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Web Log Archives: January 11, 2004 - January 17, 2004

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Salon review of Art: A Sex Book (premium subscribers only) by John Waters and Bruce Hainley. "The kind of contemporary artworks that usually lead unseasoned viewers to simply scratch their heads and dismiss the whole arena of hoity-toity galleries are sprayed with an alluring conceptual scent of musk. The authors give a new and often sexy spin to images that don't initially scream with sensuality, and they offer more serious consideration to images with uncloaked porno roots." From the book's introduction:

JW: Contemporary art is sex. The artists, the cute kids working in the galleries, the paperwork from the galleries, the crating and shipping, all the young 'hangers on' crashing the openings -- it's all about sex.

BH: Sex is a prime motivator for making contemporary work, even when the art doesn't seem to have anything to do with sex or nudity. Making art -- especially if it's interesting art -- is a sexy occupation.

Sounds about right. Also reviewed at artnet by Ana Finel Honigman.

The most tantalizing aspect of this brilliant book, aside from its bevy of erections and ribald humor, is Waters' and Hainley's ability to intellectually engage overtly sexual art while simultaneously articulating how chaste-seeming images can be as beguiling as their libertine counterparts. Anyone in the art-world can shamelessly claim that they love John Currin for his "Old Master technique," but perhaps only Waters could convincingly explain why Tom Friedman's 1,000 Hours of Staring (1992-97), a blank sheet of paper Friedman claims to have watched for 1,000 hours, is sexy.

More and more. (Thanks, Susannah.)

Leif Ueland at Nerve discusses Britney's wedding fiasco in light of his own drunken quickie Vegas wedding years ago. "So, here it is: the likely truth of what happened. There are three factors that must be present before one can wake up in Vegas married. They are, in no particular order: lots of alcohol, a weakness for extreme experiences, and some dirty nasty porn-star-like fucking-sex."

Fascinating article in The Economist about the Voynich manuscript.

The Voynich manuscript, once owned by Emperor Rudolph II in 16th-century Bohemia, is filled with drawings of fantastic plants, zodiacal symbols and naked ladies. Far more intriguing than its illustrations, however, is the accompanying text: 234 pages of beautifully formed, yet completely unintelligible script.

Modern scholars have pored over the book since 1912, when Wilfrid Voynich, an American antiquarian, bought the manuscript and started circulating copies in the hope of having it translated. Some 90 years later, the book still defies deciphering. It now resides at Yale University.

The manuscript is written in “Voynichese”, which consists of strange characters, some of which look like normal Latin letters and Roman numerals. Some analysts have suggested that Voynichese is a modified form of Chinese. Others think it may be Ukrainian with the vowels taken out. But Voynichese words do not resemble those of any known language. Nor is the text a simple transliteration into fanciful symbols: the internal structure of Voynichese words, and how they fit together in sentences, is unlike patterns seen in other languages.

You're probably saying to yourself, "wow, what an intriguing historical puzzle and . . . what was that about the naked ladies again?" Voynichinfo.com collects images from the Voynich manuscript from various sources, including all available color images. Some hot medieval hoax smut on page 75r, page 78r, page 82r and pages 83v-84r.

Elsewhere, Voynichologist Jorge Stolfi addresses an arcane question: are the nymphs with the prominent bellies supposed to be pregnant? "IMHO, that conclusion is unwarranted. A 'beer tummy' apparently was part of the early 1500's ideal of female beauty (at least in Northern Europe)." He reproduces a contemporary engraving to illustrate that theory.