22 Nov 2009
Haley is about to start a very large and awesome painting for me (!) and so she was testing out some colors. :)
20 Nov 2009
Most beautiful and most wonderful | Darwin photographic competition
Adult commended: Orang-utan Contemplating Invertebrate Life by Dr Susan M Cheyne: ‘As part of an ongoing ape behavioural research and conservation project, I was following this wild adult male who was starting to develop cheek pads. As he moved towards a tree in fruit, a dragonfly flew past at eye level; he paused to watch its flight before slowly moving on’. Photograph: Dr Susan M Cheyne
I love that animals notice and contemplate and wonder about the world around them.
20 Nov 2009
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Dr. Dre - Keep Their Heads Ringin’
Thank God it’s Friday
This was one of the songs that really made me appreciate rap as well as Dr. Dre’s rhyming talent.
19 Nov 2009
The Others Who Haunt Me and Whom I Haunt, UGA graduate student Marie Porterfield’s current exhibit at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, showcases her stunning work in painting, drawing, and ceramics. And haunt, it does; fantastically complex scenes and gaunt, wretched characters will pull you inside their world and refuse to let go, even after you’ve left the gallery.
Porterfield described the work, all from 2009, as an exploration of peoples’ relationships—or lack thereof—with supernatural entities, spirits, and ghosts. Ghouls and wraiths swirl through Porterfield’s world, spun like otherwordly larvae into gauzy cocoons. Miniature ceramic apparitions hang from the ceiling at eye level, each confronting the viewer with an eerily lifelike stare. Faces gaze up from a floor piece as if daring you to believe in them—or themselves to believe in you, the giant invader of their world.
Catch this show at the Bridge Gallery through November 24th. Like the ghosts who inhabit it, Porterfield’s work must be experienced to be believed.
Aw, Haley’s writing really beautiful art reviews for this new project she’s involved in, Project Athens. Check it out if you’re in the area or are looking for cool new stuff!
19 Nov 2009
Damn right you babies better stay away.
Get your badass name at Make Me Mighty! (Bonus points for using a word invented by Calvin & Hobbes)
(via)
19 Nov 2009
The Gay Animal Kingdom
Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in “penis fencing,” which leads, surprisingly enough, to ejaculation. They also give each other genital massages.
Reblogged for the phrases “ardent lesbians” and “penis fencing”
Hot.
I always wondered why my dog would only hump the boy teddy bears.
19 Nov 2009
Talk About Space by Ed Ruscha
Oil on Canvas, 1963
This painting sold at Christie’s for $3,529,500 on May 14, 2002.
The very uselessness of art that makes it so incomprehensible to evolutionary biology makes it all too comprehensible to economics and social psychology. What better proof that you have money to spare than your being able to spend it on doodads and stunts that don’t fill the belly or keep the rain out but that require precious materials, years of practice, a command of obscure texts, or intimacy with the elite? Thorstein Veblen’s and Quentin Bell’s analyses of taste and fashion, in which an elite’s conspicuous displays of consumption, leisure, and outrage are emulated by the rabble, sending the elite off in search of new inimitable displays, nicely explain the otherwise inexplicable oddities of the arts…. The value of art is largely unrelated to aesthetics: a priceless masterpiece becomes worthless if it is found to be a forgery; soup cans and comic strips become high art when the art world says they are, and then command conspicuously wasteful prices. Modern and postmodern works are intended not to give pleasure but to confirm or confound the theories of a guild of critics and analysts, to epater la bourgeoisie, or to baffle the rubes in Peoria. - Psychologist Steven Pinker
While I don’t espouse all of his sharp assertions, he does have an excellent point on the power of the elite and high art’s wastefulness. Although there are some people that would call this particular piece by Ruscha worth the $3.5 mil, I think it’s trash. On the other hand, I am sure there are many people who think Rothko, one of my favorite postmodern artists, is a talentless fraud. I do think it is interesting, however, that in an anecdotal study of more than 400 people across the country, art critic James Elkins found that more people shed tears to Mark Rothko’s works of art than any other artist’s.
18 Nov 2009
Before Categorization and Scientific Classification...
The Chinese divided the animal world into the following categories:
Those that belong to the Emperor
Embalmed ones
Those that are trained
Suckling pigs
Mermaids
Fabulous ones
Stray dogs
Those that are included in this classification
Those that tremble as if they were mad
Innumerable ones
Those drawn with a very fine camel’s-hair brush
Others
Those that have just broken a flower vase
Those that resemble flies from a distance
from the Chinese encyclopedia The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.
18 Nov 2009
So I'm reading this new book,
and I just came across this joke:
Two psychoanalysts pass each other in a conference. One says, “Hello,” and the other thinks, “I wonder what he meant by that.”
I lol’ed. Then I wondered what it meant that I lol’ed.
Ah, ‘tis both a blessing and a curse to be of this disposition.
17 Nov 2009
Larry: What were you so sad about?
Alice: Life.
Larry: What’s that then?
Alice: You want to talk about art?
Larry: I know it’s vulgar to discuss the work at the opening of the work, but somebody’s gotta do it. I’m serious. What do you think?
Alice: It’s a lie. It’s a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully, and all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it’s beautiful ‘cause that’s what they want to see. But the people in the photos are sad, and alone, but the pictures make the world seem beautiful. So the exhibition’s reassuring, which makes it a lie, and everyone loves a big fat lie.
This movie has some of the best, most cutting dialogue I’ve ever heard. I loved this scene.
17 Nov 2009
NPH cmuNik8s!
I keep wondering, is NPH anything like Barney Stinson IRL (other than being hilarious)?
