Princeton University Press
Review by David Starkey
I first saw one of the ISMs books in a museum bookstore—the Whitney’s, I think. Pale blue, beautifully made and about the size of my hand, Hirst-isms felt like something I wanted to own, even before I opened it up and began browsing through the quotations by Damien Hirst: “Life’s infinitely more exciting than art” and “If I believe in art as much as I say I do I’m lying; but I do.”
The series is edited by New York art collector Larry Warsh, one of the founders of the No More Rulers project, a consortium of museums and presses, including Princeton University Press, “dedicated to empowering the creative community and questioning the status quo.” Their publications claim to “erase the boundaries between high and low with the goal of blending popular culture with realms of fine art, design, music, fashion, and technology.” Warsh has said that his own “collecting philosophy evolved while I was living in downtown Manhattan during the 1980s… Hanging out downtown exposed me to the energy of the artists at that time. That era provided a real-time understanding of the artists and creatives who…went on to become some of the most important figures of their generation.”
Reading through seventeen of the books in the ongoing series (see the list of titles reviewed below), I often felt like I was overhearing the sort of conversation that might indeed take place in a New York loft, with the speakers—many of them with roots in street and avant-garde art—referencing both high and popular culture.
Appropriate for books about art, the entries in the ISMs series are striking physical objects. Each 4 ½ by 5 ½ inch volume is cloth-bound in a different color (you won’t soon forget the neon orange of Abramović-isms) and includes a brief, laudatory introduction by Warsh. The books are divided into sections, with each grouping of quotes touching on a particular theme. The end matter includes a chronology of the artist’s life and work, along with a list of sources from which the quotes are drawn, and a single black and white photo of one of the artist’s works. The lack of illustration means that if you aren’t familiar with the artist’s oeuvre, you will have to search for it. While you are Googling, you might well run across one of the quotes, as most of the material is drawn from interviews and profiles available online, which gives the books a kind of DIY feel—you, too, could make an ISMs book about your favorite artist. If you’re feeling tetchy at that point, you might also remark on the fact that the quotes are all centered, so that they look a bit like undergraduate poetry.
None of which is to say that the series doesn’t merit great interest. In fact, each book feels like a little gift, something you can open again and again, always with surprise and delight.
The most “artistic” volume is probably Holzer-sims, the sayings of neo-conceptualist Jenny Holzer, whose texts have appeared on signs and billboards and been projected on public spaces like the interior of the Guggenheim Museum. When you open up Holzer-sims, what you find are not the printed pages of a book, but six folded 21” x 31” sheets of white paper on which are printed, in bold and all caps, a series of statements, alphabetized by the statement’s first word. So, for instance, on the first sheet we learn that “A LOT OF PROFESSIONALS ARE CRACKPOTS” and “BAD INTENTIONS CAN YIELD GOOD RESULTS” and “CATEGORIZING FEAR IS CALMING.”
As with much of Holzer’s work, the assertions can feel both profound and obvious, and it that regard, Holzer-sims is fairly representative of the series as a whole. Sure, there are quotes that don’t feel worthy of being enshrined in a beautiful book. Take, for instance, master manipulator Andy Warhol saying that “I think everybody should like everybody,” or musician and fashion designer Pharrell assuring us “We have the ability to do whatever we want.” However, on balance, truisms and trite expressions are outweighed by thoughtful comments on art-making. Keith Haring tells us: “I spend most of my time deciding what not to do.” Architect, filmmaker, stage designer and sculptor Daniel Arsham reflects that “I never try to be prescriptive about what I’m trying to portray. I want to create a universe that all of these works can exist in.” Of the “Hope” campaign poster he created for the Obama campaign, Shepard Fairey says, “I’m not trying to seduce people with an image. I’m trying to snap them out of a trance.”
Artists tend to thrive on strong emotions, so it’s not surprising that anger and resentment surface in many of the quotations. Marilyn Minter: “Once you’re past menopause, people just think you’re cute.” Jean-Michel Basquiat: “I never learned anything about art in school.” Marina Abramović: “The art studios are full of art pollutions. We have really serious art pollution on this planet.” Judy Chicago: “Although my generation was able to change consciousness around gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etcetera, we have not been able to translate those changes into institutional change. Thus, we have seen how easily the changes can be rolled back.” Ai Weiwei: “A society that has no ideals, that discards the principles of humanitarianism, that abandons the fundamental rights and dignity of humanity, can only survive by denying truth, fairness and justice.”
That’s not say that there’s not also a lot of humor in the books. French street artist JR says, “I’m an artist until I find a real job,” and Warhol often seems to have his tongue firmly in his cheek, as when he claims, “I want somebody to do all my paintings for me.”
Or maybe not. One of the hallmarks of the ISMs is the way each one zings back and forth from the serious to the lighthearted, from specifics to generalities, from enthusiasm to dejection. “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself,” Whitman wrote back in 1855, and Warsh not infrequently highlights the ISMs artists’ openness to sitting with antithetical ideas, or simply changing their minds, as in these two facing-page quotes from graffiti artist Futura: “Music has always been a part of my life, from Frank Sinatra to Kendrick Lamar. The whole range.” And then: “I’m not how I used to be, where music was a necessary soundtrack to my life. I appreciate silence.”
Art as commerce is always a touchy subject, both for the artist and the consumer of art, but Warsh rightly keeps returning to the subject in book after book. Yes, there are countless statements of artistic integrity, like Fairey’s contention that “I’ve never put business before what I wanted to say.” Yet Futura states the obvious: “All artists need patrons, buyers, and people who support them and keep them working.” Damien Hirst, one of the world’s richest artists, is refreshingly frank: “To have money, you have to respect it. That’s the main thing.” Keith Haring had a more cynical take: “I loved when I had the painting inside the Whitney during the Biennial in ’83 and at the same time I had the exact same images on drawings in the subway, it makes all these contradictions like what is value, what is the difference between a museum and a subway?”
I especially love coming across a surprising quote, as when fashion designer Virgil Abloh claims, “I went to architecture school not to learn how to design buildings, but to design a spoon,” or when Marina Abramović says, “When people ask me where I am from, I never say Serbia. I always say I come from a country that no longer exists.” Iranian artist Shirin Neshat feels that “the acrobatics of having to circumvent, outwit, and elude the censor” has “a certain silver lining. Limitations, like inhospitable climates that produce some of the most robust vegetation, often propel an artist to more vigorously exercise his or her creative energies.”
Perhaps the most relevant aspect of the series in our era of emerging fascism is the way many of these artists speak out about the need to fight injustice. Judy Chicago says, “You have to choose hope. Hope comes from feeling that you’re on the side of right and fighting for it. If you’re a passive observer to what’s going on, it’s easy to give in to despair.” And Weiwei again: “You can influence other people and make your voice heard. It would be a shame if we had to confess to our children that we did nothing. That we pretended that we knew nothing. Or that we had no power. Come on! We have great power.”
I believe we do have great power, as these artists and their words demonstrate. If the more recent volumes have a sticker on the back reading, “Printed in China,” that is, one might argue, all the more reason to buy them now.
Books Reviewed: Abloh-isms by Virgil Abloh; Abramović-isms by Marina Abramović; Arsham-isms by Daniel Arsham; Basquiat-isms by Jean-Michel Basquiat; Judy Chicago-isms by Judy Chicago; Fairey-isms by Shepard Fairey; Futura-isms by Futura; Haring-isms by Keith Haring; Hirst-isms by Damien Hirst; Holzer-isms by Jenny Holzer; JR-isms by JR; Minter-isms by Marilyn Minter; Neshat-isms by Shirin Neshat; Warhol-isms by Andy Warhol; Weiwei-isms and Humanity by Ai Weiwei; Pharrell-isms by Pharrell Williams.
