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The Summer 2003 Artforum features an interview with art historian & theorist Jean-Claude Lebensztejn (here or here), who was one of my teachers in school. He filled in at UVa after retired-MOMA-curator-turned-teacher William Seitz died, and I had him for a 2-semester modern art course. Much as I regretted missing Seitz's anecdotes about writing the first doctoral thesis on the Abstract Expressionists, curating "The Responsive Eye," and so forth, I was extremely lucky to have Lebensztejn for a year. One of the coolest things he did was show up one day apologizing for not bringing his slide tray, and announcing that he would be discussing the one slide he happened to have, Paul Klee's Voice Cloth of the Singer Rosa Silber (I prefer his translation to MOMA's). This is a very abstract piece with layers of painterly detail and a few collaged alphabet letters. Lebensztejn proceeded to talk about it. And talk. And talk--for the entire class period, he perceptively and relentlessly theorized about this one small work, weaving in details of Klee's history and philosophy. It was enough to make a kid want to be a critic.
I remember Lebensztejn was interested in Photorealism, which he calls Hyperrealism, and in the interview he discusses a recent show he organized on the subject. Most of the Q&A is very clear and readable, but I found the following paragraph tough going:
Like all the most interesting forms of art of this period, Hyperrealism questioned Charles S. Peirce's famous trichotomy of icon-index-symbol, in which one finds constant slippages from one to the other. This is the case with Francis Bacon but also with Willem de Kooning or even, in the literary domain, Francis Ponge. In Bacon or Ponge, the main slippage would be between object and sign—for example, paint becomes a body, or a body becomes paint; in de Kooning, especially during the '50s, icon and index are monstrously mixed. In Hyperrealism, again, there is a two-way exchange between photographic index and icon.That just screams for some follow-up questions, but interviewer Jean-Pierre Criqui is eager to move on to Robbe-Grillet and Flaubert's Bouvard et Pécuchet so we don't get any clarification. I believe the "which" in the first sentence should be "that," so it's clear that the slippages in question are the painters' and not Peirce's. Also, why backtrack to Bacon and de Kooning if we're talking about Richard Estes and Chuck Close? A writer, Ponge, is mentioned and then dropped. A distinction is made in the last two sentences between "object and sign," and then "icon and index," and finally "photographic index and icon." All of this is especially hard to follow without a brush-up on Peirce's categories of the sign. (Briefly, an icon is an exact copy, such as a mirror or portrait; an index is a "trace" that has a dynamic relationship to the object, such as a barometer or sundial; and a symbol is an arbitrary, learned designation, such as "Exxon" for a specific multinational oil company).
I gather Lebensztejn treats a photo as an index (as does Rosalind Krauss) but it would seem to me in many instances to be a pure icon, just like a mirror image. Obviously painting the photo complicates the "integrity" of the copy. Hopefully Lebensztejn's catalog essay straightens all this out. Here's another excerpt that's less convoluted; as an artist who painted Hyperrealistically for years I found it especially resonant:
This insistence on the literal copy is the most caustic aspect of Hyperrealism, undoing what had been the basis of art for five hundred years: the judicious imitation, which was sought by the painter Zeuxis, who chose what was most beautiful in nature. In a word, let's call it artistic idealism. This was Hyperrealism's most decried aspect from the outset: the truly useless character of this painting. Why paint paintings of this sort when they are closest to what they are copying? From this point of view, Hyperrealism completes the modernist destruction of classical aesthetics.What's "caustic" about Photorealist canvases isn't so much that they're "closest to what they are copying" (Zeuxis also strived for that) but that their choice of subject matter seems so arbitrary--anonymous storefronts, bad passport photos, ads. What's destructive to classical aesthetics is the removal of the "judicious" from the painter's program; to the Photorealists, choosing to paint a luxurious bunch of grapes is just a privileged form of delectation. Or perhaps by judicious, Lebensztejn means enhanced or aestheticized? Then it would be caustic to paint in a literal or deadpan way as opposed to "prettying up" the rendering. Again, the catalog may be more illuminating.
UPDATE: A few more thoughts here.
I enjoyed seeing the fireworks over the East River last night and...whoops, wrong picture, this is us blowing up Baghdad. But seriously, talk about a disconnect between American ritual festivities and the chaos in Iraq right now. We're fast approaching the point where the number of our soldiers killed after George Bush's victory declaration tops the number that preceded it. After a few exciting days of monkey-screeching and hard-on flashing, Bush, Rumsfeld & Co. have moved on to other things (campaigning, plotting global domination, plundering public funds) and left others to clean up the mess. American troops are getting shot up, the Treasury's overdrawn, people are losing jobs, and the 9/11 conspirators are still at large.
Fortunately we can all go the polls next year and get rid of these clowns, right? Right?
Below: shot of studio wall. The piece in the center is the new one I mentioned here (more step-by-step shots have been added). It's a bigger scale than the others and better because of that, I think. As it turned out, I did no cutting back into the image; everything was drawn on the computer and (over)printed, beginning at 100% in the center and working out to 300% at the outer edges. Still mulling over a title.
Contrary to the terrible reviews, The Hulk is an inspired comic-book film--just not much of a crowd-pleaser because it's so damn melancholy. Danny Elfman's somber Middle Eastern score sets a mood, and the kinetic use of digital collage, splitscreen, and unpredictable cutaways is more alienating (in a good way) than seat-gripping. The shots of ol' Greenskin bouncing across the western desert like a 20-ton grasshopper take your breath away, no matter how silly, and there's another wonderful effect where his howling visage is superimposed on lightning-impregnated thunderclouds. Right before that barely comprehensible passage, Nick Nolte and Hulk-as-human Eric Bana do a strange little one act play about morality and Oedipal conflict on a starkly-lit dais between giant Defense Dept. electromagnets--Nolte literally chews the scenery by biting into a live cable and turning into a roiling anime demon. 33 years ago special effects guy Dennis Muren brought an unforgettable flying devil to life in the Jack Woods drive-in howler Equinox; it's great to see he's still accessing his inner Harryhausen in the digital age. Ang Lee continues to look East for ideas and atmosphere: substitute science for the supernatural and The Hulk isn't that far from Onmyoji, a live-action Japanese sorcery film that enjoyed a minuscule theatrical run a few weeks back. Major beef: it's time to retire the "recovered childhood trauma" theme. Hitchcock's Spellbound premiered in 1945 and screenwriters are still revisiting it!
Anyone who's ever been to an electronic music concert featuring laptop performers (we often have them here in NYC at Tonic) knows there ain't much to look at. Paper Rad, the Providence-based art collective, went through the entire repertoire of stage moves last night at the closing event for "Blinky," an exhibition at New York's Foxy Production. Concentrating intensely--check; nodding sagely--got it; leaning over to look at a band member's screen--several times; avoiding eye contact with the audience--consistently. The only problem with all this sincere, scientific-looking activity was it had nothing to do with the sound coming out of the speakers: the "laptops" were Fisher Price toys with colored yarn for cables and the music was a prerecorded mishmash of stop-and-start drumming and desultory, singing-in-the-shower vocals--all completely non-digital. You gotta admire a group willing to exhaust an audience's patience to make a point.
Considerably more exuberant was the act that preceded it: the reunion concert of New Yorkers Cory and Jamie Arcangel, who last performed together as hockey-mask and fright-wig wearing metal teens in Buffalo (their band, Insectiside, is documented on a hilarious home video). The duo, now civic-mindedly decked out in Sabres T-shirts and caps, demonstrated a Nintendo Duck Hunt game scrambled to electronic hash with a Game Genie, and then challenged Williamsburg's vaunted electroclash scene with an infectious tribute to Miami Bass titled, yes, "Booty." While an 8-bit computer pumped the bass, Jamie rapped through a heavily-distorted microphone, Cory played electric guitar on his back, and the crowd got down. The last performer, Towondo Clayborn of Occasional Detroit, had a hard act to follow after all this insanity, but did an extended, intermittently dazzling set of hip hop electro noize that had people wandering in off the street (and also leaving--the philistines!). Think a bipolar union of Anti-Pop Consortium and Detrechno, with inspired segues between the two modes, plus off-the-top-of-the-(hot)head lyrics that gave new meaning to the term "loose."
A couple of other photos of this event are here.
Very brief update on my Nancy post, after having read most of Brian Walker's The Best of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy. Zen, schmen, the strips are all about the gag, and many of them are funny. Clearly artists are drawn to Bushmiller's visual wit: until I saw a large collection I had no idea how devoted he was to puns and sight gags; they're almost half of his output. Here's my theory on the Nancy revival (with help from Mr. Wilson), adapting Kubler-Ross's "stages of grief" for comedy:
Denial. Boomers in the '60s see Nancy as a legacy of the "square" '40s and '50s--no way it could be funny.
Anger. Hipsters start looking at Nancy in a new way, saying it's "zen" or "so stupid it's good." This is still a putdown.
Bargaining. The generic, "anyone can make Nancy" gags start to appear.
Depression. Artists begin appreciating the strip for its craft, and for Bushmiller's "visual intelligence." (OK, my analogy doesn't work so well here.)
Acceptance. Boomers (and younger) read Nancy and laugh their asses off. Yes, I know, it's not that funny.
I reviewed the film One Hour Photo after seeing it once in the theatre; I recently rented the DVD and made a slight correction to my text. (Caution, semi-spoilers.) The film tells you, but not in a way that clearly sinks in, that Sy (Robin Williams in a great performance) took two rolls of film in the hotel, near the end of the story. One roll captured exactly what smutty-minded idiots are currently searching the internet for, the photos of which we don't get to see: "These are not pretty pictures," the cop says. Here's how I (now) describe the other roll:
The audience assumes that the photos he keeps asking for in the interrogation room are his [STARK RAVING NUDE!!!!!!!!] shots of the husband and girlfriend. Turns out they're photos he took in a nearby hotel room, before the police found him, on a separate roll of film. When a sympathetic cop finally hands them over, Sy patiently lays them out on the table and we can see they're images of the sofa, clothes hangers, bathroom fixtures, and the like, shot at odd angles and strangely cropped. He seems quite content looking at them. (sarcastic bracketed language added for this post only)In the original writeup I described the second film roll as being taken only in the bathroom. Aside from this goof my interpretation stands. Oh, and one other bit of trivia, which also hasn't escaped internet comment. A couple of scenes involve a Neon Genesis Evangelion action figure that Sy purchases for the little boy, Jake. The kid describes the figure as "a good guy that can fly, and he has a silver sword that can kill bad guys, and he's sixty feet tall." Evangelion nuts recognize the figure as a Mass Production Series 5-13 Eva, from the End of Evangelion movie, and that it's not a "good guy" but a monster (actually one of a group of monsters) that slays the flawed heroine Asuka and helps usher in the Apocalypse. The commentators I read thought that One Hour Photo erred to include this, because the toy likely wouldn't be sold in US stores (extensive Japanese writing on the box tends to support this) and it's a villain. I'd call it poetic license: yes, if the kid was an Evangelion fan he'd know it wasn't a "good guy," but since the director's obviously a fan, he knows that nothing in that Japanese TV/movie series is black and white--even the "bad" Evas have a role to play in human evolution--and his inclusion of the figure in his own shaded scenario makes sense.
The scenes raise another flaw, I suppose. In real life, if a near-stranger showed up unannounced to watch a young boy's soccer practice and attempted to give him a gift without parents present, it would undoubtedly be found out, and in our current hysterical climate about molestation (see Capturing the Friedmans) that would be it for Sy. Yet the movie keeps moving forward with its own relentless, dreamlike logic. The film is quite amazing in its ability to provoke a squirming sense of discomfort almost from the first frame. Beautifully shot, too.
Stephen O'Malley, a designer and musician in experimental outfits such as Khanate and Sunn O))), recently posted the above piece by Seldon Hunt, an Australian artist and graphic designer (a few more images are here--click on the link to "words" and scroll down; still more pics are in the news archives). Hunt has created record sleeves for the German label Drone records, among other projects. I'm pretty sure this work, which has a nice sci-fi lyricism to it, is done in Adobe Illustrator; it's definitely vector-based (drawn by means of defined curves) rather than pixel-based. This piece in particular is reminiscent of the work of New York artist Marsha Cottrell, who recently showed at Henry Urbach Architecture. Cottrell's work is much denser, limning an endless futuristic space in the vein of Rem Koolhaas's "delirious" urban spectacles. (The image below, completely packed with linear bizness, is a detail of a much larger piece.) While Cottrell's work is oddly controlled for something so "out there"; Hunt's evokes the spirit of Abstract Expressionism (or at least Rauschenberg) in its energy and formal variation. It may ultimately have more to do with the eye-grabbing immediacy of album graphics than Cottrell's ultra-refined, analytical architecture critique, but one can see an interesting dialogue between the two bodies of work. (Thanks to Brian Turner for the O'Malley link(s).)