Last weekend I headed down to sunny Miami for the art fairs. Wandering around the containers and hotel rooms, tents and convention centers in which the thousands and thousands of art pieces were displayed and sold and more or less consumed by countless pairs of eyes, I began to feel a little ill.
True, I was struggling with sinus infection; but, like everyone else, I was also afflicted by that peculiar weariness and dismay that I associate with the overwhelming experience of wandering from shopping mall to shopping mall at Christmas time. (Actually, I never do that, but you catch my drift.) You're reminded, in the most powerful way imaginable, of the troubling relationship between the production of art and its consumption: at one booth in the NADA fair, I saw a young artist frantically producing scribbled drawings which were whisked from under his pen and promptly sold as fast as he could make them. Afterwards, when I went to my car to catch my flight back to New York, an emaciated and homeless woman of my age approached me for money. In addition to the normal confusion of charitable and not-so-charitable feelings that the situation provoked, I also felt a pang of unease about my membership, in the eyes of this woman, of the moneyed and privileged elite that was so richly represented at the fairs. It was a unsettling reminder of the world of art is many ways complicit in the inequalities of the larger culture—precisely those inequalities, in fact, that enabled me to have such a good time in Miami.
All of this leads me to contemplate, for the thousandth time, the peculiar life of an individual work of art. What starts of as a precious and private imaginative intuition, becomes, in the solitude and struggle of the studio, a complex and nuanced object that invites complex and nuanced contemplation. It seems an odd destiny, then, for an artwork to wind up as a component of a shopping event that, however prestigious and financially rewarding for the artist, inevitably devalues the process which gave rise to its creation.
Anyhow, enough of that.
The point is, it was great relief that on my return I dropped in at Mixed Greens and appreciated afresh, er, my show. Actually, it was great to stroll around Chelsea and see the efforts of artists and gallerists in their proper context. A part of my pleasure was located in the fact that here was a neighborhood devoted to art, and here was art in its proper dimensions, separated from the globalization phenomenon. Intimacy was restored; and intimacy, it so happens, is an aesthetic quality that my work explores and, I hope, generates. Commodification is part and parcel of any show; but in Chelsea there is still a role for the person who wanders into a new space, eyes and heart open, just looking.
Joan Linder
December 2005
See selected images and details from Joan's show at Mixed Greens. (The complete portfolio can be seen at www.mixedgreens.com.)
True, I was struggling with sinus infection; but, like everyone else, I was also afflicted by that peculiar weariness and dismay that I associate with the overwhelming experience of wandering from shopping mall to shopping mall at Christmas time. (Actually, I never do that, but you catch my drift.) You're reminded, in the most powerful way imaginable, of the troubling relationship between the production of art and its consumption: at one booth in the NADA fair, I saw a young artist frantically producing scribbled drawings which were whisked from under his pen and promptly sold as fast as he could make them. Afterwards, when I went to my car to catch my flight back to New York, an emaciated and homeless woman of my age approached me for money. In addition to the normal confusion of charitable and not-so-charitable feelings that the situation provoked, I also felt a pang of unease about my membership, in the eyes of this woman, of the moneyed and privileged elite that was so richly represented at the fairs. It was a unsettling reminder of the world of art is many ways complicit in the inequalities of the larger culture—precisely those inequalities, in fact, that enabled me to have such a good time in Miami.
All of this leads me to contemplate, for the thousandth time, the peculiar life of an individual work of art. What starts of as a precious and private imaginative intuition, becomes, in the solitude and struggle of the studio, a complex and nuanced object that invites complex and nuanced contemplation. It seems an odd destiny, then, for an artwork to wind up as a component of a shopping event that, however prestigious and financially rewarding for the artist, inevitably devalues the process which gave rise to its creation.
Anyhow, enough of that.
The point is, it was great relief that on my return I dropped in at Mixed Greens and appreciated afresh, er, my show. Actually, it was great to stroll around Chelsea and see the efforts of artists and gallerists in their proper context. A part of my pleasure was located in the fact that here was a neighborhood devoted to art, and here was art in its proper dimensions, separated from the globalization phenomenon. Intimacy was restored; and intimacy, it so happens, is an aesthetic quality that my work explores and, I hope, generates. Commodification is part and parcel of any show; but in Chelsea there is still a role for the person who wanders into a new space, eyes and heart open, just looking.
Joan Linder
December 2005
See selected images and details from Joan's show at Mixed Greens. (The complete portfolio can be seen at www.mixedgreens.com.)
Joan, Joan, Joan. We still love your work but much ado about nothin'. Take a bow, accept your accolades, take a part in your capitalist society. Your art is beautiful, but it's still a business.
Posted by: Caribbean Gyul | Friday, December 09, 2005 at 11:43 PM
Part 1
Moscow and NYC have more in common than Miami and NYC. Mexico City and London and NYC have more in common than Miami. Don't think too much about Miami.
Part 2
If anyone is reading this, here's one person that thinks your show represents perhaps the best blind contour drawings extant today. Even if they're not blind contour, or semi-blind contour, they have the line of a master and they belong in major musuem collections. Here's to getting them there.
Posted by: Linderfan | Friday, December 09, 2005 at 11:58 PM