Establishment "Art": The Bricks Controversy of 1976

"Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn't art."

- from The Stuckist Manifesto 

  Carl Andre "Equivalent VIII" 

I image the conversation above going something like this:

CURATOR: Behold, a three-dimensional manifestation of essential modular forms; a configuration of material purity actualized in an industrial aesthetic.

PUBLIC: But that's just a stack of bricks on the floor.

CURATOR: You obviously do not understand art.

In 1976 London there was some tabloid excitement about the Tate Museum's tax-payer funded purchase and display of Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII-a group of 120 bricks arranged in a rectangle. The piece was originally part of an installation in New York in 1966. When no one bought the work at the time, the artist returned the bricks to the supplier. He had to obtain new bricks for the Tate. 

This piece has since been vandalized with paint, mocked in editorial cartoons, and met with general bewilderment. This hostility is seen as a badge of honor by elitist cultural types. But the limitations of material as message render the piece itself as dull and inert. Without lots of art blather to support it, the piece is simply a stack of bricks out of its normal context, without any inherent interest of its own.

Carl Andre went on to be put on trial for the murder of his wife during a domestic dispute (he was cleared on the charges).

"The sensation of these pieces was that they come above your ankles..." 

-Carl Andre

 

Artwork: Jeff Falk

Jeff Falk "Torso" Assemblage

Artwork: Annie Lopez

Annie Lopez "As She Goes To Sleep At Night" toned cyanotype

Artists: Peter Doig

"There could be a hundred paintings in every one painting, depending on when you stop."

-Peter Doig 

The Falling Darkness and Appearance of Mystery Cat VII

Shadow and I heard Angel make a noise.
He had snapped out of his fear or fugue.
He had drug something along with him.
Something not as big as him but a thing he could not carry
easily.

"I have found a thing. You might want to see it. I have seen it and
am not sure I want to see it again." Angel said.

Pulling it out of the hollyhock stalks into the silver light
The thing was square, thin and made crackling sounds
as he drug it. A people animal paper thing I think it was.

Why would he pick it up? It did not look like something to eat.
It had no smell to make it attractive in that way. Hmmm. Shadow
was dubious about it. She did not step forward to examine it.
I wanted to.  Finally she said "Bring it here Angel.
Lets see what you have found."

He did this. He placed it in front of us. More in front of Shadow than us.
Angel was afraid of Shadow. At least nervous around her. I did not blame him
this fear. Shadow was predictable only in her unpredictableness.

The thing was wrapped in red crinkly paper on one side. Torn a little.
It WAS a people animal thing. And now Shadow and I could smell it.
A strange smell. A bad smell. Like something burning or burnt.
With an under smell of too much people animal thingness.
This was never good.

Shadow got up and walked around the thing as it lay before us.
She began to tease at it with her right paw. Driven both by curiousity and
her infinite right to know what it was. I watched no less curious but somehow
more cautious. The red paper appeared creased and folded like some secret
thing. It told us little more than this. Soon Shadow flipped it over.

Our three pairs of eyes opened wider to at the surprise of what we saw.
Angel made a "pfffttting" noise with his mouth and took off immediately as if a hell
hound had jumped at him. I could not move or take my eyes off of it.
But not from fear. But from a shock that not only took my breath away but made
a sound in my head like the snapping of one of those evil metal things the humans
hid in the grasses to catch animals with. What was I seeing?

Shadow sat back down now.  And she did not move except for her green gold eyes.
She slid them back and forth sideways as if to check to see if something might sneak up on us.
Then she looked back down at the image on the thing on the ground.

It was a black cat. But a black cat unlike any I had ever seen.
Terrible. Powerful. Devilish. Sort of like my sister but much more than her.
A cat with a face beyond any cat we can know of. Black. Its mouth open wide and very red.
White fangs ready for the kill. Its yellow eyes burned through mine. What was it?
Who was this cat?

But much more was the question:what is a most terrible face of such a
cat doing on a people animal thing?
Some terrible cat under the power of the peoples?

What darkness was this?

NEXT: MEOW I SAY

-Jeff Falk

Artwork: Richard Bledsoe

Richard Bledsoe "Leviathan My Friend" Acrylic on Canvas 12" x 12"

Video: Cone Clown-Performance at Deus Ex Machina

Deus Ex Machina is a multimedia venue. In addition to the visual art, we host performance art, poetry and spoken word events, film, experimental theatre, and concerts.

The following video is from COCTEAU'S EYES, an event from March 28, 2008.

VIDEO: Jeff Falk as Cone Clown

Artwork: Michele Bledsoe

"The Lovers" by Michele Bledsoe

acrylic on canvas

THE FALLING DARKNESS AND APPEARENCE OF MYSTERY CAT VI

As we waited for Angel to calm down I thought
about this record I write. I know of no other cats who do this.
Shadow thinks I'm crazy. Maybe I am. Why would cats need a record?
Who will see it? Who will read it? Who will care?
I cannot say. I do not know. It has been a thing I have felt that I must do.

Our lives as cats are as ordinary as can be. We eat. We sleep. We live.
How could there be more to it?  What could possibly be worthwhile
to record? I cannot say.

I only know that, as I have sat  alone, in the quiet moments of grey morning down near the creek,
I see the great yellow orb rise and bless us, and it seems that there is some meaning to it all that I am missing.
A magic that I do not understand. But how can that be? Our lives are so hum drum. A cat is a cat is a cat.
Why think that there is more?

Shadow tells me "You find something to hunt. Stay out of the rain. Hide from the bad things coming
our way. And if we are lucky we might catch a glimpse of the Great Cat when we go away to the darkness.
If there is a Great Cat. More than that what are you hoping for?"

I don't know what to say.  But when I have sat and watched the falling of snowflakes after the time when leaves have left the trees its as if there is somewhere else between each falling flake. I catch a glimpse of a light ,a land, where all things begin. And to which all things return. Where  a question and an answer are the same thing. And before you even begin to wonder about it all the reason why is already there.

Its a good place. But I think I'm just crazy. How could that be true? This world is what it is.
There can't be anymore. Can there?

Why can't I just be the cat that I am and explore my own paths and sleep on my bed in the kitchen of my human animal and be happy with that? Most times this record I keep is a curse. But then other times I want so badly to write about what our lives are like here. I want those who come after us to remember us. I want Shadow and Angel and White Joe to have a place in it all. We were here! We lived our lives! We made our way! We were here!

But then I doubt it all and wish only to be that cat in the kitchen.

It would be so much easier.

And then Angel starts to talk and I remember where I am.

NEXT: CAT WORLD ABOVE AND BELOW

-Jeff Falk

Notes From The Studio: The Home Studio

In our home, the first room you see when you come through the front door is our art studio. This is Michele Bledsoe's set up.

I have the other half of the room as my acrylic painting studio (my oil paintings are done at our gallery Deus Ex Machina)

We have been painting 7 days a week! This is as it should be.

-Richard Bledsoe

Artists: Michelangelo Buonarroti

Pietà 

(1498–1499)

"If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all. "
Michelangelo Buonarroti

Artists: Jackson Pollock's Arizona Connection

Jackson Pollock "Guardians of the Secret" 

In many ways, Jackson Pollock represents where the art world went wrong. He was seized on by verbose theorists who projected their agendas onto his intuitive art, and encouraged him to explore the formal aspects of his work, which ended up being a destructive dead end. Remodernism does not lose sight of the personal vision in pursuit of intellectual dogma. 
But in the end, there remains Pollock the man, the artist, who struggled and suffered, and took chances; for that he deserves respect. Even in his declining years he continued to make art, moving away from the drip paintings and back towards the figurative, mythic work of his original explorations.

In September of 1913, a young family set out in a wagon hired from a stable at the corner of Van Buren and Grand Avenue in downtown Phoenix. Roy Pollock was taking his wife Stella and his five sons to the new home he had bought for them, a 20-acre farm located about 6 miles east of the city, on the road to Tempe.

His youngest son Paul-always called by his middle name, Jackson-probably didn’t remember much of his life before this, in Cody, Wyoming; he wasn’t even 2 years old yet. But the future action painter and tragic art celebrity would spend a large part of his boyhood in the Valley of the Sun and other Arizona locations.

Roy Pollock’s farm on Sherman Street was simple; an adobe house, a barn, corral, and an outhouse. Roy planted alfalfa and many other vegetables, raised hogs, cows and chickens, and gained a reputation for producing some of the best crops and livestock in the Valley. His older sons helped out with the chores, but not Jackson. During these early years he was a sensitive child, who stayed close to the house and his mother; he was afraid of the wild desert landscape outside the borders of the irrigated farmland. Having tea parties and playing house with a little girl who lived near by were among his favorite pursuits.

Despite his timid ways, Jackson did have his boyish adventures. He and the other kids would swim in the periodically flooded irrigation ditches. He’d hang out by the road waiting for the mailman’s car to go by-automobiles were a rarity then. He would ride into town with his father and see the Indians, Mexicans and Chinese in the marketplace, and Goldwater’s Store at the corner of First and Adams. Jackson idolized his oldest brother Charles, considered the artist of the family; Charles even received painting lessons from a neighbor.

In less happy events, Jackson managed to get his right index figure tip chopped off with an axe in a clumsy accident with another boy; the detached finger apparently got eaten by a rooster. Another time he was in a wagon wreck with his mother, when a bull charged and panicked their horse-Jackson had nightmares about the incident for the rest of his life.

Conditions were harsh in early Phoenix life. The family actually dragged their beds outside and slept for much of the year in their front yard, trying to deal with the intense heat. Stella Pollock was unhappy with the rustic lifestyle, and Roy had a hard time making money even with his skillful farming. So in May 1917 the family auctioned off the farm and belongs and moved on to California, where their situation continued to deteriorate.

Before long Roy had returned to Arizona without his family, supporting them long distance by working as a surveyor. Stella restlessly moved the family from town to town in California, never able to find a comfortable situation for her and the boys. In 1923 she moved the family back to Arizona, staying for a while at the Carr Ranch north of Globe and Miami. Eleven-year-old Jackson was no longer the fearful kid he had been before; he spent much of his free time hiking and hunting along the Salt River.

In 1924 the Pollock family, still without the father, left Arizona again, but later Jackson would return to live here one more time. In 1927 he got a job alongside his father working for a surveying crew on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Jackson at 15 was the youngest of the crew; he tried to fit in by drinking heavily along with the other men, the first signs of the terrible alcoholism which devastated his life. When summer was over he returned to high school in California and never lived in the state again.

When Jackson Pollock was at the heights of his career as an abstract expressionist, he was called a cowboy throwing lariats of paint. His technique was compared to Native American sand paintings and tribal art. It’s hard to estimate how much his formative years in Arizona influenced the artist he became.

-Richard Bledsoe

Artwork: Steve Gompf

Steve Gompf "Ansonia Televisor 1894"

THE FALLING DARKNESS AND APPEARENCE OF MYSTERY CAT V

My sister Shadow and I sat beneath the sunflowers.
The darkness now deeper all around us. Then some clouds
that had obscured the beautiful light of the silver orb,
flew away from it, revealing the world before us
in little flashes of bright silver explosions until finally
the sky clear, the world around us brightened.

I saw something moving through the hollyhock stalks
coming towards us.
It looks like a cat I thought. This was true. Shadow once
tense now relaxed although she is never truly relaxed
in the truest sense.

She sat up straighter now and gave out her "Who comes towards
us?" growl. The shape ahead now stopped. Its rustling quieted
for a moment. Listening. Then it came on ahead. Now a cat emerged from
the hollyhocks their dry rattles punctuating its appearance.
It was the grey tailless cat we call Angel.

He is usually in the trees above us. He is hardly ever seen
on the ground. This was a bad omen.
But whether for him or us I did not know.

Now standing before us in the moonlight, panting and looking this way
and that, Angel sat down. There was a spot of blood on his right ear.
But whether his or someone else's I could not say.
He appeared almost relieved to see us.
Then he spoke through ragged breaths......

"Its here my friends. Its here. I see no way around it.
It comes from every place. Knocked me from my favorite tree.
What is it? What is it? What does it mean? What does it mean?"

Angel spoke oddly on good days. Now his words, almost like poems,
described some event that had fallen to him. Still breathing hard
it would be a few moments before we could ask him questions
so that we might understand the meaning of his words. We would wait.

I looked up now at the silver orb its cat face seemed to smile.
But I might have been imagining it.

NEXT: DO NOT GO GENTLE

-Jeff Falk

Artwork: Jeff Falk

Jeff Falk "Horror Vacuui" Mixed Media

Artists: Albert Pinkham Ryder

"When my father placed a box of colors and brushes in my hands, and I stood before my easel with its square of stretched canvas, I realized that I had in my possession the where-with to create a masterpiece that would live through the coming ages. The great masters had no more. I at once proceeded to study the works of the great to discover how best to achieve immortality with a square of canvas and a box of colors."

-Albert Pinkham Ryder

  (1847-1917) 

Albert Pinkham Ryder "Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens"

Notes From the Studio

Sometimes when I do too much detail work on a painting, 

I am no longer able to see it as a whole.

I have to look at it upside down to gain a new perspective.

THE FALLING DARKNESS AND APPEARANCE OF MYSTERY CAT IV

A small wind blew rustling the overhanging leaves of the sunflowers we sat beneath.

The edges were starting to dry out. The Fall, the beginning of the cold days,

was creeping towards our land.

The sound the leaves made was like pages of paper being torn or the scratching

of some animal trapped in a brown paste board box trying to get out.

Shadow crouched down beside me. Her eyes wider than before they never left the direction that the wind came from. She waited, but to fight or run, I did not know. Dappled silver blotches of light from the great sphere above us fell in  shifting patterns onto the path.

Listen to me go on. I say the PATH as if it were the only one. There are many ways through our land. The trails that can be seen. And those, only a few know about. I knew of many ways, some less obvious than others.

But I did not know them all.

A strong scent upon the wind now. Less strange. More familiar than before. The slightest trace of blood. My sister stood up in anticipation of that which approached. She gave no ground. She tensed and arched her back and the low growl returned to her throat. The people animals think we cats are wild, indomitable things. Yes we can hunt and will scratch for blood if needs be.  But as the truth is told, it is more show than boldness. And I have overheard the stories of the people animals. They say "cats have nine lives." A lie for sure. Many of my kind were lucky enough to make it through one season, let alone a life.

This past season alone I have seen the lives of more of my friends taken than last.  Their ways of death varied.  Their absence no less felt.  We cats walk a razor's edge. From the moment the Great Cat sees fit to give us a life to the last day we are able to smell the messages that are sent to us on the wind.

Now my sister's stance did less to embolden me than to make my heart race. I have never thought of myself as a brave cat. I am not. But I was not about to leave my sister's side. Whatever it was coming towards us we would face the darkness together.

I hoped we would live to see the yellow orb rise over the creek again. And that I would be able to write our story of this night down onto the leaves of the holy trees that lined its banks.

NEXT: NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN

~ Jeff Falk 2012

Video: First Friday with Last Wave

PHX First Friday @ Deus Ex Machina

February 3, 2012. Video by Greg Roberts. Music by Last Wave. Images from the Deus Ex Machina exhibit "Heart of Darkness," along with other scenes from around the La Melgosa building.

Artwork: Annie Lopez

Annie Lopez "Lets Meic Aurselves" Toned Cyanotype

Heart of Darkness

Darkness exists not only externally as a physical absence of light, but also references the state of mystery that abides inside every person. Part of the task of the artist is to go into that inner darkness and bring its contents to light. To reveal the hidden lets us know ourselves, and each other, better. 

The February exhibit at Deus Ex Machina is "Heart of Darkness," ruminations on the traditional icon of St Valentines Day, the Joseph Conrad novel, and the shadow component of humanity. Darkness does not necessarily equal evil, but evil is part of the terrain we must navigate in there. There is something in us all that remains primitive and covetous, the old animal nature, snarling over its prey. 

Conrad took his own particular experiences working in the Belgian Congo and translated them into a universal exploration of the corruption of power. His character of Kurtz was a great man gone wrong. He had been a proud bearer of the White Man's Burden; he went into the jungle thinking he would be bringing enlightenment to the  savages. But like many a Classical playwright could have warned him, overestimation of one's capacities leads to tragedy.  Hubris made Kurtz into the worst savage of all, a demon god demanding worship and tribute. Such is the course of the demagogue.  

When a good intentioned leader descends into brutality, his followers are willing to overlook his excesses, remembering only his original inspiration. In the Conrad book a ragged, youthful sailor  gushes about Kurtz, "This man has enlarged  my mind," ignoring the poles festooned with severed heads all around him. But Kurtz himself, who did have great capacities, can not avoid acknowledging the consequences of his own choices. He is left murmuring about "The horror" with his dying breaths, a confession of the life he sees flashing before his eyes-an admission of his ultimate failure.

Good intentions are not enough. 

The ends do not justify the means.

Image: Richard Bledsoe "This Man Has Enlarged My Mind"  acrylic on canvas

THE FALLING DARKNESS AND APPEARANCE OF MYSTERY CAT III

In the darkness beneath the sunflowers I hear a noise.
Then a voice. Slow whisper.
"What are you up to sister?"
Then I saw the black shape of my sister Shadow.
She is a beautiful black cat. I am steel striped tabby.
We did not know our father. Or fathers.
Barely knew our mother before she left us to fend for ourselves.

Before I knew it it was as if her shape materialized beside me.
She was close enough to touch. But I dared not. I love my
sister but we are different. Very different.
"Still writing the book?" she asked.
I did not answer. I knew what she would say.
She said it. "Really? Are human animals so wonderful to you that you must
imitate them?"
And more.
"What good have their writings ever done for you? With them the human animals seem to organize and
overcome other creatures. Make life a plan for them to fulfill. That is not life.
You must beware this dangerous obsession."
Is said nothing again even louder.

Shadow sighed.
We both peered into the darkness. Silence.

She spoke again.
"You have noticed that smell. I know you have. Don't lie.
It is disturbing. Whatever made it is around here somewheres.
Waiting. But for what? We must be wary."

In the distance the sound of a long odd howl stretching out and finally
evaporating away. Made by one of the dark machines of the human animals.
A terrible beast that traveled the same tracks always. No deviation of its path.
In a cat that would be dangerous.

One must always change one's path. Enemies
are less likely to catch you that way. Friends will always find you.

But that machine was so large it was not afraid to go where it wanted.
The only thing to make it seem more like us was its howl. Loud yes but a cry
of uncertainty. As if it said "Yes I am large and terrible but someday I too will
fall."  My foolish poetic projection onto its cry. That beast never slowed down for anyone.

I had come across White Joe lying dead in its tracks last spring.
Not much left of that cat. But through the blood I recognized his collar.
The damned thing never even slowed down for him. I miss White Joe.

Then next to me I heard the low growl from my sister's throat.
Something was coming.

NEXT: THE INDISPUTABLE TOPCAT

~ Jeff Falk

We Are The Small Things

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."
-Vincent Van Gogh

Artwork: Richard Bledsoe

Richard Bledsoe "Golden Fleece" Oil on Canvas 30" x 36"

THE FALLING DARKNESS AND APPEARANCE OF MYSTERY CAT II

I deciphered the words at the top of the first sycamore leaf.
THE FALLING DARKNESS AND APPEARANCE OF MYSTERY CAT

How very odd this was. Impossible perhaps
but here it was.
I was amazed at the manuscript my good cat Clio had written.
Why had she left it here? If it was that important
surely there must be a Cat King somewhere to have
given it to.

Also, being curious, I further examined the
"ink" that she had used on the leaf pages.
What was it? And what instrument had she used to write?
Soon I discovered that she had used her own claws to do the
writing with. Each claw like the nib of an old fashioned
fountain pen. Now to the ink. That's a different story.

As far as I could tell it was blood. Whether animal or my own
I cannot say. God knows she scratched me enough times over the
years. She could have written a book with it I'm sure.

And now, as to the content of the book itself, here's where I start to share with
you what she wrote. As I said the title seems to be
THE FALLING DARKNESS AND APPEARANCE OF MYSTERY CAT

And then her story begins:

I, Clio, write these words to record a history of the strange life I have lived.
And not just me, all of us.

My life began as a kitten. The usual ball of string
upbringing among the people animals.
They dangled the string and I was expected to bat at it.
I did this for a time (foolish me, the string did hold a
mysterious fascination early on) but eventually came to my senses.

They tried to get me addicted to their noxious herbs encased in
annoying and colorful little plastic spheres that they would roll noisily across
the floor but I refused. The herb might be enticing to some but
I knew I was not meant for that. My life would be an adventure.

But I go on about nothing important. The real adventure began just
a long season ago. I say "long" as if we cats had all the time
in the world. Compared to the people animals our lives are
but a glimmer on the water of the creek behind me.
That's alright though.

We is what we is, and a gift given by
the unseen one, no matter how we perceive it, is still a gift.

The strange days began in darkness.
The best time of day if you ask me.
On one particular night.
It was a full silver sphere night as well.

The cat face of the great orb, hanging in its glorious circle high above us,
smiling as always before the dog star begins to eat away at it plunging us
again in darkness.

I wandered familiar paths in the back yard of my people animals.
Crouching low beneath the hollyhocks, winding my way through
the ferns and flowers, stopping ever so often to smell a branch
to see who was out and about.

There was a scent on the thick stem of a sunflower.
I smelt of it once, then again. This was no smell I knew.
Its language was mysterious and unknown.
I got no picture of the cat who made it. Or any other
creature for that matter. For all I knew of it, it might as well
have been made by a fish swimming in the air.
Ha! What a picture!

Hmmm. I do like fish though. Raw or cooked.

NEXT: THE CAT IN THE MOON GOES BACK

- Jeff Falk

THE FALLING DARKNESS AND APPEARANCE OF MYSTERY CAT

Being a history of the strange goings ons of our kingdom.
Here written down by Clio, a Steel Striped Tabby who sleeps in the
kitchen.

The steel striped tabby cat with the green eyes
slept several hours a day. Bears in their hibernations had
nothing on her. But when she was awake the world
was sought out by her completely. Curiosity was her reason
for living. It didn't matter if the questions she asked with her eyes and nose
and paws and mouth were ever answered. Like Sherlock Holmes
the game was afoot. And noting else mattered.

She had always been a special cat to me. But after her death I discovered
she was even more special. Beyond my imaginings even.
For in her worn little bed, in the corner of the kitchen, as I collected it to
place in her grave to accompany and comfort her to the next world, I discovered a
manuscript. Written on the brittle leaves of sycamore trees that stood near the
creek behind our house. "fragile" was not enough to describe their condition.
By accident I destroyed a few pages just by moving her bed,
but later on I reconstructed them when the true importance of this history became
apparent.

NEXT: CAT NIP DOESN'T DO IT FOR ME.

-Jeff Falk

Artwork: Michele Bledsoe

Michele Bledsoe "The Great Fear of Falling" acrylic on canvas