Notes From Nowhere

Old journalist joke: When you travel by plane and look at the people traveling with you, it becomes obvious why all hijackers let their hostages go at some point…

I hear that Gursky is now driving a Ferrari. While I’m not yet at the right age for that kind of toy, there are moments when I want to have a private jet. It should make buzzing off to my much deserved winter break in the Dolomites much more fun. Last night, it was economy class all the way to Europea.

Returning from a trip to the great capital of this great nation, I intend to share a wild mix of observations, brooding, and adventure with anyone who cares to read this (three major deaths mark the weekend, but here’s more news). First, on true dedication, which I think I have seen but twice in my life: (1) On the face of each and every one of dozens of female customers during the fall sale in the Bergdorf Goodman shoe department. And (2) last night, at 4:40 a.m., in front of a Starbucks in Washington, DC. At 4:30 the hotel fire alarm had gone off, and it was for real. We were ordered to evacuate the building immediately. Several hundred people, almost all philosophers (I’ve been, well, sort of stranded at a philosophy conference during the past three days) found themselves in their pajamas in front of the hotel in a mild and foggy December night. Many, within minutes, started to discuss philosophical problems. Two of them sat down at an empty table in front of a closed Starbucks and while I cruised the premises to get some information on what was going on (flames roaring in the 7th floor, my room was on 9th), they kept sitting there, highly engaged in the exchange of philosophical ideas. Nearby, water poured down the elevator shafts into the hotel lobby, firemen walked by schlepping their heavy gear, while other guests, draped in white sheets, some without shoes, anxiously awaited news on what to do next. But almost two hours later, when most of us were allowed back into our rooms to get our belongings, the two philosophers still sat there, lecturing away about their latest research…

But here is what I actually wanted to say about Washington. Yesterday, to take a break from the philosophers, I went to the East Wing of the National Art Gallery. Apart from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the East Wing is the place to go in Washington. I find the building by I. M. Pei thoroughly brilliant, a modern design that really works both as pure architecture and with the art in it. My pleasure was tainted by this question though: I am aware that Pollock had several shows in the Manhattan Gallery scene before his work made it into the museums, and so did Warhol. But it seems obvious (at least to me) that in the Chelsea galleries of today, you cannot find anything that remotely touches these works. Why is this? Because today’s art is so much duller? Because the gallery owners are? Because the good stuff is somewhere, but not in Chelsea? Or because it takes time to filter it out, and the display in a place like the National Art Gallery makes strong work shine even more? What I don’t get is why the current Chelsea crowd, especially when it comes to photography, seems so hopelessly oblivious of what happened in the past century, or at least, not even remotely living up to it (only if you ask me, of course…). It is as if Romanticism had never ended. Or as if people miss it, perhaps despite of themselves. (I apparently don’t miss it, even though, in theory, I might want to be the kind of 19th century person involved in it, but only if it really was the 19th century, and only if there still was the internet.) Even the low level Beuys imitators somehow seem to sneak in a trace of kitsch, and an overdose of “meaning”… (Not, of course, that I would live up to my own standards.)

Anyway – back to Manhattan now, regardless.

Ok, it took me a week or two to recover from that post on categorizing photography over there at the Alec Soth blog. Not that I don’t have other things to recover from. I have listed his blog here (to your right), considering it, generally, very worthwhile reading. And now this. I thought that, almost twenty years after the movie Dead Poets Society, nobody could possibly come up with some sort of a *chart* (the kind of thing you know from math, or some sociological study, with an axis) that is supposed to give you a formula for evaluating or categorizing art. Soth juxtaposes “scientific” and “poetic” and “even toyed around with charting different photographers on this spectrum.”

The basic question of Dead Poets Society, a movie on events unfolding in a New England poetry class taught by a somewhat rebellious teacher (played by Robin Williams), is to ask whether people should apply textbook formulas or think for themselves (guess what!). Let me remind you of some bits of the story. Early on in the movie the teacher lets one of the students read the introduction of a Poetry Anthology that will serve the class as their textbook throughout the year. That introduction is based on a spectrum strikingly similar to Alec Soth’s. So the teacher asks the question “What do you think of this introduction?”, only to give the answer himself: “Here is what I think: […] Rip these pages out of your books.” He asks each member of the class to learn using his (it is a boy school) own intellect and imagination to appreciate something as infinitely subtle and complex as poetry. The students, somewhat dumbfounded, rip out the pages, and this for them marks the beginning of a potentially life changing and, in one case, life ending class.

Soth’s attempt at helping us understand pictures (is this a descriptive picture? please, I need a chart to find out) seems heartbreakingly naive. Or is it repulsive? It buys into the thinking of the worst enemies of anything original in photography: the mindless, large agency, low level creative who could just as well work at your local post office. Time and again, some of these people come up with an earth shattering pseudo scientific view, defining with oh so many words e.g. “cutting edge” photography. Or, of course, they pay a marketing agency which exhibits their expertise by conducting a “study”, coming up with mind bashing insights like “today’s women feel beautiful when they are pregnant” – oh yes, I can give you the links to websites where you can learn such facts, but I’m not going to; these are among the things that take me time to recover from.

Why not end on a grand note: One wonders if “artists in a lens based medium” should cut both the “deep” statements and the ad hoc philosophy. Art talk sure is nice, it is a “salient feature of our culture” particularly amongst some of the fancier gallery owners (recommended reading: “On Bullshit”, Harry G. Frankfurt, Cambridge University Press). But after all, let’s leave questions on the epistemology of art to those who know about that stuff. No offense. Come back for more.