tom moody

"Dan Graham has always pointed beyond in his work: beyond the art object, beyond the studio, beyond the medium, beyond the gallery, beyond the self. Beyond all these categories and into the realm of the social, the public, the democratic, the mass produced, the architectural, the anarchic, and the humorous."

Text cut-and-pasted from the website of the Whitney Museum, describing the catalog for its recently-opened Graham retrospective. The pounding rhythm and faulty parallelism amuse, but also epitomize the kind of priestly incantation spoken or sung over contemporary art. We must be assured and soothed that every market player in the art world is in fact anti-object and anti-gallery, a selfless Walt Whitman-like figure that embraces, nay, merges, with the democratic mass, doing good works over a lifetime of artistic philanthropy. In earlier posts we have experimented with the above copy, reversing the nouns and adjectives to make the artist sound like an egotist, running permutations of the false parallels, and comparing all the "beyonds" to statements in a newspaper article that suggest that Graham is not really so beyond as all that. We need a New, Improved way of talking about art: the reflexive populism is starting to creak.

"Dan Graham has always pointed beyond in his work: beyond the art object, beyond the studio, beyond the medium, beyond the gallery, beyond the self. Beyond all these categories and into the realm of the social, the public, the democratic, the mass produced, the architectural, the anarchic, and the humorous." (From the website of the Whitney Museum, describing the catalog for its recently-opened Graham retrospective.)

beyond the art object

His glass pavilions have been placed indoors and outdoors in locations as remote as the Arctic Circle in Norway.

beyond the studio

The photographer and art historian Jeff Wall has written that while many other conceptual artists “abjured, apparently for good, any involvement with the world” outside of their methodologies, Mr. Graham’s aim has always been “to remain involved with the wider world as a subject and occasion for art, but to structure that involvement in the rigorously self-reflexive terms” opened up by conceptualism.

beyond the medium

Called “Homes for America,” it is a series of amateur-seeming snapshots of suburban architecture, published in 1966 in Arts magazine after Esquire turned it down. The blandly colored pictures tweak Minimalism — the houses look like Judd boxes — and send up the sorts of erudite essays then being published in magazines like Esquire that probed the standardizing soul of suburbia.

beyond the gallery

His fortunes have improved in recent years; he lives alone in a nicer apartment in NoLIta and is represented by a prominent gallery, Marian Goodman, though he says the work still doesn’t sell well, and he speaks disparagingly of “superstars,” including a few represented by his own gallery, like Pierre Huyghe and Tino Sehgal, making it clear that he is not counted among them.

beyond the self

Because so much of his work — from early pop-culture writing to performances with video cameras to his well known mirrored pavilions — is about what Mr. Simpson called “the way one experiences the space of the self,” it has also seemed more prescient as each new iteration of the Web alters the calculus of media, society and individuality.

Newspaper article quotes from "A Round Peg" by Randy Kennedy in the New York Times.

If David Lynch directed Dirty Dancing: [YouTube]

If David Lynch directed Return of the Jedi: [YouTube]

"Dan Graham has always pointed beyond in his work: beyond the social, beyond the public, beyond the democratic, beyond the mass produced, beyond the architectural. Beyond all these categories and into the realm of the art object, the studio, the medium, the gallery, the self, the anarchic, and the humorous."

(Rearranged the words from a Dan Graham blurb from a major art institution's website. This makes him sound more radical, I think.)

"Dan Graham has always pointed beyond in his work: beyond the art object, beyond the studio, beyond the medium, beyond the gallery, beyond the self. Beyond all these categories and into the realm of the social, the public, the democratic, the mass produced, the architectural, the anarchic, and the humorous." (From a major art institution's website.)

beyond the art object into the realm of the social, the public, the democratic, the mass produced, the architectural, the anarchic, and the humorous

beyond the studio into the realm of the public, the democratic, the mass produced, the architectural, the anarchic, and the humorous

beyond the medium into the realm of the democratic, the mass produced, the architectural, the anarchic, and the humorous

beyond the gallery into the realm of the mass produced, the architectural, the anarchic, and the humorous

beyond the self and into the realm of the architectural, the anarchic, and the humorous

beyond the art object, studio, medium, gallery, and self into the realm of the social, public, democratic, mass produced, and architectural

beyond the art object, studio, medium, and gallery into the realm of the social, public, democratic, and mass produced

Trying for some ultimate parallelism here...

"Dan Graham has always pointed beyond in his work: beyond the art object, beyond the studio, beyond the medium, beyond the gallery, beyond the self. Beyond all these categories and into the realm of the social, the public, the democratic, the mass produced, the architectural, the anarchic, and the humorous."

beyond the art object into the social
beyond the studio into the public
beyond the medium into the democratic
beyond the gallery into the mass produced
beyond the self into the architectural
beyond the ________ into the anarchic
beyond the ________ into the humorous

We need two more things to go beyond!

"Dan Graham has always pointed beyond in his work: beyond the art object, beyond the studio, beyond the medium, beyond the gallery, beyond the self. Beyond all these categories and into the realm of the social, the public, the democratic, the mass produced, the architectural, the anarchic, and the humorous."

beyond the art object into the humorous

beyond the studio into the anarchic

beyond the medium into the architectural

beyond the gallery into the social

beyond the self into the mass produced

Yeah, that works...

somewhat david-humphrey-ish found jpeg

"Sid Suite 1" [5.2 MB mp3]

The percussion is the "kit" that I sampled of beats made on the Elektron Sidstation. Other sounds are sidstation samples made by a third party soundware co. And the rest is Reaktor's Oki Computer, which is a more sophisticated software version of SID chip-like synthesis (i.e., computer game-y). After watching too many YouTube demos of sidstations and sequencers I wanted to write something fairly structured, as an antidote to the disembodied hands of nerds touching a few sequencer buttons and just letting the resulting "music" play over and over.

html page with embedded 1.1 MB animated GIF

Most of the individual drawings in this GIF were made in the late '90s. They are a bit spookier than I am interested in for my art at the moment but I find I can handle them as a composite with one/tenth of a second to view each drawing.

html page design: Seamonkey Composer