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Showing posts with label <b>Visual Arts</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
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<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>Visual Arts</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, April 10, 2007</span></h2>

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</span><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:24.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.crownpoint.com/artists/lewitt/lewitt.html"><span style='color:black'>Sol</span></a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_LeWitt"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>LeWitt</span></span></a><br>
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</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/3bcttw"><span style='color:black'>1928</span></a> - <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/arts/design/09lewitt.html?_r=1&amp;hp&amp;oref=slogin"><span style='color:black'>2007</span></a><br>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, September 19, 2006</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal align=center><span style='color:black'><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=245877702&amp;size=o"><span style='color:black;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none'><img border="0" height="107" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/K0K6FXCSCeIeHeHoMCfrh5hWu_0r0rGGTPY8HxKLckGflz7MHqexBTOtZ45ElhBd64Uw9KcnKK8W-EwP9_sZNoHRIVcBfKTixLw%3Ds0-d" width="552"></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The most moving &amp; profound work of art I see on my day in Chelsea is neither the most well crafted (that would have been <a href="http://www.maryboonegallery.com/exhibitions/2006-2007/fueki/gfx/ChieFuekiTheNatureOfHowWeSe.jpg"><span style='color:black'>Chie Fueki</span></a> at the Mary Boone Gallery, <a href="http://www.mikeweissgallery.com/html/home.asp"><span style='color:black'>Amy Myers&#8217;</span></a> graphite &amp; soft pastels at the Mike Weiss Gallery or the <a href="http://brooklynrail.org/2006-09/artseen/hans-richter"><span style='color:black'>Hans Richter</span></a> dada retrospective at the Maya / Stendhal &#8211; its last day there, alas&#185;), nor the most provocative (that would be &#8220;The Message is the Medium,&#8221; the group show responding to war &amp; terror curated by Marshall Reese at <a href="http://www.jimkempnerfineart.com/"><span style='color:black'>Jim Kempner Fine Art</span></a>), nor that with the biggest price tag (that has to be <a href="http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/?gid=2"><span style='color:black'>Richard Serra&#8217;s blocks &amp; slabs</span></a> at Gagosian). Rather, by far the work that drills deepest right through my soul is an exhibition of photographs by <a href="http://www.maxprotetch.com/index"><span style='color:black'>Hai Bo</span></a> at Max Protetch, especially a series of eight portraits of peasants on bicycles approaching on a road in the flat rural northern landscape of the People&#8217;s Republic. Judging by the already harvested crops &amp; the heavier weight parkas these men are wearing &#8211; five of the eight with Mao caps as well, at least three with gloves &#8211; the photographs were taken in late autumn &amp; the suggestion of closure that comes with this is no accident. Indeed, it&#8217;s vital to the power of the work. Each individual photograph is just under four feet tall, mounted high enough on the gallery wall that you are almost eye to eye with each subject. The one on the far right looks to his right, as if to the other bicyclists &#8211; it&#8217;s a brilliant &amp; unifying juxtaposition. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Framed as high art in one of the literally hundreds of galleries that dot the Chelsea between 10<sup>th</sup> avenue and the Hudson River in what must be the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in America, these eight men &#8211; the title of the work is <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Northern: A Man is Riding a Bicycle, No. 1-8, </i>can be interpreted many different ways, including what I take to be the obvious symbolic one for this audience, that China is riding out of the past up to greet us, that these men are literally pedaling into their <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and our </i>future. Even more than the allergic reaction to modernity we see in the various fundamentalisms &#8211; Islam&#8217;s variant isn&#8217;t so far from Christianity&#8217;s in this regard &#8211; the emergence of China will be the great story of this century. The past out of which these men ride is every bit as doomed (I want to hear <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>to the dustbins of history</i>) as is affordable housing amid the convoluted gallery scene of the west side of Manhattan (where, over tofu fajitas at the Empire Diner for lunch, I heard someone moan that you couldn&#8217;t rent a two-bedroom apartment in the area for under $5,000 a month any more). More than any other show that I saw this past weekend &#8211; and I trudged through dozens until my brain locked up &amp; my feet screamed for relief from hard gallery floors &#8211; Hai Bo seems to have his finger exactly on where we are at this moment in the evolution of world history &amp; captures it succinctly. It&#8217;s political without being directly political, aesthetic without being excessively formal, the series is both witty &amp; graceful &amp; terribly sad all at once. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Family of Man, </i>meet Late Capital. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The show is a telling reminder that what controls reception of the work of art above all else is context &#8211; not craft, not brains nor skills nor the ability to provoke, as such, save insofar as these aid in the manipulation of context, which in this post-conceptual era (or not so post-conceptual over at &#8220;The Message is the Medium&#8221; show), is every bit as much a material of art as any canvas, pigment or sculptural gunk. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Two other shows this same weekend make clear just why Hai Bo&#8217;s photographs are so powerful. One is &#8220;Brooklyn Abroad,&#8221; another series of photographs by Andrea Robbins and Max Becher that just opened at the <a href="http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Home.asp?G=&amp;gid=139120&amp;which=&amp;rta=http://www.artnet.com"><span style='color:black'>Sonnabend</span></a>, while the other is Reese&#8217;s show at the Kempner. The Robbins-Becher show contains two series of photographs, one of various Chabad Houses around the world. Chabad, the organization of the Lubavitch branch of Hasidism, the other of Hasids living in Postville, Iowa, a quaint Iowa farm town that is home to the largest per capita rabbi population in the world, thanks to the presence there of a major kosher meat packing plant. The <a href="http://www.chabad.org/"><span style='color:black'>Chabad Houses</span></a> are called &#8220;770s,&#8221; after the last home of the late Rebbe Menachem Schneerson (1902-1994), located at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. All of these other Chabad Houses replicate the architecture of the original site, with its three-peaked roof and brick exterior. At first glance, these very large photographs look like a PhotoShop stunt,  until you realize that the replicas are never completely exact. But what really jumps out is how much each sets itself aside from whatever the other local features of the  landscape might be &#8211; thus for example the five-story São Paulo building is sandwiched between two high-rise apartment buildings, virtually the only building in the vicinity that doesn&#8217;t lockstep into the late-modernist urbanism of that city. In the Postville series, we see Hasids mowing lawns, working on tractors and playing baseball. The only thing missing from that series is the presence of Kevin Costner! Robbins &amp; Becher are savvy enough postmodern artists to build in the requisite formalism to create their two series &#8211; in this sense, they&#8217;re no different from Hai Bo. But there is a sentimentalism about both of these sequences that combines with the gigantic and always bright-to-the-max color photography that yields a mock heroism as purely kitsch as any balloon puppy ever envisioned by Jeff Koons. Unlike Koons, however, I think they don&#8217;t have much control over their own uses of irony here, or maybe don&#8217;t even see it themselves. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Family of Man, </i>meet the Lifetime Channel. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Context works overtime at the &#8220;Message is the Medium&#8221; show, where the first thing that takes your breath away is, just to your right as you walk in the door, is a variant of the 1970 &#8220;<b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><a href="http://www.thefestforbeatlesfans.com/pictures/1571.JPG"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>WAR IS OVER</span><span style='color:black'> </span><span style='color:black;font-weight:normal'>/ </span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:black;font-weight:normal'>IF YOU WANT IT</span></a></b>&#8221; poster/Christmas card of John Lennon &amp; Yoko Ono. On the front desk is a huge bowl of political buttons, each reading &#8220;Imagine Peace.&#8221; But what you hear, omnipresent on the first floor of the Kempner, is the droning voice of George Walker Bush himself, around the corner broadcasting from a DVD that plays some of his semi-coherent babble about terrorism while on a TV monitor you see an ice sculpture of the word <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>DEMOCRACY </i>melting in some time-lapse process, a piece produced by show curator Marshall Reese with his partner Nora Ligorano (they have been producing work as Ligorano/Reese for some 20 years now). Immediately across the small room from the meltdown of democracy, so to speak, is a large (2000 piece) jigsaw puzzle by Christoph Draeger that shows a detail of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800"><span style='color:black'>TWA 800</span></a>, the 1996 Long Island air disaster that has long been a point of contention for the conspiracy minded, some of whom think it was brought down by a ground-to-air missile, whether launched by al-Qaeda or friendly fire. In the main room, past the Marlene McCarty flag with stars only visible for blue states (a total of 19, and, as best I can tell, she has the right stars visible) and a couple of giant Carolee Schneeman prints whose relevance to the show overall escaped me, tho I was happy to see them there &#8211; they were the least predictable items in the exhibition &#8211; is another even larger Draeger jigsaw puzzle, this time of the oilfields of Kuwait burning in 1991. Upstairs, you can see a DVD of Yoko Ono leading the audience at the Tate in a flashlight salute that she declares means <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>I Love You, </i>followed then by the same at a giant concert in a stadium in Tokyo. Downstairs, Constantin Boym has a series of small sculptures, the size of the little memorial tchotchkes you get in souvenir gift shops, only<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>this time made of cast bonded nickel. Included are the twin towers of the World Trade Center, with the holes made by the airplanes, the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Princess Di&#8217;s auto wreck in Paris, the little wood frame house in Los Alamos that we&#8217;ve each seen vaporized by a 1950s A-bomb test hundreds of times, a nuclear power plant that I presume to be Chernobyl, etc. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>If the immediate context for the show is the present Iraq war and a sense of the horror that attaches itself to George Bush&#8217;s war on democracy, the reality that is offered up by the show is that this has been going on <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>over &amp; over &amp; over </i>now for nearly 40 years. This is a vision of the world as viewed by Noam Chomsky on his most dour day, and I think it has something of the opposite effect of the Hai Bo exhibit, in that I think it drains the viewer of any possible response. So you see a Hans Haacke C-print on aluminum of all the lights on Times Square, with one image of a presumed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Grahib"><span style='color:black'>Abu Ghraib</span></a> prisoner, only with a flag instead of a canvas sack covering his head, as bright as an ad for Coke. Far from invoking the horror of that prison or of the U.S. approach to prisoners in general, whether the 14,000 war prisoners we&#8217;re holding in Iraq or the 2 million we have here at home in our jails and corrections facilities (one of which is smack in the middle of Chelsea on 20<sup>th</sup> Street), my reaction to too many of these images is numbness. I actually agree with many, if not all, of these artists, I share their anger &amp; despair, but nothing in the show offered me any insight as to what to think or do next. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Not so Hai Bo. Precisely because he&#8217;s not dealing with the conflict of cultures at their most obvious pain points, his images offer up much more to think about, whether present in the images directly &#8211; just think of the role of the bicycle in the history of transportation, especially at a time with an author like Mike Davis is current penning a history of the car bomb, &#8220;the poor man&#8217;s nuclear weapon.&#8221; Think of the history of agriculture, of Communism (big <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and </i>little C), of the Chinese regulation of society &#8211; Mao caps in 2006! &#8211; and of the role of images in contemporary life. The very lyricism of Hai Bo&#8217;s photography calls up its consciously conflicted function as an art object, and one senses a level of control over this that is unmatched anywhere in the Kempner show &#8211; with the notable exceptions of Ono &amp; perhaps Schneeman, they&#8217;re all Adorno-ites there, confirmed in their belief that the lyric post 9.11 is barbaric &#8211; and utterly beyond Robbins &amp; Becher altogether. Hai Bo&#8217;s show will be up through the remainder of the month. I seriously recommend that you take a look.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#185; And how ironic that an old Dadaist might prove the best craftsperson, or at the very least one of the best thereof. Those old aesthetic values turn out to have been hard to overthrow.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, March 28, 2006</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'><img height="252" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/W0bRSrGfZ_-Aipqc-UjyVc7pEx5p1oeh2RoJP14883tY9H6LmOP9046kcb7rJKz-E5ma_PzMVMYPa9OBERy_jXXo_lTgQD9E%3Ds0-d" width="180"><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>An image I saw of an African-American man&#8217;s skin nailed to the wall like a hunting pelt, constructed (fortunately) not of flesh but rusted roofing tin has stayed with me, haunted me, since I first saw it in the <a href="http://www.ackland.org/"><span style='color:black'>Ackland Art Museum</span></a> in <st1:place w:st="on">Chapel Hill</st1:place> last Saturday. If there is anywhere a more powerful image of the terror that was slavery, I have never seen it. Indeed, the figure&#8217;s spread-eagled posture calls to mind other, more recent images as <span class=GramE>well<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span>--</span> prisoners at Attica, stripped naked, forced to assume this same position after Rockefeller&#8217;s goons retook the yard, even Rodney King, beaten into this position on the streets of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:City></st1:place>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Perhaps it is all the more amazing that this work was in a show that celebrates &#8211; legitimately &#8211; roots &amp; family, the art work of the amazing Betye Saar &amp; her two daughters, Lezley &amp; Alison. The life sized pelt &#8211; its title is <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Skin Deep </i>&#8211; is the work of Alison, whose work I was familiar with primarily from her illustrations for Erica Hunt&#8217;s book, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.kelseyst.com/arcade.htm"><span style='color:black'>Arcade</span></a>, </i>a decade back. As I circled &amp; recircled through the galleries of this exhibit, accompanied by <a href="http://desertcity.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>Ken Rumble</span></a> &amp; <a href="http://the_delay.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>Chris Vitiello</span></a>, I found myself struck by pieces, paying almost no mind to <span class=GramE>who</span> did what. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.netropolitan.org/saar/saarmain.html"><span style='color:black'>Betye</span></a>, for example, who has several pieces in the show that explore the implications of her own light skin within the American black community, as one piece entitled <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Cream </i> (2001), a collage on hand-made paper &#8211; its tone exactly that of French vanilla ice cream &#8211; on which she&#8217;s attached an ancient, white child&#8217;s dress, at the bottom of which we see an image, perhaps of the artist herself as an infant (she&#8217;s 80 this year), above which is a little lock of hair, light brown in a small white bow, while at the top two other images, also ancient head shots of a man &amp; woman &#8211; the triangulation is patently genealogical. Around all this are the handprints of small children. To describe it like this gives almost no sense of its elegance or cohesion, which are in fact integral to its impact on the viewer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.janbaum.com/artistShow.asp?name=Lezley&amp;lname=Saar&amp;pagetitle=Artists&amp;artistID=lsaar"><span style='color:black'>Lezley</span></a>, on the other hand, is the most painterly of the three and often makes figurative/narrative objects, reminiscent of Joseph Cornell or Santeria altars. One can see everything in her work from Romare Bearden to Simon Rodia, the visionary sailor behind the great ship that is the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Watts</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType  w:st="on">Towers</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>. Her work is full of rich colors &amp;, like both her mother and sister, reflects a sharp wit that undercuts any sense of <span class=GramE>an aesthetics</span> of victimization. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This wit is at the core of the family&#8217;s politics. Two of <a href="http://www.phylliskindgallery.com/artists/as/"><span style='color:black'>Alison&#8217;s</span></a> pieces, for example, employ wire to <a href="http://asuartmuseum.asu.edu/saar/saar2.jpg"><span style='color:black'>embody hair</span></a>, entangled in one instance with small bottles, perhaps baby food jars, in the other piece one of the objects is a magnet. In another, she presents a mulatto woman &#8211; both in a <a href="http://www.pasadena.edu/artgallery/exhibition.cfm?ID=3259"><span style='color:black'>print</span></a> &amp; a wooden sculpture &#8211; as striped, dreadlocks standing straight up to accentuate the effect.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span>And it&#8217;s around this issue of <a href="http://www.mulattonation.com/"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>hybrid identities</a></span> that one senses the impact of Betye&#8217;s late husband, Richard, of German &amp; Scotch heritage, a painter turned art conservationist. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I&#8217;m happy to note that this exhibit both has a <a href="http://www.ackland.org/art/exhibitions/saarwebsite/catalogue_page.html"><span style='color:black'>catalog</span></a> &#8211; tho I didn&#8217;t see any copies at the Ackland when I was there &#8211; and is set to <a href="http://www.ackland.org/art/exhibitions/saarwebsite/index1.html"><span style='color:black'>travel</span></a>, first to Pasadena, then San Jose&#8217;s Museum of Art, then the Palmer at Penn State, where it will be from January thru April next year. I can assure my friends in <st1:City w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:City> that this will be worth the drive down to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">San Jose</st1:City></st1:place> to see. The <st1:place w:st="on">Saar</st1:place> family is not unlike the Berrigan clan in poetry, an embarrassment of riches, <span class=GramE>each</span> one doing significant &amp; visually meaty work. The show is both serious &amp; fun, which is a great combination. But I know that I&#8217;m going to be seeing that man-pelt in my dreams. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, September 24, 2002</span></h2>

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<st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Bob Perelman</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;"> was thumbing through my copy of Ed Ruscha&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They Call Her Styrene</i> (<span class="SpellE">Phaidon</span>, 2000) the other evening, which raises the question
of intermedia from another angle. Ruscha, if you don&#8217;t know his work, is a
painter and photographer associated with the 1960s </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Los Angeles</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> scene that proved to be an intersection between Pop,
Funk and Conceptual art. His work takes different forms, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Styrene</i> is representative of the works
that have most attracted me: prints, drawings and watercolors involving
anything from a single word to short phrases, often against backgrounds that
are close to monochromatic but which may suggest a picturesque element. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Styrene</i> collects some 600 of these works
into a single, affordable volume &#8211; I&#8217;ve seen individual paintings priced as
high as $45,000. My question is this: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fine
as they are as visual works of art, are Ed Ruscha&#8217;s text pieces also writing?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Ruscha himself has a
cryptic, but intriguing comment right at the end of the book: &#8220;Sometimes found
words are the most pure because they have nothing to do with you. I take things
as I find them. A lot of these things come from the noise of everyday life.&#8221;
End of comment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So far as I know, Ruscha has
not undertaken to publish these works as writing, nor in the context of
writing. As visual art, these works inhabit that territory that utilizes
language for its own purposes. Its closest kin in that vein may be the signage
of <a href="http://adaweb.walkerart.org/context/artists/holzer/jhimg2.html">Jenny
Holzer</a>, the paintings of Lawrence Weiner, or the poster paintings of
Barbara Krueger, but the more densely textual pseudo-philosophical musings of
Joseph Kosuth and Art Language aren&#8217;t entirely unrelated either. Ruscha&#8217;s
prints and paintings make use of color and the illusions of depth and texture
in ways that Holzer&#8217;s do not and his works often lack the overt political commentary
one finds in her work and in that of Krueger&#8217;s. At its most plain, a Ruscha
work might consist of white sans serif letters centered against a black
background: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">A HEAVY<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">SHOWER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">OF SCREWS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">or</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">THICK BLOCKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">OF<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">MUSICAL FUDGE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">or</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">WARM<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">AUDITORIUM<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">While Holzer has executed
some pieces etched into benches, a form that has to recall the (literally)
concrete poems of Scottish poet Ian Hamilton <span class="SpellE">Finlay</span>,
Ruscha&#8217;s droll texts strike me in many ways being better writing. <span class="GramE">If, that is, they are writing at all.</span> The last text above,
for example, makes great use of the recurrence of <span class="GramE">the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, r </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">m</i> sounds (not to
mention the echo of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">w</i> one hears
in the two instances of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">u</i>), an
attention to the smallest of details that might be more apt to associate with
the poetry of Robert Grenier. Microwriting such as this can invoke every
pleasure one expects from the best of poetry. The first two pieces above aren&#8217;t
bad either &#8211; both use the same strategy of invoking a single term that is &#8220;out
of context&#8221; in its phrase (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">screws </i>and
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">musical</i>), which functions to set the
language around it into a kind of relief, classic demonstrations of what the
Russian formalists called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ostrananie</i>,
Brecht &#8220;the alienation effect,&#8221; and which Pound characterized as &#8220;making it
new.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In addition to reminding me
at moments of Grenier, some of the more visually complex of Ruscha&#8217;s pieces,
where richly textured &#8220;3D&#8221; words float in idealized pastel skies, remind me of
how Hannah Weiner used to describe her visual hallucinations, words that would
appear on people&#8217;s foreheads that to her seemed to be composed in &#8220;dog fur&#8221; or
similar materials. Weiner used these messages to create her &#8220;clairvoyant&#8221;
works, although that aspect of such found language is not carried through her
writing &#8211; the closest she gets is to occasionally &#8220;erase&#8221; some lines of certain
letters. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">All of which makes Ed
Ruscha&#8217;s texts function as an intriguing test of the boundaries of writing &#8211;
how can a lone word such as &#8220;<span class="SpellE">fud</span>,&#8221; written in what
looks like white ribbon on an intense red surface (onto which the letters cast
shadows) function as a poem? It can / <span class="GramE">It</span> can&#8217;t / It
can / It can&#8217;t &#8211; like a <span class="SpellE">Necker</span> cube or other optical
illusions, the text strobes in and out of the realm of literature (though it
always remains within the realm of the visual). It may be that this flicker
effect is precisely Ed Ruscha&#8217;s contribution to writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Some of Ruscha&#8217;s word works
can be sampled on the web at the following sites:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://a-r-c.gold.ac.uk/a-r-c_Five/printexts/print_conceptual.html">Golden
Words</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.moma.org.uk/RUSCHA/ruscha_past.htm">The Mountain</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.umt.edu/partv/famus/print/rusha.htm">News, Brews, Mews, Stews,
Pews and Dues</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.eyestorm.com/find/AR6_product.asp?sku=ERU01717">Street Meets
Avenue</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/artcollection/exhibitions/nara/gallery/ruscha.htm">Now</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.getty.edu/conservation/resources/newsletter/13_2/profile1.html">Mud</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.beatmuseum.org/ruscha/ruschapaint.html">Selected Works</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.gregkucera.com/images/ruscha_miracle.jpg">Miracle</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.entertainmentstudios.com/fine_art/ruscha_images/ruscha_01.jpg">Angel</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.artresources.com/images/reviews/lj.6.3.jpg">Evil</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.cirrusgallery.com/cirruspics/Ruscha_drg_001-83-74_wave_full.jpg">Waves
of Advancing Technology</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php">I: The Age of Huts<br /><br /></a>             <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/u_VsYLU9NS_tJXOrl6A4RM1Dne7QkuSslpBc0StgKSXXoIDStYoXqSwDo2tuxST00QD3ynVJH4yjAhcEzTWyM0F_RriCRx9yZdyygceY2wm-%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br />II: Tjanting<br /><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/tjanting-9781876857196"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/efy1lIcVIKeKSdy_WUDIxV8WLN0OJmA3f7enQ2XDwxwt7Bh5ssfQQAkW_o4oG6FqrB1RGf7CX-Rw-VQ4u36RIuwSsCMxWjjHFDP4c7CbW2d_%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx">III: The Alphabet<br /><br /></a><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx"><img id="ctl00_MainContent_ProductInfo1_ctl00_PrimaryImage_PrimaryImage" onclick="javascript:window.open(&#39;http://www.uapress.ua.edu//images/temp/212-1897-Product_LargeToMediumImage.jpeg&#39;, 1, &#39;resizable=1, width=500, height=700&#39;)" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OnaMjXm2h6XxneM04RgHx1Bkf2Wi9UE3a8c3o0NDvW5wXo7BK3MaM5VP9YfbEIpHYxAstTorwhNW4lhhkNuua5bDX7Ogr2UgZ1NMDDjeh-0bNnuo-WH-9pGHIR6lv-4-_UDHVNe36xB6%3Ds0-d" style="border: 1px solid Gray;" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div>IV. from Universe</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MEMOIRS &amp; COLLABORATIONS</span><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leningrad-American-Writers-Soviet-Union/dp/1562790056">Leningrad</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/">The Grand Piano</a><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/under-albany-9781844710515">Under Albany</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CRITICISM</span><br /><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/0937804207/the-new-sentence.aspx">The New Sentence</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ANTHOLOGY</span><br /><a href="https://secure.touchnet.com/C22921_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=327&SINGLESTORE=true">In The American Tree</a><br /><br /><br /><br />
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<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
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