I am not going to be anything for Halloween and am not going to go anywhere for Halloween either.

When I was a painting major at Cal State L.A. in 1988, two professors pretty much told me I wasn’t much of a painter.

Lydia Takeshita was blunt: “You are not an artist. You are a writer. Quit making art and write.”

The other, Dan Douke, was kinder, but gave the same message, during a critique, he looked at my painting thoughfully and announced to the entire class, “This painting is a monumental achievement. It is the single worst painting I have ever seen. It might be the only masterpiece a student of mine has ever produced. It is a masterpiece of awfulness.”

Given the chance to get my revenge of Professor Douke, I instead took the high road in this feature essay for November’s ArtScene Magazine, as i have always liked Douke’s art, regardless of the accuracy of his comments about mine.

Llyn Foulkes had two shows open tonight at Bergamot Station - at Craig Krull and Patricia Faure Galleries.

I found a quote by Michel Foucalt that sums up neatly the space that Foulkes occupies in the between dwelling on the past and accepting its loss:

All of this beauty of old times is an effect of - and not a reason for - nostalgia. I know very well that it is our own invention. But it’s quite good to have this kind of nostalgia, just as it’s good to have a good relationship with your own childhood if you have children. It’s a good thing to have nostalgia toward some periods on the condition that it’s a way to have a thoughtful and positive relation to your own present. But if nostalgia is a reason to be aggressive and uncomprehending toward the present, it has to be excluded.”

I got this email just now:

This morning, 20 October 2006, in Moscow, Matthew Bown, owner of the London based Matthew Bown Gallery, was removed from a plane bound for the UK and detained by Russian authorities for questioning. Bown was detained in connection with his attempt to export works by the provocative Russian art collective The Blue Noses. The works in question include satirical photographic images of presidents Bush and Putin, and of a suicide bomber in a burqa flashing her underwear. The works in question are intended for exhibition at the Matthew Bown gallery on the 9th of November 2006.

The Blue Noses are known for their satirical and provocative videos, photographs and performances which parody and critique Russia’s past and its present day capitalist boom. Their targets include political leaders, sexual and political correctness, and the platitudes of art history. Using low-tech methods they ape the look of high-tec. The Blue Noses‘ intentions have always been to create work that can be understood and engaged with outside the restrictive realm of contemporary art; a populist approach for ‘pioneers and pensioners’. Their energy, black humour, irreverence and sense of the grotesque distill the spirit of Russian art (and life) today.

The world is a fucked up place.

Artists,
What if every tradition you had learned from was dead?

What if every historical lineage was played out and limp, a dead-end street?

What if every stylistic concern you had mastered and/or mannered were suddenly so ubiquitous in the cultural landscape that your entire artistic output were rendered invisible?

What then would you do?

Think about it, and then make the first art work of the rest of your life.

You don’t have to thank me, but you might.

Best wishes,

Mat.

Bakersfield

So I am writing up an article for ArtScene on an artist who was once a teacher of mine. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I did feel a bit of special insight into his process as an artist having seen the way he conducted a class.

Right after artwalk we left LA for two days in beautiful downtown Bakersfield, where I was the Eminent Speaker at Bakersfield College. I gave two talks to groups of 150 and 90 in attendance respectively. Most were students, some had no idea of what a gallery or a museum was, others were “digging my message” as people came up after the talk and wanted my autograph - that was weird. I signed some copies of Coagula for people and then we went out for Basque cuisine. the food up there was great. The drive was easy. And I saw a bar with the name The Silver Fox and had to get a picture of my greying locks with it. Being 42 feels fine…

So the BREWERY ARTWALK is this weekend.

Best thing about it is it is FREE.

Ooops, I mean, the best thing about it is seeing great art by artists in their actual live/work studios - over a hundred artist studios will be open. It also happens to be free and parking is free as well, donated by UPS central Southern California facitility.

Wow, my Catholic School education just got turned on its head.

There is Heaven and Hell and Purgatory in between, but Limbo was where all the good buddhists and muslims and stillborn babies went, but now it does not exist by Papal decree!

So, where will Benedict XVI be placing all the “Lost Souls” ?(Lost Souls literally, at least literal within the metaphoric)

Stay tuned for the next episode of As The Pope Turns.

I swear by the end of this he is going to be the bad emperor in Star Wars - they look so much alike already…

My birthday this year was mellow, a few cards, a few calls, a few lunches. On my birthday my girlfriend and I had lunch with my mom.

My girlfriend’s sister got me a $20 gift certificate for Starbucks and one of my brothers and his wife got me In-N-Out Burger coupons. Word has spread that I like dining out.

Sometimes I mention that i don’t have a refrigerator and people look all weird at me, then I mention that i eat all my meals in restaurants and they look even weirder.

It doesn’t seem weird except when it is like it is now - midnight and I am hungry and there is not a crumb of food here and I don’t feel like going out and my girlfriend - no way, law of physics, something about the immovable object. When she is making art there is like a bubble of force around her - I cannot get near enough to look over her shoulder, i am repelled.

Of course, i am the same way with my writing. I used to blog more, but my writing has been to abstract for this medium of late.