Day: July 10, 2012

Man Bartlett, whose every action requires a manifesto, announces he is quitting smoking, or rather Facebook.
The announcement amuses, coming on Hyperallergic, whose editor organized a show called #TheSocialGraph and for whom Man Bartlett is the poster boy for a "social media artist" (doing performances sitting in a gallery tweeting whatever people say to him, that sort of thing).
Two thoughts on this momentous and self-important screed: "I told you so" and "You'll be back."

Corrections: Hyperallergic's editor, not its publisher, organized the #TheSocialGraph exhibition. Also, it was #TheSocialGraph, not The Social Graph. Apologies for the imprecision.

AFC:
If Jeffrey Deitch takes on curatorial responsibilities at LA MoCA, he’ll need to start writing exhibition catalogue essays. We dug up this one Deitch wrote in 2005 about Ryan McGinness [pdf], who Deitch thinks is “one of the rare artists who is pushing the boundaries of the definition of art and the artist.” So. Deep.

My reply:
In his "Post Human" exhibition essay from 1992 Jeffrey Deitch marshaled ideas from 1980s theory and cyberpunk fiction and thoughtfully applied them to artists coming to prominence at the time. The artists and ideas now seem familiar but this was all pretty new 20 years ago.
http://www.artic.edu/~pcarroll/PostHuman.html (imperfect scan)
Give the man his due.

Meanwhile, AFC's editor-in-chief pities himself after recent savage attacks by straw men:

Also, for those who think looking at a new nonprofit hire's CV is an odd thing for a writer to do, there's this from an LA Times article on Paul Schimmel's firing:

"Deitch, who had no experience courting donors before taking over at MOCA, acknowledged in a public forum at an art fair last month that the difficulty of the task, a crucial and time-consuming one for museum directors, had come as 'a rude awakening.'"

Obviously irresponsible, slander, etc. etc.

Awww...