Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Art Critique, Critical Review, David, Genitalia, Michaelangelo, Robert Morris, SFU Gallery, Simon Fraser University, The Birthday Boy
To begin, I feel as though I need to paraphrase Robin Wood, a regular contributor to Art Forum magazine. In regard to the inherent differences between review and critique she states “ I like to make a simple distinction between a reviewer and a critic: the reviewer writes for those who haven’t seen a film [or in this case an work of art], telling readers whether they shouldn’t and offering a fairly clear idea of what the [work] is and does; the critic assumes the reader has seen it, making a […] synopsis superfluous, and attempts to engage him or her in an imaginary dialogue about its content, its degree of success, its value. The great literary critic F.R. Leavis summed up very succinctly the ideal critical exchange: “This is so, isn’t it?” ”Yes, but…” “ So, to begin, I feel embarrassed contradicting Wood’s assertion by beginning with something of an overview, but old habits are hard to break.
In his essay, for the exhibit currently on at the SFU gallery (until May 3) by Robert Morris, curator Bill Jeffries writes “Robert Morris originally created The Birthday Boy in 2004 for the Academia Gallery in Florence, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Michaelangelo’s David. […]. Morris has taught at length about the nature of sculpture and its history, and he has put some of those thoughts into The Birthday Boy – a film that purports to analyze one particular work of art in depth, while questioning the nature of the lecture as a form. Morris dissects the very model that university life is largely premised on: the lecture, which is the primary means of transmitting information from faculty to students.
The Birthday Boy is a dual-screen projection showing simultaneous 35-minute lectures on David on opposing walls, given by two “art historians” – one male, one female. The art historians present in the typical lecture format, illustrating their points with pictures relating to their commentary. In each talk, David undergoes a metamorphosis that is seemingly in response to the commentary aimed at the work. Morris’ video examines in detail, and with no small amount of humour, the complex relation that exists between the work of art and the commentary applied to it, whether scholarly or merely opinionated.” The two lecturers stand, predictably, behind lecterns reading from their notes addressing their respective audiences, in both cases they address not only us, the gallery goers, but (theoretically) each other as well. To the immediate left of each lecturer resides a bottle of wine atop a small table. Throughout the duration of the lectures the speakers imbibe glass after glass of wine; each dutifully replenished by an off screen ‘helper’ visible only by the occasional arm projecting into the shot to pour another glass. The effects of the intoxicant loosen not only the lecturers’ postures, but their opinions as well. For a more detailed description of the work I have attached a link to Marsha Lederman’s review written for the Globe and Mail’s April 1st edition.
To again paraphrase from Bill Jeffries’ essay, he writes: “Morris’ video addresses the nature of cultural commentary and the ways in which it can itself go far astray; the video examines how commentary can, for better or for worse, effect the work of art itself and how the lecture process, for all it’s virtues, can easily become theatre. The Birthday Boy raises many questions about art, and more specifically, about sculpture. As a result of this video, a sculpture that many consider an uncompromised masterpiece may be reconsidered as part of a much more complex agenda of human power relations, as well as religious and social history.”
In many tertiary institutions, the Emily Carr Institute among them, the critique of institution and institutional pedagogy is not only accepted, it is encouraged. For this reason, in my opinion, the installation of The Birthday Boy in the gallery at the Simon Fraser University Gallery feels like a case of preaching to the choir. Morris’ piece is about context. It is about the context that is responsible for the production of works of art: in this case Michaelangelo’s David. And, it is about the context of time and place that inevitably changes, alters and evolves the meaning of works and therefore changes the function of those particular works of art throughout time. In this case, Morris examines the form of the pedagogical lecture as example to place David within a contemporary context to examine the ‘role’ the statue currently plays, and has historically played. There is a certain irony then, perhaps intentional or not, that as Morris is elucidating how David has been metamorphosed into its modern day status of kitsch object, that Morris’ own work, placed at SFU, is emptied out of its own didactic power and itself becomes trite…verging on kitsch. For the art scholar at least – no, there is nothing ‘new’ to be gleaned from The Birthday Boy. However, when we consider the original context of The Birthday Boy at the Accademia Gallery in Florence, the building that now houses David, and the fact that T.B.B. was created specifically for the statue’s 500th birthday, we can acknowledge the power and justifiability of Morris’ piece.
I attended the opening of The Birthday Boy on Saturday, the 29th of March. The opening was from three to five. When I arrived sometime before four o’clock with a friend, there were about ten of us in the gallery (Liz Magor and Neil Campbell made up a quarter of the others). I stayed for the duration of the two simultaneous projections, a little over an hour in total. I watched and nodded my head and laughed when appropriate. Then I left and didn’t give the installation much more thought. It was only later, after I had read my copy of the transcript and was given a copy of the Globe and Mail article (when I returned to talk with Bill Jeffries on the 2nd of April) that I was able to remove myself from my context and see the work in a different light. In her article for the Globe and Mail, Marsha Lederman goes as far as calling the Morris work ‘provocative’. I must admit, when I first read that I laughed out loud. Provocative? What a joke, I thought. In addition, when I returned to the gallery on the 2nd, a quarter letter-sized paper label had been attached to the sandwich board that sits outside of the gallery entrance. “This exhibit rated ‘R’, 18+ only. Contains scenes of nudity”, it read. I wasn’t sure if it was David’s penis or perhaps the penis of the old man, or the vulva -or more correctly the pubic hair-of the black woman that David morphs into during T.B.B. that had warranted the warning. But, it was this warning of exposed genitalia that made me think of the original intended context for The Birthday Boy, and in turn its intended audience. As an art student immersed within the discourse surrounding not only historical, but contemporary art and the questions surrounding the creation, circulation, classification and consumption of art throughout history, it is easy to forget how most people look at art. The Accademia in Florence, the home to David today, is as close to a ‘temple’ for the secular as any building that I can think of. Without a doubt, it is a building designed to house a sublime, venerated piece of, albeit secular (if one does not count humanism as a form of religion) holy art. When people ‘pilrgimage’ to THE David they are going to revere, dare I say worship, art. To the majority of people David is not kitsch. He is the embodiment of all that art should and can be. Not to begin to sound too much like Mr. Morris himself, but without a doubt David is the ‘big ticket’. To place The Birthday Boy within this context is like placing a phallus on a painting of the Pope in the Vatican, or like drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa (Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. makes an appearance in T.B.B.). Morris is not concerned with communicating to the artistic intelligentsia, he is after bigger fish. He wants to spread the gospel, his gospel to the widest audience possible.
In order to spread his word, Morris has employed the most predominate method of communication of our day. Undoubtedly, television, film and the moving picture is the way to reach and capture the attention of the most people. He has utilized the form of the lecture, one that is constructed for the elitist intelligentsia, and undermined its authority while at the same time employing it to communicate to those outside of its usual demographic. And, he has used video as a tool to engage and connect with that audience. By exhibiting The Birthday Boy alongside David in the Accademia he is bringing the discourse of art to the people.
By sheer luck, or studious consideration, the exhibition of The Birthday Boy at the Simon Fraser university Morris is forcing us, the artistic intelligentsia, to step outside of our own contexts and consider ‘our’ public: less informed, less educated and –most importantly- less indoctrinated. We are forced to consider the contexts in which our works will exist, and in turn question the importance that we are suffusing into our own work. As the closing lines of The Birthday Boy state, we must consider those who would rather “Turn on the TV.”
Please, make the trip out to SFU. See the campus, see the show. And then ask yourselves: This is so, isn’t it?
A transcript of The Birthday Boy by Robert Morris is available upon request.
Special thanks to Bill Jeffries, Director/Curator SFU Gallery
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Art Critique, Panorama, Photography Theory
Before setting out to find a location or a subject for my panorama I spent some time researching the history of the medium. As is typical, I found myself on Wikipedia and using the Google image search function to find examples. I found many landscapes and urban settings, all of which seemed to want to convey a feeling of wonder and awe. I decided I wanted to do something different. I wanted to make a panorama, that was for certain, but I didn’t want it to feel like all the other panoramas I had been examining. I wanted to explore the medium, not only to familiarize myself with how to make one, but to question it, perhaps even challenge it. I hoped to gain a better understanding of what the panorama is, and what it can achieve.
I began thinking about the panorama and how it may relate to Vancouver. Start with my own context, I thought. Where has the panorama been used? Who has used it and for what purpose? The ‘Super, Natural British Columbia’ ads that I grew up with quickly came to mind . I remember them most vividly around the time of Expo 86, when they were in heavy, HEAVY rotation. They were a series of print and television ads that demonstrated the immense ‘beauty’ of our ‘city-in-nature’. The shots were obviously taken from helicopters, and they captured a bird’s eye view of our ‘beautiful’ Vancouver and the surrounding snow crested mountaintops from Vancouver Island to Whistler. The camera soared above the most majestic scenery only to zoom in to street level to capture the idyllic multi-cultural tapestry that is the city. The urban landscape was just as awe-inspiring as the natural landscape. A bustling metropolitan microcosm, Vancouver served as the template for unity and harmony that could be used as exemplar to benefit the rest of humankind. I remember the feeling, even as a young boy, of being grateful for living in such a beautiful place. Fast forward to today, and I am having a very different feeling.
I was walking to school on a miserably wet and cold morning, when it hit me. This city that we live isn’t always as beautiful as it’s made out to be. In fact, sometimes it’s pretty damn ugly; actually, it’s ugly a lot of the time (just ask Vancouver duo Young and Sexy ). It rains constantly, the sun and mountains are usually hidden behind clouds and most of the time, especially now due to the upcoming 2010 Olympics, Vancouver resembles a big dirty construction site. I thought about how all my life I had been subjected to the kind of propagandized imagery that I had seen in the ‘Super, Natural BC’ ads. It is as if we put up with nine months a year of incredibly shitty weather just to be able to have those two to three months of nice weather resembling the TV ads. It feels like chasing an ideal. Now I know the questioning of photography’s depiction of the ‘real’ is nothing new. Yes, photos are staged, they are chosen; and they say as much about the photographer as they do the subject. But I can’t help think that even though I know that the ‘Super, Natural BC ads definitely have a calculated agenda, I must admit that I am not immune to their influence nor persuasion. As citizens of Vancouver we come to believe that we do in fact life in one of the most beautiful places on earth. As a generally well-educated populace, we would like to think we are above such manipulation, but as Tourism BC’s current Best Place on Earth ad campaign demonstrates, we are not. Since the introduction of its latest campaign, BC’s tourism bookings have almost doubled. Best Place on Earth you say? Good enough for me!
I want to subvert the function of the panoramic medium, and to challenge the medium by turning it against itself. I want to retain the wow factor of the panorama and engage a viewer, but I also want to create a rupture between seeing and perceiving. My aim is to heighten that ‘wait a second’ feeling when something doesn’t seem to make sense. I want the viewer to have the same sense of awe that the typical panorama instills but I hope to elevate a sense of unease when something seems ‘off’.
The medium carries information, as does the subject. It is the oscillation between the two that excites me. I want the image to be beautiful and ugly at once; subtle yet blatant; attractive yet repellent. If a viewer looks at the image quickly (or without an analytical frame of mind) then one may simply say “oh, what a nice panorama of the city.” But with closer inspection I hope to raise the question of why the city is being depicted in a rather unflattering way.
We believe, or more correctly want to believe what we are shown. The photograph, an idexical trace of something, can be seen as documentation of something real, something true. This notion is nothing new, nor is the examination/challenge of it (see Sherry Levine, Richard Prince etc.). Photographs can be, and quite often are, tools of manipulation. This we know. What I aim to produce is a kind of binary opposition to the traditional panorama; but one that is that very thing it is attempting to critique (pastiche perhaps?). A wolf in sheep’s clothing, if you will. My image is just as real, just as manipulated, just as fabricated, but with very different intentions.
I want to fight the passive ingestion of images; I want to make people question that which they see (a thread that runs through much of my work). In my panorama I made three key decisions to help achieve these goals.
Firstly, I needed to find a ‘human’ vantage point to fight the soaring helicopter-bird’s eye view found in so many panoramas. The bird’s eye view is one that no human can achieve without unnatural means. By shooting the photo from eye level I hope to ‘place’ the viewer within the frame. The viewer is implicated in the photo (as too is the photographer); it is the human eye that I need, in order to fight the unnatural one. The bridge acts a ground, another way to place the viewer within the context of the image. It acts as a way of elevating the ‘real’. This documentation occurred at a real time in a place where one can physically travel to with relative ease. In addition, the human view helps obscure those iconic Vancouver buildings so often featured in tourism advertisements, namely BC Place and the Harbour Centre.
Secondly, all bodies have been digitally edited out of the photograph. I wanted not only to portray the alienation and isolation of city life (alluding to the early modernist paintings of cosmopolitan Paris), but I also wanted to juxtapose the urban landscape against the natural one as two terrestrial forms. We have come to see this urban expansion/progression as natural or necessary. When in fact the ‘urban-landscape’ is anything but natural. Vancouver is not a city-in-nature as we are lead to believe, but rather a city that needs to destroy nature for its own ‘survival’.
Lastly, the photograph was taken on a typically drab overcast day, at a temperature just above freezing. If we are to believe the ‘Super, Natural’ ads we would think it never rained in Vancouver; sunshine all year ‘round apparently. In addition to the choices I was cognizant of, I must admit there were some happy-accidents that I don’t mind taking credit for.
The bridge’s bisection of the photo creates a playful narrative between the two sides of the image. On the left, it is as if the downtown buildings are encroaching upon the less developed areas to the right, the four Concord Pacific towers (to the immediate right of the bridge) as the front line infantry. Or alternatively, looking to the right of the image, it is as if the cranes, which seem to be ‘looking’ towards the downtown buildings, are poised to begin construction to match the splendour of the downtown core. Science World (now renamed the Telus World of Science – much to the chagrin of all Vancouverites) sits like a chess piece flanked by six buildings, ready for either attack or defense, depending on how one chooses to see the narrative. Also, formally the image has a classical pyramidal composition, converging at an apex at the centre of the panorama.
Traditionally this kind of composition has been used to depict historical events, typically heroic battle scenes. There is a sense of monumentality to this kind composition, something I find very pleasing considering the antithetical nature of my intentions.
What I find most problematic about the “Super, Natural” campaign is that all the shots in the ad campaigns are escapist activities, they are what happens when you take a break from life; they are not the day-to-day as we know it. Where are the shots of the rain, people waiting for transit, municipal works or the people eating bag lunches? Granted, the ads are meant to lure people who want to go on vacation, but when repeatedly subjected to such imagery we come to believe that only through escaping the everyday can we find the ‘sunshine’. Everyday life isn’t sunshine and rainbows (it’s ironic that you need rain for rainbows, but I digress), but I don’t know what government agency exalts the merits of an unexceptional existence.
Although just as fabricated/manipulated as the images of the “Super, Natural British Columbia” campaign, my image serves as binary opposition to the traditional panorama by using the medium’s inherent characteristics to usurp the typical function of it. By depicting Vancouver in an undistinguished way I hope to offer an alternative way of examining the function of subject and medium.
˙Kevin Hubbard ©2008˙
Thanks to Lisa Middleton.
The Panorama: Extra, Ordinary British Columbia:
Tourism BC’s ‘Super, Natural British Columbia’:
(Kevin Hubbard's) My Word(s)! 
