Venice, California is paving a parking lot which necessitates “the removal of a much-used, albeit shabby work-area situated behind studio spaces occupied by artists Ed Ruscha and Laddie John Dill. Prompting the low-key Ruscha to consider leaving Venice after years working here. From an economic perspective, pushing out name artists is just bad business. Shouldn’t the value of Ruscha and Dill to the community be considered in the parking stall equation?”
Tag: 08.04.08
Why Is It Okay For Intellectuals Not To Know Math?
“Intellectuals and academics are just assumed to have some background knowledge of the arts, and not knowing those things can count against you. Ignorance of math and science is no obstacle, though. I have seen tenured professors of the humanities say — in public faculty discussions, no less — ‘I’m just no good at math,’ without a trace of shame. There is absolutely no expectation that Intellectuals know even basic math.”
Finding Context for Solzhenitsyn’s Message
“What link can we find to a figure like Solzhenitsyn today? The left compares America’s holding of enemy detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere to the Gulag…” John McCain, also a victim of internment, might disagree. According to one editorial, he “clearly comprehends the impact of Solzhenitsyn’s writings, of the power of words, of art, and of truth.”
Time, Inc. To Make Movies Ripped From The Headlines
“While some of the film deals are expected to derive from new stories in Time Inc. mags, the architects also hope to leverage the conglom’s historical assets through archived articles and photos from Time and Life that date back to 1923, including some of the most famous photographs of the last century. The company publishes 120 magazines globally and generates up to 3,000 articles each month; the venture gets a first look at all of those articles.”
An Important Lebanese Festival Makes A Comeback
In its heyday in the 1960s and 70s, Lebanon’s Baalbek festival attracted visitors from around the world. Stars like Ella Fitzgerald, Herbert von Karajan and the Lebanese singer Fairuz performed here. But in 2006, the festival was cancelled as war broke out between Israeli and the Shia Muslim movement Hezbollah.
The World’s Ten Oddest Travel Guides
Wordsworth wrote a travel book? It’s true. Others on the list include the Lonely Planet Guide to Micronations, “a meditation on just what it is that drives people to want to get away, even if only for a few square meters, from the hassles and history of the land they were born into.”
Caravaggio Stolen From Ukranian Museum
The chiaroscuro work, alternately known as The Taking of Christ and The Kiss of Judas, was stolen some time between Tuesday night and early Thursday morning from a museum in Odessa.
Can Economic Theory Rewrite Art History?
Can the type of economic analysis that explains the $4-plus gas at the pump can also explain the greatest artists of the last 100 or so years? Economist David Galenson’s “statistical approach has led to what he says is a radically new interpretation of 20th-century art, one he is certain art historians will hate.”
Is Troubled Belgium Finished?
It’s about culture in the end. In its escalating dysfunction Belgium demonstrates the inextricable link between culture and nationhood.
China’s Amazing Mega-Cities
“The mega-city — usually defined as a city with a population of 10 million or more — isn’t a new phenomenon, or one that China invented. Yet urbanists are looking to China (where Shanghai and Beijing are already mega-cities, and at least a dozen others are huge, if not “mega”) to find the capital of the 21st century, rather like Paris was the capital of the 19th, and New York the capital of the 20th.”