A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney

Source: http://www.martingayford.com/

I just finished this book, and now I am in love. With everything. David Hockney of course, but also the "author" Martin Gayford. I put author in quotes there because he is half the conversation. The book is Hockney chatting with Gayford, in a series of conversations that seem to span years. Gayford is a great narrator- he knows a lot about Hockney and he knows art and he knows how to open the whole subject up, in an easy way.

One of the simple lessons to walk away from reading this book with, is simply that an interest in everything is a great thing to cultivate. I was reminded of that because today I read Steve Job's eulogy by his sister- she talked about how he was interested in boat building, Rothko paintings, architecture, etc, even as he worked diligently at being a computer genius. Hockney is the same kind of person- he's 74, and he's still picking up new tricks, like his iPad paintings. He's really into opera, and does set design, and that informs his work on perspective and landscapes, he's interested in films and driving and so he makes films and drives around looking at things, and that leads him to bigger paintings,  his interests in photography push him to figure out how the old masters used camera obscura- everything he turns his brain towards ultimately connects back to the art he makes.

And in A Bigger Message, Gayford really shows you the vastness of the world between David Hockney's ears, with such incredible economy. The book is not long or intimidating, but it's just jam-packed with ideas and a sense of the whole life of the man, as he looks back on it now. It's amazing to see how much this man's life is like a fuge- all the things that may have seemed like random avenues when he was younger, all fit together nicely, and create an overwhelming sense of who David Hockney is now.

I've been looking at a lot of Hockney as I try and figure out the perspective on my third panel of my triptych. I've mostly finished panel one, and I'm saving panel two for the end, so I'm on panel 3 right now. It's been a long couple of months of travel, far too far away from the studio for my comfort, but in the meantime it has been a fertile time for thinking, about how to accomplish the perspectivial challenges presented by the third panel. All of the panels are too long and tall to make a comfortable shape to work with, so they're really pushing me to an interesting place. Panel 3 is especially evil as a long tall shape is exactly the wrong way to do a landscape. But if you look at Hockney, he's really a genuis with making perspective work even when it's all wrong, something he learned partially from Chinese scrolls. I hope to see "A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China" soon.

(Untitled) A Movie Starring Adam Goldberg and Other Reasons to Love It.

Image Source: atnzone.com

Occasionally a movie will wash up on the shores of the video island that is Netflix Instant, and despite never having heard of it, you watch it. Most of the time it's rubbish. Netflix has some very strange metrics that determine what you like.* As best I can tell this movie was picked for me because I watch movies about art, and a movie with Adam Goldberg in it. This one time, a point to Netflix, because this was spot on. Just this once though Netflix, because I'm still mad about Easy A, which was sheer dreck.

So anyway. (Untitled). A film title that is very hard to google, since the volume of searchable art with the title (Untitled) clogs up the internet pipes. It came out in 2009, and I never heard anything about it. Which is simply crazy pants, because all my art buddies talk about Art School Confidential and we love it like we love our slightly demented relatives, simply because it's ours, filled with in-jokes, part of the family, despite the poor pacing and slightly off performances. 

I think there's a world of things I could say about Adam Goldberg. I adore him, for his willingness to be so completely unlovable. People compare him to Woody Allen all the time, but there's a crucial difference. Woody Allen was born looking like the scrotum of an elephant. (Don't google that. I did, and it turns out elephants don't have a scrotum, but there are still some choice images on the web under "elephant's scrotum")**. So Woody Allen didn't exactly have a choice in life. He could never have been Ryan Gosling or Robert Redford. Adam Goldberg on the other hand is a very attractive man. He is tall with a sexy face and from 2 Days In Paris, you know he could do shirtless scenes if he were willing to wax himself up (Wax himself down?). Basically the man has talent and looks, instead of just neurosis and an inappropriate relationship with his stepdaughter. That he chooses so consistently to make unknown little films in which he plays demented man of the aughts to the hilt, is impressive at least to me. But I think I might be the only person on the planet who thinks 2 Days in Paris is the most brilliant romantic film ever.

(Untitled) makes great use of Goldberg's patented scowl. Goldberg is a (all the other reviews I've seen are calling him an avant-garde composer) what I'm going to call an abstract musician. He makes these crazy "music" pieces full of chains falling in a bucket, and sobbing women, that are pretty detestable. Meanwhile his brother is a painter who makes tons of money as a commericially successful painter of circles that hang by the dozens in hotel lobbies. Both Goldberg's character and his brother end up intersecting with the world of visual art, through the brother's dealer, played by Marley Shelton, who looks distractingly like Heather Graham. What draws Golberg to Shelton is her noisy clothing, which he wants to feature in one of his pieces. 

The plot is a good little plot. I'm not going to spoil it by talking too much about it, but in the limited time frame of the movie, they really do skewer all sides of the art world- the commercial parts, the bullshit parts, and the mystifying parts. There's a taxidermy artist who seems like a blatant Damien Hirst shoutout, and what facebook tells me are real Murakami and Christopher Wool pieces hiding above and next to the bed. 

At the same time, the movie isn't mean, and that's why its so very good. Just like there's real art mixed into the prop art in the movie, there's some real love for art mixed in with the legitimate exasperation. In between the horrifying and uncomfortable "compositions" that Goldberg's character makes, there's some really beautiful attention to sound happening. I would describe myself as much more interested in visual art than sound, but over the course of the movie, I found myself really listening to the sounds. The movie does a subtle job of drawing you in with a premise that the main character makes music that can't be borne or listened to, and then the bait in switch happens where you become so very conscious to the sounds going on around the action, that you actually listen to the whole thing as a soundtrack, and then like a mobius strip, there you are, proving his point. 

The movie even manages to give just about everyone a happy ending, and yet makes no one a hero. That may make it one of the first movies I've seen about an artist that doesn't take a delicious pleasure in seeing the main character turn into an alcoholic/wifebeating/cheating/evil person, requiring that the artist become a martyr and take a well deserved fall, to be worthy of our approval in the end. 

So watch (Untitled), because if nothing else, you already read this far in my review, so I know you have time to kill. 

*I've got a particular bone to pick with the "separate but equal" policy they apply to movies starring a non-white cast. If you watch one rom-com with black main characters, Netflix instant will give you a recommendation pile called something totally BS like, "urban romantic comedies (here's a hint: "urban" is a code word for "Not WHITE!!"). Heaven forbid they stop segregating the rom-coms. Then I might just judge them on artistic merits alone, instead of the average skin tone of the leads. Luckily once you watch two more movies with white leads, the "urban" movies get dropped. In case you can't tell, this is what my seething rage sarcasm sounds like. 

P.S. This particular white girl really liked "I'm Through With White Girls". It's about a man coming to terms with commitment and his excuses. I was reminded a bit of High Fidelity, but this came with a much sexier pair of leads and an amazing scene showcasing the world's worst dancing ever. 

** Pretty sure my girl C caused me to think of the term elephant scrotum.

Review Los Angeles Chain Letter 2011

I went to the Chain Letter Group Show at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica. We got there at 5:45 for a 6pm opening time, and the parking lots was already packed. Luckily for us, there wasn't a line to get in yet, but by the time we left, the lines were at least 200 people long at each of the 3 galleries they put the art in. We only went through one of the three, and then we wandered around checking out Bergamot Station.

There's an intriguing paper supplier at Bergamot station called Hiromi Paper, and I had been doing investigations into Los Angeles art paper supplier options, only to discover that this paper supplier was right where I was headed on Saturday. They're only open weekdays, so I pressed my face up against the window and looked in at the shop. It looks like it has a ton of really beautiful plain papers.  I'm looking forward to taking an afternoon and checking them out sometime soon.

So. Chain Letter. It was interesting. Sort of a big art jumble sale, or art attic. As a whole, it really hammered home that arresting art which can stand out in a crowd is hard to make. When you throw all these pieces together, instead of spreading them out in a big white gallery, most of them get eaten right up.  

Additionally, as was mentioned of the Boston show by Joan Mattera  most artists didn't think to put in their names or descriptions of the pieces. On the one hand, I applaud this. I think reading about a piece is sort of missing the point, but on the other hand, everyone was slowly shuffling through this overwhelming mass, and trying to pick out something to look at, so once you'd honed in on a piece and comprehended it, "oh it's dried fruit on a plate" or "its a very large pink penis I think..." then there was nothing really for you to do with your observation. The pieces all were numbered, so I guess if you wanted to buy one, that would be the way to also find out who did it?

All in all I didn't regret my decision not to include anything. The show felt like an explosion, a thing done for the "why the hell not" of it all, and I think for me, that was cool, if I'd had some little sculpture I didn't care too much about hanging around I would have enjoyed jamming it in just for kicks. But for a piece you've slaved over and loved and given time and energy to? I didn't feel this show necessarily did that aspect of art justice. I don't mean to imply that it disrespectful or anything, it was sincere and joyful, and it didn't take things too seriously, just didn't feel transformative.

One of the most interesting things about the show was how democratic the trickle-down was. I assume the original 10 artist invitees were relatively well known professional artists, and they probably only did invite people they thought well of, but there were also Thomas Kinkade style landscapes and crappy student art that looked slapdash and silly, and that made me think a lot about how big and iceberg-y art making is. How it can get all the way down to sculpy art on plywood from the first 10 people.

So. Yes. Conclusion. Chain Letter 2011, interesting, but somewhat meaningless?