The L Word
January 22nd, 2012What did The Last Word say? It said that a conference is more fruitful than a visionary. It said that a special program supplement might reveal meaning where it isn’t centrally evident.
Screengrab of Artist Slater Bradley in "The Last Word"
I had cleared my calendar for the The Last Word, but my snow allergy kept me indoors, as did an inexplicable compulsion to follow the South Carolina primary. (Who would have foreseen Newt Gingrich and Courtney Love in lights on the same night?) The Guggenheim’s handy Ustream presentation enabled me to do both. (It’s now partly archived on the Ustream site.) Anyway, I had heard that some presenters wouldn’t be in attendance, including Maestro Cattelan. (Thus, Cattelan isn’t just retiring from making art, but he might also be the type to miss his own funeral.)
Artist Donelle Woolford impersonating Richard Pryor's final TV performance
The Last Word was the seven-hour long series of presentations by artists, writers, academics, and other experts of something or nothing. For this finale of All, each presenter spoke of “The End,” interpreting that as he or she liked. It felt variously morbid, rigorous, nostalgic, candid, plangent, and dry. Each also introduced him or herself with a epigram.
The L Word
Simon Critchley read absentee Arthur Danto’s recollection of retiring as a printmaking artist, becoming a grad student, and then an art critic. Fellow absentee Richard Prince sent a video of a record playing his spoken obituary. Nancy Northup opened, “I’ve been thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson and tubal ligation,” coincidentally on this anniversary weekend of Roe vs. Wade. Doryun Chong poignantly compared AIDS and radioactivity. Francis Naumann investigated Duchamp, another artist who famously “retired,” while David Lipsky recalled David Foster Wallace, another artist who tragically retired himself.
The L Word
A high point was Michael Rush, Founding Director of the Broad Art Museum. He described his varieties of religious experience as a Jesuit priest and then a museum director. Spiritual yet secular, he selected Cattelan’s iconic La Nona Hora as an occasion in which “accident has pierced truth.” Speaking of, he followed up with a Freudian slip: in place of “expertise,” he said “exorcese” – awfully close to “exorcise.” -I also liked Drew Daniel, who is one half of Matmos. His ideas and his sampler penetrated Lou Reed, Johnny Cash, Snoop Dogg, Def Leppard, Erik Satie, and many others to uncover currents moving between presence and absence; fullness and emptiness.
Warhol image from Matt Wrbican's presentation
Drew Daniel killin it
Was the Ustream footage a good substitute for being there in reality? Only if “better than nothing” is the criterion. An average of 500 simultaneous viewers at home missed important details. For example, the inattentive camera operator denied viewers the most important part of the Aquila Theatre’s performance of Shakespeare’s King John: during Constance’s soliloquy, the actress was off camera the whole time. Viewers missed the visual component of Marc Etkind’s unflinching presentation of suicide notes – it all was off camera. At one point, the audience burst out laughing at one note; Ustream viewers have no idea what was so funny – especially in a suicide note. Robert Boyd’s video of doomsday cult leaders included translations on screen, but the camera person was too busy panning around the dark theatre to focus on the screen.
Aquila Theatre actors watching something important offscreen
Marc Etkind pointing at something offscreen
There were low points, but the sum was greater than its parts – and that’s what is so revealing about The Last Word in relation to All. Hearing from the presenters reminded me how wide open the field of artistic inquiry can be. There is so much to say, and in so many ways. And all of it is bigger than us! However, All is subsumed to the personality of its figurehead, Maurizio Cattelan. We view it, discuss it, and decode it through the filter of the legendary artist. And for this artist in particular, so much of the content is for insiders. This artist makes art out of collectors, dealers, institutions, and other artists. That’s fine, but what consequences are there for the rest of the world? The Guggenheim ostensibly organized this great symposium in response to Cattelan’s supposed, imminent retirement. In response, Nancy Spector’s introductory remarks focused on themes and images of death in Cattelan’s oeuvre. Equating death with retiring from art is specious (as suggested by Thomas Lawson, a cancer survivor), but here’s a more pointed question. Why do we need a conference of other people to draw out the pithy content of Cattelan’s work? If his work isn’t more than clever inside jokes, then why isn’t that content more self-evident?
Duchamp and Cattelan being all crazy - from Francis Naumann's lecture