In addition to the midtown loft, six-figure salary, and seven-figure mystery bonuses, now MoMA principal Glenn Lowry gets a Jenny Holzer e-card. MoMA already pulled the card off the site: yet another thing Lowry is not disclosing to the public.
UPDATE: A reader passes on a screenshot. Thanks, reader!
Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Erno Nussenzweig, 2001.Though she's dismissing the chatter as rumor, Sophie Howarth's writeup about reactions to purported restrictions on public photography in the UK is cold comfort. Not for no reason did one photographer presume, correctly, that he would be mistaken for a security threat and harassed if he took a page from Amateur Photographer and snapped away at tourist havens. And even if the dread stop-and-search slip isn't so alien stateside ("stop and search" is British for "probable cause"), it's not very familiar, either. The only American artists who wear police harassment as a badge of honor are graffiti artists* (who are, let's face it, legitimately scummy). So the Crown hasn't yet usurped a monopoly on public photography—nevertheless, it's surprising that UK authorities bother with photographers to any degree at all. (Unless the guy snapping St. Paul's with his Powershot also has a Qur'an and schematics for a dirty bomb on his person, how's a court supposed to prove that his motive isn't . . . to take pictures of St. Paul's? Unless harassment is supposed to be the deterrent.)
In the States, of course, we settle these things in the courts. Most people aren't aware, but only one year ago precedent was established by Nussenzweig v. DiCorcia, a landmark case that defined the publication and sale of street photographs without the consent of the subjects as free speech. And for much longer has papparazzi photography been protected as a press freedom. Shoot away, shutterbugs.
* It's quite a lot of harassment, too—see the This American Life episode about the vast police resources dedicated to tracking NYC graffiti artists, some of whose work is only ever seen by these police.
Okay, nytimes.com, we need to have a talk. The "contextual dictionary," if that's what you're calling it, isn't cute or clever. It's not helpful. It's just a pain. The New York Times may be the paper of record, but I'm not putting up with a pop-up record for every word I double click.
Oh, I double-click words—and how. I'm a habitual screensifter. When I'm reading something on the screen, I click, double-click, drag, and highlight words. Any and all words, whole blocs of text, I don't care. Idly but mercilessly, and according to rules of symmetry and aesthetics so sure and precise I won't detail them now, I highlight and grab and drag sentences, even whole paragraphs, anywhere I damn well please. If I want to just nervously click on words, that's what I do.
But the NYT wants to ruin my games—and worse still, prevent me from reading at all. I'll be the first to admit that screensifting is an obsessive–compulsive disorder (and probably a genetically inherited trait for which I'm not to blame), but nevertheless, there it is, absolutely unavoidable and necessary to the process of reading the digital fishwrap. Now, the double-clicking that happens accidentally and incidentally when I read the NYT online produces an endless, intolerable string of pop-up windows, each presenting dumb definitions for words I already know—words like "to" and "seven" and "November". It's enough to make a body read washingtonpost.com.
Yet I want to read the NYT—I want to read the likes of Roberta Smith, shake my fist at David Brooks, curse the fortune of Jennifer 8. Lee. And like Mike DeBonis points out, the Grey Lady's Web site is actually quite good, probably the best in the biz—but for being wholly insufferable in this one overriding regard.
So, screensifting reader, let's collectively ask the NYT to reconsider. I made the button that you see for any and all to use who are sympathetic. Remember, while you yourself might not be afflicted, someone you know surely is. And all he or she wants is an opportunity to read about how the other half marries. Everyone deserves at least that.
So upload your own button and use as you like. Here's a larger version to resize to suit your purposes. (To that end, Mac users can use Resize.) And a mighty please and thank you to the Governess, without whose Photoshop software and expertise I'd be just another voiceless clicker. Everyone now: BBFC!
The next time I have a chance to see Marnie Stern, I'll be lucky—lucky—if I'm peering on my tip-toes around the lanky hipsters who hole up at the Black Cat. Just last week, she played to what I imagine was an intimate crowd at my favorite venue, the Warehouse (which can only really fit intimate crowds). A few days later, the District's own Chris Richards was singing Stern's praises; today the NYT's Kalefa Sanneh crowns her new album "the year's most exciting rock 'n' roll record" and, more to the point, says that a universe in which this record isn't a hit is not a good universe. Well, the universe might not be all bad after all: Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy gives it a recommendation with caveats, a provisional thumbs-up, a lukewarm "yes, but . . ."—the surest sign so far that Stern's album lives up to the hype. If I may add to it, I haven't listened to anything but Marnie Stern all week. She nails Helium's drone (but livelier), Karen O's vocals (but tinnier), and Don Caballero's rhythms (but rawer).
Granted, In Advance of the Broken Arm has only been out now for a week. Maybe the chatter is premature, but I say, L.H.O.O.Q. out, folks—elle a chaud au album.
I mentioned this elsewhere, but be sure to check in with Paddy Johnson at Art Fag City, whose post by post commentary at the Armory is the most exhaustive you'll read anywhere.
Charles Meissner, Fort Reno
Find time on Saturday between the hours of 4 and 6:30 p.m. to wish Art Enables a happy birthday. If you haven't visited recently, they're not at the MAC any long (no one is, in fact). But they're sitting pretty in new digs at Florida and New York Ave NE. Don't let the "NE" scare you, you petticoated pansy: It's just a couple hops from the NewYoFlo stop on the Red Line and easily accessible by bus. (It's the trip to Hornfleur that's going to kill you.)
The AE gang has invited a visiting artist to celebrate Art Enables's fifth: Abe Graber, who is celebrating his (holy crow!) 103rd birthday.
Art Enables is "is an arts-and-enterprise program for adults with developmental and/or mental disabilities," which is great, of course. You want to support them for the warm fuzzies you'll feel—but also because Art Enables promotes distinctive and sharp work. (You won't find a bigger fan of Charles Meissner's work than me.) In addition to paintings in many media, they offer some sculpture and zany craft objects. (If you've been to my house, you've seen the coasters.)
Come meet the artists and celebrate a ton of birthday years.
Michelle Johnson, I Just Called To Say I Love You
Yesterday G.p chatted with Jeffrey Weiss, newly minted director of the Dia Foundation, by phone and over e-mail. Thanks to writers like Jen Graves for generating so much discussion about Dia, which prompted a lot of questions for Weiss even this far out from his first day on the job. Our discussion follows.
When do you take the reins at Dia?
I won't move to New York until June; I'm involved in the business starting now but still completely immersed in NGA affairs, including the run of the Johns exhibition.
Is the Johns exhibition the last for the National Gallery?
You never know what the future holds, but for now I'd say that's a safe bet. Johns is probably it.
Nathalie de Gunzburg said that finding Dia a new home in New York is priority-number one. That's her priority as chairman. Is it also your first priority as director?
I have multiple priorities that are equal. One is to maintain all the existing sites under Dia's jurisdiction and ensure they continue to thrive. It's also true that reestablishing Dia's prosepct in Manhattan is a thrilling prospect and had a lot to do my decision to take the position.
Dia has always been connected historically to work that has thrived in Manhattan. Its relationship to Manhattan is natural for continuing its historical identity. And the Manhattan community misses very much Dia and the role it played there before when it had exhibition spaces in the city.
Given recent changes in museum culture over all, the way Dia might present an alternative to conventional museum culture is important to consider. In that respect I hope Dia will have a critical relationship to other art spaces in New York. Dia in the best sense has always represented a place or an idea apart.
Jerry Saltz is one of those Manhattanites who has criticized negatively Dia's decision to leave Chelsea. How do you respond to his suggestion that Dia made a mistake?
The only answer I can give is that it's our intention to return in a prominent way to New York. His criticism was premature.
To be clear—is Manhattan your current focus?
Manhattan is our focus, yes.
Can you go back to Chelsea? Is it a possibility?
Chelsea's under consideration, but so are other parts of the city. All bets are off at this point. The board and I need time to consider the advisability of establishing in different spaces around town. Developing the 22nd Street space for future use—optimizing that location—would require a large investment on the part of Dia. The question is whether it's a better investment to build a whole new space instead.
How does the revenue stream that the Chelsea space generates (rentals, etc.) factor into the decision?
It is useful revenue for now, and the building is therefore an "asset." But that does not, in and of itself, rule out redevelopment of that building.
Beacon is, after all, so close. Wouldn't the West Coast benefit more from a Dia institution? Or any place in between?
The current board and I feel that New York should be the next chapter in Dia's future, but that doesn't rule out any future expansion. Keep in mind that with the sites in the desert, Dia has a long and distinguished Southwestern identity.
Does Dia have a timeline in mind?
We're turning our attention to it right away, already. Obviously for everybody, the sooner is the better. But that's going to be the subject of so much conversation.
Who is on your shortlist of artists working today whom Dia will promote?
I don't want to speak about programming yet—I'll wait at least until I've actually taken the job. But yes, I do have a short list of candidates.
In your opinion, what was it about your experience as curator for the National Gallery that led Dia to tap you?
There's an intersection with what I've done and what Dia's done in the past. It's not just the Flavin retrospective—with respect to collection building, my focus for the National Gallery of Art has been artists working in the 1960s and 70s, areas that are of course under the purview of Dia. I'm both an insider and an outsider, I'd like to think. I do hope to bring certain museum standards to bear.
More work needs to be done in developing Beacon, and my experience at the museum will be useful there, since—as a space for safely and effectively showing art—Beacon's needs are related to those of the museum.
What's your plan for working with the Judd Chinati Foundation, which has dealt with funding issues?
No specific plans in that respect yet. Let's just say that I've got a lot of catching up to do.
A question for the Internet: What role can new media play for Dia?
There's definite potential for new media in Dia's near future—to be explored.
Michael Thompson, Kill All Artists (Cynic), 2000.On March 7 I'll be joining a panel to discuss art criticism, old media, new media, and dead media. "The Role of the Arts Writer: Critiquing Art Criticism" is the fifth in the Framework panel series held by Transformer Gallery; the panel will assemble at Provisions Library.
The other panelists include Rachel Beckman, who does the arts beat for the Washington Post; Glenn Dixon, former arts editor at the Washington City Paper and current WaPo Express contributor; Corcoran instructor and author Andy Grundberg; and Glenn Harper, editor of Sculpture. Hirshhorn curatorial research associate and manager of interpretive programs Ryan Hill will moderate; he, by the way, will be giving a lunchtime talk on Arshile Gorky and another one on March 2 about the current Horn of Hirsh show, "Refract, Reflect, Project".
Okay, names and hyperlinks dropped! With that out of the way, let's kick off the panel now.
One thing that I—as the lone, lowly new media writer—have to emphasize is that new media isn't the end of editorial standards for art criticism. There is an editing process that takes place, though it's a distributed process; and anyway, old media institutions are absorbing new media, for better and for worse; and anyway, it's not as if traditional media outlets don't have their own pitfalls. Washington Post art reviews are written with an eigth-grade audience in mind not because Blake Gopnik is stupid—not because Blake Gopnik thinks you're stupid—but because the Washington Post thinks you're stupid. Jessica Dawson's gallery reviews are only ever about 100 words long not because she has only 100 words' worth of ideas—not because local shows are only worth 100 words—but because the Washington Post doesn't give a fig more than that. [SEE UPDATE BELOW.]
New media has unique problems that go well beyond not-being-old-media. The first time I saw a G.p review listed on an artist's CV, I got nervous as all hell. I don't even always proofread, y'all. But that review was something like 800 words, not 80, and 800 words I'll stand by, not 80 words that don't exceed a single syllable. Since then I've been more careful about distinguishing between entries and reviews; I'm careful not to start a review with notes about which cereal I ate for breakfast or the bus ride on the way to the show, and yes, bloggers can be incredibly lazy about style, because many bloggers are bad writers, and even good writers who write blogs sometimes sacrifice style to get the posts up, to feed the beast. But this assumes that there's some sanctity to art criticism in the first place. I think there is: There are standards, duties, obligations, and so on that an art critic has to live up to; we are the few, the proud; etc. I just think that new media neither alleviates nor drastically reimagines these concerns.
But these are all ideas that the panel will address in detail in March. I figured it would be especially bloggy to invite all the internets to join the panel—just like when Buffy and Willow turn every potential Slayer into the real thing.* The discussion is "The Role of the Arts Writer: Critiquing Art Criticism"—consider it an open thread.
* A sci-fi/fantasy reference, per the terms of new media union rules
UPDATE: My comments about the Washington Post were both too brash by half and not representative of my opinion of the paper's writers, editors, and content. Occasional misgivings with specific articles are bound to come up in a field where subjective opinion is crucial; a fit of pique such as the one I've written is neither a substantive nor worthy way to express any sort of disagreement. Specifically, I do not believe that Post writers or editors belittle their readers and I regret saying so.
By not seeking comment from the Post about their direction of the section, I abused the unique platform that blogs offer to complement and supplement mainstream media coverage. A better journalist would seek comment and information before blasting any publication with this sort of diatribe. And since then, I've written on this blog and in other outlets critical and supportive things about the Post's art coverage with fairness and measured voice—I think I have become a better journalist.
—ed., May 2008.
Tyler Green and Richard Layoco both write today about next steps for Dia. Green writes, "In theory it could re-open in Chelsea, though if that were a likelihood it seems as if Dia already would have done that."
But think about the sunk costs at work. There's good reason to believe that Dia hasn't considered with clear eyes the option to suck it up and move back into its sweet Chelsea pad. The gambler at the race track whose just put his $2 in on a horse is more confident than ever that he's picked the winner—once a cost is sunk, confidence in the cost rises in order to diminish post-decisional dissonance. (This is called overly optimistic probability bias.) Dia left Chelsea and missed its best opportunity for a new space (the High Line elevated park in the meat-packing district). Of the options remaining, Chelsea is still the best. Since Dia hasn't ruled it out, it tells me that they're saving face and holding out for a different location, even if it's an inferior one—a twist on the loss-aversion fallacy.
Dia may be wed to saving face—but why would Weiss be? Another characteristic of the sunk-cost heuristic is the requisite of personal responsibility, which describes the relationship between investment and assumed responsibility. Weiss brings to the foundation fresh eyes and, most importantly, no responsibility for its previous decisions or commitment to seeing them through. He can say what Michael Govan couldn't: It was a mistake to leave Chelsea, and it's a mistake not to go back.
There may be a perfectly sound reason why Dia can't go back—I haven't heard one, but I'll let you know if there is.
Apologies to those students who did not realize that they had enrolled in the economics seminar. If today's lesson was an insult to your intelligence, the graduate section is down the hall.
On my next trip to Dallas I'm taking a brief sidebar vacation down to Austin to splash around in the river and play in the sunshine. Turns out, the Texas Biennial will be in full swing by the time I'm in town. Sounds great—so long as the Texas Biennial is serving margaritas, I'll drag my flipflopped feet to the galleries. (Confidential to TXBi: Could you throw some HTML at this list of artists? Some linkage, something?)
TXBi is showing at stops like Okay Mountain and Bolm Studios, which led me to wonder what the Austin Museum of Art was exhibiting. "The Paper Sculpture Show"—organized by Cabinet, Independent Curators International (iCI), and the Sculpture Center—is not terribly disappointing: "the viewer/reader is invited to assemble three-dimensional sculptures from flat pages designed by 29 established and emerging contemporary artists." Why you'd want to see these in a museum when you can buy The Paper Sculpture Book and DIY, I don't know.
Dia tapped Jeffrey Weiss, modern and contemporary curator at the National Gallery of Art since 1994, to be the Beacon-based institution's guiding light. It's like when actors marry after meeting on the set of a romcom: Dia and the National Gallery of Art brought together "Dan Flavin: A Retrospective", an enormously successful show that's traveled to seven cities.
Los Angeles, the city that will host the Flavin retrospective next, is also smiling. Nearly a year ago, director Michael Govan left Dia for Lacma:*
How's LACMA's new guy doing? Govan, formerly director of the New York-based Dia Art Foundation and a specialist in contemporary art, took charge of LACMA in April and wasted no time. He put his stamp on the museum's expansion plan by moving a store and cafe aside to give art a larger presence in the entry pavilion, grabbed a chance to rescue a historic modernist office designed by architect John Lautner and install it in the Streamline Moderne building known as LACMA West, persuaded high-profile figures to join the museum's board of trustees and helped enlist artist John Baldessari to design the imaginative installation of "Magritte and Contemporary Art."Lacma's happy, all right.
But it's not all laugh tracks and wedding bells! Any number of people have voiced objections to Dia's decisionmaking in Manhattan, among them, Jerry Saltz:
[In 2006] the institutional variety of that "power structure" veered from thrilling to clueless to criminal. Starting with the criminal—instead of renovating its tremendous 22nd Street Chelsea headquarters, establishing another building, or just opening a temporary New York space, the Dia Center for the Arts abandoned Manhattan by shutting down all of its rotating exhibition spaces in the city. It is mind-boggling and heartbreaking that not one of the trustees or the ex-director (who in a very Bush-like move abandoned the institution after he shut it down) resigned over or openly protested this irresponsible action.Dia currently has no space (and no known prospects for a space: The Whitney seized on the Chelsea High Line property, which will be designed by Renzo Piano, whom the Whitney brought on for the now-abandoned plan to expand along Madison Ave).
When Weiss moves in with Dia, presumably he'll want to do the thing that the Dia should have done from the moment it moved out of its Chelsea pad: move back in. Dia's ex was crazy to leave!
Now, of course, we have a hole in our hearts here in the District. (And a tired metaphor.) Who will the NGA hire?
* It's handy as far as acronyms go, but in all caps, LACMA looks stern. How much more approachable is Lacma? Isn't Nafta friendly?
Spencer doesn't lie: Lombardo flopped on "South of Heaven" last night. I was sure this would prompt chaos from the crowd (panic! at the disco), but that's the advantage to a fan base that is prone to rioting. They already were! The drummer drops the drum solo and no one in the audience skips a beat: elbows fly, blood is spilled, there is much wailing & gnashing of teeth, etc., etc., etc. Live by the sword—die by the sword. Or get a pass.
A shame that I missed Marnie Stern, though. She played at Warehouse, one stop on her grueling tour, the kind that would make the angel of death whimper. But who could skip Slayer? And who knew: Outside of Royal K. Memorial Stadium in full attendance, I've never seen so many people throw up the hook 'em horns at once. Hook 'em, Slatanic Wehrmacht! Hook 'em, every last one!
So this metaphor from Laura Sessions Stepp's Unhooked, excerpted in the WaPo review mentioned below, comes unhinged:
Your body is your property. . . . Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn't want someone to throw a rock through the front window, would you?The house cracketh up:
Yglesias: Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. You want to have a big party and invite all your friends over.When false entailments are drawn from a metaphor's source domain, hilarity ensues!Spencer: Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. You don't want people breaking in through the front or the back.
Me: Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. If you're ever in a bind you can always take out a mortgage.
UPDATE: Genevieve had a bit on Stepp metaphors a while back.
Far more excessive than the $1.28 million or more MoMA pays director Glenn Lowry annually is the apartment that the MoMA trust provides gratis. The New York Times refers to this as a "fringe benefit." No. Free haircuts are a fringe benefit. Midtown lofts are not part of any kind of scheme that could be considered a benefits program. That's more like a reeducation camp for personal expenses.
What's simply awful is this new NYT online feature that prevents idly clicking on and highlighting and unhighlighting text while I read. I'm sure that every person in my household does this, and you probably do, too. All of a sudden, double-clicking on any word opens a window providing the definition of that word. Words that one might idly, accidentally click in the course of nervous highlighting—words that need no introduction, such as "to" and "November".
This is irritating, but it is an elegant solution to a persistent problem in the Washington Post that I was discussing with an art critic the other night. WaPo articles suffer from the rule of the appositive. Hence "competition from the soccer World Cup" creeps into an article discussing a modernism exhibit in London—as if readers would naturally assume a different World Cup, as if readers didn't know what the World Cup was, and so on.
(To the dozens of cricket and alpine ski fans who I have offended in presuming that soccer's is the world's favorite World Cup, my apologies.)
That's a minor example, but the rule of the appositive can have a pernicious effect on style. The critic told me that the WaPo once insisted on defining Tintin in the text, which is just the kind of wet blanket that a newsdaily editor loves to throw on a good joke. I feel that I'm being condescended to when the paper insists on humorlessly toiling over pop allusions or, worse, giving up valuable review space to explain simple concepts in insultingly simplistic terms.
Now, everyone has his own issues with the WaPo arts coverage—Lenny Campello, area cheerleader, complains that the paper doesn't give any inches to metropolitan-area artists. (And he's right.) As for me, I wish it were written and edited with just a fraction of the insight reserved for the Book World section. Here—from a review of a book on hooking up:
Through sex, we discover irrefutable otherness (he dreams of being madly in love; she hates going to sleep alone), and we are scared and enraptured, frustrated and inspired.You'd never read anything like that in a visual arts piece—not because the same ideas aren't there, but because the section editors are afraid of using large words to address them. Maybe some hyperlinkage will make the editors less syllable shy?
There will be more discussion of criticism, local and more broadly considered, soon enough. Isn't it so predictable, though? The MSM fumbling with technology; the blogger writing the random, raving, rambling rant about it.
Tyler Green wants to compare bloggers' favorite architectural spaces to the list that AIA compiled by polling everyday Americans (always a senseless thing to do). The AIA top 150 includes such cornerstone examples of architecture as . . . the University of Texas's Battle Hall. I took a class there and remember as little about the subject as I do about the building. I assume Battle Hall eeked by (it's number 150 on the list, beating out this place, for example) after some rabid Longhorn forum confused the lever for Battle Hall:Best Buildings with Vince Young:Rookie of the Year.
On to five great American buildings! Number one: The University of Texas's Blanton Fine Arts Museum by Herzog and de Meuron. Right, right—that building never happened.
Five: World Trade Center (Minoru Yamasaki). It's hard to make sense of the Twin Towers now that they're gone: what they meant and how they worked as architecture. It seems strange to discuss them in terms of repetition and redundancy now. The Towers were a unique monument to empire, affluence, and bragadocious industry. There's nothing else in this weight class.
Four: Chapel on Thanks-Giving Square (Philip Johnson). Texas has better architecture than the state is given credit for, and the state's good architecture does more work than buildings do anywhere else in the nation. In Dallas, I. M. Pei's Fountain Place struggles under the shadow of Reunion Tower, a giant microphone that broadcasts schlockiness, which the city has in abundance.
When you're in Dallas, you don't look to the skyline, you look under it: Tucked away under the hodgepodge of Pomo and Gothic Revival buildings is Johnson's Chapel. There's no better contrast to the hairspray and swagger that make up a sort of ozone that permeates Dallas. And yet it's uniquely Texan. (See also: Rothko Chapel by Johnson in Houston.)
Three: Chrysler Building (William Van Alen). No amount of bad Deco or Deco Echo or future retro revivals could make me think any less of the Chrysler Building, the greatest building in New York and a quintessentially American structure.
Two: St. Louis Arch (Eero Saarinen). The only time I ever spent in St. Louis was driving through. But I told the person with me at the time that I loved this city, if only for the Arch. Any people that put up a monument to space and boundless optimism can't be all bad. (See also: Dulles Airport by Saarinen.)
One: 330 North Wabash (Mies Van der Rohe). 330 North Wabash (nee IBM Plaza) is the building that comes to mind when I think of the great American contribution to architecture: the skyscraper. Monadnock was Chicago's protoskyscraper, a gilled thing that crawled out of the primordial groundfloor, clawing its way toward air. 330 North Wabash is product of that evolution, the endpoint of all that progress—an uberbuilding. (See also: Seagram Building by Johnson and Mies.)
We here at G.p headquarters have taken it upon ourselves to solve the spine-tingling case of the secret valentines. Preliminary findings follow.
Exhibit A: Valentines
File photographs of the valentines may be viewed via this link.*
Exhibit B: Princesses
Presumed to be pawns in the game of a master puppeteer. Characters with known records in related crimes are not being ruled out, but as intra-animated criminal activity falls under federal jurisdiction, they are excluded for the purposes of this report.
Exhibit C: Maryland
In 1629, George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore in the Irish House of Lords, fresh from his failure further north with Newfoundland's Avalon colony, applied to Charles I for a new royal charter for what was to become the Province of Maryland. George Calvert died in 1632, but a charter was granted to his son, Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore, later that year. Today, the State of Maryland is the second most wealthy state in the United States, with a median household income of $61,592. Maryland possesses a great variety of topography, hence its nickname: "America in Miniature." The state bird, the Baltimore Oriole, can be seen throughout the state and is a source of much pride for Marylanders. The Chesapeake Bay provides the state with its huge cash crop of blue crabs, and the southern and eastern portion of Maryland is warm enough to support a tobacco cash crop.
Another fact: Each mystery valentine was postmarked "Southern Maryland".
Figure 1: Victims
A Venn diagram depicting the social relations within the network of valentine recipients ("the victims") (click to enlarge). Catherine, who received the largest share of valentines, holds a central social position within the victims network.
A review of this network—including RSS analysis and IM interviews—has revealed at least five potential valentine senders ("the suspects"): Matt F—, Rob G—dsp—d, Kan/shka, the Nabob, and Drew McD—.
More information on these individuals is provided in Figure 2 and the following section.
Figure 2: Suspects
Figure 2 provides a detail of Figure 1 with suspects superimposed over their corresponding intersections within the victims network. Please consult Figure 1 for clarification of the network. NOTE: Everyone in the network unions with Catherine.**
Additional analysis has revealed a prime suspect, one who intersects with every element in the network.
Figure 3: Prime Suspect
Every suspect is innocent until proven guilty, Governess—but that's one mighty convenient alibi.
* Yglesias has concluded that a suspected copycat crime is in fact an unrelated incident.
** Huh-huh-huh
Charles Long, We Wait a Long Time To See You, To Beat You, 2005.
Say you're the Whitney, facing the specter on another biennial—a scant 2 years after the abominable failure that was "Day Into Night". Who do you turn to? Who you gonna call? Nobody, according to Carol Vogel. The Whitney will be taking its own counsel, thankyouverymuch, entrusting the biennial to in-house curators Henriette Huldisch and Shamim Momin with oversight by chief curator Donna De Salvo. It promises to be a family affair—well, family and a few close friends:
Three outside advisers will help: Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem (and a former curator at the Whitney); Bill Horrigan, director of the media arts department at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University; and Linda Norden, a curator and writer who was the commissioner of the United States pavilion for the 2005 Venice Biennale, where she organized an exhibition on Ed Ruscha that traveled to the Whitney.Matthew Langley pegs it: "The complaining begins now." I'm not sure the complaining about last year's exhibit ever stopped—but sure, a safe, conservative biennial by committee is nearly as unappetizing as the prospect of another whacked-out biennimonster.
The Whitney ought to take some words of advice from SITE Sante Fe curator Klaus Ottman. But not these words:
I had concerns about doing another big, theme-driven group show because there have been so many. With all of these exhibitions—and I've done a number of them myself—they really end up being more about the curator and his ideas than about the art. I wanted to try to create an environment where the art can speak for itself as much as possible—where I would be more in the background. I'm still the curator, of course, but I thought that if you have the works without a theme, there's less filtering going on and there's more of a chance for the viewer to see the works on their own terms.That's just precious talk—the kind of boilerplate introduction every curator gives to a big show. No, Ottman has numbers:
. . . I didn't want to install the exhibition in a traditional way, where you have one work hanging after the next work. I wanted to have more works by each artist, or at least have every artist separate in their own space, where there wouldn't be any distractions. For that reason, I had to cut down on the number of artists, just in terms of the space. It's not huge, and my predecessor, Robert Storr, had 54 artists in his biennial. I couldn't fit more than 13 in it, so that's the number that we ended up with.Half the problem with the last Whitney biennial is that it had three times as many artworks as it should have. And four-fifths of those were bad, funky political pieces. That show was 9/2 awful.
The pared-down approach that Ottman describes is one with increasing traction, and for good reason—fewer artists means more consistent artists and fewer one-offs. But focus isn't a band-aid—the show still needs guts.
Done right, a biennial brings both artist and curator to the fore. Anne Ellegood's "Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas"—a Hirshhorn sculpture show—gave over whole galleries to nine sculptors. (Charles Long was one of the artists.) What the show says about Ellegood: She's focused on formalism to the exclusion of any other sculptural mode. So there are risks associated with a dense, laser-focused show, too—even one that's, on the whole, successful, like "Uncertainty." (In a confused move, Ellegood also lent each artist a gallery to curate, which the artists promptly stacked with all sorts of bric a brac. The artist-curated galleries looked like storage space for the curator-curated galleries, and it hurt the show.)
There are lots of examples, positive and negative—not least of which its own previous efforts—to guide the Whitney. The museum has to consider these but avoid the obvious mistakes it's so inclined to make.
Drew Goerlitz, Explico, 2005.
Fenty fundraiser Max Brown may not get a seat on the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission—but he did pick up this hefty Goerlitz sculpture at the WPA\C Art Auction Gala (so a little bird tells me). However, Brown's guests—the Fentys—left the auction empty handed. There's still time for them (and you) to reconsider your stingy/philistine ways: about a dozen pieces that didn't move are up for grabs.
Dan Flavin's permanent installation for Santa Maria Annunciata at Chiesa Rossa in Milan, 1997.
The Arcade Fire's new Neon Bible isn't kicking my ass. But I've heard enough to look forward to tapping my foot along when the band plays the album live. I was expecting something more ambitious from a sophomore effort and was willing to forgive them a misstep—but hey, they still sound like The Cure and I still like that sound, so. It doesn't surprise me to find out that the band self-produced the new album, which comes close to sounding like a live performance. The instrumentation is as spare and as crisp as on Funeral, and expansive pop songs that avoid a lot of clutter win me over. The Arcade Fire is touted for their stadium anthems; I like that they do it without a lot of to-do.
Not looking forward to fighting for tickets for this show, though.
Don Giulio Greco, priest of the Red Church in Milan, in a letter to Dan Flavin in 1996: "I'd be delighted if someone like you could help us to find an ambiance in our church. By 'ambiance,' I mean a living space, a place inhabited by the Word."
Jenna McCracken's Stasis isn't what you've come to expect of either wheel-thrown pottery or performance art in the District—her sculptural performance is severe, elaborate, and tight. That's McCracken throwing in the foreground, with assistants vacuum sealing, tagging, and displaying the artifacts. You can see the performance from 4 to 6 p.m. on Saturdays at Meat Market Gallery in Dupont Circle—but you know that already, because you read it in the City Paper yesterday.
Drum and Yglesias on media "silly seasons." More here, here, and here.
Not silly season: the NYT reporting on the bloggers whom John Edwards hired and offering that it's much ado over "doing what bloggers do — expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language."
This is irresponsible journalism.
The conservative press and blogosphere gin up these pseudocontroversies because they know what they can expect from a pliant mainstream media: reporting on the controversy that escalates the controversy itself. Legitimate media outlets examine these stories (e.g., SBVT, Obama's education) that are evidently bogus; in the process of examination, they provide equal consideration to conservative pundits who don't care whether the stories are bogus, so long as they further the conservative agenda. By the time the press comes around to the obvious conclusion—that the stories that Obama received Islamic fundamentalist instruction and that Kerry shot himself in Viet Nam in order to receive medals to further his latent political ambitions are bogus—the public has lost interest and the damage has been done.
The biggest media bogosity of our times? Intelligent design. Intelligent design wouldn't be a meme if the media had not treated the testimony of the overwhelming majority of all scientists and as equivalent to the testimony of the fringe flatworlders that make up the Discovery Institute. Professional ID supporters are inevitably associated with DI. By treating the controversy as a divide within the scientific community and inviting scientists to discuss it—one representing science, the other representing the Discovery Institute—the media puts this creationist wedge on par with science, lending a massive, massive subsidy to the Discovery Institute.
But Michelle Malkin is worse than a wedge—she's, well, she's a corniceps fungus, in fact, and I can't understand why more journalists don't do the responsible thing and innoculate against her spores, namely by steering clear of her stories, lest they find themselves climbing whatever tree she commands them to climb.
Definitely silly season: Heatherette.
Michelle Malkin delivers a new art–craft distinction: for the troops and against them! For; against.
What's with the gratuitous shot of Chloe Sevigny at the end of Ana Finel Honigman's review? of Ryan McGinley? I'd buy it as a cheap shot if Honigman were saying that McGinley's a starfucker, but her review has nothing but praise for McGinley's photographs from the Morrissey tour. It's all about how careful and compassionate his treatment of celebrity is—but the Scene & Herd–esque snapshot leaves me with a negative impression.
OK, let's talk celebrities for a second. Sevigny's poison, right? Why is that—what's the instinctive revulsion to her all about? She puts in decent performances and yet my impression is that she's universally reviled. I'm not immune to this, either.
Marc Newson, Lockheed Lounge, 1986.Reading the lazy lede in the Bloomberg writeup on Marc Newson's furniture show at Gagosian Gallery—the writer offers that "design must work, while art is wonderfully useless"—I figured it out: We could settle this fine art–applied art divide once and for all if each were to elect Team Captains and hold a draft.
Art wins the coin toss . . . Art is taking . . . no suprise here, Art's selecting Andrea Zittel with its first-round draft pick, a solid presence with real field vision. Next up is Design, and they're deliberating—there seems to be some excitement in Team Design's corner . . . what's this, what's this? Vito Acconci, my word, they snagged longtime Art star Vito "El Contusion" Acconci for Team Design!Hey, it couldn't be any duller than the Super Bowl.
Brook Mason writes about the decorative arts in Chelsea and elsewhere for Artnet. Lurking in his piece and the Bloomberg article is an unsaid suggestion that art lovers ought to be scandalized by these signs of conspicuous consumption. That's a joke. Neither seventy-five-thousand-dollar surfboards at Gagosian nor the $2.5 million Lockheed Lounge on sale across the street should offend anyone who's been to Miami Art Basel. Nope, there's no art–commodity distinction to blur, and if anything, I'd bet any surge in the high-end applied arts market owes to the super-inflated postwar–contemporary art market.
The kind of design I'd love to see in the hallowed gallery space: useless design, like Pieke Bergmans's amazing Crystal Virus designs.
LEFT: Pieke Bergmans, Crystal Virus, 2005. RIGHT: Bergmans blowing Crystal Virus.
Journalizing today. Later I'll have a review up on Christopher L. Williams at Meat Market Gallery and a response to Jed Perl's TNR feature. Currently I'm preoccupied by fear of the ice on the ground outside and the threat of the corniceps fungus—either of which could fell me on the way to the interview I need to do. You never know.
If you can find a better cowboy hat than this'n, I'll eat it.
For your listening pleasure: The USAisamonster.
UPDATE: The review's up on Express.
To clarify some confusion prompted by tonight's episode of Veronica Mars: If taken before before implantation of the fertilized egg (within 48 hours or so of sex), RU486 is emergency contraception—it's not an abortifacient. This season of Veronica Mars, however, is.
All the more disappointing that the show references Either/Or.
Check out Austin-based, friends-of-friends, Google-proof artists Pink Nasty and her brother, Black Nasty. If you don't like Pink Nasty's cover of "May It Always Be" by Bonnie Prince Billy, you may still not like Black Nasty's "Gimme Your Butt"—but you will have listened to two new songs.
James Panero passes on the news that Jules Olitski died in New York on Sunday. The Brooklyn Rail ran a piece on the painter last year that touched on Olitski's albatross: Clem Greenberg, who hyped Olitski as the great white postpainterly abstractionist hope. For a 1966 catalog essay on the 33rd Venice Biennale, Greenberg referred to his paintings as masterpieces; in a 1963 essay for Canadian Art, Greenberg likened him in superlative terms to Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland:
Louis is not interested in veils or stripes as such, but in verticality and color. Noland is not interested in circles as such, but in concentricity and color. Olitski is not interested in openings and spots as such, but in interlocking and color. And yet the color, the verticality, the concentricity, and the interlocking are not there for their own sakes. They are there, first and foremost, for the sake of feeling, and as vehicles of feeling. And if these paintings fail as vehicles and expressions of feeling, they fail entirely.It's not usually the positive reviews that haunt an artist's reputation, but 30 years later, people still talk about Olitski as Greenberg's gaffe. Neither Roberta Smith nor Donald Kuspit could resist mentioning Greenberg's ebullient praise in ledes on Olitski in 2000. The Brattleboro Reformer has a Greenberg-free obit.
Rightwing bloggers are mounting a full-bore campaign to embarrass John Edwards for hiring rad-fem blogger Amanda Marcotte to lead his presidential campaign blog. Most of these bloggers are calling her ugly (as in, not good lookin'). But nutsofascist Michelle Malkin has prepared a dramatic screeching of a few of Marcotte's angrier posts.
It may sound like these people want to tar Edwards for associating his campaign with a pottymouth progressive. Dragging a candidate through the mud's a bonus, but not the objective. With Marcotte, the rightwing bloggers are taking advantage of a function of the liberal media that the conservative media lacks: self criticism. Remember what Grover Norquist said about the press?
The conservative press is self-consciously conservative and self-consciously part of the team. The liberal press is much larger, but at the same time it sees itself as the establishment press. So it's conflicted. Sometimes it thinks it needs to be critical of both sides.Right—a parade of the worst from Pandagon's archives might very well make lefty readers and voters consider Edwards's decision in a negative light. If the meme gains steam, traditional media outlets will pick up on it. Once Edwards distances himself from Marcotte, liberal candidates will have effectively distanced themselves from bloggers altogether (no blogger's daily archives stand up to that kind of scrutiny). On the same coin, only the left dishes out that kind of criticism in the first place—dig up any eliminationist rhetoric you want out of Michelle Malkin's archives, and right-leaning readers will collectively shrug. Ann Coulter breathes gaseous sulphur and still appears on cable television.
The netroots is one of the few structural advantages liberal candidates enjoy, and conservative bloggers hope to establish now the media mechanism for neutralizing this advantage.
MoMA kick-started a month-long love-in for women with the Feminist Future symposium, which featured speakers such as Marina Abramovic and the Guerrilla Girls. Habseligkeiten's Lauren O'Neill-Butler and Artforum's Rhonda Lieberman took notes.
The NYT gives Judy Chicago a glance in advance of the March opening of the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which is now the permanent home for Chicago's The Dinner Party. The NYT piece mentions Hilton Kramer panned Chicago the last time the work was hosted at the Brooklyn Museum. "Pan" doesn't come close—Hilton brusquely dismisses Chicago, uh, from the dinner table. Here's his lede:
JUDY CHICAGO'S "The Dinner Party" will open tomorrow at the Brooklyn Museum, where it is scheduled to remain through Jan. 18. For the many faithful followers of the Feminist art movement, nothing more need be said. This is news—and indeed, review—enough. Never mind the Picasso retrospective. Forget the Hopper show. Male chauvinist pigs, anyway, wheren't they? For aficionados of Feminist art, "The Dinner Party" is the event of the year—and of many a year.Indeed—nothing more need be said. The rest of his piece, however, is below the fold.For the rest of us. . . .
The New York Times
October 17, 1980, Friday, Late City Final Edition
ART: JUDY CHICAGO'S 'DINNER PARTY' COMES TO BROOKLYN MUSEUM
BYLINE: By HILTON KRAMER
JUDY CHICAGO'S ''The Dinner Party'' will open tomorrow at the Brooklyn Museum, where it is scheduled to remain through Jan. 18. For the many faithful followers of the Feminist art movement, nothing more need be said. This is news - and indeed, review - enough. Never mind the Picasso retrospective. Forget the Hopper show. Male chauvinist pigs, anyway, wheren't they? For aficionados of Feminist art, ''The Dinner Party'' is the event of the year - and of many a year.
For the rest of us - or for anyone more interested in art than in ideology, especially when visiting an art museum -the esthetic pleasures to be derived from ''The Dinner Party'' may prove to be more elusive. It is not that the work is in any way hermetic or mysterious or oblique in either its form or its meaning. Nothing more obvious or accessible or didactic has been seen in an exhibition of contemporary art in a very long time.
The fact is, ''The Dinner Party'' reiterates its theme -the celebration of women, both real and mythological, throughout the ages - with an insistence and vulgarity more appropriate, perhaps, to an advertising campaign than to a work of art. Yet what ad campaign, even in these ''liberated'' times, would dare to vulgarize and exploit the imagery of female sexuality on this scale and with such abysmal taste? For its principal image, ''The Dinner Party'' remains fixated on the external genital organs of the female body. Its many variations of the image are not without a certain ingenuity, to be sure, but it is the kind of ingenuity we associate with kitsch.
To represent women's achievements through the ages by constructing a monument to their sex organs may not, in any case, be everyone's idea of an appropriate act of homage. No doubt it is intended to be an ironic comment on history, but that is not the way it comes through. The result looks merely crass and solemn and singleminded.
What is ''The Dinner Party,'' anyway? It is a vast installation, occupying a single large gallery, consisting of a triangular banquet table, 48 feet long on each side, adorned with 39 place settings. (There is no need, I suppose, to spell out the meaning of that triangle.) Each of these settings represents a celebrated female personage. The range is from the Primordial Goddess of prehistorical mythology to Virginia Woolf and Georgia O'Keeffe in the 20th century, with acknowledgements to Kali, Sappho, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella d'Este, Emily Dickinson and other female eminences along the way.
Each of these 39 place settings consists of a large painted plate, sometimes carved in high relief, a large goblet and oversize utensils set down on an elaborately sewn and embroidered cloth bearing symbols deemed to be appropriate to their subjects. The whole structure sits on a platform of porcelain floor tiles bearing the names of 999 other women who are believed by Miss Chicago and her Feminist colleagues to have ''made significant contributions to society; attempted to improve conditions for women; provided a model for the future, or illuminated an aspect of women's experience.''
Such a project required the collaboration of a vast work force, of course, and Miss Chicago is said to have enjoyed the help of some 400 men and women, who worked for five years on ''The Dinner Party.'' That aspect of the project is documented at considerable length in a didactic display that serves as a prologue to the installation at the Brooklyn Museum.
The work on the plates is Miss Chicago's, I believe, and it is the plates that dwell so unremittingly on variations of the vulviform image. It is in the separate cloth runners, however, that we occasionally encounter some details of real artistic interest. There is a nice bit of tapestry, for example - all roses, violets and purple iris against green foliage - in the place setting for Eleanor of Aquitaine, and some beautifully sewn folk figures in the runner for Mary Wollstonecraft (though the plate representing the author of ''A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'' is one of the ugliest in the show). But artistic felicities are few and far between at ''The Dinner Party,'' and the use of visual stereotypes is rampant.
Thus, for the Emily Dickinson plate we are treated to a sex organ framed in pink lace, whereas for the plate representing the abolitionist called Sojourner Truth we are given a gross caricature of African mask imagery. Then, as if the images themselves were not gross enough, there is the tacky and ubiquitous use of gold and glitter to brighten up the atmosphere. Taste is not Judy Chicago's forte.
Is ''The Dinner Party'' art? Well, I suppose so. After all, what isn't nowadays? But it is very bad art, it is failed art, it is art so mired in the pieties of a political cause that it quite fails to acquire any independent artistic life of its own. To this male observer, it looks like an outrageous libel on the female imagination.
Here's an ad that's popped up all over town (you can see the sign for the Farragut West Metro stop in the reflection on the glass). The pink part that's hard to make out reads, "Not just horror movie dead, but really, truly dead"—funny, since slasher flicks are the bellwether for imagery depicting violence against women.
There's no question that an ad like this isn't checked over by a full committee of marketing execs before it's launched in a metropolitan area. Someone found this campaign aggressive, and that person(s) was overruled—or, more likely, the ad was applauded because it is aggressive (the thought being that breast cancer requires action now and these ads should draw people's attention and force them to do something).
Oh, I did something all right—I called and complained. A staffer at the Susan Komen Foundation headquarters will return from lunch to find a stern message on her voicemail: I complained that the ad couples violent words with a woman's headless torso, with informative text appearing in marginal and tiny font, and that the ad is misguided at best and irresponsible at worst.
Now, it's hard to get too worked up about an ugly ad by a fundamentally decent organization, and it would be in especially poor taste to complain about ads about breast cancer and leave it at that—breast cancer is a terrible disease that affects almost everyone at some point or another, and organizations like the Susan Komen Foundation is basically doing the Lord's work. Two close girl friends of mine recently had reason to mention it. That's reason enough for me to donate the dozens of dollars at my disposal toward research—though I could use advice (in particular that of you breasted readers who have experience with or opinions about these organizations) regarding whose cause is worthiest.
Feministing has complained that the Komen Foundation favors a "save the titties!" message, which is tacky. On the other hand, the group supports Planned Parenthood, which is a decent thing to do and also irritates the religious groups that continue to insist on a link between abortion and breast cancer incidence. Other things that don't cause breast cancer: antiperspirants, underwire bras, the pill, fondling, silicone implants. Treat yourselves, ladies!
