Periods of happiness are empty pages in history, for they are the periods of harmony, times when the antithesis is missing.
Hegel citado hoje pelo Prof. Viriato Soromenho-Marques (um comunicador nato, de quem sou absolutamente fã), numa conferência sobre a Crise Global do Ambiente.
Calle got an email from a lover, dumping her. She asked a team of women – all experts in their professional fields – to respond to it. Each woman interprets the letter from her point of view: a jurist analyses it as the termination of a contract, a translator examines its grammar, a composer turns it into music.
Na exposição de Sophie Calle Talking to Strangers, Whitechapel Art Gallery, em Londres (via The Guardian).
Comentário de L., cheio de sono, ontem à noite, depois de assistirmos ao documentário sobre Roman Polanski na RTP2 (durante o qual L. esteve grande parte do tempo a dormir):
«Não te preocupes, o Obama resolve.»
Errata: alterei o título do post anterior de "Sobre o sistema judicial" para "Sobre o sistema".
Será que o estatuto de celebridade de Polanski lhe proporcionou algum tipo de refúgio, como já se ouviu dizer?(...)A "celebridade" de Roman Polanski não o está a proteger; está a prejudicá-lo. Não se trata de Polanski se estar a esconder por detrás do nome; é precisamente o nome que atrai a atenção sobre a sua pessoa. A presença do realizador no tribunal configurará mais um carnaval político-mediático que um julgamento justo.
Excerto de um artigo de opinião de Bernard Henri-Lévy, publicado hoje no jornal i, através do qual fiquei a saber que Charles Manson, que assassinou (brutalmente) a mulher (grávida) de Polanski em 1969, vai sair em liberdade condicional no início do próximo ano.
Autocarro de campanha estacionado hoje, pelas 19h30, no Príncipe Real. I love Lisboa.
Designer Miguel Adrover (b. Spain, 1965)
I Love New York, Dress, 2000
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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.
(...)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.
Bruce Davidson, Two Gallery-goers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1968. © Bruce Davidson, Magnum Photos
... brincar à beira-mar com uma criança e um regadorzinho. «Vão nascer flores nos teus pés», dizia ela.
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?
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."
Walker Evans, Bathers in Ocean, From Elevated Position, Coney Island, New York, 1928-30. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
