A Brief History of Combining Crap with Crap

I’m not Karen but I took the “weird” as a compliment to Noland (Dude Where’s My Car as opposed to Heathers). To my eye Fowler’s keyboard bustin’ through picture-framed collages is not out of step with the other images here. It might be different in a room, but we will likely never see all these objects together in real space.

I am jumping in here late( on vacation)- Karen great topic I think you are on to something here. For all the critics- sounds like you need a vacation. This is an a-list of artists – we love trash art for all the reasons Tom listed. Whats with lazy writing being a bad thing. Sounds like Calvinism. Anyone thinking about art in August is hardcore. Rock-on Art Fag City. Harrison”s Lobster’s are really in Vogue now – kinda like M. Streep killing one with a huge knife as Julia Childs. Funny how fashion changes not long ago lobsters were limited in # per week that they could be fed to servants. One person’s trash is anothers art and vice versa….

Justin- two books that come to mind that have added much to how we can intelligently think about and discuss works of art that use assemblagist or designating strategies: Martha Buskirk’s The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art and John Robert’s Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade.

And to flesh out Tom’s excellent list a little bit, I developed a practice that uses found objects and juxtaposition as both a rejection and broadening of traditional approaches. I cut my teeth in the 90s when artists like Noland, Tuttle, Janine Antoni, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and others influenced many in how we think of the weight and complexity of meaning behind objects, the consideration of materials and context, and employment of attitude.

For the most part, it is an oversimplification to say using objects and contingent strategies is just a continuation of Duchamp. One would really need to consider precursor developments by Fluxus artists as well as the above mentioned. I am not saying all contemporary artists are aware of the continuum they are working within or that all make significant contributions to that continuum, but the concepts are there. “Crap on crap” is fine as well, a bit pithy and limiting but since I love my friend Deborah Fisher’s idea of “Crapture” I can only embrace everything said in this article as well.

AS far as the criticism of this blogpost or the blog in general, my 2 cents is that I have been enjoying AFC for years, along with Edward Winkleman’s it is part of my daily routine. It has mostly been an entertaining oultet and a source of some interesting webites, art, and other wackiness, but there has also been some great insight expressed over the years. Its not trying to be Artforum and I dont expect it to have fully fleshed out critical analysis, it has its own quirky, shoot-from-the-hip feel that fits its irreverent title.

And yes, thinking about art in August is hardcore!

@Huh? There’s nothing wrong about using the word weird to describe Cady Noland’s work or career. Did you read the stories in the link to the auxiliary story on the unauthorized Triple Candie retrospective?

Just last year I used the same word to describe Jeff Koons’ shtick about sense of self in his art work in Art Review, and nobody complained. I’m simply not going to entertain complaints on this site that the language isn’t specialized enough to be meaningful.

Yes I agree my advice was disingenuous, my apologies, I clearly crossed the line. nI do think this is an interesting topic and if I could salvage any conversation I might add a few things.nnnTom, as to your 10 points, I am interested to hear which artists in particular you feel are successfully making work within this criteria. I think some are at odds with others, so clearly the same artist would not be making work with all of the same bullet points, but the ones that interested me the most are:n4. “Nihilism.” (I can only imagine a performance artist here)n8. A way to be political without sloganeering. (I think this can lead to very smart work – I think of Tom Friedman’s styrofoam cup stack http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425972332/424410353/tom-friedman-untitled-styrofoam-cups.html)n10. New trash (web and technology cast-offs) necessitates new ways of arranging trash (and new content unknown to Rauschenberg, et al). (This is something I’ve thought of for a long time – trash changes as technology changes – it becomes a different aesthetic altogether. what was trash like before plastics?)nnI think that Gerwald Rockenschaub’s work is very interesting – nThanks for the introduction, Karen.nalthough I would consider it cheap as apposed trashy. It reminds me more minimal stockholder, in the way she uses new plastic items. I think the interesting tie to these things as trash is that is easy to see items like these in the landfills – they are so abundant and disposable – they may as well be refuse as soon as they are purchased. There is something so temporary about an inflatable mattress. I’m surprised mine has lasted me for 4 years…nnKaren, I think it is out of place for me to judge your writing, I could have seen myself enjoying this piece a lot more if it weren’t for just a few of the elements, clearly I was ticked off by the mention of the last artist. I just think it would have been more effective had you explained your distaste for his work, rather than just stamping it as crappy.nI do think you are setting up some interesting comparisons, but I’d be interested in hearing more on how they relate to each other.nnonwards,nmanzoni

Hi,

Karen Archey must have been on to something if this post elicited such defensive remarks.

I think whenever the issue becomes “spelling” the reproached is automatically the winner. (guilty)

To draw from Tom Moody’s list: for me personally, far and away the most important reason is #6 “Avoidance of known art materials”. I don’t know why this seems so important that I want to universalize it. A friend told me they were eager to get into a wood shop and my initial (internal) reaction was that the resulting work would be too artful and forced, which is obviously idiotic. For me personally, it’s the “air of indifference” and that “I didn’t really try hard,” which isn’t true, but that’s part of it. I want it to look that way. I think this comes out of my few, earnest years as a painter–I would try really hard, and it would show, and still no one would care. (The paintings also weren’t good.) At least this way I can save face.

I was reading a Greenberg essay recently and it is always nice to read something from decades ago (in this case 40 years ago) that is completely relevant today–it makes you realize you’re not on to something as relevant and “avant-garde” as you think you are. I think a edited extract, although lacking some context, is relevant here. I don’t agree with it all, and I think it can be said that two-dimensional work is no longer necessarily “pictorial”, but there’s something to that assertion.

“The case of what passes nowadays for advanced-advanced art has its fascination. This isn’t owed to the quality of the art; rather it has to do with its very lack of quality. [...]

Something like a break in the continuity of sculptural taste has appeared: something that looks, even, like a vacuum of taste. This ostensible vacuum has come in opportunely for academic sensibility that wants to mask itself. Here is the chance to escape not just from strict taste, but from taste as such. And it’s in this vacuum that avant-gardist art has produced, and performed, its most daring and spectacular novelties. But this vacuum also explains, finally, why they all come out so un-new, why phenomenal and configurational innovation doesn’t coincide the way it used to with the genuinely artistic kind.

Art that realizes–and formalizes–itself in disregard of artistic expectations of any kind, or in response only to rudimentary ones, sinks to the level of that unformalized and infinitely realizable, sub academic, sub-kitsching art–that sub-art which is yet art–whose ubiquitousness I called attention to earlier. [...] Some recent art that happens not at all to be avant-gardist in spirit gets admired precisely when it fails to move you and because of what makes it fail to do so.”

CG “Counter-Avant-Garde”

At the end I think he’s talking about “conceptual art”

Maybe that’s not that interesting.

AFC #1

In a gallery, any consumer product will stand out as “trash”. There is a tremendous amount of design and meaning invested in everyday items, making them potent but also risky materials. As with all sampling techniques there is a delicacy balance.

The work can be elegant and tasteful, with a touch of whimsy introduced by the texture of the materials. Or it can become overwhelming and obnoxious when poorly considered.

This might be a good forum to bring to light a forgotten, but important artist from the 80s, Nick Moore. His work definitely owes a great deal to Rauschenberg, but he has without a doubt influenced some of the more established “assemblage” artists working today. He was working much of his career in Ohio, which I think was the reason his career never took off. A good intro to Nick Moore’s work here.

A Brief History of Combining Crap with Crap is the best title of earth, but infact I suggest you might do a real exhibition once more: Combining Crêpes with Crêpes as opening menue and Creeps with Creeps as crowd-individuals.

thanks in advance, anja christine

It seems that the next to last point of our “discussion”-comment is a close, a closing of a letter or just closing words which are/is loosing. Do not be angry!