January 11, 1986

11:15 pm

First time I've been to Artists Space since they moved. A disappointment -- no more warrens of rooms to find something (a minor voice?) waiting for me. It's all up front and "to the point" that is it looks like a commercial gallery space.

Gallery talk by Laurie Simmons and Robert Mapplethorpe supplied a few points for thought but first I'll describe what the "curators" or "choosers" in the Split/Vision show were wearing.

Laurie Simmons appeared first. She wore a second-hand dinner jacket accessorized with a rhinestone pin over a white shirt. Nondescript slacks tucked into ankle-length suede boots, dark (or emerald) green with gold buckles. A correct academic look for the 'eighties. Her hair was darkish blond and hung freely to her shoulders from a part in the middle. She is of a solid build though her clothes made it hard to tell if she is fat.

Mapplethorpe appeared in his trademark designer leather jacket, black shirt, black pants, black boots. His slight appearance no longer signifies decadence or perversity -- he has the look of someone who either has or wants AIDS. He could be put into a vitrine and called a museum piece.

Vivien Raynor writes in the Times yesterday that this show can be divided into two easily recognizable groups, but that I suppose she means the Mapplethorpe homo ground and the Simmons mental group. As if there were two teams vying for the prize of THE art movement. She gives offhand praise to George Dureau for his work of crippled mostly black men (one was white) comparing them, of course, to Diane Arbus and saying that if not for the light they would be "case studies." Of what? Of Peter Berlin she omits the detail that he is himself the subject and a functioning (at 40) porno star. Of Peter Blanca she omits the detail that he is the subject of most of the photographs. Of Jean-Marc Prouveur she says they concentrate on the erotic implications of religion and death by setting up scenes of male arousal in churches and on funeral biers draped as war memorials. She says Mark Morrisroe's color work gets lost in this context but she likes the female nude.

As for Laurie Simmons she says they suffer by comparison (to what?) since they aim at the mind. Andy Grunberg says in the catalog essay they "require viewers to stand back and rethink the grammar of persuasion rather than embrace it." Jerald Frampton's work is linked to Robert Longo (who was Robert Longo linked to when he first started?). Laurie Neaman's still lifes are arresting but they "build toward a climax that never comes." Alan Belcher, Julie Wachtel and Lydia Panas are mentioned by name.

I would have preferred the two groups be intermixed. Simmons and Mapplethorpe have differing opinions about art (or do they?) and the point of the show was juxtaposition. I would have like the two of them to talk to or at each other (maybe they were) rather than separately to the audience.

S mentioned which artists had been her students. M mentioned which prints he owns. This may be their most profound difference. S. has taught at Stonybrook and SVA. M has stated in interviews how hard it is to pay for the upkeep of his work by selling alone. S "admires the intellectual endeavors" of her artists -- she presumably had something to with their development. M admires his artists' "commitment to their models" and calls Arbus and Avedon voyeurs.

I mentioned both of the artists' physical presence and attire because I think that has a great deal to do with the show. Neither looked the way I had expected: S because I didn't expect anything; M because I knew him only through his own photographs. The work they chose, however, looked exactly as I expected them to look. S's dry, academically didactic and over-simplified -- as if the artists were stooping down to explain something self-evident to us. M's overdone and precious, as if each individual artist's preoccupations were suppose to be of great interest to me. S dressed academically, asexual leaning toward feminine. She seemed broad and relaxed until she spoke, then the words became unfixed, unthought, uninteresting. M dressed in standard hip, out-of-date yet classic. Yet he seemed thin and uncomfortable -- his voice low and mumbling until the words came out. They were fixed, interested and interesting and involved. S had blank, tenured eyes. M had small, light blue-green beacons that aimed and fired.

Most surprising reaction is that I liked Mapplethorpe and disliked Simmons. I had assumed it would be the other way around.

Of the S artists Alan Belcher stood out as the one who failed most gloriously. The others, particularly Wachtel, were slight variations on well-trod territory. Not bad mind you but the scenery wasn't all that interesting to begin with. Belcher's failure may be an honest one but it may be caused by a lack of background information on the subject he works with -- repackaging of consumer goods. It may also be a prejudice on my part against television and film images. I stick to magazines almost exclusively nowadays. Wachtel placed identical, store-bought posters on the wall -- two of a kitten in a pink bed, two of a monkey dressed to play football. At first I thought one was a store-bought poster and the other a reproduction -- and I found that interesting. Find out they were both store-bought, and hearing the explanation by S that the art was in Wachtel "choosing to place two on the wall" left me feeling cheated, if not just bored.

Of the M artists Peter Berlin stood out as a surprise. Even the small part about his name actually being Hoinington-Huene. I was so used to Berlin from porno that it took M explaining that he made his living as a porno star to force me into appreciating what I was looking at. Aside from the maleness of the photos (that I don't find erotic) and the color (I find it amateurish and unnecessary) he's doing exactly what Cindy Sherman fails at. Berlin is not only the subject, he is the model or actor pretending to be the subject. It is a close as anything has come to the idea I have of the art director or package designer suddenly shifting context and doing what he or she does in an art context instead of a commercial one. Barbara Kruger may come close but she doesn't have the necessary stature in the commercial field. Duane Michaels may also yet Berlin makes his living from the porno mail order business, not the artwork. Verushka also comes to mind. They are all photographers. Any painters, sculptors, actors, writers?