They’re changing the shows (a combination of a work on the video monitor outside plus something in the window) every week, so go now to see the excellent one up right now, curated by Lawrence Rinder.
The Lutz Bacher piece is Olympiad, a beatifully damaged video of the 1936 Olympics Stadium in Berlin, made famous by another woman filmmaker.
The Tim Hawkinson piece, called Seal, looks like an official seal made from an elephant skin.
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Senator Rick Santorum on the anti-gay marriage amendment:
“I would argue that the future of our country hangs in the balance because the future of marriage hangs in the balance,” he said shortly before the vote. “Isn’t that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?”
As a New Yorker, I’m pretty sure that gay marriage is NOT the biggest danger we face.
[photo courtesy of Jesse Chan-Norris]
Via rodcorp, I found this interview with J.G. Ballard in The Guardian. Fascinating stuff, including his interest in the visual arts. An excerpt:
Today’s art scene? Very difficult to judge, since celebrity and the media presence of the artists are inextricably linked with their work. The great artists of the past century tended to become famous in the later stages of their careers, whereas today fame is built into the artists’ work from the start, as in the cases of Emin and Hirst.
There’s a logic today that places a greater value on celebrity the less it is accompanied by actual achievement. I don’t think it’s possible to touch people’s imagination today by aesthetic means. Emin’s bed, Hirst’s sheep, the Chapmans’ defaced Goyas are psychological provocations, mental tests where the aesthetic elements are no more than a framing device.
It’s interesting that this should be the case. I assume it is because our environment today, by and large a media landscape, is oversaturated by aestheticising elements (TV ads, packaging, design and presentation, styling and so on) but impoverished and numbed as far as its psychological depth is concerned.
Artists (though sadly not writers) tend to move to where the battle is joined most fiercely. Everything in today’s world is stylised and packaged, and Emin and Hirst are trying to say, this is a bed, this is death, this is a body. They are trying to redefine the basic elements of reality, to recapture them from the ad men who have hijacked our world.
I am currently reading Ballard’s War Fever, a rather prescient set of short stories published in 1999.
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We had lunch with friends at The Spotted Pig yesterday.
The gnudi (like gnocchi but only made of ricotta) with butter and sage: excellent.
The halibut with chunky puree of peas and sauteed escarole: yummy.
The service: HORRIBLE.
If you want to learn more about gnudi, this Rogers and Gray cookbook (they of River Cafe in London fame) has a whole chapter.
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You only have a week on two of these:
crits’s pix at Black & White has great stuff, especially Julian Montague’s “The Stray Shopping Cart: An Illustrated System of Identification” and Jon-Paul Villegas’s brilliant mix of wall paintings and sculpture. I’ll add images if I can get some. Closes 7/19.
“a dot that went for a walk” at Plus Ultra Gallery includes Katinka Ahlbom (who had a striking installation that was part of “Sunrise Sunset” at Smack Mellon), Vanessa Conte, Rosemarie Fiore, and Medrie Macphee. Closes 7/19.
We will have to go back to “Grotto 2” at Jessica Murray Projects, as it was very hot and difficult to absorb the 60+ artists in the show. A few things did manage to stand out, such as Rachel Mason’s video “Model Anthem”, the White House sculpture of Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua (we bought the “Todo List” work that went along with it), and Diane Meyer’s “Redemption: Professional Confessional.” Some lucky person at the opening bought a Reed Anderson work based on a page from a 1977 Penthouse at a very reasonable price. Closes 8/1.
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Updated: There are some photos here from the Black & White show. I also forgot to mention how much I liked Nick Brown’s work in the back patio.
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Joy Garnett tells us of a GOP memo given to people at Penn South (the big complex a little north of us on Eighth Avenue), telling them to stay inside during the convention, and to carry ID at all times. Lovely.
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I hope I didn’t embarass myself too badly. We were interviewed for a Studio 360 segment on Eric Doeringer’s “Bootleg” project.
In New York, the program will air on 93.9 FM at 10 AM Saturday, July 10 and on 820 AM at 7 PM on Sunday, July 11. You can also listen online to WNYC.
To find broadcast times/stations in other areas, visit this page. The program will also be archived for one week after the broadcast — after that you have to pay to listen — here.
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Apparently it has become illegal to wear an anti-Bush t-shirt in a public place if he is nearby.
“Our immediate task in battle fronts like Iraq and Afghanistan (news – web sites) and elsewhere is to capture or kill the terrorists … so we do not have to face them here at home,” Bush told a cheering crowd outside the West Virginia Capitol. An enthusiastic audience estimated by state capitol police at 6,500 people waving American flags chanted, “Four more years.”
Regarding Saddam, the deposed Iraqi president, Bush said: “Because we acted, the dictator, the brutal tyrant, is sitting in a prison cell.”
Two Bush opponents, taken out of the crowd in restraints by police, said they were told they couldn’t be there because they were wearing shirts that said they opposed the president.
Restraints? They handcuffed them?
If you only read one in-depth article on Baghdad and Iraq, this is the one.
Christian Parenti, who has been covering Iraq for The Nation, gives us The Rough Guide to Baghdad.
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