A yellow school bus served as a the shuttle from the Guggenheim Museum to the Frieze Art Fair on Randall's Island. As we made our way under the RFK Bridge and into the Randall Island Park I espied the large red inflatable rabbit sculpture of Paul Mc Carthy looming over the tent structure that held the Fair. I remembered what Freddie Aquilizan used to tell us: If you cant make it good, make it big. Quoted from Audrey Flack, who added if you cant make it big, make it red. This sculpture is both big and red.
Then suddenly we were hollered down by a group of men chanting "Shame on YOU!" as we made through the dirt road to the south entrance. The men - presumably artists with a cause - were waiting to pounce on the arriving guests with slogans and a funny inflatable rat sculpture with greedy eyes on their guard. All the guests in the bus peered back. The rat nodded with the wind. It was a fine Friday mid-morning, with 70 degrees on the mercury and sunny.
I wanted to make the most out of this visit and I planned to stay the whole afternoon if I had to. When I was doing the rounds of the Armory Show week I was reeling from jetlag, as I had barely a day upon landing. In contrast to the cloudy, grey and snowy late winter weather at the Armory, the near-summer heat of the day for Frieze was very, very welcome. Yet I keep telling myself: Oh God, another art fair! Ive been to many art fairs since last year, from Art Singapore, ArtHK12, FIAC and Slick in Paris, Art Fair Philippines, The Armory Show and now Frieze and pretty soon, Pulse and others. Everytime I go I think: this is a marketplace, and yet it is also a marketplace for ideas. What good was an artist if he could not capture the hearts and minds of people? Often the art fair is a shortcut to gallery hopping. Not quite the real thing, but it saves you some blisters.
There is something about this edition of Frieze that made me chuckle and smile, the same way I found myself entertained at FIAC last fall. I stumbled upon the oxygen of contemporary art practice: permissibility. Or what can art do when we are given no limits nor laws nor canons. Or our lack of awareness thereof. Or the dismissiveness of all fetters and meanings and traditions that accompany these assertiveness.
I also came to terms with the context of lifeworld in comparing Frieze New York to all the art fairs elsewhere: here in these white spaces, are objects that come from living in post-industrial cities. Elsewhere in the City are two art fairs of "indigenous and tribal art" (which I am curious to see), where art from "beyond the city and beyond modern civilization" have their own limelight. Michel Foucault once said that history which is prevalent is the narrative of the powerful. In our time the meaning of being contemporary is evidence of mastery of narratives coming from the metropolises. Contemporary art is not about the tales of bunions, unless of course, they are assimilated into the heart of the city and its politics. What made me snigger and giggle at the Fair was the dawning of an understanding. It was not about the dichotomy of "craft versus concept" or "tradition versus contemporary" or even "West versus East"; these are the concerns of Cold-War period art.
Its ALL about the traffic of novelty, this global force driving contemporary international art.
Take an banal object from New York and bring it to Ilocos and suddenly it becomes a relic of a sophisticated civilization. Take a common trifle from Ilocos and bring it to New York and in the right context it becomes an exotic object from a distant land. City and country mouse tales. But this is nothing new. In the early modern and late 19th century, in the age of expositions, this was the operative force in showcases and impresario spectacles. What made the difference? The level of seriousness levied upon the funding, politics, and presentation of the exhibits. C'mon, these things are finely tuned, and finely crafted to make it speak with the deep baritone seriousness of Habermasian discourse. So funny. And they have magazines and websites to support the works that are so flimsy without the support of a whole encyclopedia of written words. Hahaha.
What else is hilarious? The presumption that the tales of the city mouse is richer and better than the yarns of the country mouse. Foucauldian logic: the world and the community that has more power has more leverage to say what history is better said, and everything else are footnotes. But what I find fascinating is the way the country mouse is also driven to find its hole and home in the Big City and have his tale also told in the spaces, however within the liminal; or else this country mouse picks up a thing or two and goes back home with the learining of the city and in the law of traffic of novelty, becomes famous.
Then suddenly we were hollered down by a group of men chanting "Shame on YOU!" as we made through the dirt road to the south entrance. The men - presumably artists with a cause - were waiting to pounce on the arriving guests with slogans and a funny inflatable rat sculpture with greedy eyes on their guard. All the guests in the bus peered back. The rat nodded with the wind. It was a fine Friday mid-morning, with 70 degrees on the mercury and sunny.
I wanted to make the most out of this visit and I planned to stay the whole afternoon if I had to. When I was doing the rounds of the Armory Show week I was reeling from jetlag, as I had barely a day upon landing. In contrast to the cloudy, grey and snowy late winter weather at the Armory, the near-summer heat of the day for Frieze was very, very welcome. Yet I keep telling myself: Oh God, another art fair! Ive been to many art fairs since last year, from Art Singapore, ArtHK12, FIAC and Slick in Paris, Art Fair Philippines, The Armory Show and now Frieze and pretty soon, Pulse and others. Everytime I go I think: this is a marketplace, and yet it is also a marketplace for ideas. What good was an artist if he could not capture the hearts and minds of people? Often the art fair is a shortcut to gallery hopping. Not quite the real thing, but it saves you some blisters.
There is something about this edition of Frieze that made me chuckle and smile, the same way I found myself entertained at FIAC last fall. I stumbled upon the oxygen of contemporary art practice: permissibility. Or what can art do when we are given no limits nor laws nor canons. Or our lack of awareness thereof. Or the dismissiveness of all fetters and meanings and traditions that accompany these assertiveness.
I also came to terms with the context of lifeworld in comparing Frieze New York to all the art fairs elsewhere: here in these white spaces, are objects that come from living in post-industrial cities. Elsewhere in the City are two art fairs of "indigenous and tribal art" (which I am curious to see), where art from "beyond the city and beyond modern civilization" have their own limelight. Michel Foucault once said that history which is prevalent is the narrative of the powerful. In our time the meaning of being contemporary is evidence of mastery of narratives coming from the metropolises. Contemporary art is not about the tales of bunions, unless of course, they are assimilated into the heart of the city and its politics. What made me snigger and giggle at the Fair was the dawning of an understanding. It was not about the dichotomy of "craft versus concept" or "tradition versus contemporary" or even "West versus East"; these are the concerns of Cold-War period art.
Its ALL about the traffic of novelty, this global force driving contemporary international art.
Take an banal object from New York and bring it to Ilocos and suddenly it becomes a relic of a sophisticated civilization. Take a common trifle from Ilocos and bring it to New York and in the right context it becomes an exotic object from a distant land. City and country mouse tales. But this is nothing new. In the early modern and late 19th century, in the age of expositions, this was the operative force in showcases and impresario spectacles. What made the difference? The level of seriousness levied upon the funding, politics, and presentation of the exhibits. C'mon, these things are finely tuned, and finely crafted to make it speak with the deep baritone seriousness of Habermasian discourse. So funny. And they have magazines and websites to support the works that are so flimsy without the support of a whole encyclopedia of written words. Hahaha.
What else is hilarious? The presumption that the tales of the city mouse is richer and better than the yarns of the country mouse. Foucauldian logic: the world and the community that has more power has more leverage to say what history is better said, and everything else are footnotes. But what I find fascinating is the way the country mouse is also driven to find its hole and home in the Big City and have his tale also told in the spaces, however within the liminal; or else this country mouse picks up a thing or two and goes back home with the learining of the city and in the law of traffic of novelty, becomes famous.
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