Restraint

Funny how these older pictures of Barney's Drawing Restraint work are so tiny and grainy that they make him look like Chris Burden... Coincidence or savvy insta-legacy making?

Posting quickly today, because I actually have to get to work on time and do a whole bunch of work while I am there.If you are in the 'hood, it is Crane Watching season at Socrates... we've got two 2.5-ton foundations coming out of the ground today, being pulled up only on their rebar stubs which I spent all yesterday bending into pick points. Are my bends and welds in crappy rebar strong enough to withstand the weight of cement and the downward draw of the earth? The answer by lunchtime! The most impressive display of Newtonian physics around! Mark diSuvero might even get out the really big crane!

Notes and Queries and Leisurearts are both working on restraint themes today. And this is interesting to me as I continue to cogitate about MB's sweet earnest ponderous assholeitude.

Leisurearts is asking for MFA and Curatorial programs to shut down and to shuffle all those kids who care about art into MBA programs. And Joao Ribas (who is getting some play on Edward Winkleman because he manages to incorporate his picture of what he wants the art world to be like into his curatorial practice and not collapse into a cynical assesment of his own personal risk...) is waxing grammatical on the utopian community of Christiana in Copenhagen. It's all about avoiding excess and cleaving to parallel sentence structure. Yeah!

There is a simple takeaway: Every cause seems to have an effect. Can't create kerjillions of MFAs without creating a serious supply of paintings and videos and sculptures and resumes and CDs full of jpeg images and SASEs... and an increasing corporatization of the art world. Bleh. Can't create a utopia without taxing the crap out of luxury items, an effective way to lop off extremes of richness and poverty at the same time. Utopia is ultimately mediocrity for all, and that is interesting to think about.

Oh, but there is so much more fertile earth here! Restraint is what makes flamenco devastatingly, gutwrenchingly beautiful, even though I usually hate such bald displays of emotion. Restraint makes New Yorkers unique as Americans. I knew I was a New Yorker when I stopped thinking about the L train as screwing me personally and kept my frustration to myself. Restraint will become a part of American culture as sustainability, renewable energy and reducing CO2 output become more important than individualism at all costs.

Artists and other cultural producers create this curve. More later, after I have some DR 9 to throw in the mix. (restraint+baroque=interesting connundrum).