Beautiful Losers at the YBG

On display now at the Yerba Buena Gardens Center for the Arts is a mostly sad illustration of the Warholian prophesy that "anybody can be an artist." There is nothing beautiful about anything in this show. To call the graffiti, amateur video, skateboards and picture-me-ugly snapshots and sundry other sayings and sprayings in this show "art" is to call miniature gulf a sport. Sure, lets have miniature golf in the Olympics too! After all, it is sort of like real golf and anybody can do it; and most importantly, miniature golf in the Olympics would eliminate all class barriers to participation, a totally egalitarian Olympics. That, in essence is what this show is about: democratic art.

Keith Haring took from the cheerless, ubiquitous graffiti in New York and turned it into art. Paul Taylor might take skateboards and turn their nuances into dance and Lichtenstein might turn comic scribbles into art but none of that makes the original things art any more than Mt. St. Victoire or Hernandez, New Mexico are art in and of themselves. The graphitizing of New York subway cars has everything to do with sociological frustrations and almost nothing in common with art. The fact (made much of) that it is illegal and visually offensive is not important or relevant. What is important is to realize that by calling some primitive block letters and comic-strip characters, with seldom a nuance of differentiation from one subway car to the next art provides an easy mechanism for the (white) landed gentry to assuage hundreds of years of capitalist oppression and ill-concealed racial contumely. But there is more than pubescent graffiti in this particular show.

Incidentally, there should be a permanent notice posted at the door of the YBGCA: "Warning, juvenile material in these galleries." You might even consider bringing ear protection.

What is art? I don’t think we know anymore. I’m not sure I want to know. I was certainly surprised to discover that skateboarding is an art. I agree, skateboarding should not be a "crime". However, skateboarding inside a museum? Awright, awright awready, so we want to celebrate all the wonderful things that go on within our poly-cultural, semi-democratic society but a skateboard rink in a museum? I love the (sculptural) idea of the skateboard rink as object reminiscent of the amoeba swimming pools so popular for boarders in California. I think the rink all by itself would have been a brilliant piece of art work (it is, in fact, a fantastic piece of carpentry). Maybe even let the boarders in but isolate it totally and let us just see it abstractly through soundproof glass darkly perhaps to accentuate the surreal, abstractly balletic things happening. I mean, I am not averse to a range of possibilities for the rink but I am offended by the gratuitous assertion that kids coming in off the street just to skate are somehow art.

About all I can say about the photography in this show is that every bit of it smacks of some kids who saw or, more likely, heard about Dianne Arbus and Nan Goldin and decided that that was art so why not photograph their own prurient journeys through self-absorbed adolescence. So we have big cocks, shaved pussy, dour looks, bloody hands (wounds from the front line of boarding) cheap cars, cheap picnics, cheap apartments and desultory group hugs. Again, is this art or a sociologist’s glimpse of growing up in America circa 1985? Sure, we need to know these things. The travails of our young people are extremely important but, I ask, is it art? If I am not mistaken, this stuff is being shown at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Perhaps we should just change the name to make me happy: Yerba Buena Adolescent Art Center.

A whole room upstairs is devoted to painted skateboards. Fine, lets have an "art" show of yo yo’s and tattoos and motorcycle gas tanks all pinstriped. I mean, where does it end? If art can be any damn thing any teenager scribbles or draws anywhere what do we call the other stuff, like Pollack and Picasso? Yes, it is (slightly) interesting and demonstrates (unsophisticated) elements of design, but (fine) art? I don’t think so. It is all soporifically similar.

The videos are no more inspiring than the stuff on the walls; don’t expect Bruce Nauman here. 54 minutes about a bunch of skateboarders sliding down banisters from L.A to Boston? Give me a break! This might well be the dumbest documentary ever made.

The seminal piece of the show is an artist (English?) who hires a crane and suspends himself for 44 days above the London Bridge in a glass box. He pretends he is risking his life. Parts of the video show him doing other very weird things such as trying to cut his ear off a la Van Gogh, pretending to disembowel himself, and being punched a la Houdini. Apparently, this fellow has no scruples or modesty whatsoever. Houdini had dignity and let the biggest guy around take a good, solid punch at him; this fellow keeps backing away and his attempt to cut his ear off is sheer embarrassment. So, has buffoonery become art? I mean, is this yahoo supposed to make us remark at what guts Vincent had to actually cut his ear off and send it over to Gauguin? This young art poseur states at one point that he hates life and then in the next vignette he mumbles how wonderful he feels in his little glass exhibition box.

The trouble with the narcissistic childish stuff in this show is that it all illustrates the fantasy of art. Anybody can pretend to be an artist. If you wanna live in a fantasy world, fine. In the real world if you pretend you are a fighter and you step into the ring with Mike Tyson you better have one heluva chin and a good upper-cut.

2004