Seeing Damien Hirst’s Spots Before Their Eyes

Hundreds Travel the World on a “Challenge” to Visit 11 Gargosian Galleries

When the science fiction author Jules Verne wrote Around the World in Eighty Days, he could not have imagined its current version in the art world. This month, the international art dealer Larry Gargosian has persuaded people to journey the globe to gaze upon “Spot Paintings” by British super-artist Damien Hirst at all 11 Gargosian galleries.

            In the Jules Verne novel, the 80-day adventure began as a bet in a British club. Similarly, the “Spot Challenge” offers a prize—a spot print signed by Hirst—to anyone who visits every gallery on a self-funded world trip. The spot artworks are all composed of multicolored dots in grid-like formations on white fields.

            The betting began this month, and reportedly several hundreds of people—leaning toward young travelmeisters, art journalists, and wealthy hipsters—are taking planes, trains, and buses in an itinerary that stretches from New York to Hong Kong and London (a loop of about 20,000 miles). Some participants seek the Hirst print as a personal treasure. Others will try to cash it in on the art market.

            The hanging of spot paintings in all 11 Gargosian galleries is “structured as a global exhibition,” a spokeswoman said. “Damien and the gallery thought it would be extraordinary if someone made it to every location. He felt that whoever did should be rewarded with some artwork.” One wonders why anyone would want to go to every location to see similar spot paintings. But then, recall, in olden times, people walked hundreds of miles to see a boring shrine.

            As Britain’s wealthiest living artist, Hirst is a kind of rock star. Rock stars all have groupies, so the fact that people are taking the “challenge” seems harmless enough. As a conceptual artist, Hirst has big ideas, but then he pays workers and craftsmen to carry them out. The current exhibition, “The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011,” has been painted by hired help. The galleries are showing 331 spot paintings out of some 1,400 that Hirst staffers have produced.

            At first, Hirst was a rather humble art worker, studying art at Goldsmiths College in London, and helping fellow artists show their rather in-your-face art work at warehouse shows. By helping the others, Hirst rose as ringleader of “the Young British Artists,” a name given to them after the multimillionaire advertising executive, Charles Saatchi, promoted them like a new punk rock band. They held several controversial shows—titled “Sensation”—designed to offend and stir publicity.

            After that, anything that Hirst made was blue chip material for the art market. In the mid-1990s he was one of the fastest rising contemporary artists, sought by the Turner Prize in England and Venice Biennale in Italy.

            As a working class Brit, beloved for his foul mouth and carefree (former) doping and drinking, Hirst became famous for putting dissected animals in formaldehyde. His shark in a tank became a symbol of the new British art. When millions in sales rolled in, he poured millions into each new art project, always being newsworthy for the price tag, if not the artistic merit. Oligarch collectors, from Russia to China, lined up to obtain Hirst “originals.” To meet the demand, Hirst defaulted to production-line art, and thus his proliferation of spot paintings.

            Now that the “Spot Challenge” is on, it almost seems that the participants—who reportedly can make the world trip on a $2,500 economy air fare—are giving Gargosian and Hirst free publicity (as is this column). From the participant point of view, however, it must surely be a personal thrill ride, with a record to set, and not a few hardships to overcome.

            The first winner was 27-year-old Valentine Uhovski, who handily completed the 11-stop trip, passing through New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Athens, Rome, Geneva, Paris, and London. It took him eight-days (not 80 days). From Russia, Uhovski moved to America and founded the Artruby website, which no doubt praises Hirst. The second to complete the trip was Jeff Chu, a journalist for Fast Company magazine.

            A young writer for Britian’s Art Newspaper, Cristina Ruiz, chronicled her low-budget progress across Europe in a blog, for which other young bloggers have cheered her on. Each participant must prove their 11 visits by a document stamped at each Gargosian Gallery, so Ruiz gingerly ticked off the first two in London.

            “Two stamps down, nine more to go!” she wrote January 12.

            Then she began her travails of travel on a shoe string. “I am boarding a train to Paris from St Pancras station,” she wrote later. “It’s not fun getting up at this ungodly hour but at €39 ($51), the 5:40 am train to Paris was the best deal I could find, so here I am.”

            And of course, Ruiz’s writer’s dilemma in dealing with the Hirst dots, like spots before her eyes, suddenly dawns upon her, sooner rather than later: “There’s no depth to the brushstrokes, no variation to the composition, just painting after painting of incessant glossy dots. . . . Which begs the question: what on earth am I going to blog about as I make my way around another TEN galleries full of spots?”

            As a talented young writer, and a dedicated pilgrim, Ruiz will have surely found something original to say. Almost certainly, it will be more original and interesting than the spot paintings themselves.

Serial Printmaking Show Matches the World Series, Kind Of

A Museum with 60,000 Historic Prints Puts Some of its Best into Daylight

BALTIMORE—In the sports world we have the World Series, and in the visual arts we have the print series.

            The excitement of these two kinds of series may not compare exactly, of course. But the skill of the printmaker—the producer of etchings, engravings, lithographs, and screen prints—can often be more impressive than that of a pitcher, fielder, or batter at the plate.

            That skill is currently being demonstrated in the “Print by Print” exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is a national treasure trove of “works on paper.” With 60,000 prints in its archives, the museum rightly calls itself a “comprehensive resource for the study of Western printmaking.” Through March, the BMA has pulled out a diverse sampling of its collection to exhibit 29 series of prints, totaling more than 350 items in black or colored ink. They are done by a coterie of top names in art over the past 500 years. The display ranges from Albrecht Dürer and William Hogarth, for example, to Pablo Picasso, Sonia Delaunay, Roy Lichtenstein, and a sampling of contemporary artists.

            The key theme here is "series": not just one print, but a group of different prints by an artist that go together as a single theme or technique. At this BMA world series, there is no grandstand cheering, no screaming at the umpire. The gallery lights are dimmed, since inks on papers can rapidly deteriorate under strong lighting. To protect the more antique works, the exhibit will run for an optimum of five months, then reach a safety limit, after which the prints will go back into dark, dry, and cool storage.

            While print exhibits are not unusual, they typically are smallish, specialized in appeal, or put up as side attractions to block-buster shows. By contrast, “Print by Print” shows what can be done to immerse visitors in an entire world of prints.

            The serial print (usually meaning a story-like series) developed along with the printing press (1450). They first illustrated religious books and then secular tales. As illustrated by the BMA exhibit, not only professional printer-publishers turned to this technology, but so did painters, who as draftsmen wanted to explore one idea, or technique, in a series of different prints that all went together.

            The number in a series can vary dramatically. At the BMA, the Picasso example is a two-part comic-strip-like etching, “The Dream and Lie of Franco (1937),” a protest against the Spanish general. In the same decade, the Cubist designer Sonia Delaunay produced 40 color prints by stencil, producing a volume of examples for fabric or wallpaper design.

            Some of the series are by now well known, while others will always seem like precious re-discoveries. Who has not seen Albrecht Dürer’s 16 woodcuts (1490s) on “The Apocalypse,” which depicts events from the Book of Revelation?

            “He was an enormous influence on printmaking,” a BMA docent told one tour group.

            Still, even Dürer has been matched or outstripped. One example is the 31 refined etchings by the Italian artist Canaletto, “Views, Some Based on Real Places, Some Imagined.” For atmosphere, another Italian feat is the 16-etching series of “Imaginary Prisons” by Battista Piranesi (1761). These large prints offer a journey through fantastical and gothic architectural interiors, vast stone labyrinths.

            One wonders how these skilled craftsmen kept a steady hand, let alone the patience—a question that arises often when looking at engravings and mezzotints that seem to have the resolution of a photograph. Such is the case with Englishman John Martin’s 24 mezzotints of “Milton’s Paradise Lost” (1820s) and the Flemish artist Hans Collaert’s 10 engravings of “Design for Pendants” (1581). Not that past engravers have anything on the present, as illustrated by the unfailingly steady hand of Andrew Raftery in “Open House: Five Engraved Scenes” (2008).

           Three things seem to happen when in the presence of such a rich variety of serial prints. You first must decide whether to spend your time up close marveling at the detail, or standing back to obtain a broader effect. While many print series work both ways, others seem to demand one or the other, as in the case of needing to stand back to enjoy the large screen prints of American artists Ed Ruscha, Sherrie Levine, and Lichtenstein.

            Second, looking at prints is a search for clues and hints besides the main story, for often the artist has put in accessory details designed to delight, humor, or surprise. The classic William Hogarth print series in this exhibit, “A Harlot’s Progress” (1733), is a morality tale filled with quips and innuendo in nearly every sundry item included in a scene.

           Finally, prints offer a chance to marvel at the craftsman’s skill, whether it is the tightest, finest line, or the just-so smudging of crayon and ink in a lithograph.

            Dürer knew what skill was about: training and practice made perfect. Still today, as in Dürer’s, the printmaker is often consigned to being the blue-collar artist, not exactly the sports star of the art set. One time Dürer tried to compensate for this copper plate ceiling. In a self portrait, he showed himself wearing gloves, the sign in his day of being a gentleman (in addition to a mere printmaker).

The Art of Cars in Detroit and Computer Gadgets in Las Vegas

Two Major Industry Shows Illustrate How Visual Design Meets Technology

A century ago, a small group of Italian painters called the Futurists stormed Paris with the idea that zooming cars, or steam-belching trains, were more beautiful than a Greek marble statue.

            That was then. If this week’s massive Detroit Auto Show, and the gargantuan Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas are any indication, the technological tastes of the Futurists have overwhelmed the visual arts in a very big way.

            At both venues, cars and gizmos offer visual pleasures. At the Detroit Auto Show, the eye feasts on attractive grills, angles, paint jobs, and lights. Our vision follows those beautiful “lines.” The CES has got Las Vegas abuzz over increasingly high quality color screens on televisions and mobile devices. The devices are also about power and ingenuity, something that certainly enamored the Futurists (who tried to capture it in oil paint!) Their locomotives and factories have become our fast computers and fuel efficient engines.

            The venues are vast. Las Vegas has made room for 150,000 “techies” to look at 20,000 new products (displayed over more than four football fields of floor space). Motor City will probably draw 700,000. They will see about 40 new car models and lots of bells and whistles.

            Although the “look” counts, the new way of describing the visual effects with cars and consumer electronics is “interaction.” It means how devices relate comfortably to people. The term has several synonyms. At CES it is “The Year of the Interface.” Even carmakers are talking about how computer devices interact (or interface) with drivers (telling them what’s happening inside the car, and outside, on the road).

            The interaction goes into some detail at CES. The newest thing is “look and tap,” where you activate something on a computer with your eyes, then use fingers to control it. The resolution for the eyeball has become phenomenal (with more pixels). Though unaffordable for most, large high definition televisions now are a mere inch thick. “It’s like hanging a painting on a wall,” said one tech expert. (Meanwhile, the super thin “ultrabook” computer is the biggest item this year, with 60 new models coming out).

            For all the visual finesse, the computer experts say there continues to be a very human hurdle to progress. Some call it the “search and organization” problem. Now that device owners can download unlimited stuff—emails, tweets, music, photos, videos, documents—it has become hard to find what you are looking for.

            At many art schools, solving this kind of problem has often come under courses with names such as “interaction design.” Everyone is in search of a way to visually and logically store and retrieve materials. Perhaps only in Detroit, however, has the local art college tried to tackle “transportation design” as well. That is a priority at the College for Creative Studies (CCS), some of whose students are showing design sketches at the Detroit show. The school collaborates with automakers and parts designers so students understand the art of making cars better.

            Last month, students worked with parts makers Visteon and OSRAM to model new kinds of car lights. Some of the CCS students also participated in the annual Michelin Design Competition. This time Taylor Langhals won with his sketches of a futuristic “Chevrolet Stretch,” a car that morphs to fit tight city driving. “There’s a romance between the driver and the exterior of the automobile,” Langhals says.

            One of the contest judges, GM designer Bob Boniface, had won the student contest 20 years earlier. He said that students in art or design schools have precious time to dream up future possibilities, as well as learn the engineering reality. “They all seem to be very well informed and their research is thorough,” he said of this year’s art school contestants.

            With the new emphasis on smaller fuel-efficient cars, there is no need to scrimp on exterior design, the Detroit experts are saying (though small cars can present challenges for interior panache). One small-car solution is being offered by Chevrolet, which has revived the once-popular Dodge Dart. It is being called compact “with flair,” since it’s designed after the sleek Italian Alfa Romeo Giulietta.

            Not every sleek thing is going to work, as every CES convention has shown. Over the last few years in Las Vegas, 3-D TV has tried to gain a consumer foothold. Nobody wants to wear 3-D glasses. Still, television designers speak of one day offering screens with visual holographs (as done with laser beams now) that create a “complete immersion” visual experience of three-dimensional depth and atmosphere.

            So cars and computer gadgets are very visual. Their merits also hinge on power—something that the Futurists, in their own way, were saying a century ago. Today, however, talking about the subject is getting harder and harder. At the Detroit show, you might still hear, “What a gorgeous grill! Look at the dashboard!”

            In Las Vegas, however, as one talented tech writer illustrates, it’s a whole new language. He writes about “running the Ice Cream Sandwich version of the Android OS” and the “quad-core, 7-inch tablet, the MeMo 370T,” which, by the way, is like “the Prime and runs a Tegra 3 chip.” When words fail, we still have the visuals. We have beautiful objects to point our fingers at.

When Doth a Community Protesteth Too Much About Art?

A Sociological Study Explains How Rapid Local Change Stirs Art Wars

In the 2012 predictions department, here is a question that’s yet to be asked. Will art stir any great protests in America this year?

            We may not know what the big art controversy might be, but according to sociologist Steven Tepper, it will probably erupt at a community level, where debates over art—visual, literary, cultural, or theatrical—typically arise before becoming a nationwide culture war.

            To understand how art controversies are born, Tepper studied 71 cities and how they handled such events in the late 1990s. He also looked closely at Atlanta, Georgia, which under a microscope revealed far more art disputes in a few years than most people could imagine. The best predictor of art controversy is the rate of change in the community, Tepper discovered. When a community sees itself changing too quickly, putting its identity, norms, or future into uncertainty, art becomes a potent symbol of the values citizens want to preserve (or values they reject).

            The social changes come mostly from immigration, says Tepper. This itself has little to do with art, except for perhaps more Hispanic, Ethiopian, Russian, or gay pride parades down Main Street. But immigration goes along with economic shifts, volatile housing, and new interest groups in city hall or the schools. With these changes, the topic of a public mural or sculpture, a randy library book, or how to spend city money on art becomes ripe for protest.

            Art controversy usually evokes a stereotype of an outside religious or political demagogue coming in to stir protest. More benignly, you might think of the Music Man, who said, “There’s trouble in River City and its spelled p-o-o-l.” Tepper hopes to correct that stereotype by showing that “local concerns, local issues” drive these art debates. “When the things around [local citizens] are changing fast—economics, demographics, technology—art becomes something that they fight over as a way to reassert their values, reassert a sense of who their community is,” he recently told the PBS Newshour.

            Tepper makes all of this plain in his new book, Not Here, Not Now, Not That!: Protest Over Art and Culture in America, which has been praised for being the first to bring hard data to topic. As well he might be, Tepper is fascinated by how this community dynamic works: he is associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.

            The story of a crusading minister or politician who wants to defund artists or ban books is too well known, both in American novels and the usual spin of newspaper headlines. However, Tepper says that the “art community” (and perhaps novelists, too) can be just as intolerant. From on high, the art camp often tries to offend the community on purpose, and then cries censorship if anyone criticizes the art.

            “These fights are not just knee-jerk reactions, it’s not just about personal offense and it’s not just about politics,” Tepper says. “These [art issues] are so deeply meaningful and important for communities that are trying to figure out and work through these social changes together.”

            In other words, the free speech shake-down often used by artists may not work as well as it used to. This is especially so where public funding or children are involved. “I don't think we can afford to silence critics [of art] in the 21st century if we want our communities and our arts to thrive together,” Tepper said on national television. “As our cultural world gets noisier, as there are more things to offend more people, . . . there will be more opportunities for people to work together to figure out which forms of expressions are good representations of our community and which ones we don’t feel we’re ready for or represent us well.”

            As Tepper’s analysis suggests, the U.S. Supreme Court has been onto something when it has tended to rule that disputes over values should be judged by “community standards.” When community standards are clearly in violation of conventional human rights, we have the First Amendment of the Bill of Right (extended to communities by the 14th Amendment) to correct egregious intolerance.

            In all of this, the diversity of American communities is a major part of the solution, allowing everyone to get whatever art they want without great culture wars. In looking at 71 cities, Tepper found that a theatrical production on AIDS, or an artwork on Jesus or Muhammad, may be accepted in some locales, but not others. The same goes for the book Huckleberry Finn, in which Mark Twain uses the n-word. We go to Seattle and Manhattan for some things and to Kansas City and Atlanta for others. This can even work within the same county, or parts of town.

            So where will the next big art protest be, if one arises in 2012? The answer might be found in a close study of the Census, which shows how rapidly communities are changing. Then look in the Entertainment section of the local newspaper and see what’s showing at the avant-garde repertory theater, or at the public funded museum.