Jeff Rubard
2010-02-03 18:03:27 UTC
The most "ugly" 'Emcees'
They're '#1', and *where is that from* --
----
Mark Rothko/Donald Barthelme/Roger Miller: Men Without Ideas
“I’m not judging you, I’m judging me” – Mission of Burma, “Academy
Fight Song”
As Frederic Jameson has rightly pointed out in many works published
during the last two decades, “postmodernity” is not quite the cozy
catch-all mentality it is sometimes made out to be according to the
better judgments of its premier practitioners. In this piece, I will
perform the extremely transgressive act of binding Jameson’s views on
modernity to the views of the art critic Dave Hickey concerning
“popular postmodernity”, although there is more to be said on Hickey’s
theoretical account than can be comfortably included here; and this in
the context of considering two great artists almost dead, Mark Rothko
and Donald Barthelme, along with a “modest talent” latterly neglected,
Roger Miller of the post-punk group Mission of Burma. Does this
juxtaposition promise comfort? That’s the point, but let’s get to that
point.
Of these three figures, Mark Rothko arguably has the widest
recognition in the common culture, not necessarily by name but by
“visual signature”. Rothko paintings, though they have as few elements
as possible, are incredibly singular; and the great secret of debates
concerning the “avant-garde” is that viewing a Rothko painting is
quite a bit more pleasurable than looking at a work by one of the
“photorealists”, because Rothko paintings are in my opinion the most
beautiful images produced during the Twentieth Century and at any rate
feature the subtlest work with color in painting since the 18th
Century. Was Rothko a color-field painter? Right. But what
differentiates Rothko from Barnett Newman or Frank Stella is not
hostility to “action” in painting — all three paint still lifes, and
all three manage to be more interesting than the great fad of American
visual art, Jackson Pollock.
But although Rothko was not an Abstract Expressionist by any turn of
any screw, unlike Newman and Stella he was not yet a conceptual
artist; and it is the virtues of this “in-between” space in art
history that I would like to celebrate in the person of Rothko. Who
else? In truth all “Pop Art” is thoroughly thought-through (although
not all of the thinking repays close recapitulation), and color-field
is something like a “Pop Art”, a commentary on, the aesthetic culture
created by corporate conglomerates taking an interest in modernist art
and architecture — and by no means necessarily a critical one. Rothko
did not occupy such a space of “legitimation” in visual culture, and
although he was employed for this purpose with the Rothko Chapel the
absolute expressionlessness of the resulting building is a testament
to his inability to say “yea” or “nay” to cultural developments.
The famous darkening of the Rothko canvas over the years, as he
approached his suicide in 1970, is a testament to something which is
not necessarily an individual temperament; but before jumping the gun,
I encourage others to consider Rothko in terms of a most happy fella,
Donald Barthelme. Although Barthleme is also well-known and “well-
read”, critical consideration of his short stories is hampered by the
fact that Barthelme provides the critic almost nothing to discuss; his
work is thoroughly pleasant and erudite, with no frequently stated
ambition of anything else. What was infrequently stated by Barthelme
was that the example of his father, Texas’s most prominent modernist
architect, guided his aesthetic conduct. At a time when mainstream
American literature was discovering the pleasures of violence as
Charles Bukowski learned ZIP codes, Barthelme was restrained (but it
is to be remembered that he was a physically huge man; odds-on Norman
Mailer got to be the “prisoner of sex” because Barthelme was not
around when Mailer offered an impromptu challenge to box Bennett Cerf
outside Cerf’s apartment).
It could be arguably said that what Barthelme did instead of was
introduce the concept of “pictorial accuracy” or aesthetic truth into
modernist literature, without however marking this as such; although
Barthelme employs all the formal innovations of the first half of the
century, in the Barthelmian text “ideas” are for extremely gentle
mockery and there are no solemn moments where the topic of Biafran
grapes is excluded. What is not, however, to be mocked is the cultural
furniture of the American continent; although critique there be, there
is absolutely zero camp in Barthelme and furthermore no projection of
camp onto places outside the metropole: Barthelme was secure enough to
allow Buffalo to be the “City of No Illusions”, and solid in his faith
that the Holland Tunnel would carry those words to regions which
needed culture.
All of this is quite to my liking, but was Donald Barthelme the
culmination of American letters? Hardly, and this is explicit in
Barthelme’s critical and pedagogical writings (collected in Not-
Knowing); although Barthelme did not have high hopes for the “MFA
revolution” in creative writing he kept a supportive eye on new
literary developments until his tobacco-fueled death from a heart
attack in 1988. But before uncritical evocation of “the dead father”
begins again (Barthelme once suggested a short story called “The
Lacanthrope”, although he did not bother to write it), let me link
Rothko and Barthelme to the third figure whose work is neither
beautiful nor eudaimonistic. Although well-remembered (their songs
having been inexpensively collected on one CD by Rykodisc, and today
being available on two separate remastered CDs), Boston’s Mission of
Burma is not a widely influential act at the present time; their music
does not translate well across the gap opened up in “indie-rock”
culture by Jon Spencer’s “insincere signifyin’” of the period
1988-200?.
In other words, they are too white; and although a lily-white genre
with some links to Mission of Burma’s techniques (“industrial”) arose
during roughly the same period, they honestly swing too much for that
formation. The aforementioned techniques featured one of the very
first uses of tape-looping in rock music, which has been picked up by
the subgenre of “math rock” (the only people who might credit the
group as a positive influence). All this reception aesthetics, such I
did not employ for Rothko and Barthelme, is necessary because of an
extremely critically challenging element of Mission of Burma’s music:
it is ugly, in a way that not even the extremely no-longer-beautiful
Pere Ubu is. Furthermore, it is to be understood that this is to great
extent intentional, as Mission of Burma performed live at ear-
splitting volumes (causing Miller to develop tinnitus at an extremely
early age). What is the message? Well, although Mission of Burma had
received the usual modernist sacraments (song titles: “Max Ernst” and
“This Is Not A Photograph”), the music is not cookie-cutter Deweyite
“experimentation”.
What the music is is inarticulate; what promises to be the frankest
confrontation with the Nazi tropes flirted with by the early punks (to
no great consternation on the part of the numerous Jewish contingent),
“That’s When I Reach For My Revolver”, ultimately ends up saying
nothing. Or does it? No, it doesn’t; the acid test is that nobody
would ever quote a Mission of Burma lyric with satisfaction; they are
hermetic, like Barthelme’s worldview or Rothko’s technique — they’re
not supposed to move you to do anything. The aesthetic appeal of
Mission of Burma lies in realizing that Mission of Burma is clearing a
path for themselves; at no great cost to anyone else, but very little
benefit as well, the sobriquet applied to the early incarnation of the
Talking Heads, “the Autistics”, would be a simple description of their
aesthetic praxis. And if this is a time when autism caused by foreign
provocateurs in the tunafish ranks is on the rise, Mission of Burma’s
evident similarities to the aforementioned artists raises the question
of what was simply understood in the modernist aesthetic, or not as
the case might be; but this is a question someone other than me ought
to answer.
----
http://jeffrubard.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/remembering-our-demented-president-or-aesthetic-naturalism/
They're '#1', and *where is that from* --
----
Mark Rothko/Donald Barthelme/Roger Miller: Men Without Ideas
“I’m not judging you, I’m judging me” – Mission of Burma, “Academy
Fight Song”
As Frederic Jameson has rightly pointed out in many works published
during the last two decades, “postmodernity” is not quite the cozy
catch-all mentality it is sometimes made out to be according to the
better judgments of its premier practitioners. In this piece, I will
perform the extremely transgressive act of binding Jameson’s views on
modernity to the views of the art critic Dave Hickey concerning
“popular postmodernity”, although there is more to be said on Hickey’s
theoretical account than can be comfortably included here; and this in
the context of considering two great artists almost dead, Mark Rothko
and Donald Barthelme, along with a “modest talent” latterly neglected,
Roger Miller of the post-punk group Mission of Burma. Does this
juxtaposition promise comfort? That’s the point, but let’s get to that
point.
Of these three figures, Mark Rothko arguably has the widest
recognition in the common culture, not necessarily by name but by
“visual signature”. Rothko paintings, though they have as few elements
as possible, are incredibly singular; and the great secret of debates
concerning the “avant-garde” is that viewing a Rothko painting is
quite a bit more pleasurable than looking at a work by one of the
“photorealists”, because Rothko paintings are in my opinion the most
beautiful images produced during the Twentieth Century and at any rate
feature the subtlest work with color in painting since the 18th
Century. Was Rothko a color-field painter? Right. But what
differentiates Rothko from Barnett Newman or Frank Stella is not
hostility to “action” in painting — all three paint still lifes, and
all three manage to be more interesting than the great fad of American
visual art, Jackson Pollock.
But although Rothko was not an Abstract Expressionist by any turn of
any screw, unlike Newman and Stella he was not yet a conceptual
artist; and it is the virtues of this “in-between” space in art
history that I would like to celebrate in the person of Rothko. Who
else? In truth all “Pop Art” is thoroughly thought-through (although
not all of the thinking repays close recapitulation), and color-field
is something like a “Pop Art”, a commentary on, the aesthetic culture
created by corporate conglomerates taking an interest in modernist art
and architecture — and by no means necessarily a critical one. Rothko
did not occupy such a space of “legitimation” in visual culture, and
although he was employed for this purpose with the Rothko Chapel the
absolute expressionlessness of the resulting building is a testament
to his inability to say “yea” or “nay” to cultural developments.
The famous darkening of the Rothko canvas over the years, as he
approached his suicide in 1970, is a testament to something which is
not necessarily an individual temperament; but before jumping the gun,
I encourage others to consider Rothko in terms of a most happy fella,
Donald Barthelme. Although Barthleme is also well-known and “well-
read”, critical consideration of his short stories is hampered by the
fact that Barthelme provides the critic almost nothing to discuss; his
work is thoroughly pleasant and erudite, with no frequently stated
ambition of anything else. What was infrequently stated by Barthelme
was that the example of his father, Texas’s most prominent modernist
architect, guided his aesthetic conduct. At a time when mainstream
American literature was discovering the pleasures of violence as
Charles Bukowski learned ZIP codes, Barthelme was restrained (but it
is to be remembered that he was a physically huge man; odds-on Norman
Mailer got to be the “prisoner of sex” because Barthelme was not
around when Mailer offered an impromptu challenge to box Bennett Cerf
outside Cerf’s apartment).
It could be arguably said that what Barthelme did instead of was
introduce the concept of “pictorial accuracy” or aesthetic truth into
modernist literature, without however marking this as such; although
Barthelme employs all the formal innovations of the first half of the
century, in the Barthelmian text “ideas” are for extremely gentle
mockery and there are no solemn moments where the topic of Biafran
grapes is excluded. What is not, however, to be mocked is the cultural
furniture of the American continent; although critique there be, there
is absolutely zero camp in Barthelme and furthermore no projection of
camp onto places outside the metropole: Barthelme was secure enough to
allow Buffalo to be the “City of No Illusions”, and solid in his faith
that the Holland Tunnel would carry those words to regions which
needed culture.
All of this is quite to my liking, but was Donald Barthelme the
culmination of American letters? Hardly, and this is explicit in
Barthelme’s critical and pedagogical writings (collected in Not-
Knowing); although Barthelme did not have high hopes for the “MFA
revolution” in creative writing he kept a supportive eye on new
literary developments until his tobacco-fueled death from a heart
attack in 1988. But before uncritical evocation of “the dead father”
begins again (Barthelme once suggested a short story called “The
Lacanthrope”, although he did not bother to write it), let me link
Rothko and Barthelme to the third figure whose work is neither
beautiful nor eudaimonistic. Although well-remembered (their songs
having been inexpensively collected on one CD by Rykodisc, and today
being available on two separate remastered CDs), Boston’s Mission of
Burma is not a widely influential act at the present time; their music
does not translate well across the gap opened up in “indie-rock”
culture by Jon Spencer’s “insincere signifyin’” of the period
1988-200?.
In other words, they are too white; and although a lily-white genre
with some links to Mission of Burma’s techniques (“industrial”) arose
during roughly the same period, they honestly swing too much for that
formation. The aforementioned techniques featured one of the very
first uses of tape-looping in rock music, which has been picked up by
the subgenre of “math rock” (the only people who might credit the
group as a positive influence). All this reception aesthetics, such I
did not employ for Rothko and Barthelme, is necessary because of an
extremely critically challenging element of Mission of Burma’s music:
it is ugly, in a way that not even the extremely no-longer-beautiful
Pere Ubu is. Furthermore, it is to be understood that this is to great
extent intentional, as Mission of Burma performed live at ear-
splitting volumes (causing Miller to develop tinnitus at an extremely
early age). What is the message? Well, although Mission of Burma had
received the usual modernist sacraments (song titles: “Max Ernst” and
“This Is Not A Photograph”), the music is not cookie-cutter Deweyite
“experimentation”.
What the music is is inarticulate; what promises to be the frankest
confrontation with the Nazi tropes flirted with by the early punks (to
no great consternation on the part of the numerous Jewish contingent),
“That’s When I Reach For My Revolver”, ultimately ends up saying
nothing. Or does it? No, it doesn’t; the acid test is that nobody
would ever quote a Mission of Burma lyric with satisfaction; they are
hermetic, like Barthelme’s worldview or Rothko’s technique — they’re
not supposed to move you to do anything. The aesthetic appeal of
Mission of Burma lies in realizing that Mission of Burma is clearing a
path for themselves; at no great cost to anyone else, but very little
benefit as well, the sobriquet applied to the early incarnation of the
Talking Heads, “the Autistics”, would be a simple description of their
aesthetic praxis. And if this is a time when autism caused by foreign
provocateurs in the tunafish ranks is on the rise, Mission of Burma’s
evident similarities to the aforementioned artists raises the question
of what was simply understood in the modernist aesthetic, or not as
the case might be; but this is a question someone other than me ought
to answer.
----
http://jeffrubard.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/remembering-our-demented-president-or-aesthetic-naturalism/