{"id":1460,"date":"2010-01-16T22:40:12","date_gmt":"2010-01-17T06:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2010\/01\/gretchen_bennett_-_the_light_s\/"},"modified":"2010-01-16T22:40:12","modified_gmt":"2010-01-17T06:40:12","slug":"gretchen_bennett_-_the_light_s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2010\/01\/gretchen_bennett_-_the_light_s.html","title":{"rendered":"Fionn Meade – make art, not war"},"content":{"rendered":"

SculptureCenter<\/a> curator Fionn Meade took the title of his current exhibition, Leopards in the Temple<\/i>, from a story by Franz Kafka that reads in its entirety:<\/p>\n

Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the
\nsacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it
\ncan be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In his review<\/a>, Ken Johnson praised what he took to be Meade’s refreshingly modest claims for the artists in his survey:<\/p>\n

Fionn Meade, the show’s organizer and the SculptureCenter’s curator,
\nsays in an essay that he is under no illusions about which kind of cat
\nhe’s wrangling. The artists he has picked, he writes, “return to
\ndistinct formal vocabularies and art historical trajectories,” and they
\nare intent on “borrowing and unsettling rather than wholesale attempts
\nat either remaking or deconstructing.” In other words, while working
\nwith familiar elements of style they mix and match their sources of
\ninspiration in new but not shockingly novel ways.<\/p>\n

Mr. Meade is describing the essence of contemporary academicism, and
\nwhile he puts a positive spin on this, it could be read as a
\ndevastating critique. These are not the bestial vandals so beloved by
\nmyth makers of the modern. It’s rare for a curator to assess his
\nartists in such honest terms, and in a sense Mr. Meade is operating in
\nthe gap between curator and critic. At a time when curators too often
\nfunction more like smooth-talking hucksters than independent
\nintellectuals, that is good and refreshing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meade’s claims are only modest for those who still accept a modernist trajectory that peaks with destructive originals. Behind these tigers trail house-broken copycats, footnotes in someone else’s story.<\/p>\n

But what if the artists in Meade’s show do not seek to despoil new frontiers but instead chose to acknowledge that the ground on which they stand is occupied?  What if they want to make art out of an old ceremony rather than create a new one? What if their aim is not to shock but to unify? What if, in other words, they are not academics of old struggles but pioneers in new harmonies, ones with roots in the chaos of old scores?<\/p>\n

Installation view, Leopards in the Temple<\/i>:<\/p>\n

\"leopardstemple.jpg\"Meade comes from Seattle, where Ezra Pound’s injunction to “Make it new” matters less than E. M. Forster’s “Only connect.” <\/p>\n

The artist statement of an exhibit at Tacoma’s now defunct Helm Gallery, Second Peoples<\/i><\/a>, is worth quoting in full:<\/p>\n

We have coined the name ‘second peoples’ to describe the people who
\narrive late on the scene, after the beginning, after the abundance,
\nafter the traumatic event, after everything’s been said and done,
\nafter, even, the end. We are the second peoples. Chances are, you are
\ntoo.<\/p>\n

This is an exhibition dealing with what it means to be second. We
\ninhabit a landscape of iteration, reverb, elision, and generational
\nnoise. Our corner of North America-these mountains, that timber, this
\nrich land-belonged to someone else. Our popular culture-those TV shows,
\nthat movie sequel, this new band that is so retro they’re cool-belonged
\nto some other time. Our art is that way, too: this gesture to Donald
\nJudd, that nod to Philip Guston, that Eva Hesse wink.<\/p>\n

We are interested in locating the coordinates of this second position.
\nHow did we end up here? What is our responsibility for what happened
\nbefore us? What is our responsibility for the things that happen now in
\nour names? Like Simone de Beauvoir argues in “Second Sex”, we think we
\nshould be free to transcend ourselves as subjects, to not be confined
\nto existential leftovers.<\/p>\n

Contemporary art is concerned with this alchemy, trying to turn
\nsecond-handedness into first-handedness, reversing the flow of energy,
\npresenting not representing, creating value from valuelessness. We
\nthink this is a worthwhile activity. We also think it is a fraught
\nactivity. The work in this exhibition exposes some of the fractures
\ncreated by this ceaseless turning, and also dreams of a third position,
\na reification of our desire to escape, a momentary place to stop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Johnson again, about Meade’s show:<\/p>\n

No one here, however, is likely to topple the current regime of art,
\nand in that respect these artists stand for the majority of
\ncontemporary strivers. They are resourceful, alert and eager to please,
\nbut are not wildly imaginative. Call them the mild ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note the verb topple. Artists need not make war on their predecessors to qualify as major. Back in the 14th Century, Chaucer cast tributes behind him: “Out of old fields comes all the new corn.”<\/p>\n

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SculptureCenter curator Fionn Meade took the title of his current exhibition, Leopards in the Temple, from a story by Franz Kafka that reads in its entirety: Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}