I got this from Deborah Roberts:

On Weds. March 31st @ 5:00 pm in the big art auditorium located in the same bld as the Blanton artist Kerry James Marshall will be speaking about his art. If you don't know his work you should 'google' him. He is the featured artist in this months Art Papers Mag. "One true thing: Meditations on Black Aesthetics" Please, pass this on and come if you can, because what he has to say affects all of us.

I'll be there, and if I get a chance to meet him I won't even act like a dumb groupie with no self-respect...for very long.

Having a weakness as I do for theatrical, bombastic pop, I picked up a copy of Seal's new release, used of course. 2 words: wildly uneven. Some of his best stuff--if you're into all the strings sections and reverb and synth effects as I am--and also some of his worst. Let's admit it, he's at his best with cuts like the soaring, melodious, thunderous "Heavenly," or the misty "Tinsel Town," which recalls some of the smokier tracks from the first album, like "Show Me" and "Violet." Then he goes and pulls all these "influenced" songs with wildly varying results: a gospel track (exquisite), a reggae track (not entirely undecent), a vaguely funk-Sly-Stoney bad boy anthem (disasterous) and a couple of vapid, 80's-style "Everybody, we gotta get together and make a better day" dance tracks. It's almost as if he just discovered he's black and suddenly felt he had 3 decades of black music to make up for. Hey, I fell in love with you for the synth pop, Seal. That was black enough for me.

The one song where he says something like, "I'm a needle in a haystack/I'm a complex soul/something, something, something..." and he goes on singing about how difficult he is. That one's embarrassing. Look, people who are difficult don't go around announcing how difficult they are. Unless you count the time I got drunk with L and went off with her about how "multilayered" I am. (cringe.)

If you are a Seal fan, buy it used.

current music: Seal, Seal IV

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Bad fucking art day.

My friend Alex is in from Montgomery this weekend, and we forewent (foregoed?) a Stereolab concert in the interest of doing an art day. Big mistake. We could have done both technically, but we knew we'd be so tired from the day, these two old men wouldn't want to then go hang out in some crowded, noisy smokefest. So, we said, bring on the galleries.

Alex is possibly braver than anyone I have ever known. He's taken his Harvard degree and knowledge of 3 langauges and gone into urban communities of color to do organizing and anti-racism work. Every week he calls me on my shit, about art, about race, about being a wad of fucking neuroses. My journey in life would have been very different had I not known him.

Anyway, having been shut down by SXSW last weekend, we started out by taking another shot at Studio 107. Listen up: don't fucking advertise gallery hours if you're not going to fucking be there when you say you will. I am NOT fucking driving around and finding parking for my fucking health, you motherfuckers. So that's that. (left, Grant Miller, "L6-41077," 2003, something I really wanted to see at Studio 107.)

The next stop was down the street at Camp Fig. Waste...of...time. Sweet Jesus, what's going on in the art world? I can't even blame this on Austin's lack of talent, since this show was curated by the folks at Space 1026 in Philadelphia (again, with the motherfucking numbers) with art from all over the country. Why is everyone trying to out-lousy everyone else's art? It's as though someone sees one show full of inept, stupid, MFA-inspired, ruthlessly nihilistic art and then the next gallery wants to do something even more inept, more inane, more nihilistic. Just because you saw that fucking ripped up chair on the cover of Artforum, doesn't mean every piece of crap an artist happens shit into his toilet is a piece of fucking art. Raise the bar, don't lower it. (right, Angela Boatwright photograph)

That said, I did like Angela Boatwright's character study photographs, and a wall's worth of interestingly juxtaposed photographs by someone whose name I don't remember. Had I walked in and seen only that, it would have felt like time well spent. But the noise of most of the painting and drawing... I mean the drawings on canvas (mislabled, I suspect, as Bobby Puleo's)? C'mon now... This is art that is so bad, it's almost beyond description. And one gets the very definite sense that this guy has gotten as far as he has because no one wants to appear uncool by saying, "Hey you know what? This sucks. I mean, really. You can't just do anything and expect us to swallow it." But actually he can expect that and he'd be right, because the art world is full of so many fucking insecure people who don't have the balls to stand up and say when something is bullshit because so few people want to risk seeming uncool, or seeming like they "don't get it." I fucking get it. I just get that it's bad. (left, Keith Shore, "September 97" much better than the "Puleo" stuff, but enough already with this drawing style.)

The folks at the gallery were nice, though. They always are. I think the guy was Michael Sieben--he looked familiar.

But this is what got me really angry, angrier than I've been in a long time, and why I keep dropping the f-bomb so much: I picked up the current issue of VOA and happened upon their top 10 list for Texas art. (A list, by the way, right next to an ad for Gallery 2040--stop the madness with the fucking numbers!) Eric Gibbons, on the list. Very cool. Andy Coolquitt. Cool, I guess, even though I didn't see that particular show. But William Pope-motherfuckin-L? That a magazine would list that as a top 10 event in the same year that Trenton Doyle Hancock and Michael Ray Charles even set foot in the state of Texas is a motherfucking travesty. And I was one of the few black people who actually supported Pope.L's visit, because I'm not into closing off dialogue, but rather opening it up. And I thought he had some interesting ideas. Still, a top 10 nod is a slap in the face of every black artist in the state. The man is problematic, at the very least. The man makes white people feel good, and makes them feel like they're dealing with blackness, or black people, or race, or something. And that's why he's on that list. God-motherfuckin-damn.

Alex was completely blase about the whole thing, of course. "Why," he said, "would you expect anything different?" Why indeed?

I shouldn't take these things to heart. It was quite clear looking at the list that this was a club newsletter more than an actual piece of journalism. Such things are better suited to a Yahoo group email than a magazine that claims some kind of journalistic integrity. But I do take it to heart, and that's one of my weaknesses.

The list (not just Pope.L, but a couple of other things, too) shot my art viewing eye for the night. Alex and I drove all around East Austin, checking out the different neighborhoods, him remembering his soon-to-be former home in Alabama, me dreaming of a better time in Atlanta. The South. I wasn't born here, but I've come to love it, even with all its race weirdness and lack of good public transportation.

Eventually, we made it back over to Creative Research Lab for the UT MFA Thesis exhibition. I admit, because of everything else that had happened I was ready to be pissed off by a bunch of self-indulgent art. But I was really pleasantly surprised. I want to say that Brian Bales's delicate, sculptural abstractions were beautiful. A bit minimalist for my taste, but so full of grace and a kind of humility before life that was really captivating. Some other good stuff, too. (right, Brian Bales, "Tranxposition II," 2003)

I do have one question: am I the only person who finds it odd that white people constitute the subject matter for so many Asian American artists? It's weird, no? Su-en Wong is an oddity in that respect in that she paints Asian people (herself actually). I can't think of a single other US-born Asian figurative artist whose work routinely depicts Asian people. It's like this weird self-erasure that they themselves don't seem to be entirely aware of.

Like tonight, Young-Min Kang had installed this very interesting work that was, let's call it a 3-dimensional sculptural portrait of a woman made with rolls of paper. It was, of course, a white woman. Very lovely. Nice work. But is the artist aware of the weirdness of that? You gotta wonder... It's not like people can't depict people of other races, but when black people paint white people, or white people paint black people, you better believe there's a reason for that. Our intertwined histories mandate that. Even when you don't want the work to be read with racial intent, it will be. Asian artists in the US seem to fall somehow into the interstices of the racial patchwork in such a way that nobody thinks twice when an Asian photographer shows 25 photographs, all of white women. If a black artist did that...some eyebrows would definitely be raised.

So out in the hallway, I ran into Peat and his girlfriend Laura, whom I hired as my assistant at work a couple of months ago. After some initial awkwardness where Laura and Alex were talking about me while standing right next to me, which made it impossible for me to engage fully in any other conversation, we got into it about this blog and the art scene and the web and other interesting topics. I also ran into Cauleen and Sarah, Kazki's ex-wife, who was looking as cute as ever and beaming with her pure spirit. Since I didn't want to walk away from the people I was talking to, I kept hoping Cauleen would come over, which she did, but then she would quickly disappear again. I find myself constantly wanting to talk to her and then having nothing to say.

Anyway, so Peat made me understand that several Austin art types apparently read this blog, including many of the people I've praised and those upon whom I've let loose my vitriol. You might be one of them. What can I say? I stand by everything I've said. I may not be right about everything, but in my own house I call it like I see it. It has also occurred to me that this unfettered bluntness might have a real impact on my art career in such a small, incestuous art world. Then so be it. I'd rather tell the truth than be popular. In fact, Peat let me know that no less than Cory Arcangel of the Whitney Biennial read my criticism of his work and was "glad that I had that reaction." Hmmmmm.... "I'm glad you think my work is bad and tends to rid the world of grace and meaning..." That can't be right; I'm going to verify that with Dave when I see him on Tuesday. I gotta imagine that Arcangel was just glad I had had such a strong reaction at all, not that he was glad I disliked it, per se. That would make more sense.

I told Peat to check out what I'd said about him, which I think put the fear of God into him, but he has no reason to fear...that I can recall...

We left CRL and stopped off for dinner at El Arroyo, which I found to be a healing moment. Sort of took the sting off the day. Yes, I take this stuff too personally. I do often need to be reminded that it's only a show here and show there. That after all, it's only art.

current music: Sade, Diamond Life

As should well be the case, searches on "contemporary black art" and "black art news" return Electric Skin as the #1 match on Yahoo. I learned this in the usual way: from the log files.

Meanwhile, the Skin's readership seems to have fallen off a cliff in the last week. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, other than the fact that I need to do some actual marketing, actively getting the word out rather than just relying on word of mouth, or word of email. At the same time, more and more of you are coming here every day. Thanks--I guess that means that my personal neuroses and prejudices are a lot more interesting that straightforward art journalism.

current music: Amy Correia, Carnival Love

Working on the painting tonight I was reminded about what I said a while back (Feb. 1) about the need to keep things fresh. As much as I hate taking time away from painting, it does have the benefit that when I come back to it, it's a new and fresh thing that I figure out all over again--always with a slightly different and fresh result. I was able to approach the painting tonight with a new eye, and even though the concept is the same, this one has its own flavor. This is good; the alternative is settling into a rut in which you constantly mimic and quote yourself, no longer in touch with the first impulse of creation.

As usual I can't illustrate my point until the painting dries. 3 days.

Meanwhile, the New York Post reports that the art market is red hot. Also, the calls for a more humane and human brand of art are coming so fast and furious it's almost not worth linking to all the articles anymore. And the recording industry continues its blind thrashing through the digital underbrush unabated. According to this article, the last batch of students they sued netted them $70,000 max--not even enough to cover the lawyer's fees, I'm sure. And how much you wanna bet not a single red cent of that made its way into the artists' pockets?

Oh, and here's the worst name for a business ever: a glass company called "Barefoot in the Glass." Yeesh! That's a bad mental image.

I'm nearly finished now with the latest series of small paintings. Once again, I'll wait until this latest one is dry before attempting a scan. I should get a real digital camera (not just a low quality Webcam) so I can document these things more seamlessly. Put it on the list. (Or, as my loyal reader, you may send me a check directly. Thank you.)

The most recent portrait is not quite as tight as some of the others, but I kind of like that it has a looser, improvisational quality.

I found this quote at Art-the Magazine. I'm not sure how old it is since nothing on that site is dated. I do know that back when I used to check the site more frequently, updates were rare, so I'm inclined to think this quote is pretty old:

The debate roars - with anti post modernist papers emerging everywhere, but it seems it is too late. This type of complaint at post modernism comes from many quarters; it was particularly well structured. However, all the papers on the net will not a change make. Why? Because practical post modernism, functional post modernism, has already roosted in significant parts of the art world - such as gallery staff and curators. These people are able to make decisions that influence what is shown. It should be remembered though, that the post modern orientated art world professional, is just one part of the kaleidoscope that is the art world.

True and not true. The tone of inevitability sounds dated, particularly in light of the recent turn in academia. To listen to this quote, postmodernism is here to stay, as though any political/aesthetic philosophy in the last two centuries ever lasted more than a generation. But he's got it right about how these things become institutionalized in the art system and it'll take more than a book or two before that old system is overturned for the next system that starts out fresh and revolutionary only to end up stifling and dogmatic.

Whenever I can't find articles for the US/Canadian portion of Electric Skin, I usually go on a hunt for more periodicals to scan, thus ever deepening my coverage. I still didn't find any today, but now I should have better coverage of San Antonio, San Diego, Savannah, Connecticut and Indianapolis.

current music: Floetry, Floetic

The sketches for the vocabulary test just got approved. Haven't started on the inking and coloring.

Still haven't started on the Africana article on afrofuturism yet.

Instead, I watched the Seinfeld "puffy shirt" episode.

Nice night.

Attempted to get to the Studio 107 opening last night, mainly to see some Heyd Fontenot paintings, which I haven't seen in a while. (Someday I'll have to go on a tirade against galleries that name themselves after their own address or other mainly irrelevant numbers). I drove down at around 6:30 but was promptly shut down by the South by Southwest traffic. The city was fairly crawling with badge-wearing hipsters and parking was not to be found.

So I went instead to the Austin Visual Arts Association event that was happening simultaneously, but further away from the city center--not because I thought it would be good, but because I needed to do something and I thought I should support AVAA because...well, just because. (Right, Russian painted hand mirror.)

I hate going to painful little art openings where nobody shows up and the minute you walk in you become the entire focus of attention by whoever's in charge. And they are always very, very nice, in this case a girl who represented an organization called Behzat, which represents artists from Russia and Turkey and Armenia and places like that. She was really sweet; she almost didn't seem to care that there were only 4 people in the whole place.

The show was a coproduction of Behzat and AVAA. She (I can't remember her name) said that next time they want to have a "greater" AVAA presence. NO! Less of AVAA's thoroughly mediocre paintings and more Behzat Russian craftsy stuff. Sure it's not high art, but it was pretty to look at. It did a lot more for me than whoever that boring painter was with his pointless artist statement about putting banal figures in banal settings in order to make the viewer think about the paint. (um...no.)

Elsewhere (New York specifically), current favorite Xiaoze Xie is showing paintings at Charles Cowles in Chelsea. Those layers of newspapers, the compression of history. What an amazing vision. I get the feeling looking into those tenuous, degraded little piles that I'm looking at the functioning of memory, that that's what memory becomes: these truncated little slivers, piled one on top of another, compressed, fragile, doomed to decay. That's the story of history. (Left, Xiaoze Xie, "March 2003, O.T.", 2003)

Speaking of painting, here is another article about the return of painting, this time borne on the shoulders of Laura Owens.

After a lull, I'm starting to get more solicitations from people trying to become affiliated in one way or another with Electric Skin. The latest is from a guy who wanted to know what he had to do to become involved with my "organization." Organization? Uh, hate to break it to you, but the organization is me typing on a computer assembled from spare parts in a drafty apartment a half step up from skid row. I think maybe he's trying to get some coverage from me. We'll see. One advantage to not being an organization of any kind is that I don't have to make any pretense to democracy. It's a total dictatorship around here. If I say it goes on the site, it goes. If I say it doesn't, it doesn't. No need to explain my self to nobody.

current music: Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

If you check out Electric Skin today, you'll notice that there are no articles in the US/Canada section. This happens occassionally, and though it's annoying, I'm used to the dry spells. Africa provides a steady stream of arts coverage, so there's always something to post, even if it's from far away.

Today, however, was also the day that the Austin American-Statesman ran the photos of 57 soldiers from central Texas killed in combat in Iraq since last year. Any war casualty is a tragedy, but of course I noticed the disproportionate number of black and latino men represented among the dead. I counted 11 black soldiers and 12 latino. That's over a third.

I went back to finish up my check for art articles. Nope, none from the US. There is something wrong with this. I scan--directly or indirectly--several hundred news sources daily. Of that, there are perhaps 50 new articles profiling US artists, art exhibits, and the like, maybe more. Today, not one of these articles was even tangentially on the subject of a black artist. Based on our representation in the general population, you would expect that number to be about 6. You would also expect about 12 or 13 of the artists in the Whitney Biennial to be black artists, rather than the 5 that are in there. Likewise, you'd expect about 6 or maybe 7 of the dead soldiers to be black, not 11.

Apparently, we're not good enough for arts coverage, be we are good enough to die in the desert.

Thanks to Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes for linking back to this page. I've been reading MAN for a while--good source for art world gossip.

Mat Gleason at Coagula has gone over the top, as is his style, and declared that video, installation and digital art are over. Ladies and gentleman, let me assure you that the rumours of the death of installation art are wildly exaggerated. He's based his opinion on several articles reviewing the Whitney Biennial, including this article in the Village Voice. It's true that everyone is considering the Biennial as the "return" of painting, but in the same breath they all also say that the painting in this particular show came off weak. This article in the Globe and Mail echoes that opinion. So it's a little early to say that everything non-painting has become irrelevant, however much Tracy Emin's ex-boyfriend might want that to be true.

Still, anyone whose been reading this blog knows I've been grinding the axe of anti-postmodernism for a while and Saltz's essay similarly declares postmodernism on its last legs. Let me clarify one thing, though, for the record: Postmodernism gave us some great stuff, breaking up old boy networks for example. What I'm against is postmodernism as a totalizing dogma. I'm against the art world treating postmodernism as a religion.

I saw my friend Paul play keyboards with the Fighting Brothers McCarthy, not as an official part of South by Southwest, but still part of the overall hoopla. They were good--infectious pop. But man were they loud. I'm getting too old for that much volume.

current music: the ringing in my ears

I can't believe I spent 2 hours trying to get a footer onto my Electric Skin pages (copyright, etc.) and it still didn't work. I try to do everything with style sheets now, as opposed to doing layout with tables, etc., so when I redesign it will be simple, simple, simple. But I couldn't get it to work right. Eh, I came up with something that will do for now.

2 hours! When I could have been painting...

As a portrait artist, this article in the Guardian caught my eye a couple of days ago:

The portrait today barely exists, as art, because it is associated with naff celebrity photographs by Lord Snowdon and the like. It is everywhere, and yet, as the serious venture it was for Rembrandt or Picasso, almost nowhere. This is actually a very recent decline - a product of the postmodern rather than modern era. Right into the 1960s and 70s, portraiture was in the vanguard of art. Andy Warhol painted great portraits. Gerhard Richter and Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton and David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe and more recently Wolfgang Tillmans - there's no contradiction between portraiture and modern art. So why is the portrait nowadays left to the likes of Mario Testino?

Food for thought. As an artist, I like doing things that few others are doing. Even having a website puts you in the minority among "serious" artists. Go ahead, try to find Gerhard Richter's website or Marina Abramovic's. Hahahaha! I'm so fuckin' funny. Maybe it's a generational thing.

Adrian Piper has a website. So do Pamela Z and Charles Nelson. Unfortunately, so does Vanessa Beecroft.

current music: David Garza, Kingdom Come and Go

Here's another little article on Electric Skin, this time from The Austin Chronicle. I discovered this one by going through my website stats. Thanks, Robert!

It turns out that Charles Reeve is leaving as editor of Art Papers. He was one of the original ones I had contacted about my black artists roundtable idea and who turned it down, adding that he thought Thelma Golden's idea of "post-black" art is largely a sales job on Golden's part with no cultural reality to back it up. (I disagree, by the way.) Farewell dear Charles, true man of the peeps. They're trying to get the new editor installed by this summer. It goes without saying that, like everyone else, I shall descend like the Mongol Hordes on the new editor and try to repitch those ideas.

Meanwhile, this review of a new photorealist show in Birmingham could not have been timed worse, through no fault of the reviewer I'm sure--one day after Jerry Saltz's discrediting of contemporary photorealism. Now, for anyone paying attention there is no way to look at that art without hearing Saltz's voice in the background going, "Schlock, schlock, schlock."

A couple of kids came over last night from UT to interview me for a school project. It was for an Afro-Am history class--something about living out political philosophies in the daily work of artmaking. I was all excited because I thought here's an excellent opportunity to indoctrinate a young sistah on how it is in the world. Imagine my surprise when I opened the door and saw Meg Ryan on my doorstep along with her 6'4" pretty boy, ambiguously related friend.

It took me a minute to readjust, but it went all right after that. She was very, very enthusiastic, and that counts for something. But also very young, with a shitload to learn about the way the world works. Good for her for making efforts.

When I left the house this morning, I saw that Kazki had put some new music at my front door. He is crazy. Kazki, if you're reading this, YOU ARE CRAZY! This thing looks like a Stravinsky concerto. All I saw was a zillion black notes. No way I'm playing that next time. It's going to be all I can do to nail down "Clear Plastic Case."

My therapist is trying to help me figure out my obsessive tendencies. Let me tell ya, if we unlock this one, it'll be big, big, big. Also, if I stop obsessing, there's no way it won't have an effect on my art.

Kindred spirit Philip-Lorca diCorcia has been showing his spiritual, voyeuristic, yet profoundly human photographs at the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris. (Left, Philip-Lorca diCorcia's "Head #23," 2000.) Artnet is carrying a summation of it here.

The portraits are spare and simple and beautiful. And I find them extremely optomistic, almost in spite of themselves. If only the Whitney Biennial and similar shows had more work in them that reminds us that it's good to be human and good to care about what other human beings do, feel, think and say. Funny though that in this age of infinite digital reproduction, Artnet would post such a crappy pic of diCorcia's work (right), full of reflections and other distractions.

Speaking of Artnet, I caught this little tidbit:

The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation has announced $600,000 in $20,000 fellowships to 30 artists in its 2003 biennial competition, which makes awards to artists whose work shows promise but who have not received widespread critical or commercial recognition. The recipients are

and they go on to list a litany of artists. I was heartened to see Mark Bradford on the list, alumnus of Freestyle. But I also noticed Alexander Ross. Is there a different Alexander Ross? Because the one I know has gotten plenty of play from the press and from the art establishment. In fact, seems like there were a few months there where I couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting one of those green, goopy bio-plastic paintings. Not that I'm holding anything against him; they just have a weird definition of not receiving "widespread critical or commercial recognition." Of course, these things move so slowly, it's possible that back when the decision was made, he in fact had not been recognized yet.

Jerry Saltz wrote an excellent short piece in the Village Voice about the use of photography in painting. It's very difficult to be critical about the practice without degenerating into a simplistic "that's cheating" kind of critique. But Saltz has done a really good job of avoiding just that. Says Saltz:

These days, much photo-based painting looks the same (ditto digitally based abstraction, but we'll deal with that another time): a newspaper photo, picture of an urban or suburban setting, an airport or a hotel; a celebrity, fashion model or porn star; a stadium, pavilion or modernist interior; a still from a film; a yearbook pic; shots of young people doing anything; or any advertisement. These images are typically rendered in kaleidoscopic color, blurred pigments or washy black and white. Regardless of who makes these monotonous knockoffs, the results are the same: variations on Richter, Warhol, Tuymans, Polke, Celmins, Fischl, Rauschenberg, Peyton, Doig, Close, Robert Longo, Lisa Ruyter, or any original photorealist. Unlike their lemming-like imitators, all these artists have employed photographs in original ways.

That, I think, is a pretty fair assessment.

I've often asked myself about my own motivations and practices in using digital imagery as the basis for my portrait work. I know exactly the look he's talking about, and I don't think I fall into that category. But then, whoever thinks they do fall into a category of knockoffs? I also have to deal with the Chuck Close thing all the time. We both use a grid, but for entirely different reasons and to entirely different ends. Close's grid is a reference to old master paintings, to perspective "machines" and to the practice of transferring drawings from one surface to another. My grid is given to me by my subject matter. Digital images are already grids. Where Close is imposing his will on the subject, I'm elucidating the subject for what it already is. In fact, the will that I impose on my subjects is actually the opposite, in that I'm tending now to break them out of the grids in which they are naturally inscribed.

On the other hand, the legacy I've inherited from Close is that same monotonous composition: the centered, modernist, close-cropped head that takes on a kind of monumental character existing in a blank nowhere land. This is right out of Chuck's textbook. I realized it just as I started doing other things with composition. But the compositional variations are where I tend to be heading now.

As an aside, Saltz also says this: "We all know that photography is a remarkable and remarkably complex way of seeing and picturing the world; that the space between the photograph, the photographer and the thing photographed is incredibly rich." He's right, but no, we don't "all know" this. Even in this day and age, people are surprisingly unconvinced that photography constitutes a legitimate artform. I've reported here on the arguments I've had with my boss on that very subject. A lot of people have that point of view: "I could do that. He didn't do anything, but aim and press the button. That's not art." And no, my boss is not some uneducated, 80-year-old curmudgeon. He's a Boston University educated lawyer under 40 with a taste for Rothko and (ironically) David Hockney. Those of us who spend all our time in the art world and with other artists probably don't realize how pervasive this opinion is.

Had dinner tonight with the lovely and talented Cauleen Smith. These women, they're too much for me.

This whole thing is ridiculous from beginning to end: Istvan Kantor wins the Governor-General's prize for art in Canada for his off-the-wall conceptual and performance crap.Ridiculous art to begin with, then two guards are posted on him at the awards ceremony just in case he tries some off-the-wall mess. (Actually, his art is very much on-the-wall since he is best known for spontaneously painting X's on the wall with his own blood.) So the message seems to be: "We like the art you make, but don't dare try and make any of it around us. Yes, we love it when you shock people, just don't shock us." Look, either you think he's valid or you don't. If you're going to give the idiot an award, you ought to be prepared to deal with whatever shit he has to dish out. (Above, shot of Istvan Kantor performance--I'm sure all the spectators in the photo are responding to some sound off out of frame, but what irony that everyone looks like they're completely ignoring the performer.)

Here's a quote from the article:

In a recent interview with the weekly publication Montreal Mirror he also defined the art "movement" he created called "neoism."

"Well, no one is supposed to know what neoism is and I don't think anybody does, including myself," Mr. Kantor said. "The success of neoism is basically in the question, 'What is neoism?' because everybody wants to know. There are millions of definitions and none of them are good for anything. But you could define it by saying neoism is what makes neoism more interesting than neoism. Or you could say that neoism is that which makes neoism obsolete."

Yeah, Istvan. Whatever. Isn't he so right now?

One of Mr. Kantor's videos, Jericho, will be shown on March 12 at the National Gallery. Most of the 17-minute video contains wildly flashing images of Mr. Kantor in various costumes, ranging from a prisoner to a Ku Klux Klansman, screaming obscenity-laden, anarchistic slogans. In one segment titled Testimony, a semi-nude Mr. Kantor is seen on his back, his knees to his chest, spinning in circles. A megaphone appears to be inserted into his rectum. "I am nothing; nothing to say," says Mr. Kantor.

I couldn't agree more. Which I guess makes him a whole heck of a lot more honest than a lot of artists.

Elswhere, David Hockney is denigrating photography, saying it's all weak and crappy next to painting. My knee-jerk reaction is that he's wrong, that photography is just one more way of seeing the world, neither more nor less valid than any of the arts. But then he nuances his argument in this way:

Photography, with its claim to truth, is a discipline, he thinks, and he's glad digital technology is ending the rule of the one-eyed monster that never lied. "I suppose I never thought the world looked like photographs, really. A lot of people think it does but it's just one little way of seeing it.

Ok, so it's truth he's concerned with, and the recording of truth, as opposed to, say, expression. And of course, photography always claims some kind of truth that it doesn't really have. Digital manipulation exposes that lie. So maybe he's right. I don't know, the jury's out on that one. (Above, Loretta Lux's "The Wanderer," 2003, digitally manipulated photo now on exhibit in New York.)

Cleaning house, here are few more interesting things I've noticed online:

A pair of articles on reality TV. This one in the Wall Street Journal about reality TV and the Arab world. And this one in the New York Times about the Amish complaining about a proposed(?) reality show that makes them look stupid. Okay, yeah, apparently they don't get the point of reality television if they think they're supposed to come off any other way. If people don't make themselves look foolish on reality TV, the editors will jump in and do the job for them. So yeah, they're right to be annoyed.

Dyske Suematsu posted a very interesting article at Rhizome called The Myth of Meritocracy in which he argues that salesmanship is not some adjunct skill to art making, but is in fact the same as art making. Oversimplifying of course, but that's the gist of it. He argues that artists don't become famous because they're influential, they become influential because they're famous. Compelling. And I have to admit the idea appeals to the marketing hack in me.

Che Guevara is becoming chic-er than ever. And by plastering the angry communist anti-hero's face all over some supermodel's too-skinny ass, capitalism once again demonstrates its ability to empty anything of its meaning and replace it with the logic of merchandising.

And finally, most marketing people are now--and apparently always will be--one step behind when it comes to understanding the Web. First they shout at you with those annoying animated banner ads. (Yeah, I've had to place a few of those in my evil marketing days.) Now they've gotten all fancy with Flash, so they can annoy you in high definition. I agree with the wise Peter Blackshaw of Intelliseek:

==Rather than focusing on making promotions as ostentatious as possible, Blackshaw says advertisers ought to draw a lesson from the success of keyword advertising. Keyword campaigns, in which merchants buy small text ads that crop up whenever someone types a specified word or word combination into a search engine, are successful because they're relevant, not because they're flashy, he said.==

The trick is you can't let design people get in the mix. They want to overdesign everything and have this idea that everyone wants flash and pizzaz everywhere they turn. I can hear the collective gasp from all my friends who know me as a designer. What can I say, you know I'm right!

Sleeping at a normal time tonight...can't wait.

current music: DJ Spooky, personal mix

After a marathon coding session, I'm happy to say that the brand new Electric Skin is up and running. Go ahead, check it out. Once Jeanne Claire van Ryzin told me her article was going to hit today, I felt pressured to get the redesign done. (An article, by the way, in which she ages me 3 years and renames my Global Nomads project with the cringe-inducing "We Are All Global Citizens" --yech!) So 12 hours later, it's done...for now anyway.

It's definitely a rough cut. There are some navigation problems and the design is kind of rushed and wanky looking, but it'll do for a little while. Also, I already miss that raw, bloggy look it had before, now that it's creeping towards "establishment." Funny that I didn't see that coming.

Now to get my sleep schedule back on track. And call some people back I haven't talked to in days.

Zakia Carter ok'd the trendwatcher piece for Africana and we're shooting for April 8. Which I guess belies certain protestations I may have made about not being a journalist... Eh, what are you gonna do?

current music: Chris Whitley, Hotel Vast Horizon

Still slogging away at the overhauling of Electric Skin. It will be a much, much better site when I'm done.

I give it 1 week.

Somehow, Zakia Carter, editor at Africana.com got hold of my 3-part posting on black art in America (Feb 18-21). Among other things, I registered my disappointment with black news sources over coverage of the visual arts and named Africana by name. She wrote to me as a result and we've started a nice little conversation. She asked if I'd like to help remedy the situation by doing some writing. Of course I jumped at the chance. She told me to run some ideas by her. Here is my latest email to her.

Zakia,

Here are a few thoughts:

I'd like to start with a general "trendwatcher" type article on Afrofuturist visual artists. I'd like to investigate this trend in a very approachable, light-hearted, non-jargonistic way. Where did this idea come from? Whose using it? What's at stake? Several artists come to mind: Cauleen Smith, Susan Smith-Pinelo, Charles H. Nelson, Kojo Griffin, Tana Hargest, Kieth and Mendi Obadike, and Fatimah Tuggar, among others. These are all artists using technology in striking ways to make art and to deal with race and identity in the process. Charles Nelson has shows right now in Chicago and London, which might serve as a good jumping off point for the entire article.

To whatever extent possible, I will contact the artists in question as part of the research process, and let them have a hand in shaping the article. I know several of the above artists personally, and am only one step removed from most of the others. Also, the journal Callaloo is doing an all-afrofuturism issue sometime later this year. There might be a nice tie-in there.

I'd further like to do a series of "discussions" with individual visual artists doing daring new work, both in traditional and new media. I use the term discussion as opposed to "interview" to underscore an interaction in which both parties give and take. As a visual artist myself, I can bring a lot to the table in understanding where particular artists fit in and where black art as a whole is headed. I envision this as a kind of open dialog, in which readers eavesdrop as we get into the nitty gritty about art, the art world, and art's intersection with politics, racial and otherwise.

In a similar vein, there are several black artists with very distant/troubled relationships with the black world that I would love to do interviews or discussions with: William Pope.L, Nayland Blake, and Kara Walker among them.

I also recently learned that Kerry James Marshall will be doing a 2-month residency here at UT Austin. This might be an excellent opportunity to review his legacy and his new work.

My ulterior motive in all of this is to give more exposure and coverage to new brands of progressive, black visual art, and to show that "fine art" can be interesting, engaged, engaging, sexy, rowdy, interesting and relevant. This is why it is important to keep the articles free of artspeak and heavy-handed theory. Instead they should be accessible, open and fun.

Please let me know if any of these ideas work for you.

current music: Joan Armatrading, Show Some Emotion

I've learned a lot by editing the Electric Skin news aggregation service. First of all, I read a lot, newspapers, magazines and web sites from all over the world. This gives me a very good bird's eye view of arts coverage and a good basis of comparison for what's out there.

For example:

The Miami Herald-worst arts coverage of any major city's newspaper. All fluff, no substance. The Toronto Star, on the other hand, has consistently good coverage of all the arts at home and abroad. The best coverage in Chicago comes from Newcity Chicago. Los Angeles Times--Hahahahaha! The Boston Globe stupidly buries its art headlines way down on the webpage, and then they're badly written when you get there. Not the articles, just the headlines. They tell you nothing. The New York Times has surprisingly bad writing. I can tell by how much rewriting I have to do on the little blurbs I include with the headlines on Electric Skin. Nigeria overall covers its own arts far, far better than the US media covers its arts. And in general West Africa kicks East Africa's ass. In East Africa, probably the best, or at least most, news comes from Kenya. Though the coverage is inconsistent at best. The single best source for arts coverage has to be The Guardian for general news (Artnet for official gossip, The Art Newspaper for legal and financial matters).


current music: personal mix, winter 2000