What do Abramovic and Banksy have in common?

One of the artists is famously present, the other famously absent.

In some respects they make an unlikely pair and the coverage in national media this week of their respective activities is a coincidence—isn’t it? 

The Artist is Present, MoMA

Marina Abramovic became famous by staging ephemeral and often controversial performances—some of which involved self-mutilation. Now she has leveraged her fame to build a physical institution, a monument devoted to performance art. Some are crying foul; others can’t wait for the 33,000 square foot Marina Abramovic Institute to open in Hudson, NY, so that they can pay to “put on white lab coats and undergo three hours of mind-and-body cleansing exercises.” That is according an article that appeared in last Sunday’s New York Times.

The article quotes Abramovic as saying “Ego is a huge obstacle to art.” It seems a curious if not contradictory turn of phrase under the circumstances.

Banksy has become famous—some say notorious—by painting and stenciling his distinctive brand of graffiti in unauthorized locations all over the world. I use the term “brand” deliberately. While his work has become commercially valuable, his identity remains elusive. Currently Banksy is spending a month operating, publicly if not visibly, in New York City. He himself (on a website) refers to it as an “artist’s residency.”

But now “banksy” has become a verb, his graffiti sought after and reviled in nearly equal measures, and some of the anonymous artist’s works have sold for six figure sums at auction.

NPR aired an interview yesterday with a Brooklyn resident whose building was “banksied.” The family has struggled with ethical as well as financial consequences. The graffiti first drew a large and appreciative crowd. Then someone spray-painted over the stencils, which the family cleaned off promptly and successfully. After that they installed a garage door over the illicit, but potentially lucrative art that had been dropped in their laps. What’s a victim to do these days?

An appreciative crowd gathers at a "Banksied" site in Chelsea

Cash in is one of the options that the beneficiaries of Banksies artistic attentions have chosen. But what happens to street art after it has been commodified? Banksy himself addresses this issue in ambiguous ways. A story aired on NPR Oct. 14 quotes him as saying, "I know street art can feel increasingly like the marketing wing of an art career, so I wanted to make some art without the price tag attached. There's no gallery show or book or film. It's pointless. Which hopefully means something."

And was it a snub of the commercial art establishment—even the very people who purchased one of his limited edition prints for $249,000—when he (anonymously, of course) set up a sidewalk kiosk in Central Park with prints priced at $60 each. The artist’s total take for the one day sale was $420. Who got taken, I wonder?

Maybe Abramovic and Banksy have more in common than it seems at first glance. Why shouldn’t they take advantage of opportunities to leverage popularity or notoriety for financial gain? Or do they, each in their own fashion, seem to want it both ways? If ego is in fact an obstacle to art, it certainly isn’t an obstacle to commercial success.

Can either performance art or street art survive commodification? Many critics are asking. The answer is elusive.

Links:

NY Times – Abramovic: For her next piece, a performance artist will build an institute.

NPR – Banksy: Getting ‘Banksied’ comes with a price – and maybe a paycheck

London's National Gallery of Art

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This is the second in a planned series of stories from my recent trip to London, where I had the great fortune to see great art--and to explore several remarkable urban parklands. My first installment, an introductory story called "How wild is London," is on my other blog, Urban Wilderness. As I've said before, I find the distinctions between my interests in art and nature to be arbitrary and confining. My experiences in London provided further weight to this view, which I hope to share in upcoming installments.

The National Gallery

From our long list of London’s museums and galleries we start at the top. As one of the premier encyclopedic institutions of its kind, the National Gallery has not only a little of everything, but many of the specific works of art that inevitably appear in the art history textbooks. We are far from alone. The National Gallery is the fourth most visited art museum in the world (after the Louvre, the Met, and the British Museum, just blocks from this one.)

My first impression is not of the paintings on the walls, however, but the grandeur of the rooms themselves. Contemporary museum design leans to minimalist interior spaces with color schemes in a narrow range of white. Not here.

courtesy Wikipedia

In fact, at first glance the paintings seem incidental, under high domed ceilings, surrounded by richly colored wallpapers and ornate Neo-Classical architectural detailing. (This museum, like so many, eschews photography by the masses and so I am resorting to wiki-images in the public domain, as noted.)

courtesy WikiPaintings

My architectural reverie is interrupted; my attention arrested by a painting so familiar I quickly realize I’ve seen it much more recently than whenever it was I last studied art history. The Fighting Temeraire had a cameo appearance in Skyfall, the latest Bond movie. Bond sat down in front of it to meet Q, his tech handler. The two characters even bantered briefly about the image’s metaphorical significance. Art imitating art. Life observing same. And popular culture clothing itself in references to high culture, to the extent that term retains currency in a museum as crowded as this is. Next to the frame is a plaque that informs us that this is the most popular painting in England. Typically ironic. Like so many ground-breaking artists, Turner stirred controversy in his day with an atmospheric style that prefigured Impressionism. How fickle is public opinion!

Now alert to the splendor of the selections on the walls, I begin to quiz myself. Upon entering I scan each room and try to identify the artists before closing in on them, always on the lookout for particular favorites. Constable and Gainsborough, Ingres and Degas. It gets easier as I reach the more modern galleries where I find glorious Monets and, of course, Van Gogh and Cezanne.

courtesy Wikipedia

I’ll mention two more highlights, both notable for the surprisingly diminutive scale of the paintings as well as their brilliance and historical relevance. In fact, I almost miss a tiny version of Ingres’s Oedipus and the Sphinx. Only a few inches tall, it is hiding in a corner amongst larger works. Peering closely at it I am struck by the curious compulsion of contemporary artists to make their work gigantic.

courtesy Wikipedia

Watching the time, we consult our gallery map so as not to miss another famous masterpiece, Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage Portrait. We thread our way through the galleries, across a connecting bridge and into the Sainsbury Wing extension of the museum. Still early afternoon, little did we know how short on time we were. No sooner did we arrive in front of it and with barely enough time to admire the meticulously rendered detail when the museum guard, responding to some cue in his ear bud, curtly began herding everyone out of the gallery. We join a startled and muttering throng converging on the connecting bridge as we realize the entire wing is being summarily evacuated. The reason is never explained.

As counterpoint to what we’ve just seen, outside the museum Trafalgar Square offers up street arts, from the political to the entertaining to the crassly commercial. Not that these are mutually exclusive, mind you!

Jan van Eyck was innovative enough with oil paint that his work is considered revolutionary and the Arnolfini double portrait has been analyzed to death by innumerable art history undergrads. Still, his work was commercial in the sense that he depended for his livelihood on commissions, as did most artists before the advent of modernism.

The chalked flags below included audience participation. In addition to soliciting donations, the "artist" invited anyone who wished to add a flag to the matrix. Chalked in the center it reads, "Peace + Love" and "Welcome to London." Amen to that!

But wait, there's more! To read my post about the Tate Modern, click here.

Who is JR the “Photograffeur”?

Banksy, the infamous graffiti artist, inflated his notoriety with the mockumentary called “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” I found both his movie and his art intriguing (see previous post). But I just came across another elusive street artist whose work I find truly captivating. His nom de guerre is simply JR. Calling himself a “photograffeur,” he wants his art to do more than tweak the establishment. He wants to change the world with photographic graffiti. A recent body of work called “Women are Heroes” has been plastered all over trains, on rooftops, and other public places in strife-torn countries in an effort to empower women. Although trains sound like a normal place to find normal graffiti, what he does to them is so much larger and more potent it goes beyond even the advertisements that consume entire busses.

The work is incredible. I came across this one example (above) today when I opened National Geographic. But they only published this single image with little explanation, other than it being part of a “global art project.” It took a bit of searching to discover the true nature of the project. Like Banksy, his work lacks official permission and shows up in unexpected public places. Unlike Banksy, JR combines his subversive artworks with lofty humanitarian goals; he solicits help from the communities where the work will be seen; and the results combine massive appeal, powerful messages, and archetypal resonance.

And he’s being rewarded for his anonymous and illicit creations. My search for JR’s images turned up a website called the TED Prize, which gives an annual award of $100,000 to an “exceptional individual” who has an idea that can change the world. Check it out at TED Prize. Apparently JR plans to come out of the closet to accept his prize, but until now has remained anonymous despite the ambitious and collaborative nature of the work.

He does have a website. Here is how his (anonymous) bio begins:

“JR owns the biggest art gallery in the world. He exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not the museum visitors. His work mixes Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit.”

In addition to “Women are Heroes” my favorite JR intervention, called “Face2Face” is a series of monumental faces peering and grinning at passersby from the wall separating Israel from Palestine.



"Exit Through the Gift Shop" a fun movie - but is it ART?

It is billed on the director’s website as “the world’s first street art disaster movie” and it seems to have generated nearly as much controversy as the illegal artistic activities it portrays. The director is the notorious Banksy, as secretive on-screen—where his identity is concealed as he deadpans the quips that are among the film’s most entertaining moments—as he is in the dangerous world of subversive street art.

Whatever the truth—and that notion is as nebulous as Banksy’s true identity—this film is engrossing. It’s ostensible protagonist, Thierry Guetta, is a wanna-be street artist with an obsessive desire to record the nefarious activities of those he admires. Most of the story line follows Thierry as he travels around the world to find and film street artists engaged in their clandestine endeavors. These include the now famous Shepard Fairey and many others who go only by nom de guerres like Swoon, Cheez, and Coma. The movie looks like a documentary, but the expected trajectory of the plot is as ephemeral as the graffiti. (In this one fashion it reminds me of another movie I recently saw on DVD: The Informer. Like “Exit,” that very different movie sets up an expectation—the standard Hollywood thriller—and gradually assumes a surprising new identity as a psychological portrait without losing its pacing.)

I was glad I didn’t read the NY Times review of this movie before seeing it (and therefore recommend against it, hence no link) because it reveals too much of the ending, which should come as a surprise. However, the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. (Source: rottentomatoes.com.)

The movie leaves more questions in its wake than it answers even without the author’s mysterious identity. What is the true nature, purpose, and—a big one—value of “street art?” Don’t confuse the art depicted in this movie, which is astonishing in its range, technical accomplishment, and content, with the kind of graffiti usually seen under bridges. What is the relationship between the artist and the art work? This question is as multifaceted as a diamond and just as beautifully and subtly handled, if ultimately unresolved. What is the artist’s responsibility to the audience? In fact, who is the audience for this work? What happens to street art when it is discovered to have economic value to collectors? Who is being conned by whom?

My wife and I both loved it. The scene in which Thierry is interrogated by guards at Disneyland alone is worth the price of admission. It’s playing at the Oriental Theater. See it.

An example of Banksy street art