David reviewed this book for us a while ago, and I have been sitting on my copy for a good long time while I get over this horrific cold. But at least here I am.

I've been working my way through an older edition of Hanson's text on Art History, which mainly covers European Art History, but I'm still learning a lot in spite of it all. One of the big things I've learned is that for most of history Art has been about illustrating a pre-existing story.

I like to say "it's all comics! It was always comics!" and that's not far off. Ancient Art illustrated maybe a hunt, whether one that happened or one that was hoped-for, who knows. Later Art told stories of myths and legends, battles and kings. It all existed to support a story that everyone already knew, at least in outline. Trajan's Column illustrates Trajan's career, preserving it, filling in the details for people who only knew part of it, or whatever. You can't actually see a lot of it, because it's very tall, so it's not obvious who the story is for.

A painting of the Annunciation tells the story of the angel coming to tell Mary that God has a little job for her. Perhaps the painting comments on the story, illuminates it, whatever. But people know that there's a girl, there's the angel, there's no Jesus hanging around, probably an Annunciation.

The stories exist beforehand, the Art recapitulates it.

The idea, specifically, that Art should "stand alone," that it should somehow contain within itself its own meaning, is very very new and in fact fairly dicey. This is the Art that I, and presumably most of us, have been brought up to think of as Real Art. The idea is that we, as normal members of society, ought to be able to look at the thing and make meaning from it, quite apart from any specific pre-existing story.

This is really really hard, and maybe an untenable position. It's certainly something I struggle with.

Photographs, as I have remarked endlessly, do actually have an easier time with this, acting as as portals to another place and time. The meaning we make of a (ordinary, essentially documentary) photograph is to imagine the story that contains the frozen moment of time. This action is, I have long maintained, fundamentally how we interact with (ordinary, essentially documentary) photographs.

This does lead us to the essential problem with photography as art, though, which is that maybe this isn't Art in the modern sense at all. Maybe it's just documentary storytelling. Is there any meaning beyond the fairly literal story one tends to fill in around the reality presented inside the frame? Is that Art? Does that do the Art thing of enlarging us, of making is feel, or evoking some kind of quasi-spiritual response, or whatever else it is that you might want Art to do to you?

Which leads us, ever so slowly, to Tony's latest book.

David gave you the rundown on the structure of the thing, so let me just amplify that its a very very simply constructed book but exquisitely made. There's a precision to it that I like a lot, and which completely eludes me in my own efforts. It's a really really nice object.

It's also unambiguously Art in that modern sense. It's not leaning on any previous story, it's not illustrating anything. It is self-contained, or at least capable of being self-contained (it also contributes to the larger ongoing project.)

This book has crystallized something that's been noodling around the edges of my brain for a while now. It's possible for a photograph to be a highly inadequate portal to another time and place, and that can be a really good thing. None of Tony's recent photos really fit my preferred model for a photo, none of them really "transport you to a place" in any meaningful way. They're too narrow. They're a peephole into somewhere else, a peephole you cannot really pass through. You're given a fragmentary, up close, view of something that you can't understand, that you're not meant to understand.

The term I've used in the past is "semiotically rich"; there are photos that beg to be interpreted, which are rich in signs, but which decline to offer you any help.

A photo of a dog running down the street dragging its leash invites the question "where is the owner?" and it places you on the street, looking back up the street for the owner. It's a portal.

Tony's photos are a something else. A bunch of wires. A fuzzy photo of a hand. An open can. They invite no single coherent question, they transport you nowhere. The questions are vague and multiple. You're invited to interpret these things, but there is no specific guidance.

There are plenty of photographs of nothing out there. The MFA community seems fully devoted to making these things, and they's not at all what I'm talking about. A photo of a non-descript signboard, a random field, a highway overpass, no. Those are not semiotically rich.

What I mean is what might be technically called a floating signifier. These are photographs that urgently signify, they are half of a "sign," but what they signify is left open. They're not complete enough as photos to give you the signified, the referent, you have to make that up yourself.

In groups, they behave like a tarot card spread. Just as the Death Card or whatever you like signifies with urgency, but leaves open what exactly it signified, so do Tony's photos. The spread, however, can be interpreted in some depth, although ambiguity never really leaves the scene. You can construct not a reality into which one is transported, but nevertheless a larger meaning of sorts. A "vibe" if you will, a sensation, and emotional state.

In a lot of ways Tony's latest reminds me of Frédérick Carnet's "last first day" which you can still access by way of this link (you'll have to click a little), and a little of my own thing, Jesus Fucking 2020. I don't mean that they're the same in content (although there are overlaps, possibly this method lends itself to a certain darkness) but that they're the same in terms of method. Katrin Koenning seems to do the same sort of thing, but in a lighter tone (although her latest work seems to be leaning increasingly dark, sigh.)

This business of nudging you to interpret the tarot spread is what makes this format shine as an example of the modern conception of Art. There's no underlying story, the thing stands alone, but it does urge you into what a nerd would call a "dialog" with the work, It urges you to find you emotional response, it urges you into the Art-state in which you are enlarged, or made to feel something. The MFA photos of nothing don't have a story, but neither do they urge you into any response, they're dead objects that cannot be bothered to signify, because the people who make them have no idea what that would even mean. They just know they're supposed to photograph boring shit.

I'm kind of excited by this, because it's brought into focus something that has been, apparently, nagging at me. This is a thing I have noticed but not been able to make sense, of. It's a thing that I like a lot, but which doesn't fit into my (previous?) model for How Photos Work.

David comes through again! While all things are possible, I have no particular ambition to turn this into a "guest posts only" blog, but I'm certainly not saying much these days. I'm ruminating on some things, though, so check back occasionally if it moves you to do so.

Here's David:


Review of Tony Fouhse’s New Book, “the middle of nowhere”
I’ve been following Tony Fouhse’s photographic output for the past several years, and let me say this at the outset: he’s the real deal.

For those who haven’t been keeping up, Tony is a professional photographer with an impressive cv of publications, official portraits & such under his belt. You have but to flip through his website to know what we’re dealing with. A few years ago (iirc), Tony retired from professional assignments and commissions, and turned to artistic pursuits, leveraging this rich experience to craft deeply personal statements. Tony unleashed, you might say.

I’m interested in Tony’s work, because I recognize in it a dark vein of visual ideas that are, at least superficially, similar to ones I’m drawn to (Tony strikes me as a more rounded individual who, I’m pretty sure, would rather we not dwell on this characterization). His expression is nuanced, ambiguous, and broadly recognizable. This last bit is crucial in distinguishing his take from those who cosplay gratuitously morbid themes for gravitas.

His latest cycle of personal work consists of an email newsletter “Hypo,” chronicling his at times choppy progress, “the middle of nowhere” (the book), and an installation at a show in his hometown of Ottawa. He calls this cycle “Current,” publishing numbered “Fragments” at irregular intervals.

I confess that successive newsletters made me feel skeptical about the outcome. The whole thing is really experimental. The images posted in newsletter ‘Fragments’ (samples of work in progress) are sketchy. Sketchy, it transpires, is the point. This wasn’t self-evident, and I didn’t know what to make of it — a sound strategy to build and sustain interest in the project, if intentional.

“the middle of nowhere”

Last May, Tony showed me a preview copy of the book. Else based on the newsletters, I probably wouldn’t have bought it, or ever seen it. I’m one of those dumb bastards who thinks if I’ve seen it online, I’ve seen it. Thing is, I’m a tactile person. I grew up on crafts during that era (1970s). Pottery, weaving, the whole nine yards. And I fell in love with Tony’s book after handling it for a few minutes. I have one of Tony’s previous books, “Endless Plain,” which I reviewed here. That one was commercially printed, and the physical object is itself a bit meh. This is different.

Tony printed, trimmed, bound, and published this book himself. No middle people, no machine-minders. His choice of humble materials is interesting: plain brown cardboard cover, and some thin, uncoated inkjet paper, printed on two sides in monochrome black. The process imparts a slightly strange but pleasant, velvety texture and weight to the pages. The volume is small, yet it feels substantial.

The images were all shot close to home, according to one of the newsletters. I mentioned the whole project is experimental, unlike anything Tony has previously done (afaik). He ain’t repeating himself. His previous monochrome book, “While I Slept,” was also experimental, in that he used an autonomous, low-resolution ‘game’ camera to capture images at random intervals *while he slept*, that he then selected, did stuff in post (I guess), and had commercially printed.

“the middle of nowhere” builds on that. For this round, Tony shot the source images in more or less conventional fashion with a hand-held digital camera, dispensing with two of my theoretical objections to “While I Slept” — they aren’t random, ‘found’ source images, and the photographic quality is way better.

While drawing up an outline for this review, I wrote down a string of adjectives from my first take of the book. Ghostly. Death & decay. Emaciated. Troubled. Scars. Exhausted.

Pretty grim, right?

Inkjet printing uses dithering rather than half-toning for tonal/colour reproduction. Although it is easily capable of sharp, continuous tone prints, Tony’s process imparts a subtle grainy softness in which photographic detail is subsumed, but not entirely lost. A great deal is implied. This is the ‘secret sauce’ that unifies what might be considered a night owl’s portrait of a (fictional) shabby, mixed-zoning neighborhood.

A quiet, somber minimalism is at work. An image that stands out for me is an empy sardine can with lid peeled back, on a surface covered by cuts and scratches with “from heaven” and “blood” written on it. The subject has no intrinsic interest, nevertheless the composition gives it an edge. There is much visual variety in this short, 26-page book. The roles and motivation of its denizens are difficult to infer from their gestures, expressions, and situations. A glassy-eyed dog bares an enormous fang. A newborn baby stares out apprehensively. A morbidly thin person pulls up their pants. An old woman floats face up in a bathtub, eyes closed.

Perhaps they are all ‘nowhere.’ Or perhaps they are Tony Fouhse’s private somewhere, his familiars, tenuously connected to the outside world by wires strung across the sky, lying about broken in tangled masses. The book is at once troubling, and consoling.

Disclaimer: These are my own musings and characterizations of “the middle of nowhere,” and I claim no special insight into Tony’s intentions for the project. See it for yourself.

Our good friend David Smith is at it again. He's been on me to pay attention to The Manhattan Art Review forever, and whenever I do dip in it's well worth it. Somehow, I never stick with it, probably because I am a worthless dilettante. Here's a link, which I don't think David included? TMAR.

Without further ado:

The Manhattan Art Review

The terrain of Manhattan, the putative 'center of the art world,' is uneven. It has ups and downs; it is cluttered with stuff. Stuff to gaze at, stuff to trip over, stuff to kick around. Whole lotta stuff.

Sean Tatol, art critic, sole prop. of The Manhattan Art Review, has been clambering around this terrain for a few years now, issuing periodic status reports on his blog, along with a steady stream of snide, cryptic, and/or inspirational social media posts. I did say uneven.

The latest brings us sad news: the young 'uns are confused and uncertain. How to be 'cool'?

'Coolness' is the defining, driving force that animates this hermetically-sealed snow globe of an art world engine, according to Sean. Much like the whole American southwest, Manhattan 'cool' overheated, and now it's gone and dried up!

He leads the blog piece with a dour pronouncement, "It's a truism to complain that the arts are currently in a uniquely aimless and uninspired state." The Manhattan gallery scene, you see, is synonymous with 'the arts,' and who could argue with that truism? He continues: "downtown is where many (most?) of the new things in art have emerged from for close to a century now for whatever reason." Yes, the new things.

This is all part of a preachy preamble to his usual slate of brief reviews, some a couple of paragraphs, some a couple of sentences, of current Manhattan (what else) gallery showings. And what a dismal execrable bunch these sad pitiful bastards are [*] :



I like Sean's writing. It's clever, and sometimes insightful. He brings knowledge, an ample vocabulary, and opinions. I'm mildly interested in the goings on in Manhattan galleries from week to week. He's performing a public service! His blog, for now, is free to read.

As a visual artist, reading Sean makes me feel humbled and pensive. Am I doing the same wrong thing, even though I will never show in a Manhattan gallery? Then I look at the evidence of the shows, what may be seen of them online, and I think: maybe not.

Will Sean eventually become old (ugh), jaded, and power-mad, like the lead character in the film, "The Critic" ? 

Stay tuned!

* Not all of them, no. Sean has friends, helpfully identified amid the mud, the blood, and the beer (apologies to Johnny Cash). Sean has Manhattan clout, ergo Sean has Manhattan friends. And guess what? Some of them are artists! Nothing wrong with that.