Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
After Art
Cross-posted from Jelly-Town!
A couple of issues ago in The New Yorker (I'm always at least a couple issues behind on New Yorkers) art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote a review of an exhibition at the New Museum called "After Nature." Schjeldahl makes some strong statements in the article, which you'd expect from a person whose last name sounds like Thor's spare hammer, but I've never thought of him as especially prone to hyperbole in the past. So it's especially noticeable when he uses damning phrases like "silly froth" and "[p]olitically, the new art is benumbed" as he longs for the emergence of a genuinely transformative artist such as Pollock or Warhol and ultimately concludes "that absence of such an artist "will help us adjust to the happenstance that, once and finally, our particular civilization is spent."
This especially struck me because it served as a (more eloquent, admittedly) mirror of a conversation firthofforth and I had after seeing Woody Allen's new film. She noted that, at 72-years-old, Woody Allen probably won't be delivering that many more films (although, he's prolific enough that who knows). This led to an impromptu mental survey of all the notable directors who are probably much closer to their expiration dates than their bright debuts. Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and the two dark Davids are all in their sixties (as are Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola if you remain stubbornly convinced that they're worthy of attention). Even the rascally Coen brothers and the two lyrical Lees are all in their fifties. Who are the directors that will make up the next wave? The ones who will shift cinema with the audaciousness of their craft?
I'm mostly framing this around film because that's the medium I'm most comfortable with when it comes to flaunting my opinions, but I suppose similar questions can be asked across different forms and formats. As I seek out the next Scorsese and Schjeldahl hunts the next Pollock, others are after the next Roth or Pynchon, or the next Pixies or Velvet Underground. I do wonder if the surfeit of critical voices in the Internet age is going to slow down the process of recognizing the truly great work. So many new contributions to the media piranha pool are greeted with a turbo-boosted merry-go-round of praise, backlash and backlash-against-the-backlash. It quickly reaches the point where the din of the debate completely drowns out any reasonable attempts to honestly consider the value of the work in question.
There's also a part of me that wonders if Schjeldahl's dire conclusion isn't correct. Perhaps we're reaching a point where art will begin to completely cave in on itself and those of us who crave something deeper, something more will be like those women in The Descent, worriedly shimmying on our bellies through a narrow passageway as the heavy rock above us shifts under the weight of Michael Bay movies and Sharon Osbourne and David Hasselhoff evaluating "talent." If so we can at least divert whatever remaining artistic energy there is into really important things, like inventive bike racks and cocktail-flavored gum (available for enjoyment in both ironic and non-ironic forms).
Free of all that wearying pressure to keep evaluating new work for admission to the canon, we follow the lead of my ancestral homeland and begin honoring the real heroes. We can replace all of our competitions with Lego reconstructions that are more likely to reach the top of the daily Digg list anyway. Just think of all the thinking we'll be able to avoid.
This post is what happens when the slate of movies in the Entertainment Weekly "Fall Movie Preview" issue (now with comically inaccurate cover!) is underwhelming.
A couple of issues ago in The New Yorker (I'm always at least a couple issues behind on New Yorkers) art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote a review of an exhibition at the New Museum called "After Nature." Schjeldahl makes some strong statements in the article, which you'd expect from a person whose last name sounds like Thor's spare hammer, but I've never thought of him as especially prone to hyperbole in the past. So it's especially noticeable when he uses damning phrases like "silly froth" and "[p]olitically, the new art is benumbed" as he longs for the emergence of a genuinely transformative artist such as Pollock or Warhol and ultimately concludes "that absence of such an artist "will help us adjust to the happenstance that, once and finally, our particular civilization is spent."
This especially struck me because it served as a (more eloquent, admittedly) mirror of a conversation firthofforth and I had after seeing Woody Allen's new film. She noted that, at 72-years-old, Woody Allen probably won't be delivering that many more films (although, he's prolific enough that who knows). This led to an impromptu mental survey of all the notable directors who are probably much closer to their expiration dates than their bright debuts. Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and the two dark Davids are all in their sixties (as are Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola if you remain stubbornly convinced that they're worthy of attention). Even the rascally Coen brothers and the two lyrical Lees are all in their fifties. Who are the directors that will make up the next wave? The ones who will shift cinema with the audaciousness of their craft?
I'm mostly framing this around film because that's the medium I'm most comfortable with when it comes to flaunting my opinions, but I suppose similar questions can be asked across different forms and formats. As I seek out the next Scorsese and Schjeldahl hunts the next Pollock, others are after the next Roth or Pynchon, or the next Pixies or Velvet Underground. I do wonder if the surfeit of critical voices in the Internet age is going to slow down the process of recognizing the truly great work. So many new contributions to the media piranha pool are greeted with a turbo-boosted merry-go-round of praise, backlash and backlash-against-the-backlash. It quickly reaches the point where the din of the debate completely drowns out any reasonable attempts to honestly consider the value of the work in question.
There's also a part of me that wonders if Schjeldahl's dire conclusion isn't correct. Perhaps we're reaching a point where art will begin to completely cave in on itself and those of us who crave something deeper, something more will be like those women in The Descent, worriedly shimmying on our bellies through a narrow passageway as the heavy rock above us shifts under the weight of Michael Bay movies and Sharon Osbourne and David Hasselhoff evaluating "talent." If so we can at least divert whatever remaining artistic energy there is into really important things, like inventive bike racks and cocktail-flavored gum (available for enjoyment in both ironic and non-ironic forms).
Free of all that wearying pressure to keep evaluating new work for admission to the canon, we follow the lead of my ancestral homeland and begin honoring the real heroes. We can replace all of our competitions with Lego reconstructions that are more likely to reach the top of the daily Digg list anyway. Just think of all the thinking we'll be able to avoid.
This post is what happens when the slate of movies in the Entertainment Weekly "Fall Movie Preview" issue (now with comically inaccurate cover!) is underwhelming.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
This Oympic moment is passing me by
Cross-posted from Jelly-Town!
There was a time when I was always reasonably tuned it to whatever was the cultural preoccupation of the moment. While those days are a ever-foggier memory, I remain curious enough that I can offer decent discourse on the "The Battle of the Davids", I understand why Miley Cyrus might wear a blonde wig for a portion of a concert, and I could probably pick Vanessa Hudgens out of a line-up if necessary. I've never watched a second of Mad Men but I know how it dark it's getting, and I know why the uncaged dreamboat vampire sings.
And yet, as much as I prefer being tuned in, I have no interest whatsoever in the Olympics.
I don't care about Michael Phelps and his quest for medals, I don't care about the U.S. basketball team's attempt to rightfully reclaim the "Dream Team" moniker, and I certainly don't care about scandalous (although admittedly nasty) identity chicanery during the overblown, empty spectacle of the opening ceremonies. I can certainly do without the invasive, dimwitted corporate synergy that has Matt Lauer interviewing the Today medical correspondent about acupuncture (cuz the Olympics are in China...get it?) and the Project Runway designers coming up with outfits that U.S. athletes might wear in some theoretical opening ceremony. (To be fair about that last point, it was one of the better challenges in the season so far, and as bad as some of the designs were, none of them were as boring as the actual outfits created by Ralph Lauren for this year's ceremonies. He may have made a bajillion dollars crafting clothes for people over the years, but the U.S. Olympians look like Danny Noonan on his way to a boat christening.)
I'm not certain why this is the case. I don't think it's a simple as being dissatisfied with the results of my efforts on the "What Olympic Sport Are You?" quiz--
--although it surely didn't help. I'm not a hugely committed sports fan, chief proof of that being that my three decades in Wisconsin didn't give me the requisite Packer fervor. I'm not so immune, however, that big games won't lure me in, especially if they're played in blinding snowstorms. Besides, I'm a confessed baseball geek and that's one the sports actually in the Olympics.
Maybe it's just as simple as having grown up finding my heroes elsewhere, knowing full well that starring on a Wheaties box doesn't automatically protect you from dire days ahead. (Some others might tell you that all necessary heroics took place 2000 years ago, but I don't subscribe to that notion.) Maybe the boycotts of 1980 and 1984 blunted any lingering Cold War competitive feelings I may have had as a burgeoning partly cloudy patriot during my formative years.
The reason isn't important, I guess. I'll just keep sitting her detached, scrolling through the satellite listings for the movies I haven't seen. Wake me when the medal count is complete.
There was a time when I was always reasonably tuned it to whatever was the cultural preoccupation of the moment. While those days are a ever-foggier memory, I remain curious enough that I can offer decent discourse on the "The Battle of the Davids", I understand why Miley Cyrus might wear a blonde wig for a portion of a concert, and I could probably pick Vanessa Hudgens out of a line-up if necessary. I've never watched a second of Mad Men but I know how it dark it's getting, and I know why the uncaged dreamboat vampire sings.
And yet, as much as I prefer being tuned in, I have no interest whatsoever in the Olympics.
I don't care about Michael Phelps and his quest for medals, I don't care about the U.S. basketball team's attempt to rightfully reclaim the "Dream Team" moniker, and I certainly don't care about scandalous (although admittedly nasty) identity chicanery during the overblown, empty spectacle of the opening ceremonies. I can certainly do without the invasive, dimwitted corporate synergy that has Matt Lauer interviewing the Today medical correspondent about acupuncture (cuz the Olympics are in China...get it?) and the Project Runway designers coming up with outfits that U.S. athletes might wear in some theoretical opening ceremony. (To be fair about that last point, it was one of the better challenges in the season so far, and as bad as some of the designs were, none of them were as boring as the actual outfits created by Ralph Lauren for this year's ceremonies. He may have made a bajillion dollars crafting clothes for people over the years, but the U.S. Olympians look like Danny Noonan on his way to a boat christening.)
I'm not certain why this is the case. I don't think it's a simple as being dissatisfied with the results of my efforts on the "What Olympic Sport Are You?" quiz--
You Are Gymnastics |
 You are agile, expressive, and precise. You have the drive to practice until you get something perfectly right. And you have the confidence to perform difficult moves when under pressure. |
--although it surely didn't help. I'm not a hugely committed sports fan, chief proof of that being that my three decades in Wisconsin didn't give me the requisite Packer fervor. I'm not so immune, however, that big games won't lure me in, especially if they're played in blinding snowstorms. Besides, I'm a confessed baseball geek and that's one the sports actually in the Olympics.
Maybe it's just as simple as having grown up finding my heroes elsewhere, knowing full well that starring on a Wheaties box doesn't automatically protect you from dire days ahead. (Some others might tell you that all necessary heroics took place 2000 years ago, but I don't subscribe to that notion.) Maybe the boycotts of 1980 and 1984 blunted any lingering Cold War competitive feelings I may have had as a burgeoning partly cloudy patriot during my formative years.
The reason isn't important, I guess. I'll just keep sitting her detached, scrolling through the satellite listings for the movies I haven't seen. Wake me when the medal count is complete.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
It's always good to incorporate Muhammad Ali into political commentary
Cross-posted from Jelly-Town!
You know what's a pretty good sign that your presidential campaign may be on its way to joining the other great disasters in history? You're being shown up by Paris Hilton.
Listen, its been predetermined for a long time that my November vote is committed to the candidate with the "D" in closest proximity in their name (as opposed to a candidate with a lot of D's in his name), so there's my bias. Still, coming in to this campaign, I liked John McCain. This even though I strongly disagree with many of his policy stands and recognize that his tendency towards hateful comments under the phony cover of being a maverick straight shooter (hiding behind behind self-awareness of your his character flaws doesn't cut it either) long before he made flippant remarks about cigarettes exported with Farsi printing on the package. Still, any Republican willing to team up with my favorite Senator to champion campaign finance legislation that was disproportionately more damaging to his own party is worthy of some respect. Besides, he really does deserve a chance at this after being Cobra-Kai-ed out of race by the slimeball who's sullied the Oval Office for the past eight years. Whatever his (many) faults, McCain has always seemed to be a politician who operated with as much integrity as was possible and still remain gainfully employed in that often odorous field.
Given that, it's been wholly unpleasant to watch him flounder through this campaign, unable to get any sort of footing, drastically changing long-held positions and even bereft of any capability to get the members of his team to agree on fundamental matters of policy. He's stooped to such juvenile tactics--not just the original ad which invited Ms. Hilton into the fray of presidential politics, but the asinine tire gauge mockery that he almost immediately had to back off of--that Barack Obama has been able to respond to him with the equivalent of repeating "Really?" over and over again.
That response reminded me of a story George Foreman told about his historic "Rumble in the Jungle" title fight against Muhammad Ali. Foreman had been pummeling Ali for several rounds, unaware that Ali was employing the rope-a-dope strategy. Shortly before Ali turned the fight around, he leaned into Foreman during a clinch and said something to the effect of "Is that all you got, George? I'm disappointed. Is that all you got?" According to Foreman, at that moment he thought, "Yep, that's about it." Ali knocked Foreman out in the eighth round.
Things could easily turn around--there's a whole lot that can happen between now and November--but right now it's easy to imagine Obama asking "Is that all you got?" and McCain responding "Yep, that's about it."
You know what's a pretty good sign that your presidential campaign may be on its way to joining the other great disasters in history? You're being shown up by Paris Hilton.
Listen, its been predetermined for a long time that my November vote is committed to the candidate with the "D" in closest proximity in their name (as opposed to a candidate with a lot of D's in his name), so there's my bias. Still, coming in to this campaign, I liked John McCain. This even though I strongly disagree with many of his policy stands and recognize that his tendency towards hateful comments under the phony cover of being a maverick straight shooter (hiding behind behind self-awareness of your his character flaws doesn't cut it either) long before he made flippant remarks about cigarettes exported with Farsi printing on the package. Still, any Republican willing to team up with my favorite Senator to champion campaign finance legislation that was disproportionately more damaging to his own party is worthy of some respect. Besides, he really does deserve a chance at this after being Cobra-Kai-ed out of race by the slimeball who's sullied the Oval Office for the past eight years. Whatever his (many) faults, McCain has always seemed to be a politician who operated with as much integrity as was possible and still remain gainfully employed in that often odorous field.
Given that, it's been wholly unpleasant to watch him flounder through this campaign, unable to get any sort of footing, drastically changing long-held positions and even bereft of any capability to get the members of his team to agree on fundamental matters of policy. He's stooped to such juvenile tactics--not just the original ad which invited Ms. Hilton into the fray of presidential politics, but the asinine tire gauge mockery that he almost immediately had to back off of--that Barack Obama has been able to respond to him with the equivalent of repeating "Really?" over and over again.
That response reminded me of a story George Foreman told about his historic "Rumble in the Jungle" title fight against Muhammad Ali. Foreman had been pummeling Ali for several rounds, unaware that Ali was employing the rope-a-dope strategy. Shortly before Ali turned the fight around, he leaned into Foreman during a clinch and said something to the effect of "Is that all you got, George? I'm disappointed. Is that all you got?" According to Foreman, at that moment he thought, "Yep, that's about it." Ali knocked Foreman out in the eighth round.
Things could easily turn around--there's a whole lot that can happen between now and November--but right now it's easy to imagine Obama asking "Is that all you got?" and McCain responding "Yep, that's about it."
Sunday, August 3, 2008
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