This ought to be required viewing for any midwest-based landscape painter.
A little off-topic, but…(James Howard Kunstler)
January 27, 2008 by Sam K
Posted in Not Painting | Tagged city planning, design, entertainment, james howard kunstler, suburbia, technology, TED | 47 Comments
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i can’t get this thing to play, so what i am about to say is completely uninformed… but, i did read the little blurb to the right of the video and it reminded me of something i read once about how in the future, we are most likely going to have to de-revolutionize…in a regressive type of way, back to an agrarian type of lifestyle: in order for sustainability…once the masstransport of goods and services is no longer feasible due to energy expenditure. and, this will subsequently mean the break-up of cities. sorry for the lengthy run-on sentence.
You may just need to update your flash player. When I wrote this post, I was on some older computer generously designated for adjunct prof’s. I knew where the video was, but it wouldn’t play until I downloaded flash.
You’re on the right track… Kunstler’s emphasis is more on how bad city planning leads to public spaces where the public would have no desire to congregate, or where it’s not possible to be a pedestrian…in his words, “places not worth caring about.” I don’t think he’s seeing the end of the ‘city’ as a place to gather, necessarily.
You call it “off topic” but actually I think there might be a strange resonance between Kunstler’s talk and Dan Gratz’s drawings below. As you said “required viewing.”
Not to mention useful information for anyone who thinks ‘space’ isn’t an important consideration in making something (paintings or otherwise).
Yeah, I think it’s suburbia that’s more egregious than the cities, all that space in between people, all the energy and natural resources it takes to feed them, clothe them, drive them around, power their laptops…oops, feeling guilty here…
That’s what really struck me about this video. I was one of the legions of ‘neutron-bomb’ cityscape painters, and I had no idea why, other than that’s what I saw.
Y’know, I almost wonder if there’s not a new argument to be made for the neutron bomb painters. I’m planning a follow up post with a couple of those types.
the notion of absence or displacement is kind of a paradoxical sort of thing. when i was at pratt, the idea of “the absent human” or “missed human presence” was a ubiquitous theme among many of the kids in the program with me – even those intent on painting figures. in one way or another we bump into these ideas all over the art world – today i was re-looking at some manuel neri works and thinking about the simultaneous passage, presence, and disappearance that takes place in his work. so on the one hand it’s sort of an easy theme to come to and feel at home in, and at the same time it’s really fertile and somehow vital to our human experiences.
basically i’m saying that i think i love those neutron-bomb paintings, too. i think a lot of folks read them as a cop-out, but there is an interesting resonance to them; that negative pressure of the space between relations. the universe keeps expanding at faster and faster rates…
When suburban sprawl gets me depressed I try and think of it as nothing more than a visible manifestation of democracy and capitalism. It almost becomes interesting in its crudeness, in its brute concerns with efficiency and money, with the bottom line, with no guidelines of taste, other than the desire to grab people’s attention. In other words: it is ugly, but represents a truth or a belief system, that I would argue, is not all bad.
Sometimes I wish the architecture in the cities and suburban areas of the US were more uniform, as one finds in some European cities like Vienna. But those cities were built by monarchies, no? And this probably explains the uniformity of design.
In the US, the design (or lack thereof) reflects the “every man”, chasing the dollar. It is crude and pragmatic, devoid of taste and uniformity. Perhaps there is a beauty to this vapidity? I don’t know if I would go that far. But I do think that everything is dual in nature, and we always have to take the bad with the good…. in our efforts to create more efficient
goods and services, something gets lost…and as we become more comfortable, we become more alienated from each other, no?
this guy stressed me out with all his yelling and cynical quasi-humor. i did not feel like he was proposing a whole lot of solutions to the issue.
all i have to add to this discussion is that i have been baffled by the midwest’s notion of living space and suburbia since i moved here from NH. buildings in the northeast tend to be a lot older and therefore you see fewer pre-fab, factory-model looking homes. also, you rarely encounter farmland that has been cannibalized for middle-income suburban communities…(those always freak me out because they have no trees). the point being: there is a direct correlation to my sense of mental health when i go home for a bit compared to when i am here for an extended period of time…i feel better there.
of course, it is a whole lot more rural there…so i might be one of those ignorant saps who still thinks that nature is some sort of paradigm. i know it doesn’t work for urban living. i just think cities and i don’t jive in general.
i do remember the first time i drove out to IN from NH. i wondered what land of giant truck-stops and XXX adult stores i had wandered into. Also, there are a whole lotta bilboards here. that really struck me too.
addendum:
it is actually not a whole lot more rural there…it is just different rural. it feels smaller and more closed in, but in a positive sense (think: nesting).
and this guy took his shot at boston, but i just have to say, boston is way charming.
now i can’t seem to stop thinking about this in light of the ‘neutron bomb’ paintings. sam, you seem indifferent to having painted them…was it a formalist thing…like, it was all just the structure and the light and stuff? and matt alluded to really liking them, as in they were a metaphor for some sort of metaphysical condition.
everyone can scream and cry and bitch about the next thing i am going to say, but, i really have always felt that most of the people doing those neutron bomb paintings are men. could gender have some sort of something to do with this? cause i always felt really turned off to those paintings. like i was adverse to them specifically because they were alienating, and they made me feel more keenly alienated from my own surroundings. and girls (blame biology) tend to like to ‘nest’. and maybe it gets in our way to the point that we develop some sort of myopia in terms of being able to even wrap our brains around any sort of commentary that those paintings might be alluding to. ugh. i can’t believe i am going to post this.
please, please prove me wrong.
yer totally right jen.
embrace biology.
but really, yeah, maybe it’s a gendered thing. nothing wrong with that.
just to push back a bit – not denying jen’s thoughts here, just interested – i’m wondering if starkness and emptiness and the tension of existential emptiness are gendered, what might be the opposite end of the equation?
there’s kind of a starkness to susan hauptman’s drawings, but it’s still in this sort of empathically personal context. susanna coffey is similarly stark, but she’s got a sense of internal focus going on (this is in contrast to the outgoing effervescence of julie heffernan).
are there examples of still, closed, vacant paintings by women?
hauptman: http://www.forumgallery.com/current_off1.php?id=68
coffey: http://www.susannacoffey.com/
heffernan: http://www.ppowgallery.com/artists/JulieHeffernan/
They were absolutely not formalist paintings. I don’t necessarily want to get into a big discussion about what art is for or what it does, but I do think that one role that art serves is to reconcile us to things we don’t understand. I was interested in painting relatively unpeopled cityscapes because they were there. You know, if we lived in Bologna, it’d be all subtle-but-rich yellows and reds, but we don’t–here we get pavement grays and billboard yellows.
I don’t dispute that it’s kind of a boy’s club, because it kind of is, just like certain video games and genres of music and whatever else. We’ve probably all got some long-ago useful genetic inheritance that doesn’t easily find purchase in the day to day.
I will say that I think there’s something deeply wrong with this kind of cityscape, and the closest thing I can think to compare my own attraction to it as a subject would be, say, grindcore bands making music about corporate industry destroying humanness, while the music itself is brutally compressed and almost machine-like. Incidentally, grindcore is pretty dude-dominated as well.
That those paintings get made by so many people, unaware of each other, does mean something, and it will be easier to parse out that meaning in years to come. A comment on bad city planning, maybe, but also, questioning about what painting is. We stand on all this accumulated knowledge, tradition, whatever you want to call it, and while there may be some feeling of duty to sustain it, there may also be an urge to negate it. Or at least say something about what it’s like to be alive now, something really serious. I guess I’m just not as ‘serious’ as I used to be…or, to put it another way, existentialism is kinda dorky anymore, but so am I, so it’s almost a guilty pleasure.
Also, one other thing, more directly relative to the Kunstler video. When I moved to Fayetteville in ’05, I lived for a couple of months at a friend’s house. He’d just bought the house with a mind to rent it out, a real estate investment (and eventually did). It was in a new suburban development, where all the houses look almost the same and are unusually packed-in, where the yards are ridiculously tiny, where I felt like I might have a panic attack pretty much all the time. I heard, at a community-minded city planning lecture that fall, the way that people sell this kind of house is by talking about square footage. Like that’s the most important thing. Like it’s a bargain if you get a lot of it, even if it’s shitty.
Here in Columbia, we have one of the better examples of the the suburban what-the-fuck: south of campus there is an empty Wal-Mart, literally next door is an active Wal-Mart and down the street is a sports arena named after a Wal-Mart heiress who made national news a few years back when it was learned that she had paid her college roommate to write all her papers for her.
I really like those Sarah McKenzie paintings.
I second that. Those paintings are bad ass. She is painting from photos, I assume? How is she getting her arial shots?
See– you learn something everyday, ’tis true. Today I learned that I do not know how to spell “aerial”.
Oh, that gives me an idea for a McLaughlin-style pun: A bird’s-eye-view painting of the word ‘font’, sans serif.
Har har! Augenzwinkern.
Well, I guess I’m going to throw in on this as well, but I’m not a painter and can’t really respond with the incredibly articulate nature with regards to visual art that you guys can. But, living in a place now, Santa Barbara, CA, where the main thoroughfare is essentially a corporatized aesthetic meant to draw people in through commerce (and we have a lot of it here, but little is local. Think high-end boutiques: Anthropologie, The Levi’s Store, Juicy Coiture, etc). I’m a writer by trade and what astonished me was that once I moved downtown here and started walking daily through these shops, my writing became what I refer to as “window-shopping writing” meaning episodic, tied together by a central character and ultimately devoid of a specific place. The task then for me was to find that place where these episodes could fit together. I think Jean Baudrillard has a lot to say about how Americans deal with public spaces and how we tend to create islands of fantasy (he uses the idea of los angeles, with it’s proximity to magic mountain, disneyland, etc) in order to conceal the fantasy that occurs everyday on our main streets, namely the fantasy of economics. I remember too, a discussion I once had with a very prominent set designer who railed against the gargantuan civic arts spaces (the Performing Arts Center in Tulsa or even the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA) and how we had turned the access to art into something that lives in a fortress. I was stunned when visiting Poland last summer how many theaters were on street level and how accessible galleries and other arts spaces were from the street. In Santa Barbara, they’ve managed to do that, but at what cost, I wonder.
I’ve never quite understood the whole museum=fortress equation. What’s the deal there, Americans? Not the right building size to ground level parking lot ratio? A museum is less of a fortress than a Costco (no membership required). A museum is less of a fortress than a Bass Pro Shop (all those guns, you could overthrow Poland with the guns in a Bass Pro shop).
It’s interesting to read all the different interpretations of the Kunstler video. The comments thus far seem to be asking some really different questions. Is it about urban spaces or suburban spaces? Is it about needing more space between people or less? Is efficiency positive or bad (because it’s ‘Corporate’?) What kind of spaces are the nice kind of spaces?
I’m still kind of curious too about Jen’s thoughts about the gendered nature of artwork that deals in a highly formalist manner with the wasteland aspect of suburbia. Anyone have any other thoughts in light of Sarah McKenzie’s work? Thinking about what Jen wrote, those paintings do seem warmer and more charming than the paintings of that kind of stuff by the boys that I can think of.
I kept hoping that someone other than the boys might jump in on this one…Sloane? Jamie? I know there are a few others out there…
Last thing, I see in McKenzie’s statement that she calls herself a formalist, Jessie Fisher keeps calling exhibits “Aesthete.” Sam, I still think there’s a new take on Formalism out there, it’s just not the old boy’s club version.
I don’t think Formalism is a boys’ club. Just that the plein-air parking lot genre was pretty male-dominated, as I remember it.
McKenzie’s older paintings remind me of Gerhard Richter. Specifically, one I’ve seen at the St Louis Art Museum, a black and white bird’s eye view of suburbia.
They’re ‘warmer’ because her color is really good. I don’t see gender playing into it significantly.
McKenzie’s project, in relation to other painters of suburbia, would seem to parallel Yvonne Jacquette’s in relation to painters of city scenes 20 years ago.
I don’t know what to say when someone talks about color in terms of Good/Not Good. Does it have no more relation to the intent or a result of the painting than that?
you know, the gendered thing in art is so difficult for me to talk about. i guess it’s one of those things that i feel an unsaid pressure not to acknowledge, but it is also something that i can’t help but be aware of. i really find myself pushing female artists all of the time (on my students: as images and inspiration) because i just feel sort of depressed by the disparity of representation. and as an undergrad i remember feeling like i was only ever taught and only ever looked at male artists…and it way-bummed me out. and i just want my female students not to feel that way. so i am probably hyper-aware and not always to the benefit of myself or others.
however, on the other side of that coin is this: there are a lot of ‘hot’ young female artists getting a lot of air time right now. but, they are young…and they are hot. and shit, what does this say? the art world has spiraled into the fashion world, has spiraled into the music world, has spiraled into the movie world…and where does this leave these celebrity-esque presences in 15 or 20 years from now? in the same ghetto as washed up models? i am not trying to denegrate their art. i think it is usually really good. this is more of a critique of the audience: the people looking at them and wanting them. i think people are more willing to look at a package that includes sex-appeal as part of the deal.
i really did not mean to imply that sam was in some way typecast into some sort of male genre of robo-painting. and i really liked his explanation about what compelled him to make those paintings.
it’s weird, that type of painting feels really traumatic to me. traumatic as an experience. much more so than anything that is overtly laced with emotion. for me at least, i keep coming back to the impenetrability factor. they are obtuse. they bounce you back on yourself a bit. i have a difficult time sensing ‘the other’ (meaning the artist). and this is all my own stuff…what i tend to want out of paintings and how i feel dependant on whether or not i am able to get it.
i also can’t help but observe certain trends just in my day to day life. this blog for instance: mostly male. also for instance: last night my drawing II class was drawing from the model. and i had them warm up with a sort-of-blind contour exercise. and then we did a couple of extended drawings where we were doing a sort-of transparent construction line approach…very analytic and all sighting and measuring. and i might be crazy, but when i do two sort of antithetical things like that, i really do see gender emerge. like who gets what first. and who seems to value what. the women do seem more comfortable in the blind-contour exercise and the men seem more comfortable and more engaged when they are analyzing.
and this is NOT a blanket statement. and i don’t want it to read as such, though it probably does.
[…] AMOA, anyone else you think might benefit, and of course you, need to check out this video. [via] I found it pertinent to Austin, you might […]
once i get to mouthingoff about things it is all inertia and no brakes:
to be straightforward: i think part of my compulsion to keep writing into this thing has to do with the fact that i think you guys need a female voice. i am pretty sure there are other females out there that have read this blog and get turned off to it specifically because it seems like a diatribe of male voices. no offense. i think debating is fun and i am comfortable in the debate format.
but, normally, if i didn’t know who you guys are in real life, i might reject this sort of thing for the same reasons i suspect other women might.
it was a strange experience come upon this blog in the way i did: kind of accidentally finding an in-progress discussion that was going on between 3 males, about one of my paintings. and that is fine and all…that is what blogs do. but, i found it unsettling. like, i was being summed up without my knowledge of it. and it felt like there was a peculiar form of voyeurism attached to it. and a little bit like i was a novelty or something. and in my head, it definately had a gendered slant. and Chris, i say this with respect (and this really is not personal, as much as it is a head’s-up), but, would you ever say to someone like Sam, “That’s sharp stuff, Mr. King!”
this is paranoia and it is a slippery slope.
i often find the tenor of male admiration difficult to sift through in terms of what the implications are. as in: i am suspicious of it. and i think i am not alone in feeling this. and it really is a double-bind. cause i am so over being a feminist. and i hate the cliché. but…
Chris–Sorry for the “good color” comment –was being too general, rushed. I meant ‘warm’ as appetite-inducing, as the color red is so often purported to be, and, to follow through, these paintings have a real palatability in spite of what might be considered a rigid or even depressing subject, and I think it’s because, at least in part, their color is spot-on great.
I wrote “Man, that is a hell of a painting” because that was how I reacted to it–I was really impressed. BUT I didn’t mediate it through my usual talk filters or participate in the Tiepolo part of the discussion, so I’m sorry if that rang out like that’s all I thought about it. That wasn’t intentional.
Do you mean what I paint or what I write, regarding the ‘sharp stuff’?
no, you didn’t say that, chris said it.
and don’t misinterprete my interest in this as annoyance. it really isn’t. just interest. more a discussion that i am interested in as a reflection of gender-theory and artmaking. just like i am interested in art making and art-reception related to other theories (like post structuralism or something in the line of that.)
and i was asked to continue the thread of the gender thing. and i got off topic, but the stuff i was bringing up is really the most salient part of how i personally experience gender as germane to artmaking as a female.
in many ways we make the experience that we have. things happen to us in as much as we let them – that’s not a cop out, that’s an empowerment. yeah, we do get exposed to certain things more than others. the thing is, at least for me, the vast majority of my instructors and fellow-students (and now, students) have been women. so when i was at pratt and the art institute of chicago i was exposed to a very even range of artists – black, white, asian, male, female, high, low, old, and young. at IU, sure, barry was a very strong presence, but my conversations with eve did as much for me as did my talks with barry. the internal pressure to do well and prove myself as a painter came from my own comparisons of my work to yours, jen, as well as mel lowrance and eva spear. so, basically, i’m just saying that my own formative experiences were at least as affected by female artists as male; in many cases, i think the women did more for me.
now that’s not to throw you a bone, jen, or really to throw anyone a bone. it’s just my own impression of my own life.
…and while i do feel a pressure to expose my students and friends to traditionally underrepresented artists, my main goal is to be a ADVOCATE for the students themselves. yeah, i project my likes and dislikes, and feel that pressure to do certain politically correct things, but the biggest thing for me is to find out what they could use and present it.
For the record: Since I did get namechecked above: I did find a “Very cool, Mr. King!” in a recent email; another ‘sharp’, a couple other ‘cool’, several ‘neat’, ‘good stuff’ and wow!’. I really hope anybody reading this sees me as a peculiar form of dork rather than a peculiar form of voyeur…
It’s funny…until this discussion I never really thought about neutron-bomb painting as a kind of genre thing, like horror movies or zombie movies, or acid rock. That it might be something for which I could feel nostalgia (maybe because I’ve intentionally made so much of my life a crusade against nostalgia).
there should be more forms of peculiar types of dorks. which is what i perceive us all to be…not voyeurs…although, that word is so much more snappy.
maybe i can be a peculiar type of voyeur and you all can maintain yourselves as peculiar-dorks.
i sense that i started a little fire-storm with my last tirade. i have foot-in-mouth disease. something anyone who knows me well comes to understand. i should come with a public warning.
but seriously, i think there were some poor choice of word/timing issues in my writing. for the record: i am used to being able to discuss pretty inflammatory topics. and i think these can be discussed very cooly or as they hit us on a personal level. i tend to do the latter.
and really, i am very interested in this phenonmenon of the internet in general. the way i described seeing myself through the discussion concerning my painting was a description of seeing myself as not myself for a minute. that is weird and i think about it all the time in general. i was thinking about it when we were all discussing barry’s paintings. what his perception of that would be if he were to happen upon it… and in that moment, yes, i was considering myself to be a type of voyeur. and per usual (being female) that voyeurism was being channeled through a gendered filter. the internet is really one big experiment in this type of compartmentalized existence: real time/space/identity vs. something not so tangible.
but, anyone who looks at my paintings long enough can clue into the fact that they deal with the exact things i was bringing up in both of those lengthy comments. Gender-identity and identity as a projection of interaction with other people is a pretty prevalent theme. so, i tend to blab about it. cause i think about it. but, i should filter the way i use language a little bit better. sorry guys.
and the other thing: that last comment by matt was really well-put. teaching is tough. it is tough to find that line between being perscriptive and being innovative.
here’s an interesting piece i saw today on this general topic:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2008/01/the_connection_between_art_and.html
thoughts, comments, ideas?
**Cecily brown was once more featured in a column in Vogue this month. And she attended a shindig in New York…any mention of her paintings? Nope**
self as object…
because, i think, for one it is a commentary on just that. objectification. also on ownership. women are pretty accustomed to being objectified. doing it to yourself is sort of like a statement of ownership over it —> which is more enabling than having someone else do it.
also, historically, if a woman wants to exercise power, she uses sexuality. because it works. doing this in an artistic vein also perfectly sums up this type of double bind: female sexuality is always at issue…even in situations when male sexuality would warrant no consideration or thought. if you gain power via sex, then the precedent is set according to the idea that your sexuality is linked to your power. either you are bewitching/beautiful or you are bullish/unwomanly. and as a woman there is the public expectation that one of these two characteristics will reveal itself.
rarely, unless a man’s sexuality overtly deviates from the norm, will it be linked into our perception of his ability or his acuity within his profession. note: i am not saying that sex doesn’t get in the way of men in a professional sense: bill clinton got himself into trouble. but, we hired him in the first place. hillary, on the other hand, faces a different set of obstacles to even getting into office…much less the scrutiny she would face if she were to be hired. (this is not a statement of my political preference)
the private and public world for men are traditionally separate. the private and public world of women are often one and the same. just think of over how much of the historical timeline women’s professions have been their homelives. it is a difficult expectation to undo quickly. historically the same avenues of attaining power are not open to both men and women.
next: it makes people look. and i am not so sure they would look at the artist’s work as closely if there weren’t the titillation factor of knowing that the work IS the artist. they would go out and by a copy of maxim instead.
women aren’t dummies. and i can’t imagine that showing their naked bodies is anymore narcissistic or ego-affirming than overthrowing and bombing small nations to smithereens is (and certainly not as destructive to others).
Andrea Kirsh’s piece on Fallon and Rosoff is not as inflammatory as the link matt provided above, but there’s a little more context provided than guardian piece: http://fallonandrosof.blogspot.com/2008/01/womens-work.html
so, since there was some criticism of kunstler for being overly negative and short on solutions…anybody got any positive thoughts? i’m even curious, between bullish and bewitching, is there any evidence of a third way?
i was having a conversation about hillary clinton’s candidacy, which has definitely had to deal with that too woman-y/not woman-y enough issue (how is anyone who’s paying any attention able to think that hillary clinton would be soft on defense?), and wondered if the conversation would be the same if it were ann richards running. or
sloane and i have been emailing about this one a bit so i’ve got a few thoughts…
this is really a difficult arena of concern. i fully expect that there will be some pretty interesting studies written in the near future about this, just in terms of how it works in the artworld proper and how what’s been a part of the theory for the last three decades might be reexamined.
it’s already begun: last year two major shows (“Global Feminisms” and “WACK!”) analyzed some of this. and the truth is that there have been a LOT of women pushing back in the way germaine greer does in that article i linked. my wife (double major in sociology and economics from northwestern) recently read a book called “female chauvinist pigs: women and the rise of raunch culture” that takes a stab at the issues from a more socio-historical view. there is a large demographic of older women who just can’t reconcile all that they fought for to the average projected image of women in western society today. there are times when one has to ask what has actually been gained because (based on what i’ve read, heard, seen, and talked about with women of several generations) we’re living in an era where younger women really have had a true opportunity for self-direction and self-qualification. so i think that mentality is spilling through different arenas of culture.
as jen says above, i think a lot of the reason that women have engaged in so much body imagery in general and imagery of their own bodies in particular is a sort of foundational “naming and claiming” activity, if i can use that wording. part of the annoyance with the male gaze is its implicit contention of ownership or at least jurisdiction. i think that – just on a purely human level – women have been extending their gaze at bodies and presenting their visions of bodies as a really forceful, controlled projection of both claim and definition.
all that said, does this explain why brittney and paris and lindsay display their genitals to scores of waiting cameras? nope. but i do think it’s at least PART of the reason for the body-phenomena taking place within the more considered and densely-layered artworld.
in terms of solutions… what exactly do we mean by that? i’m not certain i totally understand the full/true parameters of the issue anyway. i sense tensions and read the impressions of others, but i don’t know that gives me a real idea for “solution.”
hhrmm… maybe i need to go re-read some camile paglia…
hah! nearly in the same sentence i said women aren’t dummies i also wrote the word ‘by’ instead of ‘buy’.
i think that just having more discussion about how art can link into the world in a larger sense is positive. rather than everything being so insular and about painting painting painting.
i never intended to suggest that hillary would be soft on defense. more that most of the historical blowing up of things has been done by men and not women.
for christmas, my parents’ neighbors got a nut-cracker…a little plastic effigy of hillary (you put the nuts between her legs)
they had it out at the holiday party…next to the nut bowl…i guess in the usual place for a nut-cracker.
i think i am going to go de-blog for awhile. happy painting everyone!
I think a big part of fixing the problems Kunstler describes isn’t going to be massive gutting-and-rebuilding of entire towns, but rather, the better devising and execution of sound city planning. This is what Fayetteville is doing. Northwest Arkansas has been population-booming for a while now, and they intend to do it the smart way. And the green way.
There is real risk in drastic, immediate change. Risk of unexpected complications and long-term consequences. Too bad patience and thoughtfulness are so uncool…
I think this line of thought overlaps both threads of the discussion. Yes, of course celebrity-worship will embrace sex and money. Legions of unwitting Ignatius Reillys are revolted/fascinated.
hello – matt showed me the discussion you all were having here, and although i certainly don’t have the painting background that you do, from a sociological perspective this is all fascinating to me. so, i hope you don’t mind, i thought i might throw in my two cents and, in the meantime, also add another female perspective, at least on this thread…
i like what jen was saying above about males/females, sexuality, etc. it seems to me that we perceive a much greater link between female subjects and sexuality versus male subjects and sexuality. if paintings include nude males, they are not immediately seen in a sexual context, whereas i think the instinct when viewing art that contains nude females is to jump to a sexual read. in my mind, that’s part of what prompts things like the article matt linked above and the general discussion about why female artists would use themselves as subject matter – the implication seems to be that they are objectifying themselves in a way that men who paint themselves are not. men seem to be seen more as subjects in artwork, women as objects.
i know matt often bases his male figures in his paintings at least loosely on himself. so, not to hijack your thread, but i’ll throw a question out there for you artists, is there a difference then between that and jen using herself as a starting point for the female figures in her paintings, or for other male/female artists in general?
Hey, can I ask folks to hold off answering Allison’s question? It’s a really valid one, that I know I have kicked around in my mind fairly often. I’m sure that several of us are ready to jump in here. But. Tomorrow, I’m going to post a work by a male artist working with self-portraits, so that might be the place for that discussion. Is that okay?
hey–man…lots of stuff.
first, i don’t think germaine greer likes women.
“The woman who displays her own body as her artwork seems to me to be travelling in the tracks of an outworn tradition that spirals downward and inward to nothingness.”
wtf?
its hard to come up with subject matter. the constant stream of self-editing is paralyzing enough without the external pressure to pick something that doesn’t spiral downward and inward to nothingness.
i don’t know about the sexualization of female nudes. what i mean to say is i don’t know if i actually see it, men’s paintings or women’s. i mean, there are notable exceptions, some of currin’s work, some of balthus (he gets sort ofa pass for denying it til he died because who am i to judge), fragonnard, et. al but other than that, as much as i have felt pressure to see it, i don’t see it. i also don’t really see phalluses all over the place. for crying out loud, how many cylinders are there? they can’t all be phalluses. but that is the business of art history–the rampant handing down of unsupportable generalizations.
i want to talk about what its like to be a painter who doesn’t want to talk about being a woman. to be honest, i forget i’m a woman most of the time. that is to say i’m not concious of it. i read things about women artists and i feel just as disconnected from them as i do from frogs. maybe even more so. it’s like watching tv shows that purport to be about women’s issues when really they’re about mother’s issues or wive’s issues or people taking care of aging family’s issues. women as an umbrella term is inside out and has a great big hole in it. i am definitely NOT going to worry make responsibility to my genitals part of the process in choosing what i make work about or my estimation of anybody else’s choices.
that said, there are some times when i have felt gender differences in communication including and maybe especially regarding differences of opinion about art. in grad school the group discussions we had were so frustrating for me and the other women in the group because in so many instances some of the men in the group would talk louder and longer when their points were challenged, not adding to content, just wearing everybody out. in this type of situation, if you are female and your way of talking is to wait for cues to someone’s point being through and then make your own and you’re sitting there in the middle of rocket-fire pontification, by the time you get your voice in you’re really pissed off and everybody thinks you’re psychotic.
re: kunstler, i got through half of it and stopped caring.
i liked the smiley face water tower. i grew up in a place with a big street like the one whose he’s railing against . i didn’t think it was the spanish steps but hell, i grew up there, and i remember driving down it all by myself with on intoxicated on freedom and the fine young cannibals. so even though i know what he actually means, ‘not worth caring about.’ is reductive and obnoxious.
Anyone interested in picking up the self-portrait thread can go here.
This comment section seems like a plot point from a Kurt Vonnegut book. Like somewhere in the middle of all this is a prophetic message about aliens crash landing in 14th century Bologna and encoding a message in the urban planning that the rest of their war-mongering race recieved sometime during the Enlightenment. And now they are on their way to kick some earthling ass (and their would be some prurient twist in here involving a race of Amazons, or the 1st major female presidential candidate was a sex-starved alien scout). And there’s just one 10 year old with a ridiculous name in suburban Tulsa who sees the prophetic message while the rest of the readers and commenters keep overlooking it, even though it’s right in their face the whole time.
have you got that kid’s e-mail address?
He’s making an awkward and teary phone call to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon as we speak. “but will ma and pa be okay, mr.?”
God save us all…