Literary Pick (**)

Selected Poetry
-William Butler Yeats




















Glad I experienced Yeats, but not the style of poetry I enjoy.

Quintessentially B











Caitlin Wilson Designs









CS Interiors

Cultural News

New movie to look at the life of Peggy Guggenheim
-The film, by art advisor Eleanor Cayre and Emmy Award-winning producer Nikki Silver, is expected to begin production in 2012

New York-based art advisor Eleanor Cayre has partnered with Nikki Silver, the Emmy Award-winning producer of On Screen Entertainment, to make a movie about the life of collector Peggy Guggenheim, whose birthday was celebrated last week.

Past Cayre projects include the Art Basel Miami Beach exhibition, ‘The Station’, 2008, in which she teamed up with former Whitney curator Shamim Momin and artist Nate Lowman to display the work of 40 artists, including Ryan McGinley, Ed Ruscha and Rita Ackermann.

"I have always been fascinated with Peggy's collection and life story,” said Cayre of the art world maven. “She was an eccentric figure who not only championed, but also had intimate relationships with some of the most creative minds in modern art history.”

The film, which is still untitled, is expected to begin production in 2012.

-The Art Newspaper

Quote of the Day

"Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please,
With too much spirit to be e'er at ease,
With too much quickness ever to be taught,
With too much thinking to have common thought:
You purchase pain with all that joy can give,
And die of nothing but a rage to live."


— Alexander Pope

Art of the Day

Albrecht Durer
"Turf"

Literary Pick (****)

Birthday Letters
-Ted Hughes





















In this collection of poems by Ted Hughes, one only gathers glimpses of what his relationship with Sylvia Plath was like. Each poem is slightly obscure yet enjoyable. In these writings one gets the sense that Plath was unstable and emotionally unpredictable. I'm sure she was, given the nature in which she died, but you can also sense Hugh's egoism, superior-lism and control. There is a sense of deflected responsibility on his part in blaming Plath's instability on the death of her father. Ted martyrizes himself to the reader.
The poems are effortless and smooth. "woody" feels like a right word to use to describe them.

Poetry

Drawing

Drawing calmed you. Your poker infernal pen
Was like a branding iron. Objects
Suffered into their new presence, tortured
Into final position. As you drew
I felt released, calm. Time opened
When you drew the market at Benidorm.
I sat near you, scribbling something.
Hours burned away. The stall-keepers
Kept coming to see you had them properly.
We sat on those steps, in our rope-soles,
And were happy. Our tourist novelty
Had worn off, we knew our own ways
Through the town's runs. We were familiar
Foreign objects. When he's sold his bananas
The banana seller gave us a solo
Violin performance on his banana stalk.
Everybody crowded to praise your drawing.
You drew doggedly on, arresting details,
Till you had the whole scene imprisoned.
Here it is. You rescued for ever
Our otherwise lost morning. Your patience,
Your lip-gnawing scowl, got the portrait
Of a market-place that still slept
In the Middle Ages. Just before
It woke and disappeared
Under the screams of a million summer migrants
And the cliff of dazzling hotels. As your hand
Went under Heptonstall to be held
By endless darkness. While my pen travels on
Only two hundred miles from your hand,
Holding this memory of your red, white-spotted bandanna,
Your shorts, your short-sleeves jumper-
One of the thirty I lugged around Europe-
And your long brown legs, propping your pad,
And the contemplative calm
I drank from your concentrated quiet,
In this contemplative calm
Now I drink from your stillness that neither
Of us can disturb or escape.


-Ted Hughes (Birthday Letters)

Flourish Design + Style

The Neo-traditionalist

Keen


Sabbespot

Literary Pick (***)

Brideshead Revisited

-Evelyn Waugh

I began reading this book not knowing anything about it and the reason I chose it was because it kept resurfacing as a essential read on many Goodreads members lists. Since my goal is to hopefully read most, if not all highly regarded pieces of literature, I decided to give it a shot.

The prologue concerned me immediately. It reminded me of A Farewell To Arms, not a novel I particularly enjoyed. Also, when I started reading the first chapter it changed themes so drastically that I felt I was going to have issues with visualization, which normally happens to be the main reason I stop enjoying a book. If I have trouble visualizing scenes, themes and characters the story is usually a bust. I mean, who wouldn't need a little assistance visualizing a full grown man driving around with a teddy bear? Then this book went from having a semblance of Farewell to Arms to shades of The Great Gatsby... and I didn't enjoy The Great Gatsby at all either You should read my review for that one!). I was also having a little bit of trouble following the narration, and since I was only on chapter one, I felt discouraged. I didn't plan on abandoning it so I went online to do a bit of research to help familiarize myself with it's theme. I came across a movie clip of Brideshead Revisited (with Jeremy Irons) which I've never seen nor heard of before, and upon viewing a few minutes of it I got the visual I needed.

First of all, anything Jeremy Irons is in works for me, so it was very easy for me to imagine it's style, theme and mannerism.

It is one of those books you have to read carefully and pay close attention to at the beginning because it starts off unclear and complex, but the more I read it, the more I got into it, and I became quickly absorbed by the anxiety of Sebastian's drinking problem and all the family drama that followed thereafter. Other than that, the story is amazingly told. I think Waugh is one of the best writers I've experienced. Not since Nabokov has another writer been able to stimulate me so.

I could tell this book would be much better the second time around. I enjoyed how it challenged me at the beginning and I think Waugh's writing is beautifully succinct. There was nothing excessive about his style at all. It was perfect for it's subject matter. The story matched the tone of writing exquisitely.

I loved the way Waugh described the ship scene with the passengers becoming sea-sick. I don't think anyone else could have pulled it off in such a way that would've made me enjoy it so much.

This is the reason why I don't like giving up on books, because you never know which is going to capture you. I look forward to re-reading this one again down the road.

I don't know why this book seems to teeter between 3-4 stars to me..I feel like there's a lot of room to enjoy it even further with more reads.

Botanical Brouhaha

Tracery Designs

Literary Pick (****)

Married To Tolstoy -Cynthia Asquith


 

Quote of the Day

“I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it.”
-William S. Burroughs

Literary Pick (**)

The Divine Comedy 
-Dante Alighieri

I once read a biography on Modilgiani (one of my favorite artists) where it stated that his favorite piece of literature was The Divine Comedy. He use to walk around quoting Dante all day long, to the point of being annoying to his colleagues. Other artists and writers would look at him and be like "God, don't you have a life?". For some reason he seemed to have a deep connection to this work, and It's a funny coincidence that one of the women in Modilgiani's life was also named Beatr...more 




I once read a biography on Modilgiani (one of my favorite artists) where it mentioned that his favorite piece of literature was The Divine Comedy. Apparently he use to walk around quoting Dante all day long, to the point of being utterly annoying to his friends and colleagues. Other artists and writers would look at him and be like, "God, don't you have a life?!". For some reason he seemed to have had a deep connection to this work. Also, It's a funny coincidence that one of the women in Modilgiani's life was also named Beatrice, just like the seraph who guides Dante through the later part of his journey.
Since I was a child I've always had a morbid curiosity about the tortures and torments of hell and evil. I remember the first time I heard the story of Jim Jones, I cried. I was terribly upset and terrified. It was horrifying to learn that forms of evil could exist so close to us, mortals, here on earth. Aside from that traumatizing childhood experience, my father use to have a collection of vintage saint illustrations, and I came across this collection when I was about 6 years old, and in these illustrations were depictions of angelic images who were tortured and tormented by unseen evil forces. There always seemed to be an evil form trying to pull them down into hell, as the saints gazed upwardly with their eyes pleading for mercy from the God above. These are the kinds of images that sparked a curiosity that made me want to tackle a massive masterpiece such as this one.
I prepared a lot for The Divine Comedy before actually reading it (about a year). I found a mint condition copy in a used bookstore and snatched it up immediately. Personally, the translation was a bit tough for me, fortunately I had familiarized myself enough with it's theme before attempting to read it and felt I had a pretty good understanding of what is what about, so that helped a lot.
Finally, one of the things that attracted me to The Divine Comedy was the fact that Dante put the people he disliked through different stages of hell, which I think was brilliant in and of itself. There are a couple of people I too strongly dislike (hate) who I wish to see burn in several layers of hell as well. I've come to terms with the fact that I am not benevolent enough to forgive the wrongs and trespasses of others. I can't say I've reached that level of enlightenment in my life, and to be quite frank, I don't know if I ever will. However, I know that Dante himself ultimately reaches this point of spiritual enlightenment during his journey, and I was hoping that by the end of the book some of it could have rubbed off on me, but I'm afraid that didn't quite happen. My main issue with The Divine Comedy is that I had problems with visualization and imagery. In my minds eye I wasn't able to see or feel his experiences through these phases of afterlife. Perhaps if I had read a better translation I could have appreciated it more. I do however appreciate the work as a concept. The funny thing is that every now and then I'll come across brilliant passages or quotes from this book and wonder why I don't remember coming across  them while I was actually reading the book. I definitely have to re-visit this one again.

Literary Pick (***)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
-James Joyce

I honestly didn't know what to expect from Joyce. I've added and removed Ulysses from my to-reads list too many times to count. So here I compromised and decided to start off with "A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man" to get a general sense of the flavor of Joyce's work before I would dare attempt Ulysses. I began reading this book slowly and cautiously. I felt like if I wasn't careful I could reach a point in the book where I could get irrecoverably lost, and that's exactly what eventually ended up happening.
I don't enjoy reading books just for the sake of reading them, so it was important for me to get involved in all topics that involved this novel. However, when I reached chapter 5, I was lost in the discussion of beauty and aesthetic theory. I decided to cheat a little and consult sparknotes, but it turned out to be a topic that was over my head. The shame is that up until that point I was really enjoying the book. My favorite part was when the priest preached about eternal damnation. I think that's one of the best sections of literature I've ever read in my life. In fact, a while back I had printed a piece on my blog that Umberto Eco had copied in his book "On Ugliness" by St. Alphonsus Liguori, called "Preparation for Death", and I remember thinking how similar it was to the preachers' sermon, and sure enough, later in the chapter it mentioned that Stephen Dadelus often referred to another work which was also written by Ligouri. So that was pretty cool since I always wondered if I would ever read anything similar to that piece again.
Another funny coincidence is that at the same time I was reading "Portrait", I was also reading The Divine Comedy, so I was getting a pretty unhealthy dose of the perils of hell. I have to admit, that piece about hell in Portrait has left such an impression on me. Now I understand what people mean when they talk about the catholic guilt-trip.
Anyway...at least I got some enjoyment out of the book even if the end wasn't exactly to my liking. I think Joyce is an amazing writer. I just wish he was more approachable. I still plan on reading Ulysses someday... although I'm in no rush to read it anytime soon.

Literary Pick (**)

Love in the Time of Cholera
-Gabriel García Márquez





















The prose was vibrant, and I adore Marquez's spirit, but the details were grueling. It's sad that I didn't love it as much as I thought I would. I adored 100 Years of Solitude, and although they are both similar in style, with minimal dialogue, in which each chapter is at least 50 pages long, made it that much harder for me to get through. It seemed to me there were more descriptions about details than about the actual events of the love story itself. This was a hard one for me to get through. The only motivation to continue till the end was my faith in Marquez's ability to make it worth my while, and although, like I mentioned before, the prose is beautiful, Florentino's love alone wasn't strong enough to support the almost 400 page novel.
To me their love story was not convincing, and it's not that I'm prejudice about love stories involving older people, because one of my most cherished love stories of all time is "Bridges of Madison County". Cholera just didn't do it for me.


This is the second book I've read which was translated by Grossman, and again she did a wonderful job!

Literary Pick (****)

The Days of Abandonment
(Elena Ferrante)




















This is a simple yet profound novel about abandonment and grief. I can tell Elena didn't write this to get a sensational reaction from her readers. I can also tell she didn't make any of it up. Knowing that Ferrante has shunned public attention and has managed to keep her real identity concealed from her readers confirms this for me.
When I heard about this story I knew I had to read it to judge it for myself. I know what pain and abandonment feels like. I knew I had to read it to be able to verify if her story is true, and now I know it is. Extremely vulgar at times but was relevant to her pain and rage. 
The character of Olga often shifted from numbing moments of temporary acceptance to an emotionally blinding yet hallucinatory state of being. Olga was ugly yet disturbingly honest.
I was unconvinced however that the love she had for her husband could suddenly die in just only 4 short months. The neglect of the children was understandable. Although repulsive, her sleeping with that neighbor of hers was also understandable, but it seemed dysfunctional and perverted.
If someone were to ask me what I enjoyed most about this story, I would have to say that it was written by an Italian person and so the emotions and reactions were of a European intensity. I don't quite know how to explain it but Olga reacted with the brutality and savagery it deserved, exactly how I think all women should react to a situation like that. Only here in America are women programmed into behaving perfectly proper after such a traumatic insulting injury. Where I come from you find where your husband is and you stab him in his sleep with no thought or conscience about anyone or anything.

The Fabric of My Life

Literary Pick (****)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

-(Junot Diaz)








This review is probably going to seem a bit choppy.
..Wao
I waited months to read this book. I have a reading order which I mentally follow, and since I don't do two fictions at once, I had to wait till I finished this massive classic I was already reading, but once I finished it I was able to finally start The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, and you know what they say,... good things come to those who wait. I didn't start reading it that day until I was able to read it in peace in an air conditioned room. I was really excited about it and even went online to view Junot Diaz's video interviews. I found one on NY1 news channel that was in Spanish. Great! I like this guy already! love the way he talks "que vaina!". Reminded me of Brooklyn. My Brother-in-law is Dominican, my family is Puerto Rican, so this is going to be cool! This is going to temporarily transport me to the scenes of my roots!
The book starts off with Junot telling us about the fuku. I personally never heard of the Dominican fuku, but in PR we have el cuco. Not exactly the same thing, and of course not in the form of a slave-driving totalitarian tyrant by the name of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, but el cuco was el cuco to us, and everyone has a cuco/fuku story. Cool, I can already culture-relate. Then there were the comical latin manners and expressions that I am so familiar with and miss. Oscar's crazy family, his treasonous friends, and the slutty around-the-way girls from the block. Ok, neat, I can relate to all that, but what I couldn't initially relate to was Oscar. He wasn't a typical teenager, at least not one that I ever encountered in my teenage years. Maybe back in the day I was too around-the-way myself to have noticed such a dork. I'm usually not that insensitive about boys, but I tend to judge people who are addicted to all that crap of gaming and comic books.  I sympathized with him a little, and I've heard guys complaining about the "let's just be friends" bullshit girls try to pull on them. I still seemed to have trouble relating to Oscar.  His problems weren't important enough for me to feel that bad for him.. There's not one video game or comic book in Oscar's world that I've ever even heard of, if in fact they are actual and not fictional comic books and games. I've never been into anime, video games, cartoons, or sci-fi so that alone made it a genre out of my reach. At first I didn't think I was Junot's target audience. This book felt like a young adult book that young adults should'nt be reading. The vulgarity of it took me by surprise, but I was later able to come to terms with it because I realized it was a story told by Yunior.
Plus, growing up in like the worst part of Brooklyn (East Ny) and being raised in a neighborhood of Puerto Ricans and Domincans I've never in my life recall dominicans calling each other niggers. Where did Diaz get that from? nigga, maybe, but not even. I think if you asked a Domicano from the island what a nigger is, they'd be like "un que?"

But..... then you start reading the story from lola's (his sister) point of view. Then you start reading about Beli's history (the mother). Oh Man! that kept going a thousand miles a minute. It had so many shades of 100 years of Solitude right down to the never-ending family curse! That's when I really started getting into it. Then there was Don Abelard's dilemma, I was horrified and captivated. I was worried there for a minute that the novel was going to be all about Oscar and his toto quest, and his video games and comic book obsession. Thank goodness it wasn't.
Once it covered the entire family history and spun back to Oscar, I was completely into it. Although, to be totally honest, I found Oscar's role rather boring. I know Junot had the talent to make him more spectacular, but maybe the lack of excitement in Oscar's role was purposely suppose to reflect Oscar's own frustrations of how unexciting his life was. All I know is that all the other characters were absolutely electrifying.
However, I don't think I've ever read so many pages in one day. This book is basically un-put-downable. I read it in the car, I read it as as I ate, I read it as I slept. The only times I put the book down was to shower.
I thought I was going dislike this book but I ended up loving it!
I commend Junot's effort in squeezing in as much Dominican political history in the footnotes of this book. I think they were the funnest footnotes I've ever read, although again, it felt like they were written for a younger audience. Perhaps that's the reason why I liked them and I just don't want to admit it.
This book was definitely more about keeping the political awareness of the Dominican Republic alive disguised as a novel.
That's ok, because the way he did it got my attention. I learned a lot about the Dominican Republic politics, that otherwise I would've never learned had I not read this book. It inspired me to go on-line and read more about Santo Domingo, Haiti, and Venezuela. Great way to keep the awareness of the socio-economic situation that still currently exists in Dominican Republic.  

The rest of the story ended a bit anti-climatic, but it was still worth my while.
I resisted this book so much at the beginning because there was something about it that felt very YA (young adult). This book is very manipulative, I like being in charge of what I read.  Which is the reason why I don't like reading hype books.  But this was a good one.
Quote:
"what did I tell you about those putas?"

Literary Pick (****)

Lucky Man
-(Michael J. Fox)

Quote of the Day

"I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing."

-Guy De Maupassant

Literary Pick (**)

Les Miserables  
-Victor Hugo

Love Letter

I love you no longer; on the contrary, I detest you. you are a wretch, truly perverse, truly stupid, a real Cinderella. You never write to me at all, you do not love your husband; you know the pleasure that your letters give him yet you cannot even manage to write him half a dozen lines, dashed off in a moment! What then do you do all day, Madame? What business is so vital that it robs you of the time to write to your faithful lover? What attachment can be stifling and pushing aside the love, the tender and constant love which you promised him? Who can this wonderful new lover be who takes up your every moment, rules your days and prevents you from devoting your attention to your husband?

Beware, Josephine; one fine night the doors will be broken down and there I shall be. In truth, I am worried, my love, to have no news from you; write me a four page letter instantly made up from those delightful words which fill my heart with emotion and joy. I hope to hold you in my arms before long, when I shall lavish upon you a million kisses, burning as the equatorial sun.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

Love Letter From Napoleon to Josephine

Art of the Day

The Garden of Earthly Delights

 

Hieronymus Bosch
Hell (right wing)

Eric Roth Photography



Gross And Daley Photo

Cultural News

A Musical Message Discovered In Plato's Works






















Jay Kennedy tells NPR's Guy Raz that his discovery was partially luck. Looking at Plato's works in their original scroll form, he noticed that every 12 lines there was a passage that discussed music. "The regularity of that pattern was supposed to be noticed by Plato's readers," Kennedy says.


Music in ancient Greece was based on a 12-note scale, unlike the eight-note scale of modern Western music. Kennedy posits that Plato deliberately inserted discussions of music every 12 lines to send a secret, musical message.


What Plato couldn't tell people was that he was a closet Pythagorean. Pythagoras and his followers believed that mathematics and music were the key to the universe.


"The Pythagoreans realized that when we hear beauty and music, when we hear notes harmonizing, that's because the notes have simple ratios, like 1:2 or 3:4," Kennedy explains. "So the beauty of music is direct perception of the mathematical order underlying the world. They worshipped that mathematics."


But the Pythagoreans were a persecuted sect, Kennedy adds, sometimes violently persecuted. "They were a threat to traditional religion, like many new sects." Plato's own teacher, Socrates, was famously executed for religious heresy.


"Simply put, they were threatening to overthrow the gods on Olympus and put numbers and mathematics in its place. Prior to Socrates being executed, a number of other philosophers were banished or fled because of threats to themselves. It was dangerous in those days to be a philosopher."


As far as Kennedy can tell, Plato's message was one of solidarity simply by acknowledging the relationship between music and mathematics, but he suspects there's more to it. "Perhaps some scholar will find that — in The Republic, at least — that there is something like a melody or a score embedded in the text," he says.


If that's true, then we've read only half of Plato's writings. "There are all these hidden layers of meaning which will enrich our understanding of Plato," Kennedy says. And maybe what else Plato has to say could help us today.


"Plato's philosophy shows us one way to combine science and religion," Kennedy says. "The culture wars we're having today — about evolution for example — see science and religion as two polarized opposites. Plato's hidden philosophy shows us that he combined an emphasis on mathematics with an emphasis upon beauty, music, art and divinity. The founder of western culture, in fact wanted us to combine science and religion."
-NPRIt sounds like something out of a Dan Brown novel, but a scholar in Manchester, England, claims to have found hidden code in the ancient writings of Plato. If true, the secret messages would have made the ancient philosopher and mathematician a heretic in his day.

Jean Randazzo



Hashai



Red Glasses

Quote of the Day

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you."
— Rita Mae Brown

Cultural News

Basquiat comes of age Beyeler exhibition aims to place the artist, who died at 27, high in the canon

The profile of graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died of a drug overdose in 1988 at the age of just 27, has never been higher. The Beyeler Foundation is devoting a large-scale retrospective of more than 100 works to the Brooklyn-born painter, whose output is limited to just eight years, but whose critical acclaim is mirrored by the market interest in his work, with over 30 works on show at Art Basel on six stands.
“Basquiat’s strength was in his ability to merge imagery from the streets, newspapers and TV with the spiritualism of his Haitian heritage, injecting both into an intuitive understanding of the language of painting,” Jeffrey Deitch, the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, says.


Deitch’s opinion is reflected in the wide base of collectors for Basquiat’s work. The list of lenders to the Beyeler show reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary collecting, including the Miami-based Rubells and the Bramans, hedge-funder Steve Cohen, London jeweller Laurence Graff and tennis champion John McEnroe. The Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Zurich-based Daros Foundation have also loaned works. Other collectors include star names from pop music and Hollywood, such as Madonna and Leonardo DiCaprio.


“Major collectors of modern art view [Basquiat’s] work as comparable to that of Picasso and Dubuffet,” explains Beyeler director Sam Keller. “He was prolific, and produced 900 to 1,000 paintings and 2,000 to 3,000 works on paper. This amount is a condition for an active and sustained market.”


At auction, the highest price ever paid for a Basquiat stands at $14.6m for an Untitled work from 1981. It was set at the height of the art market boom at Sotheby’s New York in 2007. In November 2008, at the depth of the financial recession, an Untitled, Boxer from 1982 still made $13.5m (in the late 1990s it had sold for about $800,000). At the fair there are two works priced at $12m, at Shafrazi (F7) and Bruno Bischofberger (C9): Gas Truck, 1984, at the former, and the 1982, eight-panel work The Dutch Sellers at the latter, who represented the artist worldwide.


These two dealers are among a small, powerful group of players in this market. But Edward Tyler Nahem (F15) feels that the market is so broad today that it is no longer possible for a few dealers to control it. He is showing two works, Catharsis, 1984, priced at $9m, and Untitled (Self-portrait: the King), 1981, at $2.8m, while L&M Arts (B18) has a large work on paper, Ribs, Ribs, 1982, priced at $2.6m. Yesterday, dealers reported interest but few confirmed sales.


“Like many markets, Basquiat’s is two-tiered,” says Brett Gorvy, deputy chairman of Christie’s, which sold the Untitled, Boxer. “The most coveted material is rare, generally dating from the best period, 1981-83. There are good later works but overall the quality is more inconsistent.” Collectors really want what Gorvy describes as “emblematic works, preferably with a single figure with strong colours and a desirable scale”. Many of the top works are now with a handful of collectors: Peter Brant, Eli Broad, Philippe Niarchos and Dennis Scholl, and the collector/dealer family of Mugrabis. They are a major presence in the market, and passionate about the artist: Alberto Mugrabi even has the signature Basquiat crown tattooed on his wrist.


Below the top level is what Gorvy calls “a level of good, B+ works that sell for $800,000-$3m. These works are often bought by dealers who sell them on. There’s a healthy trade here.”


The majority of the works in the Beyeler show come from private collections. “Museums missed the boat,” says Alberto Mugrabi. Now, he says, they will have to wait for donations. His rumoured inventory of hundreds of works “is not as good as it was because I sold works”.


Since Basquiat’s death in 1988, his market has developed steadily—in line with overall art market trends—with a dramatic peak in 2007 when, at the height of the art market boom, the global auction volume for his work was over $115m, according to Artnet. During the 2008-09 financial crisis, turnover dropped back to 2006 levels, also reflecting lower volumes at auction.


In May this year Untitled (Stardust), 1983, depicting a jazz saxophonist sold at auction for $7.3m, well over the $2.5m pre-sale estimate, a price that startled some art world specialists. It was consigned by the Basquiat estate, which also has an authentication committee including John Cheim of Cheim & Read (A9), collector Larry Warsh and Basquiat’s father, Gerard.


“The Basquiat market has matured in the last few years, there’s a lot of collectors, not the old timers, mainly new collectors,” says collector Adam Lindemann, who lent to the Beyeler show. “They want Basquiat, not De Kooning. The old guard may still wrinkle their noses but Basquiat is blue-chip.”
-Art Newspaper

Literary Pick (**)

Kafka on the Shore -Haruki Murakami

Cultural News

 


5 masterpieces stolen in $123M Paris museum heist
PARIS — A broken alarm system made it as easy as 1-2-3: A masked intruder clipped a padlock, smashed a window and stole a Picasso, a Matisse and three other masterpieces from a Paris museum Thursday - a $123 million haul that is one of the world's biggest art heists.


Offloading the artwork may prove a tougher task, however, with Interpol and collectors worldwide now on high alert.


In what seemed like an art thief's fantasy, the alarm system had been broken since March in parts of the Paris Museum of Modern Art, according to the city's mayor, Bertrand Delanoe.


The museum, in a tony neighborhood across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower, reopened in 2006 after spending $18 million (euro15 million) and two years upgrading its security system. Spare parts had been ordered to fix the alarm but had not yet arrived, the mayor said in a statement.


So with no alarm to worry about, a lone masked intruder entered the museum about 3:50 a.m., said Christophe Girard, deputy culture secretary at Paris City Hall. The thief cut a padlock on a gate, then broke a side window and climbed inside - his movements caught on one of the museum's functioning cameras, according to the Paris prosecutor's office.


The intruder later slipped back out, carrying the canvases and leaving behind empty frames. The whole thing took 15 minutes, a police official said.


Three security guards were on duty overnight, but "they saw nothing," Girard said. A night watchman discovered the theft around 7 a.m.


The stolen works included Pablo Picasso's "Le pigeon aux petits-pois" (The Pigeon with the Peas), an ochre-toned Cubist oil painting worth an estimated $28 million (euro23 million), and "La Pastorale" (Pastoral), a pastel-hued oil painting of nudes on a hillside by Henri Matisse worth about $17.5 million (euro15 million), Girard said.


Also seized were "La femme a l'eventail" (Woman with a Fan) by Amedeo Modigliani, "L'olivier pres de l'Estaque" (Olive Tree near Estaque) by Georges Braque and "Nature morte aux chandeliers" (Still Life with Chandeliers) by Fernand Leger.


Estimates of the total value of the paintings varied: The prosecutor's office initially put their worth as high as $613 million (euro500 million) but later downgraded the figure to about $111 million (euro90 million). Girard said the total value was about $123 million (euro100 million).
5 masterpieces stolen in $123M Paris museum heist


The broken alarm system also renewed concerns about museum security in the French capital. There was no operating surveillance system when a thief made off with a red sketchbook of 33 Picasso drawings from the nearby Picasso Museum while it was undergoing renovations last summer.


Within hours of Thursday's heist, red-and-white tape surrounded the Museum of Modern Art and signs on the Art Deco building's ornate bronze doors said it was closed for "technical reasons."


On a cordoned-off balcony, police wearing blue gloves and face masks examined the museum's broken window and the discarded frames. The paintings appeared to have been carefully removed from the disassembled frames, not sliced out.


Investigators were trying to determine whether the intruder was operating alone, Girard told reporters. Stephane Thefo, a specialist at Interpol who handles international art theft investigations, expressed doubt that one person could have pulled it off the heist, even if only one person was caught on camera.


Many high-profile art thefts have ended in failure, with the artworks recovered as thieves struggle to trade their illegal bounty for cash. But some famous stolen works remain at large - such as those seized more than two decades ago from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.


Alice Farren-Bradley of the Art Loss Registry in London said the Paris theft appeared to be one of the biggest art heists ever, considering the prominence of the artists, the value of the paintings and the high profile of the museum.


However, she said it will be "virtually impossible" to sell such prominent paintings on the open market and typically stolen art fetches lower prices on the black market.


"Very often they can be used as collateral to broker other deals" involving drugs or weapons, she said. "They are not necessarily going to be bought by some great lover of the arts."


Art expert Jean-Marie Baron said the heist could have been organized by thieves who plan to sell the paintings to wealthy individuals in Russia, China or elsewhere, and "who won't verify the origins of the paintings." Another possibility was that the thieves planned to "ransom" the paintings in exchange for a big insurance payout, he said.


The FBI estimates the market for stolen art at $6 billion. The Art Loss Register has tallied up to 170,000 pieces of stolen, missing and looted art and valuables.


Picasso is the world's most stolen artist due to his prolific output and the value of his works. The Art Loss Register lists some 550 missing Picasso pieces, including paintings, lithographs, drawings and ceramics, as of 2007.


Hours after Thursday's heist, the director of the neighboring Palais de Tokyo modern art museum called the thieves "imbeciles."


"Those paintings are absolutely unsellable. First off because these are very well known paintings. And also because we are in a new civilization ... of instant global communication," Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr told AP Television News. "The entire planet has pictures of these paintings."


The loss is "like the death of a family member," lamented Flemming Friborg, manager of Copenhagen's Glyptotek museum, known for its Impressionist collection.


-The San Diego Union Tribune

Literary Quote

"Lolita, luz de mi vida, fuego de mis entrañas. Pecado mío, alma mía. Lo-li-ta: la punta de la lengua emprende un viaje de tres pasos paladar abajo hasta apoyarse, en el tercero, en el borde de los dientes. Lo. Li. Ta.
Era Lo, sencillamente Lo, por la mañana, cuando estaba derecha, con su metro cuarenta y ocho de estatura, sobre un pie enfundado en un calcetín. Era Lola cuando llevaba puestos los pantalones. Era Dolly en la escuela. Era Dolores cuando firmaba. Pero en mis brazos fue siempre Lolita.
¿Tuvo Lolita una precursora? Naturalmente que sí. En realidad, Lolita no hubiera podido existir para mí si un verano no hubiese amado a otra niña iniciática. En un principado junto al mar. ¿Cuándo? Aquel verano faltaban para que naciera Lolita casi tantos como los que yo tenía entonces. Pueden contar en que la prosa de los asesinos sea siempre elegante, vaya que lo sé.
Señoras y señores del jurado, la prueba número uno es lo que los serafines, los mal informados e ingenuos ángeles de majestuosas alas, envidiaron. Contemplen esta maraña de espinas."
Lolita— Vladimir Nabokov

Literary Pick (*)

A Brave New World
-Aldous Huxley

Quote of the Day

"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
— Ambrose Bierce

Literary Pick (*****)

Lolita
-Vladimir Nabokov

Art of the Day

"Death Seizing a Woman."
Kathe Kollwitz, 1934.

Quote of the Day

"As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot."

— John Lennon

Literary Pick (***)

The Death of Ivan Ilych And Other Stories

(Leo Tolstoy)

Literary Pick (*****)

The Odyssey  

-Homer

Literary Quote

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)

Literary Pick (*)

Wide Sargasso Sea

(Jean Rhys)

Cubic Dreams

Literary Pick (**)

The Stranger  

-Albert Camus

Kris's Color Stripes

Literary Pick (**)

Lord of the Flies
-William Golding

Quote of the Day

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

— Socrates

Studio Aandacht

Literary Pick (***)

Last Evenings On Earth
-Roberto Bolaño 

Love Letter

 

July 6, in the morning

My angel, my all, my very self - Only a few words today and at that with pencil (with yours) - Not till tomorrow will my lodgings be definitely determined upon - what a useless waste of time - Why this deep sorrow when necessity speaks - can our love endure except through sacrifices, through not demanding everything from one another; can you change the fact that you are not wholly mine, I not wholly thine - Oh God, look out into the beauties of nature and comfort your heart with that which must be - Love demands everything and that very justly - thus it is to me with you, and to your with me. But you forget so easily that I must live for me and for you; if we were wholly united you would feel the pain of it as little as I - My journey was a fearful one; I did not reach here until 4 o'clock yesterday morning. Lacking horses the post-coach chose another route, but what an awful one; at the stage before the last I was warned not to travel at night; I was made fearful of a forest, but that only made me the more eager - and I was wrong. The coach must needs break down on the wretched road, a bottomless mud road. Without such postilions as I had with me I should have remained stuck in the road. Esterhazy, traveling the usual road here, had the same fate with eight horses that I had with four - Yet I got some pleasure out of it, as I always do when I successfully overcome difficulties - Now a quick change to things internal from things external. We shall surely see each other soon; moreover, today I cannot share with you the thoughts I have had during these last few days touching my own life - If our hearts were always close together, I would have none of these. My heart is full of so many things to say to you - ah - there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all - Cheer up - remain my true, my only treasure, my all as I am yours. The gods must send us the rest, what for us must and shall be -

Your faithful LUDWIG.

Evening, Monday, July 6

You are suffering, my dearest creature - only now have I learned that letters must be posted very early in the morning on Mondays to Thursdays - the only days on which the mail-coach goes from here to K. - You are suffering - Ah, wherever I am, there you are also - I will arrange it with you and me that I can live with you. What a life!!! thus!!! without you - pursued by the goodness of mankind hither and thither - which I as little want to deserve as I deserve it - Humility of man towards man - it pains me - and when I consider myself in relation to the universe, what am I and what is He - whom we call the greatest - and yet - herein lies the divine in man - I weep when I reflect that you will probably not receive the first report from me until Saturday - Much as you love me - I love you more - But do not ever conceal yourself from me - good night - As I am taking the baths I must go to bed - Oh God - so near! so far! Is not our love truly a heavenly structure, and also as firm as the vault of heaven?

Good morning, on July 7

Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once - Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

ever thine

ever mine

ever ours

Ludwig van Beethoven

Literary Pick (*****)

Revolutionary Road
-Richard Yates

Literary Pick (**)

David Copperfield
-Charles Dickens

I