04w49:1 Academia Posted November 28th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 49 number 1 (academia) As Steven Pinker said in the Edge interview I sent out in the 04w47:1 posting, “…graduate students are grumbling in emails and in conference hallways about being locked out of the job market unless they perpetuate postmodernist gobbledygook, and how they’re eager for new ideas from the sciences that could invigorate the humanities within universities, which are, by anyone’s account, in trouble.” My recent experiences attending public lectures at the University of Toronto have been memorable but also remind me of how I’m glad to not be in school at the moment. While I’ve anticipated returning to academy to do a Master’s degree for sometime, an hour or so among the mediocrity of the elites reminds me how I’d rather develop ideas over pints than seminar tables. All of which reminds me of Helena Echlin’s article, “How Yale Strangles Literature”, which I first read four years ago when it was first published. At that time I e-mailed it to a couple of friends. I re-finding it for this posting, I came across Erin O’Connor’s blog and I should really thank her, since her posting from last February led me to the other articles below. Rounding off these links, is the article by Scott Smallwood on last spring’s demise of the Invisible Adjunct, a blog now a classic on the subject. – Timothy ——————————————————————— How Yale Strangles Literature | Helena Echlin http://tinyurl.com/3tmdj “In general, students and faculty at Yale do not explicitly espouse theory, or particular theorists. But high theory, whatever its merits or demerits, has validated the use of jargon. People who talk nonsense are now looked upon not as sloppy thinkers, but as sages. The ode must traverse the problem of solipsism … And it is literary theory that has made us see writers as fallible, blinkered creatures, unaware of what they write. The critic’s job is to expose their blind spots and expound their contradictions. This goes some way to explaining the scorn for writers that I encountered.” Commentary by Erin O’ConnorArticle Date, Autumn 2000 The Seminar has no clothes | Erin O’Connor http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/000854.html Belated Apologies | Dorothea Salo http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/archives/2004/02/09/belated-apologies/ “Which brings me back, in a roundabout sort of way, to Wilf Cude. […] He?s mad at the waste of people?s lives. It?s not just the lifetimes lost to graduate school, nor is it the loss to academia itself (he believes as I do that academia more or less gets what it deserves there, good and bad). He hates the economic, physical, and psychological damage that academia causes attriters and non-attriters alike, the same damage that none of my tenured/tenure-track friends has thus far cared to acknowledge happening to me.” Required reading | Dorothea Salo http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/archives/2004/10/07/required-reading Posting links to a 60-page PDF report on the current state of the American doctoral system. Ph.D. Program Retention Rates, Again | John Bruce http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_mthollywood_archive.html The permalink for this posting doesn’t work, so the link is to the February archive. Scroll down to February 03, 2004. There are multiple postings on the subject from this month. Inane Literary Politics… | Julia at Winston’s Diary http://winstonsdiary.blogspot.com/2004_02_04_winstonsdiary_archive.html#107595186533935969 A friend writes: “One of the characters in a book by a Vietnamese-American author was indicted by the class for her phallocentric American ‘desire to know’ (I guess vaginocentric non-Americans just want to loll around in loose shoes and ignorance–exactly how is this bullshit supposed to promote tolerance and human happiness?). The character discovers that her mother’s life in Vietnam had been brutal rather than idyllic, and that the Vietcong were as lousy as the feudal overlords, if not worse. I pointed out that it wasn’t the character’s ‘American need to know’ that uncovered the truth, but her mother’s unprompted confessional letter. Was that evidence, then, of a ‘Vietnamese need to tell’? One woman sitting next to me nodded enthusiastically (she hasn’t been fully indoctrinated yet) and said, ‘That’s great’ but everyone else glared at her until she looked at her shoes, suddenly knowing she’d made a gaffe.” Disappearing Act | Scott Smallwood http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i34/34a01001.htm “Like the Invisible Adjunct blog, which walked a line between the personal and systemic, her departure is not just about her. It’s yet another signal, some say, of how broken the academic hiring system is. About 45 percent of all faculty members are now part-timers. Each year thousands of people with new doctorates in fields like history and English fail to find the tenure-track jobs they are chasing. In English, for instance, fewer than half of the new Ph.D.’s win tenure-track jobs initially, according to the Modern Language Association. When confronted with those numbers, the apologists, as the Invisible Adjunct calls them, maintain that there will always be jobs for the good ones. But if someone with a Ph.D. from a top-tier college, publications, and writing skills good enough to get thousands of people to start their day by checking what she has to say — if she isn’t one of the good ones, who is? ‘She has jumped through all the hoops that the profession set for her,’ says Ralph Luker, a former professor at Morehouse College and a regular participant in the Invisible Adjunct blog. ‘And we failed to find a place for her.'” —————————————- 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 28 November 2004 @ 7:09 PM
04w41:1 The Cutting Edge Becomes Dull, Needs a Sharpener Posted October 7th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 41 number 1 (the cutting edge becomes dull, needs a sharpener) ——————————————————————— From…Early 21st Century Art (New York: Kramer Publishing 2035) | Tom Moody http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?29368 “The death of so-called site specific art came in 2004, at a talked-about show most people never saw.” The TAAFI Panel on the Avant-Garde | Sally McKay and Guests http://www.digitalmediatree.com/sallymckay/comment/29330/ “‘I did not really expect a group of pundits with careers embedded in fine art and it’s discourse to dismiss the field with such an apparent lack of anxiety.’ So bored were they by their work in the arts, the gala soirees and seminars of their art fairs … so bored is Mr. Monk with his basically cultural civil servant position and salary, he doesn’t think he could recognize the avant garde – how tragic to be so dissapointed in one’s life work. Either that or he just likes walking around blindfolded. Pin the tail on the Donkey or play ball! – desolee (guest) 10-05-2004 9:21 am” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Thursday 07 October 2004 @ 10:47 PM
04w31:2 Jerry Saltz and Bad Reviews – Art Criticism Part 2 Posted July 27th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 31 number 2 (Jerry Saltz and Bad Reviews – a.c. part 2) ——————————————————————— Learning on the Job | Jerry Saltz http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/saltz/saltz9-11-02.asp “To me, theory and positions are important, but they often lead to dogmatic thinking, obscure writing and rigid taste. Knowing where you’re coming from means knowing what you like before you like it and hating what you hate before you hate it. This takes all the life out of art. Theory is about understanding. Art is about experience. Theory is neat. Art is not. My only position is to let the reader in on my feelings; try to write in straightforward, jargon-free language; not oversimplify or dumb down my responses; aim to have an idea, a judgment or a description in every sentence; not take too much for granted; explain how artists might be original or derivative and how they use techniques and materials; observe whether they’re developing or standing still; provide context; and make judgments that hopefully amount to something more than just my opinion. To do this requires more than a position or a theory. It requires something else. This something else is what art, and criticism, are all about”. Article Date 11 September 2002 A chat with Jerry Saltz, part one | Tyler Green and Jerry Saltz http://www.artsjournal.com/man/archives20040701.shtml#82745 “I was – and still am – sick of critics quoting from the same seven writers to support their ideas. If I read one more review that begins with a quote from Barthes or Baudrillard I’m going to slit my wrists.” A chat with Jerry Saltz, part two | Tyler Green and Jerry Saltz http://www.artsjournal.com/man/archives20040701.shtml#82777 “The one thing you don’t want to be, in my eye, is a local critic who is merely a booster, someone just writing on the artists from your zip code or gender or sexuality or political base. This is very bad. Another lucky thing about New York is our bigness. However, it’s also its great disadvantage. In London, say, everybody is sleeping together, eating together, arguing with one another? If a new artist appears, everybody in the whole termite nation is aware of that on the same night more ore less. New York is so huge that ? there are lots of different parties going on at the same time. We don’t really know about one another that much. There are many parallel art worlds in New York. I think that’s pretty exciting as long as you make it your own business to get out of your own party as much possible. ” The Art of the Bad Review | Andy Lamey http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=04/06/09/1658236&tid=1 “What literature needs most is a new and abusive school of criticism. So wrote Rebecca West in 1914, in an essay called ‘The Duty of Harsh Criticism.’ Book reviewers were too kind, she argued, and literary standards debased. English departments were remarkable only for the shocking amounts of unreadable writing they produced. Then there was the ‘formidable army of Englishmen’ who had managed to become men of letters without having written anything: ‘They throw up platitudinous inaugural addresses like wormcasts, they edit the letters of the unprotected dead, and chew once more the more masticated portions of history.’ There is now no criticism in England, she concluded. ‘There is merely a chorus of weak cheers . . . a mild kindliness that neither heats to enthusiasm nor reverses to anger.’ It’s hard to believe West’s essay appeared ninety years ago; what is striking about reading it today is how familiar it sounds” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 27 July 2004 @ 10:52 PM
04w29:1 June 16th Posted July 11th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 29 number 1 (June 16th) ——————————————————————— Super Theory Woman | Jerry Saltz http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/jsaltz/saltz7-8-04.asp ” On the night of June 16, 2004, I was a guest on the MSNBC talk show featuring the strangely likable, peculiarly white-under-the-eyes Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida and rabid right-winger […] The first ten-minute segment is a blur to me and seemed to last two seconds. All I remember is Scarborough coming on and asking, “Where’s the outrage?†Then I think he talked about Fraser being a prostitute and breaking the law and asked me, “If I snuck up from behind you and smashed you over the head with a brick and then poured salt in the open wound, would you call that art?†All I could think to answer was “That would be bad art, Joe.†I did pointedly ask if either of them had actually seen Fraser’s videotape. Unsurprisingly, neither had, to which I said something like, “Oh, so you’re like those people who ban books without reading them.†[…] whether you like it or not, Fraser should be commended for doing something brave, and in the middle of a minefield. Outside the art world she will be labeled a slut and a nut. The art world will likely call her a narcissistic showoff. But the art world is a place that says that you should be free.” Joyce’s long-lost, lustful letter smashes auction record | CBC http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2004/07/09/Arts/sexyjoyce040709.html “The famously erotic missive, initiated by an equally explicit first letter from Barnacle, includes Joyce’s recollection of past sexual encounters with Barnacle describing the time she had opened his trousers and ‘made a man of him’ – and shares his ‘ungovernable lust’ for her. Calling Barnacle ‘my darling little blackguard’ and ‘my strange-eyed whore,’ the letter is signed ‘heaven forgive my madness, Jim.’ Joyce and Barnacle met in Dublin on June 16, 1904 – the day he later immortalized in his masterwork Ulysses. Later that year, they left Dublin and never returned together to Ireland. They married in 1931, about a decade before the author’s death. “ Abracadabra , The Magic of Theory | Timothy Comeau http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/commentary/2004/06/abracadabra-magic-of-theory.html “Here’s the thing. I’m an artist, so I think I can say I know how the creative process works. I think I’ve had enough dealings with other artists to know that this is usually how it works for most of us. And my feeling is that she thought this guy was hot and wanted to do him; further, she had the wherewithal to frame it within the context of her practice and using a magic spell of theory was able to get her sextape on the wall. She didn’t even give it a title, which is really revealing. Unlike Paris Hilton, who was famous for her green-light blowjobs before her ignorance of Wal-Mart, this from the get-go was meant to be shown off, but it was also an excuse for Fraser to get laid. All well and good and I congratulate her on her cleverness and the originality of her seduction. But the work does not ‘raise ethical and consensual terms of interpersonal relationships’. It’s a simple porn. It might raise these issues if you were an alien. Let’s ignore for a second how typically pathetic that press release is and just assume that all art galleries are currently engaged in the same bullshit, thinking this is what we – an audience of intelligent people – want and expect. And that I think that’s what I finally understand – the art-world orients itself to non-humans. The texts that accompany art works are meant to explain them to dolphins, squid, elephants and ravens, or whatever intelligent non-human life is in outer space. To entertain the ‘questions raised’ is to enter a state where we deny our common humanity for the cheap thrill of speaking of a sex video in terms of the sociological, something most likely done with others in a social situation to begin with, and something that has been done to death already to no apparent end.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, email subscribe@goodreads.ca emailed by Timothy on Sunday 11 July 2004 @ 6:30 PM
04w28:1 Jane Jacobs & Robert Hughes Posted July 4th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 28 number 1 (Jane Jacobs & Robert Hughes) Thanks to Pete Dako, I think I’ve now got the RSS feed on the homepage working correctly. In addition, I think my webpage was drunk, given that the design was all wonky there back and forth for a bit. What can I say, it’s been that kind of month. The new RSS url, which should work in all newsreaders, is http://feeds.feedburner.com/goodreads/oGln . For those of you currently subscribed to the feed, I would suggest resubscribing. In addition, sending out these regular got a little spotty last month since it’s now summer and all. Who wants to sit in front of computer reading? So, I imagine that it might remain a little spotty over the next couple of months and I’m sure none of us will mind. – Timothy ——————————————————————— War? Terrorists? No, Here’s What’s Really Scary | Clifford Krauss http://tinyurl.com/2sqym “In reaching her gloomy conclusions, Ms. Jacobs barely skims over such possibilities of calamity as terrorism, nuclear war and environmental degradation. Rather, she calls those mere symptoms of what she views as more fundamental, less obvious ailments: the breakdown of the family, the decline of higher education, lapses of modern science, tax systems that do not distribute money fairly and the inadequate self-regulation of professions. These, for her, are signs that the very pillars that support society are rotting. She says it is natural for societies to ‘make mistakes and get off balance,’ but then they correct themselves. ‘What seems different about this situation is the stabilizers themselves are in trouble,’ she said one recent afternoon. ‘If the stabilizers go, what do we depend on?’ “ That’s showbusiness | Robert Hughes http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1250525,00.html “Too much has happened in art. Not all of that ‘too much’, admittedly, is compelling or even interesting, but the ground is choked with events that defy brief, coherent summary. […] Most of the ‘1980s artists’ over whom such a fuss was made have turned out to be merely rhetorical, or inept, or otherwise fallen by the wayside. […] Styles come and go, movements briefly coalesce (or fail to, more likely), but there has been one huge and dominant reality overshadowing Anglo-Euro-American art in the past 25 years, and The Shock of the New came out too early to take account of its full effects. This is the growing and tyrannous power of the market itself, which has its ups and downs but has so hugely distorted nearly everyone’s relationship with aesthetics. […] The art world is now so swollen with currency and the vanity of inflated reputation that it is taking on some of the less creditable aspects of showbiz. […] Showbiz controls journalism by controlling access. The art world hopes to do the same, though on a more piddly level. No other domain of culture would try this one on. “ —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, email subscribe@goodreads.ca http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Sunday 04 July 2004 @ 1:10 PM
04w24:1 Posted June 7th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 24 number 1 ——————————————————————— Truth & Beauty | Harvey Blume http://tinyurl.com/26y6s “…two Cambridge-based scientists — Felice Frankel, a research scientist at MIT, and Eric Heller, a particle physicist at Harvard — couldn’t be farther apart. While Frankel and Heller know and admire each other’s work, they take diametrically opposed positions on whether the imagery they produce is art and what its relationship is to science. […] Frankel’s insistence on — almost a fiercely protective attitude toward — scientific truth, makes her impatient with artists who ransack science for imagery and metaphor without taking time to understand it. ‘I get angry,’ she says, ‘at artists who create one-liners, who take a sentence from a textbook and make an installation out of it.’ […] When it comes to the art world, however, Heller considers himself an outsider. But he’s a savvy outsider who diagnoses art-world behavior as he might a peculiarity of particle spin. ‘The universal thing in avant-garde modern art is newness,’ he says. ‘Many artists think that if they do the next shocking thing, they’re going to be in the history books.’ His point of view is in many ways that of an aesthetic conservative, who respects beauty and traditional values that the art world in recent years has tended to treat as old-fashioned.” A bastion against cultural obscenity | Robert Hughes http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1230169,00.html “By the time I first came to live in England, and for years thereafter, the obsoleteness of the Royal Academy as a benign factor in the life of contemporary art was simply assumed as a fact. […] Nevertheless, one went to its shows, which were sometimes complete eye-openers.[…] The chance to see shows like that, I realised, was one reason why I had wanted to leave Australia in the first place. Anyway, as the years wore on, it began to seem a bit absurd to bear the Academy ill-will for things that happened in Burlington House when you were less than 10-years-old, or even not yet born. […]The idea that a revived Academy would or could clamp an iron fist of conformity on English painting and sculpture is simply absurd. It did not do that even in the 18th century. But there are quite clear and to me convincing reasons why we need such a revival today. […] An institution like the Royal Academy, precisely because it is not commercial, can be a powerful counterweight to the degrading market hysteria we have seen too much of in recent years. I have never been against new art as such; some of it is good, much is crap, most is somewhere in between, and what else is news? I know, as most of us do in our hearts, that the term ‘avant-garde’ has lost every last vestige of its meaning in a culture where anything and everything goes. […] The scientific metaphors, like ‘research’ and ‘experiment’, that were so popular half a century ago, do not apply to art. We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food. What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in 10 seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures.” How to Determine the Business You’re REALLY In | Mark Federman http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/BusinessYoureReallyIn.pdf “What haven’t you noticed lately? Determining the business you’re really in requires developing an awareness of the dynamics and effects that emerge from the business when considered as a McLuhan medium. McLuhan’s Laws of Media are a particularly useful tool that provides non-judgemental clarity of perception into these effects. IBM’s initial success, loss of industry dominance and subsequent recovery is a prime example of how the company’s nominal business differs from ‘the business it’s really in’ when viewed through the McLuhan lens, an insight that is applied as well to Microsoft, Amazon.com and GroceryGateway.com. Examples of how ‘creating an culture of innovation’ requires one to use the media law of reversal to break through conventionallytrained business thinking are demonstrated among some of the most successful companies in computer software, food service and electronic component manufacturing. ‘To be able to perceive 21st century dynamics is to … change the tools with which we perceive the world and thereby restructure the way we think about our business.’” NOTE: PDF file (347K) —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, email subscribe@goodreads.ca http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Monday 07 June 2004 @ 10:47 PM
04w22:3 The Week in Art Posted May 29th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 22 number 3 (the week in art) ——————————————————————— No sketch please, we’re British | Peter Goddard http://tinyurl.com/2jaaa “On Saturday, Jason Witalis was happily sketching an ancient head at the Eternal Egypt exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum. It would help him remember what he’d seen, he says. ‘I get more out of it.’ Then a ROM guard came up and stopped him flat. Busted. The 29-year-old Toronto intern architect was nabbed by the ROM no-sketching police, caught red-handed with his crudely drawn outline of Mentuhotep II, founder of ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, in his hot little hand.” When drawing art is outlawed, only outlaws will draw art | Franklin Einspruch http://www.artblog.net/index.php?name=2004-05-28-07-44-drawing “If I were in Toronto, I would get every artist in town I could to go down to the ROM, sit down in the British Museum exhibition, and draw. Call it a Draw-In. The fact that the British Museum is willing to cut off this ancient method of learning for the sake of its intellectual property rights, or whatever this is about, is vile. It is anti-art. It is vandalism against our tradition. “ A Bonfire of the Vanities | Eric Gibson http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110005138 “Art disasters normally have a visceral impact. Such incidents as the looting of the Baghdad Museum last year and the ravaging of Florence’s art treasures by floods in 1966 set the mind reeling at the thought of pieces of man’s cultural patrimony permanently lost or damaged. This time, though, I was strangely unmoved. It’s not that I think incinerating art is a good thing. It’s just that the work of these artists–as of all contemporary artists–is too new and untested to have acquired the cultural heft that makes it seem an indispensable part of one’s existence. I regret the fire happened, but I can’t quite see it as a body blow to civilization.[…] another critic, Danny Serota (no relation to Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota), suggested the burned-out warehouse be preserved as a ‘shrine’ to conceptual art. You’d expect this kind of ditsy hyperbole from art dealers (who are paid to be enthusiastic) or from Mr. Saatchi himself. Instead it’s come largely from art critics. “ Is this Britart’s ground zero? | Adrian Searle http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1225496,00.html “They will see it as divine retribution, and perhaps feel a pleasurable little glow, not from the radiated heat from the fire, but of schadenfreude, especially as so many of the destroyed works are in the collection of Charles Saatchi. A rumour circulating yesterday suggested that Saatchi has been trying to buy the site, though one can’t imagine exactly why, and it is being talked of as Brit Art’s ground zero. A generation has not quite gone up in smoke, though there are those who will see it thus. ” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself from this list, email subscribe@goodreads.ca http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Saturday 29 May 2004 @ 8:29 PM
04w11:2 Art Chairs Posted March 8th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 11 number 2 (art chairs) ——————————————————————— Good, better, best | Artblog.net http://artblog.net/index.php?name=2004-03-05-08-31-good “John Massengale (‘a recovering architect’) has an interesting post that talks about connoiseurship. Even though the topic is furniture as it relates to urban design, it has a few points that could be applied to art and art criticism. […] Most art schools teach how to invoke unprecedented reality, which is a better term for what this is usually called: originality. An artist ought to be generating at least some unprecedented reality or he’s not doing his job. But by emphasizing the novel, the art world has become fashion-driven. The cutting-edge art school experience has the students graduating with little more skill than they entered with, but with a finely-tuned art-world fashion sense. The blows to sincerity and integrity have been palpable. This is why I favor craftsmanship and connoiseurship – I believe human concerns ought to be addressed by art not just intellectually, but formally. Otherwise, you get the results that you often see on the gallery wall: art that does to your soul what sitting in the Mies chair does to your back. ” A Bag Is a Bag Is a Bag | Charlie Finch http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/finch/finch3-4-04.asp “Arties were lined up at the Elizabeth Dee Gallery on Saturday night to see the latest video from Alex Bag, whose droll, if increasingly formulaic, shape shifting was intercut with graphic, wallsize excerpts from the Paris Hilton sex tape. […] What makes this show worth seeing is not just the titillation, but the formal, esthetic dominance of the Paris Hilton sex video in a gallery context. […] Bag powerfully questions the whole fine-art enterprise, including her own efforts, that we art addicts experience today. On one wall, in one Chelsea cube, she argues that all the arch tributes to Kurt Cobain, all the Patty Chang-style contortions, all the Matthew Barney pinheaded grotesqueries are one raindrop compared to the cultural impact of a dick-hungry Hollywood heiress on the internet. ” A chance for amateurs to mumble ‘Huh?’ | Dave Barry http://tinyurl.com/yu4uh “Whenever I write about art, I get mail from the Serious Art Community informing me that I am a clueless idiot. So let me begin by stipulating that I am a clueless idiot. […] I saw ‘Chair’ at Art Basel, a big show on Miami Beach. It attracted thousands of Serious Art People, who wear mostly black outfits and can maintain serious expressions no matter what work of art they are viewing. This is hard, because a lot of Serious Art consists of bizarre or startlingly unattractive objects, or ‘performances’ wherein artists do something Conceptual, such as squirt Cheez Whiz into an orifice that has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for snack toppings. But no matter what the art is, a Serious Art Person will view it with the somber expression of a radiologist examining X-rays of a tumor. Whereas an amateur will eventually give himself away by laughing, or saying ‘Huh?’ or (this is the most embarrassing) asking an art-gallery person: ‘Is this wastebasket a piece of art? Or can I put my gum wrapper in it?’ ” http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com —————————————- Long urls made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Monday 08 March 2004 @ 9:28 PM
04w04:3 Porno vs. Theory Posted January 30th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 4 number 3 (Porno vs. Theory) ——————————————————————— The Porno-ization of American Media and Marketing | T.L. Stanley http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39599 “He’s the latest, but by no means only porn star to grab attention in the mainstream media. He is part of what some trend mavens say is the new ‘porno-ized’ America, which seems to be enthralled with people who were once marginalized in a business that has always been the black sheep of entertainment. ‘It’s a way to prove your liberalness to not be freaked out by porn,’ said Marian Salzman, chief strategy officer at Euro RSCG Worldwide. ‘People are decidedly more open now.'” ” The self-critic | Matthew Price http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/12/28/the_self_critic/ “Has theory succumbed to the same fate? That is the opinion of one of Britain’s best-known public intellectuals, the Marxist critic – and formidable theorist himself – Terry Eagleton. In his new book, After Theory (Basic), Eagleton administers last rites to today’s theoretical enterprise. ‘The golden age of theory is long past,’ he intones, reminding us that the best work of its titans – Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault; Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva – is now several decades old. ‘Rather like Nietzsche thought God was dead but we pretended for quite a long time that he was still alive, I think the same for theory,’ Eagleton said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Derry, Northern Ireland. ‘It’s actually been dead for quite a while; but we’ve been sort of behaving as though it isn’t.'” ” Theory in chaos | David Kirby http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0127/p11s01-legn.html “Specifically, says theory’s reformed bad boy, ‘[theory] has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil…’ And that, as Eagleton says, ‘is rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on.'” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Friday 30 January 2004 @ 3:35 PM
