October 2017

shorter malcolm morley

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Shorter Malcolm Morley:

First came his classic photorealist works from the 1960s, roughly contemporaneous to Chuck Close's and Richard Estes's work and rooted in Pop art. The subject matter isn't "ships" but picture postcards of ships, gridded out and painted square by square. In the late '70s Morley became the expressionist-style painter he is today. One could prefer the earlier work but sympathize with the need to loosen up and not be a lifelong prisoner of a rigid technique.

morley-ship650

SS Amsterdam in Front of Rotterdam, 1966

Liquitex on canvas, 62 x 84 in. (date and medium from Jean-Claude Lebensztejn's book on Morley, Itineraries)

jpeg via The Remodern Review

larger

MORLEMA

Cristoforo Colombo, 1966

Liquitex on canvas, 45 x 60 in. (date and medium from Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Itineraries)

jpeg via Hall Collection

morley_floundering

Sailing Vessel Floundering in Heavy Seas, 1996

oil on linen, 56 x 72 in. (hat tip JPM)

newsweek and "poor larry"

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On October 18, 2017, an item appeared on the Sourceforge blog reminiscing about Newsweek's transition from print to exclusively online mag:

Today in Tech – 2012
On this day just five years ago American magazine company Newsweek officially announced its transition from print publication to an online-only format. During this time print-news readership had dwindled while online audiences skyrocketed, leaving many in the publishing industry no choice but to switch to online formats. Newsweek’s shift was preluded by years of internal and external contractions in an effort to improve the magazine’s finances, all to no avail. Newsweek’s revenue dropped 38% from 2007 to 2009, prompting the magazine owner, The Washington Post Company to sell the magazine to audio pioneer Sidney Harman. Finally, after almost 8 decades of publication and the steady decline of print readership, Newsweek announced that the last printing of their magazine would be on December 31, 2012. They transitioned to an all-digital format called Newsweek Global.

Coincidentally, the same day, October 18, 2017, this item appeared on the Naked Capitalism blog about an essay published two days before in the all-digital Newsweek:

How Hillary Clinton Still Can, and Should, Become President After the Trump-Russia Investigation ... [Lawrence] Lessig’s thesis [published in Medium and recycled in Newsweek --tm]: Trump is removed because he was helped by “Mother Russia” (!), Pence “should” resign since he got the same help, Ryan steps in. “If Ryan becomes president, he should do the right thing and choose Clinton for vice president. Then he should resign.” This is where we are. Poor Larry. Such a shame.

Newsweek added the cutesy Mother Russia reference and refers uncritically to the "Russia cloud" enveloping the Presidency (but neglects to mention the Russia cloud enveloping Bill and Hillary Clinton). It describes Lessig as a "Democratic die-hard" and lends some of its rapidly diminishing credibility to his bizarre idea that Paul Ryan would appoint Hillary Clinton veep and then step aside. Lessig admits that scenario is "unimaginable" but says we need to start imagining it. Visualize whirled peas and all that. Ryan and Clinton are cut from the same neoliberal cloth, believing in the power of "markets," so it's actually not that big a stretch but that isn't what Lessig is talking about.

vice on art

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In Vice, NYC critic and curator Robert Nickas writes a mean review of an art exhibit by his former Index magazine colleague, Peter Halley (hat tip bill).
Halley was the publisher and Nickas was the editor of the Interview-wannabe magazine in the '90s; it stopped publishing over ten years ago.
One senses a late ax being ground.
Halley's paintings and installation strategies have been consistent for the last 25 years; one can't really accuse him of a bad faith attempt to repackage himself. (Whether the work has shown any growth or development is a different question.) The review is all about branding, comparing Halley to an overweight Elvis attempting to stage comebacks. There is no need for this!

"Snap Diary"

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"Snap Diary" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]

waveform_10-18-17

Composed w/ Tracktion's Waveform DAW, running on Ubuntu Studio
Sound sources:
Beats "from the internet"
Collective (software synth/sampler)
Calf Monosynth (triggered and recorded using Ardour and imported into Waveform)
a-fluidsynth playing E-Mu Orbit samples (triggered and recorded using Ardour and imported into Waveform)
"Digging in the crates"