Vous auriez baiser désespéré pour écrire à ce blog stupide
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Kendell Geers sent this to me...
dear linda stupid
i do apologise for sending you emails in FRENCH but i just assumed that the INTERNATIONAL editor of artthrob would figure it out. it is indeed a pity that ARTTHROB missed not only one but two international retrospectives on account of my "tendency to send ... listings in languages you (the internaitonal editor) don't understand" - perhaps you should ask to be moved another department with languages closer to your qualification. perhaps the klein karoo listings would be something you would feel more qualified to report upon. yes please do remove me from you mass emailings and give my spam filter a break
kendell geers
-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Stupart
Sent: 05 April 2007 11:52
To: panaesthetik
Subject: Re: International Listings
Dear Kendell,
Unfortunately, you have a tendency to send me your listings in languages I don't understand, however, I do frequently list you in ArtThrob and appreciate any information you send. I can take you off the mass mailing list though, but I would really really like it if you would send listings in - sorry if you feel I was ignoring the stuff you've been sending me.
Regards and sorry again,
Linda
Désolé mon français est si mauvais, mais j'essaie très durement d'être bizarre. Peut-être si j'étais une grande étoile internationale d'art j'essaierais pas être si aigre.
dear linda stupid
i do apologise for sending you emails in FRENCH but i just assumed that the INTERNATIONAL editor of artthrob would figure it out. it is indeed a pity that ARTTHROB missed not only one but two international retrospectives on account of my "tendency to send ... listings in languages you (the internaitonal editor) don't understand" - perhaps you should ask to be moved another department with languages closer to your qualification. perhaps the klein karoo listings would be something you would feel more qualified to report upon. yes please do remove me from you mass emailings and give my spam filter a break
kendell geers
-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Stupart
Sent: 05 April 2007 11:52
To: panaesthetik
Subject: Re: International Listings
Dear Kendell,
Unfortunately, you have a tendency to send me your listings in languages I don't understand, however, I do frequently list you in ArtThrob and appreciate any information you send. I can take you off the mass mailing list though, but I would really really like it if you would send listings in - sorry if you feel I was ignoring the stuff you've been sending me.
Regards and sorry again,
Linda
Désolé mon français est si mauvais, mais j'essaie très durement d'être bizarre. Peut-être si j'étais une grande étoile internationale d'art j'essaierais pas être si aigre.
posted by Robert Sloon at 2:05 PM
52 Comments:
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I love Kendell. He is such an erudite and eloquent person. Perhaps he should learn to write proper English before casting the first stone about darling Linda's French skills. Perhaps his international listings should be moved to a publication with languages closer to his qualification. Like the "Geelbladsye" in Landbouweekblad.
That's my Ken Doll!
Mon dieu, quel tosser
Aha....the colonized mind is finaly exposed
er-Ken, or whatever your name is.
How's this for French: Fuck you Kendell!
You and your work are old hat. You're just another white artist cashing in on Apartheid!
douleur dans le cul, pain in the arse, bread in the bum, bum in the butter, butter which doesn’t melt – in the “mouth”. The International Profile is HUGE, if aged, and it would seem a trifle bitter…
this is testimony to arthrobs power!!!! with not one but two international retrospectives happening it takes not getting on the listing pages for him to throw his toys.
in-security
pathetic old arsehole, Le Zoulou Blanc of the artworld. File under deceased.
I guess no amount of international reputation makes up for being ignored at home.
k-END-ell
I'm sure his mommy is very proud.
title withheld wanker, you're my kind of wanker
f-art breath
The petty comments on this blog show the abysmal lack of international knowledge and pathetic self-absorption the insular art world in South Africa still has. To Kendell Geers: it is their loss. Congratulations on your retrospectives and your international success. And they still wonder why the best of South African artists leave the African shores at the first opportunity that they have. Hopefully Sue Williamson will wake up and rescue Artthrob from this kind of incompetence.
poes
self absorption = onanism (wanking) + ?
is anonymous of 6:10 for real? sounds like linda givon or ruth sacks
success is one thing. being a prick-headed baby rapist is another.
What kind of incompetence are you, Anonymous 6:10, referring to? The fact that Linda can't read French? Can Sue Williamson? Can Kendell, for that matter?
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From anonymous 6:10 -
I would agree that calling someone stupid is in bad taste, but calling someone, to quote a few: "poes", "old hat", "pathetic old arsehole", "prick-headed baby rapist" is somehow not rude and arrogant? Why no comments on those posts? Let us be fair at least. My comment on the incompetence of Artthrob refers to their failure to list two major international retrospectives of a celebrated South Africa artist just because the listings where in French. I am sure that Artthrob could have gone the extra mile in asking someone to help with the translation rather than deciding to ignore it all together - I would argue that this would be the simple duty of an International Correspondent - no disrespect to Williamson - she has done a great job.
No matter what you think personally of Geers, his art continues to be provocative and relevant to South Africa. The failure to take notice of the development, participation and success of "one of our own" (even though is not on our shores) is to everyone's detriment - thus my comment on the continuing insular nature of the South African art world and lack of international knowledge. Why is it that some recent retrospectives of major South African artists (think Kentridge, Dumas, Geers, etc.) are not organized from South Africa?
If you are, as I assume, Kendell himself, then why not assume this reasonable tone and write to Artthrob? Your illustrious career must surely have taught you how to get things done more efficiently than this.
If you're going to put that bottle-neck pipe of yours on your retrospective, you'd better come back here and learn how to make one before you go faking South African culture for the Europeans
from anonymous 6:10:
No I am not Kendell Geers. I think that is pretty clear to everyone that he would not shy away from any confrontation or controversy. A simple South African art lover here.
Dear Anonymous 6:10, those proclaiming "poes", "old hat", "pathetic old arsehole", "prick-headed baby rapist" are not necessarily and apparently not internationally recognized multilingual artists with multiple retrospectives. It's not the same thing.
Those of us (self absorbed) here know exactly why South Africans, not only the “best” of artists, leave the “African Shores”, I don't think we wonder at all.
i think sometimes we are even quite relieved when they leave.
"Why is it that some recent retrospectives of major South African artists (think Kentridge, Dumas, Geers, etc.) are not organized from South Africa?"?
It's because we can't speak French. Who else is prepared to put money into Africa?
dear anon 6:10,
lets say , for the sake of an argument, that it was William Kentridge who had called Linda 'Stupid' : would that shift the parameters of this debate? I do think it would. You see, dear, how we have become habituated to Kendall's confrontational style, it's almost meaningless - except as a convention. Whereas if another famous SA artist treated his less succesfull (dimmer?) homeys with such scorn, wouldn't it shock one? Let's be honest and admit that this is a provincial (rather than insular) hole. Let's admit that the Boykie has made good, and has made some good work. But does that give him licence, not a fuck! A jerk is jerk is a jerk.
Look at Marlene Dumas' portrait of the man, then look again at the compositions from Abu Ghraib, and pity him.
i once heard a story about how kendell was highly irked when a younger artist slipped his/her portfolio to him under a table. apparantly it was against "protocol" to do this. the horror the horror.
for someone who schlepped his own portfolio around the basel artfair many years ago trying to pick up a gallery, I thought this was lank hypocritical. and what's with protocol? bad boy one moment? head boy the next? i just don't get it. if he cared about normal protocol (polite behavior) he just wouldn't throw his toys over an art listing and he wouldn't have cced this letter to all sorts of people.
his work enters the dark spaces of human behavior and attacks authority and sacred cows. perhaps you reap what you sow.
It's interesting to have this discussion of Kendell, seeing as he seems to resent South Africans so much.
I think the lack of respect accorded him back home is not, as he thinks, a result of our small-mindedness. The bottom line is, no matter how many bricks he has thrown into galleries in Europe, where was he when we were throwing bricks back home? He was a fence-sitter in the struggle, who then claimed to be freedom fighter in the safety of European art galleries. The Europeans couldn't see the difference. We could.
Actually his brickwork was "thrown" in SA and pre '94 at that!
However,cruelty is cruelty is cruelty. The rest is gloss and obfuscation...
Having said all of the above though, Linda Stupart does have a reputation for sloppiness, which she may or may not know about. She needs to watch it, I think
Having spoken to Linda about the incident, I think it is necessary to make a few things clear. Firstly, she did attempt to get the listings translated, and approached the sub-editor on the matter. Secondly, having tried to do a websearch myself on the retrospectives I couldn't find them in any language, so getting info that way also wouldn't work. Thirdly, putting them up in French, would make no sense to any of the readers of Artthrob. So maybe sloppy isn't the right word. Maybe a bit of a bottle-neck on the information highway?
Ok, let's light a peace pipe then. (Choking heard offstage as the curtain closes)
Does no one else find it suspect that these 'major retrospectives' seem ungoogle-able?
dear lida stupart,
please post the original french notification sent to you of kendell geers' so-called retrospective.
I'm not finished with Kendell yet, as one of the issues he raises all the time about his work is something I disagree with profoundly. He rails against political correctness as if it constrained free speech. It does not. It is a form of peer pressure intended to make people think before they open their big mouths and use derogatory words. For instance I think artheat is a politically correct blog, and I haven't noticed anyone on it suffering a lack of stuff to say. I think political correctness is doing a far better job of changing the world than a thinly disguised reactionary like Kendell.
I think his feeling that political correctness is narrow minded and curtails his freedom is somewhere up there with Jacob Zuma thinking that wearing a condom would cramp his lovelife.
So not only do we struggle with our heads in our "provincial" sand (in echo of 6:10), but now we cannot even do a simple search on the net? I hang my head in shame. Here are my result all from google:
"Auto-da-Fé" (at B.P.S 22 - 17 March to 3 June):
http://www.hainaut.be/culture/artsplastiques/frameset.asp?page=contenu&navcont=1,0,0,0
"Irrespectiv" (at S.M.A.K. 21 April to 26 August): http://www.smak.be/tentoonstelling.php?la=nl&y=0&tid=0&t=komende&id=355
Took me a whole two minutes to find.
thanks kendell
why is Ruth Sacks / Anon 6:10 still contributing to this blog? She's been in Paris for a week now. Bored of the city you love already?
imagine her accent when she returns!
they tried to make me go to rehab but I said no no no
Amy has a great nose!
what happened to Linda "Ed Younge" Lovelace's post? Ruth take it off 'cos she's the only one alowed to suck Kendul?
what the fuck has everyone got against fuckin ruth for gods sake. she's just, like, er ruth. its okay.
now that is what I call salacious...
salacious crumb?
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