http://www.mit.edu/~ruchill/lazycurator.html

Now, at the push of a button, you can make up the title of your very own art exhibition, with a real colon and everything!

Mine was  Postcolonial Dreams: John Waters and Too Many
Dinner Parties. That sounds nice.

This weekend, I saw a performance of Tennessee Williams’ “Vieux Carré” by The Wooster Group. The Wooster Group is an ensemble of experimental theater artists. They are based in New York City at The Performing Garage in Soho, and their productions tour nationally and internationally.

The video, from the groups video blog, is a mashup of text from reviews of the play, script and stage directions.

The text below is their description of the play (I’ll try to add one of my own to this post sometime soon).

Like Williams’ first big success The Glass Menagerie, Vieux Carré (1977) is a “memory play,” set in the boarding house in New Orleans where Williams himself stayed as a young man during the Depression. The young writer, as narrator, remembers his artistic and sexual awakening there. Inhabitants of the house swirl up out of the writer’s mind as archetypal Williams characters, longing for release and haunted by thwarted dreams. In The Wooster Group’s version of Vieux Carré, the Group experiments with new modes of expression for Williams’ lyric voice.

In this photo, the guy on the left seems to have an opinion about the guy on the right, but look who’s talkin’!

I was one of the writers participating in the 23rd Annual Critics’ Residency program, at the Maryland Art Place. Along the way, I saw some great art, met some interesting people, and I’ve grown as a writer. Art criticism is a new “language” for me, but I think I’ve definitely learned some new vocabulary.

About the Program

Now in its twenty-third year, theCritics’ Residency program served as a pilot program for both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. Unique in its premise, the program is a collaborative effort that works to bring a nationally-renowned critic to Baltimore each year to mentor writers while showcasing the talent of area artists.

This year’s exhibition includes the work of artists: Ken Ashton, Jessie Boyko, Dottie Campbell, Bernhard Hildebrandt, Gil Jawetz, Bonnie Kotula, Kim Manfredi, and Lynn Rybicki.

Intended to stimulate critical discourse within the region, this year-long program concludes with an exhibition of artwork selected by critic Vincent Katz during studio visits; a catalogue of critical writing by participating writers, Martin Johnson and Dylan R. Kinnett, an essay contributed by the critic; and a public forum where participants are invited to exchange ideas about contemporary art with the public.

This year’s Public Forum took place on Saturday, May 9th at 2 pm, moderated by Aaron Henkin, co-creator and producer of WYPR’s radio arts program,The Signal.

There is an art exhibition in Baltimore that spans two museums.

At the Contemporary Museum, the show isDawoud Bey: Class Pictures, a collection of color photo portraits. Dawoud Bey took “The Class Pictures” of students in public and private high school students in cities across the country. They’re real portraits though, with personality. These are not the cheesy backdrop photos we all lined up to have taken in high school. The portraits depict students from all over the country, and from many walks of life. In sum, these portraits of individuals offer a portrait of their world.

At the Walters Museum, the other part of the show is calledPortraits Re/Examined. This show was curated, in part, by high school students. They worked with artist Dawoud Bey to select portraits from the Walters collection to show alongside 10 of Bey’s similarly evocative portraits. The students were asked to address the question of race and class in portraiture. Some striking comparisons have developed between the older historic drawings, paintings, and portrait miniatures from the Walters’ collection and the contemporary photographs of ordinary people.

The student-curators also will create auxiliary components for the exhibition, including a blog, Facebook page, podcast series, and cell phone audio tour.

Both exhibitions run from December 13, 2008 until February 16, 2009.

For months now, all the talk in my neighborhood has been about the Round Robin Tour. Something like a dozen Baltimore bands have been on tour together. What’s special about it is the format of the show. The show starts, and one band plays one song. Immediately after that, another band plays another song, and so on until all the bands have played a song. Then, they do it again, and again. It’s great! For anyone who gets sick of listening to sound checks between each and every band, this is a dream come true. It’s a wonderful idea, and Baltimore is very proud to have these bands draw huge crowds nationwide – no kidding, huge crowds! The show’s almost over, but there’s one performance left, and you can download the compilation from the tour!

Tonight, the Round Robin tour celebrated its homecoming at Sonar, here in Baltimore, by kicking off a two-night series of round robin performances. The first night was called “eyes night” and it featured nearly as much performance art as music. Many of the acts were accompanied by video projections, and the overall vibe was mellower. Tomorrow, feet night, will be more raucous.

Baltimore Round Robin 2008.

Another interesting thing about this tour is that the tour bus they used is powered by vegetable oil.

This whole thing was concocted by the same talented crew who brought an event called Whartscape as an answer to Baltimore’s Artscape. The group’s called Wham City.

Here’s a rundown of the many and diverse performances to be seen and heard in the Round Robin Tour.

The Baker Artists Awards celebrate Baltimore’s artists on the Web with an ongoing exhibition of its diverse artistic practice, and the Mary Sawyer Baker Prize will establish Baltimore’s reputation as a creatively rich and vital place to live with a civic commitment to value its individual artists.

Please take a minute to visit my work on the Baker Artist Awards web site. As a Baltimore artist, I am eligible to win the significant Mary Sawyers Baker Prize or maybe bragging rights as Baltimore’s Choice. Either way, please follow the link and vote for me… and, if you live in Baltimore, you could also Nominate your own work! Now go sign-up and vote to help me get my work out there!

Visit my nomination at http://www.bakerartistawards.org/nomination/view/dylan-kinnett

Today I finished readingThe Basis of Criticism in the Arts by Stephen C. Pepper. I promised a friend that I would a quick overview of the four categories of art criticism that are described in the book.

Stephen C. Pepper’s “Theory of Empirical Criticism” goes something like this. Good criticism, even art criticism, is akin to good philosophy. It ought to be rational, and based on evidence. Data, such as empirical observations (i.e. “facts”) can be given as evidence. Feelings and impressions can be given as factual evidence, too. Evidence of feelings and impressions is called “danda” – an often overlooked type of evidence, in the sciences, but a very important one when it comes to art. Evidence of these facts is the only legitimate basis for criticism. (Skepticism is not as good as evidence. Dogma is not as good as evidence. Superstition is not to be confused with danda; it is not evidence. )

Pepper says there are four useful ways to organize evidence. With these things in mind, he proposes four distinct ways to approach art criticism.

Mechanistic Criticism

This is probably the most common, and perhaps the default type of art criticism. Here’s how it works. It should be self-evident that pleasure is good, pain is bad. Mechanistic criticism is a logical extension of that truth. If the art causes pleasure, then it is good art. If it does not cause pleasure, then it is bad art. (The “mechanistic” question here seems to be, “How does the art cause me to feel?” ) Since people have varying thresholds for pain and pleasure, it makes sense that they would have varying standards regarding the qualities of art. Sophisticated mechanistic criticism will delve into the reasons why a work of art can cause pleasure. The mechanics of pleasure can be at work wherever the senses can find it: sound, rhythm, sight, pattern, texture, etc.. Conversely, a sophisticated mechanistic criticism will criticize art in terms of its ability or failure to cause pleasure. If the art fails to cause pleasure, it can be compared to something that does cause pleasure, and lessons can be learned. Mechanistic criticism is often described with words like “hedonistic” or “epicurean”, although those words are unfortunately associated with gluttony. It isn’t really the goal of mechanistic criticism to advocate for gluttony, so much as mere pleasure.

Contextualistic Criticism

This is the type of criticism that would probably be most useful for performance art, theater, and the like. Here’s how it works. All things are subject to cause and effect. With art, the object of art is (usually) the effect. The act of creating the art is (usually) the cause. In any case there’s an event involved, whenever there is art (sometimes the art itself is the event). Contextualistic criticism is chiefly concerned with events, but not just the creation events.

All things are also experienced; they are sensed somehow. With art, the object of art is experienced. It is seen, or heard, or touched or even imagined. So, contextualistic criticism is an examination of those events, the creation and the experience of the art. If the work of art involves a good experience, then it is a good work of art. If it does not involve a good experience, then it is a bad work of art. The “good experience” here is not exactly like the pleasurable experience that mechanism emphasizes. The criterion in this case is the intensity, or the depth of the experience. For example, the horrific tale of Odysseus vs. the Cyclops may be frightening, and therefore off-putting from a mechanistic point of view, but wow what a rush! From a contextualistic point of view, that rush might qualify the story as “good”.

The “event” in question might also be a historical event. Contextualism considers these events as well. For this reason, most of the types of criticism I learned about in college fall under this category: psycho-analysis, historicism, Marxism, maybe even feminism – these are all concerned with factors at play upon the art event. They are all part of the context.

Organistic Criticism

Where contextualism stresses the qualities of the experience, or the event, organistic criticism stresses a unity of experience. The difference is subtle, and I’m not sure I fully understand it yet. In science, organistic thinking is any consideration for a part’s relationship to a whole: atoms and molecules, the classification of species, planets and galaxies, etc. In art, the organistic concern is the unity of things. Is the work of art a coherent whole? Do its parts combine into more than their sum? Are there no extraneous parts? Is the plot orderly? How are the parts connected? Aristotle is a perfect example of an organistic critic. About art and science and literature, he wrote about these things.

(I’d like to edit this post to contain examples of the other types of criticism, as well.)

Formistic Criticism

This one has a misleading name. They all have difficult names, but this one sounds like it should be the name of organistic criticism, which considers the form of things, but no. Formistic criticism is more like psychology, or sociology. (I know, there’s a debate over whether those two things are the same. I don’t want to go there.) Stephen C. Pepper, being an American Pragmatist, had to sneak this one in at the end of his book. I smell an agenda here, so I’m going to attempt to rephrase this category.

According to Pepper: the formistic aesthetic value is defined as conformity with the norm implicit in the art object itself. In addition, formism champions common sense as the ultimate authority on whether a work of art is good, or not.

There is an ancient theory of perception, older even than Aristotle, which states that only like perceives like … A man appreciates in that only a normal man, with a well integrated and relatively free emotional life, can perceive normality. … The norm is embodied there (in the work), and a normal man finds satisfaction because his impulses are in harmony with the impulses of the work, both being normal. … Formism in its stress on the perceptions and reactions of the normal man thus acts as a sort of governor over the whole aesthetic field. It holds art to the healthy golden mean, to what is sane and sound.

Nowadays, I’m not really sure how much we need to appeal to a “healthy golden mean” with our aesthetics. I wonder what that would do to the art market, if suddenly the demand were normalized in spite of all the variety in the product. I’m going to try to rephrase formistic criticism, as a different sort of approach to “the norm”.

If there has never been anything like it before, if it defies classification, a formistic critic will be dismayed. If there has, then the formistic critic will quickly set to work comparing the similarities, looking for the trends, the norms, the –isms and even the post-s. We have formistic criticism to thank for all the –isms in the art lexicon, I think. This is probably the second most common type of criticism, after mechanistic criticism.

How is this talk of –isms different from a contextualist discussion of events, moments, and contexts? I think the difference is that the contextualist would put the emphasis on the experience of the art, but a formistic approach is most concerned with the norms that it embodies.

There Are No Categories!

After that long discussion of –istic –isms, and right after I wash my mouth out, I’d like to question the author of this book on one more point. He says that these four categories are best left distinct from each other. He says, in the introduction, that they shouldn’t be used together. He also cautions against the influence of dogma over criticism, so I’m sure he won’t mind if I try an integrated approach. Why can’t I use them all? Why can’t I use elements from each, as needed? Wouldn’t that be a great way to avoid dogma anyway? Breaking all the criticism into categories is an interesting exercise, for explaining how the criticism works, but is it really useful as a way to conduct criticism? I guess I’ll find out.

There’s this new, controversial anthology of nearly 4,000 poems, entitledIssue 1. It is large enough to defy the limits of traditional bookbinding, with its 3,785 pages. It defies another assumption about books, too. This anthology was compiled by editors Stephen McLaughlin, Gregory Laynor & Vladimir and Aleksandrovich Zykov, but its contents weren’t exactly “written”. An article in Poetry Magazine’s blog describes exactly how the text was compiled. Suffice it to say that the book was generated, not written.

Issue 1 features the names of several thousand people, living and dead, poets and not. With each name is a poem, or at least what looks like a poem. These texts were not written by the people whose names accompany the texts. Instead, some of the texts appear to have been algorithmically generated by a computer program named Erica T. Carter.

It’s worth noting that the purpose of this computer program, aside from the linguistic parsing of patterns in English poetry, is to “disrupt the Academy’s mission of exclusion, its selfishness and greed, its supercilious arrogance. It does so by composing texts that democratize both the processes of reading and writing. It’s obvious that many of Erica’s poems are as good as most of what emerges as academic verse. But more important, absent an author, any reader’s reading is a valid reading.”

Many of the people whose names appear in theIssue 1 publication are angry, because their names appear in the anthology, without permission, and alongside texts that they did not write. A good overview of the controversy was titled “How to Make a Poet Cry on the Interweb Using Search Technologies”

The people at forgodot.com announced early last week that they would release an anthology called “Issue 1″ with new poetry from […] around 4000 names, most of which belong to contemporary poets who might be considered “avant-garde” and dead ones. […] if you were […] one of the other living poets they claimed they would publish, you would […] go to their site and realize that you had neither submitted any poetry to them nor had given permission to use anything previously published. This would leave you with three options. You could get irate or elated that someone actually bothered to list your name with contemporaries and icons, or you could keep a wary eye on their site to see what would happen next. One way of doing that would be doing what I did: leave a comment and ask to be notified when others did the same. Your inbox would then flood with hundreds of comments.

I blogged about it, other poets blogged about it, it became an instant internet meme. Everyone in the poetry world knew about it.

One of the most popular blogs about poetry is maintained by Ron Silliman, whose name was also used inIssue 1. He is one that might fall into the “irate” category, and he does have a point. After briefly reviewing what’s interesting aboutIssue 1, he concluded, Issue 1 is what I would call an act of anarcho-flarf vandalism. (You may be wondering: what is Flarf, anyway?) Silliman and others have mentioned the possibility of legal action.

The PDF file that containsIssue 1 disappeared from the internet shortly after its publication – perhaps in response to the controversy – but it resurfaced. Along with it came a “polite clarification” from the editors. This kind of clarification is important to consider, before deciding whether to condemn or censor a work of art.

Indulge me in an obscure analogy. Let’s say I sit down and write the most vile, nasty, over-the-line-type-of-toxic-racist missive I can think of. Better yet, rearrange some Google vomit into an original composition and save myself a few minutes. If I were to distribute this speech, it would be considered a hate crime. I could, however, shape this text into letterforms — say, large 120pt letters composed of 10pt type. If I were to spell something like “racism is bollocks” out of such illegal text, the mode of reading would be altered. The formerly despicable statement would be neutralized.

This is an approximation of my original expectations regarding the reception of this magazine. I expected its size, format, and (to my eye) clearly algorithmically generated content to make our intentions clear. I wholeheartedly support the world of small press publishing and small press writing. Following the distribution of Issue 1, I would consider myself to be a member of that community on some small scale.

A lot has been written aboutIssue 1 and not all of it is negative. In addition to this clarification, and the post on Poetry’s blog, a recent radio interview from Ceptuetics gives an account of the motivations and methods behind the creation ofIssue 1. It has been pointed out that the appropriation here is nothing new, in the art world. Marcel Duchamp comes to mind for creating things similar toIssue 1. The difference, I suppose, is that DaVinci was long dead, and couldn’t be bothered when Duchamp added facial hair to the Mona Lisa. Rauschenberg erased a work of art by de Kooning, and de Kooning approved, reluctantly. So you see, something likeIssue 1 is not without precedent.

For my part, I’m intrigued to see that my name made it on a list that is largely comprised of living, “post-avant” poets. Some of the other poets who were included have chosen to go ahead and “claim” the poetry that appears with their name. In closing, here’s “my” poem.

Improved existence and second habiliments

A habiliment of fore-ends
A habiliment of invasions
A habiliment of surgeons
A habiliment of banquets

A leverrier
A leverrier
A leverrier
A leverrier

Wrapping oxygen

Dissolving past
Dissolving existence
Dissolving plucking

Implored
Implored

— Dylan Kinnett

Ever since I met with Physicalism, I’ve been curious about what its like to be an art critic. Physicalism is somewhat antagonistic towards art criticism, for its tendency towards “bullshit”, but it can’t all be bullshit, can it? What if it is? Can it be fixed?

I decided to try being an art critic first hand. Of course, I’ve got no formal training in the field. I don’t have an art degree of any sort. Although my Dad’s an art professor, and I grew up surrounded by art, artists, and talk about art, that hardly qualifies me as a competent critic. I have studied philosophy though. There’s a lot of crossover, I’m discovering, between the field of philosophy and that of art theory. I have a writing degree, so I should be able to write about anything, even art, right?

I put together a sample of my writing and submitted it so that I could be considered for the 23rd Annual Critics’ Residency Program at the Maryland Art Place. I figured it was a long shot, but what the hell. It seems like an interesting program. Here’s how they describe it.

Taking place throughout the course of a year, the program will include studio visits and writers’ workshops led by critic Vincent Katz and will culminate with an exhibition, a catalogue containing critical essays and images of selected artwork, and a public forum.

I wasn’t quite sure what to submit for a writing sample. It’s not like I’m an established art critic or anything. I haven’t even freelanced an art review for the newspaper (although, that’s an ulterior motive of mine). I thought about, maybe, including the editorial from the first issue if Infinity’s Kitchen. Then, I thought against it. Still, it’s a good read, if you haven’t read it already. I finally settled on it. I gave them an excerpt from the undergraduate thesis I wrote. The second chapter of the thesis, titled Aesthetics in a Hypertext Age had a good bit of content that passes for art criticism in it.

Then, I dug through a bunch of notes I took during college philosophy classes. I was looking for something else I could cannibalize for the writing sample. I ended up stumbling on an interesting question: “How do we make meaning of things?” I applied the question to a new essay, which ended up being too long to include in the writing sample. That essay is called Meaning and Experience. (At least, that’s the first part. There’s more to say.)

I’m happy to say that I’ve been accepted to that writing program. It starts next Saturday. I’m very excited. Until then, I’m burying my nose in a book titled The Basis of Criticism in the Arts.

A man encounters a work of art. It is a mobile, with steel arms and flat sails that catch the currents in the air, warm and cold. Across and back it turns, arcing slowly through space, like a clockwork of metal clouds. The man says, “That’s not art, that pile of metal parts there. That’s not art. Why, I could have made that!”

Right! You could have made that! A human being made that. That’s the point. Then, it’s up to the other humans to come by and see the thing, wonder about it, and maybe make some sense out of it.

How is that sense made?

There are two types of sense that a work of art can make. It can have meaning. It can also be experienced. Of course, it has both qualities and they blend. It is important to be aware of both senses, and to be able to tell them apart, because we make these different senses in different ways.

Philosopher Robert Stecker’s essay “Depiction as Seeing-In” sheds some light on one way we experience a work of art. We see the object itself, but then we see-in the object. There is often something else that the object depicts.

Seeing-in stands in contrast with ordinary seeing. Of course, when I look at a painting I do see it in the ordinary sense. I see a canvas covered by paint that has certain properties: a rectangular shape, a colored surface, and a visible design on that surface. If I truly see all of these things then it follows that there exists a painting that has the various properties mentioned so far, just as if I see a brown cow, there is a brown cow that I see. … Further, while I am seeing-in the painting these various things, I am typically still aware that I am looking at a painting with certain surface design features.

Now, if the image depicted on the object were a religious icon, for example, then perhaps there is another level of seeing-in. In a symbolic image, the symbol is seen-in the image, which is similar to the way that an image is seen-in an object.

Of course, not all meaning is pictorial or symbolic. Instead of seeing-in, there are a variety of questions we can ask to see-around the art, to give it context, which is another kind of meaning. We could ask: Who made the thing? Was that person male or female, rich or poor?  With what intention was it made? Out of which materials? Where and when was it made? Who was it made for? Can I do anything with it?

Seeing-in and seeing-around are both intellectual pursuits. For the most part, questions of depiction, symbolic intent and context can all be answered in concrete ways. These questions generally arrive at objective answers.

Some critics would infer from these objective, intellectual qualities that the meaning of art is universal. T.S. Eliot says, for example, that the greatness of a work of art, or literature, stems from that work’s universal meaning. More recently, Noel Carroll echoes that idea by adding that “if anything is to count as a necessary condition of art status, then it must be a property had by every artwork.” But is universality even possible? If it is not possible, is it relevant? Are the objective qualities the only relevant qualities?

Even if we could know that something held the same meaning for everyone who encountered it, how would we know that they all held that meaning to the same degree, or for the same reasons? Experience, as we all know, is a subjective thing. It is rarely apprehended by everyone in the same way. How can it be universal? How is experience related to meaning?

There have already been several frustrated rebellions against universality in art. These rebellions emphasized more subjective qualities such as abstraction, experimentation for its own sake, intentional meaninglessness, and expressionism. These qualities are all related to experience.

Experience is not objective. It is more felt than known, more shown than described. Experience is incompatible with the idea of universal meaning.

Beauty is the chief victim of this incompatibility. Beauty is the most subjective quality, and therefore the least democratic, the least saleable. Our culture does not prefer to ask: why make this thing? How does the thing make me feel? What ideas, sensations, feelings, memories, or notions does the thing evoke in me? Is it a beautiful thing? Our culture does not emphasize these questions because, necessarily, the answers would not be concrete or consistent. Many of us are uncomfortable with the subjective qualities in art, and possibly also with those qualities within ourselves.

A man encounters a mobile sculpture, with steel arms and flat sails. There is nothing depicted for him to see-in it. It symbolizes nothing to him. He has no context for it. His experience of the thing has been that the thing is meaningless. He gives up. This is an unfortunate result, because understanding isn’t everything, when it comes to art. Art is not science.

Art can, in many cases, leave us confronted by a thing that defies the ability to see in it, any meaning.  In addition, there are unfortunate circumstances where the context needed to see-around it is unclear or missing. What, then, are we left to do in order to make any sense out of the art?

We are left to experience it.

This will be a zine with literature and art, in particular, but we’re open to anything, in general. We’ll consider artwork of any media, style, or subject. The zine will have an online component, as well as a paper issue, so feel free to submit video, audio, etc.

We reject the notion that great art comes only out of misery and that all good artists are filled with angst and frustration. We say: delight — rather than despair — in creation. Artists are still constrained by certain dogmas, or unquestioned “truths” about what art is or should be. We encourage you to question rules about art and literature. We prefer to explore sensory imagery. Create an innovative process, combine media; and remember: there are no categories!

As a contributor, your work remains your sole property, and you grant our zine one-time rights to publication. Compensation for your inclusion in this, the inaugural issue, will be in the form of contributors’ copies, your name in lights, everlasting glory, etc.

To contribute, or for more info:
zine@nocategories.net

This just in from the notorious Lord North…

Well met, my friends. My latest solo painting show is in the hallways of my workplace, Disney Feature Animation! So if you happen by Burbank, California, gimme a ring and I’ll get you in there to see them! Since that may be inconvenient for you, I’ve thrown them up online at www.lord-north.com

Follow the links to “Strange Loops.”

Comments are appreciated.

Love to you and yours

Lord North is so notorious, to me, because I know him from my adolescence in West Virginia, when he and other like minded art students founded an organization called the Epicenter. It was an old barn turned artist space, and for a few years, it was a lot of fun.

Lord North was also the guest editor of my zine, once.

This is the cover of the issue he made, entitled “The Dam Age”. I’ve also unearthed the zine itself, which I’ll try to put online soon.

Check out his paintings. They’re delicious.

. . . make something, which experiences, reacts to its environment, changes, is . . . nonstable . . . . . . Make something indeterminate, which always looks different, the shape of which cannot be predicted precisely . . . . . . make something, which cannot "perform" without the assistance of its environment . . . . . . make something, which reacts to light and temperature changes, is subject to air currents and depends, in its functioning, on the forces of gravity . . . . . . make something, which the "spectator" handles, which he plays and thus animates it . . . . . . make something, which lives in time and make the spectator experience time . . . . . . articulate something natural . . .

Hans Haacke, 1966

On Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (3/11-3/13) the Armory Show: the International Fair of New Art, was visited by the Physicalists, a group of artists who are challenging what has become the norm in contemporary art: art that is “deep”, angst ridden and visually uninteresting.

The Physicalists passed out over 300 balloons printed with the tenets of Physicalism (“refuse to bullshit”, “delight in creation”, “question art dogma”, “invent visual ideas”, and “emphasize beauty”.) Along with the balloons, they passed out over 400 copies of the Physicalist manifesto.

People were delighted. They exited the crowded Armory show and were greeted by sunny skies and smiling Physicalists in white jumpsuits.

The Armory show was the Physicalists’second installation (the first was at Miami Art Basel and involved eggs). The Physicalists have installations already planned for Los Angeles and Berlin later this year.

For more information contact physicalists@physicalism.org

Which is more beautiful – a butterfly or a cockroach?

On Friday the Thirteenth, tucked away in an off-beat bar, there was a fashion show called “Fashion Monsters”. A good time was had by all.

My friend Trisha has posted a new set of photographs. After the invaluable moral assistance she offered to me in the middle of the other night, I thought I’d try to get some Karma back by publicizing her lovely photographs. This set depicts Alice In Wonderland.

I recieved an e-mail today. It sparked my curiosity. Read it for yourself:

Greeetings friends, family, and fellow Physicalists,

For those of you who do not know, Physicalism is the name of we have given the group of ideas we have in response to the current state of contemporary art. In short, Physicalism is pro-beauty and anti-bullshit. We embrace visual ideas and invention and are fed up with the dense, inaccessible, angst-filled, “deep,” and ugly art the art education, art institutions and the art market promote. We do not think that one should need a degree in art, art history, or philosophy in order to be able to “get” or appreciate a work of art. Whether the meaning in a work of art is contained in visual or non-visual ideas, we think that the meaning should be accessible through the physical piece of art itself. We are fed up with looking at ugly- but supposedly “very deep and insightful” – crap. Out with angst, we say! Back to beauty!

As most of you know, the first installation in the name of Physicalism was executed at Miami Art Basel, December 1-4. Over one hundred beautiful, white, and mysteriously hollow eggs with five phrases on them were strategically placed in and around the art that was officailly being shown this year. Many eggs were left in the Miami Beach Convention Center, where the main event was housed. Others were scattered throughout the Miami art scene, from South Beach to the Wynwood Art and Design District. (Venues that were “hit” included: the Rubell Collection, NADA Art Fair, Art Positions, the South Beach Boardwalk, The Fountainbleau and Delano Hotels, the News Cafe, the Chihuly exhibit at Fairchild Gardens, and many, many others.)

This is a picture of our eggs.

This is a picute of an egg installed at “Art Positions” on Miami Beach during Art Basel. The Physicalsim website is www.physicalsim.org. It has on it the five main tenets of the movement:

• Question art dogma.
• Create visual ideas.
• Refuse to bullshit.
• Delight in creation.
• Emphasize beauty.

More information, including a longer and more in-depth description of Physicalism, is soon to come.

Please feel free to forward this email along to anyone you think might be interested, and we are open to any thoughts, feedback, criticism, and ideas that any of you have.

At last, we again delight in our senses!
– The Physicalists

During my work for One Love World Imports, I’ve come across some beautiful artwork. It has been my happy duty to clean up these images in photoshop, so that the works they depict can be sold, at fair prices.

My Friend Trisha has completed a new set of photography. She calls it “pin up” photography and describes it with adjectives like “artfaggy” and “sec-say-ness”

Trisha Bowyer is a friend of mine, and a damn fine phtographer, too. Trisha has published an online portfolio of photographs by Trisha Bowyer.

My good friend Christopher Robinson has drafted me for rebuilding his outdated website, which will be called Sinister Studio.

Chris is a farmer, an artist, etc. Here are three of his works.

By way of introduction you might read his statement:

When there are to many questions too answer and too many problems to fix it becomes clear that the system itself is wrong. A new system must be implemented seemlessly into the fabric of reality, a new system that actually works, politics must become as adaptable and forceful as nature itself if social change is ever to be acheived.

When there is no time to explain all the rules and no one who can understand them anyway it becomes clear that communication must be updated. Everyone has to understand the goal and agree on the plan before social change can be implemented.

Everything has a pattern, everything is made up of energy vibrating at different frequencies, everything must exist in an infinite universe. Patterns can be mapped and displayed, changes in vibration can be triggered.
Novelty can be manufactured.

The people in power have the power to stay in power. The people without power are giving thier power willfully to the people in power. Every dollar and minute you spend is a vote. When you interact positivly with the power structure you reinforce it.

Most people have needs. Most people are not aware of their options.
My artwork is optional…

A book called “Departed Angels” about Jack Kerouac’s “Lost Paintings” came out a little before Christmas last year and it is a magnificent work! It’s got 130 beautiful color pages of Jack’s drawings, paintings, sketches and notes. And then NYU Professor Ed Adler added another 150 pages of commentary and explanation. Jack even wrote a “List of Essentials” for painting just like he did with his list of “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose“. A magnificent book that adds tremendous insight in to Jack’s art.

For ONE DAY only this Saturday April 30th from 11 AM to 4 PM many of Jack’s paintings and drawings will be on display in Lowell at the Whistler House Museum of Art, 243 Worthern Street, Lowell, MA 01852. Their phone number is 978-452-7641. There is a $5.00 admission to the museum.

Saturday 4/30/05 – Lowell MA
11:00 AM to 4:00 PM – Painting exhibit
2:00 PM – Slide Lecture by Ed Adler, Art Professor NYU
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM – Booksigning and Reception with Ed Adler

If you can’t get to Lowell to get an autographed copy directly from Ed you can order “Departed Angels” at http://www.kerouac.com.

source: Kerouac.com

The National Gallery of Art features an exhibit entitled Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre. It seems the exhibit is well titled, because it is about the district of Montamarre more than it is about the famous artist whose name entitles the exhibit.

Artists’ fascination with the decadent spirit and glamour of bohemian life in the Parisian district of Montmartre at the turn of the 20th century is the focus of this major exhibition of more than 250 works primarily by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). Paintings, drawings, posters, prints, sculptures, zinc silhouettes from the Chat Noir shadow play, and printed matter, such as illustrated invitations, song sheets, advertisements, and admission tickets, will be presented alongside depictions of similar subjects by fellow artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec’s predecessors Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet; his contemporaries Pierre Bonnard, Vincent van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso; and poster artist Jules Chéret.

The themes of the exhibition include dance halls, cafés-concerts, and cabarets (featuring a section devoted to the Chat Noir); and performers, such as Aristide Bruant, La Goulue, Jane Avril, Yvette Guilbert, May Belfort, May Milton, Loïe Fuller, and Marcelle Lender. The exhibition will be dominated by Toulouse-Lautrec’s most important paintings and celebrated posters, including A la Mie (c. 1891), Ambassadeurs: Aristide Bruant (1892), The Laundryman (c. 1894), Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in “Chilpéric” (1895-1896), the Elles poster and album of prints (1896), and 12 of the 50 known Loïe Fuller prints from 1893, colored by hand by the artist.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s work will be seen in the company of important works by many of his contemporaries, including Van Gogh’s Agostina Segatori at the Café du Tambourin (1887); Picasso’s Le Divan Japonais (1901); and Degas’ Café-Concert (c.1876-1877). In addition to seminal paintings, the exhibition will feature a number of important early posters by Jules Chéret, including his Bal du Moulin Rouge (1889) and Folies-Bergère: La Loïe Fuller (1893), and Théophile Alexandre Steinlen’s Tournée du Chat Noir (1896).

Maybe it was because of the length of the line, which gave me time to read the entire text of the exhibition brochure, but I noticed that the exhibition had a text with it. The brochure, the placards beneath the artworks, and the writings on the walls were all taken from the same text. You can read that entire text in the exhibition’s website as well.

It was nice to see some reality shed upon the subject of the “Moulin Rouge” which has been popularized in a recent movie by that name. I had no idea until the exhibit that these words mean “Red Windmill” and that there was one such structure in the neighborhood, near the bar and the brothel.

Another popular hangout in the neighborhood of Montmartre was a club called The Black Cat, which was a scene of many of the performances advertized by the now famous posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

What startled me about this exhibition was that I left it with very little sense of the mood of the place “with its skewed perspective, lurid colors, and perplexing social dynamic… both alienating and arresting — an embodiment of the spirit of Montmartre.”

I guess I’m just jealous of anyone who got to live in such a time and place. In short, this exhibition gave a fascinating account of the context surrounding Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s life and work (the hypertext if you will), but that in turn created a desire to know more about the setting, whic might be something inappropriate to discuss in a public setting such as The National Gallery of Art.

The New York Times reports the discovery of what may have been the studio of Leonardo da Vinci.

FLORENCE, Italy, Jan. 14 – Researchers at a military geography institute here say they have discovered – hiding practically in plain sight in their building – what might have been a workshop for Leonardo da Vinci. …

Italian museum officials are hoping that the discovery of the frescoes and five small rooms where Leonardo might have lived and worked, in a building just off the Piazza of the Santissima Annunziata in central Florence, will help flesh out the life of the artist, inventor and scientist, who embodied the ideal of the Renaissance man.

Look out!
I don’t mean the window,
I mean the helicopters overhead,
the buzz on the phone,
and the police at the door.
Achtung!
The sky is falling
from the atoms they have taken
from the air.
The trees cut to build temples
to oil.
The brown water no longer
fit for fish.
Look out!
When freedom is just another word
for what we have lost.
When peace is another brand
of bomb.
When the national animal is no longer an eagle,
but a sheep.
Achtung!
The Republicans are coming.
The Republicans are coming….
Coming to put us away
in the funny farm that’s not so funny.
In the nuthouse.
In the terrorist jail.
On my conspiratorial horse,
I am Paul Revere passing Dachau on the train.
And the Republicans are coming.
The Republicans are coming….
Look out!
The Germans are hip to White House tricks.
They punched the bully in the nose.
They cite Bukowski and Chomsky
as the philosophers of the age,
instead of Wolfowitz and Bush.
And Dachau is empty
just waiting to be filled up with
the American rich.
Achtung!
Let’s put them all on the Autobahn
without brakes.
On top of the Zugspitze
without skis.
On the bottom of Starnberg Lake
with mad Ludwig.
In the middle of Munich
without clothes.
In the throne room of Neuschwanstein
without thrones.
Look out!
Everything you see is not what it seems.
This is a bad dream.
And everyone is asleep.
Democracy is fascism
spelled backwards.
Politicians are speaking out
of the sides of their mouths.
TV is a frontal lobotomy.
Hollywood is a new religion.
Caesar has risen from the ashes….
Achtung!
Look out!
The Emperor has new clothes,
and it’s all the rage.
Achtung!
Look out!
It’s a new world order.
It’s an old world cage.

Munich to Pfaffenhofen
Spring, 2003

I attended a poetry reading this evening (14th) by Thomas Rain Crowe, with whom I had the honor of sharing my lunch today earlier today. He’s a real bona-fide beatnik, drinking buddy to the stars: Ginsberg and company themselves. That alone was impressive, I suppose. He shared with us some selections of his fiction and his poetry. He told us about his rock band. and his first volume of translations of the poems of the 14th century Persian poet Hafiz, ( Hafiz )According to his bio: “Following six years as Editor-at-Large for the Asheville Poetry Review, he is currently writing a memoir in the style of Thoreau’s Walden based on four years of self-sufficient living in the wilderness environment in the woods of western North Carolina from 1979 to 1982. He currently resides in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. His literary archives have been purchased by and are collected at the Duke University Special Collections Library in Durham, North Carolina.”

Lines I caught: “I will not live in a world without whales or dolphins” and “we are what we aren’t.. Or how else could we intend one thing and do another. We are what we aren’t” “Autchung!” was an inflammatory rant against the current political status quo, not however, against the complacency on the part of most people which what seems to have incensed more than a few audience members. One woman busted out: “and why aren’t the creative people of the world stepping up and doing what the media isn’t doing?” my question is, rather, why aren’t you, lady? You don’t get off saying “oh, I’m not creative,” I’m sorry but you don’t. If you want a world unlike the one you have, and you want it brought to you without being willing to do anything to create what you all – I shouldn’t assume that about her. She interrupted him. “Are you scared!” she meant him. he shook his head and grabbed the microphone “no I’m not scared, or else I would not have read that poem!” she was looking for someone to blame for something. She was a stranger. He spoke about four years living in the mountains, back-to-the-land style.

A long-lost portrait of Virginia Woolf, who hated sitting for paintings, has gone on display after its whereabouts was revealed by its owner.