Friedrich Engels

from The Guardian, G2, 29.04.09., p. 16. 

"It is absolutely essential that you get out of boring Brussels for once and come to Paris, and I for my part have a great desire to go carousing with you." Friedrich Engles wrote to Karl Marx in 1846. "If I had an income of 5000 francs I would do nothing but work and amuse myself with women until I went to pieces. If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living. But so long as there are grisettes [prostitutes], well and good!"

Chelsea vs Barcelona

how can he jump into the air like that, having fractured his skull in a football game...I can't decide if it's heroic madness or vicea versa. 

Hercules Costume

Costume design for Hercules in the opera Atys by Jean-Baptiste Lully

International Baroque

'View of a European Pavilion at the Garden of Perfect Clarity', by Yuanming Yuan, from Beijing and created in 1781-6. 

BEAUTY

Sigmund Freud's Dora: A Case of Missing Identity

GP again

Gram Parsons

Flying Burrito Brothers

'Be Your Dog' by Jordan Baseman

contemporary rabbit

Dan Fox on 'A Serious Business'

Dan Fox's article 'A Serious Business', is a witty and believable plunge at the awkward question 'what does it mean to be a professional artist?' It's a question worth writing about again, because of the current pandemonium surrounding the credit crunch. Fox identifies the misconception that national bankruptcy will allow for a new, and naïve arcadia of artistic practice, free from the fetid world of media frenzied, consumer friendly art elite.

Young artists, i.e. my pals, who have and haven't been to art school, I think, are faced with a difficult choice. To survive as a practicing artist, you either have to align yourself with the uber rich patron, or the trust fund of a public art gallery. Neither is wrong, only both methods of upkeep perpetuate the museum establishment, and the non-threatening consumer radicalism that I think has over dominated the contemporary art market of late. The choice isn't even a new one, but I think the current economic climate has shoved it back in the limelight.

Brands such as 'authenticity' have become awkward, and I would argue invalid. But it still holds a fascination for artists and critics alike. It's no big secret that many artists, that produce important works, come from bourgeois backgrounds which allow them to survive. Although YBA's broke the barrier on this front, they are now the middle aged British artists, with no iconic and outspoken group having risen above the white noise of the media frenzy to take their place.

Unfortunately the price of a garret is only on the up, and it makes you wonder how this will change not only the type of artwork produced, but also accessed on a mass scale by the art viewing public. Will Gilbert and George's 'professionalism' or the more uncouth tradition of hustling for patronage by Windam Lewis dominate the way artists remain artists in the next few years.

Ann Peebles

AESOP IN THE CITY by Yoni Brenner

(from the New Yorker, shouts & murmurs, 2007)

 

The Fox and the Goat

A fox is offered free tickets from Cindy in P.R. She drops them off after lunch, and the fox is dismayed to find that they are for an experimental Swedish dance company called Leøtåård. He takes the tickets to the goat in the next cubicle. "Leøtåård?" says the goat. "I've never heard of them." "I saw them last week," coos the fox. "The Scandinavian Alvin Ailey. I'll give them to you for ten bucks." And so, while the goat spends the evening in a dank underground space off Avenue C, the fox goes to Ollie's and spends the ten dollars on lo mein. Sure enough, the performance is awful and the goat gets a massive strobe-light headache. Still, inexplicably, he puts his name on the e-mail list.

Moral: Always check the Web site.

Tom Wolf on Radical Chic

Booka Shade "Movements"

Just missed seeing them live in London, owing to the fact I arrived at the venue too late.I  caught the final 10 minuets.  Can't say I'm not a little dissapointed - but at least there was still great music on afterwards. And vibrating speakers in the floor, which I think is a terrific boon. 

Protests, Twitter and Eastern Europe

"MOSCOW - A crowd of more than 10, 000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova's Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police...

The protesters created their own searchable tag on Twitter, rallying Moldovans to join and propelling events in this small former Soviet state onto a Twitter list of newly popular topics, so people around the world could keep track.''