Thought I would have time for more writing today, but I have a last-minute errand or two to run before I take a combo of planes, trains, and automobiles to get to Baltimore airport. Then some flying, a layover at the Tate Modern, some more flying, Istanbul, lather, rinse, repeat.
But!
If you e-mail your address to me, I'll send you a postcard. No joshin. If it's not too Internet-y weird for you to get a postcard from some guy who has demonstrated that he can use a modem, a 3" by 4" piece of Turkish printed cardstock could be yours. Meatosphere friends, too; I don't know where y'all live.
Why not post a few links while I avert mine eyes from the pile of (all my) clothing that's consuming my floor?
The Embassy of the Netherlands is way up in Woodley Park, nearly in Chevy Chase. The Embassy of Denmark, on the other hand, is just off Mass Ave on Embassy Row. Two distinct locations, two distinct Web sites, and who knew! two distinct countries!
One of them needs your solidarity and support right now: You can show the Danes that Americans don't kid about our commitment to free speech by gathering for a peaceful demonstration outside the Embassy of Denmark at noon tomorrow. If boycotts by Muslim importers are costing the Danes millions, I say it's high time we dig deep and buy that LEGO Imperial Star Destroyer. This is about ham and Havarti on Danish rye—I don't know what you call that, but it tastes like freedom. Wash it down with a Carlsberg, friends.
Speaking of a lunchtime beer or 12, the impresario for tomorrow's counterprotest is none other than Christopher Hitchens. Fail a breathalyzer with the Hitch before 1 p.m., get a free Rose of the Prophet Muhammed!
JL is rappin bout Istanbul, which reminds me: I'm going there! Tomorrow! (Holy shit, tomorrow!) I hope you won't fret over the absence of exciting housekeeping posts while I take a weeklong furlough from dot-policing.
I'm feeling like old Yves about my predeparture to-do list—lots of packing left and probably a little panicking, too. This is my first trip abroad since Moscow in 2003, but moreover, it's the first expedition I've taken that wasn't preceded by a college-level art history or language course. I think I've taken the right steps to educate myself, but only yesterday I discovered there is an entire class of regional mythological creature of which I was previously unaware: daevas! Let's Go: Pandaemonium is silent on this score.
Dearth of knowledge aside, I'm terribly excited. In great detail I just told the local deli cashier, who's never given me any real indication that he understands English, about my ongoing negotiations with Volkan the Hotelier, who frankly doesn't want my business if he thinks I'm paying tourist-season rates once the calendar flips to March 1. Anyway, I'm dusting off my Byzantine texts (heh) and will see some of Turkey's contemporary stuff, but I'm there to spend a week on the Bosphorus with my lady. See you back here in a week.
UPDATE: Of course! Can't forget to mention that I'm adding to my global funny hat collection. The top model I already own; the bottom will soon be mine.
The update went off nearly without a hitch, though for a nail-biting moment there I expected to lose all my archives. The old MT installation was so buggy that I couldn't import/export a complete entries backup file, so I spent a while copying out old posts mentioned in artists' CVs. But it worked! I haven't tricked out all the templates yet, so a few pages (the search results, for example) still look wonky.
Comments are up! Try them out! Lurker amnesty, whatever!
Also added a simple banner to the top of the page. I'm grateful for the designs a couple readers sent me in response to a post a week or two ago, and I'm keeping them in mind. For the moment, I like the clean look for spring. The hope is that it isn't making your monitors tilt or anything. Special thanks to David for all his Photoshop help over the weekend.
Scene: Holding elevator door for delivery man, who pushes a cart stacked with boxes advertising new computers, printers, and speakers.
[elevator door closes]
ME: So, all those for me?
MAN: Ten, please.
END SCENE
Just upgraded to Movable Type 3.2. Comments aren't working yet, but I'm still under the hood.
Think it's possible to make one before the other?
Yet another thing that's broken on this blog! Every once in a while you write something that you consider great, something that changes everything or sheds new light or brings new thoughts to bear, and you can't help but see that (0) and think, Well, fuck me.
At some point in the distant past I think I introduced a fatal CGI element that virtually disabled my MT Blacklist and completely disabled my ability to rebuild my archives; that's why, if you click on a permalink, archive, or category-based view of a post, you won't find the streamlined, recently updated blogroll that you currently see to your left.
No face, no comments, no posts! I'm upgrading to MT 3.2 in the hopes of alleviating, well, my wallet of the $30 I plan to pay a pro to do it right.
Not a Pye recipe from which Ben Wolfson would shy:
Pyes of mutton or beif must be fyne mynced and ceasoned wyth pepper and salte, and a lyttle saffron to coloure it, suet or marrow a good quantite, a lyttle vyneger, prumes, greate raysins and dates, take the fattest of the broathe of powdred beyfe, and yf you wyll have paest royall, take butter and yolkes of egges and so tempre the flowre to make the paeste.What else I have to say on cockery concerns l'affaire Finch, but I've spent the day learning about Hansen's disease, which is a little draining. Still cases every year in the USA! Please—friends, loved ones—try to avoid the leprosy. If for no other reason, it's sure to greatly annoy your Valentine.
The heart is the lonely hunted.
UPDATE: From Nedra Pickler (remember her?) in the AP:
President Bush's spokesman quipped Tuesday that the burnt orange school colors of the University of Texas championship football team that was visiting the White House shouldn't be confused for hunter's safety wear.I've been e-mailed this a few times today, and no! I'm not there, I couldn't get into the party that started an hour ago, I won't get to hang out with the 'Horns except in spirit. But that White House: a laugh a minute!"The orange that they're wearing is not because they're concerned that the vice president may be there," joked White House press secretary Scott McClellan, following the lead of late-night television comedians. "That's why I'm wearing it."
"Hidden Valley Ranch Bombed by Balsamic Extremists." Why won't they lettuce have peace?
From lobby to shining lobby, Vesna Pavlović draws an international axis of modernism between two twentieth-century economic engines: the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York and the Palace of Federation in New Belgrade. "Collection/Kolekcija"—Pavlović’s show in Fusebox’s primary space, and, lamentably, the gallery’s final exhibition—features large-scale prints of these office spaces, absent their occupants. The series might have been shot in the wake of a lucrative, globe-spanning conference call, so similar are the offices in their ambition (and design).
Of course, these photographs don’t bear testimony to the war of ideas that played out between these two centers—or the outcomes. The Palace of Federation has essentially become a mausoleum since the fall of Tito (and Yugoslavia), a time-slice preserved from a grander era. On the other hand, the fundamentals that earned the win for the lessees of Rockefeller’s building aren’t borne out by their workspace.
Vesna Pavlović [insert tombstone text]
Large and overstated, Pavlović’s photos play up the kitschy, even embarrassing sincerity of conviction of these spaces. She uses a coarse film grain to contradict spic-n-span reflectionive surfaces: linoleum floors, marble columns, brushed-chrome elevator doors and polished conference tables. In the Chase photos, the scale emphasizes what’s missing—art. Works from the venerated Chase Manhattan Collection are nowhere to be seen, as if they packed them up after that war effort was over. Of the two series, it’s the ostensible victors’ that appear to be hollow.
Ian Whitmore, The New Look, 2005.The New Look, for example, is about borders. The nominal subject of the painting is the Soyuz-Apollo Test Project, which was a test of a common space docking unit developed by the USA and USSR; the painting shows the two shuttles, joined in flagrante delicto like summer love bugs. It might well be a picture postcard, a metaphor for a handsome international border, but for one patch of brassy, Philip Guston–esque abstraction, emerging from the canvas where one would expect to see a shuttle panel depicted. Like creeping doubt, the abstract element destabilizes the comfortable representational image (which we know in hindsight, anyway, to be a misleading portrait of affairs between these superpowers).
In The Free Design, Whitmore repurposes a loosely rendered balcony that has had a long service in art history: originally appearing in Manet’s The Balcony and then again in Magritte’s Perspective II: Manet’s Balcony, the fence is a versatile reference for changing values in painting. The Free Design may be the artist’s best painting yet: in it he takes his signature motif—Rococo-inspired, representational objects infused with a maelstrom of gestural abstraction—and locks it behind the gate. Whereas Magritte replaced Manet’s Balcony figures with coffins, Whitmore has substituted his whole artistic enterprise; paradoxically, the shadow that falls over his still scene is sincere in a way that the artist suggests that painting perhaps cannot be.
That constitutional cynicism is revealed in another piece, New York, New York, in which Whitmore deviates from the highbrow with a watercolor fashion sketch of those notorious alienoids, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. (Looking a little less boho-chic than they do in the tabloids, here the twins are sporting matching red fuchsia skirts and “I [Heart] NY” t-shirts.) Well, the resemblance isn’t perfect. But it is idiosyncratically straightforward—except for just a dab of light violent pigment. A faint splotch falling like an accident in the empty space just between the twins, the mark obliterates the representational fidelity of the image. (Fitting, since the Olsen waifs themselves are, in a sense, obliterated images of real girls.)
That Whitmore and Pavlović are so strong—and that they represent the rule at the gallery, not the exception—makes the loss of this space sting all the more. I can say with confidence, informed partly by source and partly by gut, that we'll see these two artists in area galleries. Other District gallerists can't absorb all the rest of the artists, a real shame. But! No time for tears! The point of this epilogue is to express my best wishes to Sarah Finlay and Patrick Murcia. Here's hoping that San Francisco welcomes them warmly and that the gallery that follows in their place carries on with the very fine tradition of always serving Sierra Nevada at openings.
Irvine Contemporary is to move into the former Fusebox space, as you may have read. To be frank, I've never felt like I understood what Irvine is about. I can't quite put my finger on it. But new year, new space, new opportunity to figure them out. Welcome to the neighborhood, Irvine.
Don't skip over Jonathan Padget's CuDC/Flashpoint profile, either. I don't have much to add except to say that it's good advice to work together, especially with a group, like CuDC, that has a little business acumen, to find development solutions for affordable housing and studio problems. The hope is that the kind of development discussed in the article helps put the brakes on the arts exodus from the District to Philly and Baltimore.
UPDATE: I've been told that the person who owns the Fusebox building is committed to keeping a gallery in the space. Not really an update, I just forgot to mention that tidbit. I imagine the final cost of the space will reflect some degree of compromise on its market value. Also, don't forget about Fusebox's going away party on Saturday.
. . . later in the day. On some I'm really pressing against the sell-by date, so apologies for that. In the meantime, have some laughs at the expense of an Aggie. And to this citizen journalist, an honorary Longhorn for the day, I say: hook 'em.
"What if it's not really a picture of Mohammed," says me, "just a picture of a picture of Mohammed?"I wasted my day, didn't I?
"Metablasphemy!" says Giblets. "It is sacrilegious and pretentious!"
But you'd rather hear good music than listen to me go on, so here goes. It's a version of "Come Sunday" from Duke Ellington's Black, Brown, and Beige suite, with Ray Nance (violin) sitting in for Mahelia Jackson (vox).
Well, it's in fact lagniappe available on later editions of that album, but nevertheless.
Duke Ellington ft. Ray Nance, "Come Sunday"Love those lazy, nearly late pings on the ride cymbal (I think) at 3:20, and the clarinet–horns cluster burst at around 3:35.
While searching for an MP3/non-M4A or whatever version of this song, I discovered albums like A Starbucks Collection of Unforgettable Piano Jazz, Dinner Party (Cooking in Concert), and Songs That Got Us Through WWII, the producers of which will find themselves in the same anteroom to hell with the developer who put a tanning salon on the ground floor of the Ellington Lofts, square center on Black Broadway.
Okay, so the post below is more baby's bum than smooth. Ultimately, I think that the gist of the Danish editor's was: Are artists being censored—are artists censoring themselves—for fear of touching on religious sensitivities that largely fall outside Western culture (but to varying degrees affect it)? The same question Edward_ asked the other day, except that the editor went so far as to provide artists access to his paper to work it all out. That makes it a leading question vis-à-vis journalism, and a dangerous question once Saudi Arabia or Hamas gets ahold of it, but sure, it falls under the purview of art.
I think there are two comparisons that drive at why the Danes did a defensible thing, one easy and one more problematic. One: Christian doctrine absolutely prohibits the use of the Lord's name in vain, but this stricture is ignored regularly, daily even, by artists. Either Christians take their commitment to liberal democracy seriously or they don't take their commitment to this Commandment seriously or whatever, but Christians more or less tolerate constant exposure in the public square to all sorts of taking the Lord's name in vain. But if the Christian temperament or balance or what have you changed tomorrow and "goddamnit" was an unthinkably insensitive thing to say, even demonstrably inflammatory, you'd hardly want artists to stop saying it, would you? No, tenets of liberal democracy, etc.
More problematically, there are elements of Muslim practice that seem fundamentally irreconcilable with Western liberal Democratic values—how women fit into society, for example. Insofar as art is about anything more than image and form, etc., it's about problems, and that one is a pressing one for Christians in the West, Muslims in the Middle East, and secularists everywhere. (Also, women, if you want to count them.) The answer's bound to offend. What makes the Danish maneuver so stupid is its comparative irrelevance—the Muslim prohibition against idolatry and certain other depictions isn't new, isn't fractious, and isn't provocative. Maybe it's the right topic but the wrong question, or maybe it's rightwing nativist propaganda and I'm stupid. But if you want to go out on a limb, it ought to be a fruitful one.
Cousin to the Danish dustup that you might have read about here or there comes this item from the BBC:
A town in Belgium has banned an artwork of Saddam Hussein for fear that it will put off tourists and offend Muslims.Heh, indeed, whatever, sigh. (Courtesy of pal R™.) Warning: last stop for good humor; funny pics of Saddam. Okay, maybe just one more. Really, I'm done.The piece, called Saddam Hussein Shark, shows the handcuffed ex-Iraqi ruler suspended in liquid and wearing nothing more than underpants.
The mayor of Middelkerke, Michel Landuyt, said the work could "shock people", including Muslims.
He said he decided to ban Czech artist David Cerny's sculpture before the row over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The Saddam piece, which echoes British artist Damien Hirst's famous shark [link] suspended in formaldehyde, was first shown in Prague last September.
A few items might make the terms of this debate clearer. First off, following the September 30, 2005, publication of the cartoons in question, the responsible Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten issued an official apology, in which they disclaimed any "nativist" intent to marginialize Muslims and reaffirmed their commitment to liberal democratic values of free speech.
Why issue an apology on January 30, 2006, for an item published 4 months earlier? Clearly, because there was no grassroots violence before now. According to this Daily Kos item—which I think draws ultimately incorrect conclusions, so caveat emptor—Saudi Arabia developed this crisis:
. . . Saudi newspapers (which are all controlled by the state) began running up to 4 articles per day condemning the Danish cartoons. The Saudi government asked for a formal apology from Denmark. When that was not forthcoming, they began calling for world-wide protests. After two weeks of this, the Libyans decided to close their embassy in Denmark. Then there was an attack on the Danish embassy in Indonesia. And that was followed by attacks on the embassies in Syria and then Lebanon.This is precisely the mechanism by which conservative congressmen manufactured the outrage that culminated in the NEA theatre of the culture wars, the revealing history of which Wendy Steiner reports in The Scandal of Pleasure: Art in the Age of Fundamentalism and about which I've written more than a few thousand words. Worse still, according to the editor-in-chief of Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, many if not most of the cartoons being circulated by the Saudi press were never published and would not be deemed publishable if submitted.
The content of the cartoons seems not to matter much in this debate, as David Velleman points out, since the American press won't reprint the cartoons for readers to investigate for themselves. (The exception being the Philly Inquirer, whose coverage has been fantastic. Naturally, the images can be seen online (click here), which I suppose obviates the need for newspapers to run that risk—but then newspapers are ceding the point, aren't they?)
But the content! and the context! are crucial. In Robert Mapplethorpe's obscenity trial, for example, an (expertless) jury was shown the relevant controversial works. These works were even presented outside the context of the other works in the show: elegant still-lifes and what have you. Figuring this was slam-dunk evidence, the prosecution showed these works and rested its case. Mapplethorpe's defense included a bachelor's degree's worth of art history experts, who convinced the jury of the merits of his photography.
I'm not looking for a principled defense of these doodles so much as I am not looking for another Johnny-come-lately expert on Muslim iconography to explain why Muslim outrage over images of Mohammed is hypocritical, citing some link whose ultimate source is michellemalkin.com. But too offensive to publish = a non-starter. Too bad to publish, on the other hand, almost universally applies with respect to very political art.
And WTF: Saudi Arabia?
Another item for the prosecution in Women Everywhere v. Charlie Finch. It's from a silly 2002 artnet profile of NYT's Roberta Smith, in which Finch kind-of sort-of writes in Smith's voice:
Some have mentioned that Roberta Smith, on first perusal, has many multiple strengths: my indefatigable attendance at every New York exhibition, my very frequent travels on a frugal expense account, my deep knowledge of every name of every artist of the last century, as well as this one, my owlish allure (hoot! hoot!), my eminently portable, compact woman's body, but upon further reflection, some of my weaknesses will show through, won't they? [emphasis added]What purpose does that serve? Hell, what does that even mean? It's not an isolated incident, as Todd and João Ribas have pointed out. I'd say that reinforcing your perv credibility
Here's a confidential: A little while back, in conversation with an unnamed publication on running a review I wrote, an editor asked me to rewrite a part and make it "more like something Finch would write." By this, I took it to mean that the editor wanted a more gossipy, insider-y tone, perhaps without much care given to person-perspective or tense. But I couldn't help but think: one hand on my laptop, one hand ahem-ahem. . . .
RELATED: Tyler Green gets Charlie Finch down to a science.
I feel like an ass for not having made it out to any of the "Who Do You Love?" panels hosted by Ian Jehle; the two previous discussions covered interesting topics, and I'd believe that Jehle is a competent moderator (so crucial for these things), but the last two Sundays just haven't been good for me. Now, this week's panel sounds fantastic—Lisa Bertnick, Allison Miner, Michael O'Sullivan, and Erik Sandberg talking about the human figure—but really, I don't feel even the slightest compunction about missing it. It's been scheduled to start during the Super Bowl! Christ, come on! I'll never understand what drives some people. (But by next Sunday, when Mary Coble, Jayme McLellan, and Ira Tattelman talk about site-specific and installation art, I'll have forgiven the enterprise.)
Bill Cowher isn't someone I love, not by any reading of the word. But I'm waving a Terrible Towel in solidarity (and to make the divide at the house more interesting), largely in the hopes that the victory party in Pittsburgh will make for good television news over the next few days as the city consumes itself. (And I don't really believe that there are football fans in Seattle.)
Very neat—Eye Level is a finalist for a South by Southwest Interactive award. When I heard the news I assumed that meant EL'd been nominated for some sort of art category (and there is such a one), but it looks as if EL is one of five finalists for "Blog."
Can I tell you how misplaced my priorities are? My immediate reaction was OMG trip to Austin!!1!, cartuja mole enchiladas at Polvo's, hook 'em Horns!
I saw at least a few of these works in a studio-visit setting, but I don't know that we'll be seeing them in Washington, DC, gallery in the near future. The regular drain of District artists to New York City is one thing, but it's unfortunate to find artists living in this city with gallery representation elsewhere and only elsewhere. Springfield may be a special case; I gather that she's not prolific, given the demands of her meticulous style, and unfortunate though it may be, it's just better business to spread your works around NYC/LA (and SF).
Now, it's not so far from U Street to Moti Hasson, so I'm not deprived of opportunities to see her work. But if I had my way, I'd matchmake her with Andrea Pollan's Curator's Office. (Is that rude to say?) Pollan shows a lot of photography, but she has an eye for exceptional women artists and has shown strong works on paper. I'm just saying.
I worked myself up into a minor fury yesterday over the fact that so many friends were skipping our regular Tuesday night happy hour in order to catch President Bush's umpteenth same-old SOTU. Apparently I really missed out: the President declared war on manimals. Chimeras, bitches!
