#benjamin genocchio

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Edward Hopper, The Sheridan Theater, 1937. Oil on canvas.

This painting shows the voluptuous shell of glowing, orange-tinted space that is "The Sheridan Theater,” which depicts one of the Art Deco movie palaces that Hopper so loved to paint. The scene is inhabited by a lone woman who watches the screen standing at the back of the house, her chunky figure contradicting the flowing architecture.

A mouthwatering curiosity is what the viewer takes away from Edward Hopper’s painting “The Sheridan Theatre” (1937), the subject of a splendid little exhibition at the Newark Museum. The painting depicts a disquieting scene of a woman alone at the back of a movie theater, watched by two figures, one of them an usher. Is she waiting for friends, or has she simply arrived late? We don’t know, for her behavior doesn’t fit with any typical pattern of moviegoing.

     —Roberta Smith in the NY Times

The pleasures of this painting are numerous, from the ambiguity of the central figure to the stylized, evocative architecture and graceful shifts of lighting in the balcony. It is one of Hopper’s best movie-theater paintings. …

A cinéaste, Hopper once remarked to a friend: “When I don’t feel in the mood for painting I go to the movies for a week or more. I go on a regular movie binge!” His favorite movie theater was the Sheridan in the West Village of Manhattan, not far from a townhouse on Washington Square where he and his wife and model, the artist Josephine Nivison, lived on the top floor for most of their lives. Calm, silent and luminous, “The Sheridan Theatre” … oozes strangeness.

     —Benjamin Genocchio in the NY Times

[artistquest]

Elements of Art: Shape by KQED Arts

[menmakingapologies]

Launching start-up news websites definitely led to conflicts with a few employees, but I never intentionally acted in an inappropriate manner nor spoke to or touched a colleague in a sexually inappropriate way. To the extent my behavior was perceived as disrespectful, I deeply and sincerely apologize and will ensure it does not happen again.

-Benjamin Genocchio, art fair director.

[dcamanes]

Acoso en el arte

Publicado en Noviembre de 2017 en el suplemento cultural “Encuentros” del Diario de Tarragona

Los escándalos de acoso sexual salpican al mundo del arte.

El escándalo Harvey Weinstein, el todopoderoso productor de Hollywood acusado por decenas de mujeres de todo tipo de abusos, físicos y psicológicos, que llegó a emplear a ex-agentes del Mossad para espiar a sus víctimas y asegurarse su silencio, ha desatado una oleada de denuncias en todos los ámbitos. Las acusaciones de abusos y discriminación vienen de sectores heterogéneos,  cosa que constata que el abuso de poder es claramente un problema transversal y estructural, que afecta por igual a todas las mujeres de cualquier condición. Desafortunadamente,  el mundo del arte, un mundo dominado en su mayoría por hombres blancos occidentales, no es un espacio que ha permanecido al margen de estas acusaciones.

 El 24 de Octubre aparecieron en la publicación ArtNews las primeras acusaciones sobre acoso sexual dirigidas contra  Knight Landesman, editor de la influyente Artforum, revista referente en el mundo del arte. Las acusaciones por parte de ArtNews hablaban de varias mujeres y hombres que dieron cuenta de comportamientos no deseados por parte de Landesman a lo largo de los años. Tan solo un día después, Amanda Schmidtt, ex empleada en Artforum, presentó una denuncia en la corte suprema de Manhattan por diversos actos de acoso recibidos durante cuatro años, en entornos públicos y privado. Cuando llegó el jueves 26, hasta 9 mujeres salieron de su anonimato para denunciar haber sido acosadas en diferentes eventos de arte. Landesman, apartado de la publicación, admitió haber “puesto a prueba ciertos límites” pero no admitio haber perjudicado a nadie intencionalmente. Decenas de testimonios han aparecido, de nuevo como en el caso Weinstein, confirmando que las manos largas y los flirteos de Knight eran un secreto a voces. Varias organizaciones e instituciones artísticas, así como artistas reconocidas como Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger o Miranda July, firmaron una carta denunciando el acoso y la discriminación en el mundo del arte popularizada a través del hashtag #Notsurprise, haciendo referencia a la obra de la artista Jenny Holzer “Abuse of power comes as no surprise”. “No toleraremos que nos avergüencen, ni que no nos crean, no toleraremos la recriminación que implica no hablar en público”. Pero Landesman no ha sido el único caso de acoso sexual dentro del ámbito artístico. El fotógrafo Terry Richardson, ha sido vetado por Conde Nast, grupo de medios que posee la mayoría de publicaciones de moda. Las numerosas denuncias por acoso que acumula el fotógrafo desde 2010, conocido por sus imágenes explícitas inspiradas por la pornografía de los años 70, ha llevado también a importantes marcas como Valentino o Bulgari a prescindir de sus servicios. Ya en 2014, apareció una campaña bajo el lema #NoMoreTerry que animaba a las marcas a no trabajar con un hombre con numerosas denuncias por abusos. Y suma y sigue. Benjamin Genocchio, director del Armory Show de Nueva York, una de las ferias de arte contemporáneo más importantes, ha sido denunciado por conducta inapropiada y abusos verbales. Aquí, escasos medios nacionales especializados se han hecho eco de estas noticias, como si el arte fuese solo sus obras y no su estructura y su funcionamiento. Instituciones y organizaciones artísticas de todo el mundo hablan de equidad, transparencia e ideales feministas de puertas para afuera, pero estos ideales no se ven reflejados en sus estructuras, ni en sus organigramas, sus espacios ni, tal y como parece revelar estos casos, en sus comportamientos. El abuso de poder, no es una cosa de Hollywood, el abuso y la discriminación está profundamente arraigado en una sociedad que ve normal que un hombre pueda hacer uso de su poder y saberse impune.

[politiciandirect]

Director of International Art Fair Accused of Sexual Harassment...

Director of International Art Fair Accused of Sexual Harassment…

Advertisement Benjamin Genocchio, a prominent and influential figure in the art world, has been replaced as executive director of the Armory Show, a top international art fair, after five women who have worked with him over the years told The New York Times that they experienced unwelcome touching by him. In interviews, a total of eight who had worked with him at the Armory Show, Artnet and…

[mironivanov]

Director of International Art Fair Accused of Sexual Harassment

Five women described unwelcome touching by Benjamin Genocchio and a total of eight said he made sexually inappropriate comments to them at the Armory Show, Artnet News and Louise Blouin Media.

[issuewire]

Benjamin Genocchio And Reinvention In The World Of Art

[studio-dwyer]

Assessment 2: Final Statement

My work challenges and refocuses notions of value and purpose, forcing viewers to be confronted by the conflicting elements they contain and from this develop a response – be it disgust, or a greater understanding. It is this which constitutes an act of rebellion, simultaneously contravening and adapting elements of expectation and convention (both in the world of art and design and in everyday life). Further, the sense of conflict, discomfort and even disgust generated is something which I believe is integral to creating contemporary rebellious works.

While I always intended to create a work which projected contemporary ideas of rebellion through the media of fabric and clothing, the actual process of doing so (and my original expectations) changed somewhat from the end of assessment one to the completion of this work. For me, assessment 1 explored rebellion at a very microcosmic level, contravening my own sewing/mending practice and the expectations or rules I had placed on myself. Building off of this, my initial research for this assessment looked at the history of rebellion in art and in dress, and at contemporary artists whose work blends both of these together – conveying socio-political messages (and often rebellious ones) through their work with textiles. While my ideas here were still somewhat vague, I did have a sense that I wanted to build off of the first assessment. However, inspired by ideas from our class tasks and following an initial photo shoot, the premise of my work shifted. While it still focussed on textiles and retained the aspect of pushing back against established expectations, I had found a specific focus (and one more separate from assessment 1, though still informed by it).

Consequently, my work focusses on value, and how the juxtaposition of ‘dirty rags’ with more conventionally beautiful artistic methods create confusing and often discomfiting responses for audiences. This idea of discomfort was primarily drawn from my observations of the reactions of people involved in my project, and the implications of this. Classmates who originally offered to model for me reneged on this when they heard my intention to use rags, and the model I finally found expressed disgust and even fear when confronted with these materials. These surprisingly vehement responses generated new ideas for me, and an awareness of the powerful effects that such a juxtaposition of ideas had the potential to generate.

Each individual ‘vignette’ in my final work present conflicting and antithetical elements. They both embrace and reject artistic tradition and conventional notions of beauty and value, and this juxtaposition of concepts has the ability to generate a surprisingly strong reaction. They are all (in some way) aesthetically pleasing, and reference artistic and creative conventions (such as colour theory, lighting, and composition), however they retain an underlying tone of discomfort, perhaps even disgust: “They are beautiful, but of ugly things.” Viewers feel as if they are “being manipulated subtly because of this”, and the conflict generated makes it difficult to judge the images or assign conventional value labels. However, if they can “feel (their) way through the fear of not knowing how (they’re) supposed to feel about these books”, they can emerge on the other side “with a better understanding of how (they) actually feel about them.” [1]

This conflict, and subsequent confusion and discomfort, is a key factor in creating contemporary rebellion in art. By refusing to comfort and placate audiences, such work rebels against the very institutions which are often key to its acceptance and survival (and that of the artist). Furthermore, being made uncomfortable is “a powerful way for us to learn what we care most about, where our boundaries really are”, by prompting viewers to question: “Why don’t I like this?” or “Why does this make me feel uncomfortable?” [2] While my work certainly isn’t perfect and only explores this reaction to a relatively small degree, with minimal risk to either artist or audience (be it economically, socially or emotionally), it is still an attempt to do so and as such confirms these notions.

 Footnotes:

[1] Miki Johnson, “Why Good Art Makes You Uncomfortable”, Medium, https://medium.com/@heymikij/why-good-art-makes-you-uncomfortable-a7f2c19e96b8 (accessed September 18, 2018).

[2] Johnson, “Why Good Art Makes You Uncomfortable.”

Bibliography:

Ally, Brooke, Christopher LG Hill, Nicolas Ceccaldi, and Rare Candy. "Boulevard 1st Day." Centre For Style. http://www.centreforstyle.org/boulevard1stday.html (Accessed September 12, 2018).

Arts2Arts. "Is Art Still Rebellious?" Arts2Arts Online Magazine. https://www.art2arts.co.uk/magazine/is-art-still-rebellious/ (Accessed September 13, 2018).

De Marly, Dianna. “The Nature and Purposes of Dress.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/dress-clothing/The-nature-and-purposes-of-dress (Accessed September 6, 2018)

Genocchio, Benjamin. "All Dressed Up at the Katonah Museum of Art." The New York Times, August 21, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/nyregion/23artswe.html (Accessed September 14, 2018).

Johnson, Miki. “Why Good Art Makes You Uncomfortable”. Medium. https://medium.com/@heymikij/why-good-art-makes-you-uncomfortable-a7f2c19e96b8 (Accessed September 18, 2018).

Tucson Museum of Art. “Dress Matters: Clothing as Metaphor.” Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block. https://tucsonmuseumofart.org/exhibition/dress-matters-clothing-as-metaphor/ (Accessed September 14, 2018).

Various artists. “Dress Rehearsal.” Centre for Style. http://www.centreforstyle.org/dress-rehearsal.html (Accessed September 12, 2018).

[artmarketmonitor]

Artelligence for May 31, 2018

Artelligence for May 31, 2018

Genocchio Returns to Art World: In a report that is as telling for where it comes from as for what it says, Louise Blouin’s ArtInfo confirms the much discussed appearance of Ben Genocchio at Galerie Gmurzynska during TEFAF Spring in New York:

In case you missed it, Benjamin Genocchio — who was replaced as director of the Armory Show after being accused of sexual harassment — is back in the art…

[caveartfair]

The Top Art News Stories of 2017—Part 2

Here’s part two of the top 20 art world news stories from this year, arranged in chronological order.

11  Several former top South Korean government officials received prison time for their roles in blacklisting thousands of artists in the country.

A court handed down stiff sentences on July 27th to several prominent political figures in South Korea who were accused of abuse of power and perjury, among other charges, the New York Times reported. The accused were top members of the administration of ousted South Korean president Park Geun-hye, who was removed from office by the country’s constitutional court for corruption in March. They faced charges for their role in secretly ordering the blacklist of thousands of artists because of their politics, barring them receiving government funding or support. News of the blacklist first surfaced last year, prompting widespread outrage in South Korea. Among the six officials sentenced is Kim Ki-choon, former chief of staff to President Park Geun-hye, who received three years after being convicted for creating the blacklist, then lying about his role before South Korea’s parliament. Kim Jong-deok, a former culture minister, was sentenced to two years for similar charges.

12  The Guggenheim pulled three artworks featuring live animals from an exhibition amid allegations that the works contained animal cruelty.

The Guggenheim removed two videos and one sculpture from “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” on September 25th, citing unspecified but “explicit and repeated threats of violence” as the reason. The exhibition opened without the three works on October 6th. Controversy around the exhibition erupted in late September and initially centered on Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other (2003), a video work by artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu that shows restrained dogs on treadmills running in an attempt to fight one another. The work quickly drew criticism, including a petition calling for “cruelty-free” exhibitions at the museum, which gained 600,000 signatures in five days. Two other works, A Case Study of Transference (1994) by Xu Bing, a video showing live pigs mating, and Theater of the World by Huang Yong Ping, the exhibition’s titular work of live insects and reptiles devouring each other, were also not shown. While animal rights activists and some art historians applauded the move, critics charged that the museum had censored the works. “As an arts institution committed to presenting a multiplicity of voices, we are dismayed that we must withhold works of art,” the museum said in a statement. “Freedom of expression has always been and will remain a paramount value of the Guggenheim.”

13 The United States withdrew from UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization.

The U.S. Department of State cited “the need for fundamental reform” and “continuing anti-Israel bias” at UNESCO, along with “concerns with mounting arrears” owed by the U.S. when the move was announced on October 12th. The tangible financial and legal impact of leaving UNESCO, experts say, are few. The U.S. had its UNESCO voting rights suspended in 2013, after two years of refusing to pay dues, following the acceptance of Palestine into the cultural organization as a full member in 2011. The withdrawal halts the increase in owed dues that the U.S. would have to pay if it wished to reenter UNESCO at any point in the future. America’s annual contributions amounted to, then, around $80 million, or 22 percent of UNESCO’s budget, and the U.S. owes in the region of $550 million to the organization. Audrey Azoulay, who was elected as UNESCO’s director-general just one day after the U.S. announced its withdrawal, has said that U.S.’s departure is “not the beginning and end” of the agency.

14  Beatrix Ruf resigned as director of Amsterdam’s influential Stedelijk Museum amid allegations of conflicts of interest.

The allegations stemmed from Ruf’s operation of a private art advisory service while serving as director, and the terms attached to a major donation to the institution last year. Ruf’s resignation came after a pair of investigations were published by the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad. One of the reports revealed that Ruf earned €437,306 in 2015 from her private art advisory company, Currentmatters. The Stedelijk’s annual report from the same year—which specifically provides a space for the museum to disclose its director’s activities outside of her employment there—includes no reference to Currentmatters (which is registered in Switzerland), nor to any income she derived from it. A statement posted on the museum’s website on October 17th cites “speculations in the media over the past weeks that may have an impact on [our] reputation” as the reason for Ruf’s departure. Ruf called the allegations a “misunderstanding,” in a November interview with the New York Times, telling the paper that she “reported everything in good faith” to the Stedelijk Museum and that the payment to Currentmatters was mainly for services rendered prior to her assuming the role of artistic director. Ruf is frequently cited as among the contemporary art world’s most influential players, and served as the director of the Kunsthalle Zürich for 12 years before taking up her post at the Stedelijk in 2014.

15  Several prominent art world figures—including Artforum publisher Knight Landesman and artist Chuck Close—were accused of sexual misconduct.

Landesman, the longtime co-publisher of Artforum, resigned on October 25th following allegations of sexual harassment first reported by Rachel Corbett in artnet News. The same day, Amanda Schmitt, a former employee of Artforum, sued both the publication and Landesman for defamation and retaliation, among other allegations, asserting that she was sexually harassed both during and after her time at the publication. Both Landesman and Artforum each moved to dismiss the lawsuit in December. In October, the publication vowed to “transform Artforum into a place of transparency, equity, and with zero tolerance for sexual harassment of any kind.” Landesman is one of several high-profile men in the artworld to be accused of sexual misconduct in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, including former Jewish Museum deputy director Jens Hoffmann and Benjamin Genocchio, who was removed as executive director of the Armory Show following allegations made against him in the New York Times. Artist Chuck Close was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women in December, including one who said he had invited her to pose for him before asking her to strip naked and then made lewd comments about her vagina. Close denied the specific comments, but apologized to any he made feel uncomfortable. “Last time I looked, discomfort was not a major offense,” he told the New York Times.

16  Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art was purchased by a Chinese investment group, securing the 798 Art District landmark’s future.

Art collector Guy Ullens, who co-founded and financially supported the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), put the institution up for sale in 2016. It spent an uncertain year on the market before selling for an undisclosed amount to the investor group in October. Previously a private company, the UCCA will now operate as a non-profit and tax-exempt foundation. Director of UCCA, Philip Tinari, has said he expects the new status as a foundation will allow the institution to raise additional funding and improve exhibitions and visitor traffic. He also affirmed that the museum has received assurance that it would remain in the 798 Art District for the long term. “Our mission continues to be a desire to put Chinese art in a global context, to provoke and stimulate a discussion about a vital part of art history,” he told the South China Morning Post. Ullens’s decision to sell the museum raised questions about the sustainability of China’s private museums and art centers, institutions that are individually owned and dependent on those benefactors for funding. The center is slated to soon undergo renovations, reopening in 2018 with a solo show of artist Xu Bing.

17 Documenta 14 ran a major €5.4 million ($6.3 million) budget deficit.

Curated by Adam Szymczyk, the fourteenth edition of Documenta ran up a deficit due in large part to Szymczyk’s decision to host the quinquennial art exhibition in Athens, Greece, in addition to the event’s regular location of Kassel, Germany, according to the findings of an independent auditor. The deficit prompted the resignation of Annette Kulenkampff, the CEO of Documenta’s parent company, on November 27th, artnet News reported, along with criticism of Szymczyk’s handling of the event’s financials. But the curator and his team have remained defiant since news of the deficit was first reported by German daily HNA in September, arguing that all of the Documenta stakeholders approved of the dual-venue format, and that “the money flowing into the city through the making of Documenta greatly exceeds the amount the city and region spend on the exhibition.” Documenta’s artists have come out in support of their curator, penning two open letters in defense of the show. Despite initial concerns that the cost overrun could endanger future editions, officials confirmed that Documenta’s 15th edition will run from June 18th to September 25th, 2022 in Kassel, The Art Newspaper reported.

18 Abu Dhabi acquired Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (c. 1500) for a record-smashing $450 million.

The work sold after 19 minutes of bidding at Christie’s post-war and contemporary sale on November 15th. The final $450 million price, including fees, is the most ever paid for a work of art, well above the rumored $300 million that billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin paid for Willem de Kooning’s Interchange (1955) in 2015. The identity of the buyer of the Leonardo remained a mystery at the time, but an article in the Wall Street Journal in early December identified a little-known Saudi Arabian prince, operating as a proxy for the country’s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, as the bidder. Saudi authorities quickly denied that the crown prince had been behind the work’s purchase, and Christie’s released a statement confirming that the work was acquired by Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which opened to the public on November 11th. One person “briefed on the deal” told the Financial Times that the Saudi government had purchased the work for the United Arab Emirates, the federation that includes Abu Dhabi, saying, “It is supposed to be a state to state gift, like when France gave the Statue of Liberty to the US.”

19  A tomb in Jerusalem was built by ancient Romans to mark the burial place of Jesus Christ, research suggests.

Researchers tested mortar found inside the purported tomb of Christ, which is located within Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to determine if its age matches historical accounts of the site. Some scholars had questioned whether the church—which has been destroyed, damaged, and rebuilt several times over thousands of years—actually marks the site that ancient Romans (dispatched to the region by Emperor Constantine), identified as Christ’s burial place in around 326 A.D., according to historical records. Previously, the oldest materials in the Church have been dated to the much later Crusader period. But new research released on November 28th by a team from the National Technical University of Athens found that the mortar used within the tomb, opened in October of 2016 for the first time in centuries, does indeed date back to roughly 345 AD, suggesting that it is the tomb identified by ancient Romans. “While it is archaeologically impossible to say that the tomb is the burial site of an individual Jew known as Jesus of Nazareth,” wrote National Geographic, “new dating results put the original construction of today’s tomb complex securely in the time of Constantine.”

20 British artist Lubaina Himid became the first woman of color and the oldest artist ever to win the Turner Prize, Britain’s most prestigious art award.

Himid was presented with the award on December 5th at a ceremony held in the northern English city of Hull, where her work is on view until January 7th in an exhibition dedicated to artists shortlisted for the prize. The 63-year-old Zanzibar-born artist—whose work deals with race and black identity—grew up in London and lives in the northern city of Preston. In her acceptance speech, broadcast live on BBC News, Himid thanked the Turner Prize jury and her supporters. “To the people who have stopped me in the streets of Preston and Hull to wish me luck—thank you, it worked,” she said. Himid also thanked the art historians who wrote about her practice in what she called the “wilderness years.” Administered by London’s Tate, the Turner Prize was founded in 1984 and “aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art” with the annual £25,000 award going to a British artist deemed to have an “outstanding exhibition or other presentation” in a given year.

from Artsy News

[thefabulousfulcrum]

The Myth of the Male Bumbler

via The Week

Lili Loofbourow

Male bumblers are an epidemic.

These men are, should you not recognize the type, wide-eyed and perennially confused. What's the difference, the male bumbler wonders, between a friendly conversation with a coworker and rubbing one's penis in front of one? Between grooming a 14-year-old at her custody hearing and asking her out?

The world baffles the bumbler. He's astonished to discover that he had power over anyone at all, let alone that he was perceived as using it. What power? he says. Who, me?

The bumbler is the first to confess that he's bad at his job. Take Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who testified Tuesday of the Trump campaign's foreign policy team, which he ran and which is now understood to have been in contact with Russian agents: "We were not a very effective group." Or consider Dave Becky, the manager of disgraced comedian Louis C.K. (who confessed last week to sexual misconduct). Becky avers that "never once, in all of these years, did anyone mention any of the other incidents that were reported recently." One might argue that no one should have needed to mention them; surely, as Louis C.K.'s manager, it was Becky's job to keep tabs on open secrets about his client? Becky's defense? He's a bumbler! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The bumbler doesn't know things, even things about which he was directly informed. Jon Stewart was "stunned" by the Louis C.K. revelations, even though we watched someone ask him about them last year. Vice President Mike Pence maintains he had no idea former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was lobbying for a foreign power — despite the fact that Flynn himself informed the transition team back in January, and even though Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) had written Pence — who was head of the transition team — to that effect as far back as Nov. 18, 2016. Wait, what? said Pence in March. Surely not! Really?

There's a reason for this plague of know-nothings: The bumbler's perpetual amazement exonerates him. Incompetence is less damaging than malice. And men — particularly powerful men — use that loophole like corporations use off-shore accounts. The bumbler takes one of our culture's most muscular myths — that men are clueless — and weaponizes it into an alibi.

Allow me to make a controversial proposition: Men are every bit as sneaky and calculating and venomous as women are widely suspected to be. And the bumbler — the very figure that shelters them from this ugly truth — is the best and hardest proof.

Breaking that alibi means dissecting that myth. The line on men has been that they're the only gender qualified to hold important jobs and too incompetent to be responsible for their conduct. Men are great but transparent, the story goes: What you see is what you get. They lack guile.

The "privilege" argument holds that this is partly true because men have never needed to deceive. This interesting Twitter thread by Holden Shearer has been making the rounds: "One of the oldest canards in low-denominator comedy is that women are inscrutable and men can't understand them. There's a reason for this and it ain't funny," he writes. The thread is right about the structural problems with lowbrow "women are so confusing!" comedy. "Women VERY frequently say one thing and mean another, display expressions or reactions that don't jibe with their feelings, and so on. But it's actually really easy to decode once you understand why it happens. It is survival behavior," Shearer writes.

But nested in that account is the assumption that the broad majority of men are not dissemblers. The majority are — you guessed it — bumblers! If you've noticed a tendency to treat girls — like the 14-year-old whom now-Senate candidate Roy Moore allegedly picked up at her custody hearing — as knowing adults and men in their 30s — like Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos and Donald Trump, Jr. — as erring youngsters, large sons and "coffee boys," this is why. Our culture makes that script available. It's why Sessions is so often referred to as an "elf" instead of a gifted manipulator (here's a very clever analysis of his strategy, which weaponizes our tendency to read white men — even very old attorneys with a long history of maliciously undermining civil rights — as slow, meandering children who know not what they do.)

It's counterintuitive, I know. For decades now, the very idea of a duplicitous, calculating man has been so exceptional as to be almost monstrous; this is the domain of cult leaders, of con artists, of evil men like the husband in Gaslight. And while folks provisionally accept that there aremen who "groom" children and "gaslight" women, the reluctance to attach that behavior to any real, flesh-and-blood man we know is extreme. Many people don't actually believe that normal men are capable of it.

Back when Dylan Farrow's allegations about Woody Allen were in the news, people quickly glommed onto Allen's exculpatory claim that Mia Farrow "brainwashed" her children into lying about him. It was fascinating, both because the claim was pretty evidence-free and because Woody Allen had blatantly and repeatedly admitted to manipulating and grooming Soon-Yi Previn. But, because Allen so skillfully deployed the script of the bumbler, everyone failed to see his behavior in those terms. Allen's portrayal of himself — he barely knows what he had for breakfast! — was just that effective. Never mind that he's so organized, ambitious, driven, confident, and purposeful that he successfully puts out a movie a year.

As the accusations of sexual misconduct roiling politics, publishing, and Hollywood continue to stack up, a few things are going to happen. The first stage of a phenomenon like this will always be to characterize the accused men as exceptions, as bad apples. #NotAllMen, the saying goes. But the second is that everyone is going to try to naturalize sexual harassment. If there are this many men doing these things, then surely this is just how men are! that argument will go. There's a corollary lurking underneath there: They can't help themselves. They're bumblers.

That won't wash. But the only way to guard against it is to shed our weird cultural blindness to manipulative male behavior. We must be smarter than our cultural defaults. We need to shed the exculpatory scripts that have mysteriously enabled all these incompetent bumblers to become rich, successful, and admired even as they maintain that they're moral infants.

We do that by looking at the deliberate, active steps they took to conceal what they did.

Take Benjamin Genocchio, who was recently replaced as executive director of the Armory Show, the New York City art fair, after 19 people testified to his inappropriate conduct. "I never intentionally acted in an inappropriate manner nor spoke to or touched a colleague in a sexually inappropriate way," Genocchio said. "To the extent my behavior was perceived as disrespectful, I deeply and sincerely apologize and will ensure it does not happen again."

In short: He's a bumbler!

Before you nod along, agreeing that it's just impossible to know what's appropriate in this day and age, let's look at how the allegations against Genocchio square with his professed confusion. At Artnet's 2014 holiday party at the Gramercy Park Hotel, as Colleen Calvo, the marketing coordinator, was checking guests in at the door, Genocchio allegedly ran his hand up her sequin pants. Per Calvo: "Ben said, 'Is this the only time I get to touch your ass without getting yelled at?'"

Does that sound like someone who doesn't understand the difference between what's appropriate and what's not? Does it instead sound like someone who understands perfectly what the boundaries are and is knowingly violating them? Nor was this isolated: The New York Timesconfirmed that Genocchio was spoken to repeatedly about his behavior. It was a known problem. He ignored the warnings.

Facts be damned: Genocchio knew he was playing to a wider audience that wouldn't look at those details; he hoped he could activate the bumbler stereotype and use it as an alibi.

This is not what bumblers do. This is what predators do. The actions are malicious, and the mind games are deliberate. So what about their handling of their reputations after the fact? Was this, too, bumbled?

No. In the majority of cases, the accused men were cunning and vindictive stewards of their reputations and did everything they could to ruin their victims.

Harvey Weinstein reportedly destroyed the careers of actresses he harassed; he got them branded as "difficult" or "crazy." He apparently hired ex-Mossad agents to spy on them.

Director Brett Ratner — to choose one unsavory example — addressed Olivia Munn's account in her book about how he masturbated in front of her (she'd left the director anonymous) by identifying himself and claiming he'd slept with her. (He later admitted she never had sex with him). It was a calculated effort to inflict maximum damage on her; to brand her a "slut."

Former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly allegedly pressured one of his victims(who worked at the network ) to give him "dirt" on another victim so he could shut down her allegations against him.

Former Fox News chief Roger Ailes reportedly videotaped his victims in compromising situations so he could ruin them later if they misbehaved.

What about the seduction phase? There's been a spate of articles about men desperately worried that they've somehow bumbled into harassment. Were these men "accidental" predators? Did they stumble — baffled and confused — into a situation where they haplessly and unknowingly harassed women?

Well, director James Toback apparently used "theater school" language to convince his targets that their vulnerability was artistically necessary. As Rachel McAdams recalls, he "used the same language during my audition — that you have to take risks and sometimes you're going to be uncomfortable and sometimes it's going to feel dangerous. And that's a good thing — when there is danger in the air and you feel like you are out of your comfort zone."

Roy Moore allegedly weaponized the nastiness intrinsic to divorce to convince a mother to leave her child in his care at her custody hearing. "He said, 'Oh, you don't want her to go in there and hear all that. I'll stay out here with her,'" said Nancy Wells, the mother of one of his accusers. "I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl." Moore allegedly picked up the 14-year-old around the corner from her house — presumably so no one would see him — and took her to the woods. The next time he allegedly undressed her, removed his own clothes, and made her touch him.

Oh, and Louis C.K., the ultimate bumbler? The bumbler extraordinaire? He lied. He lied to Marc Maron, a close friend, saying that the rumors about him were false. He appears to have done the same to Pamela Adlon, who defended him against the accusations. Nor does it end there: To hear Louis C.K. tell it, he had no idea his manager was getting the women he'd targeted to keep quiet. To hear his manager tell it, he had no idea Louis C.K. had been up to much of anything at all. Louis C.K. might be any number of things — sick, addicted, depressed, twisted, predatory, egotistical, self-destructive — but one thing he is not is a bumbler.

How many deliberate, premeditated lies, how many carefully set traps, how many instances of deceit do we need before we can admit that men are every bit as duplicitous and two-faced as women are suspected of being? That harassment is not an accident? That predation requires planning? That this gigantic apparatus through which women's careers are destroyed and men's are preserved isn't just happenstance?

Alas, the greatest supporters of the bumbler myth tend to be other men. You might recall that Dustin Hoffman was accused of groping and sexually harassing a 17-year-old on set — of saying things like "I'll have a hard-boiled egg … and a soft-boiled clitoris." He pleads bumbler: "I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation," he said. And indeed, it is hard to imagine how a teenager at her first job might receive those words. But did her employer defend her when she finally confessed, decades later, that she'd dealt with a hostile work environment? No, director Volker Schlöndorff has instead come to Hoffman's defense: He is "just a kidder," Schlöndorff says. Everyone gave Hoffman a foot massage!

Predatory men normalize their predation and support each other. "You're a target. I'm a target," O'Reilly said in a July 2016 appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers in which he discussed his employer, Ailes. "Anytime somebody could come out and sue us, attack us, go to the press, or anything like that. … I stand behind Roger 100 percent." Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, before he himself was accused of sexual assault, also defended Ailes. "I can tell you that some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he's helped them," the future president said, adding that Ailes is "just a very, very good person. And, by the way, a very, very talented person." Weinstein supported Roman Polanski, calling the charges that he drugged and anally raped a 13-year-old girl a "so-called crime" and calling the charges themselves "a shocking way to treat such a man." And Oliver Stone, himself accused of groping a model, lamentedWeinstein's fate: "It's not easy what he's going through," Stone said. "I'm a believer that you wait until this thing gets to trial. I believe a man shouldn't be condemned by a vigilante system."

This is how the culture attempts to normalize this stuff: by minimizing the damage to women and the agency of men. When actress Katharine Towne described an incident in which Brett Ratner started hitting on her at a dinner party, refused to take no for an answer, and trapped her in a bathroom, here's how his attorney Marty Singer responded: "Even if hypothetically this incident occurred exactly as claimed, how is flirting at a party, complimenting a woman on her appearance, and calling her to ask her for a date wrongful conduct?" Singer said.

Look, this is a moment when our cultural myths about men and women are colliding. It's scary and confusing and way too widespread for comfort. But rather than knee-jerking toward normalizing, it's worth taking a minute to parse just how complicated it is to make sense of the different realities in which men and women have been living. I've written repeatedlyabout the culture-wide phenomenon of "not-knowing," of how our biggest shared cultural muscles are built to repress knowledge about how routinely women's professional lives are derailed through sexual harassment and misconduct. Emma Thompson called the Weinstein revelations "the tip of the iceberg," and she's right: Economists have long and lazily attributed the exodus of women in various industries to their decision to bear children, but now this giant explanatory iceberg is floating up — this absolutely gigantic, widely denied story about how women are routinely driven from their industries because their male colleagues need to be free to use their professional power to indulge their sexual urges.

Most of us know that when a politician sits on the stand and insists that he "does not recall," that it's a political performance, a manipulative pretense intended to obfuscate. Let's apply that intelligent skepticism toward this rash of professions of male incompetence. To put it in pragmatic terms: You can be a bumbler, or you can keep your job. You can't have both.

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Director of International Art Fair Accused of Sexual Harassment

Five women described unwelcome touching by Benjamin Genocchio and a total of eight said he made sexually inappropriate comments to them at the Armory Show, Artnet News and Louise Blouin Media. from Binary Trading Tips https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/arts/design/ben-genocchio-armory-show-artnet.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Five women described unwelcome touching by Benjamin Genocchio and a total of eight said he made sexually inappropriate comments to them at the Armory Show, Artnet News and Louise Blouin Media.

Published: November 7, 2017 at 07:00PM

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Director of International Art Fair Accused of Sexual Harassment

By ROBIN POGREBIN Five women described unwelcome touching by Benjamin Genocchio and a total of eight said he made sexually inappropriate comments to them at the Armory Show, Artnet News and Louise Blouin Media. Published: November 8, 2017 at 08:00AM from NYT Arts http://ift.tt/2Alw73Z

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Director of International Art Fair Accused of Sexual Harassment

Director of International Art Fair Accused of Sexual Harassment

Five women described unwelcome touching by Benjamin Genocchio and a total of eight said he made sexually inappropriate comments to them at the Armory Show, Artnet News and Louise Blouin Media.x

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