Pop.

Proenza Schouler & Girls of Color: Go Together Like Black People and Stray Shopping Carts, Apparently.

2010-08-09T17:55:00.003-04:00

Still from Harmony Korine’s collaboration with Proenza Schouler
via Nowness and Tavi

I’m not sure what’s bad and what’s the worst. I hate being put in a position where when I see any people of color in a fashion campaign, I assume funny business is involved. I assume Proenza is propifying. I’m confused as to why there is no six-foot-tall white girl standing in the foreground of that 8mm still in front of a row of functionally identical girls of color. These girls of color are shorter, not thin, therefore not the fashion object.

But that white girl isn’t there.

The film hasn’t premiered yet, but it seems like there are, so far, at least a few things going for it: It seems that the girls of color are at least the subject, not object. It seems like they might receive the same degree of characterization that any girl does in a fashion campaign (that is: not a whole lot, but some). It seems like they’re privileged to the fashion itself: usually the Girls of Color are not seen as the ones that actually are wearing/would ever be wearing the fashion we’re trying to promote. In that sense: Proenza isn’t doin’ it rong, right?

But still (and, having not seen the film): why do they have to be in the projects? OH YEAH, I GUESS IF YOU’RE GONNA GIVE A BLACK GIRL THE SPOTLIGHT THEN IT CAN ONLY BE IN THE CONTEXT OF ‘URBAN WASTELAND’ WITH DERELICT COUCHES AND HOMELESS SHOPPING CARTS. I get it. I get the aged (read: not soft-focus, but read as dated) filmography, linking people of color with another time, never current in themselves. People of color, in fashion, can never be themselves current and relevant, but designers and models and white editors and people in power can mine their unaware culture for things and make them relevant. I get it, Proenza boys. I see what you did there.

I get it, you got Harmony Korine. It isn’t racist to slumify essentially the only people of color you’ve ever used in your work if you get the writer of Kids to do your filming. And sure, from what I remember, Kids wasn’t too racially unsettling (was it?). But really, you couldn’t just put a black girl in a regular campaign, could you? You have to get a renowned slummy director to legitimize your use of people of color, because that’s the only context we’re ever allowed to show people of color in.

Here’s how it went:
Proenza boy 1: Let’s use black girls in our new short film.
Proenza boy 2: What?!
Proenza boy 1: No, no, listen. It’s cool. They won’t be tall or skinny or fashion insiders. That would be silly. No. We’ll get some white artists and filmmakers to help us out. Stay with me here. White filmmakers and artists famous for making urban tough-life--frequently involving black or brown people--appealing to relevant fashion insiders and art-types. Like the guy from Kids. Not Clark but the other one. And one of those white 80s street artists, or something.
Proenza boy 2: I think I follow…
Proenza boy 1: And then we’ll find some short and notskinny black girls, and we’ll put them in our clothes, and we’ll make a film that makes it look like we discovered some somehow-fabulous people of color in their natural habitat and traditional dress.
Proenza boy 2: And then we can tell people that we’re telling a story about girls who are “part of the system, yet still outsiders.” Because black people are never true originals like our inspired white NYC it-girls and fashion bloggers.
Proenza boy 1: Exactly. In the press release we will tell people how we were inspired by girls who “skulk around schoolyards, spray graffiti, drink, smoke, pose and embrace, evoking the loneliness, confusion and overwhelming wonder of growing up” and “girls who sleep in abandoned cars and set things on fire. It’s about the great things in life. The stars in the sky and lots of malt liquor.” Malt liquor, get it? ‘Cause they’re black.
Proenza boy 2: Chloe Sevigny is gonna love it.

Proenza Schouler Fall 2010: inspired by the slums. Which is why black people are allowed to wear it! Proenza Schouler Spring 2010 was all about the beach. And everyone knows black people hate the beach! That’s why there were no black girls in PS SS2010’s runway show. (But then, it’s not like we saw black girls on Proenza’s runway in Fashion week FS10*. Because no matter how many girls of color are in your campaign, your sewing room, your ethnographic “inspiration” photos, the names of your collection, your iPod, your Facebook friends, your fans on Facebook, the shops that sell your clothes, or your graduating class at design school—it’s never appropriate to include girls of color on your runway. It cheapens your aesthetic, right?)

*Upon inspection, PS FS10 included three models of color (from what I can tell), though no black girls. They were Lais Ribeiro (Brazilian, likely of some African origin but still somewhat comfortably within the boundaries of what Fashion Week would call the Not Too Black space), and Liu Wen and Shu Pei Qin. I don't pretend to know a lot about these models, or the models in the film, or anyone's casting process. But I'm pretty sure that the "inspiration" behind each collection was the major factor in that tiny tiny increase in models of color between Spring and Fall 2010. That is, like I said, "beachy"= always, always white, whereas "inspired by uniforms and street culture" allows more room, in High Fashion, for people of color. And don't think this escaped me:
Proenza boy 1 or 2, whichever: Our collection is inspired by school girls. Let's cast two Asian models!!!

(I originally posted this on Tumblr on August 9th, 2010)

Here's an addition, about Fabian and "the persistent and systematic tendency to place nonwhites and nonwesterners in a Time other than Vogue or Galliano or anybody else in Fashion’s present."
And some application of these process in Native Appropriate & Hipsters

A Scale to Help You Determine What Type of Sexist the Hip-Culture Canon Work You’re Looking at is

2010-08-09T16:25:00.002-04:00

There is a scale of 1-10. At the left, at 1, is the honest-asshole-misogynist writer/artist/collector. He is Henry Miller, arguably Charles Bukowski. At the right is the I-pretend-I’m-sincere-but-I’m-an-asshole-misogynist-too. He is Rivers Cuomo. Every book, writer, album, movie, songwriter that hip boys have told us to like since the beginning of time has had a narrator or a protagonist who falls somewhere on this scale—though sometimes at even more extreme ends. Every Pinkerton, Catcher, Tropic of Cancer, Women, Garden State, Psychotic Reactions, (fuck, even Rushmore or Almost Famous) can basically be classified in this way.

These are, I admit, some of my favorite books and albums and movies. (Though some of them are also my least favorite books and albums and movies—I’m lookin’ at you, Braffy.) But they are all defined by 1) Their being positioned in some way as The Best 2) Their having a male male protagonist/creative director 3) Their lack of any women that really have any control over their own portrayal. The nature of these works’ relationship with women and cultural control places them somewhere on this scale.

Consider the foundation for this theory Sady Doyl’s piece in The Awl: “Rivers Cuomo Messes You Up Forever.” Everyone on Earth has read it, I know. But let me use it to define what I consider the extreme right end of this cultural spectrum:
1. Boys consider Pinkerton to be Weezer’s Best Album
2. It is Better Than The Blue Album because it is about a more Sincere experience: that is, the Experience of Males Specifically
3. Pinkerton is creepy
4. Pinkerton is about how Rivers Cuomo can’t get the ladies, because they don’t understand him, and because he is very Self Destructive and Sensitive. Pinkerton is about how Rivers Cuomo can’t control himself sometimes, because he is flawed. However, he expects you to love/be impressed with this flaw because ultimately, his lack of self-control is a loss of self-control. When Rivers Cuomo loses control of his ability to cheat on you, he does it because he is so flawed. He is also very conscious of the times when he has control and when he does not have control. This is in contrast to every woman Rivers Cuomo is in love with. Women Rivers Cuomo loves are only in control of the following things: being a Bitch, breaking his heart, and occasionally (I guess, ideally) being impressed by Rivers Cuomo. Take “Pink Triangle.” “Pink Triangle” is about how Rivers Cuomo is in a relationship with a woman who turns out to be a Lesbian. He was basically convinced that they were going to get married because he never asked her. And then he’s fucking crushed that she’s a Lesbian. We’re supposed to feel bad that his whole romantic future is over, and feel a little pissed at that bitchdyke for leading him on. We leftist Alt kids know that gayness is not a choice, so of course the Lesbian didn’t choose to not love Rivers Cuomo. This is, again, something this woman did not control. However, she totes could control breaking Rivers’ heart, rite? She broke his heart. Nevermind the fact that he never asked her if she wanted the relationship to begin with, because basically he assumed that it wasn’t her choice. Relationships, to Rivers, are not a mutual decision as much as they are defined by how girls react to his being in love with them, and usually he is not in love with them because they are People, but because they are some sort of quasi-spiritual-sexual-psychic-spaces-that-he-wants-to-live-in. (For more on quasi-spiritual-sexual-psychic-spaces that interesting boys want to live in, read: Natalie Portman’s stupid character in Garden State.) And when Rivers wants to live in your space psychically, the only thing you can do about it is Be a Bitch and Ruin Everything. That is: In Rivers Cuomo’s world, women only exist as vapours, and the only control they could ever have would be destructive. It’s also important to note that never once does Rivers say, “I know I’m just projecting my shit on you, ladies. That’s fucked up.” Instead, he says, “I’m so fucked up, I’ll never understand ladies because I don’t regard them as real people that I can actually speak to like humans. Obviously this is because I am so Sensitive and have a Social Anxiety or something. Mostly I just interact with girls by reading their diaries behind their back. For some reason this sneaking around doesn’t ignite my anxiety.”
5. The vast, vast majority of males who worship Pinkerton (especially before Sady’s piece) have no awareness of any of these dynamics and would be really really pissed at me, and Sady, for saying these things, and would probably think in their head that we don’t understand it because we are girls, we are annoying feminist bitches, and that our girlness/lack of peopleness would never allow us to understand these Sincere Deep experiences.

This is the first part of the way that we, as women who are kind of Alt and listen to the things our Alt guy friends have told us to listen to since forever, are portrayed in almost every established production of our culture. (Disclaimer: I really do love Pinkerton.)

The next defining feature of the Rivers Cuomo 10, though, is more important to what I’m trying to say. Like I said, these girls have no control over anything. What that means, though, is that they also have no control over Alt culture, and generally wouldn’t understand it. Case in point: “El Scorcho.” Basically, it’s a song about Rivers Cuomo’s crush on a half-Japanese girl that doesn’t know who he is, another classic in Weezer-Style-Gross-Orientalism. In it, he asked his Asian woman to go to a Green Day concert. She said she’d never heard of them. In 1996. And you know what? Rivers Cuomo thinks, “How cool is that?!” Girls, in his world, are totally Naive. They listen to Puccini and play the Cello because they’re girls. They wouldn’t ever know something as hip as Green Day. And he loves this. He wants to continue living in a world where girls are totally Naive about things like music and other areas of his interest. Because God forbid she be as good at his culture as he is.

So that’s it: the closer you move toward a ten on this scale, the less girls are expected to know about or participate in a goddamn thing related to Alt or Hip or Knowing or Respectable culture.

Before I explain the other end, let me share the criteria that I’ve developed to grade works. It’s based on Sady’s piece, and the Bechdel Test, and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl concept. They are all ideas that you will think about every time you watch a Wes Anderson movie or read/listen to anything on Pitchfork for the rest of your life. Contrary to the general conceptions about feminists, we still like things that kind of suck, even when we write long essays about how they are sexist. Because, you know, we’re people. (In fact, generally speaking, my favorite movies involve brutal mutilation/murder of, mostly, females. Especially the murder of sluts. But I’m still a feminist!)

Here are the criteria.
When I say “Criteria,” I’m not arguing that there is a good or bad in this spectrum. Like I said, I love Pinkerton. It’s just that, in order to love something, you have to be able to determine how much bullshit is involved in it, how much of that bullshit is sexist bullshit, and what type of sexist bullshit you’re looking at, exactly.

Ask yourself these questions of the book or movie or album or body of acceptable music:
1. Are women seen as people, and not just projections of our hip-sensitive male’s own insecurities/spiritual quests?
2. If women are, in fact, only used as literary devices or as blank space for projection, is it clear that the male is aware of this and acknowledges its flaws? (I would say even Lolita probably falls into this category)
3. Are women given voices and a certain degree of control over their own depiction and/or fate? If not, is it clear that this is the author’s intention—a la Catcher in the Rye?
4. Are women seen as valuable producers in the male’s universe—beyond filling his psychological void and/or making sammiches? Otherwise, again, is this an acknowledged flaw itself?
5. This, in many ways, is the most important: Are women seen as people that are able to fully contribute and participate in the man’s ideal culture (ie, Alt culture, hip culture, good literature, punk, record collecting, not being phony, etc.)?

The more confidently you can answer “yes” to these questions, the closer to 1 the work lies. If you know there’s a lotta “nos” up there, you got yourself a Rivers Cuomo on your hands.

I’ll talk a little more about what I consider to be a “1” after the jump.

The other side, a 1, can be a little complex. I would like to argue that Bukowski would fall over here, but I honestly don’t know him as well as I know, say, Henry Miller. Henry Miller can be considered downright abusive and objectifying towards women. Compare this to Rivers: Rivers isn’t brave enough to even approach a woman that he respects, but he is happy to cheat all over the place with girls he doesn’t respect because his body tells him to. Essentially, he views his sexuality as something so deep and mysterious but completely integral to his Id or whatever, but as something which a respectable girl would never want anything to do with. Respectable women can’t like sex! That doesn’t even make sense.

Henry abuses all kinds of women with his Cock. He sleeps with sluts and virgins and wives of his and wives of others and prostitutes and older women and barely legals and Anais Nin and French Girls and American Girls and Eastern European Girls. Sometimes they’re great and sometimes they are not, but in general: they frequently like sex, they frequently are controlling it (and not just in the heartless-seduction way, but in the “I would like to have sex with you” way), and they are all different. All women are different to Henry, and they frequently have Personalities, Interests, Hobbies, Conversations. Henry lives in a world where women can know as much as he does about literature, and he’s alright with that. He’s alright with that, and he respects them, and occasionally he wants to have sex with them, and generally they’re alright with that. This isn’t always the case, but it happens frequently enough to be able to safely say that, in general, Henry Miller thinks women are people.

Don’t get me wrong, Henry Miller is also very selfish, in many ways sexist, and full of shit. Every one of his books is essentially Henry traveling or moping, having sex. Writing about the places he finds his inner world collide with the exterior world; often resulting in him projecting his own philosophical woes onto the faces, actions and vaginas of women. However, what’s most important about Henry, and what makes him a number one on this scale, is that he knows and acknowledges when he’s projecting. I have only read Tropic of Cancer and some short works, but I will draw from Sexus to show how he does this. I’m not completely sure of the context, but:

Page 41: “You saw in me something you had never observed in another woman. You saw the mask which is your own.” And, page 42: “You will always be trying to dominate yourself; the woman you love will only be an instrument for you to practice on.” See? Henry is clearly being a dick, projecting his own issues on women, pushing women away, self-destrucing, being an annoying male writer. But he totally knows, and writes about, how he is doing and being all of these things. He shows that he and everyone he knows is aware that he’s projecting his bullshit. He doesn’t feel bad for himself. Really, he’s just fucking around and looking for something and he knows it. You know what else? Women recognized this. In Henry’s world, a woman was smart enough to notice deep things like this, and he he talks to them to get their input on philosophy and shit. Try to find that in Rivers Cuomo.

I think it’s notable that Henry is able to walk this line well because he’s a relatively reliable narrator. Sure, half of his books is him going on and on about his philosophical questions; but when he talks about people, he’s usually not writing fiction. However, nonfiction/reliability is not necessarily a criteria for achieving a 1 on this scale. In fact, I would say that Catcher in the Rye is at a pretty low number on this spectrum.

I know, I know. Salinger’s misogyny is fucking controversial and legendary. We do know that Salinger himself held a lot of beliefs about “phoniness” and “the real world” (re: his disappointments with the movie industry, insecurity in his own failures) which manifested themselves as “frequently hating women because they are shallow.” We also know that Salinger lost his fucking mind, abused girls in his family, and drank his own urine (which I guess isn’t misogynistic, but still).

However, in spite of the frequent portrayals of women as shallow/materialistic/Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948, he also portrayed Franny Glass as one of the most spiritually sophisticated, self-determining, realistic females ever to make it into Western Canon. I would argue that the misogyny in his works isn’t flat-out hatred: it’s self-aware and pretty frequently fair to the experiences of women, it often portrays women as real people who can be smart, and generally trashes men as often as it trashes women. Disclaimer: I am biased. I have read all of his books 2-7 times, and I love them. But I still think I’m qualified to make this judgment, because I’ve called JD out for a lot of his shitty shit in my years.

There are a lot of women in Catcher that are portrayed as, well, worthless/shallow/Platonically incapable of “transcending” beyond phoniness. But I mean, it’s pretty obvious that we’re dealing with this through the eyes of a teenage boy. A teenage boy who, as is the point of the book, sees sex and everything else as a space on which his spiritual conflicts duke it out and puke and fuck and spill all kinds of blood. God, that was such a bullshit litbonery sentence but you know it’s true. It’s pretty fucking clear that that’s the purpose of every girl and woman and person in the book. And btw, haters? Pretty much every dude in the book is a plot device for Holden’s conflicts too. The point of the book is not to, necessarily, take a journey through NYC with Holden Caulfield and relate to how much women suck. The point isn’t to hear a story. The point of the book is to sit with a teenager, a person in a fucked up postwar consumerist world, a teenager who’s leaving his ‘innocent’ world basically at the exact same second that the entire world is leaving that space. (Read: this is a very fucked up Western assumption to make about the meaning of WWII, but it’s also the assumption that Salinger was building on, so it applies.) And, in that context, to see how that teenager is coping with his own spirituality and understanding of humanity. Which usually results in virgin-whore dichotomies, the portrayal of women as shallow consumerists in a soulless world, the infantalization of every woman that Holden approves of, and the idealizing of children for being “innocent.” Those are all problematic ways of dealing with the loss of your ideals in a world where people write “fuck” on the wall for kids to see it. But it’s also, to a point, pretty realistic. And the point of the book, unlike the point of Pinkerton, isn’t for you to “feel bad” for Holden because he’s so flawed, and then relate to his story, and think maaaan that hooker is a bitch. The point is to see how, you know, all of the things going in America at that instant might lead a boy to feel that way. Most importantly: Holden is an unreliable narrator. We have to make the assumption that Salinger isn’t portraying women poorly, and the book itself isn’t portraying the women poorly, but that everything in the story is just filtered through Holden’s issues anyway. One more time: It’s very clear that these are projections, unlike in the case of Pinkerton.

“A Perfect Day For Bananafish” is kind of different. I think a lot of people have a lot of issues with this story, and understandably so. But I still think it’s only maybe a 4. Ultimately, it’s heavy-handed and stupid, but I’ll still defend it as “not too bad.” One reason I think it’s a little bit more full of sexist bullshit than Catcher is because the themes of the story are basically only played out through feminized tropes and misogyny; and even though your main argument is that “post-war America was full of materialistic soulless shit” it maybe isn’t such a good idea to only use terrible women as a way to prove your point. And it’s easier to question the intent with “Bananafish.” Because the character that Seymour’s wife played is a characature of women that we’re so used to seeing, every day, it’s easy for us not to notice that she’s being used as a device. It’s much easier for us to see, God, his wife was such a shallow insufferable bitch, and she just didn’t understand the deep spiritual philosophical masculinized bullshit Seymour was going through. Bitches. Always makin’ deep guys kill themselves. It’s just the way we’re trained that makes us think this first. At the end of the day, it definitely wasn’t Salinger’s aim. I just think he did kind of a shitty job at showing people that he isn’t a sexist with this one. In short: Seymour’s wife is only a feminine bitchprop because Salinger was trying to make a point about materialism. But: It’s really hard to only use women to make a point about how the world has gone to hell and not end up with a kind of sexist story. Then again, it’s less severe if you read the story in the context of Nine Stories.

The reason I wrote this is because I saw a clip of High Fidelity, and I remembered how much cool-dude bullshit is in it, and I realized I would probably be really annoyed by it now. I’m gonna revisit it with this theory as my framework. Lucas said, “but there’s something to be said about that sensitive misogynist guy who doesn’t know he’s being sexist.” And I said: “no, no there isn’t.”

(Originally posted on Tumblr, August 8, 2010)
*Scale in fig. 1 not guaranteed accurate. Zach Braff is totally like a 35.

Blogs? Blogs.

2010-08-09T16:13:00.004-04:00

There's something a little scary about Blogger. I think I'm afraid of commitment. It's not that I'm not writing, I am. I'm writing a lot of a research project. I'm writing a lot about Degrassi (it's therapeutic not in its mindlessness, as you'd think, but in its comfort: Degrassi knows me better than my best friend, and I know Degrassi better than I know the research I've been working on for six months. The fact that I feel legitimately good and talented at Degrassi snark and legitimately welcomed and respected in the Degrassi snark community is a boost to my ivory-tower-embattled self-esteem. Frealz.) It's almost embarrassing to Tumbl, but it also allowed me more an impermanent feeling. Less pressure. Less commitment. Less on-topic. I write, comment, and link to a lot of things I like briefly. No worries.

But you know, occasionally, I'm pretty good at writing those fleeting moments. (A lot of what I Tumbl is about fashion.) In order to rescue them from Ephemera and start this thing back up (like, eight days before this project is done and I have time to post book photos !), I'm gonna transfer the things that are good writing here. Sometimes I write really good things and I fantasize about being famous for them. But, like, if they're just on Tumblr, how will anyone ever know? Tumblr isn't real.

Also, I watched Bravo's Work of Art the whole way through, and after the premier this week I will maybe post a few notes on the gender-in-art-representation as it manifested in reality TV. And maybe that one challenge they had about book covers. Hell yeah!

Sans Serif Superman

2010-06-20T18:48:00.005-04:00

Oh, I'm back. All-that-research-project-I-gotta-finish-be-damned.

With a Typog-nerd snippet from McSweeney's:

Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don't all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can't all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun. Sorry I'm standing in the way of your minimalist Bauhaus-esque fascist snoozefest.

Yeah, you know I'm that girl. On a cheap-ass Compaq-Whatever with Picasso stickers, though.

It's a great read, an imagined monologue of Comic Sans.

(via Copyranter)

Alvin Lustig, 1949, "I Want a Thin Gothic..."

(via Alvinlustig.com)

Medium & Message: The Female Form (and also death.)

2010-06-01T19:36:00.011-04:00

So Louise Bourgeois died.

I don't need to tell you about her. (But if I do, there's a nice NYT obituary, an excellent reflection on Jezebel, a succinct retro at The Guardian. Tavi posted some pictures.)

I don't need to write about her, or about how she "advanced feminism" or how "other people" were impacted by her. But of course there's something intrinsic and silent and overwhelming about her "womany art" that is mine, as a woman. That is, the body--my body--as a medium and a voice, the language of our parts. It's so much like what I said about Motherwell and Lustig, right? All those shapes that carry essence? Well, my shape carries an essence. And Louise distilled that language.

Harmless Woman, 1969

Untitled, 2002

Let me explain better in my own words from a year ago:
(Don't worry, I wouldn't try to chug through that handwriting either)

A transcription of this, and more discussions on body-ness and art, after the jump.

Plus, Artists Can Die?

It's from a zine of mine. It was both a personal work (and my favorite thing I've produced, creatively, in years) and an academic one. I turned it in along with small research paper on the visual language in girl zines, in a class I had about subcultures and style-as-communication.

It's called Participatory Media: Girls, Zines, and Me. I want it to be the first in a series about my relationship between womanness, art, and media (I have some pages for a potential second edition about Lady Gaga). I'll scan more, I only made 25 copies but I plan to do a second run.

The above says:

So a big stylistic theme in girl zines is the mutilation of female bodies/appropriation of objectifying body images from popular media. And yeah, there's irony in doing that. And yeah, it's a direct commentary sometimes, like "oh, this girl has no head because in our society she is only defined as a waist-down object!!" But there is more, and it's something that comes up in art-by-women in general...and it speaks to me.
This reconfiguration of female form, and use of the woman's body in general, is my most common subject/medium. Body As Medium/Message. My art is almost always in the language of form/my form: bellytriangleshipboneslittlebreasts
wristsoutanddoughyarmsandcrooked
teethandopenmouthandmychinandmy
russiannoseandthoselinesthatconnectyour
mouthtotherestofyourfaceandjointssometimes
softorjaggedandmybigthighsandtornupbroke
asslegsandpubicarchandexteriorovariesand
curlsbangsandbrokenhands, broken hands like a drowing by egon schiele.
...
This is my visual language because it's the way I'm most taught to think/feel about myself. The imagery and shapes and lines of womanness, it is spoken to me everywhere and is one thing always on my mind. No matter what, I/we/they am/are conscious of form, body-ness.

The next page:

When I feel,
I feel like I can feel in
shapes and muscles. Like my forearms are emotions, splayed and in front of me. Bodies, my body, is the only way I really know how to think/see/relate to the world. So maybe zine girls were just making commentary on objectification + moral mutilation of our bodies as they relate to ourselves. But me, and I think
Hannah Hoch, and Alice Neel, and Hannah Wilke, and Frida Kahlo, and Maria Lassnig, and the body-sculpture of Elsa Schiaparelli...I'd bet anything all their thoughts + ideas, like mine, go straight from ♥ to
shouldersbreastshipslegsfingerslipscheekbones
because it's the visual vocabulary we're given the most access to.
(A NYC Riot Grrl, unnamed so far, did a cover of a RG zine once that was a Knidian Torso of Aphrodite like so but her leg stumps turned toward you + became a halved apple with the seeds where her vag is. It's an all-time favorite work of art. I think, personally + in terms of feminist artists, classical icons of womanhood serve as the perfect vehicle to explore/express how we feel about ourselves.)

The next section in the zine is about how Hannah Hoch did this with her collages.

Here are some slides to support my thesis with little-to-no explanation:

Hannah Hoch, she of disembodied-dietrich:

Marlene, 1930

and-oh-so-many-legs-and-lips:

Grotesque, 1963

I'm just gonna link to some Hannah Wilke galleries, please spend some time with her.

Maria Lassnig calls self-portraits "Body-Awareness" paintings.

I have no idea when this was done!

Speaking of self-portrait, Cindy Sherman of course.

Untitled #188, 1989

Oh my god, Nan Goldin.

These are mine, describing how I feel in ovaries and broken arms and armpits, hairy armpits.

In Music Appreciation class, inevitably, on a kind-of-bad day

I will write more about this. About Louise and Elsa and Lee Miller and the lady-iconography of boys-club surrealists and how they all totally stole ideas from their women. About Frida, oh Frida. Even Georgia. Modersohn-Becker, the relationship between Elaine de Kooning and Willem's women. Dora Maar, the artist herself as much as the eternal icon of the elegantly mutilated feminine face. The vaginas in The Dinner Party. The tattoo I want to get that's Venus de Milo made out of tiny tiny text of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"--not a feminist work, but the closest a man has come to understanding my feminine neuroses, for sure. And "I fell right into the arms of Venus de Milo." About the difference between Ms. Hoch's use of Aphrodite's torso and Mr. Magritte's, and Man Ray May Have Been A Misogynist Like Everyone Else But His Works Are Some of My Favorite Feminist Imagery Ever. And about how I'm sick of people using "Giacometti" as an anorexia-descriptor, because it belies so much universal psychological fragility that was so human and bodyful in Alberto's skinny-sculptures. There will be a part two. At least.

This blog was supposed to just be about my book covers. But of course, like everything else, it's a fucking feminist manifesto.

But before I close, I have to reflect. An artist is dead, and it's always really hard for me when an artist dies. Because artists, generally, come dead. They were already dead! Sure I would have been devastated when Albers or Picasso or Calder or Lustig or Michelangelo died, if I was alive in 1979, 1973, 1976, 1955, or 1564. I've rarely had to watch them go. I kind of remember Oldenburg's death, I was too young for Motherwell or De Kooning's.

It's hard when artists die because you take them for granted. They are suspended in time, and when you have to lose one you remember that they're mortal. I'm glad to have been born after 1973, because I am too fragile to understand the mortality of Pablo Picasso.

When Louise died, I was shocked because I forgot she was real. And I think she thought was younger, if she was real at all. But I wasn't heartbroken, because her breathing and working was not so much a part of my everyday experiences. It's shocking to learn that artists breathed in the first place. Once their breath is gone, they're exactly where I expect them to be in the universe.

But then Lee McQueen died. I'll never forget that day. I don't think I witnessed a famous-person death in my lifetime that hit me harder. It was my Kennedy, and my Other Kennedy. First, because I've never had to lose an artist before. But also, because his breathing and working was, completely, something I took for granted as being a cemented piece of my universe. He came out with a collection every few months. His being alive did affect me every day, I think.

I cried for a long time. Designers never die.

But I won't cry for Louise, I'll just think about feminism and body parts and mothers and spiders.

I might cry when Hockney dies. He's the last of my old-time friends.

Cat Ladying--it was only a matter of time.

2010-05-31T00:34:00.004-04:00

So today I bought a ceramic cat.

Really, it's a pepper shaker. I don't know how old it is, as much of a midcentury wunderkind collector as I am, I don't know a goddamn thing about salt & pepper shakers. I think they're, generally, kind of a stupid thing to collect.
(me? judge people for irrational collecting? Ask me how many copies of Lolita I have. Ask me how many times I've read Lolita.*)

It's got a "Japan" sticker, placing it after 1952 ('cause it's not "occupied Japan," you know), and I don't think it's that old anyway.

I have to wonder, was the salt shaker white? Or were they designed for black-cat enthusiasts?

No matter, I just initiated my destiny of Cat Ladihood. As if my tapestries hadn't already marked me, I actually didn't own any ceramic cats. Until today. It was five cents at a garage sale.

Did that nickel make me more or less a caricature? A pepper shaker is really just too perfect of a geriatric cliche , right? Though I swear I'm an old person, I'll never be that old, salt-and-pepper-shaker old. ( But then, I did photograph my ceramic cat with my actual cat.) Yesterday, I was pointed towards the horizon. Today I am picnicking on the mountain. It's a whole new journey for me from now on.

Look at squid. She looks like she thinks she's being replaced for a slimmer model.

*Answers: 1) maybe three or so, two of which are the same edition, but one's a later printing of that edition, but it's in better condition, so I just had to keep all of them.
2) never. I actually can't even read. True story.

1960 or so

2010-05-28T18:29:00.002-04:00

Shish Kabobs and Royal-Ironstone "StarGlow"

Kuhlman in New Motion Picture Technology

2010-05-28T03:36:00.003-04:00

First.
I was googlin' about for a good page of Roy Kuhlmans to link to, and I stumbled on Gwarizm, a very excellent blog that features this page of Kuhlman-ing. He's interested mostly in the Beckett covers, and he features a lot of great covers that are hard to find around the web. I own a few of them, covet the rest. A few I've never seen--and I've seen lots of Kuhlmans.

Second.
He mentions Obscene, the documentary about Barney Rosset. It's a film I've wanted to see anyway: Of course, it's about the owner of Grove Press which, in my world, is the publishing company. Even if it wasn't for my lubsession with Mr. Kuhlman's covers and all things Evergreen, I mean, we're talking about the man who fought to publish Lady Chatterly and Tropic of Cancer. As a Person Who Doesn't Read All That Often, I love reading Henry Miller. A champion of perfect book design and raunchy modern literature? A man after my heart!

But now, I have to see this film. He features screen captures from a segment in the film where Alex Meillier animates Roy Kuhlman's covers. I don't know what to expect, other than dying of excitement! I'm renting the film soon, I'll give feedback and look around for the clip itself.

A Guide to Well Designed Products: Pt. 1(?): Essences: Motherwell & Lustig: Modernism & Abstraction: Form

2010-05-27T22:26:00.013-04:00

"On the book jacket, the essence of the book is translated by means of type selection, color and significant form into an immediate visual impression."

From "Alvin Lustig: His Work" in Everyday Art Quarterly, Spring 1950.
(I don't know who wrote this one.)

"The design of a book is an extremely subtle problem; as compared with the design of a magazine, it suggests rather the workings of a string quartet than those of a symphony orchestra. It involves a series of delicate relationships such as type selection, scale of type to the page, area of type on the page, width of margins, proportions of the book, choice of paper. These and similar nuances add up to a total that somehow must seem organically related to the material."

-Alvin Lustig, poet of margin, type & line
From his essay "Contemporary Book Design: 1" in Design Quarterly No. 31, 1954.
(I don't know if it's available for free on the internet, but I would highly recommend you hunt it down, oh faithful lovers of eloquent lines)

"The attitudes towards the surface on which the artist works, the use of the multiple axis, the breaking of the classical frame, new concepts of space--all of the working vocabulary of the contemporary architect, designer, painter or sculptor--have made their way, slowly and painfully, into the art of book design."

Hells yes, Alvin Lustig! You break that classical frame!

I love it when artists are so sincere and emotional when they write about things like margins and size-of-type.

Robert Motherwell, "Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 57," 1957-60

Read: Robert Motherwell's "On the Humanism of Abstraction," which isn't available on the internet to my knowledge but which is well excerpted here. Motherwell, being that eloquent master of, well, humanism and abstraction; that sincere and beautiful and ever-honest seer and prophet and voice of brutish nonfigural Gods like Pollock and so-on; his ideas are so applicable to us lovers of forms and lovers of things.

Let's talk about that.

I mean, really: Motherwell's black-on-white

(And oh you know the poetry of those shapes, you don't have to be told the title or the story about Federica Garcia Lorca or Francisco Franco or It was exactly five in the afternoon to know the power in his forms)

is no different from Alvin Lustig's "thin gothic" and all that negative space. His abstract expressionism is, inherently, the same as our abstract book designs. Obviously. Not that you didn't all go to design school and know all about Arnheim and Malevich and Lissitzky and all those other theorists, but it warrants being discussed.

Just like Motherwell said (it's hard to call him Motherwell--do you call your husband by his last name? Well, sometimes you do I guess...): all representation (mathematical, photographic, cinematic, literary, or in acrylic paint) is abstraction because, well, e=mc² is not energy rly and that painting of a tree is not akshully a tree. (This is paraphrasing. Contrary to some theories Robert Motherwell was not, in fact, a lolcat.) Anyway, so based on Platonic philosophy and all his aesthetic Stanford-Harvard Schoolin' and the merits of being One of the Greatest Painters Ever, R.M. argued that more abstraction=less complexity (a distillation, perhaps) and that a stupid Wyeth rowboat is still an abstraction just less of an abstraction than Mondrian. (And so there is no "realism," obviously, because it's a painting not a real rowboat, stupid.) Really, he talks about the misconception that a painting is created in an interchange between canvas, "nature," and painter. Really, he says, it's the relationship between medium, artist, and "reality." "Nature" is a construct that is no more true and real than all of the cultural context and cognitive space. So there is nothing more "honest" about a picture of a tree than there is about pictures of shapes--both reflect the artist's relationship with their own perception, thoughts, culture, reality, everything.

Then he brings in Plato. He basically said that things have an "essence" beyond their "real" being. (Or Whatever, I Hate Philosophy.) Motherwell said, then, that abstraction was a purer relationship between the canvas and the artist's concept of reality: it transcends the wordly "body" of stupid leafy things in order to represent the "essence" of that moment or relationship. It's more honest. So, even though Wyeth's stupid rowboat seems more "complex" and "real," it's actually less "real" by this reasoning than Mondrian's "squares."

"[Abstraction] can convey feeling in its 'essence' (in the Platonic sense) in a way that 'naturalism' cannot: it has far too many extraneous details, and loses its emphasis, its focus."

This is Mr. Motherwell's way of saying: My paintings are "more authentic" than Normal Rockwell's. And, true!

So that's what I'm saying, or, well, what Everyday Art Quarterly and Alvin Lustig were saying: that book design (and architecture and every other genre design) can/should/does distill meaning into form that conveys essence that transcends its opposite,which is pictures of trees and other stupid shit. Can you tell what kind of art I like? Hint: squares.

This is formalism! [Kind of] This is obvious! [To Lustig-lovers] I'm an amateur. [Clearly]

But I'm getting ahead of myself. In that essay, Lustig asserted that book design had a difficult time breaking that classical frame, of becoming more modernist and seeking pure essence in form. And that's true, right? There's a reason why Kuhlman's typographic inventions for Grove were so cutting-edge: they weren't being done. Literalism--and, by extension, Naturalism--prevailed in book covers. There was either traditionalist plainness on books, or there was...some sort of minimally-abstracted representation of what actually happens in the book. Pictures of boats, of foxy ladies doing things, of men in suits, that sort of thing.

Is this fair to say? It's an oversimplification, of course, but the reason I am so emotionally involved in these designers is because they do the same thing for me that Motherwell's canvases do to me: they convey a pure emotion ("emotion": a cheap word. "reality," is what I mean. or, you know, "essence"). And that emotion [should be/is] true to the aim of the literature it represents.

Okay, so I'm not sure that's a fair assessment. Alvin Lustig, of course, wanted his D.H. Lawrence loose-forms to convey...whatever it is that D.H. Lawrence wanted to convey, emotionally speaking. I assume it was respectably naughty. But we're talking about Alvin Lustig, poet-idealist-designer-ideal. He's not everyman, he's not everydesigner, he isn't a publisher or a marketer or New Directions Paperbooks as a company.

We're not so idealistic as to pretend that there isn't that lofty-but-probably-true-marketing element. After the war, you had all these people that had nice-looking houses and war-funded union-bolstered jobs in the suburbs. And people going to college. And America bombed out all these art schools in Europe so all these artists had to come to America, which was cool with us 'cause we wanted to be Best Country and win a Blue Ribbon in Free Art or whatever, so we gave Gyorgy Kepes and Josef Albers and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and All Those Other Guys jobs teaching Americans about the Graphic Design Thing they invented.

Anyway, so now America had middle-class folks who wanted middle-class cultural capital and we had all these Harvard-trained designer-types with all these ideas about letters and composition floating around their head, guys that knew Motherwell more than Wyeth. And the middle class folks wanted books, but they wanted some books that were Just For Them and they wanted to buy Lolita but they didn't want the obnoxious leatherbound hardcover or the low-brow pulp at the supermarket, so all these designer-types and all these publisher-types had to wrangle together all these forces and invent the Trade Paperback, stealing artists like Samuel Beckett and some other out-there guys from Europe (which didn't really have a culture anymore since we blew it up). And so we sold all these things to the new-moneyed middle classes to put on their Sears shelves and convince them they had culture and things.

That is to say: figuralism is for poor people, us middle classes "get" those square-paintings 'cause we have culture.

Disclaimer: my research is unsound.

These are the explorations I seek: to really deconstruct these assumptions about modernism and marketing. Like, where would George Salter fall in all of this? Surely he's a little pastoral, right?

I seek to fully understand the history of this nebulous "paperback" thing I so adore. To connect, in my world, my soul-wrenching melty-fluttery wholly human love for Motherwell's fields of black and white to Kuhlman's brilliant Beckett types and the perfection of spacial relationships that is my single true Lustig paperback. (I know, I only own one! My life is a sham, I cry every day). To validate my love for stupid things like the angle of a dresser's leg's in relation to the floor, or That Perfect Thin Gothic, or a watch or a shoe or a huge heapin' hunk of metal by Alexander Calder.

And to talk about it.

And to point out how fabulous the phrase "a guide to well-designed products" is. Clearly, the sapling of Design Quarterly totally gets me.

I'm sitting here next to Art in Theory 1900-2000. Malevich is calling me. And Albers. One of these days I'll know what I'm talking about, I swear. Please don't make fun of my 'cause I'm not a real designer-type.

I'll share my one-real-Lustig soon. And, you know, everything else.

In conclusion: Me-and-Motherwell-Sittin'-in-a-tree-(and-L-U-S-T-iiiii-G).

Tavi & Terry

2010-05-27T14:36:00.006-04:00

Tavi Gevinson wrote about the Terry Richardson Controversy (and the Do Terry Richardson's Photos Suck Controversy) better than I did.

Girrl knows what she's doing. I don't think I've read any better condemnation or discussion or musing on power-relations in fashion than her original post on the subject.

"It's fun! Uncle Terry said it's fun and everyone likes it!" Know who didn't say it's fun and everyone likes it? The people who had the opposite of fun and did not like it at all!

I wish I could be as great as she is.

Graphic design: visual comparisons

2010-05-22T21:08:00.004-04:00

I went to some book sales today. At one, I'm sure a graphic designer donated a lot of books, most of which I bought. You know, I frequently buy whole collections that belonged to people I never knew.

I will romanticize said probable-designer for a long time, just like I have mental ideas about the owners of all of my stamped mid-century lit crit books (the most beautiful books I own), or the set of 25 or so Time Reading Program editions I bought all at once, or even all of the Ian Fleming pulps that we bought (they were all the same edition, 17th printing) and then sold because we got sick of Ian Fleming pulps.

For the moment, a few of my discoveries:

Lucas's 1960s Ukrainian Military Polar Exploration watch shown for scale

Two books from John Lewis's Reinhold series of Studio Paperbacks about art, one on Typography by Lewis himself and the other called Graphic Design: visual comparisons, both printed in 1964.

I plan to read the first, because I'm more and more revealing myself an amateur in type, more and more lusting for type, and more and more liking the idea of sounding like I know what I'm talking about when I talk about typography.

The latter I read, it's mostly pictures. They're paired based on similar "problems," and show that different, equally valuable solutions can be found from each advertising problem (blah blah blah). The picture above shows pages around the theme of emotion, the left being a Swiss Müller-Brockmann poster ("less noise," perhaps?), the right is Saul Bass's 1958 logo for Bonjour Tristesse.

Graphic Design is a little heavy on the Fletcher/Forbes/Gill designs, owing mostly to the fact that those three wrote the book.

But I found this part of the introduction poignant and cute, o fellow lovers of the beautiful and vain and graphic mundane:

The vast majority of advertisements, posters, television commercials, booklets and other printed matter clutter our environment and insult our intelligence.
And besides, they are so monumentally boring.

We've all said this! Admit it. We're snobs, we're well-meaning, beauty-loving snobs in every generation.

But--

There are, however, some designers and even clients who insist that the public deserve and will respond to much higher standards in graphics. They are convinced, as Charlie Chaplin was convinced, that the best way to entertain the public is first to entertain oneself.

Let's look at some of these designers, from the back covers of these books:

Left: Lewis. Right: Fletcher, Forbes, and Gill, though I don't know which is which.

Midcentury designers: they're just like us! They have cats and houseplants, they answer phones and smoke cigarettes. And they look like Don Draper, and prob'ly get just as many ladies and have fabulous bachelor pads with really nice stereo consoles and Eames-y furniture and Albers prints. I was going to joke that the probably studied under Albers, but it turns out they did! Well, at least Alan Fletcher.

This is all to say that I'm in love with these men. I will pretend that whoever donated this lot of midcentury design books for my purchase was just like them. I will swoon about it.

Anyway, I picked up a few Graphis Annuals ('64-'65 and '65-'66) as well, and a similar Italian annual, Pubblicita in Italia 1966-67. They are nice to have and nice to look at and generally very nice, except that I'm getting very, very tired of Milton Glaser/Seymour Chwast/Pushpin-y 1960s rugged figuralism and cartoonish portraits and all that. But then again, these days I go to a museum and can hardly pay attention to anything that's actually even a picture of something. I'm a nonrepresentational kind of girl. Also, there's so much of it. Don't worry, though, I have a ton of Milton and Seymour and Pushpin, and I plan on scanning it all eventually.

But also, in the back of my mind I just wish that all of Graphis Annual was books, skip the ads and posters and everything else. However, both Graphis editions feature Paul Rand's work for IBM (the packaging here being The One, but he did a lot more work with them that's out there). Ughhgsdfhsldkjf, is all I have to say, because Paul Rand Typewriter Ribbon Packaging Design would be like the design equivalent of what prisoners ask for for their last supper. Like, dear Warden, if I could have anything before I die it would be lobster on a truffle steak burger with my grandma's mashed potatoes and a side of snozzberry pie, except dear God if I could have anything before I die it would be a Paul Rand-designed early 1960s set of typewriter ribbons. You know? And then you find out such a thing really exists, and then Graphis Annual won't stop taunting you with it, and you don't have it, so you just drool and cry all over Graphis Annual 1964 for the rest of your life.

Problem Schmoblem

2010-05-22T17:10:00.004-04:00

Bought some new books today. Squid does not approve.

"I paint with shapes" - Alexander Calder

2010-05-22T16:44:00.003-04:00

I went to Grand Rapids last night, this is the best I could get in a downpour driving by with the windows up. It's La Grande Vitesse, and you can still feel its force even through this, right? Alexander Calder, one-and-only.

Here's how it looks in full:

It photographs beautifully at night, but the only pictures I have of that are with me in front of them. Which is tacky, of course.

Some information:
Grand Rapids Sculptures, La Grande Vitesse
Wikipedia
Some really excellent photos of it
Flickr
40th Anniversary information

I went to Grand Rapids this past summer for its anniversary--the exhibitions at Grand Rapids Art Museum were amazing, as well as Fredrik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. If you're anywhere near the city, and you love you some Sandy Calder (which you should, if you love abstraction and design and life), you have to see this sculpture, and GRAM is phenomenal if you like Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, Albers, et cetera. It's, I think, my favorite small museum I've ever visited just because its collection is so well aligned with my interests. And the Meijer Gardens don't disappoint, and they always have tons of Calders! Except they have way too much Chihuly. (Favorite Artist---Least Favorite Artist: Alexander Calder---Dale Chihuly). For the anniversary they had a love of the original studies and sketches, as well as a lot of his work, and newspaper clippings from the piece's installation in the 1960s (spoiler: Modern Art was Controversial!), and even memorabilia from its opening, like the cocktail napkins and invitations. Anyway, this sounds like a travel review or something, but I'm just Calder Fangirling. Calder 4evr! (Also, I have an impressive Calder book collection. I will share them someday.)

Books?

2010-05-22T16:01:00.007-04:00

She loves books, too. NOT.

Terry & Tom & Juergen & Marc & Lola & Me

2010-05-21T15:21:00.006-04:00

Lily Donaldson for Terry Richardson in Peter Pilotto, I don't know what season, from Vogue, I don't remember when
So I had a dream about Terry Richardson. We were somewhere, doing something, I guess I was a model. There were other models. We were shooting, but eventually he got all Terry-Richardson-style-creepass on me, was chasing me around, giant prosthetic penis, you know, the usual. (Follow some of the TR controversy here).

The best part was the other model. It was like we were in on some secret together: yeah, we know Uncle Terry is a creepster. And we know this is all a sham, but we were powerful and cooler than everyone else and knew exactly what we were willing to do. (It reminded me of the relationship between Esther and Doreen early on in The Bell Jar, which probably isn't a coincidence, since I had just finished it that night.) I love that about models--the best of them are interesting and sophisticated and quietly aware, and in solidarity.

He was praising us, we were just standing there (I remember thinking, when do I tell him I'm not really even a model?). Until I made the wrong face or something, then he kept saying my name over and over again like, "Come on, now," like a dentist when you're a kid and you won't sit still. Or like your parents, when you're a kid and you won't sit still. Or when they're just disappointed in you.

So I rolled my eyes at him. And at that moment something glamorous must have happened and he said, "You're witnessing a genius in action." And I said--here's the real best part, the most badass thing I've never done--"Whatever, I like Juergen Teller better."

So Juergen Teller & Terry Richardson, and their associates, that's what this post is about.

I was showing a friend of mine after I woke up, how I really do love Juergen more. Here's the example I used:

TERRY RICHARDSON

alternately, TERRY RICHARDSON

and then,

JUERGEN TELLER

We could say it's a matter of taste, but really it's also very political. WHO IS BETTER AT BLEACHED-OUT PHOTOS THAT LOOK LIKE ECCENTRIC SEX TAPE STILLS THAT SUPPOSEDLY ARE RLY RLY "REVEALING" WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO MEAN "HONEST" BUT MOSTLY MEANS "FULL FRONTAL"? It's a battle of unnecessary nudity in perfume ads. It's a battle of insider fashion credibility and "creative genius." All I know is,

a) only one of these two photographers is largely accused of everything up to, including, and beyond rape during his sessions (hint: it's the one who thinks gurls luv to put their boyfrens' cologne in their pre-pubescent-shiny-vags, in an entirely un-ironic way).

b) Terry Richardson is like a vaguely more grown up Dov Charney. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I MEAN BY THIS, but I know you all understand. And nothing gives a feminist tha shivers like Mr. American Apparel.

c) JUERGEN TELLER IS A BETTER PHOTOGRAPHER. This is a caps-heavy post, you guys, because TRUTH NEEDS CAPS. I'm gonna let you guys decide, here are the sites of each: Mr. All-the-Models-Gave-Me-Handjobs,-Dontcha-Wanna-Be-Like-Kate-Moss-or-Whoever,-Little-Girl? or Mr. Would-Have-a-Catchier-Nickname-if-He-Wasn't-So-Nice, Teller (that gallery is limited, you can try a tumblr stream here). Oh, my bias is showing. But one of these photogs is all flash and glare (photo joke, you see). The other is pure...I don't know, I'm burnt out on photo puns. Something about white balance and light? And, as a lover of design, Mr. Teller is far more the master of negative space and typog. Which you will see in photos later in the post. (But, can we confirm that that design is actually his concept? I'm not sure if he has a design partner or not).

and, finally

d) TEAM MARC JACOBS FOREVER, fools!

You see, I believed all of this, and I still do. But today, this happened:

JUERGEN TELLER

So, that might change things. In its own stupid, quiet way, I sense this is going to be the fashion rag scandal-of-the-moment. (And day 1 says it already is: see here and here to begin with.)

But really, who doesn't think this is making fun of the Tom Ford ad? I need to believe my Juergen and my Marc are just being ironic, especially in light of the Terry controversy these days. I mean, we're talking about

he-of-Spongebob-tattoos

he-of-inverted-heels

(Spring or Fall 2008? I can't remember)

they-of-the-infamous-ads:

Cole Mohr in M-by-M--ladieswear! (Fall/Winter 08/09)

Marvel at that beautiful Gothic type and its perfect spacing!
(Does anyone know why sans-serifs were called Gothic? What does that even mean?)

and:

Posh, (Spring/Summer 08)

I said, POSH

Victoria Beckham for Marc Jacobs!

I mean, really, is this a creative duo that could take that "Bang" business seriously? No way.

But then I remembered that this happened:

Marc Jacobs shot by Terry Richardson for Harper's Bazaar, January 2009. What?

Well, then, we'll have to think about that one.

But in the end, it doesn't matter. I'm a Lola Girl through-and-through.

Marc & Juergen & Karlie Kloss & Lola

Look, I can do it too, Juergen & Uncle Terry:

Please expect more cheaply washed photos of my things in the future, dear audience. Margins, negative space, the whole deal.

This picture features some of my objects that I'll talk about someday. A German slide-viewer that deserves its own post. A Kodak Brownie Starmite from the early sixties. Most of the cameras in this house--and oh, there are gajillions--are not mine. I'm not that good at them, they're mostly my roommate/object-hound-other-half, Lucas's. He knows photography. But this was was mine because it's on a rope, and you know, I'm a girl, so I must like it 'cause it's jewelry. Plus it's great-looking. And weren't Brownies totally made for women anyway, since we need daintier models that we can wear and can't screw up too bad? Anyway, I got it at a garage sale and it still had frames left, I've been using them and I'm gonna see how they turn up or if it even works at all or what is on the film soon. And I'll eventually post on the camera collection, too. Also, there are some cat-eyes and a paper crown I made for Lucas for a Lady Gaga party.

And some art books with slides that I loved as a kid, and some of my kids' art text books. Those deserve their own feature.

back to something beautiful

2010-05-21T15:14:00.003-04:00

Homemade Pierogies & Turquoise Mel-a-Mine.

Object Wrath, Object Envy, Object Pride, Object Gluttony, Object Greed, but never Object Sloth

2010-05-21T01:40:00.006-04:00

Dear Salon.com,
I hate you for already using the column title "Object Lust." I don't even think you understand what it really means. No, Provencal parfum and organic groceries and Netflix are not the same. You will never know what Object Lust really is, the way a wide-set paperback can give me arrhythmia or that just-so coral lampshade or the Cold-War-Red enamel on that bracelet, 1965 maybe but not 1967. The perfect image and feel and meaning of every goddamn thing I own. No, no, you will never understand Object Lust like I do, Salon.com, and it isn't fair.

I need a new catchy phrase.

From here on, this blog is a battle to prove that I, in fact, rightfully am owed that titled. Watch it, Salon.com

Sincerely,
RGR

On Poetry

2010-05-20T23:31:00.014-04:00

Just an '81 Bantam edition

I don't really like Sylvia's poems--not really even "Ariel," or "Lady Lazarus," or "Daddy" or any of the famous ones. I'm a 21 year old woman and I just read The Bell Jar. I've read Catcher 7 times but I've only just read the Bell Jar. It's embarrassing--and here I'm publicizing it. It took me all these years to become the cliché I already was anyway, and, what do you know? I loved it to such a personal degree that I can't even really talk about it.

But her poems are too flowery--that is, too much about nature. They weren't too flowery in terms of words, no, I think she could have used a few more flowers. I don't like poems with too few words. I don't like poems with direct meaning. I don't like poems about plants. No classical timeless references, please.
( and I do mean you, too, Mr. Pound, that means no Latin whatsoever. I only like you in two lines:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.

---no monolithic symbols & archetypes of death. No trees. Oddly enough, I wrote that from memory. I know, now, that it's "petals" but I wrote "pedals" at first. I'd much rather a poem about machinery than plantlife.)

But anyway, the words. I like poetry with good sounds, and so many words that every concept is completely abstract but also concretely specific, a combination of sense and forces that only one specific poet could ever have thought it. That's why I like Lester, Henry, T.S.

--Oh, T.S. You asked. "Doesn't he bullshit Latin? And reference Polonious? "Almost, at times, the Fool?" That business about Lazarus (Lazarus, always Lazarus, blah blah) and Heads on Platters?
Oh, right. Well. You'd think I wouldn't like T.S. Eliot. But first of all, I like rhymes. I don't like limerick but I like rhythm. I like:

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells.

I like rhythm, especially in Modernist work, because it's like a way to add even more specificity to an ultra-specific thing, to describe it even more closely through its shape and sound and not just words. The specificity here lies not just in the words and their meanings, but a combination that transcends given meanings (I mean, what, really, is a sawdust restaurant?). And then, a composition that creates shape and sound, and that sound bears its own significance (tell me those words don't tumble out your teeth in the same formation that he stumbled down those streets. Tell me that rhythm isn't an adjective and a verb.)

That's why I don't love Syvlia's poems as much as her novel. Because they rely too heavily on the words and their universal meanings, instead of forging foreign meanings from taken-for-granted-English-words and then weighing the space in between them and around them, like T.S. did. There is no translation in good literature and good poetry. There is only convenyence of instant and atmosphere.

That makes sense, doesn't it? I collect all these thousands of books, but I never have time to read. But I love art, and book art is so much my favorite. I love art and design and non-figuralism because sometimes you need more than just the predetermined sets of symbols and meanings, more than a cache of recognized iconography. Sometimes the best way to say exactly specifically what you're trying to say is with a shape or lists of seemingly dischordant objects or the way words just sound on your tongue or the noise of something breaking on a breaking tape recorder. Or whatever. Is that formalism?

So for every "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,"

(Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well)

there is

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

Okay, okay, so it's a matter of taste--and yeah, I like rhymes. But you can never convince me that

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows

is as original or interesting or capitivating or ultimately specific and thus completely human, completely intrinsically formalistically meaningful even though it could only have ever come from the brain of one Northern Irishman in the sixties, as:

Hey love, you forgot your glove
and the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves to love that loves to love to love that loves to love the glove

from "Madame George," by Van Morrison. And, to be fair, I've hardly transcribed it right. I don't think anyone has. (Listen here.)

And I can't take credit for writing about its significance--that credit goes to Lester Bangs himself (here). See him compare "Astral Weeks" to Lorca like I compare "Madame George" to Eliot. At the end of the day, I think I compare everything to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

That being said, I liked this one Sylvia poem a lot because it is juvenile and rhymes and is clustered with specific words.
(So sue me, I like wordy modernist beat-trash.)
It's called "Alicante Lullaby:"

In Alicante they bowl the barrels
Bumblingly over the nubs of the cobbles
Past the yellow-paella eateries,
Below the ramshackle back-alley balconies,
While the cocks and hens
In the roofgardens
Scuttle repose with crowns and cackles.

It's kind of like "Prufrock," it's muddled and noisy and full of instant and, to a degree, gesture. Moment and gesture and the meaning they carry, through their own form, is what I love and it's what I love in The Bell Jar. But there's not so much of it in "Lady Lazarus."

Ted Hughes said she used the Thesaurus too much. He was right, even though he meant it in the misogynistic my-woman-can't-make-poems-as-good-as-she-can-make-babies and aw-that's-cute-honey-tell-me-more-about-the-flowers-i'll-put-it-on-the-fridge kind of way.
But anyway, I enjoyed this one.

The more I write about how I don't really like Sylvia's poems, the more I kind of like Sylvia's poems. As above, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is my favorite poem, practically my favorite thing. I like everything I've said already, but I also really like literature that is self-conscious and uses the body as medium and expression ("I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled" is, in fact, my all-time favorite line). I like gestures in literature (read: the spiritual meanings of holding ash trays in Salinger's works). I like "women's" stuff. I do. And I like books about the endless feeling of finity within infinity, like in "Prufrock," and projecting the great spiritual questions onto the mundane objects--the ashtrays, the peaches, the paperbacks and the body parts. This is all so, so, Bell Jar, especially the first half.

It's true that "Lady Lazarus" is a little heavy-handed. I admit I (somewhat unfairly) would say as much about any poem so bluntly about suicide. (And words like "annihilate" and "flesh" never help). But there are "Prufrock" moments in "Lazarus:"

The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.

and

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

and I also like

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

(Okay, so maybe that last one isn't so much "Prufrock" as it is just badass.)

So I am open to being convinced, I love to see "Prufrock" in other places. Maybe I will love Sylvia's poems.

And, reading it again, I do love "Daddy."

Maybe someday I'll know why, but I'm not as good at reading poems as I am at understanding the design of books with poems in them. And, soon, I'll share some beautiful editions I have of T.S. Eliot and many more. But does this mean I shouldn't spend a gajillion dollars on that gorgeous first edition of Ariel?

Before I close, though, Wikipedia's page on The Bell Jar features the original British edition under her pseudonym, Victoria Lucas. Can we talk about how gorgeous an edition it is?

Do we know who designed it? Internet tells me it's a guy named Thomas Simmonds. A Flickr search introduced me to a new collector, user Bellacquashua, whose sets are beautiful and contain many things I also own and also many Alvin Lustig books I cry about not owning every day. OH PLEASE LET ME MAKE EVERY POST ABOUT ALVIN LUSTIG.

The works I talked about were:
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, which was published in 1963 (but not in America until the early 70s)
Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro," from 1913
Catcher in the Rye, JD 1951
Sylvia's "Ariel," "Lady Lazarus," "Daddy," all of which were published in Ariel in 1965
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot, 1915 or so
"Madame George" by Van Morrison, 1968
"Astral Weeks" by Lester Bangs, written in 1979 (and it's included in his anthology Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

America's Quality Paperback Series

2010-05-19T22:42:00.006-04:00

Now, some titles from the Scribner Library.

SL-45, dated 1952 & 1953 but I know that SL-1 (Gatsby) in the paperback series wasn't published until 1960, along with 20 other paperback titles, according to the Scribner Chronology.

Again, no date. I have other Scribner editions which I'll share periodically, and hope to date most of them and figure out the corrolation between liney-pattern/no-liney-pattern, color (teal or red or blue, as far as I've seen), and dates.

That red. (The midcentury red I've started to discuss here.) I won't call it Cold-War just-red. I do think this is one of those times where the mid-century is an aged effect. Mr. Scrinber, he was an upright man, and I'm not sure he would have gone for this modernist Not-Quite-Coral business. No, paperbacks were hard enough for him to stomach (according to this House of Scribner History). Any red, I'm sure, was originally true-upright-regular-red. Any abstraction in these covers is the dignified, Lolita minimalist style, not the Kuhlman-Lustig-Rand brand of subversive 'modern art.' Just look through the images in the Chronology--this was an instutition that represented nice, American mostly-figural traditional Salter-esque pastoralism. These books were not for Evergreen readers or Calder Reds.

But then, it is Joyce Crit. Is there anything more midcentury modern than that?

Regardless, what a beautiful collection--especially on a shelf, together, in their 60s-grey-and-compliments, perfectly aligned as standardized trade paperback size. I'll share more, and a picture of how nice they look on a shelf!

For That Not-Quite Coral, or, all those yr-to-yr details we die for

2010-05-19T17:21:00.019-04:00

I will work on the layout. It's a little too Campbell's Pop, which is to say not my kind of Pop. But I'm working on it.

It's the red, right? Let's talk about the color red. Tell me you can tell that that isn't Warhol's red as much as it's that indeterminate red red that belongs, universally, to the 1950s. That red that maybe became a mod poppy red over the course of the 1960s (Notably, like beloved Pacific Southwest Airlines girls, 1973). Or maybe like Calder red, the most loving (and mid-century) color around. There is that color that is unmistakably "vintage," the color of Modernism. And it looks great on books.

So let's talk about some of those Cold-War-Not-Quite-Coral Calderesque red red books.

First, a Meridian Book. 1962, and I don't think I need to explain why 1962's colors are not 1960s colors, per se.

Oh wait, do I?

Maybe I'm talking about the pre-Cuban Missile Crisis comfort, or maybe it's something less cliché. But either way, 1962 is not 1963 is not, for sure, 1967 and is not 32 Campbell's Soup Cans. (which were finished, however, in 1962. But it's not the same!)

Some reading on aesthetic details & mid-century accuracy:
Typeface Mad Men Controversy (for those who love Kuhlman love arguing about Helvetica, amirite?) (incidentally, this article steered me right clear of Arial in making this layout. And, actually, in general)

and, NYT on attention to "throwaway" details (alas, not the article I remember reading an article with Amy Wells or Janie Bryant or someone, explaining the way that secretary girls were in '59 patterns while the ad wives were in '62 Vogue, or whatever. Also, on that note, Tom & Lorenzo's pieces on what's becoming every outfit on that show.)

Mad Men: Legitimizing, Naturalizing, and Explaining My Neuroses to Regular People since 2007.

So anyway, I was saying, we all know 1962 red is a whole different story than 1967 red or Warhol red or anything. And here is the glorious red itself:

Maybe a little bolder after scanning, but I'm sure you understand.

I concede, though: In then end, is there anything more 1960s then that phrase? "After Alienation"? (My high school lit teacher would say so.)

It's not credited, which is a shame. Any clues? It seems Elaine Lustig designed for Meridian until 1961, but no, I don't think this is Elaine's (and wishful thinking that would be).

In any case, the universe that is that unmatched red, perfect red. I was thinking, is this a red that comes with age? Do I associate it with an era just because, after 50 years, that's what all reds have become? I doubt it, my other red-red books say otherwise. No, we're just looking at a time when there were enough people gainfully employed in the US that just knew that ugly primary red just would not do, at least not with that blue, and not for the educated masses of trade-paperback lit-theory consumers. People that spoke that language.

And all I know, Cold-War red and perfect denim blue and aged-off-white in the wide margins is so perfect and so 1962.

I'm not a real designer or anything, but can we talk about margins for a second? Have a look:

I don't think it's just me. How can an inch of space on the bottom be so sexy? Not to be that person or anything, but man, the good old days. It's just not the same since the implimentation of the bar code, amirite? Negative space. Classic.

I was going to introduce some of my Scribner Library collection. But this is enough, I imagine. In closing:

Awww.

Through the Keyhole, a lovesong to NC1882 .P73 2001

2010-05-16T16:29:00.004-04:00

When I was working in the art library I saw the due date was in October. Months ago. I don't know who you are but your lending period tells me that you are faculty or graduate. Are there art history graduate students? Not now, I don't think. And surely anyone disserting, or whatever, about book covers would have been introduced to me. No, no, likely you're a professor. Probably not even an art professor or a lit professor, probably just sosh or food science or something. You just have a hobby. In any case, I never needed it bad enough to recall it, exactly, but I want this book. And, just as importantly, I want to know who has had it checked out all year.

Anyway, all I'm saying is, I am going to buy this book:

And PS I was looking at the cover of the book about book covers and wondering how many editions featured on the cover I own (answer: some) and I was thinking oh where oh where can I buy that 1965 (6?) edition of Ariel designed by (it seems) Berthold Wolpe and was it featured in paperback and can o can I find a first paperback edition of Ariel that looks like that and why o why do I only have the "Restored Edition." ?.