May 14, 2008
How to write about an exhibition you haven't attended
Matthew Bliss, Beyond Abstraction, May 3rd-June 2nd (extended until the 8th!) at Sharada Gallery, Rhinebeck, NY
I met Matthew only once in a cold February day in New York City; my memory of this event is not an accurate but a cinematographic one: I remember it as if it were the scene of a Wim Wenders movie, a gritty urban environment, the streets dirty with the recently melted snow and the feeling that this could only have happened in this particular place - a geographical appropriateness. In the back of a yellow cab, like members of an underworld in a country where art was forbidden, Matthew carefully and almost in stealth extracted from a canvas bag a small sculpture that fitted the palm of his hand, a restless hand, anxiously showing a treasure. And there it was, a sturdy object that despite its small scale was the antithesis of flimsiness and that looked the more minute in its creator's long and elegant fingers. And it quickly disappeared back into its case.
Probably because of the secretive and intimate atmosphere I associate with this encounter, I imagine that in order to see this exhibition you'd have to whisper a password to get through the door, like a speakeasy. You climb down a few steps and there is a room, darkened and damp as a wine cellar, where flickering lightbulbs throw a blanket of yellow light over the exquisite little sculptures set in holes cut into the walls. They would possibly be lit from below casting long shadows on the rugged walls, adding a hint of drama. Exit this Boltanski's The Candles inspired stage and back to the most natural gallery setting, the ever-ubiquituous white cube. I start imagining that each sculpture has the right to its own white pedestal, high enough for the viewer not need to bend over to examine it more carefully but not as high as to leave the work at eye level either. Somewhere in between, a perfect height to see the sculpture from the front but still have a good grasp of its depth and dimensions.
These assemblages could pass for objects trouvés, industrial debris from a giant contraption, abandoned and corroded by the elements and the relentless action of time. Better even, they could be attempts at its reconstruction, the plans being lost and its aim forgotten.
Oh. Soft jazz should be playing.
As for the drawings and watercolors, they would be hanging in a small back room with a skylight. The false Rothkos, more simulacra than forgery, should be here in a contrarian stance to the Rothko hall at Tate Modern, as if Man Ray had come by and solarized the entire room. Rather than a somber and meditative atmosphere reminiscent of a chapel, a room evocative of a joyful and bright afternoon in the sun drenched roof of a house in Alexandria, a blue sky dome stolen from Klein, where the Quartet's characters would be contriving dissertations on the philosophy of love.
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May 12, 2008
Many years ago in Lisbon, my very British-crocheted-tie-and-tweed-jacket-type teacher Simon was telling me how he had gone back to London for a short break and how he made a fool of himself for not remembering the appropriate english terms for the several bank operations he had planned to take care of while there. The teller looked at him as if he was demented - or at the very least as if he had a very limited vocabulary - since with that fine Queen's accent there was no doubt he was an englishman. He concluded, "Not only do I speak a poor Portuguese, I'm beginning to forget my own language!".
I haven't been away long enough to have a similar complaint but, whereas I was before a gold card Amazon.co.uk client (if there was such a thing), I find myself now pining for some Portuguese literature. As they say, I can't get no satisfaction. In the absence of an Amazon.pt, my kind and patient parents brought me exactly what I needed:
A modern classic that I managed to procrastinate reading indefinitely until now; a posthumous work of a famous author; the most recent book by my favorite Portuguese contemporary writer.
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April 09, 2008
"Serenidad, Yulma, tu peor enemigo puede ser el miedo."
Help, my home is being invaded my Mexican memorabilia
or
how I learned about Lucha Libre and Kaliman, el hombre increíble.
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April 05, 2008
"Men, commonplace and ordinary, do not seem to me fit for the tremendous fact of eternal life. With their little passions, their little virtues and their little vices, they are well enough suited in the workday world; but the conception of immortality is much too vast for beings cast on so small a scale." -- A Writer's Notebook by Somerset Maugham
quoted by Julian Barnes on Nothing to be Afraid Of, a book I couldn't put down not out of reading pleasure but of suspense on what would he write next that I couldn't disagree more with. It's a memoir verging on becoming an anthology of quotations by famous novelists and artists about death and dying, as entertaining as any other anglo-saxon memoir and their typically detached accounts of family's eccentricities and anecdotes. Yet, I was appalled to find, even already discounting the different nationalities, generations and gender, that this man has a way of seeing the world that is so alien to me. From small insignificant details like "when you're a child you think your family is unique" - when I was a child I thought every other family was like mine and was very surprised to find they weren't - to his interpretation of Maugham's quote "The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love" which, following a story by Browne, he believes is all about growing older, having everyone die around you until there's no one else to love - as if you'd stop loving the dead.
I hope to outlive Mr. Barnes - and I'm only saying this because he actually addressed me, the reader, asking me to consider that I might die before him. I think it will be very appropriate that on the day he passes away, there will be a book on one of my shelves in which his signature will become a sort of modern relic.
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March 26, 2008
Actually, this makes sense.
What do artist Jeff Koons and prostitute Ashley Alexandra Dupré have in common? Both can be had for a hefty price through the Emperors Club. Citing a report on Artnet, Le Monde's Harry Bellet discovers that the escort service, which counted the former New York governor Spitzer among its clients, also offered contemporary artworks through its online site. "Emperors Club was not satisfied with providing women to our financial elites but also took an interest in contemporary art," writes Bellet. "Their business, Emperors Publishing Media Group, owns a site called Emperors Club Contemporary Art, which is responsible for providing its clients with works by renowned artists like Jeff Koons, David Salle, and Richard Prince." Emperor's Club describes itself as "a highly informative venue through which you may acquire exceptional contemporary art directly from a group of highly selected artists, dealers, galleries, and members." Members are required to earn at least $450,000 per year. Sotheby's and Christie's logos appear on the site's page, although, according to Bellet, the auction houses insist that they were not informed about the posting. But auction houses are not the only ones to be roped in to the Emperor's Club experience. "The site offers images of artworks, each accompanied by a notice usually taken from the best sources," writes Bellet. "A painting by Jeff Koons is accompanied by a review by critic Jerry Saltz." -- from ArtForums's news digest
It's all about aesthetics, no? And power. And prostitution. Which has everything to do with the art market these days, Jeff Koons being one of the great meretrices. But I always thought that it was part of his artistic manifesto. No need to take it literally.
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March 04, 2008
As it happens, I was present during one delirious afternoon when the children finally did catch on to the basic principles of number - the fact that with numbers you can count anything. Released from the schoolhouse, the excited children ran hither and tither in little groups, applying their new found insight: they counted the houses, the dogs, the trees, fingers and toes, each other - and the numbers worked every time.
Account of Umeda children of Papua New Guinea learning to count numbers by Alfred Gell (cited on the Routledge Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of Mathematics)
(I'm not sure if the Umedas originally could count up to 47 using parts of the body for each number or could count up to 5 using combinations of 1's and 2's. Either way, i found the account of this sudden realization of abstraction very exciting.)
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March 03, 2008
Visual Greguerías
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by Chema Madoz, spanish photographer
(a Greguería, invented by Ramón Goméz de La Serna, is an aphorism based on a decontextualized metaphor, à la Dada)
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February 19, 2008
Gibraltar Airport Runway
Finally made the plane into Paris,
Honey mooning down by the Seine.
Peter Brown called to say,
"You can make it O.K.,
You can get married in Gibraltar, near Spain".
--The ballad of John and Yoko
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February 09, 2008
São Paulo Stripped Bare by the Aesthetes, Even
Last year, the Brazilian city of São Paulo outlawed billboards, logos, posters or any kind of advertisement in the streets or even on buses.
(from the wonderful Flickr set by Tony de Marco documenting the process)
This year, the famous São Paulo biennial will showcase an empty exhibition space:
(Biennial Pavillion stolen from Frieze)
Considering the fact that there are almost two hundred biennials around the world working on similar issues, showing the diverse art practices which constitute the territories of the current visual language, it seems necessary to ask: How does the São Paulo Biennial evaluates this cultural phenomenon, propagated through the so-called peripheral countries or in regions of political or cultural tension? What is a biennial's role in the era of globalization? What role do biennials play for the cultural, tourism and event industry? What contribution to the discussion proposes the São Paulo Biennial based on its experience, being the third oldest organization of this kind and the first outside the hegemonic centers?
In El Pais, an interview with the curator, Ivo Mesquita:
Hay una frase de Beckett al final de Esperando a Godot: 'We are nummbed' (estamos embotados). Y es lo que me parece. Doscientas bienales, ferias, revistas, premios, más arte... No estamos mirando. Estamos perdiendo el sentido de la mirada".
****
(I have a feeling they are actually light years ahead of us all)
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January 31, 2008
Free association
Tom Zé, "All the eyes" album, Brazilian Musician
And when I brought the razor closer and with my fingers separated the borders of his anus, Estefania, my astonishment knew no bounds. My first thought was that Palinuro mistrusted me and had decided to spy on me; you won't believe this, Estefania, but there, in his anus, Palinuro had an eye.
'It's an optical illusion.' he said.
'No sir, it's an eye.' I answered.
'What colour?'
'Blue.'
'It's the Universal Eye.'
'That's a metaphor,' I said to him, 'And what you have in your arse is no metaphor but a real eye.'
'Are you crazy?'
'No, I'm not crazy. The General's glass eye, which you must have swallowed last night in your drunken stupor'.
--Palinuro de Mexico, Fernando del Paso
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