Arriving
I arrived in Boston on Tuesday 21st February. I had to stay one night in
the Hampton Inn, because I was arriving one day earlier than my
roommate. A nice place, very friendly and helpful people --- but the
heating was extremely erratic. It went from very hot to very cold, back
and forth. I usually get a "weird plane air" and jet-lag feeling when I
fly across the Atlantic or a similar distance or length of time. This,
together with the fluctuating heat succeeded in giving me a head cold,
which has continued until now, weeks later. Boston had almost no snow,
unlike the mountains in Switzerland where I live, where I left behind
snow about waste deep. However, strangely and abnormally, it was even
colder than the Alps. Bitter cold.
Checking In
Early Wednesday morning, I checked into my "real" conference hotel, the
Boston Back Bay Hilton. Beautiful, ritzy, expensive. Comfortable
heating. Then I went to the
CAA Conference,
in the conference center adjacent to the Hotel as well as the Sheraton. Here is the check-in hall.
Meeting People
I started attending interesting sessions immediately. Made at least one
in every time slot throughout the week (twice I left one to finish up in
another). On the way to the first hotel, I shared a hotel shuttle bus
with 5 young women, graduate students from
Savannah College.
All painters. Imagine that, those outrageous young people. They want to
paint! At a university! Don't they know enough to do "media" work or
cute events? Here they are:
Erica Gajewski, Lisa G. Johnson, Edna Dapo, Nicky Buckingham and Sarah Sharp.
Oops, I forgot, one is missing from the photo. I repeatedly came across
Erica during the conference. They all seem knowledgeable and motivated,
especially Erica. Let's all wish them the best as they enter into this
preposterous, duplicitous village we call an artworld.
Young American Painters
At coffee I met several interesting "established artists" including
Scott Betz, from Winston- Salem. He mixes linear, drawing ideas with installation.
First Session
The first session I went to was
"The Altered Page."
This was a "Studio Arts Session," so one of the few times I saw artists
speak, rather than historians or curators. Very enjoyable. I'd like to
add that I
despise the term "studio art." It has been created
by historians and critics for something that already has a name ---
"art." The creation of art is called
art. Everything else,
even if interesting, even if I love it too, is something else. These
"other" art-related activities have been referred to, until recently, as
"secondary" or scholarly activities. Not meaning, thereby, less
important, but "after the fact." Moreover, much art today is actually
post-studio, created outside the studio, so "studio art" is simply a
clumsy, unnecessary turn of phrase. One that I suspect is, once again,
an attempt by non-artists in the artworld to usurp the role of the
artist. Be proud of your own job and let us do ours!
Most exciting to me --- as will not surprise anyone who knows my work
--- was the paper "Colossal Volumes: Cycloramas, Inhabitable Books, and
Illuminated Rooms" by
Amy Broderick of Florida Atlantic
University. (Unfortunately, I can find no website for her.) Broderick
has created remarkable, large-scale drawings which become
installation-like. (Note: in German there is a wonderful adjective for
this ---
"installativ" ---, which we should borrow and anglicize. I will start doing it now.) She makes striking large-scale,
installative
drawings. She showed very little of her own work, however, presenting
and discussing more famous artists' installations, which, together with
her own approach, she sees as contemporary, yet, can be seen as enlarged
illuminated manuscripts: Very intriguing. Entranced as I am with
vernacular forms such as sign painting and comics on the one hand, and
art history since the Renaissance on the other, this was a new insight
to me. I had considered San Rocco and even the Sistine Chapel, but not
illumination. Very perceptive Broderick --- and show more of your own
works next time. I loved them!
Amy Broderick
Second Session
The second session I went to was
"Gordon Matta-Clark and Architecture,"
chaired by
Philip Ursprung,
a fellow Swiss, of my Universität Zürich. A professor of Art History,
Ursprung not only conceived a stimulating session theme, chose other
participants well, but also added discerning words of his own to the
panel.
Ursprung has written on a variety of contemporary artists and
architects, including Herzog and de Meuron (architects about whom I too
have written). (As an aside, Mr U has a fascinating surname --- it is
German for "origin;" "Ur"= primeval, "Sprung"= leap, Mr Primeval-Leap,
Origin of All Things.)
Here he is.
Philip Ursprung
One of the speakers he chose for this session was the prominent and exciting artist
Teresa Hubbard, who teaches at the University of Texas at Austin,
and creates beautiful video installations (yeah --- me --- they're "media" artworks --- and I really like them!) with her partner
Alexander Birchler.
Hubbard, who is Irish, and Birchler, who is Swiss, have been shown all
over the world, including in the Whitney and at the 1999 Venice
Biennale. Hubbard was alone this time, making her presentation by twice
playing a short film loop titled
Single Wide Space. It features
a seemingly emotionally distraught woman crashing her car through the
wall of a cheap, pre-fab trailer-like home, climbing out, going outside
to get in the car and doing it again. Simple to describe, but simply
tragic and gorgeous. Hitchcock, Kafka, Hopper and Sherwood Anderson in
one. Visual poetry.
Here's the team.
Hubbard/Birchler
The discussion after the presentations was equally edifying, good questions and
Jane Crawford,
the widow of Matta-Clark and the estate director, was in the audience.
She gave some direct personal information and reflections.
The Convocation
The hall was packed. Hundreds of attendees. Mercy, though, was that some
serious word-ifying. It went on for more than two hours, well beyond
its planned length. Their were many awards to be given, and to some
very
impressive people and for some very noteworthy projects, but with
reading each laudatory text in its entirety, and thank-yous and so on,
.... The texts were well written, but were all in the program booklet we
received, so perhaps they didn't need to be read aloud, or could have
been shortened. All those around me were getting restless. I didn't mind
it much as I was tired and enjoyed seeing the awardees' in the flesh.
The award winners included
Edward M. Kennedy
(Lifetime Achievement on Behalf of the Arts,
here is an example for why he was honored) and about 14 others.
Linda Nochlin
won for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement for Writing on Art, something
she clearly deserves. A remarkable historian who writes scholarly, yet
readably, stylishly; who has an "eye" and confronts important issues.
Nochlin thanked her (and my) editor
Elizabeth C. Baker
of
Art in America for helping to make her work well-written.
Truthfully, Nochlin is a fine author, but Betsy does demand high
standards and improves many a text!
Elizabeth Murray
won the artist version, and she greatly deserves that as well. And is,
need I note, a painter and another ex-Chicagoan. We are everywhere.
Okwui Enwezor
won an award as well. It was pleasing to finally see this much heralded
curator in person. The first African to lead Documenta (no. 11; a great
improvement over 10, even if he too was a bit "curatorially correct" and
a bit light on painting). An amazing man. He thanked a couple of people
for helping him to achieve what he has, in particular he singled out
Chicago's own
Susanne Ghez,
referring to her as "indefatigable"!
Okwui Enwezor
Susanne Ghez
Finally, the
Keynote Address speaker, for whom we were all waiting, was
Arthur C. Danto.
Danto is one of the most significant philosophers in the world, the "one
to beat" in fact. Fellow philosopher George Dickie, bouncing off the
springboard offered in Danto's
The Transfiguration of the Commonplace
and other works, created the now-called "Danto-Dickie Institutional
Theory of Art." Overly-simply stated, this is the theory that what makes
something an artwork is that it is embedded (presented, accepted,
shown, etc.) within the dominant institution, namely, the artworld. In a
highly debased and fashionably expedient form, this dominates the
artworld now and has done so for some time. Chiefly as it serves well
(albeit in the main when misused) as an inherent justification for much
mannerist Neo-Conceptual art. Although Danto's philosophy, particularly
his thought-experiment of identical objects, is the principal anchor for
this claim, he has himself seemingly had second thoughts about it,
while still insisting on the End of Art due the collapse of art into
philosophy. (Something I have argued is actually the End of Art History
As We Have Known It, and not the End of Art, see my article
here.)
He was an excellent speaker. Direct, clear and succinct. Fascinatingly,
Danto emphasized another part of his ontological theory of art, that
"works of art are embodied meanings."
A claim often overlooked in the heat of argument surrounding attempts
to subsume the Institutional Theory. Perhaps now is the time to delve
deeper into this aspect of his thought. He also mentioned that poet and
art critic
Raphael Rubinstein (a fan of painting) has
claimed that Danto is "the philosopher of art most cited by critics." I
suppose this ties him with Derrida, the theorist most cited by curators
and professors. It was exciting to me to get to meet Danto personally
after the speech, as I myself have often struggled with his work, in
print or speeches, making me probably one of those artists who, like
those critics to whom Raphael referred, quote Danto. I told Danto this
and said I was sorry and would cite him less in the future. He laughed. I
gave him one of my
viewers,
which contain images of my art. He enjoyed it and suggested he would
also take pleasure in having a copy of this cartoon I did in an article
where I cited and discussed him. I have to remember to send it to him.
He is really a grand man and thinker, especially in light of the fact
that his theory needs to surmounted and encompassed, not ignored,
whatever my misgivings are concerning its unsought after effect.
Brillo Krazy cartoon, Brandl
Arthur C. Danto
Danto's ex-student and my favorite living philosopher
David Carrier is successfully grappling with the Institutional theory, I believe.
David Carrier
The Gala Reception
As mentioned, due to the Convocation, we all got to the Museum of Fine
Arts late, also having to find our own ways, catch cabs, etc. Nice
museum. David Hockney Portraits show, John Singer Sargent murals,
beautiful selections from the collection hung salon-style in the
munchies area. Good
hors d'oeuvres.
I met one of my all time favorite ex-Chicagoan artists there --- as well
as at several other times and places at the conference ---
Buzz Spector.
He is a brilliant book and installation artist, founder of Whitewalls,
and the original "smart art" creator in the Windy City. Buzz is now the
Head of the Art Department at
Cornell University.
Spector was a shining light as well as a benefactor of mine and of other
Chicago artists who wanted to pursue more "intellectual" strains of
art, back when that was "not the thing." Thanks for the inspiration
Buzz!
Buzz Spector
Another Session
The next day, I went early to the session
It's All About Process
Not only is the title great, but so were the talks. The speakers all discussed the significance of
process in artists' work, as a sort of theoretical physicality, or physical theorization, if you will.
In particular, I wanted to hear
Janet Koplos. Koplos is another ex-Chicagoan, an art critic and important editor (senior editor at
Art in America) and author who began at the
New Art Examiner of all places. An intelligent, perceptive woman who can write damn well. She is the author of
Contemporary Japanese Sculpture
and co-author of an up-coming comprehensive art history of crafts text.
Her paper was entitled "The Meaning of Making in Contemporary Crafts."
Truthfully, other than listening to and reading Koplos, I seldom think
about crafts. Just my little personal blind spot, or perhaps the latent
snobbery of a quasi-conceptualist? I couldn't help but relate her
thoughts to a more general application of workmanship, as indeed did she
herself, to include all art-making. Her views were very stirring. The
end of her abstract describes the wider implications of her thoughts on
crafts well. "Process is valued in itself, not merely as a means to an
end, and its gratifications can be shared by an audience through the
visual evidence of the object. ...[C]oncept, process and product are
inherently wedded and of equal significance."
I am going to have to start condensing here, as I do get fired
up and run on! So --- only a few notes on her thoughts, which I found
intellectually thought-provoking, and stirring. Koplos mentioned at the
onset "the pernicious effects of theory in criticism." Remember, this is
coming from an intellectual and theory-oriented person, not some
conservative philistine. She commented astutely that "all important
experiences --- whether religious, aesthetic, cognitive or amorous ---
are reduced by theory." She cited another author, whose name I did not
catch, who said that "we can know more than we can tell." Koplos
frequently used the word
"workmanship," a term which bears resurrection, even with its somewhat passé inclusion of the word
man. It has a colloquial ring to it and avoids the specifically "pottery" overtones of
craft or the mechanistic clang of
technique. Or maybe we need to think again about
proficiency or
skill.
Koplos also mentioned that we need to "practice touch" --- the need for
this is innate and doesn't go away. This touch is, or fosters, an
important form of "attentiveness." "Working with the hands," as well as
with the mind, "is symbolic protest" nowadays, she feels. Koplos also
pointedly reminded everyone of the variety of inherently craft-like
metaphors present in recent computer developments, not the least of
which is the weaving together of the world-wide web. Finally, I was
delighted to rediscover a word she frequently used,
vernacular.
This more properly describes many of the cultural elements which interest me than the word
popular, often used today. Oh pugnacious yet cerebral plebeian antiacademician that I be, he says showily.
Very moving Janet! Look for her soon to be published text.
Janet Koplos
Meeting Interesting People
At this session, and then again several times later on, I met
Ira Goldberg.
He is the Executive Director of the legendary
Art Students League
in New York.
Many important artists has studied there, even if or perhaps because it
is not a degree-granting institution. In particular, a large number of
the first comic artists honed their skills there. It is a unique
learning (un-)institution. As it describes itself, "The League was and
still is a cooperative society based on mutual help among all its
members. There have never been any degrees or diplomas, no set
curriculum; one must be there solely for the love and pursuit of art,
the yearning for the exchange of artistic ideas and techniques. It is an
institution founded by students for students, and these are the major
reasons the school has continued to flourish."
Goldberg is an active artist as well as administrator --- and feels that
"the time is right for a survey and debate on art education." My
impression, if I may paraphrase him from memory, is that he feels most
art education nowadays is a failure. Similar to the boring,
anti-creative training in 1875 which the League was created to combat,
much of what now passes for art education is the self-serving production
of fashionable clones of a sect of art pundits. Correct me if I
exaggerate, Ira! I must say, these are important, heretical
considerations that strike to the heart of our current malaise. Worth
considering. Perhaps one thing he means can be stated as the
installation/graffiti artist
Banksy has, "All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw."
Ira Goldberg
Shortly after first meeting Goldberg, and participating in a session
discussion with him, I finally caught up with my erstwhile
hotel-roommate,
Raoul Deal,
who also sometimes uses his full name of Raoul Greco Deal. Raoul and I
were undergraduates in Painting together at the University of Illinois
about 28 years ago. He then went off to live for many years in Mexico
after having married classical violist
Dinorah Marquez.
They, with their daughter Gabriella, recently relocated to Milwaukee,
where Deal does wonderful installations involving sculpture, painting,
and community involvement. He has as much interest in "vernacular"
culture as I do, his being generally more Hispanic, but not solely. Deal
is one of the best artists I have ever seen or gotten to know, and I am
not saying that lightly. With our time together there, and earlier this
year when he and his family visited me and mine in Europe, Raoul and I
dreamed up a two-person painting-installation exhibition, which we hope
to travel. Look for in about two years! (While speaking of wives, mine
is
Cornelia Kunz,
pronounced "Koo-ents" for you English speakers, who are wondering. She
is Swiss, a Business Coach, Social Organization Developer, activist and
more.)
Raoul Deal
Roaming about between sessions, I also met
Paul Lamarre and Melissa Wolf.
They are the creators of an important and compelling video titled
The NEA Tapes.
Censorship, government support of the arts and propaganda are important
subjects and a battleground in an America where most of the so-called
"liberal"
media
is now owned by right-wing backers of George W. Bush.
The mass media serves as his propaganda machine and the radical right
has its eye on extending their censorship and control beyond even that.
As the
Metro Times Detroit has written about this video, "This
hour-long offering ... gives a pretty thorough overview of the
controversies surrounding the funding of the National Endowment of the
Arts (NEA)."
Next came MY Session. However, I will jump over that for the time being
to comment on two other sessions I attended, wrapping up with my
self-promotional self-description.
Two Sessions
I also attended a session with a very promising title:
Art History as a Class Act,
which unfortunately was not as invigorating as I had hoped. While the
participants offered some fine insights, they were four white men,
several with "upper class" accents, three with very dry deliveries, one
who was enjoyable to listen to. In the hall outside the door, cleaning
people (working class people of color) were loudly busy. Their noise
lent a weirdly symbolic background to the talk, which even one speaker
had to mention. Conference as a class act. Perhaps it was me, perhaps it
was because it was a morning at the end of the week, but Raoul felt
similarly remote from a discussion of a subject in which we are both
interested. Here's a photo of him sketching installation thoughts on the
program.
Raoul drawing.
Nevertheless, don't get me wrong. I insist that
class
is still The Big Hush-Hush in the art world. Not only art history, but
the contemporary artworld is a class (-dominated) act. Chicagoans should
be clearly aware of this, having always before their eyes the
"governance" of the (private) School of the Art Institute of Chic (to
quote an Artforum artwork from a few years ago).
Anja Meulenbelt,
a Dutch Feminist, wrote a book entitled
The Layers of an Onion,
whose title metaphor has bearing here. She points out that the problem
of oppression in society is like three layers of an onion, ones we must
peel away, somewhat painfully, one at a time --- making certain to
tackle
all three. These layers are
sexism, racism and classism.
I feel that (finally) the artworld is making a few inroads against
sexism, but it has barely even begun to mention racism and actively
quashes any mention of classism. The next time you are in a group show,
ask where all the black and brown artists are. That ought to gather some
quick silence around you! Even in the small numbers in which women
artists appear, and the infinitesimally small number of artists of color
who gain attention, they are overwhelmingly from the upper middle-class
or higher, to say nothing of the whites. "Private school graduates who
were incapable of doing anything else, so their parents bought them an
art degree, where they learned to obey fashionable directives in order
to craft a career," as a purposefully unnamed critic once described the
situation to me. Let us continue to peel off the sexist layer (with a
little more vigor even) and attack the other two immediately, even if we
must do it surreptitiously.
Saturday afternoon Raoul and I went to an exceptionally stimulating session.
Expatriate Games: The 19th-Century Artist Abroad.
From the title alone you could guess it would interest us. Yet not only
was the topic itself interesting, but all the speakers and the
chairperson's presentations were compelling. Three I will discuss below.
The chair was
Erica E. Hirshler, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The papers were:
Defining American, Defining Expatriate: The Puzzling National Identities of Sargent, Mora, and Henri, by
M. Elizabeth Boone, Humboldt State University
The Filipino as Avant-Garde Artist, by
Deborah A. Deacon, Arizona State University
Home Is Where the Heart Is: The Paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner, an African American Expatriate, by
Sharon Pruitt, East Carolina University
Away from Home/at Home in Paris: Americans Reckon with la ville lumière, by
Hollis Clayson, Northwestern University
and
Edvard Munch's "Germanness" , by
Jay A. Clarke, Art Institute of Chicago
The premise of the session, as written in the abstract, was that while
the 19th century is often viewed as rather nationalistic in art history,
"many painters of this period lived and worked abroad, negotiating
foreign languages, art circles, and cultural practices to become
successful in countries far from their native home." Furthermore, "this
session address[ed] the two-sided engagements with Paris, Madrid,
Berlin, and New York experienced by artists from an array of countries."
Sharon Pruitt's
paper on
Henry Ossawa Tanner
offered many insights, based on information concerning his notable
parents, facts new to me. This African- American painter definitely
deserves far more attention, perhaps this is a beginning. His
"internationalism" certainly bears more study. As Pruitt pointed out,
did he find a certain level of acceptance, if perhaps as "exotic," as an
artist in Paris and Rome that was unavailable to him at the time at
home in the US, because he was black? I found Tanner's family life most
intriguing. His father was a college-educated teacher and minister, an
intellectual,
Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835-1923). He
became a Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Bishop Tanner
had seven children, the best known of whom is Henry O. Tanner, but his
other children did well too. One daughter,
Hallie Tanner Johnson,
became a physician and established the Nurses' School and Hospital at
Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, for instance. Henry Tanner's mother,
Sarah Miller Tanner
was a former slave whose own mother had sent her north to Pittsburgh
through the Underground Railroad. Sarah Tanner became a noted teacher.
The painter Tanner, like the great jazzman Sidney Bechet and many other
black artists, spent the rest of his life in Paris, where he painted
some of the finest, large-scale Biblical paintings I have ever seen,
until his death in 1937. I also learned from Pruitt that the painter's
middle name, Ossawa, is in honor of the martyred white abolitionist
John Brown,
from the town where Brown first launched his anti-slavery campaign,
Ossawatomie, Kansas. Pruitt sees much of the illustrious artist's
personality reflected in those of his parent's, from what she has
discovered in her research.
Sharon Pruitt
All the papers were riveting. I would like, though, to mention in particular two Chicagoans in this session:
Hollis Clayson of
Northwestern University
and
Jay A. Clarke,
the associate curator of prints and drawings at
the Art Institute of Chicago.
Clarke's paper was a "deconstruction" in the best sense. She
disassembled the (partially self-constructed) myth of Norwegian painter
Edvard Munch's "Germanness." Lucid, social, political, yet with sound,
direct links to visual fact.
Hollis Clayson was a sparkling, humorous speaker with
entertaining rhetorical talents as well as sound scholarship. She should
perhaps consider giving public speaking classes to a whole roster of
art historians and curators with whom I am acquainted. Her paper, "Away
from Home/at Home in Paris" centered on a little-studied group of
gaslight night scenes by a variety of American artists in Paris, all
"mutilated voluntary aliens," who were "straddling the orbits of
bohemianism and cosmopolitanism during a sometimes punishing period of
accelerating French anti-Americanism in Paris" (symbolized for the
French by the new Edisonian electric lights spreading everywhere). This
was also a time in which many Americans began their slow swell of
nationalism and disregard for "the rest of the world." I can most
assuredly identify with these artists' positions, although the
xenophobia and nationalistic, propaganda-swallowing seems nowadays to be
more on the part of my "fellow" US citizens and their "freedom fries"
than the other way round, as in the period Clayson discusses.
Here are the two erudite Chicago speakers
Jay A. Clarke, left, Hollis Clayson, right
Finally, Our Session
Our session was titled
From the Page to the Wall: from Graphic Novels to Gallery Comics.
We were lucky enough to be in Prime Time --- Friday afternoon from 2:30 to 5:00. Our chair was
Christian P. J.-C. Hill
of
California State University at Fullerton.
Christian Hill
Christian is a professor of art but also a practicing fine and comic
artist --- and an invigorating theoretician. He created the term
"gallery comics" for work like his and mine. For Hill, a
gallery comic
(or art-space comic, or Kunsthalle Comic, Museum comic, et al.) is a
challenging new form of art lying between book-based sequential comics
and the spacial / wall situation of fine art. That is, a sequential, or
quasi-sequential work which both can be read like a book and comfortably
viewed as a gallery/museum work. I go into my own independently created
related term of
iconosequentiality
in my paper.
This is my neologism for the unique combination of forms of
phenomenological perception in comics — and my art. Viewers frequently
perceive both the entire page as an iconic unit, similar to a
traditional painting, and simultaneously follow the flow of narrative or
images from panel to panel, left to right, up to down. It is
concurrently whole/part and openly linear (even multi-linear with the
possibility one has to glance "backwards" and "forwards" if desired,
while reading). My notion is thus perhaps a corollary of or an ideal
compositional strategy for works of Hill's definition, which could be
called a
genre or
new media form. (Note: Regardless of what is often maintained,
new media
does not just mean electronic devices. Performance was a decided
non-technical new medium in the 70s; installation is probably the most
important new medium discovery of Late Modernism and is not necessarily
technological. Also,
media is the plural of
medium, which everyone seems to conveniently forget.) More about that all later.
Hill organized a group of curators, art historians and artists "to
address the evolution and interactions" of such art "within the
historical, theoretical, cultural, physical and economical dimensions of
the gallery" (or Kunsthalle or museum, etc.).
The participants were: First
Christian Hill himself,
who offered some fine introductory explanations and ideas and a running
show of gallery comic images from many artists;
Andrei Molotiu,
of the
University of Louisville, who spoke on
Eternal Ink: Comic Book and Comic Strip Original Art as Aesthetic Object;
Joanna Roche,
of
California State University Fullerton
, speaking on
Art Histories of Gallery Comics: What Rake Told Maus;
Michelle Ollie, Managing Director of
The Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont,
who spoke impromptu on her spanking new college for studying comics;
and me,
Mark Staff Brandl,
of the
Universität Zürich
and a
practicing artist,
with my paper on my own work, titled
Panels, Covers, and Viewers: My Mongrels of Painting, Installation, and Comics.
Andrei Molotiu is a unique scholar. An
art historian
and expert on
Jean-Honore Fragonard,
he is also a curator and a
creator of abstract comics.
He has a book on Fragonard coming soon from the world renowned Getty Institute.
Here he is as an art historian.
Andrei Molotiu
Here he is as an abstract comics artist.
I pointed out in my paper that "comics have always been
allographic, as opposed to
autographic,
to use philosopher Nelson Goodman’s terminology. That is, the actual
work of art is located in the published object, not a one-of-a-kind
"original" as in painting." Nevertheless, Molotiu accurately pointed out
in his discussion that the "original" art pages of comics offer
wonderful opportunities for different an unique forms of appreciation on
their own. Whereas in the past these drawings were tossed out or even
destroyed by the companies after they had been photographed for
printing, many collectors and scholars nowadays seek them out, buying
them for often large sums. (I myself have a few framed and hung on my
walls, such as my Gene Colan works and Al Williamson strip hung next to a
Joseph Beuys multiple.) Talking a very enlightening phenomenological
approach, Molotiu went step-by-step through the interaction a viewer has
with such an original comic page, how one can appreciate not only the
intended art values, but also additional discoveries such as the
beautiful variety of thick and thin, tapering, brush ink work common to
older cartoonists, the thickness of the ink on the board, the
"palimpsest of marks that do not show up on the printed page: touches of
pro-white and of [non-reproducing] blue pencil, ghostly pentimenti of
erased penciling, marginal notations," fingerprints and so on. As he
further stated, "these marks reveal the inescapable presence of the
artwork and the comics-creating process itself." They are what Molotiu
calls the "antilogocentric dimension." They shift the viewer's attention
"from the utilitarian aspects of the art to those not so easily
consumed by narrative." I must say that I stand happily corrected! I
realized, as he spoke, that these are often the elements I have
treasured most, and an important part of what lead me to my idea of
installation-comics. Thanks Andrei! Molotiu discussed many other related
points. Christian Hill says our papers will be printed in a scholarly
journal. I certainly hope so, because I would like to have every one
else's texts, such as Molotiu's. I was also impressed by his ideas on
how to exhibit such works of comic art.
(Yet, Andrei, I won't give up on the historical facts as in our barroom
historical discussion. Comics "qua comics" begin with Rodolphe Toepffer.
There are logical limits to infinite historical regress and/or
historical skepticism! --- or we have to argue it out again in the
future. That would be fun!)
Joanna Roche of California State University is also an
art historian, but one specializing in Modern and contemporary art. She
admirably also states that she's "trying to expand my teaching of
contemporary art beyond Europe and the US to many regions of the world
where artists are at work: Asia, the Middle East, Latin America...."
Roche made the best short definition of Hill's "gallery comics" notion:
"A new form of art sharing the structural elements of the classic comic
strip, book or graphic novel, but also using the possibilities of and
belonging within the conceptual and physical spaces of the gallery,
museum or the like." (If I am quoting her correctly from notes and
memory.) Her images were wonderful, showing works that were primarily
visual, perfect for viewing while walking about a space, and yet ones
that demanded "reading" (in it's extended sense). One was a poetic and
evocative series of panels of rain and umbrellas. I cannot find the
artist's name or the title in my notes. Please write to me and tell me
again Joanna! Another was a solo-word-balloon image from Christian Hill
which was a tour de force of a gallery comic. I was flattered to see
images of my own work turn up in her speech next to artists like Chris
Ware, Christa Donner and Charles Burns. I will definitely re-study her
paper when I get the CD of the session.
Michelle Ollie of The Center for Cartoon Studies
gave a delightful spontaneous discussion of how one can instruct comic
art. (She was a late addition to the session, as one planned member
dropped out.) She discussed various aspects of curriculum and showed a
handful of the shows they require of their students (who must utilize a
variety of forms including short strips, books, exhibitions and more.)
Even the graphics and drawings in their brochures are exciting (created
by famous alternative comic artist
Seth).
The Center has regular visiting artists of high caliber. This April
alone they will have Chris Ware, Seth, and Ivan Brunetti. These artists
lecture and work closely with the students. And, have breakfast at the
local greasy spoon, The Polka Dot, with students and visitors! There are
not many institutions where one can study comics and comic creation,
especially of a more "artsy" kind as well as traditional comics, with
important creators. So watch this place. They are going to be very
important.
And then there's me,
Mark Staff Brandl. (Spoiler warning: here comes the self-serving artist part.) I had given my presentation at the
Kunsthalle St.Gallen
beforehand, in order to address the environment where I live (finally
in my mother tongue English --- I usually have to speak in German). It
went very well there, but I was amazed at how much smoother it went at
the CAA. Perhaps because they are a more inherently intellectual
community, or because the audience understood the socio-political
implications of a mixed popular / fine art culture. (The audience was
predominantly North American, but, from what I could see during the
discussion afterwards, also included more than a few Europeans, some
South Americans and a Japanese woman.)
Here I am right before the talk.
Brandl at podium
What did I talk about?
Speaking as a practicing "gallery comics" artist, I presented my own
work, which is a "mongrel" combination of installation, painting and
comics, and discussed it in relationship to the definition of comics
(sequentiality, word and image, closure, iconosequentiality, etc.), the
influence and confluence of comics and fine art, as well as viewers'
relationship to the works from the perspectives of both "high" and "low"
art.
Panels are installations wherein large
paintings on canvas are surrounded by additional painting directly on
the wall, creating huge, readable, sequential "pages" of (an often quite
abstract) comic. The term
panels refers to the small framed
areas in comics, portable easel paintings (a term often used to
denigrate painting as obsolete), and the segments of a fresco (one
progenitor of comics).
The
Covers works are paintings and
installations employing the structure of comic-book covers: bold
lettering, price, date, numbering, image etc. In them, I revel in the
inspirational sources which comprised my initial calling to be an
artist, including the billboard sign-painting and display-window
decoration of my father, as well as superhero-comic artists. I do not
simply appropriate, rather, I engage these forms as an inherited yet
incomplete grammar, coaxing it to proclaim celebrations and critical
thoughts. This is not fusion or cross-over, but a disjunctive dialogue
of arbitration.
Viewers are hand-held slide-show viewers:
clickable comics-in-a-toy. These "multiples" are often an integral part
of my installations. Here, I use the term to refer to the perceivers,
who have divulged varied, contradictory, yet exciting responses to such
fine-art-cum-comics. Gallery comics mix various modes of viewing, as
well as several art (sub-)cultures.
Finally, for me and similar artists, it was important to discuss how we have developed
from comics
into
fine art, not the reverse, as was true of Pop Art pioneers. We are not
slumming. This is my culture, , even if it is perhaps habitually
insufficient . It is an inherited vocabulary and "scene of instruction",
with strong socio-political dimensions. My work contains a celebration
of the remarkable discoveries of comic art, used to enliven currently
moribund und mannerist fine art --- thus additionally a critique.
Contrarily, it is also a celebration of what the ambition of fine art in
form and content can bring to comics ---- therefore a critique once
again. A complex and challenging new arena of art.
The
entire text notes for the speech
are on-line at my website.
One wonderful surprise for me was the appearance of the talented writer and editor
Tom Field
at my session. While I have known him for a while via internet and a
discussion list, I had never met him face to face. Tom has written and
published in a plethora of forms, books, magazines, comics, etc. He and I
are both adamant fans of the classic comic artist
Gene Colan
. Field in fact authored a book on Colan, which has just been released ---
Secrets in the Shadows: The Art & Life of Gene Colan
. The Preface for the book was written by top novelist
Glen David Gold,
author of the delightful and complex
Carter Beats the Devil.
I was honored to write the afterward. In addition to the joy of getting
to meet him, Tom brought me an un-inked (pencils only), unpublished
page of Colan's originally for a
Spector comic. It's fabulous and he is a great guy.
Tom Field
The discussion afterward was lively and people continued even beyond the
allotted time, forcing the next session to have to push us out! Lots of
spot on, well-informed questions and comments. Before we left, I gave
out a batch of my viewers/catalogues. Hill certainly organized an
notable session, one that will be of assistance to me in the future. I
immediately received a slew of business cards and more than 10 offers to
have shows, be a visiting artist, give lectures etc. Thank you to all
those interested, but most of all Christian Hill for organizing it and
inviting me, and my fellow speakers for animating the session.
If you haven't had enough by
this point, are an art historian or are a fan of some kind, a CD recording of our session can be purchased for US$ 24.00 at
Conference Media.
The conference was finally at an end. Unfortunately. It is always so
thrilling to see so many people speaking so eagerly about their own art
interests and hungrily devouring the thoughts of others. I suggest going
to the CAA conference, for info and inspiration, as well as job
searches. It is well worth it. There are a great variety of viewpoints
presented, not just the "usual suspects," a plurality of "takes" on art
and artworld events. Invigorating.
I left for the flight home. Here are the gates in the Boston airport.
gates
Here is a strangely symbolic sign over a restaurant in the airport.
That's "pain" as in French for "bread." So many miles to Chicago, so
many miles to Zurich. I need to decide. I'm heading home to Zurich; I'll
come visit my ex-home another time.
sign
I can see the mountains.
As a close, I would particularly like to thank the
CAA Travel fund, without which I couldn't have afforded the flight. And
Pro Helvetia,
without which I couldn't have afforded the time off, hotel and more.
Pro Helvetia is a bit like a Swiss NEA. They have had a struggle
recently, as you may well know, due to a controversy over an exhibition
they helped fund wherein a famous Swiss artist insulted the major
right-wing populist politician in Switzerland. As a result, the
parliament decided to shoot a censorious "warning shot" over the head of
the institution, cutting their funding by one million Swiss francs
(about US$ 800,000). Whatever one thinks of that politician, that
artist, or "scandal seeking" artists or "headline-seeking" politicians,
this was juvenile. That's the censorship of the future, using pressure
to promote a hoped-for self-censorship. Pro-Helvetia has not given in to
this and should be applauded.
Thanks for wading through all of this!
Yours truly,
Mark
---------
Thank so so very much. That was fun, I really did laugh just now --- how thorough you are. I, in turn,
went to Boston last week; saw the art shows, including Stella, (I'll send you the review); and was
happy to find the comic book of Proust, showing the scenes of Elstir, which I've written about. In May I'm going to
Greece to speak, in September to Rome, which is to say that we absolutely must find a way to meet. I really
