ROTFL at the Whitney Biennial

The funniest thing I read all year was a description of a piece of art at the Whitney Biennial that I saw this week. I don’t think it was intended that way.

The piece of art in question was Cameron Crawford’s Sick Sic Six Sic ((Not)Moving): Seagullsssssssssssssssssssssssssss:

You could describe it as maybe a minimalist volleyball net, made of thread and plastic and framed by unfinished wood, but titled like a prog rock song from the 1970s. Are we still giving things titles like this? Is he channeling Fiona Apple? Did his keyboard get stuck? The blurb accompanying the work did not answer these questions. Luckily the description is online at the Whitney’s web site:

Oh. Let me see if I’ve got the stages right: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Using Homophones, Exhibiting at the Whitney Biennial. Homophones are nonsensical and fun, but an art museum can’t say they’re nonsensical and fun, so they say they “skirt the edge of comprehension.”

More significantly, this annotation weakens the piece, because it lets you know that the work needs “explaining” in order to be understood. It tells you that it’s supposed to be a performance, not a sculpture. It’s a response to death. The writing does the work that the art should have done. Come on – let the thing fail on its own terms!

This is a genius spin. next year I’m submitting an “invisible painting in an invisible frame” – that way it will always be relevant to any theme!

Another hilarious move! I wish, though, that the artist would have fully committed to the gag, a la Dali or Duchamp, and not let the work be displayed or reviewed until always six years in the future. Then it would seem more like a real idea and a lot less like a bullshit one, right?

There you go! “By imposing this ridiculous date and title, Crawford is suggesting that the work possibly has no good ideas in it. We agreed, which is why we included it in this exhibit. Now it at least appears to have some kind of meaning.”

Cats on Cat Cartoons

A friend of mine observed recently that I’ve had a number of cat cartoons published in the New Yorker, so I decided to do some market research. I invited several cats over and had them give their feedback on some of my drawings, figuring I might be able to sell more cat cartoons if I nail the target demographic. What follows is some exerpts from the conversation.

Maurice: Cats who hunt don’t read The New Yorker.

Ella: Is this me? The one on the left looks like me.

Roger: I thought these would be animated. They’re kind of boring.

Carrot: Ha! I don’t get this one, but it’s funny, because dogs are stupid!

Roger: I don’t get this one, either. But yeah – dogs are stupid!

Carrot: I don’t understand the humor, but I can see why people love these New Yorker cartoons. So fascinating to look at. This one really has everything.

Ella: Is this me again? I used to be a model for art classes. I could pose for a long time.

Roger: A better caption for this one would be “Aren’t dogs stupid?”

Phoebe: There are no cats in this one, right? Can you really call this a cat cartoon?

Maurice: This seems too political.

Carrot: Dogs really are stupid. They chase those round things. They don’t even have to be shiny and they still run after them!

Ella: These chairs are really comfortable.

Roger: You know who is even stupider than dogs? People!

Frances: They’re just standing around doing nothing!

Carrot: A person probably drew this. It doesn’t even make any sense. A real cat would be ruling a jungle or capturing an eagle or something.

Roger: Hey, do we get food during this thing?

Draw Something Else

Hey Dan2dublin (you know who you are), I don’t appreciate you using an innocent and very popular app to editorialize about the drinking habits of myself and another cartoonist. Plus, you made me hate myself for the words you made me guess. On the other hand, that’s a nice bottle of Maker’s Mark. By the way, it’s your turn.

“Half robots, half people, all fun”

Tuesday I went to “Krautwerk 1-8: Kraftwerk Covered” at Littlefield in Brooklyn. The show was a “screw you” to the failed MOMA ticketing system that left most fans (this one included) suffering under the spinning pinwheels of internet death, but, because it was put together by the Onion’s Joe Garden and Marianne Ways, it was also a Kraftwerk cover show that didn’t take itself too seriously. Naturally, it was MCed by somebody’s computer speech function, and featured a diverse lineup of talent. I’m really glad I went. Rolling Stone gave it a good writeup, but here is my little teaser video. Can you do a teaser for something that already happened? I think I just did.

The Reviewer of Light

For the record, I’m not a snob. I don’t think the tastes and values of middle America (whatever that means) are a punchline, and I don’t dismiss anything just because it’s popular. Many years ago, when I saw a landscape by the ubiquitous Thomas Kinkade I concluded that it wasn’t really my thing, although I recognized the obvious talent. Also, I have an appreciation for somebody who can humbly dedicate himself to a particular craft. But shortly after, when I found about Kinkade comparing himself favorably with Monet, and the pseudo-Messianic sense of mission, and the brazenly manipulative marketing scheme, I thought – for real? This Godzilla full of clichés is  clamoring for a retrospective at the Met during his lifetime? That’s fair game for abuse. He might be right about the failings of modernity, but he’s totally wrong about his own work.

The Kinkade empire has caved in on itself during the past few years, and yeah – it’s probably bad form to kick a guy when he’s down. Nonetheless, I saw the “Thomas Kinkade: Painter of Light” 2012 calendar while at Barnes & Noble last December, and decided that it would be great fun to do a monthly review, especially if I got to make a fancy title for myself like the “Reviewer of Light.” The Awl took me up on it. There you can see the April version and the previous months, and return for the rest.

Still On Your Left

The original idea for the cartoon in this week’s New Yorker was this, captured roughly in my sketchbook some time last summer. I’ll be the first to admit: the idea is terrible. Or, at least it was terrible. I thought there was something funny about a guy riding a bike on a treadmill. And there is something funny about it, but it’s not a guy standing to the side saying “There are places for people like you.” I drew it up and assumed I’d figure out a better caption to go with it, but I didn’t.

I kept running across the image in my sketchbook, because that’s what happens with sketchbooks. And at some point I realized that it was probably funnier to have the biker sharing the treadmill with a runner. I still had this same unfunny caption in my head, though, even as I started laying this out. But I couldn’t shake it: I wanted the runner to be expressing his surprise at discovering that there was someone else there with him.

As I struggled to find something punchier, I realized that you could change the game, so to speak. Instead of trying to force something witty into the mouth of the runner, it was going to be the bicyclist talking. And it instead of it being a surprising situation, what was funnier was the idea that it would be perfectly normal for a biker and a runner to be sharing the exercise equipment. You make a silly scenario mundane. There eight even be a sign at the gym saying “Please Use Caution When Entering Someone Else’s Workout.” So here’s the sketch I submitted, and then the final image as published.

Sh** People Say With an Air Horn

 

I thought that The Good Wife was probably the end of my non-acting acting career, but I was wrong. The funny folks at Jockular, who did a really terrific job adding to the ‘Sh** _____ Say” meme with this video, let me blast an air horn in it. It was done in only one take, which as you can imagine, is very, very… well actually, it’s pretty hard to screw that up.