should an artist have a website or a facebook profile?

or "You guys are locked in here with ME."

the age old question. It still seems to me that new york artists are the most power worshipping, ass-sucking losers. Continually they've got to worship the networks, NBC, CBS, ABC... "please please please let the rich people show up so i can be legitimate."

But, like Republicans, they only become less legitimate. There aren't even stars anymore. It's like watching the Warhol guy in Watchmen, he's sort of Warhol. Then again, Warhol himself was probably only sort of Warhol. I suppose that's another story.
(Read the House Next Door's series of reviews if you are still thinking about Watchmen, i am.)

Eventually one ages and realizes that the only people who actually made it in New York were like some sort of permanently self-marketing marketing people. Sort of the marketing-variant of the angry realist painters who are certain that the world is going to wake up and forget all that other stuff happened.

So - what do you want to happen when people visit your website? Is there a call to action? Will you expect a traffic boost after or around the time of a gallery exhibition? Will you expect that people will visit your site repeatedly for news of you or to see if it has been updated?

Is it simply some sort of marketing identity toy that proves artistic legitimacy and aloofness in spite of the fact that you have nothing to say?

Look at it this way, the real artists that you want to be like don't have websites, and some of them do have fan pages. Set up a fan-page for yourself, or better, have some friends or family do it.

suing our parents for giving us this life

I remember once when I was a lowly altar boy, in some sort of educational setting, a visiting priest was rambling on about good and evil.

The poor old guy had heard some story about a retarded kid who was suing his parents for allowing his birth, for having brought him into the world, albeit retarded.

This apparently didn't go over too well with the catholic.

"I'd like to hold that boy down, and VOMIT," he spat, "I'd VOMIT - in his FACE. They gave him LIFE! AND THIS is how he is going to repay them !?!"

I seem to recall that the headline of that story, like a newspaper clipping, was part of the original poster insert in the Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, way back when it was released. That thing doesn't seem to be anywhere online, but the concept is still good; vulgar horrible stories from the 70s and 80s when the Reagan years were still at their ignoble height.

When I think about that stupid priest, not understanding in the slightest, the despair and frustration of a 12 year old who is facing problems and challenges greater than most of us can even imagine - well I just like to remind myself that I was 12 too. Stupid parents never get it.

Photo is borrowed with thanks from red betty black's flickr photostream.

Poor Generation Y

I have always had a soft spot for these sort of "voice of a generation" pieces. For decades Republican rule insisted that rather than try to have some control, citizens should give up control, and put control into the hands of people who know better. The professional class of Neil Bushes and Jack Abramoffs and Kenneth Lay's were not only supposed to be good at what they do. They were supposed to be professionals at undermining and gaming the system. You can't tax them cause they are just too smart. All in the name of glorious Ronald Reagan, the loving grandfather of their movement.

Now living in Mexico City - everyday confronting the city - the question to me is - what is it we have built? Mexico City has far more public infrastructure investment than cities in the US, but it is always too little. Always playing catch up with a city growing out of control. And far more than Generation Y, there is a vast segment of society here that won't recover from the beating it's received. It's not identical to the beating that Blickstein describes. But it is illustrative.

The heirs of the Reagan Movement live in a world that is devastated by ideological over-run. A world that turned its back on the Western legacy of smart government support of free markets and that opted instead for non-smart government propping up of corrupt government dependent mega-corporations. I have to laugh when I hear how Generation Y is losing it's faith. Afterall, a sullen lack of faith and even a violent renunciation of anything that smacked of faith was what marked the generation before. At least - I've always believed. Generation Y inherited a shitty world - and an Ipod. They'd do well to take a look beyond the shores of their sealed up hermetic American universe to what is actually the state of the Americas.

It's not a place where government can afford to ignore the people piled up on the sidewalks and it's not a place where a generation that had it good can afford to think that government is always best left untended, running on auto-pilot.

Brain sculpting

I'm not sure I even include Singapore in Asia, but here is another one of those studies...

Importantly, they found no significant difference in the response of this particular visual processing region among young people in the US and Singapore. This, the team says, supports the idea that, over the course of decades, culture shapes how the brain perceives images.

The researchers note that previous studies tracking eye movement have found that East Asians are more likely than Westerners to pay attention to the background of a picture.

Park says her new findings, along with her earlier brain scan work that focused only on elderly volunteers, are "the first studies to show that culture is sculpting the brain".

Oh god. Thank god for scientists. WHA HA HA HA

Racism and the Republican Party

Let me make one thing clear up front. I have never met a single Republican party member or sympathizer who was not in some way or in some form what I would call a racist. I don't believe Anne Coulter, George Shitforbrains, or the majority of the Republican leadership are racists. That's right... I really don't think Coulter or ShitforBrains hate black people or gays. I might even concede that I think Shitforbrains has a soft spot for Mexicans.

The GOP and their Corporate Media partners use racism to unite their base. If we've learned nothing else in the past 6 years, the darkest years in the history of the country that couldn't think up a name for itself, certainly we should see now that 30 some odd percent of the population is always going to be united in their hatred for pretty much anyone else. That is the secret - the only secret - to Karl Rove's success. It has been the key trademark-lynchpin-rosetta stone of his entire ouevre.

The corporate media know very well that if democracy were to take root in the United States we would legislate Time-Warner Communications into a heap of rubble. A real Democratic congress would legislate Fox/Newscorp until it's panty waist commentators were paying taxes on their grandchildren's taxes. Not because we need to discourage free-speech, but because powerful people, people with access to power need to pay more taxes as a counterweight to the influence they so richly don't deserve.

Today's TPMMuckRaker piece on the justice department race war reads like something in Palestine.

So, I think one can argue that Imus is not a racist and maybe it will bear some thought. Everyone who listens to Imus is a racist though. Everyone who buys an Anne Coulter book and reads it, is a racist. They are right. We have been very successful at branding them and their hategoup, the GOP as a racist, criminal enterprise. Like General Electric, probably the most criminally indicted organization in US history, and its public relations department - NBC News, the GOP is a 19th century holdover of the kind of "Shit-For-Brains racism 'I speak for God because I have a direct relationship with God'" that got them thrown out of Europe in the first place. North America needs to make it clear that their Hate-God is not welcome here either.

further ranting

Reporter calls candidate "prickly," then asks candidate to answer charges of prickliness. Now that's journalism! The campaign press will follow the same formula over and over again, just changing the word -- a candidate will be accused of being too liberal (Kerry), too cold (Hillary), too "lightweight" (Edwards), too "unserious" (Sharpton), etc., until he either cries uncle or drops out. Using this technique the press can basically bludgeon any candidate into whatever shape it likes. When a candidate fails to comply -- when, say, a Kerry fails to demonstrate that he's not too "patrician" for middle America -- he is summarily punished and usually ends up a loser.

understanding the big peach

Josh Marshall, without supporting impeachment, puts the pieces together:

The Republican party is heavily invested in hyping and inventing claims of voter fraud which they then use to stymie legitimate voter registration drives and institute 'ballot integrity' efforts which have the actual goal of limiting voting by racial minorities and under-income voters. The truth can hurt but that's the unvarnished truth. And the backdrop to the US Attorney Purge was a concerted effort to enlist US Attorneys to put the power of the state criminal prosecution apparatus behind this partisan gambit.

The Republican party is a criminal organization. All of its remaining members know and support this course of action for the organization. The Democratic candidate that I, and this blog, will support is the candidate that will support burying that organization for good, in the dustbin, with long prison terms for everyone involved.

ugly woman cowboy

Sorry I really hate this mumbling bag of public relations wisdom.

racism and the whole freaking party

so i am thinking about politics and racism. Read this post at Eschaton, quoting Athenae.

It's an imposition, to not be a racist asshole. And it's hard on these guys, isn't it? It's so rough that they can no longer mock the women and the minorities and, I don't know, I guess you'd throw retard jokes in there, too, because they all seem to be about 12 years old. I don't know how any of them manage to feed and dress themselves with all that's been taken away from them.

Then take a look at what I thought was a brilliant summary by Hamsher about the Rudy thing. Now don't get me wrong. I don't really think Rudy can stand much more scrutiny, even if the whole rabid crowd gets behind him, they are only some 30%. But she's completely right that these people don't care about abortion as much as they want a good racist war. That's why they love them some W. What I think Hamsher left out were two crucial points:

1. Rudy is surround by criminals and no one cares about that (sound familiar?)

2. Even if the whatever rule says we can't refer to leaders without ovens as nazis, certainly by now we can conclude that there is something terribly wrong with people who feel so strongly for their precious leader when he has done nothing right and nothing for them except blow up, torture and murder brown people. The whole 1930s Germany thing seems less and less a mystery all the time. How I used to ponder and wonder about that dark time.

The poor dears really feel like they just gotta get somebody strong in there.

once i rode in an elevator with Al Sharpton

and i thought "that dude's got some screwed up hair." "Nappy" it is not. He did say hello to me. Nice enough guy, I thought. But what is with the retro mullet thing on this Imus idiot ? I mean, the guy proves everyday he has got nothing to say. He looks like some kind of racist hick scare-crow, or does he just look like one of those ambi-sexual kind of office women? And he is like a hero to those white-cap kids who live with their oh-so-devoted parents so they never have to think and high school goes on forever? Ugh no thanks.

talking to a naco about great art, part 2

So what makes it a one way conversation? It would seem to me that one of the key things that people learn on their long voyage to being "higher educated" is that most of the people asking questions are either stupid, un-educated, or of the wrong class to be asking questions. Which is really just a way of saying that those of us who are higher educated have merely learned that we will seem more highly educated if we keep our questions to ourselves, or we keep them to within the confines of a scientifically controlled, or corporate sponsored, environment where the answers an be quickly and effectively nullified. Of course, I'm still thinking of Gusky's post here as I write this.

The non-institutional artist, (i mean please, we meet ourselves all over the place), does not need to act in coordination with her tormenters the way that someone really climbing to the top of the shit-heap does. But she does enjoy the freedom of taking in information from where ever it happens to come, including from nacos and street-trash and hookers and kids with giant sneakers playing X-box. My suggestion, as was probably not obvious in the previous post, remains, that a curious, even hungry, working class is a better partner for a working artist than is a class of art professionals, graduate students and pretensia-speaking cell-phone flippers.

The reason it would seem to be a one way conversation is that we learned not only to not ask questions, but also to not really listen. Those climbing have their blinders firmly stretching not only across their eyes, but also extending backwards to their ears and down over their mouths. This might seem amusing if your idea of social commentary is telling everyone how helpless we are... but really, we are all well aware of that. Is our point to climb or is it to listen? Is the point of an artist to talk or is it to see? Wouldn't orchestrating the lot of those activities at once make more sense than coordinating one with an organization that is one way or another, directly or indirectly, taking money from the murder machine?

Photo is from the collection at Sinvention, Fine Canadian Leathercraft

Republicans now devouring the corpse of american capitalism

How else is one to read a story like this ? $12.7 billion net loss. What's another 28 million?

why we should teach the bible in Public Schools

Perhaps then we could pray for a free press instead of a corporate press. Many people believe that if bin Laden ran for election in Pakistan he would carry the country by a hefty 70%. Similar numbers he'd enjoy just about everywhere in the region, all the way to Saudi Arabia. The irony of this magazine is just too much to even contemplate.

sigh.... Irish sounding violin music...

this is one of those videos that you just watch and do nothing... sort of like listening to a recent college grad expounding on politics or something. There's a lot of scary numbers. It makes me feel like when I used to always get stoned... whoa. not to sound cynical (who me?) but come on people... it is like the first time you realize that
people live and die. A lot of stuff is staggering. Stop staggering so much.

what artist can't do....

this is my list of things, so far, that serious artists can NOT do.

Please feel free to add to it in the comments so that it can grow and prosper like poison ivy.

1. Artists can not look at the art-work at an opening reception. Openings are for conducting business, networking, clowning (if it's SERIOUS clowning).

2. Talk in any way that is personal, about your personal problems or your personality (unless it is fictional) or in a way that might lead others to believe that you are human and not a "business machine." Artist should try to remember that they are always conducting a public relations campaign, that should be designed to promote the work, not any old vision of humanity or something communist like that.

3. Artists must not operate in any way that might lead one to believe that they seek in any way to actually threaten the understandings of art that our great leaders from Brown and Yale and CIT and similar esteemed programs have deemed TRUE.

4. Amongst all that truth is the "relativism of truth" which we must accept as true and not question. Therefore, an artist can have opinions but a serious artist must only express such opinions if s/he is in the company of lesser artists and in such a setting where the expression of said opinion will serve the purpose of furthering the Public Relations aims of the same serious artist. All other opinions are valid, but vapid, unless published.

5. Painting can be undertaken but only after memorizing the entirety of the October Magazine pantheon, pretending to both dismiss it entirely and understand it totally. Any attempts at feeling the subject of the painting will only be discussed with fattish art-girls.

6. Feeling anything is un-acceptable, unless part of a performance about numb-ness.

art history still plagues welding artists

geoffrey : tell me you read the Jeff Wall article in the NYT

geoffrey : but my annoyance is not as much with Wall as it is the critics and writers being fucking morons as to what painting is and what photography is.

geoffrey : i would be embarrassed if i was wall

geoffrey : http://www.glumbert.com/media/miketyson

Ashes77 : hmmm no i didn't see it

Ashes77 : where is it ?

geoffrey : http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/magazine/25Wall.t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=d8e0af3da5550738&ex=1174017600

[ NOTE: well deserved pending Link Rot acknowledged ]

geoffrey : it's long

Ashes77 : ok let me look at it

Ashes77 : it sounds like Winkelman territory

geoffrey : i try to stay away from all this "realm of the senses" crap

Ashes77 : yeah, it is just like "Big Photography" right ?

geoffrey : worse

geoffrey : photo tableaux

geoffrey : montage

geoffrey : PShop

Ashes77 : really ? how creative

Ashes77 : why not put it in a magazine ?

geoffrey : take 200 photos and tie them together getting EXACTLY what you want

geoffrey : none of god or man's silly mistakes

Ashes77 : i don't want to read it

geoffrey : dude

geoffrey : can i give you highlights

geoffrey : ?

Ashes77 : yeah go ahead

geoffrey : k

Ashes77 : better than reading this crap

geoffrey : Velasquez paintings at the Prado influence Wall to use lightboxes for his paintings :"I began to think, It’s luminous, Velázquez was luminous, I’ll try it."

Ashes77 : right

geoffrey : ...Where a painter must employ tricks of foreshortening and tonal gradation to simulate what the eye perceives, a photographer need only point the lens to have everything emerge in instant perspective. Although a smooth photographic surface may be less tactilely pleasurable than a textured layer of paint, it arrives unburdened by the weight of art history. “There’s just a whole lot of problems that photography doesn’t have to engage with,” says Michael Fried, a prominent critic and art historian who has championed Wall’s work. “The photograph shifts the register to a different place. The missing ingredient is everything to do with touch and sensuous surface. It’s a big price, but by paying that price there’s a lot that is sidestepped.”

geoffrey : that's the worst paragraph ever

Ashes77 : haw

geoffrey : i lose count of how many things are wrong with this

Ashes77 : maybe

Ashes77 : i don't think it is that bad, but i can't really read the ny times

geoffrey : There’s just a whole lot of problems photography doesn't have to deal with

geoffrey : ?

geoffrey : ?

geoffrey : yeah, like that whole pesky human experience element

Ashes77 : that whole sensual surface problem

Ashes77 : those sensual surfaces just keep mucking up my experience

geoffrey : these are critics?

geoffrey : speaking of art as if it were limited to a realms only percieved by eyes and touch?

Ashes77 : good point

Ashes77 : oh michael fried yeah he is only about 40 years ago

geoffrey : yeah, you can tell he is just in awe of his Canon Sureshot

geoffrey : and his iPhoto

geoffrey : iPod

Ashes77 : i thought he was still welding

Ashes77 : welding and then cleaning up for the reception

geoffrey : ha

geoffrey : "it arrives unburdened by the weight of art history"

Ashes77 : what a burden all that history is

Ashes77 : better to just not know any of it

geoffrey : art history is now separate from humans?

Ashes77 : art history plagues welding artists

geoffrey : hahahah

geoffrey : the whole thing just spells dettachment.... all of it

geoffrey : and ooooo

geoffrey : here let me find this one paragraph that says it all

geoffrey : A more startling piece of autobiographical material lies buried (or out in plain sight) in “The Destroyed Room,” the breakthrough light box that depicts a woman’s brutalized bedroom. Wall made the picture in 1978, which was the year his wife, Jeannette, left him for another man. (After that relationship ended, Jeannette returned to Jeff, bringing with her a third son, whom they have raised together.) To construct the scene in the picture, Jeff used Jeannette’s clothing. “I borrowed her clothes because we were still on good terms and she had the good clothes,” he told me. For all the talk of allusions to Delacroix and feminist art criticism, I wondered if the most crucial piece of subtext for “The Destroyed Room” might revolve around a spurned husband’s rage. “You’re probably right, but it doesn’t feel right to me,” he said. “I don’t remember feeling particularly angry at that

geoffrey : He acknowledged that he “might express a feeling through a series of mediations.” But the subject didn’t intrigue him. “I don’t find my own experiences very interesting,” he said. “I find my observations interesting. Maybe that’s why I’m a photographer. Maybe an observation is an experience that means more to you than other experiences.”

geoffrey : maybe photography is a way of being even more dettached in your observations?

geoffrey : (that was me)

Ashes77 : good sounds sort of protestant to tell the truth

geoffrey : Rather than employ professional actors, Wall usually prefers to hire people like those they are portraying. It’s a device he lifted from cinema. “One of the things I liked about Italian neo-realism was just using people as they were, in situations similar to their real situations,” he says. “If you’re interested in the actual, it’s the closest to the actual.” In later years he has tried to elide the distinction to the vanishing point, engaging actual art restorers in “Restoration,” field anthropologists in “Fieldwork” and day laborers in “Men waiting,” the picture I watched him shoot. The performers are playing themselves. However, they are also clay in the hands of the artist.

Ashes77 : everyone has got ugh who wrote this shit ?

geoffrey : they are also clay in the hands of the artist

geoffrey : hahahahahaha

geoffrey : that's when i barfed

geoffrey : seriously

Ashes77 : yeah clay

geoffrey : just barfed

geoffrey : artists are god.

geoffrey : oooo

geoffrey : wait wait

geoffrey : another gem

geoffrey : hold it

geoffrey : don't move

Ashes77 : HAW

geoffrey : “My love of depiction is just affectionate,” he told me. “I’m a more affectionate person than I thought I was. I like trees or I like people’s faces. That’s one reason I think my work has changed. I realized I wasn’t interested in filtering my affection for things through certain levels of mediation.”

geoffrey : ALL YOU ARE FING DOING IS FILTERING ASSHAT

Ashes77 : well as long as he is not filtering

Ashes77 : THROUGH MEDIATION

Ashes77 : whatever that means

geoffrey : hahahahaha

Ashes77 : Maybe he has learned to mediate his filters

Ashes77 : this is true ass-hattery to be sure

geoffrey : dude, i am trying to find this one part...

geoffrey : “Painting could be topographical realism or it could be angels — in the same medium. Why couldn’t photography do the same?”

geoffrey : because with photography it is a lie.

Ashes77 : oh brother

Ashes77 : who said that last part

Ashes77 : ?

geoffrey : i said the last part

geoffrey : oh you mean the quote?

geoffrey : he did

geoffrey : wall

geoffrey : i just chose to answer him in frustration

Ashes77 : yes you mean that his underlying assumption

Ashes77 : is that ptgy is a lie ?

geoffrey : no i am saying the reason that he cannot accomplish what he is setting out to... combine topographical realism with angels, is because if it was done through photography, it would be a lie

Ashes77 : hmmmm ok i think

geoffrey : and im holding no morality tales in the word lie there

geoffrey : just chew on it a sec

Ashes77 : what the fuck is topographical realism ?

geoffrey : i was hoping you would tell me

geoffrey : its words that photographers use to describe painting

Ashes77 : alright i will write a blog post about it

geoffrey : i was so hoping you would

Ashes77 : but it seems like Winkelman turf too

geoffrey : that is why i came to you

Ashes77 : HAW

Ashes77 : stop it

geoffrey : i started to, and i realized i couldn't do it justice

Ashes77 : oh i am too dismissive of this asshattery

geoffrey : i must say though, if you do read it i think you will like parts

Ashes77 : i just bash Michael Fried

geoffrey : i actuallly admired a couple things

geoffrey : but now i have forgotten what they were

Ashes77 : well honestly i don't think i mind the guy's fotos

Ashes77 : i just would like them in a magazine

Ashes77 : so i could see them while i am on the train

Ashes77 : i don't see what the MOMA has to be involving them selves in that shit for

geoffrey : the one part i wanted to show you is where Wall gets frustrated with everyone only focusing on the gimmicks of how it was all captured and says "Everyone is just so focused on the process, they aren't seeing the big picture..."

geoffrey : cuhlassic

Ashes77 : haw yeah that is dumb

Ashes77 : alright i am going to take a nap

geoffrey : Having chosen not to live in an art capital like New York or London, Wall professes that he could just as easily have lived anywhere, with little effect on his work. “One thing I hate with small cities is the myth of their specialness,” he says. “It’s like in Europe, everywhere has its own ham, its own wine, its own cheese, and they’re all nice, but it doesn’t interest me.”

geoffrey : hahahahaha

geoffrey : sleep well on that note

Ashes77 : oh god

Ashes77 : i am getting a headache

Ashes77 : alright i'll catch you later

geoffrey : ite

geoffrey : later

Ashes77 : ciao-zle

geoffrey : it lies because photography is bound the realm of light bouncing off surfaces only. Painting is not limited only to that, it can share more truths.

geoffrey : that's all im sayin

geoffrey : k

geoffrey : goodnite

Ashes77 : i am not sure i can write about that fucking article

geoffrey : o don't bother

geoffrey : its a wast

geoffrey : e

Ashes77 : so ed wankleman

geoffrey : but did you at least read the last two lines

Ashes77 : no what were they ?

geoffrey : they went along with our conversation the other night

geoffrey : Thanks in part to Wall’s pioneering pictures, “artists using photography” no longer feel a need to distance themselves from others in their medium. They have emerged from their clumsily confining, defensive chrysalis.

Ashes77 : oh jesus that really is awful

Ashes77 : who wrote that thing ?

geoffrey : arthur lubow

Ashes77 : god pathetic

geoffrey : yeah, got phone call brb

Welcome Cadillac Escalade Seekers

nice to have you all on board. Perhaps I can really start to reflect on the psychology of the Escaladero.

Sort of fat, aren't you ?

Kind of got some masculinity issues?

Thinking a bit about those other kids in high school ?
Maybe you are getting better at surfing the internet?

Figured out about Google Image Searching now ?

Well best wishes to you.

In the end I don't even care if this post is formatted.

my blog fell down

well, clearly one does get busy and then more than a week goes by.... I've got no time for ranting about politics "up there," but it is nice to see the shithouse truly on fire, at least for now.

I will say this, with sincere appreciation for the Unapologetic Mexican, and for Springs and Wells, (who I am glad to see writing a little again), you are both right about cynicism. It is clever being cynical, and cynical being clever. If I think about the opposite and what we try to do instead of being clever and cynical I ended up using flat words like honesty and earnestness that get me very much of nowhere. I would go so far as to say that I think cynicism and cleverness are usually foils attempting to mask what is inexperienced, what is the posture of enlightenment, but I don't know. What do the cynical pretend their wisdom postures in front of ? A real, raw view of human nature ? Perhaps they don't pretend to be Jackson Pollack all alone on Long Island, in his stupor, summoning the voices of Austrian analysts.

Listen to David Brooks as quoted by Digby:

DAVID BROOKS: I know a lot of very socially conservative people who want Rudy Giuliani. They know where he stands on abortion and gay marriage. They know all that stuff. But they like him because they think he's a fighter.

It should be clear to anyone who reads such sentences that this guy Brooks is just a bald-faced liar. He doesn't know anyone. He doesn't even talk to anyone. It is just the sort of thing you make up when you are talking and you have a 22-year-old brain that pretends all the time to know everything. This idiot has been pretending to understand something about some broad swath of "society" for as long as anyone can remember. Sometimes, when I go to McDonalds, I read the stuff they print on the paper tray-liner. It's about how their freaking salad is nutritious, so if you don't eat the Big Mac, you can get like so much sodium and some other crap and you won't feel sick when you leave. It's cynical. The people writing the piece of paper underneath your McDonald's piece of shit lunch are cynical. I only eat there when I feel emotionally needy for some cynical garbage (which does happen to me surprisingly often.) It's all cynical.

So is the idea that people are stupid and slow. So is the idea that the people who inherit money have a right to run the government because they are good at business. It's that age old "democracy can't work" because the riff-raff can't be trusted with it. Oh wait, that was the 19th century !?!

It's that age old "Art can't work because people without degrees from Yale can't understand it." Oh wait, what century did that shit start? The 80s ? I can't remember now, but people who "appreciate" "art" from the eighties and nineties love to confuse what I am saying, now, with cynicism. I beg to differ. On the contrary, it is not difficult to have faith in art and democracy if one has faith in people. But it is also really something to see how easy it is for the cynical to destroy a democracy. Ask David Brooks.

on the exhalted guru and why he still so tortures us

Everyone I know is still haunted by this character from art-school.

Those of us who have experimented with mysticism and mystical apparatus and all those chanting, breathing-exercise goings-on find him (yeah, usually it's a guy) terrifically annoying. Particularly as the Exhalted Guru's chief experience today is usually made with reference to market factors, dealers (they're just down to earth people, man) and those creepy gallery people, you know, the buzz-cut women in their fifties and the art-clown in his alterna-costume.

I've written some pretty mushy things here, things that make the institutional artists cry. Like about Ancestory and Subconscious stuff... and trying to be honest, making art for personal reasons first.

But I hope I've made it clear that even real, mind-blowing enlightenment kind of stuff is really pretty low-brow for artists. Dude, we've been there, and it was like, WOW, ok, not going to save anyone with that heightened consciousness, now matter how high, broad or deep. That's low-brow mysticism. Admittedly, it's not as bad as the market-based stuff, but still...

The idea comes from this modernist thing, the fringe character on the edges of society, who has been to the top of the mountain, and heard god talking there. Not freaking Derrida, not some mamby-pamby who went to Brown and got a degree in talking to herself. Was talking to GOD man! It's a bit older than the 20th century really.

OK, so let's say for a second you accept that artists have been interested more or less in mysticism for like the last 7 or 8 thousand years. Before that everyone was living pretty much in the Mystical Soup, right ? Well, sadly, no, that is wrong. That 7 or 8 thousand years marker is good for the actual start of Mysticism but it happens to coincide nicely with the invention of agriculture, food surpluses (and thus POWER), and yes, sedentary living.

So my fellow nomads, I am sorry if I have lost you with this ramble. The next time someone tries to impress you by taking on the "I been to the top of the mountain" schtick or the "I talk this way cause it makes me seem like I know something" schtick, just say "dude, we are moooooving on, would love to stay and chat, but we really gotta eat tomorrow."

more art bloggers suckered

this is the sort of non-item, kind of clever thing that makes art so hard to deal with. A publicity seeking hacker imitates an artist who twenty years ago imitated somebody doing something clever so that we can all, again, elbow each other because we get it while the rest of the world wonders why we are impressed by such trivial things. If you want to write, write a book. If you want to do propaganda studies, do them in a format that matters and for an audience that can make a difference. Impressing other artists with pseudo-intellectualism just keeps getting easier.