Prescott Moore Lassman Review on DCist

UPDATE: Well, I've made the big time! Mr. Tom Bridge (don't ask me, I don't have a clue who he is) has nominated me for the honor of DC's Most Loathsome person. I take that as an honor! Apparently it's a huge deal how many readers DCist actually gets each day. I had heard somewhere that it was approximately 10k per day. But Tom and others have been very quick to point out that it is actually 1k. Wait, no, it's 5k. Wait, no, it's 7k. Wait, no, it's 8k. It seems no one knows for certain but it's worth arguing over.

So, to my 2.5 million readers each day, I thank you for enduring the writing of one of DC's most loathsome people!

Now, back to the original post...

I don't want you to think I've been completely ignoring my Thinking About Art readers. Fortunately, I have some good news. I've been picked up as a contributor to DCist where I'll be publishing one or two visual arts reviews each week. I'm excited about the opportunity to reach 10k+ readers each day and bring more attention to the visual arts in Washington, DC. I'm grateful to the editors at DCist for affording me this opportunity.

Tonight my first review was published at DCist. Over the weekend I saw Prescott Moore Lassman's brilliant photography show at Northern Virginia Community College and as you can tell from my review, I'm a big fan.

Given that I will be contributing a fair amount of writing to DCist each week, I'll post a link to the reviews here for your enjoyment. I hope you'll accept that as a Thinking About Art post!

DCist is making a great effort to expand it's visual arts coverage so if you don't already read the site each day, you should start doing so. It's fantastic reading!

Comments

[wwc]

Congrats JT!

[Scott]

JT,

Congratulations on getting picked up by DCist and thanks for the great review. I appreciate the kind words, but I appreciate something else even more -- the amazing amount of time you spent with the artwork. I had the sense from reading your site that you really study the art that you discuss but didn't really appreciate how true that is until you stopped by the show this weekend and disappeared into the gallery for eons. I think that shows alot of respect for the artist and the art. So even if you trashed the show (which I'm glad you didn't!), I couldn't really complain. Your pick up by DCist is well deserved!

Scott

[J.T. Kirkland]

Thanks Warren and Scott!!

Scott - It's easy to spend a lot of time with the art when it is interesting and full of subtleties. Don't thank me for that... pat yourself on the back for making great work!

[James W. Bailey]

Dear J.T.,

According to NCIC, Tom Bridge is an itinerant technologist currently living in Northern Virginia and working in downtown DC. A student of political philosophy, he is currently working in systems administration in order to maintain his sanity. He is the co-founder of The Four Corners, a group blog devoted to finding the common threads in life around the world. The author lives with his cat, Guinness, and is tolerated by his girlfriend Tiffany, in Arlington, Virginia.

He sounds like a suspect postmodern art theorist to me - he doesn't really find you loathsome, he's just deconstructing your expanded contributions to the art world in an effort to recontextualize the art blog medium as a whole as being an ethno-centric manifestation of culturally biased signifiers that reify the blogosphere. His implied textual analysis of your review on DCist is synchronic, seeking to delineate the codes and rules which underlie the production of your text by comparing those perceived as belonging to the same system (e.g. a genre) and identifying invariant constituent units. The analysis of your specific art review text seeks to break down larger, more abstract units into 'minimal significant units' by means of the commutation test, then groups these units by membership of paradigms and identifies the syntagmatic relations which link the units. The search for underlying semantic oppositions is characteristic of structuralist textual analysis. Contemporary social semiotics, as witnessed by Mr. Bridge’s comments about you, has moved beyond structuralist analysis of the internal relations of parts within a self-contained system.

Of course, you could counter him by doing a William S. Burroughs-style random cut-up and paste response from any selected bullshit text by Derrida.

On the other had, as soon as The American Artist Protection Act (as published on your site) is passed, I'd be happy to convene an emergency session of the DC Artist Court and have a proper arrest warrant issued and served.

Under AAPA, all defenses must be argued in plain English...or French - I think I could get the Artist Court to agree to that…that is, a defense of convoluted postmodern art theorist bullshit French art speak that is spoken in plain English.

Sincerely,

James W. Bailey

P.S. Parodying postmodern theorists is a real hoot since it’s so easy to do – you just thread their regurgitated words together like popcorn on a Christmas tree string!

[J.T. Kirkland]

James,

You're a trip! Thanks for the laugh!