I was musing on some of the ins
and outs of exhibitions recently. When I was in college in the 70s, the
theoretical aspects of the artworld was still largely dominated by critics
— the end-run of the Greenbergian era. That was one of the reasons I began
to write, to wrest back some of their opinion-making political clout into
the hands of at least one artist. (That’s probably why publications often
refer to me as "an artist who writes," rather than as an "artist and
critic" or the like).
Times have changed. Now the
artworld is controlled, at least for the nonce, by curators, as I’m
certain is well known by all. I have seldom enjoyed the activity of
actually curating exhibitions in the few instances in which I performed
this activity. It was simply too exasperating, detail oriented, even
boring. Artists can be extremely difficult as well. I enjoyed creating
ideas for shows, even writing catalogue essays and giving opening
speeches, which I still do on occasion. While contemplating these facts, I
remembered Dave Muller’s "Three Day Weekend" approach, where he carries
around artwork by various people whenever he goes somewhere, and makes
quick and temporary exhibitions — he has what I call the "Shut Up and Do
It Yourself" quasi-Punk attitude. All these thoughts lead me to come up
with an idea.
I decided to become the curator
of a "venue" of some sort, one that was real, not "virtual" (i.e. not
documentation, not computer, whatever — the real object, and not "yellow
pages art" to use Mark Francis’s wonderful phrase), yet one which I could
carry around in a small case and take with me as I go around the world, to
different countries and so on, which I do frequently. First, I thought of
a Laptop Museum, of some kind, but that kept getting back to ideas of a "virtual"
nature, some sort of documentation on CD or the like. Then I looked at one
of the action figures of super-heroes I have in my home. It hit me — I
could make a dollhouse type "space", but a collapsible one, so I could
carry it in a case. With real, but very little works. I then remembered
that Marcel Duchamp had made a tiny version of his Nude Descending a
Staircase for the dollhouse of a friend. It’s about thumb-sized and in
the Stettheimer dollhouse now in the City Museum of New York. I thought,
this is it! I worked from the standard European paper size of A3 (double
letter size) and evolved a collapsible space which would be that size when
folded together in a case. I made it, then remade it together with a
cabinetmaker. I bought a leather attaché case to put it in and
hand-lettered the name on the side (my father was a sign painter, by the
way): The Collapsible Kunsthalle™.
I call it a "Kunsthalle" because
it will have no collection — the works I am showing will be returned to
the artists. I won’t sell anything (unless an important museum wants to
buy the whole shebang, when I’ll contact everyone and discuss what we
should do). Of course most works have to be custom made for my "space,"
but the size makes that less trouble. The scale works out to 1:15. That’s
about half-Barbie/G.I. Joe-size, or normal small super-hero action
figure-size. I ask the artists I invite to truly try to stay near the
actual scaled-down dimensions of their work (not suddenly make a relative
"mural" even though they usually paint very small, for instance).They can
do something smaller of course, just not a heck of a lot bigger, or I
couldn’t fit enough works in.
I will drag the Collapsible
Kunsthalle™ around with me and show it wherever I am, whenever
I am also having a show, or visiting, showing it to "real" curators whom I
meet, in other countries and so on. I think it will be fun AND attract
attention to work of artists I admire. It will be, hopefully, a mix of
well-known, known and lesser-known artists.