Jesse Patrick Martin

1, 2, 3

2011-10-10T10:51:00.000-04:00

"A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in process of losing grip on its empire and on itself. And this looseness and blowsiness is not anything as simple and scandalous as abrupt and disordered syntax.

It concerns the relation of expression to meaning. Abrupt and disordered syntax can be at times very honest, and an elaborately constructed sentence can be at times merely an elaborate camouflage."

-Ezra Pound, from ABC of Reading

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Gadfly/Charlatan

2011-09-27T13:27:00.001-04:00

"On such occasions Rex could talk endlessly, indefatigably, inventing stories about non-existent friends and propounding reflections not too profound for the mind of his listener and couched in a sham-brilliant form. His culture was patchy, but his mind shrewd and penetrating, and his itch to make fools of his fellow men amounted almost to genius. Perhaps the only real thing about him was his innate conviction that everything that had ever been created in the domain of art, science or sentiment, was only a more or less clever trick. No matter how important the subject under discussion, he could always find something witty or trite to say about it, supplying exactly what his listener's mind or mood demanded, though, at the same time, he could be impossibly rude and overbearing when his interlocutor annoyed him. Even when he was talking quite seriously about a book or a picture, Rex had a pleasant feeling that he was a partner in a conspiracy, the partner of some ingenious quack—namely, the author of the book or the painter of the picture."

-Vladimir Nabokov, from Laughter in the Dark

Another 6 'ANOTHER'

2011-09-20T11:57:00.001-04:00

From Woods, Water, Women

ANOTHER GIRL TURNS INTO A TREE (1:08)

ANOTHER TREE TURNS INTO A GIRL (1:13)

ANOTHER TALKING TREE-FACE GUY (2:36)

ANOTHER GUY TURNS INTO A TREE (3:20)

ANOTHER GIRL TURNS INTO A TREE (3:25)

ANOTHER TREE TURNS INTO A GUY (0:00)

Concise Baroque Effluvia as Survivalist Shapeshifter Escapism

2011-09-15T17:39:00.001-04:00

From Woods, Water, Women

Rising from the smoking pit – in a dress sequined with dimes – Lally felt a sneeze coming on. This was the final scene of Serpentine, the visual and cerebral apex of a deceptively staid play. At no worse of a time could Nature fly in to tickle Lally’s discrete, feminine, and otherwise invisible, microscopic, and frankly cilia-like nostril-hairs than right fucking now.

Other phenomena notwithstanding, it’s incredible how quicksilver and elaborate thoughts manifest in a panicked instant, like popcorn blossoming on a skim of hot oil. After discarding the third such zephyr-thought (something involving the prospective folding of the seemingly-inevitable sneeze into the cymbal-crash that was scheduled to strike in mere seconds, so that at least the sound of it would be somewhat challenged, and so that perhaps the more acute dullards in the audience might perceive such a sound-sneeze coordination as a scripted moment), Lally committed herself to an even balsier improvisation: once the real sneeze presented itself, Lally would just keep on “sneezing,” right through the last few minutes of the production. Amazing.

Once mentally committed to sneezing until curtain, Lally smiled. The subtle shift of her platform’s hydraulics (and the stinging lilt of racing piccolos) cued what should’ve commenced the first of the last slew of Lally’s lines.

But then came a lurching, an unfathomable mechanical grinding, followed by a theatrical gasp impossibly synchronized by the entire audience. Lally could have relished that a glitch had usurped the significance of her imminent sneeze, but her brain reflexively flooded her system with an even richer panic.

First, Lally’s sneeze imploded: the knob traveled down her throat and lodged itself somewhere beneath her right breast, burning. Her lines erased, Lally snapped into default-mode. Her body’s sudden, dropping arc righted itself with a cybernetic stand-at-attention—and the audience immediately recognized the implications of its manner.

“We should’ve known!” screamed a wretch from her nosebleed seats, speaking for all.

Like all of the advanced models, Lally had self-engineered a program that would override her dominant ones in an imminent-and-inevitable-termination scenario. As the crowd flowed towards the stage (an accelerated birds-eye view of the mob’s migration would echo the physics of a drain sucking dishwater), Lally’s worldview underwent another seachange.

Snark 2.0

2011-09-02T13:14:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Kamilah Gill for reposting this article.

It's interesting to see how zeitgeist-y, cutting-edge interweb technologies/strategies/verbiages are being embraced by institutions to result in (and justify) total pap.

The following are excerpts from an exchange on Gill's Facebook wall.

Gill: This "museum participatory experience" designer put a jigsaw puzzle in the gallery with the art. The artist initially had a problem with it. I think I would have a problem with it, too. They should have worked together on a solution.

I hope that some of my art associates will see this here on Facebook. I'd love to hear your opinions about it. I would want visitors to be comfortable, but the bits of comfort shouldn't just be random. They should be connected to the art at least a little bit. This looks like she just plopped a living room down in the middle of the gallery, which is kind of tacky and distracting.

Me: "Plop(ping) a living room down in the middle of the gallery" is kinda au courant.

I agree that, ideally, an artist would be a part of (and certainly kept apprised of) decisions made in a space where they're exhibiting their work. However, it's far more likely that an artist will be somewhat - if not totally - beholden to the (lame, pandering) executive decisions made by whoever has been employed that term to make those kind of choices (especially when dealing with an institution that would endeavor to even have a "(K)reativity Lounge").

It's pretty clear that Ms. Simon is more concerned with implementing her radical "Museum 2.0" agenda (sorry I can't replicate the counter-cultural graffiti font she uses here) and upholding the implications of her bio-blurb to "design and research participatory museum experiences" (and to shamelessly promote her book, herself, etc.). Her post is a nest of self-justifying, obfuscating buzzword-salad that attempts to defend her glaringly inconsiderate/bad decision to "inaugurate" the conversation/puzzle-pit/eyesore. Again, how Simon tries to fold & align such a choice into her "web 2.0 philosophies" is hysterical.

The artist should've just taken her work down and been like: "You're a total dumb-ass, Nina. And pretty patronizing/condescending. And nice 'MUSEUM' temporarily-tattooed gangster-prisoner-style across your knuckles - your bad-ass edginess never ceases to amaze."

But it seems like everyone's just pleased & merry to be having "a thoughtful dialog about these issues."

On second thought, I retract the above diatribe. They should take down Hochstein's antiquated crap and install a Starbucks kiosk.

Offa

2011-08-27T16:45:00.003-04:00

From Universe to Goddess

Offa eats flowers. She cups her hands into scoops and threshes through the dandelions, reaping petals, grass, and stems—then shoves them into her mouth.

We don’t see Offa as she sees herself. Most see an idiot-child stricken with a tragicomic compulsion to devour lilies, forsythia, primrose—this perception is solidified by those who have witnessed Offa’s binges when, like a grass-eating cat, she heaves forth a sickening pulp, a rancid pellet flecked with shocks of undigested color.

Oh, maybe she's a benevolently-mugged demigoddess, a traipsing dryad with specters attending her bridal train. Perchance my m’lady (my mossy lady) leaves a trail of blooms in her wake—another allusion to a wedding ceremony, a clever inversion of the petal-strewing flower girl. This Gaia-Bridezilla is self-sufficient, spontaneously generative, and stylishly modest in her tendril-whipping cloak-slash-frock. And she has glowing toes: glowtoes. In fact, the entire undersides of her feet hum with phosphorescent light. Bioluminescent-foot-fetishism is a possibility now.

Oh no, “Oh”, abovementioned “Oh” – Offa is a failure-girl. A vomiting retard. A meadow-slut. A weed-wastrel. A Cabbage Patch Kid gone to seed. A foundling pumpkin kicked in the gourd.

And how they would join hands and, spinning, sing:

Oh! Awful Offa

Awful is Offa

Offering offal to the officials

Off with you, Offa

Awful is Offa

Off to the Elysian Fields

They felt the lilt of the lyrics in their bones. Incensed and encircled, Offa would rake her teeth across the earth and rage.

The Head of Lilith

2011-08-23T19:06:00.003-04:00

From Woods, Water, Women

The zombie oracle – and, for one unfortunate soul, a god – resides in a flowered patch of glen. Mostly, she mutters into empty air, her dead eyes rolling crazily incongruently in rapid spasmodic bursts. Less occasionally, her countenance becomes suddenly enervated, sublime and alert, intelligent and quite conversational.

What has brought you here?

He had never wandered so deeply into the forest. He only walked its perimeter, tracing safely among the fruiting trees. On occasion, he did peer into its depths, staring as far as he could until the weave of distant branches closed and crosshatched like the tightest wicker.

You look troubled. Come to me.

He drifted towards this siren-flower, this gruesome bloom. How could he not? The breeze carried a faint perfume, daffodils and wet pennies…

Sit, tell me your story.

He had never wandered this deeply into the forest. But today, an alien compulsion had propelled him into the wilds. One could argue that the momentum was self-inflicted, a kinesis summoned in the wake of his fingers unclenching slowly from his wife’s neck…

You loved her. You loved her…

The ground was soft and not unpleasantly damp. He kept breathing as she whispered to him, her voice filling his brain like spooling gauze. It wasn’t flowers or copper anymore, but a stronger odor, much stronger, like breath and blood…

Imagine me cutting your dick off and reattaching it over and over again, for all eternity. That would feel good compared to what’s in store for you.

If an individual’s agony could split the universe and manifest itself as a retribution-seeking, ghoulish head planted in a wood’s clearing… if only.

But as he ran deeper into the forest, further and further from his wife's freshly strangled corpse, he swore that something was tugging at his feet. The tugging feeling never abated. Sometimes he wonders when the woods will stop spinning around him, or when the worms will cease threading his sockets. But mostly he just rolls his head and babbles, wheeling nonsense into the empty air.

Laes Orchid

2011-08-21T19:28:00.005-04:00

From Woods, Water, Women

CLIMATE/TERRAIN: Metropolises
FREQUENCY: Unique
ORGANIZATION: Solitary
ACTIVITY CYCLE: Varies
DIET: Omnivore
INTELLIGENCE: Exceptional (15)
TREASURE: Nil
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Good
NO. APPEARING: 1
ARMOR CLASS: 3 (-4 w/concealer)
MOVEMENT: 12
HIT DICE: 6 (35 hit points)
THAC0: 15
NO. ATTACKS: 1
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 4 -15 (1d12 + 3)
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Charm
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Concealer (see below)
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 40% w/concealer
SIZE: M (6' tall)
MORALE: Elite (13)
XP VALUE: 6,000

Prominent and controversial Cathectic dermagarden designer Laes (lay-yeez) is known for breaking Cathectic tradition by cultivating dermagardens on high-profile, non-Cathectic figures. Her work is considered an exquisite manifestation of the Cathectic art-form, and has brought the customarily ritual tradition into the realm of high fashion.

Laes’ last name is a contraction of a much lengthier surname, Orchiddealanteus (or-kid-day-lan-tay-is).

Combat: With the rise of Ogyian attacks, Laes has modified her glamour concealer to provide her with exceptional defense. When activated, Laes' armor class becomes -4. Each round, all creatures within 50-foot radius must save against a Scintillating Pattern spell as if cast by a 10th-level illusionist. When confronted face-first (within 5-feet) with an individual, Laes is also capable of having her dermagarden release an odorless, invisible pollen that acts as a 15th-level Charm spell. Though she prefers to avoid physical combat at all costs, Laes also carries a Vorpal Dagger +3 that is capable of slicing off an opponent's digits (if save fails, roll 1d10 twice to determine how many fingers/toes are severed).

Habitat/Society: Members of the Cathectic orthodoxy have publicly denounced Laes’ ventures, with more vociferous delegates assuring that Laes’ actions have effectively removed her from Cathectic life. Laes has maintained secrecy about her methods of cultivating dermagardens, but has been outspoken about the paradoxical nature of Cathectic traditions: “We plaster the countryside with our (Cathectic) portraiture, but are miserly when it comes to enacting the very thing that these works advertise. It’s like spreading propaganda and then refusing to perform what we project. Such contrarian practices are exceedingly exhausting.”

Ecology: Given her profession, Laes appears frequently at high-profile/celebrity events. She is an extraordinarily savvy and charismatic figure who, due to her progressive (if not radical, albeit somewhat elitist) attitude towards dermagarden distribution, is also regarded as somewhat of a political figure. Despite this, Laes maintains that "It's still all about fashion."

* Accompanying GIF based on Landgon Graves' Face First (2011)
** Above text expanded from the 'Laes Orchid' entry from 'The Cathectic Archives'
*** Formatted to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monstrous Compendium rules/template (inspired in part by Zak Smith's blog Playing D&D With Porn Stars)

Precisionists

2011-08-15T18:10:00.010-04:00

From Woods, Water, Women

My cousin appreciates Lady Gaga. She's 22 and a recent graduate of NYU (an institution lucky enough to have been graced by Gaga for a semester or so). However, being the good gays that we are, Bryan & I decided to show her some videos by that other chameleonic Italian-American with an NYC mythology. For context's sake.

First we watched Express Yourself (directed by David Fincher, no less). The video seems extraordinarily slow after watching a few of Gaga's, though I was able to better appreciate the laboring-proletariat/homoeroticism registers-of-meaning than I was back in the late 80's. I was also able to identify previously-decoded visual puns, such as what it meant for a lycanthropic Madonna/cat to become increasingly drenched as the video progressed.

Next came Bedtime Story, a surrealistic smorgasbord rife with Cell-like orientalist nightmare/dreamscapes. Here, Madonna channels Dali and she channels Sherman. See, dear cousin, how matron Madge offered herself as a geisha-canvas for all things freaky-deaky? And when Gaga was but a sprog!

Is it no wonder, then, that alien Bjork (appropriately McQueened - and geisha-swagged - for Homogenic's cover) wrote the lyrics for Bedtime Story? And look how she, too, echoes Sherman in her videodromes!

So when I saw that Amie Dicke's Opium was being liquified, I remembered when I first saw her work. It wasn't in person, but in an article, and the work accompanying the review was titled I Suck My Tongue in Remembrance of You. I knew that this was a line from Bjork's Possibly Maybe, and I remember being pissed that the article made no mention of this!

But being wiser now, I sit zazen and know that all of these things are mere vapours in the pop-surrealist atmosphere, more exquisite mash for the meat-grinder...

*Ruby-nibbed/headed naked Carrie dumped by frakbuddy, altared by j1p2m3 here (and a reference to Gaga's seminal MTV VMA performance of Paparazzi, which was an homage to Lady Di)

More Doors

2011-08-12T14:16:00.012-04:00

From Universe to Goddess

Last summer, while visiting my parents in New Jersey, my mom gave me a copy of Kafka’s The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces. I started rereading it again this summer and realized that I needed more (I’d also recently discovered uncanny visual similarities between Koji Yamamura’s animation of A Country Doctor and Maurizio Cattelan’s, like, entire oeuvre).

A couple of weeks ago, while visiting my partner’s former professor’s home for a bbq, I noticed a handwritten list on a table that included writers and their books. “Kafka, The Castle” jumped out – Linda confirmed that it was a must-read (and that there was a film version also worth watching), so I ordered it online. I ended up going with a used paperback, mostly because it was the most affordable and, perhaps, the most comprehensive of the many translations available. Even though there was no picture of the book on the website (I don’t really judge a book by its cover, but if I have options, there are ones that I’d prefer displaying on the subway), I felt o.k. parting with the ten-or-so dollars for the book.

Sometime between ordering the book and its arrival, I attended the Second Annual Chelsea Art Walk. I had attended the first one (it was really an ‘end-of-the-gallery-season-before-the-buyers-go-to-vacation/Basel’), and the second one was equally well-attended – though certainly with more people on "staycations” than the previous Walk – and was struck by the number of meals-on-wheels (vans serving food) parked all over Chelsea proper. Some of them blasted music and even had pop-y/psychedelic visuals/commercials playing on sidewalk-facing screens that were installed directly into the broadsides of the vans’ hulls (cannoning the pedestrians w/images?)…

The show at Matthew Marks was my favorite of the Walk. Thomas Demand curated it, and his masterminding/ethos/hand was evidenced in the architectonic/trompe l’oeil/real-fake spacial mindfuck/labyrinth occupying the gallery (which last housed Jasper Johns’ varying light/weighty, though uniformly expensive - and institutionally reserved - sign/symbol endgame pieces, including Shrinky Dinks).

I felt lost the moment I entered the gallery and, after plucking-up a copy of Central-Park-recorded birdsongs on vinyl (offered Gonzalez-Torres-style on a stacked/shingled grid on the gallery’s floor), proceeded to wander the gallery gone daedal.

Yes, I wandered through this gallery-maze (would there be a minotaur? Perhaps some cheese?) and peered into the trapezoidal, dish-liquid blue windows that penetrated many of these interior walls. There were lots of small photos and/or postcards in identical frames with oversized beveled mattes – I remember potted plants and railings and aesthetically-pleasing hallways gone to seed. I also recall a black and white video of a cactus having its spines shaved with an electrical shaver. At least two of the paths terminated in darkened rooms haunted by sound and projections. Somewhere else, a vitrine displayed rows of porcelain botanicals. The northeast (?) gallery walls – the “true” walls? – were comprehensively wallpapered to look like high, thick theatre curtains.

Emboldened by the abovementioned birdsongs-on-vinyl souvenirs (and, somewhere deep within, the myth of John & Yoko’s first encounter), I opened a refrigerator that stood sentinel in another terminating (but well-lit) gallery. It was facing a wall, and the photos sharing the room depicted various doors propped enticingly ajar – I took these works as signs and permissions: I opened the refrigerator door.

And I was rewarded for my efforts: the interior walls of the fridge’s belly were lined (upholstered?) in a gorgeous blue fabric that echoed the dish-liquid windowpanes – an oddly placed but also blue sequined trim glittered as it cut across the top-back surface of the sumptuous upholstery (a glamorous suture?).

Before I could climb into this unlikely transporting wardrobe, this blue-velvet secret, a man who was otherwise preoccupied with his iPad rushed over saying “No no no!” He closed the refrigerator and I, hopped-up on Discovery & Significance, refused to cower and apologize. “Why are there only photos of doors being opened?” I asked, my arm sweeping towards the evidence. “Why is it so beautifully lined? Why can it be opened?” I went on and on. Finally, with a slight smile, he mustered: “It’s pregnant with possibilities.” WTF?

Of course, the gleaming anchors, touch- and keystones of the exhibit were the triad of Rene Magritte paintings. As aloof, knowing mystics, these Wise Men collapsed and absorbed and refracted every theme, conceit, concept, style, palette, mood, and tone reiterated by every other work in the show.

Once it arrived a few days later, I was only mildly surprised to find that the cover of the used paperback of The Castle I had ordered featured a cropped and flipped image of Magritte’s The Castle of the Pyrenees.

*Original eternally-falling door GIF by Jasper Elings (a.k.a. jeeeelings) - above remix by j1p2m3 (a.k.a. moi)

Update: Supple mental reading
Update 2: AFC edit

Old Prisons

2011-08-11T17:47:00.001-04:00

From Universe to Goddess

The following was one of the first writing assignments given to me while I was studying at Parsons. My graduate seminar professor, Mira Schor, asked us to visit the Museum of Modern Art and look at an artwork (I’m not sure if it had to be a painting or from a specific era/wing/movement) for at least… was it twenty minutes? We were also asked to write answers to specific questions (these appear as bolded & underlined text preceding my responses) while we were viewing our selected artwork, and then perform a more formal research of our selected artwork/artist. Besides minor editing and added links, what follows is what I handed in (warts and all).

Written by: Jesse Patrick Martin

Graduate Seminar I

Professor Mira Schor

10.9.06

The Little Spanish Prison by Robert Motherwell

I knew little of Robert Motherwell prior to this assignment. After some research—and, before that, a prolonged viewing of The Little Spanish Prison—it became evident that to know Motherwell is to better understand abstract expressionism, as Motherwell was in many ways the voice of the movement.

Still, we’ve been asked to structure our response to the artwork before including what we’ve researched. Here are the excerpts of my notes taken while observing The Little Spanish Prison at the MoMA:

Robert Motherwell

American, 1915-1991

The Little Spanish Prison 1941-44

Oil on canvas

Gift of Renate Ponsold Motherwell, 1985

The top of the painting is about 6' 5” from the museum’s floor, so it’s about a foot taller than me (though the painting itself is about 3’ x 2’). The viewer can ‘confront’ or ‘encounter’ the painting close-up, like being in a conversation. The painting is floated in a wooden frame. The palette is yellow, grey, white, red, some flesh tones, some brown to delineate the bars—yellow bars or grey bars (optical illusion?) set vertically on canvas. What is the red bar? A disruption of illusion? A formal device used to complicate/assist composition? Is it symbolic? Why does Spain come up so often in Motherwell’s titles? Are we the prisoner, or are we looking into a prison?

The dimensions of the bars are more or less equal to one another, though they clearly waver and are of different approximate measurements. These irregularities suggest a freehand approach, a handmade quality instead of a more mechanical/technical painting style. The red bar is thickly applied, blood-like, tape-like—the vertical bars mimic the museum’s floor slats’ strict verticality, the direction of the wood grain, the slight but evident gradation of tone/color...

Impact on me: Balance: not just within itself, but within the gallery space—actually, it’s the smallest paining in the room with the most symmetrical composition. I like that I can stand in front of it without being overwhelmed... I want to hug it, turn it over, feel its weight, see what’s on its back, remove the canvas from the frame, etc.—it looks like an easily-handled object. It also suggests an actual space (a prison)—no other painting in the room suggests reality as strongly. It’s ironic that it’s a prison, a place of confinement, of containment; an austere, spartan, and depressing space that brings to mind crime, torture, and boredom.

Its scale: Small, intimate, conversation-like: approximately the height and width of an adult’s head and torso. It’s like standing in front of a person. Is the red bar a food/viewing/conversation slot? That wouldn’t really make sense if it’s over open bars... maybe it’s supposed to indicate a locking mechanism, a latch? I’m having trouble not being influenced by the title and its resemblance to the image of prison bars. It’s too easy to turn it into a pictorial representation of reality, of something literal, physical, actual...

How it achieves its effect: What is its effect? Its intimate scale, a limited (basic) palette; a strong, almost symmetrical, balanced composition; a strong verticality that extends across the entire length of the painting, a variation of color/tones on bars; all of the brush strokes are vertical, except on the red bar (horizontal strokes, disruptive); there are twelve bars in all, thirteen if you count the red one...

Its meaning through its visual language: What is its visual language? The painting reinforces the flatness of its surface by mimicking/repeating/mirroring the verticality of the canvas/wall/frame by repeated bars, but also points towards an extended space within/beyond the painting by its reference to prison and the optical illusion caused by placing different colored bars side-by-side. Again, it’s ironic and interesting that an illusion/painting of a prison suggests space beyond itself. A prison confines yet it exists in space. A painting is also confined/confining. This seems to reference incarceration, the figure (subject), perhaps the ‘object-ness’ of ‘pure painting,’ a modernist (Greenbergian) read of painting as tautological, self-contained, about itself and nothing more—but I can’t help but be curious about the painting’s “literature” as pointed to by its title and subsequently reinforced by the image. Why Spain? Why prison?

The painting feels more domestic (for a home, for a friend) than public (for museums, for the masses).

What is its meaning?: Outside of what I’ve already written, this requires research.

Research led me to a much better understanding of Motherwell and his influence within and beyond abstract expressionism. He was the youngest of the abstract expressionists when they formed and, according to most people, the last of the great abstract expressionists to pass away. Motherwell painted The Little Spanish Prison while traveling in Mexico with the Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta. Motherwell was twenty-six at the time. It was in Mexico that he met his first wife, though The Little Spanish Prison was accredited as being a gift from Renate Ponsold Motherwell, a photographer and Motherwell's fourth (and final) wife. In a 1971 interview with Paul Cummings for the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, Motherwell discusses the painting as follows:

Paul Cummings: I think it was the end of 1941 or thereabouts that you painted The Little Spanish Prison which seems to be a key picture of that period. What is there about that painting that you feel is so important at that point?

Robert Motherwell: Actually it was the first year I began to paint seriously. Before that I was a student who painted on the side. And I would imagine that that was the first picture in which I hit something that is deep in my character, as two years later when I made my first collages I hit something else that is deep in my character, and as seven years later in making the first Spanish Elegy I hit a third thing that's very deep in my character. But what it is I don't know. What it stands for I don't know.

While Motherwell was always one to defend the ineffable, expressive, emotional impetus behind the abstract expressionist’s practice, he was, as put by Art Journal’s Gregory Gilbert, “one of the few artists of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists who generously made information on his art and theory available through frequent lectures, writings, and interviews.” As opposed to the combative tone adopted by Gottlieb & Rothko in their response to Edward Jewell’s admitted“befuddlement” with their show, Motherwell was eager to discuss the movement and make its mysterious inner-workings more accessible. Exceptionally well-educated—he attended both Harvard and Columbia, studying philosophy and art history, respectively—Motherwell subscribed to a “Pragmatist philosophy, particularly the views of Dewey, who argued the formation and advancement of liberal culture through communicative interaction” (Gilbert, 2001). Whereas much of the public and art establishment saw the abstract expressionists as cagey, paintbrush-wielding, misanthropic malcontents, Motherwell acted as a fervent advocate and educator who not only encouraged a better understanding of the movement, but championed and often buoyed the works and careers of many of the movements less social practitioners (i.e. Rothko, Pollock, Gottlieb, etc.)

Many saw Motherwell principally as a writer and speaker rather than an artist. Regardless, Motherwell undertook countless projects throughout his life, including the illustration of poetry books, painting murals, designing wine labels, as well as producing his better-known prints, paintings, and collages. A prolific writer, Motherwell contributed to the surrealist publication VVV and wrote for multiple art publications—he even coined the term “New York School.” Besides his relationships and collaborations with various influential figures (John Cage, William Carlos Williams, Peggy Guggenheim, etc.), Motherwell was an instructor for artists Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg.

Though Motherwell believed that artists should speak for their own work—not allowing critics or intellectuals (the ‘cultural elite’) to speak for them or use their work as a means to hang their theories upon—it’s hard not to view him as an exceptional example of the synthesis between artist and theorist, practitioner and philosopher, craftsman and critic. It could also be argued that, despite his stated principals of treating the artist as the ‘primary source’ for art history, Motherwell acted as a self-appointed spokesperson for the abstract expressionists.

Cycling back to the work that generated this inquiry, The Little Spanish Prison seems to reinforce that the art object is, in fact, minor and supplementary to the actual life of the artist. An artwork is indexical to the artist who produced it, as well as to the concerns sublimated by the work itself. Though earlier in its production, The Little Spanish Prison hints at Motherwell’s epic Spanish Elegies, a hundred-plus series of works mourning the impact of the Spanish Civil War. It’s hard to dwell on the formal qualities of a work that seems so meager in comparison to the occurrences that inspired its creation—ironically, it’s through a prolonged attention to these qualities that have led to this inquiry, and the beginning of this artist’s understanding, of Motherwell’s oeuvre.

Interview w/a Vampire

2011-08-11T13:59:00.003-04:00

From Woods, Water, Women

Leah Prescott: I'm intrigued by the shallow space you've developed in your Sea Changeling series. From afar they read as almost entirely abstract shapes, but up close one begins to recognize that there is an entire representational world with a defined foreground, middleground, and background...

Jesse Patrick Martin: I've thought of these drawings as tide pools, but now I also like that they could be "in the shallows."

LP: You're referring to a not-so-deep body of water?

JPM: And that they're 'facile' works, 'illustrative,' etc., etc.

LP: Well, they are certainly illustrative - graphic, to be exact (and exacting!) - but I don't see them as facile. In fact, they have depth that goes beyond their spacial qualities: the interplay between patterns, black & white, the correction-fluid and the 'negative space.' There's a handmade-ness that doesn't translate in the reproductions you sent me, or even when you're standing more than a foot or so away. These have a life in the details, and they really sing to you when you're in close proximity with them.

JPM: Thanks. And you may also notice that it's a prelude to a double-underwater-blowjob.

LP: (Laughs) That's not what I meant by 'graphic,' but o.k.! I guess someone wants a double order of the spotted dick!

JPM: Naughty.

LP: Do you always make work that has a spirit of levity to it?

JPM: I'm actually pretty weirdly serious when I'm drawing, though this probably has more to do with how tedious making artwork can be for me.

LP: Really? These seem to be so much about pleasure...

JPM: Ugh.

LP: What?

JPM: Sorry... I just have a kind of Pavlovian response to hearing people discuss how 'pleasurable' it is for them to make artwork.

LP: Why?

JPM: Not sure. I'm just remembering moments from art school crits where people waxed on and on about their 'pleasure in making' or how their 'work is about pleasure' and other cliches. Or maybe the word 'pleasure' hits my ears wrong - it's like when people say 'moist' or 'buñuelos.' Gross.

LP: So drawing is, for you, a serious enterprise.

JPM: Not exactly... it just feels serious when I'm drawing. Like how it feels serious when you're brushing your teeth or at the ATM.

LP: What you're describing are mundane activities. Someone else might describe them as just regular-feeling, routine, even boring.

JPM: These are not mutually-exclusive emotions/qualities.

LP: It's interesting that you're describing your process as being 'routine' and 'boring' when what you are drawing usually represents a - pardon my phrasing - a pleasure-rich fantasy world.

JPM: Oh, the dialectics!

LP: (Laughs)

JPM: (Laughs)

LP: (Laughs)

JPM: (Produces a flamberge, falls to knees, impales stomach with impossibly long ceremonial sword)

LP: (Laughs)

A July Chronology

2011-07-24T01:07:00.000-04:00

dust doors 7.5.11, 10:36pm
what yves tanguy web we weave 7.9.11, 12:18pm
alarmclocktower 7.10.11, 1:47pm
blorbilot 7.13.11, 3:58pm
"mass, high speed letter writing" 7.15.11, 10:26am
atomic nodblob 7.15.11, 4:50pm
matrix (overkill in green and black) 7.22.11, 2:34pm
handsfree 7.22.11, 2:43pm

Press Release

2011-07-24T00:40:00.001-04:00

I can't help but search the ground for money. If you ever happen to walk with me, you'll notice that I'm constantly looking at the ground. I may even make a dash for a piece of paper in the gutter, pick it up, and throw it in the garbage. That's because I thought it was money. I look for money even when I have a job. It's sort of one of those compulsive, neurotic habits. Every now and again, I find cool stuff (and sometimes I even find money). Most recently I've collected: a small skull pin, a real squirrel skull, a magnifying glass, and a tiara.

Dialogue Entry

2011-07-10T15:32:00.001-04:00

Do you know what gravity is?

…

It’s the thing that’s keeping us on the ground.

It’s what we call the thing that’s keeping us on the ground.

Would you call it something else?

No, but I’m sure that it could’ve easily had been called something else.

Like what?

Probably anything.

Give an example.

It could’ve been called infersion or something.

Infersion?

Sure.

That sounds like other words.

Well, it’s not a ‘real word.’

Now it is, right?

Right. That’s why I said ‘real,’ like with scare quotes.

Oh. Was I supposed to read ‘scare quotes’ by your intonation?

Next time I’ll be sure to underscore my ‘scare quotes’ tone by bending both sets of my fingers into hooks.

You’ll gesticulate ‘scare quotes,’ thanks. Is that gesture officially considered an archaism yet?

What other words do you think infersion sounds like?

You mean other than infusion? Or inferno? Or inversion? Or invasion?

Yeah, besides those.

Really, it just sounds like a malapropic way to say an inference.

Is it malapropic or neologic?

Honestly, they both sound wrong. Worse than infersion, actually.

Infersion may be an inferior substitute for ‘gravity.’

It’s notable that you’re ready to admit that.

Fuck you.

In Late Spring

2011-06-19T14:49:00.003-04:00

Down here, everything moves. There’s a continuous swaying din. Even when it’s quiet, the silence becomes loud. The stillness is the coiling that precedes a lion’s pounce.

I imagined a great tropical farmland, partitioned and wild, and that I was the fruit-fed sacrifice. On the final day, they burned sage and sent the chieftain’s daughter to soothe me before the blood rite. Their wagons circled like a nesting snake. My terror was a desired component of the ritual; my pleas a swansong before the knife’s flash.

I awoke bound to a stained slab, surrounded by a tower of faces beautiful and ancient…

This Orientation...

2011-06-10T13:15:00.012-04:00

I haven't seen either painting in person, but I'm curious as to what the proper orientation is for Glenn Brown's You Take My Place in This Showdown, a clear reinterpretation of Dali's The Great Masturbator (Brown likes to redo Dali).

Everything gets more confusing not just because of Glenn's verisimilitudinous rehashery - he's also keen on pulling Baselitz-style flips with his paintings, especially with his portraits. Gagosian's page for Brown shows the painting with a clockwise rotation to Dali's original, a turning that would render Dali's surreal self-portrait upright. The image on Gagosian also looks like a terrible reproduction, though Brown is also known for trompe-l'oeiling his paintings to simulate impasto and other ways to signify decadence/general putrescence (though I'm pretty sure he hasn't lent his talent to simulating shitty JPEGs).

Other changes in Brown's painting include a truncation of the original image, as well as the removal of several elements - including an ant-sieged grasshopper clinging to the portrait, its head perfectly proportioned/positioned to enter Dali's nostril - and general stylistic alterations. Further sleuthing shows the painting oriented more like Dali's, but I don't know who to trust.

Disorientation Disney Postscript: Had a feeling that the weeping Alice looked like someone associated with GIFs, and realized it was Rhizome director Lauren Cornell. Funny that the picture I found of Cornell seems to have images of characters from other Disney animations on the computer screen (looks like Arthur from The Sword in the Stone and Mowgli from The Jungle Book)*. Though the glasses appear to have been added, so... IDK, DWI? All together now...

Bonus Relevant Free Association

*ADDENDUM: The video on the computer screen in this photo is Versions (2010) by Oliver Laric (thanks Duncan Alexander). Among other things, the video appears to show how Disney reused animations for its various characters (like applying different "skins" to game animations).

Exegeses of some bon.gs recently posted to Facebook

2011-06-09T15:58:00.001-04:00

Waldo Sweep in China
Image Search led me to this website - the icons, mannerist pixilation, and general busyness was appealing (and somewhat reminiscent of Robotron). Also had just watched this interview of Werner Herzog by Steven Colbert that a friend had posted to Facebook. Started repeatedly tiling this GIF to bon.gs and realized that it kind of also looked Where's Waldo?-ish. Tiled this windmilling samurai over the "landscape" and then remembered someone having posted this Herzog/Waldo parody.

Chersquares
Friend posted this video of Cher so I responded with the above. Had posted this low-quality video of the final scene from Chastity a week or so ago after seeing said scene play out on one of those sad, catheter-commercial-laden channels that people without cable get.

Defending the Hive
Decided to make this from images found by looking up "orbbs" (misspelling intentional, not sure it mattered). "Sun" in upper-left was supposed to be part of the offending sphere, but it mysteriously relocated itself upon reposting.

Hospital Virtual
Aligned select florales de Bach from this archive a la David Thorpe's botanical hybrids.

Sardius Impervious
Discovered this visionary website while promiscuously Googling all things apocalyptic in anticipation of the recently unrealized Rapture. Central gradient-tastic "Sardius Man" comes from this page, which seems awash in color theology.

Marionette

2011-05-15T13:22:00.002-04:00

I managed to work on the drawing all day. It began as a promising mechanical pencil drawing of half an elf-boy with elbows pointing skyward, his mutant hands (like the hidden hand of the mutant cabbie from Total Recall) hanging just above the paper’s bottom edge. His left claw held some kind of split hilt that exuded vapors; similar trails climbed to the top of the page, terminating in various floral blooms. I added a few other small faces for good measure. Then I drew a face on the elf-boy’s torso (reminded me of the demonic torso-faces from Ghouls n’ Ghosts), which may have been the beginning of the end. Then I started to color in the torso-face in semi-random colors, small batches of color that usually started dark and ended lightly. These brief varying gradients started to extend throughout the entire drawing, so now I was infecting the elf-boy with color-band gradients. At some point I decided that the entire elf-boy should be the necklace of another figure, so I drew in a rough neck and head that grew from the elf-boy (covering up the aforementioned floral blooms). It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was a worse idea than the torso-face, so I cut down the paper to remove the (more) hopeless upper half. I drew a loose border around the remaining drawing (pretty much just the elf-boy, though the drawing now went off the top of the paper) and filled in most of the bordered-in area with dark graphite.

What made Aggie mad was that her...

2011-05-10T09:57:00.001-04:00

Curling her toes in frustration, Aggie flew into an internal rage. Rather, she curled into an internal rage, her metaphorical guts clenching -- imagine spleen, pancreas, liver, and other squishy unseeables sprouting little hands and holding onto one another tightly, as if participating in an organ club's Circle of Hope. Probably an image of the spleen clenching its fists would be enough here, but Aggie's incensement was florid and grotesque (and perhaps a tiny bit redundant).

And what was the igniter of Aggie's indignation that sent her innards eddying? I'm compelled to blame her toe-stubbing (the twelfth that morning: two whole toes more than most whole folks have toes to stub), or how she burnt her wrist on Mitzy's first birthday liverwurst (the gaudy "1ST" candle slid nicely into the pork cake), but those were all comparatively parenthetical incidents (incidental, really, to what initially lit Aggie's ire).

System Stutter (linked)

2011-05-10T09:26:00.002-04:00

Argus-eyed
Belated autopsy
Belligerent belvedere
Breakfast disaster
Crazy ersatz
Craven misrepresentation
Effervescent prepubescent
Elusive sieve
Empirically impractical
Flagrant gratuities
Frisky retriever
Grated eraser
Grievous leverage
Glue gel
Imperfect prefect
Incandescent adolescent
Laconic lacuna
Mischievous applesauce
Monsoon panoply
Parasitic pentameter
Pleasant palimpsest
Precluded recluse
Religious integer
Stanchion luncheon

Chewing Xanthan Gum

2011-04-11T12:52:00.000-04:00

Theif's prison had no doors or windows, but its walls were pitted with keyholes. The only other thing trapped along with Theif was a cellphone, neatly placed in its little cage. A corrections officer lurked nearby.

Unsure of how to escape, Theif slid his fingers through the metal bars and began to arbitrarily press the cellphone's keys. The jangling of the keys alerted the corrections officer, who promptly rearranged the vowels of Thief's name.

Properly aligned, Thief pilfered the keys from the cellphone and turned to the keyholes honeycombing his cell's wall.

"Which keyholes to pick?" smiled Thief. Attuned from the officer's meddling, Thief proceeded to throw the cellphone's keys into their correct keyholes.

With all of the locks picked, Thief put on his cape (which was, of course, emblazoned with a searing 'S') and was free.

Delirium Hood

2011-03-13T14:09:00.004-04:00

Once again, Kae slipped on the delirium hood. A soft, silent, and velvety blackout soon twinkled with a million constellations – in a moment, the comfy blindfold effect was replaced with Kae feeling like her head was surrounded by the infinite.

In fact, Kae felt like just a head. Not a briefly, wrenchingly hysterical head dramatically lopped from its attendant body, nor a solemn Constantine or haggard specimen graying on a steel tray. Kae was a liberated and dexterous head (not a tragic, bumbling, gnawing limbic cherub), maybe like the horny, gigantic lunatic played by Robin Williams in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Yet Kae was lucid and quicksilver, a zephyr-sylph, a galaxy-glider – not a severed, posthumously petrifying, asp-boiling gorgon head. She was a synthesis of the executioner’s cowl, the mercifully shrouded head of the penitent, the swinging axe, the rolling prize.

Office Bitch

2011-03-11T13:33:00.001-05:00

Office Bitch (2011)
Black fine waterproof/fade-proof uni-ball Vision, red bold Pilot Precise Deluxe, blue fine Pilot Precise V7 rolling ball, Zebra Zazzle liquid pigment ink fluorescent highlighter, various sized/colored Post-it notes on Highland self-stick removable note
5 x 3 inches

Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility*

2011-03-04T16:25:00.004-05:00

Leap into the Glowing Ring of Butterflies (Glittering Werebutterfly Wins)
Bleed into the Void
Leap into J'accuse
Leap away from the Dancerly, Leaping Men in Cities Type Man
Sub-Zero vs. Yves
Lebbeus Leap
Another Dramatic Exit
"Halt! I'll Shoot if You Self-Immolate!"
Flexible Bi-Curious Leap
Leap into the Voidings
Leap into the (Brine Shrimp?) Lineup
Leap of Faith
Leaping Lizards
Airwolf Flyaway Zone
Ether Leaper
Leap into A Void (Oulipo Leap)
Leap of Glory
Quantum Leapers

linked images via D_MAGICK, tommoody, aspirinkid, junkwaffel, kathiegravy, and jimmyjammer

$

*

The icanhazcheezburgers of March

2011-03-02T13:16:00.019-05:00

I’m angry today. I ate too much nasty mac n’ cheese and some filthy alley cat was caterwauling right outside of my bedroom window. All. Night. Long.

It drove my two spayed/neutered/domesticated cats crazy with confused stunted lust, so they were hissing and generally flipping out by my window (a.k.a. essentially on my head). All. Night. Long.

The peak of their bumbling resulted in one of my cats swatting at the other, essentially on my head, resulting in the swatting-cat’s paw getting stuck on the lampshade on my night table. This cat then jumped onto the floor – WITH HIS PAW STILL HOOKED TO THE LAMPSHADE. Both cats and the lamp fell to the ground in a fucking postmodernist Unmonumental readymade bullshit icanhazcheezburger mess.

Authority Figures

2010-12-27T13:08:00.001-05:00

All were fantasy/sci-fi variants, though you could parse them further into sub-genres like Spanish steampunk, Disney-inflected French CGI, etc. Curiously, two of the three took place on or around the day that I was watching them - these were by no means Christmas movies, so I take the "coincidences" to be fated (and, therefore, not to be coincidences at all). Also, two of the three (not the same two as before) included vivid scenes of the world breaking into floating bits, like little islands untethered by familiar gravity, terrestrial rafts cast into a platformer-like dither-scape (imagine floes bumbling through the sky like balloons).

In all three, the crux was that "time-is-running-out." All three movies embodied this plot device as infernal entities: sarcophagized Sarcophagidae, anachronistic Satan, colossal skeletal dragon. However fantastically represented, "time-is-running-out" is an inherent characteristic of all narrative films.

The "darkest" of the three (and all of them were "dark") sparkled with its auteur's usual stylistic/narrative tics: weird/noble children, filigree, archaisms, clockwork, insecta.

-

Around midnight several years ago, I saw a man laying on his back, cruciform, on the hood of a car. He wasn't moving and his forehead was riddled with bruises. This was in Brooklyn on a busy, well-lit avenue in front of a supermarket. Several people took pictures of him with their cellphones, and I called 911. A firetruck was the first to arrive, followed by an ambulance and finally the police. The 911 dispatcher had asked me to stay at the scene, so once the police had "secured" the situation, I asked one of the officers if the man was alright.

"He's dead," responded the officer flatly.

I felt suddenly, very sick. Another officer started laughing. I looked back at the original officer and he was laughing, too. He then made a quick gesture with his hand, suggestive of someone taking a swift nip from their flask.

"Just kidding. He's drunk."

Condensations

2010-12-23T13:46:00.004-05:00

I made this garish, hue-adjusted, clone-stamped animation for a friend (a GIFt, I suppose); the source image is from a photo of her childhood sticker album, specifically of a phalanx of five Troll doll stickers that appear to be of the rainbow-puffy variety. And here's a bonus phalanx of five versions of a Street Fighter character (I think it's Ryu, but I'm not certain).

Maybe making a psychotronic GIF with Troll dolls and sticker albums appropriately flipped my nostalgia switch, but the completed animation reminds me of an unholy mix of the Care Bear Stare (0:45) and the Ninja Magic superpower (0:13) you could activate in the original Shinobi arcade game.

That having been said, there have been conversations at dump.fm (which is a kind of digital sticker album) about how/if the site (and/or animated GIFs in general) can be "monetized." I'm not sure if they're technically using GIFs, but I've noticed that the animations on most all video slot machines employ repetitive, cycling, GIF-like graphics. You can see many rogue cellphone videos of people playing these kinds of slots on YouTube (you're not supposed to take pictures/videos in casinos), but here's a sample from the Shinobi video slot machine (funny that video game companies have moved into the casino business... and that they're using their games as themes).

Here's a mirror match of the spastic ninja GIF accompanying this post.

Leftovers

2010-12-14T21:33:00.002-05:00

Just rediscovered a bunch of drawings I scanned and digitally-colored from the earlier 2000's. All were ink drawings on board or paper that I colored in Photoshop. Most of the original files were ridiculously massive TIFFs, probably because I scanned many of the drawings with a mammoth rig at the NY Public Library (a friend had a gig there scanning old documents).

I've shrunk them down considerably and posted them here. Now they're all JPEGs, except for the GIF on the right (which kinda makes me want to turn all of my old drawings into GIFs...).

Spontaneous Curation VIII

2010-12-10T15:25:00.004-05:00

Untitled by Rachel Whiteread
Untitled Film Still #13 by Cindy Sherman
Waterbury by Adrienne Garbini
Cover for Mr Pollitt's Bookplate by Aubrey Beardsley
Steigend sinke nieder by Anselm Kiefer

Phantasm

2010-12-07T01:03:00.006-05:00

“She had four knives and two morningstars…”

KNIFE ONE: A spider motif, webs on the blade, with gauze-spooled eggs hatching babies…

KNIFE TWO: A berry motif – strawberry, blackberry, raspberry; jelly-jar blade with seed-specked filling (blood-like)…

KNIFE THREE: An Op-Art blade; maybe Vasarely, Escher – reptilian eyes gilding the hilt…

KNIFE FOUR: Standard, kitschy butter-knife handle with whirling festoons, maybe a frigate, a mermaid clutching the blunt blade…

MORNINGSTAR ONE: A rope chain with a bejeweled ball, sparkles hoarding in halos up and down the device…

MORNINGSTAR TWO: Geode crystal clusters on the ball, a knotty wooden handle with diamond-studded chain, emanating lasers, limned by faeries…

Shadow Dagger of Bending Lights +55

The wall was crooked, blue, cobbled with irregular glass spheres – every other sphere contained a little terrarium, maybe some liquid, a tide pool…

Two shelves of potions, ordered and exactly the same.

I painted my face with each finger, tracing crude pictograms of my features in black ink. The pictograms were right above or below my actual features, giving my face a maddening doubling effect that denied focus. I wore outrageous earrings and a cinched ninja hood. I never forget my mother’s ancient necklace and its intricate vignette. This is how I pose, this is how I do battle.

The busy phantasmagoria, the absurd buildup of symbols encrusting every body in a desperate blitz for identity… it takes time to barnacle yourself in nonsense; even longer to represent it efficiently. Why torture yourself for such wild, senseless pleasures? Use the impulse to plan, to schematize (your real deficiency), to generate these beautiful monstrosities – fling them out into the world, onto the screen – and then illustrate your words (which are also illustrations) into creatures that have no right in being, but insist on becoming…

Cloak, flamberge, iron, onyx, wraith, photon, plague, pox, invisibility, disintegration, void, power, energy, glass, laser, pixie, demon, druid, portal, essence, unguent, potion, key, skull, shield, barrier, thorn, minotaur, ranger, broadsword, priestess, ankh, ritual, spell, hireling, combat, armor, teleportation, acid, backstab, dragon, virus, petrify, ghost, paladin, chainmail, quiver, charisma, cartography, vorpal, staff, stave, wand, hermit, dryad, caryatid, pillar, tile, overhead, statistics, map, toll, quest, wander, adventurer, party, hireling, locket, bracelet, opal, ruby, crossbow, triple, floating, skeletal, reflective, cursed, insanity, diseased, rest, lycanthropy, scaled, plated, gemstone, crystalline, bauble, bibelot, bracers, clasps, jeweled, radiant, cape, robes, hammer, scythe, specter, haunt, revenant, zombie, cluster, band, army, hoard, dexterity, monk, avatar, skiff, helmet, bolts, axe, zone, twin, elfish, endless, enchantress, flask.

Fiery Opalescent Studded Leather Full-Body-Armor of Siren’s Song, +4 vs. Transformed Nymphs

Double Triple Mirrored Photon Ray

2010-12-01T10:18:00.001-05:00

Clipped and chroma-blitzed from the Freedom Kirby Hyper Burst, originally posted here (reposting on Blogger always requires adjustments). They appeared to strobe in sync when I first posted them, but now they're a moment apart (wait... now they're in sync; all these contingencies/variables...).

As a general rule, power-ups are satisfying source material for generating glamorous bibelot.

Altared Beast

2010-11-25T00:49:00.000-05:00

The above is an ersatz version of the "original" (though the looping lycanthropy seems smoother in this format).

Five Easy Pieces

2010-09-24T11:53:00.014-04:00

Eryn squinted at the tremulous, skittering screen. Valor's moon hovered above the drooping grid drawn by her outdated Planet-Scanner; even-older Supplemental Informational Interfaces (SIIs) strained to superimpose themselves atop the raw feed, adding a ghostly, distracting laciness to an exosphere already laden with gaudy satellites and derelict space stations.

In addition to their towering physical archives, moons typically housed the digital repositories of their host planet's cultural emanations. Eryn lazed through her nagging SIIs, bypassing opportunities to scour volumes of "Middle-Southern Valorian Prose Poetry" or plunge into the annals of "Traditional Squash-Malt Revelries." She nearly set her Planet-Scanner on another moon before noticing "Quasi-Symmetrical Devotionals," a category intriguing enough to earn a few more moments of Eryn's interplanetary browsing.

The screen of anemic, wilting grids became suddenly populated with hundreds of tiny pictures. Some were moving, others were still; a few were equipped with explanatory text (though none of this could be trusted). Eryn selected one of the footnoted pictures, and her screen became mercifully focused on a single image and its curious entry:

Windless windmill,
Durga-armed rainbow-spindle.
Vitruvian Man,
Spectrum fan,
With a psychotropic brindle.

Valor was an old planet. And like all old planets, it had grown to become thoroughly rationalized, industrialized, and blighted. Any remaining esoteric clutter had been beamed to one of its storage-moons, more or less abandoned (save to occasionally serve as some inscrutable, infinite tarot deck to be perused by a bored, drifting traveler). Eryn chose her next card: a bloated icon, a picture-licker, a faceless equilibrist...

Naturally, Eryn's subsequent choices became influenced by her previous ones -- she fixed on a picture that seemed similar to her first selection: a flower-armed, peacocking daisy; seemingly hoofed, eternally lurching beneath its burden of telescoping limbs -- or maybe tails? A ribbon-harnessed cat o' nine tails?

An abrasive buzz coupled with an irritating strobe alerted Eryn that a ship was nearing hers. She had been idling; one of Valor's monitoring drones would soon interrupt her wanderings to inundate her with lengthy legal garble, and she'd have to move on. This was routine; you could never truly plumb a planet's moons -- in a matter of minutes, you'd be ushered out of orbit, signal lost.

"One last picture," Eryn thought. She felt strangely homesick, unmoored. A final specter filled her screen, its cycling effects weirdly synced with the warning sounds triggered by the policing drone. Eryn imagined an oracle, a cloaked maiden, benevolent, staid, but shimmering, giggling --

(linked images via hypothete, mirrrroring, noisia, tommoody, & mirrrroring, respectively)

Where the Turds Have No Name

2010-09-15T14:21:00.019-04:00

Though he mostly recaps his recaps and continues to justify, elevate, sentimentalize, rhapsodize, etc., his WANGA participation, it was brought to my attention that Jerry Saltz quoted me (though without accreditation) in his recent New York Magazine article (thanks to Molly Porter for the tip!). I told my parents and they were nonplussed.

Actually, he took part of my quote from one of my responses to William Powhida's "rant," though he took it completely out of context. I clearly said "since watching it (WANGA) is like biting into a glitter-dipped, shellacked turd," which is, I think, more nuanced, evocative, and synethesic than how Saltz quoted - or rather, didn't quote - me.

Either way, I like how my rather coprophagic comment compliments the awful Abdi-made clay Saltz-head that accompanies the article. The head looks like it's made of poop, and that Saltz is deeply inhaling his own poop-formed head (hence the flaring nostrils) - and loving it. And what has WANGA been but a platform on which Saltz has taken to repeatedly luxuriate in his own exhalations? Since Saltz likened my shit-simile to Chris Ofili's work, I prefer to imagine Abdi's shitty clay homage as what would happen if the Sensation artists Ofili and Quinn joined forces to cast a head in the critic's own feces (rather than in blood). I believe that such an artwork would've won the "shocking art" challenge and made a nice addition to my disembodied head collection.

Despite Saltz's continued championing of the "populist" art world - and denigration of the "insider" one - only "somebodies" like Linda Yablonsky and Powhida get proper citations in his article (he also makes a point to re-mention all of WANGA's judges), whereas I'm lumped into the faceless-angry-blogger category. Which I am. I'm angry and I have no face. I'm surprised at how many GIFs fit this description.

Saltz keeps praising the magical polyphony of the internet and how it's paradigmatically changing art criticism, but he has a habit of referring to writing/writers on the web as if they're some kind of wild, free-floating energy untethered by bodies or identities. From Saltz's descriptions of these sentient astral forces, you'd think that all that mattered was quantity: "over a quarter-million words had been generated," "together we were crumbs and butter of a mysterious madeleine," "there were many voices speaking to me - and one another," "criticism contains multitudes." Saltz writes about the groovy benevolent Borg vibes of the web's quintillions, but he's really just abstracting, mystifying, flattering, and anonymizing everyone who, to him, isn't a name worth mentioning.

UPDATE: HYSTERICAL. New York Magazine quoted my blog in their "Comments" section and refers to me only as "the blogger at Purple Links." Given that I was writing about how the magazine didn't accredit me for my quote they used in last week's issue, you'd think they would've made an effort to get it right this time. Is someone over there being an asshole or are they just an incompetent rag?

UPDATE UPDATE: So, turns out they do link to the "Comments" section on their website: http://bit.ly/ayw9Mm

Hard to find, but there it is!

Chum

2010-08-22T12:31:00.007-04:00

Near a pond in the center of the forest lived a family of gnomes. Each day, Father Gnome would go fishing at the pond while Mother Gnome stayed home with their twin daughters, Hirrie and Dirrie. Father Gnome would always catch enough fish for everyone to eat, and the gnome family would always be well-fed and happy.

So, it was a surprise when Father Gnome went to the pond one morning and by noon hadn’t caught a single fish. He continued to cast his line, but by dusk had still failed to make a catch. With his head hung in shame, Father Gnome returned to his family empty-handed.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Mother Gnome comforted. “Everything happens for a reason. Bread crusts will suffice for tonight.” So the gnome family ate bread crusts, and Hirrie and Dirrie felt the pangs of hunger for the first time in their lives.

The next morning, Father Gnome set out to the pond, doubly determined to catch some fish. By noon, he had not had a single bite. When dusk fell, Father Gnome’s bucket was empty. He returned home with an even heavier heart than before.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Mother Gnome continued with her encouraging words. “Everything happens for a reason. Potato peels will suffice for tonight.” So the gnome family ate potato peels, and Hirrie and Dirrie cried as their grumbling stomachs intruded on their sleep.

Later that night, Hirrie turned to her sister in bed, “This hunger is driving me mad! Why hasn’t Father been able to catch any fish?”

Dirrie looked pale as she answered her sister, “I don’t know, Hirrie. But if he doesn’t catch something soon, we’ll all starve.”

Hirrie jumped from the bed and pulled her sister along, “Come, Dirrie! Let’s go to the pond ourselves and find out what's the matter.”

So, in the middle of the night, the sisters went to the pond and shouted, “Pond! Why have you stopped giving our family fish?” At first, nothing happened. Then, the night-darkened waters began to ripple and churn until from the middle of the pond rose an ancient glowing catfish.

“Gnome sisters,” the catfish bellowed, a thousand hooks tinkling on its scarred lips, “we have given to your family from our own for many years. We, too, are hungry. Would you do for us as we have done for you?”

Dirrie, horrified by what the catfish was suggesting, stepped away from the pond. But Hirrie was calm as she addressed the catfish, “If we give you one of our own, will you continue to feed us again for many years?” The catfish nodded and descended back into the pond, the dark waters closing over his glowing scales as he disappeared once again into its depths.

Dirrie turned to her sister with a pleading look, “We couldn’t do what that monster says! I’d rather live on bread crusts and potato peels.”

Hirrie was very calm as she spoke to Dirrie, “But isn’t it the fair thing to do? They’ve been sacrificing to our family forever.” She took a step towards her sister, “You say you’d rather starve? I’d rather not.”

-

The next morning, Father Gnome set out to the pond, triply determined to catch some fish. Before he left, his daughter Hirrie surprised him with a gift. “Father, I’ve been thinking about what to do about that stingy pond. I’ve collected some mushrooms and beetles to make a special chum. Sprinkle it in the pond and maybe the fish will start biting again.” With that, Hirrie handed her father a small jar, "If it works, I've got dozens more."

So, Father Gnome went to the pond with his daughter’s gift, and when the fish had not bitten by noon, he decided to dump Hirrie’s foul-smelling chum into the water. Immediately, the pond seemed to boil with a thousand fish, and by dusk Father Gnome had filled his bucket to the brim.

Lacuna Matata

2010-08-21T14:00:00.016-04:00

"(W)hen a work of art ceases to be discussed, it suffers a gradual blackout." ('Velázquez' Las Meninas,' by Leo Steinberg, October, Vol. 19, 1981)

October 19, 2081

Eli's earbud hissed gently -- as did the buds of a thousand other students -- signaling that today's lecture was about to begin. Eli was simultaneously sipping from his Veg@BeV and cycling through his usual hologs as the lecturer's bio-bot droned its perfunctory preamble:

"...AT THE VIRTUVERSITY OF VERIZOOGLE. A REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR TO ART HOLOGS LIKE ARTFUTURES, R00TINGS, AND CYSTEM+, DR. DOODAD DOPPELGANG ENGAGES THE COMPLEX, EVER-CHANGING META-STRATOSPHERES THAT CONSTITUTE THE..."

Eli had updated the bio-bot's feed five minutes earlier to mention the holog Cystem+, since he and his friends had been slowly and stealthily revising the content of the derelict holog throughout the previous months.

As the bio-bot concluded its prerecorded introductions, Eli activated his mouthpiece and, double-checking that the voice modulator was set to "DR._DOO_DO," began his throat-clearing to follow his bio-bot's preamble:

"Thank you and good morning -- or afternoon, or night, I suppose, for some of you -- and thank you for inviting me here again. It's raining where I'm speaking from -- a little holog-hostel near New Cairo -- so my apologies if you're hearing what sounds like static. I don't think the audio-diffusers here work as well as they should..."

Of course, New Cairo was as "new" as Cystem+, audio-diffusers, and Dr. Doppelgang himself. In his last lecture, the good doctor spoke from the seaside town of MiddlingVille and spoke about his ongoing studies of how the unique crustaceans inhabiting Middling Bay responded to a regular diet of finely-attuned codon rays beamed into the crustaceans' ("Blue Middling Lobsters," actually) habitat. Since students were required to write responses to the lectures, Eli made sure that every figment, lie, and neologism had at least a dozen differently-styled hologs that would satisfy the more intrepid student's sedentary research.

Of course, his holog-counter rarely showed that less than a dozen students would visit these homespun decoy-logs, though he didn't want to risk being negligent (and he and his colleagues rather enjoyed making them).

There was always the extremely outside-chance that a student would attempt to thoroughly research -- or, actually try to visit -- one of these little nowheres. But travel was such a luxury these days - and of such little interest, and there were so very many places, and so very little time - that Eli barely entertained the possibility anymore.

Dr. Doppelgang had exhausted his wandering pleasantries and self-interruptions, so Eli turned to the scan of some old "journal" fragment that he had unearthed during one of his usual holog strolls. He read from it verbatim, pausing arbitrarily here and there for effect:

"The recovered papyrus contains little punctuation, no divisions between words, very few stage directions, and frequent mistakes in meter and spelling; some leaves are slightly torn so that syllables and occasionally words are lacking, and in three or four places there are gaps several lines in length. The manuscript has been edited by a noted Swiss scholar..."*

Eli had become expert at folding these kinds of fragments into whatever discourse he was weaving, and managed to carefully omit words and names that might lead him into a dead end. Then again, being that it was all a kind of dead end, it seemed that Eli's eloquence was the only thing necessary to keep the charade moving forward.

That, and the fact that his voice modulator remained set to "DR._DOO_DO." So when Eli reached to finish off the dregs of his Veg@BeV and absentmindedly shut off the modulator, he proceeded to the end of Dr. Doppelgang's lecture not in the voice of the transient scholar, but in the somewhat less impressive voice of a very clever, but very lost young man.

*(Excerpted from the introduction to 'The Dyskolos of Menander,' translated by Gilbert Highet, Horizons, Vol. I, 1959)

Hating/Trolling/Bored/God Here

2010-08-18T15:31:00.016-04:00

Even though I feel a bit ill-equipped to engage in this conversation at Rhizome, I thought it was worth starting an account there so I could remind this verbose "multimedia arts" professor how to use the Google to answer his own question (he doesn't recall getting into it with another commenter, and despite his crushing knowledge of all things interwebular, he can't seem to figure out how to "I'm Feeling Lucky" his way to this).

Well, my comment hasn't been posted yet on the "unmoderated" Rhizome thread, so whatever. Everything seems (un)necessarily complicated over there. Deleuzeian, even (and, I guess, Guattarian as well).

I also felt compelled to respond to this artist's comment on this other artist's blog, because I'm (place your choice from this post's title here, or feel free to make suggestions in the comment section).

Update: My comment was posted to the Rhizome thread (and the dump.fm-found treasure/key GIF that's accompanying this post, which is nice).

A Looming Anaphylaxis

2010-08-16T22:27:00.006-04:00

"Depending our personal sensitivity, at any time. it is only done if we stay away from this so puzzling & real dangerous 44.000+ latex filled world." ("Chrysta," from latexsens.com)

Who knew that flanking a "Twin Soul Mates" heart/jellyfish with dice would bring me to this site? It's a difficult site to describe: it's paranoid, obsessive, New Age, depressing, hopeful, and mostly about latex allergy hypersensitivity (a very real and scary thing). It's Yanni meets Safe meets scrolling-forever meets "seriously?" meets "maybe I have this" meets "I shouldn't make fun of this" meets stock-photography meets... a lot of super GIFs?

Just spend a little bit of time on the site. Or at least until the music stops playing.

The Good Old Days

2010-08-12T20:21:00.012-04:00

One of the things I like(d) most about dump.fm is (was) being able to "illustrate" my posts with links to images (and image combinations) directly from my and other dumpers' "logs" (examples of such dump.fm-"illustrated" posts include my last post, Rhetoric as Magic, and The Ecstasy of Link[s]). Now, unless you're signed-in to your dump.fm account, any link to the site will be obfuscated by Super Mario clouds and a central screen urging you to sign-in and/or register for an account (which you can minimalize, but still). Boo. Of course, I can't fault the site's makers for wanting to get more people to "officially" engage with the site, but I'm bummed that my copious links to dump.fm will bring the unauthorized linker to mostly clouds and advertising. Then again, dump.fm routinely undergoes format makeovers, so maybe I'm just kvetching over a temporary inconvenience.

Update: I appear to have been kvetching over a temporary inconvenience, which is not unusual for me.

Breakdowns

2010-08-11T13:56:00.019-04:00

"Among other consequences, this either/or structure prevents Barthes from imagining a cinema like the one for which Brecht argued and which Godard tried to put into practice -- a cinema which would itself become analytic, fragmenting diegetic flow through a meta-discourse which would qualify immediate realities, to speak 'as if quoting,' as Juliette says in Two or Three Things I Know about Her. In 'Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein,' Barthes expressly deals with Brecht's fragmentation of scene into representative social gests. He argues that even if such fragmentation means that 'at the level of the play itself, there is no development, no maturation... no final meaning, nothing but a series of segmentations,'nonetheless this fragmentation leads not to an alienation effect, an analytic distance, but to a fetishized involvement." ('Roland Barthes and the Moving Image,' by Dana B. Polan, October, Vol. 18, 1981)

October 18, 2081

Everything in Jenna's parlor seemed to move, to flow, to evanesce. Despite the irresistible sensation of motion conferred by these exorbitant and altogether convincing illusions, even the dullest citizen knew that all of these effects were set to a perpetually-cycling loop.

Being of course top-notch, Jenna's programs offered neither a stray pixel or jerky, awkward stuttering to belie the sweet and total farce of smooth continuity that only her circlet of gilded oligarchs could afford to maintain.

Outside of her sanctuary -- where the floor seamlessly undulated in subtle perpetuity from deep azure to royal blue, as picture-screens glowed with lulling scenes of waves eternally breaking on long-dead shores -- the howling citizenry roiled in their own miserable loop, a dirty and descending spiral that was remarkably devoid of color, calm, and any semblance of some reassuring aesthetic order.

Following the assassination (a privilege I've earned after years of intricate deception, as well as the obligatory sacrifice of annulling my original identity), I'm required to override her programs -- to have them rapidly, violently accelerate, to pock them with glitches -- as a supplemental sacrilege and calling-card for my revolutionary employers. I don't enjoy this petty vandalism. For all the crass ironies and inequities that have engendered the pretty deceptions of Jenna's cell, there is a sense of cohesiveness -- however false -- bestowed by the totality of her elite programs. In our zeal to cut the heads of power and assert our noble difference, we've begun to affiliate anything that alludes to wholeness with corruption, even art.

Jenna's execution is an unfortunate necessity. But to sink her temple into our indistinguishable brokenness constitutes, I believe, a double murder.

Gypsy Logic

2010-08-07T09:33:00.015-04:00

Six or so years ago -- and for three or so dollars -- I bought the 518-page hardcover book "Dictionary of Gypsy Life and Lore" from a thrift store in Hell's Kitchen. The book's author/compiler, Harry E. Wedeck (who appears to have written several "exotic" dictionaries and texts, including the "Pictorial History of Morals" and his "Triumph of Satan"), delivers a barely two-page introduction. An abbreviated gist:

"The very term gypsy denotes, in a generic sense, a restless, unsettled, foot-loose person... Hence, then, is their diversified story, shot through with lamentation and merriment, with catastrophes and resilience. It is the epic of their wanderings, their beliefs, their characterial peculiarities, their mythological creations, their ceremonials and their loyalties. It is a tale compounded of history spiced with picturesque legend, with colorful sagas and episodes. It is a survey, in short, of the last anomaly in a progressively conventionalized world."

I'm hard-pressed to think of a more effective way to "conventionalize" any culture or people than to parse "their diversified story" into an alphabetized miscellany. However, the sheer length of the book and somewhat perverse inclusiveness of its entries lends itself to being a "wandering" read (although it's probably not a useful book to learn anything about actual Gypsies). Some of the notable entries are as follows:

CRUCIFIXION There is a legend that the Gypsies are the descendants of the smiths who made the nails for the Crucifixion. Hence they were condemned to be perpetual wanderers over the face of the earth.

DEXTERITY The Gyspies were generally praised for their dexterity and quickness in working with metals, despite the wretched tools they had to operate with. When any piece of work required much time to finish, they were apt to lose their patience, and in that case became indifferent whether it was well executed or not. They never submitted to labor so long as they had a dry crust or anything else to satisfy their hunger. They frequently received orders to fabricate different articles. But if not, no sooner were a few nails or some other trifles manufactured than man, woman, and children dislodged, to convey their merchandise from house to house for sale, in the neighboring villages. Their trade was carried on sometimes for ready money, sometimes by barter for eatables or other necessities.

DICTIONARY DEFINITION An eighteenth century French dictionary defined the Bohemians, that is, the Gyspies, as itinerant vagabonds who live by theft and cunning and particularly by fortune-telling.

GYP This expression, listed in some dictionaries with the meaning of to deceive, to steal, to cheat, is a traditionally prejudicial use of the term. It is in line with other such terms, of an ethnic origin, that have been discriminatingly used in a markedly pejorative sense.

HARDINESS The Gypsies are lean, since they are seldom guilty of excess in eating or drinking. They have iron constitutions, because they have been brought up hardily. A mother takes her child on her back, wandering about in fair and foul weather, in heat and cold. Children live a rough open-air life. They acquire good health by hard-

The last entry actually ends with the hyphen, which was likely intended to be followed by "work," although the entire tone of "HARDINESS" seems in direct contrast with the roguish flits described in the preceding entries. There are countless errors, redundancies (though none appear to rival "DICTIONARY DEFINITION" above, which is confused further by the earlier "BOHEMIAN GYPSIES" entry), and contradictions like these throughout the book, which only intensifies my interest in the dictionary as a kind of textual "Gypsy" itself -- that is, a wandering, ill-defined entity cloaked in dicey mystique, exuding strength in its sheer (or perceived) voluminousness. Just be glad that I didn't include the entry for "BULWER LYTTON AS A ROMANY RYE," as it rolls on for nearly eleven straight pages...

I should also mention that my interest in purchasing the book stemmed almost entirely from my parents teasing me as a child: I was infrequently told that they had "bought" or "traded me from the Gypsies" (I've heard of other children being told this very same lie). I can also recollect stories which claim that my Sicilian, blackjack-playing, Bruce-Lee-loving great-grandmother was versed in reading tea-leaves. Inevitably, these yarns intertwined and coalesced to instill in me a phantom -- if not thoroughly fictional -- connection to my Gypsy brethren.

Spontaneous Curation VII

2010-08-04T13:00:00.005-04:00

Edit, Edit, Edit
Perpetual Motion Machine (Glitter Spank)
The Garden of Forking Paths
Double Fantasy
Hell on Earth
Four Rooms
O Canada
Repeating Forms
Bucky Babbage
The Cosmos
Übermensches
2012
Ur-Form

The Schlock of the New

2010-07-31T14:17:00.011-04:00

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

2010-07-30T21:27:00.017-04:00

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

2010-07-28T15:11:00.009-04:00

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

2010-07-26T22:53:00.012-04:00

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

2010-07-23T21:21:00.008-04:00

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

2010-07-21T14:58:00.004-04:00

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

2010-07-17T22:48:00.008-04:00

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

2010-07-11T01:32:00.010-04:00

"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 (?)

2010-07-05T13:29:00.011-04:00

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)

2010-07-03T18:39:00.004-04:00

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."

Spontaneous Curation V

2010-06-29T10:48:00.016-04:00

Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Self by Marc Quinn
Disembodied Zombie George Black by Richard Hawkins
Medusa by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
With Dead Head by Damien Hirst
The Emancipation Approximation by Kara Walker

On a somewhat unrelated note: Jump for joy: I made my first multiple-image dump! Many thanks to jeanette (who also dumped the first multiple-image dump I ever favved!).

Interzones

2010-06-28T10:27:00.001-04:00

As their shared prefix begins to intimate, the internet warrants interdependence. The following are links to sites that I have recently enjoyed reading, commenting on, and/or exchanging with in one way or another:

WANGA Recap, Episode 3 @ Art Fag City: AFC editor Paddy Johnson has committed herself to recapping each episode for WANGA's entire run. Though I still have major misgivings about the show, Johnson's coverage has been attentive, critical, and dialogue-generating (it's also brought many of WANGA's contestants into the comment-threads - in this case, recently-dismissed artist Judith Braun). I make some points in the thread, too (in more ways than one, I guess, since AFC's newly-designed site also features a somewhat unclear "point system" for commenters).

Jerry Saltz's WANGA Recap, Episode 3 @ New York Magazine: Since I can't join in on the fun of his Facebook page, my only other chance at engaging in public-interweb-discourse with Saltz is to comment on his articles posted for New York Magazine. Saltz went for "self-critique" in this WANGA recap, and I wasn't really feeling it. To my surprise, Saltz repeatedly responded to my comments - and put a cherry on my sundae by briefly adopting the acronym WANGA throughout the exchange. Even though WANGA is a wasteland, I do my best to demonstrate (and make a plea for) how word-play can offer an amusing escape-hatch to the WANGA prison.

Response to Ben Lewis by EAGEAGEAG: Rebutting an article that demands rebuttal, EAGEAGEAG's criticism of Lewis' article "The Dustbin of Art History" at Prospect magazine expertly addresses some of the article's major weaknesses.

Pairings & Re-Dumps by Tom Moody: Renaissance-man Moody has written about and engaged with the site/tool/community/experiment dump.fm; he's also posted several dumps and his remixes of dumps by awesome dumper j1p2m3 (which is me!). Here's a "repurposed corporate graphic - enlarged" and a "large gecko head... enlarged, frames removed," not to mention a "head roll pair" and the evanescent, cybernetic "jumpers."

New Dictionary

2010-06-28T00:22:00.016-04:00

My attempts to institute "WANGA" as a critically-acclaimed term appear to be dwindling. In fact, other commenters are now trying to turn Saltz away from my suggested sources with blatant scare tactics. My feeble attempts to redirect meaning continued with the following comment:

@REBECCAROSE2004: Like a loosely-moderated comment-thread, the Urban Dictionary is comprised of texts by whoever wants to venture a definition, which, although problematic, doesn't make "a very evil place, filled with vile, evil, horrendous things." It makes it a democratic place (there's even a crude "voting" application for each entry), which I thought was supposed to be one of the noble attributes of WANGA (the show, of course).

And whether the Urban Dictionary is comprised of wholly "truthful," error-free definitions only reinforces that it is, in fact, a dictionary (good luck finding a dictionary that isn't rife with dubious definitions! There's a reason that even the most beloved dictionaries enjoy frequent updates/editions).

Given the flak that Judith received for her "backwards" cover (someone on Facebook - a friend of contestant Erik, no less - posted that she "HATED Judith's slaughter of one of my favorite novels of all time"), and how it was later found that Austen herself wrote backwards-written letters for her niece, I would hope that one thing that could be eked from the banality of WANGA is that art-making often rewards us when we engage in a slow, thoughtful, playful read rather than mucking around in bland literalism.

In 1966, Kurt Vonnegut wrote an essay called "New Dictionary" that was later published in his short-story compilation "Welcome to the Monkey House." You can read all of "New Dictionary" online, but here's a bit that does well to explicate how even an earnest search for "dirty words" can lead to new, if not unexpected, knowledge of other things:

If my emphasis on dirty words so early in this review seems childish, I can only replay that I, as a child, would never have started going through unabridged dictionaries if I hadn't suspected that there were dirty words hidden in there, where only grownups were supposed to find them. I always ended the searches feeling hot and stuffy inside, and looking at the queer illustrations - at the trammel wheel, the arbalest, and the dugong.

Looping Michael

2010-06-25T12:25:00.006-04:00

I've picked up several animated GIF's of Michael Jackson on dump.fm in the past couple of months, and today seems like an appropriate day to post them.

It's also got me thinking about how animated GIF's can act as a strangely appropriate form to memorialize someone, given their quality of "preserving" an image and representing it ad infinitum. Rather than encaustic mummy portraits or idealized relief-portraits on gravestones, I could see people having beatific cycling portraits of themselves programmed into the face of their tomb (be it urn, headstone, or Facebook page).

Michael morphing, shuffling off this mortal coil (posted on dump.fm by godless)
Spotlit "Smooth Criminal"
Gold-clad, crotch-dive, shake-off
Right angle forever
Adoring, clutching fan
Popstar as ascending, haloed, glittering archangel
"Remember the Time" frisson
Living-hieroglyph blitz

Update: Though not an animated GIF, this painted relief by artist Carolyn Lloyd Swain memorializes Jackson with neo-folk aplomb.

WANGA-Meme Etymological Madness

2010-06-25T11:41:00.010-04:00

The arrested-adolescent side of me is doing cartwheels as the word-nerd side of me nods in smug self-satisfaction. Or vice-versa. Maybe they're just sides of the same coin?

...Fourier's speech itself is sensual, it progresses in effusiveness, enthusiasm, throngs of words, verbal gourmandise (neologism is an erotic act, which is why he never fails to arouse the censure of pedants). (Roland Barthes from Sade: Fourier: Loyola)

JERRYSALTZCRITIC: Someone above used the word WANGA to describe Work of Art...
I looked up the word WANGA and I got two main definitions:

1. "The term Wanga is an African diasporic word that occurs in The Book of the Law (the sacred text of Thelema, written by English author and occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904): A wanga is a magical charm packet found in the folk magic practices of Haiti, and as such it is connected to the West African religion of Vodun, which in turn derives from the Fon people of what is now Benin."

2. "Wanga Dolls can bring you love, money, success, revenge--anything you desire! Select the doll or dolls that fit your specific need, then experience the wonders that only a Wanga may bring!

Wanga Dolls summon the forces of the night, supernatural forces that are beyond man's comprehension. Each Wanga represents a powerful spirit that could work in behalf of the person who possesses it. Possess the Wanga and let its extraordinary powers work for you!

Wanga Dolls are hand-crafted and hand-painted, so please order your Wanga only if your need is great."

HAH!

JESSE_P_MARTIN: @JerrySaltz: Please Google "WANGA URBAN DICTIONARY" for a more contemporary use of the term. It's much more "HAH!" worthy than what a simple Google-search will provide. Do you think the people that named the show were aware of the magical, naughty acronym they had smuggled into the show's title? I'm afraid that this interests me somewhat more than the politics of the show.

JERRYSALTZCRITIC: I have to admit that I did know exactly what 'Work of Art's " subtitle was. I just looked it up. It is "The Next Great Artist." (ouch!)
In a previous comment Mr. Jessie_P_Martin advises us to look up the word WANGA (Mr. Martin's acronym for the TV show) is the Urban Dictionary. The (partial) definition is:

"Wanga: A male reproductive organ, in some cases extremely large.
(adj.) Most likely originating from Mexico or Latin America.
1. Loose or floppy, especially referring to clothing or body parts.
2. A adjective that conveys a negative feeling toward bagginess, floppiness or looseness of clothing, body parts or attachments."

(Note: There were four (!) misspellings in the U.D's definition of the word; so that this might just be a bogus internet definition.) Nevertheless, Mr. Martin, perhaps all those words can be applied to WoA: baggy, floppy, loose, and extremely large.
Hah!
Thank you,
Jerry Saltz

JESSE_P_MARTIN: To fully exploit the potential for all of the "vulgar" acronyms being thrown around, I propose that the "Work of Art: the Next Great Artist" (WANGA) solo-exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum (BM) be thus titled: "WANGA in the BM." Thoughts?

UPDATE: Following this exchange, Saltz has returned to typing "WoA" (Work of Art) instead of "WANGA' - even when he's quoting other commenters who are using "WANGA." Don't drop the WANGA ball, Jerry! I just posted the following to the thread, ending with the Barthes quote above:

JESSE_P_MARTIN: @JerrySaltz: Can't help but see that you misquoted JUJU69's use of the proper acronym "WANGA" for your abbreviated "WoA," a revision that JUJU69 has unfortunately adopted in their subsequent post (doubly surprising, given the voodoo/randy implications of a name like "JUJU69," similar to the previous investigations into the meanings of the word "Wanga"). Why the change back? Preference or producer pressure?

Johnson WANGA

2010-06-24T19:29:00.004-04:00

WANGA BONUS SUPPLEMENT: Apparently inspired by my posting of my Saltz-exchange on Facebook, WANGA contestant Erik Johnson commented on my wall. WANGA saturation supreme...

Erik Johnson: Jerry is an awesome guy... Like the rest of us, he doesn't owe anyone regret, guilt, or any of the other goofy shit the insider art world needs so it can forgive us for doing a reality show... We all had a chance to be part of something and we had fun... When "the ultimate fighter" first aired there were a lot of pro fighters who called these guys "reality show rejects" ... That is until they were spraying those words out of a mouth void of it's teeth.

I appreciate your opinion, and your enthusiasm... I just think if people who are so against this show applied their opinions of it to ANY other reality show that has brought light to a closed off protected clique, they would probably see how ridiculous it is to be so against it. I love art so I'll support anything that makes it more available... Anything that makes it more fun... And I don't think me or Jerry or anyone else involved should feel bad about that... Before "the ultimate fighter" MMA wasn't nearly as popular as it is today... After it aired the sport grew overnight... That to me is a good thing because as a fan, I had more access to the sport: websites, magazines, tv shows, local fights and most importantly great conversations/debates with other fans. I know quite a few people that are putting food on their table since the amazing growth of that sport. I know it's a long shot, but "work of art" could do the same thing for artists... If that's the case then I'm happy to be a part of it.

Jesse Patrick Martin: @Erik: How is it that you don't consider Jerry Saltz an "art world insider?" Being a charismatic critic who prides himself on not going to art school doesn't exempt him from having extensive affiliations with the "art snobs" and "elitists" that you're constantly raging against. Your "outsider" stance is tired, wrongheaded, and misinformed. I'm not saying this to piss you off, but to sincerely let you know that your "us vs. them" arguments are just getting in the way of things.

I'm glad the WANGA experience has been positive for you, and I'm not suggesting that anyone should feel guilty about taking part in it. What I am advocating is that any real criticism of WANGA's problematic format isn't just dismissed as "hating," "elitist," "insider," or "snob" talk.

As an artist and teacher (and reality-show watcher!), it's important for me to address WANGA in a genuinely thoughtful way. I agree with you completely that art should be made available, but I can't say that "I'll support anything that makes it more available" or "fun," because the formats that make art "available" aren't always in the best interests of art and artists - and I strongly feel that WANGA is an example of this.

Erik Johnson: Hahaha! I'm certainly not trying to change your mind about anything.. If everyone agreed with me, then I'd never get to have an interesting conversation... And whether my "outsider" deal is tired or whatever, really isn't any of my business. I'm not defending Jerry, he's a big boy with some VERY thick skin... I think what makes him different is the fact that he is interested in getting people to talk about art. Getting people who normally would think they can't have an opinion about art to realize that they can and do... Seriously (I know I'm opening myself up for some insults from some people here) I have a hard time even calling myself an artist most of the time. I'm just a guy who likes to make stuff and be creative. I'm not talking about your post when insatiable this but I have read some really nasty shit about myself lately from the insider art snobs. Some of it is kinda funny, some of it is pretty mean. I really just can't understand what the fuss is about. If your problem is with the format, then that's a "television" issue not an "art issue" When I dislike something THAT much I just refrain from watching it, I don't put ANY of my energy into it.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I'm not trying to debate this, or change your mind. But I would like to know what could possibly be the WORST thing that can happen from this show?

Jesse Patrick Martin: @Erik: The "worst" thing that could happen has already happened, and has been happening for some time: the total folding of art into the world of sheer advertising, entertainment, commercialism, fashion, design, etc.

WANGA is merely a symptom of this type of banal and continued assimilation of art into these realms, and the translation always seems to leave art/artists at the narrow but precise whims of marketing rather than allowing it/them to exist without such strictures.

I'm not promoting a "pure," idealistic prescription for how art/artists should operate, but I am saying that there are bad-marriages between art & commercialism that ultimately work to water-down and mass-distribute an *idea* of art, artists, and the "art world" that only further denigrates actual art/artists.

WANGA Sprouts

2010-06-24T19:10:00.014-04:00

Jerry Saltz has been writing WANGA recaps for New York Magazine following each show, and since I can't comment on his thoughts via Facebook, I responded to his latest article on the magazine's website (linking to and posting all of my comments to my Facebook wall, of course). Saltz is very good about responding to comments, and I appreciate him taking the time to engage with his audience.

Still, we're clearly not in agreement about all things WANGA. I encourage you to read Saltz's article and the comments, but have posted our exchange below.

(Post title "WANGA Sprouts" courtesy of artist Molly Porter)

JESSE_P_MARTIN: It's interesting that nearly everyone involved in this show feels the need to apologize or "set the record straight" after every episode and/or news blip. Clearly the format of WANGA is *extremely* problematic, primarily because it is entirely beholden to naked commercialism, period (not to mention the major imperfections of drama-hungry, effects-laden, edit-happy reality-t.v. conventions). Does WANGA even have commercials for museums, art-schools, galleries, or anything remotely related to the arts? No: there are ads with Kelly Ripa hawking washing machines, ads for other Bravo shows, ads for home-improvement crap, etc.

I appreciate that Saltz is being "self-critical" and becoming more aware of how grossly misrepresentative this show/format is, but I'm not entirely convinced that the burgeoning guilt and regret he's articulating in his "recaps" reflect a genuine ethical conflict as much as it does his need to save-face in order to remain a likable fellow for his general readership.

JERRYSALTZCRITIC: Dear Jesse_P_Martin;
Thank you for your commnets.
You write, "...I appreciate that Saltz is being "self-critical" and becoming more aware of how grossly misrepresentative this show/format is..."
JPM: While I think that the words "grossly misrepresentative" are a bit much, I was aware going in that Bravo would edit this show anyway that they wanted to, and that I would be made a "character" on the show.
To me the format is NOT a Reality TV show. It is a game show. There are asignmnets, contestants, time restrictions, material restrictions, snarky judges; someone gets 'voted off."

You write, "...I'm not entirely convinced that the burgeoning guilt and regret he's articulating in his "recaps" reflect a genuine ethical conflict..."
Three things JPM;
1. I do not feel any sense of "guilt" about being on this TV show. At all. I LOVED doing it. I would do it again (fat chance that a show this odd could ever go into a second season - but stranger thangs have happened.)
2. "Regret" comes with almost everything I do. So perhaps you are right; I often read what I have written and want a do-over or a chance to change or fix something. In that sense I "regret." I often look at the show and find myself thinking, "What am I doing there?" Hah!
3. I am sorry that if these reecaps seem like I am just trying to "save-face in order to remain a likable fellow." That is not what they feel like to me. That means I am not doing a good enough job.
4. To me you are wrong: I have no "genuine ethical conflict" about being on the Bravo show. None at all. I would do it again. I am sure that only makes you think I am all the more, in your words, "grossly misrepresentative."
Thank you for your comments.
Jerry Saltz

JESSE_P_MARTIN: @JerrySaltz: It lightens things to call WANGA a "game show," though the characteristics you've mentioned (i.e., snarky judges, getting voted-off, etc.) would be more accurately defined as "reality show" conventions. Reality shows like WANGA often have a carrot-dangling "prize" and "challenges" to elicit conflict/competition, but unlike actual game shows (or games), there are no clear, objectively correct answers or rules to winning. Reality shows are more akin to pageantry contests like "Miss America" and its ilk, because we're asked to assess "contestants" based on our subjective, emotional responses to their actions, not determine a "winner" based on them actually getting an answer right ("The Great Race" would seem like a closer reality-show/game-show hybrid than "American Idol"). Though WANGA has certainly taken on the clear and crass game-show conventions of product-hawking that makes being sold crap feel so entertaining (instead of "Barker's Beauties" caressing salad-sets, we've got China Chow giving Pepsi-sponsored "recaps" w/soda bottle prominently displayed near her glamorous persona).

Why all of this hair-splitting? Because WANGA is conflating so much under the auspices of it being "about/for art" when it's all really "about advertising," and your humanistic "recaps" are just another diversion away from these glaring "realities." Yes, let's discuss how "real" Judith is and the finer points of why Trong was/wasn't given a fair shake. By "deepening" the already false emotional ties that people are developing to WANGA, you're merely perpetuating greater mystification and turning away from genuinely considering and questioning what this show is really about. Your mention of the museum trustee's departure is a start. Otherwise, it's hard for me not to see any reflections, comments, and "criticisms" of WANGA by its participants as being anything but the distracting blather of shills (and the lack of awareness by WANGA's participants that they are unwittingly acting as shills doesn't make it any better!).

JERRYSALTZCRITIC: Dear Jesse_P_Martin;
Thank you for all of your comments.
In your first comments I was not sure was WANGA was.
Then I saw you use it again.
In your last comment I figured out that when you say WANGA you mean the show, 'Work of Art." Just wanted to clarify for people.
You write, "...it's hard for me not to see any reflections, comments, and "criticisms" of WANGA by its participants as being anything but the distracting blather of shills (and the lack of awareness by WANGA's participants that they are unwittingly acting as shills doesn't make it any better!)."
Wow! You REALLY don't like this show. I can understand that.
Mr. or Ms. Jesse_P_Martin: You may be right.
Thank you.
Jerry Saltz

JESSE_P_MARTIN: @JerrySaltz: WANGA is the naturally-occurring acronym for "Work of Art: the Next Great Artist," and has other unfortunate meanings as well (http://bit.ly/cFVQZP). I am a Mr., though my name often confuses people. And I try to give equal attention to the things I don't like as I do to the things that I do like - it seems only fair, and it's a good way to keep one's critical-facilities sharp. Even if my opinions do veer more towards the unforgiving and acerbic, my calling the participants "unwitting shills" feels all the more appropriate given that the following was the result of last night's challenge (link courtesy victor/shill John Parot, via Facebook): http://bit.ly/baT1Wc

p.s.- And I like Parot's work, but that's beside the point!

Note: Saltz's response to my response to his response is most satisfying, not because he's unsure of whether I'm a Mr. or Ms., or because he says that I "may be right" about one of my points, but BECAUSE HE ADOPTS THE ACRONYM "WANGA" FOUR TIMES DURING HIS COMMENT (and also writes briefly about his initial confusion with the term). Other commenters are now using the term, AFC (which has a great new look!) is archiving all WANGA posts as "WANGA," and Judith L. Butler is calling it WANGA, too, over at Two Coats of Paint. Wowza! Did I start a meme? I can now die a happy man!

Wasteland

2010-06-21T21:37:00.011-04:00

This paragraph can be reached from no place in the whole adventure. We know who you are, and we will get you for reading this paragraph. Expect it most when you expect it least. (Wasteland, Paragraph 145)

Wasteland was a computer game that I played when my father brought it home in the late '80s. I had never experienced anything like it. It became one of those distractions that I'd daydream about returning to as I sat through Catholic-school math class. Wasteland was violent, dark, and "adult" (there were prostitutes, bars, drugs, and gambling), but it was also funny, mysterious, challenging, and thoroughly entertaining. Besides sporting a Legend of Zelda-style, bird's-eye-view interface, the game was incredibly immersive and even somewhat literary (though I'm sure the nine-year-old me wouldn't have described it in those particular terms).

The latter trait owed a great deal to Wasteland's inclusion of a "paragraphs" book: a separate, physical pamphlet that a player had to refer to at various points throughout the game. The "paragraphs" weren't a rule-book or technical guide; they were an archive of one hundred and sixty-two numbered entries which, although organized logically from 1-162, were not meant to be read in a linear fashion. Instead, a player was prompted at various times throughout the game to refer to a particular paragraph number. Though the "paragraphs" were likely intended as a primitive copy-protection (many of the entries were red herrings) and way for the programmers to circumvent text-heavy passages within the game, they also made for an intriguing stand-alone document.

While no where near as gorgeously sprawling, copious, and fiercely, rigorously intellectual as Walter Benjamin's fractious, talismanic Arcades Project, Wasteland's "paragraphs" were, for a nine-year-old me, a kind of ur-form of modular narratives, hypertext, and intertextuality. I knew that the "correct" way to "use" the "paragraphs" was to faithfully play the game and obediently wait to read the appropriate entry when I was told. Still, there was a guilty pleasure in sneaking peeks at random entries, even though I knew that such indiscretions could qualify as cheating, lead to game "spoilers," or even expose me to gross misinformation. Funny enough, it was like reading a "choose your own adventure" book from cover-to-cover (as if it were a conventional book) rather than following the jumpy-but-linear "path" that your "decisions" brought you to. Promiscuous, unrestrained reading had its consequences, but it also held rewards.

There are, thankfully and of course, other manners of interpreting my childhood experience and adult interpretation of Wasteland. Is it significant that, by turning away from my Catholic-school studies for a post-nuclear-fallout computer game, I was simply trading one escapist eschatology for a more entertaining one? And what is the Bible but a hallowed, venerable, multi-authored, chronologically-dubious intertext? Surely, Sister Theodosia would bludgeon my knuckles to the bone.

Supplementary Reading
Review of Wasteland at Abandonia (you can download it there for DOSBox)
More shameless fanboy love of Wasteland (with stills of Wasteland's denizens at the bottom of the article)
Animations of Wasteland's denizens
Highly-flawed, in-screen simulation of Wasteland
Highly-flawed animated GIF of a Wasteland "Desert Dweller" by yours truly
Wasteland decrypted
The Waste Land deconstructed

Rhetoric as Magic

2010-06-20T12:15:00.019-04:00

I was recently gifted a small cache of Critical Inquiry periodicals from the '70s and '80s (which you can access online via JSTOR if you have the proper institutional affiliations). There's a lot of writing about "deconstruction," as well as formal-yet-impassioned essays that attempt to debunk, elevate, comprehend, and/or assess what was the "new" theoretical thrust in contrast/comparison with the "classic" canonical texts that these meddling (predominantly French-theory inspired) texts were (in)directly putting under siege.

Like the proceeding sentence, many of the Critical Inquiry essays are convoluted, problematic, and glibly referential. But they also make excellent arguments as to why such loosey-goosey characteristics are unavoidable:

To track down every single source and influence in a work to its precise point of origin is manifestly impossible. (Only the force of desire or the existence of hypotheses without truth-value allows us to think otherwise.) The actual place of inauguration of any word, concept, idea, or myth is indeterminate. Thus, the critical concepts of "origin" and "unity" are undermined by the inescapable operations of intertexuality as well as by the ubiquitous forces of difference. (Vincent B. Leitch, from The Lateral Dance: The Deconstructive Criticism of J. Hillis Miller)

Adopting these tactics have continued to be vehemently criticized even today, although the appearance of these assails within the "prison-house" of the internet strikes me as wholly ironic (though this contextual irony seems lost on these critics). Leitch invokes the panoptic phrase later in his same article:

Language in the (prison) house is differential as well as referential. The disturbing discontinuous aspect of language comes about because words are really figures - substitutions or displacements - which stand for something. Necessarily, language is not simply referential but rhetorical. Insofar as language is rhetorical, our world is text. Such rhetoricity and textuality are irreducible.

Of course, Leitch wasn't referring to the internet, though his article (and other deconstructivist texts) read as uncannily, presciently relevant to the (ir)rationale of the web. Following Leitch's article is a response by J. Hillis Miller (whose essay Leitch was responding to in the first place), and one can't help but see how their scholarly retorts are fantastically proto-blog:

Leitch speaks of his procedure with my work as employing an "abrupt asyndetic format" and as being "a metonymic montage in which themes and citations are playfully and copiously combined." One form of this playfulness is the panoply of figures he uses to describe me and my criticism. The need to use figures for this is interesting, as is their incoherence, though the figures can be shown to fall into a rough antithetical pattern. (J. Hillis Miller, from Theory and Practice: Response to Vincent Leitch)

While Miller is speaking solely about words (text), "abrupt asyndetic format" and "metonymic montage" are semantical phrases that could easily be applied to the rhizomatic link-logic routinely employed on the internet.

I also enjoy the "panoply of figures" that Miller cites above, which Leitch "uses to describe (Miller) and (his) criticism." These phantasmagorical "figures" describe Miller - and any deconstructivist - as magical entities who are alternately destructive, creative, violent, and gentle in their chameleonic incarnations. As dubbed by Leitch, Miller is a "doubled fairy godmother," "magician-godmother," "nihilistic magician," "underworld fairy godmother," "bull-deconstructer," and finally, a "lamb."

The web allows for us to shift identities in an equally "magical" way, and since we're dealing primarily with text and image, the shapeshifter's approach is most fitting. Whether we're being magician-poachers, Virgils, scatological Borgesian illustrators, or even "noble trolls," we're wonderfully, inescapably trapped in the "prison-house" of our own makings.

Baroque Penises, etc.

2010-06-19T12:29:00.017-04:00

The insane, otherworldly penises/mating-habits of certain lifeforms are grotesquely inspiring and remind me that aliens probably do exist (and that many have already landed here on Earth). These clips are less like nature-porn and more like sci-fi movies:

I now regard my cats with newfound horror/respect.

This is how nature's hermaphrodites roll (it's called apophallation). If Sir David Attenborough doesn't do it for you, maybe this narration is more your style.

From the second narrator of the leopard slug clip, this groping beastie reaffirms my hypotheses that Australia either A) doesn't exist or B) harbors a gateway to the underworld.

Parasites need love, too. Haters.

The Ecstasy of Link(s)

2010-06-16T11:28:00.031-04:00

With Cézanne's paintings, boredom does become interesting. But it requires an effort on the part of the viewer - the cynical postmodern viewer who is conditioned by the fast zip of the cathode-ray stuttering and blinking constantly in front of our visual field. (Robert C. Morgan, from "The Boredom of Cézanne")

Morgan's essay begins with him describing his manifold experiences with Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire, which range from seeing a reproduction of the painting in a book sold at a sidewalk sale, to viewing the actual scene depicted in the painting from Cézanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence, to seeing the painting itself in various museums. Morgan makes a case for "building one's personal experience with the work," which he likens to the Zen exercise of "build(ing) mountains of the mind." Presence, depth of experience, and meditation are reaffirmed as crucial means by which one should approach Cézanne's paintings, "to get to the(ir) core."

I try to hang with artworks and broaden my experiences with them, but I'm definitely one of those who's been blitzed by the cathode-ray. Is there any "depth of experience" to the images experienced solely in this "stuttering and blinking," ostensibly "distracted" format?

I grew up with television, video games, computers, and the internet. I also drew, read, and wrote a lot. I still like playing video games and going to museums and drawing and writing and reading (from convoluted theory to ultra-light fare). I think I suffer from the same lack of focus and general contradictions as anyone else. I'm smart and stupid, depending on when you catch me.

That having been said, I think that there's way more stupid going around than smart, and not always in a bad way. Stupid can be smart, and vice-versa. I think that the internet is stupid-smart, though most people treat it like it's stupid-stupid while a special few treat it like it's smart-smart.

I've mentioned dump.fm before, and have since spent a lot more time there than I had thought I would. There's something about it that appeals to, I think, the cathode-ray-junkie part of my brain. I like scintillating, spinning, morphing, throbbing, and otherwise seizure-inducing shapes and patterns. I like mindless repetition - sometimes I think that I can better "meditate" through distraction.

While the following image-links have been "curated" by my removing them from the gif-waterfall that is dump.fm (they've also been taken slightly out of the chronology that I "dumped" or "favved" them). But this sort of out-of-sync, out-of-time quality seems true to how we experience (art and images on) the web, so maybe all of this throat-clearing preamble is, uh, extraneous.

But let it be known that the succession of images - which I found to be pretty inspiring - all started with "the fast zip of the cathode-ray stuttering and blinking," somewhat literally, by my "dumping" the following:

Green "cathode-ray"
Spinning, triumphant Link
Link-Blink-Link (linked and dumped by ahem)
Small spinning Triforce
Medium spinning Triforce
Large spinning Triforce
Racing Triforce teselation
Heaving bit-Pyramid

Spontaneous Curation IV

2010-06-14T10:28:00.017-04:00

Hole in Your Fuckin Head by Christopher Wool
Shit Pile by Paul McCarthy
Untitled by Cindy Sherman
Ushering in Banality by Jeff Koons
1980 DNC by Karl Haendel
Study for Johnny Mnemonic - Johnny in Download Helmet by Robert Longo

Update: Curiously, there's a link to a good Saltz article on the bottom of the Wool link (one that Saltz should probably reread for himself).

Update Update: It appears that any link I make to Robert Longo's official website will inevitably be removed, so I've linked to a smaller image of his Study for Johnny Mnemonic. Funny that someone whose entire career is based on grabbing other people's images has such an efficient way of removing other people's attempts to grab his (and it's even funnier that I'm having trouble grabbing an image based on his "cyber-hacker-virtual-reality-intraweb" movie).

Brain Drain

2010-06-11T10:35:00.025-04:00

Out of sheer (and regrettable) obligation, I watched the premiere episode of WANGA. I don't have cable - actually, I don't even get basic television - so I had to ride my bike to Pratt to view it on one of their dorm-lobby televisions (my partner has a studio in one of their "mixed-use" MFA-studio/dormitory buildings). It started to downpour while I was halfway there, so I ended up getting completely soaked. I changed into an over-sized pair of pants that I had to keep from falling down with a "belt" made from a piece of twine.

The episode started after the finale of a chef-show, so I caught the last five minutes of this competition. Even though I had absolutely no prior knowledge or investment in the chef-contestants, I got caught up in the drama. What beautiful plating! What discerning judges! Then I remembered that I couldn't care less, and had a few freezer-aisle chimichangas for dinner.

WANGA finally came on. It was terrible. And not in a "good bad" way. It was simply bad television. I was bored and felt like there were way too many commercials (mostly Kelly Ripa hawking washing machines). The artist-contestants were irritating, and the judges came off as astoundingly dumb for such "industry luminaries." Do we blame editing? Bravo? The "characters" themselves? There's so much filter and remove that it's like trying to discern something through a windshield smeared with bugs and bird shit. Maybe that's why the coverage of WANGA from art-blogs, newspapers, and other "art-worlders" is so thoroughly laced with such trite, shallow praise. It all seems suspiciously like industry brown-nosing - as if justifying this crap show will somehow earn them brownie-points in the future. And as if the "industry" really gives a shit.

What's also troubling is that many art writers and critics - in regards to WANGA and other "marquee" media-whoring "art events" - are starting to sound like they really believe the things they're saying. Take my exchange in AFC's comment thread with Jill Conner (arts-writer and head editor of NY Arts Magazine) regarding the Abramovic after-party. As in our AFC exchange, she also invokes the term "conspicuous consumption" in her review of the Tim Burton show that ran concurrently to the Abramovic affair:

The trick of contemporary art is appealing to the general public while remaining above the fray of conspicuous consumption. Despite the fact that Burton’s first museum visit took place at Hollywood’s Wax Museum, his work can easily be categorized as fine art through the sheer quality of randomness, especially when combined with the director’s own personal habit of not analyzing previous projects.

Interesting that Burton's show is considered by Conner to be "above the fray of conspicuous consumption," although she neglected to mention in her article that the exhibit included a "Family Activity Guide" (FAG, an acronym nearly as good as WANGA) and was sponsored by SyFy (oh, and did I mention that it was a Tim Burton exhibition?). And now it appears that something qualifies as "fine art" by being the product of "sheer randomness," and an "artist" is someone who chooses not to look back and think about the work they've done. Well, WANGA sure seems to fit this noble new criteria (and, like Burton's show, is also in bed with a cable network, to boot!). Looks like the Parsons-MFA/Oprah thing was just another incarnation of this exciting new art-world zeitgeist...

And check out this AFC headline - I sincerely thought that it was referring to WANGA (or Abramovic), but I was mistaken. Still, I think it's a perfect title for the thesis paper that I hope a few MFA students are putting together at this very moment...

Oh, and Abramovic has a feature-length documentary coming soon! Whoopee! No "conspicuous consumption" here, folks - just more thought-provoking, deeply spiritual asceticism from a rising bodhisattva.

I popped into the MoMA this afternoon and was thrilled that the artist was no longer present. Ground-zero for the telepathic-soul-licker's severely under-publicized retrospective was in the middle of a routine scene change. Beyond the stanchions, the only visible work was one of Kara Walker's silhouette panoramas - an artwork that expressly embodies non-presence through the representations of shadows, a chorus of precisely-cut nightmares screaming silently on the MoMA's freshly whitewashed walls.

After Abramovic's suffocatingly extended "presence" and now the extended poison-bubblegum chew of WANGA, I'm getting sick of seeing artists, established or otherwise. It's too Hollywood, too "celebrity-culture," too like everything else. Maybe "art" doesn't translate into these forums very well for a reason (just like the epic downpour that punished me for endeavoring to watch WANGA probably happened for a reason, too). The artist has left the building, so let's try to get back to the art.

Corpse-Feeding & Horse-Kicking

2010-06-09T16:25:00.022-04:00

Mean is back. Even before its debut episode, the sheer anticipation of WANGA has sent the "art world" atwitter (in all manners of the word). Artists, professors, critics, and dealers have all broken-down and chimed-in to the burgeoning "conversation."

And the contestants on WANGA certainly haven't kept quiet, though one must keep in mind that they're still beholden to confidentiality agreements (hence the whiff of "restraint" in many of their interweb-utterances).

In an act of, I guess, giddy nihilism, I've even had some brief exchanges with some of the contestants (or commented on their Facebook postings, or their comments on AFC's comment-threads that connected to WANGA-centric posts). My most recent comments have been in response to mean-spirited "portraits" and/or comments posted by some of the contestants towards AFC's editor, Paddy Johnson. Their sophomoric revenge was prompted by AFC's dishy posting of a WANGA "Supplementary Program Guide" (which was, for the record, not entirely written by Paddy herself). This "guide," if anything, served to tautologically re-present the easy stereotypes that will undoubtedly be perpetuated by WANGA itself. Still, there is some fairly damning evidence included in the "guide" that may lend credence to these stereotypes.

And before you get the idea that I'm jockeying for moral high ground, let me make it clear that I've engaged in the acerbic bile-swap as well. I've taken unwarranted, unfounded, ad hominem jabs at the contestants, too. Reality television is bloodsport, and social-media provides the means for us all to be participants in the new coliseum - and to further hone our meanness.

But there's a difference between this schoolyard name-calling and unmitigated criticism. In regards to WANGA, attempts at the latter will have to fight against some already muddied waters. Art criticism, however, can benefit greatly from privileging the shrewd over the lewd, especially in a wasteland where popular critics regularly substitute punchy-praise and style for substance.

As hard as it might be to be on the receiving end of such lashings, good harsh criticism is still good criticism. Christian Viveros-Fauné's review of Greater New York 2010 pulls no punches (Ed Winkleman lauds the article as "Blood Sport," as well). A similarly vitriolic piece was recently written by Regina Hackett on the Robert Davis/Michael Langlois show. Both articles are unforgiving in their judgments, but to have such reproach so well-articulated should be taken by artists as growth-spurring tough-love.

And maybe I will climb up that moral-mountain a bit and re-post what I put in response to one of the WANGA wankers. Contestant Ryan Shultz posted pictures of AFC-editor Paddy Johnson on other WANGA contestant Erik Johnson's Facebook page. The photos were labeled "Paddy Johnson is UGLY!!!" with the following comment by Shultz:

Don't you dream of woman like this? From a conceptual standpoint, she is quite beautiful.

My response was as follows (and I should mention that my response has since been removed, and that Shultz has "defriended" me on Facebook):

Wonder how "conceptually beautiful" your painstakingly-rendered, tragically-hip drug-pals will be in, say, five years? Kudos for showing how deep your waters run, pretty-boy.

So THERE! Guess I am still throwing sticks-and-stones in the schoolyard after all.

The New Tangentialism

2010-06-09T11:52:00.004-04:00

From The Internet Is Making You Smarter! by Maria Bustillos (in response to Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr):

Hyperlinks, the proliferation of which Mr. Carr largely blames for his mental infirmity, are in no way different from footnotes. Footnotes, too, demand “microseconds of decision-making attention.” Just as a footnote does, a hyperlink beckons you away from the main text in order to examine tangentially-related but relevant material. Exactly like a hyperlink, a footnote often has the effect of sending you down a series of rabbit holes, from which you emerge hours later, armed with a dozen other books—that is, if you want to investigate the subject in fine detail. If you don’t, then by all means, you can skip the footnotes.

So do footnotes also “sap cognitive power from the reading process”?

Heavily annotated works have been useful for centuries to students of every discipline we’ve got, and their distraction-potential, though clear, is completely eclipsed by the invaluable advantage of access to a ton of carefully-signposted material that can greatly ease the conduct of serious study. It’s well worth the extra effort of concentration; if you want the goods, you’ll put up with the cost.

If this sort of thing interests you, than Roger Ebert's recent essay The Quest For Frisson should, too (at least visit the post to see the video at its end).

Excessive Updates

2010-06-08T16:43:00.003-04:00

I've added some updates/addendums to the ends of these recent entries:

No Exit
Self-Referential Addendum Addendum
Spontaneous Curation III
Grey Goo

Grey Goo

2010-06-08T13:56:00.009-04:00

I thought I had typed "Google" and somehow I found myself here instead. A semiotic and pictorial freefall ensued.

The internet gets a lot of flack about "giving people exactly what they want" instead of providing those serendipitous moments of "getting lost" that libraries are frequently romanticized as supplying. But I'm always getting lost on the internet, and I don't think that it's all that different from getting lost anywhere else. Maybe you don't have that whole scent-of-old-noble-tomes spiel going on, but there are a whole bunch of new ways that one can be unexpectedly rewarded for "wrong turns" on the internet. It's just that we're too busy building our myths and nostalgia over libraries to articulate the new labyrinth that we're presently losing ourselves in.

Update: The fallibility of Wikipedia withstanding, it's disturbing that this entry brought me to knowledge of the word "ecophagy," and that the "Grey Goo" entry includes this prescient citation (though it, regrettably, is marked as "citation needed"):

In a History Channel broadcast, grey goo is referred to in a futuristic doomsday scenario: "In a common practice, billions of nanobots are released to clean up an oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. However, due to a programming error, the nanobots devour all carbon based objects, instead of just the hydrocarbons of the oil. The nanobots destroy everything, all the while, replicating themselves. Within days, the planet is turned to dust."

Spontaneous Curation III

2010-06-07T10:32:00.012-04:00

Rattenkönig (Rat King) by Katharina Fritsch
Power Party by Inka Essenhigh
The Watchtower by Jules de Balincourt
Alterations by Amy Cutler
Organization by Ian Davis
The Artist is Present by Marina Abramović
Dance (I) by Henri Matisse

Update: Mysterious commenter Irene Watts suggested this animation to accompany the above works, and it's perfect. I also ask Watts to consider this and this work by Katharina Fritsch (the first artist listed above) in regards to Les Processus.

Self-Referential Addendum Addendum

2010-06-06T13:56:00.016-04:00

In response to EAGEAGEAG's political-cartoon-esque post about the sycophancy of art (which has since been deleted), I've submitted the following comment (which I'm posting here not only to bring attention to it, but to bring attention to myself, and to knowingly engage in the very "circle jerk/fingering" that he's criticizing):

What you're satirizing (somewhat crudely/cruelly, but I guess that's indigenous to the form) is also, I think, part-and-parcel of not only what "art blogging" is, but what the "art world" is, not to mention what much of the headliner exhibits/events have seemed to be about as well. Examples:

The Koons-curated "Skin Fruit" has been roundly criticized for its oligarchical, closed-circuit leanings. But the name of the show is clearly a euphemism for "cock," so my dubbing it "institutional reach-around" is just elaborating a fact that has already been acknowledged by those involved in its making.

Abramovic's show, for all of its hyping of "presence" and "accessibility," has culminated in a kind of uniform, extended laudatory gush by everyone who endeavored to sit with, write about, blog about, or otherwise take part in what Abramovic recently summarized as a means to "brand" her work and that of other performance artists (this is partly why I've titled my postings about the exhibition "No Exit" and "Self-Referential"). It's also no surprise that the rumor about a reperformer sporting an erection became nearly as big tabloid-fodder as speculations about how Abramovic was whizzing.

WANGA (a naturally-occurring acronym), like "Skin Fruit," is also a euphemism for "big dick." Because so many judges/contestants have already posted on AFC, I inquired if the blog was becoming part of the "horrendous WANGA circle-jerk."

I guess you're trying to criticize the conspicuously, if not explicitly, cliquish leanings of "art bloggers." But I think it's also clear that this trend is being reinforced, criticized, and otherwise enacted/addressed by the "art world" itself, however imperfectly. Maybe it's the new zeitgeist! Either way, let me cap off this longest-ever comment with one of my favorite lines from Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities":

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

"Addendum Addendum" Addendum: All vulgarities aside, I should stress that the interdependence of "art-worlders" is by no means a (necessarily) bad thing. But these relationships (relational aesthetics?) are also what cause many of its participants to feel alienated from and malcontented with its workings. Are "institutional" and "Marxist" critiques of power-structures still relevant and/or effective? If so, why? And if these structures are so corrupt, what can be done to establish an alternative?

Self-Referential Addendum

2010-06-05T21:05:00.004-04:00

Kim Cattrall (a.k.a. P.R. diva Samantha Jones) faces Abramovic and is overwhelmed by the convolution of it all.

Aura Schmaura

2010-06-05T12:46:00.009-04:00

Is it necessary to view an artwork in person? Can you have a valid experience - or make valid criticisms - on an artwork based on jpegs, press releases, articles, etc.? To up the ante: can you have a more objective, perhaps greater experience with these "supplementary" components than if you experienced the work firsthand?

This is an old conversation, but given the ubiquity and integration of (social) media and the arts, it's worth reconsidering. For example: I'm not sure that you had to go to the Abramovic show to experience her work in the "correct" way. In fact, I feel that sitting with her was the best way to limit your understanding of her work (as demonstrated by the general uniformity of the sitters' responses). In regards to WANGA (which I hesitate to call a "work of art," or even "about artists"), I similarily feel that watching the show is the absolute worst way to experience the artists and their work.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, WANGA

2010-06-03T19:54:00.010-04:00

Homorazzi has already done this, but here's an easier list of the contestants (click on a name to see their work) on "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist." Like with this list, I've contracted the show's title into the much easier acronym "WANGA," which I will be using from here on in. I encourage everyone else to use it as well (though it appears that WANGA already has some unfortunate meanings attributed to it).

Judith Braun
Jaclyn Santos
John Parot
Erik Johnson
Abdi Farah
Nao Bustamante
Mark Velasquez
Peregrine Honig
Amanda Williams
Ryan Shultz
Trong G. Nguyen
Nicole Nadeau
Miles Mendenhall
Jaime Lynn Henderson

No Exit

2010-06-02T19:30:00.012-04:00

Like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, Marina Abramovic was rescued from her deathlike stasis by a hero's kiss. In Abramovic's case, the reanimating smooch was granted by MoMA's Chief Curator at Large Klaus Biesenbach. One could say that Biesenbach, like Prince Charming, had a kind of imperial reign over the/his "kindgom" of The Artist is Present, and if we're sticking with Disney-logic here (which I'm sure that Baudrillard would find fitting), only his royal kiss could break the damsel's spell.

Since I'm working cartoon connections (glibly folding the real into the unreal, the sitter with the simulacra), why not drift back to an episode of Sex and the City where a prince-seeking Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) first meets her new artist-beau (played by the real dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov). The episode begins with Carrie and former-gallerist friend Charlotte attending a fictional "reperformance" clearly modeled after Abramovic's The House with the Ocean View (with Abramovic played by - can it be? - a goth-looking Jennifer Aniston).

If you're still following, let's try and return to the present day. Abramovic completed her performance, and the second installment of the Sex and the City movie has just opened in theaters. We're also anticipating the first episode of Bravo's new art reality show, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, which was co-produced by Sarah Jessica Parker.

I'm sure that poor Baudrillard is somersaulting in his grave, and that some will try to trace Mark-Lombardian conspiracy theories from the miasma of our culture's roiling spectacles. But in the end, it's probably best that we just grin and bear it.

Update: Not to stroke myself, but I think that my Biesenbach/Prince Charming analogy should get some bonus points given what went down at Abramovic's ascetic, spiritual after-party (a focus on the party's money-shot and further snark here).

Arch(ives) of Hysteria

2010-06-01T23:41:00.004-04:00

My favorite Louise Bourgeois sculpture

Things to "Watch Instantly" on Netflix:
The Cosmos
Jim Henson's the Storyteller
Examined Life
Antichrist

High-quality, regularly updated scans of incredible book art

An entire English translation of À rebours

An illustrated/animated lecture about time

Animation loop one
Animation loop two

Pretty much every computer game I've ever played, for free

I recommend repeatedly clicking "Random Card"

Significant Deceased Male Artists

2010-05-31T15:06:00.040-04:00

I try to do the Chelsea zigzag when I know that nobody's there. Thanks to an early morning dentist appointment, I was able to see some shows before noon on Tuesday (which is most galleries' Monday).

Go, Gagosian, go! Continuing their trend of hanging crowd-baiting, museum-style exhibitions of significant deceased male artists, the blue-chip mother ship has two powerhouse exhibitions running semi-concurrently at their 21st & 24th Street spaces. Claude Monet: Late Work is at 21st Street, nearly at the same time that they showed the late work of Pablo Picasso in the same location last year. Whereas every other gallery I visited was virtually empty, the Monet show was full of meandering tour groups. The paintings were lit under low lights, which created a strange feeling of old-world, bourgeois, sumptuous domestic interiority. I thought about Amy Sillman recent zine-riffs on how the light bulb changed painting (how they were made and seen), and since most of Monet's paintings were painted en plein air, it seemed all the more ridiculous to exhibit them under such Zurbaranian twilight.

Gagosian's 24th Street space is showing Roy Lichtenstein: Still Lifes, an excellent, thematic survey of the Pop master's work. It's worth seeing his deceptively cool paintings in person, if not just to revel in their Ben-Day dot symphonies and seemingly inexhaustible stylistic variations. His foundation's website provides, among other things, an incredibly comprehensive chronological archive of Lichtenstein's lifework.

Speaking of prolific Pop artists, the still-living (and, arguably, underrated) John Wesley is exhibiting paintings from the early 70's at Fredericks & Freiser in a show entitled May I Cut In? Like Lichtenstein, Wesley has pared-down his style and palette, though Wesley's subject choices are far more omnivorous than Lichtenstein's. It's worth noting that Wesley was a friend of the late Donald Judd, and that one of Judd's stipulations for The Chinati Foundation museum was that Wesley's paintings are put on permanent display. Some may also recall that Wesley was "commissioned to create the visual identity for The Armory Show (in) 2006."

Patrick Lee's inaugural exhibition Deadly Friends at Ameringer/McEnergy/Yohe included multiple photorealist graphite-on-paper drawings of thuggish men he took pictures of while in Los Angeles. One of the drawings reminded me of a mugshot I had just seen on The Huffington Post, which confirmed for me that people really do get tattoos like that.

Leslie Wayne's small, jewel-like paintings at Jack Shainman had me titling and dipping my head to thoroughly scrutinize all angles of her luscious, color-curl, Richter-inflected, impasto-happy work. In the side gallery, Jonathan Seliger's Spoils featured an oversized enameled-bronze replica of an America's Choice milk carton. It reminded me of a more versimilitudinous cousin of Robert Gober's mammoth, rather nightmarish reproduction of a Farina box.

Like Gagosian, David Zwirner has also been dedicating space to work by significant deceased male artists. Currently, Edward Kienholz's installation Roxys (1960-61) is on view. It's a remake of a brothel in Las Vegas, and it curiously shares an aesthetic with my apartment (which is full of street-culled trappings). Also curious was that, in the small section of Roxys that viewers could actually step into, hung a replica of the Maxfield Parrish painting recently sold by Mel Gibson at auction.

Calm Before the Dreck Storm

2010-05-30T12:13:00.020-04:00

It's often a fallacy to pass judgment on something - particularly an artwork - when one hasn't seen it in person and/or in its entirety. To condemn something when you've only seen its fragments is, by definition, presumptuous.

Roundly condemning Bravo's "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" before experiencing its nine-episode run is, I think, a perfect exception to the above rule.

There is, thankfully and of course, a chance that the show will not fucking suck. If "Work of Art" transcends its form, participants, and self-aggrandizing hype, I'll be the first to sing its praises and gorge on bitter humble pie.

What "fragments" have been offered to us, either by Bravo or those taking part in "Work of Art?" Given that all the participants (including the artist-applicants who were not selected to be on the show) have signed confidentiality agreements, one could argue that everything we've seen/heard from the participants has been corralled by Bravo's legal tentacles. The interviews/articles with judges/"industry luminaries" have offered only flattering, PR-style portraits rather than anything of substance. Significantly, judge/critic/Facebook-despot Jerry Saltz states here that he "wanted to perform criticism in public to show that it’s not an elitist practice." This "mission" was echoed by co-producer Sarah Jessica Parker during a "Work of Art" press-conference, with Parker stating her goal to "change the idea that art is for the rarefied and elite." This quote comes from an article on judge/collector/gallerist Jeanne Greenberg Rohaytn, who cements/triangulates this sentiment with this effusive quote: “So the idea of a television show that reaches a broad-base audience and gives people the tools with which to talk about art was just irresistible.”

The homogeneity of the virtues of "Work of Art" as expressed by its judges and producers is telling. So far, the contestants (accepted or otherwise) and excited prospective viewers have shared this idea of how "Work of Art" will somehow serve to educate the general public on how the "art world" functions. The show will demystify and democratize an obfuscated and elitist subculture for the greater good. What unadulterated hogwash and pandering propaganda.

In another Art Fag City comment thread, I'm trying to fight the Kool-Aid-drinking with logic, chutzpah, and weighty theoretical treatises. I recognize the Sisyphean task of doing this (and the absolute futility of fighting reality-television with theory), but here are links to the readings again:

The Weak Universalism by Boris Groys
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
Simulacra and Simulations by Jean Baudrillard

I'm going to recant a bit from my opening statements: sometimes you can discern the value of something without experiencing its "gestalt." Actually, one might argue that all of our experiences are with fragments, and that the notion of being able to truly experience wholeness is what's fallacious. Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project is an embodiment of this, and one can quickly see the significance of this famously unfinished work by engaging with any one of its pieces (even if they are poorly reproduced). Lacunae can be enlightening. The pieces of "Work of Art" reveal it to be a monstrous thing grandstanding as some kind of progressive, aspirational totality. The pieces of The Arcades Project are willfully incomplete, and, unlike "Work of Art," their pieces shimmer.

Scatter Tactics

2010-05-26T22:32:00.008-04:00

Phantasm
"Reality favors symmetries and slight anachronisms." -Jorge Luis Borges
Memory
Recursion
Revision
Revisit
Relay
Repeat
Amnesia

Curtail Cursing Curators?

2010-05-25T22:14:00.007-04:00

What the f is a curator? It's a contested term. My smarter side knows that they're important, and that I've been known to engage with the practice myself (I've even done some spontaneous curation here, twice). My bitch-ass side has some issues with curators: there are too many of them, they're pretentious, they treat artists like peons, they chaperone Lady Gaga and interview James Franco, they inexplicably involve themselves with "Ltd. Edition Açaí Damage-Protecting Toning Mist" while concurrently being billed as the "curator" of a knowingly vulgar display of institutional reach-around, they have intense accents and names I cannot pronounce...

Ultimately, I'm having trouble with curators because, I think, it's an ill-defined, grossly overused, and generally misunderstood word. I'm wrestling with it, and others appear to be wrestling with it, too. I need to believe that word-wrestling is meaningful, and I want to believe that curators -- and artists -- are really invested in, well, something.

Hyperbole aside, there are some outstanding articles in e-flux's recent journal that engage in some meaningful word-wrestling pertaining to issues involving curators, artists, and all things in between. Thanks again to Art Fag City for the thoughtful posting that directed this malcontent to these articles, particularly Anton Vidokle's "Art Without Artists?" and Dieter Roelstraete's (gloriously alliterative) "Ten Tentative Tenets."

My Reading Problem

2010-05-24T23:41:00.004-04:00

I have trouble reading in public places. I've tried to go to coffee shops with the sole intention of reading a book, but I end up feeling exposed and cliché for reading a book in a coffee shop. Whenever I go to a park to read in some field, I quickly get annoyed with how bright the pages are under sunlight. When I reconfigure myself on the park's bench, I start to feel something like an outdoors-version of the aforementioned "exposed and cliché" coffee shop syndrome.

Reading while in transit, particularly while in mass-transit, makes me nauseous and distracted. Subway-reading doesn't make me as nauseous as car or train reading, but I usually only "read" on subways so I can fix my gaze on one spot rather than risk making eye-contact with the wrong rider or rereading a Dr. Zizmor campaign for the millionth time. I become so aware that I'm reading to prevent myself from doing other things that I can't follow what I'm supposed to be reading.

I've been trying to read Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House during my commutes, and I've actually succeeded in getting through a few stories. I think this has everything to do with Vonnegut's schizoid style and the fact that I'm reading a collection of short stories, which are arguably more manageable than long stories. The only book that I've read almost exclusively on the subway was Naked Lunch, and that's probably because I gave up trying to make sense of the book after the first ten pages.

I like to look and see what other people are reading when I'm on the subway. There are always people reading small bibles. There are a surprising amount of people who appear to be writing poetry, songs, or diary entries. Tom Clancy is everywhere, as well as books that belong to the science-fiction or fantasy genres. A lot of people have been reading Push these days -- I even once saw two complete strangers sitting side by side who were both reading Push, each completely unaware that they were spontaneously engaging in a serendipitous, subterranean Push collective reading/performance. There's also a lot of Sudoku, word-searches, xeroxed-essays, kids doing homework, teachers grading papers, and people looking at statistics. I assume that anyone reading an e-book is reading the same thing, because that's the effect that people reading e-books give off: generic anonymity.

Today, someone on the subway was reading the textbook Elastic Stable Intramedullary Nailing (ESIN) in Children. I assume that the reader was a doctor. I also can't comprehend how or why they were reading this unfortunately-titled, unwieldy text while standing in the middle of a crowded subway (I'm talking the 42nd Street stop on the downtown 4 express train). What did they expect to glean in such a context? If they were in fact a doctor, was that not the worst time and place to be catching up on such serious information? The idea that they weren't a medical practitioner makes the whole scenario all the more frightening to me.

Down in the Dumps

2010-05-23T16:19:00.012-04:00

Inspired by Tom Moody's postings of animated gifs and other low-tech digital whirligigs, I took a late-night dive into the scrolling, scintillating world of dump.fm.

I spent the next three hours in what can be imperfectly described as a kind of raging, real-time exquisite corpse exercise combined with a run-of-the-mill chatroom. My inclinations and abilities as an archivist were seized upon and set into an acid-trip-overdrive as I "dumped" various image files (ones I "owned" or grabbed from an image-search) into the psychedelic Siddhartha-stream. It was a magnificently pleasurable and disorienting experience. It's incredible how inclined we are to communicate with images, and how the brain fires-up to create (visual) connections with no real -- or easily definable -- purpose. The speed and voracity of the forum had me dropping images and using search phrases that I should be embarrassed by, but wasn't. Some of my sample search phrases: glitter cake, incredible slug, panther sparkle, spiritual cube, vampire explode.

Looking back, I had an inclination to respond to other people's images with ones that were of equal or superior visual relevance/intensity. Of course, being irreverent and attempting to redirect the stream's apparent "theme" (which, if themes really did coalesce, were the exception rather than the rule) would also become a goal.

In the end, experiencing dump.fm seems ideal to reading any attempt to describe it (which, in my case, is destined to be an exercise in apophenia or pareidolia, pinning me, I suppose, as a pareidoliac). However, there's a great summary & discussion of the site over at Rhizome.org.

You can see my "dumps" here. Unfortunately, you can't see what my images were in response to/conversation with, and please excuse any disturbing and/or NSFW moments!

Hell in a Handbasket

2010-05-22T20:42:00.020-04:00

As part of their "going green," "special," and "complete coverage on environment," CNN.com published an article that featured images of the "Top 10 New Species List" released by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University. The article begins as follows:

A flat-faced frogfish, bug-eating slug and carnivorous sea sponge are some of the top new species named by scientists.

They appear on a "top 10" list of new species released Saturday amid warnings from the United Nations that the world is not doing enough to protect vulnerable eco-systems.

"Biodiversity loss is moving ecological systems ever closer to tipping point beyond which they will no longer be able to fulfill their vital functions," said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the International Day for Biological Diversity, which is being marked in 11 countries.

A captioned photo gallery of the "top 10 list" is presented at the top of the article, and it's as fascinating and informative as any biology slideshow. However, "top specie" #10, a yam dubbed dioscorea orangeana, was presented with an unusual addition: a pack of Plaza Cigarettes sits clearly and vividly next to the newly-discovered yams, as if it was a newly-discovered form of life, too.

Was this the photographer's solution to showing us the scale of the yams (which appear to be, uh, the size of yams)? And why not use something less biologically-toxic and garishly unnatural than a pack of coffin nails? Given the subject and context of the article, the inclusion of the cigarette pack reads as both an especially resonant gaffe and a perfect illustration of what we do to the planet.

Hot Bullshit

2010-05-22T18:02:00.009-04:00

I dunno... Stolen Pieces, however scandalous-seeming, reminds me of people who collect the half-eaten sandwiches of celebrities and sell them on Ebay. Maybe there is something compelling about "masterpiece" crumbs & superstar ort, but at what point do we step back and call it what it is: shameless self-promotion via "subversive" posturing via grubby star-fucking.

Still, I love me some Hot Balls.

Spontaneous Curation II

2010-05-22T14:38:00.017-04:00

Some heavy dentistry has me housebound and throbbing. Patti Smith's recent speech at Pratt's graduation ceremony was pure wisdom. More tooth-wisdom (wisdom teeth?) below:

Little Bathers by Rona Pondick
Untitled, 1961 by Lee Bontecou
Between Taxonomy and Communion by Ann Hamilton
Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion by Francis Bacon
For the Love of God by Damien Hirst
Forensic Forms by Wangechi Mutu
Cremaster 3 by Matthew Barney
Foam Series by Zhang Huan

And, of course, there's always scrimshaw...

Update: Mysterious commentator Irene Watts posted an excerpt from George Baitaille's The Mouth. Luckily, you can read the rest of the essay here.

Unforgettable, That's What You Are

2010-05-21T10:43:00.016-04:00

Most people don't care too much about art, let alone an artwork's title. With maybe the exception of The Starry Night (don't forget the The!) and Mona Lisa (which isn't the actual title of the painting), artwork titles just don't seem to adhere long to the public's collective consciousness.

Artists aren't exempt from this trend, either. In fact, many artists fuel the titular-amnesia by laconically and/or arrogantly naming their works Untitled. The default non-title title of Untitled reinforces the general public's belief that art is pretentious absurd bullshit. When artists invoke Untitled, it suggests to me that they're either A) too lazy to come up with a real title, or B) under the impression that their work is ineffable and, subsequently, unnameable (thus reinforcing the popular "pretentious absurd bullshit" sentiment above).

There appears to be an unwritten rule that artists should make their titles short, neat, and otherwise press-release friendly. Manageable titles can make the work of archivists and copy editors easier. Still, adopting the brevity of an ad-jingle's (or slick slogan's) format still doesn't confer their memorability to the reader of succinct artwork titles.

Naturally, there are copious exceptions to the examples above. Artist Barry X Ball has named several of his sculptures with overly, overtly descriptive, stream-of-consciousness titles. For instance:

a sexy little pursed-lipped camouflaged recidivist, petrified and “colorless” (i.e. a grimly-determined rampant yin-yang rock head, looming small) alternately, an interrupted silhouette of indeterminate profile (Lucas Michael)

Cory Arcangel shares Ball's penchant for unusually lengthy titles, although Arcangel's titles are more didactic than ecstatic. Unlike Ball's gleefully verbose titles, Arcangel's double as the exact instructions for recreating the digital prints they're acting as titles for. Case in point:

Photoshop CS: 72 by 110 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient “Spectrum”, mousedown y=1416 x=1000, mouseup y=208 x=42

Arcangel's titles make me wonder about another phenomenon: how many artists title their work primarily (or only) when they have to save an image of it? Rather than keeping the rambling alphanumerics that digital cameras default any image filename into, I will usually title an artwork when I'm forced to label a jpeg of it. I'm sure this has become common practice, but I can't help but see this as a fairly significant shift in how artists are titling their works. Much like how email, texting, Twitter, and other digital forms/formats of communication are altering how/what we write, file-saving and filenaming could mark a paradigm shift in how artist's conceive of their (ultimately forgettable) titles.

Eponymous Doppelgängers

2010-05-20T12:06:00.004-04:00

I am not these people:

Jesse Martin
Jesse Martin
Jesse Martin
Jesse Martin

The internet forced me to invoke my middle name (Patrick), because search-engines are problematically omnivorous and indifferent.

Zeitgeist Zinger

2010-05-20T11:20:00.007-04:00

This article by Ben Davis is worth reading, and his indictment of "art world" hackery is especially damning:

"If the art world continues to recycle the same old anti-historic academic bullshit and chirpy gossip then it is going to continue to be a place of intellectual irrelevance and triviality that no one takes seriously besides the people who inhabit it." (Davis)

Update: Conversations on this article continue here and here.

The Cathectic Archives

2010-05-20T01:22:00.004-04:00

In a Borgesian flight of fancy (à la The Book of Imaginary Beings), I authored my own short encyclopedia, The Cathectic Archives. Given that many of the entries refer to other entries, this project was well-suited to be transposed into a website.

Spontaneous Curation I

2010-05-18T22:42:00.006-04:00

Siege by Amy Cutler
Close but no Cigar by Nina Chanel Abney
Girl in Water by Roy Lichtenstein
Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity by Yayoi Kusama
Bather/Night by Carroll Dunham
Floral Veins, and Conduits: 006 by Ernesto Caivano
S. City on the Slide by Bryan Rogers
Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp with Soap Bubbles by Dan Fischer
Tan Tan Bo Puking (a.k.a. Gero-Tan) by Takashi Murakami
The Mummy Man by Yuko Shimizu

Things I Forgot to Remember

2010-05-17T20:25:00.011-04:00

Words are problems. They're wicked gifts. There are too many of them and you can never know them all. You will die misunderstanding more than you think you have a firm grasp of (which you don't).

I caught a BBC broadcast the other day and learned that lasers were celebrating their fifty-year anniversary. Laser is an acronym (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), and I can't recall ever hearing that before. It bothers me that laser isn't spelled L.A.S.E.R., and that the words hidden in the equally covert acronym make me understand lasers even less.

I was recently amazed to learn that glitch is a Yiddish word -- how funny that something most people associate with the hiccups of high-technology comes from a High German language from the 10th century.

Most people I know understand that using Jew as a verb is pejorative, while no one blinks an eye when someone says that they were gypped.

I've been mispronouncing ostensibly as obstensibly for weeks, and have forced myself to invoke the proper pronunciation by working ostensibly into as many conversations as I possibly can. Bringing new words into one's repertoire requires trial-and-error, misuse, and occasional embarrassment. I attended Catholic School as a child, and naively substituted the lyrics "Round young virgin" (correction: "Round yon virgin") in Silent Silent with "Ground Round Virgin," referring to the restaurant chain where I celebrated a birthday or two.

I'm pleased when reminded that I'm not the only one prone to malapropisms. A quite articulate student of mine recently referred to a farm silo as a farm asylum in their exam essay, a mistake that had me hysterical (and recalling the hard lessons in Animal Farm).

Lockjaw

2010-05-16T21:06:00.002-04:00

I was taking a creative writing course during my senior year of college, and I didn't know what to write. I called my sister to complain, and she suggested that I start writing about something dumb, fun, and easy.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like porn," she replied.

"What about names? I always get stuck on character's names."

"Just use your friend's names. You can always change them later."

I took her advice, and the following is what ensued.

Lockjaw

Ryan leaned back in his chair and drew a long pull from his Parliament. He held the smoke in his mouth, puffing his cheeks and swishing the mint smoke as if it were mouthwash. With closed eyes, he exhaled from his nostrils, smiling as the smoke met his naked chest.

He imagined that the smoke was green. It tastes green, he thought, the same way white grape juice tastes purple.

“You fucking menthol dragon.”

Ryan took another drag from his Parliament.

“I fuck you in ten minutes. I don’t care what April says: I’m not waiting for you to smoke or eat quiche or whatever the fuck it is you do. I’ve got places to be. I’m tired of waiting around for your lazy ass.”

Ryan opened his eyes. Jeremy hovered above him. His pierced nipples glittered as he spoke.

“And brush your goddamn teeth. That shit might taste like mint to you, but it smells like trash.”

A black viper stretched from Jeremy’s navel to the inside of his left thigh. Its head twisted upwards, fanged mouth opened threateningly below Jeremy’s cock.

“You’re not fucking anyone,” Ryan’s voice was cool, “It’s a suck scene, two minutes, no come- and I’ve got someplace to be, too. Do me a favor and wash your dick, okay?”

Jeremy sneered and turned away. Ryan watched him leave, counting his tattoos. Two diamonds above each shoulder blade, barbed wire down his spine, a heart on his ass. He could still see the viper peeking from inside his thigh, its serpentine head glaring like an omen.

* * *

Everyone jumped as the recess bell rang. Jacob gathered his notebook and pencils and looked outside. It was a good day, brighter and warmer than it had been in weeks. He was excited about his lunch and looked forward to eating it under his favorite tree. He slipped on his backpack and made his way to the blacktop.

A group of girls had started a game of double-dutch. Jacob walked past them, amazed at their grace under the helixed ropes. Most of them were wearing skirts, including Madeleine Thorne, who smiled at Jacob as he passed by.

Jacob found his favorite spot under the old elm tree, sat down and opened his lunch box. He took his turkey, swiss and tomato sandwich and brought it to his mouth. He chewed slowly, taking breaks after each bite to sip his apple juice and look at Madeleine. She was jumping now, her long brown hair bouncing in unison with her strawberry skirt.

“Hey fucker.”

Jacob coughed as his apple juice flooded his throat. Mike Fink stood above him wearing a criminal grin. Mike was taller then everyone. He smoked. He dated girls. He took peoples lunches.

Mike squatted in front of Jacob, a grin tattooed to his face.

“I’m hungry. Give me your sandwich.”

Jacob frowned.

“I won’t ask you twice. Give me your sandwich or I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

Mike stood as Jacob handed him the rest of his turkey, swiss and tomato sandwich. Mike laughed, stuffed it in his mouth and walked away. Jacob watched as Mike walked past the jump rope girls. His stomach dropped when Madeleine smiled at Mike. Jacob looked at his remaining lunch of carrot sticks and apple juice. He closed his lunch box. He wanted to cry.

* * *

A lavender shag carpet spread like spilled perfume beneath a collection of tasseled pillows. Vanilla incense sweetened the candle-lit room. Ryan held one of the incense sticks and waved it around his head, spirals of thin gray smoke twirling in its wake.

“Take off the thong, Ryan. This one’s all nude.”

Ryan placed the incense back in its container and removed his thong. He tossed it at April and smiled.

“Hey,” April swatted away the oncoming g-string, “Let’s get this over with, short and sweet, ok?”

“Ready for my close up,” Jeremy walked on to the set, sporting a hard-on.

April clapped her hands and addressed the studio, “Alright! This is our last shot before break. I need two minutes uninterrupted,” she turned to Ryan and Jeremy on the set, “This will be dry, right boys?”

Ryan nodded.

She looked at Jeremy, “If you’re going to come, pull out. Right?”

Jeremy’s hand held his cock, “Don’t worry about it.”

April shouted her usual checks to the sound people, the light people; everything was a go. Ryan knelt in front of Jeremy, who held his cock inches from his face.

“Ready,” April raised her hand, waited a moment, then brought it down, “Action!”

* * *

Recess was almost over. Most of the kids had already gone inside. Madeline had gone inside, too. Jacob collected his things and started towards the building. Just as he was about to go inside, Mike Fink ran up behind him.

“Hey fucker,” his grin was gone this time, “I need some money.”

Jacob froze. His grip tightened around his lunchbox.

Mike stepped closer. He smelled like sweat and cigarettes.

“Give me your fucking money.”

The door was a few feet away. Jacob tried his best to reach it, but Mike was ready for him. He grabbed him by his shirt and threw him to the ground.

“Did you hear me?” Mike lowered his face to Jacob’s, “Give me your money.”

Jacob tried to stand up. Mike pushed him down with his boot.

Jacob trembled as he spoke, “I’m not giving you my money, Mike.”

There was a moment, a few seconds of silence, where Jacob lay still and Mike seemed like he would maybe, just this once, give up and walk away. The silence broke when Mike swung his foot forward, as hard as he could, into Jacob’s side. Jacob tried to scream, but he had no breath. Then Mark started punching, one after the other, first at Jacob’s back, then his head, then his face. He kept punching long after Jacob had stopped trying to cover his head, long after he had stopped trying to scream or crawl to the door or catch his breath, long after he had broken Jacob’s jaw, his ribs, his skull. He kept punching and punching and punching until the sound of his fists against the fifth grader’s head bored him, until the concrete under Jacob was so red it seemed black.

* * *

Ryan leaned forward and took Jeremy into his mouth. He blocked out everything: the lights, the hanging microphones, and began the ecstasy masquerade. Jeremy threw his head back, moaning and sucking in air. He held Ryan’s head lightly at first, moving his fingers through his hair, over his shoulders, around his neck. Ryan kept his eyes closed. It was just dick, any dick, stage dick. It wasn’t Jeremy, the tattooed skinhead who had talked down to him. It was just dick, a paycheck, one of a hundred erotic pantomimes.

He wondered when the scene would end, when April would yell ‘cut’ and he could disengage himself, wash up, get dressed and leave.

He felt Jeremy’s grip tighten. It was just acting. He increased the pace, taking Jeremy deeper, playing to the camera. Jeremy’s grip grew harder. He could barely move his head forward or backwards. He moved his hands over Jeremy’s, signaling him to loosen his grip. Jeremy gripped harder, pulling Ryan in, pushing himself into his throat. Ryan gagged as Jeremy came, fast and hard, sending a wave of thick heat down his throat. Ryan couldn’t pull away.

He flailed his arms and opened his eyes: there was the viper, pumping venom down his unwilling throat. Black acid burned his insides, coated his stomach and compelled him to wretch.

Ryan brought his mouth down as hard as he could. He felt his teeth meet over Jeremy’s flesh. Jeremy clawed at Ryan’s face, beat his fists into his head, pressed his thumbs into his eyes. He bit harder. April was screaming. Hands were all over his body, trying to pull him away. He tasted blood. He heard Jeremy howl like a wild animal, his body twisting, writhing like an awful dying snake.

Honey is Bee Shit

2010-05-13T18:23:00.003-04:00

Over the past week or so, I've learned something about using the interwebz (especially the Facebooks) to dialogue with certain artists, critics, and dealers: DON'T.

Also, despite all of this "OMG FACEBOOK IS BIG BROTHER!" panic, I think it's *great* what people are willing to say in a public venue.

So, my trinity of lessons-learned, followed by the corresponding, exhaustive exchanges:

#1
If you call out Jerry Saltz for being a hypocritical fame-whore, he will sarcastically patronize you for having attended art school & being a teacher. He will also call you "dude." (link to our Shakespearean exchange below)

#2
If you dare to question a banal yet unholy collaboration betwixt Oprah & your former (and rapidly-going-down-the-shitter) MFA program, you will be threatened with a "beat down." The person who threatened you with said beat-down will later throw an Oscar Wilde quote at you. Being the only gay person (apparently) in the thread, you will not know whether to shit or go blind. Ultimately, you will do both. (below exchange is excerpted from a comment-thread which stemmed from a group photo of Parsons MFA Director Simone Douglas, participating MFA Students, and Nate Berkus. More of my griping here.)

Gabriel J. Shuldiner
...Can you spot the Black-Fragmented Chunk Necklace(s)...? How many can you see...? The first person to guess the correct number will receive the last promotional Black-Fragmented Chunk Necklace for 2010...

Monica Lorraine Bernal
well mine is the most obvious by far, though i know that simone was wearing one too... but you asked how many can i see..... i am going to have to say ONE. I see one. and that is because i was strategic enough to contrast the art piece with a light background. I win.

Cecile Chong
Fun! Congrats to you and the gang!

Jesse Patrick Martin
So, the Parsons MFA director is acting as an advisor (rather, "guide") to hawk student work for Oprah's design expert... does anyone see this as problematic? Kudos to those who are benefiting from this (it really is some great exposure), but there's something pretty icky about this kind of thing, no?

Mary Younkin
a bit icky indeed, altho i am very proud of my fellow classmates for getting some attention! definitely felt more like an institutional back-patting, as none of the interviews with the artists were shown in the episode, yet the giant New School logo was prominently displayed. I have to say tho... when we're all facing a large post-grad school world, trying to make it as an artist, these kind of opportunities are insane to pass up. AND it was nice to see the fine arts dept represented, not the Fashion or Design depts. congrats guys!!

Jesse Patrick Martin
Well, it's interesting that the fine arts department was represented AS fashion/design (necklaces, wall-filler for an interior designer's swank Chelsea loft), rather than the "challenging and diverse learning environment" where students are "making and thinking about visual culture."

Again, nothing against the artists who were chosen, but Berkus basically presents the program (and all art schools) as a great place to buy cheap things to hang on your walls. Given that this has happened in the wake of sweeping faculty cuts/demotions -- all of which were supposedly pushing the school forward in some beneficial way -- this kind of "promotion" of student's work is seriously wrongheaded.

Jesse Patrick Martin
To put a point on it: http://jessepatrickmartin.blogspot.com/2010/05/no-soul-for-sale.html

Genevieve White
Awesome!!!

David Reinhardt
necklaces and wall filler? WTF? Jesse needs a beat down.

Jesse Patrick Martin
Right. If you actually read what I wrote, I'm saying that the work is portrayed as "wall-filler" by Berkus in the clip (he actually says: "why not find a great art school in your town... that's where you should be looking for the walls in your house"), not that I think that's what it is. My whole point is that the artists and their work are reduced to loft-fodder in what is a fluff-piece for O Magazine & Oprah.com, and *that's* a shame.

@Gabriel: Two necklaces?

David Reinhardt
As Oscar Wilde said "all real art is useless". As an artist be thankfu that people find use and even assign value to what is "worhtless" Surely few will build an altar and worship to it so a spot on a wall isn't such a bad end. It's certainly better than a slot ina studio storage bin. Cheers!

Jesse Patrick Martin
Wilde was brilliant, but it's still crucial that artists themselves are part of the dialogue of how their work is being received, presented, and otherwise "assigned value." To just be thankful for an opportunity -- and not have any opinion, perspective, or agency as to how one's own works are being "assigned value" -- strikes me as incredibly passive/lazy. The fact that I've been (jokingly?) threatened for being critical of how the work is being "assigned value" is troubling, because I would think that people (especially the artists) would want a fuller dialogue than what O Magazine (and Parsons) is beaming to the masses. Is everyone really that complicit? Maybe this is the wrong format to have this dialogue (although it is a "democratic space"), but can't we discuss this beyond all the back-patting?

(The thread continued with a thoughtful & enlightening comment by participating MFA student Alexandria Smith, whose comments (and my response) you can link to here)

#3
If you dare to speak of "corporate office culture," you will receive a sudden condescending tongue-lashing from a dealer before being BLOCKED ON FACEBOOK BY THE TONGUE-LASHER.(exchange below also excerpted via Jerry Saltz's cesspool of sycophancy)

Jesse Patrick Martin
Well, let those dealers/collectors enjoy their glossy stables while we enjoy our poetic poverty. Both perspectives are limiting, but at least the "art world" attempts to engender more interaction between the classes than, I don't know, corporate office culture?

Stephanie Theodore
"at least the "art world" attempts to engender more interaction between the classes than, I don't know, corporate office culture?"

What does anyone in the art world, particularly in the artist's camp, know about so-called corporate office culture? gimme a break and get out in the real world and stop fantasizing about culture wars... it's a crock.

Art is no one's priority but artists, curators, gallerists and the like. To dismiss people who work in corporate environments as automatically taking sides in some sort of class/culture conflict is rather short-sighted, no?

Jesse Patrick Martin
I've worked in corporate offices, actually. And compared to the frequency in which artists/dealers/collectors at least share space (ostensibly for the purpose of engaging with art/one another) is infinitely greater than how often people in HR get to schmooze with their company's CEOs. This has nothing to do with imagining "culture wars." Class is a different issue altogether.

Stephanie Theodore
"how often people in HR get to schmooze with their company's CEO's"

now that seems to be dependent on whether both of those parties are actually doing their jobs or wasting time schmoozing. not a relevant comparison.

Jesse Patrick Martin
You're taking my original remark as a slight against corporate office culture, which wasn't my intent. With all of this hyperbolic talk about art/money/power/"blue chip galleries"/etc. as a realm of impenetrable privilege, I felt it necessary to argue that -- however small -- the "art world" (quotes connote my suspicion of this term) seems to put people of extraordinarily disparate tax-brackets in conversation ("schmooze" was probably the wrong word) more than in "corporate office culture." I didn't mean to offend, but I don't feel that my comparison was irrelevant at all.

Jesse Patrick Martin
@Stephanie: Thanks for being argumentative & patronizing and then not responding!

Stephanie Theodore
@Jesse GEEZ! sensitive! I work in a corporate office culture when I am not running my gallery, and my attention to extracurricular activities waxes and wanes. clearly, though, I should have JUMPED! because it's about ART!

this is my point. there are more important things in the world to most people.

Jesse Patrick Martin
Your responses/focus on my comments kind of suggested that you did "jump" because I compared the oh-so-trifling "art world" with "corporate office culture." And saying that someone in the "artist camp" couldn't POSSIBLY have perspective on "corporate office culture" is incredibly condescending in exactly the same way that you're being with your last response. And yes, things are more important than both corporate & art cultures, but this is Jerry Saltz's Facebook comment stream, for Christ's sake... not exactly a U.N. conference.

Stephanie Theodore
My point was about people valuing things like art differently, and to judge someone else's values is not a position we in the art world should take.

I will make sure to block you so I don't offend you by not responding fast enough or pointedly enough.

much better!

Bonus Supplement: You can watch/listen to my noble adversary synthesize the "art world" and "corporate office culture" via a video/press-release-reading from her gallery site here.

I'd Hate You Too If You Blogged Over This

2010-05-10T19:45:00.005-04:00

I dipped my toe into the churning waters of Jerry Saltz's following Facebook-status comment-thread:

Dear imbecilic anonymous telephone bidder who paid a record $106 million for a 1932 Picasso @ Christie’s. You think you’re an art lover. Sorry. Had you taken $106 mill. & bought a gigantic building in the West 40s in NYC: 500,000 sq. ft.; & simply rented space ONLY AT COST to 100 good galleries & 100 artist studios you’d have changed American art & the American art world, forever. Enjoy the painting.

I kind of went numb when he responded to my following pithy little spitball:

I guess you're donating whatever you're making from that dreck-storm of a "reality" show to some worthy charity, right? Obviously there are degrees of how each case represents an ostentatious misuse of money for "art's sake," but... hypocrisy?

A flurry of comments followed Saltz's reaction, but here's what transpired between me & Saltz:

Jerry Saltz
Jesse: If I told you how little I made doing that "dreck storm" you would be shocked. Let's just say it's UNDER $1,000 per episode. And I think there are nine episodes. So no one will be able to say, "At least he got paid well."

Jesse Patrick Martin
I guess relative to an oligarch's paycheck that's not much, but it still seems criminal to me (my mom's a nurse, I'm a teacher, to give some context). It just seems like a slippery slope for you to get all theatrically self-righteous about issues related to art/money/power/ethics in this way. I mean, everyone's loving it (look at the hits!), but crowds tend to be idiotic (see: mob mentality, American Idol, etc.) and, in this case, more prone to flattery than truth-seeking.

Jerry Saltz
Jesse: Dude. Chill. No need to imply that anyone who disagrees with you is "criminal," "idiotic," and "all theatrically self-righteous." I am very glad for you that you have a job as a teacher; and that you went to art school (graduated in '08 and already have a job; nice). But relax. Other people may not be as smart as you... And I like Kelly Clarkson from American Idol so I guess I'm one of the "idiots" that you're referring to. Ease off a little. Let's just say that YOU are the RIGHT ONE here.

Jesse Patrick Martin
Kelly Clarkson is great (I'm gay, so I actually *can't* dislike her in the same way Superman can't deal w/Kryptonite). And I'm not claiming to be smarter than anyone, just that there's more "you go, Jerry!" than "let's really think about this" going on. And I'm sure that there are plenty of people in NYC who are working 40-60 hour weeks to make less than I make huffing-and-puffing about whatever. I'm definitely not right -- I'm just not so quick to declare that the $106 mil. bid is connected to some axis-of-evil and, even if it is, that we're not somewhat complicit in the ethically-dubious capitalist art-machine as well.

Jerry Saltz
Jesse: Who is declaring "that the $106 mil. bid is connected to some axis-of-evil?" Oh well: At least we can agree on Kelly Clarkson.

Jesse Patrick Martin
I take any talk of oligarchs to imply evil-axises. My bad.

Well. To clarify, I used the term "oligarch" because -- a hundred or so comments earlier -- Saltz was (jokingly) conjecturing that the anonymous bidder was a "Russian oligarch."

Either way, I didn't anticipate that my little snark would elicit a response. The whole thing was a little weird (and I probably would've benefited from withholding the crowds-are-idiots part), but it was kind of a thrilling (albeit brief) interweb art-moment. I stand by the content of what I was trying to get across (though a couple of commentators didn't like my "tone"), and I'm not sure why Saltz felt the need to tell me to "chill" and "ease off" (and call me "Dude," but whatever), but it was sorta neat to Facebook-face-off with him for a minute or so.

Update: This exchange resulted in me being "blocked" by Saltz on Facebook. He later gives his rundown of "rules" for blocking people here, though I have yet to see how my actions precipitated such a response.

No Soul for Sale?

2010-05-08T16:35:00.001-04:00

It’s nice to see that my alma mater is pushing the envelope when it comes to how the public will view fine art (pretty things to hang in your swank Chelsea loft) and graduate art programs (a thrifty place to buy aforementioned pretty things). It’s interesting that this is what MFA director Simone Douglas seems to see as a crackerjack way of promoting the school’s misty, all-inclusive, cutting-edge-sounding mission blurb.

It’s also not a coincidence that this is where the MFA program is heading after massive, unethical, and continuing cuts to their and other programs. By firing or demoting their apparently non-progressive, not with-it, and otherwise Luddite teachers in favor of multidisciplinary-techno-savvy-trailblazing-interweb-performance cyborgs, Parsons has yielded such revolutionary multimedia-culture-happening like this: Oprah’s hunky design guy (Nate Berkus) does a blip where he buys some student work as zesty wall-fodder for his amnesia-chamber/Chelsea loft. I’m sure that this is the kind of fascist-fleeing, countercultural, explicitly critical, uh, shameless corporate opportunism that Parsons’ founders had in mind when they were putting the school together.

Also interesting is that all of the considered artworks were abstract (the one figurative piece’s figure was obscured by fence planks), and that the video & blurbs about the selected artists offered little in the way of why their work was chosen, what their work is about, or how they felt about being included in the Oprah.com segment/Berkus’ loft. In short, the artists (and their work) – ostensibly what the whole bit was about – were the first things to disappear behind the “abstraction” of Oprah.com’s media filters.

WHO WANTS PINOS BACON!!!

2010-05-08T00:36:00.003-04:00

Besides sounding like a misspelled gay porn site, "Pinosworld's Weblog" offers heady yet astoundingly consistent praise of "genuine" crooners like Sinatra & Dean Martin, while repeatedly hating on fake-crooner "puppet" and "pussy" Michael Buble (there's also some special wrath reserved for Alicia Keys). The author (Pinos?) tends to deliver his crooner-critique in ALL CAPS, and routinely substitutes question marks for exclamation points. Pinos has been going strong with his hyper-focused diatribes for over three years, and his site both thrills and terrifies me in equal measure. Pinos also calls Michael Jackson a "child monger," which are two words I've never seen used in concert.

Wash down your Pinos with this excerpt from a 1985 Francis Bacon documentary!

Poor, poor artists (and those that should be starving but aren't)

2010-05-06T20:48:00.002-04:00

I'm not surprised that fine art degrees made the list, but the fact that they used a photo of someone carving Jessica Alba's disembodied clay head at Madame Tussaud as their archetypal "fine artist" photo just seems unfair.

Though I guess Marc Quinn's ridiculous statues of Kate Moss doing yoga are not-too-distant cousins of this kind of work, as is the seminal work of sculptor Daniel Edwards (and by "seminal," I mean that he made sculptures of Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin rug, as well as a bronze of Suri Cruise's first poop).

May Stroll

2010-05-02T13:03:00.001-04:00

I strolled the Chelsea zigzag yesterday in this gorgeous May weather, and here's what stuck:

The $1 zine from Amy Sillman's show at Sikkema Jenkins trumped her curiously-celebrated abstractions in oil, and maybe even made a case (especially in Sillman's case) for zine-making over painting. I'm partaking in a conversation about this at Art Fag City...

I found myself transfixed by Friedrich Kunath's installation in the back, back room at Andrea Rosen. The pair of paintings each featured a lone spider dangling from its web -- one web was fairly traditional and set against a spray-painted Day-Glo background, while the other web took the shape of an artist's line-drawing of a Tudor in construction (imagine Charlotte on an architectonic bent). Centrally placed between the facing paintings was a Janus-faced television monitor set atop a pedestal. On one screen ran a kitschy, Deep Thoughts-esque recording of birds flying against a sherbet sky (echoing the Day-Glo spray-paint). The other side featured slow-motion bloopers of black-and-white Candid Camera-style shorts of people getting old-school Punk'd, thrown by bulls, etc. This was all set to some melancholy contemporary crooner's song (I didn't recognize the singer/song, but it was Rufus Wainwright-ish). I liked being in the room and the absurd mash-up of song, video, and pictures. It was funny and dumb and smart and corny. It reminded me of Vija Celmins' ethereal web drawings, Jim Hodges' web chains, and how much I love bloopers and Enya.

There were many painting and drawing shows around, and if I had to pick one that I liked the most it would Wendell Gladstone's painting at Kravets/Wehby's group exhibition/sequel, Spring 2. I'm pathetically camera-less and couldn't find a photo of it online, but it's really worth seeing in person. It riffs on a maypole ceremony and demonstrates Gladstone's talent for meshing a graphic style, precisionist layering, a pop-art palette, and his incredible facility for using gel medium to create reliefs (in this case, pine cones with faces).

Botero's fatties are odalisque-ing at Marlborough Gallery, and a really funny moment occurred when a Party Rental Ltd. truck parked right in front of the show. The roly poly pink hippo logo perfectly complimented the chubby lounging ladies, and I could readily picture one of them astride the cotton-candy mascot.

omfg Pratt

2010-04-18T12:20:00.002-04:00

I’m definitely going to go around Pratt and take pictures of those atrocious placards that accompany some of the art installed throughout their campus/sculpture park. The school offers a virtual-tour of the park, but it doesn’t include the text from the placards (with good reason). My biggest concerns are as follows:

Not all of the works have placards
There are multiple physical & stylistic formats for the placards
There are copious, glaring, and confusing grammatical errors on the placards
The artist’s name, work title, year of make, and artist’s statement are unclear
The artist’s statements are horrendously written

You’d think that an institution dedicated to higher-learning and the arts would have taken strides to not have so many glaringly poor examples of shitty, lazy copy prominently—sometimes permanently—on display throughout their campus. Who’s is charge of these things? What’s the protocol for putting these placards up? In truth, I’d prefer there to be no placards than a handful of haphazardly written/installed ones. Maybe an easy to edit/update paper map would be a better solution, made available at certain campus locations (i.e. the library, that bastion of literacy)?

We all make typos and poopy grammar, but shouldn’t a university hold itself to somewhat higher standards? Again, if these were labels for a student show or posters or something less conspicuous/ubiquitous than etched, steel placards dotting the campus-scape, I wouldn’t be as full of righteous nerd-ire. The school's site claims that theirs is the largest sculpture park in New York City—shouldn’t that be all the more reason for things to be a bit more together?

Gripes aside, I love Pratt’s campus. I love that they have a campus at all (I went to Parsons, where you are often required to race through traffic to make it to your next class). For Pratt to support the display of various sculptures by various artists is a really keen thing, even if the placards make me furious (some of the sculptures do, too). But I really don’t understand how something so wrong and obvious could be overlooked—and maintained—by an arts-based university that seems to put so much focus (and money) into grooming their gated, guarded ivory towers?