Obit watch: former LAPD chief Daryl F. Gates.
Plus: Invisible Siegfrieds.
Edited to add: And thanks to the Chron for reminding me that the Texas City disaster was 63 years ago today.
Archive for the ‘Art’ Category
Random notes: April 16, 2010.
Friday, April 16th, 2010Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na…
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010This is one of those “only in Austin” stories. The mayor is proposing an event to celebrate Austin’s bat population, even though we’ve had an event for the past five years. However, the existing event has shut down the Congress Avenue bridge, which is a major artery, for anywhere from a day to a weekend: the mayor’s proposal would only shut down the bridge for a couple of hours on Sunday night. Plus, the mayor’s plan doesn’t involve charging admission; the existing festival does charge, although the promoter has said he plans for it to be free this year.
As part of the “Night of the Bat” celebration, Adam West , star of the 1960s “Batman” TV series, will attend a June 6 Paramount Theatre screening of the 1966 film “Batman”; RunTex plans to hold a bat-themed run/walk June 6 ; and the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau will host a private “Batini” contest for local hotel bartenders.
Obit watch: Jaime Escalante.
I’ve been neglecting the Nets. Sadly, they’re now 10-64, and out of record contention.
The WP has an article about the new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, devoted to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1976 “Running Fence”.
Art, damn it, art! watch (#8 in a series).
Friday, March 26th, 2010Because I know Lawrence is endlessly fascinated by the work of Frank Gehry, here’s a link to the LAT and Gehry’s preliminary designs for the Eisenhower Memorial. (Also, I’ve added a new “Gehry” subcategory to the “Art” category.)
Meanwhile, the NYT has a nice article on the art and music scene in Burma Myanmar .
This doesn’t really fit into the “Art, damn it, art!” category, but I do want to throw in a link to the complete 6 part LAT series on Philip K. Dick in Orange County.
Art, damn it, art! watch (#7 in a series).
Thursday, March 25th, 2010My checking of the NYT on weekends is somewhat iffy, so I missed this piece about the Marina Abramovic retrospective at MoMA until Lawrence mentioned it.
…a day spent watching people watch the show — naked performers re-enacting some of Ms. Abramovic’s most audacious pieces of the last 40 years; the artist herself in an epic endurance performance in the museum’s atrium; videos of Ms. Abramovic slicing a star into her stomach with a razor blade and standing for several minutes with an arrow in a drawn bow aimed at her heart — shows that it takes quite a bit to shake up most museumgoers these days.
More:
Probably the most talked-about part of the exhibition — generating headlines like “Squeezy Does It” in The New York Post — is a re-creation of a 1977 work in which Ms. Abramovic and her partner then, the German artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay, faced each other naked within the frame of a gallery doorway, forcing people who wanted to enter to squeeze between them.
And:
Henk Abma, a former Dutch Reformed Church pastor who said he had followed Ms. Abramovic’s work for 30 years, began his visit by spending half an hour sitting across from the artist herself, who is installed at a table in the museum’s atrium, where she will sit silently all day, every day, barely moving, for the entire run of the show. (The performance will add up to more than 700 hours of sitting if she can complete it.)
Here’s a link to MoMA’s webpage about the exhibition. I find it interesting that the NYT refers to the artist as “Abramovic” and MoMA refers to her as “Abramović”.
Art, damn it, art! watch (#6 in a series).
Friday, March 19th, 2010Zero Mostel approves.
Edited to add: URL fixed. Sorry.
Edited to add 2: Everything you ever wanted to know about the WSJ and hedcuts. I’m throwing this in here because:
- I do consider hedcuts a form of art, and
- I’m trying to limit myself to one “Art, damn it, art! watch” per day.
Art, damn it, art! watch (#5 in a series).
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010There’s a nifty profile in the NYT of Beriah Wall, who’s been producing and giving away ceramic “coins” for about 30 years.
The article includes photos of some of his work.
Edited to add: Let me make it clear, I like Mr. Wall’s work very much.
So, here, have a link to some more questionable art: John Kelso (the local excuse for a newspaper’s designated cranky curmudgeon columnist) on “Barton Barriers“:
…this more than 100-foot-long, 12-foot-wide, 10-foot-high cluster of 50 road barriers that are lit up at night.
Art, damn it, art! watch (#4 in a series).
Friday, March 12th, 2010The hot theater ticket in New York City is “The Demons”, an adaptation of a Dostoyevsky novel. There’s only going to be two performances. And the performance is taking place on Governors Island, so you’ll have to take a ferry and then walk 20 minutes to get to your seat. Only about 700 tickets are available, at either $175 or $225 a shot.
Oh, did I mention that “The Demons” is twelve hours long?
Art, damn it, art! watch (#3 in a series).
Friday, February 26th, 2010Random notes: February 4th, 2010.
Thursday, February 4th, 2010The Columbus Blue Jackets (that’s the NHL, for all you non-hockey fans out there) fired coach Ken Hitchcock.
The NYT got around to running an obit for Lt. Colonel Archer. Their obit is interesting:
Mr. Archer ultimately maintained that he shot down five German planes — two on separate days in July 1944 in addition to the three in October 1944 — but said he had not been properly credited with one of those downings in July. Shooting down five planes would have brought him official designation as an ace, making him the only one among the Tuskegee Airmen.
In a 2008 review of wartime military records, Daniel L. Haulman of the Air Force Historical Research Agency found that Mr. Archer, while officially credited with four downings, was among the three leading Tuskegee pilots in shooting down enemy planes. His total was matched by Capt. Joseph D. Elsberry and Capt. Edward L. Toppins.
As you may recall, this directly contradicts the WP obit, which states he was credited with five victories by the Air Force.
Edited to add: The WP published a correction to their obit on February 2nd, which agrees with the NYT obit. However, the WP correction is not noted in the original article; I thought this was against WP policy.
From the “Thank you, Captain Obvious” department: Scotland has a drinking problem. The NYT sees Buckfast Tonic Wine as a symbol.
The drink is 15 percent alcohol by volume, a bit stronger than most wines. Also, each 750 milliliter bottle contains as much caffeine as eight cans of Coke.
From the “Art, damn it! Art!” department: I think I appreciate a good bit of art as much as the next guy, but this Giacometti bronze just seems to me to be really ugly. Maybe the photos are bad.
The “Hello Kitty” chainsaw. I want. (And Hello Kitty Hell gets added to the blogroll. Thanks to my great and good friend Commvault Bryan.)
James Arthur Ray, the Arizona sweat lodge guy, has been charged with three counts of manslaughter.
Did you know that Men at Work’s “Down Under” sampled a children’s tune called “Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree”? Have you even heard “Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree”?
Edited to add: I’m sure this will be blogged elsewhere, but it is too good to pass up. Sun CEO resigns. By Twitter. In haiku. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Edited to add 2: Also from the “Thank you, Captain Obvious” department is this actual headline from the LAT home page: “Stew is better without jimsonweed hallucinogen“. (Link goes to actual article which has a different headline.)
Random notes: January 18, 2010.
Monday, January 18th, 2010The New Jersey Nets are on a pace to win a grand total of six games this season. The NBA record for futility is the 1972-1973 Philadelphia 76ers, who went 9-73. Could the Nets beat the record? The NYT speculates.
I note this only because it will fill Lawrence’s heart with delight: Frank Gehry has withdrawn from the project to design a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.
Saturday’s Statesman has a longish article recapping the Triton Financial story, highlighting the firm’s ties to the Mormon church.
Church members and others describe the concentration of Triton executives and investors from the Mormon church as a possible example of “affinity fraud,” in which people looking for money often go first to those they know, either personally or through social organizations.
A $1,000 iPhone app that’s not I Am Rich.
Non story of the day: U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, so; I’m back in school one night a week (and not even meeting every night on the schedule). So blogging is either going to be light or heavy as I avoid schoolwork.
Obit watch.
Friday, December 11th, 2009Thomas Hoving, former curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Harlan Ellison has written
(Edited to add: Well, I will be sheep-dipped. You can get at least the first season of “Burke’s Law”
Random notes: November 25, 2009.
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009Shocked, shocked I am to learn that The Biggest Loser may indulge in questionable practices. I am equally shocked to learn that a charity collecting money for the homeless may be a scam.
I am delighted to find out that the CIA Family Advisory Board has published a second cookbook, More Spies, Black Ties, and Mango Pies. I own a copy of the original 1997 cookbook
I did not know Julie “Julie and Julia
Edited to add: On the “Art, damn it, art!” front: “Train” in vain.
(Since I got the song stuck in your head, here’s a live Clash video. And here’s a live Annie Lennox version. And here’s a not bad Manic Street Preachers cover.)