Left: First UK edition. Right: First US edition.
Bad years look considerably worse in England than in the States, where even bad years cater to young women readers. I don't care for the cover of Coetzee's latest, a feminine departure for whoever handles the designs, which are typically quite good: clean, nice author font, a firm signature look.
About Chip Kidd, book cover rock star: His covers are handsome but aren't they overliteral? Now, I don't think you could do much else with The Road. And his logos for DC Comics' All Star imprint (e.g., Superman, Batman & Robin) are pitch perfect. But his Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is all wrong. Kidd gives the game away. The fun in Gawain is imagining what Gawain-poet has actually written despite your many-layered and Hollywood-informed expectations of medieval imagery. Depicting the Green Knight as some emissary of hell flattens the comic possibilities of the story. No, it's not laugh-out-loud funny like Chaucer, but it has its moments. Burton Raffel describes the emerald knight reclaiming his decapitated head as a football player in a mad scramble after a fumble. And there's an amusing tension in the court scenes, the knights all feigning silence as courtly propriety when, in fact, they're all terrified. That tension doesn't work under the presumption that the Green Knight is something like the Mouth of Sauron, more creature than man. Kidd's suggesting the Spectre here.
Tolkien's cover is even worse for getting Gawain wrong as well. Only the Cotton Nero A.x. illumination will do.
Last night was my first time seeing The City Veins since they trimmed down to a three-piece and the show did not disappoint, though I disappointed myself by arriving after they'd started. Their next show is at Iota, which ought to be a good venue for them.
Eric Powell, Untitled, 2005.
Mary Early, Untitled, 2007.
Check today's City Paper for a feature review of two ongoing gallery shows: "15 for Philip" at Curator's Office and "New Sculpture" by Mary Early.
The crooked angle in that Powell photo drives me absolutely bonkers.
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970.
Nancy Holt, widow of Robert Smithson, has sent a note around alerting people to a proposal before the state of Utah that would permit oil drilling in the Great Salt Lake near the site of Smithson's Spiral Jetty.
Here's a map showing the proposed location for the drills:
And here's another map showing where the Spiral Jetty stands relative to the drills:
Gunnison Island is the mile-long float of land in Gunnison Bay, for reference. That puts the nearest drill easily within two to three miles of the Jetty and would mean for infrastructure, roads, construction, and noise within sight of the famous Earth artwork.
I'd draw in arrows to make the sites clearer, but the window for consideration on this contract is narrow and drawing to a quick close. Protest should be lodged with Jonathan Jemming at (801) 537-9023 or jjemming@utah.gov by close of business today (7 p.m. EST). If you call or write to complain, refer to application #8853.
Link, email, call, and write. Roads and industry threaten to undermine the work. The site for the Jetty was chosen for being remote, austere, inaccessible, and useless. Call or write now if you'd like to keep it that way.
Download the contract in PDF by clicking here.
CORRECTION: Gunnison, not Guttison.
I know that G.p isn't your first stop for political commentary, but I'm happy to refer you to sources that ought to be. For example: Dana Goldstein on Edwards's supporters in the wake of his campaign.
Color me surprised that Edwards isn't throwing his support behind Obama immediately. But by holding onto his margin of delegates for the time being, he can continue to impress upon Clinton and Obama the fact that they need to talk about issues Edwards cares about—if only to impress him.
Friends know that I have an aversion to sprouting foods. Things like onions and potatoes, vegetables that are supposed to be eaten long before they grow, gross me right out once they've developed stalks and eyes. Things like this (ew) make me leave the kitchen. And walking in to the kitchen today, I find a horrifying green tendril emerging from a piece of garlic, which bore an awful resemblance to the totally terrifying cordyceps fungus at work. I can't believe that you all don't think this stuff is horrible.
That art for nerds set that was floating around last week? Taken down by its author, but the images can still be seen here. (Use the arrows in the sidebar box to scroll through the set.)
and
are top notch.
I'll disagree with what Matthew Yglesias writes here and point to the post just below it. Politically there may not be a vast difference between Clinton and Obama, or at least, both candidates have given themselves sufficient wiggle room that whatever those differences are aren't likely to play out beyond the rather vague horserace indicators, like when one candidate stands and the other doesn't during the President's State of the Union.
Electorally, though, the candidates promise very different elections. If Obama wins the primary, breathless Obamafandom dies instantly among conservative pundits—but so does mouthbreathing Clintonhatred disappear among the base, the dragon having been vanquished. Rabid hatred isn't so transferable as the right might wish. There would be frightening room for unforced errors from the untested Obama campaign, but beyond the crass racist appeal (hints of which we've already seen) and I would even imagine in spite of the racist blunders from the Imuses and so on who won't be able to keep their mouths shut during a general election (which would affect the right's appeal to the middle), whatever conservative conventional wisdom emerges on Obama cannot hope to match in terms of temper or pervasiveness the right's standard lying line on the Clintons, built up from the hardened bilious secretions of a fevered conservative organ that has brooded in its indigestion for more than a decade.
On the right, then, we have McCain—who remains on every issue (except neverending war) the least conservative candidate to vie for 2008—whose paradoxical strategy depends on appealing to independents who fundamentally disagree with what he's saying, that is, with the rhetoric he has tailored for a base that is turned off by him. He presumes quite rightly that the press will hide his seams, but I'd think that Obama would compete for some of those "maverick" votes that make up McCain's center/right compromise candidacy even as the base, with no Clinton candidacy to contemplate, wipes the foam from its mouth and stays home.
Clinton energizes McCain, whereas Obama draws from McCain—granted, for reasons that have no resemblance to the actual differences between Clinton and Obama, but nevertheless.
The inestimable Jason Linkins, advocate for freedom and keytars for all men, asked some writers (including your correspondent) to share their favorite State of the Union memories. The Huffington Post has compiled them for your approval.
Cloverfield is a good movie, y'all.
Left: Cara Ober. Right: Christine Bailey.
"Despite what the Baltimore Sun says, I am not angry about this any more," says Baltimore artist Cara Ober. She is the subject of a story on a Baltimore exhibit, one that sort of features her work. It's her work, all right, but by a different artist: Christine Bailey. For the show at 100 East Pratt Street in downtown Baltimore, Bailey made paintings that ape everything about Ober's unmistakable style.
"And I would be fine with this project if it had included 3 artists," says Ober, referring to Bailey's original vision for the show, in which she would style-check other artists, not just Ober. "And I would be fine with it if they had just named me from the start."
Now the Baltimore-based artist is fielding criticism from further afield: Blake Gopnik dismisses her in the Washington Post.
The newspaper's chief art critic, who writes a reported review of Bailey's show, discloses that his wife (artist Lucy Hogg) works with Christine Bailey. Bailey and Hogg are reportedly good friends, but never mind. Baltimore is a ways for a critic to travel who doesn't write the galleries beat. Not only is the show across the way, it's also not really a gallery show—Bailey's work is hung in the lobby of an office building.
By the Post's reporting, the show falls in line with the appropriation back-and-forth that's occupied artists for the better part of the twentieth century. (My favorite recent example is Jill Miller's mashup of Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott, John Baldessari, and herself, titled I Am Making Art, Too. This piece illustrates the way that appropriation almost always works: A younger artist samples a highly known piece by an established artist to make a point about practice, politics, or whatever. Appropriation is typically greeted as a sign of respect, a nod from teacher to student, and it tends to be more subtle, an Easter egg for critics on the lookout.)
Bailey's is a new escalation in a game of oneupmanship, Gopnik argues. Bailey and Ober are peers, both relatively unknown in the national context, and artists competing in the same market. That's something of a new commercial twist. In fact, there are a number of commercial twists in this show.
One is that it's hung in the lobby of an office building—a venue that's not adequate to the task of providing any historical or critical context for the show. Nor did Bailey and the exhibit's curator, Jordan Faye Block, make any effort to provide that context in explanatory text. The original text that hung with the show made no reference to Ober's work. In fact, it's arguable that Bailey obscured the fact.
"Combining imagery and text from various sources, including the web, pop culture, the urban environment and art history, the pictures are at once whimsical and melancholy," the original press release reads. That sounds like Ober describing the work, not Bailey. Bailey didn't mention Ober at all—not even in a roundabout fashion—until Ober threatened legal action. (Block has since posted a "clarification," a revised statement in which Bailey writes that she "used the work of Ms. Ober, among others, as a point of reference" in pieces that adopted the notion of "designer replicas".)
"However much the paintings might look like Ober's," writes Gopnik, "Bailey isn't using that look to the same ends that Ober, or an Ober forger, would." If Bailey doesn't mention Ober—and if Bailey makes claims about the substance and not the situation of these paintings—how can this be true?
Another commercial angle: Block, who represents Bailey now, used to represent Ober.
"I did my first gallery show with [Block] when she was the director at Gallery Imperato—'Femme Effect Part Deux' in April 2006," Ober explains. "The Femme Effect show was during the height of the housing boom and she sold a good deal of my work. Like 16 pieces. Most were small and inexpensive. She even bought one for herself." Block left the gallery, but Ober stayed on. "I decided to stay with Gallery Imperato for professional reasons."
Block describes her own split with Gallery Imperato as "a philosophical difference in vision."
Ober's contract with Gallery Imperato allowed her to participate in group shows at other spaces (provided that the show included five artists or more). Ober says that Block pursued her, and she agreed to participate in two of Block's post-Imperato shows—curated independently under the mantle Jordan Faye Contemporary at various sites.
One of those shows was "Believe It: 14 Painters", a May 2007 show at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson in Baltimore, in which Block came in for some criticism for painting her gallery logo—a Tiffany box–blue outline of a square—on the gallery floor. Some, like commenters and contributors on Ober's art blog, thought this distracted from the work. "After that show, I decided that would be the last show I worked with her on."
"The show's not about Cara Ober," says Block. "It's about authorship, originality, it's trying to question all those things. It's a conceptual project. I stand behind my artists. I think Christine Bailey is brilliant. I don't think I crossed any lines. And I didn't make any work—I'm selling the work."
"Cara is someone I don't know, so I had no personal connection and could be dispassionate about the work," writes Bailey on a January 21 post on Ober's art blog (where Ober offered Bailey a venue to address the growing controversy). Block cannot make the same claim—and much of the ire in comments to that post has been directed toward her.
"I was surprised that people were confused, as if I had made a mistake, which I didn't do," Block says in response. "I've been curating for over 9 years. I don't make mistakes."
Maybe not. But to answer that, viewers need more context than an office lobby affords, and more disclosure from the artist and curator than none at all. Post readers deserve more of both, too.
[Cross-posted at City Desk]
Spencer has a whopper of a summary piece in the newly launched Washington Independent on the state of U.S. interrogations. Here's a snippet:
[T]he program that developed within the Central Intelligence Agency after 9/11 has left the intelligence community playing a fateful role. Surprising as it may be, the CIA has never really been in the interrogation business. After 9/11, it turned its back on its own limited history of interrogations and never consulted those in the U.S. with solid experience in that difficult art. Even in the seven years since it has built an interrogation capability mostly from scratch, the agency has never applied the best practices in behavioral science to improve its regimen. The result has been to privilege brutality out of ignorance, which, according to many experts and insiders interviewed, means that interrogation practices that produce faulty information are now at the very heart of the U.S. efforts against a mysterious and still-unfamiliar enemy.Read on about the Polygraph Unit, where "employees—who were not case officers or intelligence analysts—would perform the closest thing to interrogations as existed institutionally in CIA." Not exactly a professional Inquisition the Bush administration is running. The thing that the report makes clear is that there isn't any dominant philosophy about interrogation. You have on the one hand the Bush administration claiming that harsh interrogations produce results, committing to a sort of consequentialist defense of its policies. It's hardly clear whether CIA interrogators agree but it's also not clear that there is polarization on the issue. As Spencer writes, "The former senior CIA official rejected rejected the idea that behavioral scientists know more about interrogation than interrogators. 'Some of these people are like sex experts who know 80 ways to make love but don’t know any girls,' he said."In short, despite innumerable statements from the Bush administration about the value of the CIA's interrogation program, U.S. interrogators are still mostly in the dark—in the dark not only about al-Qaeda, but about how to effectively elicit vital national-security information from the detainees in its custody.
Worse still, the interrogators can't seem to tell the girls from the terrorists, so you wind up with the CIA wasting time—and the Bush administration blowing political capital and international goodwill—on detainee interrogations that produce no valuable information. Meanwhile, the Bush administration doesn't identify this situation as a problem to fix—the only question they bother to address is the legality of torture (perfectly legal, they say). They're fixing the CYA, not the CIA.
I had to do a double-take, reading the news that four California museums were raided by federal agents on suspicions that the institutions had knowledgeably purchased stolen art:
The detailed warrants gave the agents broad authority to search the museums' galleries, offices, storage areas and computer archives. They were looking for objects and records related to the primary targets of the investigation: an alleged art smuggler, Robert Olson, and the owner of a Los Angeles Asian art gallery, Jonathan Markell. Markell's Silk Roads Gallery on La Brea Avenue was also raidedRobert Olson—not Robert Olsen, a fine painter who happens to also call L.A. home.
The sight of him is "disconcerting to say the least: he is not white but mired a filthy brownish grey colour by the mud and dirty pools of water in his enclosure." So much for his leadership on his signature issue (the environment). One eminent observer calls him a "psychopath." Rejected by his disturbed former circus performer mother, addicted to the treacly affections of a rabid base, divorced from nature, impotent, embroiled in allegations of financial impropriety surrounding a $3.5 fundraising vehicle promoted in his name, with rumors circulating about his sexuality—in other words, discredited totally—Nuremberg Knut has become . . .
. . . "a problem bear".
Time for your candidate to give up the ghost, Spencer. Knut brought up some good issues in the campaign, and he continues to draw support from white voters. But the cuteness primary is now clearly a two-bear race. And to that end, I give you a montage of images set to a pop soundtrack of the candidate that promises change:
(Polar bear opp research courtesy Sommer)
UPDATE: Knut faces an "uncertain and lonely future" indeed if this is the best his advocates can muster in his defense. Forced to acknowledge Knut's critics, Spencer resorts to a Bush administration–minded refutation of the zoological community and the animal rights–activist grassroots alike. To a polar bear, white is black—and up is down. Spencer draws attention to Knut's captivity, a tragic state of affairs for all bears, and an issue on which Knut has shown no leadership. Indeed, he seems more interested in distracting from the real issues by fetching a plastic toy for the pleasure of the crowds.
Spencer's further smears barely warrant a response. The notion that the koala doesn't pass some essentialist test is one that any American should find repulsive. As for Spencer's personal attacks, driving a wedge between my associate and me is the strategy of a campaign that can't stand on the merits. Is this what Knut stands for? That's not the sort of bear I want to cuddle.
I'm joining Ann, Ezra, Kay, Matt, and Spencer in a dialog about The Wire hosted by The American Prospect. The forum is WireTAP, and the first round is up now. Check in three more episodes from now for the next update from the District Co-Op. Many thanks to Ann Friedman and Phoebe Connelly for putting this together.
In an interview with DCist, Philippa Hughes responds to some remarks I made back in December in the City Paper about her programming. Responding to the same article, J.T. Kirkland (whom I criticized for his role in curating "Supple") has judgments for everyone involved in his show, in particular Adrian Parsons, Molly Rupert, and the organizer of The Space.
Vanessa Beecroft is a douchebag:
Beecroft went to Sudan two years ago with a camera crew and photographer because, she says, she was interested in the plight of Darfur, though she concedes that she didn't know exactly where Darfur was, and never did get there.A souvenir of the like that fetches $50,000. You may be happy to know that Beecroft (the subject of The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, a documentary by Pietra Brettkelly that promises not to be hagiography) decided in the end not to adopt.Instead, she found herself in southern Sudan, where she visited an orphanage, found a pair of malnourished twins and offered each a breast, swollen with milk because she had left her own young child back in New York. Beecroft says she "fell in love" with the twins, that she wanted to "save" them, and began a quixotic quest to adopt the two infant boys.
Beecroft also photographed herself with the twins suckling her breasts. In an interview, she calls the work "a souvenir."
Credit is due to Jeffrey Deitch, who does not try to sell you on his decision to represent these photographs with some wretch-inducing line about Beecroft's bleeding heart. "There's never been anything like the double breast-feeding photo," he says. Hear that? Two boobs!
Fubar. I'm looking into it. Apologies if you've tried to riposte.
Tuesday evening at GWU, Transformer Gallery is hosting its latest Framework Panel. The subject is art school, and the panelists include artists who teach locally or were once themselves art students. Billy Colbert, Maggie Michael, Brandon Morse, Renee Stout, and Rex Weil make up the panel, and Dean Kessman will moderate. Is our children learning?
Art School, Confidential: Rethinking Art Education
GWU Smith Hall of Art
801 22nd St. NW
Tuesday, January 22nd
6:45-8:15pm
At the risk of making a glib observation on an important holiday: The design of the forthcoming Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial leaves something to be desired. By emphasizing the accomplishments of the larger Civil Rights movement and that era's actors, the monument signals a confusion about its purpose. For example, the plaza's upper walkway is given over to 24 niches—"naves of reflection", each one commemorating the lives lost along the way to equality. Several are left blank, a poignant reminder that MLK's work remains undone—yet the implicit suggestion that others may give up their lives before King's dream is realized is macabre. The tragic losses in the struggle for freedom deserve commemoration, but losses don't tell the entire story of the Civil Rights movement. Nor should one memorial seek to tell the entire story of Civil Rights in the first place. Encapsulating King's singular achievements and great contributions is goal enough for one monument.
The design looks to be both broad and literal, offering a number of elements drafted from quotes from MLK's impressive oratorical record—including a "Mountain of Despair" and a "Stone of Hope". (Both of these famous metaphors King used are illustrated in literal terms, appearing as significant sculptural/architectural features.) Like the World War II Memorial, this design is all too aware of its audience and how it will be used. That a memorial should also be a sort of park might be justified, in this case, by its location along the tidal basin. For any other use, it should be obvious that the site should include places where tourists can get off their feat.
But a monument to King shouldn't be so practical. It should be iconic. It should strive to give some sense of the largeness of the man himself.
Today while I worked watched the Wizards hand it to the Mavs (where was that explosive bench, Dallas?), players and NBA associates spoke about King's legacy. Some players spoke about their parents making them watch King's speeches or listen to recordings of his homilies. That seems significant to me. Realizing King's metaphors in granite doesn't speak to his gravity as a speaker, and his memorial ought to pay homage to this particular gifts. He was the most gifted narrator in the history of this nation, a true uniter, and so on. This is a fussy memorial that encourages you to find your own solitary rapport with his message and that doesn't basically reflect the man.
Somewhat related: To celebrate MLK Day, TMC is showing Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep tonight at 8:00 p.m. and then again at 12:30 a.m. It is one of the most beautiful films you'll ever see and I'm ecstatic that it has been so rediscovered. Via Kottke, courtesy of le Cath.
Gogol would appreciate the sentiment: "The AP Has Written Britney Spears' Obituary."
I think I might know a Web designer or two who would trade expertise for prints. If that's you, Brian Ulrich would like to bend your ear.
The Village Voice acknowledges that an appearance of a conflict of interest is tantamount to a conflict of interest and ends its relationship with Christian Viveros-Fauné, after Tyler Green discovered (revealed?) in a Q&A (!) with Viveros-Fauné that the critic "has been named managing director of two upcoming commercial art fairs" in New York and Chicago. The statement by editor Tony Ortega is careful to say that Viveros-Fauné never acted in a way to give the newspaper pause—an important professional courtesy, but not a statement that edifies the ethical gray area. A conflict of interest is not an ethical lapse in itself. A critic doesn't need to be caught switching caps, putting on one hat to support the interest he pursues when he's wearing the other hat, to have a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest is the potential for an ethical lapse. Critics can't wear two hats—critics should not even own two hats.
Of course, it's reasonable that a critic might want to switch hats at some point to find the one that fits best. Jeffry Cudlin made the switch: The former galleries critic at the Washington City Paper (that's the beat that I write now), he ceased and desisted writing about local galleries and artists when he took the job as Director of Exhibitions at the Arlington Arts Center. He continues to contribute to the CP on museum shows, where there is not a conflict of interest. Squeaky clean.
I, for one, know exactly how hard it is to write about art and make a reasonable living. Aside from a few contract editing jobs and some regular assignments on subjects outside the art world, I earn my keep by writing about visual art. It can be done: I've found that living in a city that's saturated by media, abundant with art, and populated by relatively few arts writers makes it possible (And, if I'm honest, living like a graduate student makes it bearable.) No one is entitled to a job as a salaried critic; there isn't a minimum pay-scale above which journalistic ethics apply.
The questions Edward Winkleman raises, while worth solving, especially if we are to arrive at a more specific understanding of what counts and what doesn't in the register of permissions and violations, his premise is complicated when it need not be. An eagle-eyed watch for conflicts of interest in journalism does not actually concern art, the art market, the prestige of critics or criticism, or the rise and fall of arts-writing salaries. It's a concern for journalism itself, and one for which the answer is clear cut, across fields and across publications: One has to look out for conflicts of interest, because journalism only happens in their absence.
Some of the responses Green rounds up seem inappropriate to me. Maybe Viveros-Fauné ought to have known better, but by his own admission, he is not by training a journalist; he came to criticism by way of his specialty knowledge, having owned a gallery. I would hardly call it shameful that Viveros-Fauné erred, even if his efforts to excuse his shortsightedness by pointing out the mote in every critic's eye came off as desperate. At the risk of being too kind, I'd go so far as to say that even his logorrheic casting-about for some internal logic behind might be excused—coming as it does in a Q&A, which does not always suit everyone. Certainly, the result was the right one.
Here, for the record, is my hat.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is hosting a panel on Wednesday on how candidates for the 2008 U.S. presidential contest are ballooning Islamophobia in a crass appeal to voters. I couldn't think of a single example and couldn't make heads or tails of this, until I remembered that the presidential contest also includes the Republican primary. Right, those guys.
Juan Cole, a longtime favorite read, will be discussing the fear-for-votes issue; here's hoping that he's open to speaking off-message, too, and winds up lingering on Shiite and Sunni cultural and societal realignments in Iraq, which I believe is one of his special areas of study, concerning information that is a little harder to come by than fearmongering on Hannity & Colmes.
Fretting over Islamophobia. That's how I'll be spending my twenty-eighth birthday. Who says the late 20s aren't wild! I do worry that I'm getting this all wrong, though. Aren't I supposed to be developing irrational fears about the other as I age? Meta fears about their representation in public rhetoric doesn't seem to suffice.
Jessica Dawson on the current show at Project 4:
The show missteps only once, but royally: Anthony Goicolea's video work "The Septemberists" attaches designer-clad young men to a slim narrative that's really just an extended ad for fashion designer Thom Browne. What with the film's three separate credits for its actors' hair, Goicolea did indeed Bumble and Bumble.Nice line. That's the hair product I use, when my hair is shorter (I keep thinking about growing it out). In any case, you can and should see the show this week, which features work by an old friend from Texas.
The Washingtonian catches up with former Washington Post architecture critic Ben Forgey, who has some old-hand observations on the city's more famous buildings as well as less obvious spots like Rosslyn and Silver Spring. Click-click.
Kieran Healy, commenting on the UK's national debate on informed versus presumed consent on organ donation proposed by Gordon Brown:
Cadaveric organ procurement is an intense, time-sensitive and very fluid process that requires a great deal of co-ordination and management. Countries that invest in that layer of the system do better than others, regardless of the rules about presumed and informed consent.Healy also writes, "I think that the main effect of a change in the law, if it happens, will be as a public signal to prospective donors (and their next of kin) that the socially accepted default option on donation has shifted from 'Ask permission' to 'You have to object.'" Moreover, it makes it easier for leaders to invest in coordination and management without seeking permission from or being stymied by opposed political interests. A law that makes it easier for hospitals to transfer organs without actively seeking consent signals permission for leaders to fund these programs without actively seeking consent (any more than is already vested in them). I wouldn't say rules "regardless"—the rules make rights.
I approve of presumed consent and hope that our society endorses that outlook, but as I grow older and superstition seeps into my mind, I find myself looking at that donor symbol on my driver's license warily. I do not believe in an afterlife, but I have some slippery notions about the aesthetics of death (which are mostly informed by a passage from the Aeneid). As wolf-faced crazy as that sounds, it's true, issues of propriety continue to have a strong hold over my beliefs about burial and death rights (such as they are) and I think a lot about taking myself off the organ donor's list.
DCist reports that Mayor Adrian Fenty is sooooo dreamy, having dropped the taxi fare flag drop to $3, eliminated the ridiculous surcharges, and capped fares in the District at a maximum of $18.90.
Just the other day, I took a taxi from Dupont Circle four blocks or so west before I realized I had forgotten something, at which point I asked him to take me back to where we started. With a straight face he asked me for $16: two trips, one stop, some surcharge each way. I'm ashamed that in the argument that followed, I called him a criminal; but that fare was certainly highway robbery.
Already I have received a couple of responses taking exception with the point I put forward over the weekend in this Guardian piece: that departing Met director Philippe de Montebello will be remembered as an international arbitrator who paved the way forward for resolving provenance disputes over antiquities. What to make of the 30 years over which de Montebello exacerbated the Met's conflicts with Italy?
That's a point, I don't dispute it. But with respect to de Montebello's legacy, it is the resolution of the conflict that matters more. Now that the the color and the shape of Italy's bargain with the Met has been announced—the museum will receive three Greek vessels, dating from the 6th to 4th centuries B.C.&mdash, to display for four years;a clearer assessment of the Met's deal will emerge. Details notwithstanding, already we have witnessed the MFA Boston adopt the same general framework with respect to its own holdings and its dealings with Italy. So has Princeton University's art museum. Italy's high-profile case against Western museums has informed and enabled older cases against the West, too, for example, Peru's claim on works held by Yale University that were excavated from Machu Picchu in 1912. In September 2007, Yale and Peru came to an agreement emphasizing "the collaborative stewardship of cultural and natural treasures".
Of course, de Montebello's legacy will not be decided by the Met's final framework alone. The person the museum appoints as his successor will immediately affect his legacy. If that nominee is Art Institute of Chicago director James Cuno, then de Montebello's role in liberalizing the institution's policy toward antiquities will be downplayed. Cuno takes a hard line on whether modern Italy is within rights to lay claim to a world's worth of antique objects disseminated from the geographical area of Italy (Cuno argues that it is not). But even a reversal in the political-philosophical direction of the Met can only be taken so far; after all, it's not as if a less sympathetic director can take the helm of the museum and somehow take the Euphronios krater back.
I understand you are planning on seeing your favorite dark-calypso combustion ensemble, Gestures, play tonight at the Velvet Lounge. This is a good plan that you have devised. It is, frankly, one of the more sensible decisions that you can make, given a primary season full of confusing candidates, inevitable disappointments, and electronic amplification. None of that is on the agenda tonight at the Velvet Lounge—and that's a promise I intend to keep.
Claudia Rousseau, writing about Amy Lin for the Gazette:
The work of emerging regional artist Amy Lin, now on view at the Heineman Myers Gallery in Bethesda, presents something of a conundrum. The interest it has generated, and the sales, threaten to make it suspiciously too popular to be taken seriously. Couple that with a widespread fascination with the artist's technique — hundreds of small circles of varying sizes hand-drawn in curving strings with little tail-like ends — discussions of Lin's work tend to be on the level of a "temple of toothpicks" rather than the kind of analytical response usually accorded abstract compositions. What passes for commentary on her work has tended to focus on the amazing number of dots, the sort of thing that could be done with a computer in short order, but which Lin tediously, obsessively, draws with colored pencils. But does this emphasis on the "wow" effect do it justice? If there were no more interest here than the dazzlingly meticulous way they are made, would they really be worth looking at?That lede alone is easily one of the most useful things written about Lin's work so far—though there has been no shortage of articles about her. Outlets that have crowned the young artist include the Washingtonian, which listed her as one of 2007's forty Washingtonians under age 40 to watch. The Washington Post has heaped praise on the artist to the point of redundancy.
Rousseau continues:
The fact is, once past that level, there is much to be seen and thought about here, and the artist's much overlooked serious intent, particularly in terms of self-expression, deserves some attention.That is where our opinions on Lin's work diverge. (For reasons not least of which being that artist's intent is cited as the work's saving grace.) I have never seen an inkling of the Eastern influence, artistic or philosophical, that Lin's admirers seem to find in her work. I don't think her work shows incredibly obsessive markmaking—in fact I wouldn't even think to describe it in those terms, even if she does draw many circles on medium- to large-scaled canvases. I don't understand either why this technique is fascinating. Frankly, I don't buy that people truly believe it is. Lin's work is colorful, it's precious, it's easy and accessible, market friendly, decorative. The work I have seen by the artist (which does not include pieces recently shown by Heineman Myers) is out of step with any conversation about abstraction, medium, composition, etc., taking place in the art world today. It escapes me why her work has garnered any attention at all; at best, she's the poor man's Linn Meyers.
The other day Becks was complaining that she never wanted to hear Rihanna's "Umbrella" again. She's wrong about that song, though she might have an ally in Paper Rad.
Paper Rad, Umbrella Zombie Datamosh Mistake, 2007.
A press release tells me that on Friday, the New Museum will debut two new works by Paper Rad for its "Continuing Education for Dead Adults" series—how f'ing great is that name!—and that one of those pieces is called crank dat spongebob batman dropdead robocop. Spencer and I will be paying close attention.
UPDATE: I would explain why Becks is so wrong, but Ben Wolfson's reading of "Umbrella" can't be improved upon. Wolfson:
"Umbrella" is an expression of an extremely weak hope in an extremely bleak world, and a knowing one at that—it's not just an expression of a hope that happens to be weak but also an acknowledgement of just how weak that hope is. In this, of course, Rihanna is not without antecedents. The really vital part of the lyrics comes in the chorus, where one would expect the core thematic material to be sounded, but even in the verses we find support for this reading. The very first two lines (ignoring Jay-Z's introductory bit, which serves, as far as I can tell, no purpose whatsoever, except perhaps to establish rain as a bad thing ("when the clouds come we go") as opposed to, say, a symbol of rejuvenation) serve to vastly deflate our expectations: "You have my heart / And we'll never be worlds apart". Not being worlds apart is, one would like to point out, quite compatible with still being quite far apart indeed. In the second verse the worldliness of the world is explicitly recognized as being corrupting ("these fancy things") if not outright harmful (the war; references to bad hands being dealt); at the end she expresses once again the quietism already emphasized in the chorus ("So go on and let the rain pour").The relevant portion of the chorus perhaps ought to be quoted at length:
Now that it's raining more than ever(That's not much length, but it's enough.) What is this except a reiteration of the Arnoldian plea, "let us be true to one another", a cry for a separate peace even while acknowledging the flimsiness and temporariness of such a solution? We are here as on a flooding plain: but at least we've got an umbrella. And, of course, just as Arnold's imprecation does not really make much sense, given that "the world . . . Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light / Nor certitude, nor peace" (you're going to be true to your love in that world?), so too Rihanna's attempt to carve out some happiness comes off as at least a little self-deceived: as if an umbrella were a roof, as if even a roof would suffice!
Know that we'll still have each other
You can stand under my umbrella
"Put the odds at 95 percent" that Joe Gibbs will serve out the final year of his contract as coach of the Washington Redskins, says WaPo sports writer (and self-proclaimed "Gibbsologist") Thomas Boswell. It's not the fact that he got it wrong that's embarrassing; it's the fact that he calls himself a Gibbsologist the same day he misses the mark.
I do approve the comparison between Joe Gibbs and the Kremlin, however. Gibbs's new "special advisor" role even has a Putinesque ring to it. More broadly, every right-thinking, America-loving American knows that Washington is the Evil Empire.
I understand that when I buy things at the grocery store, graphs at universities in fifty states erupt in a fit of activity, as demand curves race to intersect with supply lines. But my knowledge of the hows and whys of this arcane phenomenon is extremely limited. My economist friends will tell you that they've enjoyed a meal ticket whenever I've needed to understand things like derivatives markets. Beyond the smattering of economic facts I've gleaned from these friends over dinner (for example, I know that this constitutes an exchange of goods for services), I'm the last person that any voter should consult when it comes to assessing a candidate's financial principles.
But when the voter's a member of the immediate family, it's a different matter. As the son who lives in the Nation's Capital, my parents depend on me to parse the debates that they see on the news. Well, that's not quite right—typically they depend on me to yell at them for being gullible when they read me slanderous news accounts from e-mail forwarded by my aunt. This week, though, I've played political consultant, fielding questions left and right (and about left and right) concerning the candidates and their positions as my parents' interest in the topic reaches its winter solstice.
For the most part I merely try not to raise my voice when I'm explaining that B. Hussein Obama isn't a Wahhabist terrorist. You'd think that Google would be able to answer all these questions, but the forwarded emails are smarter than that; one that I fielded recently suggested that the intel had been vetted via snopes.com—where you'll in fact learn that Obama was not sworn in on a "Kuran," should you bother to check after you've been assured you don't need to.
This isn't to say that my folks are rubes—just like everyone else, their understanding of the issues is predicated upon their media consumption habits. They just don't consume a whole lot of media about politics, and the information they do receive comes from unreliable sources.
Yesterday, though, I found myself debating a substantive issue with my mother, who (along with my dad) tends to vote on values issues. She approves Obama, for all the dirt she's received about him, but she thinks she should stick with the candidates she's more comfortable with: Mike Huckabee. Southerner, Republican, former governor, Baptist, rarely associated with Wahhabism. The issue that places her firmly in Huckabee's camps is his proposal to eradicate income tax and establish a (what is it? Thirty-odd percent?) national sales tax.
That strikes Mom as eminently fair, even though it's not in her best economic interests (folks are both retired). In response I decided to go for the nuclear option and explained, authoritatively, that Huckabee's plan amounted to regressive taxation. Far from impressed, however, my mother didn't know what I was talking about. Neither did I, I realized.
How do you explain, without using words like "Rawlsian" or reading aloud from Brad DeLong's archives, that flat tax plans that seem so simple and fair in fact shift the economic burden from rich to poor? Another word that isn't so self-evidently clear as I'd long believed: "burden". I stammered on for a spell about pies and proportions, arguing that in life, some people are delivered small personal pan pizzas whereas the lucky get the extra-large meat lover's. It went downhill from there:
Mom: But it's fair if everyone's giving up the same percentage of pizza!I passed the question along to my political-journalist betters, but I ask you: Is there an easier analogy I'm missing, some clearer and cleverer rhetorical path to progressive indoctrination?
Me: But then poor people don't have enough slices left to meet their basic pizza needs!
UPDATE: I don't know that Mom will thank me for it, but I am getting a lot of responses. A few heavyweight economists responded to a bleg on the cabalistic journalists' email network (no, really, it exists; I believe Ezra Klein is the admin), one saying that rich people don't spend, so under a fair tax unemployment rises. Julian Sanchez wrote me with a wealth of devil's advocacy. And Yglesias offers a good point and illustrates it with a detestable celebrity.
Things like this make me worry for the safety of the Democratic frontrunner.
(Via comments on Obama's facebook page)
Ram for your Mac turns out to be ridiculously cheap, so long as you're not buying it through Apple. Courtesy Yglesias, whose insight on Clinton's prospects after Iowa is well worth the cost of your click.
Wars should be safe, legal, and rare. When the United States does go to war, it should be under the authority of Congress, with every care taken to protect our troops while they're gone and after they return, and war should only ever be the option of last resort. To my mind Barack Obama's greatest appeal is in his unqualified critique of imperial war powers. I believe that he offers a real promise to reclassify war as our nation's response to clear and present dangers, not vague and foreseeable conflicts of interests. And putting a candidate in the White House on that message is an opportunity to re-insert that message into the mainstream.
It's a little distressing then that, during his acceptance speech, Obama makes more than a few glancing references to the coalition of interests who granted his victory, including Republicans and Independents. It was as if he were speaking from a place beyond—larger than—the Democratic Party. Now, it's critical that Obama court self-proclaimed Independents, especially if he winds up facing self-styled "maverick" John McCain in the general, so I don't begrudge him this. But part of his great appeal to me is the unique opportunity he affords to reform the Democratic Party as its leader.
That's about what I can say in the way of critique of his victory speech last night. In any other respect, it was thrilling. You owe it to yourself to watch the speech if you missed it last night. What can I say? There was a part that gave me goosebumps. He seems like a leader from a different age. He absorbs interesting things that you might say about him before you can so that what you end up saying sounds wistful and cliche.
I can't help but think of this classic exchange:
Tyrone: [ . . . ] Speaking of Obama, I need to get t-shirts printed up to sell.Speaking of t-shirts, where's Mike Huckabee's?John: I can do that on the web. What do they say?
Tyrone: Don't You Dare Kill Obama
John: How about Don't You Dare Kill Obama (... and we know you're thinking about it)
Tyrone: Niiiiice.
John: Or You Kill Obama and WE WILL BURN SHIT DOWN
[Huckabee gag via the Associate.]
Now I find myself in a band called Gestures. I'm playing tenor saxophone. The picture above does not feature me; nor do the songs on the Web site. You can only find me by showing up at the Velvet Lounge on Wednesday, January 9, where we're playing with Adventure (from Baltimore) and Terrior Bute and Big Fun (both from Milwaukee).
Gestures seems in this case to be the butt of a which-one-doesn't-belong joke by the booking agent, since the other acts on the bill are crisp and electronic whereas we proffer acoustic noise. But the hope is that we'll find instead that we all belong (and you, too).
