Interesting and very thought-provoking perspective on Texas Monthly's article about Marfa (and of the state of the town in general.) This was submitted to TM (anonymously?) but unfortunately never went to print. [in the forum] [found this at the Marfa Times blog.]
posted by Mark permanent link
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3 Comments:
A Marfa local questioned my use of the word "diatribe", thinking that the word suggests the letter to TM was *bad*. Webster's three part definition is this: "1 archaic: a prolonged discourse, 2: a bitter and abusive speech or writing, 3: ironical or satirical criticism". Is this not the right word? Should I change it? (more here: http://www.archibot.com/dcforum/DCForumID20/18.html)
Here's a new story about Hlynur Hallsson, the Icelandic artist mentioned in the LETTER TO TEXAS MONTHLY which adds some background if you need it:
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Artist Ignites Debate
ThanX to abraham normal
HOUSTON, Sept. 4 - Hlynur Hallsson arrived this summer in Marfa, Tex., with plans, as he put it, to stimulate discussion.
The first exhibit Mr. Hallsson assembled - a compilation of other artists work - did not stir much reaction. His second, four graffiti-style sentences scrawled on a wall, created an uproar.
"The real axis of evil are Israel, USA and the UK," Mr. Hallsson, an artist from Iceland, wrote in English and Spanish. "Ariel Sharon is the top terrorist. George W. Bush is an idiot. And Iceland is banana republic number one."
The exhibit, in a converted slaughterhouse in the heart of the West Texas town, inspired angry letters to the newspaper, scores of enraged telephone calls to local officials and a warning that read, "Iceslander go home!!!" The controversy has raised questions about free speech while increasing local friction between the artists and yuppies known as New Marfans and the established, more conservative citizenry.
"I guess upset would be a mild way of putting it," said Mayor Oscar Martinez, describing callers who complained. Of the exhibit, Mayor Martinez said, "We see better graffiti on the railroad freight trains as they go by."
In a remote but beautiful stretch of Texas about 175 miles southwest of Midland - where President Bush grew up - Marfa, with roughly 2,500 people, has undergone a gradual but radical transition since the minimalist sculptor Donald Judd began buying buildings there in the 1970s.
The town, once famous as where the movie "Giant" was filmed, is now an established stop in the art world. Mr. Judd died in 1994, but his Chinati Foundation, named after a nearby mountain range, now draws roughly 10,000 visitors a year and sponsors artists in residence.
Mr. Hallsson, 33, a self-described conceptual artist, earned a Chinati grant after a career in Iceland and other parts of Europe, where he once placed a hot tub on a street in Germany and invited pedestrians to take a dip. He arrived in Marfa early last month. Though he already had his "axis of evil" exhibit in mind, the foundation did not know of his plans.
He said the first three statements did not reflect his opinions but were taken from comments he had heard in Europe or had seen in the European press. He said the fourth, about Iceland, came from a quotation in an article in The New York Times about plans to build a huge power plant in his home country.
Mr. Hallsson said that he realized the statements were provocative, but that he hoped they would lead to discussion about how the rest of the world sometimes views the United States. The exhibits opening, on Aug. 22, was attended by a small gathering of local artists whose response was mostly positive. Outside, pedestrians and drivers peered through the large picture windows and the glass doors. As Mr. Hallsson quickly learned, they were outraged.
"People in Marfa got really upset," he said in a telephone interview. "And also that I wrote "George W. Bush is an idiot." That is something that you say every day here. But I was a foreigner. To write that on a wall was too much."
Mayor Martinez said his office telephone began ringing the next day. His home phone rang over the weekend. The Big Bend Sentinel, the local weekly, provided extensive coverage, including long, furious letters. Some people thought the exhibit was particularly inappropriate coming so close to Sept. 11 and feared it would embarrass the town as tourists arrived for the annual Labor Day weekend festival.
By Aug. 26, Mr. Martinez had called the Chinati director, Marianne Stockebrand, and asked her to cover the windows of the museum. She consulted with Mr. Hallsson and complied, a move that some local artists have criticized as censorship.
"Since the artist had given a green light," Ms. Stockebrand said, "we didnt feel it was censorship."
Mr. Hallsson said he first resisted the covering but relented unhappily because he did not want to damage the Chinati Foundation. He then proposed a second part of the exhibit, which was unveiled on Aug. 28.
"The Axis of Evil is North Korea, Iraq and Iran," he wrote this time, painting over the original statements. "Osama bin Laden is the top terrorist. George W. Bush is a good leader. And Iceland is not a banana republic."
He said of the change, "I just wrote what people want to read."
But Mr. Hallsson said he thought the more palatable message might still lead to discussion of the issues and hoped that the second opening would draw a crowd. Instead, he said he got apologies from the smattering of artists on hand, while few townsfolk showed up.
Mayor Martinez said few locals went because they considered the change patronizing; moreover, they regard the Chinati Foundation as an aloof and often arrogant neighbor.
"People think that maybe the mentality of the Chinati Foundation is that they build walls between themselves and the community," he said.
Ms. Stockebrand noted that the foundation had an annual open house and was not a newcomer, having been in Marfa for more than a decade.
Mr. Hallsson left on Tuesday to return to Iceland. His departure was planned before the controversy, and he said he wished he could have stayed "for further discussion."
He also said he was startled that people were so quick to try to clamp down on controversial speech.
"I think quite many Americans dont have interest in free speech," Mr. Hallsson said. "The majority, I dont know. My experience was, quite many people would be happy to give that one away."
END (http://www.xchicago.com/main/article.php?type=1&articleID=249)
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a customs agent, Wallace Stevens was an insurance man, and T.S. Eliot was a banker, so maybe a poet can be an attorney. Although there does seem to be some conflict between the label "personal injury attorney" and the label "poet," that apparent conflict falters as a measure of integrity when we consider that there isn't any institution, religion, belief system or way of earning a living that leaves its communicants uncorrupted.
Personal conflicts, I would say, are helpful in that they offer a fertile ground for art. Which is worse, working as an attorney to make a living, or submitting to contests judged by your very own mentor, or applying for NEA grants to fly you and your lover across the country so you can fuck without your wife finding out?
Art, no matter how you want to romanticize it, is just what someone is doing when pursuing a life dedicated to the search, and refusing to allow personal fears and opinions, or a desire to be popular, or to make a lot of money, or be respected, or be popular, or even be noticed or be popular get in the way of that search for light, God, the truth, the self, whatever, whatever we meet up with when the universe suddenly seems coherent and everything we do is right, and we are strangely at peace. Those delicious fleeting stretches between chaos which we work so hard to elongate. And anybody working from that purpose is an artist. Where we get into trouble is thinking that we can replace the work of being an artist with the CAREER of being an artist.
Being an artist is an identity constructed not out of quality as such, but out of faith in the task, in the dedication TO THE PROJECT, as Foucault would say, to the heart, which keeps on making projects instead of making entertainments,in the faith that IN MAKING FORM OUT OF CHAOS, MEANING WILL APPEAR and we MIGHT become as noble as Don Quixote and we MIGHT find ourselves actually making art.
For example: you plant a lemon tree and mulch it
and pour good clean water over it and when grows up and makes lemons, you can see in the shape of the lemon the love that has gone into the peeling of it, or you are making an apple pie, using a little lemon juice to give it that bite, and you can see the love that goes into rolling the dough and to the lifelong commitment to making and making and making while somehow staying in that uncomfortable, hard-won, intoxicating elevator lifting and sinking, hoping to float, back and forth between the conscious and the unconscious minds. Yes that is a plural. Conscious minds. Unconscious minds.
Or as Robert Frost said, junping like a piece of ice on a hot stove, or as Emily Dickenson said, "Tell the truth but tell it slant," or as Charles Wright would say, "searching for that small still light within," Or as Hemingway said, knowing the 90% that lies beneath the surface or it might just be about HOW LONG ONE CAN KEEP THE EGO DISCONNECTED because the poem is always longing for closure, which is what we are always avoiding.
If you are a fake, we don't have to say anything. Everyone will FIGURE IT OUT.
And if you are not a fake, disaster will follow.
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