tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post1740211514303535809..comments2022-03-24T15:14:12.561+00:00Comments on Inter Kant: Robert Mapplethorpe Night WorksGary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-82914587199739011672011-05-30T22:07:45.863+01:002011-05-30T22:07:45.863+01:00I've now had time to look at the Frieze articl...I've now had time to look at the Frieze article and agree entirely with your comments concerning it. It is a very typical piece that writes about questions of free speech in a way that rob such questions of any real interest. The operative assumption of the piece appears to be that readers require no more than a passing kind of contact with a subject-matter and that the main point should be to keep them distant from any serious investigation of the complex ways in which censorial responses can be elicited in relation to an art work. The fact that such a piece can be produced in an art journal does not do much to raise one's hopes about how the context of reception of art works can be seriously improved!<br /><br />I agree with your original comments with regard to the oddity of the connection with the Scissors Sisters, an oddity accentuated by the fact that there was an album produced by this group in connection with the exhibition and yet the album had no presence in the exhibition space itself and hence *a fortiori* no reflection was held within the exhibition on a connection to the album. The presentation of the works involved little by way of serious attempt to engage the viewer with any suggested connections and, as you say, this is hardly an isolated situation with respect to curation.Gary Banhamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-86419900265121179512011-05-30T17:50:47.519+01:002011-05-30T17:50:47.519+01:00Thanks for your comments: very useful. I'm jus...Thanks for your comments: very useful. I'm just going to respond quickly now. I will come back to this comment more fully later. The general points you make concerning awkwardness of connection and journalistic sensibility seem to go together. The reason for the awkward connection with contemporary works seems to be because of a certain expected journalistic response, a response that requires work to be "contemporary", meaning expressive of something "now", "today". Even with work like Mapplethorpe's that is from still a very recent past I think there is impatience and expectation that it should say something in connection with today's art, whatever it is that "today" is thought to be!<br /><br />I'll get back to this comment after I've had time to look at the Frieze piece but thanks very much for this comment: has made me think!Gary Banhamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-33286606380273399452011-05-30T15:52:27.916+01:002011-05-30T15:52:27.916+01:00I like your review. I think the qualities that you...I like your review. I think the qualities that you describe in the last paragraph are important and central and were missed in the show. I basically couldn't get past the awkwardness of connections (to the Scissor Sisters? via Asprey Jacques) and was seeing it anyway as some strange and limited opportunism - and on a small and a bit breathless scale. Even trying, I found the show reinforced a slight parochialism of contemporary art which is required to negotiate, via a tie to novel forms of presentation, simplistically specific relations even to its most esteemed practitioners which is usually inadequate to or even disrespectful of some of their achievements (a point I think that came out in some of the tedious juxtapositions that you mention, and was even there when they worked). That a number of the works that were in the show were better and more resolved in a way that transcended the slightly polythene pretensions of the exhibition in either space, that, in Mapplethorpe's case is linked to something dignified and almost statuesque, even austere, is a point worth making. Your suggestion of a show focusing on the nudes would be anathema in this sort of environment (you'd only do it in a better gallery, when it would be great).<br /><br />I don't want to seem to pick on this gallery, I just think that shows frequently tend to reflect a general standard contemporary journalistic sensitivity. Having said that, I wonder why that type of 'sensitivity' is so problematic. I guess that the idea of that sensitivity is linked to a kind of orientation toward achievable affects calculated on the basis of an inadequate estimation of any individual's potential for responsiveness to originality when faced with actual materials (as in your writing about the Mapplethorpe); a type of journalistic tone - that's all I think it is -whilst it's present now in curating, is easy to spot in (obviously) journalism, especially where it's directed at issues. An example with outrageous pretension is <br /><br />http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/free-speech/<br /><br />If you get a chance, take a look at it, it's a piece by an editor of Frieze which branches out as a discussion and is saturated by exactly those types of qualities that would work against any type of comprehension/actual appreciative sophistication whatever (as frequently witnessed by lovers of art everywhere) - explained now with complete insensitivity to some issues of self-identification (for instance). (The mechanics of a situation is as ever the subject where cohesiveness in context comes at the cost of recognition of any specific contributions to a context that would have needed to be more expansive merely to earn one's interest in the first place - there's no detail, no exemplification, no historical sensitivity ...)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com