Thomas Ruff, phg.01, 2012. Chromogenic print from the Photograms series.

Thomas Ruff, Zycles 3080, 2009. Made with Cinema 4D software.

WORDS BY: John D’Agostino

Thomas Ruff: ma.r.s.08, 2010.

Ruff takes the NASA generated imagery and effectively “colorizes” the images himself, much as Ted Turner did some years ago with black and white movies. This lends a surreal, eerie and fictional quality to the images, as the color is quite literally ‘added’ after the fact, and not simply tuned or adjusted.

‘It is maybe because photography has been misused such a lot that I think you have to be very careful when you’re looking at a photograph. You always have to know the conditions under which it has been made – because otherwise you cannot read it, or you could misunderstand it, or the image can be misused. Since photography is such a realistic medium, it pretends that everything you’re looking at was in front of the camera. But in the meantime it wasn’t.’          -Thomas Ruff

If photography pretends to show us reality, Ruff delights in showing us the deception behind it, almost as a kind of Penn & Teller figure, eager to pull back the curtain on the manipulations in his process.

Thomas Ruff, Andere Portrait, 1985.

One of Ruff’s lesser hailed but brilliant projects is his series of Anderes portraits. Using an analog machine Berlin police used in the 1970′s to create composite pictures of witness descriptions, Ruff reconstructed artificial faces, mixing two faces at a time, male with male, male with female.

Ruff’s photographs have lost their innocence. Their new-found authenticity, if they have one, is in a pre-arranged reality true to Ruff’s vision of it. He considers himself an investigator of the medium.

His photograms series, currently up at Zwirner gallery, turns this well known photographic tradition on its head, making them digital, multiple, and enlarging them to gigantic sizes.

Formerly one of the most ‘handmade’ of mediums, made literally by placing objects directly onto photographic paper and exposing them without a camera (to great effect by masters like Maholy-Nagy or Man Ray), Ruff’s illusory depths here are created entirely in computer via a ‘virtual darkroom’ that employs lighting effects and simulated objects.

Thomas Ruff, r.phg.03, 2012. Chromogenic print.

Ruff’s work is a repeated exercise in a technology mediated vision, where process is unavoidable. And yet, it is, in the end, as always, a promise.

New technology promises us that it will allow us to see new kinds of images – and that the images made with these processes will be inherently new, exciting, significant. And that these images will be as good, if not better? than the old-fashioned handmade.

The digital may indeed yet fulfill all of these promises. Or it may not. Interestingly, much of Ruff’s latest work is so quite literally computer generated that some of his projects could technically be thought of as more “computer illustration” than photography. For Ruff’s “zycles” and photograms, (unlike his colorized MA.R.S pictures for example), have no actual counterpart in any kind of reality.

For me, the most troubling aspect of this technological promise is the degree (or not) to which such processes can still project at least a modicum level of humanity, for that in the end, is the eternal question. Do computer generated images eventually throw out the baby with the bathwater? Do they somehow lose their humanity in the process? At present this is still unclear.


The machine made image is here. And it is here to stay – that is unavoidable. Someday, as artificial intelligence experts think , we may even have autonomous AI’s, specially designed ‘artistic’ programs, that will create works of art for us all by themselves.

But whether these computer generated forms can still teach us something about ourselves? or somehow convey human passions, human concerns, human ambitions? That is another matter. Or if these new processes, now stripped of their humanity, just provide us back with the cold, logical stare of an algorithm, a computation, a set of data. The artist, now effectively handicapped and complacent, content to just show whatever the machine can now make – much easier than he ever could.

In some cases, technology serves only to terribly alienate both producer and audience. This is no better illustrated than by the sad testament of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel films, whose hamfisted and uncomfortable scenes of dialogue make the original films sound like high Shakespeare. It was often not the actors fault, for Lucas, in love with new technology, forced the hapless all-star cast to stare into empty green screens all day,  “imagining” a dialogue with a to-be-later-added CGI character. Perhaps this is an apt metaphor too, this imagining a non-existent dialogue with technology.

However, the key, I believe, particularly for Ruff, is in his role as mediator of the machine. The real art in his work, if you will, is in the mediation. In the quality, in the degree to which (or not) he can effectively and subtly manipulate the computer generated effects to his own personal ends. At times, his work does indeed feel revolutionary and daring, his commitment to a new visionary kind of take on photography assured.

The HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And yet, at other times, some works come across as a little too cold and impersonal, a little too scientific? A little too artificial. One is reminded of the critique of another great science fiction auteur, director Stanley Kubrick, whose  gloomy genius some critics felt lacked an emotional richness, and eventually sympathized a bit too much with the inhuman over the human: all those automated dolly shots into the distance, the sinister HAL computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the sadistic drill sergeants screaming at Marine drones in Full Metal Jacket, sexual fantasy and love reduced to shattered myths in the widely misunderstood Eyes Wide Shut. In Kubrick’s seminal Paths of Glory, years earlier, it was all too clear that Kirk Douglas  was  fighting against the automated systems of bureaucracy and control, even if the war could not be won, it was something to at least be resisted. But in later films, it is not so clear at all. The machine, it would seem, finally won.

Actress Sean Young as Rachel, the haunting Replicant, in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner, 1982.

And yet, the artificial does not always have to be inhuman, as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner reminds us. Ironically, the most “human” and rich and emotionally complex characters in this dystopian future are arguably the Replicants, the artificially created ‘simulation’ human beings. Harrison Ford’s Deckard realizes that his role as bounty hunter / pseudo slave-catcher is the actual act of dehumanization, made even more poignant by the final possibility that he is a Replicant himself, tricked into hunting down his own kind because he is told they are inferior beings. Interestingly, Blade Runner’s Replicants have a passion for photographs – they need them! even if they are based on untrue memories.

As Alan Turing famously hypothesized in his Turing test, the day we are convinced we are conversing with a human being, but rather are in fact really communicating with just a computer or artificial intelligence program, is the day we must treat and “think” of the artificial as the human -even if it isn’t. 

So too, would I then prophesize a ‘Turing Test’ of sorts for the likes of computer generated artwork from artists the like of Thomas Ruff. The times we are fooled into thinking we may be looking at the hand of a human being, and not just some satellite or computer algorithm, is perhaps when this mechanized imagery is at its most brilliantly treacherous, when it is its most compelling.

For while Ruff’s endless experimentations and machinations are inherently fascinating to document and discuss, in the end, the degree to which they can somehow convey the human? is their real test, in my eyes.

In their eerie starkness, their ghostly afterimage, made entirely in the machine, some new kind of humanity – may just emerge.

Thomas Ruff’s photograms at Zwirner gallery, Spring 2013.

Thomas Ruff’s Photograms and MA.R.S exhibited at David Zwirner in New York, Spring of 2013.

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Timothy Van Laar and Leonard Diepeveen’s Artworld Prestige: Arguing Cultural Value, 2013.

Jay DeFeo, The Rose, 1958-66. The Whitney Museum of American Art.

 


Prestige is a dirty word.

The almost total failure of contemporary art criticism to talk about prestige, or even admit it exists, is an oversight with profound implications. Art history simply cannot be understood without knowing how prestige actually works, and Timothy Van Laar and Leonard Diepeveen’s latest book Artworld Prestige: Arguing Cultural Value brings some of these particularly important ideas to the fore, many of them admittedly a little too honest, even.

Prestige is a dirty word because every first year curator, MFA student, or gallerist learns to use other ‘terms of art’ to privilege certain works. Far better for an artist or work to be considered “serious” or “important” or historically “significant” than merely just prestigious.

For in the artworld, the mention of prestige’s mere existence is a danger and a threat to power. This is precisely because prestige is a term of nuance. It is perhaps just a bit too honest, because it teases out the subtle distinctions between something meaningful? and perhaps something just successful, a distinction many self-interested parties may just like to avoid.

Prestige allows for the dark possibility that success might not necessarily rely on benevolent cultural barometers like historical significance, but rather, on more shallow principles, like perhaps market success, or just powerful connections. Could an Andy Warhol or a Jeff Koons, or a Damian Hirst be somehow prestigious, but meaningless? Prestigious, but culturally insignificant? Absolute heresy.

Damian Hirst, For the Love of God, 2007. Human skull with 8,601 diamonds.

No artist wants to be considered “prestigious.” For it allows for two dangerous possibilities:  1) that important artists might somehow get ignored by the market, or 2) that the prestigious artist of today may not be considered so years later (heaven forbid). Consider for example the frequent unfashionability of some of history’s greatest artists, from Louis Comfort Tiffany, to Vincent Van Gogh, to William Blake, even to Turner or Rembrandt, all whose work at different times was ignored, misunderstood or even discarded. For a more recent example, go look at Jay DeFeo’s masterpiece The Rose, now properly installed at The Whitney, and reflect on how it had been hidden behind a false wall to rot away at the S.F. Art Institute for 20 years, finally restored only some 50 years later. Consider also how it was The Whitney in New York that finally purchased it, not the much closer SFMoMA.

What makes a work of art prestigious?

Frank Gallo’s Raquel Welch, Time Magazine, 1969.

Exhibit A:

Examine the case of artist Frank Gallo, considered in the 60′s to be the future of American art. He wins a Guggenheim. He is collected by all the important institutions: MoMA, The Met, LACMA, Hirschorn. He is in the Smithsonian’s worldwide exhibition “Alliance on Art,” he is in the Venice Biennale. In 1969, his Raquel Welch figure is on the cover of Time Magazine.

Does anyone remember him? Today, he seems lost to history. Gallo’s art didn’t change, but something else did. He lost prestige. The last major review of his work is in The New York Times from 1972, where already the postmodern critiques of his work are bubbling to the surface. Figuration is out. Minimalism eclipses Pop Art. Formalism is now inadequate. Feminist critique soon abounds, and Gallo’s “girls” seem hopelessly sexist, offensive, juvenile. The artworld no longer confers value on him. Gallo and his work has lost all prestige. It no longer matters that Hugh Hefner collected him. His work no longer “fits” the trajectory of what contemporary art is about. Fifty years later, the authors go looking for his “The Swimmer” in the cavernous storage rooms of the Whitney Museum, purchased back in 1965. It hasn’t been moved or seen since 1984, the last time it went into storage. Gallo is no longer a “serious” artist.

Is this what contemporary art is ‘supposed’ to look like? Zina Saro-Wiwa. Mourning Class: Nollywood, 2010. Video installation on monitors at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.

Dan Peterman, Accessories to an Event, 1998. Reprocessed plastic. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Rule & Levine’s brilliant takedown of artspeak gobbledygook: International Art English

Dialogue, Dialogue, More Dialogue: Sophia Wallace’s CLITERACY: 100 Natural Laws at Baang + Burne’s booth at Scope Art Fair, 2013.

Answer: the arguments around them. The discourse itself is now rarefied. People have to do or know certain things to understand the discourse, to “get” the discourse. They need degrees. They need to do homework. Often the art viewer must have the work explained to them. And thus we need these professionals – behind the work – more now than ever before.

Today, the professional narrative defines the work of art. Art has become not about new objects, but new narratives – that must be theorized, professionalized, systematized. Participating in a rarefied professional discourse is what defines the work of art, whether it is made up of Brillo boxes or refuse. A painting can still be serious, yes, but it must do a little more heavy lifting now to explain itself, to justify why it was made. Better to be “about” painting than just “be” a painting. In this example, Wade Guyton’s work succeeds brilliantly.

The more “difficult” the professional discourse? the better. (See the wonderful text on International Art English for the ultimate description). As Van Laar’s book argues, Dan Peterman’s objects of recycled plastics are not made of rare materials, nor are they made with rare skill, but rather, the rarity and prestige of his work is in the discourse that accompanies it and deems it ‘important’ art. A Murakami in a Walmart is nothing but a commodity, but a Murakami with an institutional critique? is something else. Personally, I find these frank examples from the book troubling, for they seem to suggest that these kinds of works are not ‘works’ – without their discourse. They seem to ‘need’ this discourse like an astronaut needs his oxygen.

However, for me, the real white elephant in the room that comes to mind is corruption. For the reality of prestige must in the final analysis account for at least some level of corruption in the artworld, because it teases out the differences between worth and value, merit and success, meaning and fame. Granted, maybe Mr. Gallo was a bit overrated in the 1960′s, but what does that portend for today’s superstar artists in 50 years time?

Has dialogue become the new Kingmaker? The ‘knighting’ device that marks some refuse as ‘art’ and other refuse just refuse? Today’s Readymades and High Kitsch, indistinguishable from their more common counterparts, seem so omnipresent now it would seem that dialogue is their prerequisite.

And dialogue is very corruptible in my book. And especially more so when a privileged art-industrial complex sits above the fray with a clear conflict of interest, ready to stand behind works that need their dialogue.

Today’s contemporary art resonates with ideas. And all the more better for it, I say. The public now has the ability to expose itself to a whole host of fascinating theoretical discussions on the nature of art, and its effect on our world.

But if Van Laar and Diepeveen are right, and prestige now lies no longer in the work itself, but only in its professional discourse, we must re-learn how to be skeptical and vigilant in today’s boilerplate marketplace. Especially when in front of institutionally powerful work, backed up by all that impressive, serious discourse. All being made by savvy professionals who know that their existence is only as necessary as the mediation they provide to “translate” that obscure discourse for the ordinary masses. Is discourse the new path of salvation?

Eric Halfvarson as the Grand Inquisitor in Verdi’s Don Carlo, the original inspiration for Dostoyevsky.

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor is the high priest who “protects” humanity in blissful ignorance from the awful truths of the Church. But in today’s world, perhaps the real Grand Inquisitors who protect that secret knowledge from the masses are the curators, or the gallerists, or the public art installators.

For discourse, by its nature, is mutable. Inherently contentious, transient, amorphous. It has little substance: it can change literally at the drop of a time. It is as vulnerable to manipulation, deception and illusion as any political dialogue is. When it is used to solely serve power, as in the case of propaganda, it can be insidious and dangerous.

And it is perhaps even more insidious when it is has its cake and eats it too: when an institution can claim to be championing “institutional critique” from below, by cloaking money, power and real estate from above in supposed left-wing or “critical” dialogue. I am reminded here of a particularly fascinating critique of American conservative thought, who some theorists have argued is in fact a Rightwing idea wrapped in an ingenious Leftwing narrative, that an essentially Aristocratic agenda can never be openly so, that it must necessarily pretend to be one of the common man. That is how you get grass roots organizers fighting for corporate tax breaks. Or consider some of the followers of Leo Strauss’s political philosophy, which could be argued is literally a philosophy of deception. The Iraq War proves this notion beautifully, as the justification for the war over the years seamlessly morphs from one reason to another, to another, to another . . .  Any will really do, as long as folks buy it.

For, as much as I enjoy the discourse, and as much as I myself participate in this discourse, I still find it somewhat troubling. The notion that a work of art could sort of be “substance-free” – and defined solely by the quality of the professional commentariat behind it or not – is incredibly cynical to me. Some part of me I guess still wants to believe, perhaps naively, that there is some intrinsic quality to the work itself, one that needs no discourse, needs no explanation, needs no PhD. Can the work ever transcend the discourse?

Seward Johnson’s Forever Marilyn statue, Chicago. What is its discourse? High Kitsch would seem to have it mastered its own art of self-defense.

Too-Big-To-Fail-Artwork, Fifty feet high, costing 1 million dollars, installed in an institutional setting, with the proper professional narrative behind it, seems unquestionable today. They are the derivatives of our artworld, and much like Wall Street’s version, as long as we don’t look too carefully inside, they may make us Insiders all a lot of money. As the classic Wall Street trader joke goes, keep trading those tins of sardines, over and over, just whatever you do! Don’t ever actually open them. Whatever you do, don’t eat the contents, because everyone knows the fish rotted out long ago. The sardines are for trading, not for eating.

I think we must start to ask some dirty questions, and to start using some dirty words. For starters: Is the prestige deserved? And second, why do we assume so? Who wants us to assume so?

If we want artwork in the future to be something more than just a tradeable commodity, we may just have to start opening some of those cans of worms.   •

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Promiscuous Visions:

The Hackers At The Heart of Photography

A New Course by John D’Agostino

-Captain Crunch, legendary Phone Phreaker.

Man Ray, Rayograph, 1925.

Matthew Brandt, From the series Rivers, Lakes & Reservoirs, 2010. C-Print soaked in source water.

John Chiara, 8th at Hooper, 2003. Dye Destruction Photograph.

Kim Keever, River Keeper, 2003. C-Print made with fishtank diorama.

Eileen Quinlan, Yellow Goya, 2007. Folded chromogenic paper.

Course Schedule

Week 1: Dégredés

Featured Artists:

Joseph Nicephore Niecpe · Marco Breuer · Lillian Bassman · E.J. Bellocq Curtis Mann · Edmund Teske  · Jacques Villeglé · John Chiara · Chris McCaw

Week 2: The Threat of Abstraction

Featured Artists:

Man Ray · Jaroslav Rossler · Barbara Kasten ·Roger Catherineau · Laszlo Moholy-Nagy · Walead Beshty · Aaron Siskind · Frederick Sommer · Eileen Quinlan

Week 3: Printers, Painters & Pictorialists

Featured Artists:

Mario Giacomelli · Jan Saudek · Alvin Langdon Coburn · Wade Guyton · Lucas Samaras · Robert Demachy · Matthew Brandt · Matt Saunders · Henry Peach Robinson

Week 4: Fire & Ice

Featured Artists:

Adam Fuss · Susan Derges · Yves Klein ·Hiroshi Sugimoto · Jorma Puranen · Kim Keever ·Wilson Bentley · Dupreez & Jones · Christopher Colville

Week 5: Digitalis Hybrida

Featured Artists:

Thomas Ruff · Jason Salavon · Andreas Gursky ·Idris Khan · Andreas Gefeller · Carter Mull ·Richard Misrach · Aziz + Cucher · Loretta Lux

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