Marc Alan Jacobs: Hymietown
William Conger: Circus Paintings
There’s humor in Jacobs’s repetition, and by encouraging the viewer to punch, he asks us to examine our capacity for prejudice. The way the sculptures right themselves–with a motion Jacobs says resembles the rocking made by Jews in prayer–is a witty response to aggression. And the show’s title–taken from Jesse Jackson’s notorious reference to New York City, where Jacobs now lives–is humorously echoed in the forest of identical bar mitzvah figures.
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But in part because of that title I found the exhibit troubling, even though minority groups have long tried to defuse slurs by appropriating them. Jackson’s 1987 remark made an impression on Jacobs largely because it made one on his parents: they’d been planning to vote for Jackson but were enraged by what he said. Before that, Jacobs had never heard the expression “Hymietown.” Does the title parody prejudice, or risk continuing it? Couldn’t an anti-Semite have mounted an identical show? Jacobs agrees that that’s possible, but gallery owner Ned Schwartz says he’d be unlikely to present a show by an anti-Semite (suggesting another role Jacobs’s identity plays). Still, questions remain.
Ben Stone’s seven provocative sculptures at Ten in One stand somewhere between the two extremes, gently tweaking pop-culture values without completely opposing them. Like Jacobs’s, his works look mass-produced. But if Jacobs’s overwhelming repetition seems worthy of advertising, Stone’s restraint produces a modest poetry. Honorable Mention consists of two imposing but empty handmade tables. The humorous Mini-fans consists of four ceiling fans that actually rotate but are far too small to move much air. Unlike Jacobs’s installation, they minimize rather than exaggerate. Uncle Sam and Old Yeller are, among other things, bongs–one built around a plastic Uncle Sam lawn ornament and the other a kitschy dog sculpture. If you tilt them back their eyes light up, and the dog’s tail wags noisily; the pipe and large tube Stone has appended gives each useless ornament an arguably subversive function.
But the paintings here also stand as an eloquent reminder that a mass-culture inspiration does not mean the artist must abandon internal complexity or the old-fashioned idea that he can express himself by creating new forms. In fact these works are animated by a tension between the almost inarticulate but immediate impact of kitsch and the contemplative appeal of high-art abstraction–between colors that ask to be seen in a moment and colors with inner depth.
