Four Weddings and a Phony Man

-Introducing the Bob Smith Project.

By Frederikke Hansen

In the beginning of the 90's four artists created a character who was received by their contemporary colleagues and critics as an invention, if not of Mary Shelleian dimensions, then at least as something unnecessary and without interest. The character represented patriarchy, or more precisely, the art institution as a hypostasis of patriarchy.

The four - Susan Hinnum, Ann Kristin Lislegaard, Eva Larsson and Christine Melchiors - were among the group of younger artists who, at the end of the 80's, attempted to break with the hegemony of the neo-expressive simulation painting and the neo-academic sculpture - so-called postmodern practices that had dominated largely unassailed and unquestioned throughout the decade.

The young artists turned their gaze away from the dominant Central European paradigms and instead sought inspiration in English and, not least, American art and theory. The project »Koncern° Artistic-Philosophical Basic Research« (re)introduced - strongly influenced by Art & Language - a text-based conceptual art, while the journal »Aandsindustri« - which was published with various under-titles, such as »Production, distribution and consumption« and »Object, reality and politics« - attempted to (re)introduce criticism of the institution and the discussion surrounding the moral, social and political priorities of art(ists). On the exhibition front, one should mention »Baghuset«, an artist space that, with its loose structure, involved a number of the young artists who sought to go beyond the blase irony and distance of the painters and the hermetic self-referentiality of the sculptors of the 80's.

A Danish appropriation art developed especially around the influential »Baghuset«. Not least the media-steam, that so-called hyper-reality, came under fire from the new art-as-criticism. The criticism was also directed at the painters of the 80's, who practically praised hyper-reality by sending a gentle stream of meaningless images out into the world vis-a-vis those which TV, film and advertising were already presenting - and the contemporary sculptors, who, with a modernist gesture, believed that they were subduing the same hyper-reality by cultivating inertia, material's sluggishness.

The aforementioned were taken at a time (1987-89) when the Danish Prime Minister had declared the death of ideologies, and the initiatives can in a sense be understood as a resistance to official (conservative} ideology.

So far, so good... A new Wille zu Kritik had been won. Viewed from a feminist perspective however, there was nothing new under the sun. Koncern° consisted of men, as did the editorial board of Aandsindustri (which was also largely, if not exclusively, the case with the contributors to the journal). in 1990, Baghuset was reduced to a closed structure consisting of seven men.
And they did not work to get more women involved in art.

At a time when the established part of the institution had spent all its money on simulation painting and academic sculpture on the one hand, and when the alternative scene threatened to embrace a new, male-defined critical stance with all of its aesthetic yield on the other, Hinnum, Lislegaard, Larsson and Melchiors decided to collaborate.

Merely by observing the local context they were able to conclude that there continue to be different conditions for women and men (also) in the art institution. They reasoned that if they wanted to have an art career in line with their male colleagues, they would have to secure mobility, which in turn presupposed that the institution would sanction their works as valuable. It finally became evident (still taking the local context into consideration) that such a guarantor had to be a man.

Nothing suggested that this institutional man, willing to place value on a gender-aware art, would materialize quickly, much less in Denmark. They therefore invented the fictional, male curator Bob Smith - to whom they could, on account of his fictionality, attribute characteristics that would in principle enable him to further their career. The Anglo-American name implied that he might be from New York or London (prestigious). On the other hand, the name was common enough to ensure the degree of anonymity that would maintain the fiction of his connection to the four, female, Danish artists - thus the entire notion that a person with the power to sanction quality, whom was not already known by the four artists' colleagues, could exist.

Common to all the Bob Smith manifestations was the use of the advertising aesthetic and PR strategies - a practice that was popular at the time (Jeff Koon's self-staging as the divine Bad Boy and his ensuing star-status is a prime example). In the Bob Smith project, the regained awareness of the institution was coupled with a problematization of women's position, at the same time that the popular commodity aesthetic was toned down, in that the concept was not used to further individual (commodity)works or individual careers.

... THERE'S ALWAYS ROOM AT THE TOP... ...BOB SMITH PRESENTS... ...SUSAN HINNUM... ...ANN KRISTIN LISLEGAARD... ...EVA LARSSON... ...CHRISTINE MELCHIORS...
This text ran in a constant loop on the electric newspaper at Trianglen - the Swedish provincial town Malmö's answer to Time Square - when the Bob Smith project was invited to participate in an art project in the urban space. The electric newspaper was moreover conveniently placed just opposite the hotel where all those involved in the exhibition were put up. Hinnum, Lislegaard, Larsson and Melchiors contributed further with a poster displayed in a lighted advertisement pillar on the same square. The poster shows a man with his back half-turned wearing a stylish, exclusive suit against a blue velvet background. In front of the man is a shiny new red beauty-box.

The symbolism is clear: man as subject, successful, energetic - prized! (Bob Smith, Jeff Koons?). And woman... object, decorative - priced!
The art world: every bit as patriarchal as any other sphere of society, in contrast to the modernist notion of art, which is a sphere that is separated from, and raised high above, profane everyday life - or the equally modern postmodernist notion that the great narratives created in humanity's centralist image are over.
It is thus a pious hope that the competent curator Bob Smith should be proud to present a woman artist because she is a talented artist. »It's my pleasure to introduce X. She does art. We work together (nudge, nudge - nice, huh?...)«.

The beauty-boxes returned in the artists' Fall Exhibition in 1991. The artists' Fall Exhibition is a juried exhibition that has traditionally functioned as a rubber-stamp institution: it is there where Danish artists make their breakthrough. The four artists then tied this situation to women's traditional role. The parallel to the artist's development from amateur to professional via the breakthrough exhibition must therefore be the development from maiden to wife via the wedding, and in particular, the breaking of the hymen on the wedding-night.

Aside from a more than three-meter high color photograph of the four artists clad in full bridal array, Bob Smith's contribution consisted of a number of moving-crates. On four of them were placed shiny new red beauty-boxes - women's moving-crate... noch einmal: men make art, while women (in the best case) make women's art.

At the exhibition opening, the four artists furthermore went around signing postcards displaying the bridal array motif and presenting them to the public. Instead of signing the postcards with their individual names, as one might expect of that kind of idol-gesture, they all wrote: art beauties.

The thematization of woman's fundamental reduction, in patriarchal economy, to an object that can be used and replaced continued in a consequent project: facing pages in the cultural journal »Atlas«. On both pages you see a picture with four very pregnant women wearing the same kind of bikini. The only difference between the two pictures is that the heads (which as a result of computer manipulation have become the artists' own) have been swapped. Below each picture appear the words »Visible difference«. Furthermore on the left hand side is printed »before and«, while on the right hand side the print continues, »before«.

Time stands still. For Woman time must stand still. For the visible difference is not about the natural development over time: visible ageing. The characteristic assigned to women (desirability) lies in their being able to control that development, which (for men) is connected to the attainment of experience, maturity, distinction - with the agency that keeps society's wheels turning (and which is characterized visibly by wrinkles, high hairlines and greying hair). The ultimate consequence is that Woman must stay in shape by maintaining the youthful beauty that attracts the man-as-fertilizer. For Woman's social raison d'être lies in the sphere of reproduction (and not in art). This appears in any case to be the attitude that is revealed by Bob Smith's project.

Unfortunately the problems raised in Bob Smith's more than two years of activity were heightened rather than understood. The four artists had, among other things, to face a critique from their colleagues that concerned more their own physical appearance than the aesthetic and discursive qualities of the works themselves.

It was not at all accepted to conceive of the art institution as a concrete discursive manifestation of patriarchy. For our critical awareness does not appear to be sufficient to understand and discuss the fact that there is a patriarchy at all in Denmark, where we like to think of ourselves as liberal-minded and tolerant (»Hey, we invented pornography and same-sex marriage...«). For that reason, Bob Smith's project continues to be necessary and of interest.