Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Rodney Graham | A Little Thought







[Rodney Graham]
A Little Thought
Toronto, Canada/Los Angeles, USA/Vancouver, Canada: AGO/MoCA/Vancouver Art Gallery, 2004
208 pp., 25.5 x 30.5 x 2.75 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown

A Little Thought is the first North American museum retrospective and accompanying catalogue from one of Canada's most celebrated artists. Art Gallery of Ontario curator Jessica Bradley provides the introduction, Cornelia Butler examines Graham's relationship to the Canadian landscape and identity, Lynne Cooke looks at the construction of the artist's persona in works such as City Self/ Country Self (2001), and Shep Steiner discusses the joke as a conceptual strategy for Graham. 

The latter is key to appreciating Graham's practice. My favorite work of his (and - almost - of anyone's) is Verwandlungsmusik, a work which the artist has brilliantly dismissed as trivial and a "musical joke", before adding that the piece "redeems itself only because it is a joke of cosmic proportions". 

The above copy of the book was signed for me by Graham, hurriedly arranged by curator Jessica Bradley moments prior to the opening reception at the AGO. I had helped her put on a performance by Graham at the Gladstone Hotel a day or two prior (see flyer, below). Not sure if the misspelling of my name was deliberate or not. 

Graham loved playing music but was also stricken with stage fright, often vomiting before taking the stage. In addition to the Gladstone show, I had seen him play in Berlin (alongside Martin Creed) and again in Toronto many years later (an event put on by collector Paul Marks, the doctor for the Toronto Raptors). I wish I enjoyed the performances more, but I never felt the music ever really rose above a bar generic band with witty lyrics. 

I like the song that accompanies Graham's acid bike ride film Phonokinetoscope, and of course Verwandlungsmusik is a musical work. I don't listen to it often, but I think about it all the time. It reminds me of something Ben Vautier told me during a phone interview, about John Cage: "Reading Cage is very boring, listening to John Cage is boring, but thinking about John Cage is extremely funny". 

Graham died on Saturday, at the age of 73. 






No comments:

Post a Comment