A History of Public Sculpture

Tucked away from the main drive, this gnome garden is protected from real estate agents and letters to the editor of the local paper in prestigious Rye, New York. Dominant culture does not support the garden gnome. The appearance of garden gnomes is illegal and carefully monitored in England’s annual Chelsea Flower Show, and Eva Londos reports that in her curated show “The Garden as Popular Art “ at the Regional Museum of Jonkoping in Sweden, 1998, gnomes were censored, “considered to disgrace the museum's reputation of being an art institution of first class! “. *

However the garden gnome was brought to England in 1846 by Charles Isham, a spiritualist whose family lived in the estate above for over 400 years. Charles Isham was one of the earliest and loudest supporters of the spiritualist movement in England, publicly defending psychics in the press. Wrote four-time prime minister William Gladstone, also somewhat of a spiritualist, upon his visit to Isham’s estate , ”Sir C.I. touched on Spiritualism with me, and Mr Dasent on his favourite belief in Fairies. Most curious are the little low benches and stumps placed under his trees [...] said to be for their accommodation.”**

Spiritualism was a strange confluence of ideas, whose adherents were pious towards both science and religion and at a time when the comparative study of religion, as armchair anthropology, was all the rage. Science was not so far from religion at this time, and the question of how God could enter the dead matter of the world quite real. The rappings of the dead and garden gnomes fit together in this larger picture of a new spiritual era. Anthropologists were driven to define "animism," in order to distinguish the contemporary object from the fetish object of the primitive world.*** The garden gnome, it might be said, was one of industrialism’s figurative cultural defenses against the fetish object - a bone or a piece of wood - of more primitive cultures.

The first garden gnomes were made in Germany in the mid-18th century. Production in Germany stopped during World War II, however. Joseph Goebbels advised Hitler that gnomes as used in popular culture could too easily refer to him. During the Cold War, the American version was one of happy workers surrounding “the most beautiful one of all,” and in protection of her from evil.

This June, a 53 year old man was caught stealing a gnome and is now suspected of stealing the 170 gnomes in his French garden. A little over two weeks ago, a woman in Gloucester England had her stolen garden gnome mysteriously returned to her, along with photographs of his travels through twelve different countries. This has long been a popular prank now encouraged further by Travelocity commercials. In short, the traveling gnome is a cultural expression of our own time where sculpture's conditions of publicity are in its mobility.

By Catherine Spaeth

*Eva Londos, “Kitsch is Dead - Long Live Garden Gnomes,” Home Cultures, Nov. 2006, V. 3#3, pp. 293-306.
** Gladstone Diary, 7/4/79, as cited in Ruth Claton Windscheffel, “Politics, Religion and Text: W. E. Gladstone and Spritualism,” Journal of Victorian Culture, 11.1 (2006) pp. 1-29
***Tomoko Masuzawa, “Troubles with Materiality: The Ghost of Fetishism in the Nineteenth Century,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp. 242-267

Image credits: “Wishes to remain anonymous,” Rye, NY, photo moi; Lamport Hall and Gardens, Northampton, England, 1560; Album für Teppichgärtnerei und Gruppenbepflanzung 2nd ed., Erfurt: L. Möller, [1910]; martinklasch.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html; “mysteriously returned”; Chris Burden, “What my Dad Gave Me,” 2008, 65’ tall, Rockefeller Plaza, photo moi; Takashi Murakami: Oval Buddha, 2007, Aluminum and platinum leaf, 568 x 319 x 310 cm, 590 Sculpture garden, photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/2447353393/.

Catherine Spaeth

Art in a Handbag: Business as Usual or a New World Order?

Chanel's "Mobile Art" pavilion is designed with the quilted CHANEL "2.55" handbag in mind, and it lands in Central Park this fall. Arts patronage is no longer a matter of a full spread announcing the sponsorship of a blockbuster show, but has become the design of the space of exhibition itself as a branding and marketing tool - in this case, plopped down like a handbag.

While the issue of branding has been in the art world for some time, in this year the pitch is remarkably high. Since Rothko, Klein and Warhol there has been an awareness of the artist's work as either susceptible to or embracing of the logic of the brand. But only today does there seem to be a widespread acceptance of it as the condition of art, if not subjectivity at large. Wrote Ben Davis of the "superartist": "appreciation of the work tends to be an appreciation of being part of a collective, as opposed to an individual, esthetic experience, just as the works themselves tend away from personal statements and towards blank social referents -- death, change, media, atmosphere."* There is also Dan Levenson, whose brand "Little Switzerland" presents the work of a single artist as the fictional gallery stable. At this same time, the "personal brand" is currently a very real market in the identity business.

And galleries as well are considering what they do in terms of branding, so that artistic practices, rather than settling into their proper names over time and from within a diverse critical discourse- as Minimalism did, for example - might in the near future (if it has not already happened) be decided upon through a gallery's branding strategy.

As with the Chanel pod above, branded space comes into full play as well. The advice of a gallery consultant is to always send the same size of invitation so that there is a branded space not unlike the Fed Ex space Walead Beshty describes. One might also say that Deitch's consistent practice of enlisting street artists to do full gallery installations is a curious form of branding, let alone that of the pseudonyms the artists themselves - "Swoon," or "Os Gemeos" - are likely to use.

Even further, we might think of the artist's collective as participating fully in the branding exercise, as though taking up residency there for lack of an historical avant-garde. A visit to Critical Art Ensemble's website adequately reveals this.**

How can we speak of the brand with reference to art? Is this a major shift in contemporary art and culture at large? Might it have very real consequences for art and society both? Or is it just business as usual, merely showing itself for what it has always been?

By Catherine Spaeth

Image Credit: Zaha Hadid, Chanel Mobile Art pavilion; Sylvie Fleury, Cristal Custom Commando, both from the New York Times.
* Eric Gelber led me to this article.
**And it was an exchange with Jonathan T.D. Neil that led me here.

Catherine Spaeth

Flags of Revolt and Defiance: Polly Apfelbaum

Flags are to be seen clearly from the distance of the moon, but Polly Apfelbaum’s Flags of Revolt and Defiance (2006) are sharply cut away from their traditional field. A folio of vivid silkscreens on paper, blossom templates are taken to flags of resistance ranging from the Bourbons to the Black Panthers. These templates lend themselves to the logo - typically identified more with a corporate brand than with the explicitly political communication of a flag. In collaboration with Tomas Vu-Daniel and his assistants at the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, Apfelbaum’s exacting precision in this medium (a precision that required two years of effort) heightens the intensity of color. Their cut of line is completely different than the bleed of color Apfelbaum is most known for, but the hold upon the viewer is no less saturating.

That these flags are intended to be hung vertically on the wall also shifts them from their horizontal register, further emphasizing the graphic field of the logo. Tacked to the wall at the top two corners and lined in rows, their presentation mimics that of a logo design exploration, as in the c. 2000 ExxonMobil example below. In viewing Flags of Revolt and Defiance, however, there is no acceptance or rejection on the basis of a desired unifying concept.

I have always associated Apfelbaum’s work with a powerful phenomenological insistence upon the materialism of direct experience, and this insistence occurs most forcefully in the horizontal field. According to the official code, a flag must never touch the ground. That a flag should have both avoidance of and claim upon the ground as what constitutes it places Flags of Revolt and Defiance in an important dialogue with what Apfelbaum refers to as her “fallen paintings.” Standing at the edges of a piece like Blossom (2001), currently on exhibit at Locks Gallery in Philadelphia , your own body defines the impermanence in the actual fragility of velvet petals laid upon the floor, and is at the same time held by the absorption of their color stains. The immediacy of “one shot painting” has been taken over and fleshed out at our feet in an array that summons the discretion of touch.

In the early ‘80s Apfelbaum was in Spain, away from the New York art scene at a time when cynicism had crept into painterly practice. While Douglas Crimp wrote “The End of Painting,” Apfelbaum was learning from Arte Povera and Supports/Surfaces that the conventions of painting and its exhibition remained quite full. More recently she began to think explicitly about horizontality and verticality as different registers in dialogue with each other.

What space does the logo occupy? There have always been the occasional artists to use a personal logo in the place of signature, such as Leonardo’s flying eyeball, or Whistler’s butterfly. And since Andy Warhol, numerous artists have appropriated corporate logos into their work. In 1968, Richard Artschwager, like Apfelbaum occupying a space somewhere between Minimalism and Pop, began to distribute his blips across a variety of architectural surfaces. But these were of a time that emphasized local incident as much as the more abstract mobility of a logo across a variety of surfaces. For Arstchwager, there was also the psychic effect of horizontal and vertical format - formats owing the force of their address to the difference between landscape and portraiture. When Apfelbaum flips her flags from the horizontal to the vertical register, she is also thinking of this psychic address, and at a time when the personal logo is all the rage.

For a while now I have been thinking about the increasing mobility of art. People first began talking about this when the international art star appeared, moving from site to site to install a project. The distinction between artist and curator increasingly blurred in this context. As the market for contemporary art accelerated, the walls between the museum and the market became permeable in the speed and fluidity of movement. Further, since Murakami’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton in 2003 an artwork has the mobility of a logo across a variety of surfaces. This is apparent in The Gap t-shirt campaign, and we can see it now in Google’s artist theme.

Google’s artist’s themes are a new feature for the personalized home page that, from a list of artist’s names, provides an artist's work as the banner backdrop to the Google search bar. The work of art will change over the course of the day - it is a fragment without title, known only by the proper name of the artist. And the artist’s names will range from Jeff Koons to Lance Armstrong, a bizarre blurring that can only come from the notion of art as simultaneously popular and distinctively elite - a marketer’s dream.

I can think of no artist other than Polly Apfelbaum who in Flags of Defiance and Revolt has critically inhabited the structure and history of the logo as an enterprise. At the same time, few have so critically occupied the horizontal field, exploiting the difference of its register from the vertical as a dialogue with the different aspects of each and their corresponding histories. In considering how firmly these registers can stand apart in her work, I asked Apfelbaum if she thought that while her floor pieces should not appear on Google’s theme palette, her Flags of Revolt and Defiance might have a different relation to mobility and make absolute sense there. The artist agreed.

It used to be that the autonomy of painting in the vertical register was challenged by the threat of becoming wallpaper. In our time, this threat is as likely to be seen as an invitation without challenge. In responding to the visual culture of the logo and its mobility, Flags of Revolt and Defiance positions art’s relation to visual culture in critical dialogue, rather than choosing between flight or embrace.

Image credits:Polly Apfelbaum, Portfolio Title: Flags of Revolt and Defiance, 2006, Color silkscreen, Paper Size: 30 x 19 inches each panel, Carrier: Coventry Rag, smooth, bright white, Edition Size: 27, Portfolio of 31, Courtesy of Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies; Exxon/Mobil logo presentation, c. 2000, private collection; Bubbles, 2001, synthetic velvet and fabric dye, 12 ft in diameter, Courtesy Locks Gallery, Philadelphia; Richard Artschwager, blips, 1976, Photo by Matthew, Septimus, Courtesy P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center; Pollly Apfelbaum, Flags of Revoltand Defiance - Yippies; Polly Apfelbaum, Flags of Revolt and Defiance - Kurdistan Worker's party; AT&T logo exploration, private collection.

By Catherine Spaeth

Catherine Spaeth

Sotheby's (red) and The Flag Art Foundation

Last Wednesday we visited the Sotheby's (red) auction preview at Gagosian, the day before the Valentine’s Day sale, and the Flag Art Foundation, a new collector-driven exhibition space in Chelsea Towers. (The above photo of Damien Hirst is my shy Paparazzi attempt to participate in the buzz of the day.)

I see these two exhibitions as being on different sides of the same coin with regard to the shifting ground of philanthropy and the arts. For the (red) campaign, philanthropy is being re-channelled from directed responsibility to desire for a sexy product. (Red) celebrates and encourages conspicuous consumption - the visibility of the purchase - as a model of responsible citizenry. This is no less true of the new collector-driven arts foundations, who are less attached to supporting existing institutions as a form of civic responsibility and more actively interested in the visible mobility of the works in their collections.

Collector-driven nonprofit arts organizations are bypassing a curatorial system and its ethical codes by creating their own. This ambition is with the knowledge that the increased visibility they can provide for their own collection increases its value. What characterizes these nonprofits differently from the museum and other nonprofit arts organizations is the speed and fluidity with which art crosses the boundaries between institution and marketplace. For example, the Hudson Valley Center of Contemporary Art is open to and encourages market demand. Work has been removed from the floor in the midst of an exhibition in order to appear in a major Chelsea gallery, and work on sale in galleries only weeks before has appeared at HVCCA. At the entry to the Zwirner and Wirth sale from their collection a Takashi Murakami figure triumphantly standing on a Louis Vuitton trunk expressed cheeky ambition in celebration of its own commercial visual effect.

And so it is with some curiosity that I watch the opening of the Flag Art Foundation, also a not-for-profit exhibition space, but in the very-much-for-profit Chelsea gallery district. The distinction between the kind of exhibition space that a museum or contemporary art center provides as opposed to an art gallery seems to be increasingly vanishing.

What are the similarities between Sotheby’s (red) and the Flag? It's an extreme comparison to make, so bear with me. First, I am not a financial whiz, but from the business angle: Dell is related to both - Dell has recently signed on to the (red) campaign and Glenn Fuhrman manages Dell’s financing. But this is not so important or interesting to me as the kind of art we are talking about, and the manner in which it is exhibited. Here the similarity is quite literal, as there were nearly identical pieces in both exhibitions: a Damien Hirst pill cabinet (this brought the highest sum in the Sotheby’s sale); medicine cabinets by Rachel Whiteread; and Marc Quinn’s sculptures of Kate Moss in extreme yoga poses.

Further, the packaging of the exhibitions are very similar. As (red), there was already a theme for the Sotheby’s sale - all that was needed was a curator to inhabit the preselected theme and make it work. This was the high-profile and crowd-pleasing Damien Hirst. Likewise, the Flag came up with a title for the exhibition that was appropriate to the collection, and then sought the curator to suit that theme. The title is “Attention to Detail,” placing a high premium on visual interest, and the curator is the artist Chuck Close, also a crowd-pleaser. And on their site, even though the next exhibition appears, there is as of yet no curator.

What are the issues here? Scholarly curatorial practice is not held to be relevant in the exhibition of contemporary art, and curators must cater to the private collector’s vision. Not too long ago independent curators appeared to be the new art stars, perhaps even eclipsing the role of the artist. But collector driven enterprises are avoiding them and, in the case of the Flag, putting in their place an artist whose sensational work courts the public. All of this is changing the conditions of visibility for art, and Roberta Smith of the New York Times greets the collector-driven enterprise with enthusiasm as “like making art, as an act of individual imagination spurred by the desire to be different. The goal should be to do something that no one else is doing, not the thing that everyone has already done.”*

When Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, thanks Eli Broad for the Jeff Koons bunny and claims this sculpture as the Mona Lisa of our time, no one is really being particularly creative. Collector-driven enterprises will cause certain kinds of work to rise to the surface and not others. And so it matters a great deal that the first exhibition at the Flag is devoted to hyper-real artifice and visual interest. In the gallery of the Flag, we spent the longest time standing before Thomas Demand’s Lawn, (1998). There is considerable visual interest in this photograph of a patch of grass from the perfect lawn - the absorption available to the viewer is like that of an abstract all-over painting. An added twist is that this patch of grass is completely artificial, as Demand constructs a paper tableau from an original photograph, distancing photography from being the one-click index of the real world to being the site of labor intensive artifice. In many works at the Flag, such technical replication of things in the world was its own ostentation, and imitative deceit constitutes the success of the work.

Artifice is easily understood as an achievement of art, as is a high level of visual interest. We should be reminded of the famous debate between Donald Judd and Michael Fried, in which Fried responds to Judd’s comment that “a work of art needs only be interesting” with the retort that a work of art must compel conviction. Without being burdened by what Fried meant by it, I think we can take this rather literally. The word conviction can mean two things: the personal conviction that might compel one to break with conventions or even the law (personal conviction is something that we hold dear in our notion of democracy); and as the consequence of legal judgment by state or nation. These are two very opposed meanings, but from their different sides they both stand in relation to convention or law. Fried stands behind judgment, and the canon-building enterprise that judgment has some stake in. There is a quality of thought that matters to him in the development of a criteria of judgment, and I point to this now art historical encounter as still relevant to our time.

Francis Colpitt has explained that when we say of a work that it is interesting, typically we are withholding judgment - that it is interesting or not is a matter of one’s own personal interest. With regard to the Flag, we should also keep in mind that interest is also a financial term pertinent to the increase in value culled from the increased visibility of these works. Colpitt has also found that Donald Judd was thinking of the writings of philosopher Ralph Barton Perry, who wrote that: “That which is an object of interest is eo ipso invested with value. Any object, whatever it be, acquires value when any interest, whatever it be, is taken in it.”** In our present time, this is perceived to be a crisis for art criticism, where it no longer matters whether a work of art is given a negative or a positive review - to have shown interest in it at all will escalate its mobility in visual fields. In Jennifer Dalton’s The Collector-ibles (2006), also at the Flag, collectors themselves are exhibited, and we strain our eyes to look for the names of those that we know. This is a new register of the visual field, and no one knows what the shakeout will truly be in the end. But I do find it necessary to raise questions about a continued uncritical enthusiasm for high degrees of artifice and visual interest.

By Catherine Spaeth

References:
* Roberta Smith, Rounding Up the Usual Suspects, The New York Times, October 15, 2008, Vol. 157, issue 54221.
** This debate occurred between one small phrase and a footnote. See Donald Judd, “Specific Objects,” in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965, and Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Artforum 5, #10, June 1967. Frances Colpitt, “The Issue of Boredom: Is It Interesting?,” in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, V. 43, #4, Summer 1985.

Image credits: Damien Hirst at (red), 2/13/08, paparazzi; Thomas Demand, Rasen (Lawn), 1998, chromogenic photo print, 48”x67”, courtesy of the Flag Foundation; Jennifer Dalton, The Collector, nd., courtesy of the Flag Foundation; Mark Wagner, Chuck, 2005, currency collage, 11”x9”, courtesy of the Flag Foundation.

Catherine Spaeth