In their literature the New Museum states that the focus from their inception has been on new art, new work that falls somewhere between that seen in a grass roots alternative spaces and recent work in museums that shows a correspondence to historical values, or, we might say, that which shows its relationship to the linear progression of western art. For some time I have been attempting to understand contemporary art and while I find this definition vague it is somewhat more helpful than that of the San Francisco Museum of Modern art which defines contemporary art as that created since 1975.
In one of the newspaper commentaries about The New Museum it was stated that there is no interest here in bourgeois art.
Based on these few readings I realized that I would have to define for my own understanding “new” and “bourgeois”.
In every small town in America, and even in the Greenwich Village Outdoor Art Show, one can find art exhibitions featuring classic subjects: landscape, still life, portraiture, and abstraction. Because they are recently made, however, does not make them “new”, but because their appeal is primarily to middle class buyers it does make them pretty much “bourgeois”.
But when considering the art of the twentieth century and especially from the heady days of New York in the 70’s and 80’s where so much art was heavily promoted to upper middle class and wealthy buyers, almost all the artists in uptown museums who have made their livelihood producing commercially successful works with a single signature image might be understood now as bourgeois artists. Those would be the artworks promoted as having historical values, made by artists who have produced work self consciously within the western tradition, and would include Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, de Kooning, Mark Rothko, et al. The art from the first half of the Twentieth Century, when exploration of the nature of the picture space was the primary concern of the artists, can be understood as “new” art, an overview of which we can find in Robert Hughes’ book, The Shock of the New, 1980. But because that art is of the recent past it is of course no longer new and so it is more correctly …Modern.
There is always the disclaimer that the new art is that in which the artist’s vision gives us a new perception of the world around us, whether of the exterior or the interior of that world. In some venues it is claimed that contemporary art gives us the familiar but in new arrangements.
Having had these things under consideration for some time I have come to this conclusion: Traditional western art was existential in that it was concerned with the things of the earth; landscape, still life, and portraiture and their “meaning”. Modern art was expressive of the metaphysical and was concerned with the interior experience and meaning, whether spiritual or psychological. Contemporary art has returned to the existential view that the thing presented is but the thing itself with the difference that it often has no deeper meaning or significance.
In trying to determine if a new artwork is “art” I would think that there should be as well something about the work that indicated that the artist had an art education, or that he understood the fine arts, or that he has mastered the craft of his medium, so that his work is not confused with contemporary folk art or outsider art. (It would also help if we were to attempt to make some distinction between fine art and decoration.) But I don’t know how that would be achieved without referencing historic values. Alfred Barnes says that all great art works have in common a certain quality and I understand him to mean that those works have achieved a degree of excellence in their making. Perhaps that sense of excellence would replace a sense of historic value, or art education.
I suppose there is a need for a museum of new art, although I suspect it is not a really pressing issue. Art is going to change; it always does. It will change because the world changes. And I am convinced that when art changes it will be because an artist has presented works that have a unique form based on his vision. This might very well be art work that is the result of a conscious effort to produce the new: specifically I think of Kurt Schwitters who collected the detritus of a war ravaged society determined to make a new art from it.
Rather than take the reactionary, exclusionary stance of art venues in the past, the New Museum announces that it stands at an open door ready for what is to come. That is their mission statement. But I am not completely convinced that that will be their practice; their architecturally conservative, recently made building seems to indicate that the traditional view of business as usual will likely prevail.
Certainly none of the four artists currently exhibited at this museum represent anything so very new in their work. In fact all of it has the look of second year student work, and from not one of the better art schools.
The most interesting works are those made by Steven Shearer. Mr. Shearer is apparently compulsive about downloading images from the internet. In some works these small color photographs are arranged on large white formats, about four by six or eight feet, in other than rigid patterns but achieving the look, from across the room, of patchwork quilts. On closer view these are not collage but large giclee prints. While I admired the quilt effect I was more interested in the technology than the use made of it.
He has also given us a number of portraits of men with long hair which obscures their faces. Some of these are made in blue ball point pen and have an interest in being a new use of a common marking device, but the draftsmanship does not transcend the art school level of accomplishment. (I suspect some of these are tracings.) In oil paintings of the same subjects there is an implied reach for new color sensibility and combinations but even though the results are other than those of paintings with historical values, they have a too obvious allegiance to prevailing East Village norms.
Artwork made using light is a common experience in every museum of modern, contemporary, and installation art and the work included in this show adds nothing to what has already been seen elsewhere and everywhere. Nor does the two pages of small print explaining the intellectual subtleties of these works or their relationship to the linear progression of western art elevate them to a level of more interest than they first appear to have. Nor do I understand, after the museum’s preface, why I should admire works “in the tradition” when I had been lead to understand that the museum was only interested in works that have other than those concerns.
The small abstract, non representational paintings of Tomma Abts occasioned two observations. One: from a distance her works appear to be merely two dimensional patterns in some interesting color combinations, but on walking closer to them one sees painted shadows and highlights and up close there is a sense of three dimensions, as opposed to more traditional art which has a sense of deep picture space from the aesthetic distance but which on closer view is seen to be merely color applied in daubs, points, or blends.
Secondly, I had first seen these on the internet, courtesy of The New York Times, and I was very taken by the high chromaticity of the colors. In the gallery there is quite the opposite effect: the chroma is much lower and the sense of translucency is completely lacking. If anything the paintings look opaque from having been over worked. They also look as if the making of them had been a very tedious process. (I am not one to confuse tedium with mastery.) They are really on the borderline of the obsessive/compulsive work of outsiders, but not as interesting without that something irrepressible that wants to be said or that something unspeakable that cannot be repressed. I am sometimes shocked by the slap dash presence and finish of Matisse and Picasso’s works but those paintings do have a sense of vibrancy and energy that is totally missing here.
Despite my being not favorably impressed by this work I am appreciative that the artists represented are from four different countries. If the New York art world needs anything it is the breath of fresh air that will come from being less geocentric than it has been for the last fifty years. I truly suspect that what it has self promoted all this long while is nowhere near as important as we have been lead to believe. From that regard this policy of The New Museum is a welcome sign.
http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions
In the meantime, for those with an interest in new art I suggest looking in on two of the best venues in the country; The Blue Star Center of Contemporary Art in San Antonio and the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh.
I haven’t yet figured out how to navigate the works posted on the internet here:http://www.bluestarart.org/info.html
Don’t miss the James Turrell work here. He is the present master of using light to make new art. His work at this museum is very inspiring: http://www.mattress.org/index.cfm?event=Exhibitions&c=Permanent
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