PROSE? By Martin Gantmann

From Coagula Issue #70 - October, 2004

When I was in art school, I roomed with an ex-marine, English major, poet. Phil was intelligent, ornery and gruff and he had a way of doing things that, more often than not, caused the question ?€?why?€™ to pop into my head. On one particular morning I awakened to the sound of a musical rhythm repeating persistently. I walked blearily up the stairs and found Phil hunched over the record changer. He was holding the cover of the Allman Brothers?€™ Eat a Peach album in one hand and a yellow legal pad in the other. Intently he would listen to a few lines of lyrics and then replay them.? 

?€?Phil, what are you doing??€? Phil, disgruntled: ?€?I?€™m trying to get Gregg Allman?€™s response to Prufrock and there?€™s one word I can?€™t make out.?€? It was then I noticed that he had written all of the lyrics, save a blank space for one word, on his pad. Later that day, when I returned, I asked him if he had gotten the word. ?€?Yeah,?€? he sneered. ?€?It was ?€?white.?€™ Gregg Allman?€™s answer to Prufrock was cocaine.?€?? 

There is disagreement about whether the Eat a Peach album intended any reference to Prufrock, but what reminded me about that long ago incident was seeing another word recently used in that same singular way, similar to white. It was put forward in a magazine essay; lamenting what the author considers is missing from contemporary art. The word was ?€?charm.?€? Charm?! Of all things to be missing, the word bespeaks white, epitomizes it: the whiteness of charm. It?€™s sound rolls off the tongue like the last white crumbs on a flat mirror, or the futile remembrance of a now distant society.? 

Where might it come from, that desire for the warmth and pleasantry of charm? It seems to get right back to that Karl Marx again, doesn?€™t it? And Freud. They just had to go and yank the white veil of the refined world right off the backs of the common predicament and all those black little secrets. After that exposure, you could just not avoid seeing the dirt, and the weeds, and the shit on the ground. It was all around. Seeing the collective mess. It had never been pleasant to discuss ?€“ was never charming.? 

I never knew what side of Phil was so upset about ?€?white?€? ?€“ whether it was the regimentation of the Marine Phil, who wanted society to fit to a narrow ideology; or the poet-philosopher Phil, who longed for the realization of an ideal, and beautiful, world. Obviously his chagrin was a mask on his deep disappointment from the recognition that a world he didn?€™t want ?€“ hadn?€™t foreseen ?€“ maybe none of us want ?€“ had become evident.

Phil?€™s mistake, as is the Charm essay?€™s author, was that the world we don?€™t want has always been there to see?€¦ Beneath the purity of charm, the whimsy of pleasantry and the whiteness of cocaine?€¦ And he just never saw it. Charm?€™s author?€™s further error is that he pines for the art world, epitome of purity and charm that it is, to differentiate itself from that reality. He wants art to ignore what the rest of the world must face. He wants us, as artists, to stretch our blank canvas right back over that supposed ignoble truth; the truth that people?€™s potential and manifest inhumanity toward other people ?€“ the anger, despair, the neediness that have always existed and will, for the foreseeable future - continues to reside among the many things we have that are historically beautiful. And he would have us paint. What he doesn?€™t get is that no amount of smearing of that potentially charmful medium is going to obscure the images and the issues that we have already seen, the ones that really do yearn to be faced and recognized.? 

After graduation Phil and I went separate directions. I returned to Los Angeles and Phil moved to San Francisco and continued writing. I visited him one holiday evening and rode shotgun in the cab he drove until four a.m. It was one of those fortunate times when one is presented with an alternative view of a familiar scene. I remember from my past, the exuberance of an evening?€™s club prowling, feeding off the energy of a close crowd and music and the buzz of a few drinks; exiting a club into the intensity of the flashing lights and sounds of the city streets. From the cab I saw people frazzled and wasted and burnt, seemingly longing to hang onto their dissipating high until the first rays of the next day.? 

Phil, by that time having come to terms with Allman, could also see the two sides: the thin wafer-like purity of charm and the dense complexity of being. And, in spite of an insidious pressure to align with those who would have us focus on the flatulent aura of sentimentality, he felt eager to explore all the possibilities of imagery and creative initiative available to his art form in order to portray all that he saw.

From? Coagula? Issue #70, October 2004

Out of SITE, Out of My Mind

By Jenny Berg

Ok, what a freaking huge marketing coup for the organizers of Site Santa Fe?€™s 2004 Biennial curated this year by Robert Storr. They managed to drag the majority of the ?€?caring?€™ art world to their backward village for 4 (yes, FOUR!!) Days based on the promise of great things under the title ?€?Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque?€?. While the program was only 3 days, who could get a flight out of there quick enough after the final utterance of Storr?€™s lecture on Sunday? Alas, we were all trapped until our available flights on Monday.

?€?Truly disappointing?€? is the phrase that comes to mind when describing the whole thing. The organizers apparently thought it would be a good idea to organize as many social events as possible connected to the opening (?€?Patron?€™s Preview & Cocktail Party?€? and ?€?Club Grotesque preview?€? on Friday, ?€?Members only Preview?€?, ?€?Gala Grotesque Dinner?€? and ?€?Benefit Post-Party?€? on Saturday, ?€?Public Opening?€? and ?€?Robert Storr Lecture?€? on Sunday), which ensured you would not run into ANYONE you would like to see as you would likely be at the ?€?wrong?€™ event at the wrong time.

Which brings me to the exhibit. BORING. How a curator of Storr?€™s stature could pick such abysmally safe work under the heading of ?€?Grotesque?€? completely confounds me. It was a profound waste of a more adventurous public space to put in work one could see in any New York or LA gallery. Where were the performances? Where was the ?€?New Media?€?? Where were the site-specific installations? Where was Storr?€™s head when he put this thing together? Was he under the impression the work needed to sell? Perhaps it was the organizers?€™ fault for picking such a relatively conservative curator to pull forth work for such a potentially lush subject.

Storr?€™s lecture centered on the exegesis of the word ?€?Grotesque?€?. Apparently he thought that a better understanding of the language would enlighten us as to why he chose what he did. It did not. His politics were perfect for the day, though, which sent Storr?€™s loyal subjects walking away from the lecture whispering things like ?€?genius?€? and ?€?profound?€?. Since when do one?€™s politics make one a genius? Hitler was likely a genius, but who could agree with his politics? Why should the reverse be true? Evidently in New Mexico your political orientation is directly relational to your I.Q.

Topping it all off was the dreadful art scene in Santa Fe itself. The ?€?better?€? galleries (to remain unnamed) were large, sprawling spaces that offered anything and everything all at once. ?€?Oh, you don?€™t like abstract paintings? How about mid-century landscapes? No? How about contemporary realism? No? Glass? Photography? Renaissance portraiture??€? All of this under one roof on display at the same time! Of course if none of the 50 genres interested you there was always the jewelry, craft or books. I am all for diversity, but it pained me to see a group from LACMA come through such a clearly commercial gallery and have to treat it seriously when they clearly did not take art any more seriously than the next sale. They might as well be selling stereos.

The big award for the Site Fiasco (I mean Biennial) must go to the marketing department for getting us all there. They will really have their work cut out for them in 2006, however, when they try to convince us all to come back.? 

From? Coagula? Issue #70, October 2004

THE PARANOID SECURITY OF GOOD TASTE IN THE OPEN AIR or

ARCHITECTURE AS THE FOIL OF DESIRE, INCLUSION/EXCLUSION OF THE GLOBAL WORLD (WHO’S GLOBAL WORLD?)

By S.A. du Tan

In mid-July, international archithinker Rem Koolhaas, darted in and out of Beverly Hills (?€?haas?€? means ?€?hare?€? in Dutch) to attend the inauguration of the new Prada ?€?Epicenter?€? on Rodeo drive, which he and Ole Scheeren of his Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) designed ?€”OMA also conceived the first Prada in NY. In the afternoon, he was at the Philippe Stark-designed Taschen bookstore on Beverly Drive to sign his new Taschen-published collection of architectural cum travelogue transglobal essays ?€?CONTENT,?€? the awaited sequel to his popular S, M, L, XL architectural/cultural/societal musings published in 1995.

The Prada* Epicenter** is located at 343 North Rodeo Drive, which should be renamed ?€?Via Italiana?€? as it counts no less than 25 Italian boutiques. Outside of business hours, its black floor flush with the sidewalk and its matte nameless aluminum facade make it as barely noticeable but quite reminiscent of, the entrance to the metro station near Hollywood & Highland ?€”which is hard to find because it is cut out of an aluminum facade, but a shiny one. The Prada Epicenter It can best be viewed from across the street where, at number 332, stands a jewel box Frank Lloyd Wright white building featuring a ground floor shifting seamlessly to three different heights and a white multi-tiered shaped spire… But let?€™s not digress. At the foot of the Prada building and the feet of pedestrians, the floor is pierced by three glass-clad alveoli seemingly connected to an invisible labyrinth, each one containing a female mannequin dressed and accessorized in the latest creations.

During business hours, the full length of the store is open, separated only by an ?€?air curtain?€? allowing easy access to the main feature: a 21-step solid dark wood staircase with a hallway on each side where purses, luggage and scintillating fashion accessories are laid out on low ?€?display-benches?€? on which shoppers may also sit. The sidewalls of the staircase feature LED screens with contemporary news and world images, reminders of the beat going on and the greater neighborhoods we are all a part of. Bush and masked men in army fatigues appeared from time to time. The 24,000 Sq. Ft. Store is guarded by two huge headless naked, badly finished, male mannequins and no less than 8 Prada-clad security guards with earphones, and manned by a squadron of impeccable nimble sales people dressed in black. Interesting and eclectic music plays. The subtle free-flowing quasi-featurelessness of the environment ?€”aluminum, translucent glass panels, indirect soft lighting, make it easy and pleasant to walk around and appreciate the finely crafted openly displayed merchandise, like a good gallery or a museum whose architecture serves the art well rather than compete with it.

The second story, for women?€™s fashions features ?€?sponge-like?€? cocooning pale green walls and LED screens hanging amidst the clothes streaming post-Rauschenbergian electronic photo-montages whose overly clear intent?€”global culture and contemporary events, Dude-buyer (Sydney opera house + politicians (?) + Chinese people + flowers?€¦) And dominance of primary colors are static and lack intrinsic interest ?€”but then the pale colored silk chiffon dress floats so beautifully on the delicately crafted hanger…

The third floor is the men?€™s floor, accessible by elevator with its own visual poetry or stimulation of a band of 19 circa 2?€?X2?€? images at eye level, or by a discreet aluminum staircase on the side. The theme is travel, the airport: there is an imitation security gate/metal detector with 2 image panels inside, there are cloud-light sweaters and Teflon-lined silk jackets, accessories floating on a plastic luggage conveyor belt, one wall is covered with a black mural whose white typography reveals interesting data such as the median duration of erections in minutes across the ages of man (about 55 minutes at age 21), something about people below the poverty line, the average male height (5.9), etc. The sun shines through the glass ceiling upheld by large square zinc beams. The dressing rooms walls are glass that turns opaque at the pressing of a switch on the floor and double panel plasma screens replace mirrors. This electronic meditation in progress is the creation of AMO, the research branch of OMA who worked with Prada?€™s IT department to integrate the technology and media content… This is an orderly oasis of wealth in a chaotic world and nothing, actually, is left to chance.

To fully appreciate Koolhaas?€™s and his associates?€™ thinking, peruse ?€?CONTENT,?€? itself an experiment in publishing by Taschen: by choice somewhere between a book and a magazine (because the nature of our contemporaneity is change and flight), it measures roughly 9?€?X6?€? and is a generous read of 544 pages for $14.95. It is extremely illustrated, even with a post-Caravaggian nude bear-assed male somewhere close to the center. Some of the ambiguities and paradoxes of the Prada epicenter are immediately apparent: the cover features a ?€?rough?€? (dare I say boyish) montage of a current cast of characters: Bush coiffed with French fries brandishes a crucifix, Saddam is Rambofied, the North Korean dictator smiles, all three are shadowed by?€¦ A BUILDING! A glass anonymous building above it all! The size of skyscrapers will always matter. The inside cover features, surprise, a Prada add, itself a first rate exercise in recuperation as it shows a street scene with a pile of purses on a blanket sold by a black man: counterfeit? Third world? L.A.? Madrid? CONTENT, the opus, contains no less than 76 visual and written essays by Koolhaas, et al. Summarizing their trajectory over the past 10 years: travels, philosophy, commissions drawn, lost, made and to be made, manifestoes, advocacies, confessions, collages and cogitations, maps, reportage, the future, China. L.A. is part of the Koolhaas empirical and theoretical thinking empire: you will learn about the OMA commission by Universal, the LACMA project, and the Taschen guesthouse, Prada LA. There are drawings of the Seattle public library, and an interview of Martha Stewart about her new media project, Miestakes, considerations on NY and Chicago. Throughout reverberates the cry ?€?Go East!?€? and we are introduced to OMA?€™s Chinese projects including a TV station in Beijing. Koolhaas embraces the inherent difficulties and frustrations of architecture, and its self-referential grandiosity ?€?every architect carries the utopian gene;?€? seeing architectural thinking as ?€?a discipline that represents relationships, proportions, connections, effects, [in brief], a diagram of everything.?€? Whether we agree with him or not, Koolhaas?€™s passion and excitement can and will turn us on to many urgent contemporary issues of architecture and urban planning on the Blue Planet.? 

Archived excerpts from? ASK MAT,? Coagula? founder Mat Gleason?€™s advice column on the art world.

From? Coagula? Issue #70, October 2004

Dear Mat:

Sometimes I read reviews and wonder what the critics are even talking about. I?€™m a college-educated person. Should I be taking art criticism more seriously? Will a rave review by the right critic set up an artist for life? Who would those critics be? Are bad reviews the kiss of death? Let me know.

WELL,

There are two types of art critics. Those who are desperate (despite all appearances to the contrary) to get invited to the right parties; and those who get invited to the right parties. If a critic is a teacher, a University lecturer, a professor of art history, especially if they say this about themselves in the little bio after each published essay - then this person is among the desperate group. If this person writes for an audience of more than 50,000 people whose income is above $100,000 and has been doing so for over 5 years, then this person is among the latter group. These are not absolute qualifications, but I use them to gage the worthlessness of the party banter that masquerades as reviews. Many art world reviews are paid for, often under the table. You pay a critic to write a catalog essay for you. The next few shows get reviewed. You help get a critic hired at your art school, next year he is making fifty grand and you are getting reviews. The TRUE power of the critic is revealed in his or her readers. Since most art writing is nefariously interlinked to personal relationships, you should ignore all of it, but do pay attention to where the critical mass is rising. When a critical mass rises spontaneously, you will notice it is among the readers of the latter critics. Then you have to pay attention - if you don?€™t, give up now and just go to museums when your aunt is in town for a visit.

If you are not buying favors and your gallery is not hiring critics to write catalog esays, then understand that there are two types of bad reviews: Those that pick on the powerless and those that pick on the powerful. One is merciless; those outside of academia practice the other. They don?€™t get paid to be collegial.

Oh, and bad reviews are not the kiss of death. Artists who get trashed by the same critic form a fraternity that can achieve strong bonds. Frankly, you can cut and paste a review to omit critical sentences. In fact, why not just paste up a fake review. A dingbat gallery would be impressed as all hell that you had a three hundred-word review in the New York Times. A day of page layout tutorials could get you started. Who?€™s going to pay the $11.95 fee to verify this with a Times internet search? Not your average cheapskate gallery dealer, that is for sure.

From the BAIRD JONES REPORT column in Coagula, Issue #70, October 2004

Chris Makos told me at the Drive In Gallery, ?€?I worked closely with both Man Ray and Andy Warhol and there is just no comparison. Man Ray was a true genius who made significant art discoveries right to the day he died at 86. Andy was creatively dead the last twenty years of his life. Andy stole all the credit from Paul Morrissey for the films they made together. Andy had at best only a painter?€™s understanding of photography. With his early work, if Andy was a genius it was by fluke.?€?? –Baird Jones

COVER STORY - Coagula Issue #70, October 2004

GARY BASEMAN: MORE THAN DUMB LUCK

BY Lucinda Michele Knapp

Gary Baseman is perhaps the most visible of the artists in the ?€?lowbrow?€? genre. A Los Angeles native who showed early promise as an artist, he traversed an odd path to UCLA for a communications degree, then on to a brief flirtation with law school, to an internship at the FCC, and then to an ad agency. After completing his work for the day, he?€™d draw on a sketchpad - which he still seems to always have in hand. (?€?I get bored very easily, so I take this with me. It gives me something to do, and I can constantly work on my characters.?€?) One day at the ad agency, his supervisor approached him and instructed him that, should he happen to complete work early, he was to simulate continuing to work until it was time to leave. The drawings would have to go.? ? 

That was his last day.

?€?I began working with pastels, then other mediums?€¦?€? he reminisces. ?€?I just decided I was going to be true to myself. I couldn?€™t do this other stuff any more. The thing to do is always trust your heart and do what you love. When you do, things get easy. Things work out. You have to have faith.?€?

His new coffee-table book, Dumb Luck, is well-organized - one of the most well-thought-out, comprehensive and intelligible art books I?€™ve ever seen, actually - and presents his artwork thematically. It launches him Sputnikesque into the heavens of the elite fine-art world (whereas in the minds of many he?€™d been relegated to the more populist sphere of the Illustrator) and allows the art to stand for itself, to prove its mettle in the perhaps-not-so-heavenly-after-all realm of the art world at large. Baseman?€™s work comes out swinging, and stands well on its own.

Let me make one point clear before I continue with the rest of this book review - slash - interview here. Sometimes I feel really Socially Inept.

So imagine my horror when I go to interview Gary Baseman and he remarks to me, as we walk from his house in Los Angeles to a local coffee shop,

?€?I can be a little socially inept.?€?

I almost stopped right there in the middle of Larchmont Street?€”oh Good Lord! How on earth am I going to conduct this interview if he won?€™t speak?!? We sat down for coffee and he sprang for my chocolate chip cookie. This always makes me more kindly disposed during an interview.

But still, at first, it was pretty hairy. I hemmed and hawed. I searched my purse multiple times for my reading glasses. And while he responded to my questions clearly and completely, there was none of the characteristic dead air at the end of his brief answers that indicated a further subject of discussion, a tangent we could trace in order to discuss his oeuvre, or his childhood or his driving themes, no unspoken vacant space at the ends of sentences that begged further questioning. He had his notebook with him, and bent his head to sketch in it.

Then we changed tack and began to talk about life in general. And as I told him about my recent vocational change, my artistic aspirations, and my time in the arts, it got easier. We began really talking.?  Every artist has something to say about success, and his or her feelings about it; and any artist that is ?€?successful?€? has achieved it by various efforts; most commercially successful artists these days, though, seem to come by their success not so much by hard work and determination as by spin, publicity, or the schmooze factor. Gary?€™s success seems to organically spring from his artwork and his positive attitude, and that?€™s refreshing.

LK: Did you ever think of yourself as particularly talented, or as possessing especially unique abilities? If so, how did you discover them or nourish them?

GB: Sounds conceited, but I knew I was special since I was a kid. I did believe I had a unique talent, It is all I wanted to do to make a living when I grew up. There is a balance between knowing you have a special ability and relying on that skill, and knowing how to mature it, and have it grow in your work.

LK: It doesn?€™t sound conceited?€”I think most people who gravitate to the arts suspect from childhood that they have a slightly different perspective on things. It?€™s just as we get older, I think, that life begins to clamp down on our creativity. Were you ever discouraged, or wondered if you?€™d made the right decision?

GB: Everyone has been discouraged. Everyone is told by another that they suck and lack the proper talent. It?€™s what one does with that situation. You have to use the rejection and failures as motivators to look deeper inside oneself to create better work. I questioned myself the most after I graduated UCLA. I didn?€™t study art formally. I did not have a proper portfolio and my fear of failing was the greatest. [To be an artist] was all I ever wanted to do, so what would happen if I tried to make a living at it and failed? I wouldn?€™t have anything to fall back on.

LK: So many people want to enter the arts and let that fear discourage them. There are a lot of people who just kinda flit around the edges of the art world, working in ?€?creative?€? careers?€”editing when they really want to write, working at a record store when they?€™d really like to be a musician?€”and they pace alongside their dream, but are afraid to make the leap. How did you do it?

GB: Everyone paces alongside their dreams. I keep pacing along side new dreams. Trying to find ways to make them come true. Fortunately, I was miserable doing anything else but my art. When I tried to compromise, I found myself so empty, and could only feel whole in my artwork.

LK: Did you ever have setbacks? What did you do to get past them?

GB: Of course, everyday. But in my twenties, every decision, every project was life or death. Either it would make me the biggest artist in the world or the biggest failure. Now, I have more perspective. I know the sun will rise so I can fight another day.

LK: What advice would you give the average person who has an artistic dream but doesn?€™t know how to make it come true, or who doubts themselves? How should they set into practical steps their more abstract dreams?€”that is to say, how do they go from ?€?I want to be an artist,?€? to ?€?I?€™m going to paint five canvases by October 3rd, and send out slides to three galleries, and….?€? or whatever?

GB: My biggest advice would be to accept the fact that no one is going to do it for you. An artist by definition is self-made. You are going to have to want to create those five canvases. You have to make the choice of what images you want to create. Being an artist is all about ?€?choice.?€? YOU have to go out and see what avenues are available for your work. Which galleries? Which publications? It?€™s important for an artist to always question themself. Doubt is important. But if it keeps you from accomplishing your dreams, are you meant to be an artist?

>>

Baseman?€™s art deals with some of the most fundamental elements of the human condition, and communicates them effectively and articulately. Desire and the impossible-to-reach object of desire, irony, the goofball fortunes of chance and how they play havoc?€”or guardian angel?€”in our lives; the conflict and occasionally companionable partnership of our baser sides and our more sublime or divine selves; our inner imps, devils and incorrigible pranksters, versus our inner beauty?€“all the bittersweet fucked-up lovely and dissonant harmony of being a human.

His style is informed largely by cartoons and similar popular icons from the 1930?€™s and 1940?€™s. Also present is a dose of Japanese animation, genre imagery revolving around Mexican folk art (think Dia de Los Muertos) and a love of architecture and linear structure, all against a pop-expressionist background of bold colors and graphic imagery?€”but what ties it all together is a slapstick sense of humor, blending pain and laughter.

For example, one of the standouts of the book, entitled Dumb Luck II (which is also depicted on the cover) shows us a rabbit with a peg-leg. In his hand he proudly holds his prize: a lucky rabbit?€™s foot. The image is at once sympathetic and a joke.

?€?Pervasive art?€? is the term Baseman uses to describe his cornucopia of artworks in different media. I understand this to mean that he is looking for an aesthetic that is uniquely ?€?Baseman?€? but that can manifest as a tennis shoe, an office building, a sculpture, a book, a child?€™s toy, a film, ceramic, a print or?€”gasp!?€”a painting. He spans these media with relative ease. In his home I?€™m treated to an overwhelming assault of tcotchkes, knickknacks, dolls and toys, many of which are salvaged from former eras and provide design inspiration and quite a few of which are of his own making: there are small figures and large ceramic sculptures of his more commonly occurring characters, plus his work on film and for television. (Teacher?€™s Pet, first an animated series and then a feature film. In Teacher?€™s Pet a small dog disguises himself as a young boy and attends school and navigates the social minefield of childhood, exploring common Baseman themes of longing, belonging, and alienation.) There are journals, stationery, t-shirts, Baseman-character figurines of various sizes. Seeing how his aesthetic does suffuse the space?€”his home is fun to be in?€”I can see how it wouldn?€™t be that impossible a leap to a Home By Baseman.

This isn?€™t the first time the idea of a universal style or aesthetic has sauntered into the sights of the art world. The Bauhaus movement attempted to unite all arts and crafts under one ideal, and while it ran into inevitable roadblocks it did have an effect of democratizing design - at least to the degree that it was applied. Postmodern art and pop art went a bit further, appropriating cultural icons and uniting them under the umbrella of Art?€”everyday life could become an aesthetic experience. But there was a nihilism to Pop: regarding Warhol, Robert Hughes wrote ?€??€¦through images that become banal and disassociated by repeated again and again and again, there is role for affectless art. You no longer need to be hot and full of feeling. You can be supercool, like a slightly frosted mirror. Not that Warhol worked this out; he didn?€™t have to. He felt it and embodied it. He was a conduit for a sort of collective American state of mind in which celebrity - the famous image of a person, the famous brand name - had completely replaced both sacredness and solidity.?€?

Baseman does the opposite. He uses familiar imagery to deliver us into a place more sacred, more real, more honest. This is art that cuts through the bullshit. Call it simplistic if you want, but clarity and concision is a breath of fresh air that the art world could thoroughly use.

Baseman?€™s art is earnest. It is intelligible?€”even, easy to read. This does not make it bad art, or gauche, or banal. It makes it?€¦refreshing. And extraordinarily powerful.

So as I stared across the coffee table at an artist who grappled with the very same social ineptitude I did, I realized?€”this is what Baseman?€™s been trying to tell us all along. The human condition is messy, complex, hurtful and sweet all at once, but its most important characteristic is that we all share it.

Art galleries in Southern California are starting to go out of business at an increasing rate. Will this be like dominoes falling, collapsing into one another, or will this be like fat trimmed from a piece of delicious steak

–Mat Gleason

Archived excerpts from ASK MAT, Coagula founder Mat Gleason’s advice column on the art world.

From Coagula Issue #70, October 2004

Dear Mat:
Many of my fellow artists insist that I should read more theory. I?€™m 45 and have been painting longer than some of these art school graduates have been alive. But there seems to be a dialogue that I am missing out on. What am I missing out on?

WELL
Lets say that i am really good with words. Or better yet, accept for a minute that I possess an impressive literate ability. There, that?€™s better. Almost convincing right? Well then, let?€™s say i am at a party, an art party, and i want that hot babe over by the window. I saunter over and start a chit chat about the painting on the wall next to the window that silhouetted her so well. She is impressed with my knowledge of ancient Greece, which I don?€™t just come out and say, ?€?Hi, I am a smarty pants, brain power, college degree, good to procreate with, won?€™t kill you in violent rage.?€? I let her know this by discussing the painting?€™s obvious aspirations to Greek Classicism and, therefore, the artist?€™s apparent longing for idealized human interaction. Now, she is impressed, I let her know that i am smart without bragging, and also that I am sensitive to art, as I revealed the painting?€™s effect on me. Three hours later, I?€™m enjoying a plate of Bang-A-Roni, the Sack Fresh Tickle Treat

But what i was really telling this girl was, ?€?I?€™m smart, I will use this beautiful painting as a prop to come on to you. in my world, art is nothing but a prop I use to seduce and consume as i use you and whomever else I want. When i fuck your mom next Thanksgiving I will come up with a story about where I was that afternoon just as quickly, and it will be twice as effective in quelling your suspicions then as my Greek painting story was in assisting the removal of your panties tonight. Why twice as effective? Because if you think I am a quick study with a nice painting and a pretty girl at a party, wait until i get to know every weakness you have and play your universe?€™s props against them as one big orchestra?€™s mindfuck symphony.?€?

Theory people are good with words. they construct alternate realities and seduce artists to come live in these world?€™s where the words of the theory god is as much his whim as it is your life sentence. Theory people are evil scum who will use art, beauty, truth, hope, your body, your children, and/or your universe for whatever whim they are seeking to satisfy in their sick and twisted world of lies. Avoid theory people, scorn them in social situations. Only pretend to follow the eloquent workings of a theory person if you yourself are planning to soon kill him or her in a painful and humiliating manner. Degrade theory. It is nothing but the nattering of a devil seeking to possess you, of inferior, artless sperm seeking to swim into your DNA and take over.

OPEN CALL SHOW:
POSTCARDS FROM THE ART EDGE

Okay this is a fundraiser for i-5 Gallery (a program of the Brewery Art Association, a non-profit California art charity). We are not going to make a million dollars here, but we are going to hopefully be better able to pay the electric bill at the gallery and stuff like that.

So here is the deal. Make an artwork that can be mailed in to the gallery. Send us your name, the title and the medium and we will put it on the wall. We will sell each artwork for $100 … and you the artist will get $50 from that.

No limits on anything, just that it has to be mailed by the US POSTAL SERVICE and CANNOT be something that:
Requires assembly
Has unreasonable/overly-complicated presentation requirements
Has illegal substances on or in it.

ALSO … If it is gross or sociopathic or we just do not like it, we (that would be Mat Gleason, president of the Brewery Art Association and Nancy Ramirez, director of the i-5 gallery) reserve the right to NOT exhibit it, but THIS IS AN EXERCISE IN DEMOCRACY not elitism or curation, so we welcome all art submissions arriving by mail. Artworks are not insured – we take professional precautions, but understand that there is no liability for damaged, lost or stolen artworks. Artwork returns require a Self-Addressed-Stamped-Envelope.

ART MUST BE POSTMARKED BY SATURDAY, AUGUST 23.

Exhibit runs August 29 thru October 18 at the i-5 Gallery in the Brewery Arts Compound

EXHIBIT OPENING RECEPTION FOR THE ARTISTS: AUGUST 30, 8 – 11 PM

Mail your art to:

Nancy Ramirez/Mat Gleason
i-5 Gallery
2100 N. Main St #A-9
Lincoln Heights, CA 90031

Press releases and advertising with participating artists names will be sent out to the local fine art media, so this is your chance to get recognition and exposure for your art. Be creative and, please, follow United States Postal guidelines.

Thank You.