The Future of Reading

I know, I know, I’m still supposed to be on vacation, and for me vacation is all about reading. For several days, except for an occasional swim, I did nothing but sit in a lounge chair by the lake at my friend Amy’s summer cabin in New Hampshire and read. It was a book a day, choosing from the stack I’d brought as well as the plethora that have accumulated in the house over the years. Best was re-reading Michael Frayn’s brief novel The Trick of It (I provided a link, but the review is a spoiler), so gorgeously observant and funny that I, as a writer, was seething with envy. Worst was Anita Shreve’s plodding, lifeless Body Surfing, which I ultimately threw in the trash.

While, as a child, I considered school nothing more than an irritating interruption in my reading, I hated every book my teachers assigned—to this day cannot get through Moby Dick, and A Tale of Two Cities remains the only Dickens I don’t adore. That’s why this article from the Times, “The Future of Reading / A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like” was enough to get me away from my current book to write this post. It’s amazing that we’re in the year 2009 and the idea of allowing children to follow their interests is still revolutionary. I think the root of the problem is that we don’t trust children to be intelligent, to choose well for themselves, to be persistent, or to learn without adult assistance. And yet children are nothing but persistent—when they’re interested.

Of course the other thing I did as a child was draw and paint—and I hated that in school, too, where the teachers were always trying to get me to paint objects, instead of the “besigns” (as I called them) I preferred. And in 2009, I’m appalled to say, I can still walk into some college art classrooms and find still-life arrangements of dried up plants in dusty wine bottles, or pears on a plate, as one might have seen 100 years ago. Nature morte indeed.

Keeping in mind that the success of any endeavor is directly proportionate to the level of interest brought to it, when I taught Fundamentals of Painting at Bennington College (an institution that also encourages its faculty members to follow their interests), while we touched on abstraction, landscape, still-life and portraiture, with each I insisted that the students be in charge of their subject matter. I mean, really, wouldn’t you be more motivated depicting a friend, a family member, a lover or the guy with the curious face at the convenience store, than some model? And how do you know how far you can go with anything if you’re not bringing all you have to it? It’s also a way of marrying content with execution, as it should be, from the very beginning.

And…and…and…but enough! With that rant, my hiatus from my hiatus is over. Back to my book.

Hiatus

Unless overwhelmed by a sudden desire to post, Art Vent is on vacation for the next couple of weeks.20090820

Shepard Fairey at the ICA

The other day, thrilling to the new Silversun Pickups while driving on the Mass Pike to Boston, I found myself wishing that I could get the same feeling from art—the exhilaration, the physical surge in the chest—that happens when I hear great music. Roberto and I were on our way to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) to finally catch Shepard Fairey’s show, “Supply and Demand,” before its closing tomorrow. My attempts to attend the winter opening were foiled by the weather, the following months were filled with travel and constant precipitation, so now—rain or no rain—we were making the two–hour drive.

What did I expect? Well I was a big fan of Shepard Fairey’s graphic work, and I’ve always been captivated by the way graffiti and street art in general can add (as in this photo I recently took in Reykjavik) a layer of poetry to the gritty urban landscape.

As consultant, I was enamored enough to suggest Fairey to TIME for the 2007 “Person of the Year” cover of Putin (it ultimately ran on the inside, and he did a new image of Obama for 2008’s cover) and loved his iconic Obama poster, the way it captured the spirit of the man, the campaign and the times, and how simply beautiful it was. I also admired Fairey’s philosophy—in the ridiculous brouhaha over his appropriation of the AP image of Obama (exacerbated by a news media that insists on reproducing the AP photograph not as it originally appeared but as Fairey cropped it) hardly anyone has pointed out that Fairey never intended the image as a money-maker, but made it available for free on his Web site.

However I’d also read Peter Schjeldahl’s New Yorker review, where he described the work in the show as “formulaic,” “slick and resistible,” and Christopher Knight’s review in the LA Times that talked about Fairey’s “limited pictorial vocabulary.”

Therefore I was not prepared for Art with a capital A, or a rush similar to the one I’d just gotten from the Silversun Pickups—or to find that most everyone I talked to afterwards who’d seen the show shared my enthusiasm, including a museum administrator who put it in the top five of museum shows she’s seen…ever.

It was gorgeous.

Photographs cannot reproduce the nuance, depth and complexity of Fairey’s surfaces. Clearly his inspiration comes from the street—the way peeling posters can reveal chance fragments from earlier ones, or how signs painted on the sides of buildings often wear away to expose a jumble of previous messages—yet the result is elegant and sophisticated, as well as soft and sensual. Further, Fairey wrests all this texture and nuance from what every artist knows is the most hard-edged and unforgiving of media: silkscreen.

What I want from art is that perfect marriage of concept and execution, both so fully developed that, as viewers, we are aware of neither, but powerfully in the experience. Yet I hardly ever find it—so much of what is offered seems half-realized, as if the artist is afraid to take a stand, afraid to actually make something, afraid to commit him/her self fully to an image, an object. Execution is either overdone relative to the flimsiness of the idea, or too casually rendered, as if the idea in itself should be enough. I want to see work that holds up from afar but gives me something to look at up close. I want to see art that looks as if the artist cares.

Packed with complexity and contradiction as well as humor, Fairey’s work does all these things. We stay with his messages about money, power and war because they are embedded in a richness of visual detail, the sumptuous mélange of influences (Russian Constructivism, Middle Eastern art, Pop Art, official engravings such as paper money and stamps, advertising, to name a few) that adds up to his very singular style.

It felt like a feast.

Afterwards we gave the permanent collection a run-through, but following Fairey everything seemed tepid and flat. Then, after a delicious lunch on the windy outdoor terrace overlooking the Charles, we went through the exhibition again. I attempted to get a press kit, images for this blog and to present for reviews, and to find out if the show is traveling, but was told that the administrative, curatorial and press staff were all on vacation that Thursday afternoon and photographs, even by press, were prohibited. (Photography prohibited? In a Shepard Fairey exhibition? )

We’d intended to augment our Boston visit with a stop at the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum and some fabulous seafood dinner, but decided instead to just get back in the car and drive home.

We were full.

All Shepard Fairey images borrowed from the Web, by necessity.
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Silverson Pickups' "Panic Switch"

Summer

Carrots from my garden:

This morning on my bike ride, I watched as a little white dog, no humans present, herded about 100 big woolly sheep and a bunch of lambs to a more verdant part of the pasture where they immediately chowed down, each contributing to a steady, contented crunching sound that was audible even over the crickets. If the makers of white noise machines wanted to add another comforting sound to their repertoire (ocean waves, bubbling brook, rain, country evening, etc.) , they could include that of munching sheep. This one looks as if she's never seen an iPhone:

Family story

Yesterday was son Matt’s birthday and on October 16th, he and Michelle Nishikawa will be married at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. This is their account of the proposal, which I lifted from the wedding Web site:

When Michelle and Matt got engaged, well, let's just say it was a surprise... To her, that is. Here's how it all went down:

It was June 20th, one day before Michelle's birthday. Michelle was feeling haggard, coming back from her gastronomic pilgrimage to El Bulli, having made a 16-hour journey from Barcelona. Of course, that's when Matt decided to pop the "big question." He put on a dark suit paired with his Royal Elastics hightops, went to LAX's International Terminal and stood alongside the limo drivers holding signs emblazoned with the names of clients that they were picking up. Matt was also holding a sign; however, his sign read "Michelle!!! Will you MARRY ME?"

A woman saw Matt holding the sign, ran up to him and said "Yes!"

Michelle, meanwhile, saw Matt through the glass doors leading out from U.S. Customs, and was puzzled by his wardrobe. When, pushing a heavy luggage cart, Michelle finally exited, she saw the sign and promptly went into shock. Overcoming her initial puzzlement that her boyfriend was now a limo driver and the fact that she probably needed an Altoid, she rushed up to Matt and said "Yes! Yes! Yes!" Both began to cry. One strange man repeatedly told Michelle to stop crying, while another kind stranger helpfully pointed out she was turning red. At this point, Matt informed camera-shy Michelle that the proceedings were being caught on video: he had enlisted the couple's good friend Richard to be videographer, although Rich got excited and hit pause instead of record when Michelle first saw the sign. Rich did, however, get his wits together by the time Matt got down on his knees and officially asked Michelle to marry him, slipping a gleaming ring on her finger to an uproarious ovation from the surrounding crowd (except for the one mean lady who was mad that Michelle was blocking her way to the crosswalk).

The ring was my grandfather Carroll A. Haines's diamond pinky ring, which he's wearing in the photo below, taken by my father. It fits Michelle perfectly.

E.Z.L.A.

The rain has given us a break for the past two days—was threatened for today, but hasn’t happened so far—and now we have mosquitoes the size of helicopters. Last night in the garden, taking out the pea vines and replacing them with zucchini plants, an entire fleet landed on my ear. Even though I’ve sprayed it with so much Benadryl the afflicted organ is now stuck to my head, the urge to scratch it takes up nearly all my attention. With what little brain space I have left over, I will attempt to write a little about L.A., where the sun was out all the time and there were NO MOSQUITOES.

I said I didn’t want to go see art (“I’m here to see you”) but son Matt insisted and anyone who knows Matt knows that when he insists, it’s futile to protest. Besides he was right, as he usually is.

Our first stop was Ace Gallery, which in L.A. is as vast as its last incarnation in New York, to see Matt’s friend, Melanie Pullen’s glamorized portraits of soldiers in uniform, which you can get a glimpse of here. Then there was a chain of three rooms lit by Robert Irwin in different colors, the after-image of each affecting how you perceived the hue of the next, and a lovely set of graphite squiggle drawings by Australian artist Ana Pollak, which, like the Irwin installation, were totally unphotographable. You can look at them here, but you won’t have a clue.

I admitted I wanted to see the Jorge Pardo reinstallation of pre-Columbian art at LACMA that had generated so much controversy, and as with the Musee Quai du Branly in Paris, I don’t feel the need to evaluate it, but am simply glad that museums are experimenting with creative solutions. I guess my only gripe about the Pardo is that the lighting was so even throughout that the objects on display seemed more incidental than highlighted. Meanwhile the show of young Korean artists at LACMA, “Your Bright Future” was one of the worst exhibitions of anything I’ve ever seen, yet another example of how the Academic Faux Avant Garde (hereafter to be known as AFAG) has gone global.

Best of all was Chris Burden’s Urban Light, 2008, a grid of 202 vintage Los Angeles street lamps that’s permanently installed on Wilshire Boulevard at LACMA. Sometimes I think that video (except for Christian Marclay and perhaps Omer Fast) could have begun and ended with Nam June Paik, and conceptual art could have begun and ended with Chris Burden. Next time I want to see it at night.

Oh, and the chilled soup I got at the museum cafe in the courtyard. You can try this at home: beet puree mixed with watermelon juice and a touch of finely chopped mint. Perfect!

The Berkshires, still submerged

I couldn't resist posting another photo, taken last night, of the Stockbridge Golf Course, now the Stockbridge Golf Lake. Ah, the irony of beauty in destruction.

The Berkshires, submerged

It’s started raining again, and I’ve lost the little window I had to mow the lawn. Jeez! Even the epic rain in the Bible lasted only forty days and forty nights, while here it’s been more like three months. I fanaticize that we’re outdoing Forks, Washington, famous in “Twilight” for being the rainiest place in the U.S., and all the vampires will start moving here. Meanwhile this is the Stockbridge Golf Course, taken on my way to dinner the other night, and someone posted on Facebook that ducks are swimming in the parking lots at Tanglewood.

On to LA

Flying into Burbank

I'm in Los Angeles helping Matt and Michelle plan their upcoming nuptials. We're using this for inspiration:

Landscape and interpretation

Which comes first, the artist or the landscape? I remember being profoundly disappointed when I went to Aix-en-Provence and discovered that the countryside looked exactly like a Cezanne. Damn! He just painted what was in front of him--although he did elaborate a bit on Mount St. Victoire, which was punier than I expected. And Venice looks just like Canaletto, Paris like that rainy day Caillebotte at the Art Institute in Chicago I've always loved, and while I haven't been to China, a friend told me that the mountains and mist look just like--Chinese paintings. So now that I live on the edge of the Hudson River Valley I think a lot about the painters of the Hudson River School and how they, too, were painting just what was in front of them. Or were they? Perhaps I see it the way I see it because I've been shown it through their eyes.

I thought about this a lot on our trip to Iceland, where we were shooting background landscape for our film about Olafur Eliasson and Einar Thorsteinn’s collaborations. Terry, who did his Ph.D. thesis on Olafur’s work, was visiting Iceland for the first time, and when he got there exclaimed, “Olafur is just appropriating the landscape!” Not that Olafur pretends to do anything else—it’s possible to trace almost everything he does back to Iceland in one way or another—but this time it was even more clear to me. Þingvellir is that most famous site in Iceland where the Vikings established their parliament back in 930 A.D. Now a national park, it is edged by a wall of black rock interspersed at intervals with waterfalls of various size and looking at it on this visit it was easy to imagine the black rock as the New York City skyline as seen from the East River, where Olafur placed his waterfalls. Americans expect waterfalls to be spectacular, but in Iceland, while of course some are spectacular, many, as in Þingvellir are simply columns of water whose movement animates the otherwise static rocky landscape.

I get annoyed when people apologize for photographs, but this is the best I have of the cliff line with waterfalls at Þingvellir, taken around 11:00 at night with an overcast sky. At least you get the idea. I haven't yet got the hang of taking photographs in Iceland, but it's something I look forward to working on.

Readers of this blog know how passionate I am about keeping the art experience free from any interference that attempts to interpret the work for viewers or bombard them with information that gives the impression that art is about, well, information. This is a philosophy I share with Robert Irwin and Olafur, who was greatly influenced by Irwin (did I get the idea from them or was I attracted to them because of it?—another question that can never be answered). No wonder I’m so comfortable in Iceland, because here is an entire country that appears to share my aversion to signage. The first time I went to Þingvellir I drove right past because there was a road sign but no more. No WELCOME TO ÞINGVILLIR, HOME OF THE PARLIAMENT, or its equivalent in Icelandic, not even a billboard with the park’s name on it. I also drove past the visitor’s center because there were no signs, no advertisements, nothing. The only way you’d know that the building, which appeared commercial, housed hospitality facilities would be to go look in the window. I love that. Because of course it is the Visitor Center--it's the only building within 50 km and it's where Þingvellir is on the map, but my American brain has been conditioned to look not for places, but for labels. And once you get into the park there are no plaques explaining what you are looking at here and there. You can have your own experience, and if you want to know something you can get a guidebook. Anyway, it’s an essential philosophy that Olafur seems to share with his favorite country, something to ask him about one day.

The only sign I saw at Gulfoss, one of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland. The cloverleaf symbol indicates an official site of natural or historic interest.

And now I’m off to California, causing a friend to grumble something about my carbon footprint. Well I don’t know if it fully absolves me, but I do grow all my own vegetables.

I am proud of my garden but all I did was put in some seeds and keep the weeds out. I find it difficult to take credit for nature.

Bruno blahs

In between Iceland posts, I want to weigh in with a quick review of “Bruno,” which I went to see last night with four gay guys. As one said, and we all agreed, it was “flat.” Yes, flat, as in boring. I wasn’t even offended. In fact Scott and I left midway and went out for a quite delightful dinner. Could I say I loved “Borat”? Well the actual experience was a kind of torture, but that was the point. “Borat” was brilliant, a case of inspired political activism and a cultural milestone. It worked because Sacha Baron Cohen’s transformation was seamless—he was Borat. Robert Irwin and Olafur Eliasson talk about art that makes you aware of yourself, “seeing yourself seeing” as it were—well “Borat” is the ultimate example. Because no matter what Borat does, no matter how outrageous or disgusting he is, the person you’re most surprised by is yourself when you find yourself rooting for him. Bruno, on the other hand, is wooden, a schtick. And to what end? I’m still not sure what the point is, or what audience Baron Cohen was trying to reach. And there's no pacing; it just thrashes on. It’s sad because having been a fan ever since I encountered “Da Ali G. Show” many years ago on British TV where Bruno was my favorite character, I think Baron Cohen is a genius. Oh well.

Notes from Iceland--1

Flying into Keflavik at 11:00 p.m.

Our cabin at the Motel Alex near the airport, around 1:00 a.m., with campers sleeping in tents all around. It's hard to remember to be quiet when it's so light out.

Okay, I admit to being an Icelandophile. I love that it's so incredibly rugged and isolated yet inhabited by some of the most sophisticated and creative people in the world. And I love the way of life: daily swimming in geothermally heated outdoor public pools could easily get me through any long, dark winter. Open into the evening, the pools are community gathering places for everyone from moms with toddlers to high school kids, to old guys soaking and yakking in the hottest (44 degrees Celsius, 111.2 degrees to us, yikes!) of several “hot pots.” Because of the Gulf Stream, the temperature in winter is roughly that of New York City (if you don’t take into consideration the harsh Arctic wind), and in summer hovers around 60F. People always associate the extreme northern countries with high rates of suicide and alcohol consumption, but doing research I found that (except for Greenland with the highest suicide rate, which spikes in summer) statistics don’t bear these assumptions out. In fact one site lists Icelanders as being the happiest (this before the economic crisis). They at least enjoy some of the best health, and have a 100% literacy rate. Although most in Reykjavik speak flawless English, they prefer to communicate in Icelandic, and the number of books one finds in the stores translated into or written in a language spoken by only around 300,000 people, boggles the mind.

Erica noted that everyone walks slowly to the point where, if we concentrated on it, the people on Reykjavik’s main shopping street appeared to be moving in slow motion. They are also quiet spoken, but at the same focused and deliberate. Is this because their sense of time is so unlike ours? In Iceland, rather than moving through time, you are suspended in it, and indeed we were told that the Vikings didn’t divide the year into months but gave each day its own name. I loved that it was light all the time, although the landscape seems less dramatic (if that’s possible) in summer because the light is more diffused. When I was in Iceland in the fall, the sun hovered just above the horizon, always in your eyes and casting long shadows from even the smallest rocks. Last week there was an hour or so of twilight around midnight and then, with a change that was more sensation than visually perceptible (something a photograph, for instance, could not capture), it would shift to dawn. In the space of a few minutes I’d go from anticipating more of the evening ahead to feeling as if I’d been up all night and wanting to go to sleep. There was also a different pattern of activity—more people out on Reykjavik’s streets at midnight on Saturday than at any time during the day.

Hotel Fron, Reykjavik, midnight

Not only is there no familiar reference for time in Iceland, there’s none for space. With no in-between, nothing in the middle range, you have only near and far—no way of telling whether it’s a walk to the mountains you see in the distance, or an hour’s drive. This makes the landscape nearly impossible to capture in photographs, so most photographers try to include something for scale—a building, an animal, a person in a boat—which makes for images that make it look like a National Geographic Anywhere. Certainly not Iceland, because what distinguishes Iceland is that there’s NOTHING there. Outside the city, you have to plan where you’re going to get gas, eat and, yes, pee. The tourist board publishes a map of the entire country with red dots--and not a lot of them--indicating rest stops “with W.C.” As for dashing for cover by the side of the road, forget it. There is no cover. You haven’t seen a car for at least 20 minutes, but if one of those giant SUVs (you need them in Iceland) with the high wheel beds were to suddenly come barreling across the gravel, you’d be completely exposed.

Random landscape shot

...with Terry and Erica shooting landscape for our video project, for scale.

On our drive, my companions and I had a misunderstanding. Too late I realized we were setting off on the route to a certain waterfall, which meant forgoing the restaurant Einar recommended. I was wondering, did they really intend to go without lunch and dinner? Now I realize that they must have been planning to pick up something on the way, while I was thinking this is Iceland, where there is no “on the way,” and if we know of a food source, we should go there. We did, happily, find our way to another restaurant where Erica pronounced the lamb chops “worth the entire trip.”

Landscape at Þingvellir, with flowers for scale

Gullfoss: if you look carefully, you can see people standing on the top of the ridge

Catching up

Just back from Iceland, I segued into being so absorbed with painting that I don’t want to stop even to eat or go to the bathroom. But I know that soon enough I’ll be back to my normal self, wanting to share the images and thoughts from the trip that have been percolating in my head since returning. For an Icelandic art experience in New York, I recommend spending contemplative time with Finnbogi Petursson's beautiful installations involving sound, light and water at Sean Kelly. I became interested in Finnbogi's work on my first trip to Iceland in 2004, and was lucky enough to see the other half of the show last Saturday at i8 Gallery in Reykjavik.

Just to give you an idea, here's an earlier piece: Finnbogi Petursson, Elements, Water, Earth (2005), courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery.

And for something to read, this is Jerry Saltz writing about the state of the art world through the lens of the Venice Biennale (“Entropy in Venice”—could not be better named). These are issues I’ve been grumbling about for years, so it’s gratifying to find those opinions shared, and so succinctly summed up. You can read the whole thing on Artnet:

Venice is the perfect place for a phase of art to die. No other city on earth embraces entropy quite like this magical floating mall. There are now more than 100 biennales around the world (most of them put together by the same 25 celebrity curators, drawing from the same pool of 100 or so artists); Venice is often called "the most important" of them. The main show of the 53rd Venice Biennale, June 7-Nov. 22, 2009, is the work of Daniel Birnbaum, a well-respected 46-year-old Swedish critic and curator. His "Making Worlds," held in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni delle Biennale and in the magnificent Arsenale, attains an enervating inertia of exhibitions and brings us to a terminal state of what we’ll call "the curator problem."

Birnbaum’s show, containing the work of 90-plus artists, doesn’t offend or go off the rails. Rather, it looks pretty much the way these sorts of big international group shows and cattle calls now look; it includes the artists that these sorts of shows now include. It’s full of the reflexive conceptualism that artists everywhere now produce because other artists everywhere produce it (and because curators curate it). Almost all of this art comments on art, institutions or modernism. Basically, curators seem to love video, text, explanations, things that are "about" something, art that references Warhol or Prince, or that makes sense; they seem to hate painting, things that don’t make sense or that involve overt materiality, physicality, color or strangeness.

Any critic who says this, of course, is accused of conservatism, of wishing for a return to painting. I’m not for or against video -- or any medium or style, for that matter. Nor am I wishing for a return to painting, which can never come back because it never went away. (That said, it’s hard to imagine anything more conservative today than an institutional critique. That sort of work is the establishment.) My beef is with the experience that "Making Worlds" produces. It’s just another esthetically familiar feedback cycle: impersonal, administratively adept, highly professionalized, formally generic, mildly gregarious, esthetically familiar, totally knowing, cookie-cutter. It is time we broke out of that enervated loop.

On my way...

To get in the mood for my trip, I watched the video Screaming Masterpiece, a survey of Icelandic music in which Barði Jóhannsson, of the band Bang Gang, answers the question: “Why is Icelandic music so special?” For a country whose largest city is about the size of Akron, OH, and where they speak a language shared by no other, it produces an amazing amount of great music. Barði says it’s because “all the bands that are any good know that their music won’t be played on the radio and that they won’t sell more than 200 albums in Iceland, so they make music just as they please.”

More Iceland

The Blue Lagoon, January 2004

I'm off to Iceland on Friday for a whirlwind trip with Erica and Terry to shoot background landscape for our film about Olafur Eliasson and Einar Thorsteinn's collaboration, returning after July 1st. But before that, tomorrow, I'm going to Finnbogi Petursson's opening (friend of Olafur and Einar, whose work I've seen in Iceland) at Sean Kelly Gallery, and then to see John Kelly's Paved Paradise Redux: the Art of Joni Mitchell at the Abron Arts Center at the Henry Street Settlement, which runs through Saturday. John is an extraordinary singer/actor/dancer (and artist whose exhibition of self-portraits is up until the 27th at Alexander Gray), and this particular performance, which he's done for many years, has almost a cult following.

This will be my fourth trip to Iceland since 2004, and my first in summer with its almost 24-hour light (and hopefully sun--it's been raining there as much as it has here). We plan to end up at/in the Blue Lagoon (above) where the water is so hot it doesn't make any difference what the weather is doing.

Sunday morning

Division Street, Great Barrington, MA

It’s Sunday, so a sermon is in order. This was sent to me by Father Ralph Peterson, who I met at Olafur Eliasson’s event at Bard, and whose interest in art includes having brought the Louise Nevelson-designed chapel at St. Peter’s in NYC’s CitiCorp Building into being. These are excerpts from a sermon given by Canon John Simons at the installation of the Rt. Reverend Dennis Drainville as the Twelfth Bishop of Anglican Diocese of Quebec. Although it’s been unfashionable of late to think that art should be anything more than information or even to make value judgments (I’ve been accused of wanting art to be “good for its audience,” as if that were silly, when the alternative is to waste time on the stupid or mediocre) I like the expectation put forth here, that it “enlarge the boundaries of the self.” BTW I believe in any and all religions, and none.

Human beings are by nature spiritual beings, created by God to receive the Holy Spirit. The evidence of this receptivity is that we cannot be human unless we live ecstatically. In other words, each of us lives by participating in a larger reality than our particular location and perspective, than our particular consciousness, and, conversely, each of us, enriched by that larger world, adds his and her unique sensibility to it.....

Our spiritual potential is given a particular inflection in everyday life through music and literature. We all know what it is like to be moved by a poem or a novel, or any other work of art, for that matter. An aesthetic work enables its audience to enter and explore a different way of seeing something, a different way of feeling about the world, or, a way of feeling that is already ours, but which we may have repressed. To appreciate a literary work, for example, is not simply to be informed about the author’s point of view. It is to feel the sense of things expressed in the work.

You enter into the characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their clothing. Hence literature, music and art do not isolate us in egocentric desire or self-pity; rather, they invite us to actualize our capacity to love, that is, to abandon our self-preoccupation, to stand outside ourselves and within the world as experienced by others. This is what love does, and what art fosters. It enlarges the boundaries of the self.

Scott's house reprise

Regarding the post below, Robby Baier's comment to Scott on Facebook:

I love your place. Such artistic order. Carol's Blog reminded me of a story about my friend Peter in Stuttgart. I was staying with him about 4 years ago and was struck by how impeccably the place was organized. He doesn't have your artistic sense so it was just super neat and very clean. When we left in the morning, after the beds were made, the dishes cleaned and put away, the sink wiped down with a fresh, dry rag (who wants those unsightly stains on the stainless steel?), he stopped in the doorway and turned around one last time to make sure everything was in place. Sharing with me that he "doesn't like it when things are too perfect", he went back inside and took a coat off of one of the hooks by the door, walked over to the couch and tossed the coat on the armrest. Not happy with the way the coat had fallen, he picked it up again and threw it a second time. Ahhhh. Now, for him, the place was imbued with just an air of the casual.

Note to manically tidy self: go downstairs and throw some magazines around.

Scott's House

Art Vent House Report #6:

Scott Cole is often mentioned in my posts, sometimes as Scott Who Knows Everything, as he’s frustratingly multi-accomplished. Musician, painter, and chef (Scott owns Caffe Pomo d’Oro in West Stockbridge, MA) his home is an ever-changing work of art.

While the furnishings could not be more opulent, comfortable, and New England in orientation—as well as festive—Scott’s emphatic use of black adds a slightly sinister edge to his style, which I have dubbed “Goth Colonial.” Every room is permeated with a sense of mystery, the objects in whispered conversation with each other, telling cryptic stories, alluding to histories and secrets we’ll never know:

When I’m there I’m always taking pictures and the only challenge is editing—basically you can point the camera anywhere and get a beautiful vignette. For instance you can guess what vantage point I took this from. But really, isn’t this just the world’s sexiest toothbrush?

You get the feeling that it's all intentional, but not too intentional, and that there's a sense of humor behind everything:

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s Scott, preparing the dinner he made last night for a few friends, in his kitchen which, except for the black cat lurking nearby, is white and innocent:

As is the upstairs bathroom:

The dining room:

Master bedroom:

A corner of an upstairs guest room:

Because it fit him perfectly, I gave Scott this kimono, which was made for my uncle when he served in China during World War II. He wore it once for Halloween, then hung it on the wall:

And outside, the hand-carved pickets on the fence that came with the house. Even they tell a story:

Jaws

This photo, which I took in Pittsfield, MA and posted last year, pretty much sums up how I feel about public art. Not that public art can’t be good, but that it rarely is, because too much rote thinking is involved on the part of the artists, as well as those who commission it. Artists make art that looks like what they think public art—especially sculpture—should look like, and selection committees select it, without a lot of thought to site or placement. It’s hard to compete with nature—usually the environment would look a whole lot better without it (although I’m a big fan of her paintings, the pile of rust by Rebecca Horn that despoils Barcelona’s beautiful beach is a perfect example, and the Frank Gehry fish that lurks nearby, isn't much better).

I was back in Pittsfield today, at the Berkshire Medical Center (for an MRI on my foot which, of course, was completely cured by the fact that I was going for an MRI—just the way a snuffly, crying baby turns into a smiling picture of health the minute you enter the pediatrician’s office) where this sculpture caught my attention. Although I’d go for something a little more comforting and calming for a medical center—incorporating a water feature perhaps, or vegetation (it would be a great place for some surprise topiary)—the sculpture itself is not so bad, and its sleek lines and mirrored surface contrast nicely with the traditional architecture of the building behind it. But what’s with the sign at the bottom? What’s the point of installing something if you’re going to overwhelm any redeeming qualities it might have with a tacky sign? Who’s thinking here?

So I’m driving home, ranting to myself about how I’ll gladly add public sculpture to the list of things (museum wall text, artists statements, children’s music) that I plan to outlaw when king, when I see this—unmarked, unattributed, and perfectly at home in its environment—and am reminded, as with the Kinderhook snow sculpture I came across last winter, that the human artistic impulse has a place outside after all, just best, perhaps, when it’s not institutionalized.

But let's be positive. Send me examples of public art you think works. Or even better, we could compile a best and worst list.

Painting

Oil paint is great because you can fudge it and it will still look like something...except when it doesn't and looks like crap. The problem is, you don't get to decide.

My friend Erica’s 3-year-old dog, Bella, never chewed a book before now. Interesting that she should choose Temple Grandin’s Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior for her first literary meal.

Photo by Erica Spizz