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In March 2006, I meet Patrick O'Dell and his then-girlfriend in line for a Morrissey concert in Oklahoma City. Like me, they both live in New York City, Patrick in the Lower East Side.
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Patrick: 'I want to take your picture. Also, everyone else's.'
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Math: 'I am out of my head with want for your bikechain-thin, Scandinavian, Grove-Press-interning girlfriend.'
I return to Brooklyn with a mystic list that has mostly little to do with Patrick and whatever her name was
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but when I get back, I start taking the F to 2 Ave, Patrick's stop. I wander the LES for hours at a time. For a living, I write term papers and college admissions essays. I have little sense of purpose, but an incredible amount of free time.
Lower East:
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Around Halloween, renovations begin on a café on the southeast corner of Houston and Allen. It sits under a billboard on which American Apparel has some really long-ass lease.
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***
In October I start to draw. I'm not yet obsessed with titles, but will be soon.
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***
In November a sign reading 'Live Animal' appears in the dusty café window. I don't take a picture of it.
***
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On December 12 I get hired on-the-spot at this American Apparel location, about 4 doors down from the café, which gets christened 'Sugar' and opens on my second day of work. It has cute employees and bland, expensive food. I work nonstop, the Christmas retail thing, til I fly to the west coast around December 22 for a long-planned trip.
***
In the song 'The Killing Moon' by Echo + the Bunnymen, the chorus begins, 'Fate up against your will, through the thick and thin.' While Echo+tB are not really one of my favorite bands [sorry D], that lyric is the best metaphor I have for describing how, ideally, I want a title to function. The fate is the title, and the will is the work it names. Ontologically the work and title are equal, and they are balanced against each other.
A work's ideal title is, of course, not its fate, but it is like its fate. The title is 'up against' the work because it illuminates something not fully present in the work alone. The work resists this illumination- coyly, forcefully, winkingly, whatever- but it resists it, by nature, because it cannot fully include it.
The title is also 'up against' the work the way I'm up against my apartment door when I decide I want to hear my boyfriend fuck others; when I lean on the plywood, cupping my hand around my ear. The title is propped up against the work like I am propped up against the door. The title tries always to hear what is on the other side of the work. The title knows only the future, but trying to make itself relevant in the present, it gets a major hard-on.
***
In San Francisco around New Year's, I hit my alltime fave museum, SFMOMA, and find a book in the gift shop called Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings. It's by an L.A. artist named Donny Miller, whose work I've never seen [it wasn't/isn't in SFMOMA outside the gift shop].
I'd call Donny basically a sloganist in the vein of Barbara Kruger. He also reminds me, to a degree, of Raymond Pettibon, Jenny Holzer, and Patrick O'Dell. His work is not as good as that of any of the artists I just named or am about to name, but I think it could be one day. Anyway, Donny's work is not precisely 'titled', but the majority of his pieces consist of an image and a set of words. Art like this is important to me because I spend so much emotional, intellectual and sexual energy on thinking up titles. [Half the time when I am jerking off, I am trying to think up titles.] Donny's works are really deliberately and literally worded. This is super meaningful for me because so many of my favorite visual artists were really lazy titlists. Mapplethorpe used mostly basic names of subjects, Warhol the same. Lichtenstein and Oldenberg [from whom Donny draws visually], same shit. Haring, almost all untitled, which I get frustrated trying to reconcile.
Donny Miller:
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My closest referent for Donny's style is magazine advertising from the 1950s forward. I guess that's kind of a big duh. As I mentioned before, gallery-pop-art is another obvious part of its context, as is clip art.
***
So, I finish my holiday vacation in California; I come back to work. Surprise! Not only do we now sell Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings at my American Apparel location, but while I've been away, Donny has come to the store for a reading and signing. Jeez, what are the chances? I talk to one of our many managers about it. 'He's an asshole,' she tells me. 'He was an asshole?' I ask. 'He IS an asshole. Just look at his book. It basically says women are really superficial and vapid.' To my eye, the men in Donny's book have approximately the same shortcomings, but she might have a point in the sorts of 50s-60s ad/clip-art images upon which Donny draws. The women do look kinda frivolous, I guess. Anyway, me and the manager never get to have a real conversation about the potential merits or problems of the book, but she tells me one detail which makes me blink forty-five times: 'You know he built all the tables over at Sugar, right? He was there for months. He put up this sign that said LIVE ANIMAL.'
***
Here are some of my more Donny-ish titles. I made some of them before I encountered his work, and some after.
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It Was Beautiful I'm Done with It
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We Had a Deal
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Paper Is My Favorite Invention
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What Else Would You Do
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I Offend You Just By Being Myself
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I Like All Kinds of Music
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Fuck Me Like We're from that Other City
*** Donny Miller's website is donnymiller.com. He has a blog there. You can buy Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings for $5-15 from from Amazon.com. It's got 126 discrete works and 144 pages. Donny's bio from the bookflap is, 'Donny Miller is an artist who has been exhibited internationally and an art director who has designed many well-known logos and advertising campaigns. In addition to directing commercials and music videos, he also has a pet rabbit. He lives in Los Angeles, California.'
If you look around the internet you can also find a skateboard and a calendar with graphics from Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings.
![]()
***
Download The Killing Moon.
----
*
p.s. Hey. Here's a sweet and informative and furthermore guest-post made by the legendary d.l., artist, and more Math T back a few some odd years. Enjoy thoroughly! I'll be here with a new post and a p.s. in full tomorrow.
In March 2006, I meet Patrick O'Dell and his then-girlfriend in line for a Morrissey concert in Oklahoma City. Like me, they both live in New York City, Patrick in the Lower East Side.
Patrick: 'I want to take your picture. Also, everyone else's.'
Math: 'I am out of my head with want for your bikechain-thin, Scandinavian, Grove-Press-interning girlfriend.'
I return to Brooklyn with a mystic list that has mostly little to do with Patrick and whatever her name was
but when I get back, I start taking the F to 2 Ave, Patrick's stop. I wander the LES for hours at a time. For a living, I write term papers and college admissions essays. I have little sense of purpose, but an incredible amount of free time.
Lower East:
Around Halloween, renovations begin on a café on the southeast corner of Houston and Allen. It sits under a billboard on which American Apparel has some really long-ass lease.
***
In October I start to draw. I'm not yet obsessed with titles, but will be soon.
***
In November a sign reading 'Live Animal' appears in the dusty café window. I don't take a picture of it.
***
On December 12 I get hired on-the-spot at this American Apparel location, about 4 doors down from the café, which gets christened 'Sugar' and opens on my second day of work. It has cute employees and bland, expensive food. I work nonstop, the Christmas retail thing, til I fly to the west coast around December 22 for a long-planned trip.
***
In the song 'The Killing Moon' by Echo + the Bunnymen, the chorus begins, 'Fate up against your will, through the thick and thin.' While Echo+tB are not really one of my favorite bands [sorry D], that lyric is the best metaphor I have for describing how, ideally, I want a title to function. The fate is the title, and the will is the work it names. Ontologically the work and title are equal, and they are balanced against each other.
A work's ideal title is, of course, not its fate, but it is like its fate. The title is 'up against' the work because it illuminates something not fully present in the work alone. The work resists this illumination- coyly, forcefully, winkingly, whatever- but it resists it, by nature, because it cannot fully include it.
The title is also 'up against' the work the way I'm up against my apartment door when I decide I want to hear my boyfriend fuck others; when I lean on the plywood, cupping my hand around my ear. The title is propped up against the work like I am propped up against the door. The title tries always to hear what is on the other side of the work. The title knows only the future, but trying to make itself relevant in the present, it gets a major hard-on.
***
In San Francisco around New Year's, I hit my alltime fave museum, SFMOMA, and find a book in the gift shop called Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings. It's by an L.A. artist named Donny Miller, whose work I've never seen [it wasn't/isn't in SFMOMA outside the gift shop].
I'd call Donny basically a sloganist in the vein of Barbara Kruger. He also reminds me, to a degree, of Raymond Pettibon, Jenny Holzer, and Patrick O'Dell. His work is not as good as that of any of the artists I just named or am about to name, but I think it could be one day. Anyway, Donny's work is not precisely 'titled', but the majority of his pieces consist of an image and a set of words. Art like this is important to me because I spend so much emotional, intellectual and sexual energy on thinking up titles. [Half the time when I am jerking off, I am trying to think up titles.] Donny's works are really deliberately and literally worded. This is super meaningful for me because so many of my favorite visual artists were really lazy titlists. Mapplethorpe used mostly basic names of subjects, Warhol the same. Lichtenstein and Oldenberg [from whom Donny draws visually], same shit. Haring, almost all untitled, which I get frustrated trying to reconcile.
Donny Miller:
My closest referent for Donny's style is magazine advertising from the 1950s forward. I guess that's kind of a big duh. As I mentioned before, gallery-pop-art is another obvious part of its context, as is clip art.
***
So, I finish my holiday vacation in California; I come back to work. Surprise! Not only do we now sell Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings at my American Apparel location, but while I've been away, Donny has come to the store for a reading and signing. Jeez, what are the chances? I talk to one of our many managers about it. 'He's an asshole,' she tells me. 'He was an asshole?' I ask. 'He IS an asshole. Just look at his book. It basically says women are really superficial and vapid.' To my eye, the men in Donny's book have approximately the same shortcomings, but she might have a point in the sorts of 50s-60s ad/clip-art images upon which Donny draws. The women do look kinda frivolous, I guess. Anyway, me and the manager never get to have a real conversation about the potential merits or problems of the book, but she tells me one detail which makes me blink forty-five times: 'You know he built all the tables over at Sugar, right? He was there for months. He put up this sign that said LIVE ANIMAL.'
***
Here are some of my more Donny-ish titles. I made some of them before I encountered his work, and some after.
It Was Beautiful I'm Done with It
We Had a Deal
Paper Is My Favorite Invention
What Else Would You Do
I Offend You Just By Being Myself
I Like All Kinds of Music
Fuck Me Like We're from that Other City
*** Donny Miller's website is donnymiller.com. He has a blog there. You can buy Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings for $5-15 from from Amazon.com. It's got 126 discrete works and 144 pages. Donny's bio from the bookflap is, 'Donny Miller is an artist who has been exhibited internationally and an art director who has designed many well-known logos and advertising campaigns. In addition to directing commercials and music videos, he also has a pet rabbit. He lives in Los Angeles, California.'
If you look around the internet you can also find a skateboard and a calendar with graphics from Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings.
***
Download The Killing Moon.
----
*
p.s. Hey. Here's a sweet and informative and furthermore guest-post made by the legendary d.l., artist, and more Math T back a few some odd years. Enjoy thoroughly! I'll be here with a new post and a p.s. in full tomorrow.