From Rob Walker’s column “Consumed” from the NY Times Magazine:

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Recently I noticed a Hummer in the parking lot of a Goodwill location. Almost involuntarily, I smirked. This reaction was not particularly surprising — least of all, I would guess, to whoever owned the thing. Lots of people judge not just Hummers but also the people who own them, right down to their fundamental morality (and thus whether their presence at a Goodwill is smirkworthy), and do so with no information beyond the existence of this large, gas-guzzling object. Some observers even record a pithy summation of those judgments in the form of a mean note left on the vehicle’s windshield. Or if the owner is present, the critique may be manifest as an obscene gesture, a diatribe or both. Plus, of course, there are Web sites devoted to Hummer hatred. Among the material goods that people are willing to see as reflecting and embodying very specific aspects of their owners’ identity, the Hummer looms large.

Hummer owners surely know that an audience of smirkers and note-leavers judges them as callous earth-killers or worse. Just as surely they must ascribe different meaning to their consumption decision. A recent article in The Journal of Consumer Research takes the unusual step of trying to articulate the Hummer fan’s view of the world and himself. It draws on material found online as well as interviews with 20 or so devoted owners conducted by Marius K. Luedicke, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and an author of the article.

Hummer loyalists come across as a beleaguered lot. Less predictably, Luedicke and his fellow authors, Craig J. Thompson and Markus Giesler, argue that Hummer drivers position their ownership at the center of a “brand-mediated moral conflict” in which Hummer enthusiasts are not only innocent but also heroic. Conflict with vehement critics turns out to play a key role, with the Hummer owner casting himself or herself as a “moral protagonist” who must, according to this theory, “defend sacrosanct virtues and ideals from the transgressive actions of an immoral adversary.” And what sacrosanct virtues would those be? To oversimplify a bit: American exceptionalism, rugged individualism, love of the frontier, community and freedom.

One owner’s comment from the forum of an anti-Hummer site probably falls right in line with critics’ judgments: “I want to continue living in an America where we all have the liberty to drive the biggest, ugliest gas-burning monsters that will fit on the roads.” (Recall that, in 2001, Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, asserted that prodding the citizenry to conserve energy runs counter to “the American way of life.”) The additional twist is that those who disagree are enemies of freedom itself: “Open your minds and hearts, and live and let live.” Another fan makes an even more nimble rhetorical leap: “Grow up and join us Americans that believe in our freedom. . . . Stop trying to oppress others that don’t share your beliefs, color and religion.” Thus the debate is reframed, the journal authors write, as one between defenders and destroyers of personal freedom. Hummer owners are not just right; they are righteous.

This attitude is positioned as descendant from classic American myths — John Winthrop’s vision of the City Upon a Hill, endlessly besieged by outsider foes who hate our freedom but are invariably swept aside by the forces of destiny itself. Clearly this involves ascribing meaning, motive and morals to Hummer critics, who are portrayed in the comments that Luedicke collected as narrow-minded hypocrites — particularly those who drive a Prius, or as some Hummer fans call it, a Pious. Getting down to details, enthusiasts point to volunteer groups that team up in their Hummers to clean debris from highways, or even help the Red Cross in disaster situations by way of the Hummer Club’s HOPE (Hummer Owners Prepared for Emergencies) program. In this way, they see themselves as caring for the land and acting selflessly on behalf of the community. A somewhat-related buy-American argument will presumably fade if G.M. completes its reported sale of the brand to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company.

The traditional explanation for an object like the Hummer — big, flashy, expensive to acquire and maintain — is that it’s a conspicuous status symbol. After all, consumer goods are often thought of as projectors of meaning, tools for individuals to send signals to onlookers known and unknown. Surely that theory is incomplete. The Hummer carries meaning, all right, but what it exemplifies is how wide the gap can be between what the owner and those onlookers think the meaning is. And while it’s an extreme case, it’s hardly a singular one. Probably we all send signals with products — your Birkin bag, my Levi’s, everybody else’s iPhone — that fly so wide of the mark, we’d be chagrined to learn just how differently the members of our invisible audience receive them. Probably we don’t want to know. And neither, I suspect, do Hummer owners.

Heaven.

Wow. Sound Clash.

KR + Mini Cooper = a venerated art style, brought to life on a new canvas.

Seeing Jay-Z, DJ Neil Armstrong and the Roc Boys rehearse this song before President Obama’s Inaugural Ball has to be one of the most motivational moments in my life. I haven’t heard the song “History” in several months. Just hearing it now threw me back to a cold rehearsal space in Jersey City, sitting on a couch, witnessing Hip-Hop history–before the suits and the ties and the cameras.

A powerful anthem for our nation–rapped by my favorite lyricist and scratched over by one of my best friends. I felt proud to be American again. I honestly just almost teared up hearing this song again. It was as if Obama had just been re-elected. Thank you again team H.O.V.A for allowing me to be a fly on the wall for the rehearsal of this performance. History.

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In search of victory, she keeps eluding me
If only we could be together momentarily
We can make love and make history
Why won’t you visit me? until she visit me
I’ll be stuck with her sister, her name is defeat
She gives me agony, so much agony
She brings me so much pain, so much misery
Like missing your last shot and falling to your knees
As the crowd screams for the other team
I practice so hard for this moment, victory don’t leave
I know what this means, I’m stuck in this routine
Whole new different day, same old thing
All I got is dreams, nobody else can see
Nobody else believes, nobody else but me
Where are you victory? I need you desperately
Not just for the moment, to make history
So now I’m flirting with death, hustling like a G
While victory wasn’t watching took chances repeatedly
As a teenage boy before acne, before I got proactiv I couldn’t face she
I just threw on my hoodie and headed to the street
That’s where I met success, we’d live together shortly
Now success is like lust, she’s good to the touch
She’s good for the moment but she’s never enough
Everybody’s had her, she’s nothing like V
But success is all I got unfortunately
But I’m burning down the block hoppin’ in and out of V
But something tells me that there’s much more to see
Before I get killed because I can’t get robbed
So before me success and death ménage
I gotta get lost, I gotta find V
We gotta be together to make history

Now victory is mine, it tastes so sweet
She’s my trophy wife, you’re coming with me
We’ll have a baby who stutters repeatedly
We’ll name him history, he’ll repeat after me
He’s my legacy, son of my hard work
Future of my past, he’ll explain who I be
Rank me amongst the greats, either 1, 2, or 3
If I ain’t number one then I failed you victory
Ain’t in it for the fame that dies within weeks
Ain’t in it for the money, can’t take it when you leave
I wanna be remembered long after you grieve
Long after I’m gone, long after I breathe
I leave all I am in the hands of history
That’s my last will and testimony
This is much more than a song, it’s a baby shower
I’ve been waiting for this hour, history you ours

Now that all the smoke is gone
And the battle’s finally won
Victory is finally ours
History, so long, so long
So long, so long

Sky -

This morning, Michelle and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news. At 6 a.m., we received word that I’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

But I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.

That is why I’ve said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won’t all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it’s recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

This award — and the call to action that comes with it — does not belong simply to me or my administration; it belongs to all people around the world who have fought for justice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of America, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a little better.

So today we humbly recommit to the important work that we’ve begun together. I’m grateful that you’ve stood with me thus far, and I’m honored to continue our vital work in the years to come.

Thank you,
President Barack Obama

Looks.

Places.

Palettes.

All for.

“Imagine a universe where internet leaks did not occur. Imagine this is the first time you’re reading and seeing these kicks. Please. It’ll make me feel better.” – Jeff Staple

Live like anything is possible. Parades on any day. Even if it’s just you.

Where creativity lives on and the suspense of the eventual makes the future much more sweet–if even bitter.

Where no matter where you’re from, everything is half full. A new star is born every day. We all have a fixed history in time.

And where the only thing that can make you sink is the weight that you put in your own life vest–or the weight that you decide not to be stronger than. Even the smallest of margins.

We all have to climb a ladder to be able to jump off the diving board once again. Ascension before true flight.

Jeff Koons at the Serpentine Gallery.

NEW YORK MINUTE poster pack by O.H.W.O.W.

KAWS x Interview Magazine.

NY Times Magazine 5th Anniversary Cover by Frank Gehry and others.

Creative spaces. Personal Spaces. Work Spaces. Retail Spaces. Leisure Spaces. NY. Paris. London. Milan. Beyond.

 The Selby.

Everything.

And the beat goes on.

In today’s barrage (read: persistent onslaught) of hyper-frenetic social media, I’ve been thinking about a way to try and make some sense out of how immediate, reductive, and transitory the exchange of information has become. Instant messaging has given way to texting, which, in turn, has birthed tweeting. And I don’t think that people are becoming robotic “outputers” of fragmented narratives–it’s more so the form of information exchange now, than the function. People think big–and today they just spurt small. Portion control: the Nutrisystem of information… 

And yet, I think that what’s more glaring now, more so than ever, is the short-lived notion of an individual’s legacy or lasting footprint on the world (carbon or otherwise). Aren’t our legacies just tweets when compared to the timeline of all history? Do we take ourselves too seriously? Or perhaps, not seriously enough? Are we inconsequential blips–or confined pockets of unquantifiable potential?

And I’m still not set, by any means, on how I feel about this. But I guess one way to look at it, is by taking into account a few ways that people are memorialized–how a memory of one’s life can be aggregated into a series, or a singular, relic of sorts, one that was created by them, or informed by those who remain after their passing.

Like Picasso’s drawings with a flashlight (as shot by Gjon Mili for Life Magazine), even the most luminescent of souls can at once be a blaze–and then seemingly, overnight, left in the fabric of the past. 

Of course there is the heartfelt goodbye blessing; the celebration of a lost life and the power that they left with us. Brooke Shields’ farewell speech to Michael Jackson was one of the most gut-wrenching speeches I have ever heard. Certainly, funerals are not very often made part of public discourse, or mass media to be catalogued on YouTube. So intriguing how this so private of a moment was made so public:

There are then too career-spanning retrospectives, curated glimpses in the cannon of a past artist’s creative record. DJ Soul’s recent tribute mixtape, celebrating the career of rapper Big L, certainly falls into this category (read: let’s take a trip, once again, down memory lane).

In some cases, even the relics of venerated artists, even some that have been re-erected, have too been replaced–as had the original–with a new work. The wheel keeps on turning, over and over… Os Gemeos’ “going over” Keith Haring’s memorial mural on Houston and Bowery is certainly a nod to even monuments being ephemeral. Not even a monument can be, or is intended to be, forever…

And the last type that I’m especially interested by are the ways in which some folks create self-referential ways of remembering themselves. The autobiography, the memoir.

Even Michael Jackson was memorialized–while he was alive–by Jeff Koons:

“I wanted to show Michael as a contemporary Christ figure: I wanted to give the viewer a sense of a spiritual authority…the type of adulation, the type of support that’s given to pop artists — this was the contemporary type of support that I thought that Christ would have received in his time”

In a much more “web 2.0″ way,  Tyler Brule, for example, recently interviewed, well, himself.

And some, like Terry Richardson, even erect statues of themselves–while they’re still living… an action figure for the lens that captures fame…all is fair game, in love and mem-war. 

I guess with all of our notes recorded in the digital world, we all have an RSS feed and a set of google alerts that will outlive our ability to add to them…

Ultimately, everything that you do in your life has the potential of being remembered in this digital age… choosing if you want to be memorable is now more deliberate than ever before… being recorded, however, is as much a given, and as fleeting an event, as a passing second in the annuls of time…  

I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change

I said if
You’re thinkin’ of
Being my brother
It don’t matter if you’re
Black or white

So listen to my heart
Lay your body next to mine
Let me fill you with my dreams
I can make you feel so right
And baby through the years
Gonna love you more each day
So I promise you tonight
That you’ll always be the lady in my life

Download the MJ tribute mixtape by DJ M.O.S here.

Jenny Holzer
Truisms (1977 – 79) and Essays (1979 – 82)

Cubism, Picasso, the reigns of Hitler and Mussolini, Surrealism, rampant alcoholism, the echoes of gambling halls, masochism and mortality, romance and sex…all from a man that, in his last interview, said “I painted to be loved.” You need to see this show, right now.

Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective
May 20, 2009–August 16, 2009
Special Exhibition Galleries, 2nd floor, the MET

And for good measure, here’s a lot of context…

From Jerry Saltz at NY Magazine:

To understand Bacon’s impact, look no further than the young Brits emulating him. Jake and Dinos Chapman place tortured figures in glass cases; Jenny Saville’s contorted Gargantuas are direct descendants of Bacon’s golems; Tracey Emin works with blood and guts; Sarah Lucas gives us spooks and deformities. Damien Hirst not only makes vitrines straight out of Bacon—he puts meat and carcasses in them. Like Dalí and Munch, Bacon is an artist we love when young. Tantalized by the urgency, angst, weirdness, blood, sex, and bodies, we think, That’s me! That’s how I feel!

From the MET:

The first major exhibition in New York in twenty years devoted to one of the most compelling painters of the twentieth century, Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective features some 130 works–sixty-five paintings and as many archival items from public and private collections from around the world–that span the entirety of the artist’s full and celebrated career. Marking the centenary of the artist’s birth in Dublin in 1909, the exhibition brings together the most significant works from each period of Bacon’s career, focusing on the key subjects and themes that run through his extraordinary creative output. The presentation affords the most comprehensive examination to date of Bacon’s sources and working processes, offering a reevaluation of the artist’s work in light of a range of new interpretations and archival materials that have emerged since his death in 1992.

From Art Daily:

In the 1960s, working in his classic style of much looser, colorful, and expressive painting, Bacon showed the human body exposed and violated as in, for example, Lying Figure, 1969 (Foundation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland). In the following decade he increasingly used narrative, autobiography, and myth to mediate ideas about violence and emotion, as in the 1971 painting In Memory of George Dyer (Foundation Beyeler) and Triptych Inspired by the Orestia of Aeschylus, 1981 (Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo, Norway).

From the NY Times:

Entirely self-taught, Francis Bacon emerged in 1945 as a major force in British painting. He rose to prominence over the subsequent 45 years, securing his reputation as one of the seminal artists of his generation. With a predilection for shocking imagery, Bacon’s oeuvre was dominated by emotionally charged depictions of the human body that are among the most powerful images in the history of art.

The exhibition’s loosely chronological structure will trace critical themes in Bacon’s work and explore his philosophy about mankind and the modern condition with visually arresting examples. The earliest group of works, from the 1940s and ’50s, focuses on the animalistic qualities of man, including: paintings of heads with snarling mouths (Head I, 1947–1948, The Metropolitan Museum of Art); images of men as pathetic and alone (Study for a Portrait, 1953, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany); and the human figure portrayed as base and bestial (Figures in a Landscape, 1956, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, England). The exhibition also features numerous versions of Bacon’s iconic studies (1949–1953) after Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X (1650). Mortality is addressed directly in his last works (Triptych, 1991, The Museum of Modern Art, New York).

His contorted figures and portraits, his screaming popes and apes, his flanks of beef and crime-scene gore, and his wrestling lovers bring to mind any number of video-melodramatists, most quickly Bill Viola, reflecting a taste for hokey humanism, spectacle and sensationalism that often seems pervasive today. His emphasis on loaded narrative over form, which can make his art seem formulaic and repetitive, is now nearly epidemic

…(here’s to late bloomers!):

Bacon later said that he regretted having wasted so much time while young. Instead of learning his craft, he was often drinking, gambling, sleeping around and having a brutal affair with a violent, alcoholic, drug-addicted sadist named Peter Lacy that sometimes made his friends fear for his life.

Mos Def and Talib Kweli produced the album that I’ve probably listened to the most in my life: <<Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star>>. Seriously, this album got the most spins in my car, in my CD player, and on my 1200’s…HANDS DOWN, no payola.

What more do you want? Streets, women, and Cosmology (capital C). Yes, thank you.

And my favorite track has to be “Respiration”…

Chorus from “Respiration”…

So much on my mind that I can’t recline
Blastin’ holes in the night ’til she bled sunshine
Breathe in, inhale vapors from bright stars that shine
Breathe out, weed smoke retrace the skyline
Heard the bass ride out like an ancient mating call
I can’t take it y’all, I can feel the city breathin’
Chest heavin’, against the flesh of the evening
Sigh before we die like the last train leavin’

And (drum roll please) Black Star are reuniting. Finally!

Big respect to my friend Corey Smyth who managed the Black Star movement via his artist management firm, Blacksmith (launched in 1991,yes, 1991). Keep the dream alive, Corey!

Peace to my main man Kenshin at Rocksmith Tokyo for producing the tees commemorating this regrouping…

1,2,3, it’s Mos Def and Talib Kweli.

Check out more info on the collaborative tee drop here.

WE THE LIONS / YOU THE CHEETAHS

Mastery of Mantras in Futura Bold Oblique. Declaritive. Iconic. Empowering. I’m really frustrated that I missed her show in NYC last month. Yes she created “this” style. Barbara Kruger, here’s to what you accomplished, yes, Pre-Digital… You and George Lois need to have a kid, please.

From the NY Times on her recent show at Skarstedt Gallery:

“Truth through advertising” could be a blanket title for much of Barbara Kruger’s art from the 1980s, which used the stripped-down graphs and punched-out language of commercial promotion to deliver political warnings and admonitions. The phrase “Your manias become science” stutters across a photograph of a mushroom cloud; the spaced-apart words “Your body is a battleground” nail down the image of a bifurcated female face.

Ms. Kruger came to this work from several directions. In the early 1960s she studied at Parsons School of Design; Diane Arbus was one of her teachers. From school she quickly became the chief designer at Mademoiselle but at the same time created covers for small-press political books and pursued an interest in poetry. The 44 collages in the Skarstedt show bear evidence of all these interests.

Although we’ve come to expect large scale from Ms. Kruger — billboard-size paintings, gallery-filling installations — everything in this show is small, roughly the size of a book or magazine page. Each piece takes the form of old-style cut-and-paste mechanicals, long since made obsolete by computer software but once assembled by hand using printed galleys, an X-Acto knife and paste. Many of Ms. Kruger’s best-known pieces are enlarged versions of these originals,

Some people complain of feeling hectored and bullied by Ms. Kruger’s work, but it’s hard to tell why from what’s here. Hers is a calculatedly theatrical form of aggression: a kind of performance through pictures and texts. The prevailing tone is a sardonic, noirish Arbusian humor, with melodramatic pronouncements set against often outlandish period images. As is true of Joseph Cornell’s assemblages, many of Ms. Kruger’s images appear to date back to the era of her childhood and project a kind of Hitchcockian version of cold war paranoia.

That said, the phrases she uses can be moving. The most resonant of them — “Your comfort is my silence,” “Who will write the history of tears,” “Admit nothing. Blame everyone. Be bitter” — recall the plain-spoken, politically probing poetry that Adrienne Rich was writing in the 1970s and ’80s and that Muriel Rukeyser was writing before her. Ms. Rich’s poems from that time, with their stark, passionate discontinuities, have retained their potency. So has Ms. Kruger’s art.
HOLLAND COTTER

Mark Dean Veca is one of the most imaginative artists in the world; the characters and universes that he creates are stunning. Check out a recap of sorts for his show “Phantasmagoria” that was created and exhibited at Otis College’s Ben Maltz Gallery at the end of 2008; he also produced a retrospective show at UCSD at the top of 2009 that can be seen here (via Supertouch).

Installation discussion…

Installation walk through…

Installation time lapse…

And yes streetwear kids he made this too…hooray.

Masamichi Katayama’s design firm WONDERWALL creates the world’s premier retail environments; the experiential spaces that Katayama and his brain trust produce are nothing short of mesmerizing. Have you been in a BAPE or Uniqlo store, perhaps even a Dean and Deluca in Japan? Yeah, that’s all them. Watch the above video from Tyler Brule and BBC and check the photos below. Everytime I feel like I know what to expect from them, they flip the script entirely: they suck me right back in. No one on the planet knows how to use reflective metal surfaces like WONDERWALL. I’d love to take a spin in the swiriling breezes of their design vacum…

From the Wonderwall site:

Founded in 2000, Masamichi Katayama, founder of interior design firm Wonderwall, elicits an uninhibited sense of energy towards design even in Japan, where architecture and interior design is known for being one of the most exhilarating in the world. Katayama’s interest in design has always been broad, respecting conventional and traditional aspects of architecture, while believing in breaking boundaries. A “total concept” designer, Katayama’s intensions are focused in creating an environment that would touch the subconscious of the consumer and occupant.

While the firm is best known for retail design, Wonderwall has extensively built a wide range of pursuits in design including architectural direction, and product design. His work has expanded to Japan, Hong Kong, China, Russia, France, England and the United states. In 2007, Katayama was honoured as the ‘Interior Design Firm of the Year’ through The Great Indoors Award, a biennial international interior design award. (The Netherlands/Mr. Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of International Jury).

In 2008, his second monograph “Wonderwall Masamichi Katayama Projects No.2″ (Frame Publishers) was launched in September at specialty boutique colette in Paris, which was redesigned by Wonderwall, followed by the rest of Europe, the United States, and then Japan.