Cathrine Opie - American Photographer

New York

September 26, 2008–January 7, 2009

Since the early 1990s, Catherine Opie has produced a complex body of photographic work, adopting such diverse genres as studio portraiture, landscape photography, and urban street photography to explore notions of communal, sexual, and cultural identity. From her early portraits of transgender people and performance artists to her expansive urban landscapes of cities like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and New York, Opie has offered profound insights into the conditions in which communities form and the terms in which they are defined. All the while she has maintained a strict formal rigor, working in stark and provocative color as well as richly toned black-and-white.

The exhibition, a major mid-career survey, gathers works from Opie’s most important series starting with the series Being and Having (1991) and Portraits (1993–97), that celebrate queer communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In Houses (1995–96) Opie explores her interest in domestic architecture through portraits of Beverly Hills and Bel Air mansions, in which each facade retains as distinct a character, as do her portraits of friends. Domestic (1995–98) offers a flip side to these works, moving inside to document lesbian families engaged in everyday household activities.

Freeways (1994–95), the first of her black-and-white series, offers a richly formal meditation on the Los Angeles highway system. Her impulse to document structures as icons and relics of human presence, especially those of Southern California, continues with Mini-malls (1997–98), which focuses on billboards, signs, and architectural elements identifying various ethnic and cultural groups in Los Angeles shopping centers. This series inaugurated the ongoing project American Cities (1997–present), an extended group of panoramic black-and-white series that so far has explored Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, and St. Louis.

Opie then looked toward more natural settings and the communities that exist there. Icehouses (2001) focuses on the way architectural structures accumulate human history but are at the mercy of the natural landscape on which they depend. In Surfers (2003) the subjects are virtually engulfed in the vast and gloomy shoreline of Malibu, forever suspended on a tranquil sea, primed to catch the perfect ride that may never come. Recently, Opie has turned to her own domestic life. In In and Around Home (2004–05), Opie’s family becomes a microcosm for political and social issues at play on a wider level, its status as a queer family becoming subtly apparent over the course of the series.

This exhibition is supported by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. The Guggenheim Museum gratefully acknowledges the Leadership Committee for Catherine Opie: American Photographer. Organized by Jennifer Blessing, Curator of Photography, with Nat Trotman, Assistant Curator.

How Muslims Made Europe

Volume 55, Number 17 · November 6, 2008

By Kwame Anthony Appiah

God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 570–1215

by David Levering Lewis

Norton, 473 pp., $29.95

The conception of the Mediterranean as the meeting of three continents goes back to classical Greece. But it took a further intellectual leap to conceive of their inhabitants as a collectivity. You can have Europe, Africa, and Asia without thinking of Europeans, Africans, and Asians as particular kinds of people.

David Levering Lewis's rich and engaging God's Crucible shows that it took two things to make Europeans think of themselves as a people. One was the creation of a vast Holy Roman Empire by the six-foot-four, thick-necked, fair-haired Frankish warrior king we know as Charlemagne. The other was the development, in the Iberian peninsula on the southwestern borders of his dominion, of the Muslim culture of Spain, which the Arabs called al-Andalus. In the process that made the various tribes of Europe into a single people, what those tribes had in common and what distinguished them from their Muslim neighbors were both important. This is, by now, a familiar idea. But God's Crucible offers a more startling proposal: in making the civilization that modern Europeans inherit, the cultural legacy of al-Andalus is at least as important as the legacy of the Catholic Franks. In borrowing from their great Other, they filled out the European Self.

Charlemagne's rule included at its high point most of France, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, the west of Germany, Italy as far south as Rome, a strip in the north of Spain, and parts of Hungary and the Balkans. At nearly three and a half million square miles, it was larger than the continental United States. Charlemagne imposed Catholic orthodoxy on the pagan Saxons in the east at the point of a very sharp sword, massacring thousands of those who resisted, and suppressed heresy within Frankland with equal vigor. He created monastic centers of learning, drawing scholars from across his empire and beyond; and after the centuries of ignorance that had followed the collapse of the Roman Empire in Gaul and Germania, the works of men like the Northumbrian Alcuin (poet, theologian, and restorer of the classical curriculum) created a Carolingian Renaissance.

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These achievements perhaps entitled Charlemagne to his self-conception as Rome's heir in the West, author of a Renovatio Romani Imperii, an imperial restoration. .........

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Urban Planning

July 9, 2007

Donald Antrim reads Donald Barthelme’s 1974 short story “I Bought a Little City” and discusses it with The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.

Listen to the mp3 on the player above, or right-click here to download.

Subscribe to the monthly fiction podcast to hear a a story from the New Yorker archives chosen by a current fiction writer. This and other podcasts are available through iTunes, or through our Feeds page.

Barthelme’s story “I Bought a Little City” can be found in the collection “Sixty Stories.” Buy the book from Amazon.

Pipilotti Rist: Pour Your Body Out

		Pipilotti Rist: Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters) November 19, 2008–February 2, 2009 The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor An Evening with Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist's lush multimedia installations playfully and provocatively merge fantasy and reality. MoMA commissioned the Swiss artist to create a monumental site-specific installation that immerses the Museum's Marron Atrium in twenty-five-foot-high moving images. Visitors will be able to experience the work while walking through the space or sitting upon a sculptural seating island designed by the artist.

Opening from individualEye on Vimeo.

Relaunching Capitalism

November 13, 2008

Author:	Lee Hudson Teslik

This weekend's gathering in Washington of the G-20 industrial and developing economies, billed by some as the second coming of the historic Bretton Woods conference, seems likely to produce more modest ends. Bretton Woods came after years of preparation and five years of world war; it created a global economic order more or less from scratch, establishing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The G-20 summit comes after less than a month of planning and won't involve finance ministers, whom analysts say would be needed for any broad new framework to be crafted. The most likely outcome, reports the Financial Times, will be general agreements about coordinating fiscal stimuli--not insignificant, but hardly an overhaul of the global financial order.

All the same, analysts will watch the summit for signs of possible regulation to come, and to gauge the mood of the world's leading policymakers at a time of economic distress. Over the course of 2008, the global economy has seen wild swings in equity and commodity prices, currency upheavals, and severe credit market turmoil, events detailed in a new CFR.org timeline. In the United States, the private investment bank model, which served as a driving force behind the financial successes of recent decades, eroded completely. Firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, riddled by financial uncertainty, voluntarily subjected themselves to greater oversight in exchange for access to short-term loans from the U.S. government. Washington also greatly expanded its own financial burdens, nationalizing the mortgage guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and establishing pools of money to backstop struggling financial institutions.

Other countries and international institutions made similarly sweeping moves. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and other European leaders agreed to make large sums of money available (Economist) for recapitalizing banks--and possibly taking equity stakes in them as well. China, for its part, announced a $586 billion stimulus package that CFR's Elizabeth Economy and Adam Segal write sends a clear signal that Beijing is redoubling its focus on economic growth. The World Bank and IMF have both expanded (Guardian) the amount of money available to smaller countries that find themselves in financial distress, though some countries, including Argentina and Pakistan, hesitated to take this money even when they found themselves on the brink of loan defaults. And dozens of countries, spanning every inhabited continent, have staged some form of economic intervention, from guaranteeing bank deposits to banning short sales of equities to adjusting the interest rates at which they lend money to banks. An interactive graphic from the Financial Times surveys the scope of these interventions.

The question now is whether the G-20 meetings will lead to more global coordination. The most important point, said panelists at a recent meeting cohosted by CFR, the Economist, and NYU's Stern Business School, is to provide a safety net for firms that are "too big to fail"--those whose collapse poses such a risk to the global economic order that it is worth the cost to taxpayers to keep them afloat. The panelists said this list should include any firm with a balance sheet tallying more than $1 trillion, and a handful of other companies of systemic importance (such as those that manage so many financial contracts that by collapsing they could bring down larger firms). Still, all three panelists noted the risk of regulatory overreach--a point echoed in a Washington Post op-ed by C. Fred Bergsten, the director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Bergsten also issues a more direct warning about the G-20 summit. Should conflicts emerge over regulation, he writes, the summit could undermine confidence, mitigate regulatory gains made to date, and send markets "into a new tailspin."

Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.

Religulous (2008)

Dir: Larry Charles (Borat)
Written by: Bill Maher
Official Site

Swear Off Market Fundamentalism

FPIF Op-Ed

Robin Broad and John Cavanagh | November 14, 2008
Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco

"As long as U.S. officials continue to refuse to face the reality of a post-market fundamentalist world, they will further contribute to the crisis. The Bush administration should start working with President-elect Obama's advisors immediately to open up a genuine global dialogue aimed at closing down the financial casino and replacing it with rules and institutions that put people and the planet first."

Foreign Policy In Focus

www.fpif.org

(Editor's Note: This op-ed was originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and on the IPS website.)

With the global economy facing severe recession, lame-duck President Bush is hosting the leaders of 19 other major countries in Washington this weekend to try to prepare a coordinated response.

A noble goal. But, alas, Bush is the wrong host. Washington is the wrong venue. His guest list is too selective. And Bush has already made it clear he is still clinging to erroneous policies that created the crisis in the first place.

The United Nations offered to host the summit, which would have been appropriate. This crisis has truly gone global, hitting not just financial markets but also workers, businesses and consumers in all countries — rich and poor alike.

But Bush opted instead for his own turf and his own invitees, which include leaders from rich countries and some larger developing countries. It is not quite the "Coalition of the Willing" that Bush used to try to rationalize his buildup to the Iraq War, but it's certainly not a fully global coalition either.

Bush's reluctance to face a more representative group reflects his elitism as well as his discredited views on how to solve the crisis. In a recent statement, he actually stated with a straight face that the goal of the summit should be to preserve "free markets, free enterprise and free trade."

Yes, while his own Treasury secretary is busily nationalizing much of the U.S. banking sector, Bush is suggesting that the solution somehow remains the further deregulation of financial and trade markets.

The outgoing president appears unable to give up his belief in the "market fundamentalism" that has dominated the U.S. policy agenda for the past 30 years. With strong U.S. backing, institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization have pushed governments to lift regulations on trade, finance and investment and sell off state enterprises throughout most of the developing world.

The results of this free-market theology have been devastating for poor people, farmers, workers and the environment, and made the world more vulnerable to financial volatility.

In the midst of the current crisis, the IMF has already approved new loans to crisis-ridden Hungary and Ukraine, and is deep in negotiations with Pakistan. All these loans contain some of the failed "free market" conditions.

This is outrageous, not only because of the double standard (the IMF doesn't suggest such policies for richer nations), but also because the agency knows better: Recently released IMF data show that countries like China and India that have kept some government controls on the financial sector and limited the extent to which their economies are tied to global markets are weathering the storm relatively well.

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Robin Broad is a professor at American University in Washington, D.C. John Cavanagh directs the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. They wrote "Development Redefined: How the Market Met its Match.

The Iran-Saudi Cold War

Bahman sent this

November 6, 2008

James Brazier, Guest Contributor

There has been no Western outcry against Saudi Arabia’s mediation between the Taliban and the Afghan government. On the contrary, the Mecca talks were accompanied by senior British and U.S. officials indicating that such discussions were an evitable part of ending the war in Afghanistan. Only one country has denounced the meeting as an unacceptable capitulation to terrorism and extremism: Iran. This position reflects the untold story of Iran’s tussle with Saudi Arabia for regional influence.

The talks, held at the behest of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, took place in Mecca during the final three days of Ramadan, which ended on September 29. Those present included Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief Prince Muqrin and his predecessor Prince Turki al-Faisal; Nawaz Sharif, the leader of Pakistan’s opposition and a man with very close links to the Saudi monarchy; and Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, the foreign minister of the former Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Though the talks were exploratory and did not mark the start of a formal peace process, in the days afterwards U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that negotiations would ultimately be part of the end of the Afghan conflict likening this to the situation in Iraq, where the U.S. sought peace with Sunni Muslim insurgents. Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the departing British commander in Afghanistan, declared that the war could not be won militarily. Karzai said the Afghan people were sick of the conflict. All this implied that the Taliban could be accommodated in a negotiated settlement.

The prospect of some sort of Taliban rehabilitation received a much frostier reception in Tehran. Iran’s Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki urged the U.S. against talks, saying that the Taliban’s extremism could not be confined to the Middle East and West Asia. Iran’s ambassador to the UN said that negotiations would make Afghanistan even less stable. The chairman of Iran’s parliamentary foreign policy and national security committee said the talks would spread terrorism.

Iran despises the Taliban for three reasons. The first is sectarian. Iran is a Shia theocracy, whereas the Taliban are Sunni extremists who view Shias as heretics. In August 1998 Taliban fighters slaughtered thousands of Shia Hazaras in Mazar-e-Sharif. The Hazaras were closely aligned with the Northern Alliance, an Iranian-backed rebel coalition dedicated to fighting the Taliban; the conflict between these sides saw more than a million Afghan refugees flee to Iran.

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Live election coverage from Washington Post

Election Day Special -- The End of a Subprime Administration

"He] said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors.... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

"We create our own reality… We're history's actors."

Foreclosed

The George W. Bush Story
By Tom Engelhardt

They may have been the most disastrous dreamers, the most reckless gamblers, and the most vigorous imperial hucksters and grifters in our history. Selling was their passion. And they were classic American salesmen -- if you're talking about underwater land in Florida, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or three-card monte, or bizarre visions of Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles armed with chemical and biological weaponry let loose over the U.S., or Saddam Hussein's mushroom clouds rising over American cities, or a full-scale reordering of the Middle East to our taste, or simply eternal global dominance.

When historians look back, it will be far clearer that the "commander-in-chief" of a "wartime" country and his top officials were focused, first and foremost, not on the shifting "central theaters" of the Global War on Terror, but on the theater that mattered most to them -- the "home front" where they spent inordinate amounts of time selling the American people a bill of goods. Of his timing in ramping up a campaign to invade Iraq in September 2002, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card infamously explained: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

Indeed.

From a White House where "victory strategies" meant purely for domestic consumption poured out, to the Pentagon where bevies of generals, admirals, and other high officers were constantly being mustered, not to lead armies but to lead public opinion, their selling focus was total. They were always releasing "new product."

Read the full Tomgram

A Husband in Paris

photographs and text by
Katarina Radovic

The series of images A Husband in Paris was set out as a playful comment on the idea of marrying abroad for papers, due to political isolation in economically underdeveloped countries. This was a starting point in my work, which, during the course of its progress, acquired a number of other meanings related to the choice of place and the characters photographed.

The scenario is the following: I myself took up the role of a young woman from Eastern Europe in the search of a husband in Paris, the model of a Western “city of dreams“. Walking across the city districts within the period of several weeks, I approached candidates asking them whether they would be willing to “marry me” and what it would look like. After a short introductory “sniffing“, they happily agreed to pose together with me for a snapshot, in which we played the role of a potential couples.

The aesthetic complexity of these staged images surpasses the strictly political aspects and stretches to romantic relationships between possible marriage partners as well as the seduction of the young woman who, in her appointed role, does not hide that she is “in the hurry”.

However, not every type of “marriageable material” would do; the selection of candidates was based on their look, origin, style, profession, etc. This work stands at the intersection of private (aspirations and limitations) with the more global issues (societies in flux and transition, fictive marriages and their socio-emotional consequences), reflected as such in the informality of snapshot aesthetics. The set poetic rules and the hilarious approach however reduce a certain uneasiness and explicitness of the initial idea, turning it into a light and spontaneous game of revealing latent possibilities in human relationships interwoven with cultural differences; and offering visual descriptions of human needs, expectations and illusions.

Good Dick (2008)

Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2008

Official Selection - Edinburgh International Film Festival 2008
Official Selection Jackson Hole Film Festival
Official Selection Newport Beach Film Festival 2008

Director: Marianna Palka
Marianna Palka, Jason Ritter, Eric Edelstein, Mark Webber, Martin Starr, Tom Arnold

Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927-1937

opens on Sunday November, 2, and remains through Jan. 12 at the Museum of Modern Art; (212) 708-9400, moma.org.



Miró, Serial Murderer of Artistic Conventions

By HOLLAND COTTER

Published: October 30, 2008
Art Review | Joan Miró at MoMA

Amputate tradition, torture the past, terrorize the present. The impulse to destroy was part of what made early Mart the guerrilla movement it was.

Cubism sentenced illusionistic art to the Death by a Thousand Cuts. Dada unleashed an anti-aesthetic Reign of Terror: Beauty? Off with its head. Decay? Let’s have more. Surrealism, a slippery business, let the killer instinct run amok. Tossing manifestos, dreams and libidos like bombs, it aimed to bring Western civilization to its knees and keep André Breton in the news.

So in 1927, when Joan Miró said, “I want to assassinate painting,” he wasn’t saying anything new. What was new was the way he carried out his cutthroat task. That process is the subject of “Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927-1937,” an absorbing, invigorating and — Miró would be mortified — beautiful show at the Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition illustrates, step by step, exactly how Miró stalked and attacked painting — zapped its conventions, messed up its history, spoiled its market value — through 12 distinct groups of experimental works produced over a decade. If, in the end, painting survived, that’s neither here nor there. The story’s the thing. Crisp, clear and chronological, the show reads like a combination of espionage yarn and psychological thriller set out in a dozen page-turning chapters.

In 1927 Miró was 34. He was a successful artist and an early devotee of Surrealism, working in a polished, fantastical-realist mode. But he had a restless temperament and lived in provoking times. The high-flying 1920s were winding down, the political climate was growing tense. Surrealism, he discovered, had limitations. He was ready for a radical change in art, but he realized that he would have to create it himself. He decided it would take the form of a crime. Painting would have to go. He would deliver the blow.

How to start? With dissection, which entailed taking painting apart, piece by piece, and throwing out essential things. This is what we see happening in the seven stark abstract paintings that open the show, all done in Paris in January to mid-February of 1927. The pictures look intact enough, with their handwritten phrases and clouds filled with dots, until you notice that something is missing: paint, or all but a minimal amount of it. Most of each picture is raw, untouched canvas on which the words and clouds drift like flotsam from a ship gone down.

read the full review