Patti Smith with Steve Sebring; image courtesy of gerryco23.wordpress.com

Before I went on vacation, Kristen at Act Your Age told me that PBS was going to show Dream of Life, a 2008 documentary by Steven Sebring about Patti Smith. Then yesterday, as I was sorting out my house, my friends Jacob and Melissa reminded me that it was going to be on later that night. It should be noted that I received reminder messages from them within the span of five minutes. I’m fine with being the music geek friends send these sorts of notices to. Thanks, everyone.

First, a disclaimer. I’m not a Patti Smith fan. What I mean by that is, I don’t know Smith’s music very well. Several of my friends got to know her through her music, perhaps developing their feminist and/or queer identities as a result. I’m sure the same could be said for readers of this blog I don’t know personally. This isn’t to say I’m not open to listening to her work. I’m just not very familiar with it. If there is interest in subsequent posts wherein I listen to her albums in chronological order and document my thoughts about it like Carrie Brownstein did with Phish earlier this year, show me the way.

Next, a confession. I haven’t until recently been interested in listening to Patti Smith’s music. While I haven’t listened to Horses in its entirety, I am familiar with her, and the ways in which I’m familiar with her give me pause. Here is why.

1. Each time I see a documentary where she is discussed, the opening chords to “Gloria” fade in and a bunch of musicians wax pretentious about how her music melded the sacred with the profane, or that she was not a musician but a poet and I get pissy. Not because of the song, but because of the purple prose being recited over it. I actually hadn’t heard the song in full until I was well into college.

2. With some exception, these superlatives tend to come from men: Glenn Branca, Thurston Moore, Legs McNeil, Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, Richard Hell, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, and Michael Stipe are but a few names. I remember Alice Bag talks about her influence in the supplemental feature about women in punk in Don Letts’ Punk: Attitude and I know riot grrrl pioneers like Kathleen Hanna were inspired by her, but the praise mainly comes from the men. Established or well-regarded rock and roll dudes. Legends, if you will.

3. In some of the things I have read on Smith, she wasn’t very kind to the women and girls around her. Blondie’s Debbie Harry talks about how dismissive and unfriendly she was during their CBGB’s days in Please Kill Me, an oral history on New York punk collected by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. It was also reported in Mark Spitz and the late Brendan Mullen’s L.A. punk oral history We Got the Neutron Bomb that Smith was nasty to The Runaways after they tried to visit her backstage after a concert, leaving a baby Joan Jett particularly crushed. Now, oral histories are tenuous at best and Smith is not asked to comment about any of this. Also, Bebe Buell speaks favorably of Smith in Please Kill Me. Kim Gordon has a prolonged friendship with her as well. But this, coupled with the fact that she doesn’t identify as a feminist makes me feel weird about her status as a feminist rock icon.

4. Add to this the very apparent sense of malecentric hero worship Smith evinces and I feel really weird about her. While I like that she likes Maria Callas, The Ronettes, and Christina Aguilera, I don’t get the sense that she had much use for women. She cut her hair to look like Keith Richards. She learned to hail a cab by watching Bob Dylan in Don’t Look Back, a man who would later tune her guitar. That same guitar was a gift from Sam Shepard. Tom Verlaine apparently has the most beautiful neck in rock music, though her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith of MC5 possessed something altogether else. Pablo Picasso made irreplicable art until Jackson Pollack created paintings out of the drippings from Picasso’s “Geurnica.” Willem de Kooning’s paintings made her want to touch the art in museums, an “offense” she gleefully commited on more than one occasion.

In addition, Smith’s most well-known for covering songs by men, reclaiming Them’s “Gloria,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe,” and Nirvana’s “About A Girl.” Of course, she redefined those songs by singing them as a man without changing the male-female pronouns or amending them to be about Patty Hearst or Kurt Cobain. And, as I’m sure my friend Curran would be quick to point out, Smith often aligns herself with queer men like Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Maplethorpe, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Michael Stipe. Curran may also posit that this makes Smith more closely as a transgendered person, which makes sense given Smith’s commitment to androgyny and sexual ambiguity.

However, I’ve always felt that Smith’s indebtedness to men has aligned herself at with a more liberal feminist, at times heterosexist view of how women play the game of rock (i.e., play the man’s game). While I get how others believe that she’s expanded how women can look and sound in rock, to me it still feels more like she’s abiding by male definitions of performance and sound rather than redefining it for female artists, a group she may not in fact feel that she is a part of. 

To be clear, I don’t need her to be feminine. I’d like it if she were a feminist, but I’d be happier if it just seemed like femaleness wasn’t so burdensome or powerless or safe to her. However, this is how it’s often seemed to me that Smith views or once viewed my sex category, and with it my gender, and this has always been our wedge. I’ll let her state her case.

Of course, this outlook may evince some potential transphobia on my part. I also might be privileging binaristic norms around gender and sexuality instead of championing fluidity. This nagging feeling keeps me coming back to Smith as an idea. But maybe I should get to know her better. And with that, the documentary.

I’ll be blunt again. For the most part, I found this documentary to be indulgent yet slight. Smith of course is the subject, but I was disheartened by how much she seemed to dictate the narrative (I find it just as frustrating when men do this, though I did like when Smith ordered filming to cease backstage before a performance). I would have liked more context.

I also would’ve liked to have been surprised by it more. I didn’t learn much about the artist or the person behind her mythology. I also didn’t get much of a sense of time and place. I could deduce the passing of time by watching her children mature. I understood when we were watching her tour the Trampin’ album because she was speaking out against the Iraq War and the Bush administration. I gather that dancing on the beach in Coney Island with Lenny Kaye was fun, but don’t know why it needed to be shown in slow motion. I know that losing her husband and her friend and long-time collaborator was traumatic because she said so. I don’t know how she felt about the loss of her parents during the 2000s. I saw that she loved playing with her guitarist son Jackson, who toured with her, but I know very little about her daughter Jesse past a gender-bending pubescent trip to the bathroom and, later, a carriage ride with her mother. And past some previously captured interview footage of Smith, I don’t know why she left mundane New Jersey to become a punk poet in New York, though I think I can imagine why.

That said, there were little snatches of Patti Smith the daughter and the artsy gender rebel that I enjoyed and did help me get to know her better. Seeing her eat hamburgers at her parents’ time-warp home. Seeming both proud and embarrassed when her father admits that he can’t go to his daughter’s concerts anymore because he lost his hearing at the earlier gigs he did attend while wearing one of her concert t-shirts. Trading chords with Shepard. Reminiscing about eating hot dogs in Coney Island with Maplethorpe. Holding up her children’s baby clothes and proudly declaring their cleanliness and her refusal to use bleach. Talking about how wanting to touch original paintings in museums is easily satisfied by making your own art. Playing woodwinds with Flea on the beach and swapping stories about how expertly both musicians can pee into bottles while traveling. And seeing her performances and hearing her words, her songs. I wish I was given a timeline to find out when all of these works were created, but I’m content to find out for myself. Let’s start by revisiting ”Redondo Beach.”

Mercedes Matter (1913 -2001)

Mrs. Matter was born Mercedes Carles in New York in 1913. Her father, the American modernist Arthur B. Carles, had studied with Matisse. Her mother, Mercedes de Cordoba, was a model for Edward Steichen. Ms. Matter grew up in Philadelphia, New York and Europe.

She began painting under her father’s supervision at age 6, and studied art at Bennett College in Millbrook, N.Y., and then in New York City with Maurice Sterne, Alexander Archipenko and Hans Hofmann.

In the late 1930’s, she was an original member of the American Abstract Artists organization and worked for the federal Works Progress Administration, assisting Fernand Léger on his mural for the French Line passenger ship company. Léger introduced her to Herbert Matter, the Swiss graphic designer and photographer, whom she married in 1939.

The Matters were active in the emerging New York art scene and also traveled frequently to Europe. Their closest friends included Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Alexander Calder and Willem de Kooning. They were also close to Alberto Giacometti, who was an important artistic role model for Mrs. Matter and a frequent photographic subject for her husband.

Beginning in 1953, Mrs. Matter taught at the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts), Pratt Institute and New York University. Based on her teaching experiences she wrote an article for Art News in 1963 titled ‘What’s Wrong with U.S. Art Schools?’ In it, she lamented the phasing out of the extended studio classes required to initiate ‘that painfully slow education of the senses,’ which she considered an artist’s life work.

The article prompted a group of Pratt students to ask her to form a school based on her ideas, which led, in 1964, to the founding of the New York Studio School. Originally in a loft on Broadway, the school gained almost immediate support from the Kaplan Fund, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation. It granted no degrees, had only studio classes and emphasized drawing from life. Its teachers, chosen by the students, included the artists Guston, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Charles Cajori, Louis Finkelstein and Sidney Geist; the art historian Meyer Schapiro; and the composer Morton Feldman.

The Matters lived on Macdougal Alley, where Mr. Matter had a studio in one of the eight small buildings that had housed what is now the Whitney Museum of American Art. It was his idea that the buildings would make a perfect home for the Studio School, which bought them from the Whitney family in 1967.

Mrs. Matter practiced as she preached, spending months, and sometimes years, working on drawings and paintings that usually began as still lifes and evolved into near-abstractions animated by thatched lines that attested to her her devotion to the work of Giacometti and Cézanne.

In addition to her art and teaching, she wrote articles on artists, including Hofmann, Kline and Giacometti. She wrote the text for a book of her husband’s photographs of Giacometti, published in 1987, four years after his death.

Mrs. Matter had her first solo show in New York at the Tanager Gallery in 1956. Her most recent was a double bill of drawings, shown in the Studio School’s gallery, and paintings, at Salander O’Reilly Galleries.

VIEW HER WORK HERE

“The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.”

Willem de Kooning

Took a few days away from the essay to give time for the presentation  feed back to settle in.

Doing some more reading  brought me back to the abstract expressionists; in particular Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning because of the emphasis on  gesture and physicality in their works.

Here is the link again for the interactive Pollock site that  I posted about  at the beginning of the course back in 2007/8.

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

The interest for me when making these digital Pollock style pieces is that the focus on the  physical engagement of the original works  is gone. I  read recently, that all of our online interaction happens through hand movements on the mouse or keyboard. What used to take bodily physical motion and time to achieve has become condensed in to small low impact isolated physical actions.

How does the concept of the ‘artist’ of 60 years ago may compare to today’s  understanding of the term ‘artist’ … the differences of expectations and contexts of that term; where that may currently fit in to a sense of global identity and propaganda?

Historically, abstract expressionism in the US has been interpreted as an exercise of a form of cultural imperialism by the USA a response to the cold war.

Threads seem to  lead to more questions in philosophical concepts.

Rationally I understand that the essay is an academic exercise. The goal should be to make a good contained job of writing and presenting the essay.

Just aim to get the essay finished.

New BBC 4 radio programme  called ‘art attacks’  covering the destructive nature of art – it was pretty interesting and informative all round, but particularly great for Robert Rauschenberg’s account of meeting Willem De Kooning. 

Series investigating the history of attacks on art works, from the earliest times to the present day.

When does destruction become an act of creation? Lawrence Pollard explores what lies behind some of the more bizarre assaults on contemporary art, including an exploding shed, an artist who destroyed every one of his possessions and art that has been both urinated on and whacked with a hammer.

Sourse BBC Website:

Listen to the Programme now on the BBC Iplayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nk2xr

Only available until Monday 9th Nov

Recurring dreams. I have one in which I keep on falling and falling. In a corner of Ann Veronica Janssens‘ Serendipity-exhibition at Wiels (Brussels) I suddenly found myself right in the middle of that nightmare. That’s why I love this Belgian artist: some of her work strongly meddles with your senses.

Isn’t it strange? Of some pieces of work you know exactly when and where you’ve seen them, and what impression they made on you. Why do they stand out? And why do you forget so many other paintings or exhibitions, even though they were truly great? On my list, for instance, are Robert Rauschenberg’s Monogram in Brussels (‘81), Willem de Kooning’s late paintings in New York (‘97) and Pipilotti Rist’s Ever is all over-video in NY (2000). And I clearly remember stepping into Ann Veronica Janssens’ Blue, Red and Yellow, in front of S.M.A.K. in Ghent, a couple of years ago. 

For Serendipity, AVJ’s first major Belgian exhibition in ten years, that magical ‘container’ is reconstructed on the roof terrace of the Brussels’ Contemporary Art Centre Wiels. Don’t miss it, because it’s a quintessential piece of work. Inside that coloured box filled with mist, you lose all sense of time and space. And along the way this artist, who’s often been described as a sculptor of light, sound and space, seems to succeed in making colour and light tangible.

It’s what AVJ seems to be after. Interfering with your senses. Making visible/audible what is by definition invisible/inaudible. And be warned: your eyes and your ears will be put to the test, in Brussels, with stroboscopic lights and quite disturbing sounds. Sometimes the effects are even rather violent. Apart from Blue, Red and Yellow, there’s no mist. AVJ has used that element rather often, so she and the curator of this exhibition absolutely didn’t want there to be any in Wiels. Don’t expect a big retrospective too. There aren’t thát many works on display, and most of the work in Serendipity is new.

And not all of that is AVJ at her best. Frankly, Untitled (Golden section) is not really a piece of work to be put in a museum. This ’shimmering curtain’ works much better in the environment for which it was created: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s recent performance The Song (read review here). Some of AVJ’s video’s and prototypes look rather bland too, in comparison with her other work.

There’s one room in which she lets you ‘bathe’ in red and blue (Rouge 106, Bleu 132), another one in which she attempts to create an absolute silence (Chambre Anéchoïque), but I was really taken by surprise by her Son infini. Just a speaker and one sound coming from it: an auditory illusion of infinite descent.  By means of almost nothing – that one sound, seeming to get lower and lower and lower – she succeeded in having a really powerful effect on my body, my senses and my thoughts. By that, she just might have pulled it off: putting a second work on my ‘list’.

Oh, and do go and by yourself a beer or a coffee afterwards. Because there’s a possibility that you end up with a real Ann Veronica Janssens in your hands: for 9000 euros (Conversions), the artist put 9000 stickers on 1 euro-coins, thereby translating the monetary value of 1 euro into 9 other values, such as chance, ecstasy, oxygen, light and… stardust.

(photo credits:  ’Installation view’ © Pascual Mercé – Courtesy EACC;  Side (video still), Courtesy Galerie Micheline Szwajcer)

I have recently bought an iPhone and have struggled to get hold of some good artist related backgrounds. So in the same vein as my earlier post Widescreen Artist Wallpapers I have once again decided to make some of my own. Just click on the image to download a version for your iPhone.

Warhol	Monet	Bacon
Braque	Klimt	Matisse
Pollock	Johns	Malevich
Duchamp	Picasso	Cézanne
Rauschenberg	Kandinsky	De Kooning

http://www.merce.org/

 Galería de The Merce Cunningham Dance Company

John Cage et Merce Cunningham (Centralia, Washington 1919)

 The Ruse of Medusa, 1948

Fuentel The Ruse of Medusa. Black Mountain College 

 Fotos extraídas de artcontemporainmalaquaisien.blogspot.com

So as I wrote before, last night I went to the Guggenheim with my co worker, AD (I wish I had a guy friend whose initials were BC so I could hook them up) . I am ashamed to admit it but it was my first time there, I know I have no excuse.

Well the building itself was absolutely amazing and it had a sort of minimalist feel to it, which I adore.

We mainly scanned the architectural drawings and spent more time examining the paintings. There were several that stood out however my favorite one was Composition by Willem De Kooning which would fall under the category of Expressionism. I’m not sure why I like it, it just jumps out at me and I want it on my wall….NOW! (See below)

Then we passed by a painting titled Adios by Antonio Saura. Neither one of us could understand what it was a painting of or what it meant and neither could the guy behind us. Things like this bother me so of course I googled it and still found nothing =(. Help me, it’ll drive me crazy….

Being a bit of a social cripple, and a social cripple on a tight budget, I spent most of MOCCA Festival ’09 down in a bunker watching the panels. This year the comic con has switched from the barrow-like Puck Building to the more spacious Lexington Ave. armory. The panel room was decorated with a splendid mural showing the 69th regiment in action. It’s very strange to be listening to Paul Karasik talk about Fletcher Hanks while over his head men are dying at the battle of Fredricksburg.

The panels ranged from sluggish to sweet, but when the legendary Gary Panter took the stage with Frank Santoro (Cold Heat) on Sunday to talk about painters, it felt right to get out the notebook and start keeping score. What follows is a brief summary of his high art hit parade. Of course, it follows after the jump.

Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden (1911 – 1988) had quite a career, studying with George Grosz and playing in the Negro Leagues. By the 1960s, producing collages that reflected his engagement with the civil rights struggle.

Willem de Kooning

Panter approved of de Kooning (1904 – 1997) primarily for his grotesque portraits of women, rather than his later Alzheimers phase.

Jean Dubuffet

Panter preferred the later work of French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985), which he described as “madman … insane art.” A former vinter, Dubuffet called his combination of primitive iconography and heavy impasto—often using sand and gravel mixed with the oil—as “art brut.” “You can’t compete with nature, children, or crazy people,” Panter said.

Marcel Duchamp

Onetime cartoonist Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968) could be said to have pissed a lot of people off with his 1917 readymade Fountain. Showing a slide of Duchamp’s urinal, Panter pretended to be an irate museumgoer. “This is not art! Duchamp, he’s fucking with us!” Santoro approved of Duchamp putting the idea before the execution. Panter added that he established “whatever the artist says is art is art.”

Öjvind Fahlström

Öjvind Fahlström (1928 – 1976) was a Swedish artist, poet, playwright and filmmaker. One of Panter’s interests is pop art from further afield than New York. He was approving of Fahlström’s appropriation of Krazy Kat, but failed to mention Fahlström once embarked on a play which combined episodes from Wilhelm Reich’s life with the TV version of Blondie.

Philip Guston

Panter admired how Guston (1913 – 1980) went from producing work for the WPA during the Depression to working in abstract expressionism, then returning to his figurative roots after an exposure to Zap Comics. Poor reviews sent him into self-imposed exile in upstate New York. Santoro and Panter both applauded his sense of color.

Richard Lindner

Influenced in part by Saul Steinberg, the work of Lindner (1901 – 1978) had a heavy psychosexual component, usually using the tropes of American advertising. Panter noted he was “still dead.”

Roberto Matta

“Not to be confused with Matisse,” said Panter of the Chilean painter (1911 – 2002), who was booted out of the Surrealist movement and whose murals attracted the ire of General Pinochet. For some reason, Santoro then re-told an anecdote about the young Panter watching Alexander Calder paint a six-legged horse and wondering if the artist had lost it in his old age.

Jim Nutt

Showing the work of the Chicago artist (b. 1938), associated with the Hairy Who group, Panter enthused about the late 1960s and waiting to see what the Beatles, Zappa or Captain Beefheart would do next. “I’m still waiting for the Hairy Who takeover,” he said.

Edward Paolozzi

Panter has frequently mentioned how the Scottish artist (1924 – 2005) inspired him. He approved of Paolozzi’s role as a teacher, his influence on pop art, and his friendship with J.G. Ballard. Santoro marveled that Panter knows as much about 20th century work as he does about Ditko and Kirby. “Rip off one artist and you’ll be found out,” said Panter, “Rip off 100 people, no one’s going to know.”

Pablo Picasso

Both Panter and Santoro were intrigued by Picasso’s later career, although the slide was of 1907’s still shocking Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Like de Kooning, Picasso enjoyed bringing out the grotesque side of women. Santoro explained how Cubism was basically a simplification of Renaissance theories of perspective, but I didn’t really understand that part.

Rob Rauschenberg

A frequent theme during the discussion was the difference between what is art and what is something that looks more like a dorm closet. The key factor is the idea put into it. Remarking that he shared a Church of Christ background with the pop guru (1925 – 2008), Panter savored the color of Rauschenberg combine displayed. He preferred working in black and white: “You only need two good colors.”

Jacques de la Villeglé

Showing a sample of the French affichiste’s work, Panter wondered why we all didn’t go home, tear up our comic books and make artwork like this. De la Villeglé was born in 1926.

Peter Saul

“The luckiest maniac in the world,” was how Panter described the Bushwick-based artist (b. 1934), who was also associated with the Hairy Who. He claimed that Saul was the recipient of a grant/award from France which allows him to focus completely on art. “Making art and selling art are two different things,” Panter said, another key theme of the MoCCA panels.

Martin Sharp

Sharp (b. 1942) was not only a psychedelic poster pioneer. He also wrote Cream’s “Tales of Brave Ulysses” and, according to Panter, built an amusement park in Australia inspired by Tiny Tim. The truth is probably a little more prosaic, so let’s leave it there.

Keiichi Tanaami

During World War II, the young Japanese artist-to-be (b. 1936) used to stare up from his bomb shelter at a tank of koi fish illuminated by American bombs. Tanaami later killed his grandfather’s koi but squeezing them to death. His work frequently uses a Koi motif. Largely unknown, he helped out at Andy Warhol’s factory and teaches at Kyoto University.

H. C. Westermann

Panter told the story of how Westermann (1922 – 1981) labored on building a studio by hand, then died before he could use it. His work had a strong anti-war streak which stemmed from Westermann’s time in the Marine Corps., during which he observed drowning sailors eaten by sharks. The image reappears often in his prints. He’s one of the group that appears on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album.

Karl Wirsum

Like Nutt and Westermann, Wirsum (b. 1939) was a member of the Chicago Imagists who later became known at the Hairy Who. Panter shared that Wirsum works on kneepads to paint his canvases on the floor.

Zap Comix

After a consideration of a Japanese artist whose name I did not take down—there seemed to be some discussion about this artist’s belief in alien life, but it was hard to tell if Panter and Santoro were joking or not—the cover of Zap Comix No. 3 rounded out the discussion. Panter emphasized how the artist had to redraw the color separations. He emphasized the importance of medium: “With a ballpoint pen, your thought is four miles long. With a dip pen, your thought is three inches long.” Update:The cover is by Rick Griffin. Thanks to Karen for the tip!

The presentation emerged from bull sessions Panter and Santoro would have while working on a mural in Virginia. Panter is an engaging speaker, kind of like an artistic Kramer. Aside from his pithy aphorisms, he tries to jolt the audience with shouting and enjoys taking on characters. It was a good enough performance to keep the normally ebullient Santoro—comics’ answer to Jesse Ventura–subdued.

In the subsequent question and answer session, Panter and Santoro kept returning to similar themes. Panter wanted to emphasize the importance of cartoonists having art history to draw on for inspiration. Calling yourself a “cartoonist” limits people’s perception of you. Instead, call yourself an “artist” and start educating yourself in the give and take of the gallery scene. It’s the only way you’re going to make money. He explained a bit about his current practice, where he tries to marry the styles of David Hockney (“totally gay”) with Jack Kirby (“totally butch”) and see what happens next.

Santoro’s current bugbear was what he called the “pudding school” of cartooning. Cartoonists were producing individual panels of merit, but not considering how one panel related to the next. The pudding artist’s panels spill all over the page without much direction, leaving the reader to wonder where they’re meant to look next. While Santoro praised Panter’s intuitive approach and his use of “white noise” in works like Jimbo in Purgatory, he advocated a return back to basic visual storytelling principles.

Both noted that it’s a time in comics when walls are tumbling down. Love or loathe the term graphic novel, the barriers between novels and comics are tumbling—particularly with the involvement of literary figures—as are the barriers between music and comics. In a kinetic display, Panter presented the audience with a gallery of past heroes to look towards in the future.

„Modernitatea” este o ambiţie de performanţă a Civilizaţiei. Această „modernitate” era deja descrisă — şi respinsă — de Vechiul Testament : „Haidem! să ne zidim o cetate şi un turn al cărui vîrf să atingã cerul.” (Geneza, 11 : 4). Entuziasmul acela hubric îl va impregna pe Frank Lloyd Wright — arhitect al muzeului Guggenheim din New York, Rotunda ce arată precum adumbrirea unui Babilon inversat — când declara : „Yes, I intend to be the greatest architect of all time!”. Prima parte a vieţii lui Frank Lloyd Wright se desfăşoară în Belle Époque, când modernitatea hubrică începea să se manifeste ca mod de viaţă. Ea propune omului o viziune a lumii resuscitând, contorsionând uneori, legenda turnului Babel. Romanele lui Jules Verne, — ce considera ideea de modernitate foarte reală, şi blama ficţiunea lui Herbert G. Wells cu acuza : „El inventează !”, căci, într-adevăr, eroul din „Maşina timpului” nu călătoreşte-n Caldeea–, începuturile aviaţiei, baloanele, planoarele, turnul Eiffel, toate-s reflexele sindromului Babel. În România, promotorii modernităţii şi modernismului sunt în primul rând Aurel Vlaicu şi Eugen Lovinescu. Implementând ambiţia modernistă în mediul urban, în Eurasia şi America, Le Corbusier si Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, embleme ale “stilului internaţional” simplificator, distrugeau textura oraşului tradiţional. Minimalismul lor ce pliază evantaiul perspectivelor culturale este-n primul rând arhetipal. Reacţia la această modernitate era eclectică, şi „dramatic vizibile”, cum ţinea să remarce Fredric Jameson, producţiile post-moderne apar întâi în arhitectură. Dar nu aşa vedeau postmodernismul Deleuze şi Guattari. În cea de a doua, –şi cea mai răspândită–, înţelegere a termenului, postmodernismul se (re)defineşte tocmai prin “cultura populară”. Chiar titlul cărţii lui Fredric Jameson din 1991 : “Postmodernismul, o logică a culturii capitalismului târziu“, este relevant. Deja Marshall McLuhan, director la Center for Culture and Technology al universităţii din Toronto, era solicitat de oamenii de afaceri nord-americani să ţină prelegeri privind felul în care un nou tip de cultură ar putea influenţa şi augmenta consumul, considerat în S.U.A. motorul dezvoltării economice. Cultura populară devenea o multiplicare a etichetelor consumeriste mai mult ori mai putin identice, o “copy culture” – cultură a copiei. Începuturile postmodernismului ar fi fost marcate, pe „scara de timp a istoriei”, prin transfigurarea subiectului „naturii moarte” din tablouri în mărfurile identice stivuite pe rafturile magazinelor. Cele mai cunoscute producţii culturale care glorifică produsele de consum sunt imaginile multiplicate ale sticlelor de Coca Cola şi cutiilor de supă Campbell din arta-pop a lui Andy Warhol. Cutii de supă acoperind ca o viitură fierbinte creaţiile expresionismului abstract, căci după Fredric Jameson, finalul apoteotic al modernismului avea drept decor tablourile de acţiune ale lui Jackson Pollock şi Willem de Kooning. Fredric Jameson mai corela emergenţa postmodernismului cu tipul particular de milenarism aflat la îmbinarea dintre mileniul al doilea şi mileniul al treilea, când s-a ajuns să se vorbească despre “sfârşituri”, printre care –să rîdem, nu ?–, şi al Istoriei. Altminteri este riscant să vorbeşti despre postmodernism, a cărui premisă definitorie este respingerea metanarativului. Interdicţia impusă metanarativului înseamnă restatuarea indirectă a pozitivismului, la acest punct Alan Sokal are poate dreptate.

Titus Filipas

Fund Managers Moving Towards Art As Investment Diversifier, Will These Managers Balance Their Art Portfolio Investments With A Global Mix?

Castlestone is investing in western artists like De Kooning. By focusing only on western art, is the fund going to miss out on higher returns later?

We have written before on Castlestone Management, a $660 million investment fund that focuses on works of art, which the fund feels is a better investment over the long term than traditional hedges like gold or other hard assets. Today, Bloomberg has an excellent profile of the fund, noting that it is designed to benefit from one of art’s great features — a resistance to the great asset de-valuer: inflation. Castlestone, and art investment funds like it are , Farah Nayeri writes, “designed as an anti-inflation shelter at a time when recession-busting stimulus packages are flooding the global economy with cash.” So with the number of these funds increasing, as investors look for inflation-defying destinations for their money, will they get with the program and look for a more global mix, made up of Chinese, Indian, and other emerging artists? Or will they stick to their Picassos and Warhols?

It looks like Castlestone may be up for anything as time goes on, but at the moment they seem to be a bit top-heavy with artists who are late in their career. However, with this sort of fund growing and becoming more popular with inflation-weary investors who aren’t up for the rollercoaster ride of investing in gold, stocks, or jewels, an art fund might be just the thing.

“As long as the value of money falls, the value of real assets will rise,” says founder and joint chief executive officer Angus Murray, 39. “Art to me is exactly the same asset as gold bullion.”

“The two assets are running in parallel,” says the Australian-born Murray, who wears an open-necked white shirt with his suit trousers. “The devaluation of money is affecting both.”

The global economy is in its worst slump since World War II, and will shrink 1.3 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The U.S. has introduced a $787 billion stimulus package to combat recession.

Murray pulls out a sheaf of graphs showing how gold has tripled in price this decade. Art, too, is an “irreplaceable, unleveraged, real asset.” As the value of money erodes, art will appreciate over the fund’s eight-year life, says Murray.

…

Castlestone has bought $16 million worth of art and plans to spend another $9 million by the end of September to create a diversified portfolio of about 26 artists. They include Jean- Michel Basquiat, Lucio Fontana, Willem de Kooning and Alexander Calder. The priciest work so far is a Basquiat that cost $1.2 million. Another $885,000 was spent on a De Kooning.

The article goes on to discuss the more attractive prices of contemporary and Modern art this year; Rather than being a bad thing, however, the article points out that it is a buyer’s market for hard assets, and as a result, art funds and collectors will have a net gain. Other funds like the Fine Art Fund Group, which collect everything from classics to contemporary art, have seen their value go down in line with the drop in asset prices across the board, but, as Bloomberg points out, they see this as a buying opportunity. As long as they’re looking at reasonable horizons, possibly 5-10 or more years as the dynamics of the art world continue to change along with the rising dynamics of the emerging world (and as the western art market heals, potentially buoyed by the increasing Asian and non-western buyer base).

I’m going to put in my two cents here and say that single-hemisphere funds like Castlestone are an incredibly smart idea, but they might be loading themselves a bit too heavily with western art. I think art is a strong investment, and it has an excellent track record compared to other real assets, but the problem with funds like Castlestone is they are stuck in a Europe-centric art universe, which is good, but doesn’t look at the new markets and changing dynamics of the art world (along with the changing mix of art buyers we are seeing).

The London-based Fine Art Fund Group gives equal weighting to Old Masters; Impressionist and modern art; and contemporary art. It has lost 20 percent to 30 percent of its value in the last year, and now manages around $100 million, according to Chief Executive Philip Hoffman. Until the end of 2007, the fund had an average annualized return of 23 percent, says Hoffman.

This year is a “bad time” for selling, “but acquiring art is unbelievably attractive,” says Hoffman. At the same time, he says new funds lack a track record: “Art is a dangerous thing if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Inflation Hedge

New York-based art dealer Richard L. Feigen, who deals in European paintings from 1300 to the present, views art as a “valid refuge” at a time when collectors are “worried about inflation.” Yet he adds a note of caution.

“A bar of gold is a bar of gold,” he says. “No two works of art are the same, unless they’re editions of a print.”

For art to be a good investment, Feigen says, it must be of “permanent importance” to art history, of “museum quality” to lure institutional as well as individual buyers, and of interest to more than one part of the world.

I write often about emerging art markets, because that is where my personal interest lies, but interest aside, I think works of art by artists in China, Japan, India, and even Vietnam are of “permanent importance” if they are high-quality. And they’re “museum quality,” at least the ones we have written about in the context of acquisitions by MOMA, the Getty, the Tate Modern, and more of contemporary Chinese art.

In eight years, Murray hopes “I can actually stand up and say: ‘Here’s a catalog from Sotheby’s that shows you I bought at this price, I sold at this price, this was the independent annualized return of 11 percent. It worked. We were right.’”

Yesterday, while partaking in a regular coffee shop conversation at our favorite local spot (a Starbucks in an Albertson’s market) and during a riveting discussion about Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters, my friend and I were interrupted by a group of hideous looking miscreants in black staring at us from outside.  A casual glance at the ugliest of the group–the one I assumed to be the volatile; complex leader–aroused his more animalistic tendencies (Suicidal Tendencies rather HAHA, this joke will make more sense in a little bit unless you just don’t know).  He started making what seemed to be threatening remarks at me.  What followed was a rather long, pointless, and rather indiscernible series of sign language commentary between myself and this person outside.

“Don’t respond.  They’re just trying to get attention,” said my companion.

With this I tried to get back into my dissertation regarding the fantastic science fiction writing that I had forgotten about for so long in this book that I found in a box alongside Slam City with Scottie Pippen for the Sega CD.  Regardless, the diligent little bugger wouldn’t stop and I couldn’t help but be distracted and continue my communications with him.

My friend turns around and gives them a double middle finger.  I smile at the group and throw a rather nervous peace sign at them thus creating some weird hippie vs. punk confrontation that I didn’t want to be a part of because I knew, at that point, that I had become the hippie and hippies suck.  Unsurprisingly, they responded with an ironic set of peace signs, an obvious attack at my gesture of unity.  Then they made some insolent sign language comment about homosexuality and I responded by staring at the ugly leader and signaling to him that he’d better cut this shit.

They then sent an envoy.

“Hey how’s it going guys?” asked the beanie wearing runt dressed in studded leather vest, skinny jeans, and an assortment of punk patches, “We seriously need two more dollars to get a twelve pack of beer.  I was wondering if you guys could spot us?”

Looking at the guy, I noticed he had a Sham 69 patch on his jeans.  Sham 69 is an original Oi! punk band that I can only describe by comparing them to two of my favorite Oi! bands of the era.

My favorite group is Cock Sparrer. 

Right behind them is Chron Gen.

That said, these two bands are polars for me whenever I discuss Oi!.  On one end, you have Cock Sparrer who, for me, are pop song geniuses who just so happened to be playing their beautiful pieces alongside the inebriated chants of a group of leather clad Oi! Oi! Oi! pub crawlers.  In all seriousness, if an art museum–note: ART MUSEUM–opened up an aural arts exhibit and dedicated one section to the smile inducing melodies of great pop songcraft, I’d have these guys put alongside The Jam and Buzzcocks in some ‘Rebel, Rebel’ exhibit akin to a Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Basquiat abstract expressionist set-up exploding the boring confines of the reality around them. 

I sincerely think that, despite their apparent rebelliousness on the outside, that these Oi! characters are just simple (at least initially) and only want the most debased and unacceptable as a means of disconnecting themselves from the rest of us.  That being said, they ultimately just fall into a boring model of PUNK.  Luckily for the scene, the bands that they worship are generally very brilliant at creating pop music.  I mean, it’s almost a requisite considering that you will have a group of drunks chanting along to your tunes.  Anyways, I don’t want to get too deep into this just yet.  More later.

Chron Gen is the other polar for me.  They’re a less melodic, more intelligent band.  I mean, this is stuff that you can still chant to, however, it takes a bit more thought.  The music is, relatively, more monotonous and minimal and, as a result, requires more patience from the listener. 

For me, Sham 69; and a lot of the Oi! punk bands for that matter, fall into the gray and dull in-between.  That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy listening to them or The Business or Charged GBH.  I do.  However, it isn’t as affecting to me as the two aformentioned bands.  It’s just normal, run of the mill Oi!.

That said, I’m really not that big into Sham 69.

“Sorry, I only carry card,” said my friend.

I replied in the same way and briefly contemplated the rather bourgeois sentiment of our replies.

As the guy motions understanding and begins to walk away I call for his attention,”Good band.”

He turns around and tries to discern which band on his attire I was talking about.

“Sham 69,” I say.

He smiles.  “Hell yeah.”

He waves and turns around to join his group outside.  Before he completely disappears, however, he turns back to us and with the simple pride of a partly-cloudy patriot he proclaims,”Peace, Pot, and Prosperity.”  Or something. 

All the while, the ugly leader has entered what appears to be a spastic fit and begins staring at the back of my friend’s head, flicking him off, swinging his arms, and having a rather entertaining freak out.  I begin laughing and telling my friend that this guy is being a spaz until the guy accidently punches the window that separates us from a possibly more physical confrontation.  With this, he starts giggling and runs away.

“Peace, pot, and prosperity”

The problem with rock’n'roll, punk rock, or whatever is that the modus operandi is simple: sex, drugs, and whatever (because if you’re into punk you must hate Led Zeppelin after all).  It’s this simple model that many generations of wasters have followed and fallen by for so many generations.  Seeing a rocker walking around wasted, with girl under arm, and leather jacket/boots/hair, cigarette romantically in mouth is about as fun these days as a series of gumball machines in the middle of a mall. 

Sid and Nancy YEAH!

And, when it comes down to it, that’s the most ironic thing about all of these people–in this case the punks we ran into.  They must think that they’re ‘bombing the system’ or something by dissecting themselves from normalcy and walking around being annoying assholes.  They listen to bands like Sham 69 and think they’re chanting and fighting as some sort of drunken group of ‘Rebels without a Cause.’  However, they’re just following a model as old as Robert Johnson and then some.  It’s this inherent connection between debauchery, rebellion, and the music that spans all genres and wastes all in its path.  When it comes down to it, these guys, walking through the otherwise dormant shopping center like rats in the Waldorf-Astoria, are just robots; following the equation and doing nothing much beyond being obnoxious little buggers.

That’s not to say that the normal rock’n'roll model can’t be something interesting.  It’s just that the period for doing something cool with that mentality has passed.  Chuck Berry begets The Beatles, Cream, Led Zeppelin, etc and then it’s game over.  It’s just stock footage now.

Regarding punk music specifically, the true trailblazing icons; for me, aren’t these Oi! bastards and their pub shit (besides Cock Sparrer and Chron Gen of course =)).  Instead, they’re The Clash, PiL, Ian MacKaye, Lydia Lunch, Arto Lindsay, Sonic Youth, and Bad Brains amongst others.  Each of these performers were or contributed to something that really changed the way we, as music listeners, perceive things.  That said, the most important part is that they weren’t trying to televise the revolution.  Instead, they did things for themselves.  The music they created and the scene that fostered because of that were self-enclosed indulgences for the members of the bands and their art.  The effects they’d have on culture and society were just an unnecessary by-product.

Ian MacKaye, for me specifically, holds a very special position in the pantheon of truly great artists.

He singlehandedly exploded the Sid and Nancy complex that punk music was suffering from as a legitimate punk rocker walking around exclaiming “Don’t Smoke, Don’t Drink, Don’t Fuck.”  With this, he inspired generations of kids, X’s on hands and all, to eschew the old-fashioned rock’n'roll model and simply enjoy the bands they love so much.  Although the straight-edge scene would teeter between true ideological positivity and militaristic conformity, at least these kids were doing something different.  That said, the most important thing is that MacKaye didn’t do it to create some movement.  He did it for himself.

At the core of it is that individuality.  These people aren’t politicians.  Their goal isn’t to go around using their unique perspective to arouse change.  They are artists who create what they create for themselves.  The change comes from those who are inspired by what they do, rally, and scare the establishment.  If you’re lucky, maybe Ian MacKaye or Joe Strummer (RIP) was there alongside you.  Whatever the end result ultimately is, the point is that you’re out there doing something positive and trying to catalyze change. 

 Walking around asking for beer money isn’t punk music.  It never was and never will be.   

The next day, while on a run, I come across these guys waiting at a bus stop.

“Hey how’s it going?” I ask.

The ugly leader reacts with a rather aggressive, “What!?”

He’s obviously been trained to be defensive towards any outsider that tries to penetrate their bubble.

“You guys were walking around trying to get beer.  You like Sham 69.”  I point at the beanie kid’s patch.

There’s a long; awkward silence before they appear to remember who I am.

“Oh yeah, man thanks!”  They exclaim while throwing up hand signs and ‘hang loose’ gestures.

I smile and turn around, altering my route to avoid them, the UPS driver that always asks me about my running, and the intimidatingly attractive girl walking along my route.

Unfortunatley for me, I’ve put myself at the foot of another long hill.

//J

Cele mai scumpe lucrari de arta din lume

In topul celor mai scumpe picturi, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I de Gustav Klimt, se plaseza pe locul trei, cu suma de $144.4 mln.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I- Gustav Klimt

Urmeaza Woman III de Willem de Kooning, care a fost licitata la $147.0 mln, de catre Steven A. Cohen.

Woman III- Willem de Kooning

In topul acestei liste se afla opera de arta No. 5 a marelui artist Jackson Pollock, care a ajuns la suma record de $149.6 mln.

No. 5-Jackson Pollock

Arta sfideza orice fel de clasificare, ea rezista usor interpretarilor, ea nu joaca dupa reguli si conventii; te provoaca, te cheama, reflecta realitatea in viziunea creatorului, te distreaza.
Poate acestea au fost motivele pentru care s-au dat sume fabuloase pentru anumite piese de arta sau poate colectionerul a intuit o valoaroasa investitie pe viitor…

Word: hoi polloi [hoi puh-loi] n. the common people; the masses (often preceded by the)

Birthday: Willem de Kooning (1904), Alan Eagleson (1933), Shirley MacLaine (1934), Barbara Streisand (1942), Eric Bogosian (1953), Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954), Michael O’Keefe (1955), Cedric The Entertainer (1964), Djimon Hounsou (1964), Kelly Clarkson (1982)

Occurence: 1184 BC – Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse. I still can’t comprehend how in the hell this actually worked.

Standpoint: If you’re one of the millions of people going out to eat at a restaurant this weekend, I’ve compiled 5 Things You Can Say Or Do That Will Instantly Make Your Waiter Dislike You.

 Ignore Your Waiter – In case you’ve never noticed, a restaurant can be a pretty busy place. While you are there to enjoy yourself (and rightfully so), your waiter is actually working. One thing you can do right away to earn the love of your waiter is to continue your super-important conversation when he or she walks up to greet your table. Go ahead and finish informing your fellow diners with crucial information like who’s sleeping with who in your neighborhood, or an extremely detailed account of your drive to the restaurant. That stuff can’t wait. Don’t let a silly fact like your waiter having several other tables to tend to get in the way of your self-important ramblings.

Public Displays of Affection – Another way to make sure you stay in the good graces of your waiter is to show him or her how much you love the person you’re with. There’s nothing that makes a waiter happier than watching two complete strangers making out and doing God-knows-what underneath the table with your hands. Also, make sure that you sit on the same side of the booth or table as your partner to announce to everyone in the restaurant, “Hey. The two of us are quite fond of each other.” Waiters love to be reminded that they can’t currently be with the one they love so the next best thing is watching your adorable little grope-fest as he or she attempts to pry your drink order out of you.

Ask Stupid Questions – You know the common sense that you employ almost every minute of your day-to-day life? Leave that at home. Enter the dining experience as if you were just thawed out of ice or your spaceship just landed and you’ve never been to a restaurant. If you’re thirsty you might try posing a question like, “Excuse me, is there any chance I could get a glass of water?” After all, you might’ve never been to this particular restaurant. They might not have running water. It’s best not to assume. Your waiter will appreciate how softly you’re treading around the issue and there’s no real  likelihood of he or she thinking that you are a schmuck for posing a question you already know the answer to.

Stay As Long As You Like – You’re most likely a great person. The relationship that you’ve fostered with your waiter will probably last a lifetime. So when you’ve finished your dessert and downed your last drop of coffee, don’t worry about leaving. Your waiter is hoping that you stay all night. That way he or she won’t have to deal with the inevitable gloominess of saying goodbye and welcoming a new table to where you once sat. The money that waiter would make from serving more people could never equal the mutually rewarding experience the two of you are sharing. You can’t put a price on a lasting friendship.

Don’t Worry About the Tip – Even though waiters make all of their money off of tips left by patrons, don’t be concerned. For example, say your bill is $130. Don’t worry about the traditional 20% tip of $26. Leave whatever you like. Your waiter will probably use the experience to boost his or her resolve and vow to improve service on the next table. One day, he or she will look back and remember you fondly for providing the catalyst that kicked his or her service standards to the next level. And that’s way more important than actual money.

I treated each item like it’s something you should do. Obviously, I’m hoping you picked up on the sarcasm.

Weekend: Each Friday, I’ll provide you with 3 Things To Do In Philly When You’re Dead – my list of things to do this in Philadelphia this weekend as if it’s your last.

Today (04.24) – Presidents of the United States of America – The Troc – Back in the 90s, the power pop trio gave us some of the best songs about fruit (“Peaches“) and odd women from boggy marshes (“Lump“). They broke up for a while but are now back together. Lots of energy and clever lyrics. If you’re into that kind of thing. Time: 9pm

Saturday (04.25) – Fishtown Shad Fest – Penn Treaty Park – Fishtown originally gained its name from all the shad that were fished out of the Delaware River. The fish can’t be found around these parts anymore but that’s not stopping Fishtown residents from celebrating what William Penn desribed as “excellent fish.” Events include a Shad Run Race, a historical trolley tour of Fishtown, numerous children’s activities and performances from local musical acts including Hoots and Hellmouth. Oh, there will also be plenty of beer and shad dishes from local vendors. Time: 11am – 5pm

Sunday (04.25) – The Mütter Museum – On its website, The Mütter Museum describes itself as “valuable resource for educating and enlightening the public about our medical past and telling important stories about what it means to be human.” People I know who’ve been there describe more as “a museum with all this gross stuff.” My guess is that both statements are probably true. Time: 10am – 5pm

Quotation: When you are through changing, you are through. - Bruce Barton

Tune: Before I saw the Aqueduct’s video for “Living a Lie,” I was completely unaware that David Terry could pass for Kevin Smith.

Gallimaufry: Sometimes, when you try to be a funny and do something like, say, pretend to fall off a bridge, you actually fall off the bridge. Just ask this guy…If you are still on the fence about the idiocy of Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, this will straighten you out…The Flyers shutout the Penguins last night 3-0. Can “The Orange and Black” win the next two games and advance to next round? If they play like they can, they are more than capable of sending Sidney Crosby and his squad to the golf course.

Incoming: Tomorrow morning, I’ll be moving away from East Falls and heading west to East Norriton. (I’ve decided, for the rest of my life, I’ll only live in areas that start with the word “East.”) My internet situation is up in the air but I’ll still be doing daily posts while I adjust to my new schedule. Anyone know anything about East Norriton?

Willem de Kooning

Woman/Verso: Untitled, 1948

Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was an abstract expressionist artist, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

In the post-World War II era, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to variously as Abstract expressionism, Action painting, and the New York School. Other painters that developed this school of painting include Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston and Clyfford Still among others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_de_Kooning

Print by Bob Kessel from the art series "ART HISTORY"

Many famous artists are depicted in the Bob Kessel Art History Series, a few of them are: Giovanni Bellinii, Pietro Berninii, Pierre Bonnard, Sandro Botticelli, François Boucher, William Bouguereau, Caravaggio, Marc Chagall, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Courbet, Jacques-Louis David, Eugene Delacroix, Otto Dix, Paul Gauguin, Hendrick Goltzius, Francisco de Goya, Francesco Hayez, Erich Heckel, Ando Hiroshige, Katsushika Hokusai, Pieter de Hooch, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Jan van Kessel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gustav Klimt, Willem de Kooning, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Ferdinand Leger, Frederic Lord Leighton, Edouard Mant, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Jean Francois Millet, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Nicolas Poussin, Rembrandt Van Rijn, Karl Schmidt-Rottloff, Peter Paul Rubens, Georges Seurat, Georges de La Tour, Titian, Kitagawa Utamaro, Diego Velazquez, Jan Vermeer, and Max Weber.

http://www.blogcatalog.com