Giacomettis work below.

Look at the creepy caged head, its nose protruding with absolutely no inference to a popular childhood story (just to get that out of the way). So often a flying limb so few have the extended extremities in this and even fewer are tied in to the context of a frame. A swinging edifice, though never to swing (mind the priceless work). Floating in chains. Bound by the principles of interference, immaculate and characatured observance. We'll have no laws beyond our own here. blaaaaaaaah, what fun, at least the old buoy had a playful side. Further down the corridor we find a painting of a woman her bare vagina inelegantly appearing from under her skirt, filth, wonderful filth. and why not eh? I like the pompidou, it lacks the stuffiness of others

Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds

There is something beautifully chilling watching Oppenheimer relay these words. This sanctimonious dutiful obsequeence to humanity is not in contrast to reality. I am in love with a world extreme as this. Terrible deeds were committed by a few but this is always to happen to the quiet thinker who has so effectively objectified their thought that no thought of consequence can align itself. Those who abuse this are bound to do so. Those who encounter it are ascertainably delighted and at once pained. To be a child in a society, turn to art, maybe

How to read art

I have been thinking alot recently about how to read art, more specifically: how to make art linguistically tangible or intelligible.

Ai Weiwei's Sunflower seeds:

Lets be clear about this piece, it is a lot of sunflower seeds, so many that displayed upon the floor of the turbine hall they become a vast uninhabitable carpet. The single most important thing (before any political, social, humanistic analogy) they are is sunflower seeds. How incredibly, brilliantly evocative. I know in a hundred years people will talk of how a controversial Chinese artist splayed the jealous government of his home land leading to a series of quiet, individualistic revolutions. This ultimately is way more important than them being sunflower seeds but right now we have a carpet of sunflower seeds to deal with, each so fragile when we are told they are made of porcelain and hand painted, each one so lovingly crafted (at least in the eye of the beholder) - although to be frank I would have had to find extreme mental strength not to find this kind of labour monotonous. An incredible fragility en masse is what sets this piece aside, there are only aesthetic issues of balance, mass and weight. This is what makes this piece beautiful. Everything else is no longer the domain of the aesthetic. We shift beyond this in to the paradigmatic world of politics, social theory - mainly theories. Which is fine but please, art observers please try and find a way of reconciling oneself with what one is actually dealing with.

Giacometti

 

Today's Art

If I want to study for a PhD I must pay extraordinary amounts of money, I am unsure as to how I would ever find these sums. Instead I shall write the essay alone, to be named Today's Art. I think every now and then it is important to stock take on what one has. Art is such a wonderful and valuable place, I wish to be as a friend in any other circumstance and have my relationship with it.

Corporate hostility

Corporation. I saw a ship in a magazine. The ship was painted. It had wonderful, large sails, many of them, at least 16 over 4 masts. It was painted in tones of grey and white and overlaying its image was the words Luc Tuymans. With everything I saw I knew that there was an inference of corporation and how far away we are from its now romantic routes but trade has always been the same. People may say it is opaque now but not more so than then surely. Free markets have never been weighted to equality. There is something nice in this. People have always been oppressed and transparency has now become a buzz word in itself, P.R. alludes to its existence but there is no free word. We are either shackled or knowledgeable for our being. . It is hard to ignore politics. As Hunter S. Thompson wrote: politics is the art of controlling your own environment. The original big society thinker? Or the eternal wisdom of someone who was free from societal inferences and pressures? And the ship with its large sails is as much a symbol of beauty as it is an allusion to decaying standards. What I write I feel often to be naive, uninformed, but I am stubborn to the suggestion that there is anything more useful and true than looking.

Haruki Murakami - The wind up bird chronicle

Three chapters in. Red vinyl hat, curled lipped woman, abject misery, cats (again), floating words. I am keeping a list of all the things I remember from this book, I wish I had done so with Kafka on the Shore

Waiscoat

All the people I can name in the next two minutes or until I am interrupted

hugh laurie, michael tomasky, sara peters, zara phillips, princess anne, caroline duffy, the queen, grayson perry, michelangelo, fred peters, malcolm x, stephen fry, gareth pugh, yohji yamamoto, yoko ono, john lennon, paul mccartney, linda mcartney, thor, ronald mcdonald, natalie portman, stephen spielberg, vivienne westwood, malcom mclaren, viv peters, john cleese, bruce nauman, fred perry, jeff dennis, dave beech, bernice donzleman, dan smith,