#nypop

How can we make art something other than a bangle on the necklace of the uber-rich, a status symbol all the more desirable because the culture pretends it has some other purpose? And the museum something other than the place where the pleebs can access the wonders they can’t afford, wonders mostly because they can’t afford them?

Not even putting a pee-pot in a gallery stopped the rich from appropriating any implicit disgust and turning it into a statement about their high-minded enculturement.

There is something about having to prove oneself, in art – or in anything else – that is already a kind of enslavement. I think of my friend Arthur, sloth that he is, porn-addicted alcoholic genius chess master that he is. He may too be a victim of capital, jobless and often near-homeless. But Arthur’s particular enslavement does not require that he show up anywhere. Ever. Proof, perhaps, of his perverted cleverness.

However one regards the current debate over the legalization of prostitution, brought to the news recently by Amnesty International’s argument that sex work should be decriminalized, it should be admitted that the offenses of prostitution are in line with the offenses corollary to many other lines of work, and I wouldn’t exclude Academia from this. Certainly there are degrees of freedom, but the way that the work of the mind is increasingly put to use to ends that the minds mind is telling.

And art certainly operates similarly.

The Supreme Court says that money is speech. Art too is a form of speech. You see where this is going.

Artrank.com Check it out if you haven’t already.

Who should get the right to have a louder voice? In politics, those who have the money to spend. In art, the loud voice is granted to those who please those who have the money to spend.

John Guillory in his book Cultural Capital discusses the politics debates of the 1990’s regarding the politics of the literature canon and in doing so, he indicates that after all the considerations of the influences of money on literature and on what is accepted as good literature, there is some small other thing, some kernel of aesthetic that is not simply a version of the powerful in culture enacting their will onto the field. He calls it “the remainder.”

For those of us who think that art is about something other than money, Guillory’s term should serve as a warning. A scholar and lover of literature, Guillory nonetheless calls that part of literature that he loves a “remainder,” as if only the tiniest smidgen of it exists in any work.

And in many ways, literature is less influenced (at least in the short term) by the whims of capital. Poetry doesn’t sell, so those who would pander to the wealthy to make their poetry career are fools. Visual art, however, well, well, well.

Which is why some of the work at PS1’s Greater New York show were exciting. In spite of being housed in a museum, there were some works that critiqued money directly -- not even art and money -- but money practices, such as Cameron Rowland’s boring display of incorporation documents related to a shell company that can receive New Market Tax Credits, a federal program designed to help businesses locate in underserved (read: poor) communities. Rowland’s text makes a connection between the boost in finances to these programs and the reduction in direct funding to poor families. The private employer now gets the money for selling to the poor (and perhaps eventually employing them).

John Ahern’s sculptures, famous in a way from Miwon Quon’s book One Place After Another, made a powerful statement, implicitly declaring, from a simplicity of these gesture, that beauty can be seen, perhaps simply is embodied in the acts we usually ignore and in the people the culture often ignores.

There were many young artists and there were very few areas dedicated to a single artist, which was also a relief. The museum as a site of artists engaged in making – lots of artists – lots of making.

But this vibrant display of the myriad possibilities of art might serve to hide the fact that this venue is a career-making one, or can be, that the cacophony of voices here, when it translates across the river to the real MOMA, will be filtered, not just by the accidents of aesthetic pleasure which bear the historical stamp of the moneyed, but by the actual moneyed who sit on the Board and who lend their collections for view. Sarbanes-Oxley addressed some kinds of COI problems, but not that one.

And ascendant to the art pedestal will be those who please the market, either them, or, more likely, the market itself, and from that vantage point the Artist will view the rest of the world and the rest of the art world as well as the aspirants who are trying to clamor over the razorwire to get into the art world – can be gazed down upon. <in a raised voice so as to be heard above the din of the crowd> “How’s the air up there?” Oh Just Great. Thank you! Can you all hear me? “Oh yes, Mr. Picasso. Loud and clear, Mr. Picasso. Why, your voice rings. How are you finding your 14-room sculpture throne?” Comfy. So very very comfy.

Maybe that’s why I like chairs – more conducive to discussion, indeed proportional to one body relating to another, why as if there might be something beneficial to an artist – to an art – who can relate to the concerns of an average person -- an art that doesn’t just speak but listens.

If the role of the reviewer/critic is to assess and report, then first must come the weighing, and before that a desire to compare, to weigh, a propensity for such, and a willingness or compulsion to give in to the urge to evaluate. Without evaluation, what are we, mere describers? Paltry interpreters? And yet, this role of evaluating stands in a problematic relationship with appreciation, which is where all the pleasure is. Ah, sweet thanks. But there it is: evaluation, waving, saying “use me.” It tempts us, saying it stands to show us the distinction between that which is truly worthy of appreciation and that which we are merely fooled into appreciating. The function evaluation says it plays is that it allows a clearer view of the useful, the true, the necessary, the beautiful.

And yet, at least in terms of art, the role evaluation actually serves more to suppress the appreciative impulse than to make it grow – to diminish the experience of beauty rather than to enhance it. The evaluator discards most of the evaluated. I’m not suggesting that we instead pretend that everything is equal in value, but I do not trust that the evaluative function, especially in regards to art, can behave in the ways it says it does. Evaluation, in spite of an illusion of disinterest, always seems to have other things on its mind or up its sleeve or oozing from its id, that is, it evaluates with a myriad of unacknowledged criteria, leaving us with an assessment that is far from what it seems.

And in NY, even before stepping through the doors of a gallery, there is a clear game of assessment being played. It is as if this game of relative value is excessively exercised through every motion in the city. Even to enter the island one must consider the weight and the wait of each bridge. And in NY, a thing not worth my time is worth my disdain for its seeming presumption upon me to just suggest that it waste it. Stepping into the galleries, there’s a clarity. Assessment gains a crystallization; the financial role that evaluation plays is clear.

Each gallerist is trying simultaneously to establish value through the implicit declaration that is a show AND is trying to cash in on established value by showing work that will sell. It’s a kind of real estate, including speculation into new territories, sales within established neighborhoods, the tour of the block with the newbies, of course, however, with a careful eye on the properties represented by the gallery itself. Compared to actual real estate, the art market seems to supply more spin and less fact. After all, no realtor owns the entire condo stock of a neighborhood. But with gallerists, the territory is vague and the investment can be huge. So evaluation, which is spin, is everything. That is, evaluation is everything that remains when the spin settles and the gallery must pay the rent.

What a relief, then, is a phenomenon like the NY ART BOOK FAIR, where the prices, are marked and are often less than a Hamilton. And no wonder that the cheap tent is fullest of all, where pornography and outrage are a kind of fecundity, where the people say fuck the white walls, fuck evaluation, we are not here to invest our money. We are here to waste our time with aesthetic detritus. Amen.

Not to say that the show at MOMA’s PS1 last weekend, the 10th annual, sponsored by Printed Matter, was devoid of preciousness. A first edition (I think) of Tender Buttons was $750, in ok shape. And for Ch**st’s sake, next to some glorious erotica published by PPP and a literary-porno art book treatment of famous book covers of the 20th century, there were what appeared to be Marcel Broodthaers originals in glass cases. (And these were listed in gallery-speak, as in: shh, whisper (no price listed). I neglected to notice if it was the MB Society that presented the work or some other institution. Their reps were well dressed, as you would expect with real estate on the line.

And MIT Press was there, with a good representation of the Semiotext(e) books MIT now distributes (and swears it doesn’t interfere with editorially), and a rep from MIT Press had good news, saying that thought the translation of Peter Sloterdijk’s Foam, was complete (rounding out Bubbles and Globes in his 7500-page Spheres trilogy). And Siglio was there with their impressive catalog that is at the boundary of art and literature. And more modest printers like Bodega, which is probably better known as a gallery on Rivington than as a publishing house had some fantastic titles, as well as, Jiminy Cricket!, The Song Cave, publisher of books of mere poetry, who dared to show up in a world dominated by visual representation.

All of this was more or less expected, as were the 35,000 people, the hundreds of exhibitors, the beer and coffee, the pate (You gotta class it up somehow), and the strange cage stairs that are PS1. (What kinds of children did they think were living in Queens when this place was built? OMG. The artifact that is PS1 can still overwhelm as a stark reminder of the human-education-prison-industrial complex that is American Education, Govt, Inc.)

What was less expected, though, for me, were two things: free entrance. YAY for the public in the public event! AND, more distressingly: the absence of the ART BOOK art book. That is, it was difficult to find within the fair the hand-made letter-pressed bound objects that artists such as Amy Borezo make. Is it because these 35k people are not worth the time for these objects that can sell for so much more? Is it that this beloved chaos of a fair is not suited for the book that costs more than 100 Hamiltons? Probably. Is it because some of these artists displayed during curated events rather than at the tables? Probably.

There were so many fantastic presses, like Ampersand and periodicals that break the bounds of periodicals, such as THE THING Quarterly, and PACKET-BIWEEKLY, each which curates objects as well as words to send out to its subscribers. There were residencies connected to letterpress print-shops, such as Mer. Paper Kunsthalle, an operation from Belgium that was eager to tell artists of the opportunities they provide. There were the Center for Book Arts and Printed Matter and other New York book-culture staples, and the crowd of fair-goers can give a kind of hope to those of us interested in book culture: LOOK AT ALL THESE PEOPLE! But before I get to excited, I must also admit that the fair seems too to show that there’s a certain ghettoization of this culture; it’s a sub-culture, a counter-culture, which buys in freedom what it loses in influence.

Nevertheless, in spite of the joys of art that seemed far from the concerns of speculative financiers, I find myself bound in my own self-made binding. I went to Queens, and I found art but I didn’t find refinement (another enemy of art?). I say I want grit, and I do, but I also want something delicate. I wanted a bit of something gorgeous, and I wanted more of it than I found. I want it without the F*ing trappings of the gallery – or the damned museum. I want the art without the money. I want the object without the pretension. Sometimes I think it’s like wanting the mind without the body.

So what. I can want it. And I will continue to.

And I’ll likely never find it, but dear God if you make me pick between Chelsea and a cheap drawing of a pair of boobs, well I’ll say Goodbye Pristine, Goodbye clean, Adieu thou finely made, GO TO HELL, ye refined. Pick between the galleries and the pornos, as I did this last weekend, choosing as my need to evaluate the limited time the Book Fair would exist, you will always find me, as you would have on Saturday pressed like a drying leaf among the hoary horny hoards in the zine tent while we all are getting off to poorly xeroxed asses of all stripes. (Oops. Did I say that out loud?)

Christopher Janke

Some of the more precious objects at the 10th Annual Art Book Fair at PS1:

Marcel Broodthaers under glass