Archive for June 2005
From the Tuesday’s
Hansard:
Hon. Jack Layton (Toronto-Danforth, NDP):
Mr. Speaker, it is a real privilege for me to stand in the House at this important and significant moment in Canadian history in the ongoing evolution and development of equality rights in our country. This issue is about families and it is about equal families. When we think of families, we immediately think of love.I would like first of all to salute a group which goes by the acronym of PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. It might not seem that remarkable today that there would be an organization called Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, but many years ago when this organization came into being, not only was it difficult for a lesbian or a gay person to come out to his or her family, but it was very difficult for a family member to acknowledge to their broader community that their child was a lesbian, or a gay man. In fact, this is what precipitated the enormous feeling of loneliness which is the singlemost common sentiment that I have heard over the many years that I have been associated with the gay and lesbian community. They have a feeling of being alone with nobody understanding. In a sense they are fearful of what would happen if who they really were became public knowledge, became known to their family, to their friends, to their community.
There was justification for those fears. Far from a loving environment in the early days, certainly of my awareness of the community, the atmosphere within which gays and lesbians had to live in our country was one filled with hate. That hate was illustrated.
I remember that hate as a young person growing up in my little town in the 1950s and the 1960s. I do not know whether any of my friends in the little school I went to were lesbian or gay, but I do know a lot of insults were thrown toward any young person who was judged to have any gay-like attributes. These were hateful comments. I have learned from many of my gay friends over the years what that felt like. It was like a physical assault, and oftentimes it became a physical assault.
Madam Speaker, I should have mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that I will be splitting my time with the member for Windsor–Tecumseh.
Violence and hatred were all too common and still remain when it comes to the gay and lesbian community, the transgender community, and the transsexual community. I recall in a park in my city when a librarian was killed by a group of high school students who had gone out to beat up a gay man. They beat him to death. Sadly, this is an experience that happens all too frequently.
I want to acknowledge the work of our friend, a former member of the House, Svend Robinson, for bringing legislation forward many times in an effort to have hate crimes named for what they really were. That was finally achieved not too long ago in the House.
We are looking at trying to replace hatred with a concept of love, of affection, of the fundamental equality that underlies the whole notion of love. This takes us into new territory. It takes us into the territory of understanding and defining of relationships.
At the 25th anniversary of Pride Day in Toronto a couple of days ago a couple came up to me and asked if I remembered them. I told them that they looked familiar but that they would have to help me out. They said that they had been celebrating their 15th anniversary together and at a fundraising auction had bought a tour of the city and a dinner with Olivia and me. I had very fond memories of that couple. I asked how long ago that was. They said it had been 15 years and that they were now celebrating their 30th year together.
I know from having spent some time with these men that their family has as strong a bond of relationship and love that we would find in any family. I believe they should have the opportunity to have that relationship, that marriage, recognized on an equal par with any other loving relationship in our society.
Now we are putting that into law. I must confess, I never thought I would have the opportunity to stand in this House and actually vote for such a powerful and important proposition.
As I mentioned in my speech at second reading of this legislation, when my wife and I were married in 1988, we asked that one of our gay friends speak on our behalf and dream about the day when perhaps our lesbian and gay friends could celebrate their relationships in front of all of their friends and in front of the whole community. It truly is a privilege for me today to participate in actually helping to make that dream a reality.
This past Sunday morning one of my favourite pastors, Reverend Brent Hawkes spoke to a church service held outdoors at the 25th anniversary of the Pride Day celebrations. He imagined the day 100 years from now when a historian might be writing about the struggle for human rights over the years and talked about a story that was written about the rainbow people who used to be frightened about their identity and had to essentially keep their identity concealed, because if they allowed it to become public, they would be discriminated against and ridiculed. But they fought back, not so much out of anger, but with a spirit of joy, a spirit of respect, a spirit of pride in who they were.
In fact, Pride Day itself, and not everybody knows this, emerged as a response to a huge police raid which resulted in over 300 gay men being arrested. Very few charges were ever laid, but several of those men committed suicide as a result of the exposure of their identity at the time. Pride Day emerged as a statement by the gay community that they want to be public. They want to celebrate who they are. They will not be pushed back into the corners. They will claim their place in society. Believe me, on the streets of Toronto and in communities from one end of the country to the other, gays and lesbians, their friends, their parents and the community will be out on the streets to celebrate a group of people who used to have to hide who they were, but who can now celebrate their love and their affection for one another.
It is a magnificent transition that is under way. It is one that is also very respectful of the religious traditions that compose Canada. In fact, the legislation includes quite a number of provisions to ensure that is the case, because not all of the religious communities or even all parts of every religious community feel that the religious aspect of marriage can be expressed in quite this way. There is a provision to ensure that religious diversity, which is fundamental here in Canada, should be protected. That is, of course, vitally important to the success of this particular initiative.
I am thinking about many individuals, friends and groups who have dreamed about the day that is about to come, literally within a number of hours, when finally, lesbian and gay relationships in our communities across this country will be recognized by the whole community for what they are: equal relationships infused with the kind of love that a society frankly needs more of. It pushes away the hatred. It pushes away the discrimination. It says no to second class citizenship. It invites all of us, in all of our family structures, to share in this wonderful and beautiful country in exactly the same way, with the same rights and with the same obligations and privileges that each and every one of us has as Canadians.
Robert Fulford, reviewing the then recently published diaries of Northrup Frye, wrote:
He told his diary what he didn’t always express in print or in public. He often disliked the moral tone of the Toronto people he knew. ‘Every once in a while I get shocked by the callousness and brutality of members of my class,’ he wrote; sometimes they revealed that they thought the poor sub-human. He wasn’t impressed when Osbert Sitwell, one of the eminent Sitwells of England, came to Canada to lecture: ‘f I didn’t know him to be brilliant I’d say he was a dope.’He decided that obscenity is an ornament to language except when it becomes routine; then it approaches idiocy. He cited a colleague’s story about a First World War soldier who saw a dead mule at the bottom of a shellhole and remarked, ‘Well, that fuckin’ fucker’s fucked.’ Setting that down, Frye added, ‘What sort of person is it, incidentally, whose feelings would be spared by printing the above as ‘that —-in’ —-er’s —-ed,’ or ‘that obscene obscenity’s obscenitied’?” He had no time for prudes.
(National Post, 30 Oct 2001)
Earlier this week I posted an email interview with Matt Crookshank, who is showing with Lisa Pereira at Gallery 61 until July 3. This is the interview with her I mentioned would be upcoming. I first met Lisa two years ago, the same night that Andrew Harwood asked me to be part of the Michael Jackson show that he curated with Lex Vaughan and which got a lot of press. In almost every review – which seemed to be in every paper – Lisa’s video was mentioned, which was a surprising accomplishment for someone who at the time had told me wasn’t sure if she’d flunked out of OCAD or not. (In the end she did have to take a year off due to academic probation, and is due to graduate next year).
Lisa’s video consists of porn culled from various sources and as I describe below, a sampling of different perversions and fetishes. The most amazing thing about it for me was that I learned that it is possible for someone to fuck themselves.
Here’s her PR:
12 Signs of the Apocalypse Lisa Pereira 2005
This video provides 12 Zodialogical pearls of wisdom and is the Kama
Sutra of the 21st century (and not as boring). Like a diver finding
a filthy oyster at the bottom of a sewage treatment plant, this video
will certainly pay off in the long run (whatever that means).
And given that we have Google Ads running on this site, I think I should mention that whatever twisted links come up via the keywords in this post are to be followed at your own risk.
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Your video piece, described as a Kama Sutra for the 21st Century, really seems to be a exploration of what most people call perverse. Indeed, many people didn’t want to watch your video twice, although I question what kind of wild stuff they might have on their hardrives. Do you think that the reluctance to watch your video more than once has more to do with not wanting to experience perversion in public, amongst others, or because they were really turned off and disgusted?
With regards to why people may only watch my video once I can only suggest the following two scenarios:
1.) People don’t really watch the same thing twice (particularly video art which is often difficult enough the first time around).
2.) People feel compelled to mimic disgust in front of each other, lest the public assume that they are familiar with, or even enjoy, the particular sex acts described in the video.
I don’t think the material in the video is disgusting nor do I care whether people think I participate in the activities illustrated. They probably think I do, because a lot of people have asked me which sign I am. For the record I’m a Leo, the fisting sign.
And, I’m sure there will be some people who might be turned on by some of the footage and feel the need to have a jerk off about it later on and I think that’s swell.
The found footage in the video is stuff I downloaded off the internet. Anyone with access to a computer has access to the same images. The things I shot myself are so over-the-top and unbelievable that it’s more funny (I hope) then disgusting.
Your cynical approach comes off as an intelligent response rather than just being a wanker, which is a fine balancing act that you pull off well. I find myself amused by your work rather than annoyed. But I wonder, would you ever see yourself making bourgeois-beauty Sarah-McLachlan-like videos featuring flowers and fairies? Or are you committed to exposing the sick underbelly of society forever?
I don’t like Sarah McLachlan or the kind of lame aesthetic her music videos ape, but if I were offered some cash, would I make that kind of work? You bet.
I wouldn’t necessarily be good at it but if the price were right why not? I would take that money and put it into the stuff that I really wanted to make. Better me then some other lame director who’s gonna take that kind of shit seriously and then make some horrible ‘art film’ that I will undoubtedly have to sit through at an equally boring film festival.
And if you knew some of the jobs I’ve had, in the grand scheme of things, making bad music videos would be one of the least evil things I’ve had to do. Who knows, maybe there’s some way I could slip in a few subliminal messages. Like those Coke machines with naked ladies on them.
Anyway, people who work on Canadian music videos get paid in peanuts, probably in Sara McLachlan’s case I’d get paid in free maxis, those horrible pillow-like ones you get at the dollar store so I’d probably say no fucking way you stupid, stupid bitch.
Do you consider it sick at all?
There are sicker things out there. During the making of that video I watched a lot of shit eating. And I’m not talking about a nibble on some cute little poodle poo in Pink Flamingos, I’m talking about squatting over some girl’s mouth and emptying your bowels into her eager craw. And I couldn’t put it in the video. Not because it was revolting (which it was) but because I just couldn’t make it funny. I’m not trying to shock people and gross them out. I’m just interested in people’s sick and disgusting turn-ons.
I can see why a lot of those things might be sexy to someone even though they don’t directly turn me on. I don’t think sex shocks people anymore. Shit eating is sick but it’s kind of funny to think about. It’s unpleasant for me and maybe other people because I don’t find anything sexy about it but obviously someone does because there is no shortage of shit sex sites on the internet and elsewhere so someone’s paying for this stuff and it isn’t just perverts like me (besides, I found a all of it for free). Faking it was way funnier then actually seeing it.
You’ve made other work that seems to explore perversion – notably your vampire video featuring the liver. Why are you interested in the degradations of sex (as opposed to celebrating it or whatever else one might do?)
The vampire film was actually a cannibal film called Lesbian Cannibal (get it? she “eats” her out). There are already a lot of crappy Hollywood movies that celebrate love and sex and romance and all that stuff. Crappier still are the Hollywood movies that are supposed to be titillating and controversial but don’t discuss sex in a way that people do all the time.
Also, if one wants to jerk off, there are a variety of websites and video and magazine stores to provide you with countless hours of beat-off material. That video was about having casual sex in the midst of post-aids tension, where a single encounter could potentially kill you, but then I didn’t want to make some tragic piece about living with aids.
Matching up perversions with the signs of the zodiac was a really good idea. Was it inspired by something real? Like, where you ever involved with a nasty Pisces?
The use of the zodiac is actually based on a record called Blowfly Zodiac. For each Zodialogical sign Blowfly rearranges classic soul tracks so that they are very sexually explicit and funny. It’s a sweet little record. I don’t know anything about astrology but I liked the idea of making arbitrary connections to each sign according to some weird sex thing I was thinking about. For a mix tape of Blowfly email me at lisa@sisboombah.ca
Tim what sign are you?
I’m Aquarius
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Diamonds in the Ruff continues at Gallery 61 (61 Ossington Ave) until July 3. Gallery hours: fri 7-10pm, sat 1-6pm or by appointment.
Image from the invite
Matt Crookshank currently has a show on right now with Lisa Pereira (interview with her to come) at Gallery 61, entitled, Diamonds in the Ruff and which runs until July 3. It is easily some of the most unique work out there at the moment, and so I sent Matt some questions.
Before we begin, here’s the PR Matt sent out last week in preparation for the last Friday’s opening:
“5 Chimera Love Paintings Matt Crookshank 2005
Chimera Love, so addicting. Love Bites! Like Pandora’s Box, the
devil in Miss Jones, these dirty slut paintings are prepared for you,
but are you prepared for them? Drenched in sin, decadence and
debauchery, they are the best kind of poison. Drink and be
imprisoned in the cage with golden bars.”
“Shade 1-3 revisited Matt Crookshank 2005
A shade is the insubstantial remains of the dead, a phantom without a
body or the power of thought. When hung together, these paintings
create a temporary window through which one can view Hades without
having to actually stay there for eternity.”
One of the viewers said that the circles looked like old used condoms. When I asked you about it, you said that to you they were like pockets of energy emerging between the branes of the multiverse of String Theory. Do you think this reflects some kind of fractal of reality, as a dried condom is in a way, a pocket of (captured) energy?
And, was she right-on, considering these were the Chimera love, ‘dirty slut’ paintings? (weren’t they?)
I loved her association to dirty condoms. I’m definitely interested in skins, and membranes, and fluidity in between structures. I find all of that rather sensual, and somehow almost ‘sinful’. There’s something so decadent about tubing out entire tubes of paint onto your canvas. It’s gratuitous. And when the varnish breaks through the tubed dikes, and slides all over the canvas against my will… oh my god…
You’ve told me in the past that this style of yours, with circles and squiggles are inspired by String Theory, are these:
a) concrete representations of something abstract,
b) concrete representations of a concrete reality,
c) abstract representations of a concrete reality,
d) abstract representations of an abstract reality?
e) None of the above. My paintings are not representations of anything. They are something. Certainly there are ideas in them from String Theory, and from other sources. But they are not illustrations of String Theory. They are cohesive and total power magic spells and they are designed to effect people and create changes.
I want you to talk about the ‘failure’ stuff, and this whole thing about being disgusting. I don’t really see the paintings as particularly gross – I see an interplay between materials, but they aren’t what we’d easily call beautiful. One pocket of yellow and red reminded people of a pussy sore, as if that’s the only thing that red and yellow can suggest. What’s going into your colour choices? Are the red and yellow here not related to fire, to being a window into Hades/Hell?
It depends on how you define ‘disgusting’. I think something that is gratuitous is often disgusting. Too much of something becomes gross. Do you ever have a moment when you get too turned on maybe? Or too titillated? Too aroused? And then it all comes crashing down cause it’s too much. When there’s been too much suspense and the illusion breaks. I love that line, that moment when it goes from beauty to horror. I like to make my paintings play that line.
As far as colours being representations of fire, no. My colour choices generally just pop into my head when I look at a canvas. It just says ‘I need some red’ or whatever. My paintings aren’t representations of anything, not in the way that they’re painted anyway. And they’re also not symbolic – I loathe symbolism. So speak and say. Yuck.
My paintings are magic spells. I know that sounds sort of simple, like I’m some kind of village idiot, but it’s true.
I love abstract paintings because you can allow them to become these organic systems, and before you know it they’ve gotten away from you and taken on a life of their own. They each have their own energy, and they are meant to make people change. When I write about my paintings raising hell, or creating world peace, or starting revolution, of course that’s all tongue in cheek. I know that my paintings probably won’t do any of those things. I can’t be totally sure of it, and I certainly am thinking and dreaming rather seriously about those kinds of ideas while I paint, but I’m aware that most of the time they will fail in my more grandiose magic casting intentions.
But this general idea, that a painting can make something tangible happen, that I have seen with my own eyes. I know how paintings can change people, and how they can open minds. There is a very real energy in painting, and it translates to the viewer. You can make someone change, you can affect their mind, and you can create all kinds of effects. Right now, I might not be causing reckless debauchery and dementia through my paintings, but one day! Just you wait.
Obviously chance is playing a part of the process, so I wonder how much you try to control, and if you do any editing after the fact, in case it didn’t turn out like you hoped.
How can you edit poured varnish? It does whatever it wants. The other elements in my paintings are extremely controlled. The painted lines are details of sketches or strokes with my computer mouse. Sometimes I lay out compositions in Photoshop. I build a very strict structure, a foundation, for the varnish to flirt with. Once I lay the varnish, I’m introducing the liquid, the fuel, and the fluid that works inside the structure. It’s the contrast of these two simple things that really lets the paintings take off. I love the varnish because from then on, the paintings pretty much paint themselves. It’s not ‘my free subconscious expression’ and it’s not something I compose and control. It’s actually something entirely random. Of course I mix in whatever colours I want, but this varnish is so unpredictable, even after 5 years using it I can’t know what it will do.
Let’s talk about abstraction. What do you enjoy about it?
Abstract painting is the most difficult thing to do well. It is so easy to make terrible abstract paintings, but it is so very hard to make extremely powerful and overwhelming abstract art.
I love that abstract painting is such a degraded art form. It went from the highest of high art with abstract expressionism, to (what it seems to be now in Toronto) the most reviled and abhorred practice. Especially from the context of a straight white male. How predictable!
Of course, the rest of the world is way ahead of Toronto on this. Abstraction is so exciting right now. There is so much innovation, and it’s really able to capture and translate the complex myriad structures we now live in so effectively. In Toronto though, it seems like people are still stuck in the 90s, still so embarrassed by abstract painting.
Still, people just don’t seem to know how to deal with it. They keep looking for a way to ‘read’ it, to force a narrative. Whether that’s the tired narrative of formalism, or the cliché of pure expression. So many people seem so at a loss. It’s so much easier to look at badly drawn cartoon art, which is a blight upon Toronto right now.
When will that shit die and go away?? If I were to draw or paint cartoons, I’d become a graphic novelist. That’s something you can respect! But how can anyone respect an artist’s stoner sketches, pinned up on a wall? A narrative no deeper than loose nostalgic empathy, maybe with a bit of irony and sarcasm thrown in. Barf.
Abstract painting is fucking HARD. It challenges me. Once you’ve really allowed a painting to come to life, and it starts to tell you what do paint next, that’s when you’ve really gotten somewhere. You’re out of your own head, and you’re into some kind of new territory where you’re forced to respond and be inventive and problem-solve. I had a fantasy once of curating an abstract art show, and forcing all these conceptual artists, and cartoon drawers, and realist painters and photographers to make abstract paintings. Because it is, to my mind, so much more of a challenge than other art practices.
I know I’m sounding totally pretentious right now, but really think about it? There’s nothing else to grab a hold of. No narrative, no figure, no ground, no concept. You have to make the painting speak on its own. And I’m not talking ‘art for art’s sake’ here. I mean you have to make it really talk to people, to make them change. I’ve seen it with so many people, getting excited and turned on in front of my paintings. High is the new low.
Abstract painting is the most difficult of all art forms to perfect. It’s like poetry. Listening to most poetry is like living a nightmare. But every now and then someone is so good, that it makes you forget about every shitty bad piece of poetry you’ve ever read or heard in you life. Abstract painting is the same way. It’s terrible – 99% of it is terrible. Because it’s so HARD. So much art I see my peers in Toronto making right now, it’s so easy to produce. It’s a quick idea. A one off joke. No commitment. It can be very quirky and fun, certainly. But I don’t know how that can be fulfilling. There’s no daring, no chance, no allowing for chaos and then dealing with what comes next.
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Diamonds in the Ruff continues at Gallery 61 (61 Ossington Ave) until July 3. Gallery hours: fri 7-10pm, sat 1-6pm or by appointment
Matt is also currently showing at Solo Exhibition (Barr Gilmore’s storefront window space) at 787 Queen West. That piece is called Chimera Cesspool (of Sin) which consists of oil and varnish on glass. Solo Exhibition runs from one full moon to the next, and so that show ends on July 20 (the day they landed on the moon!)
Images from Matt’s website, www.mattcrookshank.com
Last night I dreamt I was in a gallery looking at particularly bad art, and there were two girls there – one was P-, and they were glowering at me; I was feeling defensive, and when we got to talking the subject came up, they acknowledging visible discomfort, I saying in return, ‘Yes you look like you’re ready to attack me,’ but then the conversation shifted as to how they were discussing my writing, and that while they liked the show, they couldn’t help but agree with my ideas, and were curious as to what I thought. Perhaps —– —– was one of these people (talked to her and P- last night at the openings) but then a curator was giving a tour of the work, saying that some of the work was based on memories of their childhoods, and I interrupted at this point to say, ‘I question whether work based on childhood isn’t in effect childish, and I’d prefer adult work for adults’. This silenced the curator. Later, she told me that she couldn’t think of a rebuttal, and I felt bad, as I’d humiliated her.
So, like I mentioned in my last posting, I was at the MOCCA opening last week. I wasn’t planning to go, really – I planned on going to the latest show at YYZ, but a friend told me about the MOCCA party where she was going so we made plans to meet there. I arrived early, after checking out the show at 401 Richmond, and then my friend showed up, but she got into interesting conversations with other people, and I didn’t want to interrupt, so I wandered around introducing myself to other people for kicks (which I guess is a way to say that the art didn’t hold my attention). But I guess it never really does for very long, especially at openings, and especially at openings in the summer which also consider themselves parties. ‘Seen one, seen ’em all’ I’ve been known to say, and the thing is that’s not really unfair since artists are so invested in the idea of a series. Perhaps I’ve opened myself up to the criticism that I don’t know what I’m doing – writing about art and all – but I tend to think it’s a skill acquired from the channel surfing culture. New technologies introduce new skill sets and exploit unknown talents, n’est-ce-pas?
So, in MOCCA, taking up the main exhibition space, are a bunch of drums. Drums as sculpture, drums in videos, mechanized-robotized drums. I’m sure there’s lost here to appreciate if you like music and drums, but since I’m not passionate about either, I don’t really have anything to say. Some people like Crest, I like Colgate; this is Crest art to me. That’s all.
I suppose I should learn my lesson from my last posting and bitch about it, which would raise some ire and get everyone out to see what all the fuss is about. All I can say is that I’m still figuring out this whole art-criticism thing, which doesn’t even matter anyway since people are quite capable of making up their own minds. I guess when I started this gig I figured I’d try to weigh in with my two cents now and then, encourage people to see this and check out that, give them some ins to the scene. So, with that in mind, I’m saying: there’s a new show at MOCCA. It’s next door to a show at Edward Day which is going to have more visitors now than it would have had otherwise because I said that show was boring. Well, I find the drum show at MOCCA boring too, but for different reasons: cuz it ain’t my cup of tea is all. That’s not to say it shouldn’t have been exhibited in the first place, it’s just to say that I’m a nerd who doesn’t like the whole indie-music convergence with fine art thing, but that’s just me. It’s workin’ for everyone else. So be it.
This drum thing is called Demons stole my soul: rock n’ roll drums in contemporary art. Rock on.
The show I did appreciate at MOCCA is in the backroom, featuring Karma Clarke-Davis, Edith Dakovic, Nicholas Di Genova, Istvan Kantor, Geoffrey Pugen, Floria Sigismondi.
I like Di Genova’s pieces; I curated him into the YYZ zine last January, where he worked with that document’s newsprint to publish nice black and white drawings. Here, he’s showing large images drawn on mylar using animation ink, to give the colours a nice matte effect. I think I’m struck by his pictures because they have this relationship to Japanese animé which I spent my childhood adoring, as did many of us. Animé holds my interest because of the combination of striking rendering, unique stylization, and usually a philosophical underpinning to the story line. By tapping into these associations, Di Genova is able to produce work that holds my interest beyond my usual cursory glance.
In the same room is a video I didn’t watch by Geoffrey Pugen. Or I should say I watched it but didn’t put the headphones on to hear the soundtrack, mostly because the two available were almost always in use. Next to that is one of Istvan Kantor’s machine-sex-action videos … the point of which I always find is lost because I’m distracted by the fact that I know the people writhing around and I’m thinking ‘so-and-so has a nice body’. I think it’s all supposed to be about dehumanization, and machines, and porn, but it comes across as a fetish video of all three, with acting worse than what you usually get in a porn video. But hey, he’s famous now so who cares right? Nowadays, it’s like you’re not a real curator if you don’t take Kantor seriously, so throw him in with the kids.
Sigismondi is another one of these famous people who’s shown with the MOCCA before, when it was up in North York, and she’s got a mannequin with horn legs if I remember correctly. The show is called Hybrids, and so it makes sense under this curatorial theme of what Robert Storr would associate as grotesque. I suppose this is a polite Canadian version, extremely understated, of what he was getting at last year with his SITE Santa Fe show: artists mash things up, come and check it out how weird it all is.
Edith Dakovic has the most repellent pieces, to my Colgate mind, consisting of sphere coated with the type of silicon used to simulate skin in special effects. Little hairs here and there, and moles cover it’s healthy Caucasian surface, the illusion eliciting the reaction of it being some form of life, some deformed animal grown in the lab for organ harvesting and the usual nightmare scenario.
Karma’s video must have been between loops because I didn’t see it and don’t know what it’s about.
Ok, to summarize then: what awaits you when you cross the parking lot, currently marked by that gorgeous installation of blue tree stalks, is Edward Day on your left, who’s showing boring realist work and other stuff that didn’t catch my attention; straight-ahead in MOCCA, you’ll find a floor full of drums cast in bronze or whatever, some of them done up with robotics, along with videos and other things; in the back room at MOCCA, a show called Hybrids which is the only thing that caught my interest. There’s probably something else which I’m forgetting, but hey, I was socializing that evening, not looking for the god of the art religion.
More info: MOCCA website (which is in desperate need of redesign).
I was at the MOCCA opening the other night (more on that later) and while there checked out the Dan Hughes show at Edward Day next door. To be absolutely honest, I was looking at the paintings while in the middle of introducing myself to a girl who turned out to be a painting student at OCAD, so we talked about it from the perspective of both being familiar with the medium. At one point I said, ‘these are too 17th Century for me,’ referring to their dark colour schemes. And I bring that up only to say straight away that the paintings weren’t absorbing 100% of my attention.
I’ve recently begun to paint again after not taking it that seriously over the past few years, and I’ve been going after this New Old Mastercism that Donald Kuspit began talking about 6 years ago. Dan Hughes’s show is just down the street from Mike Bayne’s, which just closed at Katherine Mulherin’s gallery, which I wrote about here and which mentioned Kuspit’s defence of superior craft ‘enhancing sight to produce insight’.
I’m afraid that the only immediate insight I got from Dan Hughes’s show is that varnish makes paintings very shiny. (That and what follows after a couple of days reflection …). My own recent experiences with practicing the craft of painting, in relation to rendering and toward the achievements of the Old Masters is that craft alone clearly isn’t enough.
I’m reminded of one of the more famous excerpted essays I’ve encountered reading art and literary criticism, in which R.G. Collingwood states in his 1938 book, The Principles of Art, (quoting Coleridge): ‘we know a man for a poet because he makes us poets’, as Collingwood explains, ‘the poet is a man who can solve for himself the problem of expressing it, whereas the audience can only express it when the poet has shown them how’.
Our everyday familiarity with language is enough to help us appreciate those who can use words well, and how a well turned phrase can unlock for us understanding not available by being inarticulate (hence my loathing of jargon based literary and art writing).
We don’t seem to share such a facility with images, especially crafted ones, since most of us don’t draw and paint, although most of us do take photographs. So someone like Dan Hughes, just because he can paint like that, means he gets a pass by default into a show. It also seems to mean that those who can’t draw and paint are awestruck at first impression by his ability, so much so that the impression is one of appreciation, and if they can afford it, the seduction of their chequebooks.
Some stuff, by what it represents, will grow in value – like Mike Bayne’s, whose images of today’s everyday will appear quaint in a century and will tie that time to ours, giving them a sense of where they came from. But Hughes’s images are already boring, and I’m uncertain as to how they could grow in value. Nothing represented is worth sharing, none of the images will help the future understand its past. Skulls, self-portraits, business men on stairs … been there done that and gave away the t-shirt. I don’t write this or what follows to be mean, nor to causally disregard it simply for the clichés that they are as much as I mean it as constructive criticism with hopes that Hughes will grow as an artist and that he can put his considerable skill to better use in the future.
And here I’ll acknowledge what these images must be all about: they’re studio exercises he’s trying to offload because he doesn’t want to store them somewhere. He must be thinking, ‘might as well sell them to someone who’d like to have it in their livingroom’ which is all fine and dandy, but let’s be clear about that.
I need to point out that the main thing that makes these images uninteresting is the dark colour scheme – like I said, it’s too 17th Century, when it was fashionable for paintings to be dark. There was a reason for that then, namely, the high cost of coloured pigments against the sort of mass production of images for people’s homes – for a while there, paintings were affordable for the masses. For his own reasons, Hughes has chosen to ignore the past 150 years of paint and pigment development. And part of this criticism also fits into my pet theory of Canadian painters being united via a coincidental (aka cultural) appreciation for bright pallets – something that would seem to have lots to with our being a northern latitude country. So, if he’d used bright colours, filled these paintings with light, taken advantage of the range of affordable pigments available to early 21st Century painters – then I imagine these images transformed, amazing, worth going to see.
As it is, we can do that ourselves with Photoshop. In that sense Hughes is accidentally at the cutting edge of what’s going in our culture at large. Recognizing that the form crafted in the studio (the painting as object) is ultimately only the first version and separable from the content (the image), which can be modified, and re-edited, manipulated, etc. One day, one of these images of one of these paintings will have its levels adjusted in Photoshop before being printed for a bedroom wall. And that is what it comes down to. He, nor the gallery, nor the buyer, have the final say of what these images are supposed to look like. Since they seem to be nothing more than an exercise, you wouldn’t really be re-writing their meaning because they don’t mean anything in the first place.
And hence the image I’m using to illustrate this entry – folded and torn, it’s the reproduced image of a rather large painting, once again reproduced here and modified by my use of it that evening to exchange email address and give out the address as to where we were all going afterward. It perhaps more than anything communicates what this show is all about to me – a decoration to daily life, a nice backdrop to find some common ground with a pretty stranger.
Dan Hughes at Edward Day Gallery until June 12th
(image of Dan Hughes’s invite after a night of email exchanges and note-taking)
Ah the isms, can’t live with ’em, can’t have good arguments without them. And for the past thirty years, we’ve seen a flourishing of isms, one that could almost be said to have sprung from the fertilized soil of the World War’s dead a generation prior. To some they were flowers, to others they have been weeds.
And JRS is one who’s seen them as weeds. I’ve come to find them somewhat noxious myself, which is one of the reasons that I’ve grown fond of his thinking, and over the winter I read most of his books. It is also for that reason that I was particularly excited when I learned in March that he had a new book coming out. There was also a geeky pleasure to know that with the publication of a new text he’d be speaking in Toronto at some point, which turned out to be sooner rather than later.
JRS spoke at U of T’s MacMillan Theatre a week ago now, which I eagerly attended and like the keener I am took a seat dead centre in the third row because lectures for me are more exciting than rock concerts.
Having received a review copy of The Collapse of Globalism a week and half before, I must say that I was only able to get half way through it before seeing JRS in person. The first half of the book traces the history of the globalist ideology, which swept through the governments of the Western world over the past 30 years (which is also equivalent to my lifetime). But, even JRS conceded while presenting an overview of his arguments, ‘what could be more boring than economics’. I tried to cram last week to get ready for the talk, but found myself easily distracted by such mundane activities as mowing the lawn, because it was sunny out and I didn’t want to be stuck inside reading boring economic history, albeit written with Saul’s wonderful style. There is also the element of extreme annoyance at seeing, in the black and white of the text, at how stupid the political leadership has been, those which Saul refers to as ‘elites’ in his indiviudal way (a sort of Saul glossary is available through his 1994 book, The Doubter’s Companion).
Near the end of his talk, Saul referenced the coming democratic crisis, noting that the political energy of a critical mass of people under 40 is going into NGOs and similar enterprises, seeking influence over political decisions, and noting how that’s all they can ever hope to accomplish. (He spoke at length on this in his inaugural Lafontiane-Bladwin speech five years ago, from which I excerpted the relevant portion for my Goodreads list). But, this follows from the globalist ideology, because as he noted, what better way to drive young people away from politics than to keep telling them they don’t have power, that the whole thing is run by corporations?
That’s been the story that I grew up with. It’s also one of the reasons I find someone like Saul so refreshing, because he’s part of that generation seduced by the neo-conservative economists who call themselves neo-liberal (liberal as in ‘free trade’ etc), and yet speaks for the other side; speaks in a way that gives me hope for a better tomorrow, as soon as my generation is given the power to change things. As a traitor to the ideology of his generation, I see Saul as a potential hero to the younger ones.
He’s certainly been my intellectual hero, as he’s attacked those who’ve who constructed another an ism to be a prism: the prism of economics to explain the rainbow variety of the world’s reality. Of course, it should be obvious of how much of this is nonsense. But we’ve lived under this reality because the political leadership essentially through up their hands and said, ‘it’s inevitable, we can’t do anything about it’.
Saul has particular loathing for that word, ‘inevitable’. It’s background was a little mysterious to me when I first heard him speak 7 years ago. He’s continually bitched in his books at how the political leadership was arguing that globalization was inevitable, and there was nothing they could do except jump on the bandwagon. He explained where this came from: the apparent root of this loathing which has spurned him on to write all these books over the past while.
While he was in Paris in the early 70s (during the time I presume in which he was working on his PHD thesis on the modernization of France and basking in his own hero-worship of De Gaulle) the then president of the country, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing came on television to announce (and I paraphrase Saul’s paraphrase here): ‘thank you very much for electing me, you’re all very smart to have done so since I know everything, and I’ve studied the problem, and concluded there’s nothing I can do about it.’ It’s worth quoting the relevant passage from the book:
“Giscard came to power in the midst of those seminal crises of oil, inflation, unemployment, and no growth. He counterattacked as a technocrat could and made no impact … Giscard became bewildered. Discouraged.
“Then one night he appeared on television to address the people. He told them that great global forces were at work. These were new forces. Forces of inevitability. Forces of economic interdependence. There was little a national government could do. He was powerless.
“This historic appearance was probably the original declaration of Globalization as a freestanding force escaping controls of all men. It was also the invention of the new leader: the manager as castrato. This approach created quite a fashion among leaders at all levels. The easy answer to the most difficult problems was increasingly to lament publicly that you were powerless. Impotent. That your large budgets, your public structures, the talents and determination of your population could make little difference. These were not problems to be solved. These were manifestations of the global reality.”
Here seems to be the roots of his argument against technocratic experts and impotent political leadership and throwing one’s hands up in the face of inevitability. The crisis was an economic one, simply a lack of imaginative thinking. Saul argued in the Unconscious Civilisation that since politicians had given up leadership in favour of management, all they could ever do is manage, they didn’t have what it takes to lead society with creative solutions. I guess this is where I got my fire burning toward civic engagement, and the lingering bitterness I have toward the artworld in which I’m immersed: because if artists are the ones society trains to be creative, they’re wasting everyone’s time with these installations.
Not that I’m advocating all artists go into politics (remembering the Hitler example, I don’t think that’s such a good idea for the most part) but he argued last week that we’re in a vacuum now. Since 9/11, the castrated politicians suddenly realise they have balls and are pulling the strings, but they come from a generation who went into politics with the understanding that they would be making concessions to corporations. Now that the situation has reversed itself, and corporations are showing no respect for community infrastructure, the governments don’t really know what to do. Hence, Ottawa for past six months.
I see that whole circus as the chickens coming home to roost: the consequences of what he spoke about in his Massey Lectures ten years ago. At the same time, he’s married to the head of the government, so the chicanerie doesn’t seem so bad, since Mom and Pop have good heads on their shoulders even though they aren’t really supposed to have any influence. (I have faith that everything will turn out fine because Saul has the ear of the GG).
Now I have to bring something up which bothered me about his argument,something he opened himself up to. It’s a case of illogic, for he stated that one can recognize an idealogue by how much they won’t even admit to potentially being wrong; to the idealogue, what they believe is simply ‘true’. This got some laughter from the audience, but from then on, I wanted him to address the ‘truth’ of his arguments. He’s got it pretty good right – married to the Governor General; and he gets to write books destined to be bestsellers, he gets to work out the thoughts via lectures delivered on the ribbon-cutting itinerary, and he draws a sell-out crowd of the city’s thoughtful citizens. He gets to preach to a choir, and those unlike myself who haven’t reached the level of the sychophantic I imagine are at least impressed by His Excellent resumé.
Which is all to say that JRS is enabled in promoting his own ideology. His own ism. This one is older than most, being the one called humanism. As I see myself most influenced by those set of ideas, and operating within that history myself, it follows that Saul’s ism arm me for great arguments, and are breath of fresh air in the sickly academic atmosphere of bullshit that I’ve associated in.
I first saw Saul speak at Kings College in Halifax in 1998, and I found it very influential. It’s perhaps one the reasons I’m writing this now, on a blog I mean, since the way he disparaged the elites then as ‘not doing their job’ (in the earlier books he speaks of Canada’s elites as being the laziest in the world) prompted me to believe in the power of the public intellectual. That ideas and art and all this stuff that I was studying at the time belonged to everybody, and that it was part of a civic duty to criticize bad ideas as much as it was a duty to vote and follow politics because it’s there that decisions are made that affect our lives.
His relentlessly fair approach as well, as mocking what is foolish, and conceding his own defects now and then, is one of the reasons I find his writing extraordinary and highly influential. The belief is that we’re all in this together. We all want what’s best. There are many forces of divisiveness that we need to overcome. Perhaps his basic argument is ‘pay attention’. In that way you become conscious, and can decide for yourself. That’s the essence of a democracy, people deciding their own future, rather than giving up in the face of inevitability. That way, we emerge from being an Unconscious Civilisation.
You have the choice to read this book or not. You have the choice to buy it in a small bookshop or in a Chapters. Of course you can see that I’ll recommend that you do, since I’m a fan an all. But I can say that a knowledge of the history of this ideology from his perspective is quiet valuable, and that Saul’s work as a whole functions in the ways that education is supposed to: it empowers you in your own choice making. It helps you become a better citizen, and by becoming a better citizen, the world becomes a better place. As for the lecture – as I type this, I have TVO’s Big Ideas on in the living room, and I have a feeling this lecture will be broadcast on Big Ideas sometime in the coming months, so you’ll have the chance to see it for yourselves.
You’ll see how he began the talk by telling us of how on May 19th, the City Council of Burlington rejected an application from Wal-Mart to build a centre there, even after all the experts (the evil technocrats of Saul’s cosmology) said it would be a good thing. Here, the ‘common’ men and women of the council said something to the effect that Wal-Mart may know how to lower prices but they know nothing of fostering communities. And here is Saul’s story over the past decade’s happy ending: the collapse of an ideology of markets, when the common citizens take back the power their ancestors won from aristocrats centuries ago, to be able to say no thanks.