To Make A Dadist Poem

  	Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though
unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

Tristan Tzara

Pandora’s Box Part 2

by Michael Newberry

… pathetically, only Hope remained inside. In the other version the box held all of humanity’s glories. When she opened the box progress, knowledge, and exaltation vanished into oblivion, forever lost to humanity. Art, in all its forms, plays an exalted role as one of humanity’s glories. It also plays a profoundly personal role. Think, for instance, of the impact your favorite artwork has had on your life. Has it moved you to tears, to resolution, to moments of joy? Have you felt that an artwork was as close to you as a lover, a friend, or a child? Have you imagined what your life would be like without art? Picture your most beloved painting or recall your favorite song or regard your most treasured book and ask yourself what if it had never existed. Would that leave a gaping hole in your soul where once something precious had been? When Pandora opened the box, marvelous things rose up and vanished into space before her eyes. Without grasping the nature of this phenomenon, she unleashed Postmodernism on humanity. Artistic creation is fragile. For most artists creation calls on the limits of their intellectual, sensory, and psychological resources; each artwork is, in essence, the artist’s summation of what is important from all of existence. Additionally, it is usual that an artist’s career calls on the limits of their financial resources. Given the nature of such a daunting task it is no wonder that artists suffer profound doubts in one form or another. Imagine young students impatient to express their visions and passions on canvas and imagine their vulnerability in hoping they will have what it takes to realize their dreams. Without the certainty of accomplished works behind them, they are, indeed, vulnerable to peer pressure, authoritative experts, and the influence of the icons of their day. If their profoundly personal visions and attempts are not acknowledged and supported, then it merely takes an air of disapproval to blow away the sparks that would blaze their future. Several years ago I taught foundation classes at Otis College of Art and Design, one of the most reputable art colleges in the United States. While there, I offered seven students a private apprenticeship program outside of their schoolwork. These students had everything one could ask for: they had fire, talent, intelligence, and drive; they had that “light-bulb” look in their eyes. They studied with other foundation teachers who taught them rock-solid basics, but in the following year they entered into the fine art program, which was dominated by postmodern teachers. During a critique, one teacher and his students called my 18-year old apprentice a “fascist”, an “imperialist pig”, and “naïve” because he had exhibited a realistic oil self-portrait with studies that documented his creative process, which was dramatically lit. He was not criticized for lack of sincerity, passion, or talent. By contrast, another student received the highest mark and praise for a goldfish cast in resin which had its eyes plucked out and sewn to its tail. A day after the critique my student came to me crying and passionately asked “why?” What horrible things did my student do to deserve such nasty condemnation from the teacher and his cohorts? Could it possibly be that they were chastising him because he displayed skill and passion in painting? Another apprentice of mine took classes with an abstract expressionist teacher (in the style of Pollock) who deflected answering to students’ direct questions. In the third week of class this apprentice came to me with tears bursting from her eyes and blurted out, “what does this teacher want from me?”  I guessed that the teacher was looking for expression divorced from thought so I recommended that my apprentice use a stream of consciousness technique for this class. I told her to unscrew her head and leave it on the shelf before entering this class. She followed my advice to the letter. She did not “think”, did not ask questions, and did nothing to aim for a realization. Later in that class, the teacher waltzed around the room with my apprentice’s “creation” and claimed that it was a museum piece and that she was a genius. Overnight she became the teacher’s star pupil. My apprentice said in a mood of distaste “that work took only 5% of my capacity”. Was this teacher so out of touch with these students that she confined their potential by ignorance? Or did she do it on purpose? During our apprenticeship program every one of the seven broke down in frustration due to their postmodern education. “What do they want?” Was the unanswerable query. After witnessing two years of these episodes, it became apparent to me that it wasn’t knowledge, dedication, skill, or love of art that was wanted by these teachers. It was both obvious and inconceivable that the teachers acted to thwart these students’ minds and abilities. Did the teachers really want to turn students into confused wrecks? What sort of people embrace such a stance? Rarely have I seen genius and rarely have I seen the completely hopeless. One student was sent to my class with the aim that she would finally pass, having failed the course given by other teachers twice before. She had no interest, had no touch, and had no understanding for drawing; she had no “light bulb” in her eyes. Shockingly, just before our holidays she presented me with an invitation to her exhibition at a modern art gallery. I will never forget the look on her face after she watched me read her invitation; she was gloating. I thought of the struggles of my apprentices pouring their passion, their egos, and their overtime into developing their potential for art; I thought of the psychological abuse they were taking for it, and I thought it unjust. Was it the way of the art world that this pathetic student should displace them? I don’t mean to imply that all postmodernists are untalented, but talent in the sense of mastery of drawing and painting is not a consideration for a postmodern art education. Before their second year, my apprentices were advised by the Dean of Otis College, by the Director of Foundation, and by the Director of Fine Art that if they wanted to continue drawing the figure they would have to go into Graphic Design and forgo Fine Art. If the postmodern community does not want skill, could it be that they want students who embody a “getting away with it” mentality? A few years ago I went to an artist’s talk given by a postmodern teacher/artist at a prestigious university gallery. Her works were camouflaged within the architectural setting. One of them was a 3″ x 1″ wide plaster band that wound around on the floor of the room. It was there to be “sensed” and to subtlely affect movement within the room, changing the traffic flow of the space intended by the architect. In her talk she proudly stated that she couldn’t draw, couldn’t paint, and didn’t know anything about architectural design. Yet all her works were dependent on architectural settings designed by others. She condescendingly referred to one of the buildings as a “fascist”. When asked if she had ever created directly from nature she said she had never “thought of that.” Without any skill in art she had several museum exhibitions in which she presented her deliberate acts of subtle subversion. Could it be possible that subversion was the standard by which this postmodern exhibition was chosen? With every postmodern exhibition, with every class, with every critic’s praise, clues emerge as to the motives of the postmodernists and the general direction of the postmodern movement. I believe there is a key concept guiding postmodernists but they, in their obscure way, don’t want us or perhaps themselves to understand what it is. Let us dig deeper and see if we can find what that key is. Museum directors are the guardians of art. They strive to protect art by heightening cultural awareness: they give artists venues in which to exhibit; they cultivate public interest in their exhibitions; they arrange recognition of artists through critics and media; they raise funds to pay for their initiatives; and they produce educational programs for adults and children. They have media, millions of dollars, and educational institutions at their disposal to influence culture. Directors are the middlemen between important new artists and the public; their influence is profound in shaping “high” culture. The mission statements of many contemporary art museums include aims to express the “aesthetics of our time,” to seek out artists that are creating “new inroads,” and to exhibit the “best” artists alive today. “Best” here does not have the meaning that it has in sports, where the winner is the better athlete. Artistic value is interpreted, meaning that it is up to the curators to evaluate who are the best artists based on contemporary aesthetics, which is postmodernism, and to support them accordingly. The Encyclopedia Encarta describes the aims of Dadaists’ (the first postmodern artists) works as “… designed to shock or bewilder, in order to provoke a reconsideration of accepted aesthetic values”. But postmodern art goes deeper than merely raising challenges to specific values; it is meant to disrupt your psychological and epistemological processes or, in other words, to shatter your sanity and throttle your mind. To accomplish this, postmodern artists mangle either or both the content and means:1) They can choose a subject matter that will stretch your capacity for the unimaginable, usually by projecting a thoroughly disgusting state. Cultural Gothic by P. McCarthy is a good example of this in sculpture. It is a mechanized sculpture group in which a father encourages his adolescent son to fuck a goat. A Postmodern version of a close family? Branded by J. Saville is an example in painting. It is a self-portrait in which the obese woman thrusts out a fistful of her flesh towards us in an angry and defensive gesture. Incised scalpel-like wounds that spell out words “delicate” and “decorative” cover her rotten-colored flesh. Both these works intentionally take us into psychotic states. Saville, Self-portrait Parenthetically, it could be implied that I take issue with the artists’ right to express themselves, which is not the case. My point here is that these works are esteemed by the postmodern establishment for their shocking content and not for their quality as painting or sculpture. Strictly speaking, Saville and McCarthy aren’t postmodern purists; they compromise their postmodern, grotesque subject matters with figurative painting and sculpture. For purists, matching the means to the ends is a hallmark of the highest reaches of art, postmodern or not. “…art cannot be art and anti-art at the same time.” 2) The other method of shock aesthetics is to redefine art as anything but painting or sculpture. The classic example is The Fountain by Duchamp, a urinal presented as an artwork. The simple device of substituting anything but art, such as a toilet, as an artwork creates an epistemological disturbance in our minds. Think of substituting “table” for “egg”, “ice-cream” for “go”, “car” for “food”, etc. It is something like a computer virus that plays havoc with your system and ultimately renders your computer’s programs useless. In this way postmodernists have substituted Rauschenberg’s Erased De Kooning for drawing, Christo’s Umbrellas for sculpture, and Creed’s Empty Room for substance. Shock aesthetics are also commonly known in art history as part of the anti-art movement. Oddly, modern art historians gloss over the fact that, logically, art cannot be art and anti-art at the same time. In Part I of this series I stated that the theme of Christo’s Umbrellas magnified the contrast between the huge cost, effort, and scale of the project and its end of non-existence. The thematic idea is that this nihilistic work is not about “nothing” but it is about the non-existence, the absence, of something that had existed before. Stay with me on this idea; it is important because nihilism is one of the key aesthetic concepts of postmodernism. Now let us tweak the context and think of the entire postmodern art movement as one gigantic Christo project, in which “absence” is the theme. The postmodern movement has taken on the universality of representational art, with its history of 30,000 years, and succeeded in, in the eyes of the contemporary art world establishment, of virtually wiping it off the face of the planet. It has ripped the lid off Pandora’s box and replaced “progress, knowledge, and exaltation” with bile. Notice what this does to the status of the art director as a guardian of art, it creates a grotesque paradox; the directors of contemporary art museums are the promoters and protectors of anti-art. One important way in which they protect postmodernism is by ignoring any alternative; they are silent when it comes to value-orientated, representational art. Far from being harmless, silence from the art establishment delivers a deathblow to viable representational artists. I discussed this issue of postmodern silence with Dr. Chris Sciabarra and he replied: “[A] dominant ideology “brackets out” of the equation real alternatives: it just doesn’t allow fundamentally revolutionary alternatives to even be considered. I think this is not simply a conscious conspiracy, but a method of silence, of omission. It becomes part of the overall worldview, this tacit exclusion.” Silence is a very clever weapon for postmodernists to use; it implies that representational art is dead and that even if something is out there it doesn’t merit notice. Tom Wolfe tells the sickening story of young Fredrick Hart scanning art magazines, hoping for a review of Ex Nihilo, the facade of the Washington National Cathedral, an eleven-year sculpture project. “Months went by…nothing.” The exceptional representational artist faces another kind of wall of incomprehensibility as a consequence of this “silence.” In my long career as an artist I have met many “regular” people, who don’t know art in depth. Though some of them have mentioned the “silliness” of contemporary museum exhibitions. Yet, they have reverence for the title of “museum” and they do not understand why representational artists should have problems in getting critical recognition. They feel this is something that they cannot judge and it should be left to the experts to decide. The undertone of their unstated words is, “if the experts do not acknowledge you then there must be a good reason for it”. It is also unfortunate that if artists try to retaliate against the silence of the postmodern establishment, then it sounds like “sour grapes.” In an Agatha Christie story there is a small aside about the theft of a brooch. In the novel everyone suspected the maid, as she was the only one in the house at the time of the theft. No one accused her of the theft because she was an elderly woman and had always been very conscientious. The assumption of the locals and her employers was that she desperately needed money. The maid was terribly upset because she could see suspicion in their eyes and she could do nothing about it. The maid died before the mystery was solved. The brooch had been attached to a blouse that had been sent to the cleaners; the laundress had stolen it. The horror of this case was that the maid, in the absence of the solution to the mystery, died without ever being granted recognition for her goodness and honesty. Just as the solution to this mystery is crucial to clear up where the crime lay and redeem the innocent, understanding the mysterious motives of the postmodern movement is crucial to bringing about recognition of the goodness and honesty of benevolent, representational artists. Earlier I asked questions and raised the issue about the key concept guiding the postmodern movement. Now it should be clear. Postmodernism is literally an anti-art movement. Its objective, ostensibly, is the elevation of postmodern artists but its motive is the eradication of art. The postmodern aesthetic is a virus composed of the unstable components of nihilism for its means and disgust for its ends. It will take innovative contemporary representational art and reason-based aesthetic criticism to remedy this plague. Stay tuned for Pandora’s Box Part 3, the last of the series, in which I contrast two contemporary views of the sublime; the postmodern and the integrated. Michael Newberry 2002, revised in New York, 2006

De la Vodafone, “cetire”:

“Fa un casting pentru o intalnire!”

Morala newdadaista:

Ce “vrajeala” si cu facebook-ul si cu twitter-ul:

Click:  FIND YOUR FAMOUS ART PAINTINGS FOR SALE ONLINE

Famous Painting By Marcel Duchamp, Pioneer of Dadaism

Galleries have opened and closed on the Lower East Side for quite some time, but for the last four years, the neighborhood once home to tenement housing has developed an intense gallery scene that keeps thriving. The Lower East Side, roughly the area bound to the north by Houston Street, to the west by the Bowery, to the south by Canal Street, and to the east by the East River, has become an alternative for young galleries seeking a space in Manhattan, but that are not willing to move into the overcrowded and overpriced Chelsea neighborhood.

During my last trip to New York, coinciding with the first couple of weeks of openings after a long August break, I ventured down to the Lower East Side to take a look at some of these galleries.

On the street bearing the gallery’s name, Renwick Gallery presented Talia Chetrit’s debut solo show titled Readings. Founded on 2006, the gallery’s roster of artists include José Dávila, Meredith Danluck and George Kontos. For Chetrit’s show, the gallery presented a series of photographs that lie between the experimental and the abstract, where the artist mostly plays with light and explores the medium of photography. In their apparent simplicity, Chetrit’s work is complex and flawlessly executed. The digital renderings of the photographs, like the one displayed above, cannot even begin to describe how technically good the artist really is. 

Moving on to Orchard Street, Invisible Exports presented Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: 30 Years of Being Cut Up, a retrospective of the artists’ collage work. In this exhibition you can see, Genesis P-Orridge’s Mail Art, for which he was charged by the British general post office for sending “offensive material” by mail. These were done before he teamed up with performance artist and partner Lady Jaye Breyer. The show’s title not only refers to the collage work the artist is known for, but also to the couple’s ongoing physical transformation with plastic surgery in an attempt to eliminate differences between them; a process that leads to what they call pandrogeny, a unified male and female body. Presenting images of before and after surgery,  Two into one we go documents the couples effort to become one by way of altering their bodies under the knife.

Another gallery on Orchard, Rachel Uffner presented a new series of portraits by Sara Greenberger Rafferty titled Tears. Just recently opened last year, the gallery represents artists such as Josh Blackwell and Roger White. The series consists of manually and digitally intervened photographs printed in CMYK ink on a desktop printer.  In this her most recent work, Rafferty continues to explore ideas tied to performance, comedy and popular culture through portraits of comedians, such as Bill Cosby and Vicki Lawrence, and comedic props, such as a whopee cushion and a rubber chicken. The photographs resemble television stills of the 1970’s that have been damaged with an ‘accidental’ spill.

Other Lower East Side galleries that are definitely worth checking out are Lisa Cooley, Rental, James Fuentes and Simon Preston.

-Carla Acevedo

images provided by Renwick Gallery, Invisible Exports & Rachel Uffner

A Wonder of the World. Gone.

To witness the obliteration of those glowing, lithe twins was a shock beyond comprehension. They were so playful; light danced on them as they stretched up towards the sky. They were so free; you could not say that they stood tall with pride because they were so unselfconscious of their beauty and height. They were so innocent; they believed in friendship, progress, creation, and joy. They were.

There are people in the world who can’t stand to see that beauty and creativity exist. The guy who took a hatchet to the Pieta of Michelangelo. The Taliban leader who chose to blow up the Buddhist cliff sculptures.

On the other side of humanity, a vast majority of people felt universal shock. Waves of anger, sorrow, and sadness have followed. Though, personally, after I experienced the shock of the attack, I felt none of those other emotions. Instead a quiet calm spread over me and I knew it was a time for cold, calculating, and uncompromising action and thought. A time to expose evil and put it in its place. And a time to stand up proudly and defend the values of civilization against the onslaught of a species of human beings that romanticize destruction.

The definition of civilization, found in the American Heritage dictionary, is an eloquent statement:

“An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.”

Every civilization has had artworks, including buildings, that represent that country’s values. A unique aspect of art is that it represents the purpose of what one lives for. It represents the “point” of life. In a similar way, the art in major art institutions represents the soul of a culture or civilization.

The World Trade Center has been that kind of symbol for us and I can think of no greater expression of civilization at its height.

Apparently neither could the mastermind of the terrorists’ attack.

Terrorism, as I understand it, is based on destruction and murder, using shock tactics and unconventional means that result in a populace experiencing mass fear, anxiety, or apprehension. Though terrorists might state lofty aims, it is generally recognized that they don’t have the character to create anything other than to bring about destruction. And rarely will you hear anyone claim that they destroy for the sake of destroying. But if one looks at the results of terrorism, one must conclude that the terrorists’ aim is simply to inject fear into their victims’ state of mind. Fear is not the stuff that civilization is made of.

Now that the World Trade Center is gone, what is going to replace it? I don’t mean replace it only in the physical sense, but what is going to replace it as a symbol of civilization at its best. There are reports that a monument and four skyscrapers of 50 to 60 floors will be built on the site. But that project has something hopelessly anemic about it. It sounds prudent, safe, and absolutely lacking in imagination. Of course the Empire State Building stands, but what about finding something new from our art culture, some artwork to hold up proudly as a symbol worth creating and fighting for?

Unfortunately, the great American skyscraper is the exception to the state of serious art in contemporary western civilization. What dominates western civilization now is postmodern art. Postmodern art is a completely unique historical phenomenon. Every other culture through the history of humanity has proudly produced and honored painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature. But postmodern art, in theory and practice, is an anti-art movement. It prides itself on the destruction of the above mentioned forms of art and on shocking its audience.

It starts theoretically with Kant’s Critique of Judgement, a treatise on aesthetics. He elevates fear of experience and formlessness of means in his concepts of the Sublime and he condescendingly relegates form, theme, beauty, and sensory pleasure as elements of craftsmanship. It is an amazing piece of work. Imagine dismissing the principles that are the aesthetic foundations of Michelangelo and Beethoven as crass and replacing them with a principle of nothingness–as a superior aesthetic. Incredible.

Louis Aragon, a Dadaist poet, rants, “No more painters, no more scribblers, no more musicians, no more sculptors…no more nations, an end at last to all this stupidity, nothing left, nothing at all, nothing, nothing.”

Tristan Tzara, another Dadaist, states pathetically, “Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist…We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.”

Neither of these statements are understandable in the ordinary sense of communication between civilized people. But their stance is clear: they are for the obliteration of the forms and comprehensibility of art. But this attack is not limited to art. The obliteration of forms of human understanding results in fear and will likely lead to a snap with reality that will force the subject through a long descent into psychotic hell.

At a recent exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, one of the exhibits was a photo documentation of Paul McCarthy smearing his face and beard with excrement and using his head as a brush to “paint” a large white canvas. He is a professor of art at UCLA.

Perhaps the best known and most widely and wildly academically acclaimed postmodern artist is Marcel Duchamp. He presented a urinal for an exhibition in 1917 in New York. A copy of it is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Our society, unwisely, has swept postmodern art away from its consciousness and, unfortunately, all real art with it. They have hidden it, like the insane uncle mentioned only in whispers, tucked away in a sanatorium with a name like Village Heights. The whispers leave a hint in the air that if we acknowledge that our uncle is in fact crazy then we will become infected.

Notice how leading newspapers and internet news sites sweep art under such light and effervescent categories as Style, Entertainment, Arts & Leisure, as if putting art under superficial headings will make them less scary, less important. My guess is that because of the disgusting or utterly puzzling content of postmodern art the news media feels more comfortable relegating it and, consequently, all art to a less than serious status. Imagine listing politics under Gatherings, or economics under Business & Play.

But serious art and postmodern art are not the amusements of the masses and they are not accessories to life. Art is to culture what the soul is to a human being. To see what the spirit of a culture is, look at its celebrated fine art.

Ignored as it may be, postmodern art, America’s crazy uncle, is not in a sanatorium. Postmodern art rules the art institutions of western civilization. Its aesthetics are the criteria guiding curators and directors of contemporary art museums. It is the only aesthetic taught to upper level students in the major art schools around the world. It is the criteria used by the most influential art critics. It is debated in nuances of comical and absurd proportions by the scholarly community. It is the baying of sheep. Unless, of course, the sheep know what they are baying about. If they understand the point of postmodern aesthetics, then they know that they are promoting anti-art. Which means that they are actively promoting the demise of civilization’s art forms as well as Western art. Western art–Aeschylus, Michelangelo, Beethoven, and Yamasaki–represents the greatest aesthetic achievements in humankind’s history and postmodernists want to replace it with what? With the cynical spirit of Marcel Duchamp’s toilet?

Ominously, the postmodernists are as clever as bin Laden or whoever is the mastermind of the recent attack on civilization. Postmodernists have infiltrated our civilization’s greatest art institutions. And they have done it with our naïve blessings. They now represent our art culture, its soul. They are the spiritual voice of Western Civilization.

And that voice is sending a message out to the world: “NOBODY IS HOME. Go ahead and dump on us. There is no one here to mind; in fact, us nobodies welcome it.”

How long do you give a country whose leading art institutions project the self-abasement of hatred, of self-pity, of cynicism, or of the deformed?

America is embarking now on a moral crusade to eradicate the evil of terrorism from the world. It is a sick irony of massive proportions that America, through its network of museums, dealers, intelligentsia, and funding, is the world’s leading exponent of postmodern art. One hell of a blow to the pursuit of happiness concept. The bloody formless waste that was the World Trade Center and its people is a symbolic and literal marking of the decline of a civilization. But this does not have to be. It is imperative that Americans do three things to repair the damage wrought on her by the terrorists and the postmodernists:

You do not have to be an expert in art to tell the director of a museum that you are disgusted by their exhibitions and you would prefer to see progress in the arts, not disintegration. It won’t go by them unnoticed.

Support the arts that give you the experience that you are glad and thankful to be alive –works you can point out with pride.

And build a new Wonder of the World.

Michael Newberry
October 8th, 2001. Revised in New York, 2007

Beautiful Qashqa'i women of Iran in their colorful traditional dresses. The Qashqa'i are one of Iran's many ethnic minority groups (See below for more information about them and other ethnic groups).

Greetings Everyone!

I don’t know how to thank you for all your kind messages, for forwarding these windows to others, and for recommending it. Over thirty names have been added to the list in the past two days alone. All I can say is I am delighted these windows have so many onlookers. Welcome to window number eight!

Current Issues

* On the last day of House legislative business, Iran sanctions advocates pushed through legislation ( HR 6198 ) strengthening sanctions and promoting a policy of regime-change in Iran.
Managing the bill on the House floor, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen made the
case that IFSA’s policies complemented US diplomatic activity.
“Sanctions target the Iranian regime where it is most vulnerable:
its energy sector,” said Ros-Lehtinen in her opening remarks.
Leading a bipartisan corps of members who spoke in opposition to
the measure, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) characterized the latest
version of the Iran Freedom Support Act (IFSA) as a “cruise
missile” and stated that, “the timing for this legislation could
not be worse.” Right he is. The most immediate impact of this
“cruise missile” — besides hurting ordinary people not the regime
– is weakening the moderates within the Iranian political sphere.
The hard-liners will loose no time in using this legislation to
remind the country that America is indeed Iran’s enemy.

Nothing heals like a good poem! In response to this aggressive move,
let’s read together a stanza from a great classic of twentieth century
Persian poetry by Ahmad Shamlu (b.1925), Shamlu, known as the “Poet of
Liberty,” faced hostility by the Shah’s regime and remained out of favor
with the Islamic Republic. He wrote some of the most poignant
revolutionary, as well as lyrical, poems of modern Persian language.
Here is an excerpt from a poem he dedicated to his wife Aida called
“Aida in the Mirror” translated by my good friend Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak
(University of Maryland):

Tempests play magnificently a tiny flute
in your grand dance
And the singing of your veins makes the sun of always rise
(Let me rise from sleep so that the lanes of the city
perceive my presence).

Your hands are reconciliation
and friends helping that hostilities may be forgotten

Suggested Reading: An Anthology of Modern Persian Poetry, selected and
translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak ( Westview Press, 1978 ) Still is
available through Amazon Books.

Science

* On a much happier note, Iran’s cloned sheep born yesterday is
alive and kicking, reported Iranian doctors in the Royan
research center in Isfahan. More significantly, a combination of
the cloning methods and the new progress made by Iranian
physicians in the field of spinal injuries has created
possibilities of curing those suffering from spinal damages,
Nasr-Esfahani said. Iranian specialists recently announced a
breakthrough in curing spinal injuries with the culture of Schwann
cells enabling those suffering from paralysis to move. For cute
pictures of the newly born cloned sheep click on the first link
below (here the text is Persian)
http://www.isna.ir/Main/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-799766&Lang=P

For more reading on the subject, click on this link:
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-16/0610015225123117.htm and
http://www.payvand.com/news/06/oct/1015.html

Social

* This is the Children’s week in Iran. Each day is devoted to a
topic such as “Children and Health”, “Children and Equal
Opportunities,” etc. The United Nations International Children’s
Fund (UNICEF) will participate in the events. Activists such as
Shirin Ebadi have been instrumental in drawing attention to
children’s rights in Iran. More needs to be done, particularly in
relation to minority children such as abandoned children of
Afghani fathers who have returned to Afghanistan after the
collapse of the Taliban regime.

* Many of you have been asking questions about ethnic minorities in
Iran. I will keep an eye open for material. Iran’s ethnic
diversity is truly amazing. Of course, like everywhere else, all
kinds of jokes and stereotypes are attached to each group. In
general, however, people are fairly used to hearing different
languages and seeing different costumes on the street. The nomadic
Qashqa’is, for example, still wear their very colorful dresses.
Click on this link to see a beautiful young Qashqai girl in
festive outfit (center of the page):
http://www.11iran.com/Z2INDEX.HTM . To get a general idea of
Iranian ethnic diversity and its geographical distribution click
on:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_Iran

Prominent Iranian Americans:

* This week’s personality is Google’s senior vice president for
global sales Mr. Omid Kordestani, 42. He joined  the company a
year after its establishment as its “business founder” and is
viewed as a force behind Google’s success. Here is the link if you
like to read more (courtesy of my friend Bahar Bastani):
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187475,00.html
Also, I must apologize for sending the wrong link on the Harvard
Scientist Nima Arkani in the last window. Instead of just a
picture, I meant to send this brief description of his impressive
work:
http://www.physics.harvard.edu/people/facpages/arkani-hamed.html

Art and Culture

* If you are off to France, don’t miss the exhibition of more than
200 items from the last major pre-Islamic Persian empire the
Sassanians on view at the Cernuschi Museum Paris (15th September
to 30th December 2006). By the way, art historians would tell you
that these pre-Islamic objects — and many more — survived
because Muslim conquerors of Iran did not destroy them. Click on
this link to get a brief preview:
http://www.irandokht.com/editorial/index4.php?area=pro&sectionID=9&editorialID=2143

Suggested Reading:  Mostly Miniatures: An Introduction to Persian
Painting by Oleg Grabar. A more general art history, The Golden Age of
Persian Art 1501-1722 by Sheila Canby both available through Amazon.
And Western art is exhibited in Iran. Check this one out:

* Last summer Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art held a major
exhibit (June-October 2005) called “Modern Art Movements,”
bringing together a historic number of contemporary world
masterpieces owned by Iranian Museums.  Barbara Rose who writes
about the exhibit for “The Wall Street Journal on Line” observes:
“The unprecedented show was a huge success.”  “The first gallery”
she says ” was filled with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist
paintings. There was a Gauguin still life, a rare Léger from 1913
and Picasso’s synthetic cubist masterpiece, “Fenêtre Ouverte sur
la Rue de Penthièvre,” as well as his late cast bronze of a baboon
cradling her baby, which is also in the Picasso Museum in Paris.
There were circus performers by Georges Rouault as well as a
daring watercolor by the German Dadaist George Grosz. Other
European and American modern masters were on view with a special
section devoted to Pop artists Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol,
David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine.
Also in the collection are sculptures by Magritte, Henry Moore and
Giacometti; paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró and Georges
Braque; and three important Toulouse-Lautrecs.”

Now, check out Ms. Barbara Rose’s tone in her write up:

*”Most remarkably,” she observes “an entire gallery was devoted
to Abstract Expressionism, the art movement that proclaimed
America’s cultural primacy.”  She is even more shocked at the
Iranian Museum of Contemporary art’s “continuing to list the works
of modern Western art, including a number of prominent Jewish
artists, as part of its permanent collection, which is presumably
open to the public [can the museum be making this up?]. A more
recent, “ironic” exhibition, she adds :” is that of paintings by
the well-known Jewish painter Marc Chagall also opened in Tehran
this summer.” [2006].

*Here is what she concludes: “No one knows what will happen to
the masterpieces of modern Western art in Tehran. They are said to
be worth billions of dollars now and are too expensive to be
destroyed.”  And finally, concerning a painting of a female leg,
owned by the museum, which has not been on display, Ms. Rose
speculates: “Did some fanatic realize it is a woman’s and throw a
cloth over its offensive nudity? Is it being held for ransom to be
exchanged for a valuable Persian manuscript or an important weapon?”

* All right, we need more antidote. Let’s just visit a few of our
concluding Visual Delights, some recent exhibits of the works of
Iranian painters and art-lovers who — no doubt — enjoyed the
above exhibit tremendously (and luckily won’t have to read Ms.
Rose’s review). I have particularly enjoyed the portrays by Nemat
Lalehei http://www.elahe.net/thumb.php?gallery=316 . Lalehei is an
artist from the northern city of Rasht. Be sure to double click on
each portraits to see the enlarged version. Another male artist,
and one very different in style and temperament is:  Masoud
Dashtban,  http://www.elahe.net/photo.php?picid=3416 . Finally,
please take a look at the works of the young photographer, Salomeh
Manouchehri. Here too, you must enlarge the photographs to see the
subtleties of her work. Enjoy:
http://www.elahe.net/thumb.php?gallery=313

Have a great week. I hope to be opening another window in about a week.
Best,

Fatemeh
========================
Fatemeh Keshavarz, Professor and Chair
Dept. of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatuares
Washington University in St. Louis
Tel: (314) 935-5156
Fax: (314) 935-4399
========================

Known derisively as the “Illuminati for hipsters,” the “Society for Concerned Indifference” is an infamous, secret organization whose existence is unconfirmed; popular legend has it that the Society—nicknamed SCI—was formed at Brown University in the early 1980’s; SCI’s members are rumored to include many young leaders of the business, publishing, entertainment, and political world; the Society for Concerned Indifference was formed in reaction to the preppy chic that became popular in the 1980’s and was personified by Princeton’s eating clubs as well as the secret societies at Yale; SCI and its members were vehemently anti-authoritarian, participating in acts of “intellectual terrorism” and “commonplace surrealism”; as its founders graduated and moved to New York City and Washington D.C., the group set roots in both cities; members of SCI are each allowed to “tap” three new members in their lifetime, and while there is no age requirement, most new members are invited in their late-20’s to mid-30’s, as they rise in their respective field; while it can not be confirmed, I have known two people that were rumored to be members of SCI; one of these people was an ex-girlfriend, though we only dated for two months, and she never spoke of SCI; after we broke up, friends of mine told me that she was supposedly a member of the Society for Concerned Indifference; they assumed that I knew and was keeping the secret; I always wondered if my ex-girlfriend thought I was unworthy of SCI membership, or of the knowledge that she was a member; the other person I know who may be a member of SCI is a former classmate from college; two years ago, I ran into him in Barcelona and we went out for drinks; after five hours of drinking Cava and absinthe, my friend referred to a party in Wainscott where the guests included numerous magazine editors and politicos; there was skinny-dipping and spouse-sharing at this party; we parted ways that night, and while we swapped e-mail addresses, I e-mailed him a week later but never heard back from him; I have since lost touch with my old classmate; SCI is known for hosting tri-annual meetings of all its membership in the Hamptons, Newport, and the Chesapeake Bay town of St. Michaels, Maryland; supposedly, members of SCI correspond with each other through encoded messages in articles in major newspapers and magazines of which their members are editors (including “The New York Times,” “The Washington Post,” “TIME,” and “Better Homes and Gardens”); John F. Kennedy Jr. was reportedly a founding member of the Society for Concerned Indifference; once, while shopping in a pet store, I encountered two women, probably a mother and daughter, examining aquariums; the mother-figure was lecturing the daughter, saying something like, “You don’t know loss. Losing J.F.K. was a tragedy, and I remember that day.”; the daughter-figure replied by saying something along the lines of, “When I found out that J.F.K. Jr. died I was plucking my eyebrows like the models in “Vogue” magazine and when the man on the radio said that John-John and his wife had both died in a plane crash I tore all my eyebrow hairs clean off my face”; the mother-figure grabbed the daughter-figure hard by her shoulder and dragged her out of the store; I was left questioning if it is possible to quantify pain, and why parents bother with pets; perhaps it is morbid and insensitive, but recently I have been wondering why celebrities that die in plane crashes tend to be so attractive; the Society for Concerned Indifference takes its name from the grave of the photographer/Dadaist, Man Ray, whose Parisian grave has an epitaph reading, “Unconcerned but not indifferent.”

Rats Saw God

Author: Rob Thomas

Page Length: 202

Reading Level: 6

REVIEW: This is the story of a high school senior, Steve York, who is called to the counselor’s (Mr. DeMouy) office to discuss how Steve, an underachieving merit scholar, can make up an English grade he failed his junior year in high school. Steve lives in San Diego with his newly remarried mom and sister. He has received a possession and three under the influence citations since the beginning of his senior year.  But Mr. DeMouy, a 30 year old counselor, wants to give Steve a second chance.  He tells Steve he can make up the failing grade by writing a 100 page essay.  He promises Steve no one else will read the essay but him.  Steve decides to take the challenge and titles his essay, “Roads Scholar”.   

The story begins in Houston, the summer after Steve’s sophomore year in high school. Steve is living with his father while his mom and sister move to San Diego after their divorce.  The book is written in two settings.  The first is Steve’s essay, a recollection of the past three years; the second is Steve’s present life, a senior in San Diego.   

Through Steve’s essay, the reader becomes familiar with the strained relationship Steve has with his father. Steve dons large hooped earrings and a bandana in an act of deviance to his Vietnam vet and astronaut father.   He admits loathing his dad as he states on page 110, “ is in better shape than me, buys American, watches CNN nonstop, drinks bottled water, reads the entire newspaper, works 16 hours a day, and has never air-guitared the Rolling Stones.”  The essay also describes the formation of the “Grace Order of Dadaists,” a club Steve and an obscure group of students charter at the high school.  From this group, Steve experiences his first love and loss of virginity.  

As Steve works through these memories in his writing, he works through feelings and relationships he has experienced.  He has both rewards and disappointments.  However, in writing about his past, Steve realizes where he needs to go and what he needs to do. 

I enjoyed this book immensely.  What I thought started off slowly, gripped my attention and I completed the book on an airplane ride to San Diego. 

TOUCHY AREAS-PAGES: The book has mature content about drugs and sex.  On pages 150-154 is a graphic picture of Steve’s first sexual experience.  It is not inappropriate for mature high school students but teachers should be aware of it. I would suggest this book for junior and senior students and any adults in the education field. 

RELATED WEBSITES: 

www.bookrags.com/studyguide-rats-saw-god/

www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/Rats-Saw-God.html

http://bfgb.wordpress.com/2007/08/21/rats-saw-god-by-rob-thomas/

http://moorebrarians.blogspot.com/2007/12/rats-saw-god-by-rob-thomas.html

www.powells.com/biblio/62-9781416938972-0

REVIEWED BY: Shirley Wagner

Alright, so I managed to be more productive than usual.

I’ve posted detail shots below because the original image file is 10″x30″ at 300dpi… not something to easily view on the interwound.

Suze left her iPod at work this weekend. Normally this isn’t a major disaster but we were having company over and needed to have music playing while we cleaned up the house, if not during company itself.  So I was asked to bring my iPod out of it’s protective gym casing and allowed to set it into the docking station for the day.

Needless to say, my wife and I have different tastes in music. And just to be on the safe side (in case I didn’t realize it) she let me know we had different tastes in music this evening, which was her polite way of saying that she didn’t really like everything my pod was shuffling through. Funny how the fact that I don’t dig what her pod shuffles most of the time doesn’t matter, especially since she hogs the docking station. But I digress.

What I was reminded of tonight, and one of the first times I ever put an iPod in shuffle songs mode, was how well-matched the music seemed to be. Even when it shifted genres or decades or styles, somehow the pod knew how best to match things: when to bring the tempo up or down, how to match beats, matching closing and opening keys. Man, I thought, that’s one smart program they’ve written for a music player.

Except Apple didn’t write that program. I did. And I did it using the time-honored methods outlined by Dadaist artist Tristan Tzara back in the 1920s. And I didn’t even know it (which is really the only proper way to do it). Allow me to explain.

In 1924 little Sami Rosenstock, a.k.a. Tristan Tzara, as one of the founders of the Dada art movement published a book entitled Seven Dada Manifestos. Among the manifestos Tzara included instructions for writing a Dada poem. Here are the complete instructions:

To make a Dadaist poem:
Take a newspaper.
Take a pair of scissors.
Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
Shake it gently.
Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
Copy conscientiously.
The poem will be like you.
And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.

I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting the point of this little exercise.  The poem will be like you because, in a sense, you have consciously chosen the elements to be included even if you had no real say in their order.  In choosing the article and the length, in choosing the words, you have in essence subconsciously programmed all the possible meanings and permutations of your poem.  In the end, only one order will emerge of all the possibilities, and it couldn’t possibly be otherwise.

You see where I’m going:  my iPod is the bag, the songs I’ve loaded are the words, and the shuffle element randomly chooses songs.  That the final playlist “works” is because in pre-selecting the songs to be included the final playback of those songs in whatever order “resembles me.”  Where I find myself wishing to skip songs when the pod is in shuffle is when it’s playing back a song I loaded for reasons other than personal enjoyment — like songs I loaded in order to make mix discs for my girls, or for specific playlists (like the gym list) that have their own separate applications.  Of course I’m going to think the iPod can read my mind, I’ve loaned it the building blocks of my own subconscious programming.

It’s nice to think of all these pod people walking around with a little bit of Dada filling their ears.

Multă vreme după ce  moda culturală din Sais a fost  adusă la Atena,  Lenin, pseudonimul ideologului comunist rus Vladimir Ilici Ulianov, prieten personal cu dadaistul Tristan Tzara, va comenta că reforma instituţională de la Atena  indusă  de  legislatorul Solon prin ‚importul  saitic’  fusese cea dintâi  revoluţie din Europa. Acest  comentariu ne dovedeşte faptul că Lenin citise  foarte atent celebrul Discours sur les sciences et les arts al lui Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Lenin considera că democraţia trebuie să fie precedată de importul arhetipurilor culturale sacerdotale.Titus Filipas

Photo montage uploaded by Bunaen

Towers Open Fire by Tony Balch and Bill Burroughs is often ignored in discussions of avant-garde film.

Towers Open Fire is a montage of scenes from Burroughs’ “cut up” novels. In fact the film shows how it is done. Pages are cut up and reassembled into prose.

More watchable than a pure Dadaist exercise, it is still anti-bourgeoisie at heart, and it is a trial of one’s sensibilities. After all, the aim of surrealistic cinema is “deliberately to try the patience of the audience” — Man Ray

I like the flicker “Dream Machine” that appears from time to time. Intended to be viewed with one’s eyes closed, the flicker Dream Machine supposedly induces hallucinations without the use of drugs.

Those who are familiar with Burroughs novels may recognize themes from his books in this full frontal onslaught. Enjoy!

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