Challenged by Luis's reproach that I had been too modest, and so forth, in
not reporting an "article" calculated to shake the alt-photo community to
its roots, I confess:
In November I had a letter printed in The [Greenwich] Villager about tour
busses on neighborhood streets; I also had a letter in the NY Times Arts
and Leisure section about the professor who refused to teach under a
reproduction of Goya's "Naked Maja." However, the NY Observer neglected to
print my note explaining that in the English language a preposition takes
the objective case, even when the object is compound, as in "between you
and me," despite having phoned me for permission.
Enough? Oh, alright, just a few lines about the "accomplishment" that
took the most out of me: "Mutiny and The Mainstream: Talk That Changed
Art, 1975-1990" (Midmarch Arts Press, 1992), an anthology of "art talk"
events (mostly panel discussions) edited, and to a modest extent, written
by me.
I quote from our (alas, only) major review in the Art Journal of the
College Art Association: "This book is just plain wonderful ... I was
disappointed when it ended" [Ann Lee Morgan]. "Mutiny" still sells at a
modest pace to artists, critics, historians, etc., often as a resource for
contemporary art-crit courses, because it has, to quote our PR,
"everything the standard art histories leave out -- the color, life,
energy and feeling of contemporary art -- often in the artists' own
passionate, ironic, humorous (even despairing) words," as they left
"mainstream rectitude for the uncharted seas of pluralism" and "set about
putting back into art what the 'bad old rules of modernism' had removed."
I will be flogging "Mutiny" in my modest person at the College Art
Association Conference in Boston this winter, where it will sell at a
modest discount off the regular bargain price of only $22 for 350 pages.
However, any reader of this list who sends me a check for US $15
(preferably with an address label) will be mailed a copy postage paid.
And lest I be reproached once more for addressing a topic not directly
related to alt-photo, I note that out of 222 (two hundred twenty-two)
panels and events, at least five, maybe even six, are about photography.
One such is the 1990 "Fireworks Panel," based on Bill Jay's rant that
the Society for Photographic Education had been "captured by a minority
group of radical feminists, pseudo-Marxists ... fascists of the left ...
teeth-clenching revolutionaries [who are a] nasty little pimple on the
face of photographic education..."
Even more to the alt-photo point was "Photo-Start: Using The Photographic
Image as an Initial Stimulus in Art," which included my modest self as a
panelist (got that, Luis?), saying things like, "It's a myth that the
photograph is realistic.... the camera lies like crazy... Take blur:
there's no such thing as a blurred person," and, "I'm not so ready to buy
this total split between what is a photograph and what is a painting,"
and, "where is it written what is *the* photographic process?" It was
1982, and even to our audience of artists, "photography" was still Ansel
Adams; "manipulated" or painted-on photography had to be explained and
defended.
Enough, I won't go into more recent triumphs like getting 10 sheets of
Buxton out of England, designing the rocket ship, or winning the gold medal
in figure skating, but simply close with my truest fortune cookie ever:
"You will receive the Miss Universe title, but not accept it."
How modest can you get?!
Judy
Judy Seigel, 61 Morton St, NYC 10014 USA