There is a definite chance this post will be deleted since finding this video anywhere else is virtually impossible. If you haven't seen this skit from the Paul Rudd-hosted SNL in November--with some very awkward background dancers in a Beyonce "Put a Ring on It" video--then you've missed out.
Beyonce and Justin Timberlake SNL Skit (11/15/08)
Showing posts with label what you should be looking at. Show all posts
Showing posts with label what you should be looking at. Show all posts
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
I will not be watching Valkyrie
I saw The Lives of Others last year and it's so incredibly great that I can't even begin to explain. It's a caper! And a spy movie! And the music is great! And the acting is phenomenal! And my German teacher knew the lead actor!*
If you haven't seen it, RENT IT--it's fabulous. Even the music gives me a frission. Don't ask me why Berlin holds such a fascination for me (well, the answer is pretty simply that I lived there for 3 months working as a walking tour guide), but I've read a pretty significant number of books on Berlin/German history (I consider myself somewhat better acquainted with Berlin & German history than the average person yet somewhat far from a scholar; the books I have listed at the end fo the post after the jump).
...So when I say that I already knew the plot for Valkyrie, that Stauffenberg (that's Lt. Col. Klaus Philip Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg to the history books) is somewhat of a national hero in modern Germany, and that the idea of Tom Cruise with his Chicket-gum teeth swanning about with his ridiculous American accent and Disneyfied script makes me want to VOMIT, then perhaps you can understand why.
Whenever Tom Cruise speaks I find myself torn between laughing and crying (the words in italics are to be read with a slit-eyed INTENSE WHISPER):
At 0:16: "By nightfall I want to know that Hitler's Germany has seen its last sunrise."
At 1:31: "Anything... is a very... dangerous word."
At 2:45: "Action... is inevitable... as are the consequences."
....................ARGGGH. Shoot me.
...I mean, given my Berlin obsession, I'm going to have to see it eventually, but URGH.
* You know, some of the other movies I feel as strongly about as The Lives of Others include Hot Fuzz, Ocean's Eleven, and Sneakers. Go figure.
Berlinobibliophilia after the jump--
I have read the following books on Berlin/Germany
Stasiland by Anna Funder
The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Antony Beevor**
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor**
Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William L. Shirer** (P.S. Try wandering around Germany while reading this book. It's a little awkward.)
The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape by Brian Ladd
Architecture in Berlin: The 100 Most Important Buildings and Urban Settings by Arnt Cobbers
Speer: The Final Verdict by Joachim Fest, Ewald Osers, and Alexandra Dring
Berlin: A Novel by Pierre Frei and Anthea Bell** (this was not actually a very good book)
The point is: I'VE READ A LOT ABOUT BERLIN. TOM CRUISE AND BRYAN SINGER AND THEIR WEIRDO HOLLYWOOD AMERICAN CHEESEBURGERS CAN SUCK IT.
** These books were all vacation books. As in, I read them on the beach instead of novels. Possibly the best non-beach beach book -- The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley, which still counts among the most important books I think I've ever read -- I read while on the blissful sands of Zanzibar. There was nothing to put my days flopping around drinking beer and agonizing over a death-spiral relationship in perspective like recollections of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Rwanda in the 80s and 90s.
If you haven't seen it, RENT IT--it's fabulous. Even the music gives me a frission. Don't ask me why Berlin holds such a fascination for me (well, the answer is pretty simply that I lived there for 3 months working as a walking tour guide), but I've read a pretty significant number of books on Berlin/German history (I consider myself somewhat better acquainted with Berlin & German history than the average person yet somewhat far from a scholar; the books I have listed at the end fo the post after the jump).
...So when I say that I already knew the plot for Valkyrie, that Stauffenberg (that's Lt. Col. Klaus Philip Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg to the history books) is somewhat of a national hero in modern Germany, and that the idea of Tom Cruise with his Chicket-gum teeth swanning about with his ridiculous American accent and Disneyfied script makes me want to VOMIT, then perhaps you can understand why.
Whenever Tom Cruise speaks I find myself torn between laughing and crying (the words in italics are to be read with a slit-eyed INTENSE WHISPER):
At 0:16: "By nightfall I want to know that Hitler's Germany has seen its last sunrise."
At 1:31: "Anything... is a very... dangerous word."
At 2:45: "Action... is inevitable... as are the consequences."
....................ARGGGH. Shoot me.
...I mean, given my Berlin obsession, I'm going to have to see it eventually, but URGH.
* You know, some of the other movies I feel as strongly about as The Lives of Others include Hot Fuzz, Ocean's Eleven, and Sneakers. Go figure.
Berlinobibliophilia after the jump--
I have read the following books on Berlin/Germany
Stasiland by Anna Funder
The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Antony Beevor**
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor**
Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William L. Shirer** (P.S. Try wandering around Germany while reading this book. It's a little awkward.)
The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape by Brian Ladd
Architecture in Berlin: The 100 Most Important Buildings and Urban Settings by Arnt Cobbers
Speer: The Final Verdict by Joachim Fest, Ewald Osers, and Alexandra Dring
Berlin: A Novel by Pierre Frei and Anthea Bell** (this was not actually a very good book)The point is: I'VE READ A LOT ABOUT BERLIN. TOM CRUISE AND BRYAN SINGER AND THEIR WEIRDO HOLLYWOOD AMERICAN CHEESEBURGERS CAN SUCK IT.
** These books were all vacation books. As in, I read them on the beach instead of novels. Possibly the best non-beach beach book -- The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley, which still counts among the most important books I think I've ever read -- I read while on the blissful sands of Zanzibar. There was nothing to put my days flopping around drinking beer and agonizing over a death-spiral relationship in perspective like recollections of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Rwanda in the 80s and 90s.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
behind the times
Yes, I know this is mega-old, but what am I going to do? Post about how much time I spent downloading Vampire Weekend songs? No.It still makes me laugh every time I see it.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Robert Rauschenberg makes my brain hurt
Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953; traces of ink and crayon; Collection SFMOMA, purchased through a gift of Phyllis Wattis; © Robert Rauschenberg / Licensed by VAGA, New York
I'm not entirely sure if I actively dislike Robert Rauschenberg's work or not because I can't get past phrases like, "...the transformation of the de Kooning into what Rauschenberg called a 'monochrome no-image' can be understood from a Bergonsonian perspective as the evacuation of intentional imagery and individual expression (i.e., 'art') in favor of a receptivity to contingent visual sensations (i.e., 'life')."*
Ow.
Video that helps explain the above drawing:
In other news, I'm in love with this song.
*from Brandon Joseph, "White on White," in Random Order: Robert Rasuchenberg and the Neo-Avantgarde (MIT, 2007), p. 63.
Louise Bourgeois at the Guggenheim
WARNING! Long-winded exhibition review dead ahead...
At the Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, we are greeted at the entrance by a large metal spider and what look to be two victims suspended in shiny bright cocoons from above. As Nancy Spector, the curator of the exhibition and the Guggenheim’s chief curator, acknowledges in the introductory text, the spiral of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim at 88th Street is a uniquely fitting venue in which to present a retrospective of this ever-avant-garde artist who has returned to themes and motifs throughout her career. Bourgeois’ work functions in a world of unstable, opposing binaries: open/closed, young/old, gravity/attenuation, benign/threatening, human/building, soft/hard, spiral/linear. Works cluster along the walls in chronological groupings; the architectural scale (and color) of the winding path at the Guggenheim lends itself felicitously to the presentation of these objects, and the narrowness of the presentation space focuses the attention by permitting only a few works in the viewer’s field of vision at any one time. Though the spiral ramp forces a linear narrative, its great benefit is its ability to disrupt this strict chronology: by merely peering across the vertigo-inducing open center, the visitor sees works that came before and glimpses of what will follow. In fact, it is largely by virtue of Lloyd Wright’s whorl of an exhibition space that the show coheres—one might almost hope that all retrospectives be shown here, for nowhere else is there the ability to experience both a linear (that is to say, chronological) progression as well as a cross-section of an artist’s oeuvre.
After the opening salvo of the spider and a brief introduction to her paintings, we are launched into Bourgeois’ career in 1940s New York while married to art historian Robert Goldwater—a more propitious time and place (and husband) is hard to imagine. It was during this time in the late 1940s and early 50s that Bourgeois created the sculptural series known as “Personages,” (left) whose totemesque, vaguely anthropomorphic wood and metal forms, notably “Portrait of C.V.” (1947-49; wood, paint, metal wire), “Persistent Antagonism” (1946-48; wood, paint, metal wire), “The Winged Figure” (1948; wood, paint, nails), and “Sleeping Figure” (1950, bronze), have their relatives in the sculptural art of central equatorial Africa (as the exhibition “Eternal Ancestors: Art of the Central African Reliquary” at the Metropolitan Museum so effectively demonstrated last winter). The slightly later wooden stacked sculptures, whose attenuation recalls Giacommetti’s emaciated figures, often present an escarpment near or at the top, frustrating the ascension to the topmost level and recalling Bourgeois’ quote that “Skyscrapers reflect the human condition. They do not touch.”
After a decade of absence, Bourgeois emerged in the 1960s to create an odd topsy-turvy world where phallic buds derive from clouds and breasts emerge from the earth to become “cumuls.” Extraordinarily adept at segmenting and de-humanizing the human body, she others it, rendering it insectlike and, by so doing, reinforcing its messy actuality and the earthy humor of human existence. Biomorphic forms (like “Lair,” 1962), which occupy one section look nothing so much as sculpted excremental blobs, have something of the honeycomb—or, in the case of “Fee Couturiere” (1963), the wasps’ nest—about them. Who—or what—lives in these funny little dwellings? What is hidden inside?
Though the uncircumcised penile tips—or are they preternaturally perky breast buds? Or are they fingertips?—poking their heads hopefully through drapery in “Cumul I” (1969; above) is enough to horrify one’s conservative relatives (one dare not say grandmother in this context), Bourgeois has a mastery of texture and form that renders these things all rather beautiful. Beautiful in the way that earthworms, or giving birth, or the relief of a long-awaited bodily function is beautiful. Or, in the case of “Sleeper” (1967; left)—a “cumul” wrapped protectively in a turtleneck and sitting atop two rough wooden timbers—the way a pig in a blanket carved out of marble is beautiful.Beginning in the 1980s, Bourgeois became more willing to incorporate explicitly representational and figural elements into her work, referring more explicitly than before to memory. It was during this time that she began producing “Cells.” As individual installations in their own rights, what the “Cells” lose in efficiency they gain in narrative force. Dealing with surveillance, confinement, memory, and the interrelationships between physical and psychological pain, the range of sizes and media of these installations allowed Bourgeois to incorporate (and in some cases revisit) motifs and materials from different phases of her career. The often spiral configurations of doors that encircle the central spaces of many of the cells act as walls: as she does with that of glass windows, which are often so dirty as to preclude gazing through them to the luminous sculptural elements within, Bourgeois has perverted their natural function.
“Cell IV,” whose doors enclose a very finely carved pink marble ear across from a wood block with a large clock-like disk leaning against the wall, evokes a psychiatrist’s office, inviting the viewer to lean into the scene and whisper her secrets to the aural vessel. One of the largest and most sinister pieces in the retrospective, “Cell (Choisy)” (1990-93), encloses a marble scale model of the artist’s childhood home in a cage with dirty windows; a guillotine is poised above the only entry to the structure. Embedded in the structure of this cage and other cells, mirrors fracture the scene inside, imposing fractured, partial views on the visitor.
The soft sculptures, at the end of an arduous climb to the topmost level of the Guggenheim, have something of the taxidermy form to them. Not only are textile heads and bodies on display (as though hunting trophies, scientific specimens, or cadavers ready for autopsy), but certain stacked wood sculptures are reincarnated in quilted fabric blocks. The patchwork nature of the soft sculpture is an effective proxy for the nature of memory and the rediscovery of earlier forms and themes. The familiar textures of cloth, coupled with the explicit representations of human bodies, renders these sculptures perhaps the most viscerally disturbing pieces in the show. “Three Horizontals” (1998; fabric and steel), shows three pinkly patchworked figures coming apart at the seams and prepared for dissection on metal slabs. As they contract in size, their recognizability as human forms diminishes until the final, smallest figure is nothing more than a plucked chicken carcass with vestigial arm, leg, neck, and breast buds.
To be sure, Bourgeois maintains her sense of humor throughout—witness the last work of the show, “Couple IV” (1997): two headless and footless black fabric figures, one with a 19th century-era prosthetic leg, fornicate in a glass box. The overstuffed squeezability of these figures, sewn out of familiar, comfortable thermal waffle knit, is disturbingly at odds with the foreignness of the prosthesis and leaves one unprepared for the waffle-fabric scrotum nestled between the figures’ legs.One gets the sense of exhaustion at the end of the show—not from the artist, but from the curators. Though Bourgeois has been making fabric sculptures for the past decade, the selection of cloth “soft” sculpture seems much more meager than other sections (the “cells” for example). The physical properties of weight and gravity seen in the stacked sculptures are certainly emphasized by the trek up the Guggenheim rotunda—the exhausting effort of that climb becomes conflated with the works at and near the summit (one is forcibly reminded, too, of Breugel’s spiral Tower of Babel, another favorite of Bourgeois’). The late work (what is discussed in Linda Nochlin’s catalogue entry as perhaps Bourgeois’ “Old-Age style”) almost seems a sparsely populated curatorial afterthought. After becoming steadily more massive over the course of decades—those huge multivalent cells!—that Bourgeois’ objects shrink in size should not, however, be seen as a diminishment of her capabilities.
One gets the sense, too, that Bourgeois arrived fully formed as an artist—there are very few fits and starts and no failures in evidence at this show, and there is a lack of artistic context that leaves this visitor dissatisfied. On a different note, the well-written and judiciously placed wall labels perform their function admirably—explanatory text for selected items whets the reader’s appetite (and wallet) for the oddly organized yet informative exhibition catalogue (though, styled as a glossary, good luck trying to find anything in it).
Overall, in surveying Bourgeois’ mastery of many different media, styles of presentation, and artistic reinvention, one must appreciate her chameleon-like nature, the best parallel for which is most certainly Madonna (or should we instead be saying that Madonna is pop culture’s Louise Bourgeois?). Though the presentation of the show, with all phases of Bourgeois’ long career represented, supports this reading, Bourgeois might as well have already cocked up her toes for all that the Guggenheim enshrines these different incarnations. Whereas the J.M.W. Turner show at the Metropolitan Museum down the street suffers from too much of a good thing, the Bourgeois show strikes this viewer as almost a little superficial; the arachnid in the center foyer notwithstanding, the absence of the spider series is a serious oversight. But perhaps, like a good actor, that is the mark of a good artist’s retrospective: leave them panting for more.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
no, really, what you should be looking at: Adam Stennett
Adam Stennett. Four Mice in Diagonal Pipe. 2003. Oil on linen, 36 x 36 inches
Adam Stennett. Where Are You When You Aren't Here?. 2002. Oil on linen, 36 x 36 inches
Adam Stennett. Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans). 2008. Acrylic on paper, 30 x 44 inchesI wrote about Adam Stennett almost a year ago and I still think his art is fabulous. It doesn't hurt that he's a nice guy, too.
Above we've got two older paintings, which are both square and would go very well together as pendants. In the years since these two [early] mouse paintings, he's definitely mastered his technique better (see here and here), but there's something about their hopeful little black eyes that I really enjoy. So friendly. I think my cats would really enjoy the paintings (and the vaguely industrial impressionist vibe I get from them), too... I mean, we don't call him Learned Claw for nothing, do we?
The last one is a very recent painting, which is a great combination of Dutch still-life and grisaille; I'd buy it myself, if I could. ...Well, I'd buy them all if I could, I'm not going to lie to you. I'd put the last one in my kitchen. Ha! What an excellent commentary on my cooking skills.
P.S. I'm writing about these paintings in particular because they're all still available, which fact allows me to nurture the vain dream of them living in my apartment despite my lack of cash.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
up a creek with half a paddle
I have an enormous art crush on John Singer Sargent and don't particularly like Renoir (who, unfortunately, is the subject of my seminar). So I've got to connect them somehow; I'm thinking through Orientalism and exoticism (studio orientalism and the aesthetics of transformation? The fantasy of the [exotic] woman in nature?), and the trick is going to be figuring out a way to connect the images below (and about 50 other images). Presentation is on Tuesday, have written about one-third of a page. Situation dire. Eek.
Renoir, (1872) Parisian Women Dressed as Algerians
Renoir, (1870) Odalisque-Woman of Algiers
Sargent, (1907) Dolce Far Niente (It is Sweet Doing Nothing)
Sargent, (too tired to look up the date) Egyptian Girl
Courbet, (1856-7) Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine in Summer
Nude woman (photograph after Ingres) [comment: rrrrow!]
Sargent, (1880) Fumee d'Ambergris
I suppose I can just throw a lot of Sargent pictures up and wax rhapsodic. Mmmm.
Stay tuned for next week when we explore the incredibly poorly-researched and documented BaKwele masks of equatorial Africa!
In other exciting news: QPs have been approved by first readers. I have only to receive approval from the second readers by May 7th and I'll have my masters. Sweet.
Originally posted April 20, 2008.
Renoir, (1872) Parisian Women Dressed as Algerians
Renoir, (1870) Odalisque-Woman of Algiers
Sargent, (1907) Dolce Far Niente (It is Sweet Doing Nothing)
Sargent, (too tired to look up the date) Egyptian Girl
Courbet, (1856-7) Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine in Summer
Nude woman (photograph after Ingres) [comment: rrrrow!]
Sargent, (1880) Fumee d'AmbergrisI suppose I can just throw a lot of Sargent pictures up and wax rhapsodic. Mmmm.
Stay tuned for next week when we explore the incredibly poorly-researched and documented BaKwele masks of equatorial Africa!
In other exciting news: QPs have been approved by first readers. I have only to receive approval from the second readers by May 7th and I'll have my masters. Sweet.
Originally posted April 20, 2008.
Friday, September 12, 2008
what you should be looking at: Barnaby Barford
Barnaby Barford.
I was reading about him in Departures Magazine two and a half weeks ago and couldn't remember his name. It's been driving me bonkers because I loved what I saw, but Departures is one of those snooty weirdo AmEx things that you have to have a card to get, so I couldn't even look at the tables of contents and have just been typing in random permutations of "ironic humorous ceramic porcelain figurines art london" give or take a few words. Anyway.
Barford's stuff is very, very funny and I am slightly obsessed. As someone with a well-documented fondness for Monty Python and Steve Martin, the absurdity in both the construction and the titles just makes me melt. Witness:
Nobody fucking move.Table, Year: 2006. Dimensions: H 75 cm x L 50 cm x W 50 cm. Porcelain, Earthenware, Painted wood.
Plan for World Domination No.116. Pair of Tables, Year: 2006. Dimensions: H 70 cm x L 50 cm x W 50 cm. Porcelain, Earthenware, Resin, Glass, White Gold Leaf, Painted wood.
Struggling will only make it worse. Chandelier, Year: 2006. Dimensions: H 100 cm x L 75 cm x W 75 cm. Porcelain, Earthenware.
You sexy bitch. Mirror, Year: 2006. Dimensions: H 65 cm x W 60 cm x L 15 cm. Porcelain, Resin, GRP, Convex Mirror.
I just had to post this many items because I find them all so funny. Can't you just picture You sexy bitch right next to the door of someone's powder room? Awesome.
Originally posted October 17, 2007
I was reading about him in Departures Magazine two and a half weeks ago and couldn't remember his name. It's been driving me bonkers because I loved what I saw, but Departures is one of those snooty weirdo AmEx things that you have to have a card to get, so I couldn't even look at the tables of contents and have just been typing in random permutations of "ironic humorous ceramic porcelain figurines art london" give or take a few words. Anyway.
Barford's stuff is very, very funny and I am slightly obsessed. As someone with a well-documented fondness for Monty Python and Steve Martin, the absurdity in both the construction and the titles just makes me melt. Witness:
Nobody fucking move.Table, Year: 2006. Dimensions: H 75 cm x L 50 cm x W 50 cm. Porcelain, Earthenware, Painted wood.
Plan for World Domination No.116. Pair of Tables, Year: 2006. Dimensions: H 70 cm x L 50 cm x W 50 cm. Porcelain, Earthenware, Resin, Glass, White Gold Leaf, Painted wood.
Struggling will only make it worse. Chandelier, Year: 2006. Dimensions: H 100 cm x L 75 cm x W 75 cm. Porcelain, Earthenware.
You sexy bitch. Mirror, Year: 2006. Dimensions: H 65 cm x W 60 cm x L 15 cm. Porcelain, Resin, GRP, Convex Mirror.I just had to post this many items because I find them all so funny. Can't you just picture You sexy bitch right next to the door of someone's powder room? Awesome.
Originally posted October 17, 2007
Thursday, September 11, 2008
what you should be looking at: emerging artist edition
Originally posted October 12, 2007.
After rain date after rain date, I finally got to meet up with a friend. Sadly, our rain date was actually on a date when it was raining. A lot.
We began the evening by going to a gallery opening at a gallery downtown, where a classmate of mine works. The show is of Adam Stennett's work, which I saw for the first time last night and which I thought was very interesting. Stennett's paintings (no, they're not photographs he's traced or anything) remind me of Corot for some very odd reason--in the painting in this post ("Drink") there's something about the handling of the paint around her face. And don't you just love that the color of her eyes matches the color of the label? To give you yet another reason to dig this painting, consider that the title of the show is "Use Only As Directed" and it shows people doing exactly the opposite. (Hmm. I'm thirsty.) I really, super duper adore his work.
After rain date after rain date, I finally got to meet up with a friend. Sadly, our rain date was actually on a date when it was raining. A lot.
We began the evening by going to a gallery opening at a gallery downtown, where a classmate of mine works. The show is of Adam Stennett's work, which I saw for the first time last night and which I thought was very interesting. Stennett's paintings (no, they're not photographs he's traced or anything) remind me of Corot for some very odd reason--in the painting in this post ("Drink") there's something about the handling of the paint around her face. And don't you just love that the color of her eyes matches the color of the label? To give you yet another reason to dig this painting, consider that the title of the show is "Use Only As Directed" and it shows people doing exactly the opposite. (Hmm. I'm thirsty.) I really, super duper adore his work.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
what you should be looking at: Punt research edition
You should be looking at stuff about Punt. Incredibly, Punt has never been found--it's a lost civilization that we know only from ancient Egyptian references. That top picture shows an Egyptian naval expedition to the land of Punt sponsored by the Egyptian Pharaoh/Queen Hatshepsut (from the 18th Dynasty, in case you're curious)--but where the hell was it? What did it look like? What were the inhabitants like? Mysteries! What fun!Originally posted October 5, 2007.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
what you should be looking at
Originally posted September 19, 2007
You should be looking at Graciela Sacco. She's an Argentinian artist who likes to use heliography (similar to photography) on objects--soccer balls, stairs, slats of wood, books, spoons, etc. It's weird and cool and thought-provoking. I know so little about modern art--I'm at the stage where "I like what I like" and, well, let's just say that I think a lot of modern art is pretentious p***--that I'm always surprised when I like something done in the last fifty years. 
Take these spoons, for instance, with their hungry little sepia-colored mouths. I imagine using one to eat some soup and being a bit worried that the mouth would try to bite me. (Because, you know, inanimate objects with human attributes come to life pretty frequently. Which reminds me that when I was small I used to be scared that toilets would gobble me up--as though I'd just be sitting there, minding my own business, when --chomp! ...I have an active imagination.)
On an entirely different note, it's Talk Like A Pirate Day! Argg!
Note: The original comments were:
You should be looking at Graciela Sacco. She's an Argentinian artist who likes to use heliography (similar to photography) on objects--soccer balls, stairs, slats of wood, books, spoons, etc. It's weird and cool and thought-provoking. I know so little about modern art--I'm at the stage where "I like what I like" and, well, let's just say that I think a lot of modern art is pretentious p***--that I'm always surprised when I like something done in the last fifty years. 
Take these spoons, for instance, with their hungry little sepia-colored mouths. I imagine using one to eat some soup and being a bit worried that the mouth would try to bite me. (Because, you know, inanimate objects with human attributes come to life pretty frequently. Which reminds me that when I was small I used to be scared that toilets would gobble me up--as though I'd just be sitting there, minding my own business, when --chomp! ...I have an active imagination.)On an entirely different note, it's Talk Like A Pirate Day! Argg!
Note: The original comments were:
5 nuggets of wisdom:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Yar!
She's pretty awesome, isn't she? I had an art crush on her for a few years now. There are a lot of really interesting Latin American contemporary artists--check out Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, which has a host of them. Lowenstein's a dealer in Miami (where, unsurprisingly, a lot of great Latin American artists make their North American home).
hey thanks for your very nice comment. it's so difficult to know what to hope for in this situation, so I'm keeping focused on the kid: may the kid have the best outcome possible. that's my mantra.
sucks to know someone else had this happen. urggghh.