1/16/2009

Andrew Wyeth

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webthing said...

nice cap. btw, james kalm reduced the younger than jesus to a banana peel in his vid. v funny.

webthing said...

i was thinking about the art thing (oh no), art occurs when there are conundrums within or between states of a feature set, be it images or sounds in general, or specifically photography, video, screens, sound, painting, cinema, code, online development, advertising, products, politics (MATERIAL) and then the more primary eternal ones like loss, love, loneliness, desire, fantasy, fulfilment, failure (SPIRITUAL) - particularly as they relate to the human emotional and societal condition. Of course each could be interchanged, the material becomes the spiritual, and vice versa. When presented (as art, art being the "intent to present"), these paradoxes and inner necessities can be experienced as contemplative pieces (1. art as indirect/experiential suggestion/destabilization) as opposed to (2. processes that involve direct reasoning/hypothesis) or perhaps at least more of the first in the second. There are no restrictions on where or how the presentation takes place, however painting/sculpture/photography became and remain favorable as they are digestable in size and presence (biggggg hint: so are magazines), it's hard to consider so much at once, given that we have biological limitations, but as a result it is also challenging to attempt to portray/reduce/channel the idea in such a way. The resultant compaction/negotiation is contained/denied in a place, the site/s of the art, and hopefully it has become loaded/activated even if the intent was to silence/unhinge/debase/deny this loadedness, (can actually enhance the resonance).

Collectability is important for preservation, and can occur in many ways (the catchall being the photograph)(and yes, audio recording is a type of photograph). (Conscience tells us) this collection is most importantly done by museums, and museums already are free, or at least public, for the most part. Art becomes free/priceless, to be experienced by many, when the value has truly become cultural (ie/ beyond personal acquisition). Eg/ you can't buy stonehenge (crap, can you?), or more commonly, when the collector dies the museum is bequeathed. This will/has changed of course, into smaller/accelerated/more varied/less classical models, but the real model is the general curve between all of them. Aphorism A: Art that lasts becomes history. Etc. Or is the text about the art that becomes history? Clearly it's both, or does the old picture tells a thousand still testify? Yep (it's binary). But what about art that seeks to become history before it is? (enter: judiciary). Or history that never stays fixed (is continually updated), is that history too? Can history vanish? Yes, but no. Traces/states usually remain (consider stone/bones/disk images). I think it's funny that it currently appears that one cannot really see the history of art so much as read about it. Can it be seen? Or heard (though only fairly recently can we hear it). Of course it can be just seen. In fact there is so much more of it that can be seen than can be read or heard by enormous proportions. In considering our entire history, only classically have we been able to stop just seeing it. But it would be a great loss of content to only see it. Or would it? (cue: Abyss). A framework around some or many of these peculiar factes of the culture/s are the basis for art, increasingly the framework is now a written one (pretty dry stuff but still impacting, or somehow complementary, or maybe just ascribed).... but a long standing principle remains. A language, program or application can be a frame, as can a book, or four pieces of timber. The fact is art still has a frame. Ideas have a frame. Fuck it even cultures have a frame. A frame is like a boundary deliberating the distinctions of an ideology, a place where something is considered. A painting (read: image) is still a great place for our cognitive peculiarities. Is art more in the framing than in the framed? Yes, if we are going to speak so generally as to use one word (art) for so many different things. And no, when we care to extrapolate. All i'm saying is there's a long history of rejection of art history prior to this more recent new media type one ya know what i mean.... so i'd encourage a more holistic approach as opposed to a worldview centred around breaking with the past (because it's been done before and for obvious reasons as time passes, it fails, like utopias... inexorably it too becomes the same history it once sought to break). Pretending like prototype, just to wipe it all clean and start from scratch (like divinity) when we're clearly always in the middle of things, is the war-cry of the naive/impetuous. (see Faust). It's fine, but it ain't new. In fact, being young is very, very old. This is why new media has long suffered it's division from art and tradition, inadvertently it seeks to divide itself by pointing out for the most part how it is different. But, but, but... Struggling for identity like a teenager. However eventually, and even now, 10 - 15 (possibly 50) (or is that 15,000) years later it is slipping into place in the long trail of history. It is truly amazing to see not the differences in our changing world, for they are easy to spot and often auto-usurped, but the commonality (hint: a view where material is arbitrary). We all know it's changing, but some shit is staying the same. Is that where the big questions slumber? Probably. A sense of the true size of all endeavour is humbling to say the least. And toward it, it becomes more natural to produce work, current work, almost as offerings, phrased in ways that seek to find other ways to embed themselves on the rocks, in their own way, in the still waters, under the surface currents, while they also simultaneously surf the waves (it's quantum). All this Boom, X, Y, Z.... and then what? A or 1? Hopefully by then the shortsightedness will have been to the big, multiversal optometrist. ie/ you're not the first young people who were ever young. Everyone was/is young, for the last 40,000 years or more, and even then we still have no concrete idea (carbon dating, my ass, light, gravity, etc... the nature of all that shit is utterly beyond us, still). Whatever the case, it doesn't make you original. It makes you recurrent. And that's when you can begin to really work. And plunge - you always end up closer to the surfaces.

It appears that some curators are so wary of tacking the tail on the donkey as to let the party entertain itself.

CAP said...

Something tells me you’ll struggle to adapt to twitter, WT.

But this is what I love about blogs! Even if Painter is sick of it, they take you places. Yes we should probably just start our own blogs if we have so much to say and no it doesn’t matter who might be reading but getting there is half the fun and the surprise is in the saying. Dig the life of the thread.

You raise practically everything about art and I’d love to respond as expansively but I haven’t time or talent. To try and stick to just curating, yes there are huge problems for art history – always! – in maintaining categories, classes, adding to them. It’s not a passive, clerical task. It gets personal. As with much else! But walking away from them doesn’t help. As you say, ‘leaving the party to entertain itself’ – that’s not entertaining or party to the party.

And it’s not like the curator, art historian, critic or collector get to legislate on these matters anyway. ‘The rules’ evolve through opportunity and practice. We fumble along in the present, trying this and that, and what works gets used again, in some way, what doesn’t was obviously wrong, for the moment. We have these little pigeon holes like Conceptualism, Minimalism, Pop Art and so on, bigger ones like Fine Arts or Plastic Arts, and in as much as we can organize works by them, sort interesting differences and ‘see’ others and how they fit together, they are right. They are things, part of the furniture. But at some point they wear out. We have too many instances, need finer distinctions or simply others. It gets messy. And so long as the rest of the filing cabinet seems comparatively neat, we live with a certain amount of mess. But sooner or later we need to get neater there. We are just missing too much. And these things are felt with the weight of a revelation or revolution.

Some people will resent having their little playhouse torn down, others will be relieved. There are a lot of vested interests to shift. Everyone is looking around for allies, if not a removals van.

Curators will always tell you “Vee ver only followink orders” and pretend there was nothing personal in building a comfortable career. But when you weren’t and you didn’t you will always know better. Yes it’s the curators job to ‘try something different’ and mix things up a bit. But what is that measured against? Not just their friends, in which case differences diminish to the infinitesimal, and not just their elders, in which case differences inflate to the stupendous or cosmic. The curator has to balance allegiances, subscribe to some art history, while departing for the present in other ways. I know I’ve said it before on these threads, but you have to be prepared to dismantle the past in order to discover the present. And that involves a certain amount of risk. You can’t have it both ways, blindly follow those before and expect to discover. You can’t have it both ways without falling between stools, serving neither master, killing the thing you love. The trouble is too many curators are happy to do just that.

But then that’s true of more than curators.

youth--less said...

the review is still there, under first views, check the left sidebar on the homepage too.

that's why they dig the younger than jesus crowd, no senior moments...

i find the most enjoyable things between stools, so to speek.

CAP said...

My myth take.

webthing said...

you know you wanna .
don't listen to me i'm just trying to deflate the balloons.
poor old webthing, so lame at irony.

zipthwung said...

I have been exploring other youthful subcultures and they are all alike in their vanity, excercises in consensus building, pecking orders, role play and feighned high dudgeon - with little social interest beyond youthful expression.

Authenticity? Is your life so impoverished that one iota of the real is enough to ensorcel you?

Look how they live like dogs! WOuld that I still lived there, a life on the fly, without obligation, only desire! And risk! Ohto be young hwen risks could be taken without death! Immortality!

In literary terms the youth are in rebellion rebellion, but against what? Life? Dogma? The reality; no one is keeping you down - aside from ignoring your unique take on themes such as death, life, desire. How dare they claim those as their own? Who are they to keep you from talking when their banalities on the selfsame subjects already litter the parking garage?
Are we to borrow the gas guzzlers of the past? Truly this is the way of simulacrum. Ersatz lives as artistic impersonators!

But also, if you reify (meaning make concrete the abstract) an renew (by reinacting) the historical narrative (as you understand it which is necessarily a misreading, no matter how authoritative your claim) then indeed you will be swinging with the jaw of an ass at the windmill of soul. Slay ye how many?

Into this intersubjective intertextual and diacritical mire you must wade if you are to come across as ONE WHO INHERITS. Not meekly, but as though wedded to the land. And not just the land, but the soul of the land, and the air, and the wind, inherited. God bless us everyone, for thine is the kingdom, antisemitic though it may have once been and may remain, how long must we talk of antitotalitarianism as an aim in art? Surely artists are not responsible for political progress?

But everyone wants to be a donkey, even pinochio, who will die of cancer from the one cigar he smoked (an inferior swisher sweet no doubt) on the island, where others may smoke Cubans for a lifetime, acquiring only the leathery bark-skin of the rhinocerous and the low rasp of the hyeena chuckling at cosmic ironies.

Here lies art, dead from the weight of ownership, pressed to death crying "more weight!"

How much longer this John Henryism? This many chambered gun with but one interstellar bullet? WHo among us wants a machine for a heart?

youth--less said...

a view where material is arbitrary. aw, and me trying to contemporize my materials. at least it's fun, if not important.

source material

webthing said...

I don't mean to ignore the material, of course material will and must update, that's a given. As much as the delineation is necessary - this one is HTML, this one is oil, that one is bronze, in the end it is what is common between them, ie. beyond their material, that constitutes any type of negotiation with the eternal. And isn't that what all art seeks (even if by trying to deny it). See it how you wish it doesn't bother me if you disagree. It's working for me baby.

webthing said...

play it again?

zipthwung said...

No. I knew it was a piece of shit. The reviews I did for them really stuck out like sore thumbs. And I never did get along with Jann, because he really likes the suck-up type of writing. He doesn't like people that are stylists unless it's somebody he wants to suck up to himself, like Norman Mailer or Truman Capote or someone like that. And Jon Landau, my editor there at the time, did not go to bat for me, which Paul Nelson did later. When Paul Nelson got the job of record review editor, he told Wenner, "There's certain people I want to write for the magazine." And he said, "Like who?" And Nelson said, "Well, like Lester Bangs." And Wenner said, "No way." Nelson said, "Well if you don't take him, you can't have me." That's what kind of a friend Nelson is. He has integrity, which Landau didn't have. Landau was saying things at the time like every Glenn Campbell album, every Jerry Vale album, every Helen Reddy album, every Ann Murray album was a distinct piece of art which should not be looked at as a piece of product.

youth--less said...

i know nothing about the eternal (my religious education notwithstanding), and i doubt that anyone does. im interested in us and now.

youth--less said...

Leonard cohen made good fun of landau at LC's inauguration in to the R&R hall of fame. It's on yewtube. He said "Someone said, I've seen the future of rock and roll...and its not Leonard Cohen" With perfect timing he said it.

Since LC's played here, radio has been playing himm every day. I thought I liked him but he really is tremedously pretentious, like he knows something. he's an elitist and a puritan, can you believe it? Of course cuz he works so hard to be witty. I'll take Hank Williams.

webthing said...

zip what you wrote was great, not that you require any adulation. i wrote back to you about it, but then decided it might be better not to.

there is a great book at the moment titled 'the future of the image' by jacques ranciere.

youthless, you cannot know much about us and now if you do not want to know what led us to this point. but i'm sure you know that too.

the eternal doesn't take much to know, look at your hand, and at the same time you're right nobody really knows it at all. but it is there, to be reckoned with. as it has been to us for a very long time now. the eternal is not religion, though that too sought to prescribe it. it is the thing that koons, viola, murakami, all of them, are in a kind of attempted dialect with. it may be pretentious. but fear of adornment will take us right back to modernist mass housing and look at what a drab piece of shit that turned out to be.

zipthwung said...

Well now. I havent had the time to read too closely - I skimmed that Bouriard a bit and the thing I can't stand is the specificity to the artists - new? I don't think so, not unless you yourself were new - as Bouriard is, relative to everything.

Reads as marketing to me - so much art writing does.

Joseph Beuys wrote "Energy Plan for Western Man" and one chapter is titled "social sculpture" - so you can say "relational esthetics" and I can point to years of showmen who have been working the same scripts before anyone thought of cooking as art - snake oil!

Ranciere? I will have to look it up.

But I sure as hell don't car if its "gaming the system" or "acting the part" - greatness is only a trick of memory.

youth--less said...

eternally yours

webthing said...

i know i know, bourriaud is french afterall, they have a way of thinking, gesticulating, expounding, exhausting - blame barthes. but in it's course it throws up some dark. postproduction.pdf is from 2002 (yep, wayyy back then), but as the artists recently at the new museum were tied together as 'producers', here in 2009, it is interesting to note that the resonance is still humming around the chamber. production, and other jazzwords. and ranciere is as dense as cold black night but he gets at it in pieces, and with wisdom (and wankery) wielding a sharper knife nonetheless. i've noticed matthew collings add some french fluff to his underpants. you can cut fluff, but at it's expense you lose the possibility that something valuable was in there. it's open. it's changing. it is the same. it has shifted. it is not dead, for it was never living. faults of a bipolar language of opposites is the real plug in the wall. everything ends up as a paradox when it isn't. things can be both at once, but the english language doesn't allow that to happen, german is a little better but even then all languages breakdown at the gateways to natures.

webthing said...

art will go on, it's integral.

it is maybe the DISCOURSE that has bled itself.

a jazz piss carcass!

say hello to portmanteau.

zipthwung said...

Yeah I like condensing (packing) over unpacking, as a rule, though reading is traveling, they say, or remembering, and french is easy like living with a neat freak or a messy eater - not too much foreign, but enough. I can't stand macrobiotic - though I'm drinking water and staying clear so my mind can wrap around why my URLRequest is returning a bad URL, and the echo request sheds no light on the flow of data.

If I can get this to work I can go outside a bit and relax some.

I mean if these dudes were programmers, we could take them down simply by showing what they say could be parsed into a few neat lines - and we could all relax.

I'm definitely not a programmer. Maybe never.

I jsut saw a photographer in the genre

genre

CAP said...

I started writing Relational Aesthetics in 1995 with the goal of finding a common point among the artists of my generation who interested me most, Pierre Huyghe to Maurizio Cattelan by way of Gabriel Orozco, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Vanessa Beecroft, and Liam Gillick - basically, the artists I had assembled in an exhibition called Traffic at the CapcMusee d'art contemporain in Bordeaux (1996). Each of these artists developed strangely similar themes, but they were not a topic of real discussion, since no one at the time saw these artists' contributions as original and new. In search of the common denominator, it suddenly occurred to me that there was a new thematic framework for looking at their works. I In its time, Pop Art was born of a conjunction between the phenomenon of mass production and the birth of visual marketing, under the aegis of a new era of consumption.Right there is your problem.

Note firstly the sleight of hand that exchanges aesthetics for social history, and note also the glaring inadequacy of either definition.

1) ‘I realized that every one of them without exception dealt with the interhuman sphere of relationships between people, communities, individuals, groups, social networks, interactivity, and so on.’ - And so off – you mean Beuys, Warhol, Picasso, Degas, Courbet, Watteau, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Michelangelo, Giotto, etc didn’t deal with ‘inter-human relationships? ‘Social interaction’? If that’s the best he can do for a common denominator it’s pretty trivial even as social science, since it picks out nothing that isn’t shared by virtually ALL HUMANS, much less ARTISTS.

2) ‘Pop Art was born of a conjunction between the phenomenon of mass production and the birth of visual marketing, under the aegis of a new era of consumption‘. Well sorry NB but mass production actually got underway in the 19th century (see industrial revolution), ‘visual marketing’ hits its straps in the 1920s (see Bauhaus, Soviet Constructivist and similar projects on design layout, typeface and exhibition design). A 'new era of consumption' misses crucial differences in the economies of the US, UK and Europe and the 'post-war' boom doesn't really coincide with Pop Art anyway.

Again, even as social history this is way wide of the mark, much less the means to pick out what makes Warhol different from Stuart Davis or Rauschenberg different from say Schwitters. To claim that Stuart Davis made Pop Art in the 30s not only ignores crucial differences between Davis and Pop Art, but inflates the style to useless proportions – detects neither a place nor time with any precision.

As for the grand claims of his ‘theory’ - the works of Pierre Huyghe, Douglas Gordon, or Rirkrit Tiravanija deeply reexamine notions of creation, authorship, and originality through a problematics of the use of cultural artifacts - which, by the way, is absolutely new. Oh really? Absolutely new? When the ‘notions’ are as vague and unsubstantiated as ‘creation’ ‘authorship’ (strictly a literary principle but let’s not quibble) and ‘ the use of cultural artifacts’ it’s frankly laughable to try and erect any valid distinction between these artists and their many forerunners. Not that there aren’t differences, but Bourriaud’s not really going to get at them swanning around with this empty rhetoric, and he’s clearly not up for the hard yards of art historical scholarship.

‘Cultural artifacts’ are pretty much all any of us use, for art or otherwise. How do you get at nature, without comparing it with culture? (Or vice versa?) ‘Creation’ or originality obviously depends on art history – is surely its raison d’ĂȘtre and goes hand in hand with attribution of source or some notion of the artist or author. So, once again slack generalizations do nothing to secure the contributions of his favorites.

He wants all those pesky little stylistic questions like what is the difference between Fluxus and later performance/documentation answered, but only on glib social terms like new technology or flawed metaphysics like ‘interactivity’ or ‘primary’ material. It’s pretty much sophomore drivel. ‘Found’ material, the ‘ready-made’ – ever heard of paintbrushes and tubes of paint? Ever heard of rolls of (pre-woven!) canvas and power tools? Ever heard of printing (including movies) site-specific murals and sculpture? Where exactly is this mythical primacy to ‘traditional materials’? With the artist that insists on re-inventing the wheel? When were they ever the norm?

Bourriaud’s lame attempts to anchor the activities of his chosen few in ‘Post-Production’ are as fatuous as the claims of Relational Aesthetics, which never has enough relations or aesthetics to build a convincing case for the 90s as owned by his little crew. And what happens when he gets down to details? Felix Gonzalez-Torres uses ‘the formal vocabularies of Minimalist art
and Anti-form.’ - No shit. Which are? Are you sure Minimalism is not using the formal vocabulary of earlier Surrealist and Constructivist styles? What exactly is a formal vocabulary anyway and which Minimalists owned the dictionary? Again NB talks the hack gallery guide talk, but it doesn’t get you very far.

Historically, it doesn’t get him very far either. He has trouble getting past Duchamp, a common obstacle for the ambitious but lazy. ‘When Duchamp exhibits a manufactured object (a bottle rack, a urinal, a snow shovel) as a work of the mind, he shifts the problematic of the "creative process," emphasizing the artist's gaze brought to bear on an object instead of manual skill. He asserts that the act of choosing is enough to establish the artistic process, just as the act of fabricating, painting, or sculpting does: to give a new idea to an object is already production'.

But HOW does Duchamp exhibit a manufactured object as ‘a work of the mind’? What makes his presentation different from other instances of these objects? NB would get further if he looked more closely AT THE WORK than wittering on about ‘the act of choosing is enough to establish the artistic process’. It manifestly is not or Duchamp would not have gone to the trouble of exhibiting these objects ONCE HE HAD CHOSEN THEM numbnuts!

I could go on, but you get the picture. Bourriaud’s theory is for those who like their theory light if at all and their art devoted to Trendy Wendies. Yeah he’s a handsome young guy with a nice wardrobe and the kids love him but you must realise it’s time to kick his head in. Jerry’s working up to it in his review of Anyspacewhatever, Roberta wants a front seat, but she’s much too shrewd to actually participate and the London critics breezily salute him for Altermodern, knowing full well it reads as a farewell. Their subtlety is sometimes underrated. Me I’m in the trenches, and one more body is hardly going to bring about capitulation.

youth--less said...

relational aesthetics always makes me think of a high school party in someones dimly lit basement rec room. kids rolling doobies and groping each other. if only the "relations" were as dangerous and emotional as that was. rikrit and other social sculptors are always so nice, clean and utopian. what if he poisoned everyone that came to his dinner? that would be interesting.

CAP said...

Collings will say whatever it takes. And then he wonders why everyone doubts his sincerity. He could have been a curator. Might still, but so far he has chosen the path less travelled and gone toward the lite. He makes TV docs, with lots of frantic British camerawork.

He wants to be the big but sensible voice, Lord Clark in Nikes, but the dumbed-down thing cramps his style. It’s tedious, but partly that’s the man, nicht wahr? He digs the schmooze and networking (who doesn’t?) but it’s the other thing that goes begging, the actual engagement with the work. Yeah the work – remember that stuff in the background? There for about 6 frames courtesy of the world’s twitchiest editor. Thing is, Lord Kenny knew his shit & had an eye, as they say. You don’t get that too often.

Still Matt looks positively soulful compared with the oily, smirking Ben Lewis. You want to see how low British TV can really sink in the art doc stakes, try one of Benny’s jets.

youth--less said...

I find that Matt has some very fine insights and long may his sideburns grow. Besides, he is so obviously not wearing Nikes. He's wearing Doc Martens, which means something, and if you were up on your shoe semiotics you'd know that.

Hard to keep up with all the British presenters--don't know Ben Lewis. Who is the guy that did the show on Spanish art? That was horrible-- content and presentation. He was channelling James Burke from the 70s or 80s what was that show --Connections?

Not that we have any good presenters in the US. Anthony Bourdain, that's it.

youth--less said...

My brother used to do a great imitation of Kenneth Clark. Mumbling, unintelligible. Loudly sucking up spittle on the inhale.

CAP said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
CAP said...

Yeah the Art 21 route is to pretend there is no host, and let the artists 'answer' in a series of non-sequiturs. Some are better at this than others. It's all just a bit coy, but at least the pictures give you a chance to see the works, grasp the basics like scale and materials.

CAP said...

Klaus Maertens was a doctor in the German army during World War II. While on leave in 1945, he injured his ankle while skiing in the Bavarian Alps. He found that his standard-issue army boots were too uncomfortable on his injured foot. While recuperating, he designed improvements to the boots, with soft leather, and air-padded soles. When the war ended and some Germans looted valuables from their own cities, Maertens took leather from a cobbler's shop. With that leather he made himself a pair of boots with air-cushioned soles.
Maertens didn't have much luck selling his shoes until he met up with an old university friend, Dr. Herbert Funck, in Munich in 1947. Funck was intrigued by the new shoe design, and the two went into business that year in Seeshaupt, Germany, using discarded rubber from Luftwaffe airfields. The comfortable and durable soles were a big hit with housewives; 80 percent of sales in the first decade were to women over the age of 40.

zipthwung said...

I like art 21 for the sales pitch - you come across well if you are somewhat self effacing, with clear sounding "I don't know what it;s about but this is what Im thinking while I;m doing it" explanations as if that would make art easier to grasp - the thought process is a mystery because it's a mind looking at itself - blind man;s poker. I guess that;s why a lot of cannonized artists went to psychoanalysis? Or is that just the fashion of the time? Sympomatic?

The wound bro, dude, its always the source - whatever the burr in your saddle or the sand in your oyster or the seed in your ear, or the peach pit in your ten gallon hat filled with soil from the rio styx.

Sports metaphors. You don't see a lot of those in art. I dunno, what was the question?

zipthwung said...

Oh yeah, trivia,as if art history would make you a better artist - claims to authority based on your knowledge of Dada (you know who I;m talking about). What was that? It was really weird. I keep hoping for an explanation, that and cars. Not really interesting so much as pathological or arrested - maladaptive - like GG Allin - who, despite his rebellion might have been better off stuck in Togo or the Madives. Anywhere but the city.

webthing said...

The word art is useless.

1. This tells you everything you need to know.

2. History is not something that only happened in europe.

3. Commercial televisual media has a format unkind to the uselessness of art.

4. Uselessness is an amazing component within or beyond functional natures.

5. Historic Present.

6. How can one word, sublime, explain so much. If you want to know who the greatest formalist, reductionist, structuralist and minimalist of all time was, it is literally in the question itself - the tome of written language. Bible for atheists. Muse and mutilator of art.

d is for DESECRATE.

i is for INVOLUCRE.

e is for EXILIC.

CAP said...

And the word was goof.

For some people art is like a religion or drug. They get swallowed up by it. Their focus narrows, in the end they’re not even feeling that much of a hit.

I use politics and sport to get away from it for a while. Blogs on those subjects can get really wild. A lot of stuff gets pulled by the web police or whatever. Yeah OK sometimes it’s mine, but the whole point is to get carried away, right? Insult and agitate? And yeah there are some sites I’m no longer welcome at, perhaps was never really welcome at. I’m not overly sensitive about these things. I suppose I might have offended a nation, sex, race, creed, color, class or two. I’m only human. And you get as good as you give there anyway. But I’m by no means the worst offender. Although I like to think that’s coz I’m not really trying. I use a different tag of course, that’s part of the getaway. But after we’ve all set the world to rights and analyzed the perfect team, gone over the stats, the plays the pay-offs and investments you kind of know it’s time to move on. There’s more to life, or, more accurately, life is finding something more.

That’s when I come back to art; when something else has died for me. When art doesn’t feel like life, move on for a while, unless you want to die.

Forget the words, read their lips.

zipthwung said...

All cultures are habitual - ritualistic - when was in school they talked about being anthropocentric and shit.

Art is weird because it promises inclusivity within and exclusive (pretentious/creative/"intelligent"/"freaks") environment - which is weird because it can both incubate interesting permutations on often ephemeral or hard to grasp ideas, and at the same time it hcan allow some of the most maladaptive character traits and institutions (money, drugs, ego).

When JR dieds in a pool of vomit (I assume) on a combination of Liquid X and cocaine while partying with a collectors sone (I heard) well what is that? An accident? or part of the culture.

certianly many artists are level headed pragmatists with tea totaling tendencies, but I know you know it's hard to be creative AND rational at the same time - not mutually exclusive, btu still, if you open yourself up, it is definitely a vulnerable position to be in.

I could get all mystical about this, and certainly I don't harbor any romantic feelings about dying young, burning out or otherwise taking it to the limit one more time - I jsut know it's sometimes necessary to take a hit of something to break free of the afore mentioned routine.

Road tripping is too expensive, so I made it a point to go the other way (that's what the Taoists tell you to do).

Th upshot of this is that I am now no more disciplined (I am not) than anyone else - in fact I am probably the least disciplined of anyone I know who is ambitious, and many who are not ambitious at all).

What is ambition? Death. At least in the utilitarian sense of ultimate ends means analysis. We are all dying one atom at a time, the half life of a human is like 40-50 years tops.

Yeah, I have some regrets and I don't think painting all the time is intrinsically "good" for anyone - certainly you don;t get "better" in the sense of "game" - though you can get rusty at the top of the plateau.

I'm not even trying to be symbolic or profound here. Its like I got a lobotomy (or was I always like this- pretentiously didaqctic. I think it's the powerpoint dreams. Be careful what you wish for is all.

Living outside of the standard rules of society - thats what the breaking bad fantasy is all about. Being a mutant. A soprano, a grifter, a madman a poet a pauper a king. I fell out of tower 2 and lived. I can't prove it though - you;d have to DNA test the rubble.

I was onto zombies early - halfway up the curve - not htey are doing Wuthering Heights. Is that profound? No, its for sixteen year olds and the perpetual adolescents. Comic book stuff. I can dig that, take a vacation from the heavy stuff like "once you become a good designer, what do you communicate?" or "once you learn that there are only a set number of forms in art, what do you communicate" or "once you invent a form, is that enough, or should you communicate?" or "should you communicate" - which is like "whould you think" or "what is listening" or what is.

Chemotherapy, I hear, messes with your thought process - just as drigs do - and I find I think clearly for only a few hours of the day - probably four. I mean in top form. The rest is a bit scattered. Right now I'm off peak, but I drank a lot of coffee - probably comes through a bit in this - though unless I told you you might think I had racing thoughts or some other disorder - narcissism or some kind of neurosis maybe. An upset. No, I;m pretty good - it doesn't matter where I am physically anymore - thats a relief. I can go anywhere.

SO I guess I achieved another level of spiritual awakening, and I think I could teach it - which is where power point comes in - everybody uses it, so it;s an art form - David byrne even put his imprimatur on it (I had to look that word up to see if it meant what I thought it did - not exactly but the connotation is great.

SO I guess what I;m saying is I'm not dead yet.

zipthwung said...

I mean I heard chemotherapy does that - I wouldn't know firsthand - but what is interesting is that the kinds of things that make you feel smart are tied into that kind of thing - memory, ability to visualize - ability to analyze and abstract. Liek sudoku has three sort of mental states - all in a row, allin a box, and also - and this is important - a process of elimination equivalent of "negative space" - but there must be more complex games.

I know this kind of analytics isn't "natural" for me - and so is where I try to go. I think my dad, who was considered intelligent, had some trouble with that sort of logic near the end - and its troubling me - what and how do you turbo charge what you have?

zipthwung said...

Because otherwise I dont have any game - nothing to say really other than "im going to the ocean" or "Im building a canyon" - that sort of thing.

zipthwung said...

To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair' Walker Percy, The Moviegoer.

webthing said...

As the Book Of Game states/;

Even if we shoot in vain, if we do not shoot, we will see nothing.

Like sport, snd similarly useless,
art is something (is better than nothing).

In the realization of an expansive universe universe universe with no apparent actual purpose whatsoever, other than to be, an old girlfriend of mine famously remarked "bor-ring".

The thinkjazz of thoughts feedback is akin to golf. Nonplussed?

If art were sport the final score would always be zero - zero. All the fans could debate who might have played better on the day but there would be no finite proof. It would echo forever. Welcome to the allure and primacy of madness. Although a similar thing emerges when we consider who was the greatest player of all time... would Julius Irving be a hack in today's game? The bloggers echo looms...

As sport does not remain unfinished, on the day at least, it suits those who favor an ENDING. Welcome to the world of art prizes and auction houses. How lovely, and how loathsome, an ending would be.

There may be only fictitious endings, but it's equally as interesting to fathom the factfiction of beginnings, for most.

For me, i'm all gaseous on the midpoints.

zipthwung said...

Transmit the message, to the receiver
hope for an answer some day
I got three passports, couple of visas
don´t even know my real name
High on a hillside, trucks are loading
everything is ready to roll
I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nightime
I might not ever get home

zipthwung said...

"There is no law that could prevent the President from ordering that a young child of a suspect in custody be tortured, even by crushing the child's testicles."

Amen to that bro. Let the games begin!

high anxiety

zipthwung said...

this aint no disco

youth--less said...

what if it wasn't a game (it isn't)

zipthwung said...

well powerpoint is a game, but the paycheck isn't, the way I see it.

Like, how do you change the pivot point, adjust the slide timing, make rounded text boxes, insert a movie.

And then: are you morally responsible for the damage caused by the product you are helping to promote?

Ethics kind of fly out the window when food, independence and self esteem is involved, I find.

WHich can lead to moral quandries that lead to cognitive disonance like "what if the commander in chief ordered me to order someone to torture someone?"

Not to inflate my position, but it takes a village.

Disascoiative disorder, approach avoidance, projection, defensiveness - what else?

youth--less said...

right livelihood?

CAP said...

A spellcheck.

youth--less said...

I recall when I was small
How I spent my days alone
The busy world was not for me
So I went and found my own
I would climb the garden wall
With a candle in my hand
I'd hide inside a hall of rock and sand
On the stone an ancient hand
In a faded yellow-green
Made alive a worldly wonder
Often told but never seen
Now and ever bound to labor
On the sea and in the sky
Every man and beast appeared
A friend as real as I

CHORUS:
Before the fall when they wrote it on the wall
When there wasn't even any Hollywood
They heard the call
And they wrote it on the wall
For you and me we understood

Can it be this sad design
Could be the very same
A wooly man without a face
And a beast without a name
Nothin' here but history
Can you see what has been done
Memory rush over me
Now I step into the sun

youth--less said...

Just as pushing over one domino can topple a line of others, charging one neuron can activate millions of cells in the brain, UC Berkeley researchers found in a recent study. In the study, published last week in Science Magazine, researchers at a campus lab were able to change brain activity in rats by rapidly firing an electrical charge at one neuron, showing that one cell can change the entire state of the brain.

zipthwung said...

The central image that Mr. Ramo uses to evoke what he calls this “age of surprise” is Per Bak’s sand pile — that is, a sand pile described some two decades ago by the Danish-American physicist Per Bak, who argued that if grains of sand were dropped on a pile one at a time, the pile, at some point, would enter a critical state in which another grain of sand could cause a large avalanche — or nothing at all. It’s a hypothesis that shows that a small event can have momentous consequences and that seemingly stable systems can behave in highly unpredictable ways.

The Black Swan theory (in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's version) refers to a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. Unlike the philosophical "black swan problem", the "Black Swan" theory (capitalized) refers only to events of large consequence and their dominant role in history. Black Swan events are a special category of what is called outliers.

zipthwung said...

bacteriaSelf-organization is a process of attraction and repulsion in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically (but not always) display emergent properties.

i;d rather have a bottle in front of me

zipthwung said...

Time is simultaneous,” he explains in the comic to his girlfriend, Laurie, “an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.” This is scarcely the language of romance, and in fact Manhattan is drifting away from human attachment: one panel of the comic, replicated faithfully in Snyder’s movie, has him sitting on the edge of a freshly rumpled bed, examining Laurie’s discarded bra with a frown of celestial skepticism. (At the screening I attended, this got a big laugh.)

zipthwung said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
zipthwung said...

Fame and fortune came quickly for Rauschenberg, but began to take their toll in 1970.

"At the time, in New York, everyone around me was divorcing or seemed angry," he recalls. "I went to an astrologer and asked if I was the cause of it. I was told that I wasn't, and to move near the sun. I grew up on the coast and liked the ocean, so I went to Florida."

CAP said...

Okay, so moving right along -

Any responses to the Bacon show at the Met?

That Gary Tinterow just keeps coming up with 'em, doesn't he?

zipthwung said...

Sickens me. But I like the live safari feedings. I bet the lions do too. I don't know that I would watch it, but otherwise someone would complain that they are feeding the lions rainforest beef. My first choice would be to let the lions go, let them hunt the zoo keepers and spectators. That's the natural way.

CAP said...

Do you think Safari jackets will ever make a comeback, Tamba?

webthing said...

all dried up

CAP said...

I mention it prompted by a post on Two Coats of Pain, where the response echoes a certain NY resistance to or resentment of FB. It’s a bit like the Dumas show, where there’s a scramble to suggest a local equivalent worthy of the honor of a big museum retro, as a way of denying Dumas her due.

I don’t think she’s that great, but you know, she’s been there a while now.

With Bacon it’s much more an historical thing, obviously. He’s really one of those 50s figures, like Rivers that don’t quite fit in with ideas of Modernism dedicated to abstraction, but somehow they are undeniable and for that reason uncomfortable. I don’t know, probably someone like Steinberg got into him, but generally he throws open a few doors just when the dogmatists thought they had them all locked.

The stuff is unquestionably stagy or theatrical, but then so was David and Ingres. It’s more that extreme detachment, like a Beckett play or Fontana recording, you can do it, but you start to wonder if it’s necessary, and why. Lotta anxiety there I guess.

I once passed him in the street, apparently somwhere near his studio. He was just this little old guy...

webthing said...

he was a lonely little old dude with a gambling habit who drank too much but he could do his pain in a way that still didn't scare the fuck out of you, it was probably something to do with the color choices, he was a great colorist in the end. i don't know about those gold leaf frames though... casino/investment class always goes down a treat. Hirst loves him emulates him but hirst can't paint and i know it KILLS HIM at night.

CAP said...

The colors are surprising, given he holds back on them for much of his early career. I guess he had priorities. But yeah in the end, they're the icing.

A friend reminded me that he tried on a career in interior decorating in the 30s. Which is pretty funny given his taste in decor...

Tee Hee

But agreed the gold frames and glass feel like insurance, like he was avoiding closer inspection of some of his questionable techniques (like unfixed pastel, unprimed canvas - I think even unsized). The gold frames keep everything respectable, distanced - there's that side of the decorator in him as well.

youth--less said...

cant really fit him in your little box can you? good

rmut t said...

Anonymous Gallery: I love this one an in the future I would like to show it at the Gallery.
I will send you an e-mail Friday or Tomorrow with all the details I need the prices of you pieces , your picture and you CV . Remember the Gallery takes a 50% so please calculate the price including that %

...

The prices are ..... and ..... It's way out of proportion . Artists like Pierre Marie Brisson , Jiri Anderle , etc...sell their works under those prices and they have their works in museums aroun d the world . Sorry but your price range is not realistic.

Black Cat: The Gallery is to take 50% of what the asking price is for. I don't understand the problem.

Anonymous Gallery:Please check other artists prices and then ...price your work

Black Cat:I cannot take home less than half of my updated price list. If the gallery is to take 40%, I will lower prices even more such that I take home half of my current asking price.

Anonymous Gallery: No problem is your call . The paintings have to be here before June 18th and you can pay the fee using PAYPAL . Payment of ... to ...
Plese send me CV and a picture
Thank you

Anonymous Gallery: Plese send me the personal picture. Thank you

Black Cat: Sent a black cat
For how long will the June 20th group show be up for? Can you please send me a list of participating artists?

Anonymous Gallery: 2 weeks, Some of the artists are: ...,...,..., ..., ..., ..., ..., ..., ..., ...

Anonymous Gallery:
Hello,

Plese send payment before next Sunday night . we have to close the list. plese do it ASAP


PAYMENT TO:

...

Anonymous Gallery: Hello,

If you have received this it's because you have not send :
-Personal picture
-Prices of your works
-Fee payment to :
-All of the above

Please it is important you do it ASAP . I have a waiting list so if I don't receive the information in 48 hours I will include a new artists that already have send all the info
Remember works have to be at the Gallery not later than June 18th READY TO HANG
Have a great weekend

Black Cat: Hello,Due to the duration of the exhibition as well as the accompanying fee, I will have to decline my partake for the June 20th group show. Please allow a more suitable candidate in my place. Thank You for your interest.
Best,...

Anonymous Gallery:
Whata surprise!!! Seriously ...come back to Earth

Black Cat:
To what his mind and character are attached,
To that attached a man goes with his works.
Whatever deeds he does on earth,
Their rewards he reaps.
From the other world he comes back here,
To the world of deed and work.

So much for the man of desire.

Anonymous Gallery:
Not impressed ...but remember EXTRA ECCLESIAM NULLA SALUS

DarthFan said...

hulk here. Hulk think not want think. But hulk think hulk. Hulk think want smash but hulk not want smash for just smash. Hulk want money smash.
Hulk green but hulk not smash green. Hulk think green not smash but hulk head hurt. Hulk want make green, so hulk think maybe green make smash. But hulk want smash green money smash. Hulk only want stuff money get. SO hulk want money get green . Hulk think smash money get. Help hulk money get, Hulk need stuff smash. Help hulk.

CAP said...

I was just watching the Kalm video of the Picasso show at Gagosian. Terrible video but terrific show. I agree with Smith it's a kinghit but mostly I was reminded of Dana and George C and how coy it makes their stuff look.

It looked really contemporary!

lordofundaworld said...

Dont you people have email to talk to each other?

lordofundaworld said...

Dont you people have email to talk to each other?

webthing said...

i agree with you man. Picasso late stuff is still fresh. Like ensor.

PNYC RIP

rmut said...

27 club

SCHUMACHER said...

I want this blog back

cosset.ro said...

Great painting. I love it!!! How much does it worth?
Fier Forjat

Caio Fern said...

fantastic blog !
really good work !

/ said...

http://sophieok.blogspot.com/

an lausecta said...

now i say it a dual-form work

Abstract landscapes

G I M M A G E

Bendy Warhol said...

Very Hammershoi meets Borremans.

But I can't help thinking: "Why is the girl is sniffing the horse?"

Love, love this blog!

Cheekily posting a link to my deliciously filthy contemporary art blog click on me! seriously10 art blog

cosset.ro said...

great picture, thank you for shearing
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Kasi daniel Raj.M said...

"Wonderful body paintings

Thanks for your comments"

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