The new shelton wet/dry
We try to do what Jeff Koons did when he put 2 or 3 New Shelton Wet/Dry vacuums in a plexiglass box, and added a title. We put news in plexiglass boxes, and add titles.
It’s rather an experiment than journalism.
It’s about editing news, about the concept “editing/commenting is creating” developed a century ago when philosophers (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Deleuze, Foucault to name a few) made Philosophy by commenting past Philosophy.
Almost everyhting is quoted and nothing is signed: French writer Marguerite Yourcenar once said that it doesn’t matter who is writing. What matters is that it is written.
Also: Personality is like a collection of traits that we all share, and that we sometimes borrow from each other, but the totality (of qualities and traits) is peculiar to a specific person. That’s how one differs from another, by creating a different mix of existing traits, by tuning these traits to various degrees.
The word personality originates from the Latin persona, which means mask. We spend our life building this mask, and make it attractive, unique, different, coherent… It’s about editing traits and influences. It’s about creating something new from existing material.
artwork { Jeff Koons, New Shelton Wet/Dry Triple Decker, 1981 }
ps. thanks to “The Masked Etymologist”
August 24th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Is it crap? Damn fucking right. Wow. I thought I had see the end of this shit in grad school….
Anyone who uses Jeff Koons as any sort of reference point has got to be running with a saddle full of shit straight from the gate.
August 25th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Good criticism. Thanks.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
diggin it
June 24th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Brilliant! I read the wetdry before I check my own email. Thanks for the joy.
August 3rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
‘Tis a thing of beauty. Fuels my creativity.
Arigato.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
your experiment in journalism has altered my perception for the better.
thanks.
August 23rd, 2008 at 12:54 am
“Never mind I found one.”
——
Have you heard the one about the actress who was late for an audition? She’s driving around and around and there is no parking anywhere. She says aloud, “dear all powerful and merciful God please find me a place to park, I’ll do anything for you.” As she finishes praying, a space opens up and she says, “never mind I found one.”
Right after I finished college, I got a job working as an assistant in an art gallery in West Hollywood. It was great. Tina, the other assistant, was fresh from Art History at Barnard, blonde, blue-eyed, always smoking and cracking a joke. She drove a HOT 1968 white Ford Mustang and wore mini skirts and lots of black. Elizabeth, the gallery director’s wife was officious; ready to take on the next challenge, whether that was having another kid, starting her own business, or hiring the new nanny. Brown haired, cute and really in love with Daniel.
Daniel, the director, was for me a role model, an 80’s art world genius, a sophisticated broker of the most fickle commodity the world has to offer – contemporary art. He could glide from Sol Lewitt to Terry Winters, Richard Artschwager to Annette Lemieux, Robert Mangold to Richard Prince, and the shows looked great month after month. He was always able to put together a show that would sell out often before it ever opened, all the time making it seem effortless. Each show, each artist treated with patience and respect; every month a whole new view of the universe. And a whole new set of invoices; it was the go-go eighties and he was moving.
Daniel was also just a little hotheaded. Raising his voice about the ineptness of the crating company or steaming about the coffeepot taking too long to brew him a cup of tea. I remember once listening to Daniel on the phone, yelling at the manager of his gym. “I lost my purse, my men’s purse, (pause) yes, a men’s purse.” I could only smile at his sincerity. The daily art gallery shenanigans provided me with endless cocktail party fodder.
My favorite time there was during the Jeff Koons vacuum cleaner show. “The New: Encased Works 1981-1986.” It was beautiful. All those vacuum cleaners and floor polishers in all those plexi-glass boxes with fluorescent lights. Wet-vacs, dry-vacs, deluxe shampoo polishers all lined up and shiny. My favorite was “New Shelton Wet/Dry, New Hoover Convertible.” The two tiered tower of one white, blue and green striped Shelton Wet/Dry vacuum and one green and white Hoover upright vacuum was lit by two plinths of fluorescent tubes; a mechanical wedding cake.
Everybody bought one, the ones that were for sale: those who could afford one. One was sent to Germany another to Switzerland, a couple to NY, one to San Francisco and one to the Marina. At the time it seemed it was a very big moment in contemporary art and in Jeff’s career.
These sculptures would come together magically. At one point during the installation, we were all standing around admiring the nearly completed installation of the four-tiered floor polishers with wet vacuum. Pointing to the six reclining polishers layed neatly in three tiers of two atop each other, Elizabeth said, “Doesn’t that look just like a sarcophagus, an Egyptian tomb.” I remember we nodded and Jeff smiled.
We spent nearly a week with Jeff wiping and waxing, polishing and shining each and every part of each and every sculpture. The plexi cases were wiped, inside and out with static free cloths, the light fixtures, the lamps, the cords and especially the appliances; wipe every appliance twice, once with paper towels and once with anti-static cloth. It seemed just as we were about to seal a triple jet-vac or a double upright, a piece of lint would be spotted. We would balance the plexi-box lid, careful not to smudge the inside of the case, while Jeff carefully wiped away the smudge that might render his sculpture meaningless or (worse yet) worth less.
Wednesday afternoon, three days into the Koons installation, Tina snapped a photo of the crack of Jeff’s ass. We had all noticed his plumbers’ pants. Every time Jeff bent over to pick up a screwdriver or some electric tape, or a plexi-stabilizer-cube the top of Jeff’s hairy white ass would rise up above the top of his corduroy pants. That afternoon, Jeff was working on the jet-vac platform just a few feet from the reception desk. Tina and I got into position. Tina had the camera pointed at me; I was standing at the Jeff Koons wall sign, just in front of her to the left, Jeff’s behind was behind to the right.
Jeff bent over again to grab the plexi-stabilizer and Tina snapped the picture. The flash popped and the whirl-snap sound of the ejected Polaroid photo filled the gallery. Jeff swung around quick as Suzanne Somers at a press junket. There was a second of uncomfortable silence and not-knowing-ness. Tina and I went back to work. I remember that Jeff smiled.
—-
Have you heard the one about the actor who was late for an audition?
Never mind.
At the beginning of my first year at CalArts, I remember learning that a piece of art from wall of the 10-year anniversary show had gone missing. I remember the space on the wall where it hung. It was in the main gallery right near the doors to the modular theatre, off the main entrance, around the corner from the ticket office and the main reception desk.
That piece of empty wall had captured so much of my attention and the attention of others. The art was gone; its absence was present. People were talking about “the violation” and “who would do such a thing” and “this had never happened before” and “did this mean a shift in respect for artists’ work”.
The missing artwork was later found under the bed of a young acting student. He apologized publicly, said he was stupid and drunk, promised he’d learned his lesson. It was returned unharmed, and remained a part of the exhibition, yet, I don’t remember what the piece of art looked like.
—-
Have you heard the one about the casting director? He finishes praying, two spaces open up and just as quickly they are taken and he says, “Actors.”
At the other end of the main gallery in the same 10-year anniversary show, hung a painting titled Bad Boy by Eric Fischl. I spent hours and hours viewing that painting. I would make sure that every morning during Tai Chi in the main gallery, I would position myself with the painting in full view. I would breathe the painting in and out while performing “carry tiger over mountain” or “lotus flower.” And often late at night I would sit on a metal chair near the painting and listen to an oboe rehearsal or the silence of the white noise makers hissing in the columns nearby.
The canvas has a nude woman lying on a bed one leg up in the air, crossed over the other leg, with the striped light of a window blind streaking in. A boy (her son?), young, too young, short brown hair, his shirt a few sizes too big. He stands at the front of the frame with his back to the viewer, reaching into the vagina-like folds of a purse on the dresser behind him. Bananas and apples huddle in a bowl on the dresser, green walls meet at the orange blinds.
It was the first time I had been really moved by a piece of art.
I ran into Fischl’s Bad Boy again hanging at the museum many years later. I felt like I had run into an old friend; my first friend from college. Wow.
“Hi, how are you? How have you been? It’s really great to see you.”
“Me? Oh I’ve been great. You know. Things are fine. Yeah, I live in Hollywood. I Like it,” I said.
“Yeah things are good. “
“We’ve known each other a long time. You look great, but something is different with you Bad Boy.”
“Oh, Did you hear that Gene died? Do you remember Gene? The painter, went on to work in TV? You would have liked him. I remember talking about you once with him. He was great. And that other guy, remember he worked at the Odyssey Disco. He went to CalArts too - dead.
“Oh yeah and Tony died, and Jeff, and Chris, Patrick, and Scott, and Lovey, David, Miguel, and that guy from the acting school who always wore overalls, and Ron the musician, and I think a bunch you never knew. But I’m sure you have a list of your own too. Oh yeah and remember that guy that stole that piece from the anniversary show, from when we first met, he died too. Brian. He was always finding trouble. But you, you look good,” Bad Boy said to me.
“Something feels different with you Bad Boy. I’m not sure what.” I looked for a long time. I tried to get my eyes to notice. I tried to get real quiet for Bad Boy, I recognized the canvas; his head and her face, and her nudeness, and I noticed the colors, the temperature, the shadows, and the shapes. I looked with my left eye, and then my right, I tried squinting, I tried breathing it in, holding my breath, and standing and sitting and close and far. And then it occurred to me, Bad Boy was exactly the same as he ever was, Bad Boy hadn’t changed a bit.
And I could feel the place inside me where I knew that painting once hung, the painting was there, but the feelings were absent.
“Anyway, listen it was really great catching up with you.” And I went to go.
August 24th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Thanks J. This was such a great reading.