Showing posts with label NEWS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NEWS. Show all posts
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Smarter People Stay Up Later, Do More Drugs and Have More Sex - Esquire
Tags:
Drugs,
MasterLiving,
NEWS,
SCIENCE,
sex
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Saturday, September 28, 2013
The #cannabis #business: Here come the suits, man | The Economist
D'you think he's a real cop?
EVERY stoner has been there. You are sprawled on the couch, smoking trees of the finest Super Lemon Haze, when the phone rings: a friend needs picking up from the station. Happily, help is on the way: pop a Buzzkill, one of several products in development by the masterminds at Hudson Nutraceuticals, and the metabolising of tetrahydrocannabinol in your liver is accelerated, helping you sober up.
Such is the claim of Mike Schreibman, a former NBC executive who co-founded Hudson last summer. He understood he was on to something, he says, when he ate too much cannabis-infused chocolate sauce one day and realised he would do anything to stop the room from spinning.
Mr Schreibman was one of many entrepreneurs peddling their wares this week at a cannabis jamboree in Denver organised by ArcView, an angel-investment group. Together they raised over $1m. But bar the large pot plants on the stage, in many respects the meeting was no different from other gatherings of American investors and businessfolk. Ties, women and non-white faces were scarce. Pitches were peppered with jargon and cheerfully optimistic revenue projections, though not always a clear indication of the product or service on offer. But there was also a strong atmosphere of camaraderie, a sense that here there was an industry to be built rather than turf wars to be fought.
That is because the ground at last appears to be clearing for the cannabis industry in America. In 1996 California became the first state to legalise the drug for medical use (19 others, and Washington, DC, followed). But aggressive enforcement of federal law, under which pot remains illegal, and unpredictable regulatory regimes have made life miserable for growers and dispensary-owners. Investors have largely stayed on the sidelines.
Yet in November 2012 Colorado and Washington became the first states fully to legalise the drug. And last month the federal government indicated that it would not stand in the way of their experiments so long as they were properly regulated. Soon afterwards, says Steve DeAngelo, one of ArcView's founders, he was contacted by three well-known investors who had previously been unwilling to countenance cannabis. Now they wanted in.
With several more states likely to legalise cannabis in the coming years it is little wonder gold-rush metaphors are being thrown around. The legal cannabis market was worth $1.2 billion in 2011, reckons ArcView. By now it will be much bigger. Some look forward to a fully legalised industry worth $100 billion or more.
Still, says Steve Berg, an adviser to ArcView, investors remain wary of any outfit that "touches the leaf" directly. Thus the heavy presence at ArcView of ancillary businesses in which risks as well as returns are lower: from cannabis-oil extractors to electronic plant-trimmers. Some have built their business models around regulatory schemes: the pitch of Canna Security America, which is seeking $2m to expand, is that it helped write Colorado's security regulations. Who better to help a dispensary implement them?
Participants in the conference speculated about the shape the industry might take as it develops. One day rolling a spliff from home-grown weed will seem as quaint as baking one's own bread, suggests Mr Schreibman (who despite his chocolate-sauce experience has never smoked). Cosmetics and herbal remedies will be huge with soccer moms, muses another attender. Adam Cohen, who set up a cannabis-investment fund last year, thinks that once the full extent of the drug's medicinal uses becomes clear the federal government will be forced to reclassify it.
Inevitably something is lost as Wall Street steps in. A veteran ArcView investor recalls a charming but hopeless presentation by two stoner entrepreneurs who had built a device to convert Starbucks coffee cups into water pipes. Not only might a spruced-up cannabis business have no room for such innovations, he feared, it would be much less entertaining.
Such is the claim of Mike Schreibman, a former NBC executive who co-founded Hudson last summer. He understood he was on to something, he says, when he ate too much cannabis-infused chocolate sauce one day and realised he would do anything to stop the room from spinning.
Mr Schreibman was one of many entrepreneurs peddling their wares this week at a cannabis jamboree in Denver organised by ArcView, an angel-investment group. Together they raised over $1m. But bar the large pot plants on the stage, in many respects the meeting was no different from other gatherings of American investors and businessfolk. Ties, women and non-white faces were scarce. Pitches were peppered with jargon and cheerfully optimistic revenue projections, though not always a clear indication of the product or service on offer. But there was also a strong atmosphere of camaraderie, a sense that here there was an industry to be built rather than turf wars to be fought.
That is because the ground at last appears to be clearing for the cannabis industry in America. In 1996 California became the first state to legalise the drug for medical use (19 others, and Washington, DC, followed). But aggressive enforcement of federal law, under which pot remains illegal, and unpredictable regulatory regimes have made life miserable for growers and dispensary-owners. Investors have largely stayed on the sidelines.
Yet in November 2012 Colorado and Washington became the first states fully to legalise the drug. And last month the federal government indicated that it would not stand in the way of their experiments so long as they were properly regulated. Soon afterwards, says Steve DeAngelo, one of ArcView's founders, he was contacted by three well-known investors who had previously been unwilling to countenance cannabis. Now they wanted in.
With several more states likely to legalise cannabis in the coming years it is little wonder gold-rush metaphors are being thrown around. The legal cannabis market was worth $1.2 billion in 2011, reckons ArcView. By now it will be much bigger. Some look forward to a fully legalised industry worth $100 billion or more.
Still, says Steve Berg, an adviser to ArcView, investors remain wary of any outfit that "touches the leaf" directly. Thus the heavy presence at ArcView of ancillary businesses in which risks as well as returns are lower: from cannabis-oil extractors to electronic plant-trimmers. Some have built their business models around regulatory schemes: the pitch of Canna Security America, which is seeking $2m to expand, is that it helped write Colorado's security regulations. Who better to help a dispensary implement them?
Participants in the conference speculated about the shape the industry might take as it develops. One day rolling a spliff from home-grown weed will seem as quaint as baking one's own bread, suggests Mr Schreibman (who despite his chocolate-sauce experience has never smoked). Cosmetics and herbal remedies will be huge with soccer moms, muses another attender. Adam Cohen, who set up a cannabis-investment fund last year, thinks that once the full extent of the drug's medicinal uses becomes clear the federal government will be forced to reclassify it.
Inevitably something is lost as Wall Street steps in. A veteran ArcView investor recalls a charming but hopeless presentation by two stoner entrepreneurs who had built a device to convert Starbucks coffee cups into water pipes. Not only might a spruced-up cannabis business have no room for such innovations, he feared, it would be much less entertaining.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Jorge #Selaron found dead on the staircase he decorated in #Brazil
Tags:
art,
Brazil,
MasterLiving,
NEWS
The painter who turned the 215 steps into a kaleidoscope of brightly hued tiles from all over the world, into a rambunctious “tribute to the Brazilian people,” was found dead on the very staircase.
Jorge Selaron found dead on the staircase he decorated in Brazil | World | News | National Post
Jorge Selaron found dead on the staircase he decorated in Brazil | World | News | National Post
The candy-colored steps of a staircase in Rio’s bohemian neighborhood of Lapa were the life work of Chilean artist Jorge Selaron, and a symbol of his adopted city. On this gray, rainy Thursday, they became his memorial.
The painter who turned the 215 steps into a kaleidoscope of brightly hued tiles from all over the world, transforming a dingy, urine-scented alley and stairs into a rambunctious “tribute to the Brazilian people,” was found dead on the very staircase.
Rio de Janeiro police found his body front of his house, one of the humble colonials that face the staircase as it ascends into the St. Teresa Convent above. Visitors dropped flowers and tried to light candles in the blustery weather on his doorstep.
Investigators would not disclose the cause of death but are not discarding murder. Calls for additional comment from police were not promptly returned.
Meanwhile, neighbors, friends and strangers are in shock over the death of a man who may have been born abroad, but whose open, carefree manner and riotous use of colour came to represent the best of Rio. In 2005, the staircase became a city landmark and the artist was declared an honorary Carioca, or Rio resident.
“We can speak of Lapa before and after Selaron. He changed the face of Rio. His death is something brutish, that makes no sense,” said Jocimar Batista de Jesus, aka Mestre Duda Pirata, a capoeira master who also lives along the steps and shared many a beer with the artist over decades.
The staircase project began in 1990, when Selaron began tiling the steps and collecting old porcelain bathtubs to use as planters along the sides.
Crowded in a corner are tiles showing a woman in traditional dress from Minho, Portugal, next to a Buddha in seated lotus position, next to a depiction of St. Jorge slaying a dragon. A few steps ahead, Indian deities fan out around a tile representing the principal sites of Berlin. Further up are tiles showing Bob Marley, antique French tiles, and others with flowing Arabic calligraphy, all flanked by the flaming red and eye-popping yellow Selaron chose as the dominant colors.
The artist himself, unmistakable with his bushy mutton chop mustache, was always around, said tour guide Alejandro Martin Barreira.
Often attired in the quintessential carioca outfit of flip-flops and board shorts, and outgoing to the point of offering to take pictures with tourists even before they asked, Selaron was a local character as picturesque and well-loved as his work.
He’d make a little money selling other paintings to people visiting the steps.
“Here in Lapa everyone knew him; he was the face of this bohemian, artistic neighborhood,” said Barreira. “He was simple man, who loved this life, sitting here, watching the kids play, chatting people up.”
A mysterious image that pops up in all of Selaron’s work — a hugely pregnant black woman, often shown holding a fish — makes appearances throughout, some of them discreet, some monumental. In one painting that takes over several tiles, Selaron gives himself, mutton chops and all, the same pregnant belly and prominent breasts, along with a sign that says, “Brazil, I love you.”
The artist introduces the character to visitors in his own words, painted, of course, on tile: “On the 7th of December of 1999, I was moved to tears,” he wrote. “All that was needed was for me to paint the pregnant woman who is in all my paintings.”
He never reveals who she was, writing only it is a personal matter. With that last touch, he ran out of room. So he started substituting the tiles, he explained, turning the staircase into a fluid, evolving piece, perennially changing to reflect the interests, origins or obsessions of contributors, with Selaron first among them.
The staircase that was born of this “great folly,” as he writes in a tile, is full of stories, notes, poignant mementos of those who pass by and leave something of themselves.
In one, Selaron thanks a friend for helping out with the tiling. Elsewhere, proud mother Jandira announces the birth of her son Bruno. In one tile, Selaron apologizes to his landlady, Dona Elena, for having neglected to pay rent during the years he spent working on the staircase.
“I hope you understand,” he pleads in a piece decorated with the omnipresent pregnant woman.
Selaron meant the work to last a lifetime.
“I will only end this mad and singular dream on the last day of my life,” he wrote on the wall.
Several steps above, an anonymous contributor answered, in simple handwriting on a plain tile painted in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag: “Obrigado, Selaron.”
“Thank you, Selaron.”
The painter who turned the 215 steps into a kaleidoscope of brightly hued tiles from all over the world, transforming a dingy, urine-scented alley and stairs into a rambunctious “tribute to the Brazilian people,” was found dead on the very staircase.
Rio de Janeiro police found his body front of his house, one of the humble colonials that face the staircase as it ascends into the St. Teresa Convent above. Visitors dropped flowers and tried to light candles in the blustery weather on his doorstep.
Investigators would not disclose the cause of death but are not discarding murder. Calls for additional comment from police were not promptly returned.
“We can speak of Lapa before and after Selaron. He changed the face of Rio. His death is something brutish, that makes no sense,” said Jocimar Batista de Jesus, aka Mestre Duda Pirata, a capoeira master who also lives along the steps and shared many a beer with the artist over decades.
The staircase project began in 1990, when Selaron began tiling the steps and collecting old porcelain bathtubs to use as planters along the sides.
As it grew, people began to contribute, to send him tiles, to bring them to Rio when they came to visit“He had no resources, no support from the city,” said Jesus. “The neighbors helped as they could. I brought him tiles from my trips, from Spain, Holland, as I traveled. As it grew, people began to contribute, to send him tiles, to bring them to Rio when they came to visit.”
Crowded in a corner are tiles showing a woman in traditional dress from Minho, Portugal, next to a Buddha in seated lotus position, next to a depiction of St. Jorge slaying a dragon. A few steps ahead, Indian deities fan out around a tile representing the principal sites of Berlin. Further up are tiles showing Bob Marley, antique French tiles, and others with flowing Arabic calligraphy, all flanked by the flaming red and eye-popping yellow Selaron chose as the dominant colors.
The artist himself, unmistakable with his bushy mutton chop mustache, was always around, said tour guide Alejandro Martin Barreira.
He’d make a little money selling other paintings to people visiting the steps.
“Here in Lapa everyone knew him; he was the face of this bohemian, artistic neighborhood,” said Barreira. “He was simple man, who loved this life, sitting here, watching the kids play, chatting people up.”
A mysterious image that pops up in all of Selaron’s work — a hugely pregnant black woman, often shown holding a fish — makes appearances throughout, some of them discreet, some monumental. In one painting that takes over several tiles, Selaron gives himself, mutton chops and all, the same pregnant belly and prominent breasts, along with a sign that says, “Brazil, I love you.”
The artist introduces the character to visitors in his own words, painted, of course, on tile: “On the 7th of December of 1999, I was moved to tears,” he wrote. “All that was needed was for me to paint the pregnant woman who is in all my paintings.”
He never reveals who she was, writing only it is a personal matter. With that last touch, he ran out of room. So he started substituting the tiles, he explained, turning the staircase into a fluid, evolving piece, perennially changing to reflect the interests, origins or obsessions of contributors, with Selaron first among them.
The staircase that was born of this “great folly,” as he writes in a tile, is full of stories, notes, poignant mementos of those who pass by and leave something of themselves.
In one, Selaron thanks a friend for helping out with the tiling. Elsewhere, proud mother Jandira announces the birth of her son Bruno. In one tile, Selaron apologizes to his landlady, Dona Elena, for having neglected to pay rent during the years he spent working on the staircase.
“I hope you understand,” he pleads in a piece decorated with the omnipresent pregnant woman.
Selaron meant the work to last a lifetime.
“I will only end this mad and singular dream on the last day of my life,” he wrote on the wall.
Several steps above, an anonymous contributor answered, in simple handwriting on a plain tile painted in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag: “Obrigado, Selaron.”
“Thank you, Selaron.”
Jorge Selaron found dead on the staircase he decorated in Brazil | World | News | National Post
Friday, December 7, 2012
#NYC Dog walkers just ain't what they used to be...A Step Up in Pooch Pampering - WSJ.com
Ms. Gretch says some of her clients pay up to $1,200 a week to have their dogs walked four times a day.
#NYC Dog walkers just ain't what they used to be..I know, I used to be one as a kid...
The city's most high-end walking service may be It's a Dog's Life NY. The outfit's hourlong strolls start at $41, and the dog gets more attention than a naughty Dalton fourth-grader. Founder Elena Gretch, a former derivatives trader, says most of her clients are Wall Street bankers who demand that the walk be "productive." That often means obedience training or weight-loss exercises followed by a post-stroll paw cleaning, organic cookies and a tooth brushing. It's all administered, of course, by an attractive, highly trained college grad certified in doggy CPR.
Ms. Gretch says some of her clients pay up to $1,200 a week to have their dogs walked four times a day.
WSJ.com: A Step Up in Pooch Pampering
Bryan Thomas for The Wall Street Journal NYC Doggies' Jennifer Wheeler picks up Sherpa.
When Koda took her usual afternoon constitutional this past Wednesday, she was under heavy surveillance. As soon as the sweet, bear-headed Newfoundland hit the pavement, her walker, an employee with the dog-walking service Swifto, launched a GPS iPhone app to track the 120-pound canine's swaggering stroll along West 24th Street. When Koda sniffed a grumpy bulldog in Madison Square, the walker recorded the exact coordinates of the encounter. And when she paused just short of Fifth Avenue to defecate at the curb, the walker tapped the app's brown "pooped" icon, plotting the excretion on a digital map of Manhattan.
All this was for the benefit of Koda's owner, Lisa Paulson, a branding coordinator who puts in long hours at a big cosmetics firm. While she's busy at work, Ms. Paulson gets text messages and photos documenting Koda's ambulatory exploits. And if she wants extra reassurance, she can log into Koda's online account to view a digital map detailing the day's walking route—complete with markers indicating poop sites and canine encounters. Ms. Paulson says the service provides peace of mind. And what does the gentle Koda think of all this surveillance? Ms. Paulson smiles: "I don't think she knows."
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Chronicle of a Masterpiece Foretold - National Geographic #Art
Tags:
art,
Italy,
Leonardo Da Vinci,
NEWS,
Tech
Chronicle of a Masterpiece Foretold
Photograph by Dave Yoder
This article was originally published in the February 2012 issue of National Geographic Italy magazine and has been translated from Italian.
A dream ... an obsession lasting more than thirty years, for a mystery worthy of a detective novel, of a mural painting, a masterpiece lost centuries ago. And of another fresco painted on top of the first, complete with a clue: a small flag with the inscription "Cerca Trova" ("Seek and you shall find"). It was in the mid-1970s that Carlo Pedretti, one of the world's leading experts on Leonardo da Vinci, first communicated to Maurizio Seracini, a Florentine engineer, the idea of using scientific methods to look for traces of the mural painted in 1503 by the genius da Vinci: the Battaglia di Anghiari. It all started with a book, Leonardo inedito (The Unpublished Leonardo), that Pedretti published in 1968, in which he theorized "the necessity of research on the lost Battaglia di Anghiari," which could be found, according to Seracini, behind the right panel of the east wall in the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, on top of which Giorgio Vasari painted the Battaglia di Marciano.
The frescoed wall and the older one behind it, on which one might find Leonardo's work, prove to be separated by a gap of 10-15 millimeters, the existence of which was confirmed by ground-penetrating radar investigations from last August and recently, by the use of an endoscopic probe.
In the book, Pedretti referred to other cases in which Vasari could have "hidden" works of art in order to not destroy them: the Trinity of Masaccio, "[was] discovered in the mid-1800s in Santa Maria Novella after tearing down the planks of a large altar built by Vasari, which did not touch the fresco. The same occurred in Santa Croce with Giotto, in the Cappella Peruzzi." Not to mention that in the former Courtroom of the Arte dei Pellicciai e Vaiai, today part of the monumental complex of the Uffizi, the late-fourteenth century Annunciation, which was visible but not yet allocated, was only discovered in 1885, found by chance behind a wall put up in subsequent eras, probably by the hand of Vasari himself. According to Pedretti, the architect from Arezzo "would intervene but would not destroy." So why would he have ever needed to eliminate that great fragment of the Battle of Anghiari? He even praised it privately to a Venetian traveler when he said: "Stop and take a look at Leonardo's horses."
And so it is then, that Pedretti's book and the recent start of the final phase of the investigation in the Palazzo Vecchio conducted by Seracini, financed in part by the National Geographic Society and supported vehemently by the mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, represent the two extremes of the research, between which there are more than 35 years of document studies, acquired data, discoveries, advances and obstacles, misunderstandings and interests, all leading up to the fact that, for Seracini, the Battle of Anghiari is more than just research, it is an obsession.
Friday, November 30, 2012
"note on my ticket while @officialKeef played riff from ‘Paint It Black’: F**kin’ Great!" The @RollingStones - Branson review
Tags:
MasterLiving,
Music,
NEWS,
Rolling Stones
wishing I was there!!!
Richard Branson reviews The Rolling Stones - Red Room - Virgin.com
"note on my ticket while @officialKeef played riff from ‘Paint It Black’: F**kin’ Great!"
Eric Clapton, playing a blinder on ‘Champagne & Reefer’
“This could be the last time,” sang Mick Jagger as the Rolling Stones played yet another rock ‘n’ roll classic. Let’s hope this isn’t the last time the world’s greatest band get together onstage.
From start to finish the Rolling Stones gig at the o2 Arena was sheer magic. It was strange being there to see them live so many years after I had first seen the band play together. The best concert I ever saw was the Stones in Hyde Park, but this ran it pretty close! From the thrilling production to the high-octane set, it was a five-star performance.
Many dismiss older people as being past it and not having as much to offer as youngsters. However, the Rolling Stones are just as talented and exciting as they were when they were 20. If anything their musicianship has improved over the years and there is a special chemistry between the band that is irreplaceable. Despite all of their disagreements over the years, they rise above their differences to make something great.
As for the song of the night? There’s so many to choose from, all the way from ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ to ‘Start Me Up’, ‘Satisfaction’ to ‘Sympathy For The Devil’. Perhaps my scribbled note on my ticket while Keef played riff from ‘Paint It Black’ sums the gig up best: F**kin’ Great!
By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group
Richard Branson reviews The Rolling Stones - Red Room - Virgin.com
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
$375.1 Million Contemporary #Art Sale Is #Sotheby’s Record - NYTimes.com
a 1954 Mark Rothko oil brought $75.1 million
Sotheby's, Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The highlight of Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art on Tuesday, “No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue),” a 1954 Mark Rothko oil, brought $75.1 million.
$375.1 Million Art Sale Is Sotheby’s Record
“I have all the time in the world,” Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s principal auctioneer, said on Tuesday night as he leaned over the lectern and flashed a smile at Lisa Dennison, the auction house’s chairwoman. She was on the telephone, trying to draw a higher bid from a client. Two tenacious collectors were competing to take home “No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue),” a classic Mark Rothko painting from 1954 that is also a conspicuous example of what dealers like to call “wall power,” and the bidding was already at $61 million.
The painting ended up selling to another mystery telephone bidder for $67 million, or $75.1 million including Sotheby’s fees.
The Rothko was the high point in a contemporary art sale of exceptionally strong prices and spirited bidding that ultimately made $375.1 million, the highest total for any sale in Sotheby’s history, beating the previous record of $362 million set in May 2008.
After last week’s disappointing auctions of Impressionist and modern art, it was also a night of great relief for the international group of collectors and dealers who packed Sotheby’s salesroom.
“There were huge prices,” Allan Schwartzman, a Manhattan art adviser, said toward the end of the sale. “It was all about fast money looking for places to park.”
Shortly before the Rothko sold, Jackson Pollock’s drip painting “Number 4, 1951” — a layered patchwork of red, blue, yellow, green and ocher oil paints, metallic aluminum and flecks of shiny black enamel — which was expected to bring $25 million to $35 million, sold to Ms. Dennison, bidding on behalf of her telephone client, for $36 million, or $40.4 million with fees, a record for the artist at auction. (Final prices include the buyer’s commission to Sotheby’s: 25 percent of the first $50,000; 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)
Of the 69 works on offer, only 11 failed to sell.
Four bidders went for Bacon’s “Untitled (Pope)” from 1954, which had been expected to sell for $18 million to $25 million, but sold to a telephone bidder for $26.5 million, or $29.7 million including Sotheby’s fees.
Not everything topped expectations. Gerhard Richter, the 80-year-old German artist, currently holds the title of the most expensive living artist at auction, after a painting belonging to Eric Clapton sold at Sotheby’s in London last month for $34.2 million. Richter’s prices have been rising ever since a recent traveling retrospective that went to the National Gallery in Berlin, the Tate Modern in London and the Pompidou Center in Paris. On Tuesday, Sotheby’s had a 1990 Richter that was estimated to bring $15 million to $18 million.
Perhaps there are just too many examples of the artist’s work — Christie’s has several on offer at its sale on Wednesday night — and this painting had only one bidder, who was willing to pay $15 million, or $17.4 million including fees.
The sale also included several Warhol paintings from the 1960s. “Green Disaster (Green Disaster Twice),” a 1963 work based on a photograph of a brutal car crash, went for $15.2 million. The buyer was Peter Brant, the newsprint magnate, who is a large Warhol collector. Great works on paper by Warhol are rare, and on Tuesday night three of them, also from the 1960s, brought strong prices. Top among them, “Suicide,” a gruesome image of a man jumping to his death that was expected to bring $6 million to $8 million, went to Philippe Ségalot, a Manhattan dealer, for $16.3 million — a record for a work on paper by the artist. (Sotheby’s previously sold it in 1992 for $132,000.) As the dealers and collectors were milling outside of Sotheby’s toward the end of the evening, many said they were amazed at how strong the results were, given the shaky economic picture around the world. “It was surprising,” Mr. Ségalot said. “But Sotheby’s had works that were fresh to the market and they put them in the beginning of the sale. That set the tone for the rest of the evening.”
“I have all the time in the world,” Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s principal auctioneer, said on Tuesday night as he leaned over the lectern and flashed a smile at Lisa Dennison, the auction house’s chairwoman. She was on the telephone, trying to draw a higher bid from a client. Two tenacious collectors were competing to take home “No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue),” a classic Mark Rothko painting from 1954 that is also a conspicuous example of what dealers like to call “wall power,” and the bidding was already at $61 million.
The painting ended up selling to another mystery telephone bidder for $67 million, or $75.1 million including Sotheby’s fees.
The Rothko was the high point in a contemporary art sale of exceptionally strong prices and spirited bidding that ultimately made $375.1 million, the highest total for any sale in Sotheby’s history, beating the previous record of $362 million set in May 2008.
After last week’s disappointing auctions of Impressionist and modern art, it was also a night of great relief for the international group of collectors and dealers who packed Sotheby’s salesroom.
“There were huge prices,” Allan Schwartzman, a Manhattan art adviser, said toward the end of the sale. “It was all about fast money looking for places to park.”
Shortly before the Rothko sold, Jackson Pollock’s drip painting “Number 4, 1951” — a layered patchwork of red, blue, yellow, green and ocher oil paints, metallic aluminum and flecks of shiny black enamel — which was expected to bring $25 million to $35 million, sold to Ms. Dennison, bidding on behalf of her telephone client, for $36 million, or $40.4 million with fees, a record for the artist at auction. (Final prices include the buyer’s commission to Sotheby’s: 25 percent of the first $50,000; 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)
Of the 69 works on offer, only 11 failed to sell.
Four bidders went for Bacon’s “Untitled (Pope)” from 1954, which had been expected to sell for $18 million to $25 million, but sold to a telephone bidder for $26.5 million, or $29.7 million including Sotheby’s fees.
Not everything topped expectations. Gerhard Richter, the 80-year-old German artist, currently holds the title of the most expensive living artist at auction, after a painting belonging to Eric Clapton sold at Sotheby’s in London last month for $34.2 million. Richter’s prices have been rising ever since a recent traveling retrospective that went to the National Gallery in Berlin, the Tate Modern in London and the Pompidou Center in Paris. On Tuesday, Sotheby’s had a 1990 Richter that was estimated to bring $15 million to $18 million.
Perhaps there are just too many examples of the artist’s work — Christie’s has several on offer at its sale on Wednesday night — and this painting had only one bidder, who was willing to pay $15 million, or $17.4 million including fees.
The sale also included several Warhol paintings from the 1960s. “Green Disaster (Green Disaster Twice),” a 1963 work based on a photograph of a brutal car crash, went for $15.2 million. The buyer was Peter Brant, the newsprint magnate, who is a large Warhol collector. Great works on paper by Warhol are rare, and on Tuesday night three of them, also from the 1960s, brought strong prices. Top among them, “Suicide,” a gruesome image of a man jumping to his death that was expected to bring $6 million to $8 million, went to Philippe Ségalot, a Manhattan dealer, for $16.3 million — a record for a work on paper by the artist. (Sotheby’s previously sold it in 1992 for $132,000.) As the dealers and collectors were milling outside of Sotheby’s toward the end of the evening, many said they were amazed at how strong the results were, given the shaky economic picture around the world. “It was surprising,” Mr. Ségalot said. “But Sotheby’s had works that were fresh to the market and they put them in the beginning of the sale. That set the tone for the rest of the evening.”
See the article online here: $375.1 Million Contemporary Art Sale Is Sotheby’s Record - NYTimes.com
Monday, November 12, 2012
U.K.: London's Iconic Black Cabs Face Uncertain Future | TIME.com
Tags:
NEWS
Is This the End for London’s Black Cabs?
The gleaming black cabs that grace the streets of the British capital have become a London icon. From the London Olympics opening ceremonies to Spice Girls music videos, the black cab is a sign of all things British. But the long-standing reign of these vehicles may be coming to an end.
Manganese Bronze, the company that has been making black cabs since 1948, has declared bankruptcy, putting nearly 300 jobs at risk. Talks to secure the funds needed to save the ailing manufacturer have ended in failure. The company, based in Coventry, England, has had a difficult year. In October it was forced to take 400 cabs off the roads after discovering a steering fault. In a statement, Manganese has said that the group will continue to operate during the bankruptcy process and would make a “speedy” resolution of the recall a top priority, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
(MORE: London Falling)
The possible demise of the cabs’ manufacturer marks the end of more than a century of the historic vehicles’ presence on the streets of London. While motorized taxis have plied the streets of London since the beginning of the 20th century, the black cab as we know it was introduced in the late ’50s — a vehicle that featured fully hydraulic brakes and signature “bunny ears” turn indicators. It quickly became famous for its ability to maneuver through the narrow, congested streets of the British capital, with a turning radius of just 25 ft. — a requirement for city vehicles that dates back to 1906, when cars needed to be able to navigate the minute roundabout at the entrance to the Savoy hotel.
The car’s ability to negotiate London’s small avenues has made it a particularly attractive option for celebrities trying to avoid the eye of the paparazzi. Model Kate Moss and actor Stephen Fry reportedly own their own personal black cabs, as does the Queen’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh. Arnold Schwarzenegger even ordered a fleet of black taxis to be transported all the way to California.
The iconic London black-cab model, the Austin FX4, entered service in 1958 and is the longest surviving British vehicle after the Land Rover. It was replaced in 1991 by the TX1, a more modern car that reflects the shape of the traditional FX4. But Manganese Bronze no longer has a monopoly on London cabs; with drivers now also allowed to use the Mercedes Vito, a six-passenger minivan, the company has failed to turn a profit since 2007.
(MORE: James Bond at 50)
John Russell, the head of Manganese, has vowed to keep the troubled group’s meter running but warned that it was in a “very uncertain situation,” according to the Daily Mail. Today there are more than 20,000 licensed black cabs serving the streets of London.U.K.: London's Iconic Black Cabs Face Uncertain Future | TIME.com
Friday, November 9, 2012
Nigerian #music: The immortal #Fela #Kuti | The Economist
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Fela Kuti Attaakk!!
The immortal Fela Kuti
FELA KUTI’s electrifying performances, seismic music and defiant lifestyle gave him a worldwide following. Fearlessly confronting the Nigerian establishment through his music, he was a thorn in the flesh of every military and civilian despot that occupied Nigeria’s presidential seat during his adulthood. Now, 15 years after his death, the authorities he so often railed against have helped honour the King of Afrobeat.
A new museum in Lagos opened in October at the start of a week-long annual “Felabration” to mark what would have been his 74th birthday. The three-storey building hidden in the backstreets of Lagos, now the home of the museum, grew famous as a hub of raucous dissent during his 27 years of running resistance against successive Nigerian dictators. The commune and self-declared republic housed a recording studio and many of the musicians and dancers connected to his band. The Lagos State Government, now recognising his cultural significance, has chipped in with a grant of $250,000.
Inside, album covers and murals adorn the walls, with old family photographs embellishing the staircase as you climb up to a rooftop bar. A room is devoted to Fela’s eclectic wardrobe, where a collection of his vibrant shoes line an entire wall. Colourful underpants, sometimes the only thing he wore, sit on hangers, including a pair covered with a purple dancing image of “Barney the Dinosaurs”. His bedroom, preserved as a shrine since he died of AIDS in 1997, contains his flamboyant shirts, a mattress and a few modest belongings. His saxophone sits alone on the floor.
Fela’s creation of “Afrobeat” in the 1960s is a brew of traditional African drumming, funk and highlife, punctuated with simple shrill vocals and solo interventions from his saxophone. His irrepressible rebelliousness and determination to champion the cause of Nigeria’s underdogs through his music earned him physical punishment, brutal military and police raids and numerous arrests. “He fought for the common man, for the issues we faced everyday,” says Elizabeth Bassey, a Fela fan who was rifling through a pile of old records in a music shop in Lagos. “But he paid a steep price for it.”
Fela Kuti named the commune after his first prison cell.“The idea of creating a place open to every African escaping prosecution began taking shape in my mind,” he writes in his biography (“Fela: This Bitch of a Life”), after he returned from a tour of the United States. But the commune did not enable him to escape prosecution and became a battleground where he and the authorities fought it out.
In 1977, his smash hit “Zombie”, in which he used the phrase “Zombie no go walk unless you tell am to walk” to describe the brutal methods of Nigeria’s military with the cutting lyrics, led to a vicious attack on the Kalakuta Commune in the same year. Hundreds of soldiers descended on the compound, severely beat Fela and threw his mother out of a first-floor window. The Kalakuta Republic was razed and his studio, instruments and master tapes were destroyed.
His alternative lifestyle aroused the Nigerian authorities’ violent hostility. Often appearing with cigar-sized marijuana spliffs defiantly held between his fingers, he rejected Nigeria’s two main religions, Christianity and Islam; instead he worshipped ancestors and married 27 women. Newspaper cut-outs and extracts from his manifesto, framed in the museum, chronicle his battle against corruption and social injustice as well as his constant scrapes with the law. He is said to have appeared in court 356 times in 25 years.
His memory lives on. The New Afrika Shrine, Fela’s famed nightclub, attracts fans from Nigeria and beyond, who dance to the spellbinding Afrobeat rhythms until sunrise.“I come here every week, lots of these people do,” says Osas, dragging on a huge spliff, as he leans on a sign saying, “Drugs are not allowed in the Shrine”. “The issues of corruption and frustration that he sang about still strike a chord with Nigerians today,” he adds. “Just goes to show that some things never change.”
See the article online here: Nigerian music: The immortal Fela Kuti | The Economist
Friday, November 2, 2012
Learning a Foreign #Language Is Like Learning a #Sport - The Atlantic
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Learning a Foreign Language Is Like Learning a Sport
The long road to not sucking at French
One of the things I've noticed in my studies of French is how much it resembles my studies of athletics. Predictably, I struggle in both athletics and foreign language. But one of the great lessons of my childhood was that no one has the right to be naturally good at anything. More there's a particular pleasure that comes from becoming good at something which you kind of naturally sucked at. I played the djembe as a kid. I had a pretty good ear for rhythm, but no physical coordination. I could hear what I wanted to play, but my imagination exceeded my abilities. For the first year I did it, I sucked.
But after a year of practice in my parents garage I came to suck a lot less, and by the time I gave up the instrument I had risen to the ranks of the "Merely OK." But I didn't feel "Merely OK." I felt like a king, because I knew from whence I came. I knew that great distance (and it is great) between "Utter Suckage" and "Merely OK." So while I believe in natural talent, I've never seen much point in talking about it. Generally if I decide I want to acquire a skill, I don't see much point in talking about "aptitude." I have chosen the road. Now it's time to walk.
In that vein, it is the physicality, the theatricality of foreign language study that shocks me. To speak French you need a different mouth. Your lips and tongue must live somewhere else--even when resting--then where they live in English. When an American is trying to think of something she often goes "Uhh, Uhh." But the French will say something like "Euh, Euh." (Or some such.) This acquiring of of a new mouth is a physical act. It is not enough to memorize the words. You have to train your mouth to say them. It's like weight-lifting. Your mouth and tongue need "reps."
And this acquiring of a new mouth has a way of spreading over a person's entire face. If you ever talk to someone who is fluent in two languages, while you are fluent in one but just grasping at the other, you will have the sense of talking to two different people in the same body. The thoughts may be universal--but the face, the tongue, the mouth--the very lens through which the light of soul is refracted, is different. It is the oddest thing.
Learning a Foreign Language Is Like Learning a Sport - The Atlantic
Friday, October 26, 2012
#Obama on #Trump from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
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It all goes back to when we were growing up....
ha Ha!
Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1C453KwDzY&sns=em
ha Ha!
Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1C453KwDzY&sns=em
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Billionaire Paulson Donates $100 Million for Central Park - Bloomberg
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Billionaire Paulson Donates $100 Million for Central Park
Billionaire John Paulson and the Paulson Family Foundation are donating $100 million to the Central Park Conservancy, the largest parks donation ever.
Paulson, 56, is founder of Paulson & Co., a New York-based hedge fund that manages $21 billion across 10 funds. Paulson was worth $11.8 billion yesterday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. His contribution will help renovate and maintain park facilities and pay for recreation programs, said Doug Blonsky, president of the conservancy, which is responsible for its maintenance and operations. Half will bolster the park’s endowment, which now stands at $144 million, Blonsky said.
“The Conservancy is responsible for transforming and sustaining Central Park as the celebration of culture, nature and democracy that it is today,” Paulson said in a statement. “It is my hope that today’s contribution will help it endure and flourish.”
The park’s 843 acres (341 hectares) stretch from 59th Street to 110th Street in Manhattan and make up a leafy oasis on an island of concrete. Conservancy crews care for 250 acres of lawns, 24,000 trees, 150 acres of lakes and streams and 130 acres of woodlands, according to its website.
“Central Park is a paradise unlike anywhere else in the world today,” said Paulson, whose Fifth Avenue apartment faces the park’s east side and overlooks its reservoir. “I wanted the amount to make a difference.”
Read the rest of the article here: Billionaire Paulson Donates $100 Million for Central Park - Bloomberg
Monday, October 22, 2012
The Very Best Time To Book Airline Tickets, According To Kayak #Travel
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The Very Best Time To Book Airline Tickets, According To Kayak
A new survey of more than a billion airfare searches has revealed the very best time to book your flight, says a spokeswoman for Kayak.
Sifting through an average of 100 million queries per month from January to December 2011, the search site says fliers looking for the best prices should book exactly 21 days prior to departure.
Book in that sweet spot, Kayak says, and you'll pay the domestic average of $342 a ticket -- versus the $370 you'd pay on average for a ticket booked six months out.
For international trips, that prime booking window shifts to 34 days prior to departure, with average prices at $977 instead of $1,016 for travelers planning six months ahead.
The number crunching also proved what many frequent fliers already know: Those who wait until the last minute will almost certainly pay more for their fare.
The Very Best Time To Book Airline Tickets, According To Kayak
A new survey of more than a billion airfare searches has revealed the very best time to book your flight, says a spokeswoman for Kayak.
Sifting through an average of 100 million queries per month from January to December 2011, the search site says fliers looking for the best prices should book exactly 21 days prior to departure.
Book in that sweet spot, Kayak says, and you'll pay the domestic average of $342 a ticket -- versus the $370 you'd pay on average for a ticket booked six months out.
For international trips, that prime booking window shifts to 34 days prior to departure, with average prices at $977 instead of $1,016 for travelers planning six months ahead.
The number crunching also proved what many frequent fliers already know: Those who wait until the last minute will almost certainly pay more for their fare.
The Very Best Time To Book Airline Tickets, According To Kayak
Saturday, October 20, 2012
#LVMH faces dilemma of success
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NEWS
Even the chinese are getting tired of Louis Vuitton it seems... thats what happens when you seem to have become a mass chan rather than an exclusive brand.
LVMH faces dilemma of success
Financial Times, 8:14pm Friday October 19th, 2012
--
By Scheherazade Daneshkhu in Paris
--
Analysts say Louis Vuitton may be facing structural issues related to its size – total sales last year were €6.5bn – and its brand image
Read the full article at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dd12b790-1a01-11e2-a379-00144feabdc0.html
--
By Scheherazade Daneshkhu in Paris
--
Analysts say Louis Vuitton may be facing structural issues related to its size – total sales last year were €6.5bn – and its brand image
Read the full article at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dd12b790-1a01-11e2-a379-00144feabdc0.html
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Black Magic in #Picasso’s Parlor of Prostitutes - Bloomberg #Art
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Black Magic in Picasso’s Parlor of Prostitutes
“The most important painting of the twentieth century.” This was said of Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” before the century was even half over. It remains one of the most original and disturbing works in the history of art.
At eight feet high, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” is an intimidating presence. Reproductions in books shrink its power.
The painting was executed over three months in 1907 in Picasso’s jammed, squalid one-room studio apartment in bohemian Montmartre in Paris. Its fleshy pinks are a survival from the artist’s Rose Period but with a stunning change of tone. There is no longer any humor or pleasure. On the contrary, we seem to have wandered into a torture den. It’s the reception room of a brothel, where bored women lounge with their hair down as they wait for customers -- a scene frequently drawn by Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. Picasso had painted prostitutes in Paris cafés, where they were dancing or flirting with one another. In Les Demoiselles, however, each of the women seems locked in her own severe, remote consciousness. They are like Fates, frigid masters of man’s destiny.
When this painting finally became known to the world after its acquisition by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1939, commentary focused on its formal properties as a prefiguration of cubism, co-created by Picasso and Georges Braque before World War I. Because so many of Picasso’s preparatory sketches were preserved, studies of the painting’s genesis are extensive, but little or no attention has been paid to a variety of later details. Its demurely ambiguous title, “The Maidens of Avignon,” has proved an irritant: Picasso did not coin it, and he disliked it. He simply called the painting “mon bordel” (my brothel).
Living Picture
It is staged like a tableau vivant. The woman standing at left lifts a heavy curtain, while her opposite bursts like a wind into the tent-like space. On a stool at lower right, a nude sits with legs brazenly spread. The two apparently upright central figures are actually reclining with arms behind their heads, a white sheet draping their legs.
Picasso’s startling conflation of two points of view was revolutionary. Ever since the Renaissance, perspective had been based on the spectator’s fixed position, reproducing where the painter had set his easel. Here, however, we stand on the brothel floor and also hover near the ceiling -- a duality not seen since Byzantine art.
Multiple perspective, soon to be a hallmark of cubism, also applies to the spiderlike sitter: We view her legs and bare buttocks from behind, but her torso demonically twists to make her head and arms face forward. She rests her menacingly boomeranglike chin on her fist. The reclining ladies are also hybrid: Their eyes and faces are frontal, while their noses are profiled. Picasso’s disjunctive method is partly derived from Cézanne, whose sloping country tabletops are imitated here in the giddily angled coffee table.
But Picasso had also studied Egyptian art, with its anatomical contortions. His left-hand lady, hand clenched at her side and one foot forward, is based on pharaoh sculptures and the Greek athlete statues (kouroi) that they inspired. Furthermore, as the sole clothed (or semi-clothed) demoiselle, she evokes the Winged Victory of Samothrace, plastered with wet drapery as she lands on a ship’s prow, a monumental ancient sculpture that Picasso saw dominating the magnificent Daru Staircase at the Louvre.
Meanwhile, the reclining demoiselles allude to the Venetian tradition of lazy, opulent nudes, who reappeared as hookah- smoking Turkish or Algerian odalisques in nineteenth-century French paintings. Picasso based the two women’s domed heads and large ears on pre-Roman Iberian sculptures found near his hometown of Malaga in Andalusia. Their raised elbows come from a homoerotic statue that always fascinated him -- Michelangelo’s neoplatonic Dying Slave, a life-sized plaster copy of which can be seen in photographs of Picasso’s studio after his death.
Time Line
Thus “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” densely embodies a procession of styles in Western art, read from left to right: antiquity through the Renaissance to modernity, which Picasso shows transformed by the abrupt arrival of non-Western cultures, represented by scarified tribal masks from Africa and Oceania.
Although he later tried to minimize it, Picasso also had an intense spiritual experience at the Trocadero ethnographic museum just as he was formulating “Les Demoiselles.” Sixteen years earlier, Gauguin had abandoned Paris for Tahiti. Picasso saw Gauguin’s South Seas paintings at two posthumous retrospectives; their influence can be detected in the dusky complexion of the left-hand demoiselle, who resembles Oceanic ancestor spirits like the stone sentinels of Easter Island.
But how tranquil Gauguin’s Tahitian pictures seem compared with Picasso’s visceral adaptation of what was then called “primitivism.” Picasso zeroes in on the violence of ancient nature cults, with their rituals of blood sacrifice. Sex as portrayed in “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” is a gateway to an impersonal world of pure biologic force where man is nothing and where woman, a mother goddess splitting into her weird sisters, is everything.
The little table has been seen as a phallically thrusting prow (in early sketches, a sailor sat at stage center). But it can also be viewed as a ruined altar laden with ashy forbidden fruits -- a melon slice resembling a scythe-like crescent moon, a mottled pear and apple looking like hacked meat.
Has castration already occurred? The meat motif is blatant in the left-hand figure, whose floor-length pink peignoir gives her a third leg, like a slab of well-marbled beef. French argot for a working-class brothel was “slaughterhouse” (maison d’abattage; compare “abattoir”). Yes, whores are meat on the rack. But the bladelike leg resting on the floor suggests it is the lady’s clients who have been butchered, their blood washing down onto her sturdy, mannish foot.
Sleepless Eyes
There are no welcoming smiles in this cabal of urban nymphs. Their snakelike lidless eyes are fixed and blank or at mismatched angles or missing altogether. They are sleepless watchmen of the heaven-hell of sex, where the price of momentary ecstasy may be disease or obliteration of identity. The jewellike, geometric facets of cubism are anticipated in Picasso’s transformation of round breasts into aggressive squares with razor points (combined with unsettlingly reversed underarm hair).
The colors of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” paint an elemental drama from earth brown to sky blue. These fierce women enact what the Bible credits to Jehovah -- the division of land from ocean and the creation of the firmament with sun and moon. The cosmic birth process is literalized in a splash of blood ringing the splayed demoiselle. Her squat stool is a bordello bidet but also a low birthing chair, basic to old rural societies all over the world. In Picasso’s first sketches, a male medical student or city health inspector holding a book locks eyes with the crouching demoiselle: The gruesome mystery of procreation can be observed but not explained by science.
Picasso called this work “my first exorcism painting.” It was an experiment in black magic. With its graceful, chalky outlines yet jagged fractures and distortions, it weds beauty to ugliness.
These statuesque demoiselles, crowding the flat picture plane, are Picasso’s carnal Muses, patrons of his genius and titanic productivity. (He left 50,000 works in a vast range of genres and materials.) In this, his greatest painting until his political protest mural, Guernica, 30 years later, he confronts the mothers of his creative vision. Mutating through many faces, they are the models for the restlessly mercurial styles of his long career. He cannot conquer them, but their intense gaze conveys that they are choosing him, and only him.
(Camille Paglia, university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, is the author of “Sexual Personae,” “Sex, Art and American Culture” and “Vamps & Tramps,” among other books. This is the third in a series of four excerpts from her new book, “Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars,” which will be published by Pantheon Books on Oct. 16. The opinions expressed are her own. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 4.)
To contact the writer of this article: Camille Paglia at ask_camille@salon.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this article: Mary Duenwald at mduenwald@bloomberg.net.
Read the whole piece here: Black Magic in Picasso’s Parlor of Prostitutes - Bloomberg
At eight feet high, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” is an intimidating presence. Reproductions in books shrink its power.
The painting was executed over three months in 1907 in Picasso’s jammed, squalid one-room studio apartment in bohemian Montmartre in Paris. Its fleshy pinks are a survival from the artist’s Rose Period but with a stunning change of tone. There is no longer any humor or pleasure. On the contrary, we seem to have wandered into a torture den. It’s the reception room of a brothel, where bored women lounge with their hair down as they wait for customers -- a scene frequently drawn by Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. Picasso had painted prostitutes in Paris cafés, where they were dancing or flirting with one another. In Les Demoiselles, however, each of the women seems locked in her own severe, remote consciousness. They are like Fates, frigid masters of man’s destiny.
When this painting finally became known to the world after its acquisition by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1939, commentary focused on its formal properties as a prefiguration of cubism, co-created by Picasso and Georges Braque before World War I. Because so many of Picasso’s preparatory sketches were preserved, studies of the painting’s genesis are extensive, but little or no attention has been paid to a variety of later details. Its demurely ambiguous title, “The Maidens of Avignon,” has proved an irritant: Picasso did not coin it, and he disliked it. He simply called the painting “mon bordel” (my brothel).
Living Picture
It is staged like a tableau vivant. The woman standing at left lifts a heavy curtain, while her opposite bursts like a wind into the tent-like space. On a stool at lower right, a nude sits with legs brazenly spread. The two apparently upright central figures are actually reclining with arms behind their heads, a white sheet draping their legs.
Picasso’s startling conflation of two points of view was revolutionary. Ever since the Renaissance, perspective had been based on the spectator’s fixed position, reproducing where the painter had set his easel. Here, however, we stand on the brothel floor and also hover near the ceiling -- a duality not seen since Byzantine art.
Multiple perspective, soon to be a hallmark of cubism, also applies to the spiderlike sitter: We view her legs and bare buttocks from behind, but her torso demonically twists to make her head and arms face forward. She rests her menacingly boomeranglike chin on her fist. The reclining ladies are also hybrid: Their eyes and faces are frontal, while their noses are profiled. Picasso’s disjunctive method is partly derived from Cézanne, whose sloping country tabletops are imitated here in the giddily angled coffee table.
But Picasso had also studied Egyptian art, with its anatomical contortions. His left-hand lady, hand clenched at her side and one foot forward, is based on pharaoh sculptures and the Greek athlete statues (kouroi) that they inspired. Furthermore, as the sole clothed (or semi-clothed) demoiselle, she evokes the Winged Victory of Samothrace, plastered with wet drapery as she lands on a ship’s prow, a monumental ancient sculpture that Picasso saw dominating the magnificent Daru Staircase at the Louvre.
Meanwhile, the reclining demoiselles allude to the Venetian tradition of lazy, opulent nudes, who reappeared as hookah- smoking Turkish or Algerian odalisques in nineteenth-century French paintings. Picasso based the two women’s domed heads and large ears on pre-Roman Iberian sculptures found near his hometown of Malaga in Andalusia. Their raised elbows come from a homoerotic statue that always fascinated him -- Michelangelo’s neoplatonic Dying Slave, a life-sized plaster copy of which can be seen in photographs of Picasso’s studio after his death.
Time Line
Thus “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” densely embodies a procession of styles in Western art, read from left to right: antiquity through the Renaissance to modernity, which Picasso shows transformed by the abrupt arrival of non-Western cultures, represented by scarified tribal masks from Africa and Oceania.
Although he later tried to minimize it, Picasso also had an intense spiritual experience at the Trocadero ethnographic museum just as he was formulating “Les Demoiselles.” Sixteen years earlier, Gauguin had abandoned Paris for Tahiti. Picasso saw Gauguin’s South Seas paintings at two posthumous retrospectives; their influence can be detected in the dusky complexion of the left-hand demoiselle, who resembles Oceanic ancestor spirits like the stone sentinels of Easter Island.
But how tranquil Gauguin’s Tahitian pictures seem compared with Picasso’s visceral adaptation of what was then called “primitivism.” Picasso zeroes in on the violence of ancient nature cults, with their rituals of blood sacrifice. Sex as portrayed in “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” is a gateway to an impersonal world of pure biologic force where man is nothing and where woman, a mother goddess splitting into her weird sisters, is everything.
The little table has been seen as a phallically thrusting prow (in early sketches, a sailor sat at stage center). But it can also be viewed as a ruined altar laden with ashy forbidden fruits -- a melon slice resembling a scythe-like crescent moon, a mottled pear and apple looking like hacked meat.
Has castration already occurred? The meat motif is blatant in the left-hand figure, whose floor-length pink peignoir gives her a third leg, like a slab of well-marbled beef. French argot for a working-class brothel was “slaughterhouse” (maison d’abattage; compare “abattoir”). Yes, whores are meat on the rack. But the bladelike leg resting on the floor suggests it is the lady’s clients who have been butchered, their blood washing down onto her sturdy, mannish foot.
Sleepless Eyes
There are no welcoming smiles in this cabal of urban nymphs. Their snakelike lidless eyes are fixed and blank or at mismatched angles or missing altogether. They are sleepless watchmen of the heaven-hell of sex, where the price of momentary ecstasy may be disease or obliteration of identity. The jewellike, geometric facets of cubism are anticipated in Picasso’s transformation of round breasts into aggressive squares with razor points (combined with unsettlingly reversed underarm hair).
The colors of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” paint an elemental drama from earth brown to sky blue. These fierce women enact what the Bible credits to Jehovah -- the division of land from ocean and the creation of the firmament with sun and moon. The cosmic birth process is literalized in a splash of blood ringing the splayed demoiselle. Her squat stool is a bordello bidet but also a low birthing chair, basic to old rural societies all over the world. In Picasso’s first sketches, a male medical student or city health inspector holding a book locks eyes with the crouching demoiselle: The gruesome mystery of procreation can be observed but not explained by science.
Picasso called this work “my first exorcism painting.” It was an experiment in black magic. With its graceful, chalky outlines yet jagged fractures and distortions, it weds beauty to ugliness.
These statuesque demoiselles, crowding the flat picture plane, are Picasso’s carnal Muses, patrons of his genius and titanic productivity. (He left 50,000 works in a vast range of genres and materials.) In this, his greatest painting until his political protest mural, Guernica, 30 years later, he confronts the mothers of his creative vision. Mutating through many faces, they are the models for the restlessly mercurial styles of his long career. He cannot conquer them, but their intense gaze conveys that they are choosing him, and only him.
(Camille Paglia, university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, is the author of “Sexual Personae,” “Sex, Art and American Culture” and “Vamps & Tramps,” among other books. This is the third in a series of four excerpts from her new book, “Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars,” which will be published by Pantheon Books on Oct. 16. The opinions expressed are her own. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 4.)
To contact the writer of this article: Camille Paglia at ask_camille@salon.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this article: Mary Duenwald at mduenwald@bloomberg.net.
Read the whole piece here: Black Magic in Picasso’s Parlor of Prostitutes - Bloomberg
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Map of the Day: New York's Geography of Complaining
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NEWS
Finally, statistical confirmation of what we always knew: Manhattan is loud, the Bronx is the world's graffiti capital, and the other three boroughs are covered in garbage.
At least those seem to be the obvious conclusions from this map, by Dietmar Offenhuber, based off two years of 311 complaints. Green corresponds to noise complaints, blue to litter complaints, and magenta to graffiti.
But there are some more subtle conclusions. The Manhattan-priced neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo and Park Slope all fade to green, indicating that their residents are concerned with noise rather than with garbage, like their Manhattan compatriots.
Chinatown, Bushwick, and Corona (particularly Corona, wow) struggle with graffiti more than elsewhere in their boroughs. Harlem residents complain about trash more than other Manhattan residents. Battery Park City is LOUD! Graffiti in deep Brooklyn seems to follow the paths of the subway lines down from Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery. And people on 5th Avenue along Central Park, judging by the dully shaded blocks, either don't have much to complain about at all, or perhaps, don't know what 311 is.
See the image here:
Map of the Day: New York's Geography of Complaining
At least those seem to be the obvious conclusions from this map, by Dietmar Offenhuber, based off two years of 311 complaints. Green corresponds to noise complaints, blue to litter complaints, and magenta to graffiti.
But there are some more subtle conclusions. The Manhattan-priced neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo and Park Slope all fade to green, indicating that their residents are concerned with noise rather than with garbage, like their Manhattan compatriots.
Chinatown, Bushwick, and Corona (particularly Corona, wow) struggle with graffiti more than elsewhere in their boroughs. Harlem residents complain about trash more than other Manhattan residents. Battery Park City is LOUD! Graffiti in deep Brooklyn seems to follow the paths of the subway lines down from Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery. And people on 5th Avenue along Central Park, judging by the dully shaded blocks, either don't have much to complain about at all, or perhaps, don't know what 311 is.
See the image here:
Map of the Day: New York's Geography of Complaining
Monday, September 24, 2012
Neil Young Comes Clean - NYTimes.com
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NEWS
Neil Young Comes Clean
By DAVID CARR
Driving down the hill above his ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains, south of San Francisco, Neil Young took a deep whiff of the redwood forest momentarily serving as the canopy for his 1951 Willys Jeepster convertible.
“I can still remember how it smelled when I first pulled in here — I was driving this car,” he said, recalling the trip in 1970 when he bought the place and named it Broken Arrow, after the Buffalo Springfield song.
The author of some of the spookiest, darkest songs in the American folk canon seemed jolly on this late-August day. Even if he was accompanied by a reporter, generally not his favorite species of human, the motion soothed him. “I’ve always been better moving than I am standing still,” he said.
Young, 66, spotted this land out the window of a plane banking out of San Francisco four decades ago and now owns nearly 1,000 acres of it. His song “Old Man” is a tribute to the caretaker who first showed him the place.
“I ran out of money, so I had to sell some of it,” he said. “That’s O.K., because it was too big. Everything happens for a reason.” He kept his eyes on the narrow road through the giant redwoods.
It was hard to reconcile the affable guy motoring along on a sunny day with his past incarnations: the portentous folkie of “Ohio,” the rabid anti-commercialist who gave MTV the musical middle finger with “This Note’s For You,” the angry rocker who threatened to hit the cameramen at Woodstock with his guitar. He was happy partly because he was here.
“For whatever you’re doing, for your creative juices, your geography’s got a hell of a lot to do with it,” he said. “You really have to be in a good place, and then you have to be either on your way there or on your way from there.”
We would spend a few hours creeping along — he drove slowly but joyfully, as if the automobile were a recent invention — on our way there or on our way from there, the ranch where Young lives with his wife, Pegi, and their son, Ben. His longtime producer and friend, David Briggs, who died in 1995, hated making records here, deriding the hermetic refuge as a “velvet cage.”
In addition to the studio, where more than 20 records have been made, there is an entire building given over to model trains, another where vintage cars are stored and another piled with his master recordings. Llamas and cows roam under cartoonishly large trees. It seems like a made-up place, an open-air fortress of eccentricity meant to protect the artist who lives there. But what it has most of all is not a lot of people.
“I like people, I just don’t have to see them all the time,” he said, laughing. David Crosby, his bandmate in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, used to describe the complicated route into his ranch as “my filtering system,” Young said.
He made a bunch of rights and lefts through the forest before getting out to unlock the gate. Others might have an electronic gate, but Young likes the mechanical experience of slipping a key into a padlock and swinging something open. He is fundamentally analog, despite the occasional electronic excesses in his music. He likes amps with knobs that go to 12 and things that click when you touch them. Read the rest of the article here: Neil Young Comes Clean - NYTimes.com
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Tim Burton on His Movies, His Life and His Tombstone - NYTimes.com
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NEWS
Good interview with Tim Burton
Tim Burton, at Home in His Own Head
IT would be a tremendous disappointment if Tim Burton’s inner sanctum turned out to be a sterile environment, barren except for a telephone on its cold white floor; or a cubicle with a “World’s Greatest Dad” coffee mug. Instead, the workplace of the filmmaker behind invitingly grim delights like “Beetlejuice” and “Edward Scissorhands” is a definitive Burtonesque experience: on a hill here in north London, behind a brick wall and a mournful tree, in a Victorian residence that once belonged to the children’s book illustrator Arthur Rackham, it lies at the top of a winding staircase guarded by the imposing portraits of Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee. Its décor is best characterized as Modern Nonconformist (unless Ultraman toys and models of skeletal warriors are your thing), and when the master of the house greets you, his drinking glass will bear a poster image for “The Curse of Frankenstein.”
That the word Burtonesque has become part of the cultural lexicon hints at the surprising influence Mr. Burton, 54, has accumulated in a directorial career that spans 16 features and nearly 30 years. Across films as disparate as “Ed Wood,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “Big Fish” — released to varying critical and commercial receptions — he has developed a singular if not easily pinned-down sensibility. His style is strongly visual, darkly comic and morbidly fixated, but it is rooted just as much in his affection for monsters and misfits (which in his movies often turn out to be the same thing). He all but invented the vocabulary of the modern superhero movie (with “Batman"), brought new vitality to stop-motion animation (with “Corpse Bride,” directed with Mike Johnson, and “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” which Mr. Burton produced) and has come to be associated, for better or worse, with anything that is ghoulish or ghastly without being inaccessible. He may be the most widely embraced loner in contemporary cinema.
His success has also transported him from sleepy, suburban Southern California, where he grew up and graduated from the California Institute of the Arts, to London, where he lives with his partner, the actress Helena Bonham Carter, and their two young children, and where he has come to embrace the sensation of being perpetually out of place.
“I just feel like a foreigner,” Mr. Burton said in his cheerful, elliptical manner. “Feeling that weird foreign quality just makes you feel more, strangely, at home.”
Disney
Tim Burton, far right, shooting his short “Frankenweenie.
On a recent morning Mr. Burton, dressed entirely in black, was talking about his new animated feature, “Frankenweenie,” which will be released by Walt Disney on Oct. 5., and which tells the charming story of a young boy (named Victor Frankenstein) who reanimates the corpse of his dead pet dog.
Like its director “Frankenweenie” is simultaneously modern and retrograde: the film, which is being released in 3-D black-and-white, is adapted from a live-action short that Mr. Burton made for Disney in 1984, when he was a struggling animator. That project did not get the wide release Mr. Burton hoped for, but it paved the way for him to direct his first feature, “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” the following year.
As he spoke (and occasionally shaped his feral, curly hair into something resembling satyr horns), Mr. Burton was in a nostalgic mood but also a defiant one. That may have been the result of the tepid reception that greeted “Dark Shadows,” his big-budget remake of the TV soap opera (which Mr. Burton said did not disappoint him), or a reluctance to analyze trends in his career. Whether he was talking about his upbringing in Burbank, his earliest frustration at Disney or the unexpected honor of a career retrospective presented at the Museum of Modern Art and other institutions, Mr. Burton still casts himself as an outsider.
“Wanting people to like you is nice, but I’m confident that there’s always going to be lots that don’t,” Mr. Burton said with gallows humor and genuine pride. “I’ll always be able to hang on to that.” These are excerpts from this conversation.
Disney Enterprises
The hero and his pet in Mr. Burton’s current feature “Frankenweenie,” based on the short.Thursday, September 20, 2012
So Who Filmed #Romney's #47% Video? - Politics - The Atlantic Wire
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NEWS
It all happened at Jimmy Carter's grandson's house...
Carter Even got his family got turned off the democrats....
So Who Filmed Romney's 47% Video? - Politics - The Atlantic Wire
There's only one mystery left regarding Romney's "47 percent" debacle: Who filmed it? From what we've heard from James Carter IV, Mother Jones, and the guy who owns that lavish pad where it all went down, here's our best guess: It was the bartender, with the iPhone, at the hedge fund manager's wet bar. "Before Mitt Romney spoke at the fundraiser, guests were reminded that Mitt Romney's comments were off the record. Those present were asked not to repeat his remarks to the press," writes blogger Laura Goldman, who also reports that Marc Leder, the wealthy hedgefund manager who owns the house where the "47 percent" tape was born, has apologized to Romney and "believes that the video was made by someone who was hired to work the party." Hmmm ... blaming it on the help.
Well, that makes sense, since the video, yes all 49-minutes of it, seems to be primarily shot on what seems to be a marble-topped (or maybe it's granite) table or bar, complete with a short stack of napkins and votive candles. A meticulous video investigator at ABC News even notes that, "at one point, a waitress can be heard placing an order with the bartender, saying, 'four martini glasses, please.'"
Of course there are at least two people who know who the actual videographer is, one of which is Jimmy Carter's grandson, James Carter IV, who vaguely told MSNBC that "it was fair to assume" that the cameraman (or woman) wasn't one of the people who paid $50,000 to eat with Romney that night. The other person who knows, Mother Jones editor Monika Bauerlein, told ABC she'd be keeping the source's name safe, but did add that the video "did not come from opposition researchers or a political campaign." Leder of course isn't pleased, and Goldman reports, "He is in the process of narrowing down the suspects and is contemplating contacting law enforcement."
Read the article online here:
So Who Filmed Romney's 47% Video? - Politics - The Atlantic Wire
Carter Even got his family got turned off the democrats....
So Who Filmed Romney's 47% Video? - Politics - The Atlantic Wire
There's only one mystery left regarding Romney's "47 percent" debacle: Who filmed it? From what we've heard from James Carter IV, Mother Jones, and the guy who owns that lavish pad where it all went down, here's our best guess: It was the bartender, with the iPhone, at the hedge fund manager's wet bar. "Before Mitt Romney spoke at the fundraiser, guests were reminded that Mitt Romney's comments were off the record. Those present were asked not to repeat his remarks to the press," writes blogger Laura Goldman, who also reports that Marc Leder, the wealthy hedgefund manager who owns the house where the "47 percent" tape was born, has apologized to Romney and "believes that the video was made by someone who was hired to work the party." Hmmm ... blaming it on the help.
Well, that makes sense, since the video, yes all 49-minutes of it, seems to be primarily shot on what seems to be a marble-topped (or maybe it's granite) table or bar, complete with a short stack of napkins and votive candles. A meticulous video investigator at ABC News even notes that, "at one point, a waitress can be heard placing an order with the bartender, saying, 'four martini glasses, please.'"
Of course there are at least two people who know who the actual videographer is, one of which is Jimmy Carter's grandson, James Carter IV, who vaguely told MSNBC that "it was fair to assume" that the cameraman (or woman) wasn't one of the people who paid $50,000 to eat with Romney that night. The other person who knows, Mother Jones editor Monika Bauerlein, told ABC she'd be keeping the source's name safe, but did add that the video "did not come from opposition researchers or a political campaign." Leder of course isn't pleased, and Goldman reports, "He is in the process of narrowing down the suspects and is contemplating contacting law enforcement."
Read the article online here:
So Who Filmed Romney's 47% Video? - Politics - The Atlantic Wire
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