Erik Wemple writes about a WaPo style convention I like to call the Rule of Appositives. I use a lot of nesting in my own writing—I have to, since I'm writing about a topic for people who aren't necessarily familiar with that topic, one that has a very particular argot. So bracketed explanations don't bother me: they're efficient. But at the newspaper, the Rule is, where there's a way for an appositive, there's a will for an appositive. Wemple find two examples of things that the WaPo explains that it probably doesn't need to explain—the iPod ("an expensive music-playing device that has become a pop-culture icon") and blogs ("an online update with much of the same news but viewable by anyone with a Web connection"). You gotta assume that some portion of the newspaper's readership overlaps with the percent of the population who made the iPod popular and use the Internet.
Blake Gopnik writes a great review of Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, a soccer film—"portraiture in its purest form"—that I tried my best but failed to catch at the Hirshhorn a week and a half ago. By "my best" I mean that I got there on time, expecting the usual handful of art wahoos that shows up for experimental film screenings. Instead there was a line stretching around the perimeter of the building. Moreover, this was a line for just the first viewing; the museum had already added a second, later show and distributed raincheck tickets for that. Oh, and the line? Full of soccer hooligans. Where are these people during the day, and what do they do when the World Cup isn't on? It was like a LeftBank happy hour had been relocated to the National Mall.
Gopnik's review is clear and informative, and he avoids a lot of traps he could have fallen into: lame soccer jokes or, worse, informed soccer references. But I must protest his self-effacing jab at "sport-ignorant art critics". Some of us are reeling today not just from the weekend's schedule of art-fair parties and gallery openings but from some devastating losses to the Golden State Warriors. I'm with Sir Charles—Golden State sounds like a place where they play a lot of soccer, damnit.
UPDATE: Yglesias saw the film and says it's sux0rz. One thing he mentions that Gopnik neglected to emphasize: Zidane muses metaphysically about soccer over the soundtrack of the film. I like Gordon's films, but that sounds intolerable.
What awful news—Eastern Market burned down! This is truly sad news, right as spring was hitting its stride.
Courtesy of Crooked Timber. There's also news of a hilarious attempted theft. I believe that one of Banksy's collectors (or someone who's considering buying?) reads this blog; hope this news isn't too stressful to read.
Pick up today's City Paper to see my feature on artDC. Why did some organizations get a different quote for booths than others? And why do the directors of the fair plan to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in this outing? How the hell is that going to work? Answers (to the first two questions) are available on newsstands and online now.
This weekend, I'll be blogging at City Desk* from the fair. I don't know yet what I'll have to say, but I think the first post will be about al Qaeda in DC. So keep an eye over there. (I'll crosspost using my nifty del.icio.us sidebar widget.)
Now, there appears to have been a shooting and possible murder on my block. I know this because a police officer deputized Wreck while I was walking him. "Could you take your dog around and sniff for clues?" (Clues? What the hell does a clue look like? Could you capture the assailant first? You did see this dog, right?) So I'm going to try to avoid being the day's second as I walk to meet Sommer and venture over to the art fair.
* To my DCist friends, who ask whether they have to stop slogging on City Desk: Who reads DCist? Big Head Rob is clobbering y'all.
Tavares Strachan, The Problem of One Thing Existing Simultaneously, 2006.
One broken Budweiser bottle found; the other cut to match it precisely. No mean feat.
Hannah Greely, Joe, 2004.
In another piece, Molly and Johnny, which Greely showed at the Hammer's "Thing" exhibit, there are a pair of Budweisers—one smashed to bits, I believe. The objects are polyester resin cast and painted.
Jasper Johns, Painted Bronze, 1960.
This work came about, of course, after Johns heard Willem de Kooning boasting that dealer Leo Castelli could sell anything, even beer cans. Naturally, Castelli sold this piece.
Sorry, folks, only one-hitters until I'm out of the weeds. Courtesy of Crooked Timber, here's a neat home-page randomizer plugin. My browser is never closed, and I have no idea what the homepage is set to, but if memory serves Becks recently searched the universe, and her soul, for a fitting home page.
On Friday, entrance to artDC is free to one and all. Pick up a paper, read about it, and head over. Assuming there's scene to report, I'll be blogging from the fair grounds.
That is, if there's wifi. There's always the Warehouse nearby—though, Jessica Gould reports, there may not always be the Warehouse. Ouch.
. . . plays tonight at the Warehouse, 9:30/$8. What I didn't mention here is that no two sources list their names spelled the same way. Wtf, Usaisa.
It's been quiet here, but only here. In the Express I have reviews of Barbara Probst's "Exposures" at G Fine Art and Alberto Gaitán's Remembrancer at Curator's Office. Click here for a Guardian piece about Jonah Goldberg, Richard McBeef, Va Tech ribbons, and Cho Seung-Hui. Then, on Thursday, pick up a Washington City Paper for a feature on artDC, the art fair that hits the District . . . on Thursday. I'm running out to see two shows just this second, so I have no time to gab, but let's catch up later, okay?
UPDATE: You know what? At some point in the past several years, I dropped the two spaces after a period. Am I making things up, or wasn't that the rule?
Many congratulations to the roommate, who will now be hawking his blogospheric wares from an Atlantic Monthly address.
From Yglesias's comments
During last night's art collectors panel, I got served.
I asked a simple question. Twice during the panel discussion, someone mentioned a NYT story about collectors buying art, site unseen, having seen the work only through jpegs. It was this article, about a show at Gagosian of new works by Tom Friedman that sold out before the opening, in large part because Gagosian set up a private Web page featuring Friedman jpegs and then invited select collectors to buy these works online. (Discussed here not so long ago.) I phrased my question by first summarizing the article and then asking whether there's anything peculiar about buying art, site unseen, based solely on an impression from a jpeg.
The panel members, well, they protested. They thought the real nut of the issue was in the first thing I said, which I lollygagged right past. What about the damn dealers, eh, selling art over exclusive invitation-only channels? Selling art but not selling it to them? In my question (my question) I thought I was touching on something ineffable, a boundary that distinguishes collecting from purchasing. If collecting is a thing that art lovers do that builds cachet distinct from the prestige of the artworks, is there a value or ethic that informs that activity? And two of the six collectors there did tell me afterward they had hesitations about buying art that way (one said outright he'd never do it).
They said so afterward, because a confusion had broken out over the panel right after the question. Some were musing outwardly: Well, I don't mind of course when I'm getting the phone call or the password. The moderator was still trying to figure out what the hell I was asking (okay, so it wasn't a simple question). Someone in the audience joined in. It was chaos! Okay, it was more like mumbling—in any case, the answer that emerged, to one of those questions anyway, was no.
In my work, reviewing a show having only looked at jpeg attachments would be a discrediting thing. That's where I was coming from, and it just pushes that button to read or hear about collectors buying art without seeing it. I don't mean a piece seen at a different show or at a fair or on an earlier date; no one expects someone to stare at the art while she's writing the check. And I don't mean buying a piece by an artist whose work you know and trust and maybe even own—I know that's different, I see a gray area. And I know that some art doesn't require or even ask to be seen—I know! But I'm not talking about those pieces.
Buying art online, the work itself very much unseen, as straightforward as that. This is still collecting. Ninety-nine percent of artists won't care, and tombstone tags by a piece list name-title-date-materials-c/o—never the way by which someone was moved to buy the work. Collecting is support and stewardship and buying art online still accomplishes those things. It's only egregious if collecting art, as a practice, is a way to establish a different kind of bond between art and viewer. It isn't. I had confused my own instincts with a broader notion about collecting, of which I'm now disabused. It isn't participatory, it isn't theatrical, and as obvious and senseless as it might sound, it isn't a way of viewing. It remains weird to me and I'd check the store's policy about returns if I were you, but buying art over the intertubes: fine. I'm a devout instrumentalist on the topic.
Nevertheless, the answers of the collectors on the panel (James Alefantis, Monica Bussolati, Allison Cohen, Melvin Hardy, and Michael Pollack) didn't jibe with an attitude they all endorsed earlier in the evening. Hardy, asked something about what it means to collect, said the most classist thing I've heard all year. (Classist, as in class warfare–ist, not classiest.) He said something to the effect of, You get the measure of a person by what he puts in his homes. And to a one, the crowd nodded affirmatively, which vies for the most clueless expression I've seen all year. Hardy said, You can tell what kind of relationship you'll have with a person based on what's hanging on his walls. Much nodding. You can know a person based on the first thing you see in his home. Unanimous.
What, huh? You need to collect good art to be a good person? If there's a moral imperative to collecting art, but no prohibition against speculating on works site unseen, then I'm convinced that the art collector is a soul assassin–sniping away at our opportunities for good character with the click of a mouse, from the comfort of his own artfully decorated, morally sound, broadband–enabled homes. A samurai who finds his honor at the sample sale battleground that is the art fair. The checkbook, his katana; the openings calendar, his code. His flute plays no mournful tune, for it is filled with champagne.
So I'm walking away with my preconceived notions intact: Art collectors support artists and, crucially, vitally, serve as stewards of artworks. Collecting is a peculiar hobby. It takes a lot of money, and (right now, anyway) it's a decent way to invest, too. But collecting isn't appreciating—not necessarily. I'd never considered the thought that collecting makes you a good person, but no, for chrissakes, no it doesn't.
Many thanks to Civilian, Transformer, James Alefantis, Marissa Long, and Bridgett Reyes for organizing this series, by the by.
From the call for entries for the new media contest hosted by artDC:
Video works should be single channel in DVD format; sound works must be recorded as a CD. For internet art, no viruses please.After all, viruses were so 2005.
Writing on Douz and Mille in the WaPo, Jessica Dawson mentions some changes in the art market:
One is the rise of the Internet as a vehicle for showing artwork, facilitating its sale and publicizing artists. The second is a proliferation of art fairs. When the fairs touch down for a long weekend in London or Miami, dealers are nearly guaranteed binge buying. Ask even those gallerists who oversee permanent spaces and they'll tell you that the real money gets made on the road.It's worth expanding on exactly how art mover through the intertubes. Of course, some artists sell work over eBay and MySpace and so forth—all those painting-a-day artists, for example. But that's penny-ante stuff.This convergence of events has spawned a gallery that avoids almost all the costs of rent and utilities; essentially, overhead is plane fare. It sounds like a dream but brings with it new problems -- the biggest being how to show an artist in depth or in context."
In the larger contemporary art marketplace, I can't come up with a gallery that sells exclusively via jpeg. The NYT ran an article a while back about a Tom Friedman show at Gagosian that sold out in minutes, well before anyone viewers actually saw the work:
It's another sign of the acceleration of the contemporary art market: New works, even in the six-figure range, are selling by digital image alone. For the Friedman show, Gagosian set up a private section on its Web site, accessible only by a password sent via e-mail message to select collectors.That's still a gallery that oversees a (prominent) IRL* storefront—as is every gallery in the article (New York's Cheim & Read, Chicago's Kavi Gupta, and L.A.'s Blum & Poe. And those gallerists take pains to note, almost defensively, that buyers are familiar with the works of the artists that they're buying site unseen. The jpeg sale falls somewhere between an exclusive VIP preview and a waiting list.
In a smaller market like the District's, where fewer established and more emerging and unknown artists show, this phenomenon's rarer. (But not unheard of.) Even a virtual gallery like Douz and Mille hosts only a select number of small images online of artists' work.
The significance of the art market can't be understated in shaping the gallery space. . . but I think Dawson does exactly that, perhaps inadvertently. Plane fare is far from the only overhead involved: renting a cubicle—renting cubicles at Basel and ABMB and Armory and so on—adds up quick. There's plane fare, accommodations, the cost of shipping work—that adds up, sure—but the biggest costs are the 4 and 5-digit prices to rent the cubicle for 4 or 5 days. It's not the case that fairs or the Internet have rendered rent an obsolete cost for art dealers.
* IRL = in real life. Stay with me, folks.
"Washington Color School" does not mean "colorful and showing in Washington". I'm looking at you, umpteen gets-it-wrong press releases. That is all.
Some form of these remarks has been posted all over the political interwebs, but Mark Kleiman has my favorite take: What can Congress do to compel computers computers and servers from the White House over their objections? The executive branch claims, or so it seems, that the White House is imbued with executive privilege, that a penumbra of protection assures all their activities. To complaints that the use of RNC e-mail is a transparent ploy to evade the document preservation standards of the Presidential Records Act, Karl Rove has said (I paraphrase) that he is the Dungeonmaster; Jedi Majority Leader mind-tricks don't work on him; and when Congress is ready and able to tap four blue mana and roll a 2d12, they can put in a request to the Justice Department to execute Contempts of Congress and wait for the matter to reach the Supreme Court. Kleiman's answer to the White House is not my favorite because it's the most accurate—I don't know how this works—but it is the most delicious. Deploy the Sargent at Arms!
I've been keeping a wary eye on the pet food recall situation; to date, Wreck's favorite food—well, okay, not his favorite food, which is tortilla chips: the little guy really loves his tortilla chips—hasn't made an appearance. Cold comfort, though, as I watched Wreck get sick over and over tonight. I don't think he's ever been so ill. Hours later, now, he seems okay, asleep on his ratty dog pillow and twitching and woofing in that muffled dog-dream pitch, actually, as I write. With the dog there's no holding the hair back or suggesting some Vitamin Water; he's certainly no good for help cleaning up, and the best I can hope for, as I'm following him all around with paper towels, is that I don't ruffle him too hard when he looks at me with that look of total incomprehension over what his body's doing to itself, and in so doing make him puke pathetic all over again.
He's not quite done, I think, but it's too late for me to be too productive or noisy. In the interest of passing the time:
Oh, and have we ever talked about what an amazing literary convention the radio is for this show? All these folks associated with high-school football, tuning in as they drive to AM talk radio about the high-school football team.
WaPo:
Members of a Senate oversight committee yesterday recommended a shake-up of the Smithsonian Institution, starting with its governing board, whose members were depicted as out of touch with the management of the 160-year-old museum complex.This is exactly correct, and it's enormously encouraging to know that Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) et al. are thinking about this prescription.
Sorry to sell you refried beans, but this is the course I hoped for here and here. In the latter post, I wrote:
If Sen. Grassley (R-Iowa) et al. are serious about mandating reforms within the Smithsonian, they should abandon the pointless, punitive redresses—like capping the director's pay at a truly noncompetitive rate and freezing a $17 million funding increase. Small's abuses were heinous, but far worse for the Smithsonian in the long run were the Board's efforts to disguise or exculpate his offenses before they came to light.Did you know that the Board of Regents includes Vice President Dick Cheney* and Chief Justice John Roberts? Or that they spent "$20,000 for a dinner in September 2004, and met only 1 1/2 hours in January"? But in all seriousness, what more do you need to know than their attitude toward oversight? That's all you need to know. Throw the bums out!
DISCLOSURE: I contribute to Eye Level, the blog by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
* A fan of Helen Frankenthaler, I understand.
Ten days ago I mentioned here that Thomas Jefferson University was selling off two more Philadelphia portraits by Thomas Eakins. There was no question that Alice Walton would pounce on these—but less than two weeks after the sale was announced? Can the paperwork even move that quickly? Evidently: Walton acquired one of the Eakins paintings, a portrait of Benjamin Rand, for an undisclosed amount. And just as before, she'll be paying no taxes on the purchase. Check out the Guardian piece for background.
Tonight you'll find me at the Velvet Lounge, where The City Veins are playing their first show. Charles promises that he/they don't sound like Rush, but don't take his word for it: You can catch their whole album here.
To this debate between Jonah Goldberg and Henry Farrell, about whether culture is properly considered when evaluating the merits of European welfare states, I'm compelled to introduce a piece of evidence. (Let me catch you up: Goldberg says that France's healthcare system is too teat-suckingly Frrrrrrránch to work on Americans, what with their Protestant ethic and tradition of self reliance. Farrell says this is stupid: a deeply unserious encomium to fixed national values, which are subject to disagreement and rapid change and, in any case, shouldn't be the markers of our destiny. Goldberg clarifies that he alone among the left and right is assigning culture the non-zero significance it should hold in health care policy decisions. Farrell says this is stoopid: a "two-step of terrific triviality".)
Below the cut, then, is an (arguably NSFW) ad from France that someone e-mailed to me:
As far as I can tell, it's legit—a print ad campaign by Aides (a French nonprofit, founded by Daniel Defert after Michel Foucault's death, that promotes awareness and good health). If at all possible, I'd rather not pay tax dollars toward these.
Okay, fine, so this campaign is neither here nor there w/r/t the blogospheric health care debate. But it does really drive home the values divide between colonies and continent when it comes to health, and in particular sexual health.
Assuming it's legit, it's something that, I imagine, wouldn't pass without comment even in gay old Europe. Tres risqué. But not even were real-life, person-sized, sex-hungry insectoids prowling ur MySpaces would you find this warning posted on a Big State campus kiosk. It's not the squicky image that makes the campaign so outrageous—well, not that entirely, or rather not the first-order squickiness of the image.
Bathing the character of good health in white (white skin, white linens, white furniture: white light, white heat)—while painting the sexual predator as darkest ebony—plays on a well-worn, white=good, black=evilbadevil metaphor system. Notwithstanding 300, Katrina news coverage, Imus in the morning, etc., this is a visual that doesn't play in America. At least, not without criticism. Especially when the topic is AIDS, it shouldn't have any purchase: In the States, nearly half of all HIV-infected people are black, 2 percent of African Americans have HIV—the horrifying statistics go on. Phil Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute, says correctly, "AIDS is a black disease, full stock, through all lenses."
In France, however, integration is an enormous social problem, and this ad speaks to a characteristic myopia that traditionalists have on the subject of race. It also reveals a society that's perhaps unclear about HIV/AIDS squares with people. (Not to mention how the virus is transmitted.) Perhaps the less-alarming incidence rates in France makes for a disease that is ultimately more frightening—hence, monsters run amok with a venomous, sexually transmitted disease, rather than people living with a chronic, sexually transmitted infection.
The good things you can say about the ad, however, are the things disqualify it from the American public square. Kudos to the French for showing both a man and a woman enjoying sex. These look like hetero pairings, but hey, I'm no entomologist—there's room for straight and gay alike to be squicked out. However they're doing it, one thing's certain: These people are enjoying sex. Say what you will about arachnids, but spider is clearly getting the job done. And our totally hott monsieur appears to be enjoying some GGG, dangerous, kinky action. Also: man butt! This ad's right out. Stateside, sex and AIDS are fairly graphically divorced. A stars-and-stripes AIDS campaign would encourage you to abstain from fucking bugs until you're married.
Is there a trans-Atlantic message to take away: a message that bridges cultures? Don't fuck bugs? Kids et gosses: Ne baisez pas les bogues. Au moins, pas sans préservatif.
Architectural preservationists and the Sarasota County School District have struck an agreement over the fate of Riverview High School, an important work by Brutalist architect Paul Rudolph. The school board wants to raze Rudolph's deteriorated (and overcrowded) béton brut buildings, important examples of regional modernism—specifically the Sarasota school—in order to build a parking lot. Opposed are those who would prefer to walk, damnit. Kidding—opposed are those who hope to preserve, rehabilitate, and potentially repurpose Rudolph's campus and find another place for students to park.
The agreement gives preservationists one year to raise $20 million to fund an elevated athletic field (a soccer field and tennis courts) with parking underneath. I don't know the ins and outs of this and can't say how likely that is, but one detail from the (prior linked) article irks me. It's a quote from Bob Early, associate superintendent and chief financial and business officer for the Sarasota School District:
[H]e does not have "a spreadsheet that shows two columns: what it would cost to renovate and what it would cost to rebuild," he said. "Our sense is that we can't renovate the building."Why? Why doesn't he have that spreadsheet?
Yeah, where are the art history blogs? When I spoke recently on a panel about art criticism, I asked this question myself (thinking it made a better ripose to new-media enthusiasm than that old saw, which everyone kept offering, about how much better things read when they're on inky fishwrap that you can hold in your hands). JL hazards some answers, most of which are on point. I've given it some thought from a journalistic perspective, but I'm on my way to a press conference, so I'll have to come back to it.
Nobody in the District stops for anything but Starbucks in the morning, whatever, whatever. A gimmick that gets people bit-torrenting Bach's "Chaconne" is a win for old-music nerds. But I must interrobang: Is there a better proper name for an instrument than the Gibson ex Huberman‽ Ben suggests the Hammer; the Cannone Guarnerius (Canon, Il Cannone, Cannone del Gesu) comes close.
(Little-known fact: In 7th grade, I dubbed my saxophone Bobby Valentine, after the manager of the Texas Rangers.)
These potato-sack dresses that people are wearing: thumbs up. These look good. Some of them are kitschy and vintage, and we all agree that those are wrong. But even the future-bebop stuff is better than the dread bohemian clothing and, god, above all, those horrible, blocky, wooden beads. Correct me if I'm wrong, but any woman can wear these potato sacks, right? They obscure the figure, so there's no issue there, leaving only concerns about color and design and style.
Now, back to playing tackle football using broken glass for cleats.
In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. —Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Artforum, 1967The historian Kristine Stiles writes, "It was not until Sol LeWitt (United States, b. 1928) published 'Paragraphs on Conceptual Art' (1967) and 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' (1969) that conceptual art began to be considered a stylistic movement."
Even just that derivative fall from "Paragraphs" to "Sentences" reveals LeWitt's fundamental concern with nested concepts and dimensions. That would be the concern that fueled his early point-line-plane cubic sculptures; his later work, however, suggested a more complicated geometry between the viewer, artist, and participant, one that generated looser results that deviated from the work of his art-and-language peers.
The seminal conceptual artist died yesterday. This is a question perhaps better left for another day, but I have been wondering this afternoon: We have his instructions and descriptions, and I would imagine some were never executed. Do we still have his work?
Jonah Goldberg blasts Francis Fukuyama for advocating (in Goldberg's words) a "post-sovereign European system". Goldberg alleges specifically that Fukuyama contradicts positions he's taken previously; however, once Goldberg bothers to read the column, he retracts his objection. Good times.
In his Guardian piece, Fukuyama writes, "The EU's attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a 'post-historical' world than the Americans' continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military." Sure, you may be asking yourself, his analysis is intriguing—but where is the art that comments on transition, from the perspective of a citizen entering into the post-historical state?
Glad you asked. In fact, artists from Balkan and former Yugoslav Federation nations have touched on the subject through performative artworks, providing a distinctly liminal perspective. In nations such as Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia, debate about the prospect (or specter) of European integration is pitched. (Each of these nations is expected to join the EU by 2012–2015.)
The rapid, even cataclysmic political and economic transformation of the region informs the work of the Croatian artist Andreja Kuluncic and Serbian artists Marina Abramovic, Tanja Ostojic, and Milica Tomic. All of these artists are women, all performance or performative artists, and all artists who examine transition through the lens of feminist critique. (They are not the only artists who are working on these themes or in this metier.)
Of these artists, Ostojic deals with the political transition most explicitly. L'Origine du monde is, unambiguously, a rephrasing of the 1866 Courbet painting by the same name. In her photograph, Ostojic has hidden her sex behind panties imprinted with the EU's gold star halo emblem. With this intervention (and in other, subtler ways), the artist subdues the eroticism of the original painting: Her body lay prone vis-à-vis the viewer but neither wholly exposed nor aroused.
Ostojic's sex is a crucial aspect of her identity as an artist. So are her panties. In this photograph, they are Ostojic's intervention, the tweak in her appropriation of Courbet's image.* The panties are a surrogate for the EU flag (itself a symbol of the European Union), and as such, they provide the context for understanding Ostojic's sex. Her sex is a surrogate as well, suggesting her Serbian identity.
The relationship between the EU and Serbia in this context is arguably uneasy. Her identity, though obscured, is visceral and indelible—but the EU is abstract, a product, something to be worn or discarded. Are the panties censorious? What does membership to the EU cost? Pace Fukuyama, who views the EU as the end of the world, does the EU brand itself as the origin of the world?
Fukuyama identifies the EU effort to "transcend sovereignty". By casting herself in the context of a notorious, scrutinized image, subject to an intense gaze, Ostojic acknowledges the tumultuous nature of Serbian sovereignty. By placing herself literally within the broader narrative of European art history, she casts some doubt that the EU is in fact post historical. To Ostojic, admission means submission.
* I'm taking for granted here the transformation of painting into photograph. Walter Benjamin would find it irresistible. Maybe there is an inversion at work between capitalist and communist values, but I'm focusing on the panties. I do think, though, that the substitution of artist for model is not arbitrary, but it's also not radical. Perhaps a post for another day.
Five'd get you ten that the Washington Post's Robin Givhan would knock this Nancy Pelosi story out of the park. People like to complain about her (Givhan, that is—though Pelosi has her fair share of maligners) and about fashion criticism generally, but Givhan's found an exceptional niche. She's just about the only writer who reports on the intersection of fashion and politics, which might seem like an obvious, even mandatory, beat for a writer in the capital; she manages it, though, without writing again and again that the District is or ain't the fashion pit you'd believe it to be. When a fashion crisis becomes an honest-to-goodness political flap—who's wearing Ahmadinejad this season? Nancy Pelosi, feminist Democrat or fawning Dhimmicrat?—she's the go-to critic.
(Too bad she's already written her Obama and Pelosi features. Maybe if Givhan were a better blogger, we'd have her updated insights.)
A couple of Superpixel programs have made my life easier, and you might like them, too. Resize is an easy, free program for resizing image files—perfect for the Mac-based art & photo blogger in your life. Put is an absurdly handy little FTP client; use it when you want to jog a file (like an mp3) to your site without a lot of to-do. Put is strictly for uploading files, but that's just what you want in a quickee transfer. It's free, too.
Congratulations to Sarah of Forward Retreat, who just defended her Master's thesis. I'm assuming it was gravy. Here's hoping that academic release means she'll have more time for piddling on the Internet.
One of the Going-Out Gurus put a song on his April mix tape that I recently put on a mix tape, too. An intersection! One that I will share with you, gratis, until someone sues the pants off me or absorbs all my awesome bandwidth. Hell, I'll put up the whole playlist. Note that almost none of these acts will be appearing in your area any time soon.
Peter, Björn, and John, "Young Folks". Confirming yet again that pop improves with latitude. Don't know whether I'm going to plink down the $20 to see the Swedes' show at the 930 Club at the end of the month—but this song alone is worth the price of the PB&J album.
The Vaselines, "Slushy". My roommates live on the bleeding edge, and not often do they get behind the vintage-bin stuff I play. But I've caught every one of them humming something or another by The Vaselines, which owes either to their catchy hooks or the fact that I won't put them away.
Stereo Total, "I Love You, Ono". Carnival music? French–German Tropicália? I don't, in fact, love Ono.
Os Mutantes, "A Minha Menina". Bona fide Tropicália. I don't want to hear about how you saw them at Pitchfork. This song appears on most any mix I make from April through September: so sunny. And Wreck sings along to this one.
The Fall, "Totally Wired". Can you believe they just released a new album? Their 26th? Jesus Christ. It's got a Merle Haggard cover on it—that sounds pretty sweet. Once, when I was a wee lad, I asked an older and wiser record store clerk I sort-of knew what really great Fall album I should check out, and his response was something like, "First one [idiot]." Thank you, Letters to a Young Rock Fan.
Love, "Alone Again". Where's the love? Here's the love. (Getting bored with this format.)
Dusty Springfield, "Some of Your Lovin'". A beautiful, confident, experienced, bittersweet song. It's absolute gold.
Harry Nilsson, "Everybody's Talkin'". Not only will Wreck sing along to this one, but on the part where Nilsson launches into his stratospheric falsetto, Wreck matches pitch, duration, tone, the whole shebang. Wreck won't let you leave his love behind.
Ris Paul Ric, "Valerie Teardrop". Picking up the pace a little, I turn to local-boy-done-good Chris Richards. This song I think of as his solo single, in part because someone else put it on a mix tape for me once, also because I remembered it well after seeing it performed live just once.
Beach House, "Saltwater". My current Baltimore sweetheart act. (I understand there's a big war between the District and Baltimore scenes? Sorry, I'm totally rooting for Baltimore. Charm City, let me know if you need any intel from the inside.)
Visitors, "I Know". These guys are friends of mine from Austin. Recently, after I'd been out playing some records with some friends, I wrote these guys a retarded, drunk message on MySpace. If that's not grounds to have my Internet taken away, I don't know what is. I'm fond of the walking-tempo, minor-key arpeggios on the organ.
The Usaisamonster, "No More Forever". I had to buy, like, three different EPs by these guys to find the copy of this song that I wanted. On some recordings, the treble falls off entirely during that blazing guitar riff. Accept no substitutes.
Marnie Stern, "Grapefruit". How great is this album? Pretty A-OK, says everyone. The combination of maximum-riffage noodling with stop-and-start metrics and layered, fussy vocals is a profitable formula. I think she could mine three albums' worth of material without tweaking her concept too much, and damnit, I want to listen to all those albums. Spencer listened to this song for the first time and observed something about the frisson of perfect pop clarity that arrives with the heavy chords. That's about right: Despite all the things he and I are saying about it, it's really accessible music.
Sentai, "Everything Change Everything". More District favorites.
Stephen Malkmus, "Jo Jo's Jacket". Every once in a while a song from Brighten the Corners will electrocute my brain. I've never been all that into Pavement; I don't feel like my behavior lumps me with the at-risk community for this affliction. This song from Malkmus's solo stuff greatly enhances the threat of guilty-pleasure aneurysm.
TV on the Radio, "Mr. Grieves". An a capella Pixies cover comprising twenty-eight (!) vocal tracks, every last one recorded to creep you right the fuck out. In Tunde Adebimpe's phrasing, a lyric like "What's that floating in the water?" takes on the sinister inflection of ghost story. He's the stuttering librarian who says that things have always been amiss in this town, the shuffling carnival hand who wouldn't ride the ferris wheel under the full moon out if he were you.
Susannah Hoffs, "I'll Keep It With Mine". I'm collecting versions of this song—Dylan, Nico, Fairport Convention, Rainer Maria. This one by Hoffs (ex-Bangles) is my favorite.
With the departure of Kindred Spirits last month from the National Gallery to its new home in Bentonville, Arkansas—bye, Durand!—and Thomas Jefferson University's announcement last week that it will sell two more of Philadelphia's best Eakins paintings—bye, Eakins!—I figured an update was due on Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges museum. All's well in the open marketplace, right? Not by a sight, I argue in The Guardian.
More in frivolity than in anger, I wrote up Yoko Ono's District appearance. It's a nice day out, Ono didn't follow me home, and Phoenix can't catch up with Dallas in the Western Conference. So I'm cool.
But Ono's performance was bullshit, and the people who brought it together could do better. Frankly, I was surprised to see Kerry Brougher lending his name to a public stunt, if that's what that invitation-only performance was. (I'm hoping, though, that Brougher didn't realize that Ono planned to spike the whole thing, and that he would've gone somewhere with his questions given the chance.) The Hirshhorn ought not lend its campus to toothless protest art, even (especially!) a gift from a celebrity artist. (And neither is this the first time the Hirshhorn has shown cookiecutter political art—though the Jim Hodges piece was temporary, and contemporary, and not wholly without merit.) Maybe Ono could plant a tree here, instead.
Now, if Nora Halpern and Welmoed Laanstra can draw an artist of Yoko Ono's prominence to the District, all for the good! But dear God, don't actually bring Yoko Ono here. So far Halpern and Laanstra have done good work, and other nonprofits might take note that they're 1) getting out of the gallery, 2) sponsoring local artists, and 3) putting on great shows. Ono? Oh, no. Not so much. That's one strike.
Then there is the fact that Nora Halpern and Kerry Brougher are married. That's a second strike, and a critical one and a critical one, seeing as how the piece really isn't up to Hirshhorn snuff.
Someone give Kerry Brougher a raise. Over the weekend, the Hirshhorn curator set a new standard for patience as he endured humiliation beyond that which anyone should be asked to endure: He interviewed Yoko Ono. Before a live audience, even. Ono, well, she wasn't having it.
She had just finished a performance, sort of, at The Arc in Anacostia,* put on by Street Scenes DC. As a video from 2000 was projected on a screen behind her—a dance-y video featuring brightly colored blobs of color and bad, if typical, video installation music—Ono prowled the stage, occasionally shouting into her mic the way that a preacher might bark a hallelujah. A version of my favorite Ono piece, Play It by Trust, was assembled on the stage floor; she scattered the chess pieces with a kick. The video ended, the lights came on, the piece was done—so far, well, not so good, but we move on.
Except Yono didn't stop performing. The Q&A began with Brougher and Ono, seated together at a table. Perhaps Brougher expected the interview to go poorly. His first question to her was a real softball pitch—roughly, "Why do you work in so many media?". But before he'd phrased the question, she had crawled under the table and exited stage right. She came back with measuring tape and reported on the various ratios of Kerry Brougher ("His arm is longer than his head"). She banded his bicep with what appeared to be white tape and snubbed his questions, when he could get them off, with condescending quips. Once during his questions she laid down and intoned like a witch in a seizure—not, it seemed, to pantomime frustration with boring Brougher, but out of ADD compulsion. In an answer to one question, Yoko dragged Brougher under a black tarp, mumbling and moving about in a way to suggest that the two were, I don't know, snogging.
The tarp lay ready offstage at the ready, so maybe, I figured, the whole thing was a setup. If that's the case, what the hell was I watching? And if it wasn't—what the hell was I watching? She either set up Brougher as the fall guy, the straight suit to her mystic oracle, or it was a joke, and I missed the Mavs/Suns game for next to nothing. In the bright light of day it seems more likely a big laugh at my expense, but at the time I was so supremely embarrassed for Brougher, I could barely watch, and spent most of the Q&A spectacle trying to blind myself with the flashlight keychain I was handed before I entered.
Next came a more straightforward Q&A with the audience, during which I began to doubt whether other audience members were seeing the same thing I was. She was asked what artists and musicians inspire her ("Life" was her answer) and what she thought about the war ("Imagine peace" was basically her answer—really, she is that kind of ethereal alien). Ono revealed that the wishes tied to the wishing trees she's planting around the world will be collected and housed in an Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland. She didn't choose Iceland for its dense population of wish-fulfilling magical elves, or not solely for that reason. She chose Iceland because, as the northernmost nation on the planet, it's closest to the Universe. (What the hell, Ono?)
Finally, one woman asked whether it was possible for an audience to opt out of art—the kind of art that engages and requires an audience—by not participating. This pressing question had been growing in my own mind; had that woman followed up by asking whether we'd get out of there with any time left in the second half, I'd've had the kind of all-is-full-of-love communion that Ono was trying to foster. Distressingly, Ono's answer was "no". There was no exit. We were part of her art, like it or not. I took it as a bad sign for the Mavs.
What came afterward was unambiguously performance, and unambiguously awful. Assistants spread through the audience like tithe collectors, winding viewers' wrists together using thread from huge balls of yarn. (Concern for the game behind me, I feared I wouldn't escape before someone tried to shave my head.) That keychain? Harmless, alas—no sweet retinal release to be found there—but not merely a tchotchke. It was a magic wand, a wish-granting lamp. Totally useful.
Things began to take shape as the lights went out and another video came on: this one, Onochord, has an excellent title. Also, the disturbing feel of that 1984 Hillary Clinton clip. Ono led the crowd in a chant for peace ("War is over if you want it/ War is over now"), as a giant onscreen Ono flashed sequenced light messages at the audience. Decoded: "I Love You"—or "You Obey Ono"? The standing ovation, not to mention my permanently dilated eyes, revealed the discomfiting truth.**
When the lights came up, Ono wished everyone a beautiful life. Then: parting gifts! To participants she handed out shards of a person-tall vase destroyed during the war, promising that in a decade we'd all meet up and reassemble it. Hooray! Fuck.
I took the opportunity to sneak out before I could be fitted for white sneakers and betrothed to the rest of the crowd. Ian observed, as we decompressed on the Metro ride home, that he'd experienced similar cognitive dissonance after seeing Carolee Schneeman deliver a lecture at a museum. (That was not billed as a performance, at least. But man, people sure do complain about that Schneeman appearance.) Maybe the problem is with Fluxus; it's definitely not the case that all performance art is so self indulgent. I suspect, frankly, that Ono is just lazy. Her best ideas behind her, and those never being nearly so compelling as her celebrity, she's settled into her role as global swami. (There are worse ways to retire, but few so grating.)
Democratizing art—this is an OK goal. But trees, magic, wishes, feelings, everything is music, love is all you need, sha la la la la—God, how that stuff makes me cranky. Uncharitable though it may be to fisk an aging sprite, it devalues the currency to say that every instance of creativity, or gentleness, or happy furry puppy story time, is art. Or if it is, that it's worthwhile.
Final score? Phoenix 126, Dallas 104. Yoko Ono 1, Kerry Brougher 0. Me? I have a new keychain, and some literature I'd like to share with you. . . .
* I missed the beginning of the performance, owing to confusion about which way one exits the Southern Avenue Metro station. I'm lost without a grid, often even when I'm on the grid. There was too much cloud cover to tell which way was north, and I can't read maps. One couple made the same mistake I did, but when we turned around after realizing we were getting nowhere, they gave up and got back on the Metro. (Oh, happy couple!) So, if Ono planted a tree in Anacostia, I didn't hear it.
** Should you find yourself or a loved one indoctrinated by art, a circuit-breaking combo of ice-cold Budweiser, fridge-cold pizza, and stone-cold Blade III is encouraged to reset the brain, as Ian and I can attest.
The Guardian reprints two poems by Barack Obama, recently discovered in a probably-better-off-lost college literary journal. Obama's deployment of the enjambment, an honest-to-God literary technique, sets his poetry apart from most of what I read as the editor of my alma mater's humble literary journal. But it's still familiar stuff: Pop is about a grandparent, which is the True North of collegiate poetry, the subject toward which every student knows to steer even without a compass. (The other pole being sex, a much less welcome topic, as these are written in hopes of squicking out the reader, often with alarming success. Toward the end, one of Obama's enjambs inadvertently crosses into this territory, but that's just a happy accident of bad writing.)
PopThe (typo? neologism? slang?) word "shink" has been retained.Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes,
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me;
I stare hard at his face, a stare
That deflects off his brow;
I'm sure he's unaware of his
Dark, watery eyes, that
Glance in different directions,
And his slow, unwelcome twitches,
Fail to pass.
I listen, nod,
Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,
Beige T-shirt, yelling,
Yelling in his ears, that hang
With heavy lobes, but he's still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He's so unhappy, to which he replies . . .
But I don't care anymore, cause
He took too damn long, and from
Under my seat, I pull out the
Mirror I've been saving; I'm laughing,
Laughing loud, the blood rushing from
his face
To mine, as he grows small,
A spot in my brain, something
That may be squeezed out, like a
Watermelon seed between
Two fingers.
Pop takes another shot, neat,
Points out the same amber
Stain on his shorts that I've got on mine,
and
Makes me smell his smell, coming
From me; he switches channels, recites
an old poem
He wrote before his mother died,
Stands, shouts, and asks
For a hug, as I shink, my
Arms barely reaching around
His thick, oily neck, and his broad back;
'cause
I see my face, framed within
Pop's black-framed glasses
And know he's laughing too.
Obama's other poem, well, it makes no sense.
UndergroundCourtesy of Ron Silliman.Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.
On the subject of the now cancelled choco-Lord—about which I still so don't care—my main man Julian Sanchez has a plausible reading:
[T]here's one obvious way of understanding the piece that is both relevant to Easter and (one would think) not especially offensive to Christians. The chocolate bunny, after all, is a familiar Easter icon. Presenting a detailed, realistic chocolate Jesus at this time of year underscores the contrast between that cuddly, cartoonish image and the suffering Jesus is supposed to have endured in the Passion and resurrection. On this reading, the sculpture could be seen as a critique of the shallow public performance of the holiday in light of its more profound or authentic meaning.This, to the question of why, exactly, Christians are upset about the piece. Probably Christians are bothered because Jesus is depicted nude, and everyone knows that the historical Jesus was never naked. Still, if the piece included, I don't know, a caramel loin cloth, the response would have been the same, so the question still stands.
The Boston Globe has the scoop. I'm doing my part to boost the Google presence of this critical exposé.
I'm someone who cares not one whit about chocolate Jesus sculptures—especially since, as you'll see below, the "Immaculate Confection" quip was claimed a long time ago—though I do appreciate the snarky e-mails about it. Don't say I never gave you anything in return!
Here's Tom Waits performing "Chocolate Jesus" on the David Letterman Show:
