Last year I produced the Regarding series of photographs taken of me standing in front of famous abstract expressionist paintings. I was unable to find gallery space for these photos on short notice, so I took two other routes to publicize the photos. I hung them in a domestic interior made up to look like an art gallery, and then I posted pictures of this "pop-up" gallery on the social network. I figured the virtual gallery is online now anyway. At the "opening" for the show, somebody asked me what my next project would be. I said I hadn't even known I was working on this project until I was halfway into it. The Memes evolved in the same way. I just started working on them one day.
The first meme I did was of my brother, Charlie, who died this time last year at the age of 51. Charlie was a great man. Everybody loved him. He was free-spirited, he did whatever he wanted to do, he was a faithful husband, and he raised two beautiful daughters. He did not have a Facebook page. He was that guy. I never talked to him about it, but I know he simply felt like he'd gotten along without Facebook his whole life, and he just wasn't interested. He'd rather play golf on the beach than curate a Facebook page.
Going through pictures of Charlie around the anniversary of his death, I found this great photo I'd taken of him on Kiawah Island in the late nineties. And I said to myself, "Charlie didn't have a facebook page." I wanted to post the picture, and it occurred to me to do it as a meme, to place the caption I'd intended for the picture directly on the picture. That is generally the function of the text in a meme, to state what the picture is visually saying. If you can get more than one meaning out of a single meme, more's the better.
So the first meaning of this picture is, Charlie would rather play golf on the beach than curate a Facebook page. Slightly compressed. The second meaning is, Charlie didn't have a Facebook page. Meaning: while all the world appears to be on Facebook today, let's take a moment to remember one who didn't have a Facebook page. I know all the world is not appearing on Facebook, but a lot of people go there to share what they are doing in the world, and I just felt like Charlie should be recognized there. This picture has gotten more "likes" than any other picture I have posted.
Facebook is not capitalized in the meme because it's not about that. The courier font that looks like old typewriter typeface may seem obvious, but that's what I was going for. I wanted it to read like I was just stating a fact. No flash. No shadows. The white looked good against the gray beach sand, and so that has become my signature.
I've been following the Chris Christie scandal out of New Jersey very closely since the story broke wide open the first week of January. It's like watching GoodFellas and The Sopranos playing out in real life. And in the middle of it all, when EVERYONE knows the governor is lying and that there's a good chance that he might get impeached one day, he got sworn in for his second term as governor. So when I saw this picture of his inauguration on the front page of the New York Times, I immediately wondered how much this was going to cost him and who he was going to have to pay. And since the New Jersey Assembly and the United States Department of Justice are currently investigating the affair, the judiciary is the only body left who can take the bribe. I looked at this picture, and it looked like Chris Christie was just ambling up to his friend the judge, reaching out to shake his hand, and saying, "Hey, I'm here with that billion dollars we talked about." I loved this one. I actually thought this one had a chance to go around the world. Maybe when the whole story is out, if Christie does in fact turn out to be the crook he appears to be, maybe then this meme will gain some traction.
This one was just fun. It's just a picture of Jasper Johns leaving the courthouse in January. (Actually, this is kind of a big deal, since he's 83 years old and doesn't appear in public much.) The photo was taken by Brendan McDermid for Reuters, but the editor of the New York Post, on whose website this photo appeared, chose to leave in the frame another photographer photographing Johns. So one of the meanings of this picture is, People take pictures of Jasper Johns when he ventures outside. And the next thing I thought was, Jasper Johns looks the other way.
I like the double meaning here. He's literally looking the other way, and (as an artist) he looks at things differently from others: he looks the other way. Unfortunately for the complete success of this piece, there is a possible third meaning that might leak into the viewer's mind, the sense of allowing something to happen that you know shouldn't happen, of looking the other way. He's most assuredly not doing that, but that's the thing about creation, you never know what's going to happen. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not so much. Still, I like this one. I like associating myself with Jasper Johns. I've posted stuff about him on the social network a few times, and since he was in the news I thought I should do something to memorialize it.
That's one of the main functions of the meme. To make a commentary on something that is going on in the real world. To call attention to an event or trend.
Here's Peyton Manning shouting "Omaha!" which he'd been doing in a very high-profile way in the two games leading up to the Super Bowl. The NFL's broadcasting partners were homing in on Manning's snap count, which almost always incorporated the word "Omaha," and the next day people were talking about it over the water cooler. I posted this picture the morning of the Super Bowl. It means, Peyton Manning is one of a kind. It means, Peyton Manning is playing in the Super Bowl this evening. It means, I'm going to watch the Super Bowl.
And I did watch the Super Bowl. And unlike a lot of people, I didn't just watch it for the commercials. But I did watch it for the commercials, too. And sometime in the second half, Bob Dylan appeared in a Chrysler commercial.
This image is not from the commercial, but the text is. I wanted to juxtapose the words that Dylan spoke in the ad with an image of his younger self and ask the viewer to wonder what the younger Dylan would think. Dylan was one of the great subversives of the twentieth century, maybe of all time. He may have been the last great avant-gardist, an artist who broke through to the national and international stage, and told it like it was when he got there. He's one of Romanticism's great poets of anti-nationalism, and here he comes with this jingoistic piece of pop art with the absurd opening line, "Is there anything more American than America?"
This happened. A lot of kids, even some who actually know who Bob Dylan is, do not connect the old trickster in the ad to the hipster that he was at the height of his fame. I felt that these words with this image perfectly encapsulated my intended meaning, which is, Bob Dylan, yes that Bob Dylan, said "We will build your car" in a Chrysler ad last night.
"So let Germany brew your beer," Dylan says in the ad. "Let Switzerland make your watch. Let Asia assemble your phone." Tagline: "We will build your car." It's actually a tagline that I think Don Draper would ultimately approve of, if he makes it through the seventies. Though not a serious user, Don has never said no to any drug that was put in his face, and you know sometime around 1972 or 73 somebody is going to offer him a syringe, and he'll say, "Why not?"
I think that's probably what Dylan was thinking when he made the ad. "Why not?"
You know? Whatever, dude. The tagline of a generation. I knew this one was borderline insensitive, but I figured we could handle it. This photo was taken at Sundance last month. Even if he hadn't died, the look on his face, along with the lack of effort given to his appearance, just seem to say, Whatever, dude. But I also think about the way he died. And while I have all the respect in the world for people who battle addictions, I had to think, heroin? Seriously? Whatever, dude.
I place these works in the series of images by Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer. I like the way the best ones work like adages. I like the way some are personal and universal at the same time.
