05w29:2 Letter from St. John's | London Bombings Posted July 21st, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 29 number 2 (Letter from St. John’s | London Bombings) Craig Francis Power has written me a couple of letters from St. John’s, the latest deals with the latest controversy with The Rooms and Gordon Laurin’s firing.Now, while the news channels today are creaming themselves about being able to devote another full day to the crumbs fed to them by the London police, we should remember that in the long run, visual culture and literature is where a society’s memory lies, and certainly not at the news desks of CBC and CNN, where they tell us that today’s bombing occurred two weeks after the first round. No shit. I wasn’t born yesterday. Goodreads began partially because of what I read by John Taylor Gatto in an autumn issue of Harper’s magazine a couple of years back: After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves. And that stayed with me. Then, last winter’s readings of John Ralston Saul drove the point home: “There is no reason to believe that large parts of any population wish to reject learning or those who are learned. People want the best for their society and themselves. The extent to which a populace falls back on superstition or violence can be traced to the ignorance in which their elites have managed to keep them, the ill-treatment they have suffered and the despair into which a combination of ignorance and suffering have driven them. […] It’s not that everyone must understand everything; but those who are not experts must see that they are being dealt with openly and honestly; that they are part of the process of an integrated civilization. They will understand and participate to the best of their ability. If excluded they will treat the elites with an equal contempt”. London Bombings Bombers in London are suffering from a lack of imagination, by which they can’t relate to society at large. I’m reminded of something Mark Kingwell wrote ten years ago discussing crime statistics in the U.S. and noting that for some the conditions of poverty were so severe that going to jail was a step up, guaranteeing shelter and three meals a day. (Such motivations have also led many people into the military over the past couple of centuries as well). One then begins to see that these suicide bombers are trying to escape their lives. And, as the media would like us to think – they all appear normal, aren’t in dire poverty. They always come across as a middle-class, albeit in some cases, lower middle class. Instead, we have a situation analogous to the suicides of Canada’s north, where the Inuit children, after years of sniffing gasoline for cheap and brain-destructive highs, are hanging or shooting themselves. We have a pretty good idea as to why those kids are self-destructive, and that is because ‘they have no culture’, the story being that the misguided intentions of a century ago to assimilate the native populations did terrible damage to their sense of self as a culture, and in effect, destroyed their imaginations. The imagination of themselves and their place in the world, in the grand scheme of things. And so, I want to say that suicide bombers are suffering from a lack of imagination. That they are choosing to die, and to escape into the paradisiacal world (the only thing, one imagines, that has preoccupied their imagination for years) rather than continuing to live their dreary, industrialized, modernist, post-modernist, (or whatever other name we throw at it) lives. Those of us who despise reality television and other aspects of pop culture choose do so because we feel that we have better things to occupy our imagination – great books, the art of contemporary galleries – ‘cinema’ as opposed to Hollywood blockbusters…. but if you’re a child of immigrants, and don’t identify either with your parents or fully with your peers, and instead your imagination is stimulated by religion …. it doesn’t seem to be so mysterious now does it, why these kids would do what they do. We imagine ourselves, develop ambitions, or at least have plans for the future – next vacation and so forth. Imagining ourselves and our place in the world is terribly important in helping give us a sense of context, and in carrying out our daily activities. Our love for stories feeds this sense of imagination – and we feel more alive when our life is echoed in the imagination – it is a resonance chamber by which we build symphonies of meaning. The Rooms The tension in St. John’s is one of two imaginative visions: an elite version (which I suppose would be Laurin’s camp) and one down-home version (the CEO’s camp). Now, admittedly, I’m not in St. John’s and am only working with what I’ve read (today’s links) but let’s look at it according to Saul’s take on elitism. I believe, as does Saul, that people want what’s best. That only seems like common sense. Yes, the elites, and especially art-elites, do form a sort of tribe which treats people outside of it with an element of contempt. They think they are engaged in what’s best. They think that the lobster-trap craft folk are uneducated and misguided and have the blinders on towards ‘what’s best’. Hence, tension. Ok, that being said, it does seem to me that Craig Power has a point where he writes, “Newfoundlanders have a reputation for being stupid, inbred and drunk. With the events of the past week and a half, is there any reason to wonder why?” having set it up by saying, “Wanda Mooney, a career government administrator, has been installed as interim director. … I don’t know what this woman’s knowledge of art history or contemporary art practice is, but I do know that if you Google her name, you find out that she used to be the woman you called if you wanted to rent space or book a reception at the old provincial gallery. How this qualifies her to run the gallery on even an interim basis, I don’t know, but I can hardly wait to see this visionary at work.” Perhaps that’s unfair. But the point here is that according to the attitude among artists in St. John’s, the Board of Directors and CEO are suffering from a lack of imagination, one that in itself is contemptuous of the public at large. One that assumes tourists want to travel to foggy and cold St. John’s to see a bunch of folk-art crap, when they could be treated to the best of what contemporary culture has to offer. But, the point I’m trying to make by bringing up London and my thoughts therein are that treating The Rooms with the contempt with which it has been treated, first by the Provincial Government, which kept it closed for a year, and now with Laurin’s dismissal, is stunting the imagination of Newfoundlanders, a place which so far has imagined itself as backward and victimized, and been rewarded by doing so by a Kevin Spacey movie. Laurin’s purported vision to give the citizens of St. John’s the quality of culture they deserve (that is, the best) and to resist mediocre crap, is admirable, and it’s unfortunate that another Maritime art scandal has resulted in the process. But here we also seem to be dealing with the backlash of ‘the excluded’ toward the elites (who have excluded by obscurantist writing and snotty attitudes for a century now) by treating them with ‘an equal contempt’. Let’s just say that nobody has a monopoly on the imagination, but London also illustrates that it’s important to foster the best imaginations society has to offer. -Timothy ——————————————————————— Letter from St. John’s 2 | Craig Francis Power http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/stjohns/ “In his brief tenure, Laurin had already formed alliances with Newfoundland and Labrador’s artist run centres, not to mention its experimental musicians, dancers and writers. There was a real sense of excitement amongst all of us. We actually believed that the provincial gallery, long a bastion for the cultural vacuity of Christopher Pratt (NL’s answer to Alex Colville), would begin to take contemporary art and artists more seriously. I, for one, feel like the biggest sucker in the world. […]Newfoundlanders have a reputation for being stupid, inbred and drunk. With the events of the past week and a half, is there any reason to wonder why?” Artists ‘mortified’ by sacking at St. John’s Rooms | CBC Arts http://tinyurl.com/97n5g “Newfoundland and Labrador’s arts community is ‘mortified and deeply embarrassed’ by the recent firing of Gordon Laurin as director of the province’s art gallery, according to an artists group.Gabrielle Kemp, director of communications of Visual Arts Newfoundland and Labrador (VANL), told CBC Arts Online her group is vexed by Laurin’s dismissal just two weeks after the province’s landmark art gallery, The Rooms, opened. “ Director’s exit stuns community | James Adams (G&M) http://tinyurl.com/b3n9e “Laurin was hired for the job just a little more than a year ago, following a lengthy search. A graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, he’d been director of Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery in Halifax since 1998. In the spring of 2004, it was expected that Laurin would be overseeing the move of the art collection into The Rooms, but that March the provincial government announced it was postponing the opening of the facility by a year, to June 29, 2005, to save an estimated $2-million.” Interview #2 | On the Go http://www.cbc.ca/onthego/media/20050718DEAN.ram “The Room’s is living up to it’s controversial beginnings. Remember the enormous fight over building on top of the Fort Townsend site. Now, within two weeks of our new provincial Museum, Archives and Art Gallery opening, the director of the Art Gallery has been sacked. Gordon Laurin, the now former director, will not comment. Dean Brinton is the CEO of the Rooms. He’s the man who fired him. Here’s part of what he had to say to the host of Weekend AM, Angela Antle.”Aired Friday, July 15, 2005 | Real Audio File Interview #3 | On the Go http://www.cbc.ca/onthego/media/20050719VANL.ram “When the news came out on Friday that Gordon Laurin, the director of our new Art Gallery in the Rooms was sacked, many people were shocked, if not outraged. Now the province’s visual artists are getting together, having meetings and making phone calls to find out what happened at the Rooms and what happens from here on in. VANL, The Visual Artists of Newfoundland and Labrador is an advocacy group for visual artists. That group held a meeting today, and then two of it’s members came by our studio. Elayne Greeley, is the chair of VANL’s advocacy committee. Tara Bryant is a member of the board. Ted began the conversation by asking Ms. Greeley what she’s learned since Friday about why Gordon Laurin was let go. Here’s what she said. Q: What is important about this dispute for the people who aren’t working artists, the people listening to us right now? A: Do they want a cultural institution that represents their culture in an accurate and in an informed way, or do they want a watered down version of programming and culture that is aimed at a less informed audience? An art gallery is a research institution as well as a space that presents work, right? So we’re talking about curating, we’re not talking just about a pretty space to hang artwork, we’re talking about representing the culture that has happened as well as presenting the culture that is existing now, and how it is going to move into the future’. [7.32/9.33] “Aired Monday, July 18, 2005 | Real Audio File —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Thursday 21 July 2005 @ 1:49 PM
05w29:1 The Rebel Sell Posted July 19th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 29 number 1 (The Rebel Sell) First, a friend who was in the audience that evening told me about it, and then I saw the video last December on Big Ideas. I taped it then actually, and as I watched it I thought, I should transcribe this audio for Goodreads. But at the time it didn’t seem practical. Winter passed. Snow fell, we had Christmas and the news of the Tsunami, and then a campaign of white bracelets to end global poverty, especially in Africa. By this time, I’d completed the transcription of another hour of video, that of Michael Ignatieff’s speech last March. So, I knew how to do it. I had the experience. I figured it’d take a couple of days. And when the video was re-broadcast the weekend before last, it was a reminder. Yes, I really should do this. And the process began. It took longer than a couple of days, but what’s the rush? The book has just been published in paperback. And perhaps it’ll be someone’s August reading, supplemented with this great introduction and summary by the authors given last October as part of the University of Toronto Reading Series. – Timothy ——————————————————————— The Rebel Sell | Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter http://www.thismagazine.ca/issues/2002/11/rebelsell.php “It may give us pause to consider that while Fight Club was hailed as ‘edgy’ and ‘subversive’ when it appeared in 1999, Rabbit, Run enjoyed enormous commercial success when it was first published?in 1960. If social criticism came with a ‘sell by’ date, this one would have been removed from the shelf a long time ago. The fact that it is still around, and still provokes awe and acclaim, makes one wonder if it is really a criticism or, rather, a piece of modern mythology. What Fight Club and Rabbit, Run present, in a user-friendly fashion, is the critique of mass society, which was developed in the late 1950s in classic works like William Whyte?s The Organization Man (1956), Vance Packard?s The Status Seekers (1959) and Paul Goodman?s Growing up Absurd (1960). The central idea is quite simple. Capitalism requires conformity to function correctly. As a result, the system is based upon a generalized system of repression. Individuals who resist the pressure to conform therefore subvert the system, and aid in its overthrow.”NOTE: introductory article from This Magazine The Rebel Sell | Andrew Potter and Joseph Heath http://goodreads.ca/rebelsell/ “So the desire to conform, this idea that we’re all trying to conform, fails to explain the compulsive nature of consumer behavior, why we keep spending more and more, even though we’re all over extended, even though it doesn’t bring anybody any happiness in the long run. So the question is why do we lay the blame for consumerism on those who are struggling to keep up with the Jones’? Because the fault would actually appear to lie with the Jones’. They’re the ones who started it all, by trying to one-up their neighbors. It’s their desire to stand out from the crowd, to be better than everyone else, that is responsible for ratcheting up consumption standards in their community. In other words, it’s the non-conformists, not the conformists, who are driving consumer spending.” Branded for life | Andy Beckett http://tinyurl.com/b4ymm “The Rebel Sell is a brave book. In places it is also unfair, light on evidence and repetitively polemical. But the argument it makes is important and original. Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, both young Canadian academics, think that for nearly half a century critics of capitalism have profoundly misunderstood their enemy. Worse than that, the authors argue, these critics have – sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not – provided modern capitalism with the fuel it runs on. […] To Heath and Potter, the story of capitalism since the 60s is the story of business absorbing so much from the so-called counterculture of that decade and after, and vice versa, that the two effectively merged. By the early 21st century, the counterculture’s governing ideas of rebelliousness and ‘cool’ have become the ‘central ideology’ of consumerism. Wherever you find capitalism at its most vigorous – as in the marketing of sportswear and pop music – a ‘rebel sell’ philosophy is at work. “NOTE: (With a response – scroll down to ‘Brand Recognition’) The Rebel Sell Official Website | Harper Collins http://www.harpercanada.com/rs/about.asp No logo? Not quite | Andrew Potter http://blog.thismagazine.ca/archives/2005/07/no_logo_not_qui.html “Here’s an interesting article about some recent polling data debunking the notion that today’s youth (18-24) are a bunch of anti-branding anti-capitalists. In fact, it would appear that this crew is actually less likely than the general population to be willing to spend more on ethically produced goods or environmentally-friendly products.” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 19 July 2005 @ 5:27 PM
05w28:1 Four Years Later Posted July 11th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 28 number 1 (four years later) ——————————————————————— Mike Harris and the arts | Robert Fulford http://www.robertfulford.com/OntarioArts.html “It is a truth universally acknowledged among artists in Toronto that Premier Mike Harris has wrecked the cultural life of Ontario. This opinion must baffle newspaper readers elsewhere in Canada. On the one hand, Ontario artists seem to spend their time accepting prizes, signing big contracts, and bragging about their international success; on the other, they claim they are living in dark times, starved by a mean, vicious government. The consensus in the cultural community is simple: We must live in hope that some day Harris will be defeated so that his successor can bring back the creative policies of the pre-Harris years, when sympathetic governments vigorously encouraged the arts. It happens that this is nonsense, but it is popular nonsense. In some Toronto circles, it is more or less mandatory. Artists holding contrary ideas usually remain silent, to avoid being condemned for heresy. […] We who favour arts funding claim that most artists of all kinds have been subsidized through most of history. True. But that doesn’t mean government decisions determine the health of the arts. When Russians were writing the great novels of the 19th century, the czars were not literary patrons. When the Impressionists in Paris were producing the best paintings of the 19th century, the French government played no part. Canadians spend so much time talking about cultural policy that we think it more important than it is. Government can help, and should, but arts policies and the arts are not the same and often don’t run on parallel tracks. Looking clearly at what has happened to the arts in the Age of Harris might help us to think about these questions with less hysteria and more, uh, common sense. “Article Date, 10 July 2001 —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Monday 11 July 2005 @ 11:07 PM
05w27:1 Ideas about God Posted July 5th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 27 number 1 (ideas about God) ——————————————————————— On Evolution of God-Seeking Mind | Conrad Montell http://cogprints.org/2726/ “The earliest known products of human imagination appear to express a primordial concern and struggle with thoughts of dying and of death and mortality. I argue that the structures and processes of imagination evolved in that struggle, in response to debilitating anxieties and fearful states that would accompany an incipient awareness of mortality. Imagination evolved to find that which would make the nascent apprehension of death more bearable, to engage in a search for alternative perceptions of death: a search that was beyond the capability of the external senses. I argue that imagination evolved as flight and fight adaptations in response to debilitating fears that paralleled an emerging foreknowledge of death. Imagination, and symbolic language to express its perceptions, would eventually lead to religious behavior and the development of cultural supports. Although highly speculative, my argument draws on recent brain studies, and on anthropology, psychology, and linguistics.” The Origin of Consciousness … | Wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/87dnp “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) is a controversial work of popular psychology by Julian Jaynes in which he proposes that consciousness emerged relatively recently in human history. Jaynes asserts that until the times written about in Homer’s Iliad, humans did not have the ‘interior monologue’ that is characteristic of consciousness as most people experience it today. Instead, he argues that something like schizophrenia was the typical human mental state as recently as 3000 years ago. […] Jaynes argues that preconscious humans effectively had a ‘split brain’ which allowed one part of the brain to appear to be ‘speaking’ to another part that listened and obeyed, and that commands that at some point were believed to be issued by ‘gods’–so often recorded in ancient myths, legends and historical accounts–were in fact emanating from individuals’ own minds. Specifically, he hypothesizes that these commands were being issued by a now usually dormant area in the right hemisphere of the brain that corresponds to the location of Wernicke’s area in the left which is believed to be involved in understanding speech. He says, with neurosurgery, these commands can be recreated with electrical stimulation of the area.” Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind | Julian Jaynes http://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/jaynes_mind.pdf “But if you take the generally accepted oldest parts of the Iliad and ask, ?Is there evidence of consciousness?? the answer, I think, is no. People are not sitting down and making decisions. No one is. No one is introspecting. No one is even reminiscing. It is a very different kind of world. Then, who makes the decisions? Whenever a significant choice is to be made, a voice comes in telling people what to do. These voices are always and immediately obeyed. These voices are called gods. To me this is the origin of gods. I regard them as auditory hallucinations similar to, although not precisely the same as, the voices heard by Joan of Arc or William Blake. Or similar to the voices that modern schizophrenics hear. Similar perhaps to the voices that some of you may have heard. While it is regarded as a very significant symptom in the diagnosis of schizophrenia, auditory hallucinations also occur in some form at some time in about half the general population (Posey & Losch, 1983). I have also corresponded with or interviewed people who are completely normal in function but who suddenly have a period of hearing extensive verbal hallucinations, usually of a religious sort. Verbal hallucinations are common today, but in early civilization I suggest that they were universal. “PDF File 139 K E.T. and God | Paul Davies http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1689.htm “The world’s main faiths were all founded in the pre-scientific era, when Earth was widely believed to be at the center of the universe and humankind at the pinnacle of creation. As scientific discoveries have piled up over the past 500 years, our status has been incrementally diminished. First Earth was shown to be just one planet of several orbiting the Sun. Then the solar system itself was relegated to the outer suburbs of the galaxy, and the Sun classified as an insignificant dwarf star among billions. The theory of evolution proposed that human beings occupied just a small branch on a complex evolutionary tree. […] Theologians are used to putting a brave face on such developments. […]Only recently, for example, did the Pope acknowledge that Darwinian evolution is more than just a theory. If SETI succeeds, theologians will not have the luxury of decades of careful deliberation to assess the significance of the discovery. The impact will be instant. […] Suppose, then, that E.T. is far ahead of us not only scientifically and technologically but spiritually, too. Where does that leave mankind’s presumed special relationship with God? This conundrum poses a particular difficulty for Christians, because of the unique nature of the Incarnation. Of all the world’s major religions, Christianity is the most species-specific. Jesus Christ was humanity’s savior and redeemer. He did not die for the dolphins or the gorillas, and certainly not for the proverbial little green men. But what of deeply spiritual aliens? Are they not to be saved? Can we contemplate a universe that contains perhaps a trillion worlds of saintly beings, but in which the only beings eligible for salvation inhabit a planet where murder, rape, and other evils remain rife?” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 05 July 2005 @ 10:33 PM
05w28:2 Darren O'Donell Posted July 3rd, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 26 number 2 (Darren O’Donnell) What would a celebration of Canada, (via fireworks and an international rock concert) be without a case of provincialism, as in, ‘oh my gosh, the rest of the world is paying attention to us, and to one of our own’? In this case, Darren O’Donnell, who was recently interviewed by NY Press, and prompting this Darren O’Donnell edition of GR. Because many people on this list know Darren personally, we’re apt to take his talent for granted, so it’s nice to have this perspective available, and it seems worth sharing with those beyond the Canadian borders. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Interview with Darren O’Donnell | Kate Crane http://www.nypress.com/18/25/books/Kate3.cfm “Basically, I think the child/adult dichotomy is false and, ultimately, not healthy. Adulthood and the various layers of personality armour one has to adopt to function as an adult are, for the most part, a performance or a fiction. Adults are, ultimately, very childlike and, conversely, children are actually far more mature than most people are willing to acknowledge. So the children in the book are actually adults?composites of me and a few of my friends. The adults in the book barely exist. […] The one thing we tell children over and over is the virtue of sharing, and yet we live in this place that glorifies wealth, rewards greed, a place where the gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow. The adult is a mythical creature, as far as I?m concerned.” Your Secrets Sleep with Me (Review) | Kate Crane http://www.nypress.com/18/25/books/KateCrane.cfm “This tale holds 101 compressed dramas; the resulting tension is as thick and refractive as DC air in August. Though Your Secrets critiques the global spread of America and the sprouting of police states, at its core the book explores the meaning of self, of our relationships with our bodies, the outside world and one another, down to a cellular level.” Darren O’Donnell’s Suicide Guide to the City | Timothy Comeau http://tinyurl.com/clp5d “One of the first projects of Darren’s I became aware of was The Talking Creature, where he basically got people to meet in Kensington Market’s park and chat. In light of Saul’s arguments, that seems to have been a very Canadian thing to do. And now, with Suicide Site Guide, that Canadian tradition favoring talk over text continues. Because, as I said earlier, the play is like a recited journal it reminds me of the fact that journals are now flourishing as a literary form through blogs.” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Sunday 03 July 2005 @ 9:01 PM
05w26:1 Cancon Posted June 30th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 26 number 1 (cancon) ——————————————————————— The Daves I Know | Alison Gillmor http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/dave.html “David: Then & Now is a photography exhibition that marks increments of time in a very intimate way: by recording the way the passing years are marked onto our bodies. Sponsored by Plug In ICA (Winnipeg’s Institute of Contemporary Art), the public art project features black-and-white before-and-after photos of men named David, placed in bus shelters around the city. In each case, a life-size photograph taken in 1993 is matched with another taken 10 years later. Don’t expect any Fox TV extreme makeovers, though: there is a continuity here that is gently reassuring.” Doodle Dandies | Sascha Hastings http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/doodle.html “Last fall, I wandered into Weird Woods, a show by artist Seth Scriver at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects on Toronto’s trendy Queen West gallery strip. After half an hour of looking at Scriver’s quirky little drawings of bushmen and furry blob creatures, I left with a nagging thought: is this the spawn of the Royal Art Lodge? Now don’t get me wrong – I love the Royal Art Lodge, Canada’s most successful artist collective since General Idea, the Regina Five and, long before them, the Group of Seven. […] Baerwald and Enright feel that a lot of it started back in the early 1980s with American artist Raymond Pettibon, who adopted a comic-book style of art, combining drawings and text that referred equally to pop culture and ‘high’ culture, philosophy and politics. But Pettibon was something of a voice in the wilderness amongst a generation of artists who preferred photography, slick video and vivid Neo-Expressionist paintings. According to Baerwald, it was a new, younger generation of artists who, in an attempt to define themselves in contrast to their elders, revived the somewhat forgotten art of drawing. Mulherin notes that at recent art fairs, she’s seen more and more works on paper, especially by emerging artists showing with younger galleries. She says that Toronto artist Shari Boyle was reluctant to display her drawings for a while precisely because she felt there was too much drawing around.” Surface Tension | Alec Scott http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/lemieux.html “Lemieux’s popularity is easy to explain – at least on one level. He painted pretty pictures, ones that aren’t technically difficult to read and feel. He imbues all his pieces, particularly his winterscapes, with a magical luminosity. His subjects are generally accessible: families (remembered from his childhood) wearing their Edwardian Sunday best; unspoiled agricultural landscapes; and nighttime skies hinting (but not too broadly) at the infinite. Even during the post-Pollock 1960s and ’70s, Lemieux remained resolutely on the figurative side of the great figurative-abstract divide – unlike, say, his great friend Paul Emile Borduas. Formally, Lemieux’s compositions are as well balanced as the shots of a skilled amateur photographer. But there’s more to him: if a first glance at his work reveals an orderly prettiness, take two uncovers dark currents swirling under the apparently calm surfaces.” Painting the Town Red | Megan Williams http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/belmore.html “When it’s not even noon on day one of the press preview of the art exhibition at the Venice Biennale and there’s already a massive lineup outside the Canadian pavilion, you know the exhibit inside has struck a chord. Rebecca Belmore’s part-sculpture, part-video installation – aptly named Fountain – is a technologically complex and exquisitely executed piece of art. It begins with a simple, veil-like sheet of water falling across the inside of a darkened room. Slowly, clouds begin to take shape on the water’s surface – the opening images of a two-and-a-half-minute video loop that’s projected onto the liquid from behind. The images change as the camera begins to move across a driftwood-strewn shore and then toward a pile of wood, which bursts thunderously into yellow and orange flames, rendered almost crystalline as they flicker through the waterfall screen. Then, Belmore herself appears, with short-cropped hair, jeans and a sweater, and flails in the shallow water, struggling to fill an old pail. Looking exhausted but resolute, she emerges from the water, plods slowly toward the camera and then hurls the bucket’s contents at the lens; it’s no longer water, now, but blood. Through a downward stream of red, Belmore gazes accusingly out at the viewer.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Thursday 30 June 2005 @ 1:00 PM
05w24:2 Body Issues Posted June 14th, 2005 by timothy. 1 Comment Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 24 number 2 (body issues) ——————————————————————— The weird and wonderful dieting advice of Karl Lagerfeld | Amanda Fortini http://slate.msn.com/id/2120489/ “Four years ago, when the couturier Karl Lagerfeld dropped 92 pounds in 13 months, a public obsessed with the vicissitudes of celebrity weight took notice. […]Never one to miss a lucrative opportunity, Lagerfeld, who has designed for Chanel since 1983, codified his diet secrets in book form. Since its 2004 publication, The Karl Lagerfeld Diet has sold nearly 200,000 copies in Europe and Asia, and last month it was released in America. Not that you would know. […]Perhaps most alien, and potentially alienating, is the book’s unapologetic emphasis on appearance. Lagerfeld repeatedly states that fashion, specifically the desire to wear the superslim fashions of the aptly named Hedi Slimane (who designs for Dior Homme), motivated him. When discussing their belief in the importance of one’s exterior, Lagerfeld and Houdret, clearly a like-minded pair, don’t mince words. ‘In order to have a place in society,’ Houdret writes, ‘both men and women have to be active, good looking and above all young?and therefore slim.’ Lagerfeld, ever extenuatory, puts it more concisely: ‘A respectable appearance is sufficient to make people more interested in your soul.'” Beauty and the Beast | Matt Feeney http://slate.msn.com/id/2111762/ “It’s a family sitcom tradition that spouses are ill-matched looks-wise, but until recently, the mismatch has usually consisted of a beautiful actress, whose glamour is partly obscured behind the clutter of everyday life, and a comparatively plain actor. Think golden-haired Meredith Baxter Birney and undistinguished Michael Gross on Family Ties or dishy Suzanne Pleshette and the comically featureless Bob Newhart in the original Bob Newhart Show. In these sitcom marriages, the husband was at least shown to compensate for his obvious lack of studliness by being what Tony Soprano would call a good earner?or at the very least a mensch. In the current sitcom lineup, by contrast, several shows pair extremely attractive women, who are often clad in plunging tops and tight jeans suitable for a Maxim photo spread, with TV husbands who are not only not studly, but downright fat, and a couple who are not only not mensches, but are ugly on the inside, too.” The Big Picture 33 | R.M. Vaughan http://rmvaughanink.blogspot.com/2005/05/big-picture-33.html “Apart from being a load of goofy (and kinda hot) frat stunt fun, Zits’s restaging of Klein’s experiments resonates with a media-saturated awareness of the male body as both an object and the focus of objectification. The collages are gorgeous representations of conflicted appetites and conflicted self-image. The contrast between the silhouettes left behind by Zits’s models (round and lumpy, like real people) and the pictures of hyper-fit, over groomed men culled from magazines – images of masculinity chosen by men who look nothing like this exaggerated ideal – is both revealing and appalling. There is no small amount of self-hatred, or at least dismorphia, evident in this division between the actual and the desired.” Navel Gazing | Laura Kipnis http://slate.msn.com/id/2111753 “One problem with this brand of global feminism is how closely it resembles narcissism on a global scale: Women everywhere mirror me. Instead, Ensler should have interviewed a few anthropologists since according to Kulick and Meneley’s Fat, bodily attributes like pot bellies actually have entirely different cross-cultural meanings. Fat connotes very different things in different cultures or in subcultures like fat activism, gay male chubby-chasers, and hip hop. Fat may be a worldwide phenomenon – and increasingly so – but not everyone is neurotic about it, or they’re not neurotic in the same way. Take the chapter by anthropologist Rebecca Popenoe, based on her fieldwork among desert Arabs in Niger. […] In Niger, failing to achieve the prevailing beauty standard isn’t a personal failure; it just means someone has bewitched you, or you have a thin constitution. […] Of course, masculinity has always been afflicted with its own bodily anxieties; it just compensates for them differently (or overcompensates). […]Only feminism-for-dummies defines body pathologies as a female franchise alone, especially since that just buttresses the illusion of masculine invulnerability all over again – traditional femininity via the back door.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 14 June 2005 @ 6:48 PM
05w24:1 John Currin Posted June 14th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 24 number 1 (john currin) All these articles are from late 2003 – Timothy ——————————————————————— Defending John Currin | Charlie Finch http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/finch/finch11-10-03.asp “Currin is conservative in the best sense of the world: he seeks to perceive what is authentic within the purview of his bent vision, and what is authentic to Currin is the unclassifiability of desire and the conviction that all life is essentially erotic. Other than Currin’s stated template, Lucius Cranach the Elder, the piece that best approximates Currin’s enduring genius is Vermeer’s Girl in the Red Hat, in which the attenuated red fur of the hat begs to be taken sexually, with permission from its wearer’s smile. This sensuous aspect of Currin’s work drives the politically correct art elite nuts, much as his limpid palette, so reminiscent of Wayne Thiebaud, leads to accusations that John can’t paint.” Talk of the Town | Mia Fineman http://slate.msn.com/id/2093020 “There are some wildly different ideas about exactly what Currin is up to?New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman sees him as ‘a latter-day Jeff Koons’ trafficking in postmodern irony while Peter Schjeldahl at The New Yorker finds him a blissfully sincere artist tapping into the timeless values of ‘mystery, sublimity, transcendence.’ But everyone is unanimous about one thing: John Currin can paint.In almost every review, Currin’s technical skill is acknowledged with a kind of breathless wonder. And to be sure, lately he has adopted a suave, Old Master-ish style, rendering the smooth, luminous skin of his nudes with real conviction?a marked departure from the intentionally crude technique of his earlier paintings. But this critical fixation on Currin’s painterly technique raises the question: Why are we so surprised that a successful contemporary painter is good at putting pigment on canvas? “essay continues with an html slide show Art Market Guide 2003 | Richard Polsky http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/polsky/polsky10-22-03.asp “Now that Currin’s prices are in the same league as the above artists, you have to ask yourself — who is this painter and what is he doing selling for all this dough? In terms of esthetics, John Currin has surprisingly received universal praise from the art world press. There has been all sorts of talk of how expertly his works are painted, coupled with a lot of psychological nonsense about the human condition. To my eye, all we have here are intentional kitschy, thrift-store portraits of people with exaggeratedly wide eyes. Sure, they’re skillfully painted, but why shouldn’t they be? In this day and age, the art world considers being a good draughtsman and having a command of color and composition to be something remarkable.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 14 June 2005 @ 2:25 PM
05w23:1 New Old Masterism Posted June 8th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 23 number 1 (new old masterism) ——————————————————————— Going Going Gone | Donald Kuspit http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/kuspit/kuspit9-15-99.asp “The attempt to create beauty as perfectly as possible has led these artists to emphasize craft — not at the expense of vision, but as its instrument. Sol LeWitt once wrote that ‘When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art,’ but the New Old Masterism makes it clear that one can never learn one’s craft too well, and the result of doing so is not slick but uncanny. For superior craft intensifies sight so that it becomes insight, which is what occurs in highly crafted Old Master art. The New Old Masterism restores the idea of the work of art as a carefully considered and composed object rather than an improvised sketch, that is, as an integrated, organic whole rather than a partial expression.”Note: article date 15 Sept 1999 Why it’s ok not to like modern art | Julian Spalding http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-672489,00.html “I have never met anyone who told me they loved modern art. No one ever came up to me, their eyes glowing with pleasure, telling me I just must see, say, the new wall drawings by Sol Lewitt in the 1970s, or the smashed-plate paintings by Julian Schnabel in the 1980s, or the life-size, glazed porcelain figures by Jeff Koons in the 1990s. […] It is all too obvious to anyone not in the art world (though always denied by those within it) that a rift has opened between the art being promoted in contemporary galleries and the art that people like to hang on their walls at home. […] Any work of art worthy of the name has an instantaneous effect on first viewing. An artist might bring all sorts of feelings and thoughts into play, but unless he or she manages to make them all contribute to one encompassing, illuminating whole, the work of art will have no heart, no ‘life’ of its own. Looking at a great work of art makes one feel more fully aware of one?s thoughts yet no longer wearied by them, more exposed to one?s emotions yet no longer drained by them, more integrated, more composed ? more, in a word, conscious. It is the light of consciousness that great works ignite in our minds. It is this quality of luminosity that unites the divine visions of Piero della Francesca with the nightmares of Goya. This is the light that will return to art after the eclipse has passed. A found object, whether it is a brick or a urinal, cannot by itself inspire you with a heightened level of consciousness, just because it is selected and placed in a gallery. The man who designed the urinal did not make it to inspire ideas about art, but for men to urinate into.” Queen Street’s New Old Masters | Timothy Comeau http://www.blogto.com/arts/2005/06/queen_streets_new_old_masters/ “Dan Hughes’s show is just down the street from Mike Bayne’s, which just closed at Katherine Mulherin’s gallery, which I wrote about here and which mentioned Kuspit’s defense of superior craft ‘enhancing sight to produce insight’. I’m afraid that the only immediate insight I got from Dan Hughes’s show is that varnish makes paintings very shiny. (That and what follows after a couple of days reflection …). My own recent experiences with practicing the craft of painting, in relation to rendering and toward the achievements of the Old Masters is that craft alone clearly isn’t enough.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 08 June 2005 @ 1:15 PM
Make Poverty History Posted June 7th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Make Poverty History Make Poverty History http://www.makepovertyhistory.ca/ Dear Timothy Comeau: Thank you for supporting the Make Poverty History campaign. Your name has been added to the ballooning list of supporters who have committed to the goals of this campaign. Now it’s time to make sure every person you know does the same. Poverty eradication is possible, so let’s encourage hundreds of thousands of others to get on board. There is no time to lose. Please forward this message to everyone in your address book. Tell them to join with thousands of others across the planet to once and for all make poverty history. Thanks again. We’re excited to make poverty history? with you. Liz Bernstein and the MPH Campaign Team info@makepovertyhistory.ca tel 613.241.5293 ——————————————————————————– Dear Friend, Today, I became part of an unprecedented global call to action to end poverty: Make Poverty History Right now, there is active campaigning in over 50 countries around the three core demands: More and Better Aid, Make Trade Fair, and Cancel the Debt. In Canada, we’re also campaigning to End Child Poverty in Canada. You’ve just got to be a part of this campaign. Go to http://www.makepovertyhistory.ca and sign on to the campaign yourself. There is no time to lose. It doesn’t matter who or where you are, your voice is *critical* to the success of this campaign. This is a rare chance to join me and thousands of others across the planet to once and for all make poverty history. What are you waiting for? Join me and click in! Timothy Comeau What you can do right *now*: * Sign on to the campaign * Tell Paul Martin to commit to a timeline for 0.7% * Click others into action – forward this message to your networks /”If everyone who wants to see an end to poverty, hunger and suffering speaks out, then the noise will be deafening. Politicians will have to listen.”/ – Archbishop Desmond Tutu emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 07 June 2005 @ 10:35 PM
