Two way glass and romance

October 31, Dan Graham gave a 90 minutes talk at Emily Carr U. He concentrated on his mirrored, glass pavilions. He mentioned, a couple of times, how Jimmy Carter's presidency and policies called for a non-monumental idea in art and architecture. His pavilions focus on social interaction and how individuals and groups utilize the spaces for practical and romantic purposes. He references pop and rock music regularly in his work and the relationship between 'inside' and 'outside.'

Not to go off track here, but I wonder if there is that social element of rock'n'roll bullshitting anymore. You know back in the 70s that was a socially acceptable position to take. Guys would return to visit their old high school and allude to or imply that they knew or hung out with someone like John Lennon or Dylan - or Max Webster. They wanted to be perceived as roadies and it was ok to be a hanger-on to someone of the rock'n'roll elite class. But that was pretty over in the 80s except for its vapour of irony in bands like Sonic Youth - compatriots of Graham. There's a tongue in cheek acknowldgement of the rock'n'roll bullshitter in Graham's work. It's like a pressure valve that once might have been a tactic to release any possibility of grandeur but now rock'n'roll has an annointed and knighted cast to it. I don't feel it as a populist sign at all anymore.

A coincidental wrinkle, before I went to the talk Q lent me his borrowed copy of Sartre's No Exit and I started to read it on the bus on the way to the school. It struck me that this play and its themes of people watching people being watched, people reflecting people, angled walls and anxiety about surfaces was a key to Graham's work. In fact he did mention Sartre's Being and Nothingness as having an influence on his early architectural installations and models.

But I can't look at a veteran contemporary artist's work, that involves issues of inside and outside without thinking of psychiatrist RDLaing. I just keep running into that over and over again.

I think this is the first time an artist has invoked romance - audience as lovers in public space - as a theme in contemporary art. I wonder if it appears, when artists become older and venerable, as if their oeuvre was always about love?