Martha Rosler's "Semiotics of the Kitchen"

Dorothea Rockburne

This will not be a very informed post, but i just wanted to get these images up before another impulse took over. I went to MOMA yesterday and saw this piece by Dorothea Rockburne, an artist who (until now) has slipped through the cracks of my art history education. She was born in Canada in 1932 and educated at Black Mountain College, although she was significantly younger than Rauschenberg et al. The piece is titled A, C and D From Group/ And, 1970. I thought it was interesting to note the differences in its installation between 1970 (below) and 2008 (above).

Her early materials include graphite, cardboard, crude oil, chipboard and nails. i think this work is so elegant and so "felt," especially standing in front of the huge slabs or drapes or drafting tables or whatever they are. Her later work is a little on the "eh..." side. She was heavily interested in math, science and astronomy and has spent most of her later career making cosmos-esque paintings that have none of the strength in A, C and D. She turns away from "felt" materials and instead uses traditional paints on mostly handmade papers. Eh.... I am guessing her Black Mountain days finely tuned her Martian sensibilities, making work about physicality and strength and with a limited palette. Since then, it seems, she has turned Venetian. She is more in her head, more sensual and dependent on color and line. These are just my initial thoughts after seeing her work for the first time.

Money Funny

We are in love

.....or maybe he's just submitted to my ways. This dog, this toothless, sightless, senseless, ever hungry and thirsty, poop'n'pee machine of a dog, has turned me into a spineless slave to his every desire. you wanna pee on the carpet today? that's fine, just lick my face when you're done. you want ground beef with yams and rice tonight? coming right up! i'll even add some olive oil for a shiny coat and lecithin for an active peanut-sized brain. if aliens were observing our daily rituals, they would wonder how the small furry creature managed to enslave the pale-skinned biped. i am an unconditional slave to cuteness. that's how.

Staying Indoors Today

It's so crummy out today. The one time i left the house i found out my new boots are not actually waterproof (i stepped directly into a six-inch deep slush puddle) AND i got caught in the crossfire of a snowball fight. I still can't get over that those kids laughed when it hit me. Why not say sorry? Because hitting white ladies with snowballs is funny. The other day when i was walking Walter, a kid ran up behind him and yelled at him. Scaring the living shit out of an obviously dilapidated dog was hilarious to him. What the hell is wrong with kids? Leave my dog alone. I'm getting a BB gun tomorrow....

A Gay WHAT?

A Gay BOMB. That's right. I just happened to be up last night reading about this year's winners of the Ig Nobel Prize and came across a particularly disturbing winner. The Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio was awarded the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize for suggesting research and development for a "gay bomb," which would cause same sex enemy troops to get freaky with one another. What? Now, the fact that they won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize this year is perfectly fitting. Ig Nobel is a play on the word ignoble, meaning not noble, not honorable and just plain stupid. So the award is not the disturbing issue. What is killing me softly is knowing that the United States Air Force proposed a $7.5 million dollar research project to develop the so-called "gay-bomb." This originally happened in 1994, the same year Clinton tried to openly admit gays into the military and then embarassingly settled on "don't ask, don't tell." Knowledge of the Gay Bomb proposal didn't reach mainstream media until 2005 but has regenerated attention with the 2007 prize. It is encouraging to know our military is going to absurd lengths to develop non-lethal weapons. The obvious problem is that the gay bomb proposal exposes profound institutional ignorance and hatred of homosexuality.


I ran out into the living room to share my discovery of the Gay Bomb only to find my roommates watching Tom Tykwer's (Run, Lola, Run director) movie Perfume (which i highly recommend, btw.) In the final scene of this disturbing murder flick, the protagonist splashes himself with perfume made from the bodies of several dead women. The crowd that had amassed to see his execution (for the murder of the several dead women) consequently falls into a rapture of love and lust for him and then for each other. A massive orgy ensues in which opposite and same-sex French peasants suddenly find each other irresistible. This movie was based on the book Perfume by Patrick Suskind, published in 1985. So, I'm wondering could the Gay Bomb proposal of 1994 have been influenced by this book? People in the military read books? Could it be? Incredible. You heard it here first.

New Work

I had a rough week and i think i may have channeled my frustrations into my work.

crazy for rachel

if the apocalypse were to happen today Rachel Harrison would be in the streets scavenging for sculptural fodder. i think that's what excites me about her work. she has completely convinced me that grotesquely-painted polystyrene forms and debris from our commercial culture go together like tires and stuffed goats. http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-rauschenberg/ENS-rauschenberg.htm
maybe she is just the Robert Rauschenberg of her generation and maybe that's just what her generation needs. my generation needs. we all may need. she's 42, by the way and not necessarily so new to the art world's mainstream. She's had solo shows at both the Milwaukee Museum of Art and the SFMOMA in the early 00's. I have heard from a personal source that she is a force to be reckoned with. By that, i mean that she is fierce about her choices with her work and most likely wouldn't take well to a curator's constructive criticism. In New York her work can be seen in the New Museum's inaugural show Unmonumental, in Two Years at the Whitney and in some corner of the MOMA, i don't remember where.