[spectre] PANDILOVSKI IN CONVERSATION WITH HOLUBIZKY 2/2

[EAF Director]

MELENTIE PANDILOVSKI IN CONVERSATION WITH IHOR HOLUBIZKY 2/2

MP: Art has passed through a number of phases in the past twenty-five 
years. Do you think that there has been a decisive critical shift 
from postmodernism, or are we still in this historic stage?

It certainly seems that way when reading persuasive writers and 
theorists: their insistence that we are in an age of 'massive change' 
[to borrow designer Bruce Mau's 'project'], or the silver-tongued 
paradoxes as in Belting's AHM, an age 'where nothing new is 
discovered and the old is no longer familiar'. I would interpret the 
later as myopia-the glut of art production over the past forty years 
makes it near-to impossible for any one historian, critic, curator or 
pundit to have the inside track on what it all means. I agree with 
Belting and have thought that The [notion of] Shock of the New [Ian 
Dunlop's book, the title then borrowed by Robert Hughes] is a 
now-historic period. Can anything in art be shocking anymore? Yet, I 
see 'The New' that reminds me of what I have seen before. Some is 
work by artists who are forgotten or never known. The more doors you 
open, the more questions that appear. 

If we are in an age, it is of the museum and the art spectacle, the 
proliferation of recurring temporary exhibitions and art fairs, like 
the era of the mega rock concert in the wake of Woodstock. Some are 
remembered for things other than the music-such as Altamont-or for 
their branding [Lollapalooza as a recent example]. Music is not made 
in these festivals. Music comes from the thoughts of musicians in 
private before it becomes public. Likewise, for art. More often than 
not, art is 'merely' consecrated in the new public event. The late 
art historian Francis Haskell explored the history of 
art-as-spectacle in The Ephemeral Museum [Yale University Press, 
2000], which began in the early nineteenth-century with the 
'invention' of the Old Masters loan exhibition and continues. Such 
exhibitions, he noted, on the anniversary of an artist's birth or 
death, have become a social obligation at the expense of scholarship. 
So too, I believe, for twentieth-century modern masters.  Enough with 
the Picasso and Warhol shows.  

What has changed in the past twenty-five years? What have we added? 
Rap music and the internet? DEVO recorded Post-post modern man in 
1990. As good as any date for the end or demise of Po-Mo. [One of the 
DEVO 'boys' was a student of Lew Alquist. I note this not for the 
sake of cultural trivia but to reopen the question, where do ideas 
begin; as Ralph Waldo Emerson posed in 1841, where does nature-our 
idea of nature-begin?]

MP: Is art in a general state of crisis today? Or is crisis a natural 
state for the arts in all times?

Crisis is just another word for, what ? Nothing left to say [with 
apologies to Kris Kristofferson]! In 1992, the National Gallery of 
Canada organised the first national overview of Canadian abstraction 
of the 1950s, titled The Crisis of Abstraction. Was it really a 
crisis? I don't think so, not for the artists nor for society then. 
I've seen a Crisis of Impressionism titled show, so why not a crisis 
of everything show? The Cuban missile crisis was a crisis, but now 
anything can be a crisis, as over-amplified by 24/7 news channels. In 
the wake of the predicted disaster of Hurricane Rita [a crisis of 
global, massive weather change?], there was a Fox News live feed from 
downtown Beaumont Texas. The on-camera reporter walked to the 
drive-through bank and pointed at the ATM machine and informed 'the 
world' that it was out of order and to underscore the importance of 
this piece of trivia blurted out that there was no indication when it 
would be operating again! 

I keep a copy of the 1972 anthology Museums in Crisis close at hand. 
Valuable insights and nothing much has changed: directors are still 
beleaguered, curators have dilemmas, trustees have power, museums 
huddle under corporate wings and the democratic fallacy is 
perpetuated.

MP: In a situation of rampant globalisation and sweeping liberalism, 
what is the role of art?

Maybe that's the crisis, what is the role of art? Perhaps it has been 
over-named, oversold, and overwritten. There's more to McLuhan than 
the catch phrase 'global village', which has been overused and 
vulgarised. SBS broadcasts a program called Global Village. How is it 
different from National Geographic magazine? It is made for Western 
audiences, to make them feel comfortable with the notion of a 
multi-centered world. Is it the same for global-sample exhibitions 
and biennials-a comfort zone with a tidy tour package of the world of 
art?

MP: What is the role of the independent curator today and are 
independent curators still necessary? How is curating today different 
to the era when there weren't as many art institutions globally?

Independent curators are highly dependant on the gallery system. Very 
few can assert true independance as they must toe the line of 
institutional agendas. By the same token, the 'democracy' of the 
curatorial team weakens a strong individual voice. The results are 
exhibitions by committee, which is NOT to say that teamwork is not 
important in an institution, but it has to embrace all the staff, not 
just the glamour positions. For more on this topic, see my responses 
to question 17.

If, as many claim, exhibitions are a type of cultural laboratory, 
shouldn't there be a post-experiment analysis? That doesn't happen. 
Hefty catalogues are produced in advance of the experiment. At best 
these are sketches for what has yet to happen, or be determined. For 
more on this topic, see my response to question 15.

MP: How did you come to write art criticism?

I thought that writing art criticism was a necessary rite of passage, 
so I did. In truth, I have only written two or three pieces of 
outright criticism over twenty years. I regret the first because I 
criticised the artists. I apologised to them and am still friends 
with one of the two. My last art criticism in 1999 was, I believe, 
justified: I criticised the curators. Perhaps this too was unfair 
because artists are inevitably caught in collateral damage. I see 
myself as an historian [because my formative period is now history], 
and an essayist. If I can't add anything to a topic, why write?

MP: Tell me something about the role of the art critic today and 
about how you define the delicate relationship between critics and 
artists?

The long history of critics' hostility towards artists is hardly 
delicate. Critics DO manufacture words and see confrontation as their 
right. One example, from Henry Geldzahler's essay in New York 
Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970: "There were critics [in the 1950s] 
crying for a return to the figure, for a 'new humanism." [With the 
appearance of Pop Art] these critics cried 'foul', and they cried it 
hard and long'. Yet doubts and questions can be raised by critics. An 
example is in Ira Gitler's liner notes to Bill Evans Trio, Sunday at 
the Village Vanguard [1961]: "Just because I am a writer-critic in 
the jazz field doesn't mean that I can't enjoy an album like any 
layman. It is true that when one is forced to listen to 'x' amount of 
LPs every week, there are times when the spirit can become hostile 
toward the very thought of records." Hostility is what I object to-is 
art a battleground fought over biases and preferences? It's different 
for the movie industry. Generally speaking, the public decides what 
it wants to see and why, even if the reviews are universally 
critical. In one conversation with the [then] art critic for the 
Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper-safe and off-the-cuff 
because I had just left my gallery position. I was 'independent'-we 
spoke of one artist who had been highly promoted a few years before 
and had fallen off the map. The critic said the problem was that the 
artist believed his own press. Well, who wrote the press? A critic 
cannot walk away from what they write-their responsibility-and yet 
they do so, over and over again. Donald Judd wrote in the early 
1960s, wearing his art critic hat at the time, "Criticism is pretty 
much after the fact". [Roger Fry made a similar comment on reviewing 
his own criticism in 1920.] I can imagine how newspaper critics are 
chosen: "Let's see, you have no experience and you're an opinionated 
little fart. Oh, you can be the art critic." Which is also to say, 
that the automotive critic-writer had better know what they are 
talking about: more people drive cars than look at art.

MP: What do you think of the affirmative writing, which is so often 
present in the critical writing about the arts?

If you mean affirmative writing as in making unsubstantiated claims 
that bask in its own glow, that's part and parcel of the game. One 
artist is championed at the expense of many others, one perspective 
given primacy over others. Multi-perspective publications can often 
cancel each other out. From Robert Scholes' book on science fiction 
writing, Structural Fabulation [University of Notre Dame Press, 
1975], "Knowing one thing is a way of not knowing something else". I 
come across a lot of one thing not knowing something else.

W. McAllister Johnson on catalogue writing in Art History, Its Uses 
and Abuses [University of Toronto Press, 1988] says, "a curious 
contradiction: a catalogue is issued for an exhibition even as it is 
supposed to record its 'results'! It therefore anticipates the 
fact... Whatever the time and energy expended in their creation, 
catalogue production remains a 'cottage industry', whose artisans 
have very different ideas of their craft. Otherwise put, they may not 
know it well, if at all."

There is another form of affirmative writing and as I have already 
quoted artist Don Jean-Louis' 1969 affirmative assertion at the 
outset, here is the last line from curator Germano Celant's 'Stating 
That', his 1969 Arte Povera catalogue [an affirmative introduction, 
with doubts expressed]. "This book is a precarious and contingent 
document and lives hazardously in an uncertain artistic-social 
situation." They are expressing not dissimilar ideas, at the same 
time and unaware of each other. If I have to chose, I'll choose the 
artist over the curator in this instance. The artist is closer to 
'prime production', whereas the curator is 'exhibiting doubts'. And 
yet, they are both 'doing their job'.

MP: Can you compare the art criticism in North America to the 
criticism here in Australia?

There are good writers in North America and Australia, everywhere for 
that matter and in unlikely places such as Richard Huntington who 
writes for the Buffalo News. But no one outside of Buffalo is going 
to read him. Does that matter? Good art writing should address what 
is happening in the community-to track it. Keep it clean, keep it 
honest. The only advice I can give to artists; be mindful of what is 
written, but to go about your work as if nothing had happened. 

MP: In your text 'The Man Who Thought His Myopia Was A Vision: 
Heliocentric Worlds, with apologies to Herman Blount', you give us a 
very important parallel between the worlds of visual arts and music. 
You depict the impact that San Ra and his Solar Myth Arkestra had on 
your formative years, as well as the curatorial experiences acquired 
at cultural institutions such as the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the 
Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. One word that seems to me to be 
very important is 'independent'. Could you define what 'independent' 
means for you today?

I returned to listening to jazz after years of inattention [in my 
most lucid moments, I could only play fake jazz]. For me, jazz 
embodies whatever notion of independence [freedom of expression] we 
can muster. The last two CDs I purchased were the aforementioned Bill 
Evans and Archie Shepp's Fire Music [1965]. I don't see a 
contradiction in appreciating the two, as different as they are-Evans 
and Shepp are independent voices, adding something to the language of 
culture. I am exercising my independence in buying both of them. The 
term independent has more relevance in music than it does in the 
gallery world. The rise of independent music labels-they come and 
go-is an alternative and a necessity. Musicians need not wait for 
major labels to discover them. Not all of it is good, but there is a 
lot of good music that would not be available if left to the devices 
of the industry. Ironically, major labels will pluck off what they 
think may generate business for them thereby adding industry currency 
and credibility. I feel the same way about the well-heeled gallery 
and museum system. Independent curators are a pool of inexpensive 
intellectual talent that museums are unwilling to invest in, within 
'their own culture'. The temporary-contemporary centres have changed 
dramatically over the past thirty-five years [less independent as 
accountability to funding bodies increases], but this is where the 
action is-the laboratory. Not all experiments will succeed, but the 
measure of success is not the manufacturing of likely-to-succeed 
events. Big galleries will trawl these centres for 'artist talent'. 
One reason for the marginalisation of vanguard jazz in the 1950s and 
1960s was the reluctance of a white-dominated music industry to 
promote afro-American musicians who aligned themselves with 
radicalised politics. In other words, if you want to be independent, 
prepare to be poor.

I don't wish to criticise the Museum of Contemporary Art. I believe 
that it has an important role to play, but I didn't feel much like a 
curator there, more like a 'content provider'. At the Art Gallery of 
Hamilton there were similar pressures to deliver content that would 
click the turnstiles as a performance indicator, but there was time 
for research, even if it was on my own time. Granted, the Art Gallery 
of Hamilton performance stakes were lower than that of the MCA, so I 
could/would make time for things that mattered, and in that way, 
asserting independent thought and still contributing to the 
organisation. Then again perhaps it was just me and every other MCA 
curator has been 'happy as a clam'. I confess that I can't listen to 
Sun Ra everyday. Too intense.

MP: What do you think of the situation today for young and emerging 
artists? It's obvious that they have more chances than fifteen or 
twenty years ago, simply because of what seems to be a favourable 
grants policy for emerging artists across the globe. What is the 
impact [if any] of this policy, in regard to upper-echelon art and 
the art market?

First, I don't have much faith in grants or policies. No matter how 
committed arts councils are, at regional to national level, they are 
accountable further up the bureaucratic food chain. Arts funding is 
an easy cut when 'belts are tightened'. Who receives grants has no 
bearing on the art market, nor are individual grants any indication 
of critical mass or commodity market success-to-come. The art market 
is a wholly different beast from the agendas of arts councils and 
public-funded galleries. Discourse means nothing in the primary 
market, and definitely not in the secondary market, where the real 
profit lies, for the auction houses themselves. The majority of art 
dealers struggle year-to-year and I know only a handful of artists 
personally, who can support themselves through the sale of their 
work. That's not going to change. Moreover, in real economic terms, 
the art market is not so vast, but it is unregulated.

It's tough for young and emerging artists-so many graduates pouring 
out of art schools into a system than cannot absorb them. What's the 
outcome? More art teachers? It can't go on forever-the art school 
system will collapse under its own weight and backlog. That may have 
a positive result, we can start it all over again. 

  MP: You are also a musician and you have dealt with music almost as 
much as the visual arts. You have said that as a musician, you "have 
learned to let things go and that there was never going to be a 
perfect performance or recording." Do you feel the same about visual 
art?

Yes, except playing music was more satisfying 'incompleteness'. You 
learn from your mistakes, and no one was hurt or humiliated [sure, 
there's bitterness, but you get over it]. Wish I could say the same 
for the art world. 

  MP: There is big hype today about Asian contemporary art. We have 
been aware of a huge number of artists coming from Japan, China etc. 
The number of Biennials and other grand manifestations in Asia has 
exponentially grown, which is to say that we are bidding farewell to 
the Eurocentric art world. Yet, the domain of art theory, criticism 
and aesthetics still remains ruled by the 'old world'. How do you 
account for this?

Too much has been invested and absorbed, to ever have a blank slate. 
Then again, art history as we know it is only a hundred or so years 
old. Yet the hegemony issue is being acknowledged. Belting-AHM 
[quoting him because he is a 'Euro'] says the pressures on the canon 
"[do] not mean that the traditional discussion of art history is on 
the verge of collapse, but it invites us to reopen that discussion to 
communicate with others from non-Western traditions."

That's great-now let's see it in action. Perhaps in a hundred years 
this may shift. However, let's not conflate the dramatic shifts in 
world economies with art and culture, nor conflate say, Japan with 
China-different cultural and social states of mind. China is not 
going to reinvent capitalism, but it will very soon be the major 
economic power in the world. Not in old money terms, but in 
dominating the world of commodity production. Vast and cheap labour 
is one of the reasons. That's still old capitalism in operation. 
Lower the cost of production: exploit the workers. In this case, 
exploiting your own nation's workers in order to drive a wedge into 
old capitalism. But who is buying the new Asian art? It's the 
established Western art market that needs fresh goods in order to 
keep expanding its markets, as the West profited from the Japanese 
economic boom in selling ITS art to Japan, as the Europeans sold 
THEIR art to the American nouveau riche a hundred years ago. 

  MP: What do you think of Canadian art today?

I probably know more about Australian art today. My continuing 
interest in Canada is to the artists, whom I have followed for some 
time-it's my commitment to them-and unfinished business in Canadian 
art history. The latter, however, has informed my approach to 
Australian research and work as a useful comparative study. Anyone 
committed to the research and study of Canadian art had to know 
American art history too, not because of influence or 'derivation', 
but the cultural traffic that was generated by artists themselves. 
Ideas don't stop at political borders. [This is where my history 
training comes back into play.]
   
MP: Most of the international art market has Aboriginal art as a 
focus for Australia. How do you interpret this?

Any market action, critical or commodity, outside of the national 
scene must have benefits. On the other hand, the breadth of 
Australian culture is distorted. Maybe this isn't such a bad thing-a 
payback time, assuming that indigenous artists DO benefit directly. I 
read with interest Bruce Ferguson's candid comment on Gerald 
McMaster's appointment as Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery 
of Ontario [Bruce has just been appointed AGO's director of 
exhibitions and both had worked in the USA for several years]: "I 
just love the idea of an Indian getting to decide about white man's 
art... This has never happened before. It's beautiful." Indeed. Now 
let's see this happen in Australia. I won't go further. Suffice to 
say, there still much more 'work' to be done in Australia, and then 
let's see how this is received internationally, in the critical and 
commodity markets.

MP: You have lived in Australia for the past seven years and have 
followed closely the work of Australian artists. How do you see the 
place of Australian art within the context of the contemporary art 
project?

Like my continuing interest in Canadian artists, there are emerging 
to mid-career artists in Australia who are thought-provoking and 
engaging. I will not name them. That would be unfair and send out an 
incorrect signal. Equally, I feel that there are Australian artists 
with a mature practice and senior status who should be better known 
in the world, but there is no model nor context in which to send 
their work out. Art as diplomatic mission serves political agendas, 
not the artist's needs. A recent news channel 'filler' program 
interviewed celebrity chefs, among others, Jamie Oliver, Gordon 
Ramsay [both Brits] and an Indian [subcontinent] chef [can't recall 
his name]. For argument's sake, let's think of 'celebrity chefs' as 
the curators of the contemporary cuisine project. Oliver pooh-poohed 
the idea of a Michelin star, but stated that getting one would be 
easy enough for him. It was a matter of doing the right things to 
charm the critics. He has other agendas, one of which is a form of 
social action and responsibility-training the unemployed, improving 
public school lunches. Ramsay denied that he was a celebrity chef, 
but said that there was nothing wrong in aspiring to a Michelin star 
and that it was a legitimate, professional benchmark. Which is to 
say, he believes in his profession-his craft-as much as Oliver does, 
but chooses to stay within the prescribed arena of that profession. 
The question posed to the Indian chef was different. Could Indian 
cuisine ever gain gourmet status world wide? His response-one billion 
people eat Indian food everyday, so why not the world? The question 
was loaded, and the response was wry. Which is to say, the fact that 
one billion people eat Indian food everyday doesn't matter to those 
who control the cuisine canon. The canon may simply exclude the one 
billion because of preferences. 

There is Australian art that is 'nourished' by the legacies of the 
national school, what can properly be called 'Australian art' [which 
then raises the question, what is more Australian than Aboriginal art 
in all of its forms and manifestations] and art from Australia that 
speaks to anyone, anywhere, within the prescribed and 
'industry-accepted' area of contemporary art. [I know what you mean 
by the contemporary art project, so I won't unravel the term]. The 
members of the global cultural politburo are growing, but there's 
still a pecking order and mandated ambitions. Read the mission 
statement of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC: "Founded... as an 
educational institution, [MoMA] is dedicated to being the foremost 
museum of modern art in the world." They achieved that position a 
long time ago. Is Tate Modern challenging that position? What's art 
and culture got to do with it, except where it benefits the museum.

I know that I have dodged answering your question directly, but I 
return to my opening comment about my formative period. I still 
adhere to that optimism and by the same token, recognise that once a 
heretic always a heretic, even in moving towards what may appear to 
others as conservatism. A lot of my work now is historical, but all 
that means is that there's unfinished business and someone's got to 
do it. I'm working on two twentieth-century retrospective exhibitions 
at the moment. One artist is dead, the other is a senior 
practitioner. It's tougher to communicate with the dead artist, but 
when I do 'get a message' it's a doozy!

  My optimism extends to Australian artists who will think for 
themselves. As for 'Australian art', it will manage itself. It has up 
to now. I can only hope that it will manage itself with intelligence, 
passion and compassion. I have no aspirations for Michelin star 
cooking, but I do cook every day and I use local ingredients. If I 
don't, then I'm in a culinary-cultural denial. My results will be 
enjoyable and fulfilling and to hell with what I'm 'told to do'.



This text was commissioned by the Contemporary Art Centre of South 
Australia, Adelaide, for CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ART+CULTURE Broadsheet 
magazine, Volume 34 No 4, 2005.

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