CalArts On Location

CalArts as Lyle Pavilion

This is probably my final installment of my CalArts filming location festival. There is also an episode of Airwolf filmed at CalArts, probably from season 3, that can be streamed on Netflix, but I can't bring myself to scour through 22 episodes of such a god awful series. Even the show's theme music sounds like it was lifted from an 80's porn movie.

The Lawn Between the Main Parking Lot and the Mod; Dorms in the Distance

This episode of Banacek is from season 2 (1973) and is worthwhile for seeing what the campus surroundings looked like in the early years. Even when I was there in the 80's, there was no Stevenson Ranch or shopping mall. The remote location forced students to make their own entertainment.

The Green in the Foreground is Now the Ahmanson Dorms, the Brown Patch is the Apartment Complex Across Tournament Road

The episode is titled, "If Max is So Smart, Why Doesn't He Tell Us Where He Is?" and involves a gigantic supercomputer that vanishes overnight.

CalArts Lobby

The opening sequence (the image above and the two below) is a long tracking shot that follows the research hospital's main patron and hypochondriac (in pink pajamas) as she walks from the lobby, past the modular theater, through the L-Shape Gallery and down the stairs outside the cafeteria.

L-Shape Gallery

The shot is a treasure trove of fake art.

Gallery D300

This particular episode called for a shitload of extras in nurse uniforms, which makes me think of Richard Prince paintings.

Lulu May von Hagen Courtyard

The next scene picks up as they cross the old graduation courtyard to a prop building that convincingly matches the main campus architecture--which is more than you can say for the the metal buildings and FEMA trailers that clutter the campus today.

The Steps From the Patio Outside the Tatum Lounge

Sitting outside of the C-block was a 10' high geodesic dome, which also appeared in the climactic scene of the Invasion of the Bee Girls Movie (not seen in either post).

Looking South, A-Block

The other main shooting location was the hallways on the first floor of the A-block. Throw in a wheelchair and a few nurses and presto, you get instant hospital.

Looking Toward the Super Shop

By positioning himself on the board of trustees of places like CalArts and the Pasadena Museum, Thornton Ladd inveigled his way into architectural commissions for both institutions. Sadly, the little architectural details that sign for modernism--like the indirect lighting and the stained walnut phone booths--slowly have been stripped away as economic necessity trumps the ideals of modernism. Even the refurbished elevator looks like it was lifted from Morongo Casino.

If Only it Was Real: Drinking Screwdrivers on the Terrace of the Cafeteria

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Irving Penn's Little Trades at the Getty

Irving Penn's Calfskin Grader, NY

Back in the day when I ostensibly functioned as a job counselor, I would refer to my dictionary of occupational titles which arranged jobs to match personality types. It was within these pages that I became aware of jobs that were worse than one's own, and that in the postwar period when the classifications were developed, there were many more petits métiers, or small trades, than there are today. A recent NY Times article points to the dying and injured remnants of these professions. When I visited the Getty Center's exhibition of Irving Penn's photographs (exhibition closes January 10, 2010) it brought to mind the anachronisms of the Holland Dictionary, as well as the ways and means of (mostly) men.

Irving Penn's Buchers, Paris

It was in this time before women entered the workforce and Freud entered popular culture that male bonding was not restricted by internalized homophobia. Lives were lived more intimately, with cramped living quarters, shared bedrooms and shared beds. One of the tragedies of post-war affluence is that made us more isolated from each other and now days borders on a phobia.

Irving Penn's Fireman, Paris

My first encounter with Penn's work came before my art education, when magazines like Vogue would run Penn's images of Mud People. It was a time when art still intersected with popular culture.

Irving Penn's Fireman, London

I attended Colin Westerbeck's lecture held in conjunction with the show. What I found interesting is Penn's identification with his subjects. He would show up for work in a denim shirt and jeans, dressed as the working class archetype. In the 60's when Penn again pulled out these negatives and made new palladium prints, Westerbeck describes Penn "painting" the palladium solution onto the paper. These later prints were made for a fine art market rather than reproduction in a magazine. So in some sense, Penn adopted the "trade" of the fine artist when reprinting the series for a new audience.

Irving Penn's Fireman, NY

What was also interesting was how much credit Westerbeck assigned to those working around Penn. It was Penn's editor Alexander Leiberman who suggested to Penn that he take up photography when Penn was employed as a graphic artist. Leiberman also suggested Little Trades series and enlisted the help of Edmonde Charles-Roux and photographer Robert Doisneau who recruited and cajoled the tradespeople to climb six flights of stairs (often lugging up the tools of their trade) to Penn's studio. It was with Charles-Roux's (the newly appointed editor of Paris Vogue) aesthetic eye, and Doisneau's knowledge of the city that made the series a success.

Irving Penn's Busboy, Larue

The show at he Getty is extensive--over 250 prints. From a quick overview, the variety of poses is amazing, considering the similarity in format. Looking more closely, the redundancies enhance the small differences: the aloof or serious French, professionalism and formality of the Brits, and the smiling and confident Americans. It's a reflection of each city's recent experience during WWII. Paris was occupied by the Nazis, London was bombed but not invaded, by contrast New Yorkers fought overseas, while those left behind remained out of harm's way.

Irving Penn's Busboy, Larue

Since I saw the show, Irving Penn has died (1917 - 2009) at the age of ninety-two. There are now oodles of posts on his life and work. Rather than clicking links, head over to the Getty and look at the real thing.

Irving Penn's Artist's Model

There are a few women in the show, including several versions of the artist's model pictured here. Perhaps this anomaly can be read as Penn's self portrait. Unlike the famous people and fashion models he photographed, Penn turned away from the press like this model turns her back to the viewer. And Penn's conception of himself, he was a worker in the art trade, much like the model above.

Irving Penn's Studio, Paris

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Random Internet Slices

One of Many Baby Photos from This Website

The picture above shares something in common with all the other photographs on this post. They were all taken with a Nikon, and were posted to the Internet with their digital image naming convention intact; that is, they are all named dscn0281.jpg.

A Test Project to Inject CO2 Into a Dry Oilfield to Extract the Remaining Oil; from This Website

Years ago, before the days of Google or Bing image search, I would use the search engine of the day to view jpegs and gifs with similar names. It was a way to sort of randomly cut though the Internet--extracting a core sample of sorts--to view the visual imagery that was being injected into cyberspace.

The Vibrating Mistress from This Website

I first played this game more than 15 years ago, and it has been years since my last attempt. Based on anecdotal memory, there seems to be a lot less porn, and certainly a lot less of the home-made stuff from the days of the BBS systems. There is also a lot more posting being done outside of the United States. Outlaw content has shrunk, and banal posting has grown exponentially, with commerce as the main generator of content. That includes bloggers like myself who post on art; the subjects of our discourse are the objects and gestures that are promoted, advertised, and sold through galleries, museums, and publications--all components of the larger art market.

The Nanjing Women's Federation Send Relief Supplies Worth 1.5 Million Yuan to Sichuan Province; From This Website

What caused me to play this game again was an email I received last week from an old trick I hadn't heard from in more than a year. As it turns out, he lives close to my new job, and his invitation to come over would (in addition to a roll in the hay) allow me to avoid most of the traffic on my commute home. His email to me included a picture (which I cropped to disguise his identity) was named by his Nikon.

Matsushima Air Show with Japan's Blue Impulse from This Website

What also caught my attention was the unsolicited inclusion of the sexy photo. He goes to the gym daily to earn his physique, so I'm sure it was sent with a sense of pride. But the main reason to include the photograph with the invitation to come over was to have it function as an enticement. Basically he is objectifying himself to gain some potential future benefit.

Cute Surfer Boy from This Website

The primary thing all these images have in common (except maybe the first one) is their objectification of one sort or another. They all nail down a particular time, place, event, and/or thing, then add value though photography's documentation function. Every image in this post can be titled, This is a Signifier of my Privileged Experience. If nothing else, the photographer/posters are a members of the small minority of the world's population that both own a digital camera and have access to the Internet.

Bush, Crazy Bastard! from This Website

I mention this not to bash folks who happen to be born in the developed world and use their cash to buy and sell things and take vacations, but to point out that us human beings also function as objects in these systems. The objection to being objectified comes from the fact that we start out like the first image in this post, a pudgy ball of flesh that is loved but contains no inherent use-value. We are miffed when others treat us like objects because it reminds us that the world (unlike mom) doesn't love us for ourselves.

Pissing Girl in Brussels, Also Home to Pissing Boy; From This Website

What I find interesting is the ease with which gay men objectify themselves. Frankly, I feel better when I'm valued as a piece of meat rather than slathered in some normative social trope designed to disguise the stench of homophobia--like a mortician using stage make-up to disguise a rotting corpse as a loved one. I'd rather not experience the polite hypocrisy of you returning my smile when we pass in public, then have you vote against my interests in the privacy of the ballot booth. At least show the courage of your beliefs and call me a fag, so I can return the favor and punch you in the nose.

Not a Mike Kelley, But it Should Be; From This Website

So other than a string of letters and numbers, what does my dscn0281 share with these others?

Christo's Gates from This Website

For a few moments last week he was my baby; I was his driller and extractor of fluids.

American Version of the Austrian Steyr AUG Semi-Automatic Assault Rifle with Laser Sight; from This Website

He was my vibrating mistress and my relief effort.

An Ancient Amphitheater in Cyprus from This Website

We were each others impulse and shirtless hottie.

Cannabis Seedling from This Website

I have been his crazy bastard and his pissing boy. We have role-played this in front of others.

Foxy Angel, a Ft. Lauderdale Transgender Escort and Porn Star from This Website

We have been each others incongruent aesthetic object and phallic weapon.

Summer Camp in Taiwan from This Website

I think he's exotic and I feel ancient; perhaps the reverse is true.

A C130 on Kwajalein Atoll from This Website

We function as each others drug, porn star, and furtive encounter.

High School Reunion Photo from This Website

And like these last images show, we had our reunion, and that time apart made evident the aging process.

Oranges

From the website:

My interests lie in discovering new structures within the latter stages of decay in the cycle of life. When the outer layers of decayed fragile fibres are peeled back they reveal a new array of fractal surface structures; some of these new images are incorporated into my experimental art work.

DSCN0281.jpg

We are objects objectified, and objectifiers ourselves. But unlike some of the normative examples above, we didn't commodify the encounter or each other. And perhaps that is what makes us queer.

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CalArts Plays Something Else

Stairwell in the Back of the Main Gallery

Part of my infrequent posts of Hollywood location shooting done at CalArts, these stills are from Escape from New York the John Carpenter film starring Kurt Russell, Adrienne Barbeau, and a pre-Chef Isaac Hayes. In the future (1980's) crime got so bad that a giant wall was erected around Manhattan and the city was turned into a federal prison. Considering what a shit-hole New York became in the 80's, the scenario is almost believable.

Kurt Russell, AKA Snake Runs to the Mezzanine

There is so much trash and vandalized property in the movie, it's hard to make out CalArts locations, other than these scenes shot in the Main Gallery. Why does movie graffiti always look so fake? Maybe because it's legible.

New York in the Future: The Late 90's

These scenes are near the end of the movie as the protagonists scramble from the supposed lobby of the World Trade Center to the building's roof.

Heading Towards the Music School

Looks like the CalArts Halloween party.

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Charles Burchfield at the Hammer Museum

Approximate look (remembered) of card 19 of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Harry Sullivan coined the term parataxic distortion to describe the fantasy projections we foist on unknown individuals who cross our path. Fantastical projections used to be the bread and butter of psychoanalysis, with famous tests like the Rorschach inkblot test used to prime the patient's confabulating pump. Though less well known in popular culture, the TAT was the second most used projective test, even though there was little to support it's reliability. Interestingly, a latter version of the TAT used images from Edward Steichen's Family of Man exhibit at MoMA, and was shown to offer more reliability as a diagnostic tool, though it never replaced the earlier TAT in popularity.

Charles Burchfield's (and now MoMA's) The Night Wind 1918

One if the reasons for the TAT's popularity is that it used existing art, which often functions like the person across from us on a blind date: a barely read surface that we use to project our thoughts and feelings. Christina Morgan, one of the TAT's creators attend the Art Students League in New York after completing training as a nurse. Her talents as an artist were called into action, partly to select the images used, and in some cases, to re-render them for the test. When she arrived in New York in 1918, MoMA's first solo show for an artist--the work of Charles Burchfield--was on display. The Night Wind (above) can now be seen in Heatwaves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield at the Hammer Museum through January 3, 2010. Go and project.

The Weaver House in Salem, Ohio, next door to Burchfield's childhood home, and now restored as part of the Burchfield museum complex.
Jim Burchfield, a grand nephew of the artist, and Greg Courtney, a Salem realtor, are shown holding a black and white reproduction of "The Night Wind."

The instructions (as I remember them) asks the subject to look at the image and explain what is going on. She is then asked to explain the events that led up to the things happening in the picture, and what took place later. In Wesley G. Morgan's (no relation to Christina) history of some of the TAT's images, he writes,

On September 22, 1916, Burchfield made a note that seems to presage the painting. In it he mentions a high wind out of the southwest, clouds with black irregular openings that seem like strange creatures above a house with an evil yellow window amid black clawing trees (Townsend, 1993). In that same year, suffering from severe depression, fear and hallucinations, Burchfield made some sketches in his notebook, "Conventions for Abstract Thought," in which he developed various symbols from abstract shapes to represent various moods or pathological states including "fear," "insanity," "brooding," "morbidness," and "imbecility." The spiral symbol of fear can be recognized as the gale sweeping across the sky, and the empty-eyed mask of night over the house is recognized as the symbol for imbecility; morbidness (evil) can be found in the shape of the windows of the house(Baur, 1956; Baigell, 1976; Townsend, 1993; Weekly, 1993). These "conventions," "...make it clear that Burchfield was first and foremost a psychological artist--an expressionist and subjectivist, as it were." (Kuspit, 1997, p. 127). Kuspit (1997) maintains that fear is the most fundamental emotion in Burchfield's art. In fact a few months after painting "The Night Wind" Burchfield was drafted into the military service for the First World War.

So fear, insanity, brooding, morbidness, and imbecility might not be your reading of the middle jpeg, your therapist's reading of your reading of a black and white reproduction, an art historian's reading of the art, but it is Burchfield's intention, which should count for something.

Earlier this year I sent some TAT images to Dennis Cooper to be used as inspiration for his blog's periodic Self-Portrait Day. The readers, writers, artists, musicians, and lurkers of his posts responded to the images with their own creative output--which is another legitimate way of responding to a work of art or it's reproduction. The fruits of their talents can be seen here, here, and here. There is some amazing creative work there, in particular the description of an image of a plowed field being being described as the view looking out from the back of someone's mouth. What I find interesting is that their creative output would be pathologized in the context of the actual test. But then, psychology has a long history of pathologizing creative output, from Van Gogh to images of cats.

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Fall 2009 CalArts Visitng Artists

Sylvère Lotringer

I've been meaning to post the Paul Brach Memorial Visiting Artist Lecture Series with the famous cryptic posters and infamous gallery opening night parties that follow. Lectures take place at CalArts room F200 on Thursdays at 7:00 PM. Call or check the school's website calendar to confirm.

October 15, 2009 Amy Granat
October 22, 2009 Kori Newkirk
October 29, 2009 Zhang Peili and Zhu Jia
November 5, 2009 TBA
November 12, 2009 Sylvere Lotringer
November 19, 2009 Uta Barth
December 3, 2009 Gerard Hemsworth
December 10, 2009 TBA
December 17, 2009 TBA

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On Location at CalArts: Sleeper

Miles (Woody Allen) wheeled into CalArts' Modular Theater to be Revived

Welcome back to CalArts Movie Mondays, my little film festival of TV shows and movies shot at California Institute of the Arts. Probably the best known of all the films shot on campus, Sleeper tells the story of a man revived after being frozen for 200 years.

The Hallways Around the Upper Levels of the Mod Theater c 1973

Inside the modular theater, the floor is broken up into four-foot square segments that sit on hydraulic lifts. Since it's possible for the floor to be quite high in some places, there are these seldom-used hallways with banks of doors on the upper level. I'm amazed at how often the school becomes the institutional face of a dystopic future.

Run Away!

This looks like the hallway on the first floor of the C-Block, leading from the Broad Studios to the A-Block. On the left would be the Film/Video school's sound stages with upper level undergrad artist studios on the right.

Woody Allen's character reminds me of the boys of South Park, as both shows' protagonists prefer not to express any ardent political position, but rather occupy some pseudo-insightful middle ground. By painting both the left and right as wacky extremists, Parker, Stone and Allen put a shiny gloss on the apathy of a fictional middle ground.

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