Kelly Baum

review of
Conrad Bakker's Objects & Economies (Untitled Projects 1997-2007)
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 4, 2011

Do you ever learn about something & think: 'I wish I'd done that!' That's the way I felt when I started reading about Conrad Bakker's Untitled Projects. They both reminded me of things that I HAD done & of things that I SHD HAVE DONE BUT DIDN'T.

I don't remember exactly where I got Bakker's bk. I think I picked it up in a dollar sale box in front of a used bkstore - maybe in Cape Cod. I remember quickly looking thru the bks, seeing this one, noticing that it appeared to be a Penguin bk, vaguely registering that something was slightly off about that appearance, skimming thru the inside, seeing that it was an art bk w/ color reproductions, thinking that it looked potentially interesting, getting it, adding it to my already huge pile of used bks, & then essentially not looking at it again until a mnth or so later.

I grabbed it from my to-read pile a coupla days ago & THAT was probably when I noticed that instead of a penguin image in Penguin Books' usual spot there's a pelican. Since I didn't know that there's a series of Pelican Books (there is) I thought that this was a deliberate deviance from the Penguin logo in order to avoid copyright violation since I then noticed that the cover was, indeed, a print of a painted copy of a pre-exisiting bk cover design. This amused me & interested me further.

Bakker carves out of wood & paints slightly crude copies of various objects & then places them in contexts appropriate to the object copied. Such a process then potentially stimulates attn pd to the object in relation to its environment - particularly its economic environment as a result of Bakker's careful choices of object & ground.

I think it was in the late 1970s or in 1980 that I got an issue of "Assembling" magazine & there were poems in it inside drawings of leaves. As I recall, it was suggested by the person who'd created these that the leaf shapes be cut out & that the leaf poems be placed amongst leaves. Now I just looked thru the issue of "Assembling" that I have so that I cd give the poet/artist proper credit & didn't find the page in question so perhaps it was just in an assembling rather than in the magazine called "Assembling". I cut out one or two of the poems, hand-colored them, & put them w/ other leaves.

To me, this was what I call a "Mystery Catalyst" - a process that I was already heavily immersed in. I'd roll a cylinder seal in found chewing gum to leave the imprint of a horse & chariot on it - in the somewhat unlikely circumstance that anyone wd notice, I hoped that the mystery of it wd catalyze wonder & inspiration, questioning. Around the same time, I'd take pictures of myself in a photobooth that had something off about them & then put those fotos on display on the booth's sample foto area.

Bakker concentrates on, as his title states, "Objects & Economies" to a high degree. He makes a painted sculpture of a Hefty bags box, places it in a store next to a box of the actual Hefty bags & prices it at the same price as the original. He then fotographs the placed object & prints of such fotographs are what're shown in this bk. Since this is not a collaboration w/ the store, the object is probably placed w/o store personnel knowledge & money made from the sale, if any, goes to the store rather than to the artist. This is what Bakker calls "shopdropping" (p26). Cf the B.L.O. (Barbie Liberation Organization) 's "shopgiving". Both terms are, obviously, reversal take-offs of "shoplifting". Imagine the surprise, delight?, confusion? of someone finding such an object while shopping. One wd hope that many or most people might ask: WHY? - if they're not completely braindead yet.

Such taking of the art object out of its usual commodity marketplace & into an environment where it'll be, hopefully, examined for its relationship to what its imitating is Bakker's strongest point, IMO, & his focus. Bakker has explored this w/ remarkable thoroughness. He's made objects for yard sales, flea markets, stores, online markets like eBay, etc.. Every object is carefully considered for its place.

In some instances he calls specific attn to the theories that've probably influenced his economy comments. There are many references to Karl Marx - such as "a carved and painted copy of Karl Marx's Capital, Volume I (1867)-priced at" the same price as the bk copied. There's "a carved and painted Blockbuster bag designed to appear as if it held a rental DVD of the documentary film The Corporation (1996). This combination of objects points to the immutable relationship between the critique of corporate culture and the commercial distribution of culture." (p66) There's the "carved and painted BORDERS bookstore bag painted to look like it contains Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's book Empire (2000), a theoretical text that critiques corporate globalization."

My personal favorites might be the paintings he did of ads on eBay - wch he then advertised for sale in the same eBay category as "painted reproductions and sold to the highest bidder." MARVELOUS! I particularly like the "EBAY/COMPUTER (FLASH)" one where he incorporated the flash brightness on the screen of a computer from the foto taken of it for eBay sale.

There's a perversity to all this that reminds me of a story that a friend of mine told me about a professor of hers in Chestertown defining perversity as 'eating a picture of food rather than food itself.' I'm further reminded of the delight I felt when I was in Bern, Switzerland at the Natural History Museum where there was an indoor display of a house or barn or some such w/ a simulated bird's nest under its eaves. The bird's nest being that of a barn swallow or some such bird that's adapted to human dominance of the environment by using human structures to place its own structures in. Bakker is like a self-conscious barn-swallow satirist & analyst.

Alas, Bakker is also a bit too much of the typical artist at times for my preferences insofar as he gets so involved w/ the cute referentiality of his objects than any likelihood of accomplishing anything much in the world gets lost. His "Untitled Project: PROTESTANT [GENEVA] is both a commentary on the specific history of the Swiss city of Geneva as a birthplace of institutional (church) reform and a rather futile effort to draw attention to the location of contemporary institutions that require "reform" by the artist's posing with a carved and painted bullhorn in front of the World Trade Organization headquarters in Geneva." Even here, though, Bakker is self-conscious & critical enuf to write "a rather futile effort". Indeed. I think there've been many other attempts "to draw attention to the location of contemporary institutions that require "reform"" that've been far more successful - esp large scale protests.

Perhaps Bakker's biggest flaw, for me, is that he is an artist &, as such, ultimately works w/in artist economies & framings regardless of how much he critiques them. As such, he may be co-opted from the get-go. This bk, eg, is published by the Des Moines Art Center. That both makes me interested in them & suspect of Bakker's ultimate effectualness. Even though I think the work is brilliant, there's still the danger & likelihood that it'll be absorbed into the Art World's 'aren't these objects nice & clever' glamor mentality as the critical aspect of it becomes window-dressing. Fortunately, I think Bakker's continuing use of guerrilla contexts will circumvent such an eventuality somewhat. Alas, his being an Associate Professor of Art & Design probably won't.

Bakker does, however, try to address this: "Untitled Project: ADVERTISEMENT [ARTFORUM] is made up of set of of carved and painted copies of recent full-page Artforum advertisements featuring minimal and conceptual artists. These painting replicas of advertised gallery exhibitions or art auctions were then priced at current Artforum advertising rates, pointing to the complicated relationship between art objects and their inevitable commodification." Bravo! But is it "inevitable" that art objects be commodified? Maybe in the case of Bakker's work but I think there're plenty of instances that go strongly counter to commodification. Bakker, as an artist & art teacher, is dependent on the art market for his economic survival. As such, despite his critiques, it's in his best interests for his work to accrue art market value.

I remember Marxist-Maoist composer Cornelius Cardew's reply to concept artist Henry Flynt's proposal "Down with Art":

""Dear Mr. Flynt...Since I may be depending on organized culture for my loot & livelihood I can only wish you a limited success in your movement....[..]"" [from Flynt's Blueprint for a Higher Civilization]

Bakker rc'vd a "Creative Capital Foundation project grant" - I call yr attn to "Creative Capital". Now I'm not knocking Bakker's work - I'm delighted w/ it & very happy to learn about it. Any creative person in a capitalist society who even attempts to face the conflicts between issues of fair value & market manipulations still has to survive & capitalist society is a Goliath not easily felled by one stone. So I admire Bakker's creativity.

& I really am reminded "of things that I SHD HAVE DONE BUT DIDN'T." An example of this is an idea that friends of mine & I had of hand-altering clothing, such as by painting slogans on them, & then donating the clothes to thrift stores. On the other hand, my rubber-stamping American money "COUNTERFEIT" & Spanish money

"No es valido a menos
que se use para
socavar el Capitlismo
*************************
Un Mensaje de servicio público
del Dinero Contra el Capitalismo"

are probably more likely to resist commodification longer than Bakker's art objects. Nonetheless, Bakker's eBay projects alone make me wish that there were a bk about unusual uses of eBay & makes me think I shd publish it, eh?!… (más)