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Pam Brown

Patti Smith Was Right

these cold, known objects
                     are not very likeable —
    aluminium frames
      & curved glass with optical tricks —
but I am ‘at ease’
    at this show,
there are some nice little-grin ideas —
     like television
            screening outside
        on the suburban home’s front lawn,
& time-delay verité videos
  to amuse the usually uncrackable
                      hardened gallery-goer

*

have I flipped ?    into a strangely placid
          political zone    a lack of clutter
 and environmental concern —
these things are so simple,
              two hours here & I begin to enjoy
                    Dan Graham
more than Soutine, Braque, Delaunay,
    Bourgeois, Basquiat, Sherrie Levine,
       Agnes Martin — although
I can not deny my memory
       of her beautiful mid-1960’s picture —
              ‘Milk River’ —
nor her small collection
            of pick-up trucks
        glinting with polish — all driveable
& parked
outside her desert home.

*

I spend over an hour watching,
    surrendering to
        Dan Graham’s big ‘Rock/God’ video
that makes a simple
          anthropological connection
            between US tribal & religious ritual —
group dancing, shaking, speaking in tongues-
                  and mosh pits and rock music —
         so when Patti Smith sings
Jesus died for somebody’s sins
                    but not mine

                       I am converted.

*

Patti Smith was right,
              twenty-five years ago,
to say that rock music,
           meaning, then, for her, punk-rock,
would replace      painting
                    & sculpture
     as representative of untranscended
                       life itself.

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