Here's my question—if I were to delete the "TrackBack (0)" feature (see it there, below the post?) from my index template, would that prevent spambots from flooding me with spam? You'll notice, if you're in the comments screen (i.e., the individual entry archives), that TrackBacks can still be seen from that screen and that the TB link appears there. So would my help or no? Frankly, I'm inclined to delete the feature altogether.
Incidentally, one bot that spams me constantly gives an address that ends in blogspot.com. Like a-b.blogspot.com, c-d.blogspot.com. So is this the work of a prankster or Blogger's competition?
To add to others' advice for visiting the Met—go when it opens, naturally—let me recommend another rule: Leave Lee Siegel at home.
Slate gets in on the podcasting act by handing the mic to Siegel, promising that his podcast tour of the Met modern won't cramp your day:
Our aim, beginning with Lee Siegel's tour of the Met, is to create an experience that blends the irreverence and honesty of the DIY tours with the professionalism of the official versions. And ours is short—you should be able to make it through the Modern Art Gallery in a little over 20 minutes.I'm not sure whether it's Siegel's DIY ethic or the professionalism that brought us the undisputed art critical quote of the year, but regardless, I never pass up an opportunity to give it the old cut-n-paste:
You cannot fully understand Twombly's art unless you know that he is gay. It's often fatuous to reduce an artist to his or her sexuality, but Twombly is working in a tradition that associates homosexuality with an ideal human freedom.I was under the impression that this move was always fatuous. Regardless, whether you're looking for an iconoclastic or authoritative take on a museum, there are better stops out there than Slate.
A couple weeks back Artnet reported that conservative media outlets in New York were raising a ruckus over one panel from A Glimpse of What Life in a Free Country Could Be Like, a 14-foot-long illustration featuring thousands of words of dialogue. The panel in question featured a drawing of the iconic hooded prisoner from the Abu Ghraib photographs, but the real controversy was caused by the fact that the Drawing Center—the space in which Wilson's work was exhibited—seeks to move to facilities at Ground Zero in the new World Trade Center.
Not so much any more, it seems. What with Governor George Pataki reportedly threatening that "[w]e will not tolerate anything on the site that denigrates America, denigrates New York or freedom or denigrates the sacrifice and courage that the heroes showed on September 11," the Drawing Center is reconsidering whether it wants to relocate to the new facilities.
It goes without saying that freedom of speech from political suppression is one of America's most cherished values, and it's probably beside the point to note that a work celebrating freedom of speech from political suppression does not, in fact, denigrate America, New York, freedom, or anything else, except perhaps the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib.
I'm sympathetic to Wilson's complaint that Drawing Center chiefs aren't putting forth a robust defense of artistic freedom in light of these attacks, but the attacks themselves certainly come as no surprise. If the Drawing Center's board does decide to go through with the move to Ground Zero facilities, they had better build a bunker—anthing more controversial than a Crystal Bridges gift shop will be subject to constant shelling from those who neither understand art nor freedom. Lots of foot traffic, yes, but hardly worth the stress the artists or programming directors will surely endure if the Drawing Center isn't willing to go to the mat over the work it exhibits.
Howard Kurtz notes the bizarre blogmospheric activity that occurred after President Bush nominated that guy from Seventh Heaven to the Supreme Court:
The lightning-quick attacks came after 50 top liberal bloggers held a 45-minute conference call Tuesday night. . . . The conference call was arranged by BlogPAC, a political action committee that got some of its members on the phone with Sen. Ted Kennedy on the day that Sandra Day O'Connor announced she was leaving the court. The group has also held calls with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and the liberal organizations involved in the nomination battle, including MoveOn, Alliance for Justice, NARAL and People for the American Way.No kidding, conference calls? I'm sure that my roommate qualifies as one of the top 50 liberal bloggers and I don't seem to recall him muttering passwords into the phone that night. And shouldn't it be an A/V conference conducted via AIM or holograms or the Matrix?
Anyway, can we please swarm about/at something? Is there outrage to be mustered over this? The Getty, Boston MFA? The people must be made to feel the displeasure of the art blogging community.
RELATED: Todd Gibson notes the much-discussed, extraordinarily convenient timing of the SCOTUS nod in light of recent revelations in l'affaire Plame. (At the other blog I likened the intervention to el Matador staging a bullfight so that the rodeo clown can escape.) And clever bastard that he is, Gibson applies the Bush touch to the art world to distract us from the summer doldrums.
There's a somewhat stiff Arts and Letters booth at TPM Cafe, but good luck finding it—there's no link to it (or any other categories, as far as I can tell) anywhere on the home page, which, in turn, is exactly where you end up if you enter artsandletters.tpmcafe.com. But by the power of RSS I came upon Brad DeLong's thoughts about Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent. The book would appear to be a tour of the vast ruins wrought by Theory, that notorious match with which Derrida (or Foucault or Fish or Fried), playing Nero, burned down the academy.
Of the book DeLong says:
There is a certain bloodlessness here: the dry bones hop about and clatter, but there is too little flesh on them: much too little is said about how High Theory changed—for good and for ill—how we read books.From browsing the series of entries in the book symposium on Theory's Empire hosted by The Valve (a great literary blog, if you're not reading it), I get the impression that a similar consensus emerged there as well. Sean McCann writes, "[t]he problem (to the extent we agree there is one) is not any ideas particular to Theory, in other words, but the academic celebrity system, the tenure review process, and/or the guild process of professional training." Jeffrey Wallen (a contributor to Theory's Empire) writes that one item of consensus among his colleagues is that "that theory died, or rather was asphyxiated, some time shortly after the death of Paul de Man. The sorts of concerns and practices that seemed to be at the center of literary criticism in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s were now largely viewed as obsolete and tainted."
So that should serve as some comfort if you are, like me, skeptical whenever a book emerges that has set in its crosshairs all of Theory. I don't mean by my suspicion that I can't appreciate or tolerate a minority report; but if Roger Kimball's Rape of the Masters or Hilton Kramer's work can be taken as representative of popular notions of discontent, attacks on Theory's contemporary are usually chased with a rejection of all the political or linguistic critical accomplishments of the twentieth century, in favor of a return to a sequestered version of New Criticism.
Daniel Green, responding to an essay in TE contributed by New Critic Rene Wellek, expands on this hostility:
As the author of Theory of Literature (long considered the primary theoretical pillar supporting the New Criticism), Rene Wellek surely exemplifies the imperative to separate theory from Theory that John Holbo has been discussing. Wellek cleary believed in the efficacy of theory—which he defines as “concerned with the principles, categories, functions, and criteria of literature in general"—but as early as 1982 he feared that literary theory was undermining the very assumptions on which literary study had been based. Were his fears (at least about the kind of theory then being promulgated) well-founded? I think not.A restatement of the fundamental disagreement about the relative centrality of the object and the reader that didn't involve casting aspersions on the situation of the academy sounds like good hunting for a traditionalist out to slay some dragons. Perhaps that's not to be found in this volume, according to DeLong et al. It sounds to me like an extraordinary introduction to some writers with whom I'm not familiar, so I'll add it to the wishlist. At the very least, I know what I'm getting James for Christmas.His essay,"Destroying Literary Studies,” reprinted in Theory’s Empire, contends that Theory (primarily deconstruction and reader-response theory, but also extending as far back as Northrop Frye) was threatening “the whole edifice of literary study” in an “attempt to destroy literary studies from the inside.” In retrospect, this seems an absurd charge to have leveled against the likes of Derrida, Frye, Stanley Fish, and (!) Harold Bloom, and seems to vindicate the counter-charge that New Criticism was an especially narrow and insular movement. If even Frye and Bloom couldn’t be countenanced as serious-minded rivals, wasn’t it New Criticism that was doomed to destroy itself “from the inside”?
[. . .]
The “theories” of both Derrida and Fish could have co-existed comfortably with New Critical formalism if everyone concerned had not regarded the differences between them as so considerable that they justified critical and curricular warfare. Judging from Rene Wellek’s essay (and many of the others included in Theory’s Empire), the New Critics and other traditionalists were just as responsible for initiating hostilities as the Theorists who ultimately defeated them.
Also note that, according to Amazon, "readers who viewed this book also viewed Saved by the Bell: Seasons 1 & 2 by Elizabeth Berkley"—do with that information what you will.
I got to thinking back to old art class critiques and wondered whether the Internets hadn't yet devised a more efficient solution to replace the meandering, formless, tribal-political negotiations that serve as artistic benchmarks for students. Guess what, class? The Internets do not disappoint!
So that's that. I think we can all pack up shop.
Last month I caught a student show just before it closed at the McLean Project for the Arts featuring selected works by students from Virginia Community College (the Alexandria Campus of Northern Virginia) and George Mason University who had studied under Rebecca Kamen, who had a solo show herself in an adjacent space. (The NVCC student contributions can be seen here.) The student show seemed forced; a common association with one person (even a teacher) didn't strike me as a very good reason to bring works together that represented varying levels of artistic scope and confidence. If that sounds like I'm tiptoeing around calling some of the work bad, well, there is that. But all the works could have been better served by a show or several shows that paid some mind to the works in question.
Nevertheless, I want to post notes about three artists who caught my eye:
CORRECTION: "The student show at McLean was actually a joint venture by Rebecca Kamen and Peggy Feerick. All the students from George Mason Studied under Feerick, including McCarty and Soles. Feericks work was also featured in a separate gallery from Kamen's." Thanks for the note goes to Juliane, who, apparently, was the model in Soles's works.
Of the characters in Rowling's universe I sympathize most with Severus Snape because, primarily, I absolutely despised Harry Potter and his phenomenon when it first manifested several years ago. I railed against the books and the final throes of (high) reading culture that they signaled, swore off friendships, persecuted enemies and loved ones in equal stride. It was solely in an intelligence-gathering effort that I read The Sorcerer's Stone . . . though less so with Chamber, Azkaban, Goblet, and Order, and arguably lesser still when I reread the set. Not that I've abandoned my mission—to eliminate fun, wherever it is being had!—just that I'm going about it by a circuitous route.
So, anyhow, I'm not done with Half-Blood Prince yet, having unwisely blown precious hours of the weekend seeing a few shows, eating meals, etc., and now I'm forced to suffer the ignominy of toting this tome on the Metro—which is all part of my grand, inscrutable scheme, naturally, but is maybe a bigger pill to swallow in the District than in some cities. I caught more than a few knowing glances this morning, both conspiratorial and contemptuous, which came at no surprise after having thrown them myself for a couple years. Not in my seat, with that Washington Times! You're not really reading Sammy's Hill on the way to your internship, are you? I fell into two conversations with total strangers about American foreign policy while reading Imperial Hubris; now I'm praying that no one asks me about Blast-Ended Skrewts.
Mostly because I know about Blast-Ended Skrewts, and we all know, who read these books, whether we do so as silly, childish fanboys or for justifiable reasons that do not compromise our elitist sensibilities. It's one thing for a book to really capture public attention, like, say, Into Thin Air; and another for a stream of books to attain a great deal of public confidence, like, say, the Oprah's Book Club label; but the Harry Potter series is the perfect storm of both phenomena. Did you catch those numbers that Kevin Drum posted? It's often noted that this is a unique moment, but, 10 million copies marks that as something of an understatement. Ten million copies, most of which read over the course of 24 hours? That's absurd.
There's an epiphenomenon at the root of the books' success, I suppose: The books are fun and easy to read and lots of people read them, then many many more read them specifically because they are so widely read that they become as much part social artifact as episodic adventure. But that's not what I really had to say about Half-Blood Prince. Short review (100-odd pages from the finish line): Suffers from the imperial hubris that we saw in Order; it's too long, and an editor with some say-so could make these books shorter, quicker, and tenser. I half wonder whether Rowling isn't bulking up these books (i.e., failing to trim them) in order to pacify a perceived public notion that more means better. Related anecdote: While I was sitting through a disastrous layover last Wednesday at DFW airport, I saw a UPS-type deliver a large, Potter-decorated box to the terminal bookstore. I cased the scene and cornered the clerk when the shop was empty. He told me that it took at least two signatures to open the case, then explained that there was no price at which a copy could be made available that was worth his job, and then (somewhat loudly) suggested that I might try checking with another bookstore, or flying somewhere. The hope is that my plan to finish the book in the office without arousing too much suspicion will be more fruitful. Really, though, just a casual observer here.
. . . but also sick, unf, with a throat ailment that makes Tom Waits sound like Betty Boop. I got a fair bit of writing done while I was gone, which I'll clean up and post while I'm under quarantine this weekend.
While I have this thing open, many thanks to those of you who do your Amazon shopping through those spots on the left-hand sidebar. From the small take I pick up from each transaction, I inch ever closer to purchasing a Celestron Biological Microscope 4050. As the man once said, it will be mine.
You know, Borf got a raw deal. The exposé published by the Washington Post following Borf’s arrest and the compromise of his identity was misguided. It places a great deal of emphasis on John Tsombikos’s apparently facile political motivations, distracting details upon which his detractors quickly seized. But it wasn’t political edification that made Borf a phenomenon. Instead of questions about why Tsombikos went to all the trouble, I would’ve asked why the rest of us care: Is there any estimate to the number of Borf tags out there? Where’s the most unlikely place he hit? Does he have a favorite among the sites he’s tagged? What do other artists, graffiti or otherwise, say about his arrest? What about the man off the street? Are District officials able to estimate the amount of money spent cleaning or restoring spots that he tagged? Where's the nod to the Wooster Collective?
Instead the article condescends with “something called situationism” and then tries to make me cry with the back-story on the iconic Borf image. Whatever, I’m with Tom and Valerie—Borf was witty, prolific, and irreverent, and he'll be missed in the District, if this is the end. I don’t know if there’s anything in the Graffiti Tagger Guild codebook about retiring with honor upon arrest, but I can’t imagine that one stint in jail or even a revealed identity will keep him out of the game if he still wants to play. If he's gone, it’s nothing but Mara Salvatrucha tags and iPod DJ night–stories for the rest of us.
Over the next few days I'll be driving through various parts of the Lone Star State, so you won't see much of me around here—I'll be back next Thursday. For those of you who are reading from the District, there are a couple of should-not-miss events you should fit into your calendar:
Y'all keep the Internets warm while I'm away.
With the rumors mills abuzz with the pre-story that Chief Justice William Rehnquist will retire before lunch, the science of SCOTUS analysis has broadened to a full-bore multivariable calculus. Josh Marshall sees an advantage for Democrats: In short, insofar as the Democrats leveraged the staging of the nuclear filibuster battle for the SCOTUS, concurrent objectionable nominees is that much more evidence the court of public opinion that President Bush is trying to stack the Court with ideologues—should it come to that. The converse is that two distinct nomination battles are easier victories for the right than one nomination war.
Ezra Klein shows a different sort of guarded pessimism: Concurrent nominations will fall in such a way that Democrats can't win but won't lose too badly. Citing Loyola law prof Richard Hasen in The New Republic, Klein explains that President Bush owes socons too much to not nominate a socon Justice, which, under a single-nominee scenario, would set the stage for nuclear war in the Senate. Concurrent nominations, on the other hand, offer a better view of the complete Court—President Bush nominates a radically conservative Justice (thereby replacing Rehnquist) and a Gonzales-type moderate (thereby replacing SDO'C). The net Court transformation is minimal and Senate Democrats preserve the filibuster.
I'm thinking that with two seats up for the taking, the far right will become that much more insistent about nominating ideological candidates. Given concurrent nominations, I expect the center in the conversation to slide to the point that Gonzales becomes the unconscionable liberal activist's pick. Neither Klein nor Marshall mentions that upping the ante by a Justice will have the religious right revaluing its hand, too, but I don't think that will significantly affect the way the cards fall.
Now—it's been voiced elsewhere, so I'm not saying anything new—but I'm still unclear by what mechanism Gonzales became a lib-friendly nominee. Perhaps because he never ardently spurned precedent or penned comparisons between liberalism and slavery (the notorious examples of Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, respectively). But I do know that he drafted the torture memos, which not only served to excuse detainee abuse but also advocated the opinion that the Commander-in-Chief should circumnavigate rather than challenge inconvenient laws signed by . . . the Office of the President. Whether Gonzales is a loss for socons (and who knows?), he's a loss for jurisprudence.
(Crossposted at BTD.)
Spent an hour or so under the hood of G.p last night, and now the site doesn't work in IE. The comment form no longer has any fields for entering personal information (your name, e-mail, and so on). So . . . get Firefox? Because I can't figure out what's going on.
Next batter?
In a post about Richard Serra's new Bilbao installation, Franklin Einspruch links to a Guardian article in which popular critic Robert Hughes gives us his picks for the top three all-time American sculptors: Augustus Saint-Gaudens, David Smith, and Serra. All fine selections, but you may have noticed that Alexander Calder's name is not on that list. Not only that, but no matter how many times you re-read the article, Calder's name fails to appear at the top of or anywhere else on the list. It's almost as if Hughes doesn't think that Calder is at least America's greatest sculptor and more like the most important sculptor of the 20th century. But that would be so weird!
It certainly sounds as if the rooster is running the henhouse at American Apparel. CEO Dov Charney has been frank (even illustrative!) in interviews about his sexual relationships with his employee-slash-models—who are, in turn, the stars of another controversy regarding the company’s low-fi bedroom aesthetic.
So it’s reasonable that conscientious, crafty types like Jessica Gary and Valerie Soles are asking themselves whether they ought to continue patronizing AA, despite the company’s mostly progressive labor practices. (For some people the ramifications extend beyond the closet; a lot of independent designers buy their canvases wholesale from AA.) I may be oversimplifying the issue, but I don't see that Charney's behavior should prevent those who support AA's mission from buying the company's products. If, say, between now and Friday AA's marketshare were to increase one thousandfold, you'd have a ringing endorsement of AA's fair labor practices or its pared-down design or whatever—but not sexual harassment. No amount of market confirmation can change the fact that sexual harassment is illegal, and insofar as that's what's happening at AA (and women are willing to sue), then the correction is forthcoming.
I'm not oblivious to the creep factor—if the marketing vibe is a bit vintage Calvin Klein for your tastes, there's at least one alternative (which uses sex in an unremarkable way to push its nonremarkable clothing). What's incredible to me that Charney and AA chiefs are so oblivious to the fact that his behavior bothers the company's base. Even if there's nothing illegal about it, Charney's behavior wouldn't be tolerated by a board of shareholders for one minute. (Neither, of course, would a board stand for a seamstress making $13+ an hour.)
NB: I don't follow consumer politics very closely and only practice consumer politics in a superficial way—please, correct me where I'm wrong. I understand that NLRB has come down on AA over its resistance to an employee union, so my understanding of the company's priorities may be inaccurate.
. . . what, you don't get that? Frankly, neither do I, but Todd and Dan each sound as if he's ready to have it tattooed across his forehead.* The ASCII charm comes from polymath artist Miranda July's hott new film, Me and You and Everyone We Know. That's a link to July's ducky blog related to the film.
The press buzz for her major feature debut has me intrigued—check out the feature article in Res for one of many examples—so I think I'll make the trip up to E Street (once I get back from Dallas). If you see it, be sure to let me know what you think.
* I know I've made the storied trek from arthouse theater to tattoo parlor in my time.
Top ten plots of all time, according to Gail Armstrong:
1) Boy meets girl (boy; a goat like no other; all of the above)An unfortunate degree of overlap between numbers 5 and 8 does present an opportunity to draft another rule. I propose "Boy meets car." I also feel that the case could be made for "Boy meets Axe."
2) Boy meets money, boy loses money, etc.
3) Boy meets windmill
4) Boy meets whale
5) Boy meets gun (multiples thereof; may involve aliens)
6) Boy meets The System
7) Boy meets ancestors
8) Boy meets foreigners
9) Boy meets inner whiny self
10) Girl makes casual acquaintance with inner self, realizes she prefers to shop
I had some interesting items for the page today, but I need to make some time for much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
UPDATE: Jeralynn Merritt links to a list compiled by People for the American Way of significant cases in which Sandra Day O'Connor proved to be the swing vote:
Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) affirmed the right of state colleges and universities to use affirmative action in their admissions policies to increase educational opportunities for minorities and promote racial diversity on campus.Grutter and Stenberg are the cases that stick in conservative craws, and how long these will stand as precedent without SDO'C is difficult to say. Though it's a less inflammatory topic, our decades' long understanding of the Voting Rights Act is an area of the law that the Bush administration has signaled for significant reinterpretation, and I think the Morse (or Chishom) precedents would be ones this administration would seek to revise. (Also, women's rights.)Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation v. EPA (2004) said the Environmental Protection Agency could step in and take action to reduce air pollution under the Clean Air Act when a state conservation agency fails to act.
Rush Prudential HMO, Inc. v. Moran (2002) upheld state laws giving people the right to a second doctor’s opinion if their HMOs tried to deny them treatment.
Hunt v. Cromartie (2001) affirmed the right of state legislators to take race into account to secure minority voting rights in redistricting.
Tennessee v. Lane (2004) upheld the constitutionality of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and required that courtrooms be physically accessible to the disabled.
Hibbs v. Winn (2004) subjected discriminatory and unconstitutional state tax laws to review by the federal judiciary.
Zadvydas v. Davis (2001) told the government it could not indefinitely detain an immigrant who was under final order of removal even if no other country would accept that person.
Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (2001) affirmed that civil rights laws apply to associations regulating interscholastic sports.
Lee v. Weisman (1992) continued the tradition of government neutrality toward religion, finding that government-sponsored prayer is unacceptable at graduations and other public school events.
Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington (2003) maintained a key source of funding for legal assistance for the poor.
Morse v. Republican Party of Virginia (1996) said key anti-discrimination provisions of the Voting Rights Act apply to political conventions that choose party candidates.
Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (2001) upheld laws that limit political party expenditures that are coordinated with a candidate and seek to evade campaign contribution limits.
McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003) upheld most of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, including its ban on political parties’ use of unlimited soft money contributions.
Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) overturned a state ban on so-called partial birth abortion.
McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky (2005) upheld the principle of government neutrality towards religion and ruled unconstitutional Ten Commandments displays in several courthouses.
