Peter Schjeldahl on After Nature at the New Museum

by Art Fag City on August 7, 2008 · 8 comments

christenberry.jpg
William Christenberry, Kudzu with Storm Cloud, near Akron, Alabama, 1981.
Chromogenic color print, 16 x 22 inches.  Image via: The New Museum and Pace/MacGill, New York

A clip from Peter Schjeldahl’s excellent review of After Nature at the New Museum.

If the common run of contemporary art risks triviality in the pursuit of seduction, the new kind incurs hysteria as a toll of earnest intensity. Emotional reach exceeds formal grasp throughout the show, and certain melodramatic lurches fail entirely. (I don’t care what Robert Kusmirowski intends by his painstaking reconstruction of the Una-bomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin; it’s dumb.) But the futility of artistic technique in the face of world conditions may constitute a subject for art as substantial as any other, and rather more compelling than today’s stacked-deck models of success. Bhabha’s gruesome death’s-head neatly—that is to say, messily—critiques Damien Hirst’s famous diamond-encrusted skull, which sold last year for a reported hundred million dollars. Work like Bhabha’s tacitly cancels the credit of artists who allude to terror and horror without personal investment. Existentialist standards of authenticity may be back in force, however fleetingly. How much can we bear of art that, like Sebald’s writing, glories in bottomless malaise? I expect we’ll find out.

Read the full article at The New Yorker.

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  • http://tommoody.us tom moody

    That’s a great Bill Christenberry photo. The light (and everything else about it) looks so artificial but he’s all about “straight shooting.”

    I haven’t seen the show but wish Schjeldahl wouldn’t read the zeitgeist into one curator’s choices. There’s a million objects out there and a million ways to spin them.

  • http://tommoody.us tom moody

    That’s a great Bill Christenberry photo. The light (and everything else about it) looks so artificial but he’s all about “straight shooting.”

    I haven’t seen the show but wish Schjeldahl wouldn’t read the zeitgeist into one curator’s choices. There’s a million objects out there and a million ways to spin them.

  • Anon

    One of the best art reviews I have read in years. Moving actually.

  • Anon

    One of the best art reviews I have read in years. Moving actually.

  • Art Fag City

    Tom: It is, though in person it’s disappointing. It’s a digital print on paper – I find the texture of the paper distracting, and some of the richness of the print lost, as the paper absorbs a lot of the ink rather than photographs where the ink neatly sits on top.

    The show is uneven, but ultimately I liked it. I don’t really have too much problems with Schjeldahl’s read. I think it’s a given that there’s a million ways to interpret a show, and a million ways to apply it larger cultural trends so the question, is really whether what Schjeldahl sees is of value to others. For me the idea of the futility of artistic technique in the face of world conditions felt very profound. I agree that it may not be appropriate to apply that brush stroke quite so broadly, but by the same token, I don’t think the ideas are dismissable.

  • Art Fag City

    Tom: It is, though in person it’s disappointing. It’s a digital print on paper – I find the texture of the paper distracting, and some of the richness of the print lost, as the paper absorbs a lot of the ink rather than photographs where the ink neatly sits on top.

    The show is uneven, but ultimately I liked it. I don’t really have too much problems with Schjeldahl’s read. I think it’s a given that there’s a million ways to interpret a show, and a million ways to apply it larger cultural trends so the question, is really whether what Schjeldahl sees is of value to others. For me the idea of the futility of artistic technique in the face of world conditions felt very profound. I agree that it may not be appropriate to apply that brush stroke quite so broadly, but by the same token, I don’t think the ideas are dismissable.

  • http://tommoody.us tom moody

    Interesting about the Christenberry. He was a teacher of mine. A bit of history on him: he is a conceptual artist working in several media whose art deals with his Alabama roots. He was using little Brownie snapshots as visual aids to make miniatures of barns, etc. (See http://www.tommoody.us/archives/2007/07/25/red-dirt-of-mars-and-alabama/)

    Curators coming to his studio responded to the photos as Eggleston-ish “art photography,” which led to his career as a photographer (as opposed to “conceptual artist using photography”) included in group shows with Walker Evans, et al.

    I hate to talk about the permanence of art but it may be a problem with ancient color snapshots, for some. Sounds like he’s going the digital route, and yeah, it’s hard to get the same intimacy or clarity as old snapshots have.

    Re: the Schjeldahl, what he sees is of value to others, but I would find it more valuable if he didn’t accept the curator’s frame so completely. “The art world used to be happy but now it is sad” is the kind of thing that was said about the last Biennial–it sounds facile to me. But then, I’m a “happy” artist and a supporter of sugar cereal eating Reagan kids (as someone once said on my blog).

  • http://tommoody.us tom moody

    Interesting about the Christenberry. He was a teacher of mine. A bit of history on him: he is a conceptual artist working in several media whose art deals with his Alabama roots. He was using little Brownie snapshots as visual aids to make miniatures of barns, etc. (See http://www.tommoody.us/archives/2007/07/25/red-dirt-of-mars-and-alabama/)

    Curators coming to his studio responded to the photos as Eggleston-ish “art photography,” which led to his career as a photographer (as opposed to “conceptual artist using photography”) included in group shows with Walker Evans, et al.

    I hate to talk about the permanence of art but it may be a problem with ancient color snapshots, for some. Sounds like he’s going the digital route, and yeah, it’s hard to get the same intimacy or clarity as old snapshots have.

    Re: the Schjeldahl, what he sees is of value to others, but I would find it more valuable if he didn’t accept the curator’s frame so completely. “The art world used to be happy but now it is sad” is the kind of thing that was said about the last Biennial–it sounds facile to me. But then, I’m a “happy” artist and a supporter of sugar cereal eating Reagan kids (as someone once said on my blog).

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