{"id":1491,"date":"2010-01-29T11:41:37","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T19:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2010\/01\/euan_macdonald_-_the_banality\/"},"modified":"2010-01-29T11:41:37","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T19:41:37","slug":"euan_macdonald_-_the_banality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2010\/01\/euan_macdonald_-_the_banality.html","title":{"rendered":"Euan MacDonald – the banality of art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Dylan’s text prompts<\/a> in Don’t Look Back<\/i> (1967) are the most famous part of the documentary. (That’s Allen Ginsberg on the left, a celebrity non sequitur.)<\/p>\n

\"bobdylandon'tlook.jpg\"Euan MacDonald<\/a>‘s headless tribute (the video, Where Flamingos Fly<\/i>, 2005) has no similar loose ends. MacDonald eliminates what he can, including, on occasion, the point. <\/p>\n

\"euanmacdonaldvsheetmusvid.jpg\"At the opening of MacDonald’s exhibit at Western Bridge<\/a>, A Little Ramble<\/i>, bewilderment prevailed. The question in the air could be succinctly summarized as, What<\/i>?
\nMacDonald’s work is full of narrative, but its connections with
\nhundreds at a party are hard to discern. He makes sense one on
\none. In a crowd, his work is mute, even when it’s taking up almost all
\nthe room.<\/p>\n

\"euanmacdonaldgoat.jpg\"One
\non one, however, a mood emerges. The birds have eaten the bread crumbs
\nleading out of the forest. No, they’ve eaten the forest. It’s there and
\nnot there. What swells around the consciousness of the solitary viewer
\nis anti-climatic. The artist who isn’t there is a tour guide to a
\nmystery. In his absence, he left notes for a reassuring brochure. These
\nnotes might be helpful. They look as if they are intended to be
\nhelpful, but they’re in code. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nThe artist is cooler than the
\nviewer. His dry sense of humor makes light of the viewer’s predicament.
\nThe viewer is Rosencrantz or maybe Guildenstern, and the artist is Tom
\nStoppard. The former do not undestand their lives. The artist is not there to help them. <\/p>\n

The New Poem
<\/font>Charles Wright<\/i><\/p>\n

It will not resemble the sea.
\nIt will not have dirt on its thick hands
\nIt will not be part of the weather.<\/p>\n

It will not reveal its name.
\nIt will not have dreams you can count on.
\nIt will not be photogenic.<\/p>\n

It will not attend our sorrow.
\nIt will not console our children.
\nIt will not be able to help us.<\/p>\n

MacDonald’s
\nfocus is the ordinary set askew. Two goats taking a little ramble on a
\nmountain top could not be more banal for the goats, but stuffed and
\npoised on a mountain of fake snow in an art center, they are oddities
\nsupreme. Context obliterates the link to a natural history diorama.
\nWhile they lack the madcap exuberance of Robert Rauschenberg’s
\npaint-splattered and tire-clad emblem from 1955 (Monogram<\/i><\/a>), they can be
\nnothing other than art, by context and by artist’s choice.<\/p>\n

Selected Standards<\/i> (2007) is the back story for the video, Where Flamingoes Fly<\/i>. The standards flank the video in a gallery – 84 graphite drawings or black & white
\nphotographs each paired with a sheet music for a once popular song. Again at
\nthe opening, people puzzled over the connections between drawing,
\nphotograph and sheet music. Left brain, right brain? Structured
\nlandscapes, dated tunes? Earth and air? Work and romance?<\/p>\n

\"euanmacdonaldsheetmus.jpg\"\"euanmacdonaldmusdraw.jpg\"MacDonald found the sheet music in a second-hand store in Los Angeles, bought the lot and presented it in Where Flamingoes Fly<\/i> more or less in the order he was given. Instead of Dylan’s groundbreaking Subterranean Homesick Blues<\/i>,
\nMacDonald rifles through the equivalent of musical wallpaper, each tune
\nplayed on piano as each sheet replaces the preceding. Here’s the curve
\nball: Instead of numbing, the video is quite lovely. If this is the
\nmusical wallpaper of our grandparents lives, they lived inside an
\nillumination.
\n
\nWorld Reversa<\/i>l (12 ink-on-paper drawings, 2003) and The Shadow’s Path<\/i>, 2003 treat the earth as another roadside attraction, quite haunting. I love the video, Three Trucks<\/i>, a musical show down between three ice cream trucks. It’s entirely ordinary, but the effect is exhilarating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Dylan’s text prompts in Don’t Look Back (1967) are the most famous part of the documentary. (That’s Allen Ginsberg on the left, a celebrity non sequitur.) Euan MacDonald‘s headless tribute (the video, Where Flamingos Fly, 2005) has no similar loose ends. MacDonald eliminates what he can, including, on occasion, the point. At the opening […]<\/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-1491","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\/1491","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=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}