Category: Art

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A Day in New York, a Few in Chicago, a Few in Moline, and Lots of Snow

BC and I just returned from a visit to his relatives in Chicago and the Quad Cities. We took the long way, via New York, to visit the gallery where I’ll be showing in March, to make psychic adjustments to my proposed installation, and to see the Fra Angelico show at the Met. Fra Angelico is one of my favorite artists. His airy, colorful, spare narratives make heaven seem like such a delightful place, and Christians such pleasant people. The real discovery for me was his Christ with Crown of Thorns, a portrait of Christ with blood-filled eyes and tortured expression. Unlike most of his works that we know about, the figure in this painting isn’t located in any particular space, but presented against a dark background and brought dramatically into our world. His bright red lips and red eyes form an inverted triangle at the center of the painting with black holes for mouth and eyes that draw one into his suffering. And then, there are these incredible little curlicues at the ends of his locks of hair, a purely visual diversion from the point of the painting that reminds us that this is an aesthetic experience as well: the divinity and humanity of Christ echoed in the subject and physicality of the painting.

We also braved the crowds at the Van Gogh drawing show and the completely thrilling The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, an exhibition of photos taken mostly around the late 19th century documenting the immaterial world of auras, ghosts, ectoplasmic effluvia, and fluidic effects. “The Birth of Ectoplasm” was my favorite, with something that looked like cheesecloth coming out of some chick’s special place. Pornography for the spiritually enlightened.

We didn’t get to see much else, as we had to zip down to Chelsea and scope out the situation. Here’s the view outside of our hotel room window. BC wouldn’t let me include the picture of him in his undies opening beer bottles using the window sash.

The next morning found us in Moline, up to our ankles in snow. We crossed the mighty Mississip to visit the new museum in Davenport, the Figge, which is fabulous architecturally and spatially, but the curators should sell every one of their horrendous 17th century spanish paintings and focus on regional artists. Their Grant Wood room, for example, was so well thought out, presenting a wide range of work in the context of the countryside that inspired young Mr. Wood.

BC and I, and his darling sisters Beth and Margie, drove to Chicago to visit their Dad, Stephanie for the weekend. She was her usual glamorous self. I’m firmly convinced that her transexuality has nothing at all to do with her sexuality. She’s a transclothesual, cloaked in the trappings of an ideal femininity. Being a sucker for dinosaurs and dioramas, I dragged everyone to the Field Museum. On view was an exhibit about Pompeii, which included several very touching casts made from the voids in the hardened ash that had encompassed the bodies following the eruption of Vesuvius in 79.


Only three more months until my New York debut. Panic attack panic attack.

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Moving Out, Live and No Nude Action, and Thanks

After a year of sharing my studio and home with my disabled friend, the time has come to discuss his moving out. I met with him and his doctors and we agreed to try to find a place for him to move into March 1. The thought of this has produced anxiety and panic in my friend, despite my assurances that there’s plenty of time to find the right place, and that he’d never be homeless with me as his friend. A great deal of my time and energy right now are spent addressing his fears. He tends to make statements intent to force me into a challenge or action, rather than addressing the fear looming obviously behind the statement. For instance, he’ll say something like, “I’m moving out this weekend,” when he actually means, “I’m scared to death of being homeless and I want you to take care of me–don’t let me leave.” My goal right now is to help him move towards being more independent. It’s fairly clear that my goals are at odds with his, and that he’s going to kick and scream at every nudge I make in that direction. His idea of independence involves venturing out briefly into the world and scrambling back to Daddy Cub Coco’s Nest. BC told me that we’ve evolved into parent/adolescent roles, with all the acting-out and tension inherent in that dynamic. When he told me that he wanted to spend the holidays alone rather than be with me and my family, “who are all loud,” I told him that sometimes he has to do things that are difficult because others need him to, and that he is a part of the family and that I need him to participate in Christmas. Doesn’t that sound like something a demented mom would say?

There is no holiday entertainment from my kitchen window this year. My exhibitionists across the street are all away: the Asian pole dancer has closed the curtains and turned a light on that’s been on for three days; the hairy naked guy below hasn’t flashed me for two days; and the chicks to the right have a light on over their mantle that’s been on for two nights. Their anti-burglary measures are more like announcements that they’re out of town. Perhaps I should go into burglary.

On evening walks I love noticing the ubiquitous images of people sitting in windows illuminated by their glowing computer monitors.

The Japanese porn magazine wants to feature these bay area muscle dudes over three issues: the first will feature the Asian guy; the second issue the western guy; and the third will be of them “making love.” !!! I’m intensely nervous about this. First of all, I use a bulky camera and it takes me forever to set up a shot. Bring in the stunt pee-pees, please. I’m thinking of having the shoot be about me looking at them, implicitly, although framed as them looking at each other. The Asian guy would be in bed, perhaps viewed from behind, the camera would get closer, you’d see the hairy hand of Mr. Western Muscle Dude pull back the sheet, and Mr. Asian Muscle Dude respond to being looked at. Same with Mr. Western Muscle Dude. Then finally, we’d see them tumbling and intertwined, a mass of different skins tones, hair patterns, projectile appendages, and slobber.

For Thanksgiving dinner yesterday with my siblings, I made a pear pie, served with cream whipped into a frenzy with some fresh ginger. By the time I got to it, though, all of my organs were cowering under the pressure that my expansive stomach was exerting on them to make way for yet more. It’s so hard to not overeat on Thanksgiving. There’s so much sensation, so much flavor…

I am indeed grateful to have so many companions that I’ve never actually met, who fill my days and nights with such interesting tales and thoughts. Thank you, all!

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Memento Mori

One of my favorite works of art is a very tiny one; a daguerreotype made by D. F. Millet, documenting a painting in Ingres’ studio. The photograph, taken around 1852 was discovered in a drawer in Ingres’ desk about 12 years ago, and was exhibited for the first time in the Met’s 2003 Daguerreotype show.

The painting in the photograph sits on a easel, and depicts Ingres’ first wife. The picture of her was painted sometime in the 1820’s. She died in 1849, and Ingres remarried in 1852. Behind the portrait hovers another painting of a woman, but whose cold brightly lit presence contrasts with the Rubenesqe voluptuary in the foreground. I like to imagine that Ingres commissioned the photograph to document a portrait that perhaps his new wife didn’t like to look at, that perhaps was even destroyed. The painting is so realistic, almost like a photograph itself, and so sensually rendered. Due to the cropping, it seems like she’s in a shadow box and not contained within a canvas. I can imagine Ingres sitting alone at his desk and taking out this little image and thinking about his past love. It’s a memento mori not only of her, but of Ingres representation of her, evidence of her beauty and existence and his continued private relation to it.

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Venus, If You Will, Please Send a Furry Man For Me to Thrill

Steve told me that I’ve gotten away with playing the twinkie card for long enough already. I had a dream that I was being unsuccessfully seduced by a group of buxom chick dancers with milky chocolate skin, gyrating in that perplexing way that’s supposedly stimulating to heterosexual males, hovering over the ocean, like mulatto pole-dancing Venuses. I treaded water below, terrified of the sharks swimming nearby, who eventually rubbed against my leg and I woke up in a total sweaty panic. What an awful idea to have watched Teoremaearlier to ring in the new decade. I’m intellectually stimulated and want to die. If you’ve seen the movie, that’s me at the end, running naked in the desert, screaming, my arms flailing. I should be having sex. While I still can. Or sleeping. I can’t help but think of Bob’s aunt’s dying words, “But I took my vitamins.” At least she got to astral-travel.

It’s 5:15. Let’s check e-mail.

I’m trying to remain calm. I just got asked by a Japanese magazine to shoot some Bay Area muscle dudes. Like, NAKED! And they’re going to pay ME! I hope I read all the zeros correctly. Yes, the zeros are yen, but still, I’m not used to discussing naked men and someone else’s money. Enough abjection. The universe is dropping musclebears into my lap.

A big day ahead, so I’m going to get back to my Bada-Bing mermaids. Nighty night, and thanks for the many kind thoughts on this, the dawning of my twilight years. Or Zone. Whatever.

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Flux

Yesterday afternoon I watched The Innocents with BC, based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. The film is about a governess, Deborah Kerr, who believes that the children in her care are possessed by the spirits of the deceased former governess and valet. We get to see the ghosts, but are never convinced that the apparitions aren’t entirely in the head of the governess. She sees the children’s innocent play as increasingly sinister. When she kisses the boy, it’s alarmingly on the verge of becoming passionate. The dialogue cleverly empahasizes ambiguity, with the housekeeper admitting to having seen a ghost, but then saying “I know what I saw” when asked for confirmation. The governess is inexperienced, this being her first job–perhaps a metaphor for her sexual innocence. She first sees the male apparition at the top of a tower, the female one at the lake, like Freud wrote the screenplay, and further suggesting that we’re seeing the longings of the erotically repressed. It’s really a brilliant film, in stunning black and white Cinemascope, too, with so much queasy psychological depth to mull over.

Last night my brother made gumbo for his wife Keith’s birthday, burning the roux and everything. My sister found a recipe for a Texan-Italian cake, celebrating Keith’s cultural heritage. There is a community for every food, evidently. Which reminds me, not that this has anything to do with anything, but the other night I was talking to BC and Philip about my “last taste” obsession, and I wonder if anybody else does this: When I eat, I scope out the situation and eat around what I anticipate to be the last bite, building up to a sort of taste-bud crescendo. With tempura, it’s always the shrimp that’s last, typically preceded by the broccoli. I can’t put down a bag of Barbecue-flavored Low Fat Baked Kettle Chips before finding the chip that has the most barbecue powder on it. Both the sight of it and the taste give me the sense of finality that I seem programmed to need.

I wrote my first art review, for Stretcher. It should be coming out in the next few weeks. I’m very sensitive to what a work of art is communicating, but generally tend to make statements, grand unsubstantiated claims or biases, and am not very good at elaboration, so getting past 50 words was brutal. I ended up writing in a style that I thought contained my voice, and then grabbing a thesaurus to make it sound grown-up. You’d be surprised by how many synonyms there are for “experience” and “shape.”

BC and I made plans to visit his family in Illinois in early December. We’ll be flying to Moline via New York, stopping overnight to see the Fra Angelico show, meet with Mr. Gallery Director and take pictures of the space. The gallery has expanded since February, so I may need to alter my proposed installation. We won’t have time to see anybody, but I’ll be back in March for a longer stay.

I’m growing my beard back. Flux, a constant state of flux–that’s the state that I’m going to reside in for a while.

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Sadists and Masochists at YBCA

ThorNYC treated our fair city this evening to a screening of clips from Hollywood films portraying s/m. Luckily, BC and I got to the Yerba Buena Center a little bit before show time, so we were able to finally meet our presenter in the flesh, and expand our vision of Thor beyond the 1″x1″ depiction that we’ve been communicating with in this here corner of cyberspace. What is it with sadists? You’re all so cute and sweet. I suppose that’s part of the point of Thor’s presentation, that the mainstream generally hasn’t depicted s/m’ers in a very realistic or complex way. The roles and behavior associated with s/m make it a subject ripe for parody or exploitation. The dynamics are so close to theater. I thought of Russo’s The Celluloid Closet and about how anything out of the majority’s sphere of experience is treated as something dangerous or funny. You either laugh or scream, but rarely are given an opportunity to understand it. One of the more interesting s/m themed scenes from a recent (non mainstream) film was in Mike Leigh’s Naked, where the supposed landlord takes control of the house in his little undies and has sex with one of the roommates. Their respective dominant and submissive natures come together in a spontaneous and extreme sexual encounter. She is badly shaken by the encounter but burbles that it was the most intense experience of her life. The treatment hovers between the absurd and frightening, but the exploration of a different side of her sexuality is eagerly embraced and enjoyed. Philip joined us for the show, and for dinner afterward, as ever attired suitably in black. BC and I wore black and blue, our own event-inspired fashion metaphor.

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Because I’ve Got Nothing Better to Do at the Moment

Okay, here’s a preview of one of the pieces that I’ll be showing next year. I’ve shown it a few times before, once in Boston, where it didn’t fit in the gallery and the top image had to be hung on the ceiling, like a climbing vine, which I thought was kind of cool after my initial mortification, and once in San Francisco at a show that no one saw, Knowing You, Knowing Me. It’s called Beanstalk, and it’s almost 14 feet tall. I had it re-printed last week so that it, hopefully, will just fit between the floor and ceiling of the gallery. I turned the giant into the beanstalk, the title placing an emphasis on the delicate beans sprouting out of this enormous twisting furry phallic object. It’s a monument, of sorts, to my obsession. I’m so excited about showing this piece where people may actually see it. If you know of anyone with a 14 foot ceiling, please send them to me.

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Today’s Economics Lesson: The Price of Being an Artist

So my photo paper is no longer being produced. I decided to print a few 4-image grids for the March show, and shlepped down to Photo Supply this morning to pick up chemicals and such. Where my paper used to be there is now a huge array of Epson digital printer papers. My developer isn’t available either! They had my fixer, but no hardener! I defaulted to Agfa paper, which I adore, but it has a warm tone that I hadn’t envisioned for these pieces, but which might work better, actually, but it has a super soft emulsion that requires very delicate handling without a hardening fixer. So this is it, my last gelatin silver prints. Next year I’m investing in a digital printer and a digital back for my camera and diving into the 21st Century.

Out of curiosity, I thought I’d look into how I’ve fared financially as an artist up to this point, looking at the past 11 years, starting in 1995 when I got my first grant. I don’t know if you’ll think this is interesting, but I thought it was amusing, if not kind-of depressing:

Total art income, 1995-date: $88,853.12
Total art-production expenses, 1995-date: $105,630.05

So, I’ve earned an average of $8,077.56 per year on my art, and spent an average of $9,602.73 on production each year.

Resulting in an average net loss of –$1,525.17 per year, over an 11-year period.

Setting up my studio with digital equipment will run something close to my production costs for one year, and I’m estimating that my total costs thereafter will be less than half due to eliminating the cost of chemicals, photo paper, and color processing. The year that I turn a profit as an artist I will buy you all matching shirts that say “My LJ buddy, Chris, went to college to be an artist and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”