-
Artforum, May 2014
312 ARTFORUM
ON MY FIRST VISIT to this years Whitney Biennial, I entered a
gallery and found myself surrounded by materials documenting the
history of the journal Semiotext(e) and the small press of the same
name. Id stumbled on what felt like an uncanny physical
manifestation of my own pastspecifically, a crucial and affectively
charged com-ponent of my theoretical formation. Ephemera papered
the walls, along with displays of books, while special issues of
the journalon Bataille, on Autonomia, on polysexualitywere lined up
in a vitrine, doubles of my own personal effects. Part of curator
Stuart Comers third of this tripartite showwith Anthony Elms and
Michelle Grabner helming the other floorsthe installation, drawn
from the archive of Semiotext(e) founder Sylvre Lotringer, points
up a key if tacit theme of the Biennial. The exhibition is replete
with printed matter, writing, texts of all sortsin short, with
words. Under the broad rubric of the lexical fall such works as
David Foster Wallaces notebooks; Allan Sekulas text-heavy
sketchbooks; Etel Adnans leporellos, or fold books, conflating
painting and poetry; David Diaos painting 40 Years of His Art,
2013, which depicts an invitation to the artists fictional moma
retrospective; and Susan Howes poetic microtexts, which,
even as they take words as their medium, challenge the dominion
of lexiocentrism via their positioning between writing and seeing,
reading and looking, as Howe puts it.
In fact, by virtue of being on display in a museum, all of these
works stake out that liminal space. And because archives amplify
our sense of documents as physical things (as suggested by the fact
that libraries indicate the scope of archival holdings in terms of
linear feet), this tension between reading and looking is nowhere
more apparent than in the shows powerful archival displays. Elmss
sec-tion of the exhibition includes Joseph Grigelys reconsti-tution
of art critic Gregory Battcocks hitherto scattered papers, and, in
addition to the Semiotext(e) gallery, Comers section features Julie
Aults installation Afterlife: A Constellation, 2014. Here,
alongside handwritten papers by Martin Wong, is the Indian River
citrus crate that artist David Wojnarowicz kept beneath his bed and
used to store itemsreceipts, toys, postcards, figures made of
newspaperthat would make their way into his work Magic Box.
The prevalence of such work resonates with an impulse currently
animating several academic disciplines, namely, the rethinking of
literature and the literary object in light of object-oriented
ontology. OOO, as its often called, is a philosophical tendency
loosely connecting a diverse group of speculative realists (e.g.,
Jane Bennett, Graham Harman) who, whether or not they embrace that
label, investigate the relation between persons and things while
denying the hierarchical superiority of the human subject.
Extrapolating from this discourse (which has informed the art
worlds own in recent years, notably influencing Carolyn
Christov-Bakargievs Documenta 13 and its discussion in these
pages), we might say that a textual object-orientation refers us to
the texts status as matter, to its marks of material wear and of
interaction with other objects and beings. To be sure, from the
earliest iterations of hieroglyphics up through concrete poetry,
typographic experimentalism, intermedial Conceptualism, and most
recently thing theory, encounters with the physique of texts have
been staged again and again. But in the context of object-oriented
ontology, there is renewed attention to
literary content as grapheme, handwriting, embossed toile, mass
of print, etc. The textual object is identified not by, say, genre
or style but by what it does and what is done to or with it. Like
Howes microtexts, it becomes a thing to be looked at, touched,
translated, technologically medi-ated. It is not the static
predicate of a transitive verb, but a gerundive: A text is being
curated, and so forth. It demands to be seen as a live, or living,
work, an inter-face of bios and res.
Bespeaking a strong engagement with the object turn as a textual
form, the Biennial does not elide the fact that its tricky to claim
materiality within the realm of the liter-ary, particularly when
art itself is in many ways defined by a material engagement with
the world. But the exhibition nevertheless makes a compelling case
for the rewards to be had when words cast their lot with things, so
to speak, and vice versa, while suggesting the affective networks
linking active objects and human subjects. Wojnarowiczs Magic Box
poignantly embodies such links as an archive within an archive,
part Wunderkammer, part punk fetish
chamber, promiscuously intermingling words and things. Texts and
representations, like people, are mortal to the extent that they
are material, and certainly mortality is at the crux of this show,
with its homages to such figures as semiforgotten artist Tony
Greene (who died due to compli-cations of aids in 1990 and was
memorialized in an instal-lation curated by Richard Hawkins and
Catherine Opie) and activist Malachi Ritscher (who self-immolated
in 2006 in protest against the Iraq war, and whose performance
tapes and valises have been put on display by the group Public
Collectors). Yet, Wojnarowiczs ensemble of detritus suggests, it is
this mortality that underpins the sacred humil-ity of objects on
which artists bestow votive homage.
The Whitney Biennial is on view through May 25 at the Whitney
Museum of American Art in New York.
EMILY APTER IS A PROFESSOR OF FRENCH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY. (SEE CONTRIBUTORS.)
Whitney BiennialWHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORKEmily
Apter
The textual object demands to be seen as a live, or living,
work, an interface of bios and res.
From left: David Diao, 40 Years of His Art, 2013, acrylic and
vinyl on canvas, 40 x 60". Semiotext(e) publications, 2014. Photo:
Chandra Glick. David Wojnarowicz, Magic Box (detail), n.d., wooden
box, mixed media, 8 x 17 x 1112". From Julie Ault, Afterlife: A
Constellation, 2014.
-
Lettre, Spring 2014
-
The Brooklyn Rail, May 2013
Installation view from Walid Raad and David Diao, PaulaCooper
Gallery, New York (September 22 October 27,2012). Walid Raad and
David Diao. Courtesy PaulaCooper Gallery, New York.
ArtSeen
DAVID DIAO and WALID RAADby Joan Waltemath
PAULA COOPER GALLERY | SEPTEMBER 22 OCTOBER 27, 2012
David Diao and Walid Raad met at Hampshire College in the late
90s where they were bothon the facultyRaad having just completed
his Ph.D. and Diao, though born in Chengdu, aveteran of the New
York art world with a history from the early days of SoHo, where he
hadthe first one-person show at Paula Coopers gallery in 1969. They
soon found that they shareda keen interest in the archive and the
way histories are kept. Widely divergent in their chosensubjects,
the fruitful dialogue they have maintained for nearly 20 years is
the impetus fortheir exhibition.
Raads work for the current exhibition,Appendix XVIII: Plates
63-257(2012), whichwas also shown in part at dOCUMENTA(13) thisyear
as Scratching on Things I Could Disavow,takes its point of
departure from the explosion ofinfrastructure for a burgeoning art
scene in theMiddle East. A native of Lebanon who came tothe U.S. in
1983 fleeing a war in his homeland,Raad has both a vested interest
in and aninformed viewpoint on these recentdevelopments.
Reconfiguring the bits and pieces of materials and text that
bear a central or tangentialrelationship to the new art practices,
Raads less than sensual but certainly sleek works arethe perfect
vehicles for investment: none are too big, they are bright but not
too loud, smartlooking and cryptic enough to seem somewhat
mysterious. Each is grounded by aninformative backstory. And
indeed, Raad is talking about history, the history of the
presentmoment as documented through a rapidly expanding art
network. These works invite theironlookers to become a part of it
all, too, as both collector and archivist, through ownership.
DAVID DIAO and WALID RAAD - The Brooklyn Rail
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/11/artseen/david-diao-and-...
1 of 4 08/05/13 13:57
-
Output as scans that for the most part use fragments of text on
monochrome fields, theframed scans fill up one corner of the room
in Paula Coopers alternative space in a seeminglyrandom salon style
hanging. Here the familiar framework of institutional critique
tends tomove us away from attaching anything more than a passing
glance to the blue ground, therainbow fade or the shapes of yellow
on gray-violet that make up the grounds. Their lack ofengagement
with a formal vocabulary pushes them towards design; their content
as it is,being written. They feel like the trappings of an overtly
thorough, precise and categoricalintellect, qualities any archivist
would cherish.
Raads project, which has long been recursive, meets a more
expanded end in hisphotographs of exhibited objects as they appear
reflected in the high gloss floors ofundesignated but new, Middle
Eastern museums. Simply titled Preface to the SecondEdition _ III
(2012), the work is catalogued with ascending numbers. Where gray
melts intoglare with shadow defining edge, the true nature of the
object photographed remainsshrouded; reduced to an essential aspect
of themselves, the objects which are his subjectsopen up through
the process of being photographed and become fluid. At first view
theirresulting enigmatic nature serves to facilitate multiple
readings and then allows for both are-contextualization and
reinterpretation or the seeking of a referential clue to carry
theirsignification beyond the initial apprehension of their
appearance. Reflections on the framedworks Plexiglas surfaces add
the present to the other locations recordedbringing the twoworlds
together to sonorous effect.
Raads sculptural works seem to reflect a somewhat different
premise than Appendix XVIII:Plates 88-151 (2009), creating an
apparent evolution of thought moving through the threebodies of
work. As Untitled (floor piece)(2011) frames an absent wall, it
opens a white spacethat is latentto be filled by the perceiver. The
floor, usually relegated to the non-privilegedposition in a
figure/ground dialectic, is here rendered beautifully and
painstakingly in woodinlay as the ostensible subject. The reversal
parallels the change in the position of theperceiver, as s/he is
now given interpretative responsibilities. This tendency, apparent
here aswell as in a few of Diaos pieces in the large room of Paula
Coopers alternate space, isrefreshing. In opening up the dialogue
to not only be received, but to embrace how works areconditioned
through receivership, the relative nature of communication is
affirmed.
Framed work and paintings usually prove difficult to hang
togethernot for the framedworks so much in this context, but for
the paintings ability to command the space of thegallery. Here
though, they make the two artists works immediately
distinguishable. Diaoslarge acrylic painting KM (2012) finally
dominates the space and speaks out of its voidwhen, like
architecture, it makes a subject of the body.
Diaos history of referencing Modernist icons has played out over
more than two decades,examining benchmarks in the art historical
debates of the last century. Here his familiar
DAVID DIAO and WALID RAAD - The Brooklyn Rail
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/11/artseen/david-diao-and-...
2 of 4 08/05/13 13:57
-
referencing of Malevichs 1915 exhibition of Suprematist
paintings, which Diao first begun in1984, is paired with an image
taken from Russian architect Konstantin Melnikovs studio.Called M
& M(2012), it shows off Melnikovs signature hexagonal windows
to effect,creating a pattern of geometric figures that is on a
plane oblique to the picture plane. Theregular pattern the
architects windows create makes for an interesting play of depth
whenpainted, an effect that Diao explores in a number of paintings
here.
Diaos work points to many things, including but not limited to
the complex and sometimesfruitful exchange between architects and
painters. His glance back at the turn of the centuryis but one
example. While talking with Diao, his interest in historical
information is amplyevident, though the wealth of information is
not necessarily available when looking at hisworks. The complexity
of both the formal and historical relationships here is a fertile
ground,which with a little effort, can be unearthed.
Diao makes a gesture towards an historical lineage in
Diamond-hexagon(2012), a singlehexagonal form suspended in a
square. It is installed in the upper corner of the room, justabove
his screened image of the 1915 Suprematist painting installation,
in which Malevichsblack square hung, like an icon would have, high
up in the corner of the room. As well, itharkens back to the family
and guild crests of the 17th century that are visible hanging
highup on the columns in Saenredams paintings of the same time. No
doubt a source ofinspiration for Mondrian, who would have been
familiar with his countrymans work, Diaointones the lineage of
contemporary non-objective painting in the melding of diverse
culturalreferences. For the most part formally inert,
Diamond-hexagon rests on its context in orderfor us to take
something from its blue and black surface. What is interesting in
this exhibitionis how Diao moves his work out of an anti-formal
position, without embracing theproblematics of Formalism.
In Kaleidoscope(2012), the other large piece in the room, a
layering of shape and colorworks together with the silkscreened
image of Melnikovs hexagonal windows as they wraparound his studio,
creating a play of forms that hints at the complexity of the
backstory of thetwo men that so engages Diao. Melnikov, famous in
1924 for his design of Lenins tomb inMoscows Red Square, soon
became, like Malevich, a censored member of the avant-gardeand
turned to painting when his architectural license was revoked in
1937. Malevich, after theearly Suprematist exhibitions were
similarly restrained, as we understand this history fromafar, and
began to make, among other things, highly abstract architectonic
models thatforeshadow the architectural modernism that was yet to
come.
Kaleidoscope works formally here in a way that is counter to
Konstantin MelnikovArchitect (2012), Suppressed (small)(2012),and
Hobbled(2012), the text-based paintingshanging next to it. Using a
schematic plan of Melnikovs 1927 house and studio configured asa
Venn diagram, Diao overlays a text meaning hobbled or suppressed in
Russian, allowingthe content to be determined both referentially
and linguistically. The words Diao chose for
DAVID DIAO and WALID RAAD - The Brooklyn Rail
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/11/artseen/david-diao-and-...
3 of 4 08/05/13 13:57
-
this body of workhobbled and suppressed point to not only
aspects of Melnikovscreative life, but also to the condition of
receivership on the part of the works audience.Formal interaction
and interpretation of nomenclature is by definition nil, and these
works,next to the more fluid and permeable large works,
Kaleidoscope and KM, seem bothlimited and paradigmatic of the
shifting currents we are moving through at present.
When Diaos use of Melnikovs architectural space opens up a void
in KM(2012), a K andan M (the initials of both men), seem to hover,
stationed neither on the depicted wallhererendered in a brilliant
turquoisenor on the surface of the painting, despite the
textureresulting from being sponged on with stencils. Suspended,
they signal his life, as well asMalevichs, caught as they were in
and by the imperatives of the given political regime. Thesimple
forms of the wall in the painting reach out and wrap around the
room, which is a reliefin this context, as the forms and color are
released to speakeach in their own way.Unrestrained by a dominance
of theory or dependence on text, and where tendencies andmaterials
that are familiar are being employed, a shift in emphasis is
evident. In this formalworking through of paintings language, both
subject and object are finally released from thehegemony of an
oppositional sensibility. The questions Diaos work raises: Are we
distantenough from the reign of semiotics for color and form to
begin to regain their autonomy andpower of signification? Is it
only through recourse to the architects subjectthe bodythat adoor
has been opened for painting?
In the back room three works by Diao and an additional wall
sculpture by Raad extend theirlongstanding dialogue.
The dominance of theory and semiotics in art criticism over the
last 25 years has taken its tollon the art experience. Beauty too,
has been its causality. Where it would be overstepping thebounds to
say that beauty in any form is a primary concern here, the workings
of formallanguage do allow for an entry point.
534 West 21st St. // New York, NY
DAVID DIAO and WALID RAAD - The Brooklyn Rail
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/11/artseen/david-diao-and-...
4 of 4 08/05/13 13:57
-
Cahier recherche n23, November 2012
Vient de paratre Cahier recherche no23 / novembre 2012Universit
de Strasbourgquipe de recherche Approches contemporaines de la
cration et de la rflexion artistiques / ACCRA
Carr flottant sur fond propos dune figure visuelle
rcurrenteStphane MroczkowskiMatre de confrences en arts visuels
lUniversit de Strasbourg / IUFM dAlsace
Depuis les carrs de Malevitch et de Lissitzky jusquaux uvres de
net-art de Jodi, en passant par le monolithe de 2001, Odysse de
lespace, de Kubrick, le carr flottant sur un fond est une figure
rcurrente des arts visuels.Le carr comme forme archtypale (origine
absolue ou au contraire forme aboutie de culture ?) est analys tout
au long de cet essai dans sa dimension dapparition flottante, sur
un fond souvent indtermin, qui va du vide infini du cosmos au fond
dcran luminescent de lordinateurVision mystique? Jeu sur la
dimension reproductible du carr? Il sagit plutt dun questionnement
sur lespace des images et sur un dispositif bien connu: une figure
sur un fond.
Sommaire1- Flottements2- Questions de surfaces3- Origines:
Kasimir Malevitch, El Lissitzky 4- Pourquoi (encore) le carr?5- Et
le fond?6- Dalle de couleur, paysage infini: Hans Hofmann7- Carrs
flottants sur images: John Baldessari, Ellsworth Kelly, David
Diao8- Interstices, tensions figure/fond: Helmut Federle, Changa
Hwang9- Apparitions dun flottement: Stanley Kubrick, Georges
Rousse, Felice Varini10- Un espace pictural spcifique: anti-glacis,
espace barr, unit spatiale dcolle11- Du carr/toile au carr/cran:
flottements numriques
72 pagesISBN 978-2-916058-44-38 EurosCommande: UFR Arts Ishrat
AHMAD ([email protected]) 03.68.85.64.81
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-
New York Times, 25 October 2012
October 25, 2012
Walid Raad and David DiaoBy HOLLAND COTTER
Paula Cooper Gallery
521 West 21st Street, Chelsea
Through Saturday
In 2009, at Postmasters Gallery in Chelsea, the New York artist
David Diao produced one of themost moving shows of that year.
Titled I Lived There Until I was 6 ..., it was his attempt
toreconstruct, through paintings filled with words and diagrams,
the house in Sichuan, China,where he was born and lived for a few
years, until, with his country embroiled in politicalchange, he was
sent abroad. He never saw his birthplace again: the building was
demolished.But he has never stopped seeking it out in his
memory.
In the show he shares with Walid Raad at Paula Cooper, Mr. Diao
has used paintings based onwords and photographs to preserve an
existing but endangered house: one built in Moscow inthe late 1920s
by the Russian avant-garde architect Konstantin Melnikov
(1890-1974).
Melnikov conceived the house, which resembles a giant beehive
with distinctive hexagonalwindows, as his ideal home, and intended
it to be converted to a museum documenting hiscareer after he died.
That never happened, leaving the fate of the house, and of the
Melnikovarchive it held, uncertain. Mr. Diaos series of
architecturally based paintings refer to the housedirectly but also
evoke a personal and cultural past, forever slipping away.
The pairing with Mr. Raad, who was born in Lebanon and often
takes that countrys fraughtmodern past as his subject, makes
perfect sense in this context. In a continuing project
calledScratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the
Arab World, he traces anelusive cultural and personal journey
through the lens of contemporary art, represented byseries of
prints.
The prints are based on pages from art books and magazines, but
with the contents altered.Sometimes the original words are left
intact, as in the case of a reproduced title page
reading,Contemporary Art Practices in Contemporary Lebanon. The
texts of other pages have beenreduced to fragmentary phrases or
single characters in Roman and Arabic typefaces, as if thehistory
they record were in the process of being fractured and
obliterated.
As installed at Paula Cooper, the work of these two
Conceptualists looks spare, cerebral andcool. But its hard to think
of a recent show more elegiac and filled with emotion.
WALID RAAD AND DAVID DIAO - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/arts/design/walid-raad-and-david-...
1 of 2 10/31/12 1:44 PM
-
The Brooklyn Rail, September 2012
Installation view from Walid Raad and David Diao, PaulaCooper
Gallery, New York (September 22 October 27,2012). Walid Raad and
David Diao. Courtesy PaulaCooper Gallery, New York.
ArtSeen
DAVID DIAO and WALID RAADby Joan Waltemath
PAULA COOPER GALLERY | SEPTEMBER 22 OCTOBER 27, 2012
David Diao and Walid Raad met at Hampshire College in the late
90s where they were bothon the facultyRaad having just completed
his Ph.D. and Diao, though born in Chengdu, aveteran of the New
York art world with a history from the early days of SoHo, where he
hadthe first one-person show at Paula Coopers gallery in 1969. They
soon found that they shareda keen interest in the archive and the
way histories are kept. Widely divergent in their chosensubjects,
the fruitful dialogue they have maintained for nearly 20 years is
the impetus fortheir exhibition.
Raads work for the current exhibition,Appendix XVIII: Plates
63-257(2012), whichwas also shown in part at dOCUMENTA(13) thisyear
as Scratching on Things I Could Disavow,takes its point of
departure from the explosion ofinfrastructure for a burgeoning art
scene in theMiddle East. A native of Lebanon who came tothe U.S. in
1983 fleeing a war in his homeland,Raad has both a vested interest
in and aninformed viewpoint on these recentdevelopments.
Reconfiguring the bits and pieces of materials and text that
bear a central or tangentialrelationship to the new art practices,
Raads less than sensual but certainly sleek works arethe perfect
vehicles for investment: none are too big, they are bright but not
too loud, smartlooking and cryptic enough to seem somewhat
mysterious. Each is grounded by aninformative backstory. And
indeed, Raad is talking about history, the history of the
presentmoment as documented through a rapidly expanding art
network. These works invite theironlookers to become a part of it
all, too, as both collector and archivist, through ownership.
DAVID DIAO and WALID RAAD - The Brooklyn Rail
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/11/artseen/david-diao-and-...
1 of 4 12/12/12 11:12 AM
-
Output as scans that for the most part use fragments of text on
monochrome fields, theframed scans fill up one corner of the room
in Paula Coopers alternative space in a seeminglyrandom salon style
hanging. Here the familiar framework of institutional critique
tends tomove us away from attaching anything more than a passing
glance to the blue ground, therainbow fade or the shapes of yellow
on gray-violet that make up the grounds. Their lack ofengagement
with a formal vocabulary pushes them towards design; their content
as it is,being written. They feel like the trappings of an overtly
thorough, precise and categoricalintellect, qualities any archivist
would cherish.
Raads project, which has long been recursive, meets a more
expanded end in hisphotographs of exhibited objects as they appear
reflected in the high gloss floors ofundesignated but new, Middle
Eastern museums. Simply titled Preface to the SecondEdition _ III
(2012), the work is catalogued with ascending numbers. Where gray
melts intoglare with shadow defining edge, the true nature of the
object photographed remainsshrouded; reduced to an essential aspect
of themselves, the objects which are his subjectsopen up through
the process of being photographed and become fluid. At first view
theirresulting enigmatic nature serves to facilitate multiple
readings and then allows for both are-contextualization and
reinterpretation or the seeking of a referential clue to carry
theirsignification beyond the initial apprehension of their
appearance. Reflections on the framedworks Plexiglas surfaces add
the present to the other locations recordedbringing the twoworlds
together to sonorous effect.
Raads sculptural works seem to reflect a somewhat different
premise than Appendix XVIII:Plates 88-151 (2009), creating an
apparent evolution of thought moving through the threebodies of
work. As Untitled (floor piece)(2011) frames an absent wall, it
opens a white spacethat is latentto be filled by the perceiver. The
floor, usually relegated to the non-privilegedposition in a
figure/ground dialectic, is here rendered beautifully and
painstakingly in woodinlay as the ostensible subject. The reversal
parallels the change in the position of theperceiver, as s/he is
now given interpretative responsibilities. This tendency, apparent
here aswell as in a few of Diaos pieces in the large room of Paula
Coopers alternate space, isrefreshing. In opening up the dialogue
to not only be received, but to embrace how works areconditioned
through receivership, the relative nature of communication is
affirmed.
Framed work and paintings usually prove difficult to hang
togethernot for the framedworks so much in this context, but for
the paintings ability to command the space of thegallery. Here
though, they make the two artists works immediately
distinguishable. Diaoslarge acrylic painting KM (2012) finally
dominates the space and speaks out of its voidwhen, like
architecture, it makes a subject of the body.
Diaos history of referencing Modernist icons has played out over
more than two decades,examining benchmarks in the art historical
debates of the last century. Here his familiar
DAVID DIAO and WALID RAAD - The Brooklyn Rail
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/11/artseen/david-diao-and-...
2 of 4 12/12/12 11:12 AM
-
referencing of Malevichs 1915 exhibition of Suprematist
paintings, which Diao first begun in1984, is paired with an image
taken from Russian architect Konstantin Melnikovs studio.Called M
& M(2012), it shows off Melnikovs signature hexagonal windows
to effect,creating a pattern of geometric figures that is on a
plane oblique to the picture plane. Theregular pattern the
architects windows create makes for an interesting play of depth
whenpainted, an effect that Diao explores in a number of paintings
here.
Diaos work points to many things, including but not limited to
the complex and sometimesfruitful exchange between architects and
painters. His glance back at the turn of the centuryis but one
example. While talking with Diao, his interest in historical
information is amplyevident, though the wealth of information is
not necessarily available when looking at hisworks. The complexity
of both the formal and historical relationships here is a fertile
ground,which with a little effort, can be unearthed.
Diao makes a gesture towards an historical lineage in
Diamond-hexagon(2012), a singlehexagonal form suspended in a
square. It is installed in the upper corner of the room, justabove
his screened image of the 1915 Suprematist painting installation,
in which Malevichsblack square hung, like an icon would have, high
up in the corner of the room. As well, itharkens back to the family
and guild crests of the 17th century that are visible hanging
highup on the columns in Saenredams paintings of the same time. No
doubt a source ofinspiration for Mondrian, who would have been
familiar with his countrymans work, Diaointones the lineage of
contemporary non-objective painting in the melding of diverse
culturalreferences. For the most part formally inert,
Diamond-hexagon rests on its context in orderfor us to take
something from its blue and black surface. What is interesting in
this exhibitionis how Diao moves his work out of an anti-formal
position, without embracing theproblematics of Formalism.
In Kaleidoscope(2012), the other large piece in the room, a
layering of shape and colorworks together with the silkscreened
image of Melnikovs hexagonal windows as they wraparound his studio,
creating a play of forms that hints at the complexity of the
backstory of thetwo men that so engages Diao. Melnikov, famous in
1924 for his design of Lenins tomb inMoscows Red Square, soon
became, like Malevich, a censored member of the avant-gardeand
turned to painting when his architectural license was revoked in
1937. Malevich, after theearly Suprematist exhibitions were
similarly restrained, as we understand this history fromafar, and
began to make, among other things, highly abstract architectonic
models thatforeshadow the architectural modernism that was yet to
come.
Kaleidoscope works formally here in a way that is counter to
Konstantin MelnikovArchitect (2012), Suppressed (small)(2012),and
Hobbled(2012), the text-based paintingshanging next to it. Using a
schematic plan of Melnikovs 1927 house and studio configured asa
Venn diagram, Diao overlays a text meaning hobbled or suppressed in
Russian, allowingthe content to be determined both referentially
and linguistically. The words Diao chose for
DAVID DIAO and WALID RAAD - The Brooklyn Rail
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this body of workhobbled and suppressed point to not only
aspects of Melnikovscreative life, but also to the condition of
receivership on the part of the works audience.Formal interaction
and interpretation of nomenclature is by definition nil, and these
works,next to the more fluid and permeable large works,
Kaleidoscope and KM, seem bothlimited and paradigmatic of the
shifting currents we are moving through at present.
When Diaos use of Melnikovs architectural space opens up a void
in KM(2012), a K andan M (the initials of both men), seem to hover,
stationed neither on the depicted wallhererendered in a brilliant
turquoisenor on the surface of the painting, despite the
textureresulting from being sponged on with stencils. Suspended,
they signal his life, as well asMalevichs, caught as they were in
and by the imperatives of the given political regime. Thesimple
forms of the wall in the painting reach out and wrap around the
room, which is a reliefin this context, as the forms and color are
released to speakeach in their own way.Unrestrained by a dominance
of theory or dependence on text, and where tendencies andmaterials
that are familiar are being employed, a shift in emphasis is
evident. In this formalworking through of paintings language, both
subject and object are finally released from thehegemony of an
oppositional sensibility. The questions Diaos work raises: Are we
distantenough from the reign of semiotics for color and form to
begin to regain their autonomy andpower of signification? Is it
only through recourse to the architects subjectthe bodythat adoor
has been opened for painting?
In the back room three works by Diao and an additional wall
sculpture by Raad extend theirlongstanding dialogue.
The dominance of theory and semiotics in art criticism over the
last 25 years has taken its tollon the art experience. Beauty too,
has been its causality. Where it would be overstepping thebounds to
say that beauty in any form is a primary concern here, the workings
of formallanguage do allow for an entry point.
534 West 21st St. // New York, NY
DAVID DIAO and WALID RAAD - The Brooklyn Rail
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Artinfo, June 2012
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08.08.2012 Deconstructing Gerhard Richter Mania, Postmasters
Offers a Playful and Surprisingly Affecting Es
1/3artinfo.com//deconstructing-gerhard-richter-mania-postmasters-offers-a-playful-and-surprisingly
Photo by Kyle Chayka
David Diao, "Wealth of Nations," 1972
Deconstructing Gerhard Richter Mania, Postmasters Offers a
Playful and Surprisingly Affecting Essay in Exhibition Form
Published: June 5, 2012
Gerhard Richter, that German hero of brainy painting, is in the
process of being canonized by both
art history and the contemporary art market. The art world
always needs a clear top end, observed
dealer Thaddaeus Ropac to Art+Auction magazine after the artists
photo-based paintings began to
hit individual auction marks of $15-20 million. The art market
instinctively decided Richter should
be the one.
But what exactly makes Richter suitable for the task of leading
the upper echelons of contemporary
art? Such is the question posed by Postmasters gallerys archly
critical exhibition Richteriana,
which, rather than poking fun at the masters work, honestly
examines how the canonical current has
removed Richters oeuvre from its original context and turned his
name into a stock ticker label to
watch rise and fall. A collection of work deriving from Richters
practice or adopting similar
strategies, the show confronts the slippery difficulties of the
art-historical canon, and the reasons why
one artist might be crowned over another.
by Kyle Chayka
SubmitSearch All, Venues, Artists
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08.08.2012 Deconstructing Gerhard Richter Mania, Postmasters
Offers a Playful and Surprisingly Affecting Es
2/3artinfo.com//deconstructing-gerhard-richter-mania-postmasters-offers-a-playful-and-surprisingly
ADVERTISEMENTRichteriana can be divided into the pieces that
merely bear visual or conceptual similarity to
Richters and more intriguing interventions that
directly examine his privileged position in the art
world, confronting our Richter fetish. Fabian
Marcaccios acrid, gnarly paintings made of rope
and silicone anesthetize the power of their violent
subject matter through abstraction, much the same
as Richters photo-paintings. Rory Donaldsons
digitally altered photos bring to mind the directional
blurs of the Germans squeegee abstractions.
Art-world archaeological prankster-in-residence
Greg Allen uncovered documentation of early photo paintings that
Richter subsequently destroyed
and revived them with the help a Chinese painting replication
factory. The results are paintings of
photos of paintings of photos. The gesture is dryly satirical
but remains ambiguous: Allens
contributions rely entirely on Richter for their substantial
visual power, and seem to be driven more
by the impulse of a fanboy rather than a saboteur.
These artists cant help but fall into Richters gravitational
field, but painter David Diao provides a
strong dissenting voice to the art history engine. Diaos
abstract paintings, including the striking
Wealth of Nations (1972) on display at Postmasters, were made
through a sweeping process similar
to Richters, though Diao actually preceded Richter. Synecdoche
(1993), a reproduced essay by
critic Benjamin Buchloh on Richters work that Diao has defaced
with his own name and images of
his work, is a one-man subversion of the canon and an insertion
of the self into historical narrative.
The piece is angry and unsettling, a brief window opening to
reveal arts rumbling discontents. Diaos
1972 painting haunts Richters absent work like a specter
representing the flip side of fame.
Richteriana wont do anything to unseat Richter from his throne,
but then it isnt meant to. (If it
were, including a female artist or two might have been a start.)
Though Diao comes closest to
rewriting the critical record, in the end, its not up to him.
There may come a time hundreds of years
hence when the show is acknowledged as the beginning of the end
for Richter mania by art
kingmakers of the future, but for now it remains a small
protest.
"Richteriana" runs through June 16 at Postmasters Gallery
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BURNAWAY, May 2012
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Metropolis, No., 2011
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Leap, 2011
2010
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2009
At once meticulous and good-humored,
Little Spanish Prison
Artforum
a crisis in his practice as an artist in general, and
Matisse, Philip Johnson and MoMA all come up
Five Year Plan
in
Imperiled
Open/Surrender
Open/Surrender
For Scale Sakewith the downright scopophilic, luxuriating
Vivian Ziherl
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Invisible Networks, November 2010
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Time Out New York, 5-11 February 2009
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Art Asia Pacific, 2008
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Art in America, November 2005
FindArticles > Art in America > Nov, 2005 > Article
> Print friendly
David Diao at Postmasters
Edward Leffingwell
David Diao's concern for the modernist residence as endangered
species is the central theme in his recent exhibition,
"Demolished/At Risk," in which he lists a number of examples of
domestic modern architecture in New Canaan, Conn.,
that have been destroyed or are thought to be endangered. Among
them are designs by Marcel Breuer, Eliot Noyes,
Howard Barnstone, Landis Gores and John Johansen. While Diao
identifies Philip Johnson's Glass House as beyond the
compass of that list, he regards it as an example of a species
of architecture prime for the wrecking ball now that the newly
affluent regard it as inadequate to their expansive needs.
The 6-by-9-foot painting The Rug: It Shrank! (2004-05) consists
of abutting panels of blue and red acrylic applied in an
almost burnished density that recalls encaustic. The left panel
bears a silkscreen of Johnson's blueprint for the placement
of furnishings by Mies van der Rohe in the Glass House: two
Barcelona chairs, an ottoman and a chaise, and a glass-
and-steel coffee table. Diao's representation of the blueprint
is surmounted by a reductive silkscreen of the same
arrangement. The right panel repeats that diagram in diminished
sizes on a red ground, a schematic visualization of the
furniture's placement subject to the reduced size of a rug after
cleaning alluded to in the title. While the furnishings are
unchanged in size, they are placed in increased proximity. In
Sitting in the Glass House 1 (acrylic and silkscreen on canvas,
2005), Diao incorporates a photographic image of himself on
site, at ease on one of the Barcelona chairs.
In Figure~Ground (2004-05), a large photograph back-mounted to
Plexiglas, Diao extends the specter of the Glass
House's demise by altering the photograph. He cuts away every
part of the image that contains a built element--the
furnishings, structural steel framing, an Elie Nadelman
sculpture--retaining only the verdant landscape, as though the
house and all it contains have disappeared. In the 7-by-9-foot
Endangered Species #2 (2004) Diao further contemplates
architecture's loss in a replicated blueprint depicting
modernist residences built in New Canaan in Johnson's day, many
now at risk and others destroyed.
Diao bases a series of paintings on the roughly 6-by-10-foot
That Close! (2002), a schematic of the Green River Cemetery
on Long Island where Jackson Pollock's remains were interred in
1956. He maps the artist's proximity to the celebrated
dead he predeceased, describing radiating circles with Pollock's
plot at their center and numbered "1 ." Diao numbers the
burial grounds of Stuart Davis, Frederick Kiesler, Frank O'Hara,
Ad Reinhardt, Jimmy Ernst, Lee Krasner, Elaine de
Kooning, Hannah Wilke and Henry Geldzahler, among others,
providing an aficionado's guide to these ultimate cognates
of demolished buildings.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
Art in America: David Diao at Postmasters
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_10_93/ai_n15...
1 sur 1 21.10.2008 18:50
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Artforum, January 1992
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Interview with Ben Portis, March 2008
Dave Diao interview New York City March 18, 2008
Ben Portis: Hello David.
Dave Diao: Hi.
00:30
Ben: Hi. I thought that we could start by you just telling us a
little bit about your life. You were born in China, and you start
your career as an artist in New York in the 1960s where you
continue to live. Tell us a bit of how you came to be where you are
now.
Dave: Well, I was born in China in 1943. The revolution occurred
when I was six. Luckily my grandparents were able to evacuate me
and themselves to Hong Kong, thinking that the chaos would
determined in a few weeks and wed go home. But like most refugees,
whether youre a Palestinian or from Darfur, a brief kind of escape
from your family village ends up being a lifetime.
As a result, I ended up in Hong Kong with my grandparents. Then
when I was 12, five or six years later, my fa-ther had me join him
in New York where he had been living. Ive been in New York more or
less ever since.
I began my career after college in 1964. Basically though the
back door, in a sense, because I wasnt sure I wanted to devote my
life to being an artist, even though I was very interested in it.
But I happened to have had a job working in a gallery. Actually one
that was quite important of its time, the Sam Kootz Gallery, who
was showing Picasso and various people.
I was the guy who hung the paintings and swept up. Of course I
had a chance to see a lot of work. Hans Hof-mann was one of the
major artists in the gallery. Not to be arrogant, but I thought the
younger artists in the gallery, such as Ray Parker was not doing
work any more serious than what I was attempting in my own
stu-dio.
In a way, that gave me a kind of confidence to jump in with both
feet. Ive been at it ever since, with ups and downs, breaks and
flows.
Ben: Could you tell us a little bit about the kinds of things
that you were doing in your studio in those years? Perhaps for the
benefit of people who will hear this tape. Give it a bit of
context.
Dave: I personally was never very interested in the gestural
branch of New York painting. From quite early on, I was very taken
by what sometimes is referred to as the intellectual wing of the
abstract expression-ists, which is to say people like Rothko,
Clyfford Still, and Newman, and Reinhardt. So that was already in
my personal predilections.
04:30
It also so happens that in the mid 60s, someone like Clement
Greenberg very much was the discourse around which painting turned.
Its hard to think back, but...
BREAK
05:40Dave: Yeah, the context. The 60s. Well, just to continue
from before, in a way I think young artists can be very arrogant
simply because they just dont know enough. Because they dont know
so much, they think they know a lot.
People that were very much in the forefront of painting at that
point would be some of your socalled post-painterly
abstractionists, which was a moniker that Clement Greenberg gave to
people like Ken Noland and Mars Lewis. In my youthful arrogance, I
actually thought I would take care of some issues within painting
that someone like Noland wasnt dealing with. You know he had his
targets? So I thought, well, the target is won-derful, but it didnt
deal with the corners.
So the first work I did in New York would be square canvases,
structured cornertocorner with overlays of very thin paint. So I
kept going around the circle, in a way following what Noland said,
that he didnt start painting until he found the center. Well, I
found the center as well as the corners. But this proved to be a
kind of dead end because I would be making these square canvases
for three years.
To this day, I barely use a square canvas because when I see a
square canvas Im referred back to that early group of only square
canvases, diagonal to diagonal.
I think I actually showed one of these early square canvases in
my first outing in Canada, at Carmen
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Lamannas.
07:57
But in terms of the climate of the time, you know, there was
something called abstract painting. The dis-course very much
determined by someone like Clement Greenberg. As much as I was
swept up in that discourse, I wasnt the slavish person, the slavish
painter who actually followed everything that he wanted to put
forth as what ambitious painting was at the time. In a way, I was
always contesting what he as saying.
One of the other issues that he was very involved in was the
drawing. Remember, I think there was always that disconnect between
painting and drawing, and supposedly one of the great advances
someone like Pollock made is that drawing and painting occurred in
the same space and the same time. But, Clement would say, Oh, you
know, you just deal with the painting and then the drawing could
happen afterwards.
What he was really talking about was you could then come in and
frame the part you want as the final painting. So, the final edit
or basically, its croppingbasically, you do a whole canvas and you
come around and you find the parts that could make the painting for
you. And somehow, I didnt want to do that. So, I was rigorously
attached to beginning with the structure of the canvas and then
always retaining that in the final painting as opposed to doing a
large canvas and then coming and cropping a little part of it as
the final painting.
The other thing I was doing, but it is very much in relationship
to ideas of painting as from palette, as ho-lism you always deal
with the whole thing at once, no composition, no drawing basically.
So, I came to where there is always that problem of painting on the
stretched canvas where as you are painting the stretcher bars come
through as normally thought of as a flaw because it may be a line
where you dont want it.
In my case I thought I would take advantage of that flaw, so I
would build up the stretcher bars with, say, quarter round moldings
so that it would be an edge so that I am almost inviting and
deliberately hitting that edge as I am painting the surface which
is a way of saying, Well, you know, I am really just painting, just
putting paint on the frontality, the surface which is totally
frontal. But, in the course of doing so, I also give you the
structure which is the engineering of the stretcher bars in such a
way so that the remaining painting remains flat and stable and
structurally sound. So that became a whole bunch of work.
Ben: As much as you were deeply invested in problems that were
specific to painting and the idea of painting, many of the artists
that you were in continual conversation with were not painters at
all. And, it was a time when it was really important for people to
talk across their categorical mediums.
Dave: Sure. I mean, the closest art I was to besides painting
was probably performance and dance: the Judson Church people, the
Judson Church dancers. Yvonne Rainer has been an old friend, and
she lives downstairs. We all came into this building together, but
somehow I was always taken by the idea of painting. It still
re-mains a kind of privilege, kind of quattro (?) production in my
mind in some way. Through the many cries for its death, I somehow
managed to wade through.
13:35
I think I was more interested in film at one point, but lately I
dont go to that many movies. At a certain point I was really
looking at a lot of film, and one way it entered my painting
practice was there was the tradition in a sense of making and
titling abstract paintings as untitled. This is within the
trajectory of a grubersian thing where you dont want anything other
than the material facts of the painting. You dont want history. You
dont want narrative. You dont want anything literary; something
germane to the painting itself, whatever that was.
So, most abstract paintings were untitled. One way I militated
against that was I always wanted to title my paintings at a certain
point. In the beginning they were all untitled, and I would often
use existing names of movies. Odd Man Out, thats one that comes to
mind. Made in USA which, of course, I like to play with some of
these titles. The painting was made in USA. But if you knew the
other titles come from movies you might know that Made in USA is a
movie by the Doc. (NB film by Godard?!?)
What are some others? Navigator from Buster Keaton, Morocco; so
that was a way that my more active inter-est in film melded with my
painting practice.
Ben: And, maybe, at this point we will just go forward and then
return to this late 1960s period. But, nar-rative identity
association become more and more ingredients of your painting.
Could you tell us sort of why that is?
Dave: I think I try to be in the world, and my practice is
totally influenced by what I read and who I talk to and the kind of
existing discursive formations that is already in place. When
Greenberg was very strong I was involved with that, but in a kind
of critical way.
When other issues came to the fore I might have used them,
employed them for my own purposes but not always
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in an orthodox way or in a way that might have been expected so
things changed a great deal in the last 40 years. Whole issues of
multiculturalism, a kind of infusion of certain structuralist
theories and poststruc-turalist theories that animated the art
world in some ways. So, as an attentive person in the culture, I
was touched by these discourses.
At some point I just became totally untenable to approach
painting as the thing in itself, the socalled Kan-tian, you know,
like, art for arts sake thing. And as much as coming to realize
that, I also was still very involved in painting, so it became
clear for me that I wanted to maybe use painting as a kind of place
in which to address some of these other interests that Ive come to
have.
And, of course, one of them is issues of origin copy, another
one is issues of origin in the sense of where you come from,
ethnicity. Another issue might be masculinity. Another issue might
be the masquerade. So these things filter through me and to varying
degrees I try to address them.
Maybe on the whole, Ive wanted to make the work not about my
personal experience as such, but for a long time I thought to use
myself as but an instance of a larger set of beings whether its,
Oh, the artist, liv-ing in New York, average artist, not me, David
Diao.
19:06
Or, if Im addressing issues of identity, not David Diao, the
Chineseborn, American, Asian. But, you know, there are many people
who are like me and Im just an instance. But at some point, that
broke down. You know [small chuckle] and I think how that happened
was when I used, initially, Bruce not Bruce Boyce Bruce Lee.
Ben: Would you say that again, sir.
Dave: At some time it really broke down and it really happened
when I first used Bruce Lee, the iconic kind of martial arts movie
star as a standin for myself because I was making a fakeimitation
from my retrospec-tive, my putative, retrospective at the Centre
Pompidou, which the source of that image was Joseph Beuys with his
hat. I didnt want to use my own image so I used Bruce Lee. And then
Im looking at the Bruce Lee image and there he is, in his
atavistic, martial arts pose and Im looking at the background and
it looks like an abstract painting. Theres a kind of futility of
this overmasculinized person.
So I decided to use that image with myself, sitting placidly in
a chair reading a newspaper. So that was like the first instance I
used my own image. Once I did that, I said, Oh, my God. I could
certainly do more with that. Thats how I got myself in front of
Jackson Pollock and myself in front of Matisse The Dance. Be-fore
you know it, Im very much in there.
Including the most recent series, which I just came back from
Beijing showing, which is a kind of attempt to recreate from memory
and the memories of my uncles and aunts, a house that I was born
into which was de-stroyed at some point. There are no photographs
of the house. And its a story about me and my family. But again, I
allowed myself to do it because, in a way, its about displacement
and loss which almost every human person has had to suffer
through.Ben: So lets pull back, again, to 1969 because the painting
entitled, Blue Gray that is in the art col-lection of the Gallery
of Ontario, actually, although one cant see it, it includes your
movements and your actions and its a kind of, its made by a kind of
performance that you enact.
Dave: Well, the painting in the AGO is just a little bit later
than the very strict built up stretcher bar ones. At some point, I
wanted to get away from the strict geometrical linearity of the
stretcher bars. So, it occurred to me that I should somehow deal
with the spaces between the support. So I was throwing bricks down
on the floor, randomly, in such a way that I would then place the
canvas on top. And the logic in my mind was the bricks are where
the stretcher bars arent. Because two things cant occupy the same
space and the bricks, being slightly more elevated, as I painted,
traces of the bricks would come through.
This was also a moment when I was going beyond the flatness of
more stained surfaces and actually allowing the paint which was
manipulated around to be encrusted and puddle and be physical in
relationship to something more embedded in the canvas.
24:16
In a way, this was connected to, what was then referred to, as
process painting. I could say that this was very attractive to me
as an idea because one of the things that I always militated a
guess is that idea of mystery in art. You know, soandsos art is so
mysterious and it comes from some nether region or the deep
recesses of the artistic consciousness. The great thing about
something like process art is the preformative aspect of it which
is a way of dealing the viewer in. The viewer can, in looking at
the process, be almost able to reconstitute how the thing was done.
So theres no mystery. Everything is up front.
I guess the most preformative of that group of work would be the
slightly even earlier ones where the canvas
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was leaning against the wall, with the stretcher bars built up
and I would basically run across a 15 or 16 foot breadth of the
canvas, with loaded sponges and brushes, sponges, what have you.
And the marks would hap-pen because of the actual skipping and
running. So that, somehow, the gait is in some way replicated on
the canvas.
Ben: Some of the artists that you referred to that you were very
drawn to, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, whos sense of creating
paintings that are a kind of a vision into avoid or a kind of
gapingly open proposi-tion of a presence. You know theres something
about their attitudes that was always considered to be sympa-thetic
to Eastern thought and do you think that being from Asia yourself
you were naturally sympathetic to some of that intellect and
esthetic?
Dave: Its a fair question to equate some notion of Eastern
esthetics to the work of the more seemingly empty work, spatially
empty work of say, Rothko, Newman, Still, and people like that.
But, I cant say that is why I was drawn to that.
In a way, coming as a young immigrant boy at age 12, the last
thing I wanted was to connect up to my Asian roots. I wanted to
assimilate and become more American than or just as American as
anybody who was native born. So, in a way, I was rejecting for many
years my Asian heritage. Asian heritage is very complicated. Theres
the standardized view of the Japanese Zen empty room. But in fact,
Chinese esthetics is often marked by absolute garishness. I mean in
its long history, certainly Chinese have had whole epics where the
notion of empty fullness was there. In fact, the Japanese got it
from the Chinese but on the whole, it was a much more raucous kind
of culture.
But I didnt know it. I didnt know any of this. I was avoiding it
to such a degree that when Robert Pincus Whitten, likened some of
my paintings with the stretcher bars built up, as vertical
divisions, referring them to, say, Chinese screens, I was very
upset by that. And immediately started trying to do something
else.The first thing was to key up the color because earlier on the
colors were very tertiary, I should say. Be-cause literally, they
were complimentaries on top of one another. But its just that I was
never drawn to the kind of gestural wane of abstract expressionism,
the de Koonings and so forth. I was always more drawn to say, well
even Motherwell was somebody I was very drawn to because whether he
was a pseudointellect or not, there was a kind of place for the
mind. And his studied culturedness was something that I was
sympathetic too. I myself am not much of a writer but Ive often
been drawn to artists who are also thinkers and writers. Im not
sure that my great interest in Barnett Newman, wasnt somehow
connected to the fact that he wrote fabulous things.
30:40
Ben: Could you also talk about the raucous nature of artistic
friendships in that time?
Dave: Well, yeah, you know its a long time back. New York was a
much smaller art world. Somehow we all knew one another or most of
us somehow. And there were bars where we all hung out. I came a
little too late for the Cedar Bar. But I was sure here for the
launch of Maxs Kansas City. Basically, youd meet everyone in there
and you could pick which coterie you wanted to be part of. Many of
the Greenberg leaning painters were quite macholy at the bar with
their beer bottles. Andy Warhol was in the back room with the
superstars and the transvestites, what have you. On a side, in a
booth, in an area separate, would be, say, Robert Smithson or Leo
Williams or John Chamberlin. But sitting on opposite sides John
Chamberlin and Neal William would be on one side, Smithson would be
on the other.
I remember myself being very fluid. Often, I would be with
Smithson, but there are other times when I would be at the bar. And
less frequently, I would go in the back room. But, I never felt
that comfortable in the back room, so I would go there for a peek
and rush back to the front. I was very interested in, you know, I
mean one could say it was all bartalk but somehow, within all that
dross (?), ideas did get exchanged. Even if its to the point of
Smithson saying to me, David, youre a smart guy. Why are you still
painting?
You know this didnt stop me from painting. It just made me want
to define what I meant as painting even more. Richard. Serra was
there quite a bit. It was a great place. I often refer to Maxs as
my graduate school. I dont think that happens now. Or maybe it
does. Im just too old to be in the loop.
But in those days, well I think Im lucky in that from 64 to 2008
I barely had to have a ninetofive job. So between stints early on
as waiter, bartender, what have you, helper at the Guggenheim
Museum for hanging shows, later on teaching. Many years I taught.
Ive managed to cobble together a life. So thats not so bad.
But back then you were able to live working two days a week so
the rest of your time was your own. This was the great gift we had
in the 60s. A child, a young artist coming to New York now would
probably have to work their fingers to the bone just to pay
rent.
In those days there were lots of open lofts available. In fact
if you ran into a kind of bind in your work,
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you felt blocked in some way, the usual thing to do was to say,
Oh, Ill go find a new space. And you could do that; not any
more.Ben: And when did you feel that kind of New York...not
camaraderie, but maybe a spirit that was so stimulat-ing,
inspiring, started to change or fade away?
Dave: Well, you know, things always maybe seem better in
retrospect but at the time I wasnt thinking this is the most
glorious of times. At the time it was just my life. Its very hard
to say at what moment it was cut off. I think its part of ones own
aging. I mean I dont go to bars anymore. I dont have that many
people I speak to everyday. With the new Internet and emailing I
hardly get phone calls.
36:00
Ben: Do you think that the death of Robert Smithson was a kind
of a major...
Dave: Well, its a...I mean historians both like to have these
sort of breaks as a point of change from one epic to another. I
dont know, I dont know. 73 thats when he died.
He was just about 40 years old. I was 30. I was just 30 that
year. Its a very long story but I very likely would have been in
the plane that he died if I had gotten up in time to make my plane
from Albuquerque to Am-arillo, which I planned to do. But I missed
the early plane and it was what might have been, luckily for
me.
Ben: Id just like to close off by speaking very generally about
art and this pivotal time for art but also for contemporary life.
And on the floor were following two themes at the Art Gallery of
Ontario. One of which is freedom, or the image of freedom, and
another is of conflict. Could you just reflect on how those might
have come to bear on your work or your sense of concentration in
holding such issues off maybe?
Dave: Well the question is freedom and contradiction? Conflict,
freedom and conflict, I dont know what to speak about freedom
because I think its been hijacked by George Bush as the inalienable
right of every human being. [laughs]
I guess it was a big awakening for me to realize that in a way
people are not free. Im not talking about freedom to... you know,
press, speech, what have you. Im talking about even freedom with
the art making.
A big move for me in leaving a certain kind of hardedge painting
I was doing was I realized that the very form of hardedged painting
already came with a whole rational. That when somebody would see a
straight line that somehow implied thinking, or rationality, logic.
And when they see a squiggle line that is a sign for its specious.
So those are in the culture already that we may want to change but
you cant.
As for conflict, well I mean theres always conflict. You try to
just find the calm spot in the middle of it just to get through
life. Very interestingly I grew up with my elders being totally at
their wits end, since they had lost everything, totally
disillusioned.
And their approach to get through life was to not engage in
politics, be as neutral as possible. Also they were immigrants in
America they didnt feel right like they had the right to even
engage in politics so I didnt grow up with good political debates
at the dinner table.
And it was only when I went to high school and college that I
was more...I was influenced by situations such as the Vietnam War
and so forth to be more interested in these matters.
But, I mean, I still think that theres always conflict and a way
for me to get through it is, in some ways, to...not to not
participate but Im not at the forefront of the barricades, shall we
say.
Thanks.
