"If you can say it... Why paint it?" A review of the key concepts of Contemporary Art

Lock is a term borrowed from the snipers lexical field, which means that the target is ready to be killed. Helped with a laser pointer, Renaud AUGUSTE-DORMEUIL simulates a situation where civil targets caught in the line of fire of an undefined threat in Paris streets.

I'll ask again... Won't you take me home? Instead of this simulacra of modern urban unfair warfare? You all have in mind photos of Sarajevo, victims of Snipers. Let me refresh your memory. The media used to be flooded of such pictures at that time. But this was far away, so far that people could not even point at Sarajevo on a map. And the media did not help: Who really knows what happened there? But let's just come back to our artwork... I was just saying: What I dislike about this artwork, me, Conflict, is that it helps people to think about what would happen if I had to come to your door... A simulation... As if people were attacked in your peaceful parks, streets and playgrounds. In 'lock', the threat is viewable, the tragedy is imminent; did not yet happen though, but is just about to happen. The potentiality of death is not only a newspaper thing anymore. And YOU now think about it, maybe as you could be the victim of this sniper that points his red eye on your shoulder or on your back.

This is a terrific shot taken a few seconds after Benazir Bhutto assassination in Pakistan by John Moore. This picture is part of a series that won the first prize at the World Press Photography 2008. You can see it is real by the way the photo was taken... You expect such picture from a journalist, don't you? That is exactly the aesthetic that would boost the TIMES/Guardians sales, when framed on the front page. A guy praising at the sky in the middle of the carnage, smoke, calcined corpses and blood everywhere around... This Muslim really looks like Jesus Christ?! The perfect white European archetype of sacrifice and suffering... A model that applies everywhere?

From the exact same series, I find this one far more interesting... This is a bit more unexpected. It was taken while the bombs were exploding and it really gives a sense of immediacy. But that is a question of taste.Ok, one more time: My name is conflict, do you take me home? an idea of me? or am I just a far, remote, unrealistic fantasy that does not have much to do with proper truth and reality?

For allowing the viewer to question all these problematics, I say 'Lock' by Renaud AUGUSTE-DORMEUIL... Artwork of the month.

Kings Cross, London 2007 by Naoki Honjo

Naoki Honjo is a popular Japanese artist that blurs the border between reality and fiction by using a technique that uses the macro photography visual codes and transposes them to large city views. As some of you may be not particularly familiar with photography techniques, I will show you an example to illustrate this. Do you remember 'crazy art nation' introduced in the post 'another brick in the wall'.

Look closer at how does the picture appear. You will see that the picture gets its maximum of sharpness on the little character that represents Mark Wallinger. The foreground and the background get blurred due to the size of the object and the distance between the scene and the camera lens.

Arts Crazy Nation

Amery Carson

The point here, is that a 'visual culture' exists. Look at the picture above. It is a flower and it is not really hard to guess... But think about it... How do you know it is a flower? There are a few clues: the colors, the water drops, the organic aspect of the subject. The depth of field is one important clue. You have seen many of this flowers close-up and the small depth of field is one of the elements you expect when we show you such pictures. It is part of your visual culture!

When Naoki Honjo shows you a picture of buildings, roads and buses; with such a small depth of field, your brain may conclude that the objects shot on the picture are incredibly small... Probably a model... But no! Not this time, this is 'real', a picture of the actual London.

We might therefore say that Naoki Honjo cheats with our system of perception.

From another angle, we could imagine that a god-like photographer took the picture, starring at us the way we would stare at an ants colony... The presence of something superior, gigantic that looks at us from above and could crush everything we take for unbreakable, with a single finger.

Furthermore, the scenes look like big toys, dolls house, lego (?!) something that questions the social movements, the way we evolve in the city, representational modes.

Saitama-Arena, Saitama, Japan, 2004 by Naoki Honjo

Containers, Tokyo, Japan 2005 by Naoki Honjo

London Buses, 2007 by Naoki Honjo

This is a crystal clear demonstration that the gaze at the artwork is biased on a quite powerful manner by the stereotype we hold about the picture features (here the point of view and the particular depth of field). What I would like to point at, is that we hold stereotypes about everything, it is simply the way the brain works! We may be largely unaware of the stereotypes we hold... The more obvious are the ethnic ones, African are like this, French like that... But Naoki Honjo brilliantly demonstrates us, using quite a poetic channel that it may not be that simple!

What is this exactly? The actual artwork called Groundspeed (Red plazza) is 'what happened in the Australian jungle' (a very dangerous piece of jungle according to the 'enhancing' ArtReview article). I first came across the artwork while reading an article in the June 2006 edition of the ArtReview magazine in an article called "Art at the Extremes". If it is featured in anArtReview article, it might be important... The artist, Rosemary Laing chose to go in the carpet shop in Kiama (New South Wales - Australia) and to order several hundred square feet of their finest Axminster. The artist point is to reflect on how Europeans changed both physical and cultural landscape 200 years ago. She changed the wild Australia Forest into what looks like an ordinary living room here in the U.K.Therefore, what is presented to the viewer is a picture of the actual artwork, which makes it even more interesting. First because it is brought to the contemporary art world which would probably never go on place to see the artwork as it they would do with recognized accessible Land Art. But that is only to be mean that I say this. This artwork obliges you to rely on the picture you get in the Gallery.

Spiral jetty - Robert Smithson

The photographic medium is therefore relevant because it imposes a distance. The viewer becomes a powerless note keeper and has no possibility to interfere with the actual creation which may recall the feeling of what people may sense in front of the TV while watching Al Gore 'An Inconvenient Truth' or any alarmist BBC News coverage about climate change actual repercussion. I believe that this adds a terribly contemporary note to the artwork.

The artist uses cleverly both the photographic medium and the museum as the place in which the communication act is supposed to occur to create meaning. Groundspeed came to the public in 2001 and remains inspirational. Can you believe how fast time flies? This was a time, only 7 years ago, when people still did not care that much about environment and climate change. It usually takes time to change minds that deeply but in this special case communication might have helped a bit. Think about what comes to your mind when we are talking about pollution? A few pictures of the melting ice in the north pole and polar bears sinking because they find no land to stand on, films of flooded houses in the U.K. in the summer 2007. Think now about the war on terrorism? There comes to your mind the pictures of 9/11 disaster. The world always relied and will rely more and more on visual symbols.
This could be an answer to the question "What is Art for?"explored earlier in these blog lines.
It incites to action by putting into light concepts we may not be able to see anymore because we seek for social coherence; concept that are sometimes easier to occult than to have to reflect on. To quote the French producer Jean-Luc Godard : "La culture, c’est la norme, l’art c’est l’exception" (Culture is the norm, the art is the exception). This is done thanks to the clever use of a web of complex symbols, that aim to impact the viewer as deeply as possible.

Le radeau de la méduse (The Raft of the Medusa - Géricault)

Guernica - Picasso

Another recent example of artwork that works quite well in this sense was presented in 2004 by Tony Matelli and called Fuck'd:

It's time for a new artwork of the month.

To quote Magnus af Petersens in his excellent essay 'Paul Mc Carthy - 40 years of work - an attempt of a summary':
Paul McCarthy’s works incorporate a sharp social critique, which focuses on social and cultural traumas rather than on private issues. This is the dark side of the American Dream, of the consumer society we all live in, even in Sweden and the rest of Western Europe. He also touches on a variety of existential issues. But he can also be exceedingly comical, although the laughter often sticks in your throat. He is a clown, a buffoon in the Rabelaisian sense.

40 years of work... Paul Mc Carthy has a long and quite prolific career that really starts (at least for the artworld) in the 60's. Back in the context, in the U.S., the legacy of Jackson Pollock, the 'action painting' abstract expressionism just reached its climax point (The emphasis is put on the action of painting rather than the result on the canvas), artists are more and more interested in 'speech act' or "a statement that is not solely descriptive but also constitutes some form of action". His works present also numerous minimalist references:

After settling down in los Angeles, Mc Carthy works on numerous performances and includes progressively cameras, first to film the performance but progressively as a part of it, as a parody of the Hollywood (a close neighbour) codes of production and shows everything that this industry of 'dream' holds back. The artist attacks many myths, from the perfect family in a performance with Mike Kelley called Family Tyranny in 1987, to the acts of painting and cooking in Bossy Burger (1991) see picture on the left. In this performance, Mc Carthy attempts to reveal the world's cruelty by underlining the bloody aspect of the cooking act, to discuss anything from entropy to social oppression or waste culture. In WGG Test, depicting a sailing party gone wrong, McCarthy questions the effects that violence and mutilation, both real and simulated, have on the viewer in contemporary culture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C3yjIet2Ig Please be aware that these videos may hurt sensibilities). It bleeds, it is frenetic, the screams are unbearable, but it is clear and shown that this is all fake (presence of cameramen, displaying of the "trick" in some short sequences showing the real leg of the 'amputed' captain hidden under the stage...).
Again, like the corporal fluids, Mc Carthy throws out in the spectator's face what he/she does not want to see, because it is a part of history or intimity that everyone wants to forget! But WHY WHY WHY????!!!!! And if you run out of a Paul Mc Carthy exhibition, screaming this single 3 letters word... Then it is a total success. Why do we want to forget all these concepts? We do want to forget, now it's a fact and by being confronted face-to-face with Paul Mc Carthy abominations confirms that statement. One step further, he tends to use actual cinematographic settings used in famous mainstream hollywood productions, movies or series.

The Painter- Paul Mc Carthy

And that is exactly what Mc Carthy's art is about!! It stands to question the formative power of social and political society. You really thought that pirates were sexy and totally disapeared? If Hollywood or Disneyland does show us a glamour image of the pirates, Mc Carthy recreates the attraction "Pirates of the Carribeans" and replaces Johnny Depp by thirty actors, wearing oversize carnival heads, simulating the invasion of a village, violence, mutilation, rape and the public sale of the village women. Probably far more realistic than the Hollywood version. One step further, beyond the farce, the masks and the grotesque spoof horror movie scenes, McCarthy's Pirate work makes also some references to the US invasion of Iraq, some scenes have been said to allude clearly to Abu Ghraib and the abuse of prisoners. Once again Mc Carthy demonstrates that we invent this new pirates dream, to hold back a certain reality of a 'human' violence (opposed to imaginary).

Mc Carthy however, offers you, the visitor, a precious gift: the ability of questioning yourself and all these mental barriers and taboos... It is a "wether you like it or not , this is there, in you, do not forget it!"

So here is my artwork of the month:

The exhibition Shop head/head shop Works 1966-2006

The foreword for the catalogue “Paul McCarthy: Head Shop/Shop Head” starts with eleven questions: The physical formalism of minimalism, or the exuberant materialism of pop art? Comic performance or existential actionism? More or less? In jest or in dead earnest? Criticism or acceptance? Sadism or love? Drawing? Sculpture? Film? Photography? Performance? Paul McCarthy himself says “You may understand my actions as vented culture. You may understand my action as vented fear.”The retrospective exhibition “Head Shop/Shop Head“ (curated by Magnus af Petersens), which is being held in association with Moderna Museet in Stockholm and ARoS in Aarhus, shows for the first time a representative selection of his work in Europe, produced from 1966 to 2006. McCarthy also made a series of new works especially for S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst. The exhibition of 40 years of McCarthy’s work will be held until 17 February 2008. By vtv correspondent Thom de Bock. PS: See the video about the exhibition at Galerie Hauser & Wirth in June 2007 which presented a series of photo portfolios related to the large-scale projects Paul and Damon McCarthy produced in recent years.

Here is the trailer of the exhibition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXuFW4vm3EM&NR=1

On this next link you will find an excellent interview of the artist and several pictures of an exhibition that took place in Kopenhagen, which featured many of the artworks currently exhibited in Ghent (Belgium). http://www.kopenhagen.dk/interviews/interviews/interview_paul_mccarthy/

Let’s first have a look on the background. The saturated red color, fills heavily every inches of the frame with sexual connotations.

Her ruffled hair and her naked body under the bedding indicates that the scene takes probably place after the sexual act. She significantly protects her crotch with both clasped hands. Beautiful, ...she is, she is an exact compromise between sexual icon (blond hair, pulpy with a huge breast) and ordinary (shadows on her face, blunt nose, unsteady breast). She is the victim of a voyeurism act that YOU, the viewer, perpetrate. Prisoner of the canvas, of the tainted surrounding air and prisoner of her own attributes... Her beauty is her burden, heavily symbolised by her breast. She is trapped!

This stereotype that shapes the cage of our True Drapped Blonde is central in Yuskavage paintings and I invite you to have a look on the flickr diaporama available on the right column of this blog to discover more of her amazing artworks.

Technically, Lisa's work is recognized as particularly impressive among connoisseurs: She apparently uses models to study lights and shadows; photos to frame the paintings, her work is so impressive technically (paint strokes, mastering of light effects...etc.) that specialised art press often compare her to Renaissance masters (No joking).

To replace her work in a more general art world background, she is often associated with artists such as John Currin (Google his name on Google image or click there to go on the BBC website or slate.com, you ll see the similarities by yourself), Luc Tuymans and Elizabeth Peyton in the 1990's, reaching superstar status after reinserting figuration in the art world.

Call it kitsch, call it soft-porn, call it gorgeous, sexy, weird or embarrassing, appealing or repulsive, Lisa yuskavage paintings shake the art world... but what about you?

So...? Do you like it? Do not forget to vote on the right hand side column of this blog!!!!

;-)

• 50% Funky Soul Baby
• 42% Groovy for sure
• 7% Not the type of artwork I d hang on my living room wall
• 0% Rather listening to Enya

I am glad you like it!!! Something tells me that we will have to come back to Murakami quite regularly regarding to his actuality!!!

Why artwork of the month? First because I know most of the potential first readers of this modest blog... and I know that a lot of them may like it as well. This artwork may ring a bell to a full generation of people born in the 80's, grew up showered by the animes, in fact the next generation of contemporary art collectors. Do you want to be part of it?...

Second argument the name of the artwork: Francis Bacon Study of Isabel Rawsthorne If you become a regular reader of this blog, you will soon see that I am a fan of Francis Bacon work... For memory, here is the original "Study of Isabel Rawsthorne" painted in 1966:

Takeshi Murakami, the artist, is born in 1962 in Tokyo (Japan) and is the head of an artistic tendency called "superflat" led with Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon. Murakami defines “Superflat” in broad terms, so the subject matter is very diverse. Often the works take a critical look at the consumerism and sexual fetishism that is prevalent in post-war Japanese culture. Murakami's work is POP, as it recalls clearly other artworks produced by Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol a couple of decades ago. It is clearly a re-appropriation of the global culture idols such as Mickey Mouse who is suggested through a lot of his artworks for example (see Tantan Bo below). It is also surrealist... Look closer at this other artwork:

For anybody familiar with Yves Tanguy artworks, it may ring a bell... unspecified entities whose height cannot really be evaluated, the parallel with Yves Tanguy landscapes is easy to do...

Yves Tanguy - Indefinite Divisibility 1942

The artwork of the month reaches potentially a wide audience, recycling elements of the art and the "global contemporary culture" to reintroduce them from another angle... It points at social patterns culturally taken for granted and re-introduce them, allowing the questionment of a social environment in which the 1980's generation grew-up. And it seems to work: Murakami was ranked the 98th most powerful personality of the ArtReview 2006 Power 100, but climbed to the 89th position this year; probably due to his partnership for the design of the last Louis Vuitton collection or for the success of his "superflat" artists who all had solo exhibitions this year in France!

Tantan BO 2001

It addresses our generation (The future collectors...), the art world (post-modern concerns and homage to great artists...), it has every ingredients to make it a great success! And it already is!!!

Murakami: Already a hit... A future legend...