Los Carpinteros, "Bola," 2008. Photograph courtesy of Sean Kelly, New York.
MERRILY KERR: What brings you to New York?
Los Carpinteros: We’re designing the set for a ballet performance by Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company. Using windsocks filled by fans, we’ll play with the drama of Rachmaninoff’s “Suite for Two Pianos.” We’re combining the technical and emotional, a bit like at the airport, when windsocks are the last thing you see before you leave the earth.
MK: How has the difficulty of traveling to the U.S. affected your work here?
LC: After 9/11, the interest in Cuban art calmed down because visas were impossible to get. So while our work kept developing in Europe, South America and Asia, we had to arrange our last exhibition at Sean Kelly Gallery by email. When we do an exhibition, we like to touch everything, and this was too cold.
MK: If less of your work is handmade, will your name become meaningless?
LC: By now, Los Carpinteros is like a family name, so it won’t grow old. Originally it didn’t just refer to woodworking; we were acting as outsiders to the art scene, which made a lot of sense in the ’90s when censorship was an issue. We’ve actually been given a new label in a book project with Thyssen-Bornemisza coming out in May: Post-Industrial Craftsmen, which describes how we use industrial and prefabricated sources and craft them to our inventions.
MK: What do you still make by hand?
LC: The exploding rooms, for example, are still a labor of craft. Our work has always been about constructing, but for these we deconstruct a fragment of architecture making it both alive and static. When we showed a version of the piece in Prague in 2005, we didn’t want it to carry political overtones of the fallen Berlin Wall, so we decided to include furniture, making it unclear whether a storm or bullet had struck.
MK: Do you suppress politics in your work?
LC: We did our most politicized work in Havana when we exhibited a functioning lighthouse lying on its side in a dark gallery. We expected this symbol of fallen power to be censored, and were surprised when it wasn’t. Making political work can be addictive. They say that creation is an allergic reaction to reality. When you have a political situation you have a lot of opportunities to make political work, but we don’t abuse it.
MK: Do you consider how people from different cultures will interpret your work?
LC: It’s always a surprise. We try to choose the most polysemic, works. A piece might be understood completely differently in Cuba, South America, Asia.
MK: How does this apply to the humor in your work?
LC: It’s one of the most difficult things you can imagine to make a joke, especially because we don’t use human figures. Creating humor with cinder blocks, for example, is a challenge. We had an idea for a series of one-roomed hotels, which turned into a drawing illustrating an actual proposal in Athens to construct brick caravans to house gypsy families. The idea is heretical, but our work doesn’t judge.
Originally published in Flash Art International, no 270, March – April 2010.
For ‘Art on Paper’ Magazine Felix Harlan & Carol Weaver printing Louis Bourgeois's 'Twosome', 2005. Photo by Johee Kim, courtesy of Harlan & Weaver Felix Harlan and Carol Weaver met as young printers at a print workshop in downtown Manhattan. When it closed, the couple founded their own printshop with a rented press, inherited equipment, and a desire to push traditional techniques to meet the needs of contemporary artists. Now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, Harlan & Weaver is a well-respected, specialty workshop where some of the best-known young and established contemporary artists make prints, using a variety of intaglio techniques. Art on Paper’s Merrily Kerr talked with the couple in their bustling studio.
MK – How did you start out in printmaking?
FH – We met each other in 1980 in New York at Aeropress, which was run by Patricia Branstead. She had been Kathan Brown’s assistant at Crown Point Press in Berkeley, California and brought some of Crown Point’s techniques and professionalism to New York printmaking.
CW – Crown Point Press’s method, was to use standard etching techniques but keep the process contemporary by eliminating preconceived ideas.
MK – What was it like when you went out on your own?
FH – In the beginning, we rented a press, and also printed with Jeryl Parker, who was doing work for Parasol Press, including big prints by Donald Sultan. Jeryl would approach problems with a different kind of thinking, sometimes doing the exact opposite of what most people would do. Even the way he designed his aquatint box, which we now have, was unusual. When we moved here, it was with his equipment, which was a big boost. Working with Jeryl was kind of a bridge. Then we began to get jobs ourselves, and the business took hold, despite a downturn in the market.
MK – The market is strong now. How are things different?
FH – It’s a very productive time in printmaking in general in New York, particularly for etching. There are more possibilities now to publish and to show graphic work. Also, the potential of small letterpress, etching or litho shops is finally being realized. It used to be that printshops had to be large and offer every technique possible. There has also been a shift in taste on the part of people who are buying prints and in curatorial interest in specialized shops. Being a part of that shift, we feel a kinship with a lot of other printers in New York and around the country.
MK – At the same time, you’re a fixture on the Lower East Side.
FH – Twenty years ago, when we went out to look for a studio, the only space we could find in our price range was on the Lower East Side and it was small.
CW – At the time, we were friends with several artists who showed in East Village galleries, and they introduced us to the area and to other artists.
FH – In fact, back then, we met James Siena, who has been doing engravings with us for ten years, because he’s a neighbor in the building. He introduced us to Steve DiBenedetto and Michele Segre, so now we’re working with them. We mostly work with artists who live and work in the New York area, who can drop in and do something and then see it printed a few days later and do more work the week after.
CW – We have also stayed here because we were able to expand within the building, and because artists like the space, which has good natural light.
MK – What’s unique about the shop’s abilities?
CW – When we were younger, we strove to learn all the techniques. We were fortunate to have worked with some painters who wanted to do multi-plate color prints – technically challenging work.
FH – But we’ve continued to use fairly traditional techniques, which we customize according to what the artist wants. We rarely use photo processes or a lot of handwork after printing. The emphasis in this shop is on what you can do with the platemaking – how to alter the metal and then print in a very straightforward way.
CW – We believe that etching is versatile within every technique, whether aquatint, hard ground, or engraving. There is a myriad of ways of approaching etching, and we want to keep all the options open.
MK – Do you work with equal numbers of returning and new artists?
FH – I know there is an emphasis now on working with artists who haven’t been published before. There is a certain cachet about doing the first print, but I don’t think it’s all that important. I’m happy to work with an artist who has done a lot of prints and can bring that experience to the studio.
CW – We enjoy working with artists, young or old, over a period of time. There are artists who have returned many times, including Kiki Smith, Richard Artschwager and Louise Bourgeois. We published prints by Louise and Kiki for the first time in 1999, and we continue to work with both of them frequently.
MK – What will the next twenty years bring?
CW – We’ve always done contract work, but have more recently begun publishing more, which is where we hope we’re headed in the future.
For ‘Contemporary’ magazine Kutlug Ataman, 'Kuba', 2004, courtesy of Carnegie International, Pittsburgh Manhattan’s New Museum of Contemporary Art is remaking itself from the ground up, aiming to become ‘a truly world class museum’ via its new building (opening in 2007) and recent curatorial appointments. Fresh from curating the 2004 Carnegie International, Laura Hoptman joined the museum’s staff this winter as a curator, bringing with her an ambitious, internationally oriented agenda. Merrily Kerr spoke to Hoptman about the New York art world, what she learned from the Carnegie International, and the New Museum’s new role.
MK – Will you bring your experience curating on an international level to the program at the Museum?
LH – With an important building under construction, a larger staff and a bigger budget, the New Museum is going to move to another dimension. I haven’t joined the staff yet, so I don’t know exactly what my parameters will be. But there is a gap in exhibition making here in New York City that can only be filled by a serious institution that concentrates on contemporary art. We have PS1, but it is a Kunsthalle, rather than a museum; of course, the big museums look at the contemporary, but not in the way that an institution that’s devoted only to contemporary art can.
MK – Is the Museum’s expansion part of a national trend of museum growth?
LH – Mid-sized institutions are creating a very important niche everywhere. The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, for example, is the star institution for contemporary art in Los Angeles, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London is giving the Tate a run for its money, and the Castello di Rivoli in Torino is the best contemporary exhibition venue in all of Italy, bar none.
Over the past fifteen years in New York, we have witnessed the demise of the not-for-profits which left the commercial galleries with the task of exposing new art and artists, by organizing idea-based exhibitions that addressed trenchant issues in culture and/or visual art in particular. Times are changing. There is a new kind of energy being generated in mid size institutions which concentrate on contemporary art. They are more flexible, faster on their feet than the larger museums and as a result, have a stake in leading the discourse. And that, after all, is the ideal goal of a contemporary art museum; not to reflect, but to act and to make something.
MK – Will you consider what other art is being shown in New York when planning the exhibition program?
LH – Absolutely. My first job in New York was at the Bronx Museum in the South Bronx. It was a real introduction to community based programming and, in a sense, I haven’t changed at all even though I did curate the Carnegie International. By comparison, the Carnegie International and all big international exhibitions don’t really have a local community. Pittsburgh wouldn’t want a Pittsburgh oriented exhibition. So I was curating for an imaginary audience – the art world and the world at large. I found this particularly challenging and am happy to return to a more community based kind of programming, albeit in the savviest, most international art community in the world.
MK – You’ve said that ‘every era gets the art it needs – or deserves.’ Is there a new kind of art being made since you planned the International?
LH – I can speak with most authority on what I have observed in the U.S. Here, it seems that we’re still in a moment of apocalyptic uncertainty. Two or three years after 9/11, people were still searching for the reaction, but the self-questioning really began before that, with the impeachment of Bill Clinton and subsequent election of George Bush. I think the country changed. The way this change has been reflected in contemporary culture I think is one of the most pressing and interesting questions of the moment.
With the last Carnegie International, I tried to explore, with the help of the thirty-seven artists that I worked with, an attitude toward art making that differed from a kind of frivolity that had been proliferating, especially in New York City, in the late 90s and early 2000s. That kind of ease in the world is losing its relevance, though it’ll come back, I’m sure. It has been replaced by unease and desire to seize the power, whether it be in a spiritual or even supernatural sense, or through philosophy or even politics.
MK – Doesn’t the legacy of Pop still hold sway?
LH – Yes and no. It’s certainly not the only strategy for a relevant, politicized art. The last Whitney Biennial, quite wonderfully emphasized the Pop and post-Pop strain of contemporary art; the show was the polar opposite of the International, a fact that emphasizes the notion that there are many ways to define contemporanaeity. Whereas the Biennial was to me filled with art about our own backyard – racially, socio-economically and in other ways, the work in the International was about more macro issues like ethics, and spirituality. The International posited a different purpose for artmaking, a larger one I think.
MK – Reviews of the International were mixed. Were they fair?
LH – It is important to say at the outset that the Carnegie International hasn’t gotten a positive review in the New York Times since the nineteen eighties, and that all massive group exhibitions of this kind are naturally magnets for creative art criticism. How easy a target is a show that claims to sum up an entire world of contemporary art from one point of view?
That said, the breakdown of good and bad reviews for this last show were telling. European and Canadian publications liked the exhibition; so did regional papers like Philadelphia and Cleveland. The problematic reviews mostly came from the American newspapers. I think that this proves that there is a big gulf between what’s going on in the contemporary art worlds in Europe and American centers like New York; we have a very provincial streak here in New York, and what we look for in exhibitions might be different than what others look for. Our concern, or lack of concern, about some things is not necessarily translatable to Zagreb, or even to Berlin, and the universalist ‘us and them’ attitude that we can’t help but have here in the center of the art market is one that is not necessarily right. That’s why, to quote a friend of mine, I curate on the basis of need. I consider the needs of the people who are looking at an exhibition, as well as the needs of the artists, and most importantly, the needs of our time. That’s the ultimate aim; to do the best one can for the time one lives in.
For ‘Flash Art’ magazine Roni Horn, Cabinet of 2004, Special Project for Flash Art They’re jarring, garish, disturbing and…they’re portraits of us. Roni Horn’s clown photographs are a departure from previous projects, more provocative than the stony-faced Icelandic woman in ‘You Are the Weather’ (1996) or the roiling surface of the River Thames in ‘Still Water’ (1999). Nevertheless, they’re still intended to make her audience reflect on its own response to the work. As Horn explained in a discussion with Merrily Kerr, the viewer’s experience is paramount, even more important to her than the aesthetic aspects of the photographs and sculptures themselves. Acting as ambiguous symbols, the clowns lead viewers to analyze their process of looking and the reactions that arise.
MK – In the book format of ‘Cabinet of’ you see the clown’s face one image at a time, while this project for Flash Art is arranged in a grid. How will the viewer’s experience be different?
RH – I originally conceived of it as a grid on one wall. When I had the working photographs up for the pieces I did with Dia, they hadn’t been color corrected or scaled, but that’s how I had them on the wall – going 12 feet up. I thought, it’s very harsh [and] really aggressive, but it has a quality that interests me. I’ve [also] installed it as a surround like ‘You Are the Weather’. Sometimes a work has more than one option in terms of the kind of relationship it can have with the viewer. Book form offers a very different experience than an ‘in the round’ experience. I’m interested in these differences. So I often work in dual forms.
MK – The viewer’s experience is the goal of your work, right?
RH –There is no other point for me. There is no other reason to involve an audience unless you’re dealing with the quality of the experience you’re putting out there.
MK – You’ve been quoted as saying that you don’t consider yourself a visual artist. Could you explain?
RH – The thing is, I prefer not to be anything, because then I keep all my options. Once I say what I am, then it’s like excluding everything else. So why bother saying it? I don’t think most of my work comes from the visual. It starts in a more conceptual realm and the visual precipitates out of it. Language is a big factor in the development of the work. It’s kind of pre-visual.
MK – Speaking of language, you often talk about Emily Dickinson’s writing in relation to your work.
RH – There is something in the way that Dickinson uses language that allows me to cultivate the idea of presence around it. And that’s what I’m doing with those objects [text sculptures]. When I think of language it’s an intangible form. Language is, to some extent, a philosophical device or mind device. It’s based in the need to express or communicate, perhaps, but there is this interesting amalgam that occurs in Dickinson that is both of language and of actuality.
She, for whatever reason, in a very isolated fashion, was having this extraordinary dialogue with the empirical – what was in front of her. Basically, I’m amplifying her implications. [It relates to] that idea of language in Jewish culture which is really a substitute, in part, for not having access to the graven image. So there is an element of that in where these pieces come from. They are views in a room. What I mean by that is that when you look at it, you have to enter another space to have that experience. And that other space is the vertical dimension of what it says and where that takes you. In the sense of your understanding where that takes you. And that is all yours.
MK – Does ‘Cabinet of’ challenge viewers to look for the experience instead of musing on the clown imagery?
RH – ‘Cabinet of’ is a kind of self-portrait, definitely. But, it’s a self-portrait of the person looking at the work. And that’s the way I see it. Clown is just a metaphor for mirror. Because what a clown originally functioned as was an amoral symbol enabling viewers to imagine themselves in these roles or to understand their own morality through the clown figure, which was a kind of symbolic form. You could say it’s a generic portrait of humanity or you could imagine it as a self –portrait of the viewer expressed through the clown image – these are the same thing.
Basically, the clown thing isn’t what interested me originally. Not historically [but] more in the idea of appearance. The clown is not about actuality. It’s the opposite, it’s of appearance; it’s a symbol. And the cloud, all it is is appearance; it’s moisture and air. Now this isn’t very interesting to me to break the thing down that way, but really, the two objects are immaterial realities. One in the fabric of nature and the other in the fabric of humankind, but both functioning exclusively through appearance. They have no other life. So that was how they came together. ‘Cabinet of’ came out of that and that obviously is connected to ‘Cabinet of Dr Caligari’ the film. It’s again, not literal, but every cabinet is an interior of some kind.
MK –Your work requires viewers to have a degree of self-knowledge. Are people able to be that self-aware?
RH – I have to work, in a way, with these assumptions about my audience. Because these are the things I value and seek to embody or activate. I think a lot of people won’t. A lot of people will see an object and they’ll go on to the next show. It’s about individual character and what moves you. I think the work acts more as a mirror for one’s limitations or one’s potential. I’m not trying to educate, I’m not trying to communicate or impose my morality. This is what I have to do.
For ‘Flash Art’ magazine In nearly five years as art critic for the Village Voice, Jerry Saltz has written over 200 essays on art exhibited in New York. A selection of these appears in ‘Seeing Out Loud,’ a book that Saltz calls a ‘core sample’ of art seen in the city. Whether he is musing on the state of the art world or examining exhibitions by artists as diverse as Kai Althoff and Norman Rockwell, Saltz never shies away from making his opinions known.
MK- How did you determine the book’s contents?
JS –I kept most of the one-person reviews, a few of the two persons, and most of the museums. Like a lot of people who make things, I hope I’m getting better not worse, so I put the more recent reviews first. My deepest fantasy is that my work could be like desert island reading, where you could dip in and out over and over.
MK – Your writing is self-aware. Do you think that’s an important part of what criticism should be?
JS – I want subjectivity, subjectivity, more subjectivity. I think that’s all there really is. There is no one rule that says ‘Rubins is great’ or ‘Rubins is not great.’ I think it’s all a matter of taste. I write what I think, but I hope that plugs into a bigger, shared feeling so it’s not just some cockamamie nut, running around going, “Oh I like this; I hate that.” To me an ideal review has an opinion in every sentence – some temperature. I hate it when I don’t know what a critic thinks.
MK – Are you unusual in that respect as a critic?
JS – It’s strange. Only in the art world do people say, “Why write about things if you don’t like them?” You would never say that to a restaurant critic or to a sports writer, “Write about the Mets, but only say they’re good.” I think critics let everyone down, especially artists, when they don’t share a strong opinion one way or the other. Frankly, that’s the situation we’re in, and I think that has to stop.
MK – You’ve written that the critic has no power. Can you explain?
JS – I don’t say this to be a provocateur, but art critics don’t have true power. Theater critics have power; they close shows. Art critics can’t do that (Although I sometimes wish we could). If something I write curtails a sale, I’d like to think that those collectors shouldn’t be buying that work anyway. If a dealer backs off you because of what I write, then something’s really wrong with the dealer.
MK – Do you need an eye to be a critic?
JS – Everyone has an eye, and everyone, I suppose, has a voice, so anyone can be a critic. But only a few people can be good critics. For that I think you do need a good eye. But you also have to write clear, entertaining, jargon free prose; you should never take anything for granted, talk down to the reader, or think you understand everything you see. Art is about experience, not understanding. In a sense, it is beyond words. Of course, that hasn’t stopped me from trying to put what I see into words.
For ‘NYArts’ Magazine Sanford Biggers (with David Ellis) 'Mandala of the B-Bodisattva II', 2000. Rubber Tiles, Formica Backing, scuff marks and a single-channel video, 16x16 ft (floor), courtesy The Bronx Museum of the ArtsLuis Gispert, 'Flossing', 1999. Chrome frame, rubber wheels, race seat, neon subwoofers, amplifier, monster cable, auto alarm with remote keychain, and audio loop. Courtesy The Bronx Museum of the Arts With its energetic urban aesthetic and a roll call of hot young artists, ‘One Planet Under a Groove: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art’ at the Bronx Museum is one of the best group shows of the year. Co-curator Franklin Sirmans is primarily known for nearly a decade of art writing, but with ‘One Planet’ he has begun to seriously flex his curatorial muscle. Talking as easily about Hip Hop as High Modernism, Sirmans has made it his trademark to write about young contemporary artists who have arrived in New York on the wave of globalism. In December, he curated ‘Rumors of War’, the inaugural show at new uptown space Triple Candy and at the same time, put together an exhibition room for Fast Fwd: Miami focusing on utilitarian art. Merrily Kerr talks to Sirmans about ‘One Planet’ and a new generation of artists.
MK – You’ve done more writing and editing than curating. Do you consider yourself more of a writer than a curator?
FS – Definitely. But the approach is always similar…putting together a small show is a lot like writing a big essay. For me personally, most of the thought process is developed first in writing anyway….But I am very happy writing; that was the way it began. I wasn’t an artist, I wasn’t trying to be an art historian per se, it was about writing about art and using art as a vehicle to talk about so many issues.
MK – Several of your exhibitions have been about urban culture. The latest shows have had titles like “Classic Works of Urban Culture”, “Pavement,” “New York, New York”…
FS – That is a central part of where I find myself right now. In fact, Adam Matthews and I are working on a book of memoirs which is basically about recollections of youth spent outside of the urban environment and about how the necessity for dialogue leads people to these centers – New York, London, Paris….We worked on a story together for ‘One World Magazine’, in which I wrote this piece about Harlem. I grew up in this building here [points out the window to building next door]. But it’s about going away and coming back and talking about the changes that have occurred.
MK – Yeah, because you lived in Connecticut when you did your degree at Wesleyan, you studied at Morehouse College in Atlanta and later lived in Milan for two years.
FS – Coming back here after the cracked out ‘80s…and now there are galleries…it’s crazy. I had one week where I did three or four reviews without going below 96th Street. It was fantastic.
MK – Let me ask you about ‘One Planet Under a Groove’. How did you come up with the title?
FS – We [Sirmans and Bronx Museum Curator, Lydia Yee] bounced ideas off of each other and came up with that, and it resonated. On the one hand there is a reference to Parliament and to Funk, which is such an integral part of where Hip Hop came from. You can’t talk about Outkast without knowing about P-Funk. It comes up in Adrian Piper’s work and in other people’s work…As opposed to George Clinton writing ‘One Nation Under a Groove’, at this point in the way we looked at the show, we could safely say ‘One Planet Under a Groove,’ referring to the music.
MK – It’s ‘One Planet’ because the artists are coming from different backgrounds and countries?
FS – Yes. Japan, Italy, Korea. It was weird how the Asian influence is so much more prevalent than say, a European one. Like Hisashi Tenmyouya’s work– it’s like Wu Tang but from a Japanese perspective. There is a dialogue. And to look at Nikki Lee’s work and the ideas that she is questioning…Her work makes a lot of people uneasy.
MK – Can you summarize your essay in the ‘One Planet’ catalogue?
FS – We all have a silly blind faith that visual art is removed from all those other systems of mass media. And it was talking about that – what a great place to start. Hip Hop. The images being sold on MTV and how they can be detrimental in many ways. I was interested in talking about where the initial impulse is, where is the essence of the product? Is it about this ‘bling bling’ thing that has developed? Of course not. And how do we look at the ideas that we are giving to children, in particular? Artists are the ones who challenge these things.
MK – Like Susan Smith – Pinelo’s gyrating females in the video ‘Cake’?
FS – That’s why I love her work. It’s basic but totally powerful. In the catalogue essay, I wanted to try to grab people with a language that was not normally confined to the art exhibition catalogue. I started the essay by talking about Jay-Z. The line he uses is, “I’m overcharging niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush.” Cold Crush being one of the first Hip Hop groups who got no love and put out amazing songs, didn’t make any money, and now they’re trying to get their own little piece. They’re going to put out their own independent label record now. They were coming straight from the initial impulse of the art form. Until you have that market and you have all those people working into the machinery its just sitting there. So I was trying to make some distinction between the craft and the commodity, which I have been trying to do about visual art for some time.
MK – So are you saying that an artist or group of artists innovates and then a whole other group of artists responds and a market grows around it? We now have a commercially successful generation of young artists who have come out of the Freestyle show at the Studio Museum in Harlem last summer. In one of your review of Mark Bradford’s show at Lombard-Fried, you said that there was lottery draft for these artists amongst New York galleries.
FS – Totally – Rico Gatson, Mark Bradford, and Julie Mehretu…I know I’m missing somebody. That’s three artists with openings in the same week….Places like The Studio Museum in Harlem and now The Project make it possible for me to do what I do. I think what that gallery has done has changed a lot of things. What kick started it, it seems to me, was that it was about things that were happening outside of New York. If you look at a lot of the artists he [Christian Haye] shows, it is so easy to look at the work and say, ‘Wow, this is damn good work, and no one in New York is showing it.’ It still blows my mind that there aren’t more galleries that at least have somewhat similar aesthetics. Being in Europe from 1996-98 was really important for me. In 1997, Harold Szeeman did Lyon, he did a show in Slovenia. Johannesburg happened. Venice was that year as well. And all these shows brought together an exciting mix of artists. Someone from New York would not have done those shows. Because we know that we are the center of the world….and sometimes if it is not in front of our face then it can’t be that good, we seem to say.
MK – The term ‘post-black’ came out of Freestyle. Do you think this is a useful term?
FS – It sparked a hell of a lot of debate and dialogue, and that’s useful….Thelma Golden is definitely someone who has been amazingly important to me. Still is. And doing the Hip Hop show, there were elements that we had to be very conscious of from the Black Male show….It is a very, very different show, but we were conscious of it. For me, it was a marker. That ‘93 Whitney Biennial, her show in ’95 and the international biennials in ’97. Those are really, really important markers just like Freestyle has been.
MK – I tend to think that you write about African and African-American artists – but you write about all kinds of people. Was my initial perception right or wrong?
FS – Perhaps…I’ve studied African-American artists, my father is an avid collector, and my first experiences with art were with black artists, people like Ed Clark, Romare Bearden, Vincent Smith, Jacob Lawrence. I grew up with that. So it is a base, but I certainly don’t seek to limit the artists that I am talking about. It also depends on what you read. I’ve had people who have seen certain pieces, like maybe a Robert Ryman piece or a Sol LeWitt piece they I’ve written and they’ll say, ‘Oh, I thought you were white.’ People are funny like that.
MK – How would you write about Mark Bradford without modernism as a base?
FS – You can’t. But it certainly helps to know something about black vernacular if you want to talk about Mark. A lot of the investigations into modernism have a certain resonance for artists. Like the way that Janine Antoni brought this consciously feminist-based presence to minimalism. ‘Gnaw’ is a brilliant piece. I think that is what Juan Capistran is doing with his piece. Break dancing on top of a Carl Andre – some interesting things happened when he mixed things up. He actually went into the museum and did that piece while a friend kept the guard away.
MK – Do you have an ideal exhibition?
FS – [Laughs] Give me lots of money to pay every artist a fee up front…that would be fantastic! But there is no ideal space. I don’t know if there is an ideal show. I’d like to do small, one-person exhibitions in addition to other group exhibitions. I want to do a group exhibition called “A Hero Ain’t Nothing But a Sandwich.” The title comes from a book by Alice Childress that was made into a film in 1977. On one hand, it has this resonance for me growing up. On the other hand, it’s got that idea that we were talking about with Capistran and Carl Andre or like Janine Antoni with ‘Gnaw’. Art and modernist art history makes these big, gigantic heroes. It’s trying to talk about that and perhaps bring that lofty idealism down a little bit, and look at the work for what it is as opposed to this idea of the grand heroic – the mark, the gesture. Come on!
