Chain Chain Chain

Robert Boyd

(Originally published on Glasstire.)


Katie Wynne, A chain of non-events, 2013, mixed-media installation

Katie Wynne's A chain of non-events at Lawndale is an installation of various bits of crap semi-connected to one another. I don't say crap in a pejorative way. I use it in the way that Karen Archey did--in identifying a genre of art she called "combining crap with crap." The term both opens up a lineage stretching back to Duchamp's assisted readymades to Robert Rauschenberg's Combines and Gluts to Jessica Stockholder's painted bits of crap and consumer products. It is Stockholder's work that A chain of non-events reminds me of most, but in general it can be seen as part of a tradition that is now 100 years old (Duchamp's first assisted readymade Bicycle Wheel was originally made in 1913).


Katie Wynne, A chain of non-events, 2013, mixed-media installation

When you walk into the Project Space at Lawndale, the work is stretched out more-or-less in an arc around you. The elements are not all physically connected, but there does seem to be an intent for viewers to follow from one to another. So starting from the left, we have a floor-element that consists of a rectangular wooden central part with two large rectangular end pieces. The end pieces are designed to hold a pair of oscillating fans so that the face up. The fans are on and blowing, but their wind is blocked by a nimbus of brightly colored scarves on each fan. I suspect that the fans were meant to blow the scarves more than I observed here, but perhaps there were too many scarves on each fan. In any case, they did puff up a bit due to the blowing air.

I liked the wooden structure which was simultaneously absurd and purposeful. But the scarves were too discordant a visual element. The colors in any given scarf were acceptable (if a bit loud), but all of them combined created a chromatic cacophony that detracted from the solid homemade virtues of the wooden fan-holder.


Katie Wynne, A chain of non-events, 2013, mixed-media installation

Continuing to our right, there is another wooden structure, this one bolted to the wall. It has painted pieces of fabric and cardboard  hanging from it on strings. The paint is a light blue-green and orange--a very pastel, slightly Southern Californian color scheme. The painting reminded me of Jessica Stockholder and the cardboard reminded me of Robert Rauschenberg. It is significant that the cardboard is ripped, not cut. It gives the piece more of a junkpile feeling, less deliberate than a Stockholder assemblage.


Katie Wynne, A chain of non-events, 2013, mixed-media installation

This section in the corner is the busiest. In the left of the picture above, Wynne has mounted a shoeshining machine to the wall, where it spins hypnotically. Cheap motorized household machines appear to be important parts of the Wynne work I've seen (she contributed an extremely simple, elegant piece to The Big Show last year that consisted of a motorized tie-rack and a rectangle of blue satin cloth. Her use of these devices recalls Jean Tinguely's art. Tinguely was another master of crap on crap, gleefully scouring junkyards for old motors and debris with which he built his kinetic sculptures.


Katie Wynne, A chain of non-events, 2013, mixed-media installation

Wynne reprises the use of shiny satin-ish cloth in the drawer assembly. The gold cloth hangs over the edge of the open drawer. Underneath is another oscillating fan, covered with a single scarf. A paintbrush sticks up from the back of the fan into a slot in the drawer, where it swings back and forth.


Katie Wynne, A chain of non-events, 2013, mixed-media installation

The drawer is lined with the gold cloth which is covered with a thin layer of dirt. The curved slot for the brush is lined with gold cloth, so it almost looks like a smile peeking through the dirt. It's cleverly wrought and in a way reflects her earlier untitled piece in the Big Show, but it feels like too much is happening here. I don't see how the elements belong together, why there is dirt and satin here. The stuff on top of the table--string, yarn, tape, torn bits of painted cardboard--feel more unified than the seemingly more carefully planned and constructed drawer element.


Katie Wynne, A chain of non-events, 2013, mixed-media installation

There is another wall-mounted wood structure which leads the viewer to a more-or-less freestanding structure made of stool parts (?), painted cardboard and other crap.


Katie Wynne, A chain of non-events, 2013, mixed-media installation

While the rest of A chain of non-events sprawls wildly, this one keeps it all close in. It looks like it wants to explode and fling its crap wide, but it's not ready. This made me think of The Rape of the Sabine Women (1574-82) by Giambologna. This sculpture is identified as being an immediate precursor to the baroque and to Bellini's extravagant creations. The overt emotionalism and dynamism seem baroque, but the way Giambolgna keeps it all tightly contained in a narrow cylinder of space marks it as still a Renaissance sculpture.


Katie Wynne, A chain of non-events, 2013, mixed-media installation


Wynne could have taken the bits of crap she used in this object and spread them across the floor or up the wall. But like Giambolgna, she constrains it.

The problem with A chain of non-events is that while there are interesting passages here and there, it fails to cohere. The elements are too independent, but many of them don't stand up on their own as individual works. But the virtues are an interesting use of materials, color, and space. And it helps to see this as work in line with a long tradition. Overall, it reminded me a bit of Rauschenberg's The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece. This is another large piece (very large) that consists of many individual elements. The elements don't really come together, though. Perhaps that is in the nature of "crap on crap." Because of the disparate origins and natures of the materials, extra effort must be paid to giving them a sense of unity. The element that works the best for me in Wynne's installation is the stool piece--it feels the most like a single autonomous piece of work. With its human-sized volume and excellent colors, it's my favorite "non-event" of A chain of non-events.

Note on the Collection of the Late Frank K. Ribelin

Note on Leo & His Circle

Gallery owners are some of the key gatekeepers for art, and some have the ability (and good luck) to be tastemakers. This is a fact that drives artists crazy, and causes them to conceive elaborate strategies to avoid being gallery artists. Personally, I'm for whatever works to get art to people who want to see it. That necessarily includes galleries.

And the fact is that it's hard to successfully run a gallery (I would be surprised if they had a success rate significantly higher than restaurants). And few gallery owners succeed in bringing truly great artists before the public eye. But some do, and because some do, anyone interested in the history of art needs to know something about galleries and their owners and directors. (Just as, likewise, anyone interested in the history of culture has to be aware of the great editors and great A&R men and great movie producers and great impresarios.)



For that reason alone, Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli by Annie Cohen-Solieil would be worth a look. That it is a really well-written, compelling biography is an unexpected bonus. Castelli was born Leo Krausz in 1907. His family was forced to adopt his mother's family name when Mussolini decreed that all Italians must have Italian names--a decree that was apparently aimed mainly at Trieste's Slovene population. But Castelli's father, a Hungarian Jew, was affected by this decree as well. The book deals with Castelli's complex family roots--as complex as the city of Trieste itself. Partly Italian and partly Austro-Hungarian, Italy got Trieste as settlement after the first World War. One result of Castelli's multinational upbringing is that he was himself multi-lingual. Combine that with an extremely suave personality, superb social skills, and a fantastic feel for art, and you have the perfect recipe for a successful New York art dealer.

The book discusses how Castelli got there. It wasn't instantaneous, to say the least. He and his wife collected art and then just before World War II, Castelli opened a gallery in Paris with a dealer named Rene Drouin. Talk about bad timing! This was the exception, though. Castelli was really a guy who mostly lived off his wife's family's money until he was 50. They helped him get jobs, set him up in business, while he spent his time as a socialite and art lover.

But as an art lover, he got deeply involved in art, especially in the art being done in New York after the war. He got involved in what was going on, helped people, acted as a host for parties, etc. Nothing that made him any money, but stuff that made him an important figure on the scene. He laid the groundwork for a gallery. And finally, in February 1957, he opened it up in his apartment. He was 50 years old! A true model for all late-bloomers.

He quickly signed on such artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, etc. He put his artists on a salary of sorts, so they could live between shows. This was risky behavior for a gallery owner, and some of the minimalist and post-minimalist artists Castelli scarcely paid off this on-going investment. He also franchised his gallery nationally and internationally with galleries he owned as well as with strategic partnerships. (I wish the mechanics of the latter had been better explicated in the book. If, for example, if there was a Roy Lichtenstein show at Janie C. Lee in Dallas, how did Castelli get paid?)

Castelli was famous for having a waiting list to be able to buy art from particular artists. How this waiting list worked was fairly arbitrary--Castelli wanted to make sure you were the right customer to be buying the art. He well understood that there was a brand value to certain collectors. What the book doesn't say is whether Castelli originated this practice, which has been used since (my friend Robert Weiss was on waiting lists for Robert Williams paintings--it was a strictly numerical list, and when a new Williams show opened, there was a lot of trading of spots among collectors. Weiss eventually acquired two Williams paintings before his tragic death in a car accident. He was the first serious art collector I ever knew).

In the 80s and 90s, young gallery owners who learned Castelli's techniques started to eclipse him. Some of his top artists jumped ship. Still, he had an extremely successful career, and it is reasonable to ask if the recent history of art would have been the same without him. (Cohen-Solal implies it would not have been.) Would Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg have been the giants they were if Castelli hadn't been there pushing their work? It's not a totally comfortable question to ask, but it's true that cultural gate-keepers like Castelli may have an effect on the art form with which they are are associated. The magnitude of that effect is impossible to quantify (because it is impossible to test the alternative outcome). But the effect is there.

Painting Below Zero by James Rosenquist

 Robert Boyd



Painting Below Zero by James Rosenquist

James Rosenquist was one of the early pop artists. He has an almost perfect pop biography--midwestern boy, learns the fine art of painting billboards, moves to New York and wows the swells with his paintings of jet fighters and spaghetti. His new autobiography doesn't challenge this capsule biography, but it enriches it a lot.

I think for people my age and younger, the weird thing about Rosenquist's story was that he was a billboard painter. This is a profession that doesn't exist anymore, and one could be forgiven for being surprised that it ever existed. The idea that it was cost-effective to hire an artist to paint your billboard seems amazing today. But apparently it was common at one time. Rosenquist got his start painting billboards on the road in the midwest, including many in Minneapolis. These required a combination of sign-painting skills (he had to paint large display fonts) and more-or-less realistic painting. But beyond that was the skill of painting big--not being able to see the whole while you are painting, yet coming out of it with an intelligible image. Obviously this is a skill that mural painters have always had to master. On top of all this, he had to learn to paint it quick.

He had artistic ambitions beyond billboard painting, so he moved to New York to study at the Art Students League. He continued to paint in New York, joining a billboard painter's union, painting bottles of booze on the sides of buildings all over Brooklyn. He made a good living doing this, and in Painting Below Zero, he never hints that he might have thought of this as a job without a future (as it most certainly was). His desire to leave billboard painting behind had everything to do with his artistic ambitions and nothing to do with the fact that billboard painting was about to go the way of the dodo.

His fine art painting in this period (the 50s) was abstract. He worshiped de Kooning and Franz Kline, and for serious contemporary artists of the time, that was what was in the air. But he also new that he wanted to make his own mark in his own style. But he started meeting a younger group of painters who in time would revolt against abstract expressionism. It started with Ray Johnson (who really seems like he was a "connector" in that world), and got to be friends with people like Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly, and others. When he was looking for loft space to paint, he met Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. It was their work that showed Rosenquist a way out of Abstract Expressionism.

The interesting thing about Rosenquist was that he used his billboard experience extensively in his art. I'm not just talking about the large scale of his paintings and the "creamy" painting surface--although those are important. He wanted viewers to overwhelmed by the images, and to see them in fragmentary ways, like he did when he painted a billboard. Hence the overlapping, truncated images in his work. This is one reason why reproductions of his work are so inadequate--they make all the fragments instantly visable and comprehensible. A full-size Rosenquist painting is virtually impossible to see all at once, unless it's in a huge room. And that's intentional.

Ironically, he didn't even meet the two biggest pop artists, Warhol and Lichtenstein, until 1964. This reuse of banal imagery was just in the air. Rosenquist doesn't even quite see it that way--he always had an emotional connection with what he was painting. Obviously there was irony in his art, but that wasn't the main point. He loved the objects he painted (or hated them when he got around to painting F-111).

What I like about this kind of book is the description of the social scene in which the artist operated. How did people meet; how does a kid from Minneapolis find other artists? How do they entertain themselves (lots of drinking, apparently). Rosenquist is quite amusing in talking about the bars they hung in. It was OK to hang at the Cedar Tavern or Max's Kansas City, but if a bunch of painters showed up at Elaine's, they might end up getting booted. The centrality of drinking is kind of intense. I think it damaged a lot of creative people at that time--de Kooning certainly. And for an artist to "network" with his peers, he had to drink.

After Rosenquist moves away from New York, his life is a lot less interesting and more stable. He still has his friends (he was very close to Rauschenberg his whole life), but now he had a family and property and success. He still was doing big bold work. Now he is one of the survivors of his generation, and his memories are welcome. Painting Below Zero was a thoroughly entertaining book.

Combining Crap With Crap

That's what Karen Archey at Art Fag City calls assemblage in this post. It generated a lot of protest, and was admittedly not quite thought out. But I laughed when I read those words. That is what assemblage is--putting bits of crap together to make art; if you saw the collected elements laid out on the floor would seem extremely unlikely to combine to be "art," and yet do.

Paddy Johnson, responding to the outcry the original post caused, wrote a new post: "Reasons Why Assemblage (Or 'Crap on Crap') Is Now the 'House Style' of the Art World." In my profound laziness, I am just going to copy her reasons here.

1. Everybody’s broke and there’s always an abundance of trash.
2. Six years of art education teaches that high art is dead so everyone takes the low road.
3. Disgust with capitalism and consumer culture.
4. “Nihilism.”
5. Genuine love of trash culture and its byproducts.
6. Avoidance of known art materials.
7. A way to make formal arrangements of things without being called “Greenbergian.”
8. A way to be political without sloganeering.
9. Genuine interest in the lineage of Schwitters/Rauschenberg–-considering it an unfinished project.
10. New trash (web and technology cast-offs) necessitates new ways of arranging trash (and new content unknown to Rauschenberg, et al).

I would add at least one more reason. (11) A delight at taking bits of crap and creating something artistically interesting out of it. I guess 11 overlaps with 5, 6, and 9, except I am thinking more of things like Picasso making a bull's head out of a bicycle seat and handlebars.

Of course, some of my all time favorite artists were or are "crap on crap" artists: Kienholz, Rauschenberg, Jessica Stockholder. And the word "assemblage" just sounds like it was invented by fucking PhD. I will keep using the word, but in my mind, all those great pieces of scrap and glue and stuff are "crap on crap" art.