Top 10 of 2009: Entertainers Who Moonlight as Artists. Singer and sometime-painter Beyoncé, with husband Jay-Z, at Art Basel Miami. Courtesy BeyonceWorld.net In the spirit of my Los Angeles beat, I present to you the most exciting art world interlopers to come out of Hollywood in 2009: 10. Sylvester Stallone is making a comeback, and I’m not talking about Rocky XIV. The media has been all over “Sly” since he presented a group of paintings at Art Basel Miami earlier this month.
Though he has been painting for over 30 years, the show mounted by Gmurzynska Gallery marked first public exhibition of Stallone’s art, and his squiggle-encrusted canvases were snapped up to the tune of $50,000. Though he paints in his garage, the action star is no hobbyist. Sylvester Stallone poses with one of his paintings at Miami Basel, Dec. 2, 2009. 9. Jane Seymour at her easel, 2009. 8. 7. 6.
Lady Gaga photographing the London Papparazi April 17,2009. 5. 4. 3. M.I.A. with Li'l Wayne at the 2009 Grammy Awards. 2. Pharrell Williams feat. 1. Ludwig Wittgenstein. 1. Biographical Sketch Wittgenstein was born on April 26, 1889 in Vienna, Austria, to a wealthy industrial family, well-situated in intellectual and cultural Viennese circles. In 1908 he began his studies in aeronautical engineering at Manchester University where his interest in the philosophy of pure mathematics led him to Frege.
Upon Frege's advice, in 1911 he went to Cambridge to study with Bertrand Russell. Russell wrote, upon meeting Wittgenstein: “An unknown German appeared … obstinate and perverse, but I think not stupid” (quoted by Monk 1990: 38f). Within one year, Russell was committed: “I shall certainly encourage him. During his years in Cambridge, from 1911 to 1913, Wittgenstein conducted several conversations on philosophy and the foundations of logic with Russell, with whom he had an emotional and intense relationship, as well as with Moore and Keynes. 2. 2.1 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus The Tractatus's structure purports to be representative of its internal essence. 3.
Is the age of the critic over? | Culture | The Observer. Miranda Sawyer, broadcaster and Observer radio critic: 'Twitter has made it easier for critics to hear other people's opinions. Even then, though, you tend to hear similar views to your own' When I was writing for the Face, during the 1990s, I went to interview some boy racers: young lads who spent all their money souping up their cars in order to screech around mini roundabouts or rev their engines in supermarket car parks until their tyres smoked. The kids asked me who I was writing for. When I said the Face – a magazine that prided itself on representing all aspects of British youth interests – every single one of them replied: "Never heard of it.
" The point is that most people – especially those outside the high-culture capital of London – are involved in culture of their own choice, often of their own making. Professional critics spend their time whizzing between private screenings and secret gigs, opening nights and exclusive playbacks. See www.bookslut.com Why the astonishment? Everyone's a critic now. Late last year there was a confluence of critical opinion in America the likes of which the nation hadn't seen in years. Every single film critic in the traditional media – 350 "best" lists, the ads boast – seemed to anoint The Social Network, director David Fincher's semi-fictionalised account of the founding of Facebook, as the movie of the year, maybe even of the decade. Every single literary critic in the traditional media seemed to agree that Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, his saga of a dysfunctional American family, was the novel of the epoch.
And just to make it three for three, just about every television critic in the traditional media seemed to genuflect before Martin Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire, an HBO series that depicts the depredations of a mob kingpin in Atlantic City during Prohibition. This is an extraordinary bounty of greatness in such a short time, though what is really extraordinary is the extent to which critics seemed almost to collude in issuing their superlatives. What’s Wrong with the Culture of Critique. Photo: Brock Davis You don’t have to read this essay to know whether you’ll like it. Just go online and assess how provocative it is by the number of comments at the bottom of the web version.
(If you’re already reading the web version, done and done.) To find out whether it has gone viral, check how many people have hit the little thumbs-up, or tweeted about it, or liked it on Facebook, or dug it on Digg. These increasingly ubiquitous mechanisms of assessment have some real advantages: In this case, you could save 10 minutes’ reading time. Unfortunately, life is also getting a little ruined in the process. A funny thing has quietly accompanied our era’s eye-gouging proliferation of information, and by funny I mean not very funny. Technoculture critic and former Wired contributor Erik Davis is concerned about the proliferation of reviews, too.
Of course, Yelpification of the universe is so thorough as to be invisible. Life demands assessment. Business has much to learn from the arts. Batman: Has Batman ever killed anyone.