Unpack your (culinary) adjectives

A few towns over from where I live, there is a spoon of indeterminate but presumably highly concentrated greasiness. Whenever I drive by this beanery, I notice the sign in front that has the words “Large Food Menu” printed on its face.

I always wonder which noun the word “large” modifies, and which of the various meanings of large the sign’s creator intended.

Does the eatery have a menu of large food — meatballs the size of grapefruits, cheeseburgers with the same diameter as manhole covers, omelets made with a gross of eggs apiece?

Is the term “large food” related to portions? For example, do they serve diners enough pasta to choke a horse that was itself used to choke a blue whale?

On the other side of the equation, perhaps “large” is a measure of the extensivity of the menu itself. Perhaps this seemingly unassuming slop house has a selection reminsicent of a place like the Cheesecake Factory, where the diversity of the offerings raises the inevitable question of if they offer so many different things, how can any of them be good?

Regardless of the application of the word “large” one thing seems certain: I derive more satisfaction from pondering the meaning of this sign than I ever would from a meal at this restaurant.

Cai of Frustration

Sometimes, it seems like the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) cannot catch a break. The museum spent a good portion of 2007 mired in controversy due to its commissioning of, and subsequent legal wrangling with, artist Christoph Büchel. The museum eventually received permission from the judge presiding over the case to cut its losses, scrap Mr. Büchel’s unfinished exhibition, Training Ground for Democracy, and move on.

During the controversy, much of the reporting in major media outlets, including The New York Times and The Boston Globe sided with Mr. Büchel, if only (in the opinion of this observer) because the artist played better offense than the museum played defense.

New York magazine used the Büchel brouhaha as a negative example in an article published on October 7, 2007 issue. The piece, “Has Money Ruined Art?” by Jerry Saltz asks

Can the general public look at contemporary art without thinking about money? Will young artists having 30-month careers be able to also have 30-year careers, or are we simply eating our young? And if money is mainly what people are thinking about, does that mean art’s audience will turn cynical or hostile toward it?

One museum already seems to have crossed that line. This summer, Mass MoCA, in North Adams, Massachusetts, allowed visitors to walk through an unfinished Christoph Büchel installation—one whose incomplete status had already inflamed the artist, leading to the show’s cancellation and a lawsuit—as they made their way to another exhibit…A Massachusetts judge agreed that the museum was acting within its rights and ruled against Büchel. Really, it was as if Mass MoCA was trying to humiliate Büchel, to teach him a very public lesson…This kind of hostile attitude toward artists from general audiences is familiar; from a museum, it’s deplorable.

Deplorable. That’s it. No statement from anyone affiliated with the museum. No pretense of responsible reporting. The museum was David, and the poor artist Goliath. That was the story, from which few, if any, stories deviated.

The exhibition that replaced Mr. Büchel’s incomplete installation, Jenny Holzer’s Projections, is magnificent, and will doubtless help mend any small tears in the fabric of MASS MoCA’s reputation, at least among visitors. However, the media seems still unwilling to give credit where it is due.

In my opinion, one of the finest exhibitions at MASS MoCA was Inopportune, by the expatriate Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang. The installation opened in late 2005, and resided in the museum’s mammoth Building 5 for some ten months. MASS MoCA staff members were instrumental in helping the artist present and realize his vision.

Now, Inopportune is part of a retrospective of Cai’s work that opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Unfortunately, but perhaps unsurprisingly, MASS MoCA’s contribution to the exhibition goes unmentioned in the major media coverage of the show.

On Sunday, February 17, 2008, Arthur Lubow contributed a profile of Cai to The New York Times Magazine. The article, “The Pyrotechnic Imagination,” discusses Inopportune:

One of the most striking pieces in his current retrospective is “Inopportune: Stage One,” from 2004. As recreated for the Guggenheim, “Inopportune: Stage One” consists of nine white American cars suspended vertically in the rotunda. Flashing light tubes protrude from the cars like arrows.

No mention of MASS MoCA. Note, however, the way that Mr. Lubow cites the provenance of other pieces of Cai’s work included in the Guggenheim retrospective:

In 2006 Cai did a rooftop installation, Transparent Monument, at the Metropolitan Museum; in it, he erected a large sheet of glass, through which the skyline was clearly visible, and placed replicas of dead birds at its base.

Apparently, the Metropolitan Museum is more deserving of credit than MASS MoCA. So too is the Venice Biennale:

The most elaborate installation in the Guggenheim exhibition is Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard, the piece that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and secured Cai’s international prominence.

If Mr. Lubow cites the Met and the Venice Biennale, does he not have a responsibility to be equally assiduous in presenting an accurate history of all of the Cai Guo-Qiang works he references?

Mr. Lubow and the Times are not alone in their sins of omission. The February 25, 2008, issue of Newsweek somehow manages to overlook MASS MoCA as well. In “Pop Goes the Easel”, Cathleen McGuigan writes:

The first artwork you’ll see in the Guggenheim show is Inopportune: Stage One, a spectacular stylization of a car bombing, unfolding cinematically—or like the narrative of a Chinese scroll—with nine identical white Chevy Metros tumbling down the museum’s spiral atrium, and vibrantly colored light rods projecting from each one. The impact is frankly gorgeous.

Inopportune: Stage One: called into being from raw firmament, apparently. How does Ms. McGuigan deal with another Cai work?

In the powerful installation Head On, originally created in Berlin in 2006, a pack of 99 soaring wolves race toward their annihilation into a transparent wall, like birds smashing a picture window.

No institutional reference, but at least the reader knows where Head On came from.

I recognize it is unlikely that the contemporary art commentariat will experience a collective epiphany where MASS MoCA is concerned. The people who get it, get it (and there are people who do). The people with narrow, New York centric views of the art world will avoid anything that threatens their prestige and prerogatives. Why should the art world be different from any other field of endeavor?

I don’t expect that a museum in the Berkshires will get the credit it deserves just because people stand up and demand that, in the words of Arthur Miller, attention must be paid. However, before attention can be paid properly, those responsible for presenting basic facts must be challenged to present them completely and accurately.

Cai Guo-Qiang deserves every success, and every scintilla of attention that will be paid to him through his Guggenheim retrospective. MASS MoCA is equally deserving of their share (however large or small that share may be in the grand scheme of things) of the credit for helping Cai realize his vision.

Misreading

Walked by a phone company truck the other day. My brain parsed the “Electrocution Hazard” warning stenciled on the truck as “Elocution Hazard.” Who knew that public speaking could be so dangerous?

Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes, by Christopher Knowles, with illustrations by Joseph Michael Linsner

Mr. Knowles has strong opinions. Show me a comic book fan who doesn’t. Like too many fans, Mr. Knowles often mistakes his opinions for facts. He falls into the trap of investing his blanket statements (particularly statements of subjective judgment) with the force of fact and truth.

In discussing the X-Men, Mr. Knowles writes,

Later in the 80s, The Uncanny X-Men became nothing more than a revolving showcase for the hot artist du jour. This process reached its apotheosis with the arrival of Jim Lee. Lee’s tendency to disregard Claremont’s plots rendered the book completely unreadable, but no one seemed to care because the art was so gorgeous. (page 176)

The tail end of Chris Claremont’s run on X-Men was weaker than his reputation-making collaboration with John Byrne. While the elevation of the comic book artist during the 1990s changed the storytelling balance, there are quality moments throughout Mr. Claremont’s later run. A larger problem with the coherence of later X-Men stories was the number of multi-title crossover stories that became common during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Writers like Mr. Claremont had to not only advance their own storytelling vision, but also advance plot threads inherited from other writers. This tension, combined with the increased prominence of marquee artists, worked in tandem to dilute, but not eclipse, coherence and creativity.

When Mr. Knowles isn’t grinding his numerous critical axes (against Rob Liefield, Image comics, and comic books in the 1990s generally), Our Gods Wear Spandex is rife with factual errors. In particular, Mr. Knowles has a problem with chronology. Consider:

Batman and Robin, the nearly unwatchable 1997 film directed by Joel Schumacher, brought the Batman franchise to its knees and nearly took the Warner Brothers empire down with it. This was followed by a string of superhero flops like Judge Dredd, Tank Girl, and The Phantom that threatened the future of the entire “comic book movie” genre.(page 7)

I have no objection to a bit of hyperbole in the service of making one’s point. Batman and Robin was both a bad Batman movie and a bad movie, period. The problem is, whatever cinematic crimes can be laid at Mr. Schumacher’s feet, inspiring “a string of superhero flops” is not one of them. Both Judge Dredd and Tank Girl were released in 19954. The Phantom disappeared from screens as quickly as it appeared in 1996.

Later, in discussing Alan Moore’s career, Mr. Knowles writes,

Rejuvenated by his occult awakening, Moore reentered the industry mainstream, hijacking Rob Liefeld’s Superman knockoff Supreme and turning it into a paean to the innocence of the Silver Age heroes. He followed this with a mini-series that paid tribute to the Silver Age called 1963. (page 201)

Again, that old devil linear time plays havoc with Mr. Knowles’s assertions. Mr. Moore’s 1963 commenced in 1993. Mr. Moore took over Supreme (which launched in 1992) with issue 41.

While I admit a preference for The Comic Book Heroes by Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs, Our Gods Wear Spandex is perfectly serviceable history of the American comic book. When Mr. Knowles sticks to the facts, his work is solid. When he stretches to make a point, shore up a pet opinion, or to force the facts to fit his occult thesis, the book suffers.

Bart Modern’s Bowl..of chili

So, big game tomorrow. Americana and overindulgence. Decided I wanted a nice bowl of chili to go with my ballgame and my beer. The Lovely Wife reminded me that I’ve made jambalaya in the past, but this year I’m craving a bowl of red.

One of the things I like best about chili is that it’s a recipe open to almost infinite interpretation. You can tinker with it — hotter or milder? beans or no beans? beef or turkey or chicken or soy crumbles? — and as long as you stick to some basic parameters, you’ll wind up with something edible. My default is the recipe I grew up with, a version that uses diced sirloin instead of ground beef. It requires a decent investment in time, but the return is worth it: thick, spicy, and needing nothing but a few saltines and a cold beer to accompany it.

But this is a dish that demands attention be paid to it. It’s not something I can just scarf down when my mind is focused on whether my team should go for it on fourth and short. No, for my current purposes I need a chili that can feed my body while keeping my mind free to focus on other things. At the same time, I don’t just want to suck down a can of store bought chili. I want a meal that has seen the inside of a kitchen, and was assembled by human hands from beginning to end.

The variant I’ll be enjoying tomorrow goes a little somethin’ like this:

Bart Modern’s Big Game Chili (200

2T vegetable oil

4T + 1 teaspoon hot chili powder

2t salt

2 packages (about 1.25# each) meatloaf mix (ground beef, pork, and veal)

1T olive oil

1T cumin

2 medium yellow onions, diced

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 4 oz. can chopped green chilis

1 cup beer (leave on the counter for about one hour to let some of the gas dissipate)

1 cup apple juice

1T Worcestershire sauce

1t Tabasco sauce

2 28 oz. cans crushed tomatoes

1 cup water

1 15.5 oz. can red kidney beans

1 15.5 oz. can black beans

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1) Heat the oil in a 5-quart stockpot set on medium high heat. Add the meat, and 1 teaspoon each of chili powder and salt. Brown the meat, breaking it up with a wooden spoon until it has a coarse consistency.

2) When the meat it browned, remove from the pot with a slotted spoon and set aside. Retain 2T of the rendered fat, and add 1T olive oil to it. Add the remaining chili powder and cumin, and stir for about 10 seconds to let the spices bloom in the oil. Add the onion, and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring every 20 seconds. Add the garlic and cook another 1 minute. Add the diced chilis and cook another 1 minute.

3) Add the meat back to the pot. Stir to combine and cook for 2 minutes.

4) Add the beer. Stir and let cook for 2 minutes to allow the alcohol to burn off. Add the Worcestershire, Tabasco, and apple juice. Stir. Add the tomatoes. Use 1 cup water to rinse out the tomato cans. Add to the pot. Stir to combine.

5) Reduce heat to medium. Cover and cook for one and a half hours.

6) Add drained beans, cook for another 30 minutes.