Those attending the talk by Herbert and Dorothy Vogel at the Seattle
Asian Art Museum on February 4 might have wondered exactly what local art the
Vogels had seen while in town. Here was a couple who for 40 years had been building
a huge collection of nothing but the most challenging minimalist and conceptual
art (on the salaries of a postal worker and a librarian, no less), and at the
lecture, Mr. Vogel couldn’t stop talking about how he can’t understand the art
here, that it’s so cutting-edge it leaves him in the dust. Seattle art “cutting-edge”?
It’s almost an oxymoron. Turns out, the Vogels didn’t see any local galleries
on their visit. They did go to the Henry, which had the Surrogates show of figurative
art by the likes of Tony Oursler and Bruce Nauman, and they also visited the
home of local former gallery owner Linda Farris that day. Ms. Farris recently
dropped a lot of money on young female artists working with issues of coming-of-age
and sexuality, including Sam Taylor-Wood and Vanessa Beecroft. Herbert Vogel
was pretty “buzzed” about the work, reports Farris, “so he might’ve been referring
to that.” Of all the art Vogel saw, only two Seattleites were represented–usual
suspects Gary Hill and Josiah McIlheny. But I’m reassured to know that Herbert
Vogel’s compliments weren’t inspired by, say, Dale Chihuly.

The recent hoohah about Amazon.com selling prominent placement on its website to publishers has been well chewed
over in local and national publications. I’m actually proud of the company for
finally finding a way to sell something and make money on the transaction, something
they can’t do when they discount most best-sellers 30 to 40 percent. It’s odd
that the most feared company in bookselling has yet to post a profit. According
to The Economist, by the way, Amazon’s net worth (the number of shares times
the share price) was, in January, before its recent plummet, larger than Texaco’s.
It was also larger than all other publicly traded bookstores–including Borders
and Barnes & Noble–put together.

The heights of idiocy to which well-intentioned machine-age modern architects
ultimately ascended has never been more apparent to me than it was during last
week’s lecture by UW visiting professor Jeffrey Schnapp on the Italian architect
Gaetano Ciocca. Working in the midst of the fascist era, this designer
of stadium-sized theaters and visionary self-guided public transit systems (Seattle
Weekly’s Eric Scigliano, who’s obsessed with a similar idea for monorails, would’ve
loved him), later turned his attention to animal husbandry: pig farming, to
be specific. Decrying pigs raised in the normal manner (wallowing in their own
filth, eating all kinds of garbage whenever they want) as “flabby art deco buildings,”
Ciocca wanted to transform them into buildings by Le Corbusier. So he designed
a “rational” pig sty, with individual stalls, feeding troughs which limited
the pigs’ food intake, and even toilets, which he forced the pigs to use. Only
problem was, come slaughter time, his lean, elegant pigs only weighed about
130 pounds, some 90 lbs. less than the deco pigs’ average of 220.

Send gossip and complaints to eric@thestranger.com.