Robin Croft -- Shipwreck '08

Robin Croft has done quite a few sculptures at outdoor locations using locally-found materials. Each is interesting in its own way, inspired as it likely is by the specific locale, weather, and Robin's state of mind at the time. Maybe you've run across one if you've wandered the beaches and hinterlands of Virginia.

Robin's latest, Shipwreck '08, a collaboration with Maryland artist Michael Anthony, is shown below, along with text from Robin.

Here are a few images of ... our 2-day project on the beach at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge just south of the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge. We hauled driftwood lumber along a half mile stretch of the beach to a work site the first day using a tarp fashioned into a travois-like sling. The following day was spent "drawing" a shipwreck being exposed by the eroding sand dune. All of the wood was stacked, with only a couple dozen pulled nails reused to stabilize certain areas.

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Required Reading: War is a Racketby General Smedley D. Butler

This web page gives the excerpt from a speech Butler delivered in 1933. Here's an excerpt of the excerpt:

The World War cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 [over $4,000 in today's dollars] to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are 6, 8, 10, and sometimes 12%. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – 20, 60, 100, 300, and even 1,800% – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it. Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed.

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minutopia -- new actualities for a new world

Got this in the mail and thought I'd forward it. No cost to enter, apparently -- so let me know if anyone hits you up for some sort of jive entrance fee. Peace out - B

minutopia new actualities for a new world

project summary
minutopia
new actualities for a new world celebrates the magic and mystery of our
viewable world through new artist-made documentaries that creatively
explore in minutiae the familiar marvels of our contemporary age.
Extending the rich legacy of cinema’s earliest documentary
achievements, these new “actualities” offer vivid examples of the
hidden poetry and lyricism found in our waking life. Crowds,
street-scenes, animals, tasks, transportation, nature, art and
architecture – plus curious oddities and events all unfold to offer
unexpected insight or passing fancy to audiences of all ages. minutopia
visitors may enhance their viewing experience through a customized
viewing port stationed within the glorious rustic setting of San
Francisco’s historical Presidio Parklands area. Viewings are ongoing
and free – with additional educational presentations, materials, and
special events included. minutopia is central film programming for
Silver Sun Illuminating the Splendor of the Silent Screen presented by
COCA Center for Outdoor Contemporary Art www.cocanow.org


call for new actualities!


guidelines
1 minute maximum duration
documentary, journalistic, reportage, experimental/personal-poetic documentary ok
digi, video, or film ok
color, toned, tinted, or black & white ok
intertitles or subtitles optional
silents only
new works only, to be premiered through minutopia
open to artists from all countries

All new works selected for minutopia to be part of ongoing screenings and central film programming for Silver Sun Illuminating the Splendor of the Silent Screen.
Selections are based on artistic quality, innovation, composition, and
fluidity. Special attention will be paid to works that display strong
connectivity to minutopia source material, chiefly: turn-of-the-century
actualities. Names of artists will be included on all outgoing
promotional and educational materials for Silver Sun. All new works
will be sequenced and edited to one disc with credits and subtle
ambient soundtrack provided by COCA. Selected artists will receive free
promotional materials before project launch, plus a complete minutopia
disc to produce your own optional minutopia screening events during the
month of the September. Scheduling information/details for all
minutopia screenings will be listed on the silversun blog
http://silversunscreen.blogspot.com and promoted through various means

research
For inspiration and info regarding actualities, see
http://chnm.gmu.edu/exploring/20thcentury/narrativefilm/index.php
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/film_history

submit
· minutopia format: DVD, region1 (up to 4 different submissions per artist accepted)
· title
· subject matter (4 sentence max)
· duration
· artist name
· artist location & bio (4 sentence max)
· artist website (if any)

mail your minutopia DVD & information to

Ellen Lake
609 56th Street
Oakland, CA 94609
USA

For return of any items, please include a SASE (self-address stamped envelope)

postmark deadline
May 31, 2008

notification date
June 16, 2008

contact
openskies1@gmail.com 

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Game over, Hillary Clinton. Hit the showers.

© Copyright 2008 RJ Matson - All Rights Reserved.
* Print artists attribution with the cartoon.

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Inmate's Artwork -- Conrad L. Mallett Gallery at Capital Community College, Hartford

Who do you gotta shiv to get in an art show in this town?

Don't get me wrong -- I support the show of Inmate Artwork now appearing at the Conrad L. Mallett Gallery at Capital Community College. I believe in providing creative outlets to America's bloated prison population, the largest population of incarcerated people in the world.

And if you think that fact alone doesn't merit serious discussion and serious change, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Here's the top of the Hartford Courant's article about this apparently unnamed exhibit -- incidentally, couldn't someone have given a name to this? -- and maybe you'll get a sense of why I think the article does something of a disservice to the artists involved:

At first glance, the painting "Faith for George" is perplexing.

Who is the boy in the LOVE T-shirt and why is he in some wild place surrounded by animals including a lion, wart hog, zebra and lamb? Why is a skeletal death figure staring at him? And what's the unblinking eye in the sky, above the setting red sun?

The work, one of 333 pieces to be exhibited next month in a Hartford show of artwork by 152 Connecticut inmates, makes sense once its creator, Michael Skakel, explains it.

"It's about my communicating my trust that God will look after my beloved son in a dangerous world while I cannot protect him, comfort him or be with him at this time. The 'Eye in the Sky' represents God's all knowing and watchful eye always looking over George for me," Skakel said this week in a written communication from MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, where he is serving 20 years to life for the 1975 murder of Greenwich neighbor Martha Moxley.

The Courant obviously fronted murderer and Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel for sheer sensationalism. Skakel shows up at the end, too, so the article is embraced, so to speak, by Connecticut's current criminal celebrity.

The Courant's exploitation of this high-profile inmate is a slight, not only against the 151 other exhibitors, but also against the Courant's readers, who, if sensationalism is what they crave, can always find it in the racks next to the checkout counter at Stop 'n' Shop.

Seeing Skakel used this way reminds me of when a local Christian high school paid Connecticut's corrupt former governor and ex-convict John Rowland to speak before students. Neither criminal merits the spotlight, and neither deserves access to our kids. Meanwhile, many other prisoners who didn't murder nice girls, and many other former government officials who turned away bribes and didn't game the system for personal gain, could provide valuable insights and could make terrific role models for Connecticut's youth.

The writer compensates, somewhat, for this misdirected attention by giving a great deal of space to Community Partners in Action's prison arts program, going into quite a bit of detail about its history and range. It's encouraging to read the beefy middle of this article -- and I'd recommend ignoring the top and bottom entirely.

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In Ireland, artist income from the sale of their work is tax free.

Unfortunately, when Irish artists try to hide their incomes earned in America, they learn first-hand the intricacies of the Internal Revenue Service's taxation methods.

Watch below as Vice-President Dick Cheney, disguised as a tree, and President George W. Bush, not disguised, attempt to ambush and extract taxes from an Irish artist whose leprechaun costume is cleverly designed to conceal his Irish ancestry.

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Andrew Sullivan and I both hope that America is entering a new and better political era

This snippet from Andrew Sullivan's London Times article Judgment Day looms for Hillary Clinton the wrecker sounds exactly like my previous posts about Hillary's Rove-inspired campaign, with statistical analysis added:

And that’s why Tuesday will be so instructive. Hillary Clinton should win Pennsylvania easily. She had a 20-point lead until relatively recently. And if the Clintons are right about their classic Atwater-Rove tactics, she will win by double-digits after throwing the kitchen sink, the boiler, the couch and the septic tank at her opponent.

However, if Obama keeps her lead to single digits, if he goes on to win in North Carolina and Indiana, if the momentum of the race does not change, something else will be shown.

It will show that the crisis America is in now has made the kind of tactics of the past two decades moot. It will show that the issues of the Iraq occupation, the teetering economy, the unsustainable debt, the collapsing dollar, the constitutional disarray and the moral collapse of the torture programme are now more salient than cultural identity. It will show that the voters actually want to debate something more than lapel pins and who is or is not a secret Muslim or patriot. It will show we are in a new era.

Maybe we’re not. Maybe the old politics and the old patterns have one more turn of the screw to go. Maybe the Clintons are right. And that’s the beauty of democracy. On Tuesday, we will go a long way towards finding out.

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Church of the Artblog Comments presents Rabbit, by Run Wrake

In this time of runaway greed, when an uber-wealthy aristocracy exploits the population for their postmortem ability to attract flies that a little Idol creature found in a rabbit can transform into jewels, ink bottles and feathers, those aristocrats should heed well the warning set forth by this brilliant animator. Say amen, somebody!

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The Bush administration's supposedly objective Pentagon analysts are, in reality, shills for military contractors who gain from wartime spending

This just in from today's NYTimes.com:

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

David Barstow's 11-page article Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand reveals yet another dimension of the by now only too-well-known relationships between big corporations, their lobbyists, and the Bush administration. It also adds weight to suggestions that the Iraq War has always and only been about making the rich even richer.

While it's sad that enough Americans fell for the tripe from these masquerading government and corporate shills to perpetuate an administration that should have been sent home long ago, it's absolutely tragic that the media Americans must rely on for up-to-date information on their world has proven to be so utterly compromised and unworthy of the task.

Americans need and deserve a better media. Americans need and deserve leaders for a new age of government, who owe nothing to lobbyists or corporations, who act in the best interests of ordinary Americans. We need a new, more equitable way of bringing laws to completion and ratification.

Americans need a new America.

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The Superdelegate Shift from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama -- Cultural Connections

Ironically, Hillary Clinton has reduced her own chances for winning the Democratic presidential nomination time and time again by engaging in the kind of campaigning that brought George W. Bush into office and that kept him there for two long, painful terms.

Her campaign maintains a deeply rooted disconnect with a reality she seems pathologically unable to grasp: Americans aren't completely stupid. As the Great Decider hisself once said, "Fool me once... shame on... shame on you... Fool me can't get fooled again."

Were this the year 2000, Hillary Clinton's campaign would, no doubt, be a great success. But some hard years have passed, and Americans do learn from their mistakes. Through pain, bloodshed, the loss of children and the loss of a once-vibrant economy, Americans have learned to recognize that their own interests diverge widely from the interests of political spin-meisters and fear-mongers, and lobbyist-fed candidates like Hillary Clinton who pander to the lowest common denominator.

Her Kosovo deception, her 3 a.m. call advertisement, and her attempt to magnify any potential negative she can find in Barack Obama and wave it frantically in the faces of voters -- all of these are red flags to a newly attuned electorate, signaling the potential for another four years of the same tired old corporation-led government, along with its accompanying promises of pain.

George W. Bush has taught Americans to recognize the worst among its leaders, and his disastrous administration has given Americans more than enough incentive to weed those leaders out.

Perhaps this is the dawn of a new and better-informed American electorate, capable of resisting distractions and acting in its own best interests. But even if it isn't, even if Americans this one time only make the choice that best serves their own interests, one thing is clear: Hillary Clinton does not make the cut.

The only question remaining for me is this: will America's hard-bought lessons stick?

Can we embed them into our culture so that we stand a chance of avoiding forever the mistakes of the 2000 and 2004 elections?

Can Americans progress to the point that corporate power over politicians is broken, by the sheer dint of a passionately and perpetually self-informed electorate?

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Roberta Smith Asks, "Is Small the Next Big Thing?"

Among the galleries that aren't the Big Boxes -- Gagosian-Mart et al -- you'll find a profusion of small works, as many and perhaps even more than I've recalled seeing in recent times. I visited eight or ten lower east side galleries and attended perhaps ten Chelsea openings this past Thursday, and easily two-thirds of the paintings I saw would fit within the small works category -- say, forty-eight inches on the longest side or smaller.

Roberta Smith writes in this morning's NYTimes.com about four artists -- Michaela Eichwald, Katy Moran, Scott Olson and Matt Connors -- and wonders aloud why small might now be the new black:

But what is marginalized (she's referring now to small paintings in museums) can also become a form of dissent, a way to counter the prevailing arguments and sidestep their pitfalls. It is hard, for example, to work small and indulge in the mind-boggling degree of spectacle that afflicts so much art today. In a time of glut and waste on every front, compression and economy have undeniable appeal. And if a great work of art is one that is essential in all its parts, that has nothing superfluous or that can be subtracted, working small may improve the odds.

It's puzzling to me why Ms. Smith posits such levels of strategy on the part of artists who work small. From her write-up one would almost gather that gargantuan was the default in painting dimensions.

In my humble opinion, massive paintings were the 20th century's means of addressing similar scales in earlier works from art history's canon. In both cases, scale conflated with artist ego, and with the generation of spectacle. For the collector, titanic paintings were the ostentatious trophies of their own achievement and markers of their own importance, or their own cutting-edge fashionableness.

In the case of a number of artists from the late 20th century, scale became ridiculous and overbearing. I'm thinking now of some Schnabel and Fischl paintings, in which the content simply wasn't sufficient to keep the massive thing inflated. They crash in on themselves.

During his corporate trophy-making phase, Frank Stella accommodated his own lack of content by cramming in more and more stuff, French curves and paint smears and honeycomb aluminum. His work only regained its interest for me when he came out the other side of that by blowing the pieces out into the room, killing most of its color and making work you could walk into. Sure, it's still behemoth-sized, but, from the photos anyway, it's work I'm interested in learning more about.

In Chelsea this past Thursday I saw a show of works that interested me so little I didn't note the artist's name. The largest piece, easily twenty feet long and twelve feet tall, was comprised of one large piece of tan canvas overlapping one large piece of buff canvas. The phrase there's no there there comes to mind.

To the question of small painting's current popularity, no great strategy need be discerned. I'd answer simply that small is natural and provides a greater expressive range from piece to piece. Small costs less to make, to ship, to store. Small has a versatility the overblown can only dream of; it can shriek insanity from twenty square inches on a wall, or squat quietly on four square inches of ceiling, waiting for discovery.

Our time might partly be characterized by the unmasking of powers, the exposure of relationships between corporations and government that have brought about worldwide suffering. Within that context, giant contemporary paintings are orations, delivered at a time when the credibility of those given to oratory has been shattered.

Small contemporary paintings are poems, pericopes, discussions among individuals. They represent truth's last hiding place. They nurture reflection and quietude at a time when these practices are badly needed.

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Proof positive that the true thrust of Aliza Shvarts' abortion-hoax project is media-related: her Wikipedia entry

Complete with references, the Wikipedia entry for Aliza Shvarts relates entirely to events that happened yesterday.

Wikipedia has flagged it for deletion, no doubt in part because it was likely written by Ms. Shvarts herself. Ms. Shvarts and/or her confederates have flagged it for rescue.

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More About Aliza Shvarts' Abortion Hoax Performance Piece

From the Yale Daily News it's clear that this entire incident comprises a performance piece that relates more to media incompetence and the ridiculous side of moral outrage than the body relationships Ms. Shvarts originally put forth:

It was a media frenzy that Shvarts triggered herself. The article in Thursday.s News was prompted by a press release Shvarts circulated on Wednesday in which she discussed . in graphic detail . what she called a cycle of self-insemination followed by .repeated self-induced miscarriages..

The Drudge Report linked to the News.s story early Thursday, overloading the newspaper.s Web site with traffic and attracting the attention of news outlets across the country. The article generated more press inquiries from the University than any matter since the controversy surrounding Yale.s admission of former Taliban diplomat Rahmatullah Hashemi flared up in 2006, according to a Yale official.

In an interview for the article in Thursday.s News, Shvarts explained that the goal of her exhibition was to spark conversation and debate about the relationship between art and the human body. She said her endeavor was not conceived with any .shock value. in mind.

.I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,. Shvarts said. .Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it.s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone..

Shvarts said her project would take the form of a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall. Shvarts said she would wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around the cube, with blood from her self-induced miscarriages lining the sheeting.

Recorded videos of her experiencing her miscarriages would be projected onto the four sides of the cube, Shvarts said.

And while some news stories late Thursday dismissed Shvarts.s exhibition as a wholesale hoax, the Davenport senior showed elements of her planned exhibition to News reporters, including footage from tapes she plans to play at the exhibit. The tapes depict Shvarts, sometimes naked, sometimes clothed, alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup. It was all part of a project that Shvarts said had the backing of the dean of her residential college and at least two faculty members within the School of Art.

But now that Yale appears to have also been deceived and manipulated by Shvarts, their support may have reached its end.

It's all fun and games until you're the institution that's being ridiculed.

I can only imagine the parties going on in Aliza Shvarts' dorm.

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Yale University Art Student Aliza Shvarts Writes Her Name into Art History with a Hoax Abortion

I gotta know the grade this kid got. It's clear that Yale is on the girl's side, because their spokesperson is interpreting the project in Shvarts' favor. From the AP's website:

"The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body," said Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky.

Shvarts' "performance art" included visual representations, a news release and other narrative materials, Klasky said. When confronted by three senior Yale officials, including two deans, Shvarts acknowledged that she did not seek any abortions.

The brilliance of all this is that Shvarts has manipulated, not just viewers of her artwork, but the media itself -- the sole outlet those viewers rely on for up-to-date information on their world.

More from the AP:

Shvarts told the student paper that she planned to display a work that consisted of a cube lined with plastic sheets with a blood-and-petroleum-jelly mixture in between, onto which she would project video footage of herself "experiencing miscarriages in her bathroom tub."

The newspaper's account detailed "a nine-month process during which (Shvarts) artificially inseminated herself 'as often as possible' while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages."

Shvarts told the paper her goal was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body.

I realize that Ms. Shvarts is an art student, and that none of this AP story comprises her official statement about this piece. But from the snippets we're getting, it's clear that she already has a grasp of the strategies artists often employ in contemporary society, both in creating a compelling project, and in positioning herself vis-a-vis the project and the project's publicity, both positive and negative.

In particular, I enjoy the precociously adroit positioning seen in this line: Shvarts told the paper her goal was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. The obvious understatement, her apparent blindness to the project's ability to generate outrage and reflection, are of course put-ons, and fairly entertaining ones at that.

I'm reminded of Andres Serrano, whose 1987 photograph Piss Christ generated similar controversy, to the artist's well-rehearsed astonishment.

As for matters of public taste and decency, both sides of the abortion debate are apparently up in arms, likely earning extra credit and perhaps even a scholarship for the precocious Ms. Shvarts.

Ted Miller, a spokesman for NARAL Pro-Choice America, called the concept offensive and "not a constructive addition to the debate over reproductive rights."

Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, an anti-abortion group, said his anger was not mitigated by the fact that Shvarts was never pregnant.

"I'm astounded by this woman's callousness," he said. "There are thousands of women in this country who are dealing with the pain of having had an abortion, with the trauma of having suffered a miscarriage. For her to make light of that for her own purposes is just beyond words."

I know you didn't ask, but I'll say it anyway -- for my money, art that shocks for the sake of shocking has earned its place in the world of the low-brow. When art students resort to this kind of thing, it usually comes off with the smirky winsomeness of the three-year-old who says a naughty word when company's over, just to get a rise out of everyone.

The larger issue of involving an unwitting media in the artwork, banging on public gullibility enforced by media incompetence, and entwining that gullibility with a hot-button issue that's been used by powerful elites to swing their candidates into office -- with no effect, incidentally, on the status quo of abortion legality --

that, in my opinion, is all highly relevant, and demands further, highly public exploration.

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PublicMarkup.org -- In the next America, citizens will be able to review and comment upon legislation as it makes its way through Congress

Call it America 2.0, The American Update, The Next America --

Whatever term you choose, the idea is the same: America's operating system was written centuries ago for another world, and the continual updates and patches to this ancient software have provided our citizens today with heaping mounds of legislative spaghetti code -- a convoluted, inefficient, and easily hacked system that no longer achieves the purposes its authors intended.

You can't rely on the officials who consider this system their personal wealth expansion program to do anything to change it. The only route to our badly-needed America OS upgrade is through those outside the aristocracy. Each one of us is the door.

We can develop a culture that scorns deceit and bloodshed. We can learn to ask more of ourselves intellectually, to require ourselves to do the homework necessary to elect capable and conscientious leaders into office. We can raise our children to understand that when people enter power for their own aggrandizement, the deaths and suffering of millions can be the result, as we've so recently seen yet again.

And we can develop concepts such as Public Markup.

From the Public Markup website:

After preparing and drafting a comprehensive piece of legislation, Sunlight decided that public input and scrutiny would refine the bill and improve its chances of garnering lawmakers' support. Rather than immediately looking for legislators who might sponsor the bill, Sunlight, therefore, created PublicMarkup.org as a place to post the bill, and to allow you to comment on and suggest edits to the substance of the legislation.

This project is not intended to be the ultimate technical solution to the challenge of drafting legislation online, but an experiment in online collaboration. By collecting legislation, summaries, resources and commentary in a single linkable location, PublicMarkup.org provides a simple, blog-like framework for soliciting feedback on this legislation.

The idea isn't perfect. But it's one step in the right direction. And it completely bypasses the most chillingly effective hackers, phishers and scammers of our American operating system -- the lobbyists.

In an article today in the Austin American-Statesman, lobbyist and former president of The American League of Lobbyists Paul Miller was asked his opinion about Public Markup.

"I don't think the way you advocate is to put everything online and say, 'All right American people, weigh in on that,' because then what's next?" Miller asked. "Are we going to let the American people decide our defense policy, our trade policy, our immigration policy?"

Imagine that: the American people, deciding our defense policy, our trade policy, and our immigration policy. The American people -- average people like you and me -- having an influence on the laws that affect our everyday lives and that shape the future of our children.

Paul Miller doesn't want to understand that kind of America, because in that America his wealth conduit has been cut off.

But that's the kind of America we're going to need to create, ultimately, an America in which all facts are laid bare, in which a culture of aggressive self-information presides, an America in which lobbyists like Jack Abramoff, and sham public servants like George Bush and Tom DeLay stand no chance of rising to power.

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A Pennsylvanian Confirms Barack Obama's "Bitter" Statement was Right On Target, and Identifies the Real Insult

John Baer is a Philadelphia Daily News columnist and lifelong Pennsylvanian. If you're one of the five or six people who missed Hillary Clinton's most recent flail of desperation, which, as is the case with most of her campaigning, is pulled directly from Karl Rove's playbook, Baer's article Decades of working-class neglect: now that's insulting is mandatory reading. Here's an excerpt:

As a native-born, small-town Pennsylvanian, a son of native-born, small-town Pennsylvania parents - one from the coal region, one from Lancaster County - let me assure you that the so-called offensive, condescending things Barack Obama said about the people I come from are basically right on target.

"Bitter" perhaps best describes my late mother, an angry Irish Catholic who absolutely clung to her religion.

Dad, also a journalist, wasn't really bitter as far as I know, but he sure liked to hunt.

So, despite carping from Hillary Clinton and annoying yapping from her surrogates (really, it's like turning on the lights at night in a puppy farm), I take no offense.

What's offensive to me is suggesting that small-town, working-class, gun-toting and/or religious Pennsylvanians are somehow injured by a politician's words.

Are you kidding me?

They're injured all right, but the injury is long-term and from lots more than "just words."

Baer goes on to identify a laundry list of substantial economic and political insults that have kept the rust belt a rusty shade of rust for decade after down-and-out decade. He nails Obama's intention in unleashing the "bitter" comment in the first place:

They've been taken for granted by political parties and candidates who stay in power by - and this was the apparent gist of Obama's remarks - forcing attention and debate on issues tied to guns, religion and race (precisely because such issues resonate) rather than real problems such as health care and the economy.

Obama credits Pennsylvania's people with being able to understand him, and with being resilient in the face of Hillary Clinton's Rove-written onslaught of misdirection and outright deception. Baer ends his article with the hope that Obama is correct.

The 24-hour broadcast-news cycle will jabber on this for days - the irony being that Obama's "words," which had positioned him so well, now threaten to trip him up.

Another irony is that the candidate running to effect change where change is needed, and to offer hope to those without it, is suddenly tagged as somehow diminishing those he seeks to serve.

So the question is whether Obama effectively defuses this, as he did the controversy surrounding his former minister. And that remains to be seen.

Just don't tell me that he insulted a state or, given his background, that he's an out-of-touch elitist.

And I especially don't want to hear such arguments from a candidate who spent decades in the bubble of a governor's mansion, the White House and the U.S. Senate, and under the blanket of $109 million income during the last eight years.

Pennsylvanians might cling to religion and guns. I hope they don't cling to stupidity.

After eight long years of constant, flagrant deceptions from Beltway politicos like Hillary Clinton, John McCain and the Bush administration -- after giving up their sons and daughters to America's sham war in Iraq, and seeing the value of their hard-earned wages sink with the dollar's decline, after losing their homes to the abuses of unrestrained mortgage companies -- is this choice really that difficult?

One thing I've learned about working-class people in general is this: they do eventually figure things out.

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SOLD OUT:Shepard Fairey's Obama Hope

Meghan Daum's LATimes.com article Obama as an Art Form ponders the possibility that the increasing presence of Shepard Fairey's Obama posters may work against the candidate. Her argument is contextual:

Like the photograph-turned-icon of Che Guevara -- which graces the T-shirts of countless hipsters who barely know who the guy is -- Fairey's Obama poster is rooted in the graphic style of agitprop. There's an unequivocal sense of idol worship about the image, a half-artsy, half-creepy genuflection that suggests the subject is (a) a Third World dictator whose rule is enmeshed in a seductive cult of personality; (b) a controversial American figure who's been assassinated; or (c) one of those people from a Warhol silk-screen that you don't recognize but assume to be important in an abstruse way.

Idol worship? Well, maybe. The culture at large is celebrity-obsessed. But I'm not sure I would credit that same culture with the observational sophistication needed to make Ms. Daum's associations a or b, and few would I credit with making the comparatively benign association c.

For me, Fairey's Obama posters exemplify the oldest, most benign and most easily-decoded forms of propaganda. Unlike the practices of corporate scale disinformatsia headed by Rupert Murdoch and Karl Rove, Obama Hope spreads no lies or confusion. With Communism essentially dead as a threat to America, the poster's brilliant red is free to be interpreted as passion, perhaps even righteous anger slowly burning beneath true blue.

More from Ms. Daum's article:

Still, the most radical aspect of this whole phenomenon is not the artwork itself but how it conveys Obama's sharp divergence from the generic, easily digestible cultural coding that's always been associated with getting elected. As Fairey says, Obama has "radical cachet."

But if you like Obama and you'd like to see him elected president, it's worth asking yourself exactly why none of the other candidates has dipped an ironic toe into agitprop, and whether their freedom from images that conjure mass idol worship, however archly, might not help them in the end.

This wasn't Obama's doing; Obama Hope is the work of an independent artist, so the toe-dipping comment simply doesn't apply.

A more worthwhile question that Ms. Daum and the supporters of McCain and Clinton might ask themselves is this: why has no other candidate's base been inspired by their candidacy to create powerfully effective street art?

One reason might be that both John McCain and Hillary Clinton are themselves works of political art, created and subsidized by K Street lobbyists. Both McCain and Clinton represent the alienation of Main Street Americans from the workings of their government. They represent the political power stolen from average Americans by corporate interests and the government leaders who serve corporate interests. Artists of Shepard Fairey's stature tend to spurn such associations, and even mock them in their work.

Barack Obama owes no more to the corporate world or its lobbyists than you or I. He reminds us of those times -- and there really were such times, sporadic though they were -- when political leaders served the people who elected them with honesty and integrity, fought against corporate powers that sought to connive, exploit and subdue, and valued education as the means by which people without privilege could realize their dreams.

Great political posters punctuate, perhaps anachronistically, our memories of, and our nostalgia for, those times. So to my mind it's entirely fitting that Barack Obama's clear, honest message of hope should be communicated partly by this means. And the people are responding.

Shepard Fairey's poster Obama Hope is sold out for a reason.

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Deep6 Soutine,by Dennis Hollingsworth

Breathtaking -

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Troy Paiva -- Lost America

Book one is still around, and a second, titled Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration, published by Chronicle Books, is due out in June -- this according to Troy Paiva's website, which offers samples of his lush, disturbing, and, for me, anyway, incredibly seductive photographs, usually taken at night using only available light, showcasing the decay of the once-fabled American West.

Out of respect for the author's copyright I'm not including any of these images here. See Lost America online.

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Disney Maps the Road to Armageddon -- World to End in the Year 2012

Quint over at Ain't It Cool managed to stomach a Disney presentation by John Lasseter, whom Wikipedia describes as "an Academy Award-winning American animator and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering. Widely considered an innovative genius, he has been hailed as the "current Walt Disney."^[1]

Lasseter's presentation included a production time line extending from now until 2012, which you can view here.

Among other things, you'll note that the road to Hell is paved with Toy Story sequels, a Cars sequel, four direct-to-DVD Tinkerbell flicks, and a near-ritualistic flogging of fairy tales and fairy tale-like stories.

If he stays true to Disney form, Mr. Lasseter likely plans to unleash demonic hoards of sassy ethnic characters, gruff old codgers with hearts of gold, hip and happening but down-on-their-luck leads, and lost whatevers trying to find their way home -- all with the obligatory fart jokes and occasional rap tracks that keep the rubes coming back for more and paying extra for the T-shirt.

Immediately prior to the Apocalypse Disney will release King of the Elves, one of Philip K. Dick's early and least-known short stories -- which, interestingly enough, you can preview here.

As all four of you who regularly read Artblog Comments know, I'm a devout Philip K. Dick fan and a collector of first editions of his work. His early career is peppered with hit-or-miss stories like King of the Elves, which was published in 1953, when the young writer was still finding his voice. The experiences and revelations that signaled literary greatness lay ahead some years in the future.

It comes as no surprise to me that Disney would latch onto the Philip K. Dick brand and then promptly drive it into the ground with this fairly forgettable story. Man in the High Castle, The Unteleported Man and Valis could all be superb, boundary-shoving science fiction live-action films released under Disney's Touchstone label, and each more powerfully merits film development than King of the Elves. But regardless of all that, if Disney wants an elf story, it's not as though they're incapable of coming up with their own. Why, this one time, did they have to drag an author of PKD's stature through their discount animation candy factory?

The answer is that, like many a powerful corporation, Disney rarely strays from the easy and familiar. Vanguard they ain't.

The conceptual formula behind Toy Story and Cars is so old hat, so out of the drawer and easy to replicate, I'm surprised we haven't seen fourth and fifth sequels of each by now.

I'm going to open the same old drawer right now and start pulling out story concepts. Watch me make a million bucks:

Shooz
Jinx, the family dog, carried Little Slipper away from his home in the closet and buried him in the back yard. His dad, Wally Workboot, is completely untied. How will Little Slipper ever find his way back home?

Toolz
After Little Stubby Screwdriver tumbled off the bench, Jinx, the family dog, carried him away and buried him in the back yard. Now big daddy Jigsaw Jake, mama Penelope Pliers, and everyone else in the Toolz family must stop their bickering and rescue him! How will Little Stubby Screwdriver ever find his way back home?

Klipz
It's not easy being a paper clip, particularly in the busy cubicles at Buckswater Bank and Trust! Little Mini-Clip learns just how tough life can be when he tumbles off the desk, and Jake, the janitor, vacuums him up and tosses him out with the trash. Sammy the Stapler's never been so depressed! Will he ever see his best friend again?

A Cheese Story
Sheriff Shortcake here! Things were goin' just fine here in Fridgeville, until that evil Gorgonzola staked a claim at the back of the shelf. Now he's growing crops of nasty fridge fuzz, and menacing the entire town with his skunky smell and that Frenchy-French attitude of his! In my younger days I'd have put him on ice, and pronto, too, but I'm too old and crumbly now. But everyone's sweetheart, Velveeta, tells me that someone new moved into the cheese drawer. Goes by the name of Mini Gouda. Thinks he's a big-shot. Wonder if he can help us out...

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Roberta Smith's NYTimes.com Article about Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum Makes Me Question "Tokyo's Warhol"

I'm not going to make this show, somewhat regretfully. But Roberta Smith's article Art with Baggage in Tow only underscores my initial reluctance toward Takashi Murakami.

He's called Tokyo's Andy Warhol, for obvious reasons: Murakami is an indisputable leader, among several, perhaps, in a prevailing and ubiquitous Post-Pop aesthetic. Perhaps he's taken Warhol's idea just about as far as it can go without including a massive, world-class theme park. But I can't imagine that Murakami World doesn't eventually figure in, somewhere down the line.

Murakami means wholesale pop seduction. Fantastic figures, faces and themes prevail in a corporate enterprise that includes massive murals, giant fiberglass sculptures, animations, and licensed merchandise produced by Vuitton.

When art becomes corporate product, is it the same art anymore? Or, if the corporation in question is to be viewed as art, must that corporation itself be so utterly conventional? Couldn't that corporation, for example, satirize licensed merchandise, rather than conform so blissfully to the model of property licensing that's been in place since before Mickey Mouse?

Have Americans and others around the world become so inured to the deceit, theft and death suffered by so many at the hands of massive government-mingled corporations, that we can freely accept an artist whose output is inseparable from corporate structure, and whose life is one unrestrained affirmation of corporate culture? Must we accept the de-personalization of the artist, in the conflation of artist into corporation, that Murakami clearly stands for?

All that aside, I question whether Murakami's corporation can be truly analogous to Warhol's Factory.

Warhol played a powerful role in originating an art movement. Has Murakami originated anything on the same scale? Or has he taken what already existed, like many before and after him, and distributed it, in an entertainingly bombastic form, across a variety of media?

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Sometimes I Think I Must Live in a Hole

You probably already knew that Carol Diehl, whom you've doubtless read in the pages of Art in America, among other places, keeps a razor-sharp blog called Art Vent.

You probably also knew about her paintings.

I just figured it out, thanks to Tyler Green at Modern Arts Notes.

Don't miss Diehl's blogpost from Friday, March 28 -- Impenetrable Prose from the Whitney Biennial. It's a laugh riot.

Don't know about you, but my next urgent task is to create some space for the articulation of intention.

Because, you know, I keep knocking my head every frikkin' time I try to articulate intention.

Where are the Beverly Hillbillies when you need them? I keep hearing this line in Jethro-voice: "Dang it, Uncle Jed! I was tryin' ta make me some space for the articulation of intention!"

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What Pamela Paul's Book Parenting, Inc. May Tell Us About the Future of Our Culture

By the time the children's software field crumbled out from under me after eight years of dedicated service, I understood a lot about how the children's media business operates. And I'm in total agreement with Pamela Paul that babies, kids and parents are being exploited now, more than ever before, by big corporations that have no qualms about playing on the most sensitive parental insecurities.

My favorite paragraph from Katharine Mieszkowski's Salon interview with Pamela Paul, The Parent Trap, might be this one:

Baby Einstein is one of the most successful marketing bamboozlings of the American parenting marketplace. There is absolutely no evidence that Baby Einstein makes your baby smarter. We forget that 20 years ago, there was no programming for babies. If you wanted to really occupy your kid, if you didn't have a playpen, or if that wasn't enticing, you just turned on the TV and stuck them in front of "Days of Our Lives," and they would stare at it. The fact is that they may even have gotten more from "Days of Our Lives" than they would from Baby Einstein, because it was actual human faces emoting, as opposed to these random blaring images.

In my humble opinion, most of the people pulling the strings in children's media don't give a damn about your kid, don't know much about education, and in some cases even have a sneering disrespect for education. Like every other business person, children's media big-shots are really only interested in getting rich, and the sooner the better.

The quality of children's shows has nose-dived in the past decade. Compare and contrast Barney with Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Toss Captain Kangaroo into the ring with all three Doodle Bops. Some children's shows even feature little electronic gadgets that prompt the children to scream until Mom throws one into the Wal-Mart cart.

Authentic education was Left Behind, and the focus for far too long has been on formation-dancing, plastic-smiling child actors, or on putrid little families of senseless, yammering vermin, space aliens or vegetables.

Pamela Paul says we're over-stimulating our kids. I see them when they get into high school, and my observations provide scant evidence for the defense. Teens today must have their little gadgets, their music boxes and cell phones. Sometimes if they don't have them, or if, God forbid, they're confiscated because the kids have them out at inappropriate times, the little snowflakes fly into a force-five panic. They must be entertained, at all costs!

Fewer kids than ever before understand the value of quiet and solitude. Fewer kids than ever before know how to keep themselves amused, or have something, a hobby or an interest, that they can pick up and work on that isn't networked or computerized.

Sports are bigger now than I remember them being at that age, and music making, as always, is very big; let's be grateful for those. But both practically always feature a hefty group component. I'm not just practicing bass, I'm practicing for the band. Or, I'm not just running, I'm training for a track meet. It's all preparatory to the big get-together. Solitude is merely a means to an imminent, external end. It's practically never explored as a means to self-knowledge, self-discovery, a way to get the clatter out of your head and think about who you are and what life's about.

It goes without saying that some of these kids are the future art collectors. I can only imagine what the art they eventually respond to with their checkbooks will be like. I'm thinking psychedelic, flashing, spinning things. Stuff that dances, screams, thumps and bellows raucously.

Objects that affirm, affirm, affirm, but never truly challenge.

It's not that artists can't kick this stuff out in truckloads, the contemporary art equivalent of terrible children's media. Some of us are making it already, whether we realize it or not. When these kids step up to buy, there will be no shortage of cultural goods awaiting them.

The real question for me is this: how will the world these stimulation-addled kids create affect and inspire me, as an older artist -- assuming I live so long?

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