Andrew Schroeder

"October 18, 1977", Gerhard Richter, 1988 from the series of 15 paintings.

It has been two weeks since Osama bin Laden was killed by US marines in Pakistan. There has been an enormous amount of healthy discussion on blogs and news sites about the importance of seeing images of his body. I’m going to refrain from joining in on this discussion of “seeing is believing” and instead look for a way to analyze the images that have emerged in broader art context. (more…)

I was walking by the Chambers Hotel a couple of days ago and noticed that the hotel restaurant is now a D’Amico and Sons. This is nothing spectacular in itself, but what is interesting is the way signage has been changed on the building. The previous restaurant was the celebrated/lauded (depending on how you looked at it) Kitchen by Jean-Georges. And the signs for this eatery were dimensional cast metal and attached to the hotel’s chic, Richard Serra, core-ten steel facade. Now, the funny thing is that the facade has changed so dramatically over the course of the last few years that “KITCHEN by JEAN GEORGES” is now etched in the surface of the rusty-colored steel.

In essence, the building is permanently branded with this moniker.

This got me thinking, as always, about all the little ways our lives are being “branded.” The biggest annoyance to date is the branding of the Walker Art Center. (Or, really any cultural institution in the Twin Cities) So, I would like to make a modest project proposal. It goes a bit like this:

In the current climate of corporate sponsorship of the arts, it is impossible to enter a gallery space, museum, or other art institution without being openly reminded of the corporations whose funds have made that particular space possible. Once the realm of private commissions and later the target of public spending through education and social programs, art has now become the a byproduct of corporate culture. It is impossible to be an avid viewer of art and not draw the conclusions that the purchasing of culture by wealthy corporations is in fact changing, editing, sanctioning, and altering our shared culture.

For the project I am proposing, I will strip the Walker of all of the demarcations of corporate sponsorship for the duration of 1 month. During this time, the Best Buy Galleries and Cargill Lounge will be renamed and freed of their associations with corporate ownership of culture. For example, the Cargill Lounge will be renamed Lounge. Imagine meeting at the Walker on Thursday Free Nights… minus the Target corporation.

Art is one facet of culture. Culture is never static. Static entities cannot be tied to the agendas of monolithic corporations.

The Touch of Satan

Life is good and I’m enjoying myself. What can I say? I’m completely spellbound by the new wall shelves that my friend Christopher Pole is going to build for me and I’m also salivating at the thought of getting out of MPLS for a while.

On a recent trip to Barnes & Noble, Curtis and I came across the Mystery Science Theater 3000 box sets. Wow. Talk about taking me back to my youth. For a second, I had bad acne and felt like I was back in my family’s basement watching the Sci-Fi Channel. Anyway. As we were watching The Touch of Satan, it occurred to me that there has to be greater critical depth to this program.

In a past post, I remarked that I thought the FOX animated television show Family Guy might be an apex of late Postmodernism. After watching MST3K again, I believe that it represents yet another facet of Postmodernism coming to fruition. Where Family Guy represents the splintering, mish-mashing, and appropriation of aspects of contemporary culture to create a new whole, one could argue that MST3K indicates another core part of postmodernism in visual culture: questions of authorship.

I couldn’t help but notice that the commentary introduced by Mike, Tom Servo, and Crow acts both as a humorous (exceptionally, even) device, and also, as a means of redrawing the narrative of the film as it unfolds. It is fascinating to watch the linear format of a bad film be verbally cut up, digested, and wittily put back together into something better.

Babbling.