Reverse trompe l'oeil is cool; creeps me out

Alexa Meade doesn't paint canvases. She paints real, live people to look like canvases. And while I think this is amazing and sooo unique, I gotta say that seeing this in person would scare the bejeezus out of me, especially if I just happened to run into this guy on the subway on my way to work:

"Eye-Ass Coordination"

Neke Carson painted this portrait of his friend Andy Warhol in 1972, and "Page Six" reports that it's soon going on exhibit at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, its first public showing in 28 years. It looks pretty common, right? Kind of lopsided and cartoonish, but a pretty accurate likeness nonetheless. Not especially subversive material for that particular moment in artistic culture. So why is this a big deal?

"Page Six" left out an important detail, which New York Magazine's Vulture immediately set right. It seems that Carson, um, painted the portrait with his butt. Which is gross; but you have to admit, it makes the painting so much more impressive, doesn't it? So why did he choose to paint it this way? Apparently the idea came from several sources: kung fu movies, the new popularity of body art, and an off-color comment his wife made (and probably regretted immediately). And also because painting with your hand is so yesterday. Carson is quoted as saying: "My idea was, your hand is way too sophisticated to make art. This had much less baggage, to get this eye-ass coordination going. You had to rewire your brain, go from your eyes to your butt instead of your arms."

Portrait of Andy Warhol will be shown alongside Carson's video of Warhol's portrait sitting starting March 14th. I'm intrigued, but definitely not enough to subject my poor eyeballs to a naked Neke Carson trying to maneuver with a paintbrush between his cheeks while Andy Warhol attempts to keep a straight face. I apologize for that mental image. But for the record, Warhol thought the finished product looked great.

George W. Bush, "Art Critic"

George W. Bush has a favorite painting, W.H.D. Koerner's A Charge to Keep (1916), and it hangs prominently in the Oval Office. He claims to have acquired it after becoming a born-again Christian. But the painting doesn't depict what he thinks it does. I try not to be overtly political on these here pages out of respect for my Conservative readers (I think there are two of you?), but I just can't let this delicious irony pass me by. Because W does what he always does when he has no clue: he pulls something out of his ass and presents it as fact, and even becomes so convinced of its veracity that he completely disregards all evidence to the contrary.

The ending is too funny to give away, so I'll let Jacob Weisberg deliver the punchline in the video below. Check out this article in Harper's for more. Thanks to Isaac for the heads up.

Ocular Torture

I'm doing a lot of things lately that I've always wanted to do since moving to Boston, but never got around to until now. Like going ice skating on the Frog Pond, seeing a Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway (April 13th, baby!), and going for a run on the Esplanade. Boston is a beautiful place, and living here makes me happy.

But for a moment, I'd like to celebrate my city's ugliness. The Museum of Bad Art is dedicated to the "collection, preservation, exhibition, and celebration of bad art in all its forms." I visited those august halls on Wednesday last. And wow, that art is bad.

So what earns a work of art the label "bad?" It's not just lack of training, as one might assume. Some of the works on view at the MOBA are actually not that horrific in terms of the artist's skill. (Though of course, many of them are.) Some of the artists would certainly be capable of producing "good" art if they tried. What makes a work of art bad is when the artist attempts to create something meaningful, and fails in the execution. Case in point, The Picnic, an unattributed recent acquisition:

On first glance, it's stylistically reminiscent of Frida Kahlo. Kind of. She wasn't necessarily a master of form either, and her paintings don't always make sense unless you look at them within the context of her personal life. But what's the deal with the face-tree, and why does it have an Afro? Is the artist trying to say that the lovers are being watched? And what is the significance of the two boats set adrift on the other side of the channel, one of which looks to be sinking? It is symbolic of their relationship? There's also the question of white and yellow circles around the subjects' heads: halo, or pillow? The wall labels can significantly up a painting's bizarre factor: "Aware that inter-office dating was frowned upon by upper management, the young lovers decided to take an extended lunch break on a private island where they would surely not be seen."

But at least this painting was acquired in a respectable place, the Treasure Chest Thrift Store in Roslindale, rather than from the trash, like so many in the MOBA collection. My buddies and I bestowed upon this painting, untitled and unattributed, the honor of "object we would gladly pay money to avoid hanging on our wall":


If you'd like to visit the MOBA yourself, it's located (appropriately enough) just outside the men's room in the basement of the Dedham Community Theatre, about eight miles south of downtown Boston. For extra credit, try re-enacting the paintings (as below) and send me the pictures.

"Criminal Masterminds"

Two instances of bizarre breakings and enterings caught my attention recently. Apparently Whitey Bulger is the only person who can pull of a decent art theft these days.

On Feb. 9th, three masked men walked into the E. G. Bührle Collection in Zurich and walked out with a Cézanne, a Degas, a van Gogh, and a Monet. That's it: they walked in, grabbed, the paintings, walked out, and sped off in a van. So much for an elaborate heist plan. And to make things extra weird, police found two of the paintings nine days later in a car parked outside a psychiatric facility. Perhaps they were stolen by some intrepid inmates?

And back in November, news surfaced that a group of "cultural guerillas" had broken into the Panthéon in Paris and set up a secret lair in the dome. They didn't steal anything, but they restored a rusty old 1850 clock over the course of a year. Nobody noticed what they were doing until one of them walked into the Panthéon administrator's office and said, "hey guys, we made this clock work again." In true bureaucratic fashion, the French Centre for National Monuments responded by suing the clock fixers, but a jury cleared them of all charges within 20 minutes. This brought to you by Untergunther, the same organization that built a cinema with a bar and restaurant under the Seine. Thanks to Isaac for the news story.

Sorry 'bout that.

Well, that was quite a long time to be away from my blog. Long enough that I almost considered leaving it alone for another year. Alas, procrastination beckons. Amusingly enough, I convinced myself re-enter the blogosphere [I hate that word] after musing about about Dunkin' Donuts Pumpkin Spice Coffee on my friend Julie's blog We Are Lumberjacks.

Here's a brief update on the things I intended to write lengthy posts about, and never got around to:

-Frank Gehry wants to sell, not donate, his archives. Whichever museum buys them will end up on my unofficial academic research no-no list. Museums shouldn't have to pay for these things, must less from egotistical architects, no matter how historically significant they think they are.

-There was an avant-garde performance in Stonington, Maine (a town you won't know about unless you're from Maine, and maybe not even in that rare case) in which some awesome dancers hung from backhoes by ropes and cables in some old granite quarries. Unfortunately, the article from the Bangor Daily News has now disappeared into the archives and is virtually inaccessible unless you wish to pay them for the privilege. My own fault for not writing about it sooner, when it was actually going on. I wish I could've seen the show, but almost nobody lives in or near Stonington. Not to deprive Stonington of cultural capital; but if someone were to stage this show in Boston or NYC, it would be an instant hit.

-Bob Neuman is having a retrospective, 1954-2007, at the Beard Gallery at Wheaton College. That's Robert S. Neuman to those of you who are Googling him right now. The retrospective is being shown through Dec. 8th. Sadly, I missed the opening on September 9th--mostly due to my own tragic lethargy, but also the fact that I knew nobody there would recognize me, despite the fact that I've worked down the street from where they lived for the past two summers and sold them expensive photographs on a regular basis. Such is life in Northeast Harbor, but I won't complain. It certainly paid the bills this year.

I recently sat down and talked with Boston-based abstract painter Bob Neuman. Don't be fooled into thinking this was intentional. He's good friends with my boss, a landscape photographer in Northeast Harbor (see June 6, 2007 post), and he was bored enough to talk to me for a while at our gallery opening back in early August. Unfortunately, I didn't get to talk to him about his art. Hopefully that will happen sometime in the future. The conversation mostly concerned his assertion that the Charles River is soon to be filled in (like the Back Bay was in the nineteenth century) and taken over by Harvard University. I don't know about that. But I do know that you should not be deceived by his plaid suit. In the art, world, this guy matters, and for a reason. I'll have to write about his art sometime.

-For their birthdays in March and April, I got my parents tickets for the sold-out live national broadcast of Prairie Home Companion at the Bangor Auditorium on May 3rd. Please don't tell them; it's a surprise. How did I score the tickets? I know people who know people. Unsurprisingly, I also bought a ticket for myself. And now I have to wait six months to finally see and hear Garrison Keillor in person. I can't stand it!

-Sabra Johnson won So You Think You Can Dance, Season 3. This was way back in mid-August. But the thing is, nobody thought she was the best dancer on the show. Everyone knew that honor belonged to Danny Tidwell, who was unmatched in technique and artistry; Sabra was simply the most likeable option for the uninformed SYTYCD audience, due to the fact that Shane Sparks sabotaged Danny from the get-go by branding him as an egotistical know-it-all. (Not accurate, people! He's just shy and modest!) But I'm proud of Danny for showing compassion and class concerning Sabra's victory; especially considering he's the second dancer in his immediate family to be judged the runner-up of the show. Here's to a successful career in whatever you choose to do next, Danny.

-I finally purchased Ani DiFranco's Knuckle Down (2005) from the new Amazon music download service. I have two things to say about this:

1. I wish I had done this sooner. This may be the best Ani album yet, and I consider myself an early-'90s Ani loyalist, so that's saying a lot. I wasn't a huge fan of Educated Guess, so I gave up on Ani for a while. I'm glad I came back. It feels like home.
2. The Amazon music download service is actually pretty awesome. Abandon iTunes; nobody needs closed proprietary formats anyway.

-The Red Sox won the World Series again. It's not art news, but it deserves a mention. Particular emphasis on the word "again." Do I smell a dynasty brewing? I may just need to follow my brother's example and get a Red Sox tattoo. Okay, now I've brought this part of the post back into the realm of art.

-S