Interview

GILLICK: I remain interested in the potential of art, except I’ve always been more struck by applied modernism than high modernism. It’s partly because of feminist theory and being brought up in the ’70s, with questioning who is speaking, and why, and what authority they’re carrying. And I think these are good things, and that I learned to look elsewhere for my sources. But I’m also operating in the gap—and I think you are, too—between the trajectory of modernity and the trajectory of modernism. So what people think is design is not design—it’s my attempt to engage with the trajectory of modernity.

BRANNON: It’s funny, then, that your work would be criticized for its familiarity.

GILLICK: As critiques go, that would be a success. There’s a French-Caribbean writer, Édouard Glissant, who talks about this concept of the archipelago of the idea. He talked about this idea of the “tremblement”—this trembling that you get in good ideas. And I think there’s something to this idea, that you can reach a point where you’re not looking for profundity -necessarily . . .

BRANNON: I call it a productive frustration.

GILLICK: Now, the problem with all this is that people could say, “Well, so what? That’s very nice. Once more, we’re at the end of ideas, or the end of history, or the end of productiveness, and it leads to a kind of self-conscious collapse . . .” But I don’t think that’s true. I think the work then becomes political or philosophical—it becomes about what you think of the profound questions of daily life.

BRANNON: Americans are obsessed with this idea right now. We are at war. We have a young president. This has created an impulsive and anxious state. It’s either the end of times or we need to have the answer immediately.

GILLICK: But the U.S. has always been a contradiction. It’s always been a deeply protectionist, institutional place, where you’re not allowed to smoke, and you’re not allowed to do this, and you’re not allowed to do that . . . And then, on the other hand, it’s completely libertarian in a way. So it’s got this weird mixture of being incredibly authoritarian and incredibly open at the same time. I go back to something that Philippe and I also used to say to each other: I’m a passenger, not a customer. In Europe, there’s been such a semiotic game with the language and the relationship between individuals and the states. In the early ’90s, following the high years of deregulation in Britain, they started to refer to people on the train as customers. So the train would stop at the station and they’d say, “We’d like to apologize to the customers for the delay.” Now, everyone thinks that America is this kind of evil, consumer, capitalist culture, but if they announced on the subway tomorrow, “We’re sorry to our customers,” then there would be a kind of uproar. But in Europe, this has already happened. So when it comes to my work, what people in the U.S. have to understand is that there is sometimes a deep political content that’s rooted in this postwar reconfiguration in Europe. I’m still a foreigner in America. I’m someone who’s bringing nuanced stories from somewhere else that will always be harder to take. But I’m at least given the space here to articulate some of these things.

BRANNON: Everyone’s favorite topic right now is how the economy will affect the art world. So how will it affect it, for better or for worse?

GILLICK: Contemporary art might have a difficult time. I’ve noticed that I don’t use that term anymore. When I talk about contemporary art, I mean other things. “Contemporary art” for me is now a kind of historical term that describes the 40 years between the Berlin Wall going up and then coming down. I’m not sure who will come up with a better term to describe art right now, but I think contemporary art is actually done for.

BRANNON: [laughs] Did I say contemporary art?

GILLICK: No, I did. But you were asking me about the art market. People think that the art market is about opportunists and hedge-fund managers getting broken art, but what really happened is that there was a new configuration of bourgeois values in the U.S. and an acceptance among the bourgeoisie of contemporary art as an idea. Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m rejecting “contemporary art” as a term because I think that bourgeois people are horrible. As Lawrence Weiner once pointed out, the bourgeoisie are the only people who want to help me. The enlightened bourgeoisie are the only ones who ever buy anything, look after it, and don’t ask for a discount. They want to look after you. But at some point the bourgeoisie reconfigured how it identified itself in relation to art, and what’s ironic is that this has -happened right at the time when there’s a crisis in credit. So, to a certain extent, it’s a bourgeois -crisis . . . Now everyone thinks this is going to result in a battle between -artists and -galleries, but the demands on the bourgeoisie have really come from the development of -nonprofit spaces and the New Museum and Artists Space and White  Columns. They’ve helped build this -bourgeoisie and made them feel included, but they’ve also drained them. People make simpleminded comments about the hedge-fund people and the dealers, but you
also have to look at the behavior of the institutions. They have been complicit in that process because, as an artist, it’s been clear that the price of art has nothing to do with you—it has to do with an idea of what the market will tolerate. These institutions have earnestly and honestly thought, “We’ll push it for the future because these are good times right now, and we can charge this much . . . It all goes toward the functioning of the school, and if we’ve got any extra, toward the endowment, and—in the future—that will be good for somebody.” And this is an argument that no one has actually transcended . . . I’m going to go pee. [Brannon laughs] I’ve never done an interview after four glasses of white wine.

BRANNON: Okay, before you go, I want you to tell me whether or not the following people or things are overrated. You can answer yes or no. Firstly, Martin Kippenberger?

GILLICK: No.

BRANNON: Marcel Broodthaers?

GILLICK: No.

BRANNON: Jenny Holzer?

GILLICK: No, funnily enough.

BRANNON: Peter Saville?

GILLICK: Yes. [laughs] Definitely.

BRANNON: Daniel Birnbaum?

GILLICK: Yes. Definitely.

BRANNON: Francesco Bonami.

GILLICK: No, because I’ve always wanted to be his friend.

BRANNON: Pornography?

GILLICK: No.

BRANNON: Young artists?

GILLICK: No.

BRANNON: Yourself  ?

GILLICK: Am I overrated? Is that the question?

BRANNON: Yeah. Yes or no?

GILLICK: Uh, no.

BRANNON: What about me?

GILLICK: Yes.

BRANNON: Certainly. [laughs]

GILLICK: The trouble with a lot of these things, of course, is that it depends who’s making the judgment. The biggest problem for my generation is that people who were born years before us have no concept of us at all. There’s a massive gap. I don’t know why, but we were really like orphans. Those people competed against us—they hated us and fought for things—and yet they had no interest in our work. No one born in the 1950s took much interest in my generation, and all we’ve done is try to fix it by talking to the people who came after us . . . I don’t hang out with anyone who is 10 years older than I am, but I hang out with a lot of people who are 10 years younger. It doesn’t make me good—like a good person hangs out with younger people—but it must have to do with something they encountered. I was eager and interested.

BRANNON: There are interesting 25-year-olds. Not many, but a few . . . I think that both of us make very polite work . . .

GILLICK: [laughs] Now I’m going to be tough. You know who makes polite work? People like Thomas Hirschhorn. People who clearly represent the fancy idea of the Swiss designer of what looks like arty work because they’re polite enough to play the role. They’re invited to play it. With you or with me, you’re not sure, because there is deep content in the work that is extremely nasty and difficult to deal with . . .

BRANNON: Well, when I said polite, I meant that its form could potentially be very pleasant. I often think of it in terms of tact—the art of revealing potentially stressful information. Not that all of my content is dark . . .

GILLICK: It’s impolite as an artist at someone’s house to go to bed at nine o’clock in the evening. Or say, “I’m leaving now!” That would be impolite. [laughs]

BRANNON: Yeah, of course people are disappointed if you’re not entertaining—and to be entertaining often means to be drunk.

GILLICK: And don’t forget to leave your fully curated discussion panel at home.

Matthew Brannon is an artist living in New York. His work is currently on view at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles, Baibakov Art Projects in Moscow, and at the ICA in London. His solo exhibition, “Iguana,” opens this fall at The Approach gallery in London.