How To Make An Alexander Calder-esque Abstract Mobile →

Summer project. This is so on.

"Hon­estly, I think the bar­ri­ers are imag­i­nary, the walls have already been breached and the key to lit­er­a­ture in the early 21st cen­tury is one of con­flu­ence. There’s not much high and low cul­ture any more: there’s just min­gling streams of art and what mat­ters is whether it’s good art or bad art. But then, I come from comics, and miss the days when it was a gut­ter art-form in which nobody was expected to make art; and think that SF was much more vibrant and rel­e­vant before they taught it in uni­ver­si­ties."

Neil Gaiman in The New Yorker’s Ask the Author. As Robin Sloan says, the most interesting part is the “confluence” of art in the 21st century: the breaking down of barriers between high and low.

"What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who’s up and who’s down, but what someone has done and if they meant it."

Dave Eggers gives a long and fascinating rant back in 2000 to a journalist asking questions about his supposed “selling out” with AHWOFG. (via matthewb)

The Girlfriend Experience And Why We Are All In Grave Danger →

Andrew Altschul reviews Steven Soderberg’s latest movie, The Girlfriend Experience. Beginning with a critique of the movie’s sordid and pointless plot he soars upwards to a beautiful and damning critique of so-called Realism. I don’t want to spoil the whole thing for you, but here’s just a taste:

In Reality we don’t need Laurence Olivier or Katherine Hepburn, we don’t need talented “elites” to write our scripts and shove complicated ideas about human nature down our throats. The medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan showed us, and the message of Reality is that we are all actors, all writers, all of our opinions and abilities are as good as everyone else’s. Reality wants us to understand that the performers can’t perform, the writers can’t write, so as to better discredit and discard the function of true art and artists. They aren’t Real people: Olivier wasn’t better than you or me—just luckier; Toni Morrison’s ideas are no more important than David Duke’s.

The essay is eloquent and illuminating, and well worth the few minutes it takes to read it.

Just another day at the office. (via io9)

livejamie:

Everybody hurry and add Andy Gilmore to your feed readers. We need to get this kid on Tumblr, stat.

Wow. That stuff’s amazing.

Chinese artists responsible for 60% of the world’s oil paintings paint their self-portraits. From Self-portraiture and emerging artistic consciousness in Dafen, via Boing Boing