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Byline: Tulsa Kinney
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EDITOR’S LETTER
Dear Readers,
Suddenly, big is all around. Big, meaning huge spaces to create art in. Big, meaning large works to hang in gargantuan galleries. Big used to be considered vulgar but now it’s vogue. Big was garish, wasteful, decadent and dumb. Now it’s smart and assertive.
Lari Pittman—the artist I profile in this issue—has new paintings that are so big, he had to use the former Regen Projects gallery in West Hollywood for his temporary studio. Paul McCarthy is also featured in this issue, and he’s got to be the King of Big. His copious shows in New York this past summer occupied huge spaces all over Gotham.
On the surface, McCarthy and Pittman couldn’t be more different, but in some ways they are very much alike—both are guilty of excess with their art. Pittman crowds his canvases with images, textures, markings, color and a dizzying array of symbolism. McCarthy fills his sets with mounds of colorful messy 3D scenarios with the same sort of motifs: spurting penises, pooping anuses, blood and guts. McCarthy’s executions can come off cartoony; Pittman’s imagery can also. Both started out small, both are now big. And so is their art.
In the past, displaying this kind of work would have been problematic. Such massive art could only be seen in museums. Now Pittman can showcase his huge paintings in the cavernous new Regen Projects space on Santa Monica Boulevard. And McCarthy was able to exhibit his monstrous George W. Bush mechanical sculptures at the L&M gallery in Venice a few years back.
Los Angeles seems only too happy to accommodate this new big art. With the recent influx of East Coast galleries seeking large warehouse spaces in LA, our local galleries are looking toward bigger greener pastures as well. Staff writer Ezrha Jean Black maps it all out for us in her geographic survey of Los Angeles, telling us exactly who is moving into these larger spaces, and why. For New Yorkers, Los Angeles is still the Wild West in a lot of ways.
This new trend, where size trumps location, is something of a mystery to me. Some of these new LA galleries are practically in the hinterlands, relatively speaking. Galleries use to choose their location to be geographically convenient for their collectors. Is it possible there are helicopter landing pads on the roofs of these new loft spaces?
No matter. We all have cars in LA. Art matrons and patrons won’t stop their quest for good art. They will fly to fairs, faraway islands, new continents. And if it’s big, well that’s all the better. It all fits here in LA.
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Magic Carpet Ride
From the shaded parking lot, a stark beam of light shines through the loosely shut double doors of a nondescript white brick building. It is late morning, and the sun is already beginning to assert its presence as I approach the now-defunct Regen Projects gallery. It looks eerily empty; I wonder if I have the wrong time for our meeting.
I knock softly on the door and loudly whisper, “Lari?” Los Angeles painter Lari Pittman immediately responds and throws open the doors to expose all the sunlight-filled atrium—an oddity for a gallery, I’ve always thought.
I am meeting Pittman to view the new work for his upcoming November show with Regen Projects, which will be exhibited at their palatial new space on Santa Monica Boulevard a few miles east. Pittman is using the former West Hollywood gallery as his temporary studio—where he is able to keep three 30-foot paintings hanging on the walls, along with a raft of paintings on paper—so he can work on everything at the same time: a customary studio practice of his. Indeed, three very large canvases take up three very large walls. As I stand in awe of the formidable, unfinished paintings, Pittman announces that they are flying carpets.
Lari Pittman, Unfinished version of, “Flying Carpet With Magic Mirrors for a Distorted Nation,” 2013, photo by Rainer Hosch. Right away he shows me his one and only “plan” for the flying carpets—a torn piece of brown paper, not unlike the texture of a grocery bag, with some scribbles on it. He explains, “This is the original drawing for these. I don’t really do prep drawings.” He delivers this fact with such seriousness that it almost feels like a joke, but he’s not laughing.
The plan consists of three scraggly lines, each pointing to a caption. “These titles were established right from the beginning, before the painting started,” he claims, and points to the far right wall. “The painting over there is called Waning Moon over a Violent Nation.” He points to the second painting on the other side of the gallery, telling me the title is not fully resolved, but the third is, and he spins around to the far wall directly in front of us and blurts out, “A Flying Carpet for a Disturbed Nation.”
There is a brief silence as we stand before the flying carpets in all their enormity. The three paintings start with a black base and all have a repeated textile pattern, much like a tapestry rug. Huge hand mirrors grace one canvas (no reflections yet), another has two large telescopic lenses depicting airbrushed blurry distant landscapes, and the third one features what Pittman calls Petri dishes. All have a big thick, jagged white stripe of paint coming off the canvas. What remains empty or filled is yet to be determined. The hugeness of the paintings is daunting. It’s hard to believe Pittman never uses assistants. He employs a few to prepare his canvases, but that’s it. He paints every inch of canvas with his own hand—and he cleans his own brushes.
UNTOUCHED BY ASSISTANTS’ HANDS: Pittman’s paint supplies, photo by Rainer Hosch. As we walk back to the makeshift table that has apparently been set up for our interview, I notice he looks remarkably bright and healthy, especially since he just returned the night before from a trip to Mexico, and, I learn, a recent surgery. He’s a young-looking 61-year-old with smooth olive skin and dark eyes that pierce through stylish black-rimmed glasses. He is dressed casually in a crisp blue-and-white checkered shirt and slacks—not, I imagine, what he wears while painting. We sit down to a spread fit for a cocktail party: two kinds of cheeses, fresh purple grapes, mixed nuts and sparkling water. He even has a Starbucks cappuccino waiting for me, and apologizes that it might now be lukewarm. It seems standard practice for Pittman to do this for any visitor. I felt I was in the company of a person whose mother raised him well.
Look Inside Now
The complete oeuvre of Lari Pittman, with over four decades of work, includes a playful combination of imagery ranging from typography to pornography, decoration to abstraction, confection to perversion, and light to dark. I was interested in the dark side of Pittman. His work seems so celebratory, happy and pleasing-to-the-eye. Yet in the mix of mirth, there are guns and nooses, blood and feces, tombstones and coffins.
I can’t help but think the violent nature of his paintings harks back to a cataclysmic incident in his life. It’s common knowledge to anyone who knows Pittman: In 1985 he suffered a near-fatal gunshot wound from a burglar who entered the Echo Park home he shared with his life partner, artist Roy Dowell. Aside from the psychological trauma one might experience from such an inexplicable intrusion, there’s also the physical aspect of a gunshot wound. Pittman recently had his fourth related surgery. He explains, “I’ve had to have my intestines completely reconstructed again. When you’re shot in the abdomen, the bullet goes straight through. But your intestines are all coiled, in a complicated way, so one bullet can make 50 perforations.” He adds, exasperated, “This insane gun debate in America. I think people who haven’t experienced this—and thank God—don’t realize that actually most people who are shot have chronic problems for the rest of their life. I mean, they are lucky to be alive.”
Lari Pittman, From “National Anthem and Lamentation Duet with Birds (After Puccini),” 2013, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles © Lari Pittman It has been said Pittman’s paintings changed after that horrendous incident. Yet they are not autobiographical, he claims: “They’re personal, but not necessarily directly autobiographical,” he says. “If it’s really just exclusively expressionistic or autobiographical, I don’t see how you can enter work, and make it available to people. The viewer has to be able to have the capacity to superimpose their set of experiences over it too. I think that’s fair.”
I certainly didn’t want to argue with Pittman, but the flying carpets make me think about his tragedy. Whenever I see guns in his paintings, I can’t help but think they refer to his near-death experience. On a second viewing of the paintings, there are now images of bullet holes through the carpet, guns on another, and nooses again, all recurring motifs in his work.
Without being asked directly, Pittman did elaborate on the significance of the flying carpets. “I think it’s a strange combination to have what they’re depicting and then putting them on a carpet, much less a flying carpet. Perhaps it starts asking questions like who is going to get on this carpet?” he coyly suggests. “The reason they are so large is maybe either the entire population of a nation could get on the carpet ostensibly. Or some members could be self-selected and get on the carpet and some people banished. So it remains quite open. In other words I think the flying carpet is maybe an antidote to the disturbing nature of what is being depicted on the carpet.”
Pittman is not going to tell me exactly what the paintings might mean or represent, and maybe he’s not entirely sure at this early stage of the process. In his past work, socio-politically charged themes would often dominate a painting. I can tell he senses (correctly, I admit) I am looking for that again in these carpets. Pittman explains that his work has changed a bit. “If there’s a main shift in my work that’s detectable in the last many years it’s that it’s moved away from the moral, overtly socio-political to more the poetics and politics of philosophy, a philosophical rumination on life, self and culture. In other words, to keep work locked in a socio-cultural discussion—I can understand it. But I think it was wearing thin for me and I really wanted to pump it up. I still touch on politics, but more in a poetic way, in a more veiled way, and not so didactic.”
I ask him if that applies to all the sexual references in his paintings, i.e., colorful ejaculating penises, vibrant pink anuses, copulating couples. Some suggest that Pittman’s content can only be decoded by the gay population. He laughs at this supposition, “Let me just put it this way. I’m not straight, but yet I’m an expert on heterosexuality. Because I’ve studied it, I lived with it, I know everything about it, its quirks, its nuances… [Would] an interviewer ask a straight artist to contextualize their practice within their heterosexuality?”
This reporter stands guilty as charged. I can tell Pittman is not exactly thrilled with my question, but he also doesn’t want to change the subject. “On one hand I operate from complete social centrality and privilege,” he continues. “And on the other hand, I’m aware of differences. It’s amazing how it seems that men and women are really different from each other. I look at heterosexual relationships [with] their own protocols, their own proclivities, pathologies and so forth. But I guess I’ve made it my business to study human nature. All human nature. So when I’m asked about what constitutes my human nature, within the brackets of it being either a social subset or looking or behaving a certain way or smelling a certain way, or being perfumed in a certain way, it really is hard for me to answer. If anything, I recoil from answering. And part of it is that I refuse to defend myself in that way, or to provide that service of articulation for a hetero-normative world of what constitutes Lari’s homosexual aesthetic or point of view, if that is what they are asking.”
Lari Pittman, From “National Anthem and Lamentation Duet with Birds (After Puccini),” 2013, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles © Lari Pittman Pittman appears a little defensive at the moment, maybe even a little agitated, and who can blame him? But he seems like a really nice guy. He backs down a bit, pauses and comes back with a softer demeanor, “I know that people ask that. I think the way the work looks comes out of a certain complexity of the person making it—me. I think I have a complex gender identity and will always have that. Those are very powerful lenses through which language and visual language is expressed. The identity that frees you can also be the identity that confines you. This anxiety about one’s gender is something I hear about a lot from my female friends. I don’t hear it that much from straight males, talking about their straight maleness, causing anxieties about being out in the world. I would say I’m talking about human issues. And part of it is your identity.”
Tell Your Dreams To Me
That nice-guy part of Pittman—that congeniality, that sensitivity, that polite concern—can only come from a proper upbringing. Where’s the prerequisite dysfunctional family? Pittman comes from an unusual background for an artist—complete normality!
He’ll be the first to admit he’s lived a relatively privileged life. He isn’t apologizing, just making sure I know that he is aware of this fact. “I was encouraged my entire life. In that way, as a human being, I’ve been very lucky,” he says. “That’s sometimes maybe why I react so strongly to the way the world behaves—or the art world behaves, because I really grew up in a cohesive world, and so did Roy. Both of our mothers’ professions was being stay-at-home moms.”
Pittman was born in LA, but spent his early childhood in his mother’s native country, Colombia, with his American father, one brother and an adopted sister. The family moved back to the Los Angeles area when he was 11 and Pittman attended Catholic school. He went to UCLA for a few years, then transferred and eventually earned his masters degree at CalArts. At that time, the school was a hotbed for the Pictures generation of the ’70s. Some of Pittman’s peers—Troy Brauntuch, David Salle and Eric Fischl—would become famous.
There was very little painting going on then at CalArts, where most of the work was appropriated or conceptual, but painting was Pittman’s passion and he made what was considered a risky decision to make that his focus. “People assumed that it would be ridiculed,” Pittman recalls. “But that was absolutely not true. I think people were excited that someone wanted to take on painting at a point where it was critically degraded or not on the radar as something exciting or sexy.”
Did he know he was going to make it as an artist? “Those expectations weren’t as concrete as they are now,” he answers. “But I can see them in my students now. For me, it was really clear: This is what I want to do. I remain as ambitious and driven to make work that means something. That’s the one thing that hasn’t changed in me and that I had as a really young person. I didn’t project, in terms of making a living, per se. And don’t forget, LA in the ’70s was much cheaper to live in.”
Lari Pittman, From “Twelve Fayum From a Late Western Imperium (After Hermenegildo Bustos),” 2013,
Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles © Lari PittmanPittman found early success showing with Rosamund Felsen Gallery in the ’80s, and went to Regen Projects in the ’90s. He has remained with them to this day, and is represented in New York by the Gladstone Gallery, a sister (or mother!) gallery if you will, of Regen Projects. He is collected by major museums all over the world and has a solo show up somewhere every five minutes. (Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration.) What impresses me most about Pittman is his prolific output. He’s a hard-working productive artist, as his voluminous exhibition record proves.
On top of that, he is a professor at UCLA. He teaches both undergrad and grad students. Asked if students are more careerist than idealistic these days, Pittman takes a long pause before answering: “Let’s say it seems that it is harder for young artists to keep or maintain intact an identity-base as an artist unless there’s an external stimulus or approval. I do think that it’s important to have a professional identity, but that shouldn’t be equated with making money. Now it’s become synonymous. It pains me to see it, but it’s just a reality of advanced capitalism—a really ruthless system. You know, it’s hard to find identity without external approval.
“I find, especially for myself to this day, I love, absolutely love being an artist, I love being in my studio,” Pittman says enthusiastically, but then leans into me and says, “And I absolutely hate the art world.” We have a laugh at this together, and talk about how common this sentiment is among artists. “That’s just it. That’s why I’m so protective,” Pittman says. “Some people might think I’m snobby or a bit standoffish, and I am, to a certain degree. I really love being an artist, and this is something I decided I wanted to continue my entire life, and it would require some protection. And some sort of sense of self. Because the art world can be very cruel to artists, and artists can be very cruel to each other, and it isn’t just from the outside. The art world is a very nasty place.”
Lari Pittman, photo by Rainer Hosch. Fantasy Will Set You Free
I revisit Pittman’s studio one month later for a photo shoot. This time the door is left open and I have to holler to get him to come out. I like that, it seems to be a sign he’s now more comfortable with an Artillery invasion. I couldn’t wait to see how much progress he’s made with the flying carpet paintings.For only a month’s work, the development was phenomenal. There must have been elves hiding in the nooks and crannies of the gallery, waiting for Pittman’s signal to come out and start working again. It’s seems impossible that he could have accomplished so much alone in a month’s time.
From anyone else’s point of view, the paintings looked finished. But knowing Pittman’s previous work, it could be anyone’s guess. Of the three paintings, Pittman said one was halfway done, and the other two three-quarters complete.
So, of course there will be more. That pleased me somehow. I wanted more. Way more. This is Lari Pittman! I want a bucket-load of more! I want more patterns, more scratches, more spraypaint, more guns, more spurts, more assholes, more disturbed nations. Then leave it all behind.
Lari, will you please save a place for me on your flying carpet?
Pittman’s show opens at Regen Projects on Sat., Nov. 9, 2013
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Editor’s Note
Artillery was always skeptical about the selection of Jeffrey Deitch as director of MOCA. In 2010 we did a cover story musing on the idea of Deitch at the helm. Preposterous! was our first reaction. And we backed it up with interviews from Los Angeles and New York dealers, curators and artists, all expressing their misgivings. (see Volume 4, issue 4, March/April 2010) After Deitch took his position, rumors spread like wildfire about the disharmony between Chief Curator Paul Schimmel and Deitch, and we awaited the departure of either one of them; who would be the first to go was anyone’s guess. It turned out to be Schimmel.
Now Deitch has stepped down. It’s been referred to as a resignation, but one can only assume he was asked to leave. Deitch gave up a lot—and was paid a lot—to come out here and take over a museum, so I can’t imagine that he resigned voluntarily. Now, he most likely can’t wait to get the hell outta Dodge. What a fiasco.
From the moment I heard Deitch speak at the first MOCA press preview, it was obvious to me that the guy was out of his element. He always looked like a deer in the headlights behind that microphone. His diminutive stature and barely audible nasal voice made me feel sort of sorry for him. What was he thinking when he accepted the position at MOCA? What was he doing in LA?
On the few occasions that he allowed himself to be quoted, I liked what he had to say. He always talked about pushing the envelope and doing things that maybe not everybody would agree with. I do appreciate his gutsy far-out ideas for museum shows. I’m actually sorry I won’t get to see the disco show. I was sort of looking forward to that; it’s sort of a funny idea. It would have been better than Urs Fischer’s muddy mess over at MOCA’s Geffen now.
It appears disco was the last straw for John Baldessari, who had reached the limits of his tolerance with Deitch and resigned. And I can understand and appreciate that. I really can’t see Baldessari at a disco—what a scary thought! And of course Schimmel’s firing didn’t help much with the rest of the board members.
Some say Deitch’s crowning achievement at MOCA was the 2011 “Art in the Streets” show. It was controversial, but that’s what art should really be. That’s why hiring Deitch was intriguing, to say the least. We were all willing to give him a chance. Then Deitch tapped into Hollywood, and why wouldn’t he? LACMA Director Michael Govan schmoozes with celebrities all the time. But Deitch seemed to be only wining and dining the stars, and not letting them pick up the tab.
We tried to like Deitch at Artillery, where we just tell it like it is. Sure, our gossip columnist had a field day with Deitch. There was constant fodder for Mr. Mulholland’s On The Wag column with Deitch’s Hollywood love affair: Cary Grant’s homestead, James Franco’s James Dean reinvention, Kalup Linzy in the soaps, the human head center pieces for a MOCA benefit.
MOCA made a mistake. They traded substance for glitz. They let Schimmel go and now he’s onto greener pastures, and MOCA is left with nothing. They sold their soul. No director, no cutting-edge chief curator and a sans-artists board. But guess what MOCA still has? Eli Broad.
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The Big Cheese
I’m listening to Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass’ Classics, Volume 1 as I write this. Besides being famous for his ’60s music, Alpert has apparently been making art for almost as long. I ran into his formidable sculptures again recently, this time at the Robert Berman Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. I saw them for the first time at ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills a few years back.
Mostly I found them to be pleasing to the eye. They are biomorphic in form, substantial (10– to 18-feet tall), totem-like, harkening to a sloppier Henry Moore and Rodin-like in stature. Yes, those are heavyweights to be comparing Alpert to, but why not? I will get to that momentarily.
Herb Alpert, Warrior, 2011 When I first saw these sculptures, my husband and I were attending a chamber music concert held at ACE gallery. The concert is performed in one of the cavernous galleries, so another part of the experience is the art. On view at that particular time were the Alpert sculptures. The lights were out during the performance, so these massive totems surrounding us were even more eerie in the low light, not unlike the trees with faces in The Wizard of Oz. It was as if we were in a dark forest with music coming from the heavens… it truly was sublime. But somehow I couldn’t get it out of my mind that Herb Alpert created these sculptures.
The Wizard of Oz tree That fact alone has quite a bit of bearing on my opinion of these artworks. I know it’s unfair, but it’s like when you compliment someone on their dress and they respond, “Thank you, I got it at Target.” You’re not sure if that shows you have taste or not, and you sort of feel like a fool. But if they reply, “This old thing? I got it at Sak’s for half price,” then you feel proud that you indeed have taste. It’s all about the name, the brand. And it’s all about pretense.
What’s in a name? If Picasso had produced those sculptures, or even someone hip like Urs Fischer (whose current sculpture up outside the Geffen looks quite similar to Alpert’s), everyone would be falling over themselves.
Urs Fischer
Installation view of URS FISCHER,at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Photo by Brian Forrest.When a celebrity starts to indulge in another medium, people are suspicious; I’m no exception. My first thought is usually, Oh, being famous for (fill in the blank) isn’t enough? There are several celebrities that have shown talent in fields other than those they are already justly celebrated for. To name a few off the top of my head: Martin Mull, Bob Dylan, Carole Bayer Sager, Dennis Hopper. Some of those celebrities show talent in their secondary field. But there’s something in us ordinary folk that stops us from fully appreciating the work for what it is. Mostly because the art does fall short. In other words, it sucks. But Alpert’s seems to have merit.
Herb Alpert, (Left to right):
Chumash, 2012; Lineage, 2009; Freedom, 2011; all bronze sculpturesThis comes down to, what’s in a name. Can we appreciate work that is labeled anonymous, for instance? Yes, of course. But once we put that name on it, Bam! it becomes loaded. If it’s a no-name, we don’t pay so much attention to it. If it’s a famous artist, we pay closer attention, perhaps making critiques in our head: Is this better work than his/her earlier work? Does this work push boundaries? If it’s a famous name—but not famous for art—then we really put our critic’s hat on.
Herb Alpert, Genesis 3, 2011 Here’s my critique for Alpert’s sculptures currently up at the Robert Berman Gallery. I like those sculptures, and I’m not ashamed to say it. They’re a bit cheesy really, sort of like his music. They’re fun to look at, as his music is fun to listen to. They have a sense of humor, just like his music. They borrow from many other forms, as does his music. He is prolific with his artwork, as he was with his music. They are soft and fluid. They are abstract and representational. They twist and turn and go in and out. They are tall and bumpy and curvy, looking like they are made of clay, disguising their real medium, bronze. They are works of art with the human touch. That alone makes them very attractive, especially in our current climate of art-making with big industrial factory-made art. And I like that.
What’s in a name? It’s true, I can’t separate the fact that these sculptures are made by Herb Alpert, a man that was a huge presence in my household while growing up in the ’60s. I loved that music and I will never forget my father dancing around to it in an alcoholic haze, bringing love and mirth to our house, even though it was probably the most dysfunctional home around town. And the same man responsible for bringing back fond memories and joyous emotions as I listen to his music now, seems to be able to do that with his other talent, making sculptures. Is it cheesy? A little. But I love cheese.
See Herb Alpert: in•ter•course at Robert Berman Gallery, Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica, ends June 29, 2103; robertbermangallery.com; all Alpert images courtesy Robert Berman Gallery
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Editor’s Letter
Dear Readers,I didn’t get a chance in my last column to talk about art critic Dave Hickey’s announcement about being fed up with the art world and “quitting.” This is old news by now, but I feel compelled to continue the discussion. When I first read the U.K.Observer article, it felt celebratory. The interview ended with Hickey calling the art world “nasty and stupid,” and he doesn’t care if he’s invited to the parties anymore. Good for you, Dave!
That’s not to say I think all art sucks. There’s plenty of fresh and powerful work being made (see inside these pages), but have you noticed a lot of the work at the top of the spectrum does sort of suck? Many of the artists that have “made it,” seem to be just cashing in and going through the motions. But for some reason they are still on top.
The main thing I like about Hickey is his sassiness and spunk. Unlike a curator quoted in the same article, who wished to remain anonymous, Hickey is not afraid to speak his mind. You don’t have to agree with Hickey—although it’s pretty easy—point is, you gotta love his confidence in saying what he thinks, no matter how eloquent (or not) he chooses to be.
As for that cowardly curator, he (or she) wished to remain anonymous when voicing the opinion that maybe, just maybe, big-deal artists like Tracey Emin might be a little overrated. Ya think? Someone was afraid to say that?
I feel a segment of “REALLY?” coming on from SNL’s Weekend Update skit. Really? A curator? A curator that maybe had to include Emin’s work in a show, and really, underneath it all, that curator thought the work stunk? A curator—who the general public looks up to as an arbiter of taste—was afraid to assert themselves on matters of taste? Perhaps a sponsored exhibit funded by investors that have a lot of Emin work kept them silent? Perhaps? Really?
We all know what’s required to make it in the art world: Play the game. Kiss the right ass. But truly, that’s not where art comes from. In his interview, Hickey longed for the old days when artists were independent thinkers and creators and cared about life and communication. In the same article, a BBC arts editor put it this way: “We need artists to work outside the establishment and start looking at the world in a different way— to start challenging preconceptions instead of reinforcing them.”
To tell you the truth, that’s precisely why I started this magazine. I was an artist getting nowhere, trying to get somewhere. It wasn’t because my art stank… who can really determine such matters these days? It’s a free-for-all as far as I can tell. I knew my art was good. But I also knew that I was in a world of doublespeak—of false idols and price points—and I wanted to challenge that.
I’ll close with an anecdote. One big-time dealer (whose name shall remain anonymous) told me recently that he simply did not like the magazine. He put it plainly. “The reason I don’t like Artillery is because you tell the truth.” I think that was supposed to be a criticism, but I think I’ll take it as a compliment. Thank you Mr. Big Shot Dealer. What can I expect from your next show? Beauty? Truth? Really?
— Tulsa Kinney
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MIKE KELLEY: STRAIGHT OUTTA DETROIT
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! ART STAR STOPS MAKING ART!
That was going to be my headline after hearing the remark Mike Kelley made at the close of our interview.I was wrapping up our conversation, all ready to ask the final question, like Barbara Walters: “What’s next, Mike?” But before I could, Kelley preempted me: “I’ve been working nonstop for years and years, and now I’m not in the mood to make art. I’m trying to slow down.”
Considering he was just back from his London show with Gagosian Gallery, and that that very week his Destroy All Monsters noise/art band group show at Prism gallery in Los Angeles was being installed, maybe he was just plain worn out, and perhaps being a little melodramatic. He continued, “I have a lot of things I have to do, like a big survey show that’s coming up in 2012; it’s traveling. And some other shows that have been scheduled for a long time. I just did two shows this year, and big-scale shows. So I just want to stop for a couple of years.”
It got quiet toward the end of our interview, and if I didn’t know better, I might even say he seemed a bit melancholy that late morning. It’s true, Los Angeles-based artist Kelley has been making art for a long, long time. So to say he’s taking a break is something akin to Duchamp’s famous hiatus from making art to play professional chess.
But stop making art? I hate to break the news to him, but it’s doubtful: He’s in the Whitney Biennial (for the eighth time) this year with an ongoing project. (More on this later.) That doesn’t sound much like taking a break.
Known for his stuffed-animal sculptures and his wry text drawings, his performance art, his videos, his musical activities and his writing, Kelley is arguably one of the most influential living artists, and I’ve been wanting to feature him in Artillery for some time now.
Mike Kelley, Kandor 14, 2011, photo by Fredrik Nilsen, courtesy of Mike Kelley and Gagosian Gallery. Kelley finally agreed to an interview, but only reluctantly. Last issue, our gossip columnist got carried away, and Kelley was not happy with what he took to be gratuitous character assassination. But he honored his word and met with me anyway, and I couldn’t help but be impressed by his integrity.
Kelley invited me to meet him at his office, which is actually his former studio/home, located in Highland Park on the eastside of Los Angeles. It still has the feel of a home—it actually is a house—as you enter at the back through an alley. I opened the wooden screen door to a bright spotless kitchen with shiny green tiles. Assistants were buzzing from one room to another.
Kelley greeted me as he was hastily finishing a piece of toast, which may have served as his breakfast. Casually dressed, with short-cropped graying hair, his intense blue eyes seldom caught mine. He was gracious though, and asked me if I wanted a cup of tea as he led me to the front living room, where the curtains remained drawn. There were two modern L-shaped couches and a coffee table in the middle with one lone ashtray that looked like it hadn’t seen a cigarette in a long time. There was a large Lari Pittman on one wall, on another leaned a tall pink John McCracken, and the adjacent wall had an army-green James Hayward frosting painting hanging near the front door. He told me Hayward was an old friend to whom he would be forever indebted to for recommending him for his first teaching job in Minneapolis. This ultimately led to his professorial career of over 30 years in Southern California, where he has developed a following among students who, in turn, have perpetuated his influence in the contemporary art world.
DETROIT
Mike Kelley was raised Catholic and attended Catholic School— any Kelley aficionado knows this, as Catholicism is frequently addressed in his work. So I decided to start from the beginning. When I asked him if he ever believed in Heaven and Hell, he responded deliberately, in his deep, gravelly Detroit accent, “No. I never believed in anything.” He seemed sad when he said that, with a faraway look in his eyes. Even as a child, he said he never bought into the Catholic Church: “No. I never believed in it at all. I was stuck in it. It was pounded into me, but I wasn’t indoctrinated. I suffered because I felt that something was wrong with me. I thought I should believe, and I just couldn’t understand why I didn’t.”
Aha! There’s the Catholic guilt!
But even in the first grade, Kelley told me, he remembers thinking that religion “was a load of shit.” I envisioned a tiny kid saying “This is a load of shit!”
He grew up in a working class suburb of Detroit. His father was the head of maintenance in the local public school system, his mother a cook at the Ford Motor Company cafeteria. Kelley first knew he wanted to be an artist at age 13. He went directly from high school to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, then to CalArts. This trajectory suggested to me that he might have come from a supportive family that embraced his becoming an artist. He laughed for a long time, as if in slow motion, even a little maniacally. Then he stopped abruptly and corrected me. “No, my family did not support me in my interest in the arts. My parents were both really against it. My father basically disowned me.”
Kelley described his getaway plan back then. “Because otherwise I was going to go crazy. I was going to die. I actually had a nervous breakdown. I had no option, I had to leave my town. I would have been working in a local auto parts store for the rest of my life.” He paused, with those faraway eyes again, and added as an important afterthought: “I chose art, not to become successful, because you couldn’t make a living from being an artist at that time. It was a profession I chose specifically in order to be a failure.” This is a poignant statement, considering the nature of the art world today. Artists in the past truly were rebels and iconoclasts, not career-driven puppets.
In his early days, before Cal- Arts, Kelley delved into what was around him, incorporating his life into his art. “I was interested in hippie anarchist culture—in Detroit and Ann Arbor, that meant the White Panther Party. They put on concerts and poetry readings; they wrote manifestos about how bad capitalism was. I read John Sinclair’s writings, and I said to myself, these people are like me! I’m not crazy!” He explored the avant-garde and was deeply influenced by Dada. “The psychedelic underground was just an extension of the historical avant-garde. And I decided that I should be an artist—either that or a writer. I was particularly inspired by the writings of William Burroughs.
“When I was in high school, a group of students formed a recycling center. There was no organized recycling at that time. Working at that center, I discovered that there was a world of magazines about culture. I ripped articles out of these, and I basically taught myself about contemporary art. When I went to college, I was much more knowledgeable about it than the other students.” Smashing cans and breaking glass… and reading Dada! Mike Kelley learned about contemporary art in a dumpster, basically.
In junior high, Kelley switched from parochial to public school and acquired two art teachers. “One of my high school art teachers was a real macho guy. His paintings looked like Francis Bacon’s. The second art teacher was a closeted gay man; he had to be closeted, I don’t think an openly gay man would have been allowed to teach in the public school system at that time. He taught the craft classes,” which Kelley says he wasn’t into. But he took Kelley to exhibits and “This man was my replacement father. I won a statewide student arts award and had to go to a dinner ceremony in another city. This man went with me instead of my parents. I recall that everyone laughed when I introduced him as my teacher, because you were supposed to have brought your parents.”
It seemed to all come together right there, all the strands of his rambling and transgressive career gathered in the story of his Midwestern upbringing: the Catholic-school trauma, his teenage White Panther experience, and the tutelage of his latent- homosexual high school crafts teacher who took him to art exhibits. Roll this all into one ball, and you have the artist Mike Kelley!
CALARTS
Mike Kelley might not be a household name, like his contemporaries Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel and Jeff Koons. It would also be difficult to lump him in with that crowd aesthetically. For one thing, Kelley was doing performance art in the ’70s, which was way more subversive than the fine arts scene at that time. He performed with underground rock musicians. His work was unconventional, unmarketable and uncategorical. Kelley stayed in LA, when his above-mentioned peers went to New York to pursue conventional art careers.
Kelley had and continues to have a name around town—from mentor to comrade—and being from Los Angeles is definitely a factor in Kelley’s sensibility—along with Detroit, always Detroit.
A lot of Kelley’s work draws from personal history, and one as rich as his would seem to provide endless material. He shrugged his shoulders when I remarked upon this but was willing to see where I was going. I asked him if he was from a dysfunctional family.
“All nuclear families are dysfunctional,” he replied. “That’s my belief.” Then he paused. “My family wasn’t dysfunctional in the sense I was beaten or abused, but my mother was a complete control freak. She wanted to control everybody’s life, and it caused a lot of psychic damage. I’d say that my mother was a phallic mother, and my father was just in the background.”
Kelley was the baby of four children in a family of six and describes himself as “the troublemaker. In my family, art was considered to be what communists and homosexuals did.”
So your family didn’t understand you at all? “No, no. I was a Martian.” Kelley repeats this with a combination of nonchalance and conviction. “A Martian, a commie and a fag.”
I pointed out that that sounded pretty damn dysfunctional, maybe even abusive. He neither agreed nor disagreed.
So Kelley got the hell outta Dodge as soon as he could. He went straight to Ann Arbor “because that’s where all the freaks were. When I decided to go to graduate school, the only two schools I applied to were CalArts and the Art Institute of Chicago.”
Kelley decided on CalArts mainly because Alan Kaprow was on the faculty. “But when I got there, he was gone,” he said. “CalArts was really focused on New York. Students went to New York City as soon as they graduated; instead, I was driving into Los Angeles and checking it out and discovering a really interesting art scene. I met artists my age, especially coming out of Otis, people like Bruce Yonemoto and Jeffrey Vallance. I met Chris Burden, Alexis Smith and artists of that generation as well.”
The Los Angeles art scene was much younger then, and more intimate. “There were very, very few galleries and no contemporary art museum. But there were alternative spaces, and as soon as I graduated, I became involved with LACE. I was on the committees for many years programming shows and events.”
STUFFED ANIMALS
My first real encounter with Kelley’s work was at Rosamund Felsen gallery on La Brea back in the late ’80s. The piece was a tattered worn blanket with grimy stuffed animals placed in the corners. Above it were black-and-white snapshots of people smearing chocolate (one hoped), on the same blanket, using the stuffed animal as props.
I had never seen anything like it before and it made a huge impression on me. I assumed Kelley was thumbing his nose at the art world, but he rejected that theory. He told me it was the first series of work that made money for him. “I realized it was simply the subject matter. It wasn’t my intention that I hooked into this weird thing about hearth and home. People are so invested in their childhood.”
Kelley was a little perplexed by this back then, because that’s really not what the work was about. “I didn’t make that work for that reason. It surprised me. And that’s what led me to go on to do this work about life-repressed memory syndrome.”
A lot of Kelley’s work invokes psychotherapy, so I had to ask if he’s been in therapy. “I’ve been in therapy, off and on, most of my life. I also studied psychology in school and I read deeply on the subject. I’ve always been very interested in it.”
When I asked if he thought therapy was a scam, he answered without a beat, “Yes. But it’s a scam you need at the time.”
GAGOSIAN
Kelley’s work today sells for as much as a million dollars in auctions. I congratulated him on this apparent mark of success. “I don’t follow auctions, ” Kelley responded. “The galleries do that, I don’t want to know how much my work goes for.”
Granted, Kelley never sees any of that money if it changes hands in secondary market auctions, but the mere fact of the sale should boost the price of one’s current artwork, shouldn’t it? He responded dutifully, “It could, or could not. It might up the value of that particular period of my work. I have works that sell for tremendous amounts of money, and others that I can’t sell at all. I’m not necessarily going to capitalize on an inflated auction sale, that’s what I’m telling you.”
It seemed strange to me that, for such an abrasively uncommercial artist, success had found him. “Now that you’re with Larry Gagosian, you must feel like you’ve made it to the top,” I said.
“That’s a long story,” Kelley replied. “Mark Francis, who works at the Gagosian gallery in London, is a fan of my work. He invited me to mount a show there. This was when I was working on ‘Day Is Done’ [a feature film installation]. I had decided to leave Metro Pictures in New York, after showing there for over 20 years. I was locked into the gallery pecking order, and I realized I was never going to do better in New York if I didn’t switch galleries. At some point I said to Mark, ‘Day Is Done’ is a big show, on the scale of a museum show, it’s a waste to present it in London. I want to show it in the New York gallery. Surprisingly, they agreed to this. It was a real gamble. But luckily it worked out. The show was very successful and radically changed my reception in New York.”
Kelley showed with top LA galleries early on. He started with Mizuno Gallery, Rosamund Felsen, then Patrick Painter. Then Gagosian.
Larry Gagosian is known for his empire of 11 international galleries and a strict business approach to art, therefore it wasn’t surprising to hear Kelley say, “Gagosian Gallery, unlike other galleries I have shown with, is not very familial. I knew most of the artists at Metro Pictures personally. Gagosian is run in a much more businesslike way. Artists come and go.”
Mike Kelley in his outside studio in Highland Park, December 2011, photo by Tyler Hubby ONE MONTH LATER
When we went to shoot photos of Kelley, he seemed much more upbeat. He even brought along the striped shirt I suggested, similar to the one he wore in a youthful photograph included in Dirty, the Sonic Youth album he designed. That’s when he sprang his Detroit project on me, something he’s been working on for several years.
I reminded him that he said he was going to stop making art.He just mumbled something, then stared into the camera.
It didn’t seem the right time to talk about the project, so I arranged a phone interview. Two weeks later, I asked him, “What’s this Detroit project Mike?”
“I’ve been working on it for years. I wanted to work with a real structure, so I wanted to try to buy my childhood home,” he told me over the phone.
This is something you forgot to tell me? I scream to myself.
The Detroit project, it turns out, may be Kelley’s magnum opus. To explain it as best I can, Kelley returned to the Detroit suburb of his childhood and tried to buy the house where he grew up, in order to create a site-specific work. But the homeowner wasn’t interested, and after exploring other options, Kelley settled for replicating his home (after a fashion).
The structure will be built on the grounds of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. It will be a replica of his home but with a forbidden extension; a basement, two stories deep, each level mimicking the floor plan above, evoking dungeon labyrinths.
All these elements are still on the drawing board. What Kelley has completed so far is a façade of his house—a sort of detachable face, about the size of a mobile home, that can be placed on and off a truck. (The façade is not simply a flat wall, but a three dimensional unit that fits onto the main structure.) The piece is called Mobile Homestead, and two expeditions have already taken place, starting from MOCAD and ending at the Kelley home in Westland, which resulted in two documentary films which will debut at the Whitney Biennial this year.
This had all started as a project that Kelley wanted to do for personal reasons, not for public exhibition. But when Artangel, a London-based arts-funding organization, offered to sponsor the project, along with MOCAD, Kelley made some revisions and compromises and basically found himself doing public art, foregoing the original game plan.
The Detroit project is almost too fraught with psychology and dysfunction. The basements, the tunnels, the mazes—way too Freudian, even for me. But there it is.
Kelley continues to talk about this project as a public piece that was never meant to be public. Kelley left Detroit, but did he really leave it behind? He says the stuffed animals had nothing to do with childhood. (Really?) He says he needs to stop making art for a while, but now he’s working on a huge project that could be one of his most important pieces to date.
I think Kelley’s intended hiatus was just wishful thinking. His work is about personal history, his childhood, his hometown, psychology and dysfunction—things that could easily feel like an emotional burden. But as Kelley told me, being a conceptual artist is about ideas—and how does one shut those down?
The Stedelijk Museum is organizing “MIKE KELLEY: Themes and Variations from 35 Years,” scheduled to open at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in December 2012. After Amsterdam the show is expected to travel to: Centre Pompidou, Paris; MOCA, LA; and MoMA PS1, New York.
See Mike Kelley’s work in the Whitney Biennial 2012 opening March 1, 2012. www.whitney.org
Find Artillery: Killer Text on Art at your local bookstores or newsstands nationwide. You’ll find Artillery at Barnes & Noble bookstores too. Or Subscribe online.
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My Lunch with Zak Smith
This interview took place December, 2009, at the restaurant in Los Feliz at Fred 62. Zak ordered the spaghetti.
Find this article in our Jan/Feb 2010 issue; Artillery’s first Biennial Sex Issue…(time for another!) https://artillerymag.com/product/janfeb-2010/ARTILLERY: Do you believe in God?
ZAK SMITH: No. (Pauses, then smirks). Okay, you can’t scientifically disprove it, so maybe there’s a God. But if there is, he’s definitely a jerk. So it’s either I don’t believe in him, or if it turns out he’s real, I have a bone to pick.When did you lose your virginity?
Fourteen.Do you consider your involvement in porn an extension of your art?
Not at all. Sometimes I make pictures that are about the porn business, the way Cézanne made pictures about apples. But the apples weren’t his art. His art was painting. I’ve answered that question so much, that I’m convinced no one ever reads these interviews.Do you consider yourself lucky? Because a lot of men would envy your position.
Yeah, I’m lucky. I feel it’s important to point out that I’m lucky because I wouldn’t want people to think I’m one of those artists who thinks they’re successful because the art world rewards quality. Because it doesn’t. I make good work, but the fact that I happen to be successful is just per chance, because they’re unrelated things.What’s more important to you, sex or art?
Sex.
Zak Smith, detail drawing from Drawings Made Around The Time I Became A Porn Star (2008) But what if you were stranded on an island, and you could either have all the sex you wanted, but could never make art. Or you could make art all day, but never have sex?
Depends on the person on the island.What’s the ultimate compliment to you? Is it when someone is praising your art, your writing, or your fucking?
I think compliments are kinda cheap. If you do anything in public, you’re going to get compliments, and you’re going to get insults. A real compliment isn’t what is said, it’s who says it. So, if it’s someone whose art you really appreciate, and they like your art, then that’s a meaningful thing. If there’s someone you really want to have sex with, and they want to have sex with you, then that’s a compliment, I guess.Whose art do you like?
Historically? I like Bernini a lot. I like a lot of ’60s photographers — William Eggleston, Robert Frank. People working today? I like Philip Ross, Nick DiGenova. I don’t really like a lot of traditional mainline oil painting — like I think Velàzquez was good at oil painting and Vermeer was, but other than that, it’s kind of a useless medium, like colored mud.When did you become involved in the porn industry, and did you just do it for kicks? Were you a horny guy who just wanted to get laid?
2006. Uh, all of those are the same options, as far as I can tell, right? I mean, yeah. This director had seen the “Gravity’s Rainbow” drawings I did and said, ‘It’d mean a lot if I could use your art in my movie, but it’s a porno movie, blah, blah, blah.’ And I said, ‘Sure, you can use it, and it would mean a lot to me if I could have sex with all the girls in the movie.’I was describing you to a friend, as a modern-day Toulouse-Lautrec. Do you agree?
I guess if you wanted to draw a broad historical equivalent, sure.Is acting in porn just a side gig? A vocation? A hobby?
I get paid, so it’s not a hobby. It’s a very occasional job. I get to be choosy, because I have a whole other job.Do you work on your art every day?
Yes. If I’m awake, I’m working. Unless I’m doing this [eating]. -
All Her Children
It was two years ago when I first saw Susan Anderson’s photographs at an art fair in New York. They were images of little girls all dolled up, seemingly for one of those kiddie beauty pageants. I was struck by the pictures for several reasons: The photographs displayed composition, skillful technique, over-the-top glamour and saturated color; the little-girl beauty pageants are fascinating for the sheer spectacle; and the models had an aloofness that invited more lingering.
Back then, Anderson was in the midst of attending and documenting “High Glitz” beauty pageants, a category specifically for little girls who go all out with the sequins, big hair, makeup and flippers (fake veneers for teeth) — the works. She was planning a book and a gallery exhibition of the photos. Those were her goals then. Now, two years later and with four pageants under her belt, her book, High Glitz: The Extravagant World of Child Beauty Pageants, is coming out in October. She already had a solo show with Torch Gallery in Amsterdam last winter and will show with Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles this fall.
Curiously enough, I met Anderson on the flight back to LA after I’d first seen her work in New York. Suddenly she was everywhere; I frequently bumped into her at art functions in LA. Each time I would ask about her project. Each time she appeared to be making considerable progress. Each time I asked her if it was time for us to sit down for an interview. You could see that it was happening for her. The last time I saw her at an opening, she was passing out an art announcement from her show in Amsterdam. The cover shot was mesmerizing and caught everyone’s eye. It was time for that interview.
Anderson greets me while talking on her cell, rolling her eyes, signaling to me just a few more minutes. With her cropped, mussy brunette locks and comely bespectacled looks, Anderson has an air of professionalism rarely associated with artists. She’s tall and slender, poised and charming, and glides up the creaky wooden staircase in her Koreatown studio talking on the cell phone the entire time, with me following behind. Somehow she manages to make me feel comfortable while gracefully trying to end her phone conversation. This introduction to Anderson seemed to characterize her for me. I admired her many talents and her ability to juggle them all at the same time.
Her shared studio was neat and orderly, with lots of images pinned on the wall — not one of them crooked! Her latest project, the beauty pageant children, was represented in various forms: small test photos, large prints, layouts for the book, images of tiaras, white Mary Janes and trophies. Everything on the wall was pink and blue. I was able to feast my eyes on a work in progress, including Anderson on the phone — herself a work in progress. Right now, her life is one meeting after another; she’s featured in a lot of European publications and she sold some pieces to a museum in Amsterdam.
“The Dutch are just going crazy for it,” she said dismissively, waving her hands. She showed me a poster that just arrived: “Achtung Baby!” It announced her Dutch exhibit with her photograph, Danica, as the literal “poster child.”
Initially it was Anderson’s photographs, her images, that drew me into her work. But moments later, after settling my eyes on the portraits, I also knew I wanted to know more about the artist herself — the person who chose to go around and take these photos. The person who found this subject matter worth documenting.
Anderson was raised in Minneapolis and received her BFA from the The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She stayed in Chicago and went immediately into TV, mainly as a production designer on high-end commercials. She came to LA in 2001 and began a career in fashion photography. One can see the high technical standards and skill she acquired working in the industry. She takes her craft very seriously, and brings that expertise to her fine art photography.
But something Anderson always did on the side was document live performances and publicity shots for local bands. One gig she got, with the Los Angeles burlesque troupe Velvet Hammer, was at the Mayan theater downtown. She set up her camera and lights in a room where the performers could stop in and get their photos taken on their way to and from the stage. She got some terrific shots, and Anderson liked the “ready-to-go” portraits that came out of that experience. That method eventually led to her beauty pageant photos.
Steeped in the commercial world of superficiality and blonde ambition, Anderson tells the story of how one day while working with a beautiful model on a shoot, she mused, “Do I like doing this? Maybe I need to do a project that somehow lets me think about what I’m doing. Or think about images of women who are going out there who have to deal with this ideal of beauty, or whatever that is. This preconceived idea that we’re all aspiring to or being told we need to achieve.”
Then one evening, still in her introspective mode, she was watching a documentary on the history of beauty pageants and thought, Beauty pageants, that’s kind of an interesting subject. She’d been reading a lot of books about beauty, something that has always intrigued her.
“So, I went online and I Googled ‘beauty pageant’ and this title came up, it was one of the top hits. It was ‘Universal Royalty Beauty Pageants.’ I just clicked on it and I started reading this thing. It was all blinking and there were photographs of these little girls with makeup and I was like, Oh my God. So I started writing the director this e-mail, ‘Dear Annette, I’m a fashion/beauty photographer in Los Angeles,’” she told me, air-typing as she continued. “And, I’m thinking to myself, Wow, I won’t have to do any retouches because these girls would be so young and their skin would be perfect! So, I immediately got the visual for what the exhibition would be like. I thought, What if I went to this thing and lit these girls like I would light the best beauty photograph I could ever light and show that in an art exhibit. And I saw it immediately! It was like, ‘Bing!’”
Susan Anderson, Mary Ashton (2009) Here’s where Anderson’s aforementioned ready-made portraits come in. “I thought, what if I went to one place and I could get a bunch of people at once already in hair and makeup — it was a dream! And, just from purely technical standpoints, since I do a lot of retouching on fashion and beauty things
— I was doing so much skin retouching — I thought, I won’t even have to retouch the photographs!”
Anderson’s commercial art background seems to foster such pragmatic thinking. She continues, “So, on some level, it was economical. I could get a bunch of material at one full swoop, not even completely understanding what I was getting myself into.
“The director e-mailed back and said, ‘Sure! Why don’t you come to our state pageant in August?’ — which was in Austin, Texas. So, I was working on this job, making a bunch of money, and I had one of my assistants with me and I looked at her and said, ‘We’re going to Texas! I just bought us two tickets!’”
That was the first pageant she went to in 2005, and it was held at the Double Tree Inn. “I said I’m a fine art photographer, I’m a beauty and fashion photographer. I want to do an exhibition and a book. I told everyone that from the very beginning.” Her professional background benefits her on every level, it seems. Each model signed a photo release and everything was on the up and up. But there are always some skeptics lurking about: with a subject matter so loaded, especially after the TLC reality show Toddlers and Tiaras and the JonBenét tragedy highlighting every child beauty pageant. Anderson writes in an essay included in her book how she felt it necessary to explain her process. She wanted to make sure viewers knew these photos were not staged. That’s important to know, actually. “It’s a very different story if I go to the pageant, set up a studio and photograph the girls as they are at that moment, rather than if I were to bring them to a studio and make them look that way.”
Anderson knows exactly what she’s doing on so many levels. I wondered what it is about these photos, and why so many people are attracted to them. She explains, “This is sort of my theory about it. I’ve been a photographer for a long time, and I’m someone who looks at images all the time. I love photography, I love painting. I think we have this collective, sort of unconscious history of the world of art in our heads that we’re not aware of all the time. I think sometimes when I take the pictures, that later on I’m like, Oh, that reminds me of this. That’s the Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol, only she’s 4. There’s something that’s communicated, something that rings familiar, and I can’t tell what it is. And I think that’s how these pictures work.
“There’s some kind of tie to our visual history of celebrity, glamour, beauty, portraiture. There’s that in there too. I think there’s also that double take. Like people look, then see that’s she’s 4. There’s this shock-and-awe kinda thing. There’s something not quite right. Maybe it’s the teeth are too big, she looks older than she really is. There’s this whole illusion of an older person on this small body. Also, they’re just really beautiful. They’re dimensional, they’re colorful, they’re saturated, they’re sparkly. I think they’re attractive, but then there’s this push and pull thing that happens.”
But what about the stigma attached to child beauty pageants? Is it exploitive, and does Anderson contribute to that? Anderson includes in her book essays by nY Observer columnist Simon Doonan and The new York Times best-selling author Robert Greene, who preempt any questions headed in that direction. The two articles are excellent, Doonan’s being hilariously campy, and Greene’s on the serious side.
But I wanted to hear what Anderson had to say about the oppressive nature of the pageants. Without missing a beat, she dismissed the idea, explaining how she’s used to people looking like something they’re not. “I’m fascinated by the transformational quality of cosmetics, and the illusion involved with photography. You know, you look at a photograph of a movie star and you know how much work has been done to that picture. It’s not the way that person looks in real life.”
Anderson’s reply was convincing. After all, the pageants are voluntary events — at least for the stage mothers. Besides, she added reflectively, “It’s really not about children, what I’m doing. They happen to be the
andeRson PhoToGRaPhed by TyleR hubby
This page, clockwise from top-left: Kaylie, age 3, Austin, Texas (2005); Jacklyn, age 7, Las Vegas, Nevada (2006); susan anderson in her studio; Katy (profile), age 5, Las Vegas, Nevada (2006); Mary Ashton, age 9, Nashville, Tennessee (2008); all anderson images: © susan anderson Photography / Courtesy of Kopeikin Gallery
subject. The thing that fascinates me about the High Glitz aesthetic as long as I’ve been working on this project: I don’t really understand it. I don’t understand where it comes from. When I went to Nashville, it made the most sense to me.”
Anderson had never been to the South, and there everything began to crystallize for her. She told the story about the emcee, Mr. Tim Whitmer. “He’s like THE guy. He’s the Bert Parks of little-girl pageants. When I heard him say, ‘Welcome to Nash Vegas,’ all of a sudden, High Glitz just made sense to me. You think Dolly Parton, you think the big hair, those country-western costumes with all the rhinestones encrusted. Maybe it is really about this showtime, the ruffled skirts. Everything gets out of control to a point. It’s very American. Everything is bigger, sparklier, more is better.”
Back to the subject of beauty, though. I keep thinking of the saying, “Truth is beauty,” but these pageants seem exactly the opposite, like it’s all fake. I put this to Anderson, and she replies, “Well, it is all fake, but there’s something REAL about it. There are some girls that I’ve photographed that are beautiful.” But youth can be beauty, I point out, especially with regard to her photos. “Well, that’s what our society tells us. We’re completely youth-obsessed,” she admits.
But Anderson also notes that as much makeup and glitter as these little girls have on, their personalities still come through. She became close to the subject in a lot ways. She told me she can remember the moment she took the photographs of each of her subjects. “I knew when I had a great shot. I thought, Oh my God, this is amazing. There’s something happening right now, I don’t know what this is … but, CLICK!”
I notice two books on her desk, The Symptom of Beauty, by Francette Pacteau, and History of Beauty, by Umberto Eco and Alastair McEwen, and ask about them. “Beauty is something that changes over time.
It’s always evolving. It’s not a constant. And really young girls who know at a very young age that they want to be up on stage and performing, I think that’s fascinating.
“I’m fascinated by people who want to be up in front of people on stage and perform. I know how to light and make women beautiful. Women are a subject for me, and something I’m always interested in photographing. In fact, I’m sure the next project I do will also be about beauty and women in some way.”
But what makes this art and not fashion photography or photos in a costume catalog? Anderson’s answer is evasive and savvy at the same time. “Well, that’s not for me to answer: I leave that to you people who write about art,” she laughs heartily. “I just started the project, and people responded to it.”
Did Susan Anderson just define the age-old question, “What is Art?”
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Data and Surrealism
Tracking down George Legrady for an interview can be tricky. A man who juggles art and science for a living has a lot of demands on his time. Hence, I found myself at a panel discussion on Database Aesthetics at the convention center in Los Angeles early one Saturday morning. The room was packed and I had to sit on the floor. Legrady was one of the panelists whose area of expertise is Data Visualization. I’m not going to pretend I know half of what the panel was talking about, so here’s the “Data Technology for Dummies” version.
George Legrady in Costa Rica I first met Legrady when I was a grad student at USC in 1986. He taught photography and was one of those professors who would hang out with the grad students and come to our openings and drink beers. Legrady was never into conventional photography; he was more interested in his soundboards and computers and signals from the music he played. Since he was so brainy, he came off like an absent-minded professor type, only hip, handsome and European-chic (he’s originally from Budapest, then lived in Montreal). At that time, Legrady was easily riding the crest of digital art and technology, and modestly points out he was “one of the early artists who worked with multilinear digital narrative.” Who am I to argue?
Before USC, Legrady taught at UC San Diego, where he met Harold Cohen, a first-generation computer artist in the early ’70s. Cohen developed AARON, a digital program that painted abstract paintings much like his own. Legrady feels indebted to him: “I met him at a party, and he gave me a key to his studio, and I was in there for four years and learned everything.” This is when Legrady discovered computer programming, never to return from cyberspace.
Kinetic Flow Legrady describes his art as Data Visualization and claims he has been collecting information forever, even with his photography in college when he was working with conceptual issues. “It’s always been data. I might look at how business handles data. I might look at how NASA handles data. How people in shops handle data,” Legrady explains. “I begin with real data. I’m always playing between what is real and what are ways to represent something.” Could Legrady be a Dataist?
A perfect example of how Legrady works with data is an interactive installation currently on view at Rem Koolhaas’ Public Library in Seattle. Legrady installed it in 2005 and it will be in operation until 2014. Quite simply, every time someone checks out a book, it analyzes the data. Legrady explains, “What I try to show is what the community is thinking. It’s more interesting to look at what we don’t see.” He also points out proudly, “The librarians love it.” They can look up at the screens and see which books are the most popular at any given moment. An information exchange extravaganza!
Legrady is currently a professor in the department of Media Arts & Technology (MAT) at UC Santa Barbara. MAT is very unique in the UC system as it is a true arts-engineering interdisciplinary graduate/PhD program. The faculty consists of computer scientists, electrical engineers and electronic composers. The media arts area includes Legrady (data visualization), Marcos Novak (architect), Marko Peljhan (activist media arts) and Lisa Jevbratt (data visualization and interspecies communication). In addition to his teaching career, Legrady is constantly flying all over the world to serve on panels and lectures, not to mention working on his several ongoing art projects.
My burning question to Legrady is why are artists who are so interested in science not scientists? Legrady indulges me: “There’s a lot of interest today — it’s kind of trendy — to have artists and science work together, but the scientists say it’s not science, and the artists say it’s not art. So, what is it? It’s kind of like a meeting point where artists are looking at science as a source of inspiration for material. Scientists are explorers of the universe; artists are people who reflect on how these scientific things have an impact. So, it’s an interesting conversation, and everyone hopes that it will lead to a new kind of hybrid, like an interdisciplinary artist scientist, or artist engineer. It’s really challenging, because you need to have the knowledge base of both, and that’s a lot of knowledge.”
I’m still skeptical. I can see why artists might be attracted to science, but I don’t see why scientists would care much for having artists involved in their activities. Are artists just using science to validate their projects? “I’m not so sure,” Legrady says. He observes that a lot of his colleagues are activists. “They are interested in environment, they are interested in biology, how research in animals takes place, so there’s a kind of political activism to it.”
Legrady goes on to squelch my cynicism. “Let’s say you want to discover how many bubbles you have in your bathtub or bubble bath — there’s a scientific method that’s been developed. That’s what scientists do. And when they look at art, they can’t figure out how to evaluate it, so it’s outside of their world. Like beauty, how do you evaluate what is beautiful? So, artists work with beauty, or not.
“Scientists want to discover the phenomena of life, of the world — that’s what scientists do. Engineers make things work. Artists are in this open zone. We can explore the aesthetics and the poetics of something. They can use stuff to create political activism, political change.”
Or figure out how many bubbles are in the bubble bath.George Legrady is represented by Edward Cella Art + Architecture in Los Angeles. He is currently featured at the Plug-In alternative gallery in Basel, Switzerland, until the end of May and will have a solo retrospective at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany, next year.
This article was originally published in May, 2009.
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Extremity in the First Degree
Waters once said, “To understand bad taste one must have very good taste.” And after seeing his place in San Francisco, I would have to say he practices what he preaches. Antique furniture, tapestries and decorative drapery adorn the small but elegant 1920s apartment in Nob Hill. Bookshelves line the walls. Very tasteful art (okay, some not so tasteful) hangs on the walls and fills every nook and cranny. He has to stash the bag of rocks by Paul Lee when the maid comes, so she won’t mistake it for rubble. And he has to hide his Richard Baker pill art when his ex-junkie friends visit.
But I’m not here to check out Waters’ pad, nor his art collection — I’m here to talk about his art, and his two solo shows with Gagosian in Los Angeles and Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, both happening in April. “Rear Projection” is the title and on the announcement card is a pair of buttocks with a film projected on them. Get it? Waters explained that it’s a term for the fake moving scenes behind actors on film sets, mainly when the characters are driving. He’s always loved them, and of course, there’s the pun. That John!
Waters in his San Francisco apartment. Photo by Tyler Hubby. Known first as an underground filmmaker in the ’70s, Waters has been making and showing art since the ’90s. And now, he’s with the most famous and powerful art dealer in the world — Larry Gagosian. This will be his first show with Gagosian, and he’s been with Marianne Boesky for three years. Waters says, “People were incredibly suspicious when I had my first art show.” A lot of people, mainly artists, are dubious of celebrities who suddenly come out and say: Oh, you didn’t know I paint too? Waters wanted to make sure I knew that his status in the film world did not pave the road for easy access into the art world and that he keeps both worlds very separate.
It was Colin de Land, from American Fine Art gallery, who gave Waters his first show back in 1992. De Land approached Waters and asked him if he made art. It just so happened the filmmaker had an entire body of artwork at the time. He had been photographing film scenes from movies, then pasting them together out of context.
“I could never really have gone as far as I have without Colin de Land,” Waters says with heartfelt gratitude. “But because it was at American Fine Art, probably THE most respected cutting-edge gallery — and most of the time there was nothing for sale — it kind of protected me as much as it could from that. So I owe Colin a great, great part of my entrée into the art world.”
A black vinyl binder sits prominently on the dinner table that takes up the entire dining room. We sit around it. He opens it up and it’s full of reproductions of his recent work. The images are in clear plastic folders that he flips through excitedly. He skips from image to image, then topic to topic and we find ourselves talking about the Mansons or the religious cult the Process — also the title of one of his pieces. Waters has been to their chapel in New Orleans and speaks wildly about them, as if possessed: “The Process [is a cult] others have said the Mansons copied. They worship Christ and the Devil. If there ever was a cult I would have joined, it would have been the Process.” I watch Waters with amazement, how he truly gets excited about such things, and then when I’m just about to sign on the dotted line, he pauses, gets serious, and shyly admits the real reason he’s into them: “They wore cloaks.”
His famous Cheshire cat grin appeared. I was waiting for it. It’s that mystery about Waters that keeps most of his fans going. Is he for real? Is it all a joke? One thing’s for sure: When you’re having a solo show with Larry Gagosian, it’s no joke.
Both shows will be crammed with photograph collages and sculptures too. We stop at an image of a giant night cream jar — a product Waters uses that costs $200. Waters calculated that it would cost more than $800,000 if the cream were to fill the sculpture. (He didn’t make it clear if that was the price of the piece.) All the sculptures are influenced by Pop art, and are, frankly, hilarious. There’s an oversized roach motel and a huge poppers jar, “I’m a fan of poppers, I always have been,” Waters quips.
So where does Waters find the time to do all this? “It’s not like Ghost, where I’m at a pottery wheel,” he pointed out. Waters has a staff working for him. It’s no more than a handful of people, but it’s a staff nonetheless. And he is rigid with his schedules. He has organized his time to set aside days for each of his many media. He’s currently working on a book, so one day might be his writing day. He has “art days” when he goes into the studio and works all day on just art. “Rear Projection” has been in the works for two years. He starts every day the same, Monday through Friday. Gets up at 6 a.m., reads his newspapers, drinks tea. He works on his projects from 8 a.m. until noon. Then from noon until the end of the day, he deals with the business end of things.
One of his art days might consist of a day in the studio with his remote, stopping and starting the beginning of a blood-curdling scream of a blonde in a ’50s Oldsmobile convertible, with her stilettos pressed against the brakes, heading for a crash. One such piece, titled Look Out!, consists of movie scenes where the damsel in distress is the focus. By zeroing in on that horrific moment, Waters manages to make the viewer laugh, to make that scene suddenly camp (even though a lot of the films he picks border on camp) — and something he apparently has down. He uses a 35mm film camera to shoot the movie scene from video, then has it developed; he prefers low-tech. Waters notes his process is “about editing, and film knowledge, and hopefully, it’s about humor. Which is what all my work is about, no matter what field. It is based on some kind of insider knowledge of the ridiculousness of being in show business.”
Most of the work can be traced to Hollywood, but some is about art. I wonder if Waters taps into the ridiculousness of that business as well? “I find the extremes of the art world
hilarious. You can’t open it up to regular people — THEY HATE IT!” he screams. Waters then excitedly shows me a piece in which the text reads, “Contemporary Art Hates You.” “It does!” he cries. “They can’t learn to SEE! That piece of art on the wall DOES hate them, and I find that delightful. It’s a business that only a few people can see the magic trick. And if you can really do it, like Mike Kelley can — an old rag on the floor, and turn that into a piece in a museum — THAT IS WHAT ART IS! About being a magician. So the people are mad before they look at it. Because it makes them feel stupid. And they are!”
Waters is always one step ahead of you. He’s unpredictable, and he makes an art of it. What might be considered shocking, Waters will find tame, borderline boring. If it’s something mundane, he’ll be thrilled and deem it outrageous. He refuses to be pigeonholed. So is he just a contrarian? Not always, which I guess means yes.
“I’m not against all the things that most people get mad about [with] art. And I always say to artists that hate rich people, ‘Well, that’s stupid. Who’s going to buy your work?’ It’s not like Obama is giving out art stamps! So, I’m always amazed at that. How can you hate rich people?” And that goes for the artists, too. Waters thinks an artist can never be too rich. “Good for them. I’m happy for them. I never understand resentment about that. Good for you! You thought this up. Who would complain about that?”
We keep flipping through his art folder. There seems to be a theme, certain eras in the movies, then there’s a giant roasted ham. It’s big, it’s sumptuous, it’s Easter Sunday. But to Waters that image stands for the movie actor who is a ham, a visual pun for bad acting. “It’s a very negative review, and I celebrate that a lot,” he joyfully explained.
He also celebrates Catholicism with his piece Catholic Sin, where there’s a diagram of three milk bottles depicting the difference between mortal and venial sins. Milk bottles measuring the souls of Catholics — a diagram straight from one of his Catechism books. Next is a picture of a mildly handsome ’80s guy’s face juxtaposed against a picture of a large erect penis. Turns out it’s the face of infamous wife-killer Scott Peterson and a generic porno cock. It’s called, True Crime. Waters riffs on “the unspoken thing, that people think serial killers are hot.”
Waters’ early films can be considered subversive, but the director begs to differ. “If any movie I’ve ever done was subversive, it would be Hairspray, because regular families watched it, not realizing it encouraged their children to date black people.” He says this in all seriousness and continues, “All contemporary art is supposed to be subversive. It’s supposed to wreck what came before. It’s supposed to damage and change what people think of as fine art. So I guess if you can think of something new, that is subversive, and that is what everybody in the contemporary art world is trying to do. That’s their job.”
Hollywood Smile Train is one piece of Waters’ that I would call subversive, or at the very least, galling. Waters explained the inspiration behind applying cleft palates to movie stars’ faces. It came from the numerous billboards and magazine ads of these unfortunate children. “I’m always suspicious of charities that have HUGE advertising budgets. I’m not so sure [how much] that child with the cleft palate got. As much as they advertise, I have a right to make fun of it.” Waters admits that it is probably the most tasteless piece in the show. But maybe more than poor taste, or subversive, it’s just nervy.
Waters loves nerve. “I love when the art says, ‘It’s finished.’ And you got nerve, to show it to the dealer, then show it to world, and then show it to the collectors. And I love to see groups of collectors, because they’ll never admit that it’s too far for them. That’s what starts the next movement. I love to see that thin line, when… Oh, come on … OH COME ON! … is what I end up liking the best. It’s extreme. It’s supposed to be extreme. I respect extremity, even if I don’t agree with it.”
Extremity in the First Degree — I think Waters has been guilty of that from the very beginning. And he practices it to this day. Even though he doesn’t think shock value “works anymore and is old-fashioned,” I still think he’s capable of coming up with some pretty provocative material. His thoughts on art are anything but old-school, and they might still be called subversive, even today. But I sort of get what he means. He’s so polite and well-mannered that it just seems seditious. The homespun needlepoint throw pillow on his couch — it adds a touch of comfort. And to know his mother made it for him, well, that’s just touching. BUT IT’S A PICTURE OF A POLICE CAR IN FLAMES! That John!
See John Waters: “Rear Projection” at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, April 11 – May 23, 2009 and at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York City, April 3 – May 2, 2009.
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No Beauty, No Truth
Mike Kelley’s first feature length movie takes place mainly at a high school. Cheery bright classrooms are full of 30-year-old sloppy students. Auditoriums stage assemblies with campy musicals and pageants. Gleaming lockers line the polished hallways. It’s a regular Sadie Hawkins Day, where white trash meets Goth.
The opening credits roll against the backdrop of a bleached out sunset over the ocean, with hues of moldy greens and dried-blood reds. An over-the-top symphonic soundtrack accompanies this endless sequence of soap opera sunsets until finally the film’s title Day is Done appears. Next, a harsh juxtaposition of hundreds of slimy earthworms wriggling and slithering to raw psychedelic mind-blowing noise. Then an average-looking high school with your not-so-average student faculty. So far so good, looks and feels like Mike Kelley. Keep it up.
A trio of ballerinas with white painted faces and black leotards dance through the empty hallways. A train whistle blasts from the intercom announcing a change of pace. Vampires and creepy bad-skinned adults make up the school staff who go about their busy day xeroxing and talking on phones and making no eye contact. And no one is aware that everyone is severely fucked up.
This is probably the first 10 minutes of the film. The audience has been laughing the whole time. I had a grin glued on my face. Day is Done is practically a feel-good movie. It’s easy to identify Kelley’s influences in this film, yet his own vision as writer and director comes through loud and clear. His casting, costumes, music and nonsensical plots comprise his signature sensibility. His characters embody every hippie, yippie, punk rocker and performance artist he’s ever encountered, who in turn project Kelley’s own mischief, horror, bad taste, sexploitation, perversion, religion and ugliness. Is it just a coincidence the film’s subtitle is “Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions #2-#32”? No, of course it’s not a coincidence, neither are his film references. Kelley’s having a ball with Day is Done; it’s practically a self-parody, and incidentally a kick-ass soundtrack he and Scott Benzel collaborate on.
Mouvement Portfolio #1 (Picking a Mary), 2005 Everyone agrees that Mike Kelley is a major American artist whose influence has had an impact on younger artists today. His films can’t boast the same claim, however. That’s not to say his films or videos suck. But I have to say, his filmmaking doesn’t measure up to his art making. His art stands alone as original, whereas his films have whiffs of Waters, Lynch, Meyer, Warhol, Craven and others. Kelley’s art borrows thematic elements, but his films borrow stylistically.
Day is Done practically rips off Waters. For instance, the way he uses children in the film. Pure unabashed exploitation. Waters was famous for this, as of course was W. C. Fields. Other scenes are right out of Pink Flamingos and Kelley is actually able to pull it off (which must make Waters green with envy nowadays). Like Waters, Kelley draws on real experiences. Day is Done’s premise is taken literally from a high school yearbook — particularly the quotes and captions that go with the school photos. You know, the ones you or I never had next to our picture: “Second place Prom Queen,” “Member of the Speech Club,” “Captain of the volleyball team.” I would guess Kelley never did either. Like Waters, Kelley doesn’t have to go far for his inspiration. He finds it in his own backyard.
They say truth is stranger than fiction. What about when it’s exaggerated and exploited? So is it even truth then? I wondered about that, and about what sets Kelley’s Day is Done apart from John Waters. I thought about how void of beauty nearly all of Kelley’s work are. He’s the artist responsible for turning “warm and fuzzy” into germ-infested bombs. Then I thought about that Keats line, “Beauty is truth.” It seems weird that I would think of truth and beauty when there was absolutely neither present in Day is Done. Both are conspicuous by their absence. It would seem more fitting if I thought about filth and lies.
Maybe Kelley doesn’t see beauty in truth. Some things are ugly and it could be that truth is one of them. War is ugly and certainly true. But it’s not truth. So therefore it’s not beauty. Kelley’s work is deep-rooted, and probably stems from the truth, but he never finds beauty in it the way, say, Larry Clark does. Kelley’s preoccupation with high school and the deeply troubled period of adolescence might represent a genuinely negative experience in high school, similar to Clark’s own obsession with adolescence. But Kelley adds a layer of irony, with his faux fascination and adoration of these “normal” people from the high school yearbook, and all their extracurricular activities. So maybe it’s not truth after all. Maybe it’s even envy. These are the jocks, the squares, the goody-two shoes, who may have fascinated, but most likely repelled the likes of Kelley and other outsiders. To him, normal people were the freaks, like Marilyn in The Munsters. And admittedly, it’s hard to imagine Mike Kelley as a high school student.
But don’t worry. There’s really no reason to ponder, pontificate, deconstruct or intellectually wank off to Kelley’s Day is Done. You can just sit and laugh. The film certainly has merit and I think everyone should go see it, especially if you like comedies. But don’t expect a plot, don’t expect much sense, and don’t expect beauty.
Photos by Fredrik Nilsen; courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery
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Catherine Opie
California is known as the land of fruits and nuts. And it’s true, we’ve got wacky environmentalists, kooky lefty liberals and fruity homosexuals. And artist Catherine Opie actually fits all three categories, sans the loaded adjectives. Nothing wacky about Cathy, and nothing kooky about her politics, and certainly nothing fruity about her sexuality. But why does California attract such a rambunctious group of people? I’m hoping Ms. Opie can give me some answers.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Opie, who was just back from Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she was the only Los Angeles artist selected to be in the SITE Biennial. There she showed her new series of children’s portraits. And portraiture is what she’s famous for. But I was more interested to talk about her survey show at the Orange County Museum of Art, where Opie’s work is more about California.
Catherine Opie, Untitled #1 from “Freeway” series, 1994 When I arrived at her house in the historic West Adams district of central Los Angeles, I experienced a slight sense of deja vu. I had just seen her OCMA show “In and Around Home,” and many of the photographs in the exhibit were taken, well, at her home, which she shares with her partner and their two children and many pets. Her dwelling was very comfortable and welcoming. A short wooden picket fence opened into a front yard filled with big shade trees and children’s toys, complete with an anti-Bush banner hanging on the cool breezy porch. Constant activity was going on when I was greeted by the artist and a very friendly Doberman: a housekeeper was running the vacuum in the living room and in the kitchen workers were fixing the plumbing. Opie was very gracious, offering me something to drink, but then we quickly got down to business, as she had to take the plumber to the local hardware store for a part.
One thing is for sure, she’s very proud of her show in Orange County, which brings together many elements of her work she’s been addressing for almost 20 years now, and two new series of photographs never exhibited before here in So. Cal. When I mistakenly referred to it as a retrospective, she reminded me, “I’m still young!” At 45, her baby-face features and boyish thick mop of brunette hair (not a single grey!), reveal an artist very comfortable with herself and her art. She clarified for me, “It’s a very specific show in regards to my ideas around community and landscape as well as Southern California. A lot of people always think of me around the portraits, and never really go beyond that even though that’s only a quarter of my work. But it always goes back to that, that I made this body of work in the early ’90s.” She goes on to explain how the portrait series actually were “a little bit off what I normally make.” And that’s what makes the Orange County show distinctive, the exclusion of her portraits, which were an extension of the theme community, but more specifically, her own milieu and particularly during the AIDS crisis in the homosexual world.
Catherine Opie, Miggi & Ilene, Los Angeles, California, 1995 As Opie was talking about all this, it occurred to me that I had not ever looked beyond the surface of her photos in that way. I never really considered her work as political. For example, her famous freeway photos are gorgeous to look at with their careful composition, wonderful light and abstract quality. But they’re also about destruction, and ultimately, political. And sure, I knew her portraits were political in the subculture kind of way; even dysfunctional families can be considered a political topic. But her politics go beyond that. Opie is concerned about the bigger picture. And living in California fostered a lot of that thinking.
In that sense, Opie’s show at OCMA brings the photographer full circle. Although she’s not a native, (she moved out from Ohio at age 13) she grew up in Orange County. And “In and Around Home” documents her life and neighborhood in central Los Angeles. But the show starts in Valencia, with her MFA show at CalArts, where her first concerns with the raping of landscape were documented. Tenderly shooing her Doby away for the umpteenth time, she mused, “What disturbs me more is the use of landscape in California. When I moved from Ohio in the early ’70s, we grew up surrounded by acres of cornfields. And I got to grow up surrounded by beautiful landscape. Orange County was still orange groves. When we moved to California, we moved to this burgeoning Master Plan community called Poway Rancho Bernardo. So I watched from my backyard all of this development happen. And it used to be vineyards and rocks that I climbed on, and sage and chaparral, and I’m really interested in nature. I really like nature as a person. I mean, we have chickens!”
Catherine Opie, Abandoned TV It so happens, “Master Plan” became the title of her thesis show. Most artists would be hesitant to include their college work in a mid-career survey, but OCMA curator Elizabeth Armstrong insisted on including “Master Plan,” when Opie mildly suggested it and dusted off the negatives.
“Master Plan,” is a body of work that chronicles a tract-housing project under construction in Valencia where Opie was attending school from 1986-88. The work is very conceptual and some of the photographs are not her strongest work when viewed individually. But as an installation, it holds its own, and is not even dated in the least. Her message and what Opie is trying to communicate still rings true today. “For me it was going beyond the image, and really talking more about people’s choices in terms how they create community and also the white flight from the urban environment. I came from the suburbs. I was a suburban country club kid. Why do these environments exist? Why do people have rules and regulations within these environments? What do they serve? And really trying to explore that.”
Most of the photos in “Master Plan” are rather banal and flat. For instance the photograph of the Troidal family, who were interviewed and became part of the project, reads like a straight studio portrait, nothing particularly special. The family’s kitschy décor became still life photographs. At first glance, it appears Opie might be mocking the people who go for that style of living, surrounding themselves with bad taste so bad, even John Waters would not find it terribly interesting. When I suggested this, she set me straight immediately. “I was interested in not just [taking pictures of] it, but why people made those choices.” I did however get Opie to agree that living in a gated community would be a cookie-cutter hell of offensive blandness. “Yeah, there’s a little bit of imaging it that way, like, wow, how tacky and horrible these are and I’m glad I don’t choose to live in that kind of environment.” But ultimately she is more concerned about the drastic alterations to the landscape that such a mainstream lifestyle requires. She elaborates, “Part of the problem is the fact that the resources that it takes to maintain these developments is completely unprecedented in relationship to what California can do in providing water and energy. So what bothers me most about these communities is that they’re not approached from some kind of sustainability. That’s what bothers me the most, is watching this major acreage go, but every single house in Palmdale at this point, the technology has, that they can include solar, that goes into the grid. So you don’t have Stage 3 Alerts anymore! So these housing developments are only doing it to profit from it. But it has nothing about giving back to California as a state, or the notion of nature.”
Catherine Opie, Troidal Family, 1986-88 Fortunately for Opie, she has an ocean breeze coming through her Craftsman-style home, because I don’t know if she could handle the guilt if she had to use air-conditioning, (LA was experiencing a heat wave at the time.) It was refreshing to hear an artist talk about topics like environment, community and politics. Artists are typically known for their self-indulgence, but Opie couldn’t be further from this stereotype. And her art works beautifully with her politics. Take for instance her Surfer photographs. A whole room is dedicated to that series at OCMA, and you can practically feel the ocean mist and smell the sea salt when surrounded by the large scale works. This series doesn’t seem to fit with the others in the exhibit, but after hearing Opie’s manifesto, its inclusion is necessary. Opie is about California, and we can’t just skip the beaches and that community.
So is California to blame for spawning liberal environ-mentalists? This beautiful terrain replete with mountains, deserts, forests and beaches — that’s what California is, and when residents see the stripping and destruction of this wondrous land, they get upset. Next thing you know, you’re a concerned citizen. What happened to our clean air? Our beaches we used to be able to swim in?
You wonder how so many people can simply not care. You’d have to maybe live in a . . . gated community? Or maybe sheltered in your safe ritzy millionaire home? Another series of photographs called “Houses” are included in the OCMA show, which are of Beverly Hills mansion facades. Why are they in the exhibit, and why did Opie bother to take the photos? Are both of these communities about comfort and apathy? Opie’s work is not didactic and it doesn’t make value judgments either. And that ambiguity is what makes all her work very accessible.
Catherine Opie, Untitled #27 from “Freeway” series, 1994 “In and Around Home” was first shown at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut. But when it traveled to OCMA, both Opie and co-curator Elizabeth Armstrong agreed to expand the exhibition. In part because the space was much larger, hence the decision to include other works that would further expand on that particular theme, which is clearly California, hence the surfer photos, the mini-malls and the freeway ramps. The exhibition is divided into the different series displayed in their own spaces, for the most part. So when working your way through the show, a certain sense of where Opie’s coming from really comes to light.
The only body of work that seemed out of place with the theme was “1999,” where Opie set out on a cross-country road trip to create a series of photographs that would “represent the idea of Americana, in relationship to people’s fear of Y2K.” But in hindsight, Opie added, “Now that 9/11 happened, Y2K looks very foolish, in terms of fear. . . The fear that gets whipped-up within our culture is just mind-boggling to me.” Although the photographs are some of the strongest work in the show, they’re not California, and perhaps they relate when Opie leaves California. Opie does have that natural talent when looking through the camera lens. Her photos harken to the greats such as Walker Evans and Ansel Adams, and perhaps those two come to mind with her appreciation for nature and environment.
The “1999” photographs come before the last room, which is “In and Around Home.” And now we’re back home. Opie’s nearly twenty years of work does give a glimpse into the artist’s life and work, if one can ever separate the two. And don’t forget, that’s not all of Opie’s work. If you add the ’90s portraits and her most recent children’s portraits, then perhaps we’d get the whole picture. Her portraits may be what everyone thinks of when they think of Opie, and they may be the showier work, but they’re not her story. And the arc is what you get at OCMA. But one story Opie told me about growing up in Ohio actually might be the most revealing. “We spent most of the time swimming in the polluted lake,” she laughs. “When I grew up, the lake was on fire. They’ve cleaned up Lake Erie quite a bit, but it was highly problematic when I was a kid.” Then Opie mocked a little girl’s voice talking to her mommy. “Mom, why are all the fish dead?” She then lowered her voice, “Because they died of old age.” Perhaps Opie bought her mother’s euphemistic explanation as a kid, but she’s not buying it now.
“In and Around Home” at OCMA ends Sept. 3, 2006. “American Cities” at Gladstone Gallery in New York runs from Sept. 9 — Oct. 4, 2006
Dear Readers,
