Torontoist reports on Ontario College of Art & Design student Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson, who is sought by police for questioning after he built a pipe-bomb replica, placed it on the steps of the Royal Ontario Museum, and went about making a lot of people nervous with phone calls and YouTube videos. In an interview with Torontoist, Jonsson sounds suitably embarrassed about derailing an Aids gala and finding himself suspended—but what about OCAD? The school is saying that the hoax "was not part of any OCAD assignment or course." But the college is also saying that "The faculty involved have been fully cooperative and have been suspended with pay pending the outcome of the investigation."
(Courtesy of Sommer)
I'm in New York for the weekend to see Molly Springfield's solo show, Antony Gormley's solo show (look! someone vlogged it!), the Richard Prince retro at the Gugg, and the New Museum opening. Back on Monday.
"People think we're inventing Texas, I'm sure, but we're not."
A fellow Texan referring to Lockhart, Texas, which Kevin Drum has declared reason enough to attend 2008's Netroots Nation (née YearlyKos) in Austin, Texas. Lord knows that I was sent to spread the message—and I'm up for lunch every day at Kreutz any week of the year—so count me in.
Responding to Mitt Romney's statement that he would refuse to appoint a Muslim to his cabinet were he elected, Ezra Klein strikes a wrong note with me:
My outrage on the subject isn't different or more enlightening than anyone else's outrage on the subject, but Mitt Romney's admission that he wouldn't consider any Muslims for high level cabinet appointments is shocking, even anti-American, stuff. Romney, of course, is a Mormon, and has spent much of this campaign begging the electorate not to allow his membership in a cult harm his presidential campaign. For Romney to now turn on Muslims is like the fifth least popular kid on the playground trying to help his status by stealing the lunch money of the few losers beneath even him.Granted, Ezra might be speaking tongue in cheek here to make a point about what American perceptions of Mormonism and what an incredible hypocrite Romney is given his circumstances. But what Ezra is actually arguing by extension and analogy is that Romney has ludicrous beliefs, and therefore Romney should support others who have ludicrous beliefs. That's not very generous to Mormons or Muslims—and it's not far from the soft prejudice that (say) Catholics have faced in political contests (and may continue to, I don't know). Of course it's only American that any damn magical thing a politician wants to believe about Abraham and his descendants, on this continent or others, should have no real bearing on his fitness for office.
Julian Sanchez responds to two New York Magazine items I mentioned below, heaping praise on Saltz's piece and ample scorn on the gender rundown addendum published by the magazine. On this, I should note that "art world institutions" is my phrasing, a broad umbrella to relate institutions as diverse as Matthew Marks Gallery and the Frick Collection. That drives at the problem, Sanchez argues: There's no basis for comparison.
In fact I think the Frick serves as a foil to the other listings—an historical baseline. If gender symmetry isn't entirely to be expected among artworks representing the 20th century at MoMA, it's certainly not for centuries prior; a 99/1 breakdown between men and women is about what you'd expect at the Frick. (If anything, the Frick Collection is too small to serve as a truly meaningful base, but no matter. Any collection of Old Master paintings will break down the same way because the Old Masters were all, of course, men.) Compare that ratio, then, with the ratio of institutions that all operate in a postfeminist age—and by that I mean institutions that persist or came into existence after three waves of feminist thought and activism. What you find is not what you (not what I) would expect. Or, rather, not what we should accept: That art by men is always considered more commercially palatable and historically significant than art by women according to a range of institutions whose activity, taken in totem, represents a complete cross section of the contemporary art world. And to be perfectly sanguine about it, it's not as if these agents each act in a bubble. Matthew Marks co-directs the Armory Show, which, in a pinch, could stand in for Art Basel Miami Beach.
Sanchez writes, "It might at least be moderately telling to compare six similar art festivals or six otherwise similar galleries." Two listings offer exactly that in and of themselves: Art Basel Miami Beach is a trade show featuring artworks by hundreds of international galleries, and the Venice Biennale comprises artists selected by nations from six continents. For both, roughly one quarter of participating artists are women.
Another set of statistics might come closer to satisfying Sanchez's standards for rigor: Brainstormers compiled in 2006 gender breakdowns for 200 select Chelsea galleries. (The group does not provide a methodology—this work is more activism than social science. From a casual glance, it's apparent to me that all the selected dealers work in the primary market and represent artists.) The results: map one and map two. Readers will know that I'm usually thrilled to see so much burnt orange splattered on a page—but in this presentation, the orange alert signals an overabundance of testosterone.
This graph could easily have been formatted to depict not just ratios but numbers to address Sanchez's sensible point that at "smaller and (almost by definition) more idiosyncratic galleries . . . the numbers are apt to be highly sensitive to a swing of a few works or artists." And we'd really be getting somewhere if the graph could plot sales by gender throughout Chelsea, but these data aren't available. Nevertheless—and acknowledging that New York Magazine failed to make the case for context—it's crucial to consider the activity of dealers alongside the activity of curators because the one informs the other. (As Jeffry Cudlin ably noted last month, in contradistinction to Blake Gopnik's oddball assertion that museums drive the market.
So do we march through the borough with quotas and clipboards? No, that isn't the solution: Artworks are not fungible, and any single gallery choosing the ten best available artists for its stable may select ten men. But given that, in 2007, MFA enrollment (a reasonable indicator for young artists) breaks down even-Steven between men and women, we should not suspect all the galleries to go for the guys. They do, though, by a non-negligible margin. I strongly suspect (and anecdota suggest) that the reasons are principally social—owing to the same myriad problems women face entering and succeeding in every other sector of the workforce.
Saltz writes, acutely, "[I]t has become bitterly clear that MoMA's stubborn unwillingness to integrate more women into these galleries is not only a failure of the imagination and a moral emergency; it amounts to apartheid." If a failure to integrate MoMA amounts to apartheid, the lack of integration in Chelsea is Jim Crow.
UPDATE: On the other hand, Martin Bromirski has a suggestion for New York Mag: Data collector, collect thyself.
Jerry Salts Saltz says that time is up for the MoMA to deliver on promises to display "multiple narratives" in its permanent installation—that is, work by women. New York Magazine follows up with a run-down on gender dynamics at other art institutions:
THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ARTBringing women into the conversation is the biggest problem facing the art world.
Men: 85%
Women: 15%
That's for the permanent-collection items on view; Kara Walker's show is downstairs.MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY
Men: 85%
Women: 15%
Four women on an otherwise male roster.THE 2007 VENICE BIENNALE
Men: 76%
Women: 24%
As recently as 1995, the lineup was just 9 percent female.ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH 2007
Men: 73%
Women: 27%
The upcoming fair will be enormous: 2,859 artists, about 715 of them women.MARIANNE BOESKY
Men: 75%
Women: 25%
But it's 50-50 in the gallery right now, with work by Liz Craft and a two-man show.THE FRICK COLLECTION
Men: 99%
Women: 1%
There are two sculptures and one print by female artists in the collection, plus some anonymous work.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that CBS News is inching closer toward joining the Writers' Guild strike. The AFP headline is misleading; they're not striking yet, they've just voted to authorize striking.
Meanwhile, in the LAT, Daniel Blau, a former writer for America's Next Top Model, opines that this strike would be going better for the writers had the WGA been better prepared before the short-lived ANTM strike of 2006. Blau suggests that the WGA bungled their strategy. On the one hand, they organized a Reality Organizing Committee tasked with investigating industrywide solutions. On the other hand, the WGA approached asked 12 writers from one television show (ANTM) to testcase a reality programming strike. It didn't work out: All 12 writers were fired, and ANTM eventually organized with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (video editors). (Inadvertently sad: "They bought us lunch.")
Blau insinuates that there was some consciousness among the organized writers about admitting reality writers into their ranks. Studios pump out shows like Who Has Got a Stapler? for pennies on the dollar, meaning that (from the WGA writers' perspective) reality television is a scab genre. Meanwhile, writers on reality shows aren't doing better by organizing with smaller unions whose needs don't fit their own even if some aspects of the job descriptions do. A writer on Project Runway has the same interest in residuals from an online broadcast as a writer for Friday Night Lights. Probably any reality writer is also a video editor of sorts, and, in fact, a Project Runway writer's work might be closer to that of an FNL editor. It's still shortsighted for the WGA to stiff-arm reality programming when the organization of reality writers is so critical to their own. Clearly the place to settle these sorts of professional/artistic debates is on the company softball field.
It will be a reversal of 2006 fortunes, then, if nonfiction news writers do join the WGA strike. Presumably the WGA will not turn them down for their heterodox work. I don't see what CBS News writers stand to gain in a strike over online residuals; maybe they are simply joining in solidarity.
UPDATE: A CBS insider passes along this company kthxgiving joke:
A turkey farmer was always experimenting with breeding to perfect a better turkey.That person also says that CBS news writers have been without a contract for nearly three years and their strike is independent from the WGA strike. Last week's NYT on the subject is clearer than some of today's accounts.
His family was fond of the leg portion for dinner and there were never enough legs for everyone. After many frustrating attempts, the farmer was relating the results of his efforts to his friends at the general store get together. "Well I finally did it! I bred a turkey that has 6 legs!"They all asked the farmer how it tasted.
"I don't know," said the farmer. "I never could catch the darn thing!"
Fine song:
Kathryn Cornelius pulled me aside at the Transformer auction benefit to tell me that in this pick on her show I did not peg the notion that the images in Common Ground (version 1.0) are stills from video, not photographs. I understood that about the piece. Nevertheless I felt that "photographic triptychs" described the work better than "triptychs featuring stills from video" would have—insofar as the final work is neither film nor video, and given space constraints, readability concerns, and so on. But to be clear on the point, the source for the triptychs components is video, not photography.
JMW Turner, Snow Storm - Steam Boat off a Harbor's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and Going by the Lead. The Author Was in this Storm on the Night the Ariel Left Harwich. 1842.
Now up at Guardian America: my review of the Turner show at the National Gallery of Art. Here's a teaser:
When JMW Turner arrived at the Royal Academy in 1799 just short of his 25th birthday, Britain needed to know him. Auld acquaintance at the turn of the century would not be forgotten, but the best in British arts and letters nevertheless were gone. Collins, Pope and Swift all were dead. Gibbon and Hume recently had passed. Keats and Shelley, on the other hand, were mere babes.And so on. As a result of writing the piece I have developed a fascination with Royal Academy politics. As a result of writing the piece I have also developed some outstanding library fines. So if you have a copy of James Fenton's School of Genius that you'd like to let me borrow, I'd be much obliged. . . .Among painters, Benjamin West - the painter of epic representation and then-president of the Royal Academy - was perhaps the only artist who measured up to Turner's talent, even in those years of his youth. John Constable, who would become the other looming figure in landscape painting, was an outsider. As Turner achieved prominence, Constable has some success in France but couldn't sell his work at home.
So when Turner joined the Royal Academy as an associate - the youngest inductee in the fraternity's history - he posed something of a problem to the group's longstanding but humble achievers. Well before his membership, even, Turner posed a challenge to academicians such as Thomas Girtin and Philip de Loutherbourg. Yet the young buck faced no resistance. If Britain's historical dip contributed to Turner's painterly rise, so much the better: a retrospective of Turner's work - the largest ever to appear in the United States, currently showing at the National Gallery of Art - surveys a comfortable career that nevertheless embraced experimentation.
Via Towleroad, Baltimore legend John Waters gives some advice to the New Museum's Lisa Phillips on how to throw an "ungala" for the NuMu opening next month. How inadvertently appropriate: The museum's opening with a massive sculpture show called "Unmonumental".
I won't pimp this article any more, I promise, but I scanned the tear sheets for the ARTnews piece I wrote on this opening. Feel free to strain your eyesight reading the PDFs: pages 1 and 2.
Soulja Boy's report card. There is no decoding the accent used for the intro and outro of that song. Some kind of M.I.A.–style imagining of an immigrant who learned English in the UK? It strikes me that that's the voice Umberto Eco was striving for in Baudolino, but I digress.
| Subject | Grade |
|---|---|
| Math | 47 |
| English | 67 |
| Science | 14 |
That's really not very good.
I don't remember whether I mentioned it here, but I'm contributing at the brand-new Guardian America imprint. It's edited by Michael Tomasky, former editor of The American Prospect. It's not to be confused with http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa, which is just a category page.
Check in later this week for a review of the Turner retrospective at the National Gallery.
She's got two contracts: One with the Writer's Guild of America, which requires her to strike, and one with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which prevents her from striking. So, after publicly expressing her solidarity with the writers on strike, she's decided to go back to New York to tape her show. Now all of New York hates her guts, even more so than before, when she was just patently unfunny.
Does DeGeneres actually have a contractual predicament? AFTRA has signaled that their members should support the writers. From the Web site's page titled, cleverly enough, "Here's How AFTRA Members Can Support Writers":
As an AFTRA member, you are reminded that you are required by the no-strike clauses of your AFTRA contract to report to work and complete your contractual commitments. However, you are also instructed that during the pendency of this strike, you may not perform duties covered by a WGA contract that have been performed by members of the WGA.Seems clear that the strike interest overrules the no-strike clause. So given that DeGeneres is a WGA member and her show is written by WGA members, she's performing struck work—which AFTRA, or at least its Web site, suggests she should not do.
Just consider the letter of appreciation she received from Kim Hedgpeth, National Executive Director of AFTRA and a person with a signature even crazier than mine. (Courtesy Nikke Finke.) Now, there's been some back and forth between the WGA East and AFTRA over the nature of DeGeneres's obligations, which are legitimately confusing; she's bound by a no-strike clause, but she's obligated not to perform struck work. In an AFTRA memo to WGAE that expresses outrage over WGAE's condemnation of DeGeneres, AFTRA admits that they don't really know: "Whether the services Ms. DeGeneres performed constitute struck work is something we should determine." Someone ought to let Ms. Hedgpeth know, before she savages any more letters of support with her pen.
The Hollywood Reporter reports on DeGeneres's motivations:
A spokesperson for the show's producer, Telepictures Prods., said there's a difference between "Ellen," which is carried by local TV stations, and such late-night talk shows as "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and "Late Show With David Letterman," which are owned and controlled by networks.Put another way, she is worried about her job. So she's jeopardizing the negotiating position of some 12,000 striking writers. Granted, if she were to strike, America might wake up and realize that she's just not funny. She has her reasons, but she's still a scab. Boo hiss, scabs go home!The rep noted that Telepictures and the show's distributor, Warner Bros. Domestic TV Distribution, are under contract to continue delivering original episodes to the stations that carry the talker.
"We have asked Ellen to come back to work to fulfill her contractual obligation as host of the show because without original programs the stations can move the show out of its time periods or ultimately hold the company in breach of contract," the rep said. "The company in turn expects Ellen not to breach her contract to host the show. We also wish to preserve the 135 jobs of the staff and the crew whose livelihoods depend on the show continuing."
Have a copy of the Sunday Styles handy? Flip to page 11. Look at the Banana Republic ad. Focus on the man's suit jacket. See the felt design, whatisthat, mistletoe?, where a pocket square ought to be? [Found the ad online. —ed.] What do you call this thing?
May I suggest "abomination"? Gentlemen, we are not adopting pocket accents. The pocket square, on the other hand, has a rich history that we should not be quick to abandon. What kind of story would it be if Iago were to wave a felt twig at Othello as evidence of Desdemona's cuckolding ways? Recall Emilia's lines about Desdemona's intimate connection to Othello's handkerchief:
I am glad I have found this napkin;The handkerchief's literary applications extend beyond the romantic, of course. In fact, the handkerchief dreams, too. James Fenimore Cooper writes about the dignity of the wild flax seeds that were called to service as a pocket square in The Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief. It's not that a felt twig doesn't have a story to tell: shorn by a shepherd, pressed and dyed by a manufacturer, shaped and sewed by a craftster—I'm sure it's gripping. But it isn't a story featuring names like the Astaire, the Cagney, the Cooper, the Reverse Puff, and other ultra-masculine terms for carefully, artfully folded silk squares.
This was her first remembrance from the Moor.
My wayward husband hath a hundred times,
Woo'd me to steal it; but she so loves the token
(For he conjur'd her she should ever keep it)
That she reserves it evermore about her
To kiss and talk to. (3.3.290–296)
Carrying a pocket square is a polite thing to do: When someone sneezes and you're wearing a handkerchief, you hand it over. On the other hand, carrying a pocket twig is a selfish thing to do: When someone sneezes and you're wearing a pocket twig, you're probably making him sick.
Skipping town for Chicago this weekend to visit with Sarah & Ed. I imagine I'll see the Richard Misrach show and I might bop over to Bodybuilder & Sportsman (though I have no idea what if anything's showing since the Charles LaBelle show came down a week ago and the tough guys need to update their Web site). Ed works in a Mies building, so I'll scratch that itch. Frankly I'm kind of most excited about visiting a different H&M and doing my part to accelerate the degeneration of smaller prestige design. Boots and dogs are also on the agenda.
Off "topic", but I've decided that nothing could be more satisfying than seeing the Green Bay Packers dismantle the Patriots in the Super Bowl. It's a beautiful dream of mine.
Edward Winkleman noted last week that his answers for the Art in America roundtable were abbreviated. Question: What's the editorial standard on Q&As?
A reader wrote in last month pointing to Matt Elzweig's New York Press piece on Deborah Solomon, the author of the New York Times Magazine "Questions For" column. Solomon's column comprises a transcript of a conversation between Solomon and a media figure or celebrity. Elzweig interviews Solomon's interview subjects and finds that her interviewing practices bend standards for ethical journalism.
One element of the NYP story caught my attention:
In a follow-up email to me, [Ira] Glass wrote: "As you and I talked about on the phone, though magazines radically rewrite and fabricate interviewers' questions all the time . . . . I don't think a newspaper should do it. I know in some picky way, the New York Times Magazine thinks of itself as a 'magazine,' but for me and for most readers, we assume the editorial standards are the same as in the newspaper of record, and when the paper says a reporter asked a question, the reporter did in fact ask the question."Emphasis mine. I wasn't aware that the standard for a Q&A should vary between media.
(Again, to be clear, Peter Plagens's questions in Art in America read as straightforward to me—it sounds like he properly transcribed his own words along with his interviewers'. I only meant to touch off on Winkleman's observation, not suggest any wrongdoing.)
Last month, New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt responded to Elzweig's critical piece, acknowledging the complaints outlined by interviewees—"Ann Landers" columnist Amy Dickinson, This American Life host Ira Glass, and Meet the Press host Tim Russert—were all merited. Dickinson and Glass weren't especially upset, but Russert was irate.
In each instance, Solomon had apparently sacrificed fidelity to the interview for the sake of her hook. That's the temptation. None of the interviewees accused Solomon of putting words in his mouth, but her editorial nips and tucks—to her questions and to interviewee quotations—altered context and meaning.
Hoyt suggested that the newspaper note in some way that Solomon's column is not a verbatim transcript. Editor & Publisher notes that in Sunday's NYT Magazine, the column appeared with a proviso: "Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Deborah Solomon."
Does that do the trick? I'm not sure it will put interviewee's minds at ease—but that tells me, the reader, what I need to know. It seems like there's a more transparent option, though: Full transcripts of the interview could be made available online as a text file. Some readers might even consider it a feature to read an hour-long interview with a particular subject. The full interviews would not be published, per se; I think that might signal a lack of confidence in Solomon's project. But there they'd be there, for all to see.
Then again, Solomon herself e-mailed Glass to say: "700 words. 700 shackles. Wish we had more room. One more question." Why not just publish a longer Q&A? The Internet allows us to break these chains of wordcounts.
