Plugs and Doodles.
(I found this post I made in Jan. Thought I should just throw it on even if I hadn’t finished reviewing all the books.)
In December last year, I realized that in the whole of 2005 I finished only four books. 1) "He’s not that Into you" that I bought after watching Oprah and read the whole thing on the plane 2) "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut which I read in two train journeys 3) "Scar Tissue" by the Lead singer of Red Hot Chilly Peppers that I read in two days coz I was sick 4) "The Cisco Connection, the true story behind the Internet Superpower." That I read on an off over the 12 months. Otherwise it all was all software manuals, wire news, and my monthly Vanity Fair Articles. It really bothered me that I had let learning about the world in a more in depth way fall so far on the way side.
So I decided that I was going to rectify this situation then and there. I started with light fiction, the moved onto more popular non-fiction, and eventually I am at the library hitting the theory and art
books.
So here is my list of books in preparation for December of 2006 where I will not bemoan how much time I have wasted in my life and that my brain has turned to mush.
The reason I titled this post "Transgression," is because with the exception of a few every one of these books is some sort of polemic against our every day cultural values or is about someone or something that is. I didn’t set off my reading choice in any such way, I said I wanted to expand my horizons. But this is what I ended up with.
Lunar Park: Bret Easton Ellis
This was fab. Part horror story, part story of fatherhood. Less than Zero grows up. This is what happens to the men who party in their youth and continue to live a nihilistic lifestyle and what they find when they try to reform. I loved the description of his attempt at family life and his inability to connect with his son. You just want to scream "You’re now your father you fool!" but at the same time that is followed by, "There is something behind you!"
Glamourama: Bret Easton Ellis
There are two novels in this book, the first part about life in A-list New York, the other a story about a terrorism ring. It started of really funny, painfully true, and so very sharp, but the protagonist is a total jerk, selfish, self centered, always having (pretty unimpressive) sex with women, and it just got boring after a while, so I quit before I started the second half. It might be really good, but I am not a guy who could possibly live vicariously through him, so like all women faced with such antics I eventually tire.
The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood
The style is somewhat heavy, I found the description too laden and slow. But the story is so chilling. A Christian right has taken over, and women are now reduced to breeding vessels of the powerful. But what goes on behind the scenes is hypocritical and not always as it seems. It’s a bit dated with the feminist stereotypes bit players, but worth reading for the description of the struggle between knowing who you are and losing it under power, as well as the attempts of Resistance and the need of love. I think this book was a fictionalized account of what happened in the Middle East when the fundamentalists took over in places like Iran and Afghanistan.
Twelve: Nick McDonell
I liked this one a lot. A really simple story about a young drug dealer in rich Manhattan. It’s really Gen Y hip, cool and clever. It’s just a cool story with interesting characters without any agenda. Brilliant for a airplane read, or just a Sunday thing. It’s short, fun, and well written. Very clever. Not to mention the book was written by a 17 year old. I never liked Catcher in the Rye as Holden was just a whiner but this is the jazzed out 21st century version.
The year I moved to LA, Red Hot Chilly Peppers came out with "Under the Bridge." The year I left California to return to Asia, they put out "Californication." Those two songs were probably the most important songs in my life in terms of putting how i was feeling into something concrete. They are like bookends to a time. Anthony Kiedis wrote both of them, and even though their repertoire sometimes can be a bit weak, those two songs, as well as "Blood Sugar Sex Magic," is just too defining an album to ignore.
The book starts of with a devastatingly alternative growing up that one can only imagine a rock star or a man who dies at 20 lived. A son of a drug dealer, his father introduces him to all the vices before he even hits the teens, and Kiedis is pretty much left to his own devises on every level. Somehow he manages by stealing food and hanging out with his friends to being part of a band that hit iconic status. It all seems a bit of a muddle with the stars aligned.
The second half of the book is then just drugs, sex and rock without the rock and roll. Still fascinating but it seems Kiedis spent most of his time partying while making a little bit of music once in a while for a month or so and getting into fights with his band mates. I much rather have known his relationship with Flea and the other band members opposed to a sampler of memorable women he encountered but hey, he’s really really hot.
The last part becomes a full on 12 step recovery program of "Telling the truth." All his mistakes he made during his heroin and cocaine addiction and all the people he hurt.
The book is pretty okay written, it would have done with a really strict editor that took away the voice of the ghost writer who completely over takes Kiedis at times not to mention there were parts that contradicted each other a little but literature this isn’t. Over all if a written schema of what "Rock and Roll" was in the late part of the 20th Century is ever needed this book is it. A boy born of the world, crowned prince for a short while, and lived long enough to reflect back on the tale.
Breakfast of Champion: Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut is my down right favorite writer of all time. I try not to read too many of his books at once as it means I might run out and when that happens, I simply plan to reread them all again.
This like all his books is part biography, part science fiction, park political commentary on just how awful humans are and how much better we can treat each other -all done with a wicked sense of humour with hidden gems of sentences about pretty much anything.
The book seems completely contemporary even if it was written 30 years ago, there is nothing dated in it. It’s still shocking and thought provoking which just says how before his time Vonnegut was or maybe just timeless.
If you need something to read. Just run out now and get this and reread it five times.
The Sexual Life of Catherine M.
Billed as the "One of the most explicit books about sex ever written by a woman," it just begs to be picked up and taken home. However as explicit as this book is (descriptions of multiple sexual encounters and orgies, and all this dirty stuff.) This books is more probably the most wordy and dictionary-on-the-bedside sexual account written by a woman.
Let me illustrate," Space rarely opens up to us in one go. Even in the theatre when one is more curtain needs to be raised, the process can be laborious, the heavy fabric rises slowly or when the scene is still half hidden, the mechanism gets stuck and some occult Resistance defers by a few seconds the spectator’s involvement and mental participation in the action."
I really don’t know how she could possibly put that paragraph in her brain as she’s being mauled by a number of different men and women and having all her "orfices," (her word not mine) penetrated.
I think reading this book was a sign of masochistic tendencies. For a little bit of pleasure one had to plough through a lot of painful stuff.
Billed as a "Memoir," this is in fact a collection of Emin’s personal writing. Short essays, memories, and written form of her performance/video art. One has to be a "fan" of Emin or at least be aware of her personal history to make much sense of a lot of the book. For a woman who is known to be "in your face" with her art, there we instances were she was rather coy in the more painful aspect of her life. I find her really enigmatic but I am not sure one wouldn’t get as honest, and explicit account on some of the more darker women blogs found out there. I suppose what stands out is the stories of her relationship with her father, who had two families, and her search for peace in her family’s native Turkey.
There is something interesting in this book, a naked rawness about sex and her body, self hate, and pleasure throughout it. There is a no-holds-bar aspect to it, I thought about quoting those parts where she explicitly talks about inner sexuality to compare it with the book above, but decided against it as it would take away from the rest of the book and reduce it to one shocking paragraph, which is the very problem of the way people look at Emin’s art in the first place. Taking the most shocking layer and not looking any deeper.
Truth Needs No Allies: Inside Photojournalism
It took me two years to read this book as it’s not something you can flip through which is what I kept trying to do. In order to go through it you have to sit down and read it. However once you do that, the book is inspiring in terms of what a photograph can do. It also gives really concrete advice about being a photojournalist and describes the journey one has to go through to become a great. I felt a lot of it pertained to being an artist as well. Knowing who you are, finding your voice, seeing the world. This is an important book to read regardless of what creative field you go into, even if it’s writing as it gives you a lot of confidence in what one’s art is and should be.
Writers on Writing for the New York Times:
Fun book. Some of the stories were really funny. But this book is written by writers for non writers. If you’re looking for a book to teach you how to write, this is not it, although how can you really follow anyone else’s regime? One has to make their own way of working. However it’s good to read about other people’s struggles and what they are trying to say through their words. What this book is, is a survey on how diverse writers really are.
Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking
While Joan Didion’s daughter was in a coma her husband dies of a heart attack. This is her memoir about grief. Joan Didion’s writing is as to the point as a technological missile, it always hits the mark. She’s just brilliant. If she was writing about paper napkins it would have been interesting, let alone her writing about something so personal. She sheds light on the process we all have to go through in an intellectual but not pretentious way. Highly recommended, even if just for you may never read a book like this again.
Emotional Intelligence: Daniel Goleman
This is NOT a self help book as so many people think. It does not contain any check lists of "Things to do," nor does it give "instructions to improve." Most of all the reason this is NOT a self help book is because it does not contain any inappropriate exclamation marks. Emotional Intelligence is by in large a developmental psychology book focusing on children. It goes through breakthroughs in psychological studies in the last 30 years and ground the findings to real life and it’s practical applications. One thing I enjoyed was the follow up study of the Marshmallow experiment where by children are given one marshmallow and told to wait, if they can they can get a bowl of it after wards. I studied this experiment in college when I was majoring in education and child psychology, so it was cool to find out what happened to all those kiddies.
In the first section the book spends a lot of time talking about how the brain functions, and why we act the way we do in times of anger and distress. Then it describes the processes one needs to become an actualized human being. Reading it, made me see how many people around me really do struggle with issues of communication, handling situations and generally "being grown up." The second section becomes a child psychology book I referred to earlier.
Sometimes "best sellers" translate to "really bad smooshy books that simply tell you that conventional wisdom that is really screwed up actually works, and if you follow it, then your life would be perfect," but the content of this is actually challenging intellectually, and do help with the way we all relate. It’s a must read for anyone with children, and it’s probably a good read for any person because we all get something out of it.
Submerged: America’s Elite Diving Team
Couldn’t get into it. But I did enjoy the stories of rescue dives.
I was very fortunate to see this show in Milan. This is the second retrospective of Haring i have seen, the first one was in 1997 in Moma San Francisco. For a man who isn’t in many collection of Museums and is hard to see, I am lucky to have caught it twice. This show had some specifically European works that were bought by Italian private collectors and pieces Haring made in that country only. The show has a wide selection of his works and the time frame concentrated more on his early and mid career. It was interesting because I think the pieces in Italy was more joyous than those shown in the US. There they focused a lot on the end of his life, and his expressions of his illness. There was one room I remember that was like, "Scary Haring behind the looking glass," devil sperm, fire and hell, burning and spearing of bodies. The difference between the two shows is completely understandable as it was Italians who really took to Haring early on long before American "Art" Elite took to him (although the public always did) and that San Francisco was devastated by the AIDs epidemic of the late 80s and early 90s, and thus would focus more on that time.
The catalog was absolutely fantastic. It’s probably the only art book where I read all the articles, and compared to the other ones I own, it was really enjoyable. I am not sure if that’s Italian curating or just how someone would situate a Keith Haring Catalog. Much like his art, they kept the hebie jeebies rubbish art critique to a minimum with only one essay (something about the symbolic tribal images of psychological needs in humans). The rest were personal memories of him from friends, famous artists (such as Yoko Ono) talking about his art and his impact on society. The two reminiscences by his Italian art dealer, and his Italian artist friend was best. There was something so passionate and loving about the way they described Haring and they firmly discussed him instead of their relationship with him or his impact on them. I find that a good point of reference if I am every asked to write about someone I know. It’s not about me, it’s about them.
I found the catalog so refreshing because as someone’s whose theory background is Anthropology where ideas truly pertain to people and how we live, I always feel art criticism is like theory lite and sprinkled with a touch of bullshit. It works in the larger schema but once a person tries to expand that idea to more than a few hundred words into an essay of a few thousand, than the true desperation to say something about what someone else is saying becomes apparent. It turns into something like documentia 9 (I think) where they cataloged the art by weight and height, just to see how it would look. Yes, it was interesting for about ten minutes, but 45 minutes into the lecture I just realized I was writing down gibberish.
Let me illustrate: its true that a cafe’s context is interchangeable in different geographical settings, and by taking it out of the commercial space and re situation it in the gaze of the audience, it makes them wonder about the realities of how we structure space and public space in society, but guess what? Just to remind you, when the artist took a picture in a cafe in Vietnam he also hap penned to be in there having coffee. Which by the way, some poor Guatemalan migrant workers picked for two cents and hour and that photo cost $20,000 dollars and will be more in two years. Yes it’s true that he might have been reconfiguring space as we know it that very second, but to be honest, he probably wasn’t and all that came from the guy whose sitting in his office looking at the picture typing it all out because he isn’t on holiday in Vietnam and would probably do him good if he did. Yes there is something in it, but it’s really not that interesting or important to anyone but the people 145 people or so who sat down to read it, which at times does not include the artist themselves. (BTW don’t laugh, I just took out this cafe example from the Sydney Biennial catalog I randomly opened).
Really, I love art, I think it’s really important to create a space for it in society because it leads new thoughts and ideas, it is like buffer space for the future, can be and should be commentary on the present and in time will be historical artifacts when the time has past. But it’s just really obnoxious of the art world elite to think they are so much more better than anyone else because that’s just the exact opposite of what they should be doing, which is bring art to the public. I don’t know, probably because I am really Californian that way. A lot of the art I ever saw was in some ways, repositioning ignored narratives, and stories, by people who wasn’t taken seriously because white, male, middle class, and straight curators didn’t think they were so interesting. Mainly going back to my original point I understand why people take such offense to contemporary art mostly I blame the people in charge of it and how they talk about it to ordinary people.
The book was really useful in mapping out the Elite Art World vs Art People love and Art with Social Impact. A debate where I fall heavily in the Haring camp, which I found most useful in meeting some German curator dude. He started going on about my art not being self-reflective (my word not his), and how one could not possibly do activism, design and art concurrently, then using Haring as a one up on me. "Your interest in Street Art… for example one NEVER sees Keith Haring in museums."
Which I had to sadly tell him it was not true. As I had seen retrospectives twice on both sides of the Atlantic, and then mapped out why Haring’s interest in public art works had far more of my respect. Not to mention I found it hilarious that he felt that in order to have social impact, one must have work hidden somewhere in an art museum. Art work in museums don’t make impact on society, art made for the public does. Harings "STOP AIDS," and "AGAINST APARTHEID," prints that went around the world on badges, posters and T-shirts touched more people in a direct way than Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans can and ever did. Warhol allowed people who looked at art see things in a different way, while Keith Haring made everyday people think a different way about the issues of the day. It’s something important when someone who isn’t very knowledgeable about art but seen both artist’s retrospective tell you as he’s looking at the show, "I think Keith Haring is a better artist that Andy Warhol." To which I replied, "Shhh. Say it outside that’s blashphemy!! But yeah, I think so too."
I really had no idea how fast that my reading would be useful in real life, and how I would position myself as an artist. But I am not complaining.
Arbus’s daughter wrote a prologue that she has never allowed critique and writing about her mother’s work in any of the catalogs and photography books because she felt art critique is distracting, not to mention possibly rude in regards to Arbus’s subjects whom some of which are still living. Therefore even to have some writings in this collection is unprecedented. There is no doubt this book is absolutely about the prints and they are beautiful. But it was useful to read about Arbus printing techniques and her dark room just to see the process as that’s an art that will die out with digital photography.
There is a collection of her journal entries and letters as well, allowing insight to the though process of the photographer. I am not sure if anyone would read the whole thing, but it is an important historical record. The section ends with Arbus’ autopsy report because she committed suicide. It was so very disturbing as I had no idea what that looked like and never seen one before. Odd to think all that was left as a final testament to this great photographer was to see her reduced to weights of organs, coloration of skin and other scientific measurements of the body. I suppose it truly made a point of how art and life is made by the soul.
A good overview of Basquait’s life and work. It was simple and easy
to digest. I probably should read more of these easy going art books
because it gives you enough of a feel without getting too bogged down
with personal details of artistic critique which is not really that
interesting or important.
Andy Warhol, A biography: Victor Bockris
Beyond Past and Future: Chinese Contemporary Art Catalog
The Social Contract: Jean-Jacque Rousseau
The Case For Democracy: Nathan Sharansky.
Palm Sunday and Welcome to the Monkey House: Kurt Vonnegut
Women Artists in the 20th and 21st Century
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 