Art?

Discuss.

Ahhhh. An unseasonably balmy day here in the flyover zone. Upstairs, my riotous infant had subsided into what passes for a nap these hellish days. Downstairs, the dogs and I were cautiously relaxing into sunshine and silence. I snapped open a can of Diet Dr. Pepper, settled into the spot on the couch that fits my rear just right, and fired up the trusty laptop to while away a blessed hour with Google as my friendly guide… and saw this:

And said this: “Good God. Jeff Koons just crapped all over my Google.”

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Most art students learn to appreciate art by studying its history. Thus they’re usually exposed to the figurative art of past centuries before they are to twentieth-century art, with its effusion of styles.

But some have a natural inclination for the avant garde. For example, jazz, with the homage it paid to old standards and show tunes, seemed too, well, straight, for this author when he was young. His gateway to its wonders, current and past, was John Coltrane. Full Story »

by greg stene, phd

We cannot continue to think of advertising as merely a print ad or TV spot. We need to include far more as advertising … including the actions of people and corporations.

Their Performance Art. And in contrast, their Performance Acts.

Real Performance Art is not just some dude dancing in a street. Or some Laurie Anderson musical performance. Or some geek sitting around reciting poetry that shows up on an HDTV screen in front of him in a restaurant while he’s eating raw buffalo meat. Full Story »

I used to work with a HAL 9000. Back when I was at US West in the late ’90s we had a voice system into which we would record the day’s company news so that employees without Internet access could dial in and keep up with the latest events. As with any such system there was a dial-in sequence, buttons that had to be pressed in a certain order, etc.

One day, as I was working through the first stage of the sequence, our phone system apparently achieved sentience. For reasons that I still can’t explain, a decade later, and that nobody at the time had any clue about, the machine sort of … intuited what I was about to do. It performed an action or two that, put simply, it could not do. Full Story »

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World
by Dan Koeppel
Hudson Street Press
(December 27, 2007)

by Chris Mackowski

I fell for Dan Koeppel’s new book like a man slipping on a banana peel.

Maybe that’s because of the appeal of the cover: a close-up of a banana with a blue sticker on it so identical to a real banana sticker that I had to do a double-take.

I picked it up, peeled open the cover, and read the first line to get a taste of the writing. “If you are an average American, about forty years old, you’re probably approaching banana ten thousand, just as I am,” Koeppel writes. Full Story »

The 2007 YouTube Video Award winners have been announced (see all the nominees here), and they certainly provide fodder for debate. Not that I think the criteria were necessarily about critical standards, of course, but still.

For instance, have a look at the human tetris performance, which won the Creative category, and explain to me how it beats this.

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Imagine a great artist whose work is seen on a daily basis by hundreds of thousands of people. Yet, even though many not only enjoy, but are transported by, his triumphs, they don’t know his name. (We’re not speaking of sculptures in public places. However small, the artist’s name is usually inscribed or affixed.)

It’s not that this artist is neglected. His many honors include MIT’s Eugene McDermott Award, one of the most coveted arts awards in the US, and election to France’s “Les Arts et Lettres.” Ordinarily, this author is disinclined to celebrate the most successful and wealthy. It’s just that this man’s work demonstrates the extent to which developing a public space can set the viewer’s spirit free from its earthly moorings.

Yes, Spaniard Santiago Calatrava works in the field of architecture, which, in the US, is only intermittently thought of as an art by the public. We prefer form or flash in our architecture, not art. Full Story »

Tim Karr has an important read for music lovers up at HuffPo. In it, he covers OK Go’s descent into Washington to promote the importance of Net Neutrality to independent musicians.

The band’s success is a testament to an open Internet. OK Go was propelled to national fame via the popularity of their YouTube videos. One, a treadmill dance along to the song “Here It Goes Again,” has been viewed more than 31 million times.

“If people wonder whether the music industry will benefit from Net Neutrality they can look no further than us,” said OK Go’s lead singer and guitarist Damian Kulash in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

“There really is some consensus here that Net Neutrality is good for music and good for musicians… I’m here to ask you today to preserve Net Neutrality and the openness of the Internet. I believe it’s critical to the future of music.”

These days, when it seems like the deck is as thoroughly stacked against legitimate artists as it has ever been, it’s a little scary to imagine what happens if we take away one of the few tools left to bands trying to promote themselves. Full Story »

Who are the most influential bands and artists in the history of rock? Well, start with The Beatles and Elvis, I guess, and for good reason. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Stones, of course, The Who and David Bowie. The big names. All of them signed their names on our culture with a fat permanent marker, and in doing so insured that just about all future artists would have to navigate their legacies in one way or another.

The funny thing, though, is just how influential some far, far lesser known artists became. Many people have heard of Velvet Underground, although comparatively few have actually listened to them, but if you factor VU’s overwhelming influence out of our collective cultural history would we have had Bauhaus, Echo & the Bunnymen, Lenny Kravitz, Sonic Youth, Jesus & Mary Chain (and subsequently Black Rebel Motorcycle Club), Galaxie 500 (and the army of bands that followed their lead) and REM?

How about Big Star? Full Story »

Scholars & Rogues has added a couple of new features to its lineup, and we hope the new additions will provide our readers with even more reason to check by each day to see what’s new. In addition, we’ve reshuffled the feature lineup a bit, so here’s what to look for.

• Monday: Nota Bene - Scholars & Rogues takes you around the Web for all kinds of interesting stories you may have missed.
• Tuesday: TunesDay - A new feature. Each Tuesday S&R’s team of music lovers will present an artist or band of the week (maybe more than one), or will perhaps examine a new development in the world of tuneage, or note an important historical landmark… The possibilities are endless. Tune in for the first installment tomorrow. Full Story »

[An artist] should copy the masters and re-copy them, and after he has given every evidence of being a good copyist, he might then reasonably be allowed to do a radish, perhaps, from Nature. - Edgar Degas

I went to see the “Inspiring Impressionism” exhibit yesterday at the Denver Art Museum and came away struck by how remarkably it addressed questions of influence and originality in art, issues that have long been central to my own thinking and writing. As a poet, I’ve long been aware of the debt I owe the masters whose genius has shaped my own work, and if my efforts pale in comparison, they’re at least less meager than they would have been had I not spent so much time in the company of Donne, Shakespeare, Yeats, Hopkins, Wright, Thomas, and perhaps most especially, Eliot. Full Story »

Last September we hit you with part one of our best music videos ever, featuring Death in Vegas, The Prodigy and Pop Will Eat Itself. Powerful stuff, to say the least. Today we’re back with round two - alieNation.

Up first is Orbital’s “The Box.” I used this one in a class or two back in the late ’90s. Humanities and the Electronic Media, I think. Just a brilliant bit of short film making here - deftly captures the anomie and alienation of the postmodern urban wasteland. It’s almost magical how we can be so isolated from a character and so connected all at the same time.

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On Wednesday, I “officially” became a journalist. Through the encouragement of several of my fellow Scrogues here, and my work on a number of issues that I’ve published here, I was accepted for membership by the Society of Environmental Journalists and received notice of my acceptance Wednesday.

It’s an absolutely wild feeling, a strange combination of elation and apprehension. It’s my first real step toward following my passion - writing - and if that step was toward journalism instead of fiction, then that means my need to write has become more encompassing than I anticipated a few years ago. My blogging, combined with finally self-publishing my first “short” story in December, makes me feel like I’m actually making progress toward being an honest-to-the-gods writer. My utter lack of progress on this goal for many years had bothered me a great deal. Full Story »

It’s official–the three-month writer’s strike has come to an end, with 92.5% of the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) voting to get back to work after an agreement was struck between the WGA and the major studios that would (in theory) guarantee writers a larger percentage of revenue from shows broadcast or sold over the Internet–the chief sticking point that led to the strike in the first place. Full Story »

Last night my wife and I rented the Buster Keaton classic Steamboat Bill, Jr. She’d never seen anything by Keaton, but has heard me (and fellow Scrogue Jim Booth) talk about his particular genius.

One of the most remarkable talents America has ever produced, Keaton was an insanely gifted physical comedian who was able to communicate tremendous nuance even within the confines of the silent genre. A lot of actors through the years have gotten pretty accomplished at “deadpan,” but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anybody who could match Keaton’s mastery of the stoneface. It’s amazing how much he can convey with seemingly zero expression.

He was also a pretty remarkable athlete. Full Story »

I’ve long been convinced of two truths regarding poetry:

1: The easiest thing in the world to write is a love poem.

2: The hardest thing in the world to write is a good love poem.

Accordingly, I admire the hell out of a writer who can produce a tribute to his/her eternal love without making me a little sick to the stomach.

I think the problem I’ve often encountered is that great poetry - great art of any sort, really - is driven by tension. Whether it’s political rage, the fear of loss, the pain of mourning, whatever, it seems that the muse is more intrigued by that which is wrong with the world than that which is right. And love - real love, anyway - is an expression of two people’s triumph over the dark tension propelling most great artists. Most of the great love poems I can think of aren’t really love poems purely - they’re often driven by negative conditions. The love is unrequited, a lover is marching off to war, things like that. Full Story »

In the mid-1970s Graham Parker was portrayed as a quintessentially Angry Young Man®, a pub rocker with an attitude who helped shape the British New Wave (a movement that remains perhaps the most creatively vital five years in recent rock history).

15 years later he had matured into a Responsible Adult®, with 1991’s Struck By Lightning offering us songs about marriage, domesticity, kids and dogs. As he sings in “A Brand New Book”:

I once read the story of somebody’s life
I had a few moments to spare
He was a good man who lived with his
wife with the usual kids in his hair Full Story »

Today is Imbolc, the midpoint of Winter. That’s Groundhog Day to you secular/non-pagan types (and yeah, P-Phil peeped his shadow, so throw another blanket on the bed). It’s also my birthday, and my good friend Dr. Mike Pecaut has offered up a fine present - lots of concert footage from one of my all-time favorite bands, the unparalleled Queen! I got to see them live on The Game tour, and my only regret is that this was in the Greensboro Coliseum before they did the renovation. Which meant that the acoustics were roughly that of a quonset hut in a hail storm. Still, I got to see the most amazing band in the world in person.

Let’s kick the Dr. Slammy Day festivities off in style with - what else? - “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Full Story »

Piano

OK, so this isn’t an ode. I’ve never written an ode, probably can’t write an ode, and even if I could it would probably be right up there with Vogon poetry, so it’s probably better all around if I didn’t even try. Instead, let me list for you some of my prouder moments, right up until I went away to college:

• A bridge that spanned 6 feet of table with no support in the middle (we’ll call the brass wire I needed to keep the center from collapsing a “teachable moment”)
• More towers than I can remember, including one that stood nearly 6 feet tall and had no central column for support (a la the Eiffel Tower)
• A multi-generational starship with little robots and cars like from the movie Silent Running.
• A Voltron-esque robot that broke up into multiple smaller robots.
• An operational, motor-driven minifig-scale elevator that went up and down 3 feet.
• A Klingon bird-of-prey, complete with moving wings, exit ramp out of the nose, and place for the whales, to minifig scale.

Yes, I was a Lego geek in high school. And today is the 50th Anniversary of the often-imitated but never exceeded LEGO brick. Full Story »