Olafur Eliasson update

Since Terry Perk is here from England to edit, with cinematographer Erica Spizz, our short film about the collaboration between Olafur Eliasson and Einar Thorsteinn, this is a good moment to post some photos from Olafur's Berlin show--his first--at the Martin Gropius-Bau exhibition hall. 

The Model Room, reinstalled:

A room of fog that changes colors:

The world of me, continued

Doris Salcedo, Shibboleth (2008), Tate Modern, London

Thanks for the thoughtful comments on the post below, and if you didn’t read them before, please do. They are all worth reprinting, but here are two snippets:

“beebe” said: The problem at this point is systemic. Having somewhat recently gone through an MFA program, the main focus was on the statement--talking about the work, weaving a skein of bullshit around the work. The language surrounding the work and your inevitable defense of the language (and, secondarily of course, the work) is more important than actively making better work.

From “CAP”: Even critics want to take their cue from the artist's best intentions, in advancing an interpretation or assessment. But this really reflects a lack of confidence in an historical framework and personal intuition. The critic turns to intention to skirt thornier issues of style and form….

Whenever I bring up artist’s statements, it seems to touch a nerve.  And rarely, if ever, have I gotten a comment in their defense (such as “I love artist’s statements!” “Once I read one, I can't wait to read more!”) yet they persist—like the weather, everyone talks about them but no one actually does anything.

There are several issues at play here. “Thi Bui” who doesn’t like “self-absorbed or insincere statements either” asks, however, “why don't we care about where the work comes from, or what the artist is trying to do?”

We don’t care because it has nothing to do with the experience of the work. Like music, the beauty of visual art—emphasis on the word visual—is its ability to communicate through non-verbal means, and is therefore more about sensation than thought. The delight is in its mystery, which by its nature defies explanation. If we want to communicate messages, writing is a better vehicle.

Also, any statement that tells us what a work is about or what the artist intends, limits the interpretation—in effect it pre-digests the experience so that it's hard to see it through any other lens. My favorite example is Doris Salcedo’s (2008) installation, 

Shibboleth, 

the “crack” at the Tate Modern that I wrote about with relish in two blog posts. On its own, the piece was quite powerful; recalling fault lines or dry riverbeds, it threatened our sense of stability and security, brought to mind all manner of social and physical separations and divisions, the unknown beneath our feet, the feeling that nothing is permanent, nothing is forever, that there are forces bigger than ourselves….and I’m just getting started. But once you become aware that Salcedo sees her work as “addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world…” the whole thing goes flat, suddenly no more than a grandiose illustration of a lofty and banal idea.

Artists work from instinct, and may not be aware of the various possibilities of experience and interpretation that the work makes available. Interpretation is the work of philosophers and critics, and as an artist I’ve learned more about what my work “means” by reading about it than I did through the thoroughly intuitive process of making it.

The problem is that curators and critics are also relying on biography, intention, and social content to interpret art and justify it. When I wrote my article about Anne Truitt for Art in America, I devoted a portion of the article and several blog posts (see label for Anne Truitt) to the way the curator insisted on interpreting Truitt’s work through biography in the most elementary way—while acknowledging that “Truitt herself was reticent to make fully explicit the connections she nevertheless acknowledged between her life and art.” I came to the conclusion that the curator, who was a graduate of a curatorial program, simply did not know any other way to assess art.

However there is another way: observation

—

the act of looking at and experiencing the work and, as CAP points out, having confidence in our personal intuition.

What’s there is there, right in front of you, and what’s not there is….not.

Photo: Carol Diehl (2008)

Auto-Tune the News

I guess I’m out of it if I have to read about viral video in the Times—even Glenn Beck is ahead of me here.  But if I missed The Gregory Brothers “Auto-Tune the News” on You Tube, maybe you did too. When I was awake last night, unable to sleep at 3:00 a.m., this had me laughing out loud.

The Wilderness Downtown

 THE WILDERNESS DOWNTOWN

An interactive film by Chris Milk

Featuring "We Used To Wait" by Arcade Fire

A merging of art and technology that doesn’t require any kind of “statement.” Click on The Wilderness Downtown and follow the instruction. You may need the Google Chrome browser for this, but it’s worth it—actually I like Google Chrome, and find its single address/search box very handy.

Prepare to be blown away.

The world of me

JohnWilliams Waterhouse (1849-1917) Echo and Narcissus (detail). Copyright may apply.

It’s the eve of another art season and here I go again with my annual (semi-annual? daily?) rant about artist’s statements. As I’ve said numerous times before, when I am king, I will abolish them. It’s just not happening fast enough.

Every day or so I get a newsletter from NY Arts which, along with a lot of helpful, newsy articles, includes their seasonal “Editorial Preview” of an artist’s work, based on the artist’s statement. What it demonstrates is that a certain solipsistic way of writing and thinking about art has become an international epidemic.

Chinese artist:  “My work mainly comes from my own personal experience.”

Romanian artist:  “I see my work as a process of a constant production of the self.”

Another Romanian artist: “The essential relation is with myself.”

Italian artist: “I developed this concept from a personal perspective; in fact, most of my artworks are autobiographical and describe a familiar conflict.”

American artist: “I was always defined (and profoundly accepted) by the identity markers that were given to me, Chicana, female, lesbian, working-class, etc. But, now I am expanding those ideas to include a larger worldview that positions me as a central part in the landscape of nature.”

Romanian artist: “I feel that my art is an uninhibited territory for me….All around, my works are thoughts and emotions turned from the inside out, like you would a stuffed teddy bear.”  

(Note: The preponderance of Romanian artists doesn’t necessarily reflect a particular cultural self-absorption, there were just more of them represented on the site.)

I mean, really, who gives a flying fuck where the work comes from or what the artist is “trying” to do? We don’t care! We don’t care about what you “want” to do, are “trying” to do, how miserable or fabulous your childhood was, or what you’ve always been interested/fascinated/obsessed with. We don’t care about your relationship with your culture, and we certainly don’t want to know about your relationship with your body.

Show me the money!

And I don’t even know what to do with this: “The entire series took over half a year to complete.”

In praise of free time

Every year at this time, the media rolls out the case for year-round school. This summer it was TIME, and just seeing the subject on the cover made me so angry I immediately tossed the magazine (which these days more resembles a pamphlet) into the trash. Trying to link to it now while attempting to avoid actually reading the article, I did notice that President Obama is said to support the concept. Well, bully for him. He was no doubt the model student, one of those goody-goody kids who actually liked school. For me, summer school would have just meant extending the agony.

It all started with pre-school, where I hated the stupid songs they made us sing. Later, school interfered with my reading in a big way, and my attempts to snitch glances at my books were met with frustration, even rage, on the part of my teachers—once, when I was so immersed I didn’t realize that reading period had turned into math period, my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Hampton, grabbed my book and threw it against the wall.

Reading “Deb’s” comment in the post below, about convincing students that success in art has to do with work rather than coming up with a gimmick, I’m again thinking about Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, in which he discusses the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master—of anything. Even if you’re a kid, as Tiger Woods and many others have proved. Yet school doesn’t allow for that kind of concentration. Playing the piano for one hour, seven days a week, will get you mastery in 27 years; at five days a week, it’ll take 38 years (I’m almost there). But by that time you’d be as old as, well, me.

My brother spent every free moment in our basement with his ham radio equipment. By the time he was twelve, he was one of only a few kids his age in the country to earn a First Class Commercial Radio Operator’s License, and his first job was at a local FM radio station, which couldn’t legally function unless his thirteen-year-old self, or the adult equivalent, was on the premises. He didn’t study engineering in college—he saw no point in repeating what he already knew—but, regardless, was hired at graduation by IBM.

I can’t say I learned anything that specific in my copious free time—my interests changed frequently—but I did learn the value of sustained concentration and how to be my own best companion, qualities that come in handy as an artist.

Often the payoffs aren’t immediately obvious. Son Matt spent his high school summers (as I did, actually) working in a record shop in suburban Chicago. Like his father, Matt was an enthusiastic scholar, but it was the Record Exchange that provided the background for his professions as musician and music writer. Once, harking back to those days, I said to Matt something about his friend, D.V., also working there. “Mom,” Matt said, “D.V. didn’t work in the record shop; he just hung out there six hours a day.” Today, that seemingly slacker behavior and associated punk garb—especially in the fairly affluent city of Evanston—would no doubt terrify parents and teachers. However it turned out that D.V. among other things, ended up co-writing and co-producing (with John Cusack, who also spent quality time at the Record Exchange), and being music supervisor (one of the best soundtrack compilations ever) for "High Fidelity," (2000) the classic record shop film.

Parents often complain that their kids don’t know how to fill time on their own. My contention is that training for this begins in infancy. One of my rules as a young mother was to never unnecessarily interrupt my baby (or toddler, or child) if he was entertaining himself—any more than I’d disturb an adult who was “working.” My original motivation was completely selfish, because I thought by drawing out the time my sons were self-absorbed I’d have more to myself, but now I see its benefits for self-sufficiency and creativity.

I’m not against school—it has it’s place I suppose—and I’m all for summer programs for kids who need them.  I’m just saying that there are other ways to learn, and not always directed by adults, who often have an annoying way of asking, “What are you doing?” or worse, “What are you drawing?”  While my father, an engineer, did contribute to my brother’s development, the best thing our parents did for me was leave me alone.

Son Matt, back in the day, at the Record Exchange

Arcade Fire, even more

In the Times today, an article by Ben Sisario, “Amazon Digital Discount Helps Arcade Fire Hit No. 1,” discusses the marketing techniques that (he says) helped Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs” edge Eminem off the top slot this week. Sisario cites rave reviews, sold-out shows, and their YouTube concert live-feed as well, but nowhere does he suggest that Arcade Fire might just be good at what they do.

After all, nobody twisted my arm to get me to sit and watch them in front of my computer last Thursday night.

As soon as something (or someone) becomes popular, there’s this assumption that it’s all about marketing. This is what has MFA students looking for gimmicks, the hooks that will insure instant attention, rather than developing intuitive resources that could sustain them through a lifetime in art. 

Not that music popularity isn’t vulnerable to hype, but at least (since SoundScan began tracking actual sales data in 1991) it's measurable—we vote with our dollars when we download songs or buy concert tickets.  In the art world, however, we’re still at the mercy of the gatekeepers (curators, gallery directors, editors and writers) who insist that Richard Prince is the bee’s knees, while most artists I know couldn’t care less. 

Of course everyone knows Eminem is a marketing phenom—and it’s just a coincidence that his bestselling album, Recovery, is really good too.  

Arcade Fire, more

While everyone seems to be complaining that contemporary art lacks heart, the same isn’t true in music. Maybe it’s because you don’t need an MFA to start a rock band, and you don’t need an agent anymore to promote it. Certainly your typical A & R person wouldn’t have found The Arcade Fire an ideal prospect—the Montreal-based band is just too big (eight core members, more on tour), and their first album (2004), written during a year in which several of the band’s family members passed away, was named Funeral. Yet it was such a success that they were instantly welcomed into the world of super-stardom by the likes of Bowie, Springsteen, Bono and David Byrne and played two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden last week, one of which was broadcast live on YouTube. Even on the itty-bitty screen of my PC (see my Mac debacle in the comments of the post below), it was thrilling, and beyond heartfelt—but with just the right touch; somehow they manage to maintain their indie edge and art-band cool while performing with religious fervor.

Their newest album, The Suburbs is, in son Matt’s words, “a masterpiece.

In an Outliers kind of way, it’s fascinating to trace the sources of this idiosyncratic sound to the distinctive backgrounds of the married songwriting duo, Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, which includes, in Butler’s case (be sure to read Butler’s Wiki bio), descending from a lineage of professional musicians. In an interview I can no longer locate, Butler talks about how he never questioned the likelihood of making a life in music.

Chassange’s family emigrated to Canada from Haiti to escape the Duvalier regime, and she has written poetically about her closeness with that country’s struggles in this moving Guardian/Observer editorial, as well as in the song “Haiti,” from Funeral:

Haïti, mon pays,
wounded mother I'll never see.
Ma famille set me free.
Throw my ashes into the sea.

Mes cousins jamais nés
hantent les nuits de Duvalier.
Rien n'arrete nos esprits.
Guns can't kill what soldiers can't see.

In the forest we lie hiding,
unmarked graves where flowers grow.
Hear the soldiers angry yelling,
in the river we will go.

Tous les morts-nés forment une armée,
soon we will reclaim the earth.
All the tears and all the bodies
bring about our second birth.

Haïti, never free,
n'aie pas peur de sonner l'alarme.
Tes enfants sont partis,
In those days their blood was still warm

Chassange did, finally, visit Haiti after the earthquake.

"Wake Up," from Funeral

Tech update

Thanks for the comments!

My big news is that I’m making the switch to Mac. I know, I know….

Reactions from friends and family have been ecstatic:

“OMG!”

“Finally!”

“It’s about time!”

“Praise the Lord!” (son Matt)

Everyone describes me as the quintessential Mac person, whatever that looks like. Is it my haircut? I said to friend Scott that it’s as if I just came out of the closet and everyone’s acting as if I was the last to know.

“Yes,” he said, “except now we’re all going back to PCs.” Scott’s allergies are making him (even) more perverse than usual.

PS: For those of you who care as much about Arcade Fire as I do, they’re streaming their Madison Square Garden concert tonight on YouTube at 10:00 EST. The urge to rush to the steaming city and try to buy a scalped ticket on the street is almost unsquelchable. 

Summer reflections on Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp, Rotoreliefs (1935), Alan Koppol Gallery, Chicago.

Do leave comments, even if it’s just to say hi, because even though I can see the stats, I often forget that there are real people out there. I’ve been in that state of forgetfulness since coming back from Europe, and then last night went to Brenda Goodman’s opening at the John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY, where I ran into a bunch of people I hadn’t met before who were totally up-to-date on my peregrinations. It’s a funny feeling, but nice.

Also the heat has taken me over, my big obsession being whether or not I should get air conditioning (which I haven’t needed before) for the studio—a major expense. By the time I make up my mind, we’ll be into another Ice Age.

So since I’m not generating original ideas, I’ll put forth those of another—Marcel Duchamp, with whom I seem to agree about everything. Calvin Tomkins’s biography titled, not surprisingly, Duchamp: A Biography, is without a doubt the best biography of an artist I’ve read (don’t get slowed down by the first chapter but save it for the end, when it’s more meaningful). I got the book out to lend to a friend—perfect summer reading—and then kept it to peruse the phrases I highlighted back in 1996.

Duchamp, who used to say that the artist never really knew what he was doing or why, declined to offer any such explanations for The Large Glass. One of his pet theories was that the artist performed only one part of the creative process and it was up to the viewer to complete that process by interpreting the work and assessing its permanent value. (p.11)

“I do not believe that art should have anything in common with definitive theories that are apart from it. That is too much like propaganda.” (p. 152)

Works of art could not be understood by the intellect, [Duchamp] maintained, nor could their effect be conveyed in words. The only valid approach to them was through an emotion that had “some analogy with religious faith or sexual attraction—an esthetic echo. This echo, however, was heard and appreciated by very few people. It could not be learned—either you had it or you did not—and it had nothing whatsoever to do with taste, which was merely a parroting of established opinion. “Taste gives a sensuous feeling, not an esthetic emotion,” Duchamp said, “Taste presupposed a domineering onlooker who dictates what he likes and dislikes, and translates it into beautiful and ugly, whereas “the ‘victim’ of an esthetic echo is comparable to that of a man in love or a believer…when touched by esthetic revelation, the same man in an almost ecstatic mood, becomes receptive and humble.”

I don’t think you would've caught Marcel writing an artist’s statement.

I Am Love

Tilda Swinton in "I Am Love"

I’m still in the afterglow of Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love,” which I saw the other night. Even though I linked to it, don’t watch the trailer, which is not only a spoiler, but offers a series of staccato bytes from a piece that unfolds its subtle surprises with a tempo of its own. Just be sure see it while it’s still on the big screen, because it’s a film to sink into, be totally immersed, all senses stimulated. Especially in these bombastic times, the level of subtlety and restraint is extraordinary. Enhanced by oblique cinematography and editing, the narrative-free story is told with the slightest of clues, its intensity sustained because we’re shown only the events that directly contribute—such as the engagement party but not the wedding, nor the patriarch’s funeral—after handing over his assets, we know he must surely have died because he’s not in the final scenes. My friend, Petria, who I saw it with, said, “He (Guadagnino) trusts us to fill in the blanks” and later I found an interview with Tilda Swinton who talked about “giving the viewer ownership.”

While critical opinion ranged from “artistic triumph” to “artsy mishmosh”, it’s surprising that many critics would choose to call this “melodrama,” which is characterized by “exaggerated emotions, stereotypical characters, and interpersonal conflicts.” Here the characters are under, rather than over-acted, and hardly stereotypical—the cuckolded husband isn’t even a meanie--and the much of the drama occurs around a serving of soup.

‘I Am Love” was developed by Guadagnino and Swinton over a period of nearly a decade (Swinton interview), and which resulted in an attention to detail that could not have been hurried. The aggressively modern, symmetrically rhythmic score, a composite of existing pieces by contemporary composer John Adams, is nearly another character in the film (I wrote this before finding a video interview with Guadagnino about his process where he says that very thing), and played almost perversely against mood—urgent and insistent during languid scenes, tantalizing lighter during those more emotionally charged. (Guadagnino has said that he doesn’t like being “told by the music what to feel.”)  And the subtle inclusion of Elliot Smith’s “Pretty (Ugly Before),” by an artist who, before his tragic death, never found his place in this world, is more than indie music dropped in for its cool factor, but the perfect allusion to the daughter’s inner turmoil over her secret life, still playing on her iPod (i.e. in her head) as she greets her family.

My only complaint is that the ending is a little too abrupt and inconclusive, reminding me of Fassbinder’s “The Marriage of Maria Braun,” where it seemed the director didn’t know what to do with his protagonist, so he just blew her up.

Two other characters in the film: the house and the food. The house is Villa Necchi Campiglio, and can be found on casemuseo.it, a website of historic house museums. The food in the film was real so that the reactions to it would be real, and prepared by Milan chef Carlo Cracco, who runs the Michelin two-star restaurant Cracco.  Both might justify a trip to Milan.

Cracco's soup in "I Am Love"

 

Interim

I’m back. Sort of. Some moving parts may still be hovering over the Atlantic. Usually blog posts just come bubbling out of me, but in this heat nothing is bubbling; the brain cells are stuck. Every day the forecast calls for precipitation, but does it ever happen? My own forms of the rain dance, so efficacious in the past—refusing to carry an umbrella, going out with all the windows and skylights open, leaving garden tools out overnight—have not yet gotten the attention of the Gods, who are clearly Spanish and still off celebrating the World Cup. My resolution for today is to find the connector cable for my camera and download my photos…but in the meantime I’ll leave you with this exquisite piece of music by the 23-year-old Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds (yes, one third of all male Icelanders are named Olafur, including their President), whose new album ...and they have escaped the weight of darkness got me through yesterday.

Summer hiatus

The Housatonic River from my bike ride this morning.

What a day to be leaving! Tonight I'm off to England and Berlin, which promise to be unseasonably chilly--but bright. Everyone talks about how dark England is, but that's in the winter. Right now, nearing the solstice, the sun in England rises at 3:40 a.m. and goes down after 10:00 p.m. As usual, I may or may not post. Back after the 4th.

Louise Bourgeois

Photo: Christian Coigny for Vitra, circa 1995

Today the New York Times published an article claiming that happiness comes with age. Researchers, apparently, are confounded as to why this might be, but anyone who is older than they were yesterday knows that it’s because with experience we learn to appreciate the present, and that nursing old wounds—or new ones—doesn’t serve us. (What they failed to consider, however, is that those who are content may live longer.)

Interesting that this article should be published on the same day as the obituary of someone for whom this was famously not true: Louise Bourgeois who, in her long lifetime, came to her art through replaying the traumas of her early life, and for whom feelings of helplessness and abandonment were just as vivid in her 80s as in childhood. Maybe more so, for all we know.

I first met Bourgeois in the mid-1990s, when I was producing celebrity ads (some of the first ever), a print campaign that ran only in Europe, for the high-end furniture company, Vitra. The celebs ran to the intellectual, and part of my job was to get the famous people to sit in the famous chairs—Martin Scorsese in an Eames chair, Jean Baudrillard (my biggest coup—Baudrillard in an ad!) in a Citterio chair. When we came to her home to photograph Bourgeois in a chair designed by Philippe Starck, she could not have been more gracious, and while the photographer, Christian Coigny, was setting up, she inquired about my painting and introduced me to the writing of Edward T. Hall, whose books came to have an enormous influence on my thinking.

Emboldened by this warm visit, I called to ask if I could interview her for a story in Art & Antiques, and Bourgeois agreed. However this time, she was totally prickly—trying, while I sat with my tape recorder running, every possible gambit to get rid of me (I was later to learn just how much she hated interviews). Finally she said, “I know how we should do this. There’s a book about me that’s all quotes. Go get that book, make a list of the quotes that interest you, come back and we’ll work from there.”

“Great,” I said, pulling the list from my backpack, because that was precisely how I’d prepared, “Shall we begin?”

I never saw Bourgeois nonplussed again, but from that moment we were friends and she was completely cooperative—in fact I could say we co-wrote the article, one of my favorites ever. She gave me complete freedom to shape it, but made many suggestions, all of which were on target, and enthusiastically participated in honing the smallest details.

After that we spent time together and I helped her with a couple of projects, but had to pull away when my time began to look like more hers than mine. She taught me a lot, however, much of it about how to stand up for myself as a female artist. Around that time I also wrote an article for Art & Antiques about my artist great-grandmother, and when I called to check what they’d written in the blurb about me for the contributor’s page, was horrified to find that it read, “Diehl has recently received a grant to do some painting of her own. Will it be in the style of her great-grandmother?” The twenty-something assistant who’d written it didn’t grasp the problem, but pulled it when I told her they couldn’t run the article if it stood (there was no blurb for me in that issue).

That evening I attended the premiere of a film about Bourgeois (which began with her running away from the filmmaker and hiding) and at dinner told her my story. When I said that she’d taught me to have that kind of courage, Bourgeois started pounding the table with her fist saying, “It’s not about promotion—it’s about defending our art! We must defend our art!”

Thank you, Louise.

I remember George Segal chuckling at his well-meaning relatives' inquiries about when he was going to stop making sculpture and retire. As my son Adam, who was about 10 at the time, noted, "Many people retire so they can make art." Here’s Steve Jobs, when asked if the introduction of the iPad might be a “high, fitting end” to his career:

“I don’t think of my life as a career. I do stuff, I respond to stuff. That’s not a career—it’s a life.”

Complete interview, Time Magazine, April 12, 2010.

Your Little Room

well you’re in your little room
and you’re working on something good
but if it’s really good
you’re gonna need a bigger room
and when you’re in your bigger room
you might not know what to do
you might have to think about how you got started
sitting in your little room

--The White Stripes

Last night I watched “The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights  (2009), a video of The White Stripes’s tour of Canada in 2007, where this two-person band that can easily fill stadiums, travelled to far-flung towns and villages, playing their punky bluesy, countrified rock in free daytime shows at each location with as short notice as possible. Similar to Sigur Ros’s tour of Iceland, which can be seen in their gorgeous video “Heima,” Jack and Meg White played venues as diverse as a rec center, a pool hall, a small boat, and a flour mill, culminating their tour with their 10th anniversary show in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia—where they interfaced with local musicians, said to be distant relatives, playing regional music. The effect is surprisingly heart-warming, with attitude-free Jack White coming off as a total sweetie-pie.

White is also someone who’s thought a lot about the nature of creativity. His favorite quote about the band describes them as “simultaneously the most fake band in the world and the most real band in the world,” which made me think about how it’s the deft mixture of artifice and reality that makes for great art. Err too much on one side or the other and the magic is lost.

And White’s soliloquy on creativity was just the pep talk I needed before going into the studio:

It used to be, before I ever was on stage, there was the excitement of what it would be like to play onstage, or if I could just record… what would that be like? I don’t have inspirations like that anymore. Ten years later we’re just working in the same box….one part of my brain says I’m tired of trying to come up with things in this box, but I force myself because I know something good can come out of it if I really work inside of it

Inspiration and work ethic, they ride right next to each other. When I was an upholsterer… sometimes you’re not inspired to reupholster an old chair, sometimes its just work, but you do it because you’re supposed to and in the end you look at it and think “it’s pretty good” and you move on. That’s it. Not every day of your life are you going to wake up, the clouds are going to part, the rays from heaven are going come down and you’re going to write a song…sometimes you just have to force yourself to work, and maybe something good will come out of it. Whether we like it or not we write some songs and record them….book only 4 or 5 days in a studio and force yourself to record an album in that time…deadlines and things make you creative. But opportunity and telling yourself, oh, you’ve got all the time in the world, all the money in the world, you’ve got all the colors in the palette you want, anything you want— that just kills creativity. I’m using the same guitars onstage I used 10 years ago, and I like to do things to make it really hard for myself. For example, I don’t have picks all taped to my microphone stand. If I drop a pick, to get another I have to go all the way to the back of the stage. I place the organ just far enough away that I have to leap to get to it to play different parts of the song…. so I have to work harder to get somewhere. And there are hundreds of things like that…like those guitars I use that don’t stay in tune very well; they’re not conducive, not what regular bands go out and play. So I’m constantly fighting all these tiny little things because they build tension. There’s no set list when we play—that’s the biggest one—each show has its own life....when you go out and everything’s pre-planned and the table’s all set, nice and perfect, nothing’s going to happen; you’re going to go out and do this boring arena set….
All those things have always been a big component of The White Stripes: the constrictions…only having red, white and black colors on the art work and presentations, [sticking to] just guitar, drums and vocals, storytelling, melody and rhythm—these force us to create.

Random notes & images

I’m back. Part of the delay was a computer virus that mimicked my security program, even put an icon on my toolbar, and when I didn’t fall for their bogus upgrade, started offering me porn. Other than that I’ve been travelling for the last two months to the point that a week or so ago my friend, Scott, left a message on my voice mail saying he didn’t know where I was anymore. That made two of us. And since I seem to have no thoughts or opinions at the moment (other than about my ex-handyman’s insane bill for priming the back porch) I’ll post some images from my peregrinations and hope my brain returns to normal soon.

This isn’t De Chirico, but Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, another culture where art isn’t a separate intellectual activity for the privileged, but is as pervasive and natural as the sun.


Then revisiting one of my favorite places, the old synagogue that Camille Pissarro’s family belonged to, off the beaten tourist track in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, V.I. Who knew that this famous French Impressionist was Jewish and from the Virgin Islands? I found out when I saw an exhibition of his work in St. Thomas some years ago, and reviewed it when it went to the Jewish Museum in New York. The synagogue is tiny and opulent, a rich interplay of colors and textures—mahogany, brass, blue velvet cushions—and a white sand floor, in memory, I was told, of illicit congregations in medieval Europe who put sand down to muffle the sound of their prayers.

In contrast, the geometry of Philadelphia’s new civic center in construction, across from the ornate Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, which my great-grandmother attended, and no doubt looks exactly as it did when she was there.

Then Stanford, which has to be the most beautiful university campus in the world. Yale and Harvard should weep. This is Palm Drive, three blocks of majestic trees leading up to the campus. One of the students told me that a replacement tree arrived like an enormous rocket on a flatbed truck and sat for awhile on its side near the studios. Cost (I was told): $80,000.

The Stanford graduate fine art program has only nine students, who are fully funded, and working in the most well-appointed and vast studios I’ve ever seen. For one brief moment, degree-less as I am, I was tempted to apply. This was lunch:

And palm fronds on the ground around the studios:

Finally, the weekend before last I flew back to JFK late Friday night and early Saturday made it up to Central Park West for an all-day White Tantric Yoga workshop, held once a year in New York, which is not the sort of thing I usually share, but the photo was too beautiful to resist:

This last weekend was the Anne Truitt opening at Matthew Marks, the guests intermingling with the sculptures:

For the next few weeks I intend to hole up in the Berkshires, finish off one essay, write another, and get up to speed in the studio. Oh, and work in the garden and finish the taxes I got an extension for. It never ends.

Eruption

All images: Guðmundur Oddur Magnússon, 2010.

Thanks to reader, Sid Garrison, for linking me with Guðmundur Oddur Magnússon and these incredible photos. Goddur, as he is called, is a professor at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, as is my former SVA grad student, Hulda Stefánsdóttir. Hulda and Sigur Ros were responsible for my original interest in Iceland, and I’m grateful to Olafur Eliasson and Art in America for getting me there for my first visit in 2004.


Also Hulda sent me this link to a live feed from the volcano.