Without knowing the specifics of the technique or whatever I found these to be like torn paper technique - my guess is layers of string are embedded between layers of paper and then torn up to create images. This kind of chance or pre-planning seems packaged to please - Im sure its satisfying. There are a lot of them - too many in the show to focus on just one.
the surface isnt that interestign too me - I dunno, seen a lot fo urban decay and i guess I;d ahve to spend time looking at one to see if the michaeangelo spit wall effect (for me it was a rather nice fake marble linoleum backsplash effect) to see if images appear - the thing about agented chaos is that you imagine there must be something more to it.
As far as staying on topic - isn;t that a matter of interpretation? oh but that's what you are implying right? Clever!
Which is to say the mode of expression is also a commentary, Like if this is visionary then can I be visionary too? What are we using as criterion? Boredom? The avant guard has embraced boredom in the past, and critics have cannonized its artifacts.
What is intereting is that you desire a topical response - just as Karen Kilimnik desires a tropical distance. A red herring maybe - but not an altogether uninteresting one if you open your mind to the possibilities.
This is where buddhism comes in - and I know thats part of Rirkrits pedagogy, skeptical as I may be of his work to actually "construct" his audience (how do you teach the blind to see?)
To demonstrate his fourth principle, Tufte showed a 19th-century map of Napoleon's 1812 march into Russia. Drawn by the engineer Charles Minard, the map had a band of varying thickness that traced Napoleon's path, with the march and retreat in different colors. The thickness of the band represented the number of soldiers. On the bottom of the map was a timeline with the corresponding temperature.
The band, which at first is quite thick (representing 422,000 soldiers), gets thinner as Napoleon marches towards Moscow. The retreating band, already considerably narrower at 100,000 soldiers, continues to thin. At one point on the map, it halves in size, representing Napoleon's loss of half his army as they fell into the frozen Berezina River. At the end of the retreat, Napoleon has only 10,000 soldiers left, a fraction of the width of the original band.
Minard manages to portray six dimensions on this two-dimensional paper -- the size of the army, latitude, longitude, direction the army is going, temperature, and date. On a single sheet of paper with nary a paragraph, Minard simply and eloquently tells the history of Napoleon's failed march to take Russia.
I think I prefer julie mehretu - though she's annoyingly arty in her own way. But people dig it because its mappy - thats only natural. Still, I have Google Earth, and in the end thats all I need.
on second thought - mehretu feels overly schematic safe, predetermined and ultimately as empty as living in an airport after midnight - a criticism I could level at this as well - if Kilimnik is psychogeographical in a way (connect the dots in an edited field) then this work is maximal, while giving us an easy found grid.
WHat's more interesting than penetrating a safety net?
can someone define chaos - which is a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization - as they see it in the painters mentioned above?
chaos is not defined as "no order" - there is always order in a bounded system.
The ratio of strange attractors to red herrings is what is at issue. Is there "clarity of vision" ?
Clearly Karen Kilimnik's relative minimalism makes this kind of maximalism seem top heavy by comparison, or rendundant by design.
Is that good? Do the sum of the parts add up to a wholer picute or are we left with a phenomenological snapshot of the world as it is, the thing itself, or a representation? In the end I;d argue that this work is an extension of the environment rather than a representation, as it claims to be. For me this is just another piece of urban detritus. It;s a grim reality, I know, but beauty needn;t be agented, and I find people who fetishize their surroundings are often as not trapped in a web of lies.
But there is blue at the center of the picture - and that signifies a depth, apophenic though it may, in reality, be.
I get the feelign that this is a good artist trapped in a mans mans mans world.
propz to all gay black people makin' it in the phuckin 'painting werld question is are his paintings black enough they certainly are topical can;t really deny that
someone said something about siver and shit; if i remember carectly he used aluminum foil for part of that painting and made a hat to; or something
liked that mashup video he did pllayin' baseketball with a thing around him or something.
Reminded me of the El Anatsui show at Shainman, in a mappy, cultural detritus kind of way.
The larger the work the less reliable the reproduction, in my experience. Here, about all you can tell is mappy and either fanatically detailed or impressive scale.
If you can't/won't see the show the double page ad in Art Forum is probably the next best thing - around p 62-3 - not that ads are allowed page numbers of course under The Geneva Convention, but we terrorists have ways...
art, made of advertisment, advertising the deterioration of advertisments to art. the competition exists in the streets made by anynomous renegade pedestrians tearing posters off the walls of subways and worksites. but it isnt competition because of the lack of do-it-yourself art collectors. and that "work" is also pedestrian, even though sometimes haunting and beautiful for its accident.
no accident here, these are sophisticated and raw, which i prefer to meretu's sophisticated and calculated.
So what happened to my post? Ok, so I wanted to say to this "my guess is layers of string are embedded between layers of paper and then torn up to create images"(zip) that, yup, he says string's part of the process in Art on Paper mag (Nov-Dec issue)
I like its mappyness--it challenges the usual sense of space as asthetic. Chaos takes courage.
my guess is his practice is décollage and collage at the same time. décollage take it away; collage immediately add it right back. almost like a rhythm. a builder and a demolisher put up tear down
Bob the builder Can we fix it? Bob the builder Yes we can!
Time to get busy. Such a lot to do! Building and fixing 'til it's good as new. Bob and the gang make a really good sound. Working all day till the sun goes down.
Anselm kiefer - when they are big, really really big, you get a sense of their bigness. I like that larger than life ambitious existential quality about them - you definitely don;t get that in a jpg, or even in a magazine ad where its a more crowded house. You have to see them to believe them, and probably you believe them if you are going to go see them - I just don;t knwo where the belief comes from - a moral failing I suppose. as greil marcus say s - Helter Skelter is a call to murder - something I think everyone should take to heart in a sort of "been there done that" kind of way.
Funny because I guessed that and then I guessed again when I read the essay today. Its good to know the tinfoil works because otherwise I;d have to buy something - which is to say DIY is the way to go here. I know y'all do - and myself I enjoy thinking about it. But do I want one? No, because I have enough clutter in my life - unlike some peoplel who live in sensory deprivation tanks. Well thats it for hamfisted tales of the obvious for now. Back to the lyrics.
he said I'm sorry baby I'm leaving you tonight I found someone new he's waitin' in the car outside Ah honey how could you do it We swore each other everlasting love She said well yeah I know but when We did - there was one thing we weren't Really thinking of and that's money
Money changes everything Money, money changes everything We think we know what we're doin' That don't mean a thing It's all in the past now Money changes everything
They shake your hand and they smile And they buy you a drink They say we'll be your friends We'll stick with you till the end Ah but everybody's only Looking out for themselves And you say well who can you trust I'll tell you it's just Nobody else's money
Money changes everything Money changes everything We think we know what we're doin' We don't pull the strings It's all in the past now Money changes everything
Money changes everything Money changes everything We think we know what we're doing We don't know a thing It's all in the past now
New wave purists sniffed when Cyndi Lauper's version of the Brains' 1980 underground hit "Money Changes Everything" went top 10, but Lauper's version succeeded where the Atlanta new wavers' original failed. The arrangement, courtesy of producer Rick Chertoff and featuring melodica player Rob Hyman (soon to become a temporary star as one-half of the lead duo in Philadelphia's Hooters), is brighter, sharper and much more commercial than the Brains' rather weedy, comparatively lo-fi and dullish take on their own song. More to the point, Lauper wisely takes the victim's viewpoint in the song, dulling the arrogance of Tom Gray's original opening lines, in which he's the one ditching a longtime love in pursuit of wealth and power.
MARK BRADFORD, mixed media Angeleno artists are popping up all over Chelsea, and they’re certainly well represented in this Biennial. Mark Bradford makes collaged Mondrian-esque grids from strips of posters he picks up on the streets of South L.A.—paying homage to the sprawl of his city and the cacophony of ours. “I’m drawn to collage because it’s the immediate juxtaposition of activity. In the city, I have that same feeling—Nigerian business next to Korean business next to Jewish business,” says the 44-year-old CalArts graduate, who’s been in several shows at the Studio Museum in Harlem and had solos at Sikkema Jenkins. Studio Museum curator Christine Y. Kim praises his “unapologetic hybridization of work, play, and art. He’s discussed having been a hairdresser in South Central, using the same backdrops and aesthetic languages as that subculture—yet it complements his painting.”
Does anyone know what the vernacular of South Central LA hair dressers is? Is it derived from a kind of preppie Kid and Play sort fo dealio or more of a Stand and Deliver kind of bootstrap protocol? Highly ammphibious mathicity if you ask me.
I like the cat o nine tails myself -= gives me more of a medieval flavor.
johnny reb's fundamental "plausible deniability" - case in point: not hip but a slam dunk if you think doubletalk 24-7 It's an illness - pillow talk doesnt make you smart - thats my blanket critique - what does matter is did you do your research.
Is it real or is it a tape loop?
as far as the grid can see - Mondrian had shifts in scale or perspective - which is like multiple ground planes or vanishing points, so either you burned it to the ground or you got tied up in the traffic of it all.
I think its called the Kansas City Shuffle - not unusual I'd say - you either get the limo or you show up in the tropics with the money as planned - like Basquiat and his crown. Was he an uncle tom in the briar patch? If you want to destroy your eighties sweater, spin the smog into a cotton candy swirl girl! Cause and effect, we are all star stuff, millions and billions of atoms, some of them created more equal than others, some of them wnat to be you, some of them want to be used by you, and some of them are getting signing bonuses.
It all hinges on your track record Try to be touched for the fi9rst time every time, its more lucrative. or at least less jaded and easier to work with.
For instance, in Down and Out, Orwell wanted his readers to see how precarious a working man's existence was under laissez-faire capitalism. So after someone broke into his cheap Paris hotel room and stole his money and clothes, he found himself destitute, unemployable and quickly reduced to starvation. “Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition”, he wrote. “It is as though one had been turned into a jellyfish.”
I can see how the raised ridges structure a lot of the collected posters etc, have a sort of vein-like organization to them, which I take as a kind of mapping device, but then I wonder what drives or determines that?
I mean even if you allow that Bradford finds string, various cord and whatever, the same way he finds graphics stuff and that it’s a slow accretion, what decides on this kind of linked, even, organic structure? It’s actually the most interesting part - from what I can see in repros - to most of them, and it’s not surprising a lot of the comments are directed to the technique.
Yeah it’s obviously adjusted and built as he goes along, as IDB notes, and creates borders for the tear-offs, over-painting, etc, so the shape to some extent responds to the graphics its laid on, those laid over it. And in as much as the graphics, colors etc reflect an urban environment, there’s the expectation that this structure derives from it in some way as well. But I can’t see how, and it sort of nags at me, weakens them a little.
I have the same problem with ‘automatic’ drawing – I’m always suspicious of the circumstances for so-called ‘automatic’ drawing. I mean it’s always ‘automatic’ within certain nominated parameters, so never entirely automatic. And here those little ridges are so consistent in length and width, curves and angles, they must come from somewhere, but I’m not convinced they really belong with the material they organize.
You know, when somebody's thrown a bucket of cold water on you, and he's beating you with a blackjack, and the blood is flying, it helps if the person wielding the blackjack is someone you trust," Bacon told Cosmopolitan's Chase. "It lets you fly.
Before this year’s football season kicked off, naysayers claimed Stanford lacked explosive playmakers at skill positions and predicted the Cardinal would finish dead last in the conference. After star 6-foot-7 wide receiver Evan Moore injured his hip the first game of the season, the pessimists only doubled in volume. Stanford’s next opponent was UC-Davis, and soon after that meltdown, many national media agreed Stanford football had no shot at competing in the Pacific-10 Conference, let alone winning a game. Naysayers, meet Mark Bradford.
You mean like twombly? Asemic writing? You know me, arithamaticulous. Its ridiculous. You gotta jump down turn around and pick up the ball, jump down turn around and say heeeeeeey girfriend! and do your best mugwump with hair in curlers.
Jump down, turn around, and pick up the games. Jump down, turn around, and put the games away. Everybody's working to pick up the games. Everybody's working to put the games away.
Work standing up! Work sitting down! Work on your knees with the games all around! Work standing up! Work sitting down! Putting the games away.
Jump down, turn around, and pick up the blocks. Jump down, turn around, and put the blocks away. Everybody's working to pick up the blocks. Everybody's working to put the blocks away.
Work standing up! Work sitting down! Work on your knees with the blocks all around! Work standing up! Work sitting down! Putting the blocks away.
Jump down, turn around, and pick up the books. Jump down, turn around, and put the books away. Everybody's working to pick up the books. Everybody's working to put the books away.
Work standing up! Work sitting down! Work on your knees with the books all around! Work standing up! Work sitting down! Putting the books away.
Typically we tend to walk on the same side of the street for so long, and then it will dawn on us to cross over and walk on the other side, despite the destination being the same, or so we think! The artist seemed to enjoy his opening as seen in newarttv. can we put some new intro music to that? is that possible? DYAF I got a good vibe off the pegs.
--spontainaity--its all relative cap. when you figure that one out--by trying it I might add, going as far into it as you can--then you can come out like camp, like s&m, like south central, a little bit michaux, a little bit rock n roll.
talkin' about obvious im goin' out a limb here and sayin' mark bradferd is what decides on this fukin' linked even organic structure and stuff my guess is he wanted to be an archaologist when he was a child and shit and never kknew about michel Foucault bell hooks:cOrnel west/or Henry louis gates,jr I been there... Done that You got guns? we got guns... Yo, I got straps, we got straps... A million muthafuckas on the planet Earth Talk that hard bullshit 'Cause it's all they worth...
OK so let’s try turning it around, and say it’s not about South Central or LA or urban fliers etc. That’s a misconception, also known as a press release. It’s not even strictly about collection or accumulation. It’s only about those things incidentally, unless they’re handing out silver paint at street corners as well. Actually it’s about using the string to structure a picture; it’s about that little ridge, just over 2-D and not quite ready to go 3.
The string is the thing.
It’s about taking the high ground and corralling the rest, getting in between the sheets and gluing, avoiding the knots! There’s only splits and joins in this scene. It will get papered over, painted over, torn away and started again. It’s about making yourself attachable and detachable, providing the structure, a framework, your place or mine, not in public, discreetly, drawing the line, holding the ridge - rigidly. Being just a little bit above it all and then skating away, know what I mean?. Moving on, picking up tips, building a network, revising the list, scrubbing the troublemakers, making room, seeing the pattern, the distribution of… well, blacks. Yeah and? Uh… silvers?
2-D or not 2-D that is the P.
So he’s making out and making up the thread, throwing out a line and stringing them along. What else can he do? Sort them by shape, color, picture or text, keep just enough to show who does the organizing and how. A close brush with color does every picture good, everyone knows that. Sets the story ‘straight’, right? Who does the tying together of all the loose threads, knitting them into one big artsy craftsy scene? You will need more than a map to get there. You will need a guide. I said guide. Weaving a tale told at the crossroads, waving a tail held by a fool, full of gold and glory signifying something you will not like to admit to yourself.
Just your typical, non-topical Flex the optical illusion weak metaphoric style you be usin I check one-two's and who's in the house Like shit your lyrics ooze out ya mouth Whattyou think this is? I wanna see your face, painted black Black as night, black as coal I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black Yeah!
Hoover Institute research fellow Peter Schweizer wrote in his book Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy that West lives in a mostly white neighborhood and earns over $300,000 per year as a professor.
Mirror mirror on the wall, Shovel chestnuts in my path Please keep on up with the nuts So I don't get in aftermath But if I do I'll calmly punch them In the fourth day of July 'Cause they tried to mess with Third degree, that's me myself and I It's just me myself and I It's just me myself and I It's just me myself and I It's just me myself and I
i guess theres the whole art histtorical picture plane narrative. never get tired of that. wher eis the picture/ is it in your head or ont he box? Under a can or in a box? Is art a philosophical question that has always already been answered a priori, the horns cut from the bull, the bowels eviscerated, the fleece flung on the tree and goldleaved?
That shit Really captures the imagination, like following the thread of a tampon into the poetic consciousness of the art matrix. Tampons are like canvases if you think about it. Really drives the conversation forward in new and exciting ways.
Positiverly Jungian. WHitmanesque. Whatever. you go. I'll be a long in a bit - jsut gotta make sure the plastic room is taped and ready so the carpets dont get stained with DNA. Yep, things get messy when the y clearly told me in multiple provocation messages to murder death kill.
I talk all hard and shit, but you know its just marketing. I could use some health care and a back massage. Does that weaken my brand? Man made midas and couldnt put him back in the box, so its all gonna be black all the time, like during the blitz.
In overjustification, the personal beliefs and attitudes of the person do not change because they have a good external reason for their actions. The children threatened with the severe punishment had a good external reasoning for not playing with the toy because they knew that they would be badly punished for it. However, they still wanted the toy, so once the punishment was removed they were more likely to play with it. Conversely, the children who would get the moderate punishment displayed insufficient justification because they had to justify to themselves why they did not want to play with the toy since the external motivator, the degree of punishment, was not strong enough by itself. As a result, they convinced themselves that the toy was not worth playing with, which is why even when the punishment was removed they still did not play with the toy.
The plot of the first season centers on the ongoing struggles between police units and drug-dealing gangs on the west side of the city, and is told from both points of view. Subsequent seasons have focused on other facets of the city. The large cast consists mainly of character actors who are little known for their other roles. Simon has said that despite its presentation as a crime drama, the show is "really about the American city, and about how we live together. It's about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how…whether you're a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you've committed to."[1]
as the artist creates art, he creates himself. The plant becomes the seed becomes the plant becomes the seed which extends beyond the borders of self. This creation/ self-creation is an artist's way of Being in the face of the seemingly meaningless cycle of repetition which is process. Because as a species we are unable to accept process, we create metaphors. By saying something is something else, we are able to endure. This is not elucidation. It is survival.
We define our repetitive behavior episodically, creating beginnings and endings - an infinitely layered palimpsest that denies process and creates the illusion of linearity. Life beyond death. Escape. Reward. A plant worth more than the sum of its seeds. Ego. Disconnection. mapping APIs and map mashups are the definitive form of mashup platform and application
This is not the equivalent of one of those magnetic "poetry kits," you know the ones you buy at a stationery store, a mess of words so you can assemble funny poems on your refrigerator door.
People were talking with machines, regularly and familiarly. Making funny phone messages, personalizing the machine of forward motion that had arrived in their homes. There was no way back. The machine was a part of life, but only when everyone learned to personalize it. Poetry in Translation uses Googles Automatic Translation service to translate sentences from English to German, then to French and then back to German again with sometimes funny results.
It is the feeling of sleepwalking. Of others living life around you, keeping their fists tightly wound around whatever dollars they can muster, caring little more than nothing about those around you. We cannot sleepwalk. We cannot just survive, anything goes. We can take control of our lives, we can quit sleepwalking, we can say - right now, these are our lives, it is time to start living it. It is time to not second guess, to move forward, to make mistakes if we have to, but to do it with a greater good in mind.
Let us start a revolution. Let us start a revolution that is not just about basketball shoes, or official licensed merchandise. I am prepared to die for something. I am prepared to live for our cause. The cause is caring about each other. The secret to this job is personal relationships. Look straight at the camera. At the camera. And slowly. With passion. Straight at the camera. And in your eyes there's... passion. Got it?
Rauschenberg (RR) +5.5 (concept and form, maping factor notwithstanding)
sex appeal (SA) +3 craft and trickery (CAT) +2 stand alone quotient (SAQ) -2
= +3 derived in large part from SA
________
Mapping an experience < having an experience
*furthermore*
experiencing the mapped experience of another < (x 2) experiencing
______
Overall, they strike me as overly fetishized versions of what the viewer has available to digest on their own terms - handsome objects that aren't able to transcend the flaccid concepts outlined in the "press release" (South Central LA, Urban folk, etc).
Cap, I'm with you on the networked flowing nature of the line. Dipping above and below the surface, weaving an intricate web and arriving at an encapsulated journey. My question is: if its all about the rhythm, why not invent a primary vocabulary that reinforces it instead of stalling it by alluding to the graffitied wall ten feet from the gallery entrance? Its like putting really cheesy lyrics over an amazingly hypnotic beat.
Then again, I haven't seen them in person, so maybe the bit of trickery with the string will really get me past my hangups.
Zip: I was with your mission statement for the earnest revolution up till its tragically ironic end. I was left feeling used and empty.
Bradford's work is a picture of what your brainspace looks like, soaked and drenched in this mediasphere after all this time. Each instance where the ad gets inside the real estate of your mind they have achieved their goal. It doesn't matter to them that it might just be brain goo in there, as long as they get in and buy a piece of that precious consumer land. Good old cognition, even when it's not for sale you can still buy some. It's always on sale, eyes and ears unite. Whilst most adbusters cry about it, and Sao Paolo bans it, it's always nice for someone to come along and say hey, people, let's tribute the mess and find its charm some, his work looks good and thats why he is where he is. He's a good artist. (there are others who also do the poster scrape thing, in fact there are heaps, but none do it as well as this show). Maybe it's the super scale. Ideas of maximalism are abound/in vogue.
Fragments make you and me Fragmented is reality (reprise)
I can’t really see Mehretu or Fahlström in Bradford. One’s too techno the other too cartoony. The older, craftier stuff, like - http://sikkemajenkinsco.com/images/artists/markbradford/MB-DevilBeating2003.html made me think of El Anatsui (plus the fact that he’s showing). But then there’s that recycled/third world/village industry thing that seems almost the opposite of conspicuous wastage/rip-off/sprawling excess that is just so first world.
Although stand back far enough and there is this glittering open field/loose decorative thing going on between them.
The torn poster stuff I think of mostly is Mimmo Rotella or Jacques de la Villeglé but torn posters don’t really seem foremost about this stuff now. The tearing is structured around the string/lines which don’t actually have much to do with graffiti or street debris so I don’t see the salvaged material as some glib street cred.
TP asks ’Why not invent a primary vocabulary that reinforces it (the string lines) instead of stalling it by alluding to the graffitied wall ten feet from the gallery entrance?
I think the collected material does reinforce the linear framework’s function – defines it actually. All he’s taking from ripped off posters etc is very particular qualities of colour, shape or edge, occasionally text and picture – so to say this is a cliché sample of billboards or flyers is to then ask (as I did)- well what decides that line structure, which governs the paste-ons/rip-offs? It’s not really chaotic or random. Plus there is a lot of painting going on as well as pasting. I think any ‘primary vocabulary’ is firstly saying that the framework accepts both – anything really, as long as it’s flat enough and re-workable.
He could and probably does overlay them with other kinds of paper – maybe other materials (?) – but whatever is going on is as likely coming off in the same fashion, partly, occasionally. The question I have is - does this make the networking/mapping lines anything more than just a loose or informal pattern? Is that enough?
Like I say, stand back a ways and I start thinking about folk art or craft.
The Rauschenberg tip is interesting – I get a bit of that from some of Mark’s photos, but Mark is so low tech, I don’t see Rausch as a close influence. If people find Bradford’s work sort of handsome but undemanding, it’s because the string structure probably isn’t doing enough yet – there are a lot more options there – that may still be coming.
Just the gap between the 2003-5 stuff and this show indicates he’s trying.
Mark Bradford’s abstractions unite high art and popular culture as unorthodox tableaux of unequivocal beauty. Working in both paint and collage, Bradford incorporates elements from his daily life into his canvases: remnants of found posters and billboards, graffitied stencils and logos, and hairdresser’s permanent endpapers he’s collected from his other profession as a stylist. In The Devil is Beating His Wife, Bradford consolidates all these materials into a pixelised eruption of cultural cross-referencing. Built up on plywood in sensuous layers ranging from silky and skin-like to oily and singed, Bradford offers abstraction with an urban flair that’s explosively contemporary.
Being billboard size I think counts in as much as it allows his string/line structure greater intricacy. For the most part those lines seem of a given width, the pictures have to get big to get complex linearly. There is a smaller work on that NR link, (luggage store) which sort of confirms that they need the room, don’t deal in a just a few elements so well.
I like your point about hypothetical correspondences though Webthing!
Who knows what’s really there for the statistician or mathematician? We scan these things for no more than mappiness, a network or chart of some kind – could be neural networks, organized crime or immigrant distribution – or maybe all! But basically we know at a glance whether it works as that or not. Yeah in that way, it’s over in a glimpse. The rest is trying to explain it.
Incidentally, can anyone tell me how they’re fixed to the wall? They don’t seem to be mounted on anything.
third world is happening in the first world--luckily for our souls.
anyway the guys a flaneur. But he picks stuff up and brings it back to his studio--like a raymond saunders or betty saar--and just starts pieccing it together, weaving it together.
Challenging? Are u kidding: Another scholar, Eli Leon, expands upon this research, looking for significant African influence on American quilts. Drawing upon the history and prevalence of improvisational patchwork in Africa, he suggests that African slaves in the U. S. and England may have been more familiar with patchwork and improvisation than their masters. African artisans may have drawn upon this knowledge to develop many of the quilt patterns, which could have been noticed and adopted by European-American quilters (Leon 59-61). Leon cites the following characteristics of "Afro-traditional" quilts: "Structural flexibility, improvisation, approximation, technical accommodation for off-sized pieces, use of string pattern, strip construction, allowance of accidentals, multiple patterning, complex alternation, restructuring, use of leftover patchwork, and patchwork on both sides of the quilt"
I will definitely concede the stylistic differences between bradford, mehretu and fahlstrom.
The comparison was meant to point to the structural similarities in the mapping of experiences by each artist. I've never been a julie mehretu fan, I find the work too rigid and cold in most cases to engage. Which is why, in my mind, Bradford wins that battle every time. Although I admit Mehretu is very relevant to contemporary dialogue and produces intelligently executed work.
I invoked Fahlstrom as a counter to Bradford's appropriated "primary vocabulary". Fahlstrom's pictures are similar to Bradford in that they lend themselves to the mapped experience scheme. The difference to me is that Fahlstrom's vocabulary is based more in personal invention (stylistic differences notwithstanding, i.e. cartoon-y) and thus, far more evocative than tired appropriations.
Seeing that older image definitely helps to sort out where Bradford's magic happens - in the history, xyz structure and "soft" grid as opposed to some of the things I'm harping on.
My previous point is essentially that a really rich stage - seen in both the new and old work - is undermined by the insertion of appropriated and/or overused signifiers.
Maybe he's still searching for the appropriate punctuation to compliment the powerful underlying structures. Or maybe I'm crazy, and shredded posters are the perfect fit. Something any painter can insert to solve that nagging formal issue. A little collaged text here, some spray can colors here, and done!
I don't know, I feel like its a tired crutch.
The synopsis of a brainspace drenched in media residue with traces of commerce in the nooks and crannies is apt, but frankly too easy. We all know the media pollutes our minds. The question should be How do we move past that? not How can we remind ourselves of it at every turn? Thats the media's job.
You cant MOVE PAST what's still here -- unless yr delusional. Or visionary, and if you're visionary--prove it Buckminster. Some people make something with nothing. That is magic bro. That is everyday magic.
That is magic, the beauty of the 2D picture. Something out of nothing. Meaning you don't have to rely on whats already there to stand in for a genuine moment.
That is magic, the beauty of the 2D picture. Something out of nothing. Meaning you don't have to rely on whats already there to stand in for a genuine moment.
tightpants, granted we all know about saturation of adland and resultant media braingoo, but how many of us also know it can be beautiful when brought to the contemplative? cut up and muted especially for us, the meditative (for let's not deny the role of painting in it's positively reflective virtue). and ye, you're right, it's not for the first time (but nothing is) but only in a new manner. i certainly haven't seen shit quite like this elsewhere. hitting the right notes for the ruminative, it's like a light glowing in the muck for somebody strikes a match (unless there's methane in dem piles...) but i hear you all, in all your corners, a tumblin'.
That is magic, the beauty of the 2D picture. Something out of nothing. Meaning you don't have to rely on whats already there to stand in for a genuine moment.
What's genuine beauty? Meaning out of nothing. That is the magic, of the moment. If You don't have 2D To rely on. Something already there To stand in for a picture. Wabisabi
I see the linear progression of history, and I want to situate myself at the end of the ossified bone of Walter Benjamin's hackneyed age of reproduction.
Anslem kiefer had his 15 seconds of solitude, they seem to say, but instead of the straw or lead or dirt in alchemical poetry, let me use the alchemy of the streets to keep it real, playing cards in nurse ratchets warhol ward.
So what that says to me, tuning into those voices, is that this artist has proceeded from a to b to c but like many academics or allies, hasn't quite given up the idea that art has to follow some historical thread to be accepted, to be good, to be likeable.
THe axis of that thought, while practical (jump through the hoop, get the biscuit) is logical though hardly visionary.
And he does so but what if you are driving a pinto, and the other guy has a ferrari, do you take the road less travelled and therefore find an alternate to modernism or postmodernism, off road even, into the night, chasing the moon, which is always already floating ahead of you on the boulevard of broken dreams or at least insomnia, but not broken because you are flying along with the radio on, radio on, 10,000 times an hour, 60 times a second, 12 to a carton one to a customer half mad with the headlights off and no map but the stars Rootless - karn kilimnik or kunta kinte, children of the corn.
Because all the works are so kind of epic and intense, I have to agree with Zip about overload in the show. After about three or four of these I’m exhausted. Ready for something simpler, sparser.
This guy seems like someone I would like to know.But i dunno about the work-i just see a dry clump.of accumulation.Maybe in the 60's it would have flown,has some fiber art thing -amperplexed at lack of black artists,esp. males,though verbally,a strong ,nay,predominant presence-clever,conceptual,fluid.Unlike white art critics,who anesthetize one.Might I add that I was just turned down for a job at an animal shelter for a shit job,where I was informed about "one of the faucets"of the job....by a white butch...sheesh
* The out-of work-desperate-for-any-job applicant. This job-seeker failed to explain why someone who worked at this level years ago would be again applying for a position at this lower level -- and is seen as someone who leave as soon as s/he got a better offer. * The totally incompetent applicant. This job-seeker had worked at the same level for more years than anyone should without giving a reason why s/he never has sought a promotion - and is seen as a liability. * The too-full-of-myself applicant. This job-seeker, often older than the hiring manager, comes off as having way too many years of experience -- and sounding as though s/he was responsible for every major accomplishment in the field. * The way-too-expensive-fool applicant. This job-seeker was currently earning a significant amount more than the very top of our salary range and was seen as someone completely out of touch with reality. * The been-there, done-that applicant. This job-seeker passed this level years ago, and for whatever reasons wishes to return to that level - but without explanation and could be perceived as washed-up, burnt-out, and in the worst cases, too old.
He was at a task. He was like a carpenter who has made many boxes, making still another box, only there was furious haste in his movements. He, in his thoughts, was careering off in other places, even as the carpenter who as he works whistles and thinks of his friend or his enemy, his home or a saloon. And these jolted dreams were never perfect to him afterward, but remained a mass of blurred shapes.
Presently he began to feel the effects of the war atmosphere--a blistering sweat, a sensation that his eyeballs were about to crack like hot stones. A burning roar filled his ears.
Following this came a red rage. He developed the acute exasperation of a pestered animal, a well-meaning cow worried by dogs. He had a mad feeling against his rifle, which could only be used against one life at a time. He wished to rush forward and strangle with his fingers. He craved a power that would enable him to make a world-sweeping gesture and brush all back. His impotency appeared to him, and made his rage into that of a driven beast.
Buried in the smoke of many rifles his anger was directed not so much against the men whom he knew were rushing toward him as against the swirling battle phantoms which were choking him, stuffing their smoke robes down his parched throat. He fought frantically for respite for his senses, for air, as a babe being smothered attacks the deadly blankets.
There was a blare of heated rage mingled with a certain expression of intentness on all faces. Many of the men were making low-toned noises with their mouths, and these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric song that went as an undercurrent of sound, strange and chantlike with the resounding chords of the war march. The man at the youth's elbow was babbling. In it there was something soft and tender like the monologue of a babe. The tall soldier was swearing in a loud voice. From his lips came a black procession of curious oaths. Of a sudden another broke out in a querulous way like a man who has mislaid his hat. "Well, why don't they support us? Why don't they send supports? Do they think--"
The youth in his battle sleep heard this as one who dozes hears.
For those of you interested, there’s a brief close-up view of Mark Bradford’s “Helter Skelter” at the New Museum’s “Unmonumental” show. Fast forward to about 8:59 and use the full-screen mode, http://blip.tv/file/642679
No visible means of support and you have not seen nuthin yet Everythings stuck together I dont know what you expect starring into the tv set Fighting fire with fire
rip the wiring out of the walls like Jesus, sun! walk on down the hall the junk man delivers buy booze and dope and isotopes when the wire is all torn up Take a sip from the bitter cup. Reap the whirlwind Everyone dies in the end And so it goes. Wired to blow by blow Be yourself by yourself and no one else A lesson learned in life.
propz! to all peoples making videos and stuff puttin' em on you toobe and ford mark brad is a dam good collageologist Fifteen years old picking out the same old clothes While these posters are wallpaper for those with the same goal She'll try out on on the day after today And she dreams of the 5k The calendar's set stone Now cracked in half Dwyer said you look talented to me Join the team and get up at five with babes in briefs Candy bars, metals, trophies and stressful days Still she dreams, dreams of 5k Dwyer asked, "why did you give up on me?" "I've got tthese dreams and no idea what I want to be" Different place fast turn over has gone away But still she dreams of 5k The calendar was set in stone Now cracked in half but not unknown Records broke yesterday If only there was still a 5k
We fuckin' rollin' with no controllin', them bolts ain't holdin' Take you higher, rollin' on wires, till time expires Swinging corners, so kids are goners, you hangin' on-ers Duck them tunnels, they shrink like funnels..Get your forhead pummeled We upside down you, then round and round you, your evil found you Let's go faster, it's sheer disaster, while spinnin' backwards Jagged edges, no kind of ledges, with broken wedges It's the largest, fastest, steepest, deepest, tallest, all this and more
Art is whatever you can get away with - like if you had half a rosetta stone you'd realize that there is no universal language, asemic, or anemic, you go bulimic. We know anybody around here ever used a mop? rarely i'm sure but I used one for a cure for the linoleum, like napoleon i got the bullion from scullion when I was younger but I'm so much older than that now. I counted artifacts shooting prices with devices, isnt it nice fronting the merch? I went to college now I can make mops for moss, like kate I know hair cuts - you can get a flat top, high and tight, mullet and buzz cut, klutes for 5 kilometers, trick or treaters!
i dont know that michael showwwhatever but people who laugh at their own jokes are not cool
but yes i was thinking of chris martins sandwhich paintings and thinking about how great it is when the structure comes from the materials. i think u can see that on james k's video of CM.
Hello. I liked your work. You have a very visual style explosive, full of colour, intense sensitivity and bill admirably. I am Chilean and illustrator passed here and I was fascinated with your work. Congratulations! If you want to know something of mine, you are cordially invited to my personal blog ...
I was crossing the field -- that is all -- longing for nothing more than a color, when I found the owl's pellet coiled in the grass. Beneath the glistening veil of mucus, a mass of conflicting ingredients: squirrel fur, rabbit hip, feather of flicker and jay. Farther in, I came upon crow quills splintered and wrapped into balls, tidy parcels of polished bone, a frog's spotted fingers.
It would almost be better to be young again, the multiple longings obscuring any need for detail, but the ripening pellet demands exploration: pelt and stuffing enough to knit nothing, remnant of mole-tail, extruded ear, the skull not yet skilled at dodging or distance, a pulsating grub embedded in beak.
It is never too late for rhapsody. A kiss says nothing compared to this. Joined hands? Sweat on the belly? Lips, genitals -- all of them edible. Where inside does the owl assemble these bundles of bone and fur? How wide must she open her throat to disgorge them?
Anyone can capture the fur standing on end as small claws slip away from the glassy earth. Anyone can feed on the instant of pleasure that makes an animal sweet and defenseless. No one but the owl makes use of every scrap, licking beauty back into the coarse remains before delivering them here so openly at the feet of anyone crossing.
apparently no lover ever ate her up. too bad for her
I cried with joy when I voted for Hillary this morning, surprising me, but not. I look forward to the Red Queen getting down to business. Hope is not an option.
anyway yr poem makes it sound like jeff dahmer would be the best boyfriend ever.
Everything a lie. Everything you hear, everything you see. So much to spew out. They just keep coming, one after another. You're in a box. A moving box. They want you dead, or in their lie... There's only one thing a man can do - find something that's his, and make an island for himself. If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack; a glance from your eyes, and my life will be yours.
Yeah, when I was a kid I used to want to be a detective all the time because I used to watch all the detective shows on TV. When I was a kid they used to show these movies with Boston Blacki and he always had a woman with him. And I wanted to be a wife of a detective or be a detective, so I always watching detective stories. I'm always looking because I never know what might come up. Or how I could help. I like to help in situations like that. I really do. It's always happening to me, everywhere I go, you know, lot of times there's killing or anything, even around my house. Wherever. And I'm always looking or getting involved, you know, find out who did it, or what's going on. I listen to people. And I'm always trying to decide who's lying or who killed who before the police do. See if I can beat them. Yeah.
There was a bunch of roadies And this here is their story A scurvy bunch of evil twits Who never say they're sorry They've traveled cross the nations Fuckin' paid vacations We love the schism that they make They're here for the duration Friggin' in the riggin' Friggin' in the riggin' Friggin' in the riggin' There was fuck all else to do The captains name is Rick Whose "Bozo-do" is slick He really thinks he knows it all He's just a Jersey hick Wanking, cranking, Georgie He always finds an orgy He rubs his balls and picks his nose He's horny Georgie porgie Friggin' in the riggin' Friggin' in the riggin' Friggin' in the riggin' There was fuck all else to do The kind of sleaze is Ring Polaroid's his thing He whipped it out, her teeth fell out And now it's in a sling From LA we have Troy His fetish is Playboy A smelly trout, he'll eat it out Go wash your hands you're M.O.I. Friggin' in the riggin' Friggin' in the riggin' Friggin' in the riggin' There was fuck all else to do John Tempesta is The Joker The Adams apple choker Sandra Bernhard is his twin He'd probably even poke her The B-boy was John Rooney He was a fuckin' loony He does a rap, he thinks he's black He's soft like Gerry Cooney Friggin' in the riggin' Friggin' in the riggin' Friggin' in the riggin' There was fuck all else to do Yo my name is Bill Dur, bouncing is my skill, duh, Smoke ten packs and use my plaque Duh, with my breath I'll kill Thursby is the lard ass The monitors are his task The sound they made when the band played Was like Ed Trunk with bad gas Friggin' in the riggin' Friggin' in the riggin' Friggin' in the riggin' There was fuck all else to do The photobug is Ambo He'll fill up any hairy hole We'll blindfold you with dental floss You burnt out fuckin' bimbo The bottom line is Z Oh please don't sit on me Go wipe your hemorrhoid ridden butt You 1960's hippie!
Q: You’re known as a very contentious person. To look back at your biography is to see a series of disputes with people. A: I don’t tolerate liars. When somebody lies to me, that’s really, like, just unbearable. But there’s a definite reason for that, and that’s the meningitis I had as a child. I came out of a coma. I was in a coma for four months. I didn’t even know who I was for five years after that. Because your memory is just, you know, not there. It takes time to come back. And so I would be totally believing everything everybody told me, and so when I found out that half of those things were lies, it really disturbed me, because I was dependent on the truth. And that’s stuck with me throughout my life. Even now, I haven’t mellowed in that respect. I don’t like people lying to me, not even about the smallest things. I find it inexcusable..
Q: Well, thanks for your time, John. It’s been an honor talking to you. A: I don’t handle compliments well.
Q: Maybe I should say “fuck off” or something. A: No, that’s even worse, when people do that. They try to out-punk the punk. Don’t be so foolish. It was never like that in the first place. There’s no excuse for rudeness. I know—I’ve got albums full of it!
Q: That’s a quip worthy of Oscar Wilde. A: Ha ha! Very excellent person, him. I’ll tell you one thing I like about Oscar Wilde. On his deathbed he looked at the walls and he went, “That wallpaper is horrendous. One of us has to go.” Then he died. That’s fucking genius. That’s how you go out. That’s how life should be.
I'm a salesman. And you develop something like total recall. I don't forget places, things, or streets, because it's a habit. Something I just picked up. I just stare intensely at people and try to figure them out. Being nosey, I just stare. I was leaving the Plush Pub one night, driving a 1977 Cadillac, heading west on Hampton. I noticed a officer had two individuals pulled over to the curb in a blue … some type of vehicle. It was… it was a blue…it was a blue… I think… it was a blue Ford. It was a blue something.
The official explanation for these misfortunes concentrated on that well-known social evil, home taping. Dominated by Japan and therefore (ask Detroit) vulnerable to political attack, the audiocassette industry is still fighting off a Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) campaign that seeks legislation to control record rentals and institute a hefty surcharge on blank tape sales--despite the Supreme Court's recent Betamax decision, which holds that home taping doesn't violate copyright law.
While paying their respects to the International Nipponese Conspiracy, hipper record execs tended to single out a less exotic culprit: radio. This was a traditional tack, but a persuasive one, because the long-standing symbiotic rivalry between the two industries is rooted in a real structural incompatibility--bizzers are after your money while broadcasters only want your minutes. Record men need maximum product exposure, but radio craves ratings, which usually go to tightly defined formats and can't measure enthusiasm, much less the willingness of listeners to pay for what they're half hearing. Radio's cowardice and conservatism--its consultancies, its racism, its fear of tuneouts--have clearly helped shape an ever more passive music audience, homogenized and fractionalized all at once.z
By clearly establishing his own identity in his work, Bradford amplifies the meaning of "postblack," a term used last year by curator Thelma Golden in her Studio Museum of Harlem exhibition "Freestyle," in which Bradford was included. A central goal of "Freestyle" was to address the need, felt by many African American artists, to transcend the restrictive label "black artist" in order to redefine, in Golden's words, "complex notions of blackness." Bradford's lighthearted and sensual paintings resonate in a similarly open-ended context. Determined less by rhetoric than by the pleasurable exigency of cultural celebration, the artist's handling of "color" becomes at once abstract and personal. Then again, dealing with roots in experimental ways is what Bradford does for a living.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Artforum International Magazine, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
Yet appropriation as practiced by Americans in the '80s is the exact reverse of this process. It presumes discontinuity. It is not a gesture of homage to an esteemed original. In fact it does not agree that any image has more authority than any other. It is a response to a culture of reproduction. Its posture is a melange of acquiescence and mild pessimism: acquiescence in the thick smog of images now dumped on the eye by "high" and "low" culture alike, pessimism about painting's ability to pierce or dispel it with authentically rooted meanings.
There are many careers of this sort. Among their prototypes is the former subway artist and present disco decorator Keith Haring, 27, with his thin doodles of barking dogs and radioactive babies. Another is Jean-Michel Basquiat, 24, much hyped as a sort of art-world Eddie Murphy and hence especially popular with Los Angeles collectors, his untutored and zappy scrawls routinely praised for their "energy." (This anxious hope for signs of energy is a sure index of cultural flabbiness.) But for postgraffiti art the writing is already on the wall, and such careers, rolling in their limos to oblivion, remind one of Robert Graves' Epitaph on an Unfortunate Artist:
Purple haze all in my eyes, uhh Dont know if its day or night You got me blowin, blowin my mind Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time? Ooo Help me Ahh, yea-yeah, purple haze, yeah Oh, no, oh Oh, help me Purple haze, tell me, baby, tell me I cant go on like this Purple haze Youre makin me blow my mind...mama Purple haze, n-no, nooo Purple haze, no, its painful, baby
I can dig taking back the streets. This is a link to a website withinformation about turning off the lights for 1 hour one night in MArch.It is a global thing they are doing all around the world. They did itin Sydney last year and in that hour they saved enough energy to take48,000 cars off the roads for 1 hour. Imagine what we can do if all thenations do this. http://www.earthhour.org/
In my arms we shall begin with none of the rocks well There’s no charge In this land right now some are insane a million charge To hell with poverty we’ll get drunk on cheap wine To hell with poverty the check will arrive we’ll turn the Boast again To hell with poverty the check will arrive we’ll turn to Boast again In my arms we shall begin with none of the rocks and There’s no charge In this land right now some are insane a million charge To hell with poverty we’ll get drunk on cheap wine To hell with poverty
I like the chow mein ad in the link - like gang of four is Frankfurt for Maoism or Kung Pow ism. Thats what my ears hear in a field of owl pellets, shredded telephone books or melted cheese blue corn nacho's I guess you can still get traction out of institutional critique - ride the cyclone or give the dog a bone. How many ways to say I love you but not your sins, idolators and iconoclasts gotta meet in the middle but hey diddle diddle its just me n my fiddle, the worlds tiniest, make mine mustard and hold the philosophy I got nothing to say but I seen plenty or empty and one more for the bakers dozen eye of the tiger the eye of the needle didn't change but time will change don;t go changin to please me. Its all so ambiguous unless you talk to the artist, then its a let down because we are all just clowns and the sound of one hand clapping is the sound of an arm whistling through the air towards a phantom
Slice me up a big slab Of that sympathetic cheer If im zapped with radiation They say i'll last another year Line 'em up now To Greet The Sacred Cow My hands are full of protein My arms are made of fire If you're calling me a diplomat I'll be calling you a liar Line 'em up now To Greet The Sacred Cow Line 'em up now To kill the sacred cow
IN THE GREAT OVERWHELMING THE HYPERMEDIA TORRENT FLOW TIDAL AND STREAMING TO THE MIND OF THE ROMANTIC THE BELIEVER THAT ALL CAN BE KNOWN THE BELIEVER THAT KNOWLEDGE IS EVEN ATTAINABLE THAT BELIEVER IN KNOWLEDGE FORSAKES IT FOR EXPERIENCE AND ENTER THE GREAT NOSTALGIA TO THINK THAT EVERYTHING HAS BEEN SUNK AND NOW ITS JUST TIME TO WATCH IT RESURFACE A HOLY REPLAY ONE LAST TIME FOR EVERYONE IS IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE OTHER, FOREVER BUT ESPECIALLY NOW THAT YOU CAN SEE EVERYBODY ENDLESSLY MASS ONLINE PRESENCE DONT TWIST IN AWE OF THE VOLUME TO CHISEL IS NOT TO BE AFRAID OF THE OLD STONE EARTH AND NOW THE FRESHLY ENCODED AIR THE TASK REMAINS ALL OVER AGAIN DIGITALLY EVEN THE LAST INDUSTRIALIST WENT ON SILICON TO CHIP, SORT, DISTILL AND REPRESENT (INSIGHTFULLY)
WOULD YOU LOOK BACK JUST BECAUSE YOU COULD AND WOULD YOU LIVE AGAIN JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN EVERYTHING GOES ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND AND BACK AGAIN, BASTARDIZED WHICH ISN'T BAD OR GOOD AT ALL ITS NATURAL
bradford recycles his life on a stretch, whether it is there to address more than that or not is important, but not paramount. and i think it's safe to say there is a fair bit of history of the medium (searching for ways to generate pictorial space) tangled up inside of it.
In its most advanced sectors, concentrated capitalism is increasingly tending to market “fully equipped” blocks of time, each functioning as a unified commodity combining a variety of other commodities. In the expanding economy of “services” and leisure activities, the payment for these blocks of time is equally unified: “everything’s included,” whether it is a matter of spectacular living environments, touristic pseudotravel, subscriptions to cultural consumption, or even the sale of sociability itself in the form of “exciting conversations” and “meetings with celebrities.” Spectacular commodities of this type, which would obviously never sell were it not for the increasing impoverishment of the realities they parody, just as obviously reflect the modernization of sales techniques by being payable on credit.
It is not known where the satellite will hit. But officials familiar with the situation say about half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft is expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and will scatter debris -- some of it potentially hazardous -- over several hundred miles.
Mark Bradford @
ReplyDeleteSikkema Jenkins & co.
530 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011
Please stay on topic of the work posted. Thanks
Im liking the new work. Loving that silver--is that paint? Foil? let me know.
ReplyDeleteNobody Jones-I can relate to that.
Accrual-my favorite way to connect. Slap it on.
Perhaps we can talk about the Collage show at the NM since he is in that too.
Can you provide a link for that show norush? These works (Bradford's) don't look so hot on screen and I wish I could see them in person.
ReplyDeleteI'm just here to dance
ReplyDeleteWithout knowing the specifics of the technique or whatever I found these to be like torn paper technique - my guess is layers of string are embedded between layers of paper and then torn up to create images. This kind of chance or pre-planning seems packaged to please - Im sure its satisfying. There are a lot of them - too many in the show to focus on just one.
ReplyDeletethe surface isnt that interestign too me - I dunno, seen a lot fo urban decay and i guess I;d ahve to spend time looking at one to see if the michaeangelo spit wall effect (for me it was a rather nice fake marble linoleum backsplash effect) to see if images appear - the thing about agented chaos is that you imagine there must be something more to it.
As far as staying on topic - isn;t that a matter of interpretation? oh but that's what you are implying right? Clever!
The medium IS the message!
Which is to say the mode of expression is also a commentary,
ReplyDeleteLike if this is visionary then can I be visionary too? What are we using as criterion?
Boredom? The avant guard has embraced boredom in the past, and critics have cannonized its artifacts.
What is intereting is that you desire a topical response - just as Karen Kilimnik desires a tropical distance.
A red herring maybe - but not an altogether uninteresting one if you open your mind to the possibilities.
This is where buddhism comes in - and I know thats part of Rirkrits pedagogy, skeptical as I may be of his work to actually "construct" his audience (how do you teach the blind to see?)
Now I'm starting to see noodles. Or worms.
To demonstrate his fourth principle, Tufte showed a 19th-century map of Napoleon's 1812 march into Russia. Drawn by the engineer Charles Minard, the map had a band of varying thickness that traced Napoleon's path, with the march and retreat in different colors. The thickness of the band represented the number of soldiers. On the bottom of the map was a timeline with the corresponding temperature.
ReplyDeleteThe band, which at first is quite thick (representing 422,000 soldiers), gets thinner as Napoleon marches towards Moscow. The retreating band, already considerably narrower at 100,000 soldiers, continues to thin. At one point on the map, it halves in size, representing Napoleon's loss of half his army as they fell into the frozen Berezina River. At the end of the retreat, Napoleon has only 10,000 soldiers left, a fraction of the width of the original band.
Minard manages to portray six dimensions on this two-dimensional paper -- the size of the army, latitude, longitude, direction the army is going, temperature, and date. On a single sheet of paper with nary a paragraph, Minard simply and eloquently tells the history of Napoleon's failed march to take Russia.
I think I prefer julie mehretu - though she's annoyingly arty in her own way. But people dig it because its mappy - thats only natural. Still, I have Google Earth, and in the end thats all I need.
ReplyDeleteone of the finest painters around... i feel for the gestalt and wreck lessness
ReplyDeleteon second thought - mehretu feels overly schematic safe, predetermined and ultimately as empty as living in an airport after midnight - a criticism I could level at this as well - if Kilimnik is psychogeographical in a way (connect the dots in an edited field) then this work is maximal, while giving us an easy found grid.
ReplyDeleteWHat's more interesting than penetrating a safety net?
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ReplyDeletecan someone define chaos - which is a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization - as they see it in the painters mentioned above?
ReplyDeletechaos is not defined as "no order" - there is always order in a bounded system.
ReplyDeleteThe ratio of strange attractors to red herrings is what is at issue. Is there "clarity of vision" ?
Clearly Karen Kilimnik's relative minimalism makes this kind of maximalism seem top heavy by comparison, or rendundant by design.
Is that good? Do the sum of the parts add up to a wholer picute or are we left with a phenomenological snapshot of the world as it is, the thing itself, or a representation? In the end I;d argue that this work is an extension of the environment rather than a representation, as it claims to be. For me this is just another piece of urban detritus. It;s a grim reality, I know, but beauty needn;t be agented, and I find people who fetishize their surroundings are often as not trapped in a web of lies.
But there is blue at the center of the picture - and that signifies a depth, apophenic though it may, in reality, be.
I get the feelign that this is a good artist trapped in a mans mans mans world.
build it and they will clusterfuck"
ReplyDeleteas James Howard Kunst ler would say.
everybody plays the blues
ReplyDeletepropz to all gay black people makin' it in the phuckin 'painting werld question is are his paintings black enough they certainly are topical can;t really deny that
ReplyDeletesomeone said something about siver and shit; if i remember carectly he used aluminum foil for part of that painting and made a hat to; or something
liked that mashup video he did pllayin' baseketball with a thing around him or something.
he shoots!
he scroes!
Reminded me of the El Anatsui show at Shainman, in a mappy, cultural detritus kind of way.
ReplyDeleteThe larger the work the less reliable the reproduction, in my experience. Here, about all you can tell is mappy and either fanatically detailed or impressive scale.
If you can't/won't see the show the double page ad in Art Forum is probably the next best thing - around p 62-3 - not that ads are allowed page numbers of course under The Geneva Convention, but we terrorists have ways...
guess i better get up to the luggage store to see this one
ReplyDeletejulie m is like obama-raised by white people. I like my information mapped more like Mark does. Less like this.
Chaos is bliss.
art, made of advertisment, advertising the deterioration of advertisments to art. the competition exists in the streets made by anynomous renegade pedestrians tearing posters off the walls of subways and worksites. but it isnt competition because of the lack of do-it-yourself art collectors. and that "work" is also pedestrian, even though sometimes haunting and beautiful for its accident.
ReplyDeleteno accident here, these are sophisticated and raw, which i prefer to meretu's sophisticated and calculated.
is a controlled accident an accident?
So what happened to my post? Ok, so I wanted to say to this "my guess is layers of string are embedded between layers of paper and then torn up to create images"(zip) that, yup, he says string's part of the process in Art on Paper mag (Nov-Dec issue)
ReplyDeleteI like its mappyness--it challenges the usual sense of space as asthetic. Chaos takes courage.
my guess is his practice is décollage and collage at the same time. décollage take it away; collage immediately add it right back. almost like a rhythm. a builder and a demolisher put up tear down
ReplyDeleteBob the builder
Can we fix it?
Bob the builder
Yes we can!
Time to get busy.
Such a lot to do!
Building and fixing
'til it's good as new.
Bob and the gang
make a really good sound.
Working all day
till the sun goes down.
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ReplyDeleteAnselm kiefer - when they are big, really really big, you get a sense of their bigness. I like that larger than life ambitious existential quality about them - you definitely don;t get that in a jpg, or even in a magazine ad where its a more crowded house. You have to see them to believe them, and probably you believe them if you are going to go see them - I just don;t knwo where the belief comes from - a moral failing I suppose. as greil marcus say s - Helter Skelter is a call to murder - something I think everyone should take to heart in a sort of "been there done that" kind of way.
ReplyDeleteFunny because I guessed that and then I guessed again when I read the essay today. Its good to know the tinfoil works because otherwise I;d have to buy something - which is to say DIY is the way to go here. I know y'all do - and myself I enjoy thinking about it. But do I want one? No, because I have enough clutter in my life - unlike some peoplel who live in sensory deprivation tanks. Well thats it for hamfisted tales of the obvious for now. Back to the lyrics.
he said I'm sorry baby I'm leaving you tonight
I found someone new he's waitin' in the car outside
Ah honey how could you do it
We swore each other everlasting love
She said well yeah I know but when
We did - there was one thing we weren't
Really thinking of and that's money
Money changes everything
Money, money changes everything
We think we know what we're doin'
That don't mean a thing
It's all in the past now
Money changes everything
They shake your hand and they smile
And they buy you a drink
They say we'll be your friends
We'll stick with you till the end
Ah but everybody's only
Looking out for themselves
And you say well who can you trust
I'll tell you it's just
Nobody else's money
Money changes everything
Money changes everything
We think we know what we're doin'
We don't pull the strings
It's all in the past now
Money changes everything
Money changes everything
Money changes everything
We think we know what we're doing
We don't know a thing
It's all in the past now
Money changes everything
Money changes everything
Money changes everything
New wave purists sniffed when Cyndi Lauper's version of the Brains' 1980 underground hit "Money Changes Everything" went top 10, but Lauper's version succeeded where the Atlanta new wavers' original failed. The arrangement, courtesy of producer Rick Chertoff and featuring melodica player Rob Hyman (soon to become a temporary star as one-half of the lead duo in Philadelphia's Hooters), is brighter, sharper and much more commercial than the Brains' rather weedy, comparatively lo-fi and dullish take on their own song. More to the point, Lauper wisely takes the victim's viewpoint in the song, dulling the arrogance of Tom Gray's original opening lines, in which he's the one ditching a longtime love in pursuit of wealth and power.
ReplyDeleteMARK BRADFORD, mixed media
ReplyDeleteAngeleno artists are popping up all over Chelsea, and they’re certainly well represented in this Biennial. Mark Bradford makes collaged Mondrian-esque grids from strips of posters he picks up on the streets of South L.A.—paying homage to the sprawl of his city and the cacophony of ours. “I’m drawn to collage because it’s the immediate juxtaposition of activity. In the city, I have that same feeling—Nigerian business next to Korean business next to Jewish business,” says the 44-year-old CalArts graduate, who’s been in several shows at the Studio Museum in Harlem and had solos at Sikkema Jenkins. Studio Museum curator Christine Y. Kim praises his “unapologetic hybridization of work, play, and art. He’s discussed having been a hairdresser in South Central, using the same backdrops and aesthetic languages as that subculture—yet it complements his painting.”
mondrian-esque? thats crazy talk. all grids are not equal. all grids are not even grids
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know what the vernacular of South Central LA hair dressers is? Is it derived from a kind of preppie Kid and Play sort fo dealio or more of a Stand and Deliver kind of bootstrap protocol? Highly ammphibious mathicity if you ask me.
ReplyDeleteI like the cat o nine tails myself -= gives me more of a medieval flavor.
johnny reb's fundamental "plausible deniability" - case in point: not hip but a slam dunk if you think doubletalk 24-7 It's an illness - pillow talk doesnt make you smart - thats my blanket critique - what does matter is did you do your research.
Is it real or is it a tape loop?
as far as the grid can see - Mondrian had shifts in scale or perspective - which is like multiple ground planes or vanishing points, so either you burned it to the ground or you got tied up in the traffic of it all.
I think its called the Kansas City Shuffle - not unusual I'd say - you either get the limo or you show up in the tropics with the money as planned - like Basquiat and his crown. Was he an uncle tom in the briar patch? If you want to destroy your eighties sweater, spin the smog into a cotton candy swirl girl! Cause and effect, we are all star stuff, millions and billions of atoms, some of them created more equal than others, some of them wnat to be you, some of them want to be used by you, and some of them are getting signing bonuses.
It all hinges on your track record Try to be touched for the fi9rst time every time, its more lucrative. or at least less jaded and easier to work with.
For instance, in Down and Out, Orwell wanted his readers to see how precarious a working man's existence was under laissez-faire capitalism. So after someone broke into his cheap Paris hotel room and stole his money and clothes, he found himself destitute, unemployable and quickly reduced to starvation. “Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition”, he wrote. “It is as though one had been turned into a jellyfish.”
what you got?
I can see how the raised ridges structure a lot of the collected posters etc, have a sort of vein-like organization to them, which I take as a kind of mapping device, but then I wonder what drives or determines that?
ReplyDeleteI mean even if you allow that Bradford finds string, various cord and whatever, the same way he finds graphics stuff and that it’s a slow accretion, what decides on this kind of linked, even, organic structure? It’s actually the most interesting part - from what I can see in repros - to most of them, and it’s not surprising a lot of the comments are directed to the technique.
Yeah it’s obviously adjusted and built as he goes along, as IDB notes, and creates borders for the tear-offs, over-painting, etc, so the shape to some extent responds to the graphics its laid on, those laid over it. And in as much as the graphics, colors etc reflect an urban environment, there’s the expectation that this structure derives from it in some way as well. But I can’t see how, and it sort of nags at me, weakens them a little.
I have the same problem with ‘automatic’ drawing – I’m always suspicious of the circumstances for so-called ‘automatic’ drawing. I mean it’s always ‘automatic’ within certain nominated parameters, so never entirely automatic. And here those little ridges are so consistent in length and width, curves and angles, they must come from somewhere, but I’m not convinced they really belong with the material they organize.
You know, when somebody's thrown a bucket of cold water on you, and he's beating you with a blackjack, and the blood is flying, it helps if the person wielding the blackjack is someone you trust," Bacon told Cosmopolitan's Chase. "It lets you fly.
ReplyDeleteBefore this year’s football season kicked off, naysayers claimed Stanford lacked explosive playmakers at skill positions and predicted the Cardinal would finish dead last in the conference. After star 6-foot-7 wide receiver Evan Moore injured his hip the first game of the season, the pessimists only doubled in volume. Stanford’s next opponent was UC-Davis, and soon after that meltdown, many national media agreed Stanford football had no shot at competing in the Pacific-10 Conference, let alone winning a game. Naysayers, meet Mark Bradford.
ReplyDeleteYou mean like twombly? Asemic writing? You know me, arithamaticulous. Its ridiculous. You gotta jump down turn around and pick up the ball, jump down turn around and say heeeeeeey girfriend! and do your best mugwump with hair in curlers.
ReplyDeleteJump down, turn around, and pick up the games.
ReplyDeleteJump down, turn around, and put the games away.
Everybody's working to pick up the games.
Everybody's working to put the games away.
Work standing up! Work sitting down!
Work on your knees with the games all around!
Work standing up! Work sitting down!
Putting the games away.
Jump down, turn around, and pick up the blocks.
Jump down, turn around, and put the blocks away.
Everybody's working to pick up the blocks.
Everybody's working to put the blocks away.
Work standing up! Work sitting down!
Work on your knees with the blocks all around!
Work standing up! Work sitting down!
Putting the blocks away.
Jump down, turn around, and pick up the books.
Jump down, turn around, and put the books away.
Everybody's working to pick up the books.
Everybody's working to put the books away.
Work standing up! Work sitting down!
Work on your knees with the books all around!
Work standing up! Work sitting down!
Putting the books away.
Typically we tend to walk on the same side of the street for so long, and then it will dawn on us to cross over and walk on the other side, despite the destination being the same, or so we think!
ReplyDeleteThe artist seemed to enjoy his opening as seen in newarttv. can we put some new intro music to that? is that possible? DYAF
I got a good vibe off the pegs.
automatic drawing
ReplyDelete--spontainaity--its all relative cap. when you figure that one out--by trying it I might add, going as far into it as you can--then you can come out like camp, like s&m, like south central, a little bit michaux, a little bit rock n roll.
Smile--LA flows like a jherri curl, been there?
talkin' about obvious im goin' out a limb here and sayin' mark bradferd is what decides on this fukin' linked even organic structure and stuff
ReplyDeletemy guess is he wanted to be an archaologist when he was a child and shit and never kknew about michel Foucault bell hooks:cOrnel west/or Henry louis gates,jr
I been there...
Done that
You got guns? we got guns...
Yo, I got straps, we got straps...
A million muthafuckas on the planet Earth
Talk that hard bullshit
'Cause it's all they worth...
OK so let’s try turning it around, and say it’s not about South Central or LA or urban fliers etc. That’s a misconception, also known as a press release. It’s not even strictly about collection or accumulation. It’s only about those things incidentally, unless they’re handing out silver paint at street corners as well. Actually it’s about using the string to structure a picture; it’s about that little ridge, just over 2-D and not quite ready to go 3.
ReplyDeleteThe string is the thing.
It’s about taking the high ground and corralling the rest, getting in between the sheets and gluing, avoiding the knots! There’s only splits and joins in this scene. It will get papered over, painted over, torn away and started again. It’s about making yourself attachable and detachable, providing the structure, a framework, your place or mine, not in public, discreetly, drawing the line, holding the ridge - rigidly. Being just a little bit above it all and then skating away, know what I mean?. Moving on, picking up tips, building a network, revising the list, scrubbing the troublemakers, making room, seeing the pattern, the distribution of… well, blacks. Yeah and? Uh… silvers?
2-D or not 2-D that is the P.
So he’s making out and making up the thread, throwing out a line and stringing them along. What else can he do? Sort them by shape, color, picture or text, keep just enough to show who does the organizing and how. A close brush with color does every picture good, everyone knows that. Sets the story ‘straight’, right? Who does the tying together of all the loose threads, knitting them into one big artsy craftsy scene? You will need more than a map to get there. You will need a guide. I said guide. Weaving a tale told at the crossroads, waving a tail held by a fool, full of gold and glory signifying something you will not like to admit to yourself.
Just your typical, non-topical
ReplyDeleteFlex the optical illusion weak metaphoric style you be usin
I check one-two's and who's in the house
Like shit your lyrics ooze out ya mouth
Whattyou think this is?
I wanna see your face, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black
Yeah!
Hoover Institute research fellow Peter Schweizer wrote in his book Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy that West lives in a mostly white neighborhood and earns over $300,000 per year as a professor.
ReplyDeleteMirror mirror on the wall,
Shovel chestnuts in my path
Please keep on up with the nuts
So I don't get in aftermath
But if I do I'll calmly punch them
In the fourth day of July
'Cause they tried to mess with
Third degree, that's me myself and I
It's just me myself and I
It's just me myself and I
It's just me myself and I
It's just me myself and I
And then there was... LABRADFORD!
ReplyDeleteoh snap.
ReplyDeletei guess theres the whole art histtorical picture plane narrative. never get tired of that. wher eis the picture/ is it in your head or ont he box? Under a can or in a box? Is art a philosophical question that has always already been answered a priori, the horns cut from the bull, the bowels eviscerated, the fleece flung on the tree and goldleaved?
That shit Really captures the imagination, like following the thread of a tampon into the poetic consciousness of the art matrix. Tampons are like canvases if you think about it. Really drives the conversation forward in new and exciting ways.
Positiverly Jungian. WHitmanesque. Whatever. you go. I'll be a long in a bit - jsut gotta make sure the plastic room is taped and ready so the carpets dont get stained with DNA. Yep, things get messy when the y clearly told me in multiple provocation messages to murder death kill.
I talk all hard and shit, but you know its just marketing. I could use some health care and a back massage. Does that weaken my brand? Man made midas and couldnt put him back in the box, so its all gonna be black all the time, like during the blitz.
No one in here but us ghosts Ham.
ReplyDeleteA real Cinderella story
ReplyDeleteIn overjustification, the personal beliefs and attitudes of the person do not change because they have a good external reason for their actions. The children threatened with the severe punishment had a good external reasoning for not playing with the toy because they knew that they would be badly punished for it. However, they still wanted the toy, so once the punishment was removed they were more likely to play with it. Conversely, the children who would get the moderate punishment displayed insufficient justification because they had to justify to themselves why they did not want to play with the toy since the external motivator, the degree of punishment, was not strong enough by itself. As a result, they convinced themselves that the toy was not worth playing with, which is why even when the punishment was removed they still did not play with the toy.
The plot of the first season centers on the ongoing struggles between police units and drug-dealing gangs on the west side of the city, and is told from both points of view. Subsequent seasons have focused on other facets of the city. The large cast consists mainly of character actors who are little known for their other roles. Simon has said that despite its presentation as a crime drama, the show is "really about the American city, and about how we live together. It's about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how…whether you're a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you've committed to."[1]
ReplyDeleteyou guys make it sound much more boring than it is
ReplyDeleteanyway, its about the rhythm and the weave--
ReplyDeleteas the artist creates art, he creates himself. The plant becomes the seed becomes the plant becomes the seed which extends beyond the borders of self. This creation/ self-creation is an artist's way of Being in the face of the seemingly meaningless cycle of repetition which is process. Because as a species we are unable to accept process, we create metaphors. By saying something is something else, we are able to endure. This is not elucidation. It is survival.
ReplyDeleteWe define our repetitive behavior episodically, creating beginnings and endings - an infinitely layered palimpsest that denies process and creates the illusion of linearity. Life beyond death. Escape. Reward. A plant worth more than the sum of its seeds. Ego. Disconnection.
mapping APIs and map mashups are the definitive form of mashup platform and application
This is not the equivalent of one of those magnetic "poetry kits," you know the ones you buy at a stationery store, a mess of words so you can assemble funny poems on your refrigerator door.
ReplyDeletePeople were talking with machines, regularly and familiarly. Making funny phone messages, personalizing the machine of forward motion that had arrived in their homes. There was no way back. The machine was a part of life, but only when everyone learned to personalize it. Poetry in Translation uses Googles Automatic Translation service to translate sentences from English to German, then to French and then back to German again with sometimes funny results.
It is the feeling of sleepwalking. Of others living life around you, keeping their fists tightly wound around whatever dollars they can muster, caring little more than nothing about those around you. We cannot sleepwalk. We cannot just survive, anything goes. We can take control of our lives, we can quit sleepwalking, we can say - right now, these are our lives, it is time to start living it. It is time to not second guess, to move forward, to make mistakes if we have to, but to do it with a greater good in mind.
Let us start a revolution. Let us start a revolution that is not just about basketball shoes, or official licensed merchandise. I am prepared to die for something. I am prepared to live for our cause. The cause is caring about each other. The secret to this job is personal relationships. Look straight at the camera. At the camera. And slowly. With passion. Straight at the camera. And in your eyes there's... passion. Got it?
Does Cheyenne Westphal sound like an alias to you?
ReplyDeleteOh good closeuup of the silver surfer by the way -
http://www.newmuseum.org/assets/images/exhibitions/00000005/bradford.jpg
Nice.
ReplyDeleteBradford (MB) +1
ReplyDeleteJulie M (JM) -
Fahlstrom (OF) +3
Rauschenberg (RR) +5.5 (concept and form, maping factor notwithstanding)
sex appeal (SA) +3
craft and trickery (CAT) +2
stand alone quotient (SAQ) -2
= +3 derived in large part from SA
________
Mapping an experience < having an experience
*furthermore*
experiencing the mapped experience of another < (x 2) experiencing
______
Overall, they strike me as overly fetishized versions of what the viewer has available to digest on their own terms - handsome objects that aren't able to transcend the flaccid concepts outlined in the "press release" (South Central LA, Urban folk, etc).
Cap, I'm with you on the networked flowing nature of the line. Dipping above and below the surface, weaving an intricate web and arriving at an encapsulated journey. My question is: if its all about the rhythm, why not invent a primary vocabulary that reinforces it instead of stalling it by alluding to the graffitied wall ten feet from the gallery entrance? Its like putting really cheesy lyrics over an amazingly hypnotic beat.
Then again, I haven't seen them in person, so maybe the bit of trickery with the string will really get me past my hangups.
Zip: I was with your mission statement for the earnest revolution up till its tragically ironic end. I was left feeling used and empty.
Should have seen it coming.
or anywhere else for that matter
By the Gil Dread Scott Heroin!
ReplyDeletegoodbye 1974?
ReplyDeleteBradford's work is a picture of what your brainspace looks like, soaked and drenched in this mediasphere after all this time. Each instance where the ad gets inside the real estate of your mind they have achieved their goal. It doesn't matter to them that it might just be brain goo in there, as long as they get in and buy a piece of that precious consumer land. Good old cognition, even when it's not for sale you can still buy some. It's always on sale, eyes and ears unite. Whilst most adbusters cry about it, and Sao Paolo bans it, it's always nice for someone to come along and say hey, people, let's tribute the mess and find its charm some, his work looks good and thats why he is where he is. He's a good artist. (there are others who also do the poster scrape thing, in fact there are heaps, but none do it as well as this show). Maybe it's the super scale. Ideas of maximalism are abound/in vogue.
ReplyDeleteFragments make you and me
Fragmented is reality
(reprise)
Someone order cheesy lyrics?
ReplyDeleteheavyweight
ReplyDeleteI can’t really see Mehretu or Fahlström in Bradford. One’s too techno the other too cartoony. The older, craftier stuff, like - http://sikkemajenkinsco.com/images/artists/markbradford/MB-DevilBeating2003.html
ReplyDeletemade me think of El Anatsui (plus the fact that he’s showing). But then there’s that recycled/third world/village industry thing that seems almost the opposite of conspicuous wastage/rip-off/sprawling excess that is just so first world.
Although stand back far enough and there is this glittering open field/loose decorative thing going on between them.
The torn poster stuff I think of mostly is Mimmo Rotella or Jacques de la Villeglé but torn posters don’t really seem foremost about this stuff now. The tearing is structured around the string/lines which don’t actually have much to do with graffiti or street debris so I don’t see the salvaged material as some glib street cred.
TP asks ’Why not invent a primary vocabulary that reinforces it (the string lines) instead of stalling it by alluding to the graffitied wall ten feet from the gallery entrance?
I think the collected material does reinforce the linear framework’s function – defines it actually. All he’s taking from ripped off posters etc is very particular qualities of colour, shape or edge, occasionally text and picture – so to say this is a cliché sample of billboards or flyers is to then ask (as I did)- well what decides that line structure, which governs the paste-ons/rip-offs? It’s not really chaotic or random. Plus there is a lot of painting going on as well as pasting. I think any ‘primary vocabulary’ is firstly saying that the framework accepts both – anything really, as long as it’s flat enough and re-workable.
He could and probably does overlay them with other kinds of paper – maybe other materials (?) – but whatever is going on is as likely coming off in the same fashion, partly, occasionally. The question I have is - does this make the networking/mapping lines anything more than just a loose or informal pattern? Is that enough?
Like I say, stand back a ways and I start thinking about folk art or craft.
The Rauschenberg tip is interesting – I get a bit of that from some of Mark’s photos, but Mark is so low tech, I don’t see Rausch as a close influence. If people find Bradford’s work sort of handsome but undemanding, it’s because the string structure probably isn’t doing enough yet – there are a lot more options there – that may still be coming.
Just the gap between the 2003-5 stuff and this show indicates he’s trying.
Mark Bradford’s abstractions unite high art and popular culture as unorthodox tableaux of unequivocal beauty. Working in both paint and collage, Bradford incorporates elements from his daily life into his canvases: remnants of found posters and billboards, graffitied stencils and logos, and hairdresser’s permanent endpapers he’s collected from his other profession as a stylist. In The Devil is Beating His Wife, Bradford consolidates all these materials into a pixelised eruption of cultural cross-referencing. Built up on plywood in sensuous layers ranging from silky and skin-like to oily and singed, Bradford offers abstraction with an urban flair that’s explosively contemporary.
ReplyDelete-2003 saatchi
does it count that usually they are about the size of a billboard in the end?
ReplyDeleteloose or informal pattern, being enough, if it referred to a statistical or cartographic reality would it be... impossible to gauge, but possibly.
ReplyDeletemake up your own mine
ReplyDeleteThat's not really Saatchi talking there though, is it?
ReplyDeleteIt's probably someone like Pat Ellis.
Being billboard size I think counts in as much as it allows his string/line structure greater intricacy. For the most part those lines seem of a given width, the pictures have to get big to get complex linearly. There is a smaller work on that NR link, (luggage store) which sort of confirms that they need the room, don’t deal in a just a few elements so well.
ReplyDeleteI like your point about hypothetical correspondences though Webthing!
Who knows what’s really there for the statistician or mathematician? We scan these things for no more than mappiness, a network or chart of some kind – could be neural networks, organized crime or immigrant distribution – or maybe all! But basically we know at a glance whether it works as that or not. Yeah in that way, it’s over in a glimpse. The rest is trying to explain it.
Incidentally, can anyone tell me how they’re fixed to the wall? They don’t seem to be mounted on anything.
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ReplyDeletethird world is happening in the first world--luckily for our souls.
ReplyDeleteanyway the guys a flaneur. But he picks stuff up and brings it back to his studio--like a raymond saunders or betty saar--and just starts pieccing it together, weaving it together.
Challenging? Are u kidding:
Another scholar, Eli Leon, expands upon this research, looking for significant African influence on American quilts. Drawing upon the history and prevalence of improvisational patchwork in Africa, he suggests that African slaves in the U. S. and England may have been more familiar with patchwork and improvisation than their masters. African artisans may have drawn upon this knowledge to develop many of the quilt patterns, which could have been noticed and adopted by European-American quilters (Leon 59-61). Leon cites the following characteristics of "Afro-traditional" quilts: "Structural flexibility, improvisation, approximation, technical accommodation for off-sized pieces, use of string pattern, strip construction, allowance of accidentals, multiple patterning, complex alternation, restructuring, use of leftover patchwork, and patchwork on both sides of the quilt"
on mappiness, i've been watching this site grow in much the same way as the information it seeks to represent.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah saatchi didn't say that, he would have said it in about 3 words.
Hmmmm, (scratching on cheqbook) well, ok. (purchasing advisor scuffles away)
I will definitely concede the stylistic differences between bradford, mehretu and fahlstrom.
ReplyDeleteThe comparison was meant to point to the structural similarities in the mapping of experiences by each artist. I've never been a julie mehretu fan, I find the work too rigid and cold in most cases to engage. Which is why, in my mind, Bradford wins that battle every time. Although I admit Mehretu is very relevant to contemporary dialogue and produces intelligently executed work.
I invoked Fahlstrom as a counter to Bradford's appropriated "primary vocabulary". Fahlstrom's pictures are similar to Bradford in that they lend themselves to the mapped experience scheme. The difference to me is that Fahlstrom's vocabulary is based more in personal invention (stylistic differences notwithstanding, i.e. cartoon-y) and thus, far more evocative than tired appropriations.
Seeing that older image definitely helps to sort out where Bradford's magic happens - in the history, xyz structure and "soft" grid as opposed to some of the things I'm harping on.
My previous point is essentially that a really rich stage - seen in both the new and old work - is undermined by the insertion of appropriated and/or overused signifiers.
Maybe he's still searching for the appropriate punctuation to compliment the powerful underlying structures. Or maybe I'm crazy, and shredded posters are the perfect fit. Something any painter can insert to solve that nagging formal issue. A little collaged text here, some spray can colors here, and done!
I don't know, I feel like its a tired crutch.
The synopsis of a brainspace drenched in media residue with traces of commerce in the nooks and crannies is apt, but frankly too easy. We all know the media pollutes our minds. The question should be How do we move past that? not How can we remind ourselves of it at every turn? Thats the media's job.
At the end of the day, they're exiting pictures.
You cant MOVE PAST what's still here -- unless yr delusional. Or visionary, and if you're visionary--prove it Buckminster. Some people make something with nothing. That is magic bro. That is everyday magic.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThat is magic, the beauty of the 2D picture. Something out of nothing. Meaning you don't have to rely on whats already there to stand in for a genuine moment.
ReplyDeleteThat is magic, the beauty of the 2D picture. Something out of nothing. Meaning you don't have to rely on whats already there to stand in for a genuine moment.
ReplyDelete“It’s the skulls isn’t it? You’re looking at the skulls… yeah sometimes he can over-do it.”
ReplyDeletetightpants, granted we all know about saturation of adland and resultant media braingoo, but how many of us also know it can be beautiful when brought to the contemplative? cut up and muted especially for us, the meditative (for let's not deny the role of painting in it's positively reflective virtue). and ye, you're right, it's not for the first time (but nothing is) but only in a new manner. i certainly haven't seen shit quite like this elsewhere. hitting the right notes for the ruminative, it's like a light glowing in the muck for somebody strikes a match (unless there's methane in dem piles...) but i hear you all, in all your corners, a tumblin'.
ReplyDeletetightpants said...
ReplyDeleteThat is magic, the beauty of the 2D picture. Something out of nothing. Meaning you don't have to rely on whats already there to stand in for a genuine moment.
31/1/08 9:10 PM
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ReplyDeleteWhat's genuine beauty?
ReplyDeleteMeaning out of nothing.
That is the magic, of the moment.
If You don't have 2D
To rely on.
Something already there
To stand in for a picture.
Wabisabi
I see the linear progression of history, and I want to situate myself at the end of the ossified bone of Walter Benjamin's hackneyed age of reproduction.
ReplyDeleteAnslem kiefer had his 15 seconds of solitude, they seem to say, but instead of the straw or lead or dirt in alchemical poetry, let me use the alchemy of the streets to keep it real, playing cards in nurse ratchets warhol ward.
So what that says to me, tuning into those voices, is that this artist has proceeded from a to b to c but like many academics or allies, hasn't quite given up the idea that art has to follow some historical thread to be accepted, to be good, to be likeable.
THe axis of that thought, while practical (jump through the hoop, get the biscuit) is logical though hardly visionary.
And he does so but what if you are driving a pinto, and the other guy has a ferrari, do you take the road less travelled and therefore find an alternate to modernism or postmodernism, off road even, into the night, chasing the moon, which is always already floating ahead of you on the boulevard of broken dreams or at least insomnia, but not broken because you are flying along with the radio on, radio on, 10,000 times an hour, 60 times a second, 12 to a carton one to a customer half mad with the headlights off and no map but the stars Rootless - karn kilimnik or kunta kinte, children of the corn.
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ReplyDeletethen you are romantic... (magic is THE place)
ReplyDeleteHey now, hey now
ReplyDeleteDont dream its over
Hey now, hey now
When the world comes in
They come, they come
To build a wall between us
Dont ever let them win
I've been digging the cracks in the blacktop since 1970. No reason to stop now.
you complete me
ReplyDeleteAny suggestions for the next post?
ReplyDeleteBecause all the works are so kind of epic and intense, I have to agree with Zip about overload in the show. After about three or four of these I’m exhausted. Ready for something simpler, sparser.
ReplyDeleteyou had me at "screaming bloody mess"
ReplyDeletespare a thought for ol' twinkle toes...
ReplyDeleteThis guy seems like someone I would like to know.But i dunno about the work-i just see a dry clump.of accumulation.Maybe in the 60's it would have flown,has some fiber art thing -amperplexed at lack of black artists,esp. males,though verbally,a strong ,nay,predominant presence-clever,conceptual,fluid.Unlike white art critics,who anesthetize one.Might I add that I was just turned down for a job at an animal shelter for a shit job,where I was informed about "one of the faucets"of the job....by a white butch...sheesh
ReplyDeleteoverqualified. Roll it around on your toungue like a very fine wine.
ReplyDeleteI wear my sense of entitlement like a red badge of courage.
I prefer spigots to planar faces.
in an eliptical sort of where's the flying spaghetti monster kind of way.
* The out-of work-desperate-for-any-job applicant. This job-seeker failed to explain why someone who worked at this level years ago would be again applying for a position at this lower level -- and is seen as someone who leave as soon as s/he got a better offer.
ReplyDelete* The totally incompetent applicant. This job-seeker had worked at the same level for more years than anyone should without giving a reason why s/he never has sought a promotion - and is seen as a liability.
* The too-full-of-myself applicant. This job-seeker, often older than the hiring manager, comes off as having way too many years of experience -- and sounding as though s/he was responsible for every major accomplishment in the field.
* The way-too-expensive-fool applicant. This job-seeker was currently earning a significant amount more than the very top of our salary range and was seen as someone completely out of touch with reality.
* The been-there, done-that applicant. This job-seeker passed this level years ago, and for whatever reasons wishes to return to that level - but without explanation and could be perceived as washed-up, burnt-out, and in the worst cases, too old.
He was at a task. He was like a carpenter who has made many boxes, making still another box, only there was furious haste in his movements. He, in his thoughts, was careering off in other places, even as the carpenter who as he works whistles and thinks of his friend or his enemy, his home or a saloon. And these jolted dreams were never perfect to him afterward, but remained a mass of blurred shapes.
ReplyDeletePresently he began to feel the effects of the war atmosphere--a blistering sweat, a sensation that his eyeballs were about to crack like hot stones. A burning roar filled his ears.
Following this came a red rage. He developed the acute exasperation of a pestered animal, a well-meaning cow worried by dogs. He had a mad feeling against his rifle, which could only be used against one life at a time. He wished to rush forward and strangle with his fingers. He craved a power that would enable him to make a world-sweeping gesture and brush all back. His impotency appeared to him, and made his rage into that of a driven beast.
Buried in the smoke of many rifles his anger was directed not so much against the men whom he knew were rushing toward him as against the swirling battle phantoms which were choking him, stuffing their smoke robes down his parched throat. He fought frantically for respite for his senses, for air, as a babe being smothered attacks the deadly blankets.
There was a blare of heated rage mingled with a certain expression of intentness on all faces. Many of the men were making low-toned noises with their mouths, and these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric song that went as an undercurrent of sound, strange and chantlike with the resounding chords of the war march. The man at the youth's elbow was babbling. In it there was something soft and tender like the monologue of a babe. The tall soldier was swearing in a loud voice. From his lips came a black procession of curious oaths. Of a sudden another broke out in a querulous way like a man who has mislaid his hat. "Well, why don't they support us? Why don't they send supports? Do they think--"
The youth in his battle sleep heard this as one who dozes hears.
For those of you interested, there’s a brief close-up view of Mark Bradford’s “Helter Skelter” at the New Museum’s “Unmonumental” show. Fast forward to about 8:59 and use the full-screen mode, http://blip.tv/file/642679
ReplyDeleteCheck it out, thanks, JK
No visible means of support and you have not seen nuthin yet
ReplyDeleteEverythings stuck together
I dont know what you expect starring into the tv set
Fighting fire with fire
And you don't stop
yes!
ReplyDeleterip the wiring out of the walls like Jesus, sun!
ReplyDeletewalk on down the hall
the junk man delivers
buy booze and dope
and isotopes
when the wire is all torn up
Take a sip from the bitter cup.
Reap the whirlwind
Everyone dies in the end
And so it goes.
Wired to blow
by blow
Be yourself by yourself and no one else
A lesson learned in life.
facets faucets bitch butch
ReplyDeleteoverload you must be joking
the point is that the structure comes out of the materials
the strings in the piece I posted seem to be from a mop, as cap said one length and thickness. anybody around here ever used a mop? rarely im sure
The man has a background as a service worker. Its not about be yourself by yourself--so far from it. so fucking far from it.
propz! to all peoples making videos and stuff puttin' em on you toobe and ford mark brad is a dam good collageologist
ReplyDeleteFifteen years old picking out the same old clothes
While these posters are wallpaper for those with the same goal She'll try out on on the day after today
And she dreams of the 5k The calendar's set stone
Now cracked in half Dwyer said you look talented to me Join the team and get up at five with babes in briefs Candy bars, metals, trophies and stressful days Still she dreams, dreams of 5k
Dwyer asked, "why did you give up on me?"
"I've got tthese dreams and no idea what I want to be" Different place fast turn over has gone away
But still she dreams of 5k The calendar was set in stone Now cracked in half but not unknown
Records broke yesterday If only there was still a 5k
We fuckin' rollin' with no controllin', them bolts ain't holdin'
ReplyDeleteTake you higher, rollin' on wires, till time expires
Swinging corners, so kids are goners, you hangin' on-ers
Duck them tunnels, they shrink like funnels..Get your forhead pummeled
We upside down you, then round and round you, your evil found you
Let's go faster, it's sheer disaster, while spinnin' backwards
Jagged edges, no kind of ledges, with broken wedges
It's the largest, fastest, steepest, deepest, tallest, all this and more
So he's not just mappy - sometimes he's moppy.
ReplyDeleteArt is whatever you can get away with - like if you had half a rosetta stone you'd realize that there is no universal language, asemic, or anemic, you go bulimic. We know anybody around here ever used a mop? rarely i'm sure but I used one for a cure for the linoleum, like napoleon i got the bullion from scullion when I was younger but I'm so much older than that now. I counted artifacts shooting prices with devices, isnt it nice fronting the merch? I went to college now I can make mops for moss, like kate I know hair cuts - you can get a flat top, high and tight, mullet and buzz cut, klutes for 5 kilometers, trick or treaters!
ReplyDeletePower sprayers are the bomb and no friggin mop bucket.
ReplyDeletedont shed on me
i dont know that michael showwwhatever but people who laugh at their own jokes are not cool
ReplyDeletebut yes i was thinking of chris martins sandwhich paintings and thinking about how great it is when the structure comes from the materials. i think u can see that on james k's video of CM.
michael showwhatever is doing a fundraiser tonight for the obomaton, or whatever.
ReplyDeleteI laugh at my own jokes all the time, but not always out loud - that takes a certain element of surprise.
LSD is unsafe at any speed.
somebody today said obama is the first black kennedy. im too bitter to vote for him. im voting wit my ovaries.
ReplyDeletemulti-ball!!!!!
ReplyDeleteHello. I liked your work. You have a very visual style explosive, full of colour, intense sensitivity and bill admirably. I am Chilean and illustrator passed here and I was fascinated with your work. Congratulations! If you want to know something of mine, you are cordially invited to my personal blog ...
ReplyDeletewww.iggiart.blogspot.com
I was crossing the field -- that is all --
ReplyDeletelonging for nothing more than a color,
when I found the owl's pellet
coiled in the grass.
Beneath the glistening veil of mucus,
a mass of conflicting ingredients:
squirrel fur, rabbit hip,
feather of flicker and jay.
Farther in, I came upon crow quills
splintered and wrapped into balls,
tidy parcels of polished bone,
a frog's spotted fingers.
It would almost be better to be young again,
the multiple longings
obscuring any need for detail,
but the ripening pellet
demands exploration:
pelt and stuffing enough to knit nothing,
remnant of mole-tail, extruded ear,
the skull not yet skilled
at dodging or distance,
a pulsating grub embedded in beak.
It is never too late for rhapsody.
A kiss says nothing compared to this.
Joined hands? Sweat on the belly?
Lips, genitals -- all of them edible.
Where inside does the owl assemble
these bundles of bone and fur?
How wide must she open her throat
to disgorge them?
Anyone can capture the fur standing on end
as small claws slip away from the glassy earth.
Anyone can feed on the instant of pleasure
that makes an animal sweet and defenseless.
No one but the owl makes use of every scrap,
licking beauty back into the coarse remains
before delivering them here so openly
at the feet of anyone crossing.
apparently no lover ever ate her up. too bad for her
ReplyDeleteI cried with joy when I voted for Hillary this morning, surprising me, but not. I look forward to the Red Queen getting down to business. Hope is not an option.
anyway yr poem makes it sound like jeff dahmer would be the best boyfriend ever.
ReplyDeleteEverything a lie. Everything you hear, everything you see. So much to spew out. They just keep coming, one after another. You're in a box. A moving box. They want you dead, or in their lie... There's only one thing a man can do - find something that's his, and make an island for himself. If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack; a glance from your eyes, and my life will be yours.
Yeah, when I was a kid I used to want to be a detective all the time because I used to watch all the detective shows on TV. When I was a kid they used to show these movies with Boston Blacki and he always had a woman with him. And I wanted to be a wife of a detective or be a detective, so I always watching detective stories. I'm always looking because I never know what might come up. Or how I could help. I like to help in situations like that. I really do. It's always happening to me, everywhere I go, you know, lot of times there's killing or anything, even around my house. Wherever. And I'm always looking or getting involved, you know, find out who did it, or what's going on. I listen to people. And I'm always trying to decide who's lying or who killed who before the police do. See if I can beat them. Yeah.
ReplyDeleteThere was a bunch of roadies
ReplyDeleteAnd this here is their story
A scurvy bunch of evil twits
Who never say they're sorry
They've traveled cross the nations
Fuckin' paid vacations
We love the schism that they make
They're here for the duration
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
There was fuck all else to do
The captains name is Rick
Whose "Bozo-do" is slick
He really thinks he knows it all
He's just a Jersey hick
Wanking, cranking, Georgie
He always finds an orgy
He rubs his balls and picks his nose
He's horny Georgie porgie
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
There was fuck all else to do
The kind of sleaze is Ring
Polaroid's his thing
He whipped it out, her teeth fell out
And now it's in a sling
From LA we have Troy
His fetish is Playboy
A smelly trout, he'll eat it out
Go wash your hands you're M.O.I.
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
There was fuck all else to do
John Tempesta is The Joker
The Adams apple choker
Sandra Bernhard is his twin
He'd probably even poke her
The B-boy was John Rooney
He was a fuckin' loony
He does a rap, he thinks he's black
He's soft like Gerry Cooney
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
There was fuck all else to do
Yo my name is Bill
Dur, bouncing is my skill, duh,
Smoke ten packs and use my plaque
Duh, with my breath I'll kill
Thursby is the lard ass
The monitors are his task
The sound they made when the band played
Was like Ed Trunk with bad gas
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
There was fuck all else to do
The photobug is Ambo
He'll fill up any hairy hole
We'll blindfold you with dental floss
You burnt out fuckin' bimbo
The bottom line is Z
Oh please don't sit on me
Go wipe your hemorrhoid ridden butt
You 1960's hippie!
Q: You’re known as a very contentious person. To look back at your biography is to see a series of disputes with people.
ReplyDeleteA: I don’t tolerate liars. When somebody lies to me, that’s really, like, just unbearable. But there’s a definite reason for that, and that’s the meningitis I had as a child. I came out of a coma. I was in a coma for four months. I didn’t even know who I was for five years after that. Because your memory is just, you know, not there. It takes time to come back. And so I would be totally believing everything everybody told me, and so when I found out that half of those things were lies, it really disturbed me, because I was dependent on the truth. And that’s stuck with me throughout my life. Even now, I haven’t mellowed in that respect. I don’t like people lying to me, not even about the smallest things. I find it inexcusable..
Q: Well, thanks for your time, John. It’s been an honor talking to you.
ReplyDeleteA: I don’t handle compliments well.
Q: Maybe I should say “fuck off” or something.
A: No, that’s even worse, when people do that. They try to out-punk the punk. Don’t be so foolish. It was never like that in the first place. There’s no excuse for rudeness. I know—I’ve got albums full of it!
Q: That’s a quip worthy of Oscar Wilde.
A: Ha ha! Very excellent person, him. I’ll tell you one thing I like about Oscar Wilde. On his deathbed he looked at the walls and he went, “That wallpaper is horrendous. One of us has to go.” Then he died. That’s fucking genius. That’s how you go out. That’s how life should be.
I'm a salesman. And you develop something like total recall. I don't forget places, things, or streets, because it's a habit. Something I just picked up. I just stare intensely at people and try to figure them out. Being nosey, I just stare. I was leaving the Plush Pub one night, driving a 1977 Cadillac, heading west on Hampton. I noticed a officer had two individuals pulled over to the curb in a blue … some type of vehicle. It was… it was a blue…it was a blue… I think… it was a blue Ford. It was a blue something.
ReplyDeleteThe official explanation for these misfortunes concentrated on that well-known social evil, home taping. Dominated by Japan and therefore (ask Detroit) vulnerable to political attack, the audiocassette industry is still fighting off a Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) campaign that seeks legislation to control record rentals and institute a hefty surcharge on blank tape sales--despite the Supreme Court's recent Betamax decision, which holds that home taping doesn't violate copyright law.
ReplyDeleteWhile paying their respects to the International Nipponese Conspiracy, hipper record execs tended to single out a less exotic culprit: radio. This was a traditional tack, but a persuasive one, because the long-standing symbiotic rivalry between the two industries is rooted in a real structural incompatibility--bizzers are after your money while broadcasters only want your minutes. Record men need maximum product exposure, but radio craves ratings, which usually go to tightly defined formats and can't measure enthusiasm, much less the willingness of listeners to pay for what they're half hearing. Radio's cowardice and conservatism--its consultancies, its racism, its fear of tuneouts--have clearly helped shape an ever more passive music audience, homogenized and fractionalized all at once.z
ReplyDeleteon copyright maybe i already linked it, vital viewing
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteis it time for the page be turned and if it is, what will change? the good die young me bucko
ReplyDelete11/21/86
ReplyDeleteThe shredding machine in White House aide Oliver North's office jams.
franking Franklin Franklin's frankly frankness frankness's franks Franks ...... wapiti wapiti's wapitis war warble warbled warbler warbler's warblers ...
ReplyDeleteBy clearly establishing his own identity in his work, Bradford amplifies the meaning of "postblack," a term used last year by curator Thelma Golden in her Studio Museum of Harlem exhibition "Freestyle," in which Bradford was included. A central goal of "Freestyle" was to address the need, felt by many African American artists, to transcend the restrictive label "black artist" in order to redefine, in Golden's words, "complex notions of blackness." Bradford's lighthearted and sensual paintings resonate in a similarly open-ended context. Determined less by rhetoric than by the pleasurable exigency of cultural celebration, the artist's handling of "color" becomes at once abstract and personal. Then again, dealing with roots in experimental ways is what Bradford does for a living.
ReplyDeleteCOPYRIGHT 2002 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
INTERVIEWER
ReplyDeleteYes, but as a black painter--
BASQUIAT
I use a lot of colors--not only black
INTERVIEWER
What?
BASQUIAT
I'm not black.
INTERVIEWER
You're not?
BASQUIAT
Not what?
INTERVIEWER
Not black.
BASQUIAT
No, I'm Haitian-Puerto Rican.
The BUZZER sounds. He signals for Steve not to answer the door.
INTERVIEWER
Yes, yes.. Let's talk about that... your roots.. Your father is from Haiti, isn't
he?
BASQUIAT
(growing weary)
Yup.
INTERVIEWER
Hmmmm. Interesting. And when you grew up were there any primitives hanging in your
home?
BASQUIAT
We don't hang them at home, y'know---just in the streets..
INTERVIEWER
I see..
(beat)
And.. How do you respond to being called--hmmm-
(peruses some notes)
---yes, "the pickaninny of the art world."
BASQUIAT
(smiles--- hurt, stunned)
Who said that?
INTERVIEWER
Why, that's from Time Magazine.
BASQUIAT
No, he said I was the Eddie Murphy of the art world. He said the Eddie Murphy.
INTERVIEWER
Is it true that your mother resides in a mental institution?
Yet appropriation as practiced by Americans in the '80s is the exact reverse of this process. It presumes discontinuity. It is not a gesture of homage to an esteemed original. In fact it does not agree that any image has more authority than any other. It is a response to a culture of reproduction. Its posture is a melange of acquiescence and mild pessimism: acquiescence in the thick smog of images now dumped on the eye by "high" and "low" culture alike, pessimism about painting's ability to pierce or dispel it with authentically rooted meanings.
ReplyDeleteThere are many careers of this sort. Among their prototypes is the former subway artist and present disco decorator Keith Haring, 27, with his thin doodles of barking dogs and radioactive babies. Another is Jean-Michel Basquiat, 24, much hyped as a sort of art-world Eddie Murphy and hence especially popular with Los Angeles collectors, his untutored and zappy scrawls routinely praised for their "energy." (This anxious hope for signs of energy is a sure index of cultural flabbiness.) But for postgraffiti art the writing is already on the wall, and such careers, rolling in their limos to oblivion, remind one of Robert Graves' Epitaph on an Unfortunate Artist:
Purple haze all in my eyes, uhh
Dont know if its day or night
You got me blowin, blowin my mind
Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?
Ooo
Help me
Ahh, yea-yeah, purple haze, yeah
Oh, no, oh
Oh, help me
Purple haze, tell me, baby, tell me
I cant go on like this
Purple haze
Youre makin me blow my mind...mama
Purple haze, n-no, nooo
Purple haze, no, its painful, baby
you're free until they beat you to death in the street for being who they say you are.
ReplyDeletechange that.
I can dig taking back the streets. This is a link to a website withinformation about turning off the lights for 1 hour one night in MArch.It is a global thing they are doing all around the world. They did itin Sydney last year and in that hour they saved enough energy to take48,000 cars off the roads for 1 hour. Imagine what we can do if all thenations do this. http://www.earthhour.org/
ReplyDeletetaking back the streets are u joking? i know you saw this movie, better see it again.
ReplyDeleteIn my arms we shall begin with none of the rocks well There’s no charge
ReplyDeleteIn this land right now some are insane a million charge
To hell with poverty we’ll get drunk on cheap wine
To hell with poverty the check will arrive we’ll turn the Boast again
To hell with poverty the check will arrive we’ll turn to Boast again
In my arms we shall begin with none of the rocks and There’s no charge
In this land right now some are insane a million charge
To hell with poverty we’ll get drunk on cheap wine
To hell with poverty
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lyricstime.com/gang-of-four-to-hell-with-poverty-lyrics.html
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI like the chow mein ad in the link - like gang of four is Frankfurt for Maoism or Kung Pow ism. Thats what my ears hear in a field of owl pellets, shredded telephone books or melted cheese blue corn nacho's I guess you can still get traction out of institutional critique - ride the cyclone or give the dog a bone. How many ways to say I love you but not your sins, idolators and iconoclasts gotta meet in the middle but hey diddle diddle its just me n my fiddle, the worlds tiniest, make mine mustard and hold the philosophy I got nothing to say but I seen plenty or empty and one more for the bakers dozen eye of the tiger the eye of the needle didn't change but time will change don;t go changin to please me. Its all so ambiguous unless you talk to the artist, then its a let down because we are all just clowns and the sound of one hand clapping is the sound of an arm whistling through the air towards a phantom
ReplyDeletei love your sins. you better love mine. that's the only way to live.
ReplyDeleteooooh
ReplyDeleteSlice me up a big slab
Of that sympathetic cheer
If im zapped with radiation
They say i'll last another year
Line 'em up now
To Greet The Sacred Cow
My hands are full of protein
My arms are made of fire
If you're calling me a diplomat
I'll be calling you a liar
Line 'em up now
To Greet The Sacred Cow
Line 'em up now
To kill the sacred cow
kriesler !
ReplyDeletei love you painter-but Marc Jacobs kicked Cynthia Rowleys ass for fall.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIN THE GREAT OVERWHELMING
ReplyDeleteTHE HYPERMEDIA TORRENT FLOW
TIDAL AND STREAMING TO THE MIND OF THE ROMANTIC
THE BELIEVER THAT ALL CAN BE KNOWN
THE BELIEVER THAT KNOWLEDGE IS EVEN ATTAINABLE
THAT BELIEVER IN KNOWLEDGE FORSAKES IT FOR EXPERIENCE
AND ENTER THE GREAT NOSTALGIA
TO THINK THAT EVERYTHING HAS BEEN SUNK
AND NOW ITS JUST TIME TO WATCH IT RESURFACE
A HOLY REPLAY
ONE LAST TIME
FOR EVERYONE IS IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE OTHER, FOREVER
BUT ESPECIALLY NOW THAT YOU CAN SEE EVERYBODY ENDLESSLY
MASS ONLINE PRESENCE
DONT TWIST IN AWE OF THE VOLUME
TO CHISEL IS NOT TO BE AFRAID OF THE OLD STONE EARTH
AND NOW THE FRESHLY ENCODED AIR
THE TASK REMAINS ALL OVER AGAIN DIGITALLY
EVEN THE LAST INDUSTRIALIST WENT ON SILICON
TO CHIP, SORT, DISTILL AND REPRESENT (INSIGHTFULLY)
WOULD YOU LOOK BACK
JUST BECAUSE YOU COULD
AND WOULD YOU LIVE AGAIN
JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN
EVERYTHING GOES ROUND AND ROUND
AND ROUND AND BACK AGAIN, BASTARDIZED
WHICH ISN'T BAD OR GOOD AT ALL
ITS NATURAL
bradford recycles his life on a stretch, whether it is there to address more than that or not is important, but not paramount. and i think it's safe to say there is a fair bit of history of the medium (searching for ways to generate pictorial space) tangled up inside of it.
ReplyDeleteZipthwung is God the almighty.
ReplyDeleteor a psychic. How do you do it?
ReplyDeleteI may be a little naive but...
ReplyDeleteahh yes, a hacker?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAn Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman walk into a bar. The bartender turns to them, takes one look, and says "What is this - some kind of joke?"
ReplyDeletemore silence. less cowbell.
ReplyDeleteare we holding out for tuymans here?
ReplyDeleteIn its most advanced sectors, concentrated capitalism is increasingly tending to market “fully equipped” blocks of time, each functioning as a unified commodity combining a variety of other commodities. In the expanding economy of “services” and leisure activities, the payment for these blocks of time is equally unified: “everything’s included,” whether it is a matter of spectacular living environments, touristic pseudotravel, subscriptions to cultural consumption, or even the sale of sociability itself in the form of “exciting conversations” and “meetings with celebrities.” Spectacular commodities of this type, which would obviously never sell were it not for the increasing impoverishment of the realities they parody, just as obviously reflect the modernization of sales techniques by being payable on credit.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete12345
ReplyDeleteno opening i m going to the dentist
ReplyDeletebit busy
ReplyDeleteIt is not known where the satellite will hit. But officials familiar with the situation say about half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft is expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and will scatter debris -- some of it potentially hazardous -- over several hundred miles.
ReplyDeleteA compleate walk through tour of this show is now available at:
ReplyDeletehttp://blip.tv/file/677440
Use the full screen mode, enjoy, JK
what great richness, which comes from so many techniques and lots of time spent.
ReplyDelete