one piece

'Alone in the Woods'

Alone in the woods I felt

The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees

Nature has taught her creatures to hate

Man that fusses and fumes

Unquiet man

As the sap rises in the trees

As the sap paints the trees a violent green

So rises the wrath of Nature’s creatures

At man

So paints the face of Nature a violent green.

Nature is sick at man

Sick at his fuss and fume

Sick at his agonies

Sick at his gaudy mind

That drives his body

Ever more quickly

More and more

In the wrong direction.

Stevie Smith

Photograph: Mark Power

"Silk Stories"

Kunsthal Rotterdam, Museumpark shows a selection of 120 pieces of clothing from the collection of Jan Dees which can be dated back to the period of 1900-1940. A large part of the men's -, women's - and children's collection of clothes originates from the Taisho period (1912-26), the period of government of Emperor Yoshihito. The patterns on some of the kimonos have been derived from modern city life, but the vast majority of the designs are based on nature and traditional culture.

Cover-Uncover

The Sex Pistols’ only official album was released October 28^th, 1977 on Virgin Records. By mid-January 1978, they had broken up, Johnny Rotten quitting at the end of a concert in the US, saying “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” as he walked offstage.

Given the fact that their two and a half year career was the most spectacular PR stunt in music history, semi-controlled by one of it’s most nauseating self-publicists, Malcolm McClaren, maybe there was a little cheating going on. But not by the suitably anarchic artist who designed the cover for “Never Mind The Bollocks” - Jamie Reid.

Reid was working on a radical political magazine called Suburban Press at the time, so really did believe in some of the things McClaren and the Pistols sang and said (they didn’t!). He also believed punk was a legitimate art movement ‘ a movement it turns out, he helped define.

Work on the covers for the first Sex Pistols singles let Reid develop the powerful ransom note and newspaper clipping style that became iconic.

Read more at: Sleevage

“Cage Piece” (1978-79)

Trying to walk

the same way

to the same store

takes high-wire

balance:

each step

not exactly

as before

risks chasms

of flatness.

One stumble

alone and

nothing

happens.

Few are

the willing

and fewer

the champions.

  Repetition 

  By Kay Ryan

The Museum of Modern Art is devoting a small, gripping exhibition to the documentation of “Cage Piece” (1978-79), the first of the Taiwanese-born performance artist Tehching Hsieh (pronounced dur-ching shay), One Year Performances. It entailed spending a year in near-solitary confinement in a cell-like cage doing absolutely nothing. The show makes an altogether apt debut for the Modern’s new series of project exhibitions devoted to performance art. Few pieces communicate the medium’s potential and its demands in such a basic, resonant way.

For “Cage Piece” Mr. Hsieh built a cage from pine dowels and two-by-fours in a corner of his TriBeCa studio, furnishing it with a bed, a blanket, a sink (no toilet) and a pail, as well as some personal hygiene items. He entered the cell on Sept. 30, 1978. Robert Projansky, his lawyer, locked the door and affixed it and each dowel with paper seals that he signed. Every day a friend delivered food and dealt with the artist’s refuse. And each day the friend took a photograph of Mr. Hsieh, who had shaved his head at the beginning.

For the next year Mr. Hsieh was mostly alone with his thoughts: no talking, reading or writing; no radio or television. On designated days once or twice a month his loft was open to the public from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; people could visit it like a gallery and see the work in progress. On Sept. 29, 1979, Mr. Projansky returned, verified that none of the seals had been broken, and Mr. Hsieh left his cell.

There’s the temptation to see Mr. Hsieh as a political prisoner (all those mug shots) or as a fanatical devotee of some religion. But mainly his work fits squarely within performance art’s peculiar and extreme explorations of the human condition.What’s most tangible about the “Cage Piece” is the almost palpable immensity and emptiness of time, nothing but time, of life as the filling of time. Mr. Hsieh carved a notch for each day in the wall. (He didn’t consider it writing.) He said he spent the time staying alive and thinking about his art.

link: A Year in a Cage: A Life Shrunk to Expand Art 

By Roberta Smith 

Pull me up up up up, up up up up!

The RISD Museum of Art presents Carl Ostendarp, “Pulled Up,” an exhibition in its Lower Farago Gallery that not only borrows its title but also its optimism from the 1977 Talking Heads song of the same name. 

Opening February 13, “Pulled Up” will feature works chosen by the artist from the Museum’s collection together with new paintings of his own.

While pulling works from the Museum’s collection, Ostendarp was keenly aware of the 1970 intervention at The RISD Museum by Andy Warhol for his historic “Raid the Icebox” exhibition. Ostendarp also has been inspired by music in much of his work and for the RISD installation, he borrowed the title from the Talking Heads because of their connection to RISD-- Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz are both graduates. 

Ostendarp’s work is both cheerful and sly. Typically spare and often including simple biomorphic forms or words, his compositions are flooded with flat color. Often inspired by music, Ostendarp will create multi-sensory experience for visitors by playing the Talking Heads 1977 album in the gallery. 

"Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Ever."

The Godfather Family Album, Art Edition is a lavish, limited edition book, which also includes background articles and interviews about the films, contains over 400 color and black & white images, most of which have never been published before. It allows fans a privileged peek behind the scenes at the making of film history and it truly is a once-in-a-lifetime offer you can’t refuse.

"Imagining The Unknown And The Unknowable"

There will be many, many changes for art and artists in the years ahead. Trying to predict them is like trying to forecast the economy. You can only ask questions. The 21st century will almost certainly see consciousness-altering changes in digital access to knowledge and in the shaping of visual culture. 

What will artists do with this? Will the art industry continue to cling to art’s traditional analog status, to insist that the material, buyable object is the only truly legitimate form of art, which is what the painting revival of the last few years has really been about? 

Will contemporary art continue to be, as it is now, a fancyish Fortunoff’s, a party supply shop for the Love Boat crew? Or will artists — and teachers, and critics — jump ship, swim for land that is still hard to locate on existing maps and make it their home and workplace? I’m not talking about creating ’60s-style utopias; all those notions are dead and gone and weren’t so great to begin with. 

I’m talking about carving out a place in the larger culture where a condition of abnormality can be sustained, where imagining the unknown and the unknowable — impossible to buy or sell — is the primary enterprise. Crazy! says anyone with an ounce of business sense. Right. 

Exactly. Crazy. 

link:The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!

 By Holland Cotter

The New York Times

Happy Valentine’s Day

Very Superstitious

In 1939, a small town in Indiana forced all black cats to wear bells on Friday, October 13th. When the measure seemed to work (nothing bad happened, at any rate) the town continued the practice for the next three years. 

link: "A Brief History of Friday The 13th"

"A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected." Carl Sandberg

Every generation of Americans reinvents Abraham Lincoln in its own image. Politicians from conservatives to communists, civil rights activists to segregationists, have claimed him as their own. Presidents — most recently Barack Obama — try to model themselves on him.Lincoln is important to us not because of how he chose his cabinet or what route his train took to Washington, but because the issues of his time still resonate in ours — relations between the state and federal governments, the definition of American citizenship, the long-term legacy of slavery.      

  One problem with many books on Lincoln is that they abstract the president from the context of his times. Some historians assume that to understand Lincoln all you need to do is study Lincoln — his psychology, law career, speeches, etc. This is why James Oakes' The Radical and the Republican, which appeared two years ago, is a must read. Oakes examines the complex relationship between Lincoln and the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. He shows how, from very different starting points, their views on slavery and race began to converge during the Civil War. On issue after issue — abolition in the nation's capital, wartime emancipation, enlisting black soldiers, amending the Constitution to abolish slavery, allowing some African-Americans to vote — Lincoln came to occupy positions Douglass and other abolitionists had first staked out. 

Here lies the essence of Lincoln's greatness — his capacity for growth, his willingness to abandon old ideas and opinions to meet an unprecedented crisis. As Lincoln wrote, "as our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew." This is a lesson President Obama might well learn.

via: Three Books Explore Lincoln's Complex Genius, by Eric Foner : NPR