January 5, 1986

2:39 pm

Jess and I watched movies on TV last night which might explain my dazed feeling this morning. But it may just be the cold medicine.

Beautiful outside, perfect for walking around but I haven't gotten enough done this weekend, just barely started a couple of MAKE-UPS and the SANDPIT book. Haven't done anything on AURA (except to decided that when Joan goes into the office Monday the photo spread will have been pulled).

Started rereading Suzi Gablik's "Has Modernism Failed?" and getting more from it after other readings. As far as I can tell her thesis is that art after modernism lacks a spirituality and so has no "place" in our culture outside of a commodity on the marketplace. I agree then disagree off and on through the essays. She gets me thinking.

And this is what I think: Art should not be used as a qualitative term. And everything is not art. Everything has an art attribute, though. By that I mean that since art is the way (one of the ways) we see (or read) our culture (just as the stock market is one way we see the economy) art must be that attribute of the thing that lets us see the culture. No, that isn't quite right, but close. All things have form and art is the connection, the similarity and the difference, between those forms...the affinities.

Some things are made primarily for that art attribute and that is what we usually refer to as Art, cap A. That is not to say these Art things do not have other attributes. All things have an economic attribute, its place in or out of the marketplace. So then, there is no such thing as a thing that does not contain art and there is no such thing as pure Art.

I've had to come up with this definition to explain my reluctance to concede that art must be purely formalist (capitalistic commodity) or political (Marxist).

As T and I talked yesterday -- He mentions Grace Paley, who after three books in more than twenty years is considered one of our greatest writers -- art should not be a quantitative term either. One dilemma we face is the idea that all our work should be toward one goal (political or formal). One small gesture may have more effect than an entire gallery full of work (e.g. Duchamp's "Fountain").

Another dilemma involves the idea that we can either dive into the art market and manipulate from within, or we can stay totally apart from it, finding new ways to incorporate art (Art) into the "real" world.

One of the miracles of late capitalism (and I use that term quotationally) is its ability to absorb subversive acts into the norm. But that was the case in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, perhaps always has been. It is more discernible now, we are more aware of the mechanizations of the art world than before. Leonardo dedicated his life to subversiveness, as did Donatello. But then these are the artists who have come down to us as "great." And perhaps it is the absorption of late capitalism that has made them "great." We have absorbed their subversive acts, not their contemporaries. We, in fact, admire them for those acts.

I am neither for nor against selling work. In fact I'm more interested in its public display in galleries, the museum, and on the street. I have no great interest in "public art" outside that approached by Robert Irwin and others like him. Michael Heizer's "Double Negative" has just been "bought" by a Los Angeles museum and is part of the museum's curatorial domain now.

But perhaps that should be one of the functions of the museum. T and I talked about the difference between American attitudes and European attitudes toward their museums. I brought up the fact that outside of the Met, New York museums are private entities, sovereign states outside the public domain. European museums, by and large, are part of the state and therefore belong to the people who view the art as theirs, as a continuation and exploration of their cultural history. Americans view art as folly, a pulling-the-wool-over-their-eyes kind of thing. And who can blame them. I do believe Art should be forced on the public in as many ways as possible. It is the only way to make an impact on their lives. But I can also see the reluctance of the English public (including David Hockney) to accept a Carl Andre brick piece.

So, all things have attributes -- art, economic, political, social, sexual, historical -- all to a greater or lesser degree (a thing that has principally sexual attributes could be called erotic or pornographic). It is in the awareness of these attributes that the artist works.

And there is a danger today in working with only one of these attributes in mind because they become prime candidates for commodification. It is only when the artist works with all of the attributes in mind that he can attempt to defy this.

But why should the artist attempt to defy commodification? If Art is cultural feedback, and commodification the norm wouldn't it be most effective as a commodity? A book can't be anything other than a commodity, or can it? That is just a matter of our production system...a book is still a book in form even if it is not published and bought. Loose typewritten pages in a three-ring binder make a book, too.

But why does a culture need subversive elements in the first place? Because a culture that cannot adapt -- politically, socially, environmentally -- is stagnant and runs the risk of disappearing or being swallowed up by another, younger or more versatile culture, or being taken over by subcultures within it that are dynamic. Stagnant cultures do not survive. And a culture, like man, knows only what it already knows and must rely on permutations to develop new forms and one of the ways we develop mutations is by experiment and subversion. And one small mutation can overwhelm an entire culture to its benefit or not. That is the risk we take.

But isn't this subversion built-in to the commodity system? It is always looking for the "new." The new is not necessarily a mutation. It may not make the culture more diverse (and, of course, this diversity may make the culture either stronger or weaker). We have many new gestures but rarely new forms. And new must not be confused with repackaging, a new marketing strategy devised to adapt to demographics. That new usually fulfills a desire already developed. A subversive mutation may create a new desire or not, or may full fill a desire in an unexpected way.

Desire is a complicated term and I'd rather not get into it here. A pluralistic society (which ours claims to be) will accept any desire not deemed detrimental to the whole, or at least the ruling elite.

Politically, how much attention should the artist give to the viewers of his work? Do artists, as Gablik claims, ignore the social/political function of their work, thereby ignoring the population in return for personal expression? Giving more substance to the Rousseauan view of individual freedom? The artist who ignores certain attributes of his work in favor of another is not working fully. This is not to say that all work must be well-balanced, given as much attention to art as to political, sexual or historical attributes. But the artist who is not aware of these other attributes is like that stagnant culture, he has limited his ability to adapt, to make new forms. The same could be said for the artist who concentrates on political attributes, while ignoring the art attributes. (I'm beginning to think that art could be interchangeable with aesthetic but for clarity I'll continue to use art).

So, how does my own work stand up to the above theories (or critiques)?

I have the fear that by working with "personal" images I will become isolated from the social. But many of these personal images are drawn from the outside, in fact all of them are. And I am naturally inclined to the subversive, in my art as well as my life. I am drawn to doing the opposite, the unacceptable as a natural course. I do not want to be bored.

I'm forced to think about subversive mutation in the work I do at my job. New ways must be hit upon in order to do the work, that is how UNIX works. It is slow and lumbering unless you discover ways to subvert the basic system. And that is the frustrating part of it all. No matter how many times I try to explain, my boss falls back into the norm, the "one way to do it and that is how it's done" way of thinking. And that is how most jobs get done. I've finally gotten Matt interested in the mechanics of UNIX but I'm afraid our boss may squash it, or his boss. But if that happens it is only a failure that will hurt the shop, not me.