Category Archives: art

Art.

ART. It is so above and beyond me, and at the same time it can be so banal: Oh, look, naked ladies. A soup can. Some colors. More naked ladies. (And they all look the same!)

I need story. STORY and when possible, words. Visual media often dispense with both.

So I was surprised at how fantastic it was to wander around the AIPAD photography show this past weekend as a guest of InMotion. Two artists in particular ran away with me. Ordinarily I would not reveal my preference for anything without knowing in advance what conventional wisdom has to say. Am I making a sophisticated choice or a ridiculous one? Are my tastes bourgeois, or passe? I’m much more comfortable stating my opinions about films, but then, it is no risk to state an appreciation of Jane Eyre, for example, which I also saw this weekend.

When it comes to art, I am a total naif — and I hope to be judged as such. So if my taste is laughable or offends you, forgive me. I am coming from a position of knowing almost nothing except What I Like (story!) and What I Like Less (having to look at boobies & bush in ascetic public contexts and alongside strange men).

Okay, ready? These were the two folks I totally fell for: Tim Walker and Julie Blackmon.

Wicker Swing by Julie Blackmon

 

Otis Ferry and his hunting hounds by Tim Walker

Cool, right? $5000 worth of cool, not counting the frames. Art is for the rich. But I enjoyed the work of these artists! In fact I wanted to jump through the frames and live in their pictures. Flip through their other photos — they really are worth your time, and probably your $5K, although I really wouldn’t know about that.

Disturbia: Women Who Make Us All Look Bad edition

It’s been a week for disquieting news from the womb-bearers. First, there’s this new book by a plastic surgeon to help small children understand why their mommies are voluntarily going under the knife. There’s no explanation given except the mother’s dream of looking like a pageant winner.

To start with, the mother looks fine; by the end, post-procedures, she looks like a more exaggerated cartoonish version of herself, in hot pink no less. The once-skeptical daughter looks thrilled. Thanks, newly high femme Mom, for perpetuating irritating stereotypes! (Via Newsweek)

Next up, the abortion art installation from Yale, created by a student who inseminated herself and then induced miscarriages.

She speaks, yet she says nothing: “I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity,” Shvarts said. “I think that I’m creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be.”

Uh huh. Well, does the project speak for itself?

The display of Schvarts’ project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts’ self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

I think her uterine lining must be smarter than she is. This is why I kind of hate art. It gives people cover to be snotty & self-absorbed.

I have only divided outrage left for the Georgia belle who was scared to be Michelle Obama’s roommate at Princeton. She and her mom are still semi-racist but reflect ruefully on their fears at the time. Michelle Obama turned out to be the stately, witty, graceful woman we all know, but she and the Southern GOP-member-to-be never exactly bonded. Perhaps out of guilt, the belle and her mother (who still doesn’t believe in intermarriage) are considering voting for the big O. How many such sins do you supposed will be atoned for at the ballot box this year?