Lego's "Girl Problem" Hasn't Changed, It's Multiplied.

Viral ad campaign by Lego didn't do much to comfort those put of by Lego Friends.

I got in a bit of a dust up on twitter this week, which caught me off guard, because not only was I not looking for a fight, I wasn't disagreeing. But some subjects are thorny, they invite misunderstanding and defensiveness. Gender roles is one of those subjects. Lego's "girl problem." The problem is an old one: Lego can't figure out how to sell to girls; 90% of their toys sales are to/for boys - and I bet that that number is low. It's a problem for Lego because they have saturated half their market and can't break into the other other half - until recently, and that's where the new girl problem starts. A couple years ago Lego released a pink-washed line of doll-house themed building sets called Lego Friends, and according to NPR, has tripled their sales to girls. The source of yesterday's misunderstanding, was that I hadn't realized the "girl problem" had morphed from a question of how to get girls to play with Legos to one of how to get girl to stop playing with pink toys. But to my mind the original "problem" remains. Three times almost nothing does not a market share make. My guess the sales of the pink-washed Lego Friends sets don't reflect numbers of girls playing with the toys now that they are pink, but rather they reflect the fact that aunts, uncles, grandmothers, mothers, fathers, and girls themselves feel comfortable buying a toy for a girl that looks unambiguously like a girl's toy and comes from one of the most respected toy companies in the world. To my thinking, any marketing scheme built around structured-narrative sets (ie sets that come with instructions intended to build a specific narratives of firemen, spacemen, housewives or veterinarians) are going to be gendered, but they are also going to continue to fail with the girls and "outlier" boys who aren't playing with them now.

Art As War

Dr Strangelove (1964)

 

From time to time, as tensions rise in one part of the world of another, someone will bring up the idea replacing war with art. I had a friend who took that idea and ran with it. He wanted to top ICBMs with "art-heads." So for instance, his suggestion was that when diplomacy broke down, and it was time for action, that a group of artists would be at the ready to sculpt, paint, code, cook, whatever - a response, calculated to shaping events. Their art, rather than atomic payloads, would then be loaded onto missiles that would be fired into the enemy combatants. Culture "artwar," fought by means of conceptual bunker busters, new aesthetic daisy cutters, and social practice fat man and little boys. My friend's idea was absurd but attractive. An actualization of artistic avant-gardist pretension. Artists as actual shock troops. It occurred to me today, remembering my friends idea, thinking of Crimea, Syria, Afghanistan, et al, that we are already fighting wars by means of art; that intercontinental missiles, loaded with cultural content are flying over head. Movies are the nukes - weapons of mass-illumination. Music is another artistic weapon of mass-reproduction. Contemporary visual art, is a wholly conventional form of artfare - targeted mostly at elites.

Art, Then Disruptive Technology.

A year or so ago, right around the time of the Armory art fair, I began to think of the international art fairs in a new way,  rather than market strategies or some such, I began to imagine them as a "disruptive technology." We tend to think of technology as discrete gadgets. Smartphones are technologies. Driverless automobiles are technologies. The internet is a technology. Art fairs are too; they are a cultural technology, and they are upending the artworld. But BE WARNED: This is most definitely NOT another screed about how money is destroying art. If art has a single attribute that separates it from all other commodities, it is that it is the "ultimate commodity." Art has no upward price limit; that men (it's always men) will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a piece of cloth dabbed with paint, by some guy who lived in a coal miner's hut is amazing - but it is not the subject of this post. The wackiness of the secondary market has been with us long enough that I it no longer fits under the definition of technology as "everything that doesn't work yet." Art Fairs don't work yet.

Critical Analytics: Show Us The Territory, And We Will Find Our Own Way.

Ed Winkleman (looking for leadership?); William Powhida, Turning in Circles (2014) detail

"Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion." - Francis Bacon

I avoid the academic practice of starting essays with a quote from a great thinker because more often than not the quote is obscure and it does less to illuminate the topic of the essay it hangs above, and more to reflect glory from the great thinker,on to the less-great author of the essay. But that Francis Bacon quote goes a long way to sum up my reaction to a post the gallerist Ed Winkleman wrote on his blog called, "Looking for Leaders..." Ed argues that the flood of speculative cash has thrown the artworld is in a "death spiral" and its up to artists to lead us out of the trap. I Liked Ed's post a lot, even though I found myself strongly disagreeing with its key points. First, that the source of the artworld's problems are auctions, and second, that artists can lead the way to fixing those problems. "Someone will chime in to suggest all we need is enough idealistic dealers who dig in their heels" Ed predicted, "show quality work without compromising, and they'll begin to change how things are heading." But so far, all the responses I've seen have been along the lines that everyone needs to do their part. I don't agree with that either. Right now we are at least twice removed from truth; probably the most we should hope for is to move to an environment of error from the state of confusion we inhabit. Ed's post is a move in that direction. But I don't think leadership is what we lack at all, artists need good data.

Exposure: A Teachable Moment.

Out in the Cold: Robert Smithson, Proposal for a Monument at Antarctica (1966) Mark Quinn, Self (1999)
  
This past Monday, Nate Thayer posted an email exchange in which he was approached for a 1200 word piece on "basketbal diplomacy", but was also informed by Olga Khazan, the new Global Editor of The Atlantic: "We unfortunately can’t pay you for it, but we do reach 13 million readers a month." I caught wind of this kerfuffle yesterday when my twitter feed blew up. Felix Salmon noted: "There seem to be two kinds of websites: 'We're small, we can't pay you', and 'we're big, plz write for the exposure'." Nate Silver weighed in as well, warning: "If an editor offers no cash but says you'll get lots of exposure, you usually won't get very much exposure." And Matt Yglesias chipped in ironically (sarcastically? facetiously?): "Just discovered that many colleges run professional football teams whose players are unpaid and work for the exposure." This outrage was not contained to the wonk's corner of the blogosphere however, the pretense of "exposure" as pay got under the skin of the art people I follow as well. I was glad to see the outrage was shared by the art writer, Carolina Miranda, but also by the gallerist Magda Sawon. Sawon would seem to have no skin in the game, but does, because artists are the ultimate "freelancers." It was good for me personally to see the outrage reach the artworld, because late last month I had a similar exchange via email, and had been trying to decide if I should to post it.

The Art of 8-Bit History

Luke Skywalker filtered by 8-bit Avatar Maker

"What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles either" Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

A few years ago I began a project to explain Modernism via the original 1977 Star Wars movie. This is not an even match up. To understand everything you need to know about Star Wars takes 2 hours, but to understand even a small corner of Modernism is a project that can eat up ones entire adult life (ask me how I know). What I ended up doing, was viewing the movie under a critical microscope, breaking it down moment by moment and enlarging on every detail. Modernism, meanwhile I was forced to reduce to a few key players, some illustrative anecdotes, and iconic art works and architecture. A friend who came to one of my talks about the project took issue with art historical liberties, he felt, I was taking. But in truth, I wasn't changing the facts of the story; I was changing the resolution of the story. The history I lay out may not have the richness of detail we find in an heavily annotated academic survey, but just as an 8-bit portrait is still a photograph, an 8-bit history is still a history. Likewise, the "truth claims" of Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Lincoln, and even Django Unchained shouldn't be dismissed because those films simplify complicated histories. While these films can never provide full historical resolution, they remain important looks at important moments.

Star Wars & Modernism: Episode VI - Return of The Ugly Americans

Below are the slides for the third part of a three-part, 8-bit, art history lecture on Star Wars and American Cold War Modernism I gave via Twitter. The Introduction and Episode IV are supplemented with text that give a key for those unfamiliar with some of the artworld figures mentioned and texts alluded to. This final section will be presented without comment. (Return to Episode V)

Star Wars & Modernism: Episode V - Cold Warrior Clones

Below are the slides for the second of a three-part, 8-bit, art history lecture on Star Wars and American Cold War Modernism I gave via Twitter. The introduction and Episode IV are supplemented with text that give a key for those unfamiliar with some of the artworld figures mentioned and texts alluded to. This, and the final section will be presented without comment. (Return to Episode IV)

Star Wars & Modernism: Episode IV - The Hope of the NEW

Below are the slides for the first of a three-part, "8-bit", art history lecture on Star Wars and American Cold War Modernism I gave via Twitter. (Return to Introduction for more explanation.) I have added text to this episode to introduce some of the charicters and texts that are referenced in the "slides."

Star Wars & Modernism: An Introduction

Earlier this week on twitter I 'tweeted' what might be thought of as an 8-bit art history lecture. By "8-Bit" I mean that, in the same way an 8-bit portrait is accurate, if radically simplified, this is a blocky generalized history. I was spured to give this lecture after Todd Florio passed on the artist, Tom Sachs' observation that "Darth Vader IS Hitler. Yoda IS Buddha." Sachs owns Foamcore, police barricades, and can make an almost entirely air-tight claim on NASA, but Star Wars is mine. Sorry Tom. The "slides" I tweeted yesterday come from a "primer" I assembled as a joke while working on an essay for Triple Canopy a few years ago. Just as Florio spurred me to tweet, Dan Phiffer has spurred me to blog (he assemble the tweets into a blog post before I had a chance to, happily forcing my hand). Just as I broke up the tweet-lecture into three parts, I'll repost the slides here in three "episodes," starting with Episode IV (you haven't missed anything, thats where it starts - and no, there will be no be prequels). For twitter I introduced each slide's link with a short phrase, which would be a little redundant here. Taking advantage of the blog format, I've added some text to this intro and Episode IV that explodes twitter's 140 character limit. Like all lecturers, I look forward to questions and comments. For those interested there is also an archive of my posts on Star Wars here. Enjoy.

Mind The Gap: Art & Ethics

MEI Chart from Andrea Fraser's “L'1% C'est Moi” in Texte zur Kunst 83; Michelle Vaughan's Instagram of vandalized Damien Hirst

I was on two panels recently. One was on the question of Art & OWS, the other was on Art & Ethics - I found myself making the same point at both: that high art prices are not the problem, they are symptoms of a problem. Along with high rates of mental illness, violent crime, and lower life expectancy, high art prices are not symptomatic of extreme poverty or extreme wealth, they are symptomatic of extreme gaps between the very rich and the very poor. Here is the point that I made to the OWS activists in the audience of the first panel, and the would-be artworld movers and shakers in the audience of the second: wealth is not the problem and the wealthy are not the enemy. The gap is a problem, and it's a problem for wealthy as well as the poor. If you are the richest American your life expectancy is shorter that the richest Greek, your likely hood of mental illness is higher, and the likely hood that your life will be marred by violence is higher. Corporations are not the problem, consumerism isn't the problem; the problem that plagues us all is the gap.

Twinkle Fingers Are No Way To Decide A Death Match, or: Why I Won The Flux Factory Art & Occupy Debate

I couldn't find a picture of my Deathmatch opponents, so I tried to approximate the best I could (I imagine Hrag is Master)


This past week Paddy Johnson of Artfagcity, Hrag Vartanian of Hyperallergic, the artist Bill Powhida, and I were invited to debate the topic of the art community's place within the Occupy Wall Street movement. The debate was hosted by Flux Factory and organized and moderated by Douglas Paulson & Christina Vassallo. The debate is now available as podcasts. As I told my fellow panelists, the debate format made this the single most enjoyable panel I've ever been on. It helped that I know and like everyone else on the panel, respect their work and opinions, but I really enjoyed that there was no pretense at agreement, no impulse to reach a consensus. It made for a fun night of arguing with a group who all enjoy arguing. Perhaps because it was billed as a "Deathmatch" I swore like a sailor (or maybe because I always swear a lot), so by that metric I clearly won the debate (except the method actually used: twinkle fingers).

See Red: W.A.G.E. Asks "Why Are Artists Poor?"

Damien Hirst Spot Glasses (2012); Kyle Petreycik, Introspective Glasses (2010)

On the heels of recording a conversation about ArtPrize and social justice I was invited by the artist William Powhida to a lecture titled Why are Artists Poor? by the Dutch economist/artist Hans Abbing and sponsored by an organization called W.A.G.E. - a group that is seeking to certify nonprofit arts organizations as artist friendly. I commented on Ben Davis account of the lecture, and Bill and I posted both our reactions to the lecture on Rhizome a couple days ago, but following the lecture we also took part in on a meeting for W.A.G.E. and then, along with the photographer Chris Verene, the critics Ben Davis and Martha Schwendener ended up finishing out the night discussing economic justice and the arts over a few beers. Of the group, all of whom, to some degree or an other have been involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement, I am the least engaged (I am not involved in W.A.G.E. or OWS, beyond joining a couple of the large marches and publicly denouncing the early hi-jinx of Occupy Museum), but one of the things that has come up over and over since Zuccotti was first occupied, is what is the lesson artists should learn from OWS.

Seeing Red: ArtPrize

From left to right: John Powers, Paddy Johnson, Kevin Buist, 13' Jesus

Following a little dust-up on twitter a couple weeks ago, I recorded a long discussion with AFC's Paddy Johnson and Kevin Buist the director of artist relations for ArtPrize, the world's largest single cash award for visual artist ($250,000.00, from a half million dollar overall purse). Today Paddy posted the entire conversation as a series of short contained videos. In the first video Kevin explains how the prize works (about a minute and a half in). I agreed to the discussion, in part, because I knew I'd be speaking to Kevin, someone who is part of the ArtPrize organization; it was my chance to voice my concerns about what should be an important annual international event for the artworld, but is instead something, as an artist, I would feel uneasy taking part in. The free market ethic of ArtPrize makes ensuring economic justice more, not less, important to the competitions success.

Spotless Mind

Damien Hirst; Methamphetamine, 2004

Recently we found out that anyone who sees all of Damien Hirst's spot paintings will win a print valued somewhere between $3,500.00 and $50,000.00. Greg Allen believes making the trip would be hellish - but he has two daughters and needs to be back home in time for the school play. Felix Salmon did the math for an imaginary plutocrat making the trip in gilded age style (sans private jet) for $108,572.00.

This all got Jennifer Bostic thinking. She believes that a couple of hipsters could do the trip in better style than any bloated plutocrat could ever hope to achieve. UPDATE: And if our travel savvy "underemployed" hipsters sold their two prints, their trip would not only cost $102,804.00 less than Pictor Vinchuk's trip, but even if the prints come it at the $3500.00 low ball, the hipsters still come out ahead at the end of their trip. With that, allow me to leave the rest of the post to our guest blogger, Ms. Bostic:

The Future of Art: Your Mom is the Product 2

Artificial Companionship: Kitchen phone; Paro 
(Part 1)

Imagine you walked into your mother's kitchen and you found her on the phone. She was gossiping to a friend about family business. She was telling them about your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, your cousins, you and your siblings - no one was spared, and everything from marital status to financial well-being was on the menu. Most of us would give grandma a pass. She and her friend are keeping each other entertained; working things out with one another in a way that is harmless. On balance, most of us would feel it's healthier for mom to talk her worries out with friend than to fret in isolation. But how would you feel if you realized that your mother was speaking to an Artificial Intelligence - an algorithm created to make your mother feel like she was speaking to a friend?

The Future of Art: Non-Optical Media 1

Engaging Stares: HAL 9000 (1968); Marina Abramovic (2010)

A while back the New York Times art critic, Roberta Smith, complained against what she called "the New Modern." The current historical narrative being pushed by the MoMA, Smith feels, is a " giddy, even desperate, embrace of the new and the next, of large-scale installation and video art, as well as performance art, and generally of art as entertainment and spectacle." Smith finds the focus of the Modern's curators "a symptom of something more than a little scary about where contemporary art is headed, or where the Modern is taking it. (Hint: Conceptual Art is the new Cubism.)"

Looking at Modernism with David Brin -6

Sith Architecture: Le Corbusier and Star Wars 

(Return to Part 5)
When I originally sent David the link to my essay, Star Wars: A New Heap I knew he was an unlikely fan of my ideas about Star Wars. I understood what he disliked about the film's plot and the franchises influence on the world of scifi publishing. In no way, shape, or form, did I think I would change David's judgment of the movie (or even wanted to). But because he counts himself a contrarian, I hoped he would enjoy the spirit of my project. I was ecstatic when he replied to my email and have enjoyed the polite sparing of our sporadic correspondence ever since. The subject of our sparing hasn't been Star Wars, however, its been modernity and Modernism. David has made it very clear on a number of occasions that he believed that both art and architecture (but mostly architecture) had gone off the rail some time ago, and has never recovered:

Not the scientists and engineers and science fiction authors, who kept faith with Modernism as a central force for the enlightenment, but by the very communities that you most associate with "Modernism".... the artists and architects, who betrayed the movement absolutely, despicably and almost mortally, at the very level of personality. By preening and flouncing and calling themselves wizard-guru-masters, everyone from Le Corbusier to Wright to Warhol gave in to the old temptations and turned Modernist art and architecture away from the enlightenment's most fundamental notion -- modesty and accountability.

Looking at Do Ho Suh with David Brin - 5

Rachel Whiteread, One Hundred Spaces (1995); David explaining Do Ho Suh's Home Within Home prototype (2011)

(Return to Part 4)

After having seen the Richard Serra and Nick Cave shows, David and Cheryl and I then walked a couple blocks north to see an the two installations of two over-size doll houses colliding in two very different ways by the Korean artist Do Ho Suh at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery. Of the three shows I took the Brins to see, this last one is where I had the most fun, because it was there that David grabbed the reigns from me and his story telling took over. Not long after we had entered the show I was no longer explaining the work to David, he was explaining the work to me and Cheryl and complete strangers; whatever I had hoped might happened when I invited the Brins to look at art with me, this was better.

Looking at Nick Cave with David Brin - 4

David Brin's Postmen; David Brin with Nick Cave's post-men 
(Return to Part 3)

After visiting the Serra installation at Gagosian I took David and Cheryl next door to the Mary Boone Gallery to see Nick Cave's show of "Soundsuits." Of the three shows we saw together, this was the artist and art I knew the least about. Unlike Serra, who's shows I have been visiting since I first moved to New York 15 years ago, and who I've been thinking about ever since (I had a Richard Serra anxiety dream once), I saw Cave's work for the first time only a week or so before meeting the Brins. What I could see I did know walking into the show, was that Cave was clearly not a sculptor in the same sense as Richard Serra. The Modernist consensus was that David Smith was America's greatest sculptor - with Smith setting the bar, both Serra and Cave are solidly (and somewhat confusingly) Postmodernist. What I did know for sure, was that it was a great show, and one I felt certain the Brins would enjoy.