sally mckay and lorna mills

Lorna Mills and Sally McKay

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A recent TVO episode of the Agenda on the Future of Reading brought a panel of people together to worry and argue about whether the book as an object is going to disappear and (some of them) to advocate for e-readers and the potentials of reading in a networked environment. I got itchy and squirmy. Nobody was talking about libraries, nobody was talking about access to information, nor about the fact that critical inquiry is not just for those with post secondary degrees and money for electronic gee-gaws. Publishers are filters, they receive submissions and choose manuscripts based on their own criteria. Whether or not the reader agrees with the publisher's criteria, the system is one in which the reader expects to have their own assumptions challenged. Questioning, evaluating, participating, questioning...these are the processes of shared cultural activity, and they ought to be available to everyone. Who cares if it happens on paper or on a screen? What matters is whether or not the base of participants is broad enough that the challenges of diversity help keep things evolving. And that means doing more than just carving culture up into a jumble of isolated self-perpetuating, self-affirming niche communities.

Bob Stein had an interesting thing to say, but I wonder what he means by "successful" and I wonder what he means by "community."

"The reason why I disagree completely about the idea that branding of publishers is on the way out is that I think that the the successful publishers of the future are going to be those that understand how to build a community around an author and her work and her readers."

Anthony Easton's Ten Aesthetic Events of 2009

1. The Reptiles in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call; New Orleans. (Herzog)

The movie was as insane as a match-up of Herzog and Cage could be, and there was much that could recommend it—but the visuals of the reptile have cineaste/film study thesis all over it. From the engorged python swimming through the brackish muck of a flooded jail, to a crocodile POV of a sunbaked highway, to the instantly legendary double iguana a musical number; most hermetically visionary symbolism of the year.

2. Magdeleana Abakanowicz Head (Detroit Institute of The Arts, 1975)

The 70s were sort of a game in how ugly, how abject, how brutal an object could be before it was rejected out of hand, weren't t hey? This burlap sack, sort of like Harlon Ellison's mouth that could not scream, had a brutality and bluntness that gut hits with it's crudity and unskilled, almost democratic, lowest common denominator materials. (The DIA was strange, 5th largest collection in the united states, equally divided into European aristocratic prettiness and a tight/well curated contemporary collection)

3.The snapshot from Ray Nielson of Chicago, untitled 2009 Best use of orange evah.

and this shot by Brad Moore of Laguna Beach, California, “Kermore Lane, Stanton, California,” 2008

Because it is scant miles from Irvine, with the Lewis Baltz heritage, because of it's brilliant use of vertical and horizontal composition, because of its use of colour, because it finds sophistication in work that seems to be overly processed already, because it's digital.

4. The catalog essay from the NGO show about Dan Flavin's early works and icons Corinna Theirolf and Johannes Vogy.

Which for some reason, aside from being well printed, with great colour transfers, had a great essay about iconoclasm and iconography in modern art.

5. Matt Zoller Sietz's video of the follow scene http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/following/Content?oid=1185679

Because collating has been the new creating for decades (see also this fan video decimating the line b/w homosocial and homosexual in the case of martin and lewis):

)

(also Oliver Laric's baptisms and his clip art) [posted stills from Laric's ↓ ↑]

6. The Dirt Clod fight in Where the Wild Things Are

Earnest, and about child hood, but also about the painful, difficult, and not very rewarding traumas, the banal acts of violence and destruction that amalgamate somewhere near the cerebral cortex.

7.The George Ohr show at the Gardiner Museum

Ohr is one of the most important American artists of the 19th century. His work is visually innovative, radically new, and is among the first to figure out how to aestheticise craft—we all owe him a huge debt. This tight, badly installed show, with no publicity, and a jaw droopingly stupid review in one of the free weeklies. It had a dozen of his best pieces, but who would know it?

8.Otto Marseus van Schick's serpents and insects, 1690

New Orleans has a rep for being sexy, mucky, for climbing from the fetid swamp—this huge (10x20) foot painting of insects, snakes, frogs, and one menacing turtle stood out as meet and right, esp. In the context of acres of French meringue.

9. Kirk Cameron's Fireproof, and subsequent para-texts.

The pro-am cult of the evangelical latches onto American Christan's obsession with public confession and thinking they are not quite pure enough. There is a revolving mirror to this: Outsider work made by an insider for an outsider audience who likes the celebrity of the insider but always wants to maintain their outsider status.

10. Kevin Yates at Susan Hobbes

Tiny bronze trees mirrored perfectly into decrepit houses—the most exquisitely constructed, obsessive and melancholy show, one of profound tenderness and an almost permanent detachment.

(Runner's Up: John Heward's messy post minimalism at MoCCA, Nicholas Baer's abstracted, weirdly heart breaking landscapes at MOCCA; How all of the paintings in the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame were painted by a decent but not very memorable artist in the mid 50s, the wallpaper in my friend David Preyde's home, the giant tigers outside of Detroit Stadium; wool jersey's from Midwestern industrial teams from the 40s and 50s; Levi Johnson's gorgeous, meaty ass; Bob Dylan's xmas album; the insatiable ego of Jeff Koons; having a bf for 3 months that looked like the guy from the Pringles package; Wesleyan Methodist Church in Oshawa, that small Jack Bush at the fall Heffel auction, with the stripe of unprimed canvas; That long narrow one—Rose, in the TD Centre, that long and wide pink sash one at OISE; the quirky Benglis' pieces that pop up all over the web, Mooi's one/one scale horse, rabbit and pig furniture; the hand painted mural at the back of Norman Royal Furs; the bus driver portraits at Eglinton station; the card player portraits at the Bridge Club at Bathurst/Lawrence;the Jesus loves me banner made by children at the Church of Redeemer near keele; Jean the legendary Mississauga hoarder, Sholem Krishtalka's scarves; Eaton's spring catalogs from 1968; seeing the 34th floor of the Mies temple on King; Madam Levant's Grave; Shitney Bears; the exquisite disappointment of Obama; that weird bondage queen of a neo-classical martyr at Knox; the Ryman's at the AGO; Fighter; The Gaitor Bait Bar; the polychromed statue of Joan of Arc at the Catherdral of New Orleans; getting a handjob from the easter bunny at a bar called the Bourbon Cowboy in the French quarter; The Tulane episcopal centre; any number of dutch paintings of hanging rabbits; this wrangler king of the cowboys poster at the Ft Sask Laramie; the Wedgwood ROM show; Rob Lowe as Rough Trade shot by Nan Goldin; Tim Scott's giant and sexy sexy plastics at Mirvish's weird Scarborough warehouse; Silvercliff library; Funpix Eggos; Glittery Costco era Poinsettia's; “feel like a drag, leave like a queen” on a wig store near parliament; Andy Parke's house; Atwood's weird and slightly inappropriate purple eye shadow on the cover of Zoomer; Faith La Roque on Convenience Gallery; Swedish Folk Ribbon at MacFAB; the 70s murals at that public school near Christie I did the job classes at; and the Griffin Mac Funeral Home near Main Street Station.)

The Toronto Alliance of Art Critics panel organized by Nadja Sayej a couple of weeks ago is now available on Youtube. Leah Sandals and John Bentley Mays have both written interesting blog posts about it. Having watched the video documentation, I find myself most impressed with David Balzer. Here are two things he said that I like:

The reason why people don't care about criticism isn't because there's a general apathy towards it but because it doesn't do service to the community, to the art scene, for critics to have a voice...because [artists are the] audience for us. And that needs to change. What I'm interested in as a critic is actually not the artists reading me but rather the people that aren't artists, and I don't think that there are very many. Film is different. Film is an industry, it's part of the culture, its part of the zeitgeist, people put money into it and want to know if something's good or bad. (video 6 of 8 at 4:21)

[...]

Being an editor has really taught me a lot of things and one of the most dangerous things you can do as a writer is to assume there is editorial opposition to what you really want to say. There is a lot of self-censure in the freelance writer community, and actually the reality of it is that there's a lot of freedom, especially in Canada, and you can say what you actually want to say ...so say it. (video 7 of 8 at 4:23)

Balzer is right on. But interestingly both of his statements speak more to editing and publishing than they do to writing. It's the responsibility of a publication to encourage confliciting opinions, to set up a context in which a diversity of readers are welcomed, and create an environment that readers come to because they can expect to have their assumptions challenged. There are umpteen reasons why writers self-censor, but I think the biggest is fear of offending artists. But if it is clear in the context of the publication that the audience for criticism is not the artist, but a broad and unpredictable scope of readers, then the pressure on the writers shifts less on the negative need to establish defensible positions and more towards the positive need to communicate their points of view. Editors may be frustrated that writers hold back, but that just means editors have to work harder to encourage dialogue and set a precedent. This means actively seeking out challenging critiques and then assuming responsibility when artists get their noses out of joint, rather than putting everything on the shoulders of the writer. And keeping the conversation going from issue to issue. It doesn't really matter if the context is academic or populist, the importance of editorial risk and responsibility is pretty much the same.