{"id":1102,"date":"2009-09-23T11:44:58","date_gmt":"2009-09-23T18:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/09\/macarthur_awards_who_are_they\/"},"modified":"2009-09-23T11:44:58","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T18:44:58","slug":"macarthur_awards_who_are_they","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/09\/macarthur_awards_who_are_they.html","title":{"rendered":"MacArthur Awards: In the arts, they look backward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year the MacArthur Awards<\/a> embrace the individual efforts of the
\ncountry’s artists, scientists, economists and (still employed)
\nreporters, reminding them that whether they are in or out of the
\nmainstream, their excellence counts. <\/p>\n

This year, three of the seven in the arts are visual: Mark Bradford<\/a> for collage painting, Rackstraw Downes<\/a> for oil painting, Camille Utterback<\/a> for video. <\/p>\n

That leaves Heather McHugh<\/a>, who is a poet; Deborah Eisenberg<\/a>, a short story writer; Edwidge Danticat<\/a>, a novelist; and James Longley<\/a>, a documentary filmmaker.<\/p>\n

I can’t speak to awards in anything but the arts, aside from saying
\nthat mathematician L. Mahadevan enthralled me in his interview<\/a> on NPR. In the arts, however, there are no dancers, choreographers, musicians;  nobody working in the recently reinvigorated public art realm.<\/p>\n

With the exception of McHugh, there’s nobody fusing forms to produce hyrid realities, and nobody whose efforts shape the moment and suggest the future. McHugh is the Attila the Hun of poetry. She sweeps down from the hills to claim all lowlands for verse. She claims all speech, turning it into a wisecracking sound stream, both precise and wide open.<\/p>\n

Aside from her, the list has an elegaic feel. Eisenberg’s stories are exquisite minuets. Danticat is a 21-century Proust, animating her past. Longley’s films have a magisterial detachment, as if they cover not the Iraq War but the Trojan one. I love Downes’ paintings. If I were on the committee, I might easily pick him, but again, his work looks backward.<\/p>\n

The two remaining artists are mistakes. Bradford might still make a major contribution, but he’s not there yet. What does he offer that Kurt Schwitters<\/a> didn’t long ago?  Utterback has larger problems. Her work is labored and gee-whiz, look-at-my-special-effects. <\/p>\n

From her Web site, describing Come to Pieces<\/i> from 2001:<\/p>\n

\nImagine seeing yourself from four different angles at once.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Picasso imagined that in 1907, far more powerfully. If I want to see myself from different angles in real time, I try on clothes in a dressing room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year the MacArthur Awards embrace the individual efforts of the country’s artists, scientists, economists and (still employed) reporters, reminding them that whether they are in or out of the mainstream, their excellence counts. This year, three of the seven in the arts are visual: Mark Bradford for collage painting, Rackstraw Downes for oil painting, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}