Funston

Glider Taking Off, 2008

Funston

Woman with Dogs, 2009

Funston

Gliders, 2008

Funston

Woman with Dogs, 2009

Zabriskie Point

I saw Zabriskie Point again the other day.

I first saw it in 1970. It was a disaster. widely scorned. The right hated it for all the obvious reasons. Even the left disliked it, although I never quite understood why. (Maybe, by that point, “I’m ready to die, just not from boredom” hit a little too close to home.)

Nevertheless, it was a powerful movie. Antonioni understood as well as anyone the symbiosis between cops in the street and real estate developers in their offices, and the peculiarly American murderousness that fuels them both.

To be fair, it was also a little ridiculous. The desert orgy, in particular. You would have thought Antonioni knew better than to credit either free or love. He should have listened to Nabokov.

But the heart of the movie is still the house, and Daria’s walk through it. The everyday evil of Rod Taylor and his cronies. The adamantine ugliness of the wives. The complicity of the servant. And then the explosions. What could have been better? I still remember the people I first saw it with, and how happy we were.

Of course, that was then, and now is the Age of Obama. Is the ending of Zabriskie Point still appropriate today? I don’t know. It may help to remember that people were filled with hope then too. Although by 1970 that was pretty much over.

Maybe we should revisit the question in a few years.

Mare Island

Houses, 2008

Mare Island

Picnic Table, 2008

Fever Ray

This is a great album. It’s just a little hard to describe.

Fever Ray is the solo project of Karin Dreijer Andersson. From The Knife. She's a little like Bjork. Like Bjork's, Andersson's voice is an instrument. A strange instrument. And, like Bjork, she's an Artist. But where Bjork is whimsical, Andersson is driven. (Or do I have that backwards?) And Fever Ray is macabre. But also cheerful. As if Sigur Ros suddenly took up marimbas and the bamboo flute. But that’s not really it, either. (Besides, Fever Ray is in English.)

Maybe you should just check it out for yourself.

Mare Island

Path, 2008

Mare Island

Gas Station, 2008

Some Hope

How sad are those humans? No sooner do they escape some horror than they rush to inflict worse on someone else.

Israelis oppress Palestinians as if there had been no Holocaust. Old boys torment new boys as if they had never been new boys themselves. Lawyers, bankers, and doctors perpetuate the grim systems of apprenticeship that turned their own lives to mud. And the abused abuse.

Is it because they’ve forgotten? Or because they haven’t?

No answer is to be found in Edward St. Aubyn’s Some Hope, a trilogy of the novellas Never Mind, Bad News, and Some Hope. It will convey the book's tenor to say that when young Patrick Melrose is first raped by his father, about halfway through Never Mind, it isn’t even shocking. Nor is it the first time the reader will have had occasion to consider the childhood of David Melrose, the father, itself a nightmare of savagery and helplessness.

But why must these nightmares always be passed on?

Never mind. Some Hope is witty as hell and just the thing for Father’s Day. And yes, it’s all true.

Crayon

Plaza, California Street, 2008

Crayon

Stairs, Polk Street, 2009

Crayon

Plumbing, California Street, 2008

Plastic

Cow Hollow, 2009

The sterility of digital black and white is appalling. Strangely, digital color is not as bad. In fact, I kind of like it. But I keep thinking we should create a new art, one in which the message is as empty as the medium. Like advertising, but with nothing to sell.


Cow Hollow, 2009

San Francisco

Native Americans, Ocean Beach, 2008

San Francisco

Teepee, somewhere in Pacific Heights, 2008

San Francisco

Structure, California Street, 2008

San Francisco

Plant, Clay Street, 2008

Art and Baseball

Barry Bonds, 2007

Peter Schjeldahl's new book Let’s See is a compendium of his writing from The New Yorker over the last 10 years or so. It has many nice things, including its introduction, which consists of 20 questions posed to Schjeldahl by friends and colleagues, and his answers to them. Here’s a portion of his colloquy with Roger Angell:

RA: "Given the hugely inflated prices paid for every form of art these days and the vastly increased publicity and critical and personal attention that attends each crowded gallery opening and biennial and world-class retrospective, has it occurred to you that writing about art has inevitably become another form of sports writing?

PS: Yes. Money and celebrity govern the art game now, and covering it is pretty well reduced to reporting scores. Goodbye to critics functioning as scouts, umpires, scorers, clubhouse cronies, and occasional coaches - not a dire loss, perhaps. . . . These days when you use the word “value” and mean something besides price, you probably have to spell it out. . . . Meanwhile, there remains at least one nice difference between art and baseball: in art, none of the players knows for sure what the game is."

I like that. (Although whether the economic premise will be sustained remains to be seen.)

Funston

Beach Dog, 2009

Funston

Beach Dog, 2009

Funston

Beach Dog, 2009

Crayon

Loading Dock, California Street, 2009

Crayon

Stairway, California Street, 2009

Crayon

Overspray, Fillmore Street, 2009

Eliss

Got an iPhone? Check out Eliss. Almost too hard to play, but so trippy it doesn't matter.

Stuck!

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Permian Land, 2004

Someone mentioned the other day that my opinions are a little out of step. I know that. My pictures too. What I don't know is how it happened.

Actually, I have an idea.

I took pictures from about 1965 to 1975. Then I did something else for 30 years. When I started taking pictures again, I found myself in a time warp. Not only was I taking the same pictures as in the old days, I didn’t like anything else.

But in this version, at least, there may still be some hope for me. After all, artists grow by working through cliches and discarded styles. (Until, if they’re lucky, they arrive someplace new.)

Maybe I just have more of that to do than most.

On the other hand, I don’t seem to be making much progress. Worse still, I don’t seem to care. So maybe, deep down, I really believe in what I’m doing.

In which case there’s no hope.

Gray City

Mission Street, 2007

Gray City

Broadway, 2008