An Open Letter to Klaus Ottman:
I'll Eat Humble Pie Near You in December
Dear Klaus Ottman:
I received your comment to my post about the Site Santa Fe Biennial, and I have to admit you are right. My post, which is one of the highest rated articles on google for the search phrase "Site Santa Fe Biennial," is not a review. It is a screed and a rant about local art politics, a petty rivalry between myself and Zane Fischer, and about what happens when people (like me) allow their perceptions of a space and the discourse that informs it to take complete precedence over the work that is or was actually shown inside of it.
My only reasonable defense for trashing your show while elevating IAIA's show is this: while most Santa Fe art critics like to talk shit about diversity and multiculturalism, few, if any, have bothered to take Native American contemporary art seriously. That's my beat, my pet project, something I am willing to apologize for endlessly when it comes to its shortcomings - in the same manner that Fischer, THE magazine, and the Santa Fe Reporter will go to great lengths to cover the Site Santa Fe Biennial - even if many admit in private that they simply "didn't get it."
While interviewing an artist yesterday for a bio for that artist's website, I pointed out to him that here was an opportunity to explain his work to the public - as an arts journalist, if I don't *get* the work and I'm intrigued enough to *try* to get the work, I simply call the artist and ask. Or the curator. Many people do not have such luxuries, but I do, and thus for someone like me to say I didn't *get* your show was fully disingenous of me, and thus, I apologize.
However - because my review was never really about you and your show, nor about the artists and their work, I will take you with me for a moment down the avenue of comparison in our city's art politics. While your show was amply covered by *everyone*, (including Pasa Tiempo, The Reporter and THE magazine) the equivalent kinds of shows for Native artists were only amply covered by The New Mexican. This is not your fault - but perhaps you can see what makes me such a reactionary shit about a) (mostly) white Site Santa Fe, b) hearing from pooh-bah art critic Zane Fischer that "Indian Market sucks" while seeing no real retraction or analysis of any of the *ART WORK* in Indian Market, c) seeing that The Reporter had no coverage of Indian Market _at all_ other than a nice piece on Native Cinema, and d) hearing from the publisher of A Prominent Arts Monthly that Indian Market had nothing to offer him.
Again, this has nothing to do with you, but I am only mentioning this because while *I* can clearly see a racially-based bias about arts coverage in this city, and I can admit that my own white-guilt suck-ass apologist writings are focused firmly on the interests of promoting Native American art, no one in these other camps are willing to see at all, (it seems to me) that their coverage of your show and a lack of coverage of these other shows is a bunch of racist bunk about what Contemporary Art is supposed to be. Just as I think it's fine for me to say that "Site sucks and it's boring," Fischer thinks it's okay to say "Indian Market Sucks and it's all SWAIA's fault," and so we're all a bunch of rednecks yahoos (essentially) protecting our own little separatist turf.
You just happened to walk into this, however, and since you took the time to write to me, and to invite me to a private tour of Site's Biennial in December, I really have no choice but to write back and graciously accept your invitation. I, personally, know that neither the curator of a show nor the venue in which it is shown should have any bearing whatsoever on how a serious critic approaches *the work* itself - I wonder if it's possible for my esteemed colleagues to recognize that as well.
warm regards & please call when you arrive
Gregory Pleshaw (aka gregoryp(tm))
9 Comments:
As someone who thought that the Site SF show was pretty boring, I'd like to be included on that personal tour.
At the same time, maybe the curator of the IAIA show would be willing to do the same for Mr. Ottoman?
12:19 PM
I believe SFR promoted Indian Market as a featured "Pick of the week"
I guess I feel like I've provided an argument for what I feel is wrong with Indian Market---obviously open to debate...whereas we never got to the point of you delivering a cohesive set of reasons for your feelings about SITE. I'd say that's the difference so far. But I do think you and Sam should meet with Klauss and tour the show.
Zane
2:22 PM
I just received a note from Guy Cross, and I am sorry to say that I ignored his Very Ample Coverage of Indian Market in THE's August issue. But as should be clear to anyone, my comments were hardly directed at his publication. I'm sorry for any sense of outrage this has caused.
8:15 PM
Zane:
I just find it so funny - in your column today, you did *exactly* what I did with my Site rant - you cited the Institution behind the work and not the work itself. How different were these two approaches? At least I can cop to mine.
I spent three and a half hours at the Preview this year. Did you attend? Did you use your steely gaze to separate the wheat from the chaff and find the kick-ass work (admittedly, few and far between) that some Native artists have to offer? Or did you just go to a party at the Cowgirl and say, "Watch your ass, SWAIA"?
Damn constructive criticism. Stellar, really.
I will be going to look at Klaus' show. It's too late to see what Market had to offer....
8:18 PM
Gregory...
I didn't pretend to be reviewing Market. I didn't do what you did at all. I said exactly what my issue with market is. I admitted to being impressed by peripheral activities. It doesn't change my opinions of the problems with market and I've not implied any judgment of the work at market.
Zane
4:42 PM
Hair-Splitting Central
Okay, so the logic is this:
because I *say* I am writing a review, (on a two dozen circ. blog) that is more of a review than someone writing a column in a 27,000 circulation newspaper, because you did not say you were writing a review of anything other than an Institution. So, if i had just not titled my piece a "review", I could've written anything i wanted to and there would've been no argument?
fascinating. I have definitively Gone to Croatan. And I most definitely know why as well.
7:31 PM
Side Note to the Ongoing Discussion
America Meredith wrote, in a private email to me:
Howdy... When I try to post a comment on your blog site an error message pops up, so I'll try again when I get to SF. Oh, tell me about white liberal guilt! I want an anthropologist to go study it as a phenomenon. I think some European-Americans participate in Native American society because they can relate, which is perfectly good - cross-cultural understanding *is* possible with patience; but other people are attracted to Native Americans because they want to exoticize the Other as much as humanly possible. Or worse they only see Indians as victims and want to be the champion of the poor underdog, which is just poison, because they only want Indians to be helpless victims and are threatened by moves by Indians to be self-sufficient. Okay, I'll post later. Cheers, A
In all honesty, I'm not sure what I am, which is why I'm writing this piece, (to be delivered at the erowid conference at Burning Man 2006.) I have no fucking desire to idolize or "angelize" Native Americans - what I do see in NA art is the possibility for some kind of alternative vision to the western project, even if most of its finest practitioners are hardly running around in the jungle in a loin cloth.
A comment that was made on my blog (the first piece about Site Santa Fe) was the comment, "I hate token shows." This came from a "coyote" (self-described) half white half-Hispanic guy that I just adore and respect, but I've been thinking that "token shows" are only token shows if we think that Native art is just "Art by Natives" without any substantial offerings or viewpoints into another cultural realm.
perhaps it's absurd of me to think so, but I'd like to think that the differing mythologies of a pre-Conquest people (differing from Euro-Greco-Roman traditions) *do* offer at least *some* kind of meaningful touchstone that's different from my ethnic background's prime principles and directives. As one who likes art with "meaning" (and I guess that some people hate that idea and find it terribly naive) I have been looking at Native work in hopes of finding *something* more interesting than what I see out of New York - or even here, to be perfectly frank. FAR too many artists here reject the value of a regional dialectal - Erika Wanenmacher is one of the very few who take the mythologies (native, hispanic, and weirdo whiteys) of this region seriously and brings it into her work, as I wrote about her some years ago.
2:11 PM
Yeah, that's reoccurring problem in Oklahoma too... where non-Indian artists often dismiss and ignore Indian art because it gets so much more attention than they get. That's why I like galleries and shows that feature groups of Indian and non-Indian art - instead of just tokens. I believe Native art appeals to non-Natives because it's fundamentally community-based instead of mainstream art, which emphasizes individual innovation at the expense of communication/comprehensibility.
(I love the work of Masami Teraoka, Amrit and Rabindra KD Kaur Singh, Enrique Chagoya, Hung Liu, etc - don't have a common cultural background with these artists, and I don't personally want to adopt their culture - I just love how they use their respective traditions in their work.)
I checked out the Reporter and it seemed to be they were trying to ignore Indian Market as much as possible. I never actually make it to Site Santa Fe, but checked their website. I enjoy Wangechi Mutu's work and love Wolfgang Laib's milk stone, but yeah, it's interesting that there are no Native or Latin American/Chicano artists included in the group - choices like do not happen by chance.
On a slight tangent, it frustrates me that in the mainstream art world Jimmie Durham represents Native Americans. He is not enrolled, culturally not Cherokee, and maintains no connection to any of the three Cherokee tribes. That's why I'm glad James Luna is getting more and more recognition in the international art scene.
11:34 AM
That last post was mine - America M.
11:34 AM
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