Thursday, May 15, 2008

Summer Homework:

Go over all your old readings from school.
Write abstracts (or, at the very least, blurbs) of them before recycling.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1. Dialectical materialism: the philosophical basis for Marxism, wherein history is the product of class struggle (or, the economic structure), that obeys the general Hegelian principle (thesis + antithesis = 'synthesis' )

2. The Body of the Condemned (from Discipline & Punish): Some dude is publicly executed in 1757. It's about how codes of law & order develop through history - torture is eliminated, the body of the criminal disappears from view, punishment as spectacle is eliminated. We use the certainty of punishment, not its 'horror', to keep people from committing crimes.
the body - the body - history - history - power - power 

3. A jillion Agnes Martin writings:
"The Silent and Still in Art", "What is Real?", "Beauty is the Mystery of Life", "What We Do Not See If We Do Not See" :
Agnes Martin is a romantic and a mystic.
Experience is wordless and silent. 
Those who depend upon the intellect are the many. Those who depend upon perception alone are the few.
We perceive, we see, and both are mysteries.
Perception is a primary experience, thinking is a secondary experience.

4. "Enter the Dragon: on the vernacular of beauty": yeah, yeah, beauty, Carravaggio, Mapplethorpe, beauty, whatever.

5. "The Birth of the Big, Beautiful Art Market" (from Air Guitar): 


7. "Dear Young Artist" letters:  My favorite is John McCracken. "So, make art that comes out of your own sense of what's actually best,  and advanced, and supercool. Do you live on a planet, or on a multi-blither of unknown galaxies?"  My least favorite is William Pope L. because it's written obnoxiously: "To be cleAR: my grAndmothER WAS not A pRofessional ARtist, shE cleaned houSES <<  >> to MAKe A living."  Also, "Enjoy yoUR hateful dAy job." Yeah, fuck you too, WPL!  Gregory Amenoff: he is envious of our age.  Also, "ARTISTS DRIVE THE BUS."  And, "KEEP AWAY FROM ART FAIRS."  Thomas Nozkowski: skeptical and slightly pompous but funny.  "There's nothing special about the world part of the art world although we like to pretend there is.  Let's get back to work."

8. "High Times Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975": I have nothing to say about this except that it was a waste of trees.

9. "Teaching Notes: 4-Dimensional Design" / Paul Thek: I don't like reading stuff that looks like poetry.



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