As a Young Gay Arist

          This feels a bit awkward to say, but after an entire year of doing art with gay undertones I have just now started to look up gay art and artists. Well this is not entirely true, but I mainly have attempted to find art relevant to what I have been doing with little or no success. But looking throughout the history of culturally relevant artists, there have been several that are not even noted as being gay artists, and one that seeing his work I see just how important he is to the movement

Earth Herself (Two Nudes in the Jungle)by Frida Kahlo

           The three artists that I have long known to be part of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual) community are Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo and Keith Haring, the last two of which have directly depicted homoerotic images in there work and have been important artists. Though my preference being for Keith Haring stylistically and as much of his work is based around social movements, specifically the AIDS epidemic that struck the gay community of the 80's and became the last time that an LGB related social movement had so much art surrounding it.

Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death, by Keith Haring

          To go along with Haring and all the art he had done, I came across David Wojnarowicz, which was another big gay artist of the 80's which also did gay related art and AIDS related art. Wojnarowicz came up in an article in Slate Magazine, in which it talks about the Museum of Modern art Closeting the relationship between Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns during an exhibition including the two artists works, as well as the removal of Wojnarowicz's video piece "Fire in My Belly" from the National Portrait Gallery during the Galleries "Hide/Seek" exhibition that focused on sexuality and identity. Before going back and dissecting the rest of that information I went and found some of Wojnarowicz's works including another video entitled "Beautiful People" and a series of video clips on youtube just titled with the Artist's name,  "David Worjnarowicz: part1, part2, part3, part4," I found these three videos to be extremely strong, perhaps some of the strongest AIDS crisis related art and LGBT I have seen to date, and it made me realize that although an artist's sexuality may or may not be important to their artistic practice or even their life, it goes back to the issue of should one's sexuality matter?

         In the culture the way it is now, of course sexuality matters, if it didn't we wouldn't be having conversation around should marriage between two people of the same sex or gender be allowed? Since this is allowed to sneak into culture, a relevant counterbalance should be struck, and the artists whom have had their sexuality "swept into the closet" or who have themselves been swept away, should be undone so young people... so young artists can see that LGBT artists have existed and can be relevant even if their art is not explicitly related to LGBT, and it gives a way to see how subtle sexuality can sneak into art, such as "In Memory of My Feelings - Frank O'Hara, by Japer John, and Canto XIV by Robert Rouschenberg, which both are images done during the end of their six year relationship with one another and this video from the "Hide and Seek" exhibit explains in detail the theory of what is depicted in each of these images represents. Whether it was because these artists existed during a period when they could not directly convey their feelings on canvas or this is just contextual with their style, it is still relevant to the art itself.

          I feel as though history has let out a lot of these little details about this art that makes it so much more to young artists like myself.  I hope to continue to look into modern art history and see what other art pertains to such movements, and hope that my lack of finding art on contemporary LGBT issues, particularly gay marriage, adoption, bullying, and trans* identity is only temporary. Personally I feel as though movement driven or not, learning more about these artist's will help me in my future endeavors as an artists

Allison Smith, The Muster, Identity, and the Self

Figure 1 Allison Smith, The Muster 2005  (Governor’s Island, NY 2005)

“What are you fighting for?”

Based on this question, Allison Smith has created several public art gatherings from 2004-2006 in the format of a Civil War battle reenactment, maintaining an aesthetic that she consistently references throughout her bodies of project-oriented work (See Fig. 1). In her own words, her social formations like Muster, as well as her performative sculptures and interactive installations, are “…a means of addressing the relationship between American history, social activism, craft, and queer identity.”  Through the lattermost point, it becomes evident that Smith’s work is a cacophonic expression of many identities, including her own, into a world past, no longer existent, and not limited by the social constraints of our time.

The public art event calls activists, intellectuals, artists, and other individuals in Smith’s circle together to evoke the identity they are fighting for. Simultaneously, they all become makers of nineteenth century identities and the identities themselves in a fashion reminiscent of the theatrical endeavors of the characters of Gustave Flaubert’s final work. Roland Barthes pays homage to the nineteenth century personas, Bouvard and Pecuchet, complimenting them as “…those eternal copyists, at once sublime and comic and whose profound ridiculousness indicates precisely the truth of writing,” and, moreover, Michalis Pichler borrows this text for his Statements on Appropriation.  At one point, Flaubert writes:

“‘To do it effectively, we should need to disguise ourselves!’....Their performances...became the subject of general gossip....They only prided themselves the more upon it. They crowned themselves artists...wore moustaches.”
This crowning via costuming legitimizes Smith’s practice and—perhaps literally according to Pichler—makes appropriate The Muster’s appeal to the nineteenth century existence for its invented identities.

I would argue that these forms are resultants of the dissolution of the individuals’ selves in an instinctual reaction to the need to cope with the destructive era in which they reside. The Civil War Era is fled to for its intraviolence that seems no different from that invading the American social and personal existence today. Thereby choosing ‘flight’ over ‘fight,’ Smith, those she musters into action, and even I circumnavigate an intended contemporary subject by inventing an historical precedent in a bygone time less immediately and forcefully, yet still quietly and ever more intimately timely and vital. The resulting personas of these selves are made authentic by Smith’s and their own recreated historical material culture in the form of print media, craft, and sculpture (See Fig. 2).

Figure 2  The Muster 2005 Supporting Document


This circuitous route through time to arrive at an introspective investigation of the artistic identity in the 21st century through an escapist’s lens is logical.  Our world is little changed from that which was present 150 years ago if similar levels of hostility, violence, anxiety, subjugation, domination, and unrestricted expressions of hatred   persist. This agrees with Richard Brilliant, who in a
focused examination of the individual and its self       as  communicated through portraiture writes:

“In the twentieth century the traditional view of the fully integrated, unique, and distinctive person has been severely compromised by a variety of factors, commonly accepted as causing the fragmentation of self and the perceived decline in the belief that the ‘individual’ is a legitimate social reality. The alleged causes are well known:...the anxious decentring and fragmentation of human experience in the modern age, characterized by the disruptive force of world wars, atom bombs, mass culture, and the broken hegemony of the West over world politics, and so forth.”

All that is left, then, is a memory of the self.

The documentation and artifacts of Smith’s performances maintain its existence. Photographs collect the identities manifested from the artist’s self (See Fig. 3). According to her statement, Smith works to “…rethink, restage, redo, and refigure our sense of collective memory.”  What better utilization of the memory can there be than to fight a civil war, which can, by definition, emerge between any two previously unified entities. This included parts of the self, and only by expressing these parts through memory can an honest identity of the twenty first century be extrapolated.

Figure 3 Allison Smith, Self-Portrait at The Muster 2004

References

Smith, Allison. Artist Statement available on Allisonsmithstudio.com, 1995-2013.

  Barthes, Roland and Richard Howard. The Death of the Author, trans. Athenaeum Library of Philosophy, http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm. 

  Flaubert, Gustave. Bouvard et Pecuchet. 1907 ed.

  Brilliant, Richard. Portraiture. London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2002. pp: 171.

  Smith, Allison. Artist Statement. Allisonsmithstudio.com, 1995-2013.

2013 Carnegie International artists continued....


Vincent Fecteau

"In Vincent Fecteau's sculptures, the viewer's eye discerns fragments of the familiar. 

On a closer look, however, or from a slightly different angle, these suggestions flee, only to be replaced by something distinctly original and unidentifiable. 

The artist creates each piece through a long process of addition and subtraction, approaching a figurative reference before backing away again, ultimately striking a balance to hold the work suspended between the everyday and the unfamiliar."

Rodney Graham

"Rodney Graham is recognized for a rigorously intellectual art, which ranges from photography, film, video and music to sculpture, painting and books. 

Graham's work examines social and philosophical systems of thought, in particular those derived from the transition of the Enlightenment into Modernism. Underlying each work is an historical context, through which a complex narrative incorporates literary and philosophic references and visual puns.

The work is essentially circular in structure and moves in seamless and infinite loops, such as the film trilogy."

Guo Fengyi

 

"Guo Fengyi is a self-trained female artist whose artistic practice articulates a particular journey of spiritual and metaphysical significance, belonging to an older generation whose embrace of Chinese folk culture imparts a unique knowledge of history, myth and mystery.

Her works on paper are composed of finely controlled brushwork that blend and weave into a composition of lustrous images; suggestions of both human figure and otherworldly beings."

Wade Guyton

"Guyton is regarded to be at the forefront of a generation that has been reconsidering both appropriation and abstract art through the 21st century lens of technology.

He is just as often regarded as one of many contemporary painters revisiting late Modernism. Guyton's early "drawings," from around 2003, are filled with black Xs over ripped-out sheets from 1960s design books and interior catalogues.

The color black and the letter X became significant motifs. His tool, however, is not the brush but an Epson Stylus Pro 4000/9600 inkjet printer, a machine used for large-format prints."

Rokni Haerizadeh

"Rokni Haerizadeh uses painting as a means to critique the hypocritical aspects of his culture. Haerizadeh’s Typical Iranian Wedding ironically describes the rigmarole of getting hitched, Persian style. 

Haerizadeh rendersthese scenes with a satirist’s relish, considering every detail as a deliciously cruel and too accurate caricature.

 Haerizadeh often takes inspiration from Persia’s rich literature – such as Ferdowski’s The Book of Kings or Rumi’s poetry and prose works – using its grand themes as allegories for contemporary Iranian social issues."

Amar Kanwar

"Amar Kanwar is an independent film-maker whose lyrical and meditative work explores the political, social, economic and ecological conditions of the Indian subcontinent. 

Having directed and produced over 40 films, which are a mixture of documentary, poetic travelogue and visual essay, much of Kanwar's work traces the legacy of decolonization and the partition in 1947 of the Indian subcontinent into Islamic Pakistan and Hindu India.

Recurrent themes are the splitting of families, sectarian violence and border conflicts, interwoven with investigations of gender and sexuality, philosophy and religion, as well as the opposition between globalization and tribal consciousness in rural India."

Dinh Q. Le

"Dinh Q. Le is one of the world's best-known contemporary Vietnamese artists.

His signature "photo weavings"- which he creates by weaving photo clippings together using traditional Vietnamese weaving techniques - explore his Vietnamese-American identity and the Vietnam War."

Mark Leckey

"Mark Leckey's video work has as its subject the 'tawdry but somehow romantic elegance of certain aspects of British culture.' He likes the idea of letting 'culture use you as an instrument' but adds that the pretentiousness that artists sometimes fall into is destructive to the artistic process: 'What gets in the way is being too clever, or worrying about how something is going to function, or where it's going to be.

When you start thinking of something as art, you're fucked: you're never going to advance.' Matthew Higgs has described Leckey's work as 'possessing a strance nonartlike quality, operating, as it does, on the knife's edge where art and life meet.'"

Pierre Leguillon

Discovering objects with Cornelia Parker

 Alter Ego, 2012

Cornelia Parker is a British sculptor and installation artist that works with found, recycled and relic related objects to create pieces of work that question their meaning and what they have previously represented. She uses the idea of time and change in her work to have her work make the audience question the ways they are connected and their constant change of meaning over time.

Parker creates an illusion of stasis by freezing a moment in time. In her 1991 installation, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View,(pictured below) she suspended remnants of an exploded building from which she hung from the ceiling in a way she arranged.



This installation is a great example of how the artist chooses a moment of time to capture of the building separating apart while giving an illusion to the universe and time. The shape of the object is so post to represent the original building, a ten foot wide garden shed. But with the use of the light, shadows and arrangement of the demolished pieces, a spherical cosmic world is created from with light radiates out to fill the rest of the gallery space. Parker also looks to a religious subtext for the meaning of this work, "The whole notion of transubstantiation, the changing of one substance to another, has clearly influenced the way I think as an artist," (Themes of Contemporary Art, 145.)

The found objects that Parker finds become a metaphor of time passing and the transformations that these objects go through over that time, whether it be conceptual or physical. In her 2004 work, The Measure of a Man, is a war metal that was melted down and partially pulled into thin silver wires. She transform the metal from its previous state to its more natural one of raw metal. The wire is displayed tangled and twisted together to display the change of time in everything.

Breathless, 2001
Parkers 2001 work, Breathless, are flattened brass instruments that are suspended from the ceiling of the Victoria and Albert Museum. These objects were made by the middle class for upper class musicians. The reason why the objects are flattened is to show the bands that once used in the armies and unions are no longer existent. They serve as a metaphor for these needs being destroyed or abandoned now.

Conversations with Joseph Grigley

I was immediately intrigued when seeing the work of American Artist Joseph Grigely for the first time. Deaf since childhood, Grigely uses whatever writing material is at hand in order to have a “conversation” with others. Over the years, he has saved hundreds of these artifacts, anything from index cards to napkins all holding writing or drawings from previous conversation he has had.

                                    The Conversation Was Going Well Without Me. 2007 

                                               ink and pencil on paper  57 x 44 inches

 

Grigely has installed the individual papers using a patchwork type process – filling in as much of the wall as he could with bits of information from these conversations. He has also arranged the papers according to color or juxtaposing white with multicolored paper. Others are arranged or clustered together according to a similar theme that ties them together. From afar it looks like papers with markings, but upon further investigation the viewer is able to read the conversations and enjoy the subtle variations of our language; whether it be by the size, shape or readability of the hand writing, or the nuances of the language itself. Even though many times the conversation did not take place verbally, as a viewer you are able to hear it according to the way the language is presented. 

                                                              Blueberry Surprise. 2003                        (detail)

                                                           Pigment print 72 x 50 inches

Grigely work seems to surround the same general theme of verbal vs. non verbal forms of communication however he employs other means of discussing the issues of language and conversation, as well as living life while being deaf. Other works include Blueberry Surprise (above) and Songs Without Words. (Below)

 

                      (detail)                             Songs Without Words. 2008 

                                                                         Set of 12 prints

White Noise

White Noise, exhibited at the Whitney's Contemporary Series, was presented in a specifically designed oval room in which the 2,500 pieces of paper cover all the walls and the ceiling so that there is no beginning or end. Instead the viewer becomes consumed in the space, as a part of it instead of viewing them as objects on the wall. The pieces in this installation were chosen from an archive of over 8,000 individual sheets of paper. Grigely also has 6,500 piece archive of colored paper that has yet to be exhibited. With White Noise, Grigely focuses on the grid design and monochrome which is present in many of his pieces involving the “conversations” as reference to the minimalist ideal of taking a familiar form and repeating it in a slightly different way and perhaps an expansion on the modernist take of repressing language.

In an e-mail interview Grigely states, “About a year ago I started working on a series of monochromes that comprise papers of different shades of a single color—say, blue or green. There might be eight or nine papers arranged into a larger rectangle. It sounds relatively simple, but it’s usually a very complicated activity, because two distinct narratives have to work together: a formal narrative measured by optical experience and a verbal narrative measured by linguistic experience.” For Full interview

I find his work and the way in which he writes about his work and process informative to my own work. I also find it interesting to have similar ideas and and aesthetic preferences as someone who lives a life unlike my own, as I luckily have my hearing. This poses an odd twist in contemplating the relationship between his work and my own. I wonder if anyone has had similar encounters when researching the work of other artists? Not just physical differences, but perhaps environmental, cultural, personal, or historical differences that made you think a bit more about yourself and what drives your conceptual or aesthetic preferences.

No Stormy Skys at Storm king

           Spring is in the air and its the perfect time to get outside and see some art. One of the perfect places to do both is the Storm King Art Center in upstate New York. Storm King's 500 acres of  fields forests and hills is the home of over 100 large scale outdoor installations by many well known artists.  to name a few  artists Carl Andre, Louise Bourgeois, Andy Goldsworthy, Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Maya Lin, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Serra, David Smith,  and Ursula von Rydingsvard have art in the centers permanent collection.

         Storm King Art Center was founded and opened to the public in 1960  and with the 1966 purchase of thirteen works from the estate of sculptor David Smith (1906¬1965), Storm King began to place sculpture directly in the landscape. On a typical visit to Storm King, one has many options as to how to view the work including a motor tram tour or venturing off onto the grounds to self guide. the later is the better option from my experience as this allows for better interaction with the work.

           The grounds are also home to a museum which allows for  artists to utilize an indoor installation space. Beginning May 4th, on exhibit in and out of the museum will beThomas Houseago. his work is inspired by the figure and incorporates various materials including felt, aluminum, and bronze. 

         So if your ever in New York, pack your picnic lunch enjoy it in an on a  Noguchi, follow Goldsworthy's winding wall, set sail on Lichtenstein's boat, climb a Serra,  and head to Storm King Art center.