From: Tony Conrad (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Jan 03 2007 - 14:29:40 PST
Hey!
This kind of pipsqueak ad hominem and anecdotal bullcrap (below), coming
in from (as he describes himself) "the sidelines of history", does us
all a disservice: we could use a phalanx of critical voices, not backbiting.
What makes you think Bernie Roddy is "young", Chuckie boy----or is it
just that his critique is a little more contentious and hard driving
than your petty sour grapes smear of McCall?
------------t0ny
PS-- Seriously, I do hope both you and Bernie join me in donating again
to the CAE Defense Fund. http://www.caedefensefund.org/
I know that in the end we're all on the same side....
Quoting Chuck Kleinhans <email suppressed>:
> On Jan 3, 2007, at 7:39 AM, Bernard Roddy wrote:
>
> > There was a screening a couple months ago of that Anthony McCall
> > (SIC) “Argument” something or other film, not the “Line Describing
> > a Cone” thing, and those guys were focused, hard-hitting, on-
> > target. I was standing in back at Chicago Filmmakers and some
> > point-black radical voiceover rhetoric drove a middle-aged middle-
> > class couple right out of the theater. It tore me up that down the
> > street, at Mess Hall, a couple members of Critical Art Ensemble
> > were giving a talk at that very moment. I could not decide,
> > watched the start of the film, left to find the street-level
> > storefront packed to the windows, gave it up, returned for the
> > final quarter of the film.
>
> I take it Bernie is a young whippersnapper who is also clairvoyant
> since he can determine someone's class from just looking at them--
> nice trick, how do you do it? And what is your class, young fella?
>
> And Bernie can also read minds, knowing exactly what caused a couple
> to leave....it doesn't seem possible to him that they left to see CAE
> before he did. It must be quite reassuring to know what motivates
> others with such certainty.
>
> > I’d love to see that film in full, but CAE is current. No benches
> > in photographs. The dead are beautiful, but to await death like
> > this . . life itself risks being sacrificed in these machinations
> > for prime plots in the graveyard.
> >
> > That McCall (SIC) film closes with the filmmaker reading off a
> > list of all their expenses and sources of support for the project,
> > who turned them down for funding, how expenses compared with those
> > of other productions, what their own backgrounds and qualifications
> > were, etc. Could such a film receive serious critical attention
> > today?
>
> That list is copied from Godard. Or if you feel charitable, it's an
> homage. Well, the film did receive "critical attention" from Chicago
> Filmmakers.
>
> But if you take a look at the recent critical work on McCall, such as
> The Works of Anthony McCall, ed. Christopher Eamon, you find a
> complete erasure of McCall's radical political/ideological critique
> of the artworld. He's now been safely ensconced in the gallery and
> museum artworld as a formalist, after denouncing it in Argument.
> The book's editor, Christopher Eamon, is a “private curator” for the
> wealthy Kramlich couple who collect media art (including McCall, one
> assumes). It also appears that shows presenting McCall's work at MOMA
> and SFMMA were under their auspices (in other words, they paid for
> the shows which will increase the market value of their private
> holdings, which will provide them or their estate a tax break down
> the line if they donate it to the museums,) So the publication of the
> book is directly tied to the market value of part of the Kramlich
> collection.
>
> And after delivering the scorched earth denunciation of artistic
> formalism in Argument, what did McCall do? He has had a commercial
> design business in NYC since 1979: Narrative Rooms, which has an
> attractive website (they are big on designing art oriented
> websites). He seems to have produced no new (high artworld) art
> from 1979-2003.
>
> Yeah, Vertov was interested in that bench, but neither he nor Lenin
> were sitting on the sidelines of history.
>
> Chuck "Don't trust me, I'm over 30" Kleinhans
>
> Eugene
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.