Fiiiiiiiiiiiiinally Read: An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Prompted by my colleague David Balzer's excellent summer reading list generated for Canadianartschool.ca (Canadian Art's student and careers site), I have fiiiiiiiiiiiinally read Steve Martin's 2010 novel An Object of Beauty.

Set mainly in the commercial side of the New York art world from the 1990s to the date of publication, An Object of Beauty certainly does have a kind of light, gossipy dishiness to recommend it (though that's not all). I am quite unfamiliar with the commercial and auction parts of the art world—much, much less familiar than Martin, who is a prolific collector and, fortunately for the reader, a great observer and conveyor of human social dynamics—and it was entertaining to read scenes of a dealer sticking to her monied client like glue, for sure. He also does a great job of mapping out various strata of the NY art realm, as far as I can tell: uptown vs. downtown, East Side vs. West Side, modern vs. contemporary, etc.

(Publishers Weekly put this observation much better: "Martin (an art collector himself) is an astute miniaturist as he exposes the sound and fury of the rarified Manhattan art world.")

I also enjoyed the ways in which Martin conveys, in this book, the different ways that dealers, auction houses, collectors, and critics attribute or signal value in art. Is this value monetary, spiritual, acquisitive, social, human, humane? All of the above, or none, depending on the character and context of the individual.

Also, the fact that the narrator of the book is a critic prompted both a sense of thrill and embarrassment for me, as I empathized with his peripheral role to the art world (including the one of his own narrative), with his small, tiny publication triumphs, and most centrally, at least for this novel, with his need to get the himself the hell out of the way of the story, while also being enmeshed in it in a way.

In fact, I found this choice of narrator somewhat curious, whether a critic or not--it's rare that I read a novel (well, these days, it's rare I read at all, so I'm no expert) where the narrator has such a peripheral role to the narrative, and alternates between an individual perspective and a slightly more omniscient (or as he puts it at the beginning, a more imaginative) point of view. Could this be interpreted as a kind of reading of art criticism in general? I don't think Martin intended it as such, but criticism does tend to reach across that whole spectrum of voice, from first-person memoir to third-person "objectivity" or omniscience, so... fun to think about, I guess.

Finally, let me say that Martin is very good at conveying the dynamics in a courtship/relationship where one person is much more invested than another. It kind of made me think, man, who could really have turned down or burned Steve Martin so bad? Dude plays the banjo and has been attached to a bazillion famous things. Also, he prolly has a really nice art collection. A reminder that in matters of the heart, we are all vulnerable and imperfect, I suppose.

Overall, not a must-read, but very much a nice-to-read, especially if you are involved with art in some way, shape or form.

(Image: Image of the book's cover from Stevemartin.com)

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Artwatching vs. Birdwatching: A Highly Nonscientific Comparison

Over the past couple of months, I have been getting a teeny tiny little bit into birdwatching.

By this I mean that I have enjoyed biking to the Leslie Street Spit here in Toronto and keeping an eye out for different species. I also have purchased a laminated Ontario bird guide. And I enjoy excitedly telling friends and co-workers when I have spotted and identified a species that is new to me.

Now, from what I see out on the Spit, I understand I could be standing on the precipice of (or already beginning to slide down) a very slippery hobby slope. By the end of the summer I could just be the owner of a three-foot-long zoom lens, floppy Tilley hat and pricey binocs.

Which—you know what?—would actually be plenty fine because I really enjoy spending time in this slightly postapocalyptic pocket of nature taking back some of the wastes of humankind. (NB for the non-Torontonians: the Spit was originally built as a breakwater using landfill excavated from Toronto construction sites.)

Spending a little time on the Spit has also prompted me to think about the similarities and differences between Artwatching and Birdwatching. Here are some of my highly nonscientific observations:

1. Both Artwatching and Birdwatching are highly visual activities which one could argue engage an appetite for the spectacular.

2. Both Artwatching and Birdwatching can engage a visual analytics of identification. How many times have a stood in a gallery or stared at a page trying to identify an artwork without looking at the caption or wall label? That is, trying to identify a "species" of work purely through visual means? Or learning to do the same? Well, the same or similar skills are used in Birdwatching--just like a certain palette or texture identifies a certain painter, certain patternings or colours identify a bird.

3. However, Birdwatching can also regularly engage an aural component. Though I am not skilled (yet!) at identifying bird calls, I know there are guidebooks out there to this effect. Though there is such a thing as sound art, it is not usually necessary to tune in to an artwork's aural component in order to experience it or identify it. Canvas is pretty damn silent, ya'll!

4. Artwatchers have an advantage in that the objects of their focus typically do not move, or do not move with any great degree of speed or agility. This is quite different from the conditions that Birdwatchers encounter, where one might have only a few seconds to get a good look at the object of one's focus, or even less. This lends a kind of urgency to the birdwatching experience; artwatching allows for more lassitude, in a sense.

5. Both artwatching and birdwatching can be enjoyed as singular experiences and competitive/accumulative contests alike. In my experience, I have enjoyed looking at both objects of art and at birds as kinds of opportunities for transcendence—a way to move beyond the everyday. Yet I have also had experiences (often at the same time) where the looking can take on a competitive or accumulative quality. "Okay, I've seen a Killdeer/Olafur Eliasson work. While thrilled at first, I now find it familiar and kind of boring. I want to see something else next." There can be a kind of "onwards and upwards" or "I haven't seen that yet and I should" tendency. (I know both these qualities of looking have more to do with me than with art in general, but I thought it was worth noting.)

6. Both artwatching and birdwatching subcultures have their own distinctive customs and styles of dress. I am not indoctrinated fully into either subculture, I think, but I can say you don't see a whole lot of all-black outfits out on the Spit. A lot more earth tones and quick dry materials.

7. The cameras are a lot bigger in the birdwatching community. An iPhone just ain't gonna cut it!

If you want to find out more about bird species at the Spit, check out the Tommy Thompson Park website.

(Chickadee-riffic image via Birdwatchingclub.net. I would basically freak out, in a good way, I think, if I was the person in this picture.)

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Happy Arts Access Moment: TSO Plays First Free Outdoor Concert in More than 10 Years

Though I haven't written about it in a while, I still do think a lot about arts access issues.

So I was happy this weekend to attend (with a few thousand other Torontonians) the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's first free outdoor concert in more than 10 years. It was part of Luminato's closing events.

Even though rain threatened to end the event before it started, most of the audience members held fast. The rain then mostly cleared, and the audience enjoyed a range of popular favourites from ET (dedicated to the cyclists of  Toronto by director Peter Oundjian) and the Lord of the Rings (did you know scorewriter Howard Shore was Canadian and used to play saxophone in Lighthouse? I didn't.) as well as a premiere of an overture by Philip Glass and Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture.

There was a kind of War of 1812 tribute thing going on (not unusual for Toronto at the moment) which led to some weird touches like the audience being instructed to sing the Canadian and American national anthems, but the audience generally seemed to enjoy it.

There were also fireworks and cannons at the end for the Tchaikovsky, as well as a big round of audience-approval noise for the idea that the TSO will do more free concerts in future -- I certainly hope this is the case! Much needed and appreciated by the public.

(Photo of the audience holding steady during a rainshower at the free TSO event by yours truly.)

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From the Tara Bursey files: Notes on our Cultural Condition, Sort Of

Earlier this spring, I was flattered when artist, blogger and OCAD University student Tara Bursey asked for my feedback on some career-related questions for a class of hers. The list of questions included some general ones from the class (everyone in the class was doing these sorts of interview requests) and some individual ones.

I thought I'd post my response to the class questions. In a way, they are the questions I was the least capable of answering, so they got me thinking more broadly than I usually might. I'm just posting them here for fun.

Thanks again to Tara for inviting me to participate in this project. Here are the class questions and my responses:

1. What characterizes our current cultural condition?

I’m not in any position to comment on what characterizes our current cultural condition, because I don’t study such things. I often feel that when I am commenting on something publicly, it is on my own response to a small set of works, or to a single exhibition, rather than commenting on a wider cultural condition.

I know that subjectively I experience our current cultural moment as overwhelming in terms of the amount of information being generated and distributed through various media.

One Canadian artist I spoke with in the past few months, Kate Armstrong (whose practice addresses media and the Internet) told me that something like 90% of the information in the world has been generated in the past 10 years.

I don’t know if that statistic is accurate, but it speaks to the kind of overwhelmed feeling I experience. As much as I love the democratization and wide distribution of media brought about by the Internet and related tools, I personally don’t feel capable of digesting the volume of information properly.

2. How does this condition manifest in art and design practices?

Again, I don’t presume to know what our current cultural condition is, so I can’t really say what kinds of art and design practices that it manifests in.

I can say that I find myself increasingly drawn to sculptural works, particularly ones in textile and ceramic.

And sometimes I attribute that attraction to the fact that I spend much of my work life staring at screens and interacting with computers and images—interacting with virtuality, basically. (That virtuality also includes, in a sense, that wider media I mentioned as being overwhelming to me.)

Of course, I’m a writer, and I studied photography, and I’m happy to acknowledge that words and images are kind of virtual things to begin with. But given the predominance of digital, many of the concrete and embodied aspects of these practices have been done away with. (No more pen to paper, no more hours spent loading and shaking film-development canisters.)

So, given that I now have this subjective attraction to 3-D, nondigital objects, preferably ones in very tactile materials like clay and cloth, and given I attribute this attraction in part to the fact that there is an excess of digital or virtual inputs in my work and leisure time, I do sometimes wonder if there is a romance in our wider culture at the moment with things that are very analog or tactile or embodied in nature.

I guess if I was thinking more broadly, I’d wonder if the return to craft practices by some artists, which has been identified by some critics and curators, also relates to a feeling of wanting to get away from the digital and virtual which so dominate our work and leisure lives nowadays.

I also sometimes wonder how digital/virtual overload in the wider culture might influence fashion and home décor. It’s been very interesting for me in recent years to see the resurgence of decayed or worn textiles in fashion. There are many other possible influences for this resurgence – a look back to punk and grunge, say, or a desire for elites to “hide” their wealth in a time of economic recession – but I do wonder whether there’s some reassurance to be found in the tactile and the decayed, or maybe even just a desire to be reassured that there is still a part of life which is tactile and vulnerable to age/wear/weather/the basic laws of physics.

But again, just to conclude, I’m well aware that this sense of being overloaded is my subjective experience. It doesn’t mean necessarily that others/the wider culture/cultures are experiencing that too. That would require study I haven’t undertaken. If you find out, please let me know! : )

(Image of an Anthropologie store, near-irresistible source of tactile, pre-decayed wares, via the Style Spy)

 

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One Paint Chip, Two Solitudes

What art-text writer and editor doesn't get a kick out of perusing paint chips? The names that these colours get are often way above and beyond even the most imaginative critic's terminology for hue.

Of course, a cutesy name can sway specialists and nonspecialists alike. (I once suggested a friend use an boring off-white on her walls because it was called, irresistibly and absurdly, "Cuddle.")

Interestingly, when I was looking at swatches again recently, I noticed one Benjamin Moore paint colour whose name had quite different meanings in Canada's two official languages. In English it was called "Toronto Blue"—which is kind of amusing in itself, as I don't really associate this bright blue hue to my everyday life in Hogtown. But in French it was called "Outremer Francais." One colour, two solitudes—perfect (or fractious, perhaps) for your favourite bilingual couple. Mon dieu!

(Image from Artquiltmaker)

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Diane Borsato feature up at Canadianart.ca

Yesterday, Canadianart.ca posted my feature on Toronto artist Diane Borsato's current show at the AGYU. An excerpt:

A white beekeeping outfit, complete with netted veil and hood. A pair of bright red Coleman coolers next to silver sachets of tea. Well-thumbed copies of Euell Gibbons’ Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust. Grow lights shining on rows of tiny tomato seedlings; a table overflowing with spider plants; some multi-sided dice resting on a high shelf; and a half-moon bedroom doubling as a wood-fired sauna.

These are just a few of the treats tucked into Walking Studio, the centrepiece work in Diane Borsato’s current solo show at the Art Gallery of York University.

“I was interested in field laboratories as a model for a way of working as an artist,” Borsato explains during a tour of the show. The 11-foot-by-18-foot structure, designed by the artist in collaboration with Adrian Blackwell and Jane Hutton, is “a mobile building that functions as a studio-slash-field-lab” to accommodate practices that are social, site-responsive, peripatetic and relational.

Beyond its immediate appeal as a cute, rustic, cabin-like getaway, Walking Studio may well read as a significant material marker of the way Borsato’s many ephemeral works—from 2001’s Touching 1000 People to 2011’s revolving Walking Studio residencies at Don Blanche—have gelled into a very concrete art career.

To find out more, read on at Canadianart.ca.

(Image of Diane Borsato's Walking Studio by Michael Maranda, via Canadianart.ca and courtesy the artist and the AGYU)

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Anthony Redpath Q&A out recently in National Post

British Columbia is a beautiful place, but the sights that most appeal to Vancouver photographer Anthony Redpath aren't ones you'd see on a postcard. For the past few years, Redpath has been trying to pay homage to the blue-collar side of Pacific coast life in his large, meticulous prints.

With an exhibition on at the Rooms in St. John's, Redpath talked with me about the decline of the fishing industry, the rise of ecotourism and the buildings that tell the tale of both.

The resulting condensed Q&A was published in last Thursday's National Post. An excerpt:

Q How did you get into photography and art in the first place, given that you worked in the national parks in your twenties?

A One of my influences would be my parents; my dad was an amateur photographer. In addition to that, he used to draw a lot; he's an architect.

Plus my mom's a landscape architect. I spent a lot of time looking over their drawings when I was kid. The buildings I photograph are often broken-down structures. They're not great architectural works, but I try to find something in them that's interesting.

Q What else would you like viewers to know about these photographs?

A Probably that these buildings reflect the socioeconomic status of the region, as well as the climate. They wouldn't look like that in downtown Vancouver, because they wouldn't exist; they'd be torn down because the land is too expansive. If they were in the prairies, they wouldn't have the same textures in terms of the paint and surfaces; the air would be too dry. These are buildings that really speak about a place. And I do this work because of an attachment to that place, I guess.

(Image of Anthony Redpath's Trailer Park Party courtesy the artist)

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