I went about my day yesterday in the usual fashion - getting up, having coffee and getting to work. Of course like 98% of people I know I stopped to check facebook and a blog or two during the day and stumbled over this treasure trove of goodness about a gentleman named William Seward Burroughs.

Yes, I've written about him before.

This is different though because I was halfway to writing a letter to Tyler Green and Greg Allen because Allen had recently written a small bit about Mary Meyer (JFK'S mistress) and the relation to the Truitts. It's funny because I know a bit more about that whole thing than I should, mostly because of a job I had earlier in my life. But the connection here is clearly conspiracy. Let's be blunt about this one thing - WSB did conspiracy better than anyone.

Anyway I decided not to send a letter - because I really shouldn't, and started reading some of the most interesting things I've ever read about Burroughs in a long time. I'm serious, really quality writing. (not like the drivel I write) I am fascinated by an article called "Burroughs and Beats in Men’s Magazines: William Burroughs Appearances in Adult Men’s Magazines" (URL). Even more interesting is an article about his writing for the magazine Swank. (URL) The article starts from this little passage;

Q: What is with all the men’s magazines?

A: Oh, I read them for the articles.

But here's the punch line. In July 1961, Swank publishes a first section of what would go on to become Naked Lunch. Naked Lunch would go on to be published about a year later. Even further Burroughs was not the only writer to be doing this; Kerouac, Ginsburg and a host of others were publishing in these magazines. Burroughs would later go on to publish as many as 26 articles for the men's magazine Mayfair.

Here is a quick rogues gallery of titles Burroughs published in in the 60's and 70's:
Playboy, Penthouse, Suck, National Screw, OUI, Club, Playgirl, Blueboy, Mayfair, Cavalier, King, Jaguar, Swank. Makes me almost wish that the sleazier parts of our culture would publish with a bit more variety between the cover.

For more information http://realitystudio.org/

Labels: books, working

Somehow book news is all over me this week - I'm going with the flow of it - for today anyway. The Strand is having "Art Week" with a nice line up of events starting today and going into next week. All of these events are at the Broadway and 12th Street location as well as being free and open to the public. I'll also admit this is straight from the press release...

Tuesday, December 8, 7:00pm
Lisa Kereszi, whose photographs are in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; and the Study Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, will show images from her new book, Fun and Games.

Wednesday, December 9, 7:00pm
Award-winning photographer Joel Meyerowitz will present images from the project he was commissioned to do by the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, collected in the book, Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks.

Thursday, December 10, 7:00pm
Robert Polidori, staff photographer for The New Yorker, shows images of Versaille’s conservation project from his new book, Transitional States/Parcours Muséologique Revisité.

Tuesday, December 15, 7:00pm
Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker and author of Building Up and Tearing Down, in discussion with architecture critic James Russell of Bloomberg News.

Above: Lisa Kereszi, Junkyard office with TV, Trainer, Penna. 2001

Labels: books, New York, Photography

Usually this post is preceded by receiving the Taschen holiday catalog. No catalog this year, but there are so many great books out this year I've decided to just go forward. So here's a list of what I think are pretty interesting reads.

Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? - Jean Braudrillard.
I think the key to this book is in it's brevity as well as it's frequent uses of art and in particular photography to exemplify the distance between human and natural. University of Chicao Press

The Rockabillies - Jennifer Greenburg. (photo Above)
Greenburg's carefully done photographs reflect the attention to detail required for introducing a contemporary sub-culture (to depict any any subculture really). Published by Center For American Places

Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) - Steven Henry Madoff
A compendium of voices - Theorists, Artists, Administrators, Student , and Curators. Think of this as a road map for future learning. MIT Press

Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions From the 20th Century
That pretty much says it all. Harper Perennial

The Years Work in Lebowski Studies - Edward P. Comentale & Aaron Jaffe
Something here for the slacker and something here for the scholar - just don't spill your beverage. Michigan State University

Labels: books

Bad Barbie By David Levinthal
I made the trip out of Bushwick tonight to see the latest show from David Levinthal this evening. The evening turned into a pop culture night that could only happen in two cities here in the states.

First things first. Bad Barbie is hardly new work from Levinthal in fact it predates his more celebrated work Hitler Moves East a collaboration with Gary Trudeau. The interesting thing about the Bad Barbie images to me is the way the culture of the late sixties/early seventies is clearly reflected and amplified. Levinthal Shows Barbie not as a mild mannered woman hoping to marry the right man (her boyfriend Ken) but as a woman who clearly revels in her sexuality and freedom. You could also say that in these photographs Ken becomes her cuckold while her "mandingo fantasy" is played out with (an african american) G.I. Joe.

Either way you read this, these images are charged with enough thought and minimal theatrics to have a honest sexuality about them. For me that was more than enough. The images have a reality about them that seems for the most part to transform the dolls into characters worth watching.

Off topic, but clearly on the evenings pop culture vibe...
Gossip Girl was being filmed tonight as I was leaving the gallery - that made me stop and think - although I'm not a fan of the show, I know enough about it to know what it is. Comparing that to the free wheeling version of Barbie I just saw, I thought how tame Gossip Girl really is.

I saw Neal Casssdy's typewriter. That was pretty big thrill for me (I'll admit to being a beat generation junkie...). FYI Neal Casssdy is perhaps best known for being characterized as Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road among others as well as the driver of the bus in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. He also wrote an amazing book called The First Third.

I found myself in a back room for a moment as well and could swear that I saw some of the Vivienne Westwood clothing that Sid Vicious was known for. I wonder ... nah.

Special Note to Sharon Butler - I came face to Face with Alec Baldwin tonight, ok we look something like each other...

Bad Barbie By David Levinthal is on display until December 5th at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller

Labels: books, Galleries, New York, Photography

Interested, curious? Then point your browser over to "Art We Love" and take a quick tour this new offering from the Gagosian Gallery. My favorite part of this post is unsaid - but shown right off the front - five Jeff Koons puppy vases greet you upon entry to the "shop".

I can only imagine a traditional bookstore being able to afford one of those puppies - much less five of them. Still it's a interesting concept, and I'm thrilled that someone is willing to try something a little different right now.

Labels: books, Galleries, New York

Richard Hell's The Voidoid, with drawings by Kier Cooke Sandvik. Published by Josh Smith and Todd Amicon's 38th Street Publishers, The Voidoid is a novelina that was written by Hell in 1973. A long out of print edition was published in 1996 and this new editions comes with bells and whistles: drawings by young Norwegian artist Kier Cooke Sandvik that both re-articulates the work while providing their own brash narrative.

Before Richard Hell's well-known life as a musician began, he was a practicing writer. The Voidoid was written as his life shifted from poet to punk-rock icon and reflects the grimy spirit of that bygone era. Perhaps, the artist himself best explains this:

The Voidoid was written in 1973 in a little furnished room on East 10th St. I was staying with Jennifer (‘my thoughts and me are like ships that pass in the night') in her apartment down the block overlooking the graveyard at St. Mark's Church. The Neon Boys was stalled because we couldn't find a second guitar player... Every day I'd take a bottle of wine with me across the street to the $16-a-week room I'd rented for writing. The method was I'd keep going till I got to the end of a single-spaced page, which was pretty far. I'd wake up an hour later and have to drink a whole lot of water.

Available at Printed Matter:: 195 Tenth Avenue www.printedmatter.org

Labels: books, New York

I recently bought two books - this one, John Pawson's Minimum and The recent book by October Press; Robert Ryman: Used Paint which I will expound on in greater depth at another time.

Minimum however is a great visual guide that explores the philosophy of said approach from one of the foremost architects of that approach. This is actually a fairly highly sought-after book that shows that the value of "the minimum" is pervasive in architecture, art, design and every aspect of life.

Pawson, who has worked for Calvin Klein (interiors), B&B Italia and the Cathay Pacific Lounge at the Hong Kong International Airport, compiles images as diverse as buildings from prehistoric Mexico to the work of Le Corbusier to Donald Judd and beyond. The chapter headings - Mass, Light, Structure, Landscape, Order, Containment, Volume - are non specific to practice and as a result show greater possibilities than one might expect.

Highly recommended, I got mine from amazon.com

Labels: books

My work for the Sketchbook Project has highlighted on the Moleskine blog.

Labels: books, Matthew Langley

The honest to god truth about me is that I'm a kind of nerd.

I'm not a programmer, nor do I think thats terribly interesting. What I do get down with is the details of the process of the things I'm interested in. Far too much. Seriously. For instance, I have not told you in detail of how my home could be made sustainable and safe if there ever was a zombie war. The truth is I spent way too much time figuring that out after reading World War Z.

Which leads me to a book I bought this week and read the same day. It is simply called Low, like all the books published by 33 1/3 it is about one album, in all of it's detail - about 150 pages worth. In this case it is about David Bowie's Album Low. I'm not going to go over the big details or even the small ones you may not even care - or you might already know. There are tons of nuggets to keep a standard "trainspotter" like me happy. In fact I kind of rolled around in the facts (not unlike Mike Myers in that dreadful "Studio 54" movie) - the book was too much fun. My wife was kind enough to go to sleep and smart enough not to ask questions that would lead to my story telling. She's smart in that way.

I strongly suggest if you have the same kind of weakness I do check them out - I used amazon.com.

I assume that the market for these books are primarily men - this seems to be the dominant gender attached to obsessive music collecting - not that I want to keep women from reading the books or even collecting music, everyone is welcome. I just always assume women are better balanced about this kind of stuff. And really how many people have more than 5 versions the same album. By the way they really are not the same - different covers, labels and track listings make for a very different musical experience, plus the cd versions often have extra songs...

Labels: 70's, books, music

over the winter break I had a chance to stumble over the Art House Coop's (Atlanta) website. They were getting started with a little project called the Sketchbook Project. I thought what the hell - let's see what happens. Long story short I wasn't interested in submitting a proper sketchbook so I made something more akin to a book as art. Using my approach to paperworks as a starting point.



What I ended up with was a project where I scanned a bunch of paint samples and built a continuous artwork that accordions open. I'm actually really happy about the piece and along with my friend Tony Eckersley, we made a quick video. (above)


The Sketchbook Project is all over the eastern US for the next year - check out the Art House website for details.

Labels: Artland: USA, books, Galleries, Matthew Langley, Painting, working

Superman isn't the only one with a secret. Joe Shuster, the artist who co-created the Man of Steel along with writer Jerry Siegel had one of his own.

In the 1950s, when Shuster and Siegel were fighting with DC Comics to regain the copyright to their character, Shuster was unable get any work. So instead of illustrating the adventures of Lois and Clark, Shuster took to decidedly different sorts of couples in images for Nights of Horror, a fetish magazine sold in Times Square sex shops.

It doesn't take a huge imagination to look at the cover of Craig Yoe's upcoming Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster (Abrams, $24.95 - Available in April) and picture the young artist getting out his frustrations over what he'd lost, because the faces seem awfully close to those of the most famous famous couple in comics.

Most (if not all) of this is taken from SCI FI wire.com

Labels: 50's, books, Comics

This summer while I was in Greece I re-read one of my favorite books, Mount Analogue by Rene Daumal. Mount Analogue is an unfinished novel of 4 and one half chapters, that details a group of people who are on a journey to visit a mountain that connects earth to heaven. Lets not dwell to much on the idea of connecting heaven (whatever that might be) because there is no religion (dogmatic religion) in the book to speak of, there is however the idea of some kind of spirituality that is connected to the present.

The image of the mountain is cast in numerous cultures and Duamal uses this to a great advantage, gently coaxing different approaches of the symbolic significance of the mountain, while expanding the culture and classism of the mountain and the villages that surround the mountain.

One of the great themes of the book is the idea that to move forward, you must also have moved back. This idea of give and take is handled quietly and graciously, it is to me the idea that allows the book to reach its loftier approach.

As for it's relationship to art? I think the book could also resonate as an allegory of studio practice, not so much as a guidebook per se, but as a meditation on process and artists working.

Labels: books, thoughts

The above quote is from the novel High Rise, by JG Ballard. 20 years (maybe more) I was introduced to the writings of JG Ballard, to say it changed the way I see certain things is an understatement. Ballard is best known for his groundbreaking work of fiction called Crash. Followed by his memoir of his childhood called Empire of the Sun. However for me, High Rise is the work that speaks to the new, or should I say future, urban experience.

I was jogged back into thinking hard about JGB last week when the New York Times Magazine ran a fashion spread (sample image above) in which the models were adorned in great clothes but also great medical equipment. This spread immediately triggered me to think about Crash. A few years ago Crash was made into a movie with a reasonable degree of success, however it is the themes of Crash that carry the greatest weight; The sexualization of the car crash, the fetishization of damage, and finally the objectification of the scar on the human body as sexual device. This is clearly not dinner table conversation to be sure.

Funny enough the paper this weekend had a short article (New York Times - Arts and Leisure) about Richard Prince's recent work about/using the automobile. Clearly JGB and Prince are using the automobile as a device that speaks of an everyday experience although, clearly Ballard's view is far from everyday - however I can see parts of society moving in a curious direction.

Why am I writing about Ballard in my "artblog"? I think it is because usually I look at art and think about the experience, then when I discuss the art, most often I discuss its "Meta", rarely it's experience. (meta is a prefix used in order to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter) I find that the writings of JG Ballard, have adjusted the focus of the lens that I view, and ultimately discuss art with.

Where to start?
The three most groundbreaking books are: Crash, High Rise and, Concrete Island. You might find one of them in a better bookstores, or you might try this internet shopping all the kids are talking about.

There are some videos on YouTube as well.

Labels: 70's, books, Richard Prince

From the Press Release - "The second annual fair of contemporary art books, art catalogues, artists' books, art periodicals, and 'zines offered for sale by over 120 international publishers, booksellers, and antiquarian dealers."

I love art books and I love books as art. This is really the best of both worlds as far as art/books/book arts go, and it's free to get in. Thats a great price. If I were in NYC that weekend, I would be there. So should you.

The Website

Labels: art bargins, Art Books, books, New York

And here I am talking about Jack Kerouac's "On The Road". The scroll of course is the roll of paper that the first draft of "Road" was written on. You probably know the legend - here is the shorthand - three weeks, not a lot of sleep, coffee, probably drugs (most likely amphetamine of some sort). This was really an attack on the whole writing process. No "pages" just writing in a pure and thoughtless approach.

On The Road: The Original Scroll, has been published by Viking. It is different than the edited versions in the way that all early drafts are - I expect most drafts are a little bit more precious - proper spacing, serious proofreading, paragraph indention's or at least paragraph breaks. This is not to be found here. What is found is a autobiography that uses real names, and seems for the most part less aware of the writer even though the writer is also the narrator and main subject. Also the Jazz that Kerouac had so deeply in him is evident - I would not call this musical or even lyrical - but it gets close at points.

When push comes to shove - the standard things about "Road" become less evident and the larger issues of the book (in my opinion) start to shine. Forget about the restless generation stuff - the issue that comes to the forefront to me is really simple and clear. It starts to become a living document on how to live. I like the idea of "Road" as a living document.

Postnote:
With Kerouac dead a large number of artists have continued the legacy of "Road" beyond writing, here are a few:
Robert Frank, Dwight Yoakum, Bob Dylan, Gary Winnogrand, Charles Gatewood, Paul Westerburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Kienholz, and hundreds of others.

HERE DOWN ON DARK EARTH
Before we all go to heaven

VISIONS OF AMERICA
All that hitchhikin
All that railroadin
All that comin back to America


Photo from Emdot - found on Flickr, used without permission.

Labels: books

In 1991, David Wojnarowicz and Sylvère Lotringer met in the East Village to conduct a dialogue on Wojnarowicz's work. DW was already in the last stages of AIDS, and saw his dialogue with Lotringer as a chance to be clear about his aspirations and political views. Later SL reached out to DW's collaborators and friends - Julia Scher, Richard Kern, Kiki Smith, Nan Goldin, and others. The untold story that emerges here is the collaborative work of artists. It comes down to the fact in DW's case that he was a great synthesizer of ideas and images as well as a great artist.

for more information please visit semiotext(e)

Labels: 80's, books, East Village