A LY S S A-FA I T H R U G O S C OT T
To gain insight into how a visual artist might make their living in these domains, I spoke with Philip Rugo, a recent UCLA Design and Media Arts graduate. Philip Rugo is a Los Angeles based media artist, animator, art director, and designer who makes work that primarily deals with the exploration of isolation and loneliness in an online space. As an emerging artist, Rugo simultaneously produces commercial work and engages in studio art practices. His experience working within multiple economic spheres gives Rugo personal insight into the ways in which spectacle influences LA artists and their creative processes.
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In the time that you have been growing as an artist, have you noticed a change in the way that museums and institutions present works in regard to this idea of spectacle? Over time, have you witnessed the exhibition space become more focused on the spectacular or the dazzling? “Yeah. I mean the phenomenon of these large art spectacles happens in direct correlation with a rise of people doing things independently on the internet and a necessity to, kind of, fit traditional internet business models. There is such an importance for a standard business to interact with people online and draw people in with things that are flashy, and we see something very parallel in the art world. It’s a two-pronged thing, both on the artist front and on the organization front, for very similar reasons… To have organizations and museums and people buy your work, it’s first of all really necessary to be seen, and then second of all, for people to want to interact and engage with you. A lot of peoples’ responses to that has been to go bigger, and more expensive, so it’s kind of this feedback loop that spirals out of control where people are making bigger and more accessible work, with the intention of people buying it, looking at it, and have that initial ‘wow’ factor. When that goes well, then an artist is going to keep building on that foundation and it’s going to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger as museums and organizations give more and more money.”
So do you think that artists who employ spectacle and create works that are flashy are coming from a desire to generate viewership and to make money off of their work? Do you think that there is a correlation there? “Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m saying; it has a lot to do with how you attract viewers and money and those sorts of things. It goes back—far is not the right word—but it goes back. This has been happening for a long time, but I think not as consciously. I mean if you look at the rock piece at LACMA, I don’t remember the artist’s name, but there’s this whole ordeal around grabbing the rock from the place it was from, I think it was Oregon or Washington, and driving it down on a flatbed truck and having a party at 4AM that’s mostly for members and patrons of the arts, which in LA is generally rich people. Having a party to see this rock be installed into LACMA, regardless of what you think of that piece, kind of illustrates what we’ve been talking about: it’s an enormous rock and it’s literally really big, and there’s an enormous ordeal around installing it. The process was not private. The process was extremely public and the process was extremely funded. The entirety of that artwork was the artist seeing the rock, calling the director of LACMA, and saying that he needed the rock. Then it’s just all organization and bringing the rock down from there. Now there’s a documentary and it’s this whole thing; it’s a big ordeal around getting the work, and then the work is quite literally this enormous thing that towers over you at the back of LACMA.”
Do you feel like the entertainment industry in LA is influencing this trend of instilling the spectacular? “Yes and no. The arts in LA have existed and coincided with Hollywood and that scene since it started. That’s something that’s always been there, and I don’t think that’s something that changes the landscape very much over time. It obviously has a huge influence and people make lots of work about
SPRING 2016