Art is difficult,” says the 66-year-old firmly. “It’s not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art – it’s very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it’s art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.
Anselm Kiefer reflects on his work before the opening of his biggest UK Show at the White Cube Gallery in London.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/dec/08/anselm-kiefer-art-white-cube
This is the latest in the Temporary Sculpture series. It is a response to a short stretch of coastline which has inspired my visual and literary practice. Here the stone which suggests a human profile was found and which stares out from the top of this mast. The base of the work is a direct reference to boat builders and the sea. It also suggests the cardinal points of the compass. The blackboard and monoprint collage offer entries into other worlds.
Art is for everybody, but not everybody knows that.
Animated Sheet Music: “So What” by Miles Davis
After J S Bach, I immediately thought of Miles Davis.
J.S. Bach - Cello Suite No. 1 - Prelude
Baroque.me (2011) by Alexander Chen. Video capture. baroque.me visualizes the first Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suites. Using the math behind string length and pitch, it came from a simple idea: what if all the notes were drawn as strings? Instead of a stream of classical notation on a page, this interactive project highlights the music’s underlying structure and subtle shifts.
Grab and interact: baroque.me
More details at: blog.chenalexander.com/2011/baroque-bach-cello/
On a personal note regarding my own piano practice, l am working on Bach’s Prelude in C and the first of the Six Little Preludes from the Wilhelm Friedemann Bach Notebook.
Part of a series of erotic mono-prints produced in Glasgow during my extended stay earlier this year.
“Beckett will not hear of being interviewed, whether orally or in writing. I fear that on this he is not to be budged. He gives his work, his role stops there. He cannot talk about it. That is his attitude… . One must take him as he is.”
Repeatedly, Beckett insists that his writing speaks for itself:
“I know no more about this play than anyone who manages to read it attentively… . I do not know who Godot is. I do not even know if he exists. And I do not know if they believe he does, these two who are waiting for him.”
‘The Letters of Samuel Becket,’ reviewed by Michael Dirda
“One cannot live outside the machine for more perhaps than half an hour.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Alex Ross in The Rest is Noise
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/09/thought-of-the-day.html
Nice find.
From the Museum Nerd archive… The original 1999 flyer for Brooklyn Museum’s “Sensation” exhibit (first shown in London at the Royal Academy of Arts) of Saatchi’s Young British Artists (YBA) collection which sparked so much controversy.
HIATUS
Taken through the porthole of The Waverley, a steam paddle steamer built in 1947 on the Clyde in Scotland during my long stay in Glasgow earlier this year.
It was a very productive period for my visual work. I will post a teaser from a series of erotic mono-prints which will be posted shortly.
Over the past few months l have been travelling and working on a website which this blog will be linked.
As a writer I’m fascinated by an interrogation of the idea of home. What it is to be at home. What it is to live at home or to leave home or to damage a home or reinvent a home or leave a home and return back to it.
SKYDIVING BLINDFOLDED, VON SIMON STEPHENS
Or Five Things I Learned From Sebastian Nübling
Keynote Speech at the opening of Stückemarkt 2011 on 8th May 2011 at Haus der Berliner Festspiele.
Hamish Fulton's Slowalk (in support of Ai Weiwei)
It is inspiring to see another artist create a work in support of another. Hamish Fulton’s Slowalk. It reminds me of the Buddhist practice of Walking Meditation advocated by Thich Nhat Hanh.
PJ Harvey live session: How I wrote ... The Last Living Rose
This song from her album Let England Shake makes me think about my complicated relationship with England: the place of my birth and where l have felt the most unrooted. It therefore relates to The Last of England and my temporary sculpture The Last of …..
It also reminds me of Donovan’s Universal Soldier (http://youtu.be/G9-49abv3l8) and The War Drags On which we studied at school together with The Soldier written by Rupert Brooke, which we learnt by heart. Here is the first verse:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
The whole poem can be read at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15695
Salman Rushdie on Ai Weiwei
Dangerous Arts
By SALMAN RUSHDIE
The New York Times, Published: April 19, 2011.
Governments of the free world must make sure artists, like Ai Weiwei, who courageously stand up against authoritarianism are safe.
“When artists venture into politics the risks to reputation and integrity are ever-present. But outside the free world, where criticism of power is at best difficult and at worst all but impossible, creative figures like Mr. Ai and his colleagues are often the only ones with the courage to speak truth against the lies of tyrants. We needed the samizdat truth-tellers to reveal the ugliness of the Soviet Union. Today the government of China has become the world’s greatest threat to freedom of speech, and so we need Ai Weiwei, Liao Yiwu and Liu Xiaobo.”
Listen to the pronunciation of “Minä rakastan sinua”
Nick was born in Birmingham, England in 1953 and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1977 followed by a Fellowship in Painting at Sunderland Polytechnic in 1978.
