Modern Kicks

burning man

Last weekend we took in the Fred Tomaselli exhibition at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum.  Two things up front: first, Thanksgiving weekend is a kickass time to visit a suburban university museum.  All the spaces in the parking lot to choose from, and no undergrads wandering the galleries with their notebooks, working on that paper for Art 1.  Second thing is, you have to understand: it's impossible to write about a Fred Tomasellli show without some lame jokes.  I tried my best, but consider yourself warned.

Tomaselli's works, or at least most of those featured in the exhibit, typically feature brightly colored, spacey (sometimes literally), highly decorative compositions built up out of painted elements and collage suspended in different layers of clear resin, all against and underlying black background.  The collage elements are of course famous, and underscore the pieces' imagery: as you can see, he uses pills and leaves of various exciting kinds to build up his patterns.  The other common material consists of a vast number of cutout photographs of hands, eyeballs, and countless other body parts that are used in an endless profusion to make the figures and birds in his collages.

The work is often fun to look at.  The colors really pop out against the black, and the depth of the layers of resin - some seemed to go down as far as a half-inch before meeting the underlying surface of the image - makes for an engaging play between the upper and deeper elements of the image.  The garish psychedelia of it all can be amusing, like watching a Cheech and Chong movie.  One doesn't want to buy a catalog on Tomaselli's work to put on the coffee table - a black light poster would be so much better.  The intricacies of his astronomical patterns can mesmerize, like watching afterimages.  One giggles a little, as the buzz takes hold.

Buzzes never last as long as they promise to, however, and sooner or later Tomaselli's work brings the art equivalent of staring at the ceiling, watching it flash colors, and wishing to fall asleep.  It gets boring, like watching a Cheech and Chong movie.  Then there's his metaphors and imagery, aside from the simple spacey, drugginess of it all.  In an interview at Artnet, Tomaselli noted that

I'm not a hippie. I was too young. I wanted to be a hippie, but I was a stoner. Stoners are hippies without ideology. I think that's one of the things I'm responding to, this sense of failure that so pervaded the 1970s when I came of age.

One feels it there, the poorly thought out (if thought at all) "naturalism", the cosmic, mythic pretensions, the sense that one is stuck in a room with some guy rolling a joint on the cover of a Blue Öyster Cult record, all the while talking about how cool Steppenwolf is - so tawdry.  A sense of failure, of intellectual, even moral, ruin?  Tomaselli's paintings don't have that, exactly.  They are far too much the meticulous fine art production.  They nevertheless evoke it, remind one of it.  And that's too bad, because really, all that stuff was horrible beyond belief, and the thought that it had died or at least been relegated to the most backward, isolated parts of suburban teen culture was a great relief to those of us who came of age toward its end, suffered it, and moved on.  Now it's in a museum, sort of, respectable at last.  As for Tomaselli's work, it's not without a rush, but I can't imagine wanting to sign on for the whole trip.

(Along with the Artnet interview, Tyler recently reposted an account of a talk by Tomaselli from a couple of years ago, and CIRCA Art Magazine has a review of what seems to be the same show as is at the Rose from when it was in Edinburgh.)

the buddenbrooks effect

Now and then, when the family was gathered around the table and Aunt Antonie or Uncle Christian would fall back into their old habit of making fun of poor Aunt Klothilde and begin speaking with her in her own drawling, meek, amiable fashion, it sometimes happened that Hanno, feeling the effects of the heavy red wine reserved for special occasions, would adopt that tone of voice himself for a moment and make some teasing remark of his own to Aunt Kothilde.  And then Thomas Buddenbrook would laugh - a loud, heartfelt, encouraging, almost grateful laugh, like a man surprised by some very amusing stroke of good luck; he would even egg Johann on and join in the teasing - when in fact, for years now, he had protested against taking that tone with their poor cousin.  It was so cheap, so safe, to assert one's superiority over humble, dull, skinny, and eternally hungry Klothilde, and despite the general harmlessness of it all, the whole idea seemed rather mean-spirited.  But he fought against that feeling, too, just as he had to fight desperately against his own scruples in the practical affairs of everyday life - when a situation would arise and once again he could not comprehend, simply could not get over, the fact that, although he understood the ramifications, he still had to use the situation for his own purposes without any sense of shame.  But to use a situation without any sense of shame, he told himself, that is what it means to be fit for real life.

Ah, how glad, how happy, delighted, and hopeful he felt at any little sign Johann might display that he was fit for real life.

--Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks

on the other hand

Doing the post below, especially the rather tortured conclusion, reminded me of this bit, perhaps the only funny passage Greil Marcus ever wrote (from Mystery Train):

Let me quote from a typical ad for a [1970's singer-songerwriter] troubled troubador, supposedly appropriate to such times, presumably addressed to a troubled audience:

A few rare performers become your friend the first time you listen to them.  Jonathan Edwards is about to become your friend.

His songs are sensitive and warm, containing feelings and recollections which are sure to remind you of things in your life as well.

Jonathan Edwards.  A new friend.

Courtesy Atlantic Records and Tapes, a Division of Warner Communications, the friendly giant conglomerate.

Note the style of the ad.  The cadence is wonderfully smooth, caressing.  The grammar is perfect, proper.  The voice is fatherly.  The whole thing is absolutely unbearable.

But it’s always fun to fill in the blanks.  Let’s say:

A few rare performers become your friend the first time you listen to them. Mick Jagger is about to become your friend.

His songs are loud, brutal, and mean, containing feelings you like to pretend you don’t have, recollections you would like to forget, and temptations that up until now you have wisely avoided.

Mick Jagger.  A new friend.

As for more suitable forms of Kultur, I've been rereading (as I considering doing last year) Buddenbrooks and enjoying it greatly.  Art brings doom!  Doom, I say!  Expect to hear more about it soon.

art and culture

The post below was begun last July, abandoned, and recently revived; I found it too difficult to write and thought it offered little payoff, but have had some further ideas on the topics discussed lately.  So here it is.  I apologize if the manner of its creation makes it even more disjointed, wandering, and nonsensical than the usual fare.

Jacques-Louis David's role as the model of the political artist, the extreme nature of the politics he was involved in, and his own aesthetic radicalism, have combined to set him apart, just as the French Revolution stands apart in historical analysis.  This is unfortunate in a number of ways.  It has meant his reputation, for long periods, has fluctuated with contemporary political developments, rising and falling with the passions of the moment.  It also means that we tend to see him separate from the long lines of continuity that tie him to earlier and later artistic production.

Étienne-Jean Delécluze, an art critic and former student of David, wrote a book in the 1850's on the artist that sought to improve his standing by depoliticizing his work.  It was by no means the last such attempt.  But is that really possible, or justified?  David was the greatest image-maker at a time of actual representational crisis.  The Marat and its lost companion depicting another Revolutionary martyr, the soldier Le Pelletier, were hung in the National Assembly, overlooking the French Deputies, including David, as they met.  These were not simply portraits or commemorations, but active products of a dialectic of popular absolutism that moved according to accusations of betrayal and victimization (not concerning itself with those from the Vendée, of course, who were on their own.)  Time and distance naturally dim the connotations that adhered to an image such as the Marat in its day, but it will not do to deny them.  This is not a matter of obsessing over possible political emanations of artworks that are not themselves concerned with such matters.  For David, in the early 1790's, artists had only depicted the world; the point was to change it.

It's because of such tussles over meaning, art and politics that I was especially intrigued by the following passage, quoted in the David exhibition catalog by Philippe Bordes:

i spy with my little eye

Cool news appropriate for the week after Thanksgiving: the Smithsonian American Art Museum has today opened its blog, Eye Level.  Not only is the first blog for a Smithsonian instititution, and one of the small but growing number of museum blogs, the primary writer for it is Kriston Capps of Grammar.police, one of the best blogs, art or otherwise, around.  Because you can never have too many blogs, right?  Seriously, it's a smart, good-looking site, one that will be added to the links at right in a moment.  So check it out: not just the introductory post, but all the rest (like this one on Smithson and the American landscape, or one from the archives on Sean Scully, for instance.)  It's worth it.  The Stuart Davis logo is very cool, and I like the fact that, while naturally Eye Level will focus on the Museum it's associated with, its open to considering other institutions and being part of a broader conversation.  Congrats to Kriston, all the others involved, and SAAM as a whole for putting together such a smart project.

more bacteria = more flavor

Of all the endless advice given out to Americans preparing to cook a Thanksgiving meal, the one that bothers me the most is the admonition not to stuff the bird.  Yes, there is a risk of contamination involved.  If that's going to stop you, then I have a suggestion: don't eat meat.  What's left out of the warnings is how delicious stuffing cooked in the bird is, far superior to any baked in a casserole, how moist and tender it becomes with all that good turkey essence.  Just, you know, cook it until it's done.  Not so hard, really.  But those who follow USDA guidelines saying things like poultry needs to be cooked to a dry-as-dust 180 degrees will tell you that doom awaits if you simply try to prepare the meal properly.  I know they have to say it, but we don't have to listen.

The whole thing simply reinforces the obvious fact that, aside from once (perhaps twice) a year, no one cooks whole turkeys.  In a country that knew how to prepare stuffing properly without poisoning anyone, it wouldn't be necessary to set up a yearly hotline to offer advice on how to cook the national meal.

Oh, and - it's snowing.  Happy Thanksgiving to all.

so much for predictions

If this article from Bloomberg (link via ArtsJournal) is accurate, the Met is prepared to return the Euphronios krater to Italy, despite what I wrote not so long ago.  It's still not clear if one should prepare for a last stateside look at the vase, as the rather choppy article does discuss possible long-term loan arrangements, not to mention the fact that the Met hasn't officially signed off yet.  But if the director will argue to his trustees that this is what has to happen, there's no reason to think they won't go along.  I'd guess that, far from being swayed by a moral argument, the Met was presented with a case that compelled not only from an evidentiary standpoint but from what the Italians might be prepared to do with it.  Right now I doubt many feel inclined to call bluff, after all.

all the turnips you can eat

Last year I posted Edward Hirsch's great poem on "Luminist Paintings at the National Gallery" for Thanksgiving, and it's worth reading again.  Unlike last year, I won't be shutting things down here for the holiday weekend, although obviously there'll be some slow points.  For those travelling, be safe,  stay warm, and check in when you can.  Oh, and a question: what goes better with apple pie, vanilla ice cream or a hunk of cheddar?  And does it matter if it's Grafton Village's Stone House Cheddar, aged six years?  Because that is one heck of a cheese.

turtles all the way down

Now that I think of it, I first learned of Updike's review of Perl from James Tata, then forgot about the source.  Funny how these things work.

a note of caution

I take it for granted that the proposal discussed in this post and in greater detail in the accompanying paper (warning: .pdf) will not come to pass.  Something similar was evidently rejected in the recent past, and I don't imagine anything's changed sufficiently to make a different outcome likely, even if it were seriously on the table.  One post and a paper at a fairly well-known liberal policy blog, no matter if written by a prominent public policy academic, will not overthrow the fundamentals of museum non-profit structure.

So it would be easy to simply note that the proposal is pretty much the definition of philistinism and take pleasure in the now rather rare opportunity to use that word so aptly.  Or to go a little further, one could quibble with the paper's numbers, or point out that the greater part of most large collections consists of works that cannot be shown continually or even at near intervals and thus don't really fit the argument.  Getting more engaged, one might note that display is not the only goal of a collection, that there's value in having a broad and deep group of work together, and that the values that museums are set up to serve are not those that treating collections as capital assets will encourage.  Seizing the last point, one could ultimately point out that the increase in appraisal values between the time of acquisition of works by famous artists and the present day would mean that almost any collection of any size or significance - from the great museums of New York to provincial collections in small cities - would end up as overcapitalized; that this would, in turn, almost certainly mean the dispersal and destruction of great collections, with no assurance that anything of comparable value will emerge as a result.

So one could argue that way, but what would be the point?  From the view of the author, as far as I can tell, all that is a feature, not a bug.  I think the post and paper make the point adequately, but if you don't, there's also this opinion piece from the Globe by the same writer arguing for dispersal of museum collections to make them more secure in event of a terrorist attack.   I think we all, especially those who live or work in a major city, are aware of that horrible possibility and have contemplated the devastating losses that might occur.  And I suppose we are all entitled to use any available arguments for what we believe.  But it seems to me despicable to use that fear to argue for a policy - in this case, the dispersal or even break-up of large museum collections - that one supports for reasons aside from or prior to that possibility. In this instance, the only appropriate response, aside from a few choice words, is to say: if we disperse collections, then the terrorists will have won.

Why bother with it all, since it's not going to happen?  Two reasons.  First, despite the blinkered way he goes about his arguments, there's a kernel of truth that the author brushes up against.  Large museums do put work on long-term loan with smaller institutions, for instance, sharing what they will not exhibit with distant publics who might benefit it.  It's a good practice, and should be encouraged, when possible.  It has costs, however, and they aren't best shouldered by selling off other work.  More importantly, the winner-take-all phenomenon of our current society hasn't bypassed cultural institutions.  A donor gets more bang - of press, of ego, of buzz - from giving to an already prominent collection.  Reading recently of Edward Broida's donation to MoMA, including 36 works by Philip Guston, I couldn't help but think that a case couldn't have been made that some of that bounty might have done more good by being spread amongst institutions that didn't have a painting by the artist, or at least not 12.  I don't blame MoMA - but I do think that we could do better to encourage donations that go beyond the big splash and serve communities where major paintings are perhaps more scarce.

The other reason to pay attention is more ominous.  For in both the post and the paper, the author overcomes the potential objection to his plan that museums don't sell art by pointing to deaccessioning.  That practice is essential to weed out collections over time, but no one needs me to point out how it can be abused - and the idea, not to mention the reality, of that abuse is exactly what he plays on.  The danger of misguided deaccessioning is, in part, that museums will be seen as already treating their collections as capital assets - and once that barrier is removed, his plan might not seem so outlandish.