Friday, February 29, 2008

Stolen!



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Recently ordered a copy of Ted for the store. Today I checked: he's still in the inventory, but there is no book upon the shelves. Most likely (or at least, I HOPE for all sakes of appropriateness): Ted has been stolen!

PS - Jared sorry you didn't like the Zuk bio!

3 comments:

Hayes said...
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Hayes said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hayes said...

o andy...I'm glad someone got their hands on such a goodie! as corso might expound!

also, the whole poet Y thing is cause while i was composing variations upon yr language...shadow boxing if you will, 'tween yrself and Zook, the typewriter left out the r in poetry leaving a telltale sign magic had been at play....

and then there's the whole bio thing...I have to say I am enthralled with its narrative and its clear amount of excellent research and information pertaining to mr. Z and his "A"....i am wowed by this book in these regards...and more should definitely be talked about in the future of his kind of close reading of z's work....ahhemmm...for better or for worse in that case...

but in other regards...here's my small critique...this third person singular expositional monologic biography(scroggs doesn't address his own presence until pg.189, i think) is old school art historical model that breeds a passive acceptance of material...something which scroggs points out as being rejected by z's background in anthropological reflexivity as well as his continued explorations in writing and correspondence.

where is scroggs in this research and why doesn't his method adhere to more of the reflexive, as well as polylogical, mathematical, and performative gestures he describes, not just in "a," but in bottom and other of z's writing as well...

anyway i'll try and finish this with something more or less jargony and more or less specific to sum up what it is I think is off: These quotes are from Mr. Preziosi in Rethinking Art History...

"It is clear that we are dealing with an essentially re-presentational paradigm wherein the art object is construed as a vehicle through which the intentions of the maker are transported to the mind of the beholder through the medium of artifactual articulations...For the lay beholder, the subtext of the message is invariably the same--the genius [or lack there of] [sic] of the artist as yet another trace of human creativity in all its ineffability. The artist as chip off the divine block.

"In no small measure, the discipline [art history] has maintained its focus upon the "what" of signification to the near exclusion of the "how"...art as a second reality alongside the world in which we live today, rather than as one of the powerful social instruments for the creation and maintenance of the world in which we live. The former focus invariably legitimizes art as essentially a mode of private entertainment, a dreamworld to soften the jarring complexities and contradictions of present and past.

"...the metaphorical apparatus of the modern discipline works to establish and to position artwork and art historian relative to one another as functions within a panoptic, anamorphic machinery. It has been suggested (and I believe this to be correct in its general outlines) [sic] that the discipline also serves to project or validate a certain kind of viewing Subject: ideally, passive consumers, and, in more contemporary contexts, educated and discerning cryptographers--but receivers of messages all the same. At the same time, art history has been a powerful system of investiture of certain professional groups--historians, critics, connoisseurs, curators, dealers and archivists--with interpretative semiotic, or exegetical power. In this regard, of course, it shares with other humanistic disciplines perhaps most closely with literary studies) [sic] a highly complex and self-perpetuating analytic theatre of power and knowledge, a discourse always written in the third person singular."


These are not new ideas...that is one of Preziosi's major theses...they have been around since the inception of art history as well as other disciplinary practices...notably, cultural anthropology...so in Z's columbia education where he studied with meyer schapiro....one of preziosi's mentors (the prez dedicated rethinking art history to him..."for and because of Meyer Schapiro") Z must of been aware of these ideas...in fact scroggins points most of this out...and so this is what troubles me...scroggs seems to know and in a way praise these characteristics while he himself fails to practice them. thus contributing to the world in a way that the man he has chosen as a study might not have looked kindly upon.

much love andy
Jared