2009
December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas! Keeping up-to-date with the geometric adventures of my friend, Einar Thorsteinn, who lives in Berlin, this is his latest creation: a configuration he defined in 1978 but has just now built. He gave me an explanation about expanding on the transformation in geometry Buckminster Fuller called "Jitterbug" (sometimes when Einar tries to explain things to me it makes my brain hurt), but I just think it’s beautiful—as did Olafur Eliasson, who will be showing a work based on it at a Madrid gallery in January.
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December 22, 2009
Greetings from sunny L.A! My trip began auspiciously, with the long-haired, sleepy-eyed student next to me reciting a Shakespeare sonnet (#57) from memory, something about being a slave to love, before nodding off for a flight-long nap. I then downloaded (for free), the complete works of Shakespeare on my iPhone, through an app from playShakespeare.com, which comes with this required caveat:
Rated 12+ for the following: Frequent/Intense Realistic Violence, Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor, Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity, Infrequent/Mild Mature Suggestive Themes, Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References and Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes.
Rated 12+ for the following: Frequent/Intense Realistic Violence, Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor, Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity, Infrequent/Mild Mature Suggestive Themes, Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References and Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes.
December 18, 2009
Peter Schjeldahl, "
Gerhard Richter, Abstract Painting (894-1), 2005 11 3/4 x 17 3/8
Gerhard Richter, Abstract Painting (894-1), 2005 11 3/4 x 17 3/8 If, after the Orozco show, you want to indulge your senses in a retrograde manner, hop on over to the same place we first saw those Dannon lids, the Marian Goodman Gallery, and wallow in Gerhard Richter’s gorgeous scraped abstractions, up through January 9th.
December 15, 2009
What I wrote below sounded so negative, I wanted to amend it. I don’t want to discount Orozco because, while I find his much of his “conceptual” work tedious, I’m completely inspired by his drawings, small paintings, and collages. It’s just that these are regarded as ephemera rather than the real deal, when I think they are the real deal. Again, this isn’t an argument for painting and drawing over conceptual art, but for Orozco’s painting and drawing over his conceptual art, much of which, for me, falls into a genre Jerry Saltz has written about and Roberta Smith has aptly coined “Curator's Art” (whether or not they’d include Orozco, I don’t know). Asked about the Urs Fischer survey in the comments to the post below, while I find some of his work intriguing, Fischer lost my respect with the hole in the wall that, when you get too close, sticks a tongue out at you. In my book, not only is it just too easy, it sends the same message as Orozco’s shoebox: that museum visitors are idiots and deserve to be treated as such.
To show how undervalued (I'm not talking money here) Orozco’s graphic work is, I can’t even find examples on the Web of the pieces I love best. The overused image above will have to do.
December 13, 2009
From the Samurai Tree series, IM (2006), egg tempera on red cedar panel with gold leaf, 21 5/8 x 21 5/8"What is most important is not so much what people see in the gallery or the museum, but what people see after looking at these things, how they confront reality again.
December 7, 2009
This from my hike yesterday on the mountain. Otherwise tweaking my Anne Truitt piece (scheduled for the January Art in America), working on the Person of the Year cover (not my artwork, someone else's), making travel plans for Christmas in California, and going back to the city today for Orozco at MoMA and Sting at St. John the Divine. Will be back on track soon.... November 27, 2009
Last night, after the turkey, we watched two films from 1963-64 back-to-back: Brigitte Bardot in Jean Luc Godard’s “Contempt,” and “Viva Las Vegas” with Elvis and Ann-Margret. To my male friends it was high camp, but for me, watching them produced flashbacks of what it was like to grow up in that era: wanting men, wanting them to like you, wanting them to want you, but at the same time having to fend them off on a daily basis, the frustration of having your strengths ignored while being valued for your sexual potential: no one was ever going to understand the damaged woman Bardot played so beautifully in “Contempt”—except, of course, Godard, who somehow managed to see it all, which makes it an oblique but powerful film.
Ann-Margret, then Ann-Margret Olson, was a few years ahead of me at New Trier High School in the Chicago suburbs. One of 3,000 over-achievers in a public school that boasted a fully professional theater facility and a faculty sprinkled with Ph.Ds, Ann-Margret was already an icon—a cheerleader and the star of everything. She was dark-haired and beautiful, with a singing voice that could handle any style. I remember a prom where she sang a jazz song a cappella, holding a room filled with probably 1,000 teenagers rapt. But even though her version of “Heat Wave” in the student variety show was so hot my friend Donna’s parents walked out, it wasn’t her sexiness that stood out—she wasn't provocative at all—but her strength and determination. She didn’t go out with the high school boys; my ex-husband, who was in a band with her briefly, said that it was because she knew she was destined for greater things. Flash forward a couple of years and I’m on vacation somewhere with my parents, watching (I think) the George Burns Show, and there’s Ann-Margret, completely transformed. Her straight, glossy dark hair is now frizzled and red-blond, she’s speaking and singing in an unfamiliar little baby voice and, like her character in “Viva Las Vegas,” acting all weird and coy. I didn’t understand it at the time, but looking back it was one of those coming-of-age moments as I wondered, why would she hide her talents and do this to herself? Why would she allow this to be done to her?
A former colleague from Bennington tells me that the current crop of female students wants to disassociate from feminism, clearly not understanding the emotions that prompted it. They don’t want to be angry—perhaps they want to be liked? If so, we’re all in trouble. While it might appear that we’ve gone overboard with the whole sexual harassment thing, talking with my dinner companions last night I recalled what it was like to be female before the culture had those constraints—the high school and college teachers who hit on me and then gave me bad grades, the (two) dentists who would rub themselves against me as they drilled (think of how conveniently the dental chair is situated), doctors who took advantage (how to explain my first gynecological exam to my mother? I didn’t), the Purchasing Agent at Evanston Hospital, who literally chased me, the temp, around his desk. Then there was my only corporate job—at Whitney Communications, which owned Art in America in the mid-to-late 70s—where, among other things, the vice president used to routinely feel my back to see if I was wearing a bra and snap it if I was. That was our world; we took it for granted. Once we discovered we had rights, that we didn’t have to put up with this shit, yes, we were angry. What I love about “Mad Men” (check out this clip) is that it’s not an exaggeration.
Too much of the discussion around feminism is centered on the political action, rather than the culture that provoked it, choking off any serious analysis of where we stand now. I’d love to teach a class focused on the culture of the times, and I’d start with “Contempt” and “Viva Las Vegas.”
Contempt:
Viva Las Vegas:
Ann-Margret, then Ann-Margret Olson, was a few years ahead of me at New Trier High School in the Chicago suburbs. One of 3,000 over-achievers in a public school that boasted a fully professional theater facility and a faculty sprinkled with Ph.Ds, Ann-Margret was already an icon—a cheerleader and the star of everything. She was dark-haired and beautiful, with a singing voice that could handle any style. I remember a prom where she sang a jazz song a cappella, holding a room filled with probably 1,000 teenagers rapt. But even though her version of “Heat Wave” in the student variety show was so hot my friend Donna’s parents walked out, it wasn’t her sexiness that stood out—she wasn't provocative at all—but her strength and determination. She didn’t go out with the high school boys; my ex-husband, who was in a band with her briefly, said that it was because she knew she was destined for greater things. Flash forward a couple of years and I’m on vacation somewhere with my parents, watching (I think) the George Burns Show, and there’s Ann-Margret, completely transformed. Her straight, glossy dark hair is now frizzled and red-blond, she’s speaking and singing in an unfamiliar little baby voice and, like her character in “Viva Las Vegas,” acting all weird and coy. I didn’t understand it at the time, but looking back it was one of those coming-of-age moments as I wondered, why would she hide her talents and do this to herself? Why would she allow this to be done to her?
A former colleague from Bennington tells me that the current crop of female students wants to disassociate from feminism, clearly not understanding the emotions that prompted it. They don’t want to be angry—perhaps they want to be liked? If so, we’re all in trouble. While it might appear that we’ve gone overboard with the whole sexual harassment thing, talking with my dinner companions last night I recalled what it was like to be female before the culture had those constraints—the high school and college teachers who hit on me and then gave me bad grades, the (two) dentists who would rub themselves against me as they drilled (think of how conveniently the dental chair is situated), doctors who took advantage (how to explain my first gynecological exam to my mother? I didn’t), the Purchasing Agent at Evanston Hospital, who literally chased me, the temp, around his desk. Then there was my only corporate job—at Whitney Communications, which owned Art in America in the mid-to-late 70s—where, among other things, the vice president used to routinely feel my back to see if I was wearing a bra and snap it if I was. That was our world; we took it for granted. Once we discovered we had rights, that we didn’t have to put up with this shit, yes, we were angry. What I love about “Mad Men” (check out this clip) is that it’s not an exaggeration.
Too much of the discussion around feminism is centered on the political action, rather than the culture that provoked it, choking off any serious analysis of where we stand now. I’d love to teach a class focused on the culture of the times, and I’d start with “Contempt” and “Viva Las Vegas.”
Contempt:
Viva Las Vegas:
November 25, 2009
While I’m waiting for my friend Richard to call so I can post the best Facebook story ever, can we talk about apps? I’m always wary of writing about this stuff because I figure half of everybody already knows it all, and those who don’t, don’t care. I won’t bore you with the long story of how music technology challenged I’ve been for three years since moving into this house, but the short story is that I had it totally wired for sound at great expense—by a very sweet guy, a coke-head who up and split town leaving a bunch of tangled wires in his wake—and no matter how many experts I’ve employed, I have not been able to get streaming radio to work properly. And as far as I’m concerned, life without streaming radio is not worth living. Well that may or may not have been fixed today, but before my latest tech guru came over, I was leafing through New York magazine at breakfast, and learned that I could circumvent my computer with a free Pandora app for my iPhone. I instantly downloaded it, plugged it into my stereo, and viola! endless wonderful music. My only complaint, and it is small, is that having ascertained my alt rock bent (Radiohead, Pixies, Silversun Pickups) it plays an excess of Death Cab for Cutie (which I don’t really mind, but enough is enough) however I’m confident that with adequate training, it will get over it. Whew!
So I’ve been happily dancing and singing along in the kitchen tonight, preparing my wild rice contribution to my friends’ annual pot luck, and hope everyone has a thankful Thanksgiving.
So I’ve been happily dancing and singing along in the kitchen tonight, preparing my wild rice contribution to my friends’ annual pot luck, and hope everyone has a thankful Thanksgiving.