Precedential Material

For no other reason than it's Granite out there...

Pig in a Poke

"I did genuinely worry for a moment whether reality is a fiction designed to confuse me, which isn’t a thought that you are meant to really have."

In other entertainment news: Gio at BBB offers further reflections on the mass ornament; and at 555 Timh ruminates over the banalization of the apocalypse and the end of the end of history.

Unbuilding (Slight Return)

As another Zaha Hadid stadium becomes the object of criticism and controversy, at the Citylab site, contributor Kriston Capps bluntly concludes:

"No place with real oversight can commit itself to the surreal developments that mega-events entail today. The bid process is a game rigged to favor totalitarian countries, where costs and corruption and the lives of workers are idle concerns. This is a game democracies can’t win, and it’s not the fault of any architect. Instead of competing within this system, Western nations must pressure the International Olympic Committee (and FIFA as well) to accept and endorse bids that are realistic and healthy for cities.

"And if they won’t accept that, these groups should find the most god-awful corner on earth and build a permanent site for the Olympics and World Cup there, once and for all."

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Art historian Dora Apel on contemporary imagery of urban ruins, and the narratives suggested by ruin porn's unanimous preference for a "Neutron Bomb School of Photography" framing of urban ruination and decay:

"Hence the paradoxical appeal of ruin imagery: as faith in a better future erodes, the beauty of decay helps us cope with the terror of apocalyptic decline. In the cultural imagination, the idea of Detroit has come to serve as the repository for the nightmare of urban decline in a world where the majority of people live in cities.

"Detroit ruin imagery also serves another function — it geographically circumscribes and isolates the anxiety of decline, making the predominantly African-American city a kind of alien zone. The ubiquitous photos of derelict skyscrapers, churches, businesses, and homes, and abandoned factories like the Packard Plant — the nation’s largest ruin — are repeatedly compared to war zones, hurricane wreckage, and the aftermath of a nuclear explosion." 

[...]

 "If the victims of the city’s decline disappear, the discourse of ruination becomes one about architecture and landscape and the city’s inevitable “reclamation” by nature, whether that means a return to a pre-civilized state or the emergence of a new ecological idyll. Photography that focuses only on the beauty of decay in architecture thus distances the viewer from the effects of decay on people and obscures the ongoing crisis of poverty and unemployment. 

"This effacement of the populace also reflects and reinforces their invisibility to corporations and the capitalist state, who helped create the patterns of ghettoized, racialized poverty that have long prevailed in the city while simultaneously absolving themselves of any responsibility."

+ + + + +

Certainly the death of something or other, one would sort of have to think.




image: Kikuji Kawada, "The A-Bomb Memorial Dome and Ohta River," from the series The Map:
Hiroshima 1960-65.

Exit Through the Gift Shop, Pt. 38

So, this past Tuesday eve, MoMA opened its doors to offer the art press an advance preview of its new exhibition devoted to the career of Björk. And in the days since, negative reviews have been piling up. Far from being a backlash against the subject of the show, all disapproval and animus has been leveled at at the Museum and -- more specifically -- at curator Klaus Biesenbach.

Ben Davis at ArtNet News declares it a "fiasco" and causticly likens it to “a fashion show and a theme-park ride,” “a forced march through a props closet,” resulting in “[a] special purgatory between for half-baked celeb worship and muddled exhibition design.” This he attribtes to the notion that:

“...The regnant post-studio, post-pop, performance-obsessed sensibility has created an art climate where it is not only acceptable but inevitable to honor celebrity itself as a kind of talent.”

At ARTnews, contributor Michael H. Miller likewise deems it a curatorial fail, feels embarrassed on Björk’s behalf. Miller can forgive much about the show (even the Volkswagen product-placement tech tie-in), but ultimately condemns the exhibition as a case of misguided institutional “starfucking.”

But the most withering assessment so far comes from Roberta Smith at the NY Times. A few highights from the opening paragraphs:

“Given the number of Björk fans it will probably attract, the show’s future as a logistical nightmare seems clear. ...But the show reeks of ambivalence, as if MoMA, despite its frantic drive to cover the entire waterfront of cutting-edge art and visual culture, couldn’t quite commit. The museum has certainly given more space to less. Marina Abramovic, whose cheesy retrospective, ‘The Artist Is Present,’ took over half of the Modern’s sixth-floor galleries in 2010 (another Biesenbach project), is not as genuine, innovative or visually inclined an artist as Björk.

“... [The] exhibition stands as a glaring symbol of the museum’s urge to be all things to all people, its disdain for its core audience, its frequent curatorial slackness and its indifference to the handling of crowds and the needs of its visitors. To force this show, even in its current underdone state, into the atrium’s juggernaut of art, people and poor design is little short of hostile.”

Of which one takeaway might be that Smith holds Björk in higher regard than Marina Abramovic. Another being what serves as a unifying complaint about the exhibition: That it's a poorly-executed result of a museum trend of the past two decades -- one in which turnstile-conscious panderings to pop-culture appeal degenerate into a cynically complacent, slipshod production.*  Whlie several critics have compared the thing to an evening at the Hard Rock Cafe, a trio of staffers at Hyperallergic conclude:

"Maybe, to play devil’s advocate for a moment, that’s why we were all so intensely disappointed by the exhibition: we were expecting an exhibition. Had we shown up to preview 'The Tunnel of Björk' — and had said tunnel flowed a little more smoothly — we would have liked it?"

"But if we wanted 'The Tunnel of Björk,' wouldn’t we have gone to alterna–Walt Disney World?"

"That’s exactly where we went."

As far as how all this might wash at “street level,” perhaps the best feedback comes from the comments section of a post at Stereogum:

“Is there any reason for a bunch of Bjork’s photos, songs, and videos to be shown in an art museum? Similarly, was there any reason for Jay-Z and Marina Abramovic to participate in the Dance That Caused 1000 Cringes? Is there any reason why we need to listen to Kanye West ramble on about his nonexistent fashion career?

I’m not saying musicians can’t do other stuff, but nowadays it seems like everyone in the public sphere needs to diversify their portfolio even if they have nothing of value to contribute outside their primary discipline.”

Relatedly, Spencer Kornhaber at The Atlantic writes about how Kanye has at least some idea about how the differences of how mass-produced culture and high-art culture works; whereas RZA and some of his Wu colleagues (in reference to this recent possible “conceptual” non-enterprise) don’t.


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* Or, as Jerry Saltz wrote: "I greeted its June announcement with dismay, writing,...'MoMA [is] destroying its credibility ... in its self-suicidal slide into a box-office-driven carnival ... Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass vitrine, Queen Marina staring at smitten viewers in the atrium, the trashy Tim Burton show, last season's gee-whiz Rain Room, and of course the wrecking ball Diller Scofidio + Renfro is about to swing.' What made me know back then that the Björk show would likely be another embarrassing pop-programming nadir in a string of embarrassing pop-programming nadirs was the way MoMA — more than any major museum in the world — has gravitated to spectacle almost for its own sake." Mind you, this was penned the critic who fawned over being invited take part in that Jay-Z video; but he Saltz returns to scold modus in towards the end of the piece as he veers into a museum/cultural politics screed.

"Alt Canon" Interlude

Who remembers this Bostonian lot? Anyone?

Can't say I paid 'em much attention at the time, and the only reason I’m prompted to remember them now (seasonal serendipity aside) is in the context of some bantering assessmental blahblah Simon & I have been having. Simon recently returned to the topic of what he’s previously dubbed the Era of Bad British Music, circa the mid-1980s. Simon remarks that he might follow it up by switching shores and reflecting on the “college rock” phenom in the U.S. during the years in question.

Which is why I thought of the above, because they were very much of that era. If memory serves, the debut LP made them critics’ darlings -- enthusiasm issuing forth from major and minor publications alike, from Rolling Stone to Forced Exposure, making them candidates for the Most Promising New Indie Act of the Year. But the tide turned sharply, and their follow-up album was unanimously panned by the same publications, and the critics’ affections gravitated to (say) Galaxie 500, instead. The band would, I believe, soldier on for a few more years before morphing into '90s loungecore outfit Combustible Edison.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^

The Imaginary Museum

This article could've been a submission to the next edition of The Journal of 'Ugh', but instead it arrives by way of The Atlantic:

"But for art to have as much of an impact upon mass culture—and appeal to consumers—as those luxury brands have achieved, it will have to break out of its crystal bubble. It will have to follow the path that the food industry has for the last two decades or more, which has been the path of taking once abstruse and artisanal products and making them common fare. [...]

"'Anyone who is a serious member of the creative class,' Art Basel director Marc Spiegler told Reuters last week,' is going to come into our fair. We’re getting a lot of requests from CEOs and CMOs who’ve never come to the fair.' In other words, there is a legitimate turn taking place as the idea of an immensely lucrative contemporary art market ceases to seem like a sign some market bubble is about to pop. With each passing year, contemporary art becomes a more plausible tentpole for the global creative economy."

Of course, the whole piece serves as yet another megaphone of the marketplace triumphalism, a 'rah-rah' celebrating the wind down of this year's installment of Art Basel Miami.

There are so many problems with the thread of the author's argument that I almost get a headache trying to think of where to begin. But ultimately, the argument hinges on a number of socio-economic hypotheticals that fly in the face of the current state of things. For instance: As if an art fair is an ideal or even conducive setting for viewing art. As if every art fair is an equivalent to a Documenta, Venice Biennale, or a visit to the Gugg. And as if lots of collectors are like Charles Saatchi who -- be it for the sake of raising one’s profile or out of a genuine sense of cultural largesse -- share their collections with the public.

About that last item: Nevermind that the elevated prices brought about by the high-rolling market of recent years has priced out most museum and cultural institutions, the price of the average desirable acquisition far exceeding whatever funds they might have at their disposal. Instead much of the work ends up in private collections, often bought as a speculative investment, then shunted away into safekeeping and well out of public circulation then maybe sometime later put back on the auction block. (Unless, of course, they decide to donate -- once again, whether for the sake of public prestige, a sense of civic generosity, or as a tax write-off -- parts of their collection to art museums. If there’s been a surge in these donations in recent years, one which parallels the frenzy of the market, nobody’s mentioned it. Maybe the Pew Foundation’s already chasing those numbers.)*

In a way, one could argue that the article’s thesis tracks like a misunderstanding or distortion of the Beuysian equation of “Kunst Gleich Kapital,” extended to “Art + Money = Democratization.” Except, judging from the context, that the author’s idea of what constitutes “democratic” rests on the assumption that there’s a sort of trickle-down economics will come into play as a result of the perpetually-booming art market. Which I guess makes it the Chicago School of Economics version of Andre Malraux's "“Le Musée imaginaire." Praises be, edification from on high!

Say it with me: Ughh.

^ ^ ^
BTW: The image a the top is tom Eric Fischl's recent series of painting derived from photo studies taken at various art fairs. About which, note this article posted at -- oh, irony! -- the site for Christie's auction house. Final paragraph:

"Fischl does not paint the generous, open, multi-cultural city of Miami, infused with energy and Art Deco beauty, and lit by neon. This series is about the art world which, in his opinion, represents another country altogether."

Meaning that, in a way, it's a revisitation of his "Cargo Cults" series of beach paintings from mid-late 1980s.

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* This scenario is, of course, peculiar to the U.S.: where -- unlike other places -- cultural institutions and museums received little or nothing in the way of government subsidies, and therefore have to depend heavily on donations.

First Rule of the Krump Club is That Nobody Talks About the Krump Club...

Given, most of what the early-mid/best Autechre came down to was: "Listen ye, what Mantronix hath wrought."

Pedagogical Interlude

Some Straggling Endnotes

A couple of clarifications re that last post:

1) Discharge, Pussy Riot, Banksy, Hirschhorn...are not artists that I have any strong or firm opinion on, one way or the other. So none of what I wrote should be construed as a defense of or attack on any of those cited.

2) That Spectator blog article: Aside from the pointless of the piece itself, what I find much more deeply amusing is the matter of a British/Western/Outsider party posing the question of artistic merits in this instance. Because anyone the least bit familiar with the history of Russian punk knows that it has its own peculiar history, that it developed under artistically insular conditions, and that it in many ways has broadly departs -- stylistically & etc. -- from what constituted "punk" elsewhere. (The same could be said -- altho' to a lesser degree -- for the evolution of jazz and electronic music in Russia, as well.)

Case in point, the crew above. They probably wouldn't rank as "good" in many peoples' books; but there are at least a couple of DJs at WFMU who think they're brilliant. And, really -- what's not to love?

That Intro Thing, Again. Sort of.

So a friend got me the Numero Group Purple Snow anthology for Christmas, which put me in mind of other Minneapolis items. Particularly...




In which the band, playing at a watering hole in Oklahoma City in 1984, decides to bail on its regular set and (for the full duration of the cassette's second side) default to standard bar-band mode, playing a cross-section of Big Hits from the classic and collegiate canons. But being so supremely hammered that they never manage to get very far into any given tune. Check out that playlist from tracks 9-24.

Maybe not so much intros, but a roster of sloppy and inebriated false starts. In the case of "I Will Follow," it definitely qualifies as nothing more than an intro, because the opening riff is all Bob Stinson could manage. X's "The New World" seems to be about the only one they know the better part of. And for the most part, Westerberg's just shoveling in whatever sounds right for approximated lyrics.

Had copies of this and Pussy Galore's Exile on Main St. back then. But I'm sure you know what inevitably happens to tapes if you play them over ten dozen times.

And I've already wearied of the Best Intro topic. On to other things. Started typing this yesterday, and see today -- via BLCKDGRD -- that today is Paul Westerberg's birthday. Pure serendipity, that.

But while we're at it, one last one. One of the most whiplash-inducing kick-offs I know, an old favorite...




Probably more a candidate for riffage than intro. But whatever.

Post-Apocalypse

Via greg.org

I always liked the idea of making my own Christopher Wool knock-offs -- just a couple of small jokey versions to put up on a couple of walls around the house. Easy enough.

Or back in the days when I would occasionally get it into my head to make sarcastic paintings and the like, I wanted to make a mock, intentionally shoddy Joseph Kosuth that read: "YOU CAN'T BLAME WITTGENSTEIN FOR THIS ONE."

The Views Expressed Do Not Necessarily Reflect Those of the Station or Its Management

Recently stumbled across KEXP's "Review Revue" blog category thing, in which someone at the station scans and post old LPs from their library, highlighting the comments written by former DJs. And was a bit surprised at how boring much of it proved to be. Which had me thinking about my former community radio venue, and the odd items in its record library and some of the reviews scrawled thereon, thinking that said station should mount something similar.

And apparently someone there recently did just that.

First item that comes to mind, here's an old favorite, famous among staffers for its historical significance...

Featuring a response penned by one Mark E. Smith. Mark had recently married American expat Brix, who was in the lineup of The Fall. Brix, as it turns out, was an alumnus of the University of Chicago. And when The Fall played Chicago sometime around 1985-6ish, they apparently made a trip to the UofC campus, which included paying a visit to the radio station, with Mark E. poked through the record library and discovered that someone had made a disparaging remarks about Brix's vocal, and fired back: "YOU FUCKING DUMB MEDIOCRE PLANK! Signed - Lord Marquis E. Smith".

As I recall, he left comments on some other albums, as well. Sometimes taking issue with a staffer's reviewer, other times merely bestowing his blessing on the LP/artist.

The site so far sports a high ratio of old hardcore punk records for some reason, which is hardly representative of the rock end of the station's library. I thought some of the most amusing (i.e, quaint) comments came from the period roughly around 1980 -- from the years that the station was transitioning out of it prior AOR format (so common among left-of-the-dial college stations during most of the 1970s) and gravitating toward the noo music that would ultimately pave the way for '80s "college rock." Heated debates on the sleeves of some LPs by short-lived acts of that vintage; arguments about whether the act in question was a "real" or "fake" "New Wave" band, usually sparked by someone angrily decreeing that the artist in question (The Suburban Lawns, say) was little more than a despicably cynical trend-hopping opportunist, etc.

Former Copyeditorial Interlude

Because no.

Because?

Because iz boolshit. Because mine former hrvatski building super of long time had even for him better english grasp than.

"We want to paint a monster on it."

Admittedly, I can't help but like the title, like the kitsch-romanticism Heimat theme, and also like how it reminds me of a perverse cross between two precedents -- Asger Jorn's "disfigurements" of flea-market paintings and a twist on the results from Komar & Melamid's "Most/Least Wanted" project.

As far as the supposed controversy and allegations surrounding the sale of the piece: In the end a charity got the money. And as if the major auction houses don't routinely engage in price-/bid-rigging.

...And speaking of Nazis and art, I'm still trying to get my head around all the what-fors involved this story. Lots of sketchy and piecemeal reports, raising more questions than they answer. Looks like it's going to be a while until much of anything gets settled, before a clearer picture emerges. Looks like it'll make for a helluva hefty book project for whomever's game for tackling it.

Not Great Men (Modern Primitives vs. Killer Clowns Edition)

No sooner do I mention Thomas Houseago than NYT artcritic Ken Johnson publishes a review on an exhibition by/of same. The result is an all-too-common sight of watching American art-crit collapsing under the weight of all the extraneous baggage it’s saddled itself with these past 3 decades. Johnson’s "masculinity" framing narrative falling flat on its face, mainly because it comes across as a sneeringly disingenuous evocation of a '90s-style identity politics angle; which seems sneakily (and sarcastically) self-serving in this instance, what, given the public flogging that same critic recently received over some remarks he made about some other recent exhibitions. About the only thing he raises that might have much to do with anything significant is when he bemoans the retromantic nature of Houseago’s work and methods. But even that runs into trouble:

"Mr. Houseago’s eccentric enthusiasms are muffled by his reverence for traditions old and Modernist and by his Postmodernist play with generic formal and stylistic conventions. His art is too much about art and not enough about his inner life. It’s too impersonal."

But in a way, it’s kind of interesting to read, if only to watch the forces at play. A lot of points made, some of them arbitrary or poorly qualified, others contradictory, so in the end everything just sort of cancels each other out, leaving the reader with almost nothing to take away from having read it.

* * * * * *

Was curious to read the article in the latest New Yorker about the relationship between Alabama “outsider” artist Thornton Dial and his collector, patron and advocate Bill Arnett. Found it disappointing, can’t recommend it. Bears the common hallmarks of a lot of recent journalism (the type that’s become increasingly common in the NYer itself the past few years): Lopsided in its focus, raising questions that go insufficiently answered, with the writer (or editor) unable to figure out which story they’d like to tell, and in the end hedging it bets by defaulting to a baseline cynicism. The thing's also in need of some decent photos of Dial's work.

If there’s a story or central theme here, its about the disconnect between criterial narratives. Arnett’s passion and advocacy for “folk” art (particularly Dial’s), and the ceaseless frustrations he’s run into trying to get institutions take what he considers due attention. Of course, most of the institutions in question subscribe to a different, competing account of historical evolution – a telos in which artists like Dial don’t figure. (After all, why are they labeled “outsider” artists in the first place?)

* * * * * *

The Mass Ornament

Public Service Announcements

Yeah, like almost airybody else these days, I have a tumblr.

Sorry if that makes me some sort of sell-out. But hey, if you haven't gathered by now, I'm as visuocentric as I am text-oriented.

Stress Analysis

"I didn't design the layout of Brasilia. I just did its architecture.
And it's a place where the buildings count for a lot. The city is flat.
The horizon stretches away endlessly."
                                                                       - Oscar Niemeyer

Misc. notes on architecture

Re, the Modernist affinity for geometric simplicity, and the flat roof. Boxes with lids on them, more or less.

Granted, the flat-roofed structure has been around since time immemorial, being the direct descendent of the most rudimentary of architectural configurations, the post-and-lintel affair. Due to this lineage, one might describe it as "classic" in a sense. But perhaps only classic by default, by base necessity, since the prior mode of default mostly meant scouting out caves and the like. Post and lintel basically meaning walls and roof -- support and shelter. The rudiments.

The lintel element being -- by extension -- the flat roof. Which would become the basic structural feature thereafter, especially for buildings that served the most basic purposes -- be they domestic or institutional. Such things lack grandeur, speak in too humble of terms.

SO: The flat roof being a matter of default throughout the ages. Until the twentieth century, when High Modernism brought it back into style, made it a matter of preference. Modernism, with its guiding principle of purity and all that -- banishments of ornament and excess, form following function for the sake of improving (and aestheticizing) the built environment. That sense of purism extending to the reductivist basics of modular geometrical volumes -- permutations of the square and rectangle; the rectitude of -- as Le Corbusier would put it -- the right (i.e., 90-degree) angle.

All of that aside, there are inherent disadvantages to the flat roof, the sort that pose issues for the longevity of the building. One of course is the simple matter of water; which can collect in puddles along the plane of the roof, causing leaks which thereby incrementally shortening the integrity of the structure (not to mention adding to all sorts of laborious, expensive, and continual maintenance).

From an engineering point of view, the sloped roof has its upsides (no pun intended); mainly because it channels a lot of the gravitational taxation out towards the corners, where the corner beams could divert said forces right back down into the earth. But you lose that with a flat roof. Especially if its ceiling is low, and the structure sprawls. In which case it requires -- like the sort that covers any vast acreage (a factory, say) -- an optimum of load-bearing supports within. Basic physics, really. The more weight put upon a roof (be it the heavy accumulation of seasonal snows, a recreational deck or helipad, or the simple stacking of additional storeys), the more it needs to be reinforced from within, and extensively throughout. Stress-points have to be diffused – equally dispersed.

Such pragmatic considerations aside, there were plenty of other reasons to beat up on Modern architecture; and plenty of critics have lined up to do so in recent decades. Much of the criticism extending beyond considerations about form, focusing instead on issues of functionality. In this respect, it sometimes adopts the posture of a type of Adolf Loos-ish civic-virtues sanctimonious blowholing; which at times comes across as disingenuous, the anti-"purity" puritanism often hanging on the speaker as smartly as a second-hand suit.

At any rate, Le Corbusier is the favorite target for critics of Modern architecture; particularly his "Radiant City," which is overwhelmingly cited as the ultimate in bloodlessly "rational," dystopia-via-utopian urban planning. And yes, to look at the drawings and the model, one can't argue with that assessment. But it was never built or realized, if only because it was unbuildable and unrealizable, which is undoubtedly for the better. But there’s always Brasília, which was built and exists as an actualization of a similar plan. Like Corbu’s scheme, it's been described as inhumanly sprawling and impersonal, too aesthetically elitist and "absolute" in its grandeur. Similarly, it’s also been assailed for being too organized around the culture of roadways and the automobile; its expanses exceedingly unfriendly to pedestrian traffic and difficult to reach or navigate on foot. So while on one level – as a series of containers for administrative and bureaucratic activity – the city serves its function. But on another level, a much more logistical and symbolic level, one might argue it fails to fulfill its purpose.

Or so it’s said. Perhaps, dunno. I'm neither an architect nor an engineer, and I imagine this sort of thing is better left to those with the requisite expertise. What's more, I’ve never been to Brasília. But from appearances, the structure seems to be bearing up fairly well. Not only that, but it's still looking quite grand at the same time.