Literally

Last week I went to the pharmacy at the northeast corner of 1st and Commercial to get my flu shot. I was given a slip of paper and told, "Here's the address. You have to book online now." I thanked the clerk and left the shop.

"No!" I was told back at the house. "There's a pharmacy at Fraser and King Ed, next to Lee's, that does walk-ins." So off I walked to Fraser.

Funny all the signage on Fraser Street, instructions on how to wait before entering buildings. The one up top caught my eye: 2 metres is not 6 feet, nor are they 11 inches (the length of the paper these numbers are printed on). But that's just me being literal.

More than ever people reserve the right to take things literally, if only to vent. In 2006, Canadian Art sent a Canadian art critic to Antwerp to review a show of Canadian artists and, not surprisingly given the Belgian's acceptance of complex emotions, the critic's rage cleared customs.

What followed was a critique that began with the customs officials and only amplified once the critic was met by the exhibition curator who, sensing the critic's indisposition towards the art and its artists, toured him through the show in a manner most facetious. The critic's response was to take the curator at his word, as in literally. The result was a piece of writing that had more in common with the petulance of the critic (and the curator) than an assessment of the exhibition on the terms it set out for itself.

Last week it was announced that the critic has been missing since Monday. I admit, when I first heard the news I did not take it seriously. For here is someone who is as fond of pushing borders as he is of maintaining them. For example, in 1998 the critic crossed the doctor-patient line when he and his psychiatrist began a two-year affair, only to publish an article about it once the relationship ended. An example of border maintenance can be summed up in a line from the critic's Canadian Art review, where, in assessing the work of an artist who uses garbage not as an example of waste but of excess, declared: "Garbage is garbage." 

But now, with the critic missing for more than a week, I am taking the news literally. I am concerned about him and I ashamed of my initial reaction. I continue to google his name, clicking optimistically, yet with overtones of dread. It was trouble that led this person to a psychiatrist, that led him to write about their affair, and it was trouble that seasoned much of his criticism. More and more we are surrounded by trouble, infected by it. Literally.

English 9

The post at bottom was sent to me by someone who sends me things he thinks will make me uncomfortable, and he's right every time -- his preoccupation with my discomfort is unsettling.

The poem Amolak Nijjar refers to in his assignment for his English 9 class is from my first book, Company Town (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1991).

Thank you, Amolak, for taking the time to write this, and for posting it.

Michael Turner is born in 1962 North Vancouver according to Wikipedia.According to Wikipedia he is a writer, musician, and opera librettos. He graduated in 1982. After he graduated he went to Europe and North Africa to study about poetry. When he came back he started a band called “Hard Rock Miners” “a post modern jug band.  Later he left and started to write poetry and one of his poems, “Hard Core Logo” became a film and a comic book and a t shirt. His music work was in some movies and television shows. The most popular poem is the, The Pornographer’s Poem. He won most of his awards because of the Pornographer’s poem. He uses different styles like diary enters and constructive narrative and many more. This is Michael Turners story. One of Michael Turners poems is My Job. I picked this poem because I get what he meant when it said “so don’t got running to the foreman” (6th line) “I’m your boss I’ll do that.”(Last line) When he meant that he was trying to say that don’t go to my boss tell me and I can tell him. When he wrote this he wanted the people to go to the person not to go to the person in charge to go to the person that is in charge of you and he can tell the boss. He writes this poem in first person.  In the first three lines he talks about himself and then the rest he talks about what he can do for the people so it seems like he has nothing to do at the job because in he says (first line) “I’m paid to watch and work.” So it seem like he wants something to do.  In line three and six he says foreman I think that means he doesn’t like the foreman or he doesn’t want people going to the foreman. This is one of my favourite poems by Michael Turner.

The Conversation That Is the Art of Our Time

Art historian Owen Duffy (pictured above) concludes his recent Momus review of The Eccentrics exhibition at SculptureCentre with a line that brings to mind Canadian Art editor David Balzer's impatience with the under-producing exhibition review. Duffy writes:

Perhaps a crucial step toward not having to justify art through quantifiable means like economic impact and market performance is identifying and critiquing the very idea that art is expected to perform in collusion with the quantified world. 

In a similar vein, Vancouver-based artist Marcus Bowcott published an open letter in the North Shore News last month in protest of Capilano University's recent shut down of its visual art studio program:

Dear Editor:

“It’s the creative industries, it’s tourism, it’s business, it’s legal studies.” -– CapU President Kris Bulcroft, 2016

The final art class at CapU is in honour of the president’s choice of ‘creative industries.’

Last week we considered how convex forms imply growth and how concave forms hint of collapse and implosion. In this final class we will consider strategies of learning about art and the humanities in an imploding ‘re-visioned’ (artless) university, a university in which art has been sacrificed on the altar of business.  

If you are a student who wants to continue learning about art your only option now is to seek instruction in other disciplines. I recommend the business program. Business has become the final authority on art and culture at CapU. Consider this: during a recent CapU board meeting, a business faculty board member stated that the sculpture of protest by a studio art instructor “should be removed, I don’t like it ... it’s disturbing.”

This business instructor is an authority on art precisely because she is a business instructor and business has the advantage of making art a ‘currency’ relevant to advertising and branding.

Art is business and business is art. If Pablo Picasso were alive today he’d be a venture capitalist interested in derivatives and the bottom line. He certainly wouldn’t be making controversial sculptures.

He certainly wouldn’t ask: “What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only eyes if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far, far from it: at the same time, he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.” (Pablo Picasso, March, 1945),

Ahh, sadly, that quote is from an old lesson. Now, back to today’s class: the manipulation of form and colour in the pursuit of influencing public opinion for better business.

Studio Art class dismissed.

Marcus Bowcott
North Vancouver

Art Critic Criticizes Chronicle's New Critic Pick

The time in which we are living allows for multiple planes and platforms. At the beginning of the previous century, artists invited us to consider the world through cubes, collages, montages… Today's online world is all of that (and more) at once. Generally speaking, a friend-ly, like-able, crystalline world that has critique (based on the terms a work sets out for itself) not so much an impossibility but an impracticality for a number of people who live and work online. This is one reason why criticism has fallen by the wayside.

Last spring, Kenneth Baker stepped down from his position as the San Francisco Chronicle's art critic. Here is a May 2015 piece he wrote for Art Ltd.

Here is Jillian Steinhauer's September 10th response to news of Baker's replacement.

And here, for the hell of it, is a reproduction of an untitled verifax collage by Wallace Berman (circa late-1960s):

Do you like it?

Artists, Art Critics, All Around Emotions Managers

Brad Phillips is an artist whose paintings I admire. I remember when he moved to Vancouver.

At the beginning of his essay for Artslant, Brad, who now resides in Ontario, describes himself as "astonished," which I find hard to believe of someone as self-possessed as he is.

Sky Goodden is an Ontario-based editor who is trying to establish a magazine of art criticism. I remember when she visited Vancouver last summer.

Well into her response to Brad's essay, Sky talks about her visit here and how disappointed she was in the city's art critics. What she doesn't tell us is that she came here not to visit with critics but with gallerists who might buy ads in her magazine.

Amy Fung describes herself as a "Writer,  Organizer, @ImagesFestival Artistic Director. All Around Emotions Manager." I remember when she moved to Vancouver.

At the beginning of her response to Sky's response, Amy, who now resides in Ontario, finds it "surprising" that Sky's article is "making me want to respond, since in many ways I have stopped caring about circular conversations."