Street Walls in the Beach of Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro

This was a little field trip I took to Ipanema this weekend. Shoot some nice pictures of the grafittis on the beach walls.

Everyman - Philip Roth

Today was the traditional secret friend game from work. I have previously given three tips in my wish list to help the person who picked my name. Of course, they were books:

1. Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
2. Everyman - Philip Roth
3. Goodbye, Colombus - Philip Roth

Selma, a lady from DDC, gave me Everyman, a book I have been wishing for a long time. I have always loved Philip Roth's books. I have read lots of them. The best one is Portnoy Complex. It was so funny. He has such a sharp and ironic humour. I just cracked up every page.


Here is the New York Times review on the book:

Philip Roth quotes not these lines from Yeats but those of Keats as epigraph to his latest novel: "Here where men sit and hear each other groan; / Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, / Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; / Where but to think is to be full of sorrow."


For three of the world's best novelists, Fuentes, García Márquez and Roth, the violent upsurge of sexual desire in the face of old age is the opposition of man to his own creation, death.

The final kick of the prostate, my old physician friend called it.


But it cannot be summed up, so wryly and glibly, when it is the theme of contemporary fiction by these writers from the two Americas. García Márquez's "Memories of My Melancholy Whores," Fuentes's "Inez," Roth's "Human Stain" and "The Dying Animal" and now "Everyman" have in common in their wonderful transformations the phenomenon — presented as similar to that of adolescence — of late sexual desire. The last demanding exuberance in the slowly denuded body, when "to think is to be full of sorrow": the doubt that comes about the unquestioned superiority of the rewards of the intellect. David Kepesh in "The Dying Animal" claims the phenomenon as the undeniable assertion of "erotic birthright," and this holds good for Philip Roth's unnamed — perhaps because he is, Roth forces us to admit — Everyman.

Philip Roth quotes not these lines from Yeats but those of Keats as epigraph to his latest novel: "Here where men sit and hear each other groan; / Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, / Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; / Where but to think is to be full of sorrow."

For three of the world's best novelists, Fuentes, García Márquez and Roth, the violent upsurge of sexual desire in the face of old age is the opposition of man to his own creation, death.

The final kick of the prostate, my old physician friend called it.

But it cannot be summed up, so wryly and glibly, when it is the theme of contemporary fiction by these writers from the two Americas. García Márquez's "Memories of My Melancholy Whores," Fuentes's "Inez," Roth's "Human Stain" and "The Dying Animal" and now "Everyman" have in common in their wonderful transformations the phenomenon — presented as similar to that of adolescence — of late sexual desire. The last demanding exuberance in the slowly denuded body, when "to think is to be full of sorrow": the doubt that comes about the unquestioned superiority of the rewards of the intellect. David Kepesh in "The Dying Animal" claims the phenomenon as the undeniable assertion of "erotic birthright," and this holds good for Philip Roth's unnamed — perhaps because he is, Roth forces us to admit — Everyman.


His story begins when he is dead. But we recognize him immediately: he's in a cultural profession (if a doubtful one), advertising, with an avocation as an amateur painter; he's been married several times; he has adult progeny with whom he is in various states of lack of relationship. He's the man Roth has long chosen to take on our human burdens, as a writer has always to select particular beings from among us for attention. The Cultural Journalist in the grave has been a resident in a retirement village for several years before his death. The relatives, an ex-wife, etc., are at the graveside. It has been the decision of his most-loved child, Nancy, to bury him in a half-abandoned Jewish cemetery although she knows he was an atheist: he loved his parents and he will be close to them in their graves.

Roth takes the writer's free acknowledgment of many literary modes while unceasingly experimenting with his own. From the graveside nod to Dickens, the man unseen there is tracked back to life and even before his individual conception. Here, the chronology of living isn't that of a calendar but of cross-references; soon we're at an earlier graveside. After a re-creation of the Cultural Journalist's childhood as he waits for one of the medical "interventions" that maintain his geriatric body, he turns back the pages of self to the day of his father's funeral. It is in the same cemetery, the old Jewish one founded by immigrants. That day, as he watches, his father's jewelry store is vividly present. It opened in 1933 with an immigrant's audacity as the only capital: "Diamonds — Jewelry — Watches." In order to "avoid alienating or frightening away the port city's tens of thousands of churchgoing Christians with his Jewish name, he extended credit freely . . . he never went broke with credit, and the good will generated by his flexibility was more than worth it." A good man, as his son recognizes.



Perhaps it's possible to be good only in a life with a number of limitations? So much is intriguing, left for the reader to ask himself or herself in Roth's writings. The reason to risk opening a store in the bad times of the Depression "was simple": he "had to have something to leave my two boys." This, in Roth's context, is not sentimental; it's an unstated principle of survival with connotations waking the reader to the unending presence of the immigrant, generation after generation, country to country, Jew, Irishman, Muslim, no roots but shallow ones scratched into someone else's natal soil.


If descriptive amplitude went out with the 19th century, Philip Roth, who strides the whole time and territory of the word, has resuscitated it — in description revved with the power of narrative itself. This father's graveside is — for the canny reader, not the son — a post-premonitory experience, intended to lead back to the graveside at which Roth chose to begin the son's life, a tug at the lien between the son and his antecedents ignored by him. He has never before witnessed the Jewish Orthodox ritual whereby the mourners and not the cemetery professionals literally bury the coffin. What he sees is not a symbolic sprinkling of a handful of dust, but the relatives and friends heaving shovels of earth to thud on the coffin, filling the hole to obliteration. As he becomes "immersed in the burial's brutal directness" what comes to him is not reverence but horror. "All at once he saw his father's mouth as if there were no coffin, as if the dirt they were throwing into the grave was being deposited straight down on him, filling up his mouth, blinding his eyes, clogging his nostrils and closing off his ears." "He could taste the dirt coating the inside of his mouth well after they had left the cemetery and returned to New York." The taste of death.

"Professor of Desire." One may so name Philip Roth, writer, without disrespect and in admiration, with an epithet that was the title of one of his earlier novels. Roth has proved by the mastery and integrity of his writing the difference between the erotic and the pornographic, in our sleazy era of the latter. The premise of his work is that nothing the body offers is denied so long as it does not cause pain. With rather marvelous presumption he seems unknowingly to have written the Kama Sutra of the 20th and 21st centuries. He asserts the joy of loving sexual intercourse, the splendid ingenuity of the body. His men are not disciples of de Sade, though it may be difficult to accept (in "The Dying Animal") the man licking a woman's menstrual blood off her legs as not exploitation of the privacy of a bodily function, quite different from the evocation of "the simplicity of physical splendor" which is manifest in sexual desire, and beautifully celebrated for all of us in his latest novel.



If Portnoy has never been outgrown, only grown old, he is, in his present avatar, an everyman whose creator makes the term "insight" something to be tossed away as inadequate. What Roth knows of the opposition/apposition of the body and the intellect is devastatingly profound and cannot be escaped, just as Thomas Mann's graffiti on the wall of the 20th century cannot be washed off: "In our time the destiny of man presents its meaning in political terms." Roth has dealt with this other great theme in human existential drives — politics — as searchingly as he has sexuality. Roth's people, whether politically activist or not, live in our world — and the bared-teeth decorum of academe is its gowned microcosm — terrorized by fear of the Other abroad and State authoritarianism at the throat at home. His superbly matchless work, "The Plot Against America," has the power of political fantasy moving out of literature into the urgent possibilities of present-day reality. With that novel he conveyed the Then in the Now. Hero-worship of Charles Lindbergh makes it feasible that he becomes president of the United States, despite his admiring embrace of Hitler; Bush never embraced Nazis, but the enthusiasm he elicits, through instilling fear in Americans who voted him into power and whose sons have come back in body bags along with the gruesome images of Iraqi dead, is no fantasy. And Lindbergh's anti-Semitism foreshadows the fundamentalisms that beset us in 2006.

One comes away from the strong political overtones in "Everyman" with the open truth that subservience, sexual connotations aside, is a betrayal of human responsibility. The strength of resistance derives from even further back within us than the drive toward freedom. Terminal Everyman's memory of a sensuous experience, relived, invokes the glory of having been alive even while "eluding death seemed to have become the central business of life and bodily decay his entire story." "Was the best of old age . . . the longing for the best of boyhood, for the tubular sprout that was then his body and that rode the waves from way out where they began to build, rode them with his arms pointed like an arrowhead and the skinny rest of him following behind like the arrow's shaft, rode them all the way in to where his rib cage scraped against the tiny sharp pebbles and jagged clamshells . . . and he hustled to his feet . . . and went lurching through the low surf . . . into the advancing, green Atlantic, rolling unstoppably toward him like the obstinate fact of the future."



Another ecstasy. Not to be denied by mortality. Philip Roth is a magnificent victor in attempting to disprove Georg Lukacs's dictum of the impossible aim of the writer to encompass all of life.



Check Philip Roth's page and review HERE!
For sure, this would be a joyful reading! Thanks, Selma!

Influencers

Photo of the Day!

I bumped into this picture and just thought it was so funny!
It just seems like us, humans...

Have a funny Sunday!

Living with doubt by Seth Godin

(Street wall in Buenos Aires - Center)

... is almost always more profitable than living with certainty.

People don't like doubt, so they pay money and give up opportunities to avoid it. Entrepreneurship is largely about living with doubt, as is creating just about any sort of art.

If you need reassurance, you're giving up quite a bit to get it.

On the other hand, if you can get in the habit of seeking out uncertainty, you'll have developed a great instinct.

Understanding International Art Markets and Management by Iain Robertson

As you know I have just finished reading the book about Gucci´s story. Now, my new reading is Understanding International Art Markets and Management (Amazon link).

Product Description

This groundbreaking text brings together experts in the field of visual art markets to answer some fundamental questions:
Is art a good investment?
Why is the art market dominated by America and Western Europe?
Where are the key emerging markets and what are the next good buys in art?

Providing readers with an understanding of the challenges facing art market 'makers' (dealers, auctioneers, collectors and artists) and the decision-making process experienced by market 'players' and investors, this exciting text merges the key theories with examples of practice in a highly accessible style.

Written by an international array of experts from the US, the UK and China, this book is essential reading for all those studying or interested in art markets and management.

About the Author

Iain Roberston is a lecturer in arts policy and management at City University. He is a member of The National Art Collections Fund and Association Internationale des Critique d'Art. He is an adviser to the Asia Art Archive and responsible for information on Asian art developments in London.

One Review by Haggenmueller Oliver (Geneva, Switzerland)

Iain Robertson et al. is presenting this very sound introduction to the non-expert of the arts international market. It is a collection of articles from different authors; therefore expect a non-linear writing style, which is however easy to understand. It is written from the point of view of the curator, or of someone who stands outside the market as an observer. What one could find as missing, are other perspectives such as the artist themselves. Nevertheless, this book discusses a very wide range of the arts market and even includes chapters such as art crime. The reader can thus easily gain a very good (though theoretical) insight of how the arts market works and of who are the actors in the market.


Five stars are awarded for this book, as I would recommend this book to all those who have an interest in learning how the arts market works and as this book delivers.

Random Flowers

Jon Burgerman – Master Doodler explains why you don’t need lots of cash or fancy resources to be successful.

Do you tell yourself that there’s no way you can succeed without a wadge of cash, all the best equipment and a bunch of top business people in tow? Well Jon Burgerman is an internationally successful illustrator and he’s here to tell you that you don’t need any of that stuff in order to be successful.

Read on to discover how Jon’s succeeding in a competitive industry from Subvert Magazine.

Jon has exhibited in galleries around the world including; Japan, Hamburg, Beijing, Barcelona and Singapore. He’s published two books “Hello Duudle” and “Pens are My Friends”. Plus his illustrations have been featured in Clutter Magazine, Computer Arts and “Vinyl Will Kill”. He’s designed a range of Ripcurl clothing, a series of soya surfboards, and top fashion house Miss Sixty commissioned him to doodle all over the walls of their swanky Hotel in Italy, not bad for someone who claims “I’m the King of Wing-ing it”

“Your body, whilst hurting and hating you for making it sweat also releases tiny pellets of golden happiness”

Hiya Jon I’m always reading on Twitter about you jetting around the world doing exhibitions and live drawing events, leading such a busy lifestyle, where do you find the energy, is exercise part of your routine?

I’m pretty unfit but I do manage to get to the gym a couple of times a week if I’m not traveling. Exercise is good for the brain as much as it is for the body. Also if you work a lot on your own (say in a room on your own) you can get depressed quite easily so exercise, going out and sweating, doing something completely different is healthy for you and can keep you happy. Your body, whilst hurting and hating you for making it sweat also releases tiny pellets of golden happiness orbs into your soda-blood-stream (this is a scientific fact).

You mentioned working on your own, tell me about your process for coming up with new work can you be creative on demand?

I used to be able to but things are slowing down a little these days. Sometimes I need to have a break from work, go away and do something else for a while. It’s never good to force it if inspiration isn’t forthcoming. Just relax, try not to stress and come back to it after eating some salad.

Talking about stress, a lot of people get frustrated with the lack of resources or other obstacles they have to overcome have you experienced any particular barriers?

I had all the normal deficiencies but kept working anyway. For about three years I sat on a crappy wooden chair in my tiny bedroom, using my pillow from my bed as a cushion, working on an old PC with a dial up internet connection shared between three people.

I had no cash or fancy resources. You don’t need it (to do the kind of things I do). Just work hard! Enjoy working hard! Don’t get drunk every night, don’t complain, eat vegetables, enjoy! Work! Enjoy! Draw! Sleep! Listen! Read! Work!

Did you take to this career path naturally, did you have confidence in yourself that you could really do it from the start?


It’s all I ever wanted to do and all I knew I could ever do so whilst the path has had its ups and downs it’s all been pretty OK – but then I don’t really know any other way. But nothing good is ever really easy, it has been hard work but worth it of course.

You’re absolutely right it does take a lot of effort, did you ever write a plan of what you wanted to achieve?

I’m a terrible planner, even if I make them I seldom stick to them. I’ve never made a business plan or anything like that. I’m the King of Wing-ing it, I make it up as I go along, change my mind a million times and then get distracted and forget all about what I’m meant to be doing.

Were you encouraged to pursue life as an artist by those around you or was there any opposition?


A bit of both, most people have been very encouraging and a few art tutors along the way were disparaging but I think you have to expect that. If you can’t stand up to criticism and argue your case at that level you’re probably going to crumble when confronted with any real criticism you may face outside of an educational institution.

Did you have any particular people who helped mentor or guide you when you started out?

Not really but lots of professionals I emailed did kindly email back offering bits of advice here and there. You pick up advice where you can and treat all your early jobs as learning experiences – always ask plenty of questions.

That’s great advice, too many people are scared to ask questions and it’s an important part of learning. You mention emailing some professionals for help, can you tell me who has been particularly helpful to you?

The Association of Illustrators are really helpful. I wish I’d invited other artists out to lunch to quiz them about their practices but I wasn’t clever enough to think of that at the time. I did kind of work in a vacuum for a while.

What things do you find challenging or scary about being an artist?


I’m afraid of everything – what if it’s crap and people hate it? What if I hate it? Exhibitions are probably the scariest things, which is why I like doing them the most.

That’s great, so you’re saying – face the challenges head on. Tell me more about your thoughts on fear, does it help or hinder you?

As it’s all in the mind you can choose to let it limit you or force you to push on and conquer it. If you want an excuse you can happily find one in almost everything.

How often do you find yourself failing at something or abandoning a piece of work?

I fail at lots of things, you should of seen the porridge I made last weekend. Failure isn’t to be feared. Everything is just practice for the next time you’ll attempt it.

Apart from good culinary skills, what does it take to be a successful in this industry?

You need to be ready to learn, be nice to people, work hard, be reliable, have ideas, be clean and tidy and have some common sense. Someone told me to always offer a little more than is required. Be enthusiastic too, no-one like a sullen sad-sack mopping about the place. Offer to help with things and to make tea every so often.

Is life in the public eye what you thought it would be when you set out?

I’m hardly in the public eye – I draw for a living, it’s not like you get to sleep with supermodels and drink Champagne from glass slippers, I’m not Gary Baseman you know! It’s strange if someone recognizes me at an exhibition or something but that’s quite rare and I often run away before I can get embarrassed (or indeed embarrass myself).

We’ll have to ask Gary about those supermodels, but until you reach that point :) what would you say are the biggest benefits of this type of life?

No boss to answer to, you’re in control of what you do and when you do it, and it’s fun!

Interview by Angel Greenham


Links

www.jonburgerman.com
ww.facebook.com/jonburgermangroup

Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi

It is an audacious experiment: two small, oil-rich countries in the Middle East are using architecture and art to reshape their national identities virtually overnight, and in the process to redeem the tarnished image of Arabs abroad while showing the way toward a modern society within the boundaries of Islam.

Here, on a barren island on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, workers have dug the foundations for three colossal museums: an $800 million Frank Gehry-designed branch of the Guggenheim 12 times the size of its New York flagship; a half-billion-dollar outpost of the Louvre by Jean Nouvel; and a showcase for national history by Foster & Partners, the design for which was unveiled on Thursday. And plans are moving ahead for yet another museum, about maritime history, to be designed by Tadao Ando.

Nearly 200 miles across the Persian Gulf, Doha, the capital of Qatar, has been mapping out its own extravagant cultural vision. A Museum of Islamic Art, a bone-white I. M. Pei-designed temple, opened in 2008 and dazzled the international museum establishment. In December the government will open a museum of modern Arab art with a collection that spans the mid-19th-century to the present. Construction has just begun on a museum of Qatari history, also by Mr. Nouvel, and the design for a museum of Orientalist art by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron is to be made public next year.

Read the whole New York Times' Article HERE!

Lagoon´s Tree will be up on the 4th!

Lagoon Tree in Rio de Janeiro will be released on the 4th!

Concert, fireworks, and lovely night at the Lagoon!

Wanna join?

 

Fish with Lentil

If you like food this was a great dish. Fish with lentil topped with crunchy tomato peel. I just thought the lentil had a strong flavour comparing to the fish´s tenderness. I think that something should be added to the lentil in order to make its flavour a little less strong and in harmony with the fish...but anyways it was a great dish!

The one who isn't easily replaced by Seth Godin

The law of the internet is simple: either you do something I can't do myself (or get from someone else), or I pay you less than you'd like.

Why else would it be any other way?

Twenty years ago, self-publishing a record was difficult and expensive. A big label could get you shelf space at Tower easily, you couldn't. A big label could pay for a recording session with available capital, but it was difficult for you to find the money or take the risk. A big label could reach the dozens of music reviewers, and do it with credibility. Hard for you to do that yourself.

Now?

Now when someone comes to a successful musician and says, "we'll take 90% and you do all the work," they're opening the door to an uncomfortable conversation. The label has no assets, just desire. That's great, but that's exactly what the musician has, and giving up so much pie (and control over his destiny) hardly seems like a fair trade.

Multiply this by a thousand industries and a billion freelancers and you come to one inescapable confusion: be better, be different or be cheaper. And the last is no fun.

Hugh McLeod's Cartoon

Oh yeah!

When you do what you like for a living, you explode of joy !!

Yupiiiiiiii

Auction Analysis for Latin America by Art Tactic

Here are some important Latin America market information provided by Art Tactic:

"Expectations ahead of the Latin American sales were high after a highly successful New York post-war and contemporary season two weeks ago. However, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s Latin American sales failed to reach their low pre-sale estimates.


The Latin American sales season raised a total of $35,796,600 against pre-sale estimate of $40,024,000 - $55,036,000 - 11% below the low estimate. Despite falling short of expectations, it was still 18% higher than May 2010, and 27% higher than November 2009 - which signals that the market recovery continues, albeit at a slower pace.

The higher end of the market was clearly the driver behind last week’s result, with the price segment of $500,000 and above accounting for 33% of the total, and the $100,000 to $500,000 price bracket accounting for 43% of the total auction value. Top 10 lots in the sale accounted for 24% of the total, led by Wilfredo Lam’s ‘Les Abalochas Dansent Pour Dhambala’ which sold for $1.85 million and Fernando Botero’s ‘Family Scene’ selling for $1.45 million."

NAMP RADIO

I spend lots of time listening to poscasts about Art Management and Art Marketing. The site ArtsMarketing.Org is a great source of periodically poscasts.

Liste HERE to listen to the last one!

Summary
In this episode, the panelists (Ron Evans, Matt Campbell, Maris Smith and special guest panelist Sean Kelly, marketing director of TheatreWorks talk about the challenges of marketing an unknown work such as the development musical "Fly By Night" to existing audiences.


NAMPRadio Recommends:

•Matt recommends: This article: Speed Vs. Google SEO Ranking: A Dynamic Web Site's Conundrum

•Ron recommends: The Emerging Leaders Network of Americans for the Arts (and a local chapter near you)

•Sean recommends this New York Times article on what really makes people happy.

•Maris recommends: "Hunter ___ a bear" interactive advertisement for tippex to look like a youtube video.

•Also,the Culture Vultures blog, mentioned at the top of the podcast and composer Will Connolly's MySpace page with music samples from "Fly By Night."

Outro music: “Too Close to Crying” by Garry and the Moodswingers. Find out more about this artist via his page on the Podsafe Music Network.

Where do ideas come from? - by Seth Godin

 

 
Understanding where ideas come from makes us seek for the sources and deep dive in them. In order to be creative and innovative, you should exchange, live, experience and share. You should put yourself in a place that the In-Bound is maximized to its extreme and the Out-Bound is estimulated, disciplined and free.

1. Ideas don't come from watching television
2. Ideas sometimes come from listening to a lecture
3. Ideas often come while reading a book
4. Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them
5. Ideas hate conference rooms, particularly conference rooms where there is a history of criticism, personal attacks or boredom
6. Ideas occur when dissimilar universes collide
7. Ideas often strive to meet expectations. If people expect them to appear, they do
8. Ideas fear experts, but they adore beginner's mind. A little awareness is a good thing
9. Ideas come in spurts, until you get frightened. Willie Nelson wrote three of his biggest hits in one week
10. Ideas come from trouble
11. Ideas come from our ego, and they do their best when they're generous and selfless
12. Ideas come from nature
13. Sometimes ideas come from fear (usually in movies) but often they come from confidence
14. Useful ideas come from being awake, alert enough to actually notice
15. Though sometimes ideas sneak in when we're asleep and too numb to be afraid
16. Ideas come out of the corner of the eye, or in the shower, when we're not trying
17. Mediocre ideas enjoy copying what happens to be working right this minute
18. Bigger ideas leapfrog the mediocre ones
19. Ideas don't need a passport, and often cross borders (of all kinds) with impunity
20. An idea must come from somewhere, because if it merely stays where it is and doesn't join us here, it's hidden. And hidden ideas don't ship, have no influence, no intersection with the market. They die, alone.

Carioca Streets Walls - The Walls of Rio

Check out the Brazilain Graffiti Artists in Ipanema beach - Rio de Janeiro

Weekend Walk by the beach + Drawinings.....

Street Walls in Ipanema beach...

Rio girl!

National Ballet of China - Raise the Red Lantern

After sell out seasons in London, New York and Washington the National Ballet of China makes its first visit to Brazil. This prestigious company of 70 dancers presented the internationally acclaimed classical ballet Raise the Red Lantern for 8 performances at the Municipal in Rio de Janeiro.

Raise the Red Lantern, directed by Zhang Yimou, is one of the most sublimely beautiful and openly controversial films of the 1990’s. Zhang’s unique method of story telling – seen in his House of Flying Daggers and Hero combines an almost choreographic use of image with a powerful narrative. Raise the Red Lantern won him an Oscar nomination and universal acclaim.



Zhang brings cinematic and passionate vision to the dance stage with his stunning adaptation of one of his most acclaimed cinematic creations.


It is an event of cultural significance an internationally acclaimed classical ballet, featuring an original score by Qigang Chen and choreography by Xin Peng Wang in the first ever Australian tour of the National Ballet of China.

“A modern ballet with the sweep of a big budget motion picture… a powerful piece of dance theatre” NEW YORK TIMES

View from the Municipal Theater

Municipal Theater in Downtown (Center) - Rio de Janeiro

Last Sunday

There is always this huge natural flower arrange in the entrance

Brazilians arriving at the Municipal

“East meets West in epic style”
SUNDAY TIMES

Inside the Municipal Theater

Cafe at the Municipal

Me posing at the stairs!

15 mins break!

Mural during the 15 mins break.

Last Applause