Springing Back to Life: A Postmortem

An Instagram picture I captured 30,000 feet over the BC Interior mountains on my way to a conference -- it provided much needed perspective after a very long and challenging semester.

Somewhere back in early January of this year, all of my plans derailed. I found myself with nearly double the teaching workload I anticipated, a series of floating deadlines were finally fixed over one tight week in February, conference papers and research trips for which I had much material to prepare were on the horizon, and a laundry list of long-neglected tasks screamed for my attention. Something had to give. Don't get me wrong, the adventure I eventually found myself on proved both rewarding and quite challenging-- I ended up working at a pace not dissimilar to my final year as a graduate student-- but this past spring semester once again reminded me how critical the process of postmortem evaluation is after completing a significant project, goal, or period of intense work.

The term "postmortem" comes to us from the world of science, and it refers to the practice of examining  a corpse to assess the cause of death. Over time, the gruesome term entered the academic lexicon (not entirely ironic I might add), and has since become associated with the evaluative process after the completion of research and other long-term projects. A postmortem, at its best, provides the chance for reflection, feedback, and new perspectives. It is an opportunity to inventory what did and did not work, along with identifying potential new ways of progressing with future projects related to the one completed. This is where a postmortem serves those a part of academia especially well, since the academic semester provides faculty and students with a discrete space of time that repeats at regular intervals. Therefore, performing a postmortem at the end of each semester is a wonderful practice to adopt.

To adapt this practice as a student, the rough framework of a postmortem entails gathering your reflections based on your response to the following kinds of suggested trigger question:

•  Did I achieve the kinds of outcomes in the classes I enrolled in-- why or why not? Are my grades reflecting my intended efforts? What were the take-away ideas from each of the courses I completed? In what specific areas can I improve my performance? 
• What did I do in class? Did I pay attention and manage to capture the information I needed? Was I distracted? Did I have enough sleep? Was I prepared for what I needed to do? Did I ask for help and/or seek guidance from peers and professors?
• How did I manage my overall time? Did I use time committed to school, work, and my personal time wisely? Did I take on too many tasks? Did I skip too many classes? Did I waste my time on tasks? When did I procrastinate, and why?
• How did I organize my assignments? Did I meet deadlines? Did my organization system to get things completed work-- why or why not? Did I take sufficient notes? Did I have a system in place for organizing my ideas? Did I do enough research? Did I have a plan in place to avoid overwhelming myself at midterm and the end of the semester?
• How was my relationship with professors? Did I engage with them enough over the semester? Did I take advantage of office hours and ask questions? Did I use campus services (library, student services, etc...) to my advantage?

Bottom line, a postmortem uncovers both successes and challenges, but what you do with this information lies at the heart of the process. Reflecting on your past semester should help you in goal setting for future semesters, along with laying out a road map that will help you achieve desired outcomes. 

My own postmortem following this spring semester was especially revealing. Among the things I learned: there is a limit to the number of classes I can successfully teach in one semester; I cannot survive on less than 7 hours of sleep a night; I need to review my work flow to prioritize and improve response time to emails and requests;  I cannot attend and participate in every event that I want to; producing solid research and writing can be achieved in small chunks of time; and yes, stopping the blog was a mistake-- a big mistake-- the mental and creative rewards far outweigh the time commitment. And so here I am sharing this information in hopes that it will help some of you. That is why I love to blog and will pick up now where I left off. And to those students, colleagues, friends, family, and bloggers who politely asked "so what's up with your blog?" over the past several months, I extend a warm thank-you. You also helped me realize just how much I missed it. It is so nice to know that people are out there reading and getting some value from these posts even as I blog just for the sheer joy of the practice. It is a lesson learned.

Location| Budapest and Vienna: Season's Greetings

Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous New Year from beautiful and wintery Europe! Here are some selected Instagram photos to give you a feel of what we are experiencing here in my family's hometown of Budapest, along with some images from our side trip to Vienna (only 2.5 short hours by train). Christmas markets, outdoor ice skating, hot mulled wine, family dinners, the opera, and of course, lots of art to enjoy and provoke discussion. Enjoy and see you in 2013!

Writing and Not Writing About the Art Market: The Fallout

Screen grab of the article that started the conversation...

A few weeks ago while surfing my Twitter feed, I noticed a tweet from documentary filmmaker Ben Lewis, producer of The Great Contemporary Art Bubble, citing a "bombshell" announcement that Sarah Thornton was no longer reporting on the art world. He quoted her statement that summed up quite simply: "the art market is too corrupt to report on and I quit." I was immediately intrigued and being a huge fan of Thornton's writing I followed Lewis's link to an article Thornton published in the October edition of Tar Magazine titled "Top 10 reasons Not to write about the art market."I have summarized her points in a list here below:

1. It gives too much exposure to artists who attain high prices.

2. It enables manipulators to publicize the artists whose prices they spike at auction.

3. It never seems to lead to regulation.

4. The most interesting stories are libelous.

5. Oligarchs and dictators are not cool.

6. Writing about the art market is painfully repetitive.

7. People send you unbelievably stupid press releases.

8. It implies that money is the most important thing about art.

9. It amplifies the influence of the art market

10. The pay is appalling.

Sarah Thornton became well known for her study of the institutions making up the art world in her wonderfully written Seven Days in the Art World (2008) Image courtesy: Canadian Art

Bravo I thought. Finally someone speaking the truth that so many of us struggle to make sense of when approaching the baffling world of today's art market. Indeed, Thornton goes a long ways towards explaining through her ten points just why it is that the bubble Lewis described so well in his film has not burst (in fact, it just keeps getting bigger). Following since the discussion and comments about her abrupt departure, it is clear that the lack of real political mass in the wake of Occupy and many of the protest movements witnessed over the previous year is partly fueling this position. To be honest, I really can't blame her for the decision to stop reporting on the market, and especially after reading and thinking about Martha Schwendener's follow-up article on "The State of Political Art"-- an article I blogged about last year when pondering these issues through a series of Philosopher Cafe's I was hosting on the topic of artist activism. Schwendener's depressing conclusion after studying a number of exhibitions mounted in the year since the protests is that contemporary art, however political or subversive its intent, relentlessly suffers the fate of institutionalization and the money problems that come with it.

Moreover, Schwendener's observations only reinforce Thornton's ten points:

"What all of these shows do, however, is return protest and activism to the white cube and institutions funded, as Occupy Museums points out, by the very people the art work theoretically rails against. "Stop using my art to wash your money," one participant said at Momenta. But this happens all the time…Like other fields, art has a serious money and institution problem that reached a breaking point under neoliberalism. What past art movements taught us is that changing the medium or the definition of an artist doesn't help."

Christie's auction of a Renoir painting in October-- it wasn't even over and the price was already well over $4 million. Image courtesy: UK Telegraph

Not surprisingly, the response from art market insiders has been both dismissive and condescending. Case in point is billionaire art collector and art critic for the New York Observer, Adam Lindemann, who posted an article "Writing About Not Writing About the Art Market"  offering a point-by-point rebuttal of Thornton's original article. Having very little to add to the critical discussion, the article ironically enough proves all of Thornton's points by offering an example of the kind of writing and approach to art and its institutions that does little to question anything other than the status quo. For a billionaire collector, who is also an art critic, this should not be so surprising (this is the same man, after all, who infuriated his neighbours by planting a giant phallic Franz West sculpture on his property). But if this is the best kind of reporting we now have on the art market, it is hard not to be discouraged.

As a final note, I absolutely love this 2011 interview with Thornton posted below. Here, much like in her recent article, she offers up candid, honest, and valuable assessments concerning the art world in straight-forward and concise language. In particular, Thornton convincingly argues that too much time is taken up talking about whether people "like" particular kinds of art versus understanding the way art is deployed as a potent form of cultural capital (Ah yes-- this really *is* the task of any good art historian afterall). She also describes how and why she decided to combine her skills in sociology and art history to arrive at her eye-opening accounts of the mechanisms, interests, and power mongering within the contemporary art world-- a fascinating topic in and of itself.  But in the end, and despite any misgivings she now has about the subject she has spent so much time invested in, Thornton does share one pearl of wisdom that I think is worth repeating here:  "A successful artist is one who doesn't feel bitter." Words to live by, in my humble opinion, whatever your profession.



Further Reading:

Horowitz, Noah. Art of the Deal: Contemporary Art in a Global Financial Market. Princeton University Press (2011).

Thompson, Don. The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art. Palgrave Macmillan (2010).

Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. W.W. Norton and Company (2009).

Quick Compare | Cindy Sherman, Martha Rosler, and Vogue Magazine

Cindy Sherman, Self-Portrait for French Vogue (2007) Image courtesy: Artobserved

A few weeks back in my art theory course, we were reading excerpts from Lea Vergine's 1974 groundbreaking book The Body as Language and discussing how female performance art has transitioned, changed, and sometimes stayed the same in connection to the shifting discourse around feminism and beauty. Interestingly, while researching material for this class, I ended up juxtaposing Martha Rosler's 1982 video art performance Martha Rosler Reads Vogue with Cindy Sherman's editorial work in French Vogue in 2007, where she assumed the persona of the "fashionista" that Rosler had offered critical commentary about 25 years earlier. After reflecting on the class discussion, it is quite amazing how well these two works stand in tension with one another. In Rosler's performance, that familiar deadpan voice (the one many of us recall from Semiotics of the Kitchen) poses the relentless question "What is Vogue?" while offering a close reading, and unpacking the cultural language offered, on page after page of an actual edition of the popular and iconic fashion magazine.



Here, Rosler anticipates the emerging post-feminist position that has been unwilling to fully interrogate (or at least come to some reasonable terms with) the resilient and seductive world of commodities targeting female consumers. One need only point to any episode of the popular "Real Housewives" franchise to see this phenomenon in action. Indeed, it is hard not to notice Rosler's fingers caressing each page of the magazine as she works through her monologue. This of course is at the core of the performance's powerful statement. With Sherman, we see Rosler's radical critique morph into a situational and fully postmodern intervention that dramatically positions the artist on the actual pages of Vogue. It is important to know that Sherman was invited and encouraged to produce her own performative fashion shoot using the very commodity items and media forms that had been a source of Rosler's critique. In the end, Sherman's difficult to categorize pictures (one wonders if the irony of the images is lost on Vogue readers-- Sherman does not really comment on this issue in her interview and discussion of the editorial below) further highlights the problematic and contradictory forces that inform present-day feminist politics.



Interestingly enough, and to add to the complexity surrounding these related performances, Rosler's video was recently screened as part of MoMA's contribution to the "Fashion Night Out" event that happens annually during New York Fashion Week. In November Rosler will have her much anticipated first solo exhibition at MoMA and is planning a large-scale version of an American style garage sale where she will display and sell second-hand goods to visitors. Rosler is also soliciting donations and, as the ad for the video screening promises without a hint of irony, "contributors will receive a 20% discount at the MoMA store!" I have no doubt that Rosler knows exactly what she is doing-- stay tuned.

Screen grab from Martha Rosler's upcoming solo exhibition at MoMA-- a live garage sale is planned. Image courtesy: MoMA

Further Reading:

Brunsdon, Charlotte.  “Feminism,Postfeminism, Martha, Martha, and Nigella”  Cinema Journal , Vol. 44, No. 2 (Winter, 2005), pp. 110-116.

Sprague-Jones, J. and Sprague, J. “The Standpoint ofArt/Criticism: Cindy Sherman as Feminist Artist?” Sociological Inquiry, 81: 2011, 404–430. 

New Courses for Spring 2013: Topics in Modern/Postmodern Architecture and Avant-Garde Film

As registration for Spring 2013 academic courses begins soon, I wanted to provide more information about new courses I will begin teaching in January. Please see detailed descriptions below including a new special topics class in the History of Architecture (1700-present), and the History of Avant-Garde Film. If you have any specific questions that are not answered here or in the links I provide you to the registration for the courses, you can contact me directly. I look forward to another rich and engaging semester with both new and familiar faces.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Mondays 4:00-6:50pm, Room Fir 3414)

ARTH 3100: Special Topics-- History of Architecture, 1700-present

Norman Foster, Reichstag interior, Berlin (1993)

This course traces the history of architecture from the period of the late Baroque in the eighteenth century through to the postmodern architectural styles associated with the contemporary present, approaching architecture as a unique medium with its own visual vocabulary and spatial codes. The various formal languages, designs, and theories that have shaped the history of architecture will be explored through the close examination of select buildings and spatial environments set within specific cultural, social, political and economic contexts of their planning and construction. The broader purpose of this course is to provide students with the ability to critically evaluate and recognize how the history and theory of architecture, especially as it evolved through periods of emerging nationalism, industrialization, urbanization, and modernism within the framework of a broader global visual culture and art history, continue to impact our collective spatial, visual, intellectual and cultural environments today.

All of the buildings under examination (which will introduce and cover aspects of architecture, spatial planning, and styles associated with the Baroque, Neo-Classical, Gothic Revival, Arts and Crafts, and Art Nouveau movements in Europe and North America, together with radical breaks seen in the turn to globalizing Modern and Post-Modern architecture in the practices of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, Robert Venturi, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry and others) will be related to their original contexts, but also raise questions about the range of functions that architecture might fulfill within different societies. While the primary focus of the course will be on Western architecture and culture, the architecture of the Middle East, Asia, the Americas and Africa will also be explored through targeted readings and lectures. The course will therefore not just be about following a chronological and progressive trajectory of “great buildings” and “great architects” but will instead address broad issues related to political power, gender, sexuality, race, and the formation of individual and group identities. In this way, the ideas raised in this course will also draw attention to the dynamics and ongoing debates concerning what it means to make a building and design a space in any cultural context.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Tuesdays 4:00-6:50pm, Room Fir 3414)

ARTH 3100: Special Topics—History of Avant-Garde Film

Andy Warhol, Screen Test (Edie Sedgwick) (1964)

The avant-garde movements of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been determining forces in shaping collective ideas about artistic practice and culture, social history, and subversive intent.  Not surprisingly, the technology of motion pictures has provided avant-garde practitioners with a dynamic new medium to explore a range of themes and philosophies, linking filmic experimentation with important ideas emerging in the modern and contemporary art of the past century.

Beginning with an examination of film’s critical role in the development of modern art and the history of the avant-garde, this course will draw from existing issues and debates concerning art history and the expanding field of visual culture linked through a number of filmic subgenres (such as abstraction, collage, Dadaism, appropriation, surrealism, structuralism, duration, parody, camp, autobiography and expanded cinema). In this way, the course also offers a critical examination of selected films in connection to key theoretical and historical turning points in art history and critical theory and will roughly follow the history and theory of visual arts as it moves from the emergence of the modern period in Europe through the demise of modernism following WWII and into the areas of post-modern intervention leading to our contemporary present. Artists and filmmakers under examination include, but are not limited to, Germaine Dulac, Marcel Duchamp, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Cocteau, Hans Richter, Man Ray, Jean-Luc Godard, Stan Brakhage, Akira Kurosawa, Shirley Clarke, Robert Smithson, Chantal Akerman, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, David Lynch, Doug Aitken, Stan Douglas, Doug Aiken, Matthew Barney, Pipilotti Rist, Kenneth Anger and Matthew Barney.