Central Intelligence Art

Wojnarowicz Censored at SAAM (Ants Attack America, Again)

2010-12-01T14:05:00.018-05:00

Here's a link to a four minute excerpt of the David Wojnarowicz video A Fire in My Belly (1987). On November 30, as everyone knows by now, the film was removed from the National Portrait Gallery's Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, apparently because it displays ants crawling on a crucifix. I suggest watching the video with the sound OFF, because the YouTube version has a musical score that is distracting. Those objecting to the video are particularly incensed that it would have been displayed during the Christmas holidays. Apparently, Christ on the cross as an image of suffering and mortal death was, well, kind of Grinch. Better be good 'cause Santa's on his way. (Note that the museum edit, also about 4 minutes of the original thirty, did not have the penis segment that is included in the YouTube excerpt. However, by all reports, the most vociferous objections are coming from people who have not visited the show and who have watched it only on YouTube, if they've watched it at all.) After the video link below, there are links to two Washington Post articles from this morning's paper, including Blake Gopnik's opinion piece. BTW, my review of Hide/Seek will be in the January ARTnews. It was written when the show opened, well before the controversy erupted and specifically highlights the Wojnarowicz video as an important and worthy part of the exhibition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fC3sUDtR7U

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113007227.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113006801.html

Natalia Almada's El General

2010-09-13T10:34:00.031-04:00

On September 12, 2010 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, I saw Natalia Almada's new film El General about her great-grand father, Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles. More than a documentary, El General is a category-defying meditation on revolution, history and memory. (trailer at IMDb)

A school teacher who rose to the rank of general in Mexico's 1910-1920 revolution, Calles became president in 1924 and continued to orchestrate post-revolutionary Mexican politics until his exile in 1936. He is buried next to Pancho Villa in Mexico City's Monument of the Revolution. Calles continues to be a controversial figure, who is remembered principally for his unification of Mexico and his violent confrontations with the Catholic Church.

The project was inspired by six hours of audio cassettes made by Almada's grandmother (Calles' daughter) reminiscing about her childhood. However, the audio clips provide no more than a simple armature for the film, which gracefully swings between archival news footage, scans of old photos and clippings, home movies, and Chuy Chavez's brilliant cinematography of street scenes in contemporary Mexico City. Added to the mix are clips of Sergei Eisenstein's ¡Que viva México! and Elia Kazan's ¡Viva Zapata! (with Brando playing the hero, according to a John Steinbeck script).

The score is original music by John Zorn, Marc Ribot and Shazahd Ismaili, with Ribot's guitar figuring prominently throughout. (Ribot's new album, Silent Movies, to be released later this month, will include some music from the film.)

All this comes together as an epic tone poem under Almada 's careful direction (she won a Best Direction, Documentary award at Sundance 2009) and her intuitive, preternaturally seamless editing.

Working Class Heroes Purchased for Permanent Exhibition at the National Labor College

2010-02-21T10:58:00.004-05:00

The exhibition Working Class Heroes: Selected Film Posters and Stills that I organized for the AFL-CIO international headquarters has been purchased in its entirety by the DC Labor Film Festival, in conjunction AFL-CIO Washington, DC Metropolitan Council for display at the National Labor College’s Kirkland Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. The exhibition space at the Kirkland Center is terrific and considerably larger than the space the show occupied downtown. This move not only keeps the works that I assembled together, but also provides a basis for creating an important archive for the documentation of films with workplace and organizing themes.

Maid to Clean

2010-01-02T21:06:00.027-05:00

Maid to Clean. Very clever. I guess you can read it two ways. Made, as in forced, to clean. Involuntary servitude? Slavery? Diminishing opportunities? Discrimination? Or, is it made, as in formed, created, bred, to clean. As in, we are made to clean and you, customer, and you, bosses, are not – you are made for better things. Repulsive beyond comprehension either way. As is the appropriation of Rosie the Riveter – proud symbol of women’s mass entrance into (largely union) manufacturing jobs during World War II and subsequently adopted by the Chicana movement.
Rosie the Riveter (left) ¡Ya Basta! (2004) by Tina Hernández (right)

Flag as Road Kill & the USCC

2009-11-16T08:36:00.008-05:00

This is the worst, best logo I have ever seen. It's perfect for the US Chamber of Commerce. Free enterprise has run over the flag with a Hummer. The nation's regulatory apparatus is a carcass waiting to be scraped off the highway. What were they thinking? Aside from the obvious substantive dissonance, it's a thoroughly wretched bit of design. The deep shadow behind the splatter appears mindless and irrelevant. Is floating road kill more appealing? Surely this bloody pulp of a pennant can't be trying to wave? There is a different version on their website that emphasizes the ethereal light at the expense of the shadow. Among it's other charms, consider also the logo's vapid, sloppy exploitation of familiar twentieth century art -- gestural painting, drips, Jasper Johns, Robert Frank and, perhaps, especially Claes Oldenburg's 1960 USA Flag. I'm having fun imagining the internal Chamber meetings in which the merits of this design were pitched and debated. BTW, what's the USCC's position on flag desecration legislation, constitutional amendments, etc.? Lucky for them, the Supreme Court thinks it's protected speech. Texas v. Johnson (1989)

Keywords by Raymond Williams

2009-10-21T13:37:00.004-04:00

I’ve found myself picking up Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by Raymond Williams frequently this semester – both to review for my Theories of Art lectures and to help prepare for a new seminar I’ll be teaching in Spring Semester, 2010 on art and public policy. Williams’ book is indispensable and hilariously brilliant. Each entry is a full-fledged essay on a word, including a study of derivation, competing uses and relationships to others words. My favorite: his winning trifecta on representation, realism and naturalism.

To start with, his definition of art is gloriously down to earth. Williams doesn’t tell us what we want words to mean. In a kind of Wittgensteinian mad clarity, he patiently documents the actual usage through the ages. Here’s a sampling plucked from the beginning, middle and end of his two page 'art' entry (citations omitted, some abbreviations spelled out):

Art has been used in English from the 13th Century. It was widely applied without predominant specialization, until the late 17th Century, in matters as various as mathematics, medicine and angling. In the medieval university curriculum, the arts… were grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Artist, from the 16th Century on, was first used in this context, though with almost contemporary developments to describe any skilled person. [….]

The emergence of an abstract, capitalized Art, with its own internal but generalized principles, is difficult to localize. There are several plausible 18th Century uses, but it was in the 19th Century that the concept became general. [....]

It can be primarily related to the changes inherent in capitalist commodity production…[as a]…defensive specialization of certain skills and purposes…not determined by immediate exchange (value)….This is the formal basis for the distinction between ….fine arts and useful arts. [....]

As these practical distinctions are pressed, within a given mode of production, art and artist acquire ever more general (and more vague ) associations, offering to express a general human (i.e. non-utilitarian) interest, even while, ironically, most works of art are effectively treated as commodities and most artists, even when they justly claim quite other intentions, are effectively treated as a category of independent craftsmen or skilled workers producing a certain kind of marginal commodity.

The book was published in 1976 and updated in 1983. Williams famously had no tolerance for post-modernism and the book does not take on the then-emerging vocabulary of late twentieth century criticism. Keywords is the work of a dogged Marxist modernist with a razor sharp mind and an awe-inspiring capacity for research.

A couple of other similar projects on my shelf that are more up-to-date, but in no way replace Williams' book: A Concise Glossary of Cultural Theory by Peter Brooker (Arnold, 1999) and the more extensive Cultural Theory, The Key Concepts by Andrew Edgar & Peter Sedgwick (Routledge, 2002).

Working Class Heroes: Top Ten Film Recommendations

2009-08-08T11:36:00.016-04:00

Just an update on the exhibition of film posters and stills I organized for the AFL-CIO to direct you to the federation's web page on the show. Local union blogs are picking up on the exhibition all over the country; there are some prospects that it may travel after it closes here in November. And, (here only!) my top ten (film, not poster) list, which actually has 13 choices and is more or less in order of preference:

1. Salt of the Earth (1954) directed by Herbert J. Biberman. Production/distribution: Independent Production Company & Intl Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers. Filmed against the backdrop of the 1950’s Red Scare by blacklisted filmmaker Herbert Biberman, the film tells the story of a strike by Mexican American zinc miners in New Mexico. When the picket line is shut down by a Taft-Hartley injunction, the miner’s wives take over. Only a few professional actors were employed – most roles are played by miners, family members and union representatives.
2. Harlan County, USA (1976) directed by Barbara Kopple. Winner of the 1976 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, this film follows a UMWA strike. Mountain culture is also front and center with music by Hazel Dickens and an interview with Florence Reece, during which the 76 year old activist sings her 1931 classic “Which Side Are You On?” a cappella.
3. Fast Food Nation (2006) directed by Richard Linklater.
4. Tout va bien (1972) directed by Jean Luc-Godard. Four years after the 1968 Paris demonstrations, a workers’ take over of a meatpacking plant provokes thoughtful (and sometimes absurd) ruminations on labor politics by employees, local union officials and management. Stuck in the middle are a journalist (Jane Fonda) and her lover, a filmmaker, who wrestle with the roles of intellectuals and artists in the struggle for workers’ rights.
5. Bread and Roses (2000) directed by Ken Loach. (Japanese poster pictured above)
6.The Navigators (2001) directed by Ken Loach.
7. Modern Times (1936) directed by Charlie Chaplin. A slapstick study of the alienating effects of the assembly line, time studies and automation. This was his final silent film.
8. Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza) (1981) directed by Andrzej Wajda.
9. Matewan (1987) directed by John Sayles. Based on the Battle of Matewan, a bloody 1920 confrontation between miners, who had been evicted from their company homes, and Baldwin-Felts detectives, hired by the Stone Mountain Coal Company. Filmed on location in West Virginia. Hazel Dickens appears in the film and sings the title song, ‘Fire in the Hole.’
10. Cradle Will Rock (1999) directed by Tim Robbins. Tells the story of Orson Welles’ attempt to use the WPA’s Federal Theater Project for a Broadway musical about a steel strike. Also depicts depression era politics with a broad brush (and poetic license - the chronology is a little off). Subplots include anti-communist Congressional hearings; corporate plotting to aid Mussolini; and Diego Rivera’s famous confrontation with Nelson Rockefeller over the artist’s Rockefeller Center fresco.
11. The Organizer (1963) directed by Mario Monicelli. A professor (Marcello Mastroianni) helps Turin textile workers organize to fight for better wages and conditions.
12. Mondays in the Sun (2002) directed by Fernando León de Aranoa. Workers left idle by the closure of shipyards in a Spanish port cope with unemployment and dim prospects for work.
13. Baran (2001) directed by Majid Majidi. At an Iranian construction site where Afghan refugees are illegally employed, an Afghan teenage girl poses an a boy to obtain work after her father is disabled from a fall due to unsafe conditions. A young Iranian worker resents the new employee until he discovers her secret and falls in love.

Sun Ra: Space is the Place

2009-07-19T11:50:00.012-04:00

Sun Ra's movie Space is the Place (1974) is visually splendid, brilliant and crazy; it has the most charming special effects ever and from start to finish a knockout score by Sun Ra. The commonplace becomes profound with repetition. I remember when WPFW arranged for Sun Ra to play the Old Post Office Pavillion on Halloween. A bright moment. Also try Sun Ra's Nuclear War. BTW, what you going to do without your ass?

Michael Jackson: Blood on the Dance Floor

2009-06-26T19:25:00.005-04:00

Last night, in a state of ecstasy, anger, and hurt, played MJ as loud as the stereo could tolerate. He was magnificent in his peculiar, excessive way -- an exemplary artist as Henry Miller describes in Tropic of Cancer, page 256, beginning with "do anything but let it produce joy....Things, certain things about my idols bring tears to my eyes: the interruptions, the disorder, the violence, above all, the hatred they aroused. When I think of their deformities, of the monstrous styles they chose, of the flatulence and tediousness of their works, of all the chaos and confusion they wallowed in, of the obstacles they heaped up about them, I feel an exaltation. They were all mired in their own dung. All men who over-elaborated. ... What is called their over-elaboration is ... the sign of struggle, it is struggle itself with all the fibers clinging to it, the very aura and ambiance of the discordant spirit.... I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music....."

Working Class Heroes

2009-06-10T13:19:00.010-04:00

Working Class Heroes: Selected Film Posters and Stills opened yesterday at the AFL-CIO International Headquarters. This is the second exhibition I have organized for the AFL-CIO. The show was expertly, flawlessly installed by Nilay Lawson and Breck Brunson. It’s open Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, through November 15, 2009. The AFL-CIO is located at 815 16th St., NW (just north of Lafayette Park). Here’s some excerpts from the wall text for the show:

Film is one of the most democratic arts. As German critic Walter Benjamin observed in his seminal 1936 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, cinema dispenses with the ‘aura’ of the unique work of art destined for elite connoisseurship. For the audience, there is no single ‘authentic’ Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Royals and workers, presidents and unemployed investment bankers see copies and one copy should be as good as another. Where reactionaries saw mass media as a looming threat to great culture, Benjamin welcomed it, arguing that the mass distribution of film, especially, would open the door to new content and eventually unlock art’s political potential.

This exhibition of film posters and stills represents a wide range of Hollywood, independent and foreign films that incorporate workplace and organizing themes. In some ways, Benjamin’s prediction looks sustainable. Many of the films presented here have, in fact, helped bring public attention to important stories about worker safety, the exploitation of immigrant workers, impediments to achieving union recognition and other important issues. Many, but certainly not all, are also exceptional works of art.

In the process of selecting films for representation in the exhibition, one major theme quickly emerged: the celebration of the working class hero. The movies love heroes and in many of these films, especially Hollywood’s, the plot boils down to an individual’s battle with a hostile system, rather than true collective action. In that way, the depiction of workers shares a heritage with filmland’s other rugged individualists -- the cowboy, the secret agent, the detective, the lonely genius, etc.

Nonetheless, it’s a near miracle that some of these films were produced by business corporations. The profit motive surely plays a part (Norma Rae, Erin Brockovitch, for example, were box office hits). And, the power and progressive politics of stars (Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda) and directors (Mike Nichols, Steven Soderbergh) has been a key factor in moving working class hero scripts through a system that otherwise might not be sympathetic.

Most of the contemporary movies here are independent and foreign projects that have attracted distribution by virtue of their sheer quality (and the growing influence of festivals to get them off the ground). Not surprisingly, these films take a more nuanced view of the workplace. Indicative of the profound economic shifts experienced by workers in the last forty years, layoffs have been a major theme. Mondays in the Sun, Hula Girls, The Full Monty, and The Navigators all depict workers coping with closing factories and mines, declining job security, out sourcing and privatization.

Still, the real complexity of organizing and collective bargaining mainly eludes the camera. The grit, drama and intensity of organizing campaigns and strikes is brought to life only in a few, most notably, Herbert Biberman’s Salt of the Earth (perhaps the most remarkable labor film ever made), and Barbara Kopple’s documentary, Harlan County USA.

Enlightenment Criticism

2009-05-02T15:54:00.004-04:00

Note to art theory professors: before you teach students to disparage the European Enlightenment, make sure they’ve experienced it. Make sure you have, too.

Lou Andreas–Salomé

2009-04-01T22:08:00.003-04:00

Currently reading The Freud Journal by Lou Andreas–Salomé. She was 50 years old when she started studying with Freud. The book documents her experiences in Freud’s often contentious weekly Vienna seminars. He became very attached to her. He brought her flowers. She visited with him at home frequently, often staying late into the morning hours talking about current issues in psychotherapy. On such occasions, Freud insisted on walking her home. By all accounts, they did not have a love affair. (Lou had broken Nietzsche’s heart thirty years earlier; she was Rilke’s lover when she was in her late thirties and the poet was in his early twenties.) Her reflections in the journal are often quite original and provocative. For example:

“It was wonderful to arrive in the Syringasse in the evening with flowers from Freud … I long thought that his concept of ‘polymorphous criminality’ was a colossal exaggeration until I realized that there is inevitably an emotion analogous to hate at the onset of all conscious awareness. We attain our separate individuality only by repelling something and being repelled by it. If hate and the doom of death are found in the underworld of our dreams, that only betokens the first point of departure – the first chilling isolation and separation without which an ego would no more come to be than would pulmonary respiration without the interruption of the direct supply of oxygen from the maternal body.”

Dulles International Airport, Baggage Area, March 2, 2009

2009-03-03T20:54:00.009-05:00

Chris Kraus

2009-02-15T11:29:00.013-05:00

Suggested reading before heading out to the College Art Association Annual Conference in LA: Chris Kraus’s Video Green: Los Angeles Art and The Triumph of Nothingness ( Semiotexte, 2004). There’s double resonance for CAA in LA – Kraus’s book is not only a perceptive look at LA’s art scene, but Kraus won CAA’s 2008 Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism.

Kraus writes in blood (to borrow from Nietzsche) – a passionate, highly readable mix of autobiography, art criticism, cultural commentary, sexual fantasy and fiction. (When was the last time you read a book of criticism from cover to cover in one day?) Her main lament is the blankness of the art fostered by LA’s MFA powerhouses, but, commendably, she spends more time writing about what she likes.

To put it mildly, Kraus is present in her criticism. If George Romero had written The Death of the Author instead of Roland Barthes, it would feature Kraus. She’s decisively undead and if it’s multiple subjectivities or omniscient god-complex criticism you want, you’ll have to kill her again and again and again.

Moreover, to her credit, Kraus’s rejection of prevailing professionalized modes of art-making and talking about art does not pitch her backwards into reactionary beauty fetishization, like many of her contemporaries. She likes broadly conceptual, project based art that is engaged with the city and its many communities.

Still, it may be a little jarring for new readers to credit opinions on fine art from a writer who claims to be a former prostitute, topless dancer and domination/submission addict who trolls the internet for sexual partners to punish and humiliate her. Is connoisseurship of the many modes of sexual debasement a qualification for talking about art? Put another way, does having strange men come in your face (one of Kraus’s reminiscences) give you any insight into the experience of looking at contemporary art? Well, if you put it that way, I guess it’s kind of perfect.

Also check out LA Artland: Contemporary Art from Los Angeles (Black Dog Publishing 2005). It’s a flawed, but useful Taschen-style arts-poitation coffee table book edited (and with good essays by) Kraus, Jan Tumlir & Jane McFadden. Another useful book is Sunshine Noir, a catalogue for the 1997 show of the same name organized by Lars Nittve and Helle Crenzien for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Humlebaek, Denmark.

Ornette Coleman, Virgin Beauty (1988)

2009-01-27T23:25:00.006-05:00

Album of the Day, Month, Year: Ornette Coleman's Virgin Beauty

I bought this album probably not too long after it came out in 1988, didn’t like it and put it away. Don’t think I’ve heard it since. First of all, Jerry Garcia on guitar struck me as a cop out. Unlike most of my generation I was never a Dead Head. Born and raised on John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Archie Sheep, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Monk and Miles, Charles Lloyd, John Handy (and James Brown) -- the Dead always bored me my to tears. I went to one concert and feel asleep. (I did like the Dead’s first album a lot – haven’t heard that for years either. Still have the LP but never play vinyl anymore.)

Anyway, in the fashion of Ornette’s early, great double quartets, Bernie Nix and Charles Ellerbee also play guitar on Virgin Beauty. Al McDowell and Chris Walker contribute dizzying, syncopated, snappy, cracking, trebly bass lines. Denardo Coleman and Calvin Weston fire up the drums. The only voice not doubled is Ornette’s horn.

Listening to it my studio yesterday, I was transfixed, knocked out, in love, amazed, captivated. I danced all by myself for nearly an hour. This is a great band swinging, funking, rocking and bluesing with that crazy, piercing alto totally in command over all the commotion. And then, there’s a magnificent, soulful Ornette solo at the end. What was I thinking? Ornette’s always ahead of the curve, but how could it take me so long to catch up with this one?

Dolores Huerta and Barbara Carrasco Visit Chicano Art & Experience at the AFL-CIO

2009-01-22T13:19:00.013-05:00

Legendary labor organizer Dolores Huerta visited our show yesterday with distinguished artist Barbara Carrasco. Barbara’s portrait of Dolores is in the show. In fact, the print we have is signed by both Barbara and Dolores.

Dolores, along with Cesar Chávez, is a co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association which evolved into the United Farm Workers of America. She was instrumental in the grape boycotts that brought the farm workers’ struggle to international attention. At 78, she is still very active in progressive politics and social change in her work as an individual and through her foundation, the Dolores Huerta Foundation. (pictured at right: Barbara Carrasco, Rex Weil and Dolores Huerta with Carrasco's Dolores. You can also see, behind Barbara, Sun Mad by Ester Hernández)

p.s. the show is featured on WETA-TV's Around Town. See the Janis Goodman review here (scroll down to 'art reviews.')

Big Al Carter (1947-2008)

2009-01-14T10:50:00.014-05:00

R.I.P.

photo by David Peterson

The Washington Post Magazine

Chicana Art and Experience

2008-11-08T18:07:00.015-05:00

I am working on a new curatorial project for the AFL-CIO -- organizing an exhibition of women artists whose art reflects the interests and concerns of Chicana workers. The show, which includes more than 30 prints, paintings, photographs and posters, opens at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, DC on November 19, 2008 and continues until May 31, 2009.

My first major exposure to Chicana/o art was in 1992 when I reviewed the landmark Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA) exhibition at what is now called the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The show was viewed then as highly controversial and panned by the Washington Post's Paul Richard (as too political). I wrote a lengthy response to Richard's review in the Washington City paper defending the show. The work in the AFL-CIO show reprises some of the artists who were represented in CARA, but adds newer voices as well. If you're in town, contact me and I'll walk you through the show. I think it's a bold move for the labor federation, which is deploying its exhibition program to include politically aggressive art and to emphasize the diversity and pluralism that is a reality both in the art world and the world of work at large. The artists include : Barbara Carrasco, Ester Hernández, Cecilia Concepción Alvarez, Laura Álvarez, Favianna Rodíguez, Yreina Cervántez, Juana Alicia, Irene Simmons, Delilah Montoya, Laura Molina, Tina Hernández, Yolanda López, Carmen Lomas Garza, and Kathy Vargas. I want to thank each of them for participating and underscore what a pleasure it has been to be in touch in connection with this show. You can see more images at the AFL-CIO's website: http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/art/chicana_explanation.cfm

The images reproduced , clockwise from the upper left are ¡Ya Basta! by Tina Hernández; We Are Not the Enemy by Favianna Rodriguez; Cihualyaomiquiz, The Jaguar by Laura Molina; Humane Borders (from the series, Trail of Thirst) by Delilah Montoya; and Sun Raid by Ester Hernández.

Picturing Politics: Artists Speak to Power

2008-09-01T17:18:00.016-04:00

Picturing Politics: Artists Speak to Power, which I organized for the Arlington Art Center, is open! If you are in town, don’t miss the reception this Friday, September 5, 2008 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM, which should be a great party. I hope you’ll also have a chance to visit during a quieter time because all this outstanding work requires and rewards sustained attention. (The exhibition closes September 27.) If you’re out of town and/or can’t get there, the catalog is available from AAC [contact info is below].

The artists/collaborations are: Renee Stout, Mary Coble, Judy Byron, Randall Packer & John Anderson, Jefferson Pinder & Matt Ravenstahl, José Ruiz, Rick Rinehard, Alberto Gaitán & Victoria F. Gaitán, Lisa Blas, Wendy Babcox & Meg Mitchell, Helga Thomson, The Pinky Show, Benjamin Edwards, and photographs by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from the Independence Fund and the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum.

This show is an ambitious and courageous undertaking for the AAC, which deserves your support! (Images, clockwise from top left, by José Ruiz, Helga Thomson, Steve Danyluk, and The Pinky Show. )

Arlington Arts Center

3550 Wilson Boulevard,

Arlington, Virginia 22201

(703) 248-6800
http://www.arlingtonartscenter.org/exhibitions.htm

Romantics and Conceptualists

2008-07-07T15:20:00.006-04:00

I am preparing an advanced art theory class over the summer called Contemporary Art Theory: Markets and Collecting for the University of Maryland in fall. It's taking me back to all that critical theory culture industry biz: I'm reading parts of Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment this week -- especially the chapter on Enlightenment as Mass Deception. For me, it 's tough going. Also threw me back to Heidegger, sad to say. But I found some help: Timothy Clark's Martin Heidegger, which is a very readable, comprehensive look at the philosopher's poetics. Heidegger is essentially romanticism on steroids in my view. Part and parcel of that romanticism is a bitter critique of instrumental reasoning that furnishes a basis for the dark views of institutionalized, commercialized culture later offered by Debord, Baudrillard, Foucault and Jamison -- all of whom, in one way or another, seem to provide aid and comfort to Conceptualism as a subversion of the mainstream uses and abuses of art.

I don't teach Heidegger in my regular Theories of Art class. It's not just because he's difficult and essentially wrong. Almost all art theory is difficult and wrong. I'm more concerned that reading Heidegger is just too laborious -- slogging through all the neologisms, and jargon to come up with insights that are more simply and emphatically stated elsewhere ... earlier in Nietzsche and later on, in Marcuse's The Aesthetic Dimension, which I like.

Anyway, the relationship of romanticism to conceptual art appears more complex in this context. They appear at odds on the surface, but they have a common gene -- the goal of truth bearing via estrangement or 'defamiliarizing' the familiar in order to counter a petrified, oppressive social reality. I put it this way:

With the Romantic era came the notion that artists have some special capacity to speak the truth; it wasn't until the age of Conceptualism that they bothered to do any research.

(at right, image from A Breed Apart, Hans Haacke, 1978; one of seven panels first exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, near one of British Leyland's factories. British Leyland declared bankruptcy in 2005; its brands are now owned by Chinese and Indian companies. A Breed Apart documents the company's complicity in South African Apartheid.)

The Artist's Journey into the Interior by Erich Heller (a proponent of German Romanticism and a teacher of mine at Northwestern, where he taught for many years); the cover is the often reproduced Casper David Friedrich painting, The Wanderer Above the Mists (1817-18). My favorite book of Heller's is The Poet's Self and the Poem: Essays on Goethe, Nietzsche, Rilke and Thomas Mann.

Victims of Communism/Victims of Memorials

2008-06-03T14:17:00.014-04:00

Family came to visit this weekend and naturally they wanted to see the Victims of Communism Memorial (VCM). Well, no, they didn’t really. It’s just that I’ve taken them to all the other memorials and they hadn’t seen this one yet. In fact, they had never heard of it. (It's located at Mass. Ave. and First St., NW). It was dedicated on June 12, 2007 by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an organization established pursuant to HR 3000, sponsored by Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Senator Claiborne Pell, and Senator Jesse Helms (and signed by then President Clinton) "to construct, maintain, and operate in the District of Columbia an appropriate international memorial to honor victims of communism..." On behalf of DC, thanks.

To be fair, the VCM is far from the worst looking public sculpture in Washington DC. It’s not even the worst looking memorial. The competition in both categories is fierce and, perhaps, the subject for further discussion and disputation. (Have you ever really looked at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial at Judiciary Square?)

In case you did not gather from the image above, the VCM is a petite, intentionally crude version of the Statue of Liberty (SOL). It’s intentionally crude because, in true Society of the Spectacle (SOS) fashion, it is an imitation of a picture of a simulacrum of a representation. In short, the VCM reprises photographs of the 1989 Tiananmen Square copy of the SOL. This is beginning to sound all Iwo Jima in it’s complex relationships of copies to copies.

Oddly, onsite there is no discernible reference to the sculptor. A little research discloses its author to be Thomas Marsh of Orange, Va. According to his website, Marsh has done portrait sculpture of Betty White and Dick Van Dyke for Disney World, lots of religious statues and so on, all of which appear to be perfectly serviceable.

So much for the art and artist and on to the utterly loathsome, hypocritical, swollen bad consciousness of the whole despicable project. The VCM foundation claims that it’s a tribute to “the 100 million people who have been killed by communist totalitarian regimes worldwide,” which they pointedly describe as a 'holocaust.' On the sculpture’s base is inscribed, “To the more than one hundred million victims of communism…” (emphasis added). Well, that’s both more and less – bigger number, but 'victim' could mean anything, really – not necessarily dead. Not much here in the way of confidence inspiring precision, let alone documentation. To paraphrase Reagan, a million here, a million there, pretty soon you’re talking about real numbers. Why do I think these are the same people who would quibble over figures on Iraqi victims of the illegal US occupation down the ones column?

The difficulties with the VCM are too immense and too complex to address in one posting. Can I just say that for Washington, where creepy politicians, capitalists and bureaucrats spent half a century supporting vicious fascist regimes, sponsoring death squads, encouraging, paying for, and directly ordering countless murders of democratically inclined left wing activists, labor leaders, and human rights workers all over the globe, this should be an unbearable stain. Except, it’s so small, so over the top in it’s misguided intentions that it’s really just kind of pathetic and ridiculous. I suggest a visit soon. Maybe 10:30 AM on June 12 for the anniversary celebration. There a lunch at Georgetown Law School afterward.

Judy Byron & Art Matters

2007-12-03T09:14:00.005-05:00

Last Wednesday (November 28), Judy Byron organized and hosted a panel discussion called WHAT MATTERS: ART MATTERS -- An evening of conversation about making and presenting visual art in the District of Columbia. The panel was in connection with her current exhibition WHAT MATTERS, an ambitious installation of drawing, sculpture and sound recordings of women (who are also the models for the images in the show) conversing about life and priorities. You can participate by describing what matters to you. The exhibition is on view by appointment [judy@judybyron.com] until January 27; there are also more events coming up. (installation detail pictured; photo by Rick Rinehard)

At the panel, DCCAH Executive Director Tony Gittens described Commission programs and initiatives; Tim Davis, artist, teacher, and director of International Visions, Jayme McLellan, director Civilian Art Projects and I talked about our experiences in the world of Washington art. Mayor Fenty talked about art and community building and was able to stay for a summary of panelists major points. Photo by Rick Rinehard (from left, Mayor Fenty, Rex Weil, Tim Davis, DCCAH Director Tony Gittens, Jayme McLellan)

I first met Judy at a meeting she organized to establish a DC chapter of Artists Call Against Intervention in Central American, a group that sent art supplies to artists in El Salvador and Nicaragua and opposed illegal US support for death squads and the Contras during the Reagan years. The group was later memorialized by conservative critic Hilton Kramer in an overheated essay bemoaning the intervention of politics in art. He called it "an undisguised propaganda effort in support of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement in Central America." Well, as John Berger [more calmly] once commented, artists do not necessarily welcome "the intrusion of politics into art." On the contrary, it is adverse political conditions that force artists to engage the issues.

Cuba & Culture

2007-11-25T11:14:00.000-05:00

Sign the petition for cultural exchange

with Cuba (and freedom to travel

for US citizens).

NBC Universal to Sell Young Women

2007-10-10T16:35:00.001-04:00

"We want to create a virtual women's network where we go to market selling young women and affluent women in a way that virtually no one else can," NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker said yesterday in a conference call with reporters and analysts. (Washington Post, Business page 1, 10/9/07).

It would be tedious to enumerate all of the many things wrong with Zucker's statement. (Where are The Yes Men when you need them?)

Instead, I suggest a visit to WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. It's massive and it's required viewing. It also constitutes an interesting contrast to the Morris Louis show at the Hirshhorn. If you were trying to explain to someone the shift from modernism to postmodernism, now would be a good time. WACK! demonstrates that new forms of artistic practice come about by necessity. You can find here early examples of nearly all now familiar conceptual art strategies. Save time for the many, many films and videos. The show can easily consume a whole afternoon. Also, Linda Nochlin will speak at the Katzen Center on Friday, November 30 at 2:00 PM. I heard her speak in New York last winter; she was brilliant, witty and on the mark. (The image on the catalog cover is a detail from a Martha Rosler collage.)

Yuriko Yamaguchi at the University of Maryland

2007-09-23T18:01:00.005-04:00

Yuriko Yamaguchi's exhibition at the Art Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park opens this Wednesday evening, September 26. I worked on the show as curator and writer, so I can't tell you how terrific the work looks without sounding prejudiced. It's a big show with new work -- only one piece has been exhibited in Washington before (and even that one in a different configuration). The Art Gallery's spacious quarters are a perfect venue. The reception is from 5 PM to 7 PM. Parking should be fine; there's also Metro Green line to campus. Photo by Chan Chao. For more information: http://www.artgallery.umd.edu/exhibit/07-08/yamaguchi/index.html

Work Ethics in Cincinnati

2007-08-29T10:33:00.000-04:00

(Cincinnati, August 28, 2007 ) Procter & Gamble Co, headquartered in Cincinnati, announced that its chief executive received $27.7 million in compensation in the latest fiscal year....

(Cincinnati, August 29, 2007) Cincinnati's 2006 poverty rate was 27.8 percent. That's third-highest among major cities behind Detroit and Buffalo - according to a new estimate released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau....[For a family of four with two children the 2006 poverty level was $20,444.]

Can you help work this into my sentence on art theory? In any event, if you're playing the numbers, 27 looks hot.

One good sentence on art theory?

2007-08-29T08:58:00.000-04:00

Now, gone again [to Ann Arbor] and back again. Preparing for my first art theory class of the semester. Trying to condense into one sentence the reasons for the explosion in art theory, critical theory, visual studies, visual culture, etc., etc. Why have these courses? Why is this important at all? Why does this discipline [essentially super-charged art criticism] always bleed well beyond the confines of art history and art practice? Here's a candidate for the sentence. It's awkward and portentous, I know. So help me out.

As the advocates of real power [centralized, integrated economic and military authority] * become more adept, more agile at the nearly instantaneous appropriation and assimilation of art's techniques, art criticism and theory become indispensable for analyzing and challenging power.

I'd also like the sentence to incorporate the sense of John Berger's idea that [paraphrasing] only ill-informed people think artists/critics welcome the intrusion of politics into art. Politics intrudes, period; it's already there and it's always been there. Also, the sentence should convey to students the ideas that (1) art refers to a vast array of practices; (2) since the cradle, they have been tickled, taught, comforted, persuaded, lied to, assaulted, smothered with art; (3) and

someone, please stop me before...

*Should I just use Ike's 'military/industrial complex?' Sounds too tendentious, right? And, who are the advocates? Corporate media, major political parties, advertising firms, lobbyists, public relations firms, [art museums?], etc. -- just follow the money.

Back from Cincinnati and Wisconsin

2007-08-17T18:22:00.006-04:00

Thanks for asking. I was gone, but I brought you something. In Cincinnati, I attended the shoot for Bootsy Collins' new video. You know Bootsy, right? He's from Cincinnati, where he got his start at age 15 playing bass for James Brown (who recorded at the Queen City's famous King Records). Now Bootsy's settled there and has his own recording studio. My brother's a musician and teacher in Cincinnati and recently worked on a project with him. So, when Bootsy needed some young musicians for his Bengals music video, "Who Dey," he called Bruce. (The Bootzilla devoted Bengals fan.) I took some pictures. The setting is a tacky river boat nightclub on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. Those are real stadium characters around the margins. (If you click on the pix they should get bigger.)

ps: some more Bootsy sites:
http://www.funky-stuff.com/bootsy/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlHzHLGL60c&mode=related&search =
(this is a highly recommended campy funk Godzilla inflected weirdness)

Art and Inconvenient Truths

2007-07-29T11:41:00.003-04:00

As it happens, I finished Kurt Vonnegut's novel Hocus Pocus (1990) and watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth on the same day, yesterday. The connection: both are tendentious, both are concerned with environment degradation. One is good art, the other is decidedly not and doesn't pretend to be. One is naïve and bitter, the other is slick and evangelistic. At the same time, one convincingly makes the difficult connections between damage to the environment and religious beliefs, capitalism, greed, racism, class pretensions, and Yale. The other, with the approximate scientific depth of your average commercial for a headache remedy, pulls heartstrings and concludes with a web link. Two notes on that: (1) Yes, I admit, Al Gore brought me to tears several times; KV manifestly did not –even though there's a hell of a lot more to weep about in Hocus Pocus; (2) If Vonnegut had written another novel, I think he would have ended it with "go to http://www.tralfamadore.net/" [don't click on that]. And, don't get me wrong – of course we all want to fix global warming [and save…what? In memory of KV, let's be clear – it's not necessarily the planet we're trying to rescue, but our own miserable species]. Could it be that, ironically, the right wing is correct about the ill effects of profound reform on life-as-we-know-it: the whole deal, the ship of state, the health of the economy, etc., is, in fact, hopelessly tethered to waste, militarism and the heedless exploitation of labor and resources? And so it goes... R.I.P. KV 1922-2007 (photo by Jill Krementz/cover design by Paul Bacon)
from H/P:
It was speech by God to Adam and Eve supposedly…"Fill the Earth and Subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the Earth."
_______________________
Cough.
_______________________
So the people on Earth thought they had instructions from the Creator of the Universe Himself to wreck the joint.

Artists and Authority

2007-07-22T18:47:00.001-04:00

Is it true that artists are constitutionally hostile to authority? I just came across A Fine Madness (1966; 104 minutes) quite by accident, which makes the case. A young Sean Connery is poet Samson Shillito, who just can't abide employment, police, lawyers, responsibility, sobriety, ex-wives, psychiatrists, etc. He has a soft spot for Joanne Woodward though -- she's a waitress, who is Samson's meal ticket, manager and loyal protector. Unfortunately, but with the best of intentions, she hooks him up with a shrink specializing in creative types. Things seem to be working OK 'til Samson seduces the shrink's wife, played by Jean Seberg. (What a wrenching, tragic irony that Seberg in real life was pilloried and driven to despair by FBI dirty tricks in retaliation for her anti-authoritarian political views; she died by probable suicide in 1979). Anyway, when the Doc finds out, a lobotomy is scheduled. Oh yeah -- this is a comedy. I won't ruin the ending for you.

p.s. You can see an actual copy of an FBI planning memo that describes one particularly loathsome plot to defame and embarrass Seberg at this link (click on politics). The memo says: "Seberg has been a financial supporter of the BPP (Black Panther Party) and should be neutralized." Note that the memo comes from the FBI's 'Racial Intelligence Unit.'

More Intelligence: some list servs and feeds

2007-07-20T12:04:00.000-04:00

Americans for the Arts has the really intelligent Cultural Policy Listserv. It's a once-a-week free e-mail briefing on a variety of issues, including government support for the arts, copyright, censorship, community arts, education and lots more, with links to pertinent sources and background. Sign up here. I'm guessing you already subscribe to artsjournal; if not, I highly recommend it for a vast amount of news, commentary and a family of the best arts blogs. One more? You can subscribe to the Village Voice arts coverage (or other sections) here.

Best of Intentions

2007-07-19T14:28:00.005-04:00

Not surprisingly, given the name Central Intelligence Art, we have apparently attracted the attention of whatever spy agency tracks art theory. Onkafatso, code name of the agent assigned to us, though, in some weird inversion of the Stockholm syndrome, can't lay off commenting on my posts. And, he/she is certainly quite articulate (art theory literate spies are probably as difficult to find as those that understand Farsi, so we should be flattered). Now, Onkafatso is unhappy with my disparagement of artists' intentions – in one of my Serra posts I suggested that artists' intentions are not controlling in our analysis of the impact, experience, or social function of their work. (It's the last of 4 comments on that post.) Onkafatso thinks that if artists' intentions are not respected, it leaves the door open for art critics to make up all kinds of shit and, ultimately, to control the universe. But, I'm right. Artists' intentions are interesting, of course – and should be consulted. Nonetheless, if artists' intentions were determinative, African fetishes would cure river blindness, Byzantine icons would be portholes to the godhead, Frank Stella would be the incarnation of Caravaggio, and all artists would be great ones. Anyway, it's reassuring to know that deep in some airless, dark bunker, probably in the neighborhood of the Naval Observatory where you-know-who lives, someone is always listening and thinking. Thanks and keep those comments coming.

Ken Ashton at Civilian Art Projects

2007-07-16T09:35:00.002-04:00

I visited photographer Ken Ashton's admirable show at Civilian Art Projects (CAP) late last week. It's a selection of images from his ongoing 'Megalopolis' series that memorializes the vast array of quotidian urban spaces we normally take for granted: backyards, alleys, warehouse districts and low-rise storefronts. He captures intense natural light (seemingly often daybreak or deep afternoon shadows), but the dramatic illumination is not so much for beauty or sentiment. Rather, it particularizes Ashton's subjects -- makes them fresh and real. We see our cities with the stone cold lucidity of a hangover. (You might not know that Ashton's work is included in two recent books: Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art, Selections from the of Julia J. Norrell Collection and Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 To The Present by Deborah Willis.) Lily Cox-Richard's looming, impressive 'At Stake and Rider', also on view at CAP, shifts attention from the urban present to the rural and the past. Fragments of classical architecture support an apparently calcified split rail fence that juts through the back gallery. Both artists will be at the gallery on Saturday, July 21st at 3 PM for a discussion and reception.

While I was at the gallery, I had an interesting talk with CAP's director Jayme McLellan about politics and art in Washington. More on that later. It is, however, noteworthy that CAP has already done some interesting programming on Darfur and on government surveillance. Both events were well attended, but there was very light representation from DC's art community. Strange… It reminds me of a piece I wrote a long time ago about politics and Washington art for the Corcoran's 1985 The Washington Show. No link for that - it was pre-web, but nothing's changed. Anybody remember The Washington Show?

Hirst Skulls, 'Nam Skulls & the Whitney's Summer of Love

2007-07-10T12:38:00.001-04:00

On the subject of Damien Hirst's diamond encrusted cranium, here's an article in the Washington Post about GI's psychedelic painting and graffiti on VC skulls brought home from Vietnam. The photo by the Post's Gerald Martineau is available online, but not with the story. For now, the skulls are stored at Walter Reed's National Museum of Health and Medicine. (I told you to go to there, remember? But, sorry, the skulls are not on view.) Instead, a last minute loan has just been announced to the Whitney Museum for its Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era. That's false, of course, but you heard it here first, anyway. For that matter, Summer of Love, up until September 16, is required viewing. Check the film schedule before you go and plan to spend a couple of hours. (I especially recommend the documentaries: Peter Whitehead, Tonite Let's All Make Love in London, 1967, 70 min.; Paul Sharits, Piece Mandala/End War, 1966, 5 min.; Howard Lester, One Week in Vietnam, 1970, 3 min.; Third World Newsreel, America, 1969, 31:30 min.)

Re: macabre souvenirs, it's old news that Rumsfeld secured a piece of the plane that flew into the Pentagon. I prefer Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym's Buildings of Disaster (see, Design Intel sidebar). At any rate, souvenirs are, generally speaking, better than memorials. They take up a lot less space and accomplish more or less the same thing. The mall is getting crowded.

Serra, Serra: last call

2007-07-06T10:03:00.000-04:00

Insightful commentary by Gainesville subterranean bodhisattva JCS claims Serra's recent work constitutes a monumental gesture of resistance to authority. It's an attractive, if romantic, idea and it's certainly consistent with Serra's intention. Nonetheless, I have my doubts. The flaw is that you need the Serra back story to make that argument: tough guy, against the odds, hostile public, etc., etc. (I'm sympathetic - my self-image was forged by TV and movie cowboys, too.) But artists don't get to decide how their work functions in society. The work functions on its own. An important part of the critical enterprise is to figure out the actual, on the ground, impact of specific works of art. In my view, Serra's scale virtually guarantees its future as just another (loud) phrase in the vocabulary of wealth and power. Another way of asking these questions is an old one (Benjamin's): what is, really, the political tendency of this work? Or Marcuse's: How does this work help to demystify institutions and relationships in society and , thereby, 'break the power of established reality (and those who established it) to define what is real'? Can 'Serra' (the brand) escape becoming an emblem of capital? As to net social impact, it would be interesting to compare Serra and Gordon Matta-Clark (the recent Whitney retrospective was fascinating) and, for good measure, add in Damien Hirst's new $100,000,000 skull.

Note: to follow up on an earlier post where I wondered why Wal-Mart had not seized the opportunity to sponsor the Serra MOMA retrospective – the actual sponsor is conglomerate LVMH / Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Serra, Sculpture, Serpents, Cincinnati

2007-07-03T10:17:00.000-04:00

If you had been born and raised in Cincinnati like me, you would have been haled along to the ancient serpent mound near Peebles early and often by enthusiastic elementary school instructors, camp counselors, Sunday school teachers, troop leaders, parents and relatives. Made for an extremely dull day. Can't really see shit from the ground. Even aerial photos are pretty boring -- the most prominent feature is the contemporary visitors' walkway. Nonetheless, the adults always seemed to enjoy it and that kept them off our backs for awhile. And, the little maps are cool.

I remembered them yesterday as I was looking again at the Serra Guggenheim Bilbao photograph. All of which lends support to the idea about autocratic power and death.

For information call 1 800 BUCKEYE.

Speaking of Richard Serra...

2007-07-02T09:58:00.000-04:00

In the language of art, work of this scale signifies two things (1) the aggrandizement of autocratic power and (2) death. These are the pyramids of the twentieth century. Perhaps each should contain a burial vault or, better yet, cryogenic chambers. (But, seriously, we don't care about earthly remains so much anymore. The secular version of the afterlife is "being remembered." And that's what museums are for.) Tell me I'm wrong because I love this work and it's important to me. Alert: The MOMA show runs only 'til September 10th. Given lazy summer attitudes, vacations, etc., that's going to slip by quick, fast, in a hurry. You can see a video walk through, along with Serra interviews here. Also - check out MOMA's video of Torqued Ellipse IV (1998) and Intersection II (1992) being installed in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (!) Sculpture Garden.

ps: did you know that Tony Serra is Richard's brother?

intelligent hoodlum

2007-06-30T15:20:00.000-04:00

Hard to believe I bought this album 17 years ago. It still sounds terrific and the President still has the same last name. Just re-released this spring with Tragedy's other record in a 2-CD package. A Marly Marl production.

cia family jewels and spies

2007-06-30T11:18:00.000-04:00

muttering to myself:
'The CIA 'family jewels' are, among other things, a reminder that the world of terrorist provocateurs and arms peddlers is actually rather small and exceedingly inbred. Maybe that explains the infantile urgency of Cheney's desire to clamp down on captives. The objective is not really to get information from them. The overarching concern is to keep former 'assets' quiet and away from the press. It's what they know about Cheney, the Bushes, Rumsfeld, et al., that keeps them isolated and shorn of due process -- not what they allegedly know about future terrorist activity.'

Well, I don't actually mutter in complete sentences, but that was the gist of it. Paranoia, anger and dismay strike deep while browsing the Spy Museum gift shop, in the old Atlas and Ledroit buildings at 9th and F Streets. Along with dozens of other artists, I had a studio in Atlas-Ledroit way back before the sports complex and steakhouses – i.e., before it became an 'arts district." The street level, occupied now by the spy shop, was a wig store. It was patronized by the transvestite prostitutes that populated the neighborhood and serviced customers of the porno emporiums around the corner. There was also a donut shop I used to like until I saw the proprietor unloading the pastries early one morning on open trays from the filthy trunk of his ancient Pontiac. And a down-at-the-heels florist that might have been a bookmaking operation.

I won't go in the museum proper unless someone pays me to – the whole idea is nauseating. It's particularly galling that years of urban planning have replaced studio space with a tourist trap. Nonetheless, a visiting friend from Gainsville, FL stumbled into the gift shop a few weeks ago and suggested I check it out. It is, in fact, a trip. Mostly, of course, the sensibility is '50's Playboy pipe smoking spy-glamour – a pose that functioned then, just as it does today, to obscure the violence and mendacity of US covert ops, a/k/a state sponsored terrorism. Still, the gift shop isn't entirely one dimensional. Maybe you'll be surprised to see a reputable book on Soviet poster art and current, critical books on Iraq, etc. All that, I guess, functions as deep cover for the salacious, goofy spy stuff. It may also creep you out that you actually like the goofy spy stuff. Born and raised on it, let's face it. (The next time your gift-giving imagination is hobbled by that special someone's inscrutable tastes, we suggest the revolutionary red 'What Would Che Do?' t-shirt (don't look for it on their website which is decidedly tamer than the shop). I'm so confused and
still muttering……..

targeting target

2007-06-28T12:57:00.000-04:00

The obvious, maddening, difficulty with Target support for the NGA's Jasper Johns show was the explicit identification of the corporation's logo with the painter's imagery. No doubt, it constitutes a real coup in the history of corporate buy-outs of the ostensible authority and legitimacy of art. Maybe we've forfeited earnest outrage because we -- in the business -- don't really believe museums and artists have that kind of moral heft to confer anyway. (For better or worse, the public-at-large still believes.) So, we're stuck with just laughing it off ? It is funny in a pathetic sort of way. But the memo reproduced above from the NGA press packet for the Johns exhibition is over the top. Targeting the Community? That has an unpleasant, ominous ring. Could this be more absurd? Somebody call Hans Haacke ... What's WalMart's likely response? How's "Walling the Community" sound? They missed the boat on Richard Serra's MOMA show ....
(Serra picture from the MOMA website)

wrestler on tv/general archive

2007-06-27T22:45:00.001-04:00

italian quiz show/design intel archive

2007-06-27T18:18:00.001-04:00

____________________________
design intel archive:
fiesta disc pitcher
seiu t-shirt megaphone
chantal tea kettle
oxo
electric bike
Pentagon souvenir
PE girl's t-shirt
blik wall decals
parker pen
semi-hollow telecaster
lodge skillet
chauvet mini-bubble machine
rosie t-shirt

guggenheim museum garbage/briefings archive

2007-06-27T17:41:00.000-04:00

briefings archive:
7/1/07
how good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy!
friedrich nietzsche (1881)

the preachers of death/surveillance archive

2007-06-27T16:15:00.000-04:00

surveillance archive
read: The Dollmaker by Harriette Simspon Arnow (1954)
listen: The Great Summit: Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington (1961)
visit: National Museum of Health & Medicine at Walter Reed

listen: James Brown, Startime (polydor, 1991) (4 discs)

listen: Lonnie Smith Trio with John Abercrombie & Marvin "Smitty" Smith, Foxy Lady, A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix
listen: Lonnie Smith Trio with John Abercrombie & Marvin "Smitty" Smith, Purple Haze, A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix
read: Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer