When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.
— Raymond Chandler
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
— Herman Hesse
Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas...with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
— Margaret Mead
Friday Overture: Performingest Mormons Ever Performing The Song The Jackson 5 Didn't Want
Meh
Yeah, sad when someone dies. Sadder still my indifference. Saddest of all that they lived a life of bloated, irrational excess that surely made Elvis roll over in his pill-poppin' grave. Sorry kids, I don't care that Michael Jackson died. His death brought to the surface the fact that his music actually meant nothing to me. If I'm in a mood for music, and I often am, I would never decide to listen to MJ. I could listen to Curtis Mayfield all day. Or Funkadelic. Or Louis Jordan. But Jackson? Meh, I say. Meh. I've never been much of a fan of self-proclaimed delusional kings. And the spectacle of a man living his adult years as a child because, perhaps unfairly, he was robbed of his childhood and suddenly, freakishly, had enough money to live the life of a man-child only goes to prove, emphatically, that children should not be given large sums of money. They will just do ca-razy shit with it.
But let's not take my indifferent word for it. Let's check the iPod because the IPod she does not lie....
Currently, my iPod has 22,335 songs on it.
Curtis Mayfield: 79 songs
Stevie Wonder: 54 songs
Prince: 69 songs
Otis Redding: 65 songs
Louis Jordan: 44 songs
Funkadelic: 92 songs
Al Green: 71 songs
Ray Charles: 115 songs
Sam Cooke: 96 songs
Slim Harpo: 45 songs
Sly and the Family Stone: 35 songs
Joe Strummer(who also died at age 50), in The Clash and solo: 503 songs.
Bob Dylan: 774 songs
Michael Jackson: 1 song, Rockin' Robin, and that one only because I was making a playlist of early 70s nostalgia tracks.
Farrah of Willendorf
As a preteen and teenager of the middle 1970s, my relationship with Farrah Fawcett was, admittedly, strictly visual. This single image from 1976, which sold over 12 million posters, was pretty much THE image that exemplified "sex" for at least a couple of years. Not to mention influencing a generation of feathered haircuts, in both girls and guys (find a yearbook from that era if you don't believe me). I was aware then, and am more aware now, of the strangeness of the image. It's cropped tight, she's in a strange, crunched position, her head is tilted awkwardly back, her mouth looks huge, and she's not even wearing a bikini but a one-piece suit full of folds. It seems unconventional somehow. An author back then who wrote about books about subliminal messaging in advertising, tried to make the case that strands of her hair spelled out the word SEX. Her hair could have spelled DOG FOOD and it would have still been on my bedroom wall. It wasn't Fawcett's only claim to fame and among lots of cheesey work, she managed to prove along the way that she actually could act (see The Burning Bed). Her death at the end of a tragic illness moves me more than MJ's. And where MJ achieved his fame and familiarity through a disturbing mixture of talent, freakish behavior, plastic surgery, and pedophilia charges, Farrah found eternal, iconic ubiquity through a single image.
@ Hallwalls thru July 11
gallery hours Tues to Fri 11am to 6pm, Sat 11am to 2pm
"Siebren Versteeg's practice includes interactive paintings, digital prints and sculptures that dissect the interactions of media, intention, and indeterminacy. In many of the works, extensive use is made of the Internet as a generative source of information and imagery. By developing precise algorithms that guide the flow of information, Versteeg models the movement and content of the ambient digital atmosphere into artworks that balance choice and chance."
Siebren Versteeg Website
STATUS UPDATE:
Hallwalls 2009 Members Exhibition
op Fri, July 24, 8-11pm
STATUS UPDATE
THE 2009 HALLWALLS MEMBERS EXHIBITION
In the era of ubiquitous social networking and in vague homage to the platform everyone loves to loathe but is loath to stop using, Hallwalls suggests STATUS UPDATE as our title/theme for the 2009 Hallwalls Members Exhibition. So....tell us what you’re up to, what you’re doing, how you feel, what you like (right now), and/or anything else that will bring us all up to speed on You, Version 07/09. You might like to remark on social networking in general, a particular application in specific, the joys/pitfalls of opening yourself up on the world wide internets, riff on some other version of status like status quo....or, AS ALWAYS, you can take the OPTIONAL route, ignore the theme, and just deliver some of your most recent work. No wait, that’s a “status update” too. Huh, first theme that works even when you ignore it.
YOU MUST BE A HALLWALLS MEMBER TO PARTICIPATE.
OPEN TO ALL MEDIA.
LARGE WORKS & VIDEO WORK—OKAY, BUT PLS PHONE AHEAD.
ONE WORK PER ARTIST.
WORK MUST BE “READY TO HANG.”
NO LIVE ANIMALS.
NO WAGERING.
ANY OTHER ISSUES/QUESTIONS/ANXIETIES, PLS CONTACT: john@hallwalls.org
DROP OFF DATES:
JULY 14, 15, 16, 17 from 11am to 4pm
JULY 18, 19 from 11am to 2pm
Opening Elsewhere
• Felice Koenig and Meg Knowles @ Olean Public Libary op Sat, June 27, 2—4pm (thru July 31)
• Margaret Hart @ Burchfield Nature & Art Center op Sun, June 28 1-3pm (thru Sept 12)
Monster of Nature and Design III TONIGHT!
Friday, June 26 @ 8:30 pm
A performance by Craig Smith & Colin Beatty
with Gary Nickard, Reinhard Reitzenstein and the Vores
On the lawn of the Burchfield Penney Art Center
Free and open to the public.
CEPA's 3 Summer Exhibitions ALL op TOMORROW, June 27, 7—10pm
Justine Kurland, Brian Ulrich, Alice O'Malley (pic)
Meg Knowles & Felice Koenig @ Olean Public Library
op Sat, June 26, 2—4pm (thru July 31)
Bad Habits @ the Albright Knox
op Fri, July 10, 7—10pm (thru Oct 4)
w/ Janine Antoni, Matthew Barney, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Brinker, Cecily Brown, Robert Colescott, Gregory Crewdson, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Jeanne Dunning, David Hammons, Nikki S. Lee, Glenn Ligon, Robert Melee, Cathy de Monchaux, Tony Oursler, Jason Rhoades, Thomas Ruff, Kiki Seror, Jeff Wall, Andro Wekua, and Lisa Yuskavage.
The fabulous Handsome Furs @ Soundlab July 18!
Handsome Furs My Space
Continuing Elsewhere
• Duayne Hatchett at the Burchfield thru Aug 30 Buffalo News Dabkowski
• Buffalo Society of Artists @ Betty's thru July 12
• Tom Holt @ the Castellani thru Sept 13 Buffalo News Dabkowski
• Kevin and Thomas Kegler and Mark and Dennis Zahm @ Art Dialogue thru July 10 Artvoice Raymond
• Jennifer Seth-Cimini @ redFish (E. Aurora) thru July 10
• Monica Angle @ Wine On Third thru Aug 1
• Summer in the City @ Indigo thru Aug 2 Buffalo News• Craig Smith @ Big Orbit thru June 28 Buffalo News Dabkowski
• William Koch, Amy Robinson Gendrou, Rosemary Bauer Sroka, Kathleen Sherin @ BAS Buff News Buff News Eisenberg
• Jed Jackson @ the Castellani thru Sept 20
• Paul Zone @ College Street Gallery thru July 17 Buff News Artvoice Raymond
• Gigi Gatewood @ Nichols School thru July 15
• Diane Baker at The Mansion on Delaware (indefinitely)
George Hughes in China
"Fifteen feet tall under a nearly 60-foot ceiling, the chipped and repainted relic doesn’t change much, those involved admit. But supporters of renovating Buffalo’s once-stately train station said they hope the addition will help the city reclaim its past."
Buffalo News
Most Fulsome E-vite of the Week
John Currin Works on Paper: A Fifteen Year Survey of Women
"With a checklist of 77 works from over 50 individual and institutional lenders, Andrea Rosen Gallery is delighted to present the most comprehensive exhibition of John Currin’s works on paper to date, giving the viewer an opportunity to experience his mastery of an extraordinary breadth of style and technique.
"Carefully selected from every work on paper in Currin’s oeuvre, this exhibition is both an extensive overview of the artist’s complex use of the genre as well as an in-depth study of the artist’s engagement with the female body as subject, object, and formal foil within his practice.
"While the exhibition represents every period of Currin’s works on paper, it is by narrowing the focus to what clearly emerges as his principle subject that we hope to unveil how the artist’s depiction of women throughout his work is a strategy he employs to blur and even confuse subject matter and form. As the most traditional of subjects, one would anticipate that the female body would become the most banal of images; however, it remains continually distracting in its physicality, compelling as the perfect metaphor, and hauntingly mysterious in its assumed knowability. Currin is interested in how a viewer’s attention can be consumed by subject matter. Like his paintings, it is often assumed that the strong visceral response to Currin’s works on paper is triggered by the imagery, however, Currin and his work strongly argue that even more than images it is the powerful influence of form and style and technique that generates an emotional viewing experience. As we have become more obsessed with receiving information through images, we have become less aware of our visceral response to form. This exhibition is not only a survey of women, depicted over 15 years by Currin, but also an opportunity to survey the emotional and psychological landscape mapped out in the vagaries of line and material, of composition and structure.
"What is so rich and important about Currin’s works on paper is that they are significant both as an autonomous body of work as well as essential and critical to the invention of the paintings and the development of ideas. We purposefully chose the period between 1992 and 2003 because it represents the most active part of Currin’s drawing practice. It is not by chance that after 2003 Currin only released three works on paper; since around 2001 he began to utilize digital imaging tools as a way of developing non-art source material. Until then, along with references from magazines, works on paper were always the first step in developing bodies of work and the artist’s means for exploring new directions in content, imagery, and form. These creative phases yielded not only new ideas but also complex and thorough bodies of works on paper. While the use and methodology of the process of drawing has an even broader use in the studio, every work on paper released into the world (and therefore every example in this exhibition) is intended as a work of art. When Currin decided to make a drawing versus a sketch there was always a dual consciousness of working process and formal resolution. An interesting illustration of this is the entry in Currin’s most recent monograph, published by Rizzoli, of one of his most famous paintings, “Heartless,”1997. Next to the painting, the artist included two images: one a non-work, a sketch from 2002 depicting a figure with a hole through her head and the other,“Untitled,” 1997, a delicately rendered and fully resolved sepia ink drawing which Currin considers an independent artwork. It is also interesting to note that this drawing is one of only around seven in the exhibition that could be considered an actual study for a painting. Since, as the exhibition reveals, while they are certainly recognizable as Currin in every way and relate to the paintings, the works on paper retain their own significant territory and are very rarely direct prototypes. Much more so than his paintings, Currin’s works on paper are often vehicles for purposeful extremes, from the most beautiful line to the rawest.
"As well as experiencing the works, the exhibition allows viewers to become privy to the timeline of ideas and what Currin chose to pursue in his paintings. It is interesting to see which subject matters and formal techniques are prevalent over time. One powerful example to think about is the large balloon-breast paintings like “Jaunty & Mame,” 1997 or “The Bra Shop,”1997 of which, while extremely central to Currin’s work, there are only five paintings that fall into this category; yet, this exhibition shows that he started making drawings in this vein as early as 1987 and have remained prevalent in his drawing practice until 1998, existing in almost every medium: charcoal, ink, pencil, gouache, watercolor, and sepia toned ink. Another example of an equally prevalent figure in the works on paper is what could be referred to as the hobo. While there are only two hobo paintings in Currin’s oeuvre, “The Hobo,” 1999 and “Sno-bo,”1999 , this show includes a dozen variations on paper from the highly refined to the purposefully deformed. The rawness of the works on paper unveils some of the more aggressively grotesque elements (sharp elbows, distended bellies, sagging breasts) in the exquisitely rendered paintings. Walking around the room, each of the 17 groupings adds another piece to a deeper understanding, each with its own function. Some explore the use of a single stylistic strategy. For instance, one group of nine works representing a four year period between 1998 and 2001 that while quite varied in both subject and form, show a technical use of transparency and cross-hatching that both embellishes and distorts. There are a number of instances where one group helps inform another, in this case, the distortion of the image creates a link to a number of other groups like the selection of works where the figure is blatantly obscured by dots. Another group shows that even when focusing on a single work, like the group of drawings related to “Thanksgiving,” 2003, Currin explores levels of detail and completely different mediums. There are also groups, like the four drawings all from 1994, “The Living Room,” “The Motel Room" and two titled “The Alcohol Place,” that possess a dark, Neue Sachlichkeit-quality that does not exist anywhere else in Currin’s work either stylistically or in relation to subject. These groups help emphasize what the artist chose not to explore in painting but also provides an opportunity to acknowledge how beautiful Currin’s drawings are in their own right.
"We hope that by presenting an extensive selection of works that the exhibition would be most illuminating to Currin’s practice. Ultimately, it is the generosity of Currin’s work which stands out so prominently."
"Erudite and wide ranging, Mr. Shonibare, at 47, is a senior figure in the British art world but one who intentionally eludes easy categorization. A disabled black artist who continuously challenges assumptions and stereotypes...Mr. Shonibare makes art that is sumptuously aesthetic and often wickedly funny."
NY Times
"Still, with the exception of several blue-chip galleries who show well-known artists, foot traffic in Chelsea and other gallery precincts has thinned markedly where crowds jostled just a year ago."
NY Times
"Just as American collectors, with their art consultants and mall-like buying habits, drove the now busted ten-year-long art boom, so now these same collectors, dentists, trophy spouses, trust fundees and hedge funders, must act as the stimulus to bring the contemporary art scene back from the brink."
artnet Finch
"After several trips to Korea, the team has fashioned a highly selective exhibition intended to shine a strong light on a region that is usually in the art world's shadows. And for many American viewers, there is much to learn -- starting with the catchy, equivocal title."
LA Times
"The Vent Haven Museum grew out of the passion of William Shakespeare Berger, a Cincinnati businessman, who began accumulating the paraphernalia of the ventriloquist’s art in 1910."
NY Times
"While the Obama poster became a ubiquitous symbol -- featured on T-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers and of course, the Internet -- the new poster will have a tougher time reaching its audience thanks to the totalitarian practices of the Myanmar government."
LA Times
"Music and sculpture — expressions of artistic creativity, it seems — were emerging in tandem among some of the first modern humans when they first began spreading through Europe or soon after."
NY Times
"Frank Herbert Mason died yesterday. He was a renowned professor at the Art Students League and a portraitist in the tradition of Rembrandt, but I remember him as my neighbor on East 82nd Street during the 1950s."
artnet Finch
"Mr. Khan, who was named a national treasure by the Indian government in 1989, carried on the musical traditions of his father, Allauddin Khan, whose ashram in East Bengal produced some of India’s most celebrated musicians..."
NY Times obit
Something I listened to this week...
Way better than MIchael Jackson. Pre-rock and roll piano player from the 40s and 50s. I'm always into listening to music that just slightly predates the birth of rock and roll because you can hear the burgeoning genre just percolating under the surface. Milburn is definitely a lesser-known name but this was chock a block with great playing and a great great voice. Loved it.
— Walt Kelly
