The Whitney over President's Day Weekend

Hit the Witney this past weekend. They were advertising for Edward Hopper exhibition.

 I liked it.  He's real, but open, there are shapes and definitions, but he's not confining.  he lets the space tell they story.  I appreciate that.  In the couple of works I've painted, my second hits me in this way.  I'm far from a professional painter, so exactitude is not one of my strengths.  I'm more into representation.  anyhoo.  it was good stuff.  I like two things in addition to some of the Hopper.  

1) River Rouge Plant by Charles Sheeler. This was in the room of other industrial-type works of the period.  I'm really loving that era in between the wars. and even the wartime artwork (The Guggenheim had a between wars exhibit a few months back.  Striking.  Thomas Hart Benton's Poker Night from A Streetcar Named Desire showed at the Whitney, and he also had produced war time work, which I think is so passionate.

Scheeler called this monument to American Industry and the modern equivalent of the cathedral, "our substitute for religious experience."

2) The other think about the Whitney is obviously it's contemporary work which features jasper johns, andy Warhol, and Matthew Barney among others. 

Some thoughts, collections and observations from the 4th floor:

Johns on his 1998 Manet saying to the effect, painting can be conversations with other paintings or with oneself.

Agnes Martin's 1960 Rain: "Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings." not a specific response but that quality of response from people when they leave themselves behind, often experienced in nature - an experience of simple joy....the smile, direct going into a field as you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean."

The net for me when hitting art is just to feel it.  it's lively, energetic, passionate.  I'm jealous, but inspired and motivated when i leave.  it's exciting.

Guggenheim Visit - Chaos and Classicism Exhibition

Made a field trip to the Guggenheim this weekend to check the Chaos and Classicism exhibition.  This was work produced during the 'inter-war' period.  it's highly charged, uber-creative (of course), but political.  you see emotional energy in the period - from the dawn of the armistice and the rise from the depth of war through the strengthening to the brink - or as the Guggenheim set - the 1936 olympic games.

Really enjoyed the work, the energy.  I love the guggenheim.  I feel connected to the work when i'm there.  The site's writeup will do a much better job than me of explaining the details and the artists, but I do say the energy is sharp, and strong.  Recommend strongly, if you enjoy art and feeling.

This is Fridel Dehleffs-Edelmann.  self-portrait wearing an artist's smock.  Germany. 1932.

1 more work from the online exhibit.

Enjoy, and hope to see you later in the week.

Charles Murray's Coming Apart is a passionate call for America

Finally finished the Charles Murray book Coming Apart.  Super interesting thesis - Essentially two major points:

1) The upper class has a responsibility to get back involved in the moral foundation of this country.  ( I don't disagree).  And I think there is an over PC space that we've gone to that isn't always making sense anymore.  We have to be real and true, and call things out. Like Chris Rock when he said 'you're supposed to take care of your kids.'  Kids are better with two parents (better if they're the biological parents).  

Essentially, Murray is saying it's time we come back to the notion of personal, as well as community responsibility.  The point here is that it's not just what's right, but that things like work and marriage make people happier - they give people a sense of self-worth, self-respect - things that the welfare states of Europe cannot give people.  I think he's right here.  There are times for welfare, surely, and I can attest, but personal uplift is beautiful, strong - and it is the American story - or American Project (as Murray calls it).  His thesis is passionate, and what is clear is that he loves America - and his purpose with the book is to raise a red flag and start the conversation for rebuilding our national fabric. 

Interesting that he (and other socio works I've read) quote de Toqueville as support for a track record of strength.  And that gets into why the US is a great spirit of a country - that in these tough times, we as a people do come together, and find a way to straighten ourselves out.  And I believe there really is a magic spirit about this country.  

Like Churchill said, Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities.  

Let's do it guys!!

Letter to the Editor - School Busing Works; Enhances Cultural Experience

Via The Denver Post, my published LTE:

Ultimate Mashup: David Brooks sampling Too $hort via: 'The Creative Monopoly'; like a smart Just Do It

Not going to see this too often - David Brooks linking with the old school rapper Too$hort.  But it makes sense to me, follow:

Brooks' column kills it for me. My interpretation of what Brooks is saying is to be smart, be intelligent, like the rapper in the tune The Ghetto - "be intelligent when you put them in check."

Writes Brooks: "Think about the traits that creative people possess. Creative people don’t follow the crowds; they seek out the blank spots on the map.

Creative people wander through faraway and forgotten traditions and then integrate marginal perspectives back to the mainstream. Instead of being fastest around the tracks everybody knows, creative people move adaptively through wildernesses nobody knows."

For me right now - this really made my day.

Xer Pride, Let's see it Y

The GenY/GenX conversation has been percolating in my head, and I want to get some thoughts out.  

GenY has repatriated the 80s, at least in Brooklyn.  For me that's a fertile ground for discussion. 

As an Xer, I think the revival is a bit exploitation and I'm more thinking about the dirth of GenY's own culture/cultural content - is it just tattoos, gourmet cheese, and board games at the bar?  I know there is a civic/community sense as well, but i think within the group there's struggle to define their purpose and direction.  #Occupy may have had good intentions, but really fizzled, and embarrassed itself.  I realize the group is young, but coming of age - if it's happening - will be later in their lives.  (Like for some of us as well.)

There are factors, as akin to being our younger siblings, they both - looked up to us, and were also more sheltered.  We were the latch key kids, the independent group, that started today's work cycle of indy jobs, self-reliance and switching jobs every 2-3 years.  We adapted to the changing face of business, ie we realized there were no 30-year factory jobs, no 1-company careers.  Just not a reality for us, and I think we felt this at a young age, and were able to set forth a path, or platform, for some semblance of individual success in an increasingly unforgiving corporate environment. 

The music played today, is disco, MJ, or alternative 90s technopop. 

I know GenY is into green and community - and they do everything together, which for me, comes back to the sheltered space, along with the extended education piece.  I think Gen X - we kind of bareknuckled it out to the real world.

I also think, though, when i was today's Gen Y age - during the mid90s, it was the 70s that were making a cultural comeback.  I bought and wore vintage 70s threads, and remember films like Carlito's Way exploiting the 70s landscape.  Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson brought back Starsky & Hutch, there was the indy Royal Tannenbaums. And let's not forget Matthew Mcconaughey of Dazed and Confused. So we also borrowed, to be truthful.

Sterling Brands had a recent post also on the subject, noting GenY doesn't know about Jeff Spicoli, but we as Gen X know about Snooki.

The board games at bars is another connecting piece. Sorry, Connect4 and Monopoly being commonplace at bars is like the kids taking their home family rooms out now to the bar.  This is a departure from GenX.  We are a transitional generation - we embrace and respect older values, but execute and interpret for today's world. We didn't play board games at bars. We followed the Miller High Life Man, and Homer Simpson when they went to the bar - we drank and hung out, shot the shit.  We respected the bar as adult playtime, not kiddie playtime.

So, the time is coming near for GenY to make a statement.  Are they playing the coddled kids who go bad in Over the Edge?  What will be their impact per the civic/community mindedness Strauss and Howe have laid out for them?  Charles Murray on the other hand sees the tattoos, clusterization, and is stark in his call for strength, character for the benefit of the nation. 

I'm biased through my X lense, that my upbringing was sound and enabling.  I like they youthful spirit of GenY, and I like the tech platform, but I'm reserved in my grants of respect.  I need to see it.

Wichita by Thad Ziolkowski

This book rocked! A charming, witty, fun, dark, contemporary novel.  

For me, is perfect.  Good son, bad son, divorced parents, academia, WT, meth, E, Cambridge, south of France, etc.  Just right, with good parts of darkness, because you know it's a novel, so you're wondering how moreso than what, and then it happens.  brilliant. fun. pick it up if you like the writers I do.  NY Times review of Wichita.

Honor Track stays on the track, expected, reasonable for magazine fiction.

Finally finished reading The Atlantic's fiction work "Honors Track" by Molly Patterson in the June issue.  Fun to start. And actually I am finding myself more and more immensly enjoying works of fiction.  I'm loving the twists fiction takes, the road ahead.  I'm loving reading, i'm also loving writing and expressing.  I'm a communications man, so I love the video as well, and I also enjoy using video to tell the story and express.

Back to the work, yes the start was fun because you're learning.  The arc to me, while not completely expected, was not overly exciting either.  Maybe I'm enjoying more dysfunction  and "loveless promiscuity, the abuse of narcotics and alcohol, the debilitating effects of parental neglect and the sometimes violent paradoxes inherent in the Christian notions of salvation and self-sacrifice" in my recent reads like Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, " or the recent Wichita by Thad Ziolkowski.  Anyhoo, it was good sauna after the workout reading.  Props to the NYHRC .

The Kanye Brain

How or What Yooeze Thinks

on work - David Carr, NYTimes

The now ancient routes to credibility at small magazines and newspapers — toiling in menial jobs while learning the business — have been wiped out, replaced by an algorithm of social media heat and blog traction. 

Every reporter who came up in legacy media can tell you about a come-to-Jesus moment, when an editor put them up against a wall and tattooed a message deep into their skull: show respect for the fundamentals of the craft, or you would soon not be part of it.

I once lost a job I dearly wanted because I had misspelled the name of the publisher of the publication I was about to go to work for. Not very smart, but I learned a brutal lesson that has stayed with me.

It may not have made a difference: journalists are tasked as seekers of truth. Fabulists find the truth quotidian and boring, insufficient to convey them to the renown they seek.

The now ancient routes to credibility at small magazines and newspapers — toiling in menial jobs while learning the business — have been wiped out, replaced by an algorithm of social media heat and blog traction. 
Every reporter who came up in legacy media can tell you about a come-to-Jesus moment, when an editor put them up against a wall and tattooed a message deep into their skull: show respect for the fundamentals of the craft, or you would soon not be part of it.
I once lost a job I dearly wanted because I had misspelled the name of the publisher of the publication I was about to go to work for. Not very smart, but I learned a brutal lesson that has stayed with me.
It may not have made a difference: journalists are tasked as seekers of truth. Fabulists find the truth quotidian and boring, insufficient to convey them to the renown they seek.

David Carr, The New York Times

WNYC Leonard Lopate Show Teaches Winning

This week's Leonard Lopate's show focused on The Neuroscience of Success and Failure - what happens in the brain when you win and lose. Really interesting. 

Professor and author of a newly published book called The Winner Effect: The Neuroscience of Success and Failure, Ian Robertson explained winning gerenates testosterone and dopamine in the brain for both men and women. And actually makes you more aggressive, more focused, increases cognitive function and can also make you less empathic.  We're told the difference between winning and losing is mental. Now we have the science behind the culture of winning begets winning.  It's physically mental. And you have to look for ways to get that create that momentum.

Roberston says ways to increase dopamine and testosterone are to do it naturally: exercise, the gym, running, or interacting with people. Maybe start with the small wins.  Robertson also says there are three fundament motivations we want to win: Power, Achievment,or Affection of People. They each come at winning from different directions.

It reminds of the psychologist in the film The Natural, where he tells the players, amassed in a losing streak that losing is a disease.  Today, while we know this is quasi-true. we can understand it better to help foster a culture and attitude of winning.

Kelly Clarkson's 'Stronger' puts losing on it's head, saying what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Perception, once more, is reality.

Miley Gives Meaning

Miley Cirus's 'See you Again' via Ramblings of the BK Grrl Genius.  

My Miley tune is Party in the USA.  It's also lively, but feels like it strikes a chord in me.  It brings up Chicago in me.  To me this tune is emotional.  It makes connection, meaning to experiences I've had in Chicago and New York.  It was a national hit that provided a texture to activity of life at the time.  Why not have a fun tune, that also did have meaningful lyrics.