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[Jun. 24th, 2009|03:25 pm] |
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Two years ago, more or less, I came to Florence. The time passed, as time does, but it seemed like there would still be enough time to have drinks with a few friends, pay last visits to museums, see a few last things; somehow, as always, the end of time comes before we expect it, and I will very soon be going out alone into the morning darkness and leaving this place. |
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| A Few Pictures |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|12:45 pm] |
My final critique is tomorrow. After that, for intents and purposes, I've finished my second year here. My word.
Find below a trimester and a half of paintings.
I'm not even sure why I'm posting these, as they look nothing like the originals, and are an object example as to why one should have oil paintings professionally photographed. O_O
( Naked People and Plaster Casts ) |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 15th, 2009|01:11 pm] |
All y'all might be interested to check out the recently-created blog of my instructor/friend Stephen J. Bauman, a teacher here at the Florence Academy. We can tell he has excellent taste as a painting, inasmuch as his first post was a picture of my FACE.
Stephen Bauman |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 13th, 2009|02:47 pm] |
We had the usual angry debate over what art is. (Correct that; a debate over "what art is" might be useful. Instead, of course, people are only willing to debate "what is/ is not art", which is not an answerable question before we've defined our terms.)
Anyway, the usual angry debate over what is art: Is that piece relevant to our times? I don't know if that painting is expressing the individuality of the artist. He couldn't draw. That piece has no feeling. That piece doesn't take a realistic, non-prejudicial view of near-eastern cultures. That piece is just a mess of toddler solipsism.
Someone will think you're crazy no matter what you're doing; by, say, three to ten centuries after you're dead, the world will arrive at a rough consensus.
In the meantime, is whatever you're doing a patch of ground that you're willing to stake your life on? Personally, I recommend asking yourself that question every morning--because whatever it is you're doing, you are staking your life on it.
For the past, say, five years, I have been primarily concerned with trying to learn to draw the bloody figure. Five years. Man, out of my threescore and ten, that's a notable piece. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|02:43 pm] |
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I dreamed of a lad I knew in a different life, and he was tall and his hair was long and thick, and there was wisdom in his glance and dignity in his manner. I woke, and realized that none of these things is true. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 8th, 2009|08:27 am] |
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I sat outside eating a gelato, the Duomo visible to my left. A group of Americans walked by, and they struck me as odd; it took me a moment to realize that all were wearing identical, bleached-bone colored Dockers and polo shirts, identical save for the color. I laughed a little at their uniform as they passed, red, green, purple, and white, then looked down to discover myself in bleached-bone dockers and an olive-drab polo shirt. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 4th, 2009|12:39 pm] |
In the next two weeks, I will have either finished, or screwed up so badly that they are unfinishable (but in no case abandoned) a large figure painting, a large cast painting, a portrait drawing, a figure drawing, three drawings of musicians, and an interior watercolor. Finish the trimester, and the year, strong, I say to myself each morning, noon, and evening these days. I will, I answer myself, but have you noticed that you've cut music, exercise, society, and serious reading out of your routine over the past month?
I feel like the shell of a human being. I feel good. I feel like, if I catch this fish, I'll have something inside me that will make everything that comes afterwards easier. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|02:25 pm] |
Wal-Mart's Weight Effect - Forbes.com
One might think that "everyday low prices" for food would mean that people would eat much more--stuff themselves, even. So one would expect to see more obese folks in places where Wal-Mart does more business. Right? Think again. Research tells a different story.
The University of North Carolina-Greensboro's Charles Courtemanche and I are finishing a study of big retail stores and obesity. In our first round of statistical analysis we found that greater consumer access to a Wal-Mart ( WMT - news - people ) store was associated with lower body-mass indexes and a lower probability of being obese.
...
So what is it you think you know? How confident are you in that knowledge? |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 2nd, 2009|05:38 pm] |
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The countryside rolled away, visible for miles, yet only in streaks where the rain and mist had cleared. Edwin and I wandered the acropolis of Perugia, and stopped to look out on the landscape, and browsed the consumer goods of a previous generation which have been converted by time into antiques to be hawked on tables under a loggia by old men and women, and we stopped and drank coffee to warm us on a cold May day and then walked on, three weeks before both of us leave Italy altogether. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 30th, 2009|09:37 am] |
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Four Florence Academy teachers and I sat around an outdoor table drinking white wine. Maureen's grey-streaked hair was blowing in the wind. "It's a problem if you're teaching so much it doesn't allow any time for your own painting. Then, you're just bringing bitterness rather than enthusiasm. People are trying to suck out all your secrets, and you start to wonder, is this what I went through all those years of training for?" |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 28th, 2009|12:30 pm] |
Apricots, firm flesh, the tart-sweet taste of long days spent ripening in the sun.
The days do seem long, and increasingly weary. The weeks, though, blur together, blending into a steady routine of work and just a little too little sleep. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 27th, 2009|08:56 am] |
IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
"We invaded you last night - we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:
"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
-Rudyard Kipling
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| (no subject) |
[May. 26th, 2009|07:44 pm] |
Almost exactly four years ago, I recall posting an entry on this blog. I would have been on my aluminum-cased Powerbook, sitting in an apartment located in Tokyo's version of Newark. I said, as I recall (any of you may feel free to correct me from my own archives), something like "I don't know what I'll be doing in the future, or where this 'art' thing is going to know, but I do know that next year, I'll be studying at the Savannah College of Art and Design."
Two years thereafter, I got an email from the Florence Academy of Art, offering regrets that they had not found a space for me, but saying that I had been placed on their waitlist. I travelled that summer, in part as a way of assuaging my angst over not getting into the school. After a month and a half spent in China, Mongolia, and Canada, I came home, went to bed, got up, and found an email saying that, if I should care to move to Italy in three weeks, they had a space for me.
Now, not too long ago, an email popped up in my inbox, confirming that I will next year be studying in Sweden with the painter Joakim Ericsson, at our northern branch. I will be leaving Florence not because I particularly dislike Italy, nor (oh lord no!) because I am unhappy with the education I am receiving here.
In a way, I guess I will leave Florence because I have a few caffes I favor where the baristas know my order morning (cappuchino) and afternoon (americano), and know where to find the best gelato in town (Via dei Servi), and the fastest or most scenic ways to get to just about anywhere here.
I will miss this place, as I miss many places, but in the end, I prefer to look at them from the outside, and hope that I may eventually understand what they were. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 24th, 2009|05:20 pm] |
The director of the school last night suggested I could take up teaching painting. I demurred, saying that I was far off from even being remotely competent for such a thing. He looked at me without levity and said, "Why? You've learned plenty. You're on the short list of consideration to teach here." I felt a bit dizzy. "In many ways, you're the ideal student. Point you somewhere, wind you up, and there you go."
"I... figure that as long as I am lucky enough to be here, I should try and make something of it." I might have also said:
I got tired of knowing the way to heal a broken world, of how to solve the problems of epistemology, of how to tell good art from bad, of the secret meanings of things, of the answers to poverty, and in general, of knowing I was always the smartest person in the room. I thought I would rather, however feebly, make the attempt to actually know something about something, and leave solving problems greater than me to whatever fools feel ready to succeed me. So I have tried to attach myself to those who know more than I do, to listen rather than talk, and--though it would take a wiser man to know what questions to ask--to hear when someone who knows tells me both question and answer, then to learn to understand question and answer. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 19th, 2009|12:58 pm] |
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In this world, the last thing you want to hear from your maestro is any variant on "You are very talented", as that is inevitably the leadup to "so how'd you fuck this up so badly?" |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 15th, 2009|08:22 am] |
So go see Star Trek XI. It's entertaining, and there are worse ways to spend ten bucks.
Before you go, though, watch Star Trek II, and reflect on how a movie made for autistic adolescents who have no contact with reality outside of their parent's basement is a movie with a tightly-written thematic core, motivated by deep human elements and eternal themes, in dialogue with Melville.
Then go see XI, and reflect on how a movie made for the public at large is a deeply autistic film, motivated by WHOA LENS FLARE WHOA EXPLOSIONS WHOA THAT WAS BADASS OH MAN SWEET VIDEO GAMES R AWESOME.
O tempora o mores! |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 9th, 2009|05:59 pm] |
I had been out in a piazza drawing for several hours. Finally, the drawing was, if not where I wanted it to be, as close as it was going to get. Time to reward myself.
On the way to a favored gelateria, I passed a gaming store. I stopped to look at the replica of Aragorn's pipe in the window, the new D&D books, the boffer weapons for LARPing.
Inside the store, I looked at the new Magic expansion, the minis, the resin statues of anime characters. I nearly bought a mixed fistful of dice, despite having no need whatsoever for them. In the back room, one table of teenagers was playing cards, a CCG I didn't get close enough to recognize. Another table was playing D&D.
How I wanted to join in, roll up an elven thief-wizard and start looting some corpses. I suspect that the only thing I've ever really wanted to do in life is drink coke with friends, and pretend to be someone cool without having to invest the blood, sweat, toil, and tears to actually be someone cool. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 9th, 2009|05:37 pm] |
A man in his mid twenties was on the other side of the road. Something about his flannel shirt made the stink obvious even from thirty feet away. Perhaps it was his matted hair, or the stringy four-inch goatee, or the gauged earlobes.
He walked up to a street-level billboard, and began methodically tearing down the posters for the Popolo della Liberta, the Italian center-right party. Posters in Italy are always applied in mass quantities, possibly for exactly this reason, and a large pile of shredded paper quickly accumulated on the sidewalk.
As I turned a corner, I saw he was being confronted by about half a dozen elderly folk. I walked on, suddenly feeling a vague affection for the Popolo della Liberta. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 1st, 2009|07:59 pm] |
If you are arguing for something, and you find yourself saying, "look, if we did it my way, there would actually be no tradeoffs whatsoever," you are probably wrong--not necessarily wrong in what you're arguing for, but wrong about the costs of your course of action. Everything has costs; sometimes they're outweighed by the benefits.
Take what you want, and pay for it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 27th, 2009|05:43 pm] |
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Ramiro looked at my messy smears of mixed color. "Look, you need to start organizing your palette better," he said, in the accent of a Venezuelan who learned English from the English. "White here, black here, cools here, warms here. Maybe you can do this when you're just painting a single small figure, but eventually, you'll be painting three life-sized figures... and, uh, horses... and... and a river and shit. And you'll need to have a better organized palette for that." |
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