Disclaimer:

My presentation was a hoax. "Elsa Pfiger" comes from the German word, "persiflage" and "Xo Ha is an anagram of "hoax". I made "art" pieces out of cheap clap-trap from Chinatown, and some Bavarian junk from my aunt’s house. It was all made up, and the class "bought" it… I think.

I wanted to see how far something totally ridiculous could be taken into the depths of seriousness. The juxtaposition of mass-produced commodities with handmade objects seemed to be an ideally shallow subject, and also incredibly plausible as contemporary art. Globalization and cultural identity are current, fashionable topics; perfectly subject to shrewd criticism and cynicism. As I created Elsa Pfiger and Xo Ha, they became strangely real to me, which is the only reason I could pull it off.

I didn’t do it so much as a jaded and disillusioned artist as I did it as a nerdy art student, making an experiment for the sake of interest. Although my proposal and presentation were about Xo Ha and Elsa Pfiger, the real 2 artists that I researched are David Bowie and William Boyd, for their Nat Tate hoax, and Mind Control from Toronto for their Kungol Nate art prank. The following is the ‘catalogue essay’ and inspiration outline for my project:

Transgressing the Border of Conformity

As if we were still in Grade School, being able to say "I know something you don’t know" is irresistibly attractive to some of us. My theory works like this: Some kids are picked on and end up being the victims of nasty juvenile tricks. Like getting fake "I like you" notes in your locker, or walking around all day with a maxi pad stuck to your back, which is pretty traumatizing. Later in life, with new confidence, some of us feel that it’s "pay back time."

The motives and agendas of this century’s great art hoaxers, have been fairly consistent in that most seriously question what can be passed off as "art." Vice Magazine narrows down this sense of artistic frustration bluntly:

"How come the same old bullshit canvasses sell for thousands (…) making lexus driving assholes out of uncreative mofos while you suffer in obscurity, feeling like a loser because you’re sporting ripped pink jeans. Bet you’d like to fuck shit up a bit, eh? Somehow throw a wrench into their cocktail-sipping, overly-educated little clique?"(1)

Because art itself is subjective and not clearly defined, art hoax "helps us expose and unmask the arbitrariness, the emptiness, the superficialness [sic] (…) of the art establishment." (2) Artists and academics have been hoaxing since 1914 when Marcel Duchamp submitted his urinal to a jury under the name R. Mutt; inspiring others to rebel against "the system."

A rebirth of the prank as a method of rebellion has been promulgated internationally within contemporary art. I will focus on two – The Toronto-based group, Mind Control, with the Kungol Nate scam, and New York’s William Boyd and David Bowie’s fictional Nat Tate biography. Two other hoaxers worth mentioning are Australia’s Elizabeth Durack who invented an aboriginal artist named Eddie Burrup, and New York University physics professor, Alan Sokal with his deceitful essay, sent to Social Text magazine in 1996. Each of these artists cheated and insulted the public by means of elaborate chimera.

In 1997, David Bowie collaborated with writer, William Boyd, to write a biography of a fictional artist, Nat Tate, who lived from 1928 to 1960 in New York City. Nat Tate lived an obscure life; alcohol and jealousy-ridden, he was a great admirer of the early twentieth century artist, Georges Braque. In the book, When Braque finally invites him to his studio, Tate "…sees what true artistic mastery is. Understanding his own mediocrity, Tate grasps the meaning of his success and ‘the presaging of a future he did not welcome.’" (3) After being brutally rejected by the art world, Nat Tate questions "not only his value as an artist but his very existence," (4) and ends his life by jumping off of the Staten Island ferry.

David Bowie and UK-based 21 Publishing organized a party and book launch at Jeff Koons’ New York studio on the eve of April Fools last year. In attendance were artists Frank Stella and Julian Schnabel, local art dealer Holly Solomon, and my favourite UK art critic, Matthew Collings. As David Bowie read an excerpt from his Nat Tate book, featured in Modern Painter’s Spring 1998 edition, listeners were curious, and generally believed the story. When The Independent of London’s arts news editor, David Lister interviewed a few of the guests, some outwardly admitted that they had never heard of Nat Tate. Others, however, explained that Tate "‘didn’t have much of a reputation outside New York,’" (5) and one person even confessed to having met Nat Tate at one time. Oops!

I find that this reveals something very unfortunate about human nature. People are often too embarrassed to admit that they haven’t heard of somebody, especially supposedly well-known artists. Sean French of New Statesman magazine explains that this sort of reaction happens out of "human gullibility, obedience, and (…) [also] exposes our greed, folly, conformity, and fear of embarrassment." (6)

Vice magazine recently featured an article, "The Art Prank of the Decade," which revealed former Toronto Zoo resident and artist, Kungol Nate, to be a fabricated persona. Toronto artists, Matthew Bennett and Shane Laurila, irritated by the local art scene, "…painted a bunch of paintings so ugly they could not bear to exhibit them under their own names." (7) As a joke, they held an "outsider art" show at a local gallery, and hired their 18-year old BMXer friend to pretend he was the artist.

Public response was incredible and journalists were eager to find out more about the supposedly homeless boy who was found spending time at the Metro Toronto Zoo "painting ape pictures on pizza boxes." (8) He was featured in Canada’s Art Focus magazine, where they described his work as seeming to "sum up the best of the modern art movements of the twentieth century: the wild color of the fauves, the slashing brushwork of the Abstract Expressionists, and the ‘unconscious’ techniques of the Surrealists." (9) If "Kungol Nate"’s hideous paintings can be interpreted in this "educated" fashion, what’s stopping anyone from punching someone in the face and calling it "art"? Pushing the envelope of credibility has also been used recently in other academic fields; science for instance.

In 1994, a professor of physics at New York University devised a brilliant scam where he tricked the editors of Social Text Magazine, as well as thousands of academics in his field. An artist in his way, Alan Sokal was about to conceive a meta-project which would anger, and embarrass his specific academic community. He wrote a long, convoluted, nonsensical essay entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity:" (10) In his essay, Sokal suggests that "(somewhere, somehow) [lies] a deep connection between quantum theory and radical politics…" (11) His writing made absolutely no sense, but was published in the magazine regardless – the editors couldn’t discern the fact that Alan Sokal had written a long, academic-sounding rant that was nonsense. A major upheaval arose when the hoax was finally revealed; some found that it "…was an unforgivable act of disloyalty that undermined a political project of great importance…" (12) Most disturbing is the idea that an academic magazine would publish such an article, and then disclose their baseless anger after the fact.

When exposed, some pranks are taken entirely lightly; as a joke. But more often, the response is split; some people think it’s funny, and the rest become very angry. Elizabeth Durack, an eccentric 84-year old Australian woman, has been working and having shows under an assumed name since 1994. Eddie Burrup, a fictitious aboriginal man, is comprised of four native Australians that Durack has known throughout her life. "His" work is dark, expressive, "reminiscent of aboriginal bark painting… and is predominantly about aboriginal subjects." (13) When Eddie Burrup had sold a number of paintings, made a series of well-admired Christmas cards, and was getting invitations to enter Aboriginal art competitions, Elizabeth Durack realized the hoax had gone too far, and decided to ‘out’ herself. When the Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Dodson, found out that an old white lady had been making faux-native art, he said ‘This represents an attempt to appropriate our cultural property.’ (14) I would say that Durack is somewhat of a cultural transvestite. However angry the native community was that she was profiting from their history, I believe that she was only trying to re-invent herself as an Aboriginal man, out of envy. Not to mention her (his?) paintings are quite great.

I think I have discovered an academic revolution throughout my research. Why have so many recent artists been rebelling against the complex theoretical discourse of the art world? I just found a little piece of kleenex marking a perfect quote in my Matthew Collings book:

"…with art the discourse is incredibly tortured and unreal, and you have to get to know it over many years. At first you can’t believe the phoneyness and unreality. It’s like a bad film, set in the art world. It’s so extreme, you feel sure everybody must be joking, and that suddenly they’re going to admit it. (....) But they never do, and actually their laughter at the occasional joke you might make about the discourse and the need to maintain it more or less 100 per cent at all times, however absurd it gets – just to give your aching mind some relief – is always uneasy, and you learn not to make them after a while. You go along with it even though there’s a permanent uneasy feeling and you know you’re playing a role." (15)

Playing a role was something I wanted to try, so I did.