同志兔神

Masau’u ~ a Katsina spirit doll crafted by the men of the Hopi nation. Each doll, imbued with meaning and spirituality, is gifted to a girl of their nation during the start and end of the Hopi calendar. They are representations of the many Hopi spirits, who are said to live up in the mountains of northern Arizona. Few people have seen the gifting ceremony, which is closed to anyone outside of their tribe.

“Painting a portrait is a concentration on one particular person and no one else will do.” These are the words of Elaine de Kooning as she remarked on her time painting portraits of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. During her commission she created dozens of drawings, sketching, and paintings of the ‘golden’ man. “A perfect subject”. De Kooning’s brushwork is indecisive and athletic, disposing with the techniques in fashion with the male artists of her time. Her style is vivid and imposing, full of movement and confidence.

“The markets of the world have become a mess. There are so many shitty clothing makers just competing: fast fast fast, cheap cheap cheap, sexy sexy sexy. This is very far from me ... mentally I am very far from mass production.” For three decades the clothing by Yohji Yamamoto (山本 耀司) of Tokyo, Japan has stood as an antinode to today’s capitalistic fashion. The quality and homespun craftsmanship of Yohji’s garments reveals a reverence for the human hand rarely seen in today’s malls and boutiques. His customers are not wearing ties, they are not business women, they are working as a free ‘something’. They can look a little strange and funny. Yohji explains his world view by saying “I was educated and grew up as the only son of a war widow. I was naturally pushed to look at society through my mother. This means i looked at society through women. It was my destiny.” From this vantage point Yohji begs us to stop. Take it easy. Look back. Don’t go to fast.

 … Deep from within the subconscious of french comic book artist Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius) has sprung rich and psychedelic visions of unknown fantasy-scapes. Each new world depicted is vibrant with iconography and wonder. The detail and style of his work demonstrates a mathematical precision which extends our imagination of what is possible, yet is rooted in an understanding of history and life. “When you draw, you must first cleanse yourself of deep feelings, like hate, happiness, ambition, etc.” Until his last days Giraud was full of a desire to create, discover and, in his own words, “be a bit of a delinquent”. In this state of “insécurité permanente” Giraud expressed his wish to inspire through his artistic vision a feeling of “un délice absolu” (absolute delight).

I’m so hard to handle. I’m selfish and I’m sad. Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby that I ever had. Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on. I wish I had a river so long would teach my feet to fly.” ~Joni Mitchell

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner marked a key change from traditional airliners in it’s electrical architecture. Engineers completely eliminated hydraulics and pneumatics from key subsystems of the aircraft. The developers of this drastic change in airliner construction believe the system extracts some 35% less power from the engines, allowing increased thrust and improved fuel economy. These bold alterations allow the 787 to boast impressive numbers such as seating 296 passengers or largest cabin windows in any other civil air transport in-service. However, the construction of each Dreamliner was fraught with setbacks. These audacious changes came with substantial risk, notably multiple incidents of the lithium-ion battery catching fire mid-flight. Ultimately, the innovations led to billions of dollars in unexpected costs.

Consider the difference in architecture when in a location where infrastructure does not exist. Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré of Burkina Faso, the first of his village to be sent to a school, demonstrates the complexity of this circumstance. He shows us that  architecture becomes more than just constructing a building or a piece of art. The process becomes something shared by people. Each new structure provides a visceral experience from which the community can feel it as something that they are apart of. In essence, a true work of architecture reflects the culture and social environment of a community which cannot be replicated anywhere else. A building which fails to do so is nothing short of a disaster.

Respect for daily life is often reflected in art. Here we see this principal of elevated functionality in the pottery of Marian Baker. Joining of practical design with imperfection is expressed in a lighthearted unity. Each sensual form of the ceramics invites the user to lose themselves in a simple cup or bowl. The depth and richness of the glazes reveals an allure for the natural world ~ moss. beach stones. rich soil and the sea. Marian has said of her work “my fascination is with the material and ideas about function, as well as to reveal and honor the process.” Her art seeks to bring routine to life, for a greater appreciation of time and simplicity.

The artist James Turrell often espouses the parable of Plato’s Cave to introduce the notion that we are living in a reality of our own creation, subject to our human sensory limitations. Through this understanding his installations toy with space and light to ignite and befuddle the human senses. Turrell has claimed his medium is that of ‘pure light’, perhaps drawing from his roots in Quakerism. New Yorker critic Calvin Tompkins writes, “His work is not about light, or a record of light; it is light — the physical presence of light made manifest in sensory form.” His collections can be found around the world in Italy, Jerusalem, Japan, Seattle, Philadelphia, London, and more! Turrell’s objective is to create art with “no object, no image and no focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking. What is important to me is to create an experience of wordless thought.”

The Kaaba ( الكعبة‎‎ ), the holiest shrine in Islam, is a legendary work of granite masonry covered with a silk curtain and calligraphy in gold and silver-wrapped thread. Each year, during the largest annual gathering of people in the world, over 2 million Muslims come to circumambulate the Kaaba. Amidst prayers they hope to kiss the Black Stone (الحجر الأسود‎), a gift from the Angel Gabriel, which is embedded in the eastern corner of the Kaaba. The scholar Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi (1076-1148), considered by many as the greatest master and saint of Sunni Islam, recited upon seeing the kaaba “O marvel! A garden amidst fires! My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles, a convent for monks, a temple for idols. The pilgrim's kaaba is the table of the Tora and the book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love's camels take me is the path of my faith.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) directed over sixty films and 170 plays. The movie "Fanny och Alexander" (1982) takes place in Uppsala, Sweden in the 1900s. It plunges into the Christmas Eve celebration of an enormous family. The story explores the experiences of being young, being middle-aged, being old, woman, man, Christian, Jew, sane, crazy, rich, poor, religious, profane. In its entirety spanning 312 minutes it reveals the grave beauty in each character’s lives and opens it up to intrigue. The movie, weaving in and out of fiction and reality, stands as one of the longest cinematic films in history.

嶋本 昭三 (Shozo Shimamoto) of the 具体 (Gutai group); the first of the radical post-WWII artistic groups in Japan. The country was starting to overcome the difficulties of the period and sought to plow the first seeds of reconstruction. The collection of Shimamoto’s work pierces the surface of society. Each piece can be said to suggest an interesting relationship between the perceived violence of his work and the qualities of beauty and order prized in traditional Japanese culture. Shimamoto is quoted: ‘the time was disastrous for us because it was right after the War and we had been defeated. So people didn’t want to see destruction and violence, and they didn’t want to accept what they had done. So what we did was completely neglected by the audience.’

Meister Francke (Deutsch, 1380~1430). Martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury, 1424. Tempera on oak wood, 99 × 90 cm. 

The films of renowned director 黒澤 明 (Akira Kurosawa, 1910-1998) are a heroic cinema. His series of dramas focus upon the deeds and fates of larger-than-life heroes ~ honor, justice, freedom, loyalty. However, there is an obsession with historical cycles of inexorable savage violence. His directing was visually stylistic, and his ideals humanistic. In reference to Kurosawa, the critic Roger Ebert asked “Of the postwar giants who redefined the art of the cinema, what other director, save perhaps Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman, could claim so many masterpieces?”

Ναός τῆς Ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας (Shrine of the Holy Wisdom of God) 537 A.D. commonly known as the Hagia Sophia, is a marvel of late antiquity and the first masterpiece of Byzantine architecture. Through it’s lifetime the church has survived plundering, earthquake, and most notably the seat of three religions (Greek Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Islam). The halls are filled with mosaics completed throughout the centuries as the church has passed hands. The churches unique history has imbued it with a religious amalgamation that few but the mosques and cathedrals of Spain can compete with. As the historic site was completed Emperor Justinian I is said to have exclaimed Νενίκηκά σε Σολομών ("Solomon, I have outdone thee!").