White Trash Art

New Obsessive Issue 006

featuring:

Battle Fish!
Cat Lady Fashion!
How To Manage Your Dictatorship, Now That You've Conquered!
Aero Disaster Omelets!
Must-See London Travel Sites!
Barfing In The Bread Bin!

New Obsessive Issue 005

featuring:

When Pliosaurs Attack:::::::Murderous Gangs of Swine Meat Justice::::::::::Fully Nude Military Regalia

Meat Judging:::::::::::U Draw Andy!::::::::::::Delicious Holiday Recipe with Bonus Pumpkin Caviar Bisque

A Tragic End To An Amazing Life

After purchasing her book "The Beautiful People's Beauty Book" several years ago, I have been a big Princess Pignatelli fan. Her candid quips about being a fabulous European socialite in the swinging 1970's are purely irresistible. Completely free of shame for her awesome hair, body, face and wealth, she would lay it on the reader - unabashed.

She was no hausfrau, and she made no bones about it. And if her volumes indicate her demeanor at all, she didn't give a flying fuck who thought she was bitchy.

I learned awhile back that Princess Luciana Pignatelli had passed on. In months past, details of her death were sketchy (even with diligent and compulsive googling), and just today I happened on an article that described her suicide with gin and pills after learning her investments had taken a huge dump on her perfect Italian bone structure. Distraught over being not only old, but poor - two conditions she could never entertain - she desperately ended her own life.

I say a heartfelt ciao bella, princess. You gave me big wonderful taste of what it was like to be you.

Here's a few Pignatellisms I've collected, previously published on my page Feelin' Pretty in 2005.

"You see, I'm very gourmande, which means I should be given all the more credit for not getting fat."

"In my ex-husband's house, everyone was unhappy, even the parrot.  It was my fault, too.  With two strong personalities, either you pull together or you destroy each other.  What does this have to do with beauty?  Lots!"

"It does not matter what you start with, try to get by on nature alone past 30 and you are finished."

"For heightened perception without drugs plus rapid weight loss, nothing beats the oldest known treatment for obesity: total starvation."

"Every woman over 30 needs a homosexual in her life."

Join the Princess Luciana Pignatelli Appreciation Society on Flickr, which is run by another big fan.

Shifting Sands

My friend Jimmy and his new doo-wap hit

http://www.myspace.com/lordmagpies

13 Lame Halloween Costumes

"Go Green Girl"

Because goin' green is all about spending $40 on synthetic petroleum-based clothes that won't biodegrade for 100,000 years and that you will absolutely never wear again

"Dora The Explorer"

 

One of the perks of being childless is that one doesn't have to watch children's shows - ever. Therefore, you are blissfully ignorant of all things marketable to toddlers. If I saw this kid on the street on Halloween I would have no fucking idea she was in a costume. I'd be all... "Oh, she's wearing a wig. (whispering to my companion) She must have cancer... Oh look they forgot to take the little surgery booties off of her before she left the chemo ward. Aww."

"Miss Piggy"

The description on the website actually says "Miss Piggy Costume Teen", because every high school girl wants to be the pig in a prom dress in front of all the cheerleaders and the cute guy from study hall.

"Hairspray Tracy Turnblad Teen Plus Costume"

 

If you're life is already about being a plus sized teen, I'm guessing your ultimate fantasy isn't to dress as a plus sized teen for Halloween...

"Animal House John Blutarsky Toga Costume"

 

A great costume usually requires that you have a photo of who the hell you are supposed to look like silk screened on the front of it.

"Circus Monkey Baby"

 

I can't quite put a finger on this one... maybe it's the whole idea of dressing your baby up as an organ grinder's monkey, and how that might set the tone for failure for the next 60 years or so. Dance monkey! Dance!

"Eurasian Traveler Costume Kit"

 

I assume they were going for "Borat", and trying to avoid paying any fees to say "Borat"; However without "Borat" this just looks like you are dressing as the creepy sex offender who wants to buy your 14 year old daughter a 4 pack of Bartles and Jaymes and "hang out" in the city park gazebo.

"Strawberry Shortcake"

 

Is it Strawberry Shortcake or is it Carrot Top's illegitimate child with some random Vegas casino trash?

"Safety Barrel Child Costume"

 

Wow. This one looks like fun. Gee, Mom - can I pleeeeeaase have this one?  Mom has a few issues with being a tad overprotective, perhaps? I mean, what could happen to a kid trapped inside a "Safety Barrel". I could respect one of those barrels that homeless build fires in then stand around. Now THAT is a Halloween-worthy barrel.

"Benjamin Franklin Child Costume"

 

This is what that home-schooled kid who won the spelling bee is wearing trick or treating tonight, right before the sadistic little bastard from up the block shoves a kite up his ass and steals his candy. Get used to masturbating, kid... just like Ben liked to do. A lot. (Anyone else thinking of that episode of 'The Office'?)

"Chickie Infant Costume"

 

What kind of freak dresses their baby up as a pinata?

"Sloth Sinner Adult Costume"

 

I don't know about you, but I don't need any crappy costume to advertise what a lazy ass bitch I am. It exudes from my pores.

"Goosh Pants"

 

After working in a hospital for 12 years, and in taverns for an additional 5 or 10 - let me let you in on a trade secret: you don't have to pay $20 bucks to set yourself up with a pair of "goosh pants".

The New Obsessive Issue 004

Brains the size of cantaloupes
The cleaved head of a famous British thespian
Lusty, salty sea-dogs
beehive diplomacy
additions to the English vocabulary
muthafuckin WORDSEARCH!

and, adventures in pube grooming.

New Obsessive Issue 3

Featuring many interesting and varied flights of fancy:

Pied Piper was a pedo!
OCD hits IT!
TV Test Signal Image!
Ode to Megalonyx!
Fringe Anti-Turpin Groups Squelched!
Diplomacy reaches Lofty highs!

Plus a picture of me with a perm in 1990. Thanks, Gary...

Stuckist Reflections at 3 Years

Successful conceptual artists are more and more commonly setting up factories staffed with dozens of assistants. Unlike Andy Warhol's Factory, these modern day equivalents aren't populated with iconic pop-culture ingenues, militant lesbian would-be assassins, trans gender free thinkers, superstars of music and literature and the paparrazi loving star-fuckers who swarm them like Red-Billed Oxpeckers on the backs of hippopottami.[10] By most accounts these corporate hives are staffed a'la the late great Walt Disney. Fresh faced graduate students and talented artisans, shunned or ignored by the established art community for their lack of savvy at playing the game, churn out artworks that bring their employers multiple millions in profits for as little as 15 bucks an hour[9]. Workers line up to punch actual time cards in one studio[2], lunch bucket in hand and ready to puke out astronomically priced art for wealthy collectors. With a questionable amount of disconnect, in many cases, from concept to implementation of technique, one must wonder if these pieces will hold their value over time as societal aesthetics evolve and change. The artists who employ this method of production seem unruffled by critics of this Mickey-Mouse branding of "high art".

Case in point is British art icon Damien Hirst, who shrugs off his oft criticized but highly lucrative career choices. "The real creative act is the conception," Hirst says, and "as progenitor of the idea, I am the artist." He has called his work "a brand produced in a factory"[9] Giant bunny generator Jeff Koons concurs: "I see my work as essentially conceptual."[2] Koons has somewhere between 30 and 120 assistants[1,7]depending on who you ask, and has been called an "opportunistic publicity monger" by NY Times critic Michael Kimmelman[8]. Kimmelman went on to say that Koons work is indicative of "the sort of self-promoting hype and sensationalism that characterized the worst of the 1980s."

Many artists, case in point the Stuckist movement, have become disillusioned by many aspects of this kind of detachment from the finished piece of art. For many, any artistic validity becomes hard to see clearly through a fog of kitsch and corporate branding. Du Champ's concept of "It is art because I said it's art" has run paper thin in many circles.

Some artists who could be defined as conceptual handle large crews with a possibly more hands-on approach. In the documentary "Chihuly: In the Light of Jerusalem", American artist Dale Patrick Chihuly seems to direct his crew much like Orson Welles on the set of "Citizen Kane": very involved in the process, though largely not laboring to create any of the components. An artisan glassblower, Chihuly has turned toward very large installments such as a wall of huge bricks of glacier ice from Alaska. The installment was in Jerusalem, and the massive chunks of ice had to be quarried then shipped by barge and rail to Washington, then by train car across the US to a ship headed for Italy, where it was transferred to a boat. Deposited outside of Jerusalem, the ice had to be handled by large construction equipment to be arranged.[3,4,5,6] Such laborious efforts have been described by the collaborator and wife of artist Christo (who was the brains behind the installment of 'Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates: Central Park, New York City, 1979-2005' - in which orange curtains hung on 7500 gates in 2005). She says assistants "are not hired as artists but as workers. We generally need people to carry heavy things." People working under Christo and Jean Claude learn that "Art is not easy. Your knees are bruised, hands are bleeding, backs in pain." [11]

Conversely, Koons and Hirst seem to rely heavily on the talent and artistic skill of their assistants. Koons pays his workers to use a paint by numbers system to complete photo-realistic paintings very precisely and quickly[2]. On his fist manufactured piece, Damien Hirst says, "I only painted the first five (spot paintings) and I was like, 'fuck this'. I hated it. As soon as I sold one, I used the money to pay people to make them. They were better at it than me. I get bored. I get very impatient."[9] ADHD aside, it is a system that has made the aforementioned artist incredibly influential and wealthy.

works cited
1 http://www.artnewsblog.com/2009/08/jeff-koons-has-more-than-120-assistants.htm "Jeff Koons Has More Than 120 Assistants"
2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/jun/03/art "The Wizard of Odd"
3 Chihuly, Dale; Artist's statement, Ariel, The Israel Review of Arts and Letters, Vol 111, 1999, pages 50-57.
4 http://www.chihuly.com/jerusalem/jerustate.html
5 Chihuly: In the Light of Jerusalem, television program, 1999, Director Peter West
6 The Jerusalem Wall of Ice, Artfocus magazine, Winter/Spring 2000
7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Koons
8 http://cityfile.com/profiles/jeff-koons
9 Cohen, David; Inside Damien Hirst's Factory, London Evening Standard, 8/30/07
10 http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/article-23410356-details/Inside+Damien+Hirst%27s+factory/article.do
11 Grant, Daniel. The Business of Being an Artist, Issue 8600, p164-165, 2008

New Obsessive Issue 2

for your perusing...
Featuring many sexy avant garde articles, artsy flights of fancy, and my article on proper BBQ etiquette
click here

Video Footage from Recent Show