A diagram of the decade

..by Phillip Niemeyer via the NYTimes.

I just wish it were in color!

Catherine’s (belated) Holiday Gift Guide

Or, things that I want for myself!

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1. For the book nerds: The Original Of Laura

Nabokov is well-known for having written his novels out of order on little index cards that he could shuffle around and piece together.  His heirs were instructed to destroy the cards for his unfinished manuscript of Laura, but they didn’t listen, and 30 years later we have this:

From what I’ve read on Amazon, don’t get it if you’re expecting a complete Nabokov novel.  Get it to savor the little note cards and to get a glimpse of Nabokov’s amazing mind and creative process.  Plus, the cards are perforated, so you can remove them and carry them around with you.

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2. The Rodgers and Hammerstein Collection

It includes The Sound of Music, The King and I, Carousel, South Pacific, State Fair, and Oklahoma!

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3. The SousVide Supreme

The ultimate slow cooking machine!  All you need is $450 and you can sous vide like a pro chef from your own kitchen.

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4. The B/N Nook

I feel blasphemous for even thinking about this…but I can’t help it…I want one!  Just to play with.

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5. FrogOSphere

You can see these little guys at your nearest Brookstone.  The ultimate pet-as-commodity.  Each Sphere comes with two frogs, the “living gravel”, and a piece of bamboo. It’s super cute, but mostly I’m just curious about the logistics of how they package, ship, and store these things.  I imagine a warehouse with shelves full of FrogOSpheres, all stacked upon one another.

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6. Salt Plates

Heat one up on the stove or in the oven, and cook your food at the dinner table. Impress your guests.

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7. Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture.

It’s 812 pages long and weighs 19 pounds.  Make sure you have a sturdy coffee table.

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8. Cozy Cup Warmer

A mini hot plate for your coffee mug – keeps your coffee warm during the miserable workdays, or long miserable studying nights.

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9. An annual subscription to the NYTimes Crossword puzzles online.

I caved and got this for myself a little while ago, and it’s SO worth it!

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10. The Nature ceramic planter, by Design-Night.

This gorgeous planter has multiple pockets for herbs and flowers and such.  It’s a great idea, and it just looks so well made/designed.

(images via Design Night)

At $375 it’s pretty expensive, so here’s another ceramic planter by Sagaform that’s so cute it makes you want to squeal.

Yahoo! Answers

Sometimes when I’m feeling bored, I head on over to Yahoo! Answers, click on a random category, and start reading random questions people write.  Afterward, I don’t know whether I should cry or laugh.  Then I feel kind of guilty for judging people, because maybe they’re just little kids.  And then I feel bad for wasting my time doing this in the first place.

A sample:

“Where would you get heroin in denver? its not like baltimore, you dont see ghettos and dealers on every corner?”

“If Barack Obama was such a lofty scholar then why is he such a nasty skid mark of a human being?”

“Ok im 14 and girl and a few days ago in our school we had this tradition we do in our school we just found out about. The tradition is called nipple day, and on three random days in december all the girls walk around in low cut shirts and pull them just below their nipples and keep them out in all their free time and wen teechers arent watching. I thot it was the slnttiest thing i ever heard of, and all my frends were doin it and they sed the girls who dnt do it get made fun of 4 the rest of the year or somethin like tht. idk how but they talked me into doin it the first day (i only kept my nips out 4 like a hour tho) and then all the guys started tryin 2 tuch them so i stopped and we still hav 2 more nipple days in the month so wtf am i gonna do? Im not gonna be a slut like everyone else so how can i avoid doin it without gettin made fun of? help plz?”

“Does anyone knows what in ode is in is good with poetry that can help me with something that can recieve email?

“what are some contributions that abraham lincoln made to american history. please list at least 3. and please list the effects of each contribution. thank you”

“who invented heart disease?”

“can anyone please write about: what is communication? what are the types of communication and what are the importances of communication?”

“who invented air and when was it invented?”

“I NEED MONEY within about 2 days any suggestions?  I’m not aloud to sell any stuff online and I need money without investing or using like a website to make money.”

Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, is one of those books in which for the first twenty pages you’re bored and confused.  About a quarter of the way through, the initial indifference is followed by an a-ha moment, when you figure out the puzzle and realize what’s going on.  Then, for the remainder of the first half, you think it’s the most inventive, genius, hilarious, and lyric thing you’ve read in a long time.  “What took you so long to discover this book!” you ask yourself.  However, this all builds up to a somewhat anticlimactic and difficult-to-read-because-of-the-damn-colloquial-writing middle story of the book.  The second half is still satisfying, with many spurts of beautiful passages, but you begin to have this gnawing feeling in the back of your mind that the whole thing is just a gimmick, that you’ve been tricked, and you begin to doubt your original impressions.  One last chapter filled with sigh-worthy sentences changes your mind yet again, and then it all ends in a hurry, leaving you feeling neutral and wishing you had just read the first half so you would still be in awe.  Would I still recommend this book?  Yes!!

“Dreamt I stood in a china shop so crowded from floor to far off ceiling of shelves of porcelain antiquities etc. that moving a muscle would cause several to fall and smash to bits.  Exactly what happened, but instead of a crashing noise, an august chord ran out, half-cello, half-celeste, D major (?), held for four beats.  My wrist knocked a Ming vase affair off its pedestal – E-flat, whole string section, glorious, transcendent, angels wept.  Deliberately now, smashed a figurine of an ox for the next note, then a milk-maid, then Saturday’s Child – orgy of shrapnel filled the air, divine harmonies my head.  Ah, such music!  Glimpsed my father totting up the smashed items’ value, nib flashing, but had to keep the music coming.  Knew I’d become the greatest composer of the century if I could only make this music mine.  A monstrous Laughing Cavalier flung against the wall set off a thumping battery of percussion.”

“Eva.  Because her name is a synonym for temptation: what treads nearer to the core of man?  Because her soul swims in her eyes.  Because I dream of creeping through the velvet folds to her room, where I let myself in, hum her a tune so-so-so softly, she stands with her naked feet on mind, her ear to my heart, and we waltz like string puppets.  After that kiss, she says, “Vous embrassez comme un poisson rouge!” and in moonlit mirrors we fall in love with our youth and beauty.  Because all my life, sophisticated, idiotic women have taken it upon themselves to understand me, to cure me, but Eva knows I’m terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did.  Because she’s lean as a boy.  Because her scent is almonds, meadow grass.  Because if I smile at her ambition to be an Egyptologist, she kicks my shin under the table.  Because she  makes me think about something other than myself.  Because even when serious she shines.  Because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart, and couldn’t tell C major from a sergeant major.  Because I, and only I, see her smile a fraction before it reaches her face.  Because Emperor Robert is not a good man – his best part is commandeered by his unperformed music – but she gives me that rarest smile, anyway.  Because we listened to nightjars.  Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning.  Because a man like me has no business with this substance “beauty”, yet here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart.”

Maybe if I read more things like this, I’ll be able to write like this.

7 Days in the Art World

Way back in October, I spontaneously decided to go check out the annual Bayou City Arts Festival, and I was pleasantly surprised.  The Festival takes over a few blocks of downtown Houston, and the streets become lined with small 10×10 stands for individual artists of any and all mediums.  It’s crowded, but not uncomfortably packed.  There’s no pretentiousness at all.  No one judges you or ignores you if you clearly look like you’re not going to buy anything. Most artists are sitting in little chairs right out in front of their work and strike up a conversation with you as you walk by.  You can wander up and down the stands with a beer in one hand and nachos in the other.  Sure, maybe none of these people are going to end up in the Met or MoMA, but there are still a lot of genuinely talented and passionate artists with some interesting work.  This is art for the masses.  It’s pleasant, accessible, and overall just makes you feel nice.

This is not the art in 7 Days in the Art World.

In her book, Sarah Thorton plays ethnographer to the exclusive culture that is the contemporary art scene.  She takes us through seven different facets of this world – the Auction, the Crit, the Fair, the Prize, the Magazine, the Studio Visit, and the Biennale.  It’s no coincidence that these seven days represent the most privileged and (with the exception of the Crit chapter) money driven sides of things.  It’s the kind of world where simply being rich isn’t enough to get you the piece you want – the dealers will judge you to see if you’re important enough to own the work.  It’s a world where art becomes a tool for social climbing, though no one wants to admit it.  And yet it’s also a world that is bound by no geographic borders, that is increasingly global and culturally pervasive.  It’s a world full of contradictions – on one hand art can be classless and democratic, on the other it can be highbrow and high society only.  Yes, it may often be driven by the nitty gritty market side of things, but through her observations and descriptions, Ms. Thorton always maintains that in the end, it’s really about the art and people’s passion for it.  She claims that the art market is only one aspect of the art world.  If so, then the Bayou City Arts Festival is one teeny tiny drop in this crazy world.

“Still, the volume of art means that one will probably fail to pay attention to something that could have changed one’s life.”

All art things aside, 7 Days in the Art World is incredibly well-researched and well-written.  If you take a look at the acknowledgments, you’ll see a list of over 250 people Ms. Thorton interviewed for this short, 252 page book.  The book doesn’t get bogged down by all this research and information, and still reads and flows like a narrative.  All throughout, I was actually pretty amazed at how Ms. Thorton managed to gain access to all these important figures in the art world – from Christie’s chief auctioneer and gallery giants like Larry Gagosian, to the Artforum editors and the Tate Modern director.  Really, the best and strongest parts of the book are just all the interesting quotes from all these people:

On the Venice Biennale: “The Biennale is a lot like a high school reunion where everyone turned out to be a success…You’re on a marathon hunt for a new masterpiece.  You want to see a new face and fall in love.  It’s like speed dating.” – David Teiger, collector

On dressing for an auction: “It’s dangerous to wear Prada, you might get caught in the same outfit as three members of the Christie’s staff.” – an auction attendee

On what kind of art sells (size matters): “Anything larger than the standard dimension of a Park Avenue elevator generally cuts out a certain sector of the market.” – Amy Cappellazo, Christie’s specialist

On the volume of art out there: “It’s chaotic, bewildering.  The amount of art in the world is a bit depressing.  The worst of it looks like art, but it’s not.  It is stuff cynically made for a certain kind of collector.” – Jeremy Deller, Turner-prize winner

On art criticism: “Half the battle is in the description.  If your material is vivid enough, you don’t need to adopt an ego-driven voice where you’re always reflectin on your own formative experiences or your own complexity of mind…Your material should be out in front, carrying the weight.”

And so on.

One of the most interesting chapters is when Ms. Thorton visits the art studios of Takashi Murakami.  To call them studios is simplifying things.  It’s more like a corporation with branches of production.  There’s a scene from an old episode of The West Wing where Leo said something like: there are two things you don’t want people to see you make – laws and sausages.  Maybe the same should be said about your art too.  Does the person know that the Murakami mushroom painting he just spent thousands on wasn’t actually painted by Murakami, but one of his factory of workers?  Does he also know that there are over 400 of them in existence?  I don’t mean to wax poetic about the lone artist that creates one of a kind masterpieces, and certainly most artists don’t have factories of workers, but it does make you wonder.  How much of this is driven by a great marketing campaign, or do people really love Murakami’s work that much?  I guess this model is a lot of like starchitect offices.  You have the brand of the person’s name in front, while all the work is generated by the little people behind.  Why do they do it?  Because they want to be a starchitect one day too.

Anyway…even though I really enjoyed reading this book, it left me feeling slightly unsatisfied, knowing that unless I win the lottery, I’ll never be privy to this world.  Sure, reading this book will give you a peek into this exclusive and fascinating scene.  But mostly, it’ll just make you feel really poor.