REVIEWS

relations between the sexes, the individualself repeatedly becomes visible throughhis or her reflection in the other; her lAmWhoever You Want Me to Be (1970/71) alsorefers to this mutating capability-sexual-ity as a source of identity formation, anidea that chips away at the codes associ-ated with romantic love.

The increasing radicality of Iannone'swork brought about an enhancement ofher artistic autonomy, even as her partici-pation in exhibitions was restricted dueto censorship. Iannone documents hercentral role in the Bern art scandal in theblack-and-white cartoon TheStory ofBern(or) Showing Colors (1970). A chronologyof the events surrounding the AusstellungderFreunde (Exhibition of Friends) at theKunsthalle Bern is ajuicy tale of betrayal,opportunism, and the masculine pruderyof an otherwise openly liberal male-dominated artistic community. lannonereacted to Daniel Spoerri's accusation ofpornography with the statement, "I wishyou would stop calling it pornography. Idoubt that anyone could be aroused by it."A feminist stance starts to emerge in workslike Human Liberation (1972) or The NextGreat Moment in History Is Ours (1970) -no doubt partly in reaction to the incidentwith Spoerri, which ended with her worksbeing removed from the show.

Her seven-year relationship with Rothbecame styled as the great love of her lifein a furthering of her art's fundamen-tally content-related nature. The affairis diaristically recounted in the series AnIcelandic Saga (1978,1983,1986) throughanecdotes, anagrams, and absurd word-play. The relationship was the triggerfor her 1969 move to Europe, where shebecame active in the Fluxus movement.In letters to Roth, lannone confessesthat after her split from him she foundanother muse, that the desire for ecstaticunion was the only source of her inspira-tion. Indeed, Iannone's current popularitycould be attributed to her ability to makeart that deifies Eros.

URSULA MARIA PROBSTTRANSLATED FROM GERMAN BY EMILY SPEERS MEARR

NEWYOR~K

ROBERT WATTSLESLIE TONKONOW ARTWORKS + PROJECTS

MAY 3-JULY 28

In 1980, years after obtaining numerouspatents for his inventions, R. Buckmin-ster Fuller changed his mind aboutasserting ownership of his ideas: "I domy best to discourage others from takingpatents, which almost never 'pay off' tothe inventor." Bucky's advice came to mymind as I viewed this mini Robert Wattsretrospective (consisting of works madebetween 1964 and 1984), which calls at-tention to tactics of appropriation thatunderlie gestures of supposed "creativity."

102 MODERN PAINTERS I OCTOBER 2006

Whether Watts is quoting the tools of artproduction-pencils, pens, paint, and brush

kits-or probing techniques of representation

such as replication and mass distribution,

his work questions how the history of art isitself a series of "readymade" ideas poised

for appropriation.Watts's 1964Addendum to Pop hyperbolizes

Fuller's claim about the fruitlessness of pat-

ents. Composed of a grid of 60 documents

from the U.S. Patent Office,Addendum grew

out of the artist's pursuit of a copyright for

the term Pop art. According to Watts, obtain-

ing the patent was futile (by 1964 Pop art had

entered the common cultural lexicon and was

therefore excluded from copyright protection),

but he could have patented the term for the

purposes of marketing merchandise, as in Pop

art brand lipstick (his example-such a brand

does not actually exist).Addendum tracks the

prior uses of Pop as a registered trademark.

(These amusing brand names include the Pop-

zaball, a ball-throwing toy, and the Pop-a-Cig,

a mechanized cigarette dispenser.) In this

OSTUART HAWKINS

HANDWIPE, 2006C-PRINT, 44 X 96 INCOURTESY THE ARTIST AND ZACH FEUER GALLERY, NEW YORK

wholly unremunerative gesture, Watts il-

lustrates how a complex and diverse range

of practices calcify around a familiar and

therefore reductive term.

Concern with the proprietary nature of

art production extends beyond a "style"

such as Pop to that most fundamental

indication of originality-the artist's sig-

nature. Watts's Ingres Signature (1965)

distills the "brand" identity of the artwork

to a flashy pink neon sculpture tracing In-

gres's script. Yet this attempt to crystallize

authorship around handwriting, with its

implication of originality and innovation,

is a simulacral one, since a signature'sfluency is as rehearsed in paint as it is

stylized in its neon copy.The artist's signature turns up again,

in the unlikely format of sports collecti-

bles. In a plastic case, Watts has gathered

a star-studded lineup of autographed

baseballs-but instead of Ruth, Mays, Cle-

mente, et al., the names include Duchamp,

Manet, Goya, Munch, Ingres, and the sym-

bolist painter Odilon Redon. Assembling

a canon of heavy hitters, Watts insertshimself into a rich art-historical tradi-

R OBERT WATTSSIGNATURE BASEBALLS, 1970SIX BASEBALLS, PLEXIGLAS, AND INK12 X 12 X 31/2 INCOURTESY LESLIE TONKONOW ARTWORKS + PROJECTS, NEW YORK

Cob ROBERT WATTS

tion of citation: Duchamp, Munch, andIngres often copied or repeated their ownworks, and Manet was known to directlyreference works by other artists. In so bla-tantly using art history's hall-of-famers asfodder for appropriation (and possibly forjest), Watts's work uses reflexive humor tolampoon the category of the original andits romantic connotations.

EVA DIAZ

STUART HAWKINSZACH FEUERGALLERY

AUGUST 8-SEPTEMBER 23

Stuart Hawkins's 22-minute video Sou-venir (2006) tells the tale of an intrepid"assistant" (played by Ms. Hawkins) in-dentured to a corporate fat cat whoseidiosyncratic whim it is to find, and ulti-mately to possess, the exotic, elusive, andlong-haired "coco man"-a fictitious char-acter supposedly untouched by the modernworld, or at least by a pair of scissors. Theensuing journey has Hawkins performingall sorts of self-deprecating silliness as atoken Westerner trekking through a dis-tant and supposedly exotic land (in thiscase, as in all of Hawkins's work, that landis Nepal). Call it a farce of fetishization inthree acts.

Hawkins sends up a certain anthro-pological fascination with third-worldcultures by demonstrating that what is au-thentically foreign about them is not somehard kernel of indigenous identity but theiruneven development under the pressures ofglobal capitalism. Nowhere is this betterdemonstrated than in Hawkins's some-times hilarious and nearly Brechtian useof subtitles to convey the locals' perplexedimpressions of the wayward assistant as she

REVIEWS

O ANGELO ROGNONISCIOPERO (STRIKE), 1916BLACK AND RED INK ON PAPERFROM "FABBRICA + TRENO" (1916)COURTESY RESEARCH LIBRARY. THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE2 EReD1 ROGNONI, ITALY

hikes next to roadways and solicits guidancefrom Sherpas who, after being sent to obtainsupplies, return wearing newly bought West-ern fashions and bearingbottles of Coca-Cola.(The dream-sequence/music video, set to theoriginal tune "Fast Sandwich," is also painfullyfunny, in a drunken karaoke kind of way). Theassistant ultimately captures her quarry-whose red tracksuit, sunglasses, and bling arenative to New York if to anywhere-and thenreduces him to a pair of feathers, which endsup as the eponymous souvenir on the boss'soffice wall.

Souvenir's comedic sensibility servesits reflexivity well, deflecting any over-identification with, and thus idealizationof, a Nepali or even more generically ethno-graphic "other." But the charge one receivesfrom the work is driven largely by clich6s ofcultural imperialism and primitivist fantasy.In Stuart Hawkins: Blue Eyes, the cataloguethat accompanies the exhibition, much ismade of the time Hawkins has spent living inNepal, which one assumes is meant as an as-surance to the audience that her antics havebeen sanctioned by the locals and that she, asopposed to the "typical" Westerner that herwork derides, understands life in the third-world. Unfortunately, the authority Hawkinsmocks -anthropological curiosity in theservice of the first world's knowledge industry

H OWARDENA PINDELLDETAIL OF COUP, 2000-2006

ACRYLIC, CANVAS, VINYL, TYPE. PHOTO POLYMERTRANSFER, NAILS, YARN, SKELETON, 7 X 22 FTCOURTESY THE ARTIST

-is here simply transferred to her role asartist-cum-authentic cultural translator.

Hawkins's photographic series Customs(2005-2006) escapes this bind bybeing bothless self-conscious and more reflexive. Onlyone work, Day Driver (2006), which showsHawkins being hauled by a Sherpa while awhite-suited chauffeur waits patiently by anequally white Mercedes, shares Souvenir'sheavy-handedness. The remaining pictures,many of which, we are told, were composedand shot by Nepali locals, carry their humorlightly but take their art seriously.

JONATHAN NEIL

HOWARDENA PINDELLIN MY LIFETIME

G.R. N'NAMDI GALLERY

JUNE 3-AUGUST 31

For anyone familiar with the abstract worksofHowardena Pindell, it might come as a sur-prise to see her recent large-scale paintings.Overtly and defiantly political, they attackthe ills and injustices of the world in bold,cross-hatching strokes and thick impasto.The bombing of Hiroshima, land mines inAngola, the current war in Iraq, AIDS, envi-ronmental disasters, slavery, and racism arejust some of the themes transformed into apainterly language characterized by roughmateriality. There is no turning away; thereis no refuge. Pindell forces the viewer intoan uneasy posture of complicity. She pro-vokes a direct visual confrontation, whichshe transforms into an educational experi-ence. Dense, often autobiographical, walltexts and suggestions for further readingaccompany most of the paintings. By pe-rusing these texts, we learn that Pindell'spersonal experiences in corporate Americaand in Africa were revelatory for her, expos-ing her to the discrimination of racism bothat home and abroad.

Pindell should be applauded for her com-mitted social consciousness, somethingthat appears too rarely in contemporary artpractice. The trouble is that her language isso uncompromisingly literal-chains evokesubjugation, water represents the Middle Pas-sage, masks stand for African nations-that itleaves little to the imagination and relegatesthe work's formal aspects to an afterthought.So the few examples of Pindell's other idiomcome as a welcome relief. Her abstract works,resembling flowcharts of signs and numbers,secure her place in the continuum of post-war American artists. Untitled (1975), forexample, uses white handmade paper as the

support for white punched-paper circles.This monochromatic, manually producedwhite-on-white work variously recalls Ka-zimir Malevich, Robert Rauschenberg, andRobert Ryman.

Yet for Pindell it was never enough solelyto participate in the formal experimenta-tions of abstraction, especially since herpersonal and political views could not beclearly communicated. This ongoing ten-sion between her two artistic inclinationsis most successfully resolved in Autobi-ography: Japan (Mountain Reflection)(1992-93). The diamond-shaped canvas,covered with thousands of small punch-paper circles steeped in heavy paint, is anhomage to Pindell's seven-month sojournin Japan. While the shape of the canvasevokes the reflection of a mountain in a poolof water, the painting is also an occasionfor Pindell to explore her abstract impulses.The multicolored surface is vibrant and in-tense; figure and ground meld effortlesslyinto a continuous plane.

Perhaps it is unfair to expect Pindell tobridge the divide between her formalistconcerns and her activist leanings. Despitethe extreme imbalance between these twothreads of her art, what seems ultimatelymost important to Pindell is the preserva-tion of her personal integrity-she makesart that is fiercely her own without offeringany concessions.

NUIT BANAI

LOS ANGELES

A TUMULTUOUS ASSEMBLYVISUAL POEMS OF THE ITALIAN FUTURISTS

THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE/GETTY CENTER, LOS ANGELES

AUGUST 1,2006-JANUARY 7,2007

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TITLE: Stuart Hawkins: Zach Feuer GallerySOURCE: Mod Painters O 2006

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