Correspondence with Blake Gopnik
To: Blake Gopnik
From: “Timothy Comeau” at Internet
Subject: please consider the following
Date: 3/22/2000 8:32 PM
Dear Mr. Gopnik,
I hope that you are not to busy so that you can take time to read my letter. I wrote the following excerpt as part of a letter to a friend of mine in BC, last night. After reading your article this morning, I thought this is something I’d like to submit for your consideration. (I am a recent NSCAD graduate and attended the presentation you gave there last spring).
I remember an article you wrote in December 1998 after you visited Art Metropole, and the theme of consumerism entering the realm of art appeared again in this morning’s article. It is for this reason that I would like your thoughts regarding this excerpt.
In the letter I basically expressed how buying certain art supplies, for computer based art, seems like an extravagance, because graphics software is so expensive:
*** “….I’ve never been competitive because basically I’m a sore loser and I decided early to avoid competition to avoid disappointment and frustration.
Unfortunately I did not realize how competitive life is in general. I’ve also been reflecting how I’ve patted myself on the back and called myself noble for certain qualities – which were no more than coping strategies. Now that I have employment and a descent wage, I feel greed and the consumerist impulse to define myself through acquisitions blossoming. Because now I have the means. To desire things when you are art-student poor is self-torture, but now…
and I don’t like this, but I wonder why should I deny myself things? How come everybody else gets to waste money on junk, and what I want is stuff that I actually feel I need, tools for my art practice.
Perhaps this questioning about buying art supplies is due to my uncertain commitment to being an artist. The art world system seems so wasteful and set for a toppling, so set for a fundamental paradigm shift, that I don’t want to begin swimming only to have to pool drained when I’m in the middle.
This feeling perhaps is a reflection of our changing times. There is an ad that I pass on my way to work that says basically, “just when i was ready to make the next move in my career, the industry has changed”.
And art seems so faddish and cultish and so much about identifying cliches and either associating yourself with them or moving away from them (either way the cliche is the center and source of your action, and we should link the word cliche with the word style) that it seems like certain death to get serious about art. I see so many of our colleagues out there and to me they’re like the Salon painters of 100 years ago. Which makes me think who is going to be the 21st Century’s Duchamp and exhibit a pisser? Does the 21st Century even have room for another art movement? Does art have a future?
I really would like to do webdesign. I’m thinking of taking a course. But the web seems faddish too. Sure, its here to stay, but right now its hot hot hot. How boring will it become? Like network television? But the remedy for boring network TV is the art video. So where are the art websites? I ask this rhetorically because such things are supposed to exist. How about this for an advant-garde site: you go to the url and your system crashes. Is that the equivalent of a pisser? Which to me raises two questions: are computer viruses the most eloquent form of computer art? And, to put a wall between you and your tool, is that what art does? Any thoughts?”
***
I would appreciate any feedback you might have.
Sincerely, Timothy Comeau
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From: bgopnik@globeandmail.ca
To: tcomeau45@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: please consider the following
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 11:14:19 -0500
Thanks for your note.
Just one thought: DO we have to buy in to the basically Romantic, avant-gardist view of the artist-as-rebel. I’m afraid that artists are inevitably closer to shoemakers or other craftspeople than to revolutionaries, and that we all might want to accept that, and go back to an older, Medieval view of the artist as purveyor of sensory and intellectual pleasures — since I think that probably is the inevitable reality.
Yrs, Blake Gopnik
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Subject: No subject given
Author: “Timothy Comeau”
Date: 3/23/2000 11:30 PM
Thank you for taking the time to respond. Regarding your comments: I entirely agree. Yet it seems simple to say in the forum of internet correspondence, yet when I am interacting with my artist peers and gallery going, it doesn’t seem that I am browsing shoes. To stretch that metaphor, I inevitably end up examining the stitching. If everybody is employing a standard stitch, isn’t the craftsman who uses a new design going against the flow, and thus acting revolutionary?
I find your response intriguing in many ways. I am especially intrigued by the notion of the return to a medievalist view. I mean, there’s the talk of the collapse of the nation state and the rise of the neo-city state to replace it, and what seems to be a decline in standards of education, leaving a large, tasteless populace (do you agree, or is this a crutched form of snobish thinking which seems to be the refuge of all the Bach lovers that have to listen to Nsync being piped in from somewhere?) contrasted by a minority of educated and “cultured” elites, and the rise of footnotes (by this I mean that the act of sourcing everything reminds me of the mediaeval scholastics who always assumed that some ancient source was a reliable authority).
This is partially why I am approaching you with these thoughts, given that as art critic for a national newspaper, I respect your “authority” on these matters. Art for me isn’t a matter of a weekend’s entertainment, but is an important social indicator, a status report on the state of society. Which is why I am so frustrated that art in the public sphere, and within the community, seems dominated by the cliches of the artist founded in the 19thCentury, like you pointed out. No we don’t have to buy into the view, but in my experience many people are wearing that uniform (which Katy Seigel described as “worker drag” in an article on Mathew Barney’s work, in last summer’s Artforum) (there you go, footnotes).
What do you think of that Mike Kelly and MacCarthy show? Doesn’t that show rely on artist as rebel a little? I mean the whole shock art thing as being the presentation of an enlightened view brought forth by artists who are critics of a culture dominated by sugarcoated elements, and thus acting revolutionary? To me it seems a little infantile, in an educated sort of way. I imagine your review will be appearing soon, so I’ll wait and see.
One question that I’d love to have you answer is: Given that I imagine the typical art experience in 2000 to be spending a few hours in a gallery, or browsing through monographs of artist’s work, what would the typical art experience be in 2100, considering that you believe that artist will be by then, “purveying sensory and intellectual pleasures,” as craftsmen?
I suppose you’ll tell me that my job as an artist is to figure that out.
Anyway, I hope this hasn’t been a bother for you, I’d like to know what you think.
Sincerly Timothy Comeau.
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From: bgopnik@globeandmail.ca
To: Subject: Re: No subject given
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 11:38:10 -0500
Thanks for yours, Timothy. Afraid I don’t have time to digest its length and depth right now — deadlines call — but hope to take a closer read soon.
Blake Gopnik