Week 10: Match of the Century: Absence Versus Thin Air

In "A Farwell to Modernism" with Leo Castelli, he argues that art must have an aesthetic aspect to be considered art. It seems the Whitney Biennial produced negative thinking for him, but it also provoked him and got him thinking, and affected him in a meaningful way; after viewing the Whitney Biennial he finally started to accept that art as he knew it was over. In a sense, he came face-to-face with the reality that art as changing (or had transformed previously); it was this convergence of all that he knew to be art, all that he had participated in and connected with for so long, and the acceptance that a new kind of art had replaced all that he knew. Castelli admits that he had a kind of nostalgia for the past after he realized that art had moved on, but with this also come a simultaneous shift in his attitude toward it: don't resist change- instead, embrace it. If you resist it, you may become blindsided by the past, and it may limit the future, and with that, stifle new, meaningful possibilities.  He admits that in the Whitney Biennial, there was enormous ambition, yet it lacked a certain amount of feeling or innovation, unlike previous artists in Castelli's years. He also claims that, the gallery, to a certain extent, creates the artists, makes them what they are.

Donald Morgan was fascinating to me; I loved his work, and the passive-aggressive stance he gave most of his interactive work. For example, the sculpture made out of wood that had snowflakes painted on it beneath glass, and it took the shape of a log propped up on two little sticks (edited to add: the title of the piece is called THAW)... anyway, this structure wasn't miniature, and wasn't huge, it stood just tall enough that the person observing the work has this kind of passive-aggressive reaction to it- like "I could try to jump over that thing if I really wanted, but it's just a couple inches too tall to jump over, I think, but I'm not completely sure.." The work that provokes the kind of attitude where you have to enter into this dialogue with it, whether you want to or not, and it's the kind of dialogue that, albeit silently in your head, you are confronted with this external thing, this object/obstacle that is challenging you and making you think differently about the space you are in, and in the same regard it heightens your awareness of yourself, your body, and the physical plane you are existing in. I think that is brilliant.

So... where does this leave us? With Donald Morgan and Leo Castelli in the last week of our artist experience. We're here, writing, and we're tired. We're trying to be innovative, creative, score some points on our blogs, and we're tired. We have piles of homework to do, spanish presentations to do, and civil war games to anticipate, and yet through it all, I am loving writing this blog post. And I'm tired. I think there is something to be said about that. The fact that I am relishing in thinking of, thinking in, thinking outwardly and creatively, engaging in an open and honest dialogue with all the artists and readings we've encountered, it speaks tremendously for what this class has done for me. It has me slowing down, thinking and writing with intention (or attempting to, anyway), and really developing meaningful and insightful dialogue on a subject in which I had nary a true understanding nor compassion for ten weeks ago. And I think these very same notions, of slowing down, of engaging and creating dialogue with intention, and for a purpose, and cultivating an open and honest dialogue, is what both Morgan and Castelli have in common. Not merely existing. They think with intention, create things (writings, critiques, sculptures, paintings, what-have-yous) that are meaningful to them and engage themselves in an open dialogue with, for the most part, the world. They do more than exist. They live. in the most brilliant and inspiring way.