Everything Smelled Like Bazooka Gum

The Artist As Superstar: Presentation
Kingston University Department of Art History, 1994

“Gavin Turk is playing The Artist ‘Gavin Turk’, doing all the sorts of things you’d expect an Artist to do - making things, signing things - but he’s doing it all in reverse; he’s going backwards in time and making the work from outside in, beginning with the attendant phenomena of an oeuvre. Art history is all mirror writing.”
Simon Bill: 'Gavin, what's your work about?' Gavin Turk: Collected Works 1989-93', Exhibition catalogue essay

“The Artist appropriates things to his body of work simply by signing them, and the body is left to posterity. Gavin Turk was here.”
Simon Bill: Gavin Turk, Collected Works 1989-93, Exhibition press release

“This mixture of self-effacement - ‘I’m here but have nothing much to say’ and arrogance - commemorating a career at its beginning rather than end, as though great things were bound to follow - has remained a constant in Turk’s approach.”
Sarah Kent: 'Turk's Head' in reference to 'Cave' (1991), Time Out, December 29-January 5 1994

“For me a lot of contemporary work happens at the moment of looking, burns brightly and then dies.”
Gavin Turk: 'Great Expectations' G-Spot, Winter Edition No.1

“Everyone wants to be a loser now... although in some of my work, I’m making out that I’m much more successful than I really am. The plaque and the signature drawings refer back to the very outset of Modern Art when art started to be bought and sold on the basis of people’s identities.”
Gavin Turk: 'Last of England' Frieze, November - December 1993

“Gavin’s work is all about Gavin, but it’s not autobiography and not self-expression. Nearer the mark, I think, to say that Gavin Turk’s work is about ‘Gavin Turk’, a fictional artist whose oeuvre he (Gavin) is constructing in his (‘Gavin’s’) absence. ‘Gavin Turk’ is Gavin Turk’s pseudonym. Gavin Turk stars as himself.”
Simon Bill: 'Gavin, what's your work about?' Gavin Turk: Collected Works 1989-93', Exhibition catalogue essay

“Who needs the art, the illustrious career, when you can short-circuit the route to posterity with a monument? (He was refused an M.A. by a baffled assessment panel), but who needs proof of two years diligence when you’ve got proof of a lifetime’s brilliance?”
Simon Bill: 'Gavin, what's your work about?' Gavin Turk: Collected Works 1989-93', Exhibition catalogue essay

“Basically, art is just a commodity. It revolves around buying and selling, and all the mystique, the ida of starving in a garrett, is nothing. The only fundamental is the market. Everything else is just bollocks.”
David Pugh: 'Art Attack' The Face, July 1992

“I think art actually has a very difficult job at the moment because it has become aligned with the entertainment industry and, as entertainment, art isn’t particularly entertaining.”
Gavin Turk: 'Last of England' Frieze, November - December 1993

“Expression, illusionism, and abstraction are empty fictions. There is nothing to be said. There is only to be, there is only to live.”
Piero Manzoni 'Piero Manzoni', Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris

“Inasmuch as photography is an ellipse of language and a condensation of an ‘ineffable’ social whole, it constitutes an anti-intellectual weapon and tends to spirit away ‘politics’ (that is to say a body of problems and solutions) to the advantage of a ‘manner of being’, a socio-moral status. It is well known that this antithesis is one of the major myths of Poujadism (Poujade on television saying ‘Look at me, I am like you’”
Roland Barthes 'Photography and Electoral Appeal', Mythologies

“Complete with a glossy catalogue, ‘Freeze’ was a coup celebre, winning attention from influential collectors like Saatchi, whose interest in a young artist is often a guarantee of their future success.”
Ekow Eshun 'Art Attack' The Face, July 1992

“By the early, eighties. Goldsmiths’ was making waves and had thriving BA and MA courses. It has since achieved fame - and in some circles, notoriety - for pumping out confident mavericks who make artworks out of everything from colostomy bags to costermongers’ barrows, and who market themselves with the kind of chutzpah more commonly associated with pop stars. Often making pieces so big that only a museum could consider buying them, Goldsmiths’ students are inspired by the aggressive glitz associated with eighties New York, where artists like Jeff Koons and Julian Schnabel became public figures almost overnight.”
Oliver Bennett : 'Exhibitionists!' ES Magazine (May 1993)

“Of course there has been a counter blast, often fueled by the idea that Goldsmiths’ students are encouraged to plug themselves remorselessly - and earn large sums of money - despite having little to show by way of technique.”
Oliver Bennett : 'Exhibitionists!' ES Magazine (May 1993)

“Hirst became as close as the British art world had to a pop star... He was loquacious too: “I was becoming this sort of Damien Hirst character” he remembers. “I was this slightly mythical thing.” Hirst is talking on the phone from New York; he says it was important to get away.”
Simon Garfield: 'I like It, I'll take the lot' The Independent (March 20th 1993)

“I don’t remember it so hot but all I know Is I met Mr. D. Boy, was I lucky. The minute I went in I thought the place was empty but all of a sudden there he was. floating in the middle of the auditorium, and all this light over and around him, like as if he’s an orb or something and everything smelled like Bazooka gum and suddenly I realized I was glowing as well, like my body is a fucking Christmas tree or something, so I kept standing there looking down, knowing I wouldn’t be alone anymore.
Itai Doron: 'The Immaculate Stereoscopic Conception of Mr. D.', Exhibition press release

“The infant D lying, like the Christchild, in a Kryptonite cradle - the personification, perhaps of misplaced optimism... The plaster heads of eight famous supplicants - Mr. D.’s heroes - hang like fruit from fiberglass branches, their adoring eyes anticipating the Young One’s arrival. Will D reach the parts that others have failed to conquer?”
Sarah Kent: 'D-Light Full' Time Out (June 2-9 1993)

“Amidst this deep rooted madness, sanity prevails in the message that Itai, through Mr. D, has for us earthlings in the 1990’s, it is a message of love, hope and salvation.”
Amanda Walton: 'The Last All Action Goldsmiths Hero' G-Spot, Issue 7

“Fed up with kneeling down in front of the establishment - cue LIFT - seven London-based artists not necessarily your ‘cool school’ but individuals who have superceded efforts to be categorized into conforming as a movement. Could this be an evolution not a revolution?”
LIFT Exhibition information sheet, Atlantis Gallery

TimeOut Magazine Cover, Source material for Sue Webster’s ‘Sued’ (April 1993)

“Egotistically alters well known magazine covers self-obsessively to the point of celebrity status - artist as pop star!”
LIFT Exhibition information sheet in reference to Sue Webster, Atlantis Gallery

“It is becoming routine for people to try to alter their appearance, their behavior, and their consciousness beyond what was once thought possible. The modern era might be characterized as a period of the discovery of self. Our current post-modern era can be characterized as a transitional period of the disintegration of self. Perhaps the coming ‘Post - Human’ period will be characterized by the reconstruction of self.”
Jeffrey Deitch: 'PostHuman' Exhibition catalogue essay (1992)

Cindy Sherman ‘Untitled Filmstill No.35’ (1979)

“In the course of a two year period, Koons transformed his body and his life through his courtship and marriage with Cicciolina. The biological and material sculpture resulting from their union dissolves the dividing line between artificial and real, creating art that can truly be described as post-human.”
Jeffrey Deitch: 'PostHuman' Exhibition catalogue essay (1992)

Jeff Koons ‘Flash Art Advertisements’ (1998/9)

“An artist today must be similar to a pop artist, a part of the entertainment world.”
Jeff Koons: 'Voyage into Outer Taste' Daily Telegraph (January 9th 1992)

“I have no perception of Jeff Koons, absolutely not. Your perception of Jeff Koons is probably more realistic than mine, because to me I am nonexistent.”
Jeff Koons: 'The Jeff Koons Handbook'

“How many artists are profiled in Vanity Fair? How many have their marriage reported in Hello! magazine or are married to a woman whose name is thoroughly familiar to readers of The Sun?”
Martin Gayford: 'Voyage into Outer Taste' Daily Telegraph (January 9th 1992)

“It was really about assuming leadership, and declaring myself king. And even though the subjects of this world of mine may just be these seals, these protectors of mine, I was still king of my world.”
Jeff Koons in conversation with Andrew Renton (April 12th 1990)

“This is ‘Jeff Koons Entertainment’. I believe in art as a communicative device that’s part of the entertainment world. It participates in ‘showtime’. It just draws a slightly different audience than other entertainment vehicles.”
Jeff Koons in conversation with Matthew Collings, Modern Painters (June 1989)

“I was really going to let rip. And all that hatred I had for the art world - if there was any hatred there - I was just going to let it out in one big explosion. Like : ‘Nothing can touch me now - I’m Jeff Koons and my art can defend me!’ So I tried one little taste of it and I found that actually it wasn’t me at all.”
Jeff Koons in conversation with Matthew Collings, Modern Painters (June 1989)

“How effective are art stars? Their glamor is pretty limited. The only way artists can find their own glamor is to incorporate aspects of systems other than ‘art’, and to be creative and confident enough to really exploit what they have.”
Jeff Koons in conversation with Matthew Collings, Modern Painters (June 1989)

Jeff Koons ‘Bourgeois Bust, Jeff and Ilona’ (1991)

“I’ve made what the Beatles would have made if they had made sculpture. Nobody ever said that the Beatles’ music was not on a high level, but it appealed to a mass audience. That’s what I want to do.”
Jeff Koons: 'The Jeff Koons Handbook'

“I’m for the return of the objective, and for the artist to regain the responsibility for manipulation and seduction: for art to have as much political impact as the entertainment industry, the film, the pop music and the advertising industries.”
Jeff Koons: 'The Jeff Koons Handbook'

“She might be compared with the pop singer Madonna, who also ransacks culture for universal archetypes such as the ‘Girl next door’, the ‘slut’, and the ‘man-eater’ - yet Sherman’s brand of self portraiture is a world away in terms of its form and content, while her intentions are far more complex than the desire for mere self-promotion.”
David Brittain: 'True Confessions - Cindy Sherman interviewed' Creative Camera (Feb/Mar 1991)

Cindy Sherman ‘Untitled Filmstill’ (1979)

“His shameless self-hyping through media and gallery overexposure, his relentless social hobnobbing, and lately his well publicized employment of assistants not only to fabricate for him but to generate pictorial ideas, have constituted an ongoing conceptual performance meant - presumably - to call attention to the fundamental economic determinism of the art world.”
Ken Johnson: 'Mark Kostabi at Ronald Feldman' Art in America (September 1988)

Gavin Turk Lecture Notes
Knight’s Park Main Lecture Theater 17/2/1994

Scraping together of signatures from an artist from the past.
Artist doesn't forcefully make them.
Work around the idea of museum texts, how do you sign a slide talk?
Conceit - Change of state, authenticity
Poetic objects - Stonehenge English Heritage cup
Ruskin Plaque - Way of thinking about art/literature from the past
Plaque piece relating to circumstances - presence manifest in the room
Plato's Cave - Ways of perception, limited perspective
Not the plaque you thought it was
Plaque is visceral - Inside/Outside debate, usually hung on the outside
Piece is different every time it's shown
Audience a necessary part of the work's construction
Empowering of someone no-one knows
Curious syntax, overstated museum vitrines
See the day through slide glasses
Problems with specific dates
Robert Morris remake - Made antique (More English?)
Does he communicate to everybody?
Art becomes easier to look at with time
Time vital to all work, the more people who've done it, the better an idea it must be.
Synthetic realism
I can use me in my art quite freely
Recall of something/sort of likeness
Sculptural object best when floating (without plinth/ground/wall)
Makes things for a small amount of people over a long period of time
T.V. advert?

Artist As Superstar: Introduction

“Expression, illusionism, and abstraction are empty fictions. There is nothing to be said. There is only to be, there is only to live.”
Piero Manzoni

Idea of following on from the 'Mythology of the Artist' lecture
Something I really believe is valid and important in contemporary art
Since researching this seminar I've found I've actually started to work within this framework/genre
Kind of postmodernist way of adapting art history classification into itself. (The notion of the artist's 'Eventual Greatness')
Trying to choose a topic for the seminar which seems very 'of the moment'
Something that fits into the idea of the 'Zeitgeist'
The work to be discussed, where has it come from?
Possibly born out of the recent 'Body Art' movement (Post Mortemism?) which focused on the inner self, whereas this 'new' breed of artists are looking to project their own inner self outwards and onto an unsuspecting public, utilizing/working within the framework of the mass media
Description of how the seminar is going to run
Start with the American artists who use the genre - Idea of the artist as superstar was born in America (First to really embrace the mass media)
Was Warhol the first art superstar?
Followed by the British works - things happening now
Look at the work analytically, raise common themes between the artists
Try to draw some conclusions

Artist As Superstar: The Americans
Main exponents/originators of the idea of the art superstar
New York 1980's art boom - Warhol, Haring, Schnabel etc.
Artists became superstars/celebrities almost overnight
American culture, media saturated with the idea of being famous (Idea of celebrity status inherent in the American way of life)
Plenty of material/stimulus for artists to feed off of
Fame inherent in T.V. culture (Hollywood - Film Capital)
Best known artist working with the idea of the artist as superstar - Jeff Koons (Background in big business, stock markets, money orientated)
"I've made what the Beatles would have made if they had made sculpture." Jeff Koons
Idea of declaring yourself King of your profession
Thin line between confidence and arrogance
Uses the mass media to gain exposure for his work - knows how to play the media game
Audience manipulation becomes the work itself (Art Magazine Ads)
Says in terms of twentieth century artists the only parallels are Picasso and Duchamp
Notion of the ego - ideal, the most perfect state for a human to be in
Biological sculpture from union with Cicciolina (Made in Heaven)
Success comes with the confidence in himself and his work
'Success out of failure' - Banality works
Idea of the strategic construction of the whole career
Artificial or real? Where is the dividing line?
Is he playing out the role of being an art superstar or have the boundaries now become so blurred that we can no longer tell the artificial from the real
Is he really like that? Mysticism of the celebrity
American notion of 'Showtime'
Found he had to incorporate other things into his art to make it ‘entertainment’
Can art exist as entertainment?
Posterity due to having his finger on the pulse of what life is really like in the late twentieth century
The last piece of methane left in the dead cow of post modernisim (Robert Hughes)
Art as political impact (Is Koons political?)
The art superstar is something more elevated than just an 'artist'
Work and life completely one
Phenomenon of finishing art at the end of the twentieth century
Mark Kostabi "Mark is like Andy Warhol without the brilliance, and like Jeff Koons without the right publicity."(Paul Taylor)
Idea of the more vulgar version of Jeff Koons
Production line - Churning out endless possibilities, variations on a theme
Kostabi orchestrates the whole system
Hands off approach (Apart from the signing)
The entire Kostabi 'organization' needs him there, strange kind of figure head
Employs painters to paint for him - Seen as a negative thing but sculptors have been doing it for yearsIdea of Warhol and the 'Hands off approach'
Some truth in the quotation - He's like Koons without the charm, not quite as good as him in handling the media, lacks Warhol's personality
Would people want to be around him as they did with Warhol?
Go for broke attitude (Darker side of the 80's art boom?)
Career lacks the construction/strategy/focus of Koons

Cindy Sherman
Important in terms of image manipulation - relates strongly to Sue Webster Presents herself as someone else - strong theme in ‘Superstarism’ notion of the ego ideal and the ‘other’ self
Portrays herself as characters from the mass media (Filmstill series)
Filmstills - She has become the moviestar
Marilyn Monroe pose - Connotations, hero worship, moviestars as readymades
Life becomes one big performance (for the cameras)
Prominant interaction/relationship with the camera
Photo - Opportunities, staging, media manipulationMore recent works are more sinister - the figure has left the scene, we are ultimately left with the debris

Artist As Superstar: The British
More recent idea over here - we're just beginning to become aware of the whole phenomenon
Tradition set up by Gilbert and George as living sculptures
What are the origins of the British superstars? (American imperialism?)
Group together three main exponents of the genre

Sue Webster
Work is purely about image - its manipulation, promotion and publication
Money, publicity, hype!Idea of the non - existent celebrity
Artist as pop star - Do art and entertainment mix?
When does art become entertainment?
In the work she becomes the icon, idea of hero worship, but how long does it all last? (Relate to Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame) Or is the work a comment on this short lived phenomenon?
Idea of presenting the 'Big EgoT image
Interested in fiction - Leaving people with a name to remember, glitzy image
All about trying to play the Art game
Reacting against the cliquier London art scene
’Starfucker’ - About spotting people (celebrities)
Particularly apparent on moving to London
Close working relationship with Tim Noble - Both hype each other
Work about building up a background, getting your face known
Reaction to the notion of art education (Artist as entrepreneur as typified by Goldsmiths)
Idea of working against the 'Cool school'

Gavin Turk
Two pieces very important to the genre of artist as superstar ‘Cave’ (1991)
Empowering someone no-one knows
Monument to an ambiguous greatness
Who was this 'Gavin Turk' character?
Making the work backwards - Begins with the memory
Past studio occupation by someone famous
M.A. panel controversy - Refusal of certificate
"Who needs the art, the illustrious career, when you can short circuit the route to posterity with a monument?”
Who needs proof of two years diligence when you've got proof of a lifetime's brilliance?'(Sarah Kent)
'Pop' (1993) - Purely artist as superstar
Dressed like Sid Vicious, posed like Warhol's Elvis
Next in a line in history - Elvis, Warhol, Sid, Gavin
Sid Vicious singing 'My Way' (Song that commemorates the end of a career)
Turk remakes things from art history 'His way'
Likes things that are very British - Punks, 'The Sun', Trafalgar Square birds
Sid Vicious becomes an artist as soon as he dies
(Mythology, displayed all the characteristics of an artist)
Working within the art tradition - The plinth, the punk, the song, the self portrait, the monument, the museum (Tussauds), the icon, the artist
Themes of originality, authorship, tradition
Gavin Turk plays out the role of being an artist - Making things, signing things, begins with the idea of an oeuvre

Itai Doron
Idea of ‘Another Self’
Notion of the ego - ideal, or alter - ego
He plays his other self out as a superhero, sent to earth to save us
Problem in looking at his work in that he's only had one show
'Stereoscopic' installation charts the beginning of the other self's career
The superstar arrives on earth from another world - close links to theSuperman story
Are our heroes totally useless?

Artist As Superstar: Discussion Of Themes
Generating other selves into some kind of idealized, utopia like state
Escapism, becoming someone you're notCan you be both people at once? (schitzophrenic ambiguity)
Koons seems to have succeeded in actually becoming a celebrity
Sue Webster is not a superstar, but she is an artist and her art portrays her as such (At what point does fame begin?)
When does art stop being this 'fantasy' and become reality (Koons's biological union sculpture with Cicciolina)

Media
High emphasis placed on the use of 2D mass produced imagery
Art adverts, billboards, magazine covers etc.
Idea of getting the message across very powerfully and to a mass audience
'Look at me, I'm great'
When does art become entertainment and vice versa
Idea of playing out a role as someone else who has the same name as you
(Existence becomes a performance - Conscious decision to become this 'character')

Money
Key to all superstar success - A superstar always makes loads of money
Audience envy/Hero worship : Work made with very specific expected audience reaction in mind
Artist has to have a very mercenary attitude towards the superstar
No superstar is without money/fictional fame/wealth
Does it prove that in the end art is just an elaborate facade?

Patronage
Applicable to the younger artists - Doron, Turk (Jay Jopling) Hirst, Quinn (also with Jay Jopling - Saatchi superstars overnight)
Does a superstar need a dealer? (Money association, dealer plays the role of the agent)