Steve Locke:  It’s weird because I knew you before I knew your work.  I think it was the Yvonne Rainer/Rob Storr talk at BU.  Afterwards, we had a bit of a chat and you told me about PAPER MONUMENT and were sweet enough to send me a few copies.  Because of that, I thought of you as a critical theory/curatorial sort of voice and this got reinforced when we (with Colleen Asper, Anoka Faruqee, and William Villalongo) worked together to create a response to the writings of Ken Johnson in the NYTimes.  I didn’t really know you as a painter until your project at the deCordova Biennial with Roger White.  It was the first time I had seen one of the Plaid Paintings, and I really responded to the way it troubled some of the ideas I had been fed about abstract painting.  I spent a lot of time looking at them and I could not figure out why they were so potent and so humble at the same time.  They so clearly have these references to domestic things like tablecloths (that I think you enhance by not stretching them).  They made me think of Mary Heilman where she presents something that looks mundane and upon closer inspection reveals a complex series of decisions that belie the simplicity of the image.  Like her paintings, the Plaids are really matter-of-fact and directly painted.  They don’t have pretensions of heroism and they completely deflate the notion of the “gestalt” that is promised by Modernist Painting and in this way, they start to tackle some of the same territory as Daniel Buren and some of the other artists in the Supports-Surfaces movement in France.  But beyond that moment, your paintings seem to be engaged in something much deeper that the limits of what painting can (and should) do.   I see tensions through out the work (between public/private; modest/heroic; institutional/domestic).  Which leads me to my question:

How does conflict play a role in what appears to be a deeply structured practice in the Plaid Paintings and how does it inform decisions about the separate but conjoined acts of painting and presentation?

—

Dear Steve,

Plaid , 2013, acrylic on acrylic, 18×42″

I’m so glad you asked me about conflict in the plaids! At first I thought that was too strong a word, but you’re right—the various conflicts are always there.

Of course, on a material level, plaid emphasizes the interweaving of warp and weft, so in this sense it renders the conflict/confluence of fabric visible. This is what I like when I’m looking at plaid. Each area of color emerges from the two sets of threads, so any adjacent hues are of necessity half the same, half different. For me these ramifications are interesting precisely because the rule is always explicit, inherent in how the thing is made. The pattern is surprising because it’s programmatic. I read every plaid I see like a vernacular Sol Lewitt.

And then with plaid there are also the interwoven, so to speak, questions of location and origin, issues that occur in a different register of intersections and coordinates but are nevertheless part of the pattern. Many fabrics reference or evoke a place, but plaid is a special case because it is both so ubiquitous and so commonly associated with “clans”—Scottish and otherwise. Actually, the earliest known examples of plaid are from 3500 BC China, but most people think plaid comes from Scotland, so that is itself notable. And the Scottish part of the story is complex because the famous tartans came to prominence as part of a (ongoing) conflict with England. At the same time, plaid became such a dispersed pattern because the Scots helped colonize India, where cotton “madras” plaids were produced for distribution throughout the British Empire. And of course now we live in a global age where plaids are made all over the world and depending on the context and their particular qualities can reference a range of places from honky-tonks, country clubs, grunge shows, the board room—all the while signaling membership in various groups. So the conflicts present at that level interest me, too.

I came to Ohio from Ecuador at the age of six, so for me the encounter with plaids is bound up with realizing that it was a prep-school pattern. My mom taught second grade at a private school, and I got a lot of my clothes from the thrift store there, and I think it was a way for me to fit in with kids that had a lot more money than we did. Wearing the right plaids was a way to disguise both my foreignness and my relative poverty, so I experience plaid as a kind of camouflage as well, a way of fitting in. So the pattern carries all those conflicts for me—of class, of origin, of group membership and assimilation—in a personal way. Over the years, I amassed a large collection of plaid shirts, not all of them preppy, and came to wear the pattern almost exclusively, but for decades I was merely a collector, a self-taught connoisseur.

Plaid, 2015, acrylic on acrylic, 18×24″

So I had developed a certain expertise, but deciding to paint plaids didn’t come from that so much as from sensing that there was a kind of joke in it, something funny about a painting that was plainly abstract but also utterly recognizable. I enjoy the category conflict. Somehow if you go from monochrome to stripe to plaid, even though the progression makes perfect sense, plaid ends up being the punch line. If you picture it with Buren, and he is repeatedly calling “scene!” with the stripes, I just keep going, adding stripes in the other direction.

And I like how the representation doesn’t function in a straightforward way either: Is this plaid a painting of something? An artist I admire—someone who doesn’t associate his name with his work—was making copies of Mondrian paintings, after Mondrian had died, arguing that paintings of abstractions could not be abstractions themselves. As I did with Buren’s stripes, I wanted to take that question to a different place, to where it involved patterns from everyday life.

In terms of re-presentation, which was how my teacher Robert Reed insisted on pronouncing it, the painted plaid is a peculiar thing. You can’t actually interweave the paint, so the illusion of plaid involves layering, transparency, and a lot of guile in the way you choose and organize the colors. Eliminating the canvas was essential to this, as it allowed the paint itself to serve as its own ground. All my plaids are acrylic on acrylic, and I paint them front to back, so the first things I put down are the first things you see, and the gesso goes on last, to seal the back. (The reverse of conventional painting, where you cover things up as you go and the last thing you put down sits on top.) There is a tricky illusionistic system at play, but it’s also just overlapping paint presented directly, where everything I do is evident in the final result. So here too, in the process, I think the conflict between illusion and material reality is the generative force.

Works in the studio of Dushko Petrovich

Born in Quito, Ecuador, Dushko Petrovich is a New York-based artist, writer, editor, and teacher. He received his B.A. from Yale University and his M.F.A. from Boston University before going on to serve as the Starr Scholar (Artist-in-Residence) at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He has exhibited his work at venues including the deCordova Museum, in Boston; Rachel Uffner Gallery, in New York; the Suburban, in Chicago; and the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen.

His writing has appeared in periodicals such as Bookforum, Slate, Modern Painters, and the Boston Globe, among others. Petrovich is a co-founder of Paper Monument, where he has co-edited many publications, including I Like Your Work: Art and Etiquette and Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment. He also chaired the n+1 Foundation’s board of directors from 2013 to 2015. Petrovich currently teaches at Boston University, RISD, NYU, and Yale. His newest project, Adjunct Commuter Weekly, made its debut at ICA Boston in July.

I got into an extended discussion on Facebook today.  It mostly came out of the news that former President George W. Bush has been making paintings.  For some reason, this was so interesting that a critic as intelligent and insightful as Roberta Smith devoted space in the New York Times  to discussion of the works.  Among her observations, “one can imagine them being not too out of place in a group show that might include the figurative work of Dana Schutz, Karen Kilimnik, Alice Neel, Christoph Ruckhaberle and Sarah McEneaney.”  High praise indeed.

I’m debating putting the whole post on my blog, with names (excepting mine) redacted.

First of all, why is the intelligent and insightful Smith reviewing paintings by Bush, when Ken Johnson is (poorly) reviewing works of women and people of color?  This situation alone explains the problems with arts writing at the NYTimes and other outlets.

Second, why are we even considering these paintings in the discourse of art?  Is Bush an artist?  If not, then why not?  What makes someone an artist?  Can you just wake up after being an art historian for years and just be an artist?  If so, can I be an art historian now?  Or a chef?  (I own chef’s knives.) Or a surgeon?  Is art a profession, or an avocation?  Or an attitude?

It seems that the de-skilling of art in the 50s transformed into the “anyone can do it” ethos of the moment.  If you feel like an artist, or a writer, or anything, that is enough.  Saturday Night Live took this on in a skit called You Can Do Anything! 

Animals make paintings.  Anyone can.  Is access to art supplies really all it takes to be an artist?

In this Facebook chat, someone told me that I just wanted to keep “bragging rights” to the word “art,” something that they thought would be a hollow victory.  Maybe.  I’m not sure about that.  But I do think that art is too important to be treated casually.  Maybe it’s because I’m an artist, but I think that importance requires that we take art seriously and that we be critical about visual culture. This makes me an elitist by saying that only artists can make art.  I think that’s true.

I also think that artists are taught by other artists.  Either through a singular investigation of the works of others, one-on-one classes or institutions (including the much maligned MFA programs), there is some transmission of skill, history, and context from one artist to another.  I learned from Manet just as sure as I learned from Roger Tibbetts.  I think art is a public discourse, not a private method of personal expression.  I think art talks about life as we live it.  I think the artist embodies and expresses the entire culture of her moment through her activity.  So given the power and importance of art, who can make it?

So here’s my fundamental question to you, Dear Reader, who can make art?

Ken Johnson, Art Critic for the NYTimes

Unless you are in a convention hall somewhere in Miami, you’ve probably heard about the Open Letter/Petition to the NYTimes regarding the articles of one Ken Johnson who writes for the NYTimes.  Here are some links to the articles that caused the contention:  Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles and The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World.

Some websites have referred to this as an “anonymous letter” which is odd because at last count over 1,500 people had signed it. You can click on Open.Letter.Redacted and see the many people who have added their names to the letter.  (Some people wished to remain anonymous in a public forum, and we redacted their names.)

So what happened with all this?

The following was delivered to the New York Times on December 3, 2012 (Thanks Marie!):

Dear New York Times,
We are a group of artists who drafted this letter, which has been signed by 1,318 people. It is important to emphasize that this letter is not intended as a personal attack on Ken Johnson. We are not calling for his resignation or censure. While we express frustrations that Mr. Johnson’s arguments lack rigor, his articles touch on important issues in a necessary effort to understand troubling and persistent inequalities.

Many had written to the New York Times without response so we decided to write an open letter, both to allow people who shared our concerns to express them, and to encourage the New York Times to address them. We are simply asking the New York Times for a considered, public response to Ken Johnson’s published pieces, for the reasons we outline in the following letter.

Sincerely,
Colleen Asper
Anoka Faruqee
Steve Locke
Dushko Petrovich
William Villalongo

We received the following from John Landman, Culture Editor of the NYTimes on December 4, 2012:

Dear Colleen Asper, Anoka Faruqee, Steve Locke, Dushko Petrovich and William Villalongo;

Thanks for your letter about Ken Johnson’s reviews. I’m glad to acknowledge that some of Ken’s phrases could have been more precise. He has acknowledged this himself on his Facebook page, where there is lots of lively discussion of the issues you have raised. As Ken wrote, “I can see how my statement that ‘Black artists did not invent assemblage’ taken out of context seems needlessly provocative.”

At the same time, I assume that anyone who believes in the value of healthy debate would condemn any effort to stifle good-faith ideas and those who express them. I am heartened by your assurance that you are not calling for Ken’s resignation or censure, but your letter has been circulating for a couple of weeks as a petition and petitions are meant to produce action. It would be troubling, and, it seems to me, inimical to what I would like to believe is your goal, if the action contemplated by the petition involved some sanction by The Times against Ken, whom you in effect accuse of racism and sexism. To be clear: Ken is guilty of neither of those things.

The bottom line, for me, is that Ken’s work, like any critic’s, is legitimately subject to tough criticism. Yours is welcome and it has properly stimulated all sorts of reaction. Less welcome is any suggestion that The Times should publicly “address” unfair and unsound accusations against him.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Landman

(My favorite part of this response is when he refers to things said in KJ’s reviews as “good faith ideas.”  Really?  Duchamp’s work is “deracinated”?  Really?  Something about the kinds of work women tend to make excludes them from the market? Really?  These outmoded canards are “good faith ideas” now?  I expressed as much in my own letter to the NYTimes which is elsewhere on this blog.  It’s always been my feeling that the arguments Mr. Johnson puts forth in these texts are poorly researched, lazy bits of writing.  The artists under consideration deserve much better than this.)

We responded with the following:

Dear Mr. Landman:

Thank you for your response. We welcome your acknowledgement of “imprecise language.” However, our letter speaks to the overall quality and effect of the texts. We remain disappointed that you see our letter and its stated goal as an accusation against an individual rather than a question of the New York Times’ journalistic and editorial rigor.

The many who signed the letter have hoped for a considered response in print, in the form of an opinion piece or letter. Can we infer that yours is the only response from the New York Times? If so, we assume we can share your note with the many who signed the letter and those who continue to write about this debate.

Sincerely,

Colleen Asper
Anoka Faruqee
Steve Locke
Dushko Petrovich
William Villalongo

In response, Mr. Landman advised that we are free to share his response with anybody.  Which is what I am doing on my little corner of the internet.

It was sent via email as a letter to the editor of the New York Times on 27 October 2012.

Dear Madam/Sir:

I am an artist who lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts. While I often enjoy the writing of Ken Johnson, I was greatly disturbed by his review of the above referenced show. His text is really a lazy piece of writing. It assumes that black people make art with social and timely connection and so-called white people don’t. What was DaDa if not a response to the political madness of WWI? Black and white people have lived together for 3 centuries in this country. If so-called white people cannot access the texts and sub-texts in the work of black artists it is because they choose not to, just as some of them choose to ignore the social realities of the country. These things are not beyond their comprehension or experience, despite the article’s reification of the myth of inscrutable blackness.

While it is appropriate to discuss the history and context of every artist, and race is a part of that, we need to stop pretending that black people are the only ones with a “race.” Does anyone ever talk about Robert Ryman and whiteness? Also, does Johnson not realize that the presence of the work of a black artist like Melvin Edwards, alters our understanding of what a work by a white artist like Richard Stankiewicz can mean? Johnson reinforces the spurious notion that black people make art about being black and so-called white people make art.

Also shame on Johnson for positing the notion that if you aren’t black you aren’t going to get the work, or that some of its poetics will be lost or inaccessible to you. There is one art world, and it’s long past time that people stop treating black artists like they are from some other planet. We are part of the traditions of Western art and I’m tired of people telling us that we aren’t.

Sincerely,
Steve Locke