Language is at once both a banal standardized system which requires work to master and a numinous corpus saturated with abstruse power. Though it lives in our mouths, coils like a parasite in our minds, and though we use it nearly as often as our own lungs, nothing about it seems to encourage intimacy. Scholarship? Sure. Respect? Yes. But a simple and warm familiarity? It wouldn’t seem so. To some degree this makes sense in that its roots are so deeply buried in our past that it might as well be a force of nature ⊕. And yet, be this all as it may, each and every mind is an incubator of language and each household a nursery. In these private places, cut-off from the ears of society, we giddily break the rules and bend language to our whims, compulsively coining new words, and naming things as though it were the first day of creation.

It seems to me that every household has its own private lexicon, filled with obtuse usages, alternate grammars, and esoteric slang. Am I mistaken in this? I know that in my household language is constantly morphing with new words being invented or co-opted, becoming prominent or falling out of use. It’s as if language was a kinky sex act, our enjoyment and particular proclivities something to be kept private and out of general ear-shot. I’ve occasionally found myself using a word or phrase from my private lexicon only to stop myself short or else be met with blank faces. It’s embarrassing somehow when one slips out.

It would appear a quite complex strata actually. There are the notions which float around in the primordial ooze of our consciousness never quite coalescing into words. There are the words so peculiar and intimate that they never actually reach our mouths but which none the less enjoy regular usage in our minds. ⊕ Then there is the language which is shared between lovers, private words, often whispered like incantations, which define in some way the intimacy of a bedroom but hold no power beyond those walls or moments. Then there is the language of family or the language of a household. This is simultaneously shared and private, displaying in its microcosm the same ability to evolve and proliferate as language at large, but which remains cut-off like a Galapagos of wild syllables.

I think great catalysts in household languages are pets. It seems as though every pet owner calls his beloved little friend by a myriad of names, any name, in fact, but the one they initially chose. ⊕ For example my cat’s are named Newton and Henry. What do my girlfriend and I actually call them?

Newton: Newtie, The Newts, The Belly, Lemon, Little Bull, Dew Beard, Dewbie, Ankle-Head, Nappy Dread, The Dust Brother, Chunk, Stankly, The Stink, etc, etc.

Henry: Fluffkin, Fuzzlet, Fuzzy-Pants, Manatee, The Griz, Gristle(e), Gristle-bee, Grozells, Grizbane, Hiney, Heinz, Heinrich, Doodie, The Doods, Martha Washington, etc, etc.

These of course do not in and of themselves constitute anything approaching a secret language, I only share them as an aside, there being a whole shorthand used in place of common nouns, verbs, and concepts used in my household. I’ll share just a couple of minor examples to illustrate-

Stoony

This is a word which is related to the pet names above but is altogether more versatile. It sums up in two syllables any delighted surprise at seeing (usually on the television) some furry creature of interest. So rather than saying, for instance, “look honey! A very cute / strange / noteworthy member of the animal kingdom has made an unexpected appearance on the television, stop picking your nose and take a look for yourself.” Either of us can simply call out, “Stoony!” and the other will know instantly that our attention is required, front and center. Likewise the word can be used in plural form to note the appearance of a whole herd / pride / cete / litter / troup / etc. Dropping the “y” and adding an “s” at the end denotes familiarity as when it’s used for one of our own pets, or on occasion, one another, e.g. “Hey Stoons.” Lastly this word forms the root of further mutations such as the ever popular “Stoonhauser.”

We have a whole gamut of words which can substitute for saying “I love you.” We’ve co-opted three from Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall ⊕. These are–

Lurf
Loove
Lurve

I use all three fairly often. Other substitutions are–

Elephant
Olives

Both of which are shortened versions of longer phrases since “elephant shoes” and “olive juice” are famously observed to so closely mimic the lip movements of saying “I love you.” After 8 years of expressing that sentiment the words can feel almost meaningless, so this little bit of differentiation (both from the norm, and from other instances of its use) adds something. When leaving the apartment in the morning I might say “Elephant” and be treated, in kind, to the response of “Olives.” No more need be said. Our household shorthand accomplishing in two words what would otherwise take 7, and with added value to boot thanks to its exclusivity.

As I said these are only a couple examples. It would seem that in my household at least the language which has emerged was guided by two main evolutionary factors: economy and amusement. If a word makes expressing ourselves simpler it sticks ⊕ or alternately if something makes us laugh it sticks. What the factors are in other households I have no idea.

I have to imagine every home, everywhere, has its own strain of language subtly different from the norm, guided by its own principles. I imagine that when a word or peculiar usage actually makes the leap from a person’s mind into this testing ground of the home that perhaps .05% might make it out into the world and language at large as slang. That leaves a lot of playful and weird wordage which we keep behind closed doors away from the ears of our neighbors. It boggles the mind. If we marched out into the day using these mutated versions of our mother-tongues we’d all look at one another as if we were speaking nonsense, but it wouldn’t be true. Any word which has an intended meaning, agreed upon and understood by even two people, can’t be properly called nonsense can it? What we’d be speaking would be a billion subtly different dialects.

Admittedly I may be imagining all of this. Perhaps every household is not like mine. Perhaps other people put their energy into finding the most precise and perfect existing words to express themselves ⊕ rather than just coining their own willy-nilly. But as monolithic and as much like work as language can feel when we are first introduced to it, as careful and polite as we are taught to be with our words in public, I can’t help but assume that, at home, people are as naughty and playful and weird with their words as they are with everything else.

Am I mistaken? You tell me.

These are perhaps not the best examples to illustrate the included text, there are many more photo montages, bizarre scenes, saccharine babies, naughty bits, etc, but, well… (see the first image at very beginning of post again.)

Interesting notes: Though the printing technology existed in the 1860’s it took nearly 30 years for the various post office regulations of Europe and America to synch-up in such a way that sending postcards in the manner which they are still sent today (from far flung vacation spots, etc.) became feasible. It wasn’t until the 1900’s that people were actually allowed to write on the backs of postcards (that space being reserved for postal information only), until which time senders were forced to cram whatever messages they could onto the fronts. After all this shook-out postcards quickly became ubiquitous. As the introduction puts it: “The privileged stronghold of the articulate and the well-to-do on letter-writing was broken, cards and their postage were cheap and at least a greeting, X X X, was easy for anyone who could write a name and an address.”

X X X.

During his 9th year he began hearing voices. They were clipped whispers which in the perfect silence of the walled world echoed like a Sybil’s fiat. At first he was terrified; His bull’s brain bred to fear the hunter. He crouched deeper into his chosen shadow, hyperventilating, his tongue lolling and slick. He hid and he listened and for weeks kept still as a stone.

Slowly, one by one, the voices quieted until the only sound remaining was that of a single pair of sandals, their light steps tapping out a confused staccato once or twice a day. Emboldened by familiarity and hunger he began venturing out in their intervals of inaction.

The first body he encountered was thin and small. It laid face down in a corner, its knees bent, its hindquarters in the air. The smell of blood from its scraped knees and cheeks was faint but enthralling. He emptied his bladder dramatically, snorting and stomping and dropping his horns low, then, satisfied that the body was submissive, he sniffed carefully about its edges. It was dead and it was the first meat he’d seen since the voices invaded. He choked it down looking again and again over his shoulder.

He found 12 more bodies in as many days; All dead. 7 were large and 5 more, like the first, were small and soft. He dragged each to the center of the world and stacked them in a pile. He’d never seen so much meat in one place at one time, and were it not for the staccato sandals which still made their ragged music occasionally, he might have been… happy. He wasn’t bored any longer, nor was he hungry. What was happiness if not that?

The last body he found was also small and soft. It lay in the middle of a hall with a little sack clutched in its arms. At the sound of his water smacking the floor it moved, its sandals scraping two lazy parabolas in the dust. It was not dead but neither did it run. When he jabbed it experimentally with his horn it did not cry out. He dragged it to the center of the world but did not drop it on the meat pile.

For months he shared his meals with it. He shared the water which arrived via Daedalus’ hidden shoots and ladders. He inhaled its smell deeply, he mated with it, and he watched daily as it moved an ivory stylus across one of the tablets from its sack. He’d never known companionship, never known the pleasure of watching another empty their bowels, never known that rattling sobs and wet eyes could be so beautiful.

Learning to read had been a wonder. Once he was made to understand that the symbols in the wax tablets held meaning, were connected each to an idea outside itself, he wanted to lay eyes on little else. Meat was plentiful and mating was easy, but reading! That was different. It revealed to him existence beyond his confused hallways. She explained and explained again, every day for months. His first hard-earned moments of comprehension, when they came, were like a long dawn over a new world. Everything was transformed. The walls no longer seemed so infuriatingly uniform. The shadows seemed half as dark and simultaneously twice as deep.

But, alas, these were merely quiet contentments before a gathering storm of anguish.

One day, after mating, his female lay down in the corner where he threw his marrow-sucked bones, and never got up again. He poked at her bruised flanks with a gentle horn but knew instinctively that he was alone once more. He thought of her weeping face, her pink parts, the days of sounding out words between sobs. Though he snorted nervously and his fur bristled, his spirits were not completely broken. “I have the sack of tablets” he thought wanly as he moved her battered body to the meat pile.

He spent the next months plodding through every tablet in the sack, those which he’d read before as well as those which his mate had kept from him. (She’d always say of these “They are too difficult for you.”) It was here, reading alone in the heart of the labyrinth, that the sun set on his new world. In its dusk he learned the truth of things, of men, of gods, of his parents, and of himself.

He read of Poseidon’s agreement with Minos. He read of Pasiphae’s lust and of Daedalus’ means of assuaging it. He read of his own birth and the construction of his world built for amusement and agony. He read of Athens’ defeat and Aegeus’ bargain to send 7 youths and 7 maidens every nine years into the labyrinth. He learned his own name – Asterius – and turning finally to the tablet his mate had written, was impelled for the first time in his life to sound out the word “minotaur” in his mind.

This last tablet was an account of life in the labyrinth. It was filled with bitterness and horror, made up as it was of words like “monster,” “revulsion,” and “misery” flanking the ever repeating phrase, “I wish to die, please Gods let me die.” Had he but known how Asterius would have wept like the soft one who so despised him.

Epilogue

The Athenian meat eventually ran out and though it might seem masochistic Asterius just sat reading and re-reading the tablets each day. There was nothing else but his hunger pains and the silence. By turns he became sullen and angry. First brooding over his own newly realized miseries, then imagining, in great detail, what he would do to the next batch of children who dared drag their sandals into his darkness. He shat on the bone pile and slept clutching the sack of tablets.

More Athenians did come in time, 7 youths and 7 maidens, whom he watched from the darkness, his snorting anger tempered by longing. At first he approached them submissively with a tablet in hand, but each time they only shrieked and cursed him and fled into the darkness. Finally he lost patience and began hunting them, tearing with his horns and mating with their corpses. Even with a full belly and empty balls, however, his life as one with knowledge was a misery.

Eventually the realization struck him that he might take up the ivory stylus himself and write his own words into the margins of a tablet. It took much trial and error, but after nearly a year he set down that stylus having written a single message to the world above with its cruel men and capricious Gods:

“Had I only been born opposite of what I am, with a bull’s powerful heart and a man’s cunning mind, I might have been a beloved hero among you. Instead I find myself with the weak heart of a man and the dim mind of a bull, a monster, who you’ve trapped in the dark and universally despise. – The Minotaur.”

Theseus would find him brooding over this very passage 9 years later.

Truth: The Minotaur Reading

In that I can not not find any information specific to this piece I will instead offer a pertinent section from a review written by Roddy McDevitt from Queen Street gallery:

“Carters’ work is fresh and authentic. It is both daringly simple and deeply resonant. This is a result, of course, of her subject matter. She poeticizes the figure by creating eerie composite creatures. Whether cast in bronze or drawn in charcoal, the work, it seems to me, breaks down into either the lyrical single figure or the dramatic interaction of two or more figures. Her single figures, naked men with perfectly integrated animal heads: bull, horse, bear, fox, rabbit, all seem lost in contemplation of the mystery of their own existence.

The dramatic configurations are fabulous and thus exotic. We are like Alice through the looking glass, propelled into a dreamworld overflowing with marvelous creatures thoroughly absorbed in their own encounters with each other. This ‘Carter world’ is exciting, magic-fueled, utterly mysterious yet completely realized. The bold and beautiful visions of Beth Carter help us dream the mythology of our own existence.”

For my part all I’ll say is I came across this piece by accident but was, in fact, oddly moved by it, as I hope the extrapolated story above testifies.

For more of Beth’s work see the following:

Queen Street gallery.

Picasso Mio.

Badcocks.

A gallery.

For a pervious “extrapolation” see:

The Old Musician.

For previous alternate mythologies see:

The Myth of Ironus.

Hope you enjoyed.

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“It is all a question, finally, of the nature of genius. The best explanation of genius that I know, the one that incorporates most of the facts we have, is Koestler’s — that the act of genius is simply the bringing together of two hitherto distinct spheres of reference, or matrices — a talent for juxtapositions. Archimedes’ bath is a small instance. Till him no one had associated measurements of mass with the commonplace observation of water displacement. The question is, for a modern investigator, what actually takes place in the brain at the moment that an Archimedes says, ‘Eureka!’ It seems clear, now, that it is a sort of breakdown — literally, the mind disintegrates, and the old, distinct categories are for a little while fluid and capable of re-formation.”

“But it’s just that,” I objected, “the re-formation of the disrupted categories, in which the act of genius consists. It’s not the breakdown that counts, but the new juxtapositions that follow. Madmen can break down just as spectacularly as geniuses.”

Dr. Busk smiled, enigmatic in her veil of cigarette smoke. “Perhaps that thin line that is said to separate genius from madness is only fortuitous. Perhaps the madman simply has the bad luck of being wrong. But your point is taken, and I can reply to it. You would suggest, I take it, that genius is only one per cent inspiration, that the process of preparing for the moment when the ‘Eureka!’ comes is what is crucial in the formation of genius. In short, his education, by which he becomes acquainted with reality.

“But doesn’t that just beg the question? Education, memory itself, is but the recapitulation of all the moments of genius in that culture. Education is always breaking down old categories and recombining them in better ways. And who has a better memory, strictly speaking, than the catatonic who resurrects some part of the past in all its completeness, annihilating the present moment utterly? I might go so far as to say that thought itself is a disease of the brain, a degenerative condition of matter.

“Why, if genius were a continuous process, instead of what it is — a fluke — it would be of no value to us whatsoever! Geniuses in a field like mathematics are usually played out by thirty, at the very latest. The mind defends itself against the disintegrative process of creativity. It begins to jell, notions solidify into inalterable systems, which simply refuse to be broken down and re-formed. Consider Owens, the great anatomist of the Victorian age, who simply wouldn’t understand Darwin. It’s self-preservation, pure and simple.

“And then think of what happens if genius doesn’t reign itself in but insists on plunging on ahead into the chaos of freest association. I’m thinking of that hero of you literateurs, James Joyce. I know any number of psychiatrists who could, in good conscience, have accepted Finnegan Wakes [sic] as the very imprimatur of madness and had its author hospitalized on its evidence alone. A genius? Oh yes. But all we common people have the common sense to realize that genius, like the clap, is a social disease, and we take action accordingly. We put all our geniuses in one kind or another of isolation ward, to escape being infected.”

-Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration, pg.62-64. 1968.

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In related linkage How Stuff Works takes on (in less verbose and dramatic form) the subject of how genius works.

Though he’s produced a huge amount of work, much of it landscapes from his wide travels, in general David’s previously exhibited pieces have dealt with a kind of aesthetic subversion, playing with the balance between each picture’s pleasant surface and its darker underbelly. Most of the paintings which immediately precede the group I’m showing here are very colorful and layered. On first glance they might be thought of as “pretty” containing as they do birds, elements of landscape, etc. But a closer inspection will readily yield symbols of a political system gone awry and what David refers to as “religious warfare.” If I remember correctly, from our brief conversation, some of the pieces go so far as to subvert their own content over time, with reactive surfaces that eventually have those “pretty” birds falling out of the sky.

As you all know by now I’m most interested in a pictures aesthetic payload, much more so, in the final reckoning, than the underlying concept. So “subversion” and “tension” aside let me say much of the work was in quite nice. The new work though, for me, is something else all together. Less obviously beautiful but more compelling. He’s a young artist, only having graduated Parsons in 2001, but this new group, created as it was both under emotional difficulty as well as material limitations, seems to me a step toward something much better.

As David put’s it:

“These particular paintings differ greatly from the work I have done in the past. I began them when my mother broke her neck at c5 and c6 earlier this year and I moved back to Minnesota from New York to help take care of her. Leaving much of my materials and studio behind me I did not expect to make much work, let alone head-off in an entirely new direction. Art making itself seemed to have fallen a bit flat for me, the particular forms and images I had been previously engaged with seeming to have little or no relevance suddenly.

This work represents a bit of a departure for me especially in terms of materials. Much of my past work is very technique-heavy, utilizing a wide range of materials. These new pieces are much more pared-down using just a few types of ink and some black and white paint. They developed in a very organic way as well, with much less planning than most of the pictures I have made in the past.

For me they are meditative, composed with meticulous gestures leading to unstable and dangerous looking structures. There is a feeling here of something tumultuous happening, or about to happen, though they maintain a kind of almost static distance as well, with the space often flattened completely. From my point of view they are a stark depiction of the frailty and fragility of life both on a personal as well as in a larger sense. There are, of course, many different ways that one could interpret them.”

One last note as to scale: The dimensions of these particular paintings range from forty inches to over six feet.

Hope you enjoyed, and hope to see more from David in the future.

It seems that approximately 6 years ago an anonymous citizen gifted the then fresh and fancy-free president George W. Bush with an 1888 edition of the book The Orthoepist by one Alfred Ayers, Nom de plum of Thomas Embly Osmun. (Osmun had devoted himself to orthoepy - the art and study of correct pronunciation of words - and elocution. The Orthoepist was the first of 8 volumes he published on the subjects.) We must assume that the gift was meant as a jibe at the President whose pronouncements, noteworthy for all the wrong reasons, had already begun to be referred to as Bushisms. (A double-jibe perhaps in that the word “orthoepy” has long since gone out of use and its pronunciation is itself a source of debate.) This little joke may have begun a chain reaction, the unintentional consequences of which would remove any whiff of the initial humor and leave in its stead the effluvium of a transformed language.

Bush received his copy of The Orthoepist just this year, after the screening process undertaken for all whitehouse mail in general, which was followed by the even more involved vetting for printed matter in particular, which it may interest you to know includes but is by no means limited to the following: author background checks, ideological screenings, NSA wiretaps of author / immediate family / descendant’s phone lines, CIA / FBI records cross-checks, Black-list cross-checks, Cryptographic screenings, print dusting, value appraisals, gathering of existent critical analysis, pre-reading by no less than 2 aides, highlighting, and intern-typed summations (all of which often result in packets of accompanying information as long or indeed longer than the item in question itself). After being tossed through these various hoops for nearly five years the volume, accompanied by a 209 page report and related materials, landed on The Presidents desk.

Now we have heard a great deal lately about the President’s surprisingly energetic reading habits. 60 books thus far this year including Shakespeare and Camus. That’s a lot of reading (not to mention thousands of man-hours wrapped up in the vetting process outlined above) so it’s no wonder that, according to my source (whom admittedly is not infallible), Bush didn’t actually read The Orthoepist once it finally made it’s way to him. He was busy, obviously, catching up on the his highschool reading list. He did, however, flip through some of the accompanying material during a commercial break in the WWE’s SmackDown wrestling telecast. As it turns out a certain bit of highlighted text from an 1882 issue of The Century caught his eye.

Whether these lines caught the President’s eye because his aides are so well trained at picking out and highlighting exactly the words which might interest him or whether a lifetime’s worth of constant correction and lampooning have given him a “pronunciation complex” we can’t be sure. From His first words as a child of 6 right up until the day he was sworn into the office of the presidency George W. Bush had been corrected on his use of the english language by every G.E.D. level smart-ass he’s come across. Even his most ass-sniffingly accomplished sycophants snicker occasionally. That kind of thing does something to a man, and it does something even worse to a damn near retarded man. The fact remains though that reading these two lines initiated that rare event which passes for a shattering epiphany in our president’s mind, an idea.

As best as my source can make out, seeing, for the first time, in highlighted text no less, (and in very close proximity to the words “holy grail”) the sentiment that language is not static and that there is room for interpretation - a sentiment which flew directly in the face of every childhood taunt and every Presidential-wedgie he’d received since taking office - well… It was tremendously exciting for him. So much so that after no more time than it took to drink 4 Hard Lemonades he’d re-envisioned not only his his Presidency (as one which might in fact make it into the books as something other than a destructive string of utter failures) but his already famous Bushisms as well. Perhaps, if he used his final two years well, he could be remembered as “The Great Orthoepist” rather than the “Incompetent Destroyer” or the “Lenny of the American Presidency?” 

The logic goes something like this: why, if “the pronunciations given are not the only ones in good usage” as fine, noble Mr. Ayers says, couldn’t America “teach the controversy” in Grammar? It had worked in the Sciences. Today a majority of American’s polled no longer believed in that confusing Evolution stuff! Why couldn’t the same transformation be visited upon the English language itself?! He, George W. Bush, the average Joe’s President, the President guy’s all over the country wanted to share a few brewskies with, could be an admired coiner of words rather than a retched mangler of them. He could take the podium with confidence and speak in the manner the good lord impelled him to! He could take some liberties with those damned foreign names. He could speak in tongues if the spirit moved him. He imagined comic book versions of his own great moments and public addresses, peppered throughout with “Bushisms” now cherished by the children and deep into common usage! How wonderful it could be.

Having, since that great day of realization, brought his idea to friends in high places via aides in high places matters have mutated. A close advisor explained to the President that the idea could be taken even further; that throughout the ages alternate language systems have been developed which were less complex, less obtuse, and free of all the strange rules and exceptions which always seemed to trip him up. In point of fact there were a great many of them to choose from, any of which might, through a little palm-greasing and favor-granting, eventually supplant the reigning American english as the official language of the greatest nation on Earth. Not only could a radical new orthoepy be brought to bear but so too could orthography itself be rewritten, liberating lazy 3rd graders and lifetime-long poor spellers as well. It would be quite a legacy for a President so often “misunderestimated.”

Hearing murmurs of this language creators across the country have begun rallying their troops and pinching their pennies. Word on the hill is that before long the “language lobbies” will be a new force in American politics.

It may sound hard to believe but the truth is that by appealing to his base on this issue (which is comprised largely of people who wear monocles and have others do their reading for them, or alternately, people who don’t read because… well… they are unable. Not to mention the sizable portion to whom logic and reason are no great shakes, and hence, no boundary) a new national language might be closer than you think. And no, I’m not talking about Spanish.

According to my source some of the many alternate systems vying for favor at this very moment are:

Globish
Anglish
Basic English
Easy English
Klingon
Esperanto
Ido
Simlish
Idiom Neutral
lojban
Ceqli.

In truth the list offered to me by my source was just too long to reproduce here, but this page is a decent start.

What I can say is that though the President has not read about it in any great detail whatsoever, word is that he is strongly favoring Stephen Chase Houghton’s constructed language based entirely on its name, which he thinks “sounds pretty bad-ass.”

I can’t say for sure how this will shake out but obviously the President only has two years to make his lingua-dreams a reality, and according to my source he will do everything in his already sore and chaffed power to do exactly that. So if you open the New York Post one day and find a headline which looks like it ought to be on the front of a child’s Lemonade stand, remember, you heard it here first.

I for one am gonna try to grab a piece of the pie for myself! C U Laytr Sukus!

The Artist’s Dilemma

By Mark Rothko (probably written between 1940-41)

What is the popular conception of the artist? Gather a thousand descriptions, and the resulting composite is the portrait of a moron: he is held to be childish, irresponsible, and ignorant or stupid in everyday affairs.

The picture does not necessarily involve censure or unkindness. These deficiencies are attributed to the intensity of the artist’s preoccupation with his particular kind of fantasy and to the unworldly nature of the fantastic itself. The bantering tolerance granted to the absentminded professor is extended to the artist. Biographers contrast the artlessness of his judgments with the high attainment of his art, and while his naivete or rascality are gossiped about, they are viewed as signs of Simplicity and Inspiration, which are the Handmaidens of Art. And if the artist is inarticulate and lacking in the usual repositories of fact and information, how fortunate, it is said, that nature has contrived to divert from him all worldly distractions so he may be single-minded in regards to his special office.

This myth, like all myths, has many reasonable foundations. First, it attests to the common belief in the laws of compensation: that one sense will gain in sensitivity by the deficiency in another. Homer was blind, and Beethoven deaf. Too bad for them, but fortunate for us in the increased vividness of their art. But more importantly it attests to the persistent belief in the irrational quality of inspiration, finding between the innocence of childhood and the derangements of madness that true insight which is not accorded to normal man. When thinking of the artist, the world still adheres to Plato’s view, expressed in Ion in reference to the poet: “There is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him.” Although science, with scales and yardstick, daily threatens to rend mystery from the imagination, the persistence of this myth is the inadvertent homage which man pays to the penetration of his inner being as it is differentiated from his reasonable experience.

Strange, but the artist has never made a fuss about being denied those estimable virtues other men would not do without: intellectuality, good judgment, a knowledge of the world, and rational conduct. It may be charged that he has even fostered the myth. In his intimate journals Vollard tells us that Degas feigned deafness to escape disputations and harangues concerning things he considered false and distasteful. If the speaker or subject changed, his hearing immediately improved. We must marvel at his wisdom since he must have only surmised what we know definitely today: that the constant repetition of falsehood is more convincing than the demonstration of truth. It is understandable, then, how the artist might actually cultivate this moronic appearance, this deafness, this inarticulateness, in an effort to evade the million irrelevancies which daily accumulate concerning his work. For, while the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done.

Let us not delude ourselves with visions of a golden age freed of this cacophony. This gilding is an artistic falsehood. We deal in fantasy ourselves and know how alive dreams can seem. And an age like ours, which demands so clear a facing of realities, will not allow us the pleasure of narcoticism. With the knowledge that man’s tribulations, at least, are always with him, we can safely say that the artist of the past had good reason, too, to play the mad fool—so as to salvage those moments of peace when the demands of the demons could be quieted and art pursued. And if nature, in fact, contrived to give him the appearance of a fool, so much the better. For dissimulation is an exacting art.

Ill hath he chosen his part who seeks to please
The worthless world,—ill hath he chosen his part,
For often must he wear the look of ease

Assent with lying tongue.

The lament is Michelangelo’s (a translation of this madrigal can be found in The Life of Michel Angela Buonarroti [1807]). Even this great man—who lived in an age when the rapport between the artist and the world seemed to have been ideal, and when fetes and processions celebrated the completion of works by the artists of renown, for whose services dukes, popes, and kings fought — even he bore his full share of calumny and disapproval. The principles of his art were constantly assailed; and, after parrying those criticisms, his morals were found wanting. Aretino attacked the nakedness of the nudes in the Last judgement as inconsistent with Christian piety. The reasonableness of Aretino’s point cannot be denied. Michelangelo’s vision of the Celestial Court can be easily mistaken for an orgiastic bout. These doctors and moralists, they are always right! Like our own social moralists and critics, their facts are so neat, and their reasoning so pretty: but what disastrous falsity to the cause of truth!

Most societies of the past have insisted that their own particular evaluations of truth and morality be depicted by the artist. Accordingly, the Egyptian artist had to produce a definitely prescribed prototype; the Christian artist had to abide by the tenets of the Second Council of Nicea or be anathematized or, like the monk of the iconoclast age, work in danger and by stealth. We should note that Michelangelo’s nudes were forced to wear, in the end, the appropriate panties and drapes. Authority formulated rules, and the artist complied. We shall not speak here of those whose daring periodically revitalized art, saving it from its narcissistic mimicry of itself. We can accurately say that, within these periods, the artist had to submit to these rules or simulate the appearance of submission, if he were to be permitted to practice his art.

It will be pointed out that the artist’s lot is the same today, that the market, through its denial or affording of the means of sustenance, exerts the same compulsion. Yet there is this vital difference: the civilizations enumerated above had the temporal and spiritual power to summarily enforce their demands. The Fires of Hell, exile, and, in the background, the rack and stake, were correctives if persuasion failed. Today the compulsion is Hunger, and the experience of the last four hundred years has shown us that hunger is not nearly as compelling as the imminence of Hell and Death. Since the passing of the spiritual and temporal patron, the history of art is the history of men who, for the most part, have preferred hunger to compliance, and who have considered the choice worthwhile. And choice it is, for all the tragic disparity between the two alternatives.

The freedom to starve! Ironical indeed. Yet hold your laughter. Do not underestimate the privilege. It is seldom possessed, and dearly won. The denial of this right is no less ironical: think of the condemned criminal who will not eat and who is fed by force, if need be, until his day of execution. Concerning hunger, as concerning art, society has traditionally been dogmatic. One had to starve legitimately—through famine or blight, through unemployment or exploitation—or not at all. One could no more contrive his own starvation than he could take his own life; and for the artist to have said to society that he would sooner starve than traffic with her wares or tastes would have been heresy and dealt with summarily as such. Within the dogmas of the totalitarian states of today, you may be sure, the artist must starve correctly, just as he must paint by the dictates of the State.

But here, today, we still have the right to choose. It is precisely the possibility of exercising choice wherein our lot differs from that of the artists of the past. For choice implies responsibility to one’s conscience, and, in the conscience of the artist, the Truth of Art is foremost. There may be other loyalties, but for the artist, unless he has been waylaid or distracted, they will be secondary and discarded in his creation of art. This artistic conscience, which is composed of present reason and memory, this morality intrinsic to the generic logic of art itself, is inescapable. Violate her promptings and she will ferret out the deepest recesses of thought and conjecture. Neither sophistries nor rationalizations can quiet her demands.

What did those artists of the past do about their conscience? The Law of Authority has this saving grace: it can be circumnavigated. One can pay lip service to the letter and with equanimity violate its spirit. One bows to necessity, then schemes to defeat it. We are told that there were times when the Truth of the Law coincided with the Truth of Art. Granted! But when the divergence became too great, what ingenuity the artist displayed in disguising one to have the appearance of the other. What guile and shrewdness in this seeming moron. One needs but but recall the great Apollo. How easily this Hellenistic deity, with all his draperies and trappings, was slipped into the niches of the Christian saints. He had merely to change his name, and to look much sadder than he really felt.

What abetted the artist in his little game was the dogmatic unity of his civilization. For all dogmatic societies have this in common: they know what they want. Whatever the contentions behind the scenes, society is allowed only one Official Truth. The demands made upon the artist, therefore, issued from a single source, and the specifications for art were definite and unmistakable. That, at least, was something: whether submission or deceit were intended, one master is better than ten, and it is better to know the size and shape of the hand that holds the whip. In a master, definiteness and stability are preferable to caprice.

Today, instead of one voice, we have dozens issuing demands. There is no longer one truth, no single authority—instead there is a score of would-be masters who would usurp their place. All are full of histories, statistics, proofs, demonstrations, facts, and quotations. First they plead and exhort, and finally they resort to intimidation by threats and moral imprecations. Each pulls the artist this way and that, telling him what he must do if he is to fill his belly and save his soul.

For the artist, now, there can be neither compliance nor circumvention. It is the misfortune of free conscience that it cannot be neglectful of means in the pursuit of ends. Ironically enough, compliance would not help, for even if the artist should decide to subvert this conscience, where could he find peace in this Babel? To please one is to antagonize the others. And what security is there in any of these wrangling contenders?

The truths of India, Egypt, Greece spanned over centuries. In matters of art our society has substituted taste for truth, which she finds more amusing and less of a responsibility, and changes her tastes as frequently as she changes her hats and shoes. And here might the artist, placed between choice and diversity, raise his lamentations louder. Never did his afflictors have as many shapes or such a jabbering of voices, and never did they exude such a prolixity of matter.

-

Hope you enjoyed.

The lyrics are as follows:

————————————————-

Take take take take take it off…
Take it off, take take take take it off
Take it off, take take take take it off,
Take it off, take take take take it off,
Take it off,
Take it OFF!
Take that suede-front off
Take it OFF!
Take those contacts off
Take it OFF!
Take that horsemeat off
Take it OFF!
Take those shell-toes off
Take it OFF!
Take those track fleas off
Take it OFF!
Take that doo-rag off
Take it OFF!
Take that moth-rag off
Take it OFF!
Take those fat laces off
Take it OFF!
Take that bomber off
Take it OFF!
Take that BVD off
Take it OFF!
Take those Converse off
Take it OFF!
And those Gazelles too
Take it OFF!
Take that Kangol off
Take it OFF!
Take that Jordache off
Take it OFF!
Take that Afro off
Take it OFF!
Take that jheri curl off
Take it OFF!
Take that Le Tigre off
Take it OFF!
Take those acid-washed jeans, bell-bottomed, designed by your mama…
off? Please? Please…

————————————————-

So, where do these street-pariah’s stand today? To find the answer I tapped a fashion designer who, wishing to remain anonymous, we will call “Da Brat.”

Da Brat and I conversed briefly on the subject and the results are as follows…

Suede-Front
We were almost, but not totally, in agreement on this item. Da Brat said “I like a suede-front on a man” to which I would have to qualify, “a man over the age 60, with a shuffling walk, maybe.” The populous at large don’t wear them, which would seem to point to a ruling of whack, unless you are forward-thinking and assume that if no one is wearing something it’s cool, in which case the suede-front is pretty fly. Ya heard?

Contacts
Da Brat and I were in total agreement here: Even for fake-tanned, dyed-blonde asian girls who want to look like they are fresh from a crashing Malibu surf colored contacts are whack with a capital, Billy Joel style, ack. ack. ack. ack. 

Horsemeat
Horsemeat? Da Brat and I were similarly mystified by this one. “A Leather product of some kind? Pleather? Fur?” In so much as neither of us were up on our 1989 slang enough to positively identify this item we will have to say whack, if only because it sounds gross and we both like horses.

Shell-Toes
Da Brat had a definite opinion on this one which sprung forth without hesitation, “they are only cool on people who never stopped wearing them in the first place.” I myself recognize them as classics but also recognize that they have too much baggage to be fresh again any time soon. So we are gonna have to go with wic-wic-whack. 

Track Fleas
Track fleas? Again no clue. Da Brat and I decided to approach this one as though what they are referring to is a track suit of some kind and go from there. Under that assumption the consensus is that though you still catch a D-Train straggler wearing a pink velour Juicy Couture number the plain fact is they are whack. That being said, they sold a shit-load at least twice in the past 20 years so expect them to make a return before too long. Not that that return will nullify their whackness. 

Doo-Rag
The doo-rag is back in a big way with all kinds of loser celebrity-types rockin’ them in both the classic over-the-noggin style, as well as the Dexies Midnight Runners’ loose-around-the-neck style. Once Nicole Ritchie and other deadweight c-listers have been caught in the pages of In-Style magazine wearing something, well, word on the street has to be that that shit is WHACK!

Moth Rag
I had to seek a third and fourth opinion on this one but none of my sources were able to positively identify what exactly a “moth rag” was. The best guess we heard was possibly a wig or a weave. If that is correct then it is perfectly relevant to todays rampant celebrity fakery. Remember crack is whack, and so are weaves, wigs, and extensions. Da Brat’s final words: “Sounds pretty cool whatever it is.”

Fat Laces
The simple answer here is that unless you are a member of a japanese break dance crew or an aged b-boy being wheeled around a cardboard-floored nursing home then you have no business wearing fat laces. Just say no.

Bomber
Da Brat seems to think baggy oversized bombers are cool again. I haven’t seen one anywhere, not with an 8-ball on the back, not with top-gun style patches, not Bruce Sterling “pattern recognition” style, not even an embroidered Avirex (course, it is summer) so I’ll go ahead and agree that they must be dope again. 

BVD
Hmmm. This one has me somewhat mystified. Underwear? Giant white XXXXXL tee shirts that end somewhere below the knee? I don’t know. I have to beg off on this one. No clue. Da Brat concurs. 

Converse, Kangol, Jordache
I have decided to group these all together because they are all pretty much in the same boat of relative whackness. All these brands have been trying really hard at making a resurgence, to regain even a milligram of the coolness which once swirled around them like a swollen, money-bearing cloud. Problem is all three were so successful in their respective moments as to have become very nearly cliche. Converse and Kangol are perhaps a little better off in that they have been adopted by so many different subcultures of people that they are very nearly meaningless at this point, the first step toward injecting them with new life. Jordache, however… well, one word: wiz-ni-iz-nack! Especially, as Da Brat points out, with Elizabeth Hurley as their spokes-meat.

Gazelles
See the entries for both shell-toes and fat-laces. It’s just too soon. Why do we have to so mercilessly pummel the b-boy fashions? Can’t we let them be for a while? Go grab up some Kangaroos, K-Swiss, Diadoras, or hell even some Doug E Fresh style gucci loafers. Give the b-boy sneakers a rest… A’ight? 

Afro
Da Brat seemed irrationally exuberant in her approval for afros “on blonde girls.” I myself am almost completely ambivalent toward them. I think the afro is a style which needs to be taken on a head by head basis. ?uestlove’s fro for example: fresh. Yo mama’s fro: Whack.

Jheri Curl
I am convinced this one has hit the mat for good. The jheri curl has been so mercilessly lampooned by everyone under the sun for the past 15 years that I just can’t imagine anyone trying to rock it again. Unless it’s some ironic Williamsburger of course. I won’t put anything past them. Then again you’d think the same would be true for the mullet, and yet it lives on totally without irony. Da Brat’s take on jheri curl: “Only cool in a London nightclub.”

Le Tigre
See Jordache comments above. Not even that cool in the first place. Off-brand Izod wanna-be whack-attack now and forever. (Even if I do have a 7th grade class photo of myself wearing an turquoise Le Tigre polo shirt with a bangs and a black rope necklace. Aw shit!)

Acid-Washed Jeans, Bell-Bottomed, Designed By Your Mama
Clearly these are the freshest of the lot. Or the whackest, depending on your outlook.

So overall of the 16 our 2006 revised judgement breaks down to 11 still whack, and 5 fresh or indeterminate. Course, that’s only our take, your tally may come in very differently. Beyond that you can be sure that in redoubling the overall whackness of the Take It Off list nearly 20 years on there will be those who instantly regard its items as doubly cool. Such is the precariously subjective round-a-bout of fashion. Please feel free to enlighten us if you have any further insight into the matter. Pos, Dave, Maseo, and Paul included. And thanks to code-name: Da Brat for participating.

Signing off.

In any case I recently picked up a truly beautiful book put out in 1966 called The Biography of a Painting. The text is originally from one of six C.E. Norton lectures Shahn gave at Harvard (the most famous being The Shape of Content, which is still in print). In this particular volume Shahn attempts to trace the internal and external forces which shaped his painting titled, Allegory. It might, on the surface, seem an odd thing to devote an entire book to exploring the inspiration for a single painting. Non-artists would no doubt assume that the ideas and circumstances of a painting’s creation are right there on the tip of an artists tongue, ready to be accessed, and that exploration aimed at rooting these out is a self-involved exercise at best. The truth is not so black and white, and in the case of Allegory there were extenuating circumstances which sparked the search.

As it happens a critic named Henry McBride, who was writing for the New York Sun, misconstrued the imagery of Allegory as being symbolic and sympathetic to Red Moscow and ended his column by saying for this painting alone Shahn should be deported. As Shahn put’s it in the Biography of a Painting:

What follows is a fascinating, far reaching, and often touching examination (all printed in a handwritten style, whether authentic or simply a device I’m not sure) which as it so happens is copiously illustrated with Shahn’s own print-work as well as some reproductions of his paintings.

The truth is, with a few exceptions, that before picking up this book I was not very familiar with Shahn’s work (nor his artistic philosophies) but I truly enjoyed it, his print-work especially, and under the assumption that there are others of you unfamiliar I’d like to share a cross section of pieces I particularly liked.

Well there you have it. Hope You enjoyed.

For more on Shahn try the following:

Interview with Ben Shahn from the Smithsonian’s oral histories.

Ben Shahn. Passion for justice presented by PBS.

Ben Shahn at Harvard.

Common Man, Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn.

Ben Shahn: Picture Maker.

Ben Shahn’s art and His Mission From George Kresky Gallery.

On Ben Shahn’s Roosevelt Mural.

Andy Warhol’s Red Beard - influence of Ben Shahn and Shirley Temple on Warhol.

Yesterday I came across a truly gorgeous book of photographs by Candida Höfer titled, Libraries, a title which pretty much says it all, because that is just exactly what it is, one rich, sumptuous, photo of a library interior after another. It’s like porn for book nerds. Seriously. They are gorgeous photos, nearly all without visitors and just begging to be entered. (ha. sorry.)

See below for 14 examples which I particularly liked, but keep in mind these 500px wide version can’t really compete with the big, glossy, real thing.

Hope you enjoyed… but not too much… you filthy, beady-eyed perv.

You can pick up your own copy here.
(I’m sure they will ship in a plain brown paper-bag if you ask really nicely.)

Alternately, since I didn’t offer much by way of reading in this post I offer the following supplimentary material:

The obligatory Wiki round-up on the subject.

A history of private, royal, imperial, monastic and public libraries

Survivor: The History of the Library from History magazine.

Libraries & culture from University of Texas Press.

And hell, though it’s only tangentially related The Briar Press page:
Eleven Presses That Made History (Via.)