Friday, February 4, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
A Modest Proposal for a New BRAVO Reality TV Show: Starcurator: The Next Great Celebrity
Some of the artworld twitterers I follow were recently mentioning a new reality TV show about gallerinas, which sounds absolutely thrilling. But I had been discussing the possibility of another spin-off with a friend suffering from #academentia PTSD: a "Starcurator" contest similar to The Apprentice but way more chic, insiderish, elitist, glamorous, cosmopolitan and well, cooler. Following is our modest proposal.
Andy Cohen, are you listening? Because I have an idea for your next BRAVO art-related reality TV show. Yes, Work of Art is provocative and gets the twitterati worked up. But what about looking at this from the OTHER side? Do you read E-FLUX, artforumdiary? It arguably rivals Andre Leon Talley's column in VOGUE and The New York Times Style section. The Starcurators are where it's at! Glamorous and globe-trotting, they smoke cigars with Thomas Krens in Venetian Palazzos, loiter in hot tubs created by artists in Japan, stay in 5-star hotels or stylish apartments, organize back to the land trips to "exotic" locales where brand-name artists create site-specific projects, and rack up frequent flier miles and 5-star restaurant tips for their friends.
Like the star-artists they promote, they live BETWEEN places, for example, STARCURATOR X, lives between New York, Ulan Bator, and Cleveland. They move around the world (or the provincial allegedly global or glocal artworld) with the same collectors, gallerists, critics, museum bigwigs, and cosmopolitan artists, curating shows about the glocal, immigration, displacement, and urbanization. They travel via the business class preferred boarding lane, with multiple passports. Their innumerable biennials thematizing poverty and displacement may be supported by local business and (often corrupt) governments for their tourist boosting and gentrification potential.
This has all of the elements of a fabulous reality TV show. As you have done in the past, Andy, you may create a brilliant melange of other reality TV formats to create an exciting and riveting new program. For example:
Top Chef and Bizarre Foods - watch starcurators eat meals served by Rikrit Tiravanja and Ferran Adria in a Palapa somewhere in Costa Rica!
The Rachel Zoe Project
- watch Starcurators select clothes loaned to them by art collector Miuccia Prada! Or, watch Starcurators buy Longchamp travel totes at Duty Free in Cape Town!
The Apprentice
-watch Starcurators rephrase the same project in a new way, and find the money to do it in less than 3 months!
-watch Starcurators hold 4 visiting professor positions, 1 adjunct curator post, at least one "director" of a biennial project, and direct a museum - at once!
Globe Trekker/Survivor
- watch Starcurators go on a guided tour of a Rio de Janeiro favela with billionaire museum trustees!
-watch starcurators engage in a months-long dispute about who has the "right" to curate non-Western artists only instead of doing this in theory-heavy periodicals, make then engage in a challenge face-to-face!
-watch Starcurators attempt to live on lukewarm paninis, cold Illy lattes, Champagne, Chinese cigarettes, and no sleep for 4 days in a bienale (the women's challenge: doing this in Manolos); note: you can go for glamorous luxury destinations like Venice or more off the beaten track locales like San Juan (if they ever revive their Poly-Graphic Triennial)
The Twist
- force Starcurators to work with locally-based artists (ie. not Kara Walker, Emily Jacir, Dan Perjovschi, or William Kentridge)
-force Starcurators to sit through one of Hans Ulrich Obrist's marathon Hugo Chavez/Bernie Saunders/Fidel Castro-length interviews/lectures/events/performances
-appoint artists from the "developing" world to select the Starcurators in an exciting reversal!
-force Starcurators to live like the locals instead of staying at swank 5-star or faux minimalist-spa-sustainable living hotels in "developing" nations where alternative biennials are held
-force Starcurators to organize shows around themes NOT related to globalization, migration, urban experiences, or Relational Aesthetics
-appoint resentful overworked overeducated academics who make a living teaching as judges (but not those that are also Starcurators, an important distinction)
-appoint famous collectors/gallerists from New York City to select the Starcurators
-appoint critics based in New York City as judges
-appoint auctioneers as judges
The Prizes
-Starcurator is hired by billionaire collector, in exchange they get to act as consultant to them with paid trips to buy works
-maybe you can reprise your Brooklyn Museum tie-in and get Pollock-Krasner or McCarthur to give the Starcurator a grant or ask Bellagio to grant them a residency
-Starcurator recieves a work of art by emerging artist they chose only if you can organize a tie-in to get MoMA or another museum to purchase one as well, so that the market-value goes up
-apartment or home in "exotic" location of Starcurator's choice (exception: New York)
-"Visiting Professor" position at Curatorial Studies/Contemporary Theory program which entails teaching one seminar a year with no committee work or advising, a huge salary, and the ability to fly in for a few weeks a year while living in an "exotic" location of their choice for the rest of the year
-Starcurator receives a wardrobe and nerdy glasses by a designer such as Prada; or (in the rare case that the winner does not need glasses) a wardrobe by Jill Sander, Miyake, or Marc Jacobs
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Four Years Without You
Max Beckmann, Departure (1932, Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York)"In the right panel of Departure, Beckmann once said, `You can see yourself trying to find your way in the darkness, lighting the hall and staircase with a miserable lamp, dragging along tied to you, as part of yourself, the corpse of your memories.' (...) Beckmann called the center panel "The Homecoming," and said of it, `The Queen carries the greatest treasure—Freedom—as her child in her lap. Freedom is the one thing that matters—it is the departure, the new start.'"
SOURCE The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 162
Four years ago on January 20 I got an email with the shocking and devastating news that you were dead. It took months to finally understand that this was true. Even a year later, some of us who were your friends almost believed that it was an elaborate hoax of yours to see what we'd do. That you'd show up unexpectedly, mocking us for our sentimentality and grief. That is not what you would want. You would want us to laugh at everything, to question everything, to never take anything for granted, to enjoy every single second of life, infinitely curious, missing no details, loving even what was ugly. To adopt your pose of cynical detachment and ironic humor, your passing fixations with things that ware campy, ridiculous, base, low culture, recondite; your meandering monologues filled with unexpected comparisons, erudite, unusual, mundane, bizarre, vulgar, pretentious, punning, deadpan, devastating, hysterically funny. The way you focused in like a laser on what you were seeing, eating, hearing, touching, the way you pulled away, distant, sarcastic, condescending, always amusing. The way this came across not only in your meandering staccato conversation and indescribable bursts of laughter but also in your writing.
I learned things from you that shaped who I am today. As the years passed, we reached a cordial entente, respectful of each other's work in separate worlds that grew closer. Now I find myself going to openings, biennials, conferences, art fairs, meeting your friends, all of us feeling the void of your no longer being there with us.
The first time we met you showed me a book about Beckmann, one of your favorite artists, and you loved this painting, Departure, its ugliness, and beauty. I remember writing a paper about it for class, and finding the quote above, not knowing that so many years later it would console me, thinking of you. But I know that if you read this it would make you laugh, and maybe you'd write a clever satire of my sentimental musings, using the mocking name Petite Maoiste.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Sometimes I think about leaving the USA.....
When I see things like this.
Also, this is why you never ask a pageant Delegate about politics, here is Miss NE now Miss Universe 2011, pontificating about Wikileaks (go to minute 1:45)
I was horrified by Miss NE's jacked up weave. That thing makes Danielle Staub's hair (protagonist of Weavegate on Real Housewives of New Jersey) weave look like Beyonce's. This one is so clearly fake that I gasped. The magic of You Tube, I found an explanation. Here you see her getting the hot mess weave done in none other than Tampa, FL. Having grown up in FL surrounded by similar hairstyle atrocities, I was not surprised.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Jon Stewart on the events in Tucson
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Arizona Shootings Reaction | ||||
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Yet another great commentary from Jon Stewart, who repeatedly makes more sense than the talking heads on cable news. Obama would benefit from watching this prior to his speech to the nation. But such complexities are beyond him or the news "pundits." For me the best lines were: "let's at least make troubled individuals easier to spot," which underscores the danger of tolerating extreme and violent political rhetoric and imagery in public rallies and protests, and his discussion of the need to remember the "anonymous goodness" and civic commitment to democracy of the dead and wounded.
"Stuff White People Like" Tour of Brooklyn
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