Listening to Grace singing “Bullshit”, if singing is really the right word for it. Doesn’t matter: I still love her. There’s a whole degree of “I’m bat-shit crazy, now and for eternity” in her whole career that I just have to admire.
I’m suffering from the inverse of the usual web rhetoric inflation impulse; every time I think to comment on something I pull back from really letting rip, stopped by {1}the prospect of having to reason out an entire argument in the slender minutes I’ve given over to writing and {2}an unwillingness to to contribute to the cartoon violence of online utterance, where every emotion must be at the highest pitch in order to be heard, resulting in much heat but little light.
But I can’t tamp down always, so here are a few sanity preserving rantlets: utterly unreasonable, barely considered argument flavored bits.
1.I’m sick of transparency, shading and gradients as the dominant style in user interface design. I want my computer screen to be plain and flat and beautiful like a Paul Rand page. Stop making everything look like cough drops you geeks.
2. It was turning to Satan that doomed Haiti, Pat Robertson? Really??? I’m mocking god right now, when do I get my earthquake? Art Clokey just died. Was god mad at him too? Geology is not Theology.
3.Obama has been proceeding with the Dem party playbook vis-a-vis queer people: make nice sounds during the campaign, once in office, hire people with little fanfare, and publicly distance yourself from any legislative or executive action. Treat em like crap a bit to show you’re a centerist. Explain that the time isn’t right for plainspoken advocacy. Delay until the second term and then forget about it. It’s not surprising to me, but it is tiring in it’s banality. I believe he’s a smart guy, but he’s pulled some dick moves.
4.Big time NYC art dealer Jeffrey Deitch has been appointed director of LAMoCA. Is this a good or bad thing? Should art dealers be Museum Directors? People point to his “good taste”. He’s a nice guy, I’ve always gotten along with him, and he owns an early piece of mine. But this is a lazy hire: his “taste” is irrelevant, since Directors don’t directly decide what hangs in Museums, curators and accessions committees do. Directors basically manage the Board of Trustees and beg other rich folks for money. Not so very different from what art dealers do. So it’s not such a big stretch, but I call it lazy because it’s one more surrender of cultural life and infrastructure to market success. It’s like electing Bloomberg mayor. It reinforcement of the idea that museums should be trophy halls for big game collectors. Sure they can be that, but why not try to think of them as something else? People worry about his conflict of interest issues, which is laughable in the context of overwhelming market reverence through out most of the museum world. Here’s one of MoCA’s biggest problems: they can’t figure out why any one should go there. And Deitch won’t be able to fix that with business savvy. It’s a class issue.
OK, that last was a bit long for a rantlet. BUT AT LEAST IT’S OFF MY CHEST. (whoops, must remember to turn on my caps lock earlier next time)
Tags: anger, art world, computer, daily photo, design, obama, politics, rantlet