Another Bouncing Ball

Hardgrave – tombs and worms and tumbling to decay: Death Sheild, with ribbon. Hardgrave is showing at the Joshua Liner Gallery through Feb. 6.

Eva Speer – flowers that rot on your wrist. An accessory for the prom in hell.

The dark prince of American history was smarter than any Republican to hold office after him, and not nearly as far-right on social issues as his party today. For personal resentment distilled to poison, however, he has no American rival.

From his papers, a new portion of which was released Monday: (Story via)

In a Jan. 26, 1970, memo to Haldeman and secretary Rose Mary Woods, the president demanded that the administration ”turn away from the policy of forcing our embassies abroad or those who receive assistance from the United States at home to move in the direction of off-beat art, music and literature.”

He called the Lincoln Center in New York a ”horrible monstrosity” that shows ”how decadent the modern art and architecture have become,” and declared modern art in embassies ”incredibly atrocious.”
”This is what the Kennedy-Shriver crowd believed in and they had every right to encourage this kind of stuff when they were in,” he wrote. ”But I have no intention whatever of continuing to encourage it now. If this forces a show-down and even some resignations it’s all right with me.”

More than Nixon’s artistic sensibilities were at play here. He made the political calculation that ”those who are on the modern art and music kick are 95 percent against us anyway.”

If Macbeth and his wife were one person, Nixon would be him. Reagan was an empty suit, and Bush is too stupid for tragedy. He caused tragedies but could not embody them. The last Republican who was worthy of his part in the play is long dead, but his papers will continue to tantalize.

Philip Guston, via

If masculinity were a bubble, Mark Newport would pop it. He has the knitting needles to get the job done. His hand-knitted, 6-foot, 8-inch tall hero suits line the walls and step out in the gallery space to mingle with visitors at the Greg Kucera Gallery.

The artist looks like a mild-mannered nerd, which is why the photos of him knitting his way through his superhero fantasies are compelling.

Alter Egos: At the Game

Just dreaming of them works too.

Alter Egos: Cowboy

Through Feb. 13.

The New York Times reported last week that H&M and Wal-mart both deal with excess inventory by throwing it out, instead of recycling it or passing it on to charities. That’s not all. Before putting new clothes and shoes in the dumpster, they cut them up to be certain that no one has a chance to make use of them.

Thank you, journalism. After this story hit the NYT and began to bounce around on blogs and facebook, these corporations changed course. They now say they’ll donate to charities what they haven’t sold.

The situation is different for artists. Those who discard drawings in recycling dumpsters have found them again for sale or framed in some collector’s home. It’s necessary for artists to cut up what they want to destroy or it might live again, the art that they have every right to edit out.

And cutting up clothes doesn’t mean the same thing in fashion as it does to Wal-Mart.

Viktor & Rolf (image via Amy Goodwin)

Via

Via

Andrea Zuill – The cake she won’t let herself eat, she paints.

Anya Gallaccio – Nothing lasts. From frosting topping to symbols of the sacred.

Russell Crotty

Patrick Kelley

Time for a positive note. As Jeffrey Mitchell, both artist and bear, likes to say, “Two paws up.”

Here’s Seattle novelist Jonathan Evison on an artist’s life, via Harold Hollingsworth. They both identify with the Charlie Kaufman line from Adaptation, “You are what you love, not what loves you.”

 
Hollingsworth in 1967:

He still wears that hat or one suspiciously like it. What he does today, image via.

From Paul Campos, via Paul O’Neil

I’m quite sure I could beat LeBron James in a game of one on one
basketball. The game merely needs to feature two special rules: It
lasts until I score, and as soon as I score I win. Such a game might
last several hours, or even a week or two, and James would probably
score hundreds and possibly thousands of points before my ultimate
victory, but eventually I’m going to find a way to put the ball in the
basket.

Our national government and almost all of the
establishment media have decided to play a similar game, which could be
called Terrorball. The first two rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts until there are no longer any terrorists, and;

(2) If terrorists manage to ever kill or injure or seriously frighten any Americans, they win.

Heide Hinrichs, from The Expected Obedience of Your Thoughts

Campos continued:

The typical Congressional subcommittee chairman or cable news anchor or
syndicated columnist can’t really imagine not being able to afford to
take his child to a doctor, or being wrongly convicted of a crime, but
he is quite capable of imagining being on a Paris to New York flight
that’s blown out of the sky. And while it’s true the risk he faces of
suffering this fate are very close to zero, they are not, as they are
for a poor person, literally zero.

Kris Martin, Mandi VIII (Note the absence of the snakes, and yet the figures writhe.)

Campos:

Terrorball, then, is an
elaborate political game that seems irrational on its face – after all,
it’s certain that more than 2.4 million Americans will die this year,
and fairly likely that not even one of those deaths will be caused by
terrorism — but which features its own peculiar logic. That logic
reflects the anxieties of those who have created its rules, and serves
the interests of both terrorists and those who profit from exploiting
the fear of terrorism.

And now this, via:

U.S. President Barack Obama has announced he would suspend the transfer of Guantánamo prisoners to Yemen, where an Al Qaeda-linked group is said to have planned a failed attack on a U.S. airliner.
Around half the 198 remaining Guantánamo prisoners are Yemeni nationals and, according to the latest data available, less than 40 have already been cleared for release.
In a statement, the Center for Constitutional Rights said: “Dozens of men from Yemen who have been cleared for release after extensive [government] scrutiny are about to be left in limbo once more due to politics, not facts. Halting [their] repatriation is unconscionable.”

In other words, dozens of Yemeni men are going to continue their prison stay not because of what they have done but because there is a threat that someone in their number might do something in the future, inflamed, no doubt, by being detained by us without trial and tortured for years. 

Lacking evidence to bring them to trial, we must release them, no matter how unsavory their future actions. If we imprison people for crimes they may commit, we have become what we fear. This is not what “Yes We Can” was supposed to mean.

Look around the world baby it can’t be denied
Why are we always on the wrong side. (via)

Selma Waldman

Leon Golub

Nancy Spero

Michael Spafford

Jack Daws