Thinking About Neon

TJ Norris & Scott Wayne Indiana "M_US__EUM"

I went and visited TJ Norris and Scott Wayne Indiana's "M_US__EUM" at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. Since then I have been thinking about neon as an artistic medium and it's inherent positives and negatives. TJ and Scott's piece was clever and subtle, with a double reading of "museum" and "mausoleum." I am not sure if it adds anything new to the debate of what a museum should be when regarding contemporary work and artists. However, that does not mean that it isn't focused and sharp as a knife.

The spectacle of neon is in full effect in the piece, with it glimmering and glowing in all it's industrial cleanliness, and then the words are striking. Mausoleum is always a word that grabs your attention, and in this case, it is used wisely. With PAM and Contemporary Crafts struggling to find their place in Portland's contemporary art society, this piece seems like an astute observation and piece of commentary on the evolution and growth of Portland's art world. I am sure both TJ and Scott would simply say it is what it is, and that's all. Yet one certainly knows that these men are intelligent of to recognize and consider all this. So good piece my friends.

This "spectacular" quality is a huge positive of neon. Everyone just loves shiny, glowing things. It works much like humor does in artwork. Once the viewer laughs, they're sucked in and their guard is lowered. Neon also brings all the wonderful commercial and industial associations with it. Coldness, loneliness, industrialization, globalization, commercialization and lots of other words that end in "-zation."

However, I think this same positive is also it's greatest negative. How is the artist's hand evident in neon work? Does the hand need to be evident? I don't think this really matters. Minimalism taught us this, but it's just a thought.

In the end, neon work is usually just words, so why not just completely focus and use simply words on paper. Is there any difference from words in neon to words on paper? I suppose it is all subtle, soft details, yet the devil certainly is in the details.

However, saying something is "just words" is like saying a Pollock is "just a painting." But the history of neon artwork is still too current. Everything is still too fresh. Neon still means Bruce Nauman, just like fluorescent light means Dan Flavin, just like cubes mean Donald Judd. Yet when it comes to painting or two-dimensional visual art, I actually agree with the seemingly trite saying that "painting is dead." But painting is not a mortal being. It's history is so dense that it is being forgotten, and being rebirthed like a pheonix. More beautiful and complex than ever.

Yet who is to say that a neon artwork is not a painting. Can little bits of light be a painting? Is a painting only a painting because it uses paint? This is a ridiculously old conversation that much smarter artists have already answered (can I get a Rauschenberg in here), but it seems to have been on my mind recently.

I would never create neon artwork, because I think people overlook it and only see it for the spectacle, but here I am filling paper and panels with little patterns of gold metallic ink. Maybe nothing seperates artwork anymore. A painting is an object is a painting.

Wow, I have no idea what the hell I just said throughout all that. Little bit of tangent I guess.

Here's a smart little neon piece by Martin Creed:


Martin Creed "Word No. 560"

UPDATE: Make sure to read TJ Norris' comment he left on this entry. He elaborates further on "M_US__EUM."