jameswagner – Page 39

Obama’s hope and change: was it all fake?

today we’ve learned to hide ideas about freedom – if any even survive

Was Obama’s talk about hope and change all fake, or are his continuing conservative decisions and appointments only a cover?
Are they trying to make permanent cynics out of members of the American minority that still believes in participatory government? I’ve been worried for a long time, since well before the election, about whether a new administration would really give us the change we need and want – and clearly mandated on November 4.
I’ve tried to dismiss the evidence: Both the history and the words of the man who is now our president elect had betrayed that he has what in most times and places would be described as a pretty conservative outlook and approach. I’ve been telling myself that it’s just Obama’s way of getting through the door, and that once there he might have to continue pursuing the appearance of circumspection as a stealth device for getting people to go along with the progressive, even radical change the moment demands.
In spite of the great myth, Americans just aren’t very adventurous about government.
I was also trying not to jump to conclusions too early, since the election was only three weeks ago and this kind of speculation seemed to me to be a waste of time at this point, when the new administration was still embryonic, and also because he’s got to be given time to get some smart homies together before charging into Washington.
But as the concessions and appointments continue, apparently announcing a seemingly inexorable reintroduction of the polices and personnel which created the colossal messes both inside and outside our borders which we’re now struggling to repair, I’ve become very alarmed, and I’m finding I’m not the only one. I mean, this is only the latest: Gates stays?
The letter which follows, written by a reader distressed for good reason I would say, was printed in today’s NYTimes. It shares my own last desperate hope for change:

To the Editor:
Re “The Candidate of Change Chooses Experience” (news analysis, front page, Nov. 22):
President-elect Barack Obama was elected running left and is now making appointments from the center-right. He could still instruct his loyal appointees to govern from the left. That would be the change we could believe in. Otherwise, the joke will be on us, again.
Doug Karo
Durham, N.H., Nov. 22, 2008

ADDENDUM:
While I’m at it, let me ask who decided we have to wait almost three months to replace an administration we already voted to get rid of? Everywhere else in the civilized world governments leave as soon as they are asked to leave. Our own government, its Executive together with its Congress, today has by far the greatest burden of responsibility of any governing authority in the entire world; why do we still have to sit so vulnerable and impotent, dead in the water until next year, waiting for the spring thaw [until 1937, described as March 4, for the convenience of delegates to the Electoral College] for the control of these two obscenely-powerful institutions to be handed over to a designated successor?

[image, a detail of an 1854 engraving by Baker & Andrew of Molly Pitcher, from teachushistory]

Meredith Allen’s “Trash” at Edward Thorp

Meredith Allen Untitled_0460 digital C-print 18.25″ x 18.25″

Meredith Allen Untitled_0420 digital C-print 18.25″ x 18.25″

Meredith Allen Untitled_0538 digital C-print 18.25″ x 18.25″

Meredith Allen Untitled_0462 digital C-print 18.25″ x 18.25″

While I’ve known Meredith Allen for years, I’ve been following her documentary and art photography even longer. With each of the regular appearance of new bodies of very strong work, Allen has been able to open up the culture and the aesthetic of worlds most of us encounter regularly but would take pretty much for granted without the fact and the quality of her interventions.
Her latest series, “Trash“, is very handsomely installed on the walls of the Edward Thorp Gallery on Eleventh Avenue for the rest of this week. The smart, whimsical and sometimes borderline-sad humor which was always a large part of Allen’s earlier work is mostly gone in these modest-size, square photographs of filled and tied recycling bags. Instead there’s a new, almost monumental aspect to these images, its solemn potential confounded probably just in time, in fact balanced perfectly, by the squashiness and ephemeral nature of the subjects, and also the delicate, yes, totally honest prettiness of the artist’s captures.
I love every one of them, and I’m finding I didn’t really need the jpegs near me to still see them in my head two days later.

[images from the artist]

Karen Heagle at I-20

Karen Heagle Death Valley 2008 acrylic and ink on paper 51.5″ x 55″ [installation view]

Karen Heagle Vulture with Carcass 2008 acrylic and ink on paper 54″ x 52″ [installation view]

Karen Heagle‘s second I-20 solo show, “She’ll Get Hers“, opened on November 1st, but I hadn’t managed to see these latest paintings until Tuesday.
Wow.
The expressionist take on her characteristic, deliciously-wacky assortment of subjects has the physical appeal of the child’s “finger painting” kits which both attracted and repelled me as a child (I was too much of a neat freak to jump in). In these luscious paintings (acrylic on paper), describing vultures, rubbish, the painter’s own tools, a coiled snake, at least one nude, a pregnant man, and a burning “bush” in the desert, Heagle’s peculiar enthusiasms and almost reckless palette combine to chart a path which skims the borders of hell on the way to the celestial.

NOTE: I-20’s site has these two images and four more. I wrestled with the decision, but I decided to use my own for this entry. There are unfortunately some reflection on the plexiglas, but I thought the colors in my shots were more true to the originals, and I really wanted to do all that I could to convey some of the energy and excitement I experienced standing in front of them.
Just remember that these imperfect copies can’t begin to reproduce the paintings themselves – or their impact.

thirteen windows in the darkness

untitled (13 windows) 2008

Tracey Baran: we miss her already

Tracey Baran No Looking Back 2005

I think it was 1997. The large color prints were lying in a stack on the bed, and they were among the most exciting things I’d seen in a very exciting fair, and now I was almost blind to everything else in this very busy room. Penny Liebman and Kathy Magnan, the two directors of what soon became Liebman Magnan Gallery, did not yet have a physical gallery space, as I remember, but they had decided to share with several other exhibitors one of the larger guest rooms in the old Gramercy Park Hotel, the original site of the Armory Show. They were showing the work of a young unknown photographer named Tracey Baran.
Barry and I bought two photographs on the spot.
We eventually ended up with several more. Very soon we had met the artist, and we regularly spoke to her at openings. At her very first show, in 1998, we were introduced to her parents, Roxanne and Joe, and several other members of her family. We didn’t get to know Tracey well, but we often asked about her and inquired about her newest work. We couldn’t help talking to others about the images – a lot. We probably talked up her art at least as often as we did any other artist whose work we’re living with.
She was an extraordinary artist and a delight to be around.
On Monday we learned from Leslie Tonkonow, who has been showing her work for years, that Tracey had died the previous week. She had been hospitalized in July after suffering seizures and she never recovered. She was 33.
Two of her best friends are hosting a gathering Saturday evening, November 22, to remember and celebrate her life. It will be from 7:00 to 10:30 at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, 53 Prospect Park West. Barry and I will be there.

Links to more images:
Leslie Tonkonow
jameswagner.com
Museum of Contemporary Photography
Arratia, Beer
artnet (scroll down half way)
artnet

Tracey Baran I Miss You Already 2003

[images from Leslie Tonkonow]

PINTA 08

Roberto Fabelo* large oil at Habana Galeria, Havana

[two details]

two works by Leon Ferrari, the first (text drawing, oil on wood) at Galaria Berenice Arvani, Sao Paolo; the second (print of Renaissance religious fresco used on bottom of birdcage, framed) at Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires

Francisco Toledo 1985 aquatint and woodcut, “a Mujer del Alacr�n” [large detail], at Poligrafa, Barcelona

Fernando Bryce (imperial) installation at Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

Matias Duville huge (distressed) acrylic on particle board at Galeria Alberto Sendros, Buenos Aires

Maria Freire 1969 acrylic on canvas at Sammer Gallery, Miami

Carmen Herrera 1974 acrylic on canvas at Latincollector, New York

Nelson Leirner sculpture at Bolsa de Arte, Porto Alegre

Los Super Elegantes t-shirt at de la Barra, London

PINTA 08 is going on right now, and it’s definitely worth a visit. It would be enough if we were being offered only one of its two elements, but the organizers purposely describe the fair as host to both the “modern” and the “contemporary” art of Latin America. I found some wonderful surprises, including artists and work of whom my ignorance was pretty embarrassing.
I won’t go into the question of why New York still needs separate exhibitions or events to display the work of artists living outside Europe or the U.S., or whether we will always need this separation, although I think I just gave one good answer in the preceding paragraph. In any event, on the evidence of the great, but largely unfamiliar stuff (created over the last half century or so and up to the present) being shown on 18th street through tomorrow, we absolutely do need this one.
I’m not going to say much here, because this post is time-sensitive and already overdue, but I wanted to add some installation shots of my own to those Barry has already put up, along with his comments, to suggest some of the variety to be found at this very comfortably-sized fair.

*
I expect that come January 20 we’re going start seeing a lot more art from Cuba around these parts. Okay, I have to mention that I’m also wondering about the identity and significance of the little man in the top pot in this gorgeous painting: Does he look familiar?

civil rights, yes, but gay marriage be damned

no plastic grooms

This is the definition of “marriage” from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

mar�riage
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English mariage, from Anglo-French, from marier to marry
Date: 14th century
1 a (1): the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage
2: an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected ; especially : the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities
3: an intimate or close union

I see no religious or sacramental reference in this definition, and I am sufficiently familiar with recorded history and primordial custom to know that “marriage” has traditionally been regarded as a state independent of any and all religions.
I’m not going to jump onto anyone’s bandwagon in a quest to join my contemporary religionists and their reactionary concept of personal relationships, and if I should end up outside City Hall tomorrow (Saturday) it will be only to stand somewhere with a simple sign suggested by my friend Bill Dobbs:

CIVIL UNIONS FOR ALL

Although I’d try to add in something about civil rights for all, since not everyone is cut out for unions.
Two nights ago Dobbs sent an email around: “39 years after Stonewall the gays in New York City say GOD LOVES GAY MARRIAGE”, and he attached an image showing that on the central banner of Wednesday’s demonstration outside the Mormon Church’s New York headquarters across from Lincoln Center.
I’m just as disgusted as Bill, but I’m old enough to actually remember Stonewall and have to ask, what’s the hell’s going on here?

It seems we’re not alone on this. See “sorry, sweethearts, still fiercely disinterested in this one” from johnny i hardly knew you.

[image of Tab Hunter and Roddy McDowall from michaelprocopio]

street art sculpture in Ascenzi Square

Does anyone know anything about this somewhat sequestered seating sculpture sitting in the center of Ascenzi Square?
The triangular square was named the Ascenzi family which once lived nearby. Four brothers fought and two died during the War to End All Wars. Could the four-place bench be intended for these siblings?

ADDENDUM: For those who’ve asked, Ascenzi square is located in Williamsburg, where Metropolitan Avenue is crossed by North 4th Street.

“Cloud Cuckoo Land”, Moskowitz and Trager at Momenta

“Wanting things a certain way doesn’t limit my utopic thinking.”

“Our civilization values space over historical time”

“Oh, that’s just Booker”
[three stills from the installation of the video of “Cloud Cuckoo Land”, the quotes below each not necessarily matched to the scenes in which the lines occurred]

Wow. Do we need this now. Do we need this now? Do we need this now!
Maybe.
Aristophanes’s “The Birds”, whose “Cloud-Cookoo-Land” utopia inspired the title of Erik Moskowitz and Amanda Trager’s video and sculptural installation at Moment Art is described as the first play to question the idea of human progress. In the 414 BC comedy two men, “Mr. Trusting” and “Mr. Hopeful”, have fled the old world and together with a friendly Hoopoe and all the other birds, they go about erecting a perfect city in the clouds. In the end their utopia, or dream of an egalitarian state, is transformed into a dictatorship.
Moskowitz and Trager’s own narrative collaboration involves a small family, the conventional home from which they walk away, the progressive commune which they join, and the hopes which they see dashed. Their disturbing 17-minute musical video is installed at Momenta in the midst of the sets and scrims used in its creation.
This is from the gallery’s statement:

The familiar boundaries to which [the main character] clings and the unclear spatial relations within the gallery coalesce and call into question how we envision comfort and safety both societally and psychologically.

the great American car giants to go belly up, or?

crap piloted by doofuses (no, not the toy maker)

Lead AP story: “Pelosi calls for emergency aid for auto industry”
Of course we’re not asking for any return, like demanding that the industry produce a decent, responsible product, like attractive small, efficient, non-polluting small vehicles, or reduce its outrageous demand on scarce resources, and, above all, give its entire historically incompetent management the sack.
Come to think of it, how about converting much of it to passenger rail car manufacturing? Nobody thinks big any more.

ADDENDUM: [added at noon on November 12] He may be an idiot on Iraq and just about everything else, but in the NYTimes Thomas L. Friedman column covers this territory, and in doing so hardly misses a beat. I never read it, but today the headline subject pulled me in.
Also, I neglected to mention yesterday that I grew up in Detroit during the 40’s and 50’s, the Motor City’s heyday (yes, there really were such days). From an early age an unusually knowledgeable car fanatic, even for that time and geography, I always had my doubts about the industry which seemed to totally dominate our culture. My eyes started to open in 1950, when I saw a VW Beetle parked around the corner from our house.

[image from lallylaw]