Modern Kicks

it makes us weep a bit for gratitude

First Sight

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

--Philip Larkin

deadly

"It's 1969 and I'm at a 'think tank' near Stanford.  Each afternoon I drive to the campus to eat lunch with my wife.  One day a group of SDS students led by a fellow named Cohen forms a semicircle behind us, chanting hostile slogans.  They mean to carry the battle against decadent liberalism to the heart of the enemy.  This continues day after day.  Go elsewhere for lunch?  My pride won't allow it.  So each afternoon we are followed across the campus, objects of a kindergarten confrontation.  Then one day I wheel about and shout at the insufferable Cohen: 'You know what you're going to end up as?'  The question startles him, and before he can resume his chanting I cry out, 'You're going to end up as a dentist!'  Cohen blanches--the insult is simply too dreadful--and I march off in miniature triumph.

Ah, Cohen, wherever you may be, are you really pulling teeth?"

--Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope

IM IN UR G4LLERIEZ, SEEIN UR 4RT

Marc Spiegler over at Artworld Salon hooks me back in with more museum geekery in a post about online virtual tours.  I don't have any examples of best practices myself, though perhaps some of these excellent nerds could come up with some.  I'll agree with Marc about the "untapped potential" of web tours--they seem like a great idea which hasn't quite panned out yet.  Perhaps that's because the technology (or at any rate, the technology + the money/expertise most museums have to implement such projects) isn't quite there yet; perhaps they really aren't that great an idea.

Or rather, it may be that they're an idea caught between two modes of online presentation.  Marc mentions them, but it doesn't seem to me he draws out all the implications: one is the bandwidth-intensive, high design (if generally a bit "low" in content) world of "animated movies, console videogames, virtual worlds/MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games), etc." while the other is the quick and dirty world of YouTube.  Technological competence varies from institution to institution, but I can't think of many that are at a point where the investment in and knowledge of high quality and dynamic graphics in web design and presentation can match the first model; it's never before recent years been an important area of concern, at least not at the level for gamers for whom graphics are, if not everything, then a whole lot.  Anyone can slap up some jpegs and have an online gallery, but rivaling the gaming/animation world on its own turf is another matter (a fact which says something in itself.)

Which makes simpler modes of presentation, a la YouTube, more attractive, at least in some ways.  And certainly many institutions are experimenting with things like podcasts, Quicktime videos, etc.  But the low-tech aspect can rankle as well.  Did you ever think you'd be delighted to watch fuzzy, low-grade video clips about 4" x 6", that doing so would become a sensation?  Me, neither, but here we are.  I've been critical of complaints of low fidelity in new media formats in the past, and I still am.  In the case of .mp3s, I've tended to think of the as idealizations of a prelapsarian Age of Great Sound that didn't have much to do with how most people listened to recorded music most of the time.  In this case, however, I think there is a legitimate concern.  The rough quality of presentation runs the risk of diminishing the artwork, while the increased acceptance of the online medium (especially among younger viewers) can normalize it as an equivalent to the actual experience of the artwork.  Certainly it's hard to come to any other conclusion regarding the curator Marc tells of, who hurried filmed an exhibit only to "view" it later during a boring conference session, that he or she either had no actual interest in the show or was committing professional negligence.

markets, then and now

It was with no small amount of chagrin that I turned the pages in The Rembrandt Book over the weekend after writing this post and found the author casually mentioning that the decline in the Dutch art market began in the 1640s and arguing that the Republic did not, in fact, have the first modern art market--that the southern Netherlands, if anything, had developed further in that direction by the seventeenth century than their breakaway neighbor.  Two of my blithe assertions taken down at once, never a good feeling.  As for the first point, I'll simply defer to the writing of someone far more knowledgeable than myself.  All I can say is, I know I've seen that 1670 figure cited somewhere, and I must assume it marks the beginning of a more terminal stage than the earlier contractions.  I was intrigued, however, by Schwartz's point that Rembrandt's own bankruptcy and forced sales contributed to the decline: one of the market's former stars pulled the price floor out from under everyone by selling his all at bargain basement rates.  If only he'd had a dealer to support his price point!

The question of a modern art market, though, is different, and, I think, more debatable.  To borrow the motto of the internets, I'm no economist.  But then, this isn't really a purely economic question, it's in some measure a historical one (and it suffers from a sufficient definition of what one means in calling an art market "modern," but that's another post.)  Of course when one calls the seventeenth century "modern," one doesn't mean that it was precisely like today, or even the nineteenth century.  They were not, as far as I know, bundling sub-prime mortgage loans as securities, and perhaps not even going crazy over tulips.  Artists still belonged to guilds, as un-modern a practice as one can imagine.

Still, the points that Schwartz makes in arguing against the modernity of the Dutch art market, as well as those he makes in comparative favor of Antwerp and the southern Netherlands, don't convince me.  He notes that there's nothing in Holland to compare to the specialization one finds happening in Rubens' workshop; but by that token, the Impressionists, solitary painters that they were, were not modern, either.  It's true, as he says, that artists in the Catholic south had access to a much greater volume of patronage through the Church, which was closed off to northern Protestant artists, who relied instead on a smaller amount of private support.  Yet private patronage (which still exists today, of course) strikes me as more modern than the venerable tradition of religious art (which is not to say better.)  The dramatic spread of art ownership through not just the elite of society but to a significant part of its middle strikes me as showing a more modern aspect, as does the speculative production and existence of public auctions, both of which one finds (though not in our contemporary form) in the Dutch Republic.  Galleries, as Schwartz does note, are one of the real distinctions between fully modern art markets and the seventeenth century; they were few and far between back then.  I'm not knowledgeable enough to know how much this differs from what was happening in the south, and perhaps it's not much; but in that case, we should remember that the entire Netherlands were, by the standards of most of Europe at the time, at the leading edge.

Part of what we might take away from the matter is the reminder that art markets are genuinely strange things.  I can understand, for instance, why the promise of supporting an artist's price level would be an important and desirable goal a gallery might have and offer to its artists, but in what other sort of other market could this promise be made and attempted, more or less successfully, at least, to keep?  Perhaps I'm being naïve, but if we were talking about some more quotidian commodity, accusations of price-fixing would come out (hmm, and they have at times, of course.)  Not that I'm in favor of that, but we shouldn't forget we are talking about a sort of hothouse flower here.

who, me?

At a meeting a couple of weeks ago, called to look at and evaluate some software: one attendee begins talking about blogs, and how we should get one.  "Wouldn't it be great if [JL's real name] had a blog?  I'd want to read that, wouldn't you?"  I laughed.  Since then, it's become a recurring joke.  People keep saying things to me like, "Once we get [technology project x] up and running, then we can start your blog!"  I smile and ask them, "But what on earth would I write about?"

seen at auction

It's a staple of Rembrandt studies (as this page in Dutch seems to indicate) that Gary Schwartz touches on briefly early in The Rembrandt Book: Raphael's famous portrait of Baldassare Castiglione was sold at auction in Amsterdam in 1639, and Rembrandt was there to see and sketch it.

It's furthermore a commonplace that the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century saw the development of the first truly modern art market.  Literally millions of artworks were created, speculative production became widespread, as did the auctions that Rembrandt and other artists visited, and a profitable time was had by many, if not all, at least until the market contracted some time after 1670 (see Michael Montias, among others, for more.)  Thinking of these facts gives that long-ago "Golden Age" a distinctly contemporary feel, and Rembrandt was in the thick of it in more ways than one as an artist and dealer.

That's not what interests me most looking at the little sketch after Raphael now in the Albertina, however.  Rembrandt was using this opportunity to study a famous (and top-selling) master, as he always did, but in doing he made it--he could not help but make it--not a copy but a Rembrandt.  Castiglione's cap, nearly circular in the original, becomes a jaunty oval in the drawing.  The courtier's calm, intimate, open frontal gaze is turned ever so slightly so that his left eye becomes dominant, giving a sense of a searching, appraising look (the body seems slightly turned as well.)  And the nose has changed from a long and elegant Italian one to a characteristic Rembrandt lump.  If Raphael's Castiglione presents the epitome of sprezzatura (as we all had a chance to recall not so long ago), Rembrandt's shows a shrewd Amsterdam merchant, sizing up his chances.

As the Dutch page linked to above shows (at least through the images--I've no idea what the text contains), Rembrandt would use the portrait of Castiglione, as well as other works such as Titian's Portrait of a Man (or A Man with a Quilted Sleeve, as the National Gallery now calls it) for a wide range of pictures, including the self portrait also in London.  And there were many more sources of inspiration: in all, Schwartz's conservative estimate finds "varying degrees of influence of more than 110 artists" in Rembrandt's work, with other scholars positing even higher figures.  Schwartz sees Rembrandt's wide range of borrowings not only as a testament to the international art market of the day, when old and new masters from Italy and elsewhere might be found in the shops and auctions of the day, but of the painter's relentless pursuit of the entire range of possibilities open to his art:

Even for an age when the adaptation of work by other artists was the norm, Rembrandt shows an exceptional penchant for transforming into Rembrandts the art of contemporaries and forebears--very many of them.  There is a king of generosity in this this behavior, a lack of jealousy, a willing acknowledgment of the qualities of others.  At the same time, it suggests a certain instability in Rembrandt.  Instead of drawing throughout life on a small group of selected models, Rembrandt was always looking for something other than what he had.  If he did not find it, he was capable of returning to the source he had just abandoned or of going on to something completely different.

Whether generous and open or merely mercurial, he stamped his sources with his own imprint, one that would prove so strong that students and imitators would seek to reproduce it as well.  The irony surrounding such a powerful individual artist lies not only in that he borrowed so much from others, but that we have such difficulty telling him apart from his school.

quick hits

- Some real good stuff in the new Big RED and Shiny: first, Matthew Nash reviews all the handwringing in Critical Mess, and then asks, what do we expect from art criticism, anyway?  Also, a somewhat querulous review wrestles with the Howard  Hodgkin show at Yale.  I've not seen the show, so no substantive comment from me, but one point I would like to comment on: the reviewer finds fault with Hodgkin's referring to his paintings as pictures, saying that "paintings hang in museums and pictures hang at your auntie’s house."  Quite apart from any actual auntie possibly owning a Hodgkins, or the fact that calling a painting a picture is, if not so common, not quite the insult the writer imagines, I think it's significant that Hodgkins is British.  In my experience, for whatever that's worth, calling paintings pictures is not uncommon in British parlance.

- Since ArtsJournal had it the other day I assume most people have seen it already, but in case you haven't: the director of the Walters Art Museum has a blog.  And it's pretty good so far, too.

- Martin wrote in to note that if I had been reading anaba more regularly, I would have found out about Artworld Salon some time ago.  I would have also known that Mass Moca has fake tigers hanging in its galleries again.

also

From a comment to the same post on catalogs vs. websites:

a website’s interactive, and you can always invite your Japanese sound artist pal to crank out a few original bars of music to go with the viewing experience while the flash animations zoom through the installations and allow you to look up, down, in, around . . .

Don't ever do that.  Seriously.

the paperless gallery

Kriston comment on a new site, Artworld Salon, which he learned of from Edward_, and says that "it's less about art than about movers & shakers."  To put it in a bit more neutral terms, the posts so far, at least to the extent that I've seen, are mostly about the art world as art market--the authors disavow Gawkerforum-like topics, vowing that they "intend to steer clear of who-ate-what-where-with-whom-last-night coverage," but who-sold-what-at-what-price definitely seems to be on the agenda.  Nothing wrong with any of that, of course, and the range of topics is broader than mere market-watching, but that's certainly a central part of it.  It might be more accurate to say that the site primarily deals with the sociology of the art market, though that's probably not exact, either. 

One post that caught my eye concerned exhibition catalogs (here meaning for a current artist in a gallery show, not so much a scholarly catalog for a, say, Rembrandt exhibition, not to say there's no points in common between the two enterprises.)  The author, Marc Spiegler, writes

What purpose does a catalog serve today? In the old days, as I understand it, catalogs were the way in which those who missed the show could get some sense for it. But today it’s hardly the best way of transmitting such information. No, that would be an exhibition-specific website, with 1) its unlimited potential for showing images (and video, and multiple views of objects or installations), 2) the possibility of allowing virtual visits through the space so you can “see” how the works resonate with each other, 3) the option to add ancillary material such as reviews and articles discussing the show and, 4) instantaneous, eternal and inexpensive global distribution.

There's much to agree with here, and I, for one, thought that the website for the Yale Center for British Art's Art and Music in Britain: Four Encounters exhibit was a wonderful thing to have if no catalog was to be done (although I'd note again that here we're talking about a historical, museum show.)  One significant disagreement I have, however, is with the "eternal" business.  I'd bet on a good catalog, especially one of enough interest to be bought by some libraries, to outlast a website any day.  As wonderful as these internets are, preserving digital media, websites, etc., is a real pain if someone is not really paying attention to it--and over time, it's pretty likely that someone won't.  Not to mention whatever further technological changes come, what that might mean for migrating a site, etc., and you've got a whole lot of headaches a bound book will never face.  I'd also quibble with the idea (expressed in comments and implicit in the post) that websites are better for images.  They may be better in the sense that more can be put up (assuming the artist is cooperating, and there's no need to pay extra fees for each additional image), but limited size of browser windows and the variability in quality of monitor display (especially regarding color) are significant downsides that print can avoid.  I also agree with the idea that lengthy essays are best in print and not online, though whether they are a good thing at all I'll leave to others.

I think Spiegler's right to say that a catalog performs a validation function, and a catalog will do better in those terms than a website both in its permanence and general thingness.  I can speak for myself in that, when I'm considering whether an exhibit would be worth writing seriously about (I mean in a piece that either would be a long, thought-out post here, or published elsewhere), the existence of a catalog is one factor I consider (here I'm mostly talking about museum shows, however.)  It's not the only factor, and not a definite rule, but I'm less likely to think that the organizers of the show feel they've put something together of lasting importance if there's no catalog.

On a final note, while Spiegler may feel that the "wasted paper and postage involved" in sending him free catalogs is "unconscionable," I think I could rest very easy at night if people were mailing them to me.

grab bag

First, from Ken Johnson's article in the Globe on Karen Finley, her career since those crazy days of the early '90's, and her new exhibit at Emerson:

Bill Arning, curator at MIT's List Visual Arts Center, is another ardent Finley supporter. "She looks for those areas in culture where we have a collective denial, and she makes them apparent so we have to deal with them," he says by phone. "Having watched the feeding frenzy at the Armory Show [the giant New York art fair] this weekend, I am hoping for a new wave of art students making politically engaged, non-commodifiable art. They could not find a better role model for that than Karen Finley." Plus, opines Arning, "She makes really beautiful drawings."

I think someone needs to listen to what they are saying.

Moving on, Geoff Edgers flagged this first, but I'm pleased to see that an exhibition of my old college friend Neal Walsh's paintings won an award from the New England chapter of the International Association of Art Critics for "Best Show in a Commercial Gallery, New England."  Greg Cook has the full list, and asks the question, are New England's local artists not museum worthy?

Lastly, Gary Schwartz sees the "Pollock" discovery and controversy as a matter of art history repeating itself.  I am especially pleased to read Dr. Schwartz's take, as I currently reveling in his lastest, The Rembrandt Book, about which you shall no doubt have more to read soon.  I don't want to get ahead of myself, but here are some words the book calls to mind: "lucid," "judicious," "magisterial."  So, you know, it's good.