But having some, but not all, the genes for schizophrenia may promote creativity.

— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist a.co/1O2W90y

He then plotted the course of mood against creative production. The resulting curves are striking: he found a consistent link between the intensity of negative emotions, especially sadness, and subsequent periods of artistic brilliance. He concluded that such sadness was not just correlated with creativity but that it actually had a reliable causal effect, typically delayed by some months.

— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist a.co/h521vtL

Can AI Make Art?

It is the responsibility of artists to pay attention to the world, pleasant or otherwise, and to help us live respectfully in it.

Artists do this by keeping their curiosity and moral sense alive, and by sharing with us their gift for metaphor. Often this means finding similarities between observable fact and inner experience—between birds in a vacant lot, say, and an intuition worthy of Genesis.

More than anything else, beauty is what distinguishes art. Beauty is never less than a mystery, but it has within it a promise.

In this way, art encourages us to gratitude and engagement, and is of both personal and civic consequence.

—Robert Adams

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It was clear to me early in the week that I wanted to write more directly about art and that I wanted to consider the question of whether AI could make art.

Much of the criticism of AI generated art revolves around the idea that AI isn’t human, doesn’t have the experiences of a human, doesn’t feel the way humans do, doesn’t suffer the way humans do. Therefore, it can’t make art. At least not in the sense suggested above by Robert Adams.

I started this post with the idea that I would make the case that art needs humans and functions best when, as suggested above, it is a process of comprehending, connecting and inspiring. That it’s a human to human gesture and can only be meaningful in that context. If art needs humans, then AI needs them to make art. The problem with this thesis is that humans are, for now at least, required to start the AI process of making an art object. They haven’t been lost from the equation, even if that is the fear at present and for the future.

Did you know that ’prompt engineering’ is one of the hottest jobs in generative AI? A Prompt Engineer specializes in asking the right questions in order to get the best results from AI. This means that there is a moment of opportunity for human creativity (or lack thereof).

I imagine museum worthy art will arise out of the interface of generative AI and gifted artists and that AI will become a tool of working artists just as cameras became a tool of working artists. Some artists will specialize in prompting AI into the generation of art. It will be their medium. And exceptionally talented individuals will tease out of it “a moment of intuition worthy of Genesis.”

When the photographic process was invented many artists, especially the painters, were hostile towards it. They worried that it would devalue their work much the way artists worry AI will devalue their work now. Before long though cameras were embraced as both an art medium and a tool in the artist tool box. Human beings were required to generate anything from it. As long as humans are required, there is the possibility of art. We give tools purpose. This doesn’t mean there wasn’t disruption, as some illustration work, fore example, was replaced by photographic representation, depriving some artists of a means to support themselves while those embracing the new tool had new horizons for monetization.

A lot of people will use AI to make “art” in the same way that they use cameras to make “art.” They will share it on social media and many will get generous appreciation from their friends and acquaintances. With a little compositional skill, it is easy to make an image that makes people feel something and they will like it. But is that art?

I recently revisited the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone. It’s an app that mimics the effects of plastic cameras. It applies a set of filters to the photograph to give it a ‘look.’ Here is an example:

The picture on the left has the Hipstamatic effect. The one on the right is straight out of the iPhone camera. Which do you prefer?

I have always been hesitant to make Hipstamatic effects a part of my art practice. It felt like cheating to me. It felt like a superficial way to engage people through, in this case, their fondness for nostalgia. And it does work. Consider this photograph I made and shared last week:

It prompted much more engagement from the community I shared it with than most of the other photographs I have shared with them. Most of the time I get no response at all.

Here’s an image that is more typical of the pictures I like to make and share:

Which attracted you more? The Hipstamatic version of the Sunoco gas station or this ‘abstract’ made by composing the drainage basin, concrete pad, asphalt and crack in the asphalt within a rectangular frame. If you said the Sunoco picture, emotionally, I agree with you. Intellectually, I prefer the drainage basin abstract.

Don’t get me wrong, I love nostalgia, just as most people do. It’s like mashed potatoes, comfort food, but I don’t want to make work that panders to that nostalgia love but does little else. Art needs to contain more than an emotional hook for me. As I sit here writing about it, I have to acknowledge that one could make a legitimate art portfolio with the Hipstamatic app and that perhaps I should attempt to do so. Such a portfolio would have to be exploring something conceptual, like making a demonstration of how anything can be made appealing if you put the right color glasses on to look at it and what does that mean about us and society. Something like that might head in the direction of a worthy intuition.

A lot of what people will make with generative AI will be compelling, but it won’t be art in the sense that Robert Adams tries to get at in the quote I started this post with. What will happen, unfortunately, is that it will further devalue the artist in the eyes of the general public, because “my five year old could make that.”

A little over a week ago I attended the opening of an art show at the Public Library in Saugerties, NY. It was a good show. Each of the artists was asked to make something out of a discarded book. The results were amazing. It was fun to attend the opening and talk with the artists or eavesdrop as they talked with friends. This is not, I thought, the kind of assignment one could give to AI. An artist working with AI might prompt it to generate some of the materials to be incorporated into the work, but making three dimensional art out of found materials seems beyond the present capacity of AI. There’s also nothing quite like the experience of being with art and artists in the flesh. Human to human.

Here is some of the work I saw:

Collage portrait of a woman made with pieces of the pages of a book.

”Maggie” Brian Lynch

Sculpture of a landscape and two ponds made by carving out and adding to a book.

”Discover, Explore, Immerse Yourself” Grey Morris

Madona and Child and Primitive Art Face collaged into the pages of an old book.

”Once Upon a Time” Ann Morris

Framed images of a discarded book and roses made paper made from the pages of a discarded book on a fireplace mantle.

”I Promessi Sposi” Steven Parisi-Gentile

I am comforted by the idea that there are modes and vehicles of human expression that are hard for AI to tackle. That even with AI, gifted human interface will still be needed to make the best art, and that getting together and sharing art is the more fulfilling experience.

I wonder if I could become a good prompt artist? I think I am going to have to play with it some. I will report back when I do.

The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda

The Rise and Fall of the Neo-Romantics

… the paintings of Jean-Martin Roch caught my eye in particular… austere… almost religious in effect… his Portrait of an Adolescent slays me… an alien being from another time and place…

… or his Ruins with Cut Trunk

In Praise of the Choir

When I looked back on my week of attention paid, as represented by what I chose to post to these blog pages, this post by Maria Popova resonated. The title, Against the Cult of Originality, caught my eye.

As I thought about the proposition of a “Cult of Originality” I thought about the number of times I have come across the idea that one had not arrived, could not hope to arrive, as an artist until they had found the unique voice that distinguished them from all others, the voice that made them an “original,” a soloist.

Maria Popova writes this about genius and originality:

The best things in life we don’t choose — they choose us. A great love, a great calling, a great illumination — they happen unto us, like light falling upon that which is lit. We have given a name to these unbidden greatnesses — genius, from the Latin for “spirit,” denoting the spirit of a universe we can only submit to but cannot govern.1

She is talking about the spark of creativity as a gift. Our charge is to become the medium through which the genius of the cosmos is delivered to our species and to take no ego gratification from it. Of course, the very idea of genius in our society is that of the prodigy soloist.

In the paragraph immediately following her declaration above she cites Wordsworth who proclaims that genius does that which hasn’t been done before and is worth doing, well. But wait, isn’t that the same as being unique, qualified as it is by the stipulation that it be done well and in a direction deemed useful? Even while writing against the cult of originality it is hard to free oneself from the adoration of… originality.

But then she gets to the point with Emerson, who has a take on genius more in line with her own thoughts at the beginning:

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am more in line with this thinking about genius which moves it away from prodigality and in the direction of a gift transmitted through us. This is the Lewis Hyde concept of the creative act2. The idea that we are gifted an ability and set of circumstances that favor a different way of seeing and that we have an obligation to suffer “the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.” In this way of thinking, we are the medium, not the point. We are participating in something larger than ourselves.

As I am writing this I am listening to a recording of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion. I think it was probably my most listened to recording of 2022. I adore choral music. And what I adore most are the passages utilizing the full choir. I understand and appreciate that soloists are important and appreciate their counterpoint to the choir as they deliver whatever piece of information and beauty they have been charged with delivering. But what truly gut punches me every time is the full choir in all its synchronized beauty and power. There is little in this world that is more sublime to me.

Personally, I think we place way too much emphasis on the soloists of the world, as exemplified by our fetishization of genius and originality. We are fascinated by the individual, the celebrated, the notorious. I would guess that most of us harbor the hope, deep within or psyches, that one day the world will discover the wonderful soloists we are capable of being. I know I do. We must all be exceptional at something? Right? But the idea that we should all be soloists is untenable and leads to disappointment in most people’s lives, in addition to being a recipe for a dysfunctional society.

I remember, many years ago, attending an exhibit of space photography in the then named IBM building in Manhattan. The photography was made by the Hubble Space Telescope which had recently launched into orbit. What I saw was the most beautiful art I could imagine and what blew me away was that it was art made by all of us. A choir of engineers, scientists, analysts, technicians, politicians, educators, tax payers, and on and on.

We need soloists. But we also need to appreciate that no soloist exists with out a choir. It needs to be ok to be part of the choir and we need to value it as we value our soloists. It requires all of us to receive the gifts of the cosmos and move them out across our collective being.


  1. https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/01/21/emerson-genius-shakespeare/ ↩︎

  2. See Lewis Hyde, The Gift. https://lewishyde.com/the-gift/ ↩︎

What Would it Mean to Really Make Space for Mother-Artists

As quickly as mother-artists find ways to turn parenthood into something generative, of course, the system finds ways to delegitimize or challenge the value of that work.

”Make the work, something will come of it.”

Adventures in a gift economy…

I, like many of you, have come to the conclusion that Capitalism is killing the planet. Killing the planet means killing ourselves. We are engaged in species suicide. We don’t seem to be able to help ourselves.

For the longest time I have thought we needed a new system of managing ourselves and our resources, but I have had no idea what it should be. There have been inklings here and there. Buddhist Economics, an essay by E. F. Schumacher that wondered what an economic system based on Buddhist principals would look like. It offered a whole new way of thinking of things. It speculated that the well being of people should be centered. No matter how much capitalist economists try to tell us that capitalism centers the well being of people, that people’s living standards rise wherever its principals are adhered to, it just isn’t true. It creates the conditions it then claims to fix. It exploits people for the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few and leaves too many impoverished.

There were more inklings in Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a woman with Native American ancestry and a American Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology. The book is steeped in Native American ways of thinking about nature. That nature is a commons we all have the right to enjoy and harvest as long as we do so respectfully, don’t claim any part of it exclusively for ourselves, and don’t take more than we need. The bounty of the commons is a gift we receive and share. She places this gift economy alongside the system of capitalist exploitation where the commons has been transferred to private ownership that we buy and exploit for our personal benefit.

Robin Wall Kimmerer knows in her heart that the system her ancestors had was better, but acknowledges that it would be difficult to organize people and resources beyond a tribal or local community level based on it. She delivered a message of hope to me, but not a clear pointer to where we should be going or how we might get there.

Then, a few months ago I read an essay she wrote about serviceberry economics, essentially making the case for a gift economy along the lines her ancestors practiced. In that essay she referenced Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. I bought it. I read it.

Charles Eisenstein explained to me why Capitalism requires a forever-expanding production and consumption, aka, growth. We always owe more than we produce. The way money is created and distributed is based on debt. Debt that is collateralized by the ability of the economy to grow endlessly. He also showed me a viable way to create an economy that is not based on debt and the accumulation of capital. We create money that has an expiration date. It looses value over time. The incentive to accumulate is removed and the result is that money circulates more freely, which puts more goods and services in more people’s hands. It isn’t practical to horde what looses value. We also eliminate usury, the practice of loaning with interest. The practice of making money from money. We practice a gift economy, where it is more significant to give than receive.

Charles Eisenstein believes that capitalism is set to collapse under its own weight because we are running out of commons (that which belongs to everybody) to convert into private ownership. I am not so sure that is the case. We are exploring outer space and traveling to the Moon and Mars with an eye towards growth through privatizing that commons. Space is comparatively limitless and, assuming we find resources that can be valued, the potential for growth is also limitless.

Even so, Sacred Economics gave me the outline of a system that seems feasible. And Capitalism doesn’t have to fail or be replaced wholesale to achieve it. A sacred or gift economy, which values the commons and people, can grow up alongside the capitalist economy and channel human creative effort in ways capitalism can’t. It may in fact be a necessary adjunct to capitalism, its strength being the building of community on the local level which Capitalism is not at all good at doing. In fact, capitalism is anti local community.

Sacred Economics led me to The Gift by Lewis Hyde. I am five chapters into it and pretty sure it is a transformative text for me. It is an in depth look at the “Gift Economy” as it applies to the artist and creative labor.

Because of the above referenced books and essays, especially Sacred Economics and The Gift, I have decided to run an experiment this year with my art production and distribution. I am planning to make what I call photo chapbooks. Chapbooks are small books or pamphlets that, traditionally, contain poems, stories, ballads or religious tracts. My photo chapbooks will contain a small set of images and sometimes a poem or some relevant prose writing.

I am planning to do a series of these books that propagate and distribute only through a gift economy. That is, I will give them away to family, friends and acquaintances. They will have instructions explaining that the chapbook is a gift from the artist to the wider world. They will specify that the chapbook should never change hands for money, that it is the artist’s wish that they only be passed from person to person as a gift and any receiver of the gift is encouraged to gift it to another person if it doesn’t find a permanent home in their library. If it does find a permanent home, then the receiver is asked to gift something in their possession to someone they know in a similar way. In that way, the gift stays in motion as gifts are intended to do.

One of my favorite quotes is from, I think, John Cage, who told someone somewhere struggling with their creative product and how to live from it, “make the work, something will come of it.” I am interested to see what comes of this work.

2022-10-13

“Free speech” networks and anti-semitism… Ben Werdmuller spends some time on alternative social networks which have “free speech” policies, i.e., they don’t moderate content…

Mainstream social networks, particularly Facebook, are not off the hook here: banning anti-semitism does not absolve you of complicity in genocide elsewhere. Twitter also has its fair share of discoverable posts that espouse anti-semitic tropes. But these other networks are remarkable for their concentration: whereas these ideas are a tiny fringe on Facebook and Twitter, they’re how these other networks support themselves. You go to an alt network because you’ve been banned - or you’re worried you will be banned - from a traditional one. This concentration of extremists is why much of the insurrection was able to be openly organized on networks like Gab.

A Simple Guide to the Radical Art of Cecilia Vicuna

https://anotherimg-dazedgroup.netdna-ssl.com/1316/azure/another-prod/420/6/426953.jpg

La Vicuña, 1977, oil on cotton canvas, by Cecilia Vicuña. Courtesy Cecilia Vicuña; Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London

… i like the mythological quality of this painting…

Born in 1948, the Chilean artist has been a pioneering voice on climate change, decolonisation and ecofeminism for decades. A poet, author, artist and activist, her work exists at the meeting point between art forms and means of communication. “My work dwells in the not yet, the future potential of the unformed, where sound, weaving, and language interact to create new meanings,” she says.

… more and more stories about Nazi Germany and how misinformation and propaganda fueled its rise…

How Hate-Fueled Misinformationa nd Propaganda Grew in Nazi Germany

… much of what is described below can be seen in nascent form in the United States Today… see my link to Ben Werdmueler’s post above…

Early in her reporting trip Thompson mailed a letter to Lewis, eager to share with her husband what she’d been witnessing in Germany. “It is really as bad as the most sensational papers report. . . . It’s an outbreak of sadistic and almost pathological hatred,” she wrote. “Most discouraging of all is not only the defenselessness of the liberals but their incredible (to me) docility. There are no martyrs for the cause of democracy.”

She said that Hitler’s Brownshirts were “perfectly mad” in their hounding of Jews and other quarry. “They beat them with steel rods, knock their teeth out with revolver butts, break their arms . . . urinate on them, make them kneel and kiss the _Hakenkreuz_ [the Nazi swastika]. . . . I feel myself starting to hate Germany. And already the world is rotten with hate.”

In May, books were burned. All thirty of Germany’s universities held pep rally-like events. In Berlin some forty thousand Nazis gathered in the public square near the opera house, where a bonfire worthy of a Viking funeral lit up the night sky. A band played martial music. A student wearing a Nazi uniform told the crowd “un‑German” works needed to be incinerated before they corrupted any more pristine minds.

… and this sounds familiar…

Through the Nazi rallies, boycotts, and book burnings, the world watched and waited. Did Hitler mean all the provocative things he’d said before taking office? Would he act upon them now, or would the responsibility of governing tame his tongue and temper his politics?

Two days after the April boycott of Jewish businesses, George Messersmith, the American consul general in Berlin, wrote to Hull about the accelerating climate of repression. “The point has been reached where it is really dangerous for the average individual to express an opinion which would not be favorable to the present regime. Even with his best friend the average German is unable to have free expression of opinion.”

… hmmm… i had not expected this… Nick Cave answering the question of what his favorite film of all time was, replies, Blonde

… my wife and i watched this movie on Netflix… H didn’t like it very much… i was so-so about it… noting that it had an NC17 rating, i had hoped there would be some juicy sex in it, yes, i like to watch, in a manner of speaking… i was disappointed on that score… not because there wasn’t any sex, but because when there was it was mostly a brutal sort that i didn’t find at all appealing… my wife thought the film one more exploitation of the woman and the myth that she didn’t deserve… but it’s based on the novel by Joyce Carole Oats and wasn’t intended to be a real representation of her life (a number of critical scenes in the book and movie never happened to the real MM as far as anyone knows)… it’s more an indictment of the patriarchy and it does a good job of portraying the absurd nature of male lust and misogyny… i set out to read a number of reviews of the movie and they were mostly unfavorable… this one in particular was a thorough critique of both the movie and the novel it is based on… to sum… both failed to paint the picture of a rather intelligent and successful young woman who was also a very good actress… both indulged in fictions that were not flattering (a dumb blonde who got what dumb blondes get) and therefore harmful to her and women in general… both failed to give the woman the credit she was due and traded on her mythology and dumb blonde myth for their own purposes… so, circling back to Nick Cave, i have huge admiration for him and especially for Red Hand Files, in which he is so often a comforting, sage and empathic responder to questions from his fans… he could almost be my spiritual leader… and then this… so… do i stop loving Nick Cave?… do i reassess my thinking about the movie because Nick Cave loves it?… do i take it as evidence that no human being is right all the time and resolve to be questioning of his answers when appropriate?… i think the last response would be the right one… still, i would love to know why he loves the movie… and so… i just posed the question to the man himself… why?… i am sure i won’t be the only one… let’s see if he answers one of us…

October 11, 2022

What caught my attention…

Letters from an American, October 10, 2022

… Russia is loosing the Ukraine war… badly…

According to Deborah Haynes, a security and defense editor at _Sky News_ in the United Kingdom, Sir Jeremy Fleming, who is the director of the U.K.’s intelligence and security agency, will say in a speech tomorrow that the Ukrainian forces are “turning the tide” against Russia. “The costs to Russia…in people and equipment are staggering. We know—and Russian commanders on the ground know—that their supplies and munitions are running out…. Russia’s forces are exhausted. The use of prisoners to reinforce, and now the mobilisation of tens of thousands of inexperienced conscripts, speaks of a desperate situation.”

… two things to consider…

… what will happen to the House and Senate in November is a question and Putin is surely waiting to see, probably also planning to try to put his finger on the scales…

… and…

… what is the end game?… what is Russia’s off ramp short of nuclear war?… it may be clear to intelligence officials but it certainly isn’t clear to me…

Tschabalala Self’s Poetic New Paintings Explore the Meaning of Home

… i love this painting…

https://anotherimg-dazedgroup.netdna-ssl.com/614/azure/another-prod/420/6/426784.jpg Red Room, 2022

With this playful, poetic simplicity, Self explores a plethora of social implications. What does a home symbolise? What is the role of the home in our collective consciousness? What does it mean to take a seat at the table, or to bring the domestic setting into the public sphere? “The home has two realities,” says Self. “An aspirational reality – a place of comfort, interiority and true self-expression. Then in reality it’s a place full of expectations, where people have to take on roles.”

20 new books to get you through the week.

… i stop on this one… initially i was going to blow by it because the thought of 20 books i should read in this week was ridiculously impossible… but then i stopped… because the idea was ridiculously impossible… i have so many books to read and i am not at all making progress on reading them…

On Affirmative Action, Clarence Thomas Took a Page From Malcolm X

… i looked at the headline and photograph of Justice Thomas for this article… thought about clicking on it… scrolled by… clicked… read a little… scrolled some more… returned… read the full article… the author is white… hmmm… white man explaining black man… in a favorable way in this case… still… can he be trusted?… i don’t know… at any rate… affirmative-action vs. meritocracy… well, we all know racism isn’t dead and that it informs admissions decisions and hiring practices… we all should know that racism is endemic to our culture and has systematically suppressed people of color in all kinds of ways… how do we compensate?… if not affirmative action, what other mechanism?… i understand the argument that it stigmatizes the success of an individual for it to be thought that there but for the grace of affirmative action go they… the implication being who ever they were did not deserve the success… they didn’t merit it but for the color of their skin… how do we train institutions and corporations to be color blind?… i understand the arguments against affirmative action… but… what is the better solution?… then there is the whole thing about Justice Thomas himself… even if you explain to me that he comes by his views on AA honestly, through Malcom X, how am i to overlook the anger i have with this man and his wife Ginny and the whole Roe v. Wade thing?… and the threat to undo gay marriage, the right to birth control, etc. etc. etc.?… is this a man i can look up to?… can i entertain the thought that he might be right on AA?…

Pop Goes the Weasel?

… Nick Catoggio, writing for The Dispatch, ponders the question of Putin deploying nukes… will he or won’t he… there is no rational basis to… Russia will loose far more than it will gain… the question is… will this reach the point of being an existential threat to Putin in which he and his fellow countrymen who agree with him decide that if they can’t have empire the world can’t have life… or will someone in Russia take him out?… and if they did, would the world be safe in the chaos that followed?… so… it remains a question of the end game… how do we get to checkmate and the toppling of the king without Armageddon?…

The Inevitable Indictment of Donald Trump

… as bad as i know it will be if 45 is indicted, i simply can’t imaging having any faith in the system if he isn’t… sadly, a large part of the country will have their loss of faith confirmed if he is… according to the article, we should know by next spring… fasten your seatbelts…

There’s a date on the calendar when excessive meticulousness potentially precludes holding Trump to account. On January 20, 2025, Merrick Garland might not have a job. His post could be occupied by an avatar of the hard right. And any plausible Republican president will drop the case against Donald Trump on their first day in office.

The excruciating conundrum that Garland faces is also a liberating one. He can’t win politically. He will either antagonize the right or disappoint the left. Whatever he decides, he will become deeply unpopular. He will unavoidably damage the reputation of the institution he loves so dearly with a significant portion of the populace.

Faced with so unpalatable a choice, he doesn’t really have one. Because he can’t avoid tearing America further apart, he’ll decide based on the evidence—and on whether that evidence can persuade a jury. As someone who has an almost metaphysical belief in the rule book, he can allow himself to apply his canonical texts.

2022-10-10

What caught my attention…

In Times Square and Sunset Strip, “American Gurl” Subverts Femininity… as i have stated before, i have an interest in all things feminine…

In contrast to a “singular idea,” the artists in “American Gurl” offer myriad depictions of women in America. Ayanna Dozier’s “Softer” (2020) critiques the societal demands that African-American women “soften” themselves, specifically through their appearance. Christine Yuan’s “Hoyeon as the International Woman of Mystery” (2022), originally commissioned by Vogue, casts Korean model and _Squid Game_ star Jung Ho-Yeon as an Irma Vep-style vamp who remakes herself for international (read American) consumption. “iGurl” (2022) by Sarah Nicole François is a disturbing digital vision of endless surgical enhancements in search of bodily perfection. “Can we keep up with the aesthetic pushed onto us?” questions Ahmed. “Can these surgeries actually work on us as fast as we can change ourselves online?” Other participating artists include Christelle de Castro, Kasey Elise Walker, Kitty Ca$h, and Leila Jarman.

Art Writing as an Extension of Life

As an arts writer, I am always envious when I find that someone has articulated not only art theory itself, but the way it is a natural part of life for someone who takes joy in the consideration of art. Chris Kraus did this brilliantly in _I Love Dick_(Semiotext(e), 1997); Morgan Meis does this with equal (and completely different) brilliance in _The Drunken Silenus_ (Slant Books, 2020). Randall manages this feat, as the title suggests, by contemplating 12 female artists who are important to her life.

With analysis that is either deeply intuitive or directly informed by personal experience or encounters, Randall presents the life of an artist as both subject and narrator. _Artists in My Life_dissolves the fourth wall between artist, art object, and viewer, offering a welcome approach to arts writing as an extension of how artists live.

The US Could Get Its First National LGBTQ+ History Museum… i only wonder how it will get through congress with so much anit-LGBTQ+ sentiment among conservatives…

A national museum dedicated to American LGBTQ+ history and culture could be coming to Washington, DC. United States Representative Mark Pocan introduced a bill on September 29 to establish the National Museum of American LGBTQ+ History and Culture, potentially as part of Washington, DC’s Smithsonian Institutions. Pocan is a Wisconsin Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus.

The bill establishes an eight-person committee to conduct research into the potential museum, including how much its collection would cost and whether it should in fact be part of the Smithsonian. If the bill passes, the committee will have 18 months before presenting their findings to the House of Representatives, who will then vote on a second bill to establish the museum.

Nevada GOP Secretary of State Candidate Promises to Make Trump President in 2024

At a rally for Nevada Republican candidates on Saturday, Republican nominee for secretary of state Jim Marchant promised that he and his fellow GOP nominees, if elected next month, would reinstall Donald Trump in the White House in 2024.

“We’re gonna fix the whole country and President Trump is gonna be president again,” Marchant promised as Trump stood beside him.

Judge Blocks State Abortion Ban As Attempt “To Completely Eliminate The Rights of Ohio Women”

… who thought Gilead couldn’t happen…

According to affidavits submitted in the lawsuit, two additional minors who suffered sexual assault also had to leave the state for abortions. Cancer patients and other women with severe complications were also denied abortions. The Ohio Capital Journal summarized the evidence last month:

  • The descriptions include those of three women who threatened suicide. They also include two women with cancer who couldn’t terminate their pregnancies and also couldn’t get cancer treatment while they were pregnant. 
  • Another three examples were of women whose fetuses had severe abnormalities or other conditions that made a successful pregnancy impossible. Even so, they couldn’t get abortions in Ohio. 
  • And in three cases, debilitating vomiting was caused by pregnancy—so bad in one case that a woman couldn’t get off the clinic floor. But neither could these women get abortions in Ohio, the affidavits said.

National Constitution Center Project Offers Constitutional Amendment Proposals with Broad Cross-Ideological Support

In 2020, the National Constitution Center sponsored a constitution-drafting project in which   it named three groups to produce their own revised versions of the Constitution: a conservative team, a libertarian team, and a progressive one—each composed of prominent academics and other experts on constitutional law issues. The exercised revealed some important points of agreement between the three teams (even though they also predictably  differed on other issues). This year, NCC reconvened the three teams and asked them to come up with a list of constitutional amendments they could jointly agree on.

… and these were…

  • Term limits for Supreme Court justices
  • Making impeachment easier (would actually make starting impeachment harder, convicting easier)
  • Legislative Veto (wherein the legislature could veto executive action)
  • Eliminating the requirement that the president be a natural-born citizen
  • Making the Constitution easier to amend in the future

… most make sense on the face of it… the rest make sense upon reading the explanations…

Jack Davidson’s Alchemical Photographic Etchings

“I’ve never been a darkroom kid,” says British photographer Jack Davison. “I tried, [but] it just didn’t appeal to me.” With a new solo exhibition, Photographic Etchings, opening in north London’s Cob Gallery, Davison is instead reflecting on the tactile wonders and alchemical magic of photogravure, a labour-intensive, high-cost alternative to the darkroom that lies at the heart of this exhibition.

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Jack Davison, Untitled (JD-08), 2022© the artist, courtesy of Cob Gallery

… what is it about snarling or perhaps just snapping or perhaps just skulking in a menacing way?… and depicted in a shadowy, high contrast way… see Daido Moriyama’s stray dog

Somaya Critchlow, the Artist Reconfiguring the Black Female Nude

12 of Critchlow’s new paintings and drawings are now on display at Maximillian William gallery in London, in an exhibition called Afternoon’s Darkness. A sense of the macabre lingers across these new works, in which Black women are depicted revelling in their solitude – nude, semi-nude or in costume – backdropped by dimly-lit, domestic interiors.

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Count Me Out, 2022© Somaya Critchlow. Image courtesy the artist and Maximillian William, London. Photography: Prudence Cuming Associates.

… increasingly, women artists are portraying women in ways that do invite the male gaze… the male gaze is such a convoluted gaze… is it appropriate or not in this “hashtag me too” era?… at the end of the day, we feel what we feel when we look at images of beautiful women partially or fully undressed… it’s what we do with those feelings that matters… do we treat such images as gateway invitations to the abuse of womanhood or do we simply appreciate the beauty of the female body?… have we matured as a culture?… patriarchy is alive and well… there are risks to trying to break through to a new attitude…

Henry Miller on Friendship and the Relationship Between Creativity and Community

This vital relationship between creativity and connection has been tensed and twisted in the era of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, where self-marketing so readily masquerades as “friend”-ship.

… i have all but abandoned FB and Instagram, using the former to check in with “friends” now and again and the latter to post an image here and there… i never did have much use of twitter… these days i can be found on Vero (@smbk) and Micro.blog (@mbkriegh)…

“Usually the artist has two life-long companions, neither of his own choosing… — poverty and loneliness. To have a friend who understands and appreciates your work, one who never lets you down but who becomes more devoted, more reverent, as the years go by, that is a rare experience. It takes only one friend… to work miracles.” Henry Miller

Disgruntled American Tourist Smashes Roman Busts at the Vatican

An American man visiting the Vatican threw two Ancient Roman busts to the ground in a fit of rage after being informed that he could not see the Pope, Italian newspapers report.

… ok, the headline, “Disgruntled American”?… click bait really… when i first read it, it seemed unfortunately natural to think of any American as being an angry child…

The man who vandalized the sculptures, aged 65 and apparently “psychologically distressed,” seemed to have been visiting the Vatican alone and was turned over to Italian authorities the same day. He received an aggravated property damage charge and was subsequently released.

… and then i read the bit about “psychologically distressed” and wondered why not this headline… “Psychologically Distressed Tourist Smashes Roman Busts at the Vatican”?… then we would discover the tourist was American… which fact is more important?… “American” if you think or want people to think all Americans are childish rage-holics, and “psychologically distressed” if we are talking about the general propensity in humanity for there to be people not in their right mind…

Find My Friends… an app that tells you where your friends are at any given moment in time?… beyond the obvious serendipitous being in close by places at the same time… meet up!… there are the also obvious ways this might not be a good idea…

I feel so unispired. Inspiration. Can I have some of yours?

… my wife is a huge fan of David Bowie, me, not so much, but i love Nick Cave!… and i love his Red Hand Files in which he answers questions sent to him by his fans… that he seems to have his head on really straight helps too…

In my experience, inspiration is not something that finds you, or offers itself to you, nor for that matter is faith. Inspiration and faith are similar in so far as they both ask something of us. They each require real and constant practical application. For me, inspiration comes only when I practice certain things regularly and rigorously. I must commit fully to the task in hand, sit down each day, pick up my pencil (actually it is a medium black or blue Bic Biro) and get to work. It is not exactly toiling down the coal mines, but it is labour enough, and I undertake it through the good times and the bad, through the dry periods and the periods of abundance, and I keep on going regardless of my successes or failures. Inspiration comes because I put in the work.

Blue Rev, Alvvays

The Toronto band’s third album is a triumph of power pop, a densely layered, witty, blithe, and beautiful record that sets a new benchmark for the genre.

October 07, 2022

Heather Cox Richardson, October 06, 2022

Trump’s continuing insistence that he won the 2020 election, and the Republican Party’s embrace of that lie despite the fact that Biden won by more than 7 million votes in the popular vote and by 306 to 232 in the Electoral College, says that they will never again consider the election of a Democrat legitimate.

“If you care about democracy and you care about the survival of our republic, then you need to understand—we all have to understand—that we cannot give people power who have told us that they will not honor elections,” Cheney said.

… the next two elections will be determinative about which way the country is going… democracy or authoritarianism… conservatives, don’t believe in democracy, haven’t believed in democracy for some time now… why?… because conservatism in this country is presently focused on the preservation of the power of the mostly white patriarchy and they can’t preserve their power if elections are free and fair… they are in desperate survival mode where any means justifies the end… thus, scandals like those of Herschel Walker, which would have taken down any politician just 10 years ago are no longer disqualifying… there is an absolute abasement in this desperation… the trouble is, it may prevail…

Want Lipstick That Actually Lasts? Rouge Dior Forever is the Answer

… i have a deep love of the feminine and what is more feminine than lipstick, or more important to lipstick than it be lasting?…

  1. Who should use it? Anyone who wants intense, pigment-rich matte lipstick that actually stays where it’s supposed to – there are no smears, smudges or fading here
  1. How long until I love it? Probably 16 hours after you first put it on, as one application promises to last that long
  2. How planet-/people-friendly is it? As part of Dior Beauty’s Responsible Formulation Charter, the brand aims to source all ingredients in the most socially and environmentally responsible way possible
  3. How do I use it? Make sure your lips are primed and moisturised with a good balm, then add a slick of Rouge Dior Forever and leave to dry for three minutes

Mushrooms: Cellist Zoe Keating Brings to Life Sylvia Plath’s Poem About the Tenacity of the Creative Spirit

They were the first to colonize the Earth. They will inherit it long after we are gone as a species. And when we go as individuals, it is they who return our borrowed stardust to the universe, feasting on our mortal flesh to turn it into oak and blackbird, grass and grasshopper. Fungi are the mightiest kingdom of life, and the least understood by our science, and the most everlasting. Without them, this planet would not be a world. Like everything vast and various, they shimmer with metaphors for life itself.

Viruses Are More Like Cone Snails Than Hijackers

… as i read this article, there is this growing sense of interconnectedness… that all things are connected to all other things and that the universe can only be understood as an incredibly wondrous tapestry of matter and energy and a byproduct, life… we can’t understand the parts without some comprehension of the whole… and we can never think that anything can be understood in isolation…

Viruses, like cone snails, evolve to be more like what sustains them. It is an uncomfortable form of relatedness, this predatory metabolic convergence, but it cannot be denied that it generates amazing patterns of likeness across biological kingdoms without everything having to be descended from the same line of direct genetic inheritance.

Even if something has evolved to get away from its mimic, it holds the imprint of that entity’s influence in its difference, like a shadow.

Immersing Yourself in the Works of Gustav Klimt #art #gustav-klimt #exhibitions

In the unlikely setting of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in Manhattan, seeping into the ceilings, floors, walls, and recesses of the hall, projections of Gustav Klimt’s paintings are now set on an hour-long loop. Built between 1909 and 1912, the bank’s interior retains many of its original decorative elements, which include elegant glass panels, patterned limestone carvings, and brass detailing. Contrary to what its facade seems to convey about what happens inside — mysterious and important affairs of the economy and the state — people inside are huddled and seated in clusters on the ground and on chairs in darkness, hushed and sedated by a carousing Johann Strauss waltz.

Wrightwood 659 Hosts Exhibitions on the “First Homosexuals” and Michiko Itatani

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Roberto Montenegro, “Retrato de un anticuario o Retrato de Chucho Reyes y autorretrato” (detail) (1926), oil on canvas, 102.5 x 102.5 cm, Colección Pérez Simón, Mexico

The First Homosexuals: Global Depictions of a New Identity, 1869-1930 starts with the year 1869, when the word “homosexual” was first coined in Europe, inaugurating the idea of same-sex desire as the basis for a new identity category. More than 100 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and film clips from public and private collections around the world are on view, including works that have never before been allowed to travel outside their respective countries. This groundbreaking exhibition is the first multi-medium survey of early, determinedly queer art that explored what the “first homosexuals” understood themselves to be — and how the dominant culture, in turn, understood them. This is part one of a two-part exhibition (the second is planned for 2025 and will feature 250 masterworks) developed by a team of 23 international scholars led by distinguished art historian Jonathan D. Katz with associate curator Johnny Willis.

French author Annie Ernaux has won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

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Annie Ernaux is the author of some twenty works of fiction and memoir, winner of the Prix Renaudot for _A Man’s Place_, and of the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work, and recently the winner of the International Strega Prize and the French-American Translation Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for The Years.

Annie Ernaux on the “Infinite Lack” in Our Search for Love

Anyway, what does this sign really mean, the phone call from the Latin Quarter? That he’s thinking of me? But in what way? There’s nothing more impossible to imagine than the desire, the emotion, of the Other. And yet, only that is beautiful. All I dream of is this perfection, without yet being sure of attaining it—of being the “last woman,” the one who erases all the others, with her attentiveness, her skilled knowledge of his body: the “sublime affair.”

What Stood Out, Week 32

In the world of wordsmithing:

  • I have been reading Etel Adnan’s Sea and Fog a few pages at a time. That’s how it is with poetry. I need to go low and slow. As if I am smoking a brisket, but poetically. This take on Photography stood out to me:

    Photography is akin to medieval thinking: it values the instant, is based on the microcosm, the atom which mirrors the whole, the DNA which identifies. To see is to arrest the world, to save it from submersion.

    Etel Adnan, Sea and Fog

  • I learned about Eve Babitz from this article in The Atlantic.

    Eve Babitz was one of the truly original writers of 20th-century Los Angeles: essayist, memoirist, novelist, groupie, feminist, canny ingenue.

    Babitz was four inches short of that 5 foot 11, but she had other attributes that made her presence, and her femininity, impossible to ignore. Her most explicit attempt to address this challenge was “My Life in a 36DD Bra, or, the All-American Obsession,” a piece she wrote for Ms. in April 1976.

  • And there was this interview with [Lisa Taddeo on Death, Desire and Her “Super Dark” View of the World](https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/14293/lisa-taddeo-on-her-short-story-collection-ghost-lover?utm_source=Link&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=RSSFeed&utm_term=lisa-taddeo-on-death-desire-and-her-super-dark-view-of-the-world “Lisa Taddeo on Death, Desire and Her “Super Dark” View of the World”) in AnOther Magazine.

    Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women (2019) was a work of devastating brilliance, flooring readers with its illuminating investigation of female desire. She spent eight years creating this compelling feat of literary reportage (which is currently in production as a new television series starring Shailene Woodley as the author). Immersing herself in the stories of her three subjects, Sloane, Lina, and Maggie, Taddeo moved cross-country multiple times, bearing witness to these women’s lives as they unfolded, exhaustively recording their testimony and speaking to those closest to the book’s trio of central figures. What emerged was a complex, candid, and deeply compassionate portrait of labyrinthine female sexuality.

    I purchased Three Women for Kindle. Anything to do with feminine sexuality attracts me. I expect to be titillated by it but also hope to be educated by it.

In the world of film:

  • A review of ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’

    It’s just that modern competition revolves around the ability to claim persecution: In a land of modern strivers granted wealth and power the likes of which the world has never seen, she who can lay claim to the greatest number of handicaps and the lowest number of privileges is Queen Victim.

    A competition based on the greatest number of handicaps and least number of privileges strikes me as an apt metaphor for the present moment in America in lots of ways.

  • Why Japanese Director Kinuyo Tanaka’s Films Are Criminally Overlooked

    Kinuyo Tanaka: A Life in Film, it explores the outstanding works of one of the country’s first-ever female auteurs – whose incredible and under-seen films have been newly restored in 4K. A screen icon in her own right (highlights from her incredible acting career, including collaborations with nearly all of the aforementioned filmmaking giants, are to be shown in September), Tanaka defied the male gatekeepers of the industry to carve out her own career behind the camera. She thrived in the process, delivering works that matched those of her male counterparts and often surpassed them.

    Though her directing career was short (Tanaka completed six films in nine years in total), the stories she told were vital tales of female agency and desire that were essential to the cinematic development of one of the world’s great filmmaking nations.

  • Lena Dunham’s new film, Sharp Stick, seems like a must see to me, but then I am easily sold by the promise of sex on the screen. Still, this review in Hyperallergic and the fact that its Dunham, promises humor and intelligence in addressing the subject of a young woman setting out to loose her virginity.

In the World of my daily walks:

Leaf chatter as a breeze moves through the trees. Crickets. Cicadas.

In the world of art:

I liked Lucy Johnson’s - Reality Breakdown photography series.

Lucy Johnson (b.1986) is a UK artist who works in sound and visual art. Her work explores themes of the sublime, the mundane and the absurd in the human experience. She has self published two photo zines with imprint Pearl Press and her sound work has featured in The Wire, NTS Radio, Tusk Festival, Fact Magazine and Index Festival (Yorkshire Sculpture International). Alongside soundtracking her own visual art, she collaborates with artists of different disciplines in creating audio visual projects, some of which appear on ‘Soundtracks Vol.1’, released by Opal Tapes in 2020.

  • A Show Traces Philip Guston’s Impact on Contemporary Artists - I have long been a fan.

    A Thing for the Mind at commercial gallery Timothy Taylor takes an altogether more creative approach to demonstrating influence, one informed less by strict historical evidence than by the curator’s creative interpretation based on painterly themes and similarities.

  • Two Santa Monica Artists Create a Legacy Through Potlucks

    The backyard potlucks followed a consistent formula that worked because so many people stepped up to contribute and help out. Around 6pm on a Saturday night, a long table filled up with potluck delicacies — both store bought and homemade — while a drink table was stocked with wine and beer. Jon and his tech crew would set up for the artist slideshow as Kim greeted visitors in her studio at the back of the house.

    It’s always about connecting with other people. When we connect, when we talk face to face, that makes a difference.

In the world of human rights:

  • Telling the Devastating Stories of Pre-Abortion Ireland(https://lithub.com/telling-the-devastating-stories-of-pre-abortion-ireland/)

    Decades on from the writing of Irish laws that caused the death and enslavement of women, the deaths and abduction of their babies, and the decimation of their families and communities, we are seeing similar laws being rewritten in America—the land of the free and a country that was once a sanctuary for Irish women fleeing shame and judgment in their country. And it’s slowly dawning on us that history can repeat itself if we let it. It’s down to us to tell the stories that help us to move forward, not back.

** In the world of politics:**

  • News of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago of course stands out. Of particular interest to me is this speculative line Heather Cox Richardson draws to Saudi Arabia in her August 11 Post.

    … what springs to mind for me is the plan pushed by Trump’s first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and fundraiser and campaign advisor Tom Barrack, to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

    It seems clear that items of significant national security import were illegally removed from Washington and brought to Mar-a-Lago. We don’t know why or by whom, but the presumption is 45. We know that 45 is venal so the suspicion is that the materials were to be used for profit. Or perhaps have been. There appears to have been nuclear secrets among the materials.

    I detest the very idea of 45. That so many embrace him unquestioningly is baffling and frightening to me.

  • I whole heartedly agree with this article in The Dispatch on Liz Cheney’s integrity. She is a shining example of politics with integrity. If 45 is brought down and the anti-democratic forces in this country are turned back, it will be because of her. She has changed my idea of what to look for in a politician. Integrity first, then policy. Polling makes it clear she will not be nominated by the Republican Party in Wyoming to her seat in congress. That is sad. What is it about humanity that values loyalty over integrity? I’ll take Liz Cheney any day. If she runs for president I may well vote for her because I see her as the sanest way out of the mess we are in.

  • Tilting Our Politics Back Toward Democracy

    It seemed important to quote extensively from this article in The Bulwark:

    These constant struggles over eligibility and access are part of our constitutional birthright. The beauty in the story of America is not found in an uncritical adherence to the Founders’ design but, rather, in the struggle—in various groups’ demand, often resisted by others, that our democracy be more participatory and inclusive. For those who love liberal democracy, the one thing worse than letting vox-pop stars (election deniers, for example) touch our democracy is cutting off their access to it.

    Such unchecked anti-democratic actions are made possible by the toxic partisanship driving the country apart—today’s version of the factions about which James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10. More than half of adults view other Americans as the biggest threat to their way of life. Approximately half of Democrats and Republicans view the other as immoral, and a recent study shows partisans view their political opponents as more unintelligent than immoral, more “stupid than evil” as it were. These views make it easier for people to excuse the illiberal undertakings of elected officials because such activities are deemed necessary to defeat the existential threat presented by the other side.

    In contrast to this understanding of our political history as a series of deviations from a model republic—an understanding hardly convincing for the 90-plus percent of us who would not have been permitted to vote at the time the Constitution was first implemented—there is the other understanding I described earlier, which sees our political history as a never-ending struggle over eligibility and access. This alternative understanding makes it possible to look at our system of government with clear eyes to assess whether it has tilted too far toward democracy (toward becoming a tyranny of the majority) or too far away from it (toward becoming a tyranny of the minority or of minorities). Each direction carries risks.

    But pulling off a republican democracy that puts the demos in the driver’s seat will require trust and investment in the people—not an easy undertaking given the foundation of our democratic culture. But failing to do so will ensure we get more of the type of representatives Madison warned us about in Federalist No. 10: “Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, who may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.”

    We seem to be squarely in that place now. And the election deniers winning Republican primaries and state election offices with the intent of undermining our democracy out of self-interest may soon put the ridiculousness of the vox pops to shame.

    I struggle to resist the thought that people on the far right are “more stupid than evil.” I don’t always succeed. My assessment of the situation is that they are afraid of the brave new world that could be. The Multiarchy. They loose some privileges in such a world. It’s existential. It’s sad. I hope we can come back from the brink of civil war and make constructive choices. I have good and bad days on this. Like Democracy itself in the present moment.

  • In other 45 related news, this observation from Heather Cox Richardson:

    It is an astonishing thing to see that a former president, the person who was responsible for faithfully executing the laws of our nation, has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

    Referring to his deposition in New York State this past week.

  • How Trump’s top general worried the Hitler-curious president was seeking “a Reichstag moment."

    The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”

    “Which generals?” Kelly asked.

    “The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.

    “You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.

    But, of course, Trump did not know that. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military. Kelly told Trump that there were no such American generals, but the President was determined to test the proposition.

    I remember worrying at the time that 45 would succeed in corrupting the military. It seems my worries were warranted, but then i knew that.

I think this is a good place to stop.

July 23, 2022

…232.2 lbs…

… the dogs get me up at 3:30 AM… wanted to stay in bed till 4 but… Fiona pacing the room… i think an animal was passing through our neighbor’s yard… the other day we saw a skunk family pass through… we seem to finally have secured the perimeter of our fence so Fiona isn’t getting out and animals aren’t getting in… except for squirrels…

… H has become determined to attract humming birds to the yard… we’ve had many sightings of them this year… we have flowers in the garden they are attracted to… she wants them to come to the feeders… so far, not much activity there… we have many feeders now… she is trying to find the perfect one… i hope they come to her feeders…

… we made pizza on the green egg last night… tending a fire more bearable than i would have thought in this heat… today and tomorrow are the peak of the heat wave… high 90’s… 100 predicted for tomorrow…

a story in Hyperallergic about a mural in Queens defaced by Sony Spider Man additions and now restored

… the mural, “Queens is the Future,” created by Eve Biddle and Joshua Frankel…

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an article about Abby Manzella, a micro fiction writer and host of Micro, a podcast… her 400 word piece, Lepidoptera, mentioned… a story about a little girl in the midst of a pandemic… she wakes up with butterfly wings one day… a paragraph about how she writes into her phone at night to get ideas off her mind… how this one emerged almost fully formed… i think, yes, i write into my phone… i have been trying to write more… this will be inspiration…

… this from Maria Popova in the Marginalian this morning…

By the time we can even begin answering for ourselves the question of whether or not is worth living, myriad things have been answered for us by the fundamental forces that have conspired into the confluence of chance that is our self. None of us choose the bodies or brains or neurochemistries we are born with, the time and place we are deposited into, the parents we are raised by, the culture we are cultured in. Any sense of choice we might have is already saturated with these chance inheritances and is therefore, as James Baldwin so astutely observed, part illusion and part vanity.1

… the post is about Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem, To The Young Who Want To Die… wait another day… see what’s coming around the corner… wait another day…

… i, myself, have never been suicidal… depression is not frequent with me and never very deep… i once played with suicide, as a kid, in the basement of my parents home… i made a noose… attached it to the steel beam supporting the joists of the house and carefully lowered myself to feel the noose tighten around my neck… i had no intention of swinging from the beam… i only wanted to know what it felt like… when i think back on it, i think… what if i had slipped and hung myself… the world would have thought i was sad… there would have been no clue as to why… i would have seemed a generally happy boy… i don’t think my troubles with my father had started by then, beyond his being a strict disciplinarian… there is a short story in this… i should try to write it… something involving Schrodinger’s cat… am i alive or dead?…

an article in Mother Jones about an article in Axios that H told me about yesterday… it’s about how the MAGA group plan to remake government when they get in office… fill it with cronies… and then leave the subsequent administration with the choice of doing their own cronies make over or returning to the bureaucratic state of olden times… i think, what makes them think there will be another administration if that plan is successfully carried out?… this would be the mostly white patriarchy taking over and never letting go… this would be the end of the multiarchy… oh god, why must we contend with this shit?… 45 must never be responsible for anything in government again…

an article about Pelosi’s planned trip to Taiwan and China’s threat to retaliate “forcefully.”… there seem to be so many ways the world could go sideways right now…

another review of Nope further reinforces that i want to see it… H feels the same way…

Ukraine is winning… i read the article… i nod to its arguments… it lightens my mood a bit, but, i wonder, i still don’t see the end game where Putin retreats with tail between legs… another one that could easily go sideways…

a Jonathan Blaustein review of the photobook Kyanite Miners… i don’t share his opinion of the book… it’s slick, corporate, meant to promote the mining company… it’s competent… i don’t think it is pushing any boundaries…


… Kitchen and Coffee… the handsome bleach blond dude barista… he is less personable than the women… i wonder how women customers respond to his handsomeness?… he reminds me of a young Paul Hollywood…

… as i walk down Main Street i am thinking about writing a short story about a boy toying with a noose… i am thinking that i will write multiple stories within a story, one where the boy toys with the noose, satisfies his curiosity and then takes the noose apart and goes on with his life… another in which he slips and accidentally hangs himself… others in which various plausible scenarios play out, including that he wishes to die, is not only playing with the idea of death… could be a very interesting story…

… i am liking my return to routine and structured workflow… for so many weeks things were moving all about… i was making pictures, writing, but not in the routine and rhythmic way i am now… i have started posting titled journal entries on a daily basis… each day i publish the previous day’s entry… they are Notes On Attention Paid… each day i am posting a selection of photographs taken that day… they are also Notes On Attention Paid… it’s that simple…

… on the way here, a bunch of male sexual performance enhancement packaging on the ground… i photograph all of them… one has the words “rock hard” on it… i don’t know, sounds painful to me… anyway, i am thinking today’s image post will include a number of them, may be only them…

The starting point of infinity is always at the center, where mind resides. Behind an image there’s an image. Nothingness is Being’s foundation, put on stage by poetry, which makes the erotic and the intellect meet. It’s not life, it’s alive.2



  1. To the Young Who Want to Die: Roxane Gay Reads Gwendolyn Brooks’s Lifeline of a Poem ↩︎

  2. Sea and Fog, Etel Adnan ↩︎

July 22, 2022

… 231.8 lbs…

… stayed up to watch the J6 Select Committee hearing… it detailed 45’s determination that the capitol riot should stop the election from being certified by congress… there was not a huge amount of new information, but there was more flesh put on the bones, so to speak… whether it is yet demonstrable in a court of law, it is clear that 45 wanted and motivated the insurrection and that he had control of the mob, could have ended it at any time, but only did so when he saw the gambit had failed… of particular note to me was the way in which Liz Cheney reached out to women… she praised the women, by name, who had come forward to testify and reminded women of how hard they had to fight to win the right to vote… this from Heather Cox Richardson this AM…

At the end of the hearing, Cheney praised the witnesses, especially the women. She offered special thanks to Cassidy Hutchinson, who “knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump, and by the 50-, 60-, and 70-year-old men who hide behind executive privilege,” but had courage to testify nonetheless. Cheney mentioned the female witnesses by name, saying they were “an inspiration to American women and to American girls.” 1

… and…

Speaking especially to the American women whose votes will be key to the upcoming election, she noted that the room in which they were meeting was where the committee on women’s suffrage met in 1918. We… “have a solemn obligation not to idly squander what so many Americans have fought and died for.” 2

… the committee reminded us that the threat is not over… that 45 is still trying to claim the election was stollen, still has the same devout followers enthralled and ready to go and still poses a threat to democracy…

… just posted a reply on HCR about Liz Cheney’s callout to women at the end of the hearing…

… this sculpture by Ai Weiwei is beautiful in appearance and concept…

https://i0.wp.com/hyperallergic-newspack.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/07/DSC05104-scaled.jpg?w=2048&quality=100&ssl=1

… i read this review of Nope and confirm the already growing feeling that i would like to see it…

an article on Crazy Kat and e e cummings is an intriguing read… i read it from beginning to end… one of George Herriman’s strips in the article…

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/krazyreadskrazy-scaled-e1657729370264.jpg


… as i get the coffee ready for H, i am reminded of the sugar water spill she left last night… the floor a sticky mess… i get the mop out, set it up, leave instructions for how to use it…


… i head for Kitchen and Coffee… in a leisurely way… making photographs as i go… at one corner i stop to make a picture and two women in head scarves walk out from behind the building… they stop… i did not want people in the picture… one woman walks back behind the building… the other looks after her… i decide to make the picture with the woman in it… she turns at the instant i snap the picture and looks at me… i wonder if she somehow felt the camera on her… as i was editing yesterdays journal entry i ran across this…

… i think about this… divine attracts consciousness with the power of the sea’s liquid material manifestations… without consciousness, is there any divine?… the pansychic idea that everything has awareness… material at its most basic level has awareness, even if only attraction to that which attracts and in turn is attracted… this is the base level of awareness… to “know” something is adjacent…

… i am even more intrigued by the idea that she sensed me taking the picture and turned to see… i am not sure she liked that i did, but it was at a distance…

… loud talking barista is here today, though being relatively quiet… she is wearing a grey knit top and black stretch shorts down to just above her knees… i note that she has tattoos on both arms…

… the music is soft, easy to ignore… LM barista is talking about going to the pool after work…

… Etel Adnan…

In between there was Greece and Rome, but Rome’s gods, unlike Greece’s, seem to have left for good.3

… i think about this… it rings true… so much of western civilization resting on the foundations of ancient Greece, not Rome… EA observes that God “could be absolute darkness or absolute light,” and i think the only absolute is darkness, when it happens… the absence of light, the absence of consciousness… is there such a thing?… God, EA tells me, is “born out of the fear of pain, decay, or disappearance”… i nod, but my fears don’t create god for me except as absolute darkness… i reject the existence a separate from me they are everywhere and everything all at once… it is meaningless to consider God as some kind of apartness… which is the stance of worshiping, i and thou… rather… god… like the sea, is immersion, we simply can’t separate ourselves from God, if she exists… so what is worship but a kind of arrogance of the worshiper?… there is no point in naming Gods except to name ourselves… “eternity is death’s favorite name” EA tells me… “only consciousness is life,” and consciousness ends… or does it?… yes, in any way meaningful to me here and now… but perhaps not in general…

… a mother asking her toddler Ben what number he is… ten is apparently the right answer, i don’t know why… he’s a toddler, not a ten year old, so i don’t know the significance of ten to Ben… she makes a picture of him as he says to her “ten”… maybe a short video, that would make more sense… dad seems to prefer Benjamin to Ben…


… finished editing photos taken today… ran some errands to gather food for dinner and for dogs… on the way back stopped in a friends wine store and found out their son is sick… in the hospital… doctors not sure what is going on yet… they are waiting for more test results… then he told me his daughter’s dog had cancer and nothing can be done… a bad week he said… i did my best to comfort… glad he told me about it…

… chicken duties today… will plan to get there right at 5:30 as coup is likely to be hot… don’t want the chickens to be cooped up too early… some storms in the area… may cool things down a bit…

… i am delayed in my chicken duties by a thunderstorm passing through… as i am going to the car, a lightning bolt flashes in the near distance… i go back inside and watch the progression of the storm on my weather app… when it is safe i get in the car and go…



  1. Heather Cox Richardson, July 21, 2022 ↩︎

  2. Heather Cox Richardson, July 21, 2022 ↩︎

  3. Sea and Fog, Etel Adnan ↩︎

July 19, 2022

… no alcohol last night… told myself in the morning i would not and i did not… wasn’t strongly tempted…

… storms came through yesterday… rain… H said not enough… need to up the watering time for yard… lots of fireflies in the back yard… i like to step out and watch them for a bit when i let the dogs out in the evening…

… M, B and i set up the coop for the meat chickens… we installed heat lamps even though it’s going to be in the 90’s this week… the little chicks like it around 100, so the heat lamps… will be needed at night for sure… B put on lipstick to help us… i think, “that isn’t needed,” but she thinks so, so it is…

… HCR wrote about how extreme the Republican Party is right now… she ended with some indication that it might be rebounding against them…

… Claes Oldenburg dies at the age of 93… i was not a big fan, my interests run more to rendering the sublime… but, that i have always been aware of his work says something…

Claes Oldenburg, best known for his large, playful works of everyday objects — from a clothespin and a flashlight to a baseball bat and a fried egg — died on the morning of Monday, July 18 at his home in Manhattan, where he was recovering from a hip injury last month. He was 93. The artist’s death was confirmed by Paula Cooper and Pace, the two galleries that have long represented him.

… reading a review of a book about female art monsters… Letters to Gwen John, by Celia Paul… Ceila Paul was the lover/muse of Lucien Freud… Gwen John was the lover/muse of August Rodin… both had art ambitions… Gwen John, Rodin aside, had the greater dedication it appears… she conceived and birthed a child which she promptly turned over to her mother so she would not be distracted by motherhood… Paul decided to become a mother… just now, H’s mother comes to mind…

John organized her life much like the archetypal male art monster, severing family ties and forgoing marriage and children. Any other way of life, in her view, would be antithetical to art. Just as a monk renounces earthly pleasures to access the divine, the artist sequesters herself to access genius. “Your goal was Great Art,” Paul writes to John, “and you knew you had to make sacrifices to attain it.” John would have been disinterested in — if not repulsed by — Paul’s decision to become a mother, despite the untraditional rationale behind it. Her pregnancy was an act of beneficence: “I had wanted to get pregnant so that I could comfort my mother, who was grieving for my father,” she writes.

… i have tried to be dedicated as a photographic artist… i have struggled to do that lately… i am trying to give up alcohol so the struggle is less… i am trying to get back to the creative routines that have sustained me… i am trying to overcome H’s indifference and sometimes hostility to my art practice…

… Dia art workers seeking a Union… this has become something of an epidemic in the art world… i am guessing it is much needed… unions in general seem to be resurgent…

Approximately 135 part-time and full-time workers at the Dia Art Foundation petitioned to unionize with Local 2110 UAW on Friday, July 15. Their organizing efforts are the latest in a wave that has swept cultural institutions across the nation, with recent labor developments at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

… low wages are cited though they are paid a minimum wage of $16 an hour… the article is poorly written getting some factual information wrong… like locating Storm King Art Center in Beacon, which it is not… across the river, yes… not in Beacon… did i say i live in Beacon?…

… a review(?) of a novel published 90 years ago… Now in November by Josephine Johnson… set during the great depression, won the Pulitzer Prize… youngest person to ever win the prize, one of the too few women to win it…

This is the same America that loves a good bootstrapper success story, but this trope Johnson sidesteps, focusing instead on the precariousness of working-class life, when a slip, a fall, a burn, or a broken bone can begin a slow slide, the way the cost of medical care and absence of a social safety net still sink working people today. The shame of watching others suffer without being able to help weighs heavily.

… the horridness of the extreme conservative republicans, who would do away with that social safety net and condemn poor people to servitude…

In many ways, the drought and devastation of the Dust Bowl in Now in November rhyme with our modern experiences of climate change, when a tipped electric line can send a tidal wave of flames surging across the landscape, licking hundreds of homes from the map.

… did you know the Gimlet cocktail originated, at least in part, as a treatment for scurvy?… i did not… excerpts from the book, Doctors and Distillers, The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits, and Cocktails, by Camper English…

Proposed antiscorbutics (scurvy preventatives or cures) included rice, beans, sulfuric acid, vinegar, molasses, cinchona bark, mustard, opium, mercury, rhubarb, hops, juniper berries, seal carcass oil, scurvy grass, and especially sauerkraut or horseradish. Fermented beverages like spruce beer, regular beer, and cider, plus fizzy soda water and rum punch were quite often employed. So was gargling with urine, which probably didn’t help with the foul-breath issue. Other ineffective treatments included purgatives, bleeding, sweating, bathing in animal blood, and—surprisingly often—burial of a person up to the neck in sand.

Rose’s Lime Juice Cordial is used in place of fresh lime juice in some dive bars and homes, though it contains sweeteners, preservatives, and added coloring. The ingredient was immortalized in Raymond Chandler’s 1953 book The Long Goodbye, in which a character states, “What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”

… i am amazed at how many bad mistakes i find in articles from supposedly serious places about thoughtful things… i mean, mistakes that one re-reading for editing purposes by author or other should catch… and many are articles that had no reason to be rushed to print… what gives?…

… more reading of Hannah Arendt…

… an article on inflation and climate change… it feels we are heading to a bad time on that front…

In Italy, the hot and dry conditions are expected to destroy a third of the seasonal harvest of rice, corn, and animal fodder — at a minimum. Locusts have descended on the island of Sardinia in the worst invasion in three decades, hurting the production of hay and alfalfa. The European Commission recently downgraded its soft-wheat harvest estimates from 130 million tons to 125 million tons—more bad news amid a food shortage precipitated by Russia’s blockade on exports from Ukraine. (Russia and Ukraine are among the world’s biggest exporters of grain.)

Across the world in China, a record-breaking heat wave is causing major problems. Roofs are melting, residents are relocating to public cooling zones in underground air-raid shelters, and health workers are strapping frozen food to their too-hot hazmat suits. The Central Meteorological Observatory in Tokyo has warned that the heat could further hurt the production of corn and soy, worsening inflation. These crops are used to feed pigs, and early-season failures have already sent the price of pork, China’s staple meat, soaring.

… the desktop computer still pretty slow and crashed on me once… but i got some photos edited from this morning… not a stellar batch but a few good ones…


Heather Cox Richardson, July 18, 2022

Claes Oldenburg, Whose Sculptures Transformed the Everyday, Dies at 93

Letters to Gwen, Celia Paul

“A Book About Thirst.” Josephine Johnson’s 1934 Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novel

How Trying to Find a Cure for Scurvy Led to the Gimlet

Searing Summer Heat is Driving Food Prices Higher Still

Doomsday Monument Destroyed

No end to the crazy…

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene — an avid conspiracist herself — said the stones represented a plan for population control from the “hard left.” QAnon conspiracies have also swirled around the Guidestones.

William Blake and the Stubborn Courage of the Unexampled

As an artist, he was resolutely his own standard, his own guiding sun… Blake was determined to make what he wanted to make and to make it on his own terms — in a world unready for the art and unfriendly to the terms.

Shahzia Sikander’s Radical Take on Traditional Arts

Really like this woman’s work.

Shahzia Sikander, “Separate Working Things I” (1993-95), vegetable color, dry pigment, watercolor, gold paint on tea-stained wasli paper. Private collection (© 2021 Shahzia Sikander. Courtesy the artist, Sean Kelly, New York and Pilar Corrias, London)

… the artist’s use of a traditional medium refuses neat categories of gender and nationhood, flipping assumptions of the historical past as the site of cultural authenticity.

20220421.06

https://hyperallergic.com/725593/the-beauty-of-the-ephemeral-world/

Lucy Mullican, “Floating” (2021), watercolor on board, 10 x 8 inches

Mullican works with a simple but flexible vocabulary of tubular shapes, cloud-hlike stains, ellipses, and irregular shapes, and moves between abstraction and representation. At no point did I feel that her painting became predictable.

This is fascinating…

Public Art Decreases Traffic Accidents by 17%, Report Finds

In addition to reporting the actual crash rate for these sites, the study also tracked the behavior of drivers and pedestrians, noting that both groups performed less risky behavior in areas with artworks — such as pedestrians crossing without the “walk” sign and drivers not yielding to pedestrians until the last moment. (Drivers were 27% more likely to yield to pedestrians when there was art on the road.)

20220420.03

A New Book on Niki de Saint Phalle Presents the Artist In Her Own Words

In Drug Journey, an unpublished manuscript written in 1995, Niki de Saint Phalle wonders, “Does one have to go through catastrophe to arrive at vision?”

… if the world of this day is any indication… perhaps…

The Beastliness of Bacon, Michael Glover, Hyperallergic

Francis Bacon, “Man with Dog” (1953), oil on canvas, 152 x 117 cm. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1955. K1955:3 (© The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2021. Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd)

… i had intended to share an image of a later work that seemed more visually compelling, but then i looked at Man with Dog and… after a moment… um, wow!… something really dark about the painting as, apparently, there was with Bacon himself…

… the idea that darkness of the soul is a frequent walking companion of genius is one that came up a day or two ago as H and i watched a news segment on the four part mini series We Need to Talk About Cosby, in which…

Writer/director W. Kamau Bell’s exploration of Bill Cosby’s descent from “America’s Dad” to alleged sexual predator. Comedians, journalists and survivors have a candid, first of its kind conversation about the man, his career and crimes.

… when a great creator turns out to have a parallel self that is a horrible self, what do we do with the creative legacy?… in Bacon’s case there were “sadomasochistic excesses” though there was no suggestion in the article that any of it was non-consensual… still, by most of our standards, there were demons in his psyche and those demons flowed out onto the canvas… psyche and creative output walked hand in hand… in the case of the alleged sex crimes of Cosby, one has the sense that psyche and creative are split, with the dark self a presence lurking outside a comfortable suburban home, peeping through windows, stalking its next victim…

20220213-03

Brenda Goodman’s Fearless Self-Portraits, John Yau, Hyperallergic

_ Brenda Goodman, “Self-Portrait 1” (1974), oil, mixed media on canvas, 60 x 48 inches_

Brenda Goodman has been defining a singular path in painting at least since 1973, when she had her first exhibition in Detroit. From the paintings done around this time, it is immediately evident that Goodman was uninterested in either aligning herself with any of the styles going on around her or in making polite, palatable views. That early testimony to her fearlessness — which is still going strong — is apparent in the eight works done between 1974 and 2006 in the exhibition Brenda Goodman: Self-Portraits at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (January 11 – February 12, 2022).

Love this woman’s work…

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