I agree especially that "we have a lot of hubris" (9:34), and I think that humanity is largely pathological at this point. It's interesting that multitudes are more than willing to buy into the optimism of governments, experts, etc who've been bought out by the nuclear industry.
I want to revisit this Riz Khan segment from Al Jazeera English, with Tariq Ramadan and Slavoj Žižek.
I think it's ineptly, chauvinistically, and coercively titled "Egypt's Revolution: Can the Popular Uprising Lead to Real Political Change?" From the get-go, it dooms other possibilities, political or otherwise. This is reinforced by Ramadan and Žižekdespite their words of good conscience that attempt to critique the West's prejudices and hypocrisy toward the Muslim world.
What's most insulting is Žižek's shoddy shibboleth: "we are all universalists" (4:06). By being proud for the Egyptians because "they understand democracy by doing what they are doing better than we do in the West" (5:16), he might as well as say that they're more West than the West...so who cares about their specific culture(s)?, this hindrance to solidarity's universal that is general exchange. Žižek's thinking itself is an ideological symptom. It's a somewhat valid observation that Islamic fundamentalism filled the void of the Left (14:33), but there was also a void in the Left itself, which could be bad but could be good, a cipher. Žižek's is a nostalgia for a failed utopia, and the chore of dusting off the memorabilia on the shelves. Even in the multilinear theory of history, why doom an insurrection to the politico-philosophic circuit of a ravenous incorporating Geist? We can't even "let the dead bury their dead" (Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) because Žižek proposes to let the dead resurrect their dead. And we know from movies, when zombies can't cannibalize the living, they cannibalize themselves.
Elucidating for me anyways, some passages in Baudrillard's texts collected in The Agony of Power:
"The high point of the struggle against domination was the historic movement of liberation, be it political, sexual, or otherwise - a continuous movement, with guiding ideas and visible actors.
But liberation also occurred with exchanges and markets, which brings us to this terrifying paradox: all of the liberation fights against domination only paved the way for hegemony, the reign of general exchange - against which there is no possible revolution, since everything is already liberated.
Total revolt responds to total order, not just dialectical conflict. At this point, it is double or nothing: the system shatters and drags the universal away in its disintegration. It is vain to want to restore universal values from the debris of globalization. The dream of rediscovered universality (but did it ever exist?) that could put a stop to global hegemony, the dream of a reinvention of politics and democracy and, as for us, the dream of a Europe bearing an alternative model of civilization opposed to neoliberal hegemony - this dream is without hope. Once the mirror of universality is broken (which is like the mirror stage of our modernity), only fragments remain, scattered fragments. Globalization automatically entails, in the same movement, fragmentation and deepening discrimination - and our fate is for a universe that no longer has anything universal about it - fragmentary and fractal - but that no doubt leaves the field free for all singularities: the worst and the best, the most violent and the most poetic."
Ya gotta jump on this one, all six of Lynd Ward's wordless novels in woodcuts including his writings as a two volume boxed set (Library of America, 2011), edited by Art Spiegelman known notably for RAW magazine, graphic novel masterpiece Maus: A Survivor's Tale, and his work as editor at The New Yorker.
A compendium like this hasn't been seen since Storyteller Without Words (Abrams, 1974).
Ward's early graphic novels are still some of the best, each frame elegantly eye-catching yet trenchant. Today's proliferating graphic novels, often inconsistently or even shoddily produced despite being slicker, could use some lessons from Ward.
Of course, it's better to have the original editions, although they're getting harder to get. But fortunately, all six novels are independently available now in affordable formats.
God's Man (Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1930), reprinted (Dover, 2004)
Madman's Drum (Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1930), reprinted (Dover, 2005)
Wild Pilgrimage (Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1932), reprinted (Dover, 2008)
Prelude to a Million Years (Equinox, 1933), reprinted (Dover, 2010)
Song Without Words (Random House, 1936), reprinted (Dover, 2010)
Vertigo (Random House, 1937), reprinted (Dover, 2009)
Unfortunately, Ward's incomplete novel, printed in a limited edition as Lynd Ward's Last Unfinished Wordless Novel (Harsimus Press, 2001) is not readily available.
Ward also illustrated many books, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934), reprinted (Dover, 2009).
Relatedly, Frans Masereel's works are also available in affordable formats. Passionate Journey is my favorite. And again, previous editions are better, but you know the story...
Not many monographs on Masereel in English. Roger Avermaete's Frans Masereel (Rizzoli, 1977) is a nice American edition. Stefan Zweig's Der Zwang (Enforcement) was illustrated by Masereel, and the writer also contributed to a monograph on the artist.
Also, while we're on the subject of relief printmaking, people should be more familiar with a contemporary master, Artemio Rodriguez. He used to live in Los Angeles, had a print studio La Mano Press, recently relocated to Mexico to dedicate himself to El Huerto, Centro de Ecologia y Artes (The Orchard, Center for Ecology and Arts). Many years ago, I met him when he was just starting out in the U.S. at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, and he's a nice guy ).
You might want to get this forthcoming nice little book introduction to Josef Koudelka's photography (Torst, 2011), a reprinting of a previous edition 2002.
I first learned of Koudelka about 10 years ago, through my interest in his photographs of gypsies, for which perhaps he's most well-known. The book collection (Aperture, 1975), reprinted 1992, is now somewhat hard to get, especially in fine condition.
His photographs of the Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion of Prague in 1968, which ended Prague Spring, are also highly regarded. The book form (Aperture, 2008) is now out of print, as are other editions, and the original Czech edition Invaze 68 (Torst, 2008). Prague, 1968 (Centre National de la Photographie/Photo Notes, 1990), reprinted 1999 is available.
Another outstanding collection, Exiles (Aperture, 1988) is also out of print, last reprinted by Aperture 1997.
I would get his latest major collection, Chaos (Phaidon, 1999), reprinted 2005 and 2008.
My favorite autobiography by a (former) Black Panther is James Carr's BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr (Herman Graf Associates, 1975), reprinted by AK Press 2002. Not to be confused with the singer by the same name, although he's good too. This book is rambunctious and highly poignant, not only reflecting and exposing the conflicted historical logic of the Black Panther Party and its members, but expressing the basic fact and crux of being, the inexorable sine qua non of rage, resistance, and uncertain renewal.
I also recommend Sanyika Shakur/Monster Kody Scott's classic Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993), reprinted by Grove Press 2004.
Recently, his first novel T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. (Grove Press, 2009) was published.
And Stanley Tookie Williams' Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir (Touchstone, 2007), as well as his Redemption: From Original Gangster to Nobel Prize Nominee (Milo Books, 2004) and Life in Prison (Chronicle Books, 2001).
Sacramento: There's a major exhibition at Crocker Art Museum of Gottfried Helnwein's works, Gottfried Helnwein: Inferno of the Innocents, January 29, 2011-April 24, 2011.
Beautiful Victim I, 1974. Watercolor on cardboard.
For me, I'm not sure if Helnwein's images are really all that challenging, whether they rely more on ready-made referentiality as controversially evocative legerdemain or if that's exactly the profundity itself. In any case, his works are impressive and well-done. Above link to more works and info at his website.
Paris: Neue Galerie, NYC recently had the first exhibition dedicated to Franz Xaver Messerschmidt which in collaboration travels to the Louvre, January 28, 2011-April 25, 2011. A catalogue is also available.
Messerschmidt would be considered a schizophrenic these days, which led him to work on his famous character heads often modeled from himself.
Ann Arbor: Check out the exhibition at Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan featuring some of Walter Martin & Paloma Munoz's supermundane snow globes and photography, White Nights, January 24, 2011-March 16, 2011. Another exhibition at Bellevue Arts Museum, Travelers: Objects of Dream and Revelation, August 26, 2011-December 31, 2011.
The Orchard at Night, from Islands, 2005. C-print.
NYC: There's still some time to go, but this forthcoming exhibition at Museum of Arts and Design is going to be awesome, Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities, June 7, 2011-September 18, 2011. C'mon, it's really cool miniature stuff!!!
When I do go to the damn Getty Center, I first head to my favorite painting there which for some reason is Jan Brueghel the Elder's The Sermon on the Mount (1598). Credit goes to my friend Elliot, who told me about it as he sometimes does. It shows meticulously marvelous technique. Ya gotta see this small painting up close 'n' personal, perhaps with a magnifying glass, all those finely delineated little people, trees, etc. It's very much like an enameled "jewel-like object."
The Entry of the Animals into Noah's Ark, 1613. Oil on panel.
You might want to get this recent book, Leopoldine Prosperetti's Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) (Ashgate, 2009).
You may be able to find Gertraude Winkelmann-Rhein's Blumen-Brueghel (Verlag M. Dumot Schauberg, 1968) in its English version, The Paintings and Drawings of Jan "Flower" Bruegel (Abrams, 1969), which is ok.
I would like to have Klaus Ertz's Jan Brueghel D.A.: Die Gemalde (Dumont, 1979) or his/Christa Nitze-Ertz's four volume Jan Brueghel der Altere: Die Gemalde (Luca Verlag Lingen, 2008).
Other interesting titles found online:
Jan Brueghel the Elder:
Fritz Baumgart/Blumen Brueghel (Dumont, 1978)
Jan Brueghel the Elder (Brod Gallery, 1979)
Klaus Ertz/Pieter Brueghel der Jungere-Jan Brueghel der Altere: Flamische Malerei um 1600: Tradition und Fortschritt (Luca Verlag, 1997)
Klaus Ertz/Pieter Brueghel Le Jeune-Jan Brueghel l'Ancien: Une Famille des Peintres Flamandes vers 1600 (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1998)
Arianne Faber Kolb/Jan Brueghel the Elder: The Entry of the Animals into Noah's Ark (Getty Trust Publications, 2005)
Anne Woollett et al./Rubens and Brueghel: A Working Friendship (Getty Trust Publications, 2006)
Emile Michel, Victoria Charles/The Brueghels (Parkstone Press, 2007)
Jan Brueghel the Elder (Betascript Publishing, 2010)
Frederic P. Miller et al./Jan Brueghel the Elder (Alphascript Publishing, 2010)
related:
Max J. Friedlander/Early Netherlandish Painting: From Van Eyck to Bruegel (Phaidon , 1956), reprinted in two volumes 1969
John Oliver Hand/The Age of Bruegel: Netherlandish Drawings in the Sixteenth Century (National Gallery of Art, 1986)
Walter S. Gibson/Mirror of the Earth: The World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting (Princeton University Press, 1989)
David Koetser/Fine Old Master Paintings principally of the Dutch and Flemish Schools (David Koetser, 1990)
Meredith Hale et al./Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings (Johnny van Haeften, 2002)
Friedrich August von Metzsch/Bild und Botschaft: Biblische Geschichten auf Bildern der Alten Pinakothek Munchen (Schnell und Steiner, 2002)
Konrad Renger, Claudia Denk/Flamische Malerei des Barock (Dumont Buchverlag Gmbh, 2002)
Gordon Campbell/Renaissance Art and Architecture (Oxford University Press, 2004)
Arthur K. Wheelock/Flemish Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (National Gallery, 2005)
Agnes Tieze/Flamische Gemalde im Stadel Museum 1550-1800 (Imhof Verlag, 2009)
With help from other sources, somewhat obsessively, I went ahead and made a partial alphabetical list of museums with work(s) by Jan Brueghel the Elder:
