Charles Bernstein

Susan Bee on The Nude Formalism and Fool's Gold

Susan Bee, "Design Elements in Nude Formalism and Fool's Gold": pdf
from Talking the Boundless Book: Art, Language, and the Books Arts, ed. Charles Alexander (Minneapolis: Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 1995)
•••• 
pdf of The Nude Formalism (Sun & Moon, 1989)
(recommended that you read pdf in facing pages, 2-up)

Doomed to Win: Susan Bee, paintings from the early 1980s

audio and video of conversation

Susan Bee and Kat Greifen at A.I.R. on April 12, 2013

Kat Griefen (curator of the show) interviewed Susan Bee at A.I.R. during Bee's show "Doomed to Win: Paintings from the Early 1980s," which runs April 3 to April 27. (Press release for show here.)

(55:16):MP3

video excerpts by Joanne McFarland

 

Susan Bee's paintings were discussed from the period between 1982 and 1983 in terms of the difficulties of getting this work shown. Griefen and Bee also discussed the formation of the feminist art movement in New York including at Barnard College and A.I.R. Gallery in the 1970s and 1980s. There were personal anecdotes about the struggle to be taken seriously by dealers. Also a discussion of the influence of the artists' parents, Miriam Laufer and Sigmund Laufer, who were also artists. The death of Miriam Laufer in 1980 was a turning point in Bee's evolution as a painter and marked a return to figurative painting from her work in abstract photography, photograms, and painting. Her work was also discussed in terms of the fusion of abstraction and figuration in these paintings. There was an examination of gender roles through a potent synthesis of competing modes of figurative representation and abstraction, along with provocative art historical and pop cultural allusions. For instance, "Portrait of the Artist as Young Pig" incorporates a trickster alter ego figure of the artist in the cartoon character of Petunia Pig. The fighter paintings were talked about as an examination of the struggle between women that characterized that phase of feminism. The painting, "Doomed to Win," which is based on a film still, alters the lead figure from a male boxer, to a possibly pregnant self-portrait of the painting. The issues and experiences that led to the creation of this body of work were discussed.

Bruce Andrews & Charles Bernstein Live at The Stone, April 12, 2014, NYC: MP3

for B=U=R=R=O=U=G=H=S at 100

As part of The Stone's Burroughs@100 festival L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E co-founders Bernstein and Andrews  performed  at John Zorn's concert hall on New York's Lower East Side. 

Ted Greenwald, 'Makes Sense': digital edition

cover by George Schneeman

Eclipse has made available Ted Greenwald's iconic one-word-a-line poem Makes Sense, originally published by Angel Hair Press in 1975.

Panorama Reading at the Queens Museum of Art

Cecilia VIcuna drapes a fabric near the World Trade Center.

Queens poet laureate Paolo Javier created a day of poetry at the Queens Museum of Art, bringing poets and presses into the newly renovated museum for "Eterniday." Exhibited presses included Ugly Ducklng, Tender Button, Litmus, Nightboat, and Futurepoem. I curated a reading in the spectacular Panorama, with Cecilia Vicuan (top), Tracie Morris, Julia Patton, Shelley Hirsch, Tracie Morris, Tan Lin, and me.