Pharrell Williams recently collaborated with Takashi Murakami on a 6-foot sculpture called The Simple Things (2008-2009), featuring a black & rainbow DOB (Murakami's copyrighted character) jewel-encrusted objects the producer/rock star/designer can't live without (Doritos, Heinz ketchup, Pepsi, condom, sneaker, baby oil, cupcake). Also according to Michael Wilson's article "Frontin'" in Modern Painters (Dec 2009/Jan 2010), Pharrell admires and collects: Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and KAWS, because their work "isn't serious or snobby or stuffy." The Simple Things sold for $2.8 million.
I also don't know what his work (the blank freestanding wall above) currently on view in Seattle's about exactly, perhaps something to do with his daddy issues (consider that on his official website the title is "A Wall I Built With My Father" but the caption lists the wall as being built between the artist and his father. Check it out as part of Western Bridge's show Parenthesis. Picture by Mark Woods stolen from Jen Graves's review. Regina Hackett covers it too. THE SHOW ends next Saturday 12/19/09.
During his lecture tonight, I had the privilege of seeing Meiro Koizumi's awesome new video, Works like a Dog (I think it's called that?), based on his and (Japanese)immigrant experiences in Bellevue, tonight. Apparently, "New York Times art critic Roberta Smith aptly noted, 'His videos are 'Punk’d' for intellectual sadists.'" See his work at Open Satellite in Bellevue or Hedreen Gallery on the Seattle U campus before it flies away on January 9th, 2010!
Lifted from Koizumi's site, a still from an older video Jap (2003)
He had some thoughtful things to say about nationalism, nationality, WWII losers vs. winners, and loyalty. Particularly interesting to me--speaking about the Western gaze at Japan, he concluded that while Kill Bill is a healthy image of the multicultural world, Last Samurai is a sick image of multiculturalism. But THEN he proceeded to say that when confronted with the choice of what kind of art he wanted to make, he concluded that he would much rather make a Last Samurai type of art than Kill Bill.
Perhaps he's ever the optimist I am not, but as I asked why he would choose the sick image over a healthy one, he responded that there are enough healthy images out there, and likened these two images of art as medicine or poison--Koizumi asserted he wants to make medicine, but then again, there are times when he wants to make poison. Smells like Derrida's pharmakon to me: "The beneficial essence or virtue of a pharmakon does not prevent it from hurting...Painful pleasure, linked as much to the malady as to its treatment, is a pharmakon in itself. It partakes of both good and ill, of the agreeable and the disagreeable. Or rather, it is within its mass that these oppositions are able to sketch themselves out."
What do you think?
vs.
p.s. You can find a WMV video of an adorably bumbling Koizumi, talking in more dualisms about his art, here from Mori art Museum.
Source:
Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 99.
Cora Fisher of The Brooklyn Rail writes: "Touting Laura Mulvey’s essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' as the curatorial premise of its group show, The Female Gaze: Women on Women, Cheim & Read promises a look into how women see themselves and other women, surveying self-portraits, portraits, and female nudes, all by women artists... The contemporary viewer wonders, if we are really living in a so-called 'post' era—post-feminist, post-racial, post-gay— can the identity politics of its premise be truly invigorated by this survey? Does there exist an inter-female gaze purged of male scopophila?"
Well I don't know but I love this painting Big Blonde in the Weeds by Lisa Yuskavage (2001) at the SAM (not so much the one mentioned in the article). It is beautiful, curvy, sensuous, mysterious, and apparently not digitized online except in a tiny thumbnail from their website.
p.s. One of the photos from the show--Blonde Girl with Shiny Lipstick, NYC by Diane Arbus (1967) looks like femmebot britney spears:
The Cremator (1969)-- A so-so movie made better by its inclusion of the right panel of Hieronymous Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1503-4), especially close-up shots of the devil-bird who consumes and defecates people: Coincidentally, the same detail graces Deep Purple (English band best known for "Smoke on the Water")'s self-titled album of the same year. Deep Purple came out just three months after The Cremator and includes the song "The Painter" which goes, "Painter, come colour up my life/take away the misery/take away the strife." About that: Bosch's work is in black and white on the album cover due to a printing error but the band kept it anyway, & I'm not sure that this detail of Bosch takes away misery or strife. Rather Bosch depicts both in great detail.
For more recent Awesome Netherlandish Painting on album covers, cf. Fleet Foxes's use of a Pieter Brueghel, nicely summarized in this MTVNews article: "'[Brueghel's Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) is] this sort of really detailed, 1500s thing, but actually it's horrible, like, everything that's going on is like a disaster,' Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold said. 'All the stuff happening in that bucolic scene is weird, people defecating out of boxes and sheep getting cut through the gut.'"
Returning to nontimely art-in-film news, I think I noticed an Alexander Calder in Sabrina (1954), in Linus's office. A retrospective entitled "Alexander Calder: A Balancing Act" will be at the SAM soon, Oct. 15, 2009-April 11, 2010.
+ Lobster Tail and Fish Trap (1939). From MoMA website.
I feel like I’m somewhere around 50 years old, at the present juncture in my life. Yet I am only recently 24.Perhaps most people, when they are happy (and/or if their perception of their own age is unbothered) don’t really think of age much.I did not until I moved to a place where all my previous activities and other self-expressing signifiers were made irrelevant. I believe my internal overaging stems from the cultural differences between the Arctic Alaska bush and the places I’ve lived most recently: Boston, MA and Bellingham, WA.Culture shock will out.
In both of the latter locations, I lived in an urban center.Where I live now semi-resembles an urban center: the town is small and compact, and in the Barrow, Browerville, and NARL sections of town, there are business centers with nearby residences.This is not unlike either Boston or Bellingham.The types of businesses, however, are completely different.Instead of bars, late-night restaurants, and a wide (or at least some) variety of everything, there are only 8 restaurants in town and the only social establishments are churches, the bingo hall, and the roller rink.No bars, no coffee shops, no music venues or art galleries to be found.Also, walking between locations is possible (especially now, in the summer), but even in the summer is moderately uncomfortable to do with extreme winds and a complete lack of paved roads or sidewalks.Moving here, I have changed all of my out-of-the-house activities drastically, and from activities I considered to be befitting of my age and temperament to activities which feel unbefitting to my age.
My only social activity is a weekly knitting group, which I happen to love, but still—an activity conventionally thought of as for old women (though yarnwork and other stitchery are presently not unvogue among young women—google “knitting blog” for example).I go to work from 8:30 to 5:00pm every day, the monotony of which routine is both comfortable and mind-numbing, a sobering truly adult experience. At work I am treated with respect and given tasks which both utilize my mental capabilities and whither them.It is lovely to feel respected at work, something I feel my age has not truly afforded me in many of my other recent positions.However, this additionally makes me feel as though I have aged (a catch-22 in that overcoming the respect factor I feel as though I have overcome age, when I am still young).Perhaps I should celebrate this accomplishment in the workplace in itself without reading age into it.
Occasionally I help out with programs for children at the public library, which my sister is in charge of. Though I have volunteered with children for most of my young life, using my free time to be with them creates further feelings of adulthood.I go out to eat with a couple friends occasionally, and every once in a long while I have drinks with friends at the house, but it does not feel as festive as going out somewhere.It feels like co-alcoholsim (though it’s not often enough to actually be).I know that a lot of parties are always happening with the young people in town, but (young though I am), getting trashed at random people’s houses every weekend is not exactly my idea of a good time.See above notion of co-alcoholism.However, perhaps I should be trying out more of these as opportunities to meet other people my age.I know that I have been shy.
Since my out-of-the-house activities have differed so drastically, I have tended to stay at home, where my at-home activities have not changed much from past lives.I still like to read, cook, watch movies, write, sew and crochet &etc.The lack of tempting activity outside of the house has led me to turn completely inward, where I can at least maintain those aspects of self.One difference is that I have felt the need to self-educate much more than I ever did living elsewhere: reading, studying for the GRE’s, watching Sister Wendy dvds and looking at art books to try and keep up with art history.Even if the rest of me is withering, I have endeavored to keep my mind a living thing.
A major signifier of self which I feel is rendered irrelevant in Barrow, AK is dress. Though I do believe that physical appearance is never the only self-identifier, it is the first thing that people see, and as someone who delights in visual culture, I have always enjoyed wearing things which made me an individual in my own eyes.The weather in Barrow is quite extreme.Currently, it is the summer season and everything is melted—we are enjoying global-warmingly high temperatures around the 50’s and there’s no snow—but the unpaved roads are rutted and muddy and the winds are still rather fierce to be out in.Physical apparel is almost completely weather-related here, with good reason.In temperatures as low as 70 below with the windchill in the winter, a wool coat and ballet flats are what you wear if you want to get frostbite (even only walking to and from cars!).In the summer period, it is not sensible to wear anything you don’t want to get mud splattered on, as the town is a soupy mud bowl.So, in comparison to my past lives, instead of putting on mascara and a dress I made myself to go out and see live music, I am putting on boots and a heavy jacket to go to the grocery store or knitting group.
Also, since 40-45 hours of the week are dedicated to work, my workwear is predominantly my life-wear.For work I am required to wear professional-looking things, which in general are fairly homogenizing, on purpose.I still have the option to personalize these things as much as I can, but I do miss the life of a student and the ability to look as disheveled as I’d sometimes like.A lot of the home-made or altered clothing that I enjoy wearing in Bellingham is just not suitable for the workplace, and definitely not suitable for the Arctic.The adulthood of dressing like a professional all the time additionally makes me feel old and boring.Perhaps what I am actually resisting here is not old age, but adulthood.
Iñupiaq women young and old, and a lot of white women in town as well, wear beautiful home-made shirts and shirt-dresses called atikluks.There are also male-versions of atikluks, but mostly I see them worn by women.These are very beautiful, with decorative trim, in bright highly-patterned prints.I see that other people in town use these to express themselves and identify themselves with Iñupiaq culture, but as an outsider, I have not really had access to these.I could either have a nice Iñupiaq lady sew me one, or I could pay exorbitant amounts at our one fabric store for a pattern and the fabric to make one myself (which I am considering, honestly).But, as an outsider to the culture, I have been hesitant.After all the myriad ways that white American culture has infringed on their way of life, maybe I should not be allowed to wear an atikluk.Or maybe wearing them is a sign of celebrating Iñupiaq culture, which I think is probably the general notion.They are lovely and aesthetically, I want one!Is it conformity to want to assimilate in some fashion to the culture of the place you’re living?Is it weakness of self to not pursue my previous ways of dress whole-heartedly though I’d look crazy and I already don’t know anybody?My answer so far to these questions has been to dress for necessity alone, in work clothes or Alaskan-weather gear, both of which make me feel old.
I think my age-identity problems here stem from the fact that my previous methods of social self-expression are either not possible, or simply very different from my experience here, and so the things I can imagine to do in their stead are old-people things.There are other methods, belonging to the different culture amidst which I have chosen to reside, but I am still trying to feel those out.Especially when I know I won’t be living here forever, it is hard to branch out into a new community.Coming from larger urban settings, I am used to community involvement not being necessary in order to feel lively and young.
The Iñupiat Heritage Center is full of wonderful artistic and historical artifacts of the Iñupiat people, and features occasional cultural showcases and activities for them.I have not spent a great deal of time there, though as an art gallery, it is something from my past life of young activity that I could technically perpetuate here.I have definitely looked through the few galleries and attended some Eskimo dances, but I have not gone in weekly or anything (that would probably be seen as fairly odd as no weekly activities are held there, to my knowledge).
If you do not act young or dress young, at least by your own estimations, are you old?Perception affects and creates reality, but how do we define the age we feel ourselves to be and therefore act out?I have defined my aging factors as activity and physical appearance.But, not being able to see myself as others do—seeing my body as fragments below me, draped in clothes out of necessity instead of creativity (as my fragments used to be), not seeing the young person’s head on top of that body without a mirror—perhaps I am exaggerating my limited viewpoint of my dead physical appearance to an unnecessary degree.Although, all the very friendly Korean restaurant owners in town say I look older than my sister, who is five years my senior, so maybe it’s time to start buying the wrinkle cream.
