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This is from the White House press briefing transcript from yesterday. Check it out now before it gets revised. The subject is Bush buying UN votes with trade and immigration concessions, so he can have his war. On the CSPAN videotape, you can clearly see and hear the normally deferential press corps burst into spontaneous laughter at Ari Fleischer's BS: "Think about the implications of what you're saying," he smugly tells a reporter. "You're saying that the leaders of other nations are buyable. And that is not an acceptable proposition." In the middle of the last sentence everyone in the room starts laughing. For a split second it looks like Fleischer thinks they're laughing with him; when he realizes they're not, he ends the briefing and marches out of the room with everyone still guffawing. This should happen more often.
(Thanks to cursor.org)Q Ari, just to follow up on Mexico. Is it true that the administration is willing to give Mexico some sort of immigration agreements like amnesty or guest worker program, to assure the Mexican vote, as the French press is pointing out today and is quoting, actually, two different diplomats from the State Department?
MR. FLEISCHER: No, it's exactly as I indicated, that we have, on this issue, a matter of diplomacy and a matter of the merits. We ask each nation on the Security Council to weigh the merits and make a decision about war and peace. And if anybody thinks that there are nations like Mexico, whose vote could be bought on the basis of a trade issue or something else like that, I think you're giving -- doing grave injustice to the independence and the judgment of the leaders of other nations.
Q -- the French press is quoting actually two different diplomats from the United States State Department that -- they're highlighting that the United States is giving some sort of agreements or benefits to Colombia -- and other non-members of the Security Council --
MR. FLEISCHER: I haven't seen the story. And you already have the answer, about what this will be decided on. But think about the implications of what you're saying. You're saying that the leaders of other nations are buyable. And that is not an acceptable proposition. (Laughter.)
Thank you.
Daniel Wiener makes a new kind of Pop art, twisting the language of cartooning and toymaking into convoluted psychic landscapes. He got exhibited and written up quite a bit in the early to mid '90s, before the New York art world had one of its (not infrequent) mass attacks of stupidity and let him slip away from the scene. ("But it's sculpture!" I can hear the dealers whining, "It's hard to se-e-e-lll!") Check out his page here and see for yourself how unfair this was. Especially recommended are the Quicktime and Flash animations (e.g., Bluecraters), wherein Wiener's Sculpy and Hydrocal creations come to life, like a cross between Oskar Fischinger and Gumby cartoons. It's awe-inspiring work.
Whoops! Somehow I let the second anniversary of this weblog slip by--it was February 21. Thanks to Jim Bassett, the brains behind Digital Media Tree, and all the webloggers and posters on the Tree, for the feedback, tech advice, and good natured argument over the last 2 years. As I've mentioned before, I do seem to be one of the only artists in the New York art scene with a weblog, and I wish there were a few more of us. It would be nice to have discussions going on across pages, with pictures, rather than waiting to see if Artforum or the New York Times is going to say something (stuffy) on a particular subject.
There has been interest in this page outside of New York, I'm happy to say. I've had links, comments, and emails from Japan, England, Germany, Norway, and other places I'm sorry if I'm forgetting. Even if New York has limited interest in an internal cyber-conversation, I'm happy to be giving my biased translation of New York to the ouside world.
Since it's an anniversary, I offer a few of what I consider highlights from the past 48 months (most are actually since Nov. 2002, but whatever). The following pieces drew comments, public or private, or drew no comments but I'm still proud of them:
Review of Gerhard Richter at MOMA
Thoughts on Monotrona, Cory Arcangel, and Old School Video Games
Report on Digital Painting Panel at Artists' Space (and comments)
Review of One Hour Photo from an art world perspective, which started as a few notes the day after I saw the movie and ultimately jumped to its own page.
Review of Scott Hug's K48: Teenage Rebel: The Bedroom Show (and related posts discussing it in connection with Laura Parnes' Hollywood Inferno video).
While I'm retooling my response to Jim Lewis's Slate piece on William Eggleston, too-hastily posted a few days ago, I'm putting up a color photo I think we can safely say Eggleston didn't pave the way for, acceptance-of-color-wise or any other way.
LISELOT VAN DER HEIJDEN, "Road to Victory," 2003, color photoprint.
I missed van der Heijden's 1996 show at Momenta Art, which would have provided a context for this singularly strange image (though I kind of like the mystery of it). You can buy a raffle ticket and get a chance to win this gem at the gallery's annual benefit.
Knob Twiddlers 2, 2002, rotated 90 degrees
Machine I built and photographed many years ago, "sampled" for artwork at top.
Detail, Designers Republic CD cover for The Infiniti (aka Juan Atkins) Collection.
NY NEWS
You may have read about the the proposed defilement--sorry, redefinition--of Central Park by Christo "Unstoppable Force" Javacheff, better known as Christo. For two weeks in 2005, he and his wife Jean-Claude are going to put wavy orange banners all over the property that will flap kitschily in the breeze. Not content just to harass the city's artistic and intellectual rank and file with cattle pens and marksmen on rooftops during the recent protest, Mayor "Call Out the Cops" Bloomberg is now encouraging this egomaniac to hang his laundry all over the park. (Think I should write for the Daily News?--no, they probably supported the cattle pens.) For a better, more thoughtful critique of the project, I recommend Alex Wilson's excellent essay, which also gives a good capsule history of the park and puts Christo in the context of his betters, Frederick Law Olmstead and Robert Smithson.
I just learned from Cursor.org that Art Spiegelman (Maus, Raw) left the New Yorker because of editor David Remnick's baby blanket handling of Bush & Co. Very cool. Spiegelman's wife Francois Mouly still works there, though. I wouldn't mind too much if she vamoosed; I've never been crazy about the illustrations she picks as art director. Anyway, now Ted Rall will have to find someone else to accuse of powermongering in the cartooning world.
I keep thinking about Jim Lewis' Slate piece on William Eggleston, which I posted about earlier. It bugs me that he called Eggleston the Father of Color Photography, who paved the way for acceptance of color in the work of Nan Goldin, Mitch Epstein, Richard Prince, and Andreas Gursky ("though not [acceptance of their] work itself"). First, because these four artists are completely unrelated to each other, and to invoke them as Eggelston successors and then de-invoke them in the same sentence makes my brain hurt. Second, because the Father pronouncement subscribes to the "great men" theory of history, and overlooks other developments around the time of Eggleston's "breakthrough" show in 1976 that were also bringing color to the fore. Third and last, because the essay emphasizes the casual, snapshotty side of Eggleston's practice, making it seem like that, too, was hugely influential, when in fact it's the artist's formalism that's the most interesting thing about him. I put up a longer version of these thoughts but it's currently in the shop getting a theoretical tuneup. Check this page later, and I should have everything more carefully worked out. In the meantime, please see my essay on One Hour Photo (a movie now out on DVD!) where I mention Eggleston in passing as a "vernacular formalist" and touch on some of the things I'm thinking about in my response to Lewis. [OK, my rant is out of the shop and it's here.]