Ye gods

Deep within their underground lair, fresh from bathing in the blood of babies and conducting strange satanic rituals, the evil Barrs update their blog to have another go at me.

'Mainstream'!? 'Hot cakes'!? I honestly don't think they have a very good grasp of what words mean.

I suppose they think the likes of Gambia Castle and their own sorry excuse for a gallery (does somewhere that's had just one show that was only ever open for a matter of hours even count as a gallery?) aren't mainstream, and that I'm 'selling out' by showing in a dealer gallery rather than some artist-run space.

I hate to break it to them, but artist-run spaces such as Gambia Castle and Enjoy are fully integrated mainstream public institutions. It's not just that they receive public funding but that they are a recognised stepping stone for curators and artists (but especially curators) to get into the major public institutions. They're curator factories even.

As an intertemporal avant-garde artist, I wouldn't touch an artist-run space with a barge pole. In fact, back in 2007 I clearly stated where you would find a contemporary manifestation of the intertemporal avant-garde: 'It will be found mostly in sympathetic dealer galleries, online, and in short-run publications.'

That hasn't changed at all.

And I've found Ivan very sympathetic. He gets it, unlike some.

In other news, I got a letter in the mail today confirming my eligibility to graduate. Apparently I've got my graduate diploma 'with distinction', whatever that means. Once they post the scroll out to me, I might hang it where it belongs, in the toilet.

Ha ha ha ha ha

First, some background. Jen Dalton and William Powhida are organising a show at the Winkleman Gallery in New York.

As part of it, they've set up a blog. I suggested in the comments to one post that they make people apply to buy the work in the show.

So I laughed when I saw this:

Now, I know that if you give away an idea cos you're not going to use it yourself, you're not really in a position to complain when the people you give it to use it in a way other than you would have. But, fuck it, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

The way I see it, there are three main problems with this picture. In no particular order, they are:

1. The whole point of the application form idea was to overturn the existing power structure in favour of the artist. You can't have the dealer approve or deny applicants – that changes nothing. That's how it already works, you fucking idiots. The idea is to give the artist the power for once. For fuck's sake, repeat after me: the whole point. And you missed it. Fucking hell.


2. Apparently, during the cultural revolution, the Chinese communists would give people they'd arrested a pile of blank paper and tell them to write whatever they liked. For some reason, this was much more effective than torture. The people would produce all sorts of incredible confessions.
   
   My idea for the application form was quite vindictive. I wanted to make the applicant suffer. So I was thinking a similar tactic to the Chinese would be the go – give them a large blank space and no cues on how to fill it.
   
   Five one-line reasons is far too easy.


3. Rosemary Miller summed up the final problem nicely: 'So they have a mock application AS the work? Far too fucking Billy Apple for my liking.'

So it all just goes to show the old adage is true – if you want something done properly, you need to do it yourself.

Gits and brilliance

Well, the last post got linked to the public address website by some arsehole (see the comments). That engendered a slightly amusing discussion, but I foolishly tried to engage with the cunts. The amusement paled. I asked for arguments. I asked for examples. Did I get them? Did I fuck.

I suppose it's just me that finds that site and its culture creepy?

I tried to be honest, up front, and non-contentious. I wanted a proper debate. Let's just say it was not my finest hour. That'll learn me.

And so one of the labels for this post refers to me, and the other to them. As I said in the comments to the previous post, I should have told the po-faced motherfuckers to fuck off. Ye gods, not my finest hour at all.

On the plus side, we've just had a great radio show from Rose and Michael (check out the amazing Futurist pic!). Michael, who I insisted on calling Malcolm through the evening (I'm hard work at the best of times), included a remix of a Popol Vuh track from the Aguirre soundtrack, so we watched that as visuals.

It's the best film ever. I remember when I first saw it, with Mr Stephen Rowe, at the Dunedin Film Society in 1993 or thereabouts. We jumped up and down in our seats in amazement. We were gobsmacked. Fuck, it's good.

A madman taking on the world? What's not to love?

I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 198 pieces. Those pieces will be stamped on until what is left can be used only to paint walls. Whoever takes one grain of corn or one drop of water more than his ration will be locked up for 155 years. If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees, then the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of god. The earth I pass will see me and tremble.

Brilliant.

However, even that is not the best line. The best line has to be the African slave, seeing a ship in the treetops: 'That is no ship. That is no forest. [Arrow hits him] That is no arrow. We just imagine the arrows because we fear them.'

If you haven't, you have to see it. Quotes do not do it justice. The river! The river!

After the bubble

There have been several articles recently about why the financial crisis/recession/Even Greater Depression will be good for the art world (see here and here). These tend to take the same form: the art world has got bloated and decadent, and the recession will get rid of the dead wood and make it all strong and pure again.

As a somewhat extreme counterexample, take the Weimar Republic. It was also portrayed by conservative critics as bloated and decadent, what with its cabarets and jazz and modern painting and all. Then came the Great Depression, and people found out what getting rid of the dead wood and making everything strong and pure again really means.

Sure, there is a good case to be made that the recent art market has been a classic investment bubble. Clearly, regardless of the recent record prices for contemporary art, we haven’t been living through a golden age of art. How anyone ever thought the market value of an art work is in any way related to its (for want of a better term) aesthetic value is beyond me.

However, the idea doing the rounds seems to be that, if a strong art market equals lots of bad art, then a weak art market equals lots of good art. This is ludicrous.

There is no guarantee that tough times equal better art. Only breezy columnists with a deadline too close for considered thought would suggest so. Tough times guarantee tough times. The good artists went their own way when the art market went mad, and they’ll carry on going their own way now that it’s gone bad. It’ll just be harder.

More electronic communications

So John Hurrell wrote a review of a Peter Madden show. Madden left some comments, and I couldn't resist adding my own (relatively innocuous) one. No biggie.

However, I was a little surprised to get, rather than a response on John's blog, this in my inbox less than an hour later:

now you are being pathetic ..as well as abusive .
.now theirs a surprise...read through the comments and check context..and you might be able to ..
get your head out from up your ass
yours Peter madden

I sent a response of course, but never got a reply.

Stupid and boring, and the US election

So the Establishment has been handing out prizes to its pets again. The Stupidest Exhibition Award (otherwise known as the Walters) went to Peter Robinson for his polystyrene nonsense. What was notable about this award this time around was how the selecting panel outdid themselves in sheer idiocy, rendering the contest even more of a joke than usual.

The Most Boring Painter Award (otherwise known as the Laureate) went to Shane Cotton for his consistent mediocrity. I suppose it takes a certain knack to produce paintings that are so utterly devoid of interest. Of course, the idea of having a painter laureate is itself fairly stupid.

But enough of this inconsequential bollocks. The first results of the US election are coming in. I’ve been watching a lot of Fox News recently (it’s fascinating in a grotesque way), but for this arvo I recommend Oliver Burkeman's blog on the Guardian site.

The Even Greater Depression

Who could've predicted that free-market capitalism would eat itself?

Oh yeah, Marx did.

This financial crisis is a bit of a laugh, isn't it? People say the art world's full of nothing but hot air but, unlike the financial industry, at least we produce something tangible.

Weather redux

I've been posted a nice link about the validity of self-serving email writer Ken Ring's weather predictions. My favourite comment is:

Mr Ring's weather predictions fail. When and if he is forced to explain his failures he mischievously reinterprets forecasts, suppresses negative forecasts and simply invents forecasts that were never made, all in such a way as to make it appear that his apparent failure was actually a success.

Enjoy!

Ha ha

Some anonymous twit left a comment on my Piero della Francesca timeline post:

'can you put any of his famous quotes about how he regards his work, next time, I need it for VA'

Who the hell do you think I am? And why the fuck should I care what you need? Do your own fucking homework (I assume that's what 'VA' refers to).

I quite often get people coming to that post after searching google. The funniest thing about it is that the timeline may look authoritative but isn't. It's a compilation of historical sources and my own theories. The dates for paintings are almost all speculation on my part, and some of them are quite unconventional.

Schadenfreude

This is very unkind, but I can't resist. For the one-day sculpture event, academic artist Maddie Leach based her project on a long-range weather forecast (which are of course notoriously unreliable). From the one-day sculpture website, we have:

On 28th August 2008, a storm is predicted over the city of Wellington. Using a long-range weather forecasting system developed by mathematician Ken Ring, Maddie Leach has pinpointed a winter’s day in which downpours, hail, wind and rain are expected to descend upon the North Island’s most southerly city. A perigee is the moment at which the moon is at its closest to the earth each month and, according to Ring, it is around this time that significant changes in weather patterns occur.

Anticipation for the storm is built by the artist through a series of newspaper forecasts which appear prior to the notable day of the project. On the day itself we are encouraged to seek out a boatshed at Breaker Bay, set at the mouth of the harbour, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, from which to watch in anticipation over the Cook Strait over a period of 24 hours.

If you open up the front page of today's paper, you get this particularly nice juxtaposition:

The newspaper article next to Maddie Leach's ad reads in part:

In a rotten winter that has seen Wellington drenched in almost twice the average rainfall, sun-starved residents can look to Thursdays for a reprieve.

Niwa statistics confirm the outlook for Thursdays is fine - or at least better, as it has proved to be the least likely day for rain.

Ye gods

What is with these people who want to ban things they don't like? Smokers seem to be the one segment of the population that it's socially acceptable to discriminate against. First smoking in pubs and cafes was banned. Then the warnings on the packets got bigger and bigger and more strident, until they got replaced by graphic images of bits of dead people.

Quite apart from the smell of desperation about putting these images on cigarette packets ('oh no, the warnings aren't working, let's make them really repulsive'), there's a real question of balance here. The decision has been made (note use of passive tense) that the interests of everyone who may see what are deliberately disgusting images (who are not just smokers of course, but could be anyone – including children) are outweighed by the so-called benefits of possibly scaring some people into giving up smoking. Is it just me, or is there something very wrong here?

Of course, once the images came in, people simply and quite rightly covered them up or put their tobacco into a different container. I've seen it seriously suggested that selling covers for cigarette packets should be banned. This is the behaviour of monomaniacs and zealots, the kind of people for whom the ends justify any means. It is a very dangerous mindset.

And so now this Poneke person (who of course is anonymous) wants to ban smoking in busy public places. Why? Because the smokers have all the best spots! It's really laughable. Boo hoo! There's nothing stopping non-smokers from sitting outside in smoking areas. My non-smoking friends do it all the time.

To do this, though, you need to tolerate people who are different from you, not try to legislate them out of existence. But not these anti-smoking bigots. They seem to think their intolerant prejudice should be backed up by law.

I don't like the sight or smell of cooked flesh, but do you see me advocating for a ban on eating meat in public? Of course not. If I choose to go out to a restaurant or bar, I know I'll be exposed to it. I accept that. It's part of living in a civil society.

Oh dear

I am now hungover and contrite. Tempted as I am to simply delete the previous post, I'm going to leave it. Hopefully, it'll remind me to not blog while drunk.

I am such a dick.

And 'an hour's entertainment'? What was I thinking!? Thirty seconds more like.

Losers

I must admit to finding the evil Barrs perpetually amusing. I'll freely admit it's a character fault on my part, but they're just so funny.

On Saturday their blog featured a prominently displayed notice in the sidebar, under a picture of the words 'oh my god', promising a scandal on Monday. Well, well, thought I, must remember to have a look. After all, they try so hard.

But no! It is Monday evening, and there is no scandal. They have removed the notice and given no explanation.

Plonker

I'm not a fan of graffiti art, but what kind of plonker would you have to be to do this?

I'm tempted to go and stick up a response to the response.