December 2011
78 posts
Hannah Arendt →
Why the United States is destroying its education... →
“The greatest evil perpetrated,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the evil committed by...”
congress is worse than it appears →
the unart of gift cards →
Helen Frankenthaler dies at 83, NYT article →
Watch
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HIRST, WARHOL PRICES OUTPERFORM S&P 500 IN ART INDEX Art by Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500 index over the past 10 years, according to a new measure by Artnet AG designed to rank the performance of art as an asset. Since 2002, Hirst’s prices have increased almost threefold, though they had risen fivefold through 2007 and have since fallen, according to a...
SWISS ART PRIZE CANCELLED AFTER SPONSOR LACOSTE’S OBJECTION The organisers of a 25,000 euro ($32,000) art prize said on Wednesday they have cancelled this year’s competition after sponsors Lacoste objected to an entry by a Palestinian photographer. Jerusalem-born artist Larissa Sansour said she was told the luxury clothing brand deemed her photo series “too...
DUCHAMP’S ‘FOUNTAIN’ WAS SUBVERSIVE—BUT SUBVERTING WHAT? We all know that after Marcel Duchamp installed a urinal in a 1917 New York art exhibition, the genre-bending, class-stretching, anti-craft freedoms of contemporary art follow from that moment—or do they? Scholar Ezra Shales has flushed out a new truth.
by Blake Gopnik December 15, 2011 Around holiday time, you’ve got to envy the...
“A Master once described the journey to enlightenment as ‘like filling a sieve...”
– Total Immersion
(Unknown, from the book 1001 Pearls of Buddhist Wisdom)
“Moment after moment, everyone comes out from nothingness. This is the true joy of life.”
—Suzuki Roshi
thanks wiki
Thai festivals
Lanna (northern Thai) people use sky lanterns all year round, for celebrations and other special occasions. One very important festival in which sky lanterns are used is the Lanna festival known as“Yi Peng” (Thai: ยี่เป็ง) which is held on a full moon of the 2nd month of the Lanna calendar (“Yi”meaning “2nd” and “Peng” meaning...
DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW: FRANCISCO DE GOYA’S SNOWSTORM (LA NEVADA) by Jonathan Jones This <http://tinyurl.com/7yvw3xu> is actually one of Goya’s more lighthearted scenes. It is not one of the great Spanish artist’s nightmarish ‘black paintings’ of witches and savage gods but a design for a tapestry, done just after he became royal painter in 1786. But Goya is never merely decorative....
COLLECTORS MAKE BIG BETS ON CHINESE ART MARKET “Despite the art market’s vulnerability to shocks, including the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, when unrealistic estimates left scores of unsold lots amid tepid bidding even in the red-hot Chinese ceramics market, Asia’s rapid wealth accumulation is likely to result in more cash flowing into art and other alternative...
GEOLOGISTS FINALLY LOCATE SOURCE OF STONEHENGE STONES “They found the culprit on a 65-metre-long outcropping called Craig Rhos-y-Felin, near Pont Saeson in north Pembrokeshire. It lies approximately 160 miles from the Stonehenge site. The question remains though, as to how neolithic people transported huge chunks of rock from Wales to Wiltshire, some 5,000 years ago.” _Wired
MORNING: WILLIAM HOGARTH’S LOVE LETTER TO LONDON LIFE by Jonathan Jones Revellers in a London winter warm themselves at daybreak by a fire, while snow gathers on the rooftops of Covent Garden. The molls and rakes who have been out all night embrace by lusty flames, while a churchgoer looks disdainfully on their ragged company. St Paul’s Church, built by Inigo Jones, contrasts in its sombre...
THE LONG SLIDE by Jerry Saltz J’accuse museums of bullshit! Of bogusly turning themselves into smash-hit consumer circuses, box-office sensations of voyeurism and hipster showbiz. This year, the institution-critiquing art known as Relational Aesthetics—essentially audience-participation art, often work that moves, lights up, or involves living nude beings—entered its decadent phase. Many museums...
ANSELM KIEFER: ‘ART IS DIFFICULT, IT’S NOT ENTERTAINMENT’ “Art is difficult,” says the 66-year-old firmly. “It’s not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art – it’s very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it’s art or not. Buying art is not understanding...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/09/artist-lau... →
Kirk Kapital - Olafur →
ugh
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS; by faq@banksy Is it cheating to use stencils? Stencils are good for two reasons; One - they’re quick ; two - they annoy idiots. Why are you such a sell out? I wish I had a pound for every time someone asked me that. Is Banksy just a big brand these days? Do you even paint your own pictures? It’s not supposed to be a brand, which is why people in advertising think...
DAMIEN HIRST ON HIS TIRELESS COMMERCIALISM “You also have to ask yourself as an artist, ‘What would be more appealing … to have made the Mona Lisa painting itself or have made the merchandising possibilities - putting a postcard on everyone’s walls all over the world? Both are brilliant, but in a way I would probably prefer the postcards - just to get my art out...
CÉZANNE: PAINT IT BLACK by John Berger Any European who lived during the 20th century and was passionate about painting had to come to terms with the mystery, the achievement, the failure or the triumph of Paul Cézanne’s life’s work. He died six years after the century began, aged 67. He was a prophet, although like many prophets this was not what he set out to be. At the Musée du...
TWO PEOPLE CLAIM THEY GOT EAR INFECTIONS FROM THE NEW MUSEUM’S TANK Not too long ago the Department of Health paid of visit to the New Museum’s Carsten Höller Experience exhibit, which features a sensory deprivation tank, called the “Psycho Tank.” Upon their departure they told the museum the tank, which visitors float around in naked, could only have one person in it at...
SEEING THE LIGHT ON CARAVAGGIO: ANDREW GRAHAM-DIXON’S PORTRAIT IN WORDS by Jonathan Jones I’ve waited a long time for a decent book on Caravaggio to come along. For some paradoxical reason, this most compelling artist has inspired a lot of dreary analyses. Unable to translate the shock of his images into prose, authors either sensationalise his life story in ways so crass as to be...
