I Hate Douglas Gordon
you would have to have your head planted right up your Robokopf butt
So a few weeks ago a friend of mine and I went to see the Douglas Gordon exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery -- not because we're fans, but because we thought the Cyborg exhibit was still on. And so it wasn't, but patrons of the visual arts that we are we decided to brave Mr. Gordon. It was mainly video installations and some photography, and with my friend being a film grad and I a nascent photographer, we seemingly had naught to lose and all to gain.
Now, I think what pisses me off the most about him is the accolades he's received ("one of the most important artists of his generation") in light of the work he's accomplished. The latter is from my perspective, but you would have to have your head planted right up your Robokopf butt to call with a straight face Douglas Gordon an important artist.
His work is, to put it bluntly, laughably simplistic. One installation (that required a room about as large as my apartment) was two screens at opposite ends playing in staggered time Robert DeNiro's "You talkin' to me?" from Taxi Driver. Another was a screen showing a fly trying to flip itself off its back. Another was three screens showing in staggered time the film D.O.A. And his piece de resistance was Psycho slowed down so far as to warrant the title 24-Hour Psycho. Certainly great art needn't be Byzantine: take Dr. Seuss. But at the same time there must be some indication of an amount of effort that would merit those aforementioned honours: on the part of the artist as well as the audience.
For it seems to me that he is only passing off fragments of ideas as finished pieces. His video installations could have been conceived of and completed several to an afternoon. Not only did each require only minimal thought, but minimal work as well. For artistry, what is needed to slow down a movie? What technical skill? Could there conceivably be a hack in Mr. Gordon's field, or would even he be hard-pressed to tell the difference?
Turntablists create their music not by writing it all on their own, but by stealing its components from existing songs--but their level of artistry is determined by their choice of samples and the way they can combine them, manipulate them, distort and subvert them: their senses of rhythm, musicality, theme, texture, layering--to create something wholly new and identifiably different from its parts. Mr. Gordon's work can only be compared on the very first point: choice of samples--or rather, sample singular. But any importance is dwarfed by the lack of any other skills displayed: aesthetic, intellectual, or technical.
John Cage's 4'33" is probably the best rebuttal: the idea is primo, and works fine as the one piece. But Cage didn't try and pass off a record of silence as something equally important, or further make a career out of nothing (arguably). Likewise, if you'll allow the digression, with the genre of "lowercase music": isolating near-silent ambient sounds, like a mixing board hooked up to nothing and feeding back, or paper crumpling, is fine if used for some engaging reason.
But who in the right mind would pay for a whole album of it? And so with 24-Hour Psycho. I can reevaluate how I view the movie by myself. The ability of any sentient being whose head is still attached to its body to do the same is not necessarily an indication of genius, nor important art does its translation into a superficial work make.
At first I thought there was something integral I was missing, that I could only have scratched the surface of his work. But when we came upon the reading room I appropriately read up on some of the pieces we saw, only to discover that they had no more meaning than I had initially discerned. His work calls for a re-evaluation of how we interact with media -- perhaps he's completely unaware of how every semi-intelligent person alive today operates? It calls for active participation on the part of the viewer -- perhaps he should consider that if engagement isn't my gig I wouldn't be in an art gallery to begin with? Because I don't foresee a joint effort between the Scottish Arts Council and Famous Players theatres to show archival footage of a man trying to stand up, even as a short between the commercials and Minority Report.
***
And here the essay ends, as a deep and inescapable conflict arose within the author: an underlying subtext in the criticism that belied his ostensible position, a growing discord that would not -- indeed, could not -- allow a cohesive conclusion. Will he then ever be able to sort out his feelings towards Mr. Gordon's work? Will the wholesome light of an adamant argument ever shine again upon this poor soul, whose very analytical faculties may in fact be at the core of this, his critical dissolution? But it does seem that this may be a good place to stop.
Now, I think what pisses me off the most about him is the accolades he's received ("one of the most important artists of his generation") in light of the work he's accomplished. The latter is from my perspective, but you would have to have your head planted right up your Robokopf butt to call with a straight face Douglas Gordon an important artist.
His work is, to put it bluntly, laughably simplistic. One installation (that required a room about as large as my apartment) was two screens at opposite ends playing in staggered time Robert DeNiro's "You talkin' to me?" from Taxi Driver. Another was a screen showing a fly trying to flip itself off its back. Another was three screens showing in staggered time the film D.O.A. And his piece de resistance was Psycho slowed down so far as to warrant the title 24-Hour Psycho. Certainly great art needn't be Byzantine: take Dr. Seuss. But at the same time there must be some indication of an amount of effort that would merit those aforementioned honours: on the part of the artist as well as the audience.
For it seems to me that he is only passing off fragments of ideas as finished pieces. His video installations could have been conceived of and completed several to an afternoon. Not only did each require only minimal thought, but minimal work as well. For artistry, what is needed to slow down a movie? What technical skill? Could there conceivably be a hack in Mr. Gordon's field, or would even he be hard-pressed to tell the difference?
Turntablists create their music not by writing it all on their own, but by stealing its components from existing songs--but their level of artistry is determined by their choice of samples and the way they can combine them, manipulate them, distort and subvert them: their senses of rhythm, musicality, theme, texture, layering--to create something wholly new and identifiably different from its parts. Mr. Gordon's work can only be compared on the very first point: choice of samples--or rather, sample singular. But any importance is dwarfed by the lack of any other skills displayed: aesthetic, intellectual, or technical.
John Cage's 4'33" is probably the best rebuttal: the idea is primo, and works fine as the one piece. But Cage didn't try and pass off a record of silence as something equally important, or further make a career out of nothing (arguably). Likewise, if you'll allow the digression, with the genre of "lowercase music": isolating near-silent ambient sounds, like a mixing board hooked up to nothing and feeding back, or paper crumpling, is fine if used for some engaging reason.
But who in the right mind would pay for a whole album of it? And so with 24-Hour Psycho. I can reevaluate how I view the movie by myself. The ability of any sentient being whose head is still attached to its body to do the same is not necessarily an indication of genius, nor important art does its translation into a superficial work make.
At first I thought there was something integral I was missing, that I could only have scratched the surface of his work. But when we came upon the reading room I appropriately read up on some of the pieces we saw, only to discover that they had no more meaning than I had initially discerned. His work calls for a re-evaluation of how we interact with media -- perhaps he's completely unaware of how every semi-intelligent person alive today operates? It calls for active participation on the part of the viewer -- perhaps he should consider that if engagement isn't my gig I wouldn't be in an art gallery to begin with? Because I don't foresee a joint effort between the Scottish Arts Council and Famous Players theatres to show archival footage of a man trying to stand up, even as a short between the commercials and Minority Report.
And here the essay ends, as a deep and inescapable conflict arose within the author: an underlying subtext in the criticism that belied his ostensible position, a growing discord that would not -- indeed, could not -- allow a cohesive conclusion. Will he then ever be able to sort out his feelings towards Mr. Gordon's work? Will the wholesome light of an adamant argument ever shine again upon this poor soul, whose very analytical faculties may in fact be at the core of this, his critical dissolution? But it does seem that this may be a good place to stop.