4.26.2011
4.14.2011
don't sit down cause i've moved your chair
Come As You Are sound with Heart-Shaped Box and In Bloom imagery. But I like it.
4.11.2011
4.06.2011
Robert Pinsky: Antique
Tonight Dan and I saw a poetry/fiction reading at (my) The New School Noir Festival. Robert Polito, Mary Gaitskill, and Robert Pinsky read. Below was, in my opinion, the most powerful piece of the night, a poem Pinsky wrote as an homage to his parents' turbulent marriage.
ANTIQUE
I drowned in the fire of having you, I burned
In the river of not having you, we lived
Together for hours in a house of thousand rooms
And we were parted for a thousand years.
Ten minutes ago we raised our children who cover
The earth and have forgotten that we existed
It was not maya, it was not a ladder to perfection,
It was this cold sunlight falling on this warm earth.
When I turned you went to Hell. When your ship
Fled the battle I followed you and lost the world
Without regret but with stormy recriminations.
Someday far down that corridor of horror the future
Someone who buys this picture of you for the frame
At a stall in a dwindled city will study your face
And decide to harbor it for a little while longer
From the waters of anonymity, the acids of breath.
— New Yorker, Sept. 15, 2003
ANTIQUE
I drowned in the fire of having you, I burned
In the river of not having you, we lived
Together for hours in a house of thousand rooms
And we were parted for a thousand years.
Ten minutes ago we raised our children who cover
The earth and have forgotten that we existed
It was not maya, it was not a ladder to perfection,
It was this cold sunlight falling on this warm earth.
When I turned you went to Hell. When your ship
Fled the battle I followed you and lost the world
Without regret but with stormy recriminations.
Someday far down that corridor of horror the future
Someone who buys this picture of you for the frame
At a stall in a dwindled city will study your face
And decide to harbor it for a little while longer
From the waters of anonymity, the acids of breath.
— New Yorker, Sept. 15, 2003
4.02.2011
07-09
Dear Jerry,
In a past column you wrote about the "bad dealer behavior" you experience as a recognizable critic. As an ordinary engaged observer, however, I often experience something very different at galleries: smugness. I'll ask for a piece of information and am dismissed with some uninformative answer. Occasionally, I’m asked if I’m a collector. It's not a big deal, since I'm there to look at the art, but it does leave a bad taste. Would you please ask those galleries to be a bit more welcoming to those who've made the trek to the windy west?
-- Plebeian
Dear Plebeian,
I feel your pain. I'm not sure why, but walking into galleries can be intimidating. Being cold-shouldered is a drag. Still, allow me to say a few words on behalf of the unsung people who work at art galleries. Many will be the next generation of art dealers. (As a critic, I try to train them accordingly. But that's a subject of another column.) The people who work at those front desks are usually paid very little. Many have no insurance or benefits. Like you, they're poor, in it more for the love or desire than money. They may be on the "inside," but there's a spiritual cost to that: Dealers are ultra-demanding control types who expect impeccable work out of them. Moreover, they're on public view and subject to all manner of abuse. They're sneered and stared at, and are asked for restaurant recommendations, street directions, bathroom keys, suggestions of what else to see. They are pummeled with demands to know who bought this, how much it costs, what the artist thinks they're doing, and why the gallery would show such crap. They are bombarded with artists asking them to look at their slides. If the person behind the desk is a woman, she will be flirted with, hit on, sometimes followed out the door. This goes on all day as he or she is trying to do all the things the dealer has tasked them to do. The pressure is intense. Dealers can hold these people responsible for not recognizing a collector who has come in or for misdirecting a tiny piece of seemingly insignificant information. All I can say is that the people behind the desk are more like you than you think. They may be short with you, but they're not dissing you. They're probably as concerned about how they're perceived as you are.
In a past column you wrote about the "bad dealer behavior" you experience as a recognizable critic. As an ordinary engaged observer, however, I often experience something very different at galleries: smugness. I'll ask for a piece of information and am dismissed with some uninformative answer. Occasionally, I’m asked if I’m a collector. It's not a big deal, since I'm there to look at the art, but it does leave a bad taste. Would you please ask those galleries to be a bit more welcoming to those who've made the trek to the windy west?
-- Plebeian
Dear Plebeian,
I feel your pain. I'm not sure why, but walking into galleries can be intimidating. Being cold-shouldered is a drag. Still, allow me to say a few words on behalf of the unsung people who work at art galleries. Many will be the next generation of art dealers. (As a critic, I try to train them accordingly. But that's a subject of another column.) The people who work at those front desks are usually paid very little. Many have no insurance or benefits. Like you, they're poor, in it more for the love or desire than money. They may be on the "inside," but there's a spiritual cost to that: Dealers are ultra-demanding control types who expect impeccable work out of them. Moreover, they're on public view and subject to all manner of abuse. They're sneered and stared at, and are asked for restaurant recommendations, street directions, bathroom keys, suggestions of what else to see. They are pummeled with demands to know who bought this, how much it costs, what the artist thinks they're doing, and why the gallery would show such crap. They are bombarded with artists asking them to look at their slides. If the person behind the desk is a woman, she will be flirted with, hit on, sometimes followed out the door. This goes on all day as he or she is trying to do all the things the dealer has tasked them to do. The pressure is intense. Dealers can hold these people responsible for not recognizing a collector who has come in or for misdirecting a tiny piece of seemingly insignificant information. All I can say is that the people behind the desk are more like you than you think. They may be short with you, but they're not dissing you. They're probably as concerned about how they're perceived as you are.
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