Andrew Schroeder

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It is early in the morning and I’m still spellbound by the grey light that is sifting in through my office window like ashy enriched flour.  Beauty has been on my mind all night. Mainly, what is the relationship between beauty/aesthetic feelings and ethics in my personal life?  My professional/artist life?

Two viewpoints:

1. Bourriard – the social interaction of human beings is, in itself, an act of sheer and utter aesthetic beauty. By bringing people together, creating a situation where knowledge/emotion/anything is exchanged we are creating something beautiful: a relational aesthetic.  (I’m being incredibly brief here, because I should be working on something office related, but I digress…)
2. Virillio - The focus of art has shifted to the breaking of taboos (for whatever reason). In this slanted view, we are constantly moving toward the aesthetitization of anything that we previously considered un-aesthetic. To an extreme, one could argue that the most vile actions could be made into art – for example, murder for aesthetic reasons.
3. Both viewpoints involve the packaging of social interactions as aesthetic performances.

Back to the post.

In my personal life, I am somehow  a hedonist.  I’d go so far as to say that I’ve reduced (or elevated, perhaps) the greatest social pleasure in life (sex) to a purely aesthetic level. I’m not in it for love. I’m not makin’ babies (obviously). I just want purely aesthetic biological pleasure. Tradition dictates that this is a completely unethical situation.

But can I get away with it by saying that I’ve transported the aesthetic feelings (usually reserved for art-making) in the exceptionally personal social-aesthetic realm of my sex life? Am I a slut for art’s-sake?

In my professional life, I’m completely and totally geared toward the conceptual. My work has little to do with aesthetics in the traditional sense – and – I have never been able make a convincing argument that a beautiful idea is an aesthetic endeavor.

So, what I’m left with is the moral paradox of trying to live a life that embodies the aesthetic desires I have – and – making art that is informed by ascetic conceptual discipline.

Ouchy.

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Another view on aesthetic feelings/ethics:

This American Life has an amazing podcast on the role of testosterone in the creation of desire.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=220

Foil Party

I recently finished Julian Stallabrass’ book, Art Incorporated. A great read that I highly recommend to anyone that is looking for a quick read about our current art situation. One chapter of interest to me – Chapter 5: The Rules of Art Now. The chapter contains a fundamental decision on the author’s part to split writing about art into the genres of academic writing and art criticism.

Academic writing is focused on deconstruction, embodies/references Freud and Lacan, and tends to revolve around more open and arbitrary bounds of what can and can’t be written about.  Art criticism, on the other hand is characterized by a more utopian and accepting view of the art market as a positive force.  Danto, McEvilley, and Hickey are lumped into this genre.

Although I’ve never been a big fan of Arthur Danto, after reading this chapter, I find myself half-way agreeing with him.  Stallabrass analyzes Arthur Danto’s overly idealized view of the current art world by showing the intricate and obvious links between the freedom Danto ascribes to art and the puported good of the free market.  Danto’s view is decided utopian: under our current art world, artists are free to make whatever they want for whatever reason (or lack of reason they want).

I couldn’t disagree more with this assertion.  Afterall, if there is so much freedom with in the art market, why is there such an overwhelming lack of variety in what I keep seeing?  Is Danto ignoring that the art market is highly manipulated by dealers, writers, collectors, and other institutions?  Perhaps so.

There is one thing that Danto says about art that I buy fully:  If art can no longer be visually/culturally distinguished from other modes of production, then the we have to distinguish art making by philosophical reasons.

For me, that’s as close to freedom as I’ll ever get.  And, I can’t think of anything more pinned to conceptual art.

Two cents for a fine Wednesday,

Andrew

At this point, I would say I’m definitely down.  But, certainly not out.

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Fuck You Motherfucker!

And I

With the weather outside becoming less and less inspiring by the second, I’ve decided to just post a link:

http://heavytrash.blogspot.com/2005/04/aqua-line.html

Heavy Trash is an artist collective working in the public spaces of Los Angeles.  I’m particularlly in love with two of their projects:  The Aqua Line and the Viewing Platforms.  Simply put, they are a wonderful subversion of the notions of public and private and the disparity of neighborhoods in LA.

As I’m gazing out my window at the grey sky over the IDS building the dread of winter is starting to set in.  Yes. It’s finally here – and – with it comes the nesting urge.  It may be biological or it may be sociological, but my urge to make my living arrangements better is suddenly pronounced.

There is some part of me that still subscribes to the bourgeois fantasy of having a comfortable home with all the material trappings.  I have to take this with a bit of inherent irony, because my apartment is located in a mid-60s, perfectly rectangular modernist block.  To spruce it up a bit:  its Midwestern platenbau – a true rarity in a city of bungalows and brownstones.

That said, I think I’m spending my weekend at IKEA, painting my walls the proper shade of avocado, and getting ready to be indoors for the next couple of months.

I’ll be posting photos of the transformation of my apartment from grungy artist hovel to less grungy artist hovel.

…because I voted.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!

My political acts should NEVER be tied to a corporation’s branding strategy.

Books, Living Room, Where I

If you feel like reading a book with me… let me know.  My creative anachronistic lifestyle contiues (no TV, really no radio).

1. Art Incorporated, Julian Stallabrass
2. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, W.J.T. Mitchell
3. Herzog, Saul Bellow
4. House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
5. The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
6. America, Jean Baudrillard
7. Philosophy of Boredom, Lars Fredrik Svendsen

And any other suggestions…

I Voted.

1. It is November.  Yet still 70 Degrees F.
2. Like many other Americans, I voted this morning.  (Hopefully, like many many many other Americans)  It was an amazing experience and, to be honest, I think my hands shook the entire time that I filled in my chosen ovals.
3. Also like way way too many Americans, I checked my Facebook profile page this morning.  All of my friends, except for one, had some sort of pro-Obama message.  There was only one person, someone I knew, barely in high school, when I was living in the tiny town of Kearney, Nebraska.
4. I am reading a really great book:  The Big Sort:  Why The Clustering of Like-minded America is Tearing Us Apart.  The authors present the argument that the economic mobility of the last 30 years has allowed us to sort ourselves into homogenized communities of like-minded individuals.  The evidence they present is really gripping: comparisons of landslide counties in elections since 1976.  Back then, there were very few landslide Republican or Democratic counties.  Today:  the exact opposite.

What does this even remotely have to do with me?

When I was standing in line today, I looked around and became convinced that I am a product of the Big Sort’s invisible ordering.  I live well inside the city, yet everyone around me is very similar.  Caucasians mostly.  Similarly dressed.  With a similar sense of wealth.  It was bizarre.

Does this mean that I am at a disadvantage?  Am I missing the wealth of diversity that is present in truly urban environments?

Or does the security and similarity of my current surroundings indicate that I simply chose to ensure… my comfort?

Taken two weeks ago... and missed every day.

Pulled from FLICKR

Lines Moving From Intention to Actualization, 2008

1. If you can’t think of anything good to say — show an image.  Here are three that I can’t get out of my head. Taken on the banks of the Hudson. My friend Andrea is directly to my left. Maybe one of the best days I’ve had in years.
2. Paris in the early 20th Century.
3. A page from my sketchbook.  I am still trying to come to terms with the gap between intention and actualization.  How much of one’s intentions actually make it into the world?  And, how much of what is made actually gets picked up by the consciousness of other people?