"It will be beautiful, it will be beautiful," is the stubbornly repeated, vague incantation of Roger Buergel, artistic director of the forthcoming Documenta 12, scheduled to open in June 2007. --from Artnet, June 2006I knew I wouldn't be able to visit Documenta early on, as I might assume many of my colleagues would have, given the propensity of the international art world to show up at opening celebrations, tempted by the sure knowledge, I suppose, that they'd run into dozens and dozens
of their colleagues and be able to chat, unimpeded by the crowds of ordinary art tourists that can clog the works at other times, so I steadfastly blanked out all references, news stories, and opinions about it. The catalogue sat on my desk for a month with its plastic wrapper intact. I returned from Documenta depressed and exhausted, and sat at my computer now doing the research most would have done prior to attending such an event. I didn't type into Google “Documenta exhausted depressed” but one of the first things that came up at the search "Documenta 12" was an article by Richard Dorment of the Telegraph (UK) returning from the show in June "exhausted and depressed" to write about his desperate search for "signs of artistic talent at the 12th 'Documenta' show in Kassel, Germany" under the headline "The Worst Art Show Ever."
Two years.
It seems like only yesterday that I watched the destruction of a great American city, a great WORLD city, with stultifying disbelief. In almost real time, I watched how we all allowed the social contract that binds us together as a nation be trampled on or ignored.
I watched as governmental
agencies at every level exhibited new lows in craven self-preservation at
the expense of real solutions and dedicated leadership.
Kristina Marie Darling is an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of four chapbooks, which include Fevers and Clocks (March Street Press, 2006) and The Traffic in Women (Dancing Girl Press, 2006). A Pushcart Prize nominee in 2006, her work has appeared in many publications, including The Mid-America Poetry Review, PIF Magazine, Janus Head, The Midwest Book Review, The Arabesques Review, and others. Recent awards include residencies at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow and the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts.
Entropy
The stars have formed their equilibrium
of imperfections & to ellipses that circle
ERIC ANDERSEN AT THE DOLDER 2
FEUERTHALEN, SWITZERLAND JULY 27, 2007
When Edith showed me Eric Andersen’s name advertised for a Friday show at the Dolder 2, it set off a buzz of memory. Crossing paths in Austin, the Kerrville Folk Festival, and Nashville, the last time I had seen him was in the late 1990’s in Piran, Slovenia. An old friend of Townes Van Zandt, Eric was a living link to the storied days of early sixties Greenwich Village, and a stunning songwriter in his own right. Scheduled to be held outside in the garden, this was an evening not to be missed.
I'm a fan of Archer Prewitt's work, and an even bigger fan of BoingBoing.net. Following is a blurb of their blurb.
Sof' Boy is a wonderful but extremely infrequently-published comic book by musician and artist Archer Prewitt. I love this comic about a homeless, naive dough boy who happily lives in a crime- and filth-ridden urban neighborhood, surviving attacks by man and beast because he is made out of some kind of indestructible, infinitely elastic rubber.
Giant Robot sells Sof' Boy comics: Combo Reprint (Issue #01 & Issue #02), Issue #03.
Link
Erin M. Bertram is a fellow/TA in the MFA Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis. She writes for The Vital Voice and edits shadowbox press, which publishes hand-made chapbooks by underrepresented writers. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bloom, Columbia Poetry Review, CutBank, MiPOesias, Natural Bridge, and The Marlboro Review. With Sarah Lilius, she co-authored the chapbook Here, Hunger (NeO Pepper Press, 2007). Body Of Water recently won the 2007 Frank O’Hara Award Chapbook Competition and will be published by Thorngate Road in late 2007. Her chapbook Alluvium was published by dancing girl press, 2007.
[Travelogue (Breviary)]
Darkling, listen.
Pissed off that the MCA's rock and art show Sympathy For The Devil includes only ONE! ...ONE! Chicago artist while pandering to the same tired group of 'Ren' approved usual suspects from both coasts yet again? The 'local' LA artists, and the 'local' NYC artists must be laughing their asses off as to what a bunch of patsies those complacent dupes in Chicago are-
Hell yea they will show in our city -how did they get known? Oh! Thats right, from LOCAL SUPPORT IN THEIR CITIES! But here, if the Art Institute or the MCA supports us, they run the risk of ghettoizing us, of being provincial......yea, right! And how does Chicago differ in this respect from either LA or NYC beyond having a bunch of visionless and spineless bureaucrats ensconsed in power here, desperately attempting to be 'with it' everywhere else?
"Prizes when acid joins the pigment and the sap has been drunk."
Anne Sexton
The hardened myth
still slicked and hanging on,
a tongue wagging jackal's
black stole.
Ryan Murphy is the author of Down with the Ship from Otis Books / Seismicity Editions, as well as a number of chapbooks including Poems for the American Revolution (The Dutchess County Department of Occupational Training). He has received awards from Chelsea Magazine and The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art as well as a grant from The Fund for Poetry. He lives in New York.
Batting Cleanup for the Los Angeles Dodgers
That same old feeling,
a pop song.
Sky choral.
Someone cue up that naughty Blue Danube Waltz - played at double speed thank you very much. Galactic Suite aims to get a jump, or launch as the case may be, on the space tourism industry we were all promised back in the 70's. Their target date is 2012, a seemingly ambitious goal when you consider that they're intending to develop the spaceport, spaceship and spaceresort.
While it sounds like a really cool idea, I have to wonder what the insurance waiver will look like. I guess when you've got $4 million to spend on a vacation (complete with tropical-island based training) then you can afford to have your attorney give the waiver a once-through. Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for the Jet Pack I was promised.
Tally Ho!
231 box only for JAWS. from the movie. "Super Scenes" series. 1975. This is the one with the giant shark attacking Frogman inside his shark cage. This is the BOX only - no kit. great for display. mint. 25.00
Find It Here
MSB:
Considering the fact that I just received the invitation, via email, for applying for the next Artist Project, this post is probably too late. It appears they have made some improvements, but the discussion many artists have been having about this “project” is very interesting and should be continued.... into the realm of artist responsibility and actual inclusion of artists important and powerful ways within fairs or any art exhibition venue.
I’m posting here a LIST OF IDEAS for improving the ARTIST PROJECT. Even contradictory ones. This is / was a kind of brainstorming, aiming to increase creative proposals while whittling down less useful ones. Anybody want to help still discuss such ideas?
For my money Duchamp is one of the most important artists of the modern era, one of the funniest, and most certainly one of the most misunderstood (followed closely by Pollock and Warhol). Regardless of the fact that his legend has generated a raft of reductivist, mindless art babble, there's no question that the man's work is indispensable.
Even today these works seem retinal, vital and human. They're also far removed from the type of work we see today which lays claim to his legacy, much of which fits too-neatly into the rubric of "art for blind people."
Now we have the wonderful web site Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp, a timeline-based Flash site which provides something of a legend for the Legend. This site is great for both appreciators and detractors alike. Here's a quote from the site:
Bicycle Wheel was the first of a class of objects that Duchamp called his "readymades." He created twenty-one of them, all between 1915 and 1923. The readymades are a varied collection of items, but there are several ideas that unite them.Don't be a hater!
The readymades are experiments in provocation, the products of a conscious effort to break every rule of the artistic tradition. in order to create a new kind of art -- one that engages the mind instead of the eye, in ways that provoke the observer to participate and think.
Allyssa Wolf is the author of Vaudeville (Seismicity Editions/Otis Books, 2006) and recipient of a Gertrude Stein Award (PIP Gertrude Stein Anthology, Green Integer Press, 2007). Her poems, essays, and videoworks have been published internationally in literary journals including Ribot, Versal, Poesia en Azione, Fence, LIT, Fascicle, Octopus, Soft Targets, The Continental Review, and The New Review of Literature, as well as being featured in the 2001 Venice Biennale.from The Doll Number
Fifth Doll
Born a beak missing
Late-arriving
A kind of woodpecker, the yellow bellied sapsucker harvests sap from trees for food, as well as the insects the sap they tap attracts. The holes these birds make appear as unmistakable horizontal lines of dots that can illustrate the entire trunk of a tree. They manage the trees they use, like any conscientious user of natural resources.
Severity of sculptures stems from caprice
Alan Artner Tribune art critic
August 3, 2007
David Roth's painted wood wall sculptures at the Packer Schopf Gallery have some of the severity of abstract wall reliefs by Russian Constructivists such as Ivan Puni. But their assertiveness is often of a very different kind that comes from the forms being pushed into the territory of caprice to relieve the modern high seriousness.
The rest of Alan Artner's Review can be read here. You'll have to register, but it's free.
Low-ish res images of the work can be found here.
