ARCHITeCTURe, DISPATCHES ART, MUSIC, ARCHITeCTURe, FILM, SHOPPING, NeWS AND THINGS TO MAKe AND DO… ART, MUSIC, ARCHITeCTURe, FILM, SHOPPING, NeWS AND THINGS TO MAKe AND DO…
TaLes from The ciTy: New york
words JONATHAN T.D. NeIL
Let’s make no mistake, ‘mid-career’ in The New Yorker, which would have
is a term of commerce, not of art. one think that being drunk and young
This is not meant to demean those in Brooklyn provides the sufficient,
responsible for its increasing usage. if not the necessary, conditions for
There is surely something worthy, and artworld success.)
perhaps necessary, in identifying
those artists whose talents aren’t The arrival of the mid-career artist
so much ‘discovered’ as they are into the marketplace must signal, then,
‘recognised’. But when we talk about a certain fatigue with this stunted
mid-career artists, we are inevitably culture of permanent adolescence which
talking business. “Christopher Wool is attended the rise of the ‘emerging’
not considered a mid-career artist”, artist. But it may also signal a
one friend recently remarked to me, renewed appreciation for those
“because his paintings are not just institutions that have evolved to
beginning to sell.” And by ‘sell’, he parallel the (fantastical) trajectory
meant sell well. of art student to MFA to group-and-
then-solo-sold-out-show. Next to this
It may not have begun with curator we find the collegiate instructor,
Katy Siegel’s admirable High Times, the not-for-profit arts organisation
Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975 and exhibition space, the artist
(with the estimable painter David Reed registry, the residency programme, the
acting as advisor), which ran at the artist’s grant programme. Such are the
National Academy Museum in New York incubators of creative enterprises
this past spring, but it certainly which do not lend themselves so readily
gained serious momentum from it. Hailed to follow-the-money tastes.
as bringing to light the work of many
artists, such as Roy Colmer, Mary Corse Perhaps specifically within the US,
and Ree Morton, whose names have not and certainly in New York, many of
been much heard in the intervening 40 these ‘alternatives’ have a tendency
years due to the historical dominance to be viewed as repositories of
of pop, minimal and conceptual art the marketplace’s also-rans, which
discourses on the one hand, and the would be a pitiful sentiment were it
sensibility, drawn from militant not complete nonsense. The work of
theoretical circles, that painting figures such as Miranda Maher, who has
had passed away for good sometime been active independently for more
around 1965, High Times, Hard Times than 15 years, or Joan Waltemath,
served at once as a demonstration of educator at Cooper Union and critic
(art) history’s cruelty and of its for The Brooklyn Rail, is rightfully
potential for redemption. gaining visibility in New York, and
not least because of these artists’
dedicated and intelligent efforts in
The arrival of the mid-career
such ‘alternative’ roles and venues.
On the other side, Alexander Gray, of
artist into the marketplace
Alexander Gray Associates, appears
poised to demonstrate that it is not
must signal a fatigue with
that there has been no market for such
mid-career artists’ works, only a lack
permanent adolescence
of dealers willing to bring them to
market in the first place.
So as a new season takes flight this
But then Siegel’s show also stepped autumn, I will be keeping my ear
into the coke-and-booze-fuelled attuned to talk of the mid-career
bash that seemed to follow wherever artist (or, more ironically, the
was heard the name ‘Dash Snow’. The emerging mid-career artist). And I
artworld had to have its Paris Hilton, will continually remind myself, as I
its jack-off artist. But all the blame will others, that the distinction it
cannot lie at the feet of one young seeks to carve out for those described
and perhaps overly handled kid, or at as such is unconnected to the quality
Ariel Levy’s stupefying depiction of of their work, which, as always, must
him in the pages of New York Magazine. stand or fall on its own. We can take
(Levy wasn’t the first, after all: let comfort, however, that it is something
us not forget about Nick Paumgarten’s these artists already know, otherwise
October 2005 profile of Leo Koenig they would not have made it this far.
Artreview 42
Dispatches_columns_Sept.indd 2 9/8/07 09:54:46
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