April 30, 2005
Get It While It's Hot
This month's Certified Bananas MP3 mix is now online. Click here to get it. Once again it's loaded with great mash-ups—Destiny's Child and Three 6 Mafia over Liquid Liquid, Outkast over The Cure—and one unexpectedly great passage: a "chopped and screwed" version of Modest Mouse's "Float On." I cannot recommend these DJs highly enough. I may soon time one of my Boston art pilgrimmages to coincide with one of their DJ nights in Cambridge.
On a related note, did anyone else notice that this article in the Times ("The Strangest Sound in Hip-Hop Goes National," April 17) completely neglected to mention that DJ Screw's death was caused by his addiction to cough syrup? And how yes, the music is great and all that, but that there is a whole community of men (and women?) in Houston who are getting fucked up and giving themselves serious health problems? Maybe I'm just some sanctimonious white outsider, but I felt it deserved at least a passing mention. I digress.
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
Does gender determine value?
Greg Allen asks an important question on the front page of today's Times Arts & Leisure section: Why do works by female artists sell for less money than works by male artists? He elaborates a bit on his methodology and a part of the story that didn't make the paper in this post on his website. Quite obviously an answer to this question cannot be found in a 2,300 word essay, but I hope that it sparks debate.
I am somewhat self-conscious about gender disparity in my critical practice. For example, I know that the four reviews I have written to date for Artforum are all of solo exhibitions by male artists. At the same time, the last two feature articles I have written (one for Flash Art, one for Afterall) have featured three female artists. But a quick glance at the "review" section of my website indicates I may not be doing as good a job as I would like. Discounting group shows and shows by artists who work collaboratively, I counted forty-one reviews of male artists and only thirteen reviews of female artists. In the "essay" and "feature" category, excluding the entries I wrote for the 2004 Whitney Biennial exhibition catalog (which were more or less assigned to me), the disparity isn't quite as large: seven male artists, seven female artists, and one male-female artist duo.
This is a topic very much worth pondering, and Greg's article is as good a starting point as any.
Posted in Papers & Periodicals. Found always via this permanent link.
April 29, 2005
An update
I have updated BrianSholis.com, adding my review of Mark Lewis's recent solo exhibition, published in the May issue of Artforum, and my Artforum.com "picks" of two current shows: Frances Stark at CRG in New York (AF link; BS link) and Jim Lambie at Sadie Coles HQ in London (AF link; BS link).
Also, Afterall issue 11, which contains my feature essay on Rachel Harrison, has hit newsstands in London; it should appear Stateside shortly. I will update this post with a link to the archived version on my site once it is complete. (UPDATE 4/30/05, 9PM: Here is the link.)
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
April 28, 2005
Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik is lampooned fairly often on the web, and I often roll my eyes at what he publishes ("The People on the Bus," anyone?), but his review of a new John Brown bio in last week's New Yorker was so engaging that I find myself tempted to pick up a book or two on the abolitionist. Reading it, I began to make sense of the National Magazine Award he recently picked up for reviews and criticism. (The award cited this article on Times Square, this one on histories of World War I [which I cited in this piece I wrote for Flash Art], and this one on Shakespeare.) I'm still on the fence about whether or not I should finally read my copy of Paris to the Moon. Anyone?
Posted in Papers & Periodicals. Found always via this permanent link.
Noted
Buried inside today's "Arts, Briefly" round-up in the Times:
Paying for the Past
Giving in after years of pressure from Jewish groups, Friedrich Christian Flick, the billionaire contemporary art collector whose grandfather was a Nazi arms industrialist, has finally paid $6.5 million into a fund for former slave laborers, the German news agency ddp reported. Mr. Flick, whose collection was installed in September at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin, had been accused by critics of using his art to try to whitewash his family's past. Although his Nazi grandfather employed as many as 50,000 slave laborers in his factories, Mr. Flick refused to contribute part of his family inheritance to a major compensation fund, choosing instead to set up his own fund intended to fight racism and neo-Nazism in Eastern Germany. KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
I wonder how that will effect critics of his collection's presentation at the Hamburger Bahnhof. Considering that $6.5 million is probably far less than he paid for the works in the front hall of the museum, I suspect the gesture will not mollify many.
Posted in Papers & Periodicals. Found always via this permanent link.
April 22, 2005
Letter from London
Dear friends,
I am very fortunate to travel as often as I do. Because I enjoy making written observations of the places I visit, I decided to try my hand at stringing together a few notes and sharing the result with you. I hope you are neither annoyed by my unsolicited message nor surprised that I consider you a friend. This is a letter from London.
On the overnight flight from New York, I sat next to Roberta, the ultra-petite principal dancer for a Brazilian ballet company, and laughed with her as she rifled through receipts—Miu Miu, Joseph, Prada, &c.—totalling seveal thousand dollars. "How could I spend so much money?" she asked, chuckling at herself. Given how little fabric it must take to make an outfit to fit her, I had to wonder as well. Her peals of laughter wore thin, however, as she enjoyed the genital-joke Ben Stiller vehicle Meet the Fokkers while I made a doomed attempt to get a few hours' sleep in my not terribly comfortable coach-class seat.
My early-morning arrival in London was by no means auspicious, but my sullen demeanor was immediately overcome by the joys of people-watching on the rush-hour tube ride into the city. After over a dozen subsequent rides criss-crossing this swollen megalopolis, my earliest observation remains true: Each subway car must, by law I presume, be populated by at least one of the following: An incredibly tall and thin brunette girl, in her early 20s, with an artificial tan, garishly colored eye shadow, and form-fitting black dress pants made of a stretchy material; a scruffy-faced and wild-haired man in his late 30s wearing a rumpled gray suit with chalk-white pinstripes and a white shirt with at least two buttons undone; and a chatty elderly woman who inevitably makes an obscene joke. On this first ride in to the city center—there is no "downtown" here—the Irvine Welsh character was staring at the shopgirl, and the elderly lady to whom I had given my seat, upon noticing my bags, offered to let me sit on her lap.
Continue reading "Letter from London"Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
April 20, 2005
Tonight's haul
Tonight I made my regular payday trip to a local bookstore—this time it was Biography, on Bleecker—and here is the result:
Michael Frayn, Headlong
Francine Prose, The Lives of the Muses
Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life
Leonid Tsypkin, Summer in Baden-Baden
Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
Cynthia Ozick, Heir to the Glimmering World
Saul Bellow, Ravelstein
And, for a friend (though she doesn't know it yet): Henry Mitchell, On Gardening.
I suspect I'll tackle the Miller and Ozick first, followed by the Tsypkin (which has an introduction by Susan Sontag). I've read two Ozick essay collections but never her fiction; I've read Wolff's stories but only praise for this memoir, not the book itself.
For those of you in New York, Biography is the perfect warm-weather bookstore, as it's directly across the street from Magnolia Bakery and is notorious for the quality of the remaindered books on its two outdoor tables. (And, I might add, its chocolate brown plastic bags are among the sturdiest offered by any bookstore in the city and lend themselves to constant reuse. Am I a nerd or what?) Buy a cupcake and a book, find a nearby stoop, and enjoy an outdoor hour or two.
Posted in Books. Found always via this permanent link.
April 18, 2005
Overheard in New York
At the ICP's Larry Clark exhibition Friday evening: "Oh my God, that schlong is hideous!"
A Guggenheim visitor leaning over the parapet Saturday afternoon: "Oh my God, I'm gonna barf!"
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
April 9, 2005
Help
In this piece at Slate, Elisabeth Sifton writes, "He wanted me to pay attention, too. Auden says that paying attention is a form of love; well, then, I tried to love Saul Bellow."
Can someone point me to the original Auden quote? Thanks in advance.
Posted in Quotes. Found always via this permanent link.
April 7, 2005
Saul Bellow, 1915-2005
For those of you that keep tabs on this site for commentary on visual arts, a detour: Saul Bellow passed away on Tuesday evening, and the notices are rightfully piling up. In the Times, an appreciation by Joseph Berger, one by Michigan Kakatuni, and the obituary; in the Guardian, an appreciation by John Burnside; an idiosyncratic, personal take written by Momus; and Christopher Hitchens's on Slate. I'm waiting for Martin Amis's piece, which is sure to appear soon; his 1983 visit with Bellow, published as "Saul Bellow in Chicago" in The Moronic Inferno, and his long-format essay on The Adventures of Augie March, reprinted in The War Against Cliché (under the section "Great Books"), are both worth tracking down. Amis may be Bellow's greatest contemporary champion. For those of you who wish to read further, The Elegant Variation collects a number of links, including this profile by James Wood from 2000.
Another passing worth noting (although I am not familiar with his writing): Frank Conroy, chair of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, died yesterday at 69. The Times obit is here; letters from his students here; and an interview with Robert Birnbaum here.