shit in art galleries

[shakahislop]

went to something called 'a personal view of the japanese contemporary' this afternoon on holiday. have been going off art stuff, it just stopped doing anything to me, but it's a good thing to do when you're in a new city looking around. it was one rich guy's collection i guess. some normal things but then as you went round it the guy started to reveal his taste for the cruel. he must have been going round the world scaring people and picking up the more deranged art of the 80s and 90s. was quite a confrontational collection. lots of strange things, a couple of giants carved out of wood taking up whole rooms, one of them was fucking itself with a piece of wood, was quite a striking thing to see face to face, this enormous wooden troll woman with a grimace sticking something the size of a branch into herself. kind of weird alien child sculptures with odd protrusions from their bums. an old photo of a vulnerable looking elderly couple that had been doctored so that the guy had a big branch sticking right through his chest. big colourful abstract vagina paintings. it's not so much the shock of it but the affect, all of this stuff seemed to me to be about a kind of abjection. it reminded me of gasper noe in a way. that same kind of desire to disturb or maim the viewer.

quality was very high i've gotta say. there was some more normal things in there, including a huge majestic light and statue sculpture and some four channel video kind of thing about people skateboarding around fukuoka or somewhere dressed in construction clothes and carrying neon lights, that was class. i don't get it though, that thing about pushing people to the point of disgust. sitting on that line and getting people through the door to see things that are going to provoke a kind of unease or maybe repulsion. it seems hard to justify. maybe it's good to be reminded that there is a line. but i already knew that. i wonder if it's the enjoyment of the torturerer or the sadist, at heart.

 

[catalog]

Barbara walker at shitworth was strong

 

[woops]

Breaking Lines
Esoterick Collection

It's ironic that what they call "futurist poetry" turned out to be a dead end - I can't imagine anyone today writing a poem along the lines of BRANG ZJIP TSCHANG. Such masterpieces as there are belong to the typographer's art, not the poet's, and that goes for the British concrete poetry of the sixties too. The exception is John Furnival's work, which takes the calligram to unprecedented levels of density and scope: these are the only works here that would repay repeated examination. Houédard's typewriter works are striking and virtuosic but while they have good titles they are otherwise non-linguistic.

 

[IdleRich]

Has Woops been replaced by an AI?

 

[sufi]

Has Woops been replaced by an AI?

not as far as i noticed when i saw him recently (and lived to tell the tale)

 

[IdleRich]

He sent me an indignant FB message just like an AI woops would do.

 

[jenks]

Breaking Lines
Esoterick Collection

It's ironic that what they call "futurist poetry" turned out to be a dead end - I can't imagine anyone today writing a poem along the lines of BRANG ZJIP TSCHANG. Such masterpieces as there are belong to the typographer's art, not the poet's, and that goes for the British concrete poetry of the sixties too. The exception is John Furnival's work, which takes the calligram to unprecedented levels of density and scope: these are the only works here that would repay repeated examination. Houédard's typewriter works are striking and virtuosic but while they have good titles they are otherwise non-linguistic.

Visited recently - I still get a buzz out of the Futurist stuff before they all became fascists.

 

[woops]

Henri Michaux: the Mescaline Drawings

On display here at the Courtauld gallery are a number of the squiggle-heavy abstract landscapes Michaux drew during the mescaline period he began in his fifties. There's also an old copy of his book Miserable Miracle, translated by Louise Varèse who also did the New Directions edition of that other poet of hallucination, Arthur Rimbaud. "Squalid miracle" might have been a better rendition of the title. You can also admire a five minute loop from the film Images d'un monde visionnaire which is a great piece of sixties kitsch. Upstairs the visitor will find all the impressionist art anyone could ever need this side of the channel. Reproductions don't do justice to the deftness of Cézanne's brushwork or the texture of van Gogh's oils. The vividness of Seurat's pointillist works stands out from across the room.

 

[jenks]

I was thinking of popping in to see this next week - is that a recommendation @woops ?

 

[kid charlemagne]

Bob Dylan on Art Museums

Great paintings shouldn't be in museums. Have you ever been to a museum? Museums are cemeteries. Paintings should be on the walls of resturants,in dime stores, in gas stations, in men's rooms. Great paintings should be where people hang out. The only thing where it's happening is on the raio and records that's where people hang out. You can't see great paintings. You pay half a million and hang one in your house and one guest sees it. That's not art. That's a shame, a crime. Music is the only thing that's in tunes with what's happening. It's not in book form, it's not on the stage. All this art they've been talking about is nonexistenet. It just remains on the shelf. It doesn't make anyone happier. Just think how many people would feel great if they could see a Picasso in their daily diner. It's mot the bomb that has to go, man,it's the museums.