x., aged thirty four, teacher in the gymnasium. in childhood he suffered from convulsions. at age ten he began to masturbate, with lustful feelings, which were connected with very strange ideas. he was particularly partial to women’s eyes; but because he wished to imagine some form of coitus, and was absolutely innocent in sexual matters, he evolved the idea of making the nostrils the seat of the female sexual organs in order to avoid too great a separation from the eyes. his vivid sexual desires then revolved around this idea. he sketched drawings representing correct greek profiles of female heads, but the nostrils were so large that insertion of the penis would have been possible. one day, in an omnibus, he saw a girl in whom he thought he recognized his ideal. he followed her to her home and immediately proposed to her. shown the door, he returned again and again, until arrested. x never had sexual intercourse.

so tragic. nose craving, eye adoring virgin man. we feel your pain… as an afterward to this case the author of psycopathia sexualis, richard von krafft-ebing m.d. offers this:

nose fetishism is seldom encountered. the following rare bit of poetry comes to me from england-

o sweet and pretty little nose, so charming unto me;
o were i but the sweetest rose, i’d give my scent to thee.
o make it full with honey sweet, that i may suck it all;
t’would be for me the greatest treat, a real festival.
how sweet and how nutritious your darling nose does seem.
it would be more delicious, than strawberries and cream.

...tee hee.

in any case all this put me in mind of one of my favorite visionary artists, whom i’ve heard little about since 2002 when he was among those mentioning a 100 year old gaudi design for the ground zero site. he is one of the more talented utopian art kooks out there and in that he was diagnosed as slightly autistic in his youth i thought he’d serve as a good late addition to outsider art week…

paul laffoley
“was born into an Irish Catholic family in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1940. He spoke his first word, “Constantinople,” at six months, then remained silent until the age of four (having been diagnosed as slightly autistic), when he began to draw and paint. In his senior year at Brown University, he was given eight electric-shock treatments. He was dismissed from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, but managed to apprentice with the sculptor Mirko Baseldella, before going to New York to apprentice with the visionary architect Frederick Kiesler. In 1968 he moved into an eighteen- by thirty-foot utility room to found a one-man “think tank” and creative unit called the Boston Visionary Cell. Laffoley supports himself with a job at the Boston Museum of Science, returning to the BVC not only to eat and sleep but to work on multimedia renderings of his visions of alternative futures and complex realities.”

all well and good. but here’s my favorite part:

“During a routine CAT-scan of his head in 1992, a miniature metallic implant, 3/8 of an inch long, was discovered in the occipital lobe of his brain, near the pineal gland. Local M.U.F.O.N. investigators declared it to be an alien nano-technological laboratory. He has come to believe that the “implant” is extraterrestrial in origin and is the main motivation behind his ideas and theories.”

his work is obsessive in the best possible way. simultaneously creating and supporting complex theoretical mythologies. his work intertwines the visual systems of alchemy and science, combining mysticism, an often opaque historical symbology, and crisp, clear, technical diagrams to describe his dense pseudoscience. think chris ware and william blake smoking chemically synthesized opium and reading out loud to one another from back issues of omni magazine.

another comparison i’d be tempted to make is to the work of joe coleman, a similar obsessively detailed, overwhelming amount of information, only minus coleman’s extremely biological bent. the filth, despair, fluids, loss, greasy hair, and mortality which coleman’s work tend to exude from every minute stroke are totally absent from laffoley’s work. his work is more platonic in a sense i’d say, more concerned with human invention, be they mechanical or mythological, than with humanity itself. his titles illustrate this pretty well: the number dream, the orgone motor, geochronmechane: the time machine from the earth, the omega point - the future of evolution, dimensionality - the manifestation of fate, etc.

of course rather than falling into the trap of critical heavy-breathing let me also add that the last two paragraphs are just as likely meaningless and laffoley may just be “plain ol’ crazy” as chris rock would say. but i don’t buy it.

anyhow the joe coleman comparison leads me to another laffoley story. that of his amputated leg. evidently while installing a show at the kent gallery here in new york he was at the top of a ladder when it slid down the wall to the floor. on his way down to meet the floor time went slo-mo. he had a conversation with himself, wherein he decided which body part was more dispensable, given that something was about to break. he decided that as an artist he could not afford to break his arms. he realized he had to land on his feet. he had a conversation with his feet. he said there was an implicit agreement made: “you save me, I’ll save you.” he broke both legs.

one healed well, the other did not. he decided that perhaps demons had invaded the ladder, and now his leg. during one surgery to try to save his leg, paul was wheeled out of surgery as high as a kite on morphine. he insisted there was a demon in his leg, and requested four specialists: a priest, a rabbi, an agnostic and a shrink. He wanted them positioned as follows: “The priest will be on my left, the rabbi on my right, the rational side. The psychiatrist will be at my head, and the agnostic at my feet.” He gave explicit directions: “When the demon comes out of my leg, I want the agnostic to capture it.”

his leg was eventually amputated after which point joe coleman contacted him to ask if he could have it for his museum of human oddities. paul declined wishing is to keep it close to him, like the main character in his favorite underground horror classic, basket case.

what does any of that have to do with art? “everything you fool! don’t you see!? the man is an artist, so everything which happens to him has to do with art!” actually, the story drastically excerpted above is from paranoia magazine and it’s a good one covering other biographical bits of interest. you can check it out for yourself here.

for further reading / viewing on laffoley check out the following:

his work via kent gallery.

a recent interview you can read here dealing with new work and specifically satan, god, and h.p. lovecraft.

meanwhile a documentary on laffoly called laffoley’s odyssey gives you a nice glimpse at the man himself.

a lecture he made in 2001 about buckminster fuller, utopian space, the noosphere, the international symbolist movement, etc… if your interested here it is

here’s some realaudio via disinformation’s infinity factory. haven’t listened.

enjoy. but remember outsider art week is over so once you’re done forget what you’ve seen and get right back to stroking hirst’s taint, nuzzling barney’s ball sack, sniffing koon’s ass, and fondling warhol’s cold corpse.

the bloggie nominations are out and unfortunately i don’t see evidence of the benefits nominees tend to self consciously advertise, namely being introduced to new sites. the nominees tend to be sites the community at large are already happily familiar with, hence their nomination.

blog and site aggregators have lots to offer certainly, but they are so expansive in most cases i can’t devote the time that would be necessary to mine the gems. usually the best resource for new discoveries are link lists offered by the sites i already frequent, but then, these sites are usually just nodes of the the larger circle. bringing us back to the same content, the same stories, the same art, etc…

as a result of all this i’m finding meta-blogging more and more difficult. i’m reticent to continually post content already making the rounds, i mean once its on boingboing i have to assume everyone has already seen it. as much as i’d love to post endless digital reams of well thought out, cogent, original content that’s usually a tough proposition after a long days work and larger nonist projects, though always moving forward, are slow going. meta-blogging is a necessity as much as it is an enjoyable diversion. truthfully though i’m finding my personal digital landscape a bit stale.

a recent surge in traffic here, thanks in main to preshrunk and boingboing, has opened up a few new avenues to be sure. we’ve got new members, more visitors, and through them i’ve found some great sites. as such i thought i’d solicit everyone here to help lift my digital malaise and in so doing improve the nonist. formally, in a manner befitting our fine readership:

dear nonists and nonist-related-activity-readers:

sincerely yours-
jaime morrison.

so there you have it. i’m bored and want new sites to check out. hook me up yo! what is everyone else checking out? enjoying? reading voraciously? giggling at? any under represented blogs? any tech, science, art, philosophy, lit, music, goodies i don’t know about? post them in comments. and hell, plug your own site while your at it, why not? (especially regulars since i don’t have a proper blogroll) the more the merrier.

for a look at space suit history check out the ever fantastic encyclopedia astronautix’s page. if your impatient for the artemis project, transorbital, virgin galactic and the like to allow you the chance to suit up yourself, you can aways grab one of these and just mill around the house in the meantime.

more to come…

announce by all the trumpets of the sky,
arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils farm-house at the garden’s end.
the sled and traveller stopped,
the couriers feet delayed,
all friends shut out, the housemates sit
around the radiant fireplace
enclosed in a tumultuous privacy of storm.
-ralph waldo emerson

though i love the man i never really liked his poetry.

fire falling from the sky in streamers, bug-eyed characters bursting into flames before me… work on the nonist activity book continues. today it’s numbers, 11:1 in which the lord is displeased by ingrate complainers and burns them all to cinders. “hmmmm, should i make this eye hanging out of it’s socket or just make it a dripping blob burst from the heat? does this crouching figure look tormented enough? i mean really in excruciating pain like his fillings are melting? should this toddler be skinless, nothing but a twist of tendons and soft undeveloped muscle? perhaps. a tiny pile of flaming bones? maybe.” it’s good fun, almost like i have the truly wonderful and miraculous power of god myself.

so what’s going with the rest of you today? anything interesting?

a sparrow enters the tree,
whereon immediately
a snow lump thrice his own slight size
descends on him and showers his head and eyes,
and overturns him.
-thomas hardy.

i have no connection to snow, no fond memories, no evocation of childhood particulars as i understand other to have. a few snow forts i suppose, though what other snow suited kids might have occupied them with me i can’t recall. no snow men. no sleds. i remember playing a game we called “dive” in which we’d throw the football as nearly out of one another’s reach as possible. that was best played in snow i suppose. i remember thinking i had frostbite in my foot once. taking my boot and sock off while sitting in a snowdrift before hopping home. i remember new york closed down by snow. 94? 96? cars were like hobbled mastodons. the streets were full of cross country skiers. that was nice. otherwise, nothing comes to mind.

the snow far off on the pine
nesting into the needles
like addicts into their fix.
The mailbox as stiff as a soldier
but wearing a chef’s hat.
-anne sexton

i forgive the addicts / fix imagery considering how long ago she wrote it.

there is an undeniable pleasure in the big snowstorm though isn’t there? what is it? the beauty of it? the novelty? the sudden contrast, making your little new york hovel feel cozy and warm rather than cramped and suffocating? the fact that people disappear from the streets? the slow down? is it the excuse the snowstorm offers, to stay in, to shut down, to sit back, to reflect? is it instinctual? passed down from the days when the appearance of snow changed the odds instantly, sending us hominids hooting and hollering into caves and lukewarm crevasses? maybe our systems were flooded with chemicals when we secured safe haven back then and no one bothered to alert todays receptors to the existence of gortex and cashmere? ah who cares, it’s nice any which way.

if it’s not snowing where you are, see for yourself. times square isn’t too pretty is it? ah well, best i could find. 

out of the bosom of the air
out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken
over the woodlands brown and bare
over the harvest-fields forsaken
silent and soft and slow
descends the snow.
-longfellow.

i’ve gotta get back to destroying those who displease the lord from my cozy seat here. what’s the story for the rest of you fine folks? upstate must be getting pounded. i’m sure in spain it’s still semi-warm. germany? london? tuscany? anywhere?

i love the idea of the hermitic type, living on a mountain, wandering about, sticking notes to his wall when an idea struck him. i also love that 800 years later those random thoughts of a monk living in solitude survive to be posted on the web. this particular translation is from 1931 and the language is a bit stiff, but it’s an enjoyable little book none the less.

38
those men who are mastered by greed for riches or fame reap their reward in troubled spirits and the absolute destruction of peace. what folly! such a rich man is too poor to buy peace, and his gold is heaped to the height of the great bear will but vex himself and his heirs. carriages, fat horses, jewels and glitter, what are these but the contempt of the wise.
with what passion the average man esteems great reputation! -and yet he who censures, he who blames, alike vanish quickly into forgetfulness. then is it not also folly to desire posthumous fame? those who do so are but the slaves of transitory opinion.
this brings us to the question of those who pursue knowledge with avidity. now, knowledge is gleaned from others or learned from books. that is not wisdom. then what is wisdom?  alas! true wisdom is born in a man and dies with him. it cannot be transmitted, and the truly wise man can neither be classed with the virtuous or claimed by the foolish. he stands outside all classification of wisdom or folly or hoarding or spending. so therefore the man who pursues the gauds of fame and fortune walks in illusion. these things have no real existence- then wherefore shall we desire them?

74
the peoples of the world, what are they than ants hurrying east and west, north and south? nobles, some. plebeians, others- old and young, hastening to other places, rushing homewards. sleeping at night, rising in the morning. and why? what are they doing? in the urge of life they are seeking incessantly for gain. what future are they pursuing?
old age and death await them. what else? these come hastening on and cannot be arrested. and with this certainty what pleasure has the world to offer? yet the average man has no time to dread the inevitable law of life, for he is submerged in the desire of wealth and fame, and has no interest in reflecting upon the short span that is alloted to them. and the only ones who grieve at it are the fools in their folly, and they because the world’s impermanence galls them and they have no understanding of the law of change.

85
pray never to run the risk of imitating a fool! if you rage along the street in imitation of a madman you are a madman- neither more nor less. suppose you slay a man after the fashion of a criminal- you are a villain. (and what’s the moral?) if a horse can imitate the supernatural horse of legend who runs a thousand ri in one day, why then he is supernatural! and if an emperor imitates shun (the wisest of chinese rulers), he is shun. he who pretends wisdom is not far from being wise.

105
the snow which has lain a long time remains still on the northern side of the house; it is frozen hard indeed. a carriage is in sight, its pole covered with glittering rime. it is dawn, but the moon still gives light- a light more mysterious than daylight, obscured by a little temple and its trees, and in the haze of meeting lights, hidden from all eyes by the building, a man of high rank sits with a woman on the veranda by the temple railings. their talk is very low. how should i know what they say? her head droops a little- a sight of beauty. through the air the indescribable sweetness- a frail perfume comes drifting to me. i hear some broken words. a poem lived- not written.

137
the full glory of the blossoming cherry and the moon in a clear sky are not the only things worth seeing. it is as moving a matter to watch for the moon when the sky is dark with rain-clouds, or to be debarred from visiting the beauty of spring. and again, the garden in all it’s pride of blossom and the garden faded and dead in winter are equally suggestive…
the truth is that the beginning of anything and its end are alike touching. is the love of a manor a woman heart-moving only when they are together? what of the sorrow of separation, the empty token, the long waking night, the distant place? what of recalling with all the ache of memory bygone days, the little desolate grassgrown dwelling? these things are the very torture of lovers…
note that a man of true taste is never one who gorges himself with obvious beauty. he loves the more refined and intimate shades. you will find the lout fixed before the blossoms with gloating looks, exhilarated with drink, reeling off trick poems and heartlessly tearing off great boughs laden with bloom. you will find him dipping his paws in the purity of the flowing spring or tranquil lake. he will trample fallen snow and leave his hoof-marks upon it. invariably he is unable to rejoice in beauty without pawing it…
i take it that this is the attitude of the novelty hunter not the beauty lover.

166
when i reflect upon the thought of mankind and its purpose, i compare it to a man who models a snow image of the buddha and proposes to decorate it with precious substances and jewels in spring and to build a temple to house it. but can the snow tarry until the spring? truly a man’s life is like an image of snow thawing and wasting away daily.

235
vagrants do not enter an inhabited house, though a deserted house may be freely entered by any chance passer or be taken possession of by foxes or owls or haunted by wild woodland spirits. for there is none to say them nay.
so also it is because a mirror is empty of all form and colour that every image in turn reflects itself. should it have form and colour of itself it could reflect no images. thus an empty space may be filled by anything and every desire may nest in a masterless heart. were there a master ruling within it there would be no base intruders.

where as now automata as such have been split into those strictly for amusement (tickle-me-elmo, robosapien, etc) which are consumer items, and those strictly for scientific study (robotics, a.i.) which are expensive but generally raw and unfinished looking, automata of the 18th century were marvels of both science and entertainment, drawing astonished crowds and illiciting thoughtful reaction from philosophers and natural scientists.

“The modern robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) industries use technology which is typically less than a hundred years old, and yet what they are trying to achieve cannot properly be understood without delving much more deeply into history. Two thousand years ago, for example, automata were reputedly already capable of rudimentary synthetic sound, and legends of metal men and statues coming to life can be found in the works of Homer, Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, and Pliny.” -a brief history of automata by Derek J. Smith.

“The genuine automatons were born in the middle of the Age of Enlightenment, thanks to the art of watchmaking. This period, which was dominated by scientific spirit, and more precisely, by the biomechanical conception of the human being, corresponds to the birth of numerous artificial creatures, which were intended to be exact replicas or copies of nature. Androids and mechanical animals were thus manufactured by watchmaking technicians who were very interested in medicine and natural sciences. They did not aim at entertaining but rather at contributing to the progress of science.”

“today’s researchers have an extraordinary amount in common with the automata creators of the 18th and early 19th century. they believed that new technologies might let them bridge the gap between machines and life—a belief that has led modern researchers to build artificial insects, fish, gorillas and even people.” -stanford report by etienne benson.

A study of the history of automata clearly reveals that several of the basic inventions produced for these attempts to imitate life by mechanical means led to significant developments culminating in modern automation and cybernetics. The invention of cams, for example, which governed the movements of the androids, is applicable to numerous modern automatic machines. Although the cam is a far older invention, attributed originally to Archimedes, its employment in automata, however, resulted in the first machinery having multiple combinations and opened up tremendous possibilities for a great variety of applications. It is reasonably safe to state that cybernetics was already in a stage of potential realization in the creations of some of the mechanicians of the seventeenth century.” -The role of automata in the History of Technology By SILVIO A. BEDINI

in some ways, certainly artistically, and taking into account the times in which they were made, i think the mechanical automata are more impressive than the modern day equivalents like honda’s asimo, which seems little more than a walking, stair climbing brand recognition generator. if you take their creators’ level of knowledge and compare it to the level of amazement generated isn’t it odd that our robots today hardly garner an oooh or ahhh. back then a mechanical bird that could shit, or a mechanical woman that could “play” the harpsicord were almost impossibly fantastic. why is it our modern day androids are so disappointing somehow? is it the lack of convincing physical mimicry? or do we just feel, by now, we really ought to have robot nannies and butlers, rendering the better functioning robotic creations underwhelming?

check out these links for further reading, lot’s of great images, and other goodies:

history of automata. this site is the best visual reference i’ve come across. many images and flash animations. breaks down automata into important creators. click all the links for many rewards.

automata gallery from 1700-1814. a few gems.

japanese page with some historic automata images.

list of plates from the most famous historical book on (pre-android) mechanical wonders called “le diverse et artificios machine” by italian engineer agostino ramelli. i want this fucking book (hint hint)

modern automata creators. check out the “gli artisti” link for modern designers of simple hand operated automata.

lot’s of automata for sale. antique and modern. scroll down.

caberet mechanical theater’s virtual exhibitions of simple modern automata. exhibition 1 and exhibition 2. also links to artists.

lots of automata for sale here. mostly antique, as well as clockworks, wind-ups, etc.

download your own moving paper model and automata kits.

another unsettling part of which is an odd lack of memory. that is not to say i am an amnesiac obviously. i have memories of a sort. but by and large the details of my life, which ought to provide comfort and a certain stability in the form of a connecting thread, are not recorded. i can’t tell you how many times a friend has tried to reminisce about an event only to find they are not reminiscing at all, but more accurately relaying a story. sometimes such stories do spark memory, other times nothing at all. that i require such prompting, that random memories do not pop into my mind more often worries me whenever i stop to think of it. in any case, today i made a mistake which i make periodically, perhaps every 6 months or so, i opened the hall closet and began picking through the various journals, piles, and clippings i’ve amassed in this forgetful lifetime.

the effect of leafing through the smallest sampling of these few thousand pages is incredibly unsettling. a shock to the system almost. the endless variety of drawings, paintings, doodles, stickers, magazine clippings, poems, letters, and writings, which directly and indirectly record my path through life, never fail to rudely manhandle my perception. these crazy poems full of sickening romanticism… who wrote them? me? these journal entries, these pained and evocative scribbles… who the hell was this person!? i find it disconcerting and sad somehow to read even snatches of this stuff, to see the array of printed matter i took the time to trim and save, the crazy raw drawings, the half incubated ideas. i feel so impossibly removed from the person who created and collected all this. my memory being what it is i find in most cases i can not reconstruct the context, can’t really remember the circumstances, though the confusion and earnestness of it all is plain enough. it’s an uncomfortably intimate look at over 10 years of growing pains, insecurities, epiphanies, loves, and losses. a detailed look at what feels like the life of a stranger.

why do i look? well, it’s there, it’s mine, and i can’t help it. why do i save it all? well, obviously as strange and off putting as it can be, i can’t part with it. they are the remains of a youth, the physical evidence which props up a faulty memory. it’s stuff which i must have hoped to find a use for later. though what use i really can’t imagine at this point. weakness i suppose. or perhaps the same overly self-reflective mechanism which i suspect keeps the details of daily life from making any imprint was at work here as well. the isolation of a consciousness, put down and saved like a time capsule, for better or worse.

i remember that years ago when i was at s.v.a. a friend named mike defeo decided after portfolio review to destroy everything he’d done in those years. he shot a video of himself gathering all his work into a pile, then setting it on fire. i remember watching it in disbelief. how can he do that? how can he just let it all go? now, all these years later, i suspect he had the right idea. the video of the destruction is proof enough that something had existed before today, without the potentially dangerous particulars surviving to cause any anguish. my father on the other hand mourns the fact that all of the works from his youth and his time in the army, when he painted, are gone; that not even a photo remains. even as i write this pointless post i know i’ll never get rid of all that stuff. on the contrary, maybe i’ll make a page here, and put it all up on public display, allowing it break from it’s dusty closet and forgotten origins. giving it a chance to become somehow relevant to the present again, thus demystifying it, and lessening it’s weird potency.

good question i guess. posed at the time to the world outside of myself. now, years on, removed from the mind that asked it, it applies to me as well. it’s a stranger, a time traveller, a historical figure asking and i’m an outsider who no longer knows the answer. i realize this post is bombastic, and means nothing to the rest of you, but i feel much better having taken a little time to address it. more composed. less apt to lock myself in some dark room or crawl into bed and force myself to sleep. less apt to go out and buy a bottle of cheap liquor as i once might have done. less apt to aimlessly wander the freezing january streets. less apt to pour forth with flailing sentences that never manage to connect or carry any message. whoever that person is, whose heirlooms and history i hold in my hall closet, whose ramblings and creative outbursts i hold in safe keeping, does not seem to be me. for good or for ill, now, today, i’ll just blow off a little steam here on the nonist, then go to the couch and snuggle up to my love, have a nice home cooked meal, then watch a little t.v… i know the malignancy is still there, strong and unstoppable, but fuck it, there’s more to life than reflection and sadness. right?

seeing this bootlegs project again left me feeling the same as it did when i came upon it the first time, vaguely annoyed. for those of you unfamiliar artist eric doeringer creates small copies of artworks from established contemporary artists which he then sells, stolen book / knocked off handbag style, at a table on the street. though the magazines which have through the years picked up the story will lead you to believe it is about “questioning the relevance of originality and authorship in contemporary art” or some such intellectual commentary on the state of whatever, i can’t help but disagree. i don’t see any coherent statement in the bootlegs at all. they urk the hell out of me to be honest.

now i’m not out to critique or flame eric, not at all, i simply have a hard time understanding what his motives for doing this project are. what the personal rewards might be. that’s what urks me. possibilities which spring to mind are money or recognition as an artist.

people undoubtedly buy the bootlegs, that’s plain enough. they are cheap. unlike knocked off handbags which if not really fooling logo hungry customers as to their authenticity still have their relatively convincing mimicry as a central selling point, the bootlegs are clearly not originals, don’t claim to be, are stacked in multiples, which places them squarely in the “reproductions” category. so why not walk into a museum store and buy a poster which is even cheaper? because of the inherent novelty and nudge-nudge-wink-wink of course. does he earn enough on these bootlegs to assume money is the central motivation for creating the work? i doubt it. after all he needs to buy those pre-stretched canvases, ink for his printer, paint, and gel medium. all the works are not reproductions of paintings either so add to that the price of video tapes, and packaging… it all adds up. obviously eric is not “in it for the money” the way hardcore bootleggers are. though i’m sure he’s pleasantly surprised at the sales. if any conclusion can be drawn from said sales i’d have to say it would be a disheartening one. if i were eric every sale would be a source of annoyance for me. what does it say about the consumers view of art? or the art intelligentsia’s? but then again, maybe eric and his buyers just have a better sense of humor about it than i do.

as for the “recognition as an artist” motive, this does not seem a real possibility. “attention” certainly, but recognition?  i say this because eric has other work, all of a conceptual bent, much of it aimed at consumer culture, but original work none the less (smoke filtration systems, toys, etc, some of which is interesting.) so how do poor quality reproductions shilled outside of art shrines help to shine a light on him as an artist in his own right? i have no idea. is it a case of any publicity is good publicity? does this visibility open doors? perhaps. but i just don’t buy it as any form whatsoever of heady “message art”. as a stunt? a joke? a jab? sure. but then who has energy to devote years to that kind of thing? and in the end who wants to be identified as a joker other than a comedian? warhol? duchamp? koons? yeah, i guess, but they hoodwinked the world, and if art-folk see bootlegs as a “statement” then, well, i guess the tradition of hoodwinking is a long and rich one. so keep on keepin’ on.

anyhow, as stated, i was conflicted about posting eric’s stuff at all. on the one hand it bugs me, on the other i tend to be pretty humorless when it comes to the state of contemporary art, and certainly don’t see any reason to take stabs at other young working artists. after all, eric is doing a lot of work. he’s doing his thing. i may think it’s silly, but what the hell do i know? maybe the fact i was compelled to reason it out at all is proof that he’s onto something? i guess i just don’t get it. i kept thinking, “hey, there’s a way to re-create another artists work that proves your chops by showing serious skill, proves your cleverness by the necessity of cunning, and simultaneously can bring in big money.” which leads me, as hinted at, to what i’ve always meant to post on: art forgery. now that’s a statement! a great big law-breaking, intelligentsia-hoodwinking, fuck you.

art forgery is fascinating to me, not least of all because i can’t imagine there is a greater thorn in the art experts’, historians’, and critics’ collective sides. Abraham Bredius’ (one of the world’s most “preëminent art experts” of the early 20th century) now infamous quote upon first seeing a newly discovered vermeer i think says it all: “What we have here is a- I am inclined to say

masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer.” except of course it was not a vermeer at all but a forgery. hahahaha, oh i love it.

on the general “fuck you” side of forgery there is a great story about a guy named Paul Jordan Smith who, annoyed at the state of modern art in 1924, painted an image of “a South Seas islander holding a banana over her head.” he created the persona of russian artist pavel jerdanowitch, founder of the phoney “Disumbrationist School of Art” took a silly, brooding, photograph of himself as pavel, and submitted the whole concoction into an art exhibition as a joke. the museum of hoaxes has images and tells the whole story. “He titled his painting ‘Exaltation’ and made up something about how it represented the shattering of the bonds of womanhood. He said the woman had just taken a bite of a banana and was waving the banana skin over her head in triumphant freedom.” needless to say the painting, made totally out of spite, was praised. he went on to create more annoyance fueled works as pavel jerdanowitch, all of which were praised, until he got sick of it all and outed himself in the los angeles times, simultaneously delivering “a lecture about the declining standards of taste in the artistic community.” fucking beautiful.

on the profiteering side of forgery there is a long history which i won’t even attempt to write about. there are some great sites out there though that delve into the whole messy business in great detail.

the best resource by far is mystudios.com’s history of art forgry. includes general information as well as specifics on particularly prolific forgers. many images. very interesting stuff. the site also includes a section devoted to forger han van meegeren who created the vermeer mentioned previously. it’s a fascinating story. he avoided prosecution as a nazi sympathizer by admitting he was a forger at which point he proceeded to paint, in front of six court witnesses and a police guard a huge forgery “young christ” in the style of vermeer. a shorter piece on forgery and the x-ray can also be found here.

an alternate telling of the van meegeren vermeer tale with information on his technique and his detection.

some info from a historical perspective beginning with the renaissance and moving into the “internet age”

a nice piece online from the Encyclopedia of Hoaxes title art hoaxes by dennis dutton.

the museum security network has a huge list of names (part 1, part 2) which might warrant further inquiry if your interested in th esubject. they offer many links but most are out of date.

the story of ely sakhai an art dealer who “had allegedly been running one of the most audacious forgery scams ever.” some of the works in question can be seen at the f.b.i. art crimes site here

long interesting piece- authentication: science & art at odds?

wired story from a while back about software meant to detect forgeries.

and finally for the book lovers-

art theft and forgery investigation the complete field manual and Bible!

joslin hall, rare book dealers’ whole bookcase of forgery related books for perusal. shelves one, two, and three.

enjoy all that and… well, and nothing.