Dan Cameron

In 1986 Dan Cameron curated Art and its Double in Madrid, one of the first exhibitions of the new Manhattan art to be shown in Europe.  Similar work was later seen in the Saatchi’s show in London. Here Cameron discusses the rise of this new consumer art.

Peter Hill: The art of the early eighties belonged to the painter, particularly the new figurative painters such as Schnabel, Kiefer, Clemente, and a few years later Campbell, Wiszniewski, Currie and a battalion of Scots, many unsure of their direction, if not of their motivation. Do the late eighties belong to the sculptor?

Dan Cameron:  I would give a qualified ‘yes’ to that question, because in addition to
sculpture we are seeing whole new areas being opened up in photography, we are seeing the re-birth of installation work and the advent of neo-conceptualism.  Europe and America appear to be jointly leading the way in all of these developments. Louise
Lawler, for example, I would see as a sculptor, or an artist who thinks like a sculptor but is also involved in documentary procedures.  Bernhard Prinz fits this category also.  I would say that two thirds of what is exciting just now is non-pictorial.  A list
of artists working in these areas would have to include Julian Opie, Hamilton Finlay,
Rosemarie Trockel, Katharina Fritsch, Grenville Davis, Mucha, Koons, Steinbach,
McCollum, Bloom, Holzer and Gober.  The painting that is going on is more
involved with exploring projects as with Sherrie Levine or one of the most talented young Spanish artists Frederico Guzman whose studio I visited recently.

PH:  What parallels do you draw between the work of today’s appropriation
artists, such as Sherrie Levine or Louise Lawler, and their precursors?

DC: Duchampian appropriation was never identified as a separate stylistic practice until
the late 70s because it was previously considered – in the work of Rauschenberg or
Duchamp, for example – merely a tool within a much broader technical  repertoire.  If
artists like Sherrie Levine or Richard Prince are to be separated from their predecessors
it is because they have narrowed in on the re-represented image as the point of departure for their work.  It is this investigative tendency within their art which I believe links them more directly with Pop and Conceptual art than with appropriation’s ‘pioneers’
(a term which I find to be somewhat contradictory in the first place).

PH: What artists are you currently looking at who may not yet have exhibited outside
America?

DC:  From my perspective, the primary distinguishing characteristic between
American artists who are successful in Europe versus those who are not is that
the former have gone to Europe to promote themselves.  Consequently, artists that I’m
thinking about, but who have not exhibited outside America and who should be
better known would include the 19th century landscapists like Albert Pinkham Ryder as well as pioneer abstractionists such as Burgoyne Diller and John McLaughlin.
In contemporary terms, I would like to see two entire schools of American art
more recognised abroad.  One is the abstract painterly tradition represented by
Elizabeth Murray or David Reed (and artists much less known than they are) and the other would be the Pop/folk iconoclastic figurative vein, running from imagists like
H.C. Westermann, Karl Wirsum or Peter Saul, through more freeform work like that of Mike Kelley or Archie Rand.  I think that both genres represent a significant development peculiar to American art, and which are a far cry from the diet of American art to which most Europeans are exposed.

PH:  Regionalism, from the Manhattan to the Australian or the Scottish variety is a
widely debated issue.  I am wary of easy terms such as international or regionalism which often overlap I m of language rather than art?

DC:  On the most basic level all art is regional and all art is international. I’ve become
accustomed in recent years towards thinking of groups of artists in terms of cities
rather than countries, because I think that many cities – Berlin or Amsterdam, Los
Angeles or Melbourne – Barcelona or Glasgow – have qualities which are more
apparent in their artists than those aspects which could be ascribed to a national style.
Otherwise, I think the only true provincialism belongs to cities that had had it and lost
it, so to speak – Paris is always the classic example of that.  New York hasn’t reached that point, at least not yet.  Otherwise, seeing that the international art world is becoming decentralised  as opposed to recentralised it is as important to look at
regional work as that which has not been correctly appreciated by the world
outside.

PH:  Do you see the New York Bad Painters of 1980, such as Richard Bosman, and
the Manhattan neo-geo artists – Halley, Bickerton, Koons – as belonging to the
same movement, ie a movement of quotation?

DC:  Actually, the “Bad Painting” movement never seemed to be so much about quotation as it was about a generic approach to style, or painting as a type of social contract. The current crop of painters and sculptors seem to be more interested in art as a type of public language which can theoretically be understood by large numbers of people at the same time. Still, the difference to me between the early 80s
and the late 80s has been the shift from a microcosmic approach ( traditional art value
insularity, politics) to a macrocosmic approach (sociocultural values, legibility,
de-mythification).

PH:  The exhibition ART AND ITS DOUBLE  which you curated and brought to
Spain last year was one of the most exciting to be seen in Europe, certainly
in terms of paradigm change, since A NEW SPIRIT or ZEITGEIST.  Are you currently
working on any other exhibitions?

DC:  I was the American curator for Aperto 88 section at the Venice Biennale this year, a project that I’m still recovering  from. I am a musician on top of everything else, so I’ve actually used this summer to record the demo for my band’s second record. A lot of exhibiting proposals are in the works, but nothing which has been absolutely confirmed.  As far as writing is concerned I’m going to lay lower than I have been for the last couple of years, because I’ve felt a bit overextended.

PH:  How important are market forces on the collector and on the artist,
especially in relation to the “consumer mirror” that many young artists are holding up to
their public.  Where does irony begin and art stop?

DC:  The boom in the contemporary art market has been phenomenal during the Age
of Reagan, as everyone expected it to be.  This has lead to a heightened
number of opportunists, like advisors and so-called independent curators, as well as a
lot more galleries and individual curators, than there were before.  Certainly, the change in aesthetics over the past few years have been in part an attempt to grapple with our
awareness that the art-buying public has suddenly become its most conspicuous audience. This is a full turn away from the street orientated aesthetics of
graffiti and the East Village look which preceded it, and which in retrospect may turn out to have been somewhat I in its outlook.  Whether most collectors are aware of the ideological subtext to this shift or not is beside the point, because there are only a
small minority of collectors who buy for other than investment purposes anyway.  I think the artists are hyper-aware of this situation, and are making a test case out of
having their cake and eating it, too.

The Biennale of Sydney 2002 | Elevator Surfing | Encyclopaedia of Superfictions | The Manhattan Archives | The Art Fair Murders | Book Reviews | International Portrait Gallery | The Changing Room | The El Greco Search Engine | Press Office | Museum Shop | Current Writing | The Sorbonne Conference | Superfictions Phd | Basement - Plato's Cave