Tuesday, November 18, 2003
IRONY OVERLOAD
Last weekend I went to the Seattle Art Museum's new exhibit, "Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art." Apparently, the West Coast is awash with irony (perhaps el nino is to blame), and the flood of arch artistic observations threatens to leave the Pacific Coast art scene a conceptual disaster area.
I'm a huge fan of irony, but like any tool, it can be mis- and overused. With a few notable exceptions, each piece in the exhibit was an "ironic commentary on [fill in your hated bourgoise icon or artform here]." When everything is ironic, irony dies, and by the fourth or fifth piece it ceased to be amusing and became tiresome, almost insulting. I was reminded of a great character from the old "Kids in the Hall" show, Sarcasm Man. He would always speak in a sarcastic tone of voice regardless of his sincerity and, predictably, his conversations devolved into shouting matches. (Okay, like all comedy it loses something in translation, but it was funny.)
The point is, irony only works when it is applied sparingly and subtly. It is a rapier, not a club. Most of the artists displaying work at the SAM would do well to remember that if they desire a dialogue with their observer, not an argument.
Last weekend I went to the Seattle Art Museum's new exhibit, "Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art." Apparently, the West Coast is awash with irony (perhaps el nino is to blame), and the flood of arch artistic observations threatens to leave the Pacific Coast art scene a conceptual disaster area.
I'm a huge fan of irony, but like any tool, it can be mis- and overused. With a few notable exceptions, each piece in the exhibit was an "ironic commentary on [fill in your hated bourgoise icon or artform here]." When everything is ironic, irony dies, and by the fourth or fifth piece it ceased to be amusing and became tiresome, almost insulting. I was reminded of a great character from the old "Kids in the Hall" show, Sarcasm Man. He would always speak in a sarcastic tone of voice regardless of his sincerity and, predictably, his conversations devolved into shouting matches. (Okay, like all comedy it loses something in translation, but it was funny.)
The point is, irony only works when it is applied sparingly and subtly. It is a rapier, not a club. Most of the artists displaying work at the SAM would do well to remember that if they desire a dialogue with their observer, not an argument.
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