Anodyne
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
 

Read last night (cover to cover, in the tub): Cabinet Books' terrific Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark's Fake Estates. Studs Terkel-style multiple first-person point-of-view narrative; wildly contradictory testimony; retroactively assembled conceptual artworks (which, at least in the view of historian Pamela M. Lee, aesthetically improves them), and some unexciting contemporary proposals to mount new artworks (relentlessly earnest and dull artworks, with the exception of Sarah Oppenheimer's terrific Contract for Renovation, 2005) on the original Matta-Clark sites.

Says one interviewee:

"It was [...] artwork, but [art] that may have been recognized as such by only a handful of people. Therefore, it was of questionable value. You must understand that, at that time, most people didn't know what to make of Gordon's art. Even his friends weren't sure if Gordon was making art or just fooling around. Gordon always thought he was making art, but he had no idea if such art would one day be worthwhile, if it might have a value beyond the moment. I was so daunted by trying to make any sense out of the contents of the box that I stuck them away in a closet. . . ."
- posted by cjb @ 9:36 AM


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