Charles Long, We Wait a Long Time To See You, To Beat You, 2005
Let's look over the checklist: Eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, watching college football, wearing a wig and sinister makeup, and listening to "Castlevania" by Cradle of Filth? It must be early afternoon on Halloween (Observed)! Only 8 hours until I don't look completely out of place.
While Halloween is inarguably the greatest holiday, we should take a moment to honor the lives and works of those artists who have been consumed by the accursed spirits. The case of Francis Bacon needs no introduction; it was a powerful succubus indeed that inspired him to paint Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X before spending him completely. Tom Friedman's Untitled is better known for the documentaries that explored his macabre bent, including The Omen and The Exorcist. (Both took liberties with Friedman's life story.) Of course, the debate still rages whether hundreds or merely dozens of teenage suicides should be attributed to Banks Violette, but he is nevertheless a tragic figure. And the less said about Rom Mueck and the victim subject of his Dead Dad, the better.
Molly Springfield, "Gentle Reader" [installation view], 2006.
Then there is the sad story of Molly Springfield, whose asylum residency led her to recreate in painstaking detail the calotype process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. The documentation of her terrifying descent into utter madness may be viewed tonight at Transformer. Maybe they'll serve candy!
(Some links courtesy the spooktacular Edward Winkleman)
An atypical bulletin! Tonight there will be an early reception for "Me, You, and Those Other Folks", a show of works by painters Nekisha Durrett, Ian Jehle, and A.B. Miner at Flashpoint Gallery, which is especially relevant to this humble weblog for a couple reasons: 1) I wrote about Miner in last week's City Paper, and 2) for the show, Jehle has made a portrait of me and my dog, Wreck. I was flattered to be asked to sit, and every hair stands on end in anticipation of seeing the finished piece tonight. Wreck currently seems unconcerned; he's a handsome guy, and has grown quite accustomed to the gaze of the other.
There's an early reception from 5 to 7 tonight. For whatever it's worth, I appear in the portrait sans glasses (for reasons better told off the blog!) and Wreck is wearing his pants (i.e., his collar).
UPDATE: Sorry! I can't put up an image of the portrait here. One, I don't have one, and I lost my camera—so sad. Regardless, Jehle's style is very light and reproduces well only with equipment better than mine (which is nothing at the moment).
I happen to know that Lily Cox-Richard feels great affection for Bruce Springsteen, so this one's for her. New media artist and bobo darling Cory Arcangel has recorded glockenspiel tracks for all the parts of Born To Run that don't already include the instrument (which is, what, maybe a minute and a half?). You can order a disc of Arcangel's "Orientalist cascades" (thanks, Pitchfork!) through Beige Records. You'll need to have your own copy of B2R to hear the addendum with the original.
Might Secret Headquarters be the coolest comic-book store in all the land? I wouldn't have guessed that a region of the nation that brought us the Avengers West Coast could win the title, and I haven't been, but nevertheless I'm impressed by the letterpressed gift certificates and the dapper look that this league of extraordinary comic dealers has cultivated. I was wowed by the size of Chicago Comics when I visited, but Tommy and I were both horrified when the comic book–store guy behind the counter actually used the comic book–store guy "best. x. evar." formulation. Yglesias is a Forbidden Planet booster. Never been there—I find myself more often near Midtown Comics, which is incidentally always out of everything.
I'm guessing there are legendary sites I'm excluding, but I'm informed by this chart that I'm a lesser, super hero–title reading nerd, so what do I know? I've always thought of myself as inclusive.
NB: This blog is the first search result for "talking to aliens while robotripping," if that helps to establish my bona fides in any way.
The New York Observer goes off the record with my roommate Spack and discusses his termination from TNR. Apparently, no one bothered to tell him that starting a blog is very 2003, but he went and did it anyway and turns out to be a total pro. He was d00ced within the week!
Also new but not really new to the nabe: Catherine and Tommy each have blogs (again). I should hope that they don't lose their jobs, too, but if Catherine does, it will mean that everyone in our happy home laptops it from the house and area cafes. Speaking of desktop publishing, I'll have more fascinating content on this site soon, but having lost a week to the flu and various personal crises I need to resume billable work first.
Before there was Project Runway, there was America's Next Top Model, and Elyse Sewell was its prophetess. It looks like she's walking away from her blog, forever shutting my window into her disgustingly charming life with Marty (of The Shins).
I'm happy to hear that political independents favor Democrats 2 to 1 going into November, but you know what? Independents are irritating. "Independent voters may strongly favor Democrats, but their vote appears motivated more by dissatisfaction with Republicans than by enthusiasm for the opposition party." This is irritating, since independents who abstain from primaries promote the radical elements they then later vote against (or for, mouth-breathing GOP candidates since 1994 are any indication). A while back Kevin Drum linked to a Johnson County Sun editorial about how this trend plays out in Peoria:
You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election. They lose in low turnout primaries, where the far right shows up to vote in disproportionate numbers.Independents also irritate me with their stubborn refusal to exist as a normative bloc. Thomas Edsall wrote last month for The New Republic:
In late 2000, even as the result of the presidential election was still being contested in court, George W. Bush's chief pollster Matt Dowd was writing a memo for [Karl] Rove that would reach a surprising conclusion. Based on a detailed examination of poll data from the previous two decades, Dowd's memo argued that the percentage of swing voters had shrunk to a tiny fraction of the electorate. Most self-described "independent" voters "are independent in name only," Dowd told me in an interview describing his memo. "Seventy-five percent of independents vote straight ticket" for one party or the other.Political independence is as convincing a bloc as a faux hawk is a haircut—neither is any way to organize your head. Yet the indies will be on hand again in 2008, fresh to irritate me anew with their shock, shock!, at the nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic Party primaries (in which they will not have participated).Once such independents are reclassified as Democrats or Republicans, a key trend emerges: Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of true swing voters fell from a very substantial 24 percent of the electorate to just 6 percent.
Ian Welsh writes more in The Agonist. He describes the pressure that will be brought to bear on the Democratic Party, should it regain one or both majorities, by conservative pundits speaking on behalf of independents everywhere to "let bygones be bygones" in the name of progress—which would be one hell of an amnesty. Again, so irritating, because the revenge is the part I'm looking forward to, along with a robust war against Christmas and the mandatory abortions. In all seriousness, what else is the Democratic Party supposed to do with a majority, if not investigate and correct the mistakes of the previous Congress—which is less popular than scary ghosts?
Steven Vincent, a political correspondent and sometimes art writer who was killed in Basra, has been posthumously awarded a Kurt Schork Memorial Award in International Journalism. Courtesy of The Corner.
President Bush has abandoned his "stay the course" locution. Some light still does reach the inner sanctum of the White House, and the dim awareness that the campaign in the Middle Eastern provinces is not going well has intensified into a burst of administrative action and resolve. Over the radio, I just heard White House Press Secretary Tony Snow refer to Iraq as "a study in constant motion"—the President's most thrilling public pirouette yet. We've reached the second act in the war, in which we no long dither about why we're there but instead over what to call what we're going. The Bush administration will hone this Iraq message in perpetuity without ever again steering the course of American action there—and, tragically, considering the national treasure we continue to spend there, victory in Iraq will mean nothing short of handing this problem to the next President.
Tangentially related: More Americans believe that they have personally seen or felt the presence of a ghost (22%) than approve of the job Congress is doing (16%).
Tommy is not going to like this news:
Officials with the local Boy Scouts and the Motion Picture Assn. of America on Friday unveiled the Respect Copyrights Activity Patch — emblazoned with a large circle "C" copyright sign along with a film reel and musical notes.I've got a lot of respect for my handful of friends who made it through Eagle Scout and beyond, having myself never learned a knot more complicated than the shoelace (despite being in the scouts for some years). Shame to see the Scouts bowing to their less noble instincts and climbing in bed with an organization like the MPAA.The 52,000 Scouts who are eligible may earn the patch by participating in a curriculum produced by the MPAA. To earn the badge, Scouts must participate in several activities including creating a video public-service announcement and visiting a video-sharing website to identify which materials are copyrighted. They may also watch a movie and discuss how people behind the scenes would be harmed if the film were pirated.
Fortunately for supporters of free information, the allure of free movies, music, and pr0n is enough to counteract whatever content-side sympathies the Scouts establishment are able to instill among young troops with this very ugly badge. (Unfortunately for supporters of the Scouts, all that freely available digital content probably does a number on recruiting. Tying knots wasn't even all that fun back in the stone age days of my youth.) There's no irony lost in the notion of the MPAA tapping the Boy Scouts in order to develop a clone army.
Tommy can't comment on this post without first defending this badge.
I've been sitting on the news for a bit now, and today it's official: Numark Gallery is closing. Best of luck to Cheryl with her future ventures. But of course the rest of us are wondering, what's it mean for the District?
In certain terms, the city has lost its last interesting storefront gallery space. Plenty of people will tell you that you don't need large white cubes with bay doors to show interesting work—look at all the stuff at Conner, or Jae Ko at Marsha Mateyka, or whichever show in Bethesda, all residential or nongallery commercial spaces that have been converted into galleries. I appreciate those spaces, but there are modes of contemporary art that just won't fit through those doors. Artworks that just don't hang right in a Dupont townhouse. Numark Gallery was the biggest gallery in town and, yes, was able to show the biggest work (for whatever that counts&mndash;I think there's a point about diversity there), but it was also the best looking gallery in town and while I'm not going to say that one followed the other, Cheryl Numark set out to make a Chelsea art space and attract not only the brightest local talent but also bona fide international stars, and she did that. I don't remember Numark ever putting on a chintzy show.
So there are real, material losses with that space closing. At the same time, I'm not convinced that there were real, material deficits that led to that space closing. I'm confused about what advantage the virtual space/art "advisory" role has beyond the gallery space—since it seems to be the case that Numark wasn't forced to close her gallery but rather decided she didn't need one.
How can a gallerist not need a gallery? Two reasons why come to mind. One, the District buyer base is so anemic that one doesn't need a physical market to host all the market transactions. The dealers know the buyers and work with artists to supply those sales, and whether for good or bad, they don't trust that exposure to the marketplace will grow more buyers. So Cheryl Numark pours the rent money into art fairs and developing patron relationships between her clientele (artists and buyers), and so on.
Or two, Cheryl Numark just wasn't very interested in operating a gallery, and is perhaps better at other things and will do those things now and she won't really be doing exactly what people assume she'll be doing (dealing without a space). I don't know her personally and haven't worked with her; I don't know her health issues, which she's cited; I take with a grain of salt claims about what it's like to work with her—but the turnover in gallery staff was high. The space has been around for a damned short time. I never saw a chintzy show there, but I also didn't see Numark do enough with a star like Dan Steinhilber (whom, I'll go out on a limb and guess here, will be swept up by Annie Gawlak). Not to speak ill of the recently space-departed, but it does have some bearing on whether the District gallery scene is collapsing.
I do think that we have an opportunity to put some metrics to the District's ability to attract buyers. Remember the upcoming District art fair, which I mentioned back in July? At that time, none of the District gallerists knew whether they'd sign on—most fearing that it'd be a sure loser. By now, nearly all of them are on board. I've asked a few (not a scientific survey, by any means) why they're doing it and they've all given me the same response: If they to grow* the city's reputation, they need to show up, and so on and so forth.
It sounds to me like paying to be disappointed, but I'm hoping it won't turn out badly for the galleries. I don't think the District is a bad city for art—for all the hemming and hawing and recent gallery closings, it's still a top-tier art destination. If the market's less zippy than it used to be, there are a number of concrete factors that account come into play well before intangibles like aesthetics and appreciation. It's absolutely bad news that Numark's closing because we're losing a great space—the best in the city. But I don't know that that means the market's less zippy than it was in 2001.
Just putting that out there. I'll be mulling it over with "Sweet Child of Mine" on the repeat. Where do we go, where do we go, where do we go-oo-whoa?
Apologies for the use of the transitive "grow" not once but twice. I'm in an economics kind of way today. An Axl Rose, microeconomics mood. Axlnomics = the study of human sway and voice warble.
A quick note, and I'll resume hiding from my blog: Tonight at 8p, the Hirshhorn is showing No Restraint, Alison Chernick's documentary on the production of Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. How does someone acquire 45,000 pounds of petroleum jelly, indeed? This is one of the film's first showings outside the film festival circuit (where it's done well, if those laurel-bookended award icons at the top of the Web site are any indication).
Jae Ko, Untitled, 2006.
Shorts in this week's CP: Jae Ko at Marsha Mateyka; documentaries on Iggy and the Stooges and Dead Boys at the Black Cat.
Shirin Neshat, Passage, 2001. Video still.
Courtesy of Lenny Campello comes this bit of great news: Through the end of the month, Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville is screening Shirin Neshat's Passage. Neshat's film features composition by Philip Glass (Glass commissioned the film, in fact) in addition to funereal ululations; Neshat has been hailed as a principal Iranian exile artist.
If the gallery will agree to an appointment on Sunday or Monday, it should make for a break from my apple-picking and fall festival–hopping plans for Charlottesville. (And if the gallery won't let me in, it will come as a bit of a surprise to them on Tuesday to find that someone's smashed his way inside.) After all the hype, I'm pretty thrilled at a chance to see this movie.
Sorry for the slow week around here—I'm sure the bloggy bug will be back to me next week. Just been doing other things. Anyone want me to bring back some apples?
Are they good live? I'm planning a trip to Charlottesville this weekend, and they're playing on Sunday night. I don't know their stuff all that well but I've heard a bit and wouldn't mind seeing them.
UPDATE: Xiu Xiu's on Monday night. Sunday's "easy listening" on the Hammond by George Melvin. So . . . probably something else.
