I loved reading about French photographer Thierry Cohen’s images of the starry skies over cities like San Francisco and Tokyo minus the light pollution we’ve added to them. Nice to remember that the stars are still there, even if we can’t always see them. (More images after the jump…) And check out this link for [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1455
After the spectacular storm last night I’m thinking about wonder, and specifically 16th century thinker Francesco Patrizi’s list of the 12 sources of wonder, which he published in the 1580s. Patrizi’s twelve sources of the marvelous: —ignorance —fable —novelty —paradox —augmentation —departure from the usual —the “exceedingly natural” —the divine —great utility —the very exact [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1390
I swear, the next time Swiss artist Christian Marclay’s video work “The Clock” plays anywhere, I will get there. Won’t somebody let me know when that happens and before it’s too late!? I’m obsessed with this idea—an entire film, a 24-hour montage, made from clips containing shots of watches and clocks—or the voices of humans [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1301
Artist Sophie Calle is someone whom I hope I’ll have the chance to meet somehow before one of us is no longer. I mean, that kind of thing can go wrong—you meet the admired person after so many years of admiring, get disappointed, etc. But I’d certainly risk it in Calle’s case. I just saw [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1294
My great friend Lisa Benson (a New Zealand artist) gave me one of her recent works—a small transparent red lucite card, like a thick credit card, with the words “CE MOMENT” cut out. She likes to hand them out to interesting people she meets, in a bar, on the subway, as a way to commemorate [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1268
The Kumari’s temple in Kathmandu, Nepal is one of the favorite places I’ve visited, probably because while I was standing in the courtyard the young, kohl-eyed Kumari herself—as described in Encyclopedia of the Exquisite—appeared in the temple window like a scowling, red-lipped Lolita. Today, as I’m a bit antsy and would rather travel than work [...]
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I’ve been too busy, so today I looked back at Essays in Idleness, by the medieval Japanese monk and scholar Yoshida Kenko (1283-1352). I need Kenko to remind me what it’s all about. “What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realize I have spent whole days before this inkstone, with nothing better to do, [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1201
Yesterday I was reading about New York’s haughty hotel culture at the turn of the century, when the word ‘ritz’ became synonymous with a certain style of urbanized high life. There were ‘the ritzies,’ who often ‘ritzed’ those on the lower rungs of the social ladder. The phrase ‘don’t get ritzy’ came into vogue, as [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1188
Did you ever fantasize that the watchman would forget about you and that somehow you’d get to stay on in the museum all alone after closing time? That’s what it feels like virtually prowling through the emptied museum galleries included in Google’s new ‘Art Project,’ which applies the gliding and peeking 360 technology of …
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1144
Just a quick thought on the month of January, named for the two-faced Roman god Janus, who could peer into the future and see into the past at the same time. Who better to represent the New Year? Appropriately enough, some scholars believe that Janus himself took his name from the Latin word ianua, for [...]
http://www.encyclopediaoftheexquisite.com/?p=1112
