I may be easily angered...

but in the case of Rush Limbaugh's recent comments about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, I wouldn't say I'm over-reacting when I say this is TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE, OMG WTF?!?! WHAT IS THIS COUNTRY COMING TO???

So it was pretty satisfying to receive the first response from one of his advertisers that I'd emailed to complain, informing me that they are no longer supporting the show. Because their mission is "to delight our customers with fresh and long lasting flowers," not to spread hateful speech in the public sphere. Good to know. Wonder what they thought he was doing before this? Surely not delighting us with flowers, that's for sure. Looking forward to more emails like this one.

I don't understand

why men in robes and funny collars who get up in public and say such silly things as "I oppose birth control" get any more of a hearing than anyone else irrationally proclaiming that they don't want somebody else to do/have/say something that they are entirely free to do/have/say. I mean, I start to foam at the mouth when people talk loudly on the phone in public space. I don't think anybody should make more than 500K/year for anything, ever. I think that state universities should not pay for college sports. Why doesn't the newspaper put my objections on the front page? Why does some guy's opinion of what goes on in women's uteruses deserve column inches??? Seriously, can somebody explain?

where else?

*okay it just occurred to me why this deserves column inches: it is crazy and people need to know that this sort of insanity is happening so we can be prepared when they take away the pill. Uh, carry on.

I Don't Like You, Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince

As members of a generation steeped in mass media and nurtured in graduate education, and following the general collapse of established values in the sixties and of revolutionary idealism thereafter, they thrilled to suggestions that their automatic sophistication could see through, and dissipate, the antediluvian authority of their elders. But they suffered, too, from a loss of credible traditions that had made life seem real and reality seem livable. Many works in "The Pictures Generation" exude a melancholy of clever artifice masking inexpressible emotion.

(Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker)

We may not have much to be proud of now, but at least it's not New York, ca. 1977. (Moscow, ca. 1977, incidentally, is another story.)

Russia-88

For those of you waiting for a report on "Russia-88," the movie about young Russian skinheads, you're going to have to keep waiting. I tried to go to the special screening today, and was told unceremoniously that that movie would not be shown, because the print had not been delivered. Instead, they would show "J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster." Boo.

update: The story about the print was a red herring. Apparently, there was a possible threat of violence; however, police were prepared and the director himself did not know where the pressure to cancel the screening had come from. (h/t to vk)

I Hate You, Martin Kippenberger

For making stuff like this:

Now I'm going to the big birch wood, my pills will soon start doing me good, 1990

Ingredients: 29 birch trees (rolls of cardboard and plastic and black-and-white offset prints), metal stands, and wooden pills. Installed at MoMA. (via)

What is going on here? We have trees made of art materials and pills made of wood. We have the maudlin romantic symbols of melancholy and the practical modern-day solution to one's existential crisis, if swollen and a bit hard to swallow. I think Holland Cotter hits the nail on the head in his NYT review when he asks, quite seriously, is this "a sendup or a nostalgic sigh?"

Most critics, Cotter included, tend to weave together Kippenberger's personal afflictions/ insurgencies with questions of "history" or "culture," our quote-unquote Modern Condition:

Right from the start he understood that as an artist he was appearing on the scene at the end of a drama rather than at the beginning. By the time he arrived, the defining impulses of late-20th-century art — Pop, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Neo-Expressionism — were old. So were the political ideologies like Socialism and Communism, and the utopianism of the 1960s, which, for better and worse, had shaped the world he knew.

Seemingly all that remained were leftover styles and ideas; bit parts and walk-ons. Kippenberger didn’t buy this. He knew that there are no small parts, only timid actors, and that with the right spices scraps make a great meal. In other words, he knew he had to take what was there, including the diminished role of the artist, and make something different, and large, and loud from it, and he did.

Of course, the review is also called, "Live Hard, Create Compulsively, Die Young." So, I throw the question back to you, HC: was that a sendup or a nostalgic sigh?

A more personal and nuanced (though still unabashedly sympathetic) view of Kippenberger's life is here, in the online version of Ronald Jones's article in Artforum. Jones similarly mixes the personal and the historical:

As much as art history fantasizes Kippenberger as the spunky art-world sophomore, his position is too phenomenally complex to leave it at that. He appeared to us when powerful enclaves of contemporary German culture were sponsoring a full-scale excavation of Expressionism. It is an understatement to say that Martin was at odds with all that. ... From the Paris Bar in Berlin to New York's Odeon, to the Anchor, he carried on, untamed - like the neo-Expressionists he held in contempt - but these passages were performances Martin always kept in quotes. He never mistook having fun [for] ideology. True, he possesses an entertaining appreciation of his culture; but more significant, he recognized what it was about to become. He enjoyed a second sight in this way, a formidable perception that modern nationalism was at last giving way to the dominion of the next culture, a culture staggering in its unity. We never really talked about this seriously (it required a sobriety he would rarely permit), but it was on his mind, and I can say that he did more than casually ponder it. Simply said, his pessimistic insight into what the culture would bring forth was one of his most remarkable gifts. (Emphasis added to highlight strange contradiction, which we could explore if I could figure out the even stranger grammar. My best guess is in the square brackets.)

And perhaps this is the right approach, after all. (If we ignore, for a moment, the looming, hovering, mouthbreathing - stop reading my goddamned blog post over my shoulder!!! - question of "the myth of the tragic male hero, whose life is over before it really began because his/our over-aggressive fathers ruined it for the rest of us by acting like such f-ing a-holes." Yea, let's hold on to that one for a minute.)

How could I say that this is the right approach? Well, because art is not a truth-and-reconciliation commission. It can speak to history, it can become part of history, but it never really drew a clear line between the artist as a guy with a drug problem and larger questions, which one guy can never really address or rectify on his own. What I'm saying is, art history has a problem with biography, because art has a problem with biography. It has one foot in the piddling, pitiable messes of lived experience

On the right: Yuri Leiderman, Silent Pity (Dinner Is Served), 1988

and the other in the quicksand into which we are all sinking and which will continue long after we have left this mortal coil. In questions of history, so to speak. Call it a problem with boundaries. Call it competence. Call it the question of painting. But it's been around for at least two centuries, and it doesn't seem to be going away.

So, why do I hate Martin Kippenberger? I suppose because he makes such a great story out of it. And he makes it so easy to tell - so productive! so compulsive! so witty! so tragic! Look how he plays with materials - the pills made of wood, the trees made of art's raw materials. A spoonful of sarcasm really does make the medicine go down. And all that.

Martin Kippenberger, The Happy End of Kafka's "Amerika," 1994; installation at MoMA

A nice story it all makes. But let's not forget that it's not just a story, at least not while we're still around.

Making Do...Another Cooking Dispatch

The mid-year report that I have been asked to fill out on my progress so far asked how I have dealt with social and cultural differences and changes in my daily life here in Farawayistan. Well, one frankly underreported difficulty (I have hardly complained about this at all!) has been my lack of a microwave and my resulting feelings about cooking for one. Namely, it is a huge pain in the kiester to cook for myself when reheating anything made in more than one portion means frying it in a pan the next day. I'm not even talking about the fact that my frying pan has no handle. This is purely a greasy-food issue. So, in the interest of getting the word out, I'm blowing the whistle on the no-microwave situation. And, as an extra-special bonus, I'm offering a solution that does not involve purchasing extra equipment that will not fit in my suitcases or my future electrical sockets anyway. Here we go:

Step 1) Cook something. Let's say: boil some potato chunks, add butter, salt, and dill. Go ahead, let your eyes be bigger than your stomach and cook way more than you can eat. Don't worry, no need to invite friends over, this one's all for you.

Step 2) Eat more than you should, but leave some in a tupperware in the fridge to ensure self-respect in the morning.

Step 3) Pull out all those little plastic bags you have squirreled away in the cupboard and discover, behind random rice cookers and bread pans...are you ready?...a blender!!!!

Step 4) Cook a soup whose main ingredient is whatever you didn't finish the day before. Look! The Times has like 10 soup recipes that involve potatoes in its health section right now. Don't worry that the main ingredient is already cooked, will get mushy, blablabla; when you blend it, it all turns out awesome. I bet it works with anything: potatoes, eggplant, probably pasta, maybe even pickled herring. Awwwright!

Step 5) If you don't eat all the soup that day, repeat the process the next day to create a kind of second-degree soup, or soup to the soupth power. This is a special kind of cooking I like to think of as "cooking with eugenics." (Related examples of this might be yogurt or kombucha, where you grow a strain of "good" [Gr. "eu"] bacteria in a neutral medium like milk or sweet tea and then perpetuate the strain by adding a little bit of the old batch to the regular old medium to form a new batch.) Our leftover soup example, however, is even more eugenic, because not only are you perpetuating the genes of the yummy leftovers, but you are concentrating them in a new and more powerful super-soup whose qualities we can scarcely imagine today. History may condemn you and you might die of food poisoning. But - need I even say it? - it will be delicious.

Two Important Opinions

1) In a cultural moment of weakness, your humble Gote spent Saturday evening at the Theatre, haggling with the evil usher lady about whether or not checking his "outerwear" was truly necessary (apparently so) and then being ignored by the despicable garderobe lady who failed to see that he was indeed waiting in line and didn't butt in there like any old lady at the post-office.

The real disappointment of the evening, however, was how boring and pointless Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard is/was. Reminds me of Eugene Mirman's parody of a certain slice of the young Brooklyn population: "Oh, New York is so hard, wawawa." Except more in the key of "the landed gentry is being forced to abandon its untenable, antiquated, exploitative ways and wrapping it up in the nauseating aura of family values, nostalgia for a better time, and romantic love." As the kids used to say: gag me with a spoon. I think I prefer Ibsen. At least his characters were just plain old bat-shit crazy. A way better image.

2) I forgot what my other important opinion was. But it's finally gotten colder here, so the ground is super slippery (black ice!) and looks like it is paved with a layer diamonds. Sparkly, sparkly snow falling from the sky looks like mini strobe lights on a Saturday night. Ready-made outdoor disco for one.

Use your imagination for this one.

Quiddity, n.

1. a. Chiefly Philos. The inherent nature or essence of a person or thing; what a thing or person is; that which distinguishes a person or thing from others. Opposed to haecceity.

b. Something intangible. Obs. rare.

2. a. A subtlety or nicety in argument; a quibble. In later use also: a witticism; a quip.

b. As a mass noun: subtlety (of wit); ability or tendency to employ quiddities in argument.

3. In pl. Idiosyncrasies, eccentricities, peculiar features. Chiefly in quirks and quiddities (cf. sense 2a , QUIRK n.¹ 5).

(Source: OED)

I love how, like much bad academic writing (my own recent attempts proving most exemplary), the definition of quiddity devolves from attempting to describe the intangible truth or essence of something, to treating just the argument or meta discursive level, to finally settling on the amusing quirks with which a reader might identify and therefore justify the reading of said text.

Sawaki Suushi, Mikoshi-nyuudou from the Hyakkai Zukkan, 1737

On perhaps not an unrelated note, this is a picture of Mikoshi-nyuudou, the cross-eyed mendicant monster monk from a set of Edo-period Japan picture scrolls. According to this source, the more you look up at him, the taller he grows. If you look up for too long, you die. Unless you say "I see higher," in which case he disappears. Now that's a mantra I can get down with. (More pictures of the Sawaki Suushi scroll here.)

Is This a Joke?!

So, my dept's secretary just sent out the following "job" listing:

BARD GRADUATE CENTER

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE POSITION

The Bard Graduate Center invites applications for a non-stipendiary Research Associate position. The BGC is a graduate research institute committed to studying the cultural history of the material world, drawing on methodologies and approaches from art and design history, economic and cultural history, history of technology, philosophy, anthropology, and archaeology. We especially welcome applications from scholars working on projects parallel to our own. The fellow will be given an office and access to subsidized accommodation and will be expected to participate in the intellectual life of the institution. For additional information about the BGC, see www.bgc.bard.edu. We will appoint either a single Research Associate for a year, or two semester-long Associates. Applications should include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, sample publication (SASE), and a list of three referees, and should be sent by 15 March to Chair, Fellowship Search Committee, Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, 18 W. 86th Street, New York, NY 10024. No electronic applications may be made.

Did you catch that? "Non-stipendiary." Is this a joke?

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for institutions building intellectual communities around similar interests. I guess I just wish they framed it that way: we're inviting people to come, do research, and hang out and talk about shared interests. Instead, they make it sound all jobby (position! search committee! appoint!) without it actually being a job. Well, guess what: "studying" takes more than an office and a subsidy to a bed. This is so depressing...

Groys Talks

For those of you who are interested, here are my notes from the first of three lectures by Boris Groys at the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art.

Two disclaimers: 1) while Groys's lecturing style is very clear and lends itself well to notation, his lecture was in Russian, while my notes are in English. This means that there will inevitably be some omissions and mistranslations. I'll post a link to the audiotape if/when I get one. 2) While I find the general topic timely and interesting, Groys irritates me quite a bit by what he does with it. My at times irritated commentary is in square brackets.

And finally, I cannot help but feel that Groys's missing the mark on the state of art today (his utter cynicism and lack of historical memory) has something to do with the recent awarding of the prestigious Kandinsky prize to the ultranationalist/fascist artist, Alexei Belyaev-Gintov. (That link is in Russian, but I feel like the images speak for themselves.) In particular, there is something very odd about 1) the prize being sponsored by Deutsche Bank and 2) the strangely pussy-footed reporting the choice is getting in the English-language press. (Thanks for the link, kg.) Groys (being in my mind a Western critic), the mostly-Western panel of judges who voted on the Kandinsky prize, and the Bloomberg coverage of the whole thing, seem - as kg noted - blind to the gravity of the situation. They all seem to be playing around, refusing to take seriously the unmistakably chilling pitch of the words spoken loud and clear. ("Мы все вернем назад!" - We will return everything to the way it was!)

[Disgrace.]

I'm running to the second lecture now, but more on this later. As I said to kg, there is plenty of blame to go around. For now, I'm laying it squarely in the hands of the art world.

Grant Writing Hizzzzzell

So, it's very exciting that google is going to digitize all the books in the universe and offer them up for sale to me, because if you know me, you must also know my external harddrive, Maurice, and Maurice is a hungry, hungry hippo. What I really need, however, is that they digitize me and let me stay in Russia for another year without my having to apply for grants or pay the enormous cost of living here. Eh? Can you do that Sergey? Maurice and I are waiting.