Way back in 1998, I started a little project called The Site at MANOVERBOARD. It was a combination of desires to show new artists’ work, to run a publication that was relevant to the new medium called the Internet, and to publish artwork that would not necessarily get seen unless a dollar was being made.
I truly enjoyed the six years of designing and developing the website and, today, I’ve called it quits. At least, temporarily.
The final artist, for now, on The Site is my old time favorite artist, Ruth Root. I’ve only had her slides on my desktop for the past 10 months. And it was upon posting her work that I realized a few things:
- Even six years later, there are very, very few good artist-driven websites out there. Galleries themselves have poorly designed and updated sites; and artists, for whatever reason, have trouble showcasing their work online. This is a lacunae that will eventually need to be filled but it also helps validate my original aspirations for The Site.
- I’ve not participated much lately in the world of contemporary art in New York or elsewhere but I also don’t believe I’m missing much. The same names are recycled for the most part and young artists seem to all be using pencil and ballpoint pen. This is not such a bad thing, mind you.
- Allowing a site to go dormant, willfully or not, is sad — kind of like asking your dog to not eat for a while so that you can work longer hours for less pay.
ANDY sells-out and becomes REAL BOY!!! naner-naner… it’s about time…
‘Art’ is for slackers and ne’er do-wells, anyway…
And that way-back machine is pretty crazy – it looks like 2003 was your busiest year, somehow.
It’s funny that “art” has become so much decoration to me. But it’s still important decoration; in fact, way more important than most things.
I often wonder about the historical relationship between the practioners of design and art. It’s not been written. Long ago, R.S. refused to call himself an “artist,” preferring the moniker “designer.” He may have been ahead of his time. During college, the relationship between the two was one of industry vs. theory and today I side almost purely with that of industry and its function.
of course
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
and the question of ‘functionality’ hints at larger questions like utility and practicality, which open onto even larger questions, like the meaning of it all, etc.
i remember reading marx’s ideas on ‘commodity fetishism’ in grad school and thinking that what people coveted in things, in commodities, must actually be their own labor, their light, themselves. good to keep in mind in this season of conspicuous consumption.
a read wheel barrow: maybe important decoration, maybe means to salvation. c
ps forgot to mention in the previous post– don’t know if you’re aware of it, but the cooper hewitt is now running a show called:
DESIGN ≠ ART: Functional Objects from
Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread
On view September 10, 2004 – February 27, 2005
The first museum exhibition of the virtually unknown design works by some of the most influential artists of the last half century.
http://ndm.si.edu/
how timely! c