The Milk Wax

I kept thinking about beauty during my three days in Seattle. Questions revolved around visual pleasure–what if the only purpose of art is to make something overwhelming beautiful mixed with a dash of the uncanny? Every effort–strategized or not–to undermine beauty has eventually been folded into its overall definition: Eva Hesse, Albert Oehlen, Sonic Youth. Of course, transgression is material, too.

It was the Ukiyo-e pieces at SAM’s Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park that got me going. A small show, I found myself picking at art’s mortality–How long does it live? Is something contemporary as long as it can still be used? Is Robert Johnson more contemporary because I play him on my iPod? Art, like the washboard or stereoscope, passes into history; it becomes useless. When you walk into a room where the walls are pasted with Fragonard drawings, you’re quick to realize that the Fragonard part of the equation doesn’t matter so much, it’s just cool wallpaper. The work, unquestionably of its time, stayed there (as will work by Karen Kilimnik, for example–it’s a future someone’s wallpaper). And there’s part of that in the Hiroshige and Hokusai prints, but there’s also some other indescribable element; the formal concerns of each artist are still active and the work is complex. The process of wood block printing is beautiful, and the materials are beautiful–and those beautiful ingredients are invested in images that both capture and skirt reality. They don’t look real and yet they document events, landscapes, trends and activities. And I think that’s the key: the slightly abstracted images have grown even more powerful with the popularity of comics and anime–especially manga. Just check out Hiroshige’s View of the Naruto Whirlpools at Awa as an example.

The point I’ve come to in looking at so much art is an obvious one: there’s too much of a disconnect between what artists say and what they show. Attempts have been made to overcome that gap through connoisseurship or ethics or institutionalization or quality. Social art, for example, often looks pretty horrible and less intelligent than the platform it’s purporting to promote. Land Art and Feminist Art–as I’ve mentioned before–too often embrace the aesthetic of those areas of art making rather than functioning within a broader dialogue (and of course they expand the art conversation, but I don’t know how useful another sculpture made of sticks or another pair of embroidered underwear is to anybody).

I’m not discounting those valuable histories of art making, I’m only suggesting that the ethics of sympathy can cloud the varied roles (and strengths) of art, speech, experimentation and protest. Maybe there’s a middle-ground? The prints at the Asian Art Museum certainly suggest as much, dragging us through the visual pleasure the artists had in creating landscapes and portraits about sex, class, fantasy, social practice and ritual.

So, back from Seattle, K and G and me floating back to the high desert and out of the northern rainforest, slip-stream concrete, pebble-covered and mossy, where the Space Needle floats out of necessity–what would postcards be without it?–and the sea planes crossing the shoals, skipped like rocks near Bainbridge Island, Alki Beach, the noodles sliding down our throats as we drink in Hiroshige, Utamaro and Hokusai…”I’m a coyote”, the water tower closed because of furloughs, the sinking burgers, the drifting chunks of wet flame as a fountain burst and of course you’d fall on your ass, but that’s bad parenting for you or not getting out much. Either way it’s time to pay the two bucks for a bumper car and you think you know beauty, it’s set aside for theory but when all is said and done who wants a grey book for safety? It’s the brocade. It’s the inset rubies. The sweating streets don’t make the choice for you, the hills twenty thousand days from the beginning. And I carved a porcelain pillow. And I ate my pizza with olives. And my shoes have miles and miles.

Ok, so maybe a little knee-jerk-y with the idea that I would actually stop writing. The fact remains that I like to write what I want to read–so, I couldn’t stop, even if I wanted to.

I’ve been struggling with the motivation for new posts lately. Not that there aren’t enough things to write about, but more because many of those things–art exhibits, mostly–tap into a repetitive space in my brain, a space I feel is also occupied by books about food, thoughts on Unitarianism or the significance of the Toyota Landcruiser.

I just don’t think I’m going to come up with anything earth-shattering about Man Ray, I guess–or if I did, I would feel compelled to include an analysis of every Corvette color scheme from 1953 to now–because it would help to understand Man Ray. But, if I lay off of art writing, what do I do with the interviews I’ve collected or the upcoming one with Martin Back? The ideas in those recordings, from those people, are interesting, and the upcoming ones surely fall along the same track.

I remember there was a guy in Tempe named Elvis “The Cat” del Monte (anyone reading this from Tempe in the 90s remembers him). Elvis was a pretty withered rockabilly dude who rode his bike around and always hung out at Long Wong’s on Mill Avenue. He berated me–or Mary?–one night for killing the wrong color of ants–”The black ones don’t bite!” I just remember him as a necessary part of that world. In my head, he was like that girl you knew who could put the lit end of a cigarette in her mouth…only sweeter, and instead of a girl, he’s an old guy. He would go to the art store and have the staff make color photocopies of his art, and they did, and it seemed like they always put a copy up on the wall. His existence became one more reason not to make bullshit; to be serious about doing something significant, with people.

Anyway, you should all know that ‘53 Corvettes only came in Polo White, which stayed the most popular color until 1956.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has my favorite painting, Balthus’ Therese Dreaming from 1938. I just skip past its pervey-ness and begin thinking about content versus form–honestly, I don’t know what most of his work is about. I also like anything in the Medieval section, especially the ivory boxes where you see Aristotle being ridden like a horse and wooden doors with relief carvings of dragon-like dogs. It’s amazing how every surface becomes part of a bigger visual program.

I also saw the William Kentridge exhibition Five Themes at MoMA and the 2010 Whitney Biennial. I hit them both on the same day–which seemed like a good idea at the time.

I should probably say that my days in New York have always been the same: I get up, put on some clothes and start walking, usually with a very distant goal. For example, I’ll wake up thinking that I should go to the Guggenheim, but instead of heading north I’ll head downtown, check out Wall Street, walk over the Brooklyn Bridge and eventually take a train all the way up to Lexington Avenue and walk over to the museum.

Anyway, I went with Sherlock Terry to see the Biennial, which was great because I enjoy the way he talks about the art, though I can’t really recall much of the work that we saw. There were some weird Charles Ray paintings, some large paintings that looked like creased canvas, an installation for a performance–which was interesting because the artist, Aki Sasamoto, was there explaining to some people what her performance the following day would look like. I did like the drawings by Storm Tharp and Leslie Vance’s work and the video installation where the guy didn’t talk (I forget the artist!). I know Sherlock was really interested in the use of scale, which was so pervasive in the video and sculpture installations. The crazy thing about the Biennial is how much emphasis is put on it. It’s this thing, this definition of what art (mostly American art) should be and you should feel bad or motivated but don’t feel either because it’s so limp. And that all goes back to the curation. So, the work does it what it does but probably not as effectively as it should because it has been co-opted into a curatorial vision that, overall, was pretty boring.

After a manic search for some sesame-seed covered candy (which we didn’t find), I said goodbye to Sherlock at the Metro entrance and walked to the Musuem of Modern Art, which lucky for me happened to be hosting singles’ night or something and everyone was drinking and listening to a DJ spin house music for 3 or 4 hours.

The very first room in the Kentridge show destroyed the entire Biennial. The animations were the thing. I can’t emphasize that enough–William Kentridge’s animations are thoughtful, well-crafted and beautiful to look at. They are basically made by working and re-working large charcoal drawings with erasers and more charcoal, filming each incremental shift. There’s something about watching a body get repeatedly bombed into smaller and smaller pieces that really makes an impact. All of the issues were there–colonialism and apartheid, primarily–but the darkly comedic aspect of the films underscored the absurdity of South African power relationships.

I also checked out the Tim Burton exhibition. This was a show for anybody that likes browsing through comic book shops or collecting monsters or movie memorabilia. This was a show if you dream of a life-size Edward Scissorhands watching over you at night. The great thing was that you could watch early animations and see pages from sketchbooks that took Burton from nascent idea to The Nightmare Before Christmas or Mars Attacks!. Those cool things wear off quick, though, and you realize you could just as well be in some room attached to last year’s Comic Con rather than MoMA.

Animal Collective played Albuquerque last July. I had seen them the previous time they came through, and it was great–especially after I had the sense to go to the mezzanine at the Launchpad. The sound was full and layered, and the crowd seemed swept up in the vibe of the performance. So, in July, when they rolled into town with Black Dice, I was expecting sort of the same. In fact, I was expecting something verging more into the hippy-drone that I felt on Merriweather Post Pavilion.

But the show was shit. Starting with Black Dice, the sound levels were so unruly that even the fifteen-year olds in the crowd looked like someone was stabbing them in the sides of the head. With terror-filled eyes, these kids clasped their ears, hoping that the inch of flesh, blood and bone in each hand would dampen the aural blitzkrieg; but to no avail. I’m going to assume it was willful on the part of both bands, if only because everything else in their sets seemed really organized. Maybe after hearing what a great album they had and how great they were was getting to them, and they said “Fuck Rolling Stone and Pitchfork and Albuquerque!” and proceeded down the road of the art happening or something. Why that had to happen here, I don’t know, but it seems like Animal Collective had a similar impulse last week at the Guggenheim, where they performed “Transverse Temporal Gyrus“, basically a sound installation built out of recorded loops that coincided with the Guggenheim’s current exhibition where artists re-imagine the fifty-year old Frank Lloyd Wright space. I didn’t see the performance a) because I didn’t have thirty bucks I didn’t need and b) because my ears still had a shitty taste ringing in them.

It’s weird too when you hear contestants on American Idol refer to themselves as artists and everyone agrees. I guess from sandwiches to karaoke, that’s how broad the definition has become.

Walking through New York last week, my brain kept returning to the image of the Ouroboros, wondering if New York could be seen that way, as a snake swallowing itself; as a perfect circle not listening or talking or speaking, just moving forward under its own self-fed energies.

It was a good trip, and I practically wore through my boots–which is always a good sign, as far as I’m concerned. I made a wall drawing, saw a great friend, ingested more than enough visual stimulation and just had a good, quiet, peaceful trip. It’s weird too when you think you’ve seen more than anyone should see and you get back and everyone asks if you saw this or went there and things seem a bit disappointing. One of the nights, I went to Ginger Man for beer and I was alone and being alone in any New York bar on a Friday night is awkward, but I ran with that by bringing my sketchpad and just hanging out on a couch writing and making dirty little drawings or exploding heads. Which is why it was so funny when a woman came over as I got up to leave and asked to see the drawing I had been making of her.

“You’re gonna be disappointed,” I said, and showed her a page with an exploding face.

“But I thought you were drawing us,” and she motioned back to her friends. I smiled and walked home to watch more basketball.

Funny thing is, if I had been drawing them, I’m not sure it would have looked much different. But maybe I had too much to drink. Why else would I have written a poem about babies who wear skinny jeans and say fuck and shit all day? Oh well.

Thinking a lot about poetry and writing and humor and generational stuff, I guess. How something by John Ashberry can (or can’t) sound interesting decades later and something by Allen Ginsberg can sound pretty lame (or great!) later, too. Anyway, going east tomorrow for a week. Also, I think I just saw someone outside wearing low-cut tabby boots.

Good show tonight at SCA, with work by Jennifer Depaolo Van Horn, Erin Lynn Forrest and Darby Photos.

Interesting to think about a piece I saw at CCA in 2003 that I’m wary of describing because the mystery of who made it might be solved and the magic gone. But I will say it was terrifying (in some way) and that terror made it good, made it work, mainly because it had the similar effect of showing up at a strange party by yourself; just awkward and scary. And a friend today talking about Michael Heizer’s pit pieces at Dia:Beacon and how fun that might be to visit next week because of my self-diagnosed vertigo kicking in and me tumbling 20 feet into a tapering steel trap. On top of that, thinking about debt or support (or something) and Bob Dylan heading to New York or Paul Simon leaving Michigan (or wherever) to New York and how that’s kind of changed. And also thinking about whether great ideas happen in one place anymore and I guess not. Reading today on The End of Being about the social nature of the Santa Fe art scene and I’ll have to believe it because I’m not great about showing up for openings (read: tapering steel trap), but I was thinking of bars and performance and whether or not an art community can become unknowing performers; though I guess the act of showing up makes you a willing participant–which by default makes it a little lame when people (me included) don’t show up to be counted or have their lives entwine with others’. So maybe the art does count less, but it’s weird to think that someone could buy it in an effort to bottle a little of that community to hang above their bed. The compelling aspect of community, as far as I’m concerned, is the piling on of perspectives that forcefully deny a single point of view or monolithic account of what’s happening creatively–it’s that “piling on”, the multiplying facets, that becomes powerful. Let’s face it: nobody’s writing sonnets that make you want to die. Nobody’s making paintings that break your heart. Sure they try, but we hate that shit. There’s a larger text to write. There’s a larger image. Nobody makes anything on their own anymore.