As neat as the pantry

(Nicole Eisenman, Death and Maiden, 2009, oil on canvas, 14.25 x 18 in.)

What about the free American woman? In movieland, what are our prospects?

After the age of 40 you can be Maude as in Harold and, with a wonderfully uplifting spirit, but you’ll commit suicide so as not to face old age – and also, you’ve just had enough. Or you can grab your friends Thelma and Louise and drive off a cliff. If you’re upper middle, it’s probably better to be a ball-busting shark or plain old good mom.

And what about the free American woman as artist?

If you want to compete with the guys, you’ll have to be as butch as possible – at the very least, an outspoken feminist. Otherwise, you’ll have to be quirky, lyrical or psychological and preferably the wife of another artist. The monumental is off-limits. But don’t worry: once you die, you can be marketed for the ages.

I'll stop being flip.

Art by women is different than art by men. I don’t see that as the problem. Let’s just broaden the categories and expand the notions of destiny.

Jeune et Belle

(Natalie Baye in "A French Gigolo")

I have a soft spot for mainstream French movies, the kind that aren’t really trying to be film, but that just tell a story and let you spend ninety minutes in the French mindset and in Paris if you’re lucky. It’s as refreshing as some time away, and you don’t have to take a plane.

This past weekend's selections from Netflix instant watch were about love, the true kind versus the kind that you pay for, for convenience sake. These were upper middle class scenarios, so no down and dirty prostitution and tales of societal misery. Just good clothes and the struggle between personal freedom and intimacy.

In “I do: How to Get Married and Stay Single,” a perfume nose hires Charlotte Ginsburg to be the perfect fiancée so his family will leave him alone. “Priceless” is the tale of two young beauts – a man and a woman - who hunt down older partners in order to mooch off of their well-heeled life along the Riviera. The best though, was “A French Gigolo,” which endearingly tells the story of being the older woman asking for such services (yes, let's acknowledge that that perspective would likely not be considered on this side of the "pond").

France is a country that prides itself on its sensuality, on breeding the femme fatale, on coining the term “ménage à trois,” and accepting the open marriage (how many times have you been reminded that both Mitterand’s wife and mistress were at his funeral). But all that is facade. The French are the most tradition-minded, family-oriented people I know. And every single one of these movies reaffirms it. In the chilling voiceover that ends “A French Gigolo,” the woman “of a certain age” declares, “I am a free woman.” That she is, but lest anyone think otherwise, the free French woman is lonely and will live to regret it.

Miserable Authenticity

(Kirk Hayes, Stairs (For Kelson), 2006)

(Philip Guston, Untitled, 1980)

I was immediately attracted to this piece by Kirk Hayes in Gumption, a group show now on view at ZieherSmith. But is it the particular work that I like or the appeal of the association I make? That’s certainly reminiscent of a Guston pink and the roughhewn foot is part of Guston’s vocabulary (anyone who has been reading here a while knows, I like my Philip Guston.) Hayes’s other oil on panel in the exhibition rings more true to me. The line between influence and imitation is fine indeed.

With my own drawing, it’s so hard to tell when something is enough my own. If the question pops into my head, I probably have my answer: I’m too close. If I’m wracked with insecurity because I’ve never really seen anything like it, then I’m probably in the right zone of authenticity, miserable authenticity. Only with time does the sting wear away into a “maybe that works.”

All this said, with an almost-Guston my wall, I could be a happier person.

Lazy Monday

Today, more photographs, less words.

What is that painting behind Obama?







Wouldn’t this make a great drawing in oil stick? I’ll lose the Blonde in my version.

















I still like them.
(Demonstration for the release of Ai Wei Wei yesterday in front of the Chinese Embassy).

Margins

This is the most memorable work I saw today at the American Folk Art Museum. It's by a well-known self-taught artist named Bill Traylor, who was born into slavery and started drawing in his 80s. I still find it awkward to have work by "marginals" in a museum that institutionalizes "the marginal" (marginal to me).

As museum goers and art lovers, we tend to only learn about an artist's background if the artist is black, a woman or poor beyond can't-pay-back-my-loans. Sure, personal history is interesting and certainly does add dimension to seeing work. But we tend to chose what personal history matters. For some reason, we don't think the fact that Julian Schnabel has a new model girlfriend "matters." Nor does it "matter" that Molly Stevens found the deductions necessary to reduce her taxes to $4400, down from $10,400.

Another money riddle

(Carroll Dunham, Square Mule, 2007)

Today I learned that we underestimated what we owed in taxes for 2010 by seven thousand dollars.

I haven’t drawn this well in months.

Loaded

(Julia Roberts chilling in Bali on the path to happiness)

How can you become a better person? In recent years, Hollywood has given us two options, both entirely apolitical. To qualify, you just have to be loaded.

You can go the way of The Blind Side and take in an abandoned inner-city youth with athletic potential. This movie is based on a true story, and as such, is pretty incredible. But when you watch the real family being interviewed by Mike Huckabee on Fox News, you know other intentions are at work: namely to promote a vision of what happens when you rely (not on government but) on the good Christian will of individuals. Everyone will live happily ever after. Just make sure your new family member is docile. But even if he’s not, you’re a member of the NRA, so everything should turn out ok anyway.

Or you could go the route of Eat, Pray, Love and indulge in travel to Italy, India and Bali. In Italy, you might have to buy size 2 jeans, which is a bummer since you used to be a size 1. You’ll lose the pounds in India though, but not your attachments. Guess that would take even more meditating. It takes so long! Never mind, in Bali, you’ll fall in love with Javier Bardem. He’ll make you feel better. And somewhere along the way, you can email your friends who will send over $17,000 for a local to buy a house.

I certainly don’t mean to downplay individual lives and amazing experiences. Sometimes one person at a time is the best you can do. But on the level of popular culture, these tales become parables and also mirrors of the reigning ideologies of our times.

The snob's phone

(Philip Guston, Hooded, Charcoal on Paper, 1968)

I can’t really post today because I got my first iphone. I feel that my status has been upped, that I’m part of a club and that club says something about me. It says I’m savvy, on the go, a multi-tasker, a liberal, too good to be true. I’m coordinated, busy, up to date, pretty damn well off. The iphone is the snob’s phone, for sure. I love it already.

But I still like my art plain and simple. Charcoal on paper please. Do you realize this drawing must have taken all of two minutes, if that - after years of build up to get to this point of course.

And the sound of charcoal on paper. You can't beat it. I think there's app that'll record it.

Snob

(Percy Heath and Jimmy Heath)

Like I was saying on Monday, if you have a democratic spirit in art, you focus little on your personal position. What matters is the well-being of the whole, animated by diverse parts. I confess again, I have a hard time letting my individualistic urges go. Therefore, not only am I an art capitalist, but I’m an art snob.

Virginia Woolf, in her hilarious essay “Am I a Snob?” (thanks Ixv) provides a definition:

The essence of snobbery is that you wish to impress the other. The snob is a flutter-brained, hare-brained creature so little satisfied with his or her own standing that in order to consolidate it he or she is always flourishing a title or an honor in other people’s faces so that they may believe, and help him to believe what he does not really believe – that he or she is somehow a person of importance.

Really what has to be highlighted here is that a snob doesn’t actually believe she’s superior. She therefore sets things up around her in order to feel better about herself: she’s comforted by certain friends that complement an image she’d like to project of herself as independent and edgy; she fills her head with lofty thoughts about the potential of art (I think therefore I am). This is snob psychology, and it explains why one such person would prefer to be surrounded by like-minded artists in a gallery. Because, braving difference on her own is too damn scary.

I can think of three art snob antidotes off the top of my head:

1. Find your inner-aristocrat whereby you don’t need to care about other people. My friend, I’ll call her Shields, was a good example. She had no censor mechanism and would tell dirty jokes at every dinner party possible.

2. Find your inner-Heath Brother. To quote Percy Heath, “The reward for playing jazz is that you get to play jazz… It’s something to live for.”

3. Genuine, if only temporary, feeling.

Drawing as performance

Why draw in public? I have no idea.

I'll be drawing from 3-4pm and then will be at the kids station after.

Monster Drawing Rally benefiting the Dumbo Arts Center. This Sunday.

What's Up in Teen Pop Culture

It’s all about Rihanna. Not with Eminem. That was months ago. I mean the new Rihanna video called S & M. A fascinating subject indeed, although here it’s rendered for primetime TV. But let me tell you, when a twelve year old asks you if she can eat the dinner sausage like Rihanna does a banana, you know something is still working in pop culture.

Then there’s a guy (a band? a brand?) called Neo-con. Oh, wait, I mean Madcon. What’s amazing about a song like Beggin’ is its instant familiarity, a jingly – yes, catchy - blend of 60s and 70s for the 00s. It sounds like a spoof, but in fact it’s a cover. Of course I prefer the Frankie Valli version because I still believe in authenticity. So kill me.

One more mention: Willow Smith. She’s Will Smith’s daughter (get it?) and she’s ten. Back in the day when she was nine, she recorded a song, “I whip my hair back and forth,” and well... At one point, she walks out whipping her hair back and forth, wearing a t-shirt that reads “I love me.”

Can you practice along with me? "I love me, I love me, I love me.”

Monday's faux koan

(Drawing of ancient Chinese comet observations)

What I want to say today is that I don’t have time to write anything.

So two questions instead: is it better to have a handful of art friends that you like only some of the time, or 0 art friends that you like all of the time.

And on the flip side:

Is it better to be liked by a handful of art friends some of the time, or by 0 art friends all of the time?

Outsider

(Top: Freddie Brice, Untitled, c. 1987-1990 ; Bottom: Molly Stevens, Untitled, 2011)

So much of what is called “outsider” art is appealing to me for the bold visions that show little if no respect of institutional culture; you get fearless combinations of text, figuration and patterning; gutsy colors; un-precious supports and materials. To be a true “outsider,” you apparently have to not only have no affiliations with a school or official art culture, but you have to not even know that either exits. Sometimes this means the work’s bold visions are visionary; sometimes it means that it isn’t institutional but rather institutionalized. In fact Dubuffet’s term “art brut” – which I think started it all - was meant specifically to describe work by asylum inmates. The line is fine for me. I don’t want to admire work by the unhealthy or the unaware. Not only would that be exploitative, but it would be unhealthy and unaware on my part.

A lot of outsider art is scary. In James Kalm’s video report of this year’s Outsider Art Fair , we see a standing sculpture from Haiti that is said to contain a human skull; another piece is made of dirty rags and looks like a face. I don’t want to know what it can do. Keep the needles away.

I’m not scared of the word primitive if it means early. And I don’t mind the word tribal if it means part of community’s culture. I do wince at the word naïve (according to whom?). And I’m wary of the jumble that outsider-primitive-tribal-naive art has come to encompass. In a way, it’s all a manner of saying “not the white dude who teaches at Yale with a show up at Zwirner” – with condescending irony, for sure.

Often it’s best not to think too much about terms. A piece is good if it’s good, no matter what it is or where it comes from. You jut have to call it art.

Unfreedom

A friend of mine who actually has a functioning career as an artist thrives on freedom. It’s her M.O and at times also her schtick. Fuck ‘em, break free and be free. It’s appealing, I can’t deny it. I admire her style, but by nature, I tend to wade in the struggle.

On my team is Philip Guston. In an exciting collection of his writings, lectures and conversations, he says:

When you begin painting you’re too free. That’s why it’s always so painful to start a new picture, or to start the process again, because you have to go through the whole thing again and again. To get rid of the freedom, you might say. I think what is happening is that you’re getting to a state of unfreedom. […] And paradoxically, when you can only do this and not that […] you’re more free in some mysterious metaphysical way.

A few weeks back, I wondered about the psychological freedom that might bond artists as visually different as Amy Silman, Brice Marden and Pierre Bonnard. Perhaps a more precise investigation would involve questioning how each, through unfreedom, came into the work’s truth.