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| Ryan McGinely, "YEARBOOK" at Team Gallery, NYC |
I was walking around the Lower East Side and Soho the other
day catching up on some shows whose openings I happened to miss. Some things I
saw were charming and “good.” Others were quickly forgettable and then some
were just in a category of familiar disbelief. The familiar comes from having
seen something not exactly like what is on view but the feeling of it being
something so easy, so pat, so well…familiar. The disbelief is that feeling upon
seeing it and just taking a breath to calm disdain and quickly trying to accept
that this is how things are and this is how things will be.
One show that really hit this combo of familiar disbelief
was the Ryan McGinely show at Team’s Grand Street location. Entitled,
“YEARBOOK,” this show consists of over 500, (count ‘em 500), nudes of youths in
various shades of mostly white to sometimes brown, and all of them undeniably
young and ‘cool.’ The photos are
printed and pasted on all the walls and ceilings of the space. It is basically wallpaper and this is
the thing that had me so defeated when looking at it. I often say the word “wallpaper” to describe ineffectual,
unmeaning, just background, blank, and undistinguishing ambience that is
resultant of a failure of some effort. Whether it be art, music, commentary,
pop culture, or even a person, “wallpaper” for me is definitely a pejorative.
Anyways, back to McGinely’s show. This is an utter wallpaper
of a show not only in how it actually was installed but the content. Who cares about vague coolness? Who
cares about distracted gaze? Who cares about a coterie? (PS “coterie” is
possibly one of my top 10 words I hate).
Who cares? No one. But god
damn it, it’s right there in its glory and people know that it is all done and
over with but man, we keep looking and we keep having to see it.
Why is this happening? Internet, money, New York City death
trap, Sotheby’s, MFAs, cultural butt-hole, one-percenters, Beyonce, James
Franco, and wadda wadda wadda. We
could go on and on about why this is happening. I can’t grasp it, nor do I want to in some ways but here is
where the challenge lies.
So much of everything, and especially in the art world is
just noise. I feel like I am
having the same conversation, over and over again, about the art world, the art
market, money, fame, access, gallery structures, vultures, flippers, spinners,
PR agents, whose leaving this, whose joining this, whose funding this, and
whose broke. Maybe I keep having
these same conversations because people know that I’m so ‘over-it’ regarding
the art world and they feel they have a ready partner in the venting. They do. Please people, keep venting away but I have to pause and
speak about this challenge that comes from all this vapidity caused angst.
It’s time we all get real and chill out and take some time
(TIME!) to have some deep thoughts.
I know that ‘discourse’ and the blah-de blah of Structuralist,
Postmodern, dialectic, blabedeblah is like so puh-lease in impulse but let’s be
honest people, things have gotten real basic and stupid in culture and most
definitely in the art world and those who participate in it.
There has been an anti-academic tip going on for a decade or
so, and rightly so because that was just too expensive, too white, too male and
too boring to endure. But now there is a prevalence of flippancy, it’s ‘anti-‘
this or that but nothing that is significantly new, regenerative, or progressive. Everyone
can be an artist, being an artist or an art professional is a definite career path
for many now. Making work, talking about work, looking at work, buying work,
curating work is based on access to influence and riding the wave at just the
right moment. Is this new? No.
Does it still suck? Yes.
I guess the only thing I am saying is that I’m really not
sure why a lot of the art I’m looking at and seeing out there for the past few
years feels so vacant, easy, cool, and is so white noise wall papery. Yes, of course there are moments of sheer
amazing art and brain razzle-dazzle, and this is why I even hold onto a string
of giving one crap about contemporary art still but there is a problem. I think that we should really
collectively have it be a goal to chill out, slow it down just a little bit,
even if for a little while and just think. Think and talk and think and talk and think and maybe not
talk. There is something off, maybe it’s just me that’s off, (probably), maybe
that’s why I’m questing for some golden fleece of illusioned remedy for my
problem with art but all I know is that things just feel too contingent on some
made up status quo.
Just to confirm my ego on this trend, I also came across
this article by the astute, smart, yet not frivolous writer, Alex Ross of The
New Yorker. In his short essay entitled, The Naysayers, Walter Benjamin,Theodor Adorno, and the critique of pop culture, he goes through a lot of the clichés of being a theory thinker, and
the tacky baggage of that cultural signification. He also presses into some of the foresight, prophetic and
possibly necessary theories and ways of thinking by Benjamin and Adorno and how
it relates to the fast food culture of today. I highly recommend this read to give any who may need it,
that extra strength to not feel totally ridiculous highlighting some Adorno.
And here I will leave you with just that. One of my
highlights from Adorno’s Minima Moralia, 1951:
One of the motifs of cultural critique since time immemorial
is that of the lie: that culture produces the illusion of society worthy of
human beings, which does not exist; that it conceals the material conditions on
which everything human is constructed; and that by seeking to console and
assuage; it ends up preserving the bad economic determinacy of everyday
existence: This is the nothing of culture as ideology.
