On Demand
Jesus as emerging artist
By Claudia La Rocco
July 16, 2008
Yesterday, the New Museum announced the birth of a new “generational triennial” (biennials are so last century), “Younger Than Jesus,” to open this spring. Artists over the age of 33 need not apply. According to the press release:
“…the institution will continue its 30-year mission {What happens two triennials from now, when the Museum itself is over the hill???} of exploring new art and new ideas by launching a major triennial that will give participating artists their first museum exposure. This signature initiative will be the first recurring international exhibition in New York City devoted to emerging artists from around the world, providing an important platform for a new generation of artists who are shaping the current discourse of contemporary art and the future of global culture.”
The show “will occupy the entire New Museum building on the Bowery. The title of this exhibition is inspired by the fact that some of the most enduring, influential, and radical changes in art and history have been carried out by young people.”
The New Museum’s director, Lisa Phillips, is quoted as calling this show “predictive” instead of “retrospective,” and being “populated by the first natives of a digital world.” Whoa. She is like way, waaay older than Jesus.
So …. um, whadda y’all think? My gut reaction is pretty skeptical. And I’m not alone. A thoroughly scientific poll of four arts-involved friends involved much eye-rolling and “what else is new?” responses. As one person put it, “It’s in no way interesting in itself, which is not to say there won’t be interesting work there. It’s all a big hustle. The whole art world.”
Do we really need another event trumpeting the importance of youth? For every two-bit artist that gets picked up because “She wrote a novel and she’s only 25!” there are scores of (not that much) older artists who are shaving years off their driver’s licenses in order to still seem marketable. I remember being taken aback, when I first started writing about the arts, to have artists refuse to give their ages - I expected it from middle aged actresses, but not 40-something painters.
The idea of “emerging artists” is also a thorny one. Artists tend to be emerging well into their 50s, with “emerging” standing in, not for “still developing,” but for “not yet picked up by an important enough institution.” And many artists cling to that designation, much as it rankles, because certain grants are available only to emerging artists, and because the no-man’s-land in between youthful and venerable is too terrifying to behold.
I wasn’t able to attend yesterday’s press breakfast, but CultureGrrl did, and she had this to say about it, this being nothing very good. Although she did find the following silver lining:
“With the Whitney Biennial (which does not limit itself to new talent) experiencing less hostility in its recent outings, New York needs a new show that it ‘loves to hate.’ ‘Jesus’ might be just the ticket. We can only hope that the Spring 2012 triennial will bring us the much anticipated sequel: ‘Older Than Methuselah.’”
Hope, like Jesus, springeth eternal.
Comments
Comment from brian rogers
Date: July 16, 2008, 4:33 pm
I find this whole idea ridiculously suspect.
Too bad for me, I guess - I’m too old to “shape the future of global culture”. Missed the boat on that one.
And I’m no expert, but we’ve been in the “digital age” since the 50s if not well before. One might even argue that the “digital age” has been superseded by the “information age”.
It’s pretty smallminded, in my view, to suggest that the creative development of an artist can/should be measured in this way.
Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: July 16, 2008, 4:38 pm
Tell us how you really feel, Brian …
I have 2.5 years left to shape the future of global culture. I’d better get going. Damn.
Comment from bj
Date: July 16, 2008, 6:46 pm
Just want to throw this speculative bit in here from iconologist W. J. T. Mitchell’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Biocybernetic Reproduction” (consciously modeled on Walter Benjamin’s famous 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”) the penultimate chapter of his recent book, What do Pictures Want (a fascinating read):
“… I want to question the notion that our time is adequately described as the age of information, the digital age, or the age of the computer, and suggest a more complex and conflicted model, one which sees all these models of calculation and control as interlocked in a struggle with new forms of incalculability and uncontrollability, from computer viruses to terrorism. The age of information might better be called the age of mis- or dis-information, and the era of cybernetic control is, if my daily newspapers are telling me the truth, more like an epoch of loss of control. The digital age, in short, far from being technically determined in any straightforward way by computers and the Internet, spawn new forms of fleshly, analogue, nondigital experience…”
The New Museum does have a history of more adventurous and complex curatorial practice; one wonders what particular pressures, aside from the desire to simply keep pace with other such agglomerations, drove their decision here.
Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: July 17, 2008, 3:13 pm
hi bj,
speculative bits always welcome. “New forms of incalculability” is great.
what New Museum shows have you liked in recent years?
c
Comment from tonya
Date: July 20, 2008, 3:16 pm
I always find these emphases on youth disturbing and ridiculous. I’m currently reading Charles Bock’s BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN — which is BRILLIANT — and was shocked to read the feature on him in the NYTimes in which the interviewer remarked that 38 was old to be publishing one’s first novel. Bock has been getting an MFA, ghostwriting major books, and doing odd jobs that enabled him to write such a trenchant book. It takes age and experience to know the world well enough to explore it with depth and insight and wisdom. I can’t recall any book written by anyone under 25 that really moved me or told me a great deal I didn’t already know.
And since when do you have to be 33 or under to say something provocative? Paul McCarthy is still an upstart well into his 50s.
I haven’t been around the visual art scene for a while, unfortunately, but I remember a New Museum exhibit entitled feminism, women, gender, something like that — this is going back probably a little over 10 years — that I thought was really good. I remember some photographs of a man’s genitals kind of draped humorously over various “Simpsons” dolls and thinking of it as a kind of comical deconstruction of a traditional symbol of male potency. Those photos seemed to get the most attention in the whole exhibit, and I can’t remember the artist’s name but I’m pretty sure he was an “older” man…
Comment from tonya
Date: July 20, 2008, 3:20 pm
Haha, just reading over my comment and realizing how angry I sound — I didn’t mean to sound quite that harsh
Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: July 20, 2008, 7:32 pm
Ha! It’s true, Tonya - it’s almost impossible to comment on this stuff without sounding bitter; either you’re “old” and pissed off that you didn’t make it big before becoming an old fogey of 34, or you’re younger than Jesus, and pissed off that you aren’t among those shaping the future of global culture.
Alas.
Comment from danny
Date: July 24, 2008, 4:36 am
lol you are all such haters!
sorry you’re OLD
c u in nyc
Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: July 24, 2008, 10:30 am
hey danny … are you an artist who happens to be younger than jesus, perchance? somehow i suspect ‘yes’ - you’ll have to forgive your elders …
Comment from danny
Date: July 25, 2008, 7:38 pm
hey I’m just sick of hearing about “Young Art” shows/prizes
with artists born in the 1960’s.
If Paul Mccarthy is an upstart, then who counts as established, jan van eyk?
Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: July 26, 2008, 8:56 am
That’s an excellent point, perhaps the flip side of youth mania in the arts. It somehow doesn’t seem right that artists are “emerging” well into their 50s …
Still, don’t jump the gun - give Jan a few more years and he’ll be established. Maybe.
Comment from danny
Date: July 27, 2008, 6:48 pm
(confession) yes I am younger than jesus and maybe I was asked to submit work for consideration for this show.
Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: July 29, 2008, 12:39 pm
A ha! Well congratulations, danny - as one of the people who I originally asked about this show said, just because the organizing idea is lame doesn’t mean there won’t be some great art to be seen. And who knows, maybe once the show is up it will make fools out of all of its critics, my younger-than-Jesus self included. That’s the great thing about art.
I would love to hear if you think that the idea of the show (aside from your excitement at being invited to submit work) is a good one, and why….
Comment from danny
Date: August 5, 2008, 10:55 am
I think that there is a legitimately new tradition in art that has developed from the internet. (not only with digital work, but from its use as a social networking/information oracle)
I think that people around my age (I first used the internet when I was around 6 or 7) process information and exist in the world in a new way . I know that a lot of the other people who were asked to submit work have a similar preoccupation with the internet and the international “scene” it facilitates. To me this is the closest thing to a truly generational “movement” we’ve had in a while. Therefore, I think this show is well conceived…
(however im not sure it needs to be a triennial, it could just be once… I doubt that this new generation is going away in 3 years)
Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: August 7, 2008, 11:02 am
hey danny - I would love for you to say more about how, exactly, you process information and exist in the world in a new way, especially the existing part (that’s a huge claim, and intriguing) … and thanks for the link
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