by Catherine King
We visited SMoCA on a recent Saturday afternoon, and we were the only visitors at the time, surreally, alone in the museum. We went to see the Edgerton photography show, but of course I was anxious to take in the Segura Press retrospective, once we were there.
That Segura Press show was kind of an eye-opener for me. I knew the name, but I hadn't developed a comprehensive overview of the kind of stuff Segura Press has been publishing all these years.
Displays such as this are really psychologically telling. Remember, out of the hundreds of print editions and suites from dozens of artists over twenty-five years, these are the images that Segura and SMoCA chose to display. And people, I gotta tell ya, I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the way John Joe Segura, the owner of the press, let himself be portrayed.
I'm only witnessing. There's a lithograph in the show by a very talented artist who died recently. It's a tear-jerker about the poor little illegal immigrants here along la frontera. The caption to the lithograph by Luis Jimenez is, well, it's a painfull psychlogical stumbling block for me.
Picture this, people: the lithograph depicts a man on his knees with this hands bound behind his back. The man's thin, Spanish face, prominent, in your face, is tilted as weepily as an El Greco saint.
Luis Jimenez was an awesome artist, wanky irony aside. He could draw, paint, sculpt. (He was so rare in that respect). That's not what I'm talking about here. I have a hard time trying to figure out why SMoCA and Segura desired and consented to let you know (according to the caption) that he personally modelled for the illustration on his knees with his hands bound behind his back.
On his knees with his hands bound behind his back.
This is a businessman, A MAN, allowing himself to be depicted in this way!
Let me clue you in, Jack. No person, on this complicated, corrupt planet, should permit that sort of compliancy. It is so disheartening to realize that an American Man would get down on his knees and MODEL THIS STANCE!
Stance? Down on your knees? I'm going to go throw up now and you can just laugh at me all you want. You anti-American all-American success stories DISGUST ME.
I want to say for the record, that I detest conflict. I try like hell to avoid unpleasantness. But as trying as it is for me to make more enemies, I just could not let this one go. Because I detest these anti-American all-American success stories more than I fear all the trouble they'd like to make for my career.
[UPDATE 10/17] This is Jerome. While checking the local art venues for possible shows to visit this fall season --we do keep the faith, we do still hope-- we just found out that not only does Joe Segura and his print publishing company get a retrospective at SMoCA, a similar showcase is happening at Mesa Contemporary Arts. From the blurb:
Mesa Contemporary Arts currently houses thirty-four artworks by a variety of significant contemporary artists who have collaborated with the revered printmaker. This exhibition will showcase sixteen of these prints while honoring Joe Segura and Segura Publishing Company for their enduring commitment to quality and artistic expression.
Revered?
Sycophants, with one eye on appreciation, and I don't mean aesthetic. I'm not up on the economics of conflict of interest here, but it seems to me that these two exhibitions become golden crow feathers in Segura's cap, increasing not only cachet and client trust, which loosens wallets, but they also create a greater halo around the thirty-four artworks Mesa already owns, not to mention SMoCA's holdings.
Well, so what? That's the American way. Correct. And that is my point. This privileged weenie gets to work the system, because that's the way the system works. He couldn't do this in Mexico. But instead of standing tall and raising his arms and shouting his profound gratitude to this great nation --the United States of America-- which made his success possible, he grovels like a dog for the sake of a tired liberal lie, and he invites in people over the border who will break every spoke in our hard-wrought wheel of progress and law. He spits on America, which blessed him, encouraged him, and gave him the space to grow and succeed. And this is how he pays America back, by foregrounding this lying print La Frontera, with its looming authority figure in the background. As if it was Americans driving the poor mestizos up across the border like cattle. Segura knows it's a lie, but it's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in cachet, and that's why he churns up a visceral loathing in our stomachs.
Posted by Jerome at October 16, 2007 10:50 AM | TrackBackI think it's so cute you think you've got a Catherine. That's ADORABLE.
Posted by: The Klute at October 17, 2007 07:57 PMThat should say:
I think it's so cute you think you've got a career, Catherine. That's ADORABLE.
Posted by: The Klute at October 17, 2007 07:58 PMFrom Catherine:
You're right, The Bernard. You caught me out. I may have this burgeoning body of innovative, world-class work but --I'll never lie, even to slime like you: my career IS in the toilet.
So laugh all you want. I know I was right in pegging you as a NAZI, because you just align yourself with the powerfull side. Right and wrong will never have anything to do with it for you.
But I never kiss ass, and that's my mountain to die on. Does it make you feel good, you brown-nosed piece of shit? Your mother is ashamed of you right now.
From Jerome:
Years ago I would ask myself, why does this guy go out of his way to kick somebody who is simply doing what millions of others do? --try to make money from what they make.
But now I know better: it's because he's a sadist, a lockstep sadistic fascist of the current cruel culture, like so many others we've met these last years. And like so many of the men of this ilk, they're cowards behind the strutting, and Bernard here feels his little balls threatened by Catherine's power --the power of her words, her images, her glamour. So typically, in this case, instead of addressing the subject of the post, he picks out one line from the end of the piece because he can use it to attack my wife.
It's getting old, asshole. You have one of the blackest hearts I've ever had the misfortune to glimpse. I pity anyone who loves you.
Posted by: Catherine King at October 17, 2007 08:47 PMOh, you cut me to the quick, both of you. Called a coward by people who won't show their faces. Heaven forfend!
Posted by: The Klute at October 17, 2007 09:10 PMI repeat: a coward, and I add here, a sniggering squinty creep who doesn't even use his real name but a stupid fake one. We show our faces to the world every day, you dipshit; we just wrote about us touring SMoCA and, before that, the Heard Museum. We didn't wear masks, dumbass. We still wonder why you and your creepy friends (Campana, Roy) have such an unhealthy fascination with our faces. It doesn't matter what we look like. Meanwhile, as usual, you're trying to fog up the subject --which has nothing to do with you in the first place-- but intelligent readers can follow the thread, and your futile handwaving as well.
The shit we have to put up with from these submentals . . .
Posted by: Jerome du Bois at October 17, 2007 09:36 PMSo . . . the bully coward --Bernard Shober, who goes by a silly made-up moniker-- runs off again.
Bullies are cowards; cowards are bullies. It's true as true can be.
To summarize: After running off from a previous series of comments after showing up uninvited, talking off-topic, and getting whipped anyway, Bernard Shober showed up once again on this posting and again ignored the subject, which was Joe Segura's disgusting prone posture and anti-American hypocrisy. The Bernard is not interested in that.
Shober's only reason to comment was to snigger at my wife's present professional position. I ask readers to think about the kind of human person --I really can't call him a man, an adult man-- who goes out of his way to try to kick someone who he thinks is down. (Which is never the case with Catherine; she's always standing tall.) To giggle at this predicament and call it "adorable."
It's as though, like a hyena, he's been waiting for a glimpse of vulnerability, a single tear, and then he moves in with his toothless sneer.
Listen, asshole, Catherine has had to fend off bullies her entire life. You're nothing new to her, Bernard, you're not even very tough. All she had to do was make a couple of points, and you took off like a stripe-assed ape.
Big surprise.
Posted by: Jerome du Bois at October 18, 2007 01:07 PMWe're not doing the "Schoset" thing anymore?
As for not responding - it's not so much Cathy's words as it is the you blocking my IP and/or deleting comments. I expect this to be gone shortly.
My mother's ashamed of me? She might have wondered why I bother with people of your ilk, but ashamed? - nah. She might pity you. She never had time for people who's heart was consumed by bitterness.
And thanks for the "blackest heart" comment!
Posted by: The Klute at October 18, 2007 08:03 PMI'm glad I got your proper name correct, finally, even if you don't give a damn. It's important to me. You, I note, continue in one of the oldest and lamest verbal gambits: trying to minimize my wife by using the diminutive of her name. Her name is Catherine. She is an adult. Grow up, Bernard.
You also try to minimize outrage, anger, and indignation into "bitterness." Nope. I won't let you get away with that, either. Nobody savors life like Catherine and I do; we know too much about the alternative.
As for not responding, you actually still haven't responded, even in your response.
I banned your IP address because you sent us pure advertising spam. You know, stuff all about you you you. It is standard blogger practice to ban the IP addresses of spam. You thought you could just step right into the middle of what we're doing and plaster one of your posters there. What if we jumped up on stage in the middle of whatever it is you do, stole the mike, and started on our own thing? (Catherine says, "I, too, have a cape, you know.")
And if you really want to respond, try to update your vocabulary. "Heaven forfend" and "ilk" went out with spats and "the likes of you."
Posted by: Jerome du Bois at October 19, 2007 08:14 AM