Your eyes and ears on the world of art and culture. We remind you that 16 years of back issues of eMusings can be found on our archives page.
Let's start out with an animation called Trash which quite blew me away. The combination of so many skills here is extraordinary. You won't want to miss it. (Thanks to DM.)
Yayoi Kusama is back in the news again. She has designed a balloon that will take part in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. At the same time, an exhibition of her Infinity Mirror Room and other signature pieces will take place at the David Zwirner Gallery on West 20th Street in nearby Chelsea. The exhibition will be titled "Every Day I Pray for Love."
I am prone to imagining what creatures from another universe might look like. (I call them Blobs, and you can see them each month at our Blobs page.) But Nature has outdone me. At the Paris Zoological Park you will see a bright yellow slime mold called the blob. It has no brain but if it is cut in half is able to heal itself. Rather than 2 sexes, it has more than 700. It can also split into several organisms and then put itself back together again. The unicellular creature is believed to be about 1 billion years old. It loves oatmeal, by the way, and is happiest living in oak bark, acacia trees, and chestnut bark.
Years ago I bought a charming piece of glass by the Swedish artist Bertil Vallien. It continues to bring a smile to my face each day of my life. Now I see that the Schantz Galleries in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, carries his sculptures. Bertil is a Glass Master and considered one of Sweden's most innovative contemporary glass artists.
At a new exhibition in London, photographer Namsa Leuba examines the Tahitian tradition of the Mahu, a group considered to be neither male nor female. Since ancient times, these individuals have been important spritual and social leaders in their communities, repositories of rituals and dances, care-givers for children and the elderly. The powers of the Mahu seem to reside in four capacities: creativity, generosity, empathy, and intuition.
Artist Peter Saul uses satire and cartoons to comment on American Culture. With day-glow paint he illuminates the distortions and chaos of our lives in garish colors. More of Saul's work can be seen at the George Adams Gallery online,
In a musical piece called "The Adornment of Time", pianist Marilyn Crispell performs what has been called "rustlings". These improvisatory sounds include unusual effects like thudding noises, crashes, silences, drum rolls, etc. This thoughtful article from The New York Review of Books harkens back to other disruptions of the usual melodies and motifs that characterize Western music, from John Cage to Morton Feldman. Another example can be heard in Whitaker's "Goddess of Tattered Liberty", composed using Artificial Intelligence.
Using fashion photography as his springboard, Txema Yeste creates a fantasy world. The bold images are on exhibit now at the Staley Wise Gallery.
The traditional Japanese art of bamboo is making a comeback in the West. At one time, bamboo basket-weaving was considered a craft, in a derogatory sense, not to be confused with the eliteness of Art. Now the exquusite delicacy of the works is being recognized by major collectors. You can find some superb examples in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the Tai Modern Gallery.
Inoue Yuichi was a Japanese calligrapher who explored the parameters of calligraphy using several different materials. Eventually he returned to the traditional form of brush and ink, producing strong and eloquent works. He became known after the 4th Sao Paulo Art Biennial in 1954. He wrote, "Sho (Calligraphy) is said to be the expression of lines but the complex and delicate secrets of Sho lie in the fact that lines realize themselves in the action of writing characters. It is no that lines are integrated into characters, but that lines are realized of themselves in the action of writing characters." Yuichi was known to practice his art early in the morning before going to teach at an elementary school.
c. Corinne Whitaker 2019