The Wrong Idea at the Right Time: An Interview with Bill Wheelock

by Drew Martin, with Bill Wheelock

Bill Wheelock is a Los Angeles based conceptual artist and the author of The Wrong Idea: Maurizio Cattelan in the Economy of Attention. I recently reached out to him to discuss Maurizio Cattelan's media ubiquity.

Drew:
It seems that everywhere I turn, there is an article about Maurizio Cattelan because of his Guggenheim retrospective. So I thought it would be a good time to finally get around to reading your The Wrong Idea: Maurizio Cattelan in the Economy of Attention. You wrote it in 2005. How has it aged?

Bill:
I think the concepts are all very much present, only some of the facts have changed. Immediately after finishing the book, The Wrong Gallery moved from the Chelsea NY streets to the Tate Modern, which drastically altered the context. I had written that the Wrong Gallery was one third an object in and of itself; one third a frame for other objects, and one third an institution. The move to the Tate crystallized its state as an object. The pathos seemed to have left it in the revered halls of the Tate. It is harder to suspend one's disbelief with all that validation.

There has never been a place for a commercial gallery actually within a museum, although there have been some recent strange bedfellows (such as Jeffrey Deitch’s position as director of LA MoCA). My book opens with discussion of a recycled Cattelan piece; he claimed to have buried an old sculpture, Kitakyushu, 2000, under the floor at The Whitney Biennial. It will be interesting to see how, if at all, these two iterations of the same piece could hang in his “All” retrospective.

Drew:
I was not sure how to read your book because I typically fall into the mindset of the writer but here I realized you might want to revise sections so I kept a distance. That being said, I liked it a lot. I started it one evening and finished it the following afternoon. I am a very slow reader but I found it engaging and it seemed very relevant. What prompted you to write it?

Bill:
It was actually my Master’s thesis rewritten to remove most of the boring academic structure. I am drawn to his defiance, and was myself defiant against my thesis committee, who insisted it was a poor career move to focus on a living artist. I suppose to a monograph author, that may be good advice. The artist could openly object to a critic’s opinion or drastically change course. Cattelan has threatened to quit art all together after his retrospective, so they may have been right. I don't consider my book a monograph. I could have chosen any number of Duchamp’s heirs. Cattelan was the last one I proposed whom my thesis committee were willing to accept, three months before graduation.

Drew:
From the title, I thought you were going to write a criticism of Cattelan but you have an affection for him, as you do his influencing predecessors; Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Joseph Bueys, Piero Manzoni and Yves Klein to name a few. What is the draw for you to this kind of artist?

Bill:
All of the above artists play with more than just craft or concept but also the preconceived notions of what the viewers expect to see in an artwork. Although Zen is a different tradition altogether, there is something of an ego-smashing proposition involved for the viewer of this type of conceptual gamesmanship. The environment has changed from Duchamp, Bueys and Manzoni’s war-influenced Dadaism to a more economic absurdity practiced by the likes of the Madison Avenue artists of the American 80s or the Derilique art from the Un-Monumental 90s. Cattelan’s oeuvre plays a comfortable counterpoint to a post economic meltdown universe (toasted economelt anyone?). The book’s first chapter is in empirical first person because I do feel a physical and emotional reaction to works so in tune and on time, however conceptual their form.

Drew:
What do you think the cynical prankster really thinks about art deep down inside, beyond the clowning around the art world for which he is paid?

Bill:
Budweiser’s best ad just reads “Who cares if they’re real.” If they touch you, they are real enough. All glibness aside, most comedians are also depressive and contemplative offstage. I give him the benefit of the doubt.

Drew:
And how do you think this affects how art is taught to children and is appreciated by people not involved in this game that Duchamp began?

Bill:
The Duchamp game is an adult game. Some educators think all art should be public for all ages. I admire those who step up to the challenge and attempt to teach this liberally, but generally disagree with it. A child CAN drink a fancy red wine, but to appreciate it one needs to know what you have your hands on. Most children have a naive and limited idea of the economic environment. I can’t tell you what to the prerequisites are to get the most out of a work of meta-art, but I can say it is a critic’s responsibility to contextualize unfamiliar work. Absurdity can be most definitely taught to students of any age, so one could approach Cattelan from that direction. Trouble is when you explain humor, you tend to kill the timing.

Drew:
What do you think the near future of art has in store? And more importantly, what role do you think art could have in society that is different from the past and today?

Bill:
Well, we are in an economic depression, which is usually good for creative arts. Highly educated people have a lot of time on their hands, as intellectual employment is tough to find. I expect there will be some resurgence of craft and labor intensive work that has been lacking in the last fifty years or so. What is different is that the work of an artist has become a mainstream lifestyle and not freakishly marginal, so we are unlikely to see too many Elvis-famous heroes emerge, instead collective movements and participatory social commentaries like we are seeing in the Occupy movement are arising. People are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore, but they don’t seem really sure where exactly to go yet. Leadership seems scarce. My own crystal ball is still busted.

Drew:
You write about art and you make art. Is there a time and place for each with some kind of loose schedule or is it more of a leap frog in which you exhaust your interests/energy for one before you engage the other?

Bill:
I tend to follow my enthusiasm from project to project, without too much discipline, but once committed to seeing something through, I’d be lost unless some kind of structure or deadline is imposed. Technology permits both writing and photography to be built on the computer. Working on both feel like the same kind of weaving of patterns into the weft of the web. Blogging has been a tremendous help for me. The tools we have today allow no differentiation between the action of writing, film editing or image production. Plus, space and materials are practically free! I rely on Dropbox, iCloud and the blogosphere to sneak a bit of work in whenever I can get away with it. I edited photos recently while in a doctor’s waiting room, and later that day blogged them in line at the DMV with my phone.

Drew:
What have you been up to since our last interview? What projects have you been doing?

Bill:
Along with The Hairy Prone Companion, I have started a blog called HafoSafo identifying local news around my neighborhood. Lately I am engaged in a top secret book project for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) that I can’t talk about or I won’t finish (see former comment on structure & discipline...). I am privileged to be working full time digitally photographing The J. Paul Getty Museum’s tremendous collection of over 150,000 - and growing - photographic prints as my day job. I read a lot and try to brag about it on Goodreads and am also hopelessly addicted to audio books. I may try to record and upload a free version of Ivan Goncharov's "Oblomov" to LibriVox.org. When all else fails, I work on motorcycles- which I find tremendously comforting as there is always and only one right way to do everything.

I also interviewed Bill in the summer of 2010: Always Thinking: An Interview with Bill Wheelock.

Lady In Red

by Drew Martin

This past Sunday my parents and I stopped for lunch in Washington, D.C. at a cafeteria in the National Gallery of Art. It was a welcomed break during our long drive from Richmond, Virginia to our respective towns in northern New Jersey.

My father had recently finished reading David McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris ("about young Americans — aspiring artists, doctors and writers — who went to study and work in Paris between 1830 and 1900, then returned home to make their marks") so we viewed Gallery of the Louvre painted by the American Inventor Samuel F. B. Morse (morse code) during his stay in Paris.

We whisked through a few other galleries in the museum. My longest pause was by Antonio Canova's Reclining Naiad (1824) but the work that really caught my eye just before we exited was Study of Lilia (1887) by Carolus-Duran (Charles Auguste Émile Durand). It is so red, so mysterious. Even after 125 years it is so fresh. Lilia's youth and beauty radiates from her pale neck. It love it!

After Life

by Drew Martin

There is a touching scene in the film My Architect when the director, Nathaniel Kahn, rollerblades around his father's genius Salk Institute, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla, California. Its architect, Louis Kahn, designed some of the most intriguing buildings in the 20th century. Oddly, he also kept three families. Nathaniel seldom saw his father; the film is a search for him in the architecture he left behind.

The rollerblading scene is special because Nathaniel is a grown man but the institute's large, central plaza and his carefree movements offer us a scene of a father and son playing together.

I witnessed such a moment firsthand this past weekend. I was in Richmond, Virginia for a great uncle's funeral service. This patriarch had a house at a creek off the James River where there are huge family gatherings every Fourth of July and other legendary parties. The main attraction was always waterskiing. The service seemed incomplete but afterwards we all changed out of our formal attire and drove down to "The Creek." One of the granddaughters and the only son of this man put on wetsuits and took to the water, skiing elegantly up and down the creek, which has an exotic southern look worthy of alligators.

The son is a 65 year old man but I still remember him as the young man who patiently taught me to waterski when I was a kid. On the single ski board on Saturday he looked like a teenager, cutting through the wake, reaching down to slice the mirror-smooth creek water with his fingertips. It might seem odd to waterski on the day of your father's funeral but everyone there witnessing this understood why it was important.

A body may be in an urn or coffin but the spirit of a person is unbound and everywhere. My relative, skimming over the surface of the creek in the golden glow of the sunset seemed to be immersed in his father, pulled by his father.

Mixing It Up: The House of Pancakes

by Drew Martin

I do not know what I am more amazed by, pancakes or concrete. They may not seem like kindred (inanimate) souls but they have a lot in common.

Pancake mix and cement are dry, uninteresting powders. They seem more like the end product than something with such great potential. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

But then you add water to cement and water or milk to pancake mix and you stir them a bit and they both transform into uninteresting goop, neither tasting good.

And then the magic happens, you drop some batter on a hot skillet and a sizzling circle forms and soon you have a moist, steamy cake to bathe in maple syrup and fill your stomach. You pour concrete into a form and in a matter of days you have a rock-hard structure.

It is amazing one can taste so good and the other can be so strong.

The Brother From Another Planet

by Drew Martin

I recently watched The Brother From Another Planet (1984) for the first time. Despite a lot of bad acting and an almost unwatchable ending, I really like what it was trying to do. If any movie deserves a good remake, it is this one.

This film is a kind of sci-fi take on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Both main characters end up in Harlem, which simultaneously rejects and embraces them, and both stories are rooted in the American slave narrative.

Aside from having padded feet with three horny toes, the brother, who is a runaway alien slave, resembles a man of African descent. He is pursued by two white-guy aliens referred to as men in black, who are the predecessors to the agents in The Matrix.

The beginning of the film is fantastic. The first scene is inside the capsule of an alien starship speeding towards Earth. Joe Morton plays the sole, panicky cosmonaut. The minimal, cheap effects actually work really well. There are a few beeping lights, some kind of illuminated extraterrestrial script and a lot of splicing back and forth to the anxious Morton.

The music in this scene (and peppered throughout the movie) is Caribbean steel drum, which is a perfect sound to give the pummeling of the metal capsule as it tumbles down, especially because of the increased tempo. It is a playful sound that makes the tense scene quite edgy.

For a brief moment we see a clear, evening sky. A blip flashes across it like a shooting star and the brother splashes down in the New York harbor.

With the Statue of Liberty in the background he crawls up onto Ellis Island. He is dripping wet and profusely bleeding because he lost a leg in the crash. The stump is quickly mended with energy from his hand and the lower leg and foot grow back by morning. The brother possesses such healing powers, which he uses to earn some cash by fixing broken electronic devices, particularly video game kiosks. One of the treats of the film is getting a glimpse of where we were with computer graphics over a quarter of a century ago.

In addition to the slave narrative and a subtheme about drugs, this is definitely a insightful film about communication.

The brother cannot speak. I do not know if this is a limitation of his species or that he was permanently silenced as a slave (I gathered the latter). In the end of the film, the brother meets other runaways and they are all dumb. The white pursuers speak and have some kind of screeching sound they make when they are agitated.

Despite the inability to talk, the brother understands multiple languages and, more importantly, can retrieve past conversations embedded in objects. At the abandoned Ellis Island Immigration Center, the brother is overwhelmed by a cacophony of voices/languages when he touches the interior surfaces of the building. A column in a subway station recalls the screams of a woman pushed to her death on the tracks. A discarded newspaper is of interest of him not because of the headlines or photographs but because he can retrieve the dialogue of a man who was holding it. All objects for this alien are saturated with past sounds. He reacts to seats and walls that silently witnessed tragic events as if he has touched a hot iron skillet.

When the brother wants to track a drug dealer, he actually removes his eyeball and leaves it behind in a planter to record the man's movements. He later retrieves his eye and pops it back into its socket and sees a playback of the events in his mind. In another moment he takes out his eyeball and places it in the hand of a corporate man dealing in drugs in order to show him what he witnessed first hand, the dead body of a young punk who overdosed with this man's junk.

One of my favorite scenes is when the brother first sees a wall in Harlem with graffiti. It is as if he is confused by what it is trying to say, assuming it is meant for communication beyond tagging. Finally, he finds some red, scribbled graffiti that he recognizes as a sign of his people. He cuts open the palm of his hand and leaves a message at that site with his own blood.

The film would have worked better without a lot of the heavy-handed social commentary because the best scenes are of this alien brother trying to make sense of his new world. He is constantly processing his environment.

His first mistake is to eat fruit off a stand without paying for it and he is chased away. When he observes how money is exchanged for goods, he returns to the same shop, takes money out of the register and tries to pay for more fruit only to be chased off again, not understanding his expanded crime.

The Most Important Man in the World

by Drew Martin

This past weekend I watched a fascinating documentary, Bill Cunningham New York. It is about this 80-something-year-old fashion photographer for The New York Times. It is of course about clothes and fashion, New York and The New York Times, but more importantly it is about loneliness and being part of society's bigger picture.

What might be considered a sacrifice of lovers and family for an unfettered creative working life seems more like a substitution and a fair exchange for someone who loves what he does. Cunningham is a loner but he spends his days surrounded by millions of people, documenting their styles and being adored for his instinctive understanding of fashion. For most of his career (and all of the film) he lived in a tiny artist studio at Carnegie Hall, sleeping on a cot between his filing cabinets (part of the film is about his being evicted). He did not have a kitchen or bathroom in the studio. He ate out for every meal on the cheap and used the hallway bathroom on his floor. When discussing the possibility of a future living space having more amenities he laughs,

"Who the hell wants a kitchen and a bathroom?!"

For transportation, he gets around on a classic Schwinn. He says the one he is riding is his 29th; the previous 28 were stolen.

In the end of the documentary Cunningham is asked about his personal life. He says he never had a romantic relationship, sobs to himself, and then answers the next question about church; he regularly goes because he admits he needs it. He adds that when he used to attend as a kid, all he did was look at women's hats.

When asked the first question, he suggests it is a more specific inquiry about his sexuality but skirts the topic as something that was not discussed in his upbringing. It is a heart-wrenching moment. As for relationships, he says he did not have time and it was not on his mind but that he is also human. It is an amazing idea that someone who spends his day just a thin wrapping of fabric away from a world of fleshy bodies has never opened the presents.

In the end, Cunningham talks about honesty. To play a straight game in New York, he says is like Don Quixote fighting windmills. It was a welcomed analogy because throughout the documentary I kept thinking of Cervantes' line "The road is better than the inn."

What we learn of his honesty is that money and perks are something he shuns. At a Lincoln Center gala we see him turning down an offer for food. He thanks the host and hurries off exclaiming "I eat with my eyes!" This discipline is more than declining the temptation of being wined and dined, he does not even accept a glass of water at such an occasion when he is on assignment for the New York Times so as to not compromise his position. Keeping a distance, he says, allows him to be more objective.

Although Cunningham has dedicated his life to documenting fashion, he does not give the impression of a workaholic. He is good-spirited, easy-going and his craft comes naturally so you entirely believe him when he says it is not work but pleasure. What might be simply stubbornness of another man his age is really his determined vision.

There are delightful scenes of him working with a Times layout artist half his age, who he calls a lumberjack from southern New Jersey. In one interaction, Cunningham comments on the dress and pose of an elegant New Yorker he had photographed at an evening event who they are placing in a layout. Cunningham likens her to "a John Singer Sargent painting"...the lumberjack fumbles a confused response not understanding the reference, which is specific to Sargent's scandalous Madame X, a larger-than-life painting from 1884 that damaged the reputation of the Parisian socialite, Madame Pierre Gautreau, and spurred Sargent's departure from France.

At an awards ceremony for the National Order of the Legion of Honour of France, Cunningham is decorated as an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters but spends most of the time running around taking pictures. One attendee remarks to him how funny this is and he gleefully responds,

"You think I would miss a good picture?!"

At the ceremony, the decoration medal is pinned to Cunningham's blue worker's jacket. Whenever I saw him riding around Manhattan or scanning crowds at galas in his royal-blue smock, I thought it was a printer's jacket from New York's bygone printing era but he explains in the film while on a fashion week trip in Paris that it is a French street sweeper's jacket, which he wears because it is inexpensive and has pockets.

The footage of Paris immediately follows Cunningham's remarks to the documentary film crew in New York that there is no way they are going to follow him to France for the events. Fortunately they did because there is a priceless scene of him trying to get into a fashion show. He humbly holds out his press pass to a twenty-something woman with a clipboard. She is not very helpful and dismisses him. In a minute an older man comes over, takes him by the arm and informs the woman,

"This is the most important man in the world."

This is not far from the truth in the fashion world. Vogue's Anna Wintour charmingly says in the film that everyone gets dressed "for Bill" and that he takes one or two pictures when he sees something he likes and when he does not bother it is "death." It is not that he commands that kind of power but his reaction to what is stylish is so immediate and unfiltered that it comes out as the inarguable truth.

In Paris, Cunningham crosses paths with Anna Piaggi, a fashion columnist for Vogue. He says she is the best subject to photograph in all of Europe and is why he goes to Paris. He calls her a poet with clothes.

He definitely knows who's who but not the modern celebrities since he does not go to the movies or have a television. When they pass by and he does not take their pictures, he says he has overheard people say he must be the dumbest one in the crowd. He explains that even if he recognizes a person he will only shoot her clothes if she is wearing something interesting. He says he could never be a paparazzi - tormenting people, and that what he does must be approached "discretely and quietly. Invisible is the word."

Cunningham speaks of Paris fashion week as a school that educates the eye and during his decoration speech says,

"I'm not interested in celebrities with their free dresses. I am interested in clothes."

Some scenes of this documentary are interviews with him from previous decades. In one piece he talks about how the wider world perceives fashion as frivolity but defends,

"...the point is; fashion is armor to survive the reality of everyday life. I don't think you could do away with it. It would be like doing away with civilization."

About his craft he says,

"It's not photography. I mean any real photographer would say, "He's a fraud! Well they're right. I am just about capturing what I see and documenting what I see."

Click here to view the trailer for Bill Cunningham New York

Gay Poodle Stalker

by Drew Martin

Perhaps the heavy metal chains of slaves and beasts of burden have been broken but people still want ownership of and obedience from humans and animals. Some roles have changed only in name; maid to cleaner. Sometimes all it takes is a possessive pronoun. My favorite is "My architect..." instead of "The architect who designed the addition to my house..." because it is exclusive and establishes a hierarchy. This pyramid is constructed every day by everyone...the toy dog as a living accessory, the gay friend as supplemental mate who really listens. The problem with all of this is that the singular focus and one-way attitude flattens the dimensions and limits the possibilities of the other.

The newest of these is the "stalker." Originally coined for a harasser with sexual intent, the term is now overused for anyone who randomly says hello on the street, emails twice without receiving a response or shares a schedule that increases the likelihood of
crossing paths.

The trend is that everyone is supposed to have one. Social media makes the occasion quantifiable, identifiable and recordable (and even encourages it to a certain degree) but the real modern twist is not the action or the new tools of the initiator but the mind of the receiver. Assuming the role of the one who is stalked establishes that one is uncontrollably desirable...a fine balance of egotism and paranoia.

“A secret admirer is the same as a stalker... with stationary.”
Demetri Martin

“I've only done it once or twice every week”
Oscar Wilde on stalking

Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time

by Drew Martin

If you like the work of Andy Goldsworthy then you should see Rivers and Tides, a documentary about him and his work, which is directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer and accompanied by the music of Fred Frith.

I streamed it on Netflix this weekend and was surprised to note that it is from 2001. It is a timeless film because his artwork is timeless.

Goldsworthy talks to the camera, which functions as the narration. In one moment he suggests that the filmmaker make himself useful and put down the camera to help gather stones for a piece he is creating on the beach. It is a sculpture of flat stones he stacks in the shape of a pine cone. Four early attempts collapse while he is working on it due to the loose sand. He shouts a sharp, frustrated "Shit!" which reminds me of myself in such a moment. Finally the work is topped off and the rising sea engulfs it. The stone sculpture disappears under water. He speaks about how it is a gift to the sea. The tide recedes before sunset and exposes the sculpture again. It is beautiful to see it back in the open air after being embraced by the water, as if it has undergone a rite of passage and understands what the sea is about, with all of its creatures.

I have seen Goldsworthy's wall at Storm King Art Center and a lot of his work in photographs but the film captures the cycle of his projects, which is not possible without the ability to record time. His stone walls last years but some of his projects only last a brief moment. For one of these, he spends hours grinding a reddish stone, by hand. In the end, he holds a ball of red pigment and throws it into the river, where the stone came from. The river turns red for a few minutes and then dilutes itself as it moves downstream. During the preparation of the pigment, Goldsworthy speaks about his pursuit of the red. He comments that the red in the stone is from iron, which is the same reason our blood is red. This piece is about making the stone alive again, as it once was in its volcanic birth.

In the end of the film, the camera pans rock cliffs, which seem like unmovable walls and Goldsworthy offers that the stability of stone is undermined by its fluidity. With much of his work, Goldsworthy likes to take it to the edge of collapse. This is perhaps one of the treats of the film; watching Goldsworthy work on something and have it fall down around him. He deeply cares about his work and such a setback is often met with utter frustration but then he sets to rebuilding the structure. He is tireless.

Goldsworthy started documenting his work with photographs in order to show his teachers what he was doing. He mentions Constantin Brâncuşi who asked why should he have to talk about his sculptures when he can show pictures of them.

Much of the film is shot near his home in Scotland. The moist, green hills are full of sheep, stone walls and an exposed nature. Goldsworthy surveys the land and says that people say it is pastoral and pretty but he remarks there is a much darker side because of the history of sheep and how people were displaced and all the trees were cut down in order to accommodate the animals. He also means that there is a life cycle with decay. He comments on how we think of the signs of Spring on the surface but the evidence is below ground, where the heat and moisture blackens and rots the previous year's growth. This is a theme in Goldsworthy's work...what lies below something, affects the surface.

Goldsworthy speaks about his process but his most insightful comments are about life. He explains how he has lived in different places and how five years might seem like enough time to get to know a place, but it is not. He says you need to see children at a bus stop for years and watch them grow and have children of their own. Goldsworthy recalls a conversation he had with an older lady in his village. After mentioning all the people he knew, she remarked "You see only births and I see only deaths." He says it in a way that he was humbled by it and remarks that he tries not to forget this.

The title of the film, Rivers and Tides, seems obvious enough but Goldsworthy explains that the river is about many things, not just water. There is a river of animals and plants. It is all about flow.

One thing I learned from the film is about Goldsworthy's involvement with his projects. We see him throughout the film, piecing together icicles, reeds and scraps of stone but for a more ambitious piece, such as the wall at Storm King, he worked with wallers, who were often removing the pieces he was placing, for the sake of integrity of the wall. For this project Goldsworthy's role was primarily to define the direction of the wall. Although he was on foreign turf, America, the project was close to home because the Center's property was once farmland and what Goldsworthy found at the site where great stretches of derelict walls made over a hundred years ago by Europeans, possibly Scots. What interested him was how trees took shelter near the walls and grew back around them. Goldsworthy says the wall at Storm King "has a line in sympathy with the place through which it travels."

Although Goldsworthy engages with people and has a wife and several children, you see that he is content by himself, comforted by his own silence. Towards the end of the film he says "Words do their job but what I do here says a lot more."

My favorite comment by him is a line that you feel in his work,

"I am so amazed at times that I am actually alive."

The Triathlon and Human Metamorphosis

by Drew Martin

Last Sunday I did the running leg of a triathlon in Croton on the Hudson. It was a "Toughman" half Ironman, which means a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride and a half marathon (13.1 miles). The half Ironman is the longest triathlon you can race as a team. Our team was well balanced and took first for the coed relay.

Croton is a beautiful part of New York and the annual event takes advantage of this. The course starts down on the Hudson River (actually in the river and this year it was very murky after Hurricane Irene) and climbs up above the spectacular Croton Dam (pictured here).

The bicycle and running courses are difficult because of the extreme elevation changes and a lot of the running is on trails through the woods. That being said, it is one of my favorite places to run and the event is well organized. At the bottom of the dam you are greeted by a band and cheerleaders before entering an uphill battle in the woods. There are other cheering sections, lots of cow bells and even a rock band along the way.

At the turnaround in the woods there is also a waist-high statue of a gorilla or a yeti. It is all quite a surreal experience because you are trying to run and stay focused and yet you are a bit delirious from the exertion. Most of the other athletes had run and swum, and I had fresh legs, so it was very dreamy because everyone was really tired and I was apologetically flying by them as if they were in slow motion.

I have written quite a bit about the arts and running, how they overlap.* The triathlon culture is more diverse and has its own visual cues and aesthetics. For one thing the hydrodynamics of swimming and the aerodynamics of cycling influence what we look like and how we make things.

These dynamics inform shapes and surfaces. It is amazing how the eye picks up on this. We instinctively know what is lighter and faster. Aerodynamically and hydrodynamically engineered shapes look cool. I think that one reason we gravitate towards streamlined objects is because they appear simple; they are smooth and without complicated and frivolous details. Perhaps it is an association with examples from nature.

Aerodynamics and hydrodynamics are disciplines of efficiency. Just as there is beauty in symmetry, mathematics is also stunningly eye-catching when we witness the tangible results of its formulas for speed and resistance.

A triathlon is the most metamorphic of all sporting events. The athletes start on the beach in tight black neoprene wetsuits looking very fit and aquatic. When the swimmers emerge from the water, they have to run quite a bit to their bikes for a transition, which involves stripping down out of their wetsuits. In this event there was a place where volunteers peeled the suits off the athletes for them. (Pictured here, is our swimmer leaving the Hudson River after a 1.2 mile swim)

In the cycling portion, the participants mount their bikes and take off for a long haul. Some riders wear tear-drop helmets and have low, extended handlebars, which morphs the rider and bike into one streamlined force and a hybrid of human and machine. The shaved legs of the riders and the sleek carbon fiber surfaces are equally smooth.

In the final transition, the bikes are abandoned as are the fancy helmets and stiff shoes. Everything is left behind including the previously shed rubbery skin, and the participant begins to run. It a significant moment, born from water and beyond the assistance of technology. It is the human running free.

For someone, like myself, interested in visual identity and graphics, the event is a real treat. Aside from the numerous logos and the rainbow of colors that adorn bikes, helmets, wetsuits, and running shoes, such an occasion is rich with graphs and charts.

Below, is a map from the Toughman website, which shows the running route. It is not something you could actually use to navigate the course but at least you get a sense that it is hilly and that it is, for the most part, an out-and-back run. Personally, I like running big loops, preferably clockwise.

The next chart is interesting. It shows the elevation changes of the running course. For the kind of runner I am, this is like finding a treasure map. It tells me more explicitly just how hilly the course is, the number of climbs and when they occur in the race. I can also reason that the best runners will stay away from the event because their times would be ravaged by such topography.

Immediately after the first waves of athletes finish, the results are posted on a board. Each triathlete wears a chip around one of his or her legs with a wide, rubbery and Velcro strap. For teams, the chip is passed from swimmer to cyclist to runner. The chip is read by mats at the entrance and exit of the transition area and at the finish line. Theoretically you could cut corners, or worse, and the computer would be none the wiser. In fact, in our race I was ranked with the seventh fastest running time. Naturally, I wanted to see who was quicker but the fastest running time was listed for a woman in 413th place. The only reasonable explanation is that she cut out the few mile loop above the dam, thus placing her with a running time more than four minutes ahead of the elite male who won the overall event with a time two hours ahead of her, even with her shortened course.

These results look something like the chart on the right, which was shows our team on the top line. It has fewer columns than the overall standing chart, which details the duration of each part of the triathlon as well as the transitions times.

Finally, the best visuals of all are the pictures taken by professional photographers (for sale), like the one of our swimmer (above). My pictures are odd to behold. I do not even remember the outside of my body during the run. I do recall some internal cramps and focusing on my lungs, telling myself I was one with the air around me as I ran like the wind. I would not post an image of myself here because I am too pale and skinny. Despite all of the previously mentioned visual elements, I think the most interesting aspect of such event are the body types. Triathletes are perfect. They have swimmers' arms and cyclists' legs. As the mercenary runner, I am all legs and weigh as little as people a head shorter than me. It was a bit of a joke at the event, people asking me if I was the team's swimmer.

Even with all the visual reminders of the day, nothing can compare with the memory of participating in the event...the body moving through space and going into a zone.


*Other posts by me related to running:

Born to Run: A Do-It-Yourself Marathon
Recalling a do-it-yourself marathon inspired by the book, Born to Run

An Out of City Experience
The "third man factor" while running

Find Your Strong
Gladly brainwashed by Saucony's "Find Your Strong" campaign

Running with Music
The analogy of running and music, comparing a runner's body to a musical instrument.

Running the Media
Running as a means of communication

Murakami...About Running: A Book Review
Comments on Haruki Murakami's memoir "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running"

Cause & Effect
Running as performance art

Racy
Comparing Neal Bascomb's "The Perfect Mile" (about Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile) with Anaïs Nin's seductive "Delta of Venus"

Frost Nixon

by Drew Martin

If you do not like politics and movies about politics, and you could care less about Nixon, his administration and Watergate then a good film to see is Frost/Nixon because it is about all of these things but from a very different angle. I watched it last night and found it well paced and captivating.

The movie jacket reads:
When a disgraced President Nixon agreed to an interview with jet-setting television personality, David Frost, he thought he'd found the key to saving is tarnished legacy. But, with a name to make and a reputation to overcome, Frost became one of Nixon's most formidable adversaries and engaged the leader in a charged battle of wits that changed the face of politics forever.

I just now realize it is a Ron Howard film. Although I also liked A Beautiful Mind, I still have a hard time accepting him as a director because he was burned into my adolescent mind as his Happy Days incarnation, Richie Cunningham. Knowing this however, makes it easier to see this film as a blend of the media cues I understood it was referencing: The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, All the President's Men and Rocky.

Rocky, because the series of interviews, which take place over several days, are treated like a boxing match. From the very start the reference is offered, suggesting that Frost, despite all of his training and hype, is left slack-jawed by the defending champion's first punch. Each session is treated as a physical round of sparring. Between recordings, each "fighter" is coached in the corner. There is not any visible blood, spit or bruises but these breaks mimic the "get back in there and show him what you are made of" ringside pep talks.

The interesting thing about the interview is that it substitutes for a trial that never happened because incoming President Ford pardoned Nixon. This is the most interesting concept because a trial is only a means to an end and what America really wanted was not so much that the truth be told but a real confession and admission of guilt; the truth was already out there. It is stated through one of the supporting characters in the end of the film that the fault of television is that it reduces things and dumbs them down but in this case, the closeup of Nixon's troubled and regretful face was the perfect use of the medium.

Autism: The Musical

by Drew Martin

A couple of nights ago I watched Autism: The Musical (2007) directed by Tricia Regan. The documentary follows Elaine Hall, her adopted autistic son and a true cast of characters through the rehearsing and staging of a musical with autistic tweens. They are tweens because they are between being kids and young adults and are also somewhere between being brilliant and challenged.

All the people in the movie are impressive, especially Hall who tirelessly navigates her son's world and, if that was not enough to exhaust most single parents, takes on a dozen more autistic kids and interacts with their loving but worried parents to put on a show.

The kids are unique. Henry Stills, the son of Kristen Stills, one of the movie's producers, and Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills & Nash) and is an Asperger keen on paleontology. One of the most touching scenes is when his super-articulate friend Wyatt tells him that he is very smart. Henry sincerely responds that he had always wanted someone to say that to him. Such moments make the film special because they catch you off guard. You see the kids doing things that simply are not normal. They run around wildly or have a tantrum or contort themselves and you assume these actions are the manifestations of what is happening inside them but then they pause for a moment say something incredibly lucid that makes you to realize there is a very calm and intelligent person inside.

At a therapist, Neal (Hall's son) seems uncomfortable and fidgets. He is nonverbal so they are trying out a texting machine he can use to express himself with written words. His first stunning sentence is that he wishes his mother would be a better listener.

Wyatt speaks like a person twice his age, asking himself why he and others go into their own worlds. He yearns to be around people and to interact with them but explains that sometimes he is alone and therefore retreats to a closed-off place. He also has an issue with bullies and clearly sees his dilemma of being placed in a school program with others like him. He complains his class is "100% retarded."

The parents' concerns are also expressed. The father of the only girl the documentary focuses on, Lexi, says the one thing he has nightmares about is what will happen to her when he and his wife are gone, suggesting she is the perfect potential victim for sexual abuse because she does not have the capacity to report such a violation.

He and the father of a musically inclined boy named Adam independently discuss the friction there is with their respective wives. Lexi's father walks out on her mother during the film, Adam's father had an affair prior to the filming. From the outside, the transgressions would appear to be escapism due to the inability to accept their lot but they are both very clear what happens: the mother becomes so obsessed and consumed with her child's autism that there is nothing left for anyone else. If the apple does not fall far from the tree, the parents have to face and overcome their own quirks and limitations to do the best they can. Stephen Stills is the first to admit that he was very much like Henry when he was a boy.

One of the most interesting comments by the parents is from Lexi's father. He keeps trying to solve the impossible riddle of parenting a disadvantaged child and how to plan for her future. He thinks it over and over but the solution is never right. His wife, by contrast, in an earlier part of the film blurts out that she could take her own life.

The film shows troubled moments and starts with the alarming fact that in 1980, autism was a relatively rare disorder, diagnosed in one in 10,000 children in the United States. Now it is one in 150.

What you discover by the end of film, however, is that there is so much joy in the lives you witness and that you could love each of these kids as much as the parents if they were in your own home.

Pictured below: Adam, Neal and Elaine Hall, Lexi, Henry & Wyatt.

Passion and Purpose

by Drew Martin

I recently watched Philippe Séclier's documentary An American Journey in Robert Frank's Footsteps (2009). What I found most interesting was the discussion of how the actual title of Frank's photography book The Americans (1958) caused a stir.

Photo historian, Stuart Alexander explains how many of the same images appeared in US Camera 1958 and were accepted as Frank's personal experience but by using the title The Americans, his capturing of uncomfortable truths seemed judgemental.

I wish the idea/motif that it takes an outsider to show an American what the country is about could have been better balanced or expanded. This is true of every place, not just America, is it not? It is also inherently false, which is why the French filmmaker's retracing of this expatriated German-Jewish-Swiss' footsteps first comes off as presumptuous and as annoying as an American abroad digging deep for genealogical records. What saves the film from estrangement for a US audience are the candid and quirky Americans who are interviewed and guilelessly come across as good natured and nonjudgmental.

In the film, photographer and acquaintance Wayne Miller recounts a talk Frank gave at the Museum of Modern Art in 1956, where he discussed how good photography can only come from a combined sense of passion and purpose; one without the other does not work. Miller explains that part of Frank's purpose was anger. The most interesting thing he noted about Frank was that he would edit his negatives. This means that instead of cropping the exposure of an image in the darkroom, Frank would cut the actual negative before making prints and throw away the rest. Miller was in awe of this method, which he said took courage and conviction. He added that he was envious of his servitude and insurance.

His printer, Sid Kaplan, speaks of the challenging prints, which "took a lot of time and paper." In his creative relationship with Frank, he likens him to the architect and himself to the engineer. This relationship sounds hand-in-glove but he is also saying "he could not have done it without me." He shows a famous picture by Frank of people on a trolley car and he explains the under- and over-exposing that was necessary to make it work. Hearing him and seeing the final print is not validated until the same photo is shown at another part of the film on a contact sheet. It is a completely different image; flatter and washed out.

Peter Galassi, a curator at the Museum of Modern, explains that during Frank's time New York, the magazine aesthetic completely dominated photography; photography had a strong tradition as independent art, but was buried under weight of magazine world, in which Frank worked to make a living. He goes on to say that the photographers had to create their own place in the art world, which included the idea that a photographer could be an artist. It seems hard to believe, but according to the film there were no galleries in New York City at that time that showed photographs.

The Americans is hailed as a landmark book and a landmark view of the United States. Ed Ruscha said Frank brought together the American dream and American nightmare. Art critic Vicky Goldberg said Frank created a rent in the fabric that the nation had constructed.

Fellow photographer, John Cohen said Frank created the biographical photograph and photography teacher Jno Cook said that Frank made serial images that are cinematically related, which refer back to previous frames and make you wonder what is going to come next.

Frank's publisher, Barney Rosset lumped him together with Kerouac and Ginsberg because like them, Frank was able to connect with ruffians and "come away alive." Rosset explains that although it may not have been obvious in that period, "things come out in different arts but it takes a long time to make the connection."

The first appearance of The Americans was as Les Américains. It was published in Paris by Robert Delpire. Curiously, instead of using one of Frank's images for the cover, Delpire chose a drawing by that other great visual genius in exile, Saul Steinberg. Frank asked Delpire if it was too weird, to which he replied that is was complementary.

The film ends with Séclier's reflective narration offering that before Frank settled down in his adoptive home, he made this visual tour of America, covering 15,000 miles: He saw the land as it is, passed all the tests and felt the real pain of loneliness. He must have thought "I like it" and America responded "Ok you can be one of us."

Making Sense: A Library for the Blind

by Drew Martin

Although most artists are "visual" artists, art is not made with eyes. Most artists are guided with their eyes but the process is usually performed with their hands; a tactile process. Oddly, the experience of the art by the audience is typically visual, sometimes audio, but rarely involving touch.

What a shame. We would experience so much more by running our hands over great sculptures and brushing our fingers across some canvases. The art world would be quite different if this were the case. It would probably be much more authentic and the untouchable prestige would vanish with human touch. Of course, there are preservation shortcomings to fondling art, but what a tease that is.

I was in Philadelphia yesterday for a photoshoot and was fortunate to start the day off in the same building as the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Part of the Free Library of Philadelphia, this library provides services for people with visual impairments and physical disabilities that would prevent someone from holding a book or turning pages. Available to check out in person or to receive in postage-free containers are audio books and magazines; braille books and magazines; described videos; and, large print books. The audio book stacks are pictured here.

Pennsylvania's two Regional Libraries have over 75,000 titles for circulation. The library includes a public Talking Book Center with audio navigated computers that can convert printed word in braille, large print, or synthesized speech. With the cooperation of authors and publishers, books and magazines are recorded on cassette and produced in braille.

The idea of the audio book actually came from Thomas Edison who recommended that his invention of the record be used for the blind to hear their books.

The interior, opposing walls of the entrance to the library are flanked by relief sculptures with braille titles and were designed to be touched as much as looked at. One of these is pictured above. A plaque next to them reads: Main Line Center for the Arts, Sculpture Classes for the Blind and Sighted.

The Middle of Somewhere

by Drew Martin

A couple of weeks ago I took a midday train home. The typical evening rush-hour professionals were absent. In their place were random suburban day trippers. Two elderly, platinum blondes boarded with a small boy, who I did not see before he was slipped into a high-backed three-seater.

The train left Hoboken, passed through a long, dark, old tunnel in a rocky hill and emerged into an overgrown slice of northern New Jersey.

The boy chirped in a tiny, high-pitched and concerned voice, "Are we in the middle of nowhere?"

He must have been only four or five years old and he sounded so sad and lost. The train continued on to the marshy and wide-open Meadowlands. He asked even more desperately, "Are we in the middle of nowhere?" He was so anxious that he might as well have been abandoned in the wilderness.

He repeated the troubled question, over and over. Each time, my heart sank. Finally, our train pulled into Rutherford, which has a town center and signs of life. The boy's voice did not change its tone but this time he asked with a glimmer of hope "Are we in the middle of somewhere?"

Illustration by Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber