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Live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is “Stag by Sharkey’s,” (1909) perhaps George Bellows’ (1882-1925) most famous painting.  Filled with action, movement, and perfect lighting, the painting depicts a boxing scene that is as graceful and beautiful as it is raw, real, and violent.

Bellows died at the young age of 43 as a painter part of the Aschan School. The artistic school was known for its rejection of French impressionism and glorification of the American West in favor of portraying the real disarray of new American cities. Bellows in particular depicted the “grittiness, violence, and masculinity” of New York City.  However, throughout the remainder of his career, Bellows experimented with other painting subjects, varying from standard portrait types exhibiting piercing and frightening eyes, to landscape and an extreme use of light contrast, perhaps to portray his perspective on the disparity between light and darkness within the new city.  In personal opinion, his earliest works of the budding city are his most invigorating and impactful on the viewer.

The scene of “Stag by Sharkey’s” depicts a turn of the century illegal fight club in New York. At the time, prize fighting was illegal, so men turned to underground alternatives for prize fighting.

Upon live view, Bellow’s painting is a hundred times more powerful than its digital replica. The command of Bellow’s rough and thick brush strokes reach out to the viewer and pulls him into 1909. The painting places the viewer in the third row of the fight, amidst the crowd, the noise, and the sweat. While both men are fighting each other, their grace in movement resembles a choreographed dance. The man on the left’s leg is extended, almost at point, and

continues through the arch of his back. The man on the right reflects a mirrored curve to his back, as they meet in collision in the center.  These lines are also present in the muscle detail of each man; strong and graceful pieces that work together to generate a force much larger than the individual.

Standing in front of this painting elicits real emotion. It is the perfect balance between light and darkness, roughness and grace, detail and ambiguity.    It tells the story of a dirty and real New York, filled with excitement and uncertainty. While the city faces accusations of gentrification and a loss of its once gritty backbone, Bellows reminds us of the raw backbone of the city, and how it is perfectly balanced and beautiful in all of its glory.

Another artist this week!

This time, artist Bronwyn Lundberg who recently grabbed headlines for the following piece of art she composed. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. It is indeed The Last Supper and the lovely Ellen DeGeneres in the  infamous Bjork swan dress is indeed the Jesus of the table.

Lundberg, a lesbian artist, upon having a discussion with a friend about how to decorate her bed, came up with the idea of redoing The Last Supper with a lesbian theme. Yeah, I don’t get how she got that idea either…

Needless to say, this piece has ruffled some feathers. Lundberg’s response:

I personally don’t think this is sacrilegious in the least but of course, there are those who would see Lundberg dead for defiling a classic religious piece. Hey, humorless nitwits will always be humorless nitwits, eh? Another Lundberg piece: The Creation of Neil.

And what’s an article about potentially blasphemous art without Piss Christ, the Andres Serrano photograph of a crucifix submerged in his urine? Here’s a copy for good luck.

When I came across this piece a few years ago (thanks to Wikipedia, I’m sure), I didn’t know how to respond. I’m not Christian yet there was still the shock. A crucifix…? In… pee…?! At the same time, I didn’t really see anything offensive about this picture (read: not Christian). To me, it was clearly Serrano making a statement on what the organized church had become and its values compared to Christ’s values, etc, etc. It was a statement of fact to me. Like a number or a scientific truth I learn in class. It did not strike me as the statement of a (very controversial) opinion, most likely because I shared that opinion, thus making it no longer an opinion but a concrete truth in my eyes.

Is it the same thing again? Am I being cray cray when I think Lundberg’s isn’t offensive in the least? It’s fun. And cute. Ellen as Jesus? Ha ha. It captured my attention for, like, an entire five minutes. I wrote a blog post about it.

Religion + politics + art = volatile beauty

In case you wanna check out Lundberg: here’s the Huffington Post interview with her about the Ellen painting. And here’s the link to her  website.

Peace.

Piss.

Ha ha. Okay. Bye.

I was in Clarkston. I was in St. George. I was in Las Vegas (airport…).

None of them are quite like Ann Arbor. I live in this weird not-city city where hippies dance outside, maybe-professors play weird instruments on the diag, hipsters angstily smoke through campus, and I model-walk down State St. all while my circle scarf blows in someone else’s face.

But I thrive here. In this magical haven/hell.

I got back from break, unloaded all of my belongings, and then blared Bastille mash-ups while I lit incense, steeped some herbal tea (the one instance my life isn’t caffeinated), and read Hardt’s book on Deleuze. Some people have the gall to tell me that I live a delusional life that once I leave Ann Arbor I will never be able to function in society.

And to them I raise my wedding-ring finger, which in my book is as dirty an insult as it gets.

This city builds people who will run corporations—sure—who will cure cancer—woo-hoo—and who will build really tall buildings—gasp. This city also creates those that will be on Broadway, write the next Howl, and describe this post-postmodern/whateverthehellyouwanttocallit society we live in. It creates people who make culture and those that destroy culture. And thankfully, all so humbly, I hope to leave here creating and critiquing “culture.”

Or ontological variations thereof.

It’s also way more than this. Ann Arbor is an emotional feeling. You can’t deny that pulling off of M-23 and heading your way to Main Street doesn’t bring a certain joy to your heart (a certain burning to your bosom—which is often 3am pizza). It’s the feeling walking across the diag in a herd of people and trying to run one floor down Dennison and almost being late to class. It’s the feeling where I have a community of friends I can turn to and a community of strangers I will just maybe meet.

But let’s not get utopian too fast.

Conceptualizing much on a deep level on any type of plane is still difficult. I still scream to myself on the streets and still see violent acts of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ableism, ageism. I feel uncomfortable walking home alone whilst wearing beadazzled short shorts and for good reason—people throw insults like/with objects from cars. And I’m privileged in all ways except for identifying as gay. How would it feel to not have all of this privilege?

Ann Arbor allows for conversation. In some spaces a safe dialogue is all I want and usually get. In classrooms I can actively debate those that I unapologetically oppose. In hookah bars and coffee shops and discotheques I can converse. Above all, Ann Arbor is a place that I can talk to people and usually be heard (even if it is only myself that will ever listen).

My thoughts are “free” here.

But it’s not just about me. There are so many poetry readings to go to where people’s words, if but for an instant, are free to be heard. We have art galleries (UMMA to unknown) that have Monet and have porn folded into paper sculptures—images are free to be seen. We have boom boxes and spoken word and symphony orchestras and jazz combos and acapella where notes are free to be felt.

In the most cliché of ways: Ann Arbor is a place where the cage is semi-loosened. The bars are bent just enough so I can stretch my limbs. And it feels so nice to be home.

It’s difficult to lay a finger on how Bartholomäus Traubeck’s deceivingly simple “Years” manages to be so curiously evocative. The piece, quite essentially, consists of a modified record player that reads slices of wood, translating year ring data into music. Grain and ring density and color and width are converted into piano tones— every slice of wood will, then, produce unique music. There are years and years of history ingrained in any given cross-section, decades, perhaps even centuries. Tree rings reveal an entire chronology of climatic phenomena, of course. But “Years” acknowledges that data and continues outwards; it is a passage of years, a flow of time, the gathering of individual events that become trivialized within the sheer scale of the entirety.

What is interesting about Traubeck’s piece is the relationship between the concrete and the abstract, the input and the output. Reading yearly rings is on the whole fairly objective, and once the translation has been coded, the process is straightforward, transparent. Yet how the sure bts soccer tips.com artist chooses to make the translation is entirely within his control. What qualities in the cross-section will become what qualities in the music? How far, which way? The relationship is arbitrary, up to the artist’s discretion. As a critic succinctly phrases, “the design object is at once material— an interactive sculpture— and immaterial, interpreting an inanimate ‘fossil’ into arguably the most abstract art form,” music.

The finished product is deep, sparse, heavy. There is a certain dignity about it, something in its air that is greater in scale than a record player and a bit of tree. Our ears pick up the sounds, sometimes nearly careful, sometimes discordant when it hits a knot in the wood, and join them into something conceptual, something not physical. We’re reading history, reading time, constructing a tentatively cohesive narrative— only not with our eyes, but through our ears.

The other day I finally did what I’ve been meaning to do for a long time – take off all of the music on my iPhone and replace it all with christmas music.

I consider myself to be fairly fond of Christmas music. I am always excited for Thanksgiving to be over so that the music can start to come in and I can enjoy myself for the month of December. It’s part guilty pleasure, part fascination, and part nostalgia.

So needless to say I’ve been listening to a lot of Christmas music, particularly on my walks to and from class. It’s given me a lot of time to really think about what it is that I’m listening to, why I like it so much and why it has injected itself into our mass culture to the extent that it has.

Within the whole of Christmas music, I have a good deal of fuzzy memories. I remember the family gatherings during the holiday breaks, I remember a christmas tree and for some reason I remember being warm. Very warm. The warmth that is stifling and unbreathable, and yet at the same time entirely safe. I can’t breathe, but I don’t want to breathe.

But to dig deeper than pure nostalgia, the music fascinates me because it is so ingrained in our cultural consciousness. Pop music does this to an extent, too, but not with the width of Christmas Music. Where else in our culture do so many people share a knowledge of such an extensive songbook? People who don’t celebrate Christmas, people who do, the old, the young, the different. We all know these songs. And (I’m sure) some people don’t want to know the songs. But you can’t avoid them. They are everywhere. Christmas has invaded our culture so much that Sava’s has a huge Christmas tree up and doesn’t stop playing Christmas music and I don’t think twice about it. Christmas is an institution, a huge monolith of power and cultural presence. Christmas is about values and about togetherness but Christmas is also about the pressure of culture. It is about commercialization and capitalism and faux-values preached by public figures and about this ambiguous large man in a red suit who invades your home, steals your food, leaves gifts, and runs away with magical flying deer. It’s an absurd institution that is entirely and brazenly secular, despite its intense religious connotation for many, many people. Christmas is an institution born of religion, but that has now gone to college and rejected its parents and got a moehawk because it thought it was edgy.

Of course, Christmas means something different for everyone and everything. But. You know.

And then there is the music. An emblem of the season but also an institution within itself. An exclusive group of accepted holiday songs that are covered and repeated and sung and caroled and mutilated and ripped and sewn back together. It is music, it is the man, it is false nostalgia and it is real nostalgia. It is an immovable obelisk of money and fame and real passion and fake passion. Christmas music is the victim and the perpetrator of its own bastardization. And that makes me love it.

I think of the new Sufjan Stevens Christas box set and its epitome – the magical song “The Christmas Unicorn.”

I’m a Christmas unicorn
In a uniform made of gold
With a billy goat beard
And a sorceror’s shield
And mistletoe on my nose

Oh I’m a Christian holiday
I’m a symbol of original sin
I’ve a pagan tree and magical wreath
And a bowtie on my chin

Oh I’m a pagan heresy
I’m a tragic-al Catholic shrine
I’m a little bit shy with a lazy eye
And a penchant for sublime

For you’re a Christmas unicorn
I have seen you on the beat
You may dress in the human uniform, child
But I know you’re just like me
I’m a Christmas Unicorn! (Find the Christmas Unicorn!)
You’re a Christmas Unicorn too!

It’s all right. I love you.

And to all, a good night.