please be advised

Review of Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" at the Brooklyn Museum

 Let’s first lay down some highlights of the artist’s achievements for the feminist cause: Judy Chicago (American, born 1939) was one of the pioneers of the feminist art movement in the 70’s, a major figure that directly challenged the marginalization of women in the art world. Not only did she pave the way for forging a new female creative language through her own visual works, according to Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, Chicago, along with Miriam Schapiro, was one of “the first people to theorize and develop a form of education in the visual arts based on feminism,” through the Feminist Art Program at CalArts and Womanhouse (66). In an interview with Broude and Garrard, Chicago claims that her idea of feminist extends beyond gender, as “a set of principles, and a way of looking at the world that... is rooted in a redefinition of power—from power over others to empowerment,” an effort to escape from the oppression enforced by “the patriarchal paradigm” (72, 73). In terms of her art, this means discovering “a new language, which finally showed [her] the social circumstances of [her] female condition;” in terms of her pedagogical methods, this means “doing remedial education, and, also, providing them with information about their history as women” (74, 67).

Having acknowledged her contribution to making the art world a more friendly place for women, let us proceed to look at the actual work, The Dinner Party. The work first premiered in San Francisco, 1979, and took five years to complete. It is essentially a very elaborate ceremonial banquet for 1,038 women in history, 39 of whom are privileged with personalized place settings (though most are all just varying depictions of the same flowery vagina/”butterfly”), and 999 of whose existences are noted by their names inscribed in gold on the floor tiles. Chicago has hung six entry banners leading into the triangular banquet room that sound intentionally (but also embarrassingly) Biblical:

And she gathered all before her

And she made for them a sign to see [a triangle, that supposedly signifies equality]

And lo they saw a vision

From this day forth like to like in all things

And then all that divided them merged

And then everywhere was Eden once again

Upon exiting, the visitor encounters the “Heritage Panels,” also titled the “Herstory Gallery,” (just in case he/she didn’t get it while looking at the 1,038 names written all over the room—another cringe-worthy element of the show), which chronicles and highlights various achievements by women throughout history.

Certainly the message is clear: elevate the vagina to the status of the phallus; honor these important women, who too have contributed to history, but have been systematically written out; educate our women now so they may learn about their great female predecessors so we can finally achieve gender equality. Chicago attains this directness by the repeated use of symbols such as the triangle and what she calls an “active vaginal form,” as well as a dominant focus on crafts (weaving, embroidery, pottery, etc.) that have been historically designated as women’s work. It is wonderful that she chose to weave her entry banners by the vertical or high-warp technique, from which Renaissance women were prohibited from practicing at the time that it was popular; I’m sure that it was all a very empowering experience for the female artisans on her crew. And certainly, the craftsmanship throughout the rest of the project is very beautiful to look at.

But I see a major problem in Chicago’s work, namely that not only is the work itself dull (a large-scale high school art project involving professional artisans instead of amateurs), the artist does not execute in her work what she claims to be doing: the attempt to create a new visual language for women and the redefinition of power. This is because all elements of The Dinner Party—the banners, table settings, and historical chronology—do not depart much (if at all) from what has traditionally been the visual language of the culturally dominant group: the rich, white, Anglo, heterosexual male. Chicago has simply replaced the male guests with women, replaced the phallic symbols with vulvae. There is no doubt that she empowers these women—the banquet, prepared by countless invisible hands of the oppressed, was the ultimate display of socio-political and economic power, an indulgent activity enjoyed exclusively by the privileged few—but only through the very same method by which the women have been oppressed throughout history, a method of domination over others. I see no such attempt to establish an ambience of equality (besides the very lazy insertion of the triangle motif); Chicago’s supposed attempt to own the oppressor’s language instead manifests itself as another affirmation of the latter’s domination and the defeat of women.

Is this the only method by which a woman can articulate her social experience? By copying, pasting, and doing some hurried edits on the work of the number one student in the class? Perhaps it is the 21^st century cynic that is writing these words, and I must give more credit to the pioneer of American feminist art for attempting anything at all. However, Chicago’s method no longer flies in contemporary times, when there now exist more sophisticated investigations into gender and sexual identity; her approach appears dogmatic, authoritative, reductive, and oppressive. We can view The Dinner Party as a historical reference, but in order to achieve what Chicago has claimed as her vision, we must question the issues at hand with far more rigor than what she has executed with this particular work.

hall of fame

Review of "Hide/Seek" at the Brooklyn Museum

 Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably, my high hopes for the arrival of Hide/Seek to the Brooklyn Museum—the first major museum exhibition focused on sexual identity—was met with a good deal of disappointment. I don’t deny that the Smithsonian scandal played a major role in the untethered growth of this expectation: the battle between David Wojnarowicz’s film, Fire in My Belly and old Republican Congressmen fueled the hype that I fed it without considering the overall context of the show. In the end, however, I was forced to admit my own delusion, that the media attention was simply an issue about Wojnarowicz’s work (not so much concern about the exhibit itself), and yet another public affirmation of the Republicans’ age-old political enslavement to Christian values.

The show itself, then, was an interesting, but still less an enlightening experience: the kind that you would travel forty minutes from Manhattan, but probably not an hour and a half from Long Island City to see. As both Roberta Smith and Holland Cotter for The New York Times have pointed out, Hide/Seek’s curators, Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward, rely heavily on (the now) well-known, queer historical names to constitute the bulk of their presentation. Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ellen DeGeneres: these easily recognizable figures serve merely as affirmation rather than a change of an existing perspective on complexities of sexuality and sexual identity as treated throughout Western history.

Indeed, however, the gem of the show, Wojnarowicz’s video, temporarily put an end to my own dissatisfied mutterings. That piece single-handedly pushed through the mildness of the show’s other selections to come forth as the blunt and didactic side of the silenced narrative: the anger and pain behind homosexual marginalization during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s. Homosexuality is not a secondary fact to be noted in the lives of these modern artists and historical icons, who merely passed with muted acquiescence in normative guises; homosexuality (also transsexuality and gender-bending) constitutes an all-too-present reality that can sometimes takes lives. The curatorial work seems to compile a list of famous examples, as opposed to presenting a thorough investigation. Not all art or curatorial work needs to be didactic in regard to these discourses, but the issues at hand require a more serious acknowledgement of the stakes in question for the non-heterosexual male than what is made by Katz and Ward: namely, these individuals’ erasure from history. Harmony Hammond has written of lesbian artists: ”We do not have a history. We are not even visible to each other” (128). Hide/Seek does make these sexual identities visible, but treads back, having offered little or no critical commentary, which is an amazing feat considering the number of explanatory placards placed next to every single piece on the walls. After viewing the selections and overwhelming amount of text, still a pertinent question lingers ever so forcefully: “So... now what?”

The awkward cliff-hanger quality of the exhibit becomes especially pronounced through the curators’ choice of the time frame. The visitor’s entrance into the gallery space introduces her to the 1898 Salutat by Thomas Eakins, an all-male composition with a barely clothed boxer as the central figure of physical admiration that is an early example of homoeroticism, timidly expressed under the constraints of its time. She then follows the rest of the works that are arranged by chronological order—some 20^th century portraits of poets like Frank O’Hara, more cryptic canvases by David Hockney and Jasper Johns—then finally ends at the 1990’s with works that provide explicit commentary on sexual identity and the handling of the AIDS during the epidemic: Wojnarowicz’s Untitled (Face in Dirt), c. 1990, made after his own death sentence by the diagnosis of the disease, Félix González-Torres’ “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991, an endlessly replenishing mound of candy piled up in response to his lover’s death, and other such works.

But just a reminder that the year is now 2012: where are the works that were made in the last two decades? Cutting off the show at a point in history when a significant percentage of the gay population perished because of a society’s unwillingness to recognize its own problems as such, Hide/Seek offers a perspective on the future of the non-heterosexual-male identity that appears morbidly bleak.

luxury toilet paper

Review of "Grisaille" at Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery @ 64 E. 77th St. New York, NY 10075

 The title of Luxembourg & Dayan’s latest exhibition in New York City makes no attempt to deceive; Grisaille, a term applied to gray monochrome Renaissance paintings, consists precisely of works—spanning from the 16^th century to the present—that are almost entirely in such a palette. However, while the gallery’s press release claims the show “explores broadly the conceptual impact of a centuries-old painting paradigm upon key figures of modern and contemporary art,” its execution provides quite the contrary impression. The overall effect of its installation: an emphasis on the curatorial interests of Alison Gingeras, as opposed to a platform that provides fresh insight into individual works. Further exaggerated by the works’ contrast against the gallery’s brightly painted walls, the result is an ostentatious exercise in interior decoration that may attract attention mostly because the Ikea vases and $30 wall décor have been replaced by Frank Stellas and Jeff Koons busts. Incidentally, what I enjoyed most about the show was the untitled bathroom installation piece by Bjarne Melgaard, most likely because it was one of the few pieces that was able to break apart from Gingeras’ curatorial grips. As far as the “theme” was concerned, I saw little trace of grisaille’s influence on Melgaard’s motivation for the piece; it only seemed to belong there because the colors suited the show’s purposes. Other works were less fortunate since they were easier to render as objects, and therefore prone to being lost as one of many props in the curator’s own large-scale (but still cramped) installation.

Repulsive or comical? On one hand, the show creates major difficulties in appreciating each great work individually—some, I might say, that deserve a room of their own to give them justice—and beyond mere form and color. Especially atrocious examples this crime were the blue room on the second floor containing works portraying the female figure and the red room on the fourth floor that contained canvases with various lacy motifs. On the other hand, it is amazing to consider that the curator can so effectively strip the divine aura surrounding the works of such huge art world heavy-hitters like Andy Warhol and Robert Morris and apply a remarkably disinterested perspective of the veterans than they otherwise might receive on a Chelsea white cube pedestal for an honorary (and costly) retrospective. The yellow room on the second floor serves as a positive example of the curator’s power; the thickly sculpted eyes in Francesco Clemente’s Grilsaille Self-Portrait, 1998 stares at the viewer with different meaning when flanked by the minimalist works of Daniel Buren, Gerhard Richter, and Carl Andre. In other words, the power of Gingeras’ hand is undeniably consistent, whereas the quality of the result is not, veering uncontrollably from praise-worthy to heretic.

Upon returning to the ground floor after my tour, the annoyed receptionist reluctantly allowed me to use the gallery’s hidden bathroom. Feeling the soft, triple-ply toilet paper in my hands, I thought, At least they’re doing something good with their money.

rite of passage

my grandfather passed away on tuesday. i received news about his condition at night and booked a flight to fly immediately the next morning. unfortunately, before my mother and i got on the plane, he passed away.
korean funerals usually last 3 days: friends and extended family come to pay their visits to him, saying bye, and the more immediate family greets the visitors all day long for every single one of those days until they bury the body or cremate.
as a national figure, my grandfather's funeral lasted 5 days. we buried him this morning at a beautiful, sunny spot in Seoul.
i lost my only grandfather, the person who stood in for my missing father, the person who, aside from lifting a nation out of poverty after WWII, setting up various foundations and scholarship programs for brilliant students, national and international, was also a loving father and grandfather. he loved everyone of his children and his grandchildren.
i miss his laughter, his smart jokes, his asking me about when i'm going to get married, the way we used to sit together, communicating in silence.
it's strange how this private, personal loss is turned into a public spectacle for the media; the press devoured our tragedy during those days, visits from politicians were strategic moves.
but there were many who truly mourned his death, people who were not family, maybe not even personal friends of his, but who genuinely loved him for what he had done for the nation during his lifetime. big corporate names came by, but people, who had put on their very best, but also sock that were torn from years of wear, came and cried in front of my grandfather's portrait.
my grandfather was a great man.
i miss you so much, i love you, and you will always be with me.

r.i.p. steel king
1927-2011

overdue

Candy Koh. Untitled, 2011. oil pastel on paper.

Dear Mr. Critic--

            Years ago, when you looked at my coffin, my baby, my soul, you said it was self-indulgent and sensationalist at best.

            Did it remind you of the newest trend in Chinese art flooding the New York scene? Was it too blunt for your refined taste in subtleties?

            I take self-indulgence to mean that you find it over the top and excessive, but still boring because you don’t identify with it.

            You don’t identify with it because you spend your hours sitting with piles of theory, sifting through Adorno, Derrida, Wittgenstein, and surrounded by crumples of cheap copy paper discarded by you, those forsaken words that didn’t make it into the neatly organized file cabinets of your ideologies. You split your hours between obsessively honing your precious theories and making the gallery rounds, to sort through the latest displays of creative labor that hang in the thousand white boxes of New York City, awaiting their fates: to be discovered, seen, bought, sold, to make it in the art world. Hands behind your back, you circle through each space; your narrowed eyes scan the latest products, searching for ones that are worthy of your time and gaze. Most of it’s shit, you say. You only come across two or three good shows out of the hundreds that you see every month.

            You call my art self-indulgent because at least back then I spent most of my waking moments in the studio. I loved the screeching of rusting hinges and the faint echo of my cautious footsteps moving over the cement floor as I quiety slipped through the heavy door to spend another night with the smell of resin, paint, burning metal fumes. I loved every minute of carefully pouring just the right amount of water over the powdery hill of plaster, churning the milky contents with my chapped hand until it reached the perfect degree of creaminess. If it weren’t for the dizzy spells from the heat behind that mask or my hands slipping inside the gloves because of the sweat, I could spend the entire night without food, without a cigarette, without a moment of rest, just listening to the sizzles made by the beads of perspiration dripping and coming in contact with heated steel plates. I loved every bit of clay, wax, paint, and even the holes that made it onto my clothes better than sitting over coffee with chattering people; every scar from a burn, a scratch, cut, was a source of my pride. I even loved the black stains left on the tissues after I blew my nose or coughed from breathing in ground steel dust. My hands were rougher than any respectable construction worker’s; sometimes I would refuse to put on lotion even at the insistence of my book-and-computer-handling friends because I had what they did not have, and you will never have.

            Or maybe it’s just because I am a woman and you are a man.

            And is it so bad that I loved it so much and it showed in my work? Does that make me a petty hobbyist who simply likes making things and not a serious artist who deals with greater issues like the future of humanity?

            I don’t claim to know art. You tell me you don’t know either, but I know that you think you do.

            This is not a frivolous competition about who understands art better, the detached theorist or the immersed practitioner. No, this is a simple request for dialogue, for you to think outside of the criteria that you have established to make yourself the authority who always has the final word.

            After three years, I finally state my response to you: Let’s talk.

            Since back then I was naïve enough to think that you were right because you read more, I left my studio for three years to enlighten myself with the words you worship so much.

            Now I can speak your language. Now I too have the same books in my head.

            So now let’s talk.

            Because quite frankly, I still don’t see your point.

Sincerely,

The amateur in her mid 20’s still suffering from teenage angst

night walk

before heading off to drown myself in toxic fluids last saturday (as usual), i stopped by tribeca to pay a visit to a woman with a suitcase.
that was pretty much all i knew about it--
as part of performa 11, a biennial performance art festival that usually takes place in november, someone named laurence wagner was going to carry a suitcase and walk around the block of canal, wooster, greene, and grand streets, starting at 8pm until she became too exhausted to go on.

these kinds of performances--endurance-based works that involve mundane, common enough behavior--is not entirely new; they got their upstart in the art world starting in the 60's with conceptual artists such as bruce nauman and allan kaprow, who did things like walk around a room for hours or throw mounds of rubber tires in a room.
and quite frankly, i've always been a bit skeptical about these kinds of performances. can these artists really shed some kind of interesting light on such an everyday activity?

and so i go.

then i realized i have a task to accomplish: to find this woman.
usually, when people go to see art, it's designated to a very specific location. you enter a gallery, theatre, etc., and there it is. i realized that even though (luckily) it was a smallish block, i still had to walk around to find her, after first locating the block itself.

when i arrived at the site, it was about 9pm, an hour after she started.
around and around i went, without seeing a lady with a suitcase.
and i also had an erroneous preconception that carrying a suitcase literally meant a piece of baggage suspended in the air (i imagined briefcase, actually, not full-on suitcase).
two women passed by, speaking in a language that i did not understand, and one was lugging a large suitcase behind her with the airport baggage claim tags still attached. i saw them, but assumed without doubt these must be some visitors or residents just arriving from the airport.
as i continued to walk around the block, i saw the same two women again, coming the same direction i saw them walking from before, and only then did i realize this was the performance.

and yes, how i was fooled by its mundaneness.
but it was so natural, so ordinary, she really looked like she was coming home, going somewhere with her suitcase, having just arrived. but in reality, she was going through an endless rotation around the same block.

once i confirmed that she was the artist, i joined her.
i walked around and around the block with her, sometimes talking, asking her questions, sometimes just scanning the proximities, smoking my cigarette.

then nature calls.
it struck me to ask her, what about going to the bathroom? has she needed to go yet? what is she going to do if she needs to go?
since it hadn't been too long since she started, she told me she was ok thus far, but she's not too sure what she will do if she really needs to go. maybe i'll stop briefly, she said, but i'm going to try to stick it out as long as possible without stopping.
i made it a point to go to the bathroom just before leaving the house so i would not have to go for a while during the visit.
but after only about twenty minutes, i needed to go, and had to leave her.

instead of returning to her after by business, i decided to meet up with a friend, and unfortunately was not able to check back later.
how long did she go on?
i don't remember the exact lengths of time, but i remember people telling me ten years ago that when the world trade center was destroyed, they had to walk from the financial district all the way up to their homes in washington heights or higher, because all of the transportation was shut down. but at least they could stop by somewhere to use the bathroom. maybe?
human endurance is quite remarkable; it can really push itself to the extreme when necessary.
so how long of a walk was considered necessary to this woman? how much was at stake for her?

the next day, waking late and hungover, i truly longed to get in touch with her to ask when she stopped walking. although the encounter was relatively brief, i shared twenty minutes of my saturday night walking with her.
where is she now? where did she go once she was too exhausted to continue? where is her home here?

i have to work out more of the particulars of my response to this performance, but it certainly broke my cynicism toward endurance-based performance art.

perhaps i will chew on it a bit more and post the remnants later, but for now, i feel ok in just recounting my experience.

ethics of collaging

banana milk, 2011

the wooster group, an avant-garde theater group founded in nyc (greenwich village to be exact) during the mid 70's by elizabeth le compte and some others.

they are known for their collage works-- they rework old plays, put actors as well as monitors, sound clippings on stage. the result is precisely that, a performance collage.

in 1981, they staged a work called 'route 1 & 9 (the last act)' in which all the white performers enacted a minstrel show in black face.

this is my response to seeing a clip of that piece:

Art criticism is not parasytic because it is an art form by its own right. All art—whether it be visual, performance, or literature—borrow from predecessors and each other. (Deliberate or unintentional) appropriation is not unusual, if not inevitable.

Question to The Wooster Group: Is this Okay?

Haptic illusion: A discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect through the sense of touch.

Example: You have three containers filled with water of different temperatures: warm, lukewarm, and cold.

1. Leave your hand in the warm water for a few moments, then transfer your hand to the lukewarm one. The lukewarm water will feel cold.

2. Leave your hand in the cold water for a few moments, then transfer your hand to the lukewarm one. This time the same lukewarm container will feel warm.

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black of morning, mourning,

the morning sun, the mourning son,

the morning son, the mourning sun.

I took some artistic license.

I hesitate to say this, but I identify. I identify with the color black as well as the cultural blackness.

I was watching Leonardo DiCaprio, my childhood dream boy, play the handsome man that he is in Blood Diamond. I watched people cut off other people’s hands, fire off machine guns and flash giant machetes, pile up bloody corpses in heaps, all for some little things that would become some girl’s best friend, somewhere in some nice safe place faraway from Africa. I was watching; it was dramatic, sad, atrocious, and then I started crying. I felt sorry for myself, home on a Friday night watching a movie by myself in the living room littered with empty beer cans, wondering why he had left me.

Picasso called the years 1907 to 1909 his “periode nègre” (black period) or African period. “Picasso never copied African art,” says Marilyn Martin, curator of the Iziko South African National Gallery. “He took its point of view to express his own art. […] He creates a metamorphosis in which he creates something phenomenal and new.”

Steve Jobs was an innovative genius. He did what no one had done before. He took these crazy ideas and turned them into reality. We miss you, Steve.

Hide yo kids, hide yo wife

U don have to come n confess, we lookin fo u.

We gon find u, we gon find u,

so u kin run n tell dat, run n tell dat,

run n tell dat, run n tell that,

homeboy, home, home, homeboy.

If you exist and make money in a culture that is obviously living off a third world people, you must be racist.

Optical illusion: one and the same color can perform many different roles, according to changing neighbors and changing conditions.

Example: A green piece of paper placed on a large blue background appears light green, whereas the same green paper of the same size placed on a large yellow background appears dark green.

A memory from prep school: one time after summer vacation, the guitar-playing, weed-smoking, reggae-listening white guy came to the first day of classes with dreadlocks. Everyone thought it was awesome, except for the black kids, especially the one from Jamaica. They didn’t think it was right. What would he know about Rasta?

5'3” ~ 103lbs. ~ Asian Exotic MOLY ~ 100% Real (INCALL)

When I was little, there was an old man who sometimes set up outside my school to sell baby chicks from a cardboard box. After school, all of us would gather around that box full of little chirping fur balls. We always asked the man how much each one was, even though we knew exactly how much. No one ever bought any because we were told that they were sick and will die in a few days anyway, plus no one wants a dirty animal inside the house. Who’s going to feed it and clean up the mess? Whenever the chicken man came by, we would wait for our parents by watching the things squirm around and flap their undeveloped wings in the crowded container. When our parents finally came,  we spent another few minutes begging them to let us take just one home, but failed each time. We each left dejected, looking longingly behind us at the cute things we will never be able to have.

One day, as my friends watched with gaping mouths and my heart pounding, I asked the chicken man for two restless ones. He plucked them up and placed them in a small paper box, I handed over the money, and proudly seized my new prize, without permission, without having thought about where I was going to put them.

Sources:

Books/articles:

Albers, Joseph. Interaction of Color. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Meldrum, Andrew. “Stealing Beauty.” The Guardian. 14 Mar. 2006. Web. 29 Oct. 2011. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/mar/15/art>.

Shewey, Don. “Elizabeth Le Compte’s Last Stand?” donshewey.com. Web. 29 Oct. 2011. < http://donshewey.com/theater_articles/wooster_route1&9.html>.

Other:

Craig’s List ads.

Lyrics from The Gregory Brothers’ “Bed Intruder Song” made mostly from Antoine Dodson’s interview from the news.

Spin on a comment made by a classmate in a seminar.

True events.

Personal memories/pure fabrications.