I haven’t decided what to call this column yet.
by AMANDA MANITACH February 5, 2013
I told my editor I wanted to write an arts column that was less of a review….more personal, more gossipy, more whatever I felt like writing about my past week in the art scene. For better or worse, she’s game.
The idea that “art criticism is in crisis” is a sentiment I come across all the time in essays about art criticism. Not sure if crisis is the right word. In Seattle, artists will never stop moaning about how the city has but ONE full-time paid arts writer in town. (Hi, Jen!) Which is actually, despite all the belly-aching, not doing so bad these days, as art writing positions at newspapers all over the country have been slashed in recent years. I’m just interested in writing something deliciously readable. This column is part of that experiment.
(above: on 15th Ave)
What happened this week? I had a breakdown Saturday night when a very respected, very talented, but Mercurial-as-fuck artist ran off and disappeared with my bike in the wee hours of the morning. We’d had a few drinks at Pony. We’d been discussing fighting and violence, the meaning of it, the aesthetics of it. We ended up going to the dimly lit “Boys” bathroom, where I told him we had exactly 60 seconds when absolutely anything could happen. But I’ve never punched anyone, and I didn’t really want to punch him. He didn’t touch me. We locked eyes, my back pressed against the Factory-esque silver walls graffitied with sex-positive messages and drawings of penises. “We’re down to thirty seconds,” he said, glancing at his phone. “Ten.” We didn’t move. Time ran out, he calmly unlocked the door and we walked out together. Total white trash Marina Abramovic moment. Then he rode my bike home, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. I might have cried a little. But these were Redbull-and-vodka art tears, the kind people shed when they’re sitting across from Marina. (He eventually brought my bike back.)
Not technically this week, but congratulations, Onn/Of Festival! I had to stand in line 30 minutes in almost-freezing temperature to get into your cool, new Capitol Hill location. The BMW warehouse was 100x better than Jim Demetre’s Sweater Factory, visitor logistics-wise. Huge crowds, a great bar (but get more bartenders next year…those lines were a buzz kill), stick and poke tattoos, amazing black light murals by Izzie Klingels and Chris Buening, beautiful installations and cool bands. I wish there had been a more video art. This years’ fest had much more of a psychedelic, Burning Man vibe, which isn’t really my thing. But for only being in its second year, Onn/Of is killing it.
Critic, philosopher, theorist Boris Groys says (tongue in cheek?) that it’s the critic’s job to create a search engine for the reader. No one really cares what the critic thinks; the reader just wants recommendations. As a critic you have to decide what you want to advertise, what your ideological position is, what you want to make known. Of course, you’re no longer interested in criticizing anything; you’re interested in forwarding what you think is interesting for you, what should be regarded as interesting for culture in which you are living, what you’re ready to support….being a writer, the art critic does what a writer generally does: he talks about himself. Under the pretext of expaining his position he begins to write…..And if the critic is a good writer, we read him as we read any other writer; just as a text, just as writing.*
(above: Boris Groys)
I already wrote about myself. Here’s my rec: tonight Trimpin is giving an artist talk at 6 pm at Winston Wächter. I recommend going. Last summer I drank vodka with him at his studio. His studio is magic. You want to move in and never, ever, ever leave. I wrote about it here.
Eric Fredericksen is hosting an Artist Lecture Series at UW every Thursday night. So far they’ve all looked amazing, but Thursday nights are the worst for double-booking art events, so I haven’t made it yet. This week’s guest is Oscar Tuazon.
I’m really sorry I didn’t see Steve Sewell‘s show at Gallery4Culture this month. He’s one to watch.
This weekend I threw my first Hedreen Gallery event—as the new curator. For the month of February, I asked Joey Veltkamp to host a series of four artist salons. I also conducted a little Q&A with him for the first event, including a deliciously self-indulgent question about living in the Northwest. He wrote this:
I’m THRILLED to be a NW artist! I love the insularity, our backwater reputation, our natural geography. I like the weird energy. UFOs were “invented” here. We recycle more than anywhere. We breed serial killers. We are as far west as you can go. We live under a gray blanket most of the year. We fuel ourselves on coffee, Twin Peaks, Rainier Beer, heroin, meth, and Twilight. We’re heathens, we’re voracious readers, we suffer from group think. We legalized weed and marriage equality at the ballot level. It’s this really strange mix that I can’t ever get a grasp on. It keeps me guessing and it makes me delightfully nervous. I liken it to grunge, which seems like something that could only happen in the NW. I know we get super insecure about our place at times, but I think we, as a community, have really invested in ourselves. Yes, we can be too self-referential at times, but in this age of the Internet, we also are aware of larger trends happening on a global level. In this week’s Stranger, Charles Mudede hit the nail on the head with his article about hip hop (Sir Mix-A-Lot and Macklemore). These moments/artists could have only happened in the Northwest. I guess I just think that something magical has been building for a long time and soon the world will start paying attention to our art. BUT—and this is really important—even if they don’t, and even if this is all we have, I think it’s pretty fucking awesome.
I really like that.
*I found this in Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism published by Filip Editions. Recommended for those who can’t get enough enough art criticism to the point they want to read about people pontificating about art criticism.
(left: Joey Veltkamp and the critic; right: I don’t have any photos from Onn/Of, but I do have this photo of the mac and cheese at Linda’s that my friend had right before we went to Onn/Of.)