Vile Days: The Village Voice Art Columns, 1985-1988
600
Vile Days: The Village Voice Art Columns, 1985-1988
600Hardcover
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Overview
In 1985, the Village Voice offered me a job as senior art critic. This made my life easier and lousy at the same time. I now had to actually enter all those galleries instead of peeking in the windows. At times, the only tangible perk was having the chump for a fifth of vodka whenever twenty more phonies had flattered my ass off in the course of a working week.
—from Vile Days
From March 1985 through June 1988 in The Village Voice, Gary Indiana reimagined the weekly art column. Thirty years later, Vile Days brings together for the first time all of those vivid dispatches, too long stuck in archival limbo, so that the fire of Indiana's observations can burn again. In the midst of Reaganism, the grim toll of AIDS, and the frequent jingoism of postmodern theory, Indiana found a way to be the moment's Baudelaire. He turned the art review into a chronicle of life under siege.
As a critic, Indiana combines his novelistic and theatrical gifts with a startling political acumen to assess art and the unruly environments that give it context. No one was better positioned to elucidate the work of key artists at crucial junctures of their early careers, from Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince to Jeff Koons and Cindy Sherman, among others. But Indiana also remained alert to the aesthetic consequence of sumo wrestling, flower shows, public art, corporate galleries, and furniture design. Edited and prefaced by Bruce Hainley, Vile Days provides an opportunity to track Indiana's emergence as one of the most prescient writers of his generation.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781635900378 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MIT Press |
| Publication date: | 11/13/2018 |
| Series: | Semiotext(e) / Active Agents |
| Pages: | 600 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Bruce Hainley is the author of Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant's Volte-Face and Art & Culture, both published by Semiotext(e). The editor of Commie Pinko Guy, he wrote, with John Waters, Art—A Sex Book. He cochairs the Graduate Art program at ArtCenter College of Design and is a contributing editor at Artforum.
Table of Contents
Prelude to a Preface Gary Indiana 5
One Brief, Scuzzy Moment 9
Old Art, No Money 25
Fatal Vision 30
Seduction and Production 34
Peeping Tom 38
Living with Contradictions 42
Postappropriation 46
Imitation and Its Double 50
Debby with Monument 54
The Windex of Vulnerability 59
The Rest of Everything 63
Framing Creatures 67
Mapplethorpe 71
Art Objects 75
Goodbye, Jackie 79
Station to Station 81
The Dark Side of Gilbert and George 85
Paradigms of Dysfunction 90
Honey, Pollen, and Garnett Puett 94
Just an Opinion 98
Deep Fat 103
The Collins-Milazzo Effect 108
Dada Black Sheep 113
The Wages of Angst 118
Dear Decade 123
Banks of America 127
O Furniture 132
Slice of Art 137
Shadows of a Summer Night 141
Just Add Milk 145
Quarterly Dividends 148
The Hollow 152
Enigmatic Makeup 156
Now, Voyager 160
The World's Only Hygiene in Pictures 164
Where the Beuys Is 168
Genuine Imitation Art 171
"Garbage, the City and Death," Etc. 175
Sherrie Levine and Bette Davis: Affinities and Contrasts 179
Memories Are Made of This 183
The Age of Silver 187
Signs of Empire 191
The Physiology of Taste 195
New and Different 199
The Good, the Bad, and the Turgid 203
The No Name Review 210
On the River of No Return 215
Talking Back 219
Light and Death 223
Undermining Media 227
The Enigma of Uranus 231
Formal Wares 235
Liquid Memory, Solid Objects 239
Notes from the Snake Pit 243
New York Commonplaces 247
Soho Sketches 252
Imitation of Life 256
United States 261
Insomnia 265
After Reading Bernhard's Gargoyles 269
Canceled Texts 274
Travel Pieces 278
Ti Shan Hsu: A Chat 282
Mono 287
Home 291
Socks Make the Man 296
Venice as Usual 299
Castle to Castle 303
The Death of Photography 308
Chaos Plus 315
Infomania 318
Square Roots 323
Writing in Public 327
Star Search 331
Janet Malcolm Gets It Wrong 335
The Joy of Killing 347
Enclosed by System 351
Landscape Today 355
Easy Pieces 358
Rummaging Around 362
Model Prisons 366
III Met 370
The Fear Problem 375
Short Memory 379
It's a Pleasure To Serve You 384
Future Perfect 388
Live Wire 392
Triumph of the Cute 396
Chronicle in Black & White 400
Negative Sublime Revisited 403
Futurisms: A Conversation with Peter Nagy 408
Another Review of the Whitney 414
I'll Be Your Mirror 418
Hot Dogg 423
Untitled (Are We Having Fun Yet?) 427
Untitled (Cindy Sherman Confidential) 434
Transcendental Meditation 440
Clownophobia Today 444
'80s People 448
Agitations 451
Three Mile Island 455
Endgame 460
Really Real 464
Strange Weather 468
A Torture Garden 472
Modern Sacrifice 476
The Critic's Role 482
Funny Ha Ha, Funny Strange 487
Blue Moon 491
The Last Cigarette 494
Guys and Dogs 499
Faking It 503
1988: Some Thoughts From 15 Artists 507
Quick! Read This! 515
Blood and Guts 520
Secrets of the Rothko Chapel 524
Blind Item 528
Nerve Meter Revisited 532
Science Holiday 536
So Big 540
A Curious Part of the Planet 545
Wave Theory 549
Read My Lips 553
A Penny for the Peepshow 557
The Auctions 560
Doglessness 563
Was It Good for Lou? 565
Vile Days 569
Afterword Bruce Hainley 575
Index 581