04w32:1 Posted August 5th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 32 number 1 Readers of Tyler Green’s Modern Art Notes will recognize today’s must-read code-red as an article he has been promoting over the past few days. It is from the LA Times and will require a login if you haven’t visited before. The other two articles are from the New York Times, which I’ve urged people in the past to read asap because otherwise the articles get archived and are then only accessible for a fee. That is no longer necessary, as the NYT has modified urls available via their RSS feeds especially for bloggers to link to, which allow them to be active indefinitely. (Thanks to Chris Hand at Zeke’s Gallery for clueing me into this a couple of months back). – Timothy ——————————————————————— Art of the Impolitic in Syria | Megan K. Stack http://tinyurl.com/5sngx “‘I hate people when they’re like rabbits. Scared people, I can’t even look at them,’ he said. ‘I know my work can help my country so much. If you haven’t visited Syria, you don’t know what is Syria. And I know the culture is stronger than any gun.’ […]’The old prime minister [Mohammed Mustafa Miro] was joking with me one day. He said, ‘Yes, we know you have a lot of problems, but when you die we will build you a sculpture.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you help me now and forget about the sculpture?’ ‘ Touma isn’t afraid to fight dirty. He collected the private fax and mobile phone numbers of government officials, and dug up dirt �’ extramarital affairs and the like �’ on some of his adversaries in the party to keep them at bay. ‘Anybody you hate in the government, you can find somebody else who hates him,’ he said. ‘In any government in the world, there is somebody there who will help you, not because he likes you, but because he hates the other guy.'” NOTE: If prompted, use login: goodreads and password:goodreads As Repression Lifts, More Iranians Change Their Sex | Nazila Fathi http://tinyurl.com/4uney “After decades of repression, the Islamic government is recognizing that some people want to change their sex, and allowing them to have operations and obtain new birth certificates. Before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there was no particular policy regarding transsexuals. Iranians with the inclination, means and connections could obtain the necessary medical treatment and new identity documents. The new religious government, however, classed transsexuals and transvestites with gays and lesbians, who were condemned by Islam and faced the punishment of lashing under Iran’s penal code. But these days, Iran’s Muslim clerics, who dominate the judiciary, are considerably better informed about transsexuality. Some clerics now even recommend sex-change operations to those who are troubled about their gender. The issue was discussed at a conference in Tehran in June that drew officials from other Persian Gulf countries. […] One early campaigner for transsexual rights is Maryam Hatoon Molkara, who was formerly a man known as Fereydoon. Before the revolution, under the shah, he had longed to become a woman but could not afford surgery. Furthermore, he wanted religious guidance. In 1978, he wrote to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was to become the leader of the revolution but was still in exile, explaining his situation. The ayatollah replied that his case was different from that of a homosexual and therefore he had his blessing.” Criticism Starts at Home | Henry Louis Gates Jr. http://tinyurl.com/3z6ol “It also starts with broken dreams. Near the end of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play, ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ a young woman challenges her African boyfriend’s fond hopes for decolonization: ‘You think you can patch up the world. Cure the Great Sore of Colonialism with the ‘penicillin of Independence.’ ‘ But what comes after? ‘What about all the crooks and thieves and just plain idiots who will come to power to steal and plunder the same as before, only now they will be black and do it in the name of the new independence?’ A year later, Nigeria and 15 other countries declared their independence. Yet today, according to the nonprofit organization Freedom House, only about a fifth of sub-Saharan Africa would qualify as ‘ free.’ Nor is democracy alone any guarantee of sound governance; Mr. Soyinka told me he likens South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, who spent years denying the realities of H.I.V./AIDS (even as the epidemic’s toll exceeded the number of people shipped from Africa in the trans-Atlantic slave trade), to imams who fought a WHO campaign to eradicate polio: ‘I find his position virtually as illiterate as the position of Muslim fundamentalists here in Nigeria who say that they read somewhere in the Koran that polio immunization is anti-Islamic.’ “ Note: for New York Times articles, if prompted, use login:goodreads100 and password:goodreads —————————————- 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 05 August 2004 @ 3:29 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
04w31:1 Art Criticism Part 1 Posted July 27th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 31 number 1 (art criticism Pt 1) Being a regular reader of Sally McKay’s and Jennifer McMackon’s blogs, I’ve become entangled in a discussion and questioning of contemporary art criticism. I’ve tried to sort out the postings below, but keep in mind that the comments section of each contains more material. Along the way, Jerry Saltz pops up, who offers insight into his role as a critic in an article from two years ago. Part 2 will consist of the links to his articles, plus another related article on the need for more ‘bad reviews’ of books. – Timothy ——————————————————————— James Elkins on Our Moribund Critical Discourse | Dan Hopewell http://tinyurl.com/4qmtv “I recently digested SAIC art history smarty James Elkins’ What Happened to Art Criticism? from Prickly Paradigm Press, a problematic and at times messy essay (but one that is also thought provoking and often dead right). Of particular interest to me was Elkins’ refutation of several proposed solutions to contemporary art criticism’s woes”. Followups here and here. What Happened to Art Criticism? | Timothy Quigley http://quigley.blogs.com/asymptote/2004/07/what_happened_t.html “Dan Hopewell over at Iconoduel has a review of James Elkins’ book, What Happened to Art Criticism?. Elkins surveys the contemporary state of art criticism and examines the prospects for developing a new approach. If I read the review correctly, it sounds as if he dismisses any attempts to build on past critical traditions as hopelessly ‘nostalgic’. If that’s the case, it’s an unfortunate and untenable position”. Followup here. simpleposie question for the day #129 | Jennifer McMackon http://jennifermcmackon.tripod.com/simpleposie/index.blog?entry_id=374888 “…is prompted by a post that appeared the other day on Sally McKay’s blog with reference to a post by Dan at Iconoduel on the subject of a chapbook by James Elkins called ‘What Happened to Art Criticism’. I took umbrage with Sally for intimating that the commentary on Iconoduel (which initially consisted largely of quotations by Elkins himself but which has admirably since been readdressed) might suffice in lieu of reading Elkin’s 85 page (slimmer than the Communist Manifesto) text – and also for the suggestion that source material is no longer of interest to jaded readers of art criticism.” Who’d have thought art criticism was such a hot topic? | Sally McKay http://www.digitalmediatree.com/sallymckay/?28327 “Who’d have thought art criticism was such a hot topic? The old-style stuff was moldy and dry, the new-style stuff is either glib and undemanding, or esoteric and niche. Interesting that so many of us (myself included) seem to care about it with some sort of passion. A few months ago this blog saw a glut of posts, spurred by a panel discussion in Toronto about whether or not criticism is irrelevant. A few days ago a really good post appeared at Iconoduel, a report on James Elkins’ essay What Happened to Art Criticism? Iconoduel is a very interesting art blog from Chicago, written with insight and clarity by ‘Dan,’ who seems to have a cool and solid head on his shoulders. Read his post on Elkins (and then, like I’m thinking, you might not have to read Elkins!*).” Follow up here. Resisting the Dangerous Journey: The Crisis in Journalistic Criticism | Michael Brenson http://www.warholfoundation.org/paperseries/article4.htm “In the last few years this unofficial conspiracy of silence among critics about other critics has damaged the profession. It is not based on mutual respect and support but on self-protectiveness and laziness. It has discouraged an essential discussion of the responsibilities of critics to face issues, including the issue of criticism, and the consequences of not facing them. I believe that art criticism is failing miserably to meet the challenges of this time, and that art and artists, and indeed the artistic culture of this country, are suffering as a result. American art, artists and art institutions are struggling, and because so few critics have been willing to participate in this struggle and examine their role in its development and outcome, art criticism, as a whole, is in trouble.” —————————————- 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 27 July 2004 @ 10:09 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
04w27:2 Religion? Posted July 3rd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 27 number 2 (religion?) ——————————————————————— Fight the power | James Verini http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4960930-110760,00.html “Only a quarter century into its history, hip-hop has not only taken over American popular culture, but it has also gained a surprising respect among the intelligentsia. […] On the other side of the debate there are not as many prominent voices. In fact, there is really only one: John McWhorter, a black professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, and an unabashed opponent of rap. McWhorter finds the music pernicious and humiliating. He thinks of it as the musical manifestation of the worst traits of black America, particularly, and America generally. […] Ask McWhorter the question he’s been asked countless times since throwing his hat into the ring several years ago: why does he hate rap? Surprisingly, he says he doesn’t. ‘I like listening to rap, actually; the problem is that it’s very, very catchy. The poetry is interesting, the rhythms are fantastic. But when I hear it, I hear it from a distance. For some people this music is a religion, and I don’t mean religion in a hyperbolic way. It’s at the point where a lot of people have never known the world without it. It’s all the music they listen to. They wake up to it, they lose their virginity to it, they go to sleep to it, it’s what they hear when they go to clubs. They have a vague sense of it as part of some political movement. It’s a body language, it’s a way of speaking. It’s a creed. It’s literally a religion.'” In Art We Trust (Since We Can’t Explain It) | Mia Fineman http://tinyurl.com/38ak6 “‘Artists are the new clergy, the monks and nuns of our day,’ he said. ‘When you see a man dressed in black walking down the street in Los Angeles or Manhattan, is he more likely to be a priest or an artist?’ […] In his current ‘Art Ministry’ project, Mr. Melamid uses religion as a lens through which to examine the ingrained pieties and genius worship of museum culture. ‘The whole idea of art is based on belief,’ he said in an interview after the lecture. ‘You cannot explain it, you cannot understand it. Just try reading art criticism — all you can do is have faith.’ While the project has its parodic aspects — the Art Ministry’s motto is ‘Close your mind, open your eyes’ — he insists that his message is sincere, asking, in his heavy Russian accent, ‘Why the truth cannot be funny?'” —————————————- 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 Saturday 03 July 2004 @ 2:25 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
04w18:4 Party Hardy Posted May 10th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 18 number 4 (party hardy) ——————————————————————– The rise of (p)arty monsters | R.M. Vaughan http://tinyurl.com/29rpm “‘While the social aspect of displaying art has always been an important part of the process, the rise of art spaces that are more like hipster Romper Rooms makes many in the art community nervous — is their work becoming mere decoration for an inattentive crowd of fun seekers? And what happens when the party winds down? Does anyone even remember the work? Ottawa-based artist Eliza Griffiths worries about the decline of conversation at openings — even in Ottawa, the capital of chit-chat. ‘It’s not as bad here as Toronto, yet, but I’ve noticed this party atmosphere happening more and more in Ottawa. And I love to party, but in a club or somebody’s home. These party-openings do a disservice to the art, and for the actual artist, it’s sometimes a letdown, because when you show new work you want to hear feedback, watch people’s reactions, eavesdrop, but now you don’t get that because people are there for the event. Call me old-fashioned, but I like talking about the work. I can go to a club for music and dancing.’ ‘” “Islets” and Utopia | Nicholas Bourriaud http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/bourriaud.html “‘It is not for the artist to determine the modes of application of the spaces they build: they do nothing more than build ‘models’ which are either realized or not. (…) This time does not lack political projects, only the means by which to implement them. The dominant form during the French Revolution was the ‘assemblee’, and during the Russian Revolution, the ‘soviet’. Then there was the demonstration, the sit-in, etc. Our time lacks the forms necessary to express our political projects, or to even bring them forth. Today’s dominant form -which is not political – is that of the ‘free party’ or ‘rave’, that of a spontaneous and momentous assembly of individuals around the same goal, who occupy a place not envisaged for that purpose’.” Translated from French by Timothy Comeau. Original article here. —————————————- 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 01 May 2004 @ 4:54 PM
04w18:2 Matthew Barney Part 2 Posted April 27th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 18 number 2 (Matthew Barney Part 2) Ok, so I know it is totally uncool to be into Matt Barney, and so I have a feeling that I might be lucky if you weren’t disgusted by the subject line and are actually reading this. Here’s the thing: I’m currently working on a new frontpage for Goodreads so that it will be accessible to a RSS newsreader, and the other night I really needed a post to help test out its development. Which means that my thoughts were partially on other things and I forgot one of the best articles of all, Onan the Magnificent, by Roger Hodge. There is no way that I couldn’t share this article with you, since it is one of the better ones I’ve ever read on Barney’s work, respectfully critical and at the same time able to remind one what is so silly about the Cremaster Cycle. So, in order to bring you Hodge’s article, I thought I should make it worth our while and bring you another serving of thoughts on Barney. Amoung the new selections is the first time I’ve included a link to an audio file. This is the net afterall, no need to for a goodread not to be a goodlisten. It’s a half hour long and Barney lives up to the speculation (posited in that damn National Post review that is for sale on their site and so I can’t direct you to it) that he can’t communicate. Lots of ums and dead air as he struggles for the words to answer the questions, but nevertheless worth a listen if you are interested. The link directs to a webpage, from which it is accessible (RealPlayer required). – Timothy ——————————————————————— Onan the Magnificent | Roger D. Hodge http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/1798_300/60102146/print.jhtml “It is perhaps inevitable that the most heroic artist of our age should appear after the ‘death of the author,’ at a time when the word ‘genius’ has been all but erased, at a moment of unparalleled suspicion and resentment of the achievements of great men, when the very concepts of the good, the true, and the beautiful have been rejected by most advanced critics. To be sure, appreciative reviewers have noticed that Barney represents a crystallization of the techniques, themes, and obsessions of the vanguard art of the last decade or so, and that he shares with his contemporaries a passionate interest in sexual politics, sexual identity, and gross primary sexual morphology. The 1990s, in the arts as in politics, were the decade of the genital, and Barney falls squarely within this strain of recent art. Appropriately, fame and fortune have followed, but Barney’s fame hitherto has been limited to mere celebrity. His work, however, demands not notoriety but awe. What even the artist’s most ardent admirers have failed to recognize is that Matthew Barney is the Michelangelo of genital art, the supreme master of the genre, whose work so transcends the run-of-the-mill video artist masturbating in his studio that he also may be said to bring his tradition to its unsurpassable realization.(1) ” Cremaster Master | Andy Spletzer http://www.thestranger.com/2003-07-10/art.html “I started exhibiting my work pretty quickly, right out of school. I had been making work that needed a context, a site. An interesting thing happened right as I was graduating [in 1989]: The stock market crashed and really changed the landscape of the art world in New York. It made the kind of work I was doing interesting to galleries that wouldn’t have normally been interested in it. I was continuing to make work that was site specific, but it was happening in galleries. I did that for a couple of years, and I started getting the itch to get back to very specific places in the world as the primary site for the work. This is what the Cremaster project grew out of.” Matthew Barney| Alan Murdock http://www.alanmurdock.com/apiculate/archives/000076.html “‘Yesterday at lunch I had a talk with a couple of fellow instructors about the work of Matthew Barney. One instructor couldn’t understand why he might be important to the art world. ‘Who decides? Is it some club on the East Coast that goes through and says who is going to be important? I mean, do you like his work?’ ‘He’s well connected,’ another instructor said. ‘But it’s like Duchamp – you don’t have to like it, it’s more about a visual exploration of philosophical concepts.'” The Leonard Lopate Show | Leonard Lopate/Matthew Barney http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/04242003 LL:”You must be very pleased when someone has important to the art world as Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times calls you the most important American artist of his generation. Do you take all of that seriously? Doesn’t that put a lot of pressure on you? MB: Well I think that, luckily, that there are as many reviews that would say the opposite. LL: So you like the bad reviews? MB: I they’re important. I think they’re important for a dialogue to take place. That I wouldn’t want the bad ones to go away. ‘”(28:34/31:03) —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@goodreads.ca emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 27 April 2004 @ 4:41 PM
