Lixo não reciclável

Autocarro de campanha estacionado hoje, pelas 19h30, no Príncipe Real. I love Lisboa.

Artwork of the day

Designer Miguel Adrover (b. Spain, 1965)
I Love New York, Dress, 2000
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Publicidade

Não sabemos o que é que a manobra de Verão do 31 da Armada fez pela causa monárquica (nada?), mas agora já ficamos a saber o que fez pela carreira profissional do seu principal interveniente, Rodrigo Moita de Deus.

Rentrés

Lei Seca (Pedro Mexia)
Sete Sombras (Pedro Lomba)

Signature shot

Interesting (ii)

(...)The strongest, most successful move against beauty was in the arts: beauty - and the caring about beauty - was restrictive; as the current idiom has it, elitist. Our appreciations, it was felt, could be so much more inclusive if we said that something, instead of being beautiful, was "interesting".

Of course, when people said a work of art was interesting, this did not mean that they necessarily liked it - much less that they thought it beautiful. It usually meant no more than they thought they ought to like it. Or that they like it, sort of, even though it wasn't beautiful.

Or they might describe something as interesting to avoid the banality of calling it beautiful. Photography was the art where "the interesting" first triumphed, and early on: the new, photographic way of seeing proposed everything as a potential subject for the camera. The beautiful could not have yielded such a range of subjects; and it soon came to seem uncool to boot as a judgment. Of a photograph of a sunset, a beautiful sunset, anyone with minimal standards of verbal sophistication might well prefer to say, "Yes, the photograph is interesting."

What is interesting? Mostly, what has not previously been thought beautiful (or good). The sick are interesting, as Nietzsche points out. The wicked, too. To name something as interesting implies challenging old orders of praise; such judgments aspire to be found insolent or at least ingenious. Connoisseurs of "the interesting" - whose antonym is "the boring" - appreciate clash, not harmony. Liberalism is boring, declares Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political, written in 1932. (The following year he joined the Nazi Party.) A politics conducted according to liberal principles lacks drama, flavor, conflict, while strong autocratic politics - and war - are interesting.

Long use of "the interesting" as a criterion of value has, inevitably, weakened its transgressive bite.(...)One calls something interesting precisely so as not to have to commit to a judgment of beauty (or of goodness).(...)It is a peculiarly inconclusive way of experiencing reality.(...)

Susan Sontag em An Argument About Beauty, ensaio do livro póstumo At the Same Time, Penguin, 2007.

Interesting

Bruce Davidson, Two Gallery-goers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1968. © Bruce Davidson, Magnum Photos

Are you the Einstein of art?

quizz

Felicidade pode ser...

... brincar à beira-mar com uma criança e um regadorzinho. «Vão nascer flores nos teus pés», dizia ela.

We care a lot, mas não somos omnipresentes

O João Bonifácio, hoje no Público, foi justamente generoso na apreciação ao Giro da Flor Caveira (grandes!), mas injustamente parco em elogios à actuação fabulosa dos Faith No More e ao incansável Mike Patton (vê-se que Bonifácio nunca gostou de FNM na adolescência e que não anda à procura do seu disco Angel Dust - terá ficado em casa dos meus pais quando me mudei?). Vai daí, acho que se impõe um pedido de desculpas formal da organização do Festival por ter feito coincidir na noite de sábado a última parte do Giro com o início do concerto dos FNM, obrigando pessoas de bem a correr o recinto de um extremo ao outro em poucos minutos, do palco não-sei-quê (mais pequeno) para o palco não-sei-quantos (maior). Foi a minha estreia no Sudoeste, aos 32 anos. Midlife crisis?

Exposure

Berenice Abbott, James Joyce, 1926. © Berenice Abbott/Commerce Graphics Ltd. Inc.

Berenice Abbott opened a photographic portrait studio in Paris in 1926 after having worked for three years as an assistant to Man Ray, whom she had met in New York. Although her Paris portraits are indebted stylistically to Man Ray's, she brought to them a sympathetic eye that was very much her own. Her portraits of women are notable for their empathic understanding of her subjects, but she reached a depth of expression in her photographs of James Joyce (1882-1941). Abbott photographed Joyce on two occasions, the first in 1926 at his home, the second in 1928 at her studio, as was her more customary practice. In spite of Abbott's annotation on the back of the print, this portrait belongs to the earlier session, when Joyce was photographed both with and without the patch over his eye, worn because of his sadly degenerating sight. For this particular exposure Joyce removed the patch and held it, with his glasses, in his right hand; his forehead still bears the diagonal impression of the ribbon. This intimate portrait, with its softly diffused lighting, suggests the complex, introverted character of Joyce's imagination. It is with good reason that Abbott's are considered the definitive portraits of the author of "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake."

Com a devida distância

Walker Evans, Bathers in Ocean, From Elevated Position, Coney Island, New York, 1928-30. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Um voto pode fazer a diferença

Nas próximas autárquicas não vou poder votar na minha "nova" freguesia, onde moro há 4 anos e 2 meses, mas da qual só faço parte oficialmente desde 30 de Julho de 2009. Ora a actualização dos cadernos eleitorais terminou a 27 de Julho. Por 3 dias, é galo. A Exma. Sra. Presidente da Junta (PS) não me dá um jeitinho?

A minha campanha

Santana, não vales uma bifana.

Propaganda

Jardim Botto Machado, Lisboa, Agosto 2009

Panteão Amália

Nokia 2 megapixel (com zoom in no máximo)

Boletim meteorológico

Pinga-amor (ii)

- Se o aeroporto fosse em Alcochete também me ias lá levar?
- Claro...

Versos (quase) brancos

Traí a Sagres ao almoço com uma cerveja belga. Mas foi tão sem significado, nem me lembro do nome dela.

Pinga-amor

Estou aqui, estou a escrever poemas. Depois não digam que não avisei.