Bibliography and Hypocrisy

Birth Defect

2008-05-18T12:58:01Z

I started this drawing yesterday and I finished it this morning.

New New

2008-05-14T13:36:45Z

I have done two drawings in the past two days. I used my new Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. It is awesome. They are abstract drawings or linear networks; crystal balloons, decorative barbed wire, Nevelson like compartments filled with symbolic bric-a-brac. I am going to post a new comic today or tomorrow. The comic is based on an idea I had for a nutty television sitcom starring Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz. Hopefully I will make regular installments based on this idea.

By the way, if you have an artist friend and they expect you to provide an in-depth critique of their work EVERY SINGLE TIME you visit them in their dingy loft, you should break off the friendship immediately. These types of artists are using you. You are propping up their egos and if it wasn't for the in-depth feedback you provided them, they would have no use for you.

The Goat Man has left the building.

Joshua Mehigan

2008-05-07T15:13:51Z

A poem written by my old friend Joshua Mehigan appears in today's New York Sun. Congratulations Josh!

"Sad Stories"

Paradigm Shift

2008-05-05T01:45:50Z

Miracle?

2008-05-03T04:41:58Z

Okay so am I missing the part of this story that contains the miracle?

Steal anything in sight

2008-05-01T02:26:44Z

"Reification (thingification) moves sculpture from its passive state as contemplative art toward more precise approximations of the systems which underlie operational reality."

"Driven on by the dynamic influences of science and technology, sculpture has ceased to be an art with a sense of traditional continuity, surviving only through constant threats to its own origins."

"The object denotes sculpture in its traditional physical form, whereas the system (an interacting assembly of varying complexity) is the means by which sculpture gradually departs from its object state and assumes some measure of lifelike activity."

"Sculpture seeks its own obliteration by moving toward integration with the intelligent life forms it has always imitated."

(quotes from Beyond Modern sculpture: The Effects of Science and Technology on the Sculpture of This Century by Jack Burnham)

Balloon Dog Massacre

2008-04-27T16:55:07Z

Goodbye MET. I will miss you.

Julian Schnabel Shills for MasterCard

2008-04-17T02:21:03Z

When I opened up the latest issue of the New Yorker in the john earlier tonight I came upon the above advertisement. It was a fancily designed two page advertisement. Who knows how many millions of dollars Schnabel got for his efforts; allowing MasterCard to use one of his self portraits and apparently giving a painting to the winner of a contest. The full advertisement consists of the reproduction of the self portrait on the right side (see above) and a blank page on the left of it with a white invitation envelope stuck in the middle of it. Notice the MasterCard seal on the bottom left of the picture above (this faux wax seal is a classy touch no?). On the outside of the envelope it says "One-of-a-kind, commsioned portrait of you, painted by Julian Schnabel priceless? Give or take a few cents." This made me think that the winner of the contest would have the opportunity to pose for a self portrait, to sit right in front of the pajama clad master and have his/her portrait painted, and get to keep it.

When I opened the envleope there was a card inside of it (see the right side of the bottom of the image above). It said, "KEEP SEARCHING: Sorry, unfortunately you have not found the card entitling you to commission a unique Julian Schnabel portrait." I left some text out. This is bizarre. I had flashbacks of the movie "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." I imagined desperate New Yorker readers running off to newstands to purchase handfuls of New Yorkers and frantically searching for the golden ticket.

The wording of the outside of the invitation and the card inside is unusual. Do they mean that Schnabel will paint a self portrait of the winner or that the winner will receive a portrait painted by Schnabel of himself or someone else? Bizarre.

Also, why did Schnabel do this? According to a recent puff piece written about the artist in the NYRB, one of his servants lights his cigarettes for him. Why the fuck does he need more money?

My In-Depth Coverage of the Art Fairs

2008-04-03T15:39:34Z

"Caca Cacophony" (2008) by the art collective Universal-Washer/Dryer-Upheaval-Noogie

The above image of "Caca Cacophony", an appropriated rubber caca made in 2008 by the art collective Universal-Washer/Dryer-Upheaval-Noogie, was the best work of art to appear in any of the major art fairs. It was a brilliant deconstruction (literal) and subversion of the current political matrix in the United States. An ironic recontextualizing of the body's physiology,"Caca Cacophony" inverted value systems and problematized the act of excreting. This simulacrum of a pile of rubber caca references a variety of transgressive processes.

(I didn't go to a single art fair. No one wanted to pay me to write about them.)

Reading Stanislaw Lem

2008-03-31T14:03:16Z

I love "Fiasco" so far. Parvis, a pilot in search of lost comrades, is trawling across the unblemished surface of Saturn's moon Titan in an iron strider (known as a Digla), a vehicle that replicates the pilot's body movements. The pilots entire naked body is wired and floats in the cockpit. The tall legs of the vehicle replicate the movements of the pilot’s legs. He marvels at the living terrain at first. He thinks he sees familiar organic forms, bones especially, in the rocks and mineral deposits he crushes beneath the tall and steely feet of his vehicle, but that is only because life forms have certain universal characteristics and share structural qualities even though they exist in completely different contexts.

"[H]e laughed at the mighty efforts made by the artists of Earth to reach beyond the boundary of human imagination (which must visualize everything); at how the poor devils beat against the walls in their minds; and at how little, really, they departed from platitude, though straining to the utmost to depart -- while here, in a single acre, there was more proud originality than in a hundred of their anxious, anguished art shows."

This is exactly how I feel when I look at the natural terrain in Adirondack State Park.

The Gamesters of Triskelion

2008-03-28T14:01:29Z

image courtesy artnet.com

Sean McCarthy

2008-03-20T23:08:28Z

My Sean McCarthy review has been posted over at artcritical.com.

Sean McCarthy Astaroth 2007, ink and graphite on paper, 8-½ x 7 inches
Courtesy Frederikcs & Freiser

Walk-Through Phenomenon

2008-03-06T22:02:26Z

Image courtesy of nytimes.com

Has anyone written about the 'Walk-Through Phenomenon'? I like the picture above because it illustrates it perfectly. Person sees something in a gallery or museum space and walks past it really quickly. Some creative person in the NYT photo department should have used Photoshop and added little cartoon speed lines trailing behind this shadowy, hapless, and bedraggled soul. "Get me the hell out of here!" their body language seems to say.

Sand Dunes Thawing on Mars

2008-03-04T03:24:10Z

Diana Puntar Review

2008-03-02T16:02:36Z

My review of the Diana Puntar exhibition has been posted over at artcritical. I think this is the first essay length review that has been written about her work. As an art critic, I plan on continuing to seek out work that has not received critical attention before. I don't count blurb reviews or brief mentions as meaningful critical attention.

installation shot, courtesy Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery

The next artist I am going to write about is Sean McCarthy. I am writing about his first solo exhibition. Writing about his work does require a bit of background research. It is kind of scary, from the standpoint of a librarian, that the first thing that comes up in almost every search one does for a proper name, is wikipedia. I want my reference resources, whether in print or online, to be more stable and trustworthy.

Subtleties of Head Cheese

2008-03-01T12:31:39Z

I got sucked into a penetrating discussion about the subtleties of head cheese over at artblog.net.

This article counters the belief that it is good to keep all of your options open.

I love the Crab Nebula.

I would vote for Obama over McCain in a heartbeat, but for those of us who are getting a bit drunk on the lofty concept of change, this article should be sobering.

Let us hope that What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.

Update

2008-02-24T21:31:14Z

No I didn't hang myself. I am trying to write two new reviews for artcritical.com. These will be the first reviews I have written for artcritical in quite a while. I did some editing for David Cohen during the dry spell. Do other parents who write and have young children find it difficult to find the time to write stuff? I definitely do, but I plan on focusing more on my writing and going to NYC to visit exhibitions at least once a month. I will post the links to the reviews once they are up. Currently I am reading Robert Graves' "I, Claudius". Boy, those Roman wives were good at poisoning people. I also recently finished reading Stephen King's book "Cell", which is the very first book I have read by the author. I really enjoyed it. He is no hack. In terms of periodicals that I have been reading, I have been keeping up with all of the new issues of The Nation, The New York Review of Books, the Skeptical Inquirer, Book Forum, and the New Yorker, besides reading a ton of stuff online. I guess it should be easy to figure out what my political stance is, based on this list.

“Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?”

2008-02-16T03:22:56Z

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors

2008-02-13T04:03:45Z

Lucian Freud Review

2008-02-11T18:48:47Z

They posted my review of the Lucian Freud etching exhibition at the MoMA over at artinfluence.com. They haven't posted any images or my author I.D. yet. So if you want to refer to images, before, during, or after reading the review go here. The exhibition inspired me to think about the process of drawing from the model. My interpretations of the work ended up running counter to the most common views held about Freud's use of the human figure.

Careful With That Axe Eugene

2008-02-11T05:18:11Z

Drawings Inspired By Inland Empire

2008-02-10T04:59:59Z

Art World Ethics Pt. 2

2008-02-07T03:09:16Z

High Stakes

2008-02-05T16:19:43Z

The Art World Follies

2008-02-02T03:35:15Z