Wherein lies the fault: a discussion of the Ken Johnson
controversy
….assemblage was a critique, a subversion, of the formal
painted ground when Picasso put scraps of newspaper in his paintings. He did so
to playfully but seriously “jeu/jou” (a common Picasso fragment – translates to
game/day) to announce the arrival
of a new way/world in art, the avant-garde. Schwitters used assemblage/collage because little material
was available after World War I, and it stood for genesis – that art would be
made in any circumstances: poverty, post-war apacalypic landscapes. Order would be imposed upon tragedy, disaster.
Rauschenberg used collage/assemblage as a re-defined trope
to address materialism and its “thingness”, but also as a referential
Surrealist/Expressionist. He also
made it freshly urban, the constant churning of street discards as re-purposed,
undying objects, even as one purpose for them dies – isn’t Monogram paradoxical while it is poignant?
To return to K Johnson’s assertion that “blacks didn’t
invent assemblage”, I think they don’t claim to. So? Outsider folk black artists made assemblages all the
time, and Mexicans have a vernacular aesthetic called “rasquatche”, the re-use
of objects as decorative. While
theses groups and cultures did this, many whites planted old toilets with
flowers in their front yards, finding this amusing. So, this point is really a red herring; it’s purpose to
devalue the authenticity of expression of the artists and their work. Appropriation of mainstream culture’s
tropes is a concern – to ape the patriarchs is to assimilate, align with power,
a sell out, whether done in naïeveté
or intent, it can dilute the seminal artistic intentions of the once-cohesive
group.
For Black artists to use assemblage seems appropriate
appropriation. Pop art critiqued
itself by adding irony to the existing images. (Drowning Girl/Why is it that Today’s Homes…etc.) This even
seems brilliant on their part. Why shouldn’t black artists do this brilliantly
too.
Johnson seems to think that this direction caused black
artists to be marginalized by the mainstream
art market. Alas, it’s far simpler
than that. There was just too much
assemblage/appropriation going on, and it had already peaked with
Rauschenberg. So, the art made had
to rely on its politically correct solidarity (a questionable assigned quality,
in my book) and its haunting reminders of the crimes and atrocities of racism
perpetrated by citizens of “…the land of the free.” – not so many whites want
to step up to judgment when it
comes to facing the hypocrisy of
the American lifestyle and values.
The carpet is very crowded with candidates, all declaiming, “not me, I didn’t do it, I had no choice – the
most incriminating confession of all.
So no wonder the market didn’t just step up and pay
out. Maybe if the National Guard
had been ordered in, it might have.
But then art is not an emergency, a fact to keep in perspective, and
keep those of us who love and live
it humble.
So what ‘s the problem with Johnson? He seems incompletely informed, to have
made opinions that excluded perspectives and historical data that most critics
would know - items I’ve mentioned
above that I would have thought
anyone would have considered. So, Johnson
seems to expose covert limitations on aesthetic valuing of Black and women
artists, but, oh, look, they are his own as well.
But Johnson seems to be accusing the mainstream art world
justly even with his own amputated opinions – the shadows of racism are
long indeed.
Johnson’s issue with women’s art is similar. He suggests that some women make
“women’s art”. What is womens’
art? We all know it when we see
it. Sentimental, pretty,
decorative, ragingly hormonal, feminist, dikey, with being defined. with
self-objectification, identification with the other.. Well, there’s all that
trashy landscape art with dogs and cows from French neo-classicism, the really cute
baby Jesus paintings, the violent
sadism of Italian painting-especially those St. Sebastian paintings – I hate
those! sentimental imagery of clean peasants working the land, de Kooning’s
dominatrixies; homo-erotic wrestling matches and dying pretty boy sculptures;
textiles abstract tesserae and tile designs for architecture mostly all created
by men, …shall I quit now?
I would think that womens’ art is rejected because of its
poignancy. Women crochet
toilet-paper roll covers (and men fix cars) out of innate human needs to use
the hands, to create, to fashion.
It’s the fault of society that class determines the form of expression
that is available to the members of any given society.
The hierarchy is not comfortable with these reminders; it
guilts them and its evidence of their subjugation of classes.
That said, the work exhibited in “The Female Gaze”, though
some deals with images of women and children, or uses traditional craft
materials, does not look like a Midwest gift shop. A viewing perspective, intended by the curators, is what
kinds of art do women make? Is there women’s art? What do we mean by that? Why are they underrepresented? All worthwhile questions, besides reflecting on women’s
special biological role and its compelling paradigms and contributions to human
society – a reflection to made about male roles also.
David Levi Strauss in Art
in America says a “new
critical language” (March 2013) is needed. In the last 40 years, various perspectives for criticizing
art have emerged based on queer theory, women’s studies, psychoanalytic
reading, Marxist criticism, can
you think of a few more? He
doesn’t describe much about his brave new language, and I think it’s the least
he owes us, after his PC article about Ken Johnson, who I still think is just a
bumptious critic and probably shouldn’t be attended to in the first place, but
for the usefulness of parsing race and gender issues as they present themselves
afresh.
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