Where Bad Art Is Good

Nestled in a corner of the Boston suburb called Dedham (no not dead ham), is the Museum of Bad Art.Of course, bad art is a pretty subjective term and much of the work they have could just as easily appear in a crappy summer show in New York. In fact much of MOBA’s art has a folk art or naive style that has it’s own genre. Of course some of the best/worst paintings are like the pointillist portrait of a middle aged man in a sauna. Definitely not what the impressionists had in mind when they were exploring the effects of light by using small dots of color to create the illusion of colors mixing before your eyes.

On the Other Side of the River Where I Go

2 Savory Pies This Morning

At a hardware store I found these small bands of cooking-grade steel, which I think are mostly for making crumpets, a type of British hybrid pancake and English muffin. However, if you use them to put dough into and fill it with vegetables, black beans, tomato sauce, cheese and whatever else you want, they come out being self contained pies that look like they were made at a bakery. Thus aesthetics enters into the cooking picture. Is there a link to aesthetic pleasure and eating pleasure?

Walk from Harvard Square to the Charles River

I took these pictures about 9:00 am this morning with Harvard Square behind me, passing Harvard and going out to the Charles River. As I walked along the river geese foraged along the banks and a number of people were rowing out, which is a popular sport here.

Sometimes I wonder just how much you can take away from something before it can still be called what it is. Consider the leaf: insects chew on it, then in winter it falls from its tree, on the ground it gets rained on, stepped on and grows more and more fragile. Eventually it’ll be in little pieces and will become dust. But at some point the leaf ceases to be a leaf. Its leafness gives way when it’s no longer whole. This is a picture from my walk this morning.

19th Century Photographic Narratives

Women and their children on a carriage ride in the country. Circa 1880-90.
Boy in straw hat rides his pony for the camera. Notice the servants in the background. 1880-90.A couple stand in front of their house with their garden in the foreground. 1880-90.Post office with horse and cart in front. Probably 1890’s.

These tintypes are all from my small photo collection. They are examples of images made by itinerant photographers who traveled around in wagons photographing whoever would pay them. Whether they meant to or not, they often recorded the unofficial history going on the in places they ended up in. The small white boy in a straw hat riding his pony, for example shows several black servants in the background by the porch. There is also a Siamese cat on the porch and a quilt hanging in one of the windows on the second floor. This expression of privilege must have seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Similarly the buggy driver posing in front of the horse is tipping his hat to the viewer in a gesture of deference and welcome. And then there is the couple in front of their modest house – they seem to just be showing off their place. They’re obviously not wealthy but they they are excited enough to have their photo taken showing the entire home despite the shabby surroundings. Finally the post office, like the other images, simply records what the place looked like. No frills, just a visual document. Fascinating.

Lévi Strauss dies in Paris at 100

Claude Lévi-Strauss born in Brussels, November 28, 1908 and died a few days ago in Paris on October 30. Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, known as the “father of modern anthropology”. He was also one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought where his ideas reached into other fields including the humanities and philosophy. Structuralism has been defined as “the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity.”

A Winter’s Tale

In one week I saw Bill Berkson read from his new book, Ben Affleck direct a movie in Harvard Square and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick speak about his connection to Harvard’s Kennedy School. Patrick’s most vivid memory was about when he was in a heated debate as a candidate for Governor. The debate took place in the room where he was speaking inside the Kennedy school. He recalled how he had been covered in makeup for the TV cameras and how under the hot lights it started to melt right off of his face. He said he felt helpless to do anything because it was a high-stakes political disagreement and he didn’t want to make a bigger mess of the makeup on TV, which might have been a distraction for everyone.

The Endless Novel Which Will Drive Everybody Mad

Tomorrow evening New York’s The Poetry Project is hosting a major event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the classic Beat novel, Naked Lunch.

Burroughs with V. Vale of RE/Search Publications

Even as iconic venues such as CBGB’s, Studio 54 and Plato’s Retreat closed down, The Poetry Project has outlasted them all. To see why just go on Wednesday and witness numerous friends of Burroughs, writers, artists and musicians all reading from his work. This is a high honor for any writer and shows just how pervasive Burroughs’ influnce was. On just the basis of those reading this is shaping up to be, I hate to say it, the coolest event in New York in a long time. I can’t see how anything else can even compete.
THE EVENT:
Wednesday, October 7, 8:00 PM
Naked Lunch at 50: Join Eric Andersen (starred in the Andy Warhol movie Space), John Giorno (collaborator with Burroughs and Warhol, etc), Jan Herman (author), Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth), Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (of Psychic TV), Simon Pettet (poet), Jürgen Ploog (author), Anne Waldman (poet), James Grauerholz (longtime Burroughs assistant & friend) and more to be announced. They will be paying tribute to the book that Allen Ginsberg described as “the endless novel which will drive everybody mad.” Readings from Naked Lunch will go on all through this event & will be hosted by Keith Seward. Be there early, that’s my advice.

For more information on the Poetry Project click here.</f