Flash Points: The Ethics of Art

Gordon Matta-Clark, "Bingo," 1974. The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nina and Gordon Bunshaft Bequest Fund, Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest Fund, and the Enid A. Haupt Fund, 2004. Installation photography © Francois Robert, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. Gordon Matta-Clark works © Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Today we launch the next Flash Points topic, The Ethics of Art. Ethics are defined as “a system of moral principles” which constantly factor into the choices we make. However, these decisions can become confused, making this system of principles more gray than black and white, especially when competing priorities are at work. Over the next two months, we’ll explore the relationship of ethics in art from a variety of perspectives and question the role that they should — or shouldn’t — play.

In the 1970s, Gordon Matta-Clark took a critical stance against the Hooker Chemical Company with his work Bingo, which highlighted the unethical — and as a result, dangerous — decisions they made in the community of Love Canal, New York. Throughout this topic, we’ll feature artists who make this ethical debate a focus in their work, from artists who question the role of the institution, such as Hans Haacke or Marcel Broodthaers, to artists like Alfredo Jaar, who examines the disparity between an oil-rich government and a poverty-stricken populace in his work Muxima.

Ann Hamilton. "Accountings," Jan. 22 - April 5, 1992 (installation view, Henry Art Gallery). Steel tokens, soot, steel, glass, cast wax heads, canaries. Photo: Richard Nicol.

Ethical decisions also factor into the artistic process. Does a photographer who sells a portrait owe anything, financially or psychologically, to the work’s subject? What kind of ownership does an artist have over reproduced images of his or her work? We’ll also look at the discussions taking place around the use of animals in art, such as the range of responses — from acclaim to criticism — received during Ann Hamilton’s exhibition Accountings (which included live canaries), or the severe case of Tom Otterness shooting a dog for his art (an act for which he has since apologized). Ethical issues can even come into play after an artist’s death, especially in the handling the artist’s estate and the management of his or her legacy.

Controversies and arguments abound as ethical decisions, or the lack thereof, play a role in institutional practice. With the ever-shrinking gap between commerce and culture, the prioritization of good business over public service creates an increasingly blurry set of ethical guidelines. Collector-based exhibitions, conflicts of interest, deaccessioning practices…do museums have a responsibility to their public? And if so, is this a part of institutional culture and is it being taught in today’s museum studies programs?

Marcel Broodthaers, "Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, Section Financière (Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles, Financial Section)," 1970-1971. Gold bar stamped with an eagle. Courtesy Galerie Beaumont, Luxembourg. Photo: J. Romero, courtesy Maria Gilissen.

Here are a few of the questions we’ll be addressing over the coming weeks. We’d love to hear your thoughts, and any ideas you have for additional sub-topics, in the comments below:

• How do ethics factor into institutional practice?
• How do artists address ethical issues in their work?
• What kind of ethical decisions are made during the artistic process?
• Are ethics emphasized in art education today?
• Must art be ethical?

Weekly Roundup

Walton Ford, "The Island", 2009. Watercolor, gouache, pencil, and ink on paper. Panel 1: 95 1/2 x 36 in. Panel 2: 95 1/2 x 60 in. Panel 3: 95 1/2 x 36 in. © 2009 Walton Ford. Photo: Christopher Burke Studio. via Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

In this week’s roundup you’ll read about Tasmanian wolves, patented patterns, cartoon anthropomorphism, ancient mythology, portico projections, and a big gift:

• Bestiarium, a large-scale survey exhibition of watercolor paintings by Season 2 artist Walton Ford, is on view at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. His new large-scale painting The Island, recently acquired by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Betonville, Arkansas, is included in the exhibition. In this composition Ford presents, via the press release, “a writhing pyramidal mass of Tasmanian wolves (thylacines) grappling with each other and a few doomed lambs. The violent extermination of the thylacines, which were hunted to extinction in the early 20th century, calls into question who is hunter and hunted in this savage tableau.” Bestiarium is on view in Berlin through May 24. In June, the show will travel to Vienna’s Albertina Museum. This is Ford’s first show in Europe.

• Through March 21, Vancouver Art Gallery will project works from the exhibition CUE: Artists’ Videos onto the portico of their Robson Street facade. The show consists of more than 80 titles by artists from countries across the globe, such as Art21’s William Kentridge (Season 5). Cinematic language in video, and the unfolding of world events are some of the subjects covered in CUE. The videos have been arranged into seven thematic programs. Each program runs continuously on selected days between 5am – 2am.

• Works by Raymond Pettibon (Season 2) are on view in the group exhibition Shudder at The Drawing Room in London. The artists in Shudder use animation to develop characters and investigate personal states of mind and relationships. Their works tap into, among other things, the cartoon tradition of anthropomorphism. Shudder will include a brand new piece by Pettibon titled Zephyr; the artist describes it as a baby playing with the wind and traveling in the sky. Zephyr continues the themes explored in Pettibon’s The Place, Where We Were created in 2008. Shudder continues through March 14.

• On January 27, London’s contemporary art gallery Sadie Coles HQ will open an exhibition of works by Season 2 artist Matthew Barney. Barney will present a new group of drawings related to his performance and film project Ancient Evenings, based on Norman Mailer’s bestselling novel by the same title. Mailer’s 1983 text reimagined ancient Egyptian mythology and ritual. Barney’s operatic performance (a collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler) occurs in seven acts symbolizing the seven stages the soul passes through after death in ancient Egyptian belief: Ren, Khu, Sekhem, Ba, Ka, Khaibit and Sekhu. The exhibition closes on March 6.

• Get a closer look at a new installation by Season 1 artist Barry McGee on the blog Arrested Motion. According to SLAMXHYPE, this installation — part of SF MoMA’s year-long Anniversary Show — is made up of many individual works created over the years including drawings, personal photos, and McGee’s iconic (and patented) patterns. The installation is on view through January 2011.

• Kelowna.com reports that Toronto art collector and philanthropist Ydessa Hendeles has offered to donate 32 Canadian and international works to the Art Gallery of Ontario. This would be the biggest single gift of contemporary art in the museum’s history. The donation includes works by artists Krzysztof Wodiczko (Season 3), James Coleman, Gary Hill, Thomas Schutte, Kim Adams, Ian Carr-Harris, Max Dean, Betty Goodwin, and Liz Magor. Plans are underway to exhibit the Hendeles donation within the next 18 months.

• Alfredo Jaar (Season 4) will participate in the panel discussion “Participatory Art: Creative Approaches to the Concept of Community“ organized by LaRete Art Projects and the Legislative Assembly of the Emilia Romagna Region in Italy. The event is part of Arte Fiera Art First 2010, Bologna, a yearly international art fair for modern and contemporary art. The event takes place Saturday, January 30 at 2pm.

Make Less Art

Alfredo Jaar, "Lament of the Images (Version 2)," 2002

At one point in my panel conversation with Olivia Gude, Mark Bradford, and William Crow at the National Art Education Association’s annual  conference in Minneapolis, the discussion got around to our hopes for the future of art education. Olivia Gude, in a way only she can truly communicate, actually hoped that students would “make less art” in the future. This week’s question from the NAEA conference (our last in a series of columns dedicated to questions from that panel, titled Art Practice, Teaching Practice) comes from Bobbi Meier, who teaches on the secondary level in River Forest, IL. Bobbi asked, “How do we make ‘less art’ and keep our program intact? Administrators are looking for product!”

As we move forward as artists and art educators, it’s important to make people understand (collectors, art lovers, students, parents, administrators, and policy makers) that quantity in an art program has little to do with quality. As a matter of fact, and I believe this is what Olivia was getting at, it’s important to allow students time for immersion into the themes, questions and big ideas that can drive significant units of study on all levels. While it’s not as glamorous to ditch the series of projects about “mastering” the elements of design in favor of a longer-term painting project that focuses on a big, essential question, there are ways for students to demonstrate understanding and even “mastery” of the elements through their work in a more significant unit that’s driven by a meaningful question(s) or idea.

Working with administrators to help them understand how and what our students are learning can go along way towards convincing them that the quantity is not what’s important. What’s important is listening to students describe, demonstrate, and write about their learning experiences in the art classroom, even when the product isn’t pretty or plentiful. Here are a few specific suggestions:

• Invite your principal or supervisor in to see a variety of lessons over time, not just when an observation or evaluation rolls around. It takes time to digest what we do with people who aren’t as experienced with the visual arts.
• Start a class webpage that communicates with the school community (including the school board) the themes and questions that drive units of study in your classroom. Share your curriculum maps (or, if necessary, START curriculum mapping and share your plans).
• Create or re-imagine a gallery or exhibit space in your school or district. Create a regular schedule of shows that allows teachers and students a chance to share a variety of work over time. Encourage students to share how that variety of work was inspired and how it relates with classmates, parents, community members, administrators and colleagues.

The first step, perhaps, to making less art is helping others understand what we do, and that what we do involves planning and thinking and shaping possibilities in order to come up with quality work in the classroom. While projects that focus on “mastering”elements or specific techniques can be cute and catchy, it doesn’t necessarily make for a quality art program. Everyone is always impressed with true learning. The challenge is to make that learning as exciting to share as the flashy projects that may not have as much thinking behind them.

Weekly Roundup

Jessica Stockholder, "Flooded Chambers Maid", 2009. Courtesy of the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo: Jeffrey Sandgrund and Sam Rauch.

• Jessica Stockholder (Season 3) has completed her first outdoor installation in the United States. Flooded Chambers Maid is a site-specific multimedia installation on and around the Oval Lawn at Madison Square Park in New York City. The piece will remain in the park through August 15.
  
• Stockholder’s second solo exhibition with Mitchell-Innes & Nash is on view at the gallery’s Chelsea location through June 13.

• Kara Walker (Season 2) will be at the University of Chicago on May 13 as part of the university’s ArtSpeak series. The artist will reflect on her work in a presentation and dialogue with Professor Amy Dru Stanley, who focuses on capitalism, slavery and emancipation, and the historical experience of moral problems.
• Nine new works by Tim Hawkinson (Season 2) are on view at PaceWildenstein through July 25. Included in the exhibition is Sherpa (2008), a life-sized single cylinder two-stroke engine motorcycle constructed out of eight varieties of feathers.

• Artists Alfredo Jarr (Season 4), Yto Barrada, Cláudia Cristóvão, Georgia Papageorge, and Berni Searle are included in the exhibition Continental Rifts: Contemporary Time-Based Works from Africa at UCLA’s Fowler Museum. Read the Los Angeles Times Culture Monster review.

• New York Times art critic Holland Cotter reviews the environmental sculpture Storm King Wavehill by Maya Lin (Season 2). For this project, Lin transformed an 11-acre gravel pit at Storm King Art Center into a grassy vista of ocean-like waves. This is the largest site-specific earthwork she has created to date.

• The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has just opened their new Rooftop Sculpture Garden, with works by Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois (both Season 2), and other renowned artists.

Weekly Roundup

Catherine Sullivan, "Triangle of Need," 2007. Multi-channel video installation. Collection of Miami Art Museum, Gift of Ella Fontanals-Cisneros.

• The Miami Art Museum recently acquired Triangle of Need, a video installation by Catherine Sullivan (Season 4). Her piece is on view at the museum through October 11.
• A full room installation by Season 2 artist Kiki Smith is included in the exhibition Space-Time at the National Glass Centre in the UK. The artist’s three-dimensional astrological star chart, with cut-glass stars and animals of the zodiac scattered across a night-blue paper carpet, titled Constellation, is on display through September 6.
• The Times Online (in association with Saatchi Gallery) is asking readers to vote for their favorite artists of the 20th and/or 21st century. At present, Art21’s Louise Bourgeois (Season 2) and Alfredo Jaar (Season 4) are included in the list of leading artists. The Top 200 will be revealed on May 25. Cast your vote now.
• On April 16, Hubbard & Birchler (Season 3) will lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The talk is the second in a series ssponsored by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership in conjunction with Confluence: Points of View on Buffalo Bayou, a public art project on Houston’s historic waterway.
• A site specific piece by Mark Dion (Season 4) has been added to the outdoor sculpture garden at the The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Antiquarian Book Shop (2008), the artist’s life-size curiosity shop, is filled with hundreds of books and collectibles from around the world. Learn more about the installation here.
• Chelsea visits Havana, an exhibition presented by Fundacion Amistad in conjunction with the 10th Biennial of Havana, features work by Season 2 artists Walton Ford and Matthew Barney, among others. The exhibition is part of the Bridges to Culture initiative, which uses the power of art to surmount the cultural, political and social boundaries between the United States and Cuba.

This Week’s Roundup

Alfredo Jaar, "The Sound of Silence", 2006. Installation with wood, aluminum, fluorescent lights, strobe lights and video projection. Software design by Ravi Rajan. Installation view at Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne, Switzerland, 2007.

What’s happening now:

• The Sound of Silence, an exhibition of works by Alfredo Jaar (Season 4), is on view at Galerie Lelong in New York through May 2. Visitors are invited to enter an enclosed aluminum structure that presents an 8-minute silent film. Read more about the exhibition here.
• Read Quinn Latimer’s interview with Season 3 artist Ellen Gallagher for Modern Painters. Gallagher’s first exhibition in London is on view at South London Gallery through May 2.
• Her Memory, an exhibition of recent works by Season 2 artist Kiki Smith, is on view at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona through May 24.
• Roni Horn’s first major museum show in the U.K. is on view at Tate Modern through May 25. Watch a webcast of the Season 3 artist in conversation with curator James Lingwood; art historian Briony Fer; and Tate Curator Mark Godfrey here.
• Through June 1, two new videos by Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) are on view at the Museum Haus Esters Krefeld in Germany.
• Andrea Zittel and Shahzia Sikander (both Season 1) are included in Fashioning Felt at Cooper-Hewitt, a survey of more than 70 contemporary objects made of the material. The exhibition is on view through September 7.
• Ann Hamilton (Season 1) has collaborated with the Los Angeles-based workshop Gemini G.E.L. to produced new works, including three 3-dimensional objects and twenty-five prints. A reception with artist and a book signing will be held on March 19 from 6 to 8pm.

Art and Politics: An Introduction

FLASH POINTS is a regular conversational series that focuses on issues relevant to the state of the art world at large, contemporary art education, and issues artists face today. You can participate by contributing feedback, posing a follow-up question, sharing anecdotes, or suggesting new topics in the comments area below.

Up next on Flash Points, we introduce the topic of Art + Politics. Yes, we unashamedly admit, this is a timely topic riding the wave of excitement of Barack Obama becoming the nation’s first African-American President. But more broadly, the subject of art and politics has created countless books, symposia, exhibitions, and activist projects. Over the next six weeks we’ll explore the diverse ways that art and politics intersect, inform, overlap, and challenge each other. It is our hope that a discussion here on Flash Points will provide additional insight into the role of art in this particular moment in time. Is art inherently political, regardless of its intentions or motives? What role has political art played both in the history of art but also in the broader context of history? Can and will art participate in this new mandate of “change,” and if so, how?

Hans Haacke, MoMA Poll (1970)

Artists often deploy their work strategically to engage viewers in critical inquiry of social, economic, and political issues that define a particular moment. The 1970 work MoMA Poll, by Hans Haacke, asked viewers to answer the question, “Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon’s Indochina Policy be a reason for you not voting for him in November?” Museum-goers could vote and the results were visually represented in transparent ballot boxes. The artwork served as a form of political engagement in two ways. Not only did it function as a political poll, testing the unpopularity of Vietnam, but it also served as a form of institutional critique, as the Governor also served as a trustee of the Museum.

Defining movements in our national history like the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, the Gay Liberation Front, Feminism, Black Power, immigrant rights, and labor movements have greatly impacted our collective political and cultural memory. These social organizations and the significant issues they have addressed have provided additional opportunities and strategies for artists to work towards specific goals. In the 1980s, groups like the Guerilla Girls, Gran Fury, Group Material, and Colab took issues that were not seen as particularly political, such as the lack of female representation in museums and the AIDS crisis, and politicized them through dissemination of provocative images and information. Silence=Death, created by Gran Fury and adopted by the activist group Act-Up, is still a well-recognized icon now synonymous with HIV/AIDS activism. Both of these collectives waged media wars through art to draw attention to their causes, but they also battled with the Reagan administration and the political system as well. These are just two examples, but does art have to be partisan to be political?

Guerilla Girls, Do women have to be naked to get into U.S. museums? (2007) and Gran Fury, Silence=Death (1987)

Art consistently toys with notions of power, whether to comment on the horrors of war, as evidenced in the work of artists such as Richard Serra (Season 1) as well as other Art21 artists including Nancy Spero, Alfredo Jaar, and Jenny Holzer (all Season 4), or to pay homage to powerful figures, as reflected in more traditional forms such as monuments, presidential portraits, and religious imagery.

Richard Serra, Stop Bush (2004)

On the other hand, art can also serve the controversial function of propaganda, looking back upon court painters like Jacques-Louis David and Diego Velasquez to today’s Venice Biennale positioning contemporary artists as nation builders. What are the ties binding art, power, and patronage? Below is a recent portrait of George W. Bush that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. with a caption that reads, “. . . Bush found his two terms in office instead marked by a series of cataclysmic events: the attacks on September 11, 2001 which led to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina; and a financial crisis during his last months in office.” After much protest, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont persuaded the Smithsonian Institution to remove “led to” from the caption.

Robert Anderson, George W. Bush (2008)

To get the conversation started, here’s a recap of some of the questions we’ll be exploring in the coming weeks. Please help us frame the discussion by leaving a comment below.

• Is art inherently political, regardless of its intentions or motives or does art have to be partisan to be political?
• What role has political art played both in the history of art but also in the broader context of history?
• What ties bind art, power, and patronage?
• Can and will art participate in this new mandate of “change,” and if so, how?

Letter From London: Protest Too Much

Whichever candidate succeeds this November, there will be a discernible effect in art. The last eight years have seen a resurgence of politically motivated art comparable to that produced during and after the Vietnam War. Characterizing the nature of art made now is, of course, a quixotic and thankless task. Contemporary art is far too multifarious and globally produced, experienced, and consumed to be bracketed into an “ism.” However, an art born of outrage revitalizing art’s shock tactics has emerged within the last few years, and may be seeing its twilight in the run up to a new administration.

Political outrage can blast the subtlety out of artmaking, and not all attempts to articulate it have been successful. Too often, real events throw artists’ discontent into stark relief. Thomas Hirschhorn’s Superficial Engagement at Barbara Gladstone in 2005, nail-studded, gnarly, and startling, looked mute and minor in relation to the Abu Ghraib revelations.  A new show of work by veteran minimalist and performance artist Robert Morris at Spruth Magers in London has a pre-emptively archaic look to it: all inverted American flags, big black eagles, and screaming skulls in relief: theatrical, even camp in its outrage.

However, some works have addressed contemporary history with a lucidity and thoughtfulness that has asserted the importance of art as a forum for non-mainstream discussion. Mark Wallinger’s State Britain installation at Tate Britain was a rare example of a poised and poetic response to the curtailing of civil liberties that have taken place during the Iraq war, and is one of a number of more oblique responses to contemporary events that drag the discussion into the realm of art without compromising their efficacy as works of art (Alfredo Jaar’s and An-My Lê’s works operate on similar levels). And Maypole (Take No Prisoners) (2007), by fellow Protest artist Nancy Spero, might be this generation’s Guernica: a howl of pain and anger distilled into a direct visual language that feeds into a historical continuum of the human cost of war—the visual articulation of horrified disbelief. Graphically simple paintings on paper of human heads–screeching, wailing, vomiting–radiate suspended from blood-red threads around a maypole, conflating historical circularity (the pole itself recalls the grotesque folk ritual dramatised in The Wicker Man), the theatrics of warfare, and raw human emotion.

The example of Spero is, in fact, instructive; the best political art has always been able to be comprehended in mass-media contexts. It’s significant that Goya’s Third of May and Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa–both produced on the cusp of the mass-distribution period that produced Guernica, a painting that replicates the striations of newsprint–retain their visual currency in political cartoons. Conversely, successful photographic icons of wartime have a pictorial quality that links them to the heritage of painted protest. Staged propaganda photographs from the American Civil War and photographs of atrocities from Abu Ghraib share a compositional quality that taps into a subconscious compositional sympathy (Art21 guest blogger Emily Liebert has written succinctly and fascinatingly on the role of photography in wartime here).

The revival of protest in painting has re-engaged the connection between painted mark and emotional intensity muffled by the generation of post-Richter distanced photorealists. Increasing mistrust of mainstream media coverage and the euphemistic language of contemporary conflict may turn out to be art’s gain; we may return to it as the basic language of human understanding and communication. Whether or not that continues to be the case will, in part, depend upon what takes place in six weeks’ time.

First Opportunity at MAD and Last Chance at That Was Then…

Designed by Allied Works Architecture, the bigger and better Museum of Arts and Design opens this weekend in New York. Located in the dizzy vibrant Columbus Circle on the southwest corner of Central Park, the new space (doubled the old scale) will for the first time have dedicated acreage for its permanent collections, as well as educational facilities and a 155-seat auditorium.

The ribbon-cutting kicks off with the inaugural exhibition Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary. Featuring work and installations made from the ordinary and everyday, the smart and auspicious show includes artists and designers like the Campana Brothers, Tara Donovan, Xu Bing, El Anatsui, and Season 2’s Do Ho Suh, who contributes a jacket made of military dog tags.

Nearby in Queens, from openings to closings, you have three more days left to catch That Was Then… This Is Now, PS1’s 1960s-forward activist art exhibition that is divided into three parts, Flags, Weapons, and Dreams. The show’s conceptual framework places these representations as central to artists’ collective aspiration towards progress and explores themes of protest through elements of nationality, patriotism, violence, iconography, and graphic arts. The expansive list of artists include old and new, from Andy Warhol and Leon Golub to Jen Denike and Alfredo Jaar (Season 4).

Mining Ideas Part 2: Using Sketchbooks to Help Teach About Contemporary Art

Last week’s Teaching With Contemporary Art column, Mining Ideas, had some very interesting thoughts and perspectives submitted by Jennifer, Eric, and Sue. I want to continue the dialogue this week by suggesting two ways educators can use sketchbooks to influence teaching with and about contemporary art.

During our time working with Contemporary Art Start at MoCA, Los Angeles this past August, we asked participants to use their sketchbook to plan an installation or site-specific work inspired by a big idea after viewing and discussing Art:21 segments featuring Alfredo Jaar and Allora & Calzadilla. Participants were then encouraged, after seeing a variety of sketchbook samples, to literally think big and label their plans with specific media, effects, scale, site details, lighting, sound effects, etc. Many participants mentioned not having the chance to think and plan in this way before, but it was clear that there was a certain freedom in utilizing the sketchbook to plan for something that in the end may be too large (or expensive, or delicate) to actually build. What was important was the fact that participants thought through their idea and committed that idea to paper.

A second idea for utilizing sketchbooks in the classroom involves teaching students to use them while they view films about art and artists. Students can use their sketchbooks to jot down quotes, create questions for the artist, write a short reaction to a specific work, or even begin “working off” a particular artist to begin new ideas for themselves. Any of these starting points (and generating starting points can be one of the greatest uses for a sketchbook) can lead to thoughtful and exciting finished works of art.

Please feel free to share some specific ways you use sketchbooks in the classroom to influence teaching and learning by posting a comment below.