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Michael Merriam
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A Nightmare Remade: Dream Theory, Shirley Jackson, and the Uncanny
by Michael Merriam May 3, 2010
The 1984 classic Nightmare on Elm Street, with its sub-par acting, stupid villain, and tacked on “twist” ending, has finally been remade. Far from pandering to lovers of torture porn, the new movie rescues of the slasher genre from Hostel fans. And it’s a good film. It may, however, be good for bad reasons.
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Unwanted Timelessness: Nick Cave’s Anti-Fashion
by Michael Merriam April 9, 2010
Sculptures cannot be shut off like concert recordings, or closetted like gowns. They’re always on, and in a funny sense, however welcome the masterpieces of Michaelangelo might be in the museums of Europe, sculpture is defined by being sort of in the way; even in the case of ceremonial attire, whose DNA Cave says is present in his soundsuits. The ceremonial sculpture / costumes of Africa, whatever their vicissitudes of design and significance, were shaped to tell people: this is not what people look like. Something else is going on. His message comes with a painful twist: some of us have no tribe, and no hope.
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Echoes of Ibsen at Vigeland Sculpture Park, Oslo
by Michael Merriam November 2, 2009
Perhaps this always accompanies expectoration in the arts –a conspicuously practicality that covers for operations of the artist’s unconscious. The utopia Vigeland has imagined here is all about the tactile possibilities within “the family” and the artist – who was famous also for the creation of Hellscapes, and who made money by depicting battles of men against lizards and serpents – is not trying to disguise the tormented machinery therein. He is retching it forth, and the smoothness here does for sculpture what Ibsen did for drama. It’s a cousin of irony: You’re saying these people are smooth?
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