"Garfield Minus Garfield Plus Garfield."

"Urg, the commenters on that page manage to miss the point so gloriously I'm tempted to read it as some kind of PoMo metacommentary. Now my head hurts."

***

Every time I go to add the "philosophy" tag, Blogger tries to auto-complete the word to "Phil Gramm." Can I have my Garfield without Garfield, and my philosophy without Phil Gramm?

He's won the "Bad Writing Contest" twice, but now Professor Fredric R. Jameson has won the $900,000 Holberg Prize.

"The prize, established in 2003 by the Norwegian Parliament and worth about $900,000 this year, is awarded annually to an outstanding scholar in the arts and humanities, the social sciences, theology, or law."

The Duke literature professor has written such things as "Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism."

His 1997 "Bad Writing" prize honored such sentences as -- from "Signatures of the Visible":

The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the more thankless effort to discipline the viewer).

Were you ever required to read that sort of thing? Did you ever assign such readings to yourself?

Complicating and transcending institutional parameters with oblique, allegorical, uncertain sociopolitical themes...

Why do museum curators post such nonsensical texts on the walls next to the artwork they want us to take seriously? I went to the Whitney Biennial today and there was the usual mishmash — lots of artists, lots of artworks — and you can look at it all and make what you can of it or you can stop and read the museum's explanation of what it thinks it's doing assembling these particular artists and artworks. Here's some text I wrote down:

The artists consider each of these multiple platforms equally valid even as they seek ways to complicate and transcend institutional parameters.

So... they are united in their belief in the equal validity of the multiple platforms? I love the way that's completely, incomprehensibly amorphous but also patently untrue — because of all the many artists in the show, there must be at least one who considers at least one of the platforms at least a little less worthy than the other platforms.

Anyway, surely, I'm being unfair by withholding the antecedent for "platforms." Let me correct that seeming unfairness. The "multiple platforms" are: "music and other performance, movement workshops, radio broadcasts, publishing projects, community-based activities, film screenings, culinary gatherings, or lectures." Come on, I'll bet anything one of those artists thinks "culinary gatherings" aren't equal to film screenings or "movement workshops" don't quite measure up to music performance.

Then there is the tiresome tendency — it's been going on for decades — to claim that art is "political." It's so sad and needy the way the assertions are made. There's a reference to "uncertain sociopolitical themes" and:

Much work in this year's Biennial concerns politics although its mode of address is often oblique or allegorical.

Like it's our fault if we don't see politics in the art. Maybe you should stand over there and look from an angle or consult your imagination and hear the political argument that large distressed block of styrofoam is trying ot make. It's allegorical — it's Al-Gore-ical.

Either the politics aren't there and the curators wish they were, or they're barely there and the curators are anxious for us not to miss them. But why is getting politics into the art so important? And if it's subtly there, shouldn't we be teased and left wondering what it is we're really seeing? Am I projecting my own thoughts or perceiving the artist's message? Musing about that, we form a relationship with the artist. It might have been interesting if the curator hadn't nagged us to see politics everywhere.

Projects... explore fluid communications structures and systems of exchange that index larger social, political, and economic contexts...

Projects explore structures and systems? And structures and systems index contexts? I think this is trying to say something political about art, something about how art challenges capitalism – because, of course, if art must be political, it must be left wing. The text goes on to credit the artists for producing objects that cannot be bought — that have "an ephemeral, event-based character." But there are plenty of big, chunky objects all over the museum that hardly look as though they are about to evanesce.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian writes:

The Whitney Biennial is a massive, smelly expulsion of all the hip, tiresome shit that's built up in the bowels of the New York art scene for two years, racing artwork from the cradle of the studio to the crypt of that ossified institution without waiting to see whether it could even survive a life on its own. It's a parade of all the embarrassing fashions of the previous two years, all the simple-minded trends and gimmicks that came and went, the hangover the morning after a drink-and-drug binge where one surveys the wreckage and the carnage around them and moans "What did I do last night?!"

"Curators" are also an interesting breed, generally academics not smart enough to be scholars in any actually useful discipline, nor creative enough to be artists themselves, nor attractive enough to be models nor rich enough to be hedonists, they make their living as parasites who, unsatisfied with simply sucking the life out of you, feel the need to explain it to you in the most uninteresting terms while they're doing it.

Art is attractive to people like this. Being at its core interpretive and ultimately unexplainable, it invites these lackluster pedants to simply make shit up. Hence also the gravitation towards postmodernism and its jargon, elevating making shit up into a religion.

Here's what gets me. Their writing proves they lack taste. So it is irrational to accept their aesthetic judgment.

Speaking of writing though, Palladian, that's one hell of a mixed metaphor in your first sentence: shit ≈ baby.

Convention, Convertible, Contrex, Chardonnay, Condom.

Stumbling into the BlogHer conference, completely late for Day 1, I go first for the test drive. There's a bunch of cars, including a line of Saturn Sky Roadsters, but I know the one I want to drive. This red one:



No, not because it's red. Because it's the only one with a manual transmission. I wonder if they got it right about the proportion of women who are interested in sports cars and have the taste and skill to want a stick shift.

How does the Sky compare to the Audi TT Coupe I just drove 2400 miles? The seat doesn't adjust, so I couldn't get myself into the ideal position. That's my biggest criticism. But it was fun to drive, and it looks really cool -- all curvy. My TT isn't a convertible, but maybe when I buy my next car -- probably another TT -- I'll think about getting the convertible. It was awfully hot and bright, but the wind-in-the-hair effect is sublime. (When I was in high school, I drove a 1961 Chevy Impala convertible. Sea Foam Green.)

I went to the writing workshop, already in session. In the part I heard, they were talking about how to title your posts to best attract the kind of traffic you want. Am I following any rules about titles? I wonder. I do whatever amuses me at the moment, but maybe I could extract a set of rules from my behavior. I sort of hate to hear the "official" rules, because now I have to think about whether I'm following them, whether I should, whether I ought to want to break them on purpose, and whether I want such thoughts in my head. As opposed to tripping along on instinct, my usual approach.



All these bloggers are overloading the Hyatt's WiFi and even their Ethernet connection. (I did remember to bring an Ethernet cord.) Connection is spotty. I'm a little frustrated. I'm drinking from a freebie bottle of Contrex. Did you know there was special water for women? It tastes awful, and within the hour, I start to feel sick to my stomach. Possibly a coincidence.... I remember I have an over-the-counter remedy stashed in an obscure pocket of my computer case. I swallow it... without water.

I light out early, taking the light rail back into town, where I nestle into a banquette at my posh hotel.



The remedy has restored me. Along with that big glass of Chardonnay...



And that lovely tuna roll...

I'm getting good WiFi, so I download my photos, and work on this blog post. I pause to browse through the goodies in the Six Apart tote bag I got earlier in the day. What companies got in on the BlogHer action? Trojan! What condom was selected for the lady bloggers? Elexa! I see it's a condom with "a woman's perspective."

What else have I got here in this bag?

IN THE COMMENTS: I throw down the gauntlet:

I want a fancy-schmancy post modernist to deconstruct this post!

Sippican pens an awesome entry. Is there thermite? Of course. Elizabeth says one perfect thing. And XWL flings himself into the exercise -- over here on his blog -- and writes a whole essay on the title alone -- and don't forget this post has a passage about titles -- before declaring deconstruction crap. But he said such cool things that I can't believe it. Like this:

Convention: intentionally ambiguous meaning here, both in the sense of a 'convention' as meeting, and 'convention' as accepted method of doing things, this double meaning (with a third less obvious, but nevertheless informative meaning of 'convent'ion, given the 'sister'ly nature of the BlogHer conference, this particular 'convention' could be seen as a modern descendent of a 'convent' and therefore 'convent'ional in a secular imitation of the religious 'convent') serves to inform every aspect of the rest of the post. Next the concept space suggested by the term 'convertible', a (no doubt) intentional mimicking of the c-o-n-v-e- of the first word in the title, but with the changed ending a change in inference.

"'Convent'ion" ... that rules. If only the Saturn had been an Ion my head would have exploded.

My Dinner With Camille.

So, remember that old post of mine about Camille Paglia: "Try to survive a tornado with a post-structuralist"?

And then remember that great BlogAd for Paglia's book "Break, Blow, Burn"? You can see the ad on the BlogAds page showing the best BlogAds (scroll down to the third ad). See how it links to my post and uses my name? The ad ran in the premium slot on my blog for quite a while.

Anyway, Paglia is returning to Madison to give a big lecture tomorrow. At the request of the promoters of the lecture, I did a post on this blog to encourage people to come to it, and I linked back to the old "tornado" post, saying her recent appearance in Madison had been amusing. A couple days later, I received a phone call inviting me to the pre-speech dinner with Paglia. I accepted the invitation.

But what's this? Suddenly, I'm uninvited! Camille Paglia has actually read "Try to survive a tornado with a post-structuralist," and -- I'm told -- she's angry and hurt by what I said about her. The very material that was used to promote the book has become a reason to demand that my invitation to the dinner be withdrawn. Okaaaaayyyy....

For 15 years, I've thought of Camille Paglia as an unusually tough and feisty woman. Wasn't she the one who sneered at women who acted like fragile victims?

Ah, well, it's true: despite my light touch and detailed coverage, the post was rather damning. Go back and read it, and you'll see. Funny, though, then, that you used the post to advertise the book.

And I don't blame her for not wanting to be stressed out at a dinner before a big speech. I didn't know I was capable of stressing out such a big rockstar diva. But apparently, I am. With the very post that her people saw fit to promote her with. That's too funny!

UPDATE: Look how the BlogAds blog praised Camille Paglia's ad precisely because of the way it included me:

There's some post-modern intertextual polymorphic joy (not forgetting that Paglia hates post-modernism) in the fact that Paglia's publisher bought an ad on Anne Althouse's blog quoting an Althouse post that quoted Paglia saying: "Once you’re 'swept up in the blogosphere,' you become self-referential."

Hey, you can have fun with advertising! Let's get out of the stiff and starched print-it-once-a-month-and-pray-that-someone-reads-it mentality. This Paglia ad is a wonderful respite from book blogads with blurry images sporting mumbling unreadable text, the bain of my existence.

(It's Ann, without the e!)

So, you can have fun with advertising, but it's back to the stiff and starched when it's time to make out the dinner list...