Monday, April 07, 2008
i am working on this show about edmonton erotica, and one of the things about this kind of show, is that you begin to realise patterns of behaviour, the show is turning out to be sort of low key, whitmanesque, lots of portraits, with a couple or three exceceptions less fucking and more meta discussions about the gaze--which shouldnt be a suprise, but kind of is.
and then i saw juliens work, at his house today (one of the great things about being a curator is in the guise of work one can be nosy), and julien used to turn me on, literally, phyiscally, hard on short of breath, and i chose him to be part of the show as memory, more then anything--but meeting him today, i didn't have that phyiscal reaction, it sort of disappaited into something else, somewhere else. but the work got much stronger.
and i also thot he was a bit of flake, because i didnt get a ford drawing, that he promised, but that was a varagacy of the mail, not his fault or mine. i am finding his work more interesting, his painting better and his body less interesting, so i have this set of self portraits, tht i chose to be part of the show because they turned me on, or the memory of them turned me on, and now they are just excellent paintings.
and 30 or so self portraits, in a white t shirt, have an eroticised energy, they have a masturbatory delight in the self, and i dont have much work that is literally or figurtivley masturbatory.
but with juliens work, it will be two or three male artists working with nudes, or close to nudes, or have male energy...and theres another problem--he also has a set of military portraiture, extremely well painted, homosocial w/o being homosexual, work that tells secrets about what men do when women are not present...he showed one, giant (7x10) paitning oil on paper, of a soilder, shirtless, a crown of bullets, and guns at his feet, which in its working class fetishism, and the portrayal of flesh, the act of looking, has an eroticism, but i am not sure it is the same, as the work of the self portraits, andi t muddies the homosocialhomosexualwaters, which isnt a bad thing, and which is a realevent thing, or maybe its a bit of a mcguffin...
i want him in the show, and both works fit, but im not sure which i will chose.
and then i saw juliens work, at his house today (one of the great things about being a curator is in the guise of work one can be nosy), and julien used to turn me on, literally, phyiscally, hard on short of breath, and i chose him to be part of the show as memory, more then anything--but meeting him today, i didn't have that phyiscal reaction, it sort of disappaited into something else, somewhere else. but the work got much stronger.
and i also thot he was a bit of flake, because i didnt get a ford drawing, that he promised, but that was a varagacy of the mail, not his fault or mine. i am finding his work more interesting, his painting better and his body less interesting, so i have this set of self portraits, tht i chose to be part of the show because they turned me on, or the memory of them turned me on, and now they are just excellent paintings.
and 30 or so self portraits, in a white t shirt, have an eroticised energy, they have a masturbatory delight in the self, and i dont have much work that is literally or figurtivley masturbatory.
but with juliens work, it will be two or three male artists working with nudes, or close to nudes, or have male energy...and theres another problem--he also has a set of military portraiture, extremely well painted, homosocial w/o being homosexual, work that tells secrets about what men do when women are not present...he showed one, giant (7x10) paitning oil on paper, of a soilder, shirtless, a crown of bullets, and guns at his feet, which in its working class fetishism, and the portrayal of flesh, the act of looking, has an eroticism, but i am not sure it is the same, as the work of the self portraits, andi t muddies the homosocialhomosexualwaters, which isnt a bad thing, and which is a realevent thing, or maybe its a bit of a mcguffin...
i want him in the show, and both works fit, but im not sure which i will chose.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
From Der Speigel, Bush at an International Conference. (More context means I would have to speak German)
the present master mason in utah is lds. that they were banned for 60 years in the middle of the 20th century, and controlled the masons before hand, this is news.
Tata from India buys Rover and Jaguar.
Greenfield Saunders photos of iraq war veterans has this kind of blankness, and glamour that are found in his porn star work, and esp. his fashion work.
al jaffee fold ins, done digitally. (i could never get the paper ones to match up.
someone please buy me this
this utagawa show in brooklyn looks well worth looking at.
John Waters, Style and Glory, 2008, one of 6 manquettes comissioned for th Armory Show.
158 pages of Vigee Le Brun paintings, drawings and prints.
charles keeping's illustrations for Horned Helmet, are gorgeous, with a fluid line, and an approite ferocity (Vikings!) (other less exciting work as well)
MArylin Minter skateboard decks.
hockney 's thesis on camera and fine art, extends into cinema and politics.
all i am going to say about max mosley, is that after his five whores played nazi sex games, they got together for a nice cuppa. arendt and freud, together again for the first time.
Wikipedia photo for the Estate of Gregymog, in Wales.
atwood on anne of green gables including the fact there was an anime?!!
... our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations. See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Robert J. Delahunty, Special Counsel, Re: Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at 25 (Oct 23, 2001).
Footnote, Yoo Document Two.
Batman and Wolverine, Unknown Artist, 2008
It's nice to have words on paper that prove the Bush Admin was delibrately, and efficently shredding the constution.
alice shershow's jewlery, themed around alaska, have a poltical edge, and a wisdom about material fetish, sourcing and politics, that extends them above just craft--but they are v. v. well crafted.
egg collecting and working class culture, as a felony, via the bbc.
11 installation shots of the nw Murakami show in Brooklyn, including some of a giant, abstracted sculpture, he calls Mr Pointy--one of a seires. That it came from LA suggests that the switch from east to west coast, and the imporantce of the pacfic rim has become finalised.
Rainbow Portrait, 1600, Phillips. (Look at the snake on her shoulder, the cloak filled with eyes and ears, how the lace on the back of the dress looks like moth wings, the floral motifs, how she is 20 feet younger, and how the rainbow has the pearlescent shine of the unicorn, this is Elizabeth as Gaia.)
Hockney moving back to Yorkshire, has made his work more epic, less human, more about landscape, almost northern romantic, and about the contstant vitality of realist paitning. he has donated Bigger Trees Near Warter, to the Tate Britian, and it is 40 by 15 feet, in a mosiac style.
Hammer Quiz (i am poor at it, getting none of them right)
Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch:The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry from the journal of manly arts.
the influence of warhol on Easton-Ellis' Prose Style.
26 photos of soilder art on the barrier wall in Camp Buhering, Kuwait.
another KBR Rape Case.
I Love Cul De Sac, by Richard Poor.
Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints, Christies, London
Impressionist & Modern Art, Christies, London
- The usually hodge podge, 360 lots, which suggests a lets throw shit at the wall and lets see what sticks.
- Not divided by chronology, so Xiogang, Rembrandt, and Leger are within 10 lots of each other.
- Someone tell me that Xiogang is worth something artistically, just so i am not goin to keep thinkign im a racist.
- Two of Warhol Queens work, the purple one is 6k more then the Orange one, Two of Warhol Lenin's, The Orange one is worth 14k less then the black one.
- Large Chunk of Warhol bought in, including the jagger set.
- Twomblys 7 Poets and a Greek Philosopher for 7k is a steal.
- Ugliest Warhols (and they are ugly) dont match for the ugliest johns, which is just clattering.
- A Whole chunk of Hockney, mostly odds and sods, but a great Swimming pool litho from 78
- It's still silly that you can get A durer for under 500 quid
- Is chillida even sold in America? (like 20 here, all 1000-1500)
- Black and White Etchings by Basquit, called anatomy, from 1982, i really like these (18 peice for 90k, which means they will be split and sold for 10k per to people wanting their first basquits)
- Who buys these Picasso neo-classical things?
- Munchs woodcuts are alot gothier, northern romantic, then his paintings
- Ltos and Lots of Rembrandts labeled late impressions, which is all and good, but how latE?
- if i ever do a show or a book called great tits in western art history, rembrandt's gotta be in there
- 93 out of 360 bought in, including Warhol, Miro, Picasso, a collection of Millet prints intended for peassents, of peasents, an amazing corot of a tree, Rembrandt, Durer, and Visscher's Tabby, plus others
- highest lot is 201 Routlouff works, highest individual work is 201k for Munch's death scene.
Impressionist & Modern Art, Christies, London
- Usual Collection of Drawings and studies by famous french artits, vuillard, bonnard, le trec, etc--mostly noting only for their convention
- It's good to know that Renoirs Bronzes are as sentimental as his paintigns or drawings
- really low prices. none in the 6 figures
- five Chagall drawings bought in (i thot those sold regardless of the market
- Endless Bronzes by Dali and Cermaics by Picasso
- 6 withdrawn, 30 out of 153 Bought In, including a really nice Bonnard DRawing.
- It's an open, which should mean no bought in, and work sold for low amounts of money. (but work is being marked as bought in, so either i dont know the terms, or the terms have changed)
- Tomaselli is one of the few that has cottoned onto thef act that prints have a different purpose, they arent (though can be) collectors versions of paintings
- Lot's of classic names Lambrie, SAchs, Friedman, etc
- Two Cady Nolands, for 40k over their estimates, which means the estiamtes are low (she rarely sells her work at auction as well)
- Condo is the lastof the LESers from the 8-s to make cash
- who is Oehlen and why is he worth 265k?
- Over estimate on the Dana Schutz, who is a great painter, but will suffer for a while, while the market figures out what people will pay for her
- Slyvie Fluery for 8100, WTF?
- It's weird how a joke paiting or a cowboy or a nurse can go for more then a million, but the more conceputally difficult three man looking the same way, can go for 104, while not weird, but you would figure his work would go for more
- Great early 80s installation by Kelly for 229
- Decent, Mid Career Scully for 469, Better (though print not painting) black and white one for 39k
- Someone should writer an article about AVAF as a bubble phenom (Like Loeb, who;s work has literally decimated in price)
- Schanbel is awful, please make him go away
- I Think Aoshima is so great, because he takes the dread of the Godzilla/Little Boy Generation and makes it Optomistic, he looks with hope to the trees taking over the canyon, its much eerier then the required dread (great peice unsold)
- Fantastic Phototranser, in whispering, almsot neutral bones, greys and greens, just after the hoarfrost series, for 79k
- Cornell, who should be getting Warhol prices, sells for 39k
- Some really awful stella scribble drawings
- Caro and D Smith making coming back
- Has anyone written anything on judds 2d prints and multiples from the 80s?
- a couple of fantastic ramos works
- 56 out of 360 bought in, including work by Warhol, Minter (red lips and gems), Wessleman (hands and stilllife--really strong work), Friedman (zombie, a minimalsit, robotic white box), and a Miffy by Tom Sachs
- What we can learn from the 121 prints here (all but one sold, most above estiamte, none for crazy money), is that MAtisse was not a master print maker, a fantastic drafts man, but these are still drawings reproduced, not prints for the sake of prints (and there is only one true masterpeice, his st dominic from 1921
- Canaletto landscapes were much less popular, with some of the best examples bought in
- Gorgeous print of Jeromes study by Durer, not a later impression for a little over 6k
- Miro is still doing better then he should
- Two of the Minatour Rape, from the Vollard SEason, by Picasso in teh same auction, carless, (of course only one sells)
- A Decent Schiele for he steal price fo 14,9k
- Three Banksys bought in (yeah!)
- A Marini suite that made me think seh might be better then i hae credited
- Some Iconic Brushstrokes bty Lichenstien, make me think that work functions better as a one element on a small 2d surface
- Lots of Iconic Warhol, Soup Cans, Marlyins, Maos, Electric Chairs, from late and early (best work though, might be Sunrise, 1972, for its timely kitsch)
- prices out for the last 50 lots or so,
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
The Project Description: The restaurant at the Château Lacombe rotates. I want to invite a group of fellow artists and writers to dinner there, and put a video (VHS) camera on the lens. As the camera records for 60 minutes, the microphone will record the gossip and every day conversation of the participants. I would then want this video to play on a non-stop loop throughout the exhibitions run.
The Project’s Conceptual Underpinnings.
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning real
Dusty Springfield, Windmills of My Mind.
My grandmother died, and left me this camera, and I am about to leave Edmonton, back to Toronto. The camera is of a dying medium, difficult to get film for. The Lacombe has a kind of spectacled modernism of wealth and privilege that has now faded into something worn and a little sad. The restaurant rotates slowly; the only way that we can be sure that change has occurred is a slightly different kind of scenery. The circle of my life, with the cycle grandmothers life, with the leaving of a city and the death of a medium, creates a difficult web, combining it with a place which makes no progress, and is now home to high school proms, middle class wedding receptions, and other dress up events, while cycling on something that constantly moves, but never goes anywhere, has an intense psycho-geographic mark.
The work will take an hour to make. It is done in real time. It will be done as a way of remembering, of making real an event that was chosen as spectacle. Think of it as a pop trash recreation of Max Olphus infamous waltz scene in La Ronde (you know the one, it was stolen by Fosse in Cabaret.) The scene, and I hope this work, will be simultaneously ironic of sentiment, and heartbreaking in encapsulation of desire and loss. Also like Kiki and Herb, who manage to be strange, political, camp, and dismissive of camp, in their version of the Dusty Springfield I quote above. The work will have an edge of sentiment, but by only showing the world passing by, and not visually engaging with the participants, also a certain voyeuristic refusal of the camera’s mechanical gaze.
This becomes a camp 2.0, then, a desire to document everything, but to avoid the cameras, to circle about with pleasure, but to use that pleasure as a symbol of death, but only obliquely. The real cannot be returned to, it cannot be discussed directly, like a fish that becomes more slippery, the more one tries to catch it. What is real here—the meal, the documentation, the desire, the loss? What is hyper real, the bibliography of references in the second paragraph, the dark metaphors into the first, the stretching of an hour event into 2? What is surreal, making the private into public, making everything into theater?
This project then, wants to mess around, with Reel, like the dance, or Reel like what you put film on, or Reel like what you use to Catch fish, with Real like what has happened, with real, like what is factually accurate, with Real, like what can be ontologically proven.
The Project’s Conceptual Underpinnings.
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning real
Dusty Springfield, Windmills of My Mind.
My grandmother died, and left me this camera, and I am about to leave Edmonton, back to Toronto. The camera is of a dying medium, difficult to get film for. The Lacombe has a kind of spectacled modernism of wealth and privilege that has now faded into something worn and a little sad. The restaurant rotates slowly; the only way that we can be sure that change has occurred is a slightly different kind of scenery. The circle of my life, with the cycle grandmothers life, with the leaving of a city and the death of a medium, creates a difficult web, combining it with a place which makes no progress, and is now home to high school proms, middle class wedding receptions, and other dress up events, while cycling on something that constantly moves, but never goes anywhere, has an intense psycho-geographic mark.
The work will take an hour to make. It is done in real time. It will be done as a way of remembering, of making real an event that was chosen as spectacle. Think of it as a pop trash recreation of Max Olphus infamous waltz scene in La Ronde (you know the one, it was stolen by Fosse in Cabaret.) The scene, and I hope this work, will be simultaneously ironic of sentiment, and heartbreaking in encapsulation of desire and loss. Also like Kiki and Herb, who manage to be strange, political, camp, and dismissive of camp, in their version of the Dusty Springfield I quote above. The work will have an edge of sentiment, but by only showing the world passing by, and not visually engaging with the participants, also a certain voyeuristic refusal of the camera’s mechanical gaze.
This becomes a camp 2.0, then, a desire to document everything, but to avoid the cameras, to circle about with pleasure, but to use that pleasure as a symbol of death, but only obliquely. The real cannot be returned to, it cannot be discussed directly, like a fish that becomes more slippery, the more one tries to catch it. What is real here—the meal, the documentation, the desire, the loss? What is hyper real, the bibliography of references in the second paragraph, the dark metaphors into the first, the stretching of an hour event into 2? What is surreal, making the private into public, making everything into theater?
This project then, wants to mess around, with Reel, like the dance, or Reel like what you put film on, or Reel like what you use to Catch fish, with Real like what has happened, with real, like what is factually accurate, with Real, like what can be ontologically proven.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
the official regan on rushmore website. with giftshop.
images for the new dave mckean tarot.
Earth and Moon, From Mars, via A NASA Robot.
i am glad homophobic bullying has been taken seriously, i just wish it happened earlier, decades earlier.
five great prints from daniel stolle, with excellent use of spot colour.
peggy orenstein in the new york times, moves around, and then thru, the narrative of culture mixing, and purity that dogs the subtext of criticism of obama.
thomas beatle who is with child, after his wife had a hysterectomy, i think is heroic for the settling of narratives--the work a day, i did this, but then i want this, so i can do that, that marks the most practical narratives of transgression. he is a man, having a baby, something that we have been waiting for (and some of us have been fearing) for decades.
giant sea creatures on the ross ice shelf.
chicagoist used one of my photos.
1000 stolen ancient artifacts found in a private residence, in italy.
Lichtenstien, Mirror 10, Arcylic and Magna, 1971
robert hughes, reviewing lichtenstein in 1981 found here
he totally does not know how to read these, i am reminded of what sarah ruhl said to john lahr in last week's new yorker: "lightness isn't stupidity", its actually a philosophical and aesthetic viewpoint, deeply serious, and has a kind of wisdom--stepping back to be able to laugh at horrible things even as you're experiencing them"--the looking into a mirror, the mirror looking back netzicheian abyss thing isn't here at all, but the self is only present in oblique quotes to previous work. it is a cold and analytical fuck you, to the critics who claim that pop was surfaces, machinery, self obsessed, and narcissistic. they are not empty, they nimbly avoid the narratives created for them. & anyone who can use tondo in a sentence should know that.
Mirror 6, LithoGraph, 1976
dave hickey interview on the market. including a brief foray dissing the incestous circle jerk of christies and sothebys.
the american national library of medicein on pysch pre 1900.
Full text of A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play by Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf from 1901 is here worth reading for a discusion of the foundational folk antisemitisms that grounded western culture for most of european history, and also, for placing recent wahbisit discourses in context.
Hacked Sign, Berkes County, PA, 2007, via the new shelton wet and dry go read it now
annotation of Graham Rowe's colalge novel, a womans world.
17 pages of cartoon vitirol, from Dan Clowers in 1987, hand drawn text and illustrations.
design with in reach is now selling teepees.
Four Educational Videos about Alzheimers--well writen, well done visually, and they actively encourage people to download to them, they are cc liscensed. info here
moving from depressing to depressing, mugabe's sunday election in zimbobwae, looks same old same old
mary behrs mash ups of harlequin covers and craigs list ads are like those war at home collages taht combine life with better homes and gardens.
clinton in 1994 told women in fayetteville arkansas, that she thought of joining the marines.
mating llamas, alpacas and camels.
joe queenan on the worst movies ever.
Warhol, Oxidazation Painting. 1977 or 78.
Warhol, Cum Painting, 1978
farm riot in argentina, the globe and mail today, had al ogn artilce that it will be the next great crisis.
a dozen typewriter typefaces
minnesota is giving up on morgatge fraud cases.
taschen is doing a giant penis book
1950s Excercise Maunals that look like Balderssei's Vol. 1.
truck spills, a website that documents, trucks spilling shit.
the spitzer whore thing seems more and more to be a dirty trick like smear job, Roger Stone, A GOP Consultant (speakign of whores), has said that he released memos as early as november---why isnt this the story? (i know why this isnt the story, 20 something nymphos with huge tits and pop ambitions are always the story)
great little story interview about a art dealer working as a fence.
stephen miller's queer photos and peformances, are so over the top, so normalizing of queer abhereance, that they slip into self parody. esp. milky.
via copyranter
images for the new dave mckean tarot.
Earth and Moon, From Mars, via A NASA Robot.
i am glad homophobic bullying has been taken seriously, i just wish it happened earlier, decades earlier.
five great prints from daniel stolle, with excellent use of spot colour.
peggy orenstein in the new york times, moves around, and then thru, the narrative of culture mixing, and purity that dogs the subtext of criticism of obama.
thomas beatle who is with child, after his wife had a hysterectomy, i think is heroic for the settling of narratives--the work a day, i did this, but then i want this, so i can do that, that marks the most practical narratives of transgression. he is a man, having a baby, something that we have been waiting for (and some of us have been fearing) for decades.
giant sea creatures on the ross ice shelf.
chicagoist used one of my photos.
1000 stolen ancient artifacts found in a private residence, in italy.
Lichtenstien, Mirror 10, Arcylic and Magna, 1971
What one misses in a large proportion of the work on view in St. Louis is, simply, the sense of necessity—an engagement deeper than style.
robert hughes, reviewing lichtenstein in 1981 found here
They are also more plainly invented than the works derived from print sources. We do not think of mirror reflections as having a style, and in that sense Lichtenstein's mirror paintings sidle closer to unmediated experience, and so indirectly to nature, than his other work. They also gather poignancy from the fact that they are empty. One gazes at them frontally, as at a real mirror, but nothing shows up in their superficial depths. The spectator is a phantom. These icy, imperturbable tondos and ovals may say more about the nature of Lichtenstein's imagination than anything he has painted since. What could convey better than a blank mirror his belief that exhibitions of the self are hateful in painting?ibid.
he totally does not know how to read these, i am reminded of what sarah ruhl said to john lahr in last week's new yorker: "lightness isn't stupidity", its actually a philosophical and aesthetic viewpoint, deeply serious, and has a kind of wisdom--stepping back to be able to laugh at horrible things even as you're experiencing them"--the looking into a mirror, the mirror looking back netzicheian abyss thing isn't here at all, but the self is only present in oblique quotes to previous work. it is a cold and analytical fuck you, to the critics who claim that pop was surfaces, machinery, self obsessed, and narcissistic. they are not empty, they nimbly avoid the narratives created for them. & anyone who can use tondo in a sentence should know that.
Mirror 6, LithoGraph, 1976
dave hickey interview on the market. including a brief foray dissing the incestous circle jerk of christies and sothebys.
the american national library of medicein on pysch pre 1900.
Full text of A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play by Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf from 1901 is here worth reading for a discusion of the foundational folk antisemitisms that grounded western culture for most of european history, and also, for placing recent wahbisit discourses in context.
Hacked Sign, Berkes County, PA, 2007, via the new shelton wet and dry go read it now
annotation of Graham Rowe's colalge novel, a womans world.
17 pages of cartoon vitirol, from Dan Clowers in 1987, hand drawn text and illustrations.
design with in reach is now selling teepees.
Four Educational Videos about Alzheimers--well writen, well done visually, and they actively encourage people to download to them, they are cc liscensed. info here
moving from depressing to depressing, mugabe's sunday election in zimbobwae, looks same old same old
mary behrs mash ups of harlequin covers and craigs list ads are like those war at home collages taht combine life with better homes and gardens.
clinton in 1994 told women in fayetteville arkansas, that she thought of joining the marines.
mating llamas, alpacas and camels.
joe queenan on the worst movies ever.
Warhol, Oxidazation Painting. 1977 or 78.
Warhol, Cum Painting, 1978
farm riot in argentina, the globe and mail today, had al ogn artilce that it will be the next great crisis.
a dozen typewriter typefaces
minnesota is giving up on morgatge fraud cases.
taschen is doing a giant penis book
1950s Excercise Maunals that look like Balderssei's Vol. 1.
truck spills, a website that documents, trucks spilling shit.
the spitzer whore thing seems more and more to be a dirty trick like smear job, Roger Stone, A GOP Consultant (speakign of whores), has said that he released memos as early as november---why isnt this the story? (i know why this isnt the story, 20 something nymphos with huge tits and pop ambitions are always the story)
great little story interview about a art dealer working as a fence.
stephen miller's queer photos and peformances, are so over the top, so normalizing of queer abhereance, that they slip into self parody. esp. milky.
via copyranter
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Dear Scott:
The Governor has received your e-mail regarding the number of escalators in Wyoming. He has asked me to respond to your question.
While we are not aware of any research on this issue, it is widely assumed that there are no escalators in Wyoming.
I hope this is helpful. Thank you again for writing the Governor.
Best regards,
Rob Black
Policy Analyst
Governor's Office
via wonkette
Rob Black is a liar, after doing extensive inter net research (ie calling Caspar and googling malls--there are at least two escalators in wyoming--one at the mall in Cheyenne and one at the Frontier Mall at Cheyenne. Email me for the Rules of Conduct for said mall) (but someone from metafilter, called the Frontier Mall, said they had none.) (The Wonkette Comments suggest that it has been replaced by a coffee shop, and that there might be one in Jackson Hole, also at a mall.)
The Governor has received your e-mail regarding the number of escalators in Wyoming. He has asked me to respond to your question.
While we are not aware of any research on this issue, it is widely assumed that there are no escalators in Wyoming.
I hope this is helpful. Thank you again for writing the Governor.
Best regards,
Rob Black
Policy Analyst
Governor's Office
via wonkette
Rob Black is a liar, after doing extensive inter net research (ie calling Caspar and googling malls--there are at least two escalators in wyoming--one at the mall in Cheyenne and one at the Frontier Mall at Cheyenne. Email me for the Rules of Conduct for said mall) (but someone from metafilter, called the Frontier Mall, said they had none.) (The Wonkette Comments suggest that it has been replaced by a coffee shop, and that there might be one in Jackson Hole, also at a mall.)
thinking more about rauschenberg, warhol, johns and lichenstein in the 70s and 80s, since seeing mirror 2. i am thinking of important or vital or challenging or formally engaged work at that point
carol vogel, for the new york times:
Time Out Chicago, not known for its high tone, and its a postive review, a postivie review for the 70s and 80s stuff, but he does find the history of work dull, the reshuflling a way of looking tired work anew.
This is Saltz, in Time Out New York, and it is a ravishing defense of the indefensible the thing is, 119 paintings on a theme, or of one colour, in 50 years, is not a lot, warhol's career did thousands of portraits, Rberg did hundreds of collages, Lichtenstein pumped out prints one after another, and even people were more careful, did more work, Pearlstein paints 2 or 3 nudes a year, for the last 40, which brings him past 100, Bechtle makes a dozen prints and a painting a year... its not even encaustic, because Theibaud works in Tempera, a much more difficult work, and still produces at a greater rate...i think that artists can make a small body of work and do other things, and still have an impt career, i am not making an arguement in favour of prolfigacy (though my favourite artists are multi genre, multi editioned, artists with huge practices--but its like johns is barely trying. if 119 is too big, if we cannot handle 119, or if the only way we can handle 119 is to make category based on formal sets, then the work lacks a polymorphus sensiblity that marks the best artists.
This is the standard arguement in favour of Johns lately, that by the sheer act of painting, means something---but that slowign down/speeding up is a lithe rhetorical trick, but i am not sure it means anything, i am assuming he is talking about the cross hatch, or the more abstract paintings here, but he is nto playing the same game as cezanne--looking at the bathers for example, you see so much in the bathers, formal things, like the tonal varrations in flesh, fabric and landscape; historical things, like salon odlesiques, and historical nudes; miracles of painting, like how these 2d creatures put weight on one leg, or how their foot flattens, so the work destablizes, and the secret mystery of what is happening in these situtations, with these men and women, the lost narratives just barley implied--i dont think we can do this with john for a couple of reasons
1) he isnt as good a painter as people think he is, he isnt nearly as good a paitner as cezanne, and for americans in the last half of the 20th century, bechtle, pearlstein, warhol, sue williams, karen killiminik to name four, are better examples then johns of what saltz is gettign at--there is a masterpeice of a bechtle paitning, at the berkley art musuem, that does all of the formal, historical, miracolous, things of cezanne, that escape the kabbalism of johns secret life. i took a bad picture of it, but its a white car, in front of a white wall, with a man in a white shirt, and there are grey sidewalks, etc. the flatness is the opposite of the rough encaustic in the best of johns work, and the lack of texture is sort of the point--but the glacial movements between minute varations of white and grey, is not banal, is nto bleak, it is holy almost, or at least sublime, in a way that is respect w/o being banal, it is historical as well, a california update of constable or holbein or hals portraits of content merchants showing comfortable middle clas wealth, and that the man is unknown and the location is unknown, being lost in the suburbs, et. al--adds a literal mystery. (the bechtle is 1960 T Bird, from 1967-8) (Paul Richard in Washington Post, in 1967) talks about it thusly:
2) the grey show seems to be an attempt to move about his lack of understanding colour--the bechtle shows that grey is not the absence of colour, but another kind of colour--just like the mirror ii from 1972 by Lichentsein, with its fractured selves shows that white maintains with presence as much as absence. i normally do not argue against diffucult conceptul work, or work that is about personal concerns, or work that is obsessive, or work that is even ugly. i like awkard and ugly, but there has to be a bounce, or a splash or an imposition, or a blankness, or there has to be a there there---thinking of the great work that was made of grey, or white and grey, or grey and black or silver, in the 1957-1967 height of John's, and lets leave it to Americans, just not to make it too difficult, here are 10:
1) robert frank's the americans (1957)
2) agnes martin's white flower (1961)
3) bechtel's t bird (1967)
4) louise nevelson's sky cathedral (1958)
5) Warhol Silver Liz's (1963) (National Velvet and Cleopatra)
6) ryman (choose one, its all the same project, and they all have the same name)
7) eva hesse hang up (1966)
8) carl andre equvilents (1966)
9) twombly leda and the swan (1962) (i know there are other colours here, but its the ovehwelming whites, greys adn blacks that make the point)
10) some of juds early stacked boxes)
(i know that i do this often, the strategy of death by deluge, and maybe its a bit bullying, but i think what im saying, is that johns was working in a tradition of grey work, that living in new york while devopling a grey strategy became an almost default.) (and anyone of the artists i mentioned did more with grey, talked more about grey, figured out what grey meant, not only as a colour, but as an emotion, or not quite an emotion, but as a state of being)
i think what makes a great artist, even if he or she is pushing the same ideas or the same concepts or still working thru, after decades, is a rooting, like a pig for truffles, a rentless commitment for aesthetic solutions to aesthetic problems--and i think johns loves art, but i dont think that he has that rooting (actually i dont really think that, because lots of artists i love do not seek problems or soultions, lots of artists who are fantastic, great, dont bother with the sorting--so i shouldnt be as prescriptive as i am being) (if i had to make a list of things that i think are impt about artists, or more imporantly maybe, or a list of qaulities that artists i find value in, have in common, johns would follow all of them:
yet another list, of those qualities:
1) trans-historical
2) coperal
3) a juxtaposition of interior and exterior directions
4) a control of formal issues (including size, space, colour, etc)
5) a realtion to the work that others are now creating
6) a philosohpical or theoretical grounding
7) a consistency amongst his or her own projects
8) a desire to grease and then wrestle naked wombats
johns has all of those--in spades, he couldnt have more of some of them, and some artists who had all of them were not great artists (larry rivers) and some artists who had almost none of them were great artists (tom wesselman, donald judd, kenneth noland) (and i mean this is a v. queer urban white male in the 21st century related to the history of painting, too) so i guess the question is, why is he so bad, why is his work, that shoudl engage and grow into devotion, is given to slippery half loved critiques, or to discussions of the few things he does well..
everytime i look at olitiski, i feel like yelling to greenbergites, this is what you wanted to stake yr entire rep on--this was what you thot was impt enough that you wanted to convince historians with, this is the best you could bring to the table (esp when they had louis, frankenthaler, noland, and truitt) and everytime i spend anytime with johns--i want to yell at poptimists--this is what you wanted to stake yr entire rep on--this was what wou thot was impt enough that you wanted to convince historians with, this is the best you could bring to the table (esp when we have wessleman, bechtle, warhol, lichenstein, and rberg). i feel like the greenbergites would come up with some pretty great arguements about why i should shut up and start lookign--even reading gorgeous and loving odes to johns genuius, liek this nyrb peice : which started this essay), i feel like we couldnt come up with any great arguements about the same.
two small foot note
The essay features this qoute by Johns: I used gray encaustic to avoid the color situation. The encaustic paintings were done in gray because to me this suggested a kind of literal quality that was unmoved or unmovable by coloration and thus avoided all the emotional and dramatic quality of color. Black and white is very leading. It tells you what to say or do. The gray encaustic paintings seemed to me to allow the literal qualities of the painting to predominate over any of the others.
All of the other artists i have mentioned above recoginize that grey is a colour in itself, and not a way to avoid the colour situtation, and that bluntly, the colour situtation is nto something to be avoided. its also useful to rememebr that no matter how literary a work is, it also has to work visually, a lesson johns could have learnet from the raptously painted and poetically wry ruscha text peices.
the last great masterpeice by lichenstein:
Venetian School, Four Colour Screen Print, 1996. (the year of his death)
The last great masterpeicee from Warhol, From The Last Supper Series, Mixed Media, 1986 (the year of his death)
I cannot find a good picture, but from the reviews, Rauschenbergs last masterpeice, was the mural for the Piano designed Cathedral in Rome, done in 1996.
LAst Great Work For Johns:
High School Days, Lead Relief, 1969 (39 years ago)
- rauschenberg had cardboard and related works, consisting of cardbird, the tampa clay peices and the egyption varraitions, plus the hoarfrost series, so thats at least four.
- warhol had the collabrations wih basquiat, the piss paintings, the last suppers, ladies and gentlemen, and some of the portraits. at least five
- lichenstein had entablatures, the mirror series, the brush strokes, and the art historical reworkings, including the Monets so thats four as well.
- what did johns have? i am reading his catalog for he 1996 NY:MoMA retro right now, and its really medicore, the cross hatch is the most famous work from that peroid, and i havent written any critics defending that...
carol vogel, for the new york times:
To hear it from curators, gray is not just a familiar color for Johns but the essence of a long metaphysical journey, an exploration of "the condition of gray itself." At least that's the premise of a sprawling exhibition of his work that opens Tuesday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.(she is distancing herself, she is not claiming the colour imparts seriousness, but that curators do) (vogel then spends most of the rest of the article talking about Johns history, and his carribean vacation home)
Strangely enough, by limiting the scope of the presentation to what would seem to be the most boring “noncolor” imaginable, many of the works seemed newly vibrant.
Time Out Chicago, not known for its high tone, and its a postive review, a postivie review for the 70s and 80s stuff, but he does find the history of work dull, the reshuflling a way of looking tired work anew.
Since then, Johns’s career highs and lows have been documented and debated; admirers have turned him into a cult; detractors have disparaged him as “undernourished and overthought”; his art has been exhibited and sorted according to motif, medium, period, and iconography. “Jasper Johns: Gray,” the Metropolitan’s exhibition of 119 paintings, prints, sculptures, and drawings in shades of gray spanning 50 years, ushers us into Middle Kingdom Johns. Although the show is ravishing and brings you into close contact with the numinous ways Johns combines process, materials, tangibility, language, thought, and seeing, it’s too big. That in turn robs it of some of the radiance it had this fall at the Art Institute of Chicago. At the Met, the works are set too close together; a small alcove is crammed with ten pieces; shiny black floors, stark white walls, and a lack of natural light impede the resonant sensuality and obdurate otherness of Johns’s work. As alluring as “Gray” is, it reminds us that although the Met gets the first 50,000 years of art so right, it often gets the last 50 wrong.
This is Saltz, in Time Out New York, and it is a ravishing defense of the indefensible the thing is, 119 paintings on a theme, or of one colour, in 50 years, is not a lot, warhol's career did thousands of portraits, Rberg did hundreds of collages, Lichtenstein pumped out prints one after another, and even people were more careful, did more work, Pearlstein paints 2 or 3 nudes a year, for the last 40, which brings him past 100, Bechtle makes a dozen prints and a painting a year... its not even encaustic, because Theibaud works in Tempera, a much more difficult work, and still produces at a greater rate...i think that artists can make a small body of work and do other things, and still have an impt career, i am not making an arguement in favour of prolfigacy (though my favourite artists are multi genre, multi editioned, artists with huge practices--but its like johns is barely trying. if 119 is too big, if we cannot handle 119, or if the only way we can handle 119 is to make category based on formal sets, then the work lacks a polymorphus sensiblity that marks the best artists.
With gamesmanship and decoding set aside, you start to understand not only how Johns imposes thought on his work but how his work imposes thought on him. His short, repeating Cézanne-like brushstrokes, preserved in the encaustic, have the uncanny effect of slowing down seeing but speeding up thought.
This is the standard arguement in favour of Johns lately, that by the sheer act of painting, means something---but that slowign down/speeding up is a lithe rhetorical trick, but i am not sure it means anything, i am assuming he is talking about the cross hatch, or the more abstract paintings here, but he is nto playing the same game as cezanne--looking at the bathers for example, you see so much in the bathers, formal things, like the tonal varrations in flesh, fabric and landscape; historical things, like salon odlesiques, and historical nudes; miracles of painting, like how these 2d creatures put weight on one leg, or how their foot flattens, so the work destablizes, and the secret mystery of what is happening in these situtations, with these men and women, the lost narratives just barley implied--i dont think we can do this with john for a couple of reasons
1) he isnt as good a painter as people think he is, he isnt nearly as good a paitner as cezanne, and for americans in the last half of the 20th century, bechtle, pearlstein, warhol, sue williams, karen killiminik to name four, are better examples then johns of what saltz is gettign at--there is a masterpeice of a bechtle paitning, at the berkley art musuem, that does all of the formal, historical, miracolous, things of cezanne, that escape the kabbalism of johns secret life. i took a bad picture of it, but its a white car, in front of a white wall, with a man in a white shirt, and there are grey sidewalks, etc. the flatness is the opposite of the rough encaustic in the best of johns work, and the lack of texture is sort of the point--but the glacial movements between minute varations of white and grey, is not banal, is nto bleak, it is holy almost, or at least sublime, in a way that is respect w/o being banal, it is historical as well, a california update of constable or holbein or hals portraits of content merchants showing comfortable middle clas wealth, and that the man is unknown and the location is unknown, being lost in the suburbs, et. al--adds a literal mystery. (the bechtle is 1960 T Bird, from 1967-8) (Paul Richard in Washington Post, in 1967) talks about it thusly:
World art, before cars, was full of horses. Noble, plunging steeds with pounding hooves and floating manes are as often seen in Ice Age caves and Chinese terra cottas as they are in cowboy movies. All sorts of different painters (Frederic Remington, Degas, Leonardo) kept coming back to horses. In the Bay Area, Robert Bechtle's neighborhood, it is vehicles instead.
2) the grey show seems to be an attempt to move about his lack of understanding colour--the bechtle shows that grey is not the absence of colour, but another kind of colour--just like the mirror ii from 1972 by Lichentsein, with its fractured selves shows that white maintains with presence as much as absence. i normally do not argue against diffucult conceptul work, or work that is about personal concerns, or work that is obsessive, or work that is even ugly. i like awkard and ugly, but there has to be a bounce, or a splash or an imposition, or a blankness, or there has to be a there there---thinking of the great work that was made of grey, or white and grey, or grey and black or silver, in the 1957-1967 height of John's, and lets leave it to Americans, just not to make it too difficult, here are 10:
1) robert frank's the americans (1957)
2) agnes martin's white flower (1961)
3) bechtel's t bird (1967)
4) louise nevelson's sky cathedral (1958)
5) Warhol Silver Liz's (1963) (National Velvet and Cleopatra)
6) ryman (choose one, its all the same project, and they all have the same name)
7) eva hesse hang up (1966)
8) carl andre equvilents (1966)
9) twombly leda and the swan (1962) (i know there are other colours here, but its the ovehwelming whites, greys adn blacks that make the point)
10) some of juds early stacked boxes)
(i know that i do this often, the strategy of death by deluge, and maybe its a bit bullying, but i think what im saying, is that johns was working in a tradition of grey work, that living in new york while devopling a grey strategy became an almost default.) (and anyone of the artists i mentioned did more with grey, talked more about grey, figured out what grey meant, not only as a colour, but as an emotion, or not quite an emotion, but as a state of being)
i think what makes a great artist, even if he or she is pushing the same ideas or the same concepts or still working thru, after decades, is a rooting, like a pig for truffles, a rentless commitment for aesthetic solutions to aesthetic problems--and i think johns loves art, but i dont think that he has that rooting (actually i dont really think that, because lots of artists i love do not seek problems or soultions, lots of artists who are fantastic, great, dont bother with the sorting--so i shouldnt be as prescriptive as i am being) (if i had to make a list of things that i think are impt about artists, or more imporantly maybe, or a list of qaulities that artists i find value in, have in common, johns would follow all of them:
yet another list, of those qualities:
1) trans-historical
2) coperal
3) a juxtaposition of interior and exterior directions
4) a control of formal issues (including size, space, colour, etc)
5) a realtion to the work that others are now creating
6) a philosohpical or theoretical grounding
7) a consistency amongst his or her own projects
8) a desire to grease and then wrestle naked wombats
johns has all of those--in spades, he couldnt have more of some of them, and some artists who had all of them were not great artists (larry rivers) and some artists who had almost none of them were great artists (tom wesselman, donald judd, kenneth noland) (and i mean this is a v. queer urban white male in the 21st century related to the history of painting, too) so i guess the question is, why is he so bad, why is his work, that shoudl engage and grow into devotion, is given to slippery half loved critiques, or to discussions of the few things he does well..
everytime i look at olitiski, i feel like yelling to greenbergites, this is what you wanted to stake yr entire rep on--this was what you thot was impt enough that you wanted to convince historians with, this is the best you could bring to the table (esp when they had louis, frankenthaler, noland, and truitt) and everytime i spend anytime with johns--i want to yell at poptimists--this is what you wanted to stake yr entire rep on--this was what wou thot was impt enough that you wanted to convince historians with, this is the best you could bring to the table (esp when we have wessleman, bechtle, warhol, lichenstein, and rberg). i feel like the greenbergites would come up with some pretty great arguements about why i should shut up and start lookign--even reading gorgeous and loving odes to johns genuius, liek this nyrb peice : which started this essay), i feel like we couldnt come up with any great arguements about the same.
two small foot note
The essay features this qoute by Johns: I used gray encaustic to avoid the color situation. The encaustic paintings were done in gray because to me this suggested a kind of literal quality that was unmoved or unmovable by coloration and thus avoided all the emotional and dramatic quality of color. Black and white is very leading. It tells you what to say or do. The gray encaustic paintings seemed to me to allow the literal qualities of the painting to predominate over any of the others.
All of the other artists i have mentioned above recoginize that grey is a colour in itself, and not a way to avoid the colour situtation, and that bluntly, the colour situtation is nto something to be avoided. its also useful to rememebr that no matter how literary a work is, it also has to work visually, a lesson johns could have learnet from the raptously painted and poetically wry ruscha text peices.
the last great masterpeice by lichenstein:
Venetian School, Four Colour Screen Print, 1996. (the year of his death)
The last great masterpeicee from Warhol, From The Last Supper Series, Mixed Media, 1986 (the year of his death)
I cannot find a good picture, but from the reviews, Rauschenbergs last masterpeice, was the mural for the Piano designed Cathedral in Rome, done in 1996.
LAst Great Work For Johns:
High School Days, Lead Relief, 1969 (39 years ago)
Chris Dropped Out of a Can Lit Class, because the list was terrible--if i was going to teach a can lit class--this is what i would choose: (it would have to be two semesters)
novels:
the stone angel--lawerence
Paul's Case--Crosbie
the bear--marian engel
microserfs--coupland
kiss of the fur queen--thomson highway
beautiful losers--cohen
swann--Shields
short story collections:
wilderness tips--atwood
the paris stories--gallant
the lives of girls and women--munro
The Lamp at Noon and Other Short Stories--Ross
A Couple from Valgardsen
Roy-the Hidden Mountain
essays:
Surrival--Atwood
A Lovers Qaurrell--Carmine Starnino
Timothy Findley--From Stage to Page
Mordechai Richler--On Snooker
diaries, memoirs, etc
Roughing it in the Bush Susan Moodie
Runaway-Evelyn Lau
Loose End-Ivan Coyote
The Diaries of Franklin
Baltimores Mansion--Wayne Johnson
Mrs Mike
poetry
The Circle Game--Atwood
un--Dennis Lee
The Seed Catalog--Kroestch
E Pauline Johnson--The White Wampum
Anne Carson's translations of Sappho
Euonia-Bok
Drama
love and human remains--brad frasier
the xtc of rita joe--Ryga
The Stories of Edward--Tremblay
novels:
the stone angel--lawerence
Paul's Case--Crosbie
the bear--marian engel
microserfs--coupland
kiss of the fur queen--thomson highway
beautiful losers--cohen
swann--Shields
short story collections:
wilderness tips--atwood
the paris stories--gallant
the lives of girls and women--munro
The Lamp at Noon and Other Short Stories--Ross
A Couple from Valgardsen
Roy-the Hidden Mountain
essays:
Surrival--Atwood
A Lovers Qaurrell--Carmine Starnino
Timothy Findley--From Stage to Page
Mordechai Richler--On Snooker
diaries, memoirs, etc
Roughing it in the Bush Susan Moodie
Runaway-Evelyn Lau
Loose End-Ivan Coyote
The Diaries of Franklin
Baltimores Mansion--Wayne Johnson
Mrs Mike
poetry
The Circle Game--Atwood
un--Dennis Lee
The Seed Catalog--Kroestch
E Pauline Johnson--The White Wampum
Anne Carson's translations of Sappho
Euonia-Bok
Drama
love and human remains--brad frasier
the xtc of rita joe--Ryga
The Stories of Edward--Tremblay
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
AnthonySEaston (9:44:45 PM): and also, how is the poetics of coterie
AnthonySEaston (9:45:03 PM): im thinking about this painting he did of liz taylor in national velvet
AnthonySEaston (9:45:10 PM): that i saw at the sf moma
AnthonySEaston (9:45:18 PM): and its big, maybe 20 by 5
AnthonySEaston (9:45:22 PM): oriented vertically
AnthonySEaston (9:45:43 PM): and the ground is silver, and then there are partial strips of repeating images, in black
AnthonySEaston (9:46:08 PM): so its cinematic, in almost the least ifguritive way possible
AnthonySEaston (9:46:52 PM): it resembles themechanics of cinema, the silver celluoid, and the black films, and it came from cinema, most likely, so the transference loses all figuritive nature
AnthonySEaston (9:47:08 PM): it seems really brutal and so unsubtle
AnthonySEaston (9:47:18 PM): and i wonder, is that brutality a good thing
theminorthirds (9:47:43 PM): oh. i don't know.
theminorthirds (9:47:51 PM): for some.
AnthonySEaston (9:48:53 PM): its in the same room as one of rbergs combines, and an early 70s mirror by lichenstein, and rberg is totally brutal, slathering and obstructing the base coat of this painting, its a suprisingly gestural and violent work, and the mirror by lichenstein, was lovely, a shimmering, barely visbile fantasia of white space, blue lines and black ben day dots, decoratiev in the best way
AnthonySEaston (9:49:24 PM): so it was weird, like warhol was in the middle of these two approaches to pop, and he lost, i think
AnthonySEaston (9:49:32 PM): and im trying to figure out how he lost
AnthonySEaston (9:49:41 PM): why i am thinking of it in terms of losing
theminorthirds (9:49:43 PM): so i am reading this book by o'hara
theminorthirds (9:49:51 PM): not by
theminorthirds (9:49:52 PM): about
theminorthirds (9:49:55 PM): the lytle shaw book
theminorthirds (9:49:57 PM): which is very good
AnthonySEaston (9:50:03 PM): the poetics of coterie (which i mean to pick up)
theminorthirds (9:50:06 PM): oui
theminorthirds (9:50:11 PM): yeah get it from the library
theminorthirds (9:50:13 PM): it's good
AnthonySEaston (9:50:16 PM): dont buy it?
theminorthirds (9:50:20 PM): well, or buy it
theminorthirds (9:50:22 PM): it's still in HC
AnthonySEaston (9:50:41 PM): how much was it
theminorthirds (9:50:50 PM): i dunno, i got it from the library. like $40?
theminorthirds (9:50:55 PM): so but
theminorthirds (9:51:03 PM): so the last few chapters are more about art criticism
theminorthirds (9:51:13 PM): and this one part, which i was mostly skimming
theminorthirds (9:51:20 PM): he's talking about r'berg
AnthonySEaston (9:51:28 PM): hmm mm
theminorthirds (9:51:37 PM): and how this early critic (greenberg?) found some collage poem to "avoid" meaning
AnthonySEaston (9:51:55 PM): explain more about collaege poem
theminorthirds (9:51:55 PM): but shaw sees this avoidance of meaning as creating meaning, he goes meta.
theminorthirds (9:51:59 PM): sigh.
theminorthirds (9:52:00 PM): not poem
theminorthirds (9:52:05 PM): collage painting. of r'berg's
theminorthirds (9:52:08 PM): my language is all tire.d
AnthonySEaston (9:52:11 PM): a combine?
theminorthirds (9:52:28 PM): well something. it had images and paint.
theminorthirds (9:52:51 PM): anyhoo
theminorthirds (9:52:56 PM): so i got to thinking
theminorthirds (9:53:06 PM): that perhaps the critic's job is the find meaning in art?
theminorthirds (9:53:16 PM): or perhaps that is what the critic thinks their job is?
theminorthirds (9:53:26 PM): or perhaps that is what we do when we act as a critic?
theminorthirds (9:54:02 PM): and yet if an artist is trying to avoid meaning, as both the older critic and, to a lesser extent, shaw agree
theminorthirds (9:54:11 PM): perhaps it is best just to let them avoid it
theminorthirds (9:54:12 PM): ?
theminorthirds (9:54:29 PM): perhaps we are addicted to meaning.
theminorthirds (9:54:34 PM): perhaps we feel *entitled*
theminorthirds (9:54:36 PM): to it
theminorthirds (9:55:02 PM): and perhaps we don't need it.
AnthonySEaston (9:55:03 PM): warhol isnt avoiding meaning, by any stretch of the immigantion, and i mean lichenstein is, except formal elements are meanings, the colour, line, arangement, and the like
theminorthirds (9:55:05 PM): all the time.
AnthonySEaston (9:55:11 PM): but i feel that way about r'berg and johns
theminorthirds (9:55:34 PM): surely warhol is *sometimes* avoiding meaning
AnthonySEaston (9:55:47 PM): the absensce, the erasure, the lacunae, the absences are a way of tryign to escape the texts we use the words we use to talk about these things
AnthonySEaston (9:55:56 PM): v. rarely, he has that aspie questioning thing
theminorthirds (9:56:04 PM): surely empire.
theminorthirds (9:56:32 PM): it seems like warhol is less interested in meaning and more interested in staring?
theminorthirds (9:56:40 PM): and he likes staring at clebs
AnthonySEaston (9:56:47 PM): empire is totally about meaning, its that satie qoute made v. v. literal, its the translation of that satie qoute
AnthonySEaston (9:57:02 PM): and the staring is all about finding meaning in things that the culture considers meaningless
theminorthirds (9:57:36 PM): what satie quote?
theminorthirds (9:57:46 PM): is it?
theminorthirds (9:57:55 PM): is it about finding meaning or beauty?
AnthonySEaston (9:58:39 PM): for warhol the cosmetic is the meaningful
AnthonySEaston (9:59:22 PM): its cages aphormism about satie
AnthonySEaston (10:00:03 PM): f you find something boring for 2 mins, you should it for 4 mins. If you still find boring, you should do it for 8 mins, etc
theminorthirds (10:00:10 PM): oh. that's not about satie
theminorthirds (10:00:16 PM): that's cage quoting suzuki on zen.
theminorthirds (10:00:56 PM): but *boring* is not the opposite of *meaningful*, and i'm using "meaning" here as an intellectual "feeling of understanding", rather than as "important"
AnthonySEaston (10:01:15 PM): its also written in reaction to SAties Vexations, a performeance in nyc that acge and warhol both partipaied in
theminorthirds (10:01:34 PM): sure, but he was said it in a zillion other contexts.
theminorthirds (10:01:52 PM): but he also wouldn't say it became "meaningful"
theminorthirds (10:02:22 PM): cage seems to have been pretty much against "meaning" in music
AnthonySEaston (10:02:41 PM): how do we define meaning then
theminorthirds (10:02:56 PM): a coherent narrative, an "explanation"
AnthonySEaston (10:02:59 PM): because warhol didnt, that might be the big diffence b.w warhol and lichenstein at least
theminorthirds (10:03:13 PM): "what W. is doing in this piece is..."
theminorthirds (10:03:21 PM): "the colors are *angry*"
theminorthirds (10:03:37 PM): "R'berg is trying to do this or that to comment on this or that"
AnthonySEaston (10:04:06 PM): trying isnt succeding, and trying once isnt making a narrative for the long haul
AnthonySEaston (10:07:43 PM): its the mirror peice that really did me in
AnthonySEaston (10:08:11 PM): because it seemed to totally play with those assumptions, with the issues of narrative force, meaning, abstraction, formalism, self relfexisive historicism
AnthonySEaston (10:10:09 PM): http://collections.sfmoma.org/OBJ383.htm
AnthonySEaston (10:10:22 PM): its igger and smoother, and more white/less silver irl
theminorthirds (10:10:38 PM): ok, but so.
theminorthirds (10:10:49 PM): you're putting a narrative, a meaning, onto this piece.
theminorthirds (10:10:52 PM): why?
AnthonySEaston (10:11:22 PM): .its evading a narrative
theminorthirds (10:11:37 PM): "because it seemed to totally play with those assumptions, with the issues of narrative force, meaning, abstraction, formalism, self relfexisive historicism" is a narrative.
AnthonySEaston (10:11:44 PM): but he put the ben day dots there, and he used ben day dots before, right
AnthonySEaston (10:11:51 PM): and its a mirror that you cannot see into
AnthonySEaston (10:12:02 PM): and its only barely a mirror
AnthonySEaston (10:12:07 PM): i mean its w/i the text
theminorthirds (10:12:21 PM): ok, let me try this again.
theminorthirds (10:13:03 PM): why are you compelled, when you see a painting such as this, to ask questions like "what is this saying about narrative force? what is this saying about historicism?"?
AnthonySEaston (10:13:52 PM): im compelled about the historicism because it is in a room of other pop artists, it was done at the same time as work that riffs on monet, that it formally attaches to his other work
theminorthirds (10:14:31 PM): so you think that the work is inviting this
AnthonySEaston (10:15:12 PM): i think it is
theminorthirds (10:15:36 PM): well, it might be!
theminorthirds (10:15:56 PM): i mean, clearly this is
theminorthirds (10:16:30 PM): it's less clear if this is
theminorthirds (10:16:51 PM): and even less clear if this is
AnthonySEaston (10:20:11 PM): but that erased drawing is rberg trying to destroy historical mark making and failing
theminorthirds (10:20:34 PM): that's what i'm saying, it's clearly creating a "meaning" in that sense.
AnthonySEaston (10:21:09 PM): nodding
theminorthirds (10:21:53 PM): the middle work, less so, but it's still maybe of the historical moment, commenting on action painting?
theminorthirds (10:21:56 PM): but maybe not
theminorthirds (10:22:00 PM): because it isn't saying much if it is
AnthonySEaston (10:23:23 PM): it is about the crazy car culture
theminorthirds (10:23:33 PM): no it is not
theminorthirds (10:23:42 PM): i mean you can talk about it that way if you want, but no.
AnthonySEaston (10:23:44 PM): i meant is it
theminorthirds (10:24:03 PM): no, it's just a nice painting. or whatever. a nice visual.
theminorthirds (10:24:16 PM): i don't know if it's worth investing with more than that
theminorthirds (10:24:32 PM): the third one is the sort of thing that Shaw and the other guy are talking about
theminorthirds (10:24:42 PM): something that seems overloaded with meanings to disallow any coherent meaning
theminorthirds (10:24:57 PM): which Shaw sees as a sort of metameaning, or he constructs meaning out of it by going a level meta
theminorthirds (10:25:08 PM): which is a trick that critics have learned in order to stay in business, maybe?
AnthonySEaston (10:25:20 PM): but i am not sure that the late work is any good, though
AnthonySEaston (10:25:27 PM): which trick again
theminorthirds (10:25:52 PM): well if X doesn't provide meaning, then its refusal to provide meaning provides a meaning.
AnthonySEaston (10:26:19 PM): true that
its big, maybe 20 by 5 oriented vertically and the ground is silver, and then there are partial strips of repeating images, in black so its cinematic, in almost the least ifguritive way possible
it resembles themechanics of cinema, the silver celluoid, and the black films, and it came from cinema, most likely, so the transference loses all figuritive nature
it seems really brutal and so unsubtle
and i wonder, is that brutality a good thing
AnthonySEaston (9:53:39 PM): ts in the same room as one of rbergs combines, and an early 70s mirror by lichenstein, and rberg is totally brutal, slathering and obstructing the base coat of this painting, its a suprisingly gestural and violent work, and the mirror by lichenstein, was lovely, a shimmering, barely visbile fantasia of white space, blue lines and black ben day dots, decoratiev in the best way
AnthonySEaston (9:53:51 PM): so it was weird, like warhol was in the middle of these two approaches to pop, and he lost, i think
AnthonySEaston (9:54:00 PM): and im trying to figure out how he lost
SvnRgdTgr (9:54:58 PM): Aw hon, it's probably just about the commodification of the art of cinema, hon. And I don't think Warhol "lost" anything. I think he's so much a part of our consciousness that he could never be considered a "loser".
SvnRgdTgr (9:55:06 PM): Says the Warhol fangirl. ;-)
AnthonySEaston (9:56:15 PM): i like warhol too, but its obvious what its about
SvnRgdTgr (10:02:32 PM): Well, I think because it has something to say, it's a worthy piece. Also, I think it's good that we can tell what Warhol's message is. Too much art is about clever obfuscation to the point where very few people get what the art is even supposed to be, so it's good that even when Warhol was at his most abstract a good number of people knew what he was trying to convey.
AnthonySEaston (10:03:29 PM): i think that looking for consistent narratives is problematic thopugh
SvnRgdTgr (10:04:12 PM): Why?
AnthonySEaston (10:06:04 PM): i think that life isnt that way, and i think that formal questions often are lost looking for narratiev questions, and i tihnk that we assume too much one way or the other
SvnRgdTgr (10:08:56 PM): But, you know, why must we demand that art and entertainment provide for us an exact mirror of real life? Sure life provides us with tons of questions and mysteries, but you know what? That's a part of life's misery, and I don't think it's healthy to wallow in life's misery.
AnthonySEaston (10:09:37 PM): im not thinking any of the work was miserable
SvnRgdTgr (10:11:31 PM): It might be, to someone who's looking to understand it. And no, I don't believe all art must be photo-realistic, but look at how easy it is to understand everything Picasso did. You can even draw some probable conclusions about Mondrian's work.
AnthonySEaston (10:13:07 PM): http://www.artbrokerage.com/art/lichtenstein/_images/lichtenstein_1108_1.jpg
SvnRgdTgr (10:24:30 PM): I'll admit, it's aesthetically pleasing, but -- I don't really get anything out of it aside from a "that's nice". There's nothing visceral there.
AnthonySEaston (10:27:13 PM): i think thats why i like it , the lack of viscera
SvnRgdTgr (10:28:14 PM): Really?
AnthonySEaston (9:45:03 PM): im thinking about this painting he did of liz taylor in national velvet
AnthonySEaston (9:45:10 PM): that i saw at the sf moma
AnthonySEaston (9:45:18 PM): and its big, maybe 20 by 5
AnthonySEaston (9:45:22 PM): oriented vertically
AnthonySEaston (9:45:43 PM): and the ground is silver, and then there are partial strips of repeating images, in black
AnthonySEaston (9:46:08 PM): so its cinematic, in almost the least ifguritive way possible
AnthonySEaston (9:46:52 PM): it resembles themechanics of cinema, the silver celluoid, and the black films, and it came from cinema, most likely, so the transference loses all figuritive nature
AnthonySEaston (9:47:08 PM): it seems really brutal and so unsubtle
AnthonySEaston (9:47:18 PM): and i wonder, is that brutality a good thing
theminorthirds (9:47:43 PM): oh. i don't know.
theminorthirds (9:47:51 PM): for some.
AnthonySEaston (9:48:53 PM): its in the same room as one of rbergs combines, and an early 70s mirror by lichenstein, and rberg is totally brutal, slathering and obstructing the base coat of this painting, its a suprisingly gestural and violent work, and the mirror by lichenstein, was lovely, a shimmering, barely visbile fantasia of white space, blue lines and black ben day dots, decoratiev in the best way
AnthonySEaston (9:49:24 PM): so it was weird, like warhol was in the middle of these two approaches to pop, and he lost, i think
AnthonySEaston (9:49:32 PM): and im trying to figure out how he lost
AnthonySEaston (9:49:41 PM): why i am thinking of it in terms of losing
theminorthirds (9:49:43 PM): so i am reading this book by o'hara
theminorthirds (9:49:51 PM): not by
theminorthirds (9:49:52 PM): about
theminorthirds (9:49:55 PM): the lytle shaw book
theminorthirds (9:49:57 PM): which is very good
AnthonySEaston (9:50:03 PM): the poetics of coterie (which i mean to pick up)
theminorthirds (9:50:06 PM): oui
theminorthirds (9:50:11 PM): yeah get it from the library
theminorthirds (9:50:13 PM): it's good
AnthonySEaston (9:50:16 PM): dont buy it?
theminorthirds (9:50:20 PM): well, or buy it
theminorthirds (9:50:22 PM): it's still in HC
AnthonySEaston (9:50:41 PM): how much was it
theminorthirds (9:50:50 PM): i dunno, i got it from the library. like $40?
theminorthirds (9:50:55 PM): so but
theminorthirds (9:51:03 PM): so the last few chapters are more about art criticism
theminorthirds (9:51:13 PM): and this one part, which i was mostly skimming
theminorthirds (9:51:20 PM): he's talking about r'berg
AnthonySEaston (9:51:28 PM): hmm mm
theminorthirds (9:51:37 PM): and how this early critic (greenberg?) found some collage poem to "avoid" meaning
AnthonySEaston (9:51:55 PM): explain more about collaege poem
theminorthirds (9:51:55 PM): but shaw sees this avoidance of meaning as creating meaning, he goes meta.
theminorthirds (9:51:59 PM): sigh.
theminorthirds (9:52:00 PM): not poem
theminorthirds (9:52:05 PM): collage painting. of r'berg's
theminorthirds (9:52:08 PM): my language is all tire.d
AnthonySEaston (9:52:11 PM): a combine?
theminorthirds (9:52:28 PM): well something. it had images and paint.
theminorthirds (9:52:51 PM): anyhoo
theminorthirds (9:52:56 PM): so i got to thinking
theminorthirds (9:53:06 PM): that perhaps the critic's job is the find meaning in art?
theminorthirds (9:53:16 PM): or perhaps that is what the critic thinks their job is?
theminorthirds (9:53:26 PM): or perhaps that is what we do when we act as a critic?
theminorthirds (9:54:02 PM): and yet if an artist is trying to avoid meaning, as both the older critic and, to a lesser extent, shaw agree
theminorthirds (9:54:11 PM): perhaps it is best just to let them avoid it
theminorthirds (9:54:12 PM): ?
theminorthirds (9:54:29 PM): perhaps we are addicted to meaning.
theminorthirds (9:54:34 PM): perhaps we feel *entitled*
theminorthirds (9:54:36 PM): to it
theminorthirds (9:55:02 PM): and perhaps we don't need it.
AnthonySEaston (9:55:03 PM): warhol isnt avoiding meaning, by any stretch of the immigantion, and i mean lichenstein is, except formal elements are meanings, the colour, line, arangement, and the like
theminorthirds (9:55:05 PM): all the time.
AnthonySEaston (9:55:11 PM): but i feel that way about r'berg and johns
theminorthirds (9:55:34 PM): surely warhol is *sometimes* avoiding meaning
AnthonySEaston (9:55:47 PM): the absensce, the erasure, the lacunae, the absences are a way of tryign to escape the texts we use the words we use to talk about these things
AnthonySEaston (9:55:56 PM): v. rarely, he has that aspie questioning thing
theminorthirds (9:56:04 PM): surely empire.
theminorthirds (9:56:32 PM): it seems like warhol is less interested in meaning and more interested in staring?
theminorthirds (9:56:40 PM): and he likes staring at clebs
AnthonySEaston (9:56:47 PM): empire is totally about meaning, its that satie qoute made v. v. literal, its the translation of that satie qoute
AnthonySEaston (9:57:02 PM): and the staring is all about finding meaning in things that the culture considers meaningless
theminorthirds (9:57:36 PM): what satie quote?
theminorthirds (9:57:46 PM): is it?
theminorthirds (9:57:55 PM): is it about finding meaning or beauty?
AnthonySEaston (9:58:39 PM): for warhol the cosmetic is the meaningful
AnthonySEaston (9:59:22 PM): its cages aphormism about satie
AnthonySEaston (10:00:03 PM): f you find something boring for 2 mins, you should it for 4 mins. If you still find boring, you should do it for 8 mins, etc
theminorthirds (10:00:10 PM): oh. that's not about satie
theminorthirds (10:00:16 PM): that's cage quoting suzuki on zen.
theminorthirds (10:00:56 PM): but *boring* is not the opposite of *meaningful*, and i'm using "meaning" here as an intellectual "feeling of understanding", rather than as "important"
AnthonySEaston (10:01:15 PM): its also written in reaction to SAties Vexations, a performeance in nyc that acge and warhol both partipaied in
theminorthirds (10:01:34 PM): sure, but he was said it in a zillion other contexts.
theminorthirds (10:01:52 PM): but he also wouldn't say it became "meaningful"
theminorthirds (10:02:22 PM): cage seems to have been pretty much against "meaning" in music
AnthonySEaston (10:02:41 PM): how do we define meaning then
theminorthirds (10:02:56 PM): a coherent narrative, an "explanation"
AnthonySEaston (10:02:59 PM): because warhol didnt, that might be the big diffence b.w warhol and lichenstein at least
theminorthirds (10:03:13 PM): "what W. is doing in this piece is..."
theminorthirds (10:03:21 PM): "the colors are *angry*"
theminorthirds (10:03:37 PM): "R'berg is trying to do this or that to comment on this or that"
AnthonySEaston (10:04:06 PM): trying isnt succeding, and trying once isnt making a narrative for the long haul
AnthonySEaston (10:07:43 PM): its the mirror peice that really did me in
AnthonySEaston (10:08:11 PM): because it seemed to totally play with those assumptions, with the issues of narrative force, meaning, abstraction, formalism, self relfexisive historicism
AnthonySEaston (10:10:09 PM): http://collections.sfmoma.org/OBJ383.htm
AnthonySEaston (10:10:22 PM): its igger and smoother, and more white/less silver irl
theminorthirds (10:10:38 PM): ok, but so.
theminorthirds (10:10:49 PM): you're putting a narrative, a meaning, onto this piece.
theminorthirds (10:10:52 PM): why?
AnthonySEaston (10:11:22 PM): .its evading a narrative
theminorthirds (10:11:37 PM): "because it seemed to totally play with those assumptions, with the issues of narrative force, meaning, abstraction, formalism, self relfexisive historicism" is a narrative.
AnthonySEaston (10:11:44 PM): but he put the ben day dots there, and he used ben day dots before, right
AnthonySEaston (10:11:51 PM): and its a mirror that you cannot see into
AnthonySEaston (10:12:02 PM): and its only barely a mirror
AnthonySEaston (10:12:07 PM): i mean its w/i the text
theminorthirds (10:12:21 PM): ok, let me try this again.
theminorthirds (10:13:03 PM): why are you compelled, when you see a painting such as this, to ask questions like "what is this saying about narrative force? what is this saying about historicism?"?
AnthonySEaston (10:13:52 PM): im compelled about the historicism because it is in a room of other pop artists, it was done at the same time as work that riffs on monet, that it formally attaches to his other work
theminorthirds (10:14:31 PM): so you think that the work is inviting this
AnthonySEaston (10:15:12 PM): i think it is
theminorthirds (10:15:36 PM): well, it might be!
theminorthirds (10:15:56 PM): i mean, clearly this is
theminorthirds (10:16:30 PM): it's less clear if this is
theminorthirds (10:16:51 PM): and even less clear if this is
AnthonySEaston (10:20:11 PM): but that erased drawing is rberg trying to destroy historical mark making and failing
theminorthirds (10:20:34 PM): that's what i'm saying, it's clearly creating a "meaning" in that sense.
AnthonySEaston (10:21:09 PM): nodding
theminorthirds (10:21:53 PM): the middle work, less so, but it's still maybe of the historical moment, commenting on action painting?
theminorthirds (10:21:56 PM): but maybe not
theminorthirds (10:22:00 PM): because it isn't saying much if it is
AnthonySEaston (10:23:23 PM): it is about the crazy car culture
theminorthirds (10:23:33 PM): no it is not
theminorthirds (10:23:42 PM): i mean you can talk about it that way if you want, but no.
AnthonySEaston (10:23:44 PM): i meant is it
theminorthirds (10:24:03 PM): no, it's just a nice painting. or whatever. a nice visual.
theminorthirds (10:24:16 PM): i don't know if it's worth investing with more than that
theminorthirds (10:24:32 PM): the third one is the sort of thing that Shaw and the other guy are talking about
theminorthirds (10:24:42 PM): something that seems overloaded with meanings to disallow any coherent meaning
theminorthirds (10:24:57 PM): which Shaw sees as a sort of metameaning, or he constructs meaning out of it by going a level meta
theminorthirds (10:25:08 PM): which is a trick that critics have learned in order to stay in business, maybe?
AnthonySEaston (10:25:20 PM): but i am not sure that the late work is any good, though
AnthonySEaston (10:25:27 PM): which trick again
theminorthirds (10:25:52 PM): well if X doesn't provide meaning, then its refusal to provide meaning provides a meaning.
AnthonySEaston (10:26:19 PM): true that
its big, maybe 20 by 5 oriented vertically and the ground is silver, and then there are partial strips of repeating images, in black so its cinematic, in almost the least ifguritive way possible
it resembles themechanics of cinema, the silver celluoid, and the black films, and it came from cinema, most likely, so the transference loses all figuritive nature
it seems really brutal and so unsubtle
and i wonder, is that brutality a good thing
AnthonySEaston (9:53:39 PM): ts in the same room as one of rbergs combines, and an early 70s mirror by lichenstein, and rberg is totally brutal, slathering and obstructing the base coat of this painting, its a suprisingly gestural and violent work, and the mirror by lichenstein, was lovely, a shimmering, barely visbile fantasia of white space, blue lines and black ben day dots, decoratiev in the best way
AnthonySEaston (9:53:51 PM): so it was weird, like warhol was in the middle of these two approaches to pop, and he lost, i think
AnthonySEaston (9:54:00 PM): and im trying to figure out how he lost
SvnRgdTgr (9:54:58 PM): Aw hon, it's probably just about the commodification of the art of cinema, hon. And I don't think Warhol "lost" anything. I think he's so much a part of our consciousness that he could never be considered a "loser".
SvnRgdTgr (9:55:06 PM): Says the Warhol fangirl. ;-)
AnthonySEaston (9:56:15 PM): i like warhol too, but its obvious what its about
SvnRgdTgr (10:02:32 PM): Well, I think because it has something to say, it's a worthy piece. Also, I think it's good that we can tell what Warhol's message is. Too much art is about clever obfuscation to the point where very few people get what the art is even supposed to be, so it's good that even when Warhol was at his most abstract a good number of people knew what he was trying to convey.
AnthonySEaston (10:03:29 PM): i think that looking for consistent narratives is problematic thopugh
SvnRgdTgr (10:04:12 PM): Why?
AnthonySEaston (10:06:04 PM): i think that life isnt that way, and i think that formal questions often are lost looking for narratiev questions, and i tihnk that we assume too much one way or the other
SvnRgdTgr (10:08:56 PM): But, you know, why must we demand that art and entertainment provide for us an exact mirror of real life? Sure life provides us with tons of questions and mysteries, but you know what? That's a part of life's misery, and I don't think it's healthy to wallow in life's misery.
AnthonySEaston (10:09:37 PM): im not thinking any of the work was miserable
SvnRgdTgr (10:11:31 PM): It might be, to someone who's looking to understand it. And no, I don't believe all art must be photo-realistic, but look at how easy it is to understand everything Picasso did. You can even draw some probable conclusions about Mondrian's work.
AnthonySEaston (10:13:07 PM): http://www.artbrokerage.com/art/lichtenstein/_images/lichtenstein_1108_1.jpg
SvnRgdTgr (10:24:30 PM): I'll admit, it's aesthetically pleasing, but -- I don't really get anything out of it aside from a "that's nice". There's nothing visceral there.
AnthonySEaston (10:27:13 PM): i think thats why i like it , the lack of viscera
SvnRgdTgr (10:28:14 PM): Really?
Monday, March 24, 2008
results of a survey commisioned by nixon in 71, about public opinons re:my lai.
i am assuming the dolphin saved the beach whale to later eat it.
ny times sunday style peice about the furniture used in shrinks waiting rooms, with great photos and creepy anecdotes.
Nan Goldin, Tilda, for New York Times, 3/08. Its not a great photo, and i think its because (aside from the cliches) Nan has misapraised Tilda's Public Personae--Tilda isn't a tigress, shes a python, she slithers and consumes with coldness, so assuming the (slightly misogynsitic, hasnt been clever since mrs robinson) lady and tiger motif does her a disservice.
MCGreevy liked to have threesomes with a male staffer--with dinner at tgifridays before hand.
amusing aussie kotex ad
blog about garbage in nyc, with pix.
kevin rudd asks for 25 page questionaires to be filled out, with potentially blackmailable material.
this story out of australia is fodder for the thesis that any religious counsellign should be heavily monitored.
guess who sponsored the online footage of obama's big speech on race.
kate hutchinson's photos of her fiancee, titled Why I am Marrying Him, are touching, erotic, amusing and intimate in a way that doesent seem voyueristic .
interesting discussion of Broad Channel, Queens.
the death of c protestors in tibet, means two things
1) china is really bad at information control, and by extension, those who are better at it, will win
2) the utiopa of the olympic movement is well and truly dead.
18th Century illustration, Comparative Anotomy, Dutch.
i am assuming the dolphin saved the beach whale to later eat it.
ny times sunday style peice about the furniture used in shrinks waiting rooms, with great photos and creepy anecdotes.
Nan Goldin, Tilda, for New York Times, 3/08. Its not a great photo, and i think its because (aside from the cliches) Nan has misapraised Tilda's Public Personae--Tilda isn't a tigress, shes a python, she slithers and consumes with coldness, so assuming the (slightly misogynsitic, hasnt been clever since mrs robinson) lady and tiger motif does her a disservice.
MCGreevy liked to have threesomes with a male staffer--with dinner at tgifridays before hand.
amusing aussie kotex ad
blog about garbage in nyc, with pix.
kevin rudd asks for 25 page questionaires to be filled out, with potentially blackmailable material.
this story out of australia is fodder for the thesis that any religious counsellign should be heavily monitored.
guess who sponsored the online footage of obama's big speech on race.
kate hutchinson's photos of her fiancee, titled Why I am Marrying Him, are touching, erotic, amusing and intimate in a way that doesent seem voyueristic .
interesting discussion of Broad Channel, Queens.
the death of c protestors in tibet, means two things
1) china is really bad at information control, and by extension, those who are better at it, will win
2) the utiopa of the olympic movement is well and truly dead.
18th Century illustration, Comparative Anotomy, Dutch.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
notes on works of art i saw today
at the deyoung:
at the deyoung:
- ashuntz's iron mongers noon hour, is a painting that i have always loved, because it was homosocial, homoerotic, and the only work of his of note. only seeing it in reproduction, i was shocked how small it was (less then 2 feet by a foot and a half.)
- Charles Demuth's From the Gardens of the Chateua has an american prescision and a french sense of colour, provence yellows abound
- one of the peaceable kingdoms, they are more sophistacatred in terms of placement, and visual information, then is credited
- Albert Beirstadt was a kitsch laden racist scumbag
- Ramos' Superman, v. early, determines the lines of supermans chest by dragging his finger thru the blue, and making v. crude suggestions, it prints better then it looks.
- Arthur Dove's Sea Gull Motive is so strong, lovely billowing clouds of black and grey, the colour of water in ice or steam, abstract, but just barely.
- this photo realist huge size thing, is absurd, with Richters STronium, a 130 part mural, being almost 200 feet sqaure.
- the thing that is impressing me by Ruscah (and i have seen maybe 8 works today, is how great a formal painter he is.
- Church is like the demille of the 19th century, but instead of bodies, its landscape porn, overwhelming and battering, but sort of respectful
- I am really glad i met Danielle, because walking thru a room of Harnett, REmbrandt Peele, and thje like , i leaned heavily, and enjoyed line, colour, form w/o thinking about politics--that apperciation of hyper realism is not something i would have figured out without her
- Motherwell's Blacks are much better then Klines
- West Coast and Female Abstractionists, i am liking much better then East Coast and Male--esp Deibenkorn and Mitchell.
- saw the gilbert and george show, i dont like them, and have not figured out why, though a set of postcard multiple collages of royalist and anglo kitsch, done in 1981, and placed in the room b/w the main exhibition spaces and the gift shop, and not part of the catalog, were fascinting. (esp a modifed st andrews cross made of chuck and diana post cards)
other thots:
- jane caitlin set of drawings, some charcoal on grey linen, some mixed media on mylar--she cannot handle her colours, but the grey on grey monochrome, have an updated american translation of classical chinese themes.
- saw a great collection of prints, drawings, work studies, fabric peices, and epherema in the glbtq archives by chuck arnett--work i had encountered in books by waugh, but the sheer breadth, width, and kinky eroticism of this work was impressive, esp an autofellatio peice from the mid 80s
- Mary Blair show at the Cartoom Art Musuem, had some original production stills from Cinderella, and the Its a Small World ride, i am sort of in love with that kitschy socal vibe, aa bunch of other things, my favourite being a still from gertie the dinaour by mckay, that was a masterpeice of minimal line work.
- Hiroyo Kaneko photos, mostly not v. interesting, west coast leaves and trees wotrk, in b./w but a great one of a station wagon that s like bechtle before the engrandizing.
- 6 Candid Hoffer photos, gorgeous and drunk with a rococo attitude towards material, slick, big, seductive, but i am left wondering if that is enough?
- a purple black and white installation of natural and pseduo natural work (including vitrines, handmade geos, jars, bottles, etc) by ian mcdonald, glittery, and meta --rachel would love this.
- same gallery saw four uta barths, with different filters, a little too dentist officey for me
- the staff at marx and zavattero were assholes, but their collection of isenity based work made in strange materials was revelatory, including a show of fabrqiued bears (ie fags not ursines) and a map of oceania made of spam by a phillipino artist
- mostly wall text show of chinese culture at the california history musuem, but califonria had a head tax about the same time as vancouver did, for the same reasons. would like to know more about the radical history of chinese second generation people, as it was touched on breifly but not expanded.
- dozens of galleries on gerard showing chagall, miro, picasso textiles, warhol posters from the 80s, bad landscapes, shit all around
SF MOMA:
- Jim Guntam photo called pop advertising, from 1939, first use of that term offically?
- David Hanson'a ariel photos of disaster sites are almost too pretty
- an entire room of stills, better perseved then other work of that peroid, incoudlking one from 1951, that is black and white, on unprimed canvas, so that the less pure white of the backing, left blank, leaves a transition space, nice trick
- none of the peices had that cosmic blue we expect from Still.
- A gorgeous, scrabbley Guston from 1951, and an even better one, just at the cusp of his breaking from abstraction
- a Rberg Combine, made me realise how violent and oppopsitonal some of those combines were to the whole idea of image making
- A Mid 50s Debenkorn, before the post grid stuff, with a orange jucice coloured splotch in the middle, that might be one of the more joyful uses of colour i have seen.
- A Cornell Box of Dove Cotes, lit up, with that colbalt blue you see in the glass wear, and also in the medici boxes
- Milton Avery's Clear Cut from 1951, with a greyblue bottom falf
- one of Dekoonings Women, from the mid 50s, you could see the hidden influence of Dedini in the pinks, and the full circles to rperesent huge tits.
- A blue on Black ulta nimial renhardt
- an oddly disappointing WArhol Self Portrait, and his oversized national velvet, celluioid in its use of black on silver, its veritical narrative compostiion, and iuts repeating only some objects, a masterpeice, but i was a bit underwehled
- a fantastic bechtle southern calfionria landscape, with that corragted yellow fiberglass and a redwood fance.
- Lichenteins Mirror 2, i think that Lichenstein is under rated as a painter, and the and this t triptch of benday dots and blue lines, huge at 10x5 feet, plays meta games with not only painting history, but pop itself, self portriture, his history, and the like--epic but in a good way.
- a great polished aliminum and navy blue judd stack
- a murandi that was glossy with linseed oil, i always thot his work was dun, basic, and almost badly pinated, but this had an understated, ultra rich glamour, like cashmere
- a huge chunk of western photgos, one of my favourite adams (the two crossed palm trees from LA), two baltz from park city, a Sternfieldf disaster photo, and others)
- a couple of fairly medicore Atgets
- and Olfur Arnesons sky bridge, which was a bridge, 100 feet up, made of whit esteel, and pink, yellow, and purple arclyic glass,. high spectacle.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
crown point press was one of the best gallery expereinces, like evah, aside from having a large collection of prints from artists i love (Appleby, Balderssai, Bechtle, Diebenkorn, Katz. {faff. Ruscha, SCully, Thiebaud, Tuttle), the woman who ran it, took each print out ,explained to me the process carefully, and answered my questions, over 30 or so works.
also saw the musem of the african disapora show on digital africa, catherine clarke (walter robinsons pop pervision and obsession with surface tension are totally rachel's) and a few other things.
fairly disapointed by my presentation, the conference isnt a good fit, and few people showed up, but my co-presenters were the best kind of collegial.
i am going to treat this as a vacation and the conference as a kind of bonus.
also saw the musem of the african disapora show on digital africa, catherine clarke (walter robinsons pop pervision and obsession with surface tension are totally rachel's) and a few other things.
fairly disapointed by my presentation, the conference isnt a good fit, and few people showed up, but my co-presenters were the best kind of collegial.
i am going to treat this as a vacation and the conference as a kind of bonus.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
poetry 22:
gaspereu presses anthology, at 10 years. 24 poets, mostly what silliman dismisses as the school of quietede, with some post modern confessional to add texture. some famous canadians, like tim bowling and george eliot clarke...the thing with school of queitude is that it often does not mean anything, a light touch, a nice observation, and they leave--the problem with confessional, is that it is too heavy, too personal, anecdote supersedes poetics. there are exceptions, the excerpts from jan zwicky's small songs are humble, small things--like wrens or sparrows, not a word out of place, but also not concerned with being too poetic, here is here small song:prarie:
Wood light, meadow light,
the fencepost silver
in the afternoon's long stare;
beast light, the satin flash
of horserump or the brown hand
in the sasktoons;
cloud light and williow light,
the dead light of teh salt marsh
and the hammered brilliance
of the dug out under wind;
even the rain in the night singing,
the night in its forgetting,
is a kind of light.
its pure imagist, but the literature of t he praries is filled with long absences and epic spaces, w/o getting quantum about it, zwicky recgonizes the nessecity of tight enjabments and minute details--that poem there, in its zigzag of memory and tactile sense, is as good as wcw. Harry Thurston tries something similar and gets a poem called river otters at play, where the river otters are about love man--its high concept rod mckuen, and it makes you feel bad for the otters, John Terstrap talks about the church he goes to now, in the masterful, anecdotal, and theologically ambigious/ambitious brendon luck poems; George Eliot Clarke stumbles in bringing performance poetry to nova scotia, his obv. literal qouatlites getting in the way of hsi desire to be just folx, and peter sever makes the textual intertwinings of nature adn humanity, techonology and craft seem invisible...
it was worth reading, i think but just barely, and it makes me want to go seek out more zwicky
gaspereu presses anthology, at 10 years. 24 poets, mostly what silliman dismisses as the school of quietede, with some post modern confessional to add texture. some famous canadians, like tim bowling and george eliot clarke...the thing with school of queitude is that it often does not mean anything, a light touch, a nice observation, and they leave--the problem with confessional, is that it is too heavy, too personal, anecdote supersedes poetics. there are exceptions, the excerpts from jan zwicky's small songs are humble, small things--like wrens or sparrows, not a word out of place, but also not concerned with being too poetic, here is here small song:prarie:
Wood light, meadow light,
the fencepost silver
in the afternoon's long stare;
beast light, the satin flash
of horserump or the brown hand
in the sasktoons;
cloud light and williow light,
the dead light of teh salt marsh
and the hammered brilliance
of the dug out under wind;
even the rain in the night singing,
the night in its forgetting,
is a kind of light.
its pure imagist, but the literature of t he praries is filled with long absences and epic spaces, w/o getting quantum about it, zwicky recgonizes the nessecity of tight enjabments and minute details--that poem there, in its zigzag of memory and tactile sense, is as good as wcw. Harry Thurston tries something similar and gets a poem called river otters at play, where the river otters are about love man--its high concept rod mckuen, and it makes you feel bad for the otters, John Terstrap talks about the church he goes to now, in the masterful, anecdotal, and theologically ambigious/ambitious brendon luck poems; George Eliot Clarke stumbles in bringing performance poetry to nova scotia, his obv. literal qouatlites getting in the way of hsi desire to be just folx, and peter sever makes the textual intertwinings of nature adn humanity, techonology and craft seem invisible...
it was worth reading, i think but just barely, and it makes me want to go seek out more zwicky
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