Deborah Fisher

Benglis!

I am not going to have time to tell you everything I think about how great the Lynda Benglis retrospective at the New Museum is--not for awhile. But I can tell you this. I enjoyed the Lynda Benglis retrospective so much that, for the first time in my career of going to the New Museum, I didn't even care that the museum itself is an architectural failure.

It's brilliant. She's brilliant, and the more you step back and see what all the other sculptors were doing, the more brilliant it gets.

And it's serious fun. It affirms your body in space, and the fact that you're an oozing organism. That likes glitter. And weight. And defying gravity.

In and Out

Finally got to the MoMA yesterday. The contemporary show they have up is a club-footed art historical case for collecting detritus from Paul Chan's Waiting For Godot*, and On Line was predictable. But I loved the photography and performance show and loved the Rock, Paper, Scissors part of the Ab Ex show, even though the title of that show sticks in my head as Scattered, Smothered, Chunked and Topped.

It had good Louise Nevelsons. And it was good at talking about the fifties and sixties and that kind of modernism as a coherent aesthetic. And I've finally discovered Mad Men, and have been mainlining episodes, often ignoring more virtuous entertainment to do so.

I like that Mad Men is (apart from smoking and drinking) about the fact that what's on your inside will always be different than what's on your outside--that inner and outer life are different dimensions. Nevelson does this too, all the paint. All the hiding of the scraps of wood becomes a gesture that points more and more aggressively to the fact that this is chunks of 2x4.

I'm an honest person, myself. But I like dishonesty. It's not just more interesting. It's more true.