January 5, 2005
A clarification (and David Musgrave)
Several comments sent by e-mail—and one voiced on an arts blog—brought to my attention the need to clarify a sentence used to describe the process of writing an essay on Rachel Harrison's work. A few days ago I wrote: "Rarely do I feel so defeated by the artworks' complexities as I did while writing this piece." That fact, in and of itself, is not what makes Harrison's work pique my interest. I find her sculptures odd, funny, awkward, perhaps at times too smart for their own good, and for those reasons endearing—all qualities I find attractive in people, as a matter of fact—and said as much (with different adjectives) in the draft I excerpted here. Perhaps I should avoid confessing fallibilities in public, but the difficulties I encountered arose from the gaps between the visual and the written word. With each idea laid out in words, no matter how felicitous or well-chosen, a thought would creep into the back of my mind: I bet Harrison has already traversed this territory; she is likely a better artist than I am a writer. I felt like I was playing catch-up to a wildly inventive and art historically aware oeuvre. Has that ever happened to you?
The responses sent me back to the text which, upon rereading, doesn't seem particularly dense. I admit to indulging in a few flights of art historical speculation, but given the audience (the essay is for the biannual journal Afterall), I don't think I was stretching things. I often wonder about critics—and readers—who frequently voice antagonisms toward "intellectual" criticism. Is there such a thing as "reverse condescension"? I understand the need to make thought accessible, but a balance can be struck between potentially revelatory insight and rote description (which, I know, can offer revelatory insights of its own). I don't think of myself as a particularly intellectual critic—more like a fairly smart guy who casts his net wide enough to see and read more than the average art viewer (or, based on conversations I've had with others in the profession, even the average critic). I have to work hard to understand the October crowd. But a little effort goes a long way, and my grappling has been rewarded. Do others feel the same way?
And anyway, I think it's partly a matter of audience. One can maintain a consistent voice while varying its tone to match your reader. Those who read Afterall have a certain knowledge that those reading Vitamin D, a forthcoming book to which I am contributing a dozen short introductory essays, most likely will not. So I altered my tone. Below the jump is a draft of a Vitamin D essay on David Musgrave, an artist whose work is as challenging as Rachel Harrison's. However I think those of you who commented on an inability to follow my words before may not feel the same way about this. Again, bear in mind that this is an unedited draft:
Things are never what they seem in British artist David Musgrave’s drawings and sculptures, which are marked by sleight-of-hand conceptual and material transformations. Viewers must consistently negotiate the pratfalls of Musgrave’s playful deceitfulness when apprehending his objects—every element is brought into question—as the artist intentionally blurs flatness and depth, forces his materials into unexpected forms, uses both mechanical and artisanal means of reproduction, and bases each finished object on unexhibited originals. This complex process adds a temporality to the nominally static categories of sculpture and drawing, as the metaphorical masks worn by each work slowly give way—via successive “A-ha!” moments—to the recognition of what is before our eyes. Not all of the transformations occur in the studio, however, as Musgrave frequently toes the fine line between abstraction and representation, playing on the human tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects and forms. Works like Golem (1999), Small, Crumpled Tape Figure (2002), and Approximate Figure (2003), nearly (but not quite) figurative, are willed into being by viewers who see what they want to in the artist’s amorphous forms. Musgrave humorously commented on this phenomenon in Anthroposomething (2001), a graphite drawing of the title’s prefix. “Anthropo” was first modeled in Plasticine; then the letters, which resemble human or animal bones (get it?), were arranged on a Xerox machine and copied; then Musgrave painstakingly re-created the resultant mechanical image by hand.
Through this labor-intensive process, and by choosing to exhibit a few works at a time, Musgrave’s art requires a heightened attentiveness from the viewer. Each word in the title of Poured Overlapping Figure (2002) proves untrue upon closer inspection: What appears to be three vaguely humanoid shapes poured onto the floor, one on top of another, is in fact a singular flat object made of interlocking planes of rainbow-hued acrylic. Gradations of color provide the trompe l’oeil effect of depth; the same destabilizing effect is achieved in a series of drawings and paintings made directly on walls that give off the appearance of bits of masking tape stuck haphazardly to their surface. Here scale plays an effect, too: Some are diminutive and placed low to the floor while others, such as Giant (repaired) (2003), resemble outsized homemade stick figures or the skeletal remains of pre-historic beasts. All of these works, no matter the size, are suffused with feeling of delicacy and transience, as if the slightest breeze could set them adrift; when combined with our natural empathy toward other creatures, no matter how ambiguously rendered, a melancholic air attends Musgrave’s fragile figures.
The artist’s recent graphite drawings recapitulate and expand upon his earlier themes and his repertoire of images. The title of Transparent Head (2003) noncommittally urges us to find a face in the lovingly drawn bunched-up plastic bag; the same can be said of Form in a bag (2004). Drawing (animal) (2004), resembles the accumulated discoveries from an anthropologist’s dig. But, given Musgrave’s proclivities, it’s probably best not to work from too many assumptions.
(Images and more information about the artist can be found here and here.)
Now, compare that with friend and Artforum colleague Martin Herbert's feature on the artist in a recent issue of Frieze. Different audience, different tone. I don't advocate one style of writing over the other, and I think both have their own merits. I am not nervously self-conscious about my own skills as a writer (barring rare exceptions like my Harrison experience), so I am genuinely curious if others find one or the other "tone" valueless (or simply less valuable). Any thoughts?