Rubell said: "I truly did not intend the piece to be only a critique of her. I thought it was just as indicting of the viewer and all of us in our perception of her. I invited her to see the show. I was so naïve — I thought she would think it was kind of funny."
That happened in 2019, but I didn't notice at the time. I'm seeing it today in a NYT piece called "As Their D.C. Days Dwindle, Ivanka and Jared Look for a New Beginning/The end of President Trump’s time in office leaves his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, looking for a new home — but they appear to have plans in New Jersey."
Rubell’s work invites multiple interpretations, including ones that suggest the idea of a “taint” or stain or ineradicable blight, and others that speak directly to ideas of wealth and the cultural laundering of wealth.... As visitors throw crumbs onto a carpet, the stand-in Ivanka Hoovers them up, with a rictus of a smile on her face. In a literal but comic sense, she is doing the “clean up” work that she struggles to do within the administration, which always seems to soil things — even its own efforts to dismantle political and social contracts. Is Donald Trump racist? No matter, Ivanka will clean up the mess, even as her father tweets out more dog-whistle racism....
There is something Sisyphean in the two-hour performance. The crumbs just keep coming, and the cleaning up is never done. Crumbs recall the economics of wealth and poverty, the idea of trickle-down economics, and the old saying commonly but falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette: Let them eat cake (or brioche). Perhaps the crumbs are us, the 99 percent, the “losers” in the great economic shakedown of late capitalism...
There may be, even now, people buzzing about [“Ivanka Vacuuming”] at dinner parties on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and that chatter is a form of invisible work — cutting and etching and effacing all the possible Ivankas in ways that are both invisible and indelible.
That chatter is a form of invisible work! Women's work... it includes chatter. Chatter while drinking in posh locations. When will we women ever get equal pay for equal work? And when will people even begin to fathom the work that we do?! Vacuuming endlessly, cleaning up metaphorically, picking up crumbs and etching and effacing. It's laborious!
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That happened in 2019, but I didn't notice at the time.
That's surprising; vacuuming videos are usually international front-page news.
All politics aside, I’m less and less a fan of these kind of gestures in the art world. I used to be very much against object-based art, and now it seems to be nearly the only kind of art I’m interested in. Forget performances, I want paintings.
Just wait until you see the performance piece of someone feeding Biden his breakfast. Wait...
All major glossy magazines are owned by the leftwing machine. (From Vogue to Vanity Fair to Newsweek, TIME, Glamour... all. of. Them)
That's why we never got to see, Not ONCE, a lovely photo and positive story about Ivanka or Melania over the last 4 years.
That's the HATE we get from the corrupt leftwing machine.
Because it’s not art. It’s vitriolic ideologically possessed political commentary. The commentary of the uninformed, seeking to blame all the woes of “late stage capitalism” on the one president & co. that managed to unleash an economy that was visibly helping those on the lowest rung of the ladder. It's despicable, really.
Nowdays women can choose to knock each other up.
That happened in 2019, but I didn't notice at the time.
One of many you declined to notice.
That happened in 2019, but I didn't notice at the time.
Noticing a pattern.
That's the HATE we get from the corrupt leftwing machine.
Except now that the election is over Democrats think they can extend a figurative olive branch and we’ll all join hands for a chorus of “Kumbaya.” As long as we Deplorables remember our place.
Ain’t happening.
I find it interesting that the artist chose Ivanka. Not Don Jr and not Eric. Ivanka.
And not Chelsea, who had to clean up after her father. Would have been interesting to have people throwing hand lotion onto the window and her wiping it off with a blue dress. Or maybe Hillary. She could have been wiping things up with, like a cloth.
Obviously she choosed Ivanka because she has the most agency with the President among his children and perhaps above all in the administration. Therefore ipso facto is paying her a high honor.
Big Mike-
Ain't happening, indeed.
Biden is not my president. He's a crook.
The vacuuming woman is fairly well put together.
If she vacuumed naked, wearing only slutty shoes and pearls, it would make much more of a statement about the elite and the patriarchy, blah blah blah.
Just a suggestion.
But Jersey? They are rich beyond words, but who wants to pay Jersey taxes?
I was just about to hit 'publish' on a riff on Ivanka wearing high heels and a pearl necklace, only to see Joe Smith's 11:00 comment.
Dang.
I didn't even have her naked.
I am Laslo.
If she vacuumed naked, wearing only slutty shoes and pearls, it would make much more of a statement about the elite and the patriarchy, blah blah blah.
If she's Melanie Griffith, I'll allow it..
Biden is not my president.
I had to listen to “He’s not MY president” from Democrats for eight years of the Bush II administration. I don’t mind turning the line against Biden. Resist!
Howard said...
Obviously she choosed Ivanka because she has the most agency with the President among his children and perhaps above all in the administration.
Not true. Jared had more to do with the Middle East peace. If you had limited it to his children, I would agree.
"Michelle Vacuuming"
"I didn't even have her naked."
You're losing a step : )
Mrs. Cleaver anyone?
Women need neither build up one another nor tear them down just because they are women. They should treat other women like individuals. I have no more loyalty to my gender than I have to my race.
Kudos to the artist!! I’m impressed that something this dull-witted and mediocre was able to generate any attention at all. The artist must have first-rate PR skills.
People PAY to see that? Lefties are really stupid.
Amen, mock turtle.
Some people have a real gift for passive aggressive behavior. They are cunning in how to humiliate someone without being too obvious that they are a rat. Like throwing dirt on the floor so someone you don't like will have to clean it up. I could see that the people doing that were being jerks and knew it but did it anyway.
How many liberals have self awareness about how vicious and obnoxious they have been non-stop towards Trump, his family and even Trump supporters? Likewise the NY Times article, feigning concern for Ivanka and Jared, asking if they are going to have a hard time socially living in NYC? What if the Kushners decide to stay in DC and create a shadow government like the Obamas? What if Trump decides to live in his hotel?
"I intended this piece to insult Ivanka Trump and I think it was mostly successful. The fact that she didn't hold still while I hit her is really a reflection on Ivanka -- not me as the petty grievance ridden pseudo-artist. Pass the brie please."
The author is a feckless cunt.
Change my mind.
Not worth it to try.
"Middle East Peace"!!!!!
Ivanka would be using a Trump-logo vacuum cleaner, and would be at a trade show taking orders worth millions. Boris or Suga or Moon would be there, too, to give the cleaner a whirl across the rug, and to thank Ivanka for manufacturing the cleaners in their country.
So not really all that good a representation of the daughter of the sitting US President, was it?
Donald Trump didn't really fixate on "family values." And Mr. Trump made no attempt to humanize the White House. So most Americans don't identify with these people. And, as a result, the First Lady, whether it's Melania or Ivanka, was irrelevant.
Now do Kamala Harris.
You could go for months without hearing anything about Ivanka, and when you did, it was mostly that she was Trump's daughter or Jared's wife and that she worked in the White House. I don't see where she was tasked with "hoovering up crumbs" literally or metaphorically or that she did that. Expectations that because she was young and female she should have attacked her father and reproaches of her for not doing so look a lot like the result of her critics' prejudices.
Beyond that, sweeping up or vacuuming up crumbs is what PR flacks and press secretaries do. They do it whoever they work for. We can avoid some of the bullshit political disputes and vilification if we recognize that. Dodging questions and fabricating factoids didn't start four years ago and won't stop now. So far, the indications are that it will be worse, though it won't be something the media or the arts scene have a problem with.
It's not funny, not even "kinda funny" fwiw
Blogger FullMoon said...
The author is a feckless cunt.
Change my mind.
She's Scots-Irish and has abundant feckles.
I don't believe a word of what Althouse reads in the New York Times.
So cheap shots are considered art, these days?
Compare the bios of Ivanka & Michelle & tell me who you think should be mocked as an underachieving hausfrau.
Michelle got a JD from Harvard and it led her to a career doing "community outreach" for a Chicago hospital. Also she decided to overhaul kids public school lunches.
Not what you'd call an overachiever.
Anyone who uses the phrase "late capitalism" isn't worth reading. It's like "international Jewish conspiracy".
Give Ivanka a roomba, a phone, and a desk. Put her to work while she keeps an eye on the vacuum. If we must have this piece, at least make it witty.
"Women can choose to knock each other down or build each other up. But they can never knock each other up."
"Women can choose to knock each other down or build each other up. I choose the latter."
Yeah, right. As one who always has identified as female, I call foul.
Most women are fine. They don't buy into the all-sisters-support-each-other narrative, but they are fair-minded, and they are not threatened if another woman has a rich boyfriend or a rising career or isn't overweight.
The "knock-each-other-down" gang are a much smaller group, but they are manipulative and nasty, and they go to great lengths to punish their perceived enemies. I'm not going to share stories, but I have good ones.
If a woman staged an entertainment of that had me vacuuming and ignored every other part of my life, I wouldn't see the humor and laugh about it. I'd have nothing to do with her. Unlike Ivanka, who is a public figure, I would be able to get a lawyer to threaten a lawsuit for defamation. She just has to take it.
If the playwright tried that same number on Hillary Clinton (a certified member of the KEOD sorority) the dramatist would be dead like Seth Rich or Jeffrey Epstein.
---If a woman staged an entertainment that had me vacuuming and ignored every other part of my life, [MD Greene]
Of course, in its defense, vacuuming is one of the more noble parts of a woman's life. Don't you agree? I've always envied women's mastery of this fine art. Someday I will give it a try and see if I have any aptitude for it. How do they make those fantastic V shapes in the carpets?
I would like to repeat the sentiments "Now do Michelle Obama," and "Now do Kamala Harris." Nancy Pelosi. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Hell, any woman on the left.
The artist would have no further career if she did that, and she knows it.
Kai Akker and Assistant Village Idiot:
Thank you.
Mr. Trump made no attempt to humanize the White House.
He was human, like our other presidents have been. He didn't make a show of it. That may have been to his credit. Not getting a dog just to be thought normal. Not tossing "folks" into every spoken paragraph. Not pretending to carry hot sauce or reading a poem in dialect.
So most Americans don't identify with these people.
Do we really identify with our presidents? Maybe with Jerry Ford. The others maintained a certain distance. That didn't mean we had to hate them or ridicule them.
I honestly miss the Left having smart critiques. Ivanka's response isn't anything good. But the precursor is kinda stupid. The American Left used to be smart.
Looking forward to "Hunter Hoovering".
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