London Art Attack

Perhaps it is the onset of vernal weather I have been telling you about recently, but art is busting out all over London-town. Now, Old Ken has basically panned the "Colour After Klein", but the Rebecca Horn "Bodylandscapes" (currently at the Hayward Gallery ) is but one of several really interesting shows on at the moment. Now, to give you a fair shake at these shows, we are going to have to rely on some different kinds of evidence. First, we have photos of Old Ken's crappy drawings of art; secondly, we have a rubbish photos of press-release material from a show; and then we have photos of art in the flesh!



So, to leap right into this bustle, let's take a little glance at a few sketches the O.K. made while visiting the Rebecca Horn exhibition. Who, the general reader might ask, is Rebecca Horn? Well, so far as Old Ken knows, she is a German-born artist, who worked in New York in the 1970s-80s and alternates between performance-related pieces and really curious things with mechanics. As my drawings will suggest, I was most intrigued by the works that fused these two interests together, making mechanical performances—often simulations of artistic processes. Indeed, the role of drawing in Horn's work has been billed as the central theme of the show—a motif illustrated by still photographs of an early performance by Horn. Therein, she fabricated a mask studded with short pencils and rotated her head against a canvas so as to trace the lateral her movements of her body. If interest in automatism of mark-making materialized in this early performance a costume that looks like it might well have inspired the startling get-up worn by Pin Head in the classic horror film "Hell Raiser," machines take a much greater role in some of Horn's later work. There, spider-like mechanical arms with butcher knife attachments flail around as if looking for an invisible roast; gigantic, mechanized styluses trace patterns in the ashes of books scattered on mirrors; or (as suggested in the second drawing above) a mechanized arm regularly triggers the production of ripples in a small pool on a gallery floor, thereby yielding incredible patterns of light reflection on an adjacent, darkened wall. Combine eerie with bitey and I think you'd have the sense; but not literally as you might then get "beery", which would miss the point a bit.



From all this dark and mechanical bliss, we move on to a very different kind of show currently available at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art). Old Ken likes this one a whole lot; not only is it free, but it's a yard sale! The premise, so far as it can be understood by yours truly, is that the main exhibition space is emptied out and the standard infrastructure and goods of the yard sale/flea market/car boot sale are moved in. Thus, rickety shelves filled with copies of completely random items (including a German picture book about Alf), card tables loaded with pure ceramic ambrosia, and racks and racks of second-hand clothes, which are restocked on a daily basis. Parenthetically, and without actual parentheses, I will note my horror at the presence and subsequent disappearance of a heavily used (that is, ripped and decomposing) rhinestone-studded G-strap from the racks; might we hope it was deemed simply too unethical to sell?

In any event, the "critique" here is only as much as the visitor wants to make it, so it seems to Old Ken: on the one hand, there is a television monitor on display at one corner of the gallery wherein we see grainy, security-camera-quality footage of people milling through a rummage sale. Over this video loop, we hear a voice (presumably of the artist) musing about commodity culture. Yet, this explicit "artist's intervention" is also kept sufficiently muted so that it doesn't get in the way of what seems to be the primary interest of most visitors: shopping. Old Ken has thought that, among other things, this sense of going to a museum and rifling through to find things to buy might well have an instructive relation to the way the ultra-rich look at and use museums. But, at the same time, I certainly haven't missed the chance for some bargains.



Indeed, a prize purchase has been this charming shirt. Is maroon Old Ken's color? Are the arms a bit, say, short?



Well, what do you want for the insanely low price of one pound in London?



In any case, now that we have seen photos of drawings and posters of art, it seems logical that we might say we have seen photos of art itself. For, one would think that if you go to a gallery and buy something that is there on display, then—at least on a superficial level (and perhaps more deeply as well)—you have bought art. We'll leave this question to the philosophers of a non-experimental variety, especially as we have a more definitive kind of art to discuss.



For, as Old Ken was visiting the ICA recently, a curious character with the sign protruding from his pack was not only doing performance art but alerting the world to a screening of his film about the spoliation of a series of sculptures by Jacob Epstein from the Strand in London during the 1930s. Apparently, our artist-friend stood on the Strand with signs denoting the names and locations of the sculptures over the course of the spring—a performance that was filmed and cut down to a mere 16 minutes. Old Ken has to concede that he never saw this fellow in action on the Strand; but then again, there are loads of folks with placards on that fine street, mostly advertising things like Pizza Hut and delicious steak and kidney pies for sale. Perhaps this might lead us into further relfections on art and commodity culture; but for now, let's just say those words I learned as a young lad: I love Art (Garfunkel)!