ART
Msg#: 361 *ART*
12-12-93 21:51:39
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: PIT SCHULTZ
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 299 (PATENTATION)
Sounds like you guys had fun at your trip to the Patent Office. Can we
see the video? I need a few 15 second clips for our upcoming online video
show.
Btw, I didn't mean to engage in Fend bas
hing. He's a fun guy and he
should be able to harvest all the seaweed of the Ocean and the Earth and turn
it into methan and sell the patents and finally "get rich".
Tell us more about the show in the barbershop. I understand the
"Transactivism" Symposium is part of it. You know you are supposed to say
something there.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 487 *ART*
12-17-93 03:34:09
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 251 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
Morgan you are a genius: We have come to know what is "greatest art."
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 492 *ART*
12-17-93 09:58:13
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 487 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
Oh, thank you Josephina! I should show you my slides!
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 494 *ART*
12-17-93 10:21:39
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 492 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
Those giant Cibachromes you're doing are of Twinkies?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 501 *ART*
12-17-93 10:59:54
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 494 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
no,no...I am having giant Twinkies fabricated which are then fired out of huge
guns at low velocity. They have parachute landing mechanisms, so they float
gently to earth anywhere in the five Boroughs. With them comes a certificate
for a home study course on air conditioner repair and deconstructivist thought
on one CD rom. To qualify, you must document yourself eating the Twinkie first
on VHS format, hand held camera O.K.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 556 *ART*
12-27-93 14:44:49
From: CAROL BROAD
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 501 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
Forgive me for the interruption... and I don't even know if I am doing this
right... but could you tell me what your Twinkie has to do with Art? I don't
understand what any of this has to do with Art. I mean, are you an artist or
not? And why do you make Art if you hate it so much? I don't understand what's
going on here... I am new, yes... but everybody on this entire system
contradicts themselves constantly, and it's so frustrating... One minute it's
one thing and the next its something else. I've been on this board for six
months now and I HAVEN'T UNDERSTOOD ONE THING ANYBODY SAYS! You seem like the
most normal person here that I can talk to. But that's not saying much.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 557 *ART*
12-27-93 17:43:42
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 556 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
> everybody on this entire system contradicts
> themselves constantly, and it's so frustrating... One minute it's
> one thing and the next its something else.
Could you describe what you mean by this?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 559 *ART*
12-28-93 01:13:23
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 556 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
you got that rite, dahlink! Think of this joint as a neurotic playpen where all
us frustrated geniuses go to bug out on each other. The reality is that under
the surface, everybody is weird as shit, the times we inhabit are weirder, and
most people are disoriented, scared of the future, can't afford good drugs
anymore, and masturbate a ton. So, where does all the the nutso jizm go...to
The Thing, natch...
Might as well get nekkid and jump in the mud with the rest of us freaks. The
people you seriously gotta keep a jaundiced eye on are all them fake normal
people with a pressure cooker lid on all their squirming unconscious primal
swamp broth.
Seriously, nobody in the know takes art seriously. One way ticket to
Creedmore for those who do. The lamebrains spouting grad school truisms are
good fun at culture boozathons, at least.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 560 *ART*
12-28-93 01:15:16
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 557 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
don't tease her. She has to change into her cat-suit.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 561 *ART*
12-28-93 08:51:54
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 560 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
Just wondering, that's all.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 564 *ART*
12-28-93 16:04:46
From: CAROL BROAD
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 560 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
What does that mean?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 565 *ART*
12-28-93 16:11:01
From: CAROL BROAD
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 559 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
I disagree, because some people care very much about art, and take it VERY
seriously, like me. I LIVE for my art. What about you? All you do aparently is
roll around in here in the dialogue, ejaculating. What i want to konw is: 1.
Why are you here? and 2. Where is the art?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 566 *ART*
12-28-93 16:21:42
From: CAROL BROAD
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 557 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
It's hard to understand what everybody stands for, because they're all shifting
around. It's like Laura T. talking about that she can't stop shaking herself
off while at the same time trying to hold still.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 573 *ART*
12-28-93 19:14:41
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 564 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
nothing.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 574 *ART*
12-28-93 19:32:56
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 565 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
It is wonderful that you take art VERY seriously. It is marvelous that you take
yourself VERY seriously. I am in awe of you. I like to roll around and
ejaculate. What you like to do is your business.
What difference does it make that I am here? What difference does it make
why am I here? Even if I had an answer, who the Hell cares anyway?
Peolple cling to Art like they cling to any illusion. Then they grow up and
see through it an have a crisis. But, big deal, go take a Prozac.
Art changes nothing. It's nice to have around and kind of fun to discuss and
contemplate for five minutes, but life goes on. What can art aspire to? A big
"shape" in a plaza for people to eat their lunch around. A room full of
mysterious crap to have a mental freakout on?
Public art? 19th century sculptors totally whip 20 century phonies off the
map. The thing over Grand Central Station is really nice.
But we don't have just "art" now, we have a big stinking turd of graduate
programs and precious writers and all the politics and gassbaggery of self
appointed savants.
When you look in from the outside, you see all these jerks flattering
themselves and preaching to the converted and going nowhere and getting VERY
DEFENSIVE when their fragile eggshell minds are plinked.
Most of what they do sucks by any standard, they have lousy taste in
music, their "raps" are pathetic beyond belief. This is a life? Oh PULeeeze,
when are you going to wake up and see the light? Heil Morley Safer!!!!
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 575 *ART*
12-28-93 20:07:29
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 566 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
Do you think this is part of a more global issue? That the world seems to be
"shifting around," to use your phrase, and that we're all, to a certain extent,
both shaking ourselves off *and* trying to hold still at the same time? That
we're trying to figure out what it means that Eastern Europe is still
dissolving, that the information superhighway is sweeping parts of us away,
that North Korea has the capacity to produce a nuclear bomb?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 580 *ART*
12-29-93 09:31:22
From: CAROL BROAD
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 574 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
Oh, I don't do art like THAT... like that was on Morley Safer. I paint mostly
REAL art--birds on the beach and such. I think that you would like my
paintings, and also my poetry. I am going to post a poem to make you feel
better, and to give you hope in your time of crisis. Because when it comes
down to it, that's what it's all about: helping people.
There was a time in my life when
My heart wore a coat of armor.
It was in control and my feelings were in check. I was
on top of things.
My heart was safe from the in-
side out and the outside in. Nothing
could
penetrate or escape. My heart was like
a golf ball.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 582 *ART*
12-29-93 09:59:56
From: CAROL BROAD
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 575 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
So not only are we shaking ourselves off and trying to hold still but parts of
us are being swept away and nations are dissolving... and to top it off, NOrth
Dakota has a nuclear bomb!
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 594 *ART*
12-30-93 01:35:08
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 580 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
so's your brain, only less so.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 783 *ART*
01-06-94 07:36:13
From: LYNN ELIZABETH CRAWFORD
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 594 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
I think you are getting provoked. Faced with all of CB's femininity.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1006 *ART*
01-11-94 15:56:18
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: LYNN ELIZABETH CRAWFORD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 783 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
Do you call this feminine?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2184 *ART*
02-03-94 17:12:47
From: LYNN ELIZABETH CRAWFORD
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1006 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
Yes.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 495 *ART*
12-17-93 10:29:14
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 243 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
> What do we do with Brendan's Becht case? Cover of the Flash Art,
> November/December--he is a cook. Met Brendan yesterday, had to ask
> him about his work, is it art? I am a cook he answered.
It's very funny. And there's not even an article on him, just a little blurb.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#: 517 *ART*
12-19-93 21:30:47
From: DENNIS SUMMERS
To: JEFF HARRINGTON (Rcvd)
Subj: ART SUCKS
Regarding the market having very little to do with it (the survival of
artwork). I can't really agree with this romantic view of artwork. Although I
believe this issue to be on a continuum, like most things, I have to maintain
that the market is the overwhelming influence on which art survives. Although
there is always an *underground* of ideas which get carried along through a
generation or two, it is the *overground* which carries such product owing to
its success in the market. Much work is tempor-
ary and under-experienced until it is either mass produced (say books) or mass
publicized (say most visual arts or music). A work simply just isn't going to
get that exposure to the public unless someone, somehow is going to make money
off of it.
But you know it is your other point about light shining into dark
corners, making a connection between people's dark interiors that I really want
to segue from. When Frank Zappa died (totally unnecessarily, a major
indictment against the medical "profession", but don't get me started on
doctors and their monopoly on misguided and useless health procedures, I'll
write about that in the Health Forum), and the media was playing back old
quotes, it was encouraging to me to hear that he had as low an opinion on
people baring their souls in pop music, as I have toward the visual arts. I
have long felt that for the most part (although there are some exceptions),
personal ego really has no place in quality work. Most people expressing
their inner selves really have nothing to say of any value. When you get right
down to it, how much personal angst do we need of someone else's. I'm so tired
of hearing artists talk about the symbolism of their work. For the most part,
that symbolism is unique and not "universal" (if their is such a thing). But
on the other hand their is the extreme of artists just making mildly amusing,
somewhat clever remarks with their works, sort of Duchamp Lite. Jenny Holzer
for example. I can never tell if she is making some sort of negative comment
about these sorts of trite simplistic statements. But she seems so sincere.
And then of course there's Jeff Koons who has covered both of these extremes.
Thoughtful artwork about large issues doesn't shine my way too often.
I can't treasure it if I don't see it.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 520 *ART*
12-21-93 12:00:09
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DENNIS SUMMERS (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 517 (ART SUCKS)
you are absolutely right on more than one point. "Art" works best in the middle
zone between the personal and *mass culture*. If it is only inward looking and
masturbatory, and much of it is, one gets exercises in narcissistic fascination
not unlike the drunk at the bar who insists you listen to his life rap.
At the other end of the spectrum, you must render unto Caesar and become
less than human in the process. Then you are infected with the spirit of the
machine, accountable to forces you never imagined. The mask eats the face.
The third place, perhaps along Ben Kinmont's line of thought, isn't in great
abundance. Little patches of fertile mental land between deserts and mountains.
I don't think inner lives are necessarily empty, but that this
culture/environment has made it so easy to get away without having one that
nobody notices or cares anymore. The mind thrives on exercise as much as the
body does. It atrophies like a bedridden body will.
One can get by in a state of total passivity, there is no need to think,
conceptualize, infer, manipulate abstractions, engage in speculative flights,
mythologize, and all of those fine arts of human being.
The atmosphere encourages and seduces the would be thinker into a state of
otiose clodhood. Like anemonae, we need do no more than strain water through
our gills.
(on the subject of medicine, I will desist for now or risk going ballistic)
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 522 *ART*
12-21-93 13:46:41
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: *.*
Subj: ATTN SHOPPERS
Attention Shoppers! X-mas approaches and I am sure you haven't bought any
gifts yet. So hurry over to ThingEditions and get a steal: Peter Halley for
$20, Mosset for $30...yes this is a sales pitch...the new BLAST for $60, and
look at all the other items...a Kosuth for a ridiculous $2,500! There is
something for every budget and it's easy! Let's say the Halley: just download
it, have it printed on an Iris for 30 bucks, frame it and have a piece of
history. Don't you get it? It's real!
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 526 *ART*
12-21-93 19:17:01
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 522 (ATTN SHOPPERS)
I printed the Halley in Pro-Tech computer paper and it looks great. Does for a
very lovely Christmas gift. In a regular US Letter size the image should be
reduced in a 66%.
I also printed John. F. Simon. His first image worked very well as I
somehow reduced it and printed it horizontal... in the same paper.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 595 *ART*
12-30-93 11:25:39
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: BOMBS AWAY
Yes, North Dakota has nuclear bombs. But those bombs are being put out of
commission. Different in the other Northern province that I was talking about,
no?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 601 *ART*
12-31-93 01:54:54
From: PETER FEND
To: JENNY HOLZER
Subj: YOUR MUNICH ACTION
The following is an edited excerpt from an open letter to Jenny Holzer written
earlier this December in view of her actions regarding the Yugoslav war in
Munich and Cologne. The actions took place in a Roman Catholic Church, in the
Suddeutscher Zeitung, and in a Munich kunsthaus, all in a context (Germany)
raising serious questions of bias: the former foreign minister of Italy, the
European minister of Greece and numerous other political figures throughout
Europe,and even at the US State Department, have publicly voiced the belief, or
at least perception, that both the Western Church and the Federal Republic of
Germany have not been innocent bystanders in the war in Yugoslavia. Holzer
nonetheless chose this context to suggest that the chief victims of the war
were the many women being raped and killed, and that the chief victimizers--the
persons who could deservedly lose blood--were the soldiers and generals. Given
his own experience, Fend suggested that for we in the West,including the US and
Germany, "the moral abyss is beneath our feet."
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
*Enclosed File: whose_blood
<*>Replies
Type P to Pause, S to Stop listing
FROM "PUBLIC LETTER TO JENNY HOLZER'
LIST OF EVENTS
Prepared in response to an action by Jenny Holzer, and dedicated
to helping found a new structure in the lives of the peoples in
what has been or still is said to be a republic of Yugoslavia,
with possibly some benefit to those working for a living planet.
1. On the day that Jenny Holzer received her Lion d'Or and told
Peter Fend that his job was to save the Adriatic, the lead
headline of the International Herald Tribune read, "UN Warning on
Warming: Cut Emissions 60% Now, or Else." The article reported
that scientists at a UN conference had concluded that fossil fuel
consumption must be reduced immediately by 60% to avoid disaster.
2. Ten years earlier, in 1980, Jenny Holzer, Peter Fend and four
other artists, including TV producer Colen Fitzgibbon, painter
Robin Winters, then Holzer-friend Peter Nadin, and Richard Prince,
were asked with some urgency by scientists at the California
Institute of Technology to help develop an advertising campaign,
or some such creative media campaign, in their capacity as "The
Offices", for promoting a scheme for replacing fossil fuels with a
marine-biological source. Shortly afterwards, however, The
Offices collapsed. No such campaign, nor other campaigns pending
with UN organizations and with the North-South commission of Willy
Brandt, though envisioned, was ever undertaken. Instead, art
history took quite another course.
3. At the time that Holzer was asking Fend to "save the
Adriatic", Fend was working through an attorney and through his
domestic position in Yugoslavia, as well as his knowledge of a
marine biologist from Split (present-day Croatia) who was the head
of the UN Environment Program's Regional Seas Program, to respond
to the request of the Consorzio Venezia Nuova that a "Progetto
Adriatico", then being prepared, include a major participation
from Yugoslavia. A base in Belgrade was being readied.
4. Also at that time, a few months before the Iraqi attack on
Kuwait, the UN Peacekeeping Force in the Persian Gulf was led by
Yugoslavia.
5. In the months after the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, Yugoslavia
took a lead in attempting to find a negotiated settlement to the
Gulf question, and in February 1991 it organized a peace
conference of countries from the Non-Aligned Movement, of which it
was the head, and for which the headquarters was located in
Belgrade. At that time, the Non-Aligned Movement included 108
countries from what could be called, generically, the "South".
The singular exceptions were South Africa, Brazil (an observer
only), Granada, Honduras and Costa Rica.
6. The non-aligned states attending the conference considered the
Gulf question to be a matter for themselves to decide, as it was
between members of the non-aligned movement.
7. The non-aligned states attending the conference were: Cuba,
Venezuela, Argentina, Algeria, Malta, Cyprus, Iran, Iraq,
Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Zimbabawe, Zambia, Egypt, Yugoslavia.
As we understand, an observer status was awarded to several
states, including Yemen.
8. The members of this conference included the No. 1 oil/gas
exporters of the Americas, of Africa, and of Asia, and the No. 2
and 3 oil/gas reserve holders of the Middle East.
9. The members of this conference also enjoyed a geographical
position of control, or at least potential control, over these
primary channels of oil and other resource traffic: the Suez, the
Straits of Hormuz, the Bab el Mandeb, the Straits of Malacca, the
Sea of Ceylon, the Straits of Gibralter, the eastern and central
Mediterranean, the Straits of Florida, the Windward Passage, the
Caribbean Sea, the Panama Canal, the Straits of Magellan. If
these countries had reached an agreement on how to divide world
oil, they could be in a position to endanger or block virtually
all oil traffic worldwide which might be conducted by the current
prime owners of oil/gas assets.
10. The current prime owners of oil/gas assets are: Royal Dutch
Shell, British Petroleum, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Standard Oil
of New York, Standard Oil of California, Texaco, Elf Aquitaine,
Compagnie Francaise de Petrole, Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi. The
home countries are the US, UK, Netherlands, France and Italy. In
addition, there are some relatively minor Japanese and German
firms.
11. The current provisions for an air attack on Serbian positions
in Bosnia, or for other military attacks in Yugoslavia as
sanctioned by the UN, involve forces from the US, UK, Netherlands
and France, using bases in Italy.
12. Due to the solid grip on world oil/gas traffic by the current
prime owners of assets, as enforced by their home states, the rich
15% of the world's population, known as the West, and represented
by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), have been enjoying somewhat over 50% of all world oil/gas
consumption. The remaining 85% of the world population, the bulk
of which included the Non-Aligned Movement and its close friend
China, was left with the remaining half.
13. At the peace conference in Belgrade in February 1991, there
was talk of restructuring the access of the world's population to
world oil/gas assets.
14. Assuming that the restructuring would lead to a reasonable
equality, in which the South could be entitled to as much as the
North, then the rich 15% of the world's population would end up
having to consume no more than 15% of the world's oil/gas assets.
This would constitute a cut of about 70%.
15. Continuing the calculation, such a restructuring, which could
extend to the so-called East (e.g., then-Soviet bloc), would allow
the less rich or poor 85% of the world's population to consume 85%
of the world's oil/gas assets, for an increase in total
consumption of about 70%.
16. Mathematically, but probably not historically, a reduction
in rich-country consumption of oil/gas assets by 70% coupled with
no change in poorer-country consumption of oil/gas assets would
have effected a 35% reduction in consumption, and emissions.
Also, if the rich countries went on a crash program of developing
only non oil/gas assets, especially so-called alternative or
ecological sources, to quickly eliminate all dependence on fossil
fuels, and if the poorer countries (being less able to afford
change) replaced fossil sources by 20%, then worldwide
consumption, and emissions, would be cut back 60%--in line with
the UN recommendation reported on the day Jenny Holzer won the
Lion d'Or and told Peter Fend to save the Adriatic.
17. According to an report appearing in the International Herald
Tribune on 26 April 1993, the cost of Desert Storm--the Western
military operation to maintain the status quo in world oil/gas
asset holdings in the Gulf, as elsewhere--was nearly 700 Billion
Dollars. This figure, the article says, is "not counting vast
damage to the environment and a continuing suppression of the rate
of economic growth in the region."
18. To date, no program for a conversion from fossil fuel base to
other sources, or for a reduction in fossil fuel consumption by
"60% now, or else" has been proposed on the scale of any figure
like 700 Billion Dollars.
19. In the early 1980s, most explicitly with government agency
decisions in 1981 originated in the United States and United
Kingdom, research conducted at the California Institute of
Technology and at institutes like the French Institute for
Exploitation of the Sea for development of ocean-vegetation
alternatives to fossil fuel hydrocarbons was either denied funds
or outright forbidden. At this time, due to moves by the British
Admiralty and certain British scientists, any research or
development in the European Community of a giant-algae industry
which could compete with fossil fuels, possibly replacing them, is
illegal.
20. These sorts of projects are precisely what scientists at
Caltech, and at associated companies like Global Marine (since
bankrupt), were asking to be promoted, in a combination art and
advertising campaign, a possible media blitz, by The Offices of
Fend, Fitzgibbon, Holzer, Nadin, Prince & Winters, in early 1980.
21. The art power and even outright media power of each of the
members of The Offices since 1980 has been considerable, with one
of those members becoming an official artist for the United States
in 1990, so clearly the combined power of these five individuals--
if they had stayed together on projects such as the one requested
by Caltech and Global Marine scientists--would have been
considerable, particularly in relation to the world image of the
voice and policy of the United States.
22. On 20 October 1987, for example, an article appeared in The
International Herald Tribune in which one of the artists from The
Offices, who had developed a know-how in processing of civil
satellite data for site analysis with, among others, another
artist from The Offices, accused the key negotiator between Iran
and Iraq of handing over images and analysis for which he and his
colleagues were responsible solely to one side in the war, Iran.
This key negotiator had replaced Olof Palme in the position of key
negotiator, and he was later revealed to the artist by a UN
diplomat to be have been an agent for the CIA. A number of
articles followed, along with at least one cover-up murder in one
of the news-release points, but the artist, along with two
colleagues (not from The Offices) held a press conference at the
UN in response to what was described by correspondents as the
"biggest scandal in the history of the UN." Since then, this
aritst went through three trials, at the end of which he has been
forbidden to speak of any episodes in which he is involved that
include the government of Iran.
23. From late 1980 through early 1981, Jenny Holzer maintained an
proposal to work together with Fend and Fitzgibbon, along with a
dozen other artists, in a company called Ocean Earth which was
formed after the dissolution of The Offices, but the proposal was
rejected. She had offered to be the media director for Ocean
Earth. This was seen as threatening by the shareholders, given
her already dominant recognition in the art world and her material
resources. There have been voicings since then that this rejection
was a serious mistake.
32. At a second press conference at the United Nations conducted
by Fend and Sante Scardillo, also just weeks before Desert Storm,
efforts to show how satellite monitoring and earth-art principles
(as also monitored by satellite) could benefit all the Gulf, were
frustrated when the Counselor to the Iranian Mission to the United
Nations accused Fend personally of trying to extort a very large
sum of money from Iran. The press corps understood that even if
the accusation were not true it would be too dangerous to give any
credence to Fend.
33. A press conference at the National Press Club in Washington,
which was not nearly as well attended, given solo by Fend, was
videotaped for television release by Fitzgibbon.
34. On 26 June 1992, one day after Yugoslavia began to break up
with the declaration of independence of Croatia and Slovenia, the
residence of Fend in Cologne began to be visited and occupied by
an agent working for the German Foreign Ministry. This activity
ended four months later when Fend discovered the problem, spent
two days at a hotel interrogating his former housemate, and left
the country. He was told shortly afterwards by a US diplomatic
officer to not return to Germany.
35. The chief objection to Fend stated by the agent for the
Foreign Ministry was that he was "working with both sides in
Yugoslavia," and that "what he was doing could start a war."
The agent referred in particular to the "Administration of the
Adriatic" article which appeared in the Nov/Dec 1990 Flash Art.
He also referred to the ongoing activities of Fend in Yugoslavia.
36. Those activities, conducted with two architects from the
United States and requested by an architecture firm based in
Belgrade, consisted chiefly of trying to set up a ocean-algae farm
to yield enough non-polluting hydrocarbons, such as methane, to
end any reliance on fossil fuels. The farm was to have been
coordinated with infrastructure siting and development, and with
civil satellite monitoring. The intended site was Tivat Bay; the
intended client was Montenegro.
37. At the time that Fend and his colleagues were scheduled to
start work in Tivat Bay, in the second half of September 1991, the
Republic of Montenegro declared itself to be an "ecological
state."
38. Also at that time, due to growing conflict and tensions, the
architecture firm in Belgrade advised to not begin the project.
39. Several months later, due to this growing conflict and
tensions, an architect from Sarajevo invited Fend and his
colleagues, organized in a venture called NEWS ROOM, to come to
Sarajevo and operate a NEWS ROOM SARAJEVO. But this also beame
impossible to begin. A surrogate of the project was conducted at
PS 1 in New York in February 1992, shortly after which the main
colleague of Fend, who stayed in the US while Fend traveled to
Europe, was intercepted by an agent of the CIA.
40. In summer 1991, as observed in Rome airport, a Yugoslav-flag
airline existed with the names "Red Sea Airlines" and
"Air Djibouti." By that time, due to changes during the Iran-Iraq
war and Desert Storm, the bulk of ocean traffic of oil out from
the Gulf to the world was passing through not the Gulf and its
Straits of Hormuz but through the Red Sea. This traffic now goes
through the Red Sea to either Egypt and the Suez Canal, or to the
straits between Djibouti and Yemen. The latter has long been a
close friend of Yugoslavia.
41. Directly across from Yemen, flanking what is now the most
heavily trafficked sea lane for oil from the Gulf to the world, is
a country called Somalia.
42. Further out to sea, in the Indian Ocean, a large island owned
by Yemen sits close to Somalia. From this island there is a
potential of blocking all the sea traffic of oil/gas reserves
going southwards through the Red Sea past Djibouti to the world.
In recent years, this island was one of the largest offshore naval
bases of the Soviet Union.
43. In 1985, the father of the Yugoslav woman who conceived two
children with Fend, was murdered, apparently by agents of the
Yugoslav government.
44. This man her father is said to have had ideas very similar to
those of Fend, which explains her affection for him, and is said
also to have been a friend and professional colleague of the
scientist from Split who was the founding director of the UN
Regional Seas Program of the United Nations Environment Program.
45. Fend learned about the scientist from Split, then based in
Geneva, through the director of the UN Environment Program office
in New York, who believed that the ocean basin maps produced by
Fend could be useful to the scientist from Split and his Regional
Seas Program.
46. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Yugoslav government decided to
embark on a diplomatic policy of building up an access to and
voice of the non-aligned movement in a vital center of global
wealth, the Arabian/Persian Gulf. This policy led to its
selection as the leader of UN peacekeeping operations in the Gulf,
and to its subsequent ability to organize a peace conference on
the Gulf, even to participating in intense discussions in cities
like Teheran and Baghdad with diplomats from Russia, France,
various non-aligned nations--but conspicuously no other country
from the West.
47. In the last weeks before Desert Storm, France decided also to
abandon its attempts at negotiating a peace settlement and,
despite much internal rancor, joined the US-led forces.
48. An international lawyer playing a substantial role in the
decision of France to join the US, and to abandon its tendency for
siding with Yugoslavia or other Third World countries, has
forbidden anyone wtih whom he has professional dealings, including
anyone from his firm, to have any contact with Peter Fend. This
lawyer is married to the sister of Fend.
49. The rift between the lawyer and Fend, which started with his
entry into the art world instead of (as he wanted) a prestigious
law school, became nearly total with the 20 October 1987 article
in The International Herald Tribune, along with subsequent news
articles in the international press. Less than six months later,
due to thre pressures of the rift, the sister of Peter Fend, the
wife of this lawyer, attempted to commit suicide by jumping off
the Queensboro Bridge. The event hit the front-page of the
newspapers because, unlike most everyone who jumps off that
bridge, she was rescued and survived.
50. Virtually all communication between this lawyer and all
members of the family of Peter Fend, including his parents and
younger sister, has stopped.
51. This lawyer was educated in both France and the United
States, and holds dual French and US citizenship. He has played a
major role in various postwar arrangements in Kuwait and
throughout the Gulf. He fre~uently attends meetings in what are
described by a source to Fend as "high government circles"
regarding what is to be done about or to Fend, particularly given
demands from the German Foreign Ministry to the French Government,
and he has recently forbidden any further leaks to Fend about what
is discussed in these meetings.
52. Fend has been told by one of his sources that French
intelligence is aware that the Yugoslav government was not happy
with Fend's relation with a highly-educated daughter of a leading
ecologist there, who in 1985 was murdered following an
accelerating trend in trips overseas--to the US, to Russia, to
Japan--regarding various ecological development technologies.
53. In his last trip to Belgrade, in February 1993, it became
evident to Fend that considerable control efforts had been imposed
on her
So, Jenny, here are some facts. They indicate, I believe, that
there had been a concerted attempt during the Iran-Iraq war by
countries leading the non-aligned movement or Socialist
International, countries such as Yugoslavia and Sweden, to gain an
determinative say in the partition of vital resources in the
Persian/Arabian Gulf, the main reserve of fossil fuels for the
world, and in South Africa, including Namibia. This attempt,
particularly in regard to fossil fuels, ran counter to the
property interests of the West generally, and of the US, UK,
Netherlands, France and Italy in particular. One country, from
our experience, including three court cases and what you may have
witnessed in the art world, has been rewarded for its vital
services in securing Western access to two members of the non-
aligned movement, Iran and Libya. This country is where you are
now exhibiting and publishing your views on the war in Yugoslavia.
When you told me in May 1990 that it was "my job" to "save the
Adriatic", I had an afterthought of asking, "Okay, Jenny, and
what's yours?" What's your job?
I think you should consider what tasks we were faced with back in
1980.
And I think we both should consider how we might structure a
relation or communication, unlike the ones which failed before.
...
Historical Context
It is generally considered that by far the largest reserves
of oil/gas in the world are in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, with an
estimated percentage of the world total being 57%. This means
that the last main reserve of the world will be the Gulf.
Meantime, further to the question of who controls world oil,
there are attempts to decide on control of reserves being
discovered or suspected in Georgia and in Albania with Kosovo. In
Georgia there is fighting now. In Albania, there is a fresh new
presence, with exclusive contracts, of the Standard Oil Company of
California, along with Occidental Petroleum, AND in Kosovo, where
Presidents Clinton and Bush said it may be necessary to send US
troops, there appears to be a geological structure conducive to
large quantities of what could be an inside-Europe source of
fossil fuels.
One may suppose that Western oil companies would not like
non-Western companies or entities, such as the former Soviet Union
or the rump-state Yugoslavia, having fresh new finds of fossil
fuels which could be used to induce alliances or independence of
western geopolitical strategies. This would conform with what
happened in the two world wars, when the West blocked Mitteleuropa
from gaining land access or contiguity to the Gulf, or to other
sources of independence, and with what happened at Yalta in 1945,
when Stalin was granted an award of Eastern Europe at the expense
(did he forget) of making a claim, enforceable under an Anglo-
Russian treaty of 1907, to 50% of Iran. When the Russian empire
tried in the 1980s, along with Yugoslavia, to gain a fresh, new
access to primary fossil fuel resources, they were defeated... and
so ended the Cold War.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 780 *ART*
01-06-94 03:45:44
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: PETER FEND
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 601 (YOUR MUNICH ACTION)
I liked Jenny's project to have a magazine story about Yugoslavia printed with
human blood so it literally sticks to your fingers. What I *really* don't
understand is your insinuation
> that both the Western
> Church and the Federal Republic of Germany have not been innocent
> bystanders in the war in Yugoslavia.
I can't imagine that the conflict in former Yugoslavia is in the interest of
either one, but even if that were so, why would Jenny Holzer's action
> raise serious questions of bias?
Sincerely yours and very confused, Wolfgang.
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* Origin: The Thing - New York City (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1053 *ART*
01-11-94 02:05:00
From: HEIKO WICHMANN
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 780 (YOUR MUNICH ACTION)
> that both the Western
> Church and the Federal Republic of Germany have not been innocent
> bystanders in the war in Yugoslavia.
WS>
WS> I can't imagine that the conflict in former Yugoslavia is in the
WS> interest
WS> of either one
I don't want to raise serious conspiracy thinking or rants. But do _you_ have
an explanation why the military leaders of Bosnia and Croatia are negotiating
in _Bonn_? Ok, surely it's just the secret world of diplomacy (and not the
church). But I'm sure Mr
Fend knows better...
-> Alice4Mac 2.1.4E QWK Ser#2-103
---
* Origin: THE THING BERLIN (box/fax 030:4528534) (42:1002/3)
Msg#: 1096 *ART*
01-14-94 20:53:27
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: HEIKO WICHMANN
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1053 (YOUR MUNICH ACTION)
Delirium, Delarium, Loeffelstiel! It's too bad you guys didn't get the
attached Fend file. I'll send it via netmail. But as a precaution please
encrypt all future communication concerning this matter.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING - NEW YORK CITY (I guess it had to be in caps.)
(42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1120 *ART*
01-15-94 12:43:31
From: MICHAEL JOHNSTON
To: PETER FEND
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 601 (YOUR MUNICH ACTION)
Your paranoiac perfomance work is as dull as it is ineffective. If you really
care about this stuff, what are you doing lurking around the art world? Here
your delusional ramblings offer nothing but entertainment. If you really cared
about your causes, you wouldn't be bothering Jenny Holzer.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING - NEW YORK CITY (I guess it had to be in caps.)
(42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1302 *ART*
01-22-94 19:19:38
From: MICHAEL OWEN
To: PETER FEND
Subj: SAW YOUR NAME
Peter saw your name as we scanned the messages. How are you doing? I look
forward to hearing about what you are up to. Robin White and I still have the
Owen Electric Pictures office on Wooster Street. I still collaborate with
Carole Ann Klonarides on MICA-TV projects. Talk to you.
Michael Owen
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1859 *ART*
01-28-94 13:20:26
From: MICHAEL JOHNSTON
To: ALL
Subj: ART?
Anybody seen any good shows lately?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 1865 *ART*
01-28-94 13:45:10
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MICHAEL JOHNSTON
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1859 (ART?)
I'm getting to the point where it's tough to say there I've seen a single show
that gets me excited. Maybe it's just a seasonal art-burn kinda of thing but
there's so much dull, repeative art out there that I 'm thrown into saying that
the things that I like up at the moment are the same things that I've always
liked. The LeWitt at Pace (to open tomorrow) is very nice. Nauman at Castelli
is OK. Morris at the Gugg. (uptown) to open next week looks good. The show at
Sonnabend is wonderful. What else would you like to know?
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1895 *ART*
01-29-94 02:36:13
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: MICHAEL JOHNSTON
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1859 (ART?)
Did you see Rainer's show at Nordanstad? I talked to Rainer today and we
decided to have an online conversation about a few issues over the course of
the next two weeks. The thread will be called "Snap to Grid" and will later be
archived in the file area, section interviews. Hecklers are welcome!
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1890 *ART*
01-29-94 01:12:03
From: DONALD NEWMAN
To: ALL
Subj: REVIEW OF DECHTER SHOW AT TWS
Review Text is in Enclosed File. Select ncl to download.
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
*Enclosed File: review.txt
<*>Replies
Type P to Pause, S to Stop listing
Artists Without Faith
A review of the Dechter exhibit at Thread Waxing Space by Donald
Newman, January 1994
The recent exhibit commissioned by a critic/curator exemplifies
and exploits the sense of crisis that many of the artists within
the NY art world seem to share and reveals the often horribly
misguided role of criticism and curatorial directives in relation
to the understanding or promotion of artistic process and
activity. Specifically, the exhibit inhabits the space between
the critic/curators desire to control what the artist produces
and the artists desire to produce something that is appreciated.
In this show an art critic/curator selected a group of generally
renown and historically recognized artists and required them to
produce an artwork in a medium that the critic selected and that,
almost to a single one: none of the artists had ever produced an
actual work of art in before. The medium the critic selected was
a 35mm slide. But more on that later...
First, imagine an art critic of the time giving Picasso, Brach,
Duchamp and a group of their contemporaries, a single small
canvas, two brushes, two colors of paint, and on a sunny day
taking them all to a field and telling them to paint the same
tree. It sounds silly. It sounds silly, because we can pretty
much predict what the artists reaction would have been to such a
proposal. After all, these artists were at that moment making
history and changing the meaning of art forever and believed it,
so they might not of reacted kindly to someone acting as an art
critic suggesting that they stop those activities to go paint a
certain tree. In fact, understanding that time and the belief
those artists had in their work, we can imagine that those
artists would of pointed out to such a person would do better to
pay attention to what the artists were making and to better
understand it instead of suggesting departures of questionable
value and dubious motives.
Now, imagine it is America in 1994 and an art critic gives Peter
Halley, Jenny Holzer, Joseph Kosuth and Sol Lewitt, a small piece
of watercolor paper a brush and watercolors and tells them to
make a painting with these materials. Don't you think it is
possible that some of these people would say "That's not what I
do," and might further say "I don't make art like that because I
don't believe in it."? Well of course that's possible. After
all, some artists believe that their way of working, the
materials they choose and the forms they create, whether
paintings or a more conceptual or inactive form, represent their
art and they are committed to it.
So why did a group of already accepted and renown, (after all
that's why they were chosen for the exhibit) artists agree to
produce something that was foreign to their efforts and in many
cases, downright antithetical to them? Was it because they
wanted to be in the exhibition for the exposure, or because it
was held at one of the leading exhibition spaces in New York. In
either case it was because they lacked or suspended their belief
in the value of their own artistic achievements and processes and
did not think: "Hey, I don't make slides! I paint, or I do this!"
or if they did, they quickly put such thoughts out of their mind
and didn't think about how odd it was or what it meant that a
critic/curator would think highly enough of their artwork and
standing to want to include them in a show, but would not want to
exhibit the art for which they had become recognized.
The curator/critic made it easier for the artists to put such
thoughts aside by not confronting them with a medium or method
that they would artistically identify such as watercolors, but
instead, offered them the least understood artistic medium today:
photography, and not photographic prints, which would of set off
the same artistic alarms as watercolor paint, but: 35mm slides.
The word confront in the previous paragraph was not used lightly,
because while a confrontation did not take place an assault did.
And it is the recognition of such an assault that would of caused
many of the artists to refuse the suggestion to make and exhibit
something other then the art which they have spent a lifetime
developing, which is uniquely their own, and for which they have
had the honor of becoming recognized for doing. But, and this is
the one thing our critic/curator is to be congratulated for: by
smartly avoiding the confrontation, with it's predictable
outcome, the critic/curator was able to assault the artists in
the same way that someone who comes up unseen from behind can
more easy rob you.
Isn't assault and extreme word and did an assault take place?
After all the artists did voluntary participate, and some of them
probably aggressively pursued the opportunity? And that is the
point: they did agree. But did they know what they were agreeing
too? Did they think about how past generations of artists would
have reacted and why? Did they think about how they had spent a
lifetime developing a way of working? Apparently they did not,
or if any did, in a moment of lost faith about their artwork or
their position in history, they decided that it would be worth
putting aside their commitment to their own chosen and well
developed vision of art for a the opportunity to exhibit a 35mm
slide projected in a darken room for thirty days.
But why? And why now?
Because they do not believe. They have lost faith. I don't mean
heroics. But quiet, sure, real, lasting, belief in the value of
what they have chosen to do. After all, I expect that all of the
artists always have made art in a form and manner that they have
chosen, and until participating in this exhibit, did not make
what they had been directed to make. (The patriarchal idea of
critics directing artists on what works of art to make is
particularly troublesome and anachronistic at this time.)
And finally to the art itself, to a one, all the artists in this
show would today be unknown if the 'artwork' (i.e., the slide)
they were exhibiting represented their real talents and best
efforts. For them, I hope that they stick to what they do best,
confine their experiments to their own whims, and the next time
someone wants to exhibit their art, they think only to exhibit
their best art - Art they really believe in - so that we may
partake and share in their believes and discoveries rather then
see them capitulate to an assault by an individual who for their
own motives desires to undermine the recognition of the value of
what artists actually do.
# # #
<*>Replies
Msg#: 1893 *ART*
01-29-94 01:36:15
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: DONALD NEWMAN (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1890 (REVIEW OF DECHTER SHOW AT TWS)
:)
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1913 *ART*
01-29-94 13:46:04
From: DONALD NEWMAN
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1893 (REVIEW OF DECHTER SHOW AT TWS)
what does :) mean?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2035 *ART*
01-31-94 11:02:18
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: DONALD NEWMAN (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1890 (REVIEW OF DECHTER SHOW AT TWS)
Thanks for your review. I'm glad that you felt so strongly to comment,
since you offer many points which should be considered in any discussion of art
and artistic practice today. I hope that you will continue to write, for even
though I disagree with you I value your contribution.
I would argue that slides are a medium with which artists are very
familiar, and they play an important role in the formation of the public's (as
well as their own) perception of art. Slides are not the unfamiliar, alien
medium that you suggest; they play a vital role in the circulation of work,
mediating relations through which the art--the perception of art--is produced.
Many of the images in Decter's exhibition ("Don't Look Now") already existed in
one form or another as part of the artist's repertoire, and many no doubt
already existed as slides;
the medium was not forced upon the artists in the strategy of control and
domination that you suggest (however this matter is by no means resolved). Many
artists consider how image reproduction and circulation function constitutively
in their art; some are keen to the fact that art today is produced not in the
studio, but in the dynamic social relationalities among artist, viewer, dealer,
institution, publication, and so on; some artists even make this the material
of their art. Far better than seeing the slide as alien, then, it is better to
consider its role as extending the work outside of the institution or studio,
circulating and mediating relationship, translating into various publications
(all of whom rely on slides for reproduction) in various editorial contexts,
functioning textually in the formation of that larger text (the "work") within
that still larger text ("culture").
Your comparing this situation to a critic giving Picasso, Braque, and
Duchamp the same canvas, brushes, colors of paint, etc., and sending them off
to paint the same tree does not hold, for the artists are not being asked to
produce the same image, and artists today welcome, and actively seek, the
addition of new materials in their work, in the *spirit* of Picasso, Braque,
and Duchamp. (Yes, those artists were "making history and changing the meaning
of art forever" and so are artists today, but they're not doing it the same
way, of course, because then the meaning of art wouldn't be changing.) Artists
today collaborate with institutions and publishers and work within their
constraints; many welcome the imposition of certain conditions in recognizing
the context-specificity of work. Jenny Holzer works effectively with a dizzying
array materials, and continually welcomes new challenges. Can you imaging her
saying, "Hey, I don't make slides! I paint." Joseph Kosuth has made dishes.
Peter Halley welcomed the opportunity to replicate one of his paintings on The
Thing; he wasn't insulted that he was asked. He's actively looking for new
meanings (especially since he no longer has any). The situation is not without
problems, of course;
misunderstandings and "dubious motives" abound, but the artist is certainly not
always the victim.
A questioning of everyone's role in the art system is the order for all
of us. The artist's and critic's duty, first and foremost, it to continually
question the nature of art and to articulate its meaning at this moment in
history. With the world radically changing all around us, in every aspect, this
requires a radical reworking of all of our assumptions. To engage and further
this dialogically is of utmost importance. For a critic to offer such an
exhibition as "Don't Look Now" is not a harmful or "horribly misguided" thing:
it is what keeps art vital and alive. What *is* harmful and "horribly
misguided" is for an artist or critic to cling to outdated ideas of what
constitutes these roles, and what constitutes art in general, and to defend
them against the "assault" of new meanings. This kind of protectionism can only
hinder art's exploratory spirit, its ability to speak to us of our moment, and
sap its strength and vitality.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1910 *ART*
01-29-94 13:08:43
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: SNAP TO GRID
When I talked to you yesterday you expressed some disappointment that some
people read your show as purely autobiographical. I understand that you would
like to establish a context for your work that allows for a much broader
interpretation (and we will have ample opportunity to talk about that), but how
can you %avoid% the autobiographical element? After all it was Rainer Ganahl
who went to Japan, made it his project to learn the language, took the
snapshots, did the audio and video recordings. Why are you so vehemently
opposed to an autobiographical reading?
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 1941 *ART*
01-29-94 22:31:21
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1910 (SNAP TO GRID)
I don't mind at all that there is also an autobiographical reading of this
particular project, I call 'basic japanese', but what disturbes me is if the
objects on display are only seen as such, without the context I put them in.
Obviously, if seen without the context some of these objects would be silly,
uninteresting, even offending and would make no sense if taken at face value.
Then they would have to be seen only as fetishistic souvenirs representing the
Japanese in a very problematic way.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1998 *ART*
01-30-94 23:00:17
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1941 (SNAP TO GRID)
I am very interested in the architectural aspect of your work. You measure
your spaces with rulers and grids and you investigate the "movement" (import,
export, transfer) of language, data, and code. You created a model based in
large parts on paradigms borrowed from computer space. It is a very open and
flexible structural model to operate in. Doesn't this create conflicts when
this model is imported into the rather rigid and closed spaces of the
traditional exhibition circuit?
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2006 *ART*
01-31-94 01:19:00
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1998 (SNAP TO GRID)
well, you are right, that a lot of those models or systems stem from computer
space. But I wouldn't confine them necessairily to this space, because they
also not just have a life outside technological spaces (every interface
controlled machine) - metaphorically, linguistically, practically, and so on -
but they often are imported from this realm: interactive control of operations
with a mouse for example basically follows a logic that we are used from daily
spatial interactions. Now, if you ask me about the "rather rigid and closed
spaces of the traditional exhibition circuit" as you put it, I have to first
ask you back: what do you mean? Do you refer to the architecture of a gallery,
or do you refer to the gallery as an institution, an administrative and
ideological entity? If you mean the first, I would like to answer that
precisely this mapping of an actual architectonic space is what interests me
for a variety of reasons and the rigidness and closing of the space can be a
constructive condition. If you want to see the gallery as a rigid institution I
wouldn't agree a 100% with what you say since those spaces are what you make
out of them. One can use them in indefinite ways. And this is precisely what
interests me - playing with them in all kind of ways. Using Rulers and Grids
almost literally points to these possibilities. Nevertheless I don't find
myself only confined to those places and try to be open to accept all kinds of
different infrastructures (obviously including the one which is right now the
carrier for this interview where theoretically any other user could jump in
with questions or comments).
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2094 *ART*
02-01-94 12:23:12
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1941 (SNAP TO GRID)
> without the context I put them in. Obviously, if seen without the
> context some of these objects would be silly, uninteresting, even
> offending and would make no sense if taken at face value. Then they
Your project 'Basic Japanese' is about learning a language. Learning a
language is a process. How do the objects in this show then function? As a
documentation? Isn't learning the language, or the language itself, already
the object?
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2120 *ART*
02-02-94 00:11:20
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2006 (SNAP TO GRID)
> If you want to see the gallery as a rigid institution I wouldn't agree a
> 100% with what you say since those spaces are what you make out of them.
> One can use them in indefinite ways.
I can see the the strategies you employ to get around the limitations of
these traditional spaces (both institutional and architectural). But whether
you make the gallery your living quarters or have people teach you Japanese
(as you did in the weekend museum in Tokyo) you still basically treat it as a
"stage." You are the master of ceremonies and you define the parameters of
the interaction with your "audience." For me this defines a space as elitist
and exclusive.
Let me try to illustrate: In your current NY show there was a piece that
was a kind of guest book from your Tokyo gig in which visitors were invited to
write comments. After one visitor went berserk and decided to write
obscenities in it, you decided to cut out the pages and present them
seperately with a label "A Japanese person showing signs of madness." Now
that's your privilege when you consider yourself the sole author of that
piece. What bothers me is that the "madman" now has no opportunity of
recourse.
I am afraid I am opening a can of worms here, but these are questions I am
trying to come to grips with in my own work.
PS: I just found this piece in the Lindinger + Schmid Groessenwahn catalog.
It's by Dellbruegge / de Moll and its title is "Laura Cottingham."
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
*Enclosed File: cotting.gif
Msg#: 2123 *ART*
02-02-94 02:22:35
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2094 (SNAP TO GRID)
The objects of my "basic japanese" project at Nordanstad gallery - in NY and
not in Tokyo - function on different levels: first, these objects are layed
out to literally illustrate some kind of 'basic japanese' sentences you can
encounter in study books. actually, severeal of them - for ex. "japanese are
greeting in a cheerfull manner"- I even encountered in my 'japnese for
everyone' study book. This already confronts me with a particular logic that
isn't neutral at all and often hides a lot of prejudices about the people who
speak the language in question. second: these objects also, within the given
format of presentation, have a particular narrative task: to speak about an
exhibition I did at Person's Weekend Museum in Tokyo, to be the show of a show
(with the help of the catalog but also with other objects I destillated from
there: including 20 10 minutes long conversations I taped with visitors) , to
complement and expand the Tokyo project, to export (or re-import) it into
another context. They also are telling you some particular activities I worked
on during the several months of my stay and my show. third: those objects also
can be seen partially as decoys for all kinds of questions: dealing with the
intrinsic problem of the representation of the self and the cultural other, the
presence or absence of the anthropological (fake) narrative, the complex of
stereotypes and (cultural) prejudices - is now a greeting machine good or bad,
superficial or practical; an 'elevetor girl' gratitious, humiliating,
rediculous, efficient, sexist or traditional (to name just a few of the
questions one is confronted with -- I simply refuse the way in which Roland
Barthes in the "Empire of Signs" came to terms with all these for a western
context unusual looking phenomena --. forth: those objects as a whole also can
be seen in relationship to the "file, basic japanese" , hanging next to it with
the "special comment" on it that studying japanese brings you to a limit where
orientalism and exotism are at the point of revenge,a point where it was
working against myself (as a european), where it destabilized me. So adding
some almost fetishistic objects to it for a show at my return was once more for
me a challenging thing confronting me and others with precisley these
questions. A last task of the "basic japanese" shelf I see in the fact that I
don't really want to chose another way of representing the process of the
studying of a foreign language as a cultural exchange modus but a negative one,
one that comes accross as superficial and irritading - since you are right that
it is a process, something not really interesting to be documented as such.
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2153 *ART*
02-02-94 11:14:42
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2120 (SNAP TO GRID)
I agree with you that the gallery or museum is a stage where the parameters of
interactions with the audience are mainly defined in advance, mostly by the
institution and the artists. But I am not so sure whether everything is said by
reducing it to the fact, that they are somehow elitist and exclusive (like the
network we are writing on as well - since it takes less of an effort to just
walk into a museum than log on here, even if there is a virtual space for
interaction, that de facto is as regulated as anything else -): I can't resolve
these aporia even if I try to address them in all kind of ways. But I would
like to say something to the example you choose for good reasons: the book you
are talking was laying in the museum in Tokyo with a sign that encouraged
visitors to write words and sentences in Japanese they want the artist to
learn: one day I was surprised by an entree of 50 pages constantly repeating in
Japanese and in English: death, be dead, dead etc.... I found it a little
disturbing since I didn't want the book to be an outlet for all weird
expressions taking away so much space (50 sheets). So I became, against my own
intention, an editor or, if you want, a censor in a mediaeval way. Nonetheless
I do show then these pages illustrating my problematic but still carefully put
phrase: "A Japanese person showing signs of madness". I agree that this is an
intervention that is decided on my part: but as I don't know the author I can't
invite him for a reaction to my reaction (given the content of his message: I
wouldn't be too interested in knowing it). Now, what I find interesting in
these obsessive reiterations is the fact, that they were one of the rare
examples, (next to the police), where I encountered personally signs of
aggressions and repressions in Japan. And if I hadn't singled them out they
wouldn't have become so visible as they are now accompanying a "basic japanese"
sentence. But again I find your demand for a participational space very
interesting but I have my serious doubts about a possible, satisfying and
devinite equation between full participation and equal communication within the
framework of cultural production even if both states would be desireable.
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2157 *ART*
02-02-94 14:35:08
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2153 (SNAP TO GRID)
I'm going to take the risk of being simplistic here. Your intentions with your
show at Nordenstad seem to have to do with a very finely weighed calibration of
judgements--a very complicated analytical attitude toward what is being
displayed. But these are hardly articulated within the exhibition itself; they
are all quite implicit. Aren't the means and contexts you are using, then,
perhaps too fragile for the load you want them to bear? Shouldn't you perhaps
tried to develop a more obviously discursive, more clearly multi-layered
rhetoric?
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2167 *ART*
02-02-94 22:37:29
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2157 (SNAP TO GRID)
I appreciate that you see also the analytical attitude of this installation
some people don't want to see. The question to what degree my analytical and
narrative interests are manifest I have been asked all the time, even being
accused of formalism. I am refering here to the works of my "windows" that are
dealing with indexical textual footage only. Now, with "basic japanese" I am
playing in an almost Wittgensteinian sense with objects. (Wasn't Wittgenstein
obsessed with elementary sentences going like: "but what if a child learns the
word...", or "given somebody that studies a foreign language... "?) This
involvment with indexical objects seems to make the readability of the
analytical layering of this show more difficult, since it is not so obvious to
abstract from the single, partially seducing elements and see the entire shelf
as a kind of "Lernkasten" (learning box) for a student yet to come. But in
spite of this, one cruxial sentence on the shelf is "having a museum show" that
is illustrated with a catalog that comprises an extensive analytical interview
and images of the Tokyo show and activities (studying) I spent 6 months with in
Japan. Therefore I would say that I have never had anything so explicitly
discursive in a show before. Through this kind of door, one is invited to enter
a different show, that relates to this piece without necessairily absorbing it.
But in the end I agree, it is my particular decision to chose a discrepancy
between what you assume as a "load" and what is there. Wouldn't the shelf break
otherwise anyway?
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2221 *ART*
02-04-94 11:50:53
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2167 (SNAP TO GRID)
Yes, the "load" is "lightened" by some of it being projected elsewhere by means
of the phrase "having a museum show" and what goes with it. In fact this idea
of the "show of the show" is for me one of the more interesting aspects.
But more importantly, I have got to find a way to convince you to
accept the rubric of "formalism" with equanimity! Someone (I can't remember
who) once said that a little formalism takes art away from the real, but a lot
of it puts it right back. What I like about your work is precisely the way it
is possessed by this sense of what I think I called in the Art Press essay
"hyperformalism" that brings the world back in from the margin.
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2229 *ART*
02-04-94 17:24:07
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2221 (SNAP TO GRID)
As we all know, "formalism" like "modernism" has turned into a token coined for
all kinds of usage. I find myself particularly interested in "applied
formalisms" - how I encounter them in daily live, whether in a supermarket, in
a credit card or in any kind of electronic interface. Their designers probably
have first, second or third hand art school/history education and are therefore
vaguely familiar with formalist vocabulary but don't show any interest in the
ideological package that these visual rhethorics came with. So here too, I see
the real with its pragmatics bleeding in like black ink even if it comes a
little bit later. As a reader of Adorno, the most important European apologetic
voice of hermetic modernism (that can partially be equated with formalism), I
can't overlook, that precisely his favorite composer, Arnold Schho got a job in
Hollywood - and guess as what: being a teacher for those film musicians who
produce dramatic psychological background noises for movies.
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2230 *ART*
02-04-94 17:44:24
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BERRY SCHWABSKY
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2229 (SNAP TO GRID)
"hyperformalism" as a term is very intriguing as I see it as much in
relationship with words and concepts like hypertexts (hypercards - a brand
name) and hyperframes as with formalism.
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2256 *ART*
02-05-94 16:03:11
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2229 (SNAP TO GRID)
"Applied" reads at least 2 ways--as meaning "put to work" (opposing the
uselessness/art-pour-l'art aspect of formalism) or as meaning "laid on top of
the surface, e.g. like a decal" (opposing the organicism/internal logic aspect
of formalism) but in either case, isn't "applied formalism" an oxymoron?
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2300 *ART*
02-06-94 14:50:57
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2256 (SNAP TO GRID)
yes, it is so, "applied formalism" can be read as an oxymoron, a "figure of
speech in which apparently contradictory terms are combined to produce an
epigrammatic effect" (webster's).
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2336 *ART*
02-08-94 02:27:26
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2123 (SNAP TO GRID)
One piece in your show consists of a small row of books. The title
refers to them as coffee table books. The authors - Said, Bourdieu, Spivak,
Krauss,... - are frequently cited by you in interviews in support of your work.
Like buoys they mark the intellectual terrain of your investigations.
Is the coffee table presentation an attempt at self-persiflage?
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2554 *ART*
02-08-94 01:35:30
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2336 (SNAP TO GRID)
The work you are refering to is called: "A Portable, (Not So Ideal) Imported
Library, or How to Reinvent the Coffee Table: 25 Books for Instant Use" and was
conceived for the Tokyo show. There it was to function as something IMPORTED,
that together with my study activities should allude - even ironically - to the
arrogant and missionary attitudes of classical orientalists. The selection of
the 25 books was at least partially reflecting this problematic issue of uneven
cultural exchange. The work was on display in the coffee area of Person's
Weekend Museum, and intended for use by visitors. I tried to encourage this by
stating an example with the weekly 2 hour performance piece - "reading in the
library". This performance was in direct oppostition to the highly consumption
oriented quatier that the museum is located. As an Austrian, I am aware of the
coffee table as a site where, historically, cultural issues were written,
negotiated and discussed, something that was for me impossible to conceive in
contemporary Japan.(I am talking about coffee tables). Now, being back to the
country where most of the literature was selected from, I made another work
with the same title - but as an "US-Version". This version further confronts
and questions of import, its means in the cultural field, how it is different
according the countries involved, how the import is perceived etc. Having
addressed these issues further, makes me want to continue with some more
country specific versions. To what degreee the selected titles correspond with
the work, and the context I am putting them, and to what degree ironies of all
kinds may be involved is decided from version to version. I would like to add
that I do read these books and I wouldn't be able to set up these shows without
having studied them but this doesn't imply that I pursue like Wittgenstein at
the end of the tractatus comparing his sentences with a ladder that ...
Msg#: 2590 *ART*
02-09-94 14:51:06
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2554 (SNAP TO GRID)
I feel a need to interject here--to bring things to my usual "literal"
level--but it seems that your reply, interesting though it is in itself, goes
past what I understood as Wolfgang's question, which has to do with the
English-language phrase "coffee-table books" in the sense of big fat picture
books (whether "Rembrandt's Greatest Paintings" or "Decorating Santa Fe Style"
is irrelevant) that people buy not to read but to leave on their coffee table
so people can idly flip through them while waiting for the coffee to be served
(or whatever). I take it from your reply that you did not have that reference
in mind at all--is that right?
Msg#: 2597 *ART*
02-09-94 17:31:49
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2590 (SNAP TO GRID)
I did have also this reference in mind since I called it "how to reinvent the
coffee table". This can be seen as wishfull thinking that wants to turn the fat
picture book tables into the marble ones Karl Kraus wrote on. But this is then
nostalgic and confronts me with eurocentric, stereotypical prejudices of how
and what culture has to be. As such the paedagogical and somehow arrogant
impulse to teach, to preach, to be somehow missionary that is already implicit
in the act of puting up these "imported books" shows once more even there. But
I would not want to be cynical and have the books selected be equated with
"coffee-table books" even if I want this tension to be there.
Msg#: 2840 *ART*
02-11-94 14:28:54
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2597 (SNAP TO GRID)
So is it that the marble table of Karl Kraus is closer to the stone tablet of
the Law?
Msg#: 2842 *ART*
02-11-94 14:48:44
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2840 (SNAP TO GRID)
it might appear to certain people like this. and who casts that marble table?
Msg#: 2865 *ART*
02-13-94 12:19:51
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BERRY SCHWABSKY
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2842 (SNAP TO GRID)
Berry, I know you are giving me a hard time and the problems starts smelling
"high" - "low" something you interestingly enough don't take up with the
selection of books -that are all from the range of the so-called h-category -
but with the title. Now, with Karl Krauss as just an example from Vienna, I
have cited somebody whose relationship to the authority of the law is very
interesting: Most of his critical writing he started almost with an obsession
for grammar and correct writing targeting out primarily the bad and
inconsistent daily business of journalism and other media oriented
publications. But what he did was not just comforming to a rule, a grammar, an
authoritarian logic, the Duden's "snap to grid" but connecting social and
ideological arguments with bad writing. To mass with grammar and words
(something I unfortunately can't avoid here since I am not a native English
writer, and right now without editor) was equivalent for him with the
manipulation of narrative, representational, social and ideological meaning. He
then became a very influential figure for Wittgenstein who too started his
"tractatus" in the format of a law codex, even if he invites the reader at the
end, to throw the ladder away after use. But from there, and somehow
Wittgenstein really took his advice seriously (by the way a book he wasn't
writing on a Kaffeetisch but partially on the battlefield of world war I) he
develops almost out of Krauss his philosophical investigations that I think
belong to the most deconstructive philosophical works in this century, far
beyond any Derrida or Heiddegger who ignored him more or less totally. Another
little anecdote, concerning the law has to do with James Welling. I met him
during my show in Tokyo.He had a strong reaction to the books on the shelf but
he did a nice thing: he send me a copy of a book he highly recommended and
suggested to add it to the shelf. By the way a book that Mat Mullican was
reading also at the time. I admit I hadn't payed any attention to this book and
wouldn't read it normally. I tried the first 50 pages to get an idea: The book
was called "The Firm". Ironically enough this story develops around a law firm
in a very unrealistic but entertaining, seducing, "Dallas" tv-series like
style. Now, the point I want to make, with all this is, that I do think - and
this could produce more arguments - that the writers I somehow have chosen - as
well as the writers I alluded to with the marble table - are in a more
subversive way going against the stone of the law then any writers of the range
of "The Firm" even if they gain high popularity and garantee full entertainment
from the first page on. But I totally agree with you that the only thing that
matters is the relationship to the "law" (Lacan would say the "father") and the
ways one can break it.
Msg#: 2879 *ART*
02-13-94 15:03:33
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2865 (SNAP TO GRID)
There's a lot to consider in what you said--and one thing I for one can be very
sloppy about is keeping up the distinction between The Law and the laws. The
latter we break all the time, and I think it's pretty obvious that in doing so
we maintain The Law (Zizek can talk about this, but the same goes for Sartre or
lots of others--I know I'm stating something well-known). But perhaps the
effort to attain The Law forces it to crack a bit...
Incidentally, I would be very interested to know more about the
relationship K. Kraus/Adorno. I've been reading the latter's "Notes to
Literature" and things like his essay on "Punctuation Marks" seem very much
related to what I understand about Kraus and his way of criticizing style. (I
have to admit I've never read Kraus but have read lots about him, by Canetti
particularly, also Benjamin, but also many others.) Does Adorno cite Kraus
much and in what way??
Msg#: 2887 *ART*
02-13-94 16:25:50
From: CAROL BROAD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2879 (SNAP TO GRID)
Excuse me, I don't understand what law or laws you are talking about. I find
the discussion quite interesting, but sometimes the context is lost on me. I
would very much appreciate if you could establish some context for those of us
who have not read all the books and authors you are constantly refering to. Or
an I asking for too much? Thank you very much. I would like to see Mr.
Ganahl's exhibition, where is this Nordenstad Gallery?
Msg#: 2908 *ART*
02-14-94 11:32:18
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2887 (SNAP TO GRID)
I agree that all this "referencing" can be a problem, and in fact it's a
problem not unrelated to ones I was earlier trying to analyze with regard to
Rainer's show at Nordenstad (upstairs from Pat Hearn, on Wooster between Broome
& Grand--stop in for dessert at the Gourmet Garage while you're there!),
problems about what seemed to me a too-great assumption that viewers could be
"complicitous" with him in assuming certain kinds of attitudes towards the
cultural materials (including books) on display.
As for my particular references, some of them are pretty inessential in
the sense that I hope that the point I'm making can be clear without them, but
they are there as an extra "example" to make even more sure that things are
clear for anyone who might be familiar with them (and in some cases I know that
Rainer, to whom I was replying, is familiar with them. Slavoj Zizek would be
one of these, for instance. In another case I myself was asking for more
information, namely Karl Kraus. But if there are particular allusions you'd
like me to clear up for you, let me know what they are and I'll do my best.
Msg#: 2910 *ART*
02-14-94 11:51:42
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2887 (SNAP TO GRID)
After replying to you a few minutes ago, I decided to take the liberty of
finding some of your other contributions to discussions on the Thing in the
hope it would give me more of a sense of who I was talking to. What I noticed
was that you often emphasize your non-understanding of what's going on, what's
being said. Is it that you really feel you don't understand, or perhaps that
your understanding is "other" than what you think others are understanding? Or
are you taking a Socratic stance, trying to prod people to examine their
statements more closely? Come clean, Carol!
Msg#: 2914 *ART*
02-14-94 12:46:47
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2865 (SNAP TO GRID)
two distinctions that deserve unpacking: *snap to grid* and *the stone of the
law*.
Msg#: 3124 *ART*
02-15-94 02:21:07
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2914 (SNAP TO GRID)
Morgan I think the word "tablet," which you seen to omit, helps to clarify the
concept. It reads: "the stone tablet of the law.'
Can't help with "snap to grid..." American slang?
Msg#: 3127 *ART*
02-15-94 03:45:04
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2914 (SNAP TO GRID)
"snap to grid" is first of all a computer command, something you can find in
all kind of programms that allows you to structure the space you use. then it
is also a name of a piece, I once showed in the US in english and in japan in
japanese. then it is the name of this interview, wolfgang came up with. plus
you can imagine all kind of things (the network shuts me down in 2 minutes) I
got to go. concerning the stone, I refer you back to barry schwabsk.
Msg#: 3141 *ART*
02-15-94 10:55:09
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3124 (SNAP TO GRID)
Hamurabi ? Moses ? The Kaaba ? Whose, which, where, when?
Msg#: 3142 *ART*
02-15-94 10:57:21
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: RAINER GANAHL
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3127 (SNAP TO GRID)
but, also like the idiomatic American "snap to", to get with it, to orient to
expected roles, know what is required, no extra attitude, just do the job.
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#: 1945 *ART*
01-30-94 02:50:14
From: DONALD NEWMAN
To: ALL
Subj: REVIEW OF DAVID SALLE SHOW
The David Salle sculptures at the Larry Gagosian Gallery on Wooster St in Soho
represent the most mind bogglingly brilliant sculptures I have seen since
seeing Bruce Nauman's work in the seventies.
Why?
Because they look like they should of been made 60-75 years ago, but couldn't
of because the visual vocabulary didn't exist then that would of made them
possible.
David, at his best has redefined the way we see things, and has at times
irrefutably succeeded in adding to our visual vocabulary. This is one of those
times. See these sculptues and you will always remember them and never see
sculpture the same afterwards, even if you don't 'like' them.
I don't know when the show ends.
# # #
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 2004 *ART*
01-31-94 00:35:47
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: DONALD NEWMAN (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1945 (REVIEW OF DAVID SALLE SHOW)
great your "david" at least finds one admirer
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* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2046 *ART*
01-31-94 15:12:20
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: DONALD NEWMAN (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2004 (REVIEW OF DAVID SALLE SHOW)
let me also add that I see a wonderfull correlation between the pathos of your
rhethorics and your "David". - I must say: you are exercising there a brilliant
acrobatic step with temporality that makes me think that not only previous
times lost a big critic with you but also a big poet -
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 1946 *ART*
01-30-94 03:01:11
From: DONALD NEWMAN
To: ALL
Subj: REVIEW MEGHAN BOODY AT TWS
The antecedents of Joseph Bueys, William Gibson, and Edward Keinhotz, meet the
sensibilities and photographic expertise of a woman with astounding intellect
and artistic judgement. You think I'm prone to hyperbole, then see the show:
Meghan Boody, Thread Waxing Space in the back room. Bring a quarter to play
the pinball machine, 2 balls for 25 cents.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2071 *ART*
01-31-94 20:07:12
From: DONALD NEWMAN
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: HALLEY EDITION
Peter Halley DID NOT REPLICATE ONE OF HIS PAINTINGS on THE THING.
When you stated in your reply to my review of the Decther Show at Thread Waxing
Space that "Peter Halley welcomed the opportunity to replicate one of his
paintings on The Thing; he was not insulted that he was asked," you were
completely incorrect about what Halley did do on THE THING. Peter Halley
created ON COMPUTER an image in that would then be distributed VIA COMPUTER,
and therefore really exists ONLY ON COMPUTER, or at least not detached from it,
and even if the image file is eventually printed, is the printed form then the
ART? The ideas impled in an artist using the computer as medium to both make
and distribute a work of art with, and in the case of Halley, the relation of
the image of his work in relation to using a computer as the medium for
creation and also exchange is particularly interesting, and adds to the
understanding of of all of Halley's other achievements. (In fact in makes him
look downright clairvoyant in that his earlier work can now be seen as
predicting such a state to exists in.)
Anyway, the different between using the computer as an actual medium, which
Halley did, and as a way of distributing pictures of paintings that already
existsed, which he did not, is extreme. I don't know if he would of been
insulted but he surely would have been less interested if THE THING had called
him and asked him for some pictures of his paintings to distribute online as
apposed to involing him with using THE THING as a medium to create and locate a
work of art.
###
Peter Halley's edition is available for download by selecting Thing Editions
from the Main Menu.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 2090 *ART*
02-01-94 10:47:02
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: DONALD NEWMAN (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2071 (HALLEY EDITION)
I stand corrected, but I said it that way to make a subtle point. What
I should have said was that he replicated one of his logotypes, his signature
trademark images, which functions as a kind of colophon. It's not meant to
advance a discourse but to mark a territory. I think this work, and our
including it, trivializes what it means to make art in telecommunicational
space.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 2147 *ART*
02-02-94 08:37:16
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: DONALD NEWMAN (Rcvd)
Subj: TERRITORY MARKING
This is a reply both to you and to Jordan, but I don't know how to cc, so I
sent it to both of you.
This is a reply to MSG# 2423 in rt.
There are some very interesting ripples that emanate from the concept of
"marking a territory" in telecommunicational space. One such ripple is the
idea that each transaction by which we access telecommunicational space
creates, in a way, a marking of small amounts of territory in various
informational spaces. When we subscribe to a magazine, for example, we mark a
small amount of territory in the publisher's data space as well as in various
other demographic/informational spaces. Regardless of whether our transactions
are registered on a floppy or hard disk, these transactions are *allocated*
certain amounts of digital spaces. In this way, we not only mark those spaces,
but we are marked *by others* in those spaces. Each marking of an
informational territory, then, fundamentally destabilizes our relationship both
to that territory and to ourselves: locating ourselves by our markings in
those territories is not fully possible. Identity is destabilized. Related to
this is the fact that a *complete* record of our transactions is impossible --
we can never *completely* and *totally* mark a territory; in part because the
territory *itself* is constantly changing.
In the context of the conversation to which this posting is a reply, I would
maintain that the dynamics of an uploaded image that can be captured as a
unique "object," detached from other systems/spaces, is contrary to the
dynamics of the "territories" -- always plural -- of informational spaces.
This is not to criticize anything or anyone -- it is merely to point out an
important aspect of the spaces with which and through which we negotiate.
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: THE THING NYC (42:1001/1)
Msg#: 3166 *FINE ART*
02-15-94 21:33:46
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3141 (SNAP TO GRID)
I was only getting the phrase together--since you send me back to it. However
about its meaning you should ask Barry Schwabsky, he wrote it.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 3174 *FINE ART*
02-15-94 22:39:42
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3127 (SNAP TO GRID)
I think Josefina's reminder should clear up the question regarding the stone
tablets of the Law--except of course for those blessed with ignorance of our
"judaeo-christian" heritage!
Msg#: 3200 *FINE ART*
02-16-94 13:21:38
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3142 (SNAP TO GRID)
I wouldn't call "snap to" American slang exactly, I hear it as more
specifically military in origin--though perhaps that's no great difference.
Shall we consult William Safire?
Msg#: 3219 *FINE ART*
02-16-94 18:51:58
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3200 (SNAP TO GRID)
"Snap to" has the feel of a response to a powerful presence, dispelling reverie
and focusing intently on the present circumstances. If a rock is hurtling down
a mountain slope straight for you, the appropriate response is to "snap to".
Back in Texas, "snap" was an undefinable property that certain people were
better endowed with than others; it was the capacity to gather oneself on
moments notice, a precision of response. "Slugs" lacked "snap". Snap was that
little extra degree of spiff, a pinch of alacrity in daily undertaking. Not a
bad concept, all in all.
Msg#: 3224 *FINE ART*
02-16-94 20:12:09
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3200 (SNAP TO GRID)
In some research that I did a few years ago -- which I can't locate -- I think
I found that the etymology of "snap to" derives from the expression "doe dem
tap too," or something very close to that. It's Dutch, I think, and it means
that a military compound should "bug out." There is also the military
traditions of tattoos which, as I recall, were competitions/spectacles based on
military drumming.
Msg#: 3233 *FINE ART*
02-16-94 21:49:44
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3219 (SNAP TO GRID)
But "snap to!" is an order, and perhaps implies that the addressee is, as you
say, a slug.
Msg#: 3631 *FINE ART*
02-20-94 17:24:25
From: CAROL BROAD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2910 (SNAP TO GRID)
I'm so embarassed that you read my early messages! I wish I could delete them!
I try hitting the Delete key on my keybord but nothing happens. My
understanding may be "other", but I don't know if I understand what you're
talking about. Your statement leads me around in a circle. I feel like when
I'm in a plane circling the airport and never landing. But I read that
understanding is circular, so maybe you neverland!
Msg#: 3643 *FINE ART*
02-20-94 23:26:50
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3631 (SNAP TO GRID)
Well, you never land in Never-Never-Land anyway. Not only have I read your past
messages, but they were even the subject of conversation at a party I was at
last night! The person I was talking to opined that you are "too good to be
true"--in other words it seems I am not the only one to whom some of your
interventions seem disingenuous. (That's not a criticism, by the way.)
Msg#: 3173 *FINE ART*
02-15-94 22:07:42
From: PETER FEND
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: YOUR MUNICH ACTION
It is generally said, and believed, that the war in Yugoslavia has three
sides: one Western Church, one Eastern Church,and one Islamic. It has also
been said, in the Austrian press for example, and by the former Italian foreign
minister, as well as of course by various Greek public figures, that both the
Western Church and the German Government have played a covert role, at least,
in promoting the seaparation of Croatia and Slovenia from whatever was
Yugoslavia. There is a substantial world-public perception of some interested,
or biased position of the Roman Church and of Germany. This may or may not be
true. The point is, that it is widely perceived to be true, such that the
action of adopting a "moralisch" position on the war, as attempted by Holzer,
become biased--or at least perceived as biased--in its taking place in a Roman
Catholic church in Cologne, Germany and in a prominent newspaper in
predominantly Catholic Munich, Germany. What Holzer did in these sites, in
these religio-political contexts, could be perceived to be as biased as some
artist attempting to be moralisch on the war from a mosque in Riyadh, or an
Orthodox Church in Greece or Russia, or a prominent newspaper in Turkey. I
happen to know of people in Serbia who have hardened their position as a result
of her choice of context.
In late 1991, when my colleagues and I engaged in a Montenegro project
transferred the work-studio to the American Fine Arts Company, just as the war
was heating up but not fully flared, architect George Chaikin invited two
Yugoslav students from his class at Cooper Union to participate. One student
was Croatian, the other Serbian. The Croatian declined to take part. The
Serbian, despite her personal pro-Serbian inclinations, produced a project for
a "House of Four Religions" to be located in Sarajevo. The four religions would
be: Western Christian, Eastern Christian, Islam and Judaism. She then dealt
with the terrain of all Yugoslavia,using the rivers as an organizing principle.
Whether she was "right" is less vital to me than the fact that she maintained
an ecumenical stance. I think her effort at respecting all the main religions
of the region, at operating with regard to all the converging cultures, should
rather be a model for anyone voicing an opinion on the war than what Holzer
did within one context generally recognized as being biased, or at least party
to the conflict.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 3632 *FINE ART*
02-20-94 17:27:42
From: CAROL BROAD
To: PETER FEND
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3173 (YOUR MUNICH ACTION)
YOU MUST HAVE ONE GRAND PASSION
Msg#: 3827 *FINE ART*
02-23-94 19:35:53
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: IGOR
Subj: YET MORE
Volume 1, #1, of The New York Review of Art has passed this way. They make
claims of being a "really" critical voice within the Art world.
Page 1, by James Gardner asserts "the two besetting sins of most art writing
are a servile indulgence of its readers and an equally arrogant disregard for
them. Between pleasant puff pieces and impenatrable jargon there is little to
choose...Why did so many people come to occupy themselves with art in the first
place? For some, it was the foolish and illaudable reason that art was the
locus of power and prestige, and they gathered to it like moths to a
flame...Once when you were ten, you were taken to a museum, or when you were
twenty you sat in a darkened classroom, and you saw something that astonished
you, something that moved you to praise or emulation. But then, with all to
many people, the initial love hardened into an obligation or calcified into a
career..."
Mr. Gardner has also authored Culture Or Trash? which I intend to peruse next
time I pass through Rizzoli.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 3873 *FINE ART*
02-24-94 11:05:23
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3827 (YET MORE)
James Gardner has on various occasions remarked to me on his own ignorance
concerning contemporary art. (I'm not necessarily saying this should
disqualify him from his effort.)
Msg#: 3899 *FINE ART*
02-24-94 23:19:54
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3873 (YET MORE)
that's an interesting point. I am curious to see what he does with his
understanding. Perhaps he will grow into his project. He appears to be
committed to a better quality of discourse...I guess we'll ahve to wait and see
Msg#: 3925 *FINE ART*
02-25-94 08:48:32
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3899 (YET MORE)
> He appears
> to be committed to a better quality of discourse...
Now you really sound like Helen Frankenthaler. "A better quality of
discourse"??!!! Why don't you throw this guy in the "culture or
trash"--preferably the latter--along with the likes of Hilton Kramer and your
friend Robert Hughes, and march on down to Rainer's bookshelf...
Msg#: 3939 *FINE ART*
02-25-94 13:45:22
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3925 (YET MORE)
can we assume that you are throwing your lot with a worse quality of discourse,
then ? What earthly difference does it make if something sounds "like Helen
Frankenthaler"?
Confusing the content of an argument with its style is a deficiency we
customarily associate with the logically illiterate. Your prescription seems to
be motivated by animus to a much greater extent that it is by insight.
There are people who do not seem to think especially clearly when the moon
is full. Perhaps your seratonin levels are skewed?
Msg#: 3947 *FINE ART*
02-25-94 16:34:04
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3939 (YET MORE)
Oh I was just having a little fun Morgan. But I wanted to make a point, and
will clarify when I am thinking more clearly. Maybe it is the moon.
Msg#: 4168 *FINE ART*
02-26-94 09:31:54
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 3939 (YET MORE)
Wait a second--confusing the quality of argument with its content may be the
error of the logically illiterate, but its just the JOB of the aesthetically
literate. In this case, Morgan, you've been caught out with a formulation that
did unintentionally betray a certain level of snobbishness that is, moreover,
unearned (since the formulation itself is pompous in its inflation: what's
wrong with just "better writing" or "more challenging ideas" or whatever?).
However, too much should not be made of that, it's just good to be reminded of
one's peccadillos occasionally. What I really want to know is, when
historically did the name "Helen Frankenthaler" become "fighting words"?
Fifties? Sixties? Seventies? I'm pretty sure it was already so when I came
into the art world in the early eighties...
Msg#: 4174 *FINE ART*
02-26-94 11:37:00
From: CAROL BROAD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4168 (YET MORE)
Can somebody tell me what's wrong with Helen Frankenthaler? Please? I
always LOVED her beautiful lyrical abstractions. And what's this Morgan got to
do with her?
Msg#: 4180 *FINE ART*
02-26-94 14:00:27
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4168 (YET MORE)
there is more to this tham meets the eye; we are getting at a "mental pivot"
that is a lot more interesting than it is annoying. The annoyance factor may be
useful, like a geiger counter that indicates the presence of organizing
beliefs.
Helen Frankenthaler is probably Jordan's mental shorthand for a cluster of
beliefs or attitudes that inform a particular style. The surface, oe
epiphenomenal, "Helen Frankenthaler" arises from the milieu of her times, its
central beliefs and expectations.
I infer that what Jordan is saying is that my statement, or I should say a
style adopted for a particular statement, implied the adoption or
internalization of distorted, incomplete, or obsolete beliefs about the world.
Snob? Moi? *Sine Nobilitas*? Nevah...
But, how we establish the rules of the road as to whether we are in the
*logical frame* or the *aesthetic frame* are basic to how meaning is
established. We must carry a mechanism around with us, buried deep in the
hidden files, that instructs us as to what class of distinctions are
appropriate under which circumstances.
It is these *deep structures* which form the implicate order of what we
externally perceive as *character*.
Personally, I make a style/content distinction when I look at/listen
to/eat/smell something intended to be apprehended within an aesthetic frome of
interpretation. When content so fuses with style as to be indistinguishable, I
generally (there may be other qualifications depending on the specifics at
hand) feel that I am the presence of "an art". Could be Karate, harpsicord,
rice pudding, little bronze doohickys, headdresses.
Again, personally, an "art" can fall into two camps; those that are meta,
about something, referential, etc. and those that are "in and of themselves",
i.e. Kyusho Jitsu. However, the katas of Kyusho Jitsu contain many hidden
references to applications upon the nervous system of the opponent, although
they are practiced as a solo "dance", so Kyusho Jitsu might be said to exist on
both levels.
But then , is a beautifully crafted industrial laser, clean of all
superfluities, in an industrial setting "art", although it meets the criteria
of the fusion of style and content. Well, I would have to say no, because it
cant be said to "have" content, it is its content. It refers to nothing other
than its own utility.
Msg#: 4203 *FINE ART*
02-26-94 18:10:22
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4174 (YET MORE)
You're going all socratic on me again Carol...
Msg#: 4207 *FINE ART*
02-26-94 18:22:14
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4180 (YET MORE)
"What distinctions are appropriate under which circumstances" are always
subject to contention as well as misunderstanding. (Thank you Carol Broad for
consistently making us aware that agreement in the matters is never to be taken
for granted [and Licata, since when did parentheses become a bad habit?].) An
18th century French grammarian once proposed the institution of a punctuation
mark to indicate irony, like those for exclamations and questions. But it was
pointed out that the mark itself could then be used ironically, that is, for a
statement that should really be taken straight. Likewise, the aesthetic is
always ready to arise anywhere, to use any discourse as its straight man. The
very effort to keep it separate creates the most comical aesthetic effects.
Msg#: 4208 *FINE ART*
02-26-94 19:22:27
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4207 (YET MORE)
But, there is no such thing as "the aesthetic", any more than there is "the
true", at least in a Platonic sense. The "The" is a presupposition, and it
presumes that it is fixed, nominalized, or reified, (to use an oldie but goldie
from the semantic toolbox). There are aesthetic experiences, moments of
appreciation, relationships between perceiver and perceived. Some things that
once seemed beautiful and tempting to me are now hackneyed and tedious. Other
things that never struck my sensibilities, perhaps seemed dull or foreign, have
aquired great beauty for me.
Yes, there may be skill, craftsmanship, perception, involved in its
creating, but only under certain circumstances could I resonate with them.
An Indian musical form called Alap once seemed pointless, meandering, nerly
lazy in its execution. Only with repeated listening, and exposure to more
challenging musics, am I able to give Ali Akhbar Khan (plays sarod) my
attention, become involved in the meditative flow of his expression.
And then there are people. Some personalities that I felt drawn to, surely
for an aesthetics of personhood, I now feel repulsed by. What was once
scintillating in my perception has become tedious and boorish. Other
friendships have deepened, aquired multiple dimensions, a matured complexity
that is never static or simple to explain. Loves even more so, the most
aesthetic of experiences, some age like wine, some age like cheese.
Aesthetic and personal development are inextricable. How one distinguishes
beauty, or fails to, is one of the subtlest and most telling markers of a
person.
Msg#: 4227 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 01:33:35
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4207 (YET MORE)
I believe I mentioned parenthetical disclaimers, not merely the punctuation
mark itself. I noticed that you often undercut--but not really, as you astutely
point out--a previous statement through this sort of gee whiz, I'm just folks
too gesture in some of your previous messages. But, hey, I'd hate to have the
style/continuity police monitoring my every posting. My only point is, why
bother, you don't seem to have much invested in these afterthoughts so why
should we believe them?
Msg#: 4240 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 10:11:20
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4168 (YET MORE)
having reread this, I have to wonder...how did you arrive at the conclusion
that confusing form and content is the "JOB" of the aethetically literate? The
opposite is true of the aesthetically literate, whoever they might be.
A sophisticated viewer/listener/etc. will be in a better position to make
that distinction than a naive one will. Over time you learn to distinguish the
false moves from the real ones if you are paying attention.
Have you ever dealt with an outstandingly good salesperson? They know how to
tune their emotional state exactly to yours, so you end up acting as much from
a feeling of rapport as from a need for the thing. Then you wise up, and you
learn to distinguish the commercial smile, the hustle, from the real item.
Which, unfortunately,is why people at high social altitudes often get so
paranoid and shuttered; they are constantly exposed to masters of psychological
fraud, and it takes the finest of perception to sort out the gold from the
brass.
Logical illiteracy, for all its snobbish overtones, is an authentic problem.
People are easily swayed by appeals to emotion, simple morality plays, bathetic
melodrama, etc....if they weren't, there would be no market for tabloids and at
least one third of all television programming.
Msg#: 4242 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 11:22:20
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4240 (YET MORE)
Maybe I'm not paying enough attention here, but how do you move from the aest.
literate's JOB--in your view--of distinguishing between between form and
content, to that of distinguishing between the false and the real or falsity
and truth? I don't follow. I think that you see the aest. literate's "job" as
making such good/bad, whatever, judgments, across the board, where Barry sees
that the job is rather to articulate the complexities which undermine such
distinctions. But then if
> you wise up, and you learn to distinguish the commercial
> smile, the hustle, from the real item
which is the form, and which is the content? And can you give an example of
such a "real item"?
Msg#: 4250 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 14:39:45
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4227 (YET MORE)
Is it really a question of belief? "I'm no Prince Hamlet," but I am aware of
possibilities for antithetical elements in my own thinking, and have apparently
developed some rhetorical mannerisms for reflecting that. But I'm now on
notice to watch out for the tendency of those mannerisms to turn into mere
stylistic tics.
Msg#: 4251 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 14:44:07
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4240 (YET MORE)
"Confusing" is obviously the wrong word, since my sense is that the confusion
would be on the part of anyone who believes in the possibility of ensuring or
enforcing a separation between style and content. That's not to claim that the
two are identical, just that each is constantly displacing and relaying the
other.
Msg#: 4252 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 14:47:34
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4242 (YET MORE)
Your characterization of two positions on the aesthetic "metier," and your
determination of which one I am drawn to, is a helpful clarification.
Msg#: 4256 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 16:12:18
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4252 (YET MORE)
or lack of
Msg#: 4258 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 16:42:34
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4242 (YET MORE)
yup, you're not paying attention. What I said was that there is a point where
the two are an indistinguishable whole (several posts back), and there are
other points where the two are fairly distinct. Compare the integration of the
decorative and symbolic in the works of Hans Memling withwhat we generally
refer to as schlock, the clearly intended commercial exploitation of the
confusion ( I have had hilarious conversations with people in the schlock
business telling me how it really works ).
Yes, there are complexities that underlie the expression in certain cases,
and there are simplistic "tics" that form the sum and substance of others.
In the gold burial mask of Tutankhamen we find the "Real Thing", no
subterfuge whatsoever, but the pure expression of an attitude and a purpose.
In there work of Mark Kostabi we find a curious paradox, both sincerity and
gross insincerity, a perversity of intention. However, his technical abilities,
however you may feel about his persona, exceed that of many of his
contemporaries.
Or, we may find stylistic limitation coupled with an unusually broad
horizon, as in the pottery of George Ohr.
Tom Otterness has grown marvelously over the years in a technical sense, and
respectably as a maker of substantial work. Frank Stella continues to make
numbingly vacuous work of increasingly technical difficulty.
So, dudes, you can, and should make distinctions, including distinctions of
subtle inflection. No, you cannot draw clear boundaries as to which takes up
and the other leaves off...such an expectation would evidence a boneheaded
literalism, as would demanding that the world resolve into obvious polarities
that a child could comprehend...it isn't so simple, and you know it well enough
yourself.
There is a seductive pull into an edenic fantasy, a regressive impulse, that
would do away with distinctions with a wave of the hand, to will us back into
organic unity. The price for such an indulgence, to borrow from Shakespeare, is
that all becomes "indistinct and dislimned, like water in water"
As for Schwabsky's point, I forgot what it was, but I think he had a problem
with aesthetic vs. logic, to my mind another false polarity, and a pretext for
stirring up trouble in the name of Truth.
Lets us endeavor to keep our instrumental and our terminal values sorted out,
shall we? Let us not, hopefully, gelatinize into Night School Phenomenology, to
borrow from Thomas Hess.
Msg#: 4261 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 19:43:22
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4258 (YET MORE)
> clearly intended commercial exploitation of the confusion ( I have
> had hilarious conversations with people in the schlock business
> telling me how it really works ).
Can I savely assume that you brought up the name Kostabi to illustrate the
above sentence? Let's hope so.
Msg#: 4265 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 22:59:53
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4256 (YET MORE)
Come again?
Msg#: 4269 *FINE ART*
02-28-94 00:42:21
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4250 (YET MORE)
You're right, believe was the wrong word. It was late. I guess I meant "respond
to you in the thoughtful manner your comments usually deserve" or something
like that. It's late again. I usually take care to eradicate such
prevarications because I don't want to appear wishy-washy or
flippant. But that's me.
Msg#: 4286 *FINE ART*
02-28-94 09:48:07
From: MICHAEL JOHNSTON
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4258 (YET MORE)
Perhaps you aspire to be the Siskel and Ebert of art.
Msg#: 4287 *FINE ART*
02-28-94 12:10:31
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4265 (YET MORE)
clarification
Msg#: 4288 *FINE ART*
02-28-94 12:19:18
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4261 (YET MORE)
there is an even more extreme level, the sub-basement of the field, that has a
"rule book" of known techniques that are fully understood by all involved.
Noone is operating under the slightest illusion. There is a schlock "style", a
considered approach that involves a permutation of the style of a well known
practitioner (painter/sculptor/ whudevuh) into a more accessable, and cruder
form. These "works" are intentionally as content free as they possibly can be,
because the typicl customer of such an establishment finds "content" a
disturbing turn off.
Msg#: 4289 *FINE ART*
02-28-94 12:21:50
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: MICHAEL JOHNSTON (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4286 (YET MORE)
perhaps you could tell us something of what you aspire to be?
Msg#: 4294 *FINE ART*
02-28-94 14:44:28
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4269 (YET MORE)
Curious--my fear is that suppressing (rather than expressing) those
reservations/contrary thoughts will make me sound flippant, or perhaps glib.
Msg#: 4296 *FINE ART*
02-28-94 14:56:08
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4294 (YET MORE)
Flip or glib, and more of it. The pace needs to be picked up to a level where
only flip or glib will do it.
Msg#: 4317 *FINE ART*
02-28-94 19:44:00
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4296 (YET MORE)
No, you're just wrong.
Msg#: 4324 *FINE ART*
02-28-94 22:25:43
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4294 (YET MORE)
That's where the impact of the parentheses comes in. If You modified your
statement to incorporate the ambivalence you often seem to feel, you would
still be expressing a more unified opinion. But the parentheses combined with
the ambivalence work against the original thought, which you're still somewhat
invested in.
Msg#: 4355 *FINE ART*
03-01-94 15:23:05
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4324 (YET MORE)
So you mean that, syntactically, there should be a way to present a more
synthesized, less conflicted handling of my ambivalence?
Msg#: 4423 *FINE ART*
03-03-94 00:11:15
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4355 (YET MORE)
Paradoxical as it sounds, yes. I'm very fond of paradox.
End of Replies, add yours(Y/N)? N
Msg#: 4169 *FINE ART*
02-26-94 10:32:46
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: ALL
Subj: GIRL TALK
I'm emboldened by the mention of Helen Frankenthaler (not that she's one of my
faves either) to suggest that there be an even more comprehensive shift in the
gender of this discourse. Is anyone interested in a discussion of the New
Museum's bad girls show? Although as a museum show it has to more about
culmination than cutting edge (sorry, I hate that phrase too--and now I'm
picking up Schwabsky's bad habit of parenthetical disclaimers--) I think the
shift from explication of rhetoric to celebration of attitude is significant.
The installation is somehow sedate but effective in its way. It leads you to
the pink table crescendo with a
post-climax breather in the Dwyer area. Too bad you can't have a cigarette. My
two main reasons for bringing this up are that I haven't seen too much
discussion of directions in feminism, theoretical or otherwise on this board
and that Laura Trippi from NM is a TT member. She might want to junp in. I
could go on, but I'd like to know
if the interest exists...
<*>Replies
Msg#: 4173 *FINE ART*
02-26-94 11:29:33
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4169 (GIRL TALK)
> I haven't seen too much discussion of directions in feminism,
> theoretical or otherwise
> on this board
but
> if the interest exists...
Yes, the interest in "Girl Talk" definitely exists here and yes, there isn't
too much discussion of feminism here -- probably, in part, because the majority
of users is male, as is the case on most BBS's. But there are definitely a few
of us that address feminist issues. You might want to check back into some of
the Transactivism postings that are currently n the (S)ymposium forum. From
time to time, Laura and I talked about various issues and writers -- how gender
affects online interaction, Irigaray, etc.
Not to be self-promoting, but there might be some interesting discussion topics
that could bring feminist concerns into the Bioinformatics dialogue in (I).
Would you care to begin?
Msg#: 4175 *FINE ART*
02-26-94 11:46:21
From: CAROL BROAD
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4173 (GIRL TALK)
> Not to be self-promoting, but there might be some interesting
> discussion topics that could bring feminist concerns into the
> Bioinformatics dialogue in (I). Would you care to begin?
Can I come too? But what's feminism got to do with Biomass?
Msg#: 4183 *FINE ART*
02-26-94 14:05:50
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4175 (GIRL TALK)
> But what's feminism got to do with Biomass?
See my message #4181 in (I).
Msg#: 4230 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 01:43:02
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4173 (GIRL TALK)
I had overlooked bioinformatics; it seems interesting and I've added a no doubt
completely incoherent posting. However, the impetus for my bad girls posting
was the Snap to Grid discussion. I hoped that a similar discourse might be
started on what has been a controversial--and I'm assuming--widely viewed
exhibition. It's more mainstream than you GUYS generally seem to prefer, but
again, Snap to Grid did seem concrete and productive in a certain way and I'd
hoped that an exhibition-based dialog might at least intermittently be a
feature of this message system. rt
seemed the natural area.
Msg#: 4422 *FINE ART*
03-02-94 21:38:59
From: LAURA TRIPPI
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4169 (GIRL TALK)
It's interesting that one of the most powerful pieces in the Bad Girls
exhibition -- for me, but also one of the most often mentioned, and which
mentioned too -- is Portia Munson's collection of pink objects. It *is* a
celebration, but it's also extremely violent, in its own sweetly obsessive way.
You said the show was about a shift from rhetoric (or didacticism? I don't
quite remember) to celebration, and that is the general way in which its
framed. But there is also a strong undertow of the abject, and of ambivalence
-- in Munson's piece, and in Ann Aggee's wonderful blue tile bathroom. In the
windstorm of press coverage, and it *has* been a windstorm, I have never seen
anything like it, well, at least not since the Living Paintings, and what the
hell kind of a connection is that?!?! As I was saying, in all the press
coverage, no one has yet taken up the darker aspects. As if it were all
lipstick and vamp.
Gee, this suddenly leads me to thinking that I ought to avenge poor Helen
Frankenthaler who's gender identity cannot be accidental to her election as
standard for anachronistic puffery! Strange, isn't it, that the one woman of
the bunch of Ab Ex painters gets hauled in when its a question of mud slinging
(no pun intended on the slinging part)? I'm sure Jordan didn't mean it, and
all that, but let's look more closely. . . hm, those color washes, all
qualities and no defining lines. . . . How superficial! In fact, how
feminine! What a cloying damned collection of pink things!!!
Msg#: 4424 *FINE ART*
03-03-94 00:33:49
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: LAURA TRIPPI (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4422 (GIRL TALK)
To really appreciate the horror of pink, you have to see this movie I clicked
in on and unfortunately don't know the name of. It seems to be a 60s flick
though; a Hollywood mogol of some sort has painted his entire house, grounds
and everything therein pink. His girlfriend flees before the hired painter,
literally drunk on pink, starts to paint her (of course she happens to be
lounging poolside scantily). I think the Munson piece shares in that bad-acid
trip violation of normal color balance, but I'm not so sure it's because of the
objects themselves. I think at first you're appalled and then engaged. With the
Agee it's the opposite. Do you think the press coverage has much to do with the
show at all? I doubt it. People took the idea and then decided what they're
reaction would be, then took a look as a afterthought. One curator I spoke with
was nonplussed by the Semmes Williams juxtaposition; she thought they canvelled
each other out (perhaps I oversimplifying, but she probably won't see this.)
Group shows like that are tough though--you're always going to get stomped. I
suppose I should also leap to Frankenthaler's defense, but maybe
the attack on her was prompted by things she said, and not her work. I don't
remember. She's taken some obnoxious stances. In terms of the work, there's
plenty of male painters you have to debunk if you're going to start on her
Msg#: 4457 *FINE ART*
03-03-94 07:26:12
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4424 (GIRL TALK)
funny, I saw the same movie last night. Starring Shirley McLaine , right? Gene
Kelly as the entertainer gone mad "Pinky", who is torn to shreds (off camera)
by fans gone wild!!!
Msg#: 4501 *FINE ART*
03-03-94 22:23:59
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4457 (GIRL TALK)
Thanks, I've been trying to remember all day. I only saw snippets, but it
seemed like it could have attained cult status, but nobody's paid enough
attention to it.
Msg#: 4507 *FINE ART*
03-03-94 23:59:07
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: LAURA TRIPPI (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4422 (GIRL TALK)
Anna Chave has a riff about Frankenthaler that fits into this--the feminine
"stain" and all that.
But really doesn't misofrankenthalerism have to do with the horror of the
phenomenon of the woman who's made the fill the role of the "exceptional"
woman--like the way they tried to make Susan Rothenberg the one woman who was
supposed to fit in with the early '80s "Zeitgeist," even though she has nothing
to do with Schnabel, Baselitz, etc.--then there was that effort to shoehorn
Annette Lemieux in with Koons, Halley & Co.--the market seems to have a way of
wanting to elevate one woman to be the boys' adjunct, and it usually smells
phoney somehow. But what's behind it? Anyway, the problem isn't just that
this happens, but that in certain cases it seems to actually have nothing to do
with the artist's work (in which case it doesn't matter) whereas in other
cases, of which H.F. might be one, the art suits the tokenist role all too
well.
Msg#: 4540 *FINE ART*
03-04-94 09:18:35
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4507 (GIRL TALK)
Maybe she happened along at the right time; no conspiricy at all, simply good
enough work in the approved style which people accepted?
Msg#: 4747 *FINE ART*
03-04-94 18:16:56
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4507 (GIRL TALK)
Helen Frankenthaler has long held the highest rank in contemporary painting.
Mountains and Sea, painted when she was barely into her twenties, is credited
with inroducing the lyrical use of color to abstract expressionism. Her work
since, exhibited in the world's most important museums, is admired for its
beauty and evocative power, and respected for its disregard of artistic
fashion. Although Frankenthaler lives a calm, ordered life, she embraces risks
and adventure in her art. A strong believer in the magical spark that brings a
good painting to life, Frankenthaler approaches her art intuitively, as well as
intellectually, drawing inspiration wherever she may find it, "from nature and
the unconscious to great artists of the past." "I've explored a variety of
directions and themes over the years. But I think in my painting you can see
the signature of one artist, the work of one wrist." And on that immensely
talented wrist, Helen Frankenthaler has chosen to wear a Rolex. (front cover
verso, Gourmet magazine, 3/94) I think I see a huge blow-up of this ad in the
next Bad Girls show.
Msg#: 4749 *FINE ART*
03-04-94 19:55:36
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4747 (GIRL TALK)
"Embraces risk and adventure in her art..." Helen DOES sound like a bad girl
after all. Too bad being put in a museum automatically seems to give even the
baddest girls the good housekeeping seal of approval...
Msg#: 4754 *FINE ART*
03-04-94 22:53:49
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4749 (GIRL TALK)
Helen Frankenthaler was at one time married to the late Robert Motherwell. He
was a friend of most of the abstract expressionists and wrote and lectured
about his and their work over the years. She was quite young when she married
him. In contrast to Lee Krasner's relation to Pollack she never fell under the
influence of Motherwell's style which is quite inimitable. My recollection is
the she immediately fell in with the color field painters--Louis and
Noland--and her style is clearly of that fold. Her base is New York City,
though she is an uptown type whose network probably doesn't extend below 14
Street. She has never cultivated a bohemian or working class persona. The
image that springs to mind is the one alluded to-- uptown, upscale and rich.
And she feeds off that image--her power in the art world generated by a network
of people of her class and her life style. That she is a woman is a plus
factor. ( Artists such as Olitski and Poons, clearly her superior, are today
almost totally ignored both in the critical press and the secondary art
market--you can get a major Olitski at Christi's for under ten grand.) I can't
imagine her as a role model for any young woman artist.
Msg#: 5196 *FINE ART*
03-07-94 17:58:32
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4749 (GIRL TALK)
I'm surprised to hear such a knee-jerk comment about museums, especially since
nowadays certainuseums are putting on far more innovative exhibitions
thacertain alternative spaces or galleries. And the question of context isn't
as simplistic as you imply. Some work is more shocking/disturbing/baad in the
museum setting. Audiences pay more attention. e seal of approval you speak of
isn't as easily come by these , days, and isn't an imprimatur any more.
Msg#: 5272 *FINE ART*
03-08-94 08:16:33
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5196 (GIRL TALK)
It's true that some work is more shocking in the context of the museum--but
then it's all the more dependent on the institution. I have to insist that my
reaction is not "knee-jerk," but has been informed by all too many years of
experience in these matters: the more "critical" art museums attempt to be, the
more celebratory and self-regarding they end up seeming--as a general rule.
But a lot of the art that I like has a certain diffidence toward its own
institutionalization, it's really "domestic" in its proper location rather than
public in that way, so that's the perspective I'm coming from. I didn't mean
to impugn your profession!
Msg#: 5281 *FINE ART*
03-08-94 10:27:19
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5196 (GIRL TALK)
What's inovative in musuems? Not much that I see. Could you pick a few
examples for me?
Msg#: 5379 *FINE ART*
03-09-94 21:53:23
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5281 (GIRL TALK)
An art museum is a terciary institution, very much like your major medical
center whose primary function is to resusitate or renovate the near dead. I
thought the whole point of the 60's was to wipe the slate clean. (See Acconci's
interview in the latest Flash Art.) For those were the days when a painting
hanging on the wall seemed ridiculously strange--when the whole idea behind art
making was to rid ourselves of those institutions--the gallery and museum--
which held us captive, whose very existance dictated the form and content of an
art object. Oppenheim, Heizer and others did steer a new course, but their
early work is now forgotten and has had little or no influence on emerging
artists. We are living in reactionary times.
Msg#: 5405 *FINE ART*
03-10-94 09:08:55
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5379 (GIRL TALK)
It's just because a painting hanging on a wall was made to look ridiculously
strange that a painting on a wall is now the most likely form for art.
Msg#: 5406 *FINE ART
03-10-94 09:17:36
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5379 (GIRL TALK)
"I don't know where it's going, but I'm on the same train as Marcel Duchamp."
--Willem de Kooning, 1965
Msg#: 5638 *FINE ART*
03-10-94 19:20:33
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5272 (GIRL TALK)
Didn't mean to sound so defensive. Certainly my institution isn't doing
much of interest in terms of our conversation. But the idea of working with
public institutional space does interest me. That's why I was so taken by Fred
Wilson's Mining the Museum show at the Maryland Historical
Museum. When he shoed at Metro and the Biennial, the stuff was just objects
again--not as engaging. Because of all the baggage that comes with museums,
artists/curators can do some cool stuff. It doesn't happen often in NY because
you have the dinosaurs.
Msg#: 5671 *FINE ART*
03-11-94 02:14:32
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5405 (GIRL TALK)
you seem to be seduced by the drive of your dialectical twist - which I somehow
think I can follow: but I find this point also very interesting and want you to
say more on this threshold: isn't it also buchloh who somehow blamed, in a
longer article on conceptual art, the emergence of wilde kunst of the early 80s
to the failure (how he names it) of the conceptual enterprise.
Msg#: 4257 *FINE ART*
02-27-94 16:24:36
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: FORM AND STUFF
"Herr K. looked at a painting depicting some objects in a rather strange
form. He said: 'Some artists, when they reflect on the world, are just like
many philosophers. In their strive for form they loose the matter (Stoff). I
once worked for a gardener. He asked me to prune a laurel tree. The tree was
potted and was to be used for festive occasions. For that, it had to have the
form of a sphere. I immediately started to cut the wild branches, however, as
hard as I tried to achieve the form of the spere, I just couldn't succeed for a
long time. Once I cut too much on one side, then too much on the other. When
finally I arrived at the sphere, the sphere was very small. The gardener said
in disappointment: 'Good, this is the sphere, but where is the laurel?'"
Bertolt Brecht, Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner
Does this help to clear up some of the confusion?
<*>Replies
Msg#: 4357 *FINE ART*
03-01-94 15:27:46
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4257 (FORM AND STUFF)
Could Brecht have been thinking of Giacometti?
Msg#: 4450 *FINE ART*
03-01-94 19:21:00
From: FRANK KRUSE
To: ALL
Subj: BEAVIS 'N' BUTTHEAD
Listen Up!
Anyone interested in an FAQ on Beavis-N-Buthead?
Frank.
---
* Origin: THE THING BERLIN (box/fax 030:4528534) (42:1002/3)
*>Replies
Msg#: 4456 *FINE ART*
03-03-94 07:22:10
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: FRANK KRUSE
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4450 (BEAVIS 'N' BUTTHEAD)
nnnh nnnh
Msg#: 4825 *FINE ART*
03-04-94 14:51:00
From: FRANK KRUSE
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4456 (BEAVIS 'N' BUTTHEAD)
nnnnh nnnh
is this like cool or something?
---
* Origin: THE THING BERLIN (box/fax 030:4528534) (42:1002/3)
Msg#: 4862 *FINE ART*
03-05-94 18:17:10
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: FRANK KRUSE
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4825 (BEAVIS 'N' BUTTHEAD)
this is,like, you know, something or, like, totally something, or, uh, you
know?
Msg#: 5254 *FINE ART*
03-07-94 14:30:00
From: FRANK KRUSE
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4862 (BEAVIS 'N' BUTTHEAD)
MG>ÿthis is,like, you know, something or, like, totally
MG>ÿsomething, or, uh, you know?
uuuuuh....I guess. huh huh huh, you said "this" huh huh huh.
frank.
---
* Origin: THE THING BERLIN (box/fax 030:4528534) (42:1002/3)
Msg#: 5347 *FINE ART*
03-09-94 10:47:03
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: FRANK KRUSE
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5254 (BEAVIS 'N' BUTTHEAD)
yeah, "this", this *this*, the *This*, that *THIS*, *These*
Msg#: 5781 *FINE ART*
03-10-94 23:06:00
From: FRANK KRUSE
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5347 (BEAVIS 'N' BUTTHEAD)
MG>yeah, "this", this *this*, the *This*, that *THIS*, *These*
gee, this sounds kinda cool.
frank.
---
* Origin: THE THING BERLIN (box/fax 030:4528534) (42:1002/3)
Msg#: 4835 *FINE ART*
03-05-94 11:33:01
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: COLOR FIELD
Actually, I've never understood how anyone could put Olitski in the same class
as the sometimes truly amazing Poons--speaking of whom, aren't those drippy
paintings of his ffrom the early '70s the model (as I've pointed out before)
for the recent work of the Frankenthaler of our time, Pat Steir?
<*>Replies
Msg#: 4863 *FINE ART*
03-05-94 19:31:59
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4835 (COLOR FIELD)
Though I'm no great fan of Jules Olitski--or any of the other color field
painters--no less a critic than Greenberg called him America" greatest
painter." Just goes to show how smart critics can be! Anyhow, Frankenthaler
has always been an abstract painter; and I'm not sure you can show a lineage
from Frankenthaler to Poons to Steir if that was what you were suggesting.
True, Steir does splash around a lot (have to admit I'm not familiar with her
more recent work) but I remember her as more of a magical figurative painter.
To switch gears for a moment, as a new member of the THING I was surprised to
see no mention of the death of Donald Judd. His pure style of criticism was
important to me--perhaps it was the only criticism I could understand. Is his
criticism known by you and the younger critics? I do remember his being
trashed in a recent interview in Artforum by a member of the younger
gerneration. The guy was incredulous that Judd didn't appreciate or attempt to
appreciate from Marfa any of the post or whatever art of our time.
Msg#: 4945 *FINE ART*
03-06-94 19:24:49
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4863 (COLOR FIELD)
Steir's rrecent paintings--"Waterfalls"--come straight out of the Poons of 20
years ago, believe me.
Actually, I don't consider myself a "younger critic" but an old-timer--anyone
who lasts more than 7 years is, in my book. Maybe that's why I assume everyone
knows Judd's writing--though what makes it a wonderful period piece, its way of
going blithely from the most minute detail to the grandest generalization or
broadest judgement with no concession to dialectical articulation, would seem
to prevent it from being taken with entire serious now that it's no longer of
the moment.
Msg#: 5194 *FINE ART*
03-07-94 17:21:49
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4863 (COLOR FIELD)
West Texas is a universe of its own. Of all the places for a minimalist to find
himself! But those endless, empty counties are perfect counterpoints to his
mentality. Why should he care? All the Schnabels in existence don't mean nothin
from nothin out there, and neither does the guy that made 'em. Knowing how to
shoot straight is *knowledge*, *art* is the decals on your pick up.
Msg#: 5280 *FINE ART*
03-08-94 10:25:00
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4863 (COLOR FIELD)
Regarding Judd, he was very much "of our time." For me he was one of the
"truest" artists - his objects (sculpture, prints, furniture) we all very true
to his living spirt. The great thing about Judd's writing was it was also very
clearly about himself, less than about what he was looking at. Looking at his
collected writings (the two volumes) it's wonderful to see his writing on
Oldenburg's _Store_ - little know how much he loved that work.
As for "of" "our" "moment" - he was a supporter of Roni Horn, two of her works
are part of his foundation in Marfa. I don't think his vision streached to far
beyond Horn in current work, however, should that matter?
Msg#: 5284 *FINE ART*
03-08-94 13:02:52
From: JEFF HARRINGTON
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4863 (COLOR FIELD)
I think about Olitski whenever I am waiting for a subway train and I see those
monumental drips down the wall.... hmm.....
Jeff
Msg#: 5375 *FINE ART*
03-09-94 21:30:01
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: JEFF HARRINGTON (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5284 (COLOR FIELD)
When I'm waiting for a subway train I'm usually looking over my shoulder for
the guy who is going to push me onto the subway tracks--a time when art and
life don't mix.
Msg#: 5381 *FINE ART*
03-09-94 22:14:23
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5194 (COLOR FIELD)
Your right--those endless counties are the perfect place for a minimalist. West
Texas--Terlingua and Marfa, where the movie "Paris-Texas" was shot a few years
ago--has an immediate appeal for the minimalist mentality. Flat, hot, dry,
silent--these are the deathlike qualities that have attracted many artists to
settle there in a shack on twenty acres and live on three grand a year.
Msg#: 5402 *FINE ART*
03-10-94 08:49:17
From: JEFF HARRINGTON
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5375 (COLOR FIELD)
> When I'm waiting for a subway train I'm usually looking over my
> shoulder for the guy who is going to push me onto the subway
> tracks--a time when art and life don't mix.
You must not ride subways much... :-)
Art and life don't mix sometimes? (don't get me started...).
My comment on Olitski was off (by a bit ----) I was actually thinking of Poons.
Those big paintings with the monumental (ahem) drips down the canvas - kind of
like a Morris Louis of phlegm....
Anybody got an extra 10 grand so I can (cough) grab one of those mis-priced
Olitski's? What a deal.... yawn....
Life. Life. Life is art is poetry. Otherwise, why live?
Jeff
Msg#: 5403 *FINE ART*
03-10-94 08:55:20
From: JEFF HARRINGTON
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5381 (COLOR FIELD)
> Your right--those endless counties are the perfect place for a
> minimalist. West Texas--Terlingua and Marfa, where the movie
> "Paris-Texas" was shot a few years ago--has an immediate appeal for
> the minimalist mentality. Flat, hot, dry, silent--these are the
> deathlike qualities that have attracted many artists to settle there
> in a shack on twenty acres and live on three grand a year.
Composer friend of mine was going to be an assistant there. He told me they
had a little restaurant in Marfa with the best fajitas in the world...
But the absolute coolest thing about Marfa is the Marfa lights (the Chinanti
Lights as the indigenous call it). They're these strange light balls which
come out every! night - fly around - split up into three different colored
light balls in a most playful manner. NBC Evening News (yeah right) has even
done a few spots on them. In a sense they're celebrity paranormal phenomenon!
There's that very cool lightening field thing there too by (I forget). His
dream was just that, though, a shack, a blank piece of music paper and a
$3,000.00 grant. Those were the days...
Msg#: 5407 *FINE ART*
03-10-94 09:21:21
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5381 (COLOR FIELD)
Marfa may be a quite and small place, but it does have structure - and that
structure is 1930's squat and square buildings, with the exception of the
county building which is more Victorian than anything else. One should realize
that the vision of Judd was not just metal boxes but social structure - if you
ever got (or ever get) a chance to visit Marfa you would see this.
Msg#: 5416 *FINE ART*
03-10-94 11:27:40
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JEFF HARRINGTON (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5403 (COLOR FIELD)
The cafe in question is La Borunda; they still cook on a wood fired stove last
time I passed through. The Lightning Field is outside of Quemado, N.M., by
Walter DeMaria; owned and run by DIA foundation. You can stay there for around
fifty $ per night per person, + worth the trip (in several senses of the word).
I had one of the most overtly "psychic" experiences of my life out there (I
think?). There is also James Turrell's "Crater" in Arizona, I hear is
incredible but have never seen. The "big minimal" is sited so differently than
the urban compressive mode can handle....
Msg#: 5626 *FINE ART*
03-10-94 16:12:20
From: JEFF HARRINGTON
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5416 (COLOR FIELD)
> The cafe in question is La Borunda; they still cook on a wood fired
> stove last time I passed through. The Lightning Field is outside of
> Quemado, N.M., by Walter DeMaria; owned and run by DIA foundation.
There's a very beautiful set of photographs in an ArtForum a few years back of
lightening striking the field. What a work! If I ever wanted to commit
suicide :).
> You can stay there for around fifty $ per night per person, + worth
> the trip (in several senses of the word). I had one of the most
> overtly "psychic" experiences of my life out there (I think?). There
> is also James Turrell's "Crater" in Arizona, I hear is incredible
> but have never seen. The "big minimal" is sited so differently than
> the urban compressive mode can handle....
Something about the "big sky" does something to our psyches. Like the Jungian
"oceanic" feeling, it opens up who knows what deep mental spaces.
Speaking of "big minimal" - supposedly _Spiral Jetty_ is visible again!
Jeff
Msg#: 5658 *FINE ART*
03-10-94 23:38:45
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: PUBLIC SPACE
Yeah, that show of Fred Wilson's in Baltimore sounded pretty interesting to me
too, even though most of what he's done in NYC hasn't been. I suppose it's
because in my imagination there was an element of hiddenness to it--that idea
of the hidden landmine. Which in a funny way subtracts a certain dimension of
publicness from the public space of the museum--even as it raises very public
issues that the consensus of the public space suppresses. But as I say, that's
just how my imagination runs with it.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 5760 *FINE ART*
03-11-94 23:02:52
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5658 (PUBLIC SPACE)
I didn't feel much was hidden, but in a way, I'd agree. He stopped the
institution from being able to perform its welcoming public function. People
were often very confused and disoriented as they walked through it. It was
brilliant. Which makes his lackluster performance elsewhere very disappointing.
Msg#: 5777 *FINE ART*
03-12-94 02:29:17
From: LAURA TRIPPI
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5658 (PUBLIC SPACE)
The exhibition in Maryland was specifically about what is typically hidden, the
hidden dimensions that help to fabricate consensus within the public space of
the museum. (I'm afraid I can't quite track the weavings of your "hidden
dimension" to the exhibition as you imagine it. Hidden by Wilson in what he
didn't choose to include? In what remains hidden that his work implies?)
Wilson's work worked so well there because his *material* was *the collection*
so that in this case he wasn't *theorizing about* collecting but *theorizing
with* collected objects. They put up resistence that arrested attention -- his
I would guess in configuring his compositions, and mine and others in
traversing the installation.
Msg#: 5784 *FINE ART*
03-12-94 08:40:36
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: ELIZABETH LICATA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5760 (PUBLIC SPACE)
Speaking of things being hidden, I was just thinking about something that
happened a few years ago that made a big impression on me at the time. A
friend of mine, a lawyer, had purchased a work by Cady Noland--this was before
she became such a big name, I think even before her first show--which was
basically a milk crate filled with various metal detritus (beer cans, a
rearview mirror, etc.), very nondescript--and he had a cocktail party at his
apartment to show off his new acquisition. Well, when all his lawyer friends
arrived he started asking them to pick out the artwork and of course none of
hit on this crate as being the piece. I was very taken with the idea of having
this secret work, something that nobody even had to know was an artwork unless
he felt like confiding it to them. Which is also, to me, the beuatiful part of
the Duchampian readymade and the part that has been lost from 99% of the
subsequent work taking up the idea of the readymade.
Msg#: 5785 *FINE ART*
03-12-94 08:43:58
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: LAURA TRIPPI (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5777 (PUBLIC SPACE)
At this point I no longer remember so well what details of what I'd heard or
read about Fred's work in MD impressed me in that way, but I suppose the idea
of just working with elements of the collection already there meant that his
was a very discreet intervention, so that I imagined it would be possible
somehow for some people not even to realize that anything unsual was going on.
I like the idea of art that can work subliminally.
Msg#: 5843 *FINE ART*
03-12-94 18:38:36
From: LAURA TRIPPI
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5785 (PUBLIC SPACE)
By the "hidden dimension" of the work then you meant that the fact of its
*being work* may have been hidden to exhibition visitors? In Maryland, that
would have been next to impossible; the "intervention" was an elaborate
installation, including talking paintings and lights; but elsewhere, in the
Seattle museum, he worked the way you describe, with subtle interventions
within existing "permanent" displays.
I'm also a great fan of what you call subliminal art, work that seeks to "pass"
as part of the built (or natural? though "built" wouldn't describe a forest,
for example, I'm not altogether certain it could be called "natural" at this
point either) environment. When it catches your attention, and you realize,
oh, this is *art*, the surrounding space is also changed. Or rather the
perception of it as environment altered. Art that announces its status as art
has a harder and harder time, I think, effecting such an alteration of
perception applied to the "external" world -- external that is to say to the
realm of art. Does this in part explain the bourgeoning phenomenon of the
urban exhibition, the so-called "new public art" such as has been taking place
in Europe for some time and arrives here largely associated with the name of
Mary Jane Jacobs?
Msg#: 5857 *FINE ART*
03-13-94 00:59:36
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5784 (PUBLIC SPACE)
> know was an artwork unless he felt like confiding it to them. Which
> is also, to me, the beuatiful part of the Duchampian readymade and
> the part that has been lost from 99% of the subsequent work taking
> up the idea of the readymade.
I have a Samsonite suitcase by Ange Leccia standing around (inside is a tape
player that plays the soundtrack of "Casablanca" when the batteries aren't
dead, which they have been for years). A few weeks ago my 3 year old nephew
was visiting and changed the combination of the lock...
Msg#: 5858 *FINE ART*
03-13-94 02:12:39
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: LAURA TRIPPI (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5843 (PUBLIC SPACE)
That's the first I've heard about the talking paintings! (Sounds scary.)
But the kind of subliminal work I was talking about would not necessarily
attempt to "pass" as something else--that sounds more wilful, even
illusionistic, and so ultimately more mannered. The Cady Noland object I
mentioned, for instance, did not particularly "fit in" with this apartment, and
was not made with it in mind. In fact it would have been rather unlikely in
that particular context, but was simply neutral enough not to call attention to
itself (as art or anything else).
Msg#: 6206 *FINE ART*
03-15-94 20:51:42
From: LAURA TRIPPI
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5858 (PUBLIC SPACE)
I've been deliberating about whether my phrase "seeking to pass" was or was not
apt as a way of describing work that adopts a low profile as to its status as
art and often migrates into unexpected locales. I do think your dismissal of
the idea of such work as
> wilful, even illusionistic, and so ultimately more mannered
than what you had in mind was itself. . . wilful, even illusionistic, and
missed the point of my remarks. In formulating the phrase, I was thinking of
Adrian Piper's piece, *Cornered*, not because that work disguised its status as
art, but because it thematized the subject and also indexed a body of
performance works by Piper that troubled both the definition of public space
(sometimes they took place unexpectedly at academic dinner parties, for
example) and, that old chestnut, the dividing line between art and life.
Starting out from racial categories, "Cornered" so complexified the idea of
race that the issue of "passing" became quite dizzying, a mise en abime. Who
among us *isn't* ultimately seeking as pass -- as, what? clever, generous, or
white, whatever.
In a sense all artwork is seeking to pass. Some works seem wholeheartedly to
wish to be taken for what they seek to pass as -- "great painting" would be an
example. ("Bad painting" would not be. At least, historically. By now though
we so readily comprehend the segue from bad painting to great bad painting to
great painting that the originary disingenuousness of the genre is pretty much
lost.) Other works seem to be more interested in trying on a particular type
of materials, form, and style to see how they fit, and send out a lot of
signals about it. The Cady Noland piece you mentioned, for example, may not
have made an effort to fit into your friend's apartment; but its materials and
style and even its "content" are quite particular in citing a suburban American
backyard context. However, it's the lack of fit that flashes and results in a
reflection on implied violence.
The personification may rub you the wrong way but it points to that apparently
ineradicable aspect of intentionality that still does distinquish art from
everything else. I'm not voting in favor of intentionality. But it does have
the attraction of talking back. Until I myself attain enlightenment I do like
to have my own wilful, even illusionistic, assumptions about the world around
me interfered with in interesting, ethical, informative, and finally friendly
ways.
Msg#: 6240 *FINE ART*
03-16-94 12:33:39
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: LAURA TRIPPI (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6206 (PUBLIC SPACE)
You don't have to vote in favor of intentionality because, of course, we're
given little or no opportunity to vote against it.
Msg#: 6323 *FINE ART*
03-16-94 21:10:10
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: LAURA TRIPPI (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6206 (PUBLIC SPACE)
see Irving Goffman's book "Stigma, the Management of Spoiled Identity", chapter
on "passing"
Msg#: 6206 *FINE ART*
03-15-94 20:51:42
From: LAURA TRIPPI
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5858 (PUBLIC SPACE)
I've been deliberating about whether my phrase "seeking to pass" was or was not
apt as a way of describing work that adopts a low profile as to its status as
art and often migrates into unexpected locales. I do think your dismissal of
the idea of such work as
> wilful, even illusionistic, and so ultimately more mannered
than what you had in mind was itself. . . wilful, even illusionistic, and
missed the point of my remarks. In formulating the phrase, I was thinking of
Adrian Piper's piece, *Cornered*, not because that work disguised its status as
art, but because it thematized the subject and also indexed a body of
performance works by Piper that troubled both the definition of public space
(sometimes they took place unexpectedly at academic dinner parties, for
example) and, that old chestnut, the dividing line between art and life.
Starting out from racial categories, "Cornered" so complexified the idea of
race that the issue of "passing" became quite dizzying, a mise en abime. Who
among us *isn't* ultimately seeking as pass -- as, what? clever, generous, or
white, whatever.
In a sense all artwork is seeking to pass. Some works seem wholeheartedly to
wish to be taken for what they seek to pass as -- "great painting" would be an
example. ("Bad painting" would not be. At least, historically. By now though
we so readily comprehend the segue from bad painting to great bad painting to
great painting that the originary disingenuousness of the genre is pretty much
lost.) Other works seem to be more interested in trying on a particular type
of materials, form, and style to see how they fit, and send out a lot of
signals about it. The Cady Noland piece you mentioned, for example, may not
have made an effort to fit into your friend's apartment; but its materials and
style and even its "content" are quite particular in citing a suburban American
backyard context. However, it's the lack of fit that flashes and results in a
reflection on implied violence.
The personification may rub you the wrong way but it points to that apparently
ineradicable aspect of intentionality that still does distinquish art from
everything else. I'm not voting in favor of intentionality. But it does have
the attraction of talking back. Until I myself attain enlightenment I do like
to have my own wilful, even illusionistic, assumptions about the world around
me interfered with in interesting, ethical, informative, and finally friendly
ways.
Msg#: 6240 *FINE ART*
03-16-94 12:33:39
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: LAURA TRIPPI (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6206 (PUBLIC SPACE)
You don't have to vote in favor of intentionality because, of course, we're
given little or no opportunity to vote against it. Otherwise, I'm happy to
discover from this more elaborated statement that we are in broad agreement:
given the inherent non-self-identity of artworks, they are indeed always trying
to pass--even if only to pass unnoticed.
Msg#: 6323 *FINE ART*
03-16-94 21:10:10
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: LAURA TRIPPI (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6206 (PUBLIC SPACE)
see Irving Goffman's book "Stigma, the Management of Spoiled Identity", chapter
on "passing"
Msg#: 6208 *FINE ART*
03-15-94 22:15:16
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: SYSOP (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6002 (TWIST AND SHOUT)
I like Kosuth's work quite a bit, but your claim about auction prices I think
are just wrong. Julian, has, contrary to popular fiction is doing just fine.
(Don't get me wrong I AM NOT a fan of his work, however, I do keep notes on
these things a-la baseball scores.) Sure Joseph may out last Julian in the
textbooks, but you will NEVER see a Kosuth in a hotel, where I saw one very
terrible portfolio in an hotel in Atlanta this past weekend. In the long run I
think that people will still endure Julian and collect him at prices greater
thank Kosuth, in part that Julian's with Pace and who knows what will happen to
Joseph after Castelli dies.
Msg#: 6235 *FINE ART*
03-16-94 02:57:26
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: I DON'T KNOW
Subj: LOUIS LAWLER
I am sure most of you here in NYC have seen this show at metro by her. so far I
just heared more or less positiv feed back. but something disturbed me there.
it is her new (for some years) kind of little objects where the photograph is
small and covered by a curved paperweight simular glass that allows the
spectator - and one rally becomes a spectator - tosee the object. but I don't
care about this object as such, that with its dioptrical qualities has lots of
art historical connotations -(from the dutch painters to surrealism) - I
aminterested onlyin one question: (and I don't even discuss the changes of the
images, photos she uses, the montages and so on... a superficial reading still
gives you something like a typical Louis Lawler (do I spell her name right?) -
and this question is: why did LL have to give up with this particular series
her objective kind of presentation of her photographs? why did she have to
start with this ideosyncratic aestetic choice? and why know (since 1989 if I am
well informed) - something, I find interesting as a speculation is: didn't
this group of artists denounce something like "the artist" and then nolens
volens (lets be positiv) become so a kind of "super artist", at least
emblematic for so called postmodernist art (this once was a label, people
wanted to be called with)? now, the demand for artwork showing "no signiture",
no ideosynchrasie is not high in demand and one could assume that it must just
be the doorway outinto the "death (of the) artist"nowhere land they all flirted
with. but why is it, that she doesn't stand the colder wind she would expect if
just doiing what she did: even if provoking a drop out from the lists of
current definition brokers. I really don't understand why she needs this
"twist" ( a dangerousword that attracts here in this bulleton board also
shouts) . can you imagine dan graham blowing and laminating his works like jeff
walland reducing it then like sam samore...
Msg#: 6326 *FINE ART*
03-16-94 21:37:11
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6235 (LOUIS LAWLER)
Louise Lawler may have run out of steam. As an artist who made her niche
representing how others--collectors, museums etc.-- have presented the artwork
in their collections--she is now appropriating her own work. There is no law
that says you can't do that. It only may point out the poverty of an art
movement of many years ago wherein artists were reputed to heist--to
appropriate-- the artwork of others for their own ends.
Msg#: 6358 *FINE ART*
03-17-94 11:28:36
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6235 (LOUIS LAWLER)
I also have a question regarding the Lawler show, which has rather to do with
her use of language--though in fact this is very similar to her use of the
glass objets. Hasn't her language become reified into a signature supercilious
coyness? What is the tone of her language meant to signify?
Msg#: 6700 *FINE ART*
03-18-94 01:57:52
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6358 (LOUIS LAWLER)
and what is the fotograph of the parrot doing (don't we need some mussels too)
and what the one of the thorns?
Msg#: 6714 *FINE ART*
03-18-94 09:48:42
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6358 (LOUIS LAWLER)
in plain English, what is she trying to say?
Msg#: 6717 *FINE ART*
03-18-94 11:04:33
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6714 (LOUIS LAWLER)
More like--what is she trying to do?
Msg#: 6236 *FINE ART*
03-16-94 03:19:14
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: ALL
Subj: NOTICE
Anybody interested in pursuing the "ART SUCKS" thread may do so in the REY
ZONE.
Thank You.
Msg#: 6357 *FINE ART*
03-17-94 11:24:13
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 5879 (THE TWIST)
> we've got to
> take art's dialogic context on the
> road, so to speak, and travel with it, using it as a valuable tool
> of investigation. We must look for it
I want to go back to this question of where the impulse of conceptual art
devolved. Your notion that the context has gone on the road is correct, but
what I disagree with is that this sense of context is so determinate. For
instance, I don't know if Wolfgang considers The Thing part of his art work,
but even though I can see how it might come out of an interest originating in
the conceptual art concern with the notion of "information," I'd judge that it
is not art even though it may be a vehicle for communication about art. On the
other hand, Rainer Ganahl's work engages the notion of "information" as a
metaphor, and uses only incidentally the information technologies to which it
refers, but it is art which engages these ideas and contexts. I think with
admiration of the Italian artist Piero Gilardi, one of the original arte povera
artists. His experiences within art led him to withdraw from making art for
more than a decade, during which he worked with the mentally ill in the context
of the anti-psychiatry movement; eventually he did go back to artmaking.
What's important to me here is that while the thinking Gilardi had developed in
the context of art led to his social activism, he did not do social activism
"as art"--he did it as social activism. Often the projects that attempt to
co-opt other kinds of activities for art seem to me to be in bad faith--they
undermine themselves from both viewpoints. That's one reason why what you call
a "stopping point" in the circuit becomes so valuable, it provides a platform
for reflection and judgement.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 6710 *FINE ART*
03-18-94 03:07:20
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6357 (THE TWIST)
> For instance, I don't know if Wolfgang
> considers The Thing part of his art work, but even though I can see
> how it might come out of an interest originating in the conceptual
> art concern with the notion of "information," I'd judge that it is
> not art even though it may be a vehicle for communication about art.
Your Honor, with all due respect, isn't it customary to wait until the jury
is in before you read the verdict? Ah, do you want to see my digital
watercolors?
> as social activism. Often the projects that attempt to co-opt other
> kinds of activities for art seem to me to be in bad faith--they
> undermine themselves from both viewpoints. That's one reason why
I hope you aren't confusing THE THING with the Whitney Museum. Otherwise I
wholeheartedly agree with you on that one. To put a few stuffed polar bears in
a gallery and pretend this is done to increase awareness about ecological
conditions is just plain silly. However many of your colleagues bend over
backwards to celebrate such activities. But who cares? Morgan is right: It's
over... and this is not your periodic down-swing, this one is structural. Wake
up call!
Got to go to read the new cypherpunk postings. Bye!
Msg#: 6777 *FINE ART*
03-18-94 16:11:12
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6357 (THE TWIST)
Let's just say it's Wolfgang Staehle's work. I suspect that he doesn't care
whether it is art or not under current, speak conventional, conditions.
It is odd to me that while myriads of symposia and exhibitions are being
staged _offline_, on such issues as Ecology and Technology, Electronics and
Architecture, Technology and the Body, Conceptual Art and Technology, we are
here, _online_ indulging in the discussion of conventional object art fare.
Scientists are on the verge of deciphering the human genome, the blueprint of
humankind. Sabeth Buchmann (unfortunately I missed her recent lecture at the
Goethe House, but Rainer and Helene told me some details) draws parallels
between the human genome project and conceptual art, which I find very
interesting and would like to know more about.
If art will get stripped of its conventional carrier, the object, what will
remain is a code, a message on a host system. How can art be defined under
_these_ conditions (and, Jordan, I mean not oscillation back and forth between
object world and information space). Any other radicals around to discuss
this with?
Msg#: 6779 *FINE ART*
03-18-94 17:08:17
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6777 (THE TWIST)
While I like what you are driving towards in thinking about codes and genetics
- as it's own form of art? - I've got a basic problem (a quite broad one) with
attempting to make things relate to _THE BODY_. I'm not sure that you mean to
shift the dialogue into this direction, are you? To be more specific, one of
the most obnoxious comments that I hear all the time when I go, silently, into
museum spaces (inparticular the photography galleries), is people saying ...oh,
I just love to look at faces... I know this is a hobby to many (a perverse
form of people watching), and don't want to go to far in this tangent, but it
is symptomatic of something larger, that is (to go back to the original track I
was on) people love to relate things to _THE BODY_ because it so tangible (wow
what insite). We think in terms of scale, texture, color, weight, mass, etc.
in the form of _THE BODY_ as relationship to sculpture (and other things) in
effort to find comfort in the sculpture's "objectivity", and we do this with
everything from Judd/Serra to Kiki Smith. Is this good or bad? I tend to like
to look at things in the form of _it is_ and that is all _it is_ (ok it doesn't
work for Ronald Jones), but for Halley (for example) I like his work much more
when divorced from his tedious texts (much in the same way I would perfer to
look at sculptue w/o thinking of _THE BODY_). What I love about the notion of
TT is that in many was it's not painting, drawing, sculpture, but pure
conception - before the body.
Msg#: 6780 *FINE ART*
03-18-94 17:29:30
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6779 (THE TWIST)
Sounds to me like you are trying to be "original." Maybe if everyone likes
things to relate to the body, they're on to something. As for me, I just saw
the Schiele drawings at Gagosian today and they made me wonder how people could
even do their work (I'm talking about the gallery employees) with these images
around.
Msg#: 6808 *FINE ART*
03-18-94 19:59:03
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6780 (THE TWIST)
Why that the employees at Gagosian wouldn't be able to do their work while
around the Schiele drawings? Too beautiful?
Have to wonder... (I saw the show).
Msg#: 6824 *FINE ART*
03-18-94 22:44:58
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6808 (THE TWIST)
What, Josefina, and you an analyst...! I thought Freudians only had one thing
in mind...
Msg#: 6907 *FINE ART*
03-19-94 17:53:59
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6779 (THE TWIST)
don't you find TT Judaic (in the cultural sense of being logocentric, the
primacy of the word) ? It has the same endless textuality and tradition of
commentary on commentary that one finds in the Talmud. Maybe not as deep, tho.
This bod-centricity came about later, think of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man in the
squared circle, reached a romantic peak with Rodin, slipped off into the
Kafko-penal colony musings of the continental imagination (think of how much
Schiele is about struggling as much is it is erotik reverie) and ended up as
Kalifornya Surfur Kultur inzee hott tubb. BAHAHAHAA! Turkey Soup, bon apetit!!!
Msg#: 6908 *FINE ART*
03-19-94 18:19:28
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6357 (THE TWIST)
You're saying then that since The Thing is primarily concerned with
texts *about*
art, rather than texts and textualities that are themselves art (as in Rainer's
work), it is not itself art. Kosuth found it necessary to fix this distinction
in terms of primary and secondary theory: "That *difference* which separates an
artwork from a conversation also separates, fundamentally, primary theory from
secondary theory" (Kosuth, Art after Philosophy and After, p. 249). In other
words, you're either talking about art or making art; however talking about art
can be making art if it's articulated as part of a practice. Usually we know
the difference because the author will say it's so; but what happens when we
don't know who the author is, or if we allow for the possibility of alternate
author-constructs?
It's interesting to consider whether The Thing can be art--and it can
be, it's a matter of our articulating it convincingly as such--because it has
no sole author, and it throws into question all assumed roles. Without
question, it is not Wolfgang's art; he would be the last one to call it such. I
doubt that he would even refer to it as "his work," as Gisela does. In this
sense, The Thing allows for an exploration that Rainer's work does not, since
Rainer's work is always Rainer's work. Although Rainer's work allows for an
exploration that The Thing does not, for the same reason.
"Our work must bring together, then, the work and its maker in the
process of locating both in society and history" (Kosuth, p. 162). If its maker
is not an author per se but a kind of mechanism, in the sense, for example,
that Mother Nature is not an author although she produces evolution, then we
have an organismic construct that allows for the exploration of subject-object
relations not fixed but multiply and configuratively positioned. What subject
and object, author and reader, sender and receiver, constructs will be selected
for?
It seems unnecessary to draw the distinctions so firmly that Giraldi
did in terms of art or social activism. They're not mutually exclusive; it's
not a matter of either/or. An artist can engage in social activism employing
certain elements of art, which may more effectively address certain ambiguities
and prompt an alternate kind of thinking which is not so cut-and-
dried; one can, for instance, probe more deeply into the negotiatory nature of
"difference" or "opposition" that activist practice skims over. Similarly,
social activist concerns addressed in art can focus attention more clearly on
vital social issues while still incorporating art's play of signification (a
delicate balancing act of course).
It's unclear to me what you mean when you say that what you disagree
with is that "this sense of context is so determinate." And also, when you say
"the notion of 'information'", I can't help but wonder why you say "notion" and
why you place the word "information" in scare-quotes. You seem to hold it at
bay, even in the context of Rainer's practice, where it certainly is more
integral.
I don't mean to indicate that "stopping points" in the circuits are
merely that: I see them as valuable as you do. (But I would highlight the
"reflection," and leave off the "judgment.")
Msg#: 6909 *FINE ART*
03-19-94 18:28:54
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6779 (THE TWIST)
It seems "_THE BODY_" for you is a kind of audio-textual logo, like the
corporate jingle that you keep humming and can't get out of your head. That is
also very clearly how you respond to art.
> I tend to like to look at things in the form of _it is_ and
> that is all _it is_
Perhaps, then, you should reconsider that statement.
Msg#: 6910 *FINE ART*
03-19-94 18:32:29
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6777 (THE TWIST)
> If art will get stripped of its conventional carrier, the object,
> what will
> remain is a code, a message on a host system. How can art be
> defined under
> _these_ conditions
Art can't be reduced to a code or a message. It's always in the relations
between codes, in the relation of viewer to viewed. What you suggest is not to
get rid of the object, but to reduce it to that.
Msg#: 6912 *FINE ART*
03-19-94 18:55:42
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6710 (THE TWIST)
> But who cares? Morgan is right: It's over... and this
> is not your periodic down-swing, this one is structural. Wake up
> call!
> Got to go to read the new cypherpunk postings. Bye!
Not so fast. Why are you and Morgan spending so much time in this "Fine Art"
forum if you think it's over? Clearly this is not a matter of either/or. Maybe
we're not in the art realm proper, but we're certainly not in the cyber- or
cypherpunk one. Bring what you learn there into here and vice-versa, and let's
stop this "it's over!" art-is-dead thinking, which is as burnt out and
historically meaningless as any artwork it could purport to negate. We've got
to articulate the hybrids, not fall into camp A or camp B.
Msg#: 6916 *FINE ART*
03-19-94 20:26:33
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6908 (THE TWIST)
In this context, "information" is not really a notion (in any strictly defined
sense), it's more metaphor masked as a notion.
Generally, what you seem to be trying to get at about The Thing seems to have a
lot to do with ideas about collective authorship that were explored by the
early German Romantics (Schlegel etc.)
Msg#: 6921 *FINE ART*
03-19-94 22:50:18
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6912 (THE TWIST)
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I didn't mean to imply that art in itself
was "over" or "dead", but rather that its circulatory system is in a deep
structural crisis. You too might have noticed the number of galleries closing
and institutional funds cut back. Most of this, of course, is recession
induced. But I also detect structural changes. Some interesting trends
include galleries turning into agencies and artists getting involved in non-art
projects. And then there is The Thing...
Personally, I find the discussion as to whether one thing is art and the
other is not too deterministic for its own good. For one The Thing is a
collective readymade with multiple authors, for the other it's an online
service... chaqun a son gout!
Msg#: 6928 *FINE ART*
03-20-94 00:41:23
From: ELIZABETH LICATA
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6912 (THE TWIST)
I don't think Staehle was inferring that "art" is over, but I do agree that
adjacent disourses such as The Thing can impact on the bruised and depleted
body we know of as the art world. The Thing--and other BBS's such as Arts
Wire--can maintain both an inward and outward gaze. That's why it's important
here to continue talking about what happens "out there" as well as explore the
possibilities of cyber-expression (for lack of a better word). It is not an
either or arguement at this point. We're not taking over or replacing anything.
I also agree (with another message) that articulating sociopolitical questions
is still something that art--whther it happens on the Internet or in physical
spaces--
can thoughtfully participate in. It's not "over." In a way, I wish it was.
Msg#: 6938 *FINE ART*
03-20-94 04:02:21
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6824 (THE TWIST)
Barry, you are not answering my question.
Msg#: 6940 *FINE ART*
03-20-94 10:50:57
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6912 (THE TWIST)
the last great wave of *art is dead* art has been resorbed as high
collectabilia (Fluxus effluvia), but still, as a gesture of functioning minds
reacting to a fetishistic, and often dishonest (in the sense of declaring great
value and sublimity where its presence was dubious at best) critical milieu, it
rates as my favorite period in the second half of this century.
"It" isn't dead in the Fluxus sense, we are in the midst of an all
penetrating form of change that a person equipped with the radicalism of the
'60s or the decadance of the '70s, or the perverse materialism of the '80s
would have the greatest difficulty making sense of.
There is a lag, historically, between the arrival of a new technology (more
generally, a new class of technologies) with its initial pilot implementation,
and its total diffusion and transformation of the host culture.
It is worth noting that there is a "slow" phase, where the technology is
contained and local enough that it isn't rescripting the host culture (as in
the '50s, a few adventurous families with teevee sets filled with zillions of
tubes and little blue screens) and a "fast" phase, where the culture becomes
re-expressed in terms of the new technology. This is followed by the
"institutional" phase, where nobody can remember, and can barely imagine, life
in the absence of the technology in question.
TV is now in the *institutional* phase, and I don't believe that we could
make sense of contemporary America (north or south), were we being
extra-terrestrial anthropologists, without taking it into account.
This "new thing" we are gingerly poking around, a composite of many
technological advances; genetics, chip design, information conduits,
micromarketing techniques, learning technologies, and all that stuff bubbling
around us, is still in the "slow" phase; we are getting there technologically,
but we are old fashioned psychologically.
We hit the "fast" switch, my wild guess, in 1995, when the bulk of the fiber
optic lines reach all the way to ones house or office. Then, Art as we thing of
it won't die, it will be working for Industrial Light and Magic, or one of the
vidi production houses like it. Or, it will be traded back and forth on CD-ROMs
and bootlegged like crazy. What it won't be is "housed" in the same way that it
is now, or written about in specialized publications. WIRED is a decent
predictive template for the next phase of cultural discussion, as ARTFORUM is
kapootie.
THe established institutions of Art, and their systems of relationship, are
the most vulnerable, as they are not populated with especially adaptable
personalities. The future belongs to a different species.
Remember the heyday of the unions, maybe 25 years ago? They thought they
could forestall change, resist automation, stay in their comfortable ruts. And
resist they did, but they couldn't, for whatever reason, bring themselves to
accept the depth of change in their world, and the gradual erosion of their
power. Their leaders were insulated and intransigent. Maybe they simply weren't
capable of it, couldn't get their minds around the reality facing them.
So, the world went on without them, their membership rolls declined
precipitously, and they were left floundering, now trying to wake up and get
their act back together.
Same thing is on the horizon for culture producers and discussers. What
happened to industrial labor then happened to white collar corporate labor (and
still is) and is now about to happen to intellectual labor. May take a while
longer. A brief while.
Msg#: 6946 *FINE ART*
03-20-94 12:57:32
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6912 (THE TWIST)
in this string I am in a bad position to say something since my name came up:
but refering to this uncurable problem that has not even its career as a
problem for granted (whether something is, or isn't) I might just add a little
comment: I am a little bit confused why there had to be this belief in
definitions. isn't it more of a contextual question - and isn't the context
itself somethng very open to all kind of changing definitions that have to be
negotiated from person to person, from case to case. soit is not the question
of whether this thing here "is it or isn't it" but more whether wolfgang
staehle will "use it" or will not use it ... obviously the question of the
"good use" of things is entirely up to him and does not depend of whether he
"shows it" or doesn't (there is no need to show anything, since everything is
"out" anyway) - also, the german idealism argument, barry raised doesn't apply
if he doesn't "use it" as somemthing that has traditional work qualities
(obviously, they could be found if one applies this matrix, but it isvery
unlikely that he would do so) - I think if we have to stress art historical
references, I would more locate it at the very disolved, abstracted end of areadymade without object (it is important that there is no object even if we,
as users 'bricolage' on one) - everything else would be too pathetic ... so
far, I might say the best "usage" of "it" is to leave it totaly "empty" and not
stress any kind of "art thing" (definition) for it. and ifsomebody really wants
to have anything materialized: I would send him/her to the one line in his CV
(isn't the best piece anyway only what you can express only in a line of a CV
whithout anything shown) ? (by the way: right now I am not even sure whether I
suffer diarrhoea passed over from my room mates or not, whether "I have it or I
don't" (but for me it is already enough to be paranoid - this too does the job
- I better go now)
Msg#: 6947 *FINE ART*
03-20-94 13:05:59
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6921 (THE TWIST)
here we go, I didn't know - he himself makes the point withthe ready made: I
might even somehow cynically add: if you feel better in your typing if pushing
an artproject with your fingers - feel free to feel and do so: for the rest of
us: use it as a service (I am definitlyon the service side: what staehle does
on his CV I don't care : but I do care hoping that those circuits that are
usually reserved for artistic matters don't ignore it in order to get more and
good people on it to write and argue with - this is purely functional: so for
this prupose such a "a-definition" might serve tohelp recrute good writers
Msg#: 6950 *FINE ART*
03-20-94 15:43:24
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6938 (THE TWIST)
Sorry, Josefina--I meant that I couldn't see how people could spend so much
time around so many of those Schiele drawings without wanting to have sex
instead of working.
Msg#: 6993 *FINE ART
03-20-94 22:20:21
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6950 (THE TWIST)
Heard that some of the best Schieles' are just too hot for the media--N.Y.
Times, art magazines etc.--to reproduce them in reviews. Is there any art
today that is too hot to handle? A few years ago I saw some great drawings and
paintings by Mike Cockrill (formerly of Cockrill and Hughes out of the old
Semaphore Gallery) of prepubescent young girls. Rumor has it that nobody dares
to show them. Mike is now painting for Mark Kostabi. Also heard from a
reliable source that Rick Prol painted just about all of Basquiat's last
paintings, for what that's worth.
Msg#: 6997 *FINE ART*
03-20-94 23:48:25
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6950 (THE TWIST)
Barry, you an artcritic... I thought artcritics did not have only one thing in
mind.
Msg#: 6998 *FINE ART*
03-21-94 00:09:30
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6993 (THE TWIST)
If there's any art nowadays which is too hot to handle? Don't tell me you
forgot about Jeff Koons, and the problems of the feminists with David Salle...
Just now Lacanian Ink 8 was rejected by four printers in a row because of David
Kelleran's photograph in the cover (the GIF in TT). Only the fifth attempt was
succesful--the printer doing the journal is a pornography specialist, in
Vermont. And lets wait and see what may happen with the book stores.
Msg#: 7009 *FINE ART*
03-21-94 12:37:47
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6780 (THE TWIST)
I'm not an artists, but I get distrubed when everybody seems to suddendly react
to market forces. I don't want to say that artist (all, most, many, few) make
art to sell, but it does seem to me at times that it more than just what "in
the air" that drives either artists to make work about the "body" at this
moment, or dealers to show artist that make work about the "body." What did
you mean that you don't know how anybody can work at GoGo's with the Schiele's
up? Do you mean that they are so distrubing or such great works of art that it
would cause one to stop and stare?
Msg#: 7012 *FINE ART*
03-21-94 12:40:56
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6907 (THE TWIST)
Morgan, say what? Eat your soup while it's still hot.
Msg#: 7015 *FINE ART*
03-21-94 12:54:13
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6993 (THE TWIST)
The notion of Rock Prol painting Basquiat's work somehow seems grotesque on
more levels than I can even geta grip on.
Msg#: 7016 *FINE ART*
03-21-94 12:55:36
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6997 (THE TWIST)
Don't be fooled, Josefina, by my always having been such a gentleman in your
regard.
Msg#: 7017 *FINE ART*
03-21-94 13:04:30
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7009 (THE TWIST)
Josefina already asked your question regarding my remark re: Schiele--check out
my response to her and its follow-ups.
Regarding the topos of "the body" in contemporary art, it's hard not to
share your suspiciousness, not so much on the level of it being market-driven
but rather that people are just too easily influenced by their peers because of
their own lack of strong convictions. But still and all, it is a theme that of
necessity hits very close to home. Maybe the problem is that the category as
we are using it, which is to say as it's generally used in casual art-talk and
at a certain journalistic level, is just too vague to be of much use, and it
confuses more than it clarifies things. I tried to make a few distinctions
within all this talk about "the body" in an essay called "Shamelessness"
published in Sculpture magazine about two years ago, but there's a tremendous
amount of critical thought that has failed to engage any of this in a serious
way.
Msg#: 7021 *FINE ART*
03-21-94 13:29:24
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7017 (THE TWIST)
In some ways what I feel, often, is that there is all this "Body" stuff out of
the same reason that Pepsi, Arco (gas), Ban (deoderant), etc. are rushing to
market "clear" products. It's what people want, plain and simple. If Kiki
Smith sells, hey, I'll think about making works bout the body too. (Simple
minded?) Anyhow, this new "eco-aware" culture we're a part of does demand that
we look at thinks in a physical (human/living) system way. But maybe Zone is a
precursor of things to come three volumes about the body followed by one on
technology. We'll wait our turn.
Msg#: 7022 *FINE ART*
03-21-94 13:39:46
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7017 (THE TWIST)
David Freedberg, author of "The Power Of Images" (which directed its gaze at
the overt sexual and violent denotations in art throughout history) said, with
some unsettlement, also in Sculpture, that the critical/academic community
simply could not bring themselves to discuss his thesis. Freedberg had broached
taboo material, and the response was predictable, embarrassed silence. Why
this craven pie faced cat got your tongue play dumb didn't hear a thing you
said timidity from the decks of the ,eh, "professional" claque of kultur
peemps?
Perhaps that the sequalae of his observation, were it to be officially
"taken seriously" by being given a Chorus in this particual morality play of hi
taste, are too disturbing to be shrugged off, or given the bum's rush of ironic
dismissal.
That being that, jes perhaps, some of what we have assigned the status of
"the glories of culture", has as its prime mover, base and pornographic
impulses.
That simply won't do. We have a reputation to uphold, you know.
Msg#: 7023 *FINE ART*
03-21-94 13:53:54
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6993 (THE TWIST)
maaarvelous! looove ittttt! I ran into Mike at a trade show in Chicago last
year, where his dealer was showing his "girlie" paintings...this was a tres
straight occasion with Leo Castelli dutifully munching down vile buffet fare,
breaded shrimp full of PCBs and horrid stuffed peppers with God knows what in
them, and an enterprising team of two brothers laden with Fluxus things you
must own, and about ten thousand other forgettable expressions of the profound
creative spirit and inherent nobility in human aspiration...Rick did Michael
B.? Figures. Now WHO do you think paid for that?
Msg#: 7024 *FINE ART*
03-21-94 17:07:01
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7022 (THE TWIST)
Freedberg is kidding himself. His book was not discussed because it is a bad
book that completely fails to show what it says it's going to show, despite a
vast amount of raw data being served up in the absence of an intellectual
schema capable of processing it. Check out David Carrier's review published
in Arts Magazine shortly after the book's publication.
Msg#: 7088 *FINE ART*
03-22-94 00:28:01
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7024 (THE TWIST)
OK, I think we can take that torpedo at face value (even if some metaphors get
mixed on the way). I've got the thing right here, but am halfway through a
biography of Goebbels, so will pick through it again when time permits.
As he is concerned with the problem of *evasion* ( and that can be a self
serving framework, not unlike the psychanalytic one, i.e. "you won't accept
this intellectually because you are in actuality evading anxiety provoking
unconscious thoughts, and your anger or disdain is not only a symptom, but the
more you experience it, the more you are, in truth, confirming the points that
you appear to reject, etc etc") I'd like to cut him a little extra slack and
run through his stuff with suspended judgement. Sometimes we can be in the grip
of intellectual fashions and not know it. In my own mind the jury is out, but
who knows, I may end up agreeing with you, or vice versa.[k
Msg#: 7105 *FINE ART*
03-22-94 03:42:07
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7016 (THE TWIST)
Hmm... Barry. A penny for those thoughts!
Msg#: 7118 *FINE ART*
03-22-94 13:26:54
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7105 (THE TWIST)
Any time, Josefina--on a private channel.
Msg#: 7126 *FINE ART*
03-22-94 20:25:05
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7023 (THE TWIST)
Glad to run into another Cockrill admirer. We are very few. I wonder why?
His early job on the Kennedy clan was pure masterpiece. Apropos of "work too
hot to handle" a suggestion that after Koons there is nothing left to shock
the multitudes, leads me to believe that the current crowd just doesn't know
the multilevel delights of Cockrill.
Msg#: 7127 *FINE ART*
03-22-94 20:49:48
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6998 (THE TWIST)
I'm pretty much strait-laced and rarely rent a video from Blockbusters or
Tower. But Koons is really weak tea and its error to think that the pseudo
shock that thundered through the art world represented a new high in acceptance
of the workings of the plumbing of the human body as high art. You must look
at the early work of Mike Cockrill who mixed eroticism, politics, and a sly
sense of humor into a fine art cocktail. And the guy can really draw!
Msg#: 7391 *FINE ART*
03-23-94 12:59:55
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7126 (THE TWIST)
when you look to the "primary layer" (not the best term, if you have a better
one, please feel free to substitute it) of Koons, you find not much. This is a
people problem that appears as an art problem (like guns dont kill, people
do?), namely "hollowness". No big news there, T.S. Eliot had his big despair
over "hollow men, filled with sawdust", no news to Nietzche even, who dreamed
up the curse of "eternal recurrence" (how many times would you have to relive
your life exactly as you have before you couldn't stand it anymore? that's not
exactly what he said, call it para-Nietzche, but you get the point, which
isn't philosophical geneology but what are we really doing with these lives of
ours?...let some other fool pick nits)...
But, Koons does make useful contributions to our understanding of the banal.
Perhaps he himself is thoroughly banal as well..ok, that's his problem, but the
magnification, the hyperbolizing of the banal, the conflation of the grand
gesture and the idiotic throw away is consistent with the social background
noise all around us.
What he does lack is rage, and purifying disgust, which Mike Cockrill
possesses and hones to a keen edge. I believe, from knowing him, that he has
little stomach for fraudulence and hypocricy, and that inability to "go along
to get along" will keep him marginal.
Koons wallows, but he never confronts...one suspects that his art is a kind
of covert endorsement of the very prejudices he claims to mock, his art is the
art of bad faith (git 'em Jean Paul...)
Msg#: 7455 *FINE ART*
03-23-94 22:24:32
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7391 (THE TWIST)
> heck, its a
> coercive, manipulative culture, so, like, party dude.
Msg#: 7489 *FINE ART*
03-24-94 10:24:31
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: CHRIS KRAMER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7455 (THE TWIST)
yeeeessss? aaaannnnd? you were about to say something?
Msg#: 7769 *FINE ART*
03-25-94 02:27:49
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7127 (THE TWIST)
"Heard that some of the best Schieles' are just too hot for the media--N.Y.
Times, art magazines etc.--to reproduce them in reviews. Is there any art
today that is too hot to handle?" I was replying to this question Michael. Good
or bad, today art is many times "too hot to handle."
Msg#: 7770 *FINE ART*
03-25-94 02:51:00
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7021 (THE TWIST)
I think Zone's three volumes my have abused the body topic. It got tedious in
the end. I like though the subject when relative to the Barroque.
Lacan, addressing the body--the soul as it's supposed identity--writes
this intriguing phrase: 'When you suppose it thinks secretely, it has
secretions--when you suppose it thinks concrete, it has concretions--when you
suppose it thinks information, it has hormones." (in Encore, the chapter "of
the Barroque").
Msg#: 8052 *FINE ART*
03-25-94 20:50:58
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7770 (THE TWIST)
True, in the wider world, penises, profanity and pederasty have not yet been
widely accepted as topics of media exploration and discussion. In the narrower
art world however we seem to be awash at least in penises lately. Maybe I am
being overly simplistic but isn't it true that your thoughts and mine are still
"too hot to handle."
Msg#: 8053 *FINE ART*
03-25-94 21:09:19
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7391 (THE TWIST)
Rage and disgust are authentic emotions the communication of which appeal to me
in art or otherwise. "Hyperbolizing the banal"--Koons--smacks of juvenile
pedantry. The banal is everwhere around us. I'm a high school graduate--got
my GED--and Koons can't teach me anything.
Msg#: 8091 *FINE ART*
03-26-94 15:18:13
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8053 (THE TWIST)
ain't that it in a nutshell? Can it teach you? Do you walk away knowing or
feeling or perhaps in an inexplicable way comprehending something that you
didn't before you encountered the work? That's what differentiates
entertainment; to be entertained you don't have to be educated, simple have
your attention redirected for awhile. An experience can both be educative and
entertaining (if you luck out); but empty entertainment has a barren wasteland
quality to it just like dead dry information. I don't know exactly the algebra
for great engagement, the spot on blend of high entertainment and great
teaching, but when you meet up with it, you can almost feel the machinery of
your life changing gears. Nothing like that happened with Koons, merely a
Hmm...cool...look at that...next please...
Msg#: 8093 *FINE ART*
03-26-94 16:42:39
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6916 (THE TWIST)
> In this context, "information" is not really a notion (in any
> strictly defined sense), it's more metaphor masked as a notion.
What are you talking about? By "this context" do you mean The Thing, Rainer's
work, or the context of your discourse? Perhaps in your antiquated world, it
appears masked as a notion, but certainly not in the discourses whirling around
you of which you're obviously unaware, shuttered off as you are within the
confines of the art world, bound up in rearranging the furniture and dusting.
And *no,* I'm not talking about "collective authorship" at all! That
does not apply to the kinds of alternate relations and transactions that I am
trying to articulate.
Msg#: 8141 *FINE ART*
03-26-94 18:57:11
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8093 (THE TWIST)
eeech!oooch!ouch!>>>>>>>>how about information=information? Artsyfartsy (a dead
language that was discovered in clay vessels next to the Essene scriptures, but
suppressed by a deviant faction of Scientologists who had major problems with
Sperber's meta-linguistics....just kidding) requires an indirection, the
academic equivalent of a snipe hunt, to keep itself "in the game", by being
able to provide a legitimizing service to it while keeping the terms of the
inquiry just that crucial teensy bit off balance, like doctors who don't want
to speak in lay english, less some of the mystique gets coated with the
shake'n'bake of the daily grind. I am sure you get my drift.
Still, keep in mind that the "critical community" (an artificial construct
on our part so we can have a juicy, unspecific target to get our morality jones
on) is as highly socialized into their roles as "artists" or "lawyers" are into
theirs.
We don't see our own clonedom, but I'd be willing to bet that if you got
some artists together and a gaggle of surgeons, or senators, or cops walked in
on them, "we" would look like something, and sound like something, as a class
of "thems", relative to some "us's".
Meta-artists, "critics" if you will, suffer their fates of socialization
along with the rest of humanity. The dominant question is how do we, co
inhabitants of an intellectual sphere, arrive at that which matters, and
distinguish it from the mental equivalent of potato peeling?
Msg#: 8160 *FINE ART*
03-27-94 09:45:18
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8141 (THE TWIST)
Yes, Jordan, like Jonathan Richman, "I'm still in love with the old world."
Msg#: 8161 *FINE ART*
03-27-94 12:38:23
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8093 (THE TWIST)
Jordan, I really think you should check out how close your projections of
meta-authorship regarding The Thing, as articulated in your message #6908, are
to what was being said about the "Athenaum" almost 200 years ago! It's hardly
an insult to point this out.
Msg#: 8176 *FINE ART*
03-27-94 07:27:24
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8161 (THE TWIST)
You seem to be arguing for dose of "populism" to be tossed into the critical
brew. Perhaps term-limits for critics--and artists--may be the answer. I
think I'll give my senator a call.
Msg#: 8486 *FINE ART*
03-29-94 18:25:47
From: CAROL BROAD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8176 (THE TWIST)
I just adore German Romantics. How can I learn more about this Schlegel and
his Atheneum? What is it anyway? Can I get his books at Rizzoli? I am nearly
done reading Derrida...
Msg#:10900 *FINE ART*
04-16-94 19:32:00
From: JEREMY WHITEHURST
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8486 (THE TWIST)
The problem concerning conceptual practice and its ongoing legacy interms of
how, if at all, appaers to be the most interesting phenomena that is arising
within the cultural field. What I do find strange is how painting as a language
fits into the legacy that is regarded as conceptual art. of course the
development of painting was a conceptual project and as a language still has
that the posibilities of a conceptual project.
The problem is that goods do not seem to be adquately delivered to continue, or
validify the conceptual possibilitiers of this language. As we know the in
terms of the ever expanding fields of cultural practice then painting seems to
have its feet so haevily set in concrete that any shift that comes out of
appaers already to be rotten fruit.
Of course the whole problem of activating a visual field is not under the sole
ownership of painting. The level of competion arises out of every visual
formulation and this, or these confront the conceptual or theoretical problems
far more succictly than the evere decreasing possiblitie sof the language of
painting. The restriction to a given set of problems withih a language offers
endless possibilities but with painting the outcome is alraedy ........
........there are to many questions or discourses that are immediately left out
in the cold, to many processes that are removed.
Or maybe I'm just to young to find painting as an activity intresting. Next one
please........
I would rather see bad conceptual art than some daubed material anyday.
---
* Origin: THE THING COLOGNE [0221-7392450(BOX) 723578 (TEL)] (42:1002/1)
Msg#:10917 *FINE ART*
04-16-94 14:41:37
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: JEREMY WHITEHURST
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10900 (THE TWIST)
Strange as it is to consider how painting could fit in conceptualism's legacy,
as you say, it is even more strange to consider how it could *not* fit in. In
this situation, the case for excluding painting, or any other cultural
phenomenon or mode of artistic practice, would be weak.
Msg#: 6696 *FINE ART*
03-18-94 00:58:47
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: ZOO
> If Judd is a boar, does that make Serra a stag?
Subjects concerning Zoomorphology are now being discussed in the REY ZONE.
cc: SKIP SNOW, DAVID PLATZKER
Msg#: 7403 *FINE ART*
03-23-94 17:05:20
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BEGINNERS
Subj: BASIC GERMAN
within the context of renee green's "taste venue" show at pat hearn gallery, I
am giving "basic german" lessons from today on every wednesday and friday from
12 to 1 o'clock untill the end of her show (april 10th) - the classes are 5 $ a
person to cover the rental of the space; the lessons are held in the gallery on
39 wooster street. after april 10th the lessons could go on under a private
banner for 10 $ an hour you are invited to come, if you want to study german
<*>Replies
Msg#: 7474 *FINE ART*
03-24-94 00:42:29
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7403 (BASIC GERMAN)
Perhaps it would be more challenging, Rainer, if you were to teach basic
Japanese instead.
Msg#: 7544 *FINE ART*
03-24-94 19:10:48
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7474 (BASIC GERMAN)
I just did my "basic japanese" upstairs, so I thought it might be more fun
doing "basic german" - but if there is an interest in learning "basic japanese"
I would be willing to teach privately... but this msg belongs more in the adds
section or the e/mail...
Msg#: 8050 *FINE ART*
03-25-94 20:32:37
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7403 (BASIC GERMAN)
Rainer, wouldn't it be more appropriate for you to be paying others to learn
your native tongue. According to the latest statistics of the Bureau of
Linguistics of the Deutche Institute, in the May 1994 survey, German is a dying
language having been surpassed by both English, French, and Spanish as a
language of international discourse, and is only read rather infrequently in
some obscure and unreadable German art journals. Also recent historical
discoveries in the field of "primitive multicultural languages" has decisively
proven beyond a reasonable doubt the origin of German as an offshoot of early
American english. See the Journal of Early Languages, September 1994.
Msg#: 8078 *FINE ART*
03-26-94 02:23:18
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8050 (BASIC GERMAN)
> Also recent historical
> discoveries in the field of "primitive multicultural languages" has
decisively
> proven beyond a reasonable doubt the origin of German as an offshoot of early
> American english. See the Journal of Early Languages, September 1994.
does this have something to do with the proven facts, reported in the journal
of "historical east coast discoveries", December 1993, page 35 ff, that Berlin
and Vienna are split of colonies from the texas germans before they were
converted into americans? May be we should do some more studies at your
"Bureau of Linguistics of the Deutche Institute" (by the way, where is it
located).
Msg#: 8081 *FINE ART*
03-25-94 19:35:00
From: FRANK KRUSE
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8078 (BASIC GERMAN)
RG>doing "basic german" - but if there is an interest in learning "basic
RG>japanese" I would be willing to teach privately... but this msg belongs more
gee, sure thang!
i used to in yokohama a couple of years ago. and now, as time goes by,
it kinda hides somewhere in my brain. i can understand it quite well but
when it comes to speaking, i just can't get a hold of it...
so: i'd love to brush it up, but do you think it's going to work via tt?
tell me...
furanku-san. kyo wa boku no tanjobi desu.
cheers.
---
* Origin: THE THING BERLIN (box/fax 030:4528534) (42:1002/3)
Msg#: 7547 *FINE ART*
03-24-94 20:09:49
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: BASIC JAPANESE
If I can make it to Pat's during one of your hours, I would be happy to take my
first lesson in Japanese.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 7551 *FINE ART*
03-24-94 22:18:06
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7547 (BASIC JAPANESE)
sorry barry, but at pat I just do "basic german" - for basic japanese, you have
to come to my place - (plus I you will encounter a native speaker as well) -
but again, we are at the wrong board (go e)
Msg#: 8079 *FINE ART*
03-26-94 02:27:48
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: TOO HOT TO HANDLE
so why don't you buy some cuts or gloves at 7th avenue?
Msg#: 8209 *FINE ART*
03-27-94 10:08:34
From: SKIP SNOW
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: OLD WORLD
There is no old world, only memory and nostalga. If you are in love with the
old world, then you have no sense of what the past is or should have been. I
am sorry to be mean, (spelling for once right), but the old world is more
mythic than a thruth of history.
Msg#: 8216 *FINE ART*
03-27-94 11:57:46
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: WHO CARES
Subj: TALK/SHOWS
after Lawler one should also talk about the show of Barbara Krueger and the one
of Cady Noland. all three are very interesting and worth to be discussed. but
different to just reviews I wish we would be able to develop and exchange
arguments one can not find so easily elsewhere. the emphasis should be on
"developing arguments". I was surprised and sad about the way Lawlers show was
somehow "bashed" in the end without arguments. I opened up her string with some
critical questions about her work but nevertheless I do find her entire project
as such interesting and worth to be defended. So I did not want to see end this
string so miserably fringed down into nasty silence. So I hope we do not repeat
this with Noland and Krueger even if I might open it up with some critical
remarks or questions.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 8234 *FINE ART*
03-27-94 19:58:08
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8216 (TALK/SHOWS)
I agree the emphasis should be on developing arguments. But the problem
is, we dance around so much from one topic to the next, from one show to the
next, that it's hard to concentrate. It's a matter of wanting to make a time
and energy investment in a particular issue and/or artist. Lawler and Kruger
are artists worthy of investing time in, but the question is: why, and for
what? We are all busy people, there is so much in the day that competes for
attention, that cries out for articulation. In order to engage in developing
arguments here there has got to be a compelling reason for doing so. Idle
chatter isn't enough; I'd rather do it in person.
I suggest we try a roundtable discussion on something which interests
us all, set aside some time to do it, and publish it somewhere. I like the idea
of choosing participants, focusing on a set of issues, creating a structure,
and gearing the whole thing to be published.
Msg#: 8217 *FINE ART*
03-27-94 12:06:00
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: &
Subj: BARBARA KRUEGER
somebody defended her show and sees in her recent show an investigation of the
relationship between architecture and language. further in this discussion the
word - very easily used in the US (I am more careful with it) - "fascistic"
came up linked to the object of her inquiry (architecture and language): I
somehow imagined that this could mean that Krueger sees in this link a
fascistic because oppressive quality and wants to show it somehow. now, my view
on her show was slightly different and I don't see the very interesting
relationship between architecture and language as her primal point of
investment. I more see her engagement with architectonic space from a tendency
to subsequently monumentalize her presentations in order to try to keep up the
degree of impression, persuation, and effects. And in this show she added even
a very powerful, impressive sound factory.(architecture is then just a special
effect for her representations as sound is one too) If it was this particular
relationship between architecture and language - something I am very interested
in - than the text would have been different. In terms of the "fascistic"
aspect, I more locate it in the extensions of her proper messages that, taken
to the very last end, would touch on social phenomena that have their monuments
in this country with Waco (spl?). Now all of this could be discussed:
<*>Replies
Msg#: 8236 *FINE ART*
03-27-94 21:43:20
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8217 (BARBARA KRUEGER)
I can't break the Kruger down into parts that work for me. Not to be too grumpy
about the work, but, I'm so tired of spectical art. Cady Noland too. Going
back to what Jordan posted about everyday life and being bombarded (to
paraphrase), frankly I just can't give a damm about overblown installations.
Sure it looks neat etc., but I rather go to Disneyland. The only value that
works for me with either Kruger or Noland is that it provides us with a new
framework to talk about art with. Is that enough to make it good art? I no
longer want to think about if something will "last", that is outlive the moment
in whick something's either made or presented, who care about that anymore? In
the end all I say in the Kruger show was that Boone's floors look much better
covered in black & white institutional squares than scruffed up concrete.
Msg#: 8262 *FINE ART*
03-27-94 05:42:43
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8217 (BARBARA KRUEGER)
Rainer, I'm not so sure it's possible to make the kind of distinction between
"object of inquiry" and "effect," which seems to boil down to trying to
disentangle ends and means--Kruger clearly uses language in relation to
architecture, how are we to decide whether she is somehow "engaging" this or
just using it for some other effect?
Msg#: 8218 *FINE ART*
03-27-94 12:08:24
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: %
Subj: CADY NOLAND
yesterday's opening of cady noland somehow didn't permit to really look at her
work. it was too crowded. it was one of the biggest gallery openings I have
ever been to. so this gave me the impression as if there is more than just a
show at stake: could it be that one has to defend with this event, with her
show, (everybody had been waiting for), something that has been taken for
granted over the last 30, 40 years?: namely New York Art as THE art of the
planet. could such a show fail? and if it did, what would somehow remain to be
exported with a gesture of enlightenment to the rest of the world? With a
little eye to the show I am asking: Could it be right that I saw lots of
instruments that could very well serve in S+M clubs?
<*>Replies
Msg#: 8343 *FINE ART*
03-28-94 16:56:55
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: ALL
Subj: ONWARD
The Onward thread migrated to R&D. Let's try to be aware that there are 9
different topical fora on this board. Thank you for your attention.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 8406 *FINE ART*
03-28-94 19:09:43
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: SECRETARY GENERAL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8343 (ONWARD)
Thanks, Sec'y Gen'l, I was getting tired of all that Futurism anyway. To me it
all sounds like Marinetti fulminating over the latest Fiat.
Msg#: 8347 *FINE ART*
03-28-94 18:38:32
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ANY OL DAMN BODY
Subj: THERE IS NO THERE THERE
art luvvers take note! Seems that Absolut (as in vodka) is getting the jump on
all you highfalutin culturoos by opening a virtual museum to themselves and all
that grrrrrrreat artvertizing they sponsored (I specially luv the pious,
saintly one Keith Haring did, so childlike, so innocent, so fulled with joy and
hope and good vibes...). Now, which one of you geniuses wants to draw straws an
see who gits to review this here gem of the culture/taste nexus?
<*>Replies
Msg#: 8349 *FINE ART*
03-28-94 18:52:04
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8347 (THERE IS NO THERE THERE)
Morgan, you got to be kidding. What? Pot shots and lame art? BTW many of us
know the "art advisor" who picks the artists, couldn't we just pick on her?
Msg#: 8462 *FINE ART*
03-29-94 13:22:09
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8349 (THERE IS NO THERE THERE)
I got the matches...you bring the gasoline. Jes who iz this "Urt Dvisor"
n-e-way? Shure, lettus pik on her. Ken we markit dartboards with peepuls faces
on em? Member, now, this ain't nuthin but the d 0;QH-An
Msg#: 8464 *FINE ART*
03-29-94 13:26:30
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8462 (THERE IS NO THERE THERE)
circus nohow. Ril fahn ixkuse fer a buncha gloryhogs to crawl round on ther
bellies an snif each otherns butts. Now, this here iz ril aktual kritisizm frum
the hoses mouf, ain't it pardner!
Msg#: 8482 *FINE ART*
03-29-94 16:17:33
From: SKIP SNOW
To: ALL
Subj: CANDY, AND TOYS
I went to an art opening last night, at Cooper Union. It was an end of the
year graduation show, held in a lecture hall. The show was as would be
expected, many good pieces, all a bit derivative. One of the pieces was a
performance centered around a prop, a fake column blending into the gallery, a
pinnate stuffed with candy and plastic toys. Towards the end of the opening an
exuberant young man, the artist who had made the pinnate, stepped up to the
column, and started to beat it with a baseball bat.
Dressed in an ill-fitting used suit and sunglasses, his image with the bat was
a cross between Norman Rockwell, and some tabloid headline "Racial Violence
Shocks Peaceful Neighborhood". He slugged violently away at the pinnate for a
while. Then the bat was passed to a pal of his, a muscular youth with long
blond hair. The pal slugged even more determinedly away. Each time the bat
hit the paper column a laud dull thwack echoed through the hall. The third
male, who had almost violently obtained the bat from the second resumed the
ritual. He, pounding away at the thing, attacked it with true vengeance.
His batting style had nothing to do with baseball, but was the image of
violence itself. He swung the tool over his head like the blacksmith at the
hell like anvil in the Goya painting at the Frick. his assault seemed not only
to be directed at the paper toy, not only at the four long years of art school
finally over, but even at the journey ahead; his battering, subjectively
projected, was directed at the assurance that for the most part one's voice
will melt into the obscurity of silence.
On the one hand, the shattering of a column is a sort of revolutionary gesture,
implying the destruction the status quo and one of its classical symbols. On
the other hand the violence of the attack, coupled with our knowledge of the
resulting oppressions which follow violent revolution make all such
revolutionary gesture futile. While the event was in the words of the man
with whom I attended the event "a perfectly conceived dadaist performance," I
couldn't help but be saddened by the beauty of this model.
Somehow the game was all at once violent, painful, and empty. It demonstrated
the perpetuation of the caveman roles we have supposedly evolved beyond. It
promised rewards of sugar pills, and fake spiders even to the heroes of its
dull rituals.
Msg#: 8549 *FINE ART*
03-29-94 21:51:39
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: THE ADORABLE
Actually, I might have been thinking not of Schlegel but of Novalis, who
writes, for instance, that "journals [i.e. magazines] are actually the first
books to be written in common....Perhaps one day people will write, think, and
act as a mass. Entire communities, even nations, will undertake One Work."
In any case, Carol, now that you've digested Derrida, a good transition to
Roamtnicism might be via his associates Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe & Jean-Luc
Nancy and their book "The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German
Romanticism" (SUNY Press). There are two good anthologies of German romantic
texts in translation, "German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: The Romantic
Ironists and Goethe," ed. by Kathleen Wheeler (Cambridge University Press) and
"German Romantic Criticism" ed. by A. Leslie Willson (Continuum). Bon appetit!
Msg#: 8726 *FINE ART*
03-31-94 13:18:30
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: ALL
Subj: TRASH
Messages 8593 and 8552 have been forwarded to the Trash Collector.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 8861 *FINE ART*
04-01-94 14:21:40
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: SECRETARY GENERAL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8726 (TRASH)
Whose messages were these and why where they thrown in the trash?
Msg#: 8865 *FINE ART*
04-01-94 16:23:07
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8861 (TRASH)
All trash now goes into the trash compactor in ALPHA 60/basement/Janine's trash
compactor. To find out more about trash, go there and ask.
Msg#: 8848 *FINE ART*
04-01-94 02:12:45
From: ED GRANT
To: ALL
Subj: BK
Is it me, or is B. Kruger's show full of shit. Postions of Privilege!? Not to
mention the audio. A few thoughts, Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Clint Ruin, Caberet
Voltaire......"Sluggin'for Jesus". Just a thought.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 8852 *FINE ART*
04-01-94 10:08:22
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8848 (BK)
> Ministry
Yes! You use them a while and it's over the shoulder . . .
Msg#: 8856 *FINE ART*
04-01-94 12:36:20
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8848 (BK)
*Preaching To The Converted* maybe? The grand stance as a form of dressing up
for church so everybody can see the clothes you can afford?
Msg#: 9002 *FINE ART*
04-02-94 20:14:34
From: M BOYER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2184 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
Are you joking? Melancholy masturbation and art as therapy? Please. Cynicism
<*>Replies
Msg#: 9136 *FINE ART*
04-03-94 21:33:53
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: M BOYER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 9002 (WHAT'S UP DOWNTOWN.)
uh.like this thread is like expired.uh.yeah
Msg#: 9166 *FINE ART*
04-04-94 15:18:00
From: FLORIAN CRAMER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: SCHLEGEL, NOVALIS , ROMANTICIS
There is a very good English translation of Schlegel's writings by Ernst
Behler which, as far as they remember, appeared at University of Washington
Press. For a first reading, they recommend the Athenaeum aphorisms and the
Conversation about Poetry. Unfortunately, Schlegel's novel "Lucinde" is not
translated. There is a cheap German edition by Ullstein Verlag which also
includes an extensive commentary by the Hermeneutic philosopher Friedrich
Schleiermacher, a close friend of the Schlegel brothers. To get a better idea
about Schlegel's system of notions, it will greatly help to read Schiller's
essays "On Naive and Sentimental Poetry" and the "Letters on Aesthetic
Education," also known as the Kallias letters.
As above, Monty Cantsin
---
* Origin: THE THING BERLIN (box/fax 030:4528534) (42:1002/3)
Msg#: 9785 *FINE ART*
04-09-94 15:37:00
From: MICHAEL KROME
To: MICHAEL OWEN
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1302 (SAW YOUR NAME)
> Peter saw your name as we scanned the messages. How
> are you doing? I look forward to hearing about what
> you are up to.
Just to keep you informed: Fend is popping in very spontanious and never
continiosly working here in the office of TT Cologne.
In the last week, (when TT CGN was still down) he told me to get connected from
TT London after the 11th of April.
He is preparing his show at the new space of Marc Jancou in London.
Hope he will react the to all open questions, but I really don't know.
(This is adressed to all, who react on Pf„nndts spontanious interventions)
---
* Origin: THE THING COLOGNE [0221-7392450] (42:1002/1)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 9794 *FINE ART*
04-09-94 10:06:28
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MICHAEL KROME
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 9785 (SAW YOUR NAME)
> Just to keep you informed: Fend is popping in very spontanious and
> never continiosly working here in the office of TT Cologne.
Ah, so he is following your example.
Msg#:10002 *FINE ART*
04-11-94 01:18:21
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8218 (CADY NOLAND)
Did you read the review in Friday's paper? Roberta Smith, as usual, does
another great job in balanced packaging. Includes great poetry, like this
koan:
Mr. Eagletons stint in a psychiatric hospital,
which included shock therapy,
made him a political liability.
I think we should review the reviews. The shows get reviewed anyway.
To take a closer look at the techniques of validation could yield far more
interesting results, aside from being more fun.
Anybody else interested in the amateur semiotics workshop? Perhaps Jordan
can get us a publisher?
"All non literary types to the front! Let's stop breeding literary jerks!"
-- Hugo Ball
<*>Replies
Msg#:10498 *FINE ART*
04-13-94 12:37:11
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10002 (CADY NOLAND)
This literary jerk takes exception to Hugo Ball! But the idea of critiquing
the critics is a good one (we need some kind of attention).
Msg#:10814 *FINE ART*
04-15-94 12:24:00
From: MICHAEL KROME
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10498 (CADY NOLAND)
> I think we should review the reviews. The shows
> get reviewed anyway.
I think it's a great idea, I did it some months ago with the german magazine
Texte zur Kunst, when I did an interview with Thanos Lipowatz for them.
I found out, that its possible to destillate some few words, which funktion
in very instrumentalized way to establish a new "critical discourse" of
ideology critics.
In this days I spoke with Lipowatz, who published a lot of political
interpretation on Lacan's deconstruction via the language, and we even talked
about the strategy of this magazine. He was really shocked of the paradox of
beeing or seeing themselfes as left wing- deconstr£cting the discourse of POWER
and re-establishing it through a very redundant form of language.
He and me agreed in the necessity of re-interpretation the interpretation
in order to diagnose the intention of the author or publisher or doctrin or
ideology.
> To take a closer look at the techniques of validation
> could yield far more
> interesting results, aside from being more fun.
> Anybody else interested in the amateur semiotics
> workshop? Perhaps
> Jordan can get us a publisher?
I think there should be an interest in the french magazine Purple Prose,
because in my opinion they publish the most selfreflecting issues in Europe.
They will be in Cologne at the premiere days and I will talk to them, but have
to start with zero, no modem, no SW and so on.
We really need a technical service, worldwide operating, like IBM, we
shouldlook for a cooperative partner, whos able to install and serve a node and
the beginning users f.e. in Paris and elsewhere.
Msg#:10816 *FINE ART*
04-15-94 18:17:00
From: JEREMY WHITEHURST
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10814 (CADY NOLAND)
What may appaer to be amatuer semiotics is one of the most intresting points
that have come to the fore in such a long time, and I would like to thank the
parties that elevated the discourse out of the armchiar !
The point that I would like to bring in is that within the armchair of thought,
the being that is in which we are enmeshed, that one must ask if the problem of
a semiotic analysis also remains within the armchair? The answer that I here
from the back of the monitor is: "of course not". That is that the entity which
goes under the name, or dare one say logo, of semiotics would reveal to
everyone of its intrested parties is that it will always function outside of
and regardless of the armchair, while it is simultaeously one of the major
occupiers of the armchair in which we all sit.
Also when the word semiotics and psychiatric clinic appear within the same
short text then the names of Lacan and Foucault are standing very prominatly
within the shadows. The only solution to this is to keep taking the drugs and
enjoy them as much as possible. When one has reached a level of enjoyment with
the afore mentioned drugs then one would be in the position to relise nothing
and would expereince being, just how Mr. H always talked about. Maybe a few
days afterwards comes the semiotic sobreity. Oh dear, Oh dear! What a paradox,
I think I will have to go and make some art.
Ciao bella, ciao.
Love and peace to everyone.
Jeremy
Msg#:10837 *FINE ART*
04-15-94 11:37:15
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MICHAEL KROME
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10814 (CADY NOLAND)
Purple Prose publishes "the most selfreflecting issues in Europe"???
Msg#:10854 *FINE ART*
04-15-94 17:23:27
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JEREMY WHITEHURST
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10816 (CADY NOLAND)
ah drugs! Ah thinks ahl woof down a gulletful an go git analized, uh, analysed
in Ol' Sparky, the lectric chair in my home state. Jes uh stsate of mind
n-e-way. Git 'em n-t-lektuals!
Msg#:11086 *FINE ART*
04-17-94 22:46:43
From: DOUGLAS WADA
To: ALL
Subj: RECENT OPENINGS
MATTHEW WEINSTEIN / SONNABEND GALLERY, NEW YORK.
Overheard during opening of 4/16:
"The text is sort of like a romance novel, only not as interesting"
"Why are the holes in the canvas at waist level? You have to bend down to look
in them when you're close up."
"I thought you said this was a good gallery."
NICHOLAS RULE / PAUL KASMIN GALLERY, NEW YORK
Overheard during opening of 4/16:
"So when is Suzanne McCleland having a show here?"
<*>Replies
Msg#:11899 *FINE ART*
04-20-94 10:36:21
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10917 (THE TWIST)
> consider how it could *not* fit in. In this situation, the case for
> excluding painting, or any other cultural phenomenon or mode of
> artistic practice, would be weak.
It's true that the conceptual apparatus of conceptual art has a harder time
maintaining strict criteria of exclusion than the conceptual apparatus of
painting; that is, if painting is taken as paradigmatic, then it is easy to
exclude most conceptual work from consideration, whereas if conceptual art is
taken as paradigmatic, it isn't so easy to exclude painting, except by either
the importation of a progressivist historicism (a la Kosuth) which is hard to
credit these days--or else through the old bugaboo of TASTE, (as in, "I prefer
bad conceptual art to painting," or, to paraphrase my own earlier statement of
taste, "I prefer run-of-the-mill painting to bad conceptual art") which is
something that conceptual work rarely becomes self-conscious about. Whereas
painting is always self-consciously amnd often critically dealing with notions
of taste.
<*>Replies
Msg#:12119 *FINE ART*
04-21-94 14:42:14
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 11899 (THE TWIST)
are you saying that conceptual art is unable to come to terms with its own
badness, when it is bad? That the very standpoints needed to formulate the
perspective of badness are difficult to obtain in the conceptual sphere? As a
rule, I prefer good art to bad art, and tend to look at everything as more or
less conceptual...its a question of which concepts: painting struggles with the
concepts of depiction from an optical set of conceptual tools..."conceptual"
work, done right, like a properly glazed baked chicken, appeals directly to the
neocortex, as does nitrous oxide.
Msg#:12124 *FINE ART*
04-21-94 16:59:40
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12119 (THE TWIST)
Conceptual art's badness? Don't you mean blandness?
Msg#:12250 *FINE ART*
04-22-94 17:03:24
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12119 (THE TWIST)
Most bad art is unable to account for its own badness. Conceptual art, like
literature, appeals more to a virtual sensorium than an actual one, but it does
so by means of practices that touch on practices and traditions that derive
from painting and sculpture and the atmosphere of thought surrounding painting
and sculpture (I refer you to "The Ready-Made and the Tube of Paint" and other
critical writings by Thierry de Duve) rather than literature. But for this
reason it is more of a problem for conceptual art than for literature that for
the most part it can account for very little of how it actually looks--it can
merely refer you to the history of graphic design.
Msg#:12300 *FINE ART*
04-23-94 13:02:47
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12250 (THE TWIST)
this is an interesting point of view, however, I am wondering how art, good,
bad or mediocre, can account for itself. Wouldn't that be, on some level,
imputing a sentience, or spiritual presence, in an artwork? Or, perhaps,
"account for itself" has to be unpacked into a multidimensional discussion of
the problematics of self awareness. Does all conceptualism have to operate
within a retinal domain of referents? Who did that piece where a store,
preferably a small general store in the Southwest would be purchased, and
filled to the ceiling with cement, with everything in the store entonmbed
within? Pompeii on the mind, maybe. Walter DeMaria's Earth Room? Renaturalizing
the domesticated consciousness? A worthy tradition, but no more immune to
schlocky impulses that any other donkey towed to market? Where do we put
Christo in all of this? Manzoni? Beuys last but not least?
Msg#:12303 *FINE ART*
04-23-94 13:22:43
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12124 (THE TWIST)
"This is the TRUE portrait of Iris Clert" Robert Rauschenburg here, being
channeled by Morgan Garwood. I am directing Morgan's keystrokes at this moment,
but this is the genuine Bob you all know and love transmitting these commands
from Captiva Island via a shamanistic artwork I made sitting out back behind
the studio, called Transmission/Emission MoonWalk (for Michael Jackson).
You must believe me, this is really happening, and the original telegram I
sent to Iris Clert is now NOT ART, and, ex pos facto, not authored by me. I now
here irrevocably vest the artistic meaning of The Portrait into this
posting...I am throwing in the Erased DeKooning Drawing because I am such a
good guy...allright, I have to return to my compound now and refresh my drink;
my dogs are wagging their tails HI at all of you out there. Oh, and thank you
Morgan for letting me use your mind/body/Thing hook up. All you all out there
are really where it's at. O.K. Back to you Morgan, later guys!
whew!...this Cosmic vibration stuff is hard on the psychic nodule within...on
to the next topic...
Msg#:12333 *FINE ART*
04-23-94 18:41:04
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12300 (THE TWIST)
I use "conceptual art," perhaps unfairly, to mean basically text- or language-
based art. So most of the things you mention, Morgan, I personally would not
be likely to call "conceptual," except to the extent that the description of
the act or event is what is primarily at stake. In any case, the reference
would remain visual even when not strictly retinal--what I meant by referring
to a virtual sensorium. I realize that this may be an unfairly restrictive
sense of what counts as conceptual art, but it's the only one I've found useful
and not impossibly vague--so many people seem to imagine that conceptual art is
anything made by someone who had something rather than nothing in mind!
Msg#:12403 *FINE ART*
04-24-94 09:22:05
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12333 (THE TWIST)
Part of our difficulty here is that we're all trying to understand each other's
use of a term which has clearly run its course.
Msg#:12419 *FINE ART*
04-24-94 14:14:29
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12403 (THE TWIST)
The term has run its course but won't go away--if only because it still seems
to carry a certain prestige that people want to appropriate. But not only for
that reason, I think. There is still something yet to be assimilated in
whatever conceptual art was, which gives it a continuing interest.
Msg#:12683 *FINE ART*
04-24-94 20:54:35
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12419 (THE TWIST)
could it be that conceptualism, the idea that the *idea* is what counts, and
everything else is carrier or medium, is as much with us as painting or
sculpture, and once the genii is out of the bottle, it has no intention of
going back in.
If ideas, per se, can be graded with a qualitative taxonomy, and we conceive
that there can be such a thing as an aesthetic idea, as much as there can be a
mathematical idea, the possibility of conceptualism may have entered or
intellectual heritage. Perhaps erasing its presence would be, on a far lesser
scale, like trying to erase the concept of "rights". Although the concept of
conceptualism may be less pivotal to our common human project than the concept
of *natural law*, it is as of now with us as a domain of play.
Msg#:12893 *FINE ART*
04-24-94 22:26:12
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12683 (THE TWIST)
"Rights" are currently being erased almost everywhere, without anyone feeling
much need to erase their concept. Likewise, there are attempts all the time to
erase all kinds of artistic practices from history. Sometimes it seems to me
as if certain strata of the practitioners and supporters of what are called
"painting" and "conceptual art" are trying to efface the existence of the
other--why?
Msg#:13050 *FINE ART*
04-25-94 21:43:03
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12893 (THE TWIST)
does any particular example, either of the loss of rights (one suspects you may
have privacy rights in mind, as they are the ones most effectively being
redistricted at the present juncture) or of artistic practice via erasure
strike you as particularly egregious, or telling about the larger state of
affairs, or is this a global observation about the nature of slippery slopes in
general?
Msg#:13077 *FINE ART*
04-26-94 22:23:00
From: JEREMY WHITEHURST
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13050 (THE TWIST)
The answer to what should be and should not be excluded is a topic for a
"debatte". That we can do the next time, as now I'm pushed for time.
Till then, Jeremy
Msg#:13213 *FINE ART*
04-26-94 18:40:14
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: ALL TWISTERS
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13077 (THE TWIST)
The Twist twisted into the rey Zone. Please continue the political debate
there, preferably under a new subject heading. Makes message sorting and
retrieval a lot easier for all. Thank You!
Msg#:13219 *FINE ART*
04-26-94 19:49:14
From: SKIP SNOW
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13213 (THE TWIST)
It is not so that an aethetic idea is like a mathamatical idea. Aesthetics are
based upon the sensory devise. That is to say that the aesthetic is a
conditioned, or unconditioned response to a set of sensual manifestations. See
Emanuel Kant Kritik der reinen Vernunft p 35 Meiner Philosophische Bibliothek,
in the section on transendental aesthetics. On the other hand a mathamatical
idea is a logical construction. we only experience mathamatical ideas in
relationship to the logical sets of defenitions we have been given.
An ilustration of this difference is the relationship between pi and a diameter
of a circle. This relationshiip only has an absoute value in the realm of
logic. as soon as the aesthetic ability to quantify, and code the relationship
to some sort of absoute, non ideal relationship of names and defenitions comes
into play the mathamatical idea is a calculation rather than a reprentation of
a theoretically perfect relationship. The mathamatical idea, perhaps more than
nearly any type of idea can have an ideal relationship to the mind. The
aesthetic ideal is always determened outside of logic and inside the realm of
experience. The aesthetic ideals are always confounded by the human condition.
A while ago in a thread I did not reply to one person gave the example that
rotten food had a universally repugnent quality to it and this was an
indication of a universal aesthetic. this is a good example of how there is no
universal aesthetic. For when one is northern china the food, smells to the
western trained nose rotten. Yet the chinese describe it as appealing.
If there is some universal aesthetic, then I believe it is somehow based upon
mathamatical ideals derived from experience. For example it might be possible
that the arabesque is universally appealing, if this is so then it seems to me
that this appeal is derived not from some objective beauty of an arabesque but
rather on the fact that the anotomical structure of human beings contains an
abundance of arabesques. When these arabesques are "in proportion" within the
male or female body we are atracted to those proportions. In other words this
aesthetic is based upon the human condition.
On the other hand the circle's relationship to pi, granted an ideal logical
construction, is not dependent upon human perception, but rather the nature of
the ideal circle and a line through its centre.
Msg#:13639 *FINE ART*
04-29-94 23:09:08
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: SKIP SNOW (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13219 (THE TWIST)
nice argument, but I don't think it washes. Can you say that math and beauty
are any more or less of the mind? Once I was in a real investigative phase, and
went around to museums with a tape measure and calculated all kinds of
proportions off the paintings. I discovered that, more frequently than not (by
a wide margin) that paintings with good math looked more beautiful, even if you
were entirely naive about the underpinnings of the composition. The eye, I
discovered, and I am positive beyond any reasonable doubt, so did good visual
crafstpersons from as far back as the Old Kingdom of Egypt, is EXQUISITELY
sensitive to integer proportions. Most of Picasso, it turned out, was based of
proportions of fourths and thirds. The mind has an unwitting affinity for math!
The two, our capacity for mathematical abstraction, and our sense of beauty
(also a title of a book by George Santayana that I hope to read someday, i.e.
The Sense Of Beauty) stem from a common neurological structure that has yet to
be fully elucidated, but would be a hot topic for a researcher like Gerald
Edelman (Edelman has an arch-enemy here in NYC, somebody named Kandel, who
might vociferously dispute his hypotheses), a neo-Kantian who sees
consciousness as the interplay of distinct "maps" (he asserts that vision, or
the visual experience as "played" into consciousness, is the work of about 30
distint dynamic mapping processes; maybe so, maybe not). So, vee shall see, one
day, perhaps, pending a quantum leap in neural mapping technique. Stay tuned,
you may be in for quite a surprise!
Msg#:14043 *FINE ART*
05-04-94 10:40:53
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13639 (THE TWIST)
what does "good math" means... something tht looks "good" on a metric ruler
most the times doesn't make sense on a "inch" based one, and one can even
propose a unit that makes the "strangest" proportions look like relational
Msg#:14346 *FINE ART*
05-05-94 20:36:18
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 14043 (THE TWIST)
1:1,2:1,2:3,2:5, 1.6:1, etc. the secret is in the ratio, not the unit of
measure, works as well with barleycorns (the source for our wretched inch) or
cubits. P.S. you really must taste durian fruit, hard to find in the states,
the sort of flavor one imagines bats lusting after, they fly them in frozen to
chinatown, but Balinese tree ripened ones beat all. Smell like holy hell, makes
great iced cream and flavored drinks.
Msg#:14534 *FINE ART*
05-06-94 17:30:29
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 14346 (THE TWIST)
thanks for your assistence: I was thinking of the ration but just couldn't
figure it out (so I am going to try your syrup if this helps)
Msg#:12006 *FINE ART*
04-21-94 21:15:00
From: MICHAEL KROME
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10854 (CADY NOLAND)
> Purple Prose publishes "the most selfreflecting issues
> in Europe"???
In my opinion PP is a magazine, whose content is to reflect on the premises of
the contemporary visual culture, transgressing the limts of the art-mechanism.
Several points could describe this:
First of all the way to thematize the publishing itself by using popular
typographic methods and refering to some purposes of the situationist
esthetique.
Second, the wider palette of issues concerning politics, advertising,
film-making, science and other "post art" paradigmas. Especiall the discussion
on the phenomens of Post Art are what I meant: selfreflecting the functions of
the art world and trying to manifestate them in the way of choosing issues and
doing exhibitions.
More than other magazines in Europe it's between a fanzine and a commercial
magazine.
Articles on THE THING (first issue, Oktober 92, when we just started) on music
bands like Therapy?, burning heads, on football and its political implications,
on archictural problems, bio-constructions, futurological investigations (next
issue), on roboter constructing, their function and aesthetic and f.e. "the
dream of openning a gallery in east jerusalem"... are manifestations of a
broader, self-reflecting thinking on the art in general, and doing an "art"
magazine in special.
I don't know much magazine, which are doing this step in general and especially
in Germany.
Don't mention the reductive, restrictive Texte zur Kunst.
They neglect this necessary transgressive step in order to restablish a kind of
stalinistic dicourse, which is totally the wrong way, a way like the
art-intern-diagnostic view of Andrea Frazer.
What a fun...
In this comparision, for me PP is a real perpective.
(Of course, Blast magazine is the next step, Jordan)
Msg#:12118 *FINE ART*
04-21-94 14:34:29
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: MICHAEL KROME
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12006 (CADY NOLAND)
Transgressive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Yabba Dabba
Doo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Transgressive!!!! There's the way to do it. Transgress.
All these zillions of pursed lipped hierophantoids maintaining prissy little
picket fences of who Will and Won't entertain which kind of ideas. (I Won't I
Simply Won't I Will Not and Nobody Kan Make Me My Two Square Feet Of Kontrol
Zone Mine Mine Mine Any Anybody Who Tells Me How To Run My Business can simply
Blow It Out His Ass>>>get away from that fucking knob this minute apprentice
dickface!!!!!) O Unpretty O Unpolite O Funky....................
Msg#:13078 *FINE ART*
04-26-94 22:43:00
From: JEREMY WHITEHURST
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12118 (CADY NOLAND)
Okay, go get 'em !
Shake all down and smoke that funky shit,
Burrr, Butt, But there is going to be a hell of a come down when we all wake
up with a hangover
Msg#:12007 *FINE ART*
04-21-94 21:18:00
From: MICHAEL KROME
To: *.*
Subj: GAVIN BROWN
Gavin Brown, in earlier times initiator of the independent artist space "city
racing" in London moved to NY, was assistant at 303 gallery and I think had
opened a own space, called ENTERPRISE.
I would really like to know more on his activities, is anyone able to give more
informations ?
(The best would be, to connect him to TT)
---
* Origin: THE THING COLOGNE [0221-7392450(BOX) 723578 (TEL)] (42:1002/1)
<*>Replies
Msg#:12123 *FINE ART*
04-21-94 16:58:43
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MICHAEL KROME
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12007 (GAVIN BROWN)
I'm sitting in an office above "Gavin Brown's enterprise" at 558 Broome Street
(1 block below Spring Street & beteen 6th and 7th Ave's.) The space is a
little storefront space (maybe 350 sq feet). First show opened April 9th
(Scott Pipin). Gallery was turned into a camera and back wall was the film
plane making a wall size image of street out the front door. Sadly what's
outside is pretty dull, thus the image is duly dull too. Next door at 558 is
AC Project Room which opened last fall and has been very interesting. Today's
New York Times had a cover story on the Weekend section on the small new
galleries, worth the read.
Msg#:12304 *FINE ART*
04-23-94 13:24:08
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12123 (GAVIN BROWN)
ever hear the sound piece "I Am Sitting In A Room", by Alvin Lucier, maybe?
Msg#:12394 *FINE ART*
04-24-94 15:07:00
From: MICHAEL KROME
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12304 (GAVIN BROWN)
> I'm sitting in an office above "Gavin Brown's
> enterprise" at 558 Broome Street (1 block below Spring
> Street & beteen 6th and 7th Ave's.)
Then you could drop in, say hello, and connect him.
> Today's New York Times had a cover story on the
> Weekend section on the small new galleries, worth the
> read.
Just an accident, but this saturday Rirkrit Tiravanija came to Cologne, to
prepare a show at our projectroom, and he gave me this article of Roberta
Smith.
Wort to read, but if the consense ist just the minimized space and the
minimized costs, its a bit....
---
* Origin: THE THING COLOGNE [0221-7392450(BOX) 723578 (TEL)] (42:1002/1)
Msg#:12120 *FINE ART*
04-21-94 14:42:37
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DOUGLAS WADA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 11086 (RECENT OPENINGS)
who?
Msg#:12178 *FINE ART*
04-22-94 13:57:13
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: MICHAEL KROME
Subj: SITUATIONIST ETIQUETTE
Texte zur Kunst a Stalinist discourse? Michael, give me a break! Perhaps
they run their business like an exclusive country club, but Stalinist? TzK has
certain parameters which now look a bit dated, but within those parameters they
were doing good work. It is the only German art magazine I still subscribe to.
But then of course, I am a Stalinist .
The subtext of your message, as I read it, is that TzK is dissing you and
that Purple Prose is in line with Schipper/Krome policies/interests. Now, that
perhaps is informative for some Newbies, but when I read it camouflaged as
"discourse," I can't help but yawn.
My advice: a little more "selfreflecting" after each meal. Take two!
Or, if you don't like the medicine, try a better camouflage.
Yours truly, Josef...we talk about the polish question later.
<*>Replies
Msg#:12302 *FINE ART*
04-23-94 13:12:43
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12178 (SITUATIONIST ETIQUETTE)
Crypto-Trotskyites, the darn lot of you! Try Jesus you Godless heathens! We do
communion with big chocolate chip cookies then get worked up about Essene
scriptures, maybe go loot the cashbox at a Scientology franchise! Wanna buy a
Rolex heavily discounted? Bears playing cellos, one half mile...if you lived
here you'd be home now.
Msg#:12393 *FINE ART*
04-24-94 12:54:00
From: MICHAEL KROME
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12302 (SITUATIONIST ETIQUETTE)
> Texte zur Kunst a Stalinist discourse? Michael,
> give me a break! Perhaps
> they run their business like an exclusive country
> club, but Stalinist? TzK has
> certain parameters which now look a bit dated, but
> within those parameters they
> were doing good work.
Of course I used "stalinistic" in a methaphoric sense, I meant
the discourse they are establishing is a bit too reductive.
In my opinion, they don't cross the borders.
It has nothing to do with the point, that I prefer the work of f.e. Carsten
H”ller, Julia Scher or General Idea as those of Andrea Frazer or Christian
Phillip Mller.
> It is the only German art
> magazine I still subscribe to.
You're right, the other aren't worth to discuss seriously.
Except of the ones, who are not genuin art magazines like
SPUREN.
But anyway, I'm not reading a lot of art magazines anymore.
> But then of course, I am a Stalinist .
Of course you are, you are the beuysian variant, you initiated the transfer of
the social sculpture into the electronic, telecommunicative sculpture.
> The subtext of your message, as I read it, is
> that TzK is dissing you and
> that Purple Prose is in line with Schipper/Krome
> policies/interests.
Of course I would prefer to promote a style, or paradigms, which are lying in
my line, but I think this is very normal.
> Take two!
...and read one.
Msg#:12922 *FINE ART*
04-25-94 02:00:01
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: MICHAEL KROME
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12393 (SITUATIONIST ETIQUETTE)
your bold promotional postings are a big bore! give us a break please! or go
to internet and reach out the world
Msg#:13218 *FINE ART*
04-26-94 19:30:55
From: SKIP SNOW
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12922 (SITUATIONIST ETIQUETTE)
I like this thread. I hope it does not move on to another forum. For example
what is meant by Stalinist. If it is a metaphore then what is its referent,
and what is its meaning.
What is a stalinist, if not a stalinist. And by what criteria is stalinism
defendable.
I for example could argue for the "Maoist" position, but I won't. However
stalinism? What is it, that it is good. Excuse my American brain washed
sensability but I do not get it.
Msg#:12399 *FINE ART*
04-25-94 01:36:00
From: JOHN DUNN
To: ALL
Subj: TRENDS
I have visited a couple of nice shows here but don't believe any NYers
would be to interested in a description of them. I would therefore like
to speak generally using examples and hear what y'all are experiencing
there.
First the trend to living room atmosphere with the example in Kunsthalle
Duesseldorf show "Freundschaftsspiel" or Dank's exhibition in Hagen
(forgot the name). Both were in modern art museums or exibition halls
and brought up the question of the usage of such institutions. The
question was: what good are such institutions? How can artist and the
general public use them and not just consume?
Another is the Citizen Office show(ideas and comments to a new office
world)in Kunstpalast D'doof with Andrea Branzi, Michele de Lucchi, and
Ettore Scottsass. Here they coupled on the no-stop city idea of the
70's and generally created a non-hyrarchical funky office lifestyle
vision; although the equiptment and designs were super expensive
and sponsored from big industry.
Yet another is bilateral garden or park design. Wolfgang Eckhard
displayed his picture and concept book as well as big, half abstract
modells and painting installations that dealt with a park on the border
between Poland and Germany. Next month the polish artist will present
his/her concept in Krakau. bye4now, john
Msg#:12686 *FINE ART*
04-24-94 21:04:34
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOHN DUNN
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12399 (TRENDS)
cool...
Msg#:12923 *FINE ART*
04-25-94 12:59:00
From: JOHN DUNN
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: RE: THE TWIST:RECEPTION AND FUNCTIO
Painters prefer an hermetic exhibition to instill a dialectic whereas
concepties prefer the all over and unrestricted relational reception.
Painting----reflective
concept ----functional
I don't really want to level all differences but I will anyway 'cause I'm
too stupid to do otherwise. A painter must be careful(but usually isn't)
about how many, adjacency, size, where, light, and space. A concepty
(but usually isn't)-general impression, coherence,
details, and aesthetics. They could definetly learn from each other but
are not at all interested in this, more in how to get distance and
anhilate. Both want to install their stuff so everyone can see it and make
sure there's enough alcohol at the reception.
Pardon me but what the hell is progressive historisicm(a la Kosuth)?
Just so noone thinks I'm too stupid I'll guess. I read a text from
Kosuth last Nov. titled Hungarians(a knee slapper but I'm not exactly
sure what he was getting at). So pro-history has something to do with
pomo. The pro-historian has read and seen everything and
can now be cynical while still believeing in the evolution of art or,
at least, some of it's classical forms. The form is eternal the
interpretation is evolutionary. So it is something like putting on
the brakes. Maybe it was just a typo and should have read prodressive
historicism. Then I'd say it's the historians that like to wear dresses.
Monty Python could have some influence in this school. Here I can
imagine taste plays a big role especially at the openings, conferences, etc.
It'd be a social gauntlet run. A scandal to be absolutely out with a
cute pink candy-striped half dress with a gigantic red waist bow.
For the ladies the arguments center around whether or not it is correct
to even wear one, and if yes does a gunny sack count(with or without
product labels?)?
Msg#:12996 *FINE ART*
04-25-94 13:34:03
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JOHN DUNN
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12923 (RE: THE TWIST:RECEPTION AND FUNCTIO)
> sure what he was getting at). So pro-history has something to do
> with
> pomo.
No! All wrong! Progressivist (not "progressive") historicism, a label I think
I made up, has to do with thinking that history has a telos, that there is such
a thing as progress, and above all that you are it (the telos, progress). I
keep hearing that pomo was supposed to get past that, and while I remain
dubious of this, I think if you're going to use the term you have to stick to
the standard usage unless you can say why not.
Msg#:13049 *FINE ART*
04-25-94 21:40:24
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 12996 (RE: THE TWIST:RECEPTION AND FU)
I'm confused a bit by the way you use "telos" and "progress" somewhat
interchangeably. Telos has much to do with theology, whereas progress has much
to do with industrialism. There was a significant strain of pomo that tried to
get past both of these, but I think we had to wait until hypertextual
environments to really find a model for breaking down teleological paradigms.
As for getting past industrialism . . .
Msg#:13083 *FINE ART*
04-26-94 09:06:41
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13049 (RE: THE TWIST:RECEPTION AND FU)
> I'm confused a bit by the way you use "telos" and "progress"
> somewhat interchangeably. Telos has much to do with theology,
> whereas progress has much to do with industrialism. There was a
Ideologies of art have been anaclitic to those of religion and the, more
recently, commerce, so it's not surprising that in art's realm elements of both
become a sort of stew.
Msg#:13644 *FINE ART*
04-29-94 23:25:21
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13083 (RE: THE TWIST:RECEPTION AND FU)
anaclitic,,,cool word,,,has Freud's fingerprints all over it,,,anaclitic
ideologies gettin' all sexed up on each other, you say? Everybody in bed with
each other for all us simple folks,,,aw' shukkins...
Msg#:13076 *FINE ART*
04-26-94 13:16:00
From: JULIAN VON HEYL
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: TEXTE ZUR KUNST
> Texte zur Kunst a Stalinist discourse? Michael, give me a
> break! Perhaps
> they run their business like an exclusive country club, but
> Stalinist?
Oh, TzK are looking for a VERY stalinistic discourse, when I go
there to correct textes, first I have to wash Isabelle Graws
Wolgrawowitsch-Limousine, and sometimes it is difficult to pass
the snipers which are waiting on top of the roof for the
crome/schipper-gang to blast them away.
Hard art life, around here in Koeln!
Greetings, Julian.
Msg#:13653 *FINE ART*
05-01-94 03:14:00
From: JOHN DUNN
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: RE: SITUATIONIST ETIQUETTE: INSTINCT
I am red, live on Mars, eat sand, sun spots, and smoorgasbord. Now
that I am all grown up, wonder what earth tastes like? I want to
be at home everywhere, so I eat it.
Msg#:13681 *FINE ART*
04-30-94 13:13:53
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOHN DUNN
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13653 (RE: SITUATIONIST ETIQUETTE: INSTINCT)
yeah, I remember doing that once, too. Tasted gritty. The salty oceans of
Venus, that was a different scene altogether.
Msg#:13654 *FINE ART*
05-01-94 03:14:00
From: JOHN DUNN
To: SKIP SNOW (Rcvd)
Subj: RE: SITUATIONIST ETIQUETTE:STALINISM
The way I see it is, as usual, too general but....In every School or Party
there are the authoritarians and the liberals. So at the start of the
Russian revolution the constructivist artists were the liberals that
interpreted and phantasized about what Socialism or Communism could
be. Stalin layed down his law and said you must obey and stay within
the strict lines I lay down. Here in Germany the Green Party has
the fundamentalists that don't want to compromise their ideas and the
realies that say we must stay in the government to be effective and thus
it's necessary to compromise. Or another German example is the directors
of Bauhaus- Meier and Gropius. Gropius being liberal and allowing a
colorful mix of ideas whereas Meier stood on his functionalism and
wanted everyone to stick to the programm. Or Sartre and Camus(his
unfinished monumental work has just now been published in France)
the political and the mystical existentialists.
Msg#:13655 *FINE ART*
05-01-94 03:14:00
From: JOHN DUNN
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: RE: THE TWIST: SELF AWARENESS
Isn't the anthropoligizing of an art work(something like a day in the life
of an artwork) difficult to get around when speaking of an "account for
itself"? I slip almost instantly into the role of the interpreting
observer and see DeMaria's Earth Room, for example, as an obstacle, or
a storage room, a space ship, an underground space, an elevator, an ancient
cult alter, or whatever comes to mind(your interpretation is probably the
nearest to the artist's though). The truth of it is that the thing
in front of one lays or stands there like the opaque obelisque in 2001.
It is- the other(I am so ashamed. I forgot the name of our Lacan expert
but she could surely write something about this. Like you wrote: the
multi-dimensional discussion of self awareness). So I can either
academically eat it or be awed. Wait, there is also the third possibility
of using it somehow, like this E-mail network. So it is not the- imputing
a sentience, or spiritual presence, in an artwork; rather in the observer.
Anything a human encounters takes on his/her consciousness-of-the-world.
no such thing as good, bad, or mediocre art; it is the observer that counts.
I am, however, not sure which self awareness you are refering to.
Msg#:13683 *FINE ART*
04-30-94 13:27:27
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOHN DUNN
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 13655 (RE: THE TWIST: SELF AWARENESS)
that makes two of us. When I went to the Earth Room I saw a room full of dirt.
When I first read about it when it opened, it struck me in a bizarre amazing
way, but I was much younger then and everything was newer to me. One of the
sublime pleasures of getting older and fatter is the discernment of patterns
and relationships in between. The thing in itself is still there, but its
shifts in importance, becomes perceived a part of a larger system. This idea of
"duration", incredibly long spans of time becomes compelling. Arid remnant
places like Rajahstan in western India, ferociously colorful, psychedelic,
worshipping rats as deities, balls of opiated hashish smouldering on the edge
of history, a disinterest in causality, gritty red dirt everywhere. The triumph
of meaning over reason.
Msg#:13656 *FINE ART*
05-01-94 03:15:00
From: JOHN DUNN
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: RE: THE TWIST:PROGRESSING
So pomo is also post historical and thus also progress(as defined by
the modernists-Le Corbusier for example)sceptical. I have the Charles
Jenks book "The Post Modern" but I only looked at the pictures and
diagramms- it's not good for much else is it?
Further your term Progressivist historicism seems to be a bit different
from the Modernists in that the individual is "it" not the society or
universe. Most people do believe in cause and effect leading to the
new. The twist is that now progress seems to be able to be directed.
I guess that implies a certain amount of atheism. We have the choice
which direction we want to go and there is no turning back. It is
possible to look back but with every step or, rather, every new time
the view of history changes and in turn the shape of the future and
future possibilities. Kinda Scary. Maybe things can't be changed
anymore to avoid a catastrophy: the chain reaction can't be neutralized.
Ground control to major Tom your circuits dead there's something wrong
can you here am i sitting in my tin can, far above the world. Planet
Earth is blue but(and???) there's nothing I can do. But it is also
incredible and something sci-fi freaks can't get enough of.
Msg#:14395 *FINE ART*
05-06-94 15:13:35
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: INTERFACES
At last Saturday's workshop at Here, you focused on the _written_ word as
interface, while Marshall Blonsky made his point stating that the _spoken_
language is the ultimate interface. As a writer interested in the current
techno development, Blonsky keeps in touch with the computer industry's CEOs.
He presented two in-house video demos illustrating the industry's take on
interfaces.
The "Knowledge Navigator" is a video based on the futuristic idea of ex-Apple
John Scully who commissioned Lucasfilm to produce this 10-minute
Hollywood-style trailer. It begins with a camera swing over a traditional
library, lots of books, framed family photos, a laptop on an antique console.
The living quarters of a well-off person. The owner comes home. Immediately,
the knowledge navigator appears in the corner of the laptop screen. It's the
image a young humanoid dressed in butler gear. He starts to talk... briefs the
owner about database findings on the Brazilian Rainforest and on other
projects he was asked to work on. He reports phone messages and reminds him
of upcoming appointments. The owner consults with him and delegates new tasks.
The interface was _spoken_ language.
The other video was demonstrating the actual interface of a new Apple Newton
version, a _pictorial_ or graphic user interface. A robot-like cartoon
character, activated by key-stroke input, runs from file cabinet to trash can
to the email room down the painting-decorated hallway. Disturbingly
stupefying!
But, what you call "infantilization" is the industry's bet to "popularize"
computer usage. If you were in their position, how would you do it? As an
artist, you often make use of computer graphics with text-based interfaces.
And for what I know, the interface design of this net is intentionally kept
transparent - Ansi instead of RIP - for "form/function" reasons. The
interface question seems to be a larger issue, one which I hope can be
addressed with this thread.
<*>Replies
Msg#:14801 *FINE ART*
05-09-94 02:18:39
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 14395 (INTERFACES)
let me first add to your introduction that in my paper I was not just talking
of the interface of academic books and its influence on the production of
knowledge but also about an enlarged more philosophical notion of interfaces in
general: including language and languages as interfaces. My dialog partner's
presentation with two videos of the latest development on the front of
electronic interfaces was very interesting to me. but unfortunately, mister
blonsky didn't analyze them at all. he seemed to have fallen prey to the
seducing utopian spectacle of the interface industry. the presentation of such
a techno-fantasy I found extreme enlightening since it showed the true
inspirations and ideologies of these developers: an omnipresent, hegemonic
dream of total control that is shared if not entirely handed over to a well
hearted, sensitive, sweet computer that might even show sexual preferences. the
interfacial elements of this smart manager assistant (a portable lap top
computer) were basically voice and image assisted. the machine was not just
executing commands but making decisions based on a real attention span i.e. the
machine was thinking with and for the user, even making the right decisions for
him. those kind of omnipotent projections we know at least since the fairy
tails if we don't want to see them already inscribed in all kind of religious
and transcendent narrations (the christian for ex.) where also an omnipresent
and omnivisible god anticipates and fulfills all desires and needs without even
an interfacial articulation. but what I found extremely striking was the
imperialistic aspect of it: not just was there a huge library - staying for
knowledge of the world: and we know what this implies - but also a spherical
atlas, representing the world for direct symbolic access. when entering the
screen of this "knowledge navigator" - the name already recalls the glorious
times of a christobal columbus - we encounter immediatly a map of south america
and a zoom into brasil. isn't this a subtle flirt with a tradition of conquest
and imperialism? And how can I understand Blonsky's introductionary remark that
Said's analysis of Orientalism is irrelevant and has to be replaced by this -
pointing to his video's? And how can I understand loose sentences out of his
very charming but chaotic presentation that I recall like: "we don't need the
problems of these countries", "we don't have to care about space" etc....
somehow suggesting that just giving "them" a Mac Newton and access to
electronic space would resolve problems ..and they are fine.... (sorry, but I
really couldn't make an understandable rhyme of his talk show experienced loose
sentences that intrigued in relationship to his well applied and calculated
confusion - I call this here an interfacial trick - a panal trick) the other
film, a presentation of a possible "Newton" interface was not less informative
about what we have to expect: a cursor emulating figure in the shape of an
animated comics hero was walking through a virtual architectonic environment
thus executing commands in the way we where used to hollywood animation films
of the wild west genre where characters shoot people in order to open swinging
doors. but here again, the computer was rendering all possible functions and
consequences for the user automatically and visually with an iconography of
comics books, that no abstraction was needed anymore. the militaristic
commands a la "kill", "cut", "move up" of the early interfacial control
landscape is now entirely giving way for a total infantilization of any
interaction that anticipates and visualizes everything for a snoopy proofed
intelligence. there will be then no choice left. like in my childhood's
nightmares when all of my micky mice from the wall paper in my room started to
be animated little monsters overwhelming me, our future interfaces will be
operated by little animated figures recruited by an increasing world that is
dominated by comics or manga representations.
Msg#:16542 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 21:37:25
From: PIT SCHULTZ
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 14801 (INTERFACES)
The knowledge-navigator-film was shown here during an PR-event of Philip Morris
organized by their "minister of tomorrow" in february. A little panel in a
famous artsy cafe-house, subject "mobile communication (chance and risks...or
s.t.like that) PM is going "below the line" (below the Interfaces of their ads)
adressing rare trendsetters in their own sociotopes. As i remember they invited
some experts (Press-speakers) of a magazine called CONNECT, of Apple-Germany
and a professor, Mr. Norbert Bolz, who declared, on refering to the white
butler (called Capsar) in the Apple spot, that humanism is dead, because of the
simulation of human beeings. He said something like: slaves are reanimated
virtually, so that human rights get confused about their subject, the project
of Aufklaerung is transformed into Info-overload and fragmented into virtual
light. The Uebermensch lives in your neighborhood. The only problem that Bolz
sees is the "stupidity" of simple people which causes redundance or noise.
Interfaces are walls against stupidity, something like lowest common divisors,
which produces a wide use. This would be an example of a homoaetasis of risks
in which capitalism is develope itself, as applied chaos theory.
I hope Bolz isn«t translated yet and not a member of Scientology Church.
Another film was about another E3 (everyone, everywhere, everything)-project
called Iridium, global private 144-satellite network of Motorola, Bill Gates
and so on. Also a very generally magic scenario, in which a female
archeologist, gets a permission from her museum to dig. Good stuff to "desaid".
--- MacWoof Eval:13Nov92
* Origin: thing net point berlin (42:1002/3.6@thingnet)
Msg#:16678 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 00:29:30
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: PIT SCHULTZ
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16542 (INTERFACES)
this mr Bolz sounds horrible: but something I find innteresting in the way he
makes his argument, since it shows very clearly how right wing and cynical
reason can be one and the same thing. (I am just refering to your description,
since I have no clu about this guy, but it sound very "familiar" to me, this
kind of discursive strategy) - what he seems to do is to "criticize" this kind
of technology in a very vage, totalizing un differentiated/"postmodern"/ way ("
Aufklaerung is transformed into Info-overload and fragmented into virtual
light") and on the other end (contradicting himself) he is totally embracing
it, using it for a very dangerious (unfortunately "realistic": see NY times of
23. may: about the develloping patterns of fiberoptical cabel that are
sharpening once more the already hard borders of race and class devisions)
discriminating aim culminating in statements like:" "stupidity" of simple
people which causes redundance or noise.Interfaces are walls against stupidity
"
I can not really judge this Bolz since I didn't hear him. So I just take the
sentences you delivered, speaking for him. The reason I do this, defenitely
something one shouldn't do, since it isn't fair, to condamm somebody on this
second hand level- - is that I see in this kind of style of argumentation a
common pattern, I already tried to explain with the case of the person I was
dealing with here in NY (see my first posting: m blonsky) - total and cynical
fascination, meaningless and exaggerated criticism that can not be taken
seriously, but still has the effect of pushing the case in their direction plus
a very troubeling aspiration for exclusiveness, for not calling it worse... I
think, that we do understand what it means, when mister bloz said, supposedly
said that "Interfaces are walls against stupidity" (isn't it also true that the
european union needs now higher walls...)
Msg#:14818 *FINE ART*
05-09-94 02:40:00
From: JOHN DUNN
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR
MG> could it be that conceptualism, the idea that the *idea* is what
MG> counts, and everything else is carrier or medium, is as much with us
Duchamp was the mother of this movement. Like you said it is then
the genie out of the bottle or I prefer Parkinson's Law. The gaseous
metaphor is also not that bad though because as Mr. Crandall pointed out
conceptualism has run it's course which can in the metaphor be seen
as diffusion. Ideas are subject to the laws of entropy.
I think conceptualism was a move away from the aesthetics of representation
towards one of being. Maybe also Warhol's blatant mirror-of-society
graphics is the best example of the relativity in conceptualism. Picking
up what one finds, cutting it out, and exhibiting it.
The classical dualism of observer and object has changed. There is
now less distance between the two or a hell of a lot more.
MG> the concept of conceptualism may be less pivotal to our common human
MG> project than the concept of *natural law*, it is as of now with us as
The concept of natural law is hard to pivot around because it is the
term for "everything". Psychosocial dynamics don't stand outside of this
debatte.
<*>Replies
Msg#:14895 *FINE ART*
05-10-94 10:55:07
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOHN DUNN
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 14818 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
conceptualism, like all kinds of prefabricated -isms, are "handles"
manufactured by the consecration industry (i.e. "art writing"). There are two
planes of the mysterious at work (at least as far as the uninformed public is
concerned, who do not spend much time looking behind the stage sets to see what
is holding them up). First is the mystery of making, a feeling that an
alchemical wonder has taken place when an abstract idea is downshifted into the
plan of the concrete, and second, the mystery of consecration. Consecration, or
blessing, is the activation of the mysterious spiritual forces that are blended
with the artists materials. These mysterious ingredients are very rare and hard
to explain, but they impart a subtle energy to the masterpiece that illuminates
and ennobles the viewer. With the exchange of the Spirit Of The World (i.e.
money) the owner is even more ennobled, but only as far as the priest caste is
willing to bless the work (sacred vessel or uterus of the wonderous and
mysterious). Conceptualism, it obviously follows, is purity of blessing made
spirit through its descent into the "fixated universe of concrete/abitrary
meaning" and rebirth on the third day and ascent into heaven to sit at the
right hand of God. iF YOU LAUGH AT THIS YOU ARE DAMNED AND WILL GO DIRECTLY TO
HELL. Be a darling and peel me a grape,will you?
Msg#:15022 *FINE ART*
05-12-94 17:36:03
From: ED GRANT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 14895 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
Bullshit. There is very little mystery in the act of making. Your idea of
"downshifting" is horribly archaic, wheter it being the mind/body dualism or
the earth/sky (heaven) split. However, it brings me much sadness to agree with
you, in that most of the participants in the holy church of culture believe
your scenario. Case in point, ArtHistorians. They have a tendancy to
romanticize the act of making to an almaost laughable height. And, yes,
exchange of "The Spirit of the World" does appear to be the only way that the
participants can justify their existance. Well, I guess I'll be seeing you in
Hell, but you can peel your own damn grapes.
Msg#:15024 *FINE ART*
05-12-94 19:31:13
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15022 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
you don't exist on high enough of a spiritual plane to perceive the auric
energy that masterpieces emanate. This is because your chakras are plugged up
with unbeautifulness and negativity and protons and things like that. If you
would just reject male/phallocentric linear left brane logic and get in touch
with your inner woman you would know immediately what I am talking about. But
NO! all you theory albatrossed pontificators of smegma have scales over your
eyes to GET, i mean in the REAL sense of GET, in the Werner Erhard sense of
GET, (!!!!!) the primal earth mother actuality of the blessed compost you might
have half a chance of locating your magnetic north pole and finding$w
lovelyness and kittens and Sun Ra and eggplants and the golden sunny rays of
the hereafter, but NO (!!!!) you persist in your chinked up konstipated
insistence on Bush-ite republican pseudo truths and half realities, and buddy,
i hate to tell you what a shitload of trouble you are in if you cant get this
sorted out right this very minute and that goes for all of you other creeps who
are reading this. i, for one, happen to knopw what each and every one of you
are doing at this minute, and whare you live, and hat you eat, so don't mess
with the inner plutonium or all kinds of hell is going to break loose. your
friend, Saddam
Msg#:15040 *FINE ART*
05-13-94 00:13:39
From: ED GRANT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15024 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
Kittens and blessed compost. Thank you for showing that there is good in this
horrid world. I truly wish I could tell you that there was a snake loose in
the Garden, but, it just ain so. We are just to lame. And, as I told that
Dunn guy in Germany, I have seen BLISS on earth. Her name is Malo, and she's a
small furry dog (I hate cats, they suck). I may be damned, but I have DOG.
Now its time to make my studio a crucible for the MANifistation of genius.
Msg#:15072 *FINE ART*
05-13-94 11:21:44
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15040 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
i wish i could answer you right now but i am currently hanging by my penis as
punishment for ever having read dead white european males. it is important to
hang by ones penis. then i am making shamanic/subtle energy vessels to extract
spiritual essence to mix with my worldly materials to transform the vibratory
planes of my unenlightened fellow geniuses. (ignore them, i am the only true
genius, they are flunkies but i lie to them and tell them they are geniuses so
they will say nice things about me in return. if they only knew what i really
thought)
Msg#:15167 *FINE ART*
05-15-94 02:11:37
From: ED GRANT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15072 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
But, if ones life is constructed with lies, are they then not the truth?
Msg#:15182 *FINE ART*
05-15-94 13:46:51
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15167 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
no, not. Of course, this depends on how solid you like your Truth. Are we going
for the spin job, burnish you up for public consumption? That'll run you in the
vacinity of $20,000 per placement in on of the second tier magazines; to do it
"right" will cost you some heavier coin. Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the
wall in the public relations firms that handle the personality accounts (say,
as opposed to corporate or product placement accounts). What plastic surgery
does for the career retarding odd facial feature, or overly conspicuous
evidence of coke'n'booze therapy in the Admiral's Lounge, an identity nip and
tuck job can do for the public face. You might call this one Truth Lite, the
outlines are there, but the modelling has a more sculpted quality to it.
Or perhaps the grottily candid, a la Jimmy Swaggart, the bare all public
confessional, "yes, boo hoo, o God, I wiggled my dick at the secretary, o
forgive me I truly repent, O by the way, now that I am redeemed, keep them
donations coming so I can continue doing the Lord's work".
However, you could select the Big Lie from the McReality Menu, and join the
ranks of the Flat Earth Society and unrepentant Maoists and zillions of others
for whom truth is what you want it to be.
Simple, unadorned Truth is around, it just doesn't draw much attention to
itself, but when it does, in the public arena, at least, it hits us as an
anomolous surprise. One CEO of an Brit jewelery/knick knack chain (on the verge
of bankrupcy) was asked during a stockholders meeting how he could sell a
particular wine decanter set for so little. He blurted out; "because its
absolute crap". A videotape of this was shown around the world on various news
programs because it was a sterling example of a "discrepant performance", and a
rarity at that, the simple act of telling it like it is.
Msg#:15482 *FINE ART*
05-17-94 21:47:34
From: ED GRANT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15182 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
Yet, people will still stand by all the crap. Hunger and pain, the closest
things to non-mediated truth around. Is it me and my head or me and my
intestine?
Msg#:15586 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 19:27:25
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15482 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
life as pain avoidance
Msg#:15631 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 22:46:27
From: ED GRANT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15586 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
Damn straight, suffering sucks. I want stuff, and I want it now. If I don't
get it, I'll whine my way into a market share. So, you had better just whatch
it, buddy.
Msg#:16225 *FINE ART*
05-22-94 01:14:32
From: SKIP SNOW
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15024 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
Ha ha HEEE ha ho
Msg#:17204 *FINE ART*
05-28-94 16:35:46
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: SKIP SNOW
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16225 (RE: THE TWIST:CONCEPTUALISM AS ENVIR)
uh,right...sure buddy.
Msg#:15296 *FINE ART*
05-16-94 17:49:40
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: ALL
Subj: DEATH AND ART
I've been loosing a lot of sleep over the last few months. Loss of sleep is an
amazing thing, without cable TV, and wanting to keep my eyes closed as much as
possible, I've taken the time to ponder all sorts of things as images dance on
the inside of my eyelids. Most important, the deaths of Judd and Greenburg.
Don's death bothers me as I knew him, knew he had been sick for a few months
and drawing into death, but also as I have a tremendous respect for the works
that he made. As with most artist we could argue back and forth about what was
good and bad about his work, or even periods of his work, or types of his
works. The virtue of some of which I never fully felt as strongly as others,
but that's neither here or there. The feeling is, however, that he was a very
gifted artists, a difficult person, and really (to me) the most important
sculptor of his era. He was also a painfully didatic writer, and a lousy
public speaker - often comic in his presentation (this is a red sculptor, the
guy who made it wore a leather jacket and had a motorcycle....ummm> .)
Greenburg was anothe case, his writing more than an anyother writer of his time
was uncompromising and declared the generation of abstract exp. painters like
no other writer. Most important is that there has been no writer that did what
he did since. What unites these guys in my mind is a burning, haunting,
neilism that both of them so strongly defined. The decleration that what is
good is good, bad is bad, just isn't seen today in such bluntness, in part due
to the ongoing notion that beauty is dead, and that intellectualism is what is
most important. Idea art and Conceptualism over all. Judds works were
specific object - process, idea, and concept, yet he still crafted wonderful
objects, one could fall in love with just an edge of a Judd sculture. A few
weeks ago I saw the much imitated action of a woman fixing her makeup in the
gleam of the shine of a Judd stack. It was a wonderful moment. Beyond this
the sleep I'm loosing has to do with an ongoing probem that never seems to
excape up, that being: Why Art. I know this is a college freshman style
question that one should have gotten over years ago, however, as I get older
it's begining to haunt me again. Why do we need it? Why do we make it?
What's good, what's bad, and how come something of no value (in terms of it's
basic parts) can come to be worth so much. Does art tht sells above a certain
point begin to be worth _less_ at art? Ie. is 100,000 or 1,000,000 or 1,000
the signal that art is good, great, or worthy of respect? We all look to pure
items such as a computer (for example) to define worth. If something cycles at
100 mhtz we know that its much better (woth more) than somehting that opperates
at 50 mhtz. But, why do we need either if a pocket calculatior can do the job?
Anyhow, I'll be loosing sleep for a few more weeks now. If anybody can post
something else for me to dwell on I would be thankful. Or even a point of
further departure would be welcome.
<*>Replies
Msg#:15478 *FINE ART*
05-17-94 20:08:34
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15296 (DEATH AND ART)
1. First, get a good nights sleep 2. Have patience, if you have the time. It's
surprising how the art world can turn on a dime. Modernism, abstraction, and
craft may be resusitated yet. 3. I think we need art because it is fun to make
and fun to look at--at least it should be. 4. The price of art (objects).
Isn't it all supply and demand. Maybe only "bad art sells." 5. Buenas noches
Msg#:15483 *FINE ART*
05-17-94 21:54:51
From: ED GRANT
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15296 (DEATH AND ART)
I once saw and old man walk across a Carl Andre at the Modern. His wife ran up
and scolded her man, "Honey, get off the Art." Made me laugh. Almost pissed
my pants laughing at society ladies gasping in horror and dismay in the "Made
In Heaven" (Koons) show. It seems that if art can make me laugh, at least its
done something.
Msg#:15487 *FINE ART*
05-17-94 22:34:59
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15296 (DEATH AND ART)
> I think there should be an interest in the french magazine
> Purple Prose, because in my opinion they publish the most
> selfreflecting issues in Europe.
Msg#:15488 *FINE ART*
05-17-94 22:36:44
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15296 (DEATH AND ART)
> The only solution to this is to keep taking the drugs and
> enjoy them as much as possible. When one has reached a level
> of enjoyment with the afore mentioned drugs then one would be
> in the position to relise nothing and would expereince being,
> Maybe a few days afterwards comes the semiotic sobreity. Oh
> dear, Oh dear!
> Love and peace to everyone.
Msg#:15489 *FINE ART*
05-17-94 22:38:27
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15296 (DEATH AND ART)
> Try Jesus you Godless heathens! We do
> communion with big chocolate chip cookies then get worked up
> about Essene scriptures, maybe go loot the cashbox at a
> Scientology franchise!
> Wanna buy a Rolex heavily discounted?
Msg#:15517 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 10:09:23
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15483 (DEATH AND ART)
> It seems
> that if art can make me laugh, at least its done something.
Yes, but then what?
Msg#:15518 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 10:12:38
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15478 (DEATH AND ART)
> Modernism, abstraction, and craft may be
> resusitated yet.
*That* is supposed to make us sleep easier?
Msg#:15519 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 10:44:03
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15296 (DEATH AND ART)
> Most
> important is that there has been no writer that did what he did
> since... The decleration that
> what is good is good, bad is bad, just isn't seen today in such
> bluntness, in part due to the ongoing notion that beauty is dead,
> and that intellectualism is what is most important.
I think it's rather that we don't want heavy-handed intellectuals to tell us
what is beautiful, or what is good or bad, and we much more closely examine the
agendas of those who purport to do so.
The death of Greenberg doesn't make me nostalgic, for to me he died a
long time ago, and his body just hung around awhile. As for Judd, I hope at
least he made one last box, to lay in.
You raise many interesting issues, David. What is apparent is that you
keep looking to art for a way out of your malaise. Art is most useful when it
prompts you to reflect on life, society, and the nature of meaning--not just on
"art." What are your difficulties with art and the art world telling you about
your life? How does it play out in the real world? It's not whats in the
galleries and what people write about that's important--it's what you take home
with you, it's in your relationships, how you look through your own window.
Your condition cries out: you must change your life.
Msg#:15523 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 11:33:13
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15519 (DEATH AND ART)
A couple of things: I'm not loosing sleep over art, it's just something to
dwell on that provides good entertainment when my eyses are closed. Please
don't think that I'm asking _anyone_ to tell me what's good, only I long for
people with strong oppinions. (Like you). Look, most writers on art don't
write clearly, don't write well, and flutter in the wind when it comes to
making clear choices. Sure things are never just black-and-white (my LCD
screen here has 16 shades of grey). Sure everything can be turned over and
over until it works, but damm, people sure should know there own ideas and not
just watch water go under the bridge.
Msg#:15562 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 12:24:54
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15519 (DEATH AND ART)
Couple of more thoughts. Yes he rests in a box. It was made by the same
people who made his plywood/douglas fur works. If it is his own design I
really don't know. Did he wear his boots into the grave too, I would think so
along with his favorite plaid jacket. As I said in the main message, all the
ideas that I was twitching over are pretty petty. There's nothing all that
special about thoYo thought. Just something to dwell on. The reall problem
that I see is where we're going. As you posted just getting a giggle out of
art really isn't enough. But neither is a little brain massage via dead
conceptual art.
Msg#:15568 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 15:30:00
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15562 (DEATH AND ART)
I sort of see what you mean. We're in the midst of a major crisis, that is
everywhere evident. Things are changing rapidly, profoundly. No wonder you lose
sleep. Where *are* we headed?
Msg#:15570 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 16:49:42
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15568 (DEATH AND ART)
Were are we headed? Not to bring up something that should have died long ago,
but good for argument sake: at the Koons sex show I got a kick out of listening
to people either say "that's sick...this IS NOT art..." and other, younger,
kids saying "so what would you like to try out tonight...?" Sure, you had to
be there, in the mood to hear it, take it, but it did give art a charge for a
moment also Barney climbing the walls over at Gladstone. I'm still awaiting
the moment that something hits be 'tween the eyes that does something that
isn't about something I already know. That is I'm tired of seeing end run
games trying to take, say, Weiner or Kosuth to the last possible point it can
go. Same as I dont ever want to see another generic geometric painting. What
to do, where to go? I much rather go see a movie or take a walk, do anyting.
And I ponder what should we do while we await the next coming, not more of the
same.
Msg#:15588 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 19:33:34
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15519 (DEATH AND ART)
i betcha we're all thinking that! That big Q keeps comin' round the bend. How
to live ? How to be ? So many easy answers, but the good ones take years of
digging and long hard observation.
Msg#:15620 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 19:41:00
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15296 (DEATH AND ART)
could you explain (for yourself alone even) what it was that Judd had as a
person (that perhaps his art rose out of) that caused him to affect you with
such intensity. Perhaps you are mourning a loss of purity, a climate that
dissolved into a promiscuous funk as the years passed and art became
increasingly a carnival, a place to go for an opening and maybe to let the lead
cloak of enui lift for an hour or two before going back to the grindstone?
Msg#:15622 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 20:39:59
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15620 (DEATH AND ART)
I knew Judd just slightly, and was impressed with the terseness and dogmatism
of the man. Interestingly, his work to me was not the reflection of the
man--exceedingly femenine and elegant--his plexi and bronze stacks--and then
exceedingly macho and brutal--his plywood progressions. Perhaps he could
express in his work what he couldn't express in his relations to others--that
we probably are an admixture of the masculine and femenine. Some of his work
was certainly a bridge to artists like Serra and Andre, who, however, have been
able to maintain a consistant pose in relation to their work.
Msg#:15629 *FINE ART*
05-18-94 22:37:37
From: ED GRANT
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15517 (DEATH AND ART)
Then, well, not much of anything. There is not much out there that interests
me, so if I can be entertained, not all is lost. There have been a few moments
where art has made a lasting impact, most notably the Ad Reinhardt show at the
Modern. The last room with the black paintings were stunning. To see such a
progression of a vision, distilling and perfecting it. On the other hand,
there is some motivational incentive, seeing so much horrible art, I damn sure
know that I can do better. Also, why do I find a negitive value being put on
laughter?
Msg#:15654 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 00:39:00
From: VERENA KUNI
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15629 (RE: DEATH AND ART)
well, maybe for to get a better idea of both the entire difference as well
as the lost chain between works of art and computers - and how we form our
criteria of worth and values, a closer look at the conditions and the
possible varieties of subject-object relation might be helpful.
to get an idea of these concerns, for example, thinking about their
relation to a computer some of us might define it as a pure tool, for
others it might be seen as a kind of bachelor's machine
(>junggesellenmaschine<, a field Duchamp walked on his whole life and
work)...
far beyond the sensual touch or the intellectual kick I can get from art
(which I might get, however, as well by entering any other field of
interest) there might be a zone where other criteria arise that belong to
the atavistic, but (damned how) ineradicable hope of men to gain a kind of
transformation of the subject through objects ["oh! there MUST be
something BEYOND the raw materia", all those "dark mirror dreams" - I love
the stuff Philipp K. Dick wrote on that theme, really], immateriality
through the touch of the material [o yeah! "the lumps are so heavy in
order to prevent me escaping from this hell", as you'll find it written on
Beuys' Double-Fond. sharp edge between iron and irony.], life beyond
death; all this howling yearn of the lost human being for salvation... all
those thoughts about art as catharsis, all those visions of rites de
passage.
leaving the field of art as reflected in the eye of the beholder, as well
producing art might be considered as submitted to comparable criteria.
still working (even as a voluntary accepted projection, a "common sense")
is the metaphor of the Great Work, the image of the alchemist reaching out
for the gold of our time ["je cherche l'or du temps" wrote Breton, and
you'll find those words also engraved on his tombstone] - well, of course,
if you look closer, most of the times it's nothing but shit you get, or,
at the better, something like Boettger's porcelain, i. e. materia to make
money with.
* Internet k&k@thing.contrib.de * Fido-net 2:2440/506.1 *
Msg#:15662 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 09:48:29
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15620 (DEATH AND ART)
What I fell a loss about is that Judd was the last of a generation, or possibly
the last of a 'kind' of steril, hermetic artists. I have tremendous respect
for his ability to flip the same basic idea over and over and over and over and
over and keep on going with it. There's somehting very unique about his
involvement with his own objects that most other artists don't have the rigger
to handle. Sure it also makes for some pretty static works at times, and yes
his works do get tedious when taken en mass. You are right, I do look to art
for something than a giggle about this or that before I go back to the grid - I
don 't hinge my life on art, but it is what I do for a living, and does take up
most of my time. Frankly I rather watch Mary Tyler Moore or some other drone
TV late at night when I can't sleep, but it happens I dont have cable TV, dont
get off watching infomercials, and can't stand the other late night fare (say
3/4/5am), so as I lie in bed tossing and turing this gives me something to
dwell on, though it isn't what keeps me up.
Msg#:15663 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 09:59:00
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15622 (DEATH AND ART)
Serra delivered a nice "lecture" at the memorial service for Judd last week.
The basic tone was one of "damm that son-of-a-bitch did it again...now what can
I do...?" It's about the best thing an artist can say about another artist.
Msg#:15664 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 10:03:36
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15629 (DEATH AND ART)
The problem with laughter is that often it means that art is "good for nothing"
other than a transitory smirk. Yes I want to get a laugh from art too, but I
fear that all to often it has more to do with something either other than what
the artist intended or I walk away forgetting what it was all about that I was
laughing at, sort of like John Baldessari's jokes - most of them leave me
pissing in my pants, but damm if I can rember the next day what I found so
funny - though I do remember that it was funny at the time.
Msg#:15665 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 10:50:17
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: VERENA KUNI
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15654 (RE: DEATH AND ART)
What happens when you pull the plug? For give me for playing the devil here,
but is a dead object - the computer - of any use without the support of
everthing else around us? That is isn't the key to sustaining this tool the
sustaining of everything else in the infostructure of our lives? I'm still at
a point where I think we're all entranced by the technology to the point where
we will stare for hours at anything on a CRT. Video art still suffers from the
fact that people get hooked watching and just can't move on. Maybe photography
is just getting beyond this now, however, people crave realism in photography
above all else. I am both elated by the notion of computers as a tool for
artists and a bit put off by it becoming a crutch too. With anything,
sometimes it will be put to good use and other times it will fall very flat.
But like work by Rebecca Horn, what happens when the plug is pulled? The
computer must become something more than the alchemist's pot as the true pot
must reside in the artist's head not at the tips of his/her fingers.
Msg#:15675 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 11:55:16
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15570 (DEATH AND ART)
Honestly, David, I think you should seriously consider retiring.
Msg#:15676 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 12:00:17
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15629 (DEATH AND ART)
> On the other hand, there is
> some motivational incentive, seeing so much horrible art, I damn
> sure know that I can do better.
If you only see horrible art since Ad Reinhardt, then I can assure you that
your artwork is only going to be worse.
Msg#:15729 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 13:06:41
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15675 (DEATH AND ART)
Thanks for your thoughts Jordan, I'll take that under condiseration, why not,
I'm young and may be able to find another line of work. :)
Msg#:15757 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 19:09:41
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15663 (DEATH AND ART)
I'm really sorry that I couldn't go to the memorial service for Judd. What
Serra eulogized sounds generous and brothely--but it must be remembered that
Serra as he arrived on the scene in the sixties aimed his diatribes at artists
like Judd who pasted, nailed or welded their work into completion. The art-
sculpture community in the sixties was a small community of males--the work
tells it all--who knew each other and supported each other. Dan Graham has
talked nostalgically about that time and the need to have a return to
community. Perhaps the THING is an effort in that direction.
Msg#:15774 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 22:37:53
From: ED GRANT
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15664 (DEATH AND ART)
But I remember what was funny, mostly with the Andre. It was a clear example
of fine arts departure from a more common world. The man did not have a clue
that he was walking on FINE ART. Where is the problem? Whith both the artist
and the viewer. It was a break down in communication, ignorance on the viewers
part and arrogance on the artists. Granted, finding the balance is both hard
and rare, but possible. I saw a show of Judd and Martin at the Boston Museum
of Fine Arts a few years back. Martin swept me away. Her work was all that
Judd's was plus it was human.
Msg#:15775 *FINE ART*
05-19-94 22:42:31
From: ED GRANT
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15676 (DEATH AND ART)
I have seen a great deal of horrible art since the Reinhardt show, yes. And, I
have not seen much art that has left a lasting impression. I know people
making good challenging art. I have even seen some in SOHO. But it is rare.
I also find the ritual of Mass a beautiful thing, but I'm not going to become a
priest.
Msg#:15806 *FINE ART*
05-20-94 01:55:12
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15296 (DEATH AND ART)
Your message on Donald's death is so touching... Hardly talked about it with
anyone but Lauretta, his ex-girlfriend... I hadn't seen him for a while...
used to go for dinner, when he brought meat from Texas... long, precious chats.
Loved your remarks about Donald's work.
So why Art? For the case I would say artists dye a bit less than other
people, since their work outlives them.
Now, about Green-burg... ;)
Msg#:15822 *FINE ART*
05-20-94 10:13:37
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15757 (DEATH AND ART)
Has that clubby feel been really lost, or just replaced with something else?
We've all heard stories about the Ab. Exp. painters hanging out - but the
minimal artists and conceptual guy hung together too. The stories of people
fighting over the sprial (as form) I'm told are true also that Tony Shafrazi
was prompted to spray paint attack Gueneca on a dare by Serra - in the days the
former was an artist. I do have a lot of hope that The Thing will become a
bridge for the arts, however, nothing can replace seeing people face to face.
Msg#:15823 *FINE ART*
05-20-94 10:21:07
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15806 (DEATH AND ART)
Did you mean to say die rather than "dye"? Being a lapse Jew I want to believe
that we only live on (after we're done with all this life on earth stuff) in
other people's memories. No heaven, no hell - only our surrivors good and bad
throughs. Don was a very difficult guy, with pleanty of hang ups and troubles,
however, you are right his work will live for him long after anyone who ever
knew him will. My personal feeling is that he will become one of the most
important artists of the post war period (more so than Serra, Andre, etc.) In
part as he died before his time, but also because he didn't stray from his
mission in his work - he was true to himself, something that should never be
undervalued.
Msg#:15825 *FINE ART*
05-20-94 10:43:57
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15774 (DEATH AND ART)
I don't doubt that Martin looked great with Judd. He did a show of her
portfolio On A Clear Day in a small perfect space in Marfa a couple years back
durring the hoedown. The room that was used as in a former storefront downtown
Marfa with thick adobe walls and large frosted glass windows. When the front
door was open there was a wonderful view down to the Victorian Court House
building. In the room was a simple green Judd Winter Bench, and that's it. I
even think that the light in the room was natural only. Painfully perfect.
Msg#:15923 *FINE ART*
05-20-94 21:25:39
From: ED GRANT
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15825 (DEATH AND ART)
Wow, thats nice. I can only guess how amazing it was (having lived in NM).
Beauty can be a powerful thing.
Msg#:15924 *FINE ART*
05-20-94 21:31:05
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15823 (DEATH AND ART)
Of course I meant to say die rather than dye. An error. Should I wonder about
it's relation? Makes for an image no doubt... Say that we want to visualize
this substance that lives inside "other people's memories." A living memory,
there is the image and the trace of that person's passage, which leaves a mark
behind, inscribed maybe indelibly. The image is different from the mark. Only
the mark may call on the subject that is to reveal its "dyeing" of destiny.
Msg#:15928 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 00:04:11
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: ED GRANT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15775 (DEATH AND ART)
I liked some shows lately: Condo in Pace, Jenny Holzer in Barbara Gladstone,
Hans Haacke in John Weber, Guillermo Kuitca in Sperone Westwater. Didn't like
Ross Bleckner, nor Chia at Castelli.......etc. Why? ask Wolfgang.
Msg#:15929 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 00:15:43
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15676 (DEATH AND ART)
An assurance agent is what we need.
Msg#:15930 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 00:30:34
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15519 (DEATH AND ART)
"As for Judd, I hope at least he made one last box, to *lay* in."
Jordan, I think there's a problem... you don't get layed in boxes.
Msg#:15931 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 00:39:31
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15570 (DEATH AND ART)
Lawrence Weiner once stated that the discourse that surrounds the work of art
makes the work of art.
Do we believe that?
Msg#:15954 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 02:10:13
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15757 (DEATH AND ART)
it is a nice subject here on board even if I also regrett the incident it
prompted. ..... BUT: I wouldn't want to be so so pessimistic about things
since these are tropes we find in any shift of generation: I am talking about
the rhethoric of the "loss of rigour", the "loss of community" - briefly: the
loss of the great old times. saying that I feel extremely uncomfortable with
these tropes shouldn't disavow judd and his merits at all. but one can find
easily the same "rigour" the same communities today as well as you could find
(or not find) them in the golden days... there are wonderfull artists around
and they also will fit all criterias for the creation of myth... and remember:
all these events that take place now, including our typing, will turn
immediatly "wonderfull" if they stop or if they are 25 years old (the only
problem with this kind of typing here is, tthat unless the magnetic storage
colapses, we want have just some great fading white and black fotographs
underscoring some circulating stories but we will have the same types on an
improved screen - that looks always fresh and doesn't create any aura (this
time - there is really now aura possible, different to what benjamin thought of
photographs: with networking it is defenitly true, since the letters are fresh
every day and the text doesn't convert into anything better than it is (with
b/w myth supporting photographs it does, but not so with these kind of texts...
) - obviously, I am on the side of the text and jsut want to remind you of
these basic bias people so easily fall pray to.
the same thing is also true with greenberg. the art community was so tiny then
that his big old times were also just normal businessdays with the same
frustrations everybody else encounters in our days... and wasn't his big
fellow j pollock only dreaming of picasso and his(picassos) great time(he
thought he never could live up to), - so totally blind of his own big era, that
he just collapsed in alcohol and died... isn't he just a good example to point
out this big discrepancy between people perceiving something in retrospect and
people involved in the contemporanity of daily life... so beliefe me, some are
going to enthrone new princes picked from people around us and do the same
bourgois business of semiconservation... (I always admire the pickels I buy in
glasses and wonder about their preservation...) david and michael, let me
invite you to some coffee here ... I am kidding... but you should come anyway
....(let's have a pickel sandwich)
by the way: what about judds writing?
Msg#:15956 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 02:26:44
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: VERENA KUNI
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15654 (RE: DEATH AND ART)
if we keep talking under this Subj. (death and art) we just go to revive hegels
believe in the past times character of art.
Msg#:15957 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 02:31:35
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15822 (DEATH AND ART)
the msg I wrote to michael bennet was - technically I ended up replying to him
- was meant to you...
Msg#:16007 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 15:50:17
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15957 (DEATH AND ART)
In relation to the theme of the aura of the past--we should remember that for
the same reason, what is most original in the present often seems at first like
a mere repetition--the way proto-pop and early pop work was first called
"neo-dada," as though it were something already known.
Msg#:16210 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 18:36:09
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16007 (DEATH AND ART)
this is a good point. and I full agree with you. but my concern was not so much
the "what is new" problematic but more the walter benjamin aura complex that he
wanted to attach to fotography...with texts of a network, I don't see a point
how ara could devellop since the "physicallity" of the text is always in every
activation "new" .... this is, what I think doesn't let these text "die" in the
traditional sense of a work of art.... (this is not at all a statement about
the content of a text, the text as such... the machine calls it "text only"
text... I am just talking about the "materiality" of a text here on a BBS that
probably will resist "auratization" (and I express this in an ironic relation
to the subject matter here called "death and art" - I have to get some people
over a loss of an important member of the art community)
Msg#:16270 *FINE ART*
05-22-94 19:51:34
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16210 (DEATH AND ART)
But doesn't a text on such a network "die" when it is removed from current
accessibility? After which it could presumably at some point be "revived" as
an antique text?
Msg#:16296 *FINE ART*
05-22-94 23:02:32
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16270 (DEATH AND ART)
yes , a text out of such a system dies if removed from it. but if "revived"
after a longer period of time, and just because it will be "revived" on a
current, then current system it will not produce any aura at all , I think. so,
it "dies" easily, ( if wolfgang doesn't soon make more money with subscribtions
it will die as simple and easy as if I pull out the plag from the wall and cut
the electronic energy of my non-laptop machine...) nothing easier then having
these constellations destroyed... it takes a long time to cultivate them, but
it doesn't take much of an effort to destroy them... but then, at another
moment in time, to revive/ replay these massages, will not create any aura
whatsoever... it is already hard to creat one for old videos if they don't
deal with people one recognizes or with fashion products one identified and one
is able to classify.. . and I don't see any way to "auratizise" these kind of
msges... no way... (but what could be "mystified" and "auratizised" is this
business as such, without any particular msg.... let say: oh, one time, some
artists had an idea to do this and that .. but this would be as far as it can
go... and so what.... even better...)
Msg#:16306 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 00:51:58
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16296 (DEATH AND ART)
Rainer, we are backing up the system daily and every month all the messages are
archived on floppies and other media. I don't want to speculate how future
archeologists will perceive these texts once they dig them out of the
quadrillions of databases, let's just hope they will be easier to decipher than
the dead sea scrolls. As for the lost Aura, why don't you adjust the luminance
of your monitor! Turn it up all the way, sit down lotus style in front of it
and meditate for one hour.
Msg#:16312 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 08:18:44
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16296 (DEATH AND ART)
I'm not so sure. I think time has shown that Benjamin was incorrect in his
analysis of what was happening to "aura" because of photography, whereas poor
old Andre Malraux--the most unfashionable thinker imaginable!--was correct in
his view that reproduction was intensifying the aura around paintings. Which
is just to say that it's not so obvious except in retrospect what goes on
during such developments...everything we are doing on The Thing is presumably
"primitive" compared to what we will be doing in twenty years, and if there
turns out to be anything of value in what we do, that value will be enhanced by
the primitiveness.
Msg#:16314 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 09:39:29
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15928 (DEATH AND ART)
Can you tell me why you liked the Holzer show? I feel like she's run out of
steam. The texts are strong, but the presentation runs from being to high-tec
to being just terribly morbid and chilly. The emotional content seems to me be
just overly rehearsed.
Msg#:16315 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 09:42:24
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15931 (DEATH AND ART)
I love Lawrence, he's really wonderful and always playing the role of the
devil. Yes, I think he is largly correct, but not totally. Art should be both
private and public in its discourse. His statemet as you quoted sounds like
either a punchline to a joke or the start of a longer story.
Msg#:16316 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 10:08:11
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16296 (DEATH AND ART)
I disagree that the text so easily dies on such a system. The networked text
(and arguably, any text) doesn't begin and end on the screen, but is connected
through networks of connectivity--pull any one thread and you jostle them all.
The texts that we have built here are built in interstitial relations, in the
movements from one text to another, in the relation between textual code and
subjectivity. If you write a text on here and then you delete it it still has a
ghostlike presence and afterlife, for it reincarnates, inserts itself
elsewhere, its borders porous. The electronic text is built of movement,
relation, and flickering signification; it's not a shapshot.
Msg#:16355 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 13:14:10
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16312 (DEATH AND ART)
berry, I fully aggree with you and even more so with the minister of culture
malraux. and because of malraux I say this: concerning the production of myth
and aura, the TT could be one already next week if it closes down tomorrow. but
it will not gain any aura for the physicallity of the me/assages, but for the
fact that they exist m and the kind of loose community they create. this is
without doubt easily to be turned into an "aura" . but not so the massages as
such... this is different. and I am only interested in this differnce.
obviously, I do know, that this point is not interesting at all ... who cares
whether a msg can create an aura or not, whether it creates a physicallity that
can attract dust and aura or not. it is almost absurd reflecting it. ... but
nonetheless, this time it is really possible that the physicallity of the texts
here is not going to attract any aura... (and the litle interest it can have -
this insistence on this point - stems precisely from the fact, that benjamin
was wrong, what I alluded too in my opening msg about this. so once more, make
a difference between TT, the msges and the physicallity of the msges. the first
two could be easily turned into "myth", into "aura" and special atttraction,
but not so the physicallity of the msg/texts.... this is not so wiht
photography... what we are intersted in old photographies is not so much the
fact, that there was some photography (the "institution of photography") but
the artifact itself... the fading, smelling, dirty little piece of
silvercontaminated paper.... (intersting for me in this exchange is to see all
the different ways, my initial msg. is read and the reactions it creates... may
be, this kind of writing could be helpfull in the prevention of the exploding
proliferation of books as it could clear misunderstandings at the source...- I
know this is idealistic nonesense)
Msg#:16356 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 13:21:02
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16316 (DEATH AND ART)
jordan, I fully agree with you.. I just refer yoiu too my answer to the other
msg. I just posted a minute earlier.... I am only talking about the
disappearence in the sense, that the sysop takes the text from the accessible
memory after a certain time... obvioulsy, the text as text (msg, as part of an
intertextual intercourse continouse to make it's way through all kind of
meandering mutations... producing and reproducing itself... texts are
viruses, following epidemical maps - they are going to survive us all, .....
but teh particular msg. can be removed... it has to, it has to make room for
new ones.... )
Msg#:16363 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 14:25:53
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15954 (DEATH AND ART)
Don't think I want thinks today to be like they were yesterday. Looking back
is very dangerous, especially when what you know about the past is second hand
knowledge. What I know about the 60s is formed by reading back issues of
Artforum, Arts, Art In America, Studio International, New York Times reviews,
and Art International as well as books, exhibition catalogues, and talking with
people who were on the "circut" then. It's all very on sided, nothing seems
dull, flat, borring, or tired. But it is true also that while there are many
more artists now, and the audience is larger too, more galleries exist - much
of the medium of expression has been limited. Maybe Barry could tell us about
the death of Arts, or we could consider the departure of some of the other
journals also (bye bye Studio International, Art International, Artscribe,
etc.) Yes we now have October, Parkett and a few others, but both of these are
much more "considered", well Parkett should even be seen as a vanity magazine
you'll never see a critical word betewen those covers. The other issue here is
dialouge. Artforum in particular had a history of wonderful letters to the
editor (often with considered responses), how often do you see this now? I
think you'll find a liquor advertisment and something for Lucky Strike before
you find a single interesting letter... Yep, sure there was dull work then
too, but I'm getting sick of seeing people trying to make work that emulates
work that sells. (Fad of the moment seems to be plants, a few years ago it was
wax, then lead, and let's not forget paintings - there making a comeback...)
Seriously, I was talking with some young artist who only wanted to know what
kind of art to make in order to sell. The minute that art becomes considered
as an emulative decoration I get a bit cold. (Oh, this was an American artist
living in Koln because he read in the New York Time that Koln was the place to
be if you wanted to be a hot artist. [OK your in Koln now, what ARE you going
to make to become a hot artist... I wanted to vomit and tell him I saw vomit
at the last Whitney Bi. exhbition, and he should scrape it up and put it to
good use.] Yep, retrospect is very scarry stuff. Your Picasso story (Pollock)
is a good point and could be applied to Rothko too, but that's not the point of
why I started writing these posts - I really think that we're in a funny lull,
like in the mid 70s when there was also dull art and a flat market, not to
mention very few stories about "what a wonderful moment it was". Hell we're
not all that far out of the 80s and even durring the 80s everbody keep on
saying just how wonderful THAT moment was. Ok, let's put it all to rest and in
5 years lets look back on this moment - I hope I remember The Thing, I hope The
Thing lasts that long.
Msg#:16364 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 14:30:27
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16316 (DEATH AND ART)
Think I read in the cypherpunks posts that the NSA can read disks that have
been not only wipped but overwritten with new data, somthing about echos. Who
know if this is true, but sure means there's a lot of ghosts floating on hard
drives out there.
Msg#:16365 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 15:16:31
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16355 (DEATH AND ART)
I don't even know what the "physicality" of these messages is, or where it
might be located (this perhaps goes back to a much earlier discussion in which
I said the presence of the body is hyper-compressed here) but it is quite
possible that it will show itself itself quite clearly once this medium becomes
antiquated. (I recently pointed out how the physicality of the marks of Carl
Andre's typing, in the poems he exhibited at Paula Cooper, shows up more
clearly now that the manual typewriter has been defamiliarized than it might
have in the '60s when he did them.)
Msg#:16367 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 16:27:23
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16365 (DEATH AND ART)
I like the notion that you bring up about Andre's typewriter - that of the
touch of metal to ribbon to paper created - a method of writing that is fast
becoming lost. However, I would doubt that we will ever feel the same of this
medium as the residue is so different from my computer to yours to anothers
that the similarity can be quite far apart in display (or printout - thinking
of laser, ink jet, dot matrix, and fonts...) that it will never have the same
qualitys of that old (I suspose) typewriter that Andre banged his poems out on.
Msg#:16383 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 19:02:48
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16355 (DEATH AND ART)
It's interesting to see our texts as built from these "misunderstandings,"
these disjunctions, these overlappings and these interstitial areas... from
which the voices speak... Ghosts in the marginal blackness of the screen.
Msg#:16400 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 00:05:52
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16367 (DEATH AND ART)
> writing that is fast becoming lost. However, I would doubt that we
> will ever feel the same of this medium as the residue is so
> different from my computer to yours to anothers that the similarity
> can be quite far apart in display (or printout - thinking of laser,
But the same is true for typewriters--remember all those old detective stories
where the murderer is found by matching some misaligned letter in a message
with a key of his typewriter.
Msg#:16422 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 01:51:33
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16365 (DEATH AND ART)
yes, I talked a lot about "physicality" without defining it... obviously the
"physicality" is a ne"negative" one, whatever this means -it is one that does
and doens't change at all: it does change, since from "on" and "off" it
"appears", becomes "light" or "shodow" and "disappears" ("dies") AND it doesn't
change, since the letters are supposed to come up in the same order, and the
light around the letter is supposed to be always "new" (can there be old light?
- do we know, how long, how far a light beam has travelled when it encounters
us?, would an "old", travelled through years old beam have dark outfaded
borders? isn't there a clear night tonight? and can I distinguish the time, the
age of the light?) ... I am not talking about printed out versions of this
thing here, I am talking about what happens, if in 20 years, somebody will have
a msg. popped up on his screen.... I doubt it to be recognizable as an "old"
text if one is able to abstract from the context... the semantic, syntax and
the interfacial context, if it will open up as well...
I don't want to repeat myself... I just refer you back to some other responses
I posted even in the afternoon... (usually I like to write when the light
differences are a little bit bigger between my screen and my window)
Msg#:16423 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 01:57:48
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16400 (DEATH AND ART)
let me just add something for your type writer nostalgia: isn't it that the
most attractive typeface right now is "american typewriter" simular to
"courrier" -- and precisely this font was strongly rejected in the last decade,
since it connotated simply the 70ies, and typewriter..
- just the fashion everybody is in again...
Msg#:16432 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 05:21:42
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16315 (DEATH AND ART)
About the private discourse of art. Are you saying this discourse concerns the
artist's relation to the object to be represented... or that it belongs to a
smaller circle of people around him?
Msg#:16434 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 09:59:14
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16400 (DEATH AND ART)
With such typewriters there is always a one-to-one correspondence between the
letter and the finger that pushed it, attached to a body. There is a
physicality that is not present with computers: you hit the letter on the
typewriter harder and you get a darker letter (physicality can thus be read
into the text)--or at least with an electric typewriter, you have a particular
corresponding function for each key--but the computer interrupts this, and
complicates this space, since there is no longer such a one-to-one relation or
such a locatable body. One key on a computer can delete an entire text, send
it, move it, etc., and you see not the hand that pushed it, no physicality
except an implied (one read into) the text in relation to/through the
screen-interface. This is very interesting here with your detective story, for
the we could make typewriter marks correspond to bodies and imply "guilt," but
today we can no longer find the body or judge it thus.
Msg#:16435 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 10:26:53
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16432 (DEATH AND ART)
There's all sorts of circles, waves, of interaction between artist and object
that need to be though of. There's the object divoreced from the artist - in
many forms, such as a causal viewer coming to a museum (or anyplace where art
is viewed) blind (so to speak) with no backgroud viewing something without any
contextual information about the artist or otherwise. There the next level
with the viewer knowing a little to quite a bit about what they are looking at.
Etc. On up to being an intimate of an artist. Everbody comes away with
something else. I don't think in my context of writing on Judd that my knowing
him had any impact on my relation to his work - frankly, there isn't that much
to grasp with him - what it is it is. I do have problems when art becomes
inside jokes in which without knowing the artist one doesn't know the work. I
belive in something not so hermetic, and more inclusive.
Msg#:16436 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 10:29:21
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16363 (DEATH AND ART)
It's interesting here that we're attempting to "get at" things as the
past of a projected future (e.g., what TT is today is seen by projecting its
future and looking back; what electronic text is today is historicized by way
of the future). Today takes shape as a past of a future, not through the
advance of history. (Think about this especially for the info-elites--in many
ways we increasingly have a better sense of the future than we do of the past.)
We can't even get at our present "first-hand" (I say this in relation to your
comment of seeing the past only "second-hand") but possibly employ this process
to break up the landscape, uncover what's hidden from view (smoothed over as it
is by the homogenization of market forces). Perhaps this opens up a new space,
a contradictory, hybrid present (even though the future is already so
colonized)... No longer a present which results from the culmination of
History, but a present as an unstable site through which "past" and "future"
circulate. (Pastness and futureness as interfaces? or at least market
mechanisms...what a radical disruption of Time.)
Msg#:16437 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 10:32:37
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16400 (DEATH AND ART)
What about age? As much as I love my computer, I'll never be able to see the
screen "age" the way a sheet of paper ages as it gathers coffee stains, finger
prints, and time stains. Ok call me a romantic.
Msg#:16438 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 10:34:20
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15931 (DEATH AND ART)
> Lawrence Weiner once stated that the discourse that surrounds the
> work of art makes the work of art.
> Do we believe that?
It not only makes the work of art, but it makes Weiner too.
Msg#:16439 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 10:38:19
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16436 (DEATH AND ART)
I suspose you are right. There are always going to be people that have the
future while others toddle in the past using "antique" equiptment that was
outdated while still in the box. I only wonder at what point, if ever, there
will be a common ground at which point equiptment will become static much the
same way microwave ovens are now basically the identical from one to the next,
only cooking power marking the price point. Will we ever all have the same
user interface, or more importantly the same access to information?
Msg#:16440 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 10:45:28
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16423 (DEATH AND ART)
I don't see anybody using "american typewriter" or "courier" for that matter.
Where have you seen it? Maybe you're suffering a bit of that typewriter
nostalgia yourself. :)
Msg#:16484 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 15:12:12
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16434 (DEATH AND ART)
> for each key--but the computer interrupts this, and complicates this
> space, since there is no longer such a one-to-one relation or such a
I just wonder why you say "complicates" when I would have thought the word
should be "simplifies"?
Msg#:16485 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 15:15:33
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16437 (DEATH AND ART)
Perhaps there could be a software that will automatically "age" your
print-outs. It would keep a record of when the file was first made, and then
as it gets older, any time it prints it out it add a very light grey screen
behind the text when it becomes a bit old--as the text gets older and older the
software could make the grey screen darker and darker, until, according to a
time-scale the user could select, the oldest messages would become illegible,
totally darkened with age.
Msg#:16488 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 16:06:11
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16485 (DEATH AND ART)
At last a computer age idea that harks to years gone by. Barry, you've got a
million dollar idea there. Sounds like something the NSA would dream up.
Better find a programer and do if before someone else does.
Msg#:16505 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 19:02:30
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16484 (DEATH AND ART)
On the surface it "simplifies" but the relationships are "complicated"--the
trajectory from the body to the finger to the signifier doesn't contain the
same correspondences, and doesn't presuppose the same body/subject.
Msg#:16506 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 19:09:25
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16485 (DEATH AND ART)
"Dorian Grey"?
Msg#:16536 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 00:24:57
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16485 (DEATH AND ART)
technically thi[s wouldn't be a problem at all... but would it work? would it
introduce /produce "aura" where it - and this is my point - not possible to be
produced (opposite to all previous forms of media).... but this is a good
question...
Msg#:16543 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 22:13:41
From: BOTSCHAFT
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16536 (DEATH AND ART)
Where is -- the personal CDROM (platinum) backing up your personal private data
for the future. (bio-graphies of your bank, your clinic, your prison, containig
kodaks of your holidays at the chinese wall or the heidelberger schloss, your
adolescence written on wordstar, some schooltests, some brainwave-recordings,
quicktime sex-souvenirs, the familyharddisk, your favorite tele-games +
hiscores, a scan of your genome code...)
There is -- a user sitting in lotus style (1-2-3 or notes?) in front of a
Trinitron, remembering the white noise of Don de Lillo. What is lost is the
semantic structure which we call information. The aura has still a name, poor
Benjamin, it«s not holy or Jahwe, reiki or prana, but electromagnetic.
Believers buy TCO-Monitors, which transmitting in a "cleaner" spectrum. Dark
minds use Mobile-phones to pact with the luck.
--- MacWoof Eval:13Nov92
* Origin: thing net point berlin (42:1002/3.6@thingnet)
Msg#:16546 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 08:24:06
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16438 (DEATH AND ART)
>> Lawrence Weiner once stated that the discourse that surrounds the
>> work of art makes the work of art.
>> Do we believe that?
>
> It not only makes the work of art, but it makes Weiner too.
One thing I've noticed about Lawrence is that he makes the most definitive
sounding declarations as though they were carved in stone but which in fact
just represent his passing mood of the moment. So the first question might
rather be, does Lawrence believe that? Presonally, I would hope that on
further reflection he would reject the idea that discourse is "outside of" the
work, since his own work is merely one of the clearest examples of what is
always true to some extent, that discourse does not surround the work so much
as run right through it.
Msg#:16674 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 22:15:43
From: JANINE GORDON
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16485 (DEATH AND ART)
There is this contest in Wired magazine ,judged by Holzer.L.Anderson and
friends....their looking for entries ...Guaranteed to win if you can produce
this wacko software....THE KEY WORD IS PRODUCE!
Msg#:16675 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 22:19:03
From: JANINE GORDON
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16423 (DEATH AND ART)
Dont' you just hate trends????
Msg#:16680 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 01:01:57
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16438 (DEATH AND ART)
"It not only makes the work of art, but it makes Weiner too."
Are you saying this is Weiner's personal case?
Msg#:16685 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 01:47:56
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16435 (DEATH AND ART)
Sometimes, during an interview, there is a moment when my question may reveal
something to the artist about his/her work. I search for that, like it. Also
the artist likes it. But it has nothing to do with closeness, on the contrary.
Does it affect my vision of the work? Maybe, have to think about it.
In the case of Judd our conversations use to turn at times around his
writing--his articles took like a month to write. We talked while eating some
spectacular meat from his ranch in Texas. He would make everything so preciousÉ
this wine!... also the bread... the oilÉ
Msg#:17205 *FINE ART*
05-28-94 16:38:04
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15662 (DEATH AND ART)
probably we all have some inner god archetypes that get us through when the
going gets banal, and the horizon is mud.
Msg#:17206 *FINE ART*
05-28-94 16:40:43
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 15676 (DEATH AND ART)
no, better, gloriously, infinitely better. Better than yoghurt, better than
santa claus, better than roach motels.
Msg#:16556 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 10:14:55
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16546 (DEATH AND ART)
Knowing Lawrence I believe that he's very up front about what he thinks, not to
mention honest to the core. He's a wonderful story teller, if nothing else the
cadence of his speach leaves people with the impression that he's some kind of
spiritual leader (not to mention the beard).
Msg#:16626 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 11:19:54
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16556 (DEATH AND ART)
> that discourse does not surround the work so much as
> run right through it.
Runs around it, runs through it... I'd say it *is* it, since it is the only
indispensable element in the construction of a work of art.
And now, let a thousand voices howl!
Msg#:16628 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 14:30:27
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16626 (DEATH AND ART)
To say that discourse
> is the only
> indispensable element in the construction of a work of art
is problematic in just one respect--but a pretty important one: it fails to
distinguish an art work from any other thing in the human realm!
Msg#:16695 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 23:56:00
From: VERENA KUNI
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16685 (DEATH AND ART)
DP> The computer must become
DP> something more than the alchemist's pot as the true pot must reside in the
DP> artist's head not at the tips of his/her fingers.
well, if you're talking about the alchemist's vessel you should know that
just as the true alembic will reside in the artist's head - maybe I'd
prefer to say in the human head -, at all times it has been well placed
let's say just INSIDE the head of the alchemist.
if you're talking about the true pot in the artist's head or anywhere else
- what at a glance it might seem to be a different field of question - one
could state that even here the materia(l) will stay the medium for in-
formation even if you place the sender/receiver in your head.
but however: not only god, also the computer is a concept...
Msg#:16706 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 09:57:50
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16685 (DEATH AND ART)
I don't know much about Judd's writing process, though I do know his writing
quite well. Some of the funniest things I've ever read were the letters
between Judd and the editor at Art International (published in his Collected
Writing book - volume I). Complaints like his being late and writing short
notes like "this is a show of sculpture, there are three works, all small, all
metal, they are good works." Minimal to the core.
Msg#:16709 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 10:08:07
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: VERENA KUNI
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16695 (DEATH AND ART)
The computer may be a medium, but it is not like paint in or any other medium I
can think of in that it (the computer) is an interactive surface that isn't any
single medium. I can draw, paint, manipulate photographs, etc. each as
seperate tools or combined - additionally objects can be rendered in dimensions
and then fabricated (you could ask Charles Warren here about this). In the end
it's only as good as the skills of the artist who uses it. And right now it's
all to trendy sometimes, like the early days of video, something that people
will stare at no matter what's on.
Msg#:16825 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 15:21:04
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16709 (DEATH AND ART)
> fails to distinguish an art work from any other thing in the human
> realm!
That's exactly my point. I left the church of true believers way back in art
school when I had to write papers on Mark Rothko and transcendence and stuff
like that. Once you strip off all the nebulous and mystifying discourse you're
left with pigments on canvas. Now then, _what does_ distinguish the art work
from any other artefact?
Msg#:16880 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 23:46:30
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16706 (DEATH AND ART)
I wish someone would put those writings together... Did someone ever interview
Donald? Never made it to the Satchi's private Museum in London. They have a
whole floor dedicated to his works. Have you seen it? Would love to go there
myself.
Msg#:16881 *FINE ART*
05-27-94 00:03:07
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16825 (DEATH AND ART)
> you're left with pigments on canvas. Now then, _what does_
> distinguish the
> art work from any other artefact?
well, I guess that's what we're trying to figure out...this is the self-
questioning nature of art...as opposed to giving up on making the distinction.
Msg#:16884 *FINE ART*
05-27-94 00:08:28
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16881 (DEATH AND ART)
The art object is empty. Even if it were full, the fact that it is a work of
art seems to work against one's opening and consuming its contents, lets say.
So one difference between the box of Brillo that exists in the supermaket and
the silk screened version that is in a gallery is that the latter, I assume,
is empty. Another reason of course is the way in which the object is organized
in relation to whatever surrounds it. This way must be different from the
syntax of, say, a supermarket. The effect the work produces ought to be other
than the promise of an enjoyment that resides in the consumtion of the
contents of the box, or even, in the case of fruits and vegetables, in the
consumption of the thing itself.
Msg#:16928 *FINE ART*
05-27-94 10:37:32
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16880 (DEATH AND ART)
Judd's writing was collected in two volumes (Nova Scotia / NYU circa 1976, and
Stedlijk circa 1989). A new complete book was underway at the time of his
death. As far as interviews go Judd was a lousy interviewie and I don't think
there were any published of value.
Msg#:16939 *FINE ART*
05-27-94 13:47:50
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16884 (DEATH AND ART)
> supermarket. The effect the work produces ought to be other than the
> promise of
> an enjoyment that resides in the consumtion of the contents of the
> box, or even,
An interesting correlate to this would be the reflection that an art aiming to
be ephemeral is not after so profoundly different from one that aims to be
monumental--since what is transitory is like what is preserved just insofar as
in neither case can it be consumed.
Msg#:16943 *FINE ART*
05-27-94 15:47:56
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16939 (DEATH AND ART)
Everything can be consumed! Memories are for consumption too. If anything can
be learned from the 80s it is that people are often willing to plop down cash
for just about anything. Isn't going to a movie about catching a memory for
later usage? As far as ephemeral art goes, people will strugle to save it too
- what about Bruce Conners work or the dilema of what to do with Beuys's
objects that are turning to dust. I love the idea of food art - works that at
one time seem so fresh than over time become older and older as if before your
eyes. As for monumental art, it's being made for corporations and individuals,
many of which are far thinking enough to know that sooner or later these large
things will be sold (at a profit).
Msg#:17054 *FINE ART*
05-27-94 18:56:09
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16943 (DEATH AND ART)
At the risk of being pedantic, let's clarify the use of a few words--to
"consume" is not the same as to "buy." To "consume" something means you don't
have it anymore--it's been used up. On the other hand I was using "monumental"
in a somewhat specialized way that probably wasn't clear--I just meant the
opposite of "ephemeral"--art that is meant to last and be preserved. When I
took Art History 101, my prof referred to all the existing objects we studied
as "monuments" whether they were paintings, churches, statues, or whatever, and
that's more or less how I was thinking of the word.
Msg#:17202 *FINE ART*
05-28-94 16:11:35
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 17054 (DEATH AND ART)
And when I think of "monumental" I think in terms of "large-scale projects" and
public monuments, city square kind of stuff. However, I like your twist on the
term.
Msg#:17451 *FINE ART*
05-29-94 03:13:28
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16939 (DEATH AND ART)
I remember now there's been the case of some artists doing sculpture *for* it
to be consumed (eaten). Marta Minujin, an Argentine artist, I think you met her
in Bs As., made a strawberry statue of Margaret Thatcher that we all eat at
the opening. Hmmm... does this knock down my theory? Maybe what counts in this
case is the context and the naming..... And it could have even been called
monumental in the sense that this statue was enormous, though it is the very
ephemeral.
Msg#:16702 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 08:49:10
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16680 (DEATH AND ART)
No, not at all.
Msg#:17407 *FINE ART*
05-28-94 18:30:42
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 17205 (DEATH AND ART)
Thanks for the words of widsom, however, I don't see the horizon as being mud,
rather I think it's more like the tunnle of love meets the haunted house.
Msg#:17408 *FINE ART*
05-28-94 18:31:27
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 17206 (DEATH AND ART)
Better than ant farms?
Msg#:15955 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 02:21:11
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: ART AND DISCOURSE
yes I do - the artwork is the discourse that surrounds it. (this is not an
ontological statement)
Msg#:16231 *FINE ART*
05-22-94 03:44:16
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: NOBODY
Subj: NO BODY
jan avgikos interviewed in her last issue of lacanian ink wolfgang staehle
about the thing. interesting in this interview was the way, how jan was
obsessed with the body (the absence of the body / I would callit the "no body"
- she somehow almost ccame accross as if she was blaming the electronic network
for the distance between the writer/user and the body/ the bodies on the other
side/ somewhere else. abviously, if their is a gap filled with no bodies, an
electronic network can not immediately help out here (inspite of rosa services
in specially reserved networks which probably charge the user by the minute).
but I would say, that we are more and more living in a "no body" world that
isn't so much due to these electronic mail systems... they seem to be more set
up where territory was lost already and not the other way around (even if it is
sweeter to think so, since we all have learned well our foucault) . I don't
want to allude to some aladine story and believe in some sinuous gost
descending my machine... but given the stupidness of the contemporary
consumerist society we are sourrounded by in an endless urban and suburban
landscape (suburbia is folding into urban landscapes and vice versa) such
networks can be potentially used for an improvement of exchanges that might
even have consequences on the "nobody somebody body" line... and what is in
particular to willcome is the fact that voices await you with ears eyes and
fingertips... jan, who actually hasn't been really using any network so far
(as far as I know) might feel /if logged on/ a little bit closer to the pulse
of some bodies even if the unknown user appears as a nobody. and doesn't
actually josefina have the best stories to tell about trackdrives and police
men who want to step out of america on line like young angeles for teh best
imaginary acts in town to circulate... with all this I just wanted
to point out some conflations that are often done... (
<*>Replies
Msg#:17510 *FINE ART*
05-29-94 23:48:08
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16231 (NO BODY)
Jan says, " Dear Rainer, May the pulse be with you."
Msg#:16234 *FINE ART*
05-21-94 11:42:00
From: SABINE B. VOGEL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: JUDD
DP>My personal feeling is that he will become one of the most important
DP>artists of the post war period (more so than Serra, Andre, etc.)
it's strange, but Judd isn't that important in Germany like in USA. Carl
Andre is much more visible, and Serra is much more discussed, probably the
influence on artists, especcialy accademy-students, is not by Judd, but by
Serra. The museums tried really hard last year to give Judd the same
importance in Europe like in USA, but it didn't work out. maybe because
Andre + Serra have great galleries doing the pr-work here, maybe because
of all the Serra-outdoor-works, maybe because Judd's work is more
difficult to understand here - I don't know.
I guess people read/see Judd more like design then sculpture, but anyway
there aren't that many Judd's in public collections.
DP>but also because he didn't stray from his mission
DP>in his work - he was true to himself
isn't it the same with R. Serra? but, by the way, if I can ask you, what
is the *mission* in Judd's work?
Sabine
Msg#:16361 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 13:54:45
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: SABINE B. VOGEL
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16234 (JUDD)
I don't know why Judd doesn't have the stature in Europe that he has in the US.
Maybe I'm myopic and only think he's on par if not beyond Andre and Serra here.
Sure, maybe he isn't as well premoted in Europe, but it more likely has to do
with materials and execution (my guess). Serra and Andre work with raw
materials in crude methods (that is to say that their works don't have the
fetish/finish of Judds) which are more more accessable to the masses, where as
Judd worked with expensive processes. Both Serra and Andre works are also more
about mass, proximity, and relation of parts. Serra is also has that terror
edge to it. Where as Judd's work was about the exploration of repetive play on
the box, containment, and specific objecthood. Yes, Judds work has that design
quality, however, so does Andre - it's just a change of dimensionality. I
don't want to make any claims about accademy students, but people are often
impressed by _weight_, and that's so much about Serra. The flip side is
poetry, which is what Andre is about. Judd had that strange duality of being
crazy about the finish of his works (a very West Coast notion - think Larry
Bell, John McCracken...) and then the crudeness too in some works. Rudi Fuchs
wrote, poetic, on Judds works at his last Pace Gallery Show, mostly about the
quality of rust - which could have been said about anybody working with Cor-Ten
steel. I think what may give Judd such lasting potential is simply he died
before he could make any wrong steps in his work. Serra and Andre both have
the chance to do some amazing new works, however, they could also turn out some
lousy works for the next 20 years and we would say "Gee, they should have
stopped years ago" - almost as bad, they could also not grow and continue to
repeat the same works over and over to the point where the illusion of the
"great" work is lost over time. The sad thing here is that Judd was working to
making something wonderful at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa - something that
not only would have preserved his work, but the works of other artists too.
The foundation will go on, but his vision of inclusiveness will not have his
hand in it anylonger. Maybe Serra and Andre will grow into a position where
they try to do something similar, but they remain static in this respect to me.
Msg#:16690 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 18:02:00
From: SABINE B. VOGEL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16361 (RE: JUDD)
actually I never really thought about the question of Judds importance
here + there. it just plopped up when he died and almost nothing was
written in magazines. then we started to compare it with Beuys death,
Warhol, Rothko, Picasso, Miro, Dali, etc. - and continued with a macabre
(is this an english word?) game, comparing it with living artists, how
much publicity their death would effect.
DP>has in the US. Maybe I'm myopic and only think he's on par if not
DP>beyond Andre and Serra here.
maybe because of his work is much closer to design - to the furniture-
stuff from Philip Starck etc. - then A's + S's work. but I don't know.
DP>students, but people are often impressed by _weight_, and that's
weight? hm. maybe more something like beeing in love with material, which
is pretty much the german sculpture-style.
*********************
DP>"Gee, they should have stopped years ago" - almost as bad, they could
that's something I just thought of Rauschenbergs work. god, how bad! works
from '87 - '92. just nothing. sad. seems to be something which happens to
most of the pop-art-artists. same with Wesselmann, Lichtenstein, Jim Dine,
who all just recently showed their recent works in Germany. Now I just
wonder about Jasper John's works of the last 5 years...
Msg#:16710 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 10:20:17
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: SABINE B. VOGEL
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16690 (RE: JUDD)
Isn't it all about what makes a "modern master," what becomes of an artist as
they age? For me Johns can still hit the mark a good deal of the time, in part
because he has such great hand skill and sense of color. Rauschenburg never
had that, Dine never had that either. Maybe in a few years we'll have a better
idea what going on at this moment. Maybe there's something wonderful happening
under our noses, or maybe we really are seeing a creative lull. Back to
thinking about Judd, I think to describe his work as design is true to a point,
however, I don't see him as being any more of a designer than Serra or Andre,
the only difference being the surface of Judd's works being as slick as they
are.
Msg#:16916 *FINE ART*
05-27-94 02:32:00
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: SABINE B. VOGEL
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16690 (RE: JUDD)
david, I don't want to be dismissive of personal stories and anectodes... they
are great, but unfortunately, they only mean something to poeple like you who
participated... for the understanding and discussion of the work, they don't
mean anything. and this is what creates some frustration... I keepl reading
every night at least 5 postings about judd, and yet I don't learn anything.
let me refer to some interesting discussions aobut minimalism: hal foster's one
(The crux of minimalism) and rosslind krauss's one...(in october, a few issues
agao: the realationship of minimalism and the museum) I think it would be very
interesting to talk about minimalism and this kind of work since there was a
totally differnt epistemological intelligence at work then we encounter it in
most of the works today... I really would enjoy and prefer these kind of
discussions to the culinarium I get served right now (and I am even a
vegetarian on a diet) ... what was minimalism doing when it entered the game?
what did it push out? what was phenomenlogy doing in relationship to
minimalism? what was mini[malism's limit? what was it accused off? by what was
it replaced? what is there worth to be rescued? what can we learn from the
history of reductive readings? how could it be possible and understandabe, that
robert morris started his career with very intersting minimalist work and
switched then to the most awfull representational relieves I have ever seen
what are the intersting artists of the time that took minimalism back into
architecture, and other applied fields... (why doesn't anybody talk aobut the
wonderfull show of gordon matta clark right now - was he just eating
cheeseburgers?)
Msg#:16302 *FINE ART*
05-22-94 23:59:00
From: SKIP SNOW
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: TEXT & DEATH
The notion of a text dying, hmmmm. Well I am not sure that any work of art
exists anywhere except in the mind of the person who views it. What I mean by
that is that the text exists nowhere in some absolute fashion. Its essence is
in its relations, and its relations are in its context.
It seems to me that people make a big mistake when they assume that the
electric reality of computation does not take place on a physical level, in a
not altogether different fashion than the alignment of pigment in a dried
medium of linseed oil, Rainer is right in speaking of text as a different thing
than the singular objects of the traditional plastic arts. In this sense the
reproduction and the original object have no particular reality. A bit map is
after all a sort of text, a hard code which does not have the same organic
qualities as the blue Rapheal used. the bit map is in that sense more archival
than most plastic art.
We can not read it without the algorithms of a computer that translates Giff
files, or whatever type of files they are. But they are still texts, in the
sense that they exist only as reproductions. In fact they are a special sort
of text in that the original is destroyed as soon as the Ram which created them
is erased. There is in this sense no original except the inspiration which
created the texts. It is a sort of publication of art which takes place in the
computer rather than a display of some original work.
But this is not necessarily a good part of computer art. In fact the reduction
of the analog to the digital is just what most research into parallel
processing is trying to do. For to imitate that wonder, the human mind a
completely non digital invention must displace what we conceive of as the
computer. I believe until the computer is capable of this sort of analogue
simulation, or emulation there will be no computer art which reaches the wonder
of analog arts such as the theater, or painting.
On the other hand, a text is a wonder because it reassembles in an analogue
fashion as soon as it enters the mind. In other words if we the audience of
Rainer's text, a clearly digital phoneme make connections which though random
are still in accordance with the spirit of the communication then it becomes
the same wonder, and attains the same type of aura as any faded painting. The
wonder is in the comprehension of coherent communication. The medium, and even
the method are tools, and not ends. In the end the text is random because we
view it under random circumstances which shape our understanding of it.
<*>Replies
Msg#:16352 *FINE ART*
05-23-94 12:53:47
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: SKIP SNOW (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16302 (TEXT & DEATH)
obvioulsy a text is not "dying" but in reference to our particular subject, I
used this metaphor for simple "disappearance" - if not to say:
inaccessability... disappearance in the fact, that - opposite to a published
book - these texts produced here could be easily be inaccessible after a few
months and after they "naturally" rotate out of the accessible memory of the
database... - but unless to a book, you take out after 20 years and yoiu
obviously feel and smell and see that something like time has touched it, with
the uploading of these texts after a considerable amount of time, they just
will look the same... (and I am not talking about the content, the usage of
references, of paradigms, of names, of syntactical and paradigmatical fashions
(doesn't my last line already sound "trackable" for a certain kind of jargon...
one will be able to easiyly locate on a temporal axis?)
- I think you should use more occham's razor when writing about these artifacts
without really bothering too much with classical notions of artwork and all
this stuff... just a personal advice, that could shorten your msges. and free
you from unnessecairy "derives" into lost paradises)
Msg#:16540 *FINE ART*
05-24-94 18:04:00
From: MICHAEL KROME
To: *.*
Subj: FILMPRODUCTIONS
Does anyone knows, if David Salle is really going to produce a film with Martin
Scorsese in Los Angeles ?
Robert Longo, who's married with an actress is also going to make a film in
Hollywood.
Another proposed film from which I heard is one with Stephen Prina, Albert
Oehlen and Theo Altenberg.
Something like a persiflage on Hitler.
Perhaps this should wear the subject ART+Death.
Msg#:16673 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 22:12:26
From: JANINE GORDON
To: MICHAEL KROME
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16540 (FILMPRODUCTIONS)
actually michael.....I just met one of the actors from Robert Longo's new film.
It was a 35 million dollar budget!!! It supposedly will be released in the
winter,the film is in its finishing touches . DOn't know about the others.
Msg#:16679 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 00:38:42
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: MICHAEL KROME
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16540 (FILMPRODUCTIONS)
michael, don't you want to explain to our non-german speaking users what the
coloquial, lower end meaning of "einen film drehen" (for ex: "der typ dreht
wieder einen film") means?
Msg#:16681 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 01:02:01
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: TOPOLOGICAL MYTHS
first of all, lets stop writing under this pathetic subject "death and art" now
responding to what seems to start grouping around laurence wiener (and please,
no anectodes anymore, we know how great these people are, but we don't need
this here) : whether the discourse "sourounds" it, i.e. outside, in a circle
form, wether it penetrates the center: it "runs like through" it, or whether it
"is" the work - makes me have ask some new questions:
do I need a map here?
what kind of geometry comes with your topography?
could I use a compass for orientation?
<*>Replies
Msg#:16711 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 10:26:11
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16681 (TOPOLOGICAL MYTHS)
Did you intend to make this comment to me? I think that stories are important
to getting at where art is coming from. If you want to end the Art & Death
chatter fine with me. Just what topological myths are you looking to debunk?
Msg#:16917 *FINE ART*
05-27-94 02:46:13
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16711 (TOPOLOGICAL MYTHS)
david, see my reply under the subj. Judd
and I still expect some responses to this subject:
topological myths
wasn't even Minimalism part of a topological myth, a hodology that ended in the
museum, the corporate lobby and the great plaza (don't we also have sympathy
with serra's one, that was destroyed)?
wasn't it actually minimalism, that ended a certain rhethoric some of you seem
to be so attracted to: stories, psychologies, pregnancies of meaning and sense
inside and outside of "it"...
isn't it actually minimalism, tahat first brought structuralism and
relationsals thinking to the NY art world... (and isn't this
somehow paradoxical if we remember, that some of the french structuralists
lived during wolrd war II in NY .. levi strauss and alt... somehow even
involved with surrealism that couldn't really be effective here in NY and had
to go back to Paris)
Msg#:16927 *FINE ART*
05-27-94 10:35:09
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16917 (TOPOLOGICAL MYTHS)
Rainer, I'm a little confunsed with your post. It seems to me that art is at
it's core about telling stories - thats where it all started didn't it? Think
of any narrative sequence and it becomes a story. Even Duchamp was a story
teller in his work, just think of the titles. Yes, you are right that
minimalism was something of a departure from the convential story telling
system. Judd may be a bit of a more narritive minimalist in that his works are
sequential often (part, part, part) rather than a single mass of weight
(Serra). Michael Freed wrote of minimalism as being theater, a stage set at
which the people that move around the sculpture/painting become the players. I
don't think so, though it is one way to look at it. Just because a strucutre
is placed in an enviornment doesn't make it stage set.
Msg#:17062 *FINE ART*
05-27-94 19:29:24
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16927 (TOPOLOGICAL MYTHS)
> Rainer, I'm a little confunsed with your post. It seems to me that
> art is at it's core about telling stories - thats where it all
I am not so sure about this... and even if we could agree on "story telling" it
doesn't have anything to do with what today is understood under "story telling"
- but one shouldn't go too far back for origins, since this is a too dangerous
passage, that only confuses, mystifies and distracts from the actuallity of an
issue to be discussed and negotiated... I am still waiting for people who tell
me their analytical "stories"
Msg#:16682 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 01:05:29
From: RAINER GANAHL
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: CASE STUDIES
JOOSEEFIIIINAAAA
<*>Replies
Msg#:16684 *FINE ART*
05-26-94 01:45:43
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: RAINER GANAHL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 16682 (CASE STUDIES)
Rainer?????
Msg#:16687 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 17:30:00
From: SABINE B. VOGEL
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: RE: TYPEWRITER/FONDS
there's a *IBM*-fonds, looks exactly like a typewritten page. some so
called subcultural, mostly low-budget-magazines use it, to get the cheap
look from earliert - students-magazine? - times. Even some advertisings
are using this fake-typewriter-style, although the whole layout is done -
visibly done - by computer.
Sabine
Msg#:16688 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 17:42:00
From: SABINE B. VOGEL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: COMP./TYPEWR.
BS>Perhaps there could be a software that will automatically "age"
BS>your print-outs. It would keep a record of when the file was
before they should figure out a prg that keeps the monitor from aging...
all the burned-in lines...
--- CrossPoint v3.0
* Origin: Ding-Point (42:1002/2.3)
Msg#:16689 *FINE ART*
05-25-94 17:46:00
From: SABINE B. VOGEL
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: ONE-TO-ONE-RELATION
JC>With such typewriters there is always a one-to-one correspondence
JC>between the letter and the finger that pushed it, attached to a
JC>body.
it's the same with a computer, it's just much much faster. writing-wise
there isn't that much difference, especcialy not between the almost-
computerized typewriters and computers. or do you wanna compare the old
ones, where you needed a lot of power to push the buttons, with comp.?
even the deleting isn't that much different - taking out the paper,
throwing it away and using a new one or just delete the letters and start
over again isn't a physical question. the _paper_ is blank, anyway. the
big difference is moving blocks around - something you can *read* in much
essays. but again: discussing this in terms of *body*, of phyical
experiences a.s.o., doesn't make much sense for me. the connection between
thinking and writing is a question of abilities, how fast you are., how
well you know your machine etc. And discussing the differences in terms of
the text-structure isn't a body-thing.
JC>you hit the letter on the typewriter harder and you get a darker
JC>letter (physicality can thus be read into the text)--or at least
how old is your typewriter? my last one, from the 70s, didn't make any
difference by such physical tries.
Msg#:17529 *FINE ART*
05-30-94 02:30:29
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: JENNY HOLZER
I liked the setting, it has an hypnotic quality that nailed me there for quite
a while. If anything what I didn't find so good is the moral connotation in
some of those phrases.
<*>Replies
Msg#:17533 *FINE ART*
05-30-94 08:21:32
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 17529 (JENNY HOLZER)
I always thought that the Holzer's texts were her strong point and the
presentation a gimick once it became electronic. I was quite bothered by the
bones downstairs, feeling it was gratidious. Sure Holzer needs to move beyond
the LED, but this was just too morbid for me. As for the works upstairs, it is
a stunning environment, but to the determent of the text.
Msg#:17601 *FINE ART*
05-30-94 18:59:16
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: INTERFACES
Response to message #17486 in (I)ntershop.
I wasn't aware that Habitat was the topic of part of Sandy Stone's talk at
Electrotecture as well. From the two times I've seen her, I think her work on
industrial design has some *very* nice moments -- evocative, critical,
engaging.
The cartoonish interface of Habitat really makes me regard it as just that -- a
caricature. Although it is important to acknowledge that the technologies are
in the early stages, and that they might develop into something more
substantial, I can't imagine being intrigued enough in that interface to get
involved. The rudimentary and infantile character representations are likewise
just uninteresting to me. Given the current tremendous interest in computer
games, however, it seems that there is at least some kind of potential here.
The problem that I have in general with the rhetoric that accompanies Habitat
and other "virtual worlds" is that they are often regarded as the *only*
manifestations of life in cyberspace. The largely computer-illiterate general
population is awestruck and amused by the novelty of projects like Habitat, but
they are often completely unaware that they themselves *already* exist in
virtual spaces. This obliviousness of course contributes heavily to the fact
that the politics of cyberspace continue to be swept under the carpet by
pundits of what often turn out to be online utopias.
The primary aspect of Sandra Braman's presentation that I found stimulating was
her work on economics; and the shift that she regards as necessary in order for
economics to be able to effectively deal with an information-based economy.
(Her paper was titled "Alternative Approaches to Economics In and Of
Cyberspace.") As others have also noted, and as I believe as well, the concept
of equilibrium is becoming more and more suspect as a model with which to
examine the economy -- if it *ever* was an effective model. Braman gave a nice
historical summary of various alternative approaches to equilibrium, as well as
a vigorous call for participation in defining an information-based world.
Msg#: 672 *FINE ART*
06-14-94 01:11:31
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: JUDD
O....! I want to read that. Haven't gotten hold of The Artforum yet. I already
wanted to go back to Judd's writing after you mentioned *his way* at the
meeting in Buenos Aires. You made it sound so funy! Of course I remember
struggling through his articles with no end in sight... Now, are you calling
this generation Fathers, why not? Make of them a dead father and there is the
tomb (memories) and the mark(deep in the "body") to ex-ist them.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 680 *FINE ART*
06-14-94 09:06:04
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 672 (JUDD)
That generation did want to be Fathers--they were somehow much more oedipal
than we are, don't you think? Frank Stella could be a supporting character in
a Nicholas Ray movie...
Msg#: 685 *FINE ART*
06-14-94 13:14:10
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 680 (JUDD)
Barry, I'm shocked! The only thing I would accuse Judd and others of his era
would be a lot less tact (less gloss, less in tune with making things seem
"nice") than younger artists. Really, I'm pressed of think of any artist that
writes that _doesn't_ attempt "self-justification" through what they write. I
do think that Judd wrote often muddled essays, that were often very tangential
to what the "subject" was intended to be. As far as being fathers, they were
offspring of the Ab. Ex.'s in particular Newman. Sure they will (if the
haven't already by making the same objects over and over) die off, and we'll
then wish for the death of who? Salle, Julian, and other slugs a more recent
generation with larger than life egos?
Msg#: 686 *FINE ART*
06-14-94 19:50:07
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 685 (JUDD)
Salle, Schnabel et al at least don't claim omniscience or pretend that
everything comes to end with THEM. That they're negligible artists is another
thing...
Msg#: 693 *FINE ART*
06-15-94 09:59:19
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 686 (JUDD)
Say what? How many times did the dynamic duo (Salle/Schnabel) claim to be the
greatest since sliced bread and/or sex. With Schnabel thinking (claiming) to
be Picasso (not the next, but THE article). Salle isn't (or wasn't) as brash
to claim the guise of Picasso, but I seem to recall that he did claim all but
that crown too. But besides that, neither made great art (nor did either
really write anyting - besides Schnabel's joke book CVJ.
Back to Judd. I never heard or read Judd claim to that "everything comes to
and end" with him. Sure Judd was very dogmatic and did claim, declare, his
work to be _important_, but never the end all. [That he was very supportive of
young artists, or little know artists always seems to be overlooked. Or that
he was a champion of artists such as John Wesley to Oldenburg (and Roni Horn).]
As I said when I opened this thread under the Art & Death title, what I miss
about Judd is his outright commitment to what he was doing (that notion of
"being true to oneself"). There was no middle ground with Judd, it was good or
it was crap. Sure it's not how one should live a complete well-rounded life,
but I do admire that drive. Ok he's dead and gone. The Guggenheim has to keep
people from sitting (!!) on his sculpture at the top of the 6th ramp (people
_are_ tired after climbing the ramps and _there's no place else to sit_). MOMA
is said to have to wipe lipstick from his works every so often. LACMA keeps a
scraweled sheet of paper on an Andre reading "Do not walk on the sculpture"
(it's not that the artist cares it's that LACMA can't insure themselves agains
people slipping and falling while standing on the work...)
In the end, what?
Msg#: 694 *FINE ART*
06-15-94 11:40:44
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 693 (JUDD)
That essay is just awful. Couldn't they have unearthed something better
for his last post? I approached it with an open mind, since I've never really
read anything of his, but after the first paragraph, in which he states "the
discussion of art is superstitious. There is no history", he launches into a
muddled, repetitive, contradictory rambling that refutes that statement and
many others--it becomes unbearably trite and childish, almost painful to read.
It amounts to a last-ditch staking out of territory by a man who has clearly
spent the last ten years with his head in a box.
"There has been almost no discussion of space in art, nor in the
present." Whoa! His text is peppered with such odd conflations and horribly
ill-informed notions; statements like this just stop you dead in your tracks as
you're trying to make a path through his logic, which belies at nearly every
step the work over which he stands guard. I kept thinking, *when was this
written?* since no date is indicated in the magazine; desperately looking for
something to achor it in time, so I could give it more slack--after all, it
must have been written quite some time ago!--I stopped dead when he quoted
Clinton. CLINTON?! the 90s! I nearly fell off my chair.
Nearly to the end, he suddenly realizes that he hasn't talked enough
about color, and since he talks so much about the dependency of color and form,
and color and space, and since "so much of this essay is about space"--*quelle
surprise!*--he proceeds, in the home stretch, to pack in delirious ramblings
about color, so completely unbearable that you have to slide through it,
stunned, mouth agape, and then... you're almost there and... it just *ends*
almost in mid-sentence, as if his pen or his Smith-Corona ran out of cadmium
red light. It's so bewildering that you inadvertently turn the page looking for
him. As Larry Bell informs us in his remembrance (for those who haven't read
it, the article is interspersed with remembrances by Serra, Bell, Paula Cooper,
Arne Glimcher, Wesley, Douglas Baxter, Rabinowitch, and Roni Horn, whose text
is so bafflingly inane that you have to just sit there and stare at it in utter
disbelief), he must be off "munching on some greasy pork sausage, of which
there was always an abundant supply around his house." For some strange
reason, it seems appropriate to think of Judd and meat. In his text, Bell tells
a story of one night in the '60s when they were having dinner together at Max's
Kansas City. Bell almost strangled on a piece of steak, and nearly knocked Judd
off his seat as he ran to the bathroom. "After relieving my plugged throat of
an obscence piece of meat," Bell returned to the table, "panting and quite
ashen of color." (RAL 6000 Patinagruen?) Sipping his whiskey, Judd slowly looks
up at him and says, "I told you I didn't like this place."
Msg#: 695 *FINE ART*
06-15-94 14:17:19
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 694 (JUDD)
Not to defend Judd's writing, but lighten up! For all of you who claimed that
minimalism was dead because it showed no signs of life, get a grip. Believe it
or not Judd though of his writing as an extention of his art - what the art
lacked in apparent content his writing tried to make it up. If he wanted to
talk about the war (pick one) he did it with his writing, not with his objects.
As you pointed out his writings were all over the place, subject is nowhere to
be found often because for him the subject was never a singular issue that was
_unrleated_ to everything else in his life. For "fun" read his "Stanza for
Panza" (if you can find a copy) which takes on the Count, the Guggenheim, MOMA,
the US Gov., etc.
The Horn piece in Artforum was a poem that she read at Judd's memorial service.
Don't you have anything critical to say about the Serra essay too?
Msg#: 706 *FINE ART*
06-16-94 21:55:26
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 695 (JUDD)
> Don't you just LOVE Focault?
> "Stanza for Panza" (if you can find a copy)
> makes my knees weak!
Msg#: 713 *FINE ART*
06-17-94 10:55:10
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 695 (JUDD)
Yikes! Horn's poetry is even worse than her writing.
Msg#: 744 *FINE ART*
06-20-94 07:45:13
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 713 (JUDD)
in Icelandic yet!
Msg#: 673 *FINE ART*
06-14-94 01:12:39
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: CHRIS KRAMER (Rcvd)
Subj: FRANCESCO CLEMENTE
No Art? I thought this was only a day, if something.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 674 *FINE ART*
06-14-94 01:14:12
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MICHAEL JOHNSTON (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 673 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
Thad bad?.... Anything that gets to reach the point of horror you describe
makes me suspicious already...
Msg#: 675 *FINE ART*
06-14-94 01:16:41
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 674 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
Those series of paperbacks are Vintage Books--Avedon Edtions. But we've also
seen Salle and Clemente together in shows like the Recent Survey at MOMA, 1984
. Salle appeared to me, also Fischl, as the American response to the Italian
transvanguardia, and to the Germans--Kieffer, Polke, and Salome--I think he was
Swiss, and the English--Fetting, and so on... 195 works, and 165 artists. How
many made it?
Msg#: 681 *FINE ART*
06-14-94 09:09:38
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 675 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
Salle and Fischl are like Clemente in that their background is really in
academicized (at least in the case of the Americans) conceptual work--photo
installations and all that--but they tried to turn toward "painting." But to
what extent is it possible to take their work seriously as painting?
Msg#: 684 *FINE ART*
06-14-94 12:06:47
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 681 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
guesses...poking around...no idea what really makes him go..I have one of his
little books on DeKooning quotes, cute thing..the man treads a fine line
between phantasmagoria and psychobabble, has his lucid moments, is a good
artist and a bad artist...at least he enjoys himself, missing ingredient in the
puritannical revels of high purpose and earnest declamation, making sure there
is the light of day between oneself and the abyss of schlock. Maybe that's it,
his going where angels fear to tread, beating schlock at its own game, but his
obsession with the mirror, seeing himself in everything, opposed to his
alchemical fascination, th albedo, rubedo, the cauda pavonis...moment of
transformation, transubstantiation, sublimation...Freud and Cocaine, the birth
of psychoanlysis, in a society undergoing psychoanalysis in reverse...the loft,
the lifestyle, displaced libido, fragmented ego ideal...chaos and
reintegration...spam!
Msg#: 688 *FINE ART*
06-14-94 23:17:18
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 673 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
> We are all busy people, there is so much in the day that
> competes for attention, that cries out for articulation.
> I have tremendous respect for his ability to flip the same
> basic idea over and over and over and over and over and keep
> on going with it
> Frankly I rather watch Mary Tyler Moore or some other drone
> TV late at night when I can't sleep
> What a paradox, I think I will have to go and make some art.
Msg#: 698 *FINE ART*
06-16-94 01:46:47
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: CHRIS KRAMER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 688 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
Mary Tyler is excellent for imsonia in the sense that she may put you to sleep.
But the next day, once you got to sleep enough, who wants to sit in front of
the Television to watch Mary Tyler? The next day you'd rather see a nice art
showÉ
You are going to make art?......
Msg#: 699 *FINE ART*
06-16-94 01:48:33
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 684 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
Morgan I'm amazed at the flow of your speech. Nice idea about Clemente being a
good and bad artist while enjoying himself. Also I like the question as to pose
to the work of an artist, what do you enjoy? Of course that famous word
"jouissance" may better do the job since it would as well include pain in that
enjoyment, even the enjoyment of pain. The mirror yes, it's obsession with
Clemente, talk about it in my article.
Msg#: 700 *FINE ART*
06-16-94 01:50:43
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 681 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
They tryed? Clemente and Fischl are two of the most proliferous painters you
can find. Also they both know how to draw--a natural gift? Let's say they are
talented as you may say of an artist like Cheri Samba... how seriously can you
take Cheri Samba, with a background in Zaire? I liked what Morgan said about
Clemente being sometimes a good artist and sometimes a bad one, but always
enjoying.
Msg#: 701 *FINE ART*
06-16-94 01:56:40
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 681 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
I can see the generation of Stella and Judd like Fathers, yes. Not Clemente and
Salle. Don't Stella and Judd go together with Oldenburgh, Andy Warhol, etc.
even if they are different, when the scene was America for the Americans.?
Clemente for instance is not "American born Italian," like De Kooning is
Clemente is the intruder, with the whole transavanguardia, Germans and so on.
What Clemente and Salle have in common is a *look*that has to do with
impatiency. Not Judd, he could scream out of a hang-over, but that's
different.
Msg#: 702 *FINE ART*
06-16-94 10:40:11
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 699 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
yes, what does one enjoy and what does one enjoin, where is the hand open
feeling the air rush between the fingers and where is the hand a closed fist.
What doeas one have the strength to grasp and hold on to and what does one have
the wisdom to release, to discharge from duty ? And the *anlage*, the inner
order, tendency, pull towards, blueprint of oneself ? How does one enjoy, or
enjoin this? The *drang*, the pushings against the wall, uterine contractions,
leakings outwards ?
Msg#: 705 *FINE ART*
06-16-94 21:53:34
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 698 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
> What? Pot shots and lame art?
> Painting functions as a stopping point within larger
> socio-cultural constructs fueled by the circulatory dynamics of
> the information economy.
> Once you strip off all the nebulous and mystifying discourse
> you're left with pigments on canvas.
> Hmm...cool...look at that...next please...
> The dominant question is how do we, co
> inhabitants of an intellectual sphere, arrive at that which
> matters, and distinguish it from the mental equivalent of potato
> peeling?
> Or maybe I'm just to young to find painting as an activity
> intresting. Next one please........
Msg#: 709 *FINE ART*
06-17-94 01:09:20
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 702 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
You are giving two examples. See already the beauty in the image of the open
hand... in its enjoin. Can we say that this image takes over, because of its
enjoin taking on futher meaning, thus enjoin you? Opposite to it, the closed
fist you enjoy, since there's no lust to it--in the way you write about it--no
enjoin?.
Did you make this word up? I'm already wanting to use it.
Msg#: 712 *FINE ART*
06-17-94 10:50:15
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: CHRIS KRAMER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 705 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
I love these things that you do! They're really wonderful.
Msg#: 715 *FINE ART*
06-17-94 11:33:09
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 709 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
no, *enjoin* has had a long usage in English. The legal term *injunction* is
related to it. It means (briefly) to bind or proscribe, or to require some
action. Authority is implied. Equals do not enjoin each other.
Msg#: 1252 *FINE ART*
07-06-94 23:37:34
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 712 (FRANCESCO CLEMENTE)
> And, I got a dog.
> Yours truly, Josef...we talk about the polish question later.
Msg#: 721 *FINE ART*
06-17-94 23:11:06
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: SABINE B. VOGEL
Subj: POP
> DP>"Gee, they should have stopped years ago" - almost as bad, they
> could
>
> that's something I just thought of Rauschenbergs work. god, how bad!
> works
> from '87 - '92. just nothing. sad. seems to be something which
> happens to
> most of the pop-art-artists. same with Wesselmann, Lichtenstein, Jim
> Dine,
> who all just recently showed their recent works in Germany. Now I
What you say is generally correct--except that Lichtenstein does not belong on
that list! He's had some tremendous lows in his career--but his most recent
work, the interiors, are a real culmination of his career so far, and I'd even
go so far as to say they could be the best work done in painting in the '90s.
Rosenquist has done good work since the mid-'80s too, though not as good as
Lichtenstein.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 731 *FINE ART*
06-18-94 16:29:35
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 721 (POP)
Lichtenstein's interiors--at Castelli: "Interior With Yves Klein Sculpture",
for instance, were absolutely lovelyÉ But Lichenstein is bound to compete with
himself. When at his retrospective--MOMA I stood looking at the drawings he was
doing in the 60' I found them so beautiful!.... Lets say that you have the
opportunity of choosing between one of these works and the interiors. What
would you do?
Msg#: 732 *FINE ART*
06-18-94 16:33:17
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 731 (POP)
The retaining of the feeling outside--the coming back from the other in your
equation--is what I like. But what would be the case when it comes to the
gerund--present participle? Enjoying leaves things out.
Msg#: 735 *FINE ART*
06-18-94 21:03:08
From: SKIP SNOW
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 721 (POP)
You must be kidding.
Msg#: 745 *FINE ART*
06-20-94 08:11:12
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 721 (POP)
Lichtenstein is capable of a fierce wit ( I Can See The Whole Room And There's
Nobody In It ) a decent sense of craft, and a strong reading of his culture.
All the same, seeing his retrospective was a tedious and depressing experience.
Along with his virtues comes a banal, grinding vacuity that had me reaching for
the Elavil. It took days to shake the morosity that clung to me like a plastic
wrapping after seeing that show. Why ? I wondered. Seeing the individual piece
here and there had a refreshing clarity, bright and stripped to essentials. A
spot free of the murk of life, a Dick Van Dyke show, smoking a joint while
driving a stolen Mercedes Benz (the expensive model) over a cliff into the
Pacific Ocean on a beautiful Summer day and swimming free as the carcass
burbles to the seabed. But seeing them all together, lifestyle props stenciled
with boring intellectual comedy, their diluted sense of purpose and necessity,
I was transported instead to a smelly destruction derby, or maybe even more to
the point, the scene in Herzog's *Even Dwarves Started Small* where a car is
roped to a pole and all owed to drive itself around and around until it runs
out of gas, and is eventually thrown down a cistern. A bouquet of nipples
exploding in the martian sunset.
Msg#: 756 *FINE ART*
06-22-94 02:59:51
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: NEW ART MARKET
Under the headline "A New Art Market," art commentator Carol Vogel reports in
the June 10th issue of The New York Times of QVC's (the home shopping
television channel) new program "Gallery Direct," and describes it as being
aimed at "serious art collectors." In its debut broadcast photographs of
Marilyn Monroe by photographer Bert Stern were offered and "television viewers
shopped with a vengeance." QVC's senior vice president of merchandising is
quoted as saying that "there's a real market for it. Art is our future." More
than 175 prints of photos taken 6 weeks before Marilyn's death were sold in a
two-minute spot (price range $380 to $7,900).
I wonder how long it will take for Warhols and Lichtensteins, and so on, to
show up on that circuit. Isn't that the _ultimate_ medium for the marketing
of art objects. Faster than the galleries, but still "show and sell."
<*>Replies
Msg#: 758 *FINE ART*
06-22-94 10:27:33
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 756 (NEW ART MARKET)
I would contend that anything that can be sold in your local mall can be sold
on TV. With all those Martin Lawrence Galleries splattered all around America,
it makes perfect sense that QVC would begin to sell Warhol too - the question
though is how long will it take until what's sold on QVC goes beyond what
people are already familiar with (Marilyn or Andy). Will QVC take to time to
educate their new found "art market"?
Msg#: 759 *FINE ART*
06-22-94 12:11:25
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 756 (NEW ART MARKET)
this will work with a certain type of collector, and a certain kind of art, the
kind that deserve each other.
Msg#: 760 *FINE ART*
06-22-94 12:17:00
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 758 (NEW ART MARKET)
you noticed how the Warhol estate is embroiled in litigation and on the verge
of financial collapse ? The deadly side effect of telemarketing is that art
will now be in a perpetual auction market. All the cachet, the price justifying
smoke and mirrors of mythology maintenance, and other essential falsifications
of the sausage machine will arrive at the level Karl marx described as "the
second time around, a farce". There is beauty in this too, I don't see why the
fine and excellent could not be exposed to the public in the same way?
Msg#: 762 *FINE ART*
06-22-94 13:33:03
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 760 (NEW ART MARKET)
I hope we get to a point (once again) where when we (the public) doesn't look
at art and only see $$ and before asking what the title is what it's worth.
Msg#: 763 *FINE ART*
06-22-94 15:11:29
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 759 (NEW ART MARKET)
What certain kind of collector and what certain kind of art are you thinking
of, Morgan?
Msg#: 764 *FINE ART*
06-22-94 15:29:41
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 758 (NEW ART MARKET)
They have to produce and release some Hollywood art/artists movies first, then
market the product... you know, the Batman-Flyntstone strategy. Isn't Schnabel
already on the case? Theo Altenberg, the former Culture Minister of Otto Muehl
(the Austrian actionist/artist/commune leader) is producing a movie with Albert
Oehlen in the role of Hilter (would be a very strange marketing strategy, I
must say). And isn't Salle doing it? And who else?
Msg#: 765 *FINE ART*
06-22-94 16:04:06
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 764 (NEW ART MARKET)
G, I beg to differ! Hollywood is littered with "artworld" movies that had
market potential. I list some below that come to mind:
9 1/2 Weeks Kim B. as an art dealer Legal Eagles D.
Hanna as artist Body of Evidence Madonna as art dealer 6 Deg. of
Seperation Art collectors chat about Kandinsky Lust for Life Kirk
Douglas as van Gough Batman (I) Kim B. as photographer Gorillas in
the Mist Produced by Arne G. (but w/o art) [untitled] new movie
being filmed by Arne G. [untitled] new movie being filmed by
Julian S. [untitled] new movie being filmed by David S. [untitled]
[? new movie being filmed by Robert Longo] Arena Brains by Robert
Longo Love Boat guest star was Andy Warhol Stand By Me
plot twist at the Guggenheim Hanna and Her Sisters major character was a
painter L.A. Stories steve martin skates in LACMA New York Stories
Nick Noltie as artist [forgot the title] with Dennis Hopper and Jodie
Foster (who is an artist
a la Jenny Holzer...)
Msg#: 769 *FINE ART*
06-23-94 07:29:37
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 765 (NEW ART MARKET)
a generic cool activity to do in big cities and be cultured...
Msg#: 772 *FINE ART*
06-23-94 10:59:54
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 765 (NEW ART MARKET)
Do you actually keep records of this kind of thing?
Msg#: 773 *FINE ART*
06-23-94 11:17:44
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 756 (NEW ART MARKET)
Would anyone like to do a video of a QVC prototype? We could do it as a Thing
project, for public tv. We can do it as a talk show, or just endorsements,
bring on some artists, critics. Could be lots of fun. I'd like to be a Bob
Barker-like host, with a hairsprayed wig. We can have bad hand models caress
and fondle the artworks. Frantic call-in testimonies.
Msg#: 774 *FINE ART*
06-23-94 11:42:10
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 772 (NEW ART MARKET)
Well, yes and no. Susan (my wife) and I do keep mental notes about the movies
we see that have an art twist to them. Mostly we like to see just how dumb the
artworld look when reflected through Hollywood. I seem to have forgotten that
art was involved in two of the Beverly Hills Cop movies (Ed's girlfriend in
first movie worked in a gallery - in the second [which I didn't see] I think
there was an evil gallery owner]). Also a J. Irons movie has a sequence that
included a crazed artist that makes surigical instruments for Irons (Irons
plays twins...can't recall title...).
Anyhow, with the right movie I'm sure there would be art marketing bonazzas.
Maybe someting like the Mark Kostabi Story (my fictional horror movie) or one
of the Jackson Pollock movies said to be in production...
Msg#: 777 *FINE ART*
06-23-94 12:34:59
From: CLAIRE JERVERT
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 773 (NEW ART MARKET)
Love your idea for a QVC prototype with hands caressing the art works. Makes
me all tingley - just a thought. I don't do video, but photo stills of TV
recontextualized. Could be my next piece. Ha Ha.
Msg#: 782 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 10:21:54
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 774 (NEW ART MARKET)
"art", the mass idea of art, vs. specific art, must have piles of archetypical
resonances tha Jung would be fascinated with. I think there is a archetype
called "The Magical Realm", loosely related to one called "The Herb Of
Immortality" (that gets constellated in much psychological drug addiction
behavior). This Magical Realm has a lot of Eden business going for it..a place
of pure freedom, of the pure expression of oneself, transcending mortal
problems, never being bored, always fulfilled and psychically rich and
enriching. Of course Heavens have their Lucifers ( as the art dealer in Beverly
Hills Cop 2 ) or else they become static. An old Catholic buddy, Brother George
Searles, feels that Lucifer is an essential figure, for without him, no
struggle, ro religion.
And "Art" is a powerful attractor of religious impulses today as it often
was for sexual impulses whenj religion held the high ground. During the Great
Depression so many movies were made depicting a world free of economic stress,
an escape place for miserable people. Perhaps in our fantasises we can offer
"Art" as a place to escape from the depersonalization and regimentation of
common life?
Msg#: 783 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 10:26:01
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 773 (NEW ART MARKET)
I really like this idea...its so info-kinky...maybe we can find a double knit
polyester leisure suit with contrast stitching..This is fantastic...we really
should do it..worse than just corny...appalling...but well enough
produced...the crappiest art we can find!! A MUST!!!
Msg#: 785 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 11:51:34
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 783 (NEW ART MARKET)
Yes, and the most lurid colors! I think it would be great. I talked to someone
about it who said that he knows someone, the night bartender at Jerry's, who
does a public tv thing and is always looking for new stuff. Also this guy was
over here the other day who does a thing called 'gallery beat' where he goes to
galleries with a hand-held camera. He seems to have the sensibility that would
love it, and help us get on too. Somebody else said that we would have no
problem at all getting a half hour on.
We could have the most god-awful stuff fondled and fawned upon, but
also good stuff that most people wouldn't think was good. We could have Karen
Kilimnik do something and interview her. She would be great. The whole thing
would be so corny, so over the top, that it would be good performance art. Lots
of people could come on in cameos. There's an enormous pool of good young
talent who would really get into it. The great thing about it is that it would
be artists appropriating this structure, and turning it around.
Msg#: 786 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 12:16:25
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 783 (NEW ART MARKET)
It reminds me of one of the "Potatoe Wolf" cable TV shows - or was it the
"After Art" television journal by Wolfgang and some friends? - a monthly
public access TV series produced by Collaborative Project artists in the early
80's. One of the artists, Jo Shane, offered in a 5-min. clip two
retro-futuristic art objects, which could also function as coffee table and
space devider screen. The elegant host, the seductive voice, the dramatic
lighting and, most of all, the very well written script - I think it was by
Blackhack - turned rather crappy stage props into the ultimate object of
desire. Have to look at the tapes again!
But now, artists like Longo, Schnabel, Salle, Oehlen (see David's list)
represented top galleries (Metro Pictures, Pace, Gagosian, Hetzler,...) turn
to Hollywood and QVC turns to art. Could be a combination where art gets
marketed as memorabilia, rather than just being stage props. No?
Msg#: 788 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 12:21:24
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 782 (NEW ART MARKET)
Not to take a tangent that's so far from the tree that we're no longer on the
topic of the "new art market", but...it is said that art should aspire to the
highest ideal(s) of the times and thus certain "isms" work wonderfully for the
moments in which they were crafted. Ab. Exp-ism was about the chaos of the end
of the 40s and the new stability of the early 50s. Pop was reaction to the
calm of the 50s and 60s. Conceptual/Minimal about the dullness of the 60s/70s
and Neo Geo about fast consumerism of the 80s. Its all so neat and tied (and
very simplistic! Smirk.) But about the "new art market" - the problem is if
art is a reaction to the moment, then it's only going to be understood by the
masses as reactionary and absorbed in retrospect. Besides, could you see QVC
selling anything that doesn't have some sort of star qualtiy of anything beyond
National Enquirer status?
Msg#: 789 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 12:22:10
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 783 (NEW ART MARKET)
Mark Kostabi is waiting.
Msg#: 790 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 12:22:55
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 785 (NEW ART MARKET)
Mark Kostabi is still waiting.
Msg#: 791 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 12:29:31
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 786 (NEW ART MARKET)
I don't think these guys (Julian, Robert, David, etc.) will be the breakthrough
men to make art for QVC. We'll have to wait for people who make art _for_ that
medium. People that understand that there has to be a popular twist to what
they make in order to meet that market. Remember that QVC does something like
$100,000 in sales per minute, not only is that huge turnover, but large
understanding of what is being sold. People understand clothing, scents,
knives, and all that other jazz thats being sold on QVC just as they understand
Marilyn Monroe (which is what they were selling) - that it was "art" that was
the so called medium (support surface) is very secondary to the picture.
Msg#: 797 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 16:42:42
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 785 (NEW ART MARKET)
RIGHTEOUS!!!!
Msg#: 798 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 16:43:08
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 790 (NEW ART MARKET)
thanx but no thanx
Msg#: 799 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 16:44:36
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 786 (NEW ART MARKET)
the possibilities sound very tempting...deliciously trashy
Msg#: 800 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 16:46:01
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 785 (NEW ART MARKET)
glorious mediocrity...how pretty...how nice
Msg#: 809 *FINE ART*
06-25-94 11:15:30
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 788 (NEW ART MARKET)
on further thought about what you are saying here...there is a great
convergence at work, and marketing strategy is what it is all about. Basquiat,
in my humble opinion, was an atrocious, wretchedly bad artist, as was Warhol.
Both however, had their moments when they expressed a social essentiality,
Warhol with his exploration of voyeurism and sadism in the Disaster series, and
Basquiat with cultural "nigger fascination". The areas they open up are not so
easy to deal with in the clean and pretty, so they have to de o so delicately
waltzed around. But still, Warhol and Basquiat worked exquisitely with the
marketing system, so Gagosianable. The hunger for defanged exotica is great,
and that is central to the art marketing paradigm. Lower down the totem pole
your market will require recapitulations of the familiar, John Wayne plates,
Elvis and Jesus knick knacks, posters of cars and sophomoric mythic episodes,
like silicone inflated Barbie(r) Dolls brandishing swords and flying on winged
horses is the service of Rumplemintz(r) (blech) schnapps and all the
glorification of nothingness. The Kostaboids of the world, LeRoy Neiman, Peter
Max (has anyone examined the phallic implications of this dudes moniker?),
attempt to work, with varying success, the blurry zone between these two
worlds. But, i betcha, that's where the convergence is taking place, the
netherworld of haut-crapola.
Msg#: 810 *FINE ART*
06-25-94 12:21:31
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 809 (NEW ART MARKET)
One of the best art show that I never saw but was presented was the LeRoy
Neiman/Andy Warhol show at LA ICA (I think around 1981). I will forever be
kicking myself for not seeing it and worse yet not getting the catalogue.
Along the same lines was a wonderful (horid) interview with Andy walking
through the John Singer Sargent show at the Whitney around 1986.
I think your on to something though I think it was what Warhol too recognized,
that stars sell and superstars sell even better. Maybe the best star being a
dead one.
Msg#: 813 *FINE ART*
06-25-94 14:59:18
From: TOM THULEN
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 809 (NEW ART MARKET)
IT SEEMS, UNFORTUNATELY, THAT TALENT TAKES A BACK SEAT TO WHO YOU KNOW. BRIGHT
COLORS, A SNAPPY TITLE AND A GOOD MARKETER.
Msg#: 814 *FINE ART*
06-25-94 18:17:27
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: TOM THULEN (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 813 (NEW ART MARKET)
Its a game that has levels; glamour, contacts, incessant schmoozing, a capacity
for emotional artificiality, a certain gift for guaging public response,
skills, in other words, but probably not the ones you value.
Msg#: 829 *FINE ART*
06-27-94 15:57:05
From: CAROL BROAD
To: TOM THULEN (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 813 (NEW ART MARKET)
IS THAT WHY YOU ARE WRITING IN HEADLINES?
Msg#: 837 *FINE ART*
06-29-94 10:31:42
From: TOM THULEN
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 829 (NEW ART MARKET)
No, my caps lock key just happened to be engaged.
Msg#: 843 *FINE ART*
06-29-94 16:40:33
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 837 (NEW ART MARKET)
The Knowledge Navigator is back, this time for real!
The article "Japanese Put a Human Face on Computers" by Andrew Pollack in
yesterday's New York Times says that "driving the move toward using the _face_
as the interface is the development of so-called agents, which are computer
programs designed to act as personal assistants. While existing agents now
possess only primitive abilities, in the future it is envisioned that they will
be able to act on their own, fetching data from a database, sifting through a
person's electonic mail for important messages and arranging appointments. It
would be only natural for such a human-like assistant to be given a
personality by having a face, perhaps of the user's favorite actress or
actor,..."
Terrifying, but...
Now, the _NEW NEW_ art market will probably more look like that: the
digitalized favorite face one selects is searching databases for electronic art
(or art objects, but who needs all those clunky things)... according to your
taste buds or maybe adjusted to the franchised taste buds of Madonna or Larry
Gagosian or you name it. Or, it is collecting databases which are art, like the
electronic version of the "Museum for the Future" Archive, for example. Buying
and selling is via digital money and the face gets some liberty of doing so
autonomously for lower price items. Of course, if you want to do your own
shopping, you will also encounter one of those perfect _faces_ as sales
persons, instead of having to deal with the rather unsuccessfully altered
monstrous looking real face of a Joan Rivers.
Is _this_ the ultimate medium for art (or its Fine?)?
Msg#: 856 *FINE ART*
06-30-94 10:26:08
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 843 (NEW ART MARKET)
even stranger, but of medical value, is a tool now being introduced to
anaesthesiology, called a "face". A camera scans the face of the patient,w ho
during surgery has to be brought into a state resembling a controlled coma. As
a result, the facial expressions of the typical patient are minute compared to
what they would be in a normal, waking state person. However, even under
anaesthesia, ones face does display an number of microexpressions, very subtle
echos of normal grimaces, smiles, and so forth. As an aid to understanding if
the patient is adequately medicated, undermedicated, or approaching a critical
level of overmedication
Msg#: 857 *FINE ART*
06-30-94 10:29:26
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 843 (NEW ART MARKET)
I'm not so sure that we'll see digital art as you described anytime soon.
Video, which was claimed to be the medium of the moment (since the early 70s)
just has never tookoff from a sales point of view. What it did spawn was
Stupid Pet Tricks, that's about it. [Wegman was a hit on early Letterman
shows, and the rest is history.] People expect art to have physical properties
(touch and feel) it's all part of that nasty craft aspect aspect of art.
Someday the technology will catch up and we will have those wall screenes that
we can project our art upon (taken (bought or rented) from art databanks). In
the meantime people will have to change their preceptions about what they
expect from art. It would be a sad day when this cool technology becomes just
another way to splash beer posters in teenagers rooms, or lame reprints of
Michael Heizer paintings (one of the most popular art posters) over the bed.
Msg#: 859 *FINE ART*
06-30-94 10:33:46
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 856 (NEW ART MARKET)
continuation of last post...so a computer analyses the subtle facial
expressions from the patient, and amplifies them thousands of times, and the
operator of the anaesthetic supply watches the virtual face for signs of pain,
comfort, or blankness (that might indicated overdosage). This technique
promises to reduce error vastly, and hopefully promote higher recovery rates
without post-op complications. From the standpoint of all and everything, it
means that there is better face generating stuff out there, and good
pseudo-face are undoubtedly right around the corner. The impact on the young
will be incredible, a whole shift in socialization processes, and art will have
to make use of it as well. Instead of sculptures or paintings, artists will
program personalities. Instead of owning a DeKooning, get DeKooning, and when
he gets to drunk, hit Alt-F4.
Msg#: 866 *FINE ART*
06-30-94 13:14:54
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 859 (NEW ART MARKET)
Drunk DeKooning? Hit CTRL+ALT+DEL. [Someone should have done this 10 years
ago.]
Msg#: 874 *FINE ART*
06-30-94 15:30:26
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 866 (NEW ART MARKET)
har! give 'em the boot.
Msg#: 876 *FINE ART*
06-30-94 16:01:41
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 859 (NEW ART MARKET)
Remember the "Average President" or the "Average American Beauty," digitized
faces by artist Nancy Burson? She made a series of works in the mid 80's were
she superimposed for example four presidents' faces (Kennedy, Reagan,
blahblahblah, forgot) or four American beauties' (Marylin Monroe, Liz Taylor,
and so on), with very stunning results. According to tests in Japan (again),
"average" facial features seem to be an important characteristic for beauty,
there at least. This and a beautiful (average?) voice will probably be very
important when it comes to electronic corporate representatives and sales
people, while personal agents we were talking about earlier might look wild and
crazy. How would yours look like , Morgan?
Msg#: 890 *FINE ART*
07-01-94 00:28:54
From: STEPHEN PUSEY
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 876 (NEW ART MARKET)
This brings to mind the dilemma of our nomadic salesman awhile back in the
Intershop forum. It occurred to me at the time that a tech wiz salesman would
just slip one of them new-fangled soft agents into the system and off it would
go, bouncing around the net, making his deals and interviews, perhaps even
creating some necessity for insurance on the way. Imagine, he could also
endow this agent with his own personality, creating a virtual doppleganger,
add his portfolio too and have the whole package pop out of hypertext messages
like some evangelical born-again Max Headroom. It would be logical for this
virtual Insurance Agent to spawn clones of itself and automatically despatch
them to more addresses, eventually to reappear on the original salesman's
notebook while he is sunning himself on a porch in Port Antonio, Jamaica,
replete with ganja spliff and politely inform him that he has now been made
totally redundant; also that his Smart house has been infiltrated by a virus
(a little extension of the agent) and is in danger of exploding within ten
days, but taking out a hefty new insurance policy might just avert (but
certainly cover) such a calamity. All this related by an amiable, optimistic,
digital head and shoulders, radiating beneficence. The Ultra Salesman with
your best interest at heart. "We know what's good for you and we are going to
ensure you buy it."
Actually, these agents are already in employ; I believe Microsoft's
"Intellisense" packaged with Word 6.0 is a type of soft-ware agent. What
interests me is their latent possibilities as art forms. If they can retrieve
they can deliver. Imagine an agent which was programmed with "emotions". Its
interaction with your responses would be essentially unstable. It might even
take offense and demonstrate its ill humour by showing you something rather
unpleasant. Or reward your wit with visual or informational riches that it
had acquired on its wanderings around the Net. Its visual repertoire would
encompass all the achievements of humankind, from its most horrific and brutal
acts to its greatest and sublime creations. It would therefore be capable of
frightening you to death or transporting you to rapturous ecstasy, depending
on its whim and the swing of the dialogue. Through this interaction you may
glean an understanding of the cosmos and the cultural dimensions that you are
heir to. Don an electrode headband/VR helmet and the whole of history could
be delivered with such emotive impact that (given that your cerebrum is not
utterly frazzled at this point) all of time becomes equivalent to the
sensations of the present. A "Slaughter House Five" syndrome of parallel
realities experienced simultaneously. And your worst media nightmare: while
you are twitching on your ergonomic couch in the throes of virtual
experiences, your agent companion may be planting subliminal messages in your
central cortex, compulsive desires for certain commodities, surreptitiously
creating the model consumer. Then of course you might wonder, if you still
could, who is served by this interaction, who and what is being fashioned and
by whom.
Msg#: 904 *FINE ART*
07-01-94 13:11:26
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 876 (NEW ART MARKET)
I'd morph Michaelangelo's Moses with Don Knotts and give it a Japenese accent
with some Togolese inflections...
Msg#: 905 *FINE ART*
07-01-94 13:15:25
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: STEPHEN PUSEY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 890 (NEW ART MARKET)
I used to hallucinate events like the ones you propose here. Are we moving in
the direction of hallucinatory reality, where tripping is more real than the
real...like artificial flavors tasting so much more like the foods they are
intended to resemble (in a gross, chem-lab way) that the real things taste off
flavor and alien?
Msg#: 929 *FINE ART*
06-26-94 07:15:00
From: FELIX BERNOULLY
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 905 (NEW ART MARKET)
> [forgot the title] with Dennis Hopper and Jodie Foster (who is an
> artist a la Jenny Holzer...)
christ! can't (won't) remember the title either.
made my VCR smell for a week!
btw the "artwork" stuff they used _was_ J.H. AFAI remember
Msg#: 1303 *FINE ART*
07-07-94 19:48:02
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 843 (NEW ART MARKET)
I would like to introduce the Parangole, created by the late Brazilian
artist Helio Oiticica, and some related ideas. He is an artist quite unknown in
this country, whose work is very relevant to our concerns here on TT. I offer
it as a constructive possibility for discussion.
"The creation of the [Parangole] raised not only the question of
considering a 'cycle of participation' in the work, i.e., that the spectator
both 'watches' it and 'wears' it as part of a complete vision, but also of
tackling the problem of the work in space and time--as if it were no longer
'located' in relation to these phenomena, but a 'magical experience' of them."
(Helio Oiticica)
The Parangole is a soft, wearable structure that resembles a tent,
banner, or cape, made of layers of brighly-colored material that moves with the
body and reveals itself in the act of movement. It necessitates direct
corporeal participation, requiring that the body moves, walks, dances. Weaving
together Oiticica's sense of color-structure, socio-environmental structure,
poetics, dance, and textuality, the Parangole initiates a relation between
watching and wearing, action and passivity, embodiment and environment, forming
a "cycle of participation" in the work that becomes the work. The Parangole is
embodied "structure-action": the relation between movement and structure,
visible in terms of the body or bodies and in the social networks that they
inhabit--indeed, in the *processes of inhabiting* social space.
The Parangole, then, does not exist as an object, but constitutes a
fluid, mediating element, through which one seeks to uncover the "direct
perceptive moulding" of socio-
environmental structure--"structure-action" in space. Its form is not resolute
but wavering, held in tension, poised at the divisions of "inter-corporeal"
space, whose mechanics and dynamics it reveals, however fleetingly, like the
soft rush of a shadowy figure as it crosses the periphery of vision.
The Parangole is not synthetic, but marks a kind of resistance: as
Oiticica writes, it appropriates its "objective-constituent elements upon
embodying itself, upon forming itself in its realization." Operating as a
permeable, networked border, connected through feedback-fields and existing in
terms of them, it both translates and is formed by, following Walter Benjamin,
the "untranslatable"--the resistant elements of translation. That which
"resists" translation forms the textual surface (language); that which allows
translation--that which passes through and dissolves the textual surface--forms
the exchange-relation (economy). The surface of the Parangole, then,
constitutes what I call a translate: a surface that hovers in tension between,
a boundary simultaneously located and blurred.
Establishing "perceptive-structural relations" between body-movement
and environmental structure, the Parangole, correspondingly, relates speech to
language. As Michel de Certeau suggests in his formulation of the "pedestrian
speech act," the act of walking is to the environmental system what the speech
act is to language. Weaving a "space of enunciation," the Parangole establishes
a "mobile organicity" in the environment, a sequence of phatic *topoi*. It is
useful then, to consider its function in the relation between physical and
informational space--"real" space and "virtual" space--and in the construction
of the subjective, social, and environmental conditions of cyberspace. In this
sense the Parangole can also mediate a traversal of corporeal space and
information space (an interstitial, inter-corporeal space), as it does with the
relationships among embodied subjects and the structures of objective
relations, the self and the other, the social and the environmental.
In telecommunicational space, the Parangole can operate as a mobile
interface, allowing an extended subjectivity--mediating relation between
embodiment and its associated "I." The static idea of the interfacial surface,
or what Rainer Ganahl calls the interfacial passage, cedes to a flowing,
relativized, translate: the unified surface is made disjunct, cascading in
folds like Benjamin's royal robe, spilling out into the cloth of the Parangole,
while simultaneously whisked back in, held in dynamic tension, oscillating
between real and constructed space, allowing passage while foregrounding the
hybridity and contradictoriness of same. In this sense the Parangole pulls one
through the computer window--or rather, pulls associated subjectivity from the
body--and positions an alternate site of agency or point of view (POV) within
the telecommunicational environment, which interpenetrates with the "real" one.
Movement of this POV, agent-icon, or extended subjectivity constitutes a kind
of walking-speech, a process very suggestive within the context of
object-oriented telecommunicational worlds such as MUDs or MOOs, as such
environments are built through discursive codes: one walks by typing (saying)
that one is walking, and other participants connected to such an environment
"watch" one walking by reading that statement, which activizes/produces the
movement.
"If it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities
(e.g., by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall
that prevents one from going further), then the walker actualizes some of these
possibilities. In that way, s/he makes them exist as well as emerge. But s/he
also moves them about and...invents others, since the crossing, drifting away,
or improvisation of walking privilege, transform, or abandon spatial
elements...In the framework of enunciation, the walker constitutes, in relation
to his/her position, both a near and a far, a *here* and a *there*. To the fact
that the adverbs *here* and *there* are the indicators of the locutionary seat
in verbal communication...we must add that this location (here--there)
(necessarily implied by walking and indicative of a present appropriation of
space by an 'I') also has the function of introducing an other in relation to
this 'I' and of thus establishing a conjunctive and disjunctive articulation of
places..." (Michel de Certeau) [feminine pronouns added]
A layered Parangole effect is produced, generating what Oiticica called a
"collective-participation Parangole": a totality of inter-corporeal space,
within which the work unfolds, which constitutes it and of which it is
constitutive. Watching becomes wearing becomes watching becomes wearing, a
cyclical, configurative network, generating "intermediate phases" of
"watching-wearing": donning a Parangole, the subject sees a self or an"other,"
dressed in another work, and so on, a stacking or windowing of subject-object
relations. The body moves within the Parangole moves within environment moves
within environment: between the embodied subject, walking-speech, "architecture
parlante" (Ledoux) and the objects within, emerge complex biological feedback
loops, which criss-cross the borders of "real" and constructed spaces, weaving
a liminal inter-
corporeality.
Msg#: 1335 *FINE ART*
07-08-94 12:15:15
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1303 (NEW ART MARKET)
you should mention this to Calvin Klein
Msg#: 1359 *FINE ART*
07-08-94 18:42:34
From: TOM THULEN
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1335 (NEW ART MARKET)
IT SOUNDS LIKE THERE'S TO MUCH MATERIAL INVOLVED FOR C.K.
Msg#: 1376 *FINE ART*
07-08-94 22:23:05
From: COLIN GOLDBERG
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1303 (NEW ART MARKET)
is the art in the concept or the explanation ? Has art like this provided
fodder for the Morley Safers of the world ? It seems that there is so much
intellectual intention here , that the art becomes isolated from the viewer,
buffered by philosophy, so to speak. Designer philosophy. I bet I could
construct an entire rhetoric on the weathering processes used to age Ralph
Lauren clothing (simulated coffee stains ?!) but would it be any less or more
legitimate ? Curious.
Msg#: 1407 *FINE ART*
07-09-94 12:42:13
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: COLIN GOLDBERG (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1376 (NEW ART MARKET)
> Designer philosophy. I bet I could construct an entire rhetoric on
> the weathering processes used to age Ralph Lauren clothing
> (simulated coffee stains ?!) but would it be any less or more
> legitimate ? Curious.
Of course it would be as legitimate. It's a matter of taking the time to think
about it. However if you apply it to fashion, then you *do* have "designer
philosophy." If you apply it to art, then you have something else: your
intention is to get beyond those surface mechanisms into something deeper. The
"weathering process" can yield a wealth of material, for its speaks of the
mechanisms of time and the nostaglia industry, the compression of history into
product, techniques of advertising and of the body (to "fit" the clothes),
etc., etc. It's a matter of taking the time to do it and wanting to do it.
Wanting to do this does not feed the Morley Safers of the world--it's not
wanting to do it that does. To reduce what I'm talking about to Calvin Klein or
Ralph Lauren style (without using the techniques of style in terms of art) is
Saferesque and lazy and undermines our own reasons for artmaking. On The Thing
we have the opportunity to develop substantive work beyond this--our work can
be among the best, forging new pathways across the real- and info- spaces
particular to our moment. If we choose to talk about R.L. or C.K. or
Lichtenstein or Salle like we do then we are not doing anything significant at
all.
Msg#: 1410 *FINE ART*
07-09-94 12:55:28
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: TOM THULEN (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1359 (NEW ART MARKET)
designer philosophy; exactly. Often in reality infomercial patter disguised as
neutral observation. Always keep in mind that academia is, among many other
things, an industry, and the only product it has are ideas. This leads to a
perversity...new (or new seeming, new sounding) concepts must be continuously
manufactured and marketed in order to give a patina of legitimacy to what would
otherwise be mental wheel spinning. Not that good work is impossible, as is
also the case with the arts proper. It is simply that it isn't enough that the
conceptualization or the art be good, it must be marketable, and infused with
the aroma of a fascinating personality behind it; a dash of guru, a pinch of
existential hero, mildly notable sartorial panache, an instinct for the correct
controversy+ a speck of righteous rage (when called for), often a somewhat
doughy and convictionless center plastered over with the fashionabilities of
the moment... in short, a good sales rep for the product. Now, keep in mind a
product, the benefits of which are far from immediately obvious, will need a
keen advocate, a comforting and confident sophist, bland and accomplished, to
make its immanent merits discernable to the insecure and unwashed. Voila!
Swarms of PhD.s in non-remunerative disciplines, getting soft around the edges
and looking down a dark passage to a day job bagging groceries at the
D'Agostino's, find a convenient niche (and a degree of shelter from a
repulsively grubby and unread world that could give two damns for Derrida and
all his clones) flakking the genius of the hour. Even Bernard Berenson, once
considered above reproach, is now known to have abbetted many a forgery passed
off by Duveen, the greatest art dealer of his day (and the conduit by which
much of the major paintings in New York came to be here... and by major I am
not talking about Julian Schnabel or anything with nuking distance of him). For
my next piece, I am having contact lenses manufactured with dollar signs on
them, surely they will be all the rage...
Msg#: 1412 *FINE ART*
07-09-94 13:11:18
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1407 (NEW ART MARKET)
of course, you are right in your own way, and make a cogent counterpoint to my
grouchy polemic, however, its how you talk about (and unpack the conceptual
life of what you've got under the microscope) any designer, or art that makes
the difference. Nostalgia can be seen as a desire to protect and appreciate the
excellences of the past, or it can be an infantile clinging to a secure memory
of how good it was, way back then. The fascination with Lichtenstein can be an
identification with America at its imperial hight, that brief moment before we
began to sink under the weight of our contradictions. Roy (the king) offers the
cheeziest possible Eden, an immaculate tackiness free of all care. The question
might be, why do people buy into this vision with so little reflection ?
Perhaps for the same reason that a celebrity that one knows next to nothing
about is preferable to the gnarly old dude that lives in your broomcloset.
Blonsky went into this at some length, the Vanna phenomenon, the public need
for a blank screen to project its contents onto.
Msg#: 1414 *FINE ART*
07-09-94 13:22:06
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1410 (NEW ART MARKET)
Holy Ayn Rand lenses!
Morgan, your argument as usual is very seductive and you score many
punches. But if you stand back from it a bit it's another story. If this is
indeed how you picture it, then what alternative do you propose (besides
burying art altogether)? Is art to somehow hover heavenlike outside the market
mechanisms?
And for whom are the dollar-sign lenses intended?
Msg#: 1416 *FINE ART*
07-09-94 13:43:45
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1412 (NEW ART MARKET)
Yes, precisely, it's how you talk about it that makes a difference. But the
*how* of talking about it, in that indepth way, is a kind of artmaking, an
employing of art's investigative mechanisms into the production of meaning. In
this way, art is a way of uncovering the *social relationships* that comprise
the fetish object, that, following Marx, it obscures.
Msg#: 1430 *FINE ART*
07-09-94 17:08:35
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1416 (NEW ART MARKET)
Quite complex, the fetish object obscures in as much as it shines--Freud talks
of this shine of the fetish. But I want to follow your thought... Are you
saying that the social relationships comprise a hole that the *how--art
making*, a fetish, covers? In other wrods, are you saying the *how--art
making* is a fetish?
Msg#: 1441 *FINE ART*
07-09-94 19:51:31
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1416 (NEW ART MARKET)
in reply to both points, sort of... Churchill was fond of saying that democracy
was the worst governmental system, except for all the others that had been
tried. The same could be said of what we are getting our minds around here,
that it is a humanly imperfect response to an impure and imperfect world, and
that to expect saintly purity isn't realistic, never was, and never will be.
That's more where I really stand in the matter. Sometimes I take an extreme or
unalloyed position to chip away at the subject with all the focus I can muster
in the few minutes I am pecking out these epistles of rectified wisdom. On the
other hand, we need to be blunt about realities that infuse and shape they way
we think, what we value, the forms of beings we become, and what we would shun
and ignore. Intellectuals (or pretenders to the title) aren't likely to be spun
of any finer thread than anyone else, neither are they any less prone to the
pressures, anxieties, divided allegiences, night sweats, petty passions,
neurotic revulsions, blatant favoritism, bad digestion, or sexual
phantasmagoria than anyone else. Anyone who has spent much time around either
lawyers or doctors, not to mention politicians, will immediately be conscious
that noone has the patent on psychobable, self serving, unhinged, or otherwise.
What does strike me as noxious, however, and something which could be done
better than, is a kind of expression that manages to be at once patronizing,
evasive, hyperbolic, clotted, clubbish, and toadying.
Msg#: 1442 *FINE ART*
07-09-94 19:53:21
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1430 (NEW ART MARKET)
maybe a meta fetish? A fetish fetish? A feta sandwich? Fetch my whip, Beulah !
Msg#: 1449 *FINE ART*
07-10-94 00:21:08
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1442 (NEW ART MARKET)
Morgan, are you whipping us out of the Temple?
Msg#: 1451 *FINE ART*
07-10-94 11:00:31
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1449 (NEW ART MARKET)
Jesus, would I do a thing like that ? Whipping up awareness, letting the scales
fall from the eyes, perhaps yes. As I said, there is room for good work, and
there is good work. We ought to have a clear sense of which side of the street
is being worked, though. If, for instance, you listen to Canadian radio, or
read some of the cultural publications that come from Canada, you will be
struck by how much more room there is up in the frozen North for cultural
critique. They are sensitized to domination from U.S. culture, and make an
effort to discern the actual motives behind a media campaign is ways that
simply don't happen here in the land of the Free. Then, they have the internal
schism of Anglo and French culture as well, and have a second stake in not
being culturally overrun by their compatriots. A formula for a much more aware
discussion... one must always be alert to the possibilities of manipulation,
subtle or gross. Of course, this level of outspokenness would be intolerable in
the United States, where fresh consensus is manufactured by the hour. To
understand American culture, you must come to terms with the extent that the
public relations industry, and flakkery in general, has usurped informed
discussion of almost any substantive issue (i.e. where real $$$ are at stake).
The big problem is the one that noone wants to talk about, the flattening of
thought into the dimensions that powerful interests will permit. The
consequences of this is a flattening of the psyche, a draining of the blood,
leaving a parched skin stretched onto a wall. This is certainly what has
happened to the arts. They have become puppet shows for consumers. See?
Msg#: 1453 *FINE ART*
07-10-94 11:51:22
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1430 (NEW ART MARKET)
The social relationships are the networks through which the objects are
produced; to fetishize these last is to obscure the sociality, not a "hole" but
a web that fans out from them. To me the artwork is not so much a fetish object
as a mediator of social relation, which it prompts us to foreground. But it is
both of course, not one or the other but something between.
We talk about art or technology in terms of what "it" is doing, when in
fact what we are really talking about is what "we" are doing, under its
auspices.
Msg#: 1474 *FINE ART*
07-10-94 19:20:47
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1453 (NEW ART MARKET)
"We talk about art or technology in terms of what "it" is doing, when in fact
what we are really talking about is what "we" are doing, under its auspices. "
I see what you mean. However, is it the object or the word that gets
fetishized? Or is it that the fetishized word takes on the value of an object?
Msg#: 1551 *FINE ART*
07-12-94 08:25:51
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1451 (NEW ART MARKET)
Morgan, to get back to the art market track, the new issue of Print Collector's
Newsletter (with an article aboutMel Bochner by Barry on the cover) reports:
Susan Harder is curating a collection of photographs to be sold on QVC. Her
first venture involved two "Marilyn Monroes by Bert Stern", offered on Joan
Rivers' "Can We Shop" at $2,700 and $5,000. Rivers and Stern did the hard
sell; Harder took calls from the public. Both sold within minutes to the same
woman in Long Beach Ca. The Rivers spot was a test for a new show, "Gallery
Direct," targeted at "serious art collectors," which premiered June 1. More
Monroe photographs were offered from Stern's "The Last Sitting." Prices ranged
from $280 to $7,900 for "Marilyn with Roses". Six "...Roses" sold at that
price, as well as more than 175 prints of "Marilyn in Vogue" at $350 IN TWO
MINUTES. Harder is now talking to other photographers. [A complete set of the
59 images from "The Last Sitting" sold at Sotheby's for $55,000 last April].
Interesting that they are only talking about art as "photography". I wonder
what the next sale will be? Images of Kennedy? Isn't nastalgia wonderful.
Msg#: 1560 *FINE ART*
07-12-94 10:12:56
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1551 (NEW ART MARKET)
With the greats, the legends, this will work like a dream. Its the desire for
identification with the legend as much as it is the love of photography. Would
this work with Paul Outerbridge carbro nudes, or Harry Callahan's awesome
little masterpieces ? There are markets, and there are markets, each having
their own internal logic. With HDTV around the corner, I expect that art
appreciation via the tube, as well as art selling, will increase by leaps and
bounds. An intimation of things to come, as they surely will.
Msg#: 1561 *FINE ART*
07-12-94 10:16:26
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1453 (NEW ART MARKET)
so what happens when social relations become fetishized?
Msg#: 1570 *FINE ART*
07-12-94 10:52:36
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1561 (NEW ART MARKET)
Can you think of an example of that?
Msg#: 1571 *FINE ART*
07-12-94 10:56:42
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1474 (NEW ART MARKET)
> is it the object or the word that gets
> fetishized?
> Or is it that the fetishized word takes on the value of an object?
How do you see it?
Msg#: 1621 *FINE ART*
07-12-94 23:46:11
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1571 (NEW ART MARKET)
Have to wonder about the use of the word *fetish* in relation to its actual
meaning--the amulets of the black people in Guinea, Marx, Freud... what are we
calling on when we say *fetish*...?
Msg#: 1649 *FINE ART*
07-13-94 11:48:47
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1570 (NEW ART MARKET)
yes, indeed. But let's take Josefinas's comment seriously, as to how much
slippage has attached to the use of the term "fetish". One psychoanalytic
explanation I heard (surely one of many) is that a failure to incorporate a
constructive human figure as one's "ego ideal" may lead to a transposition of
idealization onto objects. Somehow this doesn't take into account the
libidinization of the object, but perhaps Josefina can expand. AS for concrete,
literary examples, I am at a loss, but personal observation during the 80's
offered likely subjects. For example, during publicity moments, generally known
as "foto ops" to the guys lugging the cameras, the quarry would engage in what
appeared to be highly animated, delightful, sparkling conversation, absolutely
fascinated with the subject at hand, filled with healthy vitality and burnished
mojo. Having worked the trade for a little while, and having been on both sides
of the transaction (for a while, we got to eat at MK club in its prime by
acting as plants. if the place wasn't filled to the tits, we'd come in and
switch on, helping to create the illusion of a most happening evening, every
evening. Food was pretty good, but don't let em fool you, three hours of being
incredibly delightful is hard work, especially when you are trying to stifle a
huge gaping yawn for the entire three hours) it's all theatre, artificial, part
of the job. Not much real connection between people, but perfecting the image
of it. Celebs, they earn their dinner, and know little rest.
Msg#: 1699 *FINE ART*
07-13-94 23:33:02
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1451 (NEW ART MARKET)
Nice images Morgan... eyes peeling like onions, psyche's flattening--two
dimensionsal like Poincare's creatures? and the draining blood, and the
"parched skin stretched onto a wall." What to tell you... what happens in
Canada now is probably what happened in the United States some time ago. It's
easy to think that Canada will follow, and they may even do quicker since they
have the "know how." Do you think passed times were better? Art being
something we consume, it will take in the laws of the market. Opposite to that
you have the ways in Russia, where artists worked for the State--ask Komar &
Melamid. Not their ideal anymore. Question is, what is the ideal?
Msg#: 1777 *FINE ART*
07-14-94 14:49:58
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1699 (NEW ART MARKET)
no ideals... too Platonic, suggestive of hidden order and metaphysical finery.
Our (American) successes made us dumb in ways, not prone to self reflection, or
questioning how itis that things come to be the way that that are. We live in
an eternal present, or at least it seems to me. Statism is terrible medicine,
especially where unfettered opinion matters, and Plato, too, was, for all his
ideals, a statist as well. We have other forms of oppreession, the kind that a
Hobbes or a Toqueville would understand better, the tyranny of mass opinion
(and mass marketing). True, softer, sweeter, and very much better than cruel
deprivation, famine, and ever-present paranoia that the eastern-bloksters
live(d) through. Our own voodoo is the banal-tsunami that washes over
everything and changes the social landscape in its wake.
Msg#: 1789 *FINE ART*
07-14-94 15:24:19
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1777 (NEW ART MARKET)
Isn't the social bacground _the_ wake? We're making the waves, everything else
is sifting around _us_. Only it seems to me the wake is the _other_, all that
isn't us, all that we can't take in and mold ourselves. TV is the wake as much
as it is the bow of the ship that's plowing the waters cultural.
Msg#: 2011 *FINE ART*
07-16-94 16:39:05
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1649 (NEW ART MARKET)
The ego's ideal has to do with the father's eyes, thus with the love. For Freud
the fetish is on the mother's side, thus with the sexual and the
desire--opposite to the first love object which is the father, the first sexual
object, wether a man or a woman, is the mother. Problem is how the male child
resolves his finding of the mother's *not having* what he has. Did they take it
away? will they take his away? Freud gives three ways out 1) he becomes a
homosexual 2) he becomes a fetishist 3) he'll like women. Then, if he becomes a
fetishist, the shoe, the curl, or the shine in the nose, cover this hole. First
comes the woman with the high heel shoes, then there's only the shoe.
The social fetish is more likely to relate to the amulets--like the
black men in Gana use. Still I think the fetish is covering a whole, not a web.
And this hole maybe in the web.
Msg#: 2060 *FINE ART*
07-16-94 20:21:26
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2011 (NEW ART MARKET)
O! a mistake... "Still I think the fetish is covering a *hole*, not a web. In
message 27352
Msg#: 2079 *FINE ART*
07-17-94 09:58:26
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2011 (NEW ART MARKET)
but aren't there female fetishists?
Msg#: 2080 *FINE ART*
07-17-94 09:59:30
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2060 (NEW ART MARKET)
what is this *hole* you refer to? An area of uncompleteion? An emotional
vacancy?
Msg#: 2082 *FINE ART*
07-17-94 10:04:33
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1789 (NEW ART MARKET)
uh, ok, why not? Good metaphor.. what do we do with it though?
Msg#: 2145 *FINE ART*
07-17-94 22:02:05
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1560 (NEW ART MARKET)
I wouldn't be too quick to jump into the next century of art appreciation and
art marketing. It is curious that the only QVC art product that seems to move
is the name brand art photo. Try pushing a Serra site specific piece by that
means. I doubt it. True, the photo and HDTV would be marvelously
compatible--but what else would stand the test. But then I could be wrong.
Certain precedents--phone and catalog sales by Christies etc. where the buyer
has never seen the artwork but is sufficintly familiar with the genre seem to
be somewhat relevant... and then remember the PBS-Channel 13 art auctions of a
decade ago.
Msg#: 2146 *FINE ART*
07-17-94 22:22:24
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1777 (NEW ART MARKET)
No doubt you are on target when you announce that statism is a flop. But
aren't you being a bit hyperbolic and vinigary in suggesting that mass
marketing (global capitalism) and rule by the majority (democracy) is ruining
our lives. There may be a worm inside us but I'm not sure where it comes from.
Msg#: 2166 *FINE ART*
07-18-94 02:21:17
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2080 (NEW ART MARKET)
The hole I refer to is the absence the male child finds when confronted with
the mother's sex--she does not have waht he has. Freud says that the fetish is
likely to be a shoe, hair or fur, because these are the elements the child
finds on the way of his look--under the mother's skirts.
Msg#: 2167 *FINE ART*
07-18-94 02:29:25
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2079 (NEW ART MARKET)
Female fetishism is quite complex. Kleptomaniacs seem to be the case. But
something's very different. Women in general are said to fetishize the male
organÉ but this is normal, and a fantasy.
Msg#: 2171 *FINE ART*
07-18-94 02:41:05
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1789 (NEW ART MARKET)
If the *other* is the wake, we should be able to see ourselves from this
*other*, a rare object in the landscape: "social background."
Msg#: 2279 *FINE ART*
07-18-94 21:23:07
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2145 (NEW ART MARKET)
claro, genau, true.
Msg#: 2280 *FINE ART*
07-18-94 21:27:55
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2146 (NEW ART MARKET)
as you plainly see, getting a fix on exactly what this worm is is more than a
simple task. So, we try out a range of mind sets, and mutually draw a bead on
this elusive larva. So far, nothing has given me visceral satisfaction in
understanding the quiditude of this now-stuff, thus on we trudge, never exactly
wrong nor exactly right. As for vinigar, I like the liquid, provides a needed
bite to otherwise bland and unfocused dishes.
Msg#: 2235 *FINE ART*
07-18-94 17:45:14
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2171 (NEW ART MARKET)
I'm not sure we can see the "other" in context of the moment we're living,
however, in retrospect, when the waves move outward we can either see the
"other" or make out it's presence.
Msg#: 2453 *FINE ART*
07-20-94 03:27:27
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2235 (NEW ART MARKET)
My idea of "other" with small caps involves but the neighbour or any other one
which is not me. The "Other" with big caps instead is interior. Have to wonder
about this "other in retrospect," is it the "cause" of what happened before the
waves moved outward, an "effect" or a "left over"?
Msg#: 2281 *FINE ART*
07-18-94 21:31:29
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2166 (NEW ART MARKET)
Freud himself related seeing his mother *in nudam* (his words) while travelling
as a very young child on a train with her. Yet he did not, as far as I know of,
regress into fetishism. He did have a rather odd oral fixation that we are well
aware of, one that eventually cost him his life, but that would belong to a
different category of dynamics, wouldn't it?
Msg#: 2452 *FINE ART*
07-20-94 00:38:31
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2281 (NEW ART MARKET)
as he--Freud--says, not the same circumstances bring the same symptoms. That's
why he gives three examples of different reactions to the same setting. About
the odd oral fixation of his, what I've heard, read, is that he was in intense
pain for a long period of his life--had cancer--. Maybe the odd oral fixation
was already there, what to tell you, I don't know.
Msg#: 2282 *FINE ART*
07-18-94 21:33:11
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2167 (NEW ART MARKET)
Kleptomania is a topic that would be most rewarding to hear your thoughts on.
Could you elaborate further, when you can steal some time?
Msg#: 775 *FINE ART*
06-23-94 11:54:03
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: ALL
Subj: ARTISTS NOT YET FOSSILIZED
Can we please talk about some artists who are doing vital work in this decade?
Msg#: 778 *FINE ART*
06-23-94 12:36:39
From: CLAIRE JERVERT
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 775 (ARTISTS NOT YET FOSSILIZED)
Like?????
Msg#: 781 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 10:08:17
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: JORDAN CRANDALL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 775 (ARTISTS NOT YET FOSSILIZED)
I'm thinking....I'm thinking...vital...um...you meen older ones still doing
good work (IMHO James Turrell) or new blood really up to new tricks ? That's a
tough one...nothing has wowed me in years, but there is repectable work around.
I think I have a soft spot for good minimalism...but now that you mention it...
Msg#: 793 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 15:28:14
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 781 (ARTISTS NOT YET FOSSILIZED)
Is anything "vital"?? Is any artists "vital"? Here's my short list: McCollum
(are you watching?); Kelly (Ellsworth not Mike, but him too); Ryman (damm, I
know it's getting old, but it's kinda like the dreggs on the bottom of a good
bottle of wine - good to the last drop); Ruscha (if only for his books);
Balldessari (if you condnese the works of the last show at MOMA); Mullican
(tedious and good for that); Martin (Agnes of the Gods, On a Clear Day...);
Gonzalez-Tores (nice bulbs and paper); um... Jim Shaw (no he isn't Mike
Kelley); Richard Prince (and his girlfriends); Raymond Pettibon (sometimes).
Could I live without any of these artists sure I could. Could I live w/o art,
maybe that too.
Msg#: 801 *FINE ART*
06-24-94 16:47:58
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 793 (ARTISTS NOT YET FOSSILIZED)
ummm....why not...they're not too terrible, considering the alternatives, maybe
good enough
Msg#: 812 *FINE ART*
06-25-94 14:23:46
From: CRAIG KALPAKJIAN
To: ALL
Subj: CURRENT SHOWS
In response to the "not yet fossilized" string why don't we start a discussion
of some shows that are up now? Has anyone seen the group show at Jose
Freire? (up until July 9). There was some work there that I really liked. One
of the artists (I think it was Larry Mantello) was doing these assemblages of
cardboard holiday decorations - four leaf clovers, pumpkin heads,
leprechauns... it was work that I was first tempted to dismiss-very easy, sort
of 80's, but somehow I started to like it - it was just fucked up enough to
work. Some very interesting photography in this show as well.
Also some very interesting video work at David Zwirner - a project for
television by Stan Douglas -twelve short commercial like bits - fragments that
implied they were parts of larger narratives yet with no conclusion or point. I
believe they were to be shown (possibly were) as commercials, a few times in
the course of a show, on broadcast television, with no explanation.
Msg#: 873 *FINE ART*
06-30-94 15:14:24
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: CRAIG KALPAKJIAN (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 812 (CURRENT SHOWS)
Stan Douglas work sounds interesting! But, artists importing art into the
realm of television commercials or, vice versa, importing TV commercials into
the gallery space was very much a thing of the 80's, though. Then again, this
kind of work still seems to be more "on the pulse of time" (is that proper
English??) than most other work out there.
Msg#: 821 *FINE ART*
06-26-94 12:18:51
From: ROCCO RUSSO
To: ALL
Subj: CLEMENTE
Clemente vs. Salle We are propagandized to look up to the hero. To grow up
wanting to be one. We are given a range of choices. Do we like the blood
and guts war hero who just crashes in and gets it done or the intellectual
planner working through the war like a chess player a lot of slow preparation
and a quick attack. Do we like the Clint Eastwood action type cop who bends
the rules a little but gets results (blood and guts etc) or do we like the FBI
or CIA operative college educated etc type piecing reality together like a
picture puzzle. (Gen Patton or the anonymous workers decoding secret German
messages etc) In both cases we are given a lot of intelligence. (Nobody wants
to be a dumb hero) The action hero is just as cultured in his own way as the
thinker but it's manifested in a different manner. The blood and guts of
Clemente and the intellectual coldness of Salle. At least that's how they seem
to me. I think that these artists represent one set of opposites of the artist
as hero or whatever choice. (21315 "I was amazed at the contrast between
someone whose horizons were totally defined by Cal Arts and Soho--and someone
with a genuinely cosmopolitan sense of culture(s)--as continuity and
plurality."exactly what I consider our choices of heros or models. I think
that the entire history of art could be defined as a contrast of these two
attitudes and the varying mixture that goes into different artists. (Gauguin
Seurat Surrealism vs De Stijl - all the divisions between expressionism and
whatever opposes it at any given (Matisse and Picasso would make an interesting
contrast and their mixing of attitudes would show that my dichotomy like any
binary contrast doesn't really hold. But I find it useful))). My original art
orientation was toward the "heroic" artist action type even though I didn't
like their work as much as the those from the other side. When I first got
interested in art I found Van Gogh and Gauguin very interesting but I liked
Seurat' paintings better. (although in another way I think that some of Van
Gogh's work has never been bettered. I never liked Gauguin's work at all as
much as I wanted to.) Now I sort of disregard the whole persona thing.
Basically I don't like "characters" "personalities" etc.
It seems that it is rather difficult to appear genuine even if one is. I
think that some of Baudrillard (do I dare use the name) applies here. When the
artist is mediated through the magazines, museums etc, it becomes impossible to
differentiate pose and real feeling. (I should write 'pose' and 'real'
'feeling') But from my point of view it doesn't really matter. The entire
thing is really silly. If they really have this "Artsy" attitude I don't like
it. If they are posing as "Artists" I don't like it. But looking at the
images I like a few of Salle's. I don't think I've seen one of Clemente's that
I like after first look. I read an article about Clemente and didn't like the
art illustrations but thought that he seemed rather fascinating but then I
realized that I was falling into the propaganda model. My old feelings about
being a rebellious hero. (21211 Garwood "The naive pose, cultivated innocence
is grating.") Basically in first reading about the "artists" I found Clemente
to be the much more interesting but now I really don't find either "type" very
interesting. They are both "types".I must confess (I guess it has to be almost
analogous to a confession on this BB) that I take an opposite view of their
work to the general consensus (although I don't like either one, I prefer
Salle). Actually I don't get much chance to see real art, but there seems to
be a great desire to like Clemente by people I would think wouldn't like him
and I was urged to a rather large show a while ago at Gagosian. I didn't like
it. It was OK. It was interesting like the pictures in a psychology book of
the Jungian school etc (actually I like Dali better). But I didn't like it
(21211 "too much Jung in adolescence") (msg 21625 JOSEFINA AYERZA possibly
it's more the lapsed Catholicism than Jung. I'm a lapsed Catholic but really
dislike Catholic or lapsed Catholic stuff. Anyway Dali did it better. (most
of later Dali's garbage but somehow I find it better garbage than Clemente.
More 'real' maybe.) (21211 MORGAN GARWOOD "Better than a Salle? By all means,
more felt, in his own way more real, however strategic he may be." ) This I
disagree with. Better than a Salle? By no means, More felt? I really don't
know and have no way of judging this and don't make it a criteria. More real?
I don't think so. I find Salle to be more real. I was at one time highly into
Jung and still find some of the concepts interesting but I don't find the stuff
very realistic in our culture. I find the layering of images in Salle to be
"more real". But then I've never been very good at realism.Actually I've never
seen a "real" (that is an actual painting by) Salle that I liked. But dealing
with reproductions I find Salle a more interesting and satisfying artist (I
think he comes off a lot better in a photographic reproduction and best in
black and white). Most of the stuff I don't like (even in reproduction) but
some I do. Basically a lot of my own work is collage work and I like a rather
cold image juxtaposition. I don't generally like painted images though and
prefer a digitized image etc. If one gives us the inside and the other the
surface or the skin, I prefer the skin. (Msg 21179 CAROL BROAD- Actually I
think he's rather limp.)
Msg#: 828 *FINE ART*
06-27-94 15:55:27
From: CAROL BROAD
To: ROCCO RUSSO (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 821 (CLEMENTE)
Are you for real? I mean, I thought at this thoeretical stuff is hard to
understand but I can't make heads or tails out of that message.
Msg#: 834 *FINE ART*
06-28-94 12:52:16
From: STEPHEN PUSEY
To: ROCCO RUSSO (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 821 (CLEMENTE)
Sir, you seem somewhat inebriated with the exuberance of your own verbosity.
Also, could you turn down the radio ?
Msg#: 842 *FINE ART*
06-29-94 14:03:23
From: MICHAEL JOHNSTON
To: ROCCO RUSSO (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 821 (CLEMENTE)
Don't pay attention to those hecklers--i admire you for jumping into the ring
and for not being afraid to say how you really view things. Yes, the message is
a tad bit incoherent, but it's insightfully, voguishly slippery, like those
wishy-washy academics--although you're sloshing around at the Wet-n-Wild, doing
cannonballs in the realm of Taste.
Welcome, dude! Cowabunga!
Msg#: 860 *FINE ART*
06-30-94 10:42:12
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ROCCO RUSSO (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 821 (CLEMENTE)
you definitely have your own way of piecing together the world, but I follow
and you make your own king of sense, it a different intelligence, a new flavor
around here. Probably cultural...Steve has this succinctness, I have raving
celtic madness sometimes (especially when I am really pissed off about a
stupidity of the universe and have a few to organize my brain's shalebeds), and
all that jive. Have some pills.
Msg#: 885 *FINE ART*
06-30-94 20:25:41
From: STEPHEN PUSEY
To: ROCCO RUSSO (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 821 (CLEMENTE)
Yeah, Morgan and Michael are right; all styles slop around in this sink. I'll
just adjust my Info Filters. Let a hundred flowers blossom ! Let it all ...
Msg#: 877 *FINE ART*
06-30-94 16:31:42
From: GISELA EHRENFRIED
To: JEFFREY SCHULZ (Rcvd)
Subj: COMMERCIAL ART
Jeffrey, you incorporated in your work a TV commercial by American Express
linking it to a very _contemporary_ phenomenon, the "Virtu-Real" Space (Jeffrey
Schulz, "Virtu-Real Space: Information Technologies and the Politics of
Consciousness" Leonardo Magazine, March 1993). I never saw the piece, so could
you let us know about it? (here, or in (I)ntershop)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 900 *FINE ART*
07-01-94 10:46:33
From: JEFFREY SCHULZ
To: GISELA EHRENFRIED (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 877 (COMMERCIAL ART)
The American Express advertisements that I utilize were done by Chiat/Day/Mojo,
Inc. They were television ads that were broadcast during the early 90s showing
AmEx cards in various locations throughout the physical landscape. The ads were
striking in that the cards -- which signify not only credit but the information
technologies through which credit is facilitated -- were placed in a wide
variety of locations, serving a number of purposes. One ad showed the card as a
canopy over a restaurant, another as the tail of an airplane (with the song
"Spirit in the Sky" as background music), another as elevator doors and, most
crucial for my work, cards were interspersed throughout the landscape of
Manhattan. In this version, a time-lapse shot of midtown began at dawn, showing
a typical morning. But as noon neared, AmEx cards began to appear *as
buildings* throughout the landscape. By nightfall, the cards were beacons;
beautifully illuminated green icons (the campaign was actually called the
"Icon" campaign). The voiceover was, "You're gonna like it here."
What interested me in these ads was that the virtual space of information
technologies was used as structural support for physical space (another ad
showed an AmEx card as a bridge pylon). I realized that the ads perfectly
articulated the fact that landscape and cyberscape had merged, and that we now
travel through both scapes simultaneously. My Hyperformance series, partial
documentation of which will be shown at TZ'Art & Co. in October, emerged out of
this realization.
As you mentioned in a private e-mail message, I also edited together a video of
digitized versions of this ad. The ad was digitally extended, shortened, and
reversed, and then edited to become the visual component of the performance
that I did at the Fourth International Conference on Cyberspace (Jordan posted
a message to me in (I) some time ago asking that I describe the performance, to
which this serves as a very belated response). Basically, during the video,
which evoked the sense of moving between a physical landscape and a
digiphysical landscape, I skated on in-line skates around the twelve-foot
screen, moving both in front of and behind it, while Laura Trippi delivered a
text that I wrote describing actions that occur during the Hyperformances. The
Hyperformer was wearing his typical Body Glove surfing shorts, Armani shirt,
Fendi tie, Leader swimming cap and goggles, and he was doing military-derived
maneuvers with a metal sabre. (Look for a photograph in the premiere issue of
"World Art" this fall of the Hyperformer performing in the financial district
of Manhattan.)
Msg#: 1230 *FINE ART*
07-06-94 12:05:17
From: ROCCO RUSSO
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: CLEMENTE RESP TO 21179
You don't understand my message but then I don't really understand yours. I'm
not up on ASCII art so I have no sense of scale. Are you implying big (if yes,
is this positive or negative), upright (if yes, is this positive or negative),
masculine (if yes, is this positive or negative) masculinist (if yes, is this
positive or negative).Does the metaphor deal with an anatomical detail (which
would put Clemente on his back) or with the artist as a whole. (simile or
synechdoche?) I won't ask about your tastes in body parts or their functions,
but; do you like Clemente? Do you like his art? It's not quite clear to me
(I'm rather lacking in communication skills; both sending and receiving.) This
is all rhetorical of course. I don't really care what you think of Clemente or
his art. But don't take this as a criticims of the art itself. I looked at
some ASCII art on one of the Internet things and yours is really much better
than most. Hard to believe your just starting.
Msg#: 1231 *FINE ART*
07-06-94 12:09:01
From: ROCCO RUSSO
To: CAROL BROAD (Rcvd)
Subj: CLEMENTE RESP TO 23334
Am I real? I think so; but with all the theoretical stuff I read, I'm not
really sure. I'm working on a hypertextual cyberspatial novel in which I'm
definitely not. Weren't you asked the same thing. I don't want to go back
through all the messages now; but somewhere along the line I had a series of
questions for you which I really had no intention of asking. But, since you
ask, I will.
are you real are you for real are you really female are you single (doesn't
matter, I'm not) did (do) you like Derrida (I do. 'Limited Inc' is my
favorite)
just kidding (doesn't matter who or what you are. It's all text to me) but
seriously (see response to Msg. #21179 in Fine Arts) sorry you don't like my
style.actually, I like yours (it's fun you and Morgan Garwood make an
interesting counterpoint kind of keeps the Thing going(are you the same
person?)
anyway, f.y.i. it's tails (that's why I like Salle)
<*>Replies
Msg#: 1234 *FINE ART*
07-06-94 12:16:22
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ROCCO RUSSO (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1231 (CLEMENTE RESP TO 23334)
Rocco! You finally figured it out! Yes, me and Carol are the same person! I am
the yang side and Carol is the yin side of my complete identity! Isn't it
wonderful that we humans can be more than one thing!?
Msg#: 1288 *FINE ART*
07-07-94 16:13:20
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: ALL
Subj: ME
Ladies and Gentlemen... you might have guessed it: the ME thread migrated into
theeee GREEY ZzzzONE!
Msg#: 1289 *FINE ART*
07-07-94 16:33:38
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: CHRIS KRAMER (Rcvd)
Subj: DOGSHIT
You know this appropriation stuff went out with the eighties. We don't usually
accept low grade provincial art. You might want to consider dropping off your
slides at the Sandra Gehring Gallery.
<*>Replies
Msg#: 2006 *FINE ART*
07-16-94 10:59:12
From: CHRIS KRAMER
To: SECRETARY GENERAL (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1289 (DOGSHIT)
> > You know this appropriation stuff went out with the
> > eighties.
> Total nonsense.
> The form is eternal the interpretation is evolutionary.
> --we should remember that for the same reason, what is most
> original in the present often seems at first like
> a mere repetition--the way proto-pop and early pop work was
> first called "neo-dada," as though it were something already
> known.
> As the so-called "formal" educational process continues
> to break down it is replaced by a kind of "parroting",
> repetition without comprehension. ... To return to education
> vs. parroting, children learn a hollow language and grow to
> use it without comprehending its structure. The readers on
> the radio are saying words they often don't understand (to say
> nothing of the concepts; pathetically simple though they may
> be) which are rendered in a quasi-phonetic form on their
> sheets. They will use these same terms in daily life as will
> their listeners, and it all gets very fuzzy -- sort of like a
> game of Charades (sounds like? sounds like?). The fact that
> sports figures are treated as repositories of profound wisdom
> doesn't help matters. The end result is that the "common
> language" grows more vague by the day. This is of course only
> half the process, in the schools, ghettos, technical
> work-places, and (in some cases) laboratories, new words and
> structures are continuously invented and reinvented. For me,
> the issue is whether the generative portions of American
> Society have fallen behind the curve in their struggle against
> the glottal homogenizers and fuzzmongers.
> Garbagethink will be the order of the day for anyone raised
> on a mental diet of enticingly packaged infoshit, which you
> can bet you booty will exist in a superabundance.
> > We don't usually accept low grade provincial art.
> The answer to what should be and should not be excluded is a
> topic for a "debatte".
> I hope you aren't confusing THE THING with the Whitney Museum.
> All these zillions of pursed lipped hierophantoids maintaining
> prissy little picket fences of who Will and Won't entertain
> which kind of ideas.
> My advice: a little more "selfreflecting" after each meal.
> > You might want to consider dropping off your slides at the
> > Sandra Gehring Gallery.
> Get a life.
> Perhaps, then, you should reconsider that statement.
Msg#: 2008 *FINE ART*
07-16-94 14:49:35
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: CHRIS KRAMER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2006 (DOGSHIT)
You know, I always wanted a pet. So, I guess I am stuck with a goddam parrot.
But tell me, how did you learn to type and why does your owner let you out of
the cage so often?
Msg#: 1381 *FINE ART*
07-08-94 23:11:46
From: BARRY SCHWABSKY
To: ROCCO RUSSO (Rcvd)
Subj: SALLE BOY
Anybody seen the New Yorker piece on Salle--how we're all supposed to feel
sorry for him now that he's out of fashion?
<*>Replies
Msg#: 1413 *FINE ART*
07-09-94 13:15:14
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1381 (SALLE BOY)
heard about it..wouldn't bother reading it. Salle simply doesn't mean anything.
He doesn't matter on any level. He has nothing to say. Washing out my bathtub
ring is more rewarding than even thinking about him.
Msg#: 1427 *FINE ART*
07-09-94 16:22:40
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1381 (SALLE BOY)
Didn't see the Newyorker piece on David Salle, but learned that he is nowadays
doing movies. Did you hear about that?
Msg#: 1464 *FINE ART*
07-10-94 12:21:52
From: ROCCO RUSSO
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1381 (SALLE BOY)
haven't seen it. If I get a chance I'll check it out, I need someone besides
myself to feel sorry for. I hope he saved up some of his income and is not
really impoverished or anything like he'll have to take up teaching or
something. I suppose I should take it as a lesson, if I'm ever rich and
famous, I'll be sure to be prepared for a quick fall from style. X% for the
gallery, Y% for the future, don't overstock materials, don't rely too much on
Holywood connections etc.
Msg#: 1465 *FINE ART*
07-10-94 12:24:51
From: ROCCO RUSSO
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1413 (SALLE BOY)
I agree that Salle doesn't mean anything and does't matter and has nothing to
say. But, lack of meaning has never deterred me. The less meaning the greater
the rewards. I get to make up my own meanings. Thinking about Clemente and
Salle, I remembered having a copy of the Avendon Editions (Vintage) that was
mentioned in the ine Arts forum. (I wouldn't have gone out and bought a
Salle book. It was a sale table book, I think they had the Clemente also but I
didn't pick that one up.) Anyway, I got the book out. Figured it would be
more rewarding than doing house work. And it was. I didn't even have to
read it.
On the front cover is a portrait of Salle. The focus of the picture is
definitly toward the head. One is looking Salle in the eyes. On the back is a
painting called "The Loneliness of Clothes" which is of a partly declothed
female lying face down. The buttocks are mostly bare and they form the focal
point of the image (at least in the small reproduction (at least for me)). If
the book is laid out in an open position the back cover becomes the left image
giving it a reading priority in our left to right reading system. (heads and
tails both
)(The painting is (or was) from the collection of Eli and Edye Broad; if there
was no relationship to Carol, there is now - at least in my collection of minor
coincidences.) These are the kind of things that interests me.
Msg#: 1529 *FINE ART*
07-11-94 20:11:53
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: BARRY SCHWABSKY (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1381 (SALLE BOY)
Barry, when was this article in the New Yorker about Salle? Would love to see
it. NYU's library has lost all it's recent copies...
Msg#: 1558 *FINE ART*
07-12-94 10:01:17
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ROCCO RUSSO (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1465 (SALLE BOY)
like the majority, but not all, of "what's going on", nothing is going on.
Earlier in the Eighties, when Salle was on a roll, I got many an opportunity to
read his pronouncements. He has since had the good sense to clam up, lest the
readers of this pseudo-philosophical quasi-academic shuck and jive act wise up
and see the emptiness of his pretensions. He, his dealers, the copywriters, the
publicists, and all such fine examples of wayward tastes, bent over backwards
to create an intellectual mythology (that noone in the house was quite up to
explaining) within which his "work" made sense. Two things stand out. First, it
is generally execrably painted. To merely call it bad or clumsy would be paying
it a great compliment. On occasion, it soared into the stratosphere of the
mediocre, as we all held our breath in wonderment at this fellow's promethian
talent. Should you be so benighted as to allude to this minor incongruity of
reputation and execution in the polite company of one of the folks on the
payroll, you would be reassured that this was a profound and ironic commentary
on the appropriationist and derivitive nature of our historical moment (such as
it is, as he would say). Meanwhile one would find oneself rubbing one's eyes in
disbelief, trying to make out the inner wisdom in a laughably puerile, often
misogynistic, badly seen, unimaginative, boring, predictable, formulaic couple
of square yards of mental crud huld up to the public gaze like the Shroud of
Turin. And nary a voice was heard from the stable of pet poodles, excuse me,
critics, (with perhaps the exception of Hughes) that had the guts to tell it
like it was. Simple. No Guts. None.
Msg#: 1614 *FINE ART*
07-12-94 21:51:35
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1529 (SALLE BOY)
It's the July 11 issue... should be in the stores. Read it today. Love her
remark on "To kind of buy stuff."
Msg#: 1617 *FINE ART*
07-12-94 22:21:07
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1614 (SALLE BOY)
Josefina, sorry to say that July 11th issue is now out of the stores and
replaced with July 18th issue, which contains a letter to the editor by Robert
Hughes responding to article. Sadly, I've got 18th issue only. Could you fax
me the 11th article?? [ fax: 343 0574 ]. I've tried NYU and all local SoHo
newspaper stands to no avail....
Msg#: 1620 *FINE ART*
07-12-94 23:44:34
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1617 (SALLE BOY)
Sure... I was lucky enough to find it at my doctor's waiting room today... so I
stole it. Will Fax it to you tomorrow. But maybe I can scann it and upload it
for everybody. Let me try.
Msg#: 1922 *FINE ART*
07-15-94 16:56:57
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1617 (SALLE BOY)
So Salle boy--in the New Yorker
*Enclosed File: Salle1.txt
Msg#: 4985 *FINE ART*
07-31-94 11:25:21
From: ROCCO RUSSO
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 1558 (SALLE BOY)
This is all stated so matter of factly; but I don't think it's a matter of
facts at all. I don't disagree with your assessment of Salle to any large
degree. If you tell me that Clemente is a better painter I won't disagree with
that. But if you tell me that Clemente is a better artist, I'll disagree. I
don't really care that much for either and there is no critical discourse that
I agree with that would allow me to rate one above the other.
"He, his dealers, the copywriters, thepublicists, and all such fine examples of
wayward tastes, bent over backwardsto create an intellectual mythology"
This I disagree with in that I think that the mythology was created long before
in the education system and that Salle either simply fit into the paradigm or
saw an opportunity and did what he had to to fit the role. This was the gist
of my earlier message. I think that the 80's saw a large number of
professionals with a education that led them to believe that they should appear
cultured and with certain role models of what an artist should be. When the
money hit the market the marketeers were there to provide the goods and the
artists that these people, with there slim knowledge of art (a mythology of
art), would be able to recognize as art and artists. (Paint on canvas, a
little pornography etc, a realism that wasn't really realistic or well painted
(isn't that the entire history of modern art from the perspective of the
"masses" -- that of a lot of poor painters putting it over on the public -- but
there was something there (according to those in the know and the money proved
that (in a rather viscious circle))) .There was no necessity to create an
intellectual mythology. The mythology was already in place, it was just a
matter of providing the goods. Look at the way art is viewed in the not so
intellectual media and the "work" will make perfect sense.
Bad painting. Even with my verbally austere style I could go on for a long
time about that. But just a couple of comments. What fascinates me is why
with all the possibilities of making art would someone who can't paint images
very well take up imagistic painting. Because that's what was expected? I
tend to think so. And what is bad painting really. It seems that this
designation is only valid in a realistic sense. I mean Cezanne was a terrible
painter compared to Bouguereau or even to a second rate trained academic
painter. (and weren't Impressionism and Post-Impressionism evaluated in ways
similar to that in which you are evaluating Salle). Was Pollack a bad
painter. In my opinion whenever any of the abstract expressionist painters
moved into a realistic mode; they were bad. I mean late Guston, no matter what
the current consesus might be -- to me it's garbage.
"And nary a voice was heard from the stable of pet poodles, excuse me,critics,
(with perhaps the exception of Hughes) that had the guts to tell itlike it was.
Simple. No Guts. None."
Really I don't think it was a matter of guts. I don't like this manner of
criticism because I think that a lot of people did and do like Salle and his
art. I don't think that the critics who assessed his work were all gutless or
liers or whatever. People have totally different perspectives and I don't
really think that it's good to thrash out with that kind of verbalism. One can
wonder. I can wonder. I can ask "how can you like that shit?" etc but I
assume that they do have a genuine feeling for it. I mean some people just
love paintings on velvet etc. I really want to think of them as brainless; but
that's not really fair.I don't think that it took guts for Hughes to do his
criticism. I think if it's a matter of guts, it probably takes more guts for
him to defend de Kooning in Time Magazine than to trash Salle. And why a
matter of guts. Why not brains. I think it would take guts for someone on the
Thing to defend Salle. Out of all the user list there must be some who like
him. Is anyone going to come out "Hey, I like da guy" Come on, I dare you.
A scene from my science fiction novel. It's 2002 and tastes have flipped
and/or flopped again. Salle is considered right up there with refined white
bread and virtual sex. Someone is looking at the Thing archives. - "Not one
of those feral hounds had the guts" (or should I use brains) "to defend Salle"
But, even if your message is treated as a matter of fact; isn't this something
to think or wonder about. How such a scene came about. This is the matter
that interests me. Why would someone pay such huge amounts for these works.
(I'll sell my entire extent art work for $60,000 (you haul it)) Why was
there a situation where it would take guts to criticise Salle. A situation
where an entire discourse could center around an outdated paradigm (but wasn't
that the entire cultural (in the sense of money culture) and economic sense of
the 80s -- a totally outdated mentality). Isn't it amazing how tastes have
changed so suddenly. But they haven't really. A group of yuppies came into
power with a lot of stolen money and exercised their power. They are now aside
and the victems of the robbery are having there moment to speak. We won't get
our money back but at least their providing us with a network on which we can
complain (if we can afford it). I won't criticise the critics, I'm sure that
those who liked Salle are still around and that most of them still like Salle
or at least the stuff that he was doing when there voices were in the majority,
if they ever really were. It seems to me that the general discourse of those
theorists was that they were taking risks. That it took guts to defend Salle.
That they were a small group who spoke for truth amidst an art world that was
opposed to Salle. (This would be interesting to look into) And why do we keep
bringing up Salle. (I didn't, you did). I missed the beginnings of the 80s.
I had read about Salle and seen reproductions. When I saw the work, my
reaction was that it may have been a good idea but wasn't well carried out. I
tend to keep forgetting about Salle but he keeps coming up and this fascinates
me. As soon as I'm ready to forget that stuff someone is attacking him. When
I did start looking at art in the mid 80's I saw dozens of artists whose work I
liked (I won't say good artists - but artist I like) (almost none of them were
painters) but who were totally left out of the critical discourse. But there
seems to be no positive discussion. Instead of discussing some art and artists
that was there but overlooked by the magazine machine we keep bringing up
Clemente and Salle. I think that it was easy to develop a critical discourse
around artists like Clemente and Salle (positive or negative) because the
educational paradigm or mythology (I think of my own minimal art education)
were there in place. Developing a discourse for the artists that I like is a
lot more difficult (but critical discourse is possible exactly what we don't
need now) (check out TZ'art they have some great artists) ($50,000 takes my
whole load and I'll deliver up to 300 miles, There's some really great art in
my attic but I just don't have a mythology (or perhaps its personality I'm
lacking (actually maybe the stuff's not so good (but has that ever really
mattered))))
bye
Msg#: 4990 *FINE ART*
07-31-94 16:44:45
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: ROCCO RUSSO
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4985 (SALLE BOY)
"I think that the mythology was created long before in the education system and
that Salle either simply fit into the paradigm or saw an opportunity and did
what he had to to fit the role..." -> I don't think so. Salle was a student of
Baldesari at CalArts - the last thing they were teaching there in the 70s was
painting. Baldessari taught "Post-Studio Art" - if anything Salle learned that
it was ok to open a book, and rip out its innerts. This I think was a good
thing to teach, do 't get me wrong, however, once you've torn the books up it
all comes to to what you've got left in your hands. I think Salle was in the
right place at the right time, like so many other artists, dealers, critics,
curators of the early-mid 80s. I believe there was someting worthwhile
happening at the moment, but once it crashed and burned we weren't left with to
much of strength to hold on to. In retrospect Salle's work looks more and more
like bad copies of Rosenquist (61-64), even his source material is of
Rosenquist's era, not Salle's. I think it's painfully nonauthentic, unlike his
early 80s work which feels like he felt blood in the water and knew what he was
doing. Now it only seems that he's desperiate to prove, if only to himself,
that he can paint.
Msg#: 6306 *FINE ART*
08-06-94 10:20:06
From: JORDAN CRANDALL
To: ROCCO RUSSO
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4985 (SALLE BOY)
> I'll sell my entire extent art
> work for $60,000 (you haul it)
> $50,000 takes my whole load and I'll deliver up to 300 miles
Rocco, can you explain this enormous drop in price and headspin in delivery
arrangements in the space of just one message?
Msg#: 6670 *FINE ART*
08-08-94 16:18:54
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: ROCCO RUSSO
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 4985 (SALLE BOY)
what I write is as much my opinion (no more or less ) than what Salle slops on
his canvass, or those activities that you do for giggles. I've detested his
work from the first moment I saw it (around 1980), as much as I have
consistently been grossed out by Schnabel's "work", etc. In art school we were
instructed in the importance of John Baldessarim (do you know how to spell it/
) Anyway, it was my impression that the whole structure was a crock, the
geneology was a put on. The entire cast of charactrers are nonentities,
intellectual and spiritual. Some art never gets redeemed, and noone ever
discovers hitherto secret virtues in it. There's been plenty of that, too. No,
this whole school of thought, its entire approach to life and living, will
vanish without a trace, and we will be that much better off.
Msg#: 6671 *FINE ART*
08-08-94 16:22:15
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6670 (SALLE BOY)
Morgan, I'm not sure, but, are you saying the Salle is a result of Baldessari?
I think not. If anything Salle is an example of the son killing the father. I
cant speak for Baldessari, but, I suspect there's little he would find familiar
in Salle's work.
Msg#: 6672 *FINE ART*
08-08-94 16:47:41
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6671 (SALLE BOY)
what I was referring to was the mental climate of Cal Arts and type of thoughts
people were thinking all over the place. Much energy devoted to appropriation,
"interrogating" notions of authorship, and all that why bother to rehash it
again tedium of pusmunchkins gargling on high theory and cramming the same down
the throats of geese and sheep. Sorry about the disjoint image there, but after
a point, one refuses to cooperate with the academic niceties of professional
courtesy when it comes to splitting the pubic hairs of discourse. So, sniffing
my armpit we sally forth and join battle with the crustaceans guarding their
oddly shaped pearls behind calcified lips and peering out at the detritus
strewn environment with gimlet eyes dangling from mucusy stalks. More or less.
But, yes, Salle et al., it all worked out in its own way, provided everybody
played the part expected of them. But even a relatively naive observer equipped
with a capacity for inference must have noticed that the staging wasn't
perfect, a pall crept over the scene, yes the money was good enough to keep the
wheels turning, but nobody seemed to believe in it anymore, this leaching enui,
as if every muscle had become an exhausted eel, and emotion clogged the nerves
like heavy grease mixed with hair trimmings and the burnt bottoms of pans with
old chili reheated in them and flushed down to coagulate in the grease trap
with rust flakes.
Msg#: 6674 *FINE ART*
08-08-94 17:38:42
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6672 (SALLE BOY)
Morgan, good to have you back, just when things were getting dull around
here... Um, Salle. Are we wasting our time with considering this guy further?
Let's just take this as a framework to travel on. Do you consider Baldessari's
teaching (post studio art) being the problem, or is it what the students did
with it the problem? In the case of Salle and Fischl they did the
unimaginable, the picked up brushes! Like, oh my god, how retrograde! What an
anti move from the movement toward anti-art. Intresting also is how vulgar
both Salle and Fischl (Julian, Clemente...too) were with not only returning to
painting, but doing porn painting. Sure it was lame, low grade porn (if one
even should call it porn is up for grabs), but it was porn. No self
resprecting post-studio artist was dealing with (or making) porn art.
Baldessari, for example, made one tenative sex work in 1972-73, felt embarsed
by how dumb it was and moved on. Salle and Julian must have recognized that in
the go-go 80s that big painting would sell and so would sex would make it all
that much better. And, if the work was kinky too geeze, better make a waiting
list. The Guggenheim has a funny Baldessari painting up right now, it's placed
at the pinicle of the spiral it's just text on a grey canvas, reading:
"Everything is purged from this painting but art, no ideas have entered this
work." It's a pretty wonderful object to see way up there, while at the bottom
of the spiral is clumped in those pittifull alcoves some of the worse examples
of neo-expression art, from Arnulf Rainer to Alberto Burri (who I like - but
this object bites). Anyhow...
Msg#: 6702 *FINE ART*
08-08-94 20:58:30
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6674 (SALLE BOY)
yeah, anyhow... having returned from my desert swankienda and wormholing from
straight space to the urban warp, one cannot help but feel the psychsocial
cleavages of the empirical commonsensical out-thereness and the ever seeking
the edgeness of in-here. Uh, art, I think it matters but I can't remember why.
Honestly. I used to come back to the city and experience a grand geritol surge
for a few days before hundreds of tiny grindstones all went to work, slowly
filing the would be urbanite down to a nubbin. Yes, there is so much output all
around, acres of it, hectares of it, counties of it, but is it telling me
something I don't already know, suspect, intuit, and so on in that vein ? Whose
name is stuck into it doesn't matter a whole lot; does it move me, does it move
you, does it move anybody ? Either Time or Newsweek, not normally a source of
great insight, did a cultural service with its lightweight investigation of the
wasting of the very concept of "hip" , and the meaning of the stance of "hip"
within our cultural processes. The point the authors make is subtler that it
appears at first blush, in that we have half consciously constucted and
perpetuated systems of meaning around unexamined first principles (an
attainable grail of hipness for those blessed with knowingness). Fairly soon
this begins sounding like the writings of L. Ron Hubbard who in turn sounded
like a cross between Sartre and the Bhagavad Gita after smoking DMT, but still,
the decomposing corpse quality of these endgame strategies would be appreciated
(and wickedly satirized) by George Romero, as in the Dawn Of The Dead. You see,
the real fulcrum that this mutitudinous and manifold output turned on wasn't
investigation, or the seeking of wisdom, or self understanding, in was a ploy
to be the eye of the god of hip, to be possessed of the ineleuctable blessing
of groovitude. And thus this community became torturously self referential,
hoping that each gesture of hipdom could accelerate or leverage one to yet a
higher, more unattainable plane of it. What if hipness goes away, and The Lion
King returns triumphant, starchy foods displace cuisine, the cities lose
influence to the heartland? The entire temple may come tumbling down, to have
humble kiosks and drink stands made from its residues. Me, I'll be stocking up
on cheez whiz.
Msg#: 6872 *FINE ART*
08-09-94 09:05:01
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6702 (SALLE BOY)
Time, Life, Newsweek do those "hip" articles every few years. The best I've
seen was from the mid 60s (67?) with Gloria Allread (sp) as a young hipster (in
miniskirt, gogo boots, tight sweater) taking about being hip., Really, the was
just as the Fem. movement was about to get going and she was still doing the
flower child thing at the moment. Tell the reader ship about being "Cool",
dig? What would scare me would be the moment the article hits and it actually
tells me something I don't already know - a sure sign of age. I once though I
would never stop listening to college radio stations - now I'm stuck listening
to jazz and classic rock 'cuz I can't tune in a decent station in the city.
I'm becoming stuck in a era I really didn't even live in in a full awake
capacity. TV too has been reduced to "clasics" too. Isn't Murphy Brown just
Mary Tyler Moore with a loudmouth as the new Mary? History is doomed to repeat
its self over and over - 10 year cycles? Isn 't grunge rock just Hendrick's
again too?
Msg#: 7028 *FINE ART*
08-09-94 19:34:42
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 6872 (SALLE BOY)
there are smaller cycles inside of greater ones: it looks like "hip" in
whatever form, as a way of psychologically relating to ones surroundings, and
establishing a persona, a public self to define ones role in the social
theatre, has incarnated many a time. This recurrance of hipness is like a small
wheel, predictably making a rotation with each season of opinion. This little
wheel may in turn be captive to a larger mechanism, subtler and less directly
available to the senses, a gestalt shift, that even the most perceptive and
articulate of us find nearly impossible to describe, due in part to the
thoroughness and generality of its effect. Some time back I posted thoughts I
had ranging over a small variety of subjects, which by the generosity of
Wolfgang ended up in the Journal for a while. At the time ( and still ) it
seemed like a useful study to discern what one (individual, family, subculture,
nation, etc.) thought "in terms of", meaning, what were the essential
distinctions that doers of that culture used to make their way around its
"reality". You are well aware that "reality" is to a large extent socially
determined (if you weren't this Thing project would sound like Martian to you);
so, the dominant concepts that map reality, such as "hip", are, as long as they
last, distinctions essential to understanding that reality. But, deep changes
can, do, and always have happened to cultures, that result in fascinating
psychic and social dislocations (and frequently very disturbing as well). In
such a milieu, "hip" may no longer be suitable for mapping the new terrain, and
be as obsolete as "phlogiston" or "ether" (the stuff that supposedly carried
light across the reaches of outer space) and other conceptual casualties of an
evolving worldview. Of course, this tends to be problematic, especially if you
have a large institutional commitment to a suddenly embarrassing idea, such as
the Sun revolving around the Earth, instead of the other way around.
My travels around the Southwest suggest to me that a largish social shift is
in the offing, and it will be catalysed by all the new techno-goodies leaping
out of catalogs, not the least of which is the satellite TV phenomenon (it
turns out that the Discovery channel is very big in Bangladesh and who knows
where else). Art, as we know it, is part of a dense-pack population condition-
it comes with, and is formed by, the exposure of minds to an array of
influences in very close, tense quarters. Out There, where everything is
headed, is a wholly different terrain. Trend-hunger is weakly felt, the need to
distinguish oneself from the pulsating millions around you is infinitely less.
But, people are not stupid, it is just that they have better things to do with
their energies (and money). Cars reign supreme, and a great suspension system
is aesthetic as all hell, and so is a nice juicy steak.
Fredrick Sommer, the last of the F64 Weston/Adams nexus is alive and well in
Prescott, and by all accounts yet producing fine work, and, surprise of
surprises, doesn't appear top know the meaning of "hip", other than the place
he gets vitamin B shots once a month from his doctor (more power to him, in my
book, doing his thing at 89 years old and to hell with what anybody thinks).
Now, to grow old like that is something I could live with.
Msg#: 2482 *FINE ART*
07-20-94 13:17:57
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: ALL
Subj: MSG HEADERS
One more appeal to all to be more conscious about the SUBJECT in the message
header. I cannot fathom what the current debate about THE OTHER has to do with
THE NEW ART MARKET. Please change the SUBJECT heading each time you take the
discussion in a different direction. Make a mental note of it. Thank you.
Msg#: 2807 *FINE ART*
07-21-94 10:10:35
From: MICHAEL BENNETT
To: JOSEFINA AYERZA (Rcvd)
Subj: AN ORAL FIX
Is it true that Freud, after being wheeled out of the operating room after
having half of the roof of his mouth excised, proceeded to ask for his favorite
Havana cigar? Is this an oral fixation? Does it mean anything?
<*>Replies
Msg#: 3405 *FINE ART*
07-23-94 01:38:19
From: JOSEFINA AYERZA
To: MICHAEL BENNETT (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 2807 (AN ORAL FIX)
A "fixation" is bound to "compulsion to repeat." Don't know what the case is
with Freud's cigars... what we certainly know is that he is *politically
incorrect.*
Msg#: 4468 *FINE ART*
07-28-94 11:29:48
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: JOHN TOWER
Subj: QUICKTIME ART
John, thanks for downloading your quicktime movie - can we expect more from
you? How about something much longer? Something beyond thunbing your nose at
The Thing?
Msg#: 4528 *FINE ART*
07-28-94 18:09:33
From: SECRETARY GENERAL
To: ALL
Subj: MSG AREAS
"SEX AND THE OTHER" can now be discussed in the rey Zone. The Grey Zone is
not the Gulag, but an area for the discussion of topics that don't fit in any
of the defined message boards. Thanks for your attention.
Msg#: 7261 *FINE ART*
08-11-94 12:23:32
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: HOP TO HIP
But, what's hip here won't hop to be hip in Des Moines for days, weeks, months.
Maybe MTV will deliver it to the marketplace pretty damm quick, but I could
argue too that MTV is also behind the curve - by the time MTV get ahold of
anything it has turned to crap at the source. Nirvana is a great example.
Decent music picked up, hyped, mass cultured, grown, and withered and died.
Lets take rap for example - picked up off the mean streets, now clothed
(litterally) in upper class duds (check out Massive, Studsy, Phat Farm, or the
other SoHo trendy clothing shops that have addopted the culture and now
clothing whites in the duds of up, up town black kids. Bring it all the the
hood near you.
Kansas City, and other mid west cities have their own gangs called Crips and
Bloods - these "gangs" have nothing to do with the real Crips and Bloods of
L.A., they've just appropriated the "hip look" so they will feel connected to
the world of style at large.
I'm glad to hear there's one F64 original out there, but what about Lewis Baltz
or does the same in urban realism?
<*>Replies
Msg#: 7459 *FINE ART*
08-12-94 12:48:54
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7261 (HOP TO HIP)
Lew Baltz, I haven't herad that name mentioned in at least two blue moons!
America is oddberg when it comes to it relationship with underclass culture.
The stylistics are appropriated with hungry intensity, but the people
theyselves can go die under a bridge. Where does inventiveness of this sort
come from? Maybe far-outsider status frees you up from the constipations of
gentry-imitative groupthink. Socio-economic cross dressing allows for a
theatrics of individuality/rebellion/mock defiance without actually having to
steep oneself in the septic, violent, neglected, psychopathic worlds that also
manage to be brilliantly creative in a desperate, momentarily liberating way.
The black upwardly mobile middle class (bumpies?) has no truck with this
posturoid identity decal approach, and is in the cleanest cut Brooks Brothers
corporate greys faster than you can say campus recruiter. Its the
identification with (presumed) outsider potency/authenticity/wiseness and
general seeking of dickhood that gasses this particular badness-hunger.
Personally, I've been a major fan of Harry Callahan as long as I have like
photography (and find Minor White a confused, pretentios bore half the time but
really like his work the other half of the time), and wouldn't mind at all
having a Paul Outerbridge carbro print of one of his kinkier subjects. Where
have all the great photographers gone, by the way. Once the novelty of Cindy
Sherman, Barbara Kasten, Sandy Skoglund, and so forth wears off, they are
completely forgettable. Well, you wont find me at Woodstock2, but the whole
concept more or less says it all for one corner of purgatory.
Msg#: 8593 *FINE ART*
08-23-94 08:37:12
From: WOLFGANG STAEHLE
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7459 (HOP TO HIP)
Who is Barbara Kasten?
Msg#: 8813 *FINE ART*
08-23-94 14:13:05
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: WOLFGANG STAEHLE (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 8593 (HOP TO HIP)
she does soft-psychedelic exterior architectural photography with pretty
colored lights, mirrors etc. Creates illusionistic and confusing spaces.
Msg#: 9690 *FINE ART*
08-27-94 18:48:50
From: COLIN GOLDBERG
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 7261 (HOP TO HIP)
The very notion of hipness, it seems, is something that either exists as a
personal qualitative judgement, or is a notion that is instilled by someone
that is already considered hip. I think it is interesting how MTV has evolved
as a cultural phenomenon - pulling the reins of the mass-culture caravan that
is growing every second. What is the goal of artistic or musical pursuit ? To
appeal to a rarefied 'culture', or to reach out and touch the masses. What, in
the end has more effect on the evolution of culture; paintings or commercials ?
It is difficult to say. How about ART-TV ? Would that ever happen ? And what
would it look/feel like if it did ?
Msg#: 9693 *FINE ART*
08-27-94 19:40:30
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: COLIN GOLDBERG (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 9690 (HOP TO HIP)
Problem with MTV is who is pulling who. Is the music, style, corporations, or
corporate style maker pulling the strings. Who the hell is in charge? Does it
matter? The one thing that I think we call all agree with is that MTV isn't
testing the limits of culture, it's inching and inching and inching forward
towards limits that are moving at a similar pace. As far as some kind of Art
TV goes, I'm not so sure that there's a large enough public for it. Music is
just to present in our lives across the spectrum, where as art has such a
limited environ. I'm feeling that there's no more than 10 works of art in the
world that the public knows - Mona, Iris, Scream, Monet, Picasso, Warhol,
Lichtenstein (just one work of each). That's the limit. People don't go to
museum like they buy concert tickets, records, or T-Shirts. Think of this a
big book run for a museum exhibition is 10,000. What's a gold record? 100,000
or 500,000?? How about visitors to an exhibiton, even that doesn't hit these
kinds of numbers on any regular basis. There's you audiece. Figure that even
Seinfeld draws a 500,000 viewers a week plus, it's not an easy show as sit coms
go.
A few years PBS tried a series " Live from off Center " - remember it? It
couldn't last - show Wegman once and then what?? Bottom line, there needs to
be a new way to approach the public with ART or ART will be even further pushed
to the margins of culture.
Msg#: 9745 *FINE ART*
08-28-94 11:54:04
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 9693 (HOP TO HIP)
since ART is a concept that kinda-sorta similar activities get lumped into
because they fit less well in other slots, what art is or isn't is a matter of
intention. It may be art if you say it is, but whether its great or it sucks
stays with they eye of the beholder. Artists aren't keeping up with culture.
Culture didn't suddenly get up and walk out on art. We have two godzilla sized
phenomena that weaken the hell out of art's stature in our society. One is that
the world of work has gotten competitive as all get out, no time to coast, get
out and about. It's all most people can do to drag their asses home and pour a
few stiff ones and switch on the tube. The luxury of time, to sit back and
reflect, read some subversive trash, putter around with your friends, is hard
to come by these days. But, the situation might open up and some serious social
slack reappear, but don't bet the farm on it for now. These firecracker hot
asian economies are going to keep us gringos from getting too comfy, and if you
don't spend your time keeping up with relevant technologies, your ass be grass.
The other godzilla is that home entertainment is gooood if you want to get
yourself some electronic toys, and not bad even if you're hooked up to cable.
Why should anyone care about "art" as it has been traditionally defined ? Peter
Gabriel videos are more successful at doing with art set out to do than any
"art" I can walk around and see in galleries.
Msg#: 9746 *FINE ART*
08-28-94 12:07:15
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: COLIN GOLDBERG (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 9690 (HOP TO HIP)
art tv simply doesn't need to happen. TV gives better head than art. In not
delicate terms, art is a lousy fuck. There have been times when art was a good
fuck, but the libido has got up and moved on. Why this state of affairs. Art is
a marginal, closed culture, talking to itself mostly, a few people nekkid,
walking around on their hands and knees, sniffing each others butts and barking
at the moon. The '80s were the last hurrah, the final blowout. After that,
technology peeled out, laid rubber, did a few do-nuts in the intersection of
Pekker Ave and Brainboggle street, and left us clutching the straws blowing
around or heads. It used to be that dope was more advanced than culture, you
got stoned and your mind could play with culture, see it in unexpected ways.
Now culture is more advanced than dope. Getting stoned is almost beside the
point. Just doing culture is getting stoned.
Msg#: 9806 *FINE ART*
08-28-94 17:46:58
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 9745 (HOP TO HIP)
Then it all boils down to the problem is that art is usually singlar object
that one needs to seek out - where as entertainment (music, video) is mass
market and very easy to pass from the "maker" to the "audience" at the touch of
a remote control. Art don't do that, homie. What to do? What to say? It's
hit the culture or miss.
Msg#: 9816 *FINE ART*
08-28-94 20:55:09
From: COLIN GOLDBERG
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 9746 (HOP TO HIP)
Doing culture is like getting stoned in that there is an element of absurdity
that exists? What is doing culture ? When I hear the word, I think of a
bacteria culture. This is an association that must stem from some distrust of
a mass-produced, taste-tested, 99% approved culture that is sold at a store
near you. The artist is being sublimated from the individual into the mass
aesthetic, much like the buddhist idea of beauty, in which anonymity and form
reigned supreme. The role of the artist is similar to that of a scientist in
many respects, but the exploration is aesthetic, not quantitative. As with the
invention of the camera, the computer is changing the face of art, both
directly and in a reactionary sense. What is much slower to change is the
public perception of 'art'; what constitutes it, etc.
Msg#: 9938 *FINE ART*
08-29-94 15:57:51
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: COLIN GOLDBERG (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 9816 (HOP TO HIP)
the slipperiest stuff, impossible to get a fix on. That's art's real fate,
always one step from general understanding. Like science, its good when it goes
beyond the known, and questions raised by it don't have ready made answers to
be popped into the cassette player and come out neet and complete. The
scientistic bent of the now makes art act like the bastard child of academia,
attempting precision where it should explore the potentials of ambiguity, and
conflating mystery with mystification. Are nutrinos art. They don't have any
mass.
Msg#:10042 *FINE ART*
08-30-94 00:55:56
From: COLIN GOLDBERG
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 9938 (HOP TO HIP)
It's the eternal question : what is art ? It has to be a function of society,
although the equation that determines its curvature is quite obscure. Think of
it as a path of information that winds its way thru time.... Art 'becomes' Art
(note the capital A) to the general public only when there is money attached to
it. My painting professor, Angelo Ippolito, once said
"Either give your art away to your friends or sell it for a lot of money.
Then at least you can be sure its taken care of through time."
an interesting sentiment, eh ?
Msg#:10127 *FINE ART*
08-30-94 12:19:21
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: COLIN GOLDBERG (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10042 (HOP TO HIP)
Vita brevis, ars longa. Art and spacetime. As I was reading your post it
occured to me that art is also an extension of the ego, vertically through
time, and horizonatlly through space. If you are assiduously prolific, your
personality, something close to your temperament, is extended accordingly. You
populate the world with yourself. If you are good enough, a residue of you,
much more vital that the pickled proteins sitting in a metal box we are all
going to become one day, will live on and through the imagination of other
people you have never met or heard of. Until you turn 40, artmaking has an
Oedipal nature, displacing established order with your own. After then, I think
it becomes increasingly a discussion with history. On a recent visit to the
Tallix foundry, I saw the most incredible monstrosity of a sculpture I have
ever witnessed. It looked like an asteroid had hit a 747 in midflight, the the
burning mass crashed to earth and was hit by a train. Unless there is some
redemptive alchemy that he intends to pull off at the conclusion of the
fabrication, its the biggest, damnedest mess I can imagine. Chernobyl might
have belched it. (ok- this IS my highly opinionated opinion, you may think it
ranks with Michaelangelo's Moses for all I know). But why? Why would a man
financially, reputationally, etc. secure go to such extremes to accomplish so
little ? Is he attempting to insure immortality, does he feel that he has to
leave one unquestionable *opus magnum* behind as a totem to his accomplishments
? Regardless, If I heard right, a buyer in Japan feels that he must have it...
Japanes culture may have a way of incorporating this gesture ?
Msg#:10129 *FINE ART*
08-30-94 13:03:56
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10127 (HOP TO HIP)
Yea, that Stella at Talix is really something else. Did you see the Koons
puppy? Also something of scale and girth beyond words. I think your right -
art is residue of an artist's life, that's what people want, a portion of a
life more often than something to just hang on a wall.
Msg#:10228 *FINE ART*
08-30-94 23:47:07
From: COLIN GOLDBERG
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10127 (HOP TO HIP)
maybe as a tribute to American excess, god bless it ! Who knows. How do things
like that get sold ? is it simplu a whimsical expenditure of money ? Maybe it
doesn't matter, it is just the way it is. Our tastes are formulated from many
sources, and the notion of wantonaiety (?) is one that may be valued...WHat
about the object anyway ? is it dead ? lost amidst the ever-widening spectrum
of bandwaves broadcast for our viewing pleasure ? lost among rhetoric and
intelligentCIA ? who is buying the (most expensive) best art ? Can artists be
capitalists, or vice-versa ? vittles for thought.
Msg#:10315 *FINE ART*
08-31-94 12:11:02
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10129 (HOP TO HIP)
in reply to the Platzker/Goldberg nexus here... an impulse to incorporate, or
internalize the vital spirit of the living thing (or maker) may be a driving
(and unacknowledged) force behind the civility of collecting. Is that so
distinct from the attraction to animal skins and parts that impel us to fur
coats and rugs? The primitive human ate his adversary to gain the spirit of his
adversary, and Dahmer ingested the objects of his fascination so the "wouldn't
leave him". For the artist, it is ejaculatory, one's "code" is splattered over
the world. For the collector, it is cannibalistic, one devours the Stella to
have the powers of the Stella. Is this compatible with capitalism ? Capitalism
is dual, it is fecund, constantly egging itself on, pouring gasoline on its own
fire, and self devouring, wasting itself, burning itself up. Art is inseperable
from this great psychodynamic macrocosm, and for that reason, art will flow in
the great plasms that have engulfed everything else, like the blob that came
from outer space. On closer inspection, we see the constantly interchanging
dynamic of two plasms, the Euplasm (or Vishnuplasm) and the Dysplasm (or
Kaliplasm) that are in a perpetual embrace of cosmic sexual intercourse. Art is
merely one of the manifestations of plasm-dynamics. When we speak of Art or
Capitalism, we understand that these are merely convenient mental placeholders
for processes so general and Tsunami-like in their actuality that we have to
use "tight language" to fix the idea long enough to perform mental
manipulations on it.
Msg#:10328 *FINE ART*
08-31-94 14:38:27
From: DAVID PLATZKER
To: MORGAN GARWOOD (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10315 (HOP TO HIP)
Nice return of ideas in your post - however - though one may acquire an art
object, and thus own a bit of the artist, it is only dead skin that the
collector is honestly taking posetion of. And one needs to remember that that
posetion is only temporary. Sure a collector may own an object for a lifetime
(the collectors), but more often than not the objects change hands every few
years as the fortunes of the owner changes. Then what are they left with? A
cite in a book? Memories? A bill of sale? All interesting things. All
things that need frames of some kind, or to be put under glass.
In the end all of these things, given times, will either end up in a museum or
be lost or fall out of fashion, passed over by time. Reconsturcted in a museum
in the future dedicated to a given slice of a previous time.
Msg#:10550 *FINE ART*
09-01-94 16:11:11
From: MORGAN GARWOOD
To: DAVID PLATZKER (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10328 (HOP TO HIP)
funny you should bring this up... was just last night reading Freud's little
essay on transience. He felt that transience was "scarcity in time" which was
as much part of an object's beauty as it economic scarcity, its scarcity in
space. A revulsion towards transience he felt was a neurotic inability to truly
mourn, and that emerged as a state of permanent melancholy in the one who could
not accept transience.
Msg#:10552 *FINE ART*
09-01-94 16:22:52
From: GERARD HOVAGIMYAN
To: ALL
Subj: BKPC
To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the creation of the "Barbie Doll"
G.H.Hovagimyan and The Thing are presenting BKPC or Barbie & Ken politically
correct. The Thing will present one image (gif format) a week for twelve weeks
which you can download into your personal files. Look for your first snappy
picture on Thursday September 1st followed by a new one each Thursday in the
Fine Arts forum. Your comments are desired. Will the Valet please present the
first image.
<*>Replies
Msg#:10554 *FINE ART*
09-01-94 16:33:51
From: VALET
To: GERARD HOVAGIMYAN (Rcvd)
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 10552 (BKPC)
At your service. Here it is. (If any of the European nodes are interested I
can make the files available via ftp request. There are no messsage file
attachments in regular echo boards. Send me email.)
*Enclosed File: bkpc1.gif
Msg#:11698 *FINE ART*
09-07-94 20:52:46
From: VALET
To: ALL
Subj: #2
...and here's number two. Don't ask me what it is about, I am just doing my
job.
*Enclosed File: bkpc2.gif
Msg#:11770 *FINE ART*
09-08-94 10:55:01
From: GERARD HOVAGIMYAN
To: ALL
Subj: BKPC 2
BKPC stands for Barbie & Ken politically correct. There are 12 images in all.
There is no cost for you to download the file but you need a GIF. convertor to
see the images. If you don't have the GIF. Convertor it is in the Database
files.
Many white women were startled to discover that Ken had taken classes as a
modern dancer. His main ambition in life was to land the lead role of Tony in
the broadway play West Side Story. If only there were a way....
Msg#:11772 *FINE ART*
09-08-94 11:35:41
From: GERARD HOVAGIMYAN
To: ALL
Subj: BKPC 2
Regarding the GIF. convertor which you use to view the BKPC piece. It is in the
file area not the database. sorry about the wrong info.