Items of Interest, Lives of the Saints Edition
"In taking political action, writers and artists are likelier to betray than fulfill the demands of their vocation."
Jeffrey Carson, Maine Masters Update. “Richard Kane, despite his lyrical style, is after this: the terribilità, the presence of Carlo [Pittore] in his friends and colleagues’ lives years after his death. He did not critique his students, he clamorously encouraged them by the force of his interest in them. Does this sound like a medieval saint? Read the lives of the saints, and you do not encounter saintly figures meek and mild: the saints are furious, fanatic, bursting with energy.”
, My Sunflower Teacher.Nick Cave. “We are obligated to make our best attempts to become the thing we wish to be, otherwise we forever remain the sorry consorts of our own defeat.”
Zach Kessel, ‘Grow Up’: Cartoonist Speaks Out after Washington Post Censors Hamas Drawing. “Last Tuesday, the Washington Post ran a cartoon by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Ramirez satirizing Hamas’s claims that Israel targets Gazan children, showing the terrorist group’s spokesman, Ghazi Hamadi, using kids as human shields. By Wednesday, after what executive editor Sally Buzbee called “deep concern” from staffers and letters written by subscribers, the Post pulled the cartoon, which many readers and employees reportedly saw as racist.”
Bari Weiss, You Are the Last Line of Defense. “When antisemitism moves from the shameful fringe into the public square, it is not about Jews. It is never about Jews. It is about everyone else. It is about the surrounding society or the culture or the country. It is an early warning system—a sign that the society itself is breaking down. That it is dying.”
Oliver Traldi, Snowflakes for Hamas. “[P]roclaiming one’s personal or group hypersensitivity and fragility is a technique to gain control of particular spaces by hijacking the language of America’s preexisting therapeutic culture, with the goal of forcing opponents into silence.”
Flora Tsapovsky, Giving Notice. “The compact art community of Tucson, Ariz., recently experienced turmoil following an Instagram story by MOCA-Tucson that responded to the recent events with the familiar accusatory refrain of Palestinian genocide and colonial oppression. (The story was reposted from the account of the museum’s featured artist Keioui Keijaun Thomas.) In response, multimedia Artist Leah Schrager, who splits her time between Tucson and New York City, promptly resigned from the museum’s board.”
, Clearpill yourself on Gaza. “Look at those girls’ faces again—a kind of orgiastic, Bacchanal pleasure in destruction. In a real-life trolley problem, they will not be motivated by care at all—they will be motivated by pure vanity and sadism. In any contest between two peoples, they will choose the weakest over the strongest—not out of love for the humble, but out of pride in humbling the strong. The drug of politics has made them into human crocodiles.”George Packer, Why activism leads to so much bad writing. “In taking political action, writers and artists are likelier to betray than fulfill the demands of their vocation. They might be the last people to turn to for wisdom in a crisis like this.”
Sarah Hotchkiss, SFMOMA Eliminates 20 Positions, Citing 35% Decline in Attendance. “Attendance for fiscal year 2023 was about 65% of 2019 attendance, ‘mirroring reduced foot traffic in San Francisco’s Downtown Core and our city’s broader economic issues,’ [museum director Chris] Bedford wrote.”
Out now: Andrew Einspruch, The Western Lands and All That Really Matters Omnibus.
On now: “3 Women Choose: Paula De Luccia, Lauren Olitski, Ann Walsh” at Mark Borghi Sag Harbor.
Content at DMJ is free but paid subscriptions keep it coming. Please consider one for yourself and thank you for reading.
We are (I promise) in the midst of an Asynchronous Studio Book Club reading of Totality: Abstraction and Meaning in the Art of Barnett Newman by Michael Schreyach. Obtain your copy and jump in.
Preorders are available for Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art by Walter Darby Bannard. More information is available at the site for the book.
"In taking political action, writers and artists are likelier to betray than fulfill the demands of their vocation." They are also likelier (unless they're great artists) to be seen as hedging their bets or taking out insurance to "supplement" the fact they're not all that good, let alone great, whether out of opportunism or fear. Yes, even a Picasso can play that game, but in his case it discredited him as a person rather than as an artist. The point is that if your art is good enough, you don't need to be public about anything else, same as any creative person, though your private life is your affair.
Thirty bucks plus possible substantial surcharge to visit your museum? You'd have to guarantee, in writing, that I will not only like but LOVE what you've got on show, and if I don't, you'll not only refund my money but pay me extra for wasting my time. And trust me, even to get me to contemplate paying such an entry fee, you're going to have to do better than Yayoi Kusama or Madame Bourgeois, let alone the flavor of the moment, unless it's my flavor--but I wouldn't bet on that if I were you.