Quarantine Reading List | David Livingston
Quarantine Reading List | David Livingston
David Livingston’s home studio in Milwaukee.
During the quarantine, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to podcasts and reading. I listen to The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC as a podcast because it keeps me connected to my hometown of NYC and the larger tri-state area. Brian Lehrer is a wonderful interviewer and he’s committed to educating his listeners over just entertaining them. It’s great to listen to while making art in the studio.
Now that I suddenly have the time, I’ve picked things up that I’ve been meaning to read for a while. At the beginning of this COVID19 crisis, I started The Dispossessed, a Sci-Fi novel written by Ursula K. Le Guin in the 1970s. The protagonist is loosely based on the nuclear physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was a family friend during Le Guin’s childhood in Berkley, California. The book feels topical as the leading character, a scientist, is trying to find the best political environment in which to pursue potentially groundbreaking research. The protagonist was born and lives on a dry and inhospitable communist/socialist planet where, for a number of reasons, he is unable to pursue his research. Then he visits a nearby fertile planet that is rich and capitalist but has issues of extreme inequality. The novel explores the ways in which both societies become eroded by greed, abuse of power, and cultural isolation. It’s almost Dr. Seuss’s The Butter Battle Book, but for adults.
David Livingston, Gouache on paper, 2020.
I recently finished a gripping novel by Tommy Orange (Cheyenne/Arapaho), entitled There There, set in contemporary Oakland amongst a community of mostly Cheyenne and LatinX peoples. The novel navigates, through multiple interwoven narratives, the way in which Native people of all ages, income levels, and genders together deal with their contemporary Native American identities and attempt to overcome the past and present traumas of colonialism along with the intergenerational violence and destruction it continues to leave in its wake. There is a diverse cast of characters, each with a unique voice and perspective that Orange is able to shape in a writing style that shifts beautifully to suit each character. It’s riveting, heartbreaking, and a page-turner.
Thanks to the recommendation of New Haven artist Jeff Ostergren, I’m currently reading The Evolution of Beauty by Richard O. Prum, a Yale ornithologist. This book is a delight to read. Prum argues — through close study of bird plumage, song, and mating ritual — that animals (mostly females) have adapted their species through sexual selection. As a result of this phenomenon, birds and other animals have developed wildly impractical adaptations for the sake of beauty alone. Along with the Cornell Ornithology iPhone app, Merlin, this book has enhanced my partner’s and my daily walks through the woods, renewing our fascination with local bird species and their unique behaviors. As an artist who is attracted to beauty, but almost feels guilty about it, the theories in The Evolution of Beauty are, in my view, a free license to explore, as Prum writes, “beauty for beauty’s sake” — I mean, if entire species have evolved because of different animals’ appreciation for beauty, it must be important. I’ve also spent many years now, after reading Karl Jung, warily trusting in and pursuing the illogical in my art. If his theories on sexual selection are true, then a component of evolution has no particular logic beyond the whims of attraction in the subjective minds of animals — a both invigorating if not slightly troubling notion as certain species may have already sexually selected themselves into extinction.
David Livingston, Gouache on paper, 2020.
David Livingston
David Livingston works in drawing, sculpture, and performance, often employing his abstract drawings and organically shaped soft-sculptures as theatrical props in public happenings and more recently as interactive forms in virtual space. Livingston received his BFA from Kenyon College and his MFA from the Pratt Institute. His work has been exhibited nationally in galleries and non-profit art centers. In 2016 Livingston had his first solo exhibition with Franklin Street Works at the Ferguson Library in Stamford, CT. Livingston has previously worked as a Practitioner-in-Residence at the University of New Haven and he also taught drawing at Gateway Community College. His podcast series The First Stop explores the lives of artists living around the New Haven area. He currently lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Follow him on Instagram: @plantmanlivingit.
These recommendations are part of the Quarantine Reading List series. See the call for participation here.
