Allan McCollum Lecture

Allan McCollum talked about the history of his work, which I found to be incredibly "meta" and amazing. I didn't know anything about him before last night. He walked us through his work from the past 40 years while commenting on what he was thinking at the time.

Much of his work is about mass production of individual items. Making 10,000 unique (but similar) objects. He made a massive series of paintings which were black images, designed to act as props of paintings. When the painting is just a prop, it makes the gallery just a set. Allan mentioned the idea that paintings often become background art, so why not just design for that in the first place?

The idea of making all the items unique was to make sure they fit some of the basic definitions of art. It's not mass production if no two are alike.

He also would make supplements to go along with the art. Often some sort of informational papers (which are also available for download on his site). When he talked about these supplements it reminded me of what Warren Ellis said about the Chemical Brothers. They release "Electronic Battle Weapons" before they release an album. These are 12" records they give to DJs which have many of the sounds they will use on their new album, the idea being that the DJs are sonically preparing the way for the new album.

He took pictures of his television, grabbing images whenever he saw something that looked like his own paintings. And from there he started making art out of the images of the art you couldn't quite make out on TV. This reminds of the guys that make T-shirts based on the clothes worn by characters in films.

He made art that was intended to be both a memorial for all the art that wasn't made (because an artist has to have a signature style, and can't get too close to the style of another artist) and also worked as a placeholder for art that was not there.

Getting more into symbolism, there was a series of vase-shapes. Not functional as they were filled in, made of different colors and sizes. He said he created some very large ones as a reaction to art critics lumping him in with other artists. The vase (or "ginger jar" as he called it) was also in the background of so much film and television.

He mentioned that decorative pieces that last a long time can cross over into art, and talked a lot about souvenirs and tchotchkes (sp?) and how they gain a lot of value to the people who own them, but none to the outside world. When we made 10,000 unique objects the gallery wouldn't let him sell them one by one, because logistically it was too difficult for them, so they sold as an installation. He went on to do other projects where creating a souvenir was a part of the project.

At one point he said he thought that people didn't like large quantities of unique objects, and I was a little surprised that he would be surprised by this.

I would love to see his notebooks! He had these amazing charts on the combinatorial of how to ensure the many objects were never duplicated. And on some of the projects he had help, and he had these great instruction sheets.

Initially he talked about being really interested in the mindset of the person coming to the gallery. What people thought of when they were about to see art is what inspired the black "prop" paintings that acted as a symbol for all of art. That interest seemed to shift into the stories around art, and he started working with more people and involving people in the process more (moved outside the gallery?).

His work with the sand spikes, dinosaur tracks, and topographical maps were my favorite. They get so meta and work outside the realm of "art" in a way I find very appealing. And, as conceptually strong as all the ideas are, they are also technically strong.