[NOTE: this post is part of a series of reviews, the rules of which are listed in the little image there or here at the initial post in the series. If you are a nervous reader or prone to complaining, please read the rules first!]

So on January 23 (can you tell I’m already behind on reviewing things?) my girlfriend and I went to a lecture at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, part of their “Modern Mondays” series of events. The lecture was on the Hans Bechtler “Birthday Book”, a collection of pieces commissioned from a number of artists as gifts for patron and collector Hans Bechtler in 1964.

A bit of background: the Bechtler Museum represents a large private collection of modern art amassed by the Bechtler family over 70 years of collecting and patronage. It’s a gorgeous building, designed by Mario Botta (who also did the San Franscisco MoMA), and the collection is unique in that it is a collection–rather than just a bunch of paintings in one room, it represents the interests, personal relationshipos, and aesthetic of a family, from the father, Hans Bechtler, down through his children, Andreas and Dany Bechtler.

So anyway–the birthday book was for Hans. Invitations were sent out to a number of artists, along with 2 pieces of 9 x 12 paper. The artists weren’t just “who’s pretty famous right now?”–it was artists who in most cases had some sort of relationship with Hans himself. The result was a presentation book filled with 27 pieces, presented to Hans on his birthday. Today they’re split between the public Bechtler collection (14 of which were on view for this event, along with the book/box itself), and the private collection of Dany Bechtler, who lives in Switzerland.

I’ve only recently, maybe in the last couple of years, become really interested in modern art, which means I lack a lifetime of thinking and education on the subject: so please pardon my ignorance. I approach things like this with as open a mind as I can manage, because I still have the vestiges of the “that looks like a child drew it” thing that people get with abstract art. This is probably exacerbated by being a cartoonist and thinking about technical concerns and questions of–above all else–legibility in the drawings I make and look at all day.

Which of course, is not the point of abstract art, or at least not in terms of technical concerns. But even so it was hard to view the collection of “birthday book” pieces as being actually significant, except in a historical sense. There were some really interesting pieces, but the group was just.. a group of images, drawings made by a bunch of people for one guy.

But the exhibit, and moreso the lecture, were educational insofar as the idea of the patron‘s role in the world of art. The dedicated collector, the superfan, the first line of support, both financially and emotionally, for an artist, especially an artist whose work has not yet gained the attention of a larger audience.

We have a similar thing in comics–certain people take a unique pleasure in supporting an artist’s work, often by buying original pieces, commissioning new pieces, etc. Not to mention, are active networkers and work to enlarge an artist’s audience in non-financial ways as well. And then there’s someone like Anne Koyama, who would slap my face if I called her a “patron”–she’s a publisher, first and foremost, and a businessperson, even if her business model is based more on her own aesthetic connection to an artist’s work than ideas of profit margin. But Anne is an energetic buyer of original art, and a relentless supporter of artists, both those she publishes and those she just loves. And I bet there are dozens of people whose Kickstarter projects Anne has contributed to, often at the highest levels. It’s just how she rolls.

Anyway, enough about me and my friends. But I’m very acquainted with the idea of patronage in the comics world, but never really thought about it in the larger art world. Especially in the last century, when the support of the right person at the right time could make an enormous difference in an artist’s ability to continue working, not to mention cement a lasting legacy after their deaths. Beyond the making of art, if anyone’s going to see it you’re going to need someone to notice it eventually.

But the pieces in the collection, while occasionally really brilliant–especially the work of Emilio Stanzani and Marino Marini, as noted in my scribbled notes–weren’t as a group very interesting, beyond their historical significance. What was interesting was John Boyer’s lecture on the pieces and how they came to be. And what was even more interesting were the people in that lecture: it was mainly older people, overwhelmingly female. There was a 70/30 split between “people making an effort at a new hobby called ‘art’” and “fussy-ass rich busybodies with too much time.” I loved it. It reminded me of being in church, wondering what was going in everyone’s heads; who was listening to the sermon, who was just there out of habit, who had been dragged along by a spouse. And at the Bechtler lecture (“Blechture”? branding opportunity? maybe not), there was at least one old guy who would bark from the corner occasionally with authority, “GREAT POINT JOHN THANK YOU”.

I love the Bechtler museum–Charlotte is terrible at culture, and the culture we do have is either super white or super boring or both. So having a high quality art museum in town has been really exciting. And going to lectures with a bunch of older ladies is something I hope we get to do every month.

So I should say up front and out loud that this isn’t a show for me, and I probably shouldn’t have watched it. Although I’m a fan of David Cross, Mr. Show, etc., I’m not generally into that kind of cynical, negative comedy. I’m not against it; it’s just not for me. Discomfort as an animating principle can work, but I think it needs a valve of some kind; maybe a sympathetic character, or something the audience can latch onto. It doesn’t even have to be a character–it could be a theme, or an overarching system of choices that elevates the whole piece into the blurrier world of “art.”

But The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret lacks all of these things, or at least the first two episodes of Season 1 lack those things. It’s all cynical; it’s shabby people exploiting other shabby people, with no real stakes, no need to worry about the welfare of any character.. nothing. Why care if a situation is uncomfortable if you don’t care about any of the people in that situation? It’s satisfying at first– “oh yeah, now this dummy is going to get what’s coming to him.” But as it’s repeated again and again, there’s no longer any drama. It’s just beating up on that dummy.

I’m fairly unsophisticated in preferring sympathetic characters, although I’ve been getting better at it. Dan Clowes said in an interview last year, talking about his book Wilson: “Who says you have to like the characters in a story?” [heavily paraphrased; I can't find the original quote] But in the case of Todd Margaret, I think you need someone to side with, for any of the discomfort and awkwardness to have any real punch. There’s a woman who owns a restaurant who seems like she should fill that role, but it’s such a “smart beautiful longsuffering small business owner just trying to achieve her dream” stereotype that she’s utterly uninteresting.

But the real crime is the guy who plays Todd Margaret’s employee, who for me undoes the whole show. The actor, Blake Harrison, plays it so straight and unbelievably that it destroys any chance of believing in the show. He’s flabbergastingly bad, and it’s a loud obnoxious kind of badness, considering that David Cross, who’s in nearly every scene with him, is so good. I can’t figure out why he was cast in the show to be honest–he’s as interesting to watch as someone posting punk’d videos on Youtube. Just terrible.

Anyway. Again, this isn’t for me, to be fair. For someone into this kind of thing, it might be more interesting, but for me, it was unpleasant and mildly confusing.

Watching The Bachelor with my girlfriend has changed how I interact with it a little bit. For some weird reason I really want her to like it too, which of course makes me embarassed about how unabashedly terrible it is. The fact that the second hour of each show is basically a long cocktail party– read: excuse for all the girls to get drunk and provide tons of material for the gleeful editors to work with — is less gross when you… well, when you don’t think about it.

I can handle it though, don’t worry. Because what I really love about The Bachelor is how slight it is. So much of my TV watching is about finding things that are not very distracting, so I can work while they’re on. The Bachelor is perfect for this: it’s a long show that’s wayyyyy drawn out — I think I read somewhere that they shoot the whole thing in like 3 weeks — and is essentially about.. nothing. There’s no value to the show, no real impact on the world (except perhaps on its psyche), nor any benefit at its end. Some dummy will or won’t propose marriage at the end, and what’s more meaningless than an American marriage in this day and age?

It’s a most American show I think, and the fact that it’s lasted this long, even spawning its weird sexier (and amazing) spinoff Bachelor Pad, is fascinating.

But don’t let me fool you, what’s really great about The Bachelor is how TRASHY it is. There I said it. Also how it encourages you to root against its own contestants — because regardless of all the lovey talk, of course they’re contestants, of course this is a game show. This episode featured the ascendancy of the contestant from Charlotte NC, which usually would ensure my faithful support, except that she’s awful. She’s got googly eyes and googly breasts and seems incredibly proud of both. During a group date where 12 — TWELVE! — of the girls audition with Ben in front of a bunch of cute kids, one of the boys ACTUALLY ASKED “can you run in slow motion?” which nearly made me choke to death. Later the woman, “Blakely” (they all have names like that; one of them’s named “Lindzi”, although I think maybe she got cut last week) drives the entire house insane, gets drunk, then squats in a corner next to some luggage, Terminator-style, until Ben comes in to see if she’s alright and leaves confused after her dry-eyed, still-squating assurance that everything was fine, she was tired of this, everything was fine.

Man I love it.

The Bachelor is definitely the best-worst show on television, for me. It’s way WAY below the line that smart-but-still-schlocky shows like Battlestar Galactica or Firefly, in terms of shows that once you’re invested in, you tend to ignore their, hm, excesses. In order to enjoy the Bachelor, you can’t ignore the excesses, you have to gorge on them. Actually the more I think about it, the more it’s making me hate it a little bit. A show like the Bachelor can’t stand a whole lot of examination, lest you end up realizing that you are no better than those terrible producers, making everyone look like fools.

[NOTE: this post is part of a series of reviews, the rules of which are listed in the little image there or here at the initial post in the series. If you are a nervous reader or prone to complaining, please read the rules first!]

I can already tell that it’s hard to write these things by hand and still maintain some kind of control. Reading that above, you can’t quite tell that I‘m really enjoying the book–in fact, I haven’t finished it yet, because I’m enjoying it enough to take my time. The cover is so well-designed, beautiful colors, striking and warm and pleasant and inviting. And the care Julia Rothman took with the book is evident. My small complaints are more conceptual than anything else–book design is fascinating to me, not only for the graphic elements, but the idea of organizing information with an eye toward clarity and communication is one of those places where aesthetics and science meet.

You can find the book in bookstores or on Amazon. I highly recommend Julia’s blog Book By Its Cover.

[NOTE: this post is part of a series of reviews, the rules of which are listed in the little image there or here at the initial post in the series. If you are a nervous reader or prone to complaining, please read the rules first!]

[click on image for a big whopping readable version]

To add to what’s written above, two things:

1) Robert Downey Jr.’s accent in this movie is a crime. In the first movie, which was dumb but pleasant, his accent was just a little silly but serviceable. In this one it’s like he’s doing a Saturday Night Live sketch. Except that right there with him is someone with an actual regular British accent (Jude Law), which makes Robert Downey Jr. seem a little like that one theater-type at a party with a bunch of non theater-types.

2) In the positive column: by the end you’re so used to his accent that it somehow adds to that dumb-but-pleasant texture to the movie. In order to enjoy the movie at all, you have to just kind of surrender to Robert Downey Jr. and his cartoon mouth and eyes. If you don’t, this is a terrible terrible movie. If you do, it’s a fun movie to watch in a theater with big sound and things whooshing everywhere.

I’m working on some longer stuff that I can’t reveal yet, so my comics output is going to be pretty anemic throughout the winter and early spring OF 2012. In the interest of continuing to post and be creative and keep my brain working, I’m going to start a new thing this year: in 2012 I’m going to review everything.

Well, not everything, but most things. Every book or comic I read, all the tv shows I watch, movies, video games, etc. The only exceptions will be the super non-distracting stuff I watch while I’m working–for instance, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Although if I feel like saying something, I suppose I still could.

I’m not a critic. I’m not even a high school graduate. So I don’t have a rigorous critical acumen; I’m not trained or highly educated. I’m not even particularly interested in writing criticism–but I am interested in how criticism works, not only within a creative community, but for the writer as well. Looking deeply at a piece of art, whether it’s “low” or “high” art, will probably teach me much more than anyone would get out of reading my dumb reviews of it. That’s my hope, anyway.

But most of the time, when dummies like me try to review things, they just end up looking for and pointing out whatever they think is wrong. Which I guess is appropriate once in a while maybe, but seems intellectually lazy somehow. The obverse is as bad, maybe worse: reviewing the work of friends or peers or people you’re afraid to offend, heaping it with praise, finding everything of value you ignored in similar work by strangers.

So to that end, I’ve made up some rules, to try and keep things interesting, both to me and to whomever may find themselves reading these things:

NO SPOILER WARNINGS. Should be self-explanatory. If you’re worried about spoilers for something, then don’t read a review of that something. Reviews should serve a purpose other than building suspense or advertising the work they’re reviewing.

RESPECT THE ATTEMPT. It’s hard to make even bad art. Most of us don’t make things, even bad things. It’s easier to throw bricks than to build houses, even bad houses.

RESPECT WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW. As I said earlier, I’m mostly self-educated. Which means I don’t know a lot of stuff, and thus miss a lot of stuff, especially “references” or “nuance.” Even the most well-prepared, delicately flavored dish will be wasted on someone who only eats hamburgers. It’s important to recognize that your palate is not trained to recognize all the flavors there are out there, for good or ill.

CONSIDER CONTEXT. Is a work timeless? Chained to a specific time? Is it episodic? Does it lack value on its own, but add to or expand the larger work it’s a part of? Or group of works? Or a movement, a school of thinking or ideas? Should we consider a thing from many angles at the same time? Should we consider it from many contexts? Should we end all sentences with ???

LOOK FOR VALUE. This is good advice both in reviews and in the real world; not to mention a huge challenge for me. Looking for value is a lot harder than looking for fault. Your eye will naturally find whatever’s wrong with something–the eye is drawn to inconsistency. But the fault in something is often what elevates it, what complicates it, and what makes us talk about it. And, in terms of art, that’s what I’m most interested in–the impact a thing has on people. Specifically, on me.

Okay! Reviews will go up as I do them, on no particular schedule. Some will be complete, others will be as I have ideas about something–for instance I’m not going to break down TV shows by episode, but would probably do them in clumps, etc. Or long books, or video games–I’ll write about them however I feel driven to. I hope you enjoy this project. I’m looking forward to it myself!

I’ve gone ahead and posted the very first review, of the new Sherlock Holmes movie, here. You can see all the review posts to date under the REVIEW PROJECT tag.