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Bibliotecture

January 29, 2011 | by | Category: Photography, Text&Context | Leave a Comment
Ecalator

Seattle Central Library, USA, OMA / LMN – A Joint Venture Commissioned:1999 Completed: 2004 From the Original Project Proposal 1999 At a moment when libraries are perceived to be under threat from a shrinking public realm on one side and digitization on the other, the Seattle Central Library creates a civic space for the circulation of knowledge in all media, and an innovative organizing system for an ever-growing physical collection – the Books Spiral. The library's various programs are intuitively arranged across five platforms and four flowing "in between" planes, which together dictate the building’s distinctive faceted shape, offering the city an inspiring building that is robust in both its elegance and its logic. read ... [Read more]

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On the Occasion

January 27, 2011 | by | Category: Music | Leave a Comment
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) "Miracles; I’ve used the word, and I‘ll stay with it. In a lifetime with Mozart’s music I am still surprised, shaken, momentarily ashiver at those moments when the heavens seem to part and revelations fill the sky." — Alan Rich On the occasion of his birth, offered here is the Mozart Piano Sonata No. 13 in B flat, KV  333 as performed by Solomon. This is the BBC transcription from his final broadcast pre-recorded August 28, 1956, just weeks before the catastrophic stroke that was to end his career. Mozart Piano Sonata No. 13 in B flat, KV  333, Solomon (Solomon Cutner), Great Pianist of the 20th Century, Philips Classics, In cooperation with Steinway and ... [Read more]

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Origin Stories

January 23, 2011 | by | Category: Art | 1 Comment
Artifact 4, 2009 bronze 26 x 43 x 31 inches

Cheryl Ann Thomas, New Work, Frank Lloyd Gallery, January 8-February 5, 2011 – The suite of porcelain and bronze pieces by Cheryl Ann Thomas that comprise her latest show at the Frank Lloyd Gallery seem to find their locus as “objects” neither in the art world proper – the province of museums, educators and critics, nor in the decorative arts – where we find the beyond-functionality of material beauty.  The interest of these works exists in the space between these often mutually exclusive domains – worlds with their own historical lineages and arbiters of taste. These objects seem to exist independently of any progenitors, their origin story elusive and mysterious. Thomas terms these works “artifacts” and ... [Read more]

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Immiseration Can Wait

January 18, 2011 | by | Category: Text&Context | 5 Comments
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Falling Back with Celine and Sally –  For whatever they may be, the gods manifest themselves above all as mental events. Literature and the Gods - Roberto Calasso As I fell back off the ladder I thought about unintended consequences and about the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine. The light bulb was still in my hand – one of those beefy exterior bulbs – and as I fell it swung around behind my back so that when I landed the stem of the bulb dug hard into the soft tissue above my left hip. Lying rigid on the hardwood floor I made odd bleating sounds until the firemen arrived some twenty minutes later and smiled, looking down at me. My thoughts about unintended consequences had been triggered earlier in the day while ... [Read more]

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Derailed

January 14, 2011 | by | Category: Photography | Leave a Comment

Jean-Pascal Imsand: Photographer, Swiss, (1960-1994) Lorraine Anne Davis is a curator-appraiser of fine art photography and a board member of the Fondation Jean-Pascal Imsand. Her lecture, The Famous, The Infamous and the Anonymous, A History of Portraiture in Photography will be given at the Center for Creative Photography in Tuscon, February 4, 2011 to accompany the CCP exhibition FACE TO FACE: 150 Years of Photographic Portraiture Gifted with exceptional visual talents, Jean-Pascal Imsand rose to prominence in the European world of fineart photography, only to end his own life at the age of 34. He left behind a legacy that has continued to grow making this master photographer—with his oeuvre of poignant documentary work and ... [Read more]

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Variegated Menace

January 9, 2011 | by | Category: Music | Leave a Comment
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Portion Control, “Progress Report 1980-1983” septuple LP box set (VOD 73) Electronic Dance Music (EDM) rarely finds itself reviewed critically alongside, say, Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini or Requiem in D Minor. It is often regarded as derivative of Kraftwerk at best, cold cut kitsch at worst, or merely functional for those who get off by shaking their endoskeletons. Entertaining? Yes. Fine art? No. But if EDM is the property of the discothèque, not the audio boutique, what must we do with Portion Control?—the band who has for thirty years dedicated itself to composing and occasionally performing music that is meticulous yet aggressive, elevated yet idiosyncratic, challenging yet lyrical, and altogether subtle. It also ... [Read more]

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A Considerable Collection

January 4, 2011 | by | Category: Fashion | 1 Comment
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Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 LACMA Resnick Pavilion, October 2, 2010–March 6, 2011 Photography by Nancy Baron Fashioning Fashion, one of the inaugural exhibitions of the Renzo Piano designed Lynda and Stewart Resnick Pavilion, is a trove of European clothing that speaks to both the evolution of style and the historical narrative of technical innovation covering a span of more than two hundred years. The show is the culmination of the gift from donors Michael and Ellen Michelson and Suzanne Saperstein, that when integrated with the objects and holdings of the LACMA's Costume and Textile departments, now make Los Angeles a destination of consequence for European costume studies. Stewards Sharon S. ... [Read more]

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Urbanature – Coleen Sterritt and Constance Mallinson

January 1, 2011 | by | Category: Art | Leave a Comment
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New Representations of the Natural A six part serial essay and online exhibition focused on the contemporary depiction of landscape in the painting, photographic and sculptural arts. Introduction and Additional Exhibition Artists: Urbanature, An Introduction, Merion Estes, Roland Reiss and Elizabeth Bryant,Don Suggs and Karen Carson,Linda Stark and Nancy Evans,Ross Rudel and Pierre Picot – COLEEN STERRITT Perhaps owing to the consumer culture and the endless flow of global commodities, for sculptors the present has been dominated by hybridity, the interdisciplinary, and material excess. Moving closer to what Nicholas Bourriaud has termed “Altermodernism”, these artists take into their stride postmodern pluralities, the ... [Read more]

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