Sunday in Venusburg

Fosco has been listening to Wagner's opera Tannhäuser this week. The music is absolutely ravishing (Don't believe me? Get a hold of the Overture--an easy download from anywhere.), but I had never really paid attention to the plot before this week. Guess what? The plot is stupid. Even so, the opera's a pretty thrilling listen.

Another thing I never knew about Tannhäuser: the overture is referenced in the title of an almost-equally ravishing Cézanne painting.

This is Cézanne's Girl at the Piano (Overture to Tannhäuser) (1868-70). It lives at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. It is entirely possible that this young woman is playing the piano transcription of the overture by Franz Liszt (although there seem to have been versions by several composers).

I wish you a restful Sunday, filled with wonderful music (and perhaps some needlework?).

Wounding Your Cavaliers

It's Sunday and, if you are like me, you would like to see something beautiful.

I finds this strange Pre-Raphaelite painting to be oddly gorgeous. This is The Wounded Cavalier by the delightfully-named William Shakespeare Burton (1824-1916).

Although this was painted around 1855, the depicted scene is from the English Civil War. Personally, I think it's reasonable to read the painting allegorically; otherwise, I'm not sure how you explain the presence of the dour, Bible-holding Puritan who looks on disapprovingly. Oh Puritans, is there anything you don't hate? Also, an allegorical reading may help to account for such oddities as the broken blade stuck in the tree and the small butterfly that is perched on it. (But no, I'm not going to do the allegorical reading for you.) Also, why in the hell is there a tree running down the center of the painting? And why is the Puritan hiding behind it? These are the kinds of questions that, to my mind, make this a worthwhile painting.

As far as I can determine, this painting is in the permanent collection of the Guildhall Museum of Art in London (although it does not appear on their website). There is a smaller "study" for this painting in the Tate collection, although its colors are very different and it is (on the whole) much less appealing.

A note on the coloration. There are numerous images of this painting online and the colors are different in every one. As Fosco has never seen the original (nor is it, apparently, on display except by appointment), he has chosen the version that is most appealing to him. You may find this image to be a little "washed out," but Fosco much prefers the faint mist in this image to some of the gaudier versions.


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Hentai Goes High Culture

N.B., there are parts of this post (farther down) that might be a little NSFW. Be warned.

Somehow, Fosco managed to ignore most of the hullabaloo around last year's Takashi Murakami retrospective which started at the MOCA in LA and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum (among other places). Sure, Fosco skimmed the New Yorker review, but didn't pay much attention. Murakami just isn't quite Fosco's style.

Takashi Murakami (not to be confused with Haruki Murakami, whose exquisitely beautiful novels Fosco does love) is something of an art sensation. To Fosco, T. Murakami looks eerily like the future version of Hiro Nakamura from TV's "Heroes." Murakami's art, however, is not from the future--it's insistently of the present. I guess you could call his work "pop art"--in that it owes much to popular forms of animation and illustration (especially manga). Yes, there are lots of anthropomorphic flowers, mushrooms, and god-knows-what:

It's like the materialization of an LSD hallucination--at least, that's what I imagine it would it be like.

It's also relentlessly, and intentionally, commercial. You may recall the frisson caused by the inclusion, in the middle of the actual exhibit, of a fully-functioning Louis Vuitton boutique dedicated to selling Murakami's designs for Vuitton. As this piece in the Village Voice notes, the Vuitton boutique was one of the principle draws of the Murakami show in the first place. You may recognize this Murakami design for Vuitton:

If you think this pattern is unforgivably gaudy, you should see this design translated into actual decor in Fosco's December photograph of the Manhattan Louis Vuitton boutique:

It's eye-catching, sure; but isn't it all a little... vulgar?

Apparently, in all of Fosco's studied ignorance of 2008's Murakami-fest, he managed to avoid knowledge of one sculpture in particular. Somehow, Fosco missed (in Peter Schjeldahl's review of the retrospective) this description of

another, “My Lonesome Cowboy,” is of a masturbating boy whose ejaculate twirls upward like a lariat.

If you're wondering what on earth this might look like, Fosco's got your back. Behold!

Hell's bells, that's disturbing! Are you repulsed, yet unable to look away? Well, here are some more views:



The title, My Lonesome Cowboy (referring to an Andy Warhol film), is pretty great. And sure, there's something cute about his face (he is an anime boy, after all); and yes, I would probably kill to have his hair. But that cum lasso? Freaky. Which I guess is the point.

[Note: in the Village Voice piece, the author claims that the boy "has some kind of disgusting gray effluvia shooting out of his wiener." Ummm, I think we call that "semen." Art interpretation: Ur doin it rong.]

Want to know how Takashi Murakami himself would explain this sculpture? You can take an online tour of this room of the exhibition (choose Exhibition Tour, Part 1).

But wait, this story gets even better: the sculpture just sold at auction for over $15 million (when commission is included). As this blog notes, Sotheby's was expecting the piece to go for $3-$4 million, so this was pleasant surprise. As the shape+colour blogger notes, Murakami is so popular right now that he can do no wrong:

And when you can do no wrong, your life-sized sculpture of a bright-eyed anime manga-boy jerking off and whipping his jizz into a gigantic lasso around his head will sell at auction for $13.5 million US.

I guess that's how you know you've "made it."

Thanks to Todd for bringing this story to my attention.

If you want to read more about Takashi Murakami (or read some novels by Haruki Murakami), you can click through on these buttons:

Fosco will receive a tiny percentage and he will be grateful.

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Your Sunday Fantasie

Fosco loathes this half of the time change dyad. "Losing" the hour plays too much hell with Fosco's sleep schedule. I wish we could live in a world where we always "fall back" one hour in the fall, but never "spring forward" the next spring. Of course, this would eventually result in darkness at noon and other unpleasantnesses. Alas.

So to ease your bleary eyes this time-change Sunday, Fosco offers a gorgeous painting. This painting caught Fosco's eye several years ago as he was speed-walking through the "Americans in Paris" exhibit at the Met Museum. It took my breath away.

The painting is by Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914) (no relation to Charles Sanders Peirce, although they were contemporaries). Pearce was born in Boston, but lived and worked in France after 1885. In his work, he was something of an Orientalist (ya think?), so naturally he received the French Légion d'honneur. This painting, titled Fantasie was finished circa 1883 and resides in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

There is not a lot of academic work that Fosco can locate on Charles Sprague Pearce, but interestingly enough, there appears to be something of a disagreement about this painting. The Americans in Paris 1860-1900 catalogue essay for this painting identifies the subject as a boy. However, Aisla Boyd, writing in the Journal of Victorian Culture, disagrees:

Strangely Charles Sprague Pearce's Fantasie is identified in the catalogue and labelled as a young boy wearing a woman's kimono, but is more obviously a woman. Her cupid's bow mouth, hint of bosom under the beautiful silk, smooth skin and hair drawn back like a bob, contrast most dramatically with the firmly held samurai sword--the fantasy is that of the femme fatale rather than cross-dressing.

I think this is a faulty reading of the portrait.

Of course, the only way to resolve the question of the sex of the portrait subject would seem to be finding some sort of historical evidence that establishes the sex of Pearce's model (like a letter or journal entry). However, even that type of evidence would still leave open the question of the sexual ambiguity of the subject--regardless of whether or not said subject is "actually" a boy or a woman. After all, Boyd sees "obviously" a woman, while others see a boy. Clearly, this painting is not meant to evoke a stable representation of sex (either male or female). If there is one thing that's obvious about this painting to me, it's that the sex of the subject is not obvious.

Consequently, I want to read this painting as a queer painting. Think about it: either way, this painting is attempting to mess with sex roles. If it's a boy (and I think it probably is), why is he so feminized? Why is he wearing a woman's kimono? If it's a woman, why is she masculinized as a samurai? (I'm sorry, there is nothing of a femme fatale here--I think that's a ludicrous reading.) Either way, this painting is about some aspect of cross-dressing (which is its fantasie, right?). Boyd's reading of the painting tries too hard, I think, to unqueer a very queer painting--to establish a conventional alibi for what is a sexually subversive work of art.

If you are interested in the catalogue for this exhibition, you can purchase it here:

Liquid Art

Good morning: it's time for good eating (and drinking) on "Foodie Friday."

I think bottled water clearly falls under the purview of "Foodie Friday."

Steven Heller wrote a great piece on the design of water bottles for this Times this week.

Heller writes appealingly that he

was intrigued when Fiji introduced a rectangular water bottle, and Fred Natural Spring Water was packaged in what resembled a whiskey flask. I was seduced by Voss, which comes in a pristine cylindrical container akin to an ultramodern vase — and is priced two times higher than the average bottled water. At least when I finished the Voss, I had a vessel for my long-stemmed roses. Indeed, why shouldn’t water bottles be designed with panache (and multiple uses) for an upscale consumer’s tabletop? These are examples of conspicuous pretension, yet what’s the harm if someone’s willing to pay for it — and if the bottles look good in the bargain?

Fosco is actually a fan of the Fiji bottle, maybe because there is a simple elegance to it. As for the "Fred" water: I love the bottle, but I don't understand the name and the logo. Are they trying to cash in on the success of discount airline Ted? Because, ummm, Ted hasn't really been much of a success...

Then there is the water called Aquadeco (bottle at far left in picture above). Heller gives credit to the impulse behind the Art Deco bottle, but he's disappointed with its execution:

Granted, the water is tasty, but the so-called “complex” package is not as elegant as promised. Compared with Fiji, Fred, and especially Voss, the design of the bottle and typography is ham-fisted. The bottle is less Chanel than Woolworths (in the 1930s, Art Deco package design was quite common in the five-and-dimes), and the logo’s white, customized serif typeface, with a silver outline, gives the impression of a knockoff rather than an original. The difficultly with using pastiche or retro styling for a contemporary product is making sure it doesn’t look preciously passé. This does. What’s more, does anyone really want to drink something that looks like a novelty perfume?

Fosco knows that some of his readers are big fans of Art Deco style (looking at you, BeeMaster), but I think Heller's right here: the bottle just doesn't look like something I want to drink. Or, for that matter, to display.

And because this is "Foodie Friday," we should probably say something about the taste of bottled waters. Fosco does indeed drink bottled water on occasion (although he's trying to cut down for environmental reasons). Evian is a classic and it's great, of course. Dasani is absolutely undrinkable (maybe because it's just tap water?). Cibo Matto's lyrics to "Sci-Fi Wasabi" note that "Yuka Honda knows her water--Pass the Volvic"; I guess that Volvic is fine. But my favorite in indeed Fiji. Fosco is all about the smooth mouth-feel, thanks to those silicates. Not to mention that it makes you look like a model.


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Omnibus Titbit Post

Some weeks, there's just too much to share with you, the Fosco Lives! reader. That's why you are now reading a "news digest" post, consisting of a bunch of stories that Fosco just can't not comment on.

• Guess who's back at Stanford! Hint: she's a lesbian war criminal. No, not Rosie O'Donnell, but good guess. Nope, it's Condi, who has returned to her life (and lifepartner!) at Stanford (aka America's anus). Her teaching load is still undetermined, but she eventually hopes to get back into the classroom:
  

  As a professor, Rice has said, she hopes to lead future courses on international politics, with a focus on decision-making. Specifically, she seeks to teach "decision simulation," where students are pressed to think about real-life questions and choices and not just abstract policy.

  You know, decisions like: "Which war is the right war for you?" or "How many dead Iraqi civilians is too many?". Come to think of it, she's going to fit right in at Stanford.
  
  
• There's more financial mumbo-jumbo to explain why Harvard is in trouble and it appears to have something to do with "dry powder." Fosco isn't quite clear on this concept, but he assumes it has something to do with the gunpowder that Harvard has amassed in the basement of Widener Library for the inevitable apocalyptic war against Yale in the End Times. Yale delenda est!
  
  
• Fosco went to prom in high school, because who doesn't love a little heteronormativity? For his senior prom, Fosco chose a lovely corsage for his date; the day after Fosco ordered said corsage, the date and her stepmother went to the florist and redesigned the whole thing. Guess who still paid (Fosco could afford it, but still!).
  
  Which brings me to my point: prom would be pretty silly and ridiculous if it weren't so damned expensive (and mainly for the girls). But, as per this article in a recent Santa Cruz Sentinel, things will be easier for girls in Santa Cruz this prom season: Free Prom Dresses! Yes, thanks to a city councilman and a local dry cleaners, a buttload of donated prom dresses (and yes, the appropriate grouping adjective for a collection of prom dresses in indeed "a buttload"--look it up!) has been assembled for girls who cannot afford to purchase their own. Which is actually a pretty good thing, right? I almost think everyone should wear a recycled prom dress. After all, why should you buy a new dress when it's only going to get covered with alcohol/vomit and ripped by an overeager date rapist? Ah, good prom memories...
  
  
• Speaking of prom, did you realize that one in every thirty-one American adults is now in the corrections system? As the brilliant Jonathan Turley goes on to note, Georgia is the leader in this statistic (1 in 13 adults in the corrections system), followed by Idaho and Texas. (Hmmm, is it me or are those all red states?) This is a shocking statistic, no? I don't think anyone believes that this kind of rate is sustainable--the burden on our society is just too great. I don't know what we need to do, but I'm willing to listen to proposals for increasing education spending and decriminalizing marijuana.
  
  
• Speaking of prison, did you see that former football-star Maurice Clarett is blogging from prison? You may remember Maurice Clarett as a star running back at the Ohio State University, who as a freshman, helped to lead that team to a National Championship. Or you may recall that Clarett then sued the NFL to allow him to enter the NFL draft a year early (he lost). Well, a few years later (after getting cut from several NFL teams) Clarett apparently committed an armed robbery and is now serving a seven and a half year sentence.
  
  Now Fosco has never been a fan of Clarett, but there is a surprise here. (And no, the surprise is not that an Ohio State player ended up in prison...) Fosco was prepared to make some comedic hay from Clarett's blog, but, well, he can't--it's actually pretty good. It turns out that Clarett is using his time in prison for self-improvement, including working on his college degree. He's been reading philosophy(!) and doing a lot of thinking about life. He's been counseling some of the younger prisoners. And you know, he's actually a pretty decent writer. I actually find the whole project to be both serious and positive. I don't want to make fun of someone who is clearly taking his mistakes seriously and thinking about what he can give back to society after his release. I'm a little impressed and, to tell you the truth, I've subscribed to the feed... You can find his blog here.
  
  (I wonder if the crooked administrators and boosters at Ohio State who took advantage of this kid will ever end up in jail... Yeah, I suppose not.)
  
  
• A Santa Cruz aerial photographer just swept the "2009 Professional Aerial Photographers Association print competition," according to this piece in the Sentinel. You can see one of his winning images at right. The story behind the image itself is actually pretty amazing:
  

  Back in May, David Sievert flew to the Black Rock Desert of Nevada to preserve for posterity one of the ephemeral creations of Santa Cruz sand artist Jim Denevan.
  
  Sievert circled for 40 minutes over a dry lake focusing on what Denevan hoped would be the world's largest freehand drawing. He spent a month and a half, using a stick to draw a series of circles, creating a composition three miles wide.

  Crazy! Think of the work involved! And think about all of the ways that the drawing could have been destroyed:
  

  Then a variety of circumstances could have smashed Denevan's composition, sitting unprotected in the wild.
  
  A ranger from the Bureau of Land Management drove out, wondering why Denevan had camped there and potentially jeopardizing the drawing.
  
  "He didn't know what we were doing," said Denevan, who tried to explain. "We told him, Hey, when you leave, would you follow the lines?'"
  
  Three days before Sievert was scheduled to arrive, a group of 30 machine gun enthusiasts in Hummers and pickups kicked up dust, heading straight toward the drawing.
  
  Luckily, they turned toward Denevan's camping bus, assuming their leader was inside, thus leaving the drawing intact.
  
  Even the weather cooperated.
  
  "It rained like crazy a week later," Denevan said.

  Fosco has always had a soft spot for good "nature art" (like Robert Smithson or Andy Goldsworthy). And while the circles thing is indeed pretty cool in its ambition, I wonder if it could have been a little more interesting. Like what about a giant Oprah head? Oh wait, that's been done...

Would you care for the "Drum Roll of Colonial Fish"?

Please to be enjoying "Foodie Friday" here at Fosco Lives!

Fosco missed an important anniversary last Friday: the one hundredth birthday of the Futurist Manifesto. The Manifesto was published by F.T. Marinetti on the front page(!) of Le Figaro. As the BBC notes, the Manifesto seems like a strange thing to celebrate:

It called for the demolition of museums and libraries, contempt for women and the glorification of war, "the world's only hygiene".

It promoted "the beautiful ideas which kill" and claimed that beauty exists only in struggle - so why is the art world celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Futurist Manifesto?

Because when it appeared, on 20 February 1909, it was the first art manifesto of the 20th Century, paving the way for Vorticists, Surrealists, Dada-ists, and Situationists, as well as more recent cultural agitators like the Stuckists.

Sure, it's all a bit creepy and proto-fascistic, but don't you have to appreciate (even a little) a movement that so entirely attempts to revalue all values? Personally, Fosco has always loved tenet #4 of the Manifesto:

We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

I can guarantee that Dale Earnhardt Jr. agrees with that one.

The best reason for us to talk about Futurism on "Foodie Friday" is Marinetti's 1932 publication of The Futurist Cookbook. There aren't many "isms" that provide their own recipes and there is no cookbook that is as amazingly bizarre and hilarious as this one. Actually, the genre confusion is part of the fun here: is this really a cookbook? Is this literature? Is it some kind of imaginary food-writing? Whatever it is, here is Fosco's favorite recipe (not that he's ever tried it, of course):

HEROIC WINTER DINNER (from the “Futurist Cookbook”, 1932)

A group of soldiers who at three o’clock on a January afternoon will have to get into a lorry to enter the line of fire at four, or go up in an aeroplane to bomb cities or counter-attack enemy flights, would seek in vain the perfect preparation for these in the grieving kiss of a mother, of a wife, of children or in re-reading passionate letters.

A dreamy walk is equally inappropriate. So is the reading of an amusing book. Instead these fighters sit down round a table where they are served a ‘DRUM ROLL OF COLONIAL FISH’ and some ‘RAW MEAT TORN BY TRUMPET BLASTS’.

“DRUM ROLL OF COLONIAL FISH”: Poached mullet marinated for twenty-four hours in a sauce of milk, rosolio liqueur, capers and red pepper. Just before serving the fish open it and stuff it with date jam interspersed with discs of banana and slices of pineapple. It will then be eaten to a continuous rolling of drums.

“RAW MEAT TORN BY TRUMPET BLASTS”: cut a perfect cube of beef. Pass an electric current
through it, then marinate it for twenty-four hours in a mixture of rum, cognac and white vermouth. Remove itfrom the mixture and serve on a bed of red pepper, black pepper and snow. Each mouthful is to be chewed carefully for one minute, and each mouthful is divided from the next by vehement blasts on the trumpet blown
by the eater himself.

When it is time for the Peralzarsi; the soldiers are served plates of ripe persimmons, pomegranates, and blood oranges. While these disappear into their mouths, some very sweet perfumes of roses, jasmine, honeysuckle and acacia flowers will be sprayed around the room, the nostalgic and decadent sweetness of which will be roughly rejected by the soldiers who rush like lightning to put their gas masks on.

The moment they are about to leave they swallow the Throat–Explosion, a solid liquid consisting of a pellet of Parmesan cheese steeped in Marsala.

Of course, the question of how seriously to take this is part of the proper enjoyment of the Futurists (at least for contemporary readers). The strange thing is how similar this kind of recipe is to the actual contemporary culinary practice of chefs like Grant Achatz or Homaro Cantu.

If this kind of food writing thrills you, you may enjoy even more the setting of the Marinetti's cookbook to music! American composer Aaron Jay Kernis has written The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine for string quartet and narrator. A recording is available on this CD.


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WG Sebald: Looking at Corpses

Fosco recently read several "novels" by the late German author W.G. Sebald. Sebald's work is absolutely astonishing; he's one of the best authors I have read in years. In fact, The Rings of Saturn is now one of my favorite books of all time.

Sebald's work is hard to describe--it's kind of a hybrid between a novel and a personal essay, with lots of history thrown in. There isn't much "plot," but the stories are so ravishing and the language is so smooth that it's easy to fall under the spell of the narrative.

For your Wednesday edification, Fosco today offers an excerpt from Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. In the excerpt, Sebald offers a historical and art critical meditation on a famous Rembrandt painting, The Anatomy Lesson (seen below). As history, this is a beautiful passage; as art criticism, it's extraordinary. Hopefully, it will whet your appetite for more Sebald.


Excerpt from W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, trans. by Michael Hulse:

"In January 1632, [...] the dissection of a corpse was undertaken in public at the Waggebouw in Amsterdam--the body being that of Adriaan Adriaanszoon alias Aris Kindt, a petty thief of that city who had been hanged for his misdemeanors an hour or so earlier.

[...]

"The spectacle, presented before a paying public drawn from the upper classes, was no doubt a demonstration of the undaunted investigative zeal in the new sciences; but it also represented (though this surely would have been refuted) the archaic ritual of dismembering a corpse, of harrowing the flesh of the delinquent even beyond death, a procedure then still part of the ordained punishment. That the anatomy less in Amsterdam was about more than a thorough knowledge of the inner organs of the human body is suggested by Rembrandt's representation of the ceremonial nature of the dissection--the surgeons are in their finest attire, and Dr Tulp is wearing a hat on his head--as well as by the fact that afterwards there was a formal, and in a sense symbolic, banquet. If we stand today before the large canvas of Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson in the Mauritshuis we are standing precisely where those who were present at the dissection in the Waaggebouw stood, and we believe that we see what they saw then: in the foreground, the greenish, prone body of Aris Kindt, his neck broken and his chest risen terribly in rigor mortis. And yet it is debatable whether anyone ever really saw that body, since the art of anatomy, then in its infancy, was not least a way of making the reprobate body invisible. It is somehow odd that Dr Tulp's colleagues are not looking at Kindt's body, that their gaze is directed just past it to focus on the open anatomical atlas in which the appalling physical facts are reduced to a diagram, a schematic plan of the human being, such as envisaged by the enthusiastic amateur anatomist René Descartes, who was also, so it is said, present that January morning in the Waaggebouw.


[...]

"[T]he much-admired verisimilitude of Rembrandt's picture proves on closer examination to be more apparent than real. Contrary to normal practice, the anatomist shown here has not begun his dissection by opening the abdomen and removing the intestines, which are most prone to putrefaction, but has started (and this too may imply a punitive dimension to the act) by dissecting the offending hand. Now, this hand is more peculiar. It is not only grotesquely out of proportion compared with the hand closer to us, but it is also anatomically the wrong way round: the exposed tendons, which ought to be those of the left palm, given the position of the thumb, are in fact those of the back of the right hand. In other words, what we are faced with is a transposition taken from the anatomical atlas, evidently without further reflection, that turns this otherwise true-to-life painting (if one may so express it) into a crass misrepresentation at the exact point of its meaning, where the incisions are made. It seems inconceivable that we are faced here with an unfortunate blunder. Rather, I believe that there was deliberate intent behind this flaw in the composition. That unshapely hand signifies the violence that has been done to Aris Kindt. It is with him, the victim, and not the Guild that gave Rembrandt his commission, that the painter identifies. His gaze alone is free of Cartesian rigidity. He alone sees that greenish annihilated body, and he alone see the shadow in the half-open mouth and over the dead man's eyes." (12-17)



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Not (Yet) on iTunes

Tra-la-la... Music Monday!

Without Ted Gideonse, Fosco would miss all of the good blog memes. This is a great one: the Random CD Cover Meme. Let's get the rules from Ted (so you can do it yourself):

Here are the rules:

1. Use Wikipedia’s random article page to find your band name.

2. Go to the Random Quotations Page. The last four words of the very last quote is your album name.

3. Visit Flickr’s interesting photos page, the third image, no matter what, is your cover art.

4. Use Photoshop or Paint.NET to put all the pieces together.

5. Post it to the group!

For example, my random Wikipedia article was on Ski Bums, a gay and lesbian ski/snowboard club (how interesting!). My random quote was from the loathsome Woody Allen:

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.

[Rimshot!]

And if you think that none of this seems very promising for poor Fosco's band so far, wait until you see this "interesting" Flickr pic.

However, I must say that a little PhotoShop can do wonders. Here is the complete CD cover:

It actually came out looking surprisingly professional, I think (certainly much better than these covers). Lest you think that Fosco knows much about PhotoShop, allow him to reassure you that he did most of this by accident. That cool "molecular" background beneath the titles? That was (somehow) the default background texture. But for some reason, it looks pretty rad with the other elements.

The next step, of course, is to record this album. Anyone know any songs?

Food of Tomorrow... Today!

Welcome to "Foodie Friday" here at Fosco Lives!

Let's kick some things off today with a bit of gastroporn--both professional and amateur. Fosco remains fascinated by the work that Grant Achatz does at his Chicago temple of molecular gastronomy, Alinea. Achatz was born in both the same year and the same state as Fosco, so he feels a natural connection with the star chef. At some point, you should read about Achatz's battle with tongue cancer--it's an amazing story.

Here are some professional pictures of Achatz's creations. One of his guiding principles is to create entirely new ways of tasting familiar flavors. This is "rhubarb."

And this is a "tomato" caterpillar:

And now here are three "amateur" photos of dishes that Fosco had on his visit to Alinea in December 2007. I don't know who took this (found it on image search; my own pic didn't really turn out), but the dish is called "Lamb in Cubism." There are two preparations of lamb plated onto colorful panes of sauce--each pane is a different sauce, focusing primarily on Mediterranean flavors (yogurt, mint, pomegranate, saffron, &c.). The idea is to mix and match.

The next two photos were taken by Fosco. This is a dish called "venison." Achatz is also very interested in the ways in which scents can impact flavor--so yes, that is an inedible juniper branch. Nestled inside the juniper is a super-heated river rock. On top of the river rock, a small venison roll is being seared. The roll contains marinated Japanese plum and is topped with candy cane shards. You eat it in one bite with chopsticks. (And in case you think this looks like too small a portion, recall that the Alinea tasting menu has something like twelve courses. Fosco was very full.)

This dish was one of the desserts. It's a tempura-battered fried pumpkin pie popsicle (frozen with liquid nitrogen) on a cinnamon stick that is set aflame (look at the tip).

And you see that Achatz custom-designed wire holder? They've been popping up at other restaurants recently (including Jean-Georges, where Fosco saw them last December). That's called influence.

Toys of the Day

Fosco has mentioned before that Oz has caught something of a collection bug right now. And it's only getting worse, as Hasbro expands its Mighty Muggs line to include Transformers and GI Joe (yes, we're pretty much getting them all). No word yet on Battle of the Planets, but it's surely only a matter of time.

But Oz isn't the only one in this relationship who enjoys a nice plastic toy. Fosco has been smitten as of late by the creations of Miami art collaborative Friends With You. They've imported something of the Japanese toy aesthetic to the US, while playing up the sheer absurdity of it all by creating an accompanying bizarre metaphysics and cosmogony (think Hello Kitty crossed with Hinduism). Whatever it is, it's a hit at the international art fairs.

Fosco own a few of their plush creations (which are strangely cuddly; plus they have the added benefit of being completely inexplicable). But even better (and easier on the wallet) are their smaller plastic figures called "Wish Come True." Here's part of the lineup:

Each "Wish" figure is approx. 2-3" high and has a nice heft to it (we are not talking Happy Meal toys here--these are satisfying to touch and to hold). Each one has a bell embedded inside to make a variety of pleasing tinkling sounds. Each one also comes with a sticker!

Remember the part about weird metaphysics and cosmogony? Here are some samples:

POPA: Popa is little and he holds the key to your wishing potential and human ancestry.

MR. TTT: Mr. TTT is a shape shifting mystery! From wormholes to black holes he keeps making history. This cute little Mister is always a hit, whether shaped like a burger or a galactic peppermint.

COCO: Zozo is the universe and Coco is too. With all that power, what will you do?

This may seem annoying, but then again: what if it's charming?

The best part (especially for "Friends With You") is that the "Wish Come True" toys are sold "blind box"--meaning that you have to keep ordering to get complete your full set (and you will end up with some duplicates). There are also some secret figures that are not pictured anywhere. However, that's all part of the metaphysics of luck that reigns in the land of "Friends With You."

Two Armies Clash in the Mushroom Kingdom...

Oz's flatmate has an eleven-year-old daughter who comes by on weekends. This past weekend, she was working on a project (for junior high) that required her to create her own chess set (Fosco's junior high never assigned creative projects like that; and I'm not sure any of the teachers knew what "chess" is.). She came up with the idea to make an all Super Mario chess set. She and her dad spent much of last week sculpting the characters out of clay. Oz pitched in and sculpted one of the Yoshi figurines. Fosco's contribution was to doubt from afar that the whole thing would work (he's an eternal pessimist).

It turns out Fosco was wrong, because it came out totally cool. Here are the "good guys":

The "bad guys" are a little trickier: who would you pair up as the King and Queen? Oddly enough, L chose to make a cross-species evil romance between Bowser and Donkey Kong. And no, I'm not sure who's the top and who's the bottom. But it's still cool.

The Bishops there are Mario and Luigi's evil doppelgangers, Wario and Waluigi (for those of you who stopped following all of this sometime around Super Mario World). Here's the detail:

Remember: this is done entirely with clay and poster paints (no molds or models)! Impressive, no?

Dressing One's Boyfriend: Raf Simons

If Fosco ever wins the academic lottery, he might just start playing dress-up with his boyfriend Oz. Not that Oz doesn't dress well (he does); however, there is always room for some expensive labels in a handsome man's closet. And Oz is indeed a handsome man.

And if Fosco's windfall shows up tomorrow, he will probably buy Oz this coat from Belgian designer Raf Simons (go ahead click on the photo to get a sense of the fabric--that's what makes this coat great).

Also, while perusing Simons's Autumn-Winter 2008-2009 collection, Fosco had to wonder: does the Estate of Mark Rothko get a residual from every sale of this sweater?






Seriously, though, that is a pretty sharp sweater.

RIP America's Most Overesteemed Writer

Fosco Lives! bids a fond farewell to John Updike, known around these parts as The Most Overesteemed Man in American Letters. Updike is well-known for anthropomorphizing bunnies, making sex repulsive, and, well, being John Updike.

Fosco has read several of Updike's novels and each one is more unbearable than the last (especially his gimmicky "home-grown American terrorist" novel). This is not to say that Updike was talentless. Fosco does recall one or two short stories that were pretty good. And Updike's art criticism is pretty decent, especially his meditation on Renoir:

Renoir does not quite rank with the heroic masters of early modern painting--specifically, with his friends Monet and Cézanne. Compared with either, he didn't look hard enough. He saw what he wanted to see, and turned it as he aged into an inward vision, a mythology. [...] The brushstrokes turn greasier, the colors rawer, the drawing vaguer. In the end the people all look Mexican.

This is a critical bullseye, I would say, but we must remember that an occasional perceptive comment should not make one into a titan of American letters (deserving of a front page NYTimes obit).

So how did Updike come to be so overesteemed? The definitive history of this phenomenon is yet to be written; however, Fosco suspects it has something to do with the 1960s-70s and suburban adultery.

Updike had held the title of "Most Overesteemed Man in American Letters" since the death of Norman Mailer in 2007. Mailer had held the title for almost twenty years, with a brief hiatus from 1996-1999 when David Foster Wallace held the distinction.

Who does the title pass on to now? Unfortunately, David Foster Wallace is dead, as is Hunter S. Thompson. Robert Olen Butler may overly esteem himself, but I'm not sure anyone else likes him at all. Philip Roth and Don DeLillo are both highly esteemed, but deservedly so, in Fosco's judgment. Similarly, I think Cormac McCarthy could not be overesteemed. Are there any women who qualify? (After all, this title doesn't have to go to a man.) Again, Fosco believes that the esteem for Toni Morrison is entirely justified.

Richard Ford is a possibility, but he's actually pretty good and people don't really talk about him much anymore. We are probably going to have to go down one tier to find our new titleholder. In the second tier, I think Jeffrey Eugenides is a strong candidate. But instead, I am going to award the title of Most Overesteemed American Man of Letters to Michael Chabon. Chabon is a Pulitzer Prize-winner (for a ridiculously bad novel about comic books), as well as a promoter of stupid genre fiction. He has scraggly rock-star hair.

Congratulations, Michael Chabon! May you continue to be scandalously over-rated for many years to come.

SFMOMA by night

Fosco and Oz had a (very small-scale) eighteen-month anniversary celebration in SoMa last Friday night. They had dinner at Northern California's fanciest food court at the Westfield San Francisco Centre. You can tell it's a fancy food court because they have real silverware. They also have an outpost of Beard Papa!

Oz was in the mood for spicy tuna, so he opted for a spicy tuna bowl:


Fosco was in the mood for the deliciousness of the Slanted Door's takeout version, Out the Door. Out the Door serves Fosco's favorite green papaya salad:

Fosco is not normally agog over green things, but this salad is exquisite. It's fresh and clean and complex and totally rejuvenating (the french-fried onions really rock it). Sadly, Fosco cannot recommend the Egg Noodles with Shrimp Stir-Fry--an unfortunate failure for such a consistently good place to eat.

After dinner, Fosco and Oz headed down the street for an after-hours corporate reception at the SFMOMA (thanks to Oz's employer, which may or may not be Mmm Carpets). It was a surprisingly hip event. The SFMOMA's atrium was almost clubby, with a DJ and everything.


The best part, of course, is that all of the galleries were open. Fosco and Oz had been to the museum recently, so there wasn't much new. However, they got a nice second look at the Martin Puryear show. Most of Puryear's work is on some borderline between wood crafts and art, usually on a (very) large scale. A surprising amount of the Puryear exhibit leaves Fosco cold, but he does really appreciate this work, entitled "Brunhilde":


The longer you walk around this piece, the more interesting it becomes. Fosco also enjoys Puryear's little tiny ladder on display in the SFMOMA's atrium:


There is a nice (short) piece on Puryear's art here that I think is helpful.

We had also seen the exhibit called "Art of Participation" before, but we walked through it again. One of the best pieces is by Fosco's adored Félix González-Torres. This is Untitled (1992-93):


The work is essentially a big stack of prints on large sheets of paper (like 2.5 X 3.5 ft). The prints are all the same. Viewers are encouraged to take one of the prints home with them. The stack is replenished forever. Isn't that cool? Right now, Fosco has one on the wall near his desk (don't worry--Oz and I have another one to frame someday):


The last time Fosco was at this exhibit, the ANT FARM Media Van wasn't working correctly. Luckily, it was running smoothly on Friday night. The Media Van is a gutted van that is the repository for a digital time capsule (which will be opened in the year 2030, assuming humans still exist then). Inside the van, there are hookups for iPods, cell phones, cameras, etc. Visitors are encouraged to hook up an electronic device to the van; the van then randomly downloads a file from that device for inclusion in the digital time capsule. Once you the van copies your file, it spits out a receipt for you (which is good for 10% off in the SFMOMA store!). Here is Fosco's receipt:


As you can see, the van randomly selected a Bloc Party song from Fosco's iPod. Fosco realized afterward that this could have been a very embarrassing situation: can you imagine putting some horrible song into a time capsule to be played in 2030? Now Fosco doesn't have a ton of bad music on his iPod, but there are still some things he wouldn't be thrilled about (Bon Jovi, Aly and AJ, Roxette...) Luckily, Bloc Party is acceptable in terms of street cred (and "Sunday" is a particularly good song with a particularly good chorus for an anniversary: "I love you in the morning / When you're still hung over.") And who knows? Maybe in 2030, that song will still sound totally rad.

Come to think of it, Fosco and Oz will celebrate their twenty-three year anniversary in 2030.

The Holy Orgasm

Fosco's art education is a bit sketchy, especially when it comes to Italian sculpture. Even so, how did it take him this many years to encounter the absolutely ravishing face of Bernini's Saint Teresa? Here are a couple of views:


That is just amazingly beautiful.

Of course, Fosco wasn't completely ignorant of the existence of the statue. Seeing the face reminded Fosco that he had read about it once before in the Seminar of Jacques Lacan. As Lacan notes, in his discussion of feminine jouissance:

[I]t's like for Saint Teresa - you need but go to Rome and see the statue by Bernini to immediately understand that she's coming. There's no doubt about it. What is she getting off on? It is clear that the essential testimony of the mystics consists in saying that they experience it, but know nothing of it.

Fosco always thought Lacan was just being silly here; but look at her face! She is indisputably having an orgasm! Don't believe me? Take a look at some of these (mildly NSFW).