Dennis Hollingsworth

Mighty Falling

Our art world has gotten so large that it even exceeds the institutional behemoths' (museums ...and universities too) capacty to deal with it. Think about it, think about how big the art world was back in the fifties and early sixties (and most of the seventies and less of the eighties) when one could hit all the openings in town in a single evening and still have time to discuss what you saw at the local pub.

Not any more.

Here in LA, there's too much going on to see all the openings, and even all the shows in the month after the openings. If one does it all, there's a big question as to how much of a life there is in the studio. Only the dinosaur artists here in my city still hit all of the shows (and I see them prowling less so nowadays). Creatures of habit, one can only guess their careers are on cruise control. Good for them, I guess.

Finally, it is becoming clear that the number of artists and artwork is dwarfing the capacity of the institutions to represent what is going on out there in our artworlduniverse. Think about how thundering Godzillas like the Whitney used to be the hot tip as to what was vital at any given time in our art world.

A chain for linking this morning:
1. Chris Jagers.
2. Tyler Green's surgical recommendations and round up.
3. And Green's 2004 WSJ article, even though I don't think a road show will cure the ills that palgue it. A road show might amplify the problem.

One idea sticks for me: that art fairs do what the Whitney promised to do (surveying), but better. And without the annoying wall text. And I guess the fairs don't pin a medal on artists... but then I don't like pomp and circumstance too much anyway. Brass bands and puffy chests put me off.

Maybe the Whitney Biennial should detach itself from the physical building and rove the world's art fairs in an effort to make sense of what can be found therein? I mean, if the mandate is to represent "what is happening now", then what is a better site than the commercial souk that is the phenomenon of the art fair?*

(Image Source)

*(The counter argument is the problem of commerce... but isn't everything physical and nonphysical an agent in commerce in our artworld? Maybe commerce is more ontological to art than many of us would like to think? Transactions of private property encompass the physical and conceptual... and even in a utopia free of filthy lucre, there would still be a give and take of ideals and ideas, a commerce by other means after all.)

UPDATE:
Chris Jagers writes in:

Dennis,

Beyond the curators acting like artists, I also feel the artists are trying to make work like curators: by assembly. They are creating meaning by merely putting two or more things together without much investment in the things themselves. So meaning is hobbled together from disparate places rather than building it into the work slowly over time.

Chris

(Hi Chris!)

I know what you mean. By "building it into the work", I take it that you mean an imaginative investment. Surely sheer duration, an immersive experience can help one dwell on a... project or artwork or somesuch... and bubble out a captivating... creative act/object/experience or somesuch. (I'm starting to like this "somesuch" word!)

But.

This might be an attribute of our times -you know, Collage City and all that. We assemble computer code, do off shore manufacturing, make lists of instructions, look up FAQ's, watch McGyver, grab off the shelf, cobble together...

And there are so many more people in the world now. That's a lot of cobbling.

Hats are jumping from head to head for some time now. Chris, your note seems to suggest that heads are jumping in those hats too.