March 25, 2013

Photograph

 Hermann Hesse with "Narciss"

March 23, 2013

R.I.P

Bebo Valdés, Giant Of Cuban Music has passed away

One of the giants of Cuban music, pianist and composer/arranger Bebo Valdés, died Friday in Switzerland due to complications from pneumonia, according to his wife and manager. He was 94.Ramón Emilio "Bebo" Valdés Amaro was born in 1918 in a village outside Havana. Trained at conservatory, and having absorbed the sounds of Afro-Cuban street music and American jazz in various ensembles, he became the house pianist and arranger at the Tropicana Nightclub in 1948. The Tropicana was the hottest venue in Havana at the time; many American entertainers performed there, and Valdés became known as the go-to arranger in town for studio dates, film scores and dance numbers. In 1952, he also participated in the first Afro-Cuban descarga, or jam session, recorded in Cuba, where a group improvisation turned into the recording "Con Poco Coco."

But as his career was booming, a revolutionary government took over in Cuba, accompanied by a crackdown on the entertainment industry. In 1960, he left Cuba to play a gig in Mexico City with his own band. He never returned, leaving behind his wife and children. Valdés eventually wound up in Sweden, where he remarried and pursued a quieter music career, often playing piano for cruise ships or in choice hotels.
"If you are a musician and you do one thing, you should enjoy what you do," Valdés told NPR's Felix Contreras in 2006. "This is my profession, and it is my hobby, and I live in love with what I do. In those years in Stockholm, even if I wasn't successful, I did it because I liked it, and I'll keep doing it until I die."
Meanwhile, one of his children had matured into a piano virtuoso himself, and had co-founded his own jazz-influenced, genre-crossing band called Irakere. When Chucho Valdes and Irakere played a date at Carnegie Hall in 1977, Bebo Valdes crossed the Atlantic Ocean to reunite with his son. It set into motion a reconciliation which resulted in several collaborations, in concert and on recordings like the Latin jazz performance film Calle 54 and the duet album Juntos Para Siempre.
Late in his career, Bebo Valdés enjoyed a resurgence of popularity. In 1994, another Irakere veteran and Cuban exile, reedman Paquito D'Rivera, convinced Valdés to record Bebo Rides Again, a disc of Cuban classics mixed with original compositions. The album led to future recordings, among them Grammy-winning efforts like El Arte de Sabor and Lagrimas Negras. He was also the inspiration and pianist for the animated film Chico and Rita, about Cuban musicians in the 1940s.
"This attention is a gift from God," he told NPR. "I did not ask for all of this. But since it was sent to me, I accept it from the heart."

~NPR

Art of the Day


















Finial in the Form of a Parrot
Object Name: Finial
 
Date: 17th–18th century
 
Geography: Northern India
 
Medium: Brass
 
Dimensions: H. 5 3/4 in. (14.6 cm) L. 11 in. (27.9 cm)
 
Classification: Metal
 
Credit Line: Gift of Robert W. and Lockwood De Forest, 1919
 
Accession Number: 19.135.3

R.I.P

Chinua Achebe, Nigerian Author Of 'Things Fall Apart,' Dies

















 

Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, widely seen as the grandfather of modern African literature, has died at the age of 82.
From the publication of his first novel, "Things Fall Apart", over 50 years ago, Achebe shaped an understanding of Africa from an African perspective more than any other author.
As a novelist, poet, broadcaster and lecturer, Achebe was a yardstick against which generations of African writers have been judged. For children across Africa, his books have for decades been an eye-opening introduction to the power of literature.
Describing Achebe as a "colossus of African writing", South African President Jacob Zuma expressed sadness at his death.
Nelson Mandela, who read Achebe's work in jail, has called him a writer "in whose company the prison walls fell down."
Achebe's "Things Fall Apart", published in 1958, told of his Igbo ethnic group's fatal brush with British colonizers in the 1800s - the first time the story of European colonialism had been told from an African viewpoint to an international audience. The book was translated into 50 languages and has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
He later turned his sights on the devastation wrought to Nigeria and Africa by military coups and entrenched dictatorship.
“"Anthills of the Savannah," published in 1987, is set after a coup in a fictional African country, where power has corrupted and state brutality silenced all but the most courageous.
The pain at Achebe's death was felt across Nigeria, and particularly in the southeastern homeland of the Igbos.
"Our whole household is crying out in grief," a cousin and traditional chief, Uba Onubon, told Reuters in Ikenga village.
WAR
Born at Ogidi in southeast Nigeria on November 16, 1930, Achebe was the son of a Christian evangelist. He went to mission schools and to University College, Ibadan, and taught briefly before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, where he was director of external broadcasting from 1961 to 1966.
When his homeland broke away from Nigeria in a disastrous bid for independence, Achebe launched a publishing company in Enugu, capital of the self-declared republic of Biafra.
After the war, which cost a million lives along with Biafra's hopes of statehood, Achebe returned to Enugu to teach at the nearby Nsukka University.
In 1972 he moved to Massachusetts and since then spent much of his time in the United States, with occasional spells in Nigeria. His last post was at Brown University in Rhode Island.
Through tears, former government minister and friend Dora Akunyili said Achebe's death "leaves a void in Nigeria, Africa and globally."
Although Achebe never won the Nobel literature prize like fellow Nigerian Wole Soyinka his works won praise for their vivid portrayal of African realities and their accessibility.
His contribution was recognized when he won The Man Booker International Prize in 2007.
"Professor Achebe will live forever in the hearts and minds of present and future generations through his great works," Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said in a statement.
CORRUPTION
Achebe never hesitated to turn harsh words on his home country, publishing a pamphlet in 1983, "“The Trouble With Nigeria", excoriating its corruption and condemning it as "dirty, callous, noisy, ostentatious, dishonest and vulgar. In short it is among the most unpleasant places on earth."
"The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility," he wrote, words which chimed with the feelings of many Nigerians.
In 2004, he turned down the title 'Commander of the Federal Republic' offered to him by then President Olusegun Obasanjo, replying that he was appalled by the cliques who had turned Nigeria into "a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom".
Undaunted, President Jonathan also tried to confer a national honor on him in 2011. He snubbed that one too.
A car accident put Achebe in a wheelchair in 1990 and he wrote no books for more than 20 years.
His last, "There Was a Country" was a deeply personal account, in prose and poetry, of the horrors of the 1967-70 Biafra war, lifting decades of silence on the loss of friends, family and countrymen that forever shaped his life.

 

March 22, 2013

Quote of the Day


“You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!”
Maya Angelou

Photograph of the Day
















Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (Cuba, 1960)

March 21, 2013

Literary Pick (**)

Pale Fire
-Vladimir Nabokov


March 16, 2013

Art news

Yoko Ono awarded the 2012 Oscar Kokoschka prize, Austria’s highest award for applied contemporary art. 

On Thursday 1 March 2012, artist Yoko Ono won the 2012 Oscar Kokoschka prize, Austria’s highest award for applied contemporary art.

The Oskar Kokoschka prize, named after an Austrian painter who died in 1980, is awarded every two years to a contemporary artist and is worth 20,000 euros (26,600 dollars).
By awarding Yoko Ono the Oskar Kokoschka Prize 2012, the jury acknowledges her distinguished artistic career as a whole and her clear sociopolitical positioning, explains jury chairman Gerald Bast.
The Tokyo-born artist ranks amongst the most important representatives of the Fluxus movement and was a pioneering figure in the avant-garde New York art scene as a filmmaker, composer of experimental music, and vocalist.
In 1962, Yoko returned to Japan for two years, where she drew attention with her numerous solo exhibitions and performances. From 1964-1966, and 1972 onwards, she lived in New York once again.
“Wall Piece for Orchestra” or “Cut Piece” are two of her most exciting and memorable concept art projects.
In 1972 and 1987, she participated in the documenta in Kassel.
In 2008, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld organised a retrospective exhibition on her work.
At the Venice Biennale 2009, she was awarded the Golden Lion, the highest recognition for a living artist.
Time and again, she causes a furore with large-scale actions for the benefit of world peace and compliance with international human rights. Her commitment to the recognition of same-sex partnerships, her political statements, and her artistic work make the music and concept artist an extraordinary personality – and not only in the art scene.
Yoko Ono lives and works in New York.
The artist was selected for the Oskar Kokoschka Prize 2012 by a jury consisting of Dr. Gerald Bast (chairman, rector of the University of Applied Arts Vienna), Univ.-Prof. Brigitte Kowanz (representative of the Senate of the University of Applied Arts Vienna), General Secretary Mag. Friedrich Faulhammer (represented by MinR Dr. Peter Seitz, representative of the BM:UKK – Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture), Mag. Olga Okunev (representative of the BM:UKK), em.o.Univ.-Prof. Arch. Mag.arch. Hans Hollein (president of the Austrian Arts Senate, indisposed on short notice due to illness), Karola Kraus (director of the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig), Prof. Dr. Erwin Melchardt (representative for media coverage on art), Mag. Eva Blimlinger (rector of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Dr. Klaus Albrecht Schröder (director of the Albertina, represented by Dr. Antonia Hoerschelmann), and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat (University of Applied Arts Vienna, head of the Art History department).
With this decision, the jury honours Yoko Ono as “an exceptional artistic personality who is not only one of the most important members of the Fluxus movement but also of the utmost topicality given, in particular, her transdisciplinary approach in artistic production. Her multimedia artistic work, which is connected by an ideology-critical red thread, ranges from film to experimental music, concept art to performance. In her work, Yoko Ono links the pursuit of artistic innovation with the assertion of art’s efficacy in society, which is convincingly evidenced in her political engagement for peace and human rights.”
The prize – established by the Austrian Federal Government in 1980 on the occasion of the death of the painter Oskar Kokoschka, born 1886 in Pöchlarn – is awarded to a visual artist every two years in recognition of his or her artistic work. The Oskar Kokoschka Prize is one of the most important awards for visual art in Austria, bestowed to a national or also international artist. The first prize was given to Hans Hartung in 1981; since then Mario Merz, Gerhard Richter, Siegfried Anzinger, Agnes Martin, Jannis Kounellis, John Baldessari, Maria Lassnig, VALIE EXPORT, Ilya Kabakov, Günter Brus, Martha Rosler, William Kentridge, and Raymond Pettibon, in 2010, have received this distinction.
The presentation of the Oskar Kokoschka Prize by the Federal Minister of Science and Research and organised by the University of applied Arts Vienna took place – in accordance with the statutes – on March 1, the birthday of Oskar Kokoschka.

 

March 4, 2013

Quote of the Day

“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.” 

Art of the Day

Head from the figure of a woman, ca. 2700–2500 B.C.; Early Cycladic I–II
Cycladic; Keros-Syros culture Marble