Robert Gober

Untitled (Newspaper Stacks), 1992

five sculptures, each: photolithography on archival Mohawk Superfine paper and
twine with supporting bundles
each 6 x 16 1/4 x 13 1/4 inches, overall approximately 30 x 45 3/4 x 32 1/2 inches

In September 1992 Gober created a monumental installation at the DIA Center for
the Arts that brought together the major themes and images of his work to date. An
entire floor of the former warehouse building was given over to a mise-en-scene
established by wall-sized paintings of forest woodlands. Small prison windows
punctured the natural setting, while the sound of continuously running water
emanated not from a babbling brook, but from the artist's sink sculptures which also
lined the walls. These gurgling drains, like the bright light that shone just beyond the
prison bars, spoke abrasively of the realities that encroach on even the most idyllic
grotto (or art gallery). Just in case of unwanted intruders, boxes of rat poison,
painted by Gober in a similar fashion to Cat Litter, are situated nearby the sinks. But
[w]hat draws the attention of the Catholic League, began the Leagues statement,
is the anti-Catholic and fraudulent aspect of one of Gobers queer creations. The
queer creations to which the League refers are Gobers Newspaper stacks, a series of
bundled newspapers which Gober himself fabricated, and which were a seminal
element of the Dia installation.
Consisting of actual articles from the New York Times, altered texts of Gobers own
creation, and real and fabricated advertisements, Gobers Newspapers are hybridized
surfaces in which fact and fiction, objectivity and mediation are deviously
intertwined, presenting the viewer with communiqus from an alien but uncanny
world. Gober did not intend for these works of art to be fraudulent or a hoax, but
rather provocative in their familiarity, a callas was his Dia installation in its entirety

for viewers to assess the current state and future fate of American life, as well as
what mediates this process of assessment to begin with.
American rhetoric often distinguishes people from society, positioning the latter
as an inorganic, oppressive network of forces for which they personally are not
culpable. Gober confounds these attempts at personal exculpation, as his art
ventures to confirm the publics existence in and creation of the greater social fabric.
With many of his Newspapers, Gober makes these points by examining that great
spectacle of democracy, the U.S. Presidential race. The social and cultural effects of
the Presidential race are not caused solely after the winning candidate accedes to
power; much of how the country currently understands itself, and many of the
wounds it will need to address, come to the fore during the prolific polling, endless
palaver, and destructive vituperation of the campaigns. Gober observed the election
of 1992, collecting shrapnel from the media bombardment that he then redeployed in
his Newspapers, sometimes altering the texts but frequently transposing them
verbatim, with the reality being sufficiently horrifying. What results is the impression
that American culture does not spring forth from our beliefs, values, and morality,
but that the opposite is actually true.
Family valuesa political euphemism for conservative and religious
fundamentalismwas a pivotal topic throughout the 1992 campaigns. Of the over
220 New York Times articles from 1991-1992 that contain the phrase, a number
frankly describe how the GOPs pollsters, consultants, and PR people actually created
the issue, viewing it as an effective method of wooing voters. Republicans Send
Bush Into the Campaign Under a Banner Stressing Family Values, read a headline in
the Times on August 20, 1992. Gobers altered this statement for one of his
Newspapers so to read: Bush is Sent Forth as Champion of Family Values. Gobers
revision to the passive voice is noteworthy; it connotes a hidden force, a greater
power which dictates Bushs persona and compels his moral crusade. While Gober
certainly has an axe to grind with the GOP and religious right, the ambiguity of this
headline implicates everyone and no one. Gober dispenses the blame for this culture
of persecution among the adherents, the passive, and the fire-stoking opposition.
This ubiquitous guilt itself attests to a broken system, one which, once created, is
now impossible to change and destined to repeat its failures.
Gober warns of a cycle of reactionary hate and conservatism in another of the
Newspaper tops, which juxtaposes articles titled Family Values and the K.K.K. and

Merchants of Hate. These two pieces both ran in the New York Times Op-Ed section
in 1992, but ten days apart from one another. Family Values and the K.K.K. draws
strong parallels to the values-based rhetoric at the 1992 Republican Convention and
that of the Ku Klux Klan during the Civil Rights Era, while Merchants of Hate
documents the GOPs attack on homosexuals and non-Christians, for lack of a Red
Scare to rally around. Printing these together, Gober illustrates the Puritanical spirit
that haunts America, ready to revitalize itself during times of uncertainty or when its
ever-lingering social and moral authority is challenged. The result is a culture of
oppression and persecution, in which individuals value systems are the product of
the social environment
Common to these attacks is a claim to the unwholesomeness or impurity of the
other, be it a racial minority, a religious minority, a sexual minority, or otherwise.
Gobers impurity is double: first, Gober was raised Catholic, a denomination widely
demonized by conservative American Protestantsthe true Americansduring the
1950s and 60s; then at a young age Gober realized his homosexuality, making him a
deviant even within his deviant religion. The shame with which he was inculcated,
and more importantly the shame he saw people constantly try to make him feel,
strongly affected Gober, and motifs of ablution, purity, and cleanliness abound in his
artwork. But his sanctifiers work for a limited time only, if at all; they are not
magically redemptive but fictitiously palliative. Sinks are dry and have no faucets,
escapes into natures sublimity end up in prison, and we need more poison for those
pesky rats
Gober revisits these notions in one of his newspapers, for which he created an
advertisement that features Tide, Cheer, and other detergents and cleaners. These
products symbolize the Sisyphean endeavor of keeping us clean, an endeavor
predicated upon temporarily erasing natural traces with unnatural, alien chemicals.
They are signs of the inhuman requirements humans create for themselves, and of
the energy social groups expend (or waste) continuously battling the indomitable
another example being found in the juxtaposition of the text Catholic Singles, with
all its connotations of sexual oppression, next to an alluring lingerie advertisement. In
Gobers world, one is taught to be self-conscious and ashamed if he doesnt smell
April Fresh, or if he doesnt worship the right God, or if he doesnt desire the opposite
sex. And for this, as he emblazoned above the detergent boxes, Gober sardonically
says: Thanks America.

Gobers disbelief of and exasperation with modern human ingenuity manifests itself
in other motifs in his oeuvre, particularly those of recycling or reuse. His newspapers,
properly bundled and tied with string, are ready to be hauled off to the recycling
plant, where they will transform into another blank page ready to be imprinted with
summarized social disasters. Gober devotes an entire top page of one of these
bundles to an advertisement that shouts USED CAR INVENTORY SELLOUT, signaling
reuse once again, while also underscoring its rewards for the shrewd salesman. But
while Americans are taught the benefits of these acts of recoverythe conscienceclearing, self-congratulatory deed of recycling, the everybody wins result of a used
car transactionGober reveals them as delusional placebos and self-imposed, nowinescapable traps. These conservational gestures are cute enough, Gober explains,
but we screwed ourselves long ago, and largely for corporate profit. Mass production
of paper destroys just the kind of sylvan glade that Gober represented on the walls of
his Dia installation, and while many believe recycling to be completely restorative, in
reality it only slightly impedes the natural, irreversible deterioration of harvested
paper pulp. Paper fiber degrades with each cycle, so virgin pulp must be introduced
anyway to create the usable product society expects. Used cars are a symbol of the
American way: create an industry of planned obsolescence and reap profits at every
stage of decay. The consumer always loses: if your car survives the built-in
breakdown period, you wouldnt then want to be seen in that old clunker, would
you? Structurally or aesthetically, either way it is a dying machine, and you probably
overpaid.
In examining Gobers Newspaper Stacks, one begins to see a nation built on
untenable pretenses. Citizens are manipulated and shamed, their natural impulses
denied, all while the materials of modern life decay around them. These pretenses,
though, are as ardently protected as they are unsound pivotal for maintaining the
status quo of white, Protestant, heterosexual power, the privileged have established
and continue to maintain hulking armatures of law, economy, and government to
attempt to preserve this way of life based on family values. Flourishes of opposition
arise, but seeing the impassioned Op-Eds, now bound and gagged and forgotten in
the second George Bush era, one wonders if moral stands are even worth the effort.
Ultimately though, despite the eternal return to periods of reactionary conservatism,
signs of progress persist. After all, the once-powerful K.K.K. referenced in Gobers
headline are now effectively marginalized and defunct; furthermore, these
Newspapers, which are the product of an openly gay artist and AIDS activist, are now
part of the American cultural and art-historical canon, as is Gober himself. The gears

of America continue to grind, and culture continues to recycle itself, but one begins
to reevaluate for whom the rat poison is really intended.