Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Quote: Pluralistic world

Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race. -Jacques Barzun, professor and writer (1907- )

Music: New CD - Arctic Monkeys

All the critics are raving about the Arctic Monkeys. About half the album is very good and the rest is decent.
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Art: Atypical art collectors

A good article from the NY Times about an art collecting couple from Spain: Atypical Collectors With Art to Share
Excerpts:
Still, they said, even then what really interested them was not to possess art, but to participate in social and cultural change through an intellectual engagement with artists who were rebelling against the existing art world.

Unsurprisingly, then, they also see collecting as an art. "That's what Duchamp said," Mr. Herbert said later over lunch, "You can 'paint a collection' together by choosing your works and bringing them into a context. We try to do that, and I think that in Barcelona you see a kind of vision of a whole."

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Music: New CD - Love is All and Deerhoof


Love is All - Nine Times That Same Song - Post punk swedes with great female vocals and horns that add a touch of ska.
Deerhoof - Apple O' - I am becoming a fan of the frenetic but tight Deerhoof sound.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Books: Phillip Pullman in New Yorker

A good article from the New Yorker about Phillip Pullman, author of "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Excperts:

“we can learn what’s good and what’s bad, what’s generous and unselfish, what’s cruel and mean, from fiction”; there is no need to consult scripture. As Pullman once put it in a newspaper column, “ ‘Thou shalt not’ might reach the head, but it takes ‘Once upon a time’ to reach the heart.”

In his Carnegie Medal speech, he said, “We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them. We all need stories, but children are more frank about it.” What angers Pullman most about theocracy, in the end, is that it blinds people to the true purpose of narrative. Fundamentalists don’t know how to read stories—including those in the Bible—metaphorically, as if they were Lord Asriel’s imaginary numbers.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Art: Hiroshi Sugimoto

An exhibit of Hiroshi Sugimoto - History of History - at the Japan Society, NYC.
A gem of a paragraph about art and artists from the exhibition catalog written by Sugimoto:
"Ever since the age of cave painting, humans have wanted a unified vision with which to see the chaos of this world of ours. It has been largely those people known as artists who have filled such a role - and they still hold this function today. No matter how brilliantly religion and science might explain and persuade, shadowy areas will always remain. Scooping up shimmering particles with which to fashion decoding devices that afford us a look around in the gloom, the handiwork of these people of vision is now known as art."

From the Japan Society website:
This exhibition juxtaposes Sugimoto's exquisitely minimalist works, selected from the photographer's past and most recent series, with fossils, artworks and religious artifacts ranging from prehistoric to the 15th century, all drawn from his own collection. The result is an extended exploration of time, life and spirituality as perceived in the contexts of nature and history. The exhibition, Sugimoto writes, addresses "recorded history, unrecorded history, and still another history--that which is yet to be depicted… like parts waiting to be assembled in a do-it-yourself kit."

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Books: Curry

Book review from yesterday's NY Times - How Curry, Stirred in India, Became a World Conqueror. Excerpt:
"She is a good postmodernist who scoffs at the idea of authenticity when it comes to food. One of her goals, in tracing the evolution of curry and the global spread of Indian cuisine, is to pull the rug out from under the idea that India, or any other nation, ever had a cuisine that was not constantly in the process of assimilation and revision. The very dishes, flavors and food practices that we think of as timelessly, quintessentially Indian turn out to be, as often as not, foreign imports or newfangled inventions. That includes chili peppers and tea."