Real Art, Film Art, and the Art of the Steal

An article, a film and a book have all converged the past two days to fulfill my promise from the other day of



We began the filmed portion of the triptych on Friday night and finished it last night. In between, I read the article and began the book.  So,....

The Square is weird. Let's get that right out of the way.  The most recognisable actor to US audiences in this set-in-Sweden film is Elisabeth Moss, who did it in 2017 just as her Handmaid role was making her a serious star.  Most of the questions we have about the film surround her: what's with the sex scene? What does it have to do with the story as a whole? And why does she have a full-grown bobono running around her apartment? The only clue about that last one comes from a Cannes speech by the director: "Anything can happen in a movie when suddenly a monkey appears in an apartment. Everything should have a monkey in it."

The director of the film, that is, not of the museum. That's Christian, played by Danish actor Claes Bang. HIS story (other than the mysterious sex scene or the monkey, who is not in the sex scene) involves two intersecting events: the opening of an exhibition at the museum he curates, and the theft of his phone and wallet.  The stress of the latter event leads to on-the-job distraction that results in his tacit approval of a viral marketing campaign for the former.  Beyond thar be spoilers, so watch it if you dare. (It's available for free on Prime if you have it. For the eagle-eyed: in the credits at the end, besides to Bobby McFerrin who does much of its wonderful music, is an acknowledgement of a Garry Winogrand photo in the museum somewhere; he's the artist who put my sister in the Met some years back.)

It's a film that's difficult to quite "get," but it definitely includes thoughts about a traditional museum's role in influencing culture beyond its walls and the dangers of not getting things right once it tries to.  A tale with some similarities to the one that played out in real life, in the second piece I encountered over this weekend.

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Full disclosure: I am friends with a relative of the real-life curator referenced in this piece, although I have never met her in person (thanks,  Mets ushers:P) and have had no contact with her curator relative at all.  I do know that my friend is professionally connected to another big-city artistic venue of similar provenance, which over the past few years has had its own run-ins with #metoo and the dangers of focusing on Dead White Men in their artistic endeavors.

I do not, however, think that her institution ever dealt with something quite like what her relative did at the museum she curated. It's more a #BLM thing than a #metoo thing, but there's a lot to digest in the dynamics of the incident, the reporting, the institutional response and the final positions of the individuals involved.  The crimes against art consisted of slights rather than slaps, and the big difference between The Square and The Slinky (other than only one being non-fiction) is the number of years between the two incidents. Those years brought us the pandemic and the limits on interaction related to it that still somewhat persist, and several years of horrid incidents including George Floyd's murder that raised temperatures higher than they've ever been in my sentient lifetime.

The aggrieved artist doesn't help her cause by responding the way she did, either in the moments of the controversy or in the reporter's efforts to tell her side:
 
I sent an Instagram message to LaBouvier asking if we might speak for this article. In her reply, LaBouvier castigated The Atlantic for not having covered her Guggenheim exhibition or its fallout. “Where were you in 2019 or 2020?” she asked. “Fuck you and your arrogance.”

LaBouvier followed up by email, copying the executive editor at the magazine. “I am not interested in participating in a piece that through lack of expertise, thoroughness, research or fortitude will resign me as a footnote and amplify a glorified publicity stunt,” she wrote, calling me “another example of a clueless, rapacious White woman.”

“I am so tired of scavenging journalists attempting to speak for me, or depict me. I am nothing if not direct, and I have always said it from my chest, and with my name on it.” She closed with a warning: “Should you fuck this up—which you will—I will be on your ass like white on rice on a paper plate in a snowstorm at a KKK rally.”

She seems nice.  That chip on her shoulder must make her lean over more than Eyegor.  I see a fair amount of that kind of anger among other activists and idelologues, which get their overall causes absolutely nowhere. (See Jill Stein's "Vote for me since Hillary's just as bad as The Other Guy" campaign, passim.)

Anyway, go read the piece.

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The third, which came in from the library yesterday, is not about art so much as the art of marketing, even when what's being marketed is thoroughly criminal:



The first thing to know here is that's NOT Eddie on the cover of the book.  It's a 1970s New York FM disk jockey named Jerry Carroll and nicknamed "Dr. Jerry" on the air, who I listened to when he was just starting to develop his persona as the turtlenecked face of this franchise. This book goes back much earlier to the earliest days of the real Eddie Antar's family, arriving in the US in the early 20th century wave of immigration. You need something of a scorecard to keep Eddie and Eddy straight, along with Sam and Sammy and at least one other Sam, a couple of Debbies and a number of Weisses not related to the author of the book.  I amazingly remember other businesses in the same line, many of them turning out to be related and/or equally illegal, which also advertised on WPIX-FM when I listened. Corner Distributors, 2901 White Plains Road in the Bronx? PIX morning man (and still voice legend) Les Marshak did the adverts for their legitimate retail business, while they dabbled in skeevier deals with Eddie and the Mob described in this book. "Sound Machine in Jersey City!" also had obnoxious commercials on Stereo 102; they were run by another from Eddie's family. And one of his competitors was a Long Island based joint called Battling Barry's House of Audio. Larry, one of the Weisses-no-relation who did Eddie's advertising, found out about him after Congress banned state-level "fair trade" laws allowing manufacturer price-fixing:

But the end of fair trade was not an unalloyed blessing, as now all electronics retailers were freed from price restraints, and copycats began springing up. There was Meshugenah Ike in Lower Manhattan and Battling Barry on Long Island, who advertised "We drove the other guy crazy." Larry and Eddie sent Barry a case of champagne for the free advertising.

But nothing lasted in popular culture longer than the Jerry Carroll ads, which kept coming around like a bad penny of unremitted sales tax, well into this century, even after the bankruptcy and criminal cases and foolish attempts at relaunch.  I was sad to read, while waiting for the book to arrive, that Dr. Jerry headed to that great waiting room in the sky a little over two years ago, with no obit in the Times or anywhere. The book cleared up the reason for that:

Jerry died on September 3, 2020, felled by a longstanding heart ailment. He was a few weeks short of his 76th birthday. In compliance with his wishes, Jerry was cremated and his ashes given to his widow, Andrea, who kept them in their Manhattan apartment. There was no funeral, no death notice, no media coverage. Some of his friends didn't learn of his passing until months later. Some never did. The man who had screamed his way into the public's consciousness had left the earth in silence.

I wonder if Dean Friedman ever got word. I met him at one of the last shows I saw in the Before Times, but only later found that he'd somehow became internet-intertwined with another of the earliest of Crazy Eddie's ads that I remembered from New York City airwaves. It was a doo-wop number which ran before the long series of Jerry's screamers and which, the book explains, was one of two that Larry recorded and pitched to Eddie. The screamer won out for the long term, but the doo-wopper, which Dean had nothing to do with originally  (Larry wrote it, with his sister adding the "whole wide woild" tag line that made it scan) remains a retro website staple. Here, Jerry and Dean come together for possibly the only time at a function in 2010:
 

Watch on YouTube

Oh, and the Crazy Man logo on the shirts in that video? Eddie stole that, too- from the avant garde comic artist R. Crumb.  I hope he didn't have a chip on his shoulder or a monkey in his apartment.