All the Words Out There

I usually avoid blog memes like the plague but this one started by Peter Plagens at Grammar Police about art blogs was just too much to resist.

What's the purpose of your blog?
Pushing words around is a nice change from pushing pixels around.

What are the boundaries of your blog?
Boundaries? It's all grist for the mill.

Tyler has cited Joy Garnett's NewsGrist blog [hyperlink added —ed.] as doing a great job of "placing art within a sociocultural and political context." What I see on NewsGrist is a magazinelike interspersing of short profiles, exhibition reviews, op-ed pieces on how other people are covering things, and Village Voice–like political takes. But what does Tyler's comment mean to you, and why are blogs in general better positioned than print to do what he describes?
He’s sucking up? Dunno, never heard of NewsGrist until this thing came along, took a look and found it pretty boring really. Although blogs are better positioned to provide a voice that isn’t controlled by corporate interests unless self imposed.

Why can't blogs go further, to the point where there's hardly any discernible difference between artist and critic/commentator, blog and work of art?
Who says they can’t?

What scope and degree of editorial control do you exercise over your blog?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, read The Expat at your own risk.

What about posting comments from readers, and what about anonymity?
Comment away, if its spam I’ll delete it, but anything else goes.

What's "trolling," and why don't some of you allow it?
If trolling is dissenting or disagreeable comments, you post it; learn to live with the Flack.

Is trolling really so easily identified and universally bad? Is having posters register a solution?
Now who is getting anal?

What about liability coverage?
Sue me, I could use the publicity

What's the economic model of your blog?
A freebee, although it has jagged me some MSM writing gigs so I guess it could be considered an earner of sorts.

How do you see your blog's relation to the established print art media?
When I write for the established media, arts or otherwise, I must play by the publications rules on my bog I make the rules.

How do you attract readers/posters other than by word of mouth?
Any SEO strategy I understand enough to make work.

In general, is blog art criticism more open and liberal, and print criticism more closed and conservative?
Well this is a no brainer, of course they are if they are independent, with the caveat of the blogger’s personality. If they are the online version of the print organization they will be constrained by the vested interests that constrain the print version.

Some people say that there's a dearth of art criticism at length on blogs. Is this true? If so, does it have more to do with reading on a computer in general, or with art criticism in particular?
Why say in a 1000 words what can be said in 300, unless you are being paid by the word?

Art magazines come out once a month. Newspaper art reviews usually appear once a week. Blogs appear more or less daily, and sometimes have updates by the hour. Do you think that the faster pace of blogs will start to affect the pace of art-making.
Only if the art is made for critics with blogs.

Tyler just said that there's more good art being made by more artists in more places than at any time in history. Is this true? And if so, what's the reason?
The increase in the world’s population?

Do blogs help correct the geographical bias in print art criticism, i.e., the tendency to think that most of the important stuff happens in New York or Los Angeles, and the difficulty of art outside those places to get national attention?
Perhaps, although I suspect that population density and disposable income have a greater influence.

One index of a city's gravity as an art center is young artists—perhaps recent MFAs—from elsewhere coming to set up shop. Is that happening in Philadelphia and Portland?
Ask someone from Philadelphia or Portland not the Philippines. As to a city’s arts gravitas, young artists are just a part of the mix. I suspect that low rents are more important.

Is there any constructively negative edge to your blogging and, if so, what is it?
Occam’s razor

Let's throw something back into the mix: naked human ambition. Unknown bloggers want to be little bloggers; little bloggers want to be bigger bloggers; and bigger bloggers want to be called, as is Tyler's Modern Art Notes, "the most influential of all the visual-arts blogs" by the Wall Street Journal.
And the question is?

Where will your blog be in three to five years?
On the internet.

Neither Confirm nor Deny

Like a nuclear armed super power elusive graffiti artist Banksy refuses to either confirm or deny his presence in a photo of graffiti artist at work published in the London Times.

The clandestine nature of his work obliviously makes anonymity a prerequisite whether the same can be said about the US warships is a moot point. If Banksy has been outed will it make any real difference? One suspects, nay hopes, he will continue decorating drab concrete walls with his unique sense of humour and irreverence.

Whereas a floating platform of death and destruction in my back yard, mmmmmm no thanks. Although I did read about one of them having a bulls eye painted on its side whilst in a Middle East port.

To see a portfolio of Banksy work click here.

The White Cube

The White Cube - a new era in comedic sequential pictorial narratives taking place in the context of the contemporary art world and/or business.

Check out more of Thomas Marquet’s The White Cube blog here.
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Poster Girls - Greenbelt

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A re-work of a 2006 photograph for inclusion in my new book "I'm for the Birds" upon which I am waiting for the proof copy from the printer. More details when I have eyeballed the sucker.

A portrait of Sorts

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Over the past few months I have been working on portraits without a great deal of success, well not anything I would own up too. Although this latest effort doesn't make me want to instantly delete it. It started from a passport mug shot (which are endemic here in the Philippines) of my stepdaughter and after some playing in the digital light room, viola, in all its illustrative glory.

The Other Saatchi Showdown

According to Alexa.com, the web traffic measuring site, Saatchi Online has overtaken art.com as the webs most visited art site. Over the past week Saatchi’s ranking was 1989 compared to art.com’s 2366.

Art.com did manage to annoy a lot of its artists, if the negative chatter on art forums is any indication, with their re-structure a few months ago. Saatchi, on the other side of the pond, quietly went about building an impressive traffic base with its Showdown competition and its recently opened Saleroom. And according to www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk front page they had 56,483,120 hits in the 24 hours preceding the writing of this post.

The Showdown competition is in its second incarnation and attracting healthy interest from the 70 thousand artists registered at the site. The Saleroom Online has been open just over a week and has over 16,000 works of art available for sale commission free for both buyers and sellers. According to London’s Financial Times, annualized art sales of $130m have been estimated.

Also according to the FT, Charles Saatchi has no interest in any kind of commercial participation in artists’ sales. Has the man with the reputation of re-invigorating the British art scene now set his sights on the internet art scene?

More LA

What's the go here? A couple of days ago Going LA hit the net scape (see post below) with pictures fom the City of Angels. Now over at BLDG BLOG there is a prose ode to the city.

"No matter what you do in L.A., your behavior is appropriate for the city. Los Angeles has no assumed correct mode of use. You can have fake breasts and drive a Ford Mustang – or you can grow a beard, weigh 300 pounds, and read Christian science fiction novels. Either way, you're fine: that's just how it works. You can watch Cops all day or you can be a porn star or you can be a Caltech physicist. You can listen to Carcass – or you can listen to Pat Robertson. Or both."

I take on faith that both know what they are talking about, New York and Boston I have experienced but for LA I have a total of about 3 hours experience split over 2 occasions. And each time I only got a few steps outside of LAX to puff on a ciggy.

Perhaps next time.

Desperate Housewives or Desperate Pinoys?

There has been an outpouring of national indignation of the past few days in blog-o-sphere that has even made it into the op-ed pages of metropolitan dailies. A derogatory slur about the competence of Philippine medical training “… before we go any further, can I check those diplomas because I just wanna make sure that they’re not from some med school in the Philippines,” on the US sitcom Desperate Housewives.

The fuss is similar to that of about a year ago when the indigenous fast food outlet, Jollie Bee, received a serve from an American customer who didn’t like the pink dressing on the burgers. For a few weeks the internet ran hot with indignation. Why are Filipino’s so thin skinned in these situations?

When this latest piece of negativity hit the air waves my 23 year old step son asked “Why are they saying that?” He, like almost all the Filipinos I have met, regards America as the land of milk and honey. Prick a Filipino and out gushes the desire for a Green Card, if I could just get to America all my troubles would be over.

Whereas for the average American the Philippines is barely a blip on the radar. Apart from a cheap tourist destination of exotic tropical beaches and available mocha coloured maidens the Philippines is sorta like Mexico, but far enough away not to worry about. Outside of natural disasters and political coups things Filipino are page 10 at best.

For the writers of Desperate Housewives it was pick a 3^rd world country, any 3^rd world country, the Philippines, the Maldives, India, whatever. But yes, it does hurt when those you have put on a pedestal flip you the bird even if they are a 3^rd rate TV sitcom.

And All the Fun of The Fair

On Thursday the latest art fair opens its flaps. The London art Freeze is off and running for its 4 days in its tent in the park. And the spin masters have been working over time to ensure its success.

To wit from the Times Joanna Pitman “Five years after they founded Frieze, the directors, Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, have put together a hugely ambitious series of events, performances and talks designed to move Frieze beyond an art fair and turn it into a larger event where art is made and the cultural agenda is set.”

A coloured light set up to make coloured shadows is really cutting edge stuff as is watching a stranger’s toddler’s first steps albeit on a raised dais. Or perhaps a re-enactment of the eleventh minute of the eleventh day of the eleventh month’s minute of silence is where it’s at. Admittedly more than one randomly timed throughout the event with a voice over the PA counting backwards from 60 to ensure you don’t miss it does make it all new, fresh and unthought-of.

Or perhaps it is as the Times Waldemar Januszczak says it is the opportunity to rub shoulders with ones betters. “People fly in from Miami and New York, from LA and Chi-cago, from Berlin and Zurich, and now, I see, from Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo. Hotels are packed, restaurants booked. You can’t get a limo for love nor money.” “And it’s why a hardened art-fair hater like me will be at the head of the queue on Thursday, making sure I get in before you.”

One can only hope that amongst the side show hoopla and the Celeb spotting there is some actual art to view for those foolish enough to think that is what it is all about.

10 Minutes LOL and a 95 minute yawn.

I finally got round to seeing this 10 year old flick, thanks to HBO. It is a small screen filler for a dull Sunday afternoon, if I had put my money down for a hard top experience I would have been sorely disappointed.

“My Best Friend’s Wedding” is 10 minutes of a set up and high camp sing-a-long of a very funny rendition of Dionne Warwick’s “I Say a Little Prayer” and 95 minutes of Doris Day/Rock Hudson fluff.

Julia Roberts in the lead and Julia Roberts, is Julia Roberts. Cameron Diaz is predictable but does actually do some acting. Dermot Mulroney must be acting, no one can be that much of a jerk in real life, but ultimately forgettable. It’s Rupert Everett’s 10 minutes as the gay boy friend at the wedding rehearsal and dinner that saves this film from utter oblivion.

And those 10 minutes are good, very bloody good and did I say funny?