Type the words “American Dream” in a search engine and you will get millions of results, from essays trying to trace the origins of the term to articles that link this definition not just with cultural, political or sport achievements but with the American identity.
Yet with recession hitting the world, the United States going through economic decline and unemployment and poverty rates continuing to grow, it is legitimate to wonder if the American dream still exists.
A recently opened exhibition at Florence’s Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina, looks at how contemporary artists are tackling this theme. Organised in conjunction with the Hudson River Museum and curated by Bartholomew F. Bland, director of curatorial affairs at the Hudson River Museum, “American Dreamers. Reality and Imagination in Contemporary American Art” features 11 artists employing their vision and imagination to face modern challenges.
Chaos and confusion prevail in some works: Laura Ball’s watercolours hint at a subconscious and surreal dimension and feature intricate images of animals, human figures and natural elements; Nick Cave’s multisensory wearable sculptures are assemblages of sequins, buttons, fake fur, children’s toys, human hair as well as other found objects, while Adam Cvijanovic’s natural and urban landscapes look picture-perfect but are actually characterised by diverse and incoherent architectural styles.
In other works there is a strong will to create a sort of counter-reality, an alternative world where it’s possible to escape. Adrien Broom’s dreamy images of women floating in space call to mind Pre-Raphaelite iconography and Baroque female figures; “Visualized Civics”, a 1950s American textbook based on so-called “consensus history” informs instead Richard Deon’s conceptual collages hinting at new social scenarios.
Will Cotton’s paintings show imaginary cotton candy and liquid caramel landscapes populated at times by pop icons à la Katy Perry and inspired by popular board game Candy Land and movies like "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory"; Patrick Jacobs’s recreates perfect yet artificial miniature lawns or interiors of apartments viewable only through peepholes and portholes in the walls; Mandy Greer’s "Cynosura" installation combines instead mythology, shamanism and Native American traditions.
Artists Kirsten Hassenfeld and Christy Rupp recycle materials, transforming and integrating them into their works: the former used recycled gift-wrapping paper to create fragile hanging light sculptures; to criticise the fast food industry and mass production and consumption, Rupp made instead a series of skeletons of extinct birds, including Great Auks, Moas, and Dodos, using bones she collected from the rubbish outside fast-food restaurants.
Yet amid the chaos and confusion there is also humour and irony: Thomas Doyle’s dioramas of typical American houses precariously perched on the edge of a cliff and locked inside glass globes summarise modern anxieties and fears of losing everything you have built in your life, but, as Bland highlights, the houses also seem to be bravely laughing on the edge of their own graves.
When did you start working on this exhibition?
Bartholomew F. Bland: My work collaborating with the CCC Strozzina began last June when I spent three weeks in Los Angeles at the Museum Leadership Institute run as part of the Getty Leadership Institute. It’s a very intensive program and I met there Franziska Nori, the Director of the Strozzina. I was very interested in the contemporary exhibitions at Palazzo Strozzi that had been organized under her leadership over the last several years. They presented a series of very challenging shows that wrestle with many of the problems and issues society is facing and how artists are responding to them. I’m very interested in the aesthetics of beauty, and I’ve wanted to do a show about fantastical elements in contemporary art for several years. I’m based in New York, and I think that my interests dovetailed with Franziska’s desire to present a show of American artists. I’m originally from Florida, an area of the country where the U.S. real estate crisis has been rampant, and so I was particularly interested in how the idea of the American Dream is so closely tied to the idea of home as a sense of place, and what happens to the psyche when that sense of place and identity is in jeopardy. Thomas Doyle’s work is a wonderful illustration of that constant uncertainty. I think many of the ideas embedded in “American Dreamers” and the strand of fantasy in art as a refuge from a kind of deep societal unease has parallels in Europe as well.
What was your selection process regarding the artists featured?
Bartholomew F. Bland: The exhibition includes 11 artists, each of which has a dedicated gallery with multiple examples of that artist’s work on view. Early on in the process we made the decision to go for depth, trying to present the point of view of each of these artists, rather then represent them with single works. It was interesting working with the team in Florence, because we developed together the themes embedded in the show. I had about two dozen artists on my list for the show and whittling it down to a cogent grouping was a challenge. The gallery spaces within the Strozzina are defined with very simple, but interesting curved ceilings. Even though the galleries have a modern gloss, you definitely feel the weight of history all around you. That provides an interesting foil for contemporary work. We’ve had a luxury of space to work with, so that each artist has their own gallery in varying shapes and sizes and a number of the artists created site-specific installations to fit their spaces.
Does the exhibition also feature works of art that can be considered as political since the starting point seems to be 9/11 and the collapse of American security?
Bartholomew F. Bland: I think that all of our artists in the show are probably commentators on our societal, rather than overtly political structures. One of the points of this exhibition is that in one thread of contemporary art, there is now a turning away from overt political messages to something more subtle. So there aren’t any photographs of the World Trade Center being blown up. Most of the work in the show has been created since the 2008 economic crisis, and represents a response, in one form or another, to how that slow moving crisis has re-shaped our world. But in some works, the paintings of Will Cotton for instance, the crisis is hidden. The Gilded Age could still be alive.
For many of us the American Dream is embodied and represented by Hollywood icons, Pop Art and advertising campaigns: in which ways do these contemporary artists introduce us instead to a new vision of the “dream”?
Bartholomew F. Bland: American artists have certainly been commenting on the post WWII American Dream for a long time. Whereas earlier artists would critique or criticise negative aspects of flawed, but acknowledged and recognised “dream”, now there is a sense of what the news like to call a paradigm shift - that the dream could literally be disappearing out from under our feet. I think that growing anxiety tends to spark elements of nostalgia in art, even a kind of grief.
Does the American Dream still exist or has it turned into an upsetting or puzzling nightmare embodying maybe the chaos, confusion and anxieties of our society?
Bartholomew F. Bland: I think Nick Cave’s work definitely signals a desire to shut out the world and replace it with an alternative immersive experience. At the same time, his work is so alluring – it can register as a little creepy and foreboding sometimes, but it also suggests “Let’s get this party started!” no matter what is happening around you. On one level Cave’s work has real positive life force, particularly when his suits are in motion. I may be morbid, but, amid their beauty, they always remind me of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story "The Masque of the Red Death", in which frantic revelry occurs in the palace, even as disaster lurks.
What is the cultural significance of this exhibition?
Bartholomew F. Bland: I hope we’ve captured a moment in time, that is unfolding around us. This has been a great chance to introduce many of the artists in this show to a European audience. With so many thousands of artists working on the contemporary scene, it’s almost impossible to make definitive statements, but I hope we’ve succeeded in capturing this fantastical strain, a kind of refusal of reality, that I’ve noticed for the last few years in art.
American Dreamers is at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina, Florence, Italy, until 15th July 2012.
Image Credits:
Laura Ball
Web, 2009
Watercolour on paper - 51 x 43 cm
Courtesy the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, NY
Nick Cave
Speak Louder, 2011
Mixed media - 249 x 173 x 137 cm
Photo: James Prinz/Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Adam Cvijanovic
New City, 2001-2012 (detail)
Flashe on Tyvek - 2,43 x 1,98 m
Courtesy the artist and Blindarte
Contemporanea, Napoli
Will Cotton
Cotton Candy Katy, 2010
Oil on linen -183 x 214 cm
Courtesy the artist and Mary Boone Gallery, New York
Thomas Doyle
Acceptable losses, 2008 (detail)
Mixed media sculpture
Courtesy of Amanda Erlanson
© Thomas Doyle
Adrien Broom
Rapture, 2010
C-Print - 91 x 76 cm
Courtesy Diane Birdsall Gallery
Kirsten Hassenfeld
Star Upon Star, 2011 (detail)
Paper with mixed media - 121,9 x 160 x 160 cm
Courtesy the artist and Peter Mendenhall Gallery, LA
Mandy Greer
Dare alla Luce, 2008
Installation view at Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue
Courtesy the artist / Photo credit: Nora Atkinson
Richard Deon
Reseller, 2006
Acrylic on canvas - 193 x 246 cm
Courtesy the artist
Christy Rupp
Extinct Birds Previously Consumed by Humans, 2005-2008
Steel, chicken bones, mixed media
Variable dimensions
Courtesy the artist and Frederieke Taylor Gallery, NY
Patrick Jacobs
Mushroom Cluster #2, 2011
Diorama-like sculpture with window, mixed material
diam. 5 cm
Courtesy the artist and Pierogi Gallery, New York
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