“When he saw me thus launched on yet another enraptured description of what I had observed, he looked at me with desperately sad eyes and said in obvious despair: ‘But Selye try to realize what you are doing before it is too late! You have now decided to spend your entire life studying the pharmacology of dirt.’ ”
– (Hans Selye, The Stress of Life)

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York University art history professor Carol Zemel’s overall project with respect to Vincent Van Gogh is an ambitious one, as she suggests that (among other sub-theses) Van Gogh was a somewhat pragmatic, business-oriented artist in complete, even distancing, control of his artistic product until the final few months of his life, a view that usurps his mythology. In the chapter of her 1997 book, Van Gogh’s Progress: Utopia and Modernity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Art titled “Modern Citizens: Configurations of Gender in Van Gogh’s Portraiture,” Zemel further identifies Van Gogh’s strategies and seems to suggest that external factors – the changing role of women in society, the conflict between burgeoning modern life and Van Gogh’s concept of agrarian utopia, and the shift of identifiable classed and gendered roles in general – contributed more greatly to Van Gogh’s ultimate breakdown than underlying biological mental illness.
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Aperol-fueled hipsters congregate in Venice, Italy, during the Biennale Venice in July, 2009.

A small boat approaches a low bridge…

The exciting conclusion: Boat travel in Venice, Italy, during the Biennale Venice near the Arsenale hall, July 2009.

Van Gogh scholars Vojt?ch Jirat-Wasiuty?ski and Joan Greer present comparative views – comparative in the sense that some aspects differ and some also agree – of Vincent Van Gogh’s production of olive-tree related paintings during his slightly-longer-than-one-year stay in Saint-Rémy beginning in May 1889 in the respective articles “Vincent van Gogh’s Paintings of Olive Trees and Cypresses from St.-Rémy” and “A Modern Gethsemane: Vincent Van Gogh’s Olive Grove.” While both pieces emphasize the storied Biblical association of olive trees and olive groves and explore various aspects of Van Gogh’s perception and representation of himself as a Christic figure, Greer brings forward some interesting arguments concerning Frédéric Salles, a Reformed Church minister who visited Van Gogh at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole and became involved with the artist and his family, and about the possibility of Van Gogh’s intentions around these paintings to engage in a sort of conversation with Emile Bernard and not-so-subtle reproach to Paul Gauguin about observation vs. memory studies and religious iconography. Jirat-Wasiuty?ski proposes as an aside that Van Gogh’s cypresses constitute references to Egyptian art (as invocations of immortality) and that the olive series also furthered Van Gogh’s earlier pursuit of typology and physiognomy in attempting to locate the nostalgic and essential in Provencal culture. Finally, Jirat-Wasiuty?ski makes some points about Van Gogh’s identification olive and cypress trees not as religious symbols but as relatable organisms. “Both trees were treated as tough outcasts, relegated to marginal land,” Jirat-Wasiuty?ski observes on page 650.
Greer is persuasive in her account of Salles’s appearance in Van Gogh’s life as a sympathetic figure and one whom Van Gogh could fix some of his yearning for connection upon and as a vector for rekindling connections to Protestantism. Viewed this way, Van Gogh’s representations of himself as a Christ seem more grounded in the longstanding tradition of post-Reformation artists to show themselves this way (such as Albrecht Durer’s most famous self portrait). This type of representation springs not from hubris, but from the belief that man is made in God’s image. Speaking of hubris, though, this does not account for Gauguin’s Christic delusions (coming from a Catholic family it is further mortifying to learn that Gauguin also poorly represents us – this man is a constant disappointment on every level). As to Van Gogh’s dialogue with Bernard and Gauguin, certainly this is a possibility – Van Gogh probably (in reference to conversations which may have taken place in Paris) entertained the hope of “getting the band back together.” Read more

Concentration of wealth in hands of rich greatest on record

from rawstory.com

Look at this hip art show poll! I will be curating an as-yet-to-be-named art show going up September 7 at USF’s Centre Gallery. The special guest artists will be USF Masters of Fine Arts candidates, maybe, and maybe some other local and regional art stars too. The reason the show is lacking a name is because its title will be decided the democratic way: through your votes.

A manifesto detailing the curator’s philosophy and the inspiration for this cultural insurgency will be forthcoming, but for now I welcome your vote. Please feel free to post your suggestions for alternative names in the comments section, and thank you for participating. — Jean Carey

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Best promotional email ever from MyJumpsuit.com!

The Remorse of the Emperor Nero After the Murder of His Mother, John William Waterhouse, 1878

INTRODUCTION

An important distinction between Roman Emperor Nero and Chinese Emperor Kublai Khan (and his modern descendent, the William Randolph Hearst character entombed in Xanadu in Citizen Kane (1939) ), is that many of Nero’s ostentatious and ambitious construction projects – beyond and including the Golden Palace – contained spaces for the creation and display of art as well as libraries. In fact Nero’s baths offered one of the largest “public” libraries of the ancient world (Boese 2005, 102) (Staikos, K. 2000).

The purpose of this paper is to present a biography of Nero in relation to the development and subsequent destruction of First Century libraries in Rome, and to present an argument about how access to libraries and knowledge ebbs and flows, and how this access does not always correlate in predictable ways around what we normally think of as civilized and progressive behavior. Nero’s strategy – to earn the love and support of the Roman people by providing culture, food, entertainment, and the constant diversion of a capricious sociopath running the Empire – was successful; it was the senatorial class who actually despised Nero. As Christendom ascended, it adopted some of Nero’s tactics – the spectacular persecution of a minority, for one thing – while other beneficial societal institutions – the aqueducts and the libraries, for example – fell away (Kiefer, Highet, and MacInnes 2000).

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Aerial photograph of Australian outback, Mike Lehmann,   1 March 2007 (UTC)

You Have No New Messages- Ever: It’s Time Voice Mail Threw in the Towel article in Slate by Farhad Manjoo.

Continuing the experiment, here is a video from YouTube of  Astra and Marcie napping Italian Greyhounds Sleeping filmed in 2007.

To get back with the blog, I am experimenting with Blackberry uploading technology.

Astra Carey, 31 October 1992-9 January 2009

My darling girl and the love of my life Astra died at 6:30 p.m. 9 January 2009.

She spent her final day being extremely boisterous for her breakfast at 5:30 a.m., being variously sat beside and sat upon by her young sister, Marcie, and taking in as many B-movies as it is possible for a deaf, blind, elderly dog to absorb, all things she did most days for many years.

Astra was an amazing Italian Greyhound. During her long life she climbed the Bridal Veil falls trail and played in the falls’ freezing spray, ran on Miami Beach at sunrise, chased armadillos and wild boars, aspirated a sandspur, consumed an entire bag of dark chocolate, was stung by a bee, dove into an alligator-infested river, and walked thousands of miles with me in all sorts of environments. Astra survived all her adventures and misadventures with good cheer and a hearty appetite. Over the years I said many prayers to Saint Francis and Saint Mary imploring them to watch over and protect this loving, gentle soul and I believe she is receiving a warm welcome in paradise tonight and rejoining her sister, Queequeg, who went first as always a few years ago.

Until arthritis affected her range of motion these final years, the first sound I heard every morning after the alarm clock was Astra’s tail, thumping the bed, ready to greet another day in happiness and with love.

Astra was frequently infatuated with animals of other species, particularly rabbits and cats, and though her affections were often misunderstood she remained steadfast.

I have no other words to express my grief but also my ineffable gratitude at having had so many wonderful years with such a wonderful child.

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Caesarea Mushroom

This post is concerned with “Out of the Closet and into the Universe: Queers and Star Trek” by Henry Jenkins. Even though this piece is nominally about homosexuality vis a vis popular culture, the writer’s unifying field is not an idea, however, but an emotion, the unmoored nostalgia for an unrealized past that manifests as an incurable yearning projected upon the present and future.

Jenkins article, reprinted in 2004 without updates that would have allowed for the recognition of another Star Trek spin-off television series, Deep Space Nine, which provided a deeper consideration of gendering and alterity subjects, discusses a sort of popularly-based movement fomented by fans of the sequel to the original Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, to have an “openly” gay character join the multicultural, multispecies Enterprise crew. Further wishes included incidental portrayals of gay behavior, such as ambient, non-storyline driven asides to shots of men kissing and so on. There is certainly a genuine sweetness to the Trekkie fandom community amid the fanaticism attendant to the science fiction/fantasy core crowd.

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“Enraged by Tea,” one of my all-time photophone favorites, from 2005.

The three essays discussed in this response paper relate to contemporary concepts around the analysis of visual culture through the interpretation of the philosophies of history, commodification, and language as refracted by The Man’s capitalistic hijacking of the involuntary human practice of looking.

While Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels use the terminology typically associated with the social proposals of communism including the expected references to the “proletariat” and the “bourgeois,” these selections from German Ideology constitute less a political manifesto than an intellectual proposal for the active reconfiguring of the recording and interpretation of history. Marx and Engels (and, for the consideration of these works, Barthes) are not particularly known for easily comprehensible prose styles. German Ideology capitalizes, so to speak, on the even more opaque writing of the greatest German ideologue of the time, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Marx and Engels propose that while there is some fundamental correctness to the Hegelian principle of the dialectic – ascertaining an absolute truth through logical dissection and argument – historians and philosophers following Hegel had simply got everything wrong. Rather than intangible evolved yearnings for “immanence” and “transcendence,” humanity is a material manifestation controlled by economics. This definition of “historical materialism” is preceded by “dialectic materialism,” which establishes both the sole existence of the physical (as opposed to ephemeral) world, and, more significantly in connection to visual culture studies, the establishment of the thesis/antithesis paradigm which eventually becomes known as “binary opposition.” (Marx – more Marx than Engels – also takes exception to other “Hegel deconstruction” scholars such as Ludwig Feuerbach and Max Stirner). In a certain titular and textual respect, these selections undercut some of the assumptions endemic to the concepts of alterity politics and false constructions of Otherness raised during the heights of Post-Modernism simply by presuming that such a thing as an ideology based not upon colonial dynamics or Western European cultural dominance but on the national identity of Germans.
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Peak Libraries: Developing Sensitivity to Future Consequences

Insensitivity to future consequences is an identified behavioral aberration experienced by people who have experienced traumatic brain injuries to the cerebral cortex (Franck, 1995). Though perplexing and disruptive, at least there is some explanation for the actions of those who suffer this affliction. There is no such biological explanation for the shortsighted and damaging behaviors affected by those responsible for the stewardship of public library and museum programs, particularly in Florida. Florida’s plight, which is duplicated in states and municipalities nationwide, presents a particularly tragic case as the consequences of defunding important cultural and social programs may easily be foreseen.
Parallels may be drawn between the “gas crisis” and the “library crisis.” For more than twenty years, since the administration of President Ronald Reagan, patrons and employees of museums and libraries have dealt with increased funding shortfalls and budget and staff cuts in pretty much the same way as the general population has dealt with the current petroleum crisis: by complaining, and doing nothing else. Until recently, drivers griped about gouging at the gas pump and kept buying Hummers. Librarians and museum curators long bemoaned the crumbling cultural infrastructure (Klein, 2007). Through 2006 and 2007 commuters continued to drive exactly as much as always, and since 1984, library administrators have also continued, with respect to the lack of public funding for collections and facilities, to commiserate with colleagues and at library conferences, and perhaps most damagingly, to continue to rely on the personal integrity and client focus of library staffers to maintain the high level of productivity and professionalism associated with librarianship.
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Excellent essay by Gary Kamiya on Salon.com

The culture war: It’s back!

“Democrats may have thought that the disastrous Bush years killed the GOP’s favorite tactic. The Palin effect shows they were wrong.”

“I’m really shocked that the city has made the decision to close the library on Friday and Saturdays,” resident June Connell said of the city’s proposal to close the Countryside Library on Fridays and Saturdays to save money. – From The St. Petersburg Times September 5, 2008, edition.

Hey city of Clearwater residents, particularly those who voted for Amendment 1! Here’s what the closings of the Clearwater library branches are paying for: For the sprinkler system to be turned on while four city workers lay chalk lines and even up the turf at the Drew Street sports complex, commencing at 6:00 a.m. weekdays.

What’s going on with this radar image captured from Tampa Bay NBC affiliate WFLA on 8 September 2006 (during the week Hurricane Ike was just off the coast out in the Gulf of Mexico)?
Is the Bay Area being affected by streaking columnar bolts of weather?

Eastern Timberwolf (Canis lupus lycaon), picture taken in Schönbrunn Zoo, Vienna, Austria.