Monday, 5 July 2004
the Telegraph was amusing yesterday about Sharapova's victory over Williams in the tennis (glad Federer won).
practically licking their lips, one writer enthused about Sharapova's 'flaxen hair' and 'blue eyes'.
there was almost a very distasteful subtext (or perhaps there actually was!).
[also, Robin Carmody wrestles impressively, but can also conclude by feeling the love]
practically licking their lips, one writer enthused about Sharapova's 'flaxen hair' and 'blue eyes'.
there was almost a very distasteful subtext (or perhaps there actually was!).
[also, Robin Carmody wrestles impressively, but can also conclude by feeling the love]
"The past months have been challenging for us in the anti-war camp. I am ashamed to admit that there have been times when I wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder ..."
_Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (in the Standard), quoted in this Ann Clwyd article.
Yasmin is merely "ashamed"?
she's being rather generous to herself.
absolutely disgusting.
meanwhile, in another guardian article, Ewen MacAskill is right about the islanders' right of return-debate in Diego Garcia.
_Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (in the Standard), quoted in this Ann Clwyd article.
Yasmin is merely "ashamed"?
she's being rather generous to herself.
absolutely disgusting.
meanwhile, in another guardian article, Ewen MacAskill is right about the islanders' right of return-debate in Diego Garcia.
Sunday, 4 July 2004
Attn. any American readers:
HAPPY STICK IT TO BRITAIN DAY [beams]
in celebration, below are links to seven pictures {days of the week} of said people, mostly from the arts (because being an arts blagger and not being familiar with the real creatives, the sciences and maths of the day, this is howwedo), in tribute. click on the name to be transported to a visual representation of them.
- James Baldwin
- Eudora Welty
- Mark Twain
- Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-sa )
- Richard Feynman
- Emily Dickinson
- Sarah Vaughan
HAPPY STICK IT TO BRITAIN DAY [beams]
in celebration, below are links to seven pictures {days of the week} of said people, mostly from the arts (because being an arts blagger and not being familiar with the real creatives, the sciences and maths of the day, this is howwedo), in tribute. click on the name to be transported to a visual representation of them.
- James Baldwin
- Eudora Welty
- Mark Twain
- Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-sa )
- Richard Feynman
- Emily Dickinson
- Sarah Vaughan
Saturday, 3 July 2004
CAUTION! UPCOMING PSEUDS CORNER ALERT +===+ CAUTION! UPCOMING PSEUDS CORNER ALERT +===+ CAUTION! &c.
Actually I’m probably going to recant my Koons outburst yesterday. I read somewhere his ‘conceptual pieces are slight’ but heck I wuv the bunny. I suppose the upshot of the matter is that even though I find Hughes at least nominally agreeable on many artists (his BBC2 documentary about Gaudi and Barca last year was unalloyed delight, television as educator but not in any dowdy or worthy sense, rather a joyous festival of flavours as it were; and, incidentally, worth my license fee all year just for that), I don’t want to go the whole nine yards.
Hughes on Rothko is damn straight up though, it must be said, you know his piece that opens with a discussion of the corpse of the artist and whatnot. As noted previously, I have a love-hate relationship (well it’s not hate at all, but sometimes not quite love) with Rothko. Essence of divine, spiritual suggestion, abstract, floating blocks, yeah, all very well. he probably is one of my favourite Abstract Expressionists, but frankly that’s at least as much to do with the fact he’s definitely one of the most well-known people from that grouping, so prints and opportunities to see him second-hand abound, and it’s politically correct to like him (terrible and complete misuse of the phrase), just as much as it’s politically correct (ditto) for (probably imaginary all these pot-shots of mine, but hey I’ve been reading a tabloid newspaper this morning and they like making up imaginary targets to fit their screed around and on top of) a certain type of hobo-smoking art-ish-a-nista to disdain terribly middle-of-road-bourgeois people hanging mass-produced mid-period Rothkos on their walls.
And the consensus of both chattering-class and really-rather-normal-chick-on-the-Namur-omnibus about him is deafening, and sometimes it’s an almost shrill chatter, rather than any soothing convo (still, what does that matter, and yes this is all caricaturing the probably/potentially only smallish body of society that does actually care for Rothko/knows who he was, to begin with, anyway… …and also potentially a case of me thinks he doth protest too much…).
But I will say there’s a very nice, extremely large, mainly orange canvas of his in a Chicago gallery (it resembles, somewhat, his celebrated ‘Orange and Yellow’ that hangs in Buffalo, NY; except quite a lot better for my money, but that is a redundant opinion because if you really wanna go anywhere with Rothko (well, not just him obviously) you have to see him in the flesh – I’ve only ever seen decent Rothkos in London, Chicago, and San Francisco, I must admit – if you haven’t seen Rothko in the flesh it’s still the same actually {strictly not true but I say this as a sop to any lovelies that might be reading who like Rothko but have never seen a Rothko in person} because I don’t want this rant to degenerate into something elitist, but what one is trying and failing to articulate is the sure knowledge that people who love Rothko but have never had the chance to appreciate a canvas in the flesh would surely jump at the chance to see one….anyway I’ve never been to Buffalo is my point, even though I would jump at the chance to see Manhattan-in-miniature-on-the-lake and be near an international border at the same time) that is indeed great, but it’s hung near a similarly-sized Pollock (sturm und drang and immense) and an even greater Still (vast and imperturbable is this Still, and but largely dark and glowering if you want that too).
It’s been repeated visits to this place to learn my own truth (how very pseuds-corner!) that I find this particular Still and this particular Pollock far superior to that Rothko (there’s a very small Newman in the next room with an exquisite frame that seems up there or probably the equal of this Rothko: size isn’t everything) and somehow containing that grain of truth that all posh critics bang on about, and other sixth-form cod-intellectualism’s if you’d like to jot ‘em down and are keeping score, but hey bugger it.
And I have to say, I think Hughes on the epic narrative of Rothko’s place in the American canon is pretty spot-on, the Abstract Expressionists forging their new white-heat technology in the crucible of the New World’s ideas factory, (gleefully?) displacing louche and decaying old Paree (Hughes would have preferred Hopper to have been canonised earlier, and in Rothko’s place, and by Jove that’s an attractive and good idea), the Abstract Expressionists had to count (don’t wanna go on some politicised rant about American hegemonic blah blah, especially given it’s only Germany, as a country and across mediums, out of fellow western nations that produced visual art – as a whole that is, not individual brilliance in terms of particular artists or the odd monumentally influential movement from certain other countries and sorry to use ‘of course’ but it’s needed innit! – to rival that of the USA in the western visual artists’ 20th century, but still…). Obviously I know I’m chatting complete bollocks here and my thesis is a mess as Still and Pollock were all considered abstract expressionists all together too, and they all hung around the Big Apple, I just wanted to make my point felt that – in my view as conventions dictate – Still and Pollock, to use a British colloquialism, piss all over Mark Rothko (who I mostly also adore, too), from the evidence presented to my own eyes, heart, and (bit of a long stretch this last un) brain.
Looking at a huge Still work, accustoming oneself to the traceries and sub-regions co-habitating and reacting with each other, seems to suggest to viewers things being made and unmade, it’s a real performative (oo-er!) process, high-flown/top-end acting peppered with violent and profound asides (seeking kinship with Flaubert or Zola or Turgenev). Rothko is a talented host, implying celestial bodies and a whole bunch of world-wide artistic traditions being ingested, put through the wringer with the rest of the fabric of time and space, and then spat out to (sometimes) glorious effect, but he still doesn’t seem as immeasurably strong as Still.
Not too sure if there’s as much learning, and unlearning, going on with Rothko as there is with Pollock either, but he doesn’t seem as thrilling as Pollock these days. he does contain faith (I was gonna write ‘a range of faiths, both mono-, and polytheistic’ but that seems fussy, redundant, and also unselfconsciously stoopid), in his cloudy action, and you can see storms and human history and turmoil and peace/love/n’philosophy, which is pretty bloody action-packed, but the other chap seems to have it…
there was an ILM thread once (dunno where now, but remember it clearly) about, well, just generally IDM/electronica and then in general dance (IIRC that bit) where people were saying the basic noble truth about magic in repetition (and other dancey tropes, to ensnare non-dance fans) if you wanna find it blah-de-blah, and someone posted a picture of a Rothko painting to illustrate a point. All perfectly eloquent with silence and all that I’m sure, yadda yadda yadda, but for some reason I just shrugged my shoulders when seeing that. dunno why, not a very nice thing to do, for which I apologise, I’m sorry.
+
anyway what do I know, I was shite at GCSE art, quite a lot of mates graduated from unis with fine or visual art degrees, but I read politics and anthropology!
+
big up Ian at 86400 seconds yet again, he is of course right, Henman is actually a very fine, talented player (whatever The Sun says), with a superb grass record. I was just in a foul mood or something like that, most likely, so accept my humblest apologies.
+ I ADORE Robert Hughes’ accent. It’s such a rich tone, not the plummy uber-fertile and expensive tones of an English luvvie or something (hello Donald Sinden), but like a ‘fair go’ Aussie version (more or less), and a brilliant nasal-side to it sometimes. When, during that documentary series he made for the Beeb about his native land, he was showing the utterly brilliant Dreamtime images Qantas had got Aboriginal artists (or at least non-Aboriginal folk with spraycans working to Aboriginal art essences and ideals) to paint onto the tailfins of their jumbo jets, I was so excited I think I blacked out: fantastic images, and a comforting, hot bath conversationally guiding you through it.
+
The Clash’s version of ‘Police & Thieves’ (which is being heard right here as we type, after a long absence on my part) is so inferior it’s really not funny, is it?
Mind you, Strummer and the gang always said that himself anyway, to be reasonable, so it’s hardly a daring opinion. And they loved Murvin, so respect due to the Clash anyway.
+
That was a good film, Natural Born Killers, wasn’t it.
Actually I’m probably going to recant my Koons outburst yesterday. I read somewhere his ‘conceptual pieces are slight’ but heck I wuv the bunny. I suppose the upshot of the matter is that even though I find Hughes at least nominally agreeable on many artists (his BBC2 documentary about Gaudi and Barca last year was unalloyed delight, television as educator but not in any dowdy or worthy sense, rather a joyous festival of flavours as it were; and, incidentally, worth my license fee all year just for that), I don’t want to go the whole nine yards.
Hughes on Rothko is damn straight up though, it must be said, you know his piece that opens with a discussion of the corpse of the artist and whatnot. As noted previously, I have a love-hate relationship (well it’s not hate at all, but sometimes not quite love) with Rothko. Essence of divine, spiritual suggestion, abstract, floating blocks, yeah, all very well. he probably is one of my favourite Abstract Expressionists, but frankly that’s at least as much to do with the fact he’s definitely one of the most well-known people from that grouping, so prints and opportunities to see him second-hand abound, and it’s politically correct to like him (terrible and complete misuse of the phrase), just as much as it’s politically correct (ditto) for (probably imaginary all these pot-shots of mine, but hey I’ve been reading a tabloid newspaper this morning and they like making up imaginary targets to fit their screed around and on top of) a certain type of hobo-smoking art-ish-a-nista to disdain terribly middle-of-road-bourgeois people hanging mass-produced mid-period Rothkos on their walls.
And the consensus of both chattering-class and really-rather-normal-chick-on-the-Namur-omnibus about him is deafening, and sometimes it’s an almost shrill chatter, rather than any soothing convo (still, what does that matter, and yes this is all caricaturing the probably/potentially only smallish body of society that does actually care for Rothko/knows who he was, to begin with, anyway… …and also potentially a case of me thinks he doth protest too much…).
But I will say there’s a very nice, extremely large, mainly orange canvas of his in a Chicago gallery (it resembles, somewhat, his celebrated ‘Orange and Yellow’ that hangs in Buffalo, NY; except quite a lot better for my money, but that is a redundant opinion because if you really wanna go anywhere with Rothko (well, not just him obviously) you have to see him in the flesh – I’ve only ever seen decent Rothkos in London, Chicago, and San Francisco, I must admit – if you haven’t seen Rothko in the flesh it’s still the same actually {strictly not true but I say this as a sop to any lovelies that might be reading who like Rothko but have never seen a Rothko in person} because I don’t want this rant to degenerate into something elitist, but what one is trying and failing to articulate is the sure knowledge that people who love Rothko but have never had the chance to appreciate a canvas in the flesh would surely jump at the chance to see one….anyway I’ve never been to Buffalo is my point, even though I would jump at the chance to see Manhattan-in-miniature-on-the-lake and be near an international border at the same time) that is indeed great, but it’s hung near a similarly-sized Pollock (sturm und drang and immense) and an even greater Still (vast and imperturbable is this Still, and but largely dark and glowering if you want that too).
It’s been repeated visits to this place to learn my own truth (how very pseuds-corner!) that I find this particular Still and this particular Pollock far superior to that Rothko (there’s a very small Newman in the next room with an exquisite frame that seems up there or probably the equal of this Rothko: size isn’t everything) and somehow containing that grain of truth that all posh critics bang on about, and other sixth-form cod-intellectualism’s if you’d like to jot ‘em down and are keeping score, but hey bugger it.
And I have to say, I think Hughes on the epic narrative of Rothko’s place in the American canon is pretty spot-on, the Abstract Expressionists forging their new white-heat technology in the crucible of the New World’s ideas factory, (gleefully?) displacing louche and decaying old Paree (Hughes would have preferred Hopper to have been canonised earlier, and in Rothko’s place, and by Jove that’s an attractive and good idea), the Abstract Expressionists had to count (don’t wanna go on some politicised rant about American hegemonic blah blah, especially given it’s only Germany, as a country and across mediums, out of fellow western nations that produced visual art – as a whole that is, not individual brilliance in terms of particular artists or the odd monumentally influential movement from certain other countries and sorry to use ‘of course’ but it’s needed innit! – to rival that of the USA in the western visual artists’ 20th century, but still…). Obviously I know I’m chatting complete bollocks here and my thesis is a mess as Still and Pollock were all considered abstract expressionists all together too, and they all hung around the Big Apple, I just wanted to make my point felt that – in my view as conventions dictate – Still and Pollock, to use a British colloquialism, piss all over Mark Rothko (who I mostly also adore, too), from the evidence presented to my own eyes, heart, and (bit of a long stretch this last un) brain.
Looking at a huge Still work, accustoming oneself to the traceries and sub-regions co-habitating and reacting with each other, seems to suggest to viewers things being made and unmade, it’s a real performative (oo-er!) process, high-flown/top-end acting peppered with violent and profound asides (seeking kinship with Flaubert or Zola or Turgenev). Rothko is a talented host, implying celestial bodies and a whole bunch of world-wide artistic traditions being ingested, put through the wringer with the rest of the fabric of time and space, and then spat out to (sometimes) glorious effect, but he still doesn’t seem as immeasurably strong as Still.
Not too sure if there’s as much learning, and unlearning, going on with Rothko as there is with Pollock either, but he doesn’t seem as thrilling as Pollock these days. he does contain faith (I was gonna write ‘a range of faiths, both mono-, and polytheistic’ but that seems fussy, redundant, and also unselfconsciously stoopid), in his cloudy action, and you can see storms and human history and turmoil and peace/love/n’philosophy, which is pretty bloody action-packed, but the other chap seems to have it…
there was an ILM thread once (dunno where now, but remember it clearly) about, well, just generally IDM/electronica and then in general dance (IIRC that bit) where people were saying the basic noble truth about magic in repetition (and other dancey tropes, to ensnare non-dance fans) if you wanna find it blah-de-blah, and someone posted a picture of a Rothko painting to illustrate a point. All perfectly eloquent with silence and all that I’m sure, yadda yadda yadda, but for some reason I just shrugged my shoulders when seeing that. dunno why, not a very nice thing to do, for which I apologise, I’m sorry.
+
anyway what do I know, I was shite at GCSE art, quite a lot of mates graduated from unis with fine or visual art degrees, but I read politics and anthropology!
+
big up Ian at 86400 seconds yet again, he is of course right, Henman is actually a very fine, talented player (whatever The Sun says), with a superb grass record. I was just in a foul mood or something like that, most likely, so accept my humblest apologies.
+ I ADORE Robert Hughes’ accent. It’s such a rich tone, not the plummy uber-fertile and expensive tones of an English luvvie or something (hello Donald Sinden), but like a ‘fair go’ Aussie version (more or less), and a brilliant nasal-side to it sometimes. When, during that documentary series he made for the Beeb about his native land, he was showing the utterly brilliant Dreamtime images Qantas had got Aboriginal artists (or at least non-Aboriginal folk with spraycans working to Aboriginal art essences and ideals) to paint onto the tailfins of their jumbo jets, I was so excited I think I blacked out: fantastic images, and a comforting, hot bath conversationally guiding you through it.
+
The Clash’s version of ‘Police & Thieves’ (which is being heard right here as we type, after a long absence on my part) is so inferior it’s really not funny, is it?
Mind you, Strummer and the gang always said that himself anyway, to be reasonable, so it’s hardly a daring opinion. And they loved Murvin, so respect due to the Clash anyway.
+
That was a good film, Natural Born Killers, wasn’t it.
Friday, 2 July 2004
AND ALL ALBERT SQUARE AT YOU
Ineffably wondrous Velazquez portrait in last week’s Andrew Graham-Dixon of a Franco-Spanish lady, breast slightly exposed.
Slow-burner: upheaval, migration, Vanity Fair, and eroticism.
Startling.
apparently Louis de Bernieres’ latest Birds Without Wings is not much cop. well, unfavourably compared with either Pascali’s Island or ‘The Rage of the Vulture’ from Barry Unsworth anyway (with their thoroughgoing dissections of the Ottoman empire calculated to entrance).
Turkic-Hellenic magical realism can probably be useful but this one’s just overweight, basically.
Orhan Pamuk’s latest Snow [ta Jess!], on the other hand, is sparkling Anatolian sorcerer-dust, boiled up and refined down to a pure high.
really looking forward to tomorrow night’s Robert Hughes docu.
previews note that special venom is reserved for Koons.
dunno what to make of that, i was enchanted by what i'll term an exquisite piece of his {yes! Wacko and Bubbles, yes} once seen at (the amazing) SFMoMA, and Hughes is certainly a grumpy holder of cudgels, but his “resonance, guv” calls are appealing. a lot of art blogs (i.e., ppl that know what they’re on about) will argue for Koons, and some won’t, and it’s true that arguments for Koons are more convincing than a knee-jerk rejection.
basically though, i don’t really feel Koons too much, i suppose.
~
I got a hard head like a hammer
~
really feeling Doogz. The BIONIC FIST? Strider.
ALL KLASS. I luv that “the wolfpack’s about” and that lurch, and that handclaps swerve, and all that speed.
~
five hours on gotta big up meself
compact discs to buy:
? Janet jackson
? Girls aloud
? Rachel stevens (united in poptimism etc.)
? J-kwon
? Usher
? Kompakt comp.
? Junior boys
? Rephlex grime comp.
? Britney
? Quite possibly maroon 5
? Some Cecil Taylor or something
- more Ethiopian things
- this is it
Vinyl:
1. Big tune Jammer production
2. Some UR stuff
3. Maybe some Astrobotnia, going cheap
4. Dillinger
WOEBOTNiK: priceless.
this Morley alternate histories pop arc thing is all very well (and indeed agreeable) but VDGG and Faust and all that aren't old Texan countrybluesmen still.
Franz Ferdinand are inspired by Dennis Potter it's true it's true!
mischief and DIVERS ALARUMS. heh.
Ineffably wondrous Velazquez portrait in last week’s Andrew Graham-Dixon of a Franco-Spanish lady, breast slightly exposed.
Slow-burner: upheaval, migration, Vanity Fair, and eroticism.
Startling.
apparently Louis de Bernieres’ latest Birds Without Wings is not much cop. well, unfavourably compared with either Pascali’s Island or ‘The Rage of the Vulture’ from Barry Unsworth anyway (with their thoroughgoing dissections of the Ottoman empire calculated to entrance).
Turkic-Hellenic magical realism can probably be useful but this one’s just overweight, basically.
Orhan Pamuk’s latest Snow [ta Jess!], on the other hand, is sparkling Anatolian sorcerer-dust, boiled up and refined down to a pure high.
really looking forward to tomorrow night’s Robert Hughes docu.
previews note that special venom is reserved for Koons.
dunno what to make of that, i was enchanted by what i'll term an exquisite piece of his {yes! Wacko and Bubbles, yes} once seen at (the amazing) SFMoMA, and Hughes is certainly a grumpy holder of cudgels, but his “resonance, guv” calls are appealing. a lot of art blogs (i.e., ppl that know what they’re on about) will argue for Koons, and some won’t, and it’s true that arguments for Koons are more convincing than a knee-jerk rejection.
basically though, i don’t really feel Koons too much, i suppose.
~
I got a hard head like a hammer
~
really feeling Doogz. The BIONIC FIST? Strider.
ALL KLASS. I luv that “the wolfpack’s about” and that lurch, and that handclaps swerve, and all that speed.
~
five hours on gotta big up meself
compact discs to buy:
? Janet jackson
? Girls aloud
? Rachel stevens (united in poptimism etc.)
? J-kwon
? Usher
? Kompakt comp.
? Junior boys
? Rephlex grime comp.
? Britney
? Quite possibly maroon 5
? Some Cecil Taylor or something
- more Ethiopian things
- this is it
Vinyl:
1. Big tune Jammer production
2. Some UR stuff
3. Maybe some Astrobotnia, going cheap
4. Dillinger
WOEBOTNiK: priceless.
this Morley alternate histories pop arc thing is all very well (and indeed agreeable) but VDGG and Faust and all that aren't old Texan countrybluesmen still.
Franz Ferdinand are inspired by Dennis Potter it's true it's true!
mischief and DIVERS ALARUMS. heh.
did you see old Saddam in court yesterday, eh?
pure theatre, wasn't it! electrifying!
he heard about Halabja, he said. very decent of him.
that suit!
he's a good looking fellow i tell you.
all that Bush is the real criminal stuff, fantastic.
i wonder if they allow visitors?
he should have Michael Moore round for a brandy and Havana, that's the sort of one-eyed bollocks he likes to spout.
pure theatre, wasn't it! electrifying!
he heard about Halabja, he said. very decent of him.
that suit!
he's a good looking fellow i tell you.
all that Bush is the real criminal stuff, fantastic.
i wonder if they allow visitors?
he should have Michael Moore round for a brandy and Havana, that's the sort of one-eyed bollocks he likes to spout.
Thursday, 1 July 2004
how do you say tour de force in all the languages?
29th June radio free narnia entry: what right[ness]!
29th June radio free narnia entry: what right[ness]!
fair enough in the case of the Home Office whistleblower Steve Moxon, who has said he does not want to go back to his job.
he certainly shouldn't be sacked for contributing to the row that led to the resignation of Beverley Hughes, immigration minister, back in April. The Home Office says his disclosures were not in the public interest, but it's difficult to agree with that perspective.
however, purely out of interest, one would like to note that Moxon thinks fundamentalist Muslims should be "silenced by nuclear weapons".
he certainly shouldn't be sacked for contributing to the row that led to the resignation of Beverley Hughes, immigration minister, back in April. The Home Office says his disclosures were not in the public interest, but it's difficult to agree with that perspective.
however, purely out of interest, one would like to note that Moxon thinks fundamentalist Muslims should be "silenced by nuclear weapons".
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