Thursday links

Art Fag City (Paddy Johnson) takes a swipe at David Hockney:

In other grating news, The Daily Mail reports famed artist David Hockney creates digital paintings on his iPhone and He also sells prints created on his computer in limited editions. If there were any interest in this project past the fact people are actually willing to pay for it, lifestyle, the display of Hockney's iPhone on an easel certainly destroys it. Surely the artist doesn't use the easel to make the work and the iPhone is not equivalent to a stretcher- its frame is invisible- so why display it as such? The iPhone as medium is a gimmick that needs to die a quick death.

Couple of things wrong here. First, why should any medium be called upon to die? It's not the size of the boat, it's the motion in the ocean. Japanese school girls are writing text novels. I await the text novel masterpiece. Second, Hockney is Mr. Tech. He loves the mechanical means of reproduction and thinks old masters did too. Third, he's the ultimate in pure visuals. Like a drummer who can play with a symphony orchestra by banging away on tin cans, he can be Hockney in any form he chooses. Case by case basis, Ms. Johnson. Nor do I care that he put his little phone painting on an easel. So what.

C-Monster nails it:  Abdel Abdessemed's roots in a bad 1980 movie. It's funny, of course, but doesn't matter at all in the art sense. He could get his inspiration from the drool on his grandfather's chin. What matters is where he took it. I haven't seen this show, but I'm mighty impressed with the photos.


Peripheral Vision's take on Arts Writing and the New Thing:

Well worth reading. She quotes Doug McLennan:

I've recently come to feel that the new thing (whatever that is) won't have a chance until the old order is disposed of. Newspapers are sucking up all the oxygen in the room, and the startups won't have room to flourish until newspapers get out of the way.

I think I agree in cities like Seattle, where the Seattle Times represents a grim version of the old order, but I don't agree at all if we're talking about the New York Times, LA Times and Boston Globe. Can't we all just get along?

As PV notes, it's an excellent time for anybody interested in reading about art.

Greg.org on Le Corbusier's Poeme electronique from 1956 is riveting. Watch the videos. It's probably the only futurist pavilion that delivered on the future.

I love Emily Pothast's tribute to Bea Arthur at Translinguistic Other.

In 2005, during my final quarter of the MFA program at the University of Washington, I spent hundreds of hours holed up in an apartment equipped with a TiVo and dozens of chisel-tip felt markers to cross out the entire Bible, leaving only the violent words. The resulting document is a concentrated study in psycho-spiritual trauma more closely resembling a censored Bush era CIA folio than a sacred religious text.

To figure out how Bea Arthur fits in, click the link.

If you're in LA May 23 to June 13, check out 1000 Days, which Daily Serving helped organize at Scion Space. It includes, from Seattle, the dazzling Tivon Rice.