“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is given to the less talented as a consolation prize.
—Robert Hughes”
Dresser, 2012, oil on canvas, 35 x 29 inches
sitting on a milk crate
John Prine : All The Best (1991)
“There is absolutely nothing in the contemporary arts, I’m sorry, that when you look at it, that it does not remind you of ten other things over the past century, most of them better.”
a preview.
true or false
relationships.
coldest coors light on franklin.
Jay DeFeo working on what was then titled (and i wish still was) Deathrose.
“Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less.”
“…I was resolved never to smoke a cigarette again after leaving Spain, and so I smoked with particular abandon, critical because the cigarette or spliff was an indispensable technology, a substitute for speech in social situations, a way to occupy the mouth and hands when alone, a deep breathing technique that rendered exhalation material, a way to measure and/or pass the time. More important than the easily satisfiable addiction, what the little cylinders provided me was a prefabricated motivation and transition, a way to approach or depart from a group of people or a topic, enter or exit a room, conjoin or punctuate a sentence. The hardest part of quitting would be the loss of narrative function; it would be like removing telephones or newspapers from the movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age; there would be no possible link between scenes, no way to circulate information or close distance, and when I imagined quitting smoking, I imagined “settling down,” not because I associated quitting with a more mature self-care, but because I couldn’t imagine moving through an array of social spaces without the cigarette as bridge or exit strategy. Happy were the ages when the starry sky was the map of all possible paths, ages of such perfect social integration that no drug was required to link the hero to the whole.”
Leaving the Atocha Staion
-Ben Lerner
“…it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.”
“Insofar as I was interested in the arts, I was interested in the disconnect between my experience of actual artworks and the claims made on their behalf; the closest I’d come to having a profound experience of art was probably the experience of this distance, a profound experience of the absence of profundity.”
FILTERS
Just curious to know if anyone has thoughts on the rise of filters among iphoneography and phone photography and also the movement against using filters among the "purists"? I feel a little torn between the two things. On one hand, it seems like filters (hisptamatic, etc..) make almost all photos interesting or engaging, on the other, it seems the reason for this (at least for me) is how it makes photos instantly nostalgic, as if every moment suddenly has a significant history.
When I think of the reasons polaroid had such a following, it is for the same nostalgic reason. It was the way the film was unpredictable and added a certain importance. However, it was also the object you got, it seemed more cherished, or potentially so. If you took polaroids years ago and still own them, I assume you feel more attached to them than you do the hipstamatic photos that exist as digital bytes.
Anyway, I don't know why I care about this. Maybe it's because I just started using Instagram and I'm trying to understand the appeal and the point. As a photographer myself, it's always been strange to disengage from what was happening in front of me and hide behind a camera, especially in social situations, you have to find the line. But it seems more and more, whether attending a small social gathering or a large one, there is a lot of time spent behind a camera phone, looking to remember something as special, regardless of whether it actually is or not, this is the lie of the photo I suppose.
It could also be that I am slightly bitter. Suddenly everyone is a photographer, it's not just me being the annoying guy hiding behind the lens. Maybe I feel like those bitter musicians who spent there life playing guitar, then suddenly somebody just picks one up and starts a band. I don't want to be that, I want to be happy that anyone can play guitar
