2
Shall We Kill Daddy?
Mike Kelley
It is this problem of transparency that I believe primarily separates the first generation of Conceptual artists from the so- called second generation, which I am often defined as a part of. Much of the pleasure I got from early Conceptual artworks was from seeing them as a critique of, a parody of, dominant modes of the presentation of "knowledge." I think this was accentuated by the fact that, in the late Sixties, Conceptual artworks existed within a milieu where they would have been considered alongside psychedelic counter culture graphics. Psychedelic graphics set up a mode of visual address that was distinct from dominant cultural modes, whereas Conceptual Art did a pathetic version of them. Conceptual Art's primary visual source looks to be the academic textbook, where the poorly-printed photograph or diagram, accompanied by a caption, is standard fare. The fact that this mode of address is culturally omnipresent does not render it invisible, for, as I have already pointed out, there are modes of address distinct from it that, by comparison, will always render it visible again. It is only invisible in context. The artworld pressures operating at the time to render the visual tropes of Conceptualism invisible are twofold. The first is political - artists of the time sought to make works which, in their seemingly invisible ("dematerialized" to use Lucy Lippard's term) state, could symbolically lie outside of commodity status. The second pressure was philosophical - to downplay the fetishized objectness of artworks was to play up the mind, the intelligence, of its maker. This is the Duchampian model. Nevertheless, the visual tropes of Conceptualism were not invisible, which is obvious now that it has been rendered an academic and historically recognizable art movement.
In response to this crisis of the "look" of Conceptualism, the Neoconceptualists of the late Seventies/early Eighties began exploring presentational modes previously taboo within Conceptualist practice - modes derived from Modernist art history and from popular culture. I know from my personal experience at Cal Arts, in the mid Seventies, how reviled popular culture was. The general consensus of the first generation Conceptualist faculty was that use of such material was a reiteration of the values of the dominant culture, and critical usage of it was simply impossible. The apolitical stance of Pop Art had seemingly closed the issue in the Sixties. Some of the most widely-discussed writings at this time, by people of my generation, were ones that tackled the politics of image usage, and especially the usage of mass media imagery. Images That Understand Us: a conversation between David Salle and James Welling of 1980, Tom Lawson's Last Exit: Painting of 1981, and Richard Prince's Why I Go to the Movies Alone of 1983, are good examples of the kind of texts I'm talking about. All three of these texts in one way or another attempt to reconcile the use of mass media imagery with the political aims of Conceptualism. Lawson's text attempts to reintroduce imagistic painting as a viable artistic pursuit; while the other two texts evoke a kind of phenomenology of popular image reception (An example common in the latter two texts is the allure of magazine photography.) Prince's text is in the form of a narrative novel.
These popular images, these "images that understand us" are dead, are opaque. Salle and Welling write "So what are the big themes? Much talk about opacity as a positive value, ambiguity, and the complex notion that there are some images or some uses of images which, rather than offering themselves up for a boffo decoding by the viewer, instead understand us. That is to say that there is a class of images, call it an aesthetic class, that allows us to reveal to ourselves the essential complicity of the twin desires of rebellion and fatalism. To say that a work of art is dense or opaque is not to say that it is not implicative, subversive or poignant." Lawson posits that painting, by the very fact that it is an outworn mode, is the last exit for the radical artist: "He makes paintings, but they are dead, inert representations of the , impossibility of passion in a culture that has institutionalized self-expression. . . The paintings look real but they are fake." This experience is a familiar one in relation to Conceptual artworks. Huebler's early work presents itself in given terms, as I have already described. The very deadness of its academic facade leads the viewer to other places.
In the May 1982 issue of Artforum Huebler lashes out at the ideas expressed in Lawson's essay Last Exit: Painting. In his counter essay Sabotage or Trophy? Advance or Retreat, Huebler adopts a Marcusean position vis a vis "New Painting's" embrace of popular style: "Little wonder that art-world marketing strategies are so successful: they simply emulate an all-pervasive ideological impulse which seeks gratification through constant change. Little wonder that the products of art are regarded as consumable; little wonder that the historicizing of Conceptual Art lined it up in the fashion parade of art as yet another example of avant-garde style!" Huebler labels the New Painting, in its use of already consumed and lifeless images from the past and present, "reactionary" and pluralist. Surprisingly, Huebler cites, in opposition to the New Painters, such socially engaged artists as Suzanne Lacy, Hans Haacke and Helen and Newton Harrison as more compelling producers.
The stated reason is that these artists focus on matters that lie outside of art. I say surprising because this is not the path that Huebler himself takes. In his own work, Huebler also reintroduces painting, and specifically paintings mimicking the styles of famous art historical figures. He also begins producing works utilizing such popular forms as the Hollywood narrative, and the newspaper comic strip. And none of these works are overtly political in the manner of Haacke, for instance. It raises the question of exactly how is it that these works operate differently than that of the Neoconceptualists.
Needless to say, Huebler's attacks on Neoconceptualism did not exactly endear him to the younger generation. But, on the other hand, at this point his work had more in common with theirs than it did with the work of most of his contemporaries. Huebler was an interesting figure in the Eighties art world in that many young artists had a kind of attraction/repulsion response to him. His work definitely made an impact on many of the artists associated with Neoconceptualism, and by this I mean not only the so-called New Painting (and photography) but also Commodity Art and Appropriation Art. But here I can point out one great difference between Huebler's practice and that of the Neoconceptualists. Whereas in their work the artists themselves are rarely present (And I would add that this is true in their social positions as artists as well. By the mid Eighties hardly any of the so-called Neoconceptualist artists wrote critically and many of them became increasingly tight-lipped in the Warholian manner, about their artistic motives.), in Huebler's work his own position vis a vis the art world becomes more and more overt, even though it is presented through fictional characters. Despite the fact that Cindy Sherman continually photographs herself in her Film Still series, you never learn anything about Cindy Sherman, nor do you expect to. The work constantly refers back to social archetypes. However, in Huebler's Crocodile Tears project a great deal can be gleaned about his relationship to the art world, art market and art history. Again, his work is fictive; it is not overtly biographical, but it does allow access to social realities instead of social archetypes. I agree that this is a distinction that, in artworks, cannot be made clearly, I guess it would be more proper to say that Huebler's work intimates experience instead of fantasy. The popular images he uses are not completely dead, they still resonate somewhat with life. The work rides a slippery line between the two.
In one version of the Crocodile Tears project, done as a weekly comic strip for a Los Angeles newspaper, Huebler presents the tale of a character, named Howard, who is a first generation Expressionist. As I recall the strip, with the rise of Eighties Neoexpressionism Howard thinks his career will make a comeback. No way. As a reminder of Expressionism's less than new history, Howard is an embarrassment, a threat to Neoexpressionism's pose as fresh goods - as current style.
I remember hearing young artists describing Huebler's Crocodile Tears project as the complaints of an aging and bitter man. They were frankly embarrassed that the pathetic artworld scenarios depicted in this work were being paraded in public. Huebler's work did not engage the popular dream spectacle to the proper degree. It wasn't cool enough - not hip. He seemed too present in his fictions. These younger artist's problem with the work was precisely that it introduced unsavory topics that young up-and- coming artists didn't want to think about. Again, the specter of Huebler's age looms. I, for one, embraced his tactics. Why shouldn't these things be the stuff of his work - they are the stuff of his life, and have become the stuff of mine now that I have been in the artworld a while. These embarrassing and loaded subjects should be the material of art production. And if, as in Cindy Sherman's work, we can look through the thoroughly recognizable trash of television melodrama into something else, why can't we similarly do the same with Doug Huebler's scramble of dreary artworld scenarios. Well, one reason, as I have already stated, is that they are embarrassing - at least to artists. They are too close to home. In this sense you can even say that Huebler has a remote connection to Abject Art.
I do not want, however, to dwell too heavily on the sociopolitical aspects of Doug's work. They mean nothing without the complex structure they are built upon. Doug's work is extremely playful formally and much of my enjoyment of it, or exasperation with it, comes from that. The work's self-criticality rises from Doug's insane interplays of structure and content, of his putting forth of a prospect which then mutates into something else unexpected or indecipherable. Earlier I mentioned the seeming contradiction of Doug's attack on the pluralism of the New Painting and his own involvement in what could be understood as pluralist practices. The Crocodile Tears project is a huge mishmash of styles and references. One could easily see Doug's compositional methodologies as akin to David Salle's leveling strategies. This is not how I experience them however. Despite the complexity of the work, it still strikes me as dialectical – even though sometimes the various positions he plots are so numerous that it becomes impossible to position yourself in relation to them. Yet I do not experience this as planned futility. Rather I take it to be a challenge to involve myself in complexity. It's up to the viewer to take up the challenge or not. Doug's work is not designed to fail. It is possible to navigate through Huebler's multilayered constructions. It's just that his is not an easy art.
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