Dan Graham
Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube, 1991, site-specific installation, Dia Center for the Arts permanent collection.
A native of Urbana, Illinois and current New York City resident, Dan Graham has been averaging six shows a year since his solo debut in 1969. With work commissioned by almost every European country-- and half of Asia as well --Graham is considered to be one of the most successful contemporary installation artists practicing today. In addition to his public pavilions, which reflect his interest in architecture and suburbanization, Graham is well known for his photographs, video, and critical writing. Some of Graham’s recent public projects can be viewed at the Dia Center in New York City, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Art.
The interview was conducted by Ilana Stanger of TheArtBiz.com.
You’ve been showing your work regularly since the late 1960s. How did you first break into the art world?
I started a gallery with two friends of mine. We showed the early works of artists like Sol Le Witt. My parents put in the money and took a tax loss. I was the director of the gallery, and after that I never wanted to show with galleries again. We were against money and economic success. Sol Le Witt wanted everything in his first solo show to become firewood. I did work for magazine pages, so that it was inherently disposable work.
When did you begin doing more permanent work?
I invited myself to the Nova Scotia College of Art. I wanted to do video as demonstration, and film and performance art. I set up a visiting artist program and an art press, and in this way I made a small living. I was also living in New York the whole time--I had a $250 rent controlled apartment in Chinatown that just went up to $350 seven years ago.
In what ways has the art world changed since your entrance into it forty years ago?
I always made my living teaching even though I never went to art school. Now people go to art school to make a career. I think the best art is produced after art school, but before signing with a gallery. Once you’re in a gallery your work becomes simplified and commercial, less interesting.
You’ve said that you have a fantasy of the “artist as architect,” which you partly realized in your glass and mirror pavilion construction for the Dia Art Center in 1995. What does this fantasy mean to you?
I designed the work to be a hybrid between art and architecture. Now that’s cliché, because all artists are doing that but in a simplistic way, based on a fantasy of the 60s and 70s. Every artist wants to be an architect.
I always the like the hybrid, the in between. I like art criticism of architecture, and architectural criticism of art. I wanted the Dia Center pavilion to be both an 80s corporate atrium with a performance area and a 70s alternative space. Both a penthouse roof and a slum roof.
What drew you to the idea of a “Pavilion”?
It’s halfway between sculpture and pavilion. I looked to anonymous urban spaces like bus shelters or telephone booths, but also to pieces like the Barcelona pavilion. I wanted an anonymous meeting place between art and architecture, between public and private. I also looked to the history of parks--the 19th century gazebo, the English garden pavilion.
What are you working on now? What themes does it speak to?
I’m perhaps going to do a showroom staircase for a French designer in Milan. I get some commissions. For the Dia I was invited to do the piece by a committee--I think they wanted a somewhat underground, unestablished artist. But many times I decide to do a piece on my own.
Your work has been exhibited more widely in Europe and Japan than in the US-—before 1989, you had never received a public commission here. Why do you think this is?
The best thing about art is travel and my own learning process. I have a lot of German friends from New York, so I get opportunities through that. Art is import-—people want to find out about another culture. Also, I was always against galleries, and I did a lot of writing here. Americans knew me as a writer, and then didn’t take me seriously as an artist.
What do you find most difficult about your career as an artist?
Stupid shows my gallery put me into. They set up a Walker Evans and Dan Graham show, which was designed to sell my photos, which were very amateur and really just for magazine printing. So Walker Evans looked a lot better than Dan Graham. Two-man shows are always bad because there’s a comparison. I like galleries that help me produce things--the main thing for me is production. I tend not to do a trademark work of art. Collectors really want what they’ve seen in a large exhibition, and they want the same thing.
What would you change about the art world?
I’d have everything on a more intimate scale. I’d make it so large galleries would not force artists to do simplified things and drive out competition. I like small business—-it’s like I’m a left wing democrat. Also I want galleries to maintain an intellectual interest in the content of work, rather than identifying with art that sells.
What advice would you give to emerging artists?
Travel to see different situations and cultures. Don’t rush to sign with a big gallery--choose a gallery that has personal interest in your work.
How does one find a "good gallery"?
Make friends and have good conversations before you sign. Don’t be so eager to do things.
This article was originally created for TheArtBiz.com. It appears on NYFA Interactive courtesy of the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Library.
|
