The L.A. Times has its Top 10 lists up for the The Year in The Arts, 2010. Each are listed/linked below by medium. Happy New Year! -- Leif
Friday, December 31, 2010
The L.A Times lists its Top 10 Theater/Art/Architecture/Classical/Jazz of 2010
The L.A. Times has its Top 10 lists up for the The Year in The Arts, 2010. Each are listed/linked below by medium. Happy New Year! -- Leif
Evolving Faith(s)
The most recent episode of onBeing explores the question of "how American culture's encounter with religious ideas and people has evolved in the past decade." Listen to the program by following this link.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Cambodian Art Emerges from Horrors of Murderous Past
Full Article Here // Excerpt Belowby Robert Turnbull
PHNOM PENH — Slowly but surely, Cambodia’s visual arts’ scene has been emerging from the shadow of the Pol Pot era, nurtured by a clutch of mostly Western-owned galleries dotted around the capital. Years of faith and investment are finally paying off.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Scholars Say Chronicler of Black Life Passed for White // Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Jean Toomer's 'Cane'
Full article here // Excerpt belowBy Felicia R. Lee
Renown came to Jean Toomer with his 1923 book “Cane,” which mingled fiction, drama and poetry in a formally audacious effort to portray the complexity of black lives. But the racially mixed Toomer’s confounding efforts to defy being stuck in conventional racial categories and his disaffiliation with black culture made him perhaps the most enigmatic writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance.
Now Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard scholar, and Rudolph P. Byrd, a professor at Emory University, say their research for a new edition of “Cane” documents that Toomer was “a Negro who decided to pass for white.”
Keep reading...
"In a dark time the eye begins to see" // A first glance at Bernd Brunner's new book "Moon: A Brief History"
by Cornelia Dean
Every faith and culture, it seems, kept an eye on the Moon, setting Passover, Easter, Ramadan, Tet and other observances according to the lunar calendar. The Buddha was supposed to have achieved enlightenment by the light of the full Moon, and as belief in a Moon goddess faded with the advent of Christianity, Mr. Brunner tells us, Mary became associated with the Moon. // Read On...
Monday, December 27, 2010
Do you have time for Beauty? Do you have time for God?
The holiday rush and shopping crush of this time of year can often blind us to the beauty and grace to be found all around us. And just as many in Bethlehem didn't recognize anything special about a young couple with a new born baby two thousand plus years ago, we too are often profoundly ignorant of the beautiful and the divine in our midst. It is in the spirit of this basic fact that I pass along this Pulitzer prize-winning Washington Post article from 2007 which documents what happened when arguably the greatest living violinist played incognito in the D.C. subway one morning. The Post article asks the question "Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you?" but we might also ask, for those professing faith, "Do you have time for God? Shouldn't you?" Enjoy! -- Leifby Gene Weingarten
No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?
Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? // Keep Reading...
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Holy Ignorance // When Religion & Culture Part Ways
Full Article Here // Excerpt Belowby Alan Wolfe
Every winter Fox News, seeking to stir up anger through the land, uncovers evidence of a war on Christmas. Secular humanists ignorant of religion and hostile to its traditions, someone in the studio will declare, want us to say “Happy Holiday” or give Kwanzaa equal standing. But Christmas, as its name suggests, is about Christ. These enemies of Christianity will stop at nothing to get their way. Not even Santa Claus is sacred to them.
Actually, as the brilliant French social scientist Olivier Roy points out in “Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture part ways,” it is those defending Christmas who are not being true to their traditions and teachings. There are no Christmas dinners in the Bible, which is why America’s Puritans, strict adherents of what that venerated text offers, never sat down by the raging fire awaiting St. Nick; indeed, they briefly banned Christmas in Massachusetts. Read On
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Way Beyond Atheism // Paul Wallace on why Richard Dawkins is a fundamentalist, and most Atheists reject too little
Full Article Here // Excerpt Belowby Paul Wallace, M. Div. candidate at Emory
Last week I read a remarkable essay [by Denys Turner, professor of Theology at Yale] called “Apophaticism, Idolatry, and the Claims of Reason.” In it he tells this story:
Some years ago, and in younger, more foolhardy days, finding myself in a tight spot in a public debate with a philosopher atheist at Bristol University, I made a wager with my audience: I would give anyone present five minutes to explain his or her reasons for atheism and if, after that, I could not guess correctly the Christian denomination in which that person had been brought up, I would buy her a pint of beer. As luck would have it I was not broke at the subsequent revels.
It turns out that he was not broke because no one took the bet. But the story points out a very interesting idea that Turner pursues in the course of his essay: The atheisms of most committed, principled atheists are often not more than mirror images—inversions—of the theisms they negate. In On Interpretation, Aristotle wrote, “Affirmations and their corresponding negations are one in the same knowledge”; therefore, one can discern from many atheisms their corresponding affirmative theologies. Read on...
The Sacred and Secular Spirit of Christmas
Full Post Here // Excerpt Below
by David True
It’s become customary this time of year to hear concerns expressed about the loss of Christmas spirit. Sometimes these fears are more about one’s cultural identity — and the sense that one’s group is losing power and influence — than they are about the actual meaning of Christmas. At other times, one hears something that sounds less reactionary and more like a thoughtful: Have our Christmas rituals lost some of their meaning? Have they become old and tired or do they pale in comparison to more novel inventions? Keep Reading...
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Scott Avett: Musician and Visual Artist // The Elder Avett Brother Stays Busy
Scott Avett has been busy. Not only as the banjo-playing member of the nationally-successful local band, The Avett Brothers, but he’s also carving out a career for himself in the visual art world. Scott’s been painting for years, and even studied art when he was a student at East Carolina University in the late 90’s. Now he’s getting attention for his art as well as his music, and we’ll talk about both.More info
My Advent of Magnanimous Despair // Doubt and Depression Mediated Through Poetry
Full article here // Excerpt belowBy Luke Hankins
For me, Advent means that God is coming into your life — is already there, in fact, has always been there, but you are about to experience that fact in an unprecedented way. I have come to view my experience of losing my faith and falling into anxiety and depression, into fear of damnation, into hopelessness, as being God’s advent into my life.
Keep reading...
The Great Rustici Emerges From the Shadows // The Revelatory Exhibition at the Bargello Museum
Full article here // Excerpt belowBy Roderick Conway Morris
Vasari declared the bronzes “the most perfect and harmonious by a modern master” and nothing to rival them was made in Florence until the arrival in the city of Giambologna nearly half a century later. Rustici’s “Preaching of St. John the Baptist,” hoisted into position over the Baptistery’s north door in 1511, was reputed to be the result of some form of collaboration with Leonardo, the exact nature of which remains uncertain.
Keep reading...
Joe Carter and the Legacy of the African-American Spiritual // From Krista Tippett On Being
Check out the full interview here.
Born in slavery, the Negro spiritual conveys a generous understanding of the nature of God and of human life. A celebration in word and song — through its hidden meanings, as well as its beauty, lament, and hope.
What's Your Calling? // Young Religious Leaders Explore Vocation in PBS's The Calling
Join seven young, vibrant, thoughtful and vastly different Americans as they embark on the most extraordinary journey of their lives. Representing Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, and Protestant faiths, each is ignited by the "call" to serve humanity and has decided to join the clergy. The Calling is a four-hour documentary series that follows them from their first days of training, through years of challenges, doubts, triumphs and surprises, and into their early practice as ordained professionals.
More info
Handed-Down Holidays // Six Artists reflect on the objects that define the Holiday Season for them
The NY Times has a neat little piece just up in which six artists reflect on the objects that define the holiday season for them. Click here to reflect along with them. Happy Holidays! -- LeifTuesday, December 21, 2010
Resources for the 2011 NCAG Juried Arts Exhibit: "Places of Redemption"
If you're looking for something productive but not quite school-related to do over the holidays, remember that the spring Juried Arts Exhibit is coming up, and winter break is the perfect time to get started on your submission! The theme this year is "Places of Redemption"--if you need some ideas, you might want to check out Mary McClintock Fulkerson's book of the same name (you can read a review of the book here), but we want to leave the theme open to your artistic interpretation. Complete guidelines and rules will be available later, but for an individual work of art, pretty much the only restriction is that it needs to be able to hang on a wall. So go forth, pray, dream and create! Meanwhile, here are a few more resources that might jog your imagination or just be helpful in general:No Typical Texas Church // Philip Johnson's Interfaith Peace Chapel
Full Article Here // Excerpt Belowby Willard Spiegelman
Located near, if not exactly on, the buckle of the Bible Belt, Dallas has always boasted more than its fair share of religious organizations and buildings. Highway billboards along the adjacent interstate highways feature pictures of smiling preachers with pressed hair, and names like Reverend Jim and Pastor Joe Bob, urging people to come to Sunday worship.
It's perhaps no surprise, then, that Dallas should also be home to the country's largest gay congregation. What is a surprise is that the Cathedral of Hope—formerly the Metropolitan Community Church, but since 2006 a member of the United Church of Christ—should have, as of November, a handsome chapel designed by Philip Johnson (1906-2005), whose career had a six-decade tie to the Lone Star state.
Architects are not noted for their modesty, but Johnson famously always worked with his clients rather than imposing—think of Frank Lloyd Wright—his demands and his vision upon them. Of the chapel (which went through many iterations, after back-and- forthing with the church officials) he said: it "will be built of simple and common materials, which I understand God is rather fond of." Keep Reading...
"Searching as a form of Arrival" // The ecstatic faith of 13th century Muslim poet Rumi
The most recent episode of Krista Tippett's radio program onBeing focuses upon the 13th century Muslim mystical poet Rumi. You can listen to (and/or download) the podcast for free and can peruse the site to encounter some of Rumi's most luminous verse. The program is described as follows:
This Peabody award-winning show explores the spiritual world of Rumi, a 13th-century Muslim mystic and poet, with Persian scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz. Rumi saw human love as a mirror of the divine, and searching as a form of arrival. Hear his poetry and its echoes in our world.
"Making the Darkness Luminous" // A Carrboro resident weighs in on the meaning of the Solstice
Full Post Here // Excerpt Below by C. Hawk Croft
At first glance, it might seem odd to spend the longest night of the year celebrating the return of the sun. For many of our Pagan ancestors, this was the essence of the winter solstice mystery... With lives rooted deeply in the rhythm of the seasons, they were dependent upon the reliability of their gods and goddesses to once again return the sun and its greening of the Earth. This night, the turning point from darkness to light, was more than just a metaphorical reflection on the meaning of winter; it was a choice between life or death... Keep Reading
Huffington Post's Top 10 Religion Books of 2010
Stanley Hauerwas (Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir), Krista Tippett (Einstein's God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit) and eight others comprise an eclectic list that you can view in full here.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
A Walltown Nutcracker // Durham Children's Theater Puts a New Spin on Holiday Classic
Full article here // Excerpt belowBy Jim Wise
Wanona Satcher has seen a lot of 'Nutcrackers,' but she's never seen one like the one she's producing in Durham.
It's likely nobody else has, either.
Satcher, an urban planner and landscape architect by trade, has taken Tchaikovsky's Christmas chestnut and made it into a musical, a ballet-within-a-play set in the 1980s with some multicultural add-ins. [...]
"It's very Durhamesque," said Satcher, a 29-year old making her debut as a theatrical producer.
Keep reading...Hanukkah Video Helps Jews Sing New Tune // Yeshiva University's Maccabeats on CNN Belief Blog
Full article here // Excerpt below
By Jessica Ravitz
Face it: Good Hanukkah songs are hard to come by. [...]
Now, making its viral video and international debut, we have the Maccabeats.
By Jessica Ravitz
Face it: Good Hanukkah songs are hard to come by. [...]
Now, making its viral video and international debut, we have the Maccabeats.
Out of New York's Yeshiva University, this 14-member a cappella group introduced just this week, "Candlelight," a music video that parodies Taio Cruz's "Dynamite," and specifically Mike Tompkins' rendition of the song.
The song educates listeners about the story of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, an eight-day holiday which started Wednesday night. Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabean Revolt and the menorah (candelabrum) that stayed aglow for eight days, despite a lack of oil.
__________
I am more than a little obsessed with this song. Duke Div needs an a cappella group. -- Sarah
Friday, December 17, 2010
Getting Ready for Christmas Day // Paul Simon's Holiday Single, Free Download
Paul Simon has released his song "Getting Ready for Christmas Day" as a CD single, and you can download it for free from his website. Off the upcoming spring album So Beautiful or So What, this song samples the last recorded sermon of preacher/gospel singer Rev. J. M. Gates, from 1941. Check it out.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Muslim American Artists strive to bridge a chasm
Full Article Here // Excerpt Belowby Thalia Gigerenzer
At a time when Islam has been heavily politicized, many Muslim artists say they hope the arts can expand understanding of their faith among non-Muslims as well as bridge American and Islamic traditions.
“We’re at a point where Islam is really being defined in this country, and it’s going to be through the arts,” said Javed Ali, founder of Illume, a Muslim online news, arts and culture magazine based in Newark that serves as one of the central nodes of the Bay Area Muslim American network. “We want to break through common stereotypes and present the whole spectrum of Muslim reality,” said the cultural center’s marketing and development director, Jason van Boom.
Hatem Bazian, one of the Islamic scholars behind Zaytuna College, the first Muslim liberal arts institution in this country, echoed that thought. “In American society,” Mr. Bazian said, “artistic expression is the way we narrate our story, so Muslims are beginning to draw their own narrative.”
Documenting "Processions of the Cross" // Photographer Emil Gataullin in search of God
Full Article and Slideshow Here // Excerpt Below
by Teresa Tomassoni
For the last five years, he has traveled with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Russians on pilgrimages to the country’s most sacred religious shrines. His series, “Greshnyi Cheloveche” (a sinning man or sinner), documents these “cross processions.”
Walking dozens of miles a day through scalding sun and heavy rain, sleeping on church floors by night amid wives praying for their alcoholic husbands, superstitious businessmen, sick children, repenting criminals and earnest monks, Mr. Gataullin has tried to understand why and how people seek God. He does so with his camera ready.
“It’s important to capture not just the religious side of the event, not the surface of what’s happening,” Mr. Gataullin said, “but to try to show the individual — his emotions, feelings, suffering, his inner state. And at the same time, to show the communication of human with a god.”
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
With and Without Sight // Representations of Lady Justice through the ages
Full Article Here // Excerpt Belowby Randy Kennedy
As the Yale Law School professors Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis show in an unusual new book just out, “Representing Justice” — an academic treatise on threats to the modern judiciary that doubles as an obsessive’s tour of Western art through the lens of the law — Lady Justice’s familiar blindfold did not become an accessory until well into the 17th century. And even then it was uncommon because of the profoundly negative connotations blindfolds carried for medieval and Renaissance audiences, who viewed them as emblems not of impartiality but of deception (hence the early use of the word hoodwink as a noun, meaning a blindfold or hood).
“Sight was the desired state,” Professors Resnik and Curtis write, “connected to insight, light and the rays of God’s sun.” Even in modern times the blindfold continues to fit uneasily in Lady Justice’s wardrobe, used as a handy prop by political cartoonists and a symbol of dysfunction by others. “That Justice is a blind goddess/Is a thing to which we black are wise,” Langston Hughes wrote in 1923. “Her bandage hides two festering sores/ That once perhaps were eyes.”
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Tomorrow at Duke // Listening Party: Derek Webb's 'Feedback'
More info here
"Feedback" is Derek Webb's new instrumental concept album, based on the Lord's Prayer and accompanied by paintings and photos. We're going to take a break in the middle of finals week (right after the OT11 exam) to just chill out and listen to the album all the way through. Bring a blanket, pillow or lawn chair. Relax, enjoy a multimedia artistic experience, and talk about anything but school. Theology, sure. But not school.
When: 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 15
Where: Centenary (059 Langford)
"Feedback" is Derek Webb's new instrumental concept album, based on the Lord's Prayer and accompanied by paintings and photos. We're going to take a break in the middle of finals week (right after the OT11 exam) to just chill out and listen to the album all the way through. Bring a blanket, pillow or lawn chair. Relax, enjoy a multimedia artistic experience, and talk about anything but school. Theology, sure. But not school.When: 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 15
Where: Centenary (059 Langford)
Studio Job // 'The Gospel' Exhibition at Milan Design Week
More info hereJob Smeets of Studio Job explains their 'Gospel' exhibition:
This is no protest or imputation against the body of religion. Respectfully these icons have been selected and designed. Although Nynke and me do not practice religion, we enjoy the incredible fatal and expressive drama's which are executed, immortalized in extreme inventories full of holy pomp and splendor. We used the icon and religion as canvas and metaphor to visualize and express how our 'high culture’ becomes more fantastic by the minute. The abstract truth is more exciting than physical evidence. In many ways that's a great source of inspiration.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
In Amsterdam // A rich collection of Islamic Art
Full Article Here // Excerpt Belowby Valerie Gladstone
“The exhibit shows that Islamic art is a masterly expression not of a single national culture or civilization,” said Vincent Boele, curator of exhibitions for the museum, “but of many peoples joined by Islam for more than 1,400 years.”
The collection includes works originating from around the globe — China, Spain, India, Tunisia — many of them masterpieces. They include manuscripts dating from the 10th to the 19th century, jewelry set with precious stones, as well as vibrant enamels that belonged to India’s Mughal rulers and exquisite miniatures from India and Iran. While the general perception of Islamic art is that it is always religious and without representations of humans and animals, this exhibition shows otherwise, including in miniature paintings.
Straight Outta Hoboken // How Sinatra's swagger has influenced Hip-Hop
Full Op/Ed Here // Excerpt Belowby James Kaplan
But ultimately, Sinatra's vulnerability is at the core of his magic. There was an operatic intensity to Frank Sinatra’s existence. His life mistakes were legion; he was, always, at the mercy of powerfully oscillating emotions. The conflicts filter into the molecules of his music. We hear, we respond.
Rap, of course, would seem to be about outer rather than inner conflict: swagger and defiance don’t just set the tone, they shout it. And yet the best rappers expose the sorrow and humanity that underlie the swagger. Eminem’s hymn to recovery “Not Afraid” is both brutally self-critical and self-transcending, reaching out to listeners who’ve been down the same addictive path.
And Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” which begins by trumpeting the rapper’s importance to the big city, modulates to sympathy for those who get lost in it: wayward girls from small towns, ball players and rap stars hooked on Ecstasy and addicted to the limelight. When a Swedish interviewer asked Jay-Z, “What is your talent?” he answered shyly. “I guess, telling the truth in rhyme..."
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Decolonizing Architecture
Full Article Here // Excerpt BelowIn a new exhibition at the Gallery at REDCAT in Los Angeles, the Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR) looks at ways to use architecture to investigate and speculate about the future of sites that have been evacuated, or decolonized, by Israel in Palestine’s West Bank.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Steve Martin Finds His Muse In 'An Object Of Beauty' // Martin's New Novel Explores the Art World
Full article here // Excerpt belowSteve Martin is best known for his comedy, but he's also a writer, a Grammy-winning bluegrass artist — and a serious art collector. In his new novel, An Object of Beauty,
Martin channels an ambitious woman navigating her way up — and out of — the New York City art world.
Lacey Yeager, the art dealer anti-heroine of Martin's book, will do just about anything to get ahead in her field. Martin hasn't met her, exactly, but tells NPR's Tony Cox that he's met plenty of people like her.
Martin divides the world into two categories — the financial and artistic — with "different types of people" populating each domain. "Generally," Martin explains, "the artistic side of the world has people with more flamboyant personalities, or more uncategorizable personalities, and Lacey is certainly one of those people."
How we wait // From Being blog
Full Post Here // Excerpt belowby Peter A. Friedrichs
Advent is a time of waiting. For Christians, it’s a time of waiting for the arrival of the Christ child. For others, Advent is a time of waiting for a hoped-for future, waiting for the time of bleakness to pass and for new joy to arrive.
We spend a lot of our time waiting for a “hoped-for” future. Waiting for the arrival of our own newborn child. Waiting to get that promotion at work. Waiting in line at the checkout counter. Waiting for the light to change. One writer I know said, after returning from a recent trip to Disneyland, that she realized that an amusement park is 10 percent thrills and 90 percent walking and waiting. “I realized,” she writes, “that that same equation works for most of life … including Christmas. So one of life’s greater challenges is to enjoy the 90 percent.”
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The Tea Maker // Yoko Remembers John
Full Op/Ed here // Excerpt below
by Yoko Ono
John and I are in our Dakota kitchen in the middle of the night. Three cats — Sasha, Micha and Charo — are looking up at John, who is making tea for us two.
Sasha is all white, Micha is all black. They are both gorgeous, classy Persian cats. Charo, on the other hand, is a mutt. John used to have a special love for Charo. “You’ve got a funny face, Charo!” he would say, and pat her.
“Yoko, Yoko, you’re supposed to first put the tea bags in, and then the hot water.” John took the role of the tea maker, for being English. So I gave up doing it.
It was nice to be up in the middle of the night, when there was no sound in the house, and sip the tea John would make. One night, however, John said: “I was talking to Aunt Mimi this afternoon and she says you are supposed to put the hot water in first. Then the tea bag. I could swear she taught me to put the tea bag in first, but ...”
“So all this time, we were doing it wrong?”
“Yeah ...”
We both cracked up. That was in 1980. Neither of us knew that it was to be the last year of our life together.
30 years gone, still shining on // Remembering Lennon
Thirty years ago today John Lennon breathed his last. A flood of remembrances and commemorations are to be found this day from a variety of media outlets, but this one from Rolling Stone magazine might be a cut above the rest. -- LeifFull Article Here // Excerpt Below
by Rolling Stone
Three days before John Lennon was killed, Jonathan Cott spent hours interviewing him for a planned cover story. The complete Q&A, which is running in the new issue of Rolling Stone — available on stands, as well as in the online archives — has never been published before now.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Hands Through the Ages // Accompanied by Rilke's Poetry
Full Post Here // Excerpt Belowby Trent Gilliss
Immediately when I saw this photograph by Touhami Ennadre, this poignant moment in our interview with Joanna Macy came to mind:
“I’m looking at my hand right now as we talk. It’s got a lot of wrinkles because I’m 81 years old, but it’s linked to hands like this back through the ages. This hand is directly linked to hands that learned to reach and grasp and climb and push up on dry land and weave reeds into baskets, and it has a fantastic history. Every particle and every atom in this hand goes back to the beginning of space-time. We’re part of that story.”
The Advent road between "Already" and "Not Yet" // From Being blog
Full post here // Excerpt Below
By Debra Dean Murphy
By Debra Dean Murphy
In Advent we walk a tightrope, taut (and fraught) with the tension of living between the times — between the “already” of the first Advent of God and the “not yet” of its completion. The Advent scriptures and liturgies and hymns bring this tension alive, teaching us, as the archbishop of Canterbury writes, “something of God’s own simultaneous ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to all religious aspiration and expectation.”
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