04.28.12

Promise of the American Dream is Broken

"...Millions of Americans are just giving up on the possibility of ever rejoining the workforce. These frustrations reflect a reality that is unraveling the American identity. One of the most fundamental dictates in achieving the "American Dream" has always been a good job that pays wages decent enough to care for our families, buy a car and a home, and live reasonably comfortable lives."

By Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, Special to CNN

New Data Reveals Artists Aren’t Gettin’ Paid

"...Everybody keeps shifting the responsibility of sustaining artists (the real lifeblood of the arts) to some other group; meanwhile, the money keeps finding its way into the coffers of the few who hold the most power and the purse strings.

"As the NEA said in its own 2008 report, Artists in the Workforce: “The time has come to insist on an obvious but overlooked fact—artists are workers.”  By Alexis Clements @ hyperalleric

Why Are (Most) Artists (So Fucking) Poor?

"On Friday evening W.A.G.E. presented the results of its 2010 survey of payments received by artists who exhibited with nonprofit art institutions in New York City between 2005 and 2010. The survey found that 58% of artists who responded received “no form of payment.”  The audience, including Artists Space director Stefan Kalmár, asked questions critical of the survey methodology, but did not refute the group’s findings. W.A.G.E. has partnered with Artists Spaceto explore the development of a self-regulatory model, mandating the implementation of a fee schedule within the institution. Presenter A.K. Burns explained one of the rationales for artists fees, “nonprofits get money from different sources for public education, and the artist is the educator. We are wondering why the artist isn’t being paid?”  That artists should be remunerated for their cultural value in capital value is one of W.A.G.E.’s positions from its statement and one that remains controversial."  by William Powhide @ hyperallergic

White House: Obama Would Veto GOP Student Loan Plan

"...Obama favors extending the current lower interest rates on student loans but would seek a different way to pay the $6 billion cost.

"A proposal by Senate Democrats would pay for the measure by ending some tax loopholes for corporations, a move opposed by Republicans. The House plan would instead take the money from the health care fund, which is part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act detested by Republicans...." 

By Deirdre Walsh, Brianna Keilar and Tom Cohen @ CNN

An Artist Goes Undercover at a JC Penney Portrait Studio

"Studio portraits don’t document an event; the making of the photograph is the event. In order to create a series titled Free Sitting, artist Nora Herting got a job as a trade photographer at a portrait studio in a JC Penney department store in Ohio....

"The ubiquitous photos generated from portrait studios reveal a great deal about how we choose to portray our relationships and ourselves. This was part of Herting’s investigation when she began the project. The portrait serves a testament to the subjects’ prosperity and personal relations, and yet, despite the time and care people take when having their pictures taken at commercial studios, the resulting photographs are rarely considered aesthetic objects. They are documentation. Herting’s work questions what, exactly, we are documenting in this benign, constructed way."  By Sarah Walko @ hyperallergic

How CISPA Would Affect You: FAQ

"CISPA may have cleared the U.S. House of Representatives, but the fight isn't over. It's shifted to the U.S. Senate. Here's CNET's FAQ on what you need to know about this particularly controversial Internet bill."  By Declan McCullagh @ CNET

How To Get Food on Every Table

"There are extremely cost-effective ways to respond to the problem of hunger and malnutrition. But which ones should be the top priority for policymakers and philanthropists? How could limited money best be spent to combat global challenges? Have your say by voting below. Tomorrow, we look at the ways we can respond to chronic disease—and how a rethinking of development aid spending may be required."  By Bjørn Lomborg @ Slate

Where Did All the Accomplished People Go?

"...My head is filled with pathetically stupid thoughts about inconsequential people, and so, quite frankly, is yours. We are all in the same boat. And why on earth do we privilege the most superficial idiocies of popular culture over more substantial fare? The answer is simple: We have lost our fascination with accomplishment."  By Simon Doonan @ Slate

04.23.12

U.S. Government Can Seize Any Domain

"According to a representative for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the US can seize the domains because the root infrastructure of those top-level domains is controlled by the US-based Verisign. The government intends to do it from the root on its home turf because it doesn't trust the authorities in foreign countries to comply with its desire"

blog maverick: Some Olympic Thoughts

"The Olympics are a business, plain and simple. A tax-free juggernaut called the International Olympic Committee that generates revenues, on average, of over $1.4 billion a year. In fact, the IOC’s 2010 tax return shows a $1.4 billion net balance — as in cash in the bank.

And if Wade, and other Olympians don’t ask for and get a share, then who does?"

Say What??? Governor of Illinois Calls This Week's Events "Epic"

Started with a paid by the government of Illinois visit from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. According to the article, "Walker, who faces a recall election this summer, earned renown and notoriety by spearheading the end of collective bargaining for Wisconsin’s public-sector unions last year. Walker’s visit was sponsored by the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business. His appearance drew throngs of pro-union protesters, while Quinn used the opportunity to ask for campaign donations via email."  

Another 'epic' event was the return of indicted state Rep. Derrick Smith's return to the Illinois House today for the first time since his arrest on a federal bribery charge.

The State of Illinois is also working at scrapping a scholarship program:

"Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno on Wednesday questioned why three proposals to eliminate the state’s legislative scholarship program are bottled up in a subcommittee — despite a majority of senators being co-sponsors on the bill."

Governor Quinn’s is also proposing to generate $2.7 billion through savings and reductions to prevent the collapse of the state’s Medicaid program, on which 2.7 million Illinoisans rely. His suggestions include:

Cutting 58 Medicaid line items totaling $1.35 billion

Reducing rates to Medicaid providers totaling $675 million

Increasing the state’s cigarette tax by $1 per pack, to $1.98, raising $337.5 million, plus a federal match of the revenue from the cigarette tax increase — $337.5 million

Ending the Illinois Cares Rx prescription program for 180,000 people, eliminating adult dental care for 172,000 patients and a moratorium on new admissions to intermediate care nursing facilities are among the 58 items Quinn targeted for cuts and reductions.

I find it interesting that "his plan, the product of a Medicaid working group he assembled earlier this year, does not address the $1.9 billion in overdue Medicaid bills the state is pushing off until next year."

He also is making changes to retirement plans which according to public worker's union officials say violate the Illinois Constitution.

I'm not a political expert, but it sounds as if he is laying the foundation for some more 'epic' weeks in Illinois government.

"Street Art" Revival Planned for Manchester

Community activists who brought public artistic expression to areas as diverse as a skateboard park, the back alleys of urban neighborhoods and a passageway near City Hall plan to renew their call for young people to become involved in “street art'' projects this spring.

The controlled painting on public buildings began a few years ago as a way to both channel youthful expression and behavior into a positive format and to create a type of street art distinguished from the malicious defacing of property by vandals.

This jazz mural is located on Litchfield Lane in Manchester.

THOMASROY/UNIONLEADER

Anacostia School Included in Pilot Arts Program

"The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, working with the Education Department, will announce a plan Monday to infuse art, music, dance, theater and other forms of creative expression into the schools over a two-year period.

"Officials involved in the project want to prove a theory: Robust art, music, dance and theater can set failing schools on a path to academic success....

"New research indicates that students from low-income families who attend arts-rich schools are three times more likely to earn a college degree, and those who earn arts credits in high school are five times more likely to graduate than those who took few or no arts classes."

Despite opposition, paddling students allowed in 19 states

"That use of corporal punishment is rooted in a strong Bible Belt belief in the proverbial "spare the rod and spoil the child," says George Holden, a Southern Methodist University psychology professor. It's reinforced by Southern sensibilities that favor obedience and respect for authority, he says. "Most people were spanked when they were kids, and they think that's the proper way to discipline," says Holden, chairman of the 2011 Global Summit on Ending Corporal Punishment and Promoting Positive Discipline. "They make the erroneous correlation that spanking equals good discipline and if a child isn't behaving, he must not have been spanked enough — that's fallacious." "

Study Questions Value of Early Exposure to Algebra

"Separate studies of urban middle schoolers in California and in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., schools suggest that placing struggling math students in algebra class does not improve their test performance on state math tests, and significantly hurts their grade point averages and the likelihood of their taking and passing higher math courses in high school."

04.20.12

A Master Opens the Door to an Empire:  
‘Dürer and Beyond’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

"The title of a new exhibition, “Dürer and Beyond: Central European Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1400-1700,” presents a bit of a conundrum. How do we get beyond Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), the ne plus ultra draftsman and all-around Northern Renaissance master, an artist so secure in his greatness that he painted himself as Jesus?

"We don’t, at least not often in this show, which surveys the Met’s holdings of drawings made before 1700 by artists working in the Holy Roman Empire (an area that today encompasses Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and parts of other countries). But the offerings should nevertheless entice viewers to look more closely at the art of Central Europe, which absorbed diverse religious and stylistic influences from Italian, Dutch and Flemish art.

"“Dürer and Beyond” was organized by Stijn Alsteens and Freyda Spira, curators in the Met’s drawings and prints department. It includes about 100 drawings, supplemented by prints, illustrated books and decorative objects."

Venus and Cupid (r); Studies of a Woman (v.) 

Nikolaus Knüpfer  (German, Leipzig 1603–1655/60 Utrecht)

Robert De Niro Sr.: Paintings and Drawings, 1960-1993

"In the expanding field of postwar American painting, more room should be made for the seductive yet rigorous art of Robert De Niro Sr. (1922-1993). De Niro, whose son is the movie star, studied with Josef Albers at Black Mountain College and with Hans Hofmann in New York and Providence, R.I. He made his solo debut at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery in 1946 and showed regularly in the 1950s at the Charles Egan Gallery, alongside de Kooning, Rothko and Kline.

By 1960, the starting point of this exhibition, he had made abstraction the setting for a loosely figurative art, painting the thick outlines of nudes, still lifes and rooftops among briskly improvised expanses of bright color."

Also see:  Robert De Niro S: A Complete Artist

Yugi Agematsu

"The found-object aesthetic is pushed to beautiful, ephemeral and mind-blowing extremes by Yuji Agematsu, who was born in Japan in 1956, moved to New York in 1980 and is having his first solo show in a commercial gallery in 20 years.


"Mr. Agematsu left actual objects — found or otherwise —behind about 25 years ago. That’s when he began selecting small pieces of trash from the streets and gutters of New York, pinning them unaltered to walls and also archiving them in carefully labeled cardboard files. Several hundred of his selections are on view here, mostly presented one at a time, but sometimes arranged in whorl-like clusters....


"This work is a wonderful lesson in focus and attention. Fluxus, Situationism, John Cage and Jean Dubuffet are among its precedents. It explodes the notion, basic to assemblage, that the materials to make art are everywhere. It argues instead that we are surrounded by intact artworks, formed by the incessant collaborations of nature and modern life, awaiting extraction."

Microsoft Beats Estimates as Windows Makes a Stand

"There is speculation within the technology industry that the supremacy of the PC is over and that Microsoft’s influence is waning along with it. Executives at Apple have boasted that the explosive growth in sales of the iPad and the iPhone are evidence of the arrival of a post-PC era."

Non-Profit Pathology
"Some people say — though never publicly — that the elephant in the room of the nonprofit sector is that people work in the sector because they can't cut it in business. That's not what this post is about.


"Allow me to introduce a brand new elephant to the room: Maybe people get into the compassion business full-time not because they're more compassionate than others but because they're codependent. Maybe the driving force is really inverted narcissism — an unhealthy and unexamined addiction to care-taking or to self-neglect....

"We have to ask ourselves, why would we choose to go into an industry where our compensation is not tied to our value? Where we are constantly told that there are not enough resources with which to fulfill our potential to make a difference? Why would we do that if I really do want to change things? And why would we choose to work on problems that are so intractable? What in our personalities draws us to frustratingly difficult — perhaps unsolvable — problems?"

The Mommy Wars Are About Daddies Too

"The recent brouhaha set off by Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen (who infamously noted that Ann Romney "never worked a day in her life") is telling on an infinite number of levels. All women on both sides of the so-called "Mommy Wars" (and those horribly caught in the middle of the conflict zone) feel a prickly defensiveness, regardless of where they sit on the spectrum.

"But here is another reason why Rosen's remark touched a third rail, and it has to do with — let's just put it out there — men's identity crisis....

"Yes, there is a war on, but it's not just a war on, over, or between women. It's an economic and identity war. When people lack self-esteem and feel threatened, disrespected and disenfranchised, they snipe at each other. We become defensive of our world-views — even reactionary. And in the echo-chamber of the current media, which feasts upon our discomfort, we all become stridently unthinking, defensive and blaming."

Art & Art Education

Researchers say long-lost Leonardo may have been found

At the start of the 16th century, Florence's leaders commissioned Leonardo, then at the height of his career, to paint a massive fresco celebrating the Florentine Republic's victory over the Milanese in a battle on the plains of Anghiari that took place on June 29, 1440.

Leonardo, who loathed war as "a most beastly madness," depicted a group of horses and riders furiously fighting.

He abandoned the project a year after he started, probably because a new experimental technique for frescoes failed. But some of his preparatory studies remain, as well as other artists' copies of the original fresco.

All traces of the original were lost more than 50 years later when Giorgio Vasari renovated the great Sala dei Cinquecento in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio and was ordered to paint a new fresco, "The Battle of Marciano," to accommodate the higher walls.

Read original article @ Reuters

See more photos @ Washington Post's The Style Blog

Are video games art? Draw your own conclusions

Are video games worthy of being counted, like movies and paintings, among accepted art forms?

The 120,000 Americans who work at creating games probably would argue yes. And many of the 100-million-plus who spend upward of $20 billion a year to play them would concur — if they ever looked up from their screens and joysticks long enough to think about it.

On the other side fall writers such as film critic Roger Ebert, who famously said several years ago that video games weren't comparable to great paintings, poetry, films and novels and could never be considered art.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum, which houses such masters as Georgia O'Keeffe and John Singer Sargent, steps right into the middle of the argument with a new exhibit, The Art of Video Games. It begins a six-month stay at the Washington museum Friday before going on a national tour.  Read original article @ USA Today Life Section

Photos of Exhibit 

 

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has the details:

"The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. It features some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early pioneers to contemporary designers. The exhibition focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for twenty gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3. Eighty games, selected with the help of the public, demonstrate the evolution of the medium. The games are presented through still images and video footage. In addition, the galleries will include video interviews with twenty developers and artists, large prints of in-game screen shots, and historic game consoles. Chris Melissinos, founder of Past Pixels and collector of video games and gaming systems, is the curator of the exhibition."

                                         Smithsonian Museums and Zoo Website




Academy of Art University and NASA Announce Design Partnership


This semester, Academy of Art University Industrial Design students will collaborate with the NASA Ames Research Center (Moffett Field, California) to design a user interface that will allow future astronauts in space to remotely operate a robot on Earth. A number of thesis level students have been chosen and will use a variety of design skills to complete the project, including storyboarding, task analysis, ideation, brainstorming, sketching and rendering. The students' work will be used to create the user interface elements, including icons wireframes and glyphs. Simultaneously the team is identifying opportunities for additional design disciplines to be integrated into the experience. Already the team is starting conceptual work on interior architecture, product design, and apparel.

Read original article @ 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/12/prweb9267620.DTL#ixzz1p0pR2hhl

Art Education Needs to be Protected

Why invest in arts education at a time when schools seem laser-focused on improving performance in reading and math skills?

Evidence shows that the arts matter. Arts have a positive impact on student achievement, motivation and engagement, critical and creative thinking, collaboration and team work skills.

Read Original Article @ The Boston's Globe: The Podium:  http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/blogs/the_podium/2012/03/arts_education_needs_to_be_pro.html

01.29.2012

Russia's most powerful women in business — RT

Feel Good Art: Art For an Age of Anxiety
"There is a second world war kind of thing going on about 'keeping the home fires burning' at the moment; a bit of 'keep calm and carry on' art, if you like," said the Turner prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller this weekend as he prepared for the opening of his retrospective show, Joy in People, on London's South Bank next month. 

Solar Storms Spawn Hyperactive Aurora Aorealis

'Anonymous' Supporter Says He is Being Targeted - WQAD 
Kevin says he has never participated in the hacking activities of Anonymous; he just supports the ideology of the group. Kevin says he has yet to receive his laptop and does not know when it will be returned. Copyright © 2012, WQAD-TV

A career in context: Josef Albers and Winsor & Newton

Josef Albers and Winsor & Newton




" Offering courses in painting, graphics, theatre and stage design, the Bauhaus concept was to combine art, craft and technology:  industrial design was taught alongside painting and both were to be at the service of society. According to Bauhaus director, architect Walter Gropius, ‘the artist should be trained to work with industry.’ Bauhaus was influenced by the Russian movement Constructivism, which sought to make art out of its component parts, these being line, form, colour and shape."

Josef Albers

'Homage to the Square' (1976), Oil on masonite, 24 x 24 inches

The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation (1976.1.524)

© 2011 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/

Artists Rights Society, New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Germany.

Read the complete article, "A career in context: Josef Albers and Winsor & Newton", here