taut and the arrow points at her heart, the sound of their breathing, further intensifying the experience. Look at the collection of seventy-two objects that Marina allowed audience members to use on her in "Rhythm 0," which include wine, scissors, a whip, a single bullet, and a gun. Watch the "The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk" in which Abramovic and ULAY, collaborators, friends, and lovers from 1976-1988, each walk the entirety of the wall, starting at opposite ends of the wall, meeting in the middle and having an emotionally intense goodbye, after which they never saw each other again, until ULAY, now Frank Uwe Laysiepen, sat silently across from Abramović on the opening night of "The Artist is Present."  Wow.

SFMOMA expansion

On Monday, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom announced the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's planned expansion, which includes taking over the Howard Street fire station, and spending $14 million to relocate it to a new building.

The additional space will house the contemporary and modern art collection of the Fisher family, founders of the Gap. Last September, SFMOMA announced that long time San Francisco residents Doris and Donald Fisher planned to house their 1100 piece collection at SFMOMA.

Brandeis faculty cuts

The Boston Globe just reported that Brandeis plans to cut 2 dozen faculty positions and eliminate a number of academic offerings, including grad programs in anthropology and theater. This, of course, is after Brandeis' controversial decision to close their Rose Art Museum. Read more about it here.

Update: The Rose

Brandeis University's art museum, The Rose, is making headlines again. In January, the university's president, Jehuda Reinharz, announced that the museum would close its doors to the public, and additionally, Brandeis would sell the museum's entire 7500 piece collection in order to raise funds for the school.

A group of professors immediately called for Reinharz's resignation, and many in the art community questioned the legality of the university's actions.  In February, Reinharz recanted some of his earlier statements: he told The Boston Globe that the Rose would not be closing, but instead would  transition from a public art museum to an educational arts center. Additionally, he clarified that

the university intended to sell just a small portion of the collection 'if and when it is necessary.'

Still, such clarifications did little to assuage the fears of the international art community. In July, citing museum ethical codes, which require proceeds from any sale of artwork be used only to purchase new acquisitions, three members of The Rose Art Museum's board of overseers filed a lawsuit in order to stop the sale of any work.

Then, last week, a Brandeis University committee recommended that the museum remain open to the public, although it failed to take a position on the arguably more important issue of the sale of its collection, valued at $350 million.

Days later, Reinharz announced his resignation to The Justice, Brandeis' student newspaper. However, he claims that he is ending his long tenure as university president because he's met his goals, and the resignation was not influenced by the outcry he created by announcing the Rose's closure.

We drive the bus, Roberta. Don't forget it.

In her September 9th column lauding The Bruce High Quality Foundation University, a free, unaccredited art school created by the artist collective The Bruces in the vain of Summerhill and The Art Students League, Roberta Smith criticizes academia's role in the art world as one that capitalizes on "the illusion that being an artist is a financially viable calling." She also criticizes the new Ph.D. programs in studio art as "cynical commercial opportunism." So, is it financially feasible to be an artist? And if not, is the Masters of Fine Arts, presently accepted as the standard terminal degree in artmaking, a useful degree? Would a Ph.D. program benefit artists?

Is "artist" a viable occupation? Smith should hope so; without artists, where would art critics be? As I read Smith's piece, I was reminded of Gregory Amenoff's words in Letters to a Young Artist:

Remember that ARTISTS DRIVE THE BUS... The entire enterprise is built on one central event: the creative act in the studio.

Artists generate jobs for art critics, art historians, curators, gallerists, art consultants, arts administrators, and art educators, among others. Thus, it's odd, even arrogant, for Smith to argue about the feasibility, or lack thereof, of artmaking as a profession. In fact, there are markets for art; it is possible to be an artist, although it's true that it might not be the most profitable or easiest route for one to take. But these days, what is? Law school, once thought to be a reliable path to a six figure salary, particularly if one went to a top-tier school, is now leaving students six figures in debt with no job prospects. And, those who are lucky enough to score jobs at a Vault 100 firm are stuck working 50-60 hours a week, doing mindless doc review. I may not be able to subsist entirely on my artistic practice, but at least my day job involves creating curriculum, working with leaders in my field on a regular basis, designing material for print and web publication, teaching and writing this blog post in my down time.

And, I am certain that MFA made me a more desirable candidate for my job. A good MFA program prepares its students not just by refining their craft, but also by asking them to relate abstract ideas and visual forms, to utilize available resources, to work under pressure, to work both independently and collaboratively with others, to criticize and evaluate ideas and works, and to effectively communicate, skills that are valuable in myriad settings. Of course, the goal of every artist is to be able to exist entirely off one's own art, to be a full-time artist, but it doesn't mean that one has failed if he must instead use the critical thinking and creative skills that he honed in art school to do something else.

Smith is rightly critical of the present model for advanced study in art practice that leaves too many young artists in debt, and struggling to find time to both survive and make art. However, this is not just "the big business of art schools." This is the higher education system in America, whose costs are rising at a much greater rate than our incomes are. What's more, she is too dismissive of the possibility of a more, rather than less, rigorous educational model for artists as the solution to this problem. Indeed, I don't know that a Ph.D. program is really necessary for artists, however, it's illogical to call the prospect of such a thing "cynical commercial opportunism" on the part of a university that chooses to offer one. In fact, most Ph.D. candidates are funded-- that is, they are actually paid (albeit not much) to study their discipline and often also teach undergraduate courses. Assuming this model would hold true for a Ph.D. in fine arts (and it seems to for the University of California San Diego's new program, one of the only such programs in the United States) this would actually be a good thing for artists. They would have the opportunity to be supported for five years as they made art, and would emerge free with all the connections that a graduate arts education affords, and a degree that would allow them to teach at the college level. Finally, five years of study is a much larger time commitment than the two, or sometimes three years required by MFA programs. Perhaps the greater time commitment will serve to weed out less serious candidates.

Last July, in a performance titled, "Explaining Pictures to a Dead Bull," the Bruces asked, “How can we imagine a sustainable alternative to professionalized art education?” Maybe the way to combat "the conflation of market, art, and academy" is not to abandon entirely any academic qualification for an artist, as the Bruces propose. Perhaps instead, it is to increase academic qualification, to let academia for once truly embrace the arts, to equate artmaking with original research. And maybe then, Roberta Smith will remember who drives the bus.

Higher Ed: Why do we still view creative pursuits in opposition to higher earning?

What is the purpose of higher education? Why should one attend college or graduate school? In the months before school resumed for many students, I found myself pondering just that, as I read articles about frivolous masters degrees, listened to an NPR discussion titled, Is college education worth the debt? and sorted through the comments that followed. Do we seek education for knowledge or to become higher earners?

Remember how, four years ago, in his book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink declared that the MFA is the new MBA, to the delight artists and arts educators everywhere. He argued that, as technology automates many jobs, rendering them obsolete, and many of the remaining jobs in technology move to Asia, creativity is what will drive the success of the American economy. "Whole minded aptitudes, " or an integration of both logic and creativity will be rewarded. Those of us pursuing graduate degrees in creative disciplines, so often questioned as to why we were pursuing a "useless" degree felt vindicated: our time had come!

It seems that moment has passed. Indeed, as students returned to school earlier this month, many came back to universities with shrunken arts curriculum. To be fair, many schools were forced to make cuts across the board; it wasn't only arts programs that were affected. But, many argue that arts programs were disproportionately affected. This is in part, because of the structure of many programs. It's often not possible, due to space and materials, to expand a studio course from 16 to 24 people, so, if a section of a course is cut, many students who would like to take it are simply unable to. A lecture, unlike a studio, could more easily take on more students. And, although smaller seminars are ideal, a seminar with 24 people as opposed to 16 is certainly not impossible in the way that a studio course is.

What's more, arts programs rely more heavily on part time or adjunct professors than other programs do. Many schools, including UCLA explain that this is so that they can attract artists who are "in the thick of their careers." This may be true, but it also means that most art professors are not protected by contracts or tenure. It also means that schools can simply not renew a professor's contract, and it isn't reported as having laid someone off. In short, it's an easy way for schools to cut costs without having to appear as though they're cutting costs. The heavy reliance on adjunct professors by arts programs is a separate and complicated issue that I have mentioned in previous posts, and plan to devote a post exclusively to, but, for now I will just say that I wonder why more universities refuse to equate artmaking with original research. That is, why wouldn't the university support an artist with a studio and time to make work in the way that it grants, for example, a physicist a lab, and time to conduct experiments. If creative disciplines were valued equally to other disciplines, then the university would support an artist "in the thick of" his career, or even, support an artist so that he can reach a summit in his career, rather than let others sustain him, and then give him a couple thousand dollars to teach a class each semester.

Higher education is, indeed, an investment, but i's problematic that we measure the value of this investment in money, rather than knowledge. Knowledge is deemed valuable based on its connection to earning potential.

Thus, what one learns as a major in Sports Management, which remained at Washington State University as Theater Arts and Dance were cut, is judged more valuable than the creative knowledge-- including choreography and directing, that comes from performing arts curricula. In fact, the lack of support for creative curricula and programming in the universities is simply a reflection of the nation's values: America does not value making. Our economy is not a production based economy, but instead based on an abstract system of exchange and investment. We don't make things; we just make money, and that is, in part, what led to our economic collapse. Indeed, Pink was right when he advocated the rise of creative thinking; he just was wrong to think that it would be embraced. The irony is, had we recognized the value-- creative, informative, AND financial-- in artistic pursuits, perhaps we would not find ourselves in our present economic state.

My Michael Jackson Post

Because the world has been abuzz about Michael Jackson since his passing on Thursday-- This American Life titled its acts after Michael Jackson hits; Jamie Foxx was moonwalking at the BET awards, every bar I've been in has played a string of MJ hits, and because my boss at SVA is Bob Giraldi, who directed the music video, Beat It as well as the New Generation Pepsi spots with Michael, I feel compelled to blog something about the man in the mirror. What's more, Michael was nothing if not controversial, and I love to blog about controversy in the arts.

No one, save the now grown children involved, can ever truly know if anything sinister happened with Michael, who was accused and ultimately acquitted of child molestation charges. However, he was extensively investigated for over a decade, and although some odd things were discovered, no definitive evidence of foul play was ever unearthed. What's more, people like to fear what's different. Thus, it's my belief that Michael was accused of pedophilia for much of the same reason that homosexuals are often accused of it.

On Monday, Bob twittered, "Time 2 put MJ to rest-forget the rumors, move on 2 remembrance. USA lost 1 of its greatest artists, like Britain's Lennon, Spain's Picasso." Indeed, Michael should be remembered for groundbreaking music, for his thirteen #1 singles and thirteen Grammy Awards, for "I'll be there," and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," for Thriller, the top selling original album of all time, and for "We are the World", which raised $50 million for hunger-relief in Africa. But more than that, he was in many ways an artist who should be placed in both the canon of pop musicians and that of performance artists like Marina Abramović, Bruce Nauman, and Vito Acconci, artists who's bodies are their medium. Indeed, most obviously, Michael's voice was his art. So too was dance, how he made his body move. He perfected and popularized the moonwalk; his dance was integral to the evolution of music video production style.

But, in addition to these things that made him an American icon, the multiple plastic surgeries that were the cause of debate in the African American community, contributed to his reputation as an eccentric, and were the subject of many jokes, were also a part of his art. And yes, they may have been art fueled by such things as vitiligo, a troubled youth, depression, even a body dysmorphic disorder, but much great art comes from personal struggle. Throughout his songs and videos is the theme of transformation-- transformation from person to werewolf ("Thriller"), or from person to spaceship ("Moonwalker"), transformation of the world with music and dance ("Beat it;" "We are the World"), thinking beyond racial stereotypes (Dangerous). His surgeries were not, as some believe, an attempt to transform himself into a "white" person. Instead, with each surgery he further metamorphosized into a person who was neither black nor white, masculine nor feminine, but someone who transcended these classifications: he worked to be aracial and agender. And, though this is not my own ideal, I have to respect someone who so fully embodied his art.

The role of the NEA: Is there a place for controverial art in the government's budget?

A piece about arts funding by David Smith, author of Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy, was run in the Wall Street Journal today. The column discusses President Obama’s selections of Jim Leach and Rocco Landesman to head the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), respectively. Many in the arts community are disappointed with these choices, as they seem to signal that there will be no change from the somewhat conservative status quo. But Smith embraces these choices; indeed, he argues:

Privately funded art need not steer clear of controversy, but publicly funded art should. In addition to hurting the endowments' standing in Congress, controversy undermines in the public eye the idea that the arts and humanities are important to civic life and are worthy of public funds.

What’s more, he distinguishes between grants made to individual artists, and grants made to programs:

On the surface there's certainly nothing wrong with either cultural agency disbursing grants to individuals. But the debate over such grants highlights the question of who should be the real beneficiary of the endowments: artists and scholars or the public? In truth, the NEA functions just fine without making individual grants. In fact, absent this practice it's easier to see the agency as its creators back in 1965 intended: one whose primary beneficiary is to be the American people as a whole.

The foundation for each of these positions is the belief that the American public as a whole does not benefit from controversial art. But is this assertion true?

In fact, some of the most valuable artistic contributions that have been made have also been controversial, in style, subject matter, or both. These include Goya's Naked Maya and Los Caprichos, Turner's The Slave Ship, the works of the Impressionists, Picasso's Guernica, and Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans.

In literature, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and Ulysses by James Joyce have all sparked debate and been banned or censored from various institutions.

In fact, one appeal of a lot of good art is its ability to provoke controversy, because this often indicates that it is also provoking thought. Certainly there is work that shocks gratuitously, but the fact that an artist presents something shocking or controversial does not make it gratuitous. Nor does it make it self-serving. I can think of no better way to benefit American society than to encourage and stimulate thought.

Smith trumpets such NEA sponsored programs as Shakespeare in American Communities and Poetry Out Loud because these programs foster a sense of appreciation for the arts, which he believes is in keeping with the spirit of the original NEA mission. But, the NEA's stated mission is:

to foster the excellence, diversity, and vitality of the arts in the United States, and help broaden the availability and appreciation of such excellence, diversity, and vitality.

If we are to foster excellence, diversity, and vitality of the arts, then we are to encourage not just appreciation, but also actual making. And, to be fair, the NEA does do that, in the form of grants to organizations that then redistribute the grants to individual artists. The Vermont Studio Center, The Women's Studio Workshop, Aljira Inc, Art in General, and Public Art Fund Inc are examples of organizations that have received NEA grants for "Access to Artistic Excellence," in other words, money that they will pass along to individual artists, often to do a specific project.

I don't know that returning to a system in which artists apply directly to the NEA for money would be the best way to pomote and advance new work. However, I would be interested in exploring whether eliminating some of the middle-men could be a cost-saving measure that doesn't undermine the integrity of arts funding.

Furthermore, Smith ignores the fact that grants for art appreciation could also spark contoversy. In fact, the poets whose work is included in the Poetry Out Loud program include Jimmy Santiago Baca, who spent 6 years in prison for drug possession and intent to sell, Allen Ginsberg, whose work Howl, was the catalyst for an obscenity trial against San Francisco book dealers, and Gertrude Stein, the lesbian author of one of the earliest coming-out stories, Q.E.D, and whose other works, like Tender Buttons, often commented on lesbian sexuality.

Indeed, many of the museums and arts institutions received NEA grants specifically for exhibitions that might be deemed controversial. The Williams College Museum of Art funded the exhibition of controversial African American artist Kara Walker with a $40,000 grant from the NEA. The recent Jenny Holzer exhibition at the Whitney, Protect Protect, which is highly critical of the Iraq war, was made possible with a grant from the NEA.

And that's a good thing. The government should not deny funding to artists or organizations that promote artists simply because the artwork is critical of a societal institution. To do so is indirect censorship. That is, it encourages those in the arts community to abstain from riskier, controversial endeavors in favor of safer, less critical projects that will more readily receive funding. And if we do that, then what we are not "fostering a vitality of the arts in the United States," but rather a degeneration of American culture.