Tuesday, December 05, 2006

I'm gonna win the art fight with this analogy

"But that's like assessing the merits of a newborn baby by the sexual position through which it was conceived"

There is an imaginary art fight going on in my head 24 hours a day.

PS. this popped into my head after seeing the Rodney Graham Exhibit at the MACM...I'm far too lazy to bother backwards-engineering what the analogy is referring to....if you know his work maybe it makes sense, maybe I'm just slipping on wanting to prove how wrong other artists are. I'll just store the analogy in some internal bank and if you're lucky I'll start saying it over and over one night drunk with you next to me.

PPS. I actually really, really love Graham's upside-down-tree photos.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

if newborn babys have any merit at all (which i'm not prepared to admit - but if they do) then that would be a perfectly reasonable way to assess it.
I mean, you know the kids who get picked on and bullied in the playground, go through school and perhaps university without motivation or hope, enter into boring careers and unfulfilling relationships, never experiencing true passion, joy or misery and die without having achieved the one thing they really wanted to in this world - they all come out of the missionary position.

Wil Murray said...

This time next year:

"Why does Wil have so much money?"
"Oh, you know that coffee table book you see in the bins next to where you line up at Chapters that's like some piss-take on Astrology, with what your future holds based on the sexual position your parents were in when they conceived you?"
"Uh, yeah"
"He wrote it."
"Oh my."

Anonymous said...

"totally ripped off the ideas of heather kvill of course."
"oh yeah - but no ideas are new ideas are they"
"perhaps not, but she's suing her oldest friend for all he's worth"
"well, good luck to her!"

Anonymous said...

what upsidedown tree photos? can you make a link?

Wil Murray said...

Yes indeed:
http://www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/past/images/graham-trees.jpg

Wil Murray said...

My dear, you know my whole career is based on ripping you off.

Anonymous said...

"But that's like assessing the merits of a newborn baby by the sexual position through which it was conceived"

Thought that I'd add fodder to this 24hr party, or summon confusion to an already fraught analogical turn, or to just argue with Mr. Rodney Graham... and to add that, personally, I prefer the use of a well-lubed turkey baster for baby making, and yes this analogy applies, however obliquely...

"I wish either my father or my mother,
or indeed both of them, as they
were in duty both equally bound to it,
had minded what they were about when
they begot me; had they duly consider'd
how much depended upon what they
were then doing; -- that not only the
production of a rational Being was con-
cern'd in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body,perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind ; -- and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost : ---- Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, ---- I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me."

from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Wil Murray said...

Wow, between your Tristram Shandy quotes and Heather the Britishness of my blog is frightening.

Anonymous said...

'verily'!
oh i must employ that word more often.
hey wil, you're friend christmas image verily resembles a day-glo abortions gig poster! i like it heartily! and verily.
tra-la!

Wil Murray said...

Oh man, I think you could pay my flyer no bigger compliment.
I will ring you up tonight.