Lady Gaga Before the Mirror

Many a time the mirror imprisons them and holds them firmly. Fascinated they stand in front. They are absorbed, separated from reality and alone with their dearest vice, vanity.

—Rrose Sélavy (aka Marcel Duchamp), “Men Before the Mirror”

Though I’ve long since stopped tuning into MTV’s Video Music Awards, when someone told me that Lady Gaga opened this year’s show with the introduction of a male alter-ego named Jo, I was curious enough to call up the clip on the internet. Sure enough, there (s)he was, sporting a black pompadour and a bound chest. Jo’s eight-minute performance included a five-minute monologue about—who else?—Lady Gaga; Jo played the part of the spurned lover, smoking furiously and beating his chest.

In her recent MTV promo, Lady Gaga (née Stefani Germanotta) says: “I really believe that art is this huge lie … we sing it and we dance and we dress it every day, and me and my friends all hope that someday we tell it enough that it becomes true.” With its black-and-white palette and close-ups of musicians, one can almost be forgiven for forgetting that the spot is an advertisement for something so crude and commercial as the Video Music Awards. Lady Gaga would like to be more than just a pop star; she sees herself and has encouraged others to see her as something of a performance artist. (By invoking her “friends” in the MTV spot, she even suggests the existence of an avant-garde coterie à la the New York School.) By donning the mantle of Art (note the capital 'A'), she has gained permission to do things and to say things that other popular performers would not do or say—their careers could not survive it. Though her audiences often appear embarrassed for her—this was surely the case at Sunday’s VMA’s—she survives to sing another song because she is vested with the authority of the Artist.

This is a clever trick, and she is not alone in deploying it. In the name of Art, James Franco has deigned to educate the masses about the distinction between high and low cultures: how wonderfully postmodern it is to see a “serious” actor play an artist on “General Hospital”! Lady Gaga and James Franco are not content to be mere artists; that is, talented performers in their respective fields. Their narcissism compels them to seek—and if they don’t find, to invent—ever more and elaborate ways to display themselves. It is fitting that Lady Gaga’s most recent incarnation (after all, Lady Gaga is herself an invention) is the lover of Lady Gaga.

For all of their supposed melding of high and low, art and life, what saves these performers is precisely the persistence of these distinctions. Lady Gaga says that she longs for the dissolution of boundaries between art and life, but her career depends on that boundary remaining fixed.

East Coast, West Coast

In the course of my research here in Los Angeles, I came across a recorded interview of the California-based artist Craig Kauffman. He and the interviewer discussed cultural differences between the East and West Coasts. They agreed, having each spent time in New York, that Los Angeles has more of a "body culture;" New Yorkers put more emphasis on intellect, and, moreover, New Yorkers are suspicious of the West Coast’s failure to do so. Kauffman noted that some conceptual artists of the Eastern persuasion who taught in LA even considered health consciousness fascistic. These kinds of New York vs. Los Angeles conversations are inevitably reductive. (In 1969, Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt made a video called "East Coast, West Coast," which played off precisely these stereotypes.) It’s also likely that New Yorkers have themselves become more attuned to health in the twenty-five years that have elapsed between that interview and the present.

Nevertheless, I have been impressed by the seriousness with which UCLA students attack their workouts at the campus gym, which I have been visiting with, perhaps, insufficient regularity. They do things like jump extremely high to clear boxes in the gym’s open-air courtyard; climb on a rock wall; play volleyball in volleyball-playing gear (like the kind of stuff Gabrielle Reece used to wear); and lift very, very heavy weights. It seems to be paying off, as some of these kids look like they stepped straight out of a tabloid "Best Beach Bodies" issue (not that I’ve ever seen one of those; not even in a waiting room). When I was in college in Philadelphia, almost everyone I knew went to the gym sometimes, but it was really a chore and it seemed clear that they weren’t aiming for the kinds of results I’ve seen here. Still, I won’t extrapolate from my limited experience. Instead, I’ve compiled a list of fairly random Los Angeles anecdotes and observations; you can draw your own conclusions:

•  Angelenos are very friendly. But one nice lady I spoke to on my daily trip to the local frozen yogurt place was surprised to learn from me that when someone falls on the street in New York, people immediately come to their aid. She surmised that in LA people would be too concerned about lawsuits.

•  People ride their bikes on the sidewalks.

•  There’s a movie theater that has couches instead of chairs. And a real live person introduces the film.

•  The buses function fairly well and are populated by mostly normal people. Even so, people here are embarrassed to catch the bus, a bus driver informed me.

 •  Almost every Coffee Bean has outdoor seating.

•  This weekend, I watched one person after another arrive for a party in an apartment building, pass right by the conspicuous buzzer box, try the door, and upon discovering that it was locked, throw their proverbial hands in the air.

•  The police will shut down a relatively tame party at 11:30pm on a Friday night if they get a noise complaint; and if they can figure out how to get into the building.

What if Starbucks Were Art?

At the last Whitney Biennial, my friend and I were approached by a security guard in a curtained gallery where photos and a film by Babette Mangolte were on view. The encounter—which involved the heavily accented guard telling us about his family and requesting that a man with a professional-looking camera take our picture together—had us convinced that we had been involved in some kind of relational art; so much so that when we found out from someone with inside knowledge of the biennial that this was not the case, we were astonished. "Relational aesthetics," like Happenings in the late 1950s and '60s, aren't content to let viewers peruse art at their leisure, but rather draw them into interactive situations. I skipped Tino Sehgal’s already-legendary exhibition at the Guggenheim last year for precisely this reason. I don’t like to perform, and I didn’t want to engage in conversations with strangers in an emptied museum. I considered going on several occasions, but the idea filled me with dread. To me, this is like the adult version of being picked as a "volunteer" at a magic show. Despite my aversion to this kind of art (Just leave me alone with my thoughts!), this morning, as I was picking up my grande nonfat chai latte, it seemed to offer one possible answer to the question (and don't ask me where this came from): If Starbucks were art, what kind of art would it be?

It is a plain, stucco and glass structure whose only distinguishing characteristic is a large, green, lettered sign reading “Starbucks Coffee.” Upon entering the environment, the viewer first encounters a soundtrack of bossa nova and the hissing sound of milk being steamed vigorously. Olfactory sensations soon follow and the viewer realizes that she is in a convincing simulation of a coffee shop. The décor contributes to the verisimilitude of the installation: round café tables with wooden chairs; taupe walls with dark wood wainscoting; artwork about coffee; and plush armchairs clustered in a corner.

Most of the approximately twelve to fifteen tables are occupied by lone patrons on laptop computers. A line has formed at the long counter on the far side of the room. The counter is festooned with seemingly random found objects: granola bars, CDs, breath mints, and the like. With this nod to the impulse purchase, the quaint coffee shop betrays its affinities with such emporia of mass consumption as the supermarket and the gas station. The illusion slowly begins to unravel.

The viewer notices a television monitor with an image of one of the CDs she has seen on the counter. It is preceded by the words, “You are listening to …”. Perhaps this is not a coffee shop after all, but one of those old timey record stores. Could this explain why the patrons are all wearing headphones? If at first she thought the headphones were a commentary on the alienation wrought by personal computers and social media, now she begins to wonder whether this is not, in fact, one of those relational art situations. Is the monitor a prompt? Is she meant to ask one of the customers wearing headphones what he is listening to?

Emboldened by years of museum and gallery visits, she decides to take the risk. She approaches a young man at a corner table who is in the process of tagging himself in a photo. 

“Excuse me,” she says. “What are you listening to?”

“I’m so glad someone finally asked,” he responds, removing his headphones. He invites her to sit down and a conversation ensues.