Franzen Fever All Over Again

It took me all of four days to cave and buy a copy of Jonathan Franzen's latest novel, Freedom. I had decided some weeks ago that I would wait to see if all of the hype surrounding the much awaited novel by the author who dared to opt out of Oprah's book club (not to be confused with the author James Frey who had been kicked out) was legitimate. Nine years ago, only a few weeks ahead of the 9-11 event in NYC, Franzen debuted The Corrections and quickly rose to popular attention with a novel that seemed to touch on the growing anxieties and inter-generational tensions of North American society with alarming familiarity. I recall now reading the book over several months and oscillating between loving it for its honesty, and hating it for its pessimism (as a side note, the last book that did that for me was Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones, a book I talked about a great deal in my classes last year). It was one of those books you think about again years after reading it.

Hype is an odd phenomenon and it can be double-edged. When Franzen made the decision to take a stand against what he deemed the corporate logo of the Oprah Book Club-- that familiar "sticker" that is actually now permanently affixed to any book that enters her list-- he only added to the publicity surrounding his well reviewed book and drew attention to normally taboo questions about literacy, class, and the social divide in America that also ironically forms the themes of his novels. At the time, Laura Miller at Salon summed up the sentiments in an astute article surrounding the controversy: "The sad and petty truth is that far too many book lovers don't really want a good book to reach a large audience because that would tarnish the aura of specialness they enjoy as connoisseurs of literary merit." Nine years later, I would add that the effect of social networking and "word-of-mouth" endorsements that build interest in consumer items (my blog included) has only complicated the strategy of publishers to sell their books. Is there any doubt that the move to publicize Barack Obama's early endorsement of Freedom a few weeks ahead of the book launch (he was "caught" reading it on vacation in Martha's Vineyard) was just another form of the Oprah book club phenomenon. The New York Times even asked the question this weekend, "Are you reading what he's reading?" in a great think piece. Obama is, after all, positioned as a public intellectual, someone who has little to gain personally from Franzen's book sales. But he is pretty friendly with Oprah..... and so the hype builds.

I held off to read the reviews (and quite honestly to see if a Kindle version of the book would emerge-- and it did) and there seems to be consensus once again that Franzen has written another excellent novel. The New York Times review has gone so far as to call Freedom "a masterpiece of American fiction", but I was finally sold reading Kirk Lapointe's review in the Vancouver Sun which raved about the book for "how modern it speaks and how old-fashioned it reads." Love that. Sometimes the hype seems to measure up, and in this case I am so glad.

Check out this brilliant (and purposely awkward) video of Jonathan Franzen discussing Freedom and the tensions between narrative and visual media. 

Murakami Japanese Pop and Versailles French Baroque: A Clash of Artistic Sensibilities or Something Else?

Takashi Murakami, Oval Buddha Silver (2008) at Palace of Versailles

Takashi Murakami is one of those artists you either really like or really do not. My decision to make him the subject of this blog's first "Click and Muse" poll (on the right hand of the home page) is case in point. Perhaps for this reason alone he has continued to spark controversy with his unabashed fusion of visual arts and popular culture references, culminating in his theories of the "superflat" art movement, and his not so veiled hommage to the grandmaster of pop art, Andy Warhol. Murakami's close connection and working relationship with popular fashion and music icons (Marc Jacobs, creative director for Louis Vuitton (see video clip below) and hip hop superstar Kanye West to name but two) has also done much to polarize those in the art world who cannot decide if he is more businessman than serious artist.

This past week Murakami once again made the headlines with his much anticipated exhibition opening September 14th at the historic Palace of Versailles, ground zero for French Baroque and a symbolic monument to more traditional notions of French culture. A showstopping spectacle for many will be his 18.5 foot tall Oval Buddha (pictured above, and which also famously spent some time in a midtown Manhattan sculpture park in 2008) set center stage in Louis XIV's famous home. The character was originally conceived in 1999 when Murakami was asked to create an iconic figure for a line of Issey Miyake t-shirts and has subsequently appeared in a number of the artist's projects-- a hybrid of traditional Buddhist sculpture and Murakami's signature iconography (yes, it kind of looks like Hello Kitty, that is the point).

ArtInfo reports that the "right wing" Coordination de la Défense de Versailles (CDV) has now organized a protest against the show and declared that Murakami's presence at the Palace represents "the veritable ‘murder’ of our heritage, our artistic identity, and our most sacred culture." Not surprisingly, Murakami's artist statement suggests that he is well aware of the hype: "I am the Cheshire cat that welcomes Alice in Wonderland with its diabolic smile, and chatters away as she wanders around the Château." The Anime News Network has reported upwards of 4,000 signatures already gathered by the group. And yet another interesting factoid is that the Qatar Museums Authority--who have no contemporary art collections themselves, but appear to be following the tastes of the Quatar's royal family who have particular appetite for all things Damien Hirst--are the main sponsors of the show.

All of this of course begs the question of what is actually being protested. Is it the work of Murakami and its blend of commercialism and what the CDV terms "inferior aesthetics"? Is it the fact that French cultural exports and those who design, influence, and consume them are increasingly non-Western? Or is it just another instance of Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis rearing its ugly head whereby the state of globalizing art markets and the power of taste-makers residing in remote Arab countries to select and position Murakami's work in the symbolic center of traditional French territory rings some kind of alarm bell to right-wing French reactionaries? Probably all of the above. In any case, it will be fascinating to see how the French and international public respond to the Murakami show in the months to come. No doubt in my mind that the issue of Quatar's sponsorship of the event will increasingly come to the fore of debate.

Marc Jacobs on Murakami


Further Reading:

Steinberg, Marc. "Otaku consumption, superflat art and the return to Edo." Japan Forum 16.3 (2004): 449-471.

Darling, Michael. "Plumbing the Depths of Superflatness." Art Journal 60.3 (2001): 76.

SFU Contemporary Arts at Woodward's, Check Your Class Schedules

For those of you like me who (happily) discovered over the last few weeks that almost all of the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts lecture and seminar courses are now running either in the Woodward's building, or down the street at Harbour Centre in downtown Vancouver, make sure to check your schedules for class times and places. I have a sinking feeling some of you are going to end up searching around Burnaby for one of my classes or the office! For more information about this transition, you can check out the SFU Woodward's page and also follow the events at the new space on Twitter. By the way, if you are looking for the SCA building out on the main campus, you will find this (picture now on rotation in those headers at http://www.sfu.ca/ ):

Gearing Up for an Introduction to Film Studies

Lumière Brothers, Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory (1895)

Last semester I had the pleasure of designing and implementing an upper level film history course at Kwantlen Polytechnic University titled "Film and the City: Representations and Realities of the Metropolis." Teaching this course has been one of the highlights of the year for me, and I had a fantastic group of students with whom I was able to explore and discuss the themes of the dynamic intersections of the filmic medium and the emergence of the “city” as both a conceptual and material idea, examining how filmmakers and the techniques of filmmaking from the early 20th C. forward have been closely bound up in representing the visual, spatial, and mental contours of the metropolis.

As a result of the interest in the course and the growing popularity of film studies courses at Kwantlen, I was asked to put together an Introduction to Film Studies course (to be debuted this September) that covers some of the basic context and history of the medium. The fact that the Vancouver International Film Festival runs each year in the fall semester was also an important consideration when putting the course together, and students will be encouraged to check out the event as part of the class. Kristi Alexandra, the culture editor over at The Runner, called me a few weeks ago to run a story on the interest in film studies at Kwantlen Interest in Film Studies Piques at Kwantlen and did a nice job of summarizing my enthusiasm for the new course (which I think is now full!).

“If it doesn’t exist on the Internet…..”

Some years ago, I bookmarked the text of a conference presentation given by Kenneth Goldsmith, the founder of UbuWeb, one of the largest and most important educational sources for avant-garde studies in cyberspace. The provocative title, “If It Doesn’t Exist on the Internet, It Doesn’t Exist” had caught my eye as I searched for more information about the person who had so painstakingly put together an archive of materials that I used on a daily basis in my teaching and research. What struck me in particular was the lines at the outset of the talk which, declaring in a manifesto-like tone and urgency not dissimilar to many of the subjects of his website, suggested that the Internet was the final critical space of discourse: “It is our obligation as educators and intellectuals to make sure that the bulk of our production ends up there, preferably with free and unfettered access to all. This means not making materials available only for those affiliated with our institution, our students, or our colleagues, but giving free and unfettered access for all.”

The notion of unfettered access to ideas is a very radical idea for many academics. This may come as a surprise to those who think of academia as somehow intrinsically linked to freedom and open dialogue. But for individuals who have built and staked their careers upon the kinds of ideas and conversations that only a small handful of people truly care about and engage with—much of which fills the pages of peer-reviewed journals and provides the content for specialized academic conferences and symposia—the frameworks of that discourse have remained largely remote from any kind of mainstream and public discussion. As a result, many academics and intellectuals have been conditioned to believe that much of what they think and write about will never truly register beyond the confines of the ivory tower.

Like Goldsmith, I have come to believe that by opening access to alternative spaces of dialogue beyond the university classroom, new fields of radicality and potential can emerge to break down traditional barriers in the pursuit of knowlege and learning. The decision to create a public blog called “Avant-Guardian Musings” that is at once a place to reflect on ideas raised in my classroom and also ones I find personally interesting and engaging is my small act in support of his call. If nothing else, Goldsmith's “manifesto” inspires my first entry to state something of an intention for those who stumble across this blog as if walking in on an ongoing conversation. To all of you I say "Welcome."