Iconography Obsession

Iconography Obsession: A Response to Ken Johnson’s “A Museum’s Mission in Artists’ Statement”

In a recent article in the New York Times, Ken Johnson wrote about an exhibition at the Newark Museum entitled Unbounded: New Art for a New Century. He begins with a truth that I see a lot in the museums that I work in which is collecting contemporary art from collectors who might not be getting the best advice on what to buy leads to contemporary collections made up of bad art. Mr. Johnson begins his article as such “For museums, collecting contemporary art is a crapshoot.” With that statement I am in total agreement. Who knows if the artists that are getting big gallery shows are going to have a lasting importance upon the history of art or if they are just fashion plates representative of a timed aesthetic? The critic then continues on to make a comparison based upon geography that:

“Just across the river, several big museums collect and exhibit contemporary art for a huge, international audience that is interested in all things new, experimental and provocative. Not to know the once proud, now down-at-the-heels city of Newark, but why would anyone come here to see cutting edge art when it’s so easy to do in Manhattan?”

This statement made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. In hearing a lot lately about unique architecture along with biographies on the radio of Merce Cunningham and Andy Warhol, these stories have just really brought into sharp focus the driving force of the ambitions of this city: iconography. New York City itself is an icon on numerous facets, from Elise Island to the WTC, from the Yankees to Lincoln Center. This is a city obsessed with iconography. Many of the buildings listed in a recent article on cutting edge architecture were in Manhattan, the Guggenheim and the New Museum both, being raved about for their iconic additions to the architectural fabric of Manhattan. While listening to a biography on Andy Warhol, there was a statement made about how he arrived at the Campbell’s soup can works. Basically he was in search of something in front of him to give him some inspiration. Leave it to a designer turned “artist” to lock on to Campbell’s soup. For someone who later would outshine his own work it is fitting that Warhol built his ladder of fame out of the iconic status of an already American icon.
With all of these collisions coming to a head right now, seeing New York City’s obsession with being an icon of culture in America has just never been clearer. This city collects and lays ownership over icons in a manner similar to kids going after baseball cards of players like Sammy Sosa, Derek Jeter or Babe Ruth. Even when they can’t have the iconic person themselves they retain the object that makes the icon an icon. Where would the Met be with out Hirst’s “Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”? It would still be an icon of cultural collecting but now it spans all of time from the ancient to the contemporary.
If New Yorkers are only obsessed with the fashionably avant-garde then where does the real thought provoking work end up?

Introduction

Artchek is a space meant for an open discussion about the state of the visual arts. Granted that there are a lot of people out there writing about art, but a discussion about art is not just supposed to engage in discussions around techniques used to create images. A discussion about art is meant to engage the viewer with a contemporary discussion about the state of the culture and the art is meant to spur on this discussion by acting as a catalyst for this back and forth to take place. Artchek is an open space free of institutional allegiances and all the other areas that tie up tongues when talking about the art world, or any world for that matter. The exhibitions that are discussed will be as varied as they can possibly be, hopefully bringing a well rounded look at the arts at a variety of levels.

Throughout my study of art, art history and art criticism, many ideas have been tossed across my field of vision. For myself, one particular notion introduced by Noel Carroll has stuck with me through the last decade of study, Neo-Wittgensteinianism. Inside this sometimes convoluted introduction to post-modernism is a very simple concept which makes sense, especially now. Art is an open concept. Restricting it to disciplines and visual language is counter-intuitive to the nature of being creative. With this simple idea Artchek begins.