My Commonplace Book

Go see my portrait at Mr. Picassohead!

That's EXACTLY how I feel some days.

(found via eudyptes)

The train wreck-like story of Suri's First Poop has gotten even weirder.

The eBay auction is closed, but the art gallery's website is being very mysterious about the reason.

As eBay has insisted on bending to the will of such dissidents towards Daniel's recent work, even though the auction had bid up to $7000.00 dollars and had 60,000 visitors for charity, then they have proven themselves unreliable in being part of this process. The gallery will look to its private collectors to fulfill its arrangement with the March Of Dimes. Interested parties can place a bid on the item in the auction box located on the left. All bidders must include name email and full phone number. Bidders will be contacted by the gallery and authentic bids will be posted to the site every hour. Good Luck bidding.

"Such dissidents" would seem to refer back to an earlier statement, but there was nothing else there. But then again, the phraseology of the statement is rather bizarre, so I guess I shouldn't have expected that part to make sense either.

At least they spelled its correctly. They can spell, they just can't write (or punctuate or capitalize) coherently.

=shakes head=

The art world has totally lost its collective mind.

Hard on the heels of show made up of portraits of wailing toddlers who were made to cry in order to photograph them, and the over-the-top press release rhapsodizing about it -- scathingly described by motherwell -- we now have...




Yes, art fans, it's a life-size replica poop, and it's being shown at an actual New York art gallery (albeit in Brooklyn), Capla Kesting Fine Art.

Once again the art world is attempting to make a ridiculous subject seem Important by claiming relevance to public issues. The art gallery insists that it has great depth and is actually a social comment on the culture of celebrity: 

It's partially a statement on modern media that celebrity poop has more entertainment value than health, famine or other critical issues facing society and governments today.

Also, it is a statement on the absurdity of the media coverage surrounding Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' new baby, Suri Cruise, which has reached stellar proportions and is eclipsing far more notable events with more substance.

The trend for bronzing baby poop isn't eccentric, the gallery claims, but simply follows the popularity of the critically acclaimed children's book Everybody Poops [sic].

In one of the more ridiculously ignorant statements I've ever heard, Capla Kesting's director, David Kesting pointed out the importance of the sculpture for Family Values, too:

Babies mostly breastfeed for the first four months, so a baby’s first meal of solid food may be a baby’s first meal at the dinner table“ A bronzed cast of baby’s first poop can be a meaningful memento for the family.

David ... you've apparently never taken care of a baby. Babies don't wait until they start having solid food to have their first bowel movement. And they don't suddenly begin sitting at the dinner table and having a meal of roast beef, baked potato and salad with the family. They sit in a high chair and eat a spoonful or two of pureed, watery glop that doesn't contribute a whole lot more substance to their stool than the breastmilk or formula they've been having up to that point.

And thus the whole thing is revealed as a scam. When a potential bidder asked whether the sculpture actually is Suri's poop that has been encased in bronze, the gallery replied:

Unfortunately, organic material burns in the heat required to cast bronze. Therefore, Daniel Edwards rendered her first solid defecation as close to the artistic eye as possible.

Notice the cagey avoidance of any statement that the sculpture was even modeled on Suri's, or any actual baby's first poop. Notice the clever reliance on the wording "first solid defecation," allowing them to claim that her first stools were mainly liquid and this is her first solid one.

Because that is not what a baby's first poops look like. What the artwork =cough= being so proudly displayed does look like is the stool of an adult, or a child much older than Suri. Or perhaps of a cat. I've become something of a poop connoisseur since I began examining my cat's excretions so closely for signs of dehydration, and I assure you that this purported poop is much too dry and well-formed.  A little too dry, in fact -- when Friday's stool starts to look like that I know I need to get him to drink more water. Whoever produced the model for this sculpture probably should drink a bit more water too.

Of all the outrageous things being said by the people involved with this travesty, the weirdest may be the gallery's statement that the sculpture reinforces claims by Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes that they have a healthy baby.

And it does this, how? It wasn't made from Suri's poop. It wasn't modeled on Suri's poop. It was apparently copied from a children's book ... or possibly from something the sculptor produced himself. Just how does it reinforce anything other than that the artist and the director of the gallery are ignorant boobs?

This sculpture of the artist's (wildly incorrect) conception of baby poop is being auctioned on eBay, where, Kesting said, he hoped it would attract bids of up to $50,000. Oddly, one article said that as of Wednesday it had attracted a top bid of $41, while an article published today stated that bidding stood at $7,000. Yet the eBay auction page -- obtained from the link at the gallery's own page -- shows a high bid of exactly $1.25. Since eBay doesn't permit (as far as I know) items to be auctioned on their site and elsewhere simultaneously, something is very strange.

But actually, maybe these people are not so stupid after all. Edwards' private joke may be that has found a way to memorialize his own excretions. And even though the proceeds of the auction are going to the March of Dimes, both Edwards and Kesting are getting a huge amount of free publicity that they could never afford to buy.

I just hope people see through the buzz and don't spend their money for what is, in every sense of the word, a really shitty sculpture.