Janet Cardiff and George Bures-Miller, The Killing Machine, 2007.
Jury duty today.
UPDATE: Wi-fi! I'm sitting at a table with George Hemphill. Both of us just got called for voir dire.
UPDATE II: Wi-fi in the courtroom, too! Since they made a fuss about my digital voice recorder, I'm not sure why I'm able to use my laptop in here—pretty sure I could record a courtroom conversation better with my Macbook than with my Olympus—but no one is telling me no, even after I rather pluckily plugged my charger into the wall socket.
There was a sweet moment in the jurors' lounge. Sitting across from the table where I was working was a blind woman, probably in her late 50s, cute as a button. When the administrator called her number, she answered "Present" and said, under her breath, "Yes! I'm going to be on a jury!" Imagine the mental fist pump.
On Sunday everyone should go visit the Crafty Bastards fair. Jurying that show is one of the funner things I get to do every year. For next year, however, I have a vision for a booth of my own. I think I'd like to set up shop as Sarkt the Illithid Sorcerer and sell a range of hand-crafted potions, spellbooks, summoning scrolls, wands, alchemical supplies, restorative draughts, and so on. A picture of what I have in mind. The entries we receive for Crafty Bastards are all pretty great, but every year (okay, both years) I register the same complaint: not enough unguents!
This is the name of a peppy mix I made to do while I'm researching boring stuff:
μ-waveMatters of larger import will have to wait for at least a week. But right now, I'm cracking myself up with that one.
Those of you interested in the protests in Myanmar may want to keep an eye out for Kerry Howley's coverage on Reason's Hit & Run blog. She's one of exceedingly few people you'll meet who has visited Myanmar and can claim any degree of expertise on the political lanscape therein. Unfortunately, it appears that police have begun violently suppressing the protests.
Bedouin the Beguine
I Want To Hold Your Land
I Can't Get No Saudis' Faction
This Scud Be the Start of Something New
Oman the Range
Papa's Got a Brand New Baghdad
Sheik to Sheik
I've Grown Accustomed to Her Fez
It's a Sin To Tel Aviv
These Fuelish Things
UK police seized a Nan Goldin photo, titled Klara and Edda belly-dancing (1998), from collector Elton John, on grounds that the image constitutes child pornography. I looked around and couldn't find an image to put up here, but it shows two naked girls horsing around at home. The image is provocative because one of the girls' bodies is distorted in such a way that her vagina is presented directly to the viewer. The viewer is supposed to confront the fact that the young girl is entirely vulnerable and yet totally safe. The photo was published in The Devil's Playground and has been exhibited in a whole lot less liberal places than London without a peep. Surely the police will come to their senses: No one actually believes that viewing this photograph within the context of a museum exhibition is tantamount to practicing pedophilia. Absolutely no one believes that's what's going on.
UPDATE: A reader writes in with an image, noting that the auction details list the title as Edda and Klara Belly Dancing. I'll go with that title in the tombstone text.
I will accede to the inevitable howls that the image is not safe for work and post it below the cut, but let me remind all of my standing policy: Reader, if ever an employer gives you trouble over an image seen on G.p, I offer to call that employer and explain, in whatever detail proves necessary, the difference between art practice and pornographic function. Should your employer prove immune to a deontological appeal, I'll happily craft a consequentialist argument (a lie, if need be) that you are not a pervert. Click with confidence.
Nan Goldin, Edda and Klara Belly Dancing, 1998.
The Stranger's Jen Graves discussed the piece in a short review from 2006:
There is plenty of variety in the images, but you stop dead in your tracks when you hit Edda and Klara Belly Dancing, Berlin (1998), a Nan Goldin photograph that came into the museum's possession just last year. Both of the young girls are laughing and playing; one of them is wrapped in a scrap of sheer costume fabric and the other is lying on her back, her knees bent under her, her legs spread wide for the viewer. Though this is a perfectly natural moment, the dark open hole of the girl's vagina is harrowing. My first thought is that she is about to be raped, or maybe is being raped already, by me, by my looking. I come to my senses. She's at home, playing with a friend and laughing. She's fine. I'm the one who's afraid.
Christopher Büchel finally responds to Geoff Edgers's questions with a prank of an answer. What a messy divorce between Büchel and the museum. Does anyone think he'll be seeing exhibition time in the next decade? And woe to the next artist who shows at MASS MoCA, who will no doubt be asked to wade through a trial's worth of legal documentation before setting foot in the space.
I recommend you check in with Modern Kicks for closing statements.
If you say that out loud, it scans like, "Spare a little change for the homeless." See?
The Washingtonian profiles Lili Montoya, my favorite bartender in the city. So pro style.
Emerging from the salt mines to note that I've been selected to participate in this year's Maryland Art Place Critics' Residency program. I don't have a ton of information for you—I only just got the call last night, and I couldn't totally hear what she was trying to tell me because I was in the midst of a nonpolitical journalists' happy hour. But I'm pretty sure she said I was in, and that means I'll be spending some time in Baltimore. More details to come, I'm sure. Back to work!
Predictably, the boys at Armavirumque are flustered by Columbia University's decision to host Iranian premier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday. James Panero objects that the Secret Service should provide security for Ahmadinejad, despite the fact that this is entirely routine for any visiting dignitary of his stature. Roger Kimball gets down to brass tacks:
What can one say? That [Columbia University] President Bollinger traduces the idea of "a community dedicated to learning and scholarship"? Yes. That he elides the notion of free speech and the more limited privilege of academic freedom? Yes again. That his incontinent demand that his university provide a forum for all ideas, no matter how toxic, erodes freedom by making it vulnerable to fanaticism? A third time Yes.Frankly, Ahmadinejad's visit strikes me as an embarrassment for everyone involved. War hawks like Kimball would have us believe that Ahmadinejad's mere presence before a podium would transmit ethnosectarian conflict throughout a pliant audience, or something, but in fact Ahmadinejad was ably laughed down by a lecture hall's worth of college students in response to his claim that there are no homosexual people in Iran. Is Ahmadinejad ridiculous? A resounding Yes. Is Roger Kimball ridiculous? Why, Yes, him too.
On the other hand, Columbia University had no compelling reason to invite Ahmadinejad to speak in the first place. Because Ahmadinejad is ridiculous—he is not a significant political actor within Iran. Perhaps Bollinger et al. realized the utility of giving Ahmadinejad a major stage, i.e., that he'd say something foolish, as he is prone to do, and that might diminish political pressure at home that we face an imminent threat in Iran. That's a very instrumental view of the academy and one I doubt that Bollinger et al. endorses, but I'm having a hard time understanding why Columbia would make a fuss over Ahmadinejad given the sheer number of people in the world who are more important. And even that liberal-instrumental view makes little sense, as Ahmadinejad no more runs his country than George W. Bush runs ours, so whether he looks fierce or foolish in the eyes of Americans has little bearing on whether Dick Cheney gets his war.
At the very least, yesterday's debate wasn't a stunt compounded by a stunt. Had Ahmadinejad visited Ground Zero and laid his wreath, or whatever, I'm sure I would have vomited. Whatever Ahmadinejad is, he is not our ally, and he does not mourn our losses. I disagree with the decision to prevent Ahmadinejad to visit the site, and it makes me feel like a hypocrite to say that I'm nevertheless pleased that he didn't. I'm surprised that he wasn't allowed to, in fact, since scarce little else would provoke war hawks so much as a photograph of the great enemy "desecrating" the site of September 11; and the Bush administration has never proven squeamish about using September 11 for political ends when the opportunity arises.
Since Tiny Shiny first posted "Crank Dat" I have been following Soulja Boy in the news, and it must be said that we still lack a clear understanding of his role within the Crank Squad or the goals of the Crank Squad more broadly. We know that Soulja Boy releases his training videos over the Internet. And we now know that he recently infiltrated the entire University of Texas Longhorns football squad, recruiting them to his crank-dat regime and lending Soulja Boy a militia of unparalleled strength. The ability to negotiate from the I-formation with QB under center? Consider Soulja Boy a regional authority to be reckoned with.
Soulja Boy's modular message has been adopted and transformed by other figures in the global hip-hop community who are interested in cranking dat for a variety of purposes. Using freely available p2p technology, I was able to locate instructions for cranking dat vis-a-vis a number of significant world leaders across the globe. In addition to Soulja Boy's original Crank Dat Superman, I was able to acquire:
It must truly warm the cockles of Jed Perl's heart to see Joan Snyder listed among this year's bunch of MacArthur Foundation prizewinners. And for Snyder, this award falls under the category of just deserts.
By the 90s, Snyder felt so snubbed by the art world that she was eventually led to write about it. In a 1992 essay she titled, "It Wasn't Neo to Us", she complained about the early 90s emergence of so-called Neo-Expressionists, young bucks like David Salle and Julian Schnabel who were greeted by the art world as the revitalizing, restorative figures who would save painting. But we're still here and we've been here all along, Snyder was saying. Since the 70s, she (and several peers, mostly women) had never strayed from an expressionist program, but the critics and curators had nevertheless left them behind, only to fawn over more of the same when it was done by men in a more masculine fashion and with less success.
Typical. This time around, the powers that be recognized the oversight, and she's begun to receive her due. Following a critically regarded retrospective at the Jewish Museum in 2005 comes half a million dollars to close out the decade. Schnabel has that kind of coin many times over, no doubt, but no one's calling him a genius. Way to play the long game, Snyder.
Joan Snyder, And Always Searching for Beauty, 2001.
On a side note, I love the MacArthur Foundation prizes. It's so affirming to read about progress, and to see parity across all the fields of human endeavor: the robotics researcher standing shoulder to shoulder with the soprano, everyone wearing laurel crowns, humanitas ascendant.
UPDATE: "Way to punch above your weight," says ModKix, referring to the Danforth Museum of Art's Katharine French, who organized the Joan Snyder show that graced the Jewish Museum.
Culture Warrior reads the NYT T Mag piece on the District and asks, "[W]hat the fuck are they talking about?" My response falls along the same lines. And wtf with that Legally Blonde Real Doll they use for the slideshow!
A piece on Noelle Tan in this week's City Paper. Writing this piece made me realize that I desperately badly need to take a road trip. I'm more of the summer/desert driving sort than the Vermont/autumn turning kind, as evidenced by my affection for America's "Horse With No Name." The research is vigorous, the methodology beyond reproach: It has been proven absolutely that only those people who really get off on the idea of driving around in an El Camino in the glare and the heat will tolerate that song. The point being, I'm planning a road trip for next summer, and you're going to read this article now.
Dean Young, "Ode to Hangover":
Hangover, you drive me into the yardNo, no, no. Ode to Hangover goes:
to dig holes as a way of working through you
as one might work through a sorry childhood
by riding the forbidden amusement park rides
as a grown-up until puking. Alas, I feel like
something spit out by a duck, a duck
other ducks are ashamed of when I only
tried to protect myself by projecting myself
on hilarity's big screen at the party
where one nitwit reminisced about the 39¢
a pound chicken of his youth and another said,
Don't go to Italy in June, no one goes to Italy in June.
Protect myself from boring advice,
from the boring past and the boring present
at the expense of an unnauseating future:
now. But look at these newly-socketed lilacs!
Without you, Hangover, they would still be
trapped in their buckets and not become
the opposite of vomit just as you, Hangover,
are the opposite of Orgasm. Certainly
you go on too long and in your grip
one thinks, How to have you never again?
whereas Orgasm lasts too short some seconds
and immediately one plots to repeat her.
After her I could eat a car but here's
a pineapple/clam pizza and Chinese milkshake
yum but Hangover, you make me aspire
to a saltine. Both of you need to lie down,
one with a cool rag across the brow, shutters
drawn, the other in a soft jungle gym, yahoo,
this puzzle has 15 thousand solutions!
Here's one called Rocking Horse
and how about Sunshine in the Monkey Tree.
Chug, chug, goes the arriving train,
those on the platform toss their hats and scarves
and cheer, the president comes out of the caboose
to declare, The war is over! Corks popping,
people mashing people, knocking over melon stands,
ripping millenniums of bodices. Hangover,
rest now, you'll have lots to do later
inspiring abstemious philosophies and menial tasks
that too contribute to the beauty of this world.
UuueuhI don't know about the hangover as the opposite of the orgasm, but Young's argument has fine moments. This turn,
eeeeuuugh
eeuuuu
uugghggh
uuuuggheeuh
. . . and immediately one plots to repeat her.in which Young registers that the narrator does "repeat her", is especially fine. The narrator "could eat a car", but instead says that "here's" something else—note how the verb places him in his present situation (as it were, in bed). He could eat a car, but he isn't going to eat anything at all, because "here's", then, a "pineapple/clam pizza and Chinese milkshake". O rly. The suggestive imagery is alluring, but not exotic or rarefied; new experience but nevertheless variations on classics; somewhat more vulgar than fine. Indulgent—like the vigorous, athletic, 'round-the-clock sex that establishes the beginning of romantic relationships . . . and followed by that perfect enjambment ("yum"), spoken in a voice that breaks with the narrator's voice, a lusty and dumbly monosyllabic, lip-licking declaration of joy.
After her I could eat a car but here's
a pineapple/clam pizza and Chinese milkshake
yum
Good lines about sex, but the hangover itself seems less successfully established, until that last pair of lines, which are awfully redeeming. "[T]hat too contribute to the beauty of this world": A person couldn't (and perhaps rightly shouldn't) believe that about himself while he is hungover; it's comforting to think, though, that it might nevertheless be true of whatever small works he can eke out of the day.
Constitutionally I cannot write about hangovers in literature without passing on the greatest description of a hangover ever written, by Kingsley Amis in Lucky Jim:
Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.
There's nothing quite like hearing Benjamin Buchloh growl the word "Rauschenberg". So I'm sorry that I missed his lecture on Saturday morning during the "Issues of Content: Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art Today" conference at the Phillips Collection—if not merely for more opportunities to hear him speak. Following his presentation, speakers made glancing references to Buchloh's presentation, which, by all accounts, was maximalist and incendiary, so in addition I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to listen to his lecture.
Buchloh's topic: "Museums, Formerly of the Public Sphere, Now of Spectacle." That shouldn't have come as any surprise to a roomful of people who follow his writing, right? The recap I heard from an art historian covered all the familiar topics: Art suffers from the dilapidation of the tripartite, antagonistic system between critical, historical, and museum functions that, in tandem, serve to keep art honest. The breakdown of this system has resulted in a "competency of judgment crisis". That's as best as I can say, gleaned from secondhand sources and conversational references—familiar stuff.
Jeff Koonz, Blue Diamond, 2005.
The next speaker to present a paper was psychoanalyst, critic, and curator, Suely Rolnik (“Lygia calling"). I didn't think we were doing the whole Semiotext(e) thing any more, and I was predisposed to take a dim view of what she had to say. It was certainly a broader presentation on Lygia Clark's work specifically and Neo-Concretism generally than I'd been exposed to; and notwithstanding a few mentions of the benefits of psychoanalysis in art criticism, it was not so offensive as I would have expected from a lecture on the "therapeutic" value of Clark's work. Here, Rolnik means something other than the generic value for this notion, "therapeutic": If I understand her correctly (probably don't), she means for a post facto understanding of the subjective relationship between artist and work and also between work and viewer, after the fact of art's "instrumentalization" by the market. Working from memory and scratchy notes, I take it that she means that there was this subjective potential meaning between Clark's work and the audience, but that was "neutralized" by the interference of the market, which codifies both spaces and conditions under which art can be experienced and categorized.
A bellowed "so what?" might have derailed her presentation. She laments the loss of the therapeutic, clinical value of art in the marketplace. Is that essential to the experience of art? It would seem not, as her answer in the case of Clark is to provide thorough documentation of her performances ("proposals") alongside whatever artifacts remain. I don't understand how this evades rather than accedes to the trappings of the market. But she never establishes what this clinical value is supposed to impart, except a vague sense of political well-being.
The art market being what it is, Rolnik asked (and I paraphrase), how is it possible to convey work that is ephemeral but renewable? (She meant it as a rhetorical question, but really, someone's already answered that: Félix Gonzáles-Torres.)
One concrete bit of information Rolnik extended that I will in turn pass onto you, fortunate reader, is that Lygia Clark resisted the Tropicalia movement as a category for her own work, and Neo-Concretism should be rightly considered divorced from Tropicalia altogether (though I don't know why). Labor under your illusions no longer!
Left: Abdel Abdessemed, Real Time, 2003. Right: Abdel Abdessemed, Birth of Love, 2003.
Manolo Borja ("What To Do?") presented a more optimistic paper than his hand-wringing title suggests. He began with a graph comparing the modern museum with the postmodern museum (please imagine some triangles in there somewhere):
Modern Museum
After a tangent on the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art that detailed some of these problems, he offered his prescription: Museums should reevaluate the property-centric nature of collections in favor of an "archive" format, in which orality and micronarratives are encouraged. I don't believe he clearly explained the nature of this new decentered art, but he gave as examples some guerrilla stuff, some reproducible stuff.
In short: Hakim Bey, ontological anarchy, Temporary Autonomous Zones, that sort of thing.
Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube, 1963.
The final segment featured a panel of museum directors—a gang of four, really, who almost to a one bucked his canned statement in order to respond to Buchloh. The panel: Bruce Altschuler (NYU museum studies), Neal Benezra (SFMOMA), Jay Gates (Phillips Collection), Kathy Halbreich (Walker Art Center, exiting director), Lisa Phillips (New Museum). More on that later.
Fellow District citizen and art blogger Tyler Green says that it's high time that the city's museums had a come-to-Jesus meeting.
They don't program contemporary art and, in a rare convergence of frictional unemployment, a number of them don't have the staff to show contemporary art. The Hirshhorn is without a director; the Corcoran Gallery of Art has no contemporary art curator; the National Gallery of Art has no contemporary art curator. (Two of these three things will change.)
In the next six months, we'll have some better sense of where the District stands on contemporary art. One thing that won't change, unfortunately, is the lack of a dedicated contemporary art space. The District needs a Kunsthalle, either a New Museum–esque space for temporary exhibitions or a dedicated contemporary extension to the National Gallery or the Smithsonian.
I know for a fact that there's institutional interest in re-purposing the Mies-designed and much-maligned Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library as a contemporary-art center. It would take a larger meeting of the minds than has assembled to date, but it's something that people think about. I was more supportive of the notion back when it looked as if the building itself might be in jeopardy because it houses a deficient library, but as the terror alert level on that threat has fallen, so has my desire to see the library turned into something other than the library. I still use it as a library, and I think it could be a great library.
And in any case, there is all of Northeast to consider! Warehouse space abounds; while gentrification has transformed some of the available area, it will be a long time coming before Trinidad gets the full Logan Circle treatment. To be sure, a space in the warehouse district in NE is far from the tourist circuit. You know—so what. The people who want to see, say, John Bock's Zero Hero will surely find the Red Line and hop on the train. The people who are merely curious will, too. (People actually like contemporary art, quite a lot. They'll find it.)
It would take the kind of corporate philanthropy that Olga Viso says this city doesn't see, and it would demand the sort of curatorial vision that the city can't seem to keep. The city might have the collector class to do it—certainly something like this doesn't happen without the support of people like the Ernsts, the Lerhmans, Lorie Peters Lauthier, and Mitch Rales. One snag: Mitch Rales—who happens to own his own contemporary art gallery—also serves on the board of the National Gallery, which has proven reluctant to invest in develop its contemporary art holdings. Then again, National Gallery trustees don't have to advocate for the National Gallery's interests, so perhaps he could work on another project. Given his investments and his stature, the most likely (and I think, the best) prescription is for a collection-free Kunsthalle.
Point of fact: There isn't a space in the District to show Bock's Zero Hero. (That's my example because it's the last rilly big installation piece I saw.)
UPDATE: Made some minor language edits.
I'm having one of those weeks where I'm scheduling business calls for when I'm walking from one place to another. Sorry it's so slow around these parts. I've also fallen behind on personal correspondence. Bear with me!
It's clever enough that the District voting rights bill's supporters have pledged that the bill, which is being debated even as I type, will not be a slippery slope toward acquiring two senators for the District. But if we get our House representative today, is there an action plan for getting our Senators tomorrow? If the Congress proffers a vote of no support for the reading of the Constitution that says that the District shouldn't have any congressional representation, then I really don't want to spend another day without full congressional representation. There's no halfsies in Congress. I have greater respect for Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) cockblock, however informed it may be by crypto-racism and pure partisan politicking, than I do for the view that we should be happy with this bone that they throw us.
UPDATE: Cloture invoked, 57–42. Here's to not paying federal taxes.
The spirits were high at gallery openings across the city over the weekend—in fact, the spirits were flowing, what with the vodka sponsorship on 14th Street. But after talking with artists and dealers, my understanding is that the market for art in the District has cooled. Waiting lists and sell-out shows seem not to be a feature of this market, this season.
Pumpkin ale: acquired! Texas football: watched! Art: seen! All in all, a banner weekend.
A conversation from last night's Options opening has stayed with me all day today: What's wrong with the National Museum of Women in the Arts? I can hardly even tell you what's wrong with them, because they don't talk to anyone and no one talks about them. They have no presence. They have no programming. They have no press people. They don't support local artists. They don't cater to women who aren't white and ludicrously rich. It's as dead a museum as they come. You'd scarcely guess that they're hosting a major West Coast exhibition ("Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution") based on the utterly deafening silence about the show within this city. I'm told they had the option to book "Global Feminisms" to run next year, but declined. Why? Why not host these shows back-to-back and make it the conversation in the District? These shows represent the two most important surveys of women artists done in the last 30 years—at least. The NMWA won't pony up for both?
What they also don't have: a director. Maybe that means they do have an opportunity. But before they so much as peak at resumes, Mary Mochary et al. need to get religion. It's time the board sat down for a serious come-to-Jesus meeting.
I read yesterday's error message to the tune of The Who's "You Are Forgiven." Dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang.
Carol Vogel scoops all the local outlets with the news that Olga Viso is leaving the Hirshhorn. She'll be the new director at the Walker. This satisfies the loudest rumors about changes over at Bunshaft's Bunker, but I hear that's not the end to personnel changes there.
Photo by Matthew Worden
Holy shit. For the Love of God is in an edition of three.
For The American Prospect I wrote a piece about Jonathan Yeo's pornographic portrait of President Bush, with a focus on artists' treatment of administrations past and present. That's up now. As for the portrait, you need to see the print for the full effect, but images and details are here.
Everyone's talking about Randolph College, whose Maier Museum art collection, if you'll recall, is on Alice Wanton's shopping list:
In related news, the state of Tennessee ruled that Fisk University can't sell its collection to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum when there's a better offer on the table from Crystal Bridges. However, before Fisk University can proceed with the sale to Walton, it must prove in a separate case that it did not forfeit its hold on the Stieglitz collection entirely by violating the terms of O'Keeffe's original bequest, which mandated specific guidelines for displaying and maintaining the collection. Diverse has the detailed report.
From Gloss, one of my favorite new blog finds, on Judd Apatow:
Don't let the eye-dropper's worth of character development he gave the women in Knocked Up fool you, Judd Apatow treats objects like women, man. His female characters are at best goalposts, there to measure your male narrative arc against—motherly when you are ready to lose your virginity; pregnant and employed when you finally outgrow the stoner act; drunk and waiting to give you a blow job when you finally show up at the high school party, even though you've only talked to her once. The joyous parade of penises at the end of Superbad is exactly the point—this is the world we live in. Apatow's male character (really, there's just one) shows that it's painful growing into his role as penis bearer in the planet's last surviving empire. But guess what, tough guy, you still get to wear the penis in the world.The rest of J's comments about quirk and gender are worth your time, but I gave this chunk the blockquote treatment because, while I wholeheartedly agree with his take on Knocked Up—irritating conservative commentary dressed up in an even more irritating stand-up performance by Seth Rogen—I hold Superbad in slightly better esteem. So long as we're going to explore male gender (and this I approve—my friend Sarah describes this trend as men, having internalized some feminist concepts, suddenly realizing that they also have a gender), it's worth doing so in a way that doesn't gloss over certain realities of penis-having at the sunset of American empire. Sure, Wes Anderson's films don't treat women so poorly, but they're also not illuminating, either. If you can look past the anti-feminist women characterizations in Superbad (which are gross and not worth actually skipping over, but bear with me)—you have a film in which the men basically treat each other terribly throughout. That's novel. In the high-school morality tale, brohem is such a firm rule governing male-male relationships that you don't ever have to establish the tenets of brohem—you only need to introduce the conflict, that single violation of brohem, whatever it may be, in order to confirm the obvious, absolute, unquestionably given and universal rule that is brohem. Superbad follows that track to a certain extent, and has the convenient happy ending, but it also features enough instances of cruelty to undermine brohem as this contour-free base state between men. Rather the movie reveals brohem as a strategy, a way to negotiate the intra-gender dynamic. I'm not just talking about the part where they hit each other in the balls.
MORE: One more thing. It's more than ridiculous that they cast this film with one fat guy and one skinny guy, with the skinny guy playing the character you're supposed to identify with (I guess) and the fat kid who's essentially his foil. Granted, they do much better than some in actually developing a narrative for the bigger kid, but we really ought to be beyond this point where the large guy only plays the fool to an attractive woman/skinnier fellow.
Last week, the Bethesda Urban Partnership announced the winners of the fifth-annual Trawick Prize. The winners include painter Jo Smail (first place: $10,000); painter/installation artist Nicholas Wisniewski (second place: $2,000); painter Bruce Wilhelm (third place: $1,000); and photographer Kathleen Shafer (young artist award: $1,000).
Shafer's just a great selection for that category—no question. And Wisniewski's work, while perhaps not as strong as some of the finalists (many of whom simply have more proven bodies of work), is easily distinguished by its political–social content; I see an argument for investing in his work, but perhaps not awarding it, at least not over the more established artists at hand.
Smail and Wilhelm, on the other hand, are disappointing selections, especially given that the set of finalists includes a few very strong contemporary artists. Smail's work contributes nothing new to the conversation in painting. Wilhelm's work holds up better: He has a Guston sense of humor, and the style is a welcome update on the glut of Marcel Dzama derivatives that have flooded drawing shows over the last few years, but the work is also very placeable along a chart of contemporary developments in this quirk/twee vein.
But winner selection, nothing doing—that list of finalists is problem enough. To my mind, there's no accounting for a final round that puts Mary Coble—arguably the most deserving artist in the contest—on par with Linda Hesh. It's hard to reconcile the (altogether competent and proven) members of the jury with the decision to put Hesh in such company.
Oh, and Baby Martinez? Gabriel Martinez, what are you trying to pull. I am surely not buying this "Baby" business.
Are Kanye West's sunglasses Jeremy Scott or Takashi Murakami? I'd've bet that he just picked them up off Oriental Trading for $2.95 a dozen.
It's too embarrassing to talk about the complete meltdown that is Michigan's season only two games in, so let's all just look away and leave it at that. Except, it has to be said: This talk about firing Lloyd Carr is premature. Things are going so badly for Michigan that it wouldn't even help. The offense is executing poorly, the defense is playing without a playbook, and the whole team is operating under some wicked magical hex. But two games ago, they were ranked 5, and they didn't lose twice because they were outcoached. Otherwise, it's a calm week in the NCAA, especially if you don't particularly care about the outcome of the Notre Dame–Penn State matchup.
But tonight! It's the first Longhorns game this Texpatriate will get to watch on the big screen. And after talking with people who saw last week's game, my expectations about our chances against Texas Christian are appropriately diminished. Colt McCoy will really have to step up early with some plays that inspire the defense to keep #21 TCU from converting. (Every Texas fan knows the curious truth that it's the offense that has to provide the defense with opportunities to shine.) If he doesn't, TCU is without a doubt a team that can walk away with a win. I'm with the Star Telegram: TCU should be playing in the Big 12. (I'd love to switch out Baylor for a team that has a hope of playing competitively from time to time.)
Over in College Station, the Aggies are playing this week minus Reveille; the Aggie mascot was grounded after she bit her handlers. (Bitch.) It's frankly a bad sign for the Aggs that the team didn't have those handlers executed on the spot—they're showing a lack of resolve. And why isn't the Bryan–College Station Eagle reporting this story? Apparently, they have more pressing news to cover.
On Campus Progress: Reviews of new stuff from Travis Morrison Hellfighters, Montag, and Stars—a veritable cornucopia of indie blather. Later today or this weekend, I'll put up a link to a piece on The American Prospect on presidential portraiture and the controversy surrounding an (un)official portrait of President Bush.
"It takes a special writer to impress me one sentence and make me want to kill myself the next." —Subject line from an email, inadvertently forwarded to me with an email returning edits on a piece I'd written.
Greg Allen responds to Lee Rosenbaum's LAT editorial on the crisis facing public collecting:
The "crisis" Rosenbaum imagines now has existed almost from the founding of both these great American museums [Met and MoMA]; they have almost always been too cheap, too slow, or too risk-averse to collect cutting-edge art, so instead, they collect collectors.Tyler Green punches the numbers and finds that, whatever museums are buying, they are, in fact, buying:
The story is that American museums, especially contemporary art museums, are extraordinarily committed to purchasing art, and that this serves us (and artists) quite well. The commitment American museums have to acquiring art is one of the great under-told stories in American museumdom.I can't elaborate right now, which is just fine, since these two hit the points that need to be made.
Please and thank you for e-mailing me or otherwise contacting me with your cell phone number, if you think I should have it. My old phone met its tragic demise at the bottom of a purse pool.
Two pieces in this week's City Paper:
Of course Rachel "just gets better and better"—Matt keeps cooking her more and more amazing anniversary dinners. I'd gay-marry him before I even saw the entree. Mazel tov to the happy couple on their third.
Caitlin Phillips, Curlers, 2006.In the Washington Post, Jessica Dawson reviews "Subtext," a group photography show at Randall Scott Gallery. She writes:
At Randall Scott, Caitlin Phillips's work proves particularly enervating. She's an attractive woman, slender and young, and she takes pictures of herself. In one picture she wears a simple dress and cute shoes and holds a tea set while looking blankly at the camera. In another, she stands on a beach, masked and perfectly still, dressed in a flowery shift. In a third, she's nearly naked, in curlers and hose, pouting for the camera.On first read, I couldn't make heads or tails of Dawson's question. Is she asking whether Phillips is denigrating herself in the imagethat she depicts or by doing the photography she does? The fact that Dawson writes "woman artist" and not "woman" leads me to believe that she's not interrogating the text—that is, discussing the figure as she is depicted or suggested within the narrative of the portrait. If she had asked why this woman (or this figure, person, etc) denigrated herself, she'd be talking about the figure as if she were a character in that narrative. The "nearly naked" line is confusing bit of misdirection as it is followed by a line about denigration; but I'm convinced think that Dawson is asking why Phillips—the photographer, not the model/character—is denigrating herself by stooping to a photographic trope.What possesses a woman artist to denigrate herself like this? Photography, in its many forms, dominates artmaking. But can artists use it wisely?
Conveniently, that's the opinion I hold of the work. In the City Paper, I write:
The evidence of spotty printing lingers like a haze over Caitlin Phillips' languid self-portraits, which are heavy with references to life in the South: sundresses, hair rollers, tea pitchers, malaise, disrepair. Thematically and technically, her romanticized pictures are Polaroids writ large; unfortunately, the results are all too common in Southern photography.At this late date, Phillips is using a tired bromide. My basic response to seeing Phillips's work was a feeling that her photographs were inaccurate. I don't believe the South is so seersuckered out any more; of course, your mileage may vary (I'm sure it does). Whether it's accurate or not, I think it's not compelling or significant as an observation.
(There's more of the work available online here, but I'm afraid you might not take away a reasonable impression from the Web images. You can see the overexposure just fine, but you really can't detect the high grain in the film she's using.)
Now, I don't bring this up merely to share notes with Dawson. In fact, I was prompted by Lenny Campello's response to her review, which is unreasonable:
Here's the question that her editor should have asked the critic: "Since you are asking the readers this question, did you ask the photographer?"Portraying her as socially inept is just mean. And presuming to speak for most DC gallerists is unfair. But expressing outrage that the critic didn't ask the artist's intent just gets it plain wrong. Dawson is interpreting the piece, and it is for her to say whether she believes that the artist doesn't know what she's doing. It's often important to ask artists technical questions, and I like to gossip with dealers, but critics don't go around asking artists to tell them what to write in their reviews.Of course not, Dawson's vitriol is generally reserved for the written word, and as most DC area gallerists know, and in my experience, she rarely asks questions when visiting a show, or even speaks, other than the social "hello," when she first arrives, and the occasional "ahah" when spoken to.
Most intense child evar. That kid is the offspring of Ed Norton and Destro. Terrorfying. Via Ygglz.
Too late do I realize that the guy who tried to steal my bike was hoping to do me a favor. Last night, riding home from the Townhouse Tavs, I fell off my bike and broke a rib. The longer version is whinier and more embarrassing, so I'd do better to keep that to myself. (Maybe I will share it on a vlog and finally realize this descent into utter ridiculousness that I find myself pursuing as of late.)
I walked away from the accident wary, as I'd felt a ping in my side, but convinced I was find because I didn't feel any pain. I even rode the rest of the five or so blocks home. Only this morning did I realize I walked away scathed after all: my leg was a horror show, and moving was not so much an option. On the bright side, I haven't been coughing, which is good news, because coughing is supposed to provoke a miserable cycle of violence (coughing, pain, more coughing, more pain); but putting on my pants this morning took approximately 45 minutes. As I was walking home from the hospital I pulled something out of my pocket, and a five-dollar bill fell out and fluttered to the ground. I stared at it longingly, but let it go in the end: apparently, I will pay $5 to not endure the pain of bending down.
Now, writing about art is less lucrative than you've been led to believe all these years. No one covers my benefits—national health care really can't come too soon for the long-suffering freelance members of the creative class—so, a while back, I bought a modest catastrophic coverage policy. In fact, I was shamed into doing so, perhaps inadvertently, by a (liberal) friend who said it was irresponsible and also unfair to go out in this trapeze of a world and expect society to catch me when I fall. But of course, the class of catastrophes that my insurance will consider (without the benefit of a ludicrous premium) is quite queer. I imagine that were my bike-oriented demise to put a dent in someone else's property, some ebenezer at insurance HQ would reluctantly issue a check to cover a fraction of his damages. I've always been a miser, but I'll pay $5 to spare myself extra pain; my insurance company won't pay a damned dime to help alleviate the cost of this injury. I'm not blegging, only moaning.
To add insult to injury, the bike is fine. Topanga leans there against the wall in smug self satisfaction, as if she played no part in this casualty.
On puns: Originally I was going to go with a Pavement reference (as that's what pounded me)—maybe touch on "Transport Is Arranged," the inspiration for the title of this very blog. But I must tip my hat to Amanda for the choice pun she let me steal.
On helmets: Bell helmets are both stylish and reliable. May I recommend one in matte black? I may, and I will.
On hospitals: Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes,
I think it frets the saints in heaven to seeWell. No worry of that at Howard University Hospital this morning, let me tell you, friend.
How many desolate creatures on the earth
Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship
And social comfort, in a hospital.
On drinking: I'm the sort who meets a really agreeable guy out at a bar and likes to cement the new friendship with way too many terrible shots. Agreeable guys, being so agreeable, will always respond in kind and with enthusiasm. There has to be a better expression of mutual admiration than the kamikaze.
On pity parties: Oh, I'll let you tell me.
Conner Contemporary, the most prominent contemporary art gallery in the District, is moving from Dupont Circle to H Street NE. I write up the details in today's Express.
Even after spending a c-note on the cable college game-day package, this Texpatriate still couldn't watch the Horns play their season opener. Not from the comfort of my own home, not from any of the local bars. Every fall, I'm reminded that I'm a stranger in a strange land.
I'm also reminded that it's fall and college football is back. Right. On. Now, would that I'd actually seen the Texas game, I'd've kept my eye on the defense. I'm anxious to see how how defensive co-coordinator Duane Akina manages the new blitz-centric defense while also debuting three new starters in the secondary. The defenese needed more than a tune-up—they needed a test drive. By the numbers, it was a bumpy ride; Arkansas State led Texas in passing, rushing, and total yards—basically, everything but the final score. Numbers don't always tell the whole story, but today's story sure sounds sounds familiar: A shaky secondary allowed an undeserving offense to establish the passing game and maintain possession of the ball.
Still a win, though. Hook 'em!
Elsewhere: Michigan lost! To Appalachian State! Picture that horde of hill folk, all crazed eyes and recessive traits, run amok in Ann Arbor, the tune from Deliverance hanging on the air. Squeal like a pig, Chad Henne! I love this game.
