Music Features
The Alternative Press 25th Anniversary Group Art Show
By S.P. MacIntyre Jul 11, 2010, 13:32 GMT
The Alternative Press 25th Anniversary Group Art Show celebrates 25 years covering the alternative and underground music scene.
To celebrate 25 years covering the alternative and underground music scene, the magazine Alternative Press is holding a group art exhibition at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles from Saturday, July 10 to Saturday, July 24.
The exhibition features works by contemporary musicians and artists as well as cover art and memorabilia collected through the magazine’s history.
Among the artists and musicians contributing to the gallery are: Marilyn Manson, Shirley Manson (Garbage), Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance), Tim Armstrong (Rancid), Camille Rose Garcia (The Real Minks), Shepard Fairey, Adam Jones (Tool), Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio), Pete Wentz (Fall Out Boy), Marc “Porter” McKnight (Atreyu), Carla Azar (Autolux), Liz McGrath (Miss Derringer), and many more.
On July 9, I had the opportunity to attend the opening reception of the exhibit and had a chance to view the art and speak with some of the artists, the editor-in-chief of Alternative Press, and the senior consultant of the Merry Karnowsky Gallery.
The artists in attendance that I saw were: Porter McKnight (Atreyu), Carla Azar (Autolux), Tim Armstrong (Rancid), Liz McGrath (Miss Derringer), and Shepard Fairey. Other people of note that I saw perusing the gallery were: Lenora Claire, Vyxsin Fiala, and Kynt Cothron.
For much of the night I didn’t speak to any of them for two primary reasons: 1) my near-prosopagnosic inability to recognize anyone’s face (only learning their identities later), and 2) crippling timidity. This, coupled with my interest in the artworks themselves rather than the bands the artists belong to, will probably make for very boring reading.
The Merry Karnowsky Gallery is on the northeast corner of La Brea and Sycamore in Los Angeles. On the inside, there’s a foyer with a roped-off staircase, and on the night of the opening tables had been set up to serve as a bar as if to send the message to all entrants that art is always better when there’s liquor involved.
The foyer is rectangular and has a narrow walkway stretching east between a cordoned off private room and a long countertop behind which stood the gallery employees and a DJ playing music like She Wants Revenge, Marilyn Manson, and Joy Division.
On the walls of the walkway and the foyer are Marina Chavez’ photographs of Nick Cave, Tom Waits, and Elliott Smith ($250 each) and Myriam Santos’ photographs of Dave Navarro, Marilyn Manson, David Bowie, and Robert Smith ($700, $600, $1600, and $1600 respectively), among others.
Through the walkway is the main room where all of the contributors’ art hangs. To the northeast of this room is a smaller room, accessible by two doorways set 90 degrees apart, which featured memorabilia and posters from Alternative Press’ history.
I imagine, from an overhead view, that the gallery looks quite a bit like an abstract expressionist painting. I think this may have been intentional.
Curious about the details regarding the preparation and setup for the show, I asked Jessica O’Dowd, the Senior Consultant at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery who was also responsible for installation, what unique challenges she faced when putting on this exhibit:
Jessica O’Dowd: “Musicians don’t really put hardware on the backs of their pieces, so that was very interesting. Also, any hardware that was there was completely non-uniform, so like the wall in that room where there’s all the covers of the magazine, everyone was just a hair different, so that was sort of challenging. As far as lighting is concerned, basically there’s so many pieces, you know, making sure that everything has proper lighting tends to be a challenge.”
SP: “A lot of the stuff typically at the gallery seems inspired by music or closely related to music. What do you feel drew Alternative Press to the Merry Karnowsky Gallery?”
JO: “You know, Merry Karnowsky Gallery is known for having cultivated some of the most significant what you would call low-brow, pop-surrealist artists in the country, and those people are generally inspired by the music scene. We actually have artists that are represented by the gallery that have been musicians as well. And we have known Norman [Wonderly], and he has been a collector of a lot of the artwork here, and so he thought it was a natural fit and approached Merry [Karnowsky] and asked if he could have the show here.”
SP: “The works here seem very aesthetically diverse. How would you compare it with previous shows? Does it seem almost jarring to you as someone who’s worked in the gallery for a long time or does it all seem.”
JO: “You know, it’s all very interesting when the work all first comes in. It’s a little bit crazy, and it has to sit around for a while and Merry has to absorb what it is she’s looking at and then we sort of consult and she gets the opinions of other people around and ultimately decides. There’s just a rhythm, there’s always a rhythm. Group shows are always different from solo shows, solo shows are always a lot easier to hang because there’s a uniformity to the work. You know, here, you just have to find some sort of rhythm in the size, some sort of rhythm in the subject matter. It was very challenging, but in the end I think it worked out really well.”
SP: “If you were to categorize some sort of sensibility across the artists, between the different styles, how would you characterize it?”
JO: “For me, it was obvious that there’s a lot of open-mindedness. In the art world, there can be a lot of, you know, very educated people, a lot of people that are very sort of restricted in their mediums, very restricted in their subject matter because they have belonged to an institution. And I think that, what is obvious, is that people are free here and people don’t feel intimidated and they’re very easily able to express things that are very socio-political, things that are very sexual. I think that comes across a lot stronger than you often see.”
SP: “What are your favorite pieces here right now?”
JO: “I’m a big fan of Liz McGrath. And also Tara McPherson. That being said, those are both working artists. Other than the working artists, I have to say that I was very impressed with Shirley Manson’s knitting skills, because I didn’t expect knitting to come out of a musician because it seems like such a domesticated sort of genre to be working in.”
Shirley Manson’s piece is a knitted sculpture mounted on the south wall called “Peking Noodle (Ode to Louise Bourgeois)” ($7500). The sculpture itself is knitted in pink and resembles horizontal labia—very sexual and definitely homage to the late Louise Bourgeois who died two months ago. Beneath the aperture is a strip of paper from a fortune cookie that reads, “Soon you will be sitting on top of the world.”
Whether the “world” in this case is a metaphorical face or genitalia, I find the juxtaposition both provocative and fraught.
McGrath’s sculpture occupies a podium in the center of the main room. The piece, “Eyes of Dead Ophelia” ($5000), is a sculpture of a female head tilted askew atop a long neck covered in a shroud of gold leaf hair with crystals—quartz, amethyst, et cetera—embedded throughout.
The eyes and the lips are gold leaf, and the crystals are embedded in no discernable pattern, though (and this may just be me) the way the crystals are placed on the face of the sculpture seem somewhat reminiscent of Melinda Clarke’s character in Return of the Living Dead 3.
I did finally have the opportunity to interview Liz McGrath, but by the time we spoke there were so many people in the gallery that the background noise on my audio recorder made our voices indistinguishable from the cacophony. I can, however, paraphrase certain parts of the exchange.
When asked what drew her to work with the media in “Eyes of Dead Ophelia,” the gold leaf and the crystals, she responded that through her west coast touring she had begun taking a great deal of interest in nature and the geology of the landscape.
She mentioned that every small town had gas stations or tiny shops selling stones and crystals culled from the local environment, and that she had begun amassing a large collection of these stones. The gold leaf was chosen because of its luster and the fact that gold, more so than silver, has an amazing variety of shades and colors.
When asked what inspired her while making the piece, she mentioned other contemporary artists, musicians, everything. Everyone inspires each other, and all art inspires other art. For her recent work, she had been especially inspired by nature and landscapes. In particular, she mentioned that she had been listening to Led Zeppelin and kept imagining children climbing along rocks, and perhaps a lady (Dead Ophelia) popped her head up in the middle of that.
In a recess along the east wall of the main room is the only Marilyn Manson painting, a watercolor called “Baby’s on Fire” ($30,000) depicting what appears to be a self-portrait of Manson naked and clutching himself, staring deadpan at the viewer while a mass of red and orange and yellow rise off of his body. I’ve always been of the opinion that it takes real talent and quite the cajones to paint in watercolors simply because it seems to be a very difficult medium to work with if the intention is to have the product come out half-way decently.
Manson has been able to pull this off well in other work (“The Enabler” and “Trismagistus” come to mind), but, I must say, “Baby’s on Fire” is not very…good. Certainly not $30,000 good. Still, the painting did have a sort of magnetic draw on Vyxsin Fiala and Kynt Cothron, who spent much of their time hovering around “Baby’s on Fire” or speaking with Tim Armstrong, whose paintings were nearby.
In the partially partitioned room to the northeast, the gallery had set up a long wall featuring notable covers from every stage in the magazine’s development over the past 25 years. On other walls, there are pictures taken from the magazine’s photo shoots, letters written from Bob Guccione and Henry Rollins, and memorabilia ranging from concert flyers to items from old typesetting equipment.
I was milling about in here for a while, avoiding all the people I should have been talking to, when one of the publicists from the Mitch Schneider Organization approached me and asked if I wanted to speak with Jason Pettigrew or Mike Shea.
“You can’t expect to be a journalist and not speak to people,” she said.
Well, I’m not much of a journalist.
Regardless, I got to speak with Jason Pettigrew, the editor-in-chief of Alternative Press, and here’s what he said when I first walked up:
Jason Pettigrew: “Here’s what you need to know: we’re not from LA, we’re not from Chicago, we’re not from New York.”
SP: “You’re from Cleveland?”
JP: “We’re dorks. And we’re able to make this happen, and it’s really great to see it all put together in the same room.”
SP: “What was your impetus, aside from the musical aspect, for bringing all of these disparate artists together?”
JP: “The main reason was the 25th anniversary of the magazine. And when you’re celebrating something like this—you know, like popular cultural works and those aesthetics—things change. There’s always a sea change. We thought, instead of doing a big rock and roll show where we try to get three generations of listeners who like certain things together, let’s just celebrate the thing in a way where everybody can check out the same thing. It’s all one historical element so, if you’re full on into Warped Tour, there’s something for you, but if your dad thinks your music is crap he can groove over to the Red Hot Chili Peppers photos. This whole thing is kind of like a celebration of a continuing body of work.”
SP: “I noticed that there was a great influence of pop-art in all the artists that are here. I was just interested in seeing if that artistic sensibility has influenced the magazine at all as well.”
JP: “I think magazines—we’re dealing with the print is dead climate. But as far as the visual aspect of that stuff, I think it’s important that we create things that are kind of like ‘Oh, that’s cool, that’s amazing!’ Here’s Mr. Norman Wonderly, he’s the photo editor.”
Norman Wonderly: “Hi.”
SP: “Hi. Sean.”
NW: “Sean? Nice to meet you.”
JP: “He’s asking me about the importance of photography and art in general in—”
NW: “Did you say something good?”
JP: “I don’t know, did I say anything good?”
SP: “You did.”
JP: [To Norman:] I just saw you, you like came in on cue. Did you have anything to add?
NW: “It’s very important.”
JP: “This I can tell you, one of the reasons I think Alternative Press has succeeded is that—you can see these issues over here, that are kind of like a high school newspaper. Early on, Norman would say to people, ‘Okay, we need a photo shoot.’ And everyone was like, ‘Well, you know, you’re a little magazine, we’ll supply an exclusive for you.’ And he was like, ‘No, you’ll give us a photo shoot or you won’t get the cover.’ And saying that right now, it’s like, ‘Who’re these schmucks from Cleveland trying to dictate the terms?’ But, I mean, we knew, as fans of that stuff, fans of the British news weeklies, we knew how important the artwork and photography was. So it was basically [Norman] putting his foot down and making that work. As far as the design element goes, Chris Benton has been our designer for a number of years. He always works with a sense of energy about him. He’s always inspired to do things and make things so that they jump off the page. It’s…sometimes it can be hard because of the way deadlines are, you have to conjure that stuff up fairly quick.”
SP: “I suppose what I was getting at earlier was that a lot of the artists here derive their aesthetic sensibilities from the art of the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s, the Dadaists, Surrealists, Pop-art. And I was wondering how that meshes with [Alternative Press], with whatever ideological aims you may have as a magazine.”
JP: “The art movements that people are inspired from are kind of essentially pre-punk antecedents, aren’t they? So where some of the images are jarring, back then they caused quasi-outrage. And I think that type of historical art—that [the artists here] are trying to bring something like that into a current format in a way that doesn’t seem too—I’m choosing my word carefully here—modified. So, a lot of people they always go back to see what was before them. But I think that’s kind of important because, as generations of new listeners are experiencing something—and let’s face it, an MP3 on your computer, you don’t get full artwork. So if there’s another way you can get that type of sensory stimulation, does it really matter that someone’s ripping off something? Is it a rip off or an homage? And here’s some 19-year old kid in the suburbs, [he’s] never seen that before.”
SP: “Like Duchamp, or something.”
SP: “And how do you feel that correlates to music or what you’re doing with the magazine?”
JP: “Well, in music you have people now who listen to blues. Jack White has an extensive collection of blues records, so does John Spencer. Nick 13 from Tiger Army is doing a country solo-record that’s like a full on grand ole opry, I mean, we’re not talking some horrible Rascal Flatts stuff. So, he’s going back to those early artists. I would much rather hear representations of country music from that era than some sanitized thing.”
SP: “Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to [Monsters & Critics].”
JP: “You know, I’m from Cleveland, I’m not fronting. I’m really just happy that anybody cares. Because, like I said, we’re kind of like the dogs that’ve been kicked too many times. We were never a cool enough magazine, we were never a commercial enough magazine, we were never X enough, we were never Y enough. [After 25 years,] to see it all in one room, when you look at the issue right now, or all the issues leading up to it from the beginning—it’s kind of powerful for us because we’re just creating this thing that we love. It just makes me feel good. I’m about to break into an Oprah moment.”
Though this may just be me rambling, it seems that the conception and creation of the magazine at the very beginning as a fanzine distributed for free at concerts is very much in line with the so-called low-brow (or, at least, anti-establishment), DIY attitude exemplified by the punk scene and the art present at the exhibit. This attitude—which has its underpinnings in the Beats, the Underground Comix of R.
Crumb, the pop art of Andy Warhol, everything and everyone that sought to democratize the distribution of art and fetishize the commonplace through the appropriation of common cultural images and ideas—seems to be the thing that spurred the creation of Alternative Press. And, indeed, the fact that AP was not the only magazine distributed this way or the only magazine to begin in a similar fashion attests to this widespread sentiment that compels people to take art back from the expert, the trained, the professional, the institutionalized intellectual—we see this happening on the internet today.
When I was speaking with Mr. Pettigrew, I was looking for the connection between Alternative Press and the kind of art that was hanging on the walls all around me, and this is that connection: both were originally inspired by the desire to liberate oneself from convention, to create based upon one’s own interests rather than those that are established or prescribed. It was true 25 years ago, and it is still true today.
Of course, now Alternative Press is a nationally distributed magazine, and some 19-year old kid in the suburbs is likely to view low-brow pop art as the epitome of emulable artistic achievement. In the last 25 years, we’ve seen this culture move from the sidelines to the mainstream, and that which has previously been underground is now the norm.
While Alternative Press began with the same counter-culture compulsions that drove the creation of the art now hanging at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery, now all of it—the attitude, the style—is ubiquitous, and this type of creation is standard for the masses and the elite alike (a flimsy argument, though YouTube and Blogs, I feel, are just another step in this direction).
I wonder if, in this day and age, it would be more “punk rock” to paint like Vermeer, to sculpt like Rodin, and to publish a magazine by first seeking out venture capital.
The northwest corner of the main room hangs Porter McKnight’s work, a photomontage of assorted figures called “Believe in US, or Die” ($875).
The image consists of a woman wielding a rose while surrounded by images of goose-stepping soldiers, leering buildings, and officious documentation all overseen by a hovering Eye of Providence with a banderole reading “The Lord said ‘All may kill in my name’ and it was so” beneath it in all caps.
While waiting to interview him, I overheard him speaking to another member of the press and saying that the image was build around the central figure of the woman, and that there was, and I quote, “No real inspiration here.” This was a puzzling comment to me, so I asked if he could expand on it a bit:
Porter McKnight: “I don’t have the exact image in my head. I just kinda go, and I look around, and I look at things, and whatever calls out to me is what I use.”
SP: “Where do you see yourself as different from other artists that do similar things? I mean, you spoke about intent, I mean, I don’t think intent really matters when it comes to it, like you said, but how do you see yourself as different from what else is out there, where do you see yourself going in the future?”
PM: “That’s a good question; I don’t think I’ve ever been asked about that before. I don’t see myself as better or worse than the other artists, I don’t see myself as—I don’t know. I have to think about that. I don’t do art because it’s cool or because it’s going to get me shit-tons of cash or whatever, it’s just something I legitimately need to do from time to time to stay sane, if that makes any sense. I can’t sit alone, I have to create. There comes a time in my life where I get really weird and anxious when I’m not making or working or creating something. From that aspect, in response to your thing, I don’t know if every artist is like that, but for every artist art should be like that, it should be what comes from within. So I guess, from that aspect—I respect any other artist—I don’t know where the fuck I’m going with this, man, [Laughs] I’m just trying to give you an answer.”
SP: “That’s totally fine, that’s totally fine.”
PM: “As far as the second half of that, where I see myself in the future and stuff. I’ll be doing this for the rest of my life in some shape or form. Like what I said before, I need to.”
SP: “Do you see the drive or compulsion to make art as being the same or similar to the drive that pushes you to make music as well? Are the drives mutually exclusive for you?”
PM: “Exclusive? No, I mean, most art is inspired by music and a lot of music is inspired by art, I think those two work hand in hand, and those two work better than most other things put together. I couldn’t do one without the other. I’m trying to think of a time when I won’t be playing music all the time, and not performing and not writing all the time, who knows when that will be. Five, ten, twenty years? Who knows? I don’t want to imagine that, because when [Atreyu] is home for a while, I just get crazy. I need to be out there and playing shows and performing. I guess [art and music] are both cathartic in their own ways.”
Personally, I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the compulsion to do art “in order to stay sane,” as some integral catharsis that acts as a good substitute for drugs or therapy. Art, I don’t think, should be viewed as a monkey that needs to be removed from one’s own back, or as an itch that needs to be perpetually scratched. If anything, I think this view is dangerous for art and for the self, and I think it may be an attitude all too prevalent in those that produce low-brow pop art.
If anything, the prevalence of this attitude may further instill the idea in those 19-year old kids in the suburbs that a person can create a collage or a painting without any training or diligence or knowledge of precedent and expect public interest or money, all under the auspices of creating art out of a compulsion to stay sane—and the cycle continues.
Mostly, I just want to see someone prove Ecclesiastes 1:9 wrong.
This of course leads back to a conversation about the democratization of art and what it means to be an artist in the digital age, but I would be more interested to hear an actual artist pontificate about these topics.
Shepard Fairey had four pieces up on the east wall of the main room: “Jonesy Jukebox,” “Lotus Record,” “OBEY Standards in Propaganda,” and “OBEY Velvet Tone” ($2000 each). All of the works were intricate combinations of other images that seemed familiar or on the cusp of familiarity silkscreened on stained (intentionally?) album covers. All four, if I recall correctly, featured the OBEY Giant icon in some form or fashion.
I finally tried to speak with Shepard Fairey later on in the show. He was being led by a woman in a red dress, taking in the artwork along the north wall—the Adam Jones, Carla Azar, Tara McPherson, Camille Rose Garcia grouping—so I didn’t want to bother him. When I realized he was making for the exit, I asked if I could speak with him.
“Not tonight, you can’t,” said the woman in the red dress.
Mr. Fairey said his wife wanted him to take her home. Then they left.
If I had the opportunity to speak with him, though, I would have asked him questions like: If the “medium is the message,” what political message is entailed by the use of appropriation and remix? How do you feel digitization has impacted the production of artwork? How do you see your work as evolving from or different than the pop-art of Andy Warhol or other contemporary street artists like Banksy? Where do you see the visual arts moving in the future?
What, if anything, does the art of musicians or the art of other pop artists portend for our culture and its advancement?
If these questions don’t interest you, then you’ve missed nothing. In the meantime, I’ll keep wondering.
All Photo taken by S.P. MacIntyre and ©M&C
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