Proposed: Any lengthy, aphoristic, musing essai on the Internet and its deleterious impact on "significant speech"—whether by the hordes it summons, the criticism it debases, or the men of privilege it removes—be called a turning aspen.
Here's Leon Wieseltier with a turning aspen on the sorrow and resignation that he feels after a peer and friend embraces the Walt and Mearsheimer position on the Israel lobby. Note, though, that embedded in his pensive pen is the audacious capacity for hope, the recognition of and appreciation for the renewal that is bound to come. This is a necessary feature of the turning aspen. The emptiness Wieseltier feels now is real but his remove from considered commentary, alas, is only temporary.
An absolutely devastating article in the Washington Post about the lax standards for rape prosecution in the UK. Nineteen of twenty defendants walk free; police conduct investigations in a way that grossly benefits the accused. In those cases that lead to prosecution, justice officials and police express an attitude of tolerance and permissiveness. Even the verbiage of "murky sex," the UK equivalent of Laura Sessions Stepp's "gray rape" concept, shift the rhetorical case in favor of the men. (Not that Stepp's notion was born from an overabundance of kindness toward women.)
Mary Jordan (along with researchers Jill Colvin, Karla Adam, and Robert E. Thomason) writes up some recent cases that will turn your stomach. Excellent reporting, highly recommend you read it.
Sixteen-hundred words from Lee Siegel about Lee Siegel being Lee Siegel. About the crystallizing moments of our era that fractured Lee Siegel. About the negation of Lee Siegel. About Lee Siegel and Lee Siegel, about sprezzatura and sprezzatura. Also, about Jon Stewart.
Lee Siegel, crashing through the blogosphere. Go read Spencer.
Matthew Yglesias goes on vacation and his blog gets culture. Guest-blogger Alyssa notes a Smithsonian magazine list of the top 10 art heists of all time. Only three of those cases also pop up on the FBI's top-10 list, which just goes to show that the black market for art is storied.
Alyssa writes, "Prints are cool, but it's fun to imagine having the real thing tucked away to look at." But that's only ever been the established motive in one case: the theft of Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, which was stolen by . . . Dr. No. Megalomaniacal art connoisseurs don't exist—but fabricators, petty burglars, and insurance defrauders do, and they commit crimes that set the industry back $6 billion annually.
It's insurance fraud that does the worst damage. Most every high-profile, celebrity-art crime is motivated by the same form of extortion: Third-party insurance companies arbitrate the payoff between museum and thief. It's an incredibly high-risk, incredibly profitable, and incredibly routine process.
The only way to prevent against art theft is to make sure that priceless works stay priceless: Art museums should not insure their paintings against theft.
Lee Siegel on Cy Twombly in 2005:
You cannot fully understand Twombly's art unless you know that he is gay. It's often fatuous to reduce an artist to his or her sexuality, but Twombly is working in a tradition that associates homosexuality with an ideal human freedom.For art writers that sentence stands as an example of what's to be avoided in art criticism. It's not merely wrongheaded analysis. It's shoehorning the biographical into the critical, conflating the two as though they're one and the same. Or worse, as if knowing some gem about an artist's life or disposition is the key to judgment about that artist's work.
I didn't mention the fact that Robert Rauschenberg was gay in my obituary for the Dallas Morning News, an omission that one friend picked up on the day it ran. Later it surfaced as an item in Tyler Green's roundup of article that he claims heteronormalize Rauschenberg's work, career, and life.
One point to make is that Green's picking up on a metanarrative. Individually, a press omission about Rauschenberg's sexuality may be benign and even reasonable. What part of his career or work should the writer under space constraints neglect in order to discuss his sexuality? What about an obituary of a person for whom simple binary modifiers don't seem to fit or for whom sex doesn't seem especially significant? Or the publication that's past all that?
In sum, however, it's a different story. I don't think that a gloss of the obits on Rauschenberg reads straight-by-omission—though a reader wouldn't know any better about certain aspects of his life if every article had ended with the old journalistic obit trope on confirmed bachelors: "He never married." At the media level (as opposed to the sole press account), Green's point holds.
That Rauschenberg's relationship with Jasper Johns was sexual as well as professional might be a detail that writers, in an overabundance of caution, neglected to mention so as not to appear to indulge in salacious reporting. That wasn't my thinking—I was focusing very specifically on his work in Texas and wrote in one draft more extensively on his influence today over sculpture, and I wasn't planning on discussing Jasper Johns at all—but that sort of thinking might occur to me.
Green's examples of hostility toward homosexuality in press accounts (specifically in the Baltimore Sun) strike me as flimsy. His suggestion that my reference to Rauschenberg's charity work on AIDS was a workaround to acknowledging that he was loud and proud isn't right and undercuts the importance of that charity work to Dallas.
Still, one gay artist asked me later, "Why didn't you talk about Rauschenberg as a mo?" Fair question—and it's good for the practice that Green is bringing the discussion forward. I didn't talk about that because I don't think it's crucial to the work. I find those readings of works like Bed and Monogram as dedicated statements about sexuality to be provocative but lacking. I don't think that identity politics were so significant to arts practice at the time and I don't think that he opened up an era for that discussion. He did use gay imagery—but he was a devourer of imagery. He didn't shy away from his sexuality—but the barriers he trampled right over were different ones.
To be sure, I don't think his sex is irrelevant to his work. But you can fully understand Rauschenberg without knowing that he is gay.
For the Guardian, Shane Danielson writes the proper defense for Australian photographer Bill Henson and a measured response to his harassers, chief among them prime minister Kevin Rudd. You already know the script: Photographer snaps non-sexual nude images of adolescents, finds admiration home and abroad, courts persecution from state prudes. The Sydney Morning Herald has the sordid particulars, including multiple gallery raids across the country.
Note that the police claim that they are acting on new complaints they have received about the photographs. It's actually rare that you will find any recorded complaint against an art work in culture-war cases alleging obscenity in art before the state interferes. After the fact, of course, the controversy alerts puritans who are plenty willing to speak up against art works they never knew were there. Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and Nan Goldin all had successful runs in modest- to large-scale exhibitions that received no complaints (more likely, glowing reviews) before politicos seized on the works—after the fact of the exhibitions—in prurient appeals to prudishness. Henson, too: His retrospective drew 115,000 viewers three years ago to the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of Victoria. With not one complaint generated over those runs, according to Alison Croggon's letter on behalf of Creative Australia 2020 Summit representatives.
Unfortunately, the preoccupation with child protection and photography has become something of a paranoid style in all the former elements of the British Empire. I know Austin Mitchell to be on UK politician who has opposed the official harassment of photographers (in Britain it's street photographers who must beware). In Australia, it's Cate Blanchett who's giving the state what-for.
I reported for DCist on the city's move to close "Here & Now," an art exhibit staged at the 14th and T Streets NW building that used to house the Church of the Rapture. And on the goldfish that are still trapped inside.
A fascinating WSJ article about stray dog culture in Moscow, complete with a video that features dogs that look like Wreck. The story distresses me for reasons I can't quite name. Courtesy Catherine.
A reader passes on some stuff about the Urban Verbs, a band who sounded like Public Image back before there was a Public Image. They've reunited after a long absence from the scene; David Malitz enjoyed an early look at the group before its official reunion show at the 9:30 on May 24. The Urban Verbs played a preview show at Comet Ping Pong, which should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with Comet's reputation for supporting the art scene—that's painter Robin Rose on the acid synths.
Check out this incredible blurb from the band's site:
The band's first performances took place in 1978 at the Atlantis Club on F Street in Washington DC. The Verbs first practice space was in the Catacombs beneath the club and Roddy lived in a seventh floor loft there for a time. After catastrophic mismanagement by the club and building owner, the incredible Dody Di Santo took over and birthed the 9:30 Club, named for it's address at 930 F Street, NW as well as its usual opening time. The Verbs were the first DC band to play CBGBs (with the Cramps) in October of 1978. During that gig they were seen by Brian Eno, who was living in the West Village at 9 West 8th Street and recording the Talking Heads' "More Songs About Buildings and Food" at Chris and Tina's loft in Long Island City. After the Verbs second set he rushed home and typed a two page letter, replete with marginalia and beginning, "I was extremely impressed by your performance tonight. It struck me as a whole new set of ideas about how to structure sound.” He shared his thoughts about the structure of the Verbs' music and instrumentation and very generously offered to record two live Verbs sets at CBGBs the following week before leaving for Africa. "I realize this gush might surprise you somewhat (it did!!!) , but you came at a good time for me. I have been sitting in my apartment for the last three weeks, and before that in England, thinking and writing about music in a social sense: it's connection to the current state of life, if you'd like. And now to hear something which seems so very well connected is a joy."I'm sorry I'm going to miss that May 24 show, but it sounds like a band worth checking out.
Closed immediately and indefinitely, say the Going Out Gurus. Aw, man—Gestures had just got word that we were playing Fort Reno this year. Arsenic—what a bummer!
Kudos to Spanish-language press for providing the "most timely, serious, and civic-minded" news to the Los Angeles media market, and shame on Governor Schwarzenegger for his wrong-headed assumption that it obviously should be otherwise. At the other end of the bell curve, Mexico's Milenio has the best and bluntest wrapup of the international scene over the last 8 years:
Courtesy Eyeteeth.
Here is my obituary for Robert Rauschenberg for the Dallas Morning News, focusing on his career and influence in Texas.
Knee-deep in deadlines but I should have more up here later today. Just a quick note—come by Project 4 this Saturday at 2 p.m. 3 p.m. Both the artist and I will be speaking about the work (and I suppose to one another). In the mean time, read the essay I wrote for the show—my big contribution to the effort.
UPDATE: Due to a competing event, the talk's been pushed back to 3 p.m.
Christine Gray, Rabbit Terrine, 2008.
An illustration: Radiohead fans who arrive late (that is, not early enough) to Nissan Pavilion during a Biblical flood are told that the roads inside the venue are flooded. Fans wind up circling the venue for hours waiting for access (all the while, it rains even harder). In comments here, readers relate stories about watching from the lawn, where they are exposed to the elements, and falling ill afterward. Pneumonia and hours idling in the car aren't worth the price of admission!
It did all make for a laugh during "Paranoid Android" ("Rain down, rain down/Come on rain down on me"), at least under the enclosed part of the auditorium. Which is where I was—sort of up in the front. And I had a great time! Though I had some difficulty getting the personal seat warmer to work. Live Nation, if you could look into that?
One more pun, karma police: Does the fallout from yesterday's failed show mark a watershed moment? Fans and promoters have always clashed but it's never been over carbon and rarely over structural access. It's not just that the roads were flooded—fans are saying they shouldn't have to take roads. The band's saying it's irresponsible to take roads. With both bands and fans complaining bitterly about the choice of venue, how long can promoter corporations like Live Nation hold out?
Another bitter point: Ticketmaster charged every fan—who saw the show or not—a $6 parking fee. When I am king, they will be first against the wall.
Everyone ought to see this video of Prince covering Radiohead's "Creep" before Prince makes it too hard to come by—copies have already been disappeared from Youtube. You know that's what Prince does all day: Surfing the Web for unauthorized copies of his music, while attendants bathe his feet in fresh yogurt.
The most remarkable part is that Prince's voice cuts out before he can say "creep" at any point during the song. The man is constitutionally incapable of making a self-derogatory claim, so he can't actually bring himself to sing the lyrics, "I'm a creep." Loud and clear on the perfect body line, though.
Amazing. Just as Chuck Todd is telestrating his way through a complicated explanation of how Barack Obama can yet pull out a narrow win in Indiana, MSNBC interrupts him to call it for Hillary Clinton. I've watched this sad scene unfold every single time the vote's been close during this primary. The only thing more improbable is that Rachel Maddow continues to have a job on a cable news network, despite being a woman, a lesbian, an unapologetic liberal, and quite frequently correct.
I favor MSNBC coverage over all the other cable networks, but I mean it when I say it: Chris Matthews should be required to present three authorizing signatures each and every time he wants to use a sports metaphor.
Nevertheless, as Hillary Clinton so lawyerly put it, they broke the tie in Indiana tonight. She canceled her talk show appearances for the morning—indeed, all her public appearances for the day—and her campaign asks the commentariot to take a deep breath and not rush Sen. Clinton. I don't think there's any worry on that score. This week and next week promise a leisurely parade of superdelegates announcing for Obama to the drumbeat of media outlets recognizing Obama as the Democratic nominee.
Everyone who prognosticated that nothing changed tonight got the election basically right: Though it seems at this hour that Obama wins Indiana by a hair, it doesn't make for a substantial improvement in allocated delegates over the small number that Clinton was predicted to net. Obama won North Carolina like he was supposed to.
The thing that changed was that Clinton dropped the front-runner façade. She couldn't maintain it. She declared the victory she could, furiously backpedaling on the meaning of the contest and canceling her next steps. Oh, and it looks as though she loaned her campaign money to get to this point—and this performance isn't going to make the crowds throw money. She even said that she would work for the Democratic nominee, no matter the results.
What about this signal is going to convince a majority of undecided superdelegates who, for whatever reason, have all along abstained from pledging their support to the candidate?
She'll have the time she needs to tour West Virginia and Kentucky and work out the post-active phase of her campaign; no one will rush her through that. But Barack Obama will be named the Democratic nominee for President.
On Day One waded past the garbage out front to ask the Flophouse what we'd like to see the next President do on day one of his administration. Yglesias says the President should commit to global nuclear disarmament. Spencer says the President should withdraw from Iraq. (And on that note, read Spencer's interview with David Petraeus.)
I in fact believe that support for the Artist-Museum Partnership Act and tax-code revisions to bolster fractional giving can probably wait until day 90 or so. But those are concerns that I'd like to see the next President address.
Related info, in blessed non-vlog format: Obama on the arts.
In its continued war against the Florida Flophouse, the District of Columbia sent operatives from a different agency to threaten us with fines. Yesterday we were visited by the Housing Regulation Administration, who told us to bag up the cardboard that the city won't collect or pay the price. Today, the Department of Public Works came by to tell us that bagging the garbage wasn't good enough: the city won't collect trash that's not in cans.
When I told him that the city wouldn't deliver recycling cans even though I've asked for them twice (confirmation number: 1692544), he said that the city in fact would not be giving us more cans for trash or recycling because—hang on—we residents of the Flophouse number five and that marks our house as a commercial property.
Then, to truly break our house's spirit, the guy made me move all the trash bags that the city pledges not to collect five feet to the right so they were centered in front of our house. Filth, we can live in—but indignity??
So, um, did you guys just feel an earthquake? I am very certain I felt the ground shake and I even thought for one split second that it was an earthquake, but it was over too quickly to register.
UPDATE: DCist says it was merely an explosion triggered by a group called the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which is drilling deep into the Earth's core. Nothing to worry about there!
UPDATE II: It was an earthquake! So to add to the snowy winters, the District now has earthquakes. But what, then, is this NGIA up to?
UPDATE III: Wrecky? Didn't even so much as try to tug my sleeve to warn me that an earthquake was imminent. No use!
The Lacie Golden Disk external hard drive, designed by Ora-Ïto, is tempting me, even though I know fully well that I can get double the capacity for another $50. Realistically, though, it will be many years before I max out half a terabyte, and I can't resist that surface value—some might call it "shiny"—especially when it comes in a shape that casually resembles Gió Pomodoro's classy abstract bronze pieces.
Maybe you like one of Lacie's other designs better?
Gió Pomodoro, Forma distesa, 1963–4.
Readers should know that I'm no longer writing for the Washington City Paper.
The proximate cause for my dismissal was a letter to the editor, which the paper forwarded to me two weeks ago. In the letter, a reader asked for a correction with regard to something I'd written for the best-of issue. An April correction would have meant back-to-back corrections for articles I'd written. (In March, I wrote that the "Collectors Select" exhibit at Arlington Arts Center showcased the efforts of five curators. There were in fact six/seven: five collectors and one husband-and-wife collector team, all of whom I discussed in the piece.)
I stood behind what I'd written in the April issue and protested the correction. A subsequent investigation (including two interviews with persons involved in the story) conducted by editor-in-chief Erik Wemple proved me right. No correction was run.
But vindication did not change the fact of the matter: It's time that the paper and I part ways. I've enjoyed working with Mark Athitakis and Matt Borlik and my work has benefited from their editing. I won't talk out of turn so I'll just say that I'm proud of the reporting and criticism I've written on the city's visual art scene for the last two years.
No doubt, I'll continue writing about District gallery shows, primarily in art magazines. Reviews for April/May shows will hit newsstands in a couple months and I'll let you know when they pop up online. Other reporting and opinion-y stuff will appear elsewhere. So keep reading.
In today's Dallas Morning News I have a story on the Vogels' "Fifty Works for Fifty States" gift. In the article I explain in some detail what Texas will receive—the list's only recently been made available to press (and to the museums).
Jen Graves in the Stranger has some posts about the gift that Washington (state) received.
Throughout my life I have seen, without one exception, narrow-shouldered men performing innumerable idiotic acts, brutalising their fellows, and corrupting souls by every means. They call the motive for their actions: fame. Seeing these exhibitions I've longed to laugh, with the rest, but that strange imitation was impossible. Taking a penknife with a sharp-edged blade, I slit the flesh at the points joining the lips. For an instant I believed my aim was achieved. I saw in a mirror the mouth ruined at my own will! An error! Besides, the blood gushing freely from the two wounds prevented my distinguishing whether this really was the grin of others. But after some moments of comparison I saw quite clearly that my smile did not resemble that of humans: the fact is, I was not laughing. I have seen men, hideous men with terrible eyes sunk deep in their sockets, outmatch the hardness of rock, the rigidity of cast steel, the shark's cruelty, the insolence of youth, the insane fury of criminals, the hypocrite's treachery, the most extraordinary play-actors, priests' strength of character, and the most secretive, coldest creatures of heave and earth. I have seen moralists weary of laying bare their hearts and bringing down on them selves the implacable wrath from on high. I have seen them all together—the most powerful fist levelled at heaven like that of a child already wilful toward its mother—probably stimulated by some denizon of hell, their eyes brimful of remorse and yet smarting with hatred, in glacial silence, not daring to spill out the unfruitful and mighty meditations harboured in their hearts, meditations so crammed with injustice and horror, enough to sadden the God of mercy with compassion. Or I've seen them at every moment of the day from the start of infancy to the end of dotage, while disgorging incredible curses, insensate curses against all that breathes, against themselves and Providence, prostitute women and children and thus dishonour those parts of the body consecrated to modesty. Then the seas swell their waters, swallow ships in their abysses; earth tremors and hurricanes topple houses; plagues and divers epidemics decimate praying families. Yet men are unaware of all this. I have seen them also blushing and blenching with shame at their behaviour on earth—but rarely. Tempests, sisters of cyclones; bluish firmament whose beauty I do not admit; hypocrite sea, image of my heart; earth with mysterious womb; inhabitants of the spheres; the whole universe; God who grandly created it, you I invoke: Show me one honest man! . . . May your grace multiply my natural strength tenfold, for at the sight of such a monster I might die of astonishment. One dies at less.From the first canto of Les Chants de Maldoror, by Le Comte de Lautréamont, 1868–69. This segment reads like the prayer of The Joker. The first canto, which I've only just finished, ends with the author speaking directly to the reader: "Greybeard, farewell, and if you have read this, think of me. You, young man, do not despair, for despite your opinion to the contrary, you have a friend in the vampire. Counting the acarus sarcoptes that causes crabs, you have two!"
Sam Taylor-Wood, That White Rush, 2007.
One image that's stayed with me since the art fairs last December? Sam Taylor-Wood's That White Rush.
Taylor-Wood, who is known for her photography, gives her medium a gentle tweak and winds up with one of the best video artworks I've seen in a fortnight. Taylor-Wood pictures the tryst between Leda and the Swan through a grainy video loop that plays at only a few frames per second.
Her take is both comic and earnest, acknowledging the absurdity of the visual: the nude woman reclines, propped up by her hands, and receives the ministrations of the taxidermied waterfowl, its wings fanned wide. Enhancing a comic effect is the low-fi porn production, which signals to the viewer that the perversion of the gods is best understood through the lens of the celebrity sex-tape. Taylor-Wood diminishes the deception of Zeus and the corruption of Leda as two very distinct effects within the myth. Instead, she focuses on the sex and how it acts as an equalizer—it just looks silly, silly in the way that only sex can, even sex between a mortal and a god.
Yet the scene and setting offer a stark contradiction to the porny production: no hotel mattress illuminated by lime-light night-vision, but instead stark wood floors bathed in wan sunlight. The set is ascetic, signifying revelation or ecstasy or their possibility. It's the same wood paneling favored by Anselm Keifer, who also investigates the divine, visitation, and the supernatural manifested in the real world. In Parsifal III, for example, Keifer depicts a wooden attic—a space invested with significance after the Holocaust and one that appears frequently in his work about heaven and earth. [For more Kiefer, click-click.]
Anselm Keifer, Quaternity, 1973.
Taylor-Wood's video painting takes its name from Yeats's 1922–23 poem, one of the myth's greatest depictions (and one of the poet's greatest poems):
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,So mastered by the brute blood of the air
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
Cy Twombly, Leda and the Swan, 1962.
Click to enlarge.
As in Yeats's characterization, Taylor-Wood has captured Leda in consensual contradiction: receptive, cautious, stimulated, curious. Yeats described Leda as resisting the swan with mere "terrified vague fingers", casting doubt as to whether she even put forth that much effort. Taylor-Wood has simulated that doubt in stilted frame captures—the breast caught heaving, the thigh caught shifting.
Yeats's poem breaks neatly into two halves, with action initiating the octave and climax resolving into sestet. In Taylor-Wood's piece we witness the moment suspended between "a sudden blow" and "a shuddering in the loins"; she has elected to promote perspective as the narrative insight. And in so doing she keys into Yeats's great, telescopic bound from myth to history: A shudder in the loins engenders there/ The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/ And Agamemnon dead.
Although the work is video, That White Rush doesn't capture the sort of context needed to assess what's happening between Leda and the swan. That ambiguity has always driven both the myth and its depictions. Photography and especially video are supposed to dispel ambiguity, and Taylor-Wood is certainly attentive to this idea. Her work is a religious painting caught on security camera. The momentary glimpse of sex (the nip-slip, the up-skirt cam) is a totem for sex, sexuality, and consent.
Art history provides two great precedents for Taylor-Wood's version. Michaelangelo's 1530-ish composition features important Mannerist tendencies. Leda's elongated, curling fingers, for example, give lie to the notion that she is asleep, suggesting permission. Michaelangelo could be a rather dirty old man, and he's reduced the act of penetration into two ambiguous details: the swan's tail meeting with a conspicuous fold of red drapery underneath Leda's bottom, and the swan's beak entering Leda's mouth rather than trained on her nape. And here for the first time (I believe), Leda is depicted in (welcome?) supine repose.
Cy Twombly's far more recent abstraction obviously involves a great degree of ambiguity as far as figure is concerned. The square window form is the anchor to the real, granting the architectural space of this mythical moment unexpected prominence. Taylor-Wood's piece reverses the configuration: the action is unexpectedly graphic, but the space is mysterious.
Leda and the swan as a motif? A welcome throwback. Not only is it one of art history's favorite myths, but confident dialog between contemporary art and a long art history is simply a relief in comparison to often confrontational appropriation tactics favored by would-be dragonslayers and debutantes. Taylor-Wood is not only pinging the canon but, doubly boldly, saluting Bill Viola, her contemporary, so well known for capturing the ecstatic in slow-to-unfold video works. To do so with a nod to Yeats and others? An unexpected achievement.
So I'll see you all at Borders downtown tonight to see Yglesias give a talk on Heads in the Sand? Thought so.
