The CIA has a photostream. There are no grainy surveillance shots of square jawed agents using George Forman Grills to assassinate diplomats or pallets of US currency being handed over to various shady operators, but a boy can hope… There are 67 photos from the CIA Museum, which includes such awesomeness as “Charlie” [...]
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I finally, finally got around to processing the some of the photos from one of my many trips to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, which remains one of my favourite museums, anywhere, and mainly for their excellent permanent collection. At top, Shiva and Parvati. I recently went through a mind blowing, worldview altering study of Indian art, and although I think the galaxy of Hindu symbols is too vast to really sum up there are some aspects that I keep returning to as being “key”. There’s a lot going on in the above image, but there are two things about it that I enjoy is the idea of a functional family unit as an object of worship. The first is that unlike any other religion I know of, the presence of gods/avatars as couples is probably the most psychologically healthy model I can imagine for a religion to promote. Only in Hinduism is there a constant reminder of the value of the family, that the world of the divine truly mirrors the real world. As I interpret it, the world of spiritual experience is definitely here and now, in this life, as opposed to on the other side of death. The second thing of primary value is that if Shiva and Parvati are both aspects of the ultimate divine, and can be combined into the same avatar of that divinity as Ardhanarishvara, then Hinduism, more so than any other major world religion contains models that could potentially avoid extreme patriarchal or matriarchal beliefs. As usual, there’s a bunch more images in this Flickr set of Indian Art at the AAMSF, which right now is “all Hinduism, all the time”, but which might get some Buddhist and Jain images thrown in later. Below the break are a few more images that I’d like to highlight. Continue reading Hindu Sculpture at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco Banksy is busy cruising around LA, throwing up his now predictably witty work, which is being rapidly monetized a desperate public, likely all as a sort of Oscar campaign. But someone in Minneapolis has real wit, enough to make me think that maybe graffiti can still be saved. via the LA [...]
Ahh, the de Young Museum. I both love and hate you. So terribly designed internally, so many waste of space shows, so much a cattle car designed to dump folks right into the gift shop. But then you do amazing things, like the Vivienne Westwood and Hiroshi Sugimoto shows. I feel the same way about the permanent collection. So hodge-podge, but then there are just these huge treasures in it. Like the above. My absence from working life has enabled my mind to engage more with areas of personal, rather than professional, interest as of late, and a big part of that is my interest in overlaps between contemporary art practices and spiritual/religious beliefs, particularly shamanism and animism. So wherever I go, I seem to be finding opportunities and minor revelations. The de Young is home to a small, but interesting group of objects from Eskimo, Inuit, Inupiaq and Yupik Native American cultures that I find illuminating. At top is a small sculpture of a shaman, mid-transformation into a bear. It’s a few inches long, the kind of thing you might keep in your pocket. Apparently an aspect of Inuit and Eskimo shamanism is not only the shaman’s ability to transform into a bear (or vice versa), but also his ability to contemplate or see his own skeleton. So these three symbols of bear, shaman and skeleton together symbolize the underlying power of the shaman in much of the far north and the arctic.
Made my first visit to the Tacoma Art Museum recently, where they’re currently showing some of the Japanese prints from their collection. Museum collections of Japanese prints, basically mass-market, popular culture items, always function as a reminder that 200 years from now, someone’s gonna be displaying a museum collection of xerox punk flyers that have become somehow “priceless” and “ancient”. On to the prints. The collection has some definite highlights, mainly due to some very early prints and some Meiji-era prints that, while less “magically Japanese” than the classics by Hiroshige and Hokusai, were of primary interest to me (I’m more of a Yoshitoshi fan, myself). The most interesting of these is the image above, a 1904 print showing Japanese soldiers crossing the Yalu River during the Battle of Yalu River in the Russo-Japanese War. It’s not the kind of image you see anywhere before the advent of photography and journalism. A couple more images I’d like to highlight are below the break, and a whole bunch more, with their labels, lurk in my Flickr set. Peter Wegner’s installation, The United States of Nothing, all lit up, as seen at SFMOMA. Paint neon, based on the lat/long locations of towns with names that refer to nothing. I love being on the road, love the mystery of yet-unvisited town names. Embiggen. With Talking Heads accompaniment, if you please. [...] Former Los Angeles City Councilperson and current Warhol Foundation President Joel Wachs has written a letter condemning the Smithsonian’s censoring of Wojnarowicz’s Fire in My Belly, threatening to stop financing exhibitions at the Smithsonian if the work is not reinstalled. The Warhol Foundation supported Hide/Seek to the tune of $100,000, and has given $375,000 [...] Hideseek.org is up, a clearinghouse of Hide/Seek & Fire in My Belly information, including a listing of all screenings. The Hammer Museum in LA, Yerba Buena in SF, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, The Wexner in Ohio, SFMOMA , Boston ICA, Contemporay Arts Museum Houston, Stanford and many others are now showing Wojnarowicz’s [...] The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Tip/Wag – Art Edition – Brent Glass www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> March to Keep Fear Alive Fire in My Belly bit starts at about 2:50. Stephen Colbert (who it’s worth noting, is a devout Catholic), mocks representative Congressman [...] The Smithsonian has released a wimpy statement that indicates that they “Stand Firmly Behind “Hide/Seek” Exhibition”. Which is total bullshit. If they’re was anything firm about their stance, David Wojnarowicz’ video would still be on display. If we are going to have to fight another culture war to defend the rights of free expression [...] |
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