that has been appropriated Californian computer hackers

through its absorption into referenced in the sound piece

art history’s index of termi-
nologies and as a result, used
as a symbol for a wider set of
reference points. This slip-
page dislocates ‘fetish finish’
from the original terms of its
classification, in turn forcing
us to question whether it is
possible to engage academi-
‘Paradox’. It is through this
fetishisation that the implica-
tions of these practices can
be explored and the retro-
spective construction of their
vernacular can be considered.
[1] ‘All I can you tell you is what it feels like when you leave
the studio…it’s like you have a bunch of rocks in your stomach
[and] then, all the trouble starts…. You have to go through it,
like somebody preparing for sacred vows, the sensation of you
putting paint on…You do it and the work is done,,,,And then you

cally with concepts that by
their very definition tran-
scend intellectual and aes-
thetic boundaries.
leave the studio and those rocks aren’t there anymore’ Philip
Guston, 1966
Once Upon a
[2] Hughes, A. (1990) The Cave and the Stithy: Artists’ Studios
and Intellectual Property in Early Modern Europe, Oxford:
Time in the West
Oxford Art Journal 13(1), p 34-48
[3] Frank Stella, interview with Caroline A. Jones, July 18, 1990
[4] Ibid. Naomi Pearce Part 1
[5] Liberman, A. (1960) The Artist in His Studio, New York:

There is fetish at work

Viking Press, p 11, 12.
[6] Hickey, D. (2010) Primary Atmospheres: Works from Califor-
There existed rooms of con- In post war Europe and
within this art practice. Not
nia 1960 – 1970, New York: Steidl/David Zwirner, p 8
[7] ‘What distinguished work made on the West coast was not
templation and solitude. America, the artist’s studio
the fetish of surface, object
so much the materials, or even the industrial look of the work,
but the degree to which the artists were involved with almost Spaces where moments of by its very definition was a
or the ideologies that employ
intangible qualities of polish, surface effect and colour, focusing
at a deeper level on phenomenological and perceptual issues.’ individual genius erupted space under authorship of a
these devices. Through the
Allington, E (1998) Buddha Built My Hot Rod, Frieze Magazine:
38 p 20 from the pits of men’s stom- lone creator. Modern artists
exhaustive study of photo-
[8] ‘Several Finish Fetish paintings, wall reliefs and sculptures
from the 1960s and ’70s attest to the absorption of surf-board achs, spluttered like rocks1, ‘create[d] authentic works in a
graphs, anecdotal accounts,
materials and techniques — cast fiberglass, resins, high-gloss
finishes, and luminous monochromes — by art. (2010) Artist and racing through their hearts semi-private lair shut off from
Surfer as Best Buddies, New York Times, July 23 2010 p C23
techniques used and materi- [9] This is Irwin talking about his 1939 Ford: ‘Well, I finally got and minds, out into the world. the pressures of the outside
that car finished. I had twenty coats of ruby-red maroon on the

als tested Clements fetishies dash, and I had this great finish outside. The car was absolutely These rooms existed high world’2.
hunky-dory. Twenty coats of ruby-red maroon, let me tell you,

the idea of the ‘visionary’;
be it the ‘executive artists’
of East coast minimalists or
Printed on the occasion of Neil
Clements solo exhibition, held at
the Woodmill, London, from 15th
to paint the dash: that means taking everything out, all the
instruments and everything, painting it, building up these coats
up in rotting attics of rented By 1960, the romance of
very slowly, spraying the lacquer. It was just a very exagger-
ated thing’ Allington, E (1998) Buddha Built My Hot Rod, Frieze
dwellings, forgotten ware- these studios were begin-
Magazine: 38 p 20 houses strung out on the ning to diminish, the rooms
outskirts of thundering cit- begun to swell and distort
Supporters: ies or in the isolated retreats with changes to how art
of rural landscapes. One was produced and the way
day, the men looked into the in which the world was per-
H PE

January - 13th Febuary
For more information:
info@woomill.org
www.woodmill.org
SCOTT world and decided to leave
their rooms and go on a long
journey. Where they would
THE WOODMILL go and whom they would
NECKINGER DEPOT . NECKINGER
meet they did not know but
LONDON . SE16 3QN
they would surely be back.
ceived. In New York, Frank
Stella declared himself an
‘executive artist’ openly re-
jecting the mythology of the
studio, embracing assembly
line techniques and working
with house painters brushes. these artists with a camera one of the many quandaries straction that occurred simul-
He wasn’t even interested exposes his desire to frame inherent in his practice. In taneously during the 1960s
in being an artist; ‘futzing their activities and spaces in keeping with his exploration and 70s.
around or seeing how clever an act of nostalgic preserva- into minimal abstraction of Although possessing
[he] could be’ . Stella refused tion. Over the subsequent 1960s and 70s America, this the industrially fabricated
to adhere to the traumatic decades, there would be a site specific installation built aesthetic of East Coast mini-
creative process of Jackson proliferation of these types within the Woodmill hangar malists this ‘fetish finish’ (an
Pollock and other Abstract of photographs in exhibi- space incorporates the meth- originally derogatory term
Expressionists that had come tion catalogues, artist mono- ods of production and aes- coined by New York based
before he ‘just wanted to do graphs and popular maga- thetic employed by the artists critics to describe Califor-
it [make a painting] and get it zines such as Life and Vogue. of these generations. How- nia’s school of minimalism)
over with so I could go home It was with an appetite ever, it also marks an uncom- is rooted in the performative
and watch TV’ . 3
for minimalist practices and fortable departure from the actions of human labor7. Un-
Conversely, in the same it’s ephemera that fifty years familiarity of his studio where like DeWain Velentine and
year, artist Alexander Liber- later, Neil Clements studied the majority of his previous Robert Irwin who utilized
man published the photo- a photograph of Larry Bell’s work has been contemplated, this process in both their
graphic publication; ‘Artist in studio. Depicting the vacuum minutely planned and pro- artworks and everyday lives
his studio’, featuring, among coated glass surfaces of one duced. (be it building surfboards8 or
others, images of Cezanne’s of Bell’s trademark cubes, Sol le Witt’s remark; ‘The fixing their cars9) Clements
preserved studio taken on this monument to isolated most interesting character- harnesses it as a prop for his
one of his many ritualistic ‘hard-core nothingness’5, istic of the cube is that it is conceptual concerns. How-
returns to Aix de Provence. brought into being within relatively uninteresting’6 is ever the definition of ‘fetish
In contrast to his work as a vacuum optical coating re-interpreted by the cladding finish’ is determined by more
a painter, where Liberman machine, is presented rest- of industrial treadplate and than its aesthetic qualities,
sought to rid the canvas of ing on humble foundations. layered application of bright cultural origin or mode of
the artists’ hand, as photog- Absent are the clean perspex car paint finish. Here the production, inherent to its
rapher he depicted the art- columns on which the cubes treadplate functions as a wa- nuance, is the individual and
ist studio as a dusty shrine. usually stand, in their place, termark; interrupting the light arguably irrational desire
Suppressing any ideological the rudimentary form of com- and space delivered back to to carry out this process. To
doubts he harbored for the mon breezeblocks. us by the cubes reflective achieve a ‘fetish finish’ one
practices these spaces bore, surfaces. These impenetrable must submit to an instinctive
he presented the artist as Part 2 masses force the eye to rest obsession groomed through
someone who ‘sacrificed all Clements’s decision to upon their refracting sides. the repeated act of doing. In
personal human contact to choose an image of an art- Inanimate, the cubes allude contrast to this, within Bad
achieve his vision’4. Liber- ists work in the studio for the to both ‘fetish finish’ and History we are confronted
man’s decision to record basis of Bad History exposes more painterly forms of ab- with a technique or style