Hello (and goodbye) flowers!

[imomus]

What's the connection between art and ethics? Is art that's ethically good good art? Not always. But I feel very drawn to art which is both aesthetically satisfying and "ethically beautiful". It's important to me. I like to endorse art which is not only beautiful, but seems to have been made by a person who is morally beautiful. This relates very much to my reactions to the Japanther fiasco on Saturday night at the Whitney (and I suspect this thing is going to be the talk of New York when the Village Voice runs its story about it), and it might even relate to something like "the Smiths phenomenon", the fact that wherever you go in New York The Smiths are playing, and one of the qualities (apart from Morrissey's good voice and strong lyrics) that makes The Smiths so enduring is the deeply humane quality of many of their lyrics, the ethical stance on meat, property, exclusion, and so on. Millions of badboy rock artists come and go (I'm thinking of Andrew WK, or ARE Weapons, or people like that), but the ones who endure often have a higher ethical view; they actually address the question "How then should we live?" and come up with some answers.

I was in Kinokuniya at the Rockerfeller Center yesterday leafing through Drop Dead Cute: the new generation of women artists in Japan, and decided I really like the work of a painter called Yuko Murata. Using thick paint, simple shapes, nature imagery and off-kilter compositional crops, Murata paints with an almost childlike naivete. Her work makes me think of painters like Luc Tuymans or Karen Kilimnik (with whom she shares a Tokyo dealer, Gallery Side 2). There's real compassion in her paintings of animals; I instantly feel I'm in the presence of a good person, a person I'd entrust with important decisions, a person who "feels with" all living creatures.



Here's a little internet exhibition of Yuko Murata's paintings: an owl, an arched rock, a little bird, a sheep, a bat, a rabbit, a mouse, a field.

Murata is 33. I feel like I know where she's coming from, because I've known so many young Japanese women with similar tastes and ethics. They've been, to be honest, the greatest loves of my life, and in a sense my gurus and "seeing formers". I idolize them. I know their taste. They always love Mark Borthwick, and Jonas Mekas (and indeed a cursory image google turns up a photo Yuko made of Jonas Mekas, if it's the same Yuko). I'd say Tujiko Noriko is cut from the same cloth, and so is Rinko Kawauchi.

Hikaru Furuhashi is just about to graduate from SFAI. She loves Jonas Mekas, Mark Borthwick, and the philosophy of the Dalai Lama. Her work, like this 8mm film, Where is my head?, combines electronic disorienteering and a slightly spooky, surreal quality with friendliness and a sort of universal empathy, especially with nature, the sky and animals.

I don't doubt for a moment that this nature sentiment is rooted in Shinto. It's something I've tried to capture on my forthcoming album "Ocky Milk", but I actually doubt that, in the end, I've managed to transcend my own deep protestantism and its need to fight and quarrel and reject. It might be easy to stereotype this way of feeling and thinking about life as something hippy, something a bit "Hello trees, hello animals, hello flowers, hello sky!" But I can promise you that it isn't easy to achieve, especially in the world we live in today, and despite the fact that it's precisely what we need.

In contrast, yesterday I watched American artist Joe Gibbons' film "A Time to Die", part of the Whitney Biennial, in which "Gibbons is an irascible hit man accosting autumnal flowers for hanging on to their beauty after their prime". He actually makes chopping the heads off blooms look tremendously violent, which is funny, but also sad:

"Our botanical pugilist," says the Lincoln Center Film Society "picks on specimens less than his own size, quoting Ecclesiastes and offering life lessons with last rites of occasional mercy and ruthless pruning. Tidy tips for candytufts: “Life is short,” “A moment’s sunlight on the grass.” Gibbons personifies Pascal’s definition of man as a thinking reed, albeit with a switchblade.  A Time to Die serves as a timely update of some of Gibbon’s early Super-8 films, where he sucker punched garden varieties and showed nature who was boss."

Goodbye, flowers!

Comments

[notazionist.livejournal.com]

Momus,
Wonderful piece! Have you seen Godard's "Notre Musique", where a scene describing war atrocities is interrupted by a back-and-forth pan of flowers on a table?

Also, when will you be at the Whitney this weekend? I'm finally making my way there.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I should be there between about 2pm and 5pm.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Very wonderful. I like that Naive Art (http://www.daprix.com/barton/gallery/intro-gallery.html#Anchor%20Landscapes), such as the examples of Yuko Murata's paintings you posted above, reminds me a bit of those old paintings you could do from the times when you were a child. The flatness is also what appeals to me as ultra-realistic art with faked dimensions can make you a bit dizzy and seem so utterly serious. A bit more playfulness and experimentation please!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Yuko's work is marvelous--color, composition, subjects reminiscent of Milton Avery. Diebenkorn, too. My wife is currently doing a series of plant and bird studies for a group show in Britain that goes along similar lines. With a carnivorous plant garden and a duck about to hatch it's brood under the porch, she has plenty to draw from.

re your wife!

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

Would be glad to hear when her show is on - if it's anywhere near London I should like to pay it a visit!

Thanks

Simon

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

i met Hikaru recently through Sean Talley....she and her work are lovely!

i had a piece in a show called "empirical nostalgia" a few weeks ago that reflected this "hello trees" aesthetic a bit....included were photographs of accidentally exposed flowers in Brighton, playgrounds, my boyfriend sleeping, houses at dawn, found wedding/family photos....as well as torn & suspended bits of book, flower petals found between a lost journal, and a little spider named Orlando. I named it "Ludid Box with Friendly Spider" after i learned the word "ludic" from you! :)

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

oops, "LUDIC box" sigh.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Ethics in art is almost a taboo subject. There's a fervent observance of politically-correct ideology in *some* issues like race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc., that is moral (meaning cultural constructs--mores--rather than ethics) and is very subjective in the groups it excludes. But too many artists, curators, academics and gallerists treat the larger picture of ethics like it's an affront to artistic freedom.

I sometimes find it difficult to believe that we're living in a time when artists like Hermann Nitsch, Nathalia Edenmont and Katarzyna Kozyra still kill animals as part of an artistic statement. This disconnect between the professed human sanctity of life and the defense of the vulnerable (say, wanting to free the child-soldiers in Uganda) and the opposite treatment across arbitrary species lines suggests to me that we're a lot less ethical than we'd like to admit.

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

Although, keep in mind, that many, many people are horrified by those artists.

the bad boys of rawk

[(Anonymous)]

ohhhhhh, my. I almost can't believe I'm going to write this:

Andrew WK is totally not a "bad boy"--man, I'm laughing becuase I haven't even thought about him in soooo long.

First, his outfit: tight 80's acid washed/light blue jeans, white t-shirt, and white high-top sneakers. Might have been "bad boy" in the 80's or earlier (maybe), but today its like a joke...definitely not intimidating or "bad"

Second, his demeanor: yes, I've seen him interviewed on television...he was enthusiastic, outgoing, always smiling, and happy--and he likes children. Bad boy? Maybe he stole a cookie out of the cookie jar.

Third, his music: goddddd, it sucks. Okay, that's out of the way. I hear his music (with silly toy-piano keyboards underneath power chords and choruses) as if it were a joke--which kind of negates any "bad boy" qualities it may harbor, or resemble.

The cover to his album did have blood on it though--looked like he was moshing too hard in the pit. poor AWK...

Hope someone gets a laugh out of this :-)

Winslow

Re: the bad boys of rawk

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

I guess bands like Eagles of Death Metal have replaced him now....and they are more or less a well [if over]-played joke. I thought they were pretty amusing until I realized they were being used in Budweiser, Payless Shoes, and Wendy's commercials.....

blog tree and branches

[petit-paradis.livejournal.com]

hi

I just came back form a performance of john cage's piece CHILD OF TREE and BRANCHES. a piece played by plucking the needles of cacti and ticking of wooden materials, a plank a tree a few branches all according to the table of numbers of the IChing.

why is it that you think the musicians are more autistic and weird when they paly a cacti than they would play piano or guitar?

do you CHILD OF TREE?
it would suit as music to this entry.
blog music

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

Say there, Nick, when is "Ocky Milk" planned to be released? Just so, you know, i can write it on my '365 Days of Kittens' calendar and surround it with hearts and smiley faces.

[istealcookies.livejournal.com]

but shoplifters of the world, unite and takeover.

aren't ethics pretty much relative (to culture, time period, even per individual)?

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Nope.

[buckminster.livejournal.com]

I was not impressed with Murata as I was with some of the flashier artists in that book. It may be because i don't connect with animals much. I'll give her another look tonight.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

Dear Momus,

What will we do when the new ethics breaks down under the weight of the same inherent flaws as the old ethics?

Sincerely,

-sl

[anglerfish96.livejournal.com]

You, I'd invite over. :)

[maybeimdead.livejournal.com]

Oh to be artistic and moral. This depends on our actual freedom to be who we would like to be, and who we are born as. Morality is a privilege.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

the Title of that book seems to me like (yet another) unfortunate frame for 'viewing japan' - reminiscent of the exotic and somewhat patronising pre-superflat era when , say, mariko mori was turned into art-superstar , rather than where things are at now.

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

What's this "SUPERFLAT" you speak? You mean, Japan isn't Zen geishas eating sushi on Godzilla's back??

[tassellrealm.livejournal.com]

Bad apples might as well make bad apple art, because the stink comes through regardless.

All that creating a moral or ethical climate does is encourage the vilest artists to don the most ethical and moral of masks, once again obscuring the proof of the pudding.

"Only the pure in heart can make a good soup" -
Ludwig Van Beethoven

[henryperri.livejournal.com]

Yea, it helps me to like an artist when they're ethical. But more important than that they should be a Japanese girl.

"Something hippy"

[(Anonymous)]

"It might be easy to stereotype this way of feeling and thinking about life as something hippy..."

Well, maybe it's time for a re-trope of the "hippie" aesthetic. This, the Japanther article, and your song "Life of the Fields" on "Otto Spooky" seem, to me, more than the lone sentiment of a sensitive sensualist (phrase from the back cover of my 1969 edition of Nabokov's "Ada, or Ardor"). I really believe that as we progress further and further towards...well, whatever it is we're progressing towards...the sort of sentiments you've voiced will become increasingly important. I know they're becoming increasingly important to the people I know.

There's nothing dirty or bad about "hippy." I mean, sure, as a movement it quickly got silly and bloated and absurd: but hippydom wasn't the Strawberry Alarm Clock, it was the small claches in places like Woodstock that sought to get a little perspective on the folk tradition and integrate it with the new. "Hippy," to me, is less about a fashion sense than it is a general idea of retroping the traditional: if it weren't for what would eventually become the "hippies," the Folk Revival would've remained a preservation act.

I hiked a fair bit out to a cliff over the sea near Zuma Beach yesterday, and found myself looking down at breaching whales, sea lions, seals, and dolphins. As I walked back, two crows landed on a gnarled branch and stared out to the sea. And there were lots of yellow and purple flowers among the sand and cactii you'd expect. Baby, if that's "hippy," then I don't wanna be punk.

-Rob

[(Anonymous)]

"...I don't doubt for a moment that this nature sentiment is rooted in Shinto. It's something I've tried to capture on my forthcoming album "Ocky Milk", but I actually doubt that, in the end, I've managed to transcend my own deep protestantism..."


I wonder if you would want to elaborate on your lack of doubts about this? Cause I tend to think that the values of Shintoism are oversold in the West. Seems to me that Japan's native religions were manipulated and reworked by those in power as much as they were in the west. And its hard to see a love of animals permeating contemporary Japanese society as a whole.

Ms. Murata's works often appear to me to be antagonizing not just contemporary Japan but contemporary society as a whole, not with anger the way Gibbons might, but with a flattend kind of despair. The ethical beauty to her works (with which I agree totally) feels more personal and more emotional to me. She chooses small canvases and paints from photographs, their is alwys a longing in her works but when I have seen them I haven't been certain that its a longing for nature but perhaps something more social.

As for your own work, do you think the protestants drubbed everything out of your culture? Aren't most Western nations bubbling under their surfaces with thick animist-pagan beliefs and practices? I tend to think that in the west now we stil have that deep in us somewhere and perhaps as artists we can pull it out and put it back on.
I guess I don't worry about the roots of things and prefer to think about the leaves and seeds.

thanks always for the forum.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

When I talk about Shinto I tend to ignore "state Shinto", a brief militaristic perversion of what, for me, is essentially an agricultural religion, a series of festivals marking bloomings, seasons and nature spirits.

And yes, I totally agree with you that most societies have some pagan agri-mystical religion deep in their past. We Celts certainly do, and it's interesting to see Japanese artists like Mariko Mori delving into Celtic symbolism. I think Japan has preserved a better link with its paganism than we in the West have, because of the subtle syncretism with Buddhism, and Buddhism's lack of evangelical aggression.

[intergalactim.livejournal.com]

also, remember that Morrissey really liked flowers too,
because they "are beautiful and never hurt anyone", according to an 80's interview on youtube i saw recently...

GOODBYE FLOWER ?

[(Anonymous)]

that sounds so familiar to me it freaks me out.
I don't really understand where are all this coincidences coming from but I embrace them. Throughout February I had been flirting with the idea of yuxtaposing an iraqui mother to a Japanther video, without understanding why, feeling scared or hurt in a way to do it. I still might just do it (ok you are thinking so what?).

1-that was a personal tangent-not a political one.
2-there will be many spelling mistakes.


I hate the way you reduced the incident at the Museum in your previous posting rocking and awful.
Guess what? you can't reduce it. Sorry.
It already got you thinking and re-thinking. (a village voice article?)
Obviously the lady-comment was rude. So don't be rude then if you dont want people to get upset!
I was there too. When I left I felt the confusion, it was relevant! and it is real.- who is not confused these days????? look at your self. All the while you do not support the war, you are NOT ready to change your habits, stop with the excessive shopping, the millions of clothing items, you look ridiculous with all this cloth hanging off of you!....I felt many tiny holes all over me as I rode my bike away from that very important confrontation. Someone had USED the mike at the firkin Whitney Museum of American Art.
I KNOW this artists, and I know their work. So yes I look at fact, not at the tiny roads of misunderstanding. They spend their time doing what you would never do for your country (truly removed from vice btw), partially because you speak from a sort of dated pedestal, and partially because the younger generations listen to each other!!! They are the ones reaching one on one the the kids in middle America, spreading the peace word, the stop corporations word and the make it yourself word, and not what you choose to focus your writs on, or did you not hear Vanek also said " FUCK THE INTERNET, BUILD REAL COMMUNITY". And yes news for you: populist is good and hard work.-

And then those poor kids inside the tanks. They should not be there in the first place. They are not guilty! they are being used, they are confused, get them out already...and if you can't, if it is too late for them, then make sure they know we feel for them.-----------------and more importantly SHIFT THE PARADIGM.

Re: GOODBYE FLOWER ?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I hate the way you reduced the incident at the Museum in your previous posting rocking and awful.
Guess what? you can't reduce it. Sorry.

All interpretations could be interpreted as reductions. I interpreted the events.

Obviously the lady-comment was rude. So don't be rude then if you dont want people to get upset!

The drummer comment was even more rude, and a lot less apposite. He shouted down someone doing more to "spread the peace word" than he will ever do, I can promise you. He had no right. It seems to me that Adam ultimately believes in rock and roll, not peace. Shouting down Peace Lady was his way of defending rock's honour, and that's the most important thing in the world to him. Because he once met, you know, Calvin Johnson and it, you know, changed his life.

mmm, she started it.

[(Anonymous)]

"All interpretations could be interpreted as reductions. I interpreted the events."

Reduce and interpret are two different pictures. Look, you even bring it down to the apple thing, who met who and what-ever.

Forget the specifics. I rather live in a world with passionate musicians in it, the kind that's down to touring full countries with no money-honey (and over and over), than not. Given the options for the USA youth, I'd tolerate...if anything dialog and de-confuse if you could, don't introduce their work with what-attacks....also you can't corner art in the 00' into being of a particular speed. Please, you have a bloody mess on the table, what do you expect?

~

Hallo people!..

[(Anonymous)]

Hi. I find forum about work and travel. Where can I to see it?
Best Regards, Michael.