panelmania:
bangers and mash
by Suzaan Boettger 


"New York has maintained its position of
dominance because 1) it has so many
artists; 2) they engage in a sophisticated
level of dialogue, and 3) the dialogue is
controlled from here [New York]."
So said Michael Craig-Martin, an Irish-born
artist who was raised in the U.S. and has
long been resident in London, where he is a
professor at Goldsmiths' College. He was
speaking at the Drawing Center in New York
on Sept. 10, 1996, as part of "A
Conversation on Contemporary British Arts", 
a panel that distinguished itself by its
squat level of discourse.

This column has been initiated to respond
to an aspect of art life in New York that
Craig-Martin so correctly pinpointed: the
density of vanguard intellects regularly
spouting off in public forums in this art
capital. Thus it's disappointing to have to
inaugurate it by reporting that this first, 
post-Labor Day panel discussion got the
art-talk season off to a dumb beginning.

Hosted by the Drawing Center--its spacious, 
beautifully-proportioned and -lit gallery
and adventuresome programming has made it
SoHo's premier site for sophisticated
symposia--the putative impetus for the
panel was as an "educational component" of
the show that had opened the previous
weekend at another "alternative space
" Art, in General, called "Thaw: An Exhibition of
Emerging Artists from London." (Curated by
Laurie DeChiara and Omar Lopez-Chahoud, 
the work by six artists will be on view through
Oct. 26.) Joining Craig-Martin on the panel
was the longtime former director of the
nearby Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Richard
Flood, who a couple of years ago became
chief curator at the Walker Art Center, 
Minneapolis, and who himself curated the
substantial traveling exhibition of new
British art called "Brilliant." The
moderator was RoseLee Goldberg, a critic
who at one time directed the gallery at the
Royal College of Art. Lynne Cooke, the Dia
Center curator who is from Australia and
can be counted upon for cool analysis, was
a no-show.

Yet despite the panel's connection to
"Thaw, " neither the artists nor the works
in the show were discussed.

Instead, the three speakers--none of them
English--in this context became
Anglophiles. Goldberg (who originally hails
from South Africa) asked questions of the
two men and they explained through
biographical anecdote their own relation to
contemporary British art. Essentially, 
what the audience got was an enthusiastic social
history. Craig-Martin recounted how the
'80s were dominated by British sculpture, 
almost all of it represented by the
Lisson Gallery, and how Damien Hirst, 
when only a sophomore at Goldsmith's in 1987-88, 
broke that lock by conceiving of "Freeze", 
a professionally presented, artist-
organized exhibition. "Suddenly" Craig-
Martin remarked, "a scene had been created
a dialogue clicked in between art and the
culture of the time." Charles Saatchi's
wholesale acquisitions of young artists'
works made contemporary art fashionable, 
and the Turner Prize, commercially
sponsored and with ten-minute films of the
semi-finalists broadcast on television
made the competition a matter of public
debate. The audience for art became
enormous, so that "people now go to
exhibitions of new art the way they go to
movies." There are still few collectors, 
and the critics are, as Flood put it, 
reactionary "Hilton Kramer's." Flood razzed
the audience, "What do you have here--a
bunch of collectors? There they have
AUDIENCE!"

Hooray for British art--but all of that
ostensible good fortune for the artists
across the Atlantic only seemed to make the
local audience restless. As one put it from the
floor (in a distinctly British accent), 
the panelists' discussion "didn't go beyond a
recognition of the hype 'Freeze' created."
The panel's advocacy lacked a critical
spirit. An hour into the evening, the
audience began to thin out. After a request
from the floor for more "detail or content"
(i.e., ideas), Flood snapped at the woman
for seeking a "recipe" and Craig-Martin
announced, "I'm sure we haven't satisfied
you."

Indeed. With those chastising remarks
much, of the remaining audience fled. The only
thing left to say is that the blather that
night was an anomaly at the Drawing Center, 
where starting Oct. 11 they present a
stellar lineup that will debate, read from
and perform the works of Antonin Artaud.

Suzaan Boettger is an art historian and critic in New York.