BUT, BUT, BUT.. IS IT 'ART?'

September 29, 2017

Thanks to a dear pal of mine, Michael Gregory, an actor you have seen a hundred times in features and on TV, I got a lesson in contemporary art and culture.  We often don't much think about 'culture'.. or at least I don't .. even though here in Glendale, California, we now have combined the Library with the Arts and Culture Department.  Glendale  'culture' is swinging one way and it will be an interesting swing as the City has hired a consulting firm to help make decisions about how Art in Public Places should be administered.  We have seen one huge installation curated by Ara Oshagan that was to commemorate the Armenian Genocide.  It was not to my tastes, but it was huge and expensive and took up the entire lawn at Glendale Central Park.  It was undeniable and that, to me.. is important, whether or not it is to my particular liking.  

What Michael Gregory did for me was very special.  He teases me now and then about 'art' and I love it.  His message was about a mortician in England who had an unusual collection. Is a collection of 3,000 penises 'art?'  That's what MG wanted to know.  I'll leave it at that.

But!  His note reminded me of the current controversy of the Guggenheim Museum of Art's installation of a video piece that was made in 2003 by conceptual artists, Sun and Peng: "Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other."  The Guggenheim installation is part of a survey of Chinese contemporary art.  Outrage by American visitors to this exhibit forced the Guggenheim to remove the video.  The link below shares  an essay by Ben Davis writing in Artnet News. It gives us some very interesting back story. I dobut that it will  change any Western Minds about cruelty to animals, but may expand the information on why this work is important in context.   Of course, most of us have a hard time putting things in 'context' because we are governed by our own personal prejudices and politics and limbic reactions to the world around us.  Stepping outside our own comfort zone is difficult at best and impossible at worst.  

Reading Mr. Davis's essay, the challenge was, for me, trying to understand a Chinese art thing that is far removed from my appreciation of what Art is to me.  

Many Los Angeles folks were challenged when the LA County Museum of Art spent ten million dollars on Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass" that now sits on the grounds there.  I loved it because there was no way that anyone along the delivery route from Riverside, California to Wilshire and Fairfax in LA could not be involved.  Heizer's Big Rock involved thousands of people who may have never been to an art museum or gallery in their lives.  That, to me, is what Art is supposed to do: allow us to have an opinion and react.  If the artwork is not responded to in some way, is it really art? Is the response important?

That said, for those of you who have waded this far into my comments here, take a look at this essay.   Please copy and paste to read the essay.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/so-whats-really-going-on-with-that-disturbing-dog-video-at-the-guggenheim-1100417 

This is NOT to advocate for what is discussed in the essay.  However, being informed in a broader sense IS very important and for a culture to move forward, it must turn on what artists and others who are forward looking are doing in response to the Times. 

Michael Sheehan

September 29, 2017