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A Knowledge Set Shouldn’t be Set in Stone

When we were just a young and naïve art history student, the only reference book that we needed to survive our college years and beyond was that evergreen title ‘A History of Art’ by H.W. Janson, an enormous tome that a) was heavy, so couldn’t be taken anywhere outside your dorm room, and b) clearly lacking in useful information if you knew a bit about a particular time period or certain artists and the author didn’t want to discuss them. Our edition was the first after Janson’s death, edited by his son, and actually listed several women artists (the earlier editions only had one, and she didn’t even have a full name) from different centuries. We consulted it for essays, exams, and in post college years, a quick refresher before seeing a museum show, but it never occurred to us that it was not as complete as it should have been. Sure, it barely discussed art after 1970 and maybe mentioned a few women artists from that era, but you could get that information from books and articles dedicated to that time, no need to use the Janson as a source. As a result, we knew very few female artist names from the 1950’s on, and only those making work in the US. And as terrific as Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Pat Passlof, Marisol, Judy Chicago, Barbara Kruger, and Cindy Sherman are, there’s a lot more people to meet in modern/contemporary art history than these seven.

That’s why we’re so glad to be living in this era, where collectors, curators, and historians are doing so much work to showcase and educate the public about women and women-identifying artists. In Making Their Mark, curated by Cecilia Alemani (now on view at 548 West 22nd Street, November 2, 2023 – January 27, 2024), the Shah Garg Foundation presents a selection of works from its women-centric collection of 20th and 21st century artists. There are names that have received attention from national museums and local galleries, been celebrated at international art fairs, and most importantly, there are names you don’t know and need to learn about. For ourselves, we only recognized about a third of them, and are looking forward to expanding our knowledge about the rest (perhaps with the assistance of The Story of Art Without Men).

Another aspect of modern art history that is a distinct improvement over previous attitudes is the inclusion of media and artists that used to be separated into a ‘craft’ category, never to be regarded as art. Now, this is still a relatively new viewpoint (when you think in centuries, as historians tend to do) but its one worth considering as more galleries are welcoming these objects, framing the work and artists as something a bit different from the old definitions.

While walking through the display at Slip Tease (now on view at Kasmin, October 26 – December 22, 2023), we couldn’t help but remember the Louis Pasteur quote of ‘chance favors only the prepared mind’, especially since working in ceramics seems to exemplify it. Taking as a starting point the shape known as ‘vessel’, the sixteen contemporary artists represented in the exhibition build forms, then draw and/or decorate with slip or glaze, to present stories or subjects that describe the complexity of life from personal relationships to the natural world. The colors and textures of the works are endlessly fascinating, showcasing the intricate balancing act each creator must navigate between decisions based on technical knowledge and the unique moment when a piece undergoes the firing process. Although a small exhibition, we recommend moving slowly through the gallery space, in order to fully appreciate each piece in all its wildly inventive glory.

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Make a Rule, Break a Rule

Although it’s true that art making has plenty of rules, it also thrives on the misguided idea of being ‘ruleless’, if we’re defining that as ‘without law’ or ‘lawless’. Look at all the clichés around it: If you’re an artist you’re free to say, think, act as you like. An art object is usually more valued if it looks less labored and more ‘natural’ (or as we like to say, ‘it seems so obvious that thing had to appear that way’). So-called ‘great artists’, at least those with excellent promotional skills or press agents (we’re looking at you, Vasari!) might have their skills downplayed, only to have their marvelous rule-breaking genius extolled – and we all can guess that genius is valued a bit higher than daily practice in the studio.

But art, good art, and especially great art, all need a strong foundation of rules, either for or against, to get from a mind to the outside world. Whether it’s practicing skills, learning about other points of view, researching information, rules assist with providing a framework to get the work started. You want to criticize a policy or a point of view, but the censorship of your location doesn’t allow for it? Make a rule that your commentary is allegorical, even non-representational, so your statement is hidden below misdirection and confusion. Want to explore the definition of art itself? Take each assumed rule about art and make a new rule that is opposite. Play with the rules: bend, reshape, make new rules, throw everything away today to start fresh tomorrow. But don’t do it if you haven’t got the nerve. Rule breaking is for people who can do the work, take the consequences, and still go back to the drawing board every day whether they had success or not.

All this brings us to our two gallery shows this week, featuring rule-breakers who employed every idea and skill they had to revolt, subvert, and remake art that answered to their own time and place.

In ‘Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s-1970s’, on view at the Guggenheim Museum, artists from South Korea grappled with socio-political turmoil in all aspects of national life, using illusion and allusion with ease, commenting on everything from rural vs urban life, consumerism, and authoritarianism. The multi-media works on display are very much against previously accepted forms of artmaking in Korean culture, but they opened new possibilities for creative expression that have become accepted today.

At Japan Society, ‘Out of Bounds: Japanese Women Artists in Fluxus’ showcases Shigeko Kubota, Yoko Ono, Takako Saito, and Mieko Shiomi: all early practitioners of Fluxus ideals, each interpreting and expanding the parameters of the movement to create distinctive artworks. These four artists, by combining multicultural and multi-media formats, represent a groundbreaking moment in the field of conceptual art, moving away from an artificial separation between creator, idea/object and audience towards a cooperative effort; where artist, concept, and participants are an artwork, made new with each presentation. Their work changed the course of modern and contemporary art in subtle and profound ways, continuing to have an effect in fields from music to film making.