Touch the Art...No Really.

I picked up Emma Stein underneath the El tracks at Robert Bills Contemporary--where she spends her days working as Gallery Director--on a sloppy, gray afternoon last week. It's the time of year when even optimistic Chicagoans start to wonder if Spring will ever arrive, and as a native Californian, Emma has had more than her fill of snow and slush.

Weather aside, Emma has thrived in Chicago. Having completed her MA in Art History at the University of Chicago last June, she won high praise from the Tribune for her most recent curated group show: Exploding Faces, Confining Spaces. But she has also been working on her own project proposal for an exhibition that rethinks the senses and sensations associated with the consumption of art in the gallery and museum. Playfully titled Please Touch the Artwork, Emma's project considers how the blind experience what we traditionally call "visual arts." It's a deeply personal issue for her, as two members of her family--including her mom--are affected by a degenerative disease that affects the retinas, often leaving patients legally blind. Emma's idea not only has the potential to raise awareness about the problematic way museums attempt to address accessibility, but also to expand how individuals conceive of their relationship to art.

(Why touching the art matters...after the jump)

AMIWWL: Zodiac and Targets

[I'm going to categorize most of my future posts on film as: "Analysis of Movies I Watch with Lindsey" (AMIWWL), mainly because I can never say exactly what I think about them until way after. I'm not used to analyzing film. I'm used to reading at my own glacial pace (sometimes I think I read at a fifth grade level). In general, I'm not a very quick writer either, and need to take my time and let thoughts congeal, and then get them down. As you might imagine, this makes me a really awful conversationalist, especially when it comes to film. But since we're all expected to be critics of movies, I'll make some efforts].

[Oh, also, I spoil everything]

This week it was Zodiac and Targets, two films that are roughly 40 years apart and extremely different--but that both try to get at the heart of what might be an obsession-in-transition in the American psyche: the Serial Killer. Peter Bogdanovich's 1968 film Targets, starring Boris Karloff, draws (in many places quite overtly) from the infamous University of Texas bell-tower shootings of 1966. David Fincher's 2007 Zodiac examines the exploits of the Zodiac Killer, who murdered seven people (though he claimed responsibility for almost 40 murders) in the Bay Area during the late Sixties and early Seventies. Unlike Targets, Fincher's film takes up the perspective of the investigators assigned to the case, though it also reconstructs scenes from the perspective of Zodiac's victims.

Covert Urban: Chicago Artist Gwendolyn Zabicki

"Somebody called me the Bruce Springsteen of painting," said Gwen Zabicki. We were eating homemade steak and ale pie, sitting in Ikea recliners in her UIC studio. Gwen is one of only three painters in the most recent crop of the University's MFA students. "And I thought, oh no, so I'm really earnest and hamfisted and there's a honking sax in the background." It seemed like a real concern, especially because Gwen paints subject matter that can be easily associated with the middle or blue-collar urban class. In other words: solidly in Springsteen territory. But after our conversation, it was readily apparent that there is an important difference between earnestness and inquisitiveness. The former is about latching onto an emotion and glorifying it. The latter seems more about asking why we feel a certain way in the world, and whether we might be able to feel differently by changing our perspective.

In thoughtful and measured paintings, it is this territory that Gwen's work inhabits.

Best Books for Valentine's Day

I love Valentine's Day. I really do. It's some sort of weird disorder, or maybe just a testament to the successful rhetoric of greeting card companies. But in any case, it's nice to think that once a year you can either do something self-consciously hokey (or, you know, break out the ol' love swing) with your significant other, or cry yourself to sleep watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and listening to Coldplay.

Regardless of the state of your heart this February 14, here are some books to read to make sure that your brain is working:

Got a little someone special in your life? Try Lolita. It's not exactly the most un-horrifying experience in the history of modern literature, but it sure makes you feel normal by comparison.

Nobokov's unbelievably sinister portrayal of Humbert Humbert takes us through the psychology of a pedophile and leaves us wondering, well, how he thought up all of this stuff. The salacious content of the novel is one thing...and there are arguments on both sides about whether it is pornographic. I come down on the side that says: this is a novel that pushes the limits of narrator-reliability. Its unrelenting portrayal of psychosis is absolutely unique.

Super Bowl Car Commercials II: Vader Kid

It has been declared, almost unanimously it seems, the best commercial of the Super Bowl. And it's for a Volkswagen Passat, a decidedly un-luxurious vehicle. What does this spot tell us about the persistence of traditional narratives of middle class desire? And moreover, why should we care? Why do I want to suck the joy out of this adorable commercial by overanalyzing it to death?

Super Bowl Commercials I: Is it Okay to Start Buying Stuff Again?

Can the privileged class start enjoying its privileges again already? Here's the first in a three-part series on the Super Bowl's auto commercials (including perhaps THE only two popular ads this year). They tell a divided story.

Audi: Release the Hounds (Or, Meet the New Boss: Same as the Old Boss)

Two bathrobed prisoners in a jail for the wealthy break out, to a soundtrack of their delighted fellow inmates' cheers, and Kenny G. The warden orders "Release the hounds," and as the prisoners reach the gate, they have a choice: climb into a white Mercedes, or a flashy Audi A8. The older of the pair hops into the Benz--"My father had one of these," he says, and is driven immediately back to the jail. The younger accelerates to freedom in the Audi, passing under the George Washington Bridge as a voice-over implores us: "Escape the confines of old luxury." The tagline reads: "Luxury has progressed."

Dispatches from DC: The Problematic Ambitions of "Donald"

I like McSweeney's when it's funny. And though I have gone back and forth on Dave Eggers, I have been strongly in the "pro" camp (at least when it comes to his work) since Zeitoun, a powerful piece of writing about Katrina that may very well go down as one of the best books about that disaster.

But last night's reading of the McSweeney's-backed Donald at 826 DC was not funny. The evening presented a confusing and often painful caricature of what Eggers’s enterprise morphs into when it boosts authors who "do" politics. The concept and execution of Donald come off as shrill, opportunistic, and incurious. All the while, its authors trumpeted the incoherent idea of "serious fiction"--a term that McSweeney's did not invent, but one that it seems all too ready to mobilize as its reason for existence. Donald, written by Eric Martin and Stephen Elliott, attempts to turn the tables on Donald Rumsfeld. Set to hit shelves on the same day as Rummy's memoir, the book is described as an "allegory," in which a Rumsfeld-inspired character is kidnapped, rendered, and tortured at the hands of an unnamed regime. Simply: Donald is the wrong book at the wrong time with the wrong message, and it took me less than an hour to decide that McSweeney’s owes its fan much more than this.