but a party is a different thing altogether

I hope I have to say it only one more time.

I have no interest in getting married. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of official marriage of any kind.

A letter in the Village Voice this week expressed a reader's disgust that "gay people" now want to get married, after " . . . thousands of years of crafting the finest true alternative/outlaw society this planet has ever known, with all the deaths, suffering, joys, and triumphs that were so hard fought . . . . "

Yeah, "Gay", it's not just about settling down and making babies anymore, you know!

Barry and I have been together for twelve years. It goes without saying that as born-again atheists we certainly don't need any corporate religious cult to sign on to our commitment, but we also don't need any goverment, or any other group or individual, to interfere with what we are perfectly capable of handling ourselves, our commitment to each other.

That being said, in this very imperfect society, government does get involved in the commitments people make as couples, up to now by unjustly declaring who is entitled to the benefits it grants only to such couples. More fundamentally, governments, and especially the U.S. government, refuse, except through the conservative and archaic device of marital contracts, to provide the simple health and financial tools which individuals, couples and families need.

Yes, I'd like to be able to visit my partner in a emergency or hospital room, to be able to make medical choices for him if he is unable to do so himself, to be his heir should he pre-decease me, and to share title to our home. Someone has enumerated almost 1500 other benefits which attach to the status of legal marriage, but these do not make marriage sacred. In fact they only show how absurd and fundamentally unjust the concept is in the first place.

The solution for the crises of marriage [and there appear to be many crises] lies in its replacement by intelligent and equitable laws which can protect everyone in society equally. Marriage would become irrelevant in that best of all possible worlds. Of course there's no reason why people who chose to do so couldn't have their commitments celebrated in some religious ceremony, but the state should have no interest in those arrangements, something like its indifference to confirmations and mitzvahs right now.

Unfortunately this isn't going to happen here soon. What is happening right now is that some people want the very real civil advantages which are available only through marriage and these are being denied them discriminately. Under these circumstances of course I want to support their right to civil recognition, but I recognize the disturbing irony of a movement which may seem progressive, but whose objective is extraordinarily conservative.

It's the conservative part that still really bothers me, and doubly so because it's not likely to stop the issue of same-sex marriage from mucking-up the election even though its opponents call themselves conservative.

How did we get into this mess just months before what many think will be a referendum on the future of the planet?

[image, Bruegels's "wedding banquet", in the Prado, from Web Gallery of Art]

image of Tracey Baran image

The image was irresistible, and it remains irresistible even through these layers. A self-portrait, it's one of the photographs included in Tracey Baran's current show at Leslie Tonkonow.

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Updated: typo fixes.

Brian Alfred, still from video, Artflick.001:painter_BrianAlfred

After checking out the Ester Partegas show at Foxy Production and talking to Tracey Baran at the opening of her amazing show at Leslie Tonkonow last Saturday we thought we only had energy for a quick stop at Max Protech Gallery, but once we were inside we decided to stay for a while.

The show was Brian Alfred's "Overload" and it was . . . cool, made more cool by the music of dj E*VAX (Audiodregs Records) and some excellent sake. I loved the small discomforting collages even more than the paintings, but both were beautifully morphed by the disturbingly elegant computer-animated video projected in a separate room.

Of course the people were equally stunning, and none of them seemed discomforted in the least, but rather as happy to be there as we were, no less for seeing Josie* looking so stunning in what appeared to be an electric green Miyake vest.

Hmmm, on April 16 the gallery will host a special event, Computer/Animation Screening/Performance, at 7 pm, featuring Cory Archangel, Mumbleboy, Scott Roberts and Paperrad. Sounds wonderful, and I'm sure it will.

For a mini-tour of 35 years of art and of Max Protech, click onto "About Max Protech Gallery" on the gallery site.

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*the gallery Director, Josie Browne

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Updated: typo fixes.

Peter Maxwell Davies

The great British composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has been appointed Master of the Queen's Music.

The Guardian site begins its report thus:

Buckingham Palace yesterday admitted that the Queen has chosen Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, a gay, self-styled "old-fashioned socialist" and republican, as the Master of her Music.

The fact that Maxwell Davies is also perhaps the pre-eminent British composer of the day appears not to have been a handicap for a job which has seen some previous musical talents overlooked in favour of justly obscure nonentities.

Although previous incumbents have included Sir Edward Elgar and Arnold Bax, the 380 year-old post inaugurated by King Charles I has also been held by the likes of Nicholas Staggins and Maurice Greene, chosen instead of Henry Purcell and George Frederick Handel.

Perhaps understandably, there is little in the Guardian article about his musical production. We have just about every recording of his music ever available in the U.S., so for us at least the music needs no introduction. The paper also neglects describing just how beautiful a man Davies is [very], but it seems to have missed little else in composing a report that succeds in being exquisitely provocative.

The composer made clear at the weekend that had the job been offered by the government he would not have accepted because of his opposition to Tony Blair and the Iraq war, which he described as the worst foreign policy decision since the crusades.

The Sunday Times quoted him as saying: "I voted for Blair twice, but never again. He has betrayed the principles of the Labour party, not just on Iraq, but on tuition fees and foundation hospitals. Yes, I'm an old-fashioned socialist and I feel utterly let-down."

His principles did not prevent him accepting a knighthood in 1987, as an honour for music, though he threatened to send it back seven years later because of plans to amalgamate London's orchestras.

He has accepted the job for 10 years, rather than for life, on the basis that it may be used to promote music, rather than for the composition of anthems and other ceremonial music for royal occasions.

A palace spokeswoman said tactfully yesterday that the post, which carries with it a small stipend, placed no obligations on its holder.

. . . .

His works have been performed all over the world and are said to be becoming more accessible to general audiences, which may come as a relief to a royal family of generally limited musical interests - the Queen paid her first visit to the Proms for 50 years last summer.

She may be relieved to know that Maxwell Davies has been known to write compositions to mark propitious events, including a lullaby for the first baby born on the Orcadian Island of Hoy for 25 years. She may be less impressed that his previously best-known work about royalty, Eight Songs for a Mad King, was a meditation on the insanity of George III.

This is also the man who composed the extraordinary opera of the Antichrist, "Resurrection", described in these excerpts from an amazing review in the NYTimes [byline uncredited]:

Begun in the early 1960s but not performed until 1987, Resurrection, with music and libretto by Mr. Davies, is one of the fiercest works of social criticism ever to come from the pen of a classical composer.

. . . .

The savage parody could easily turn preachy and heavy-handed, and it is to Mr. Davies's credit that he, like Weill, knows how to handle such material with an irreverent, comic touch. The libretto is witty, often ingenious and viciously anticlerical. (A minister sings: "For we can make the Book mean just anything we please,/And use it as a weapon to bring you to your knees,/With the promise of salvation shining on your steadfast face,/By the word of God, this Book, we can keep you in your place.")

The composer helpfully describes in clinical detail the transformation he has in mind during the metamorphosis of the patient into the Antichrist: "Despite the lack of testes, which the Surgeons removed, the Patient's penis slowly becomes erect - a huge submachine gun, directed over the audience."

. . . .

It is also a protest against the sexual conformity demanded in a Thatcherite England and a Reaganite America. A recurring theme of Resurrection is the homophobia spouted by the hypocritcal political and religious establishments. In one particularly memorable scene, three of society's supposed moral guardians - a Policeman, a Judge and a Bishop - have an unscheduled meeting in a stall of a public lavatory.

. . . .

It is impossible to listen to the opera without finding it chillingly timely. The message of Resurrection could easily be transplanted to the United States, circa 1996. But it is doubtful that it could be staged in the present [January 1996] political climate. Somehow, one imagines that Federal, state and corporate support would not be forthcoming.'

Ain't opera grand?

[image from MaxOpus]

in the Mahatma's garden, Union Square Park this afternoon

[spring crocus (family Iridaceae)]

I like Newsday, and I guess they like me. Last week pictures of me or my signs at a same-sex marriage rights demonstration appeared in their pages twice in one day. Yesterday Barry and I were the subject of a column on our outrage about MTA disaster preparedness, and today they're including an edited version of my letter to the editor on the same subject.

Just coincidence. Still, maybe I should lie low for a while if I don't want to be shut out because of overexposure. It's going to be a nosiy year. I just might still have something important to say.

Maybe Chinatown isn't going to be the next Soho, Chelsea, or Williamsburg, but it is going to be the next Chinatown. Maybe it can be sui generis. It sure would be nice to see the big guys stay elsewhere. There's a place for a Chelsea, especially if it stays sprinkled with alternative spaces, and Williamsburg is just fine as it is.

Anyway, whatever happens elsewhere, watch for a number of new gallery spaces to open in one of the last "unimproved" neighborhoods in the southern half of Manhattan. It's going to happen. Economics will drive it, but its integrity, energy and good subway accessibility will all be part of the attraction of the Canal Street area.

There seems to be room for more. Especially in New York, people want art. Art just seems to make us happy. Sometimes it makes gallery people happy too. It's best when that happens.

I sure hope that galleries in Chinatown will be good for the people already there. Judging from the gallery presence already dotting southeastern Manhattan it seems at least likely to be good for everyone else.

I wrote about Michele Maccarone's space, Maccarone, Inc., last October, raving about the Phil Collins show, and we returned recently to see Chivas Clem's installation [officially closed one week earlier, I think] of re-contexualized media images, once again spread through the three floors of a small, barely-spruced-up old commercial building on Canal Street near the Manhattan Bridge. The intrepid explorer Holland Cotter reviewed [scroll down] the show early last month.

Great shows, but still no website and this time not even a press release or card for a visitor, at least by the time we got there. Nobody said art was easy, even for its fans.

down the hall, turn left, first door on the right, "come in, we're open"

The improbably-named Canada [no, the principals aren't even Canadian] tries a little harder. Here on Chrystie Street just north of Canal, once you track down the space and navigate the hallway, you'll find some very sweet people and the usual artist informationals. Two weeks ago we visited Michael Mahalchick's wonderful soft sculptures and the videos of sound art by other artists Mahalchick had invited to further enrich the funky gallery space. They have a real website.

Michael Mahalchick Billie

Not to take away anything form the shows we've seen in the "formal" exhibition spaces, but the best thing about Canada may be the promise (and reward) of the goodies hanging or lying about in their back room. While we were there this time we made nusiances of ourselves asking to see and hear more about everything we could get our eyes on, work of artists who had already shown in the gallery or who would or might be seen there in the future.

Oddly, none of the work I'm going to mention here really comes across in photo reproduction, because of textures materials or dimension, but we were very excited about every collage we saw by Brian Belott, and Sarah Braman looks better every time I see the work, especially if you can look at the pieces inside and out. Even the fact that the one piece we saw by Carrie Moyer looked better than what we have seen in other venues may be a testament to the gallery. The Sunday we last visited we spoke to Constance Feydy.

These are very savvy gallerists, and I hope they stay on the edge even if their intelligence and judgment means they are not likely to remain only on the periphery.

detail view of one wall in Sterling Ruby's exhibition

Michael Gillespie and John Thomson run one of the smartest galleries around, Foxy Production, and these two guys are also just about the nicest people around, in or outside of the art world.

Unfortunately we messed up our [very modest] responsibility to the outside world last month by not getting to their exhibition of L.A. artist Sterling Ruby's work until the very last day, but some images are available on their site, and several of the works themselves can still be seen in the back space of their gallery.

I thought I needed some help when we first walked in, but Michael was easily able to set the scene for us. In fact however the work can stand on its own, once eyes and mind adjust to an eccentric aesthetic exercised in as many media as are found here. Beautiful things smartly done, and not easily revealing their layers of real intelligence.

We did get to the opening of their current show, "CIVILIZATION IS OVERRATED", of sculpture and works on paper and mylar by Ester Partegas. The single, large [ok, it's literally gallery-sized] construction in the main room, of mostly paper and vinyl, seems to be at least partly a comment on the trash we consume and the trash we create. But it and the three framed works in the rear may be the most beautiful dreck I've ever seen.

Ester Partegas, detail from her installation, "CIVILIZATION IS OVERRATED" (2004) plastic, wood, paper, metal, enamel, 13' x 13.2' x 13.2'

Ester Partegas Polylumplous Tetraflacidontics (2004) enamel paint on mylar, 29" x 82"

Today's Newsday includes a page 2 column by Ray Sanchez devoted to our experience with the subway system the Sunday before last.

We've both had a history of dealing with the press, and I've found that most of the time they just don't get it. Barry writes about Sanchez's piece, "I think it's quite good. I never had an experience with the media before where the point I wanted to make actually made it into the article."

Bloggy also observes that if you run out and buy the print version of the paper you get a photo of us, squinting up at the sun on the steps of our local subway station.

goldfish on sale at an outdoor bazaar in the center of Baghdad

This is just about the only one of the 49 extraordinary Moises Salman photographs currently on the "more photos" link of the Newsday site which did not make me very angry or just incredibly sad - until I noticed the significance of the date, February 21, 2003.

I love open markets, and I love goldfish. Don't like war.

[image from Newsday Photo/Moises Saman]