Living Painting Made of People
24 Apr 2009 6 Comments
in Art, Life, News Tags: Art for the Sky, conceptual art, Daniel Dancer
Here’s an unusual idea. Oregon conceptual artist, author and educator, Daniel Dancer recently worked with students from Long Island’s Commack Middle School to create the image of a humongous lighthouse, an image beloved by many native Long Islanders.
2,100 bodies form lighthouse at Commack school. Newsday photo by Daniel Dancer.
The entire Commack Middle School — 1,900 students and 200 staff members — took on the shape of a gigantic lighthouse representing the students’ shining beams of knowledge, understanding and respect for the earth. The lighthouse image was formed by participants wearing clothing representing the school colors (black, gold, and white) and other materials necessary to complete the design. In front of the school, participants gathered in designated areas to become “human drops of paint” forming an image that will only make sense from the sky.
The “rocks” on the bottom of the lighthouse are garbage bags filled with garbage collected from the beach at Sunken Meadow. The top of the lighthouse is constructed from sticks and driftwood from the beach, and the windows are in actuality water and soda bottles that were also collected from the beach.
Dancer photographed the huge design from a ladder truck raised 100 feet in the air.
“Art for the Sky” is an art form that has a history dating back 3,000 years. The varied teachings of Art for the Sky help participants awaken their “sky sight,” a manner of viewing the world in a big-picture way that gives greater access to creative thinking and problem solving. In working together to create Art for the Sky, participants experience the power of collaboration and the benefits of interdependence.
~MadSilence
RecycleToday + Great Furoshiki Tutorial Video
21 Apr 2009 3 Comments
in Japan, Japanese Culture Tags: eco, furoshiki, wrapping
Back in December I posted a little about DIY Christmas, including eco-friendly wrapping, specifically the wonderful Japanese furoshiki. I was surfing the Net and found this video on Vimeo with live-action book, wine, chocolate box and bag-making from RecycleNow. Check it out! This video shows how simple and elegant using furoshiki can be.
There’s actually a specific way of presenting your gift to the person who will receive it, but it’s quite traditional and complicated. I’ll have to scan an illustration out of my Japan book if you’re all interested.
Searching for Lisa Y
19 Apr 2009 5 Comments
in Art, Culture, Life, Popular Culture, Thoughts Tags: Lisa Yuskavage
MadFriend and artist Erika Takacs touched upon an interesting topic in a recent post, Weird search engine terms. It’s fascinating to consider what visitors are looking for that leads them to our blogs, and to contemplate just how those linkages are made. Even more so, it’s intriguing to learn which topics are of significance to those who search.
Nana by Lisa Yuskavage (2005)
Recently, the fourth most popular search phrase used on various search engines to find MadSilence has been “Lisa Yuskavage.” I find this surprising since Yuskavage is only mentioned in one MadSilence post, Still Searching for That Special Gift?, which featured a plastic shower curtain decorated with a Yuskavage image.
What is the appeal of Lisa Yuskavage? I decided to find out.
Yuskavage, like her colleague John Currin, is a contemporary figural painter. She graduated from Temple University and earned an M.F.A. from Yale University. Yuskavage paints the naked female form, “color-infused paintings of naked sloe-eyed girls with melon-like breasts, erect nipples and contorted bodies.”
Lisa Yuskavage from PostMedia
Her distinctive figures are grotesque young sexpots with bloated stomachs, described as “disturbing, repulsive, enticing, beautiful.” Her painterly skills have been compared to Vermeer, Raphael and Bellini. It is said that she has responded to her success by being “mildly naughty” and “using her exceptional facility to produce knowingly dreadful paintings.” Could this explain her popularity as a search term?
When you look at a Yuskavage painting, you aren’t sure if you’re supposed to feel titillated or offended, or if the proper response is to rush to your desk and write an essay on the eroticizing tendencies of ”the male gaze.” Unable to decide, you shrug your shoulders and conclude that the paintings are gorgeous to look at. And that is always enough. –Deborah Solomon in The New York Times, Art Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
“Gorgeous to look at?” Perhaps. And if beautiful to behold, would “that always [be] enough?” I’m not so sure. I find Yuskavage’s paintings offensive and pornographic, her exaggerated images of the female form disturbing and off-putting. Her images are pornographic in that their purpose appears to be the titillation of the male viewer, offensive and disturbing in that they exaggerate and distort the female human form.
But does my reaction reveal more about the viewer than the artwork? Is there some puritanical guilt in my voyeurism? Does Yuksavage have some hidden message or meaning that eludes me? Or am I, by nature of my gender, inflicted with ”the male gaze” that blocks the discernment of an ironic feminist message?
I’ve always enjoyed the female form in art, obtaining a great deal of aesthetic pleasure from such images, whether classical or modern, Vermeer or Picasso. Is their a proper way to represent the female form? An appropriate use of sexual imagery in art? Does Yuksavage address this puzzle in her artwork, or is she indeed “using her exceptional facility to produce knowingly dreadful paintings,” having stumbled upon a formula that appealed to the market?
Ken Johnson, writing in The New York Times, claims that “pornographic imagery is ubiquitous in art today.”
In the early ’90s Lisa Yuskavage’s erotic fantasy pictures of nubile half-naked young women made their debut, and not long after that John Currin moved from painting yearbookish images of anonymous girls to painting outrageously goofy pictures of women with ridiculously oversize breasts.
So-called pornographic imagery is ubiquitous in art today. Hilary Harkness’s lesbian S&M narratives, drawn and painted with old-masterly refinement; the photographer Thomas Ruff’s pixelated pornographic imagery, downloaded from the Internet; Mr. Currin’s own recent X-rated paintings. A recent exhibition of montages by Richard Prince featured much-enlarged images of naked women from trashy vintage pornography and fragments of de Kooning paintings and drawings of women.
The fault line running through all this involves the question of the “proper” use of sexual imagery in art. Do we ever allow it as an end in itself, or must it always be redeemed by some aesthetic, social, moral or ironic purpose? Can pornography be high art? Indian and Japanese artists raised it to that level in pre-modern times; literature is loaded with great erotica, from the Marquis de Sade to “The Story of O.”
On the other hand, whether because of aesthetic convictions, prudery or politics, the modern art worlds of Europe and America have not appreciated the idea of art made for sexual arousal. But why should that be any less worthy an aim than, say, trying to inspire religious feelings?
The “search for Lisa Y” leads me to confront an uncomfortable question, for which I have no easy answer. Readers, can you explain the appeal of Lisa Y?
~MadSilence
Lost in Translation
17 Apr 2009 3 Comments
in Humor, Life Tags: fun, Garfield, Japan
Garfield: The English
What happens when you take a Garfield comic strip, run it through an internet translator to Japanese, and then run it back through to English again? Garfield: Lost in Translation.
Garfield: The Engrish
~MS the Amusing
Those who love art cannot remain neutral
16 Apr 2009 4 Comments
in Art, art criticism, Criticism, Culture, Thoughts Tags: Alfred Barr
An actual “battle of styles,” as for instance between realism and abstraction, is desirable only to those who thrive on a feeling of partisanship. Both directions are valid and useful — and freedom to produce them and enjoy them should be protected as an essential liberty. There are, however, serious reasons for taking sides when one kind of art or another is dogmatically asserted to be the only funicular up Parnassus or, worse, when it is maliciously attacked by the ignorant, the frightened, the priggish, the opportunistic, the bigoted, the backward, the vulgar or the venal. Then those who love art or spiritual freedom cannot remain neutral.
—Alfred Barr, 1949
Source: Art criticism since 1900 by Malcolm Gee. Published by Manchester University Press ND, 1993
And this from the Founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York! Barr was the son of a Presbyterian minister, which may explain his reference to Greek Mount Parnassus. He entered Princeton University at the age of 16, which might explain his use of the word “funicular.” Whatever the reason, I enjoy the mental image of a cabled rail car climbing the steep slope to the top of Mount Parnassus, where the Greek Muses dwell.
Nicolas Poussin's (1594–1665) drawing of Apollo and the Muses on Mount Parnassus.
~MadSilence
Let’s get some shoes! Friday Fun
10 Apr 2009 6 Comments
in Humor, links, Music, Performance art, videos Tags: cake, friday fun, guacamole, Humor, imogen heap, Music, shoes, videos
Because it’s Friday! And it’s Spring! And nothing’s better to wipe the cares of the week away then watching ridiculous things on the Intarwebz(tm)!
OK, this video is absolutely ridiculous, but doesn’t every girl on the planet have a day like this sometimes?! And if you like that, check out the sequel: “Lemme Borrow that Top.“
Or, if you’re feeling contemplative (and appreciative of amazing music videos done in live-action stop-action):
And for other days when instructions are necessary to prevent bad food combinations. Like guacamole. And cake.
~MS the Easily Amused
PS: Ever heard of Imogen Heap? She’s a musician (previously with the group Frou Frou) who does amazing things with a mixing system and her voice. She makes these songs that are electronic but amazing warm and human, something you don’t hear that often. This is one of my favorite clips of her live:
Whale of a meal
07 Apr 2009 10 Comments
in Culture, Life, News, Thoughts Tags: whale meat, whaling
While I’ve never tried whale meat, I have no reservations about sampling this exotic food. After all, people eat intelligent mammals all the time. More to the point, the food we eat is often determined by cultural preference. I recall college-age friends raised in urban areas who were adamantly opposed to deer hunting, confronting rural friends who hunted deer not only for sport, but for sustenance.
Whale meat has long been a part of the Japanese diet. A Tokyo-based restaurant offers nothing but whale meat. On the menu can be found:
Fried whale meat. Boiled whale meat. Smoked whale meat. Whale meat sashimi. Whale meat sukiyaki. Baked whale meat with curry. Whale meat miso soup. Even whale meat cutlet with cheese.
A decades-long decline in whale meat consumption has caused the Japanese government to initiate programs to encourage people to eat more whale meat. Environmental groups, international governments and whale-lovers worldwide have protested the eating of whales.
Image source: The Wall Street Journal
After a 20-year ban on commercial whaling, Iceland in 2006 resumed limited hunting of minke whale, bringing whale meat to a a new generation of Icelanders. But does it taste like chicken? Apparently not.
“It looks and tastes like beef but costs about half as much.” From The Wall Street Journal.
Icelandic ads, with translations, from a campaign to get more people to eat Minke Whale:
Minke Barbecue
Minke Carpaccio Market
Minke Grill
Alaskan Eskimos have been subsistence whalers for almost 2,000 years. The International Whaling Commission decided in 2007 to allow Alaskan Eskimos to continue their subsistence whale hunt.
The debate spills over into the arts arena. The Endangered Species Act and international conventions restrict the harvest and sale of ivory, including the bones and teeth of Sperm Whales and the baleen of other whales, for the making of scrimshaw.
A difficult dynamic: To balance the needs of endangered & intelligent mammalian species against human cultural values & the need to maintain cultural identity.
~MadSilence to&w
The beginning of hanami season
06 Apr 2009 8 Comments
in Culture, Holidays, Japan, Japanese Culture, Life Tags: cherry blossoms, dango, hanami, Japan, pictures, sakura, spring
Cherry Blossoms in hand - the first of the season! Soon they'll start tumbling off the branches in showers of flowery snow.
Dango! The traditional flower-watching treat (along with some nice green tea or sake in a jar!). Brown ones on top are mitarashi-dango, sweet/savoury miso sauce poured all over them. Bottom are traditional hanami-dango. Sakura, plain and herb flavoured.
A stranger perches beneath the overhanging branches near the Saigawa River. So many people were using their cellphones to take pictures!
Attack! This kind of hawk, called a tombi, lives everywhere in our area. People feed them stuff from their BBQ's and suddenly they become a closer and scarier menace. My friends and I were sitting and munching away when suddenly I hear this "WHAM!" and a rush of air. The hawk had launced itself out of the tree, flew between me and my friends, and snatched a cream puff right out of my friend's hands. 6 inches from my face! There was nothing left of the puff but splatters of cream on the pavement ^^
MadSilence (the older & wiser) comments:
Dango is a Japanese dumpling made from mochiko (rice flour).
I believe the tombi is the Black Kite, a dark-colored, medium-sized hawk. While considered to be quite common, I don’t recall seeing any when I last visited Japan. According to Wikipedia:
Black Kites will take small live prey as well as fish, household refuse and carrion. They are attracted to fires and smoke where they seek escaping insect prey. They are well adapted to living in cities and are found even in densely populated areas. Large numbers may be seen soaring in thermals over cities. In some places they will readily swoop to take to food held by humans, offered or not, and their habit of swooping to pick up dead rodents from roads often leads to them being hit by vehicles. They are also a major nuisance at some airports where they are considered important birdstrike hazards. European and central Asian birds (subspecies M. m. milvus and M. m. lineatus respectively) are migratory, moving to the tropics in winter.
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Time around the world
03 Apr 2009 2 Comments
in Culture, Japan, Japanese Culture, Science Tags: calendars, computers, conficker, Japan, Science, time
Office paperwork! Especially, business trip forms. At my first school, I spent a lot of time traveling because I worked between a middle school and a high school. And of course that meant filling out paperwork for every… single… trip… At first the most challenging part was remembering which box was for what information: name (MS the younger), position (ALT), date (2009/4/2)… After which I would hand it in to my supervisor. He inevitably handed it back to me with errors. Most specifically “Don’t forget to write the date in Japanese!”
1978 Japanese Calendar from Newark Library's "Essential Calendar" exhibit.
Japanese? The Japanese write dates the same way we do, in numbers, right? Are numbers different in Japanese? It’s 2009, right? I can write that in kanji, no problem! 二〇〇九. And he looks and me and says, “No, in Japanese.” He proceeds to explain. In Japan, Western style dates are used, but more commonly used, especially on official documents, is 年号, nengou. The name of the current reigning Emperor is paired with the year of their reign. 2009 is officially 平成21, Heisei 21. This means that this is the 21st year of the reign of Emperor Akihito (who will be renamed Heisei after his death, a Buddhist practice). Heisei began the day after the death of the old Emperor Hirohito (renamed Showa after his death).
According to Obuchi, the name “Heisei” was taken from two Chinese history and philosophy books, namely Records of the Grand Historian (史記 Shiji) and the Classic of History (書経 Shujing). In the Shiji, the sentence “内平外成” (peace inside and prosperity outward) appears in a section honoring the wise rule of the legendary Chinese Emperor Shun. In the Shujing, the sentence “地平天成” (the land is peaceful and the sky is clear) appears. By combining both meanings, Heisei is intended to mean “peace everywhere”. The Heisei era went into effect immediately after the announcement of the new emperor on January 8th, 1989.
For businesses, the beginning of the financial year is in April. All very confusing at first, but after writing it on a few thousand business trip forms, you’ll start asking, what year is it at home again? Then you’ll know it’s time for a refresher course in your own country ^^;;;
Persian Calendar from "Calendar of the World"
In Iran, they use the Persian solar calendar to keep track of time.
The present Iranian calendar, also called the Jalali calendar, dates back to the eleventh century, when Jalal-ed-din Malek Shah Seljuq commissioned a panel of scientists in 1074-1079 AD to create a calendar more accurate than those in use at the time. Prominent among the scientists was Omar Khayyám, best known today for his poetry, especially The Rubaiyat.
The Iranian year begins on the day of the vernal equinox–the first day of spring. It consists of 12 months which have retained their old Persian names. They are: Farvardin, Ordibehesht, Xordad; Tir, Mordad, Shahrivar; Mehr, Aban, Azar; Dey, Bahman, and Esfand. The first six months are each 31 days, the next five 30 days, and the last 29 (except in leap years, when it is 30 days). They roughly correspond to the signs of the zodiac. The Iranian calendar coincides with the tropical year, which is 365.24219 days long, but because of the constraints of adjusting the beginning of the calendar to the beginning of the day (at midnight), on the average, the Iranian calendar runs short of the tropical year by 5h, 48m, 45.2s each year. In addition, in astronomical terms, the length of a year shortens by 0.00000615th of a day every century.
Afghanistan uses a similar system to Iran, called the Islamic calendar, but is linked to the moon rather then the sun. The calendar starts when Mohammad moved from Mecca to Medina in 621 AD. New Year’s was March 21st this year, which happens to be 1388. Australian Sophie of the blog GoEast writes about the problems a planetary calendar causes for people in modern society: specifically public holidays that can’t be predicted more then a week in advance. so much for planning long weekends.
Those of the Jewish faith calculate time using their own calendar which takes both the sun and moon into consideration, but unlike other systems a new day starts at dusk, when the first 3 stars can be seen. New Year’s is Rosh Hashana, which apparently commemorates not only another 365 days gone by but the creation of the world (circa 3761 BC). While I’ve had lots of Jewish friends in my life and certainly heard of Rosh Hashana, I never realized that’s what it meant!
"calendar: Jewish calendar." Online Photograph. Britannica Student Encyclopædia.
And on a completely different note, I’m glad we all didn’t have out computers blowing up on us yesterday. Dates are a big deal in the computer world, something maybe we’ve all forgotten since that “little upset” in 2000. If you hadn’t heard the pan panicked yammering on the web, a nasty little worm called “Conficker” was set to blow up on April 1st. Interesting worm, apparently it hacks its way into your computer through a variety of back doors and sits there, trolling over 50,000 randomly generated websites for instructions from its programmers. April 1st was the day someone was going to activate the nasty – but nothing’s happened yet! Worried you’re infected? Check out Yahoo!s survival guide for instructions on scanning and ridding yourself of it.
~MS the Younger and Bored
PS: Some fun links about time and calendars
- British Maritime Museum’s excellent PDF on time and calendars around the world
- Use EarthCalendar to find out what holidays are happening today all around the world on one page.
Alone in the office with a wordprocessor
01 Apr 2009 11 Comments
in Books, cooking, Food, On Books & Reading, Reading, Recipes, Thoughts Tags: cooking, Food, spring
Ahhhhhh! Isn’t it spring yet?? Isn’t is already April??? Why is it snowing? And why isn’t it warm? The plum trees are long bloomed out and the first cherry flowers are perched like tiny kernels of popcorn on the trees and yet, my cellphone says snow today. Curse you groundhog!! ::shakes fist at the sky::
But anyway – I wonder if you guys remember my mentioning the Tattered Cover Bookstore in my last post. It was a veritable book paradise, and I spent a good chunk of my time there while in Historis LoDo. Sadly this time of happiness had one serious deleterious effect: it’s revived my need to read. I’m a compulsive reader, a book fanatic. When I came to Japan I brought about 10 books with me, and vowed not to buy any while I was here because it’s just too hard to ship them home! So for 3 years I’ve made 1 Amazon order and otherwise survived on borrowing from friends and the limited English selection at our local library and re-reading until covers fall off of my favorites. Of course this was good because it forced me to read new kinds of lit, which is normally restricted to sci-fi, fantasy, military, and food. I’ve read the intricate tales of Murakami, the earthy and sensual lines of Roman poet Catullus, the ridiculous tales of The Princess Diaries… but this visit back to the States has destroyed my control – I have to read again!
3 books I brought back from Tattered Cover that helped to destroy my budget-restraining abilities: Tamora Pierce’s The Will of the Empress (don’t look at me like that, I have a weakness for YA fiction ^^;;;), Lois McMaster Bujold’s Cordelia’s Honor (if you like excellently written military fic with a hint o’ space opera, I highly suggest this author) and Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone, edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler.
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant by Jenni Ferrari-Adler
It’s that last one I’m absolutely raving about! The collection of essays and recipes about cooking and eating alone is so, well, comforting and amusing. One of my favorite quotes from the collection is this:
Dinner alone is one of life’s pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they’re alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam. ~Laurie Colwin
Every story you read makes you think “I know exactly how they feel! I’m not the only one who does that!’ One story talks about the author’s obsession with beans (being his best friend), another of being a Spragelfrau, an asparagus superhero, another their need to eat white foods(?!). They all reveal their secret “home-alone” foods.
So I’ve begun to think… I’ve been living alone for 3 years now… what are the strange comfort foods that I cook for myself when I’m alone? Sadly I have to confess to the regular sins of eating too many cookies and snack foods (when you get home from work and you’re starving and it’ll take an hour to get dinner on the table, those grilled corn-cob flavored potato chips start to look miiiiighty tasty…) and an abundance of soups, but besides that I think my biggest thing is an obsession with zucchini. When I’m alone I chop up a huge pile of onions and saute them golden-brown in olive oil and butter, then throw in a chopped up zucchini or two, toss the lid on and steam-saute the little buggers in their own juices. Sprinkle with a little black pepper and salt, toss into a bowl and sit and eat the whole damn thing with a spoon… who says it can’t be the main course!
I’m convinced this comes from the days when we grew zucchini in our backyard on LI. We’d always have green beans, cucumbers (my special charge), tomatoes of all varieties (which our Dalmation would sneak into the garden to eat, earning him the nickname of “cow-mation!”) and 4 or 5 zucchini plants. All summer we’d be up to our ears in squash. Baby ones tender and juicy and sauteed with pasta, medium ones to slice, bread and fry, and the few that you always manage to miss that grow to baseball-bat proportions that are perfect for grating and turning into zucchini bread or fritters.
My second food is something that looks horrible but tastes like heaven in a spoon (I love spoons, they’re definetly the best utensil ever created) and I always make when the tomatoes start ripening in the summer. Take a ripe tomato, dice it up, saute it in a little butter. When it’s given up all its juices, toss in a bag of baby leaf spinach and cover. Let it steam down until the spinach is done. Then toss in 2 whipped eggs and scramble. When it’s still a little wet throw a handful of your favorite shredded cheese on top, cover, turn off the heat and wait till it melts. When you deplate it it oozes everywhere, but it’s so luscious and amazing…
So, what foods do you make yourself when you’re all alone? What guilty pleasures do you indulge in when no-one’s looking? If you care to play along with my research, tag Kristina, artandlife, leafless, and Jafabrit!
~MS the younger and hungrier
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