Storage II

Yesterday my team of teenage assistants, led by the industrious Leah, helped me to complete the cleaning and reorganization of my painting storage, and it feels as if the studio can finally breathe—although now that everything’s so tidy it hardly looks like a project that would take weeks to do. I found it interesting that when, at Joanne Mattera’s suggestion, I wrote my first post about it, people were moved to comment, underscoring what an issue storage is for artists. Then, as I was sharing my elation at putting this task behind me with my friend, sculptor Matt Freedman, he commented that, “taking care of your work is a way of acknowledging your commitment to it, of being respectful toward it”—something I’d never thought about—and that “conservatorship is the final act of assessing a work’s value.” He was reminded of an anecdote I told him many years ago, about Louise Bourgeois pounding a table and saying, “We must defend our art!” That was in a different context completely—after I’d told her how I’d managed to keep a sexist contributor’s blurb about me from being published—but it works here as well. Yes, we must defend our work. Because if we don’t, who will?

Matt Freedman, Lost Puppy, 2006.

Travel blue$

It took all of yesterday to buy plane tickets to Berlin for the end of October: one hour to book the reservation and nine more to get over the fact that air fares to Europe have doubled, and because of taxes. The tax on the $480 flight was $560. Figure that one out. Being a Virgin Atlantic fan who’s just finished reading Richard Branson’s energizing autobiography, I felt disloyal doing business with British Air, but we’re stopping over in England and Virgin doesn’t go to Berlin. The agents at BA were much grumpier than the ones I’m used to at Virgin, but maybe everyone’s grumpy now. The good news (it pales next to the bad news, but at least there is some) is that England has lifted its carry-on restriction so that you can now take two bags on board (a handbag or computer case in addition to a suitcase). I’ve decided to cheat and bought a travel vest into which I can tuck even more stuff.

Kronos, etc.

Last week I saw the Kronos Quartet perform at Tanglewood, part of wanting to support the festival in going beyond their classical-music-as-usual format, which is treated with such annoying reverence here in the Berkshires. It was the first time I’d been in Seiji Ozawa Hall, which was built in 1994 for $8.7 million and designed by William Rawn Associates in Boston in a manner aptly described by my friend, Scott, as “I. M. Pei channeling Charles Rennie Macintosh.” The relentless woodwork is gorgeous, veering close but thankfully avoiding association with the cheesy faux-Mission look that’s become so ubiquitous in furniture and design in the years since the hall was built. The entire back of the building opens up to include picnickers on the lawn, and exterior stairways contribute to a pleasant indoor/outdoor ambiance. My only complaint is with the decidedly un-ergonomic wooden chairs which, with thin cushions on the seats and none on the backs, are much more uncomfortable than they need to be—especially when listening to challenging music. I was familiar with much of the Kronos’s aggressively adventuresome repertoire, but didn't realize that they’d commissioned over 600 pieces in their 35-year history. While some of their choices push the limits of my tolerance for cacophony—a sound I associate, rightly or wrongly, with contemporary academic composition—there were moments that were completely transporting, among them Flugufreisarinn by Icelanders Sigur Ros (rightly described in the program as “at the forefront of invention in today’s international post-rock scene”), of whom I’m a fervent fan, and Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet.

The Kronos, like many contemporary musicians, make free use of pre-recorded audio, the only part that, for me, was disconcerting. I don’t mind sampling because it’s clear what it is, but I found it distracting to sit there and wonder what was live and what wasn't. This is one of the things I value in—and have learned from—the visual work of Robert Irwin and Olafur Eliasson, who make a point of keeping their means obvious so that the experience is the experience, and not marred by conjecture about how it’s done. One of my companions at the concert, Gregory, suggested that the Kronos might be better off having someone behind the computer up there on the stage with them, just to acknowledge the source of the sounds. But in general I don’t love the combination of canned music with live performance (even with dance)—it reminds me too much of lip-syncing (how about those Chinese?), or the violinists in the subway whose backup orchestra is a CD in a boombox.

I found a YouTube version of the Kronos playing Flugufreisarinn, which hardly does it justice, but can give you a taste. And finally the stunning new Sigur Ros video, Gobbledigook, has been posted, so I can include it here rather than make you go to their site to download it. It was done in collaboration with Ryan McGinley (Scott asked, “Does this mean that now I have to like Ryan McGinley?” and the answer is, "Yes."). Of course this is exactly what it’s like to be in Iceland, but with more trees.

The Kronos Quartet playing Sigur Ros:



Sigur Ros video Gobbledigook



I neglected to bring my camera, so Gregory took these pics of Ozawa hall with his iPhone:

Joe and Dick's house

Art Vent House Report #2, the Berkshire home of Joe Wheaton, sculptor, and Dick Lipez, writer of, among other things, a series of mystery novels featuring a gay detective in Albany, NY (nom de plume Richard Stevenson), who had a dinner recently for 19 friends in order to reconnect after their extensive travels in Southeast Asia. Joe, who also has a background as a chef, went to cooking school in Thailand and, after travelling to Boston the day before for rare ingredients, recreated a mind-boggling array of tasty dishes. I think sometimes about how the synergy of some couples I know adds up to more than the sum of their parts. Well, in the case of Joe and Dick, in terms of accomplishments, experience, good works, and all round good will--their combined contribution to the world--is that of about 10 people. On top of it, they make everything seem easy and fun. Joe's response to my comment about about much work it would take to pull off a dinner like that was "No problem."

Before:

After:

During: a random slide show of Joe's photographs documenting the trip. While not all artists make good photographers, Joe's photographs are gorgeous. More pictures and the story on their blog.
The stairwell:

Sculpture with extras:

The lounge:

Where the magic happens:

My Life As I Remember It

Last night my Berkshire neighbors, poets Taylor and Marie-Elizabeth Mali, came over for dinner. Taylor and I didn't know each other at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe--he started out in 1995, after I'd turned to other things--but we knew many of the same people. So I got out the anthology, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (1994)--with signatures and little notes from friends, it's the closest thing I have to a yearbook--and Taylor read a poem both of us remembered (it would be impossible to forget) by Bobby Miller, although it changed each time Bobby performed it. Written for spoken word, it pales in the absence of Bobby's rapid-fire delivery, but still holds up:

At two years old I whistled at the mailman

and set a pattern for years to come.

At four I danced in the sunshine of our front yard,

an interpretative dance to the gods.

The neighbors swore I was retarded.

At six I told my classmates that I was from another galaxy
light years away.

Mrs. Jackson, our first grade teacher, thought it

was necessary
to alert my parents.

By ten Mr. Grady the art teacher was alarmed by the colors
I chose to paint with,

red, black and purple.

In junior high I was considered weird and neat at

the same

time because I dressed funny and my parents had tattoos

and Harleys.

My ninth grade report card was all D's and F's

except for art and music class.

All written reports from the faculty stated,

" talks too much and daydreams..."

Some things never change.

I watched the Beatles arrive in America,

and decided I wanted to go to England.

I saw hair grow over ears and down over collars and onto

shoulders and backs all over the country.

I walked with the first protest march in Washington

and every other for ten years.

And we still have crooks running the country.

I sat in streets, cafes, corner bars and coffee houses

and listened to the beat of a new generation being born.

I went through puberty with Janis and Jimi

and took LSD when it wasn't cut with speed or poison.

I smoked pot in fifth grade and laughed all day

at a fat substitute teacher named Mrs. Potty.

I dated black boys at fifteen in an all white Klan neighborhood.

I hitchhiked to New York from Baltimore with three queens

in hot pants, clogs and long bleached shags at sixteen

and blew truckers all up and down the turnpike.

I've been addicted to MDA, tequila, LSD, PCP, speed, dope, coke,

pot, mescaline, Quaaludes, nicotine, sex

and the mysteries of the night all my life until I hit twenty-eight.

Now it's only nightlife and sex.

I've walked barefoot on twenty four hundred degree hot coals

and not been burnt.

Greta Garbo grabbed me from behind in traffic and

saved my life.

I've had green hair, blue hair, black hair, red hair, no hair, long hair

and all before 1973. I'm happy to still have hair.

I've walked Sunset Blvd., Polk Street, Forty Second, Hollywood and Vine,

Christopher, Fire Island Blvd., P-town, Key West, Bombay, Miami Beach,

London, Paris, Rome, Milan, Montreal,

and every gay ghetto street listed in the book

and I'm still looking for the perfect lover.

I've lived as a woman for a solid year and had tits,

thank you!

I've dated black men, white men, brown men, red men, yellow men,

and several delicious women.

I've been engaged, married, in love, separated, divorced and brokenhearted.

I've had syphilis, gonorrhea, crabs, scabies, hemorrhoids, hepatitis,

appendicitis, dermatitis and the flu at least fifty times.

And I feel better now at forty than I did at twentyfive.

I've spent the last eleven years meditating, concentrating,

contemplating, applicating, educating, investigating and instigating

a higher ideal.

I've been a born again Christian, a crystal-holding new age

visualizationist, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Christian scientist,

a Universalist, a bullshit artist, a seeker of truth, a charlatan,

a holy roller, a shamanistic dancer, a guru, a disciple

and an enigma to my friends.

I'm a triple Gemini natural blonde who loves God and takes

time out to smell the roses.

I've been around the block at least ten times and I'm ready

to go again until these feet won't carry me anymore.

I have always believed in the power of love and that the groove lies somewhere between the heart and the genitals.

I have never been deliberately cruel and I've never hit anyone

with my fist. I hope I never have to.
I've been a whore, a saint, a sinner, a healer, a heathen,

an actor, a poet, a drag queen, a straight man, a teenage zombie,

a punk rocker, a greaser, a clone, a faggot, a streetwalker,

a skywriter, a vegetarian, a teacher, a student, a wanderer,

a caretaker, a wild thing, a father, a son, a yogi,

and a fierce hairdresser.

I've been lost, found confused, absolved, punished and rewarded.

I've stared death in the face and wondered why not me. Yet.

I've talked and listened and heard and seen and been shown the way.

I've played follow the leader, pin the tail on the donkey,

five card stud, and Russian roulette with a silver handled .38.

I've lost eight thousand in cash gambling and won

five hundred on a bet in less than a minute.

I've seen the eye of God and been touched by her hand.

I've seen miracles happen and been disappointed dozens of times.

I've been almost everywhere, met almost everyone, seen almost everything,

done almost all of it, and I'm still waiting to be discovered.

The night has a thousand eyes and I'm a gypsy dancer

who's still hungry for more.

Bobby Miller

Talent

When I ran the post not long ago on musician jokes, I thought about how implicit in them is the assumption that making money at music, although always welcomed, is neither expected nor the goal. You’re a musician because you're a musician. Yet while the odds are no better in the art world, many artists I meet seem to feel that going to school, making art, and having a career should be a natural progression, like studying for the law—which isn't surprising, considering what art schools cost. Thank god, I say, there’s still—a certain Hollywood film not withstanding—no academy for rock musicians. My theory about this is as follows: along with, now, being able to use the Internet to their own best ends, musicians have always met and played in bars. And back when artists used to gather in bars such as, famously, Les Deux Magots, the Cedar Bar, and Max’s Kansas City—for the price of a beer—younger artists could hang out, form associations, and meet older, more established artists. In the eighties, however, when artists started making big money and began to frequent expensive restaurants, such as the Odeon and Mr. Chow’s, off limits to their struggling brethren, art schools took up the slack—and therefore may be seen as simply expensive substitutes for art bars. Looking back on it, a little Brouilly at the Odeon would have been cheaper.

In the August Interview, I read an exchange between filmmaker Steven Soderbergh and Brian Burton a.k.a. Danger Mouse, who achieved international fame at 27 after spending untold hours in his bedroom mashing up the Beatles “white” album with Jay Z’s The Black Album to make the The Grey Album. Intended for his friends and released for free on the Web, it was downloaded, bootlegged and shared by millions until the lawyers got in the way. His collaboration with Cee-Lo, dubbed Gnarls Barkley, resulted in “Crazy”, the song that was the summer of 2006, and he’s produced two of my favorite albums: Gorillaz’s Demon Days and the new Beck, which has a title I wish I’d made up: Modern Guilt.

In the interview, Soderbergh (whose own career began similarly, with international prominence at age 26 for the low budget film sex, lies and videotape), notes that the “traditional models for success are just disappearing” to which Danger Mouse says, “Well, in the history of humans making music, how long have musicians been rich and famous? In the end, I think musicians know that getting up in the morning and making music you love, doesn’t necessarily mean that you deserve billions of dollars or worship from anybody.” Then:

SS: I’ve heard you say that you don’t necessarily believe in talent.

DM: No, I don’t.

SS: But I’m wondering if you’re making a distinction between talent and skill.

DM: I guess I just look at talent as a very subjective thing. I mean, if you’ve never tried playing an oboe, how do you know you’re not the most talented oboe player ever? The point is that if you don’t love it, then it doesn’t matter. No matter how naturally gifted you are, it’s your passion that’s going to make you better and maybe touch some people. There is no genius—there is only love.



Looking for an illustration for this post, I was wandering around YouTube and came across this live video of “Hong Kong”—from the Gorillaz album D-Sides—a song that sends me into a swoon each time I hear it. I don’t think Danger Mouse produced “Hong Kong,” so it’s not exactly related, but then that’s the beauty of a blog, I can go where I want with it. Even though it’s not the absolutely best recording of the song, Damon Albarn will make you swoon anyway, but what’s really special about it is the performance of the beauteous Zhen Zhen on the harp-like guzheng.

inside gertrude stein

Tonight at our local open mic, I'll read this tour de force by poet Lynn Emanuel, who I met at the MacDowell Colony many moons ago, and have remained an ardent fan.

* * *

Right now as I am talking to you and as you are being talked to, without letup, it is becoming clear that gertrude stein has hijacked me and that this feeling that you are having now as you read this, that this is what it feels like to be inside gertrude stein. This is what it feels like to be a huge type-- writer in a dress. Yes, I feel we have gotten inside gertrude stein, and of course it is dark inside the enormous gertrude, it is like being locked up in a refrigerator lit only by a smiling rind of cheese. Being inside gertrude is like being inside a monument made of a cloud which is always moving across the sky which is also always moving. Gertrude is a huge gal- leon of cloud anchored to the ground by one small tether, yes, I see it down there, do you see that tiny snail glued to the tackboard of the landscape? That is alice. So, I am inside gertrude; we belong to each other, she and I, and it is so won- derful because I have always been a thin woman inside of whom a big woman is screaming to get out, and she's out now and if a river could type this is how it would sound, pure and complicated and enormous. Now we are lilting across the countryside, and we are talking, and if the wind could type it would sound like this, ongoing and repetitious, abstracting and stylizing everything, like our famous haircut painted by Picasso. Because when you are inside our haircut you under- stand that all the flotsam and jetsam of hairdo have been cleared away (like the forests from the New World) so that the skull can show through grinning and feasting on the alarm it has created. I am now, alarmingly, inside gertrude's head and I am thinking that I may only be a thought she has had when she imagined that she and alice were dead and gone and someone had to carry on the work of being gertrude stein, and so I am receiving, from beyond the grave, radioactive isotopes of her genius saying, take up my work, become gertrude stein.

Because someone must be gertrude stein, someone must save us from the literalists and realists, and narratives of the beginning and end, someone must be a river that can type. And why not I? Gertrude is insisting on the fact that while I am a subgenius, weighing one hundred five pounds, and living in a small town with an enormous furry male husband who is always in his Cadillac Eldorado driving off to sell something to people who do not deserve the bad luck of this mer- chandise in their lives--that these facts would not be a prob- lem for gertrude stein. Gertrude and I feel that, for instance, in Patriarchal Poetry when (like an avalanche that can type) she is burying the patriarchy, still there persists a sense of con- descending affection. So, while I'm a thin, heterosexual sub- genius, nevertheless gertrude has chosen me as her tool, just as she chose the patriarchy as a tool for ending the patriarchy. And because I have become her tool, now, in a sense, gertrude is inside me. It's tough. Having gertrude inside me is like having swallowed an ocean liner that can type, and, while I feel like a very small coat closet with a bear in it, gertrude and I feel that I must tell you that gertrude does not care. She is using me to get her message across, to say, I am lost, I am beset by literalists and narratives of the beginning and middle and end, help me. And so, yes, I say, yes, I am here, gertrude, because we feel, gertrude and I, that there is real urgency in our voice (like a sob that can type) and that things are very bad for her because she is lost, beset by the literalists and realists, her own enormousness crushing her and we must find her and take her into ourselves, even though I am the least likely of saviors and have been chosen perhaps as a last resort, yes, definitely, gertrude is saying to me, you are the least likely of saviors, you are my last choice and my last resort.

From: Then Suddenly--, by Lynn Emanuel, 1999, University of Pittsburgh Press.

Gardens of summer

At the moment I couldn't care less about art. This is why:

Near Bennington, VT:





New Lebanon, NY:

Mt. Washington, MA:

Doppelgangers

In a June news story that lasted about two minutes, Coldplay were accused of stealing a tune from a rock band named Creaky Boards for their new album—as if Coldplay didn’t have enough songs in their repertoire that they had to nick them. The story was nipped in the bud when Coldplay responded that lead singer Chris Martin was in London the night that he was allegedly seen in New York at a Creaky Boards gig, and that the album, Viva la Vida, on which the offending song appeared, had been demoed months before. While I know ideas do get ripped off, and I’ve actually had them ripped off (a book and an article, and blatantly), I also know that two people can come up with efforts that are spookily similar.

My direct experience with the zeitgeist was when Frank Del Deo, my dealer at Hirshl & Adler Modern (now at Knoedler), asked me—this was around 1995—if I knew the work of Italian artist Alighiero e Boetti (1940-94). I didn’t, but sought out his work and when I found it, it was like looking at myself. And, of course, now, I'm a big fan.

Which is Carol's and which is Alighiero's? Okay, mine is on the top and his is on the bottom. And while mine is painted, his is embroidered. But still....

Drummer bummer

Mungo Thomson, Drum Kit Drawing (Keith Moon 4), John Connolly Gallery, NY.

My plan for my next life has always been to come back as a drummer in a rock band, however it’s been severely compromised since I’ve found out, through my friend and neighbor, Robby Baier of Melodrome, that drummers are the butt of rock musician jokes. One of my favorite pastimes is to listen in on the shoptalk of other professions—especially their in-jokes, and I even once thought of doing a book based on them, except the only one I’ve ever been able to remember is about how dermatologists have only one prescription:

If it’s closed, open it. If it’s open, close it. If it’s wet, dry it. If it’s dry, wet it. And in every case use cortisone.

And I’ve been told that in the orchestral and opera world it’s violists and tenors who don’t get no respect, but then it was a baritone who told me that.

Interestingly, the drummer jokes also involve pizza, as in:

What’s the difference between a drummer and a pizza?
A pizza can feed a family of four.

How do you make a drummer’s car go faster?
Take the pizza sign off the top.

How do you get a drummer off your porch?
Pay him.

However, according to Robby, there’s something even worse than being a drummer, and that’s a folkie, something I never aspired to be.

How many folk singers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One to screw it in and six to sing about how great the old one was.

What’s a folksinger without a girl friend?
Homeless.

What happens when a folk singer wins the lottery?
He gets to play a lot more gigs.

But even the folk world has its hierarchy, with banjo players at the bottom:

What’s perfect pitch?
Being able to throw a banjo ten feet into the garbage can.

What happens when a banjo player leaves his car in a bad neighborhood?
He comes back and it’s filled with banjoes.

And back to rock musicians, there’s this one; no doubt the drummers getting back:

How many lead singers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
One to put it in and wait for the world to revolve around him.

I only dimly remember once hearing a joke about an artist, having something to do with real estate and outhouses. Curious, I looked up “artist jokes” on the Web, and found a bunch but they weren’t very funny. Except for this one:

How many performance artists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
I don’t know. I left.

The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths

Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign), neon, 1967.

There’s an interview on Catherine Spaeth’s blog with gallery owner and blogger Ed Winkleman, where he says, “I don’t have much interest in anti-formalist conceptualism…I have seen tons of conceptual art that doesn’t raise the bar for formalism…my idea of conceptual art is that it must be compelling visually.”

Agreed. And I’ll add that to be compelling visually, art must also be compelling conceptually. We’re in a new century, and it’s time we stopped categorizing art by medium—photography, painting, sculpture, video, installation, and so on, with conceptual art in another category. To succeed, all art must be conceptual, just as it must address formally its reason for being considered visual art.

The test is in how well the conceptual and the formal elements are synthesized—to the point that the ultimate experience of the art is about neither, but something else entirely.

Of course the wonderful thing about art is that it operates in a realm beyond language, so we may not be able to explain the concept—in fact it may be better if we can’t, because if it can be grasped fully in words, then the execution has no role other than that of illustration. Further, the best art may engage numerous concepts, which may or may not have been intended by the artist.

[And BTW, unless I’m doing graduate crits, I’m not interested in the “artist’s intention.” The experience is the experience, and what the artist was trying to do is of no value. This is why artists’ statements are irrelevant and, in fact, if not on a par with the art, can detract from it.]

So while we can’t define concept—or “content” as we’ve become accustomed to calling it—we know when it’s there and when it’s not. We can tell when abstraction crosses the line and becomes simply “design.” We know when realism is about rendering rather than something bigger, or when “concept” turns out to be no more than novelty.

The last century was about experimentation with media—as well as what could be done without it. But we’re over that. We’re over being excited about something just because it’s video, or because the artist figured out how to make something out of bat shit, and we’ve discovered that painting is still interesting because it’s the most plastic, and therefore most expressive of materials. Now that the toolbox has been opened and found to hold every possibility, the question is, in service to what? And how do we evaluate the results?

My garden, at the moment, is very visually compelling--and edible. Now if I could just plant a little concept...

Hamburgers

Claes Oldenburg, Hamburger, 1962, lithographic crayon on paper, 14" x 17", Museum of Modern Art.

My friend, Jane Sigal, wrote a delightful piece in Wednesday's Times about how hamburgers are becoming the gourmet dish of choice among chefs in France—and that the French want to eat them with a knife and fork. The funny thing is, I told her this morning, that I've had more hamburgers (three) in the past month than in the last 20 years. What precipitated this unprecedented consumption was being at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton (not exactly known for its feats of gastronomy—having dinner there is how you get a table for the concert) when my friend, Scott, a chef among other things, ordered a burger and I realized it was only smart to get the plate most likely to be prepared best. It was surprisingly delicious. Of course (eew! white bread!) I didn't eat the bun. Another tasty burger followed at a barbecue, and then last week, when starving at Mass MoCA before the Beth Orton concert, I ate one—gasp!—bun and all, and it was superb.

Before I'm lambasted by vegetarians and others pointing out how our penchant for beef is destroying the planet, I know, I know. Philosophically, I'm there. Because of that I've given vegetarianism my best try a number of times, with all the attendant righteousness and attention to protein grams. And I'll admit that after the first three days of my foray into macrobiotics, strangers were assuming my 13-years-younger boy friend and I were the same age. However I now believe that while some people are meant to be vegetarians, others aren't—there are even theories that base this on blood type—and I'm just not. A few days without animal protein and I wilt.

So no longer holier-than-thou, I'm eating hamburgers. And when Jane admitted today that she'd never cooked one, I proffered my method (the chutzpah!), learned from my mother:

Shape ground chuck (grass-fed, of course) into ½ pound patties, not too thick because they puff up, but not so thin that they'll overcook. Put a layer of salt in the bottom of an iron skillet and let it get really hot before adding the patties. Cook on one side until there's a crust, then turn and cook on the other. DO NOT turn them more than once. DO NOT try to flatten them with a spatula or pierce them in any way that would cause the juices to run out. DO serve them with fresh corn-on-the-cob cooked in boiling, unsalted water for THREE MINUTES and NO MORE (my Midwestern orientation kicks in here).

Bon appetit!

P.S. Son Matt, a culture critic who's always ahead of the curve, wrote this about where to find the best burgers in LA.

Storage

When I told Joanne Mattera that I was methodically cleaning my paintings and storage area, and she suggested I write about it, saying that storage is an issue for artists over the age of 35. Yep, the older you get, the more you have. And if being a painter of large paintings is bad, think about sculptors, yikes! These paintings have been so many places—from the pristine, climate-controlled warehouses of the Sidney Janis and Hirschl & Adler galleries, to grime-encrusted cubicles in the dark, scary labyrinth that is Chelsea Mini Storage, to the barn studio I got kicked out of with hardly any notice and rented a room from a friend in my apartment house to sleep so I could use my bedroom for storage, to the studio I shared with an amateur pornographer (who I thought was just a local businessman with an interest in photography until I found spread beaver shots next to the phone) where later a renovation took place in the gallery downstairs and every inch of everything in my workplace was coated with sheetrock dust for three months (when I complained, the owner—a New York art world impresario—asked why I didn’t just go on vacation until it was over), to the quaint mill studio attached to an auto repair garage where there was almost no heat and all the spiders of the western world convened…to here, my airy, clean, newly-renovated third floor atelier, with skylights and mountain views and nearly, but not quite, enough room for everything.

It speaks to the durability of oil paintings on canvas that they’ve survived being moved by everyone from professional art handlers (including one cross-country company with the encouraging slogan, “Every time an artwork is moved it dies a little”) to the likes of my handyman in the back of his pickup truck—with only one serious mishap, a slice from a box-cutter that was, fortunately, in the hands of a pro with insurance.

Compared to some of my friends (such as Lucio Pozzi, whose storage area looks like a branch of Costco) I don’t have that much. But I believe an artist’s own history is his/her greatest resource, and have kept to my practice of hanging onto the paintings where I made the most significant changes. However when you add those to my collection of half-baked paintings just waiting to get the new layer that will make them masterpieces (I don’t give up on anything), it adds up to a lot of stuff, especially for a person who, in the rest of her life, likes to keep stuff to a minimum.

So I’ve hired a teenager. Every day Leah comes for an hour or two (she has another job washing lettuce for her farmer father who, she tells me, outfitted a household washing machine to dry greens on the spin cycle) and together we unwrap the paintings, vacuum the backs, damp wipe the faces, re-wrap them in glassine, and clean the cardboard dividers. That’s the hard part, getting all that cardboard clean, but I’m too ecological (or cheap) to buy more, and besides, have no idea where to get 4 x 8 sheets here in the country now that the mills have closed. So there we are, Leah and me, down on the floor, scrubbing the cardboard with damp rags (actually microfiber Miracle Cloths, one of the all-time great inventions, up there with Velcro and Post-its). She likes the part where we throw all the old plastic sheeting and unsalvageable cardboard out the third floor window to the driveway below and says she can’t wait until someone asks her what she’s doing this summer so she can say, “Washing cardboard.” Me too.

Roberto's house

Welcome to Art Vent's new Home and Garden section. I took these pictures last week at Roberto Juarez's home and studio in Canaan, NY, as he was getting ready to go with me to Home Depot (or, as we call it, "Home Despot") in Catskill, where I needed to return basement windows that were the wrong size, and he was shopping for a garden umbrella. We artists lead a glamorous life here in the country.

Roberto's house is special, though, because it's so Roberto--artful, yet hardly calculated or precious; he shares it with David, two cats, and various friends who add their own touches as they come and go. A sprawling cement block edifice set on four bucolic acres, it was built around 1979 as a day care facility that later turned into a medical center. Because it's so solidly built, the basement was, at one time, designated the emergency shelter for the neighborhood. His friend, architect Kimberly Ackert, was responsible for the renovation and making the industrial building livable.

Below is Roberto's studio as seen through the front window, with reflections of daylilies. He seems to live in a micro-climate where everything grows bigger and better, like the vegetables in Woody Allen's Sleeper. From my perch, not that far away but on the side of a mountain, it seems positively tropical.


Inside the studio. Note the artistic display of this week's Netflix:


The "brush room":

The office:

A corner of the kitchen:

Another corner of the kitchen:

You can't see it here, but one of the things Roberto and I found we have in common--after meeting while teaching at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown the summer before last and realizing that we'd been in the same place at the same time practically our entire lives--is that each of us has a pink ceiling over our kitchen.

The living area:

Roberto sees his house as a laboratory, a place for objects to look at and enjoy, and which may later be reflected in his paintings. The corduroy quilt, above, he found ten years ago in Miami when it was 100 degrees out, and kept until it found its rightful place.

Some things, however, are just passing through. Below, getting ready for the tag sale. Roberto's friend, Peter Kennard, laid the stone floor:

Master bedroom:

This quilt is from Ralph Lauren. How does Roberto get away with it?--in my house it would look totally tacky. More proof that context is everything.

The vegetable garden, made with branches from the surrounding woods, is the work of part-time resident Mark Tambella, who is an artist, production designer at La Mama, and generally gifted when it comes to food and cars:

David made the moss and rock garden near the stream:

So we had our shopping outing in Catskill. I returned my windows, but--arrgh!--Home Depot didn't have the replacement size and I had to order them, contenting myself with a few new dish towels, bought later in Hudson. Roberto, however, got not only his garden umbrella but scored this gazebo, on sale for $199. Again, it's all about context. Roberto is ecstatic, and waxes on about its Josef Hoffmann-esque lines. I can't go nearly that far, but nestled under the trees near the burbling stream, it's quite divine.

Wherever I am it's NOT VALID

I haven’t posted now for several days because I’ve been in Verizon DSL hell, whence few mortals ere return. The Verizon voice prompt, the most annoying in the world with the tones of some supercilious kindergarten teacher/drill sergeant, doesn’t understand the words “repair” “tech support” or “fuck!” but demands I say the 3-digit number on my bill after which it insists on reciting to me the particulars of what I’ve paid and what I need to pay and the due date and when I—somehow—get to a place where I’m finally asked what operating system I use (whew! almost there) I’m put on terminal hold and forced to listen to a power-down-power-up message (“it will fix most problems”) and told how I can also get help at Verizon Online, which only adds insult to injury when the problem is that I can’t get online—and then—and then—I get a message saying that “Due to unusually heavy call volume all representatives are helping other customers, please call back later.” I go through this so many times that when I finally get to the guy in Bangladesh (conveniently named “Robert” or “Ed”) who’s supposed to help me, I feel guilty because he’s probably a really nice person who’s trying his best and I’m a raving maniac. But today I decided to screw Verizon and sign up for cable, so got on another computer and went to the Time/Warner site (“order online in only 4 minutes”) where I type in my address and zip code only to get the message… “Sorry, the address entered is not a valid address…”

But I'm going to beat this. I can do it. I promise.

Foxes and hounds

[Via] Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly likes to distinguish between what he calls “Patriots” and “Pinheads”. “Pinheads” must be in short supply, because last week he decided Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin was one because of a reference to a fox on one of his songs, which O’Reilly sees as one of many “cheap shots” Coldplay regularly takes at the Fox Broadcasting Company. The lyric:

It was a long and dark December
When the banks became cathedrals
And the fox became God

O’Reilly appears not to know that the word “fox” also refers to a canine animal who lives in the wild and is part of the mythology of almost every culture.

In my Animal Speak reference, I found this: Probably the fox’s cleverest hunting technique is ‘charming’ [where] the fox is seen near a prey, performing various antics. It will leap and jump and roll and chase itself, so that it charms the prey’s attention. While performing the fox draws closer and closer without its prey realizing, as it is caught up in [the fox’s] seemingly non-threatening antics. Then at the right moment, the fox leaps and captures its prey.

This fox, however, looks as if it’s just having fun:






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Commenting on the commenters

James Turrell's Roden Crater

Thanks to “Pretty Lady,” “Spatula,” and CAP for comments on my last Whitney post that are worthy of being posts in themselves. While, CAP, I was perhaps too casual in saying “anything can be art,” I actually do believe that, at this point in time, anything someone makes or designates can be (note I said can be, not should be) considered art, and that recognizing this was a necessary step to get us away from the painting-on-a-wall, sculpture-on-a-pedestal mindset that pervaded the first half of the 20th century. I do not agree with “Spatula” that “we have gone too far in deconstruction” since I’m one who delights in art that uses an economy of means (Irwin, Turrell, Eliasson, and a moment of silence in a Sigur Ros concert) to achieve great ends.

However along with deconstruction, we lost our ability to discern. We went rollicking off in the other direction, making deconstruction an excuse for sloppy thinking, sloppy execution, sloppy everything. And I lay much of the blame for this on the proliferation of art schools who profit by making everybody think art is easier than it is, who in order to exist, need the majority of students to come away with a positive experience. I remember a final graduate crit at SVA, when I said to a student about her sculpture, “There’s a lifetime of work to be mined from this”—thinking that I was giving her my highest praise—and she burst into tears because to her mind, she was finished. This was it. What, she’d have to do more?

However I believe the resounding failure of the Whitney Biennial marks the beginning of the end of a too-long era. It goes along with the political scene. We want substance. As with the Iraq war, SUVs, and Froot Loops, we’re not inclined to think something is good for us just because the powers that be say it’s so. I’m encouraged by the fact that I’ve seen more good art in the past six months than in the last ten years put together—and that we’re having these conversations. Before when I saw stuff like Fritz Haeg's Animal Estates or the Whitney’s publicity I thought that I was the only one who thought it was ridiculous. It’s a relief to learn that I’m not alone.

Koons and Shafrazi

Installation view, "Who's Afraid of Jasper Johns," at Tony Shafrazi Gallery.

I’m catching up on my reading, plowing through the magazines that accumulate on my kitchen counter (I swear they reproduce overnight—I come down in the morning to find ten magazines where there was only one the night before). Not to be missed is Peter Schjeldahl’s summing up of Jeff Koons in The New Yorker (June 9 & 16) on the occasion of Koons’s retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, which begins, “There’s something nightmarish about Jeff Koons” and ends with “We might wish for a better artist to manifest our time, but that would amount to wanting a better time” yet acknowledges the “material mastery, conceptual perfect pitch, and idealistic beauty of the objects on display in Chicago.” Yup, sometimes Koons fakes it and other times he makes it. Schjeldahl doesn’t make sense of the Koons phenomenon, as if anyone could, but for the first time I found myself reading about Koons while nodding my head in agreement.

Then there’s Jerry Saltz’s review in New York (June 25) of the Gavin Brown/Urs Fischer conceived “group show” entitled “Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns” at Tony Shafrazi Gallery (through July 12th), a mishmash of authenticity, appropriation and reproduction that Roberta Smith called “demonically aerobic to brain and eye” and Saltz wrote is “like some mad replicating vision machine, or a walk-in Louise Lawler” that was intended to “set art free from the context of the white box.” I’m as weary of the “white box” as anyone, but I don’t find the tag sale aesthetic of “Who’s Afraid,” where every image seems to cancel out every other image, a viable replacement. Howard Halle, in Time Out, called it a “deeply cynical meditation on the deeply cynical nature of the contemporary art world.” To me it felt toxic, was toxic—given the out-gassing fumes from Ron Pruitt’s plastic bag “waterfall” and Rudolf Stingel’s new but visitor-smudged white wall-to-wall carpeting—an environment to be exited as soon as possible.

The back-story is much more interesting. I mean if you were to write a novel about a guy who sprays paint on Picasso’s Guernica at MoMA and then goes on to fame and fortune as purveyor of graffiti-based art, it would be just too cheesy. It’s a story that I've always felt revealed the rotten core of the art world. But to bring it up-to-date, here’s Shafrazi, 34 years later, at the after-party for ”Who’s Afraid,” being presented with a birthday cake that’s a giant replica of the Guernica.

Saltz writes: Brown climbed atop a table and, amid much yelling, toasted Shafrazi. He then thrust a cake decorator filled with red icing into Shafrazi’s hands. As the crowd screamed, Brown implored, “Write, Tony, Write!” Shafrazi started moving the device over the cake. Slowly he wrote the words I AM SORRY. Time stood still. It was like an angel of redemption had entered the room to take away Shafrazi’s guilt. The room went silent. I was shocked. The Shafrazi began writing again. He wrote one more word: NOT! It was like the Sopranos finale. Just as you thought everything was going to change, everything became more of what it already was.

And that sums up the exhibition: something that purports to be new and different but is really just more of the same old.

Gifts from the Whitney Biennial, continued

"Anonymous" comments about the video that spoofs Biennialist artist Fritz Haeg in my last post: "Oh, it's actually a response to this video... now tell me this is not funny... THIS IS THE REAL ONE!"

Anonymous is so right, it's almost word-for-word. But you have to grit your teeth to watch it.

And "Spatula", commenting on Haeg's Animal Estates admittedly treads on the “dangerous terrain of discourse” in wondering how it can be construed as art, but I will take it on. My definition of “art”—since Duchamp made sure that it can be anything, which to my mind, was a necessary step—is something where execution and idea merge so completely that we’re unaware of either and taken to a place beyond words. That’s what music does for me (thank you, Jose Gonzalez, who I saw at the Iron Horse in Northampton last night) and that’s what I want art to do. That’s what I get from Olafur Eliasson’s endeavors: a place of new experience. Indescribable. Therefore, when I see something that sends my thought processes away from the piece at hand, when instead of being immersed in it I'm congratulating myself for having been so precocious as to realize—even in Mrs. Egbert's first grade— that it was stupid to go around in a group pretending to be squirrels, then it’s not art.

Whitney Biennial: The gift that keeps on giving

The Whitney Biennial is now over, but clearly there's no limit to the fun we can still have with it. Reader Judi Collins sent this, The Cat Condos Project by The Infinity Lab:



which was inspired by this (after a brief commercial):



Do share your thoughts.

Correctly politically incorrect

We’ve already established that Anthony Lane in The New Yorker took everything waaay too seriously in Sex and the City, thinking of it more, perhaps, as a documentary about four women than a farce. Lane is horrified by their political incorrectness, as in what may have been the funniest line in the film, which he describes as “Miranda’s outburst as she hunts for an apartment in a mainly Chinese district” where she says “White guy with baby! Let’s follow him!” He follows with the comment, “So that’s what drives these people: Aryan real estate”—although you’d have to be pretty cloistered in your own Aryan ivory tower not to know that the “Chinese district” is called Chinatown.

I’m all for political incorrectness if it’s an agent for social change which, strangely, “Sex” is, in the way the film emphasizes real values behind a façade of exaggerated consumerism. But I guess there will always be people who have trouble making the distinction.

A case for distinction was made the summer before last in Berkshire County, the third bluest in the nation, when filmmaker Mickey Friedman became annoyed that the drivers whizzing past him to shop at the most politically correct grocery store ever, the Berkshire Coop Market, weren’t joining him in his weekly protest against the Iraq war in front of Great Barrington’s town hall. That they might honk to show that they agreed just made it worse. He complained to his friend, Rudi Bach, who suggested that perhaps Mickey and his signs had become part of the scenery, and promised to do something about it.

The following weekend as Mickey was taking up his lonely post, he saw another protest forming across the street, a group dressed in combat fatigues holding American flags and beautifully lettered signs with slogans such as “Screw Peace,” “Gandhi was a Wimp,” “Peace is for Losers,” “God Supports US, not Them,” and my personal favorite, "It's Our Oil." Rudi and his friends took vigorous abuse from the pro-peace ranks, who gave them the finger or yelled from the windows of their Subarus and Volvos, but within a few weeks Mickey had all the company he wanted.

In the end, a returning soldier took offense at the counter-protest and introduced himself to Mickey, who ultimately made a film about his experience: Spc. John Flynn’s War in Iraq.

Poppies

This picture is from my steamy bike ride this morning. And if you're a newcomer to my blog, you may want to read my post from last summer, about a time when my experience with poppies went beyond the visual.

Photo: Carol Diehl, 2008

Sex and the City, Part II

I wasn’t going to write about Hillary or elaborate on my Sex and the City “review” below (brevity, as well as cleanliness, is next to godliness in my book) until a friend forwarded me this Judith Warner blog post, and I realized that my credentials as a feminist were in question because I didn’t vote for Hillary and I liked “Sex and the City.”

Warner: Is it a coincidence that the bubbling idiocy of “Sex and the City,” the movie, exploded upon the cultural scene at the exact same time Hillary’s campaign imploded? Literally, of course, it is. Figuratively, I’m not so sure, And before I set off an avalanche of emails explaining why Hillary deserved to lose, I want to make one point clear: I am not talking about the outcome of her candidacy—mistakes were made, and she faced a formidable opponent in Barack Obama—but rather about the climate in which her campaign was conducted. The zeitgeist in which Hillary floundered and “Sex” is now flourishing.

Warner bolsters her view by providing a link to an inflammatory video montage of footage, mostly from Fox News, of both men and women making crude, stupid, sexist remarks. Believe me, I’m not saying that sexism has been eradicated. But isn’t this what we expect from Fox? And isn’t it more indicative of the right-wing mentality than bias among Democratic voters? Instead I agree with Ariana Huffington, who wrote about Clinton’s campaign as a “historic triumph” for women, and Gail Collins, in the Times, who reiterated the theme saying:

Nobody is ever again going to question whether it’s possible for a woman to go toe-to-toe with the toughest male candidate in a race for president of the United States. Or whether a woman could be strong enough to serve as commander-in-chief.

What surprised me about the campaign was not how endemic the sexism was, but how little gender had to do with it. Clinton lost, and only by a small margin, to a black man whose name is only one consonant away from one we associate with terrorism. She lost because Barack Obama ran a tighter campaign, showed the courage of his convictions, and was better at reading the mood of an electorate that was weary of polarizing politics. But in spite of that, I’m convinced that if Clinton hadn’t made the fatal mistake of voting for the Iraq war, she’d be the Democratic contender right now.

But back to Warner who goes after “Sex and the City” (not without a little male-bashing in her description of Charlotte’s husband as an “adoring troglodyte…so short, so bald”) and concludes:

“Sex and the City” is the perfect movie for our allegedly ever-so-promising post-feminist era, when “angry” is out and Restalyne is in, and virtually all our country’s most powerful women look younger now than they did 20 years ago. Oh lighten up, I can hear you say. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Earnestness is so unattractive in a woman.

Funny, I was going to say that. How did she know? Perhaps because inappropriate earnestness, the inability to get a joke, isn’t attractive in anyone. I mean—tell me if I’m missing something huge here—I thought “Sex and the City” was a satire. For all the talk of Labels with a capital L, those fantastical over-the-top clothes were designed by Patricia Field, whose boutique I remember from the East Village in the Eighties where she used outfit drag queens. And how can you take seriously a story in which the love interest is called Mr. Big? C’mon, is that not hilarious?

So, far from the paean to consumerism the hyper-serious commenters on Warner’s blog thought the film was (if many of them actually saw it, which I doubt), I got the opposite message—such as, don’t get so involved in your wedding plans that you forget about the guy. But the film could just have easily been about Forgiveness—there was a lot of that going on—and, of course, let’s not leave out Loyalty. And what how about how women in their forties and even—gasp!—fifties can hang out, be lusty, and have fun?

Then there’s Anthony Lane in The New Yorker who complains about, of all things, too much schmaltz. He also doesn’t understand how Miranda, a lawyer, can drop everything and to fly to Mexico to support her friend (hello, it’s a fantasy, all right, but hardly one that’s “posing as a slice of modern life” any more than Sasha Baron Cohen expected us to believe Borat was really from Kazakhstan). Lane gets into a twitch about the little dog who humps everything—and he’s right, it was awful, which is just what was so great about it. But why would a hetero guy over forty, who admits he “never was sure how funny the TV series was meant to be” take on the film in the first place? It seems Lane violated his maxim of “Whenever possible, see the film in the company of ordinary beings” and went to a critics’ screening, where he took notes on every instance of political incorrectness (he had to write fast). He should have seen it with some gay friends and instead of rushing home to transcribe those notes, spent the rest of the evening driving around with the top down, listening to the Scissor Sisters.

Sex and the City

I hated every minute of it. I think it's one of the best movies I've ever seen.

Dreams

I hardly ever recall my dreams, but when I do they’re almost always the same. Except for the ones where I’m in a public place without my clothes, or suddenly remember I have a kitten or baby I’ve forgotten to take care of (they’re always okay, I just feel this terrible guilt), all of my dreams are travel dreams where I can’t get somewhere, can’t find my luggage, etc. I thought when that dream finally came true that I wouldn’t have it anymore but that didn’t happen (yes, I really was in the airport outside Reykjavik at 6:30 a.m., unable to find Einar’s phone number or my luggage, running across the tundra after the only bus of the day that was leaving without me…). In last night’s dream I was lurching from car to car on a futuristic train trying to find my luggage, clutching a gigantic zip-lock plastic bag stuffed with hundreds of tiny bottles of toiletries to my chest. The “stewardesses,” all in a gaggle talking about their dates of the night before, were no help. At one point I found myself walking through the empty observation car as we were passing Niagara Falls and next to the rushing water was a giant screen duplicating the scene, as if it were a rock concert. All of this was no doubt triggered by reading an article in an old (April 28) TIME magazine, about Richard Branson and his revolutionary plans for Virgin Airlines (where I’m a regular), one of which is to end the “Sisyphean tyranny of the cart” by offering choices (which you pay for, of course) from a computer screen, brought to you whenever you want. Wow, I think, what a great idea, until I realize that if I did get that plastic-wrapped $12 turkey sandwich, most likely it wouldn’t be appetizing enough to eat, so what to do with it? Perhaps use it as a neck support as I nap, hoping I won’t dream.

P.S. The Iceland story ended happily. Einar, sensing something was up, rang me, I found my luggage, and the beautiful blond bus dispatcher took it upon herself to arrange for a driver to take me to Einar’s outpost, about 25 minutes away (cost: $16)—where breakfast was waiting. It was almost worth it to find out how caring people could be to a stranded stranger in a far-flung place.

Photo: Carol Diehl, Iceland 2006