Miss Representation dumps a scalding hot cup of realism in the Port Authority’s lap by asking if their crown jewel–and the only thing the PA’s obduracy hasn’t botched so far–the Calatrava “transit hub”, isn’t just a crown roast instead.
The official line, of course, is that everything’s going smoothly, no hitches, what? but as MR points out, that’s demonstrably not possible, given the degree of flux and uncertainty surrounding all the other elements of the site redevelopment.
And then, on its face, he says, the design seems guaranteed to fail as anything other than a pompous, largely superfluous “glass hat.” And we know Calatrava’s not above building one of those, given budget enough and a seducibly ignoramic client.
I don’t see how ‘roof of bones’ won’t be the inevitable epithet. [miss representation]
previously: How is this Calatrava Moment different from all other Calatrava Moments?
Hiroshi Sugimoto: The Kultureflash Interview
Sherman Sam interviews the artist Hiroshi Sugimoto about his London show at Gagosian. Sugimoto’s latest works, originally shown at the Fondation Cartier, are photographs of early 20th-century mathematical and mechanical study models from the collection of Tokyo University.
Sugimoto provides some more background on the models, which were also photographed by Man Ray and studied–in their day, in the 1910’s and 20’s–by Duchamp, Brancusi, and others.
By happy coincidence, the same series are on view at Sonnabend until June 11.
Artworker of the Week: Hiroshi Sugimoto [kultureflash]
previously: On Math & Art in France
What Makes You So Special?
Just as there’s hardly an actor/waiter left in New York who hasn’t made rent by doing a couple day’s work on some Law & Order spin-off or other as an at-first tearful but increasingly suspecious relative or a neighbor who conveniently pins down the time of death by recounting what they were watching on TV, there’s hardly a blogger left in the city who hasn’t had to feign interest in Radar Magazine and cop to a fondness for the hard stuff while doing a “guest-editor” stint at some Gawker Media blog or other.
Forget S.I. Newhouse, Nick’s clearly on his way to becoming the Dick Wolf of the blogosphere, increasingly intdistinguishable spin-offs and all.
Come to think of it, Dickwolfer kinda sounds like a Gawker Media title already. Come to think of it. heh.
Memo to Diane Neal: Who are you again? [gawker.com]
GET YOUR 15 MINUTES! [radarmagazine.com]
Blogging, as in Slogging [nyt on guest-blogging, via gawker, please make me pure.]
[but not yet. 5/18 update with the best disclaimer ever: “(Disclaimer: Everybody involved in the Gawker-Radar spat works for or with everybody else involved, including The Observer.)”]
2005-05-23, This Week In The New Yorker
Issue of 2005-05-23
Posted 2005-05-16
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT/ BLAIR’S BUSHY TAIL/ Hendrik Hertzberg on Tony Blair’s shrinking majority.
DEPT. OF YESTERYEAR/ U.N. ON ICE/ Nick Paumgarten on the U.N.’s potential move to the outer boroughs.
STREET LIFE/ TREE COUNT/ Andy Young on cataloguing Manhattan’s flora.
ICONS/ MR. G./ Adam Green on Robert Goulet, at seventy-one.
DEPT. OF INSPIRATION/ WRITERS AT WORK/ Ben McGrath on special work spaces for writers, in Queens.
A REPORTER AT LARGE/ Michael Specter/ Higher Risk/ Why H.I.V. rates are rising among gay men.
SHOUTS & MURMURS/ Paul Rudnick/ A Mother’s Story
THE SPORTING SCENE/ Ben McGrath/ Teen Spirit/ The trials of being an American soccer star.
ANNALS OF ESPIONAGE/ Thomas A. Bass/ The Spy Who Loved Us/ The double life of a Vietnamese patriot.
PROFILES/ Calvin Tomkins/ Everything in Sight/ Robert Rauschenberg’s big new work.
FICTION/ Jonathan Franzen/ “Two’s Company”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS/ Joshua Micah Marshall/ National Treasure/ In the year 1776, character was destiny.
IN FASHION/ Judith Thurman/ Scenes From a Marriage/ The House of Chanel at the Met.
ON TELEVISION/ Nancy Franklin/ Magical Mystery Tour/ Forty-eight castaways win the prime-time challenge.
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ Anthony Lane/ Space Case/ “Star Wars: Episode III.”
FROM THE ARCHIVE
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ Galaxy Crisis/ Penelope Gilliatt/ A consideration of the human fascination with extraterrestrial life, complete with an R2-D2 namecheck/ Issue of 1977-06-13
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ Contrasts/ Pauline Kael considers the first “Star Wars” [wait, almost four months later? slacker. -greg]/ Issue of 1977-09-26
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Who Makes Movies? Well, Fluffers, For One.
Personally, every time I see those “Who Makes Movies?” spots where some lowly crew member is trotted out to say how Internet pirates are taking food out of his dyslexic kid’s mouth, I want to say, “Actually, it’s Canadians who are taking your job, pal, thanks to the studios moving over $10 billion worth of production-related economic activity out of the US in pursuit of lower wages, more pliable unions, and government-funded tax incentives. Oh, and they’re the same studios who are funding these MPAA commercials and claiming that “potential worldwide losses” from “piracy” “could” exceed $3 billion a year.
Needless to say, the folks behind these three spoof spots have a funnier time of it.
Check out “Zombies make movies,” “Script doctors make movies,” and “Fluffers make movies” at R4NT Magazine. [R4NT.com, via boingboing]
Yeah, but who makes points on gross? [lowculture.com, 11/03, yes, this whole MPAA thing is getting old.]
Film & Television Action Committee [ftacusa.com]
Serra Documentary At MIT 5/18
Director Alberta Chu’s 2003 documentary, Seeing The Landscape: Richard Serra: Tuhirangi Contour follows the artist’s production of a massive, 843-foot steel wall piece in New Zealand. Here’s a line from the synopsis: “A dramatic five years in the making, the Tuhirangi Contour finds Serra’s artistic vision at odds with his patron, his materials, his environment, and the harsh realities of physics.”
While I’m sure there’ll be a lot of conflict, I don’t think there’s much suspense about who prevails here. Serra’s whole artistic practice is built around pushing and expanding his understanding of his materials and the “harsh realities of physics,” and from what I understand of his commission agreements, a patron who stays at odds with the artist can very quickly find himself without an artist to be at odds with.
Still, this sounds like a great way to spend an evening: The film screens Wed. 5/18 at 7pm at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center. Chu will be present to discuss the work.
Buy Te Tuhirangi Contour, a book of photos documenting the finished work by Serra and Dirk Reinartz
On Bullshit and The Getty
[2018 UPDATE: In 2018 The New York Times reports that five women who worked with Meier, either at his firm or as a contractor, have come forward to say the architect made aggressive and unwanted sexual advances and propositions to them. The report also makes painfully clear that Meier’s behavior was widely known for a long time, and that his colleagues and partners did basically nothing to stop it beyond occasionally warning young employees to not find themselves alone with him. This update has been added to every post on greg.org pertaining to Meier or his work.]
Michael Bierut’s excellent post on design bullshit has gotten a lot of attention. He starts by quoting the artist/gardner Robert Irwin, who hilariously calls bullshit on the man who would be king Of the Getty hill, architect Richard Meier, in a Getty-produced documentary, Concert of Wills. It’s a startling moment in what’s otherwise a typically institution-stroking hagiography of the “The travertine selected was from Michelangelo’s quarry” variety.
If it’s bullshit Irwin, wanted, Meier apparently thought, it’s bullshit he got. To demarcate where the architect’s work stops and the flaky artist’s landscaping starts, Meier created what is essentially a travertine toilet bowl to empty the placid fountains of his pristine, self-conscious Acropolis. It literally sounds like a giant is taking a pee. Forever.
It’s an at-once hilarious and unbelievably petty gesture. [And as I type this, I’d be even happier to find out the fountain was actually Irwin’s backhanded joke. As if he turned Meier’s bullshit into the fertilizer for his garden.] As it is, Irwin’s baroque landscape can’t defuse the rest of the Getty’s overbearing sense of self-importance.
Don’t get me wrong, I like it fine, and there’s some hand-rubbed plaster on some of those gallery walls I’d love to have myself. But I’ve always felt the ratio of building to art–of building to life–seemed wildly out of whack there.
It doesn’t help, of course, that on my first visit, I watched someone collapse in the main rotunda. With lightning efficiency, security guards hustled the portly man out of sight. They laid him on the ground behind one of the large stone benches at the entryway and radioed around frantically, while the man’s companions tried reviving him. Transfixed, I watched the scene for nearly 20 minutes as a circle of guards shielded the man–who turned out to have a heart condition–from view until the ambulan–oh, wait, that’s not an ambulance, that’s a Getty security van they’re loading him into. They’re not letting the ambulance up the hill, they’re shuttling him down to it.
I made a note to myself then not to die in a mausoleum. Well. That’s a cheery way to start the day. Have a great weekend!
Introducing The Lucas, The Dark Side of Film Rating
Dale Peck thoughtfully turns is hatcheting attentions from things that people should care about but don’t (books) to things they shouldn’t care about but do (movies).
And what he finds is, the current star-based movie rating system is inadequately and overly generous; it needs “a negative unit of measurement to warn viewers away,” a Dark Side, if you will.
Naturally, his proposal is based on things people shouldn’t care about and don’t (the ‘new’ Star Wars movies).
Go to his NY Observer article and see how, exactly, his new unit of evil film measure, The Lucas, works.
[But go soon. Here, I thought that the NYO had just bunged up their search function, gone even cheaper and crappier with their site by adding free/slow-to-update Google search, and given up on ever publishing persistent links to their stories, when in fact, they’ve done all that and started charging money for the stories you can’t find in the first place.]
The First Rule Of Empire Club
“Don’t ask Nick Denton, publisher of Gawker Media and its growing list of popular Web logs, about his empire…
…If his reluctance to be interviewed is theater, it is deft theater.”
– Excerpted from Nick’s eleventh NYT profile.
A Blog Revolution? Get a Grip [nyt, via memefirst, were the NYT’s ‘deft theater’ might be called The George Lucas School Of Boy, Do We Know How This Story’ll Turn Out Acting]
Architecture: In The Gutter
Lockhart Steele, of the real estate blogging empire Steeles, has put architects in their place: The Gutter, a new sub-blog of Curbed.
“Ill-mannered commentary on the architectural arts” [gutter.curbed.com]
Elmgreen + Dragset + Me: The Not-Fit-To-Print Interview
Right after their installation, End Station, opened at the Bohen Foundation (415 West 13th Street, Tu-Sa 12-5), I did a back and forth email interview with Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset for the NY Times. The paper ended up reviewing the installation and not using this piece [I’ll get you, Roberta Smith! And your little– oh, never mind.], so here it is in its entirety, cleaned it up a bit, but with all my essay questions in their full, self-important glory.
Continue reading “Elmgreen + Dragset + Me: The Not-Fit-To-Print Interview”
WTC? What WTC? I Don’t See Any WTC
According to Alex Frangos’ report in the Wall Street Journal, roughly $1.8 billion of the $4.6 billion insurance proceeds for the WTC have been spent so far on things like buyouts (is that Westfield, the Autralian mall company that used to have the retail rights?) and $15 million/year in management fees for Larry Silverstein. [Not mentioned: the eight figure monthly lease payments Silverstein pays to the Port Authority to stay in the game.]
What IS mentioned, though, is Silverstein’s heartfelt but hmm, never-mentioned-until-now love of Tribeca:
To woo tenants, Silverstein Properties is trying to distance the building from the image of the Trade Center, though it literally sits on the site’s edge. Instead of 7 World Trade Center, the building will be marketed under a newly created street address, 250 Greenwich St. The idea, according to someone familiar with the matter is to emphasize the building’s proximity to TriBeCa, the trendy neighborhood to the north. It’s also a tacit admission, according to real-estate executives, that the World Trade Center name scares prospective tenants.
Showdown at Ground Zero [wsj, sub. req.]
The Gates, for the sake of argument, fine: $20 million
the 2+ month gap between posts on banker/nude male swimer Dana Vachon’s blog/: $650,000
Vachon’s last post, an interview with Christo & Jeanne-Claude: priceless.
“Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”
After a couple of months of interviews and trying to wrap my head around the question of why there were no expensive women artists, I read Linda Nochlin’s seminal 1972 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” It was tremendously prescient and helpful; many of the explanations people had given me for why women’s art wasn’t, in fact, undervalued–or why it shouldn’t be selling for more–were identical to the rationales Nochlin laid out–and then demolished–thirty years ago.
When I spoke with Prof. Nochlin, she was much more optimistic, though; from where she sees it, in the art history world–she’s a professor at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, and is co-curating an upcoming show of feminist art at the Brooklyn Museum with Maura Reilly–things have improved dramatically since she wrote “WHTBNGWA?” The number women making and showing art have increased; curators and critics and historians are paying them equal (or requisite) attention; and she never hears her current crops of students qualify a work based on the artist’s gender, now it’s really about the work.
So you’ve come a long way, baby, I guess.
“Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” by Linda Nochlin
Edward Jay Epstein, Hollywood Accountant
Move over, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
In his article in Slate, “Paranoia for Fun and Profit: How Disney and Michael Moore cleaned up on Fahrenheit 9/11”, Epstein shows how Moore played up Disney’s refusal to distribute his Cannes-winning doc, and how Disney happily extracted some serious participation–they netted $75 million of the film’s $228 million worldwide box office, plus another $3mm for DVD royalties– from the distributors they “sold” it to.
Given Disney’s ongoing interest F9/11‘s performance, it sounds more accurate, if not technically true, to say they didn’t “sell” the film, so much as they outsourced distribution.
But Epstein’s talking about the accounting world’s reality, where, as he’s written previously, Hollywood studio films are all German productions now.
As for Moore, he made at least $27 million, not counting what he may have pocketed for producing the film itself (Epstein notes that it cost far less to make than the $6 million Miramax fronted for production, not including Moore’s acting, producing, writing, and directing fees. [Of course, clearing the music could’ve eaten up that much, too, so who can say?])
Next on Epstein’s list (I hope): “Sadistic Religiosity and Jew-baiting for Fun and Profit: How, verily, Mel Gibson got is reward from The Passion”