Cezanne’s Coat on a Chair, 1890 is like a living, animated thing, a drawn sculpture. The traces of the person who set this coat on this chair—likely Cezanne himself—are still there. It seems hurriedly tossed off, not draped quietly and neatly over the back, as if he was in a rush, perhaps returning from a walk, eager to get back to work.
"Time and contemplation gradually modify our vision,” Cezanne said, “and at last we reach understanding." I have not seen the MoMA Cezanne drawing show in person, but of all the images that I was able to see, this one stood out among the still lifes and figures. It is utterly contemporary and breathtakingly beautiful. Time, in this case, has only rendered it more extraordinary.
Deluge IIs Painting Holds Truth Today
In all the turmoil about Philip Guston’s Klan paintings and the radical decision to postpone his retrospective I had forgotten this marvelous painting at MoMA which stands out there even among all the other standouts and classics. Deluge II painted it in 1975 at another point of inflection in the world (war /AIDS/drugs et al) felt so spot on for today’s pandemic deluge with its disembodied, muted heads, floating shoe and leg debris, and violent reddish hues. It reminded me of another famous painting which once hung at MoMA in the 70’s which also bespoke the horrors of war but in the end represented a wholly uncontrollable force visited upon an unsuspecting population, Picasso’s cry of rage and pain, Guernica.
Superstudio: the Italian radical design group saw the future
In 1972, the architecture design collective Superstudio arrived in New York along with many other Italian designers for MoMA's Italy: the New Domestic Landscape exhibition. At the time, they were labelled 'radical'. In 2016 the Maxxi Museum did a 50th retrospective of their work which had presented 'an alternative model for life on earth...a final attempt of design...for a society no longer based on work and on power and violence.." By 2020 they can no longer be called radical but rather prescient. Their theories about the need to reduce waste, overproduction, superfluous design, consumerism, and rather to encourage living with nature, to take only what we need with us on our backs, to look to the sun, the clouds, the stars, to live without possessions on a grid and simply plug in wherever you are now resonate in a contemporary way. "Life will be the only environmental art", they once wrote. In this time of Covid, their message aligns with the message of Earth Day 2020.
Images of Gli anti fundamentali, Self Portrait, Poltronova sofa all by Cristiano Toraldo di Francia; Images of Il Monumento Continuo and Atti Fondamentali Vita - Supersuperficie. Pulizie di primavera, by Superstudio, all courtesy Fondazione Maxxi, Roma.
White Men: a MoMA salon confronts the status quo
On the heels of Donald Trump’s almost vindication by the special prosecutor, curator Paola Antonelli’s Salon at MoMA about White Men held a special charge. One panelist, Whitney Dow is making films and interviewing only white men so they are not afraid to speak out. This image was offered by panelist Aruna D’Souza as a more ironic version of co-panelist Rich Benjamin’s slicing and dicing of white men into four categories: entrepreneurs, environmentalists, working men and minstrels with examples--besides Trump-- like Beto O’Rourke, who in his opinion are allowed to fail upward as no others. As was pointed out by almost all the speakers, white guys are still running and populating things--Silicon Valley, Washington, the Environment, Wall Street, Museums and Culture, and so it takes a lot of heft to move them from their special, centuries-long perch on high. The artist, Pastiche Lumumba, has nailed it in a “Woke, Gentrifyer Starter Pack” with copies of the right magazine, the right beer, the right tech, the right music….etc. It was a rare humorous moment in an evening which shone a light on privilege, race, gender. It’s very hard in the art world right now to escape this kind of categorization which I understand comes from a place of deep disaffection with the way things are. (I repost Paola’s reading list) As a white woman, too, I’m hardly exempt but I can speak to more personal issues having spawned four of them. I once wrote a whole book about having felt like I landed on an alien planet and barely lived to tell the tale.
Reading List and image courtesy of Paola Antonelli, MoMA Salons
Discovering Masculinity & White Identity
-Bazelon, Emily, White People Are Noticing Something New: Their Own Whiteness, The New York Times Magazine (06.13.2018
-Fortin, Jacey, Traditional Masculinity Can Hurt Boys, Say New A.P.A. Guidelines, The New York Times (01.10.2019)
-McGill, Andrew, Why White People Don’t Use White Emoji, The Atlantic (05.09.2016)
-Roberts, David, American white people really hate being called “white people”, Vox (07.26.2018)
-Whitaker, Robyn J., Jesus wasn’t white: he was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jew. Here’s why that matters, The Conversation (03.28.2018)
-Yancy, George, #IAmSexist, The New York Times (10.24.2018)
-Harmful masculinity and violence, American Psychological Association (2018)
White Male Entitlement
-Cole, Teju, The White-Savior Industrial Complex, The Atlantic (03.21.2012)
-Fleming, Peter and Rhodes, Carl, CEO pay is more about white male entitlement than value for money, The Conversation (07.23.2018)
-Hall, Ronald E., Entitlement Disorder: The Colonial Traditions of Power as White Male Resistance to Affirmative Action, Journal of Black Studies, 34:4, 562-579 (03.2004)
-Keltner, Dacher, Sex, Power, and the Systems That Enable Men Like Harvey Weinstein, Harvard Business Review (10.13.2017)
-Lissner, Caren, Men are Killing Thousands of Women a Year for Saying No, Dame (10.24.2017)
-Rosner, Helen, Mario Batali and the Appetites of Men, The New Yorker (12.13.2017)
Maintenance of White Privilege & Benefit of the Doubt
-Lerer, Lisa, The Privilege of Being Beto, The New York Times (03.11.2019)
-McIntosh, Peggy, White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women (1988)
-Onion, Rebecca, Automatic for the People, Topic Magazine (2018)
-Stack, Liam, Light Sentence for Brock Turner in Stanford Rape Case Draws Outrage, The New York Times (06.06.2016)
-Wurtenberg, Nathan, Gun Rights are about keeping White Men on Top, The Washington Post (03.09.2018)
-Yancy, George, Dear White America, The New York Times (12.24.2015)
Power & Normativity
-Amatulli, Jenna, Donald Glover Needed ‘White Translator’ To Convince FX To Allow ‘N-Word’ In ‘Atlanta’, HuffPost (02.27.2018)
-Friedman, Vanessa, Fashion’s Woman Problem, The New York Times (05.20.2018)
-Golliver, Ben, LeBron James calls NFL owners 'old white men' with 'slave mentality' toward players, Chicago Tribune (12.22.2018)
-Grigsby Bates, Karen, 'A Chosen Exile': Black People Passing In White America, NPR (10.07.2014)
-McCarron, Meghan, When Male Chefs Fear the Specter of ‘Women’s Work’, Eater (11.30.2017)
-Walker, Tim, Quentin Tarantino accused of ‘Blaxploitation’ by Spike Lee... again, Independent (12.26.2012)
White Men in the Workplace
-Cain Miller, Claire; Sanger-Katz, Margot; Quealy, Kevin, The Top Jobs Where Women Are Outnumbered by Men Named John, The New York Times (04.24.2018)
-Dishman, Lydia, White men still hold the most leadership positions in tech, Fast Company (06.25.2018)
-Jones, Stacey, White Men Account for 72% of Corporate Leadership at 16 of the Fortune 500 Companies, Fortune (06.09.2017)
-Weber, Lauren, White Men Challenge Workplace Diversity Efforts, WSJ (03.14.2018)
-White, Gillian B., There Are Currently 4 Black CEOs in the Fortune 500, The Atlantic (10.26.2017)
White Male Anxiety & Perceived Discrimination
-Dr. Agarwa, Pragya, Unconscious Bias: How It Affects Us More Than We Know, Forbes (12.03.2018)
-Berman, Jillian, When a woman or person of color becomes CEO, white men have a strange reaction, MarketWatch (03.03.2018)
-Berman, Jillian, White men who can’t get jobs say they’re being discriminated against, MarketWatch (06.17.2018)
-Blow, Charles M., White Male Victimization Anxiety, The New York Times (10.10.2018)
-DiAngelo, Robin, White Fragility (Chapter), International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3:3, 54-70 (2011)
-DiMuccio, Sarah and Knowles, Eric, How Donald Trump appeals to men secretly insecure about their manhood, The Washington Post (11.29.2018)
-Haider, Mischa, The Next Step in #MeToo Is for Men to Reckon With Their Male Fragility, Slate (01.23.2019)
-Massie, Victoria M., Americans are split on "reverse racism." That still doesn't mean it exists, Vox (06.29.2016)
-Norris, Michele, As America Changes, Some Anxious Whites Feel Left Behind, National Geographic Magazine (04.2018)
-Price, S.L., Whatever Happened to the White Athlete?, Vault, Sports Illustrated (12.08.1997)
-Bird: NBA 'a black man's game', ESPN (06.10.2004)
White Male Pride & White Male Rage
-Cep, Casey, The Perils and Possibilities of Anger, The New Yorker (10.15.2018)
-Deitsch, Richard, Anger Therapy in his Autobiography John McEnroe Comes Clean about his On-Court Behavior and Off-Court Anguish, Vault, Sports Illustrated (06.24.2002)
-Fortgang, Tal, Why I'll Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege, Time (05.02.2014)
-Friedersdorf, Conor, Does ‘White Male Rage’ Exist?, The Atlantic (10.10.2018)
-Krugman, Paul, The Angry White Male Caucus, The New York Times (10.01.2018)
-Newman, Brooke, The Long History Behind the Racist Attacks on Serena Williams, The Washington Post (09.11.2018)
-Schwartz, Alexandra, Brett Kavanaugh and the Adolescent Aggression of Conservative Masculinity, The New Yorker (09.27.2018)
Insecure Responses to our First Black President
-Coates, Ta-Nehisi, The First White President, The Atlantic (10.2017)
-Edsall, Thomas B., The Fight Over Men Is Shaping Our Political Future, The New York Times (01.17.2019)
-Lopez, German, The past year of research has made it very clear: Trump won because of racial resentment, Vox (12.15.2017)
-MacWilliams, Matthew; Nteta, Tatishe; Schaffner, Brian F., Explaining White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President: The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism, presentation at the Conference on The U.S. Elections of 2016: Domestic and International Aspects, January 8-9, 2017 (2017)
-Serwer, Adam, Trumpism Is ‘Identity Politics’ for White People, The Atlantic (10.25.2018)
A ‘Rebranding’ of White Male Identity
-Benjamin, Rich, The Trumpist White Minstrel Show, Los Angeles Times (10.27.2018)
-Blow, Charles M., ‘The Lowest White Man', The New York Times (01.11.2018)
-Gold, Michael, ‘I Just Love White Men’: White Man Aims Racist Rant at Columbia Students of Color, The New York TImes (12.11.2018)
-Hesse, Monica, How should we talk about white men today, The Washington Post (02.13.2019)
-Mishra, Pankaj, The Religion of Whiteness Becomes a Suicide Cult, The New York Times (08.30.2018)
-Percy, Jennifer, The Life of an American Boy at 17, Esquire (02.12.2019)
Policing the Bounds of the White Patriarchy
-Anderson, Elijah, “The White Space”, American Sociological Association, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1:1, 10–21, (2015)
-Gilio-Whitaker, Dina, Settler Fragility: Why Settler Privilege Is so Hard to Talk About, Beacon Broadside (11.14.2018)
-Harris, Cheryl I., Whiteness as Property, Harvard Law Review, 106:8, 1707-1791 (1993)
-Menand, Louis, The Supreme Court Case That Enshrined White Supremacy in Law, The New Yorker (02.04.2019)
-Onwuachi-Willig, Angela, Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness: The Tragedy of Being out of Place from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository (2017)
-Patton, Stacey, White Women aren't Afraid of Black People, They want Pretty Power, Dame (07.30.2018)
-Wildman, Stephanie M.,The Persistence of White Privilege, Washington University Journal of Law & Policy (01.2005)
The White Male Online
-Angwin, Julia and Grassegger, Hannes, Facebook’s Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men From Hate Speech But Not Black Children, ProPublic (06.28.2017)
-Collin, Rowan and Petray, Theresa L., Your Privilege Is Trending: Confronting Whiteness on Social Media, Social Media & Society (05.17.2017)
-Donovan, Joan, How Hate Groups’ Secret Sound System Works, The Atlantic (03.17.2019)
-Iqbal, Nosheen, Donna Zuckerberg: ‘Social media has elevated misogyny to new levels of violence’, The Guardian (11.11.2018)
From White Supremacy Ideology to Violence
-Bouie, Jamelle, The March of White Supremacy, From Oklahoma City to Christchurch, The New York Times (03.18.2019)
-Bowles, Nellie, ‘Replacement Theory,’ a Racist, Sexist Doctrine, Spreads in Far-Right Circles, The New York Times, (03.18.2019)
-Coaston, Jane, The New Zealand shooter’s manifesto shows how white nationalist rhetoric spreads, Vox (03.18.2019)
-Garcia-Navarro, Lulu, White Supremacy And Terrorism, NPR (03.17.2019)
-Kaadzi Ghansah, Rachel, A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof, GQ (08.21.2017)
-Parrott, Joseph, R., How white supremacy went global, The Washington Post (09.19.2017)
-Pazzanese, Christina, Probing the roots and rise of white supremacy, The Harvard Gazette (03.18.2019)
-Singal, Jesse, Undercover With the Alt-Right, The New York Times (09.19.2017)
-Williams, Jennifer, White American men are a bigger domestic terrorist threat than Muslim foreigners, Vox (10.02.2017)
Watch
-Benjamin, Rich, WHITOPIA: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, Youtube (01.25.2016)
-Blanco, Mykki, WYPIPO: Mykki Blanco speaks about race in whiteface, Dazed (08.23.2018)
-Dow, Whitney, Whiteness Project, ongoing
-Rankine, Claudia, The Fire This Time: Claudia Rankine on Whiteness as a Brand, The New Yorker Festival (10.12.2015)
-Welp, Michael, White Men: Time to Discover Your Cultural Blind Spots, TEDxBEND (07.06.2017)
-Videos Show a Collision of 3 Groups That Spawned a Fiery Political Moment, The New York Times (01.22.2019)
-What's Killing America's White Men? BBC News, BBC News (10.18.2018)
Monumentality at the Getty: an exhibition filled with solidity and whimsy
The Monumentality exhibition at the Getty Research Institute (in my opinion, always the venue of the great sleeper hits of Getty curatorial initiatives) is of a cosmic piece with the MoMA show on Yugoslav Concrete Utopias. It’s much smaller but it has as thesis that monumentality is not only defined by concrete but also other structures and natural objects that have a certain considerable mass and effect on the environment.
In particular it dials down on Los Angeles as a home to monumental structures that are more unconventional and opens one’s eyes to the very concept of monumentality.
It begins with Trajan’s Column in Rome, the Place Vendome copy in Paris, built, destroyed and rebuilt depending on the political whims of the French and their view of Napoleon, and Palmyra, Syria sites that are, alas, no longer with us.
But it quickly moves on to things one might not have considered ‘monumental’ at the outset and by the end of the small but pungent displays make a convincing case that the infamous Los Angeles freeways, the LA River, Virginia Dwan gallery’s Earthworks show, the Capitol Records building, Tacita Dean’s riff on a JG Ballard paired with the Smithson Spiral Jetty, and the Moon itself are also ‘monumental’.
My favorite is, of course, Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip. This small fold-over book, a personal talisman for me loaded with emotional freight, is here backed up by Ruscha’s handwritten production notes for the original shoot (plus a follow up video of Hollywood Boulevard, seen below). This conceptual piece—a pre-animation— has resonance well beyond his original intentions as it serves both as a marker of what once was on the street as well as a new definition of urbanity while more strictly traditional cities were in flagrante of this low-rise kind of density.
In an adjacent gallery, there is some overlap to the MoMA show especially in a charming film of the Yugoslav Tito-era Communist monuments which shows them in overgrown, grassy situ juxtaposed with interviews with locals who live adjacent to them. This verite film is priceless as it captures the solidity of the fantastical monuments as well as their (certainly unintended) whimsy. One commenter dryly notes that “without having moved a muscle” he has lived under 5 successive regimes.
In the museum there is the sublime Renaissance Nudes exhibition, monuments of an entirely other kind. The air is ultra clear and cool and after the fires, it is a splendid time to be in Los Angeles and a needed respite from the more dire news from our nation’s capital.