Tickets booked; I’m going.  This is going to be incredible!

(5.20.10 :: Maida Vale, London)

This is the life I almost had.  The one where I’d be poor and unemployed and frustrated with the challenges of living in a huge city where I knew virtually no one.  But it would be totally worth it, because it’s LONDON and who in their right mind would throw away a two-year British work visa just because the move would probably be a little uncomfortable?

baranduin:transitory:loveyourchaos:phantomwise:dustthepiano:timallama:theskyisalandfill: adaytoremember:lonelystring:lightningbugs:woaah:pamilya:

THE SITUATION - In Washington , DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

About 4 minutes later:
The violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent - without exception - forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes: The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while.
About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

After 1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.


This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

This experiment raised several questions:

*In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?
*If so, do we stop to appreciate it?

*Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made …
How many other things are we missing as we rush through life?

This raises one of the major issues I’ve been trying to work through ever since I began studying contemporary art, which is the extent to which “high” culture, “good” art, or beauty (as the case may be) is conferred by recognized authorities—museums/galleries, critics, theatres.  I’m still not sure if this owes a lot to anti-art and pop art movements carried to such extremes that they essentially inverted, or if it goes back to the beginnings of the category of “art” and Kantian ideas of aesthetics.  Or, along similar lines to the former, if perhaps people feel so overwhelmed by a constant barrage of visual, musical, and other artistic stimuli that we block it out until we come to a designated time or place where we finally let it in and appreciate it with all our attention.

David Shrigley, Cat.

Warning:  Art rant follows.

Today at Shrigley’s exhibition in the Kelvingrove (as part of the Glasgow International Art Festival), I noticed a group leave the exhibition almost immediately after seeing this—and only this—piece, declaring it “in very poor taste.”  This set me off reflecting on Art Ideas and what determines taste level for museums.  Naturally.

For a start, the museum has an entire room full of taxidermic animals.  Did this group take issue with those, too?  Or was it just the fact that Shrigley and the dog had the audacity to call attention to the obvious, and that this shifted focus from examining the specimen to the morbid subject of its inanimate state?  Perhaps the issue was with the pose, too whimsical for a museum, or maybe even a little too human (especially with the sign) for comfort?  On the other hand, should I have been more startled by it?  Often “art exhibitions” seem to inherently involve turning off shocked reactions—for example, at last year’s National Review of Live Art, I stood in a room with 30 or so other people and watched a naked woman cover herself in flour and roll eggs down her body.  If I saw that on the street, or in a pub, or basically anywhere but an art exhibition, I would laugh or be alarmed or confused (well… I still was a little confused even knowing it was Art).  

Anyway.  Here’s a dead cat.  Maybe it’s clever, maybe it’s just “poor taste.”

“Imagine” - John Lennon

via Hark! A Vagrant

Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty.

Foster can take a complex, ingenious idea and explain it so clearly and logically that he makes it seem almost commonsense.  I cited this book in three separate essays during my MLitt, and I’m pretty sure I mentally reference it fairly often in my post-academic life.  If I had to pick a favorite art historian, it would definitely be Hal Foster—although strangely, that question is missing from Facebook’s ‘personal information’ section, and from most conversations.

Frank Snyder, ‘Family Group at Picnic’, Oxford, Ohio.

My alma mater!

thedailywhat:

Old-School Cosplay of the Day: Redditor loblawlawblog says: “Spotted these guys running around my campus.”

What’s that? It’s 4/20? Carry on.

[reddit.]