Ink Stained Hands

prophet

2008-07-19T00:52:00.000-04:00

Meta Narrative

2008-07-17T22:55:00.005-04:00

I am onto something with this.

Check out this as a thesis statement for an essay:

"The crisis in contemporary culture is the death of the meta-narrative." - Bill Donovan

Meta-narratives are what give meaning to everyones' life, without meta-narratives moments in our life have no meaning.

Meta-narratives do two things:

1. They provide meaning to our lives
2. They give us identities, and convictions

When you examine art history in the context of meta-narratives rather then other catagories, you may be surprised that very little conective tissue exists that can strap art history to current struggles with meta-narratives, but instead are stuck in exhausted worn bins. Rennaisance art is commonly catagorized by region, religion, and indivual artist. (There is a section in the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Islamic art books. Chinese art has its own section.) Modern art is catagorized in movements, for example: Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and Dada.

Contemporary art has broader catagories, but largely people refuse to identify specific movements, and artists deny any affiliation. The only time this rule is broken is for "art groups" who collaborate together. This denial may be a symptom of something more endemic.

Religion, to me, has something distintcly naive about it, it is just highly improbable that any one religion explains the world completely, and the fact that different religions exist whenever a communication barrier existed means that one true story is even more unlikely. But I do see a purpose for religion, outside of its implausibility, it gives meaning to peoples' lives.

Other meta-narratives that are failing at this time include the benevolent nature of government. The USA is having a hard time swallowing the bitter pill that the last eight years have been. I have some authority here having served in Afghanistan. (Click here to see some photos)

The only two meta-narratives we have remaining are:

1. History

2. Some new religion, largely catagorized as Myth in contemporary art.

I heard someone say that history is just philosophy set to a story, it was a professor, and I think they were quoting someone else. History is one way we can experience and construct an identity.

Myths and new religions are ways to give meaning and identity too, but they require a catalyst. A catalyst in the form of someone, or a group of people, who have made a willful jump from something that occured to them in abstract sense, an idea, to actions that they perform with conviction. No one really believes in a new religion, and you shouldn't blame someone who starts one, but people need new religions because they give meaning and purpose to their lives and they are willing to suspend there disbelief with the aid of a catalyst. There is a lot of art being made that is feeling around the edges of new religion, largely dealing with connections to the natural world, or referencing evocative symbols in similar ways to alchemists - magical symbols.

Anyways that is the idea that is floating around in my head!

Illustrator I Like

2008-07-12T16:03:00.003-04:00

I found an illustrator I like, Daniele Melani, here is the link, click here. Here is another link, click here, you have to find the icon for Daniele's stuff.

view of Grenada

2008-07-10T01:24:00.001-04:00

view of Grenada, originally uploaded by ink stained hands.

This is a picture I took while I was living in Grenada in 2005. I was thinking about it today and decided it would be good to post it here.

New Work

2008-07-06T17:11:00.002-04:00

Integrity

2008-06-19T16:01:00.002-04:00

I deleted all the sponsored posts, which are sort of deceptive because they look like normal blog posts but are actually advertisments. I don't know exactly how many I wrote, but I think I deleted all of them.

So now this blog is just a blog about art, and related stuff. If you don't know me, I am an adjunct art professor in NYC, and I work as an assitant to a prominent artist. I have also been installing shows in Chelsea.

I went to school in the midwest, at the University of Iowa, with some really great people. If you didn't know the University of Iowa takes its art pretty seriously and brings in a lot of guest lecturers, it also has a very strong faculty. It is sort of strange because a lot of schools in urban centers and on the coasts won't get important artists and thinkers to come and talk to the students, but the University of Iowa really goes out of its way to bring people in there, and provided me with a top notch education.

I guess I am thinking about the University because I saw that the new art building was flooded last week when I spotted it on the news here. I thought it might flood because it right next to the river, and it is probably one of the lowest buildings in the entirety of Iowa City. I wonder if the art museum flooded? They have some pretty important paintings in there...

Ok, well starting soon look for pics from NYC galleries. I am going to try and make the blog more topical about art, and specifically stuff that pushes me away from my comfort zone.

Hope everyone in Iowa is doing ok.

Barry McGee

2008-06-19T14:40:00.000-04:00

Isabella Rossellini - Green Porno

2008-05-16T12:58:00.001-04:00

Click here to watch videos about insect sex.

No Internet

2008-05-11T15:18:00.002-04:00

I moved, and I have no internet at the new place yet.

So I have not been posting.

I was talking to two of my best friends, Jamie and Cece, and they critiqued my blog a little, and I am going to make some changes. In the future the blog will focus on art related topics exclusively. I am going to start posting photos from shows in New York once I get internet up again.

Maximianus I Ae Follis, 305 A.D. London Mint. Choice, good VF.

2008-04-30T01:52:00.001-04:00

Pretty sweet roman coin. You can get it for 450 bucks at Nemisis ancient coins. Here is the link, click here.

Poker

2008-04-28T23:18:00.004-04:00

I play poker sometimes, and I like to watch poker on tv. There is a website kind of like youtube that just plays poker stuff called pokertube. This clip is an interview with Daniel Negreanu where some punk starts giving him a hard time and Daniel pushes the guy backwards into a pool that is behind them. Pretty funny.

Two Prickly Hair on Your Arm Musical Clips

2008-04-23T23:26:00.005-04:00

I heard about this clip while listening to WNYC radiolab. It is a clip of Gregory Warner playing a Johnny Cash song to a crowd of Afghanis and getting a really amazing response. Gregory won a competition that allowed him to travel anywhere in the world to work as a journalist, he chose Afghanistan, and he brought his accordian. Turns out many Afghanis were familiar with western songs because a Afghani pop star from the 70s, Ahmad Zahir, used many western melodies to create songs that are still very popular. If you listen to the Radiolab podcast you will find out that it likely Zahir was assasinated by the Communist government in Afghanistan in the 80s.

I personally enjoyed this clip because I was a soldier in Afghanistan, and if I have the authority or the power to say one thing about the Afghanis is that they are people. I know that sounds ridiculous, you say: Of course they are people Bill, but I counter: do you think of them as people who are important and equal to people from other places. I think not, because these people have been dehumanized in the media, and that dehumanization is most disheartening for someone like me and the guys in my unit who got to know and became friends with Afghanis.

I enjoyed this clip because you can not fail to see their perfect humanity.

This is a clip I found on Blogginbindoggins, and he found on Yiekes.

Bought some Roman coins on Ebay with my blogging money

2008-04-21T20:43:00.000-04:00

Bought these five coins in an Ebay auction, paid with money I made on this blog through advertising.

Trip

2008-04-21T02:13:00.000-04:00

Freebie

2008-04-19T00:55:00.005-04:00

I belong to a lot of email groups that discuss, barter, and sell ancient coins. I just read one of the newsletters, and Kevin who runs Noble Roman Coins, is giving away a free download of a 250 page powerpoint about cleaning ancient coins. I know that it is not everyones cup of tea, but here it is, click here. I have read the first 45 pages, and it is good, the advice is well organized and thorough.

If you do not know I wrote a pretty popular guide to ancient roman coins on ebay, click here. I wrote the guide during my last semester of grad school in Iowa, so that was in 2006, the information on pricing is out of date mostly due to the bad exchange rate with the Euro.

New Paintings, The Thinking Maps

2008-04-15T00:25:00.001-04:00

Elephant Paints Self Portrait

2008-04-14T01:15:00.001-04:00

At first I did not think this was real. How did they get the Elephant to paint a picture of an elephant, and does it understand what it is doing?

Best Link I Have Ever Found

2008-04-13T16:44:00.004-04:00

Click Here

It is a Japanese girl's face who follows your cursor arrow with her eyes, and makes beguiling expressions.

Click Here

I found this animation on Pushapixel.

Air Guitar

2008-04-12T23:38:00.007-04:00

I read the first few essays in Dave Hickeys Air Guitar today, and he really struck a chord with me that previous readings had not.

When Hickey writes about the small stores that serve as places where people exchange things they love for money, but really they exchange these beloved things for the privilege of talking about them with other interested parties, it seemed true. I feel like that may be true. I have a prejudice against the idea of money. I much prefer things to money, and I prefer ideas to things. In my Utopia I would not live in a futuristic jungle with a treetop house made from biodegradable plastic sheets that capture solar power, my Utopia would be having a situation where I would not have to worry about this primate body and could live in a world purely made up of ideas and images. Maybe with my entire personality existing on a tiny computer chip, that had access to all the information available anywhere to that point: I would exist as the tiniest physical presence and roam the most massive world available, economy at its best. Just thinking about things at my leisure. I guess that is what the internet is like, but unfortunately I have to be in a human body. I think eventually they will make technology that allows people to become machines, and that the people who remain people will be left behind while the machine people spread through the Universe like dandelion seeds.

Wow, that took a turn I did not see the previous paragraph taking.

I have had different escapist fantasies my whole life. The two most recurring are one where I bike across country on a ten speed bicycle with a back pack and one of those little one person tents. The other is finding some independent income and then going off the grid living in a Winnebago, parking it at truck stops, state parks, Wal Marts, and Casinos.

A close third is a house boat, but I am not sure if I would get sea sick or not so this never gets that far as a fantasy.

Infamous Elmer and Abigail

2008-04-11T23:30:00.003-04:00

Here is Elmer jumping over another dog he was playing with in Grenada.

Abigail and Elmer, this is when we just had brought Abbie home and she was a shy puppy.

Abbie and Elmer taking a break after destroying the house.

Dogs

2008-04-11T18:10:00.002-04:00

My dogs relieved themselves on the carpet this morning, somehow they broke out of the bedroom and made it to the dining room. Once in the dining room they went on a romp that involved bathroom stuff, digging garbage out of the garbage pail, and finding a peach with the pit and smooshing all the red peach juice into the carpet.

I am so used to the dogs being crazy that I could not even get that angry.

I spent all day cleaning the carpets, so no painting today. I rented a rug doctor at the super market and scrubbed everywhere, including the staircases. I still have to finish my taxes too, ugh.

It was a good feeling to get all the carpets cleaned up. I also cleaned the carpet in the basement. Now if I can finish the taxes tonight I will have the weekend cleared up for painting time.

No new art stuff happened today.

New Blog, Eastern Europe in English

2008-04-11T03:58:00.002-04:00

I found an eastern European art blog, written in English.

It was found through the Neo Rauch entry on the wikipedia, it was the first link.

Click Here to go check out: MuseumZeitraum Leipzig

Leipzig is where Neo Rauch paints, and there is a whole loose affiliation of artists called the Leipzig school (schule). Pierogi 2000, the Brooklyn based contemporary art gallery has also recently set up a new shop in Leipzig. So this blog may be a good one to watch.

Palettes

2008-04-10T20:30:00.003-04:00

This is the palette I used:

To make this painting:

This is the first oil painting I made in a new attempt to make paintings in one sitting. I am planning on making another painting tomorrow, a landscape.

Beautiful Day

2008-04-10T19:03:00.005-04:00

It was a beautiful day here, 74 degrees and sunny with a nice breeze, the air smelled nice too.

I spent the day catching on paperwork. We are looking for new car insurance, and I have to file taxes, and I have to finish writing my syllabus for the summer class I am teaching. The most exciting thing is thinking about the class, and I hope I can get some artists to visit and talk to the class, maybe the school will give me a few hundred dollars to pay as honorariums.

My plan is to paint all day tomorrow. I am going to paint a landscape with unatural colors, and stick a figure and maybe a small shack into it somehow. I like the slightly derelict boat my neighboor has up on blocks in his backyard, that may make the cut too.

I have included a picture of Nibbs, my longtime pet. Nibbs loves to be combed with her special cat comb. She is a lucky black cat.

Fell Asleep on the Subway

2008-04-10T12:58:00.004-04:00

I fell asleep on the subway.

It was on the R train going from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and it is a kinda long ride as subway rides go, maybe 20 minutes.

When I woke up I didn't know where I was for a second: weirdly shaped, brightly lit underground chamber. My mind flashed to thoughts of being buried alive like the characters on CSI or Bones. It was a short lived feeling, because the trains are labeled so you can see where you are going and I remembered pretty quickly.

So I closed down Pearl Paint getting two small canvases to make oil paintings. Pearl closes at 7pm, and I am always hustling to get there before the class I teach at night starts at 830. Luckily the school has a library for me to spend the hour in between the time when Pearl Paint closes and my class begins.

Forum Gallery:
Forum Gallery was a big deal to me when I was learning to paint. They basically showed the strongest group of realist painters in America.

I used to love Forum Gallery, because they showed Scott Prior (who I briefly worked for in the late 90s) and Gregory Gillespie. Now Gregory has passed on and Scott doesn't show there anymore. So I lost my personal connection to the place, but I guess they still show Jane Lund who I met a few times when I worked in Northampton Mass. Anyways I think I may go and see what they have up on the walls this Saturday.