Writing About Art : Making Art - Andy Wear
Once I wrote a review that was bypassed for publication. Disguising self-indulgent bitching as critique was, clearly, not so comfortably performed. So I meekly retreated to the comfort of my research project and humbly re-engaged with the exemplary non-partisanship of revered art theory journals.
In this research world, only the seemingly random use of italics and Adorno comes close to matching the irritation of being out-everythinged by the likes of Krauss, Foster and Buchloh. So be warned (traumatised survivors recall being basted with their piquant blend of Barthes, in readiness for a roasting by Derrida; Merleau-Ponty, they were told, could produce crackling, and Bataille made for a delicious gravy). Yet we all return in the end, drooling over the discovery of an elusive reference to the nexus between the deontological and satirical in Kippenberger’s aesthetic, and snigger (knowingly) as they unleash their vitriol on the neo-colonialism implicit in Hartleford’s developing textile collective.
Then, on weekends, like all real Australian men, I put the books away. Sometime in between detailing my jetski and having jacket-potatoes with the kids, I come up with all these darned conceptual-art-type-concepts. I propose an exhibition; some sorta spatio-temporal representation of them, methinks. I tell you, they keep me up at night. To think; I used to be a painter…sheesh!
That’s when October (and its haughty ilk) gets me real cranky. Caught like a fool in their imagined gaze*, I hear them mock me. Quietly at first (as the conceptual-art-type-concept emerges), then intensifying (as I raise the glass to celebrate the opening of the spatio-temporal representation space) before exploding into a cacophonous scree (when in the solitary confinement of its aftermath): “…derivative and void of conviction…jejune quasi-fascist…not worthy of any italicisation…”
Then, if I make it through the exhibition, I’ll check in to the Post-Traumatic Theory Ward (PTTW) at the Art School. This is some breakdown! I mean, these people don’t even know I exist! Sure, were I the kinda guy to rehash postmod puns, I might kick back after the show and contemplate “a pleasant deconstruction.” But I’m not that kinda guy. You see, these theory-folk – my guiding methodological lights for giving (and acting as references for) an academic account of art – turned on me in my time of need. No afterglow in this spatio-temporal representation space, sunshine. In its place only stillness and staleness.
Naturally, I blamed my own pretence and cursed the limits of my creativity and intellect. They appeared connected, but I couldn’t figure out how. I berated myself for stepping into the formulaic stations of conceptual-art-making. I even think I cursed Beuys. I turned the key in the lock on the door, and exited the gallery.
Back at the academy, I turn the key in the lock on the door, and enter my office. I turn on the computer. Though the internet allows me to be briefly distracted by both the parlous condition of my savings account and the news of Pakistan’s second-innings capitulation to Bangladesh’s raw and inexperienced bowling attack, I settle in to write. I’m at it for a good half-hour-or-so before I get the urge to refer. I leaf – furiously at times – through secondary sources, trawl the myriad databases and raid the reams of inconsiderately reproduced articles that clog my filing cabinet, in the hope of finding that killer quote…Ahh…who else, but the indefatiguable Rosalind Krauss, could produce such a satisfying opportunity to drop-in an op.cit. here or an ibid. there?
This is a complex of cultural practices, among them a demythologizing criticism and a truly postmodernist art, both of them acting now to void the basic propositions of modernism, to liquidate them by exposing their fictitious condition. It is thus far from a strange new perspective that we look back on the modernist origin and watch it splintering into endless replication.1
Demythologization and liquidation in one fell swoop?
Splintering into endless replication?
This is gold!
Sign it, seal it, deliver it.
This one is going to press!
Isn’t it?
Andy Wear lives and works in Hobart. His art practice coexists (sometimes uncomfortably) with doctoral research being undertaken at the School of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania. Both his art practice and academic work are essentially investigations into the relationship between philosophical texts and visual representations.
Footnotes
- Krauss, R. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge, MA and London. 1986. p. 154
* No, not that gaze!