800 Page Dick Joke

It' s been a little while. Art season started last weekend, saw some shows. Nothing blew me away....with the possible exception of...

Chinatown. It looked good. Sort of in general. Which makes me happy, because I live downtown. I want downtown to have art I like. Looking back on what everyone had, Michael Lazarus at Sister Gallery wasn't bad. I remember liking Eric Sall's paintings at Acuna-Hansen.

Mark Moore Gallery's 3rd annual Ultrasonic International was up and running. Roberts and Tilton's new space in Culver City opened, but I guess I forgot to walk inside. I was in a mood.

The new show at the Geffen Center is good for some laughs. Good follow up to the Lawrence Weiner show.

If I seem a little bereft of opinions, its probably because I've started teaching again, specifically an Introduction to Art Concepts class (some schools call it 'Art Appreciation), and my mind has been occupied with explaining the basics of what art 'is' to people who have little or no experience with it. This is the kind of fine challenge I relish sinking my teeth into, and, like much of my teaching have taken on the seriousness of it to the point of emotional exhaustion. I love it.

The young people in my class seem to have an aversion to non-representational painting, which interests me deeply, being a painter who loves and appreciates painting of that 'genre'. When I taught 2D Design, by the end, I had most of the students making super-tight Ellsworth Kelley / Theo van Doesburg / Barnett Newman-esque mini-paintings, and they could talk about them. Hmm.....

Besides all that, I finished reading Gravity's Rainbow. I have been making dents in this sprawling tome since December, along with a readers guide that was indispensable. After all of it, I think I can say that I know exactly what Pynchon was doing with GR, and what it is, as whole, and it is this:

Its an 800-page dick joke.

I realized this about 30 pages from the end, and that explanation somehow satisfies a lot of my instincts about the novel, and its overall concerns. Layered, researched, and complicated, yet also juvenile, self-indulgent, and scatological. So I've pretty much committed to reading all of Pynchon's output now, but I must have some lighter reading for the immediate time-being. I began many flings and affairs with other books while I was with GR, and now they will get my full attention. And I've got Daybreak 2250 AD, apparently the first modern post-apocalyptic novel, penned by one Ms. Andre Norton.

Two shows of interest coming up -- Friday, Sept. 19th, my friend Amanda Browder is throwing a show entitled "Um...My Gallery", which I will be taking part in, right here at Raid Projects (602 Moulton Ave, LA 90031). I imagine things will start around 6-ish, hm? Do come.

And, on Saturday, Sept 27th, "Neosapian" at the Cal State LA Fine Art Gallery opens, curated by M-L Flemington. And you are required to attend that as well.

























ps
Be sure to check out Bad at Sports, a super art world podcasting destination, for your listening pleasure.

Frustratingly Elliptical

SS Inspiration seems to have lost its course for now, so I thought I'd talk about the (growing) pile of books by my bed, among other things.

The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson -- Early 2000 AD era Moore, my secret British comics desire is Grant Morrison's Zenith, but I've only ever found copies on eBay for insulting amounts.  So far Halo Jones is just a catchy, 80's style post-apocalyptic sci-fi ride-along, but already a single brilliant reference -- they watch a TV show called "John Cage, Atonal Avenger" -- has reminded me that where there is Moore, there is always more.  Hey, a pun!

Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig -- I can't get on the internet without running into the ongoing fight to redefine intellectual property laws, "piracy" and copyright.  This is all under the banner of the Free Culture movement, and this is the book that much of their argument is based on.  Being an artist who makes use of public domain material with the express purpose of highlighting the wonderful idea behind why public domain exists, it seemed I should do my homework on the current state of that issue.  Any fan of Negativland, Kieron Dwyer (and the reason I don't drink Starbucks), music downloads, or postmodernism in general may want to look into this.  It has a fundamental relationship, at least on a philosophic level, to.....

The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord -- Finally decided to get down to reading all of this, and its interesting to see how its all divided into a series of discreet chunks, or "theses".  Less a single structured book than it is a series of short, heady declarations.  His style of wording them (at least in translation) is at times frustratingly elliptical, and the lack of specific examples in an effort to universalize his theory makes for a suspicious vagueness.  I dig it.  Its no doubt those very qualities that have made it classic reading for us artsy-fartsy types.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon and A Gravity's Rainbow Companion by Steven Weisenburger -- So I've been hacking away at this one since December, and so far it has been worth the journey.  Weisenburger's book has been indispensable, as what seems like nonsense language in the novel is actually thoroughly researched technical jargon relating to military conventions, chemistry, WWII British pop culture, engineering, Pavlovian psychology, the German language, Herero tribal culture, and much, much more.  Weisenburger has found the books Pynchon used to grab all of this info, and sets you up before each episode in the book. The novel does have an overall structure, it does have an overall theme, it does have a central plot.  Its homework to start to assimilate the experience of this book, but man is it a satisfying mindfuck.  I can only deal with one episode a week or so -- I'm a bit more than halfway through it. I fancy I'll tackle Ulysses in the same manner....

Glomp 9 -- Finnish avant-garde comics extravaganza.  A big, sexy, colorful tome that silences the withdrawal from no Kramer's Ergot coming out the past two years.  There's a whole deep important sphere of influence regarding the Euro art comics scene, and the American contingent, and Fort Thunder, and I think it all starts with Gary Panter, somehow.  Someone has got to be writing a thesis on this.  My sister got me a book on Euro comics for my birthday that's on the way.  Perhaps that will fill in the missing part of the puzzle.....

3 books on Francis Bacon -- The painter, not the writer (though they were related).  My own work, at least in my head, seems to have arrived at a place reminiscent of the images that sprang from this drunken master.  Much of what he says about his paintings seem to coincide with my own thoughts about imagery relating to the body, and the Figure (capital f) in art.  Painters paint with their bodies (duh), our bodies are the medium of all our thoughts and actions, it follows that representations of figures would be a basic concern in art.  All of my dealings with the cyborg idea in the work of late has led me to Bacon, some of whose forms and masses resemble pink, fleshy counterparts to the plastic robo-figures that have been popping up in my drawings for an upcoming installation.  I wanted to immediately inundate myself with his work so I wouldn't fool myself into some myth of originality with what I plan to do; only now that I've seen what I thought I was seeing in my head can I have the confidence to create something that is now more consciously informed and challenged....does that make sense?

There's much more, or course.....books, music, movies....more blogging later.