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    Identity Plagiarism

    A blogger steals someone else's life story and calls it her own.

    By Ashley Harrell

  • Westword

    Fuel's Gold

    How William Orr's quest for better, cheaper gas became a crime.

    By Alan Prendergast

  • Miami New Times

    Mold Over Miami

    The family of a dead judge blames a creeping fungus in the federal courthouse.

    By Tim Elfrink

  • The Pitch

    McCain Girl

    I worked at Kmart with John McCain's director of strategy.

    By Alan Scherstuhl

Writers of the Purple Prose

One picture’s worth a thousand atavistic contemplations

By Clay McNear

Published on April 03, 2008

Michael Lundgren takes a nice pic. His silver-gel landscapes offer unadorned depictions of our lovely, denuded desert. Odds are, you’ll like ’em.

So God forbid the works should be allowed to speak for themselves. No, their meanings must be spelled out, tediously, in terms you have no hope of understanding. Well, we’re taking a stand, right here, right now, against artspeak and its unholy offspring, the “artist statement.” To wit, an excerpt from Lundgren’s personal manifesto: “[The] images are an atavistic contemplation of the origin, drawing out the mythological potential of the desert. The landscape is only discernible because of the presence of what is fundamentally absent. Myth and metaphor remain unfixed, open.”

Say freakin’ what?!


Tuesdays-Saturdays. Starts: April 3. Continues through May 3, 2008



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