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american rites, manners and customs
Guests in town, a birthday, and a trip to California, where I stayed with some of my oldest and most beloved friends.
Had the opportunity, while out there, to see the Diane Arbus retrospective at SF MOMA, which I really enjoyed. The best thing about the show was the (expertly selected) excerpts from her letters, journals, and other writings, which really led me to a new assessment of Arbus' body of work.
One particularly interesting piece of supplementary material was a grant proposal she sent to the Guggenheim Museum, to study "American Rites, Manners, and Customs":
"I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present because we tend while living here and now to perceive only what is random and barren and formless about it. While we regret that the present is not like the past and despair of its ever becoming the future, its innumerable inscrutable habits lie in wait for their meaning. I want to gather them, like someone's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful. There are the Ceremonies of Celebration (the Pageants, the Festivals, the Feasts, the Conventions) and the Ceremonies of Competition (Contests, Games, Sports), the Ceremonies of Buying and Selling, of Gambling, of the Law and the Show; the Ceremonies of Fame in which the Winners Win and the Lucky are Chosen or Family Ceremonies or Gatherings (the Schools, the Clubs, the Keetings). Then there are the Ceremonial Places (The Beauty Parlor, The Funeral Parlor or, simple The Parlor) and Ceremonial Costumes (what Waitresses wear, or Wrestlers), Ceremonies of the Rich, like the Dog Show and of the Middle Class, like the Bridge Game. Or, for example: the Dancing Lesson, the Graduation, the Testimonial Dinner, the Seance, the Gymnasium and the Picnic. And perhaps the Waiting Room, the Factory, the Masquerade, the Rehersal, the Initiation, the Hotel Lobby, and the Birthday Party. The etcetera. [...] These are our symptoms and our monuments. I want simply to save them, for what is ceremonious and curious and commonplace will be legendary."
Labels: art |
Saturday, November 29, 2003
11:48 PM
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