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New York, 6:26 AM
Fri Dec 4
53 posts in the last 24 hours
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04:23 AM
Of course it's art. Art is anything that's been made with aesthetic intent. There. Simple definition.
Yet people continually go on about what does and does not qualify as 'art', as though there were some elusive quality of 'artiness' that we're all struggling to grasp. What's implicit to the question is the idea that art is somehow special or sacred or whatever; that true art is imbued with 'importance', so we shouldn't accept that just anything may be 'art'.
Bullshit. Most 'art' sucks. And too much bad art gets away with sucking because it qualifies for some standard of artiness that other art does not, no matter how good it may be, and is therefore out of the reach of critical assessment.
Art isn't special by virtue of being art. It's only special by virtue of being good, if and when it is. The question, 'is this art?' needs to be replaced by the question 'is this good art?'
Most of the time the answer's 'no'. When the answers 'yes' then that should be acknowledged independently of any other criteria.
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06:18 AM
For instance, yesterday, I posted a handful of links to my own blog about a couple of artists who made "funny" or designed notes and mailed them to everyone in a Pittsburgh neighborhood.
Photos of all the notes are posted to the artist's blog, but they said somewhere in their press that the actual collection of notes or the letters themselves isn't the art, and nowhere do they claim that mailing them to an entire neighborhood or their goal of mailing one to everyone in the world is the art, but instead, they repeatedly say that "the art work consists solely of the discussion between the recipients".
Apparently this is these artists' intent, but do I have to accept that it's their art?
01:33 AM
I know this is akin to admitting that I'm a serial killer or a pedophile but...yes, I watch soap operas. I started watching them at my momma's knee when I was a kid and have continued with the habit through college, grad school, and now adult working life. I DVR One Life to Live and General Hospital, and watch them, sometimes on ffwd, on the weekend or every other weekend when folding laundry or the like.
But my point is....Franco kind of has a point about the meta aspect of his performance. He plays a mysterious artist named Franco, and yeah, much of the time I've watched his scenes I've thought "this is James Franco playing a guy on a soap named Franco." And it's almost impossible to watch him in the role without being acutely aware that this is a famous movie actor playing a famous artist on a show. It does add another layer of interest to the show.
I think he also has a point about the critically legitimate thing. Yes, soaps are outrageous and silly in many ways. But having "big time movie star" Franco playing against these other soap actors brings home the point that (1) many of these actors on these shows are just as good as him and (2) are not playing roles that much more outrageous than roles Franco has played in other films.
So yeah, I do think it makes (some) people question whether soaps are less critically legitimate. Of course, other people just think it's a soap so why care.
05:47 AM
The clips they have posted on Jezebel, the one above and the one the other day on .tv, all say hey - look at James Franco - he's on a soap and now with the op-ed, he's pulled himself further from the context.
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I will make a gross generalization and say that I was probably the only person at the gallery, not counting the staff, who had any professional connection to the art world. In fact, I AM counting the gallery staff. Nothing personal and I’m sure they’re all sweeties, but Half Gallery is an art gallery the way the way James Frey is a novelist or Olivier Zahm is an artist or the hideously decorated lounge down the street where the bill for a jalapeño martini came to $35 is a bar. Short version—they’re not. (The longer version has to do with pornographic simulacra, and it’s just too early in the morning, kids.)
But surely there is something to the pictures as pictures? Let’s see. Naked female bodies on glossy antique furniture in underlit or unlit but luxurious spaces, the bodies splayed, prone, leaping, the faces either obscured or out of the shot altogether, one girl, shot from the waist-down, squatting to pee into what looked like a highball glass. Zahm may take a photograph with his whole self, but he denies his subjects theirs.
This type of thing was last shocking…actually, to a certain class of people, this was never shocking. Think Warhol, think the Surrealists, think Zola, think Beardsley, think Courbet’s "Origin of the World," hell, think The Venus of Urbino, or Bronzino’s less well-known but fascinating nude portrait of Cosimo I de’Medici, an upright musical instrument in Cosimo’s hand taking the place of an erect penis.
These are ostensibly pictures of sex, but they are also pictures of class—the bohemian ultra-rich (and their hangers-on) for whom limits are there to be transgressed. None of the young ladies I saw in Zahm’s pictures are recognizable—so their collusion with his art costs them nothing. It’s a rumor, an intrigue, a liaison sans danger. Tee-hee-hee, I peed in Daddy’s highball glass—hush! Nanny mustn’t know! Note Zahm’s refusal to share his porno sites with Somaiya—for someone who claims that sex is life, he’s eager to brandish a closed door in another man’s face.
To put it bluntly, Stipe had the right idea. These are pictures that those who want to be seen are desperate to be seen not looking at. Blasé is the new dandyism.
By the way--hi James! Hope your shiny little toy make-believe gallery churns along and gives you some hot downtown cred! Personally I think this as likely as the reemergence of the whalebone bustle. But whatever floats your flab.
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Me being the Rolls Royce outside.
11/24/09
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11/24/09
+10 points for Goatse mention.
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11/24/09
In New York state, men and women have equal rights. Therefore, there is not a single law that specifies that something can be done by men, but cannot be done by women.
11/24/09