Art and art museums’ primary requirement for functionality is light. Remove the light source or interfere with it sufficiently and you have effectively removed the building’s functionality.
Richard Patterson
Born in the UK in 1963, Patterson graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1986. He has exhibited internationally with group exhibition including Damien Hirst’s renowned Freeze, Surrey Docks, London (1988); as well as Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA (1997-00); The Rowan Collection: Contemporary British & Irish Art, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2002); Painting Pictures, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2003); Nexus Texas, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas, USA (2007) and Attention to Detail, curated by Chuck Close, the FLAG Art Foundation, New York, USA. Solo exhibitions have included Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London (1997); James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA (1999 and 2002); Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, USA (2000), Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (2005 and 2008) and the Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas, USA (2009). Patterson currently lives and works in Dallas, Texas, USA.
Articles by Richard Patterson
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Texas suffers from a broadly philistine and even economically unfounded attitude toward the true value of culture. Broadly speaking, it sees culture as existing in the sole domain of private enterprise. At state and city political level it seems to regard culture as superfluous, a luxury, an indulgence, probably silly and probably pretentious. In short: a waste of money. It somehow fails to see it as the central component that engages, meshes, and lubricates the machinery of the entire civilized world – regardless of business models.
Instead, Perry prefers to promote video game designers as big business for the state. That approach to leveraging state funds will draw new revenue for sure, though not necessarily more revenue than an investment in the cultural would, and, in fact, ultimately very much less. But regardless of investment, that approach certainly won’t draw massive international respect, tourism, and tangible credibility on a world stage which will ultimately lead to untold future business opportunities. So, in terms of its impact on our own community, the myth of Dallas will be further perpetrated as big hair, beach ball bazoomers, out-sized trucks for picking up groceries at Tom Thumb and video games (about all the above?) for people who can’t seem to get out enough. Well, this may, at least, have the added bonus of keeping the kids happy while they’re failing at school and remaining uncompetitive in the world at large.
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[Ed note: Richard Patterson's response to the Creative Time report was originally submitted as a comment to Lucia Simek's response the report, which you can find here. It also addresses comments by Laray Polk that were made in the comments to Simek's piece. Patterson's response below has been reposted with some corrections and additions by the author.]
Well said, Lucia. The other simple issue is that we just need much more stuff in general – more of everything – and as you say, not any old stuff, but good stuff.
The critic’s voice is important for simply ‘being there’. It’s not an option to not be there, although somehow Dallas previously allowed it to be so. It is as much an integral part of the creative process as anything else, as anyone who has read FR Leavis will know. Art and criticism are not just bedfellows, they are the beast that makes two backs – the hairy, lairy, heaving, grunting, sweating, squirting, creaking, bed-collapsing, cigarette smoking, Belgian chocolate eating, lets go to Wholefoods now and then on to the Winspear….beast with two backs. It is the cultural ‘procreative’ process. I shag, therefore I am, etc. I eat Belgian chocolates afterwards, therefore I am – you name it… Can someone please write a decent novel in Dallas/about Dallas by the way. That might be bloody entertaining.
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Dates
Jan 22 thru Mar 6M’s video is the single best piece of art I’ve seen by anyone in DFW that could make the claim of being a “local artist.” This is a flawless, complete piece of art that is highly sophisticated and would stand up in any context. Every detail is well taken care of, and from a technical point of view, it is well produced and apparently effortlessly conceived. I’m not talking Guernica, Mona Lisa levels of bulletproof-glassed-masterpiece here. I am saying, however, that this is real art. It’s not my place to say whether it’s big or small, important or not – just that it’s totally authentic and it’s the real deal. It isn’t derivative, and it is not tired, predictable, or conventional.
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Dates
Feb 6 thru Apr 30Michael – or MCM, as he is affectionately known – was my personal tutor at Goldsmiths College, University of London, twenty-seven years ago. Michael was the then youngest ever artist collected by the Tate and his long career has seen many phases – integrating sculpture, painting, and, more recently, language through line and vibrant color. He was the first artist, for me, of many great artists teaching at Goldsmiths, to clarify or challenge casual assumptions in art. He was often prescient – rarely demonstrative. He taught by allowing meaning to reveal itself by surrounding the elusive central idea with other ideas. This was a simultaneously pragmatic and poetic approach based on his deeply held philosophical belief that, for him, an art work represents the embodiment of an idea as opposed to the symbol for one.
