funny quote ...

...from an overly theoretical review of what seems to be an overly theoretical book that seems to be criticizing conventional theory in some way that only those wanting to slog through over-theoretical writing could possibly understand or want to read ...but the quote is funny:


...she is always able to throw in a scandalous fact such as her mother’s crush on Hitler or her obnoxious childhood response to the news that her grandfather had sent a postcard from Auschwitz: “Did he write: ‘Wish you were here?” (which she claims she was ashamed of asking ...


- Artforum may 2011, pp 76 

one more dead artist: nice obit

I never know what to think of Dennis Oppenheim; I like his early work and would have to come face to face with his later stuff in order to formulate a fair opinion since it is a lot more architectural, and one has to inhabit architecture.  Or maybe I like his older work because the pictures are in black and white and I can understand them more clearly.  But maybe I like them because they are more modest ...  Whatever it is, I like Alyce Aycock's tribute/obituary in this month's Artforum.  

Documentation of Dennis Oppenheim’sReading Position for Second Degree Burn, 1970, color photographs and text, 85 x 60".

READING POSITION FOR SECOND DEGREE BURN, 1970, was one of the first of Dennis Oppenheim’s works I ever saw. I was struck less by the willingness of this fair-skinned artist to inflict pain on himself than by the title of the book on his chest––Tactics: Cavalry and Artillery. Here was someone who was going to play the art game hard and from a series of strategic positions. I paid attention to his work––Attempt to Raise Hell, 1974; I Shot the Sheriff, 1977; Predictions, 1972; Lecture #1, 1976; Gallery Decomposition, 1968, to name a few. I saw them all. They were multilayered and suggested the ominous possibility of disorder and instability.

I had a long-standing rule not to get involved with art superstars, but years later, after we had both been in the Whitney Biennial, the phone rang and Dennis said, “Don’t you think it’s time we got together?” I broke my rule in a nanosecond. And so it was spinning-blade machines, fireworks art, and Puffy’s, the Mudd Club, the Riverrun, Debbie Harry and “Heart of Glass,” and the first drink at the bar the night the Odeon opened. One of those nights out at the Odeon we were driving the few blocks home when we were brought into the First Precinct yet again. The officer began to write a series of summonses for driving without a valid license and so on, and paper spilled over the table and across the floor like ticker tape. The officer said that this time Dennis would really go to jail. I went out to the pay phone in the lobby to try to get hold of a lawyer, and at just that moment Dennis ran out the door and into the night with a policeman in riot gear following close behind. I returned to the room with the officer and sat silently––one of the longest half hours of my life. And then Dennis returned. The officer handed him the summonses––a gigantic roll––and we drove home, waving and promising to vote for Teddy Kennedy. Some warm June night this summer I will wander down to TriBeCa and wait for Dennis to run past me in the night—the outlaw bad-boy artist no one can catch.

On another of those nights out we took a trip to Coney Island. The ride we went to first was called Hell Hole, or maybe it was the Gravitron. It consisted of a drum whirling around so fast that the centrifugal forces slammed your body against the wall while the floor dropped down below. It was the closest you could get to experiencing g-forces on earth. We had our cameras and our Manhattan attitude, and we were immediately singled out by a group of young toughs who obviously thought we were ripe for mugging. They followed us into the ride, and the whole time we were experiencing the g-forces we had every expectation that we would be robbed and beaten up shortly thereafter. But once again Dennis’s luck prevailed. Everyone was too nauseated and dizzy, and we all just staggered away.

Dennis was a trickster, a shape-shifter, a flimflam man, a snake-oil salesman for art, and a rascal. He was highly intelligent, charismatic, and witty. He could instantaneously get the gist of almost any situation and figure out a way to play it. This sometimes made the art world wary, but his self-deprecating sense of humor and his ability to connect with people made him beloved by his fans. He could appear vulnerable and hapless, wearing a torn, rumpled sweater covered with dog hair to an important public art presentation, or not show up at all because of a forgotten passport and yet somehow win the competition. In later years, when we were pitted against each other for big projects, I never once underestimated him. One of his last works, Light Chamber, 2010, created for the Denver Justice Center, is a favorite of mine from this period. In the context of the court system, which can appear terrifying and arbitrary, the piece offers a place of beauty and solace.

After these competitions, if neither of us won, we would deliciously perform a postmortem. Once a month or so, one of us would call the other to rehash some exhibition or talk over some trend. We sliced and diced, pointed out some interesting idea brewing in the art-architecture complex, critiqued and reassured each other. It is this ability that we had to connect over and over through the years––to read each other’s mind––that I will be lonely for. There was probably nothing we could not say to each other, except maybe that we absolutely didn’t like a particular recent work made by the other.

Along with antique cars and motorcycles, Dennis loved dogs, Jackson Pollock and Bruce Nauman, birdhouses, dollhouses, papier-mâché jack-o’-lanterns, Halloween, tramp art, prison art, carnival art, pottery and furniture from the 1940s and ’50s, and women. When he died, I imagined women across several continents weeping. And from the looks of Facebook, where he friended everyone, it was probably true. But in the end it always was and would be Amy Plumb, whom he married in 1999.

Years ago, I discovered a quote from Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis that I repeat to myself whenever I become discouraged about art and the art world:

For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you. I knew, if I allowed myself to hate you, that in the dry desert of existence over which I had to travel, and am travelling still, every rock would lose its shadow, every palm tree be withered, every well of water prove poisoned at its source.

Dennis loved art like that, and I love art like that, and that is why we loved each other.

Alice Aycock is an artist living in New York City.

breaking my video streak: art (?)

ratatat
collage on paper

Art:  My level of engagement with it, and it is intense at the level that I do engage with it, is in its making, its viewing, its studying, and in the teaching of it; but rarely in its showing.  For some reason, I am not very interested in engaging in the dance necessary to get my work displayed.  This makes me a very bad artist, if one at all.

I’m not afraid of criticism.  I believe in my work.  I’m just not interested in the networking necessary to get something exhibited.  If opportunity knocks, and occasionally it does, I happily show it.  Also, sometimes when I am totally disgusted with myself for not being a real artist, for an artist needs to show his or her work, I engage in the rigmarole necessary to do it.  But this has become rarer and rarer.  The good news being that I no longer get too disgusted with myself; though this might not be one of those days...

For the past 28 years I have studied and taught art.  All these years, I have questioned it and wondered what it is all about.  Art is ever changing, and these days its raison d’être is to be ubiquitous.  It has no single meaning and no single goal, as at times in the past, when movements could coalesce within its caldron of shifting winds, it fooled us into thinking that it did.  Teaching it to and sharing my love for it with young people, some of whom will get addicted to making it and might chose to dedicate their lives to it, becomes morally suspect at times like this when I am blue. I worry about how my young students will make a living in this rapidly changing and fickle environment.

My father retired to Europe where he and my mother started making and exhibiting their art.  My uncle retired and became a photographer.  My other uncle, before he died, started making sculptures.  Except for my father, none of these people have any formal training; and unlike me, they happily engage in the bullshit necessary to exhibit their work. 

These days, everybody is an artist.

one more video...

...and amazingly enough, still about art!  Is it possible that I am being more "artist" than "raving" this month?  ... hmmm .... probably not, since those who can understand the Portuguese will find the lyrics hilarious and not devoid of irony and sarcasm.  A beautifully rendered verbal picture of artistic practice in the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty first one.  The images: all of art work, some of which have at some point or another sent one group or another raving...   Back to the studio.

translation:
De-materializing the work of art of the end of the millennium

I make a painting out of hydrogen molecules
pubic hairs of an old Armenian,
spit of fly, sleeping bread, and wings of a crooked cockroach.

At first glance my concept seems to be
a neo-expressionist figurative baroque
with pinches of post surrealist art nouveaux
dressed with a revaluation of the still life.

My mother one day told me,
upon seeing my work exhibited in a gallery,
“My son, this is weirder than Jia’s ass.
It’s a lot uglier than a restless hippopotamus.”

To understand such a modern work,
it is necessary to read the second notebook,
calculate the internal raw material,
multiply by the value of the water bill, electricity and telephone.
Whirling in the fury of the cyclone

I reinvent heaven and hell.

My mother did not understand the subtext
of the dematerialized art in the present context.
Recycling the trash from the trash can,
I arrive at a pleasant esthetic result

with the grace of god and Basquiat.
New York, wait for me I’ll be right there.
I’ll do graffiti with oil of dendê and vatapá,
and a psychadelia from Bahia.

I’ll mix in a widow’s petticoat
with Pepsi and grape Fanta lids
and a chamber pot with waters of the last rain
with ampoules of penicillin.

De-materializing the material
with arteries pulsating with art
I inflame the ice in Siberia
and even make it snow in Teresina.
With the flash of Silibrina’s lightning bolt
I disintegrate the power of bacteria.

Always Gratifying to See

One day I hope to experience all his work, as it is meant to be experienced, with my other senses.  For the moment, while I am condemned to live in the boonies, I experience it by sight and mind only.  Viva a virtualidade...



... hmmm, I rarely embed videos in my blog, could it be I am getting to be as lazy as "the times"... 

In Memorium

A little English lesson to commemorate Osama bin fuckin' Laden's demise:

bittersweet

In the course of human events...I get emails about bittersweet and amazing encounters between animal and animal or animal and human...  ...Got this one lately...  As usual, I find it amazing and sad all at once; for in the course of human events, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, we will one day only see these majestic animals in captivity.

...and that does it for my use of cliches and pessimism on this here Sunday...