Critics in the Northwest appear to be vying for the punchline position from an old anti-feminist joke:
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: That’s not funny.
We fall all over ourselves in our haste to tell Portland’s Jim Riswold that he’s not funny. I’ve done it. Jen Graves has done it. Chas Bowie is doing it now, in response to Riswold’s show at Augen Gallery.
Me:
He doesn’t have the depth to compete with Mexican graveyard humor, even under the utterly false guise of a Hirst tribute.
(Not just false but utterly false. more)
Graves:
Riswold makes big, glossy, colorful photographs that reach for satire but amount to little more than low-calorie artistic cannibalism. (more)
Bowie:
It doesn’t take a degree in art history to get Riswold’s one-liners. One of the show’s better photographs, for instance, a small still life titled “Damien Hirst Gets a Fish for His Seventh Birthday,” alludes to Hirst’s infamous sculpture of a dead shark by imaging the artist’s boyhood fish tank, occupied by a singular fish skeleton. Seeing as Hirst first exhibited his 14-foot tiger shark in 1992, Riswold’s commentary is as culturally relevant as a Monica Lewinsky joke. (more)
Mike Leavitt cannot claim to be any more nuanced, but his home town (Seattle) hearts him. I post examples of his art toys on a semi-regular basis. In New York, William Powhida is as subtle as a sledge hammer. Reaction? Pant, pant.
What’s wrong with Riswold? Why do critics rain shock and awe down on his head? He moved to art after a big career as an ad man. Could it be (at least partly) the oldest of NW critical tropes, that commercial success, especially in a commercial field, is suspect?
Riswold’s Retired Jesus is pretty funny and, dare I say, well done.
Q: How many art critics does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That’s not funny.
Excellent post, Regina.
Riswold is not simply pressing the drunken college student idea of a one liner joke. I think he is making the case for the cultural relevance of things like New Yorker cartoons – as well as Monica Lewinsky jokes.
What someone like Jen Graves probably doesn’t like about his work is that Riswold is making fun, bascially, of her: art for the inculcated, but not the overly inculcated. It’s an anti-snob jab and Jen Graves doesn’t handle that kind of thing very well.
Remember Jasper Johns’ “The Critic Sees”? (Of course, you do – we all do, right?). That’s certainly no less of a one-liner than Griswold’s work. In fact, far more so because Griswold seems to have a broader target.
Q: How many art critics does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That’s not funny.
I am impressed, Regina, that you made the joke funny.
Jim Riswold’s work looks like carefully calculated advertisements for contemporary art…the equivalent of drinking a diet soda.
The images “tell”, they don’t ask…just not a very satisfying or fulfilling visual experience for me anyway. Contextually, many Pop artists from 45 years ago explored the same territory with a more personal appreciation for surface, texture and assemblage. Riswold’s oversized photoprints feel calculated to sell as “art” and not authentic to any kind of genuine experience…the scale, the one-liners, the obvious themes, the jokes.
Well, now that I think about it, perhaps his work is perfectly emblematic of these cynical times.
Yes, Bonegyspy, but some images of his that are better than that. The man needs an editor. Don’t we all.
I’m so mixed. He is easily a quick study in what critics despise but all the meat they desire.
Give it time. He’s not funny. He’s trying too hard and then again, very deferential. Spend an hour with the guileless man and get a sense of how it all makes sense, whether you like his art or not.
I was exposed to a concept for 7 weeks and for a while, was numb to the point. A lot of repetitive photographs, conceptualized to be actualized by minions. Impressed with the execution and his well-earned status in the advertising world, I wasn’t feeling it right away. And then the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day… until I was branded. I was dreaming about it. It was affecting me the way all of our immediate surroundings infiltrate our lives.
Here I was being manipulated and I was satisfied because I knew it, I just didn’t know if I liked it.
His subject matter is often about manipulation or pain – (Hitler, Warhol, Frida Kahlo) – and its hard to see through the veil of professionalism that is his Achilles heel, but its the only way he can work.
This charming man has only as many days left on this earth as the rest of us (never enough), so I thank him for making me think and I hope we all see beyond good taste to see what effort was made. I also hope to see more. We’ll all have opinions.
Diana
Riswold’s brand of humor is particularly adept at spinning well-known art world personages and repackaging them in a way that suggest both the significance and frivolity of their success. Riswold combines his adman acumen with a positively boyish love of toys to reassemble artists like Warhol, Hirst, Koons, Sherman, Basquiat, Lichtenstein, Kahlo and Rauschenberg. In this, Riswold focuses on an aspect of the artist’s personal mythology and/or ego. This is achieved by focusing on an event in the artist’s life or an iconic characteristic in their work, and often both.
However, his carefully distilled imagery has detracted some critics from accepting its genuine artistic integrity. And for this, Riswold is accused of being yet another harbinger of a heartless art world that has succumbed to cheap jokes and shiny finishes. This interpretation of the work ironically plays the victim to the quick ‘art world zingers’ that it accuses Riswold of throwing, Chas Bowie. If one is distracted by the slick finishes of Riswold’s work they may be tempted to appreciate it (or not) on the surface only.
While Riswold’s work relies on humor and blatancy it also pays tribute to a larger a theme- namely the role of ego in the creation of personal mythology. If there is a punch line to be had in Art People and a Cow it is not directed at the viewer, nor the subject, but Riswold himself.
Riswold is aware and unabashed in his recycling of other artist’s work and he aligns himself with the likes of one of the original Duchampian copiers (yes, that does sound oxymoronic), Cindy Sherman. Cast in acid-green light Riswold wears a black and white striped frock; the image replicates Sherman’s “Untitled 138,” 1984, which takes aim at female stereotypes in the fashion industry. Why would Riswold place himself in drag as Sherman playing the role of a depressed and possibly homicidal fashion model? Is it the disparity between the constructed image and the reality? Perhaps. By isolating myth and making it absurd Riswold enables us to laugh at the way stereotypes are constructed. It is not a new tactic in art but it is one that continually needs updating, this is what Riswold does and he takes aim at himself and uses his own self-proclaimed “bad-art” to make his points.
In a way, Riswold is presents himself as the sacrificial lamb of the art world, which is funny and promotes his own mythology. So my advice to those Riswold detractors is don’t hate the player, hate the game.