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"Honesty Bullshit Honestly" takes a critical look at the way that English is used within the contemporary art community and industry in regards to describing and summarizing artworks for the general public or specific audiences. Questions the book tries to investigate include "Why is the description of contemporary art written in such a way that it is often confusing or completely pretentious?" and "How much does this kind of writing actually inform or alienate a larger public?".

TRANSCRIPT

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This thesis would not have been possible without the amazing and thorough help of my grammar coach, copy editor and English expert Diana ‘Dee’ Fanning, who also happens to be my mother. I could not have asked for a better partner in editing. Thanks, mom!

I’d also like to thank Donald Fanning, who not only facilitated contact with my fabulous copy editor but is also a lovely and loving father as well as Denis Krob who helped guide me through my own honesty in addition to doing a wonderful job at being the love of my life. I love all of you.

And, a final thanks goes to Ludmila Rodrigues who did the layout for the book version of the thesis and helped me from losing my mind over it. Beijos!

All text and graphics by John Fanning

www.johnkrob.com

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface: A bit of honesty from the author

I. Abstract

II. The context of text within the contexts art is presented to the public

III. Why does writing about contemporary art seem to speak a different language?

IV. ‘International Art English’

V. Responses to the International Art English essay: - Martha Roseler / Hito Steyrl - Ben Davis - Grayson Perry

VI. Judging 3 publications from 3 art events

The Catalogs:

- Venice Biennale, - Frieze art fair - Phillips auction house

VII. Constants and observations of the texts from the catalogues

VIII. Conclusions

IX. References / Bibliography

X - Compendium I

XI - Compendium II

XII - Compendium IIA

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Preface: A Bit of Honesty From the Author

Before diving into other peoples’ descriptive texts and such, I will share a bit of my own honesty with bit of background about myself. I did not attend art school until I was 31, starting at the bachelor’s level. I had, however, been making artworks, exhibiting and performing for a long time previous to entering school in 2010, though I did not have an official academic background in art primarily because I really wanted to avoid academic influence with what I was doing and generally disliked and distrusted academic approaches to art. From 2007-2009 I was co-owner and co-founder of a gallery space mixed with an artist/artisan-made goods shop which was close to my home town in the small city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA. Our goal with the space was to bring a younger, fresher and much more contemporary form of art to our small area, where the majority of art that is presented to the public is of a primarily decorative and/or classical nature. One of my main jobs at our space was to write the texts which would accompany artists’ works in the gallery for exhibitions which would occur monthly.

I had been to many galleries and museums in the past as well as reading press releases from various galleries and museums from various parts of the world and found so much of the writing regarding the artwork to be amazingly convoluted, often saying a whole lot while actually saying nothing and I couldn’t relate well to most descriptive texts and generally became more annoyed when reading them. I could decrypt a good amount of what was being said as even though I had not yet had a formal training in art I read and did my own studies about art and the environment around art quite regularly. While I could figure out the often overblown intellectual tone of the texts I found myself becoming completely irritated by it. I constantly wondered why most every text I saw or read insisted on this kind of interpretive language, alienating those who couldn’t understand it and further annoying those, like myself, who are tired of having to decode these texts.

With the descriptive texts I wrote for exhibitions at our collective gallery I wanted all of the visitors who came there to have a clear understanding

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of what they were looking at as the majority of people who came there did not come from academic art backgrounds or had a kind of pre-requisite, let’s call it, art ‘savvy’. I felt attempting to reproduce the style of texts one usually encounters with contemporary art, like those I had encountered at other galleries and museums, would just alienate most people who came to our space.

Mentioning alienation brings up one of my central points to this thesis. With the general public (meaning those who are not artists or connected to art in some way or have the pre-requisite art ‘savvy’, previously mentioned) it seems quite common that many of them will say in regards to contemporary art that they just don’t ‘get’ it most of the time. Contemporary art can be a confusing entity to approach as it has gone very far beyond the classical approach to art to encompass almost anything. I personally find a good majority of contemporary art to be not all that interesting or worth my time to interpret. Having to then read inflated texts about works and artists makes things even less engaging. My irritation about how art and artists are described to an audience plus a curiosity about the possibility of change within that led me to look deeper into the topic which subsequently became this thesis.

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“I came across a short text (which I don’t want to reproduce here) written by an artist in a catalogue of his work. I read it, I re-read it, then I read it again. The first sentence is easy. In the second, it gets complicated; by the third sentence, I’m lost. I hardly understand a word, and much less why he is using these words. What’s going on?”

- Jan Svengusson, An Artist’s Textbook

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Abstract

Art has changed significantly over time, incorporating an immense spectrum of contextual forms. Over the years the manner in which art has been presented and described to the public (in the form of text accompanying an exhibition whether physically in the space, in published form (catalogue, book) or in the form of a press release) has also developed its’ own specialized language and dialogical approach which attempts to frame the artist and works in a specific manner, generally referring to the artist’s intentions with the work presented as well as a number of references to other artists, philosophers, writers as well as cultural and historical happenings and movements. Often the importance of the work is also mentioned, usually in reference to the aforementioned references. Because of the international nature of art, the majority of galleries, museums, biennales and art fairs worldwide use English as a communicative language for their texts which are presented along with artists and their work. However, the kind of English used is a specialized form of English which has become accepted as a general standard of how artists and works are described. This thesis will explore elements of these kinds of descriptive texts and question the effectiveness of them. Do these texts truly describe the artist and works in a manner that is communicative and understandable to a wide audience or do they only communicate to those who are already acquainted with this kind of semantics? Can text which is obviously for those who already know how to interpret it be adjusted to fit a larger audience?

In the quest for finding answers, I looked at many different types of texts used to describe artists and their work and attempted my own manner of finding keys to these texts as to how I believe they are communicating. My observations are subjective and are by no means the ultimately definitive manner in which to properly judge descriptive texts about artists and their work. I have my own definitions of what I find clear or convoluted, understandable or obscure and good or bad. Similar, really, to how people perceive art in general. An artist may have a certain intention with their work which anyone else may see something

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different within. Most people know what they like or not when they just simply see or experience a work by an artist, regardless of whatever kind of descriptive text accompanies a work.

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The context of text within the contexts art is presented to the public

Art can be presented to the public in a myriad of ways. The most common are galleries and museums, but art can also be shown and/or sold at events such as biennales (an art event that happens every 2 years1 which is meant purely for display), art fairs (commercial events that are similar to an “expo” in which the main goal is selling artwork) and auctions (the most purely elite commercial context). Galleries can be divided into 2 categories: for-profit or non-profit. The division is simple: for-profit galleries sell the work they show, non-profit galleries don’t. Museums serve a “non-profit” function to the public (as far as the art is concerned) as the art there is not for sale directly at the museum. However, art that has been in museums can be sold, generally within the context of an auction house that acts as the middleman between works and buyers. Auction houses primarily acquire art to sell through galleries or private collectors, though, and usually museums acquire works (either to display for a temporary time or to become part of the museum’s collection) through the galleries and private collectors.

The texts one reads to describe artists and their works which are displayed in galleries (or on their press releases, promotional flyers/materials, catalogues etc.) are primarily written by curators, assistant curators or even (almost always unpaid) interns. In general it’s the same for museums, though it depends on the size of the museum how many people are involved in writing texts about artists and their work. Most all museums have separate press officers that work together with a curator and often an assistant curator. It is mostly the job of the main or assistant curator to write the texts about whatever exhibition is occurring. Larger museums often will have more assistants to the curator(s) and press officer(s) who may actually write descriptive texts. One crucial element to writing the texts accompanying an exhibition is the artist themselves. The writers of the descriptive texts don’t just make up texts on their own. Various ways of acquiring info and direction on what to write about an artist and their work occur.

1 In addition to biennales, there are also trienales, quadrinales and other large art events which happen within a set number of years.

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For exhibitions artists may directly speak with the person writing the text or they might submit a text that is then modified. In catalogues for events such as biennales and art fairs and places like auction houses, texts are often cut-and-pasted from already existing texts and collaged into new ones.

Why does writing about contemporary art seem to speak a different language?

A lot of writing about contemporary art is trying very hard to represent something. Whether the writing is trying to explain an artwork in the sense of what it actually is or the theoretical framework behind the work or how the work or the artist fits within the context of art history in general or within society, there is an element of representation. Writing in art is an attempt to make bridges between artists and their work, the institution and ‘industry’ (or ‘market’) of art and some form of the public (either a specific faction or the general public). A good deal of the people writing about art are generally entrenched in the arts, generally with a background which includes art history or theory acquired in an academic setting.

The American author and blogger C. Song Jackson keeps an interesting blog about the interaction between art and commerce with a focus on the concept of ‘jargonizing’ called “The Capitalist Artist”. In one blog entry titled “Academic Art”, Jackson makes the observation that “The academy will always fight to have complete control of the meaning of art–not only what “art” means, but also what “good” and “bad” art are. The academy will always set up judges (critics, professors…) and rules, both implicit and explicit. The primary power of the academy is twofold: 1) awards and 2) networks. Most awards are given by those in the academic world. Thus, the academic world gets to say, “This is the best work of art.” The academic world also provides the necessary connections needed for enabling an artist to be seen or heard. Without these connections, it will be very difficult for an artist to be recognized by the academic world. An artist’s only recourse is to either: 1) ignore the academic world and go straight to the market, or 2) hope that somehow the academic world

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comes to their senses.”2

By using the model offered by Jackson, it would make sense that an academic approach to writing about art is the most common. If academies worldwide are attempting to “have complete control of the meaning of art”, students at art academy will be influenced by this in varying ways, often perhaps without noticing the element of control but that what they do is “right” or “wrong”. It is common for teachers within an academy to claim that “there is no right or wrong” but teachers still have to appraise a students work in some positive or negative way.

Art students are required to write about their work in some way, even though in many art schools there aren’t specific classes about how to do this (for instance, in 2013, the art school I attended offered a Thesis Lab class. Prior to 2013, students were expected to produce a thesis on their own and/or with help from instructors). A particular method of writing has been established and reinforced in academies worldwide, whether explicitly or ambiguously.

(GRAPHIC [‘Artist Network’])

2 Jackson, C. Song, “Academic Art”, posted 11 August 2011 (http://foldingtime.word-presscom/2011/08/11/academic-art/, accessed 13 December 2013)

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International Art English

A major catalyst in my decision to analyze writing about art came in the form of an essay titled “International Art English”, written for the online arts journal Triple Canopy and published in July, 2012 by artist David Levine and sociologist Alix Rule. In this essay, Rule & Levine analyze one of the most common occurrences in which artists and artworks are described and presented, the gallery press release. This particular essay has caused quite a lot of debate, responses from other art writers and even forums that are aimed at discussing the role of writing about art. The phrase “International Art English” (abbreviated “IAE”, which I will be subsequently using to describe this kind of writing in reference to the essay) was devised by the authors. It was created to reflect the role of the specific type of English utilized within texts one finds in the globalized “art world”.3 A large majority of galleries, museums and art spaces worldwide use English within their communication to the greater world. However, the form of English used is highly specific to the arts context. Rule & Levine attempt in their essay to investigate this. They approached their own research into the topic by analyzing every announcement/press release that was published through the arts website/”listserv”4 e-flux since its inception in 1999. e-flux5, according to the “about” section of its website, “.. is an international network which reaches more than 90,000 visual art professionals on a daily basis through its website, e-mail list and special projects. Its news digest – “e-flux announcements” – distributes information on some of the world’s most important contemporary art exhibitions, publications and symposia”6

3 Previous to the publication of the essay, this kind of language used within arts writing was generally referred to as “artspeak”/”art-speak”. “Artspeak” is still used as a term, though “International Art English” describes this kind of language within the “art world” in a more specific manner. I refer to both “IAE” and the “art world” in quotations as the terms have debate surrounding them. 4 “Listserv” is a way to refer to early electronic mailing list software applications, allowing a sender to send one email to the central list and then transparently sending it on to the addresses of the subscribers to the list. (Definition from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listserv, accessed 10 January 2014)5 “e-flux” is always written in lowercase letters.6 http://www.e-flux.com/about/, accessed 10 January 2014

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Rule & Levine note that e-flux sends out roughly three announcements per day through its news digest.

They also note that though e-flux deals only with non-profit institutions, these institutions must pay to send out an announcement and not every submission is accepted. Rule & Levine digitally gathered the archive of announcements from e-flux and then entered them into “Sketch Engine”, a ‘concordance generator’7 that allows a person to analyze language usage in a variety of ways. The authors then compared the frequency of words within the collected e-flux announcements to the website of the British National Corpus (BNC), which represents British English usage in the second half of the twentieth century. Rule & Levine’s essay does make some good points but it’s not an outstanding essay. It’s definitely written for an audience that already understands a good deal about art and suffers a bit from occasionally wonky grammar and under-explained points. The better parts of the essay attemps to point out ways certain words are used within IAE. From the section with the header “Vocabulary”, Rule & Levine say:

“IAE has a distinctive lexicon: aporia, radically, space, proposition, biopolitical, tension, transversal, autonomy. An artist’s work inevitably interrogates, questions, encodes, transforms, subverts, imbricates, displaces—though often it doesn’t do these things so much as it serves to, functions to, or seems to (or might seem to) do these things. IAE rebukes English for its lack of nouns: Visual becomes visuality, global becomes globality, potential becomes potentiality, experience becomes... experiencability.”8

7 In publishing, a concordance is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, with their immediate contexts. (Definition from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordance_(publishing), accessed 10 January, 2014)8 Levine, David and Rule, Alex, “International Art English”, Triple Canopy, published July 2012 (http://canopycanopycanopy.com/issues/16/contents/international_art_english, accessed 19 October 2013)

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Rule & Levine do hit a nail on the head when they mention that IAE rebukes English for its lack of nouns. IAE does utilize & often invents nouns from adjectives at an alarming rate. Philosophical and theoretical texts will often do a similar thing and one could view utilizing IAE as an attempt at being philosophical or theoretical. Further on in the “Vocabulary” section of their essay, the authors note that “spatial and nonspatial space are interchangeable in IAE.” They highlight other grammatical aspects of IAE, such as the pairing of like terms, the reliance on dependent (also known as subordinate) clauses and using more rather than fewer words.

To give an example of “like terms” they give the example with 2 phrases from one e-flux press release from an exhibition by Korean artist Kim Beom: “Kim reveals the tension between internal psychology and external reality, and relates observation and knowledge as states of mind.” (emphasis added). A dependent (or subordinate) clause is one that cannot stand alone as a complete sentence, because it does not express a complete thought. Rule & Levine note that the use of dependent clauses is “one of the most distinctive features of art writing” and also refer to it in a sentence which humorously begins with a dependent/subordinate clause: “When we sense ourselves to be in proximity to something serious and art related, we reflexively reach for subordinate clauses.” To illustrate using more rather than fewer words, the authors use a piece of a press release for Danish/Icelandic artist Ólafur Elíasson and his work Yellow Fog, which “is shown at dusk – the transition period between day and night – it represents and comments on the subtle changes in the day’s rhythm.” The authors also note that “groupings of ostensibly unrelated items” are also common, which they note in a press release for Korean artist Jin-Me Yoon: “Like an insect, or the wounded, or even a fugitive, Yoon moves forward with her signature combination of skill and awkwardness” (interestingly the authors don’t mention the doubly incorrect use of the word “or” and the use of commas with that. Re-written properly it should read “Like an insect, the wounded or even a fugitive,….” Or a bit more clumsy “Like an insect or the wounded or even a fugitive,…”) . In addition to the certain grammatical elements, Rule & Levine trace the origins of IAE to the post-structuralist texts by various French philosophers

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who came into provenance in the 1960’s and 1970’s as a reaction to structuralist philosophical thought. Summarizing both structuralism and post-structuralism succinctly is a bit tricky. Structuralism was a movement of intellectuals (philosophers, historians, writers, etc.) who disagreed with some of the theoretical ideas about human existence which had been proposed & popularized around the mid-20th century primarily by linguists, Marxists and psychoanalysts. One main disagreement the structuralists had with the theoretical ideas by these groups was that “each man is what he makes himself”. From the website philosopher.org.uk: “For the structuralist the individual is shaped by sociological, psychological and linguistic structures over which he/she has no control, but which could be uncovered by using their methods of investigation.”9

Post-structuralists argued that while language and society were shaped by a kind of governed rule, there is no underlying structure which can define the human condition and that it was impossible to step outside of discourse and survey the situation objectively. Post-structuralist thought became the backbone of Post-modernism, which questioned and challenged the ideas of and search for an ultimate truth behind humanity (i.e. the idea of “God(s)” determining our condition as humans).

So basically, one group of intellectuals establishes a certain way of looking & thinking about human society while the follow-up group generally rejects multiple elements of these thoughts, with the cycle continuing thusly. A large number of contemporary artists, critics, educators and art intellectuals have steadfastly glommed on to post-structuralist and post-modernist thought to explain, justify, philosophize and think about how art is perceived, received, defined and executed by either artist or observer.

9 Jones, Roger “Post-Structuralism” (http://www.philosopher.org.uk/poststr.ht-m#Post_Structuralism, accessed 28 November, 2013)

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In the U.S.A. the translated writings by the French post-structuralist philosophers were first presented into an academic artistic context through the publication October, which started in 1976 and is still published today through M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Press. The journal was established by art critics Rosalind E. Krauss and Annette Michelson, who both left the magazine Artforum to start a publication which sought to give deeper intellectual and interpretive criticism in the context of art. “October”, as noted by Rule & Levine “had an enormous impact on the interpretation and evaluation of art and also changed the way writing about art sounded.”. They also note that Krauss and most of her colleagues started writing in ways which were heavily influenced not only by French philosophical texts themselves but especially the English translations of them: “Many of IAE’s particular lexical tics come from French, most obviously the suffixes -ion, -ity, -ality, and -ization, so frequently employed over homier alternatives like -ness. The mysterious proliferation of definite and indefinite articles—“the political,” “the space of absence,” “the recognizable and the repulsive”—are also French imports.” The French that was used by post-structuralists was such that it was both highbrow in nature but also very often a kind of parody of highbrow French (which Rule & Levine note that the “distinction was mostly lost in translation”), with sentences that ran on for ages and had heavy usage of adjectival verb forms, indefinite articles (which are more common especially in French in general) and past and present participles. In addition to French, October’s writers were also heavily influenced by German, primarily the “Frankfurt School” (which is a term referring to the thinkers affiliated or merely associated with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, primarily a neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory think tank/academic institution which had emphasis on the critical component of theory). Rule & Levine then postulate that because of October’s writers adopting a style that was based on highly intellectual yet also (often wonky or accidentally) translated theoretical critique and that October became so well renowned within critical art circles, IAE was born and then quickly canonized into much of the “art world’s” writings. Because of increasing globalization over the past decades and the international nature of English, IAE has become the standard language of the world’s artistic discourse.(GRAPHIC)

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In an interview with writer Andy Beckett in the UK newspaper The Guardian, Rule & Levine expand a bit on their essay. Levine comments: “You can’t speak in simple sentences as a museum and be taken seriously. You can’t say, ‘This artist produces funny work.’ In our postmodern world, simple is just bad. You’ve got to say, ‘This artist is funny and ...”

“If you read catalogue essays from the 50s and 60s, and I have some, there are these sweeping claims about what artists do – and what they do to you.” A 1961 catalogue essay for a Rothko exhibition in New York declared that the famously doomy painter was “celebrating the death of civilization ... The door to the tomb opens for the artist in search of his muse.” Levine says: “That style of art writing has been overturned, and rightly so. It was politically chauvinistic, authoritarian. IAE is about trying to create a more sensitive language, acknowledging the realities of how things [made by artists] work.” 10 Rule comments: “This language has enforced a hermeticism of contemporary art that is not particularly healthy. IAE has made art harder for non-professionals.” She also notes that the artists who’ve responded most positively “are the ones who have been through master of fine arts programmes.”

One aspect that the Guardian article claims has given rise to the ubiquity of IAE is the influx of new money into the art market. Levine remarks, “The more overheated the market gets, the more overheated the language gets” and “The more you can muddy the waters around the meaning of a work, the more you can keep the value high”.

10 Beckett, Andy, “A User’s Guide to Artspeak”, The Guardian, 27 January 2013 (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/27/users-guide-international-art-english?intc-mp=ILCMUSTXT9386, accessed 20 November, 2013)

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Responses to the International Art English essay

Whether or not “International Art English” was actually a well-written observational essay or quasi-science pretending to be actually relevant, Rule & Levine’s timing with the essay seemed to fall at the right moment. They were arguably the first to write such an essay about the specific kind of English used in descriptive art writing on a global scale, attempting to scientifically define it and give reason for its existence, that then caused a large buzz within art circles.11 There have been a number of essays, blog posts and general commentary about the article since it was published.

- Martha Roseler / Hito Steyrl

e-flux, the same place from which Rule & Levine cultivated the press releases that were analyzed, published two reactions to the article in their monthly journal from May 2013. One was by American artist and former professor at Rutgers University Martha Roseler, the other by German artist Hito Steyrl who teaches media art at the University of Arts Berlin. Roseler’s article, titled “English and All That”, is the more academic of the two and her prose is that of someone who has been very much entrenched in the style of discourse which comes from an academic art background (she writes for an audience who already knows references she makes and is already part of the larger “art world”). Steyrl’s article, titled “International Disco Latin”, is a slightly clearer and less highbrow critique of the IAE essay, though judging by Steyrl’s writing style she obviously comes from an academic artistic background.

Both authors are critical of the IAE essay especially in regards to the essay choosing to analyze press releases. Roseler states:

“Sniffing after the trail of press-release copy in the search for a diagnosis of a perceived art-world malady seems to misconstrue what a press release is and what it is designed to do or to be. It hardly needs to be said that a press release is a long-form piece of advertising copy, with embedded keywords. This is such a

11 As a side note, in researching this thesis I have yet to find another essay that deals with descriptive writing about contemporary art in such a manner of attempting to “define” it.

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commonsensical understanding of linguistic folderol12 that moving the subject to the art-world press release impels the writers of the article under dissection here to try to reassure us, their readers, that what they are doing is not in fact merely a silly game—when it may very well be merely a silly game”.

Steyrl says a similar thing in a slightly more understandable though still wordy manner:

“In the unstated hierarchies of publishing, press releases barely even make it to the bottom. They have the lifespan of a fruit fly and the farsightedness of a grocery list”, “Typically written by overworked and underpaid assistants and interns across the world, the press release’s pompous prose contrasts most acutely with the lowly status of its authors. Press releases are the art world’s equivalent of digital spam….. And while they may well constitute the bulk of art writing, they are also its most destitute strata, both in form and in content. It is thus an interesting choice to focus on this as a sampling of art-speak, because it is not exactly representative.”

Both authors deride Rule & Levine for creating a correlation that descriptive writing about contemporary art (what the authors christen as “IAE”) is convoluted and wonky because of how they analyze only press releases in their essay. Steyrl makes the point that press releases are “not exactly representative” of art-speak but also that press releases “may well constitute the bulk of art writing” which may be one of the more important observations as far as how writing about contemporary art intermingles with a wider audience. The text on a press release is generally what ends up being the text that accompanies an exhibition and therefore is the text that is attempting to create a bridge to the viewer(s). Both authors also touch upon different shortcomings of Rule & Levine’s analysis of IAE, chiefly the duo’s oversight about how English is being used on an international level. Roseler writes “Our diagnosticians note but may not quite understand that global English is a necessarily simplified language, most useful for communicating simple ideas and instructions.”

12 Folderol, or falderal, is a rather obscure word stemming from the 18th century that means “trivial or nonsensical fuss”

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Steyrl, in regards to the acquisition of English by non-native speakers who wish to work in the art field, focuses more on the economic and political aspects of doing so. “Clearly, as with any other resource, access needs to be restricted in order to protect and perpetuate privilege. Interns and assistants the world over must be told that their domestic—and most likely public—education simply won’t do. The only way to shake off the shackles of your insufferable foreign origins is to attend Columbia or Cornell, where you might learn to speak impeccable English—untainted by any foreign accent or non-native syntax. And after a couple of graduate programs where you pay $34,740 annually for tuition, you just might be able to find yet another internship”.

Roseler and Steyrl comment on the inherent element of colonialism and empire-building within the push for English as an international language, especially in the “art world”. Roseler: “The spread of the [English] language may be traceable to colonialism, to be sure, but richness seemed to be the underlying reason for its success…” Steyrl, directly referring to “IAE”: “IAE” is not only the language of interns and non-native English speakers. It is also a side effect of a renewed primitive accumulation operating worldwide by means of art. “IAE” is an accurate expression of social and class tensions around language and circulation within today’s art worlds and markets: a site of conflict, struggle, contestation, and often invisible and gendered labor. As such, it supports oppression and exploitation. It legitimizes the use of contemporary art by the 1%.”

One last relevant comment that just Roseler notes is on the overall impact of the “IAE” article within various art circles. What strikes her about the subsequent buzz that surrounded the article is that the article seems to imply that those in charge of/controlling/facilitating things within the “art world” (or however one wishes to see it) are concerned at all with what she calls “linguistic ornaments” and that these rather vague powers-that-be then have to defend those ornaments.

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- Ben Davis

While both Roseler and Steyrl write critical responses to the “IAE” article there is a lack of “direct” usage of English to deliver their critique (for instance what one would expect from a journalistic article). Both authors use a lot of grammar which seems to belong to the typical art-writing (or what can be considered “IAE”) oeuvre, especially Roseler’s. A more direct critique came from Ben Davis, the executive editor of the online journal ARTINFO. His succinct but effective article entitled “International Art English, the Joke That Forgot It Was Funny” generally avoids the pitfalls of a lot of the writing about contemporary art and is more journalistic. Davis challenges Rule & Levine’s motives of trying to “prove scientifically that the art world” is “a hive of pompous windbags” by their technique of using the e-flux press releases as evidence of this (a process he says must have been due to convenience). For Davis, it’s not completely their usage of press releases as their main source that bothers him “but the assertion that these particular press releases stand for trends within the entire art world”.

This questioning of the source material used in the “IAE” essay was, of course, one of the central arguments in Roseler & Steyrl’s articles. Davis actually cites their articles (as his was written after theirs), noting that he also found “the tremendous excitement it caused to be more significant than the argument itself”. He finds the implication by Rule & Levine that “IAE” is in fact its own unique language “seemed both overstated and trivial — but most of all strangely tone deaf about the art world of which it claimed to speak so authoritatively”. Davis then mentions the interview piece in the Guardian with the claim that the art market boom has contributed to a dominance of “IAE” which he rebukes by saying the “the jargon pilloried in the Triple Canopy piece is all but irrelevant to the discourse around the unholy trinity of Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and Takashi Murakami, the most visible faces of the market”. Unfortunately, Davis doesn’t expand on this point. However, by implying that auction-house heroes such as Koons, Hirst and Murakami have nothing to do with “IAE” one can assume that artists who are already at the top of the art market need only their own famous names and established pedigrees to appeal to people.

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Davis’ central point to his critique follows. He begins this with the statement, “I wouldn’t deny that the art world is still awash in a lot of sophomoric intellectual bullshit. It clearly is. Yet the obviousness of this point is the problem.” Davis then continues by saying the “IAE” essay doesn’t take into account the “complexity of the actual environment it is generalizing about”. Davis doubts that the use of this kind of English is all that big of a topic in the grand scheme of the “art world”, but gives credit to Rule & Levine for their attempt at making a kind of political statement with their essay by “unmasking art’s false investment in a superficially radical vocabulary” and that “artspeak is off-putting and elitist”. A statement he makes after possibly brings up the most debate, saying that “the idea of “IAE” lends itself to old-fashioned anti-intellectualism”. This statement is something that is tricky territory. Defining the way people in the “art world” use their own brand of English to describe art and then coining this as “International Art English” is possibly the essay’s biggest strength. The essay doesn’t necessarily try to make a statement of anti-intellectualism. If it did, Rule and Levine would advocate more base-level or simpler English as what should be the alternative to “IAE”.

The essay does poke fun at a lot of the inconsistencies and rather unnecessary flourishes of descriptive writing about contemporary art but it is hardly pointing to it as intellectual bourgeois bullshit that needs to be eradicated, nor is it “old-fashioned” (in the sense of (what Davis may be referring to with that phrase) a political manifesto in the vein of late-60’s radicals rallying against the intellectual elite). Davis ends his article by lambasting the overall superficiality of the essay and that the term “International Art English” “almost instantly became detached from its original meaning, and used by various people as a buzzword to drum up superficial interest.”

- Grayson Perry

A different kind of response to the “IAE” article was made by British artist Grayson Perry. During October and November of 2013, Perry did a series of honest and humorous lectures for BBC radio in various locations around the United Kingdom & Ireland. The primary goal of his lectures was an

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analysis of the concept of “taste” within art and especially contemporary art, where the rules of taste are seemingly quite confusing to many. In his first lecture entitled “Democracy has Bad Taste” held at the Tate Modern in London13, Perry first breeches the subject of descriptive writing in the arts by quoting a wall text he had written down while being at the Uruguayan pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011. The wall text said: “A common ground is based on the fact that affectivity remains a central access in contemporary Uruguayan artistic production. This exhibition puts forward two seemingly anti-thetical notions of this idea. On the one hand Magela Ferrero’s personal diary, a written and visual work in progress, and on the other, the discourse and meta-discourse about language in Alejandro Cesarco’s constant need to shed light on what it has said and not said, multiplying the winks, quotes, repetitions and versions of his favourite subject matters.”

The audience laughs and claps a bit in a mix of both semi-disbelief and (because of the number of art professionals in the audience) recognition of this kind of writing. Grayson simply replies to the response of the audience with, “Neither do I!”. He then says, “This is International Art English” and speaks about Rule & Levine’s essay, saying “they describe the kind of metaphysical seasickness you get from reading this sort of text”. He talks about its origins in 60’s magazine writing and how it “very quickly spread like wildfire because everybody wanted to be thought of as being very serious about the art and so it spread to institutions, commercial galleries, even students’ dissertations... you’ll still see it in today”. He continues by stating “Now the non-fluent in this kind of language might feel a bit uneducated and they might… they think you might need to understand this in order to pass judgment. [whispering into the microphone]: I just want to tell you now, you don’t.”

He then talks about the consumption of art, from the pop-art ideal of exploiting consumerism in the mid to late 60’s up to today where, for instance, Japanese mega-artist Takashi Murakami installed an actual Louis Vuitton boutique as part of an exhibition because Murakami had 13 Quotes from Grayson Perry are taken from the transcripts of the lecture so they feature all words spoken by Perry and should therefore be read in a conversational manner.

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done a number of limited edition designs for handbags for the fashion giant and continues to blur the line between art and commercial design. Perry comments on the rather recent breed of art collectors who equate owning contemporary art with, for example, buying a Ferrari. A lot of contemporary art has become a major commodity. On the other hand, art has also challenged becoming a commodity by expanding into territories where work cannot be sold and where the “experience” is the key factor. Because of this, it often seems anything can be art if people are told that it is. Though, how does anyone judge what actually is quality?

Perry states, “the whole idea of quality seems to be a sort of contested word now like you’re buying into this sort of… ‘the language of the elite’ by saying “oh that’s very good” or something, you know. Oh no, so it’s really problematic about how you might judge this work because to say it’s not beautiful is to sort of put the wrong kind of criteria on it. You might say, “Oh it’s dull!”, “Oh you’re just not understanding it with the right terms.” And I kind of go, “Well, how do we judge these things on,” because a lot of them are quite politicized. But then again I might say, “Well what do I judge them against?” Do I judge them against government policy? Do I judge them against reality TV? So in the end I’m sort of, what do we do, you know what happens to this sort of art when it doesn’t have validation?”. Though Perry doesn’t specifically say so in his speech, he does allude to the fact that, in theory, part of the validation (and an element to art’s commodification) does come through how an artwork is described.

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Judging 3 publications from 3 art events

After considering the ideals regarding descriptive writing in art proposed and defined as “International Art English” by Rule & Levine as well as the responses to that specific essay and other critiques and observations on writing about contemporary art, I was inspired to attempt my own experiment in analyzing descriptive art texts.

To go beyond just the press releases from non-profit galleries (which Rule & Levine did in their experiment), I decided to compare 3 catalogues from 3 different kinds of art affairs on my own without using any automated/computer-based help. I compared the writing in the catalogues for the Venice Biennale, the Frieze Art Fair and Phillips auction house. The dynamics of the three are quite different and I reasoned that comparing these texts would give an idea of how the writing about art might either differ or reflect each other in some way. In total I read, analyzed and categorized 286 texts.

The criteria I used for ‘judging’ the texts was self-devised and highly subjective. My view about the construction of each text more than likely will differ from how others may see it.

Starting with the Frieze Art Fair and Venice Biennale catalogues, I noticed the writing styles could be generally divided into 5 categories I formulated:

‘DD’ is an abbreviation for ‘decently descriptive”. The language used is clear enough to be understood by a majority of people, even those who may have little to no experience with interpreting art. Artists and their works are described in a manner that is pretty straight-forward, though still intellectual in nature. It does not indicate that something is well written but that it avoids many of the IAE pitfalls.

‘D-IAE/Mi’ + ‘D-IAE/Mo’ are very close together. The overall text is descriptive, attempting to describe artists’ works in a fashion which you can generally have a picture of it in your head from the description. There is less interpretation of an artist’s motivation through allegorical means (hidden meanings, etc). However, the texts do contain some more typical ‘International Art English

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(IAE)’ phrases, words or constructions. “/Mi” signifies that the amount of “IAE” is minimal, possibly a phrase or a few words that are typical for “IAE” writing. “/Mo” signifies that there is more “IAE” but that in general the text is trying still to create a descriptive image for an audience.

‘D+IAE’ could also be seen as “classic” or “standard International Art English”, but the “IAE” is more prevalent than the previously mentioned ‘D-IAE/Mo’ classification but not as heavily with the next classification of ‘VH+IAE’. While the text attempts to describe an artist or what is they do, much of it can be quite unclear. A description of a work may indicate materials used or a bit about the process but can be a bit obscure or written in a manner that attempts to make things more important than they would be if clearer language was actually used. There is more allegorical interpretation. The understandability factor is primarily low, leaving many still slightly confused over what they have just read in relation to what they see.

‘VH+IAE’ stands for ‘very high (usage of) “IAE”’. With these texts, nearly all of the text is written in a majorly theoretical and/or pretentious manner, basically ‘abusing’ IAE to the point of near incomprehensibility for a large majority of people. The text is trying to make the artist and works look as important as possible and overly emphasizes the artist/works importance within the line of art history. Descriptions of works revolve around adverb-heavy allusions that often require a thesaurus (often with words even being seemingly invented) and also knowledge of specialized terms that are common within writing about contemporary art.

(Note 1: 26 of the texts got the label of “in-between”, where my decision on a definitive ‘rating’ proved to be difficult and I could not choose between one or the other rating.)

(Note 2: For examples of texts and my judgments on where they fit in my ratings system please refer to Compendium I : Examples of texts from the Venice Biennale, Frieze Art Fair and Phillips Auction House catalogues and how these texts were categorized within the VH/D/DD/+/- ratings system.)

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The Catalogues

Venice Biennale, 2007

The Venice Biennale, established in 1895, is the world’s oldest biennale of contemporary art which includes sub-festivals for film, architecture and contemporary dance. The biennale, as its name suggests, happens every two years in Venice, Italy. It is generally considered to be the most important biennale not only because of its age but also its size and its particular structure, which includes a large number of separate pavilions for individual countries and certain territories (for example Central Asia or Wales, etc.) participating in the Biennale. The most recent edition in 2013 had 85 countries participating, with 30 of them having their own permanent pavilions at the central location of the Biennale, Giardini park. Each country picks an official representative artist or a small group of artists (though the chosen artist(s) do not have to come from the country which has chosen them), though many additional artists also participate within the biennale. The ‘history’ section of the biennale’s website notes that in the 2013 edition of the contemporary art exhibition, there were over 370,000 visitors.14 The Biennale is in theory a non-commercial endeavor and works displayed there are not officially supposed to be directly sold at the biennale. However, selling at the Venice Biennale actually happens rather frequently. According to an article written in the Financial Times in 2009 written by Georgina Adam15, sale deals happen frequently between dealers who represent artists showing at the biennale. Adam writes, “For a start all the art dealers are there, laying on smart parties in yachts or in palazzos for their select clients. Deals are wrapped up between the Giardini park and the Molo pier, poolside at the Cipriani or over prosecco in the Danieli.” She mentions some sales which happened during the 2007 biennale, including sales at the British pavilion for artist Tracey Emin where her representing gallery, White Cube in London, sold works by her and that before the biennale even began

14 http://www.labiennale.org/en/biennale/history/ (accessed 10 February 2014)15 Adam, Georgina, “Trading Places”, Financial Times, 6 June 2009 ( http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/63f20e8a-50a4-11de-9530-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1Wzuv6naN, ac-cessed 15 February 2014)

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they had sold over 75% of the works.16

Despite these ‘back-room’ style sales, the main purpose of the biennale is to give a major international platform for less commercially inclined work.

The catalogue I chose from the biennale to analyze coincidentally was from 2007, primarily because it was the easiest for me to find at the moment I was looking. This installment of the biennale was artistically directed by the American curator, critic, academic and painter Robert Storr. The catalogue itself is for the central international exhibition which was directly curated by Storr and featured 97 artists (though the catalogue is missing one artist, David Riff of the UK, so I only analyzed 96 texts). Storr wrote the majority of the texts (37), while five other authors wrote the remaining 59 (one unique text in the book by Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov is completely written by the artist himself).

Frieze Art Fair, London, 2013

The Frieze Art Fair was started in 2003 in London, UK by Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, the publishers of Frieze art magazine. The fair happens every year in London and in 2011 expanded its scope to include an edition of the fair in New York City and a specialized “Frieze Master’s” fair in London, focusing on more established artists with work going up to the year 2000. The Frieze fair is one of the few art fairs that exclusively focus on only contemporary art and living artists. In 2013 the fair had 113 participating galleries, all of which were selling work. Art fairs are generally large and slightly chaotic affairs where each gallery has an extended-cubicle like area in which to show one or multiple artist(s).

Art fairs exist to sell work, so the majority of work on display is for sale (though fairs like Frieze have special “projects” which are more for the 16 In the past, the biennale was more strictly commercial. From Adam’s article: “Between 1942 and 1968, the Italian dealer Ettore Gian Ferrari had the official job of placing works for any willing artist, earning 15 per cent for the Biennale and 2 per cent for himself. This was stopped, ostensibly so that the Biennale was not commercially tainted, although Ferrari’s daughter Claudia says the real reason was that the artists’ regular dealers began to object to the practice.”

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experience/viewing but most of the artists within the “projects” part are also represented by a gallery at the fair and sell other works).

The fair is accompanied by a large catalogue of various selected artists by the participating galleries. I focused on the main & “Frame” artists17 which have short texts written by 15 different writers. I read and analyzed 152 texts from this catalogue.

Phillips Contemporary Art London Evening Sale, 16 October 2013

Philips auction house was founded in London, UK in 1796 by Harry Phillips. Phillips had been a clerk to James Christie, who had established the auction house Christie’s 30 years earlier. Phillips focused on aristocratic buyers and sellers and focused heavily on the sales of contents from estates of the aristocracy. The auction house changed ownership a number of times throughout its existence, starting within the Phillips family and then leaving family hands in the 1930’s. It was not until it was acquired in 1998 by Bernard Arnault, who is the chairman and CEO of the gigantic LVMH Moët Hennessy - Louis Vuitton S.A. conglomerate, that Phillip’s started to focus more on art sales. The auction house went through quite a lot of mergers and acquisitions after Arnault, including a high-profile merger with the Swiss private art dealers Simon DePury and Daniela Luxembourg. DePury became chairman of Phillips (which became Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg) and was a main catalyst to reducing the auction house’s focus (around 2003) to exclusively contemporary art, design, jewelry, photography, and editions. In 2004, Luxembourg left to start her own private dealership (the company then becoming simply Phillips de Pury & Co.)

In 2008 the company was acquired by Russian retail luxury company Mercury Group. Simon de Pury eventually left as chairman in January 2013. The current CEO is Michael McGinnis. Phillips holds auctions at its headquarters in London and its showroom and sales building in New 17 “Frame” artists were part of a section dedicated to galleries aged eight years or younger who presented solo projects at the Frieze fair from 2009-2013. The fair has since dropped this section but has a “Focus” section for younger galleries with a flexible fee and application structure.

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York.18 Phillips has perennially been the third largest auction house behind monster-houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s, but it’s exclusive focus on contemporary art and design (especially in regards to young artists) and young collectors has kept it a formidable competitor in the auction market. I received both the evening and evening auction catalogues from 16 October 2013 at Phillips’ London headquarters. A day sale has a larger number of artists and generally lower reserve & final sale prices.

An evening sale reduces the number of artists but is more like a ‘showcase’ of higher-valued works. I chose to analyze the evening catalogue because nearly each artist and their auctioned work have long text descriptions, often spilling out onto multiple-page layouts. This particular evening sale consisted of 38 works and 36 artists (Andy Warhol and Richard Prince each had 2 works up for auction that evening).

I analyzed 36 texts in total. Two artists had only a short artist’s quote and no specifically written text about the work for sale. The texts in the Phillips catalogue are the longest by far of the three catalogues. Each page is devoted to a single work (which in auction terms are referred to as a “lot”). Some lots are simply the work, the artist and a small (1/4 page) text. Other lots are expanded into multiple pages and many feature a fold-out (encompassing 2 pages) large scale photo of the work, plus photos of work(s) by other artists that come close to the offered lot (in auction parlay, this is referred to as “comparables”).

The level of “IAE” in these texts is amazingly high, to an almost comical degree. Because of the context of making each work/lot enticing for

a buyer, the text about each work/lot uses “IAE” as a selling tool, somewhat similar to the Frieze Art Fair but on a more “capitalist” scale. Interestingly unique to this catalogue are two things: one is that none of the texts are credited to an author. The other is that it is rife with typographical errors.

18 Phillips history (early) : http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/phil-lips-de-pury-luxembourg-history/ (Source: International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 49. St. James Press, 2003.) and: http://phillips.com/about-us

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One explanation about why texts are not credited to authors came to light to me through an article written by Alice Gregory, a freelance writer who for a year worked for Sotheby’s auction house, first starting in research, then being assigned to writing the texts in the catalogue. Describing this, Gregory writes, “The more text given to an individual piece, the more the house seems to value it. I sprinkled about twenty adjectives (“fey,” “gestural,” “restrained”) amid a small repertory of active verbs (“explore,” “trace,” “question” ). I inserted the phrases “negative space,” “balanced composition,” and “challenges the viewer” every so often.” Further, “It was embarrassingly easy, and might have been the only truly dishonest part of the Sotheby’s enterprise. In most ways, the auction house is unshackled from intellectual pretense by its pure attention to the marketplace. Through its catalogue copy (and for a time, through me), it makes one small concession to the art world’s native tongue.”19 The long lengths of most of the texts in the catalogue make sense, as the more works/lots are written about, the more they seem “talked about” and are therefore more enticing for the buyer.

19 Gregory, Alice “On The Market”, N+1 Magazine, March 2012 (http://nplusonemag.com/on-the-market, accessed 28 January 2014)

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Constants and observations of the texts from the catalogues

The catalogues have different lengths of texts. As mentioned in the previous section, the Phillips catalogue primarily has the longest texts. The Venice Biennale texts are on average much shorter than the Phillips catalog, while the Frieze catalogue has the shortest texts overall. It is hard to judge the lengths using sentences as most writing about contemporary art consists of long, drawn-out prose. Two sentences therefore can be a pretty decently sized paragraph.

In looking at all the texts as a whole in a database I created, I added up the totals of each of my six ‘ratings’ (including “in-between”) for each writer’s texts from each catalogue (except for Phillips, since they do not credit the writers, where I judged texts on their own). I shall list my totals for each catalogue and I’ll give a few examples of how I determined the ‘ratings’.

In all three catalogues, the ‘VH+IAE’ rating had the highest totals. The rating just below ‘VH+IAE’, ‘D+IAE’ was the next with the highest totals, though these two ratings could be put into the same category as both indicate higher usage of “IAE” (adding both together shows that heavily “IAE” texts make up the bulk of writing in all three catalogues). The Phillps catalogue has the highest amount of ‘VH+IAE’, where the overwhelming majority of texts earn that rating. One could see this as an example of how “IAE” is definitely a sales tool, considering that auction catalogues, especially the catalogues for higher-end evening sales, pile on text to each work in the hopes of attracting high-end clients. Comparing this ‘sales-tool’ model to the Venice Biennale and Frieze catalogues is tricky, but not unfathomable nor totally incorrect. When comparing all three much of the language really is similar. To me, it seems all three are trying to ‘sell’ something with these texts. Whether it’s literally, as in the case with Phillips and Frieze (even though Frieze blurs the line between commercial and non-commercial, it still is inherently an art fair) that provide platforms for selling work, or figuratively, as in the Venice Biennale catalogue where what is being ‘sold’ is the artist’s ‘worth’ of being included in a major event.

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Conclusions

A lot of my own questions about the necessity of writing in this type of manner that Alix Rule and David Levine define as “International Art English” are posited by the authors themselves towards the end of their essay about IAE. Rule and Levine ask: “Can we imagine an art world without IAE? If press releases could not telegraph the seriousness of their subjects, what would they simply say? Without its special language, would art need to submit to the scrutiny of broader audiences and local ones? Would it hold up?”. These reflect my own questions pretty exactly.

I would add the following questions: “Could writing about contemporary art be more divided up towards the audience it’s aimed towards? (“IAE” for the more indoctrinated and a kind of “translation” for those who aren’t?)”, “Why do people within the “art world” believe in the kind of writing style they employ?” and especially (adding to the 2nd & 3rd questions from Rule & Levine) “Without writing about contemporary art adhering to what seems a standard rule established by a group of people, can an artist just honestly say things about why they did some particular thing and why we then should look at it?”

It seems many artists perpetuate the idea of ‘IAE’ because of the texts either they themselves write or which they approve by others. Art schools keep up the idea of ‘IAE’ as “the” correct way to write about art and galleries, museums and other institutions also do the same by utilizing texts written with a lot of “IAE”. No matter how much artists or institutions wish to appeal to a broader public, often art appeals to the ‘world’ directly surrounding it: artists trying to attract curators, people specialized in art, potential buyers or supporters of work (I did not even touch upon how much ‘IAE’ can be found in requests for subsidies and grants, but it is certainly there as well). No matter how artists position themselves, they do have to attract somebody to what they are doing if they have any hope of being a success. To be taken seriously as a serious artist, those within the “art world” have to recognize an artist as being worth doing so. The general public has little to no role in this. I’ve personally never heard of gallery or museum going “democratic” and having people vote which artists to show on a regular basis. Art fairs, biennales and auction houses all have people who choose which artists can participate. Art schools also have

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ways of acknowledging those who are the best of the best. The work speaks for itself is a phrase one can hear over and over within various contexts of the “art world”. The actual truth of this seems to be more complicated.

It seems to me the only way the tides could change is for more artists to change the way text accompanies their work. This seems simple, but it’s tricky the more an artist needs to convince people they are indeed “serious”. In researching this thesis I tried to find artists who may already have this idea of changing the dynamics, but it proved to be very difficult.

One artist mentioned in the Venice Biennale section about judging catalogues, Nedko Solakov from Bulgaria, is already implementing his own style of descriptive texts about his work that always accompany the work when it is displayed20. In the Biennale catalogue he has the longest text in the catalogue, though it is entirely written by himself and tells a long story about his concept for his project at the Biennale. He always writes from his own point of view, as if he is sitting down and talking about it in a conversational manner. After reading his descriptive texts (usually written by hand on the wall), I feel most anyone can identify with the work that he does.

For me, I feel even closer to the artist as he is telling me a story directly using clear language. There’s no need to throw around half made-up adverbs or convolutely connect things together in some kind of theoretical way. Of course, the texts also become part of the work but I think that will have to be part of the sea-change within descriptive writing about contemporary art. Having a descriptive text about whatever kind of work is done which integrates itself with the work completely renders having curators or unpaid interns writing highbrow nonsense unnecessary.

20 I must also mention the Estonian artist Marko Mäetamm who does a similar thing to Solakov. He also writes descriptive text on the wall in his own handwriting, also telling little personal stories about work he does. His writing style is a lot more like black comedy and rather sinister, but so is his work. Nedko Solakov’s website is http://nedkosolakov.net/, Mäetamm’s is: http://maetamm.net/

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References / Bibliography

Books:

Svengusson, Jan, An Artist’s Text Book, Finnish Academy of the Arts press, Taideyliopisto, 2007 Thornton, Sarah, Seven Days in the Art World, Granta Publications, London, 2008

Catalogues:

Think With the Senses, Feel With the Mind – Art in the Present Tense, 52nd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Marsilio Editori, Venezia (Venice), 2007 Frieze Art Fair London, 2013 Phillips Contemporary Art London Evening Sale 16 October 2013, 2013 Articles:

Adam, Georgina, “Trading Places”, Financial Times, 6 June 2009 (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/63f20e8a-50a4-11de-9530-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1Wzuv6naN, accessed 15 February 2014)

Beckett, Andy, “A User’s Guide to Artspeak”, The Guardian, 27 January 2013 (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/27/users-guide-international-art-english?intcmp=ILCMUSTXT9386, accessed 20 November 2013)

Chayka, Kyle, “How the Art World’s Lingo of Exclusivity Took Root, Branched Out, And Then Rotted From Within”, Blouin Artinfo, 8 July 2012 (http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/817400/how-the-art-worlds-lingo-of-exclusivity-took-root-branched-out-and-then-rotted-from-within, accessed 14 November 2013) Davis, Ben, “ ‘International Art English,’ the Joke That Forgot It Was Funny”, Blouin Artinfo, 6 June 2013 (http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/911210/international-art-english-the-joke-that-forgot-it-was-funny, accessed 13 November 2013)

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Gregory, Alice, “On The Market”, N+1 Magazine, March 2012 (http://nplusonemag.com/on-the-market, accessed 28 January 2014) Heddaya, Mostafa, “When Artspeak Masks Oppression”, Hyperallergic, 6 March, 2013 (http://hyperallergic.com/66348/when-artspeak-masks-oppression/, accessed 15 November 2013)

Jackson, C. Song, “Academic Art”, 11 August 2011 (http://foldingtime.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/academic-art/, accessed 13 December 2013)

Jones, Roger, “Post-Structuralism” (http://www.philosopher.org.uk/poststr.htm#Post_Structuralism, accessed 28 November, 2013)

Lescaze, Zoë, “Critics Debate ‘International Art English’ at CAA Conference”, Gallerist NY, 25 February 2013 (http://galleristny.com/2013/02/critics-debate-international-art-english-at-caa-conference/, accessed 14 November 2013)

Levine, David and Rule, Alex, “International Art English”, Triple Canopy, published July 2012 (http://canopycanopycanopy.com/issues/16/contents/international_art_english, accessed 19 October 2013)

Rosler, Martha, “English and All That”, e-flux journal #45, May 2013 (http://www.e-flux.com/journal/english-and-all-that/, accessed 12 November 2013) Steyerl, Hito, “International Disco Latin”, e-flux journal #45, May 2013 (http://www.e-flux.com/journal/international-disco-latin/, accessed 12 November 2013)

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Compendium I : Examples of texts from the Venice Biennale, Frieze Art Fair and Phillips Auction House catalogues and how these texts were categorized within the VH/D/DD/+/- ratings system.

VH+IAE: Danh Vo / Frieze VH+IAE: Francis Alÿs / Venice Biennale VH+IAE: Fischli/Weiss / Phillips D+IAE : Marcus Coates /Frieze D-IAE/Mo: Barbara Kasten/ Frieze D-IAE/Mi : Jason Rhoades / Venice Biennale DD: Philipe Thomas / Venice Biennale

VH+IAE

Danh Vo (Frieze)

Here’s a great example of an amazingly convoluted VH+IAE text about the Vietnamese/Danish artist Danh Vo in the Frieze London catalog by Martin Hebert (a major abuser of IAE within the Frieze catalog, I categorized almost all his texts as VH+IAE) in which exists almost no understandable description of what Mr. Vo actually does:

“As a child, Danh Vo fled Vietnam with his family by sea in an attempt to reach America, but their homemade boat was diverted to Denmark. Migration infuses his art, most famously so in We the People (detail) (2011-2013) - a 1:1 copper replica of the Statue of Liberty shown in 200 near-abstract fragments worldwide - but also in his presentation of letters and artefacts from 1960s and 70s political figures such as Henry Kissinger and Robert McNamara. Like Vo’s use of his father as transcriber of languages he doesn’t speak, and his allowing the story of his childhood escape to conceptually underpin Tobias Rehberger’s futuristic boat Go Mo Ni Ma Da (2004), these works reflect the scattered shapers of his selfhood. They also show a former refugee who recognizes

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art-making as a kind of statelessness, one that precipitates poetics from a restless traversing of cultural spheres.”

Though it’s not all that important, I found myself asking “how did a homemade boat get from Vietnam to Denmark?” since it was mentioned in the first sentence (the homemade boat ended up getting intervened in the ocean by a Danish freighter that then brought the family to Denmark). This element of Vo’s life is mentioned often in texts about him, seemingly because we are told that “migration infuses his art”, (a typical subordinate-clause-starting-a-sentence construction) and the author gives two examples of that. The first perhaps makes sense, as one could see the ideas of migration in the breakage of the Statue of Liberty into 200 near-abstract fragments and somehow placed worldwide (though we’re not told exactly how or how that is then presented to the public), but the second reference gives us no idea of how letters & artifacts from 60s & 70s politicians really connect to this idea. The same applies for this description of “Vo’s use of his father as a transcriber of languages he doesn’t speak”, because we have no idea how this was executed. Did Vo do a video of this? Does Vo have his father do this all the time? We don’t know.

The ultimate vague description is next however, in which a reference to another artist, Tobias Rehberger from Germany is inserted without much clarity. This, annoyingly, tasks readers with the chore of finding works by Rehberger, but again causes a divide between those who know Rehberger’s work (where he collaborated with Vo on a series of works, which could have been made clearer) and those who don’t. It becomes then a rather pointless reference that could have been left out. The next sentence could be in a hall of fame for IAE, in which the statement “these works reflect the scattered shapers of his selfhood” is used. I’m personally not sure where to start with this statement. It’s phrases like these that I usually just repeat with a question mark at the end and can’t be bothered to figure out. This particular text ends with another question mark/IAE hall of fame statement, where art-making is compared to being a kind of “statelessness” and “one that precipitates poetics from a restless traversing of cultural spheres.” Yet again, I have no idea where to start with this

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statement. Using ‘precipitates’ here especially makes things confusing, as precipitate should mean to cause (an event or situation) to happen suddenly, unexpectedly, or prematurely, so then one has to think the “poetics” happen unexpectedly... though within a “restless traversing of cultural spheres”? It is worth noting that the word poetics is being used, as the artistic world’s view of what is poetic is quite different of that of most people (I myself still don’t fully comprehend this).

VH+IAE

Francis Alÿs (Venice Biennale)

Here’s an example of a VH+IAE text in which not only the author speaks in heavy IAE but also the artist himself does so even more, the Belgian artist Francis Alÿs, from the Venice Biennale catalog, written by Ann Mecugni. It begins with:

“Francis Alÿs art is multifarious yet remarkably cohesive, with simplicity of style and structure being a common denominator. As the artist recently wrote, his pieces are like episodes of a larger narrative, mostly focused around his investigation ‘into Latin America’s relationship with the concept of production, with the dogma of efficiency and grand programs or promises of development”

Here we have a surprise in that the word “art” is used in place of “work”, which is not that common. “Multifarious” is a lovely word meaning “many and of various types”. We see here also the usage of “narrative”, which is definitely an IAE staple-word. “Narrative” does mean to tell a story, though it’s classic definition is within spoken or written form. Contemporary art has really attached itself to this idea of “visual narrative” whether or not the ‘story’ may be totally clear to a viewer. Note how the author uses the word ‘investigation’. Some of the heaviest IAE here comes from the artist himself. I really have no idea what “the concept of production” might mean for Alÿs nor do I understand what the “dogma of efficiency

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and grand programs or promises of development” are (I’m guessing underdevelopment in Latin America, but dogma of efficiency?), and what they have to do with each other. More heavy duty IAE comes later though: “Alÿs works are like fables or metaphors in which poetic license has the function of introducing a rupture, and element of absurdity in an otherwise ‘normal’ context, not limited to Latin America. For instance, in Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic (2004) Alÿs pointed at the arbitrary and transitory nature of borders by walking through Jerusalem –loosely following the armistice boundary sanctioned at the end of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence – as he spilled a line of green paint from a pierced can (the armistice boundary is also known as the ‘green line’ from the colour of the pencil used to mark the map). The strategy of disrupting reality and revealing its senselessness recalls Rene Magritte’s Surrealist painting. More politically oriented, Alÿs’ works seek to “shake up assumptions’ and ‘open up, for just an instant – in a flash – a different vision on the situation, from the inside’.

So, here’s where IAE gets into overdrive. In so much writing about art, everything becomes visual. Fables become visual, metaphors become visible. Similar to the idea of visual artworks being ‘stories’, things which traditionally are written or spoken can be also visual. Mecugni, the author, absolutely astounds me with her reference to Magritte, as if she was really desperate to connect Alÿs to art history, which is often a big fine arts concern. A lot of fine art trained people and authorities always want to see the place in which an artist fits into art history and will make any kind of connection they can to do so. Comparing Magritte to Alÿs seems to me almost like saying “this artist has brown hair and so did that artist who you know more about already”. It is Alÿs again at the end who spouts more convoluted IAE, making the statement that he aims to ‘open up, for just an instant – in a flash – a different vision on the situation, from the inside’. It’s the addition of “from the inside” that has me scratching my head. How exactly does he mean that? Statements like this are the kind that seem to beg people to ‘get it’ or not. I’d like to hear what people say who do ‘get’ this as to what he means.

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VH+IAE

Peter Fischli & David Weiss (Phillips)

The texts in the Phillips catalog, as mentioned in the main thesis, are generally very long. The majority of texts are VH+IAE so picking out just one to analyze was a tough task. I decided to go for one of the longest texts (and, including pictures, the largest spread in the whole catalog), about Swiss duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss. While not the highest valued work in the catalog, I suspect that the size of the entry for their work Floß (or ‘Floss’ (“Raft”), which is 8 pages long, may have something to do with the fact that David Weiss died in April 2012. When an artist of certain provenance dies, auction houses especially hope the suddenly-halted output will spark major bidding on existing works. I will cite some excerpts of the longer text, which is loaded with typographical errors including the most embarrassing of all in which Peter Fischli’s last name is misspelled as “Fischili” twice. I will keep the typographical errors intact marked by [sic]. Because the Phillips catalog does not give writing credits, I do not know the author: After a short and terribly worded intro calling Fischli and Weiss “one of the most extraordinary sustaining collaborators of the late twentieth century” (and the first misspelling of Fischli’s name), the text tries to explain their work for sale, a 72-part installation/sculpture hybrid work from 1982-1983. The typographical errors become ubiquitous starting with the sentence “Constructed entirly [sic] of polyurthane [sic] foam, the present lot exemplefies [sic] the artists [missing apostrophe] ongoing facisnation [sic] of the representation of commoditized objects, inbuing [sic] their works with an anthropomorphic quality”. Typographical errors on this scale must be a kind of embarrassment for the auction house, though I’m curious about who amongst bidders will make some kind of open comment on it. These errors to me seem to negate much analysis of the actual text. Continuing on, the work is described as to some of the elements made from polyurethane foam contained in it.

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The second paragraph begins, “Challenging the boundaries of objectood [sic], the artists have seemingly plucked artifacts from their respective roles transforming them into a chaotic mess. Adding to this negotion [sic] between the real object and their facismilies [sic] [missing comma] the objects that comprise the raft mingle with each other in an implausible, humorous scenario and yet they are all comprised of the same material.” The text continues by saying that by carving objects out of polyurethane, Fischli/Weiss “confront and confound the viewer with the awareness of their surroundings – be it museum or gallery”.

The first sentence truly boggles my mind as the author has made up the word “objecthood” (and then misspelled it anyway), to which there are apparently boundaries. Is there a debate about what is an object and what isn’t? I’m guessing by the misspelled “negotion” the author means “negation”, though could he/she also mean “negotiation?” It’s hard to tell as either word doesn’t quite fit the sentence. I am also completely baffled as to how this particular work then confronts a viewer with the awareness of themselves being in a gallery or a museum. I have a hard time trying to ‘translate’ this whole mess into understandable English. The next two paragraphs dive into different Fischli/Weiss works, one that led to Floß and another that shows their “negotiation of representations and context within a constructed environment” (basically, “they make objects that look like real things but are made out of polyurethane foam and then put those into installations of a lot of objects mixed together”). The invented word “objecthood” returns again in the sentence “Thus, a false sense of reality and objecthood is created, subverting expectations and meaning. The referent is simultaneously absent and present.” These two sentences say the same thing twice, really. These fake objects surprise people and don’t particularly mean anything grandiose.

The next paragraph in the text goes way off the path and starts describing a loosely related, rather recent, sculptural movement called “Unmonumental” (artworks made with poor/found materials, low-tech and messy, basically revisiting the arts movement known as “Arte Povera” that

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initiated in Italy in the late 60’s- early 70’s). The rest of the paragraph is devoted to describing two works by the German artist (and one of the ‘unmonumental’ spearheads) Isa Genzken in quite long detail. The final paragraph then goes back to the Fischli/Weiss work in question and states, “When pondering the unified oeuvre of Fischli/Weiss and the painted foam elements that comprise Floß – as both art objects and facsimiles of the everyday – we must consider the desire to believe in the fragmented and fragile truths that index the larger whole”. The word “oeuvre” is used in almost all the texts in the Phillips catalog. The last sentence is as IAE as it gets, asking an audience to think hard about the fact that, basically, objects make up our lives and sometimes artists make fake versions of them.

D+IAE

Marcus Coates (Frieze)

D+IAE and VH+IAE are pretty close to each other. Both forms use IAE, though D+IAE is a bit more “middle-of-the-road-IAE”. It still tries to overinflate things by use of obscure vocabulary, convoluted sentence structure and all the usual traits of IAE-heavy prose, but doesn’t quite have the “hitting one over the head with it” element that VH+IAE does. I did often wonder if, in fact, VH+IAE were the same, but there was a “lesser” element in the texts I chose as being “D+IAE”. The first example of a D+IAE text is from the Frieze catalog, for the British artist Marcus Coates, written by Max Andrews:

“Marcus Coates imagines a ludicrous and earnest exploration of the boundaries between man and other animals, which seems equally at home with Post-Structuralist thought as with a tradition of absurdist British TV comedy. In the video installation Dawn Chorus (2007) people in everyday settings suddenly sing as if they are birds. (Each participant mimed birdsong that had been slowed down many times, and the resultant

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footage was then speeded up.) In works such as Vision Quest – A Ritual for Elephant & Castle (2009), meanwhile, Coates has taken on a shaman/social-worker role, here consulting animal spirits on behalf of residents of a condemned housing estate in London through rituals inspired by shamanic Jungian and Butoh traditions of engagement with the unconscious.”

This text is a pretty standard use of IAE and is a good example of the D+IAE rating. It’s not completely hitting you over the head with IAE but it’s definitely in there. The sentence about how Coates “imagines a ludicrous and earnest exploration of the boundaries between man and other animals” is a badly constructed sentence because of the use of the word “imagines” meaning does/makes (work). As if the construction of the first part of the sentence wasn’t enough indication, dropping in the phrase “Post-Structuralist thought” brings us into IAE-territory directly, though by mixing that with “equally at home with” and “absurdist British TV comedy” is basically saying “it may seem as stupid as bad television but this guy is totally doing contemporary art because we can throw in the word Post-Structuralist to justify what he does”. A better way to re-phrase this whole convoluted sentence could be: “Marcus Coates makes work that centers on the theme of the boundaries between man and other animals and does so in a manner that mixes a sense of the absurd with an earnest approach”.

The middle part of the text at least tries to describe one work by Coates and you can get an idea of what he may do to show these “boundaries between man and other animals”. The second work described is less clear. It could be a video, a performance or a series of photos. We aren’t sure. Now, the texts in the Frieze catalog are very short and don’t leave a lot of room to get into major detail, but it doesn’t seem to me that it would take much to say “In works such as the (video, photo series, etc.)…”. This is one element that does happen often which is worth commenting upon. An artist can be described as doing something but without enough clarification as to what an audience actually sees from what they do. The reader of whatever descriptive text with this element could wonder how these bizarre sounding things are made visual and

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subsequently presented to an audience. The reader just has to accept that this artist does this or that and it is just what he or she does and then we look at/experience it somehow.

Spotting VH+IAE and D+IAE is rather easy but the toughest I found to categorize were the low-IAE ratings (D-IAE /Mi + /Mo and DD). For those descriptions I found that they were generally clearer, used some higher English but nothing one couldn’t find in general journalism/reporting. The one exception is the D-IAE/Mo rating, where the writing becomes a bit less clear but doesn’t quite cross the line into heavy-duty IAE territory.

D-IAE/Mo

Barbara Kasten (Frieze)

D-IAE/Mo is my most self-debated rating, though while I nearly dropped it as a rating I kept it as a kind of “special circumstances” rating as there is a very slight in-between zone that I see between D-IAE/Mi and D+IAE. The best way I could describe D-IAE/Mo is that it contains more of an aspect where IAE comes often out of nowhere and tends to contrast heavily with the parts which are understandable English. A good example of a paragraph to which I gave the D-IAE/Mo rating is about American artist Barbara Kasten from the Frieze catalog. It is written by Sam Thorne:

In the 1970s Barbara Kasten began constructing models in her studio and taking luminescent photographs of them, often with a large-scale Polaroid camera. These works – from ’Constructs’ (1979-1984) to ‘Studio Constructs’ (2012-13) – often appear to be digitally manipulated or flatly abstract, although they are in fact the record of a specific three-dimensional environment. Kasten’s recent pieces, such as Studio Construct 140 (2012), abandon the vivid colours of earlier pieces, instead honing in on subtle abrasions on sheets of clear Perspex. In its pleasurably disorienting oscillation between abstraction and materiality, her work prefigures that of a younger generation of artists – such as Lucas Blalock and Eileen Quinlan – who are producing cameraless and Photoshop-assisted composite images.

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This paragraph presents an excellent example of my own slight confusion about how to rate it. As it is from the Frieze catalog, the description is short which can lead to problems truly rating it. The first 3 sentences are perfectly acceptable English. The last sentence nearly drags the IAE out of seemingly nowhere and left me wondering exactly where it fit in my system. If the entire thing had been written in the style of the last sentence, this paragraph would instantly get a VH+IAE or D+IAE rating. I truly don’t know why Mr. Thorne references the somewhat obscure artists Lucas Blalock and Eileen Quinlan. Name-dropping in this case seems to be completely unnecessary. I also can’t understand if indeed Blalock and Quinlan do work without a camera that is assisted by the computer graphics program Photoshop, or if Mr. Thorne is trying to say “cameraless” (which is not really a word but obviously means working without a camera) and “not Photoshopped”.

To fit a bit more with the rest of the paragraph, I would propose this final sentence: “Kasten pleasurably manipulates the viewer through her use of photography as a means to document work that exists only in a photographed form though they illustrate three-dimensional sculptural environments.” I would personally leave out the part about “prefiguring” other younger artists, which basically just says “She was doing this kind of thing before younger artists who are championed for a sort-of similar approach”.

D-IAE/Mi

Jason Rhoades (Venice Biennale)

A good example of D-IAE/Mi I found came from the Venice Biennale catalog entry for the American artist Jason Rhoades, who died in 2006. The text is by Joe Martin Hill.

“Before his untimely death at age 41, Jason Rhoades established his reputation as a leading artist of his generation with rambunctious, high-octane installations that commandeered whole exhibition spaces as supports for sprawling arrangements of disparate, colourful materials.

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Combining kitsch hot-rod and pin-up aesthetics with sophisticated samplings of the Los Angeles avant-garde (Paul McCarthy was Rhoades’ graduate-school mentor at UCLA and a collaborative partner for the 1999 Venice Biennale), Rhoades’ testosterone-driven works offer a surfeit of associations that confound definitive interpretation. Nevertheless, a consistent formal logic is evident amid the liberating exuberance of his scattered conglomerations, and sex is a persistent thematic thrust throughout Rhoades’ work.”

Starting out, things make enough sense. We get an overall decent image of what Rhoades’ work was in general. It helps to know who Paul McCarthy is (a quite well-known contemporary artist with a certain pedigree). The IAE creeps in towards the end of the paragraph, with sentences like ‘a surfeit of associations that confound definitive interpretation’, which one could say simply as ‘lots of things going on that can be rather hard to totally figure out’. The next sentence, “..a consistent formal logic is evident amid the liberating exuberance of his scattered conglomerations” could be ‘translated’ in the same manner as the previous sentence as “he really thinks a lot about how these piles of things should look”. Using “thematic thrust” is actually quite clever considering the way Rhoades injects his work with sexual references.

Continuing on, Hill describes some of Rhoades’ work in a pretty understandable manner:

“In Uno Momento: The Theatre in my Dick – A Look to the Physical/Ephemeral (1996), Rhoades assembled an expanse of household and industrial objects, including video monitors in which the artist explained components of the installation and defined the work as a whole as being “about glands”. A skeet machine at one end of the work hurled clay pigeons down the length of the installation, and these smashed against the distant wall in a theatrical climax. For a 2003 exhibition titled Meccatuna, premised upon the idea of taking a live blue-fin tuna on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Rhoades’ sculptural media included donkey carts from Guadalajara; life-sized fiberglass donkeys; hundreds of ceramic trinkets;

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live, fresh and canned tuna; a one-million piece Lego construction said to be a one-third scale model of the Kabba at Mecca; and ‘550 vagina euphemisms’ written in colourful neon tubing on 227 Plexiglas panels.”

This entire paragraph is IAE-free and does try to explain more about what actually is contained within Rhoades’ installations, which the reader can tell without even seeing the work that they must be heavily packed full of various kinds of things all together and must be quite bombastic and as said earlier in the text, “high-octane”. The reader may not totally get the connection with all the conceptually absurdistic elements (like why one would want to bring a blue-fin tuna to Mecca), but at least what ends up in the installations is decently described.

DD

Philipe Thomas (Venice Biennale)

Texts I labelled as “DD” had the lowest totals of the 3 catalogs (the Phillips catalog contained none, Venice had 4 out of 95 total texts and Frieze had 12 out of 150 total texts). These texts had to contain nearly none of the “pitfalls” of IAE-heavy writing. In general, most people with a decent knowledge of the English language could figure out the text without too much head-scratching. One ‘DD’ text that stuck out for me was from the Venice Biennale catalog for French artist Philipe Thomas, who died in 1995. I found it interesting because Thomas did primarily high-concept work, so finding a descriptive text that isn’t loaded with IAE seems quite a feat. The text was written by Sarah Lewis:

Through both collective and individual work, French Conceptual artist Philipe Thomas made a practice of assigning the authorship of his creations to others, not with the intention of complete deception, but as a mode of questioning the uniqueness of art. After some early experiments with concrete poetry, the few works that bear his name, Thomas formed a collaborative artistic team in the early 1980s along with Jean-François Brun and Dominique Pasqualini called Information Fiction Publicité (IFP).

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With this group he primarily made light boxes displaying self-referential images, such as a check made out to IFP and photographs of the group’s founders. What remained after his departure from that group in 1985 was a continued engagement with reference: his art interrogates how (and perhaps why) we perceive it as such.

I have to clarify that “DD” doesn’t completely mean “well written” per se, as we do see a bit of comma abuse (the first long sentence could be split into two sentences eliminating at least two commas) and a little bit of wonky grammar (I keep feeling there should be something before “the few works that bear his name”). However this one is pretty free of IAE-clichés. Of course, it does start with a subordinate clause and uses phrases like “continued engagement with reference” and that his “art interrogates how (and perhaps why) we perceive it as such” (a real common mistake within writing about art is that art can somehow do things like “interrogate”, which of course is impossible really. In this case, it’s an easy change to “... his art makes us question why we perceive it as such”). Despite these little glitches, we get the idea that Thomas was not necessarily making visual art but playing with concepts and making them visual. Continuing on with the original text:

Thomas experiments with designations of all kinds, with titular alterations to identical images, for example, as in his 1985 piece Subject to Discretion, where three identical chromogenic prints of a seascape are simultaneously a ‘self-portrait’, an ‘anonymous’ view of the Mediterranean and a portrait of the collector who purchased the piece. Having studied and taught literature, he created fictional agencies, designating faux auteurs – often his dealer or gallerist – for his published books and public lectures. In 1987 he founded the underground organization, Les ready-made appartiennent a tout le monde, an eponymous name that directly refers to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. In his agency, the collector of any piece that he sold becomes the purported author of the work. While he has often created fictional authors, ascribing his own texts to patrons, his intention was not to deceive outright, but to shatter the stability of our perceptions.

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It seems Ms. Lewis forgot that Thomas died in the first sentence (it should say “experimented” in past tense) and also goes comma-crazy again trying to make two sentences into one. I would re-write the first sentence in this manner: “Thomas experimented with designations of all kinds with titular alterations to identical images. For example, his 1985 piece Subject to Discretion features three identical chromogenic prints of a seascape which are simultaneously titled as a ‘self-portrait’, an ‘anonymous’ view of the Mediterranean and a portrait of the collector who purchased the piece.” However, this is correction based just on regular grammar and not translating IAE into more understandable English. The work is described in a way in which we can see it and get the idea at least. The next sentence again has a rather awkward structure, I would write this more like “Thomas had previously studied and taught literature and subsequently created fictional agencies designating faux auteurs – often his dealer or gallerist – for his published books and public lectures.” We get a reference to Marcel Duchamp but it is actually relevant here. At the end, Ms. Lewis dips her toes slightly into IAE waters by saying Thomas wanted to “shatter the stability of our perceptions”, which is a bit cringe-worthy (a better way to say this could be something like “have us question our perceptions of visual art, ownership and authority”).

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Compendium II: Ratings results for Frieze, Venice Biennale and Phillips catalogues

FRIEZE

Artist Author Rating

(MAIN [FOCUS] ARTISTS)

T. Adkins KMJ D+IAE

S. Al-Maria ST DD

N. Aladag PT DD

T. Baga KMJ D-IAE/Mo

A. Balteo Yasbeck SNS D+IAE (almost VH+IAE)

A. Barriball CFW D+IAE

G. Baselitz MH D+IAE

M. Bauer KK D-IAE/Mi

M. Beck SL VH+IAE

A. Benera/A. Estefean MH VH+IAE

E. Berkenblit AS VH+IAE

U. von Brandenburg TM D+IAE

M. Cahn PL D+IAE

J. Calle SNS D+IAE

V. Caniaris SOR VH+IAE

V. Carron SL D-IAE (Mi or Mo???)

S. Claydon TM D-IAE/Mo

M. Coates MA D+IAE

A. Collier TM DD

M. Connors KMJ D+IAE

E. David MH VH+IAE

J. Davila SC D+IAE

E. Dekyndt AS D-IAE/Mo

S. Denny PT D+IAE

J. DeSara SC D+IAE

P.L. DiCoricia JG D-IAE/Mo

J. Durham ST D-IAE/Mi

S. Edwards SL D-IAE/Mo

P. Elliman ST D-IAE/Mi

E.A.T. SC D-IAE/Mi

O. Fast SC D-IAE/Mi

V. Fiskin PL VH+IAE (or D+IAE?)

M. Gaba SL DD

G. Gabellone MH VH+IAE

M. Galan MH VH+IAE

J. Galindo MA D+IAE

L. Ghirri ST D-IAE/Mo

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Gimhongsok SOR VH+IAE

D. van Golden MH VH+IAE

L. Golub KMJ VH+IAE

D. Graham MH VH+IAE

G. Griffa KMJ D-IAE/Mo

A. Grzeszykowska CFW D-IAE/Mo

R. Harrison MH VH+IAE

N. Hausler PT D-IAE/Mo

R. Hefti SOR D+IAE

S. Hicks SL DD

G. Hildebrandt CFW D+IAE

J. Hoeber JG VH+IAE

C. Holstad KK D-IAE/Mo

JJ Hutchins KK D+IAE

P. Huyghe PL VH+IAE

T. Kaspar PT DD

J. Kassay CFW D+IAE (almost VH+IAE)

B. Kasten ST D-IAE/Mo

S. Keogh MH VH+IAE

W. Khan SNS VH+IAE

J. Kounellis SOR VH+IAE

U. Kowski AS D+IAE

M. Kunze AS VH+IAE

G. Kuri ST VH+IAE

Y. Kusuma SNS VH+IAE

R. van Lankveld SL DD

I. Law ST D-IAE/Mo

M. Leckey ST D-IAE/Mi (almost DD)

Li S. JG D-IAE/Mi

H. Liden ST D-IAE/Mi

Linder SNS D-IAE/Mi (almost DD)

D. Longo Bahia MA D-IAE/Mi

C. Mayton MH VH+IAE

A. McEwen KMJ VH+IAE

R. McGinley SOR VH+IAE

F. Mitroi AS D-IAE/Mo

K. Moran SOR VH+IAE

R. Morris KMJ D-IAE/Mo

A. Nordby PL VH+IAE

N. Nuur PT D+IAE

A. Oehlen ST D-IAE/Mo

S. Ohtake AS VH+IAE

H. Oiticica/N. d’Almeida JG D+IAE

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P. Olowska SOR VH+IAE

D. Oppenheim SL DD

D. Ostrowki PL VH+IAE

A. Otero KK D-IAE/Mi

Otolith Group TM VH+IAE

T. Paglen CFW D-IAE/Mo (almost D+IAE)

S. Patane MA VH+IAE

J. Pestoni KK D-IAE/Mi

P. Pfeiffer JG D+IAE

F. Pisano CFW VH+IAE

L. Price SC Either D+IAE or VH+IAE?

W. Prieto JG D+IAE

C. Rantanen JG D+IAE

M. Rostiffe TM D+IAE

J. Richards SC D-IAE/Mo

T. Robak JG D+IAE

T. Rollins/K.O.S. ST DD

T. Ruff SOR VH+IAE

V. Safavi SNS VH+IAE

T. Saraceno PL D-IAE/Mi

M. Schinwald PL D+IAE

G. Schwidt SC Either D+IAE or VH+IAE?

J. Shaw MH D-IAE/Mo

D. Shirgley SOR D-IAE/Mo

M. Sosnowska TM VH+IAE

D. Steegmann-Mangrane MA D+IAE

H. Steinbach TM VH+IAE

D. Stewen AS VH+IAE

R. Stingel KMJ Either D+IAE or VH+IAE?

T. Struth MH VH+IAE

Sturtevant KMJ VH+IAE

M. Subotzky TM D+IAE

T. Suzuki CFW DD

R. Tabet SNS D+IAE

H. Toyama AS D+IAE

G. Trinkhaus SL D-IAE/Mi

R. Trockel MH VH+IAE

K. Trubkovich KK D+IAE

K. Upson JG D-IAE/Mo

S. Van der Beek SC D+IAE

A. Villar Rojas MA VH+IAE

D. Vo MH VH+IAE

66

Page 65: Honesty Bullshit Honestly

J. Warboys ST VH+IAE

J. Welling TM D+IAE

K. Wiley AS DD (almost D-IAE/Mi)

J. Williams SC D+IAE

J. Wolfson QL D+IAE

M. Wong AS VH+IAE

Yang S. MA VH+IAE

A. Young KMJ D-IAE/Mo

Zhang E. KK D-IAE/Mi

H. Zobernig CFW D+IAE

(“FRAME” ARTISTS)

Z. Baladran MA VH+IAE

E.T. Basualdo SC D-IAE/Mi

I. Chang ST D-IAE/Mo

P. Feriancova KK D-iAE/Mi

E. Hawser SL D-IAE/Mo

B. Hirte PL VH+IAE

I. Karilampi SOR D+IAE (almost VH+IAE)

A. Longacre-White JG DD

V. Martek MH VH+IAE

M. Mul CFW D+IAE

M. Murtaza SNS VH+IAE (or D+IAE?)

P. Sahib TM VH+IAE

N. Sanmiguel Dienst CFW D+IAE

E. Sequin CFW D+IAE

Ryan Siegan-Smith SC DD

G. Soares MA D+IAE

P. Takala KK D+IAE

K. Tanaka KK D+IAE

VENICE BIENNALE

Artist Author Rating

I. Aballi FP D-IAE/Mo

A. Abdessemed RS VH+IAE

Alterazioni Video JMH D-IAE/Mo (almost D+IAE)

F. Alys AM VH+IAE

E. Anatsui RS D+IAE

G. Anselmo RS VH+IAE

Y. Barrada FP D+IAE (almost VH+IAE)

G. Basilico RS D+IAE (almost VH+IAE)

67

Page 66: Honesty Bullshit Honestly

L. Bourgeois FP VH+IAE

J.C. Braun RS D-IAE/Mo

D. Buren AM D+IAE (almost VH+IAE)

L. Buvoli FP VH+IAE

W. Caldas LH VH+IAE

S. Calle RS VH+IAE

P.Canevari RS VH+IAE

C. Capurro LH VH+IAE

Chen Z. JMH D+IAE

Cheri Samba RS D+IAE

M. de Boer JMH D+IAE

R. de Keyser RS DD

I. do Espirito Santo RS VH+IAE

J. Drake RS D+IAE

V. Export LH VH+IAE

L. Ferrari RS VH+IAE

A. Filomeno RS VH+IAE

Y. Fujimoto RS VH+IAE

C. Gaines RS VH+IAE

R. Ganahl FP D+IAE

T. Ganihar JMH D-IAE/Mi

M. Garcia-Torres RS VH+IAE

S. Gladwell LH D-IAE/Mi

F. Gmelin AM D-IAE/Mo (?)

F. Gonzales-Torres FP D+IAE

D. Gutov + D. Riff RS VH+IAE

N. Hamon AM D-IAE/Mo

L.A. Harris SL VH+IAE

C. Hill LH D-IAE/Mi

J. Holzer SL D+IAE (almost VH+IAE)

M. Hugonnier RS VH+IAE

P. Huyghe FP D+IAE

E. Jacir RS (??*)

K. Jones SL D-IAE/Mo

I&E Kabakov FP VH+IAE

Y.Z. Kami AM VH+IAE

I. Kato FP VH+IAE

E. Kelly FP D+IAE

M. Kippenberger LH DD

68

Page 67: Honesty Bullshit Honestly

R. Komu RS VH+IAE

G. Kutica JMH D+IAE

R. Laing JMH D-IAE/Mo

Leonilson FP D+IAE

S. Le Witt RS D-IAE/Mo

R. Lopez AM VH+IAE

N. Malani RS VH+IAE

S. McQueen LH DD-IAE/Mo (almost D+IAE)

A. Monastyrski RS VH+IAE

H. Mori AM VH+IAE

Morrinho Project RS (??)

J. Mosley AM VH+IAE

O. Munoz RS VH+IAE

E. Murray SL VH+IAE

A. Naskovski SL D-IAE/Mi

B. Nauman AM VH+IAE

E. Ngangue & F. Titi FP VH+IAE

T. Nozkowski LH

O. D. Odita RS VH+IAE

M. Ohanian RS VH+IAE

P. Parreno LH VH+IAE

D. Perjovschi FP D+IAE

R. Pettibon RS VH+IAE

S. Polke AM D-IAE/Mi

E. Prince FP D+IAE

J.A. Restrpo RS VH+IAEa

J. Rhoades JMH D-IAE/Mi

G. Richter RS VH+IAE

S. Rothenberg AM VH+IAE

R. Ryman FP D+IAE (almost VH+IAE)

E. Salmeron RS (??)

M. Salmon FP VH+IAE

F. Sandback FP D+IAE (almost VH+IAE)

M. Sidibe RS DD

N. Solakov (*) (*)

N. Spero FP VH+IAE

Tabaimo RS D+IAE

E. Tedesco FP D-IAE/Mo

P. Thomas SL DD

69

Page 68: Honesty Bullshit Honestly

P. Trope FP D-IAE/Mi

T. Trouve RS VH+IAE

K. Walker SL D+IAE

L. Weiner JMH D+IAE (almost VH+IAE)

F. West RS VH+IAE

S. Whettnall LH D+IAE

P. Wolberg LH D-IAE/Mi

Yang F. RS D-IAE/Mo

Yang Z. RS D+IAE

T. Yoneda AM D+IAE

PHILLIPS

Artist Author Rating

R. Sullivan VH+IAE

A. McEwen VH+IAE

T. Auerbach VH+IAE

D. Colen VH+IAE

M. Grotjahn VH+IAE

S. Ruby VH+IAE

C. Wool D+IAE

N. Lowman D+IAE

T. Schutte VH+IAE

G. Richter VH+IAE

A. Kiefer VH+IAE

R. Prince (1) VH+IAE

J-M Basquiat VH+IAE

A. Warhol (1) D-IAE/Mi

M. Cattelan D-IAE/Mi

R. Prince (2) VH+IAE

Komar & Melamid VH+IAE

E. Ruscha VH+IAE

Yan Pei-Ming VH+IAE

C. Ofili D-IAE/Mo

D. Hockney VH+IAE

A. Warhol (2) VH+IAE

K. Haring D-IAE/Mi

A. Calder VH+IAE

70

Page 69: Honesty Bullshit Honestly

71

S. Polke VH+IAE

P. Fischli / D. Weiss VH+IAE

A. Oehlen (1) VH+IAE

A. Oehlen (2) VH+IAE

M. Heilmann D+IAE

A. Reyle (no text)

L. Lou VH+IAE

J. Kassay VH+IAE

T. Struth (no text)

G. Quinn VH+IAE

M. Quinn D+IAE

F. Moshiri D-IAE/Mi

R. Johnson VH+IAE

O. Murillo VH+IAE

Page 70: Honesty Bullshit Honestly

Com

pend

ium

II-A

: R

atin

gs T

otal

s

FRIE

ZE

Au

thor

Ra

ting

Auth

or T

otal

AS

VH

+IAE

D-

IAE/

Mo

= 2

AS

D-IA

E/M

o D+

IAE

= 2

AS

D+IA

E VH

+IAE

= 5

AS

VH

+IAE

In

betw

een

= 1

AS

D-IA

E/M

o

AS

VH+I

AE

AS

VH

+IAE

AS

D+IA

E

AS

DD (=

) D-IA

E/M

i)

AS

VH+I

AE

CF

W

D+IA

E DD

= 1

CF

W

D-IA

E/M

o D-

IAE/

Mo

= 1

CFW

D+

IAE

D+IA

E =

6 CF

W

D+IA

E (=

) VH+

IAE)

VH

+IAE

= 1

CF

W

D-IA

E/M

o (=

) D+I

AE)

Inbe

twee

n =

2 CF

W

VH+I

AE

CF

W

DD

CF

W

D+IA

E

CFW

D+

IAE

CF

W

D+IA

E

CFW

D+

IAE

JG

D-

IAE/

Mo

DD =

1

JG

VH+I

AE

D-IA

E/M

i = 1

JG

D-

IAE/

Mi

D-IA

E/M

o =

1 JG

D+

IAE

D+

IAE

= 5

JG

D+IA

E VH

+IAE

= 1

JG

D+

IAE

JG

D+

IAE

JG

D+

IAE

JG

D-

IAE/

Mo

JG

DD

KK

D-IA

E/M

i D-

IAE/

Mi =

5

KK

D-IA

E/M

o D-

IAE/

Mo

= 1

KK

D+IA

E D+

IAE

= 4

KK

D-IA

E/M

i

KK

D-IA

E/M

i

KK

D+IA

E

KK

D-IA

E/M

i

KK

D-iA

E/M

i

KK

D+IA

E

KK

D+IA

E

KMJ

D+IA

E D-

IAE/

Mo

= 3

KMJ

D-IA

E/M

o D+

IAE

= 2

KMJ

D+IA

E VH

+IAE

= 3

KM

J VH

+IAE

In

betw

een

= 1

KMJ

D-IA

E/M

o

KMJ

VH+I

AE

KM

J D-

IAE/

Mo

KM

J (=

) D+I

AE o

r VH+

IAE?

KMJ

VH+I

AE

KM

J D-

IAE/

Mo

M

A D+

IAE

D-IA

E/M

i = 1

M

A D+

IAE

D+IA

E =

4 M

A D-

IAE/

Mi

VH+I

AE =

4

MA

VH+I

AE

M

A D+

IAE

M

A VH

+IAE

MA

VH+I

AE

M

A VH

+IAE

MA

D+IA

E

MH

D+IA

E D-

IAE/

Mo

= 1

MH

VH+I

AE

D+IA

E =

1 M

H VH

+IAE

VH

+IAE

= 1

3 M

H VH

+IAE

MH

VH+I

AE

M

H VH

+IAE

MH

VH+I

AE

M

H VH

+IAE

MH

VH+I

AE

M

H VH

+IAE

MH

D-IA

E/M

o

MH

VH+I

AE

M

H VH

+IAE

MH

VH+I

AE

M

H VH

+IAE

PL

D+IA

E D-

IAE/

Mi =

1

PL

VH+I

AE (o

r D+I

AE?)

D+

IAE

= 2

PL

VH+I

AE

VH+I

AE =

4

PL

VH+I

AE

Inbe

twee

n =

1 PL

VH

+IAE

PL

D-IA

E/M

i

Page 71: Honesty Bullshit Honestly

PL

D+IA

E

PL

VH+I

AE

PT

DD

DD

= 2

PT

D+

IAE

D-IA

E/M

o =

1 PT

D-

IAE/

Mo

D+IA

E =

2 PT

DD

PT

D+IA

E

QL

D+IA

E D+

IAE

= 1

SC

D+IA

E DD

= 1

SC

D+

IAE

D-IA

E/M

i = 3

SC

D-

IAE/

Mi

D-IA

E/M

o =

1 SC

D-

IAE/

Mi

D+IA

E =

4 SC

(=

)D+I

AE o

r VH+

IAE?

In

betw

een

= 2

SC

D-IA

E/M

o

SC

(=)E

ither

D+I

AE o

r VH+

IAE?

SC

D+IA

E

SC

D+IA

E

SC

D-IA

E/M

i

SC

DD

SL

VH

+IAE

DD

= 4

SL

D-

IAE/

Mo

D-IA

E/M

i = 1

SL

DD

D-

IAE/

Mo

= 2

SL

DD

VH+I

AE =

1

SL

DD

Inbe

twee

n =

1 SL

DD

SL

D-IA

E/M

i

SL

D-IA

E/M

o

SL

D-IA

E (M

i or M

o???

)

SNS

D+IA

E (=

) VH+

IAE)

D+

IAE

= 2

SNS

D+IA

E VH

+IAE

= 3

SN

S VH

+IAE

In

betw

een

= 3

SNS

VH+I

AE

SN

S D-

IAE/

Mi (

=) D

D)

SN

S VH

+IAE

SNS

D+IA

E

SNS

VH+I

AE (o

r D+I

AE?)

SOR

VH+I

AE

D-IA

E/M

o =

1 SO

R VH

+IAE

D+

IAE

= 1

SOR

D+IA

E VH

+IAE

= 7

SO

R VH

+IAE

In

betw

een

= 1

SOR

VH+I

AE

SO

R VH

+IAE

SOR

VH+I

AE

SOR

VH+I

AE

SO

R D-

IAE/

Mo

SO

R D+

IAE

(=) V

H+IA

E)

ST

DD

DD

= 2

ST

D-

IAE/

Mi

D-IA

E/M

i = 3

ST

D-

IAE/

Mi

D-IA

E/M

o =

5 ST

D-

IAE/

Mo

VH+I

AE =

2

ST

D-IA

E/M

o In

betw

een

= 1

ST

VH+I

AE

ST

D-

IAE/

Mo

ST

D-

IAE/

Mi (

=) D

D)

ST

D-

IAE/

Mi

ST

DD

ST

D-IA

E/M

o

ST

VH+I

AE

ST

D-

IAE/

Mo

TM

D+

IAE

DD =

1

TM

D-IA

E/M

o D-

IAE/

Mo

= 1

TM

DD

D+IA

E =

4 TM

VH

+IAE

VH

+IAE

= 4

TM

D+

IAE

TM

VH

+IAE

TM

VH+I

AE

TM

D+

IAE

TM

D+

IAE

TM

VH

+IAE

TOTA

LS:

8%

DD

= 1

2

9%

D-

IAE/

Mi =

15

13

%

D-IA

E/M

o =

20

27

%

D+IA

E =

40

32

%

VH+I

AE =

48

9%

In

betw

een

= 13

15

0

Page 72: Honesty Bullshit Honestly

VE

NIC

E

Auth

or

Ratin

g Au

thor

Tot

al

AM

VH+I

AE

D-IA

E/M

i = 1

AM

D+

IAE

(=) V

H+IA

E)

D-IA

E/M

o =

1 AM

D-

IAE/

Mo

(?)

D+IA

E =

1 AM

D-

IAE/

Mo

VH+I

AE =

7

AM

VH+I

AE

Inbe

twee

n =

2 AM

VH

+IAE

AM

VH+I

AE

AM

VH

+IAE

AM

VH+I

AE

AM

D-

IAE/

Mi

AM

VH

+IAE

AM

D+IA

E

FP

D-IA

E/M

o D-

IAE/

Mo

= 2

FP

D+IA

E (=

) VH+

IAE)

D+

IAE

= 7

FP

VH+I

AE

VH+I

AE =

7

FP

VH+I

AE

Inbe

twee

n =

3 FP

D+

IAE

FP

D+

IAE

FP

D+

IAE

FP

VH+I

AE

FP

VH

+IAE

FP

D+IA

E

FP

D+IA

E

FP

VH+I

AE

FP

D+

IAE

FP

D+

IAE

FP

D+

IAE

(=) V

H+IA

E)

FP

VH

+IAE

FP

D+IA

E (=

) VH+

IAE)

FP

VH+I

AE

FP

D-

IAE/

Mo

FP

D-

IAE/

Mi

JM

H D-

IAE/

Mo

(=) D

+IAE

) D-

IAE/

Mi =

2

JMH

D+IA

E D+

IAE

= 3

JMH

D+IA

E In

betw

een

= 2

JMH

D-IA

E/M

i

JMH

D+IA

E

JMH

D-IA

E/M

o

JMH

D-IA

E/M

i

JMH

D+IA

E (=

) VH+

IAE)

LH

VH+I

AE

DD =

1

LH

VH+I

AE

D-IA

E/M

i = 3

LH

VH

+IAE

D+

IAE

= 2

LH

D-IA

E/M

i VH

+IAE

= 4

LH

D-

IAE/

Mi

Inbe

twee

n =

1 LH

DD

LH

DD-IA

E/M

o (=

) D+I

AE)

LH

D+

IAE

LH

VH

+IAE

LH

D+IA

E

LH

D-IA

E/M

i

RS

VH+I

AE

DD =

2

RS

D+IA

E D-

IAE/

Mo

= 3

RS

VH+I

AE

D+IA

E =

5 RS

D+

IAE

(=) V

H+IA

E)

VH+I

AE =

23

RS

D-IA

E/M

o In

betw

een

= 4

RS

VH+I

AE

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

D+IA

E

RS

DD

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

D+IA

E

RS

VH+I

AE

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

VH+I

AE

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

VH+I

AE

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

VH+I

AE

RS

(?

?)

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

D-IA

E/M

o

RS

VH+I

AE

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

(??)

RS

VH+I

AE

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

VH+I

AE

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

VH+I

AE

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

(??)

RS

DD

RS

D+

IAE

RS

VH

+IAE

RS

VH+I

AE

RS

D-

IAE/

Mo

RS

D+

IAE

SL

VH

+IAE

DD

= 1

SL

D+

IAE

(=) V

H+IA

E)

D-IA

E/M

o =

1 SL

D-

IAE/

Mo

D+IA

E =

1 SL

VH

+IAE

VH

+IAE

= 2

SL

D-

IAE/

Mi

Inbe

twee

n =

1 SL

DD

SL

D+IA

E

TO

TALS

:

4%

DD =

4

6%

D-

IAE/

Mi =

6

7%

D-

IAE/

Mo

= 7

20

%

D+IA

E =

19

45

%

VH+I

AE =

43

14

%

Inbe

twee

n =

13

95

Page 73: Honesty Bullshit Honestly

PHIL

LIPS

Ratin

g (T

otal

) D+

IAE

D-IA

E/M

i = 4

D+

IAE

D-IA

E/M

o =

1 D+

IAE

D+IA

E =

4 D+

IAE

VH+I

AE =

48

D-IA

E/M

i

D-IA

E/M

i

D-IA

E/M

i

D-IA

E/M

i

D-IA

E/M

o

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

VH

+IAE

VH+I

AE

TOTA

LS:

7%

D-IA

E/M

i = 4

2%

D-

IAE/

Mo

= 1

7%

D+IA

E =

4 84

%

VH+I

AE =

48

57

Page 74: Honesty Bullshit Honestly

The Hague, June, 2014

Book layout by Ludmila Rodrigues

Page 75: Honesty Bullshit Honestly
Page 76: Honesty Bullshit Honestly