Post-Modernism - March 31 2006
Masticating With Mussolini
Explaining Post-Modernism with Boiled Beans
Suddenly, I was in
Italy. It was 1925, and I was dining with Benito Mussolini, that cheeky fascist bugger who somehow knew I was most ticklish under my third metatarsal. His dining room was decorated with conductors who had failed to keep their trains running on time, and although their pleas for mercy were a bit melodramatic, I appreciated them, and they very much complimented the meal. Ah…the meal. Exquisite, dear readers, absolutely outstanding. There is nothing I enjoy more than a cup of boiled beans and warm milk, nothing at all, except perhaps running with Kenyans in the fog, but that’s besides the point.
Benito, as I recall, was quite loquacious. Our conversation wandered from a discussion about bipedal marsupials to the musings of Soren Kierkegaard, whom I had built a house with in 1843. One morning, as we were laying roof tiles, he had whispered in my ear the words “truth is subjectivity”, but I was far too troubled by the news that Argentina was laying siege to Montevideo to really understand, so I just smiled and nodded and continued to hammer away. Mussolini, however, was so delighted by these three words that he ordered a conductor be freed. I protested but he insisted it had to be done.
Three words, dear readers. Three words was all it took for Nietzsche to send me out the door, shotgun in hand, in 1880. Locked and loaded: if god was dead, I was going to bathe in his killer’s blood, become baptized in vengeance, v for vendetta. The pudgy German philosopher had to lift my blue-pick up truck over his head before I understood he was merely provoking me, that slimy little Übermensch. God wasn’t dead! Only absolute values! I had to chew on cactus for an hour before the veins in my forehead un-bulged. Luckily, Benjamin Franklin was baby-sitting my kids, so I didn’t have to worry that little Fitzgerald wasn’t getting fed.
Speaking of which, in 1970, Jacques Derrida deconstructed the house Soren and I had built. Eight years earlier, Thomas Kuhn had found a pair of dimes on the sidewalk and based an entire career around the discovery.
And all this time Benito was still laughing, his body bubbling underneath his rigid uniform, moving back and forth, swiveling, swirling, lovely, precious. At one point, he pushed back his chair and stood, raising a glass of warm milk in his hand, trampling the colony of parasites that had gathered by the crumbs at his feet. It was then that I noticed the sky outside the window was screaming, the colour of cars running on the blood of Wessex manure. It stretched my smile muscle to an extent that would not be matched until Gravity’s Rainbow filled my retinas fifty years later. I remember that moment as one of my happiest.
This is not to say, of course, that Jean Baudrillard does not enjoy boiled beans, he just likes them when they are hyper-real, fed to him through spectacle and one hundred and fifty-three inch television sets. Unfortunately, we cannot hold this against him; at least his trains are on time.
Levels, dear readers! Where is reason in all of this?! We dream in bright colours, like broken computer monitors and splintered mirrors; how can you even dare to hope, to believe you can assemble understanding in the way one assembles furniture and airplanes? How dare you explore! Give up, and leave hope for the savages. Benito Mussolini fed me post-modernism for dessert.
Cosmopolitan - March 24/06
The Importance of Being Cosmopolitan
It’s not just a magazine; it’s a state of mind.
“Dearest Arts Snob, I recently came across a CD called “Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited.” The French-iness of the title didn’t sit well with my Freedom Fries, but I picked it up anyway and was shocked to find that some of my favourite uber-hip, super indie, ultra clutch bands were on it, paying tribute to this chain-smoking leftist Frog boy. What’s the deal oh knowledgeable one? What do the Rakes, the Kills, Cat Power, and Franz Ferdinand have to do with this baguette?
Forever yours, Pippa Passes, aspiring elitist”
Oh dear, dear Pippa! You have much to learn! Most importantly, understand that Franz Ferdinand have lost their indie status and thus can no longer be admired! Silly girl!
But otherwise, you have to realize that the world is a large place! The arts snob must acknowledge this fact; we cannot be restrained by the Anglo-Saxon mentality of North America! Our openness to other cultures is a defining trait! We are the ones who are supposed to appreciate Haitian artists and Asian cuisine, the students who are supposed to fill our passports with stamps and our messenger bags with iron-on flags! Chile! Greenland! Kenya! Saskatchewan! Knowledge of these foreign lands is essential!
France especially, you must learn, holds a special place in the heart of an arts snob. The home of pretty much every major art movement since the 19th century, France is the land of snobs; a paradise of fine wine, long cigarette holders, and black clothing. Pippa, you must learn to recognize those Freedom Fries for what they really are: French fries. Yeah, I said it. French fries.
The point is, the arts snob recognizes that the global community has much to offer the eager mind, and is willing to exploit it for all its goodness. This considered, it is not difficult to see why Serge Gainsbourg may have influenced the artists you listed in your letter. Gainsbourg was the “dirty old man” of French music, a singer/songwriter who pushed boundaries with his genre experimentation, and more notably his use of the sounds of female orgasms in his songs. He was never really successful in North America, however, and remained a cult figure beloved by us elitists. His ‘taboo-shattering’ output and interest in all types of music from jazz to Baroque to reggae has no doubt inspired many bright young minds to create, especially those in the “uber-hip” bands you mentioned. Beck has sworn allegiance to him. Belle and Sebastian even wrote a song about him.
It can be hard out here for an artist, really. Feeding off the accomplishments of other cultures has become an important way of keeping Western art exciting and interesting; people like Gainsbourg have been essential in stimulating new intellectual activity. But international awareness is about more than just being able to appreciate the influence of Ethiopian art on Picasso’s sculptures, it’s about not being an idiot. As arts snobs, it is our privilege to know things that others do not.
On St. Patrick’s Day, for instance, we enjoyed our pints that much more because we knew that Ireland is in fact a country, not merely a slogan on an American Eagle trucker cap. We also recognize that ‘Fubar’ has its roots in the German word ‘furchtbar’, which means ‘awful’ or ‘shocking’, a fitting description of that abominable night club. Germany, by the way, is a country in Europe, which is a land mass beyond the Atlantic Ocean, which is a body of water to the East of Canada, the country we live in. Arts snobs can also appreciate the fact that the bearded, beret-wearing figure on Rage Against the Machine T-shirts is in fact ‘Che Guevara’, an Argentinean who had an important impact on revolutionary movements in Latin America (yes, you’ve read correctly: there’s more to the ‘Americas’ than just the North. In fact, there’s even a South America!). Arts snobs understand that Ikea sells meatballs because it is an important part of their Swedish background. Sweden is one of many countries around the world whose food habits do not revolve around microwaved hamburgers.
The world is a fascinating place, dear Pippa! Serge Gainsbourg is only one example of the wonderful figures you will meet on your explorations! You must set forth with an open mind and an eager heart, and once you have filled that ignorant little head of yours with languages and experiences and memories of strange streets and even stranger foods, perhaps then you will be able to truly justify being an “arts snob”. Until then, enjoy “Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited” for what it really is, an exceptional tribute album to an under-appreciated genius of pop music. The fact that he is a “baguette” makes it all the better.
Sweatsuit - March 17/06
Nelly Had It Right All Along
How the Grey Sweatsuit Could Change Your Life
Dearest readers of Imprint, it appears that your favourite columnist is under fire! No, not the sexually-enlightened Russell Cole, but I, your noble messenger of pretentiousness, your prophet of cultural refinery, the man (the boy) they call the “arts snob”.
Bludgeoned by hate mail, drowned in angry sentiment, I have fought through the worst to write to you this week. I am not discouraged, however, so do not fear; the arts snob thrives on upsetting people, forcing them to react. See, for example, last week’s column on sex and car crashes.
Alas, there has been some concern lately that my column can appeal only to upper-crust rich kids who can afford “designer jeans” and “gourmet lattes”. Many are worried that the majority of you out there with your pajama pants and library cards have no hope of ever fitting into a fashionable intellectual culture, but I am here to assure you that such notions are nonsense! Oh underprivileged readers, it is by no means necessary to own an engraved pocket watch and Ben Sherman jacket to be an arts snob! There are plenty of options for the restricted wallet, one of which I will examine today.
In 2004, a group of artists in Toronto decided that they were going to reject the idea that a person’s personality is determined by their fashion sense by rejecting fashion altogether. They would confine themselves to a generic and nondescript type of clothing and wear it everyday, without fail. This was the humble beginning of what was to become “The Grey Sweatsuit Revolution,” an international movement dedicated to interrupting the cannibalistic forces of consumer society, the very forces the arts snob must avoid! These forces have crushed any attempt at differentiation by adopting rebellion into the mainstream: “Look at trucker hats. Artists rip off the blue-collar worker because it’s cheap, edgy, ironic, kitsch, whatever. Subsequently the fashion system rips off the artists. Thanks for coming out rebel! What’s next? Cow shit covered boots?”
The Revolution is based around the idea that limiting your identity to grey sweat pants and a grey sweat shirt will leave you rejuvenated. It is much more than a simple rejection of fashion: it is an attack on superficiality and complacency. The Revolution’s manifesto, posted on www.thegreysweatsuitrevolution.com, indicates that: “the ultimate rebellion is to be generic and very comfortable. F**k using clothes as a form of expression. Think of something more valid, like what you do with your time or what you have to say. See what happens when your clothes don’t speak for you. Oh shit! How will I be cool? Maybe I’ll have to participate in something…”
Essentially, the grey sweatsuit becomes an icon for the avant-garde. This cheap, plain, and uninteresting outfit acts as a vehicle for rebellion, a “Trojan horse” ready to destroy the fashion industry from the inside: “Our symbolism spreads like anthrax across the anorexic bodies of fashionistas everywhere! They look frantically for the next trend but there is nothing. Only grey sweatsuits.”
The Revolution has spread rapidly out of Toronto, with loyal followers sending the website photographs of their sweatsuit allegiance from as far as Switzerland, Greece, and India. Exhibitions and conferences are held at such places as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. The organizers encourage the holding of grey sweatsuit “socials, parties and parades” as a means of celebrating the uniform of this new ideology. They speak of time in terms of “Pre-Sweatsuit Era” and demand that, if the grey sweatsuit isn’t cohesive with your lifestyle, you must “Change your lifestyle, change your life!”
It seems obvious, then, that all that is required to make a statement, to be important, to subscribe to an ideology not shared by the majority, to truly be an arts snob, is a grey sweatsuit. There is no need for finely-tailored dress shirts and expensive imported shoes; one does not need an extensive wardrobe to be considered an intellectual. The grey sweatsuit offers a much more powerful statement than any sort of fancy scarf and corduroy jacket ever could.
So to all of you people out there who are already coming to class everyday in grey sweatpants, despite the social stigma, I salute you! You are on the cutting edge of not only an important arts movement, but are also contributing to the very destruction of fashion as we know it! Bravo, I say, bravo, and keep up the good work!
Ballard - March 10/06
Sexual Deviance, Car Crashes, and Ronald Reagan
The wide and wonderful world of J.G. Ballard
Torquil Campbell, lead singer of Canadian indie heartthrobs ‘Stars’, once said in an Exclaim magazine interview that, “if there are no negative reactions to your art, you’re making something that isn’t all that interesting.”
Art snobs, dear readers, eat up this philosophy like it is caviar of the finest grain.
We love to be associated with the obscene, the provocative. This is why we allow portraits of the Virgin Mary to be smeared with cow feces and placed in our galleries. It may also explain why experimental noise bands like Wolf Eyes, who sing about “urine burn,” gain a devoted following. Art snobs are inherently drawn to that which repulses every one else. It is part of our “superior sensitivity,” our much larger brains, and our never-ending need to be distinct from the unwashed masses.
Take for example David Cronenberg’s 1996 film Crash. This is not the enlightening, Oscar-winning film about the problem of racism in modern society, no, this is a movie about people who get sexual pleasure from car accidents. The film, which follows a psychologically-disturbed group of people on their quest to merge sexuality with machinery, was condemned as “sick and evil” by critics, banned from theatres in Britain and crippled by an NC-17 rating in the United States. But the Cannes festival, that French utopia of uppity film snobs, commended Crash for its ‘daring audacity and originality’. Indeed, a particularly cultivated friend told me recently that to “not appreciate Cronenberg’s Crash was to forsake your claim to the title of ‘art snob’.”
If it is necessary for the art snob to associate with the perverse and the provocative, it seems likely that the work of British writer J.G. Ballard should find a home on our burdened bookshelves. One of the most important writers to address the mechanization and dehumanization of society in the modern era, Ballard was in fact the author of the novel that inspired Cronenberg’s film. He also wrote Empire of the Sun, which was turned into a blockbuster movie by box-office whore Steven Spielberg, and thus will be ignored.
Ballard’s Crash is a portrait of technological dystopia, filled to the brim with nihilism, sado-masochism, and a plethora of disturbing imagery: “The lungs of elderly men punctured by door-handles; the chests of young women impaled on steering-columns; the cheek of handsome youths torn on the chromium latches of quarter-lights.” One publisher, after reading the novel, proclaimed that Ballard “is beyond psychiatric help.” The English writer’s other work does not deny the publisher’s diagnosis. 1969’s Atrocity Exhibition, a fragmented critique of media culture containing chapters with titles such as “Why I want to F*** Ronald Reagan” and “Plan for the Assassination of Jackie Kennedy”, so offended bookseller Nelson Doubleday that he demanded the entire press run be shredded. Vermillion Sands, a brilliantly written short-story collection about a desert resort inhabited by eccentric and insane celebrities, was so erotic in its portrayal of technology’s grotesque manifestations that it disappeared off bookshelves into obscurity. Each of Ballard’s novels becomes a struggle against nausea, at least for the average person.
The true art snob is immune to Ballard’s graphic perversity. So smart, so cultured, so enlightened, there is nothing we haven’t seen before. The hardest of the hardcore, art snobs are able to look past the blood and genitals practically unfazed, to see the message underneath. We, like J.G. Ballard, subscribe to the idea that the best way to enlighten people is to upset them. Art snobs can thus appreciate the image of a man making love to a wound his wife earned in a car accident, because we see it for what it really is, a commentary on the effect of modern technology and disaster media on the human psyche. I mean, isn’t it obvious?
Fellow British writer Martin Amis described Ballard as “quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different - a disused - part of the reader's brain." For providing this intellectual challenge, art snobs can latch on to Ballard and love him forever. He is a perfect testament to the ideal that the best art is the type that repulses its beholder, and by separating the intellectually enlightened from the weak-stomached majority, Ballard has given art snobs the greatest gift they could ever ask for: something to hold over everyone else.
Aesthetic Revolt - March 03/06
Throw your Macs out the Window!
An aesthetic revolt finds an outlet in Waterloo.
Art snobbery, dear readers, is about evolution. From the penny-farthing bicycle came the moped, from Paris’ Montmartre came Brooklyn’s Williamsburg. Constant change, you see, is necessary to stay above the ignorant masses, especially when history has shown that they often catch up.
Years ago, we elitists were the focus market of the Apple Computer company. We needed their technology to edit our short films, their creative suite to design our gallery posters, and in return they got priceless indie cred. But then they went and got all “accessible”. The iPod exploded on the markets and suddenly everyone had those sexy little white laptops. The clean ‘vector’ image art snobs had made popular (see www.julianopie.com or The Best of Blur album cover) became commonplace.
Art snobs don’t like it when their little sisters are able to use Adobe to advertise their eighth grade dance. They get angry. They start breaking things. Then they start looking for new ideas.
There is a movement developing, dear readers, an “aesthetic revolt” some have called it. Perhaps it is a reaction to Apple selling out, perhaps not, but it is certainly exciting. A new approach to design is sweeping the world, and has found a strong foothold in Canada – in Waterloo, no less! Your daring, fore-sighted columnist has stuck his massive nose into this new phenomenon, barely surviving to tell the tale!
Artists and designers, quite simply, are starting to move away from the computer, hoping to find a new means of expression in something grittier and less-refined. A new fascination with cut and paste design, pencil crayons, and silk-screening is taking hold of bright young things like Marc Lecompte of CTRPLLR, an independent zine published right here in Kitchener-Waterloo: "Things are too sterile, boring, non-offensive and hardly stimulating from an aesthetic standpoint. Layout for newspapers and magazines are done on computers to make sure they look perfect; the pictures are not incorporated in to the page, but merely placed beside text as a point of reference. I like to make the visual design of the page just as interesting as the articles themselves.”
Lecompte accomplishes this noble task through collage. CTRPLLR’s pages overflow traditional margins with images cut and pasted from old furniture magazines and outdated textbooks, anything that may relate to the article. It is an incredibly stimulating experience, with Lecompte and his CTRPLLR cronies choosing obscure images and wrapping them over and around the article text, creating a busy and interesting page: "I think there are so many great photos trapped inside old books and magazines that people will never read, so I take what I think are some of the best ones and work with them when doing the design for the zine.”
Heavily influenced by the independent music scene, Lecompte speaks of bands like Chicago's Owls and Seattle's Soiled Doves, who have utilized the collage aesthetic to make their album artwork stand out. Indie music has certainly been the teat at which the unpolished look suckles, acting as an outlet for everything from the pencil and graph paper singles of LCD Soundsystem to the crayon-colored posters of Waterloo’s Silent Film Soundtrack.
Canada has become very associated with the revolt, with Montreal outfits like Seripop becoming internationally recognized for their gritty silk-screened concert posters, despite their lack of training. Their website biography relates that "neither of us ever took a design class because we thought the design art students were lame sell outs.”
It may seem as if the world is crashing down, my elitist friends, when even design students are no longer cool, but this is the direction art is heading in. The mark of the art snob is no longer his mouse-clicking index-finger, but rather the paper-cut, the ink-stained hand, the box of pencil crayons in the pocket. Art snobs must prepare for this new step, be eager to follow CTRPLLR’s mission to “abolish traditional forms of media, or at least try new ones.” So throw out your Macs, pick up some old National Geographics, and create. While you’re at it, grab a CTRPLLR from the Turnkey Desk, the Grad House, or any other place of fine taste in K-W.
Cuba - February 24/06
WARM WEATHER: NOT JUST FOR ALPHA-MALES!
Art snobs embrace the South!
It may come as a bit of a surprise to you, dear readers, but your beloved, pasty-white, library-frequenting, urban area-worshipping, arts snob columnist is heading to the Caribbean for this reading week. Yes, I admit it is strange; I had my own problems with it. I mean, shouldn’t I be going to Iceland or something? Venturing to Prague, perhaps? Even Montreal would be more appropriate, for goodness sake! Alas, as classes end for the break, I will be trudging with the eager masses from the beautiful gloom that is the Canadian winter to the horrid heat and humidity of tropical lands, where sand will invade my white loafers and loud, horny students will interrupt my philosophical ponderings.
Why, you must be asking, would I submit myself to such a pedestrian pleasure? Why would I choose to go for a week wearing shorts instead of my tight-fitting blue jeans? What in god’s name would convince me to spend a week with scantily-clad, drunk-off-their-face co-eds?
My decision was affected by quite a few factors, actually, many of which have led me to believe that perhaps spending reading week in the south may not be such a bad idea for an art snob.
First off, the island that calls my name is the Communist Republic of Cuba. You know all those fashionable CCCP shirts with the hammer and sickle? Well, this is the REAL DEAL, suckas: communes and workers revolutions and statues of Lenin and murals of Che and missile crises and those really sweet-looking Fidel Castro military caps. It’s one thing to say you’re a socialist (and grow a beard to prove it), but its another thing to actually experience life under a Leftist regime. I hope to be able to get out my plough and collectivize with those drably-grey peasants while in Cuba, really get a taste for the life, you know?
Cuban culture, perhaps surprisingly, has a fairly developed and diverse arts sector. This is due partly to the society’s mix of European, African and indigenous cultures, but has also been somewhat enhanced by Communist rule. The result of being completely cut off from American culture means artists, film-makers and musicians are generally vibrant and individual, uncontaminated by the poison of such Western models for success as “Reality TV”. Francis Ford Coppola, who filmed part of his famous Godfather trilogy in Cuba, commented on the nation’s film industry in 1975: “I know very well the pain of a country like Australia that's a wealthy civilized place and yet has no film industry, because it's cheaper for them to buy our old television shows and our old movies. You see them struggling to have a little bit of a film thing. Yet here you have Cuba, which is a small place by comparison, and they have healthy, real, ambitious films.” Much of Cuban art is government regulated, however, so you get a lot of movies about the revolution, but this sort of intervention is also responsible for extremely high literacy rates and billboard/commercial-free streets, which can’t be a bad thing.
And history has shown that it’s not just beer-guzzling frat boys and impressionable valley girls who have frequented the area. Many brilliant Northerners have shown an affection for Cuba’s colourful towns and dark Havana bars, most famously perhaps being the modernist novelist Ernest Hemingway. The writer wrote his Nobel-prize winning novel The Old Man and the Sea about the small coastal village where he lived in the 1930s and 40s. He was so well loved in Cuba that Havana’s marina is named after him, and photos of him still decorate the bars he frequented.
So, it seems, Cuba is not one of those single-minded, non-creative countries that is often associated with Communist rule, but instead a well-educated and creative force. It is also, as shown by the patronage of Hemingway and Coppola, not simply a retreat for hormone-accelerated university students in board shorts and Corona t-shirts. So all ye art snobs out there, I beckon you: do not underestimate the South. If you’re not convinced by the above article, don’t forget that they do drive mopeds. I mean, what more could an art snob want?
Arsenal - February 17/06
MUSIC + INTERNET = DECK
artsnob tip #3: BUILD YOUR BAND NAME ARSENAL
Music, dear readers, is a monumental, immovable, ivy-covered pillar of the art snob’s world, as embedded into our culture as art galleries and fancy glossy design magazines. Explosively creative, endlessly complex, and sympathetic to skinny ties and one inch buttons, music gives to the art snob the same joy heroin gives to Peter Doherty. Indeed, art snobs across the world pride themselves on listening to music that you’ve never heard of: “Oh, you’re not familiar with that obscure disco-punk band from Brooklyn? Well, then…I guess I really am better than you.”
We successful elitists are constantly searching for the unknown, the underappreciated and the underground. It is not always easy, with false alarms from British magazines and a constant battle to stay ahead of that confounded “OC” show, but music is at least one element of art snob culture that doesn’t require reading a three-hundred page book to become familiar with. Lucky for you, the aspiring art snob, there are plenty of resources available, and plenty of bands yet to be discovered.
Any person with true art snob potential will realize immediately the importance of the internet in “building one’s band name arsenal” for, unlike magazines, web sites often allow you to actually listen to the music you’re reading about. No elitist wants to be one of those posers who knows the band’s name but doesn’t know what they sound like: “Oh, the Stills? Yeah, they are a pretty deck hip-hop group.” (‘deck’ means ‘cool’, FYI. Use it.)
The information age has done more to bring independent music to the mainstream than any other medium, and although the internet allows us Waterloo folk to keep up to date on the latest art rock bands emerging from the suburbs of London, it also means there is a lot more crappy music to sift through. There are, however, a few sites that can be helpful in your quest to build musical knowledge.
A good start may be www.pandora.com. The “Music Genome Project” created this website to link different music together so listeners could basically create their own radio station. The aspiring art snob types in the name of a band that he or she already knows and likes, and Pandora will find similar artists, matching everything from vocal styles to “rhythmic syncopation”. This is certainly a good gateway website for musical exploration, and exposes to the art snob tunes like “rhythmic syncopation”. But Pandora can be a little commercial at times, so you may actually have to do some work to find the truly obscure.
Far better (but also a little more advanced) than Pandora is www.epitonic.com, a website offering not only a vast database of music to explore but also FREE and high quality mp3s to download. This is key; the art snob must fill his or her iPod with epitonic’s ‘cutting-edge music’, so the next time someone searches through their library they will be shocked and astounded by the level of musical sophistication. Each artist profile offers mp3s, links, a biography, suggestions for related artists and movements, and is highly informative. Fill up on knowledge, o aspiring art snob, for then you, too, can look down your nose at people who don’t know about stuff like the California Avant-Pop movement.
The whole blog thing has also had important repercussions for underground music, for it allows art snobs everywhere to share/show off their particular tastes. As far as free music goes, www.3hive.com may be your best bet. This blog is run by three fellow art snobs, attaching their personal opinions and reviews to a growing archive of free downloads. Their write-ups are both humorous and informative: a wonderful resource for the advanced art snob. 3hive allows the visitor to search by genre, artist, and label, and the page can even be streamed through iTunes.
The internet has much to offer to the aspiring music elitist, and these sites are certainly a good start on the young art snob’s search for the unheard. Most important, however, is that you actually listen to the music. It can be a very enjoyable experience.
Café Culture - February 10/06
artsnob tip #2: FIND SMART FRIENDS
The brilliant 20th century lyricist Vanilla Ice once advised us all to “stop, collaborate and listen”; wise words from a wise man, and an adage perfectly suited to the manifesto of the art snob. If there is any hope for the development of an artistic and cultural community in Waterloo, then there has to be a sense of…well…community.
Step one: ditch every one of your friends who doesn’t like to read, thinks Green Day “pushes the boundaries of modern music”, and believes that movies with subtitles are “gay, guy”. Well, you don’t have to go as far as ditching them, but it might help to ignore them a little bit. You, young and hopeful art snob, have to find some like minds.
Intellectual interaction is absolutely essential for the growth of ideas. Take, for example, the salons of 18th century Europe. These gatherings of writers, artists, ‘philosophes’ and great minds, uninhibited by class, gender or race, were a main force behind the Enlightenment that revolutionized Western history. The only requirement for entrance to the salon was that you had an idea, and were willing to express it. These people knew how to combine ‘entertainment and education’, just like the Discovery Channel.
So where are all the salons in Waterloo? Well there aren’t any, really. But there could be. The city is surprisingly well suited for them, and there are a couple places in particular that the aspiring art snob may want to consider frequenting.
The atmosphere of Café 1842, a small corner shop on King St. at the Heuther Hotel, seems to invoke the same sense of intellectual energy associated with the salons. With its red brick walls and old bookshelves, it seems to be a sort of elitist recluse (despite the fact that its located on the city’s main street). It recalls, perhaps, the “Chestnut Tree Café” from Orwell’s 1984; the haunt of painters, musicians, and opponents of Big Brother, a place of ideas in a world that condemned independent thought. Café 1842 is not nearly as dank and depressing as Orwell’s world, but it has the same sense of being separate, non-commercial, open to any and all ideas. Indeed, many of Waterloo’s “intellectual elite” are known to gather there; it is the preferred hang-out, for instance, of the Perimeter Institute’s physicist poster boy Antony Valentini (I don’t know if he’s really their poster boy, but he does have long curly hair which is always a sign of intelligence). The Artsnob recommends that you visit, purchase a latté, find some stylish, smart-looking people, and discuss something other than the hockey game: perhaps plot a proletarian revolution, if you feel it appropriate (which I assure you, it is).
On the other side of the street is another potentially salon-ish cafe, the Symposium, located on King between Dupont and Erb. Perhaps more aligned with Ancient Greek values (as suggested by its name), Symposium offers a stimulus to thought not as prominent at Café 1842: alcohol. In Ancient Greece, the symposium was a gathering of men who would basically get drunk, give their bloated opinions on metaphysics and the world, and then pass out to some epic poetry. Plato records Socrates attending such events, and no doubt they were important venues for intellectual interchange in the Classical age. The Symposium Café emphasizes the same kind of commitment to thought, as suggested by the massive reproduction of Raphael’s School of Athens plastered on the walls. This fresco, portraying Plato, Aristotle and other great figures of Western thought, looms over the visiting art snob, daring him or her to match the intellectual prowess of its subjects. The dim candlelight and comfortable couches provide a wonderful environment to engage in drunken philosophizing, just like those noble Greeks, and because it is open late, it’s the perfect venue to meet at after watching one of those subtitled films at the Princess.
Waterloo, then, has the foundations in place for the growth of an intellectual community. It is possible, o cynical students, to be entertained and educated, one just needs a place to go. The aspiring art snob must realize the value of these café institutions, and perhaps then the spirit of the salon can carry on in our humble town.
Manifesto - February 03/06
artsnob tip #1: ANIMAL HOUSE IS NO LONGER AN OPTION (sorry)
The demon that is the popular media has established two different perceptions of University life in our culture. The first is of a John-Belushi-in-Animal-House nature: the drunken, drug-addled, sex-infused bullet-train through campus life, characterized by failure and apathy towards that failure. The second is the glorified “groves of Academe”, the idea of university as a congregation of brilliant and curious intellectuals, gathering in wood-paneled rooms full of books to discuss philosophical ideas, literary movements and the like.
The University of Waterloo is an interesting case. It is not crazy enough to fit the first category, nor is it enough of a cultural hub to belong in the second. There is room for development however, and that is the purpose of this new column: The Artsnob.
Unfortunately, this column is not about teaching you to drink whiskey like water. It will attempt, however, to help you at least pretend to be an intellectual, which may or may not be more appealing. The truly worldly and well-read student is not a rare specimen at the University of Waterloo, but is certainly a minority. It is the unfortunate result of attending a math and engineering university in the “heart of Mennonite country”: there are little opportunities for a Basquiat-admiring, Tarkovsky-watching, Mogwai-listening art snob to find a like-minded soul.
It is this humble writer’s belief that university should be about the exchange of ideas, academic revelations, spontaneous creative bursts, weighted-down libraries and ivy covered buildings, post-structuralism and existentialism, cubism and dialectical materialism, Foucault, Thurston Moore and Apollinaire. Most of all, University should be about being able to show off your massive intellect by using these terms and dropping these names. It is this column’s quest to turn you into an elitist, to allow you to stick your opinion in everyone else’s uncultured face, to feel confident in proclaiming “oh, that’s so post-modern,” to truly become an art snob.
Each week, this column will cover a new idea, place, or thing that any elitist snob must know in order to remain an elitist snob. The reader will be exposed to literary movements and political ideologies, hole in the wall bookshops and independent cinemas, new and innovative writers, unheard of musicians, and the most avant-garde of young artists. You may even learn what ‘avant-garde’ means. It is hoped that, under the influence of this column, an intellectual fervor will spread through the campus; UW will turn into a sea of knowledgeable art snobs, and perhaps I will be able to talk about Basquiat with the next person I meet in the SLC.
It is time to reclaim the intellectual spirit, o eager students, to come to the unfortunate realization that, yes, there is more to university life than beer and getting laid. As the University of Waterloo grows more and more prestigious, we must learn to act the part of the elite. We must stand out at dinner parties, make snide remarks at art galleries, look too good for any concert we go to, and be able to outshine those U of T kids in any debate. Students, the time is now. The artsnob is here, pay attention.
Good day!
Welcome to the Art Snob Archive.
Here lie the records of my various publications, outlining my career as noble messenger of pretentiousness, prophet of cultural refinery, the man (the boy) they call the "art snob."
Hopefully this will help you as much as it has helped the unwashed masses of the University of Waterloo in becoming worthy and enlightened citizens. Truly, I have been called 'Messiah' by some, but this is a title I refuse to adorn. All I ask is that people realize I am a far superior being, and respect that. In that, the world will be a better place.
