My favorite foodie blogger Metrocurean notes that hip vegetarian cafe Vegetate is finally receiving a temporary liquor license, over the longstanding objections of Shiloh Baptist Church. That's good news, but a temporary liquor license is only a battle won, not the war. Only when Vegetate is licensed to serve delicious, delicious meat will its day have finally arrived.
Michael Crichton isn't merely a pulp-fiction factory, anti-environmentalist hack, and middle school–minded libeler—he's also the author of a catalog on Jasper Johns! Crichton's introduction doesn't inspire confidence.
Jiha Moon, Place for Sib-Jang-Saeng II, 2004.
Congratulations are in order for Atlanta-based painter Jiha Moon, who's having a hell of a year: Curator's Office recently announced that the Hirshhorn acquired two of Moon's works (including the one shown above). Her work is currently showing in "Asian American Art Now" at the Blaffer Gallery at the Art Museum of the University of Houston. GlassTire recommends that y'all see it, so hop to.
From a writeup of a recent Second Life Left Unity protest of Front National, the radical-right political party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen:
It's unclear when the shooting started, or who fired the first shot (several witnesses claim FN security forces assaulted them with "push guns", weapons capable of flinging a Resident across the island like a ragdoll), but in the final days of last week, at least, the assault raged from both sides.[. . .]
And so it raged, a ponderous and dreamlike conflict of machine guns, sirens, police cars, "rez cages" (which can trap an unsuspecting avatar), explosions, and flickering holograms of marijuana leaves and kids' TV characters, and more. By California time, the battles often culminated at 2am, 3am, and even later into the small hours of the American clock, when Residents in Europe are most active. So amid the exchange of salvos, the chat log was choked over with pro and anti-Le Pen curses, most in French. And when the lag was not too overwhelming to stream audio, the whole fracas was accompanied by bursts of European techno.
One enterprising insurrectionist created a pig grenade, fixed it to a flying saucer, and sent several whirling into Front National headquarters, where they'd explode in a starburst of porcine shrapnel. A few native English speakers joined the fray, though at least one missed the point in either direction, unhelpfully shouting "The French stink! Get out of Second Life!" and the like amid the conflict.
A screenshot from the protest
The Second Life Herald reports that Front National staff were forced to evacuate the facility; a casino now stands at the site of the former headquarters. But that's not the end to political tensions for the Porcupine arrondisement: the Modern German Army has identified the casino as a prime ground for recruiting. The Herald explains:
In a series of interviews with German Army führer Tristan Mineff and his troops, the Herald was told an unhappy tale of "French lag" and vigorous defense virtual German virtual real estate from the noisy partisan politics of another country from another universe—real life. [sic]In an unrelated news item, the Herald reports on an outbreak of a highly contagious strain of Haiku. The first reported case was recorded today at 3:45 p.m., and follows:We discussed the how selling some land to get a buffer between the German Army's base and the FN proved to be a mistake when Irish leftists purchased the plot and set up an anti-FN outpost. Führer Mineff also provideded the Herald with a copy of the "SECOND LIFE STRATEGIC ARMS LIMITATION TREATY", and discussed the joys of damage enabled land, using black soldiers to make the point that the German Army are not fascist nazis, and the Alliance Navy.
Teleports, Linden$,In brighter news, pics are up from the winter opening at the University of Texas's Metaverse Gallery, which exhibited works by portrait photographer Shoshana Epsilon. The Flickr set is here. (My avatar was unavailable to attend.)
My virtual nards shriveled.
Concurrency sucks!
[Via Jackmormon.]
Thank you very much. Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished guests, Spencer, fellow citizens: As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, my iPod's nowhere to be found, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet, it's my birthday. (Applause.)
Every year, by law and by custom, we meet on this day to consider my birth. It's pretty awesome, when you think about it, my being born. This year, we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead. Thanks again for crowding into the dining room—can y'all hear in the back? (Applause.)
In all these days of promise and days of reckoning, we can be confident. In a whirlwind of change and hope and peril, my hearing is sure, my eyesight is firm, and my back is strong, for up to 12 consecutive hours a day. (Applause.)
Hey, you, jerks in the robes, you up front—the f? You're too good to clap? Someone let those pie-throwing protesters in here. (Applause.) Mm, pie—everybody loves pie.
In the coming day, there will be efforts to join me to see helicoprion skeletons at the National Geographic Museum, take me to the Wizards–Suns game, and buy me beers at the Tavs. I applaud all these efforts. (Applause.) Apparently, you do too.
Some might call this a good record; actually, I would, too. Pretty, pretty good. Tonight I ask for the House and Senate to join me in thanking friends and family for making the last year fun and to wish for an even better one at 27. And so long as I have the attention of the House and Senate, some representation in your august bodies would be appreciated. Also, Hillary Clinton must be stopped. (Roaring applause.)
Thanks for the well wishes! (Applause.)
Thanks, good day. (Applause.)
Seriously, y'all get out of my dining room. (Applause.)
. . . but Chicago's defense will! Hook 'em Bears! Sexy Rexy may very well be the spottiest, most frustrating athlete in the NFL (as if on cue, Grossman overthrows the end zone), but Chicago's got Cedric Benson and Nathan Vasher and when I don't have a stake in the contest, a strong Longhorn contingent is enough for me. In the AFC, the Patriots and Colts—really, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning—are both so intolerable that one can only root for injuries and penalties.
Pics from last night's party at the Heart of Dupont. Oh, and if you attended and left with my iPod, I'd like that back please and thank you.
On his own terms. I heard him tell a story that I just love, about visiting France and being thoroughly reamed by a taxi driver and responding, "Oh je suis, suis je?" There there's his hilarious auction introduction, more rant than pitch, to a famous Bill Newman painting—and those are just things that people overheard him say, not even published writing.
Franz Ferdinand, "Do You Want To?"
K. tipped me off to this one. Fun for art nerds and dance-y to boot!
After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, from time to time I would check in on the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, since I had been fond of the place and always tried to visit when I was in the city. Shortly after the devastation, some people who worked there set up a blogspot site in hopes of finding out where everyone was. It led to some tearful reunions (and reading).
No surprise that Cacno is up and running, but there's still a great deal of cultural rebuilding going on—or so I learn from Cynthia Joyce's Culture Gulf. She writes here about 1 dead in attic, a collection of distressing New Orleans Times-Picayune columns by Chris Rose (who, avant le deluge, wrote the celebrity gossip beat). I recommend it for your bookshelf, to fit that empty slot beside Robert Polidori's inescapable and haunting book of photography, After the Flood.
Josie writes,
here is something I also disapprove of—Felicity Huffman playing a transgendered man in Transamerica. That's weak, people. There are plenty of transgendered actors to play that part.Wikipedia—which may not be the go-to source on tranny cinema—lists 23 actors and actresses. That's very few. (But say there are actually 230. If half of those are any good, and if half that number actually fit the assignment (ba-dum), and assuming that some of those aren't available or interested, then you're still looking at a modest number for an audition.)
But a number there are, and the movie deserved a tranny lead. Here's one suggestion for the role: Alexis Arquette, who put in a respectable performance as Georgia in Last Exit to Brooklyn. The studio boasts that its film depicts important, progressive work—why not, you know, actually do that work? Kind of along the lines of Yglesias's complaint that Brokeback Mountaint showed aesthetic cowardice for its lack of hot man-on-man action. Only kind of along those lines, though, since Annie Proulx didn't set out to do work with her story, and Ang Lee captured what she did: a heartwrenching love story that just so happens, etc, etc. Transamerica, on the other hand—I mean, c'mon. "Transamerica." This is coy illusion—in a word, weak.
I think a lot of people mistakenly classify indie film as an aesthetic category—an umbrella brand to be trusted—rather than a production category or, better yet, distribution category.
I come to you with glad news from the front lines of the great war. For even as I speak does the tide turn in our favor, as the squirrel has been cast out into darkness, and the Heart of Dupont beats again with pride, and renewed vigor.
Verily did I go do battle with the squirrel, it is true. His beady black eyes shewn with wrath, and armed as I was with a broken broom and one of the Express boutique bags that line the floor of the fair lady's lair where the squirrel had taken residence, the outcome was uncertain. Briefly I hesitated before I entered the lair, remembering to don the Hoodie of Bevo—to think about the match's outcome had I not!, for several times did the creature reach for my extremities (though not that extremity), to gnash at them with his razor fangs or claw them with his . . . uh, claws, and once even lunging and landing for a spell on my head seriously like in my hair y'all.
Brave Spencer did second my effort, ready with mighty oven mitt to stand as the West's last best defence should my mission fail. Wettham Saiselgy did consider the matter with great philosphye, no doubt while listening to crystal-clear indie pop from Montreal on his kick-ass new speakers. And lo! was one of the mightiest of our number deceived! Taken in by the dark visions of the squirrel, fearless Wreck, Killer of Rats, turned in confusion on the Lady Catherine. (She was really cool about this and I was and still am so very sorry and glad that she's an understanding roommate and Wreck's so grounded.)
So the battle raged across all four square feet of Catherine's lair, with advantage changing hands e'er between the both of us; and for long did the squirrel evade my sight by taking refuge under the Lady's Helm of Wahoowah. Nearly did I give the animal the tools to bring about his escape, perhaps even victory (I shudder to think), since in my haste to acquire my armor I forgot to close the door again to my lair, which is down the hall (we have four lairs on the top floor), giving the squirrel an avenue of escape when I had chased him from the Lady's realm. Nevertheless, having screamed like a girl only twice, I did capture the squirrel and eject him to the outer darkness. Devil take him!
Your friendly correspondent contributed an essay to a catalog on Martin Brief's work, specifically regarding his Dictionary and Newspaper series. I'll try to put up a PDF of the essay or something.
Speaking of, folks should look forward to his joint show with Molly Springfield and Dean Kessmann at School 33 in October.
It's bad practice to use one's blog to offer up ex ante defenses of one's print stuff, so we may say that newly minted blogger and fellow CP writer Jeffry Cudlin wandered into a trap of his own devising with this post—his, like, third or forth ever. It's tempting to write those caveats: what the reader doesn't know is that I originally wrote this, or, I would've liked to mention so-and-so's work but had no room. (Those almost always apply.) But those would've, could've, should've, and did, in fact furthermores amount to asterisks—footnotes to which the readers of the original print edition may not be privy.
To that end, I'm wagging the finger at Regina Hackett—or rather, at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Hackett first apologizes for an awkward lede. That's a feeling that strikes like a nicotine fit—second-guessing is habit forming. It's a position of privilege to write about art—and it's deflating to feel that your craft hasn't risen to the occasion. It's the correction that Hackett publishes in her post that rankles. At the end of the day, this probably belongs under the editor's column, but that's neither here nor there—if the mistake was published in the paper, the correction belongs there, right? (And apologies to RH for making her work a case in point. Here's a post that shows her off).
Skipping over the moronic anonymous comments, the conversation at Cudlin's place turns toward that favorite fulmination: whether writers must be artists to be critics. As a writer with some college-level fine arts training, I say that critics need standards like a fish needs a bicycle. The readership will out. If you don't know what you're talking about, readers who do will let you and everyone else know—that's the call and response of journalism. Blogs, I think, make the marketplace of ideas even more transparent. The charge that so-and-so shouldn't be writing about art is levied more often than not in hopes of declaring an opinion ineligible.
Now that I've covered shots across the bow, middling grousing, and navel gazing—let me tell you, I'm a real prince today—I'll direct your attention to this incredible Guardian report about a merger ventured Britain and France during the 1950s. To make one kingdom. I know. It's so rad.
George Condo, Little Joe, 2004.
Pills, alcohol, cigarettes—okay. But those and flies? Could this be anything but a shot at Damien Hirst?
Cute couple, huh? Shame that they broke up. (Komar got the Web site out of the deal.)
I cringed when I read in the Boston Globe about "Territories of Terror: Mythologies and Memories of the Gulag in Contemporary Russian-American Art". Yes, title's a mouthful, and the show's a dreary prospect, but that's not my issue. It brought back in a rush all those college debates about the Russian memory, and how, long ago, I used to have opinions on the signs of nascent capitalism in pre-revolutionary representational paintings of Russian peasant communes. Any mental capacity I once had for the topic has long been rented out for Friday Night Lights plotlines and the biographies of various X-Men. But Cate McQuaid's article sparked to life some of the upstairs tenants who've been presumed dead all this time.
In her writeup, which is otherwise helpful, McQuaid makes a tiny error that got me thinking. She writes:
Part of [curator Svetlana] Boym's agenda is the reimagining of space as a response to imprisonment. Komar and Melamid pioneered unorthodox exhibition venues in the 1970s; their "Paradise/Pantheon" was a daring installation in a small apartment, featuring images of deities and prophets presented as a dream conjured from a prison cell.Now, these days Moscow isn't so different from any other Western European art capital, with white cubes like XL, Shcola, and 1.0 showing the chintzy painting and clunky installations you'll find everywhere. But it was different behind the red veil, right up until shortly before glasnost: Official art spaces showed official, Soviet Realist art, whereas unofficial and dissident artwork proliferated on the underground Apt-Art scene. Apt Art—a response to the Gulag but also something of an ideological movement—started in the 60s, before Komar and Melamid came along with ironic, nosethumbing Sots Art. (Back when I knew things, I could rattle off the names of those curators, radicals, and nogoodnik artists from the Underground Gallery Crawl.)
The Moscow Biennale celebrated that dissident heritage, sort of, by showing works in apartments or spaces meant to evoke the Apt-Art scene; listed as a venue, for example, is the residence of one V. Buivit. It strikes me as gross&mdahs;it misses the point of the original moment—for an institution to pimp Russian art history this way. Better a biennial than a fair, though.
Chalk it up to a failure of the imagination, but the Apt Art angle has proven to be an obvious theme for curators. Russian art developed in the dark: Russian art today doesn't totally correspond with its Western counterparts, and unofficial Soviet art never did at all. So you see more crutches, more hand-holds, in shows of Russian art that curators bring here.
But I think something gets lost or transforms in context over here. Apt Art was not guerrilla—not a happening—not an architectural gesture. It was never an investigation of space—it was fugitive. So I'm piqued by the Boston show about the Gulag and memory: suspicious, for sure, because the Gulag occupies already such a problematic place in the Russian historical memory; irritated that the show seems to slap Western artspeak on Russian art about the Soviet horror; and perhaps even dubious that the show is coherent, even on its own terms. Entirely independent of the question of whether Russian needs one, Russia has no Anselm Keifer.
However, Russian art does have Komar and Melamid. (The show does not.)
Komar and Melamid, What Is To Be Done? 1970s?
Every once in a while, you see, this cranky old Sovietologist delights in the opportunity to muse about Sokov and Bruskin and of course Nakhova, while everyone else is talking about the new hot Iranian art.
If not the worst opinion, surely the worst opinion column the Washington Post has ever published. Above and beyond Courland Milloy's idiotic objections to the HPV vaccine, since when is cervical cancer a subject that deserves so much snark?
Lust.
Right there at the bottom center of The Hay Wain is the best decision John Constable ever made. He decided to depict a horse, and then a barrel, and finally to simply cover over the whole mess. In other industries, this is called CYA. But in Romantic painting, it's technique: pentimento (from pentirsi, "repent").
In one sense of the word, pentimenti describes the show of the painter's six-footers, sketches, and odds and ends, which just closed at the East Wing of the National Gallery: it's revisionist. By pairing finished paintings with preliminary sketches—on-site concept paintings, which Constable never showed—the show makes a strong claim about Constable: that he changed as a painter in significant ways over time.
And it's true, in the later works, that Constable regulates his application of paint less strictly, making for uneven canvases that more closely resemble the dashed-off sketches. As the catalogue text explains, Constable hated to call anything final—so, naturally, works toward the end of his life exist in various stages of finish. Ultimately, all that's neither here nor there. The painter's argent effect—the famous silver dapple he used to depict light—dominates any other technical experiment. Epicyclic progressions in his technique take a backseat to the argent effect.
Romantic landscape paintings explain themselves—or rather, people don't argue with them—so the show doesn't do much to explain the significance of agrarian landscape painting in context. The wall text could have used fewer paeans to the noble English countryside and much more explanation of why Constable bothered there, and not, say, in metropolitan London. The post-Napoleonic era during which he painted saw spectacular financial crises related to the transformation of England's economy, and specifically, its land. Gentrification—in particular the cupidity of land speculation—resulted in the dismantling of many of England's oldest aristocratic estates. A notorious crab, Constable wouldn't have wanted anything to do with the city anyway. And a conservative like Constable would have appreciated the countryside for its gentle rebuke to the populist sentiments of Chartism, the Reform Bill, and so on. The rural was more than agritainment&mdahs;it was a refuge.
Charles Downey and Jeffry Cudlin both examined the show in considerable detail. Blake Gopnik and Joanna Shaw-Eagle also ran their reviews. I'm tempted to add to that a real snoozer of a survey of the Commercial Crisis of 1847. Instead I'll note that across the way—in the National Gallery's West Wing—is some primo pentimento: The Feast of the Gods, by Bellini Dossi Titian.
Since you illiterate lot are useless for new book pics ('cept for Emily), I've turned to the tubes. Three from Bloomberg:
—Boilerplate that blurb writers use for an Amis novel: "He revisits [site of act of incredible violence], where he and his [male relative] reminisce about their shared love for a once-[adjective ending in -acious] woman." *
—Boilerplate that blurb writers use for a contemporary Russian novel: "This trippy satire depicts [persons] who beat [persons] with ice-covered hammers."
—Not the boilerplate usually associated with Bush administration–era fiction.
* For Philip Roth, strike the violence; for Norman Mailer, restrict the violence to women
Rachel Cook and the GlassTire staff run down the best and worst in the Texas art scene for 2006. One of those writers is Christopher French, whose paintings are represented here in the District by Marsha Mateyka. Another GT writer gives a nod to Jenny Schlief, whose work I saw and liked in Houston a few visits ago.
(Fierce Austin nostalgia wave taking hold; bear with me until it passes.)
LEFT: Nature, Calf, 2006. Mixed organic media. RIGHT: Josh Levin, Trophy Room (Two Head One Horn), 2006. Epoxy clay, urethane foam, urethane resin, wood, horn, replica eyes, acrylic paint.
A two-faced calf on display at Kirk Heldreth's dairy farm in Rural Retreat, Virginia, is a bald-faced rip of Josh Levine's sculpture. Levine's works are showing at Irvine Contemporary through today. I wrote a small item about the show in the City Paper (catch it before it disappears behind the firewall).
Freaky link courtesy, as ever, the Apostropher.
Browsing through the SF Weekly art reviews, I ran across the name of an old friend of mine, Keri Oldham. She has work in a group show, "Get Together", at the Hardware Store Gallery. About her work, artist and critic Lea Feinstein writes, "And perhaps the most modest yet kinkiest stars of the show are Keri Oldham's small-scale sculptures; by turns endearing and ugly, they're sea creatures you've never seen before, made from cast aluminum and plaster, leather and stuffed fabric."
It's always gratifying to find out that people who deserve it are finding success. If anyone's reading from Ess Eff, go see it (it's showing through January 13), and please be so kind as to leave a note if you do.
Good on Michael Dirda for addressing the Fairfax library scandal first thing in his WaPo chat, but what a milquetoast response:
[L]ocal libraries seem to be discarding classics and stocking the shelves with popular contemporary writers. Their argument is that they are catering to their clients needs and wishes. Yes, I can understand that. But whatever happened to the notion that people went to the library to learn something, to better themselves, to gain some familiarity with culture and achievements of the past? A library serves to educate, not merely to entertain.Yah sure but come on. The state, employing its monopoly on violence, coercively collects hard-earned citizen tax dollars and funnels them into moratoriums for the relatively unpopular but absolutely extraordinary achievements of mankind. Achievements like The Sound and the Fury—libraries hold The Sound and the Fury. A book-borrowing building that does not hold The Sound and the Fury—a list that might include the George Mason Regional Library, if it adheres to the quota system that allow it to boost Scott Turow's stackshare by weeding William Faulkner— is not a library. When no one borrows The Sounds and the Fury from the library for 24 months, the library still retains the novel because it's William Fucking Faulkner, and libraries exist if for no other reason to preserve the kneejerk instincts of canon-preserving elitists, who may waffle over, say, which Proust companion to stock prominently but would only entertain removing In Search of Lost Time—as librarians are at George Masion Regional Library—in daydreams of cheekily replacing each copy with À la recherche du temps perdu. Because, in fact, within an institution of subsidized knowledge and only within an institution of subsidized knowledge, a book can be forever, despite what 21-branch Fairfax library system director Sam Clay seems to suggest when he says, "A book is not forever."
We could just set up YouTube terminals. Dick in a box! Dick in a box for everyone. Let's throw italics around Dick in a Box.
UPDATE: Allen Ginsberg is cooler than Charles Bukowski.
In the The Quincunx, a character offers just once the exclamation, "Bli' me!", a corruption of "God blind me" that (Google says) replaced "gorblimey" or "cor blimey" as the favored way to curse without invoking the name, and thus the wrath, of the Lord. The Online Etymology Dictionary, for what it's worth, dates the appearance of "blimey" to 1889. I trust that Palliser's done his homework, but I don't have the resources on hand to check whether this contraction appears in any literature during the period described by the novel (1810–30 or so).
This is to say, I didn't get much in the way of new fiction for Christmas this year. My mom usually gives me two or three new novels, but this year she gave me a fantastic flexiheaded torque screwdriver. The Flophouse is most securely fastened, but I have nothing to read—anyone care to recommend some new fiction, preferably from the Bli' Me Era (1810?89? to present)?
Giving up smoking means giving up on some favorite pastimes: kindness towards your fellow man, for example, or walking outside. Nevertheless, as we in the District today enter into a new dispensation under the smoking ban, the denizens of the Florida Flophouse have pledged with fellow travelers to join in a pact of steel: to quit and not look back. Now a center of rehabilitation, our house is an institution resembling something between a Betty Ford clinic and a 19th-century lunatic ward. From the grouchiness and aimless pacing of the social smoker to the 50-yard stare and perpetual shiver of the life-timer, the prescription is the same—assign the ward to a corner, and throw a shroud over him if the shivering gets too violent.
Asylum professionals and their clients share one fantastic notion: that quitting smoking is rewarded with athletic excellence. Each of us may look forward to rock climbing, goal keeping, hurdle leaping. Sounds good—I'm interested in competitive mountain dangling—but addiction consultants might do better to address some of the daily fears. That the Nine will be as appalling as I bet it is without the thick pall of smoke. That I might become the sort of person who's always chewing gum.
I don't mean to make light—I know that some of my friends are struggling with symptoms like numbness of the extremities, whereas I for the most part limited my smoking to the social hours, and won't feel it until I have a poured draft in hand. Still, I'm sure that professionals will say that you have to change your context, or whatever, and to that end I say we take over this new Axis Bar & Grill as our own. It's sure to be a Blue-and-Orange Line destination by the end of the month, but I bet we can hold it down for a couple weeks. New year, new nanny state—new haunt?
