Zak Smith Writes...

[jbor]

David Joselit:

> It seems to me
> that [...] Gravity's Rainbow [...] is meant to embody a system in
> the process of its own undoing.

While I don't want to mean to buy into the argument over what Smith's
drawings do or don't represent (though I can see one problem immediately in
the fact that more than one scene/event/thing is happening on most pages of
_GR_, and that consequently a *page by page* transcription from one medium
to another wouldn't be a particularly efficient or effective way of
representing what the text is "about", either in a "literal" way or
otherwise), Joselit's insight into _GR_ (above) is spot on.

best


erik:
> 
> Page proof.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
> 397 Words
> 22 June 2004
> Artforum International
> 16
> ISSN: 1086-7058; Volume 42; Issue 10
> English
> (c) 2004 Information Access Company. All rights reserved.
> 
> To the Editor:
> 
> There's an error concerning my piece Pictures of What Happens on Each Page
> of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow in David Joselit's review of the
> Whitney Biennial, "Apocalypse Not" [May 2004]. Joselit writes: "Like its
> literary model, Smith's work adopts an episodic structure through its
> arrangement of 755 page-size drawings in a grid, but the connection to
> Pynchon is largely metaphorical. While adopting different visual idioms
> ranging from cartoons to modernist abstraction, Smith's subject is
> apparently his own private milieu."
> 
> The connection to Pynchon's text is by no means "largely metaphorical"; it
> is in fact meticulous, exact, and quite literal. As the title states, the
> images correspond, in the order presented on the wall, to each page of the
> novel--the first Viking edition, to be precise. (See, for instance, in the
> detail reproduced in Artforum, the image in the bottom row, far right, which
> corresponds to page 536: "He beams at Katje, a sunburst in primary colors
> spiking out from his head.") The images required hours of historical
> research and are as true to the descriptions in the text as possible. If
> there's a B-52 in the fiftieth drawing, it's because there's one on page 50.
> 
> While I can only guess what insights Mr. Joselit may have into my
> (admittedly rather limited) "private milieu," I assume I will be believed
> when I report that it is utterly devoid of V-2 rocket strikes, sentient
> light-bulbs, and paranoid men in pig costumes. All of these do, however,
> appear in Pynchon's book.
> 
> --Zak Smith, New York
> 
> David Joselit responds:
> 
> I am sorry for any inaccuracy in my characterization of Zak Smith's work.
> However, I remain convinced that the relation among his motifs, his formal
> realization of them, and the profusion of pages that constitute the piece
> place the viewer in doubt over how systematic the project is. It seems to me
> that, like Gravity's Rainbow, this artwork is meant to embody a system in
> the process of its own undoing. To my taste--and I'm afraid I can't cite any
> higher power than taste--Smith's network of text/image somehow needed to
> read more forcefully qua network in relation to its literary analogue.
> 
> 
> COPYRIGHT 2004 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.
>