Curatorialist

Sometimes you can hit a bullseye and still miss.

The We Are The World remake for Haiti, 25 years after Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie rocked the world for USA for Africa, is sort of its own disaster in and of itself. My emotional preference would be to just go down the list of artists then and now and discuss the vast difference in artistic quality. Not that there aren’t some real deals in this video: Jennifer Hudson, Barbara Streisand, Celine Dion, Tony Bennet, Beyonce, Wyclef Jean, Usher, even Pink. There were some heavy hitters in there, to be sure. But the lows were so much lower as to bring down the overall quality quotient too dramatically. Popularity was never the casting spec in the ‘85 version. Jonas Brothers? Justin Bieber? Will i Am? Enrique Iglesias? Josh Groban? Miley Cyrus? I don’t need to discuss the differences between those artists and Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers or any single person who was invited into that studio in 1985. This isn’t an old guy’s “times were better when” speech, either. It’s a pure, one-to-one look at artistic integrity. Not about album sales, but about having undeniable expressive art in your soul. The kind that lasts. If you play the ‘85 video right this second (I just did), every one of those artists is undeniable. One look at the Haiti video and you just know that 25 years from now, nobody is going to want to open that time capsule. That’s a miss. Should have been part of the consideration process for something important, like disaster relief. It detracts from the integrity of the message and this message deserves it. The Jonas Brothers should have bowed out. T-Pain should have said, you know what, I’m honored to have been asked but the message is too important to make this about the trend I represent. Same with Miley Cyrus. But that’s not what goes through their minds. Not that they don’t care about the cause, I’m certain they do, but it’s the lack of soul-searching about the true meaning of something, obscured by the false rationale that popularity, in and of itself, is also a contribution to the cause, that disappoints. And nothing could sum that up better than the difference between Lionel Ritchie introducing the video in ‘85 and Jamie Foxx introducing the video in’10.

But there’s deeper issues at play here. On the surface, 2010 WATW seems to have the same premise as 1985 WATW – bring artists together for a cause. Did artists come together in 2010? In the 1985 WATW, disparate musicians stood shoulder to shoulder and finished each others’ sentences. You could barely tell where Lionel became Lionel and Stevie. Where Paul became Kenny. Where Warwick became Willie. And wasn’t that sort of the point? Quincy’s magic was in the pairings and the way the individual gave way to the duet, the duet gave way to the song and the song gave way to the message. Can we say the same about 2010 WATW? I hear the overlaps in the mix, but from the video, it appears that all of them were recorded separately. We open on Justin Bieber, HEAR Jennifer Hudson and Nicole Scherzinger come in and then hard cut to them by themselves. Where’s the sharing of the mic? Where’s two artists working it out? Where’s the “Check your ego at the door” sign? Seems to me, this is one big ego enabler: separate recordings, close-ups and a who’s who of most-Tweeted-about flavors of the month. What, Jennifer and Nicole don’t want to bend down to Justin’s height? Too good for that, are we? What a missed opportunity. And if you think that none of that matters as long as it gets people to watch and donate to Haiti, I’d beg to differ. I’d like to ask how much more money might be raised, how many more relief workers might be enlisted, how many more concerned and helpful people might come out of the woodwork with a better product? If you set out to make something of value, make it great – or you underachieved. This version drafts off the success of a predecessor, lazily substitutes artistic effort with buzz metrics and propels an already suffering industry of music into further chaos by continuing to confuse popularity for genius. Haiti and Music deserved better.

And I can applaud the intention of the people who put this together while still disliking how they went about it.

Group rapping is terrible. It should have just been Snoop, Wyclef, Kanye or maybe Lil Wayne. Diverging into a group rap segment belittles rap and misses the point of the whole get together. Let’s mix it up. It’s okay to blend Mary J. Blige in with Tony Bennet (sort of) but rappers need their own interlude? So much for creativity. Speaking of which, auto tune? Why why why would you employ a technique like this to a song with such a heartfelt message? Auto tune corrects tone at the expense of humanity, that’s why the more it’s used, the more robotic it sounds. Conceptually, where does that help in a situation where you’re asking people to have empathy for a cause?

The irony of all of this is that the ‘85 WATW starts with a slate of the USA for AFRICA logo with all the artist’s signatures on it, but all you remember is their voices. The ‘10 WATW video is a lot of voices, but all you remember are their signatures.

Fame and the system killed the time-honored farming of talent. Somewhere in our lifetime, fame and talent switched positions on the time line. Guys were geniuses first, then they went mad. For real. Then, guys were genius and they wanted the image of going mad, so they wrecked hotel rooms, laced people’s drinks for fun and caroused with women, because they could, it was fun and they didn’t seem to get in trouble for it. The “bad boy” was invented. And girls loved it because, underneath, the bad boy had a genius to it – a skewed outlook. Something admirable. But Street Car Named Desire became Rebel Without a Cause. Then Rebel Rebel. Then Rebel Yell. Then Tom Petty’s Rebel Without a Clue. Then Courtney sang “Celebrity Skin” and then the whole world just started watching American Idol and Rock Star: INXS and the process reversed itself. We asked the audience to vote and to find a star that had “it.” But these boys and girls are music academy snobs with helicopter parents who’ve never really lived. We elect them based on a history of what genius is supposed to look like. Carrie Underwood? There’s no there there. There’s no genius. There was never any genius. There’s a look and there’s a voice. The rest is all manufactured.

And not to get political, but Ronald Reagan had a part in this, too. I know history has rewritten all of it, but I will die knowing that that man was a dumb actor, not a genius. And although he wasn’t the worst, he paved the way for guys like W. Bush to become POTUS. It’s a straight line from there to Carrie Underwood.

And the radio stations play them because the people know them. And we say “see, it’s successful because people buy it” or in the case of politics “look at the approval rating!” All backwards. Having made it USED to be the proof that you were talented, now I don’t assume you’re talented just because I know your name, or you’re on TV, or you won an award.  And, consequently, the predominant style of music today is not “beat” or “pop” or “rap” or “rock” or “country.” The predominant style of music today is a formula. Sure, blues is a formula, too. But genius does something with it. Blues is a raw material. There’s no raw material anymore. Manufactured cardboard cutouts just do what the computer prints out. Rick Rubin, Timbaland, will.i.am, John Shanks – they aren’t supposed to BE the talent, they’re supposed to help the talent put some shine on their raw genius. Mold the clay. That’s how it used to work. No longer. Linda Perry had one hit as a singer. She couldn’t sell an album as an artist today. Then all of the sudden she’s writing songs for Kelly Osbourne??? The un-genius daughter of one of the true geniuses? All  backwards. Ozzy was the old way, Kelly is the new way.

We can’t look for talent within the system anymore. The system develops money, not talent. And the formula, although designed to make money is also designed NOT to make genius. Shave off all the corners and call it a perfect shape. That’s not why we love music. I don’t need it perfect, I need it pure, driven, full of life. And the system is lifeless and creates the veneer of art out of a composite of lifeless elements. We’re not building out of clay anymore, we’re carving out of cardboard.

There’s something more than a little thought-provoking about this video. Be warned, it’s graphic:

RAD OMEN – “Rad Anthem” from Nicholaus Goossen on Vimeo.

This video forces you to look at the advertising business, both from a creation standpoint and a consumer standpoint. Jack, from the Jack in the Box ads, has become over the years a complex character. He, and The King in fact, have become pretty edgy. Willing to get in fist fights, blow up boardrooms, show up in people’s houses unannounced, etc. But they are still, in their fictitious bones, kid-like cartoon characters. The disintegration of innocence didn’t start with this video, it started with how advertising has evolved the characters to reflect ourselves. But how far do we take it? Advertising’s job is to connect to people, up to a point. There’s also a responsibility that comes with being a public message. So, advertising takes things right up to that line of appropriateness. It’s fascinating to see the other side of that line. Especially when that place somehow doesn’t feel so far away.

Interesting what happens when you become a grown-up. The hard truth is, there is no “balance.” Balance is an ideal, but it doesn’t play out like that. You don’t work for an hour, relax an hour, eat healthy, work out at exactly the right time, have time to yourself, be social… it sounds nice, but life goes more like this: work really hard and sacrifice your social life, family life and health. Then cram a bunch of social activities in, get on the road for a few days, get sick for a few days, take a vacation, go on a diet. Things happen in bunches, phases, often in reaction to pendulum swings in other directions. THAT’S life. The average height of a roller coaster is somewhere between the ground and the highest point, but that doesn’t explain what it’s like to ride one.

Mobile technology is important because whether you’re on the upswing or downswing, it is there with you. Not many things can travel with you through all your phases. I think we are just starting to see the potential of what that can mean to us as we watch our behaviors change. We often evaluate technology on the big shifts that it creates – the printing press brought news to the world, airplanes made the world smaller, etc. – but not on the personal shifts. The applications that are coming out for mobile devices affect our smaller moments. So that while we often find ourselves pinned to one side of the car or the other, we can start to envision a life with a little more center.

The following are 5 apps that have changed my life. Not in the enormous sense, just in the behavioral sense. And, really, these are the kinds of shifts that affect us the most – personal ones.

1. Runmeter. It was a new year’s resolution to start running again. I said it, but I still didn’t want to do it. Saying it was part of my way of getting myself motivated. But then came the time to pony up. I found Runmeter and it’s actually made running somewhat enjoyable. Runmeter does everything that Nike+ can do; log runs, give you audio split times, compare how you’re doing to previous runs, show you routes on a map, all while you listen to your music mix, etc. But where Nike+ entails using a combination of their shoe, their chip, your iPod and their website, Runmeter does all of it through the iPhone. Way way easier to set up. Way way easier to use and enjoy. Also, it has incorporated social networking in a really innovative way. You can set it to tweet that you’ve gone for a run and it will fade out your music and text-to-voice you the encouraging replies from your Twitter followers. That’s smart, and it makes you smile while you run. And I never smile while I run. The calendaring function is great and you really get a macro view of how you’re doing. I’m looking forward to my runs and the in-depth look at how I’m doing adds a game-like aspect to the whole thing that I enjoy. That’s a behavior changer.

2. Momento. I’ll be straight up, this is a diary application. I never considered myself a diarist, but here’s the thing, if you partake in social media, you’re a diarist. This app puts it all into a new perspective. The main “new math” is that it imports your social media activity (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Blip.fm) and logs it in the calendar. It also does it retroactively, so as soon as you get the app and give it your info, you can go back and look at all your status updates through a calendar interface and it changes your perception of social media and your life. All of the sudden, I find myself logging little notes about things going on in my day and uploading pictures taken on my iPhone, too. The truth is, we partake in social media for ourselves anyway. We like to mark moments, we want to remember our days and not let life slip by. This app has brought a lot of elements together to make that possible in a way I’ve never seen before.

3. Photo Apps. I use the broad topic because there are so many and which one you use is a matter of preference. I like Camera Bag and Hipstamatic. The thing about these apps is that they do such a great job of making the images look like a Lomo, Diana, viewfinder or old Polaroid camera that they need absolutely no post work for what they are. I have a very good SLR camera and I do a ton of photography and like a lot of other photographers, I make a distinction between shots that just capture a moment and shots that I go create. For the former, you often feel compromised in the quality of the image. You know how you SHOULD compose it, but it’s not that kind of shot. With these apps, you feel better about posting to FB or just having them in your library of captured moments. The idea of EVERY shot in my collection having a certain creativity to them is very exciting.

4. Four Track. Four Track is a legitimate four-track recording application. You can record separate tracks, mix them down, adjust volumes and balance and it has a number of add-on features that surprise you for a $10 app, including the ability to cut and paste drum loops in from another app of theirs. Now, let me be clear, I’m not looking to get my songs on the radio or anything like that, but can I throw down a guitar track and then go back and add in some vocals? Hell yeah I can. And if it’s in my bathroom, it sounds… well, it sounds terrible, but it sounds like me. I gave up the idea of being a musician a long time ago, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have music inside me. An app like this makes it possible for a regular guy with a guitar to have a little musical outlet without all the expensive software and hardware. And ego.

5. NBA League Pass. Aside from local games, which are blacked out, League Pass plays all the NBA games either live or recorded from that day. The quality is not bad, either. I’m a basketball guy, so for me this app brings me games I never would have been able to see other than through highlights on SportsCenter. And I’m not a SportsCenter guy. Also, more than anything, I’m a Laker fan. So, seeing Laker games on the road with this is a joy that is hard to even explain. Of all the apps I’m talking about here, this one is probably the one that comes closest to a Big Life Change. Watching TV on your mobile device has large implications for many industries, but it is really the deeper personal relationship to a sport that makes this so amazing.

When The NY Times had their typographic face lift of 2003, they obviously put a lot of thought into it. They replaced what was a mishmash of different typefaces with one family: Cheltenham. It was a decision that everyone could live with. Indeed, it was the kind of bold (yeah, I said it) move that screamed of confidence. Even hardcore NY Times stalwarts understood – modernization is necessary, but I can live with this.

Not so lucky is IKEA, who is currently on the receiving end of a Twitterload of abuse online regarding their shift to Verdana for their catalog font of choice. IKEA had been employing some kind of version of Futura which, sure, is an outdated font but it was a) sort of a signature font for them and b) a whole helluva lot more of a distinct opinion than Verdana. Verdana is a dumb-downed font for the web. It is specifically un-designed. Not good for a company like IKEA, which has enthusiasts who care about such things and also, by the way, are designers by trade. They should have known better. Faux pas.

Related: I love typography, but I’m partial to hand drawn lettering. The stuff that gets me really excited is typography layout like this work gathered here. This kind of careful manipulating of typography, drawing and image make you think of craftsman – designers from before computers. The lost art of design that comes from the hand. It’s the kind of work that makes you want to say “Beautiful,” whereas the cold comfort of the perfectly kerned, computer-generated line simply makes you say, “Nice.” There’s a difference.

Lucky enough to have just returned from a great trip to Paris, my head is in an art history kind of place. Something dawned on me on this trip that I hadn’t really considered before – the important role of the Realists. I realized on this trip that I have an extremely simple view of art history. It breaks down into two distinct macro-movements for me: External Representation and Artist’s Impression. Everything before Realism sought, in some way, to reflect something outside ourselves: from animals to humans to stories, allegories and religion, this is the world outside people, represented. Post Realism, art began to take a different look. All of the sudden, it was the artist’s “impression” of the world that showed up on canvases and we have been on that trajectory ever since. Although an over-simplification of art history, it maybe says something that the two major museums of Paris (Louvre and D’Orsay) divide up art at exactly the point where art shifted from one to the other. That point was Realism.

Courbet is significant, in that regard, because he was the quintessential, and perhaps pioneering, artist/rebel. His desire to portray life as it really is was a major break from the uppity art snobs of the day and his rejection from the mainstream only spurred him on more. You could call him the first folk artist, in fact. And, in my opinion, he deserves more credit in the history of art than he gets. In particular, I think his contribution to art far exceeds, say, Picasso’s. But I’m sure I’m relatively alone in that view. Picasso is a whole other ball of wax.

When Courbet painted “A Burial at Ormans,” well known as the beginnings of Realism, Auguste Rodin was 9 or 10 years old. Exactly the years he started drawing. Only 4 years later, he’d be enrolled in art school and was considered a child prodigy. He, of course, was well aware of the Realists, but also reverential to Romanticism and what was still the more accepted art of his time. His temperament was different; less of a rebel, he did seek to bring his own sense of realism to sculpture, but he tried in much more earnestness to bridge the gap between old school and new school. And despite dealing with his own rejections from the Salon, in his lifetime he won over all critics.

The thought that kept going through my mind at the Museé Rodin was, “What if the future of art hinged more on Rodin than Courbet?” Rodin was a sculptor, though. Sculptors belong to their own long history that sits alongside, but just outside, the world of fine art. Sort of like motorcycles to cars. When discussing Rodin’s place in art, it is more likely to hear about sculptors from the 4th Century BC or Michelangelo than any of his contemporaries. That’s too bad. It seems to me that if you look at that first arc of art, according to my own view of it, External Representationalists, it never really peaked. What Courbet, or one of his contemporaries, should have done (if I may be so bold) is to have taken Realism to its natural end – to really capture the essence of another being. It stopped just short of that, choosing instead to make it political and, therefore, about real situations, not real people. It never got personal. Not Daumier, not Millet, not Whistler… and then, boom, it’s off to Impressionism. But Rodin…

Rodin studied the human form. I mean really studied it. Multiple sketches, paintings, maquettes, even whole sculptures of different sizes and expressions… all to get just the right one. Balzac, alone, took seven years. He worked on The Gates of Hell for 37 years, up until his death, and was never fully completed. All in the effort to accurately capture each and every form. To translate the human condition through an accurate depiction of flesh, muscle, bone, expression and the language of the body. He’s known for all that, sure, but in a vacuum, really. I am in love with art and have nothing but respect for modern artists, but I also think that if there is a way to express the inner mind of an artist, it has been done. We have had a good 100+ years of what amounts to not a whole lot more than a lot of really talented artists’ impressions of the world. I just can’t help but wonder what kind of more important place we might have ended up in had Rodin been the guy who took art into the 20th Century and beyond? Imagine a hundred years of artists thinking about the true essence of others, instead of just themselves. Worth considering.

Liu Bolin is the kind of artist who makes the kind of art that sort of demands you pass it along. It begs to be shared. It has an immediacy to it. Arresting from the moment you look upon it. And, like all great art, breaks through that initial impact to deliver something deeper than what you expected.

At first look, you get an astonishing trompe l’oeil, difficult to make out where surroundings end and the artist begins. He plays with colors, textures, imagery and anything else he can manipulate to make it apparent that this is a photo of him, but that he is inextricable from his environment. Points just for making something arresting and new. In this day of icons, logos and headlines, standing out in this kind of fashion is a feat in and of itself.

At second read, though, we’re looking at an artist making a statement about the world, about his place in society, about being overlooked, ignored and/or undefined. Symbolic gestures like these should reach you somewhere profound in your body because the notion is very human. He is depicting what it’s like, not just in China, but anywhere, everywhere. We all have one foot in the desire to stand out and be noticed, and another foot somewhere hidden, behind statues and other people, in walls and blended into the world.

Learn more about Liu Bolin here.

This is something I’ve been wanting to do on here for a long time, but hadn’t gotten around to. I was reminded, looking at that video of Marcel Duchamp that I posted last week – the music, the clothing, the film, the editing, even the way he talks; the turns of phrase, word choices and discussion points all hint at a world completely different than ours now. It’s a fantastic voyage in time and one we don’t take enough advantage of. This kind of video exists in droves, it’s just a part of a massive archive that can be pulled, but is rarely pushed. Maybe that’s where I can come in.

I am going to start curating videos that capture/curates a great time in history. We’ll call it, “Time Machine.” This one is Chicago, circa 1948 (you’re welcome, Chuck). Besides the cars, the suits, the trains and countless other gorgeous remnants of a bygone era, it marks a momentous time in America’s history of success. These are the glory days of Chicago, post 20’s Gangster Era, but they are America’s glory days, too. Just prior to this video, Chicago housed the “great migration” of Southerners, looking for work and the city flourished as a center for Jazz, architecture, fine living and much more. My grandparents (always the picture of success) met and married in Chicago, in 1928. My grandfather looked like a gangster, actually, and my grandmother was a beautiful, successful dancer and although they left for Los Angeles by 1930. But this great city, depicted in this video, is the one they made.

I’m also taken by the writing of this tour. It’s selling the city, sure, but in a voice you don’t hear anymore. It’s verging on poetic. In fact, at one point, the narrator just gently recalls a Henry Austin Dobson poem:

“TIME goes, you say? Ah no!

Alas, Time stays, we go.”

How true. Enjoy.

It’s funny. With advertisers leaving magazines these days, I am reminded of the Renaissance. That’s actually not funny, everything reminds me of the Renaissance. If you recall from history class, it went: Middle Ages, Black Plague, Renaissance. Some say that the plague left people thinking about their own mortality, empathetic to the human plight and that set the stage for more humanistic movements in art and patrons with the hearts to fund it. We might be in that Black Plague right now.

Nobody seems to be making this connection, but both music and magazines are both artistic expressions that have relied on some kind of business arrangement. As those arrangements and our economic structure unravel, the art just might be getting to a better place. The next stage very well could be patronage, especially if the art gets very good and reaches some kind of new height of personal expression.

This new book out, “We Make Magazines,” highlights a number of independent magazines who are doing their thing outside the mainstream. No coincidence that the sub-title of the book is “Inside the Independents” and that you could very well put that line underneath many of the new venues for music and film, as well. People are doing it on their own these days and, since the tools are all at our disposal, we simply don’t need the business to get published. And the decisions are, therefore, all our own. When you have a job working for someone else, you make what you make according to their vision. This is the draw of independent _____-making, be it film, music, magazines or whatever. We make whatever we want, according to our own vision. It’s a great time to be an artist, but what will you make? What is the new renaissance about? How will you be part of it?

More info on the book here.

You either start loving cars really early, or most likely you never really get that obsessed over them. I was an early obsessor: Matchbox to kit cars to remote controls to, eventually, my first car. A Dodge Dart. It was a hand-me-down, but it was mine. I came across this emblem and it took me back, not just to my first car, but to a day when car badges weren’t so squared off and corporate. These guys had verve. Panache. Style.

Take a trip down Highway Awesome over at this guy’s Flickr page of Cool.