Dennis Hollingsworth

edward_winkleman

Jean Milant mentioned a blog recently, edward_winkleman. It reads like a good one, worth following, so I thought I'd pass it along to you all. Evidently, Winkleman is a gallerist in New York. I like what I've read so far, I think that he's got his own voice as a writer and he seems to be consistently analytic and deep enough for someone who is successfully juggling life and then porting that into a blog.

I tend to read sentences in it like this one:

I guess I'm a purist about concept. By that I mean, I feel strongly that each choice made in the creation of an artwork should be carefully considered, as to whether it supports the central ideas or not.

And then I want to insert the words and sprouts:

I guess I'm a purist about concept. By that I mean, I feel strongly that each choice made in the creation of an artwork should be carefully considered, as to whether it supports and sprouts the central ideas or not.

Ah... better.

In this post, he was ruminating on a sculptor's anxiety in a "post medium" world. I know the feeling. I mean, who wants to be old school and busted, reactionary, provincial fuddy duddy, whatever. When I used to teach architectural design, I would encourage the kids to work with a defining conceptual apparatus (apparatus, because I made them aware of the distinctions between notions/ideas/theories and to seek the latter than the former) and when they were lost in the design process, to use their conceptualizations as a compass for what to do next. Once they are able to do this, I try to get them to see how their conceptualizations can grow along the way, informed by the nature of the medium that is expressing it.

Thus the insertion of sprout.

What Winkleman writes makes a lot of sense, but still. The duality between medium/concept here maps cleanly on the subject of my last post, The Long Look and the Set of Concepts....let me (ahem) quote myself (ahem--cough):

I see the modern and postmodern as something once one and indistinguishable, incipient in the genesis of the western world up until the 18th or 19th century when the dilation of the 20th century began. The western world's ability to appreciate the individual (the west's prime criterion, freedom) comes with a price: the inability to see how antinomies are as one, how apparently unlike things are ultimately connected. Thus the bloom spilt into two streams: one that strove to touch G-d through material means and the other strove to touch everyday life with conceptual means. The former dominated the first half of the 20th century bloom and the latter the second. The second half was a great run: Pop, minimalism, Conceptualism, Crit Theory, and all the variations tumbled and dribbled afterward for more than fifty years now. It was an ice cold thundering stream that has since evolved into a stinky slouching oozing and interesting delta.

The formula of idea-generation-and-problem-solving-expression-of-that-idea-within-one-or-more-media, is a process that is usually used to handle Mia Fineman's "core tenant of contemporary art", our conceptually based postmodern era. It seems to me that the mastery that Edward Winkleman alludes to is actually implicit and mirrored out of sight in contemporary art ("postmodern art" is the term I use for the artworld that Fineman is defending). But attention to materials (mastery? ...sounds so flagellant) is still there, and in evidence in every great work we admire whether it be Beuys or Warhol or whomever your favorite contemporary artist is.

UPDATE:
Ah, I found his gallery here.

Posted by Dennis at January 24, 2007 7:49 AM