January 2010
28 posts
4 tags
5 tags
Transmissions from Marfa: By Tommy Robbins
[Shortly after that last Marfa entry, I stopped working on the Marfa stuff. I had this folder that Paul left me and I think I uploaded everything in it to this blog. If I left anything out, I’ll get to it later.
Why’d a quit the Marfa gig? I got fed up with art. What a fricking racket. It seems to get worse every minute. I enjoyed sitting at the table with the panel and all, but it...
4 tags
4 tags
SNAPSHOT
Somewhere
Beyond the concrete (scanning – the artist in mourning)
The sun will set over Malibu’s edge of the world Pacific horizon .Orange disc above the Equitable highrise, through my filth filmed windshield, tinting the interior of my vehicle, as I zip along a cross-town thruway toward Silverlake beyond Planet Hollywood (and the star of the slums of Beverly Hills’ fake breasts)
the sun...
4 tags
5 tags
CONCEPT: A PRAYER FOR CLEAN WATER
Water
“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” - “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Coleridge
Some Thoughts and Facts about Water
Human beings need water to survive. Each of us is constituted largely of the stuff. Our bodies at birth consist of nearly 80% water (although that percentage varies and diminishes over a lifetime). Water covers about 70% of the...
4 tags
3 tags
Subject: Torture
Object: As an example of change in socio-politics
Predicate: Since 9/11, my government has instituted a policy that allows for torture in defense of the Republic against terrorism. The Bush Administration continues to argue for torture as a necessary tool in “The War Against Terror”, in spite of the passage of new legislation meant to re-establish protocols preventing the practice of...
4 tags
4 tags
ESSAY #1 [NOTES]
“CONTINENTAL THEORY”
POV & Tone
Anecdotal, conversation starter for discussion groups, expanding influences to include democratization of art.
Issues
§ The theorist/critic seeks to determine the artist’s role in the culture.
§ The Marxist critic opposes the canon, push socio-political agenda masquerading as human interest activism
§ 50,000 art students graduate every year (Coagula)
...
4 tags
5 tags
Milo's Muse Song
You are the muse
You light my fuse
There’s no offer you won’t refuse
When I follow you, you leave no clues
I look for you when I read the news
I cry out for you when I’ve got the blues
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
You ain’t my muse
Your everyone’s to use
You’re not a choice to choose
You’re not a thing to lose
I think of you like a bruise
It...
5 tags
5 tags
Collecting in Austin
By Paul McLean, in Proxy*
As Gleened from
An Esay of thots on Colectings of Disernable Arts of the Eyes Hand & Spirits
By Tommy Robbins
Los Feliz, Los Angeles, CALI, USA
*BEGASH, & so forth. Paul offered me Dodgers playoff tickets to take this screed off his hands. I guess he’s in flagrante delicto this week with a bella from San Jose, whose identity I’m sworn to secret (though I’ll...
4 tags
5 tags
©Caligula [For Cantanker]
“When one considers excess in a historical context, one thinks in awe of Babylon of the bible, sultans like Achaemenids with hundreds of wives, Chinese emperors with 20000 concubines… If all you do is watch TV today, you think of Britney Spears. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. I’m a god, so I only think of myself, & anything...
5 tags
4 tags
Banksy: for Cantanker
“Barely Legal”
Banksy
Los Angeles
September 15, 16 & 17, 2006
Note: Before reading this article, I recommend that you go to www.banksy.co.uk. Then, Google “Banksy Los Angeles.”
After scanning the first thousand Google hits, you should have realized that Banksy, the Bristol, England-born man with a spray can & plan is an international kultur phenom, and probably the world’s hottest...
4 tags
4 tags
Dear St. Paddy
JM: Enclosed, please find a note CC to Cantanker, written in anticipation of March 17. Best of luck surviving the holiday. I’ll be on Kauai. Will call on cellular phone, possibly – possibly not.
Dear St. Patrick:
Please go to Austin, or at least devote some Saintly Juice to the good people of Cantanker. Serpents have infested the art scene there in Austin. I’ve seen them & it’s horrifying....
4 tags
6 tags
An abortive gesture...
If one wants to survive as an artist, one has to learn the skills of cultural analysis. My investigation of Austin’s art scene was moderately exhaustive, conducted over several years. Ultimately, the cons outpaced the pros. The following is a rundown of what I discovered about Austin while casing the city for an artist’s livelihood, on the ground and in production.
Artsies and artsy lovers...
4 tags
4 tags
tfm=scramblr
painted, made collages, and wrote
De-Definition of Art
a direction to that life and if he
would be quite otherwise and there could
substance and therefore no history
whatever made he cannot exist without a
different from yours or mine for it is the
reality and that of all about us. Our
history presses upon us the realization
debt. For each event is revealed to us
us, the whole of the...
4 tags
5 tags
Transmission [int]
TR: I’m reading this quote from the envelope by Rhonda Shearer…
PM: Right. We’re going to start getting into the 4th Dimension now.
TR: Okay. Wait. Let me run back to my closet in the bedroom & grab my space suit. Don’t hang up.
PM: Tommy. Don’t be a dork. Did you read the first installment of “Transmissions from Marfa on Cantanker’s website, like I asked you? The point of that Art...
5 tags
4 tags
TFM > PG.121
Back to Eagleton on Zizek, for a sec: “Zizek has only to clap eyes on a received truth to feel the intolerable itch to deface it.” What does this have to do with Art?
Pg. 85: A review of the movie “Hostel”: Most interesting line in essay to me is “But just as he’s about to make his getaway, “Pax” succumbs (in typical American/messianic style) to misguided heroic ambition.” Pax’s failure to save...
December 2009
7 posts
5 tags
4 tags
“Since the U.S. economy shrank, artists, being luxuries, got less money. The...”
– Donald Judd, from a “Letter to Irving Sandler in reference to the panel at the College Art Association 1973”
4 tags
TFM3 [DADDY'S PECKER DANCE]
…
TR: So, dude, Begash. I guess you picked up my Artforum notes in the mailbox. No way was I getting out of bed to answer the door. I was out there, man. I mean, I had visions. It was truly awesome & whatnot. How’s DC?
PM: … (not printable) …
TR: Hey, Paul? I know you meant that as an expression of loving compassion, one dear friend to another, but I’m going to have to...
5 tags
5 tags
TFM [part 3D]: Crossroads
Part 3
talking to the young man had
made me feel
bad.
they thought that writing had
something to do with
the politics of the
thing.
they were simply not
crazy enough
in the head
to sit down to a
typer
and let the words bang
out.
they didn’t want to
write
they wanted to
succeed at
writing.
—Charles Bukowski, from “Between Races,” The Last Night of the Earth Poems
“He...
6 tags
5 tags
End of the Second Part
…
TR: So what’s this crap about the con on the front page of the New York Times?
PM: My batteries dying, so let’s try to make this quick. Donny Johnson is a murderer in solitary who makes paintings on postcards with the dyes he collects from M&M candies. He’s the latest in a long line of art world dancing monkeys, who get press as human interest types or freaks or oddities. Remember...
October 2009
7 posts
3 tags
5 tags
Judd v. IKEA
From a cell phone memo:
Tommy Robbins and I are sitting out front of Swingers on Beverly Blvd., kitty-corner from Forum Gallery, the LA franchise outlet for Odd Nerdrum paintings and drawings. The Andy Warhol cow head wallpaper of my favorite diner was hurting Tommy’s digestion, so we moved our operation out here. We just polished off a couple of mind-blowing shakes and artery-clogging burger...
5 tags
4 tags
4 tags
TFM >
…
From the Austin Chronicle, “Naked City”, 11/15/02:
The Live Music Capital will in 2004 become an official American Capital of Culture. Austin was so designated this week by a group allied with the Organization of American States and the European Union (which has selected its own “cultural capitals” for years; there, it’s a really big deal). Austin is the first U.S....
3 tags
4 tags
TFM 45
…
TM: What the hell’s a “Muse antenna?”
PM: Good to hear your voice, Tommy! How’s the article coming?
TM: Stupid. What’s a frickin’ “Muse antenna?” Are you claiming you’ve got some sorta artsy ESPN? You really have lost it.
PM: I’m doing well, thanks. The White Mountains are incredible. We should come up here and do some camping. I’ll bring the weenies. Anyway, I really needed a break....
September 2009
19 posts
5 tags
2 tags
7 tags
My Name Is Vera
My name’s Vera. I’m a Muse. I’m speaking to you from Francis Bacon’s studio, which was relocated from 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington, London, to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. Naturally, I am not wearing much in the way of sensible shoes, or much of anything else, for that matter. The topic of today’s discussion is the following quote by Donald Judd: “Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has...
4 tags
4 tags
Twangtown
[Field Notes, 2005, exact date unknown]
The absolute most godawful thing happened when I moved to Twangtown, Tejas. All, or at least some, of the fevered Brisket dreams - brought on by almost a full year of drop-ins and expensive recon forays into the sweaty, river bent burg in the cleavage of the continental divide between North & South Americas - dissolved into a foot-weary, bug-bit near...
4 tags
6 tags
4 tags
A memo
(From a voice memo.)
To get to Austin from LA, one can take a train, bus, plane or automobile. I suppose one could walk, run (like not-real Forrest Gump), hitchhike, ride a bike, motorcycle or a horse, rollerblade, or one could skateboard the 1200 or so miles. I chose motorized vehicle, hence my turning onto “the 10”. My instruments for half-crossing the North American continent included a...