Collaboration

We're doing a unit on collaboration in my painting class. This week's homework is to do some research about artists who work in collaboration.

I first heard about McDermott and McGough (mostly McDermott, actually) in the "Beyond Time" episode of Radiolab. They are nineteenth-century dandies who happen to live in what most people perceive as twentyfirst-century New York. I was attracted to the story initially because of McDermott's bizarre speaking voice. I was glued to the radio listening to this cartoon character have the beginnings of a meltdown because of the sheer terror that the concept of time brings him. I wasn't laughing because I can relate, I am scared too.

Then McDermott's name popped up in our painting text, In The Making. One of the interviewed artists mentioned being involved with McDermott and the Dandy movement. I volunteered to do some research and report my findings, and here are some of them.

Manifesto:


I watched this and for an instant I believed there was no McDermott, and that I was watching another Crispin Glover brand video hijink, a la "Clowny Clown Clown". There is a Gloverlike sensibility and anarchy to their lifestyle- the three would get on famously, or despise each other- but McDermott and McGough are very much individuals. This film clip plus the Radiolab clip, sums up the dandies' thoughts on time.

They're obsessed with the past, they live in a self-created late Victorian age, their art is inextricable from their life. They make a lot of stuff.

Their website, their Temple of Art, is divided into painting, photography, sculpture, motion pictures, drawings, and editions. Most works have two dates- the one they assign, and the year it was made in 'mundane time'. Interestingly, not all of it looks Victorian. They have produced comic-book inspired work which they date from the sixties, '30s film-still inspired paintings, and an interesting mirror installation which seems, for them, strangely modern. It's tricky to divine whom their audience might be. Looking at the work I feel they must be making it for themselves, and anyone else who wants to view it is welcome. Clearly these are not gentlemen who fret over what the world thinks of them.

McGough and McDermott have been working together since about 1988. I like the work they create but it's really the story that has me interested. I work from anachronism and history, but I don't think I could live it like this. And I don't know if I could collaborate so extensively with someone for decades- though outside of my academic work, I am often collaborating with my partner on crafts. McDermott and McGough are puzzling to me, and I think that's exactly what they want.