Art + Architecture + Design
Literature
Rip Torn Kicks Norman Mailer’s Ass
Feb 9th
I’m in the middle of reading Mailer’s “Castle in the Clouds” [holding out judgement] and while googling the old man I ran across this:
On the set of the 1970 film Maidstone, Rip Torn assaults Norman Mailer with a hammer, and Mailer retaliates by biting off a piece of Torn’s ear:
Who could we get to do the updated version? Eggers v. Foster Wallace? Whitehead v. Eugenides, Ha!
Some backstory:
Norman Mailer created a film in the late 60s called MAIDSTONE. He played the part of a famous movie director who is considering a run for the presidency. Rip Torn played his potential assassin. At the end of filming, Rip appeared to get a little too far into his role, and he attacked Mailer on camera with a hammer, drawing blood. Mailer retaliated by viciously biting into Torn’s ear, drawing even more blood. This is the fight.
It’s debatable how “surprised” that Mailer was by the attack, but it should be noted that he still had the camera crew hanging around and filming, the day after production had allegedly “ended” on the picture. However, the blood from both men is undeniably real, as are the horrified reactions of Mailer’s children (his wife, on the other hand, seems to be overacting badly).
More backstory here.
[via iFilm.]
via Panpopticist
Saul Bellow & Perfection; A False Premise
Feb 5th
Sam Tanenhaus has a wonderful article in Sunday’s NYT which we couldn’t agree with more. All too often art criticism employs an implicit standard [whos? from where?], a false one; a ‘straw-man’ as it were, usually set up with no intent other than to provide an impossible [useless] model from which to draw comparisons:
"Shortcomings, to be sure. But so what? Nature doesn’t owe us perfection. Novelists don’t either. Who among us would even recognize perfection if we saw it? In any event, applying critical methods, of whatever sort, seemed futile in the case of an author who, as Randall Jarrell once wrote of Walt Whitman, “is a world, a waste with, here and there, systems blazing at random out of the darkness” — those systems “as beautifully and astonishingly organized as the rings and satellites of Saturn.” "
The Power of Language to Change the World
Feb 2nd
"The Library is on Fire. These were the code words [during the German occupation of France] for a parachute drop to the Cereste maquis of the French Resistance — words that acquired a mysterious life when one of the containers exploded and set fire to the forest, alerting the Gestapo to the position of Rene Char’s group. The Frenchmen barely escaped with their lives. And the poet thought the fire was proof of the power of language to shape the world. ‘I believe in the magic and in the authority of words,’ he told his superiors in London, insisting the code be changed."
– Christopher Merrill.
Link: ::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal".
via Wit
Jutta Koether @ Kunsthalle Bern v. Artists In and Out of Cologne @ Henry, Seattle
Jan 22nd
This could not have been better if they had planned it; a Jutta Koether show [Kunsthalle Bern] up at the same time as the "Make Your Own Life; Artists In and Out of Cologne" show at the Henry, Seattle! Imagine getting everyone involved in these two shows together for a party. It would be epic, history-making.
(incli)NATION favorites Diedrich Diederichsen and Martin Prinzhorn will be writing essays for the catalogue, and on January 20th, Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) will be at the opening with Koether.
More info at:
Kunsthalle Bern
Helvetiaplatz 1, 3005 Bern
T + 41 31 350 00 40 F + 41 31 350 00 41
http://www.kunsthalle-bern.ch
info@kunsthalle-bern.ch
Bush, de Gaulle, Torture, and The Battle of Algiers
Jan 19th
“ ‘The depressing problem of getting entangled in the Muslim world,’ [author Horne] replied. ‘Algeria was a thoroughly bloodthirsty war that ended horribly and cost the lives of about 20,000 Frenchmen and a million Algerians. There was a terrible civil war. …De Gaulle ended up giving literally everything away and left without his pants.’
President de Gaulle had all the same misconceptions as W., that his prestige could persuade the Muslims to accept his terms; that the guerrillas would recognize military defeat and accept sensible compromise; and that, as Mr. Horne writes, ‘time would wait while he found the correct formula and then imposed peace with it.’
Mr. Horne also sees sad parallels in the torture issue: ‘The French had experience under the Nazis in the occupation and practiced methods the Germans used in Algeria and extracted information that helped them win the Battle of Algiers. But in the long run it lost the war, because it caused such revulsion in France when the news came out, and there was huge opposition to the war from Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.’
In May 2005, Mr. Horne gave a copy of his book to Rummy, with passages about torture underlined. ‘I got a savage letter back from him,’ the author said."
Subscription Only NYTimes article: Aux Barricades! – New York Times.
Wiki: The Battle of Algiers – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
via Wit
(pro)text @ Richard Hugo House, Seattle Independent Publishers Fair
Jan 17th
(pro)text: It’s a sit-in. A stand-up and shout. A chance to yell, “Look at me, dammit!” Meaning, we want you there to represent the counter-world (counter anything as long as it’s not counter-intelligence—the Bush Administration has that covered). This ain’t Book Fest or Bumbershoot. It’s a free-for-all. It’s a chance for small publishers to show off the work they’re doing and to get their texts (journals, magazines, books, zines) in the public eye. We’ll also have some swanky and provocative performances, including a reading by the poet Christian Hawkey (The Book of Funnels, Verse Press, 2004) and a panel on the ethics of literary contests at the end of the day (from 5-6 p.m.). The press fair is full! We have 37 small publishers displaying their work. The event is free to the public (and co-sponsored by Hugo House).
SAT> FEB>17, Noon to five.
Four Seals of Buddhism as Mathematical Formulae
Jan 17th
I’m not sure how accurate these are, but I love the idea. Can anyone help me with these?
From Neatorama reader Dan Stevenson:
A number of years ago, my father, an economist and Tibetan Buddhist, converted the Four Seals of Buddhism into economic formulas. The Four Seals are:
1. All phenomena are impermanent.
2. All phenomena are suffering.
3. All is empty.
4. Nirvana is peace.
Link [flickr] – Thanks Dan!
Tigers of Wrath: Walton Ford at the Brooklyn Museum
Jan 12th
above; Dirty Dick Burton’s Aide de Camp, 2002
Watercolor, gouahce, ink, and pencil on paper, 59 1/2 x 40 inches
Courtesy the Artist and Paul Kasmin Gallery
In NYC this weekend? Check out this show of incredible watercolors by Walton Ford; RISD grad and effemera master.
According to the museum: "While beautiful, Ford’s paintings often portray scenes of violence and offer a wry critique of colonialism, the naturalist tradition, and the relationship between man and animal.
And according to the Athanasius Kircher Society: "Sir Richard Burton, eccentric 19th century explorer, scholar, and Hero of the Athanasius Kircher Society, spoke 29 languages and 12 dialects:
He was the first non-Muslim to make a successful pilgrimage to Mecca posing as one of the faithful, and the first to penetrate the ancient kingdom of Harar, in Somalia. He was the first Westerner to discover Lake Tanganyika, in an attempt to find the source of the Nile. He served as a spy in peacetime India and as an officer in the Crimean War. He prospected for gold in Egypt, West Africa, and Brazil. He wrote what is thought to be the best book on sword fighting of the nineteenth century. He introduced the word “safari” into the English language and is said to have introduced Turkish delight [a candy consisting of jellylike cubes] to Europe. He was one of the earliest translators of the Kama Sutra and of the Arabian Nights, and he also wrote poems in the manner of the classics of Arabic literature. … Explorer, anthropologist, linguist, erotologist, universal genius – [he] could easily have turned up as a character in a Joseph Conrad novel. – Joseph Epstein, New Yorker (11/23/98)
But it was Burton’s work in compiling a dictionary of monkey language that has earned him the admiration of artist Walton Ford:
“His language studies continued unabated and his interest in the science of the spoken word led him to conduct an interesting experiment with some pet monkeys. Curious as to whether primates used some form of speech to communicate, he gathered together forty monkeys of various ages and species and installed them in his house in an attempt to compile a vocabulary of monkey language. He learned to imitate their sounds, repeating them over and over. And he believed they understood some of them. Each monkey had a name, Isabel, his wife, explained. He had his doctor, his chaplain, his secretary, his aide-de-camp, his agent, and one tiny one, very pretty, small and silky looking monkey he used to call his wife and put pearls in her ears. His great amusement was to keep a kind of refectory for them where they all sat down on chairs at mealtimes and the servants waited on them and each had its bowl and plate with the food and drink proper for them. He sat at the head of the table and the pretty little monkey sat by him in a baby’s high chair… He had a list of about sixty words before the experiment was concluded, but unfortunately the results were lost in a fire in 1860 in which almost all his early papers perished.”
Ford’s paintings of Burton’s monkeys, including “Dirty Dick Burton’s Aide de Camp” (above), are currently on display at the Brooklyn Museum.
Through Jan. 28th.
RIP in 2006. You will be missed.
Dec 29th
Il faut se quitter pour s’aimer toujours.
[We must leave each other in order to love each other forever...Misquoted French proverb.]
Seattle Wind Storm, 7 days without power…
Dec 21st
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Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then, heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, That does not bite so nigh As benefits forgot: Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not. Heigh-ho! sing . . . by William Shakespeare |
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image by Bud, KING5 News, Seattle
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