REVIEWS BOOKS
THE
PABLO HELGUERA
MANUAL OF
CONTEMPORARY
STYLE
By Pablo Helguera
Jorge Pinto Books, £11.95/$15.95 (paperback)
The horrors of schoolday struggles with the rules
of grammar are reawakened by the cover design
of this slim volume, which parodies that of Strunk
& White’s enduring manual, The Elements of Style
(first published in 1957). Also alluding in its title to and on how to use Google as a curatorial tool.
the renowned Chicago Manual of Style (1906–) Certain phenomena are clearly explained – the
Pablo Helguera’s present creation models itself, in ‘selling artist’ (who makes a good living off his
design and format, after these compact handbooks, work but is excluded from the critical discourse)
and itself aims to be one that helps the reader or ‘festivalist syndrome’, a situation in which
come to grips with an equally complex system. the artist’s success leads to serial international
A Miss Manners for the artworld (referred to by hotel living, thus effecting a necessary change
the New York-based Mexican artist as simply ‘the in artwork to accommodate lifestyle – while a
AW’), here you’ll find all the information necessary glossary at the back explains terminology not as it
to learn the correct etiquette for navigating its was meant to be understood but as it has actually
dangerous corridors and Byzantine structure. come to mean. ‘Land art’, therefore, is explained
Helguera’s manual is the kind of book that as ‘an art genre invented… in the ’60s in order to
you have to be careful about reading in public, question the museum as sacred space. Today, the
for fear that your abandoned laughter might works… have become sacred and can be seen at
be taken as mental instability. It is full of useful your nearest museum.’
items: instructions on how to play the AW ‘game’, Yet this book shouldn’t be written off as a
envisioned as a chessboard with an illustration mere comic skewering. First of all, while Helguera
allocating each chess piece to a particular player writes in a manner that suggests parody, he
– dealer, critic, artist, etc; a ‘Chart of Sentimental is simultaneously deadly serious and entirely
Relationships’ that allows one to quickly and easily accurate; the balancing act between flippancy and
check with whom it is acceptable, problematic or gravity is neither easy to achieve nor to sustain,
unacceptable to sleep with; a practical diagram yet Helguera manages it with ease. Furthermore
of how to steer a course through an opening; the book itself is an integral part of the artist’s
and a table for the effortless production of a practice, in which he routinely appropriates
press release. Handy descriptions help the reader academic language or strategies to create his
distinguish between A-list and B-list artists; there’s artworks, which can appear as books, recordings,
advice on how a dealer/artist should dress, on how symposia or even a nomadic museum. With
to deal with failure or create art under a dictatorship these he astutely observes the politics of culture
and its effect on society, what it means to us and
how we are taught to appreciate it (in the manner
of a handbook, perhaps?). Amanda Coulson
ARTREVIEW one.linfour.lintwo.lin
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