carp on crap art starting with rauschenberg


- bill 8-27-2009 3:05 am

Ivan Carp? I just made a comment on that thread. Paddy's readers are meaner than mine used to be, on the whole. You can disagree but she gets a lot of "now, Paddy (or Karen), what you don't understand..." type crap.
- tom moody 8-27-2009 7:13 pm [add a comment]


bottom line is shes right, crap on crap art aint what it used to be.
- bill 8-27-2009 7:51 pm [add a comment]


It's better! Seriously, I like a lot of the newer work, just not the lack of discourse around it.
- tom moody 8-27-2009 8:19 pm [add a comment]


id like to hear you make that case. about it being better that is.
- bill 8-28-2009 2:56 am [add a comment]


tom posted this list on his page and on paddy johnsons page.
Reasons why assemblage (or "crap on crap") is now the "house style" of the art world (from an artist's perspective):

1. Everybody’s broke and there’s always an abundance of trash.
2. Six years of art education teaches that high art is dead so everyone takes the low road.
3. Disgust with capitalism and consumer culture.
4. “Nihilism.”
5. Genuine love of trash culture and its byproducts.
6. Avoidance of known art materials.
7. A way to make formal arrangements of things without being called “Greenbergian.”
8. A way to be political without sloganeering.
9. Genuine interest in the lineage of Schwitters/Rauschenberg–-considering it an unfinished project.
10. New trash (web and technology cast-offs) necessitates new ways of arranging trash (and new content unknown to Rauschenberg, et al).


- bill 8-28-2009 8:30 pm [add a comment]


what i find interesting about the original post is the coining of the term crap on crap and identifying it with rauschenberg and large group of young practitioners as well as a few artists connecting the dots in between.

my reading is that crap on crap for RR (he called them combines) is paint applied to a montage of found objects including printed or textual items and signs. i consider RR's use of this approach more in connection with picasso and braque collage (applique on painting) than to schwitters (cut up and glue - no painting) technique. although rauschenberg does reverse their process from things on paintings to painting on things. thats how i read the original coining of crap on crap, paint on things. thats what jessica stockholder does. but its not what cady does (did) and not what some of the others mentioned in the AFC post do.


however it does seem to be what some of the current crew is doing. but to a "better" end as tom states? not so im aware of. but im not out there pounding the pavement with toms diligence so ill remain open to persuasion.


- bill 8-28-2009 10:06 pm [add a comment]


afc has picked up toms notes from where he posted them as comments.
- ree 8-29-2009 2:14 pm [add a comment]


the ree post is mine.

"we are nihilists. ve vant ze money lebowski."

collage, montage, decollage, assemblage all have traditionally been an opting out (of high art, good painting, painted representation) process, as hinted at in toms list. but if every one is out of the process then they are all in. all in is not a refuses position. its a simulation of opting out while staying in the market and in the system. ultimately part of the problem, not the solution.

i prefer cady noland and laurie parsons positions where no means no.


- bill 8-29-2009 4:51 pm [add a comment]





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