“An exhibition of paintings is not as communicative as speech, literature or live entertainment, and the artists’ constitutional interest is thus minimal.” - Giuliani appeal brief , Giuliani v Lederman et al and Giuliani v Bery et al, filed with the US Supreme Court 2/24/97.
I’ll just let that speak for itself.
Need I say more?
Yes, that’s Damien Hirst playing with his lovely little $100 million diamond-studded skull. No irony here. Just pure wretchedness.
If you think you can stomach it, read Charlie Finch’s short piece on ArtNet.
Technorati Tags: art
Contemporary art has long been in denial of reality. From the ironic to the vulgar, art has, in recent years, become less about people. But the resounding opinion of the 2007 Biennale is that art has finally re-engaged with reality.
Sarah Milroy’s piece in The Globe and Mail recognizes this newfound relevance of art, and I encourage everyone to read it.
Here’s an excerpt:
A theme emerges: Storr versus CNN. Taken as a whole, this exhibition presents a kind of sustained resistance to the smarmy platitudes and easy generalizations of the media, which so effectively gloss over the jagged edges of confusion, human tragedy and loss. Truth is to be found, Storr seems to suggest, not in grand and sweeping rhetoric. Rather, it is lodged in the nitty-gritty of lived experience, which art can make us witness to.
The pieces in the Arsenale are “works of similar political urgency and emotional resonance.” She concludes: “Considering the show in retrospect, you feel chastened and inspired to expect more from art, and to think a little more rigorously about how we live. This show’s intelligence leaves a taste in your mouth that not even ice-cold Prosecco can wash away.”
This is what art can and should do. It should inspire us to connect with our world and with the people around us. At times it should challenge our assumptions. At others, it should serve as a release. But art as public enjoyment has partially been in its death throes because it simply hasn’t bothered to speak to people. A shark suspended in glass means nothing to me, even as an art historian. It seems silly because it is silly.
This Biennale has shown us a way forward. It has shown us what our art can be and what we as a people can be. An art that does any less simply doesn’t deserve to be called art.
I’ve been looking out for work that goes outside of “ars gratis artia,” something that speaks to people. Recently I’ve come across a few fairly neat things.
First up is a piece at the Venice Biennale:
The Italian pavilion has a very funny video installation, called Democrazy, by Francesco Vezzoli, a satire of the American (and increasingly, the world’s) political campaign process. It consists of two sixty-second videos — parody presidential campaign spots — that play simultaneously on large screens facing one another in a darkened space. In one the actress Sharon Stone is candidate “Patricia Hill”. In the other, the French celebrity philosophe Bernard-Henri Levy plays “Patrick Hill”, who naturally is just about indistinguishable from Patricia, though it’s hard to tell because in their simultaneous babbling of political nostrums, with appropriate background music, they just about drown one another out. Which, of course, is part of the joke.
Very fitting.
And then NPR reports on this piece by Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal:
Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal, who left his country in 1992 but still has family there, wanted to bring into sharp focus what it’s like to be constantly worried about personal safety. So he moved into a gallery in Chicago and invited computer users across the country to shoot paintballs at him — through the Internet.
You can visit his site here.
And the Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal reports on the last remaining gallery in Baghdad:
Imagine, therefore, the onus of courage on anyone who dares open an art gallery, let alone keeps it running since January 2006 with 26 shows and as many receptions. Such a place exists: Madarat, the last active gallery in Baghdad, just up a side road next to the Turkish Embassy in the Waziriya district near the city center. Imagine the risks involved for patrons attending an opening–how to get there safely, and then how long to stay en bloc as a provocative target, even how much precious gas to use up for art’s sake.
In light of this kind of work, the Damien Hirst’s of the world just seem silly…not that they didn’t before.
While there is only a limited amount of information on MIT’s OCW site, I have to say that I have fallen in love with it. I’m going to be playing around with this for awhile; I’ve already downloaded lecture notes, readings and videos for the following classes:
Feeling and Imagination in Art, Science, and Technology
Logic
Media, Education, and the Marketplace
Mind and Machines
Problems of Philosophy
Relativism, Reason, and Reality
I hope that they continue to expand the resources on the site, and it’d be nice to see other schools do the same.
The Guardian has an interesting article up about possible evidence of panspermia.
While it’s unlikely that this actually is evidence of panspermia, I do think it gives us an opportunity to talk about the importance of SETI. So here we go, the Drake equation:
I always find it amazing that so few people know about the Drake equation and the implications it has for life here on Earth. Obviously, the existence of extraterrestrial life is important. And Carl Sagan made what I believe to be a low estimate of 10,000 advanced civilizations within our own galaxy using the Drake equation, a number that I would hope would cause some people to sit up and take notice.
But Sagan noted that for us there was a hidden immediacy in the equation: L, the expected lifetime of an advanced civilization willing to communicate. We are such a civilization. However, the threat posed by the possibility of nuclear war and environmental issues seriously curbs our ability to extend our own L. It’s just something to keep in mind.
Via MediaMatters:
On the March 2 edition of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, right-wing activist David Horowitz claimed that “[t]here are 50,000 professors” who are “anti-American” and “identify with the terrorists.” Horowitz, the president of Students for Academic Freedom and a proponent of an “Academic Bill of Rights” for American universities, is the author of The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Regnery, January 2006).
According to statistics from the Department of Education, there are just over 400,000 tenured and tenure-track full-time university professors* in the United States. If Horowitz’s numbers are accurate, that means approximately one out of every eight tenured or tenure-track college and university professors is a terrorist sympathizer.
I wonder where he got the number 50,000. Sounds a bit arbitrary to me. Needless to say, I’m not surprised about this kind of comment at all coming from him. I just worry about some of the professors who teach here who could be targeted sometime in the future by people of his ilk. The prospect of this bastardization of academic “rights” being widely accepted in the future makes me think twice about wanting to teach. But then again, it does create some sort of an urge to want to fight these people off with a piece of chalk. While I’m certainly not a Burkean, I do agree that “[a]ll that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” This man has got to be stopped.
I finally decided to go on one of the Terrapin Trail Club trips, with Lauren. We had an excellent time; I can’t wait until it gets warmer out and we can go on some more. The weather was perfect for hiking, though: approximately 45º the whole time.
And last night we had a rousing three hour philosophical discussion in the cabin. The weekend was refreshing, to say the least. You can check out some of my pictures (and hers).
Thanks to a nice post on 3QD about the 2005 Koufax Awards, I ran across the group blog Coming Anarchy.
And thanks to the first post I saw, I added them to my feedreader. This Christmas I begged my parents to buy me The Pentagon’s New Map, written by a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and one of the leaders of the NewRuleSets Project. For the uninitiated, there is an excellent Esquire article that sums up his thesis.
I’m interested to see what Curzon has to say in the future posts.
Looks like Libby is about to resign:
Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe, plans to ask members of the grand jury to indict Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, a lawyer involved in the case told CNN Friday.
The attorney said that Fitzgerald believes Libby misled investigators.
Indictments in the case would cap off a nearly two-year investigation into the public unmasking of an undercover CIA operative. Fitzgerald has scheduled a 2 p.m. ET news conference.
More here.
