I.

ETERNITY
OR
MORE LOVE HOURS THAN CAN EVER BE REPAID
BOBNICKAS

The history of art is the wall on which it has been hung, the be denied. For an era in art is deemed historically signifi-
page within which it has been inscribed, and in this narrative cant when a collective body of work engages and defines a
its subject is invariably time itself. But time, as a material period, and resonates long past its point of emergence. Those
witness that allows us to reconstruct a sequence of events, artworks reflecting their time in ways that continue to be
cannot be held indefinitely. Perspective and distance are resonant, and in which we may find ourselves reflected in the
needed to see anything in its entirety, yet the further removed present, can be thought of as two-way mirrors enabling us to
we are the less distinct its contours, lived texture, and detail, examine that world beyond as well as our own. This is certainly
while key protagonists are consumed within the times they true for the art of the '80s, an assertion allowing us to consider
define. When the past is in front of us, an object almost, it as perhaps the last significant period in contemporary art.
brought forward for recollection, what lies behind? Here, the There are many reasons why this holds true, chief among them
old joking definition of sculpture-what you bump into when a particularly charged correspondence that art in the '80s
you step back to look at a painting-might actually apply. For had to earlier movements and figures, which it built upon and
what is the history of art: what you look at, or what you bump inverted through a process of disruptive reanimation. This
into, when you step back to consider its evidence? In the more occurred in a moment that was already of consequence, as the
direct equation, history is an image while works of art have gradual wearing down of modernism had by then reached its
palpable form. We would be mistaken to accept this as an later stages and the art produced in its wake would self-reflex­
indelible image of history, since it is always an afterimage, one ively morph and perform, to embody aspects of theatricality
in which any number of artists are afforded an afterlife. Even and criticality that had been claimed for and empowered art
as history tends to be obj ectified, one legacy of the 1 980s, twenty years before. Art's retrospection at this time reached
which certainly carried over from the '60s and '70s, is how a further back than that, to be sure, but one could only account
dominant narrative can be countered. History, we are all too for the moment which had arrived from the vantage of more
often reminded, favors the winners. In any ascendant period, recent points of departure. After all, the '60s was not only
however, everyone has their part to play, and the momentum a matter of so much unfinished business. As that decade's
that drives a moment which endures is in fact built upon this "endgame" ushered in the '70s, and so-called advanced art had
very dynamic. We should be mindful of this as we follow the all but reduced visual culture to information, a salient point to
trail and piece together the clues, making particular note game strategy-with the readymade chessboard well within
of any that may have been missed, either unintentionally or sight-would be raised anew: one never concludes with but
expediently, when the story was somehow settled while it was always begins with the ending.
yet unfolding, before the ink was even dry. Any number of artists who emerged in the '80s had been
Hovering between the metaphorical walls of turning the students of '60s and '70s figures such as Michael Asher,
pages, works of art are evidential. And what do they prove? As John Baldessari, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Dan
we reconsider the art of the '80s, you might say, as in a legal Graham, Hans Haacke, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth,
process, that the evidence is compelling and cannot easily and Yvonne Rainer. Teachers, particularly those who have a

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 valuable lasting effect, influence but tend not to produce car­ the story of the '80s is one that was always in danger of getting
bon copies of themselves, a situation that accounts for the nec­ ahead of itself.
essary tension of continuity/discontinuity between one era and
the next. Despite the popular pretense of the term "rupture"
in the '80s, the art of this period can be seen to have more 1914
purposely built upon what came before-retrograde "neos" Even as we bend the shape of time, eternity may be difficult to
aside-than to have seismically dismantled its predecessors. It fathom. Having no beginning or end, there are only contours
is worth noting here that punk's rallying cry at the end of the to be mapped. As an ongoing process of expansion and contrac­
'70s, "Rip it up and start again," can be applied to a generation tion, an overlay and succession that continually eludes fixed
that came out of that milieu as well, and saw nothing particu­ coordinates, our map is always in a state of unfolding. This
larly nihilistic about starting over. One had to actively respond better serves to describe life itself. We are, in the living of it,
to the times in which one found oneself, caught in between the often too preoccupied, too distracted to clearly see the moment
hyper-present and the just passed, the sociocultural realities of we inhabit or barely notice its passing, at least until after the
the day, and how unreal they would soon become. fact. With bodies in perpetual motion, how do you glimpse the
At the dawn of the '80s, the sense of reanimation and ground beneath your feet? To a remarkable degree this would
embodiment that was literal and libidinal could be seen to change in the '80s, even as the decade was gaining momentum
have carried over from the decade prior. As the figure would and beginning to accelerate, fraught with all manner of tempo­
return, represented in pictorial space rather than real time, so ral dislocation. And what are decades? Do they begin and end
too would the hand of the artist-regardless of any greater precisely on cue? Do all decades encompass ten years elapsed?
remove in the facture of images and obj ects. This was not More often than not, they are of unequal duration, many over­
simply the reemergence of pictures and painting, an almost lap from one to the next, and are not experienced seamlessly
fairytale reduction of the ambitions of that time, but of repre­ the world over. You could say, for example, that the '60s arrived
sentation in its wider sense, the very right to voice and assert on or about November 22, 1 963, and came to an ingloriously
one's position, defense, and dissenting opinion. Once mute spectacular end in April 1975, with helicopters dumped from
forms were imbued with content, to function as questioning the decks of aircraft carriers in the South China Sea. While the
objects, and art would again, as it had in the '60s, assert its '70s were announced by the stuttering blades of a lone 'copter
grievances, address its own status, its audience, and issues lifting off from the White House lawn, on that not-so-august
of consequence to the wider public. Troubled and turbulent day in 1 974. In that same space of time, in Berlin, the Cold War
in their own ways, one understands that what was fought for '60s had yet to conclude, and would not be brought down until
and gained in the '60s led to a sense of permeable liberation November 1 989.1 While there are instruments to measure
that could not be sustained through the '80s and beyond, or at physical and temporal distance, we have none to gauge socio­
least not in the same way, as lines were once again drawn and cultural drift, or the ebb and flow of our mental and emotional
renewed battles took their toll. Just as we identify that frac­ lives impacted by larger events. What we do have, produced
tured time before, the '80s can only be seen as a decade inter­ more or less continuously over the passage of hundreds of
rupted. It began one way and ended quite another, as both years, are works of art, some of which come to be regarded as
tragedy and farce. And if some of the cagier art of the '80s was significant markers in time.
accused of "leading the witness" and an intentional sleight­ It is well worth noting that the notion of post-history
of-hand, those times demanded certain provocations and was suggestively raised in the '80s, a period defined as post­
deceptions. They felt honest and necessary considering what time. There was an acute awareness, in a charged moment of
art and culture were up against. Criticality would be found reassessment, that what had been done was done, that even
within and not only outside the work of art as it responded to, war had been rendered obsolete. Little did anyone suspect
interrogated, and upended the larger image world, the repolit­ that modern life would acquire the deathly pallor of medieval
icized world, from which it emerged. There was still pleasure times, with plagues and crusades, an Iron Lady and a knight
to be had, not only in this investigation, but in a text that could in shining Teflon. Against the ever-darkening backdrop of
be visually rendered, whose subject more often than not was a period that celebrated avarice and exuberance, Ronald
desire, whether fictive or palpable and which, in either case, Reagan's demonizing of the poor and Margaret Thatcher's
might slip through your fingers. By the end of the '80s, figura­ attempts to crush trade unions signaled nothing so much as a
tive reanimation was no longer skin deep, a canvas stretched return to feudalism. Hans Haacke's portraits of Thatcher, in
youthfully taut and brought to life, but would register in the Taking Stock (unfinished) ( 1983-84), and Reagan, Olgemdlde,
flesh and blood reality of having been disembodied. This Hommage a Marcel Broodthaers (Oil Painting: Homage to
suggests a further correspondence between these decades, a Marcel Broodthaers) ( 1 982), painted by the artist in classi-
correspondence that is perhaps not entirely coincidental. One cal nineteenth-century style, commented on the regressive
of the landmark compilations to emerge from the '60s, Lucy R. attempts of his subj ects, on their fear-based politics, to return
Lippard's Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object to the ruling structure of that time-the empire, in a sense,
from 1966 to 1972, bookends the period now under review, strikes back. In wondering what the image of '80s art was, as
1 984 to 1 989, for not only does it parallel this span of six years to who the '80s artists were, we see someone like Haacke as
encompassing art's rematerialization, the very notion of operating fluidly between decades, and these works serve as
reappearance magnifies the loss of so many who witnessed and an example of how that time, as a mirror alternately concave
made it so. And if we risk advancing our narrative this early on, and convex, encompasses so many others. Any number of

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 artists and cultural critics who rose to prominence in the would help fund a production hoping to realize a profit on their
'80s-the artists were themselves becoming cultural critics­ investment, all of which was dutifully promoted by a bevy of
had been born in the '50s and came of age in the '60s. Their publicists-the media-practically tripping over one another
very DNA was entwined by the inherited hopes and fears, as to land the cover story. Part of the flowering of Warholism was
well as the liberation movements, of those eras. By the early how the artist-as-celebrity and a tragic figure made them cin­
'80s, a book that had been readily absorbed by this genera- ematically attractive. Warhol himself would be the subject of a
tion, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, written in 1 949 film, and not about his life and work so much as an attempt to
against the backdrop of postwar E ngland, may have seemed annihilate both in I Shot Andy Warhol ( 1996). To place oneself
a prophecy meant to be fulfilled. One thinks immediately of in the spotlight is also to stand in the line of fire. But in having
Barbara Kruger's Untitled (Surveillance is their busywork) miraculously survived being shot, Warhol was given his first
(1983) and, in retrospect, of Andy Warhol. E ndlessly recording afterlife, a kind of haunting in which he would go on to embody
conversations; forever taking Polaroids, logging movements the quintessential '80s artist, a master of expropriation, par­
and activities, mindlessly filling "time capsules" with seemingly ticularly in his overtaking of bodies, among them Basquiat's .
useless ephemera and information, he was both hopelessly No o n e thinks o f contemporary art a s prehistoric, not even the
behind and ahead of his time-a one-man NSA? paleontologists of the secondary market, but in this respect
While 1984 may have registered as a foregone conclusion, Basquiat's numerous paintings and drawings that reduce the
another twenty years would pass before it actually came true. figure to its structural anatomy are imbued with second sight
This serves as a reminder that just as literature can be set as he anticipates the picking over of bones. Here an image
in the future, so too should the future. For artists and cura- comes eerily into view, a 1 986 painting made in the studio on
tors in the '80s, what loomed in the distance would become a Great Jones Street that Basquiat rented from Warhol, and
subject, and often one of derision. The artist team McDermott where he would be found dead, painted with the phrase and
& McGough, whose art-life project was a "time experiment" titled, To Repel Ghosts.
that situated them more readily in the 1880s than the 1 980s,
steadfastly proclaimed, "We've seen the future and we're not
going." The curatorial impresarios Collins & Milazzo conceived DE ART OF MEMORY/DE LOSS OF HISTORY
The Antique Future, while Jenny Holzer, in one of her best The significance of the art of the '80s resides not only in an
known Truisms, famously stated, THE FUTURE IS STUPID. image of its own making, but in an immediately recognizable
Time yet to be was a subject, and not only, for its attraction identity, rather than one that formed by official consensus
was also in its warping, particularly within the politicaVcultural over time. Many works achieved an iconicity with their initial
landscape. The temporal dislocation of the '80s was heightened appearance. Images were, in a very potent sense, self-aware,
by the fact that there were leaders simultaneously living in and art in this period would encounter and engage its "dou­
the past and enamored by flights of fancy, as with Reagan and ble," images echoing others, from both art history and popular
his Star Wars defense system, an idea born of a film in which culture, invoking the presence of the past and an ever-present
he himself had starred: in Murder in the Air ( 1 940), Reagan now, at times uneasily. In their intent, the engagements could
plays a secret agent whose mission is to protect "a super be facile or complex, either retrograde or willfully meant to
weapon that could strike all enemy planes" from on high. Such reorient and disorient art's axis, and one quickly learned to
was the cinematic dystopia, and delusion, at that time. It was differentiate between advance and retreat. In that moment, as
in 1984, perhaps not without coincidence, that Terry Gilliam may no longer be true for our own, the future still had a future.
first conceived the movie Brazil ( 1 985), an Orwellian tale that, Here, it is essential to acknowledge that a lasting image cannot
for all its frivolity and fantasy, registers thirty years hence as coalesce solely around the contained auratic space of art
virtual documentary. We may go so far as to propose that in obj ects, but takes us back to and accounts for the space they
our rereading of the film now, it can be seen as being emblem­ inhabited and that informed them, to the exhibitions in which
atic of the '80s to an equal or even greater degree than Oliver they were originally presented, as well as to the essays and the
Stone's Wall Street ( 1 987), just as Derek Jarman's Caravaggio criticism that framed and problematized them, and continue to
(1986) may be thought to paint a far more poignant portrait of do so. Much of the art from that time has not only been influen­
an artist's rise and fall than Julian Schnabel's Basquiat, which tial for those who experienced it from near and far, but rather
appeared ten years later in 1 996. than appear dated, which is all too often art's fate, its distance
Art and artists of the '80s were intensively consumed, yet appears foreshortened. Any number of '80s projects are in fact
haven't artists always been ambitious? The very creation of relevant to and might have been initiated in this moment. This
art is a visual projection of one's mind in the world, of one's is especially worth noting because it turns directly on how the
vision, and how many artists over the centuries have freely art of the '80s-a time traversed by so many others-came to
offered the model of careerism that continues to be applied be readily identifiable. One willingly admits just how unreason­
to successive generations? Artists rely on their patrons, and able it is to expect that an art which neither engages nor ques­
real collectors are always acquisitive, highly competitive tions its own history will ever itself be historicized, or even
with one another, and used to getting exactly what they want. attain a recognizable identity, the valiant efforts of its markets
None of this was in any way new. What was new, as a con­ notwithstanding. We saw this transparently with a veritable
struction based on celebrity culture, which at that time meant cascade of "false starts" to the '80s, all the various neos which
Hollywood, sports, and pop music, was that artists would be inaugurated that decade, and which soon ran dry. Actively
stars, their dealers the high-powered agents, and collectors vocal artists, critics, and curators saw through and skewered

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the worst of them, neo-expressionism, possibly unaware of Williams's pursuit of picture-making, always in distant proxim­
the extent to which those false starts, cumulatively, would be ity, often too close for comfort. Gretchen Bender's overtaking
instrumental to the arc and polemics of that time. of broadcast TV to infect and implicate us all. Dara Birnbaum's
We look back on the '80s as a period when art was con­ superheroes and game shows. Barbara Kruger's Orwellian
tested, when people took sides, when art propelled debate and photo/text pieces. Jenny Holzer's public address systems.
ultimately came under siege. Artworks and exhibitions actually Graphic signs, posters, and banners designed by and announc­
felt textual, as if one was inside a larger ongoing conversation ing Matt Mullican. Adrian Piper's identity politics, long before
in which images and ideas intermingled. Museum wall text, "performing the self" would be examined and identified as such.
which is almost always superfluous today, was often unneces­ Martha Rosier's unconsciousness-raising. Michael Smith's
sary in shows of the '80s because they raised relevant topics by alter egos. Ashley Bickerton's suburban/entropical paradise.
way of content-driven work. The show could be a form of pub­ Robert Gober's poignant sinks and cribs. Little theaters deftly
lic address and would situate the viewer. It was as if at every staged by Jon Kessler. Jeff Koons's household reliquaries and
turn one encountered the sign: "You Are Here. " Impassive tanks, and inflatables serving to remind us, by way of Manzoni
viewing is possible at any moment in time and almost no and Duchamp, "On vend du vent."3 Joel Otterson's poppy faux
matter what sort of art is on view, but this was not so easy in totems. Canny shelf arrangements by Haim Steinbach. The
the '80s. Casual observers really had to fight for their right kinky minimalism of Wallace & Donohue, in which the paint­
to passivity, refusing to read works that visualized their very ing-as-stage became its own play-Jack Nicholson forever
articulation, to avoid being implicated-one cannot, for exam­ caught inside of a Judd box-acted upon by its audience.
ple, readily evade the accusatory "You" in the work of Barbara In the absence of reproductions, a checklist jogs the
Kruger. Revisiting a number of select catalogues from exhibi­ memory, and one may recall an occasion when a gallery talk
tions in New York at that time, or from outside which offered was offered, spooky in its seeming normality, and the museum
an American perspective, we see now, as we understood docent turned out to be none other than the artist Andrea
then, that a narrative was evoked by the shows themselves, a Fraser. 4 Where no publication exists, or cannot easily be traced,
meta-text in which to trace the heady passage of art and ideas memory itself serves as the catalogue, particularly for a num­
in the '80s: Image Scavengers; A Fatal Attraction: Art and ber of exhibitions that were organized by artists in the '80s,
the Media; Art and Social Change, USA; The New Capital; among them Douglas Blau, Robert Gober, Peter Halley, Robert
Infotainment; Difference: On Representation and Sexuality; Mapplethorpe and Laurie Simmons, and Steven Parrino. For
Signs of Painting; Political Geometries; The Art of Memory/ 1 983's Science Fiction, Halley had the gallery walls painted
The Loss of History; A Brokerage of Desire; Damaged Goods: black, acting on Robert Smithson's reversal of the "white
Desire and the Economy of the Object; Endgame: Reference cube," and suggestively brought together works of '60s art­
and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture; Witnesses: ists-Smithson and Judd-and '80s figures, including Ross
Against Our Vanishing; Art and Its Double. 2 Bleckner, David Deutsch, R.M. Fischer, and Richard Prince, all
Turning the pages of these catalogues, whether or not bathed in the eerie glow of a Jeff Koons Hoover Shampooer, a
names register with the same level of recognition, the works pop-driven collision of J.G. Ballard and Dan Flavin.5 Semi(op)­
are all collectively compelling. Here we find optically striped tics, presented by Parrino at International With Monument in
canvases by Ross Bleckner. Jack Goldstein's airbrushed scenes 1 984, proposed a visual realm in the space between opticality
of air raids. Peter Halley's fluorescent cells and prison bars. and semiotics. Mapplethorpe and Simmons's Split Vision,
The otherworldly still lifes of Kevin Larmon, whose substra­ at Artists Space in 1 985, allowed their visual sensitivities
tum was a bed of homo desire. Peter Nagy's psychedelic map­ to contrast and overlap with works by Alan Belcher, Peter
ping and xerography. The elegantly twisted violence of Steven Berlin, Mark Morrisroe, and Julia Wachtel. The untitled 1986
Parrino's mis-stretched monochromes. Walter Robinson's exhibition that Gober curated at Cable Gallery was not so
spin paintings, years in advance of that wheel being rein­ much a group show as an installation for which he arranged
vented. The illuminated manuscripts of Tim Rollins & K.O.S. works by Nancy Shaver, Alan Turner, and Meg Webster, with
Historical portraits by Rene Santos. David Salle's Picabian his first sculpture of a bed, complete with pillow, sheets, and
overlays. Philip Taaffe's undulating waves. Julia Wachtel's blanket. The whole room centered on Webster's large, densely
comic ethnography. Painted Surrogates and grainy Perpetual packed earth cone. An ominous earthwork at the foot of one's
photos by Allan McCollum. Hybrid photo-objects by Alan neatly made bed? One immediately saw how, at mid-decade,
Belcher and Jennifer Eolande. Barbara Bloom staring back at within a few short years of the big bang that ushered in the
the gaze. Sarah Charlesworth's glossy newsprint factuality, her '80s, another sensibility was already forming. The bombast
images isolated on keyed-up chromatic fields, and whose pre­ and bravado, largely personified by Julian Schnabel, already
science cannot be denied. Painted and sculpted figures brought appeared entirely anachronistic. A more nuanced art, imbued
uncannily to life in situ by Louise Lawler. Sherrie Levine's with pathos, poetics, and a palpable sadness balanced quietude
deadpan hauntings-pictures Walker Evans was not aware and an undertow of dread, later revealed, as if from a bad
he had taken on her behalf a decade before she was born. dream, to have been a darker time foretold. Fictions, Blau's
The corporate, choreographed retro-noir of Robert Longo. deft orchestration of images from the eighteenth, nineteenth,
Frank Maj ore's highly stylized art direction. Richard Prince's and twentieth centuries, composed of everything from the clas­
cowboys, sunsets, and porn stars. Cindy Sherman script- sical and revived genre of history painting-works by Thomas
ing and starring, at times reluctantly, in all her own movies. Cole and Thomas E akins alongside those of Troy Brauntuch
The methodical romanticism of James Welling. Christopher and Mark Tansey-to film stills both real and imagined, from

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Blade Runner (1982), 2001: A Space Odyssey ( 1 968), and Cindy Infotainment perfectly aligns the conceptual pop that was
Sherman. As an obsessive collector/arranger of images, Blau's prevalent at that time with the dual legacy of its '60s anteced­
tour de force would in its own way represent the pinnacle of ents. This particular reproduction is of an ink drawing made
the Pictures Generation, and revealed, as did all of these exhi­ by Jessica Diamond, an artist later known for large-scale wall
bitions, that time-the material of which we are made-was paintings. Printed in capital letters that awkwardly fill a sheet
the '80s' ultimate subj ect.6 of rice paper lengthwise, she proclaims: SENSATIONAL ISM
There were also shows by artist collectives, most OR B UST ( 1 985). In a modest tone of voice that evenly but
prominently those of Colab and Group Material. Short for markedly contrasts with the more declarative statements of
Collaborative Projects, Colab had formed in 1 977, famously that era, Diamond comments unambiguously on the larger­
staging The Real Estate Show in an abandoned building on than-life ambitions of the decade. She does this by adopting
the Lower East Side in January 1 980 (shut down by the police the pathos of those down on their luck, who hitch their wagons
within a day), and The Times Square Show that summer, in a to the promise of brighter prospects on a new horizon. It is
former massage parlor in the city's seedy, cheap-thrills arcade. a very pointedly American work, and while it may be from
For the latter show they j oined forces with Fashion Moda, a time past, and refers even further back-to the country's
the Bronx-based group, which brought the culture of graffiti, pioneering spirit and to the Great Depression-it can easily
street art, and hip-hop to the attention of the downtown art be applied to our own. Her statement finds correspondence
world. Group Material had initially come together in 1 979. with another in close proximity, immortalized by Oliver Stone,
With a large and fluctuating membership, its longer-running "Greed is good. " Diamond's work gains its relevance, as much
participants would include Doug Ashford, Julie Ault, Felix art created in the '80s does, from the fact that while it critiques
Gonzalez-Torres, and Tim Rollins. Their origins were in and defines a moment, it may be relevant over and again,
scrappy storefronts and alternative spaces, but by mid-decade whenever art comes to represent the spectacle of its own exag­
they were being invited to take part in, and organize shows geration-of value both cultural and financial.
for, museums and institutions.7 Americana, their contribu- Although we understand that market forces come into
tion to the 1985 Whitney Biennial, installed salon style in the play to avail themselves of readymade provenance, and that
museum's lobby gallery, opened the institution to the kind recuperation comes at a certain price, it is far preferable that
of social critique it did not regularly endorse. At the center figures who were lost are not permanently forgotten. Not only
of the room was a washer and dryer, while a TV set played does a fuller, more nuanced story evolve, but these recupera­
continuously in the corner. Various wallpaper patterns, includ­ tions serve as a reminder that what is true now is also true for
ing faux wood paneling and brick, provided a homey/garish the past-the present can only ever be an ongoing narrative
backdrop for the assembled works, as did a soundtrack that rather than so many neatly packed boxes lined up in an orderly
mixed Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, James Brown, and row. This we identify as the realm of the archive, always imper­
Run-DMC. Many of the artists had never before participated fectly precise. The hours and the days, the weeks and the
in a Whitney Biennial, perhaps most notably LeRoy Neiman. months, their succession as years, these elapse in nonlinearity,
For Resistance (Anti-Baudrillard), at White Columns in 1987, since art, like gravity, interrupts time and space. For a period
Group Material addressed the art world's "use and abuse of to be recalled as if those hours and works had unspooled
French theorist Jean Baudrillard's writings, particularly as conveniently one after the next would be false. Is not this
they [were] used to invoke 'the end of the political.' " Their the story told by those who have their own agendas, or who
1988 exhibition Democracy: Education, sponsored by the were not there? Even so, recollection must encompass enough
Dia Art Foundation, had been installed as if it was a school­ physical and psychic remove from a period under review so
room, with desks and chairs and the walls painted black, that we may access that time without any nostalgic or roman­
rendering the space an all-encompassing chalkboard. tic tinge, certainly with no sense of regret. We acknowledge
Coincidentally made that same year was one of Jeff Koons's nostalgia as a longing for what was lost, though memory itself
staged magazine advertisements, in which he pictured him­ is only ever bittersweet. And let us not forget that successive
self as a fresh-faced teacher in front of a group of elementary generations may register a loss for what they never had, for
school students, many with their hands eagerly raised. On what was taken away before the fact. Objects in the mirror, as
the board behind him are slogans: EXPLOIT THE MASSES, we are routinely warned, are always closer than they appear.
BANALITY AS SAVIOUR, and (though partially obscured) Against the backdrop of an impatient present, even more fast
CREATE THE POWE R BAS E . It is certainly among his and loose than the '80s ever were, there is one point we should
most self-revealing works in this period. U nsurprisingly, it was not lose sight of: where contemporary art is concerned, art and
not included in the Democracy exhibition, for this was class art history, if not mutually exclusive, must keep their distance.
struggle of another sort. History takes time, and will not be hurried along.
Looking upon the '80s from our current vantage, it seems
perfectly reasonable to claim that if we traveled back and
IIFDTIIIMEIIT asked a number of artists, critics, and curators to imagine
Revisiting some of the publications from the decade, what which works would stand the test of time, thirty years later,
stands out with the greatest weight now, at least personally, those predictions would most likely have come true. Because
and despite its diminutive size, is a small black-and-white we knew in the very moment that many of these works would
reproduction in the Infotainment catalogue. At the inevi­ last. And yet we have to ask: what do we choose to remember
table juncture of information and entertainment in the '80s, and what is forcefully imprinted on our mind? They may, in

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fact, be one in the same, or at least be overlain, for in the History most certainly repeats itself, and it is not a matter
Proustian sense memory itself is involuntary. Surely among of happenstance that the first public appearance of Rabbit was
those immediate images of the '80s is that of a silver bunny, in the gallery of Ileana Sonnabend, one of the great champions
impossibly bright and shiny, materially seductive and aware of of Pop art in the '60s. Perhaps more than anyone showing the
its surroundings and audience at all times. This was an instan­ new art at that time, she not only had a half century of art's
taneous totem in which all the various taboos of its tribe had history turning over in her head, but would willingly confess to
been enveloped and rendered as a surrogate form of currency, one of the hallmarks of her personal collecting habits-which
ever rising, soon to be accepted the world over, to the bearer could only have emerged from the old world's collision with
payable upon demand. Rabbit ( 1 986), the famous sculpture by "the shock of the new"-that she often bought the art she had
Jeff Koons, remains, though cast in a less precious metal, like a at first misunderstood, even what she had originally hated.
bar of solid silver, undeniably seductive, without doubt claim­ This was not so much a matter of courage as it was an exten­
ing for itself a permanent place in the metaphorical museum sion of a long modernist tradition of collecting, whose generos­
of the '80s. In no way as well-known and widely regarded, yet ity of foresight was often compensated in kind. To those who
in every way as exemplary of those times, is a maj or though would point an accusatory finger at artists who profited greatly
infrequently realized installation by Chris Burden, Tower from their work in the '80s, one might consider their collec­
of Power, from just the year before. First presented at the tors, and ask how they earned the money to acquire this art.
Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, Burden's (As "innocently" as applying paint to canvas? More likely in
work comprises a pyramidal stack of " 1 00 one-kilo bricks of helping to erase the city that once was, replacing it with glassy
pure gold. On the marble base surrounding the tower were mirrored towers, the castles of our age, which only ever reflect
several paper match stickmen in various forms of tribute. The one another.) And yet artists are always part of a complicated
value of the gold in January 1 985, at the time of the sculpture, equation into which they themselves enter, willingly or not.
was one million U.S. dollars."8 Burden's three-dimensional Looking back on the '86 exhibition at Sonnabend, which had
image of money-as-power, encompassing its lineage from instantly elevated Koons's profile, along with that of Ashley
ancient E gypt to the Federal Reserve, suggesting an obj ect Bickerton, Peter Halley, and Meyer Vaisman-the E ast Village
to be worshipped and potentially overthrown, invoking gov­ usurpe dT E stelle Schwartz, the most visible art consultant at
ernment, religion, and the state treasury, was sublime. For in the time, would matter-of-factly remark, "They wanted to be
the sublime we find wonder and dread in equal measure. Were bought and we bought them. "
this work made available for sale, we understand that its price
would have to be in excess of one million dollars, for this only
accounts for its production cost. 9 THE lEW CAPITAL
As a magnet of fascination, Burden's installation of gold Distilling a period in which many memorable and iconic
bars, shown in a darkened room and spotlit to enhance the artworks were produced to a select few will always prove
luminosity of their material luster, also presented a weight of problematic, yet a particularly evocative triangulation may
sinister force. In fear it could be desired but never arouse love, be formed between Rabbit and two works exhibited in New
an object of reverence and also revulsion. And if this sets up an York from the year prior and just after. In 1 985, Martin
uneasy parallel with the Koons bunny, it is worth noting that Kippenberger's The Capitalistic Futuristic Painter in His
his silver obj ect, and all its shimmering companions, can be Car ( 1985) was included in his solo debut Selling America and
seen to have ushered in the series "Luxury and Degradation." Buying El Salvador at Metro Pictures . For a German artist
Transformed from its earliest incarnation as a cute inflat- who had never before mounted a show of his own in the States,
able toy, the silver bunny is worthy of our love-if only ever this registered as a double provocation. He not only acknowl­
displaced-whereas Tower of Power is not, and was possibly edged the current political climate-across the U.S. numerous
never meant as such. Burden's generation did not eagerly galleries and museums had recently participated in ''Artists
seek to be bought and sold, at times projecting an impression Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America"-but
of indifference, conceiving works that could not easily be offered a rebuke to the cultural legacy established by Joseph
possessed, thus doubly alienating collectors. Burden emerged Beuys's 1 974 action I Like America and America Likes Me.
from that side of the '70s that embraced risk, where he placed (And this despite Beuys's arrangement for the daily deliv-
his own body in life-threatening situations. If the decade that ery of the Wall Street Journal.) Moreover, the title of the
followed can be seen to have reversed the polarity, to have Kippenberger painting, perhaps with no specific intention on
rediscovered a way to profit from risk management, to court the part of the artist, alluded to the only neo which was not
disaster, manipulating a "rabbit hole" first opened in 1 929, the foisted on art's public at that time, neo-futurism, most likely
Koons sculpture becomes even more wholly emblematic. This because, even in a period that mined the ironic, when every­
artist was among a generation who at that time availed them­ thing seemed to fall between scare quotes, it could only have
selves of Pop's strategies of parody and appropriation, and in registered oxymoronically. This painting is notable for the
doing so produced works that were already familiar and simul­ many bumper stickers that are affixed to and cleverly deface
taneously estranged, an inherent alienation of affection. They its surface, among them: I • Eternity, I • Polke+ B asquiat, I
thus extended one of the great through-lines in the story of • Jeans+ Smoking, I • Mad Max, I • 50%, I • Nicaragua.
contemporary art, the love-hate relationship that we have with With this reference to Polke and Basquiat, Kippenberger's
culture and, perennially, with the new, a "new" which must by title may be aligned with the '60s formulation of German pop
necessity echo and undermine whatever came before. as "Capitalist Realism"1 0 as well as with the politicized roots

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of graffiti, in this case Basquiat's initial appearance-along as skew that aesthetic, becoming significantly integral to the
with AI Diaz and Shannon Dawson-as SAM0©.11 This trio, '80s scene as it altered course.
only a few years earlier, had anonymously inscribed the walls
of Soho and the Lower E ast Side with a running commentary
that indicted the yuppie '80s that was well on its way, in the art ART AIID SOCIAL CHAIIGE
world and beyond: In the heightened atmosphere of the '80s, art and writing
registered congruently and nearly instantaneously. This held
SAMO© AS AN END TO B OOSH-WAH-Z E E FANTASI E S true for works you were drawn to and works you dismissed,
SAMO© AS AN E ND 2 T H E NEON FANTASY CAL L E D for reviews and essays that furthered your own thought and
"LIFE" writing as well as those you deplored. If, in more vernacular
SAMO© AS AN E ND TO MINDWASH R E L IGION, terms, an era is historically relevant because it represents
NOWHERE POLITICS AND BOGUS PHILOSOPHY an extended period of highs, the fight is always part of the
high. People sparred as a matter of responsibility, spurre d
Just months before the Kippenberger show opened, one another o n , and were taught a valuable, lasting lesson,
Basquiat had ambivalently gazed back at us from the cover of that contention is an essential enlivening motor that drives
the New York Times Magazine, Sunday, February 10, 1 985, any period in art. (One recalls, oddly enough, the New York
impeccably suited yet barefoot, made to hold a tube of paint school of thirty years prior, and wonders why criticism now
and a brush in his hands, a picture prominently captioned by is so conservative and nearly irrelevant, possibly having to
the story's title: "New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an account for the fact that a bigger boat is somehow harder to
American Artist." Barely 24, he would be gone in a short three­ rock?) Back then, positions that were hostile and reactionary
and-a-half-years' time, though the streets of Soho would still were absolutely integral, enjoyable to read, taunt, and rip
reverberate faintly with traces of the encrypted and ironically apart. Contrary to popular opinion, to what cannot in any way
copyrighted voice we had heard there not so long ago. This be dignified as received wisdom, the tail at that time did not
painting of Kippenberger's reminded us, and still does, that wag the dog. Art was still very much in charge. Some may not
eternity, or anything reduced to a bumper sticker-the anti­ have cared for its content and its aims, but it had both and in
hero, the art star-is not meant to be loved, or only from afar, no short supply. In the '80s there was still something called
and forever turns on the price of admission, for them and for culture, whereas today we are faced with nothing so much as
us. Ail for loving 50%, the perennial half-off sale that is art and a culture industry. In the supply-and-demand present, the
life? 100% guaranteed. artist's role is in danger of reverting almost solely to that of
One is here reminded of a work closely associated with a producer, and not necessarily of meaning. Those who look
Metro, Mike Kelley's ultimately conj oined The Wages of Sin upon an historical moment must reconsider the art as well as
and More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid ( 1 987). With its literature, particularly from a time in which artists regu­
its proliferation of forlorn stuffed toys and tatty afghans, all larly wrote and published essays and interviews, were directly
handmade, More Love Hours upends the discourse of com­ involved in the creation of their context, and spoke for them­
modification that was so prevalent until then in the New York selves, evolving the terms and language with which art would
milieu. Rather than a bright shiny object imbued with desir­ be discussed. Whether the writing illuminated or mystified the
ability, Kelley focused on the investment of time associated art, lamely or suggestively appropriated the world of philoso­
with craft and the ultimate cost of gifts, particularly those phy, drew upon politics for which the artists may have had no
unwanted-the guilt they aroused for what could never be particular affiliation, or was simply impenetrable-even the
paid back in equal measure-and the higher cost of emotion, twisted locution of the curatorial impresarios Collins & Milazzo
to which all are vulnerable, by which we may be consumed. consequently added to the discourse-it was clear that as the
From opposite geographical and cultural directions, from visual landscape changed so too would modes of address. 1 2
Los Angeles and Cologne, Kelley's and Kippenberger's This occurred in parallel and by necessity, allowing those who
sensibilities would come markedly to bear on art at that had occupied the sidelines to come forward and participate. No
time, as well as on the critical climate that, from the mid-'80s one had any patience to wait for the permission that had been
onward, ha d to shift along with art's content and concerns, at withheld and did not appear forthcoming.
first warily. We would be mistaken, for example, to assume Sometimes the side you took was your own, for in that
that Kelley had been wholeheartedly embraced in New York moment you could be in mind what would soon prove no longer
(except by other artists), when, in fact, it had taken years for tenable in body, in a word, promiscuous, freely availing oneself
his work to be seen as more than a sort of funky "outsider" of whatever was available, what was intellectually attractive
art. Even if New York was an insider's world, the respec- and instinctively of use. A certain segment of the community
tive reputations of these artists had preceded them. Kelley in New York in the '80s, having come out of punk, was not
and Kippenberger had each in his own way come from per­ necessarily inclined to what was perceived as doctrinaire
formance, and at Metro they would share a stage that was but to what was irreverent. Some were not in a hurry to j oin
animated by the mannequins of John Miller (who had been any clubs, whether they might accept or rej ect them, which
at school and in a band with Kelley), the personae of Cindy perhaps accounts for a brand of iconoclasm that is a hallmark
Sherman, and the ventriloquist's dummies of Laurie Simmons. of that time, as well as for what may paradoxically be termed
With as many reciprocal as unexpected connections between collective subjectivity. In going one's own way, however, there
these artists, Kelley and Kippenberger would amplify as well was an unstated recognition that we are never really one

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 person. It was important to form a philosophy that would and was instantly transported to another world. In the song
function within the community while simultaneously maintain­ "Venus," by the group Television, when Tom Verlaine-in a
ing a measure of distance. It was thus possible, for example, half-strangled voice that sounded as if the hand around his gui­
to fuse elements of two central essays from 198 1 , Thomas tar's neck was wrapped around his own-described Broadway
Lawson's "Last Exit: Painting," and Benj amin H.D. Buchloh's as looking "so medieval," he might as well have flashed a black­
"Figures of Authority; Ciphers of Regression," to partake of and-white Polaroid, capturing its unreal factuality.
both without privileging one over another, following a pur­ New York was still New York. There was a palpable con­
posefully wayward path of one's own. And it was not a matter nection to the films and the music and the poems that had been
of choosing between Artforum and October, for there was a shot, played, written, and read there decades prior. When you
wholly democratic, at times unpredictable and unruly dis­ left the Mudd Club in the morning after the night before, you
course to be found elsewhere, in the pages of Real Life, Wedge, walked down an alleyway that could have been a Weegee photo
ZG, and the short-lived Effects: Magazine for New Art Theory. from the '40s, complete with the forgotten men who slept
It must be added that Artforum did have one indispensable there. Continuing up along the B owery you might pass William
feature in this period, Barbara Kruger's column on television, Burroughs slipping back into the Bunker, and catch yourself
"Remote Control," which she regularly contributed to the in a double take, only in slow motion. An eerily illuminated
magazine between '85 and '90. As it had been the case in the lobby near the Stock Exchange might have been a scene from
'60s, the writing of artists in the '80s had value. There were also Godard's Alphaville ( 1965), and you saw it that way because
posters in the street, notably those of an anonymous women's the classic films of the French New Wave screened regularly
collective, the Guerrilla Girls, who justifiably harangued the in the city's revival houses, and had been absorbed by the
art world and its various sins-the care and maintenance of No Wave filmmakers on the Lower E ast Side. The city itself
its status quo-posing in gorilla masks with a phallic, peeled served as a meta-text that was inhabited, in which one saw one­
banana. One poster, referring to the 1 985/86 season, pointedly self reflected, where you worked, caroused, and carried on with
asked and answered: "How Many Women Had One-Person life, or what appeared lifelike. The larger ideal of the social
Exhibitions at NYC Museums Last Year? Guggenheim 0, encompassed one's social indulgences and one's philosophy;
Metropolitan 0, Modern 1, Whitney 0." Most famously they and the playfully pointed admonishment of Kippenberger-
made public a long list of the so-called ''Advantages of Being a "The person who can't dance says the band can't play"-reg­
Woman Artist," which included "Working without the pressure istered in this respect, loud and clear. If someone thought
of success;" "Not having to be in shows with men;" "Seeing that the more bracing music on offer was simply noise, they
your ideas live on in the work of others;" and "B eing included were probably out of step with the more abrasive art in this
in revised versions of art history." time. (And let's not forget that some of the members of those
When art's primary constituents-artists, critics, and bands-Nancy Arlen, Barbara E ss, Pat Place, and Alan Vega­
curators-assert their positions, they inevitably shape and to had also made the art. 13) While the period was marked by what
some extent determine how their work will be received, a fact some may consider dissolute behavior, one's resources were
that clearly resounded in the mid-to-late '80s. That world was never really expended without purpose, as we see in the visual
much more finite and knowable than the amorphous entity evidence, a reminder that it is the art and not the artist that
which surrounds us today, and art's immediate audience was should ultimately be judged. Just as no one survives his or her
mostly comprised of one's peers. Pre-computer and cell phone, work, inside of it they themselves are allowed to live on. In the
news traveled slowly, often by word-of-mouth, a magazine '80s, both art and life had an undeniable texture, and if we keep
or catalogue passed between friends, one visited studios and returning to that point it is only because it is true and there
galleries rather than websites, congregated in clubs and bars is no better way for a moment lost to be conveyed. E ssential
nightly; and life had its soundtrack, time travel contained in a to note as well is that the dual centers of the art world in that
jukebox that spun decades. This was no more apparent than moment, New York and Cologne, were basically small villages
in the music woven in and around Nan Goldin's slideshow The and news had to travel thousands of miles between them. Even
Ballad of Sexual Dependency ( 1 986) (which borrowed its title so, one was aware of what was happening, one felt connected
from Brecht's The Threepenny Opera), mixing songs asso­ to an energy and a spirit of irreverence that made art feel new
ciated with the period in which the artist came of age, from again. As frenetic and hopped up as the '80s are perceived to
Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made of This" to the Velvet have been, the kind of time and space that was available back
Underground's "I'll Be Your Mirror." At the risk of slipping then simply do not exist anymore, neither economically nor
into reverie and romanticizing what for many was a hard, realistically. One could say that New York in the '80s was yet
messy time, to conjure an image of New York that now only tied to its history, and this gave it the weight of more than an
exists in photos and as light spilling onto a screen, this has evocative backdrop. You have to ask: What sort of history is
value even in passing reminiscence. It is well worth that detour possible in a city scrubbed squeaky clean, when the last traces
to glimpse in the mind's eye a place long gone, a "naked city," of its more visceral lived texture have been overtaken by a
dangerous, lawless, sexy, and exciting, especially after dark placeless place? And in a timeless time?
and in the early morning hours when it offered a noirish movie
set. Crumbling piers on the Hudson waterfront, abandoned
diners that would have spooked E dward Hopper. (These were FICTIONS
perfectly captured in nocturnal rambles by the photographer Of any historicized moment we have to ask: What do we want
Peter Hujar.) Gazing up at rooftops one saw carved gargoyles or expect from this story? Is there an implicit investment in a

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 happy ending, or in conclusions that are open-ended? When and for worse. One may argue that we trade a more clearly
a period is entering history, brought back for review through delineated focus for a potentially greater inclusiveness, a sense
books and exhibitions, one is compelled as well to examine the of where art is destined for the pleasurable uncertainty of
moment in which we historicize the just passed. No matter where we may be headed. But even with its greater plurality,
how inconvenient, the fact that the past may inform as well is art today headed forward or back? Is it aware of its history
as indict the present is a distinct possibility which should not and contesting the past or looking over its shoulder and chas­
go umemarked. With a moment worthy of retrospection, and ing its tail? And hadn't we witnessed a widely varied range of
a realignment of the coordinates of its unfolding, along with art practice in New York in the '80s, particularly among artists
a reappraisal of its values, we also examine the very time in who had previously been excluded or marginalized, and who
which it is being inscribed, and thus our own value system. employed forms of picture-making and art-making that had
And our time-with its increasingly business-like demeanor, so not been fully recognized as art, and duly rewarded? Despite
friendly and familiar as to appear oddly normal, where buyers its central place in the prior decade, what was the status of
outnumber collectors and art changes hands within months performance in 1 984? What was photography's status, let
rather than over the course of many years, a trajectory accel­ alone a photograph of a photograph? Some may look back
erated beyond comprehension-our time makes the so-called to the 1 987 Cindy Sherman retrospective at the Whitney
big, bad '80s appear nearly naive in comparison. Of course Museum as a moment of confirmation, for both the medium
they were not, not at all, and thirty years on we are able to see of photography and for a woman artist of her generation, and
that routinely demonized period as having been in many ways yet this exhibition almost never happened. 16 An institutional
prophetic for our own. Of everything that was ushered in with embrace may be made with some measure of reluctance,
the '80s, banality turns out to be the least of it. For some of us while the story of those convinced behind-the-scenes may not
who were there, the writing, as we look back now, was on the emerge until many years have passed. History, as the case
wall. AB Jack Goldstein predicted circa 1 982, ''Art should be may be, only reveals itself at a later date. Whatever appears
a trailer for the future."14 If '80s art can be thought of as the in the museum or dominates the galleries and the discourse
teaser to announce a coming attraction, often giving away too in any given moment is simply part of an overall picture, a
much of the film's plot and surprise, we should be aware that in significant part of the picture to be sure, but what happens at
Goldstein's aphorism he may have been playing with different or is pushed to the margins will often come to our attention
meanings of the word. One is reminded inevitably of the trails with some deferment or delay. We can even say, at the risk of
of light in the paintings which made him famous, how the appearing mercenary, that those in the spotlight are stamped
sublime is both terrifying and maj estic, how spectacle unites with an expiration date, while those outside are not, and one is
beauty and destruction, and in this his paintings reimagine perversely thankful for having been ignored. Even as the art
imagery that had been dealt with in the postwar period by of the '80s has its identity, the works produced then were not
Vija Celmins and Gerhard Richter with their ghost planes so strictly defined as may be claimed today, and that identity
and streaking bombers. To trail is also to follow behind. Maybe was informed, visually and in terms of subj ect matter, by much
a trailer is an artist who stalks the future with a sense of of what had come before. There were artists of earlier periods
the past. who were relevant all over again because of the re-mapped
In the movie of that time projected circa now, while there landscape of the '80s, whether the new work they were making
may be concordance for a narrow mind and a slender depth of mirrored the times, or its reflection was inherent to their very
field, to only see the '80s as cynical is itself the worst form of project. And thus our image of '80s art includes the wholly
cynicism, for in large part the artists, critics, and curators, the reinvigorated sculpture of Bruce Nauman, the proto-appropri­
serious collectors and dealers, were committed in their pursuit ation of Elaine Sturtevant (who returned to the studio after a
of art with a heightened awareness of their various roles in its protracted absence), Mary Heilmann's abstraction (brought
reception. The fact that we are here today, looking back in the back into painting's renewed dialogue after she began show­
'80s mirror, seeing how it doubly reflects on itself and on the ing with the gallery of Pat Hearn), elder L .A. statesmen John
present, serves to remind us that history, particularly in the Baldessari and Paul McCarthy, who were new discoveries for
parlance of that time, is an obj ect in culture: it can be remem­ a wider art audience from the '80s onward, as well as pavilions
bered, it c an be forgotten. And there is always a danger, as by Dan Graham. It is tempting as well to look now at the date
Marcel Broodthaers warned post-'68, that culture may become paintings that On Kawara made in that decade, and just after,
"an obedient malleable matter."15 He was right, of course, and as evidencing the passage of the '80s. Are there paintings from
forty years ahead of schedule. As a culture industry supplants Oct. 13, 1 984, Sept. 8, 1 985, Nov. 26, 1 987, Aug. 10, 1 988, Mar.
culture, we see the art and artists from the '80s and prior as 9, 1 989, Sept. 25, 1 989, Feb. 16, 1 990, and May 20, 1 992? These
having a clear-cut purpose, a sense of community, a continu- dates respectively mark the departures of Alice N eel, Ana
ity with preceding avant-gardes in breaking with what came Mendieta, Peter Huj ar, Paul Thek, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jack
before, advancing the longer story we may grasp more readily. Smith, Keith Haring, and Moira Dryer.
In spite of its excesses, the '80s was also a time when art would One of the salient features of the last fifteen or so years
serve a cause, when its content was apparent, even by willful has been the recuperation of art that fell by the proverbial
misdirection, when art was a questioning rather than a slyly wayside, particularly from the '80s, artists subsequently reha­
mocking object, in short, when art still mattered. bilitated or rediscovered, and for a younger generation encoun­
If the art of the present seems unmoored, and has been tered for the first time, from Lee Lozano to Cady Noland to
since before the turn of the millennium, this is both for better artists whose names will only barely register. That many of

215
these figures are seen in some ways as misfits who absented and the editor of the esteemed Real Life), Carlo McCormick,
themselves, left of their own accord, or discord as the case Nicolas Moufarrege (also an artist, and among the first to
may be-and that they account for much of the negative space prematurely depart), Rex Reason (the literary pseudonym
in the more comprehensive picture being pieced together­ of artist David Robbins), Rene Ricard (the poet who never
serves as a reminder that many of the more compelling figures considered himself a critic, but a fan and champion of artists),
in any period are misfits. It would be mistaken to say that Walter Robinson (co-editor of Art-Rite and a painter), Fulton
today they walk among us, for they always have. The differ­ Ryder (the nom de plume of Richard Prince), and Wallace
ence now, quite possibly, is the extent to which the misfit is so & Donohue (the artist team of Joan Wallace and Geralyn
well-behaved or rehearsed. In this sense, we are faced with an Donohue). The only sham critic was a shadowy figure who
obedient, well-schooled nonconformist. Are they making what came late to the game, Christian Leigh, whose sociopathic
they themselves want to see or what others desire? This raises conning of the art world made him a "Melmotte" figure, as if
one of the inversely positive lessons of the '80s, that it is not Anthony Trollope's cunning character of the 1870s had been
always bad to be selfish. revised by Dennis Cooper over a hundred years hence. (Read
against the backdrop of the 1 980s, this Victorian novel, in
fact, seemed in almost every way to be describing that very
ART AID ITS DOUBLE moment of our time, its scoundrels and speculators, even in
We tend to think that artists became savvier in the '80s, more its title, The Way We Live Now.) And who were the quote-un­
competitive and self-promoting, as if they had never been that quote fake dealers? E asier to identify the artists who presided
way before. One need only glance back to 1855 when Courbet over the more consequential galleries in the E ast Village :
arranged for a pavilion in which to show a large selection of Elizabeth Koury and Meyer Vaisman of International With
his paintings at the Exposition Universelle (or World's Fair) Monument, and Alan B elcher and Peter Nagy at Nature Morte
in Paris, having been rej ected from the official exhibition. And (it was Nagy who rightly observed that in New York in the late
then a dozen years later, Manet did the same, laying a major '70s there were nightclubs, while the storefront galleries of the
presentation on the doorstep of the 1867 exhibition from early '80s were "day clubs"). One can see that appropriation
which he had been excluded. One asserts that exclusion is a in this period extended to an overtaking of certain roles and
key factor in the making of history, and that the examples of functions in the art world, with an initial emphasis on fun. Of
Courbet and Manet can be seen in relation to the emergence the '60s, Warhol famously declared, "You were never sure if
of the E ast Village scene in New York in the late '70s/early '80s. you were getting to know the person or the drug the person
Being left out of the complacent gallery and magazine worlds was on." By the Warholian '80s, appropriately enough, whether
of that time was decisive for a whole generation of artists and you were on the same high or stone cold sober, you were not
writers and curators who would help define the moment that always sure if you were getting to know a person or a persona.
followed, influencing what came after, for both better and In the end there was only one truly fake artist: John Dogg, the
worse. AB David McDermott of the artist team McDermott entwined and mischievous minds of art dealer Colin de Land
& McGough recalled of that period, though exaggerating for and Richard Prince.
effect, "They made up their own art world. It was completely With few opportunities to participate, a younger gen­
fake. There were fake critics. Fake dealers. Fake artists. The eration had, by necessity, created a self-sufficient world of
whole thing was fake. They were all pretending back then. their own. The "character actors" who might otherwise have
'Let's play art world. They won't let us, so we'll play over here been kept on the periphery would come forward to occupy a
in the dirt.' "17 While many who participated in that moment quickly improvised center stage. They would open galleries
might take issue with the term "fake," and for some "fictive" to show their work and that of their peers. They would start
may be more appropriate, they probably would not disagree and contribute to publications, creating a forum for the art
with this encapsulation, that all the structures, roles, and and ideas circling around the moment. They would organize
protocols of art were occupied as a form of performance. Of exhibitions. In a hallmark of that time, as it was in the late '60s,
many participants in this scene, it should not go unremarked they would j oin forces, working in groups and in dual collabo­
that they had come from prior and concurrent lives in under­ ration. Wallace & Donohue worked together to create object­
ground film, Off-Broadway plays, cabaret, punk and No Wave type paintings and often co-authored texts. They deliberately
bands. They understood the dynamics of performer, stage, and engaged with their self-representation in an oblique parallel
audience, how language itself is a symbolic world. To wear a to the performance of the seemingly staid Gilbert & George,
suit, even one somewhat threadbare, in an Avenue A gallery as who they once "interviewed," and unnervingly so. Wallace &
its straight-faced proprietor, welcoming collectors who rolled Donohue were two women who cleverly gave themselves a
up in town cars, was itself a form of drag. A vestige of this con­ designation suggesting partners in a law firm-then, as now,
tinues today, without the slightest knowing wink of an eye. a male-associated referent-and in fact among the various
In 1 984, if someone asked what you do, and you said cards they published and distributed within the art world at
that you were an art critic, then you were. And who were that time (as had G & G to gain entry when they started out)
the so-called fake critics? As only a partial, though in no way was one which stated bluntly, "We're being sued." Invoking the
impartial list: Collins & Milazzo (the husband-and-wife cura­ very perils that would accompany appropriation and questions
tors and editors of Effects), E dit DeAk (editor of Art-Rite), of authorship that helped define the '80s, this was a retransla­
Kim Gordon (bass guitarist in Sonic Youth), Gary Indiana (the tion, two decades after the fact, of Gilbert & George's "To B e
novelist and true-crime specialist), Thomas Lawson (a painter With Art I s All We Ask." One of the central questions raised

217
 in this period was, without doubt: "Why Pictures N ow?"18 thus of queerness understood to denote a deviation from the
Serving as a response, though not originally intended as such, expected, a break with convention, a suspect nature. This is
the dual sense of permission and responsibility that came with where images and not bodies collide, are overlaid one on top of
art being given visual form was most succinctly articulated by another in memory, disappear, and just as readily rematerial­
Wallace & Donohue, who proposed: "When you're at the head ize in the eye and in the mind.
of culture, you're using the image to see."19 This is exactly
where many artists found themselves in the '80s.
The sense of appropriation-as-performance can be viv- WITNESSES: IBIIIIST OUR VIIIISHIIIG
idly located within a number of period events, exhibitions, The change of sensibility in the mid-'80s was not simply
and artworks, the most exemplary of which involve "time aesthetic, a restless shift from one sort of art to another as
travel," collaboration, and acts of repetition. Another artist collectors moved promiscuously from what they desired, or
team working in the '80s was Clegg & Guttmann, comprised thought they should possess, to what they acquired, and with
of Michael Clegg and Martin Guttmann, who showed at Cable it the imperative for dealers that "the show must go on." The
Gallery. Often passed over in the more official histories of the '80s, as previously observed, was a decade interrupted. At its
time, Cable offered one of New York's most lively and cogent midpoint, one of Jenny Holzer's most poignant aphorisms,
programs, occupying an aesthetic/locational juncture between "Expiring for love is beautiful but stupid," either registered
the E ast Village and Soho, as important in the day as Metro with a depth of feeling or as a cruel twist of fate. 2 1 More than
Pictures. In addition to showing Clegg & Guttmann, the first thirty years prior, Orwell had warned in Nineteen Eighty­
notable shows of Alan Belcher, Ashley Bickerton, Barbara E ss, Four: "The consequences of every act are included in the act
Haim Steinbach, and Christopher Wool were at Cable, and the itself." This was not a matter of recrimination all those years
gallery helped to renew interest in the work of Dan Graham. later, but would become a call to arms. When the artist group
The gallery was overseen by Clarissa Dalrymple and Nicole General Idea-the collective formed by AA Bronson, Felix
Klagsbrun, who became the subjects of a Clegg & Guttmann Partz, and Jorge Zontal-appropriated Robert Indiana's iconic
portrait in 1986, The Gallery Proprietresses. Here, in one of LOVE in 1 989 to spell, in the same configuration, AIDS, the
their most finely articulated works, the women's heads and two would be made synonymous, one being the price of the
hands are visible as their bodies are immersed in a velvety other. This work was first presented in the street, in the form
black, suggesting some distant point in the patrician past, as of posters titled Imagevirus. 1 989 was the same year in which
if they were nobility, the new face of the old world. It is a very Mapplethorpe had died, and when his exhibition was canceled
classical picture that might as well have been painted in a long­ at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. The museum had
gone century as staged for the camera in our own. caved to the pressure of right-wing Republicans who seized
Mike Bidlo, one of the forerunners of appropriation, on an issue with which to opportunistically raise their profiles,
staged two events early on at PS1 that, when viewed side by along with piles of money for themselves : government support
side, are incredibly prescient for the entwined antagonisms for what they saw as the obscene, "degenerate" art of the '80s.
that would come to define the era in its onset: neo-expression­ The decade neared its close, in terms of the calendar if not
ism and neo-pop. With Jack the Dripper at Peg 's Place in 1982 symbolically, with the designation of December 1, 1989, as a
and Andy Warhol 's Factory in 1984, Bidlo reanimated the national Day Without Art, observed by galleries and cultural
figures of Jackson Pollock, the alpha-male urinating in Peggy institutions across the country. Just weeks before, a show
Guggenheim's fireplace, and Andy Warhol, the limp-wristed organized by Nan Goldin had opened at Artists Space in New
mannequin who would reduce action painting to pissing on York, Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, which addressed
a copper-coated canvas, forever presiding over an endless the AIDS crisis, and featured an incendiary essay by David
parade of hustlers, "superstars," and speed freaks. 2 0 (The fact Woj narowicz in its catalogue. This was the time of ACT UP, of
that Bidlo's imagining of the Factory could be seen as nearly the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, of Gran Fury, of vocal
interchangeable with the E ast Village of that time was lost protest in the face of a devastating epidemic.
on no one, as ''All Tomorrow's Parties" appeared much the One of the indelible images in that time was Gran Fury's
same from one decade to another.) Pollock and Warhol repre­ neon sign, SILENCE =DEATH ( 1 987), installed in the window
sented two maj or and opposing vectors in the '80s, which Bidlo of the New Museum, which was then on Broadway just below
triangulated in an act of staged appropriation, a performance Houston, a major shopping thoroughfare and a point of entry
revealing the fraught connectivity this new art had to its near to Soho. 22 E erily aglow every night, illuminated for all to see
and distant past. in that dark time, it was as iconic as Bruce Nauman's neon
Warhol would also rear his bewigged head in an exhibi­ spiral, which proclaimed, The True Artist Helps the World by
tion-a "return of the repressed"-that was one of the most Revealing Mystic Truths ( 1 967). Twenty years after the fact,
anticipated in this period, when Elaine Sturtevant presented the truths at the end of the '80s would no longer be mystic, but
a selection of her pre-appropriation works, after a twelve self-evident, that all were not created equal, that rights were
year absence, in a 1 986 show at White Columns. Sturtevant's in fact alienable, that life and liberty would be pursued rather
"repetitions," a term she much preferred, included Warhol than attained. Art would come under attack and, rising to the
Gold Marilyn ( 1 973), Stella Lake City ( 1 969), and Duchamp occasion, many were compelled to action. The frontal assault
Fountain ( 1 973). Assisted readymades one and all, they on artists and museums was a rallying point, serving as a
expanded, as did the works of Bidlo, Levine, and Taaffe at the reminder that the question of art and its purpose is raised first
time, our notion of appropriation as asexual reproduction, and and foremost on the parts of those by whom it is made, amid

218
the reception of an engaged audience. This so-called culture begun one way, with great buoyancy and lift, they ended, as we
war resulted in no less than a declaration of independence, saw, quite another. As for eternity, to some this was a matter
with many lessons learned, perhaps chief among them: we of impatience for a moment that would not pass soon enough,
are obliged, on occasion, to bite the hand that does not feed us. an era that was-and still is-misunderstood and maligned by
And yet there was a more lasting message delivered, and still many who never went through that time, who have little or no
very much alive: being true to oneself is the highest form proximity, whose vantage is a rearview mirror filled with so
of morality. much secondhand smoke. To them, and ever so predictably, it
For many in the years that followed, whether they expired represents an excess of money and ambition in parallel to the
or survived, eternity would come much too soon. There was so-called ends of art. This despite the fact that the inevitable
an urgency that had nothing to do with '80s careerism or and necessary end of modernism, brought to bear upon that
competition, and everything to do with an hourglass image of time, opened up rather than contracted art's aperture. All was
working on borrowed time. In an art world that was severely not done, and even if it was, how could this possibly serve as
diminished, the historical and market construction of an art­ any cause for rej oice? A popular term at the time was the "cri­
ist's trajectory, of what came first and what came last, would sis of representation," while "ruins" and "exhaustion" were so
be rendered all but irrelevant, for the space in between was routinely invoked one might as well have been stumbling over
nearly nonexistent. E arly and late work? There are artists antiquity at every turn; yet even as this language overstates
from the decade for whom we are left with the only work. the case, it highlights the urgency with which the new art was
Unexpectedly attenuated creative lives are as haunting for brought forth and was seen to perform. The "endgame" played
what exists as for what never was, and the '80s is witness to a out through the '80s, viewed in relation to that of twenty years
doubly interrupted narrative, since life ended as well for any prior, suggests nothing so much as a Mobius strip, the arc of
number of individuals on whom its telling may have befallen. its path simultaneously visible inside and outside itself, able to
One can only wonder how history would have otherwise played maintain an entwined circulation perpetually.
out, how the whole sociopolitical context of that time would Today, when art needs a collective sense of where it may
now be seen within an entirely different frame, how specific be headed, the feeling of the time is "every man for himself."
subjects and concerns which drove art in the '90s may have On their own, the artists may be more beholden, perhaps
been, and perhaps indefinitely, deferred. A whole range of art willingly, to a system that needs at all costs to maintain its
and debate might have never been engaged, as art cannot help authority. This may in fact be an unintended legacy of the '80s,
but impact what will ensue . In the larger sense, wonder sug­ of "wanting to be bought," and yet having seen the trailer Jack
gests the cosmic, and how in the dissolution of a single particle Goldstein projected, we might suggest that even as the movie
an entire universe may shift, at first imperceptibly, though came true the plot was lost. While art's destination remains
with inevitable consequence. From one period to another, art­ the showroom, the boardroom, the art fair, and the auction
ists come forward and recede, while the meaning of their work house, every condemnation of the '80s is now business as usual,
is subject to forces beyond its control, at the time of its initial and every complaint about that time would have to be magni­
reception, later revised within a wider context, eventually to fied to a power of ten. That exhibitions would slowly cede their
be appropriated by the museum and by history, which is not importance to mere spectacle, that magazines would appear
always an impartial witness. more like trade publications, with art writing diminished, that
stars and a studio system, just as in old-time Hollywood, would
prevail, that it was no longer artists who were nomadic but
EIIDBAME galleries, pitching tents from town to town-"as serious as a
There are multiple beginnings and ends to a decade, most of circus," to borrow an '80s phrase-all of this, if not a foregone
which have nothing to do with the calendar and everything to conclusion or an end of the line, can only signal a pervasive
do with symbolic gravity, with a particular rise and fall, espe­ unraveling. And if this reads as a textbook '80s critique, then
cially when a decade's edges are frayed, whose center will no so be it, for just as with a two-way mirror, the shadow of the
longer hold, when lives are abruptly cut short. History, we past allows us to see what happens on that other side in the
are rather bluntly reminded in the wake of certain periods, is cold light of day. As he looked back on that time, Mike Kelley
often a matter of unfinished business and can only be related recalled to Dennis Cooper, "In the early '80s, we were all
with the acknowledgment of stories untold. We would be mis­ eccentrics and outsiders united by our mutual exclusion. There
taken in giving too much weight to the official version of what was no art market at that time. We weren't thinking about
became of the '80s art world, that it ended with the collapse sales. The '80s changed that forever. That was the major shift
of its market, that there was some sort of comeuppance, a in art practice in my lifetime."23
needed correction, that it got what it deserved, when in point The '80s, as they flowed into the '90s, appear from our
of fact its ends must be measured in human terms. Contrary vantage as perhaps the last period in which artists, critics,
to popular opinion, the art was not created by the market but and curators, the exhibitions and the writing around art, led
by the artists, and its case was made not by tabloid reporters the way and were of consequence. Art was driven by what
but by writers who articulated its criticism and defense. This was gained and what was lost. There were heroes and villains.
has greater relevance for the longer story that has to be told, People chose sides and art served its cause, addressing the
for a narrative that has to be written and rewritten, for as larger culture within which it coexisted, at times uneasily.
John Miller reminds us, citing Vih�m Flusser, history begins Artists saw themselves implicated within an image world that
with the very invention of writing. Although the '80s may have was fast transforming into an industry, and art would once

220
again have a self-critical function. You were aware that you
were present in the moment, that you were part of it or wanted
to be, that there was a collectively driven force. Everyone was
offering each other a set of possibilities and challenges, and
with them, even as it was all unscripted, a heightened sense of
direction. And so those works and those shows, the writing and
debate, they were guideposts that pointed to where you were
heading and where you had come from.
The period under review ultimately represents an ongo­
ing engagement between art and its successive legacies, each
informed by, and necessarily building upon and rejecting, what
came before, a process of negotiating futures and pasts. In this
nonlinearity, with its U-turns and detours, there is a stark con­
trast to our self-historicizing time. Looking back on the art of
the '80s we can see that, in the end, the art remains in play as
the story is told and retold, as artists and works cast aside are
recalled, just as those enshrined may fade almost from view.
Having been exhibited, reproduced, and held in the mind, art
exists as an afterimage of itself, of the artists by whom it was
conjured, certainly not from thin air. We are compelled to ask
how, without a sense of history, a palpable grasp of time and
space, the very points of origin and departure, is it possible to
proceed? All artworks have their lives to lead-"lives" plural­
and having an afterlife of any meaningful duration is in no way
guaranteed. As we turn back toward the art of thirty years
ago, as we historicize that moment, we cannot help but wonder:
If we ask a number of artists, critics, and curators to imagine
which works from today will stand the test of time, will those
predictions come true? Will this period in art be similarly
afforded retrospective exhibitions and catalogues and essays?
Merely to raise the question is cause for reasonable doubt.
Within this shifting narrative, only time will tell.

221
IOTES
1 R e f e renced here are , respec­ Endgame : Reference and Sim u l a t i on Genre ( T a l l ah a s s e e : F i n e Arts que s t i o n mar k , as if t o under­
tively , the a s s a s s ination of in Recen t Pa i n t i n g and S c u l p t ure , Gal lery and F l or i d a State score that to c r i t ique the return
John F. Kennedy , the end o f the I n s titute of Contempo rary Art , Unive r s ity , 1984 ) , 4 : " ' St i l l to p a i n t i n g at that t ime was
Vietnam War , the departure of Boston , S eptember 2 5-November life ' d e s c r i b e s t h e s ty l i z e d f a c ­ not a matter of s p e c u l a t i o n but
Richard M. Nixon after his resig­ 30, 1986 , organized by E l i s abeth t i c i ty i n t h e work w h i c h a l lows nec e s s ity , that there was an
nation as p r e s ident , and the fall S u s sman , c a t a logue e s s ay s by Yve­ it to c l a im the generic condition imp l i c i t unde r s t a n d i n g o f that
of the B e r l i n Wa l l . Alain Bo i s , Thomas C row , David of ob j e c t s i n the wo r l d . • . . Where moment ' s arrival . And wh i l e the
Jo s e l i t , and S u s sman . E n t ropy is the u n i ve r s a l still c r i t ique might not hasten its
2 Image Sca vengers , I n s t itute of life , T r a n s a c t i o n determi n e s the departure , a phe nome non could be
Contemporary Art , P h i l ad e l p h i a , Wi t n e s s e s : Aga i n s t Our Van i s h i n g , New Death o f wor l d ob j ec t s . As s hown f o r what it was , s omething
Decerr�er 7, 1 9 8 1-January 29, Art i s t s S p ac e , N e w York , November such , transaction indicates a t o which a match could e a s i l y be
1982 , presented i n two p a r t s : 16, 1 9 8 9-January 6, 1990, orga­ mode of interference which brack­ l i t-even i n the mo s t r a r e f ied
Photography , o r g a n i z e d by P a u l a nized by N a n Go l d i n , c a t a l ogue ets the continuity of ephemera s u r r o u n d i n g s-and wou l d go up in
Marinc o l a , c a t a l o gue e s s ay s by e s s ay s by David W o j narowic z , in such a way as to insti l l a smoke .
Dou g l a s C r imp and Marinc o l a ; and G o l d in , et al . d i s turbance into the set of dead
Painting , o r g a n i e e d by Janet r e l a t i o n s wh i c h perpetuates that 19 Wa l l ac e & Donohue , " Skills :
Kardon , c a t a logue e s s ay by Art and Its Doubl e : A New York status quo o f the ob j ec t , actu­ 65 Wor l d s Per Minute , " in
M a r i nc o l a . Perspe c t i ve , Fundacio Caixa de ally vivifying rather than nulli­ Pervert e d B y L a n g u a ge , exh . cat .
Pensions , B a rc e l o n a , November 27, fying the stasis o f t h e ob j ec t , ( Gr e e n v a l e , NY : H i l lwood Art
A Fa t a l A t tra c t i on : Art and the 1 9 8 6-January 11, 1987 , organ i z ed and thereby d i s t r ibut i n g that set G a l l e ry , Long I s l a n d Univers ity ,
Medi a , The Rena i s s ance Society by Dan C ameron , c a t a l ogue e s s ay of still relations over a dis­ c.w. P o s t C ampu s , 1987 ) , 61.
at the U n i ve r s ity o f C h i c ago , by C ameron . rupted univers a l . A k i n d o f white
May 2-June 12, 1982 , o r g a n i z e d by death entertains the p a s s age of 2 0 I n h i s s t a g i n g o f Andy
S u s anne Ghe z , c a t a l ogue e s s ay by 3 " O n vend du vent , " which trans­ each object . " Warhol ' s Fa c t ory, B i d l o p l ayed
Thomas Lawson . lates as " One sells air , " refers the part o f Warho l , with a cast
to a wa l l - t ext p i e c e by H a i m 1 3 Nancy Ar l e n was the drummer that i n c luded David Wo j n arowi c z
Art a n d Soci a l Ch a n ge , USA , Allen S t e i nbac h . in the No Wave band Mar s ; Barbara ( as Lou Reed ) , a young C o l i n de
Memo r i a l A r t Mus eum , Obe r l i n Ess p l ayed b a s s , uku l e l e , and Land ( who wou l d later open the
Col lege , Ober l i n , Ohio , Apr i l 4 Andrea F r a s e r ' s Ga l l ery Ta l k sang with the a l l - f ema l e Y g a l l e r y Ame r i c a n Fine Arts ) , and ,
1 9-May 30, 1983 , organized b y w a s presented as part of the P a nt s , and was also a member of mo s t unexpec t e d l y , Ruth K l i gman
W i l l i am O l ander , c a t a l ogue e s s ay s Damaged Goods exhibition at the t h e Static ( wi t h G l e n n B r a n c a ) , ( who had been in the car with
b y David D e i t c h e r , et al . New Mu s e um , on S aturday after­ and D i s band ; Pat P l a c e p l ayed J a c k s o n P o l l o c k o n the night when
n o o n s at 3 p.m. , J u n e 2 1-Au g u s t s l i de guitar i n the Contortions he c r a s hed and died in 1956 ) .
The New Capi t a l , White C o l umn s , 10' 1986 . and B u s h Tetras ; and A l a n Vega
New York , Dec ember 4, 1 9 8 4- p e r f o rmed w i t h Mart i n Rev as 2 1 H o l z e r ' s apho r i s m , E X P I R ING
January 5, 1985 , curated by 5 The e x h i b i t i o n was presented S u i c ide . Many of their appe a r ­ FOR LOVE IS BEAU T I FUL BUT STUP I D ,
Col l ins & Milaz zo . at John W e b e r G a l l e ry , New York , ances at the t ime w e r e h e l d in printed in a numb e r of f o rmats-as
S eptember 1 7-october 8, 1983 . venues such a s Ar t i s t s Space and posters , on golf balls , embroi­
In fo t a i nmen t ( 1 8 Art i s t s from New In l i eu of a c a t a logue , H a l ley the Kitchen . dered on b a s e b a l l caps , i n s c r ibed
York ) , first p r e s e n t e d at Texas guest-edited an i s sue of New on a stone bench-appe a r e d in 1985
Gal lery , Houston , 1985 , and trav­ Observa t i on s , no . 17 ( S eptember 14 Jack Goldstein , " un t i t l e d , " on c ondom p a c k a ge s . Another , MEN
e l ed , organized by Livet R e i c h a r d 1983 ) . f r om a series of aphor i s m s origi­ DON ' T PROTECT YOU ANYMORE , was
Co . , Inc . [ wi t h the c o l l aboration n a l l y pub l i s hed in the exhibition s im i l a r l y emp l oyed .
of Alan Belcher and P e t e r Nagy at 6 The e x h i b i t i o n was s imu l t a n e ­ c a t a logue documen t a 7 ( Ka s s e l :
Nature Marte ] , catalogue f o rward o u s l y p r e s ented at Kent Fine Art D.V.P. Dierichs , 1982 ) , 1 3 4 -1 3 5 . 22 The S I LENCE= DEATH logo , with
by George W.S. T r ow , e s s ay s by and C u r t M a r c u s G a l lery , both New the phrase topped by a pink tri­
Thomas Lawson and David Robb i n s . York , November 1 7-Decemb e r 31, 15 Quoted by Ben j amin H . D . angle , first appeared on s t i ck­
1987 , c a t a l ogue e s s ay by Dou g l a s Buchloh , " Op e n Lette r s , ers , and was o r i g i n a l l y d e s i gned
Di fference : On Represen t a t i on B l au . I nd u s t r i a l Poems , " in by Ken Woodar d .
a n d Sexu a l i ty , The New Mus eum Brood t h a ers : Wri t i n gs ,
of Contemporary Art , New York , 7 For a compre h e n s ive account of In t erviews , Ph o t ographs 23 "Mike K e l ley t a l k s to Dennis
Dec ember 8, 1 9 8 4-February 10, their h i story , see J u l i e Au l t , ( C ambr i d g e : MIT Pre s s , 1988 ) , 82 . Cooper , " i n Art forum 4 1 , no . 8
1985 , and trave l e d , o r g a n i z e d by ed . , Show a n d Tel l : A Chron i c l e ( Ap r i l 2003 ) : 255 . Here , it is
Jane We i n s t oc k , c a t a l ogue intro­ o f Group Ma t eri a l ( London : Four 16 The curator of the exhibition , worth n o t i n g t h a t w h e n an artist
duct ion by Kate L i n k e r , e s s ay s by Corners Boo k s , 2010 ) . Lisa Phillips , wou l d r e c a l l , of K e l ley ' s generation gradu­
C r a i g Owe n s , We i n s t oc k , et al . many y e a r s after the fact , that ated f rom art s c h oo l , in the
8 The a rt i s t ' s own c a t a logue immed i a t e l y p r i o r to h e r final late ' 70s, they may have a c c rued
S i gn s o f Pa i n t i n g , Metro note , in Chri s Burden : A Twen ty presentation for the exhibition $5, 000 i n debt , whi c h , account­
Picture s , New York , Apr i l 5-2 6 , Year S u r vey , exh . cat . ( Newport to the mu s eum ' s board , a key ing for i n f l a t ion , wou l d now b e
1986 . H a r bor , CA : Newport Harbor Art board member had i n s i s t ed t h a t about $ 15 , 000 . [ John M i l l e r , who
M u s eum , 1988 ) , 145 . the s how wou l d absolutely not go attended C a l Arts at the s ame
Pol i t i ca l Geome tries , Hunter f orward . It is a t e s t ame nt to t ime as Mike Kel ley , and who s e
C o l l e g e Art G a l l ery , New York , 9 Accounting for i n f l at i o n , the h e r be l i e f in S h e rman ' s work at f r i e n d s h i p b e g a n there , brought
May 1 5-June 20, 1986 , organized gold required to produce Burden ' s that t ime , and t o h e r powe r s of this fact to my attent i o n , and I
by M a u r i c e Berger . i n s t a l l a t i o n wou l d c o s t about persuas ion that , only minutes am indebted t o him for encour­
$2 . 2 mi l l i on today . Rabbi t , which later , when the plans for the a g i n g me to p u r s u e this partic­
The Art o f Memory/The L o s s of was p r i c e d at a b o u t $ 4 0 , 0 0 0 in s how were brought b e f o r e the full ular l i ne of que s t i o n i n g . ] You
Hi s t ory, The New Mus eum o f 1986 , c o u l d n o w command as muc h board , t h a t s ame member announced do not need a n e c o nomi s t to t e l l
C o n t emporary Art , N e w York , as $80 mi l l i on . its a c c e p t a nc e . I t was c lear that y o u t h a t s ince t h e Thatcher/
November 23, 1 9 8 5-January 19, they were f o l l ow i n g his lead . Had Reagan era , the d i s t r ibution of
1986 , o r g a n i z e d by W i l l i am 10 " C ap i t a l i s t Re a l i sm " is P h i l l ip s been u n s u c c e s s f u l in her w e a l t h h a s b e e n mo re great ly
O l ander , catalogue e s s ay s by t h e term u s e d by Konrad Lue g , reasoning and d e f e n s e , the s how c o n s o l idated i n the hands of a
David Deitcher , Ab i g a i l S o lomo n ­ M a n f r e d Kuttner , and Gerhard wou l d not have been mounted . F r om very few . How might this af fect
Godeau , and O l ander . Richter t o d e s c r ibe t h e i r wor k s a conve r s at i o n w i t h the author , art b e i n g m a d e today ? S o m e might
i n the " f irst exhibition of February 26, 2013, perhaps not s ay t h a t it accounts f o r works
A Brokerage o f Desire , O t i s Art German P o p Art , " May 4- 1 8 , 1963 , c o i n c ident a l l y at the Whitney of a decidedly critical nature ,
I n s t itute , Los Angele s , July Kaiserstrasse 3 1A , DU s s e ldor f . Mus eum . e s pec i a l l y c o n s i d e r i n g the fact
1 1-Au g u s t 16, 1986 , o r g a n i z e d by t h a t o v e r a t h i r d o f Ame r i c a n s
Howard H a l l e and W a l t e r Hopp s , 1 1 For a thorough r e te l l i n g o f 17 " Mc Dermott McGough talk to c u r r e n t l y h a v e d e b t t u r n e d over
c a t a logue e s s ay by Halle and B a s q u i at ' s g r a f f i t i wor k , see Bob Nickas , " in Art forum 4 1 , no . for col lection . Clearly , a sig­
Hopps . Henry Flynt ' s " Viewing SAMO , " 7 ( Ma r c h 2003 ) : 90. n i f icant p a r t of this debt is
www . h e n r y f lynt . or g / overviews / owed on s t udent loans , a per­
Damaged Goods : Desire and the S amo / v iewings amo . pd f , and for 1 8 The p h r a s e c ome s f rom Loui s e centage o f wh i c h was incurred b y
Econ omy o f the Obj ec t , The New a s e lection o f more than 50 Lawle r , appe a r i n g o r i g i n a l l y on t h o s e w h o attended M F A p r o g r ams .
Mus eum of Contemporary Art , New photographs t a k e n b y F lynt , see a book o f matche s , c o n c e ived But rather than c r i t iq u i n g the
York , June 2 1-Au g u s t 10, 1986 , http : / /www . henry f l ynt . or g / ov e r ­ by the artist i n order to be s y s t em , what is the l i k e l ihood
o r g a n i z e d by B r i a n Wa l l i s , cata­ v iews / s amo . htm . photographed for the work Why that s ome of these newly minted
logue es says by Deborah Bershad , Pi c t ures Now ( 1981 ) , in which it artists are produ c i n g wo r k s w h i c h
Hal Foster , Wa l l i s , et al . 12 An e x amp l e of the Collins & sits upright in a hotel a s htray . fit in comfortably w i t h what is
M i l a z z o writing style , f rom the It is important t o note that , in currently in fas hion , even as a
exhibition c a t a l ogue Na t ur a l the title , Lawler inc ludes no s e emi n g l y ant i - s t y l e ? Keep in

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 mind that a s tudent ' s debt today
would not be $ 5 , 000 , but may t o p
$100 , 000 . Are those entering the
gallery system more p l iable ,
more w i l l i n g to create art that
can be marke t e d ? M a y b e t h e good
news is the bad news after all ,
that inc l u s i o n and being able to
sell one ' s work leads to emp t i e r
art and to the attendant anxi­
e t y Marc e l B r o o d t h a e r s w a r n e d o f
l o n g ago : " You don • t have to feel
t h a t y o u s o l d out before having
b e e n bought . " In this respect ,
in K e l l ey ' s p o s t - t ime , will More
Love Hours Th an can Ever Be
Repaid nece s s i t a t e r e t r an s l at i o n
as " More s t u d e n t loans than can
ever be repaid " ?

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