Wishing all a good year ahead!

In a webinar illustrating a post-9/11 world, I noticed a random surge of word usages like ‘x is the new y’ popping up everywhere like a perfect storm helping make 2007 a year where such clichés were overused and is now in need of the wordsmiths.

In fact, there seems to be an organic growth to the clichés, but back in the day, one would be more apt to give back and throw under the bus these mindless repetitions. Of course, one can shrug it off by thinking 'it is what it is' and continue language decimation armed with these fickle few phrases, but I hope to stop.

All of the words underlined above have been labeled as some of the worst used (or should I say overused) clichés of 2007. Choosing from among 2,000 submissions, the public relations department at Michigan's Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie targeted 19 singular affronts to the English language. Some of them underlined above…

Here goes: My first resolution – stop using clichés like the above – lets see how long that sticks…

Happy New Year!

2007 Essays - a listing

Just about everybody is creating lists of their own. Not to be outdone, I decided to give it a try. Nothing spectacular like the list of celebrities who seem to have had wardrobe malfunctions (either of their own volition or not), but this is a list of magazine essays that were deemed some of the best of 2007. This list is a selection among the many that David Brooks of the New York Times recommends. I read almost all of the essays over the last five days and every one of them is worth a read – even if you print it out and read it on your way home from work…

Roger Stone, Political Animal by Matt Labash in the Weekly Standard
"Some original, some borrowed, Stone's Rules address everything from fashion to food to how to screw people. And one of his favorite Stone's Rules is "Unless you can fake sincerity, you'll get nowhere in this business." He is honest about his dishonesty. "Politics with me isn't -theater," he admits. "It's performance art. Sometimes, for its own sake." "

The Evolution of an Investor by Michael Lewis in Portfolio
"Blaine’s training at Lehman consisted of a monthlong class, which focused mainly on overcoming customers' objections, and a close reading of the bible on how to peddle stocks to people you've never met: Successful Telephone Selling in the '80s, co-written by a Lehman managing director named Martin Shafiroff."
- A well-planned presentation creates a sense of urgency. If the prospect fails to act now, he will risk a loss of some sort.
- Speak with confidence and authority.
- The most important part of the presentation is the close.

The Story of a Snitch by Jeremy Kahn in the Atlantic
"He ambled past the massive Board of Education building, with its columns, and headed down North Avenue to Greenmount Cemetery. There he turned left, passing the abandoned row houses where the “corner boys” were already opening for business, hoping to find a junkie in need of a morning fix. Farther on, past still-shuttered hair salons and check-cashing outfits, he turned down East 24th toward Bartlett. Just after seven o’clock, he reached his front porch and called out for his girlfriend, Yolanda, to let him in. Then he sensed something behind him..."

Crime, Drugs, Welfare—and Other Good News by Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin in the Commentary Magazine
"Over the course of the preceding three decades, Bennett wrote, the United States had indeed experienced “substantial social regression.” About this, the data were unequivocal. Since 1960, there had been a more than 500-percent increase in violent crime; a more than 400-percent increase in out-of-wedlock births; almost a tripling in the percentage of children on welfare; a tripling of the teenage suicide rate; a doubling of the divorce rate; and a decline of more than 70 points in SAT scores. To Bennett, the conclusion was inescapable: “the forces of social decomposition [in America] are challenging—and in some instances overtaking—the forces of social composition.”

A death in the family: Politics and Power by Christopher Hitchens in the Vanity Fair
"Having volunteered for Iraq, Mark Daily was killed in January by an I.E.D. Dismayed to learn that his pro-war articles helped persuade Daily to enlist, the author measures his words against a family's grief and a young man's sacrifice."


There and Back Again - The soul of the commuter by Nick Paumgarten in the New Yorker
"The commuting paradox reflects the notion that many people, who are supposedly rational (according to classical economic theory at least), commute even though it makes them miserable."

Everybody Sucks: Gawker and the rage of the creative underclass by Vanessa Grigoriadis in the New York magazine
"Journalists are both haves and have-nots. They’re at the feast, but know they don’t really belong—they’re fighting for table scraps, essentially—and it could all fall apart at any moment. Success is not solid. Consider the Gawker mind-fuck at a time of rapid deterioration of our industry: Young print journalists are depressed over the state of the industry and their inability to locate challenging work or a job with health insurance."

The Immigration Charade by Christopher Jencks in the New York Review of Books
"Certain poll questions suggest that 69 percent of Americans want to deport illegal immigrants. Others indicate the true figure is only 14 percent. Conservatives, having learned from past failures, demand “enforcement first.” Employers, fearing bankruptcy, demand the legalization of the current immigrants first. Neither powerful group will budge."

Moral Psychology and the misunderstanding of Religion by Jonathan Haidt in The Edge
"Our brains, like other animal brains, are constantly trying to fine tune and speed up the central decision of all action: approach or avoid. We have affectively-valenced intuitive reactions to almost everything, particularly to morally relevant stimuli such as gossip or the evening news. Reasoning by its very nature is slow, playing out in seconds. Studies of everyday reasoning show that we usually use reason to search for evidence to support our initial judgment, which was made in milliseconds."

Creative Destruction's Reconstruction: Joseph Schumpeter Revisited by J. Bradford Delong in The Chronicle
"But as fascinating as his life was, it is Schumpeter's economics that sing to me, because he tried to set long-term economic growth — entrepreneurship and enterprise — at the top of the discipline's agenda.

Over the previous two and a half centuries, three different economic worldviews, in succession, reigned. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Adam Smith's was the key economic perspective, focusing on domestic and international trade and growth, the division of labor, the power of the market, and the minimal security of property and tolerable administration of justice that were needed to carry a country to prosperity. You could agree or you could disagree with Smith's conclusions and judgments, but his was the proper topical agenda.

The second reign was that of David Ricardo and Karl Marx. Their preoccupations dominated the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They worried most about the distribution of income and the laws of the market that made it so unequal. They were uneasy about the extraordinary pace of technological, organizational, and sociological change, and about whether an ungoverned market economy could produce a distribution of income — both relative and absolute — fit for a livable world. Again, you could agree or disagree with their judgments about trade, rent, capitalism, and machinery, but they asked the right questions.

The third reign was that of John Maynard Keynes. His agenda dominated the middle and late 20th century. Keynes's theories centered on what economists call Say's Law — the claim that except in truly exceptional conditions, production inevitably creates the demand to buy what is produced. Say's Law supposedly guaranteed something like full employment, except in truly exceptional conditions, if the market was allowed to work. Keynes argued that Say's Law was false in theory, but that the government could, if it acted skillfully, make it true in practice. Agree or disagree with his conclusions, Keynes was in any case right to focus on the central bank and the tax-and-spend government to supplement the market's somewhat-palsied invisible hand to achieve stable and full employment.

But there ought to have been a fourth reign, for there was a set of themes not sufficiently explored. That missing reign was Schumpeter's, for he had insights into the nature of markets and growth that escaped other observers. It is in that sense that the late 20th and early 21st centuries in economics ought to have been his: He asked the right questions for our era."

The Abduction of Opera by Heather Mac Donald in the City Journal
"Welcome to Regietheater (German for “director’s theater”), the style of opera direction now prevalent in Europe. Regietheater embodies the belief that a director’s interpretation of an opera is as important as what the composer intended, if not more so. By an odd coincidence, many cutting-edge directors working in Europe today just happen to discover the identical lode of sex, violence, and opportunity for hackneyed political “critique” in operas ranging from the early Baroque era to that of late Romanticism.

The Abduction from the Seraglio is a humorous tale of the capture of a group of Europeans by a Turkish pasha, who tries to win the love of one of them; Mozart lavishes joyful, driving rhythms—led by piccolo, triangle, and cymbals—on its Turkish themes, and adds a rich lode of elegant solos, particularly for tenor. Bieito transferred the Abduction to a contemporary Eastern European brothel and translated the dignified pasha of Mozart’s sadly irrelevant tale into the brothel’s sick pimp overseer. To give the production’s explicit sadomasochistic sex an even greater frisson of realism, Bieito hired real prostitutes off the streets of Berlin to perform onstage. Needless to say, neither the streetwalkers nor the whippings, masturbation, and transvestite bondage are anywhere suggested in Mozart’s opera. In one representative moment, the leading soprano, Constanze—who has already suffered digital violation during a poignant lament—is beaten and then held down and forced to watch as the pasha’s servant, Osmin, first forces a prostitute to perform fellatio on him and then gags the prostitute and slashes her to death. Osmin hands the prostitute’s trophy nipples to Constanze, who by then is retching."

Saturday along the Hudson

Drawing

Sunil, 'The United States of Adipose', Sumi ink on paper, 11" X 14"

Note: The drawing is based on a photograph by Martha Casanave

Is self therapy a reason for taking to the arts?

Roberta Smith in a short essay in the back page of the Sunday Times art review made some assertions as regards art as a 'practice'.

The assertions are as follows:
#1. First off, there’s the implication that artists, like lawyers, doctors and dentists, need a license to practice. Many artists already feel the need for a license: It’s called a master of fine arts. But artists don’t need licenses or certificates or permission to do their work. Their job description, if they have one, is to operate outside accepted limits.

#2. Second is the implication that an artist, like a doctor, lawyer or dentist, is trained to fix some external problem. Art rarely succeeds when it sets out to fix anything beyond the artist’s own, subjective needs.

#3. Practice sanitizes a very messy process. It suggests that art making is a kind of white-collar activity whose practitioners don’t get their hands dirty, either physically or emotionally. It converts art into a hygienic desk job and signals a basic discomfort with the physical mess as well as the unknowable, irrational side of art making. It suggests that materials are not the point of art at all — when they are, on some level, the only point.

While #1 and #3 are very much agreeable, I questioned #2 over at Art and Perception in a post yesterday. Link to the post here.

Recent drawings

Sunil, 'Untitled_12_27_07', 11" X 14", Sumi ink on 400 series watercolor paper

Sunil, 'Untitled_12_26_07', 11" X 14", Sumi ink on 400 series watercolor paper

Our variegated lawns

Ever notice how at about this time of the year, lawn ornaments used to multiply the good cheer (yes, those flaccid Homer Simpsons that turn into very dapper looking Homers at night) are getting bigger, better and more garish as years pass. What was originally a little bit of string lighting that lent warmth to the otherwise gloomy weather prospects characterizing this time has turned into a grand 'keep up with the Joneses' spectacle with Ferris wheels, chugging trains, neon signs and in some extreme cases, rock music blaring mangers (OK, I made that last one up). Walking down a stretch of Main Street that our house adjoins (yes, we are part of the ‘suburbia’ census statistic), I was wondering if I had lost my way and wandered accidentally into Times Square by mistake. A couple of wary Johns looking for a quick fix would have completed the transformation.

Lighting up is great for the mood, spirits and the festive times that December and the New Year bring, but a silly profusion of any good is an easy road to cheap excesses and that is the current state of suburban lawns today. Of course, adding to the confusion in the night is the scene that greets passers-by in the morning - large carcasses of white nylon casings that seem to billow all over the lawn shorn of their air filling (I am guessing it is air that they use to pump those huge effigies of Santa and Homer doing things to inanimate objects that cannot be written about here) and generally making a mess of the whole lawn. Yesterday, we noticed a nylon-based Ferris wheel that actually dwarfed the house that put up the abomination and had me convinced into thinking that Barnum and Bailey were in town. Honestly, I did not mean to do a Debbie here, but if this is not a lit up neon-sign of our growing trade deficit with China, then I am not too sure what is... Closer scrutiny of any of the cardboard cartons that these things come packed in would doubtless tell you three magic words that large scale retailers sing before falling asleep – ‘Made in China’. It almost looks like we are celebrating China’s expertise in capitalist acumen than Christmas and New Year.

I really do not have anything against a bit of lighting in front of homes, in fact every year we do it zealously. It lifts spirits and spreads the good cheer that comes with Christmas and New Year. But, a surfeit of lights, sparkle and gas filled monstrosities might be a little too much on the eyes - not to mention that looming trade deficit.

Luo Weidong, Luo Weiguo & Luo Weibing, 'Welcome to the world's famous brands' 25" X 21", mixed media, collage, and lacquer on wood, 1998

Yule tidings...

On solastalgia

Sitting by the window early this morning with my son who was nursing a slight cold, I looked over the tree tops overlooking our bedroom and reflected on how beautiful mornings really looked – if you actually cared to get up and look – I never do and had it not been for the circumstances, we would be fast asleep. The sealed windows effectively shut out most of the chirping of the birds, but one can only imagine the activity that precedes and heralds the beginning of every day. It also left me thinking whether our children would get to enjoy mornings as much as we do or would the pressures of events like the slow warming of the globe obliterate mornings such as these.

Wired magazine reported on research conducted by Glenn Albrecht – an Australian professor of environmental studies at the University of Newcastle – on how pockets of population in the Australian outback are psychologically reacting to the growing denudement of the forests, changing landscapes and the exploited outback around them. His research concludes – and frighteningly so – that peoples as a whole are starting to feel sadder – a new type of sadness – of displacement similar to the feelings felt by indigenous populations when they were moved forcibly or otherwise from their original lands. His research indicates that familiar markers of landscape are changing so fast that even over a period as short as a lifetime, humans are starting to acutely feel and experience the psychological effects that result from a loss of once familiar environs. The change in ones immediate environment is manifesting itself in familiar neural signal pathways from our sensory organs to the brain being distorted and re-wired – resulting in a mental tension and a sadness that is slowly gaining over peoples the world over. He has created a new word to describe this syndrome – solastalgia (a linguistic mash-up from ‘solacium’ meaning comfort and ‘algia’ meaning pain). The word seems to eerily bring up references to nostalgia and the feeling he describes seems to be close to nostalgic – ‘a pining for a lost environment’ or a ‘form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home’…

Dawn

This morning, we waited for the sun,
our son and I,
him, with a minor infection,
me, a balancing act.

We parsed the grays,
tried giving life to forms,
even leavened the wisps.
The clouds did not listen.

The trees at the edge
were nude from the wind,
contrasted lightning skywards.
Solidity a testament.

Our window small,
the moment brief,
our symphony short.
In the dawn’s slow march.

Photo

Sunil, 'The day before yesterday', digital photograph

The Dalit condition – a gallery full of crap

Close on the heels of charged exhibitions like the crack at Tate comes another interesting exhibition at a London gallery. Artist Santiago Sierra uses faecal matter collected from Indian toilets in an effort to draw attention to untouchables in India. The sculpture consists of 21 cuboids of human faecal matter mixed with a binder (Fevicol) collected from New Delhi and Jaipur toilets.

From the gallery website comes this interesting excerpt:
"According to government statistics, an estimated one million people in India are manual scavengers (the majority are women) whose work involves the removal of human faeces from public and private latrines and open sewers. Unofficial estimates of the actual number are much higher. Scavengers clean public latrines on a daily basis, using a broom and a tin plate. Human faeces are piled into baskets carried on the head to a location that can be up to four kilometres away from the latrines. At all times, and especially during the rainy season, the content of the basket will drip onto a scavenger's hair, clothes and body. The continuous exposure to dirt and human faeces, coupled with poor living conditions, make people employed as manual scavengers vulnerable to serious illnesses, amongst which tuberculosis is the most common. Despite various governmental acts that prohibit the employment of scavengers or the construction of dry, non-flush toilets, this practice is still common throughout the country".

This reminds me of a show we went to in Princeton that showed the untouchable’s sordid situation minus the faecal matter. It was enjoyable, direct and engaging – although my wife who had recently given birth to our second son decided that it was too depressing…

I am glad that the arts are functioning as a mouthpiece towards drawing attention to little known aspects of the currently roaring Indian tiger, but I fear that by using excrement, there is a tendency to overly sensationalize the situation rather than help it in any way – but then in today’s world, the loudest, most boorish ones are the ones who get noticed anyways. Ultimately the sincerity of the artist in drawing attention to the issue may only be judged by meeting the individual – which I have not – so until then, I reserve judgment on the sensationalist aspects and am just happy to note that artists are spotlighting some of the lesser known aspects of the country I am from…

Funny enough, as I was reading about this, another famous 'faeces-as-art' scene came to my mind. In 1961, Piero Manzoni defecated into 90 small cans, signed and sealed them and then priced each can based on its weight pegged to an equivalent quantity of gold. It is reported that the cans are in various art collections all over the world. It is also reported that many of the cans have also exploded - expanding gases in closed spaces... None of that is of worry here - the gallery has taken a lot of pains to explain that the faecal modules are super clean and sanitary...

References:

- The Guardian covers the exhibition well here.
- Article in the National Geographic on Dalits:
- Human Rights Watch. “Caste Discrimination: A Global Concern.”

Creation Institute now offering masters degrees!

No, I did not make up that title, it is true.

Yesterday we sang hosannas to the theory of evolution when a team of scientists led by a professor from Texas (University of Texas at Austin) found evidence of tuberculosis in early migrating humans as they made their slow trek from their African cradle of civilization to slowly populate the various corners of the earth. One of the fallouts from this slow evolution and the resulting favorable mutations and natural selections that followed were the development of favorable skin colors that helped them best adapt to their particular environment.

Not to be outdone, there is news today that in the same state of Texas, the higher education panel of this august state has approved for opening an Institute for Creation Research.
Yes, we did talk about the creation museum in Kentucky on Simplistic some time back, but this Texan institution goes a step further towards trying to legitimize the creation fallacy - in the name of giving out master’s degree in science education. I am not too sure when science and creationism crept into the same bed, but here in this institute they cozy up even further...

Some useful information on the website of the institute:
All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week. The harmful consequences of evolutionary thinking on families and society (abortion, promiscuity, drug abuse, homosexuality and many others) are evident all around us.

There is more in the dean's letter extorting prospective candidates to join up:
Thank you for considering the masters degree in Science Education at ICR as you prayerfully seek God's counsel regarding your place of service in His Kingdom. Our calling is to partner with students who are committed to a view of science and education that is not restricted to naturalistic processes and who have the zeal and self-discipline required to excel in an environment that is both rigorous and rewarding.

James Nasmyth, ‘Back of Hand and Wrinkled Apple to Illustrate the Origin of Certain Mountain Ranges Resulting from Shrinking of the Interior’, Plate 11 from Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite, London, John Murray, 11" X 8", 1874, The MOMA, New York

On image manipulation

True to the age of 'gimme my results NOW!', the current trend towards digital manipulations of photos is a good case in point. Free image manipulation software now seem to bring out results that sometimes rival uber image manipulation software like Photoshop in the matter of touching up and sharpening digital photographs. A photo of a bunch of bananas lying around on our kitchen counter top that was then digitally manipulated using something as low tech as PAINT.NET are shown below as an example…

Of course, there is a certain school which believes that the instant you touch your photographic images with any software tools, you pollute the concept and the resulting image is not worth its salt. This may be true for images produced in scientific journals, but does not seem to hold true for a lot of amateur photographers (and some professional – especially folks who cover the news) who have clearly started to use these tools. Tell-tale signs are visible to a practiced eye and even if I do not claim too much practice myself, I did notice a couple of photography shows down in Chelsea where the images were clearly manipulated to suit the subject or the theme. Personally, I do not think there is anything sinful about manipulating an image. It is just that the chemical laced manipulations laboriously done inside that makeshift and cramped darkroom can now be done fairly easily in front of a computer. Of course, historically, 'more effort' is sometimes perceived as being 'more original' and the darkroom based morphs of yore were definitely heavy lifting.

Sunil, 'Bananas', Digital photograph

On skin colour

The recent discovery of the evidence of tuberculosis striking ancient humans illustrated by telltale signs in the skull of a homo erectus discovered in Turkey further lends credence to a plausible theory of race and skin colour.

The theory goes something like this. The original human beings evolved around the regions below the Horn of Africa. It is now believed that most of the original humans were very dark skinned. The dark skin gave them protection against the intense ultraviolet radiation from the African sun. (Light is absorbed lesser by dark colours than lighter colours and hence blocked the harmful UV better...) Again the dark skin was purely an artifact of evolution rather than a random colour assigned by forces beyond comprehension. By and by, the proto humans migrated out of the horn of Africa, following the Red Sea all the way taking a route along modern day Palestine, onto Syria, then Turkey and the vast beyonds... As they moved north, the sun became less bright, the climes colder and the vegetation less tropical. As it turns out, the explorers found that their dark skins were now an impediment rather than a blessing. The cause lay with the synthesis of vitamin D (Vitamin D is produced photochemically in the epidermal layer of skin and is not available freely in nature)... The less intense sun could not penetrate the darker skinned migrants and a lot of them found themselves depleted of vitamin D. Reduction in vitamin D leads to a weakened immune response to bacteria’s and for the Leptomeningitis tuberculosa bacterium (the one that causes a special form of tuberculosis), the migrants were a choice prospect to infect. Many migrant ran afoul of the bacterium and a chance few who had the odd mutation that resulted in lighter skin colour escaped (the lighter skin colour meant more vitamin D synthesis that resulted in a stronger immune response and a proportionately higher resistance to diseases like tuberculosis and the like). The random genetic mutations that resulted in the now favorable light skin started to build up as the migrants and their generations started settling in lands farther north. Of course, many, many more mutations will pass before we get to the cornucopia of human skin colours today, but in a nutshell, this is a leading theory that is gaining grounds in an attempt to explain the diversity of skin colours that we see around us…

The findings are reported in the current issue of The American Journal of Physical Anthropology (abstract here) by a team of American, Turkish and German researchers. The researchers have maintained that the new evidence “permits us to speculate that a case of TB was exacerbated by the reduced level of ultraviolet radiation encountered during the expansion of a low-latitude population of dark-skinned Homo into temperate Turkey.”

Again, all this is speculation, but the case is gaining ground and becoming stronger… Further research into the scattered bones of our ancestors along the ancient migration routes will surely settle this argument. I wonder what Dr. Watson, who is now famous for his macaca type slurs would have to say…

Pierre Mathurin Petraud, ‘On the Nile’, Oil on canvas, 22” X 18”

Revealing pictures

It is not the greatest habit to rip pictures from other sites, but the following pictures are from the UNICEF 2007 photography competition. Both pictures are from the Spiegel online and I could not stop myself from putting them here.

The first shows a girl on her 9th birthday dancing near her family's home that straddles one of the biggest garbage dumps in the world. The sofa ostensibly is part of the rubbish.

The second image (which actually won the competition) shows a married couple from Afghanistan. Mohammed, the husband, is a mature 40 years and Ghulam, his wife, is 11. More related news here.

Photographed by Hartmut Schwarzbach


Photographed by Stephanie Sinclair

"I’m delighted to be related to flies, yeast, frogs, chimps and blue-green algae. I find the serenity of algae restful and the ambition of yeast admirable. Frogs are great jumpers. Chimps have hands at the end of their feet, sort of. And fruit flies, well, I never met a fruit fly that I was ashamed to share genes with, and I certainly can’t say that about human beings."

James Gorman in the NY Times

Tis almost winter...

Sunil, 'Cold Ship', Digital photograph

Winter

Sharp contrasts,
rock and snow,
christmas lights
fight the pelf.
The morose skies,
a brooding grey,
the waters shiver
in their gulfs.

as the last leaf curls away...

A somewhat crude gallery visit...

If anyone were to lament the lack of political art in the interesting times we live in, there sure is a surfeit of it at the Daneyal Mahmood gallery in Chelsea. Done by a Russian artist, Andrei Molodkin, the exhibition titled 'Sweet Crude American Dream' is a cunning pun on two phrases ‘sweet light crude’ (the filet mignon cut from the fractional distillation of crude oil) and the often clichéd 'American Dream'. Of course, it is another matter all together that the aforementioned dream is currently riding somewhat blindfolded atop the gusher that is purported to fizzle down to a trickle in a little over a century. Two installation pieces, both critical of the current administration are the centerpieces of the show. While the message is clear, one fears that the theatrics involved in setting up the elaborate apparatus on the gallery floor might unnerve the senses a bit (sometimes too much clarity might dull introspection).

Exhibit one is an installation piece consisting of about 450 feet of PVC tubing connecting pumps, intermediary equipment and oil barrel containing crude oil. The tubing snakes its way all around the gallery floor, ceiling and rafters and is crowned with a light box that projects the moments before Saddam's execution. The smell of crude is overpowering yet strangely mesmerizing (they seem to have used sweet crude as opposed to the sour crude which has higher percentages of sulphides and is supposed to smell like rotten eggs). The message is fairly clear - the invasion and the execution of Saddam seems to have been driven by one thing and only one - the stuff that flows silently in the PVC plumbing in the gallery space. I must say it was a little too much for me in its reality and starkness - maybe that is what the artist wanted.

Exhibit two is a little more ironic and is a humorous word play that is sinister in its overtones. Two panels, one containing the Sotheby’s description of the infamous Jeff Koon’s 'Hanging heart' exhibit and a second panel that contains subverted/substituted text from the first in a humorous yet meaningful way.

The original text reads as follows:

There is an enormous amount of excitement in the Sotheby's building at the moment because we are able to realize one of the most important works by Jeff Koons Hanging Heart. It looks like it came from out of space. It has an absolute surreality about it, for you almost think that it cannot be so perfect. The hanging heart was part of a celebrations series that was conceived in 1994 but it took Koons an enormous amount of time to make, because he was so obsessive about perfection. The technical requirements of realizing this work were so complex and so involved that he postponed, and postponed and postponed it. When we finally saw it, it was like going to Santa's workshop, one of the biggest moments Sotheby's had for hanging out a work of art was hoping that the emotions would bring out this incredible 'whoa'. -- Sotheby's, November 2007

Now the substitution:

There is an enormous amount of excitement in the White House at the moment because we are able to realize one of the most important works by G.W. Bush - hanging Saddam. It looks like it came from out of space. It has an absolute surreality about it, for you almost think that it cannot be so perfect. The hanging heart was part of a celebrations series that was conceived in 1994 but it took Bush an enormous amount of time to make, because he was so obsessive about perfection. The technical requirements of realizing this work were so complex and so involved that he postponed, and postponed and postponed it. When we finally saw it, it was like going to Santa's workshop, one of the biggest moments Bush had for hanging Saddam was hoping that the emotions would bring out this incredible 'whoa'. -- Copycats, November 2007

Of course, the text also included an obligatory pair of PVC hearts that suspiciously looked like it had been filled with some more left over crude spilt from the Total barrel conspicuously present on the gallery floor. Overall, well worth a visit – if not for the smell or the theatrics, at least for the post-visit reflection on our current state.

Crude oil pumped through 450 feet of PVC plumbing with the Saddam execution lightbox in the background


Detail of lightbox

Hanging Heart installation

Detail of hanging heart

Drawing

Sunil, 'Pinocchio', Ink and charcoal on inkjet printed 300 series Strathmore paper, 9" X 11"

Duane Hanson at Van de Weghe fine art

In retrospect, it was a fairly stupid question, walking into that Chelsea gallery that was showing hyper-realist sculptures (yes, I was thinking Ron Mueck too) and asking the hyper-made up lady there 'Is the show on today or is the gallery closed'? She gave me a look as one would give a cretin who had just crawled in from under the door and went back to looking at her sleek apple computer that seems to be a necessary fixture in galleries and disdainfully ordered 'Look around'. I quietly crept back into my shell and meekly walked around stupefied at the hyperrealism on display here. Duane Hanson's sculptures made of autobody filler and other mixed media seems so real that it is unnerving to stand there looking at the sculptures half thinking that the sculpture might step out and ask "And what is it that makes you want to stare at me so hard, you pervert, you?"

Most of these works executed between 1973 and 1990 were and are classics. Mundane people doing their mundane jobs, so often overlooked for doormats in normal life now in this gallery being stared at and studied with attention by people wondering “Just how did the *&%# did I miss all this expression in ordinary people...?”

Queenie II, 1988, Autobody filler, polychromed in oil, mixed media with accessories, 72” X 40” X 50”

Detail of above

Security Guard, 1990, Autobody filler, polychromed in oil, mixed media with accessories, 72” X 40” X 20”

Self Portrait with model, 1979, Polyvinyl, polychromed in oil, mixed media with accessories, 48” X 75” X 40”

Flea Market Lady, 1990, Autobody filler, polychromed in oil, mixed media with accessories, 50” X 120” X 48”

Old man playing Solitaire, 1973, Polyester resin and fiberglass, polychromed in oil, mixed media with accessories, 50” X 35” X 55”

Delivery Man, 1980, Polyvinyl, polychromed in oil, mixed media with accessories, Lifesize

Painting

Sunil, 'Untitled_120907', Latex based house paint and wet gesso on dricore board, 24" X 24"

On commuting and a conceptual art idea

One of the modes of transportation that I use on my way to work is the commuter train. Modern train journeys - especially one as short, precise and impersonal as going to work can be a very sterile, degrading affair. People shuffling into their self assigned spaces, making sure that the unwritten but mandatory three inch space is left between them and the other significant human being(s) that close in on the individual as the lurch begins in earnest is a constant staple. Finding a space and holding onto a hang rail is also enormously complicated. It has to be located in such a position where one’s hand does not accidentally or remotely touch anyone else’s body part(s). The space surrounding the length of the arm - however twisted and sinuous that might be - has to be similarly free from intruding flesh or handbag. Nonchalance in pose might be an added plus, but may not come easy. Once the handhold and foothold is secure, an important and necessary piece of the journey begins - finding a blank piece of space to stare such that we do not inadvertently stare into anybody else's eyes, piece of clothing or anatomical feature (ever fearful of actually making a human to human connection). This can take an awkward 30 seconds to a minute that may sometimes be thwarted by the wandering eyeball resting upon an inconvenient hairstyle, inconvenient truths, an open fly, contents of unkempt bag or an unshaven face. Trying to quickly avert attention and the resulting vicarious vortex of thoughts and relations they spur is an art in and of itself. The eye darts quickly assessing alternative spots until a favorable space that we could call our very own is found, locked in position and is synchronized with the motions of the locomotive. It was as if that a space of the subway skin were reserved for us during the ride and came as a privilege included in the act of buying the ticket. The occasional stops, fitful starts and the jars that the metal on metal motion entails only results in additional strains entailed by the individual in ensuring that the unseeing eye remain locked to the now reserved point of contact. Sometimes, a baby's wail could break the pristine silence and might disastrously result in errant motions of the eyes from assigned spots, only to be restored to equilibrium by even quicker, corrective and somewhat evasive actions. Of course, this might also involve movements that involve a quick reappraisal of the situation and other convenient spots to focus on. Getting out is as sterile as getting in – finding your way out while making sure that nobody is toppled over, touched, fondled or brushed aside. The whole process makes me sometimes think that maybe each of us harbor the pestilence and anything as benign as eye contact or as audacious as an actual inadvertent touch might make the resident germs jump and bridge the ever expanding gulfs that we artificially build. I am not envisaging or advocating travel where the bump and grind of the nocturnal dance floor is duplicated, but a place where a few hellos, pleasantries and an involuntary smile might lift the otherwise sour prospects. Of course, this is not going to happen. This is New York. One of these days, I plan to steal a video camera in with me on the train and will focus the lens to the objects that my eye locks to – in other words, mere nothingness, an empty void that we try and create in the little times that strangers in a big city hustle together. The recorded voice, the background clackety clack of the metal wheels and the automated, disembodied white male voice announcing the stops and exhorting us to say something when we see something being the only signs of hospitality. It indeed will be a good conceptual art video installation.

Painting

Sunil, 'Gitmo', Oil paint, kumkum, rose petals, latex based house paint and wet gesso on dricore board, 24" X 24"

Drawing

Sunil, 'Dross', 12" X 10.5", Ink and charcoal on paper

Art and the ravages of time...

"Send me a postcard
drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely wasting away
Give me an answer,
fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me
Will you still feed me
When I'm sixty four"

So sang Beatles in their reflections on getting older. Among other things, getting older is something that none of us really relish – let alone getting to 64. Oftentimes, I wonder if I would still be doing art then, but then what else might be there to pleasure one's soul other than art, the love of my life and grandchildren. Talking about art, I also think about how one would look and perceive art as old age sets in. You might have a more refined, minimalist outlook or you might have a garish, overbearing persona on canvas – not too sure what might happen – sometimes no outlook at all – your senses dulled by a feeling of satiety after inhaling a life well lived…

Sometimes artistic outlooks/outputs (on canvas or otherwise) may be forced to proceed in a particular direction dictated by onset of illnesses or certain other maladies than as a conscious self-provoked decision to explore and nurture newer avenues. Whatever the case, the infirmities that befall one that consist of a kind that cannot be reined in and controlled tends to produce art that is often varied, richer (sometimes) or more diffuse - depending upon how you look at it. The case of de Kooning (depression), Monet (cataract) and others come to mind here. In this article on Art and Perception (provoked by reading a report on this individual's research reported in the Science Times), I write about how one might ascribe greatness to art based on past glories attained by the artist rather than appreciate art for what it is – in some cases a gooey mass of ill mixed colors or in other cases sheer resplendence – in both cases the result being a function of the infirmity that befell the artist.

Reflections

We live in a time where a real war is being fought over the now fictitious weapons of mass destruction. We also live in a time where future wars may be created out of fictitious uranium enrichment programs. During heady times such as these, it is useful to read passages like the one I had run into yesterday that yearn for a better, more pragmatic time… Pray, read it, for it is worth it, albeit a little long…

"In a photograph, differences between a crag, a marble column, an oak, a frog, and a human face are merely differences in shape and texture. From the height of ten thousand feet, the earth appears to the human eye as it appears to the eye of the camera; that is to say, all history is reduced to accidents of nature. This has the salutary effect of making historical evils, like national divisions and political hatreds, seem absurd.
I look down from an airplane upon a stretch of land that is obviously continuous. That, across it, marked by a tiny ridge or river or even by no topographical sign whatever, there should run a frontier, and that the human beings living on one side should hate or refuse to trade with or be forbidden to visit those on the other side, is, from the height where I find myself, revealed to me as ridiculous. Unfortunately, I cannot have this revelation without having the illusion that there are no historical values.
From this same height I cannot distinguish an outcrop of rock and a magnificent cathedral or between a happy family playing in a back yard and a flock of sheep; so that I am unable to feel any difference between dropping a bomb to destroy a cathedral, the happy family, or even the rocks or the flock. If the effects of distance between the observer and the observed were mutual, so that as the objects on the ground shrank in size and lost their uniqueness, the observer in the airplane felt himself shrinking and becoming more and more generalized, we should either give up flying or create a heaven on earth."

---- By W.H. Auden from "De Droite et de Gauche"

An ink drawing in progress

Weekend painting

Sunil, 'Untitled_12_02_07', Kumkum, wood stain and gesso on dricore board, 24" X 24"

Mandelbrot moments

Most of us have had a lot of fun deciphering indeterminate forms in the nature that abounds us. Be it in the shape of leaves, the gnarled branches of a leafless tree, the leaf laden oak that dwarfs that old rickety home or the recursive edges of a sand grain under the microscope. Looking at the skies yesterday over Lady Liberty, I must say that I felt equal parts elation, melancholy and awe.

Sunil, 'Fractals over the Lady', Digital photograph

Drawing

Sunil, 'Paganism', Charcoal on 400 series Strathmore paper, 11" X 14"

Dabbling versus specialization

Recently an uptown gallery in NYC (Anita Shapolsky gallery) held a very special show – an exhibit that showcased the work of writers who in their part time became artists and went ahead and created some very compelling pieces of art. Comments on some online forums covering this event seemed to deride this as a wannabe attempt by non-artists at producing art and hinted at the fact that writers should stick to what they do best – writing. They also gave the example where exactly zero publishers would flock to publish a novel if written by a major artist (which I very much doubt). Though not related, take the recent example of moviemaking by Julian Schnabel as a supposed exception.

In a short piece for Art and Perception due to be published later today, I hope to delve deeper into this perception that we are live and breathe in a specialized society so much so that one must not stray too much from ones roots. In the odd case of such hucksterism, transgressions may be met by the threat of being proclaimed as second rate.

Hmm, coming to think about it, I have an engineering background…

Also, I take this opportunity to let you review the work of a writer Patrick Woodroffe, one of whose oil paintings are depicted below.

Drawing

Sunil, 'Untitled', Charcoal and ink on 300 series injet printed Strathmore paper, 9" X 12"

Conceptual thoughts

I was reminded of the seminal essay "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" as I read about two exhibitions currently underway - one in New York and the other in London. 'You' by Urs Fischer at Gavin Brown in New York comprises a 38 'X 30' foot crater that is about eight feet deep and extends to the walls of the gallery, surrounded by a fourteen-inch ledge of concrete floor. 'Shibboleth' by Doris Salcedo in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall is a minimal piece that comprises just a cleanly executed 167-metre-long crack in the floor of the gallery.

While the crack in the gallery floor conceptually explores issues of racial segregation, social exclusion, class politics and rich-poor divide, 'You', (by demolishing the gallery floor space) aims to deconstruct the almost cultish aura that surrounds the archetypal white-walled gallery of today hawking million dollar paintings in their pristine, almost vacuum-sealed environs.

It is indeed interesting to note that at a fundamental level both of these inspiring works aim to attack the concepts of separation - while the former applies to class, gender and race, the latter explores the same concept as it applies to separating artists with the right contacts exhibiting multimillion dollar pieces within clean sterile walls and those that do not have the right connections languishing along the wayside...

Sol Lewitt in "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art"

I will refer to the kind of art in which I am involved as conceptual art. In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman. It is the objective of the artist who is concerned with conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the conceptual artist is out to bore the viewer. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist art is accustomed, that would deter the viewer from perceiving this art.

Doris Salcedo 'Shibboleth' (Photo ripped from http://www.lemoniteur-expert.com)

Urs Fischer, 'You' (Photo ripped from http://nymag.com/)

Stitching poems

Sometimes you could take utterances by an individual over the course of their lives, stitch them together and form a composite of the person’s thought process. I had a little bit of fun the other day when I happened to cherry-pick utterances made by a well known individual at various points in his life. None of actual lines were written by me, they were just ‘sentenced’ together to create a poetic form… The stitching was fun…


Muddling through...

I don't particularly like it
when people put words in my mouth,
either, by the way, unless I say it.

I'm the master of low expectations,
I was a prisoner too, but for bad reasons.
I know what I believe.
I will continue to articulate
what I believe and what I believe, I believe.
What I believe is right.

I'm also not very analytical.
Just remember: it's the birds
that's supposed to suffer, not the hunter.
One has a stronger hand when,
there's more people playing your same cards.

Oftentimes, we live in a processed world
you know, people focus on the process
and not results. Are we going to be facile
enough to change? Will we be nimble enough?
Will we be able to deal
with the circumstances on the ground?
And the answer is, yes, we will.

I understand how tender
the free enterprise system can be.
When somebody builds
a new building,
somebody has got to come
and build the building.
And when the building expanded,
it prevented additional opportunities
for people to work.

You're free.
And freedom is beautiful.
I think we are welcomed,
but it was not a peaceful welcome.
And, you know, it'll take time
to restore chaos and order,
order out of chaos. But we will
I promise you - I will listen
to what has been said here,
even though I wasn't here.

And so, therefore,
we're cautious, about
encouraging people to
return at this moment of history –
I'm looking forward
to a good night's sleep
on the soil of a friend.

Photo

Sunil, 'After the festivities', Digital photograph

Fall colors

Sunil, 'Premium Roof Cement', Digital Photograph

Sunil, 'Premium Red Maple', Digital Photograph

Sunil, 'Premium Home Foreclosed', Digital Photograph

The audacity to choke - and squeeze further

I recently read an article in the New York Times that had me thinking about the swaths of self denial that certain institutions use to cover themselves as they continue their business of making money off the global marketplace.

Read the report here in detail but one statement in particular got to me.

The report focuses on the ever growing trend of companies in the United States fanning out over larger areas around the globe in their search for the eternal lucre and profit. I can’t find too much fault with this behavior given that variants of capitalism seems to work OK in a majority of nations around the world (of course, it has it’s attendant warts that I shall list in some post later, but in its most basic form, it is a fairly feral animal that weeds out and mostly tramples slower moving animals leaving significant road kills in its hunting grounds while providing game meat for the villagers…)

With our economy currently heading towards a state of extended stasis, it is only natural for the capitalist machine to seek our greener pastures and feed itself. This way the economy grows, we keep the industries from dying out and innovation is spurred (add in a couple of hundred extra millionaires and all are happy with equilibrium). Most of us are ok with all of this because for the most part, the system works and we can go to the movies and have that bag of popcorn unhindered on weekends…

What does get to me is when senior analysts (the well educated suits) at financial firms start to couch naked capitalist aspirations with ennobling messages that portray financial companies playing a role in alleviating people in other countries from their current economic conditions to a higher, more modern, purportedly better condition while trying to explain their actions… Cunning contortionist are among the phrases that come to mind, but the quote is very telling.

“Think of 400 million people in China going from the 6th century to the 21st century over the last 15 years,” said Robert Barbera, chief economist at ITG, a brokerage and advisory firm. “The same thing is going on in India as well. That’s still the big driver for growth. It could self-destruct for any number of reasons, but that underlying story is decades away from being over.”

Hogwash!

This statement is plain wrong and misleading for a lot of reasons.

- If people still think that countries are stuck in the 6th century then they would need to revisit their high school history, geography and civics classes (not to mention maybe a flawed education system)..

- Even if the above is true, it is indeed puerile to think that it is the capitalist industrial complex that is responsible for lifting people from the 6th century to the 21st century…

- A reason for some nations to become stuck in less modern times might be due to the reckless plundering that oiled the economic engines of countries fuelled by ideas of enlightenment and industrial revolution (here the plundering of nations was not just limited to human beings in the form of slave capital, but also materials hijacked from these nations to fill the coffers of the plunderers)… Think King Leopold II.

- At a psychological level, the statement just shows the brand of hidden elitism that a lot of us have towards the purported ‘third world’ (how I hate that term) countries. The elitism is normally well disguised in polite dinner chatter, but wells from the collective subconscious during times like these…

If one is in the business of making profits, just say it, it is sad when I see individuals believing that they are lifting people from their supposedly un-modern conditions when the alternative – leaving them untouched might have led to a better state – we just do not know for sure – do we?

Maurits Escher (1898-1972), 'Predestination', 294 X 422 mm, Lithograph, 1951

Stopped to smell

Walking to work the other day, I was struck by splotches of bright orange and red along the sidewalk. It was maple leaves blown down from trees lining an avenue I frequent to catch my morning train. A light rain falling made the leaves glisten in the immature morning light common at half past six. Everything looks clean, fresh, pure and ready to start. The air was free of smog and cigarettes. Stepping on the rain-moistened leaves cushions the gait as the water laden green carpet absorbs and lightens the walk. It was a glorious sight and one which could not be reproduced by human hand yet endlessly reproduced across the country by nature at this time of the year. It also made me reflect on the profusion of art that is prevalent around us and was happy for the moment that I took to stop and feel.

In this regard, the words of art critic Micheal Kimmelman rings true in his recent review of an exhibition in the NYT here.

Art works that way. It can turn up, unexpectedly, and once you see it, you can’t imagine how you missed it in the first place. The art is there in the worn, throwaway sheets, dog-eared or tattooed with the rusty imprints of paper clips. Art is about what’s inexplicable and out of the ordinary. Painting is the world’s oldest conjuring act, colored dirt smeared on a flat surface to create an illusion. We may know it’s not real, but we still enjoy seeing how the magic is done. But art — whether it’s the mnemonic art of Rabbi Hirsch Dänemark, remembered in the show via a 19th-century German handbill, beautifully printed in Fraktur typefaces on luxurious mold-made paper, or whether it’s the art of those ancient pornographers who left naughty mosaics at Pompeii — reminds us that the world has always been messy, weird and wonderful.

Sunil, 'Lady and Cranes', Digital photograph

Big questions

The Templeton foundation hosts a big question every month and some of them are well worth a read. Among the discussion items include the following and may be accessed here…

- Is It Good To Be Good?
- Can Happiness Be Measured?
- Do We Live in a Multiverse?

Does the Universe have a purpose? and Will money solve Africa’s development problems? seem particularly relevant and poignant…

"The great accumulation of understanding as to how the physical world behaves only convinces one that this behavior has a kind of meaninglessness about it" - Richard Feynman

Weekend painting

Sunil, 'Untitled', Acrylic paint, wood stain, Indian spices and gesso on dricore board, 24" X 24"

Drawing post: Black(water)boarding

Sunil, 'Black(water)boarding', Charcoal and pencil on paper, 12" X 9"

On the recent police killing of a Brooklyn teen carrying a hairbrush

A young man was fatally shot last night in a hail of 20 bullets fired by five police officers who responded to a 911 call in Brooklyn. The police said they believed that the man, Khiel Coppin, 18, had a gun. But when the gunfire stopped, it turned out that he had been holding a hairbrush.
More here…

Recently, my brother traveled back to India for what was a routine visit home to see his family. He studies culinary sciences at a University here in the United States and I am sure he wanted to try his new found cooking skills on his family back home. The flight usually lands at Bombay and then one catches an onward local flight to Bangalore - the town (now it is a bustling city), where we grew up. On landing at Bombay a random group of passengers were sorted into a separate group and were herded into a waiting line for no apparent reason. After a couple of hours, they were half heartedly told that they would be searched and checked for validity of passports and documents.

Questions on the seemingly random course of actions elicited blank stares and threats of police action from the officials. After the random group was submitted to a partial search of belongings and scrutiny of papers (the process took another couple of hours and the officials could not find anything incriminating), they were told to wait in another room. You must remember that most of the connecting flights were long gone at this point in time. In between, my brother was solicited by seedy characters for cash, electronics, perfumes, alcohol and other imported articles. After another couple of hours of what seemed now like an endless wait, they were let go and told to find the next available flight for their onward destinations with a verbal promise that they would be refunded. Bewildered and confused, when my brother approached an airline official for explanations and an apology, they looked at him as if he were an exotic alien who had just landed on this planet. With little will and energy left to fight the system that did not explain (after a seventeen hour flight from the States, nobody is in any mood to press on), he waited for another four hours before managing to land a 'lucky' seat for his flight onward to Bangalore. He told me later that calls were never returned and he never got an explanation or the incident at the airport. Efforts to coerce the officials with any kind of legal threats were dismissed with indifference and veiled implications of the use of lethal force.

It is only when one experiences the indignities to civil rights and individual liberties that get trampled on blatantly in other countries does one realize the importance and the luxury of having them and taking them for granted here in the United States. The United States still stands as the single greatest country that can safely assimilate people into its great fold, warts and all while helping individuals feel secure in understanding ones potential abilities, capabilities and talents. Of course, on bright sunny days, one might complain occasionally about living in the worlds greatest debtor nation or the fact that the country is controlled by capitalist mavens who oil the wheels of profits by hiring lobbyists in Washington, or the fact that we are fighting an unjust war trampling on the world, but the fact remains that the rights and liberties offered to individuals stand far above the madding crowd that are characteristic in many countries around the world.

The incident above has the same parallels that define arbitrariness that sometimes accompany police actions, the fact that people tend to act first and talk later (if they talk at all). In a painful flash of memory, I was also reminded about what happened to a friend and neighbor who lived two streets away from our home during a simpler time in my childhood - of the police barging into his house sans warrant for entry, him not being seen for a couple of days after the incident and me chancing upon him about a month after - the same neighbor now seemed to have a missing leg and was barely recognizable - features a bloody pulp.

It is these same flashes of memory that return to haunt when I had chanced on the story of Amadou Diallo a while back or when I read the story of Khiel Coppin today.

It is fairly easy to descend into mindless anarchy and violence in the name of upholding law. Sometimes, little explanation is offered for some of these actions other than the single mind-numbing word ‘security’ (as is the fashion these days). It is however, far more difficult to count from one to ten as the rage sets in while simultaneously balancing the situation in front of one’s eyes with the clarity offered by concepts of justice and well being and then deliver a measured response. A little respite and thought before people act out senseless fantasies like the one that took place in Brooklyn yesterday evening might be small steps in keeping the ideals that fashion and help sustain this great country.

References:

Political Debates Between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

The papers of George Washington

Hidden Costs of the Iraq War

Declining Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Bush Administration

The international debt cycle and the United States as an external debtor

Lari Pittman, ‘Thankfully, you will have taught me freedom within constraints’, 1999, acrylic, alkyd and spray enamel on panel, 64” X 95”