ancy Spero and Leon Golub are too well known to need much introducing here. They have been important figures in art and political circles at least since 1964, when they returned to NYC from Paris at the height of the Vietnam War. Today international interest in their work is high. The Eupatrids are rolling out the red carpets, and there is rock-solid succès d’estime among the rank and file. The more you know about Leon & Nancy, the more you want to find out, and here they have generously agreed to answer a few questions for afterart news readers.
Can you indicate for us the state of political art since 9/11? How do things look from downtown NYC?
We are not in the best position to comment on the state of political art since 9/11. It would be largely concentrated in video – to what percentage as against from before 9/11, we would have no idea. We follow very little video art (which has the capacity to totally eat up one’s time). As to how things look in downtown New York, it is cleared up and throngs of New Yorkers are going about their business without paying much attention. It is not that people don’t care, but New Yorkers live fractured harried lives and only occasionally get diverted to other concerns unless it is an extraordinary event such as 9/11. Down the street where we live the American Institute of Architects, NY Chapter, has in a window a glistening skyward ‘utopian’ building monument that has come out of the special interest struggles, etc., and the damn thing looks pretty good, surprisingly so.
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There is no rest for the weary; we’re lost, we drop blindly hour by hour, we who suffer, tossed like water from cheek to cheek, for long years thrown into uncertainty”: such might assuredly be the enchanting Schicksalslied of Anna Jermolaewa’s take on the urban scene in her last book Ass peeping from onestar press. The contemporary reader here finds him/herself confronted with a multitude of rearends that make faces, in the literal sense of Catherine M. (for whom the anatomical center is the ontological center with which communication is immediate and unmediated). This invitation to investigate deeply also pushes us to move forward, to openly follow, without any hope of ever being able to see the other side of the dream decor. So let us dream, but let us also move on. He who follows is surely the foundation of he who leads.
eady to Change is Polonca Lovsin’s (b. 1970) contribution to the 25th International Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana. Presented on a platform conceived by Allen Ruppersberg (along with four other titles by Slovenian artists), the book gets her art across as assuredly as any installation could have. Lovsin is interested in how people apply savoir-faire, technology or special know-how to their lives. In this way, the book catalogues a suite of discoveries arranged in categories (building/ growing / adapting / changing / exchanging / collaborating) of which the simple list would outrun the remaining inch of this column. Take an inventor’s fair, a cooking-at-home and a home-improvement television series, a do-it-yourself store and a survival manual, then elevate all of it to a life-style!
hatever your politics, we can probably agree that September 11, 2001, was one of those “before and after” moments for just about everybody. The world DID change. That’s the easy part, even if it’s hard to take. But Elein Fleiss, the esteemed Purple magazine co-founder, has chosen in her onestar press book to show us her rendition of the “during”, those moments when our minds struggled to absorb the enormity of it all. Elein has managed togive us a visual representation of consciousnessactually shifting by juxtaposing images of the world with images ofsomeone reading a newspaper, etc. That black date, the book’s title, does the rest, along with your memory. This book makes me think of the film Shoah (remember that forest?) or Frank O’Hara’s famous poem on the death of Billy Holiday. Fleiss’s instincts are exactlyright, and she found the poetry that persists in an unacceptable world. RD
toryboard is the title of Elisabetta Benassi’s artist’s book for onestar press. I have a certain feeling when I meet artists of exceptional quality. There is something in their faces that moves me, like when I hear a perfectly tuned “A”. It’s like a weight settling. Doesn’t much matter what aspect of the artist we are talking about. How they eat, get drunk, write, draw, speak, make work. Betta’s one of those artists. Storyboard is the tale of the artist playing soccer with her alter ego, a football player remarkably similar to Pier Paolo Pasolini. Interspersed in the picture flipbook are scenes from films by the famous Italian comedian, Toto. They serve to create additional levels of dialogue, making for a story about a play about reality and fiction, about time and narration. Betta’s own storyboard is only partially written. Her tryst is with the Italianness of her past. With her male femaleness and her female maleness. With the films of her beloved Pier Paolo Pasolini, and the designed machines of her country, those fire-red superbly made cars and motorcycles, those automobile racing ramps, all called “she” in Italian. Betta is as beautiful as a Botticelli; hard and diaphanous at the same time. Her works, Storyboard included, have a particularly fascinating quality. They are able to synthesize the past, even quoting it deliberately, without resorting to nostalgia or imitation. They are artificial but completely natural. Her artworks are so realistic they seem like tools or machines, and avoid ever becoming metaphor. Yet, they remain poetic devices. Betta works with design, fashion, style and popular culture, but always in the name of art. Betta is a goal. Present tense poet, philosopher and practitioner, swiftly kicking straight into the net.
