China. Nari Ward. Street Art & The Arab Spring. Joseph Beuys, Feet Washing. “Every man is an artist” What can art be? Can a lecture or a public discussion be art? The 20th century has taught us that almost everything can be used as art. The photographs that record the teaching and discussion practices of Joseph Beuys force us to think about the boarders of art.
We are also compelled to ask “what does it mean?” For Beuys, there should be no clear demarcation between art and life. This is what Beuys called the “social sculpture” (Soziale Plastik). Beuys did not think that each human being should paint or produce particular things we call “art.” Another aspect of the idea of the “social sculpture” consists in Beuys’ critique of the modern society not only as an extremely rationalized but also as a highly individualized one. Imitatio Christi In his work Feet Washing (1971) Beuys is performing an action which reminds us of a famous story from the Gospel. Text by Dr. The best art is born from democracy | Jonathan Jones | Art and design. Jackson Pollock documentary. Portrait of the artist: Sebastião Salgado, photographer. What got you started? I discovered photography completely by chance. My wife is an architect; when we were young and living in Paris, she bought a camera to take pictures of buildings.
For the first time, I looked through a lens – and photography immediately started to invade my life. I finished my PhD in economics, and become an economist, but the camera gave me 10 times more pleasure. Do you suffer for your art? I cannot really say I "suffer". Has the advent of digital photography been a good thing for the art form? Yes, an incredibly good thing. What's the best advice anyone gave you? When I was just starting out, I met Cartier-Bresson. Who or what is your greatest source of inspiration? Gandhi. Is there an art form you don't relate to? Not really. What one song would work as the soundtrack to your life?
The Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah. In short Born: Aimorés, Brazil; 1944 Career: Began working as a photographer in Paris in 1973. Cultural Connectives: Understanding Arab Culture Through Typography. By Maria Popova What typography has to do with cross-cultural understanding and linguistic minimalism. I’m obsessed with language, such a crucial key to both how we understand the world and how the world understands us.
In today’s political and media climate, we frequently encounter the Middle East in the course of our daily media diets, but these portrayals tend to be limited, one-note and reductionist. We know precious little about Arab culture, with all its rich and layered multiplicity, and even less about its language. On the heels of last month’s excellent Arabic Graffiti comes Cultural Connectives — a cross-cultural bridge by way of a typeface family designed by author Rana Abou Rjeily that brings the Arabic and Latin alphabets together and, in the process, fosters a new understanding of Arab culture. The book jacket unfolds into a beautiful poster of a timeless quote by Gibran Khalil Gibran, rendered in Arabic: Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool.
For the Love of Books: A Sarajevo Story – in pictures. Frank Gehry: 'There's a backlash against me' | Art and design | The Observer. There are iconic architects and there is the architect who is the icon of iconic architecture. Whether he wanted to or not, Frank Gehry, as the creator of the titanium-clad Bilbao Guggenheim, made the original for 10,000 wannabes – pointy, swooshy, shiny things, would-be masterpieces that proclaimed regeneration for whichever ex-industrial swamp or intended megalopolis that happened to host them. He was feted in magazines and film and by an appearance on The Simpsons. He became the epitome of the idea – again, without much reference to his own wishes – that genius in architecture lies in spectacular shape-making.
Then there was the inevitable reaction. Iconic architecture came to be seen as wasteful, extravagant, unsustainable and, worse, a gaudy distraction from the dark financial forces for which it was a bauble. Not that he or his office seem unduly perturbed by the change in the critical wind. He argues that what he calls "expression" is essential. I buy the Gehry defence. Noir Nouar. ‘ Noir Nouar is a dark haired girl, with dark subliminal meanings and jolly palatable paintings.
For example, you might think a robust shiny tomato lady is an enticing marketing icon; but three eager worms approach, their phallus shaped noses glowing red with excitement. A Bob’s Big Boy cameo also fits nicely in the genre of American advertising. But in the nude, he is a blatantly repulsive mascot for Fatty Happy Lard. This is the precarious imagery that Nouar delivers in neat packaging, awaiting responses of repugnancy and giggles. 15 Amazing Tattoos Inspired by Science.
The Bomb and the General: A Vintage Semiotic Children's Book by Umberto Eco. By Maria Popova How symbols become symbols, or what keeping atoms in harmony has to do with language acquisition. Novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco once said that the list is the origin of culture. But his fascination with lists and organization grew out of his longtime love affair with semiotics, the study of signs and symbols as an anthropological sensemaking mechanism for the world.
In bridging semiotics with literature, Eco proposed a dichotomy of “open texts,” which allow multiple interpretations, and “closed texts,” defined by a single possible interpretation. Since semiotics is so closely related to language, one of its central inquiries deals with language acquisition — when, why, and how children begin to associate objects with the words that designate those objects. This particular page presents a lovely wink at Brian Cox’s The Quantum Universe, featured here earlier today: Mom is made of atoms. Via the lovely We Too Were Children, Mr. Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr. Teju Cole (color photos)'s Photostream. R.k.vr.y. Picture Show: The Garden - - GOOD. Over the last few years, urban gardening has grown increasingly more prominent-as an emblem of demand for healthier, more natural food; as a centerpiece of community-minded interaction; and as a means of cultivating beautifully functional public spaces.
All these factors are in evidence at the Somerset Community Garden in South Providence, Rhode Island, where families of African, Cambodian, Dominican, European, Hmong, Laotian, Liberian, and other origins share a public space where they maintain all sorts of different crops. Photographed across many seasons over a two-year span by Lucas Foglia, "The Garden" covers an entire city block and continues to attract a vast array of individuals. "I've gone back a lot to visit when I'm in Providence, and every time I go there are more gardens," says Foglia. "It's interesting, considering what's going on with food globally and financially.
Learn more at Southside Community Land Trust. Www.arttrucks.com. Oh Freedom! Alejandro Escalona: 75 years of Picasso's Guernica: An Inconvenient Masterpiece. Take a closer look at Picasso's Guernica. Let its powerful images of the ravages of war confront you: the screaming man engulfed in flames, the bewildered horse, and the howling mother carrying the dead body of her child--all forever unable to escape an unseen horror. The chaos unfolding seems to happen in closed quarters provoking an intense feeling of oppression. There is no way out of the nightmarish cityscape.
The absence of color makes the violent scene developing right before your eyes even more horrifying. On the left, a bull stares at you with uneven eyes while a warrior lies dead still holding a broken sword. This year marked the seventieth fifth anniversary of both the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica and the creation of Pablo Picasso's mural depicting the horrors of the unprecedented aerial bombardment against a defenseless civil population of around five thousand. Picasso's mural is now also inescapably linked to the US-led war in Iraq.
Look again at Guernica. John Perivolaris - Migrados.