I took that picture of the artist Dan Graham during the press preview for his first U.S. retrospective a few weeks back, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NY. The picture was taken while WNYC was making this video (which stars several of the writers I was in the International Writers' Institute with, especially in the lipstick chamber, which I found weird and dumb):

Later, Roberta Smith of the New York Times said just about everything I'd need to say about Graham after seeing the show, especially that

Mr. Graham’s most profound embrace of American culture — perhaps his most profound work, period — is “Rock My Religion,” a 55-minute video from 1982-84 that has earned him a cult following in the music world. Building a idiosyncratic argument that rock music belongs to an American tradition of ecstatic, collective experience linked to the religious singing and dancing of the Shakers, the piece gives the fullest picture of Mr. Graham’s talent for language, his eccentric way of thinking and his reverence for history.

Here's a 9-minute clip from "Rock My Religion" on YouTube, starting off with footage of Minor ThreatBlack Flag and moving to Patti Smith.

The best part about seeing Graham, which you can't tell from the photograph I took, is that he was wearing a Rodney Graham "Rock Is Hard" T-shirt. Rodney Graham is the awesome Canadian artist whose 2005 retrospective organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery (the lame VAG web site doesn't have a good page for it, so here's its page at ICA Philly) made me fall flat in love.

Graham, in addition to his conceptual video-photographic-sculptural works, has been making music for decades.

"Rock Is Hard" is the name of an album he put out in 2005, but here's a classic video of the Canadian art-rock band uj3rk5 (you jerks!) in rehearsal years ago.

A party thrown by Dan Graham and Rodney Graham would be the best possible party.