Like graffiti, break dancing is steadily making inroads into the institutional art world. Not new, just as street based arts have been in and out of favor with the art world for some decades, but stronger than ever, the notion that this art must be validated and understood outside the core culture building. Desire for institutional validation of American vernacular arts has plenty of precedents. Eric Porter beautifully describes Wynton Marsalis’ work with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in this context in his book What is This Thing Called Jazz. There is a clear avenue for advancement (institutionally) with Marsalis, elevate jazz to the same status as classical music.   

Progressive dance companies have occasionally mixed breakin’ in to spice up some pieces, but the flowering of purely hip-hop driven troupes in the past decade pushes the folk form more solidly into the academy. Philadelphia is a hot bed for hip-hop dance companies, most famously Renne Harris’ Pure Movement. Over the years I’ve seen a good number of them, mostly at Washington DC‘s Dance Place, which next week will host its annual hip-hop dance festival. They kicked off a little early this year inviting olive Dance Theater in for a one week residence.

The mission of the theater is “validate indigenous American hip-hop dance forms, specifically Breakin’, through the creation and performance of new dance theater works.” Unfortunately, in offering authentic breakin’ AND poignant interpretive pieces the aim is stunted. Director Jaime stresses that breaking is the sole dance form employed by Olive. Certainly true, however the interpretation of breaking within the frame of contemporary dance minimizes the pace, pulse and power of break dancing. Isolating movements also works to limit the potential of the dancers to express a confident identity. 

olive undeniably is about breaking. The most powerful piece of the performance wasn’t even live. The film presentation “’83″ nicely discussed the nature of community through mentoring, as well as opening my eyes to a new connection. Raphael Xavier, Olive’s lead dancer, also rides flat land. Moving between his riding and dancing, similarities in movement are apparent, and the linkage fascinating. In the film, the company best relays the power of street arts to combat social ills, and only here does the company really push the original intent of the hip-hop movement. 

In the more “serious” pieces, olive faces tension between salient points and actually doing great dance. There are moments of excitement and flow in each, but they never quite hit a stride. Ultimately, the attempts at validation are overly focused and sadly miss the proper fusion of vernacular and high art. 

I am reminded of Donte Ross’ review of the recent Banksy instillation in my thinking about olive. The New York show raised similar questions about intent. The small scale pieces presented in NY divorce Banksy from the interactive power of the street paintings and his large scale instillations. The connection is limited, however, in that olive minimizes their own mission in the work, whereas Banksy falls to the hands of outside curators. 

What does build in both is the difficulty of bringing new forms of folk art to traditional audiences. Balancing expectation and authenticity has pitfalls. Certainly, as I mentioned above, street arts have taken the fancy of the art world before. Basquiat is the prime example. But, street arts now have more cultural and economic capital, and I would argue there is more at stake with current moves toward validation. The core purveyors of the culture have more power to ease the entry, and have opportunities to positively push agendas. 

With olive, I was bothered by the overall feel of the product. They have an ambitious mission, but have a long road ahead in pulling it off the right way. Break dancing needs passion. There is a need to react, to the music or to fellow dancers. Formalizing the movements, while an interesting exercise, removes the EXCITEMENT. The dancers faces showed just that and the audience could feel it. They had come to be enthralled, and left (at least in my case) uninspired and a little let down.   

I was introduced to my greatest guilty pleasure as an eighth grader. After graduating from a rather childish series of books, I discovered the work of Clive Cussler. They appealed to my interest in history, vague sense of adventure and desire to be a bon vivant. Dirk Pitt and later Kurt Austin, Cussler’s two all-American heroes, are cut from the same cloth as Indiana Jones. Except, they exist in the present and are sadly represented (at least Pitt) on screen by the hapless Matthew McConaughy and not my friend Jed’s favorite male lead, Harrison Ford.

Over the years, even as I have dispensed of most reading material I deem crap (maxim, vibe, the source, and countless others), Cussler has stuck with me. Paint by numbers novels appear with frightening frequency, and hold my interest without fail for the day or so it takes me to get through them. When Sahara hit the silver screen, I was dreadfully disappointed, perhaps thinking that had the movie been excellent, my pleasure would have been marginally validated.

Last week, I read The Navigator. The writing was weak, and the editing worse than my own, but still I turned each page as quickly as the last, and felt momentarily lost in Cussler’s world. I passed it on to my newly teenage cousin, hoping that at the very least, the NUMA adventures would make him fall in love with books as I have.

Customarily, Cussler has provided an escape from an ever growing list of books that I must read. I often wonder- do other people avoid reading by reading? Perhaps so. In any event, I have returned to my stack and am catching up on some much overdue tattoo reading.

Half way through Sarah Hall’s The Electric Michelangelo and I am enormously pleased with her treatment of the tattoo trade. I shouldn’t really be surprised, the book, after all, was a Booker Prize finalist (note: in reading this book, I have decided that I will not review fiction, and rather reflect on it in rambling entries like this instead). The first third of the book cleanly captures the tensions of the apprenticeship system, and even better the unmitigated attraction some men (and women) have to the art.

The appearance of tattooing in fiction has always been a real point of excitement for me. Hall’s book marks a nice change too; it’s well researched and hinges more on human passions than sensation. Hers is a perceptive handling, great fiction, encompassing a contemporary and reverential view of tattooing.

The only thread linking my two recent reads is an emphasis on historical record to drive plot. On the one hand, Cussler’s wild tales heightens the sense of adventure, whereas Hall’s precision underlies her brilliance. In essence, the methods define the divide between guilty and absolute pleasure.

There remains minor anxiety though, as I don’t wish to dismiss the guilty as a blip in my consumer history. Despite less artistic and historic merit, books like Cussler’s are strong signifiers of what punters want, and how they choose to be entertained. As I am a proponent in pushing the value of any item of the past as valued historical marker, I’ve hit a road block. If I privilege some items in my life over others, am I bound to ignore interesting documents in my work?

This will likely be a never ending question of both my intellectual interest and integrity.

This year I was asked to contribute to one really great year end review, and to write blurbs for another. I consider the former a great honor (thank you, Steven), and the latter a bit of a pain in the ass. Given that my views are available elsewhere and more so that my lists are completely off base, it seems appropriate to finish the year with a post about something so often avoided in year end reviews, the best (or really, my favorite) exhibition. 

2007 was a pretty good year for me and exhibitions. Without second thought I would say that in this calendar year I visited a wider variety of exhibitions than in any other, in more cities and in more diverse settings. Some were curated by friends, others by foes. Some displayed the work of new acquaintances, others the craft of dead cabinet makers. It was a year in which breadth of voice was privileged, and collaboration between the museum world and the practitioner expert delightfully achieved.

On that note, my favorite exhibition of the year came in the form of the Imperial War Museum’s (LONDON) Camouflage instillation. When launched, the exhibit received considerable attention from the streetwear blogs, in most part due to the association with the good people at Maharishi. I thought this brilliant – expand audiences, bring in intelligent collaborators and push the boundaries of the museum a little.

Despite my initial excitement, I was wary of what I might find. Fearful that the praise might be unjustified, and that the sum of its parts would come off as a lame attempt at cool. Turns out my fears were unwarranted.

The exhibition played out in two clear parts. First, there was a concise and complete history of camouflage in military use from World War One, and second, an exploration of camouflage in contemporary fashion. From my perspective, the opening section was the stronger. The history was full and the sources varied, and the presented objects were so engaging. From discussion of the artistic influences of early military camouflage, both naturalist painters and cubism, to the earliest vogues in fashion (popular camouflage parties) there was so much to discover and a wealth of connections to make and dissect.

Things either forgotten or simply unknown clicked. Disruptive camouflage on ships, for example, made such an amazing visual statement, and the paintings and photographs depicting them worked as both documentary artifact and art object. The duality of everything presented made the experience so memorable, as each and every selected article shared historical value and aesthetic sensibility. And it wasn’t just history, art and fashion; there was some science thrown in too, and also a dash of humor.

The Imperial War Museum, point blank, does visitor interactive correctly. Through video and reproduction pamphlets, the curators offered examples of how the general public engaged with camouflage. Protecting homes, protecting bomb shelters, and disguising tanks; after this portion of the exhibition I felt as if I could do it all. There was also an opportunity to test my understanding and knowledge of the history, bang on a touch screen, and celebrate being smarter than my brother.

Highlighting the exhibition was a long case displaying a wealth of camouflage from a range of inter-national military units. The shapes, colors, patterns and even cuts of the clothing were astonishing. Even amidst such a bounty of terrific objects, the uniforms shone. Of course they did. That’s why we were there! Still, I was refreshed that the uniforms not only exercised star power, but as the central objects they were treated as such. Brilliantly lit, simply explained and, in the flow of the instillation, a perfect segue to the more strictly driven fashion portion.

Given the excellence of the first half of the exhibition, I must admit to being a tad let down by the fashion element. The scholarship was certainly weaker, though the points solid and well articulated. Perhaps I was upset by the reliance on the contemporary. Or, it might have been a result of having just literally been at the DPMHI store two hours prior. I felt the drop off in historical connections, but not in visual impact, which was maintained throughout.

Despite my downplaying of the final section, what should be applauded is the contrast of dense history to clean celebration of aesthetics. I cannot recall another exhibition that so simply and easily appealed to a multitude of learning styles. It offered so much, so quickly, to so many. I have complaints about every exhibition I attend. Its in my nature, I’ve worked in the field; I scrutinize everything from hanging hardware to the material labels are printed on. And, yet at the Camouflage show, I could only complain about the limited text in a portion that was so stunning I really forgot about reading altogether.

I’ve done the work no justice. It was perfect balance of history, art, science, sociology, and that cantankerous beast we call fashion. It set a new standard, and I am pretty sure I will spend the rest of my life trying to match it in my own work.  

Beneath this harsh and sour critique, there was redeeming quality to the experience. For one, like a dull t-shirt company, simplistic artwork helps to qualify the good, better and best of this world. And, let’s face it, helps also to qualify what is complete shit. If the ultimate goal is provoking thought, and the articulation of an idea the most heavily weighed element to judging artistic product, many things on the marketplace are just not cutting it. The democratization of contemporary life gives everyone a sense of possibility, a feeling that they can do things. There also comes with it slacking standards.
The Dadaists pushed the notion of ready made objects. Duchamp, most famously, employed urinals and tools and combs and other prefabricated objects to question definitions of art and artifice. Since then, the found object has played a common, and commonly controversial, role in art. I mention this as segue into thinking about how digital images have become “found objects.”

I began pondering this during my visit to the art show; for despite the relative shallowness of the finished products, the component parts all being located in some way has potential for some future excitement. Salvaged goods are great vehicles for inspiration. The discovery of something, especially when removed from its intended context, can yield new thoughts about shape, color, texture and all the other intangibles that come with physicality. With all the potential for arriving at inspiration via the internet, what is lost in just having the visual?

For example, a few years ago I had some ideas of doing t-shirts based on hair styles through time… profile shots of Anthony Mason, Glen Plake and Agassi. I was planning on putting museum text labels inside the shirt that told the history of the given cut. Then I realized that I would be making something that just looked like all the other crap, regardless of whether the original idea was interesting. In the end, I’m really happy that I never put my stamp on the slippery decline of contemporary fashion. I would have felt like a real asshole.

The majority of streetwear aficionados will probably agree that the mere manipulation of digital images doesn’t equate to winning design. Critique of corporate structure via playful re-imagining of brand logos has lost potency. Even in a clever handling of “C.R.E.A.M.” with recognizable texts, the end result has no narrative depth. As Adorno says people are drawn to what they already understand, but that only makes it popular and not exceptional. This example alone points to the negative impact of the digital age on the “culture.” The simplicity of utilizing digital “found objects” leads to complacency.

A few articles in the spring 2007 issue of American Art (the Smithsonian’s journal) have pushed my thinking. In these critical essays, scholars discuss trends in craft. Defining craft, particularly modern craft, has inherent difficulties. “Craft and the Romance of the Studio” by Glenn Adamson, cleanly relates to discussions about streetwear and consumption. Adamson describes the lore of the studio as a site of pilgrimage for fans and critics. As such the studio becomes a transformative place, where lifestyle overtakes art, and the nature of how someone lives becomes integral to their output. There is some corollary here to the way some shops become a sort of Mecca for sneaker and clothing obsessed travelers. Being able to see and feel the environment from which a favorite brand emerges might help solidify the sense of streetwear “community,” but more so establishes streetwear as something different from the retail norm. The romance of the boutique helps build a (often false) conception of uniqueness.

To return to my central query, the treatment of found objects (be these digital or physical) in streetwear’s current idiom figures strongly into perceptions of what makes it an alternative. Simple usage of found digital images, like in the art show I attended, no longer holds enough cultural currency to denote difference. I believe worthy use of such material can happen, but it will require people who are pushing the standard of thought incorporated into design. The death of a vibrant movement comes when the core energy doesn’t have a discernibly different tract to the status quo.

A second piece from American Art, Edward Cooke’s “Modern Craft and the America Experience,” deftly assesses key themes to push scholarship about craft in the future. In terms of my ideas, the important points are that craft evolves as a social construct, and therefore is ever changing and linked to the language of a specific moment; and that, craft is often not about what it is, but what it is in opposition to. I think these notions are particularly salient in regards to streetwear. How are these sets of jeans and t-shirts different from those sets of jeans and t-shirts? The power of place, as we infer from Adamson, is important, but so to is the strength of classification.

In thinking about definitions and issues associated with craft, the power of the term’s relevance comes in the ability to translate intention to current thought. Trapped in a mire of nostalgia, streetwear is finding difficulty in reconstituting what it means. Just like home art projects can masquerade as art if placed in a “show,” companies can masquerade as authentic in this subgroup by finding way into the cathedrals of the culture. When we begin to champion memories of things that were simply middle of the road, it isn’t just hampering progression, it damages objectives.

It is important to remember that streetwear’s aesthetic and commentary has roots in designing new wearable dialogue. And now that the simple act of creation is easier, setting new standards for acceptability are keys in continuing that tradition.

Final note: Just received Digital Gravel’s 9-20 update. Shout out to Akomplice for illustrating a few of these paragraphs.

In London, The National Gallery has brought some of it’s the collection to the streets (in the form of excellent reproductions), dotting the landscape with well placed paintings of note. For example, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” hangs outside a coffee shop in Soho. Each of the paintings is accompanied by a spiced up label, transferring the museum experience to the cities street scape. While museum folk champion the ability of objects to speak for themselves, it was refreshing that a marketing campaign would allow for that. Having people interact with the art on their own terms, the National Gallery actually piques interest via a sense of discovery, rather than a packaged experience.

Making a nation’s public collection explicitly public, apart from navigating new territory, is an exciting notion. Some may argue that the encounter lacks authenticity; People are, after all, viewing reproductions. But, that an aesthetic experience combined with expert commentary is retained as the paintings find new life, the way people consume these objects on the road is not vastly different from on the walls of the museum. It simply creates a more intriguing dialogue between viewer and painting.

Pictures of the campaign in action can be seen at the link below:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/2007/jun/12/art.artnews?picture=330015567