I want to put this on my wall

http://www.charitywines.com/

It isn't really fair to call this art, but I want to frame it and put it on my wall because it makes me smile. (Though I suppose I could be Dadaist about it and decide it's art because I say it is.) I'm not really a wine person, but this ad makes me want to drink wine. I especially love Manny's expression. He's like a little kid saying, "look, Mom! Grapes!" Plus he's basically wearing a zoot suit. If there were speech bubbles, I think this is what they'd all be saying:

Wake: "Dear Sears Catalog: My knuckler is not fluttering as of late, and my team gives me no run support. Please accept this photo along with my application for a position as a men's wear model pending my imminent retirement."

Schill: "I feel out of place here. Booze is evil. I'm a Christian and an upstanding citizen, and yet I'm standing in between these two smartasses pitching $12 bottles of wine instead of 90-mph splitters. This is so painful it feels like I'm having my tendon sewn to my ankle."

Manny: "Buy my wine, man. It's great, man. People jus' love me so much, man, they wanna drink my wine, man. Manny Being Manny and all that, good times, man. Yeah."

In other news, my space bar is sticking, so posts may be fewer and shorter for a while.

In love with landscape

This isn't going to seem like it's about art at first, but I'll get around to it by the end.

I was pretty tired when I got home tonight. It was actually kind of a hard day at work, made worse by the slow-moving line of tourist traffic I got stuck behind on the way home. So when the sun set and a brisk breeze started blowing down the cove and whisked away the humidity, it seemed like a perfect evening to spend on the hammock next to the water.

It was. I can't express how lucky I am to call Beech Hill Pond my home. Can't express it. There's no better place, no better feeling, than watching dusk from the hammock with my dog at my feet and fireflies darting around me. For just a little while, I forgot about work, forgot about my dissertation, and forgot about the raging disaster that is my love life. I didn't watch TV, check my e-mail, listen to music, or even talk. I just looked at the sky and thought, this is one of those great moments in my life. The loons warbled, the frogs belched, and the crickets played tiny violins. The fading pink light gave way to Venus on the western horizon, hazy, yet still bright enough for its reflection to dance in the waves. The two maples trees framed the scene like the proscenium of a stage. What amazes me is that I've seen this particular performance thousands of times, for twenty years in a row, and yet it's still so beautiful it can move me to tears. The sun always sets in the same place, the waves always make the same sound when they hit the rocks, and the loons always nest in the same cove opposite our camp. The big rock, the one we always took our family pictures on, casts the same silhouette as it has forever. But it only gets better with time. I've been in love before, but this lake is my soul mate. My love for this landscape is not more or less than for any other element of my life--my family, my friends, or my career. It is intertwined with them. The beauty makes my heart fill to bursting with happiness every day I am lucky enough to spend here. I fear its destruction even more than I fear my own death.

This personal landscape of mine has inspired me to create art so many times. When I was little, I drew crayon pictures of it. My mediocre pictures from college photography class hang on the wall above the door out to the porch. I can't paint, but once I asked a friend of a friend to paint a scene of our camp for my parents' 25th anniversary (unfortunately, she never finished it). I even tried, with truly craptacular results, to paint the sunset over the dock on a ceramic crock at the paint-your-own-pottery place in downtown Bangor. However, I've always sucked at all art forms other than dance (much as I yearn to be creative, I'm more of an armchair advocate), and none of my attempts at capturing the scenery have ever been remotely successful.

But all of this made me realize why Frederic Church is my favorite painter. I think I recognize this same love that I feel for Beech Hill Pond in his paintings of Mount Katahdin. He traveled all around the United States and around the world--New York, New England, the South, Maritime Canada, Mexico, Jamaica, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Arctic--but he returned to Mount Katahdin almost every summer for over 40 years and painted dozens of canvases of it. My very favorite painting, Mount Katahdin from Millinocket Camp (the one permanently in the upper right corner of this blog--you can see it in person at the Portland Museum of Art), must have been his greatest labor of love. It's an intensely personal vision. At the time, in 1895, he was almost 70 years old, weak, sickly, and so arthritic he could hardly hold a paintbrush. It took him at least five years to complete it. It was his last major painting (he died five years later), and instead of selling it to a wealthy patron, he gave it to his wife for her birthday. In a sweet little note he wrote to her, he says that the figure in the canoe is himself, pausing in the shade to admire the sublime mountain and to contemplate the afterlife. He's not known to have included a self portrait in any other painting, and this tells me that Katahdin was probably his favorite landscape of all. He had painted it many more times before, but never like this. The luminous pink wash of the cloudless sky, the hint of gold at the mountain's base, the ethereal peak of Katahdin reflected in the still water--this is his version of heaven.

My version of heaven is the hammock by the lake at dusk in mid-summer, just as the stars are beginning to show. Oh, how I wish I could paint it.

What do you do when a building is historical, but impractical?

New Focus on a Forlorn Cleveland Tower

I don't know the answer to this one. Marcel Breuer's 1971 Cleveland Trust Tower may be ugly. It may be poorly maintained. But that doesn't mean it should be torn down. Why do we prize 19th century architecture (and earlier) above all else? Well, that's obvious. Older architecture is simply prettier. There's nothing pretty about this building. But it is an important example of modern architecture. So do we just leave it there in all its impracticality? Do we try to adapt it to modern needs? Or do we just build something better? While I believe historic architecture should be preserved, I also think that buildings have a natural lifespan, and when a building's lifespan is coming to an end, it's better that it goes out in a blaze of explosive implosion and wrecking balls than falls into disrepair and crumbles slowly. Architecture needs to evolve constantly. New buildings have to be built somewhere, and it's better that they replace old buildings rather than encroach upon the natural environment. Think of it as a physician-assisted suicide plan for architecture. I'm just not convinced the Cleveland Trust Tower is a terminal patient yet.

I can't help but think this whole situation is somewhat ironic, though. In the 1950s to the '70s, many of the 19th century buildings we would now call architectural treasures were torn down in "urban renewal" programs and replaced with blocky, concrete creations like the one we see above. Now it's those very buildings that are danger. We finally realized our mistake from the first time around; will we be too late to realize it this time, too? Or is it simply time for us to switch off the life support machine on modern architecture?

Maine art goes to the dogs

Renowned Photographer Unveils Mural at Rest Stop

My first thought when I heard about this was: leave it to Maine to take a $100,000 art appropriation and spend it on pictures of funny-looking dogs. But I've mulled over it for a while, and I've decided that this isn't entirely bad.

First of all, the art is appropriate to the venue. At least the Maine Arts Commission has a sense of irony, and it knows you can't really slap a bunch of Winslow Homers on a rest stop wall. They would be out of place. Nor did they choose any of the voraciously overused symbols of Maine culture: lighthouses, clipper ships, moose, lobster, loons, black bears, blueberries, or pine trees. They chose something accessible that people will enjoy looking at. And you know what, dogs are funny.

I'm still a little bit skeptical, though, because of this quote offered by Donna McNeil of the Maine Arts Commission:

"It was about creating an icon. ... New York has the Statue of Liberty. Paris has the Eiffel Tower. This was about creating a visual icon that speaks about Maine as a place of culture."

...So, Maine's culture should be represented by Weimaraners? I'm not sure this is right.

Yeah, that's what I thought

News from Basra: Sunni Mosque Is Destroyed in Retaliation

Yankee Stadium is about to get a lot less rowdy (and even more bourgeois)

Climbing to the Upper Decks (Before They're Torn Down)

I'm never happy when historic architecture gets destroyed, even when it belongs to the Yankees. Both Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium are set to be torn down once their replacements are completed, and both new ballparks will feature more luxury seating and less room for bleacher bums. Even the Times' Ben Sisaro, a Yankees fan, appropriately dubbed the Yankees' new $800 million park an "unfinished Death Star." Leave it to New Yorkers to take a traditionally working-class sport and turn it into a sterile, unaffordable theater performance. Fenway Park may be small, and it may be next to impossible to find tickets for face value (unless, like me, you happen to have lived next door and know all the secrets). It may have right field grandstands that don't face home plate and seats located behind posts. But at least it still has soul.

Everybody Hates Richard Serra

…Except, it seems, the Museum of Modern Art. Much of its new Yoshio Taniguchi-designed building was conceived specifically with his work in mind. MOMA is showing “Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years” through September 10^th.

This is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. First of all, Richard Serra's art is oversized compared to everything else, and the gargantuan space MOMA created on the second floor to show off his sculptures will not work well for other artists. What are they going to do with the space once the Serra exhibit is over in September? As New York Magazine puts it, even his smallest pieces are roughly the size of a car. The largest pieces are like twisty buildings that you can walk through and experience from the inside. It’s art that envelops and consumes its viewer. And secondly, in my opinion, most of Serra’s works belong out of doors. It’s horribly confining to plunk them in a big room and expect viewers to relate with them the same way as they can with his public sculptures.

Unlike a lot of people, I actually do like Richard Serra’s art a lot. I agree that sheet metal can be ugly when it oxidizes and turns that ruddy, rusty color, and Tilted Arc in NYC’s Federal Plaza in the ‘80s was generally a bad idea because of where it was placed. I’m convinced he put it where he did just to piss people off—and, well, it worked, and now it’s scrap metal. But his sculptures are more than just big pieces of oddly shaped metal. They’re cool because they’re both minimalist and maximalist, if you will. They’re so simplistic in shape, but the experience of viewing one is so huge and complex that the sculptures are almost too large to comprehend. My personal favorite is Sequence (2006), which is on the exhibition catalogue and poster (shown above). The curves and tilts are so sensual.

There’s also a neat video of Torqued Ellipse IV (1998) and Intersection II (1992) being installed in the sculpture garden:

A bad day for architecture in Iraq

Two stories on the NBC Nightly News this evening caught my attention—first, the destruction of two minarets on a sacred Shiite mosque in Samarra, and second, the construction of the massive new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The destruction of the famous minarets on the sacred Al-Askari mosque (the "Golden Mosque") follows a prior attack that destroyed its massive golden dome in February 2006. (Note: the picture on the top was taken prior to the 2006 attack, and the minarets are still in place.) The bombing, likely by Al-Qaeda, led to (what else?) lots and lots of sectarian violence, and Shiites have retaliated by destroying Sunni mosques. I haven’t studied Islamic architecture a whole lot, but apparently the Al-Askari mosque is one of Iraq's treasures from the turn of the century. Obviously all of these buildings are very important to the people of Iraq and are imbued with special meaning in Islamic consciousness. If the violence continues (and it looks like it will for a long time), there’s a strong possibility that an entire culture’s architectural treasures will be wiped out completely. In this sense, I suppose Iraq has something in common with New Orleans: both are experiencing a crisis in historic architecture. Of course, architecture receives somewhat scant attention in the news in comparison to the tragedy of human lives, and rightly so. But it’s still very sad. From the pictures I've seen, the mosque before its destruction was absolutely glitteringly beautiful.

The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad…I’m sorry, but this thing is doomed. It's been doomed since it was just a zygote of a building in its architect’s head. (Well, more likely an engineer’s head. Because the U.S. government is trying to keep its budget down, you know, so it can't afford an architect. It only had $592 million to spend on this project.) NBC described it as a “white elephant,” and indeed, the place is likely to be targeted by everyone and their mother. It’s made up of 27 separate buildings behind “bomb-proof” walls. I assume they mean "bomb-proof" in the same way people claimed the Titanic was "unsinkable." The embassy also includes a 16,000 square foot home with a pool and a gym for the ambassador. (Hell, you gotta give the guy a few perks. He’s the ambassador to Iraq.) The funniest thing is that they’re worried it won’t be large enough to house all of the diplomats and military leaders who need secure housing. The compound is 104 acres, roughly the size of Vatican City. I’ve been to Vatican City, and let me tell you, the Vatican is a lot prettier than this monstrosity. Memo to the government: your embassy is the size of a small country. How about before we build a small country inside Iraq, we try rebuilding Iraq itself. For example, maybe we could rebuild one of these mosques that's causing all the commotion. Not to mention the embassy is fugly (and I reserve that word for only the fugliest of buildings). Now, I’m about as big a fan of modern architecture as you’ll find, concrete and all, but this is too humongous to even be comprehensible. It’s a glorified fallout shelter. I suppose form follows function, though.

The opposite of landscape photography?

She Calls It 'Phenomena.' Everyone Else Calls It Art.

What an awesome job Felice Frankel has. It's too bad nobody buys her stuff (though I'll bet she'll get a few interested people after being featured in the NY Times). Probably people think her work makes better desktop wallpaper than wall art. I'd love to be appointed the artist in residence for something random, like a science department, though I think the closest I'll ever get is artist in residence of my parents' basement.

Finale

The Dance of the Final Bow

Four of the world's best ballerinas a retiring at the end of this season. I used to idolize these women when I was a kid, and it's sort of sad (though I suppose a natural fact of a dancer's life) that they're retiring. I've seen one of them dance in person (I'm pretty sure Alessandra Ferri came to the MCA on tour sometime in the early '90s) and one on video (Kyra Nichols as the Dew Drop Fairy in the unfortunately horrendous movie version of The Nutcracker, with Macauley Culkin as the Nutcracker, barf). It's disappointing that they're done performing. I hope they find successful and fulfilling careers post-dance.

Which reminds me of another interesting dance world happening--word is, Damien Woetzel is set to retire from NYCB sometime in the near future as well, but in between seasons he's getting his Master's degree in Public Policy at Harvard and guesting at the Boston Ballet. Double props to this guy for getting and education past high school (rare in ballet dancers) and for dancing in my city.

Maine is pretty.

Figured I'd put in a pitch for my boss, who photographs the Maine landscape. This one's called Mistake Island, Moose Peak Light Panorama.

http://www.jackledbetterphotography.com

These are not your typical tourist images. Jack's photos of Mount Desert Island and the surrounding area are large, full-color, highly detailed Cibachrome and Fuji Flex prints. He photographs like Ansel Adams used to, with an antique large-format view camera on 8x10 negatives or larger. Also, he's a wicked cool guy and has been nice enough to give me a job for the past couple of summers. Drop by the gallery and see us sometime if you're around MDI.

Martin Firrell and Nathan Fillion's Super Secret Thingy

http://www.martinfirrell.com/supersecretthingy.html

I heard about this project some time ago, but the details were just released a few days ago. The actual title of the work is Hero: the future of gods, icons and heroes, and what's on the web site is just a preview of a larger public art project to be shown sometime later, likely in London. (Martin Firrell works exclusively in London. I'm not sure exactly why.)

Firrell proposes a "new model for male behaviour" in an audiovisual presentation, an ideal that eschews violence in favor of gentleness and compassion. He shows Fillion in slow motion from the neck up and projects light patterns onto his face. The piece is accompanied by a cappella female voices and the phrases "Thought before action," "Strength without force," and "Clear light in the sky." The last phrase is kind of cryptic, but the gist is that in order for modern society to survive, men must take it upon themselves to create peace. In a time of war, terrorism, and continued violence among men (and especially against women), it's more important than ever to empower men to become part of the solution, rather than just viewing them as a problem.

At risk of gushing about Nathan Fillion--I've been in love with him since Firefly, and even more so after his portrayal of the sweet Dr. Pomatter in Waitress--I'm so glad Firrell chose him to play the new hero. It's especially meaningful because Fillion has primarily been known as an action star in the past. Ironically, I think it's his background as the violent hero in Firefly, Serenity, and SLiTHER that gives him the masculine credibility to portray a new kind of ideal man without being perceived as too effeminate. I wonder if the Firrell piece will change the public perception of him as an actor, as by all accounts he's an incredibly kind and warmhearted person off screen.

Edward Hopper show at the MFA

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is exhibiting a collection of Edward Hopper paintings and prints until August 19th. However, it costs upwards of $20 for a single ticket (even with the student discount).

I'm going to be a bad art historian for a moment. Personally, I'm not one of those people who insists you need to see a work of art in person in order to understand it. Certainly it's helpful to see the colors, texture, and technique up close, especially if you plan to study it in depth. And originals just have a powerful quality to them that reproductions don't. But I'm more interested in the social and political context of art anyhow, so the formal properties often take a backseat. My recommendation is to forgo spending the money on the Hopper exhibit unless you're a big Hopper fan, or if you're one of those people who appreciates subtleties.

It is a very good exhibit, however. It covers a lot of ground over the course of Hopper's career. All the greatest hits are there, including Automat (1929), Chop Suey (1929), New York Movie (1939), Office at Night (1940), and of course, Nighthawks (1942). Several lighthouse paintings from Maine are also included, though they barely take up half a room. Disappointingly, most of the famous paintings (including Nighthawks) are glazed, and not very well. The MFA needs to invest in some better glare-free glass.


One of my very favorite paintings of all time hangs near the entrance: Summer Interior (1909). I've seen it twice, once at its permanent home at the Whitney and once in this exhibit. Because of its content, this is not the sort of picture that will end up on the postcards or T-shirts sold in the museum gift shop. The MFA skips over it on their website. It was one of Hopper's early works, and you can see him starting to play with light in interesting ways, like in the solid block of sun and the yellow light filtering through the blinds on the wall on the right. What I really love about this painting is the way it makes me feel. Yeah, I know that's vague. So many of Hopper's works deal with loneliness, and of all of them, I think this is the best. He didn't want his paintings to tell stories, but you just can't help creating a narrative to go along with this one. I'm imagining that her lover has just left her, perhaps for good. It's quiet ("almost too quiet"), and probably the only sounds are the ticking clock on the mantle and the street noise filtering through the window. The bedsheets are still rumpled, she's barely half dressed, and her head is turned down to hide her face. Her hand is shoved between her thighs so her arm looks like it's cut off at the wrist. The act of sitting on the floor in that contorted pose with the sheets dragged down, instead of sitting on the bed, is what makes the scene disturbing. It tells us she's not just relaxing on a hot morning. Something is clearly wrong. The painting is provocative, but her pose is not meant to be sexy. She's exhausted.

So in summary, go see this exhibition if you can bear to part with $21. But if you think you're going to race through it in a half an hour and just look at the highlights, you can afford to skip it.

This is my new blog.

Hi there! I'm bored this summer, and I like to read and write about art, so I figured I'd share. I'll cover old art, new art, architecture, landscapes, performance art, art news, and anything else I feel like writing about. Your contributions and thoughts are always welcome!