Ray Johnson Five Decades @ David Zwirner

"New York's most famous unknown artist."
                                  —Grace Glueck, The New York Times, 1965

To begin this review of Ray Johnson's work at David Zwirner, I want to share that the announcement email dazzled. An animation of artwork "details" (I was to realize after perusing the online exhibition) grabbed me and was so visually captivating that I wanted to see the show and learn about Ray Johnson, an artist with whom I was only vaguely familiar, but who nonetheless has created a space that my own work resonates with stylistically.

One of the things that I really like about how the email functioned was that the artwork was the draw and the text about the artist was succinct with a BROWSE button for the online exhibit, but also there was an embedded link to the physical exhibition WHAT A DUMP curated by Jarrett Earnest at the 19th Street gallery, and a "Book an Appointment" link to see the physical exhibition. Truly the perfect blend of physical and digital—creating the phygital experience—right from the email. 

Beyond the beauty and the enticing nature of the email, I was also impressed that the email sent April 8, 2021 still has working links for both the online exhibit and access to the online version of the physical exhibition. This for me is essential in this phygital space that is emerging. While Platform will be rotating artwork on a monthly basis (which is good for selling art), I was very pleased that the backroom concept was still in play and access to Johnson's work was still possible. Both a regular rotation of artwork on Platform and deep dives into particular artists (like Ray Johnson) are needed to maintain the phygital experience at the highest level.

I am a skimmer and drawn in through great visuals. I usually look through an entire magazine first to see what grabs my interest: a great headline or a great picture is where I will follow up after the skimming. So I skimmed through the online exhibition and then went for a brief skim of the physical exhibition. Both presentations were attractive and well designed. But the online exhibit was structured to be informative with an overview of the five decades noted in the show title: '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s each defined a section with artwork and commentary. Johnson committed suicide in 1995, which is revealed in the WHAT A DUMP press release. When writing these reviews of the phygital art experience, I don't check out other websites except through the links provided in what I am viewing. For reviewing Johnson's work I am experiencing the freshness of the work for the first time exclusively through these David Zwirner presentations. 

The online presentation continued the art "details" animation from the email and also had a photo of Johnson from the 1960s with a final design feature of large font quotes from art reviewers during his lifetime and beyond. Mixed throughout were the framed collages with sizing details, pricing, and more text about the artist's career and his significance. I really loved that the first image (from a private collection) of Johnson's art was his abstract work, influenced by Albers, with whom he studied, which was noted in the text. 

This online exhibition is very concise, educational, and lets the viewer have a sense of expertise about this artist—all with a minimal investment of time if desired. Every image is linked to its own window noting again the artwork's title, size, materials, date made, frame size, price, an "inquire" button, and social media links. These individual window links don't necessarily show a larger image and they don't show a detail. The lack of detail is a missed opportunity to enhance the online viewing experience. Every piece of artwork made has a relationship to a viewer. The relationship is experienced when seeing the art in person. The energetic intention of the artist is conveyed and received in the close approximation of viewing. For me, I wished that there was a detail image for each piece of artwork. That would give the online viewer a more tactile sensation about each piece of artwork highlighting their beauty and originality.

I opened this blog post with Grace Glueck's quote from 1965 from her The New York Times review. While detail images of the artwork are missing there is something that only online presentations can give and that is links to other websites with more historical or contemporary commentary and information. In this case The New York Times link is to an archive review from April 11, 1965 by Glueck. To read the review one must click on the TimeMachine button from the NYTimes link and then in the left side dialogue box, click on "CONTINUE READING PDF." A few extra clicks, but truly worth the read. From the review, having Johnson's quotes about his work adds insight to his art and artmaking process. 

Also throughout there are other quotes in the online exhibit, which are eclectic and give a sense of mystery. And many quotes have a link to the original source material. At times it is easy to get lost in reading all the links, but I rather find the act of absorbing this artist through all the connections he made an excellent way to possibly understand Johnson and the context of his art.

Now to transition toward the physical exhibition Ray Johnson: WHAT A DUMP at David Zwirner's 19th Street gallery in New York, curated by Jarrett Earnest. In the first paragraph at the online exhibition there is a link to this show, but no link to the online exhibition from WHAT A DUMP. Not sure why that is: possibly an oversight? The overall feel of WHAT A DUMP definitely mimics the sensation of visiting the gallery plus more. Between the two exhibits there was only one duplicate image: James Dean (Lucky Strike), 1957, Collage on board. So viewing each exhibit yielded a unique experience and greater depth on Johnson's work.

Opening text for WHAT A DUMP includes the first paragraphs of the press release with an option to read more and general gallery details for seeing the show in person. Next there is a video, which is focused on Johnson speaking about his process followed by a 29-page downloadable essay PDF by curator Earnest. The essay PDF is presented as if it is a folded pamphlet set in a typewriter font. The essay is filled with details that are salacious and intriguing weaving together a life biography of Johnson that captures a feeling of what the art scene and Johnson's community of artists were like when he was alive.

WHAT A DUMP moves beyond just showing Johnson's work and instead includes work from artists with whom Johnson the man and Johnson the artist was engaged with in his artmaking process. There are a number of full wall installation shots that help the viewer see the intimacy of Johnson's work in a collective group of pieces. 

What I love about both exhibitions is that there are levels of "knowing" to be unpacked when reviewing this artist in this context. Without ever clicking a link the viewer can still connect to work through each the presentation, but each link is an incredible rabbit hole leading to another rabbit hole that keeps uncovering more of who Ray Johnson is. And yet can we really know him? 

In this process of considering the phygital experience for this review, I had a recent opportunity to physically visit an exhibition at SITE Santa Fe. The visit clarified for me the three elements that should be present for a complete phygital experience—represented through imagery—scale, texture, and proximity.  It is the interplay of light and shadow in a gallery space that gives the depth of perception for artwork seen by the human eye, which can then possibly excite or inspire the viewer.

The email "detail" animation was a teaser about the nature of these collages. A close viewing of the individual collages could make all the difference for a possible buyer and the phygital viewer. Some 50 years after Glueck's review, Roberta Smith in her 2015 New York Times review articulates why the detail images are so needed.

Mr. Johnson’s efforts teem with art-world names and related iconography, much of it explained in a gallery handout. But what I like best about them is, again, never quite being sure how a piece came to be. Are the white flecks atop or beneath the luminous blacks and grays they are scattered across? Are repeating images stamped or drawn by hand? Despite being wonderful vortices of wordplay, personalities and connectedness, these collages begin with the unending mystery of how they were made, which still looks new.

David Zwirner's staff are approaching the phygital experience with these two exhibitions of Ray Johnson's artwork. But investigating a bit deeper there are holes that are revealed from the Village Voice review of May 11, 2021 by Daniel Felsenthal highlighting that there's still more work to be done to bring the gallery into The Living Room.

David Zwirner Is Listening To His Kids

Phygital is an evolving concept. Some might say the evolution that is creating the phygital art market was begun from the pandemic—a desire to make lemonade from the abundance of lemons in a shut down world-wide economy. 

But really it's a moment of shifting the art buying process from what is comfortable for Baby Boomers to how Millennials would like to shop—for everything—online. This issue was articulated in the New York Times article by Scott Reyburn dated June 8, 2020: "As the Art World Goes Online, a Generation Gap Opens."

And yet David Zwirner was ahead of the shift and debuted Platform: New York, which was announced in a different NYTimes article written more than two months before by Robin Pogrebin dated March 27, 2020: "In Time of Quarantine, Zwirner Shares Online Platform With Smaller Galleries."

How did he do that? 

He had been listening to his kids. From the above linked NYTimes article: 

... Mr. Zwirner, add[ed] that the idea came from his son and daughter—Lucas and Marlene—who work at the gallery, along with other younger members of his staff: Alec Smyth, Thor Shannon and Cristina Vere Nicoll.  

I believe that I got on the David Zwirner Gallery email list when I checked out his gallery a few years back because it was an example of a gallery using Art Storefronts—though I can't substantiate this with evidence as Art Storefronts has continued to evolve their niche market and website, so he's not there anymore. Art Storefronts is on the cutting edge of creating a new wave of professional artrepreneurs that can sell their art work directly to art buyers, cutting out the middleman: galleries and art dealers. 

From the outside, this dichotomy—represented artists versus self-promoting artists—may seem an inherent conflict of interest. But it's how artists—in all the mediums that they create in: visual art, performance art, film, writing, poetry, photography—continue the process of redefining what art is. A very famous example is photographer Alfred Stieglitz showing Modernist artists—including his wife Georgia O'Keeffe—at his galleries: 291, The Intimate Gallery, and An American Place.

As an artist and a gallerist, I have been watching Art Storefronts as they develop. I checked them out as a bolt-on for my then gallery website, but as I have continued my own evolution I would like to use them for selling my own work and possibly for selling the work of a select few artists I still informally represent.

I have been getting David Zwirner Gallery emails for awhile. As the concept for The Living Room blog was slowing developing in my mind as the pandemic dragged on—then cemented with the NYTimes article I mentioned in my introductory post—I started opening the David Zwirner emails, all interesting, but nothing grabbed me like the Ray Johnson email from April 8th. I decided that Ray Johnson would be June's The Living Room post.

Then this article—Zwirner May Disrupt Art Gallery Model With Click-to-Buy Business—came out in mid-May, also written by Robin Pogrebin as a follow up to the original article from more than a year ago. Now Platform isn't just a response to the pandemic; it's a new business model. Hence, why reviewing the phygital art experience will become the apex of this changing art market in the competition for eyes (between galleries and self-promoting artists).

The article highlighted a fear that Platform would just be poaching hot new artists from smaller galleries in the collaboration of partnering with Zwirner on Platform, an issue raised by Larry Gagosian.

“I wouldn’t be interested in doing something like that — it’s a little bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said the dealer Larry Gagosian. “My advice to smaller galleries would be preserve your own identity and brand — even if you can’t do it at the level of a large gallery, work within your means and don’t hand over your artists and client lists to somebody who might take advantage of it at some point.” 

 Then Pogrebin expanded on this issue in the next paragraph.

Skeptics will say that Zwirner is just trying to garner publicity and generate good will with a paternalistic, Robin Hood move that ultimately gives his own gallery 20 percent of every sale on Platform. And some in the art world worry that Platform is merely a farm team for Zwirner — a way to develop emerging artists, woo them from smaller galleries, and harvest information about those galleries’ clientele.

Gagosian's comment and the elaboration on skeptics' thinking are both a bit disingenuous as the issue of poaching has been happening as long as there have been galleries. Again the symbiotic relationship between smaller independent galleries showing new artists and the big dogs selling masters and newly minted artists to the canon... Well, this is the game: that the traditional galleries need to be fed more buyers (consumers), more artists (product), and keep up with the latest developments on a quickly changing art scene. While rubbing shoulders with corporate galleries, the smaller independent galleries will grow their own credibility and reputation on the way to possibly become more financially successful. 

Isn't that capitalism?

Judy Chicago Is Still A Revolutionary

For the first post I decided to check out a gallery. Galleries generally have websites. Back when I had my gallery Eich Space in Tribeca, I was attracted to Deitch Projects, partly because of the similarity in name. Now years later Deitch has the website Jeffrey Deitch. For my first phygital visual art review his website is an excellent place to begin.

First, what I love is that Deitch's website is an experience. I will say that I don't share the same aesthetic taste as Deitch even when we had galleries in the same town, but I fully appreciate how his vision is conveyed right at the landing page. With a very intricate piece of animated art continuously scrolling by in an ongoing transformation—the website is art in motion.

There is a lot to see on this gallery website. Everything is clearly organized and easy to surf. Interested in Los Angeles, New York, Special Projects, Online Gallery, Archive, or learning more about Deitch himself, you are just one click away. 

In my original visit I surfed a little in all the categories, but was most interested in the "Online Gallery." In that section (current to this post) there are three exhibitions. The one that caught my eye is Judy Chicago: What if Women Ruled the World. (To enter this area of the website one must give their email. This is not surprising as I imagine Deitch is tracking who is checking out these online gallery exhibitions.)

Having entered the exhibition the layout is easy to navigate. The opening section has a full image of the gallery installation plus it's possible to click through a few more gallery installation views of this exhibit. Then the images are followed by text that was very easy to read with an excellent overview of the Herstory of the artwork and a contextualization of who Judy Chicago is as an artist. 

Chicago is a feminist artist icon. Her work The Dinner Party—now on permanent display in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center For Feminist Art on the 4th floor of the Brooklyn Museum—sent shock waves through the art world in the mid to late 1970s. She influenced a generation of women artists, me included. To see her current work now at 80 years old highlighted at Jeffrey Deitch's gallery shows her ongoing relevance as she continues to create new Herstory.

Next there is a video of Chicago discussing her work and how the original art installation was part of "a[n] historic collaboration between Chicago and Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri for the Spring/Summer 2020 haute couture collection...the centerpiece of Dior’s runway presentation at the gardens of The Musée Rodin in Paris in January 2020." For me, I found the video very inspiring and when I finished I checked out Chicago's own artist website.

Following the video, the studies for the banners, which are sized at 32 x 24.5 inches (framed) are for sale and have a statement by Chicago next to them. The viewer can click on each study to see it in a larger view. The price point is staggering, but considering the magnitude of Chicago—who at this point in her career is very much a part of the American feminist contemporary art pantheon—the prices are completely appropriate. I also liked that if one was a buyer the clarity of price, materials, and size was very much in line with the ubiquitous price list at most galleries

Continuing beyond the studies for sale, there is another video and more text about how the banners were made. A key component of the installation and collaboration between Chiuri and Chicago is highlighted in the video that shows the link of empowering women in Mumbai, India in the creation of the monumental banners.

As this is a review I will admit to being intimidated when considering a feminist icon and a gallery of Jeffrey Deitch's caliber. First, consider what is a gallery? Galleries are in the business of selling art and promoting artists, which will hopefully turn into future sales. And I also believe gallerists love art and spend a great deal of energy promoting art beyond just monetary transactions. Gallerists and artists have a symbiotic relationship that can span many years as appears to be the case with Chicago and Deitch. 

There were a few things missing for me though regarding a phygital experience and the business of selling art. The banners with embroidered questions are not provocative in and of themselves except in relation to their monumental size and the Dior collaboration of having the banners hanging inside a feminine shaped building where the Dior fashion show was held. The opening short video does not convey well enough the experience of the space where the banners were originally hung. 

The second opportunity to give scale to the banners is in the opening gallery pictures. But here also the scale is lost as there is no human element in which the viewer can translate the grandness of the banners against the self. As a possible buyer looking online to understand what the fuss is about—looking at the studies does not evoke the experience of the banners. The questions Chicago is posing about what the world would look like "...if women ruled the world?" takes on an incredible significance for the psychological loudness of the questions due to their size and original location of hanging in a building designed in the shape of the goddess.

The significance of the size of the banners falls in line with the work of Georgia O'Keeffe. I remember viewing the Red Poppy many years ago and finally understanding the politics of O'Keeffe's desire to show the infinitesimal—what that truly meant for the viewer. The painting is not large, but the poppy fills the space totally in such a way as to explode from the canvas. Chicago's banners with simple questions become urgent when the viewer feels the intensity of scale of what those questions mean for society. 

Is it possible to convey that intensity in a phygital experience? Yes, but the old rules must be broken about having art in an esthetic white space that does not naturally convey scale. The other point I would make is that this online exhibition would do well to link back to the Los Angeles section of the website where an exhibition of Chicago's work from 1965-72 was shown in the fall of 2019. And here I believe the opportunity to educate the potential buyer and other viewers is essential. Developing buyers no matter the price point, is to open the backroom and contextualize for the viewer who an artist is—in reference to a gallery aesthetic and in relation to the artist's other work. Linking back to the earlier Los Angeles exhibition would do this.

Creating a phygital experience that attracts viewers and possible buyers needs to reconsider that many of the "professional" rules used to show art in galleries may need to be abandoned: namely not having a human element in exhibition photos. If one reviews how this might look I suggest reviewing the evolution of Sunset magazine covers. The human figure on the cover has gone in and out of vogue—though now people are back. This can be attributed to the design sensibility of the current generation creating the magazine. Scale and the human element make viewing digital material more accessible. Many people are not reading Sunset magazine in the print format just as many people due to the pandemic are not physically walking into galleries. 

It should be noted that there are images on the internet that address the issues I presented with the Judy Chicago online exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch's website, but my goal in this reviewing process is to highlight what creates an excellent phygital experience for the viewer from a specific online location connected to a gallery or museum.

Creating a phygital gallery experience would invite more looky-loos online (who may turn into buyers). But a thoughtful phygital experience would hopefully attract younger serious buyers also. Both are a part of the fun and business of selling art.

Note: From my discovery that The Dinner Party is on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum, in a future post I will explore and review this exhibition also.

Let's Eliminate "The Art Deserts" of America

I've been very fortunate that I have lived in both major urban centers like San Francisco and New York City and very rural areas of the Southwest in Arizona and Colorado. Both landscapes are beautiful and vibrant, but of course in very different ways. As an artist I love going to see art in person. Living in a rural area this is not so easily done. Through the years, I have managed to squeeze in art exhibits in my travels for family obligations, but it's not the same as walking into a gallery or museum whenever you want.

When living in a city it's easy to forget how much art is so accessible: from going to see movies; to watching live theater; to hearing live performances in music venues of all varieties; to visiting museums and art galleries featuring local, national and international artwork. 

In a rural area the above can be available, but much planning must happen as the accessibility factor is greatly diminished. In my very small community much work is done to host and support a few art outlets like the local artisan gallery collective and exhibitions of local art at the library and a cafe. Also music comes in the form of a few local bands playing at the brew pub and through an annual evolving music festival. In the next two larger-sized towns, each about an hour away, the variety of options increases. 

Truly it is amazing how organizations and individuals make art available in these remote areas—often through foundation grants. But really there are many remote parts of the United States I would call "art deserts." A term inspired in part by the definition of "food deserts" as noted by the USDA as living 10 miles or more away from a supermarket for rural areas. In this case, living 10 miles and often more—away from visual art venues—can have an impact on one's quality of life. Of course the scenic beauty of living a rural lifestyle is pretty amazing and one could counter that much of urban America is living with a lack of natural beauty.

But back to visual art...

Right now the pandemic has greatly impacted how art—in all its forms—can be accessed by anyone and everyone through many formats on the internet. 

Beyond being an artist, I'm also a former New York City gallery owner. Lately, I have been reading the New York Times to see how galleries are navigating the COVID-19 lock down and now the reopening. An article that captured my attention was "With Galleries Closed, Art Dealers Rethink Their Real Estate Needs" by Scott Reyburn from Feb. 26, 2021.

The article is mainly focused on the London art scene, but it was the comments from Iwan Wirth of Hauser & Wirth that truly captivated me. 

“‘Phygital’ is the future of commercial art galleries,” said Wirth, referring to a
hybrid business model that blends digital and physical experiences. This new
way of working had emerged during the pandemic, he added. 

“It needs bricks and mortar. Artists respond to a physical context, but it’s digitally
accessible to everyone everywhere,” said Wirth.

The emphasis in bold is mine. Those are revolutionary words, which have inspired me to create The Living Room blog. My desire is to review visual art in this new internet environment and consider the phygital experience.

My vision is that a phygital art scene could transform America's "art deserts," and beyond—by making visual art experiences accessible to everyone such as homeschoolers, the elderly, people living with disabilities. So many people could benefit from this shift. 

So join me in The Living Room for an armchair ride into a phygital experience as I review visual art around the internet.