This Art is Fine.

Just a quick note on the move of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, opening Dec. 1. Its new location, according to The New Yorker article I just read (O, can we never get enough of The New Yorker?), is right between what appears to be a yellow-faced Diamond Equipment Dealer and a rusted Bari building. That’s right ladies and gents, it’s smack in the middle of the Bowery, just east of its former home in SoHo. Its towering, unique design doesn’t exactly fit in with this gritty area but I suppose that’s part of the point of art. Why not have it in the middle of reality? Why not place it in between the things that really inspire us? (That is to say dirt, grime, sadness and poverty and beauty too) It was designed by Sejima and Nishizawa of Tokyo: two designers who hadn’t made their creative impression on New York yet. Since the museum purchased the lot back in 2002, word has it (ie: The New Yorker tells me) that a Whole Foods has moved in as well, along with “several luxury condominiums within view of the museum’s front door” and a few pricey shopping spots. It’s odd how a little anticipated “culture” can change a place. It reminds me of my hometown, Albany, NY. Albany is home to an emerging nano-tech culture which brings in richies which ushers a re-vamping of Albany/Troy/Schenectady’s arts scene. Paul Goldeberger, the author of Bowery Dreams, the article in The New Yorker writes a line that could really be applied to Albany, to Manhattan, to any place really.

“The area hovers between a grungy past and an overpriced future.”

Please note there is now a Guess, BR and L.L Bean in my mall in place of a dollar store, a game store, and a cheap cuts service. Oookay.

Feast:

First of all, let me say a belated… po’ Mailer. Norman Mailer, often crowned one of the most ‘towering’ writers of the 20th and 21st centuries died of acute renal failure Nov. 10. Although I’ve never read any of his novels (of which include The Naked and the Dead and The Castle in the Forest) one of my best friends hails him as “as close to a hero as I’ll ever get.” So, I figure he’s probably pretty good.

Number two on the agenda: Don’t go see Love in the Time of Cholera. Especially if you’ve read the book. Especially, especially if you read and LIKED the book. The acting is awful; the portrayal of Fermina’s father is horrendous.

With the money you’ll save NOT seeing this movie, go see The Darjeeling Limited if you haven’t already and can find it playing anywhere. I saw it with my brother last night at The Spectrum (Albany’s coolest movie theatre, duh) and love love loved it. Wes Anderson (director, also, of The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, Rushmore…) is absolutely genius. Plus you’ll get to see the preview for I’m Not There, a move in which numerous people including Heath Ledger, Richard Gere and Cate Blanchett play Bob Dylan in order to encompass (and simultaneously, half-purposely not encompass) Bob Dylan’s many persons and far-reaching effect on American culture. Let’s just say I’m going to be pissed if it comes out when I’m in Barcelona.

In separate news, I’m having a stale month in terms of art. Perhaps I’ve just been too busy (which I inarguably have been) or perhaps the world has been too busy (which it inarguably always is) but it just doesn’t seem like there’s much out there right now. If you find any, let me know. If I find any, I’ll let you know.

Happy Thanksgiving, nonetheless! May your turkey come with a side of Modigliani!

Hello (hello, hello, hellooo.) all y’all who are interested in not only learning about fine arts but making some art as well. (Yes, that hello was my echo.) Anyway, if any of you DO exist, please, let me know. The original concept of this blog was to share art/photography/songs/poetry/prose/your interpretation of your failed childhood (ha. doesn’t art really just come down to that? I mean. Really.) with the rest of the iMPrint-reading community. (Think, DeviantART, that moss green webpage of our collectively haunted youth, only more yknow, cool and stuff.) Feel free to strut yerr stuff all over this blog! Send anything to cwillsie@gmail.com

Thank ya!

As I’m sure all y’all know, Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature last week for her many many many many many many (it’s best to exhaust a word to the point it no longer seems a word, don’t you think?) novels, including The Golden Notebook and The Grass is Singing. I’ve never read a novel by Lessing (surprise!) which is, of course, embarrassing (slightly…maybe not at all?) HOWEVER I’m sure that I’ve read a short story by her. In my quest to discover this short story I looked through the index of my hefty Intro. to Lit. anthology. Nothin’ honey. (Nothing but cereal. What cereal? Nut ‘n Honey. DAHA.) My mission abruptly halted, I decided to continue my quest the next day at good ‘ole Pyramid Mall’s Border’s. After purchasing the requisite green tea latte, I wandered over to the Ls. Again, nada. Say what!!! I seriously looked for about 20 minutes and unless I temporarily forgot the alphabet I can tell you that if you’re searching for some Lessing, don’t go to Border’s. I know what you’re thinking, it’s probably in a display at the front of the store with all the other hot items (read: Harry Potter, Stephen Colbert books, yaddayaddayadda) but I checked!! Nothing! (surprise!) Come ON people. If anyone knows the mysterious piece I’ve read by Doris Lessing (That’s you if you’ve taken Paul Hansom’s Intro. to Lit. course!) lemme know please kthx.

So, my plan for this week was to write an entry about the wonderful time I had at the Met or MoMA (momma’s choice) during my Thursday in New York but that agenda was slashed, sliced, slaughtered and officially slain. Instead of paying 20 dollahs to look at sculpture, I spent all day (literally my entire day) in New York in the Spanish consulate getting my Visa for my semester in Barcelona. My gawd. So, no scattered Georges Braque for me, only waiting waiting waiting. (lyke hellooo I’m not Estragon or Vladimir.) surprise!

So, even though my plan to see art this break was, as I said, slaughtered, there was an ounce of resurrection to my hope at….(surprise) the doctor’s office! Apparently my new doctor knows where it’s at. Nosir, no Thomas Kinkade for him! Not even puppies or ambiguous landscapes! During my awkward, half-clothed wait I got to gaze at Modiglianis, Picassos and Miros! Thank you classy doctor, thank you ver much.

I’d like to start this post by giving props to James Baldwin. Major props. I’m currently reading Giovanni’s Room in my African American Literature class and though I’d read short works by Baldwin before and been mildly interested, his long-form prose is absolutely stunning. The book is a beautifully written narrative of a white homosexual man and the way his sexual preference interminably haunts him. I really can’t get over it. Here is one of my favorite passages, taken from pg. 75 of Delta Fiction’s version.

“I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea. Time flowed past indifferently above us; hours and days had no meaning. In the beginning, our life together held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day. Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish and beneath the amazement was fear; but they did not work themselves to the beginning until our high beginning was aloes on our tongues. By then anguish and fear had become the surface on which we slipped and slid, losing balance, dignity, and pride. Giovanni’s face, which I had memorized so many mornings, noons, and nights, hardened before my eyes, began to give in secret places, began to crack. The light in the eyes became a glitter; the wide and beautiful brow began to suggest the skull underneath. The sensual lips turned inward, busy with the sorrow overflowing from his heart. It became a stranger’s face — or it made me so guilty to look on him that I wished it were a stranger’s face. Not all my memorizing had prepared me for the metamorphosis which my memorizing had helped to bring about.”

Wow, yeah?

The beginning, of course, got me straight away as it evokes the image of being undersea, similarly brought up in one of my favorite Anne Sexton poems, The Gold Key, originally published in Transformations. (1971) Sexton wrote, “Are you comatose? Are you undersea?”

Although the image is manipulated differently by Baldwin and Sexton, each use gives the reader the sense that someone is being clouded, is being deceived, is horribly and irrevocably opaque. I can’t get over how effective it is in creating that inside-feeling.

Here’s a hottie pic of Baldwin taken from Wikipedia:

Both Baldwin and Sexton were undersea in a way. Baldwin drowning in his race, Sexton in her sex. Baldwin’s whole career, to an extent, was spent fighting against the “protest novel” — the idea that African Americans should wholly and always write about the African American experience. Sexton was considered one of the first “confessional” poets and also a product of the feminist movement. The feminine connotation of confessional ties her to the personal realm of art, oftentimes discredited as juvenile and girlie. Both were trapped in their outsider chains, constantly rusted by the sea enveloping them. (I will give a cookie to anyone who can tell me what poem I loosely based this sentence off of! Hint: it’s Dylan Thomas. Ha.)

Anywhoo…Now that I’ve expended myself of that rant, I’d like to share an amazing opportunity. The National Poetry Series (http://www.thenationalpoetryseries.org) has announced that they’re working with mtvU to include a contest directed towards college-aged students. (Hint: That’s you! That’s me!) Here’s the deal: You submit a book length manuscript (about 48-64 pages) of yerr best poetry and cross your fingers that you’re one of the five chosen to be published by some pretty prestigious publishing companies (READ: HarperCollins, Penguin Books…), $1,000 and a hella good chance to start really making a name for yourself. The deadline is February 15 so get cookin! I know I am!

Okay and one last thing! SALMAN RUSHDIE is coming to CORNELL. HERE. In ITHACA. SALMAN RUSHDIE. The catch, you ask? It’s October 18th, the day most of us will be enjoying our first day of fall break and I, personally, will be applying for my Spanish visa. GAWD. Why, Cornell, why must you tempt me so?

What’s that, you ask? My newest favorite installation that I’ve never seen? Kohei Yoshiyuki’s “The Park,” currently on view at the Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea takes the cake ferr sherr. Yoshiyuki’s photographs chronicle a collection of toms peeping in on an array of couples having sex in a public park. Taken in 1970s Tokyo, the pieces demonstrate the slightly sickening social phenomenon of looking in on others’ intimacy. (Sex videos, much?)

Most of the photographs are of the band of voyeurs, huddling close together to see a little boob here, a little crotch there. Yoshiyuki sidled up to the groups, never telling them he was taking their pictures the entire time.

O, Yoshiyuki, you dog you.

The layers of voyeurism (title shamelessly stolen from The New York Times Yoshiyuki slideshow) are oddly intoxicating. Lovers love, spies spy on the lovers, the artist spies on the spies, and we, in a way, are spying on the artist and in consequence, on the lovers and spies as well. Sheesh.

I suppose that’s what art really comes down to though. Writers, artists, sculptors, on and on and on, are essentially spying on the human condition and the purveyors of art spy on the artist, the art, and the human.

A person reads to discover something about themselves and those around them (although this is, normally, a subconscious desire) but what they are reading was discovered by a person who wanted to discover the same thing. Hypothetically, the person reading the book could have been the model for the book. The person is spying on him or herself. My gawd.

Is this really it? Some creepy game of taking turns looking through the peep-hole?