Compound Tropes

On the section Compound Tropes

“Compound Tropes concerns the displacement away from the urban pioneers who, in the late twentieth century, occupied the urban frontiers of New York City, metaphorically and subjectively, and who now have to confront the frontier of profitability wherein the engagement of the commercial world is welcomed by the artist.”

Interview with Fred Wilson:

born 1954 in New York (NY), USA, lives and works in New York (NY)

“I guess I consider myself to be a conceptual artist or a conceptual installation artist. I try to keep myself as open as possible because I’ve been making things I never thought I’d be doing.”

FW: The artist Howardena Pindell made a big todo about a show at Artists Space called The Nigger Drawings, which were basically a series of monochromatic, abstract, graphite drawings by a white artist. There was nothing in them, no imagery – just this dark field of graphite that was titled by the artist The Nigger Drawings. And so it was a big ordeal – this was in the late 70s – and that was the first rumbling. The gallery defended the show. The art world had this notion of quality and didn’t realize the offensiveness of this show because there was no dialogue about race, culture and difference in the art world. They rarely showed people-of-color in the gallery. They felt it was just fine to do this offensive exhibition; in the 70s the art world did not realize that this was a problem. But the funding agencies realized that it wasn’t going to fly, and it seems like the art world, of course, is the last place in America to realize that multi-culturalism is an important issue, and that racism is within their ranks. At the time they were just totally oblivious to this stuff. Ignorance was bliss. So you had all of this going on. Then all these women who worked in museums, but could not become museum directors because of the glass ceiling, became directors of alternative galleries. And these women, feeling a bit like outsiders themselves, eventually began to see the relationship between their plight and the plight of artists-of-color. And certainly people like Howardena Pindell who had worked at MoMA, and was an artist herself, was involved in these women’s issues as well. She was instrumental in getting racial equity into this dialogue. Certainly Adrian Piper talked about feminist issues as well as racial issues, and this was also another way that the mainstream began to open up a bit, thanks to women artists, curators and directors. But returning now to these panels we were on, we decided that since all these alternative galleries were not showing anyone of color and this was all being funded with our tax dollars, we would tell them they simply had to. And there was a huge outcry about how quality would suffer and things like that. And they said they were not going to change their exhibition program. So their money was reduced. And lo and behold, all these galleries began to “discover” artists of- color, and they just loved their work [laughs].

SM: And the quality increased?

FW: Yes, I would say it did. They were high quality galleries, and they remained high quality galleries.

Excerpted from a telephone interview conducted by Shaheen Merali in February 2007