what goes around

Rejection is an awful feeling. What's worse is when you're convinced you've got something nailed down and then it goes in the complete opposite direction. I didn't get the Philly job. What's a girl to do?

worth sharing

iMEEM exclusive... makes me hear the song differently...

second piece of the week

Interior (The Rape) by Edgar Degas, 1868-9

In the fall semester of my junior year I took an art history course entitled Theory and Criticism. On the first day of class our professor told us that this was in fact the hardest course within the major and essentially we would be teaching ourselves the material (via torturous hour long weekly presentations by every student in the class for the next 3 and a half months). Hundreds and hundreds of pages of scholarly articles later on topics I didn't even know could be applied to art history brought the class to the painting you see above. It has almost been three years since I discussed this piece in depth, and it is still fresh in my mind. The startled feeling I get right where both sides of my ribcage meet each other remains and I am stunned.

Degas is obviously a well known painter, but most importantly among the laymen his named strikes a particular key. Thick and colorful images of ballerinas in formation with one another come to mind and the delicacy with which the paint was applied to such supple canvases reminds us of Impressionism -- one of the most revered and respected movements in art. The part of our brain that stores pictures is triggered and releases Monet's waterlilies, Manet's seascapes, and the faces of the many Renoir children. The goal of this "glamorous" high painting was light, to capture it and maintain it in the most realistic of ways throughout the entire piece. An even balance of luminous color is cast upon the canvas using apparent brush strokes, clearly not as striking as the Expressionistic application seen in such Van Goghs but still powerful. Artists working within this spectrum wanted to give the impression of the ideal. They were working their way out of Realism, and Impressionism was the best way to give a realistic depiction of a world that was only perfect on the outside, which brings us to Degas' The Rape. Here we are reminded that no matter how many idyllic flower scenes and bourgeois French citizens an artist focuses on there is a dark, frightening mind within that realizes not all is as it seems.

Remember that Impressionism shows that everything seems fine on the outside, well, this is the antithesis of that. This concept is not proven by examining the darkness of the scene, nor is the woman's torn dress or the positioning of the man against the wall a true hint to the obscurity of private lives. It's in the tilted and warped perspective, the focal point, and the sheer uncertainty of the presentation that makes us question our own realities. Every formal aspect of this painting leads the viewer to believe that the situation we are first presented with may not be as it seems. It is said that this scene is based on a Zola story, one of a woman who wants her lover to kill her husband so they can elope and live together. If this is known ahead of time, one could speculate that the man (who we initially perceive as the rapist) has arrived to his lover's bedroom after killing her husband. She waits anxiously for his return, the torn dress symbolically representing her torn conscience. Light as the central focus could have been used in this instance to set the figures apart from the viewer, placing them in a lower moral caliber than us. But perhaps the picture is telling us exactly what we are told, and the Degas has manipulated the light to place the woman in a vulnerable position, she is in fact crouched and set below the male figure who is in "power". Whether we are witnessing a raw love born from infidelity or an innocence that has been ripped from one person by another, this unsettling image is what I believe to be the epitome of Impressionism (at its highest).

It is ideas such as these that I believe inspired Neo-Impressionists like Georges Seurat to fragment reality and give the viewer an image that is admired and confusing -- showing us familiarity and ripping it away by manipulating a site so that it is looked upon in a way that at one point was inconceivable. The Gravelines done by Seurat at the fin-de-siecle are a perfect example of this. Such dizzying pieces remind us of the Night Cafe by Vincent Van Gogh and how the prettiness of painting done un plein air is in fact underrated.

seahorses 4 eva

Apparently a guy was tripping on acid and his friends recorded what he said. I don't know what Dan Deacon has to do with this, but it's entertaining. NO WAY.

i haz job, i haz it!

OKAY FRIENDS here's the deal: I'm no longer unemployed, babysitting, or working odd (but fun) jobs for people. I'm also not working a career job, nevertheless, I am an employed individual who is now contributing somehow to society. This morning I was hired to work at a local organic food market.



The better news: I'll stop asking you to pick me up because I'll finally have money for gas.

transparent things

Since last summer I've been really into Fujiya and Miyagi, as well as most music like this (Cut Copy, Hot Chip, Datarock, etc.). It's just come to my attention, however, that F+M says "Sock it to me" in way too many of their songs. Is that really necessary?







You don't see David Byrne doing this shit.

thank you for being a friend

As most of you know I'm a huge Golden Girls fan, have been since about age eleven. It might seem strange for a girl my age to not only be an avid watcher (three times a day), but to quote lines from the show in casual conversation is very much a part of my daily routine. So for a person like me, today is a sad day. Estelle Getty, the actress who played Sophia Petrillo on the series passed away today. On the show she was known as a sassy, witty, brash little woman filled with old world charm. She reminded me very much of my own grandmother. That being said I haven't much else to say.







R.I.P. Estelle, we loved you!

first piece of the week

If you think you've noticed some changes on my blog you're correct! To the right I've added a section entitled Piece of the Week. It not only includes a picture of whatever I have chosen for this week but if you click the image it will lead you somewhere that will educate you further about the artist. Every Sunday I will introduce a new piece of artwork and briefly discuss it in hopes of starting some sort of discussion or at least a place for those interested to pose questions. The Andres Serrano post is still up for grabs, though.


Yellow, White, Blue over Yellow on Gray by Mark Rothko, 1954

While watching a program on the artist this afternoon on Ovation TV I became inspired to have this as my first piece. Rothko has always been an artist that inspires me in some fantastical way. I believe it has something to do about the interplay between his color fields and the radiative qualities each section possesses as it plays with the others and the viewer. Mark Rothko once said that the ideal painting has three qualities: romanticism, tragedy, and the clear preoccupation with death. Many art historians say that there is a romantic element to Rothko's body of work (especially in regards to the vibrant, lovely paintings), but much to the surprise of many it is his stark, dark, solid works that are the triumphant and joyous ones. Pieces like the one I have chosen, according to Rothko, are the sad ones filled with tragic players.

It is important to keep in mind that while Mark Rothko was working within the New York School of Abstract Expressionists, also known as the Irascibles (which included Pollock, de Kooning, etc.), the maxims to which he worked were very different for an abstract painter. Like all artists whose work seemed to transform over time into something more obscure and oftentimes confusing, they all started out using "traditional" techniques with identifiable "forms". In his early work from the 1930s there was an obvious preoccupation with color which stemmed from his admiration of Henri Matisse and the painting The Red Studio. Using color as the primary expressive tool was Rothko's game. Each block can be likened to a paragraph and how that paragraph speaks for the whole is what makes it "work".

What most people don't realize when looking at a piece is that they don't have to search for meaning, and the reason for that is because there isn't one. I heard an artist speak once about a person he witnessed at the Tate Modern who was looking at a Rothko. It was a large, red schemed, heavy yet staggering work. The viewer looked at it from every allowable angle as if "he dropped his coat somewhere into the space and was desperately trying to retrieve it but didn't know how to approach searching for it." It isn't meaning that you should walk away with, it is an experience. Paintings such as these are meant to leave the viewer with an experiential enlightenment. What Mark Rothko truly strived to do was create a cohesive space, one where architectural form and visual form could come together to embody a spirit of some sort. These works are meditative and majestic. We should contemplate them, let them become a part of us. I've never been so physically affected by another artist's work and it baffles me.

your own personal jesus

Piss Christ by Andres Serrano, 1989
"I am not a heretic. I like to believe that rather than destroy icons, I make new ones." -Serrano

A few years back in one of my art history courses I was introduced to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ. In short, he placed a crucifix in a receptacle of some sort, filled it with his own urine, then proceeded to take a photograph of it. This piece has been the object of much controversy, for obvious reasons. Here we are faced with the destruction of religious meaning and symbolism, degradation of a whole mass of followers and God's one and only son, among other things. My feelings remain almost indifferent -- mostly because I like to avoid religiously charged conversations and as an amateur art historian I've learned to respect and accept (for a limited amount of time) others' opinions -- and so I'd like to know what others think about this. We are the risk taking era, especially within the arts: Pollock's drips, Newman's zips, Marden's encaustic sticks, Oldenberg's and Christo's larger than life installations, International Yves Klein Blue, Janine Antoni's hair painting performance piece, and of course, human expulsions.

Disregard

the previous post. I feel empty and void of all thoughts right now. I have experienced the most bizarre and uncomfortable 24 hours my life.

hot child in the city

I'm currently sitting in Matt's room on Terrace Avenue in Jersey City Heights and I don't think I have ever been this hot in my life. I'm pretty sure that my denim shorts have become one with my body and I've been covered in a new skin, one that requires peeling to remove. In this cozy little split level live my friends Hello Midnight (they have real names I promise) and we are finally together since graduation... or since the Knitting Factory. I honestly don't remember. I also don't know what I'm writing about since this heat is making me delirious. Make what you will of it.

i feel the temperature risin'

Over the years I've experienced various types of fevers (Hello Midnight, Lion on Oil, a small case of Monument, Timemachine) and I've even caused others to suffer from Shade fever. David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks has caused me to suffer from feverish nightmares!



But just when I thought I was safe I'm seeing the outbreak of Dark Knight fever!




And I think I'm falling victim!

seni seviyorum

After a long day in Philadelphia I came home, laid out in my driveway, then came inside to revel in the nice conditioned air. I soon realized I had a voicemail that must have come in when I turned my phone off during my job interview, so I dialed up and listened to it. It was my dearest friend, Berk, telling me that he and our other friend Devin would be in Brigantine in a few hours until Friday -- mind you, Brigantine is where I grew up, and they have been spending summers there since we were all kids and I never knew them until senior year of college. I haven't been that excited in a long time. The longest time Berk and I ever went without seeing each other was during winter break for 6 weeks, and even then I went up to New York for a visit. The night was spent drinking wine out on Devin's family's dock on the bay, then driving down to where I used to live and walking along the jetty at night -- the Atlantic City skyline looking strangely fabulous -- and putzing around in the water a bit taking night-time photographs. Everything was lovely until I came home and walked in on my parents having sex. So like some sort of odd fractional mathematics, my great night got canceled out.

the two one five versus the two one two

I spent the later part of senior year desperately searching for a job in New York City after a year's worth of preparation for life in the Big Apple, otherwise known as Beasting Out 101. Creating a "sound" network of friends and potential colleagues, finally learning to navigate the subway system on my own and without a map, and seeking out the illest spots to chill in the city was no easy feat, but this sort of difficulty is most definitely welcome. The arts sector is painfully unwelcoming, however. Fuck a degree and a respectable education (despite what my fellow classmates have to say), all I need is an endless, over-expensive black wardrobe and a perpetual pout in order to be qualified for a job that consists of sitting behind a Macbook offering absolutely nothing to gallery frequenters. That being said, after this quest I'm turning my back on the grande pomme and diving head first into the city of brotherly love. Yes, Philadelphia -- better known to my friends who are residents as Illadelphia -- and ill it is. I spent the day with some choice heads meandering about the city and I came to the conclusion that it is as cool if not cooler than New York being that it's got all the personality and less than half the pretentious attitude. Tomorrow I have an interview in Old City for a Gallery Coordinator/Assistant position at the Clay Studio, and I'm fully psyched. If this is it for me, then it's onward to my (hopefully wonderful) new and independent life. But seriously, 212 (etc. etc.) I fucking miss you even though you're a bitch who insists that boots and scarves are alright in the summertime and Long Island Iced Teas and Camel Lights should be at least $8.

if things start splittin' at the seams

I'm not one to really give you a detailed journal-esque entry about what is specifically going on in my life, so instead I'll leave you with a song that says exactly how I feel at the current moment. It's a really great track from one of my favorite albums this summer.


No One's Gonna Love You by Band of Horses, from their album Cease to Begin

hey zeus!

Is this what I'm in for?

north american scum

My friend Chris recently posted this bulletin to Myspace (I hate to admit that I even have an account but let's admit it, we have them to check out other people's pictures and read bulletins, and sometimes promote our cough blogs cough):

"those american apparel models that are plastered all over myspace and on the website are quite possibly the ugliest and most beat looking people i have ever seen. they look like they smell bad and the one girl who models the "slim slack" looks like a horse and the gross guy with long hair thats always on my myspace when i go to look in my inbox looks like a dirty seal...i never want to meet people that look like them and think they look cool."



I love the ferocity with which he wrote this. Those cats are a bit too pale and a bit too out of bed looking for me. What's the big deal?

you always come to the party

I want this.



Master of None by Beach House, from their self titled album.

heart of chambers

When important people in your life have gone you're only left with a memory. Their names and faces are almost permanently engraved on specific songs, places, and even seasons. Those you have spent the most intimate of times with, whether friends or lovers, are the people who remain closest to your heart -- an organ which is our life force, but has for some reason been deemed a muscle that is capable of physically feeling emotion. It is strange that when you "love" you feel this gnawing, pulling, tightness in the left side of your chest and the heart actually responds, pumping hard inside of you as if it is the one responsible for creating such a mentally dependent feeling. Of the many times I have experienced this feeling, I wonder what my heart makes of meaning. If it can in fact feel "love" then can it sense meaning? And if so, what does it mean when those who once made your pulse meaningfully exist come back into your life? I'd like to think that there is something bigger than my own mind's interpretation of the world around me and that these recurring characters in my life are playing a bigger part in this game I play day to day. I crave meaningful encounters and have for a while now. Amidst all of this superficial nonsense I concern myself with, where can I place the tangible parts of my own reality? These days I wonder if I even have any.



My friend Zoe has brought the following to my attention, and I leave you with this:

Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers. Reptiles and turtles have hearts with three chambers. Fish have hearts with two chambers. Insects and mollusks have hearts with one chamber. Worms have hearts with one chamber, although they may have as many as eleven single-chambered hearts. Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all; but even they have fluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell to the other, swirling and whirling. No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.

semi-charmed life

A few nights before I graduated from college (a strangely quiet night, in fact) I walked with my friend Matt down behind our dorm, through a eerily dark but not so quiet parking lot, down the secret stairs and to a neighboring elementary school, Miller High Life longnecks in hand. Matt and I had quite a year. We went from being super tight friends to people who at one point barely spoke. The impending end of our college career had forced us back into some kind of friendship and so we took this odd moment to spend some time together, recollecting the past two years and talking about what God only knows now. In the stillness of one of our last Madison nights we sat on a swing set, just downhill from this large, looming rectangular box of a school whose presence was undeniable. The one thing I can distinctly remember talking about was how in these final days we needed to make some substantial memories. An awful montage of scenes fluttered through my buzzing brain as I listened to him go on a diatribe (a word I can thank Matt for adding to my Words for Regular Usage list). I knew for a fact that we had had some crazy times, not just the times that people usually reflect back on as crazy but some legitimately insane times where if it wasn't for each of us, neither of us thought we would make it out alive. The two of us had fashioned ourselves into the whackest of tag teams. How many people do you know that walk into a social situation with a meticulously crafted escape plan? With two years full of panic rooms, shooting galleries, (oftentimes grimy) New York City bars, rock anthems (I'll explain this later), characters out of the most frightening of comic books (Timemachine, Werewolf, The Ultimate Warrior, Metal Sheik, Killa Kasai, AK-47, etc. etc. this could go on forever), princes, disasters, and chuckles all alike... I deemed this not the soberist of friendships but incredible nonetheless. This night out on the playground, wishing we could go back and rewrite our childhoods and speaking of how much cooler we could have been, was fantastic and strange. No matter who we once were, he will still have been the awkward, pale kid with an almost-unibrow, and I the chubby kid whose mother made her to go public school in plaid skirts and knee-high socks for her entire sixth grade year.

Thank God for change, but despite how much each of us has evolved into pseudo hipster non domestic beer drinking pubcrawlers these ghosts still haunt the ends of our minds and unwillingly we accept that this has shaped us into the shells of people we proudly call ourselves today. Looking back on this particular moment in both our lives I think we each realized how alike we were and that we had in fact made memories. Please, this kid can't take a car ride lasting more than ten minutes without a drink in hand and I remember his temper tantrum from last summer about how I needed to drive faster because he couldn't be in the car anymore. Needless to say, the car ride was like 15 minutes each way, I was buying him dinner AND providing him with a place to stay. I digress, but if you're curious that story ended with him chugging Jim Beam in my basement upon arrival at my house.

Whether or not he and I struggled to carry an old, musty couch from some campus basement back to the large lawn in front of our dorms where we had spent numerous afternoons criticizing the physically fit people playing frisbee in the distance and drinking Twisted Tea from mugs so as to not get written up for "open containers" (the vaguest title of misdemeanors), our friendship was in fact real and tangible. Matt and I, both Leos born three days apart, are as he would say "reactionary people." We are people who have fought, smacked, hit, thrown TVs at each other, scream and cry holding each other in the middle of parties, holding back each others hair in our upstrokes... people who have said to piss of and piss on, I love you and hate you. We are two strange people who may have deemed Closer by Nine Inch Nails our theme song at one drunken time or another. I laugh as I type up all of this. Once we had brought that couch to Hoyt Lawn we sat and stared out at it. We were fortunate enough to live on the best part of the campus and in the mistiness of that night, while Fatty slept soundly after pulling an all-nighter for a four page paper, while Pablo and Eric did whatever it is they did, while the City hummed softly some miles away we were there, in silence, together.

For a fraction of a moment I forgot this was soon coming to an end. And then in the midst of it all we awoke the morning of graduation. Back to square one and "I hate you!" we stood in his room, Matt still drunk from the night before that had ended a little over two hours prior to the 9:30 AM line-up. In his wrinkled cap and gown, shirt and tie, he jumped back into bed declaring that he would not be attending graduation. After Pete and I forced him up, we walked to the Forum together for the last time, fighting the whole way. I'll say no more for to most of those reading these are no surprises, but if he is reading this, I hope he looks back on these times with great fondness as I am right now.

mango pickle down river

This morning I woke, threw on my super fashionable mesh shorts that I bought at Target instead of a bathing suit, and slipped up into my Champion brand racer back sports bra (which is my new, most favorite thing to wear all the time and in all seriousness). I walked to my closet, slid open the doors, and stared into the frightening abyss of it all, not trying to make myself feel like a disgusting over-consumer, but to decide which pair of brightly colored Pumas I wanted to put on my two feet. I go with the indigo and white, very light and very worn in ones. They're dirty and misshapen and I love them. These shoes are a testament to the fact that I often do get up off my ass and do things (despite the fact that I purchased them online). These days my ass isn't such a bad thing to discuss, in my opinion at the very least. If you recall I declared this the summer of fitness and so I have a heartbreakingly long list of exercises and things I do to (get) keep myself in shape. I counter all of my stern efforts by drinking excessively, but I can be proud of the fact that I don't really each much of anything. So yeah, I dressed myself and did some obscene looking stretches in my driveway before starting my run. I hadn't even gotten up off the ground and the sweat was starting to bead at my temples and on the back of my neck being as it was incredibly humid out. I put in my headphones, start up Kala by M.I.A. which is the best to run to, and go go go go go go go. I love running to this album, not because it's good or anything but because its beat is something I can stick with. Half a mile and album in I was definitely dying but it was the good kind of death approaching, the warming light and all. The worst part about running to your destination is knowing that you have to turn around and run home. Home is no place I'm in any hurry to run back to, but I don't think I'm ready for the big white light. When I returned home my mother was drinking her bowl of coffee at the kitchen counter. Disregarding my profuse sweating, inability to speak, headphones still in ears, and the difficulty with which I maneuvered myself to the refrigerator, she asks what's wrong. I opened my mouth and stuck my head under the water dispenser of our fridge, and replenished myself. She said nothing.

That was my morning.

the procreation of advertising

Briefly, I'd like to address recent ad campaigns whose target audience is unclear. When children are the target we see bold and vivid color, playful music, and often cartoon inspired scenes. Women and mothers that are aimed at by advertisements seem to be approached by orderly, organized themes and visualizations. We can probably agree that the majority of commercials out there are aimed towards women who are probably the largest consumer audience out there. So when we want to freshen our spaces or seek out a new room fragrance, why is a computer animated octopus or elephant launching the product? Moreover, in Air Wick's plug-in room freshener commercial, how on earth does this elephant mother have a centipede for a son? It all makes no sense to me. Last I checked, none of these animals were domesticated, and some aren't even fit to live above water!