AnthonySEaston (6:27:08 AM): 1) how geographic isolation mirrors emotional isolation
2) how our ideas of women and men, are often about how they deal with this isolation (esp w. ideas of spectacle, and the domestic)
3) how we create works about this isolaiton is a simulacra of real expereinces
AnthonySEaston (6:27:27 AM): and then how all of those things are intertextual
pattismithsmense (6:27:37 AM): are they what you offered them?
AnthonySEaston (6:28:03 AM): w/o the baggage i think
pattismithsmense (6:28:30 AM): ok - how do they relate specifically to the magnetic fields song?
pattismithsmense (6:30:17 AM): (check out the list of books the mum wants banned - freakonomics??? http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bookban22.html)
AnthonySEaston (6:34:07 AM): the song is about losing, rambling thru an imagined west, and there are large sections of the song, in the beginning and in the middle, where there is no music sung. the idea of rodeo, is one of the examples of spectacled masculinity (look how it fits in oppostion to domesticity in brokeback, or how it is handled in nick rays these lusty men), how it revolves itself into a heteronormative marriage, or love or something like that, is relfected in the taming of the cowboy, which is frequently connected to the taming of the cowboy (like in the last picture show), but its really arch, and his view of the west, does not seem real, like the cowboys in that gary winnogrand photo or how winnipeg and tulsa look the same when stephen shore shoots them
pattismithsmense (6:35:21 AM): well, there's yr essay
AnthonySEaston (6:36:09 AM): just need to pump it up
AnthonySEaston (6:36:17 AM): do you think it matches what i pitched

Countries for the Deer Show: Canada,USA, Japan, France, Ukraine, Spain, England, Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, Sweden, Burma (its eurocentric cause deer are eurocentric, fuckers)

Materials: Graphite, Watercolour, frottage, silkscreen, tatoo, photography (c prints, polaroids, coupler prints), fabric craft (Batik, Sewing, Knitting), street art, offset lithography, cermaics, installation, performance, taxidermy, alinmunum(sp), oil on canvas, oil on linen, Digital prints, offset printing, powder coated steel, etching, glicee prints, graphite, woodcarving (cedar, ash), wrought iron, parchment, needle craft (embrodiery, petit point), lithographs, silver, horn, pewter, rubber, fencing, commerical printing, glass, lucite, flash, java, other video games, resin, collae, fiberglass, leather, acrlyic.

William Jefferson, Democratic Rep from Louisanna, who previously was caught commandering a helicopter from katrina work to get luggage, a large box, and a lap top, has been found on camera, taking 100 000 in bribes for the Nigerian VP.

This is one of several times that he has been accused of this, though the nigerian stuff is new,

The Hat Makes It

(Chuck Renslow, fotog by John of Seattle, same show as below)

Bob Mizer, Order Sheet, 1951, from a collection of nudes, New York Musuem of Sex


Bob Mizer, all pix of Bob Stroeder, 1950, source above

(note font, the lo-fi, handwritten qaulity, and the mail order nature of the porn, also note the aesthetics of mechincal reporduction, the idea of image/icon, the sexuality of capitalism, and how tender all that chicken looks)

done today:
first draft of the 100 list, for the deer show, can trim and add of course, depending on a number of factors, 750 words for xtra, worked thru some roy g biv photo stuff, talked to rachel about the bubble show, edited 100 useless photos from iphoto, settled what i kind of wanted to say in the mag fields peice...

if the democrats had any balls this would be their campaign theme song

Font Shot! (The orange, and hte perfect santa fe blue--not my favourite train font, that would be the cattle cars from nebraska, or wheat cars from saskatchewan, but the sheer tightness, it bursts out of the frame)

Robert Cottingham mostly does boring photo realist prints of various american signage--real obvious ones, he is in the middle of an alphabet (but then so am i), and i dont know, he doesnt have the ennui of bechtel or the ocd strangeness of estes, and is basically forgotten for a reason--he isnt playing in the same way other people are--but the two of the rolling stock seires ive seen, both below, move me, maybe because i love trains, maybe because of the size, and spacing, reminds of earlier american masters like scheler (sp), but there is something tender and intimate here:











Linocuts, Woodcuts, Collographs, All handcoloured in places, with pencil or watercolour, all of them based on the thesis of placement of a central element, a purity of forms, and mechanics, they of course remind me of warhol (or ruscha, or any of the desperate working over and over again of one formal element, this masturbatory desire to understand what liz taylor or naked women or the standard gas station or found photography had to do with the price of tea in china, and while warhol is a god, and ruscha is a saint, and mel ramos has a sexy cult, and balderssessi is every conceptetual's prophet, cottingham is too precise and not difficult enough to be popular, not that i dont love these works as much as i like the strongest work of the above (except rushca, who never made a weak peice) the images above make me realise how on purpose the chaos/messiness of warhols peices were, for commerical and personal reasons. these are too clean for real trains, lack the grease, the muck, the dirt, and the human interaction (trains as moving canvas for graffitti, these are trains that work--and thats the power/problem of the photo realists, and the eugenic quaility of course is not popular right now, but these, they move me intesenly, i find myself excited seeing them, maybe because they are so butch w/o being camp, or maybe because of certain mythological prarie shit, or maybe because they remind me of when dave berhman of the silver jews sings "sin and gravity/drag me down to sleep/to dream of trains across the sea..."

(his paintings of signs still suck)

Rolling Stock 56 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Arymn, 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Mark, 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Jesse, 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Trish, 1993, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock 27, 1992, colour woodcut
Rolling Stock 13, 1997, colour woodcut

(33 others in the seires)

i know thats eleven

Ten Pairs:

Jello Panther
High Park Ravine
Glass Wall Shimmer
Airplanes
Basil's Light
Orange Sqaush
Atheltic Viewing
Drive Thru Cokes
Scavanging Curtains
Mary Kent
Skylit Tunnel

Upcoming Photo Shows Confirmed:
Roy G Biv, Naked (no date yet)
10 Pairs, Bohemia (May 25th)
no openings

Waiting for Response:
Tu Gallery (Meeting on the 25th)
Bubble (64 Steps, Rachel is currating, but no pressure)
Banff
Alberta Bienalle


Waiting to Submit
Truck Gallery, Calgary

John Waters Space Ship Earth 9/11


The whole show at the marianne boesky gallery (chelsea) apparently is well worth seeing...on till friday


here is another

(knights tales and dr doolittle two were the two movies shown on the planes that went into the wtc)

bad taste as destructive and redemptive, the natural consquences of popular culture, desire and abjection--its all here -and of course they are all cheap jokes, but effective cheap jokes, ones that are so tasteless that they act as an alternative history, to the hagigography and monument building that occur in approved culture (cf the 1776 tower or the clean respect of united 93)

and here is an interview that explains it all
is the article

here

NEW INFO ON Ramin Jahanbegloo:

WRITE TO:
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic :
His Excellency Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei,
The Office of the Supreme Leader
Shoahada Street, Qom, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email:
info@leader.ir
istiftaa@wilayah.org

Head of the Judiciary :
His Excellency
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
Ministry of Justice, Park-e Shahr,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: via Judiciary website: Iranjudiciary.org/feedback_en.html
Salutation: Your Excellency

COPIES TO:
President:
His Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Presidency,
Palestine Avenue,
Azerbaijan Intersection,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Fax: Via Foreign Ministry: +98 21 6 674 790
(mark: "Please forward to H.E. President Ahmadinejad")
Email: dr-ahmadinejad@president.ir
via website: www.president.ir/email

(from the Pen/Amensty site)

they are esp looking for academics, so please put yr uni affilation somewhere on the letter, and any degrees etc, as well...if anyone writes arabic or persian that would be even better

Maohair is a fotog from china, who takes photos of the immigrant migrations from rural regions into cities, this urbanazation is the single largest problem in the next 100 years, next to information control and the nation state--his ability to take photos of car crashes, industrial accidents, police brutality, etc, and then smuggle them out, combine these two, making him perhaps the most impt (and unheard of) journalist (esp since photojournalism seems to be more am then pro these days) working recently--the images are incredibly graphic, but well worth seeing (here is one of the least violent:

his caption for this image: Migrant workers climb up the construction towers at the site to demand their back wages
here>are more, but in mandrian

every playboy centerfold ever--the ones from the 50s are much sexier, then the ones later (though there is a string of well fed lovechildren from 68 to 72 or so that come close...
the pussy wars of the 80s, make everything so harsh, mechincal, parodic, and competitve, its less about decent photography, beautiful women, and general giddy fun and more about who can out hustle hustler...(read laura kipnis' bound and gagged for discussion about the history of mainstreaming porn, and class signifers in this sort of thing)

mass hysteria among catholic school girls in laos, memories of salem or loudon, sometimes i wonder if beatlemania and the like is a western manifesation of this

speaking of mass hysteria a brilliant interview with christian page, about abortion, and how its legalazation gave us all sorts of under rated gifts (including contraception, pleasure, queer rights, the autonomy of womens bodies, stronger laws against rape, the work against "surgical correction" of intersex folks, and the mainstreaming of blow jobs), once again the abortion wars are wars against non reproductive sex
three great qoutes:
The first line of attack is legal and safe abortion. The second line of attack is contraception. We have to understand that the pro-life goal isn't about reducing abortion or furnishing people with prevention. It's about forcing people to live in ways that the pro-life movement wants them to live.

The pro-choice movement is like a relief agency. In a war-torn country, these workers are the first to get attacked. The ones furnishing water, medical supplies, furnishing people with the things that enable them to live their lives safely — they're the first to go down.

The American Prospect recently analyzed coverage of the New York Times op-ed page and concluded that it's been increasingly airing inaccurate or terrifically critical views of the pro-choice movement. Even NPR has been slow. I don't see a lot of perspectives from people who are in the trenches on either side of this issue. What I do see are these diary-like entries as to what's been happening: "Alito nominated. Alito confirmed. Memo found." I don't see people asking questions that matter.
read the whole thing


French/Polish 19th Century, a great example of the flying penis motif, from the rare erotica blog

Dean fires his queer point man, goes in front of the cameras, and talks about how marriage is only for breeders, loses 5k of campaign money, and apolgizes, not getting the money back story here people assume that queer rights are a minority, and a small one, and fucking with them is alright--the problem is that we work as canaries in the coal mine, about sexuality, about how to treat complicated minorties, about behaviour vs idenity, about mutablity and choice in a (post) democratic society, etc etc and so noting games being played against us is a good indication of games being played elsewhere (though he was eloquent, on point, funny, and pointed today on the daily show--the guy is slippery as a trout


SHE has been arrested 22 times, tortured so badly that her front teeth were knocked into her nose and had an AK-47 thrust up her vagina until she bled. Thabitha Khumalo’s crime: to campaign against a critical shortage of tampons and sanitary towels in Zimbabwe, one of the least talked about and most severe side-effects for women of the country’s economic crisis. Full story here, including how to help, and attention being paid b/c of british celebs, here it reminds me of how womens shelters constantly beg for tampons, or how tampons are taxed in canada while condoms arent, or about how food banks never have enough pads or tampoons, or how expensive they are--the politics of blood...i dont have any cash, but if you do, try to send some along (and people should talk to oxfam about whether they do this too)

ill get ray to explain this one to you, sein fienn (ie the poltical part of the catholic ira) nomainted ian paisley (ie colonialist, homophobe, racist, batshit protestant) to be on their council here

The philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, who has taught at Harvard and the U of T, and has written about Ghandi, Isiah Berlin and Hegel, went back home to Tehran, and got arrested--he is in prison right now, though apparently phyisically safe (the prison he is in his notorious for a torture center--though i havent read Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, i have read several articles of his on pacificism, ethnic identity, king and ghandi--this isnt good news, and im really quite scared for me... Teh Chronichle of Higher Education reports here...the last qoute of the article is really impt---Rather than having embassies intervene and turning this into a political show, I think the best strategy would be for Ramin's academic colleagues -- college presidents, provosts, deans, faculty, students -- to write to Iran's leaders, to the president, to the head of the intelligence ministry, to the head of the Iranian foreign ministry. ... It's very important not to involve U.S. political officials, because that would immediately be used against him.

The address for his cultural research beurou(sp) in Tehran is:
No 10, Shahid Servati St.
Kamranieh- Shemiran
Tehran- Iran

Fiction:

37 Norman Spinard The Iron Dream: An Alt History novel, where hitler moves to ny after the putsch, and at first draws adn then writes for pulp sci fi magazines, eventually this was supposed to be his masterpeice, it is a reworking of historical documents and mein kamph, in the style of heinlien and other lesser writers. the book is brilliant, maintaining tone throughout, writing this badly on puspose is an incredible act of chutzpah and skill--it is also an impt book, metacritquing the fascism, and controlling of bodies that occur in large chunks of sci fi, and also the academic reclaiming of books that may or may not require it. i first heard of the book in China Meville's long canon of socialist sf in the fantastic metropolis, where he wrote t his about it:
A SF novel by Adolf Hitler… Spinrad’s funny, disturbing and savage indictment of the fascist aesthetics in much genre SF and fantasy. What if Hitler had become a pulp SF writer in New York? Not a book about that possibility but a book from it. “By the same author: Triumph of the Will and Lord of the Swastika.” Brave and nasty

Hes right, i also couldnt honestly recommend it, its too difficult to read.


36 Jesus Son---the new york times called it the third best american novel written in the last 30 years, and Blair loved it, i read it as short stories, though it could work as both. there are sections of beauty in hte prose, and i like its sort of heroin dream spaciness, raymond carver, with out families, and in the pacific northwest instead of the mid west. i didnt like it though, it seemed too self conciously art, too proud of its own decadence, and too directed towards its own ego, this might be because i like drinking writers better then i like smack writers

fifteen things i want to talk about in relation to the essay for geez

1) sodom and gommorah
2) the leviticus qoute about strangers in egypt
3) the idea of the mercy seat in kings
4) paul at pentecost, the galatians, etc, and identity sets
5) the early xian martyrs
6) Chrysolom
7) The rule of st benedict
8) anglo ideals (from monastics, to hank viii, etc)
10) gender, geography, and the lingustic similarties b/w covents and whorehouses (get the to a nunnery)
11) the undergnd railroad, and abolotion
12) anti veitnam in yale
13) immigration trends
14) islamic ideas of hospalitiy and the last two wars
15) the social gospel and food

The Last Sotheby Auctions, only three i want to buy it from, but those 3 are worth about 15 million (a rymans that look like straight from sears new fridge enamel, a landscape abstrated lonely and pretty agnes, and the urtext of commerically banal kitsch: koons vaccuums)

new records for Robert Ryman (an ugly, obvious, pockmarked disaster, for 8m, 4 times the previous record), Andreas Gursky (buying gursky is like buying falcon videos, strictly for size queens), Damien Hirst (shockingly not the rotting sheep), Lisa Yuskavage (can someone please explain this woman to me, i think she hates tits and thats why she makes them ugly), David Hockney (he should be getting lichenstein prices, he isnt), Neo Ranch (hes german), Brice Marden (post minimalism is fun), and Cecily Brown (i like my paintings about fucking to be a little less abstract.)

and Christies prices for Pierre Soulages (no i dont know him either)( Christo (more orange flags somewhere--i wonder if people buy christos as an oblique way to donate), Elmer Bischoff (fischl if he couldnt paint), Victor Vasarely (surpisingly little number, but out of fashion for so long, dont call it a comeback), Harry Bertoia (is this the guy who does those steel chairs that cause back aches after 10 minutes?) and Forrest Bess (mid 50s, texan, there must be a story here i dont get) Yoshitomo Nara (this is why you dont give hipsters money or musuem jobs, cheap sentiment) Sturtevant ( Robert Irwin (criminally undervalued, even at half a mill), Ross Bleckner (its insane that his record was 120,000, batshit) Karen Kilimnik (imagine if peyton couldnt paint) and 11 others

i lost a contest on the modern art blog, thinking a small sqaure mao in teals would be worth about mill, everyone else thought it would be worth 250-300,000, except the dude who tht it would be worth 550 000, it went for 750, 000...still a steal.

(also why are buying soupcans, again, for the longest time they were thot in the market to be horribly cliched)

most overpriced works:

that fucking picasso
a lichenstein sunrise
that yuskavage painting
and warhols soup can

most overrated artists
hirst
picasso (almost 60 lots of cermaics!)
judd (and i like judd)
warhol (and i like warhol)
phillip di circio (and i hate dicirrcio)

ones that are still a steal:
andre sculptures
mel ramos nudes
robert indiana prints
martha rosler
richard estes (though not as cheap as 5 yrs ago, i was right about the rise of the photorealists)
late 40s picabos (though not next year)
danny lyon
robert irwin
helen frankenthaller
craig elliot
african photography in general
bettina rheims
Nolde, Kircherner and company
Sandblack
Twombly Prints (esp since the drawings and paintings people are paying too much for them)
MArtin prints (see above)
Kenneth Noland (this will change, people will pay more for colourfield in the next 6 years or so, esp with recent kelly action, increased interest in louis, ironic reconstrctions of monochromy, and musuem work--and noland is too big to be ignored)

i dont know how i feel about them
ed ruscha (all prints/photographs, no drawings, and excellent 6/7 figure prices, after decades of being bargin basement, his role of LA patriach/grandfather to us all is being realised, im not sure its a bubble)
tom wessleman limited audience, too much shit work, i think he has reached his level
Rosenquist--his paintings because of size, limited taste, etc, are basically where they will always be--but when his prints, photos, collages and other ephermability starts coming into large scale market forces things might move around

havenet paid attention to old masters, as lm noted in the below comment