danielflahiff_journal

Weltanschauung: The Wind in the Trees

The Weltanschauung, Ignatius J. Reiley spoke of, if you haven't already guessed or if you've forgotten your high school German, is a kind of personal world view. Yesterday I had a confirmation of sorts of my current weltanschauung. I'd picked up a translation of Montaigne's 'Essays', and flipping through the collection literally 'at random', I read this passage from "Of idleness":

"Lately when I retired to my home, determined so far as possible to bother about nothing except spending the little life I have left in rest and seclusion, it seemed to me I could do my mind no greater favor than to let it entertain itself in full idleness and stay and settle in itself, which I hoped it might do more easily now, having become weightier and riper with time. But I find-

Ever idle hours breed wandering thoughts
                                                                --Lucan

"--that, on the contrary, like a runaway horse, it gives itself a hundred times more trouble than it took for others, and gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monsters, one after another, without order or purpose, that in order to contemplate their ineptitude and strangeness at my pleasure, I have begun to put them in writing, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself."

And the moment for me took on the aspect of revelation. I shit you not. The experience of, 'seeing as in a mirror, dimly' my own reflection, reminded me of one of the things that first attracted me to art and literature; a process of discovery, of learning to be human.

Montaigne wrote this passage in the late 16th Century and it is just as relevant today as ever. Not in the term 'idleness' per se, but more specifically, in the false industry of instant information availability.  For example, do something like Google your name--'chimeras and fantastic monsters' indeed!

This is not the idleness artists need. What we need, what I need, is to be still; to listen to the wind in the trees. Godard said we need more films with wind in the trees. I trust Godard. I've got to go back into my DVDs and find the scene. Was it "Helas Pour Moi" or something much earlier?

Here's one from YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwrLmtlo1e0

On Laughter, Angst and Cai Guo-Qiang

And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

When I read Roberta Smith's description, in todays New York Times, of the small army of assistants to the artist Cai Guo-Qiang--Mr. Cai puts large sheets of paper on the floor, distributes some combination of gunpowder and/or fuses across the paper and then lights it all, after which the assistants rush to put out the small fires which have ignited on the paper itself--it cracked me up! Imagine the sight, a room full of blue, sulfurous smoke and a half-dozen m.f.a. students running around stamping out little fires with their soon-to-be-ruined Converse lo-tops.

Mr. Cai's work reminds me that Democritus and Heraclitus were both right; we are at once pathetic and pitiable. But we are hilarious as well. Mt. Rushmore? It's a caricature of hubris and it's really funny!  Or Warhol's "Empire"? Sadistic and terrifyingly boring and bust-a-gut funny! Thank you Mr. Cai for taking up this honored tradition.

 

Mr. Cai's bravado illustrates how in the western world, where anything seems possible, much of our privileged, existential angst can be traced to the ongoing problem of keeping our Franklin/Covey® 'To Do' list up to date; schedule the meeting, pay the bills, buy the groceries, fill the gas tank, finish the novel, call mom. It's frantic. It seems really important. We court misery and worry ourselves sick. And eventually we need meds. [some of us, anyway.] And this is all exactly like  Mr. Cai's work. The tyranny of absolute freedom, theoretical or not, wreaks havoc among every one of us not singularly motivated by financial gain. Remember John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius Rielly,  from 'A Confederacy of Dunces':

    "Employers sense in me a denial of their values." He rolled over onto his back. "They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century which I loathe. That was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library."
     "But Ignatius, that was the only time you worked since you got out of college, and you was only there for two weeks."
    "That is exactly what I mean," Ignatius replied, aiming a paper ball at the bowl of the milk glass chandelier.
    "All you did was paste them little slips in the books."
  "Yes, but I had my own esthetic about pasting those slips. On some days I could only paste in three or four slips and at the same time feel satisfied with the quality of my work. The library authorities resented my integrity about the whole thing. They only wanted another animal who could slop glue on their best sellers."
    "You think maybe you could get a job there again?"
  "I seriously doubt it. At the time I said some rather cutting things to the woman in charge of the processing department. They even revoked my borrower's card. You must realize the fear and hatred which my weltanschauung instills in people." Ignatius belched.

Slap me in the face if that ever fails to make me laugh!

Thank you John Kennedy. Thank you Andy Warhol. And thank you Cai Guo-Qiang. You crack me up, even those flying Fords in the SAM lobby. [I know I'm supposed to be thinking about the ubiquity of violence, post 9-11, ruminate on the mediation of extreme brutality and terrorism by technology, etc. But they just look so...hammy! Thanks again.]

Goethe, Faust and Tricky Translations

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless   ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. --Goethe

I've always liked this sentiment, romantic as it is, and I believe there is a certain kind of truth in it. The quote is all over the internet and I was thinking about jotting down some thoughts on the idea and was in turn trying to find the correct attribution. But as it turns out, Goethe never wrote those words. According to a story on the Goethe Society Website, the phrase is actually a paraphrasing of Goethe by W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition,1951. Murray's text reads:

But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money--booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

Goethe, on the other hand actually wrote:

    Enough words have been exchanged;
    Now at last let me see some deeds!
    While you turn compliments,
    Something useful should transpire.
    What use is it to speak of inspiration?
    To the hesitant it never appears.
    If you would be a poet,
    Then take command of poetry.
    You know what we require,
    We want to down strong brew;
    So get on with it!
    What does not happen today, will not be done tomorrow,
    And you should not let a day slip by,
    Let resolution grasp what's possible
    and seize it boldly by the hair;
    it will not get away
    and it labors on, because it must.

                           [Der Worte sind genug gewechselt,
                          Laßt mich auch endlich Taten sehn!
                          Indes ihr Komplimente drechselt,
                          Kann etwas Nützliches geschehn.
                          Was hilft es, viel von Stimmung reden?
                          Dem Zaudernden erscheint sie nie.
                          Gebt ihr euch einmal für Poeten,
                          So kommandiert die Poesie.
                          Euch ist bekannt, was wir bedürfen,
                          Wir wollen stark Getränke schlürfen;
                          Nun braut mir unverzüglich dran!
                          Was heute nicht geschieht, ist morgen nicht getan,
                          Und keinen Tag soll man verpassen,
                          Das Mögliche soll der Entschluß
                          Beherzt sogleich beim Schopfe fassen,
                          Er will es dann nicht fahren lassen
                          Und wirket weiter, weil er muß.]

        - Goethe, Faust I, Zeilen 214-230

So what's a poor blogger to do? Idleness must eventually acquiesce to action, for without action, there is nothing. Without action, there can be no 'this' or 'that', but only 'potential'. We recognize the person of action when we meet one. We call them 'a force of nature' and 'bigger than life'. They convey a sense of confidence and authority without pretense. What of the rest of us?

J. says 'just show up, it's half the battle'. Not bad. For now, I will print these lines and post them on my monitor:

Grasp what is possible and seize it boldly by the hair..

And then I set my quota. I'll report back on this on Friday.

Note: It seems IBM has been brushing-up on its Goethe too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziOG_GHNVq0 :

Ambition is to Idleness as Industry is to...

Art. Here's a little digression on the idea. The only profession in which idleness is an asset is the artist's. It takes time--distance J. likes to say--to make something interesting, unusual or unexpected. This is one of the reasons that great art is rare; it takes time, a lot of time (and not a little talent). In my experience, it cannot be scheduled, regimented, put on a calendar or charted by project management software. It is not some romantic notion of inspiration we are talking about, but a kind of lack of industry.

Lou Reed quoted Andy Warhol's refrain, "All that really matters is work." ('Work' on 'Songs for Drella' ) And he was right. But a large part of what Warhol called 'work' is not the physical production of objects as might be assumed. Producing an object is but the last five or ten percent, for me anyway, the flowering of a plant whose root system is deeper and wider and has taken longer to manifest than is commonly acknowledged.

Additionally, one of the greatest things about most art today is that it is worthless, at least according to the principles by which most ventures in the west are measured: it can't be processed, incorporated, unionized, depreciated, consumed, added to or subtracted from? [this argument is not the Platonic/Aristotelean split in which Plato dismisses art as mere imitation while Aristotle champions it as a means of conveying universal truths, this little riff has more to do with economics than philosophy, though the slope is slippery] Obviously, this is not the art that is stolen from museums or auctioned at Sotheby's. We are talking about the world of objects and ideas that are never commodified, that never make it into the history books, but that make up the vast majority of art that is produced every day--the painting you saw at a swap meet, the novel that came and went and was never read again, the poem by that unknown poet you heard that one time downtown and will never forget, but which will nevertheless go on to be forgotten by 'history'. Its 'worthlessness' is the very thing that makes art so important in a world of de facto global capitalism.

On one end of the spectrum, Duchamp plays chess; on the other, Chihuly fills the world with glass, glass, glass...the rest of us fall somewhere in between. I make art and I run a business, several business ventures actually. I am married, have children, need exercise, nourishment and sleep. I want a house, a car, a TV, maybe some nice shoes--all that bourgeois shit. I want to feel good about the work I do. For me and for many of the artists that I know, ambition and idleness are constantly at war. Does this seem odd? It shouldn't. It is a cliché. Finding the balance-- the sweet spot between the joy of the creative process and the rest of life's joys--continues to elude me.

In the classic "The Poetics of Space", Gaston Bachelard wrote that, "To say that one has left certain intellectual habits behind is easy enough, but how is it to be achieved? For a rationalist, this constitutes a minor daily crisis, a sort of split in one's thinking which, even though its object be partial--a mere image--has none the less great psychic repercussions." He was laying the ground work for his definition of the transsubjectivity of images, what he called a "phenomenology of the imagination", but what he described resonates with my own daily experience.

My "minor daily [psychic] crisis" is also a kind of transsubjectivity, not of images but rather of consciousness, a way of being in the world; a subjectivity that is not fixed but fluid, fickle and unpredictable. It could also be called a kind of schizophrenia, which is kind of a relief, and kind of fucked-up.

Beer, Babes and Butoh:The Bridge Motel Blowout, Seattle 9/15/07

      

Hello all! Sorry for the lack of posts over the summer. Studio updates are coming soon. For now I thought I'd try to give you a taste of the bash at the Bridge Motel last night. Props to all involved in the organization and execution of the complex happening. And it really was a 'happening'.

For those of you who don't already know, the Bridge Motel has been a Seattle icon of sorts for the last 50 years; needles in the sheets and no questions asked. A year ago DK Pan took over as manager with an eye to holding this event just before the motel was to be razed [I thought that was Pan in the picture on the left, holding the red umbrella on the roof of the motel, but it was probably either Sheri Brown or Diana Garcia-Snyder performing "Praying Walk", I think...]. The only stipulation for artists was to avoid the subject of drugs, prostitution, or other obvious cheap motel clichés.

We showed up around 7:30 and jumped right in, though we didn't have the courage to open the door to 'The Van'--Mike Min's contribution to the festivities--at least not at first.

The event drew around 1200 people (according to the people who should know), though the small footprint of the motel and parking lot made it seem like twice that number. We found a place in the line and settled in.

      

Standing in the phenomenally long line, I thought I heard the sound of howling, and as the crowd parted, there it was, a perfectly preserved, young coyote--stuffed, mind you--sitting in a Red Flyer wagon, flanked by the curious and the confused.

I'm fairly certain it was part of "No Touching Ground, "Guide" - Wolves.  Ravens.  Owls.  Shamans.  One of the last storytellers, a northwest pure blood, conjures up his ghost army." I could be wrong, but the crowd did seem rather 'shamanish' and the vibe was decidely in the realm of the undead.

      

Edging closer to the motel, I managed to distract Drs.Ink and Owning (aka Sierra Nelson and Rachel Kessler) also known as the Vis-a-vis Society, long enought to snap this pic. Though we never made it to their reception desk, they were kind enough to smile for the camera. And yes, they are smarter than you. Isn't that hot!

      

At the top of the stairs we were met by the two on the left, who managed to entertain the crowd with antics intended to distract but which actually made me quite nervous. Could it have been the blood/paint or simply the fact that just after this picture was taken, I happened to overhear a person who seemed to know what he was talking about quietly say to our hosts that they should try to encourage people to keep moving because the upper balcony was only supposed to be able to hold 200 people at a time, max. Fun!

    

Our first stop was number 9 in which we found "Ghost Stumps" by Sarah Kavage. I liked these white, porcelain tree stumps Kavage created. I don't think they performed very well in this setting though; the precious nature of the material and the contrast created by their form was overwhelmed by the seediness of the motel, the smelly rug, the dirty matress and the dingy bathroom.  One might hope for a kind of tension between the two, but there was really no competition. I can't wait to see these in another setting though. [more info at www.gogoweb.com/kavage]

      

Our next stop--"8 Legs" by Kathy Kim and Shelly Farnham in room number 8--was one of my favorites of the night. Kim and Farnham transformed the room with string, mirrors and black lights, requiring viewers to crawl on the floor "gingerly" in order to view the installation. They stated that it was intended as an exploration of the "dichotomy of the victim and prey in social webs", and it did indeed conjure feelings of confusion, competition and fear. It was also incredibly beautiful.  I went into the middle of the room and rolled onto my back and stayed there for a while, just enjoying their vision. [more here: http://www.hive-mind.com/shelly/farnhamportfolio.htm]

    

Next stop, number 7 and an installation by our host D.K. Pan called "The World Will Always Welcome Lovers", in which he painted the walls red, covered the floor with 3 inches of sand, and scattered love letters around for viewers to read at their leisure. We slipped off our shoes and socks and stepped onto the cool salt-covered floor; like walking on the beach, only softer. That's Julie in the picture above snapping the pic in the mirror. I'm on the left bending over to read one of the letters. On the television a gold fish swam upside down. Pan's room was generous and tender. I couldn't help but ping back and forth between his intentions and my reaction to the often banal sentiments of the letters. Sentiments which reminded me of my own awkward adolescence [and whose isn't, really?] Sands of Time. As Time Goes By. And a recent project I did called "Love Letters to my Sweetheart the Crack-whore."

    

PDL's project in room number 10, "Deep Space" was in keeping with their smart-alecky M.O. I liked it. So did the two in the picture above [no, I don't know them but we had some fun messing with PDL]. The performance consisted of the three artists of PDL hidden in the room acting out a kind of space mission. Viewers could watch the performance only on the small television mounted creatively in front of a rear screen projection of a cheezy starfield.  But--and this was the key--viewers could communicate with the artists through a vintage intercom system glued to the window. "Mission control to PDL, you are entering a dangerous meteor storm [of irony?]. Take evasive action immediately!"

   

Room number 11 was too packed [Laura Corsiglia's "Slippage Drawing"] and so we found ourselves next door in number 12, Jack Daws' and Faith Ramos' "Campfire. As hard as it is to imagine, Daws and Ramos managed to clear the room, cut a huge hole in the ceiling, and installed a firepit. They even provided marshmallows and roasting sticks. And was that Bob Wills singing on the tinny radio, or Hank Williams?

I was enjoying the vibe, staring at the fire when Julie said, "Oh my god! What is that?" I turned and looked up and found another Azucar Acida dancer doing their thing on the roof. Excellent!

      

We pushed our way down the stairs and found ourselves in room number 3, the lounge "Straight up Chillin", which was anything but. As party-goers thrashed the place--accompanied by AC/DC's Back in Black--we saw one reveler pull a photograph off the wall and attempt to walk out with it. When she was grabbed, she put up a particularly dramatic fight, after which she bounced on the bed for a while, apparently unphased by the incident. [Don't tell anyone, but this was my favorite room of the night!]

      

In rooms 2/5 we found "Implied Violence", a bravado performance that dealt with [as close as I could tell] the machismo of male violence, drugs, rock and roll and action painting. But maybe that wasn't what it was about at all. By this time I was hitting image/performance overload and was badly in need of a drink.

Back outside, we stumbled over Robert Zverina's "Flattened Cans Spiral" and found the pot empty at the One-pot dinner. Still haven't been able to taste one of those dinners.

It was around 10:45 and the crowd was bigger than ever. I bumped into the couple above as he was trying to convince her to come to New York with him. She said yes, and they just looked so happy I had to snap this picture and share it with you. It seemed to represent what the whole night felt like; a great big tub of love! Congratulations to all involved. It was a huge success.

      

Oh, and I almost forgot about the van, Mike Min's "Don't Come a Knockin'" which consisted of "TOOL, fog machine, laser lights and chicken...in a van, bitches. Let's be chums." By the time we were ready to leave we were pretty exhausted, but as tends to happen when it gets late and you're buzzed/punchy/drunk, we fell back on the old, "I'll do it if you do it" ploy and actually did get up the courage to hop in the back of the smoking, rocking, crowd-intimidating van. It was a highlight of the night and I'd love to tell you all about what happened inside, but as they say, "What happens in the van, stays in the van."

Cheers!

Paintings That Rhyme; round 2

This week on Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes, he has put out a challenge to bloggers to share their own take on the idea of Paintings That Rhyme. He kicked things off with his own take, looking at an 1887 trompe l'oeil painting by George Cope titled Civil War Regalia of Major Levi Gheen McCauley, which made him think about Marsden Hartley's Portrait of a German Officer, 1914.

It's a fun and creative way to get back to actually writing about art, rather than art world politics, finances and scandals. I'm pretty sure it's also a not-so-subtle comment on the recent art thievery debates, the most public being the Hirst/Precious spat in LA.

Maybe not, but I like to think Tyler is intentionally (and playfully) pointing us to a much more interesting aspect of all this; semiotics. That's right, the good, old-fashioned joy of reading 'texts'. It's brilliant, actually.

From where I'm sitting, Tyler's 'rhymes' are about how pictures speak to each other, but more importantly, how they speak to us.

Briefly oversimplifying Semiotics 101, a picture can be seen as a 'text' made up of 'signs'. A sign is simply a single unit of a text (so if we look at a picture of a horse let's say, each element in that picture or text is a sign; the horse, rider, ground, sky, tree, bird, rock, cloud, and on and on. And by the way, semiotics considers most things texts - pictures, sculptures, films, houses, people, places...just about everything actually. Oh, and books too.) Anyway, we are constantly in the process of reading texts by decoding the signs. We do this naturally through the simultaneous processes of 'denotation' and 'connotation'. And here is where we get back to Tyler's 'rhymes.

Looking at the picture of the horse, the rider, as a sign, carries a denotation, as in the most basic idea of 'the rider'--male, young, caucasian etc. The rider, as a sign, also carries a connotation, which is all the things 'the rider' may suggest--rich, spoiled, mean, bully, class struggle, suffering, injustice, death etc. Denotation and connotation take place simultaneously and automatically. They are also both subject to the unique views of each individual. And while each sign's denotation may be relatively easy to name within a given social milleaux, it's connotation varies wildly from individual to individual. And it is in the process of connotation that we finally get to Tyler's 'rhymes'.

Take for example, I recently saw Baldesarri's Stonehenge in Green:

which made me think of Davie Salle's Sextant in Dogtown:

 

which made me think of Buren's Palais Royale for some reason, those circles maybe:

then this by Monet:

which, of course led me to one of my favorite of all time:

which came full circle to Nan Goldin here:

and on and on it goes.

Looked at this way, every picture rhymes. Try it! I'm going to do more.

Thanks Tyler...

d.

 

A Confession: Fairfield Porter, John T. Spike, Florence and Paint

I hadn't thought about the painter Fairfield Porter in years, and he would never have crossed my mind had Regina Hackett at the Seattle P-I not mentioned him in her fabulous blog recently. The story is complicated, and I hesitate to even bring it up, but...

This is how I remember it:

Florence, Italy. January 1, 1993. It is one of the coldest days on record in the city; snow is predicted for overnight, the first time that has happened in decades. A recently married young couple--artists from America--weave their way through the crowded, cobblestone streets. The artists are cold, tired, loaded down with bags seemingly filled with bricks, and disoriented from twenty-odd hours of travelling from their home in Seattle.

The two stop to ask directions to their pensione from a nice looking Italian couple chatting amicably in front of a coffee bar. The Italians react coyly, as if they don't understand the young couple's broken Italian. How fucking obnoxious! think the Americans, If you don't know where it is, just say so. Don't play this pathetic game! When they part, the coy Italian man says, "Je suis desolée , Monsieur. Vraiment," and does a classic, Parisian shrug. It turns out that the Italians were in fact French and really didn't understand a word the Americans had said.

Skip ahead three months. The young American couple (Julie and me if you haven't already guessed) have rented a flat and settled into a life of drawing, painting and visiting museums, art and architecture that we had until then only read about in art history books. We were lucky; I had recieved a small grant, and neither of us had been to Europe before, so we sold our car, closed our bank accounts and bought two one-way tickets to Italy. We would worry about careers later. We saw a chance; an entire year to study Art. The real deal. The Mecca of the figurative tradition--a version of which I was practicing on canvas at the time--and nothing but time to paint, study, eat, and drink...la bella vita!

Skip ahead another month to a bitterly cold Wednesday night, the night that I first met John T. Spike, art historian, critic and author of a forthcoming book on Fairfield Porter which would soon be hailed as the 'definitive text' on the subject. By this time Julie and I had become regulars at a student gathering held in the basement of Florence's St. James Episcopal Church; cheap pasta, free chianti, and usually a movie, slide show, or lecture. On the night we met, Mr. Spike had given a lecture at that gathering on the artist Fairfield Porter, and afterward he announced he would be curating an art exhibition in the basement of the church, The exhibition title; "Ars Gratia Artis: Art for Art's Sake". That was the beginning of the end.

Later that evening, after several glasses of free chianti, I gathered enough courage to walk over and introduce myself to the illustrious Mr. Spike. He asked me what kind of artist I was. I told him I was a painter. A figurative painter. Oil on canvas. Very interested in developing some ideas from the Bay Area school, and particularly in cannibalizing the work of Nathan Oliviera, Richard Diebenkorn, and David Park all of whom had monographs that I regularly referred to in my studio.

Mr. Spike laughed. He was no more drunk than I, no doubt, but nevertheless. A loud laugh. Beads of sweat formed on my brow. Mr. Spike; Harvard PhD., lecturer at Yale, Princeton, and god knows where else. Me; 24-year-old unknown artist. What did I know?

     Mr. Spike said, "Does anybody paint anymore? You can't do that. Everyone is doing installations now. Or performance. Or video." He smiled at his giggling entourage. At this point I wasn't sure if he was mocking me--the quaint little painter--or trying to include me in a little ironic bravado--yes, of course you are a painter, why would you be making trendy, superficial installation art and living here in Florence?

     I tried not to miss a beat, "Of course I, um, paint," I said, trying not to slur. "Painting is not dead, um, it's alive and, um, at least, um..." It was the best I could do.

But here is the irony of that encounter, and similar ones I had with Mr. Spike that year. Yes, it's true that I was exploring a kind of perversion of Bay Area figurative abstraction at the time, but I was also writing a thesis on the transformation of the socio-economic role of artists, from the beginning of the Renaissance to the end of it; from artisan/laborer to the epitome of the cult of personality. It is a transformation that still resonates today. And in truth, I was beginning to think that painting was out of touch, anachronistic, rife with nostalgia and burdened by the weight of history and NYC vitriolics, particularly in light of what was happening in film and the web at the time.

Mr. Spike--in fact a passionate defender of painting as it turned out, 20th Century American realism to be exact--only added to my suspicions about my painting practice. Like his subject Fairfield Porter, Mr. Spike seemed hopelessly lost to nostalgia, a romantic living in a dream of his own making; a dandy--irrelevant, spoiled and out of touch. Eventually, I found it difficult to separate Spike, Porter, and figurative painting. I began to view my practice--with no little help from Arnold Hauser's classic text "The Social History of Art" among others--as an extension of the Porter/Spike/Painting triumverate. In short, I thought my painting was...irrelevant.

I cut the stretcher bars from my works in progress, rolled up the six linen canvases--and never looked at them again (a la Baldessari, Park, and countless other artists given to fits of melodrama).

Jump ahead 14 years to today, February 16, 2007. It is a drizzly Friday afternoon here in Seattle. I should be in my studio working on my new series of pictures, a kind of collision of architectural paradigms; Koenig meets Mary Colter, as I joked to John Jahn over at PORT.

Will I work with paint today? Maybe.

Much has happened since those bucolic days in Florence. Painting has not died, obviously, nor has it faded in importance. It made it through it's 'crisis of legitimacy' and has, in fact, proven itself more relevant than ever as the world becomes more and more inundated with moving images; film, television, and most recently, broadband internet. Painting has survived Mike Kelly and Martin Kippenberger, Brice Marden and Stephen Prina, Peter Halley, Jeff Koons, Marcel Broodthaers, Ross Bleckner, Rudolph Stingel, Peyton, Owens, Freud, Hirst, Shaw, Currin, Murakami...

Painting today is crowded with vital, dedicated and serious exploration, so I will end this post with a few quotes I found written down in my notebooks. And then maybe I'll pick up a brush. Anything is possible...

"If some painting is still to come, if painters are still to come, they will not come from where we expect them to." --Yve-Alain Bois in "Painting: The Task of Mourning"

"Today, there is an almost uncanny resemblance between the discourses around the status of contemporary painting and rock music. The techno-factions in both art and music have repeatedly buried the canvas and the guitar for good, and time and again both have risen from the grave, claiming that their time had not yet come, that there was still something substantial to say with and about them."--Jorg Heiser in “The Odd Couple”

"These paintings are reconceived in terms of the larger cultural spectacle without allegory, or any idea that looks backwards for its own relevance. I want them to be the symbolic language object come-to-life, the way it is impossible to ignore something that stirs in the ashes, not dead, but rising from the death of everything that has been poisoned and made extinct around it." --Daniel Mendel-Black in "The Paintings Are Alive Manifesto"

"Yes, I am the first to admit that my paintings are willful perversions of my training...Inversion and perversion only serve to reinscribe the law they seek to undermine...It is all shit. The law is there. And in my last breath, like all lapsed believers, I will whimper and ask for forgiveness. I will die groveling, begging to be reinstated into the ranks I never truly left: the ranks of the law-abiding. Stupid me.I was a beliver all along." --Mike Kelly in "Goin' Home, Goin' Home"

-Daniel

Blatant Self-promotion; Bleeding Hearts at Gallery OK

I have a piece in the "Bleeding Hearts" show at the Gallery OK. E-mail Greg so he can set-up a time to let you in gmc_tile@comcast.net ...

More about the show at (incli)NATION

[Picture is blurry, yes, I know, better pics to follow.]

 

title "Love Letters I Never Sent to My Sweetheart the Crack-whore; three translations of Shakespeare's Sonnet XVIII; binary, hexidecimal, base 64" (clear/ebony) 300` high-polymer archival ink on 80# pH neutral paper. Three prints numbering VII of X - XIX of X, 8.5 X 11 inches, 21.5 X 28 cm

A Dog's Guide to the Olympic Sculpture Garden

On a bright, cold Sunday afternoon, the opening weekend of the Seattle Art Museum's new Olympic Sculpture Garden, my dog Parker took me for a walk among the grand, shiny and brand new additions to Seattle's waterfront. Parker is an eleven-week-old, yellow-labrador mix--a puppy really--still not fully in control of her bladder, but she is surprisingly conversant in the area of contemporary art. What follows are exerpts from my interview with her:

DANIEL Rumor has it that you actually liked the Olympic Sculpture Garden (OSG) contrary to some of the comments you've made recently.

PARKER What comments? Who's been talking? Was it the cat? You can't trust cats, you know.

DANIEL Did you not say that the OSG was a missed opportunity for Seattle, and that choosing second-rate work by internationally known artists was just a timid attempt by SAM and her patrons to get taken seriously in the international art community?

PARKER I didn't say any such thing. What I said was, choosing to include Richard Serra's "Wake" was about as daring as an outing to a Medina dog-park; it may have seemed like a nice idea at first, but when confronted with the reality, the well-behaved blandness of it all was a dissapointment.

DANIEL Can you explain?

PARKER Sure. And let me be clear, Serra's work is not the only culprit in this debacle, but he is arguably the most well known artist of the bunch and provides a convenient jumping-off point. For instance, let's do a run-down of the work in the garden; Kelly's "Curve XXIV" an immitation of his 1970s work: Caro's "Riviera" 1974; Pepper's "Perre's Ventaglio III", 1967; Nevelson's "Sky Landscape I" 1983; di Suvero's "Bunyon's Chess", 1965; Calder's "Eagle" 1971; Smith's "Stinger" 1968 ('99) and "Wandering Rocks" 1967. See the pattern?

DANIEL You've just listed an internationally known roster of talented, brilliant and influential artists.

PARKER Right. But it is also a list of artwork--8 out of the total of 16 sculptures on view at the OSG--that were made over 30 years ago. 30 years! It is also a list of sculpture that has been easily digested, is equivalent to decoration, and appears to have come out of storage [aren't they mostly Virginia Wright's? or are they the Shirley's?] only to be plopped down in the middle of a lawn.

DANIEL In all fairness, Nevelson's piece is just over 20 years old, and frankly, I find your lack of gratitude offensive...

PARKER You're missing the point. Here we have an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the history of art, or at the very least 'art in public places', or less heroically, to the unique character of the city of Seattle, and what have we done? We have simply imitated hundreds of other cities in this country, made a list of well-known artists and/or took any and all donations we were given by the old-guard, art patrons of Seattle, and plopped them down in the middle of some million-dollar real estate on the waterfront.

DANIEL But as you must know by now, the reaction to the Garden has been overwhelmingly positive. The paths are crowded even on weekdays, and the Garden is getting rave reviews from all across the nation.

PARKER And Mussolini was a hero to the majority of Italians in the 40s...

DANIEL That's not entirely true, nor is it a fair comparison. It is ridiculous.

PARKER I'm hungry.

DANIEL You're not tracking, Parker.

PARKER No, but consider for a moment even the most contemporary work on view here--aside from the Serra piece. Roy McMakin's "Love & Loss" 2005, appears to be an advertisement for his design firm, and Teresita Fernández "Cloud Cover" 2004-6, looks as though a group of b-tier, mall architects had a little money left over after construction and asked themselves, "Hmm. What would spice up an outdoor hallway in Seattle? I know! Colorful clouds!"

DANIEL Fernandez received a MacArthur "genius" award!

PARKER Did you bring any treats? I'm really starving.

DANIEL So then I take it my information was wrong. You do not like the OSG after all.

PARKER Actually, quite the contrary. I do like the garden. But just the garden, not the sculpture.

DANIEL What do you mean?

PARKER Just stop for a moment and look at the space! This is an urban dog's dream; grass--fresh cut grass--and wide open spaces. WEISS / MANFREDI Architecture did an outstanding job creating a park from this waterfront wasteland. The dreamy zig-zag path, the seamless bridge over Western, the integration with the beach and all those STICKS!--oh, and did I mention the views? Just fabulous. And now that they've seasoned this feast-for-the-eyes with a little art, I've mapped out my rest-stop routes to most of the smaller sculptures, and found the ideal corners on which to leave my mark.

DANIEL Very nice.

PARKER Actually, there is one sculpture I like. No, love!

DANIEL Let me guess; Roxy Paine's "Split".

PARKER What's not to love? A 50 foot stainless steel tree! This piece should have been placed on the crest of the hill where Calder's "Eagle" sits. It could have been iconic, emblematic, a picture-postcard installation symbolizing the bright, technological future of Seattle, not to mention art in the landscape. The piece is so simple even a dog could get it.

DANIEL So would you consider the Olympic Sculpture Garden a success or a failure?

PARKER I'm not able to make sweeping generalizations like that. I'm a dog. A hungry dog. What I can say is that regardless of what I think about the art, the politics, and the 'future of art in Seattle', I will still use the space on a regular basis. And like most of the dogs in this city, after the initial fracas is forgotten and all that is left is a park with some structures to climb, tag, or piddle on, I too will say to my best doggie pals, I kinda like this place after all, don't you?

Now please give me something to eat before I piddle...

   

Michael Darling's Seattle and Is Provincial a Bad Word? @ The New Museum

Hot coffee, warm slippers, frost on the grass outside. Surfing blog posts while still half-asleep, I arrived this morning at Regina Hackett's great post on Michael Darling, the new curator of contemporary art at the Seattle Art Musem, and two of his recent purchaces; Whiting Tennis' "Bovine."  and Pedro Reyes' "Evolving City Wall Mural"

The choices have Ms. Hackett "concerned":

"I'm in the raised eyebrows camp, among those who are not cheering. I doubt Corrin (Darling's predescessor) would have chosen this sculpture (Bovine) for SAM, not because it's challenging, but because it isn't. It reeks of frontier nostalgia and trades in wild West stereotypes. It's shabby chic without the chic...

"Bovine" is one thing, but isn't Darling responsible for Pedro Reyes' "Evolving City Wall Mural" in the park's pavilion? Reyes sees it as a tribute to Mexican muralists early in the 20th century, but it lacks their passion, politics and point.

It's not fair to judge Darling on a few early choices, but I'll admit to being concerned. Another thing: He's nice, and nice curators finish last at SAM.

My immediate reaction was to post this:

"The "Bovine" choice should not come as a surprise. Remember Darling's comment to Jen Graves in April:

"...there are artists who have Seattle roots but have not been shown there much, like Matthew Day Jackson, who now lives in New York but was in Seattle, and still has that Seattle ethos. He has a piece [a life-size covered hay cart draped with state flags called Chariot (The day after the end of days)] in the Whitney Biennial..."

And in describing the "Seattle ethos", Darling says,

"Well, he is politically progressive, I think he would consider himself a feminist, and he has an ecological sensibility, an awareness of the land. He's down-to-earth, not pretentious, not New York..."

And while it may be true that "Bovine", "...trades in wild West stereotypes. It's shabby chic without the chic."--an opinion I tend to agree with--contemporary art in Seattle does not [and in my opinion, should not] look like a carbon copy of Los Angeles, New York or anywhere else. Let's see what Darling can come up with out here in the wild West. If the fantastic "Superflat" is any indication, his vision will be anything but another attempt to look like everything in the Contemporary Art Rags...

"Art Rags"?! The same publications I read, looking for former classmates to envy (as I chose to work primarily in commercial art for most of the last decade to pay off outrageous art school debts, rather than slog away in the Echo Park trenches. But we've been over this...)

Okay, I confess; I was feeling a little defensive. Having recently relocated BACK to Seattle after ten years in Los Angeles, I am still doing my own re-evaluation of what  location can and/or should mean in my work, particularly as I am now re-animating my own art (Art) practice from outside the "center" as it were.

The question, really, is one of provincialism--or more politely, regionalism. Ms. Hackett's concern is quite the opposite of what one might expect. Rathern than fearing that Darling might foist an LA-centric agenda upon this fair city, Hackett seems to fear the opposite; that Darling might be planning a hopelessly irrelevant provincial agenda for SAM. That once again, a major opportunity to put Seattle "on the map" might be squandered. But maybe I'm projecting. Let me explain...

The New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC recently presented a panel discussion titled, "Location, location, location or Is Provincialism a Bad Word?"

Some obvious insights:

1. Saskia Bos, Dutch curator and Dean of the School of Art at The Cooper Union for the last 15 years:

--"if you don't ever leave New York City you run the risk of becoming provincial."

--being "outside" is a choice due to modern transportation and communications

--"outside" is not determined by location

     2. Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic for The New York Times:

--provincialism "is not an issue in this country, except for New Yorkers...who still believe in the idea of a cultural center or magnet."

--quoted Rem Koolhaas from '96, "New York is dead. This is the right time to go."

Easy things for people who live in NYC to say. Kind of like the rich saying that money does not matter.

Some observations however, were not so obvious:

     3. Roger Buergel, curator and Artistic Director of Documenta 12:

--"we must get rid of exhibition formats which are inadequate to what we are now seeing."

--"the notion of the place of the subject has become central again."

--"to extend the notion of  exhibition also to the display of subjectivity in every day mediality..."

--"fragmentation is no solution."

--"give them what they really need...what they really need is never what they want."

So, not every insight was on-topic. But the gist of the argument was, hey, it's okay if you don't live in NYC or LA or Berlin because the top curators are looking for diversity, not watered-down ARTFORUM clones, but a new way to open up ideas around "looking", "subjectivity", and "the exhibition".

Isn't this just what everyone outside the "center" wants to hear?

I would love to be able to accept the "centerless" idea at face value because then I would not have to listen to the part of me that thinks that moving AWAY from the "center" --as I recently did (away from the people, publications, parties, museums, galleries) when you are trying to establish your art career is professional suicide.

So why did I move? (Excuse the indulgence) The answer is simple; emotionally and physically I function much better outside the "center", I have small children that I want to raise in a house with a lawn, something I cannot affort in the "center", and philosophically I DO believe that we are moving toward a "centerless" system. I am one of the one's who could not work in the din of the city and the art-world action/party/scene. We have only been here in Seattle seventeen months and already I am much more productive and my work is far better, if I do say so myself. Maybe I can even get off the meds.

Getting back to the Hackett post, I suggest we give Darling the benefit of the doubt and assume he is a supporter of the "centerless" ideal. I trust he will try to bridge that gap between local idealogy/iconography and the broader, global language and history of art.

The challenge is no small task. It is rather like having the vision of Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith who, in 1929 chose to publish a fourth novel by a thirty-two-year-old failed poet about the slow decline of a once prominent southern family. A story which had all the elements of the cliched southern tale. Cape and Smith saw something else:

"When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."

from The Sound and the Fury , W. Faulkner