Ambiguous Freedom

Posted on September 8, 2019 by JMN
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Mr. Van Sant’s “Untitled (Hollywood 4),” 2018-2019, watercolor on linen. Credit Gus Van Sant and Vito Schnabel Projects.

Film maker Gus Van Sant is known for “Drugstore Cowboy,” “My Own Private Idaho,” and “Good Will Hunting.” I didn’t know he also painted. Watercolor on linen is an unfamiliar combination for me. I’m not sure I would look too closely at these pallid paintings without knowing they were the work of a renowned film director. They remind of the background of a cartoon by Barry Blitt.

No one should confuse the soft-spoken painter with the wild characters in his films and paintings. “Artists are not necessarily the performers,” he says. “They’re industrious. They adhere to rules, and they actually work.” As an example, he points to Jack Kerouac’s relationship with his muse, Neal Cassady: “Kerouac is disciplined and Neal Cassady is the freak, driving him around and partying.” Artists, Mr. Van Sant says, are often “attracted to the characters that seem to be freer than they are.”
(Jonathan Griffin, “Gus Van Sant’s Next Picture Will Be a Watercolor,” NYTimes, 9-8-19)

“… Freer than they are.” I’m struck by the ambiguity of the pronoun “they.” Its antecedent could be either “artists” or “characters.” Each way, the statement makes an interesting, but different, point.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Young Bashi-Bazouk

Posted on September 8, 2019 by JMN
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Mr. Cummings in 2001. The son of an oil rig project manager and a special-needs teacher, he attended Oxford, like so many protagonists of the Brexit saga. Credit David Levenson/Getty Images.

“Mr. Cummings is a bashi-bazouk,” said [Dominic] Grieve, citing the Ottoman Empire’s shock troops, who were renowned for their ferocity. “It is going to be a very difficult period because Cummings doesn’t respect any rule at all.”
(Benjamin Mueller and Stephen Castle, “Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s Rasputin, Is Feeling the Heat of Brexit,” NYTimes, 9-8-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Francisco Toledo, Dead at 79

Posted on September 8, 2019 by JMN
francisco toledo

Mr. Toledo in 2015 at an exhibition at the Zapata subway station in Mexico City. His paintings, drawings, prints, collages, tapestries and ceramics were largely inspired by his indigenous Zapotec heritage. Credit Alfredo Estrella/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.

“The man himself is elusive,” [Paul] Theroux noted. “He hides from journalists, he hates to be photographed, he seldom gives interviews, he no longer attends his own openings, but instead sends his wife and daughter to preside over them, while he stays in his studio, unwilling to speak — a great example of how writers and artists should respond — letting his work speak for him, with greater eloquence.”

(Jonathan Kandell, “Francisco Toledo, Celebrated Mexican Artist and Arts Philanthropist, Dies at 79,” NYTimes, 9-7-19)

The work should speak for the artist, yes. But there’s room also for the occasional artist who also talks.

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“Pensando — Autorretrato” (“Thinking — Self Portrait”), 1985 (Watercolor with pen and black ink). Francisco Toledo, via Princeton University Art Museum.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Female Underwear for Men

Posted on September 8, 2019 by JMN
victorias secret

The prime-time Victoria’s Secret fashion show will no longer appear on network television after years of declining viewership. Credit Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated Press.

[Victoria’s Secret’s] guiding light… was a fictional woman named Victoria who had been raised in England by a successful London businessman and a French mother. She was well educated and married to a barrister. Company decisions were often made by asking, “Would Victoria do this?”

Victoria’s Secret is actually based in Columbus, Ohio.

Leslee King, who was an executive with the company for more than a decade, says that for millennials “unattainable projections of beauty became not just dated and uncool but offensive… I see the consumer getting much more aware and loud… about the fact that this is a brand run by men.”

(Sapna Maheshwari, “Victoria’s Secret Had Troubles, Even Before Jeffrey Epstein,” NYTimes, 9-6-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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If You Want a Picture, You Must Ask

Posted on September 8, 2019 by JMN
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Texas State Capitol, South Facade. Courtesy of the Texas State Preservation Board.

A female-focused dating app named Bumble, based in Austin, Texas, founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd, has lobbied Texas legislators successfully to pass the “cyber-flashing act.” The act

… bans the electronic transmission of unwanted visual material depicting any person’s “intimate parts” as well as the “covered genitals of a male person that are in a discernibly turgid state”.

(Arwa Mahdawi, “Put it away: Texas passes law banning dick pics,” The Guardian, 9-7-19)

Good job, Texas. Let’s work on mass shootings now.

(c) 2019 JMN

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“Storm With a Silent Mist”

Posted on September 5, 2019 by JMN
isabel toledo

Huffpost.com. “Images courtesy of Patrick McMullan and Getty.”

Isabel Toledo died last week of breast cancer at the age of fifty-nine. Judith Thurman pays tribute to this “designer’s designer” who described couture as a language which she had learned “as a child does, by immersion.”

Self-possession is usually an acquired patina, but Toledo’s was bred in the bone, and it often came across as reticence—the same economy of expression that she brought to her drafting table… A great dress, Toledo once said, has to surprise you with “a rush of feeling,” by which she seemed to mean the feeling of being happy with yourself. Was she happy with herself? Her business partner, husband, and soul mate, Ruben Toledo, described her as “a storm with a silent mist.”

Two days after her death, Ruben wrote:

“Izzy was a contrarian even to herself. Her true medium was unpredictability. If she sensed a cage was descending on her, she spread her wings fast and was gone.”

(Judith Thurman, “Remembering Isabel Toledo, A Designer With Few Peers,” The New Yorker, 9-4-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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“She’s Got It Down”

Posted on September 5, 2019 by JMN
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Ms. Saar in her studio in Laurel Canyon. Credit Erik Carter for The New York Times.

The work of ninety-three-year-old artist Betye Saar will be shown concurrently this fall at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her assemblages, illustrated in this article, are charming and compelling.

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“Sketchbook 1998,” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Credit Betye Saar, via Roberts Projects, Los Angeles.

My favorite words from her mouth are the following: “You can’t beat Nature for color, She’s got it down.”

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And “Supreme Quality” (1998), the assemblage based on the sketch. Credit Betye Saar, via The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; Tim Lanterman/Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

The theme of the deserving artist, long neglected, who achieves belated recognition while still living is low-hanging fruit for the art journalist. I suspect that the story lurking behind the neglect of Saar’s work is glimpsed in the following words of Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture:

“For the most part (and with notable exceptions) until this past decade we were not looking in the directions where we would have found Saar’s work. And speaking personally,” she added, “for that reason now is such an inspiring and rewarding time to happen to be a curator.”(Holland Cotter, “‘It’s About Time!’ Betye Saar’s Long Climb to the Summit,” NYTimes, 9-4-19)

Speaking personally, do I detect in Temkin’s remark a bit of understatement around an institutional legacy of turning a blind eye to artists from certain “directions”? No matter. She happens to be a curator now inspired and rewarded to be looking in Saar’s direction.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Do NOT Surprise Your Mom

Posted on September 5, 2019 by JMN

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The mother said she… saw someone running into the bedroom, at which point she fired her .38 special handgun, hitting her daughter once…

“If you realize someone has a gun for protection, and they’re not expecting you—announce yourself when you enter the home, or even if you’re getting up to get a drink of water in the middle of the night, just announce yourself….”
(Police Chief John Norman of Girard, Ohio)

“Ewan Palmer, “Mother Shoots Daughter After She Came Home From College to Surprise Her,” Newsweek, 9-4-19)

The concept of waking up the household to issue a “getting drink of water” announcement has zany appeal. The same protocol would apply to toilet visits and midnight refrigerator raids. Sleepwalkers beware, however! (The daughter was shot in the arm and is recovering.)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Nay, Nay Now. Period

Posted on September 2, 2019 by JMN

“I am NOT going to use the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the God-given rights of my fellow Texans. Period. None of these so-called gun-control solutions will work to stop a person with evil intent […] I say NO to ‘red-flag’ pre-crime laws, NO to universal background checks, NO to bans on AR-15s or high-capacity magazines. NO to mandatory gun buy-backs […] YES to praying for victims.”
(Texas State Congressman Matt Schaeffer on Twitter, 31 August 2019, 9:35 PM)

(Quoted by Richard Parker, NYTimes, 9-1-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Sexual Fantasies

Posted on September 1, 2019 by JMN
Adverbs Ahead

Humour Ahead

“My greatest sexual fantasy is just to have regular sex in my own apartment. But, in my fantasy, my apartment has a washing machine and a dryer.”

(Mark Cognata, “Sexual Fantasies of Everyday New Yorkers,” The New Yorker, “Daily Shouts”)

(c) 2019 JMN

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