...more recent posts
Hey, Bill! "6.4=Make Out" is being reissued! (Brian's probably already heard this.) Neil Strauss's Times story on the great Gary Wilson is on my miscellaneous page. Here's a choice tidbit:
"On Saturday night, I arrived at Mr. Wilson's house to conduct his first interview for publication since the late 1970's. For the last 17 years, it seems, Mr. Wilson, 48, has played keyboards in a lounge act whose members and audience are not familiar with his original music. (Mr. Wilson's father was a jazz bassist who often played hotel lounges.) At midnight he reports to a pornography bookstore and peep show, where he works behind two layers of bullet-proof glass, handling cash and dispensing tokens."
Wilson's LP is amazing; I can't wait to pick it up on CD.
I've never really warmed up to Richter, though I agree that many of the abstractions are "beautiful". They have a hollowness; a lack of engagement and belief, which typifies the transition between Modern and Postmodern (or some such thing). Like Johns & Rauschenberg, they're about letting the air out of Abstract Expressionism, but in a much cooler, detached manner, without the humor of the Americans. With Ab Ex, a bad painting might be an interesting sort of failure, with Richter, it's more like, "here's a good one, here's a less good one, let's move along". The photo-based works strike me similarly, but the imagery allows for more associative readings. Taken together, his various works make up a larger project, which serves to further deflate the value of any given piece seen in isolation. Again, this "whole greater than the sum of its parts" strategy is characteristically PoMo.
Below is the Artforum ad layout for my upcoming show with Gregor Passens in Munich. The dates have been changed: they're now May 3 - June 14, 2002.
[ad removed for remodeling]
The earliest know photograph has been sold.
It's a photo of an engraving. Technology keeps devouring itself.
Ramones vs. Talking Heads
Punk hits the Hall.