December 23, 2022 The Review’s Review On Mel Bochner and Sophie Calle By The Paris Review Mel Bochner, Bochner, Die, 2004, acrylic and oil on canvas, 60 x 80″. Courtesy of the artist and Peter Freeman, Inc., New York. I have had a few of Mel Bochner’s slogans stuck in my head ever since I visited Peter Freeman Gallery to see a exhibition of his work, Seldom or Never Seen 2004–2022. Bochner—a conceptual artist known for his colorful, text-based paintings—first rose to prominence with a 1966 show called Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art. How good a title is that? (The show included a fabricator’s bill from Donald Judd.) The same cheeky spirit inflects his retrospective at Peter Freeman. Most of the works are text-based, brightly colored, and employ a cartoonish Comic Sans–esque font. In one, against a bubblegum-pink background (pictured above), he spells out clichés for death, which get more and more Looney Tunes as they go on: “Die, decease, expire … give up the ghost, go west, go belly up … screw the pooch, sink into oblivion.” On other canvases, the text is literally filler—white melting into blue, with the words blah, blah, blah dripping into nonsense. Bochner is playing with language, having a way with words, flickering between the register of the cliché and all the possibilities clichés can offer. It’s all a lot of fun. My very favorites are a canvas with writing so thin and light it appears to be in pencil, and one on which is written the perfect joke-warning, which I have since passed along to others: “Don’t make me laugh.” —Sophie Haigney, web editor Recently, after once again experiencing the bad behavior of a man—boring in the nature of its badness though nevertheless dispiriting—I once again turned to Take Care of Yourself, by the French artist Sophie Calle. The work was first exhibited as a multiroom installation at the 2007 Venice Biennale that incorporated photos, paintings, drawings, video, audio, and text. The project began when Calle received a breakup email from a man anonymized in the work as “X,” with the titular sign-off. “It was almost as if [the email] hadn’t been meant for me,” Calle wrote. So she shared the email with 106 women (107 participants, if you include a parrot who clawed apart a printed copy of the email), enlisting them in an endeavor reminiscent of a group chat’s collaborative evisceration and consolation in response to such situations. She asked that the women “analyze it, comment on it, dance it, sing it. Dissect it. Exhaust it. Understand it for me. Answer for me.” And they did, using their skills as, among other things, tarot readers, Talmudic exegetes, psychiatrists, puppeteers, clowns, anthropologists, cartoonists, magicians, ikebana masters, mothers (such as Calle’s own), et cetera. An editor critiques the email’s convoluted syntax and obfuscatory language, which frames the man as a victim of his own nature and of Calle’s prohibition of infidelity. A lawyer analyzes it as a broken contract. A diva sings it as an aria. A poet reconfigures its language. The collection of responses is a masterpiece of women not only talking back but transforming what they’re talking to. It’s hilarious, over-the-top, and magical. Take Care of Yourself was also published as a (glossy, pink) book. I received it from a man who said, not entirely approvingly, “This seems like something you would do.” I hope so. Calle wrenches the story away from the man who breaks up with her—and away from the randomness of event itself. Life becomes a story she’s telling, not just something she’s living through. The man who signed off “prenez soin de vous” is Grégoire Bouillier, writer of The Mystery Guest, a memoir about being invited to a stranger’s birthday party by a woman who had broken his heart. This stranger was Sophie Calle. Later, he told The Brooklyn Rail that Calle “believes in the genius of the artist while I pay attention to the genius of life.” She wants to control, he implies, while he wants to observe. But if life sometimes behaves like a novel, why not start trying to write life for yourself? By the end—of the text thread, the exhibition, the book—the impression left is not of messy sentences or tortured narcissism, but of creative bounty and feminine solidarity. The work takes its name from X’s farewell: “Take care of yourself.” The phrase, as multiple interpreters point out, implies a second clause: “Because I will no longer take care of you.” Calle’s experiment shows there’s another, sublime possibility for the aftermath: in your lowest and loneliest moments, others will understand for you, answer for you—take care of you. —Elisa Gonzalez, author of two poems in issue no. 240 (Summer 2022)
December 22, 2022 Diaries Kafka’s Diaries, 1911 By Franz Kafka and Ross Benjamin Facsimile of the first page of the diaries. The following is drawn from Ross Benjamin’s translation of the complete, uncensored diaries of Franz Kafka, to be published by Schocken Books in January 2023. Benjamin sought to preserve the diaries’ distinctive writing, including its rough edges and inconsistencies. This excerpt contains diary entries from late March to late September 1911. Between March 19 and 28, 1911, Kafka (1883-1924) attended several lectures given by Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) at the invitation of the Prague chapter of the Theosophical Society. After the end of his lecture series, Steiner remained in Prague for two more days, which were reserved for personal conversations at the Hotel Victoria, where he was staying. The audience that Kafka describes in the following diary entry probably took place on March 29. In the “prepared speech” Kafka presents to Steiner, the twenty-seven-year-old writer seems to be responding to Steiner’s description, in one of the lectures on “Occult Physiology,” of a “mystical immersion in the self, as well as the reverse, the lifting of oneself out of one’s own consciousness.” Kafka returned to his diary in August shortly before a trip to Switzerland, northern Italy, and Paris with Max Brod, his fellow writer and intimate friend. He wrote his notes on that trip in a separate travel diary. After parting from Brod, Kafka stayed at the naturopathic sanatorium Erlenbach near Zurich. When he returned to Prague, Brod brought him together with the painter, graphic artist, and writer Alfred Kubin (1877–1959), probably on September 26, the day of Kafka’s entry recording this encounter. My visit to Dr. Steiner. A woman is already waiting (upstairs on the 3rd floor of the Viktoria Hotel on Jungmannsstrasse) but implores me to go in before her. We wait. The secretary comes and holds out hope to us. Glancing down a corridor, I see him. A moment later he comes toward us with arms half spread. The woman declares that I was here first. Now I walk behind him as he leads me into his room. His black frock coat, which on lecture evenings appears polished, (not polished, but only shiny due to its pure black) is now in the light of day (3 o’clock in the afternoon) dusty and even stained especially on the back and shoulders. In his room I try to show my humility, which I cannot feel, by looking for a ridiculous place for my hat; I put it on a small wooden stand for lacing boots. Table in the middle, I sit facing the window, he on the left side of the table. On the table some papers with a few drawings, which recall those from the lectures on occult physiology. A magazine Annalen für Naturphilosophie covers a small pile of books, which seem to be lying around elsewhere too. Only you can’t look around, because he keeps trying to hold you with his gaze. But whenever he doesn’t do so, you have to watch out for the return of the gaze. He begins with a few loose sentences: So you’re Dr. Kafka? Have you been interested in theosophy long? But I press forward with my prepared speech: I feel a large part of my being striving toward theosophy, but at the same time I have the utmost fear of it. I’m afraid, namely, that it will bring about a new confusion, which would be very bad for me since my present unhappiness itself consists of nothing but confusion. This confusion lies in the following: My happiness, my abilities and any possibility of being in some way useful have always resided in the literary realm. And here I have, to be sure, experienced states (not many) that are in my opinion very close to the clairvoyant states described by you Herr Doktor, in which I dwelled completely in every idea, but also filled every idea and in which I felt myself not only at my own limits, but at the limits of the human in general. Only the calm of enthusiasm, which is probably peculiar to the clairvoyant, was still missing from those states, even if not entirely. I conclude this from the fact that I have not written the best of my works in those states.—I cannot now devote myself fully to this literary realm, as would be necessary, and indeed for various reasons. Leaving aside my family circumstances, I couldn’t live off literature if for no other reason than the slow emergence of my works and their special character; moreover, my health and my character also hinder me from devoting myself to what is in the most favorable case an uncertain life. I have therefore become an official in a social insurance institute. Now these two professions could never tolerate each other and permit a shared happiness. The least happiness in one becomes a great unhappiness in the other. If I have written something good one evening, I am aflame the next day in the office and can accomplish nothing. This back-and-forth keeps getting worse. In the office I outwardly live up to my duties, but not my inner duties and every unfulfilled inner duty turns into an unhappiness that never leaves me. And to these two never-to-be-balanced endeavors am I now to add theosophy as a third? Won’t it disturb both sides and itself be disturbed by both? Will I, already at present such an unhappy person be able to bring the 3 to a conclusion? I have come Herr Doktor to ask you this, for I sense that, if you consider me capable of it, I could actually take it on. He listened very attentively, without appearing to observe me at all, completely devoted to my words. He nodded from time to time, which he seems to consider an aid to strong concentration. At first a quiet head cold bothered him, his nose was running, he kept working the handkerchief deep into his nose, one finger at each nostril Read More
December 21, 2022 On Sports Today I Have Very Strong Feelings By Jonathan Wilson Manuel C., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. A month ago, Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, made his now infamous “I am Spartacus” speech at the World Cup’s opening press conference. “Today I have very strong feelings, today I feel Qatari, today I feel Arab, today I feel African, today I feel gay, today I feel disabled, today I feel a migrant worker,” he said, before adding, “Of course, I am not Qatari, I am not an Arab, I am not African, I am not gay, I am not disabled. But I feel like it, because I know what it means to be discriminated, to be bullied.” Two days before Sunday’s final, he returned to the microphone to announce, a bit prematurely, that this had been the “best World Cup ever.” It pains me to say it, n terms of pure football, and especially given the galactically great final—a game that will remain, as everyone pretty much agrees, unsurpassed in the annals of football history—he was right on the money. At the beginning of England’s penalty shoot-out against France in the quarterfinals, English fans were back at the Battle of Agincourt, the whole country ready to channel Laurence Olivier or Kenneth Branagh and “cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George,’” when the local penalty pathology kicked in. In the 1996 Euro, Gareth Southgate, currently England’s manager, had famously missed a vital penalty against Germany, weakly side-footing the ball toward the goal. The next day one of the tabloids ran the unforgiving headline “‘HE SHOULD HAVE BELTED IT’ SAYS SOUTHGATE’S MUM.” This time, Harry Kane did belt it. The result was the same. Kane’s ball went way over the bar, effectively ending his country’s chances of beating France in the quarterfinals. England had probably otherwise deserved the win, on the merit of its second-half performance and in the wake of some egregious decisions from the referee Wilton Sampaio, along with the mystery that is VAR (video assistant referee). All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears. Harry lifted the top of his shirt above his chin and bit down on it. Read More
December 19, 2022 Studio Visit LSD Snowfall: An Interview with Uman By Camille Jacobson Uman, Snowfall: winter in Roseboom #4, 2016–2020 (detail). The Paris Review‘s Winter issue cover, Snowfall: winter in Roseboom #4, by the artist Uman, looks from different angles like a field of floating Christmas lights, a confetti drop on New Year’s Eve, and a winter storm touched with a kind of bright magic. Uman worked on it over a period of four years, dabbing bright color on the canvas until, as they told me in our conversation, it felt a bit like “the mothership.” Born in Somalia in 1980, they grew up in Kenya and moved to Denmark in their teens. In 2004, they came to New York, where they continued to work in collage, painting, and sculpture before moving upstate. They are largely self-taught, and their signature style is bright, geometric, and vivid. We talked about their economical attitude toward paint, the process of making Snowfall, and their sheep. INTERVIEWER Have you always thought of yourself as an artist? UMAN I certainly drew as a kid. The earliest drawings I remember doing were on my actual schoolbooks. At school I ended up drawing on desks and lots of walls, sort of like tagging things—always female figures. I wanted to study fashion. In Kenya our TV channels were limited, but we had CNN, and on Saturdays I would watch Style with Elsa Klensch. I just remember being fascinated by fashion—drawing things, making things out of my imagination. And it felt really good. At one point, my parents were called to my school to pay for the damages I’d caused. I realized then that drawing wasn’t something I should be doing, so I became more secretive about my creativity. Read More
December 16, 2022 The Review’s Review What the Paris Review Staff Read in 2022 By The Paris Review From Mary Manning’s portfolio Ciao! in issue no. 242. The sadness of thinking about a year in reading is how little of it endures! As I try to recover lost time by rereading the terrible handwriting in my journal I find so many abandoned or forgotten books, and even the ones that remained in my memory are now reduced to an image or a sentence or a feeling—but maybe this is universal, and therefore not so sad. Read More
December 15, 2022 Poetry The Blackstairs Mountains By Colm Tóibín Illustration by Na Kim. In the new Winter issue of The Paris Review, Belinda McKeon interviews the writer Colm Tóibín, author of ten novels, two books of short stories, and several collections of essays and journalism. Tóibín also writes poetry—“When I was twelve,” he tells McKeon, “I started writing poems every day, every evening. Not only that but I followed poetry as somebody else of that age might follow sport”—and we are pleased to publish one of his recent poems here. The Morris Minor cautiously took the turns And, behind us, the Morris 1000, driven by my aunt, Who never really learned to work a clutch. I remember the bleakness, the sheer rise, As though the incline had been Cut precisely and then polished clean, And also the whistle of the wind As I grudgingly climbed Mount Leinster. All of us, in fact, trudged most of the way up, With my uncle carrying a pair Of binoculars borrowed from Peter Hayes Who owned a pub in Court Street. Read More