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threes / art
Seen everywhere:
THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
1. jed
2. Jeanine
3. Various speaker-specific nicknames that I would be offended if I heard spoken by others
THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
1. dentata
2. jedbird
3. velvetglove
THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. My legs are longer than yours.
2. Curiosity/enthusiasm
3. I make good mix tapes.
THREE THINGS YOU HATE ABOUT YOURSELF:
I'm really trying not to do the hate, thank you. But, okay:
1. Personal biochemistry.
2. Incipient jowls. I can see them even if you can't.
3. That my scatterbrain causes me to hurt people without intending to do so.
THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
1. Scottish
2. Some sort of Native American, but my grandfather refuses to admit to it, much less identify tribe.
3. My people apparently have strongholds in Hagerstown, Maryland and Fort Myers, Florida, but I have never met any of these relatives and probably never will. So, basically, I haven't got a third answer.
THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
1. Needles, specifially intravenous.
2. Slugs, though over time the fear has toned down such that they just make me recoil and heave, not scream in terror.
3. Stupid people in control of things.
THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
1. Pet time!
2. Writing something, even something stupid.
3. Caffeine.
THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1. Glasses (l.a. eyeworks "hello hayden," apparently)
2. Old Navy lime/dark brown glen plaid pj pants.
3. Black tank top.
THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS OR ARTISTS AT THE MOMENT:
(with the personal qualification "That aren't Nick Cave or Radiohead or Tori Amos")
1. Arcade Fire
2. Sing-Sing
3. Devendra Banhart
THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS AT PRESENT:
1. Lover I Don't Have to Love - Bright Eyes
2. Dreams - TV On The Radio
3. Abattoir Blues - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS
1. Re-learn to swim.
2. Finishing a book-sized piece.
3. Keeping to a schedule, even a loose one.
THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP (love is a given):
1. Humor.
2. Ample listening and babbling both.
3. Sex. It's not the same as love, after all.
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE
1. I believe in ghosts.
2. I believe in Peter Pan.
3. I believe I'll have another glass of wine.
THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE/SAME SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
1. Eyes
2. Any unjointed place where bone pushes at skin.
3. Hands.
THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:
1. Be consistent, unfortunately.
2. Laugh demurely.
3. Be sensible with money.
THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
1. Writing
2. Reading
3. "Sewing," or sorting happily through boxes of fabric and trim without purpose.
THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
1. Become a better person, nonspecifically.
2. Get drunk and flirt with attractive strangers. Also attractive people I already know.
3. Have a cathartic cry.
THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:
1. Writer
2. Writer who also draws.
3. Writer who also draws and makes crafty stuff that people will pay actual money for.
THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
1. New Orleans
2. New York
3. Tokyo
THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
1. Publish somewhere other than the internet, at least perfect-bound, if not hard-bound with a dust jacket.
2. Get paid to write something (not counting the dirty stories I wrote for money in 7th grade)
3. Be able to do a handstand without using the wall to get in and out of the pose.
art, purpose, interactivity and response: Tell me something that interests me and we might never "discuss" it, but I'll research and poke and walk the perimeter until I can come away with my own piece of the puzzle you've presented. So, this exchange here led me to look for a clearer image (as yet unfound) and ultimately, here, where the following questions got under my skin, easily adapted to writing as well as visual arts:
The bit about holding with tradition is like a burr, and the rest is a challenge. If I tell myself that the story I want to write is too unlike anything already in existence, and thus will never be published, then I don't have to write it. But then I also remember the incredible sense of possibility I felt when I read Neuromancer, and recall the (r)evolution that occurred in the sci-fi genre (at the very least) because of that book.
And then I started thinking about art response, and how the response itself is, of course, part of the art. Years ago, Mr. Glove and I went to a Very Important Show of art by young persons. Included in the show was a (needlessly, cheerfully) large machine, furnacelike and sprawling, which served a single purpose: blowing sheets of 8-1/2 x 11 paper up toward the ceiling to see-saw down to the tile floor, skidding underfoot. Mr. G kicked a pile of random, loose sheets as if they were dry fall leaves and, much to our surprise, the exhibit security asked us to leave.
My visit to the Guggenheim this past May was a hoot for many reasons, but what I found oddest was the absolute novelty of the small amount of interactivity available in the face of such temptingly inert art. I so wanted to fuck shit up, and I can't believe that feeling wasn't prevalent. Among the heaped goods (hazelnut pollen, sugar, or salt [twice] in tidy pyramids of sizes from tiny to ton), colored lightbulbs, and slabs of sheet metal lying in carefully taped-off sections of floor, there was a nook filled with wrapped hard candies strewn across the dusty floor. The plaque explicating the piece (all about endless abundance, or so we were told) encouraged viewers to take candy. My friends and I took candy, and the high school kids there on a field trip warned us with loud glee that we shouldn't bother to eat it because it sucked.
Mr. G and I saw a Joseph Beuys exhibit in, of all places, a shopping mall. The museum in Bellevue, WA, is in the very upscale mall, which is basically the downtown for the city, so I guess it makes sense. Beuys' art often looks like scrap paper with faint doodles, but it does grow on you. At first glance, they might appear to be the handiwork of a particularly beloved retarded child, but a playful sense of menace eventually takes over. Beuys used a peculiar selection of art supplies - beeswax, felt, a strange "ink" made from dirt and detritus, various fats - as well as more traditional materials. Organic and messy things. After spending quite some time in the exhibit, becoming more and more excited by what were basically grease stains and scribbles (and knowing this, and still being excited), we passed through a "response" room before hitting the gift shop (yes, we bought a book). To record one's response, there were pencils and a ream of white paper on a folding table. I had just reached the end of my period and, in a moment of inspiration, I stuck my hand under my skirt, smeared a faint bloodstain on a sheet of paper and pinned it to the wall among the earnest, handwritten critiques. I like to think Beuys would have been amused.
This is the image that I intended to be the inspiration for my wedding flowers, Judith by Yasumasa Morimura. This was done sometime in the early 1990s. Morimura took pictures of himself, almost always in the guise of a woman, as the central figure in famous (and a few obscure) paintings. Since then, he's branched out into actresses of various eras, and a truly horrifying dual portrait of Madonna and Jacko. He's lumped together in my head with Cindy Sherman for obvious reasons.
In addition to the photograph, I also gave the florists what has, over time, become my standard speech about flowers being the sex organs of plants and how prominent that is for me in terms of their appeal. I think they wanted to cancel with us right then and there, but we found out later we were their first big, paying job and they didn't want to pass it up just because I was scary. As it was, they did really lovely flowers, although not...brutal enough for me. Not wet enough, and odorless, too.
I had never seen the original until I went looking for it today, and here it is, painted in 1530 by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Oh my god. I am so glad Morimura had his art response, because I hate this painting:
And it occurs to me that perhaps Morimura made Judith a cabbage and Holofernes a potato because this particular J + H image is so fucking bloodless. She's a bored, Saxon princess in heavy bling who's too polite to say that this severed head business isn't really to her taste. He looks stoned primarily, beheaded second. Caravaggio's foxy Judith looks a bit dubious about the undertaking, while the capable Gentileschi version seems resigned to slaughtering troublesome livestock, but they both seem at least possible saviors of Israel.
Not only do I like the Morimura version better, it's also much more fun to say Yasumasa Morimura (so bouncy!) aloud than Lucas Cranach, which is certainly a major factor in my critique.
And, yeah, I didn't know where I was going with this, but at least I went.
THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
1. jed
2. Jeanine
3. Various speaker-specific nicknames that I would be offended if I heard spoken by others
THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
1. dentata
2. jedbird
3. velvetglove
THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. My legs are longer than yours.
2. Curiosity/enthusiasm
3. I make good mix tapes.
THREE THINGS YOU HATE ABOUT YOURSELF:
I'm really trying not to do the hate, thank you. But, okay:
1. Personal biochemistry.
2. Incipient jowls. I can see them even if you can't.
3. That my scatterbrain causes me to hurt people without intending to do so.
THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
1. Scottish
2. Some sort of Native American, but my grandfather refuses to admit to it, much less identify tribe.
3. My people apparently have strongholds in Hagerstown, Maryland and Fort Myers, Florida, but I have never met any of these relatives and probably never will. So, basically, I haven't got a third answer.
THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
1. Needles, specifially intravenous.
2. Slugs, though over time the fear has toned down such that they just make me recoil and heave, not scream in terror.
3. Stupid people in control of things.
THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
1. Pet time!
2. Writing something, even something stupid.
3. Caffeine.
THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1. Glasses (l.a. eyeworks "hello hayden," apparently)
2. Old Navy lime/dark brown glen plaid pj pants.
3. Black tank top.
THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS OR ARTISTS AT THE MOMENT:
(with the personal qualification "That aren't Nick Cave or Radiohead or Tori Amos")
1. Arcade Fire
2. Sing-Sing
3. Devendra Banhart
THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS AT PRESENT:
1. Lover I Don't Have to Love - Bright Eyes
2. Dreams - TV On The Radio
3. Abattoir Blues - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS
1. Re-learn to swim.
2. Finishing a book-sized piece.
3. Keeping to a schedule, even a loose one.
THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP (love is a given):
1. Humor.
2. Ample listening and babbling both.
3. Sex. It's not the same as love, after all.
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE
1. I believe in ghosts.
2. I believe in Peter Pan.
3. I believe I'll have another glass of wine.
THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE/SAME SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
1. Eyes
2. Any unjointed place where bone pushes at skin.
3. Hands.
THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:
1. Be consistent, unfortunately.
2. Laugh demurely.
3. Be sensible with money.
THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
1. Writing
2. Reading
3. "Sewing," or sorting happily through boxes of fabric and trim without purpose.
THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
1. Become a better person, nonspecifically.
2. Get drunk and flirt with attractive strangers. Also attractive people I already know.
3. Have a cathartic cry.
THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:
1. Writer
2. Writer who also draws.
3. Writer who also draws and makes crafty stuff that people will pay actual money for.
THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
1. New Orleans
2. New York
3. Tokyo
THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
1. Publish somewhere other than the internet, at least perfect-bound, if not hard-bound with a dust jacket.
2. Get paid to write something (not counting the dirty stories I wrote for money in 7th grade)
3. Be able to do a handstand without using the wall to get in and out of the pose.
art, purpose, interactivity and response: Tell me something that interests me and we might never "discuss" it, but I'll research and poke and walk the perimeter until I can come away with my own piece of the puzzle you've presented. So, this exchange here led me to look for a clearer image (as yet unfound) and ultimately, here, where the following questions got under my skin, easily adapted to writing as well as visual arts:
- How do you spend your time? More talking about art than making it?
- Do you think your work should hold within tradition?
- Do you trust your first response, or do you go back and equivocate consciously? Do you believe that the freshness of first response can be developed and sustained as a working habit?
- When you accept the identification of artist do you acknowledge that you are issuing a world challenge in your own time?
- How long will you work before you work with the confidence which says, What I do is art?
- Do you think acclaim can help you? Can you trust it, for you know in your secret self how far short of attainment you always are? Can you trust any acclaim any farther than adverse criticism? Should either have any effect upon you as an artist?
The bit about holding with tradition is like a burr, and the rest is a challenge. If I tell myself that the story I want to write is too unlike anything already in existence, and thus will never be published, then I don't have to write it. But then I also remember the incredible sense of possibility I felt when I read Neuromancer, and recall the (r)evolution that occurred in the sci-fi genre (at the very least) because of that book.
And then I started thinking about art response, and how the response itself is, of course, part of the art. Years ago, Mr. Glove and I went to a Very Important Show of art by young persons. Included in the show was a (needlessly, cheerfully) large machine, furnacelike and sprawling, which served a single purpose: blowing sheets of 8-1/2 x 11 paper up toward the ceiling to see-saw down to the tile floor, skidding underfoot. Mr. G kicked a pile of random, loose sheets as if they were dry fall leaves and, much to our surprise, the exhibit security asked us to leave.
My visit to the Guggenheim this past May was a hoot for many reasons, but what I found oddest was the absolute novelty of the small amount of interactivity available in the face of such temptingly inert art. I so wanted to fuck shit up, and I can't believe that feeling wasn't prevalent. Among the heaped goods (hazelnut pollen, sugar, or salt [twice] in tidy pyramids of sizes from tiny to ton), colored lightbulbs, and slabs of sheet metal lying in carefully taped-off sections of floor, there was a nook filled with wrapped hard candies strewn across the dusty floor. The plaque explicating the piece (all about endless abundance, or so we were told) encouraged viewers to take candy. My friends and I took candy, and the high school kids there on a field trip warned us with loud glee that we shouldn't bother to eat it because it sucked.
Mr. G and I saw a Joseph Beuys exhibit in, of all places, a shopping mall. The museum in Bellevue, WA, is in the very upscale mall, which is basically the downtown for the city, so I guess it makes sense. Beuys' art often looks like scrap paper with faint doodles, but it does grow on you. At first glance, they might appear to be the handiwork of a particularly beloved retarded child, but a playful sense of menace eventually takes over. Beuys used a peculiar selection of art supplies - beeswax, felt, a strange "ink" made from dirt and detritus, various fats - as well as more traditional materials. Organic and messy things. After spending quite some time in the exhibit, becoming more and more excited by what were basically grease stains and scribbles (and knowing this, and still being excited), we passed through a "response" room before hitting the gift shop (yes, we bought a book). To record one's response, there were pencils and a ream of white paper on a folding table. I had just reached the end of my period and, in a moment of inspiration, I stuck my hand under my skirt, smeared a faint bloodstain on a sheet of paper and pinned it to the wall among the earnest, handwritten critiques. I like to think Beuys would have been amused.
This is the image that I intended to be the inspiration for my wedding flowers, Judith by Yasumasa Morimura. This was done sometime in the early 1990s. Morimura took pictures of himself, almost always in the guise of a woman, as the central figure in famous (and a few obscure) paintings. Since then, he's branched out into actresses of various eras, and a truly horrifying dual portrait of Madonna and Jacko. He's lumped together in my head with Cindy Sherman for obvious reasons.
In addition to the photograph, I also gave the florists what has, over time, become my standard speech about flowers being the sex organs of plants and how prominent that is for me in terms of their appeal. I think they wanted to cancel with us right then and there, but we found out later we were their first big, paying job and they didn't want to pass it up just because I was scary. As it was, they did really lovely flowers, although not...brutal enough for me. Not wet enough, and odorless, too.
I had never seen the original until I went looking for it today, and here it is, painted in 1530 by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Oh my god. I am so glad Morimura had his art response, because I hate this painting:
And it occurs to me that perhaps Morimura made Judith a cabbage and Holofernes a potato because this particular J + H image is so fucking bloodless. She's a bored, Saxon princess in heavy bling who's too polite to say that this severed head business isn't really to her taste. He looks stoned primarily, beheaded second. Caravaggio's foxy Judith looks a bit dubious about the undertaking, while the capable Gentileschi version seems resigned to slaughtering troublesome livestock, but they both seem at least possible saviors of Israel.
Not only do I like the Morimura version better, it's also much more fun to say Yasumasa Morimura (so bouncy!) aloud than Lucas Cranach, which is certainly a major factor in my critique.
And, yeah, I didn't know where I was going with this, but at least I went.