The Schlock of the New

In this AFC comment-thread, I make a comparison between WANGA contestant Abdi Farah's floating, textured, green biomorph blow-up painting and Alexander Ross's floating, textured, green biomorph blow-up paintings. I'm sure that Farah was unaware of Ross's work (though I've already had to clarify that I'm not accusing Farah of "copying" or "appropriating" Ross's style), and I even dropped a paragraph from Mira Schor's essay "Trite Tropes, Cliches, or the Persistence of Styles" (the essay is included in her new book, which I just got in the mail):

"Old styles never die, they just continue to permeate the substrata of American art, lurking under the radar of the mainstream art world. Mutating and merging, they form new subspecies of styles with recognizable characteristics and a persistent life of their own. Yet, made up of cliches from styles whose original radicality, purpose, and lineage are lost, they are unconscious of their own existence as specific and historically based style types."

Obviously, Farah (and Ross, you, me, etc.) aren't the only artists who rehash (knowingly or not) existent and well-worn tropes. This press release for Peter Stichbury's upcoming show at Tracy Williams -- and the work itself -- seems to revel in the trope-tripping that Schor's essay indicates.

Before I even dove into the press release, the appended image of Stichbury's painting (a slight variant of these) immediately called to mind a host of other artists' works: Lucien Freud, John Currin, Alex Katz, Brian Calvin, Margaret Keane, and above all others, Tamara de Lempicka (hat tip Molly Porter). There's something about the big-eyed, pared-down, slick caricature style of these artists' portrait paintings that makes it fairly easy to situate them as close cousins. I'm even inclined to liberally trace the style back to the Fayum paintings and those gaga-eyed Sumerian statues.

The press release fails to address how Stichbury's work has clear stylistic affiliations with any of the abovementioned artists (though his Wikipedia page does associate his work with Freud and, nobly, Ingres). Instead, it launches into an exegesis of the show's epic-sounding title: The Proteus Effect. Suddenly, his kitschy, creamy Keanes "reflect the metamorphosis that occurs through digital self-representation via the use of avatars and invented personas." Instead of speaking about how or why Stichbury is employing this particular style, the press release instead opts for the "let's make it about the internet" and then "let's also make it about Greco-Roman myth" in order to justify the "relevance" and "novelty" of Stichbury's anything-but-new portrait-painting style. Did they lift the title and content from this dissertation? Because there's no mention of that, either. As mentioned in Schor's subsequent essay "Recipe Art," the Stichbury press release employs this formula:

"Recipe: something from popular culture + something from art history + something appropriated + something weird or expressive = useful promotional sound bite."

Update: Artist Angela Watters posted this photo of her textured, green biomorph lamp in reponse to Farah's painting. It's great (I especially like how she approximated the background of Farah's Chaos). Watters also refers to me as a "frequent, impish commentator," which I guess is better than being called a "noble troll." Or maybe they're equally awesome? I am a fairytale being.

Stupidity, Inconvenience, and Pointless Effort

While I still think that there's some Bing-biting going on, Google's image-search redesign isn't without its problems. Tom Moody outlines some specific and essential flaws with Google, from its Apple-esque stylistic affectations to the general stupidity of how its image-search operates. This Gawker article cites a study that reflects how shallow even the joined-to-the-internet-by-the-hip generation is when it comes to using search engines, and I've previously cited some writings here that weigh-in on our problematic cyber-everything culture.

I don't mind Google's new design, but I'm used to having to muck through endless pages of text and images to find something even tangentially relevant to what I'm looking for (actually, I think that it's one of my idiot-savant skillz: rapid precise scanning). I also realize that relying on search engines to provide substantial knowledge is to submit to willful ignorance. I mean, I love that I can find scores of images of an artist's work by typing their name into a toolbar, but first I've got to know who I'm looking for (and how to properly spell their name!). And even with that foreknowledge, you're not at all guaranteed to find kosher (or critical, or interesting) information -- you've still got to scour and cross-reference to validate your findings (foreknowledge helps a lot here, too).

So, even if you image-search Dana Schutz (assuming you know who she is and how to spell her name), would you ever find her painting that deals with the very subject that's being written about here?

But I also disagree that the internet is only useful for those who know what they're looking for. I've written about (and frequently link to) findings from dump.fm, mostly because I'm genuinely excited about what I find there. If you're willing to engage with (and endure) unfamiliar forums -- especially those that inundate you with content you're not looking for -- your internet habits (and expectations of what the web "is" and "for") will be challenged. For most people, that would probably be a good (though wholly inconvenient, if not entirely useless) thing.

The Horror of Laughter

I know that this can easily be chalked-up as "for a good cause" and that any criticism of it will mark the criticizer as a loathsome curmudgeon, but this Jeff Koons-ified children's hospital room frightens me. I've brought up Koons' artistic promiscuity before, but this is some next-level shit. I spent a fair share of time in hospitals when I was a kid (due to a leg injury and the fact that my mother worked in a hospital), and I never found the antiseptic-institutional vibe to be disturbing. Actually, I found the cleanliness and order to be somewhat calming. I liked that the hospital was a serious place and not a Chuck E. Cheese. Or maybe I was just a really boring kid.

Koons' hellish cartoon nightmare chamber, on the other hand, would've freaked my shit out. I'm reminded of the hallucinatory hospital-meltdown scene from Akira, and this health ad well-illustrates that combining a fun-house with a hospital room would result in a ghoulish, phantasmagorical cell-of-despair (note the Koons-esque blow-up giraffe/doctor). I also present these comparisons for your consideration.

Finally, the monkeys on the CAT Scan (which is prominently branded by Philips, though I like how it suggests the auction house) have got to go. As with panda bears and koalas, there are certain animals that we should seriously stop encouraging children to associate with unconditional friendliness.

Koala Smear Campaign... from the Inside

I'm sure that the Australian Koala Foundation totally has the collective, proverbial back of koalas everywhere (well, in Australia at least), but there's something about the answer to question #11 on their FAQ page that suggests someone at the AKF harbors some slanderous ill-will towards the perpetually-stoned marsupials:

Do koalas smell like eucalyptus cough drops? Does eating eucalyptus prevent them from being affected by external parasites?

No, though some people say koalas do have a eucalyptus smell. People like to put this idea out as an amusing fact about koalas but for most koalas, it’s not true. It depends on several factors. Mature males tend to have a stronger odour because of their scent gland but it's more of a strong musky odour than eucalyptus. Juvenile males are more likely to give off a very slight eucalyptus smell. In contrast to a nice eucalyptus odour, koalas often have a strong smell of urine (emphasis mine). The eucalyptus does not act as a parasite control - koalas do get ticks and other parasites.

Jeez! It's like: "No, asshole. Koalas DON'T smell like fucking Vicks VapoRub. In fact, they smell like piss. Really strong piss. And they're full of fucking parasites!" The AKF better deal with this Trojan horse before it blows up in their face.

Dumb is International

Gay priests blah-blah-blah and all, but what struck me about this story is that the Italian "conservative Panorama newsweekly" it was scooped from used an image of prayer-clasped, rosary-holding, hairy priest hands with SHOCKING FUSCHIA NAIL POLISH to signify "gay." Because, you know, gay men wear hideous nail polish whenever they can, and being gay is the same as being a colorblind old lady and/or transvestite. Or an old blind transvestite. Whatevs.

And for you academics out there who love them BIG WORDS, an image of nail-polished man-hands is a good example of a (visual) metonym (albeit an entirely homophobic, grievously wrongheaded one).

Spontaneous Curation VI

Breathing Through the Code by Ernesto Caivano
Cold War Hot Stuff by Aleksandra Mir
Savannah Region by Nicholas di Genova
Männergruppe von Kono by Fernando Bryce
Black Hole endpapers: Black Circle by Charles Burns
Britannia à la Beardsley by Aubrey Beardsley

Perils

I was charmed when I saw this multiple-image GIF dumped by Crunkus. The central animation is from Sierra's 1988 computer game King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella. It's from a scene where the title character, Rosella, drowns when you try to have her walk across a swamp (you can watch the scene here @ 2:39, as well as other "Ways to Die" throughout the game).

KQ4 was one of the first in-depth games that I became engrossed in on one of our first home computers (a Tandy 1000). As with Wasteland, I have a lot of fond memories, nostalgia, and sheer hours wrapped up in this game - I also attribute my fast typing skillz to KQ4, because unlike later point-and-click games, every action and observation had to be typed out.

A few years ago, I made some drawings based on scenes from KQ4. You can see them on my "Older Drawings" site. The screenshots they're based on can be seen here, here, and here.

Brand New You're Retro

"The art of tomorrow will be a collective treasure or it will not be ART at all." -Victor Vasarely

Every time I see one of Vasarely's paintings (generally as reproductions in auction catalogues or the short Op art section of art history books), I always end up liking them a lot. Just Google image-search his name and you'll see why. He's often credited as having made some of the first Op art paintings (according to Wikipedia, his Zebra works from the 30's were Op art pioneers), and even though Op art is generally disregarded as formulaic, purely visual eye-candy, I've always been a fan of the genre.

Vasarely's paintings are eye-tickling fun, but they're also amazingly similar to certain kinds of "native" images and animations you'll frequently see at dump.fm. I spent some time on his official website (designed by his wife, Michele, who also designed the site of their son/artist, Yvaral). All of the sites have this overworked, cheesy, retro-futurist, soundtracked, Utopian slant that I found really frustrating, but also surprising in how they try to associate Op art with a kind of cyberculture. There was also something about these sites that reminded me of Melanie Griffith's site (which was brought to my attention via AFC), though more because of their new-agey-ness rather than their cyberculture-ness.

Al Held's paintings are also CGI/GIF/screen-saver-ish, though his works haven't been given the overwrought website treatment.

Death of the Author (?)

Multiple-image dumps, unauthorized collaborations (?):

Faceless Walkers (Thanks Julian Opie)
Diamonds and Butterflies (Thanks Mark Grotjahn)
Elegant Industries (Thanks Hilary Harkness)
Moonwalk Autopsy (Thanks Dana Schutz)
Sushi for Giants (Thanks Kara Walker)

More multiple-image dumps, semi-unauthorized collaborations (?):

Six Runners (Thanks Bryan Rogers)
Lava Lamp Collection
Juggler
Happy Bouncing

(Ironic?) Post-Title Attribution: The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes

I'm a Hypocrite (But So's Your Mom)

I'm slowly acclimating to working in a studio outside of my apartment, and after finishing my first drawing/collage I found myself thinking: "Christ... I'm glad I'm not on WANGA, because then I'd have to deal with motherfuckers like me ripping the shit out of this piece of crap."