general

Let's try it with, oh, say, Jenny Holzer:

Holzer acted in a film by Beth B and Scott B, The Trap Door (1980)

Beth B later directed Two Small Bodies, which starred Suzy Amis and Fred Ward.

Suzy Amis is the current wife of director James Cameron.

James Cameron was married to Kathryn Bigelow from 1989-1991.

Bigelow is a past member of Art & Language.

Art & Language is in the Tate collection with Francis Bacon.

[OK it's a lousy game, because no one current is really connected to Bacon except through the Tate. The Trap Door is chock-a-block with art stars; have never seen it. Here's co-director Scott B's description, from IMDb: "A Nietzschian parable on the fate of innocence, THE TRAP DOOR follows the mishaps of Jeremy (John Ahearn) as he is fired by his boss (Jenny Holzer), gets laughed out of court by Judge Gary Indiana, loses his girlfriend to sleazy Richard Prince, is hustled by prospective employer (Bill Rice) and mauled by predatory bird-women. Finally, he seeks the help of a shrink (the legendary Jack Smith) who turns out to be the most demented of all."]

...from Holland Cotter in his New York Times review of the 2010 Whitney Biennial. Some of these remarks are taken out of context (what sounds like a cut might be ameliorated with praise elsewhere) but the overall tone of snippy boredom is fairly accurate. Given Robert Williams' extreme, er, sensitivity to his pop culture roots, being called "the cartoon artist Robert Williams" for his big moment in the sun has gotta hurt.

"[t]he museum...can claim credit for a solid and considered product"

"Two mural-size photographs by James Casebere...have the trippy glow of Claritin ads"

"Small gouaches by the cartoon artist Robert Williams"

"Pictures by Sarah Crowner are basically Op Art folded and stitched"

"Scott Short elaborates on a production process Franz Kline used 60 years ago"

"[a]bstraction’s old content — utopian ideals, personal expression — is squeezed out... What’s left? Décor? Expensive busywork?"

"Lorraine O’Grady...rais[es] issues of race, class and the highly ambivalent nature of beauty that the new abstraction ignores"

"Exactly what the Bruce High Quality artists had in mind I don’t know, but maybe it doesn’t matter. In any case, they’re already on to something else"

"In the end it was video along with photography...that made the show tick for me"

"And there’s one example of Conceptual Art still to come. It’s by Michael Asher, and it consists of keeping the Whitney open around the clock just before the Biennial ends in late May. Mr. Asher was originally told his piece would last a week, but the museum, for budgetary reasons, has cut it back to three days"

Good call from John Michael Boling on spotting this '70s Levis commercial--all analog, anticipating the look of CGI. Some real chicken/egg stuff here: Is CGI a style or did it follow the look of what had been predicted for it? As for the Friskies commercial posted by Paddy Johnson that Boling was responding to, I laughed at what was probably the unintended irony of the cat re-emerging from this sublime, tripped-out landscape to greet a lousy can of commercial cat food. Talk about a letdown. Or perhaps the cat's "trip" is what an ordinary can inspires--that's how uncritical felines are when it comes to a meal.

...as in, it's worse than AOL.

Had heard about "the poke" but couldn't believe it. (Obviously we aren't Facebook users here.)

Update: The Tomorrow Museum blog went offline -- the above article is in the internet archive.

Newspapers are more and more becoming simple distributors of corporate press releases. For example, this New York Times story by John Markoff about a new, malicious botnet that is sweeping through many companies' computers. Alarm bells should always ring when reading stories about cyber-attacks, since they are so often sourced to "security consultants" who can help you solve the problem (for a fee).

The Markoff story originates with one such consulting service, which "discovered" the botnet and wants us to know they are on top of the situation. While the article may have a grain of truth and will be "prescient" if said viral cootie becomes a larger threat and eventual household word, how credible is it that no other cyber "experts" besides this one company are quoted?

Markoff makes it look to the hurried morning skimmer that he's sourced the story more widely by obtaining quotes from two people, in addition to what he recycled from the press release. But they both work for the company that "discovered" the botnet! The last sentence admits the Wall Street Journal got the jump on the Times, by previously running a story on the alleged botnet prior to the security consultant's press release. (Which means the consultant gave the Journal an "exclusive.")

The Journal story is here, and not much more credible. The companies supposedly compromised by the botnet are barely talking. A consultant asked to give a second opinion doesn't actually speak to the first consultant's data but makes a vague statement like "these darn worms can really be a problem." It's clear that both the Times and Journal took this story seriously because the CEO of the consultant who made the announcement used to work for a major government agency (hint--the one that brought us color coded terror alerts).