Cliche Organized with Bill Powers

Cliches are always already on the canvas, and if the painter is content to transform the cliche, to deform or mutilate it, to manipulate it in every possible way, this reaction is still too intellectual, too abstract: it allows the cliche to rise again from its ashes, it leaves the painter within the milieu of the cliche, or else gives him or her no other consolation than parody.

- Gilles Deleuze

The more probable the message, the less information it gives. Cliches, for example, are less illuminating than great poems.

- Norbert Weiner
 

We imagine love notes to be sweet.
We expect graduation speeches to be inspirational.
When a cliche subverts our expectations, these tropes become less familiar and acquire some measure of uniqueness.
In French, the term derives from a printing technique to make reproductions, giving the entire enterprise a perfume of Walter Benjamin.
Not quite onomatopoeia - they say the word cliche comes from the sound of the printing plate stamping down.
Click.
Click.
Cliche.
More important than its auditory beginnings, how should we define cliche today?
The betrayal of originality….
An overused motif….
Genericism as a byproduct of ubiquity….
I’ve heard the term or its stand-in breach conversations again and again.
Mark Grotjahn talks about the foolishness of painting skulls after Basquiat.
Cecily Brown confesses anxiety that The Raft of the Medusa might be too ridiculously famous to re-imagine in her own vernacular.
Sam McKinniss goes the other direction, proclaiming that cliche is a cornerstone of his artistic practice and something to be celebrated.
It’s also a funny free association game to play.
If I say butterfly which artist is the first to come to mind?
How about cowboy?
A smiley face.
Bumper stickers.
Who owns the canoe?
And is it truly owned or leased to buy?
Joke paintings.
The issue—in part—might be traced back to problems of hierarchy.
Rewind to 17th century France, when the French Academy of Fine Arts compiled a list of pictorial categories by order of importance.
History paintings held top ranking.
Followed by portraitures.
Then landscapes.
And lastly genre paintings.
These organizing principles assigning value to subject matter naturally conceived sub-sets.
Even the very idea of a summer group show has become a form of cliche.
So what better time to harvest “Cezanne’s Apple”—a snippet borrowed from Deleuze’s thoughts on cliche—than June through July.
With this show, we hope to exploit the many facets of cliche: the self-portrait, the tribute painting, the nude, conceptual art.
Any rampant fetishization that may read as a shortcut to meaning or popularity is fair game.

- Bill Powers

「俗套」

由Bill Powers策划

2018年6月20日—7月28日

纽约

“油画难免都有些俗套。一个画家如果想改变这种俗套，将它变形或毁坏，用尽方式去摆弄它——这种想法还是过于智性和抽象了：它只是让俗套变得更俗套，并把画家框定在俗套之中，除了滑稽的模仿之外，无法给他任何其他慰藉。”

——法国后现代主义哲学家吉尔·德勒兹（Gilles Deleuze）

“含义的确定性越高，包含的信息则越少。 例如，从启发性这一点上看，陈词滥调无法与那些伟大的诗歌比拟。”

——美国应用数学家诺伯特·维纳（Norbert Wiener）

我们想象中的情书是甜蜜的。

我们期待毕业典礼上振奋人心的演说。

当俗套颠覆我们的期望，比喻变得陌生，并在某种程度上，产生一种独特性。

在法语中，它最初指代印刷术中复制生产的一种技能，这给这个词增加了很多瓦尔特·本雅明（Walter Benjamin，德国哲学家）的意味。

作为不完全象声词 — 他们说，“Cliche”一词来源于印版冲压的声音。

Click.

（啪嗒）

Click.

（啪嗒）

Cliche.

比听觉上的起源更重要的是，如今我们应该如何定义俗套？对于原创性的背叛......

过度使用的意象......

通用商标成为了普遍性的副产品......

我已经一次又一次地听到这个词，或与其意义相近的话。

马克·格罗特雅恩（Mark Grotjahn）谈及在巴斯奇亚（Basquiat）之后绘制头骨的愚蠢行为。

塞西莉·布朗（Cecily Brown）承认，《美杜莎之筏》（The Raft of the Medusa）出名到她无法想象自己可以如何重新诠释这一场景。

山姆·麦金尼斯（Sam McKinniss）采取了相反的态度：他宣称俗套是他艺术实践的基石，我们应当推崇这种实践。

这也是一个有趣的自由联想的游戏。

如果我说到蝴蝶，你第一个想到的艺术家是谁？

说到牛仔呢？

一个笑脸。

保险杠贴纸。

谁“拥有”独木舟？

独木舟可以被拥有吗？还是需要租赁购买？

搞笑绘画。

这个问题部分可以追溯到等级问题。

回到17世纪的法国，当时的法国美术学院，按照重要程度将绘画划分为不同级别。

历史绘画排名第一。

随后是肖像。

然后是风景画。

最后是风俗画。

这些分类原则为绘画不同的主题赋予了不同等的价值。

今天，夏季群展的想法都已经变得俗套。

那么，除了6月到7月，什么时候才是收获“塞尚的苹果”（从德勒兹关于俗套的思考中借来的比喻）的最佳时机呢？

通过这个展览，我们希望探索俗套的不同侧面：自画像、裸体、观念艺术。

任何猖獗的恋物癖，只要它可以被视作通往意义和流行性的捷径，这都是一场公平的游戏。

——Bill Powers