Hirschhorn resists.

The first two questions that arise when I look at an artwork are always the same: what is it and why is it made ? In Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument a third question triggers irritations: where? 

The Gramsci Monument is dedicated to Antonio Gramsci, a politician, philosopher and one of the founders of the Communist Party of Italy. Hirschhorn calls himself a fan of Gramsci, who “was a hero and who was ready to pay the price for his commitment”. Hirschhorn refers to the time that Gramsci spend in prison after Mussolini survived an alleged assassination attempt in 1926 and enacted new restrictive laws. Hirschhorn, in his informative monument, focused on the 32 notebooks that Gramsci filled with notes during his ten years in prison. In the classical monument he reproduces Gramsci as a portrait on a wall. 

In the exhibition brochure, Hirschhorn questions his installation in regards to “the Universality and Autonomy of Art”. His decision to locate the work in the Bronx is based on an encounter that he had with the people from the Forest Houses after speaking with other communities. The mission of co-existence and co-operation “asks for help not to bring help” claims Hirschhorn. The problem of the installation is the contradiction between Gramsci’s communism, the monument to him, the location, the people that are involved, and the visitors’ experience: the kids are occupying the computer lab playing video games, the library is empty and the lectures are only attended by the art going public. 

Occupy Gramsci

OCCUPY GRAMSCI

In a time when a simple “share” or “tag” in social networking websites connotes political awareness, the viewer might not be able to get rid of one old question: “What is the role of social engagement in contemporary art?” In his Gramsci Monument, Thomas Hirschhorn has tried to address such themes by making a platform for everybody to participate.

 Gramsci Monument was constructed this summer in Bronx, New York. Built with the help of local residents, Gramsci Monument looks conspicuously shaky and contingent. The site contains several public platforms for people to spend time in and it is also covered with banners and spray paints of Gramsci’s quotations.

By opening up his monument to people of all walks of life, the artist has successfully subverted the most important feature of traditional monuments. Here, people don’t step back in awe, but enter the space, engage with it and with each other, and most importantly, they “occupy” the sanctioned space of an aesthetic object. By doing so, Hirschhorn tries too hard to raise the possibility of “counter-hegemony”. 

Hirschhorn’s attempt at contributing to the idea of social sculpture established by Joseph Beuys in 1960s, seems exciting but hardly geared to leave a lasting effect on the viewer’s mind and it remains unable to provide the viewer with a deeper understanding of Gramsci’s ideas and their relevance to the contemporary world.

Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument

The Gramsci Monument – a participatory wooden hut made of recycled materials, located in a housing project in South Bronx – is meant to function as a public artwork only communicating the artist’s vision of art. But, by choosing Antonio Gramsci as his muse, Thomas Hirschhorn is also selecting a sociologically charged figure.

Gramsci was an Italian supporter of Marxist theories. He was convinced that a self-created and self-regulated “counter-hegemony” could emerge and reverse the capitalist system. One might think that Hirschhorn was going in that direction by erecting a monument to the philosopher. But the Swiss artist in fact intended to “establish a definition of monument, to provoke encounters, to create an event, and to think Gramsci today.” Hirschhorn is not speaking about acting on Gramsci’s theories; the artist is not meaning to start up the revolution the philosopher thought of. This duality goes further: Hirschhorn constructed the Gramsci Monument as a commission by the Dia Foundation (fully part of the established American art world). Therefore, it remains questionable what the intention of the artwork is: conveying Gramsci’s revolutionary message, or Hirschhorn’s artistic approach.

The artist is here paradoxical in his method, using a revolutionary image to crystalize concepts that are not so revolutionary after all. If the message of the artwork might be sensed as unclear, it nevertheless succeeds in waking up curiosity regarding its content.

 

GRAMSCI MONUMENT - a Tree House for Social Change

Thomas Hirschhorn, a Swiss artist, brought a monument dedicated to the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci to the Forest Hill community in the Bronx. This is no ordinary monument, it was built with help from the local Bronx community with ply wood, box tape, and other non precious items. The materials transcend the established norms of what a monument should be made from and  the form itself also was unusual. This was not a monolith or portraiture of a man, it was a simple tree house in the middle of the projects open to all.

Each “room” within the tree house was dedicated to some sort of learning or community - based activity. There was a library filled with historical /political literature about Gramsci, and a place where children could make art. For the older crowed there was a porch filled with white plastic chairs and a tapped up microphone where philosophers and poets had a place to showcase their thoughts. There are possible problems within this work, questions whether or not this is fine art or just another form for political activism. Or whether or not this exploits those who live in the neighborhood by exposing different communities to the poor projects.  But after going there several times, I just wanted to be part of it;  part of the  hope that this tree house would bring social change.

                                          I Can See His Aura:  Wade Guyton @ the Whitney

The Whitney Museum of American Art plays host to Wade Guyton, in a midcareer survey . Guyton, a  38 year old, New York based artist, utilizes banal and ubiquitous technological means of production -- Microsoft word, Adobe photo shop, Epson inkjet printers, etc. – to quote, imitate,  and playful allude to mid-20^th century abstract painting.   Yet, his spacious and well organized survey feels less like a longing for the glory days of minimalist abstraction, when non-expressive, black and white pen stripe paintings were painted by hand – Frank Stella  or when architecturally scaled  stripe paintings alluded to Parisian awnings  --Daniel  Buren, and more like a liquidation of the two. Or better still liquidation in general, Guyton uses an “Epson touch” to survey the history of painting, Ellsworth Kelly’s black and white painting Cite, 1951 was given a prominent reiteration by Guyton, in a multi-panel, Epson Ultra chrome inkjet painting that measured 88 x 157 inches.

In Guyton’s painting: scale, muted color, proximity of multiple panels  all play a prominent role in Guyton’s survey. The exhibition begins with a somewhat standardized row of black on black pen strip paintings all of which contain digitally printed flames that rage upward from the bottom edges. The letter U floats within the flames of each individually printed panel, though the color, location and amount of U’s  differ from panel to panel.  The white space that is created in between these multiple black panels is reciprocated in the panels themselves, due to a white line that vertically bisects these predominately black paintings.  This reciprocity between the sliver of white contained in the painting and the larger expanses of white from the wall that get exposed from panel to panel goes a long way to differentiate Guyton’s work from someone like Kelly. Since Kelly wanted his paintings to function as architecture not oscillate between them.

By grasping Guyton’s work from the perspective of ‘space’ these mechanically produced paintings deal with pictorial and architectonic space in an almost enthralling way.  Ma is a Japanese term that describes intervals between the apprehension of objects and the acquisition of conscious knowledge; it can be simply described as the space between things that allows for mental comprehension of things.  Ma is thought of as a sacred ‘conscious space’ that develops from acute observation. Whether or not Guyton had Ma in mind when producing his works borders on the side of speculation perhaps even its wild side; yet, his works do demand a certain level of perceptual engagement.  And if one is so inclined lines, ostensibly, become three dimensional and rise above the surface while others recede and fade into a cloud of digital fuzz. 

But undoubtedly, Guyton’s work, if ever mentioned in regards to transcendence will be done so in relation to a cynical or ironically playful approach.  Yet, by reducing the work to postmodern irony the social value or the cultural significance of the work is displaced.   That is, if conclusions can be drawn about the organization of perception in relation to a given historical moment based on the art produced with in it, Guyton’s work is a clear sign of the times.    If viewed through Walter Benjamin’s aura, a term he describe as “the stripping of the veil from the object, the destruction of aura…”  Benjamin rested the decay of aura on two circumstances “the desire of the masses to get closer to things and their equally passionate concern for overcoming each things uniqueness.” Benjamin continues, “The uniqueness of a work of art is identical to its embeddedness in the context of tradition.”

 Benjamin’s last quote serves to explain Guyton’s excessive use of art history, which differs from artist of past generations who utilized techniques of mass production, based on representations embedded in popular culture.  

REGARDING WARHOL at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is an extensive look at Andy Warhol's influence on art and popular culture over the last fifty years.  The exhibition is organized around five overarching themes in Warhol's work: banality, celebrity, sexuality, appropriation, and business.  Each of these themes could have easily been a show of its own, but instead the audience is treated to a jam-packed historical and thematic survey of some of the most influential artworks from the second half of the twentieth century.  "Overwhelming" doesn't even begin to describe the vast scope that the Met is trying to cover, but sometimes a grand overview can be worth contemplating.

Left: Andy Warhol, Green Coca-Cola Bottles (1962); right: Ai Weiwei, Neolithic Vase with Coca-Cola Logo (2010)

Beginning with banality and seriality, Warhol’s Green Coca-Cola Bottles from 1962 displays his fascination with consumer culture, taking something as commonplace as a soda bottle and repeating it many times so as to raise its status to that of an item worthy of worship.  Juxtaposed with Ai Weiwei’s Neolithic Vase with Coca-Cola Logo from 2010, the status symbol of Coca-Cola is clear.  What Warhol accomplishes with seriality, Ai Weiwei accomplishes by painting the logo onto a 5,000 year old treasure, ruining this ancient work of art while raising the symbol of Coca-Cola to one worthy of imprinting itself on 5,000 years of culture.  

Visual continuity between symbols is taken a little too far at times, as can be seen in the first room of the “No Boundaries: Business, Collaboration, and Spectacle” section of the exhibition.  Two versions of Warhol’s 1964 Flowers hang among works such as Jeff Koons’ Wall Relief with Bird from 1991, a large, hyper-realistic floral sculpture, and Takashi Murakami’s more recent flowered wallpaper.  While the room itself is a joyful assault of color, the grouping of these “flower” works cheapens the original intent behind Warhol’s Flowers, which some have speculated to be about life and death.  The stark black backgrounds of Warhol’s Flowers harken back to the momento mori of Dutch vanitas and still-life paintings, meant to remind viewers of their morality.  Murakami’s psychedelic and joyful wall paper with its thousands of smiling flowers, on the other hand, uses the cute and colorful anime-inspired motifs to comment on Japanese popular culture and fetishism.  While there are clear similarities between the exploitation of popular culture in the art of Warhol, Koons, and Murakami, the all too obvious aesthetic uniformity of this flower room takes away from the social commentary of these works.

Andy Warhol, Flowers (1964)

Installation shot including Jeff Koons, Wall Relief with Bird (1991) and Takashi Murakami's flowered wallpaper

The audience is then asked to consider an array of reality-based film works.  Upon initial investigation, it would seem a far stretch to pair “Empire,” a 1964 film by Warhol that consists of eight hours of footage of the Empire State Building over the period of one night, with MTV’s show, “The Real World.”  In “Empire,” the audience is asked to simply watch the time pass, and while this may not be the reason that contemporary society indulges in reality television, it is certainly an underlying current.  In a show like “The Real World” viewers are entertained by the everyday antics of seven people who allow the world to watch them as they pass the time.  

Andy Warhol, "Empire" (1964)

The overwhelming variety of work makes it seem as if the Met has taken an entire floor of a Contemporary Art museum and jammed it into five gallery rooms.  But, if the curators have made one thing clear, it is that Warhol was an influential artist and celebrity, even if coming to that conclusion means demeaning the artistic merit of his work.   The Met has shown that it is time for us to consider other artists in the same context as we do Warhol, in a spotlight of consumer-driven celebrity glory.