FACEBOOK "LIKES"

What I "LIKE" on Facebook....Shadows, obscurity, abstract photos and paintings, absurdities of life, close-ups of miraculous flowers and landscapes, friends getting together to eat of perform to the camera, students who still have hope and made-it through to graduation, photo art of political and social reality, young animals and kids, non-clichéd paintings and drawings, visionary architecture, simple hard true realizations for the heart and spirit, friendship and love, revolution without murder, dark and dry humor, brilliant unique performers, good and bad singers and musicians who touch my soul, tiny details of life that are beautiful but no one notices,

GIVING UP THINGS WE LOVE

STANLEY FISH May 27, 2013, 9:00 pm 414 Comments

Moving On

By STANLEY FISH

Stanley Fish on education, law and society.

I have sold my books. Not all of them, but most of them. I held on to the books I might need while putting the finishing touches on a manuscript that is now with my publisher. I also kept the books I will likely need when I begin my next project in the fall. But the books that sustained my professional life for 50 years — books by and about Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, Skelton, Sidney, Herbert, Marvell, Herrick, Donne, Jonson, Burton, Browne, Bacon, Dryden, Hobbes — are gone (I watched them being literally wheeled out the door), and now I look around and see acres of empty white bookshelves.

ART and art

GREAT ART uses many different, constantly changing, carefully chosen and carefully crafted techniques (art language) in a single painting, to reveal deeper levels of thought and feeling....

MINOR ART discovers one or two new techniques and maintains them obsessively -- afraid to break through the surface, lose control, make mistakes, do failed paintings, or lose temporal reputations and sales. This very human, but anti-creative fear can be seen in a single painting, a series of paintings, or throughout an entire career....

There is nothing wrong with minor art. It can give us great immediate visual pleasure, make us laugh, feel a simple non-challenging emotion, and make our boring ugly environment more interesting or pretty....

But minor and great art are not interchangeable, and should not be mistaken for each other by art lovers, critics, museums, buyers, art teachers, art students, or other serious artists. The actual fate of our civilization and the human spirit depend on knowing, admitting, and celebrating the difference.

CLOUD GATE

Beautiful photo by Liu Chen-hsiang

Lin Hwai-min to Receive the 2013 American Dance Festival Lifetime Achievement Award

The American Dance Festival, one of the most prestigious institutions for modern dance in the world, announced that the 2013 Samuel H. Scripps / American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement will be awarded to the renowned Taiwanese choreographer, Lin Hwai-min. The award celebrates choreographers who have made distinguished contribution to modern dance.

Previous awardees include Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Trisha Brown, Pina Bausch and William Forsythe.

A BOULDER OF MUSIC

George Jones died.  He did not pass away.  Anyone who has ever been emotionally moved by carefully-crafted modern country pop music, should listen to his old-fashioned truthful albums.  His songs are shot from his heart into your ears, without dilution by producers, managers, marketeers, or public image ego.

George Jones lived a tortured self-destructive life, but instead of physically killing others or himself, he turned his love and pain into intimate art that he shared courageously with anyone who would listen.  His singing style was not manufactured to win screaming concert fans, or to sell 100 albums he recorded.....Everything in George Jones' songs - his traumatic voice, unequaled precise phrasing, brilliant succinct poetry lyrics - was straight from his soul.  It was not entertainment.  A life was at stake.