Semi-spicy contents alert

This post is part of my ongoing project to migrate my old Art Is My Middle Name newsletter archives to my own website. Learn more about all that.

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Originally published Jan. 28, 2020

Hey, there,

So last week I had this uncharacteristic burst of positivity and was all set to write a buoyant, inclusive newsletter issue about how there’s no wrong way to visit a museum, that any thing you do that gets you inside the door interacting with exhibits is a good thing, even if it’s just a quest to go in and find the 6 ugliest paintings or because you like the view out of one of the windows.*

*FWIW, I do believe this pretty fervently.

And then, as I walked through the skyway, a crushing wave of reality hit me: of course, even with the most open-minded of visions, there are some wrong ways to visit a museum. I know this because I worked at museums for a decade and a half, and witnessed or heard about all kinds of ways that people—usually, but not always, horny teens—managed to find extremely wrong ways to visit museums. And then I asked around to other museum-y people I know for horror stories, and got a bunch more. Crucially, I should add that other people’s horror stories were emphatically not limited to teens; people of all ages can find bad ways to visit museums.

For me, the canonical example of this comes from the days when I worked at a large, encyclopedic art museum (I have this vague sense that I shouldn’t name the names of specific institutions in writing here, but rest assured that for the price of one beer I will happily do so in person), took a break to stroll through the galleries on a quiet day, and came across a couple of teen boys fondling a nude statue. More specifically, I guess, one was fondling the statue while the other looked on, very impressed. I told them to knock it off and they bolted.

Continue reading Museumgoers Gone Wild →

Hey! We’re finally talking about museum-type art!

This post is part of my ongoing project to migrate my old Art Is My Middle Name newsletter archives to my own website. Learn more about all that.

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Originally published Jan. 23, 2020

Hey, there,

I guess it’s time to talk about my least favorite painter. The art world is full of talented jerks, and if you throw a rock at the canon, you’re gonna hit someone who’s easy to hate. I’m not here to talk you out of whoever your bete noire happens to be, but I do want to spout off for a while about the guy I hate the most: Jacques-Louis David, the biggest kiss-ass in all of art history.

Honestly, the “biggest kiss-ass” thing is underselling the case for hating David. That was my gateway into hating David, but it turns out there’s a bunch more.

First, let’s establish who we’re talking about here. JLD* was a French painter who spanned the 18th and 19th centuries. His most prominent period overlapped with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. He was a tremendously gifted technical painter, as you can see here:

*Using “JLD” occasionally here just because typing his whole name out over and over is a drag. But the abbreviation feels weird, because I usually associate it with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who has this mirror-image thing going by being as absolutely cool as David is sucky. Nature always balances out, I guess. Oh, while we’re all parenthetical, maybe this is a good place to point out that, being French, his last name is pronounced “Dah-veed.”

Continue reading You Know Who Sucks? Jacques-Louis David →

This post is part of my ongoing project to migrate my old Art Is My Middle Name newsletter archives to my own website. Learn more about all that.

This one in particular was an urgent outburst in 2020 but you know what? I’ll stand by it in 2026, and think it’s all the more urgent. Just, uh, don’t use Substack now.

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Originally published Jan. 16, 2020

Hey, there,

This began as a twitter rant the other day, and it kind of took off, much to my gratification. But Twitter is ephemeral, and I want to spread this message as far as I can. In fact, to that end, after you read this, please forward it to anyone who might be receptive.

OK, then.

*clears throat*

I have an earnest request for you (yes, you).

Start a blog in 2020! And start reading other peoples’ blogs!

RC and I were talking the other night night about how much it sucks that our society just drifted away from blogs after the big social media sites sprung up. I understand the historical reasons for this, but here’s the thing: NONE OF THOSE REASONS ARE DETERMINISTIC OR IRREVERSIBLE.

There used to be this wild, varied, untamed wonderland of personal expression through blogs and it was a thing of exquisitely messy human beauty.

Now, we all complain (rightly!) about the slow death of media outlets, especially those that have any spark of humanity in them. And we howl (rightly!) about how the big social media orgs, especially FB, are trying to turn the web back into a monetized AOLesque walled garden.

And those things are true, and they suck!

BUT A HUGE SUITE OF BLOGGING* TOOLS IS STILL JUST OUT THERE WAITING FOR ALL OF US TO PICK THEM UP, USE THEM, AND GIVE OURSELVES OUR VOICES BACK.

*and newslettering, which winds up being functionally damn near the same thing.

Writing for paying outlets is great if you’re interested in pursuing that, but there are always fewer of them, and you have to tailor your pitches to their tastes and the news cycle and what have you. And that’s fine, but THERE’S SO MUCH YOU HAVE TO SAY THAT DOESN’T FIT INTO THOSE BOXES.

And it’s intimidating to pitch stuff, and it sucks to get rejections. SO WRITE ABOUT WHAT INTERESTS YOU ON YOUR OWN BLOG WHERE NO ONE’S GONNA SAY NO TO YOU. YOU HAVE A VOICE AND IT’S AS IMPORTANT AS THE LATEST GODDAMNED BACHELOR RECAP ON A CORPORATE SITE.

Let your freak flag fly! Write about the weird shit that interests you! Not sure about your grammar or spelling? WHO GIVES A DAMN ABOUT YOUR GRAMMAR OR SPELLING? You still have things to say.

And then let the rest of us know about it! And on the flipside: we all can and should make an effort to be reading each other. Committing to this for 2020: I’m going to forcefully push to add idiosyncratic personal blogs back into my media diet.

I just got done reading* a book about kids in a fucking police state using darkrooms and silver nitrate to photo-reproduce newsletters to give themselves a voice; we’re all sitting here with the best communication system IN HUMAN HISTORY sitting in front of us unused.

*and won’t stop talking about, apparently

Google Reader died? WHO CARES? Every goddamned browser has a bookmark function. Or it’s not hard to type a URL.

If you don’t want to mess with blog software: start a newslettter! Then nobody has to remember to check your site; they just have to check their email. It took me less than 20 minutes to set up Art Is My Middle Name. It could not be easier.

So yeah. Start a blog, start a newsletter, and let everyone know about it so we can signal-boost it. And if you can boost your friends’ signals, DO IT.

OK, that’s it. Sorry about the shoutiness, but I feel strongly about this. Please at least give starting a blog, about whatever you feel like talking about, a serious think, and forward this to anyone who might be open to the same.

Newsletter’ll be back, maybe in a couple of weeks, in a more restrained form.

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RECOMMENDATION

I recommend that you start a blog or a newsletter, and then let me know about it.

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CLOSING STUFF

OK, so here at the bottom, sorry for the ragged copy editing; my deal with myself was to keep this fast and loose, which is gonna mean typos. On the other hand, that also means it’ll actually come out, instead of being obsessed over.

If you have any thoughts/reactions/what have you about this, I’d love to hear about it, either by email or on Twitter. And if you know anybody who might dig this, please forward it on to them, or send ‘em the signup link! And thanks!

But don’t worry, they’re pretty positive once you get to know them

This post is part of my ongoing project to migrate my old Art Is My Middle Name newsletter archives to my own website. Learn more about all that.

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Originally published Jan. 14, 2020

Hey, there,

The plan was for this issue to be about what it actually means to have refined taste, which is a bee that’s been in my bonnet for a while. But then I got sucked into Burning Down the Haus, Tim Mohr’s book about punks in East Germany in the 70s and 80s, and that thing took over my whole brain. Refined taste is gonna have to wait.

Haus is fascinating, relevant, and moving from like 30 different angles (to me, at least, although a book about politically-active bands and punks in East Germany does sound like something developed in the lab to appeal as tightly to as many of my interests as possible). But the thing I want to focus on right here is a fundamental thing undergirding the book and the world its describing: the way that punk culture created a space through which East German kids could assert their own identities in a system that was geared to suppress identity (and for what it’s worth, I’d say the same thing is true about punks on the other side of the Iron Curtain, the difference being lower stakes and some details in how the overarching system tries to assign you an identity that’s convenient for its driving ideology).

Continue reading This Newsletter (/website) Has Been Hijacked by East German Punks →

This post is part of my ongoing project to migrate my old Art Is My Middle Name newsletter archives to my own website. Learn more about all that.

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originally published Dec. 29, 2019

Hey, there,

So I want to start out my talking about art by talking about a book (which is largely about art): Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard. It’s not quite top-shelf Vonnegut, but it’s pretty good and certainly doesn’t deserve its obscurity. And as far as my life goes, Bluebeard was a big turning point in letting the idea of capital-a Art establish a beachhead in my brain.

Bluebeard is ostensibly the autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, a fictional Armenian-American Abstract Expressionist painter who became a national joke when the “futuristic” materials he used to create his paintings causes them all to fall apart. There’s a lot going on in Bluebeard, with time spent on the Armenian genocide and some admirable-in-intent-but-kind-of-falling-short-in-action feminist points being made, but the stuff that always stuck with me the most was “Karabekian” just addressing the reader and talking about painting and paintings (and since Vonnegut painted on the side, I don’t think it’s too outré to just read these sections as Vonnegut telling you what he thinks about painting).

Continue reading Bluebeard! →