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.

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