THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509220066
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines
A N ARTIST who goes by the name Orlan has the highest of aspirations: sainthood.
Orlan wants, literally, to look like a goddess. She has hired plastic surgeons to give her Venus' chin, Psyche's nose and Diana's eyes.
More than their looks, Orlan desires the traits of love, creativity and courage associated with these goddesses. To that end, she has undergone psychotherapy.
Orlan's transforming self is her artwork.
Then there's artist Mel Chin, whose media is toxic earth and plants. For a work titled ``Revival Field,'' he transformed a hazardous waste site into healthy, fertile soil.
Among Chin's art techniques are plowing, tilling, planting and harvesting.
Orlan and Chin are among 15 nationally known, cutting-edge artists featured in ``IS IT ART? Transgressions in Contemporary Art,'' opening today at the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts. A free public reception takes place from 2 to 5 p.m.
The art on view is extreme.
Mike Kelley's assemblages include soiled dolls and ratty toys meant to counteract the romanticized ideals regarding childhood. On their bodies, Russian artists Rimma and Valeriy Gerlovin stencil designs meant to undermine our faith in logic. In a statement on our culture's self-absorption, Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler are producing enough towels monogrammed with the word ``me'' to give one to each American citizen.
Many of these artists are well-known among followers of contemporary culture for broadening the very definition of art.
The show was organized by Linda Weintraub, who teaches graduate-level art education at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. The point of the show, which also includes insightful labels and related objects, is to clarify the intent behind such bewildering recent art.
Weintraub got the idea for the show several years ago, when she was director of Bard's museum. ``Whenever I would exhibit the work of living artists, I would hear audience members proclaim disbelief, skepticism, often hostility, and always a lack of comprehension,'' Weintraub said last week in a phone interview.
``And I thought, `Someone has got to address this problem.' ''
She listened closely to the museum's patrons and noticed that certain questions were raised again and again.
She took 12 of those questions and built a show around them. She asked:
Is it art if the artist is the work of art? . . . if the art is devoid of feelings? . . . if the art is disposable? . . . not original? . . . functional?
Then she came up with examples of artists who were pushing those particular boundaries.
In addition, the 15 artists she chose ``all have something of crucial importance to convey to people living today,'' Weintraub said.
``Each one has selected a theme, an issue, a problem. Something you'll read about in the newspaper or see on television. And they are addressing these issues through the medium of art. Once the effort is made, and the themes discerned, the art objects have the potential of really helping us cope with life.''
These artists make art that is relevant to ``everybody living and breathing today,'' she added.
In other words, as esoteric as it may seem, the art in ``IS IT ART?'' is meant for Everyman. That means roofers and cashiers, as well as bankers.
``In each case, the art originated from a need to say something. And what emerged out of that need was the breaking down of certain expectations.''
While the exhibit broadens notions of art, Weintraub won't pass along her own definition.
``I never define art, as a kind of policy. But after seeing the show, I do hope people will include elements in their own definitions that they would not have considered valid before.'' READYMADES IN WAITING
The ``Thrift Store Painting Show'' at Old Dominion University Gallery also raises issues about aesthetic boundaries.
Here's one: How can a university gallery justify premiering its season with a show of amateur art purchased at thrift shops?
One answer: Because the 158 paintings on view, stacked almost floor to ceiling in an installation as kitsch as the art, were collected by name artists. Presumably, the art collection could tell us something about what inspires a certain kind of popular-culture-oriented artist these days.
Besides that, the exhibit itself is a conceptual art piece. Like Marcel Duchamp's ``readymades'' - urinals and shovels he labeled art in the 1910s - these found paintings constitute high art because someone put them in a gallery and dubbed them so.
Jim Shaw, a fairly famous West Coast artist whose latest work is inspired by his dreams, concocted the popular traveling show in the early 1990s. His collection forms the core.
``I started out by going to swap meets and thrift stores and buying a lot of ugly portraits or paintings,'' Shaw told Flash Art magazine in 1993. ``They interested me because they had a certain weird gusto that was filtered through American puritanism. I've had my own artwork end up in thrift stores and I have a great deal of empathy and affection for the pieces in the show.
``What's important to me above all is the content of the paintings, which tends to be slightly lurid. Content has been shaken out of a lot of contemporary art.''
For the version at ODU, other artists contributed thrift shop art from their collections - including Mike Kelley, Shaw's longtime close friend who is featured in ``IS IT ART?''
The work at the Beach arts center is accompanied by elaborate conceptual underpinnings. The thrift store paintings were created out of an innocent urge to communicate something - often love, lust and unrestrained fantasy.
Surely, these Sunday painters never expected such a spotlight from people likely to poke fun at their fumbling sincerity, their poor technique.
But it is the lack of polish that heightens the potency of these images. The artists don't have the talent to hide the embarrassing vulnerability of what they're trying to show. That deficiency is touching. ILLUSTRATION: This is one of 158 works exhibited in the ``Thrift Store
Painting Show'' at Old Dominion University Gallery.
by CNB