Articles
Publication In The Age of Negation, Part II Pillorying the Pillars
Four weeks passed. I was about to resign myself to not hearing from Charles Wersing, a top New York literary agent, when I checked my inbox one afternoon. “Good to hear from you,” he wrote, and apologized for taking a month to get back to me. He complimented me on my “intriguing” synopsis, and suggested that the novel would require the services of an agent who wasn’t “overly concerned about commercial potential.” Towards this end he recommended that I contact a friend of his, Raoul Sellert. He stated that Sellert was “incredibly well read” and that he might be receptive to my pitch. Charles gave me permission to use his name and wished me...
Ways of Reading On the Road with Tim Youd's 100 Novels Project
When I first encountered Tim Youd, he was sitting at a metal table outside an art gallery in Chinatown, tap-tap-tapping away on a portable typewriter, just minding his own business. Most of the crowd didn’t pay him much mind either. Earlier that summer, Youd found himself on the flatbed of a pickup truck parked in front of LA’s Terminal Annex Post Office retyping Charles Bukowski’s Post Office on an Underwood typewriter. That was in July of 2013 and proved to be a precursor to the LA performance artist’s ongoing “100 Novels Project” series, in which Youd visits the settings of one hundred novels and retypes them in their entirety on the...
Publication In The Age of Negation, Part I Humility and Humiliation
Perhaps you remember me… No, that wasn’t right. It was senseless to open a letter of entreaty by suggesting that I was forgettable, especially when I knew only too well that the party in question would remember me. Hello Charlie, it’s your old friend here… No, that was too presumptuous: only his friends addressed him by that diminutive. I had met Charles a few times at social gatherings; our brief exchanges had been awkward, and I always got the impression that he was itching to get away from me so that he could talk to somebody more successful. Hello Charles... I didn’t like the sound of that either. There was something both wheedling and...
Book Review: A Measured Coolness Building + Becoming by Amir Zaki
Building + Becoming By Amir Zaki 272 pages X Artists' Books and DoppelHouse Press The works of Amir Zaki subtly subverts analog photography’s long-held truth claims. His photography, surveyed in the newly published artist book Building + Becoming, addresses the artist’s digital manipulation and, setting aside the medium’s presumed objectivity and fidelity to representation, invites the question, “to what end”? Illuminated by two texts, “Stealing Light,” a conversation with Corrina Peipon, and “Addition by Subtraction,” an essay by Jennifer Ashton and Walter Benn Michaels, Building + Becoming explores Zaki’s formation as an artist, touches...
Book Review: Heartfelt Moments Portrait of an Artist by Hugo Huerta Marin
Portrait of an Artist By Hugo Huerta Marin 424 pages Prestel What exactly is a portrait? In art, “portrait” is generally understood to mean a visual likeness or representation. One could argue that a photographic portrait captures this visual likeness more closely than would a painting or drawing. It is also possible to create a literary portrait. Embracing this multiplicity of the word, author and photographer Hugo Huerta Marin presents Portrait of an Artist, a gripping book of candid Polaroids and captivating interviews with 25 creative women, including visual arts titans like Tracey Emin and Kiki Smith, and legendary actresses like Cate...
