Artillery Magazine

Byline: By Anthony Ausgang 2

  • FUNKO-DELIC

    FUNKO-DELIC

    Andy Warhol predicted, “Someday, all department stores will become museums, and all museums will become department stores.” If that’s the case, then there’s a new museum in Hollywood that needs to be added to the list of L.A.’s tourist attractions. Funko, a company specializing in urban vinyl toys, bills itself as ”one of the leading creators and innovators of licensed pop culture products,” and in November of 2019, they opened their newest retail space on Hollywood Boulevard. Still, as obvious as the cash registers are, the uncognoscenti are excused for thinking they have arrived at a most excellent museum since the space is primarily designed to impress viewers with the monumentality of what appear to be Instagram-ready art installations. As part of Funko’s mission statement to “provide consumers tangible ways to take their fandom offline,” each different toy franchise features a life-size sculptural environment that encourages exploration; which of course reveals the shelves of merchandise. It’s crafty and remarkably similar to a museum, where one looks at unaffordable objects but can leave with a satisfyingly inexpensive facsimile.

    Nightmare on Elm Street sales kiosk at Funko. Photograph by Anthony Ausgang

    The art critic Peter Schjeldahl has pointed out that museums are the secular equivalent of churches, which explains the gravity characteristic of a museum experience. There’s interface but no interaction, and not understanding a work of art’s purported significance puts the viewer in a difficult place. Because when an artist or singular work of art is called “important,” things have suddenly gotten serious, and that encourages the casual observer to look for an anchor of normalcy in a sea of art rhetoric. Unable to calculate value outside of the museum’s rarefied atmosphere, the search is not for meaning, but for meaninglessness and the refreshing relationship one can have with something of no importance. Which is the appeal of Xu Bing’s piece 1st Class, included in the LACMA exhibition The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China. Probably the most accessible piece in the show, Bing’s massive faux tiger skin rug made of 500,000 cigarettes owes its appeal to the fact that there’s no mystery involved, just a shared enjoyment based on everyone’s understanding of what constitutes both tigers and cigarettes. Unfortunately, explaining Bing’s underlying concept (that fanatical smoking in China is a result of U.S. commercial imperialism) would probably lessen most people’s enjoyment of the piece.

    Xu Bing, 1st Class, mixed media. Photograph by Andy Kitchen

    Andy’s prophecy is a moot point now that a single location can serve as both a museum and a department store; witness the fully functional Louis Vuitton boutique included in Takashi Murakami’s 2007 exhibition at MOCA. The alchemical element that makes such a thing possible, is fun; the same fun that encouraged customers at the Murakami show to pay $300 over the price of similar items at Vuitton in Beverly Hills. So, the point of Funko isn’t so much that one will have a good time there; it’s that one will have an even better time if more money gets spent. Plus, the more spectacular the offline retail environment, the more online exposure Funko gets through its customer’s social media accounts. Check out the Harry Potter kiosk that features an IG-ready table at which one can be photographed with cartoonish figures of the movie’s three main characters. Which is probably more fun than standing under a 340-ton boulder with a selfie stick at LACMA.

    Harry Potter sales kiosk at Funko. Photograph by Anthony Ausgang

    Funko, 6201 Hollywood Blvd Ste 100, Los Angeles, CA 90028, (213) 462-3600, https://www.funko.com/

  • WAYS OF NOT SEEING

    WAYS OF NOT SEEING

    If, as John Berger writes, “Oil painting… is a celebration of private property”, then Street Art is the equally joyous appreciation of public property. This difference is due to the nature of the work and their contrasting environments: Graffiti beats the streets while “oil painting” luxuriates in museums. So, other than both being categorized as Art, there’s not that much similarity between the two; in fact, the difference is so great that entirely separate skill sets are required to properly experience them.

    Interior, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is one of Holland’s greatest tourist destinations and at certain hours, as crowded as the nearby Centraal railway station. Here, tour groups dedicated to the Myth of Van Gogh mix it up with individuals seeking a private audience with the artist. Meanwhile, new arrivals aggregate around them like an out-of-control assembly line, each person anticipating their own virtual moment with Vincent in Arles. Everyone appears dumbfounded, like the devout reaching the ultimate destination of a pilgrimage, their rosaries exchanged for earbuds. Unfortunately, this “bogus religiosity” as Berger describes it, requires unfettered observation so the line of faithful at each painting moves at a geologic pace. But that’s OK, since to really be appreciated, Van Gogh’s subjects and techniques require a pensive approach.

    Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam,Netherlands

    Just across the Museumplein, Amsterdam’s MOCO museum recently hosted an unofficial show of work by the Street Artist Banksy. This contemporary art museum, “founded with the mission of attracting broader and younger audiences”, exhibits Pop Surrealism, Street Art, and works by a few “old masters” like Andy Warhol or his doppelganger, Elaine Sturtevant. MOCO is located in a 19th century mansion, so its galleries are small yet seem perfectly suited for hosting a crowd essentially the same size as the manageable coat check lines at the Van Gogh Museum. But even at those numbers, Banksy’s exhibition was denser and more uncomfortable than Van Gogh’s. People were colliding with each other constantly; plus, kids with backwards baseball hats and extra wide Sharpies aren’t going to apologize when someone’s crows-in-a-cornfield poster gets crunched. Worse than that, more than a few people waited to get up close and personal with a Banksy only to find out they were in the restroom line.

    Banksy, Laugh Now But One Day We’ll Be In Charge, Spray paint and stencil on board, MOCO, Amsterdam

    I call the cause of all this aesthetic anguish Attention Surfeit Disorder, and it occurs when an art viewer deems a simple work of art worthy of the same extended investigation as a complex one. For example, MOCO’s version of the famous Banksy chimpanzee piece “Laugh Now, But One Day We’ll Be In Charge”, had more people lined up to gawk at it than  Van Gogh’s sunflower painting. For a single stencil piece to garner that much attention is crazy; for a multiple of the same image, its certifiably insane. Banksy is a master of the static meme and what he scribes can be sussed out later; there’s no need for a lengthy on-the-spot evaluation.  Graffiti’s economy of means demands economy of attention, so people are either going to get the message or not. And if they don’t, then they should heed that famous line used by London bobbies, “Move along, nothing to see here.”

    Banksy, Sunflowers, Altered painting on canvas, MOCO, Amsterdam
  • CURATING THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

    CURATING THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

    On July 4th, CNN’s website featured photographs of drawings done by several ten-year-old migrant children who had been separated from their parents by US Customs and Border Protection. After their release from CBP, the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center, to which the children had been relocated, asked them to depict their time in CBP custody. The children then made accurate drawings of their incarceration, complete with figures sleeping on the floor of the cages in which they lived and CBP authorities wearing hats. The drawings were then given to the American Academy of Pediatrics which brought them to the attention of the Smithsonian Museum of American History. As “the museum has a commitment to documenting the history of the United States as it unfolds,” the Smithsonian began considering the acquisition of the drawings for its collection.

    Photo courtesy of CNN

    It’s ironic that the drawings were brought to the public’s attention on American Independence Day, a day that celebrates the liberation of a population oppressed by a foreign power. These children were brought by their parents to escape the unlivable conditions in their Central American countries; which would seem a desire for freedom on par with that of the original 13 English colonies in America. But instead of welcoming “the huddled masses yearning to breathe free” as is expressed on the Statue of Liberty, the CBP forcibly isolated the children who made these drawings, ensuring that in El Norte they would find not freedom, but another form of oppression. President Trump’s immigration policy favors skilled workers over families but makes little preparation what to do with the rejects after they get here. That can be viewed as either good or bad, but the fact remains that at ten years old, a child is essentially unemployable and, along with their most likely unskilled parents, has no chance of becoming a citizen.

    Photo courtesy of CNN

    Which compounds the irony of the drawings; these children of negligible worth, even in their confinement and statelessness somehow manage to represent the American “rags to riches” fable. After all, to many artists living in this country, having their work acquired by any museum, let alone the Smithsonian, is a sure sign of success and acceptance and thus an acknowledgement of their skill. But if the Trump Administration’s definition of  “skill” only applies to individuals considered valuable enough to pay taxes and be profitable for their employer, the artistic skills of these migrant children are worthless. Still, that isn’t surprising with an administration calling for complete termination of the National Endowment for the Arts.

    Photo by John Moore

    Unfortunately, the situation in which these children find themselves is yet another example of the how American society values art above artists. Although these children will most likely be sent back to their country of origin, for the foreseeable future their drawings will be treated better than most humans on the planet. That in itself is unfortunate; but what’s most ironic about the Smithsonian’s acquisition of these drawings is that they will forever be valued not for their beauty, but for their representation of a particularly despicable chapter of American history.

     

     

     

  • Shot By Both Sides

    Shot By Both Sides

    The primary icon of Low Brow Art is also unfortunately one of the most corrupting and dangerous icons of mainstream culture. It should by all rights and agreement be stuck on the business end of a spear and left out to rot in the streets for the amusement of the proles. It’s a jumped-up turd with a coat of glossy varnish, a PVC ’32 Ford with a cruddy Japanese engine. It’s the odor of a garbage collector’s fart coming from a Chanel perfume bottle, and it’s all wrong like black and white porn. It’s the first thing you think about when you go to bed and the last thing you think of when you wake up. It’s the grinning head of Mickey Mouse.

    There are those that rebel at the idea of dragging M.M. into the Low Brow fold, the field is far too shit pure and exclusive to accept some image that’s been branded on things like baby bibs and flavored lozenges. We are told that Lowbrow icons favor rusty, trashy environments, the kind of neighborhoods Mickey avoids these days as he limos from Burbank to Hollywood. They say that there is no missing link between Lowbrow and Disney because there is no link, period.

    Bill Barminski – Mickey Mouse Gas Mask, 2011

    Low Brow has been forced by cultural analysts to expand and accept genres such as No Brow, Post-Brow and, in the case of some aesthetic futurists, Brow Moderne. The sweating armpits and road grease blackened knuckles that used to be seen and smelt at opening receptions have left by the garage door, and the pile of empty beer cans that used to greet visitors is now a mound of half empty cans of Krylon surrounded by taggers wearing backward baseball hats. Post-Graf was not preceded by Graf any more than No Brow was defined relative to Low Brow. It just happened, get me? So even though the flaming skull of M.M. screaming in agony as it’s tortured for all eternity just kinda slipped in under the door, it’s still M.M. and his shit stinks in the gas station crapper as much as in the executive washroom upstairs. He’s Low Brow because he’s a ‘toon which gives him street cred, and High Brow because he’s Disney; and Disney makes you check your gun at the door. M.M. is a true Post-Modern tragic figure, co-opted, corrupted and shot by both sides.

    At his genesis, M.M. was a funny little drawing of a common mammal; his image was based on observations of the real, natural world. Ub Iwerks’ and Walt Disney’s initial use of this filtered distance between object and image can be considered a Modernist maneuver. Lacking only the total acceptance of the public to complete the Modernist cycle, Disney utilized the new medium of film to convince people that his character was as real as the one scurrying across the kitchen floor. It worked to the point that in due course, they began to don beanies crowned with bogus cartoon mouse ears in an attempt to falsify reality by pulling a species bend and become the mouse.

    Jeff Gillette, Mickey Slum Sphere, mixed media, photo courtesy La Luz de Jesus

    The universal acceptance of this icon becomes the catalyst for the next stage. In this “Pre-Post Modernism”, the hipster elite initiates a backlash of scorn and derision against the revered image and parody becomes a form of worship. Mickey’s legitimate children are forced to deal with his bastard relatives: Annette Funicello versus Mickey Rat in a Pop smackdown. At this time Post Modernism initiates a cultural free fall and all references, alliances and manifestos are rendered void. This aesthetic scorched earth policy levels the playing field, and claiming allegiance to any particular school of thought is useless.

    So, Mickey Mouse himself becomes the principle reference point for further graphic exploration of what the Buddhists would call “mouseness”. It is no longer necessary to observe the actual mouse; it is enough to have an available design that is based on one. This abstraction of an abstraction creates artistic white noise and cultural feedback; smells like Post Modernism’s fuck you finger is way up the ass of High Brow Classicist Style for now. And what could be more Low Brow than that?

    Artist unknown, 4 x 4 in. sticker