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    • XVII

      • Colleen Asper Labor with Rectangle
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Monument Working Strategies LLC: Structuring Creative Freedom
      • Triple Candie Exhibition Preparations
      • Sean Raspet 2GFR24SMEZZ2XMCVI5L8X9Y38ZJ2JD…
      • Owen Kydd Handheld
      • Dan Levenson Notes From Jessica
      • Julia Rommel Easy Tacker
      • Jordan Kantor MAN(ET/DE)GAS
      • Sreshta Rit Premnath The Last Image
      • OJO The Adventures of Nuclear Wad & How He Learned To Stop Dreaming
    • XVI

      • Julia Sherman Re-Claiming Susan B. Anthony
      • Robert Hult Hasidic Street Posters in Brooklyn
      • Runo Lagomarsino Pedro’s Story: An Unsuccessful Transatlantic Traveller
      • John Houck Pine Ridge: An interview with Jim Houck
      • Brian Zegeer Dragoman of Little Syria
      • Sidney Russell Kuna Yala Swag
      • Desirée Holman Outer Spaces: Part I
      • Faith47 The Unexpected Present
      • Carmen Winant Personal Best
      • Philip-Lorca diCorcia Red Bull Snake
    • XV

      • Jessica Green & Tom Griffiths Terra Incognita (A Video Game Folly)
      • Prem Krishnamurthy The People’s Representation: On Staged Graphics in Klaus Wittkugel’s Work
      • Cian O'Day N/A, or On the Dark Stores of Brian Ulrich
      • Yasmeen M. Siddiqui Avatar Gone Analog: Musings on The Bridge Project by Do Ho Suh
      • Emily Larned ARTS 02–2011: The Artist-Created Institution as Art Practice
      • Yoonjai Choi & Ken Meier Interview with Metahaven
      • Aaron Kunin Space and Place in Two Video Installations by Amie Siegel
      • Tom Griffiths Interview with Barbara Griffiths
    • XIV

      • Colleen Asper & Justin Lieberman In Conversation
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report To The Committee On Periodical Group Exhibitions
      • Ryan Mrozowski & Mike Womack Before-Biennial-After
      • Kay Rosen Waiting for Michael Asher
      • Kate Gilmore Drag
    • XIII

      • Talia Chetrit Van Hanos’s Harlem Studio
      • Mieke Marple The Lives of Objects at The Suburban
      • Laurel Nakadate Island Light
      • C.D. Parker Draw Me a Pie Chart Powerfully
      • Alan Reid Despondent Babysitter
      • Lucy Kim & Leeza Meksin Art Crimes
    • XII

      • Anonymous On Looking at Nature: An Untitled Petition on Crapomimicry
      • Paul Huf Musical Box with a Dancing Ballerina
      • Lance Wakeling Voluntary Sculptures: Photographing the Unmonumental
      • David Kennedy-Cutler Possession Obsession
      • Nine Budde Stopping by at a Friends’ Place
      • Cody Trepte Untitled (Something Clever Here)
    • XI

      • Adam Helms Hirschhorn at Gladstone Gallery
      • David Scanavino Fact or Fiction
      • Jason Tomme The Voodoo of Robert Irwin
      • Kristin Posehn The Rocks of Rocklin
      • Joanne Greenbaum Decorating the Void: On Clay and Dirt on Delight
    • X

      • Jennifer Dudley Interview with Daniel Bozhkov
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report to the Committee on Decentered Practices
      • Except for the brief interlude of high modernism, when we were encouraged to spend all our time in the studio and leave the rest to the professionals, artists have usually also been other things: architects, poets, scientists, thieves, diplomats. In his prime, Jacques-Louis David managed—between paintings—to dismantle the French Royal Academy, art-direct Voltaire’s lavish funeral, and help arrange several high-profile executions during the Reign of Terror, before they threw him in jail. So we shouldn’t be too impressed with ourselves when we curate a show or write an essay.

        Jacques-Louis David, Self Portrait, 1794.

        And yet here we are. Having foresworn the isolated studio and its self-reflexive entrenchment of competence, the artist of the decentered practice triumphantly re-enters the world. But, as he quickly discovers, this world has long since been divided into discrete and impenetrable domains of expertise. Encountering the highly evolved vocabulary that envelops everything from aerodynamics and philosophy to grant writing and non-profit law, the artist of the decentered practice sees he can no longer be a Renaissance man. More than likely, he will become a kind of universal amateur instead.

        This can be both good and bad. Sometimes it’s productive to let those with no formal training visit a discipline and rearrange the conceptual furniture; some people are truly useful in several fields. And certain fields are more open to our interventions; artists would nowadays find it very difficult to advance the course of science, but we have a much easier time opening a gallery or starting a magazine. The downside is that the artist-as-amateur spends endless hours playing catch-up to the rules and procedures of other practices, often finding himself unable to do more than footnote contributions from the establishment. And the tedium of dilletantism is self-evident to anyone who has sat through a mediocre screening, lecture, or social experiment whose only supposedly interesting feature was its presentation as art. It’s like being asked to be impressed that someone drew a passable picture of a dog using his left hand.

        Which leads us back to the studio. When people talk about the decentered practice, they often ascribe to it an inherent progressivism, and to the still-centered one, an embarrassing atavism — as if the artist who curates exhibitions, produces films, and collaborates on texts with economists has moved conceptually, politically, and even morally beyond the artist who still mucks around with objects and then tries to sell them. But it’s naive to presume that the contemporary artist’s tangled affair with the culture industry is left behind at the studio door, or that activities embarked upon outside one’s specialty — or outside one’s gallery — are necessarily altruistic. What’s more convenient for the culture industry, anyway, than a producer who operates in different fields at once — synergistically, as they say? What smells worse than the artist who seeks to evade the specter of marketing by branding himself?

        53 Degrees Design, Lectern 04.

        We find the decentered practice works best when it doesn’t draw too much attention to itself. Soaked too long in theory, it tends towards a convoluted formalism, turning potentially useful actions into blank, self-conscious examples of themselves. In practice, however, there are countless good reasons for an artist to do other things occasionally, or even primarily. So even if someone wants to open a bar as an artwork, you can still get a drink. And if another artist has to bartend anonymously just to pay the bills, then make it a double. This seems to be the point, really: what artists do collectively, or for money, or for kicks, all serves to mitigate what is still usually a badly paid, solitary, and potentially monotonous vocation. For anyone who feels boxed in by the traditional role of the artist, these decentered activities begin to revise the job description. For those who feel excluded from the sacred rooms of art, writing an essay, curating a show, or starting a gallery can all serve to jimmy the door open.

        Given their usefulness, it’s no surprise that these various practices, seen as radical and groundbreaking in the last century, are now fairly commonplace: so much so that we’ve stopped thinking of them as decentered. In fact, the very notion seems nostalgic to us, harkening back to the days when there still was a center — held fast by painting and sculpture — and other practices were vying for legitimacy. As artists, we’ve long since won the right to do as we wish, so we don’t see the romance in reenacting previous transgressions. Whatever projects we take up now, their status as art or not-art — centered or decentered — matters less to us than what they actually do, whom they serve or entertain, what they reveal or revise, what feelings they evoke or dispel. At this point we’ve earned the right to see practices for what they are and take each of them on their own terms. So if an artist feels called upon to open a restaurant — well, you can either eat the food or not. And if they want to write essays instead — you can’t really stick a fork in those.

        Dushko Petrovich and Roger White are both painters. They also edit the print journal Paper Monument.

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      • Shana Lutker Artists Are Not
      • Steve Cairns & Isla Leaver-Yap Blind Carbon Copy
      • Katarina Burin Rooms No One Lives In
      • Jonathan Bogarin What’s Your Context?
      • Sara Greenberger Rafferty Master of None
    • IX

      • Andrea Hill Fact, Factoid, Factotum
      • Nicholas Weist We’re Interested in Your White Horse
      • Tyler Coburn Ronnie Bass at I-20
      • Allison Kave Doa Aly and Juan William Chavez
      • Gillian Sneed Interview with Adam Pendleton
    • VIII

      • Jacob Hashimoto Interview with Luis Gispert
      • Lilly McElroy Guy Maddin’s Winnipeg
      • Kevin Zucker Thematic Apperception Test
      • Ian Cooper That’s What He Said
      • Colleen Asper Interview with Matt Borruso
    • VII

      • Mieke Marple Interview with Michelle Grabner
      • Farrah Karapetian Reframing Mirrors and Windows
      • Ruby Sky Stiler That’s What She Said
      • Spencer Finch New Zealand Light
      • Dana Frankfort John Walker: Text in/and Painting
      • The Editors Whitney Biennial 2008
    • VI

      • Katie Herzog Bay Area Figurative Language
      • Matt Connors Teignmouth Electron by Tacita Dean
      • Connelly LaMar New Photography 2007 at MOMA
      • Ethan Greenbaum Inside Lights
      • Matthew Lancit Cleaning Magritte’s Pipe
    • V

      • Roger White Jay Heikes at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Interview with Michael DeLucia
      • Erin Shirreff Michel Auder: The Feature
      • Jessica Lansdon Interview with Brian Bress
      • Lisha Bai Suzanne Song at Michael Steinberg Fine Art
    • IV

      • Mariah Robertson Conditions in Time
      • Jacob Feige Psychopathia Pastoralis
      • Eric Golo Stone Interview with George Kontos
      • Skyler Brickley Keith Tyson at PaceWildenstein
      • Lumi Tan Curatorial Project with Jo-ey Tang
    • III

      • George Rush Wayne Gonzales at Paula Cooper
      • Jacqueline Cooper Margaret Wall-Romana at Bucheon Gallery
      • Ana Wolovick Robin Rhode at Perry Rubenstein
      • Skyler Brickley Nicholas Krushenick at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Peter Young at PS1
      • Ethan Greenbaum Daniel Gordon Interview
    • II

      • Christine Frerichs Rebecca Morris at Karyn Lovegrove Gallery
      • Skyler Brickley Josh Smith at Luhring Augustine
      • Ethan Greenbaum Kristen Baker at Deitch Projects
    • I

      • Mark Barrow On Abstraction
      • Tova Carlin Superstudio
      • Julia Weist Johannes Vanderbeek at Zach Feuer
      • Skyler Brickley Wilhelm Sasnal at Anton Kern
      • Ethan Greenbaum Cement Garden at Marvelli Gallery