Will Oldham Profile in the New Yorker

Music provokes a visceral, instinctual understanding: I hear it and am immediately moved by its power. I find myself prowling around visual art, searching and finding, engaging with my mind as much as my heart. But my relationship with music is less cerebellum and more soul. It washes over me all at once, while visual art requires a more incremental understanding.

Put briefly: I love music. I should include it more on this blog.

Oldham has become an uncanny troubadour and, in his own subterranean way, a canonical figure. Photograph by Steve Gullick.

Will Oldham. Photograph by Steve Gullick.

So to that end, here’s a link to a thoroughly enjoyable article on folk / rock enigma Will Oldham in last week’s New Yorker.

The article revolves around a laid back, lakeside concert he put on outside of his hometown of Louisville, and features some truly hilarious stuff. A sample:

By way of rehearsal, Oldham and the band had spent the week giving brief, unannounced performances at local bars. On Thursday night, he had called up Joe’s Palm Room, a venerable and predominantly African-American establishment, and asked, “Do y’all have music tonight?”

The answer was no.

“Do you want some?”

No.

“So if we came down there with some instruments and played some music, would you like that?”

No.

“For free?”

Oldham “did it his way” (and continues to do so), flopping around at Brown University for a while, sending teen girl-esque collages to Glenn Danzig, dabbling in acting, and finally learning lyrics and melodies with a nudge from the guys in Slint. Wow.

The Pretender by Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker, January 5, 2009

Happy Holidays

tate_tree1

"Christmas Magic" book art, as seen on TATE Modern gift shop bags

Happy Holidays to all.

Suzanne Mooney: Behind The Scenes

image

From the series Behind the Scenes by Suzanne Mooney

Suzanne Mooney’s Behind the Scenes project intrigues me, as it is “photography about photography.” The entire series is like the one above. In the blurred distance lies a landscape, but we experience it via a digital camera’s LCD screen.

All of Mooney’s work grapples with photographic culture and technology. She collects diagrams from erotic/glamour photo instruction books (Make Love to the Camera) as well as found photographs of photographers (Found Photographers). Both are as absurd and thought-provoking as you would guess.

But, so far, these projects don’t seem fully realized. It looks like Mooney is deep in the process of collecting and thinking, and that the right way to convey these ideas (be it prints, book, installation, moonvertising, etc.) will eventually present itself. I can’t wait to see what comes of it.

(via Conscientious).

The Slightly Uncomfortable Chair Collection

Spread from Fleeting Seating: The Slightly Uncomfortable Chair Collection

My love of chairs is no secret, but the ones featured in Fleeting Seating: The Slightly Uncomfortable Chair Collection might challenge my affections just a bit.

The idea struck Louis-Thomas Pelletier of creative agency Sid Lee when he realized he’d been spending too much time in meetings, thanks in part to his comfy Aeron chair.

In hopes of increasing efficiency  (i.e., shortening duration), chairs like the Gottago (the back leans slightly forward, urging you out) and Space Invader (with an uncomfortable pointed ridge on the seat) were born.

I’m especially fond of the booklet, with a group portrait of the chairs relegated to a “Island of Misfit Toys” conference room.

(via CR Blog).

Starns in the Subway

Doug and Mike Starn, photo by Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

Doug and Mike Starn, photo by Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

Great article in today’s New York Times on Mike and Doug Starn’s installation in the South Ferry subway station.

Plenty of interesting details on the piece, its method and meaning, but I found this part most inspiring:

When the Starns were first approached by the Arts for Transit program in fall 2004, they were busy with other projects and not particularly interested in participating, Doug said. But the brothers came up with a proposal at the last minute and won the commission the next year.

It’s reassuring to realize that even the greats are sometimes just tossing it together at the last minute.

Damien Hirst at the Rijksmuseum

This is the last weekend for Amsterdammers to catch a squinting glimpse of Damien Hirst’s powerfully lit, diamond encrusted skull (modestly titled For the Love of God) at the Rijksmuseum.

In keeping with Hirst’s reputation as basically having his own license to print money, I wondered what the gift shop would be offering. There was a lot of goofy junk (a skull-emblazoned baseball cap?), but this little skull keychain wins for sheer absurdity:

My guess is that’s how Hirst sounds when he’s plotting his art stunts.

On its own the skull is pretty much a whole lotta nothin’, but Hirst and the Rijksmuseum deserve credit for giving it some context. For more on that, read my review at Amsterdam Spoke.

For the Love of God - Damien Hirst | through December 15th | Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Boccioni Euro Coin

Found this in my pocket: the futurist sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Umberto Boccioni on a twenty cent Euro coin.

When I lived a few blocks from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I’d tell people it was nice to count Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase as a neighbor.

It’s also fun to realize you’re carrying a little replica of a seminal work wherever you go.

Tim Steer: Tourists

From the series "Toursits" by Tim Steer

From the series "Tourists" by Tim Steer

Tim Steer’s Tourists series reminds us that photographs absorb more than the specific object of our vision. Steer writes:

As people take tourist photos, other tourists are inevitably included in the background. Each person who enters the space being photographed ends up in numerous personal collections around the world.

While we may endeavor to photograph a “place”, we are also (instead?) capturing dozens if not hundreds of people, moments, interactions, memories, etc. These photos go beyond one persons visual record of a place; they are small universes of experience.

Steer sweetens the deal by linking the photos to the places they were taken via Google Maps.

This got me to combing my images of Amsterdam. This is a quintessential tourist town, always choked with those absorbing culture, history, or psychoactive substances. Below is a sampling of some of the ones my camera saw while I was likely looking at something else.

So, You Want To Be An Artist?

So You Want to Be an Artist

(by Richard Cowdry, via Vice)

Thoughts From Election Night 2008


Not to bore you with my half-baked political observations (and on an “arts blog,” no less), but … here are a few of my half-baked political observations!

Specifically, these are some of the ideas I held on to from last night’s “until dawn” (here in Amsterdam) election results viewing.

(more…)