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So far Mike Gravel on the Democratic side and Ron Paul on the Republican side lead all the candidates in willingness to speak truth instead of poll-tested BS. Watch this YouTube of Paul responding logically and articulately to Rudolph Giuliani's thuggish questioning of his patriotism. Wolf Blitzer, reinforcing the status quo as always, seems to have a hard time wrapping his head around the concept of "blowback."
Good Art of the Day
Joel Holmberg: Scratching Post Vortex and rear-screen-projected sculpture/installation based on same.
From Time Out New York's Art Listings this week: "Tom Moody, 'BLOG.' Moody's art, music and animations are accessible through a computer terminal; viewers are invited to post comments. artMovingProjects, Brooklyn, Project Space, Sat 19-June 24." (online version) Hope all can come to the opening Saturday. I will be present and will post from the gallery. (more details)
Photo of the "terminal": artMovingProjects
Samurai Quotes from Ghost Dog.
From the Vault: Ghost Dog review(s) and license plate screen shots. (Some serious link rot rectified!)
Completely off topic, but essential: the last 10 or so seconds of every episode of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, assembled by Paul Slocum (Caution: Wesley Crusher in oversized natural fabric (?) top)
A couple of threads on art and religion over at Sally McKay's and L.M.'s blog: here and here. Seems it started with a panel with some art critics saying really stupid stuff like
"A -"We [secularist intellectuals] are very much the white settlers in the fort, completely surrounded ...by the raging hordes of the spiritual outside."...followed by some of McKay's/LM's commenters decrying the art world's hypocritical bias against current religious art when it is only too happy to talk about past religious motivation (Kandinsky, etc.) To David Morgan's question "why do art historians studying art before the modern era give attention to religion, but those writing on fine art since the 19th century often very confidently consider religion irrelevant, even improper to examine?" I responded (cramming together several answers):
B- "That's precisely the point. Well put. That is exactly what's behind the anxiety...about all this religion stuff and what does it have to do with the avant-garde, with contemporary art, real important art. There is an anxiety that we are indeed outnumbered. Jesse Helms attacked the NEA and had great success. We're under siege."
A-"But luckily we're the ones that write the textbooks."
How about: Because art before the modern era is safely in the past, its practitioners long dead, and religion's contribution can be approached analytically without getting some living religious person's knickers in a twist. It's not that religion is irrelevant but let's just say certain zealots have made the topic literally lethal.(image above--possibly the greatest painting ever made--by jonathan borofsky)
As an artist I'm fascinated by fringe religions because the idea of the deity seems to come from the same place as art ideas--as in, some murky, ecstatic place. I like to read and think about those religions but I don't necessarily want to meet these people. As for religions with more established dogma many of those practitioners are reading from a script. Either way, I hate it when someone tries to convert me because a lot of sleazy mind control tricks are used. The practitioner is looking for people who seem depressed and unhappy* because they're more subject to "love bombing" and all that other shite. Ugh. I'm proud to be from a country where the founders steered clear of the various mystery cults in creating our civic charter.
The art world's "bias" against religion isn't just reflex avant gardism. Empirical, Enlightenment principles of rational argument are also at stake. (One who questions whether the Earth really started 6000 years ago is in actual, physical danger today.) But I don't think contemporary art has any duty to defend such principles against the fanatic hordes--just to be aware that talking about current religion (critically or not) involves real risks so it's better to be guarded, or coded, or steer the f*ck clear of it.
*Or in my case because they mistake irony for misery. Thinking of one specific instance where I was sitting drawing a skeleton playing bongos and a woman saw it and tried to get me come to come to her megachurch on the freeway.
The Sunday NY Times had a report about a musician who quit his job and posted a song a day on his blog. One minute journalists are hissing and spitting about "people in their bathrobes" presuming to usurp them and the next they're glorifying the new lifestyle mythos. Didn't read past the first page but it sounded like it was about an individual trying to cope not just with creativity but the stresses of fan adoration, frequent commenters, people music-animating and -remixing his work--in other words, being a one man band of self promotion. Yawn. Not too interested in the problems of someone replicating how the record industry promotes an artist: that is, via behind the scenes stories and a cult of personality. Every musician his own Tigerbeat. As artists using blogs we want transparency but on some level our projects should still be difficult for journalists, not spoonfeeding them stories in terms they already understand. To adapt a favorite quote about art from AbEx painter Adolf Gottlieb: "I'd like more status than I have now, but not at the cost of closing the gap between blogging and the public. I'd like to widen it!"
