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Themes ofContemporaryArtVISUAL ART AFTER 1980

JEAN ROBERTSON

HERRON SCHOOL OF ART AND OESIGN

INDIANA UNIVERSITY-PURDUE UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOLlS

CRAIG McDANIEL

HERRQN SCHOOL OF ART ANO DESIGN

INDIANA UNIVERSITY-PURDUE UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOllS

New York Oxford

OXFQRD UNIVERSITY PRESS

2005

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PROFILE: Ken Aptekar

Ken Aptekar's paintings are instantly recognizable, even though they share strate~

gies (such as juxtaposing words and visual imagery within one artwork) utilized bymany other artists. Aptekar constructs his work in a consistent formato Typicallyeach oil painting slarts as a single square wooden panel (thirty ¡nches by thirty¡nches, or twenty-four ¡oches by twenty-four ¡nches), or multiple square panelscombined (5uch as two thirty ¡nches by thirty ¡oches squares butted together toform a sixty ¡nches by thirty ¡nches artwork). Aptekar paints an image on the panelor panels and OOlt5 a thick pane 01 glass approximately an ¡neh in fronl of theimage. Typeset words are sandblasted onlo the glass. A viewer reads the wordshovering in front of the painting and sees the words cast shadows onto the surfaceof the image.

The artist derives his imagery from other painters' work. Not striving for anexact copy, he translates the source image into a style of painting that combineshis own with the original artist's. Colors may change¡ the most common alterationis a simplification of colors into a monochrome. Scale is manipulated for emo­tional control. For example, by creating a close-up of a figure's face (done by en­larging and cropping a detail from the original image), Aptekar creates (or exposesla feeling of intimacy that did not exist (or did not register) in viewing the earlierpainting. After creating a digital sean of the source image, Aptekar often employsa computer software program to experiment with alternate layouts for paintings inprogress. He can experiment with various combinations of text and details. Thecomputer also facilitates the testing of such options as flipping the image into amirror reversal of its original format.

Early in his career, Aptekar appropriated details of imagery from famousartists, such as van Gogh, Rembrandt. Watteau, and Raphael. In selecting oldmaster works as his starting point, Aptekar startled and delighted viewers bydemonstrating how the meanings of "masterworks" from the history of art can shiftdramatically. In Pínk Frick [6-101, for instance, Aptekar appropriates a well-knownself-portrait by Rembrandt. transforming it into a reddish-tinged monochrome (sortof an equivalent to seeing Rembrandt through rose-colored glasses!l. Etched ontothe panes of glass positioned directly in front of the four-part painting are a seriesof reincarnations of the words "pink frick." Some of the spellings are nonsense syl­lables, while others are actual words, such as "fink" and "prick." Aptekar's wordplay "invites parallel readings about Rembrandt, the current location of the por­trait [in] the Frick Museum, and the [Frick'sl philanthropic, union-busting bene­factor and namesake."36 Aptekar's painting serves as a complex and witty critiqueof power. In Aptekar's view, even a sublime work of art (the RembrandU inevitablyfunctions within a network of powerful economic and social forces.

More recently, Aptekar has undertaken commissioned installations involvingpainted detailsselected from artworks by lesser-known artists. Aptekar's Dad isshow­ing me how todevelop(1997) (color plate 171, for example, is based on a seascape

6·10 Ken Aptekar 1 P¡nkFri~k. 1993

0iI on wood. sandblasted g1ass. boIts 601I60.rdles 14 p¡mels¡C<lurtesy oIlle<noce Slelnl»\lm GaIery. M_

by Willem Van de Velde the Younger, a little known early-eighteenth-century Outch

artist. Aptekar's composition shoW$ close-ups of ships in glowing red colors (theships are revised versions of those in Van de Velde's painting). Etched on the sheetof glass that hovers in front of the painted imagery, Aptekar's text concerns his ownchildhood. The narrative focuses on an episode when his father was teaching himphotographic darkroom procedures. Aptekar's strategy of combining an autobio­graphic story with the reworked imagery results in the latter being seen as a pho­tographic negative. In Aptekar's work, the word "negative" takes on a double

meaning: the storyline written on the glass pane hints ominously at the youngAptekar's anxiety over the lack of an appropriate level of parental guidance: "Often¡ am all alone in the dark Iwhile I'm developing."

Dad is showing me is one of thirty artworks created for a 1997 exhibition atthe Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, O.C. Aptekar based the entire series ofthirty artworks on selections from the Corcoran's permanent collection. Each ofAptekar's artworks incorporates details from an existing work. The texts incisedinto the glass in frent of the paintings are the artist's own writing¡ many tell storiesbased on the artist's memories of childhood and adolescence (such as the true tale

of an older brother who, tragically, needed to be hospitalized for a nervous break­down shortly after entering medical schooJ). Other texts quote actual responses tothe original paintings that Aptekar elicited from visitors and guards at the Corcaran

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Gallery who agreed lo participate in focus group discussions about what specific

artworks mean to them.By incorporating the words 01 viewers ¡nta his artwork, Aptekar creates a elever

takeoff on Rotand Barthes's famous pronouncement in 1967 01 the "death of theauthor." An influential French poststructuralist and semiotician, Barthes theorizedthat readers and viewers of texts and images necessarily create their own mean+ings; according to Barthes, no author or artist can dictate fully how others willdecode an existing work. 37 Each person unpacks his or her own baggage during thetask 01 constructing an interpretatían. Barthes's theory also declares that the artisthas no "authentic" voice bul creates his work using languages and conventions ofwriting and image making that are derived from earlier usages. Part of our delightin viewing Aptekar's art is to see how effectively he addresses both sides of atheoretical puzzle: no artist can be totally original, and yet no interpretation canbe totally the same as any other.

A study of Aptekar's paintings in the 19905 and today shows his ongoing

interest in juxtaposing appropriated visual images with autobiographical texts. Hekeeps revealing new sides to the question: How is an artwork's meaning altered bythe process of interpretation? For an installation of his work in a 2001 exhibition,Give and Take, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, london, Aptekar hung his ownpaintings alongside the source paintings. Doing so, Aptekar's "spin·off" resonatesin a seemingly endless variety of interpretations as the viewer glances back andforth at the Aptekar and the source echoing one another. Aptekar believes, and hisart demonstrates, that interpretation is a creative process, too; each viewer com­

pletes a new work of artoFrom the outset of his career, Aptekar approached other artlsts' art as an

opportunity to remind himself of his own lile's story. The sandblasted texts at­tached to paintings include episodes of family strife, the pressures his brother feltgrowing up in a household where high achievement was expected, and his ownchildhood anxieties. Aptekar's full range of texts also explores liminal, or border,areas, where his own personality melds with communal identities, including hisJewishness, his male gender, his status as an artist, and his professional career

operating within an art world heavily influenced by the politics of museums andthe power of critical theorists. Even a Rembrandt self-portrait, as Aptekar revealedin Pink Frick, is not evaluated sirnply on the basis of sorne neutral scale of artis­tic value but finds its place shifting within the constantly negotiated and renego­tiated arena of art history and institutional practices.

Throughout this book, we approach art in the belief that all artworks are openfor interpretation within a context of ideas and issues. Ken Aptekar's work takesthis process a step further. Not only do his paintings gain meaning as we consider

them within a conceptual context, but the artworks themselves embody compet­ing contexts of ideas within their own compositions. What do we mean by this? Wemean that taken alone, the visual image in the source painting may lmply, to eachof us, one set of ideas, whereas Aptekar's copy inserts a different set 01 Ideas and

issues to think about in relationship to the painting. The addition of words adds,

literally, another layer of meaning to the entire artwork. Aptekar's paintings addresssuch issues as What artworks are collected by a museum? What do the people whowork in and visit a museum think the artworks mean? How are males and femalesrepresented in artworks, both masterworks and works that are in the dustbin of arthistory? How can artworks created by others in earlier times for other purposesretrofit into new compositions that explore thp. ;utist's own life story?

The painter Ken Aptekar was born in Detroit in 1950. He received a master of

fine arts degree trom Pratt Institute in 8rooklyn, New York. He now divides histime primarily between New York City and Paris, maintaining residences and stu­

dios in both locations.

Notes1. Deborah Wye, Thillking Prillt: Books /0 Billboards, 1980-95 (New York: Museum of

Modern Art, 1996). An exhibition catalogo2. John Berger is the author of one of the notable exceptions: a ....,ork of criticism in which a

sequence of visual images wilhout any accompanying text delivers the "message." See Berger,Wnys of Seeing (London and New York: Brirish Broadcasring Corporation and Penguin Books,1972), pp. 36-43, 66-81, 114-27.

3. Gavin lanljes, inlroducrion lO A Fruitfu/ !ncoher('nce: Día/oglles witJI Artists on In/('rna­tionalisnl (London: Inslirute of Inlernalional Visual Ans, 1998), p. 16.

4. Chang Tsong-zung, uThe Character of the Figure,u in Word IHld Mellnins: Six COlltenrpo­rary C!Ji/lese Artists (Buffalo: University ar Buffalo An CaIlery, 2000), p. 13. An exhibition catalog.

5. John Hollander. Types of Shape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).6. In addilion [Q wrirers who emphasize the visual qualities of language, a great number of

contemporary liternry artisls have made use of visual art as subjoo matrero Entire anthologiesand critical studies, for instance, hove been dcvoted ro poems aoout paintings. See, for example,Howard Nemerov, "On Poclry and Painling. N in J. D. McClatchy, ed., Poets on Painlers (Berkelcyand Los Angeles: UniversilY of California Press, 1988).

7. The praetice of mixing the visual and rhe verbal in works of art has a long hisrory, but wenole that visual and verbal modes of representalion have, ar times, bccn kepr strictly separa te. Forexamplc, in an intluential essay uLaocoón, or On the Limits of Painling and Poeuy," eighleenth.cenlury German aesthetician Gonhold Lessing argued that lhe domains of [he twO ans are sodistincr-painting based on simultaneous spatial composition and poetry based on the sequentialmeaning in wordS-lhat even rhe criricism of eaeh art form muS[ necessarily be based on separaleprincipIes. In the era immediately prior tO rhe contemporary, influential modcrnist critics, espe­cially those favonng formalism, tended 10 emphasize those qualities inlrinsic ro each art formo Inthe case of visual art, this resulte<! in works that avoided lilerary soueres, narralivc, and theincorporation of language.

8. Kristine Stilcs, "Language and Conceprs," in Krisrine Stih,"s and Peter Selz, cds.. 7heo­ríes Ilnd OOCllmell/s of COlltemporary Arl: A Sourcebook of Artis/s' Writings (Berkc1ey andLos Angeles: UniversilY of California Press, 1996), p. 804.

9. Quoled in William Innes Homer. The Lansuoge of Contemporllry CriticiSnl Clllrified(Madiron, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1999), p. 30. We note that our reeapitulation of a comp!exhisrory is quite simplified, Icaving out a discussion of o/hers, such ;lS the AmeriC;ln philosopherCharles Sanders Peirce and Freneh strucrurnl anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who airodeveloped ideas that bear important relationships to those we are discussing.

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10. Brian Wallis, "The Artist's Book and Postmodcrnism," in Camelia Lauf and ClivePhiJlpot, ecis., Artisr/AlIthor: COl1temporary Ar'!sts' Books (Ncw York: American Federarían oEArts and Distributed Art Publishers, 1998), p. 95.

11 Howard 5ingerman, "111 theText," in!l Foresl af Signs: Art in Ihe Crisis of Representa­rion (Los Angeles: Museum of Conlemporary Art; Cambridge: Mil Press, 1989), p. 165.

12. For abrid look at why [he competing paradigms of semioticiuns versus "traditionaJ" arthistorians can engender eontention, see Mieke Bal, "Signs in Painting," rhe IIrt Bulletin 78(March 1996): pp. 6-9.

13. Artiot'o omtC11lcnt quotc¿ in AndrCflo Hflpl<clllcycr und Pete¡- Wcicrmoir, ccis_, photo texl

text piloto: T/u' Synthesis of PllOtogmp/¡y fUld Tex' in COlllemporary Arl (80z,en, Itnly: Museunlfür Modernc Kunst; Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurter Kunsrv~rein, 1996), p. 139. An exhibirioneatalog.

14. Russelll3owman, a curator and art historian, identified rhe firsr six caregories we lisr inthe use of words in arto See Russdl Bowman, "\Nords and Images: A Persisrent Paradox," Arl}ournal45 (Winter 1985): p. 336.

15. Rimma Gerlovina and Valcriy Cerlovin, "Forward," in PhotoglYl'hs (Ncw Orlcans: NewOrleans Museum of Art, 1993), unpaginated. An exhibition catalog.

"16. Claire Oboussier, "Vong Phaophanit," in Beyond Ihe FU/lIre: The Third Asia-PaeíficTriennial of COIl/emporary Arl (Hrisbone: Queensland Art Gallery, 1999), p. 216. An exhibitioncaralog.

17. Viro Acconci, "Notes on Language," in Perver/ed by LiPlgllage (Greenvale, N.Y.: HillwoodArt Gallery, Long lsland Universiry/C W. Posr Campus, 1987), p. 6. An exhibition cata lag.

18. S~e the insightful essay by Hamza Walker, "Don'r Throw Otlt rhe Shaman with theBathwater," in Ann Tcmkin and Hamza Walkcr, eds., Raymond Peuibon: A Reada {Philadelphia:Philadephia Muscum of Art, 1998}, pp. 217-24.

19. Thelma Colden, "My BrOlh~r," in Thc1ma Gold~n, Black Male: Reprcsentalious ofMaswlinily in COl1lemporary American Arl (Ncw York: \Nhitney Museum of American Art,1994), p. 35. An exhibition (atalog.

20. Wye, Thinklng Prilll, p. 87.21. Sriles, "Language and Concepts," p. 816.22. Quoted in an interview with the anist in A Fruilfu/lncoherellce, p. 70.23. Eriko Osa ka, "Shigeaki Iwaí," in LJeyond ¡he FII/ure, p. 72.24. rbid.25. Valentin y. Mudimbe, "The Surreptirious Speech," in Okwui Enwewr, ed., Th e Shorf

Ccnfllry: [Ildepelldencc alld Lil¡¡'ratioll Movemenfs il¡ Africa, 1945-1994 (Munich: MuseumVilla Sruck, 2(01), p.19. An exhibirion catalogo

26. For a discussion of how naming operates in rhe formaríon of social identity, see LucyLippard, "Naming," in Lippard, Mixed Blessings: New Ar' in a M¡ll¡inll¡uml Amcriea (New York:Pantheon Books, 1990), pp. 19-55.

27. Nicholas Thomas, "The Body's Names: Cordon Bennett's 'Notes to Basquiat,'" inBeyond ¡he Fl/ture, p. 174. Bennett produeed the works for a show in Nl'W York and deeidcd tocreate a link with the place by aligning the imagery and ideas in the paintings with the work ofJean-Michel Basquiar.

28. Magritte's painting L'lIsage de la parole I (The Use ofWords r) (1928-29) shows a sim­ply painted pipe below which are painled Ihe words, "Ceeí n'esl pas !lne pipe" (This is nol a pipe).Suzi Gablik commented, "Normally objects nre c1assified under words like 'nee' and 'shoe', andnlso under pictures rhal represent them. The more stereotyped these Inbels and their uses are, themore likely it is that the represented wil! be confused with the representntion." See Suzi Gablik,Magril/(' (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1976), p. '137.

29. Quoted in Jan Estep, "'vVords and Music: [nterview with Christian Marclay," in New Ar¡ExaminH 29, no. 1 (Septembcr-Oetobcr 20(1): p. 79.

30. jonathan Goodman, "Xu Bing," Seu/pIure 20, no. 10 (Dcccmber 2001): pp. 70-71.

31. joseph Grigely quored in Michacl Kimmelman, "Bit und Pirces From thr IntersectionWhere a Draf Mun Meets the Hearing," New York Times, August 31, 2001, B28.

32. The importance of maso advertising, and the examinarion of ito eHect by applying lheo­rrtical toolo of analysis, has received great attention by variouo scholars. According to Puuljobling and David Crowley, judirh WilIiamoon's Decodillg Advertisements (1978) is "probablythe key text in this kind of enquiry, and in it she conrextualizes advertising in a Marxist-feministframework, with reson to semiological analysis." See Paur jobling and David Crowley, GraphicDesigno' Reproduction and Representation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996),pp. 245-46.

33. Oliver Seifert, "Jeffrey Shaw," in MediasCllpe (New York: Guggenhrim Museum, 1996),p. 48. An exhibirion catalog.

34. Charles Bernstein, "J Don'r Take Voice Mail," in Susan Bee and Mira Schor, eds.,MIEIAIN/fINIG: An AnthoJogy of Artists' Writings, Theory, and Criticism (Durham, N.e.:Duke Universiry Press, 2000), p. 181.

35. john S. Weber, "Beyond the Saturarion Point: The Zeitgeist in the Machine," in 010101:Art in Technological Times (San Francisco: San Francisco Muoeum of Modern An, 2001), p. 23.An exhibition catalogo

36. Gary Sangster; "Ken Aptckar;" in 43rd Biel/nial Exhibítioll of Contemporary AmericanPaillting (Washington, o.c.: Corcoran Gallery of An, 1993), p. 34. An exhibirion catalog.

37. See Roland Banhes, "The Death of the Aurhor," in Stephen Heath, ed. and trans., lmage,Music, Text (New York: Noonday Press, 1977), pp. 142-48.

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