Crossover Dreams

So I'm down at Rockaway Records to pick up the new Julian Schnabel CD. The bargain bin is full of them - usually a sign that the music critics passed on it, as Rockaway has a pretty liberal policy about trading cut-outs for cash. Only five bucks. I bring it to the register and the biker guy behind the counter tells me - begs me - not to buy it.

'Hey man, that's the worst album we've ever had in the store. It sucks. Don't get it.'

'Dude, I have to, I'm writing an article.'

'I'm warning you, man. It really sucks. Put it back.'

'I'll take my chances.'

And I did. And of course, he was right.

If you must know, Schnabel's Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud sounds like a cross between Lou Reed and Slim Whitman, both whacked on Xanax. (You can almost hear the hired session musicians sniggering in the background.) The liner notes feature page after page of Schnabel's paintings and somnolent lyrics, followed by a black-and-white photo of the well-fed expatriate himself. With his wraparound shades, slicked-back hair and Fu-Manchu/goatee combination, Schnabel resembles another celebrity who hightailed it to Europe when his career tanked: actor-cum-pugilist Mickey Rourke.

While he may be the most colourful example, Schnabel isn't the only 80s art star to resurface in the world of entertainment. Robert Longo, who skipped town after his disastrous 1989 museum retrospective, recently directed Johnny Mnemonic - a $27 million sci-fi movie starring Keanu Reeves, based on the William Gibson short story. And East Hampton recluse David Salle made Search and Destroy, a low-budget independent film along the lines of Martin Scorsese's 1985 fable After Hours. Schnabel himself is currently working on a documentary about Jean-Michel Basquiat.

And there's more, from Larry Clark, Cindy Sherman, and others. But those three men, among the most successful and remarked-upon American artists of the past decade, were the first to make the leap, returning from an art world exile many didn't think would end so soon. At first glance, the phenomenon seems like a late-career lark; after a long vacation, equipped with stock portfolios and industry contacts, all three have decided they want to be media stars. But it can also be seen as a shrewd career move by artists convinced that their insights are still relevant - but who choose to pursue their comebacks not in the art world (which in this chagrined era may be too hostile or too small to accommodate them), but in the world of entertainment, a vast and unconquered plain.

By not slinking back to the art scene, to endure the kind of humbling that has allowed, say, Eric Fischl to continue on in the good graces of the critics, these three move on to the biggest canvas of all without having to adjust their messages. Consequently, their mass-media works are supremely nostalgic for the 80s - not the decade per se, but rather the state of mind.

Irony and self-deprecation are nowhere to be found: Salle's humourless film is about an unrepentant yuppie who murders his way to the top. Schnabel sings countrified ballads about a hard life of gold cards and romance in Paris and Arles. And there's a scene in Johnny Mnemonic where the title character, wearing a 1981-vintage dark suit and skinny tie, stands atop a pile of dockyard garbage and shakes his fist at the sky, demanding all the creature comforts of which he is temporarily deprived. Suddenly, inexplicably, the camera starts sinking, shooting up at an increasingly heroic angle. But soon we remember that it's just Robert Longo back there, trying to imitate one of his own Men in the Cities drawings.

The results of this entertainment expedition aren't pretty: Schnabel embarrasses himself, while Longo ruins a perfectly good cyberpunk story, losing TriStar's money in the process (Johnny, now on video in the US, has yet to break even). And Salle squanders a promising cast (including John Turturro and Christopher Walken) in a dull rehash of something Scorsese did better a decade ago.

In the Rockaway clerk's parlance, it sucks.

Yet it's a breakthrough nonetheless. In the world of contemporary art, determinations of worth - intellectual, aesthetic, and monetary - are notoriously mutable, and initially, at least, made outside the purview of the average art consumer. But in the entertainment world, achievements are quantifiable and culpable parties readily apparent: When Johnny Mnemonic bombs at the box office, it does so unequivocally. Schnabel's vanity album is putrid in a way most folks have seen before, and Salle's brand of boring is a universal language.

All three suck because they fail to meet the expectations of their knowledgeable public. And unlike art's more polite and less empowered patrons, American consumers of popular culture are unafraid to wield that shameful monosyllable.

Making mainstream cultural products is something visual artists always seem to want to do, but when the opportunity presents itself, they tend to run away, screaming things about compromise and integrity. It's taken these three former art stars - well-financed and used to delegating authority - to be the first to put 'art' concepts in front of millions of new sets of eyes, for their delectation or disapproval. In essence, they've translated their ideas to a more rigorous form of visual communication. They've been forced to impart their thoughts to co-workers, to write them down, to clarify them for themselves and us.

So in addition to learning that Schnabel isn't a singer, nor Longo a filmmaker, we discover their world views to be shallow and narcissistic. Salle, while more competent, is still a cold fish, locked into a rigid investigation of baby boom angst. (As a bonus, however, we discover he's not a misogynist after all; although his female film characters may exist on the sidelines, they're not gratuitously belittled.) Art cognoscenti may have already suspected as much, of course. But after its airing in the court of public opinion, they may now shout it from the rooftops.

The same standards will hopefully apply to all subsequent entries in the new field of 'artists' movies'. The world of entertainment is cannier and far more powerful than art will ever be, chewing up and spitting out more geniuses in a week than art does in a year. It's a tough gig. The stakes are certainly higher. And its audience demands to be entertained - harbouring precious little patience for poseurs or blowhards, dead air or re-runs.