Arts and Culture

["Hacienda", oil on canvas, 180x200cm, 2013]

In Samuel Beckett's classic play "Waiting for Godot," two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait ... and wait ... for the arrival of a fellow named Godot. The play is bare, minimalist, even absurd. There is but one scene (a country road and a tree) and just a few characters. While waiting in vain for the arrival of another someone, the two main characters find in each other something profound and elemental. Eric Anthamatten explains. 

It took him fifty years, but he finally did it. Arthur C. Danto's experience with Andy Warhol's "Brillo Box" (1964), coupled with his understanding of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" (1917), convinced him that there must be something intrinsic about that thing we call "art" that transcends genre, context, and history. At the end of his life, Danto published his findings in What Art Is. Shaun Randol has this review.  

The Kiss (1935) by Man Ray

I

The first dream is of a dry kiss. Her lips touch mine but something does not pass in the process. It was a hesitant affair; we were waiting on the sidelines, waiting to be taught. I have failed to imagine how she looked at me afterwards. How dissatisfied were we?

I think now, we hadn’t been taught to kiss.

II

[Read Parts I, II]

[Read Part I]

Walking through the Museum of Modern Art I was stopped short by "The Tribulations of Saint Anthony," an 1887 oil on canvas by the Belgian painter James Ensor.

["Lost Objects of Desire", Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, 2010, installation]

“War is no longer declared,

But rather continued. The courageous

Has become the everyday. The hero

Is absent from the battle. The weak

Are moved into the firing zone.

The uniform of the day is patience,

The order of the merit is the wretched star

Of hope over the heart.”

– “Every Day,” Ingeborg Bachmann