copy-paste-ing this from my phone notes:

Two shows
Someone edits down Maria Stepanova’s “In Memory of Memory” to what they feel are the indispensable passages and lines
+
Soiled ottomans seen on the street over the past 15 months

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Related to two entries ago, I find it endlessly maddening (and of thus of course edifying) that e.g. the “Two shows” directly above could be understood neither visually nor verbally in the way I intend them to and that I’m arguably required (let’s say compelled (inner-scruples/intent)) to provide further explication/elucidation to convey the “true” tenor/aestheticism of the show. So here I go: they are two shows because they have nothing to do with one another other than being two shows that complement one another in ways I feel it aesthetically apt to present. And even that leaves room for interpretation, so I further describe/qualify by saying: each of the two is intended to bring a distinct tenor to itself, having little-to-no relation to its companion show beyond their being put together for the aesthetic effect(s) of having them as companion shows; the rest remains up to you, dear percipient/recipient/consumer. 

Even though this further qualification still can’t guarantee understanding of my intent/aesthetic- surmise, it by chance robs me of the affection I have for the aesthetic surmise that first presented itself to me via the animating motor of idea. So now I feel I’ve been robbed of the vision I once felt potent/dynamic/interesting/engaging enough to pass aesthetic muster. So shall I ultimately pass on the idea or attempt to further pass it off to you and them as a testament to the potential of an idea?

Each and every one of us, no hyphens or commas can approximate the meaning I mean (and that we all always mean).

Donald would have been 66 today. Donald was my first art world employer (as well as my fourth). Brian Belott is working on a memorial service and publication for Donald.

When Donald passed earlier this year, it was unexpected and I wondered if I would cry (I did, and I made an Instagram post as I did).

Donald Baechler is his name. In my opinion the mid-80s and late 90s works are really very very good and underappreciated.

Happy Birthday Donald. You are missed.

Of late, my content-creation conundrum has been (and rather prosaically so): Why can’t Instagram and Twitter be accessed in tandem? Another rather would be: I’d rather some perfect balance for text and image where degrees of mutual legibility are easy to comprehend/digest. Sebald comes to mind as a useful analog, Godard as well (though I have no interest in being a Sebald nor to reside in Geneva (pre-postmortem)). Obviously text + image + neverthetwainshallmeet haunts me a bit (as might the (pure) promise of a philosopher’s stone). Semi-loathe IG and Twttr though I might, it’s clear that they hold promise for text-image vessels more dynamic than either platform per se.

[If I don’t end up improving on this entry, please take the food poisoning [it may have been Covid] I’m in the late throes of as sufficient excuse.]

Over the weekend Dean Kissick tweeted something apropros Julien Nguyen tweeting that so much of painting + sculpture seem to be “neutered spectacle.” I can’t but agree. But beyond the intuitive implications of cultural mangling in the www maw (and all its attendant anomie), there’s always the perennial tectonics of the generations and how life may shift with shifts in hormones and experience — aging is a powerful medium. What I mean is there’s a moment when each generation (loosely measured of course) is apt to discern the trans-generational qualities of its own disillusionment, as the motors and appetites of youth are met with the redoubts of aging and the ages; the newly/nowly dis-youthed generation comes to perceive the endless fissures and fraudulences of the previous generations it may have looked up to (and conversely is now able to see some elders it once regarded as contemptible as deserving of at least partial empathy). There’s always a naivety to anything, in particular the voice itself. 

Decadence (and its attendant exhaustion[s]) is a notion thrown around more often than might be convenient, but perhaps its mention is a sacrament of sorts, whereby the living are forced to remind themselves that they’re never more than a small encampment of generations. 

Painting is a highly resilient medium. This impresses me. Leave it to its own devices (whether they be perceived as cynical, naive, counterproductively pretentious, etc.) Sculpture for a gallery space has a host of issues and I hope I’ve been able to speak about these in various ways over the years. What I regularly miss/bemoan is the lack of “avant-garde” sculptural spectacle, whether the height of Installation Art or from the DIA pantheon. (I also like Anthony Caro.)

Got sub-drunk at lunch and went on (and on) about art in the digital (not to necessarily be confused with “digital art”).

A couple days ago: https://twitter.com/MosesHosiery/status/1590375508898107392

I should have talked about Ruscha at some point. Ruscha speaks for Ruschaself. A significant body of work it’s all too easy to under-consider.

Forgot it was the 5th anniversary of my father’s death. (Without my father’s genes and encouragement, I wouldn’t be writing this.)

Read Brian O’Doherty obituary. Though I couldn’t care less about the visual aspects of the art, the ideas resonate all too well. Again I’m disconcerted by being born too late (my most thoughtful ideas generally having been those of others, often of my grandparents’ generation). “Polymath” was a word used in the obit, and there’s something about that word; I assume he was quite bright (as few artists truly are) and there’s something about that too. His affinity for Duchamp is notable too. Duchamp has always been something along the lines of a bete-noire for me, which is silly, especially being familiar with how wry and open he was. But I suppose there’s a mix of envy and sadness, in that I’m but a symptom of my times rather than what-seems-to-be an ostensible author of my times — prescience as we may call it (always in retrospect). 

The older I get, the more I recognize myself as but one of the myriad absurdists (be they in animation, advertising, literature, sketch comedy, screenwriting, still cartooning, etc.) that now span at least 4 American generations. 

What’s surprisingly interesting for me in resuming journaling is the unflattering, indeed mediocre, feeling of mediocrity that comes with the process. One can’t but distrust, even occasionally loathe, oneself as one sees through the fractures/fissures in one’s logic/thought/idea(l)s/inspiration. Which brings me back to Duchamp, whose genius (I can’t be the first to think of this) may be in “merely” stating how obvious this personal mediocrity could be against/abreast a person’s quest for (outsized) cultural belonging/significance.

Discover MSCHF @ Perrotin online. In many ways the concept/precept answers itself, i.e. art that can’t speak of commerce in a culture-largely-defined-within-commerce isn’t necessarily art that means enough. Of course this also can’t be true, as art as we know it requires personal experience and any person’s (temporary) emotional experience is broader than any attachments they may have to objects within the (church of) the consumersphere. Even as art museums actively collect consumers, there does remain a cultural understanding of art that is apart from consumerismic episteme(s)/epistemics. The remainder (always) remains to be discussed (as/qua art).

Who can? And is this/that the wrong question?

6(?) months and counting…  Start work on project website, while starting this journal in a doc.

Go more public on Instagram.

Go public [Twitter] with intention to sell art practice.