Brown-Nose Business

When it comes to art, goodness has (almost) nothing to do with it.

by Robin Rice

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When I described the concept of Arcadia's current show about the art world to sculptor David Stephens, he commented, "So, maybe instead of 'Air Kissing,' the first word should be a little different." Neither of us had seen it at that point, but Stephens was right. Servility is prominent among a range of artifices and compromises typical of the art world.

Most of the work in "Air Kissing: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art About the Art World" is light as air, but its core is harsh: The art world is not a nurturing, fair or even rational environment. Rather, it is quixotic, cruel, riddled with prejudices and an uncertain way to make a living.

Nearly all "professional" artists actually survive as teachers, assistants, installation and transport people, curators, fabricators and other functionaries, or in some non-art profession. Mira Schor's telegraphic paintings (pictured) ambiguously record the consequent evaporation of the artist's studio time. Would she have painted something better if more were available?

My equation for art-world success is something like: 30 percent luck, 35 percent looks, charm and backing (like a working wife or well-connected family) and 35 percent hard work plus that slippery concept, talent. Goodness, as Mae West said, has (almost) nothing to do with it.

"Air Kissing" addresses the luck element with a great video by Christian Jankowski, who paid Italian fortune-tellers to predict the likelihood of success of a work he planned for the 1999 Venice Biennale. Not every psychic predicted he would make a lot of money (a question he did not actually ask, as I recall), but all said it would succeed. If this video is his planned work, how right they were.

The gloomy demographics of art success for women are the subject of three works. Jennifer Dalton's slide show of colorful pie charts provides plenty of comparative information while the activist art group Brainstormers present a chart and a 21-page report growing out of Guerrilla Girls research.

As for the good-looks-and-charm department, in a video by Linzy Kalup, Conversations wit de Churen V. As da Art World Might Turn, the aspiring American artist is played in Monty Python-esque style by a socially inept, not-great-looking man in dreadful drag. It's no surprise that this character is disappointed in her dreams.

This show will entertain those who know the art world. Current or former art majors will find Alex Bag's video "journal" describing the career of a student from freshman to graduate all too familiar.

Intentionally uncohesive, the show is fashionably text-heavy. A big book on Duchamp was cleverly rebound as The Holy Bible by David Hammons. It's open to a page illustrating Duchamp's mustached Mona Lisa, which art historians will recall is titled L.H.O.O.Q. Appropriately, the acronym in French is a pun that translates "She's got hot pants."

The art world probably isn't lots worse than the rest of the world, but we desperately long to believe it's better. And this show's Fax Bak entry is better. Noncommercial, humorous and initially open-ended, the 1998 Fax Bak project elicited authentic communication (however hostile) in place of a simulacrum.

The U.K. collective "Bank" was behind Fax Bak. They returned press releases from commercial galleries with copious annotations. In the example shown, suggestions and corrections were added to obfuscating, jargonistic prose emanating from New York's Feigen Contemporary gallery. Rubber-stamped with the red Fax Bak motto "Helping You Help Yourselves," the documents were faxed back to the gallery. Finally, the gallery ended the exchange with an unambiguous hand-printed fax.

That message shares something with Michael F. Black's more pompous hostility. At a fundraiser for Momenta in New York City, the original venue for "Air Kissing," Black received a nicely fabricated Scalp made by William Bryan Purcell. Its convincingly "bloody" surface backs a swath of false curls. The scalp currently hangs in the gallery beside Black's angry letter of resignation from Momenta sponsorship: "I found this object to be completely unacceptable and below any reasonable standard of artistic accomplishment." I imagine Fax Bak would have advised him to stop sugarcoating.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

Air Kissing Through April 20, Arcadia University Art Gallery, Spruance Fine Arts Center, 450 S. Easton Road, Glenside, 215-572-2131, arcadia.edu/gallery