I like to toast. Not the type of toast involving bread (although that type is perfectly good as well) but the one demonstrated by the smiling Asian couple below:

I’ll take any available opportunity to make a toast and there’s a standard toast that I’ve been using for about two years now. Actually, come to think of it, I think I started using my standard toast right after George Bush was elected for a second time, which makes sense because my standard toast is, “to a new way of living.”

Well, “to a new way of living” has sort of worn out its welcome. Actually, it sort of wore out its welcome about a month into its life. People hate “to a new way of living.” My girlfriend really hates it.

So I’m in the market for a new toast. Something broad enough in its meaning that I can say it for about a year and not get sick of it. When I would make the old toast, I would sometimes imagine myself on some post-apocalyptic organic farm trading my crafts for some beans and fresh milk—“that’s a new way to live,” I would think. Of course, the new way of living wouldn’t have to be so drastic, maybe just a minor change like everybody gets fitted for a bespoke suit.

So what’s a good new toast? “We have fun” has been suggested. It’s pretty good but not quite there. I got some positive feedback with, “In a world of infinite choices, I choose this” but, again, Kaveri hates it and maybe it’s a little to pompous.

Any toast suggestions?

At Hunter College’s MFA open studios last weekend there was an artist displaying “Art Punk” T-shirts emblazoned with defiant art slogans. All the Tees were lame, but one in particular—the one that said, “Fuck Clement Greenberg”—struck me as extra-lame.

Ah, to be back in the days when Clement Greenberg ruled the roost: tough-minded artists’ used to sweat it out in their vast SoHo lofts, pondering the notion of “flatness.” Painters would dutifully comply with Michael Fried’s latest marching orders in the pages of ArtForum. There were lots of acrylic stains being mixed up and applied to unprimed shaped canvases. To be considered an “advanced” artist there was only about three things you were allowed to do…

Those were the 1960’s. By the 1970’s there was lots and lots of conceptually-minded work being made with one underlying message: Fuck Clement Greenberg. It may have reached a fever pitch in the 80’s when Greeny (my pet nick-name) came to represent the iron fist of the Patriarchy.

But 25 years later to be making a “Fuck Clement Greenberg” t-shirt and expect it to be transgressive is sad, sad, sad. It would be much more punk rock to wear an “I Love Clement Greenberg” Tee. In fact, I’m wearing one right now.

Thanks Clem. It’s a little disappointing that you seemed to think that all popular art was shit. This would certainly disappoint my comic book-loving comedy friends. But I still respect you anyway…sort of.

I have the handwriting of a mildly hyperactive 10-year-old. So do you. In fact everyone of my generation, when they put pen to paper, ends up printing letters that are indistinguishable from those of a competent middle-schooler.

It wasn’t always the case that adults wrote like pre-pubescent loonies; when I look at parents handwriting it seems strangely even and regular. Their penmanship looks quaintly old-fashioned. I like it.

I feel like a gigantic sissy talking about penmanship but a gotta speak truth to power…

Anyway, this all leads to my latest obsession: improving my penmanship. After trolling the internet, I found a website that teaches the modern italic handwriting…

which I’ve been practicing for the past two weeks. I’ve been practicing a lot. Again, I’m obsessed.

You should be obsessed too. Italic looks much cooler than the bullshit, wanky cursive that I learned in third grade. It’s what all the kids are taught in Iceland and I think that they’re beginning to teach it instead of cursive in the U.S.

And once again, sorry for the sissy-ness…

It turns out that despite what my blog says, I was back in Brooklyn for Halloween. I wasn’t able to do anything festive, though; I didn’t go out, didn’t dress up. But I did think to myself, “won’t it be cute to hand out candy to all the kids in my enormous building who will inevitably drop by my door.”

So, I went to Duane Reade and bought one of those big bags of Snickers.

I was home by about 6:00. I actually carved a tiny pumpkin that I had bought earlier and placed it outside my door so the kids would know I was jazzed up to hand out candy. And then I waited.

No one came. The only thing that happened was that some kid stole my jack-o-lantern.

And I was left with this big bag of Snickers to contend with. So, I’ve been slowly making my way through this Snickers bag for the past two weeks and have finally finished. It’s been a steady diet of Snickers for me. I can’t say that I’ll miss the ol’ Snickers Diet; I felt like I might have gained some weight.

As a post-script, when searching for a Snickers image for this post I found this picture:

Went to Century 21 today. Bought socks and underwear.

So I was going to write a little something about the new Luc Tuymans show, “Proper,” at David Zwirner. But I thought instead, I’d post a portion of what kaveri wrote about the show for a class she’s taking in graduate school.

I’m posting it after she gave me her grudging consent. She says that it’s incomplete and needs revision and was dashed off for a class at RISD and certainly not her best work…

“Proper” consists of 10 paintings of enigmatic subject
matter that, thanks to a few key images – a couple
dancing on a ballroom floor emblazoned with the State
Seal of Texas; a portrait of Condoleeza Rice –
collectively read as loosely referring to the current
state of political affairs in America. In this
context, the painting titled “Demolition” – which
depicts a huge cloud of smoke – suggests September 11.
It’s a typical Tuymans work in that it holds back more
than it tells. We don’t know for sure if we are
viewing the routine and innocuous work of a
construction crew or the aftermath of a terrorist
attack. Neither the deadpan, one-word title nor the
image will settle the matter. The smoke filling the
canvas both obliterates and constitutes the imagery of
the painting – a painting which comes extremely close
to literally depicting nothing. This sparseness of
information, this ambiguity in terms of what is
represented and what it means (or how or ever whether
it means) are some of the themes of “Proper” and of
Tuymans’ work in general…

…Elliptical and enigmatic treatment of weighty
historical subject matter has been a consistent part
of Tuymans’ approach from the beginning of his career.
But the history refered to in “Proper” isn’t yet
history—unlike colonialism or the Second World War, it
is transpiring right now. How, then, to deal with
elements of the Tuymans style that we’ve become
accustomed to reading as elegiac? The muted palette
that in previous paintings seemed to derive in part
from their source material in fading old black and
white photos doesn’t make quite as much sense here.
Why not the lurid colors of CNN?

This leads me to wonder whether Tuymans’ vocabulary,
developed initially to deal with history and memory,
is now being applied in a formulaic fashion to a
ripped-from-the-headlines topic, to lesser effect. Can
the same strategy of photo-mediated, emotionally
stifled, weighty topic/weightless representation make
sense all of the time?

This doubt is exacerbated by the larger scale of the
canvases and the heightened elegance and refinement of
the paint handling in “Proper.” In most of Tuymans’
work from the nineties, small scale and a
matter-of-fact, almost machinelike laying-on of paint
contributed to the effectiveness of the work (an
example would be his “Der Diagnostische Blick” series
of portraits, which included only horizontal
brushstrokes.) This deliberate, self-imposed
limitation of means –including the muted palette and
thin paint - was a formal enactment of the limits of
representation that his paintings dealt with
thematically. And, like the eloquence of a novelist
writing in the voice of an inarticulate fictional
character, the clumsiness of those paintings had an
expressive power of its own. Inadequate signs bent under the burden of meaning, of memory, of
history, Tuymans’ best paintings from the nineties
possessed a conceptual rigor and muted emotion that
isn’t quite matched in “Proper.”

There’s a snippet of dialogue that I’ve been trying to work into a sketch for over a year.
I didn’t really write it, I think I lifted it from Alien (or Species? Or Aliens? Or The Blob?) Anyway, it’s a moment that always seems to happen in any killer-alien type movie.

There’s a large, impenetrable, glass chamber with a vicious alien trapped inside. Two scientists in labcoats—a cold, effete man and a resourceful, young woman—are staring at one of the aliens they’ve spent the first half of the movie trying to trap…

DR. PRITCHER:
Look at it, Jane. They are the perfect killing machines, instantly adapting to our every advantage. They will stop at nothing less than our complete annihilation. They show no fear, no remorse, no sniveling devotion to the moral codes that seem to mire us humans…

DR. RYAN:
[repulsed and outraged] You admire it!

DR. PRITCHER:
I admire its cunning.