Category: A Symbol Life

Dear Visual Studies

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, art school, artgame, olden ways

what is clear to me

by now it is clear that you aren’t returning my check; it is clear that you didn’t keep your commitment to provide reprints, or return my check.

it is clear that your structure is the same as any other business, run simply, sloppily made rules, carried out by functionaries aware of their vacation, treating research requests as interruptions.

I expect dishonesty, false promises from a profit business; that is the founding basis of opaque blind commerce. That shouldn’t be  the basis or philosophy for a non-profit, otherwise, there is no need to make tax or structural distinction among them. If they act the same, they are the same.

now isn’t then;

then when Visual Studies Workshop was a fertile place, bold: attracting the committed, driven by a mission spirit, with a goal of a broadening, rather than a deadening future. a place beyond the market drivers, something other than a tax deduction.

what may not be clear to you

is how much VSW has changed. what you were, and what you’ve become; where you were headed, and how far off course you’ve gotten.

Turning a non-profit into an organization that is as layered, with interactions like a profit business is pretense and false promise. It is also bad mimicry. No small business succeeds with so much pretentious departmentalization over such small amounts of money. They would die of overhead and organizational inertia.

Baltz – Brief Read

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, book shelf, old bones, on photographersTagged 1 Comment

Views enlarge what they engage. Whenever primates look in one direction, they see two views, one through each eye. The camera blocks parts of the world; words the other.

“Untitled” Baltz : (1974 ) first published in  Image volume 17 number 10 June 1974 . George Eastman House. This was published the year before ‘New Topographics,’exhibit held at Eastman. In this short essay of 8 paragraphs Baltz provides summary estimates of “typical” industrial sites; where, why, how. Reading it all these years later, I don’t remember it from then, though I subscribed to Image, there is a desolate tone. And, the final paragraph does offer a (mild) condemnation, as well as an erroneous assumption about likely economic actions.

“Panegyric” Baltz. The praise is of Larry Sultan, from the “Larry Sultan” book. A brief, but strong statement of appreciation of Larry as the person. Recalling time with Larry, Henry Wessel, and Baltz playing racquetball; avoiding talk of their different work.

These are pieces of Lewis Baltz, discovered as I was looking for something else. I knew Larry – I went to school at SFAI in the same class as him, Mike and 6 other people.

I never knew Lewis Baltz, but feel I know much more about him now. We are lucky he left us so many words.

  • Sultan July 1946- December 2009  (aged 63) cancer (wife Kelly)
  • Baltz September 1945- November 2014 (aged 69) cancer & emphysema

ISBN-10: 1934105295 &  ISBN-10: 3735600697

Eat your vitamin A, C, D, exercise doesn’t prevent cancer.

Lewis Baltz (September 12, 1945 – November 22, 2014) was a visual artist and photographer who became an important figure in the New Topographics movement of the late 1970s.[2] His work has been published in a number of books, presented in numerous exhibitions, and appeared in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.[citation needed] He wrote for many journals, and contributed regularly to L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui.

Publications

  • Landscape: Theory, Lewis Baltz, Harry Callahan, Eliot Porter, Carol Digrappa and Robert Adams, 1980 ISBN 0-912810-27-0
  • The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California, Lewis Baltz and Adam Weinburg, 2001 ISBN 0-9630785-6-9
  • The Tract Houses: Die Siedlungshauser (English and German Edition), Lewis Baltz, 2005 ISBN 0-9703860-4-4
  • The Prototype Works, Lewis Baltz, 2010 ISBN 3-86521-763-X
  • Mario Pfeifer: Reconsidering The new Industrial Parks near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974, Lewis Baltz, Mario Pfeifer, Vanessa Joan Mueller, 2011 ISBN 1-934105-29-5
  • Lewis Baltz: Candlestick Point, Lewis Baltz, 2011 ISBN 3-86930-109-0
  • Lewis Baltz: Rule Without Exception / Only Exceptions, Lewis Baltz, 2012 ISBN 3-86930-110-4
  • Lewis Baltz: Texts., Lewis Baltz, 2012 ISBN 3-86930-436-7
  • Lewis Baltz, Lewis Baltz, 2017 ISBN 3-95829-279-8

References

Artists Cook

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, book shelf

the other table in every artspace- food

artist cookbooks
cookbook

Cookbooks are aids. Times away from, without leaving the work place. Part of the universal life consists in what you do at gatherings, no matter how small they are.

Imagination never eats alone.

How they differ is what I noticed. “The Photographer’s Cookbook” is the newest. “Beaumont’s Kitchen” the oldest and  seems it, as if from a much longer time ago than it is. TPC, while just released, is also from the past. It was collected during the time of the silver rush, the time photography was growing up and beyond photographers. It seems to pledge allegiance to the past, standing in the shadows of the Grand Museum people.

richard.L9814
richard.L9815

richard.L9817
richard.L9818

Even though I own them, they are of only passing use or interest. Probably not of any use to the non-photographer. That is in contrast to the third book.

Studio Olafur Eliasson: The Kitchen

richard.L9816“The Kitchen” is a book that expands cooking in an honest manner, additionally we are provided a possible alternate way of the studio. The creative gathering he hosts is worth reading even if you don’t cook, aren’t vegetarian, and would never consider growing vegetables or cooking for 50.

The differences in these books is great, not just in the printing, but in the purpose. Not just in recipe but in scope of life. The difference in books is as great as the difference in the artistic lives of the contributors — there is an art that is small, a sole proprietor who must have support from a durable entity — the other is free standing, able to be far more inclusive and is. Willingly, it seems.

I wish photography could generate as good a book. A book with clear ideals and uplifting goals.

of the three books, “The Kitchen” is the only book that I would, and have, given as a gift.