Now Dig This! and the Ken Johnson Controversy: A Case For Pluralism in 20th Century Art History

Installation view of Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 at MoMA PS1. Photo by Matthew Septimus.

Ken Johnson’s controversial review of Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, currently on view at MoMA PS1 through March 11, has become nothing less than an art world scandal, sparking a deluge of denouncements from readers, an open-letter and petition against the New York Times backed by prominent artists, critics and art historians, and even an attempted rebuttal on the art critic’s Facebook page, with continued debate in the comments section. Some of Johnson’s most problematic assertions focus on questions of originality and “quality,” each clearly sited in the historical standards of high Modernism. “Black artists did not invent assemblage,” he protests. “In its modern form it was developed by white artists like Picasso, Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, David Smith and Robert Rauschenberg.” Later, the critic attacks the use of socially-engaged themes during a period in which art was supposed to be purged of realism and representation: “The art of black solidarity gets less traction because the postmodern art world is, at least ostensibly, allergic to overt assertions of any kind of solidarity.”^[1]

These accusations would be relevant if Johnson’s concerns were shared by the exhibition’s curator, Columbia Professor Kellie Jones, but Now Dig This! is not intended to de-throne Duchamp and Rauschenberg. Jones presents Now Dig This! as an art historical survey of the African-American cultural scene in 1960s-1980s Los Angeles; she frames the exhibition as an arrangement of episodes rather than a singular narrative. Each gallery focuses on a different theme, style, or institutional network, thus allowing the viewer multiple points of entry into a wide body of artistic and historical material. Johnson’s attachment to the master narrative of Modernism is the first (and perhaps most innocuous) interpretive error of his review, revealing the degree to which this evolutionary historical model remains deeply ingrained in our thinking.

Locality and Multiplicity at Documenta 13

View of Kassel’s Orangerie and Karlsaue Park through Rahmenbau by Haus-Rucker-Co (1977)

Nowhere does art feel more global than at the biennials and exhibitions that happen at such regular intervals that their devotees can confidently book their hotel tickets up to five years in advance. Certainly this is true at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany—a place with no particular history of strong artistic production in its own right, albeit a site with a very significant role in history itself. Yet in this global arena (this year’s Documenta includes physical or conceptual sites in Kassel, Kabul, Alexandria/Cairo, and Banff in Canada), a theme amongst the disparate works is a sense of place, a groundedness within the local—within the issues of the artist’s particular time and place—and one that is often framed within the larger historical scope of war. Though one theme among many (the exhibition included nearly 200 artists), this investigation of specific, localized moments in cultural and political history strikes a particular chord in Kassel, a tiny city smack in the center of Germany that was badly damaged by Allied bombs during World War II. The exceptional quality of the art on view and the panoply of locations from which they came make the associations, possible through the works’ juxtaposition, all the more striking and layered.

Robert Morris in the Guggenheim’s Panza Collection

The large-scale Robert Morris sculptures grouped in a bright room at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the members of the Panza Collection Initiative (PCI) told us, were there for one reason. Derelict, fragile, or compromised in some way, they were gathered as part of the PCI’s ambitious project to preserve and conserve the Guggenheim’s large holdings of Minimalist, Post-Minimalist, and Conceptual works, many acquired by the Guggenheim in 1991 and 1992 from Italian collector Giuseppe Panza di Biumo. What are the questions we face in considering the collection, preservation, and display of works borne out of the innovative artistic practices of the 1960s?

When we think of Morris’s large-form sculptures, it is easy enough to conjure them in the mind’s eye: L-beams, boxes, frames, and hovering platforms, especially as pictured in the well-known photographs of the Green Gallery and Dwan Gallery shows from the mid-1960s. But to say specifically what these works are made of is more difficult. Plywood, fiberglass, aluminum? Yet in looking at two iterations of Morris’s Untitled (Warped Bench), the difference in material is palpable: the later one (2004), made of painted plywood, has a crispness of edge lacking in its earlier (1965) fiberglass counterpart, a difference resulting from the exactness of facture possible with each material.

Exhibition at the Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, April 1966.
Image courtesy Catherine Grenier, Robert Morris, exhibition catalog (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1995): 227.

In front of Warped Bench, and only minutes into the discussion led by Jeffrey Weiss, Ted Mann, and Anne Wheeler, it was already becoming clear just how complicated the PCI’s task is, given the tangled web of historical and technical considerations relevant to Morris’s work.

March 20 CAC Event: Robert Morris in the Guggenheim’s Panza Collection

A Seminar for IFA Students and Faculty
Tuesday, March 20, 2012, 2:00-4:00 PM

The Contemporary Art Consortium at the Institute of Fine Arts, in collaboration with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Panza Collection Initiative, invites students and faculty to visit and discuss a private installation of works by artist Robert Morris selected from the Guggenheim’s Panza Collection.

The group will meet on Tuesday, March 20, at 2:00 PM at an installation space located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in which the PCI has installed one dozen important works by the artist for the consideration of a committee of art historians and conservators who will gather in the space for a two-day meeting the week prior to the student visit.

Panza Collection Initiative members — Jeffrey Weiss, Francesca Esmay, Ted Mann, and Anne Wheeler — will lead a discussion of issues raised by the works. Participants are also encouraged to raise topics of related interest with regard to the work. Because discussion will be based on immediate reference to the works of art themselves, participation is limited to 20.

Ticket/entry details:

Registration open to the IFA community only. Reservation required. To register, please send an e-mail to awheeler[at]guggenheim[dot]org with your name and affiliation.

The event will be held at SurroundArt in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Please allow adequate time for transportation (approximately 25 minutes by car or 45-60 minutes by subway from the IFA). Location details will be provided to confirmed participants.

IFA at CAA: Stay Tuned

A number of IFA students and professors will be presenting at the upcoming 2012 CAA conference in Los Angeles, February 22 to 25 at the LA Convention Center.

If you’re planning to attend the conference, you can support your colleagues and classmates at the following panels!

Happenings: Transnational, Transdisciplinary
Wednesday, February 22, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 403B, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Guerrilla Tactics and International Happenings: An Expanded View of Brazilian Art of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s
Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

The Interconnected Tenth Century
Wednesday, February 22, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 404A, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
China among Equals: Recontextualizing the China-Abbasid Trade Connection in the Long Tenth Century
Hsueh-man Shen, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Internationalizing the Field: A Discussion of Global Networks for Art Historians
Wednesday, February 22, 12:30 PM–2:00 PM
West Hall Meeting Room 501ABC, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Townhouse Gallery “Archive Map” Project
Clare Davies, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

From Camp to Visual Culture: Accounting for “Bad” Art since the 1960s
Wednesday, February 22, 2:30 PM–5:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 404A, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Good Ideas Done Bad: Neil Jenney’s Bad Paintings
Matthew Levy, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Theorizing the Body
Thursday, February 23, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 403B, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Body of Work: Stylization and Ambiguity in the Benin Plaque Corpus
Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch, New York University

Towards a Rock and Roll History of Contemporary Art
Thursday, February 23, 2:30 PM–5:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 409AB, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Chairs: Matthew Jesse Jackson, University of Chicago; Robert Slifkin, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
The Sense of an Ending: Spiral Jetty and the Stones at Altamont
William Smith, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

New Research in the Early Modern Hispanic World
Saturday, February 25, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
West Hall Meeting Room 511BC, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Old Meets New: Classicizing Visions in Diego de Valadés’s “Rhetorica Christiana”
Laura Leaper, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Soldier Ecclesiasticus: Images of the Archangel Michael in New Spain
Niria Leyva-Gutiérrez, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

New Scholars Session
Saturday, February 25, 12:30 PM–2:00 PM
West Hall Meeting Room 501ABC, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
The Garden Landscape and the French Interior
Lauren Cannady, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

(Re)Writing the Local in Latin American Art
Saturday, February 25, 2:30 PM–5:00 PM
West Hall Meeting Room 501ABC, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
“Un Espacio Abierto”: Metaphors of Space and Community in
Mexico City’s “Temístocles 44”
Emily Sessions, New York University

Manuscripts without Moorings, Objects and Their Origins: Stylistic Analysis or Stylistic Attribution?
Saturday, February 25, 2:30 PM–5:00 PM
West Hall Meeting Room 501ABC, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Medieval Spanish Painting at the Crossroads: Stylistic Pluralism in the “Liber Feudorum Maior” of Barcelona
Shannon Wearing, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Situating Expanded Cinema in Postwar Art Practice
Saturday, February 25, 2:30 PM–5:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 409AB, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
“We Must Build Our Theaters in the Air”: Jaime Davidovich
and Public-Access Cable Television
Sarah Johnson Montross, New York University