I haven’t lived in New York City for about a year, but I’m back now. Maybe it’s because I’m taking a different subway train, but I’ve been seeing striking ads all over for the RMA—the Rubin Museum of Art.
On the corner of 17th Street and Seventh Avenue, the museum, opened in October 2004, is “the first in the Western World dedicated to the art of the Himalayas and surrounding regions.” The ads feature a head shot of one of the RMA’s average visitors—usually a funky-dressed, aging hippie—”overheard” saying something profoundly Buddhist-sounding, like, “Everything is everything.” They’re eye-catching, though, and they’ve done the trick: I’m planning a visit. (more…)
Why are books almost always more memorable than the movies they spawn? After all, if forced to choose between reading a book and watching a movie on a Sunday afternoon, I suspect most people would select the movie. And if you place the world’s worst film, say, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, next to the Mona Lisa, most people would wind up watching the film, if only because moving images captivate us in a primordial way.
But only books let us inhabit the thoughts and feelings of other people. One needn’t have owlish glasses, pasty skin and brown hair to identify with Harry Potter—J.K. Rowling shows us the ordinary realm of feeling and fear in which he lives despite his magical life. Movies, however, are often a more passive experience; we only know what a character thinks through the awkward voice-over. Only on occasion can I find a film that affects me like a book; the two that come to mind cast non-professional actors, have virtually no plot and end with images of a character deep in thought. For me, at least, this might suggest that famous faces and plot are not the stuff of unforgettable storytelling. (more…)
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid isn’t the first person you’d expect to find at an English garden party. As last year’s Guggenheim Museum retrospective of her career helped to demonstrate, Hadid favors Russian Constructivism and sleek Donna Karan separates over manicured hedges and flowered dresses.
But a new temporary installation by Hadid was at the center of Wednesday’s Summer Party fundraiser for the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Kensington Gardens. (more…)
A couple of days ago, I interviewed artist Douglas Tharalson at his home and studio, a 2.5-acre ranch in Agoura tucked away in the middle of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
Agoura is near Malibu and several other overdeveloped pieces of California coast. Tharalson got in early and cheap on the land he now owns, and now he’s happily inspired by the mountain views and open space where he has worked there as a painter and sculptor for the past 20 years. (more…)
Allow me to relate one of the more popular mantras in journalism: “Lists, people love lists!”
We’re inundated with rankings—the best colleges, the most bohemian cities and other unquantifiable entities. With an ardor that matches presidential elections and “American Idol,” 100 million people around the globe recently cast their online vote for “The New Seven Wonders of the World.”
The new list updates the mostly inaccessible seven ancient wonders, which includes fabled sites such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Colossus of Rhodes, apparently visited by Salvador Dali, the hallucinatory surrealist painter. Only the Great Pyramid at Giza dutifully survives from this list. (more…)
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