Swindle

William Anastasi, I Want Walls, 1995




Swindle –

1. To cheat or defraud of money or property
2. To obtain by fraudulent means


Yesterday a student posted on my facebook wall a link to an article, “The Art of the Swindle”. The article is a “review” of the exhibition “Wall Ceiling Floor: An Exhibition of Works by Anastasi, Judd and Sandback”, curated by Michael Straus.

The posting of this link was a continuation of a conversation – the kind of earnest conversation I value so much in teaching. It represents the kind of conversations that some might avoid because of their directness and honesty but I find embedded in them at least some of the “real stuff” that we think about in art. I see the post as a request for a response from me to this article.

We cannot judge the sincerity or authenticity of an-other’s works, doings, statements – not truly, not absolutely. We cannot know another’s internal thoughts and motives. We can only know with certainty our own thoughts and feelings. We can only be sure of our own authenticity. We can only be certain that a work of literature or art is of value – is valid – if it offers something to us. To fear being “taken in” – “scammed” by a work of art is to doubt our own senses, to distrust ourselves, to fear being made fools of – of being made to look stupid. I know if a work speaks to me. The insights and musings of others can expand my understanding but they do not replace my own. Whether or not a work has something of value for me I know.

I am distrustful of reviews that seek to condemn work and which ridicule those who find something valid within a given piece of work. Why would I need to be warned against my own honest responses? Why do I need you to protect me against my own thinking?

I find the following “review” provocative. It gives voice to what I think many feel when “confronted” by challenging work. Like so many other examples of rhetoric it truthfully does nothing to persuade of any particular point of view – it merely reaffirms entrenchment – widens the divide between those of differing points of view.

As for me I find great poetry in many Minimalist and Conceptual works. They are often stark and elegant in their simplicity – and I think frankly courageous in their willingness to rely on less in the hopes of achieving more.


The Art of the Swindle

Art of the Swindle Readers' Responses

Judd Foundation

William Anastasi

Fred Sandback

Link to Exhibition Catalog on Amazon

Not in this show but ...

John Baldessari on Art21

Mini-documentary on John Baldessari

Joseph Kosuth at MOMA

Joseph Kosuth

Short Paragraph on Conceptual Art - MOMA

Thematic Essay on Conceptual Art - The Met

artists of a certain sort part I

Mel Chin

Mel Chin's work


Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

Website of Cardiff and Miller


Ann Hamilton

Ann Hamilton's Website


Christian Boltanski

MOMA link to Boltanski

Marian Goodman Gallery Link to Boltanski

Love and Luc Tuymans

I am in love with Luc Tuymans.

Here it is ... someone who is after my soul. Someone who can and does look deeply at a thing. Someone who gets it. This deep and thoughtful conversation on painting means so much to me.

Bombsite: Luc Tuymans and Kerry James Marshall

I really love art, truly, deeply. It is art that makes life more than mean and hard -- in whatever form you find it, wherever you find it -- brought into being by any impulse which drives the someone to make art. Such a futile endeavor. Such a folly. Yet what a desert life is without it.

I am really tired -- deeply fatigued with the war between the "makers and the thinkers." It is bullshit.

There's an illness in this need to exclude. It is an illness knitted from fear of differentness. It is a fear of being proved irrelevant. It is the fear of god in a way of thinking. The fear of being judged and being found lacking. So let us condemn before we ourselves are condemned -- a fear of oblivion and meaninglessness.

We go at it like fundamentalists. If you don't come at it like I do -- if you don't do what I do -- expect what I expect -- then you're an atheist and there's no place for you.

However you come to work. Whatever way you love. That's enough. It's a spectrum of thinking. Different ways of thinking deeply. Different ways of giving over. Give over. Make room for those who would give over.

Exhortation to make remarkable – September 14, 2011

Our chief charge as artists is to bring ourselves to our work … to extend through this work to an audience that which elicits passions within us … This is to some degree the nature of ambition for artists. How do I “take to the next level” … elevate above the expected those things I wish to give to my audience?

Every opportunity to make work, every opportunity to engage an audience, is a challenge to our ambitions. How do we achieve these? How do we make remarkable that which we do?

It is to us to exceed our own expectations, to exceed that which is adequate … to make exceptional.

practicing ...

It is a practice. It is all a practice. Each day is filled with subtle adjustments edging infinitesimally toward the goal of a project destined for failure. It is ever this striving that moves us … and I mean us … the collective … forward.

I have thought for a long time on the meaning of “goodness.” What can it possibly mean? In some limited way it is a measuring against some criteria. People say over and over again, all meaning many different things … “Is it a ‘good’ painting?” is he or she “a ‘good’ painter.” You would think, used in this context that “good” would have no real ethical content, that it would simply refer to some quality … some ascertainable quality.

I have known for some time that art is so much religion and that the conceptions of it inspires as much passion as any religious belief. There are attached to our definitions a vigor that spills over into the world with righteousness. With that “good” represents clearly a passing of judgment on something other than the quality of a work – or in addition. The appellation of “good painter”, “good artist” transcends these limits and extends to the quality of humanity … to be revered … or conversely … “a poor painter, a bad painter” … to be reviled.

I am as fervent in these opinions as all my associates.

A good painter:

• A commitment to the practice – a love and a longing to take up the challenges of that history and that material.
• A dwelling on a goal … ever moving forward … a program within the work – (for me it has been the goal of making manifest in material ideas in the same kind of why that the Gothic Cathedrals embody the ideas of Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Abbot Suger. So that my work is not an illustration but a body.)
• For the work to be driven by an internal dialogue, which incorporates and responds to the external but which has a subject of its own.