for your consideration

myth fortuna by marc quinn

2010-10-13T14:33:00.004+08:00

myth fortuna by marc quinn
outside of mandarin gallery on orchard rd

art beyond limits: marc quinn and more

2010-10-12T14:03:00.005+08:00

From YourSingapore.com

ART BEYOND LIMITS

Date & Time: From 17 Sep 2010, Fri To 24 Oct 2010, Sun

Opening Hours: 11am to 8 pm (weekdays), 10 am to 8 pm (weekends)

Additional Information:
17 September – 24 October 2010 (Outdoor in Orchard Road Underground)
24 September – 24 October 2010 (Indoor exhibition in The Opera Gallery at ION Orchard)

"The exhibition, supported by Singapore Tourism Board, will showcase several monumental sculptures by Marc Quinn, Manolo Valdés and Mr. Brainwash in premier public spaces in the heart of the Republic. These pieces seek to display how artists are breaking new ground. How art is neither limited by social expectation nor conventionality. These big names are on display on Orchard Road. Five monumental sculptures by Marc Quinn, Manolo Valdés, Mr. Brainwash and Laurence Jenkell propped up in front of the Mandarin Gallery from Sep 17 until Oct 18 2010, while more of their works will be on display at Opera Gallery in ION, along with works by Picasso, Matisse, Warhol and Damien Hirst, as part of the Art Beyond Limits exhibition. The sculptures displayed are “The Merlion” by Mr. Brainwash, “Delos” by Georges Braque, “Myth Fortuna” by Marc Quinn, “Archaeology Of Desire” by Marc Quinn and “Meninas En Desierto De Arizona” by Manolo Valdés. Up Close With the Masters Art Beyond Limits What is the event about From mid-September till 24 October, you’ll get a rare opportunity to see the paintings and sculptures of the art world’s finest contemporary giants in Singapore for the first time. From 17 September, sculptures of modern masters like Marc Quinn, Manolo Valdez and Mr Brainwash will dot the Orchard Road shopping belt bringing yet another dimension to this great shopping …" From Damien Hirst Art

See details here at YourSingapore.com

anish kapoor for the israel museum

2010-07-22T14:08:00.004+08:00

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

More Inside the Renovated Israel Museum

hilarious

2010-07-15T19:30:00.004+08:00

by Nina Katchadourian from her Sorted Books Project

night festival: new world 2010

2010-07-15T11:39:00.003+08:00

Chicago has Looptopia, Paris has Nuit Blanche, Amsterdam has Museumnacht.. Singapore has Night Festival!

"Dream of the past, be in the present and fantasise the future at Night Festival 2010! Explore and have fun at the reinvented magical playground in the pulsating arts and heritage district. Taking its inspiration from the amusement park of the 1960s, a dazzling spectacle of street theatre extravaganza, magical lights and carnivalesque play will retell the story of this era. Teaming contemporary art and video installations with an exciting outdoor performance that connects us and the Universe, Night Festival 2010 will also reveal a surprising insight to our New World 2010!"

FREE ADMISSION TO ALL GALLERIES at the National Museum of Singapore, Singapore Art Museum, SAM at 8Q and Peranakan Museum till 2am.

Find the program highlights and booklet here.

the cure for creative blocks

2010-07-14T19:43:00.006+08:00

The Cure for Creative Blocks? Leave Your Desk.
by, Jocelyn K. Glei for Behance

Everyday between 8:00 and 8:30am writer Stephen King arrives at his desk with a cup of tea. He turns on some music, takes his daily vitamin, and begins to work – exactly as he began the day before. Using this routine, King has produced well over 50 books, averaging 1-2 novels a year since 1974 when he published Carrie. Clearly, daily routines can be incredibly valuable. That is, until they’re not.

While familiarity, organization, and discipline can be powerful agents of productive creativity, there is a “tipping point” – when these same once-fruitful qualities transform into creativity killers. In his great TED talk on time off, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister recounts the feeling of stuckness that prompted a massive change for him:

“I originally had opened the studio in New York to combine my two loves, music and design. And we created videos and packaging for many musicians that you know… [But] I realized, just like with many things in my life that I actually love, I adapt to it. And I get, over time, bored by them. And, in our case, our work started to look the same.”

But how to battle this stagnation that ultimately sets in with most any creative endeavor? Sagmeister decided to take a yearlong sabbatical every seven years – for the first he stayed in New York, for the second he went to Bali. Of course, there are smaller, more accessible ways to spark new creativity. But they all have one thing in common with Sagmeister’s sabbatical: It’s all about putting some distance between you and your desk.

Read the rest here

you thought we wouldn't notice: plagarized or inspired?

2010-07-06T15:08:00.007+08:00

you thought we wouldn't notice: a fascinating site on art law. It's "dedicated to pointing out those things that give you that feeling of ‘haven’t I seen that somewhere before?'"

original

copy

Also watch this TEDtalk on copyright laws in the fashion world: "Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley. At TEDxUSC 2010, she talks about what all creative industries can learn from fashion's free culture."

damien hirst audi a1 sells for $524,000

2010-07-01T09:38:00.004+08:00

It's like a spin painting... but on a car...

"The 2011 Audi A1 hatchback, with its accessible curves and viral-video associations with Justin Timberlake, does not scream “enfant terrible,” nor does it inspire debate on the limits of abstract expressionism.

A visit to the Gloucestershire, England, studios of the art-world provocateur Damien Hirst, however, can rectify that.

Mr. Hirst is best known for his mixed-media piece “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” for which a tiger shark was suspended in formaldehyde within a glass vitrine.

He was asked to paint an A1 for the annual charity fund-raiser of the singer and activist Elton John and his partner, David Furnish. The event, the White Tie and Tiara Ball, was held June 24 in England, and it raised nearly $8.5 million for AIDS research and treatment, with the Hirst A1 bringing $524,000..."

by, Jonathan Schultz for the New York Times

picasso at tate liverpool

2010-05-26T10:28:00.004+08:00

A member of the public looks at The Charnel House as part of the Picasso: Peace And Freedom exhibition
Photo: PA

Picasso: Peace and Freedom at Tate Liverpool, review
by Richard Dorment
Telegraph.co.uk

Picasso’s post-war political activity is the subject of an intermittently gripping exhibition at Tate Liverpool entitled (apparently, without irony) “Peace and Freedom”. If you come out of it as confused as I was, it is because the show refuses to oversimplify a messy topic fraught with contradictions at every twist and turn.

What is certain is that Picasso was never an ideological Marxist. His naïve support of a monstrous ideology was motivated by genuine humanitarian concerns – he also contributed generously to much worthier causes, including the American civil rights movement.

Yet the fact remains that for 30 years the artist whose name is synonymous with freedom of expression placed his genius in the service of tyrants dedicated to its ruthless suppression.

The precise nature of Picasso’s political affiliations has always been a contentious issue. Some art historians have detected evidence of anarchist sympathies in the early work executed in Barcelona and Madrid. But his dealer, Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, was adamant that the young Picasso was “the most apolitical man I ever met”.

The second half of Picasso’s life, however, was largely shaped by the vagaries of European politics. His passionate support of the Republican cause during the Spanish civil war resulted in life-long exile from the country of his birth.

And yet for all his immersion in Left-wing politics, with one glaring exception (Guernica – the monumental canvas expressing his outrage at the Fascist bombing of the Basque village in 1937), Picasso was never conspicuously successful as a painter of political propaganda. That is because effective agitprop requires the simplification of complex issues. Picasso was a poet, not a politician. His is an art of allusion, symbol and metaphor.

Agree? Disagree?

See the whole review here: Picasso: Peace and Freedom at Tate Liverpool, review

can art be priceless?

2010-05-25T13:58:00.004+08:00

Left to right: Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society, New York, via Christie’s;
Sotheby’s/European Pressphoto Agency

What explains the quick return to confidence in the art market?

This month, a painting by Picasso, “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” became the most expensive painting ever sold at an auction when it exceeded expectations to fetch $106.5 million at Christie’s. In February, a sculpture by Giacometti, “Walking Man I," sold for $104.3 million at Sotheby's, setting the previous world record auction price.

What accounts for these auction prices? Are investments in trophy art any different from investments made in an office park or a sports team?

Denis Dutton, professor of philosophy of art
Eileen Kinsella, editor of ARTnewsletter
Donald Kuspit, art historian
Kathryn Graddy, economist

Can Art Be ‘Priceless’ in Rocky Times? @ Room for Debate, NYTimes

studio visit @ p.s.1

2010-05-24T17:55:00.003+08:00

I'm on Fire 2007
Alyssa Pheobus

Cattle Rustler
Eric Graham

Black Gravity 2007
Seung Wook Sim

Welcome to Studio Visit, P.S.1’s new web initiative that offers virtual presentations of artists’ studios. Emerging artists working in the five boroughs and greater New York area are invited to upload video or still images of their studios and work. Artists’ submissions will be present on the website for at least one month.

Studio Visit will serve as an online artistic hub and provide viewers a look at the varied artistic practices located within one city.

1038 studio visits and counting...

hopper at the national gallery of art

2010-05-19T12:28:00.004+08:00

A great interactive site from an elapsed Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in 2007-2008. Full of good resources.

don't judge a book by it's cover

2010-05-18T17:15:00.005+08:00

The covers of Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated in the UK and in France.
Photograph: Observer

Albums are sold across the world inside a universal sleeve, blockbuster films branded in a singular style. But novels, by a convention that nobody in the publishing industry seems fully able to explain, must be re-jacketed from territory to territory. It inspires all kinds of illustrative madness, and makes browsing foreign bookshelves a fascinating – often bewildering – experience...

By Tom Lamont for Guardian.co.uk

See the rest of the article: Design: Don't judge a book by it's Cover, particularly in France

this is where we live

2010-05-13T10:54:00.007+08:00

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

A film for 4th Estate Publishers' 25th Anniversary. Produced by Apt Studio and Asylum Films.

The film was produced in stop-motion over 3 weeks in Autumn 2008. Each scene was shot on a home-made dolly by an insane bunch of animators; you can see time-lapse films of each sequence being prepared and shot in our other films.

From 4th Estate

bring the noise: responding to ofili

2010-05-11T14:19:00.006+08:00

Virgin Mary 1996

INSA shoes

"TATE Britain is hosting a side event entitled Bring the Noise that respond and resonate with the exhibition of Chris Ofili...

London’s writer and artist INSA was invited amongst many others to partake in the event and have produced an one of pair of Heels that is unusual to say the least. The piece is entitled “Anything goes when it comes to (s)hoes…”, a play on the lyrics from classic Big Daddy Kane track Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy which is referenced by Chris Ofili several times in his paintings. The highlight of the heels are the elephant dung that is used as the platform of the heels. INSA retraced the footsteps Chris Ofili made over 15 years ago and sourced dung from the same family of elephants that produced the dung used in Ofili’s infamous paintings of the nineties."

From Freshness Mag

picasso sells for $106.5 million

2010-05-06T13:13:00.003+08:00

"A painting that Picasso created in a single day in March 1932, “Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust),” sold for $106.5 million, a world record auction price for a work of art, at Christie’s Tuesday night. The painting, more than 5 feet by 4 feet, shows Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, both reclining and as a bust. Picasso’s profile can be discerned in the blue background."

By Carol Vogel for the New York Times

bravo's work of art

2010-04-19T09:24:00.003+08:00

"WITH VERY FEW EXCEPTIONS—PBS’s Art:21 and the occasional British import—contemporary art is conspicuous by its absence from mainstream American TV. To some this might seem a rank injustice, but given the obvious pitfalls, it may equally represent a lucky escape. Arriving at the Paley Center for Media for a Wednesday evening preview of Bravo’s new reality series Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, I felt more trepidation than would have accompanied any insider event. How would the art world fare at the hands of producers who aimed to do for it, in the words of the cable channel’s Frances Berwick, “what we’ve done for fashion and food”? Would the featured artists (who are, of course, pitted against one another in the bankable manner of Project Runway, Top Chef, and RuPaul’s Drag Race) survive the presumed emphasis on pizzazz? And would the judges shed all credibility by association with this demotic form?"

Art created within the mass-marketed framework of a reality show... not sure what to think. Brilliant or ludicrous?

See full article here on Artforum: Alternate Reality

more mcqueen

2010-04-15T19:10:00.004+08:00

A Timeline of McQueen's Life & Career

graffiti in caracas: government sponsored political promotion

2010-04-14T14:26:00.007+08:00

See the rest of the slide show here: Political Graffiti

"CARACAS, Venezuela — Of all the murals and graffiti that adorn this anarchic city’s trash-strewn center, one creation by the street artist Carlos Zerpa fills him with special pride: a stenciled reinterpretation of Caravaggio’s “David with the Head of Goliath,” in which a warrior grasps the severed head of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The more overtly political images tend to glamorize President Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution, and his demonization of Washington is a favorite subject.

Mr. Zerpa, 26, a slightly built painter sporting a few days of stubble, shrugged at the possibility that American visitors to Caracas — or Mrs. Clinton for that matter — might find the mural offensive. “It’s a metaphor for an empire that is being defeated,” he said nonchalantly in an interview. “My critics can take it or leave it, but I remain loyal to my ideas.”

So does the government, which supports Mr. Zerpa’s creations and the work of many other street artists, and is increasingly making them a central element of its promotion of a state ideology. Government-financed brigades of graffiti artists and muralists are blanketing this city’s walls with politicized images, ranging from crude, graffiti-tagged slogans to bold, colorful works of graphic art."

By Simon Romero for the NYTimes

See the rest of the article here: Artists Embellish Walls With Political Visions

albers color relativity studies

2010-04-12T18:32:00.004+08:00

Is the purple same or different?

Taken from Marilyn Fenn Studio.
For more exercises testing your eye for color, go here: Color Theory Exercises

roy - papermaking with chuck close

2010-04-08T12:38:00.003+08:00

See it here on youtube.

young curators speak

2010-03-24T17:45:00.003+08:00

New curators with eclectic backgrounds are helping to define how art is viewed by the next generation of museumgoers. All still in their 30s, four from top New York City institutions talk about their jobs.

From the NYTimes

twombly decorates the louvre

2010-03-24T17:23:00.004+08:00

"The Louvre's ceilings already abound with decorative paintings: There are plenty of frolicking maidens, epic battles and racing chariots, not to mention cherubs holding cornucopias.

American contemporary artist Cy Twombly had something different in mind — something simple.

Twombly, the first artist given the honor of decorating a Louvre ceiling since Georges Braque in the 1950s, came up with a geometric design — a deep blue background punctuated with floating disks and emblazoned with the names of sculptors from ancient Greece.

The 400-square-meter (4,300-square-foot) ceiling, inaugurated Tuesday, floats over a gallery of antique bronzes like a deep blue sky. It opens up the long gallery but doesn't overpower it, as was Twombly's intent."

Angela Doland for the Associated Press

See the rest of the article: US artist Cy Twombly creates ceiling for Louvre

See more of Twombly's work here

mona hatoum wins

2010-03-11T15:16:00.002+08:00

"Sophie Calle and Mona Hatoum have been recognized for their work with awards. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, Calle has won the Swedish Hasselblad Prize for Photography for 2010 from the Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg, while Hatoum was awarded the German Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis for 2010 from Berlin’s Akademie der Künste...

In Hatoum’s case, the jurors lauded the centrality of the “human body caught between violence, power, and fragility” in her work. Hatoum, who was born in Lebanon in 1952, moved to London in 1975 and now divides her time between London and Berlin. The Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis is endowed with $16,800."

From Artforum

philagrafika 2010

2010-03-04T17:52:00.003+08:00

Oscar Munoz

Gunilla Klingberg

Art Hazelwood

Philagrafika 2010 is the first presentation of what will become a recurring event in Philadelphia, celebrating the role of print in contemporary artistic practice.

The Philagrafika 2010 festival contends that the printed image lies at the heart of contemporary art. Concepts of imprinting, multiplicity, reproduction, and seriality, as well as physically printed forms are frequently used by artists who do not think of themselves as printmakers. As artistic vocabularies have expanded and mixing media has become commonplace, artists have increasingly drawn from inherent characteristics of the print to achieve specific aesthetic and expressive goals.

See more here: Philagrafika 2010

what is a print?

2010-02-26T17:04:00.003+08:00

A good interactive site if you're interested in learning about the history and processes of lithography, woodcut, etching, and screenprinting. Gotta love MOMA.

biennial on a budget: the whitney biennial

2010-02-26T12:22:00.004+08:00

At a Biennial on a Budget, Tweaking and Provoking

by, Holland Cotter, New York Times

"In what felt like a pre-emptive effort at damage control, the Whitney Museum of American Art
did everything to underpitch its 2010 Biennial. With 55 artists, we were advised, it would be half the size of the 2006 show. Unlike the 2008 version, which spilled over into the Park Avenue Armory, this one would be confined to the museum’s premises. No frills. Tight belts. We’re doing our best. Don’t shoot.

The show lives up — or down — to its billing.

It has no theme; its catalog is slight; its installation, spartan.

Spectacle is out. Much of what’s in is quiet and hermetic to the point of initially looking blank. The prevailing aesthetic is the art of the tweak, minute variations on conventional forms and historical styles: abstract paintings stitched like quilts, performance pieces channeling the 1960s, and so on.

But if the museum gets full points for truth in advertising, it can also claim credit for a solid and considered product. The show has dead spots, mainly where it reflects the retrenched art-about-art spirit of the day. But it also has strong work (particularly in video) that speaks of life beyond the art factory."

See the rest of the article here: At a Biennial on a Budget, Tweaking and Provoking

See more photos of the Whitney Biennial here: Whitney Biennial 2010

reimagining the guggenheim

2010-02-19T16:28:00.003+08:00

Saunders Architecture for "Contemplating the Void"

Contemplating the Void: An Exhibition Re-Imagines the Guggenheim Museum

By, Roberta Smith, New York Times

"The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is capping the 50th birthday festivities for its Frank Lloyd Wright building with some navel gazing. Still, there are worse navels to consider. Wright’s spiral rotunda, in fact, could be thought of as the greatest belly button in modern architecture: an innie and an outie all in one.

The rotunda is the inspiration for a frolicking, mostly feel-good show called “Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum,” for which more than 200 artists, architects and designers were invited to redesign or repurpose the space."

Read the rest of the article here: Contemplating the Void

See what heavy hitters such as Zaha Hadid and Anish Kapoor imagined for the void a.k.a. the Guggenheim's belly button here: The Void

remembering alexander mcqueen

2010-02-12T10:23:00.008+08:00

{Freshness Mag}

Fall '08
{Style.com}

Fall/Winter '08 Ad Campaign
{Frillr}

Finally, forever immortalized at the Met:

Oyster Dress, Spring/Summer 2003
{Metropolitan Museum of Art}

slander or censorship?

2010-02-11T13:23:00.002+08:00

Officials See Slander in Uzbek Photos, but Artists See Censorship
By, Ellen Barry
New York Times

MOSCOW — How can a photographer defame her country?

Uzbekistan tried to answer that question this week in a slander trial that harked back to the days of Soviet censorship. The answer, in part: by showing people with sour expressions or bowed heads, children in ragged clothing, old people begging for change or other images so dreary that, according to a panel of experts convened by the prosecutors, “a foreigner unfamiliar with Uzbekistan will conclude that this is a country where people live in the Middle Ages.”

Umida Akhmedova, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, was found guilty on Wednesday of slandering and insulting the Uzbek people, in a case that has stirred outrage in artistic circles throughout the region. Though the charges carried a prison sentence of up to three years, the judge waived the penalties, saying that Ms. Akhmedova had been granted an amnesty in honor of the 18th anniversary of Uzbek independence.

After the verdict, Ms. Akhmedova said she had been so deeply shaken by the prosecution that, even as she walked away free, it was difficult to feel relief.

“I can’t say my anxiety has subsided, I can’t say I’m suddenly O.K.,” she said. “There was a fear of going to prison. But to tell you the truth, I feel insulted, that’s the main thing. I still don’t understand how my creative work could have brought me to this courtroom.”

....

“The authorities want to show a rosy-cheeked face, a beautiful face, as if the wise rulers rule so well that nothing will ever happen,” he said. “And 99 percent of artists are afraid to get involved in anything problematic.”

See the whole article here.

At what point is it acceptable to censor work for state interest or at what point does it violate artistic liberties?

the decent drapery of life

2010-02-10T11:49:00.003+08:00

A wonderful excerpt from a book contemplating the value and importance of money. It's written in an American context, but the message is applicable to all.

---------------------------------------------------------

Dear Reader,

The nation's political contests are (finally) entering the home stretch.

That means the candidates who are out of office - Democrats in some races, Republicans in others - are raising the age-old question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" When politicians pose this question, we know they are asking us to do a quick economic calculation. Is your salary higher? Is your home worth more? Is your 401(k) rising in value? Given the bruised condition of the U.S. economy, housing market and stock market, millions of Americans could be forgiven for responding with an emphatic "no" - and perhaps a few overripe tomatoes. Politics aside, though, there is a problem with turning this "better-off" question into a monetary equation. It neglects what Edmund Burke called "the decent drapery of life."

You may not be earning more than you were four years ago. Your home or your stock portfolio may be worth less. But is that really how we determine whether we are better off?

Maybe you fell in love over the last four years. Maybe you took up fly-fishing. Maybe you moved to an exciting new city. Maybe you spent the last four years honoring your profession, learning more about it, helping more people than ever before. Economic statistics are fine as far as they go. But they don't go far in measuring a life well lived. Life can't just be about the grim determination to get and have more.

As President Calvin Coolidge said, "No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave."

Peggy Noonan agrees. "In a way, the world is a great liar," she writes. "It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn't, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better. That's what it really admires. That's what we talk about in eulogies, because that's what's important. We don't say, 'The thing about Joe was that he was rich.' We say, if we can, 'The thing about Joe was he took care of people.'"

It doesn't hurt to remember this. Because the one undeniable fact about the last four years is that you now have four less of them left. So maybe the important thing is not to make more, have more, or spend more. Maybe the important thing is to slow down and appreciate small things, ordinary things: The first frost. The town clock. The curl on your grandson's forehead.

At 79, my Dad has suddenly become an avid birder. What a surprise. When I was growing up, his free time was all about golfing, coaching Little League games or watching major league sports. He didn't own a pair of binoculars. And he certainly couldn't tell you the difference between a tufted titmouse and a yellow-bellied sapsucker.

When we're young, of course, we're going to live forever. There isn't time to notice things. We have places to go. Things to do. "We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well," wrote Paul Bowles near the end of his life. "Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty."

Rushing from one appointment to the next, we use up our time, putting off the non-urgent, the unessential. But in the second half - and no one knows when we reach that point exactly - life takes on a special poignancy precisely because our time is limited. It becomes richer and more meaningful because of it. It becomes more important than ever to spend time with the people and family we love. We need to create those opportunities - and to savor them. Are you better off than you were four years ago? Only you can determine what the question even means. But the answer shouldn't require a calculator.

"Enjoy life, it's ungrateful not to," Ronald Reagan once remarked. They understand this in Scotland. When I lived in St. Andrews several years ago, the locals would often clink my glass, give me a wink, and announce in that distinct Scottish brogue: "Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead."

---------------------------------------------

From The Secret of Shelter Island - Money and What Matters by, Alexander Green

tim burton at moma

2010-02-09T10:00:00.005+08:00

Untitled (Cartoons). 1980–86
Pencil on paper, 13 x 16” (33 x 40.6 cm)

Currently, there is an amazing retrospective at the NY MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) featuring Tim Burton. While I know it' s halfway across the globe, I think that the exhibition site is quite interesting. And Tim Burton is so inspiring anyway, so why not? :)

"Taking inspiration from popular culture, Tim Burton (American, b. 1958) has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of personal vision, garnering for himself an international audience of fans and influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics. This exhibition explores the full range of his creative work, tracing the current of his visual imagination from early childhood drawings through his mature work in film. It brings together over seven hundred examples of rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, photographs, moving image works, concept art, storyboards, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera from such films as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman, Mars Attacks!, Ed Wood, and Beetlejuice, and from unrealized and little-known personal projects that reveal his talent as an artist, illustrator, photographer, and writer working in the spirit of Pop Surrealism. The gallery exhibition is accompanied by a complete retrospective of Burton’s theatrical features and shorts, as well as a lavishly illustrated publication."

See the exhibition site: Tim Burton at the New York MOMA

See the trailer for Tim Burton's newest movie: Alice in Wonderland

michael paul smith

2010-02-02T16:07:00.002+08:00

America in the 60s...

Or little toy models...

See more on flickr

"going west" for the new zealand book council

2010-02-01T17:22:00.002+08:00

Amazing stop-motion animation by Andersen M Studio for the New Zealand Book Council

lace in translation

2010-01-29T15:45:00.004+08:00

"Welcome to Lace in Translation, an exploration by three contemporary international art/design studios, whose works are often inspired by traditional lace imagery. These European and Canadian art/design teams explored the historic Quaker Lace Company collection of The Design Center at Philadelphia University for inspiration, and were commissioned to create new, site-specific works for installation in the Center’s galleries and on its adjoining grounds."

Cal Lane

Tord Boontje

Lace Galvanized Fence, 2009
PVC-coated wire, Demakersvan

See more: Lace in Translation

singapore international photography festival 2010

2010-01-27T13:39:00.004+08:00

"the 2nd SIPF 2010 commences with two categories for open call. The open-ended theme category continues with the purpose of unearthing new works and talents. This year’s festival incorporates a brand new themed category titled, ‘HUMAN: NATURE’ to address universal concerns faced by the world. The duality in the theme can be freely interpreted either as ‘Human Nature’ or ‘Human & Nature’. The ‘colon’ represents a relationship and a balanced ratio between Human and Nature. Thematically, this category is an ambitious call for creative interpretation on HUMAN: NATURE.

Please be reminded that the deadline for open call submission is 31 March 2010. "

For more information, see Singapore International Photography Festival 2010

nytimes: scenes from a catastrophe

2010-01-25T09:39:00.002+08:00

Pascale Monnin, Untitled

"In the two weeks since the earthquake struck Haiti, the devastation has been chronicled not just by journalists and news photographers, but also by novelists, bloggers and visual artists. The Op-Ed editors asked four painters, two in Haiti, two in the Haitian diaspora, to create works that reflect on the disaster and its aftermath."

From the New York Times

design film festival 2010

2010-01-20T17:35:00.003+08:00

Presented by Anonymous - the first edition of A Design Film Festival will feature an eclectic selection of films that span the diverse disciplines of architecture, graphic design, art, photography, motion graphics and guerilla culture - many of which have yet to be shown in Asia.

Features Herb & Dorothy, Milton Glaser, Beautiful Losers, Rem Koolhaas, Visual Acoustics, Craftwork, Extended Play and J-Star.

20 - 30 January 2010 at Sinema, Old School.
http://www.designfilmfestival.com/singapore/

Tickets are selling out, so if you're interested, buy soon!

the art market now

2009-11-17T19:07:00.006+08:00

Art Prices (and Mood) Inch Back Up

By, Carol Vogel, New York Times

Oh the drama of auctions: the salesrooms packed with smartly dressed collectors; the tension of having to decide in seconds whether to drop another million dollars on an artwork or let it go; the steely smile of the auctioneer trying gently to squeeze another hundred thousand from bidders. And the final results of the last two weeks of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art auctions in New York, which saw the return of a surprising number of collectors, their wallets open, but only if the price was right.

“The numbers may not be the same as they were two years ago,” said Guy Bennett, a former co-head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie's who is now a private dealer, “but confidence is back.”

Read the rest of the article here: Art Prices (and Mood) Inch Back Up

seiji aruga

2009-11-16T15:24:00.008+08:00

Seiji Aruga, Le, 2009

Seiji Aruga, Le (Detail), 2009

Seiji Aruga, 968B, 2007

Seiji Aruga, 993 04 10, 2007

Numerous square-shaped holes measuring precisely 1mm are punched onto a sheet of paper. These creations by Seiji Aruga are beyond the scope of so-called paper craft. His world of punched, layered and folded paper fills us with overwhelming amazement. Technique alone cannot create this. He puts incredible effort and passion into each of his creations, and sets his visions free. Aruga's new, precise and amazing world will be revealed after two years' absence.

Tokyo Art Beat

100 most creative people in business

2009-11-04T13:48:00.004+08:00

#22: Damien Hirst

How is he business saavy? How has his business sense affected his celebrity? And consequently, his art?

-----

Other notable figures on the list:

Fashion designers
#13: Stella McCartney
#24: Jil Sander
#42: Marc Jacobs

Architects:
#68: Zaha Hadid

Photographers:
#98: Scott Shuman (fashion photographer/blogger)

Artists:
#43: Neri Oxman (scientist/artist)
#70: KAWS (designer/artist)
#86: Cai Guo Qiang

And many other designers, creative directors, writers, etc. See the entire list here

gehard dementz

2009-10-21T11:48:00.007+08:00

My Headphones Save My Life
158 x 38 x 35 cm

Your Monsters Are Just Like Mine
168.5 x 38 x 35 cm

Everything He Lied Was True
166 x 37.5 x 50 cm

You Have Stolen My Silence
167.5 x 55 x 38 cm

You Have Stolen My Silence (Detail)
167.5 x 55 x 38 cm

The Mouth Full Of Stars
166 x 50 x 40 cm

The Dark Celebration of Gehard Demetz

Gehard Demetz is a mystery artist, the only thing that we know about him is that he was born in 1972, Italy, and that he currently lives in the mountains of Selva Gardena. Maybe this is the only thing that matters when you set an eye on his absolutely marvelous wooden sculptures, since you forget everything you may have in your mind. Why lie, this is not wood, this is the material of the dreams. And dreams are the perfect place for dark surrealism to rise. What are those lost children looking for? What’s the story that they hide? They look at you and it seems that they are inviting you to torture them. Or to pay for having tortured them in the past, as if they were the habitants of a forgotten orphanage where bad things were happening.

Their sad expressions come as a contrast to the almost porcelain aspect of the wood. It seems that innocence was interrupted there and now it’s time for justice, for the revenge of the good. The missing wooden parts of the sculptures reveal the aching truth. That life may be at moments superficial and seemingly happy-go -lucky, but nobody can hide from the past, nobody can escape his ghosts. Gerald Demetz’s sculptures leave you defenseless. Addicted to darkness, you keep begging for more.

Apostolos Mitsios
Yatzer

the shock tactic

2009-10-16T09:28:00.010+08:00

Artist Apes Crucifixion in London

Two controversial works by the artist Paul Fryer––a crucified ape and a black Jesus sitting on an electric chair––are on view in a former church in London, reports Andrew Hough for the Daily Telegraph. The pieces are part of a wider exhibition of sixty works that are being shown for two weeks at the former Holy Trinity Church, now known as One Marylebone. The show features sixteen artists and is titled “The Age of Marvelous”; it coincides with the Frieze Art Fair in nearby Regent’s Park.

Organizers say the exhibition is designed to “integrate areas of human knowledge that exist outside the boundaries of traditional art making.” Fryer noted that the gorilla artwork “is a reminder of our collective responsibility to protect those who are least able to protect themselves,” he said. “It features an image which I obviously realize is provocative but which I hope may evoke sadness and compassion as well as outrage.”

Joe La Placa, the curator, defended the exhibition, saying it was designed to inspire people to think and understand “deeper meanings.” The director of All Visual Arts admitted some people would be shocked by the exhibition but rejected suggestions it was designed purely to shock.

Artforum.com

------------------------

When does the shock tactic fail? At what point does it push more people away than it pulls in? Is it ever too much?

remembering irving penn

2009-10-08T09:14:00.006+08:00

Pablo Picasso at La Californie, Cannes, France 1957

Woman with Roses 1950

Twelve of the Photographed Models of the Period 1947

Truman Capote 1948

Cuzco Children 1948

Colette 1951

Cocoa Colored Balenciaga Dress 1950

Ballet Theatre 1947

NYTimes: Irving Penn, Fashion Photographer, Is Dead at 92

leandro erlich

2009-10-01T08:47:00.004+08:00

Leandro Erlich, Hair Salon 2008

Remember this guy from the Biennale? Check out more of his work:

Leandro Verlich at P.S. 1 (Vernissage TV)

Leandro Erlich, Swimming Pool 1999

Leandro Erlich, Swimming Pool 1999

Leandro Erlich, The Staircase 2005

Leandro Erlich, Batiment 2004

See more here

i would buy from them

2009-09-30T19:21:00.003+08:00

matthew sporzynski

2009-09-29T17:28:00.002+08:00

white box by makoto yabuki

2009-09-25T15:04:00.003+08:00

mitsuru koga

2009-09-25T13:48:00.006+08:00

paper in paper

paper cloud

leaf cutouts

See more here.

another pose, another portrait

2009-09-07T12:20:00.003+08:00

"Ragnar Kjartansson, left, Iceland's representative at the Venice Biennale, paints a portrait of his friend and countryman Pall Haukur Bjornsson in the 14th-century Palazzo Michiel dal Brusa."

- Dave Yoder for The New York Times

See more from the Venice Biennale here

poverty porn?

2009-08-28T13:27:00.003+08:00

Salgado, School in Refugee Camp
Afghanistan, 1996

Salgado, Manila Slum
Philippines, 1999

Salgado, Kurdish Girl
Iraq, 1997

Salgado, Coal Industry Workers
India, 1994

Sebastio Salgado is known for his photographs of the underprivileged around the world. Do his photographs function as a social documentary? Or are they simply aestheticizing poverty?

Or is it that the ends justify the means? Perhaps glamorizing the poor will instigate a more powerful reaction. Consider Bono and Africa.

artist's perception vs. public perception

2009-08-26T12:03:00.002+08:00

Salvador Dali on old American TV show, "What's My Line"

censorship in china

2009-08-20T11:20:00.006+08:00

Earthquake works banned from Beijing art show

By, Tania Branigan, Guardian.co.uk

Works about the Sichuan earthquake and other sensitive issues have been banned from a Beijing art show that was to involve controversial figures, its artistic director said today.

The group exhibition at the 798 space, a former electronics factory in the Dashanzi art district, north-east of central Beijing, covered themes including the death of children in schools that collapsed in the quake. The show, the centrepiece of the Beijing 798 Biennale, reopened today but without some of the contentious works.

Zhu Qi, the artistic director of the Biennale, said he told the exhibition's deputy director not to include performance art involving people likely to stir up controversy. They included "Runner Fan", a teacher who became notorious after posting an article on the web saying he fled his school ahead of his pupils during the earthquake; Liu Xiaoyuan, a prominent blogger and lawyer; and the owners of the Chongqing nailhouse who became famous for refusing to leave their home even when developers demolished all the buildings around it.

"I had not approved it because I thought it was too sensitive. But he wanted the publicity," Zhu said.

Read the full article: Earthquake works banned from Beijing art show

Does it really just boil down to sensitivity and publicity? What are the reprecussions of limiting the viewership of work? What would have happened had the work been shown?

pop away

2009-08-20T10:24:00.003+08:00

Because I know you're stressed.

art in an age of convenience

2009-08-11T10:47:00.004+08:00

At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus

By, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times

Visitors at the Louvre: some engage directly with the art while others take pictures of pictures.

PARIS — Spending an idle morning watching people look at art is hardly a scientific experiment, but it rekindles a perennial question: What exactly are we looking for when we roam as tourists around museums? As with so many things right in front of us, the answer may be no less useful for being familiar.

...A few game tourists glanced vainly in guidebooks or hopefully at wall labels, as if learning that one or another of these sculptures came from Papua New Guinea or Hawaii or the Archipelago of Santa Cruz, or that a work was three centuries old or maybe four might help them see what was, plain as day, just before them.

Almost nobody, over the course of that hour or two, paused before any object for as long as a full minute. Only a 17th-century wood sculpture of a copulating couple, from San Cristobal in the Solomon Islands, placed near an exit, caused several tourists to point, smile and snap a photo, but without really breaking stride.

Visiting museums has always been about self-improvement. Partly we seem to go to them to find something we already recognize, something that gives us our bearings: think of the scrum of tourists invariably gathered around the Mona Lisa. At one time a highly educated Westerner read perhaps 100 books, all of them closely. Today we read hundreds of books, or maybe none, but rarely any with the same intensity. Travelers who took the Grand Tour across Europe during the 18th century spent months and years learning languages, meeting politicians, philosophers and artists and bore sketchbooks in which to draw and paint — to record their memories and help them see better.

Cameras replaced sketching by the last century; convenience trumped engagement, the viewfinder afforded emotional distance and many people no longer felt the same urgency to look. It became possible to imagine that because a reproduction of an image was safely squirreled away in a camera or cell phone, or because it was eternally available on the Web, dawdling before an original was a waste of time, especially with so much ground to cover.

We could dream about covering lots of ground thanks to expanding collections and faster means of transportation. At the same time, the canon of art that provided guideposts to tell people where to go and what to look at was gradually dismantled. A core of shared values yielded to an equality among visual materials. This was good and necessary, up to a point. Millions of images came to compete for our attention. Liberated by a proliferation, Western culture was also set adrift in an ocean of passing stimulation, with no anchors to secure it.

So tourists now wander through museums, seeking to fulfill their lifetime’s art history requirement in a day, wondering whether it may now be the quantity of material they pass by rather than the quality of concentration they bring to what few things they choose to focus upon that determines whether they have “done” the Louvre. It’s self-improvement on the fly...

...Artists fortunately remind us that there’s in fact no single, correct way to look at any work of art, save for with an open mind and patience. If you have ever gone to a museum with a good artist you probably discovered that they don’t worry so much about what art history books or wall labels tell them is right or wrong, because they’re selfish consumers, freed to look by their own interests.

They looked, in other words. And they seemed to have a very good time...

Read the full article: At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus

How has the proliferation and accessibility of art affected our art viewing experiences? Do you agree? Have we become presumptuous? Do we take it for granted? Or has the nature of consuming art in modern society changed, shifted, adapted? What is the result of this? And what does it mean for the future of art?

once bonded

2009-08-04T12:02:00.001+08:00

When I was 19, I inked my name on a legal document to affirm that I would enter upon and diligently continue in an overseas university course specified by the government of the Republic of Singapore, complete it to the best of my ability, then return immediately to Singapore to serve the government for a period of eight years (hereinafter called the ‘Bonded Period’) in any body or organisation whatsoever in any appointment which the government might deem appropriate.

In exchange, the government would foot the bill for my education, pretty much.

I still have a wilting, yellowed copy of that document. I keep it in a file with all the official ephemera of my student life: examination certificates and school testimonials, records of extra-curricular activities and official class photographs.

The backs of the photos are covered in childish signatures that I barely recognise. My signature on the Deed (that is, the legal document mentioned above) looks childish too. I changed my signature during my first couple of years at university to give it more of a flourish. This old one looks rather paltry in comparison.

There are other signatures on the Deed, a neat procession of four on the last page, in prosaic ballpoint ink: the Secretary of the Public Service Commission, a witness from the Public Service Commission, and my uncle and my aunt, who were my sureties. I don’t remember if I had to look up ‘surety’ in the dictionary at the time, but the Deed leaves no doubt as to their obligation: to be jointly and severally responsible with me for the money (‘damages’) that would have to be paid if I didn’t complete my course of study or ‘Bonded Period’ to the government’s satisfaction.

During that ‘Bonded Period’ (1997–2005), I remember flipping through this document on occasion, just to remind myself of what I had put my name to, all those long years ago. The page I kept coming back to was the one that spelled out the ‘damages’: Singapore Dollars Two Hundred and Sixty-Four Thousand Only (S$264,000/–). On hindsight, it’s incredible to think that I put my name to such an enormous sum without breaking a sweat. It’s more than the bank loan I would sign for, 16 years later, to buy a resale HDB flat.

I’m not saying I didn’t know what I signed when I was 19, or that nefarious consequences were concealed from me until after the paperwork was completed. And I didn’t have to go away to obtain a university education. I had a place at the National University of Singapore, where a full four-year undergraduate education would cost less than one year abroad, and it came with no strings attached.

But I was also 19, comparing notes with other high-achieving friends about where they might be going to university, which sent me into a tizzy of anticipation about possibly going abroad myself. It was easy to overlook the tedious little details.

And I knew how much an overseas university education would cost. The main reason I had applied for the government scholarship in the first place was to try to save my parents from having to pay for that education. We were middle class and in a pinch they could have afforded it – but I didn’t want them to have to make that pinch.

Anyway, the government made the application process rather straightforward. Even before I had taken my ‘A’ Level examinations, it had sponsored my test fees for the Scholastic Aptitude Test and application fees to two American universities (of its choosing). I only submitted the actual scholarship application form the following year, after I had received my ‘A’ Level results and university acceptance letters. Specifically, I applied for a teaching scholarship because the only thing that I was interested in studying at the time was English literature, and the only thing I thought people did with university degrees in English literature was to become teachers (or journalists, and I didn’t want to be a journalist). Colour me that naïve: I had swiftly concluded that if teaching was my likely career path, I might as well try for the government scholarship and be done with it.

Over the next few months, I was shortlisted for an interview (unfortunately, I don’t remember it at all), then some kind of psychological evaluation at Woodbridge Hospital (the first time I stepped into the legendary mental hospital) – then a phone call, followed by a letter, offering me the scholarship.[1] I think about 50 government scholarships for overseas undergraduate study were given out that year.

On 30 August 1993, I inked my name on the Deed, and that took (care of) the next 12 years of my life.

***

Every March or April, shortly after the ‘A’ Level results are released, the Singapore newspapers unfurl a series of glossy advertisements that extol the joys and wonders of studying abroad on an undergraduate scholarship. I should know; I appeared in one of those ads some years ago.

The array of scholarships in the government domain alone is quite staggering: beyond the glittering President’s, Singapore Armed Forces and Singapore Police Force Scholarships, there are also Overseas Merit Scholarships, Singapore Government Scholarships, Local Merit Scholarships, Local-Overseas Merit Scholarships (leave no stone unturned!) and several others. Then there is the slew of offerings from statutory boards and government-linked corporations – far too many to enumerate here, but suffice to say that if the abbreviation for the organisation’s name is immediately recognisable to the average Singaporean (e.g. SIA, SPH, EDB or URA), it probably offers some kind of undergraduate scholarship.

Most of these scholarships carry bonds of two to six years.[2] Several hundred such scholarships are given out every year, most of them to students from the five or six top-ranked schools in Singapore. In 2008, over 5,000 students applied for these scholarships, as well as for ‘bond-free’ scholarships offered at Singapore universities.[3]

Amidst the annual scholarship fever and the flurry of applications, what the newspaper ads don’t mention, and what people don’t talk about enough in a meaningful way, is that the three or four years spent in university can change a person quite profoundly, all the more so if that university education is conducted abroad. I don’t mean having a British- or American-sounding accent, or having visited half of Europe in one summer backpacking jaunt, or learning how to cook the food you get homesick for. I’m talking about the kind of deep-seated change that can leave a person wondering how to reconcile what her old self agreed to do, with what her new self now believes.

In my case, I got bored with English literature – once the love of my life – and picked up a second major in history. I found extra-curricular activities more interesting than my classes. I discovered that, more than anything, I wanted to work in book publishing in New York. And politically, philosophically, I found myself inhabiting a very different position, one that made it hard to stomach certain principles on which our government operates.

A couple of years after I started work, I believe a minister called me ‘idealistic’ at one of his ‘tea sessions’ with teachers. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but let’s just say his tone was not entirely complimentary.

***

I’m not the only government ‘scholar’ whose overseas education turned out to be a life-changing experience, and I’m not the only one who felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole when she got home. I’m not ashamed to admit that I wasn’t thrilled about the eight-year ‘Bonded Period’ that stretched before me, and later I was even less thrilled at some of the things that were asked of me, as a government employee. But I served every last damn day of that scholarship bond (and then some): I went to Singapore’s National Institute of Education to get my teaching qualifications, spent some time teaching in a couple of junior colleges, and worked at the ministry of education for a few years. I did my time dutifully and I tried not to think about other opportunities that I had missed, forever.

The government certainly doesn’t; that’s not its business. It’s perfectly pragmatic, the way these scholarships are packaged. There’s no better way to lock up all the nation’s bright young things ‘for critical jobs to safeguard Singapore’s future’, as the Public Service Commission scholarships website puts it.[4] Catch them before they have a chance to see how big the world really is, and they won’t have the chance to skedaddle off to more interesting prospects overseas or in the private sector. The nation is kept safe, the ‘scholars’ are kept happy through elaborate career development and remuneration schemes, and the world continues to turn.

Is this the best way to ensure good leadership for the government and other scholarship-giving bodies? They would have you think so. Their logic is if they don’t make a government career attractive, they won’t be able to secure the best and brightest of Singapore, who are needed for these critical jobs. One consequence of being such a small yet globally-oriented and English-speaking country, is that the government is always fretting over the ongoing ‘brain drain’; plummy government scholarships are designed to lure those brains to stay at home, although nowadays they aren’t necessarily enough. In 2007 Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong recounted that a student who was offered an Overseas Merit Scholarship declined, saying, ‘I am going to Princeton [University]. They will pay for my education and there is no bond.’[5]

For those who take it up, is the government scholarship the best way to develop a person? I can’t speak to this with any insider authority because I never made it to the hallowed halls of the Administrative Service.[6] No one ever had a conversation with me that involved grand plans for my future, and I can’t say that I ever felt like very much more than a cog in a very, very, very large machine. I don’t feel slighted – I don’t think I had the qualities they were looking for, nor was I particularly interested in developing them. I didn’t play any of the usual games to get promoted and move ahead in one’s career; if there was indeed some grand design, it’s possible that I simply never stepped up to the plate.

At the same time, don’t get me wrong – my eight-year scholarship bond was not spent languishing in some forgotten corner, sulking over the choices my 19-year-old self had made. I was paid well to do various jobs, I did them reasonably well and I also learned from them (though perhaps not always the lessons I was intended to learn). But a lot of what I saw around me gave me pause. I witnessed a lot of people doing things for the sake of doing them or to keep the bosses happy, or doing them the way they’d always been done, just because. There was plenty of sound and a flurry of activity, signifying that the government machinery was at work, but I’m not sure how much was always accomplished. People were valued and ‘ranked’ according to a mystifying and multiplying array of systems; people got lost in the system.

I’m sure some of this was simply the consequence of working in a huge organisation—my experience was in a 2,000-strong government ministry that manages a 25,000-plus army of teachers. Friends who work in other fields have assured me that organisational culture can be dismal elsewhere too, be it in other arms of the government or in the private sector, in Singapore or overseas.

I suppose it all comes back to the fact that I didn’t really know what I was signing up for. You could say I didn’t research my prospective employer enough before agreeing to my contract. And once I was committed, nothing I saw during those eight years made me want to spend the rest of my adult working life there, even if the work was in pursuit of some kind of national endeavour.

***

One thing that used to bug the hell out of me when I was working in the government was the rather limited control I had over my career. Any job change I wanted to make didn’t simply rely on my current boss agreeing to let me go and my potential new boss agreeing to accept me. It also had to go through some kind of abstruse approval process, which appeared to be at best mere rubberstamping, at worst some kind of arbitrary edict from the powers that be who might (or might not) be privy to some secret plan for my career that I certainly knew nothing about.

A classic example of this shadowy paper-pushing was an interview I was asked to attend about a year before my scholarship bond ended. At the time, I was finishing up a posting at the education ministry and due to be posted back to a teaching position in a government school. I didn’t know what the interview was for and I didn’t know who was interviewing me until I entered the room. Rumour had it that this was part of the usual rigmarole to assess interviewees as future school vice-principals, but no one had ever asked me if I wanted to be a vice-principal (or anything else) in the first place.

So when my scholarship bond ended, what mattered was not that I quit (because I didn’t, not immediately), but knowing that I could. I could quit, walk away, tell them to shove it, forge my own destiny, far, far away from any paper trail that required a higher-up’s approval or games that involved mystery meetings and interviews. That’s what we were celebrating when a few of us whose scholarship bonds ended around the same time clinked glasses for the occasion. No one had quit and many still haven’t, but we were celebrating the fact that we could.

Quitting is a bad word in Singapore. It was co-opted by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in 2002 into the phrase ‘quitters and stayers’,[7] which still resonates today. It implies failure, or an abortive attempt that didn’t go anywhere. It goes against the grain of perseverance, forbearance, fortitude and other hallmarks of a good Confucian spirit. But sometimes you need to quit. You need to tell people that I need a break, or enough is enough. Or sometimes: that this is enough for me.

***

We are not all cut from the same cloth. Many scholarship-holders didn’t know, as I did, the exact date on which their scholarship bonds ended and they had no desire to leave after it did. Many have taken on new government scholarships for postgraduate studies. Some really, really enjoy the work they do, and it’s work they couldn’t do anywhere else. Some still hope to change the system.

Others seem to stay because they don’t know where else to go. They’re too used to the ins and outs of the civil service, they know too well how to navigate its intricate bureaucracy and read the signs for what’s coming next. Maybe they feel it’s too late to start afresh in a different place. Maybe they just don’t want to. And hey, government pay ain’t bad.

Other people who studied overseas on their own dime (or their parents’) have come back to Singapore, even though they didn’t have to, and chosen to work for the government.[8] They believe in government service, even though they would make more money, gain more professional experience or be more professionally esteemed elsewhere.

I don’t know that many scholarship-holders who’ve quit the government after their bonds ended. The few whom I know, we joke that we ought to form an ‘ex-scholars’ club, to show people that there is life after finishing the bond and leaving the civil service. But mostly, I think, we just want to move on.

Knowing what I know now, if I were to go back to advise my 19-year-old self, would I tell her not to take the scholarship? Some years ago, when I was halfway through my scholarship bond, a very bright and very talented former student called me in desperation. She had to choose between a full bond-free scholarship to a top-notch American university and a top-notch government scholarship to the University of Cambridge. The American university would allow her to study anything she wanted, so long as she maintained a certain grade point average; the government scholarship specified her course of study, with the usual legally binding documents and scholarship bond.

‘My parents think I should take the government scholarship,’ she said. ‘It’s a good scholarship and, you know, there’ll be job security.’

Forget job security, I wanted to tell her, that’s the kiasu Singaporean talking. You’re a straight-A student with talent oozing out of your ears. You don’t need to worry about job security.

But I knew what she was thinking. I remembered how it felt, looking down that four-year path and wondering what was at the end, beyond the horizon, after university. I understood the full weight of her parents’ opinion that a government scholarship was ‘good’ (even though my parents hadn’t invoked that on me). I remembered what it was like not to know.

Students in Singapore spend a lot of time knowing. They know that after six years of primary school comes four years of secondary school, followed by two years of junior college. They know the national examinations that act as wayposts along that path. They know that university is something of a jumbled mess but still, it’s a predictable three- or four-year programme, at the end of which they get a shiny sheet of paper certifying their successful completion of that stage of life.

After that, they don’t know. Will they get a job? Will it be a good job? What is a ‘good’ job? Will they earn enough money for the rest of their lives, to marry and own a flat, a house or a car? Will there be enough for everything?

Coming out of the Singapore system, I could see the allure of the government scholarship that promised to take care of everything. But to me the attraction of the bond-free scholarship offered by the American university was precisely that it didn’t. If she took it, she could defer making any long-term life choices and spend her university years learning more about herself and being open to new opportunities, not just preparing for a career that was waiting for her at home. The American university could take her away from everything she knew – and that was a good thing.

I spent a long time on the phone with that former student, laying out all the pros and cons, spelling out the knowns and unknowns. But I couldn’t make that choice for her or make her make my choices, again. A couple of weeks later, she told me she’d taken the government scholarship.

***

I get the impression that the entire scholarship management process has changed a fair bit since I was in the system. There are work attachments and civil service-related courses held during university summer vacations, where scholarship-holders try on various jobs for size and start jockeying for the ones they want post-graduation. There is a management associate programme that ‘grooms leaders with skills to go beyond being CEOs to become public sector leaders’.[9] Anecdotally, scholarship-holders seem much more confident that there is a career plan for them, that the government wouldn’t let the half-a-million dollar investment per person go to waste. I don’t get the impression that scholarship-holders have very much say in that plan, however.

Meanwhile, the world lurches from one eventuality to another, sending the best-laid plans along into a rough-and-tumble spin. In such times, I think it’s common to have one of two reactions: flee headlong into cocooned safety, or hurtle forward into the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. (A psychologist might put it more pithily, in reverse order: ‘fight or flight’.)

Fleeing is understandable. In Singapore we like things to be neat and tidy: our roads and our trees, our careers and our choices. Families are nuclear, salaries come with CPF (which we can cash out at the appointed retirement age) and the government always, always has a plan.

Hurtling is un-Singaporean. Hurtling implies a loss of control. Who knows where you might end up?

When my scholarship bond ended and after I’d completed the work I felt responsible for, I fled, hurtled, hurled myself out of there. I didn’t have a job or a plan. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but I knew what I didn’t want. I had only myself to go on.

It was a precious, precious feeling.

Notes

[1] The government scholarship application and selection process runs along similar lines today. A private service provider has even created the blithely named BrightSparks website, where students can apply online for scholarships from 77 government and non-government scholarship providers. Particularly outstanding students may also be conditionally offered government scholarships before their ‘A’ Level examination results are released (though the award of the scholarship is usually contingent on their results).

[2] The eight-year bond attached to my scholarship went out of fashion around 1997, although it did not retroactively apply to my contract.

[3] Samantha Eng, ‘More students applying for scholarships this year’, The Straits Times, 15 April 2008, p. H4.

[4] Public Service Commission – Scholarships. <http://www.pscscholarships.gov.sg> Accessed on 31 March 2009.

[5] Speech by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the 2007 Administrative Service Dinner at the Meritus Mandarin Singapore, on 22 March 2007, at 8.00 p.m. < http://app.psd.gov.sg/data/PMSpeechatASDon22Mar07.pdf > Accessed on 31 March 2009.

[6] The Administrative Service in Singapore is positioned as the most challenging and prestigious career path in the public service. Its website describes its raison d’être as ‘to recruit, groom and develop the next generation of public service leaders’. < http://www.adminservice.gov.sg/AS/ > Accessed on 31 March 2009.

[7] Goh said, ‘Fair-weather Singaporeans will run away whenever the country runs into stormy weather. I call them “quitters”. Fortunately, “quitters” are in the minority. The majority of Singaporeans are “stayers”. “Stayers” are committed to Singapore. Rain or shine, they will be with Singapore.’ ‘Remaking Singapore – Changing Mindsets’, National Day Rally Address by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong at the University Cultural Centre, NUS, on Sunday, 18 August 2002, at 8.00 p.m. < http://www.gov.sg/nd/ND02.htm > Accessed on 31 March 2009.

[8] See for instance Lucian Teo, ‘Bond Free’. < http://tribolum.com/archives/2008/09/bond-free.php >

[9] Public Service Commission – Scholarships. < http://www.pscscholarships.gov.sg/MAP/?indexar=2 > Accessed on 22 March 2009.

Yu-Mei Balasingamchow is a writer. She studied English and history at Northwestern University in the US on an Overseas Merit Scholarship (Teaching) from the Singapore Public Service Commission. She completed her scholarship bond on 14 July 2005 (as far as she knows, anyway – she never got PSC to verify the exact date). She is the co-author of the forthcoming Singapore: A Biography, a popular history of Singapore. She divides her time between living in Singapore, where she writes about history, film and culture, and travelling across Asia, researching and writing for travel publications such as Lonely Planet.

Find the article here.

benjamin - the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

2009-07-27T12:54:00.006+08:00

One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements. Their most powerful agent is the film. Its social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage.

Read the full essay here.

abc3d by marion bataille

2009-07-24T12:19:00.003+08:00

a real life tranformer

2009-07-22T12:03:00.006+08:00

Introducing Prada Transformer, a collaboration between the Prada Foundation and iconic Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaus.

"The interesting thing about this building is the acknowledgement of the transformer as a dynamic organism, opposed to simply a static object, which arbitrarily fits program. Prada Transformer helps add an extra dimension regarding the treatment of this typology by allowing it to be moulded in real time, depending on the specific programs it intends to facilitate inside."

– Rem Koolhaas

Is kinetic architecture the future of architectural design? Is is inspired progression or is it indulgent excess?

Learn more about the Prada Transformer here.

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Images from the NY Times, Art in America, and Designboom.com

for all you design nerds

2009-07-22T10:59:00.006+08:00

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which recently celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.

Helveticafilm.com

Want more? Check out Hustwit's (same director) newest documentary, Objectified, which examines how industrial design affects our lives.

just get kopi

2009-07-18T11:21:00.002+08:00

tara donovan

2009-07-16T17:09:00.004+08:00

Untitled, 2003
Paper plates, Glue, Dimensions variable

Untitled (Detail)

Strata, 2000-2001
White glue, 45' 9 1/2" x 20' 1/2" x 1/8"

Strata (Detail)

Untitled, 2003
Styrofoam cups, Hot glue, 6' x 20' x 19' 2"

Untitled (Detail)

Haze, 2003
Plastic drinking straws, 12' 7" x 42' 2" x 7 3/4"

Haze (Detail)

Tara Donovan makes I-can-do-that sculptures by taking a household item—a Styrofoam cup, straight pin, drinking straw, or toothpick—and positioning it among thousands of its ilk. You could do it, but you wouldn't. You wouldn't log hundreds of hours meticulously assembling, arranging, affixing, or otherwise conjoining countless identical consumer goods. The results, when seen from afar, offer gestalt experiences that, paradoxically, often conjure natural associations, with, for example, waves, clouds, and mountains.

Brian Sholis
Artforum.com

See more of her work here.

experiences 09

2009-07-16T17:02:00.002+08:00

Interested in studying in the US, UK, or Canada? Check out Experiences '09 - The US University Convention.

do schools kill creativity?

2009-07-13T10:08:00.007+08:00

"Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. 'We are educating people out of their creativity,' Robinson says."

TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

Do you agree? (It's ok if you say yes. :))

i heart ny

2009-07-08T11:54:00.004+08:00

Kat MacLeod
New York, 2008
Giclee Print, Edition of 50

not the case for mid-years

2009-07-07T17:05:00.005+08:00

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Image from Indexed

jim denevan

2009-07-07T15:50:00.004+08:00

"Jim Denevan makes freehand drawings in sand. At low tide on wide beaches Jim searches the shore for a wave tossed stick. After finding a good stick and composing himself in the near and far environment Jim draws-- laboring up to 7 hours and walking as many as 30 miles. The resulting sand drawing is made entirely freehand w/ no measuring aids whatsoever. From the ground, these drawn environments are experienced as places. Places to explore and be, and to see relation and distance. For a time these tangible specific places exist in the indeterminate environment of ocean shore. From high above the marks are seen as isolated phenomena, much like clouds, rivers or buildings. Soon after Jim's motions and marks are completed water moves over and through, leaving nothing."

Jimdenevan.com

Denevan's work is reminiscent of land artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson. Land art began as a movement against the perceived artificiality and commercialization of the art world. It calls to question issues of permanence, authorship, and the organic.

kumi yamashita

2009-07-03T13:27:00.010+08:00

City View , 2003
Light, Aluminum, Shadow

Origami, 2005
Light, Aluminum, Shadow

Feather, 2006
Light, Wood, Shadow

Exclamation Point, 1995
Wood, Light, Shadow

A Japanese artist who uses light and shadow to play with our sense of reality. See more of her work here.

If you like this work, also check out Tim Noble and Sue Webster.

anonymity and the artist

2009-07-02T09:52:00.005+08:00

From Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art

In all respects the traditional artist devotes himself to the good of the work to be done. The operation is a rite, the celebrant neither intentionally nor even consciously expressing himself. It is by no accident of time, but in accordance with a governing concept of the meaning of life, of the goal is implied in St. Paul’s Vivo autem jam non ego, that works of traditional art, whether Christian, Oriental or folk art, are hardly ever signed: the artist is anonymous, or if a name has survived, we know little or nothing of the man. This is true as much for literary as for plastic artifacts. In traditional arts it is never Who said? but only What was said?

What role does the identity of artist play in the perception of an artwork? And consider how and why this has changed over time. What function does art serve today, and how does this compare with the function of art in the past? With that in mind, does the existence of an art market eliminate (or at very least limit) the an artist's anonymity?

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Image from Suicide Blonde

dominique blais

2009-06-29T16:51:00.003+08:00

Bernhard Günter “Un peu de neige salie (Untitled I/92) 9'00 (1993)”, 2009
Powdered charcoal on paper, 31 x 42 1/2"

Dominique Blais's exhibition...hinges on oppositions and dualities. Eleven works play on the contrasts between sight and sound, resemblance and difference, intangibility and materiality, and question the process and limits of perception. The pieces near the entrance of the gallery are auditory or visual conundrums...

The most outstanding pieces here, however, are those that explore the interplay between the senses, generating interstitial sensory states and an almost palpable sense of the unreal. In the tenuous and insubstantial Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, 2009, a video of a performance by a percussionist is projected onto a wall in broad daylight, while two speakers muffle the sounds instead of amplifying them. Viewers must reconstruct the performance by associating the barely perceptible sounds with the ghostlike flickers on the wall. The complementarity of sight and sound is also addressed in the charcoal drawing Bernhard Günter “Un peu de neige salie (Untitled 1/92)” 9'00 (1993), 2009, which is Blais’s visual equivalent to the nine-minute-long musical composition of the same name. Here, charcoal dust deposited by Blais on the loudspeakers was projected onto paper throughout the duration of the piece by the sound vibrations. The faint, blurred traces on the drawing materialize the passage of time. The tenuous materiality of sound is even more apparent in Distorsions Spectrales, 2008, in which a Plexiglas disc coated with ferrofluid turns silently on a turntable outfitted with magnets. Peaks and undulations form on the disc’s surface when it passes over the magnets, creating a tangible and ever-changing visual image of sound.

Rahma Khazam
Artforum.com

erika iris simmons aka iri5

2009-06-03T10:11:00.004+08:00

Bob Dylan

Jimi Hendrix

Jim Morrison

iRI5 creates portraits of music legends made from recycled cassette tape. As she states "The idea comes from a philosopher's (Ryle) description of how your spirit lives in your body. I imagine we are all, like cassettes, thoughts wrapped up in awkward packaging."

ron mueck

2009-06-02T12:49:00.006+08:00

The following video was filmed during Ron Mueck's residency at The National Gallery, London. The exhibition Ron Mueck is on view at the Brooklyn Museum, November 3, 2006 - February 4, 2007. Video courtesy of The National Gallery, London.

simon schubert

2009-06-01T11:13:00.010+08:00

The main installation of “In Apnoesie,” Simon Schubert's first solo exhibition in Berlin, collects crisp, clean black-and-white sculptures that recall horror-film tropes. At first glance, its cool presentation suggests that our nightmares have become domesticated, maybe even sanitized. But somehow, they still do not feel safe. The distance that Schubert achieves by removing any hint of gore and by addressing his darkly surreal source material with a levelheaded aesthetic slowly accentuates the creepiness of his work, even for viewers jaded by graphic violence.

...The show’s most impressive images are almost invisible at first. Lining the walls and ceiling are stark white panels of paper, which Schubert has folded and layered over other white sheets to evoke subtle sculptural images of classic wall moldings, long corridors, staircases, and halls with mirrors, like a stately, but probably haunted, house.

Ana Finel Honigman
Artforum.com

sun k kwak

2009-05-29T11:37:00.006+08:00

Sun K. Kwak: Enfolding 280 Hours
Brooklyn Museum

“My first reaction to the visual and emotional qualities of a given space is rendered through my spontaneous tape drawings.”
—Sun K. Kwak

When Kwak first visited the Brooklyn Museum to research the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, where she would install Enfolding 280 Hours, she noticed that the space was “like a square enfolding a circle” with “two concentric opposing circles of energy.” On the basis of these initial impressions, she created a digital rendering to indicate the lines she envisioned in the space and the direction in which they would flow. During the installation process, which began two months before the exhibition opened, Kwak used rolls of masking tape to create the sculptural drawing. Estimating that it would take 280 hours to install the work, she titled it Enfolding 280 Hours.

Audience interaction is an essential component of the work. Kwak was inspired by the diversity of the Brooklyn Museum’s visitors and its mission to act as a bridge between the collections and the experience of each visitor: “When I go to a gallery or museum, it often feels like a dead space. I want to create work that has life, vitality. I don’t want to produce another dead body. I don’t want people to stare at my work, but to feel it by walking into the picture. The space changes as the work and audience interact together.” She says that she chose abstract imagery for the installation “so that everyone can relate to it. Everyone sees something different through their unique interaction with the space.”

At the close of the exhibition, the tape will be pulled off the walls and discarded. According to Kwak’s artist statement, “This process of emptying the space is a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life and my acceptance of the emptiness of that nature. Yet the drawing lives on in viewers’ memories as an imprint that leaves the space forever altered.”

See more of Sun K. Kwak's work

artists and the recession

2009-05-28T08:56:00.007+08:00

Tight Times Loosen Artists' Creativity

by, Robin Pogrebin, New York Times

"Nobody wants me to do anything, so I'm just doing what I want."

Even in the best of times Sony Holland had to hustle.

Living in San Francisco, she got singing gigs wherever she could find them: concerts, corporate conventions, wine country gatherings, weddings, hotels or on the city streets. Now because of the economic downturn the company bookings have dried up, along with some of her regular bar engagements.

But Ms. Holland, 45, said she feels liberated, able to focus on the kind of music that she loves. Rather than serving up the usual Gershwin and Porter tunes typically requested at corporate events, she can sing Wainwright and Dylan.

This singer’s story is just one of hundreds that poured into The New York Times Web site in response to a request asking artists to share how the economy is affecting their lives and work. Perhaps most striking about the comments was the considerable number who were defiantly upbeat despite grim circumstances. Many artists echoed Ms. Holland, testifying that the recession had strengthened their commitment to their work or allowed them to concentrate on their art — since the time spent on side jobs had diminished — or had even been a source of creative inspiration.

Liz Fallon, 30, a visual artist in Portland, Me., started selling her paintings and drawings to private collectors about 10 years ago, when she was still in college. She has not sold an original work in almost a year. But in the Portland area, Ms. Fallon said, there seems to be a kind of artistic renaissance under way as various groups, like photography cooperatives and drawing collectives, form to connect creative professionals with one another.

“As for myself, freed from the constraints of creating for a specific buyer,” Ms. Fallon wrote, “I’ve experienced my own surge in creativity and have been producing a great deal more than I used to. While it would be nice to still be getting paid for my work, the need to be more resourceful is having a beneficial effect on the arts community around me.”

Read the rest of the article: Tight Times Loosen Artists' Creativity

Does the existence of a patron diminish or increase the success of arts? Can art exist without funding? But does creating art for a buyer affect the sincerity of the piece? Or has everything changed with the advent of found art, such as bricolage?

lili almog - portraiture in the 21st century

2009-05-27T11:41:00.006+08:00

Lugu Woman #3, 2007
Chromogenic color print

Muslim Girl #14, 2007
Chromogenic color print

Video Portrait #3, 2007
Still from a color video, 2 minutes 40 seconds.

The Mosuo people, a populace that has surrounded China’s Lugu Lake for hundreds of years, have no word for war, but they do have Levis and Adidas. The women of this matriarchal society are one of the minority groups represented in Lili Almog's latest exhibition and book, part of the Israeli artist’s ongoing investigation into female identity. Referencing a quote by Chairman Mao, “The Other Half of the Sky” reveals the cultural paradox of today’s rural China through portraiture. Ancient customs and modern tastes compete in the richly textured photographs. Like the flash of blue jean beneath a religious gown, the exhibition is filled with surprising details. At first glance, a group of four screens seemingly presents a slide show of still images; on closer inspection, the stoic figures animate—a subject blinks or wets her lips, a chicken wanders through the scene. Though discrete works, these “video portraits” suggest broad paradigmatic shifts of tradition conceding to modernity. The cracked face of an elderly woman is projected alongside that of a young girl, as if the former had miraculously morphed into the latter. Almog conceived the project in six geographic sections: mountain, lake, factory, street, backyard, and land. Fittingly, it is the landscape which most aptly thematizes the dilemma; the artist cogently captures her subjects at sites of literal transition—atop factory rubble or at the intersection of land and water—holding up their half of the sky.

Cameron Shaw
Artforum.com

how ironic

2009-05-22T19:21:00.005+08:00

“To be a modernist work is to be a work that takes its own conditions of possibility for its subject matter, that tests a certain number of the conventions of the practice it belongs to by modifying, jettisoning, or destroying them, and that in so doing renders the conventions or conditions thus tested explicit or opaque, revealing them to be nothing but conventions.”

- Thierry de Duve
Echoes of the Readymade: Critique of Pure Modernism

Can there ever truly be modernism?

tolstoy - what is art

2009-05-21T09:47:00.006+08:00

"What is Art?" by Leo Tolstoy

"Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression...

The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example; one man laughs, and another who hears becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another who hears feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and another man seeing him comes to a similar state of mind. By his movements or by the sounds of his voice, a man expresses courage and determination or sadness and calmness, and this state of mind passes on to others. A man suffers, expressing his sufferings by groans and spasms, and this suffering transmits itself to other people; a man expresses his feeling of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and others are infected by the same feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to the same objects, persons, and phenomena.

And it is upon this capacity of man to receive another man’s expression of feeling and experience those feelings himself, that the activity of art is based."

Tolstoy argues that art must create an emotional link between the artist and the audience. Hence, sincerity and clarity are vitally important in the creation of good art. Do you agree? Furthermore, according to his rationale, the success of the artwork necessitates an audience. Can art exist without an audience?

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Leo Tolstoy - Russian writer known for novels "Anna Karenina" and "War and Peace"

duchamp revisited

2009-05-21T09:00:00.009+08:00

What is art? Or better yet, what isn't art?

Perhaps the more appropriate question: what is good art?

for your consideration

2009-05-20T15:01:00.008+08:00

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them.

It is a question of experiencing everything.

At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

- Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet