Ken Johnson, Not Agreeing With

Now this is a long one. But I figure if you get bored, you're perfectly free to click over to Tyra and the dolphins. Independent curator James Hull did not appreciate Globe critic Ken Johnson's take on the Büchel situation.

"The first sentence clearly establishes the biases of the “critic” and irresponsibly places blame singularly on a valuable regional art center that has won accolades for almost everything it has done artistically and economically since it opened–until now.

Johnson concludes, as if he is in some way a good judge of the complicated legal and budgetary issues that have not even been made public, that the Museum’s response is “sad, dumb and shameful.” What is shameful is that Mr. Johnson did not consider that there may be two sides to this story.

Just to put my take in perspective, I have been working with artists to create installations of all kinds on a limited budget for over 15 years. I am an artist who fund raises for myself and other artists and volunteers my time at a non-profit gallery to install work for public exhibition. I have written reviews of exhibitions that have been published in Art Papers, ArtsMedia and Big Red and Shiny. I have also worked with artists as an installer at the List Visual art Center at MIT, ICA Boston, the Thread Waxing space, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, The High Museum of Art and Barbara Krakow Gallery. Additionally I have had to work with installers at the Huntsville Museum of Art to have one of my own installations installed to my specifications for the Triennial “Red Clay Survey” several years ago.

This is just to say that I looked at view this in a the situation in a much more open minded way than Mr. Johnson. Which is not much of a challenge, considering that he spent the entire article vilifying an institution whose side of the story he barely even mentions except to quickly list that the artist had already used up a budget of $300,000 after agreeing to do the installation for $160,000. He gives the museum’s past record short shrift in the second paragraph saying “ Mass MoCA is known for sponsoring artists with ambitious, big ideas.” This actually is just a disguised compliment that Johnson pays to the artist implying he was another artist with a big idea. When the museum tried to remind visitors of the successes it had always had in the past Johnson again attacks them saying, “Mass MoCA has compounded its misdoings by mounting a slick, disingenuous, egregiously self-serving photo and text display called “made at Mass MoCA” ... “The implicit message is that Büchel must be a real jerk to have been so uncooperative.” Show me a single museum that does not brag and archive its past exhibitions. The message is only implicit and egregious because this critic does not want anyone to get both sides of the argument.

To call the installation “slick”–which I think is an underhanded compliment about how well installed the temporary, unplanned “Made at Mass MoCA” installation must have looked–showing the unmentioned skills that the institution can muster in a crunch were not good enough to satisfy the artist (or were they?).

I am not faulting the artist yet, just because I agree with some of the Bloggers and writers that gave more consideration than Mr. Johnson to the obvious similarities of this legal battle to the artist’s stated practice. The text for a recent exhibition Hauser & Wirth Coppermill in London's East End states:

“Büchel often appropriates mass media sources such as the Internet, printed political pamphlets and everyday household objects. His work is informed by an explicit political awareness, often telling of new forms of propaganda...” perhaps referring to Mr. Johnson’s article!

It goes on to say, "'Capital Affair' (also 2002), another collaboration with Motti, promised the entire exhibition budget to the gallery visitor who could find a cheque hidden within the exhibition space of the Helmhaus in Zurich. Büchel repeatedly manipulates and exploits the perceived power of the social and legal contract, subverting the relationship between artist and audience while insisting on a more active political role for both.”

It is not unreasonable, given his past history, to think Buchel may include his legal contract and exhibition budget as fodder to be used in his artistic practice and his installation. After all there is no such thing as bad press–at least for an artist–unfortunately that may not ring true for an institution that has to raise money from almost any source available in order to survive.

This possibility was obvious to others as well, just not to Mr. Johnson, as a posting on the Blog ANABA by Evan demonstrates...

“ Regarding the Büchel kerfuffle: I've been following it for awhile now, and I've come to the conclusion that perhaps his intent all along was to have a "non-show show" at Mass MoCA. It seems like something he would do--create a lot of hype, pull a supposed "freakout" at the last minute, force the folks at Mass MoCA to cleverly conceal everything, post some newspaper clippings about the whole thing and voila, you have a VERY tongue-in-cheek and subversive show. In any event, it's pretty clear to me that Büchel did indeed manipulate the powers-that-be in the press and Mass MoCA to get something out of it, even if it was just some more exposure.”

Yet another posting says:

Man, I pretty much ALWAYS side with the artist, and hate curators claiming artistic license... but I have to hand it to Joe Thompson and Mass Moca for one-upping Büchel at his own "subverting the relationship" game.”

One reason to consider why this explanation was ignored by Mr. Johnson comes from Johnson’s own writings on the artist from a few years earlier at the Swiss Institute, New York (which he quotes in his Boston Globe rant) where he describes the exhibition space as “a grungy, fully furnished apartment with a meandering cinderblock wall running through it. There is a visceral absurdity about the wall, and it is sad how it divides and isolates two people who, we may imagine, might otherwise productively commune and collaborate.”

Could the “two people” of Johnson’s Swiss Institute review be replaced by the Museum vs. Büchel for the same effect? Might the artist want the burlap and tarps of the “Closed” Mass MoCA exhibit to function like the cinder block wall?

Many reasonable questions such as these were omitted by Johnson throughout the incendiary article and replaced by argumentative suppositions like “What may seem to museum workers a perfect solution may not necessarily be acceptable to an artist who has an extremely exacting vision” while the museum implicitly has no vision, not to mention that the installers, many of whom are artists, get slighted by Johnson as well in this slur. I guess the MoCA installers and even his imported, salaried swiss assistants were incapable of making things look “grungy” in just the right way.

The funny thing is (and it was so one sided as to be mildly entertaining!) that after describing a ...“ a grungy, fully furnished apartment with a meandering cinderblock wall running through it” and a “labyrinthine space” ... “animated by mysteries the visitor could only guess at” Mr. Johnnon anoints it “a miracle of industry and imagination” because the trash and old beer can strewn coffee table, old rugs and the cinderblock wall were “exacting” I guess. Johnson could instantly see “ that the artist worried over every object in it the way a literary novelist worries over every word and every sentence.”

Yet Mr. Johnson fails to accept The Mass MoCA installations burlap and tarp covered space, saying visitors will be “mystified by what he or she encounters”. Continuing this sudden change of heart Johnson’s description continues “as you follow a path through the unfinished installation, you can see through the openings below the tarps parts of cars, trucks, trailers ....the second story of a white clapboard house...a guard tower and an almost completely reconstructed interior of an old movie theater.”

He then concludes–in telling contrast to his “miracle of industry and imagination” response to the Swiss Institute installation of a single “grungy” apartment, that “it is altogether a gloomy, frustrating and not at all illuminating experience.” Can we really be expected to believe Mr. Johnson had a completely opposite response to two similarly rambling, Alice in Wonderland installations by the same artist?

Another ANABA blog entry says:

“My impression, and I saw "the show", is that Büchel was overwhelmed by the huge space - unable to finish on-time and within budget - while trying to maintain his demanding character at the same time - and just couldn't deal.... so he abandoned it until safely back home in Switzerland, where he perhaps began to embrace the new nature of the piece.

Really, this works out better for him, because even with ALL of the stuff they put in there (a movie theater, mobile homes, many vehicles and cinderblock walls and shipping containers, a HOUSE) it still looks all spread-out and very much like you are in a single gigantic room, not the disorienting gosh-am-i-still-at-an-art-show? effect that he is able to get in a more manageable space. The museum putting up a maze of tarps and opening the space without permission is doing him a favor... more notoriety for him, and it will actually look better.

I hope that the closeness of Mr. Johnson to this artist, his belief that institutions should not ever question the desires of an artist that they collaborate with (does he accept that term?) and spend whatever money the artist demands are held in check in future opinion pieces that the Globe chooses to publish.

Maybe Mr. Johnson should reread the “List Of Demands” printed in the Globe and see if he has indeed been had.

It makes you think doesn’t it?

Just one final note: Try to remember that, even though your years as a mighty art critic for the New York Times may have convinced you that there is only one interpretation that really counts– YOURS –art is almost by definition a subjective experience. Please try to look at things from more than one perspective in the future, you will serve your Boston Globe readers far better if you do.

Thank you,
James Hull"