Two gifts

Oneand two.
(found here)

Here, have a conceptual elephant.

ARTISTS IN LOVE, part two

Before Hollywood began making pictures that moved and talked, illustrators who created the still pictures for popular magazines were national celebrities. Successful illustrators were paid huge sums, received hundreds of fan letters and hung out with the "beautiful people" of their day.



No illustrator was more of a celebrity in the 1920s than the now forgotten Ralph Barton, whose work appeared in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and in books such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. A notorious womanizer, Barton lived a fast life and went to glittering parties in Paris, London and New York with friends such as Charlie Chaplin, George Gershwin, H.G. Wells, Clarence Darrow, H.L. Mencken and the Barrymores. He was reputed to be the highest paid artist in New York City.

At the peak of his fame, Barton fell in love with a sultry young Broadway starlet with the exotic name of Carlotta Monterey. She was allegedly the daughter of Danish aristocracy.



It turned out that Carlotta's real name was Hazel Taasinge. She was the unwanted daughter of a poor fruit farmer from a small town in California. Abandoned at age four, she worked as a housekeeper but was crowned Miss California in 1907. After that, she used her looks to secure a bit part on Broadway where she was "appallingly bad."






Carlotta's Broadway career flopped, but she moved in with Barton who soon divorced his second wife in order to marry Carlotta.



Despite his love for Carlotta, Barton could not quite let go of his philandering ways. Carlotta walked in on Barton in bed with some "country club type" so she divorced him. She didn't ask for alimony, just "my Krazy Kat clippings in a Chinese lacquer box." (Clearly Carlotta had the right priorities). Soon she set up housekeeping with the great playwright, Eugene O'Neil.



Too late, Barton realized that Carlotta had been "the one." He became fixated on getting her back. His career went into a precipitous decline. He could not work without his muse. His health suffered, and he lost much of his fortune. But Carlotta never returned. He wrote one last impassioned plea to "my dear lost angel" but the note arrived in Paris the day after Carlotta and Eugene O'Neil sailed for New York. Despondent, Barton dressed himself in his silk pyjamas, wrote a suicide note, lay down on his bed with Gray's Anatomy opened to a picture of the human heart, and killed himself. He was 40 years old.

I find it fascinating that an artist who was so jaded-- a smug, sophisticated veteran of countless affairs on several continents-- could no longer work-- or even go on living-- without Carlotta, the small town girl with the made up past.

Interview with Tim Etchells from Forced Entertainment

Forced Entertainment's shows during the Alkantara Festival were not a huge success. While the smaller, more intimate Exquisite Pain was discussed, adored by some, appreciated by others and disliked by others yet (as is to be expected of any show, let alone a FE one), The World in Pictures had the audience quite clearly disappointed. It was a flop. It was based on a fairly silly idea of telling the world history, as it is presented in children's books. The idea itself seems controversial, if not dubious. And the execution was messy, as it usually is in the case of the Sheffield group, but also somewhat timid, as if not daring to be really outrageous or controversial. The one thing that really stood out were the gorgeous monologues of the great Jerry Killick (an invited actor whom I can't recommend enough).
Nonetheless, Forced Entertainment are not only a reference. They are one of the very few actual stars in contemporary independent theater. And, although they have by now turned into a classic, they still dare to risk in new ways - and Exquisite Pain, a lecture of Sophie Calle's work with practically no "theatrical artifacts", is a great example.
What I was really curious about was what does it actually mean to be Forced Entertainment. Or to be Tim Etchells, the group's artistic director.
It's a fairly long interview, and it mainly reflects my own interests in directing, contemporary theater, its relation with contemporary art, and the possibility of change.

Vvoi> From the perspective of today, how do you see Forced Entertainment when it started 20 years ago?

Tim Etchells> We were a group of friends who somehow convinced ourselves that we would be able to make some things together. At the beginning, we were still students, and, in various combinations, we worked together and began to make things. Then, once we finished our studies, we started the company properly. But more than anything, at that point it was an idea or an inclination that we could perhaps make something together.

I suppose this feeling still continues if you’re still together.

Yeah, I guess so.(laughs) I suppose now it’s less speculative. It’s clear that we have some things to do and to talk about, a way to work together, whereas at the beginning I don’t think we could be so confident of that.

What other ways do you think you have evolved in?

There are technical things that change, like you develop some skills, some knowledge about what you do and how you do it, some understanding about what it is that you can do in performance or in other media, which of course you don’t really have in the beginning. And maybe what also changes is that you get more confident in the idea that you should trust your instinct, that you should go in whatever direction you think seems worth pursuing, though you can’t necessarily explain where your decisions are coming from or what’s leading you to do certain things. You have to trust your inclination, because in a way it’s all you actually have.

How does that work in a group? Your inclination is not necessarily the inclination of other members of the group.

The group is a very curious thing, because on the one hand it’s got lots of inclinations, since there are lots of people, and lots of people are constantly pulling and pushing the company in different directions. On one hand that means that there’s lots of potential, on the other hand it means that there are lots of things that get proposed get kind of shouted down or stopped. But what also happens, which is the positive side of that, is that anything proposed by one person is endlessly modified and augmented and added to and taken away from by other people in creative ways - as well as not so creative ways (laughs) - but basically, for us there is a sense that somehow what you can achieve together in that process is deeper and richer than what you could achieve on your own if you had simply followed one of those desires or inclinations.

Isn’t this a constant struggle, like you’re constantly fighting over ideas?I can imagine someone giving an idea and all the others saying “that’s not really what I was thinking”, so you start talking about it, arguing... Or do you just try it out?

We work a lot by trying things. In argument it’s possible to prove more or less anything, but when you do things in a rehearsal studio than the truth of the situation becomes clear fairly rapidly. One of the things we’ve learned, I guess, is to trust practice, is to trust doing things more than anything else. Ideas are fine, but people who’ve got a really brilliant idea, or a really brilliant theory, that’s one thing, but actually having something that you can do in the studio or in front of an audience and that actually works is a different thing altogether, in a way. We trust doing much more than we trust talking. Although we talk a lot, that has to be said. The thing that we really trust more than anything else is doing.

What happens if it fails you? And how do you know?

It’s normally pretty clear to us that there are problems with something if there are problems. If we do improvisation in the studio and it’s crappy, than we can tell... (laugh) we think we can tell.

Does it ever happen that you discover it after the show has started touring?

Of course, when shows open, there are always things that need greater articulation, or which need to be cut. That happens all the time.

So I could go and see your show after your touring it and hardly recognize it?

Not normally. Normally in the first month of touring, there’s a process whereby things get changed or, even when we’re not trying to change them, they settle into a way of being done in front of audiences which is different and which happens in response to the situation of being in public and having to communicate the peice to audiences. That will change, but it’s pretty rare that a piece will change substantively. We make a lot of small changes which make a great difference to how a piece will work, but wholesale, major changes are pretty rare. Maybe once or twice in the last 20 years you could say that.

In this sort of devising process, what does it mean that you “direct” the group?

In some ways it’s a kind of an organizing job - it’s like being the chairperson of the group: I’m watching and I’m listening and I’m trying to hear what other people are saying and trying to make sure that we together consider things in as many different ways as possible, that we’re thorough and clear together about what we’re doing. I guess, in another way, I’m doing something that’s much more like normal direction: I’m watching and if I think things are working than I’m saying so, and if I things are not working than I’m saying so. But I’m usually doing that in order to open a discussion with the group. It’s not this kind of model of Robert Wilson, or someone who’s drawn the whole show in his head before anybody arrives. It’s entirely more collaborative and discursive somehow.

And do you ever feel you have to say “no, that’s it, this is what we’re going to do”?

Not really, no. Another thing we have is a model of working based on the idea that you should come to decisions rather than make them. That means basically, we just try a lot of different things, different possible solutions to things. Sometimes we’ll try all of them. It may take us some time. But in the end of that process there’s usually a shared opinion from the group about what works and what doesn’t work and about which way to push things. So it’s pretty rare that I would have to say that I... and in a way, even if that kind of thing gets said, I think it’s a very temporary thing. You say: “Well, so today, we’ll do that”, because it’s 6 o’clock and the show is at 8 (laughs). I think we’re very good at knowing when to make these pragmatic decisions. In the process we have this thing where we say, well, if we had to do the show tonight, this is how it would be. And that’s a very good way of learning and undersanding the material that you have - to put it under that kind of scrutiny.

This idea has actually become famous. I’ve heard about it and I think it’s something that you might have planted and that has grown all around the world. It’s quite an effective method.

Thank you.

I suppose the world of theater today is very different from when you started. There are many new groups that have developed their work learning from you and using your work as a starting point. Does that change your perspective, your situation? And are there any groups that you like particularly?

I don’t think I see enough of the work that’s coming from younger artists to know much about that. But for me the work that I’m most excited about when I encounter it is work that maybe has a very strong relation to what we’re doing, but it actually comes from a very different place. So, for me, the first time I encountered the work by Jérôme Bel about 15 or 12 years ago - I could recognize a lot in Jérôme’s work, but of course it’s completely different. Or when I saw Richard Maxwell from New York and his work - again, it’s totally different, it’s plays, it’s drama, it’s characters, but there’s something about how he’s dealing with performance and with a certain kind of dead-pan thing, that we could recognize very rapidly. The work that we tend to get excited about is the stuff that’s a bit of a jump away from what we’re doing. It’s often coming from dance - if you think of Jérôme, or if you think of Meg Stuart, or it’s coming from plays, in the sense of Richard Maxwell...

How about visual arts?It seems like the contemporary art scene somehow developed its ‘performance side’, so maybe it got closer to where your directions?

In a way that’s true. On the whole, I probably feel more affinity and closeness with people who are working in visual arts, in projects like that, than I do with people who are working in theater. Although there’s something about the group thing...the other thing that we tend to feel very close to is to do work collectively. Historically, encountering Richard Maxwell and his group, Stan from Belgium, Goat Island from Chicago. Often it’s something about recognizing this rather difficult and strangely social, in a way quite wonderful, in a way absolutely impossible, situation of working so closely with other people that seems to be at the heart of theater and performance. You don’t get that so much in visual art. Those are mostly people working solo, with a very developed and schooled sense of their own ego and their own vision - and themselves as a kind of commodity. That’s very different from the existence that we have when we are working in a group of 6 or 8 or 10 or 12.

So how does it relate to your solo projects? I know you have these lectures that you give quite often. Have you made other types of solo performance?

I made a solo performance performance, which is somewhat on the lighter side of things, in 2000 I think, which was really good to do. And I do a lot of stuff on my own - I write, and I’m also working on art projects...

What projects?

Installation, and text pieces in a visual art context... Or neon... really a bunch of different things in a gallery context.

Neon? Did you say neon?

Yeah. Text pieces.

Uhuh. I see.

I’m working on two things for Graz* in September, small projects that are part of a group exhibition. One of them is a project of collecting stories and songs from people, and another piece which is a set of instructions for visitors to the museum. They’re given it in a sealed envelope. Every person gets one instruction. So I’m also very happy to work in this way that’s much more private and solo. In a way it’s a necessary escape from being in the room with all those people all the time.

How do you find time for all of this? Do you have a life outside of that?

Not as much as I would like. (laughs)

But even without that much of a life, how do you manage all these things?

I’ve just got very good at working in the cracks of other projects. So while I’m doing one thing, I can usually be trying to do two other things at the same time. And I got very good at working in hotels. And I got very good at working on the airplane. And I got very good at working when I shouldn’t work any more (laugh). A lot of people are very sensitive, they’re like “I can’t work when I’m at home”, or “I need all my things”, and I’m really like, if I have got my laptop, and probably an internet connection, I can be working. I really don’t need almost anything else. In a way that’s how my work has evolved. It’s grown to fit into this circumstance where there’s a lot of things going on. I tend to find time in and around, in the cracks.

I don’t know how it feels for you, but for me Forced Entertainment is a very famous group. How does it feel, and what does it mean?Does it translate into, say, people recognizing you, and writing you e-mails...?

[This is where my minidisk ended. And I didn’t dare to admit it or interrupt my famous interlocutor. So for a few minutes, as I was trying to find an alternative way of recording, I wrote down whatever I could catch from Tim’s answer. Here is what is left:]

...a bit of e-mails...

...within a context...

...we have a profile...

...but the context is hopelessly small...

...In the real world, nobody heard of us.

[back to recorded dialogue]

Do you think there’s an alternative to this? Some solution, some way the independent theater can get through?

I think no. In our work there’s a sort of fundamental awkwardness. And this awkwardness is what stops it from traveling or progressing into the main stream too far. Because there is always something a little bit uncomfortable, or a little bit difficult, or a little bit confrontational... Whichever way you look at it, one of the interests in what we do is in creating a certain kind of uncertainty, or putting pressure on the audience.

For a lot of people that’s hugely enjoyable and valuable: that’s what they want. That’s why they keep coming to see us.

Maybe it has also to do with the way that the work is marketed or positioned in the culture, but this awkwardness is a bit of a problem. I mean, I don’t think it’s a problem, but if what you wanted was a broader, bigger, more popular base for this work, than that’s the thing that would screw you.

But I think that’s actually pretty key to what we do, so I don’t really see that changing.

We’re not Complicite. Complicite, in the end, can do a deal with the National Theatre in London and there’s nothing really threatening there. There’s nothing really difficult. It’s interesting, it’s sort of experimental, it’s got ideas in it...

But it doesn’t make you feel... weird (laughs). Or, it doesn’t give you a hard time. And even if we want to make very nice, funny , popular thing, which we sometimes say that’s what we’d like to do, but there’s something about us and the work that we do that can’t resist the temptation to make life difficult. So I think that’s the thing that at one level sets us into the way the work could go. Maybe.

This sounds like a pretty dramatic choice.

It’s not really a choice. It’s about making the work that you want to make. And about making the kind of interventions with your work that are important to you. If I look around, maybe in some of the work that follows us, I can think: yes, maybe it’s quite good at following the formal strategy that we make, but what it lacks is that difficulty - and that’s what I really can’t bear about it - I’m not interested any more. I’m interested in causing trouble at a certain level.

And don’t you ever get tired of causing trouble?

No! (laughs) Well, maybe. Yeah, I don’t know. Apparently not. (laughs slyly)

Maybe we get better at causing trouble, and trying to do that in a way that brings people along with you. We’re not talking about some sort of idiotic attempt to shock or drive the audience out of the theatre. For me, shows like Bloody Mess, or The World in Pictures, or First Night, what they’re trying to do is to work in a very seducing and comical and playful way with theater, and at the same time take audiences into trouble, take them into difficult places. For me, this balance, this attempt at doing both of those things at the same tame, that’s what is really important.

Technoratitheatre, theater, performance, performance art, art, contemporary art, new art, vvoi, vvoitek, modern art, cool

William Wegman Early Videos

Instead of discovering new trends in performative styles on YouTube, I seem to get attracted by the old avantgarde (why does this expression sound so nice?). And so, instead of a shaky home video of a new, unknown artist, here is a shaky video for all those that, like me, enjoy the snobism of exploring once explored territory. William Wegman became really famous not because he was good, but because his dog, Man Ray, was good. And Wegman had the good idea of showing him. And giving him the concepts any good curator provides an artist with. Wegman, of course, made (and continues to do so) a significant amount of other interesting semi-conceptual work (if we can have semi-conductors, can't we have semi-conceptualists?). But a significant part of it shows he knows his A-Bs in market-related works. Publicity is one of his main focuses. Ironic, indeed - and as we know, irony acknowledges its subject's presence and importance. And isn't using trademarking a dog just a brilliant move? I mean this honestly, with just a tiny little bit of irony.
See the first of the videos: choreography, drama, manipulation, humanity, self-consciousness (or lack thereof), individuality, contact, hidden agendas, thought. All this can clearly be found in here. It could pretty much be considered a contemporary piece. Some qualities make it dated. Which is interesting - since we accept it just as well, and enjoy it, and find it quite appealing and strong. So what makes it old? What is it about 70's conceptual art that makes it at once incredibly up-to-date and plainly dated? On one hand, many conceptual works are now being brought back to the scene. On the other, this repositioning has a certain distance that gives it the...space (?) we seem to require.

Wegman also has a (even) lighter side to him: these videos are sometimes closer to what we know as Saturday Night Live humor than to what we think of as video art. Man Ray rocks once again...

via

Technoratiart, contemporary art, new art, vvoi, vvoitek, modern art, cool

Anne Wenzel: the reference game

I just can't stop thinking of references when I look at Anne Wenzel's work. Is this proof of lack of originality, or of a feel for Zeitgeist, or of knowing how to play with what she sees? Or is it just an obsession of mine...?

Functional Confusions remind me of a work I saw once in Paris (was it by Jeff Koons?) - a pillow made of glass. And of surrealist games.

Here> Arcimbolodo, Dali from the Slave Market... (this is a landscape from sauerkraut and saussage combined with a plastic reindeer)

Yves Klein, as well as some contemporary Japanese art, very happy-like, and a slightly punkish Sarah Lucas kind of thing (also Paul McCarthy - this is butter cream...)
Oh, and notice the dimensions of the last two works : the deer installation is 41cm x 23cm, and this last one is also a model of an exhibition. I find it gives the work a specific lightness that a 1:1 scale wouldn't necessarily have.


And this? Any ideas?

ARTISTS IN LOVE, part one

George Nathan once wrote, "art is the sex of the imagination."

That strikes me as a pretty dumb thing to say. However, it does serve as a useful springboard for talking about the intriguing relationship between art and love.



Maxfield Parrish was 33, a successful illustrator living on a grand country estate, when he first met Sue Lewin. She was a 16 year old girl from a nearby farm town hired to help Parrish and his wife care for their two young children. Because Parrish's wife would no longer pose for him, he drafted their young nanny to pose in fairy tale costumes.



Lewin soon became his muse, modeling for his most famous illustrations.




Eventually Parrish moved out of the mansion where his wife and children stayed and set up residence in his art studio so that he and Lewin could work closely together. Not long after that, Parrish's wife began taking their children away on extended trips.

The villagers from the tiny farm town were scandalized by this living arrangement and even sent a delegation out to the estate to confront Parrish. But Parrish and Lewin both insisted that their relationship was purely Platonic. The relationship between Parrish and Lewin is captured in an excellent book by Alma Gilbert.

To her dying day, Lewin was adamant, "I'll have you know that Mr. Parrish has never seen my bare knee." After Parrish and Lewin had passed away, construction workers at the estate found a secret compartment where Parrish had hidden the nude photographs he had taken of Lewin.



Lewin was Parrish's constant companion for 55 years. He and Lewin must have had a magical life together out in the country. When Parrish was 90 years old and Lewin was 71, Parrish's wife finally died, leaving him free to marry Lewin. However, he declined so she packed her bags, left the estate and went back to her village where she married someone else. It is difficult to fathom why Parrish could not commit to Lewin after all they had been through together. At age 90, he could hardly have been holding out for a better offer. Parrish was a brilliant painter with a rich and vivid imagination. But for some reason, he just wasn't big enough to make a commitment to reality, and he died alone a few years later.