11 February 07
Clones
When I worked for an architectural firm in Cambridge, Mass, in the late 1980s, a lot of the young architects had studied at Harvard. They had survived the gruelling critiques by the then prima donna, an eccentric Argentine called Jorge Silvetti (“Jess: but it is veddy veddy oggly”) and were coming to terms with churning out HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) systems rather than designing the masterpieces they were probably all capable of but would never have the chance to do, because architecture is highly political and without an in to where the money was, their work was doomed to oblivion. They were affable and seemed resigned to the huge student loans they’d struggle to repay for decades.
They taught me a lot, though, these talented designers, apart from the late 20th century Boston vernacular and how to play softball. (And, incidentally, how to love the Red Sox.) They taught me that you could tell that someone had studied graphic design at RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design, simply by looking at their portfolio. (You can use any typeface as long as it’s Helvetica.) I later came to learn that you could tell any calligrapher who had been active in Portland in the 1980s: styles coalesce regionally around one or two top practitioners.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this: it’s been going on a long time. The eyes of figures in Giotto’s paintings are what they are because of where he was and who he sipped wine with, as much as who taught him how to paint and his own genius. Early Renaissance Sienna brings to mind a certain look. There were the masters and the students, but there’s an identity inherent in the school.
How this is different from a disturbing trend I’m seeing now in book arts is hard to pinpoint. But the way, now, the de rigueur way to make an artist’s book, is this: you take all your pages, you smother them with acrylics (leave no white space visible, on pain of being labelled facile); you then take vintage photographs, which you cut up in “disturbing” ways (hands; feet; eyes) and paste onto your acrylic ratatouille, and then you paste arbitrary newspaper clippings on top of that and other clip art and maybe some rubber stamping and slather some more muddy acrylics on and there you go, you’ve made some art.
Except for this: all of these pieces are identical. They will be found 100 years from now and someone will say “Scrapbooking School, ca. 2006, artist unknown.”
Will someone please explain to me a) how this happened and b) how it’s just a fad that’ll over by next Tuesday, please?
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As usual I have nothing illuminating except a completely tangential memory your entry activated. David Sedaris wrote hilarious short stories about his time as an artist high on meth, and the installations he ardently created with old cageots and hair wads from the sink. I think it might be nice, albeit facile, to blame drugs.
Oh, hilarious!!!!
I’ve been grousing about this for a couple of years, now, sounding like a terrible curmudgeon.
“grumble…grumble…buncha people following instructions from the “how to make scrapbook pages” books, copying each other, churning out horrible bastardized versions of Max Ernst and Joseph Cornell, even if they wouldn’t know those artists if they tripped over their work in a pot-pourri-scented gift shop.”
Scrapbooking: the WalMart of humankind’s need to make meaning, or establish oneself as meaningful, and to call the process Art. Profits from those scrapbooking stores must be enormous, and they are just total crap. Where it actually came from, I suspect, is stickers—little girls (I’ve never known a boy to be into it) grew up peeling and sticking, and just never outgrew it. They’ve discovered acrylics, and they’re off to the races when they’re not keeping Hallmark in business. Pay them no heed.
Well, my goodness. I’m afraid I’ve not seen any of these “art books” Pica describes, but I have seen some scrapbooks done by people (yes, all women) who want to, yes, make something that means something TO THEM. I don’t know that any of them would have the temerity to call it “art,” but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be as disdainful of what those who call what they do “art” as you seem to be of their pastime. Oh, and now and again I’ve seen some rather decent items from Hallmark’s shop.
Docroc, Babz: perhaps I should explain that I have no disdain for scrapbookers as such (and I've never seen a scrapbooker use acrylics like this, though my sample size is low): but the way that scrapbooking, and the industry that caters to it (and it is indeed formidable), has started spilling over into domains that used to be the province of letterpress, painting, calligraphy, is distressing to me. Mostly it’s because they all seem like such a cop-out.
My rant was prompted by a book Numenius found for me at the library, Alphabetica: An A-Z Creativity Guide for Collage and Book Artists by Lynne Perrella. You don't need to pick up a copy of this: you just need to see the cover on Amazon or somewhere. (What's on the cover is repeated with minor hue shifts throughout, and the pieces are all by different artists.)There’s a really interesting sub-thread to explore here: how did a wave of particular style find simultaneous expression through so many different people?
I’ve often wondered at how looking at others’ work prompts me to see in ways I didn’t/couldn’t before.
And the related phenomena of style-cluster-bombs — have people always been ever thus, and it’s simply been magnified/accelerated in the internet age?
Oh well. More tea, and more reading on your blog!
Your description fits perfectly the zillions of “artists books” which have been pouring out of art schools offering courses in, doh, Artists Books. Those teaching these courses generally don’t have any background in the whole Livre d’Artiste tradition or even in the ‘multiples’ produced by artists in the 60s/70s etc. So they show examples of the acrylic-ized scrabook-ized stuff and that’s what gets produced. But on the other hand, it’s not all like that. There are some truly original and beautiful and well-made artists books around, which can be seen in various book fairs & exhibitions and collections. These, I think, will last.