At the Guardian, Robert Hughes goes after Damien Hirst, and it is one of those articles that has me cheering once more someone’s common sense in this age of absurdity. Hirst is not only derivative but represents the capitulation of art to money. An excerpt:
Actually, the presence of a Hirst in a collection is a sure sign of dullness of taste. What serious person could want those collages of dead butterflies, which are nothing more than replays of Victorian decor? What is there to those empty spin paintings, enlarged versions of the pseudo-art made in funfairs? Who can look for long at his silly sub-Bridget Riley spot paintings, or at the pointless imitations of drug bottles on pharmacy shelves? No wonder so many business big-shots go for Hirst: his work is both simple-minded and sensationalist, just the ticket for newbie collectors who are, to put it mildly, connoisseurship-challenged and resonance-free. Where you see Hirsts you will also see Jeff Koons’s balloons, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s stoned scribbles, Richard Prince’s feeble jokes and pin-ups of nurses and, inevitably, scads of really bad, really late Warhols. Such works of art are bound to hang out together, a uniform message from our fin-de-siècle decadence.
and
One might as well get excited about seeing a dead halibut on a slab in Harrods food hall. Living sharks are among the most beautiful creatures in the world, but the idea that the American hedge fund broker Steve Cohen, out of a hypnotised form of culture-snobbery, would pay an alleged $12m for a third of a tonne of shark, far gone in decay, is so risible that it beggars the imagination. As for the implied danger, it is worth remembering that the number of people recorded as killed by sharks worldwide in 2007 was exactly one. By comparison, a housefly is a ravening murderous beast. Maybe Hirst should pickle one, and throw in a magnifying glass or two.
Of course, $12m would be nothing to Cohen, but the thought of paying that price for a rotten fish is an outright obscenity. And there are plenty more where it came from. For future customers, Hirst has a number of smaller sharks waiting in large refrigerators, and one of them is currently on show in its tank of formalin in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Inert, wretched and wrinkled, and already leaking the telltale juices of its decay, it is a dismal trophy of - what? Nothing beyond the fatuity of art-world greed. The Met should be ashamed. If this is the way America’s greatest museum brings itself into line with late modernist decadence, then heaven help it, for the god Neptune will not.
The now famous diamond-encrusted skull, lately unveiled to a gawping art world amid deluges of hype, is a letdown unless you believe the unverifiable claims about its cash value, and are mesmerised by mere bling of rather secondary quality; as a spectacle of transformation and terror, the sugar skulls sold on any Mexican street corner on the Day of the Dead are 10 times as vivid and, as a bonus, raise real issues about death and its relation to religious belief in a way that is genuinely democratic, not just a vicarious spectacle for money groupies such as Hirst and his admirers.
I very much like the point about the greater power of the Mexican skulls. But perhaps the ultimate irony of the shark piece, not unlike that now near forgotten artist who sold collectors his own canned feces, (see here for that story) is that even though he did not catch this fish, he caught many other fish, rich and tasteless collectors who blundered into his clever net. At least the crap artist was honest enough to state his goal as one of exposing the rotten state of modern collection whereas Hirst who though I’m sure is quite aware that he is gulling the lot, really shares the same values as his marks.
Once in a blue moon something comes along that challenges your limited sense of what is possible, and this, for me, Don’tClickIt certainly qualifies. Visit this site to see how simple navigation without a mouse, without clicking, is possible.
And then some new and unusual ways of telling timevia GrowaBrain:
In an entirely different realm but of potentially life saving consequence is the invention of the Peepoo bag, a portable toilet (via the David Report Blog), a bag that soon after it is used, sanitizes the feces and thus prevents further contamination of the environment. Any natural disaster disturbs existing infrastructures, and even barring such events, many urban slums are ill equipped to deal with human waste; this is a major contribution toward reducing disease under those conditions.
And the craziest and most disturbing invention in some time:
From LoveHoney, the Touche Womanizer Shaver and Silicon Massager. “The magnificent Womaniser is not only smooth to the touch - it’ll leave you smooth and strokable, too! This intimate shaver is hidden inside a single speed silicone massaging vibrator - the perfect combination for a night of orgasmic personal pleasure.” I’d love to read the warning label.
Won’t be writing a lot today but have the links to previous writings about this current, and most likely continuing government, the Conservatives. And given their name, why are these Conservatives such radicals when given the reins to our blessed Canadian buggy? We’ve been trundling along nicely but now we have these folks telling us the world is going to hell, that fear is the only way to properly engage with the world, that compassion is only for the well off, and that we really should be more like those folks down south.
Its the last that really has me concerned. Not that the Americans are bad sorts, but the point that people seem to forget, (just like Canadians addicted to American shows like Law and Order are under the impression that our laws are the same), it is a different country with a different history. And they are not doing very well right now. Harper’s government is emulating only the worst of their moves, the same moves they themselves are trying to undo with little success; the ruinous war on drugs, the horrible legacy of the highest incarceration rate on the planet, and a greater rift between the will of the people and the governors. Because though the Conservatives like to state over and over again that they represent the people, on most of the issues, the people and the evidence do not support them, and yet they move ahead. And the sooner we return to our unique national path, a more humanist path than the coldhearted route being mapped out by these folks, the better, and especially now considering the very real danger of the States actually getting someone worse than Bush into the driver’s seat.
I’ll be returning to this from time to time because I have to. As I say, I’d rather be on about music and films or science but when you have the real possibility of these dangerous incompetents being returned to office you just have to say something. And I worry for my daughter who if she ends up using a little drugs like almost all of us did when we were kids, that she might have to pay a much higher price, that if she fell far and became an addict that there would be no one anymore to help her, or simply if she ended up working in the arts that she would have to survive in a culture where the funding was gone for any work outside of the mainstream or comfortable.
Man Man. Oh, man, I was just turned onto this group last night courtesy of a burned cd. (Thanks T! Bigtime.) Its a bit of a cumulative pleasure in that though I liked it right off the bat, if only for it being a new sound, the more songs you hear, the more you listen to their music, the better, way better, it gets. Here’s a Pitchfork short film on the group in the studio and loose on the streets.
They put me in mind of Tom Waits (if you took about twenty of him before his voice was ravaged by smokes and booze) and other purveyers of messy music. Love the messy music which for me encompasses the soundtracks of Nina Rota, the jazz compositions of the incomparable Carla Bley especially with her big band, various klezmer bands, circus music and organ riffs from hockey games. Brilliant, all of them.
This particular video was shot in Holland which is appropriate given the not dissimilar music from the Dutch jazz veins of Willem Breuker.
Speaking of Tom Waits…here is the brilliant Chocolate Jesus (roosters and all).
Waiting for the new cds from TV on the Radio, Calexico, Okervill River and B B King. In circulation at the home front is Creature, the latest Elvis Costello, Buddy Guy’s Skin Deep. Creature is a lot of fun; another Montreal band and kind of party disco for people who have issues with Abba. If this doesn’t grab you, something is wrong. (Go here, type in Creature and listen to Sugar Plum; the rest are good too but this one is cool and funny and better than the album version; there are plenty of videos on youtube but they are all disconcertedly retro ).
Writer of Broom of the System and Infinite Jest, and the wonderful collection of short stories The Girl with Curious Hair. He was one of those writers whose every step was worth watching.
Anna Paquin plays Sookie Stackhouse who saves a vampire from being drained by a lowlife couple and like many around her are simply pleased as bunch to come up against one of the undead.
In this refreshing take on the vampire narrative, the creatures are as potentially deadly as always but there is an available commercial product Trueblood (kind of light beer) on the market for them and many want to have sex with them just once. The show isn’t perfect; some of the characters are a little too television but Paquin is good as a spunky and tough but kind of sheltered waitress who can hear what everyone is thinking (except for vampires). There’s some story behind that power but we have not been made privy to that yet.
Stephen Moyer plays Bill the Vampire (actually Bill Compton) with a restrained menace and someone who just wants to move into town and not make trouble. Sookie gets all excited because he’s the first vampire in the bar where she works. When she tells her grandma, the grandma wants to get him to talk to her library group, if he was alive during the Civil War that is. We are in rural Louisiana for the setting.
The show itself is tonally a little like Dexter in the way it veers between graphic violence and light humour, and a bit like Rome in its frank sexuality and nudity. Actually, it may be just a little ahead of Rome on that score.
On the strength of the first episode True Blood just might be worth watching…and yes, great opening credit sequence. Created by Alan Ball who was behind Six Feet Under and wrote the script for American Beauty.
Above are two shots from a television commercial that seemed to be on just about every time we turned on the television in the flat in Barcelona. The product consists of vibrating pads which will melt off the pounds even if you are absolutely sedentary. Another set of commercials, which I did not manage to get any pictures of, were for corsets for young women. This coupled with the lack of any visible exercisers in this town seemed to be a clue as to why the old people tended to look pretty run down, and an indicator that some of the many many hot young women around might in fact not be so much fit as fit to burst.
I’ve always liked watching television in countries not my own, and in languages I don’t understand. In Warsaw, there was a very strange voice over version of CSI (see here), and in Prague a dubbed soapy Western (see here), and I’ve already mentioned a little big about the mountain of psychics on Spanish television (see here).
A few years ago I was with my daughter in Kawaii. It was just her and I so I was bound back at the place at nights and ended up watching more television than I would have expected. There were a few rerun channels which convinced me once again that most television shows should have had stakes punched through their artless hearts and forever silenced. Now, thanks to digital technology, we will have to live with the low points of our culture forever.
The best thing though were the religious channels (not just shows but whole channels). Watching the small brained make sense of existence is always amusing (I will admit that this shows Christians at their very worst) but saw something absolutely amazing…imagine a Jim Morrison of Christianity…free-form charismatic rock n roll type extorting to Jesus….not quite up to the Lizard King but pretty good. Watched that for almost an hour. And then ended up tuning into the channel every day…it was mesmerizing. Saw other preachers, sweat flying, rapping, speaking in tongues and laying hands, and all these people were quite aggressive…no platitudes here….the theme was taking it back, getting back control of the culture…it was like watching Martians but being a little scared that they might be invading some day.
These religious networks or channels have born again comics, religious extreme sports, game shows, the whole spectrum of typical channels. (To be continued…)
With that recent study of the magpie recognizing itself in the mirror and thus joining the select group of humans, some apes, bottlenose dolphins and Asian elephants, and another on whether apparently grieving animals really perceive death (the latter concern voicing the opinion that quite a few humans seemed to have trouble with that particular concept as well), the human/non-human intelligence gap seems to be blurring.
One thing that seems true over the decades is that humans, or should I say certain academics, are so obsessed with delineating all the things they can do and animals cannot, that when these supposed specialties are being broached by certain species, the investigators tend to then develop new barriers to joining the smart club. Though I am wary of anthropomorphizing, and do feel from time to time that my dog is so utterly alien that its a wonder than we share space, I also believe that same dog to take pleasure in existence, to make decisions, to have an aesthetic sense. Its so much easier than coming up with reasons as to why its brain would preclude those possibilities.
But what I really want to say here is that everytime someone waxes on about how amazing humans are, they tend to hold up the Einsteins as examples when the Einsteins are not what you call typical. Whenever I read someone writing about an animal failing some intelligence test I can only think that quite a few people might have done the same.
I’m not saying we’re not smarter as a species. But we seem to be a little too obsessed with not only being at the top of the food chain but also being tops in gray matter. And I am pretty pleased magpies came to the dance. As annoying as their chatter is, I love those birds. They are the definition of street smart.
Worth repeating this video which I saw just now on Scanners; those voices you hear on the movie trailers. The article at Scanners is about the passing of one of those, Don La Fontaine.
