Clearly, true capitalists know better than to alienate or judge consumers, and keep morals out of the transaction. Its the ideologues who’ve got an agenda, and usually a righteous mission to justify it, one with an absolutist vision – insert bible thumpers here – that bring morality into the equation – insert corporate right-wingers, religious zealots, and all the other wealthy nutjobs whose strings are being played by a cold-calculating capitalist here. So believe me, I’m very cynical and kind of ick-ed out by how mainstream so many gay and straight folks I know have become, in large part as they chose to participate in that get married, buy a house/apartment, bear offspring, bourgeois nuclear family thing.

BUT there’s a spectrum of POVs, and its always taken those working from within and without the system to change it, I think. Ever heard of the Trojan Horse? Celebrating the supreme court’s ruling – a victory for civil rights!!!! – that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, and on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, is a beautiful thing!!! Its one damn weekend, and we can still continue to advocate for #blacklivesmatter, #abortionrights, etc. because in no way should what happened in Charleston, SC, be forgotten, nor should the protests, of which i’ve been part of, stop.

And maybe there’s an unexamined bias in some of these anti-pride critiques that stems from an Amerocentric (not a word, but should be) perspective that forecloses what Pride parades and rainbow flags mean to the rest of the world? Its easy to forget the utter bravery, the warrior-like resolve, required to carry that flag in places where homosexuality is still a crime.  Punishable by death. Places where people boldly and heroically risk their LIVES to be out and proud. As those at Stonewall once did. I was so touched, for example,  to see a friend, a longterm survivor of AIDS march today with veterans of the latter, though it was a pic of a Ugandan man striding down a dirt road, wrapped in a long rainbow cloth tied at his waist, that brought me to tears. Don’t forget Uganda just passed the most draconian anti-gay legislation, and despite the state sanctioned violence this man’s action could provoke, he marched anyway. So its important to remember rainbow flags aren’t just co-opted signs of capitalist-assimilation for everyone on the planet. For some, it represents solidarity with an identity so radical its met with murderous hatred. In Istanbul, parade goers were attacked by police with rubber bullets for fuck’s sake.

None of this is to suggest everyone who is gay, queer-identified, or allied with civil rights, should wave a rainbow flag around, but to say there’s no need to piss all over someone else’s celebration. Pride 2015, especially here in NYC, was momentous, and while I was not able to partake ( I’ve been hosting Turner-Prize nominated artists, Jane and Louise Wilson all weekend, in conjunction with a screening/talk they did for my show, From the Ruins…), I was there in spirit! Luckily, it seems the negative attitude didn’t register out in the streets.  But on Facebook I saw a LOT of it, and just felt the need to comment. As one friend counter-posted to all the ‘tude, and the implication that one can’t be Pro-Pride AND anti-assimilationist, “YES AND NO. We can feel both at once”, with the two following pics attached:

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I’ve always avoided the sadistic pleasure of gang-ups because of natural compassion for anyone under attack, not  to mention the issue of context, which is essential. and easily missed, I might add, esp. on social media.

Lately, virtual bullying seems all the rage as schoolyard trolls go meta.  I’m thinking of the year-old case of Justine Sacco, the gift that keeps on giving. If you recall, she’s  the woman who tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” to her 120  followers, and in the 11-hour plane trip home during which she had no cell service, received 20,000 tweets shaming her for it. That someone in Cape Town, South Africa, would take up a Twitter challenge by a stranger thousands of miles away to go wait at the airport to meet and tweet Sacco’s shocked reaction when she learned of her infamy shows just how far people are willing to go. Sure, the tweet had become what her BFF called “the No. 1 worldwide trend on Twitter right now”, but still, really?!

If you don’t know what I talking about, I recommend reading  this excellent Times Magazine piece by Jon Ronson, a guy who acknowledges his own impulse to chastize in it. He shares how he began to control said impulse once he saw the wake of trauma it caused, having interviewed several victims of the virtual mob. Many, who like Sacco, were traumatized long after that elusive, all-important context came to light, and in some cases vindicated them. Ironically, one such case was a young woman from Michigan who dressed as a Boston marathon victim for Halloween, which I’ll admit was as tasteless as Sacco’s sick joke.  I’ll also admit that it made laugh out loud. Why I don’t know. Maybe the slapstick ghastliness of the costume seems perfect for Halloween?

I mean, OF COURSE its wroooooong, the idea of family members and loved ones enduring the joke makes it so. But as we all know, social media is all about getting attention, and such displays have become as pedestrian as bad tattoos and duckface selfies. That’s why its no surprise someone tried to up the Ante with a better costume – a kind of FUCK YOU to the morality police, I suppose, as well as  a way to capitalize on the reaction.

 All of this puts me in two minds on the issue. My unwavering commitment to defend free speech (always balanced by the equal conviction that people have a right to protest what they feel they must) undermined by a nagging “what did they expect would happen?” disbelief. The kind I typically reserve for the dangerously naive. Is that an invitation to jump on the Blame & Shame wagon (haters all aboooard, toot toot – I mean, tweet, tweet)? NO.  I’m just acknowledging the growing lack of responsibility/concern for one’s public behavior never mind the consequences of one’s actions when the stakes are so obviously high.

Clearly, social media exploits and encourages these outre outbursts. Twitter, which breeds sensationalism like Facebook on steroids, seems the worst. Another reason – in addition to just not having the time –  that I don’t tweet. The instant sharing of instant thoughts in a forum designed to make us want to be “liked”, “shared”, and “followed” has turned into a kind of virtual Russian roulette. I chose not to play. (And believe me, there’ve been many a social media scandal vis a vis the art world in which  I could’ve assumed a beef, or added my two cents, but abstained. Because I felt sorry for the person being attacked – the stuff of nightmares! – and/or was appalled by the hypocrisy of those joining the fray – their own bases ambitions for doing so being no better than those they sought to virtually lynch.) So where does that leave me? Disturbed.

APRIL 5, 2015/ UPDATE: This Atlanta piece offers a critical view on Jon Ronson’s new book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, 2015, claiming it “vividly warns about the power of angry mobs online but ultimately misdiagnoses what drives the modern cycles of indignation.” This pretty much gives you the gist, in a way, reflecting my own perspective, which is strangely reassuring: Stone didn’t mean for the image of her disrespecting a national monument to be seen by many people, but is it any great surprise that what’s literally the most anti-patriotic symbolic gesture a person can make might get out onto the wider Internet once it’s on Facebook? Sacco tossed into the world a joke about racism that actually came off, to many, as racist; is the takeaway that people are too sensitive, or that it’s a good idea to carefully consider matters before sending out a joke about AIDS in Africa, of all topics?

We are living in very tricky times when it comes to what is “appropriate” behavior in the public sphere, and to the backlash against all things PC, which intrigues me.

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But back to the point, which is history, and the way its constantly being rewritten (something else I hammer home). Last week’s New York magazine, which I’m reading through now, is devoted to speculation, by 53 historians, on Obama’s legacy. Will history regard him as an FDR or a Kennedy or forget him, or worse, malign him. I think he will be remembered well, and dare I say, as someone who embodies that quality of focus I speak of, which is equally important to achieving goals.

People on the left and right have been so hard on Obama IMHO, and though I understand some of the criticism (Cornell West speaks esp. well to disappointments I also share), I find the expectations baffling and extraordinary. And frankly rather naive. Just what do people think presidents can do given they’re largely figureheads,  and that corporations run the government? I mean, maybe I’ve become biased, as I think I’ve acknowledged before, because I’ve grown to like and admire the man a lot. But anyone smart enough to pick a partner like Michelle, and capable enough to remain calm in the face of an 8 year shit storm, all while still getting things done – Obamacare, immigrant rights advances, that eco-agreement with China, to name a few accomplishments worthy of historical record – is worthy of remembrance.  And while I loathed most the bailout of the banks, had he not done so, they would’ve dragged this country into another Depression (yes, we got close, and the poor were, as usual, most fucked, but what president could’ve avoided that decision – one in which acting swiftly was key).  Maybe I’m naive, but Obama has earned my loyalty. I hope history treats him well. I look forward to hearing him give his State of the Union address tonite.

Regardless, this lost speech by Martin Luther King from 1964, perfectly encapsulates how unreliable history is, and its potential to radically change, when what has been lost or omitted, is redressed or discovered. And as this interesting article  also conveys, by discussing MLK’s more radical socialist leanings, which have been repressed to suit another idea of him, even his legacy is open to change. Yes we can.

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That the media repeatedly misrepresented Williams condition as depression rather than bipolar disorder, is proof of this stigma since depression is less strange, less perverse and therefore easier to sympathize with. Anyone in doubt about Williams’ hypomania has never seen him perform on stage, or on a talk show. Andrew Solomon does a good job of getting at these issues in his New Yorker piece though his claims that Williams was very open about his condition is countered in the first link I shared.

Yes it is sad that Williams killed himself, but what is TRULY sad is the stigma that remains, and the willful ignorance that feeds it. If only we were more aware that people suffer in silence largely because of this ignorance and fear. Please educate yourself. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, and one in four adults−approximately 61.5 million Americans−experiences mental illness in any given year. I myself have suffered and treatment made all the difference, and while I refuse to be ashamed of this, to be “in the closet”, kindness and understanding by others are no less needed. And I feel safe saying that on behalf of 60 plus millions, safer in fact.

Dearest,

I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.

— Virginia Wolff’s suicide letter to her husband Leonard, 1941

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When it stops for a while, say 45 minutes to an hour, I wonder if I’m being cunty as I do try to just absorb life as its lived ala the bar next door which never controls its patrons. Every summer at least a handful of times I have to yell out the window, but I never call and complain,wanting to avoid getting invested or upset as I know it could be SO much worse. I’ve known people who’ve had to move because of intolerable life-wrecking noise, and worse those who couldn’t get away and had to endure it for months – dogs that won’t quit barking, construction work, loud bass music, etc. I count my blessings. One must in this town.

Still, there is something so immature and stupidly selfish about people on purposefully loud machines roaming pack-like around the streets of a residential area blasting what must exceed 80 decibels, the limit set by the city. Regardless, this club is certainly breaking the law, as “highlighted” in the  NYC Noise code: “The Noise Code prohibits excessive sound from the muffler or exhaust of motor vehicles operating on a public right-of-way where the speed limit is 35 mph or less.” 

I wonder, would it be reasonable to complain, or even productive? For the sake of bikers who do get hassled more than automobile drivers/owners, should I just let it go, suck it up along with the occasional bunch of assholes screaming outside the bar next door. I asked a biker friend who more or less told me to complain, making clear it was noise not anything else that was bothering me. Always hard to know how to handle these things…

How sexy is this electric bike by Johammer,an Austrian brand, though? I bet it doesn’t sound like a car without a muffler!

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I also continue to wonder if Gilligan made Flynn and Skyler intentionally unsympathetic characters (the former like a pampered 9-year old, the latter annoying an entire nation). Especially as I like so many of the other characters for their nuance – Saul, Mike, Lydia, Skinny Pete, Todd, Brock, Jane…

Speaking of Jane, the first scene that made me rail against Gilligan’s script was when Walt watches her overdose and die a hideous death. Its when he truly becomes Heisenberg.

No point in going on as BB has been talked about ad nauseam, but I would like to say Dave Porter’s score deserves equal attention (that link is to music, btw). Its brilliant, lending atmosphere and pathos with as much menace as Mr. White’s stares, and as this Rolling Stone article pointed out a year ago, some scenes were quite the challenge.

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Billed as the first art movement to steal the avant garde spotlight from Paris, and train it on New York, where it has – or so the myth goes – stayed ever since, I so enjoy introducing proof of the CIA’s use of Ab Ex as a a Cold War weapon, a Renaissance Prince, if you will as this great article brilliantly details via the declassified information. It certainly raises the possibility that some of AB-Ex’s historical significance may be linked to that peculiar form of propaganda. That in order to make the Soviet’s use of Social Realism look fascist, which it mostly was, the government hired ivy leaguers to promote the Ab-Exers internationally. In heavily funded exhibitions that became key to the movement’s rise.

Of course, at home, it was still a very hard sell. Americans wary of all art abstract, or too provincial to get it (again, so the story goes). Pretty damn interesting wrench to throw in there, esp. since my aim is to get students to question dominant cultural narratives, in this case the eurocentric diachronic model of art history. It’s a weird thing to actually explain though (that a bunch of lefties would be employed by a bunch of isolationists to foster an international reputation for cultural tolerance).

Another thing I really like to introduce is the related interest in American primitivism, our very own “others” to project and steal from, ala Jazz and Native American cultures, at that time. Some of it sincere, I’d imagine. Still, this photo of Eleanor Roosevelt, who deserves a lot more credit for advocating for federally funding the arts, says it all, and this wonderful essay reveals a very interesting convergence of interests as well. Regardless, the influence of this larger interest in Native American art is another overlooked aspect akin to the role of African art on cubism.

1943: First lady Eleanor Roosevelt greets Miss Spokane Catherine Betts, in Native American dress, at a War Bond Rally in Seattle.

Franz Kline’s series of magnified details rendered iconic through a chance experiment with a projector at de Koonings also wonderfully undermines the whole authentic spontaneous gesture thing. MoMA owns this one from 1950, and describes it on its website in carefully guarded terms:

“True to an alternate name for Abstract Expressionism, ‘action painting,’ Kline’s pictures often suggest broad, confident, quickly executed gestures reflecting the artist’s spontaneous impulses. Yet Kline seldom worked that way. In the late 1940s, chancing to project some of his many drawings on the wall, he found that their lines, when magnified, gained abstraction and sweeping force. This discovery inspired all of his subsequent painting; in fact many canvases reproduce a drawing on a much larger scale, fusing the improvised and the deliberate, the miniature and the monumental.

‘Chief’ was the name of a locomotive Kline remembered from his childhood, when he had loved the railway. Many viewers see machinery in Kline’s images, and there are lines in Chief that imply speed and power as they rush off the edge of the canvas, swelling tautly as they go. But Kline claimed to paint “not what I see but the feelings aroused in me by that looking,” and Chief is abstract, an uneven framework of horizontals and verticals broken by loops and curves. The cipherlike quality of Kline’s configurations, and his use of black and white, have provoked comparisons with Japanese calligraphy, but Kline did not see himself as painting black signs on a white ground; ‘I paint the white as well as the black,’ he said, ‘and the white is just as important.'”

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(Veruschka as Chairman Mao from an issue of French Vogue 1971, photo by Alex Chatelain)

Obviously Mao was fashionable in the early 70s ala Warhol (his 1972 shot Mao – above – being my favorite, can’t believe Dennis Hopper’s estate sold it for 300Gs). So I google “Mao and fashion” to explore and I find this abstract for a paper on why there was no fashion in Mao’s China:

“Abstract:
We examine the popularity distribution of given names prior, during, and after Mao Zedong’s rule over the People’s Republic of China to clarify how exogenous and endogenous factors act together in shaping cultural change. Whereas recent work in the sociology of culture emphasizes the importance of endogenous processes in explaining fashion (Kaufman 2004), our analysis demonstrates two ways that Mao’s regime impacted cultural expression, even in a domain that was largely untouched by its radical cultural policies: (a) by promoting forms of expression reflecting legitimate political ideologies; and (b) by creating a general feeling of insecurity, whereby citizens fear that any public expression of difference could signal political disloyalty. As argued by Lieberson (2000; Lieberson and Lynn 2003) and developed further in this paper, the latter condition is important because endogenous fashion cycles require a critical mass of individuals who seek to differentiate themselves from common practice. Our analysis suggests how exogenous and endogenous mechanisms interact, with the former setting the conditions for the operation of the latter; our analysis also sheds light on the nature of conformity under authoritarian regimes as well as the social conditions supporting individual expression.”

(and people wonder why I chose not to be an academic)

What IS interesting is that the Mao suit was an anti-fashion statement, which the west tried to make fashionable, and failed. Personally, I’ve ALWAYS been attracted to the idea of a uniform/onesie/jumpsuit. Probably why I wear dresses so much in the summer. I even designed a prototype about 5 years ago (ok, it was just sketches) for a basic over-alls-meets kilt shape for which there are interchangeable parts/add-ons to create some aesthetic and functional variability. Bauhaus textile and garment design obviously were a mega-inspiration.

I was obsessed then too with finding them online/vintage versions. Most were too retro (flared in the 70s, baggy in the 80s) and I wanted a sleek unisex look in hi-tech fabric. Of course soon enough they were popular, everywhere, and while most had no functionality, some were gorgeous, I wanted, but I couldn’t afford:(. Regardlees the uniform is appealing to many if only for the utility factor (if they’re not comfortable what’s the point?), and I hope someone makes a version so great – and affordable! – that I want to put it on everyday EVEN though I don’t have to!

This Stella McCartney (pre-autumn 2013) is nice but a bit too stiff/car mechanic-y (the sleeves could at least zip/button off, right?)…reminds me of Carl Andre who I shared a dry cleaners with near NYU (and the building Ana Mendieta “fell” from) ages ago. One day he came with a pair of bib overalls on – his artworker uniform (since the 70s I think), and after he left I said to the owner, do you know who that is? And he said, No. And when I told him he laughed so hard explaining he’d been coming like clockwork for years to dry-clean these overalls and they had no clue why.

Ah well, I will have to keep looking, or just make my own! Any seamstress interested in collabing, msg. me!

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After I began to look through her various portfolios, New York 1 and 2, specifically, both shot in the 1950s, I noticed a number of her subjects had that hostile look of a person accosted by a camera. The person wielding it trying to steal a shot without consent. Its always been a tricky question for me, the ethics of that. I love a candid photo as much as anyone, but I’ve never felt comfortable aiming a camera at strangers. Still, the results can be brilliant. What do you think?

Some of the images I’ve selected don’t convey overt shock/irritation, but their subjects are still being taking advantage of (kids can’t consent, and street people can’t escape). Regardless, intention has to count, and I think Maier’s was innocent/honorable enough. See for yourself. At the end is a self-portrait she shot in a subway mirror. Funny to see what was at the other end of that lens, and to turn the gaze back onto Maier (maybe she was aware of this herself). It balances the power out a little:)

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I remember finding the word count daunting until I realized there was so much to say because, inexplicably, so few had traveled this terrain before. It seemed incredulous given so much precedence in her work, especially its integration of Fluxus, process-based, and second-wave feminist art; and use of clothing as sculptural form. I tried to convey all that, and just how brilliantly she wed the Fluxus interest in intermedia and the everyday (as subject and medium) with feminist and Pop explorations of all things “domestic”. Perhaps its the peculiar combination of irony and intimacy that marks her early work that made its reception problematic at a time when women artists like Carolee Schneemann and Smith were marginalized for sexualized imagery. Regardless, Smith has naturally continued to make and exhibit work, leaving a rich forest of reviews and texts, though she is overdue for a museum survey. And another serious look at her work, which a blog post obviously can’t accomplish.

Unassuming and generous, Mimi immediately put me at ease, and then fifteen minutes into our visit she mentions Bob Watts and Robert Morris who she studied with at Rutger’s. In its heyday (1958-72), I’ve always imagined Rutger’s to be an ideal place-time-space moment in art history. A radical experiment unfettered by institutional, art world politics. And it seems it was. Because when Mimi talks about Mass Art in Boston where she went for her undergrad, she recollects in her nonplussed way, how a faculty member used to regularly stick his brush up the female students’ skirts for laughs. WTF. And when I observed how beautiful her drawings of underwear, shoes, and dresses are – bodies of work that poignantly represent a woman’s life cycle – she wryly tells me how another told her how great her draughtsmanship was, even better than his, he added, communicating that because he knew she’d soon be married he wasn’t threatened. (Smith is also a very talented seamstress, she showed me an exquisite silk-lined cranberry wool cape with intricate sleeve detailing, and a wonderful bespoke suit she made for her little boy, objects she’s using in a new series).

Anyway, I wanted to share her work with you, so here are some quick shots I took in dwindling light, from her iconic steel wool peignoir and bubble dress works of the mid-1960s to the ongoing drawing series I mentioned, and a number of other wonderful works in-between like her knitted test tube baby and an early 1980s example of her paintings of old computer game lingo! Any other queries can be sent to her gallery, Anna Kustera, where one can read her biography for references to other writing, reviews, etc. And one can see MUCH BETTER IMAGES here.

Biography, detail, 1996

Recycle Coat, 1965/remade 1993

Slave Ready Maternal, detail, 1996

Timeline: Underpants, details, 2002 (all underpants images)

Terror, 2009

Test Tube Baby, 1996

Coverings For An Environmental Catastrophe, 1990s

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