Nostalgia for Scandal:
The ‘Not’ Paintings, Sculptures, Works on Paper by Mike Bidlo
by Richard Milazzo.

First edition deluxe hardback:  September 2022.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
With an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio.
368 pages, with a 4-colour gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece, 420 color and black and white illustrations and 16 full-color plate reproductions.
13.3 x 9.75 x 1.5 in. (38.7 x 23.4 x 3.8 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy:  Galleria Mazzoli Editore, September 2022.

RETAIL PRICE: $150.00 (includes postage and handling)

Nostalgia for Scandal: The ‘Not’ Paintings, Sculptures, Works on Paper of Mike Bidlo, 1984-2010/22 was written by Richard Milazzo on the occasion of the exhibition he curated at Galleria Mazzoli, September 2022.

Regarding the title, the curator explains forthrightly: “In a world in which, politically speaking, not to mention sexually, scandal is no longer possible, the scandalous has acquired the valence of wishful thinking. And yet, Bidlo’s outrageous appropriations still seem to scandalize viewers to this day. It is rare and special to have in a single exhibition works from so many different vectors of Bidlo’s oeuvre. However, given the labor-intensive nature of his works, it should surprise no one that he has executed so few one-person shows in his lifetime. Indeed, the only other time an exhibition of this magnitude and of mixed works has happened was in his Masterpieces show at the Bruno Bischofberger Gallery in 1989. This exhibition at Emilio Mazzoli Gallery might even be described as Masterpieces II, especially as it contains works of artists that post-date that show in Zurich thirty-three years ago, by such artists as Courbet, Malevich, Miró, Klein, Fontana, and Twombly, almost all of which of have never been seen before.

“Of course, all the titles of Bidlo’s works are preceded by his by-now infamous word ‘Not’: Not Courbet, Not Picasso, Not de Chirico, Not Duchamp, Not Magritte, Not Morandi, Not Tanguy, Not Warhol, Not Pollock, Not Twombly, Not Stella. The phenomenon of appropriation in Bidlo’s work functions simultaneously as a critique (a dialectical negation) of, and a homage to, the history of Modernism, pertaining specifically to some of its most radical and monumental artists and works, such as Picasso’s Self-Portrait of 1901 [on the cover]; Duchamp’s Bottle Rack (1914), Fountain (1917) and L.H.O.O.Q. (1919); Malevich’s White on White (1918) [on the back cover]; Magritte’s Elective Affinities (1933), and various hypothetical works by the above mentioned artists.

“Two controversial issues,” the author continues, “merit clarification: for those who see only the ‘scandal’ of theft or plagiarism in Bidlo’s appropriations, they should reconsider. For if an artist paints a Caravaggio and transacts it as such, as a painting by Caravaggio, then it is what it is: a crime, a fraud, perpetrated against the public. But if an artist paints a Caravaggio and titles it Not Caravaggio and signs it with his own name, then that is an authentic work of art by the artist who signs it, however complex it is to understand (the relation of the present is to the past). Let me repeat this principle for those skeptics who surely must be pretending not to understand: if an artist makes a Cézanne and transacts it as such, that is a crime and the work constitutes a fake, not unrelated to fake news and disinformation. But if he makes a Cézanne and acknowledges that it is not by this artist, as Bidlo did, when he titled the work Not Cézanne (The Large Bathers, 1898-1905), signed it ‘Mike Bidlo,’ and dated it 1986, that makes it an authentic work of art, one by Mike Bidlo.

“The second issue is perhaps still more controversial having to do with Bidlo’s anti-Duchampian ethos, operative in several of the works’ most radical instances, including his ‘actions’ or performances, involving not only the self-destruction (or, to put it more politely, the abnegation) of the ego or Self, in the personification of Mike Bidlo, but the destruction of the work of art per se. For an artist who might be rightly described as having continued the avant-garde ‘tradition’ of Duchamp and the readymade, effectively treating Modernist masterpieces as readymades, it is more than a little strange, or perhaps not so strange at all, for Bidlo to subvert what has become the convention of appropriation in contemporary art. Accordingly, Bidlo steam-rolled over Duchamp’s first readymade, the Bottle Rack, and perhaps most emphatically of all, destroyed a prototype of Duchamp’s urinal, in his Fractured Fountain, then reassembled it, but left the ‘history’ of its fractures in evidence, just to give two primary instances of the destruction that functions as a desublimation of the self-destruction of Bildo’s ego. It is the sacrifice or destruction of this ego in the works he appropriates that remains the most stunning and controversial achievement of his art.

“Who else but Bidlo,” the author writes, “looked back, turned toward the past, then peed and shit on it, peed in a fireplace in behalf of Pollock, shit in a can in behalf of Manzoni, erased not one but sixteen de Kooning drawings Bidlo himself made, erased multiple Warhol Brillo boxes in a country (Germany) where a whole race of people were shoved into crematoriums and erased; steam-rolled over a bottle rack and fractured a urinal to critique the fetishization of an idol (Duchamp); shattered a plaster cast of Mademoiselle Pogany in behalf of Brancusi; in a word, destroyed a portion of the history of radical Modernism almost indiscriminately, right down to cutting a cravat (Nam June Paik’s) in behalf of one of the most pacific artists of all time (John Cage); and executed a blank canvas in honor of Clyfford Still’s caustic critique (well ahead of his time) of art schools and the art and artists they produce. It is as if Bidlo were looking at the art world and its history through Duchamp’s Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), except that Bidlo’s ‘looking glass’ is not accidentally broken but intentionally shattered. Who else but Bidlo could have perpetuated such destruction in behalf of such self-destruction?”

In addition to the controversial analysis of Mike Bidlo’s paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, this 368-page volume contains approximately 420 color and black and white illustrations, 16 full-color plate reproductions of the artist’s works in the show, a checklist of these works, a comprehensive history of his exhibitions and actions/installations, a selected bibliography, and an index of the works by the artist discussed and/or referenced in the monograph.