Ravelled Reviews

Paul Cezanne, Still Life with Fruit Dish



In honor of Cubism, Gertrude Stein, and Cezanne, a fractured ravels in review that attempts to document the act of ravelling. (Unfragmented links included).

Yesterday, it was Cubism, Visual and Literal, without Gertrude Stein’s mug in the end, before some explicit in odd ways not explicit enough notes on Butt in ASS , dear lord what a title for an exhibition, and horses, really big horses and what glitter at Jack the Pelican and why would they have named the gallery that, whose full name is Jack the Pelican Presents, and then in between is smushed a really great piece written by Richard Serra– Had I dressed it up better, images and all, maybe more people would have read it, my eyes are caked with sleep, before, before is so long ago, and my finger hurts from a paper cut given by a file folder, who knew such barbarities existed, so then here we are, we’re reviewing ravels, but what the hell happened this week, do I drink too much that I have the memory of a goldfish, but wait–I’ll check, oh dear, I really need a new website. And then i had written about loving my ‘hood, which terrible choice of word now strikes me as particularly annoying, and yet we must march on, although to note the accordion shop is choice, and so then- then now my boyfriend came into my room and did a flying ninja pose and told a work story, Gertrude didn’t have to deal with this, and so lastly I see I wrote about the High Line, which is nice, as I tell you, but maybe not so special it needs to be written about so much, but then I broke that cardinal.

Pablo Picasso, The Reservoir, Herta de Ebro

Images from the special exhibition on the fifth floor of MoMA, which leads you by the nose over to the room next door, for this savagery, savagery!:

My, what a big horse you have

Gregory de la Haba’s Equus Maximus


Sometimes you see something that is just wrong:

“New York multimedia artist Gregory de la Haba’s not-to-be-missed masterpiece Equus Maximus is ambitious to say the least, involving life-size taxidermy show horses… The overall effect is at once baroque and erotic, emotionally charged, and animated by a certain primitive, tribal sorcery that lends a deep soulfulness to the tableau’s splashy titillation.” – Flavorpill

And you feel the need to correct it, even if you never were particularly motivated to talk about the art you first saw months ago. If you’ve been to Jack the Pelican in Williamsburg…you’ve surely noticed this in the back of their gallery:

It’s striking, and makes me quite uneasy as it’s crammed into a dimly-lit, small backroom and you really have to scoot behind the rearing horses with obscene huge sexual organs to see all of it. What I did not see was “a deep soulfulness” the Flavorpill writer mentions. Of course, I’ve also heard it described as awesomely amazing, which I don’t buy into either. The gallery website puts it best by saying: “Over-the-top doesn’t quite capture the incredible vulgarity of it all.” Has anyone else seen it? I’m not sure if I’m turned off by the calculated attempt at shock value, or if the sexual horse thing is just too much for me. Either way, I’m pretty sure the emotional primal sorcery was lost on me.

Now I’m going to try to find something to write about that doesn’t involve horse sex or butts.