Will Lady Gaga Transcend Her Tampon Costume?

@everybody What I meant other day when I offered that there was zero difference between Gaga and Abramovic is simply this: That the art world is being inexorably absorbed into the larger entertainment-industrial complex, and there is no going back.

Paddy can talk about how differently art is received, say, on Bravo than it would be in a gallery or museum; Jesse can talk about the difference in the significance of Abamovic’s work, compared to the lack therefore in the efforts of Gaga. It’s all irrelevant. What’s at issue is the big picture as I mention above but let me try to restate here: that the production and consumption of what we used to regard as fine art is being monetized for a mass audience.

The Tim Burton show had the third highest attendance figure in MoMA’s history; only shows by Picasso and Matisse garnered larger crowds. This is hardly lost on the people who run MoMA, and I’m sure everyone here will agree that the place has huge overhead costs.

However much one wants to argue the art-historical significance of Abramovic’s work, there is no doubt that her retrospective was staged with a mass audience in mind. Hence, the performance piece/staring contest/shoot-out at the center of show, complete with movie lights and FLICKR page filled with celebrity cameos; also the young, lithe nude actors in the re-stagings of her key pieces.

No accidents here, people, and it’s not just the museum world, but galleries as well. To whit: New York Gallery Week—of which, yes, TONY is official media sponsor, so I suppose my description of the way things are going as I see them could be described as self-serving—if I was actually making any money off the deal, or felt comfortable about the whole thing, which I am not and do not. It’s just clear to me what’s happening.

The ultimate outcome will be to resolve how the business of the galleries are conducted (dealing with a limited elite group of paying customers, otherwise known as collectors) with the way museum’s conduct theirs (presumably, everyone else). Art fairs, have, in fact, already changed the equation. It used to be that collectors would come to the galleries to buy work; that is no longer the case. Yet the effort and expense of hanging monthly shows continues, so who are those exhibitions meant for, and how do they factor in to the necessary task of staying in business? The answer is still up in the air from what I can tell.

i’ve got no opinion on points 1, 2 and 5 but for 3 & 4 i would definitely propose an alternative, especially as those are BG (beyond gaga) issues:

3: it’s only ridiculous if you are playing with the vague meanings of the words “artist” and “performer”, in which case there’s loads of overlap. if you look at the goals and contexts of most commercial music performers, they are different than those of most contemporary artists and there’s no indication that lady gaga has anything to say about the latter.

#4 drawing a line of what is art is different than drawing a line saying “this art takes on the practices and contexts that have been read as art, and this art doesn’t”. i just don’t believe we live in a monoculture, i do believe our cultural forms are defined by reference, and the references of the former are generally what define contemporary art. even if there’s some small aspect of lady gaga’s work that might have something to say about contemporary art, there’s no indication that the decisions to create it were hers. she writes the tunes, most everything else is the machine, and it doesn’t keep people who are concerned about the histories of pop music from saying quite substantial things about it.

thats no reason to keep lady gaga from performing anywhere, just like it’s no reason to say keep martin creed’s band off the radio. but his band is not the same as his art practice (i’ve asked him) and that’s even when they are coming from almost identical process-based systems. sure we can read one as the other if we feel like, but beyond the “is it, isn’t it” that this discussion is doing, i don’t think there’s much to get into.

@collinlafleche It’s not my fault MoMA’s programming is safe and PBD puts it exactly right when he says, “sure gaga’s an artist but only because of the vague definition of the word”.

I also think it’s weird to say I have an obsession with Lady Gaga. Art news sources have been covering the whole Biesenbach/Byrne/Gaga thing for two weeks now, and I’ve only now written a single post on the subject. This is hardly obsessive coverage.

Anyway, I do have the sense that people want to talk about media phenomenons and that the driving force behind this has to do with money, (which we call a lot of these things these days that don’t sound the same ie: entertainment).

What I edited out of my comment to Howard a while back, re-iterates what he just wrote.

“We’re not there yet. We’ve got at least two years before 20×200 starts running double editions of Gaga and Abramovic”

It was a joke based on real things, but I removed because of the nagging doubt that going to too many art fairs was coloring the way I look at art. But you know, in my experience on the blog, people don’t want to talk about art that isn’t also part of the marketplace. On some very basic level we not only understand stuff better that’s for sale and believe in its merit.

I’m digressing here, but ultimately I think this is the issue net artists are still working through.

@gianni i’d suggest just the opposite here: that the mass consumption of lady gaga images is rather uninteresting. at least compared to the images of wildebeasts fighting lions, holidaymakers snuggling up to seals and people setting farts on fire that are watched even more than lady gaga images and don’t have a concerted industry effort to get people to watch them (and even then those images aren’t terribly interesting to me in relation to art practice, but hey thats my practice). the effect of networked distribution as it relates to audience that you find interesting has little to do with lady gaga specfically, i’d think.

@howard i’d posit that a small minority of what we use to regard as fine art is being monetized for a mass audience, and it’s a specific minority that’s already been familiarized to mainstream taste. certainly artworks are being represented and dealt outside of the traditional gallery, and i’m curious to see how the chips will fall too, but the post-entertainment-industrial complex and the internet (where all art IS being inexorably absorbed) are not the same thing.

@Halle: There’s nothing new about art being mass-produced for mass-consumption. Maybe the rate & degree by which this is happening has accelerated (due in a large part by CEC), but there needs to be efforts made to contextualize — and give meaning to — artwork and artists who will inevitably be folded into the predominant paradigm of late-capitalist-spectacle-everything-culture.

To dismiss (and declare as “irrelevant”) the significance of artworks/artists and how they are received & differentiated suggests that such efforts at resisting total monetization for the sake of mass-consumption are mere exercises in futility. Such a view also suggests that applying connoisseurship, meaning, criticality, scholarship, experience, subjectivity, etc., are outmoded whimpers into the void. Flattening Abramovic’s life’s work into the fledgling (albeit as an international superstar) career of Gaga is negligent, as is equating the popularity of a museum/gallery exhibit with the significance of what’s being shown & why.

To my knowledge, the “Degenerate ‘Art’” show remains the most widely attended Modern Art show to date. To discuss that phenomenon solely through a the lens of a generalized economic business-plan (“big picture”) rather than invoking one’s own ethical, moral, aesthetic, intellectual, cultural, and poetic facilities would, I think, make a good case as to why we constantly need to reappraise — in an informed way — who & what defines art. Only privileging the perspective of the “big picture” just further abstracts everything and feeds into what drives the “big picture” in the first place: a cynical refusal to seek knowledge beyond what’s popularly deemed as relevant or useful, while also abstaining from the risky business of sharing your own feelings & experiences with a given artist or work.

@pbd I would think Gaga is more interesting than lions, etc…because she is presented as an “artist” and “performer” – and this is how she overlaps with the artworld. The images you have described are less interesting in that regard because they are not self-reflexive. Gaga has to do with “celebrity”, as a joke.

The artworld has flirted with celebrity for so long and failed to produce a remarkable “celebrity”. In the arts you have the hipsters who are in the fashion magazines but they are actually conservative when it comes to images of themselves or their work. Even Jeff Koons comes off as an oily overpaid CEO.

I used to be into “avant-guarde” until I spent enough time in New York to realize that it was basically a club busy re-hashing ideas that were about a century old…and that one has to really conform and win the approval of the tribal elders…there is nothing radical about a roped-off club.

Calling something not art, is the fastest way to make that thing art. It is natural. It is quantum physics. It reminds me of Schrodinger’s Cat. Two cats are in two different boxes. The boxes are so far away that there is no way that they are connected. Both cats are alive until you look into one of the boxes. If you look in one of the boxes and the cat is dead then the other cat is definitely alive, even though they have no known connection. And if you look into one of the boxes and the cat is alive then the other cat in the other box is dead. So lady gaga is or is not art until you call her not art now she is art. Klaus should have never opened that box.

@gianni i definitely agree about the “avant-garde”, and i think that’s probably why when most people use the term they refer to a specific set of dead people and practices, not anything that’s happening today. the hipster and celebrity comments i guess i’m with but i don’t really know what hipster means anymore.

but who is presenting gaga as an artist – when she obviously isn’t – and why? if it’s just to get people in the door at a museum, which is what i can gather from this discussion, there’s nothing interesting about that.

gaga vs. lions, i’d still hold that the cause here i.e. why a certain image is viewed a million times, is mostly down to the means of distribution, not her being presented as an artist. the fact that somebody is paying good money to get gaga images up and get you to view them empties it a bit for me compared to images that are up for reasons i really have to work out and no one cares whether i view them or not.

best to go with one’s instincts on this one. trust them and don’t be swayed by opinions.

@Mark: quantum mechanics don’t work in the macro world, much less in the cultural world.

I agree with Paddy, Gaga (who I enjoy, mind you) is not an artist. I even have my doubts about Marina (oh, horrors!).

“We’re not there yet. We’ve got at least two years before 20×200 starts running double editions of Gaga and Abramovic”

Paddy-this quote is brilliant!

@Jesse Let me be clear: I don’t think attempts to ascertain qualitative differences are futile; I’m merely saying one shouldn’t forget the forest for the trees.

When I was 14 years old (1969) my best friend and I went to a halloween party as siamese twin tampons. We cut 2 holes in a sheet stuck our heads through, tied a red string in our hair and doused ourselves with ketchup. We were the hit of the party! 40 years later? meh…

@Howard: Your saying that there’s “zero difference” between Gaga & Abramovic was what I was responding to, a point that was reinforced by your subsequent post which stated that “there is no going back” and that “it’s all irrelevant” to the “big picture.” Such statements seem to eschew the need for “ascertain(ing) qualitative differences” at all. Maybe I’m misconstruing your invoking such final-sounding declarations as more than “merely saying” (maybe you’re just being hyperbolic, polemical), but I took your point as reflecting a very strong belief that the “forest” is all that matters now, and that the “trees” are “irrelevant.” I agree that we have to consider both, but you appeared to be emphatically privileging one above the other… and then backpedaling when this provoked a response.

Art makes me think. Lady Gaga does not.