A few random events that caught our eye.
Is writing about visual art just getting worse and worse? That’s what Eric Gibson, the Wall Street Journal’s Leisure and Arts feature editor, contends
in a column today. Look, I know what he means, and I don’t disagree with his primary charges (actually, he employs several [...]
Yesterday, Art Scatter thought about replacing whatever constitutes the guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy (I know, we don’t really have one, a guiding principle, I mean) with a new one — the preservation, encouragement and support of art-making around the world. Today, we move from the global to the local and dream about what [...]
Yesterday, we suggested that the obliteration of archaeological treasures in Iraq was on our mind because of a story in the Guardian about an upcoming exhibition at the British Museum. The show will document the predations on Iraq’s rich archaeological sites, primarily the ruins of Babylon, by U.S. and UK forces since the beginning of [...]
1. Art Scatter reader Marc Acito had a CLOSE encounter with Chelsea Clinton when she was in town to campaign for someone running for something. Too close for comfort. WAY too close and so shocking on so many levels. His blog recounts the incident in some detail.
In other late-breaking Acito news, his new book, [...]
“Funes remembered not only every leaf
of every tree of every patch of forest,
but every time he had perceived
or imagined that leaf. “
-Jorge Luis Borges “Funes, His Memory”
I turn sixty today and my memory plays tricks. At any moment I can forget a word, like “deck” or “cup” or “knife.” It’s there in my mind’s eye, [...]
“Remember William Carlos Williams’ description of the pioneer
women who shot their children against the wilderness like cannonballs. Do the same with your novels.”
— Nathanael West
Dismantling Paradise is hard work. Accomplishing it by proxy, such as in writing a novel, also takes its toll. Perhaps that’s why Ken Kesey abandoned the novel form after [...]
The news last week that archaeologists rooting around an Oregon cave found coprolites containing human DNA and dating back 14,000 years has shaken Art Scatter right down to the toes of its foundation myth. Art Scatter emerges from lithic scatter, the circle of rock shards and shavings that stone-age men and woman created as [...]
Art Scatter is NOT a lamentation site dedicated to cataloging the disappearance of critics from newspapers. It just seems that way sometimes. And this is one of those times. Though we won’t wallow as we lament.
The specific occasion of this post is an LA Observed post on the resignation of dance critic Laura Bleiberg [...]