CORRUPTION! DECADENCE! HUBRIS! pg.2 The Most Trusted Name in Loafing
Organized by Mats Bigert and Sina Najafi
JULY 19 – SEPTEMBER 19, 2015
THE ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM
CURATORS TOO LAZY!
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SAVE ONESELF TROUBLE!
ACCEPT YOUR pg.5 LETHARGY!
LAZY AS HELL!
SLOTH July 19 – September 19, 2015
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Exhibiting Corruption, Decadence, Hubris Richard Klein
July 19 – September 19, 2015 The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
SLOTH is The Aldrich Museum’s contribution to The Seven Deadly Sins, a collaborative exhibition series presented by the Fairfield/ Westchester Museum Alliance, a group of seven museums located in New York City’s northern suburbs. The other institutions participating in the project are the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut (Pride); and in New York state, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers (Envy); Wave Hill, Bronx (Wrath); the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill (Lust); the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase (Greed); and the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah (Gluttony). The
EXHIBITIONS DIRECTOR
seven deadly sins have been the subject of art since medieval times, being referenced by artists as diverse at Hieronymus Bosch, Dante, James Ensor, Kurt Weill, Jean-Luc Godard, Eugène Ionesco, Paul Cadmus, Ian Fleming, and director David Fincher, whose 1995 film SE7EN starred Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. Although the Christian basis for the deadly sins has faded somewhat in the modern era, the morality that the sins suggest continues to resonate, with the beginning of the twenty-first century apparently exhibiting corruption, decadence, hubris, and inequality at unprecedented
levels. As the world becomes a smaller and more interwoven place, perhaps the time is right to dust off the deadly sins and consider both their history and relevance to our current condition. This publication, in keeping with the spirit of the exhibition it accompanies, is a compendium of words and images relating to Sloth—both historical and contemporary—that have been gathered together by Mats Bigert and Sina Najafi, the project’s organizers, from myriad sources. Its tabloid format encourages skimming, not deep reading, so put your feet up, relax, and enjoy!
385 Main Street Ridgefield
203-438-2661
July 19 – September 19, 2015 SLOTH
CURATORS� STATEMENT
We would like to thank The Aldrich Museum, and especially exhibitions OF ALL THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS, SLOTH—understood as director Richard Klein, for allowing us, as curators, to operate in the same laziness, inactivity, and disengagement—might seem to be the most lethargic and frantically distracted mode that we are offering our visitors. irrelevant in a modern world that has devoted itself to the gods of It was Klein, not us, who traveled to the other six museums, and he efficiency and productivity, one in which even leisure, as philosopher took care of many, if not most, things in the exhibition. We would Theodor Adorno pointed out decades ago, often takes the very also like to thank the many others at The Aldrich who helped form of work. It is no surprise, then, that in the contemporary , o o t , imagination Sloth is less sin than fantasy, an unattainable ou come us, including Tracy Moore, director of public programs and Y audience engagement, Rich Cooke, facilities/exhibitions promise of time not structured by duties or work. This is not ve will hnaow, and manager, and Chris Manning, facilities/exhibitions asin itself a new condition: in the nineteenth century the Marxist k t s o t sistant. The sleek and informative videos would not have political writer Paul Lafargue’s seminal treatise, “The Right to is mo h t , e v been possible without the assistance of Pete Stewart and Be Lazy,” encouraged laborers to break free from capitalism’s lo cellent x Bruce Becker, videographer and editor, respectively. Our increasingly oppressive gospel of work. e . s n i s f sincere thanks also to Alexander Isley and Christina Holland But this understanding of Sloth—as idleness that runs o of Alexander Isley Inc. for the wonderful design of this publiagainst the grain of contemporary society—takes into account cation. Crucial to the success of this exhibition is the relaxed posonly one half of the rich and complicated history of this sin, whose ture adopted by viewers, and so we offer heartfelt thanks to Bob's Discount contours were first sketched in the writings of Evagrius. For this fourthFurniture for lending us their excellent Bob-O-Pedic recliners. Mats Bigert century theologian, the sin that he named acedia (from the Greek would like to thank IASPIS in Stockholm for providing him with travel for lack of care) did not simply indicate laziness or inactivity. These funds, and Sina Najafi would like to thank Daniel Rosenberg for explaining afflictions, which could prevent the to him the early history of Sloth—to which the above is indebted—in ways monk from focusing on God, were that have always held his full attention. only one half of the problem. Acedia was also discernible in monks who exhibited a busy restlessness. Though it might seem the opposite Mats Bigert and Sina Najafi of laziness, frantic activity also made it impossible to give God, CURATORS and the world, one’s full attention. For Evagrius, the sin was both inactivity and what we today would call hyperactivity. This is why Sloth is the most relevant sin for our current moment, dominated as it is by vast and powerful digital regimes for producing both apathy and distracted hyperattention. This condition is so prevalent that we now routinely medicate our children as they, like us, move from screen to screen and begin to divide their attention between as many objects, events, and tasks as possible. What the history of Sloth shows us is that the apparently antithetical figures of the couch potato, the adolescent diagnosed with ADHD, and the banker whose daily schedule is divided into fifteen-minute segments— the most efficient division of time, according to Benjamin Franklin, the patron saint of industriousness—are, in fact, all products of the same cultural condition. Ours is truly the Age of Sloth. To complicate matters further, curating an exhibition about Sloth, defined as lack of care, is itself also a paradox of sorts, given that the word “curating,” from the Latin curare, is etymologically related to the notion of caring. Curating a show with all these nuances in mind might seem a difficult task. We found it impossible, which is why the exhibition Sloth refuses any thematic exploration, instead opting to advance human understanding by inhabiting the sin itself. On offer is an exhibition that allows the viewers (and the curators) to indulge in what we might call interpassive art. Let’s face it; we all know that we are too lazy and too frantic to go to the other six exhibitions in The Seven Deadly Sins series, or to give them the proper attention they deserve even if we were magically transported there. This is why we have gathered here some of the most powerful technologies produced by the West—including Bob-O-Pedic recliners, video, television monitors, gin, ice, and tonic—and placed them at the service of Aldrich visitors, who now have the opportunity to armchair travel to the other six venues by watching six short videos Land and Cruise Travel Agent while they snack and check their text messages. No need to go all the COMMITTED TO PROVIDING, way to Katonah! (And where exactly is Wave Hill?) Put aside that map, CUSTOMIZED, PERSONAL SERVICE put up your feet, and learn (a little, but not too much) about the other 203.403.4053 • 844.75TRAVEL sins, thanks to the diligent curators at the other six institutions. And peggy.honore@cruiseplanners.com Sloth? Well, by the time you have sunk into the deep folds of one of our www.VacationsByPeggy.com recliners, we think that you, too, will have come to know, and love, this Cruise Planners-Peggy most excellent of sins.
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SLOTH July 19 – September 19, 2015
STRANGE DELUSION POSSESSES THE WORKING CLASSES! A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations where capitalist civilization holds its sway. This delusion drags in its train the individual and social woes which for two centuries have tortured sad humanity. This delusion is the love of work, the furious passion for work, pushed even to the exhaustion of the vital force of the individual and his progeny. Instead of opposing this mental aberration, the priests, the economists and the moralists have cast a sacred halo over work. Blind and finite men, they have wished to be wiser than their God; weak and contemptible men, they have presumed to rehabilitate what their God had cursed. I, who do not profess to be a Christian, an economist or a moralist, I appeal from their judgment to that of their God; from the preachings of their religious, economics or free thought ethics, to the frightful consequences of work in capitalist society. In capitalist society work is the cause of all intellectual degeneracy, of all organic deformity. Compare the thorough-bred in Rothschild’s stables, served by a retinue of bipeds, with the heavy brute of the Norman farms which plows the earth, carts the manure, hauls the crops. Look at the noble savage whom the missionaries of trade and the traders of religion have not yet corrupted with Christianity, syphilis and the dogma of work, and then look at our miserable slaves of machines. When, in our civilized Europe, we would find a trace of the native beauty of man, we must go seek it in the nations where economic prejudices have not vet uprooted the hatred of work. Spain, which, alas, is degenerating, may still boast of possessing fewer factories than we have of prisons and barracks; but the artist rejoices in his admiration of the hardy Andalusian, brown as his native chestnuts, straight and flexible as a steel rod; and the heart leaps at hearing the beggar, superbly draped in his ragged capa, parleying on terms of equality with the duke of Ossuna. For the Spaniard, in whom the primitive animal has not been atrophied, work is the worst sort of slavery. The Greeks in their era of greatness had only contempt for work: their slaves alone
were permitted to labor: the free man knew only exercises for the body and mind. And so it was in this era that men like Aristotle, Phidias, Aristophanes moved and breathed among the people; it was the time when a handful of heroes at Marathon crushed the hordes of Asia, soon to be subdued by Alexander. The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods: O Melibae Deus nobis haec otia fecit (God has provided us this rest).* Jesus, in his sermon on the Mount, preached idleness: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Jehovah the bearded and angry god, gave his worshipers the supreme example of ideal laziness; after six days of work, he rests for all eternity. On the other hand, what are the races for which work is an organic necessity? The Auvergnians; the Scotch, those Auvergnians of the British Isles; the Galicians, those Auvergnians of Spain; the Pomeranians, those Auvergnians of Germany; the Chinese, those Auvergnians of Asia. In our society which are the classes that love work for work’s sake. The peasant proprietors, the little shopkeepers; the former bent double over their fields, the latter crouched in their shops, burrow like the mole in his subterranean passage and never stand up to look at nature leisurely. And meanwhile the proletariat, the great class embracing all the producers of civilized nations, the class which in freeing itself will free humanity from servile toil and will make of the human animal a free being—the proletariat, betraying its instincts, despising its historic mission, has let itself be perverted by the dogma of work. Rude and terrible has been its punishment. All its individual and social woes are born of its passion for work. —Paul Lafargue, “Chapter I: A Disastrous Dogma,” in The Right To Be Lazy, 1883 *Virgil, Eclogue I, 37 BC
SATAN FINDS SOME MISCHIEF STILL Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.” Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. —Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness,” Harper’s Magazine, October 1932
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
CLAIM LUNCH BACK!
We need to claim lunch back. It is our natural right. It has been stolen from us by our rulers. The fear that keeps you chained to your desk, staring at your screen, does not serve your spirit. Lunch is a time to forget about being sensible, practical, efficient. A proper lunch should be spiritually as well as physically nourishing. Cozy, convivial, a treat; lunch is for loafers.” —Tom Hodgkinson, How to Be Idle: A Loafer's Manifesto (HarperCollins Publishers, 2004)
REFLECTION, MEDITATION, DREAMS, CARES, LOVE, AND HATRED!
For at the sight of work—that is to say, severe toil from morning till night—we have the feeling that it is the best police, viz. that it holds every one in check and effectively hinders the development of reason, of greed, and of desire for independence. For work uses up an extraordinary proportion of nervous force, withdrawing it from reflection, meditation, dreams, cares, love, and hatred; it dangles unimportant aims before the eyes of the worker and affords easy and regular gratification. Thus it happens that a society where work is continually being performed will enjoy greater security, and it is security which is now venerated as the supreme deity. —Friedrich Nietzsche, from Daybreak (the Dawn), 1881
AN INFINITE BUSTLE!
This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! … [T]here is no Sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. … I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business. —Henry David Thoreau, “Life Without Principle,” Atlantic Monthly, 1863
IN THE DOGHOUSE
Why is work so exalted, enthroned and glorified, while laziness is in the doghouse, why are most lazy souls smeared with shame, branded with the stamp of infamy, the stamp of mother–laziness, when the most menial of workers is destined for glory, honors, and rewards? I have always believed that it should be the exact opposite: work should be cursed, as legends about paradise teach us, while laziness should be man’s essential goal. —Kazimir Malevich, “Laziness: The Real Truth of Mankind,” 1921
IF ONLY POLITICIANS AND SCIENTISTS WERE LAZIER
Most of the world’s troubles seem to come from people who are too busy. If only politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be. The lazy man is preserved from the commission of almost all the nastier crimes, and many of the motives which make us sacrifice to toil the innocent enjoyment of leisure, are among the most ignoble – pride, avarice, emulation, vainglory and the appetite for power over others. —Evelyn Waugh, “Sloth,” The Seven Deadly Sins, ed. Ian Fleming (London: Harper Collins, 1962)
POOR EXCUSE!
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. —attributed to Charlie McCarthy (Edgar Bergen)
AMBITION ??
July 19 – September 19, 2015 SLOTH
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Like A Runaway Horse When lately I retired to my house resolved that, in so far as I could, I would cease to concern myself with anything except the passing in rest and retirement of the little time I still have to live, I could do my mind no better service than to leave it in complete idleness to commune with itself, to come to rest, and to grow settled; which I hoped it would thenceforth be able to do more easily, since it had become graver and more mature with time. But I find, that, on the contrary, like a runaway horse, it is a hundred times more active on its own behalf than ever it was for others. It presents me with so many chimeras and imaginary monsters, one after another, without order or plan, that, in order to contemplate their oddness and absurdity at leisure, I have begun to record them in writing, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of them. —Michel de Montaigne, “On Idleness,” Essais, 1580
THE ART OF LOAFING
Culture, as I understand it, is essentially a product of leisure. The art of culture is therefore essentially the art of loafing. From the Chinese point of view, the man who is wisely idle is the most cultured man. For there seem to be a philosophic contradiction between being busy and being wise. Those who are wise won’t be busy, and those who are too busy can’t be wise. The wisest man is therefore he who loafs most gracefully.
The highest good! He who possesses you Will lead a life without annoyance But I—yawn—I—tire— So please forgive the fact that I can’t sing your praise; You, after all, hinder me in the process. —Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, In Praise of Laziness, 1747, in Werke, vol. 1 (ed. G. Göpfert, 1970), from Harper’s Magazine, trans. S.H., January 23, 2012
ACCEPT THIS BOREDOM
A STARTLING SHRIEK
“The —Oscar Wilde, 91 18 , ns Intentio
Laziness, now I’ll sing you A little song of praise, Oh what a challenge it will be To craft a song worthy of you But I’ll do my best For after work comes the soundest rest.
Laziness is not a myth; it is a basic, seemingly natural given of the educational situation. Why? Because school is a structure of constraint, and laziness is a means for the pupil to dupe this constraint. The classroom inevitably includes a repressive force, if only because the student has no real interest in the things that are taught there. Laziness can be a way to answer back to this repression, a subjective tactic to accept this boredom, to manifest consciousness of it, and in a certain way, to force it into a dialectical process. This answering back is not direct, it is not an open confrontation, the student not having the adequate means to affront these constraints head on. It's a roundabout response which avoids a crisis. In other words, educational laziness has a semantic value, making up the code of the classroom, and the natural language of the student…
—Roland Barthes, from “Osons être paresseux,” Le Monde, 1979
t all is the To do nothing a ing in the most difficult th difficult world, the most tellectual. and the most in Critic as Artist,”
A LITTLE SONG OF PRAISE
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—Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1937)
Leisure always breeds an inconstant mind. —Lucan, IV.
HOW TO BE A GENIUS It takes a lot of time to be a genius—you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. —Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1937)
IDLENESS SO CALLED Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class. —Robert Louis Stevenson, “An Apology for Idlers,” Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (ca. 1881)
To sit down in a solitary place (or a busy and bustling one, if you please) and await such little events as may happen, or observe such noticeable points as the eyes fall upon around you. For instance, I sat down to-day, at about ten o'clock in the forenoon, in Sleepy Hollow…The sunshine comes down on the pathway with the bright glow of noon, at certain points; in other places there is a shadow as deep as the glow; but along the greater portion sunshine glimmers through shadow, and shadow effaces sunshine, imaging that pleasant mood of mind where gayety and pensiveness intermingle. A bird is chirping overhead among the branches, but exactly whereabouts, you seek in vain to determine; indeed, you hear the rustle of the leaves, as he continually changes his position. A little sparrow now hops into view, alighting on the slenderest twigs, and seemingly delighting in the swinging and heaving motion, which his slight substance communicates to them; but he is not the loquacious bird whose voice still comes, eager and busy, from his hidden whereabouts… Now, when you are not thinking of it, the fragrance of the white pines is suddenly wafted to you by an almost imperceptible breeze, which has begun to stir. Now the breeze is the gentlest sigh imaginable, yet with a spiritual potency, insomuch that it seems to penetrate, with its mild, ethereal coolness, through the outward clay, and breathe upon the spirit itself, which shivers with gentle delight… Now we hear the striking of the village clock, distant, but yet so near that each stroke is impressed distinctly upon the air. This is a sound that does not disturb the repose of the scene: it does not break our Sabbath; for like a Sabbath seems this place, and the more so on account of the cornfield rustling at our feet. It tells of human labor, but, being so solitary now, it seems as if it were on account of the sacredness of the Sabbath…But, hark there is the whistle of the locomotive,—the long shriek, harsh above all other harshness, for the space of a mile cannot mollify it into harmony. It tells a story of busy men, citizens, from the hot street, who have come to spend a day in a country village,—men of business,—in short, of all unquietness; and no wonder that it gives such a startling shriek, since it brings the noisy world into the midst of our slumberous peace. As our thoughts repose again, after this interruption, we find ourselves gazing up at the leaves, and comparing their different aspect, the beautiful diversity of green, as the sun is diffused through them as a medium, or reflected from their glossy surface…but come, it is time to move. The sun has shifted his position, and has found a vacant space through the branches, by means of which he levels his rays full upon our heads. Yet now, as we arise, a cloud has come across him, and makes everything gently somber in an instant. Many clouds, voluminous and heavy, are scattered about the sky, like the shattered ruins of a dreamer's Utopia. But we will not send our thoughts thitherward now, nor take one of them into our present observations. The clouds of any one day are material enough, of themselves, for the observation of either an idle man or a philosopher. —Nathaniel Hawthorne, in Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife: A Biography, Vol. I, (James R. Osgood and Company, 1844)
Increased means and increased leisure are the two great civilizers of man.
—Benjamin Disraeli, from a speech before Parliament, 1867
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SLOTH July 19 – September 19, 2015
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
July 19 – September 19, 2015 SLOTH
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
LETTERS to the EDITOR
To the Editor: For there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. —Thomas Carlyle 6 To the Editor: The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not. —George Bernard Shaw 7
Knight vs. Snail, margin
NOTHING TO DO I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can’t go beyond possibility.
I’m too lazy to read the Taoist classic, for Tao doesn’t reside in the books; Too lazy to look over the sutras, for they go no deeper in Tao than its looks; The essence of Tao consists in a void, clear, and cool, But what is this void except being the whole day like a fool? Too lazy am I to read poetry, for when I stop, the poetry will be gone; Too lazy to play on the ch’in, for music dies on the string where it’s born; Too lazy to drink wine, for beyond the drunkard’s dream there are rivers and lakes; Too lazy to play chess, for besides the pawn there are other stakes; Too lazy to look at the hills and streams, for there is a painting within my heart’s portals; Too lazy to face the wind and the moon, for within me is the Isle of the Immortals; Too lazy to attend to worldly affairs, for inside me are my hut and my possessions; Too lazy to watch the changing of the seasons, for within me are heavenly processions. Pine trees may decay and rocks may rot; but I shall always remain what I am. Is it not fitting that I call this the Hall of Idleness? —Po Yüchien, “The Hall of Idleness,” trans. Lin Yutang, Ralph Vol. XXVIII, Number 4, 2001–02
—Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (Harper & Brothers Publishing, 1940)
There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.
Dew-licious! PepsiCo is testing a Doritos-flavored Mountain Dew at a handful of colleges and universities. Why take the trouble of first picking up a Dorito and then taking a sip of Mountain Dew when both treats can be combined into one experience?
SAVE ONESELF TROUBLE! All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room. —Blaise Pascal, Discours sur les passions de l'amour, 1652–1653
—A Paragrapher’s Reveries, ed. Mary Wilson Little (Philadelphia: David McKay, Publisher, 1904)
Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good. —Søren Kierkegaard, “The Rotation Method,” Either/ Or, Vol. 1, 1843
ess muses. s; lazin Work thThienJok 1897–1910 urnal of Jules Renard,
To the Editor: Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind. —Henry Ford 1
—Agatha Christie, An Autobiography (Collins, 1977)
t
To the Editor: What benefit does this older man derive from the eighty years he has spent in idleness? A person like him has not lived; he has merely tarried awhile in life. Nor has he died late in life; he has simply been a long time dying. He has lived eighty years, has he? That depends upon the date from which you reckon his death! Your other friend, however, departed in the bloom of his manhood. But he had fulfilled all the duties of a good citizen, a good friend, a good son; in no respect had he fallen short. His age may have been incomplete, but his life was complete. The other man has lived eighty years, has he? Nay, he has existed eighty years, unless perchance you mean by “he has lived” what we mean when we say that a tree “lives.” —Seneca the Younger 2
To the Editor: It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself. —Charles Baudelaire 3 To the Editor: For most men, intelligence is a field that remains unharvested for most of life. One might be surprised, just looking at the multitude of stupid people …who live only to vegetate, how God could give reason, imagination, powers of comparison and combination…and get so little out of it. Laziness and ignorance…change almost all men into the passive recipients of circumstances… Laziness is without doubt the greatest enemy of our intellectual development. —Eugène Delacroix 4 To the Editor: Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. —Mahatma Gandhi 5
CAUGHT IN THE ACT!
It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance? —Ronald Reagan, in Lou Cannon, Ronald Reagan: The Presidential Portfolio: A History Illustrated from the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum (Public Affairs, 2001)
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asleep at President Obama’s State of the Union Address, January 20, 2015
To the Editor: It is a mistake to believe that only the violent passions—love and ambition—can be triumphant. Laziness, with all its languor, comes out just as victorious; she encroaches upon all of life's designs and decisions; she silently destroys and consumes all passions and virtues. —François de la Rochefoucauld 9
To the Editor: Idleness and lack of occupation tend—nay are dragged—towards evil. —Hippocrates 10 To the Editor: Determine never to be idle…It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing. —Thomas Jefferson 11 1. Ford Ideals, Being a Selection from “Mr. Ford’s Page” in the Dearborn Independent (Dearborn, Michigan: The Dearborn Publishing Company, 1922), 2. Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 93, 65 AD, 3. Journaux Intimes Fusées: Non Coeur Mis a Nu, 1864, 4. Journal, 1847, 5. The Wisdom of Gandhi (Philosophical Library/Open Road, 2010), 6. Past and Present, 1843, 7. Back to Methuselah, 1921, 8. The Adventures of Pinocchio, 1883, 9. Maxims, 1665, 10. Decorum, 4th Century, BC, 11. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson, May 5, 1787.
Pieter van der Heyden (after Pieter Bruegel the Elder), Desidia (Sloth), from the series The Seven Deadly Sins, 1558.
—Jules Renard,
I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention—invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
ntury English manuscrip
! H T O L S E T THEY HA
Roz Chast Napquest, 2004 Courtesy of the artist and Condé Nast Publications
Too lazy to drink wine!
alia from thirteenth-ce
To the Editor: Put this into your head: whether a man is born rich or poor, he must do something on this earth, he must have an occupation, some kind of work. Unhappy those consumed by idleness! Idleness is a pernicious illness that must be cured when it first appears in childhood, if not, when you grow up, it becomes incurable. —Carlo Collodi 8
Vice President Joe Biden asleep at President Obama’s budget speech, April 13, 2011
THE WAGES OF SLOTH!
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258 Main Street Ridgefield, CT 06877 203.438.4519 aldrichart.org
THE ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM Founded by Larry Aldrich in 1964, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is dedicated to fostering the work of innovative artists whose ideas and interpretations of the world around us serve as a platform to encourage creative thinking. It is the only museum in Connecticut devoted to contemporary art, and throughout its over fifty-year history has engaged its community through thought-provoking interdisciplinary programs. The roads not traveled: Crossroads, the sculpture/sign designed by Mats Bigert and Sina Najafi for the front lawn of The Aldrich Museum, summer 2015
About the Curators
BORED OF TRUSTEES Eric G. Diefenbach, Chairman; William Burback, Vice-Chairman; Linda M. Dugan, Treasurer/Secretary; Diana Bowes; Chris Doyle; Annabelle K. Garrett; Georganne Aldrich Heller, Honorary Trustee; Michael Joo; Neil Marcus; Kathleen O’Grady; Lori L. Ordover; Martin Sosnoff, Trustee Emeritus; John Tremaine Alyson Baker, Executive Director
Mats Bigert (b. 1965, Stockholm, Sweden), half of Swedish artist and filmmaker duo Bigert & Bergström, lives and works in Stockholm. He received an MFA from the Royal Art College in Stockholm. The duo’s films and artworks have been shown extensively around the world, in institutions such as Moderna Museet Stockholm; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; ICA London; Mori Art Centre, Tokyo; among others. They have participated in exhibitions and projects such as the Venice Biennale, the Moscow Biennial, the Kwangju Biennial and the Singapore Biennial. Bigert is also an editor at-large with Cabinet magazine and contributes to the Swedish art magazine Artlover. He recently started to curate and co-curate exhibitions, including urSenses at Färgfabriken Stockholm (2014) and Eclipse at Forum, Stockholm (2015).
Sina Najafi (b. 1965, Tehran, Iran) is editor-in-chief of Cabinet magazine and the editorial director of Cabinet Books. Najafi has curated or co-curated a number of exhibitions and projects, including School of Death (Family Business, 2013), A Collector’s Album of Traitors, Traders, Translators and Experientialists (Sharjah Biennial, 2011), The Bubble (Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2010), The Museum of Projective Personality Testing (Manifesta 7, Trento, 2008), Sivan vs. Finkielkraut (Documenta, 2007), Philosophical Toys (Apex Art, 2005), Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon MattaClark’s Fake Estates (White Columns and Queens Museum of Art, 2005), and the traveling exhibition The Paper Sculpture Show (2003–2007). Together with Jeffrey Kastner, he commissioned and edited the twenty-four essays in the catalogue for the 2013 Venice Biennale exhibition, The Encyclopedic Palace. He has taught at Cooper Union, Yale University, and the Rhode Island School of Design, and holds degrees in Comparative Literature from Princeton University, Columbia University, and New York University.
SINFUL SATURDAY: SLOTH SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19; 10 AM TO 3 PM Salute the final lazy days of summer and Sloth, The Aldrich’s contribution to The Seven Deadly Sins exhibition series presented collaboratively by the Fairfield/ Westchester Museum Alliance. See snippets from exhibition co-organizer Mats Bigerts’s not-quite-finished film Do Nothing, exploring idleness and inactivity. Family art-making projects for all ages, food trucks, and laid-back exhibition tours round out this easy, breezy day.
Larry Aldrich (1906–2001), Founder
THANKS Generous support for Sloth has been provided by Bob’s Discount Furniture and IASPIS.
The Aldrich, in addition to significant support from its Board of Trustees, receives contributions from many dedicated friends and patrons. Major funding for Museum programs and operations has been provided by the Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation; the Leir Charitable Foundations; the Goldstone Family Foundation; the Anne S. Richardson Fund; and Fairfield Fine Art. Support for Education and Public programs has been provided by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, Joyride Ridgefield, the Newman’s Own Foundation, Fairfield County Bank, Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, Ridgefield Education Foundation, Cohen and Wolf, The Cowles Charitable Trust, and The Gage Fund. Generous support for exhibitions has been provided by The Coby Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc., and the SAHA Association. HamletHub; TownVibe, publishers of Ridgefield Magazine; and WSHU Public Radio are the official media sponsors of The Aldrich in 2015.
Front cover: (lower left-hand corner) detail from Hieronymus Bosch, Sloth (Accidia), from Table of the Mortal Sins, ca. 1500; (lower right-hand corner) detail from Pieter van der Heyden (after Pieter Bruegel the Elder), Desidia (Sloth), from the series The Seven Deadly Sins, 1558. Publication designed with a minimum of effort by Alexander Isley Inc.