Dodo revival, even though there are a suprising number of Dodos.

Being Blunt

Little Music Video Review
James Blunt
"You're Beautiful"
Director: Sam Brown

I check Slate.com pretty obsessively everyday, and when the year started I felt shocked and hurt when Jody Rosen took the helm of all things music at that most respectable of web magazines. I wondered why the so-loveable Hua Hsu had been excised, and I longed for more diatribes such as his "Notes on 'Humps'" and more praise like "The Insanity Plea." But with his latest review-ette of James Blunt's album, Rosen has won my following. I suppose we like critics because we agree with them (or, rather, because they agree with us), but Rosen's notes on Blunt's "unassuming" smarminess are great and on the mark--and, as a result, deliciously worth the read.

After reveling in Rosen's review, I just couldn't resist adding my two cents about the way Blunt came onto my radar. A month or so ago, I had been watching MTV Hits for about half an hour when I first caught sight of the video for "You're Beautiful." Blunt stares out at the camera, quietly, calmly sitting in a cross-legged zen-ish pose--and this is how he starts begging for some attention. His puppy dog eyes stare out at the camera; it's raining; he croons about how I, being his audience, am really pretty; how he saw me in the subway; how I was with someone else; how he kind of has a plan to catch me anyway. It's a lost cause, he knows, but he still thinks I'm hot. So, the strategy is that he's peering out at me from his humble, bare-bones platform, and I'm supposed to want to get it on with him?

I don't think so.

Beyond staring out and singing in the rain (and not even in the great Gene Kelly way of, ahem, singing in the rain), there's not much going on in the video. He wants to beseige his audience with his looks and his hot bod. But as I kept watching, I couldn't really understand how, by emptying his pockets and taking off his shoes and shirt, Blunt was disarming himself for me. When he finally mannishly swan dives into a stormy ocean at the end, it actually feels -- after every object removed, every raindrop drizzled on his head -- like he's enacted a ritual for himself. It becomes solely an advertisement for Blunt, which is the inherent idea behind music videos, but so unearnest an ad because it's clearly trying to do something by doing the exact opposite. In other words, the video makes James Blunt the center of attention when the song and his intent staring signals that the goal is for his audience to be the center of attention. And for all his weepy, staring pleas into the camera, he just can't cut it. He's just pretty self-absorbed.

"You're Beautiful" the video sure will woo his already-wooed fans, but it has absolutely no relevance to the song and it certainly won't win any skeptics into the Blunt fold. I thought about the song too. It's not that bad and I devised a test: despite the video, do I like the song anyway? Well, when I hear it on the radio, I keep mixing it up with the Lifehouse song "You and Me." And after I realize it's "You're Beautiful," I just wish it were "You and Me" because, for all it intents and purposes, "You and Me" just reminds me of Jason and L.C. getting it on in "Laguna Beach." Now that's beautiful.

Save up your bucks! Space travel is becoming a reality!

Art-Heavy Weekend, Pt. 3a

Sunday: MOCA, MOCA, MOCA!

MOCA is currently bursting at its seams--and that's just the Grand Avenue location. Not only do we have the second and slightly more contemporary part of "Masters of American Comics," you've got "Painting in Tongues," a solo space for Karl Haendl, and the fantastic selections from the permanent collections in "After Cezanne". Added to this, MOCA's showing some works by William Kentridge at their Pacific Design Center space, and, of course, "Ecstasy" takes up the entirety of the Geffen warehouse. What's more, these are all high, high quality shows that make me feel lucky I live in Los Angeles. Here are some thoughts on what's currently on at Grand Ave., with more to come about Karl Haendel and "After Cezanne" in a part 3B!

Masters of American Comics, Part 2
I'm not an avid reader of comic books. I'm in fact so un-avid that I still have yet to read Art Spiegelman's "Maus" and the only comics artists I'd heard of before the two-part exhibition were the aforementioned Spiegelman, Charles Schultz, R. Crumb, and Chris Ware. I'd also been familiar with Daniel Clowes because of his script, "Art School Confidential" (which I think will be fantastic fun to watch), and I was recently introduced to Winsor McCay when I went to completely surreal and unfamiliar territory, ComiCon 2005. And even though I'd had to the opportunity to sample comics at last year's behemoth comic book convention, I could only claim to be a tourist.

So, Master of American Comics was supposed to make me a novice. I got to see Part 1 of the show a few weeks ago, and what amazed me was how much Winsor McCay's stuff continues to push the boundaries of comics. His work continues to feel fresh and innovative, trippy and strange, and utterly fantastical, especially in the face of Will Eisner's hoodlums or E.C. Segar's Popeye. Especially when at the Hammer, I couldn't help comparing everyone else to McCay! What Became interesting about the experience of walking through the exhibit was that, as someone completely unaccustomed to pregnant panels of drawings and text, I was utterly exhausted just looking. At first, I was prodigous about looking and reading (i.e. when I stood before "Krazy Kat"), but as I dawdled around, I realized that my patience was being tried by the time I arrived at "Dick Tracy." And I couldn't help imagine that being able to be in bed and lazily flip through the pages of any of these comic books would the ideal way to "see" the exhibition and trace the history of comics.

Thus the question of how one is supposed to read comics -- at least, as far as the comic book artist's intent -- resonates. The idea of giving comics and their artists the proper acknowledgement has much merit; and for all their output -- and intelligent storytelling -- the goal of spotlighting this cultural phenomenon is important. But I keep coming back to a couple of basic questions that one might encounter in an art historical displays and collecting course: how does the museum -- and not just MOCA, but any museum -- and its vitrines change the context of the comics? How does it change how we have to read them? How does the museum negotiate between high and low culture? Also, how does, say, an original Winsor McCay proof alter the value of the original newspaper print itself?

It seems like the answer points to one general thing: elevation. Elevating for the sake of acknowledging and, thus, the move towards inclusion rather than exclusion. I think, in part, the including happens because artists like Raymond Pettibon wouldn't exist if it weren't for comic book artists. And graphic novelists -- to use the upscale term -- such as Chris Ware completely turn the medium upside on its head, turning the sad and melancholy into graphic-cum-literary epics, which inherently change the way one perceives of the medium. Chris Ware also makes really interesting objects, and he one foot drenched in the McSweeney's world of literary culture. Additionally, R. Crumb was at first considered an outcast, but then recast as a comic genius who was then showing in high-class galleries in Chelsea (around 2002-ish). I think the categories for inclusion here are interesting: history -- i.e. "Krazy Kat" and "Peanuts" -- and relationship to high culture -- i.e. Art Spiegelman's covers for The New Yorker.

So we find comics in a both precarious and enviable situation: not only are they read by teenage boys the world over, they have now become an earmarked, museum-approved bastion of underground -- but potentially high -- visual culture. Maybe this has always been the case. But what became such a slight in the modern art movement was if artists were just illustrators. Norman Rockwell is the archetype for this conundrum--how can you be great at rendering charming, narrative scenes and still be accepted by the Art World? What Masters of American Comics does is recast the question: how does the museum include previously excluded media? And Masters has a particular strategy: the show is an incredibly comprehensive look at the pantheon of those who would probably considered forerunners and practioners of graphic novels. It begs the question of where the medium will go and how it will continue to skirt high art, or whether it will recast itself exclusively to the nerdy masses. Perhaps, now, there's no turning back.


"Painting in Tongues"
Oh how false the `80s-coined pronouncement "the death of painting" really was. There has been endless evidence since that, like it or not -- and even in that just-linked Jed Perl TNR piece, we still see that Richter is using painting-- there is something about painting that fascinates and seduces; that still keeps calling for more minds, hands and brushes. Apparently, conquering painting has not been won. Jed Perl's article on Richter comes to mind here... the idea of Richter as "a bullshit artist masquerading as a painter" might seem appropriate and all too relevant for MOCA's latest show, "Painting in Tongues." I think Perl is interested in investigating Richter as a "calculating" artist who just uses imagery that exists in the hard-easy region--in other words, he paints the kinds of objects and moments that seem difficult to excavate from life, but then, on second thought, seem all too easy, and all too easy to manipulate its audience.

I happen to disagree with Perl, and I think what attracts me to Richter's work is not only his technical prowess but a mysterious track record. Richter is the ultimate stylistic chameleon; he has gone through phases of mock-Ab-Ex to blurry realism, glass panels to tiny collages. It's almost unnerving that despite his shifts, one still sees Richter come through in all of his work. The question of what unifies Richter's work is always at the forefront of his admirers -- and his detractors. Though Perl would cry "manipulation," I think it's something different. I believe Richter practices something more like a knowledge of how history is portrayed and how artists fashion images of history--either by referencing them (as Richter seems to have done with his Bader-Meinhoff paintings) or using portrayals of history as an actual strategy for making (one might say that Richter's elegant toilet paper painting is toilet paper constructed to look historical).

The concern is certainly related to Arthur Danto's position of art having become self-referential. And this is quite obviously the case for those artists curated into "Painting in Tongues." Lucy McKenzie paints sexually charged scenes as though they've been painted on brick walls; she merges historically low culture imagery with high culture mentality. Kai Althoff morphs his images, but seems to have a thing for Victorian frocks and either very thin or very thick paint. Rodney McMillan likes to deflate massive symbols like the Parthenon and slap them on the wall, their canvas flapping into the white cube space. Even Anselm Reyle whose work I loved for its hot-ness -- its extravagant but keen use of neon -- takes minimalism and Dan Flavin and heats it up. I'm still interested in figuring out the deals with Ivan Morley and Mark Grotjahn. Both are painterly in their own ways -- Morley taking on painting in many guises (weaving abstraction and then grappling with botanical imagery) while Grotjahn goes thick paint-crazy with primative-looking faces and line and perspectival abstraction. But I'm still trying to work them out in my head. I have always loved Gillian Carnegie and to be able to see her thick-thick again was quite welcome. She makes me believe that there are still ways of abstracting landscapes and still lives that can be incredibly sumptuous; and, even better, sumptuous with gobs of paint.

The show, good and comforting as it was, wasn't necessarily mind-blowing in any startling, stop-your-heart way. It was a really nice show about painting. And, in a sense, it made me question how much we can expect from painting. Anselm's Reyl's work definitely floored me, especially his neon sculpture. But that almost seemed like it would be primarily defined as a painter-ly sculpture, rather than a painting in space. So the question that lingered in my mind was this: How much can painting surprise us now? What can it do to astound? And--the key question--who will step up to the plate and do it? Though it sounds like I'm conceding with the `80s adage of death, I don't think my questions are a matter of painting's being dead. Painting is certainly alive and kicking. I think these painters Michael Darling presents are up to the task of astounding. It's a matter of how these power-morphers of paint can change the terms by which we think of painting--and, even better, how they'll be able to do it convincingly, so much so that it just might boggle the mind.

Art-Heavy Weekend, Pt. 2

Part 2 of 3 of my art obsessed weekend!

Saturday: Openings at 6150

I didn't get to see as much as I'd hoped, as I mistakenly thought that the openings took place from 6-9pm. But I did get to catch Chris Finley at ACME before the whole complex closed down for the weekend.

Chris Finley
"Friggin' Curve"
ACME
February 11 - March 11

Here, Chris Finley presents us with a strange combination of dynamic tan and fatigues-colored paintings and mixed-media sculptures, inflected with hints of Tatlin, Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," Julie Mehretu and Matthew Ritchie--but poised on ellipses. Though I love Ritchie's work a great deal, what's pleasant about Finley's latest show at ACME is that he isn't urging us to to buy into any kind of mythology; it's as though he's doing these techno-sexy shape-shifting paintings for the pure joy and intricacies of invented forms. And thus he makes the act of looking a fun and engaged experience.

Finley seems to be particularly attuned to invention and innovation when he attaches to the paintings delicate lines connected to wooden hanging sculptures (i.e. line drawings in space). It is in these moments--when the wood punctures or touches the surface of a painting--that we see Finley attempting to negotiate the boundaries of painterly and sculptural space. It's difficult to pull off, but this artist does it with visual intelligence. And it's actually quite fun to get the chance to go underneath the wires and sculptures, just to get to the paintings. Almost like a minimal and mini obstacle course, but with all the obstacles hanging from the ceiling...

The best part of the show is in the smaller gallery space where there's a device in the middle of the room that's attached to all the paintings on the walls. When I went, a guy was standing in the middle of the room hanging out and then he suddenly said, "Oh, I have to do this thing!" So when he pulled down the device, the paintings were raised to reveal other paintings underneath. I'm trying to figure out what its 18th-to-19th century equivalent is, and I keep wanting to say that it's like a cabinet of wonders but that doesn't really have the same performative quality as this does; and it's not necessarily the same as a science display where you open a box to reveal some sort of answer. (When I think of something appropriate, I'll certainly add it here!) Anyway, I love any kind of mechanical devices in artwork--even if it comes in bare-bones form--and Finley's device feels especial in its revelatory qualities. The exhibition definitely makes me curious about his turn from figurative work to abstraction. But it makes me wonder even more what other tricks Finley might have up his sleeve.

Art-Heavy Weekend, Pt. 1

With Munitz's resignation lingering in the Los Angeles smog, I took it as a sign that I should see a glorious gloop of art during the weekend--and indeed I did. I'm happy to report that all of it kept me interested and engaged, and it was certainly a testament to Los Angeles's prominence on the international contemporary arts scene. Here's part one of three...

FRIDAY: UCLA MFA Open Studios
Though I went to the UCLA MFA Open Studios on Friday night [hat tip, Caryn, for the heads-up], I was utterly exhausted from a long week of work, so I just bandied about, popping in and out of various spaces, looking for the pleasure of looking and not really paying attention to names. For me, it was more of a trip to investigate this mythic thing that is UCLA's MFA program, particularly its painting program, and a nice thing to help ease into a Friday night. The space was surprisingly large; I didn't expect that the program had quite so many students. As I was walking through, I was suffering from a bit of an end-of-the-week slump, so I'm not sure how informative this post will be. But, I will say that the work--on the whole--was definitely solid, and much of it market-ready.

I was really impressed by how diverse all the work was. There were painterly paintings, some elegant performance (which I wasn't able to see because I arrived too late), quiet and compelling sculpture, and even some good photographs. Here are some highlights that stuck out: I really loved the arrows that punctured the hallways, which were the prelude to a ceramic horse stabbed with dozens of arrows, all arrayed as a kind of invisible globe around the horse (sadly, I didn't catch the artist's name). Along the same "prelude" lines, in the main gallery, there was a strange zoetrope that seemed completely incomprehensible, totally blank and uninteresting, but as you wandered around the studios, you realized that one of the studios was showing this animation-looking video of a camera going round and round a hallway. The question, of course, was how these artists could install this in a less labrynthine space--i.e. how does it fit into the context of the gallery.

In the main screening room, jokester Brian Bress's video about sporks was hilarious and engaging; it looks like he's having lots of fun. And in the maze of studios, I was also very interested in first-year Juliana Romano's portraits -- they have an Alice Neel sensibility inflected with a Julie Mehretu intuition for color. (Full disclosure: she and I went to middle school together for a little bit.) And just around the bend from Romano's cubicle, I was impressed by Jun Ho Kwon's Sarah Sze-like sculptures (which the artist referred to as paintings) that used tripods, globes, even ladders as devices for making some rather explosive 3D collages. There was also a photographer whose pictures featured band geeks and firefighters. The firefighting pictures were excellent--really beautiful, and weirdly peaceable moments in the face of disaster.

All of these -- and the overall feel of the studios -- gave me a better idea of how one goes from being a so-called student to being Elliott Hundley. Brenna Youngblood (whose name is undeniably awesome) is already on the rise, so it begs the question of who might be heir apparent...

Great United Nations design post at Design Observer!

The Snow and the Flurry

I have always loved the Winter Olympic Games. They give me an excuse to hum the John Williams theme music and they provide endless hours of televised entertainment (as long as they're not airing long-course speed skating). During Lillehammer (`94) and the early days of the internet, I looked up the United States Luge Association on the web and sent them an SASE for a USLA decal. I believed that upon sticking the decal on the family car I would become the fastest, most aerodynamic female luger the world had ever seen. But I never did put the bumper sticker on my mom's Volvo. So, letting bygones be bygones, I have since watched powdery Olympic glory from afar, usually wrapped in a wool blanket with a cup of hot cocoa. As it turns out, this has been a quite satisfactory situation.

The Olympics are the only time when I get to see Bob Costas's sportscaster's glow, and it couldn't be more welcome. This time around, Costas has had plenty of news to report: Michelle Kwan withdrawing, possibly hinting at retirement (i.e. "skating will always be in my heart"); the adorable, loveable 19 year-old Shaun White asking Sasha Cohen out on a date during his post-gold medal press conference; the so-close efforts of Tony Benshoof; and Apolo Ohno's heartbreaking fall. All this (and more) has been covered quite well by both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Other things that have been charming about the games: Neve and Gliz; the uninteresting interesting debate between calling the city "Torino" or "Turin"; re-learning what the sport Skeleton is; and the low hopes for this being America's dream Winter Olympic team. It's also been awesome that NBC can superimpose downhill skiing runs on top of one another. Oh, the wonders of technology!

My personal experience of the Olympics is always embarassingly emotional. I'll basically cry at any profile provided that there are either cute baby photos or personal obstacles overcome -- and the NBC producers never fail to add these into every spotlight segment. Then, additionally, I'll shed a tear whenever an American sheds a tear while standing at the podium and singing "The Star-Spangled Banner." This, I claim, is evidence of my patriotism, not necessarily my emotional susceptbility. And, with these games so far--even though Michelle Kwan seemed to have secured her spot on the figure skating team in a sneaky sort of way--I even teared up during shots of her farewell conference.

Kwan's withdrawal marks the end of an era -- the era of my sad attempts to imitate her camel spins (indeed, my parents can attest to my incapacity for such grace). But beyond that, I have always felt a kinship toward Kwan, she being an Asian-American from Southern California with a flat nose, born in the early `80s. And I always hoped to be as humble and good-spirited, driven and determined as she. It now feels strange that an ambassadorial someone from my generation has become 'too old' for that in which she excels. Sports, acting, and rock and roll -- and sometimes even art and literature-- are almost inherently, by virtue of contemporary currents and next-big-thing-itis, agist. And sports, above all, test the mortality of their practitioners and the spring-iness of their tendons. But seeing Kwan in her black cowl-neck almost seemed to signal a shroud of mortality. It made me pause for a second... twenty, more like. I suppose our most innocent days are behind us. Then came Bode Miller on the downhill slopes...

Later, I let Bob Costas ease me back in to Apolo's short-course semi-final. I caught a glimpse at the slopes beyond French flag-colored wigs and the seas of Italian flags. And I reacclimated to my giddy anticipation of the 20th Winter Olympics. I think that's what Neve and Gliz want from me. And I suppose, for now, I'll think of it as something like a return to innocence.