Modern Kicks

wonder-working power

Leaving yesterday's post behind, I return to the topics I planned to write on then instead.  Which is to say, the Great Cheeses of New England.  Behold the power!  I'm somewhat embarrassed to note that Rhode Island has no representative on the cheese map, a fact due to the state's leading dairy farm having devoted itself to exploring the world of whipped cream pastries instead.  Vermont rules, as might be expected, though I am excited to read about the fine blue cheese available down near Buzzard's Bay, and the quality cheeses of central Massachusetts.  These will need to be savored.

. . . Oh, and Cate McQuaid liked the Hockney portraits at the MFA.  Photos here.  I have to say that I've never really warmed up to Hockney as an artist and was looking forward to this exhibit as a chance to test my reaction.  Then I found out the MFA was charging for tickets, so we'll see.  Laying down $22 in order to be convinced in the first place seems a little steep (plus convenience and/or handling fees, for online orders at the least.)

I really don't want this site to be all MFA, all the time, but: the Hockney show is what, the fourth contemporary art exhibition in the past couple of years there focused on a British artist?  Since I've been writing here, at least, which is less than 2 years.  Granted, in this case it's not a YBA like Hirst or Noble and Webster (or to a lesser degree, Wyn Evans); and there have been some other things as well.  Hockney is the only one of these, to be sure, to get the full Gund Gallery treatment - the others have been smaller shows in the awful white cube area of the Museum.  And this most recent exhibition may not even be the responsibility of the contemporary art program, I have no idea.  But the . . . Episcopalian character of the Museum, for all of its controversies (or in hand with them?) continues to be safe under the Rogers directorship.

very annoying

So someone's sent at least one email faked to look like it came from me.  Here's the header (I've removed the recipient's information, though someone knowledge about this stuff might be able to figure it out):

Return-Path: <modkicks@yahoo.com>
Received: from fastdnsservers.com (ns128.fastdnsservers.com [216.51.232.128])
by xxxxxxx.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id k1RE3C78027929
for <xxxxx@xxxxxx.com>; Mon, 27 Feb 2006 08:03:12 -0600
Received: from WEBSERVER128 ([127.0.0.1]:4903)
by fastdnsservers.com with [XMail 1.22 ESMTP Server]
id <S19E0F4> for <xxxxx@xxxxxxx.com> from <modkicks@yahoo.com>;
Mon, 27 Feb 2006 07:55:27 -0600
thread-index: AcY7pXaLY+gsHzyYR5ewnyANyNKQwA==
Thread-Topic: tip
From: <modkicks@yahoo.com>
To: <xxxxxx@xxxxxxx.com>
Subject: tip
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 07:55:27 -0600
Message-ID: <033001c63ba5$768be4c0$8001a8c0@WEBSERVER128>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0331_01C63B73.2BF174C0"
X-Mailer: Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000
Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message
Importance: normal
Priority: normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.1830
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=3.1 required=5.0
tests=FORGED_YAHOO_RCVD,NO_REAL_NAME
version=2.55
X-Spam-Level: ***
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.55 (1.174.2.19-2003-05-19-exp)
Status:

Note the "FORGED_YAHOO" bit.  Not so hard to do, but very annoying.  In fact, I'd have to say that the person who did this is a real chickenshit - if you want to pass along tips and gossip, do it under your own name, or at least have the decency to create your own anonymous email account.  Anyway, given the nature of the email, which I needn't detail here, I'm guessing the party involved was the same who arrived here via a search for "modern kicks blog" on a Cox Communications connection in Providence, RI,  about  4 or 5 minutes before the email was sent this morning.  I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but if anyone has any tips for me on how to determine who sent the faked message, I'd be happy to hear them.  I suppose I could contact the institution whose information was leaked - they might have some ideas.  Anyway, whoever did this: don't do it again.

UPDATE: On the advice of others, I've filed a complaint with Yahoo, though I doubt they'll be able to do anything.  I could contact Cox with the suspected IP address, and if they decided to look I think they could certainly find out.  But I'm not sure I want to do that.  I have to say that the lowest aspect of this matter lies in the fact that the substance and nature of the email falsely attributed to me makes it highly likely the person responsible is someone I know, or used to know, and might have thought of in the past as a friend or friendly acquintance at least.  That they think of me quite differently seems certain at this point.

2ND UPDATE: I did send a message to Cox.  I don't know if they'll bother to look into it, or if my suspicions are correct; but if they do, and they are, I have no doubt the provider be able to figure it out.  Unfortunately if that happens, the matter is out of my hands.

a sing to shay

A busy work schedule and some misfired weekend plans have meant that I haven't gotten up to the MFA to see their new exhibits (the Cubism show, as well as Degas to Picasso, and, new this weekend, the David Hockney portraits), nor anywhere else, for that matter.  I hope to change that soon.  I will say that Charles Giuliano's review of the D2P installation of modern works from the collection calls it pretty much as I have expected it would be:

It is director Malcolm Rogers attempt to get some street cred in the field of modern art. Many of the works by minor modern masters haven’t seen the light of day for decades, if ever. Seen as a whole, these tandem exhibitions attempt to overwhelm visitors in their sheer numbers and command of wall space. There are some 280 plus works on view in the Degas to Picasso show. But, truth be told, other than the occasional painting, some of which are just terrific and a lot more not, this is a show of mostly prints, drawings and photographs; an area in which the museum’s curators collected intelligently and aggressively.

There's much more on the history of Boston collecting there, so check it out.

Giuliano also has a new column up at his own website on the recently concluded CAA conference.  Highlights include discussion of sessions on the Pollock Matters situation and art critics and criticism within CAA and other artworld institutions.  Lots of interest there for those who skipped the meeting and are even quite skeptical about it.  For my part, as I had no thought of going (though the joy of AAM looms on the horizon), John Berryman's great, drunken mockery  goes to show that nothing ever changes, over time or across disciplines.

Dream Song 35: MLA

Hey, out there!—assistant professors, full,
associates,—instructors—others—any—
I have a sing to shay.
We are assembled here in the capital
city for Dull—and one professor's wife is Mary—
at Christmastide, hey!

and all of you did theses or are doing
and the moral history of what we were up to
thrives in Sir Wilson's hands—
who I don't see here—only deals go screwing
some of you out, some up—the chairmen too
are nervous, little friends—

a chairman's not a chairman, son, forever,
and hurts with his appointments; ha, but circle—
take my word for it—
though maybe Frost is dying—around Mary;
forget your footnotes on the old gentleman;
dance around Mary.

--John Berryman

maintaining distinctions

Todd writes this post so I don't have to.  Seriously, the Whitney angle, about which I know nothing, aside, it's almost exactly what I've been muttering to myself all week.  I'll only elaborate by saying that the need on the part of those who hold what are by most any standard very rewarding positions (and I don't mean only curators) to aggrandize further what they do by claiming it as art demeans both their own vocation and that which they imagine it to be.  Anyway, I'll be back soon, I promise.

you listen to love with your intellect

So some guy on NPR explained the success of the Artic Monkeys in the UK by saying their "sound and images resonate with the young."  Huh.  Wonder why no one tried that before.  In music that resonates with old people, I stumbled on the classic rawk station while driving around over the weekend just in time to hear Paul McCartney (and Wings!), "Jet", back to back with Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open the Door".  I won't deny that the former is a bit of a guilty pleasure, but the latter . . . well, look at him, that so-sensitive fallen angel.  It's a cliche to say that Empty Glass has the songs the Who would have recorded if Pete wasn't giving up on them at the time, and that's true enough.  What's less often noted is how the record provides definitive proof that a mid-life crisis, serious substance abuse, and sexual confusion can propel an aging rocker to a great pretty good record.  And given that he had the sense to include one of the best pure pop songs he ever wrote among the tracks, a nice little hit as well.  I'm sure his family feels it was all worth it.

istanbul (not constantinople)

Theophilos Palaiologos

This is the last year, this the last
of the Greek emperors. And, alas,
how sadly those around him talk.
Kyr Theophilos Palaiologos
in his grief, in his despair, says:
"I would rather die than live."

Ah, Kyr Theophilos Palaiologos,
how much of the pathos, the yearning of our race,
how much weariness
(such exhaustion from injustice and persecution)
your six tragic words contained.

--Constantine Cavafy
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

frogs around a pond

In Mamluk Alexandria, we are told by the Gardner's Bellini catalog, Venetian merchants were generally limited to their fondaco and did not have the run of the city.  In Damascus, matters were different; Venetians went as they pleased, bought houses in different quarters, wore local clothes, and adopted the city as a second home.  As in antiquity, when a merchant in old Antioch might have India or even China in one view and Spain or northern Europe in the other, the traders from Venice or beyond had access to the widest traffic of the Eurasian land mass from a city such as Damascus.  Venice was a city of essentially medieval origin, Damascus far older, but had gained its greatest fame and importance as the capital of the Umayyads.  In the Reception of the Venetian Ambassadors in Damascus (sorry, no image) by a follower of Gentile Bellini, the view of the city behind the main scene shows the Great Mosque, a sight that would have been familiar to visitors of the time, with its great mosaic decoration offering some of the final flowers of the late antique era.  At the end of the fifteenth century, when the painting was made and Bellini traveled to Istanbul, the Roman Empire in the east was only a few decades gone, though it had been rotting for some time.  Both Venice and the Islamic conquerors of Byzantium thought themselves to be its heirs, and in many ways, they both were.  They sat, as did the Byzantines, and the earlier Romans and Greeks before them, like frogs around a pond - even if they were tied to lands far beyond in ways their predecessors were not.  The fading and loss of one of the greatest continual facts of that pond was something that the entire eastern Mediterranean (and beyond) still struggled to absorb even as Bellini went to paint the Sultan's portrait.

two from the Globe

The Boston Globe reported yesterday that the Harvard University Art Museums will be temporarily relocating to Allston while the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger undergo renovation (the Sackler will remain open with selected works from the collection on view.)  The article contains a small nod to the rumored possibility of Fort Point Channel as a potential location, which unfortunately will not be the case.  Allston I'm sure makes sense for HUAM, given Harvard's other plans in the area, but the South Boston waterfront would have been a terrific location for everyone else.  In any event, the temporary site will eventually give way to a space for contemporary art also in Allston, and some museum staff will be staying there as well, banished from the 02138 zip code.  The project may ultimate cost $100 million and take until 2015 to complete.  $100 million!  2015!  Those are staggering numbers for a university museum, even the small group of them that HUAM represents.  I don't visit the Fogg as much as I used to - some of the permanent installations have grown dull, and I tend to think of large parts of it as representing a 1st rate collection of 2nd rate art.  But the gap its closing (even with the temporary site) will leave will be large.  I can only hope they'll have put away the Pre-Raphaelites when they reopen.

Also, Cate McQuaid reviews the Dana Schutz show at Brandeis.  Short version: she liked it.  The accompanying photos offer one of the only decent online images of Shutz's Surgery, which I thought one of the strongest works in the exhibition.  What can't be seen online is the speck that the central figure is reaching to pick out of the patient's body is a succulent little dollop of impasto.  The metaphors seemed to generate themselves, and I found it very amusing.  On the other hand, what McQuaid writes about the painting resonates with some of what I felt about Shutz as well:

Although Schutz's canvases are hot-toned and painted with brawny, expressionistic, almost sculptural strokes and filled with sometimes outrageous, push-button scenes, a chilly sense of disassociation marks them -- as if she's 10, and her subjects are dolls she's outgrowing but still plays with. Look at "Surgery." In it, a woman, eyes wide, lies on a table with limbs splayed. A group surrounds her, picking at her with forceps or scissors; one reaches into her skull and probes at her brain. They take a clinical interest in what's going on, but nobody shows concern that the patient is on the verge of disappearing as they pick away at her flesh.

That disassociation, and the sense of a bored child playing, is what I was responding to when I made the comparison to a kid playing video games and deliberately messing them up, to see what would happen.  Is it too much to say that McQuaid and I are both responding to what feels like (at times) an adolescent quality in the work?  I'm saying this not to dismiss the work, but because I enjoyed it and wanted the artist to strive for more.

going out theme

To end the lamest week in the life of this blog in proper lame fashion:

1. "California Sun" - The Dictators
2. "I'll Take Care of You" - Bobby "Blue" Bland
3.  "Another Girl, Another Planet" - The Only Ones
4.  "Eight of Magic" - The Pebbles
5.  "New Slang" - The Shins
6.  "Darling, Let's Have Another Baby" - Kirsty MacColl and Billy Bragg
7.  "When I Saw You" - The Ronnettes
8.  "Hello Kitty" - Cub
9.  "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" - Louis Jordan
10.  "Tell Me When It's Over" - Dream Syndicate

Psst, guys - it's over.

1 was the final song the Dictators played the time I saw them, maybe 15 years ago; I bet it's the last song every night.  2 and 3 are sublime in very different ways.  I like the record 4 is from, but my real disappointment is that their first record went in the U.S. under the title The Pebbles First Album instead of the so-much-better Eat the Pebbles.  Dig that cover, too.  5 sounds like something from the White Album to me, while 6 is very fun and sweet, from a fine record.  7 is one of the best Ronnettes ever, not one of the uptempo hits but a teenage torch song.  And the quote from Winston Churchill on Ronnie's webpage linked to above . . . there's got to be a story behind that.  Or he just went around saying that to everybody, either one.

reports of my death: only slightly exaggerated

I hope you've all been enjoying this week's special series, "Blog Tailspin."  I'd like to see Charlie Finch come up with incisive artwriting like this, believe me.  In between my daily dives into the woodchipper that is my job, I've been rereading Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (volume I at the moment), inspired, as I mentioned before, by the Gardner's Bellini exhibition.  The book's a bit broader in scope, to say the least.  One might wonder how a history devoted to la longue durée could illuminate artworks, which must seem as epiphenomenal from such a perspective.  And in truth, it can't, at least not in any direct way.  It's still great fun to read, reveling in Braudel's fascination with climate, trade routes, patterns of settlement and nomadism, commercial contacts across almost the span of the globe, with the Mediterranean spinning at the center of the web.  So many steps taken to get a sack of pepper from India to Nuremburg!  Venice, of course, is near the center of the story, as is the period (broadly considered) of Bellini's mission to the court of Mehmed II in the still newly-conquered Istanbul.  The artworks that are the beautiful, unique contingencies of that particular encounter are not in any simple way the product of the deep patterns Braudel traces, but are marked by them nonetheless.  The artistic and political traditions of the Mediterranean world were being renewed and reinterpreted in a changed situation, and those involved drew upon resources ancient and modern to find their way.  A thrilling moment early in Braudel's work (thrilling for me, at least) occurs when he illustrates the slow movement of ideas and modes along the east-west trade routes by noting that the clothing fashions of fifth-century China arrived in Europe just in time to be depicted in Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry.  In a somewhat different way, the legacy of the slow accretions of Mediterranean civilization are part of  that with which Bellini and Mehmed II worked in presenting a new image to the world.

On a slightly related note, another book that's come to my attention recently and sounds fascinating for some of the same reasons as the above is Olivia Remie Constable's Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.  It's a study of the wayhouses, civic and religious, enclosed quarters, and warehouses of the ancient and medieval world, as well as the social/cultural ideas surrounding them.  It may not sound like much, but these were the essential, delicate elements required for that vast, slow pattern of commerce and travel to occur through the Mediterranean and further east.  A very good review is here.  Worth reading.