Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Tomorrow and Thursday in Nor Cal: The Painted Word Book Tour


I am honored to announce the publication of my latest collaboration with the author Phil Cousineau:
 The Painted Word
Sixty-three of my artworks are included in this new volume. 


Book Tour Dates - All Are Welcome & All Events are Free. I will bring a group of the artworks included in the book to each event listed below:

In Northern California:

51 Tamal Vista Blvd | Corte Madera, California
Wednesday, September 12, 2012, 7:00 PM (Art by Gregg Chadwick Courtesy The Sandra Lee Gallery, San Francisco)


NEW BOOK:  The Painted Word By Phil Cousineau and Gregg Chadwick

"When Phil Cousineau and Gregg Chadwick join creative forces it is an important event. This historic collaboration shines with fresh insights into both language and art."
— Alexander Eliot, author of 300 Years of American Painting and The Global Myths

Notes on the Artwork In The Painted Word
When I was young, the form of words—the way they looked— intrigued me and I often wondered what it would be like to look at a word and not be able to read or understand it. In essence, I wondered about the indecipherable mystery behind the word. The artworks I have created for The Painted Word take that sense of mystery into the world of paint and image.

Each creation began with that wonderful, slippery stuff that never wants to be tamed or pinned down: paint. Specifically, I use oil paint for its historical resonance and also because of its liquid origins in the oil pressed from flax. From this plant comes both linseed oil, which is mixed with dry powdered pigments to create oil paint, and linen, which traditionally has been used as the surface that oils are painted upon. Whenever I unroll a new bolt of linen in my studio a rich fragrance reminis- cent of a newly cut field fills the room.

I find that freshly stretched paintings waiting for their first touch of color invite the mystery of life and creation. The word stories written by Phil Cousineau opened up a similar sense of wonder. Like the words, each tube of paint also brought its history into the room. Color names are words steeped in myth and meaning. Lapis Lazuli evokes dangerous treks along the Silk Road into Afghanistan that brought this exquisite blue stone into the workshops of Renaissance artists. The pigment was so expensive and so important it was often reserved for coloring the heavens and Mary’s garments. A separate clause in the artist’s contract would dictate how much the client would pay for the Lapis Lazuli in addition to the amount paid for the artist’s services. Other colors weren’t so dear but were still rich in lore. Burnt Sienna is a warm brown earth pigment that was dug up in the fields surrounding Siena, Italy. Cinnabar, a brilliant red originally found in minerals veined with mercury, also made its way along the Silk Road from its source in China. I used all three of these colors in many of the paintings in The Painted Word.

Gregg Chadwick

(From The Painted Word, available in September 2012. 
Published in the United States by Viva Editions, an imprint of Cleis Press, Inc., 2246 Sixth Street, Berkeley, California 94710.)



"If The Painted Word were a club act, I'd sit there drinking in Cousineau's revelations, tales and mythologies until they kicked me out of the joint. Reading this brew of etymology, history, lore, and pop connections, with lambent illustrations by Gregg Chadwick, is just as intoxicating. A Cousineau riff on a (passionately selected) word is like Mark Twain meets Coleridge meets Casey Stengel meets---well, everyone who's fun and informative, whether the riff is on autologophagist (someone who eats his/her words) or jack, which, believe me, the world-traveled Cousineau knows when it comes to language. "

—Arthur Plotnik, author of The Elements of Expression: Putting Thoughts Into Words



Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Writer of Magic: Ray Bradbury Dies at 91


Ray Bradbury
Santa Monica, California 2009
Photo by Gregg Chadwick


The author Ray Bradbury died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 91. Gerald Jonas in the New York Times describes Bradbury as "a master of science fiction whose lyrical evocations of the future reflected both the optimism and the anxieties of his own postwar America." After atomic weapons obliterated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fears that science had become more of a threat than a boon found their way into science fiction films and stories that depicted a dystopian future. Bradbury used the magic of stories to create literary works that used this threat as a source of tension in works that often left an impression of hope rather than horror.




For the book loving Bradbury, his novel Fahrenheit 451 - whose title refers to the temperature at which paper ignites - seems to be the most harrowing of his works. A future America that would burn books and thus control the river of ideas and imagination was a horror to be avoided at all costs. François Truffaut turned the book into a critically acclaimed film in 1966 which featured a moving film score by the composer Bernard Herrmann. When Herrmann asked Truffaut why he was chosen over more modernist composers to create music for the film, Truffaut replied,"They'll give me music of the twentieth century, but you'll give me music of the twenty first." Ray Bradbury gave us stories of the 21st century and beyond that will continue to inspire. 


Ray Bradbury
Santa Monica, California 2009
Photo by Gregg Chadwick


More at:

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Maurice Sendak: An Artist In Love With the World and the Things That Go Bump in the Night


by Gregg Chadwick


“Dear Mr. Sendak,  How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.”
 -From a letter sent by an eight year old reader to Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak
 Where the Wild Things Are
Pen and ink and watercolor on paper  1963



Maurice Sendak was an artist in love with the world and with things that go bump in the night. Sendak looked deeply at the world around him. His vision included the visible nature of  our existence and the invisible, but no less real, world of dreams. Sendak's beautifully crafted artworks for his books began with simple pencil sketches that were then enlarged and fleshed out with pen and ink which was then layered with glowing watercolor washes. 

The finished paintings on paper reflect what Dave Eggers described in a Vanity Fair article on Sendak as the "unhinged and chiaroscuro subconscious of a child." Sendak's books and images appealed to readers of all ages. Sendak took the deep mysteries of life head-on and allowed us all to journey to where the wild things are.
 In an interview with Terry Gross in September 2011, Maurice Sendak reflected on his mortality and the transient nature of life in general:
"Yes. I'm not unhappy about becoming old. I'm not unhappy about what must be. It makes me cry only when I see my friends go before me and life is emptied. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again. And it's like a dream life. I am reading a biography of Samuel Palmer, which is written by a woman in England. I can't remember her name. And it's sort of how I feel now, when he was just beginning to gain his strength as a creative man and beginning to see nature. But he believed in God, you see, and in heaven, and he believed in hell. Goodness gracious, that must have made life much easier. It's harder for us nonbelievers.
But, you know, there's something I'm finding out as I'm aging that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old, they're beautiful. And you see I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music. You know, I don't think I'm rationalizing anything. I really don't. This is all inevitable and I have no control over it."
We are fortunate that Maurice Sendak's love for beauty and the mystery of existence forged a unique vision that led to his magical books and images. He will be greatly missed.

Maurice Sendak
Outside Over There
Pen and ink and watercolor on paper 1978


Portrait of Maurice Sendak by Annie Leibovitz 

More at:




Monday, January 30, 2012

Peter Clothier's Inspiring New Book: Mind Work

by Gregg Chadwick






Peter Clothier's Mind Work explores the history and spiritual dimensions of his inspiring life. Clothier is known for insightful writing on the arts and artists which adds luminosity to the events depicted in Mind Work. The volume delves deeply into a life well lived and inspires us to consider our own lives in a spirit of humility and acceptance. 

The book is  structured into a series of essays that reflect an admiration for Montaigne's writings. In this spirit, each chapter of Mind Work dwells upon a singular idea and illuminates this idea with episodes drawn from Clothier's experiences. 

Mind Work deftly weaves Peter's family history into essays rich with metaphysical questioning. Looming behind much of Clothier's life is the recurring struggle to both live up to his father's dreams for him and to overcome them. In one pivotal chapter, Clothier and his wife Ellie encounter, for the first time, Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses in the Church of St. Peter in Chains in Rome. Clues to Peter's past, present and future are found in that moment. As I read that passage, I pictured all the Peter Clothiers depicted in the book - from the just named infant, to the wounded boy, to the young man on the train to Spain, to the adolescent bloodied in a German car crash, to the young father unsure of life and family, to the art writer, to the academic, to the inspirational man that Peter is today. 

The Buddhist practice of meditation plays a vital role in Peter's life. Discussions of Buddhism provide an interconnecting thread throughout Mind Work. In essence, life for Peter can be seen as a series of actions and then the result of these actions. Peter's mantra, "This is not me. This is not mine. This is not who I am.", guides us through Mind Work and reminds us of the inspired discipline found in his spiritual struggles and triumphs. 

Peter Clothier's Mind Work  honestly grapples with one man's life and expands the viewpoint to help us consider the human condition. The writing in Mind Work  is cinematic and brings us face to face with the rich life and the fertile mind of Peter Clothier. 

Highly recommended.





Peter Clothier Reads by Torchlight at the Standard Hotel, Hollywood
photo by Gregg Chadwick



More at:
Parami Press: Mind Work by Peter Clothier
Peter Clothier's Always Engaging Blog: The Buddha Diaries

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

The Ghost in the Human Machine: Tony Bennett's Nude Drawing of Lady Gaga

by Gregg Chadwick

Lady Gaga Poses For Tony Bennett in His Atelier
photo and concept by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair


During Lady Gaga's entertaining Thanksgiving special she joked about her brief gig as a life model for singer and visual artist Tony Bennett. Gaga recounted:
"I walked in and said, 'Well, Tony, here we are,' and I dropped my robe and I got into position. I felt shy and thought, 'It's Tony Bennett. Why am I naked?"
Lady Gaga had come face to face with what Kathleen Rooney describes as the “spine-tingling combination of power and vulnerability, submission and dominance” of nude modeling in her
marvelous book Live Nude Girl : My Life As An Object. Rooney's book provides an introspective look at the history and challenges of art modeling from the model's point of view. Rooney's meditative prose leads us to a point of connection between muse and artist.
Why after centuries of images in charcoal, paint, stone and silver print do artists still feel the need to depict the human figure? For me it is our shared connection as sentient, sexual, and spiritual beings. By taking the time to deeply look at and into another person we move closer to finding the ghost in the human machine. At our core we are all naked.



Tony Bennett
Figure Study of Lady Gaga
18"x24" charcoal on paper 2011


 Tony Bennett's nude charcoal drawing of Lady Gaga is up for auction at eBay Celebrity, with proceeds to benefit the two singers' foundations – Tony Bennett's Exploring the Arts and Lady Gaga's Born This Way


The Rose of Time
Gregg Chadwick
The Rose of Time
30"x20" oil on linen 201o
Manifesta Maastricht Gallery, The Netherlands


Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Theater of Memory Catalog Now Available in the iTunes Bookstore

I am pleased to announce that the catalog for my exhibition Theater of Memory at Monterey Peninsula College is now available in a digital format in the iTunes Bookstore.

Please click on the iBookstore Logo for more info.


Theater of Memory: Paintings By Gregg Chadwick - Gregg Chadwick

Monday, October 31, 2011

Into the Reason of Things: Jonathan Moreno's "The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America"


By Gregg Chadwick

Are we making monsters in university laboratories? How much is a life worth? Where does science start and religion end? When it comes to contemporary advances in science, the general public can feel lost on the margins as new discoveries whizz past like speeding rockets on the Bonneville Salt Flats. As humans we are primed to distrust or misunderstand unfamiliar things or states of being. Is it any wonder that popular culture since the dawn of the modern era is full of out of control scientific experimentation such as that found in Mary Shelley's cautionary novel Frankenstein?

Fear of the unknown may often be polarizing. Knowledge may be liberating. Jonathan Moreno's new book, The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, shines a light on the issues surrounding contemporary scientific explorations. Moreno focuses on the current place of science and politics in the United States, yet Moreno also deftly explores through a long lens, the philosophical history of scientific thought and the political debates that have ensued

Slipstream
Gregg Chadwick
Slipstream
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

Moreno argues in a balanced fashion, as his book considers the debates over the ethics undergirding contemporary scientific discoveries and explorations. Should the government fund scientific projects? Is there a limit to scientific advancement? The discussion becomes especially heated in the political sphere, when advancements in current Biology are considered. At times, the rhetoric adheres to a standard Red State vs. Blue State pattern. Moreno explains that, when considering science, alternatives exist to the stagnant polarization often found in the political sphere. Moreno quotes Charles Peirce's definition that science "does not consist so much in knowledge...as it does in diligent inquiry into truth for truth's sake, without any sort of axe to grind, nor for the sake of delight of contemplating it, but from the impulse to penetrate into the reason of things...."

Moreno's The Body Politic delves deeply into the battles over science in our era and ultimately calms our irrational fears by questioning the mad scientist trope: "The notion that science is an enemy of moral and civic education is puzzling. How then to account for the coincidence of the development of science with the growth of liberal democracy and the recognition of human rights since the eighteenth century?"

Jonathan Moreno's groundbreaking book, The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, should be required reading for all students in the sciences and all those interested in our place in the universe. Highly recommended.





Introduction:
Neera Tanden, Chief Operating Officer, Center for American Progress
Distinguished Panelist:
Jonathan Moreno, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress; David and Lyn Silfen University Professor, University of Pennsylvania; and Author, The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America
Moderator:
Andrew Light, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress; and Associate Director, Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, George Mason University

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Defending the Muse: Michael Stein and Paul Georges

Paul Georges
The Studio
120”x79 1/2” oil on canvas 1965
The Whitney Museum Collection, New York
Courtesy Paul Georges Estate

Michael Stein's new novel "The Rape of the Muse" ponders the worth of art and the place of beauty in our contemporary society. Stein's re-imagining of painter Paul Georges' trial for libel in 1980 updates the events to the 21st century and fleshes out the characters with a post September 11th ennui. When Georges' trial took place in 1980, the Neo-Expressionist boom in art was just beginning. Emotional, brightly colored paintings using the figure as a theme filled galleries in New York and Europe. In that time Paul Georges’ artwork was included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. But still, Georges was an outsider looking in on an art world that often considered narrative painting to be atavistic at best - reactionary at worst.

Paul Georges
The Mugging of the Muse
80”x103” oil on canvas 1972-1974
Courtesy Paul Georges Estate

Michael Stein adeptly weaves elements of Paul Georges' life into the story of his fictive painter - Harris Montrose. Montrose cares deeply about the gift and responsibility of art. This humble esteem for the muse that stokes his creative fire leads to a showdown with an artistic colleague over a limned image. Are we all fair game for artistic interpretation? Is anything really private anymore? Is the language of painting relevant to our time?

Stein brings in a young artist, already marked by the reigning critics as one to watch, who is psychologically blocked from the creative process. This young artist, Rand Taber, becomes Montrose's studio assistant. As if in a scene from Martin Scorsese's segment in the film "New York Stories", Taber learns life lessons from his mentor Montrose. In this sense, Michael Stein seems to hold up the elder painter as a pugnacious model of validity. Harris Montrose paints like his life depends on it. The muse needs to be honored. And if anyone gets in the way they should heed the warnings. The muse shall be avenged.

It is refreshing to read a work in which art is considered deeply as much more than a commodity or a means to privilege. Michael Stein’s “The Rape of the Muse” is gutsy – almost an aesthetic bar fight of a novel. It is heartening to feel Paul Georges’ passion seep into Stein’s writing. Art is not just style. At its best, art considers life and then makes something new. Michael Stein’s “The Rape of the Muse” digs into the life and work of the forceful painter Paul Georges and conjures up a story for our moment.

Highly recommended.


Michael Stein

More at:
Life and Art of Paul Georges
Michael Stein's Website

Monday, August 29, 2011

The New Yorker Releases Excerpt From Haruki Murakami's New Novel 1Q84

Stilled Life (Akihabara) 30"x22" monotype on paper 2011
Gregg Chadwick
Stilled Life (Akihabara)
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

TOWN OF CATS
(Excerpt from 1Q84)
by Haruki Murakami

At Koenji Station, Tengo boarded the Chuo Line inbound rapid-service train. The car was empty. He had nothing planned that day. Wherever he went and whatever he did (or didn’t do) was entirely up to him. It was ten o’clock on a windless summer morning, and the sun was beating down. The train passed Shinjuku, Yotsuya, Ochanomizu, and arrived at Tokyo Central Station, the end of the line. Everyone got off, and Tengo followed suit. Then he sat on a bench and gave some thought to where he should go. “I can go anywhere I decide to,” he told himself. “It looks as if it’s going to be a hot day. I could go to the seashore.” He raised his head and studied the platform guide...
Continue reading in The New Yorker at: Excerpt from Haruki Murakami's Upcoming Novel 1Q84




Above: The Cover for Haruki Murakami's New Novel 1Q84:
1. Jacket 2. Binding 3.Complete
(Cover design by Chip Kidd. More at: Chip Kidd Discusses the Book Jacket for Haruki Murakami’s Forthcoming Novel 1Q84)

Also: New Jersey School Board Bans Reading of Haruki Murakami's Novel Norwegian Wood.

Knopf, Murakami's US publisher responds:

“We are disheartened to learn about the action by a New Jersey school district to remove a book from its required reading list due to objections from a group of concerned parents. The novel, NORWEGIAN WOOD by Haruki Murakami, was originally selected for the list based on suggestions by teachers, librarians, and administrators within the district, and the list was approved by the board of education. It is unfortunate the parents felt the need to dismiss such an important work of fiction and regrettable the school district would succumb to such pressure and disregard the recommendation of its own professional educators.”

More Details at: Knopf Responds to NJ School District’s Withdrawal of Murakami Novel from Reading List





Friday, August 26, 2011

Breath of Allah: Jamil Ahmad's "The Wandering Falcon"

by Gregg Chadwick

In his first work of fiction, The Wandering Falcon, Jamil Ahmad depicts a world caught between timeless paths of migration and geo-political modernity. Ahmad knits together a series of short stories that cover the life arc of one young man, Tor Baz - the wandering falcon of the title, as he journeys from infancy to manhood.



Inspired by his time as a civil service worker in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Ahmad writes of a world governed by clan and custom. During his time as a powerful emissary of the Pakistani government under the tribal region's frontier governing system, Jamil Ahmad simultaneously served as politician, police chief, judge, jury and executioner. Bits of this personal history are woven within the stories, including hints of Jamil's wife's German heritage. Environmentalist and activist Helga Ahmad was instrumental in encouraging her husband Jamil to move from  halting first attempts at poetry to richly crafted stories of people, place and borders.

The bleak landscapes in the book evoke a world of nomadic treks where human contact is brief and often violent, and where far western desert winds blows clouds of sand so thick that breath is priceless. The environment is unforgiving as is the justice doled out by tribe and government.

Jamil Ahmad finished The Wandering Falcon in 1973-74 but the stories did not find a publisher until this year. Penguin Books' decision to at last publish Jamil's stories is timely. Ahmad  believes that his stories evoke a vanishing world of tribes that the modern world must resonate and harmonize with: "Because frankly speaking, I still think that each one of us has a tribal gene inside, embedded inside. I really think that way."

                                                                         Jamil Ahmad

Jamil Ahmad hopes that deeper understanding of the tribes that once roamed freely between the far borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran could help end the wars that stain their mountains and valleys with blood. Reading The Wandering Falcon can help begin a process of understanding between the timeless nomadic life and the fragmenting borders of our post-modern society.

Our contemporary world has much to learn from the rhythms of the nomadic trail. I highly recommend Jamil Ahmad's magnificent book The Wandering Falcon.

Breath of Allah
Gregg Chadwick
Breath of Allah
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

More at:
The Wandering Falcon's Site on Penguin.com

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

This Digital Life: A Chat With Adam Gopnik

I enjoy the writing of Adam Gopnik. His current piece in the New Yorker, How the Internet Gets Inside Us, delves into the spaces between man and machines: between the internet and inner self.

Today the New Yorker hosted a chat with Adam Gopnik. I found the conversation to be fascinating and have archived it below.


The New Yorker: Adam Gopnik will be joining us shortly to discuss the Internet. For now, please submit your questions.

2:00 Adam Gopnik: Hey everyone. Glad to be here for the slightly ironic-meta purpose of carrying on a conversation on the internet about the uses of conversations on the internet. Let me start taking questions. A.G.

2:00 [Comment From Doug]
When did you first start using the Web? Were you a late or early adopter?

2:01 Adam Gopnik:: Early or late? Somewhere in between I suppose. I went on e-mail in the mid nineties while living in Paris-- my life is now composed of nothing but e-mail and caffiene-- but only really started being addicted as the world did, in the early noughts.

2:01 [Comment From KyleS]
Are you in the prognostication business? What’s the future for the printed book?

Die Kathedrale Der Bucher (The Cathedral of Books)
Gregg Chadwick
Die Kathedrale Der Bucher (The Cathedral of Books)
20"x16" oil on linen 2010


2:02 Adam Gopnik: Wish I knew. I live for books, love books, and cannot imagine a world without them. The book to my mind is the ideal technology -- you take it with you from window to table to bed -- and I love everything else about them: spines and turned pages and smells.

2:02 [Comment From JF]
I love how you describe Internet commenters. Have these kind of forums made us less polite in real life face-to-face interactions as well?

2:03 Adam Gopnik: I doubt it somehow. I think that there's a kind of abashed moment when virtual friends meet, and no doubt an equally abashed moment when internet opponents meet.

2:03 [Comment From Elizabeth Bee]
Do you consider yourself to be a Never-Better, Better-Never, or Ever-Waser?

2:05 Adam Gopnik: This I see has come up in several questions. I don't know...to be brutally honest I am something more of a skeptic than the form of the essay quite encourages, but also , as I say, something of an addict, and altogether a fatalist in any case. Like every parent, I worry myself sick about the dissapearance of books from our kids lives, and , like every parent, I wonder what a world made up of pixels will produce. But, like every amateur historian, I know that these changes are the stuff of life, as I tried to document in the essay, and that wishing them away is like wishing away the tides. So....still in the middle , I suppose.

2:05 [Comment From Fred]
How has the web changed your processes for writing a piece?

2:06 Adam Gopnik:There is, as I suggested, something semi-miraculous about Google. I find myself wondering what Hemingway wrote about winter sports for a project I've embarked on, and two seconds later, boom, there it all is. That's wonderful-- magical! But the slogging hours of the writing day never alter or lessen or, really, change much.

2:07 [Comment From Gregory]
The never-betters would say that Egypt's revolution wouldn't have happened without social networking technology...

2:09 Adam Gopnik: This I think is an important point, which my friend and colleague Malcolm Gladwell has been arguing through recently , so let me take a moment here to say as precisely I can, if at length, what I think is up with that. Malcolm can speak for himself better than I can speak for him..but the issue isn’t whether people in Egypt or wherever used Twitter or whatever to communicate. Of course they did. But they used cassettes or faxes or pamphlets or whispers in years past and would have used them now if that was the easiest tech available.


Jacques-Louis David
The Oath of the Tennis Court.
66 x 101 cm. Pen and brown ink, brown wash with white highlights 1791
Musée National du Chateau de Versailles, Versailles, France.


The issue – the only issue -- is whether the availability of those new media actually changed the likelihood of their formenting social revolutions, or altered the outcomes of the ones they did. And there is no evidence of any kind , that I've seen at least, to suggest they have. In truth, every popular social revolution/movement/regime change due to since at least the French Revolution has followed the same pattern: a government weakened by war or financial crisis or both meets popular resistance which for the first time takes in members of the elite and the masses; they find a meeting space and occupy it – could be the Square or the Tennis Court – then, in the crucial moment, the army ,called on to disperse the “mob”, identifies with the cause and refuses; the government is forced to surrender. Sometimes the army – Peking 1989 does—sometimes – Moscow, 1991 – it doesn’t. On that decision – complicated in motive – turns the outcome of the revolution. (Then, most often, in depressing truth the best organized and most motivated of the parties on the opposition side – Jacobins or Bolsheviks or Mullahs – no matter how unrepresentative takes over in the period of chaos that follows the revolution.) This is the pattern that was in place in Tunisia and Cairo, as it was in St. Petersburg in 1917 or Paris in 1830 and 1848 and 1871. Why the army , who the regime had trained and fed and paid to do just that ,didn’t disperse , i.e. massacre the “mob”is always the fascinating question. In Egypt , it seems to have been prudence; in France, widespread dissastisfaction with the economic conditions.

Historians and sociologists in fifty years time may see that more social movements were begun , or fewer – or that more that did begin succeeded. If that’s the case then for good or ill (because after all, most popular movement do not have benificient outcomes for the people who started them) social media will have had an outcome. If the number is about the same, and the outcomes about the same, then the truth that revolutionaries used Twitter or Facebook will be of the same consequence as that they once wore Phrygian caps and now wear tee-shirts – an interesting detail about the décor of the time, but not a crucial determinanat of anything. The notion that because people used Twitter therefore twitter made the revolution is so nakedly ridiculous that it is hard to believe that grown-up people are seriously proposing it.

Next?

2:09 [Comment From Mary Claire]
What did you mean by your closing comment...that's it's not about the toast, it's about the butter?

2:10 Adam Gopnik: I meant merely that , as it says a sentence or two before, that the content of our ideas -- the butter -- is more important than the containers, or vehicles --the toast-- that carries them. For a while I thought of writing " butter and jam" but thought that went a food image too far.

2:10 [Comment From Nimer Rashed]
Hi Adam, loved the piece, which I thought was fabulously well-written and researched and made my brand-new UK subscription of the magazine worthwhile! I think the article really took on a life of its own once you chipped in with your own point of view after rehearsing the various opinions of the different camps, and the toast/butter ending was a poignant flourish with which to end. I'm curious how much your opinions changed the more you delved into theNever-Better/ Better-Nevers Ever-Waser camps - how much were you pushed/pulled by what you read? And finally, what are your opinions about reading magazines such as the New Yorker in digital format?

2:13 Adam Gopnik:: Thanks. As I struggled to say a moment ago -- and the difficult thing about these chats is that you find yourself re-writing badly sentences that you struggled for months to write well!-- there is a kind of built in space between my actual emotions -- which include a lot of parental fear about the loss of books, silence, space -- and my evolving ideas, which recognize the "ever wasness" of it all. So I live now as a kind of Better-Never Ever Waser, with forlorn hopes of seeing Never-Betterism proven true. I would love to believe that the substance is all that matters -- and I do think the butter matters most -- and that the transition of The New Yorker or any other good magazine or newspaper to the new digital format will leave the content untouched. But I shudder as I see the future, and am skeptical that we can make the change without losing something on the way. But I am game to go, as we all must be.

2:14 [Comment From Bill]
I have found that what you call information is,from a technical pov, sometimes completely erroneous(as in energy cycles on Wikkipedia). Books are much harder to overwrite with a different message. Isn't this a big advantage of books?

2:14 Adam Gopnik: An interesting thought. Yes, I suppose so-- though of course books have been mines of misinformation , creating mountains of misery, for millenia.

2:14 Adam Gopnik:: Or less.

2:15 [Comment From Mary Claire]
Getting back to the 'butter' or the content of our ideas. Isn't it possible that the butter we can create now, in the age of the internet, is just not as good? I mean, I'm finding my ability to concentrate on books or to think deeply, has been diminished. Your thoughts?

2:17 Adam Gopnik:: There are scary days when I fear you're right , and I put down my own scattered mind and tattered nerves not to the press of life and deadlines but to the machines we're attached to. I was serious about the Unplugged Sunday business -- think it's as good an idea as Meatless Monday, and we try ( and often fail) to put it in operation at our house. But concentration is mutable and maybe has more to do with insomnia than new information, at least with me.

2:18 [Comment From Angelosays.com]
Do you think that the internet is the most important technological advancement after the discovery of fire?

2:18 Adam Gopnik: No. I think that instant replay was the most important tech advance since fire. More important , maybe. You can't go back to the fire once it's out, and you always have the replay.

2:18 [Comment From Ned]
Can book publishing survive ebook piracy? Will the internet's effect on the book publishing industry be even worse than the effect on the music industry since publishers cannot make up lost sales revenue with 360 deals that cover touring?

2:19 Adam Gopnik:: Oy! A worrying thought. My hope is that it was really "disaggreation" , which I'm sure I just mis-spelled , which killed the record business: suddenly, we all found ourselves in effect playing old 45s , singles. A book still comes at us a whole -- nobody wants to download a chapter of a Franzen or a Roth -- and I hope that will save our bacon.

2:20 Adam Gopnik: If not our butter.

2:20 [Comment From Susi]
What happened to my question that I sent at 2:15? Could you comment on the effect of our highly visual media's effect on gender roles?

2:21 Adam Gopnik:: Sorry, Susi; so many questions coming in here that I have to blip by some on the way to urgent others. Of course, as the father of a daughter (and son) I share your worry. We do seem to be offering kids sexual role-playing, and info, way too soon. That said, I notice that my daughter , in love with Justin Beiber, is more like her mother, in love with Mark Lester forty years ago, than one would have thought possible. Perhaps language and adolescent crushes are the two universal human traits.

2:22 [Comment From Nimer Rashed]
I think what's particularly poignant about the article is the fact that for just one second you hold up your hand, ask for a time out, and assess the state we're in, whilst simultaneously acknowledging the inevitability with which we as a species enthusiastically - and perhaps that inevitability feels more troubling the older you get.

2:23 Adam Gopnik:: Inevitablities crowd in on us the older we get, until that last great inevitability of all claws us down. Meanwhile, there's just the comedy of living,including the comedy of information.

2:23 [Comment From Gregg Chadwick]
Adam, My teenage son and I loved the part in "Through the Children's Gate" where you misused the internet initialism LOL.

2:23 Adam Gopnik:: That was probably more precise, and on point, than the long essay. It exists, he advertised shamelessly, as a MOTH podcast as well. Thanks.

2:23 [Comment From Susi]
Oh, yay. Computer glitch, no doubt. It seems to me that insults are more easily hurled at women, and with the increase in insults comes an increase in misogyny. I don't know how girls navigate it.

2:25 Adam Gopnik: I don't know how anyone navigates it. But when I look at Kids Today, I see more resourcefulness , and a greater reservoir of irony, in the face of things that trouble me than I would have feared. They are native speakers of the new technology, where we are second-language users, and , like all native speakers, they know the secret corners and double-takes and deadpans of their tongue.

2:25 [Comment From Tabitha]
Back on the recording industry - obviously the demise of the traditional recording company is inevitable and the rise of the independents is here and now. Have you any thoughts on where that is going?


The Strokes

2:26 Adam Gopnik:: One of the joys of my life is sharing -- that is , learning about -- new music with my son. It's stunning to me, and weirdly heart-lifting, that with all the difficulties of the "business", the connection between musician and listener -- between my son and his beloved Strokes -- is not just intact but more constant than ever. An encouraging thought for writers though,as you say, we don't have the option of touring -- or rather we do, but only to empty chairs in poignant indy bookstores.

2:26 [Comment From Nimer Rashed]
Oops - last question was sent unfinished! I think the poignancy of the article comes from the sense of the crushing inevitability of technology and the latent observation that we as a species hurtle forward, enthusastically accepting all new forms of technology and in the process giving up/losing something of the past - something elegiac about this. With this in mind, which of yesteryear's technologies would you suggest we resurrect on our Amish, internet-free Sundays?

2:27 Adam Gopnik:: Uh--reading unfamiliar books about familiar subjects. Japanese novels on the family; Russian memoirs of childhood; Slovenian research into adultery.

2:28 [Comment From Marcy Murninghan]
Loved your article, it's so timely with all that's happening around us, in politics, economics, and culture. Your "butter" statement reminds me of Annie Hall, and that wonderful line at the end where Woody reflects on love, and that joke about a fella with a crazy brother who thinks he's a chicken. Guy's doctor asks, "why don't you turn him in" and guy says, "I need the eggs." We all need the eggs--with something as wild, irrational, crazy and absurd as love--and the Internet.

2:29 Adam Gopnik: Hadn't thought of that. But in my book you can't quote, or borrow, or refer, too often to "Annie Hall". That was the "Battleship Potemkin" of my teenage years.

2:29 [Comment From Kevin J]
Back to the topic of over-writing "fact" with different messages e.g; on Wikipedia: does that mean there are no more truths, or are we entering an era of increased acceptance of diverging viewpoints?

2:30 Adam Gopnik: Diverging viewpoints are fine, and we've always had them. What worries me is the spread of information (i cited Shakespeare authorship and the Shroud of Turin in the piece) where the truth is known but the lies keep coming. Evolution and creationism. A kid going on line to do research on the Second World War is one fatal click away from negationism. That's worrying.




2:30 [Comment From Elizabeth Bee]
Have you read the YA fiction book Feed by M.T. Anderson? If so, what were your thoughts? If not, I found it to be a startling glimpse of what happens when social apps and advertisers find a way to finally reside in our brain. Do you think the average American is aware of the corporate interests that are investing in their social profiles (ie - Facebook's Social Graph, cookies used for advertising purposes, data mining and scrubbing, etc.)

2:30 Adam Gopnik: Haven't read it. Will do so.

2:31 [Comment From Susi]
My M.I.L. from behind the Iron Curtain wisely said about us newlyweds: "The problems we think they have aren't problems at all; and their real problems are things we can't imagine." Still, it's fascinating to watch and imagine. What else is life for?

2:32
Adam Gopnik:: Too true.

2:32 [Comment From Sanjiv]
I've been reading of late about the effects of technology on childrens minds and its impact on concentration and other key factors regarding education, literacy, and so forth. Already, people predict that this new generation's life expectancy may be lower than the previous. Do you suspect that our education outcomes will similarly decrease (although this has been happening for certain ethnic groups, I mean broadly)

2:33 Adam Gopnik: What worries me -- my goodness, seem to be using the verb "worry" a lot in this chat -- but what worries me is the spread, the break, that's happening between elite education, which bounces along on its meritocratic basis, and all the rest of us. A country divided into A pluses and C's cannot long stand.

2:33 Adam Gopnik:: Or, rather, A pluses and F.s

2:33 [Comment From Manuel Espinoza]
I personally believe that the inevitable fall of "traditional" media -call it books, magazines, news papers, music- is something as unavoidable as any other generational and technological change that has come along. But here in the developing countries we see it as an equalitarian change, as it will, if no already, provide us with access to information we never thought possible. So my question is, in essence: How do you feel about creative commons, freedom of information, abolition of copyrights and even piracy, as a medium of redemption for us who cannot have access to information with the traditional media?

2:34 Adam Gopnik: Well, obviously, the more news-novels-stories -opinion are more often in more hands , the better the world is. The trick is that all those "content providers" , to use that hideous jargon, must live ,too. At some point, the naches, to use a favorite Yiddish word, provided by the Huffington Post to its bloggers will not be enough, and then we will be dependent not on those who think and write , but on those who don't think and write anyway.

2:35 [Comment From Brian Kimberling]
If butter is important, and toast less so, have you thought much about the interaction between the particular brands of toast and butter used? Apologies for spreading your metaphor too thin. Does the internet foster shallower content? (It sure churns out and popularizes endless news content, much of it soon forgettable).

2:37 Adam Gopnik:: Metaphors are like jokes; once they make their little effect, they won't stand too much close analysis. But , yes, the thinner the toast, the less butter it holds. But then we could put jam on it so....escaping the traps of imagery, I don't think that the internet demands shallow content. It's just that the impatience it enforces is best suited to it...but , look, we publish long stuff on the New Yorker website all the time, and people cotton to that. Of course, I worry -- that word again! -- about the three hundred word bit moving out the three thousand word musing. But I think that a minority, anyway, will always want the real thing -- and minorities, in a world as vast as ours, can often be counted in millions.

2:37 [Comment From Tabitha]
I read the term 'Lifecasting' today. Interesting concept. Is this the new buzz word and really - is it just what Josh Harris did years ago?

2:38 Adam Gopnik: I have a dormant twitter account -- dormant because I am never sure what to tweet. We went out to dinner not long ago with a well known television personality -- and she had a sub-tweeter, a designated tweeter, of her own! Not merely lifecasting, but subsidary-rights lifecasting.

2:38 [Comment From Michael]
What did we do before we read about sports online?

2:39
Adam Gopnik:: We argued about them with our friends . Our face-friends, I mean -- is that a term, by the way? Should be.

2:40 [Comment From Kevin J]
Does the sub-tweeter make it up as s/he goes along or is there a style sheet to follow?


Edgar Bergen & Mortimer Snerd in Stage Door Canteen


2:41 Adam Gopnik: More like an impersonation -- your job in life, in that role, is to be a kind of benign Mortimer Snerd, sitting on your chief-tweeters lap.

2:41 [Comment From Elizabeth Bee]
I think I'm nervous about living in a world where we have "face friends"...

2:41 Adam Gopnik:: Well. I meant "face friends" meaning those whose faces we know.

2:41 [Comment From Mabel]
Are there novels being written now that capture what this digital life feels like?

2:42
Adam Gopnik: Good question. Are there? In movies particularly, people , movie-makers, are always trying to insert the Internet into their work, but it always ends up being painfully anti-dramatic, since it's just....somebody typing! The ultimate revenge of the secretary -- in a Julia Roberts rom-com, the heroine now has to type like a fiend just to be in time.

2:43 [Comment From Brian Kimberling]
And should there be novels written now that capture what this digital life feels like?

2:44
Adam Gopnik:: It is, or was, the novelist to whom we turned for news on the texture of life -- not news that stayed news, as I think Bellow said, but news that stayed alive. Who in recent fiction has tackled this particular stretch of texture?

2:44 [Comment From Dex]
Does the internet promote uniformity? I am thinking of the kid isolated in a small town who may not have any connection with art or music scenes who can instantly connect with established artists and directly interact instead of spending years isolated.

2:45 Adam Gopnik:: Well, yes -- but surely there's something to be said ,too , for that kid (the young SInclair Lewis, V.S. Naipaul, Scott Fitzgerald, Harper Lee, whomever) having the boredom to explore his own world without the instant gratification of the "top:. If you don't enjoy bad Beethoven concerts played by the local quartet, you won't enjoy the great ones eithe r- -won't know what makes them great. Boredom and amateurism are great incubators of art.

2:45 [Comment From Marcus]
It seems as though the rise of digital culture, this revolution, is much more tied to a consumer mindset than other, maybe more real revolutions.

2:46 Adam Gopnik: Interesting point. Yes, the technological revolution is also a consumer revolution. Our neurons may be altering, but Steve Jobs is profiting.

2:46 Adam Gopnik:: Not that I begrudge Steve Jobs, whose goods fill my desk and life and who should get well soon.


Portrait of Mark Twain
Chromolithograph from the 1898 oil portrait by Ignace Spiridon.
Courtesy UC Berkeley Library


2:46 [Comment From Gig]
I wonder what role the Web has played in this new Twain mini-fad, which you so adroitly harpooned.

2:47 Adam Gopnik: Well, I was sure that someone would say that the great Twain's very-much-lesser autobiography was a prescient form of blogging, silly though that would be to say, and sure enough, they said it. Slack sentences attract slack sentences as lint attracts lint, I suppose.

2:47 [Comment From Elizabeth Bee]
Any thoughts on "mommy bloggers" and others who obsessively document the lives of their families for the entire world to see? I viewed one today and thought, is it ethical that this mom is taking photos of her child's broken arm to post online? Will this child be totally cool with this in 5,10,20 years?

2:49 Adam Gopnik:: Well... as one who has written on auspicious occasion -- some would say on too damn many auspicious occasions -- about his children, I would say that being obsessed to the point of crazy with your kids is just normal parenthood. With children as with all others we write about: we owe them our best and fairest and most compassionate account,and if we give them that, how much pain can be caused. But there comes an age and time (of theirs, I mean) to stop.

2:49 [Comment From Bill]
As a classical Greek scholar (ex), I immediately recognized the prole bias of the Christian New Testament when I read it - a popular "book". This analytic comparison of comparing translations tells alot about translators What do you think of the translators and filterers on the net?

2:50 Adam Gopnik:: Sorry -- do you mean the literal translators -- the ones that go from French to English or whatever? THey're better than they used to be, but still so far from good that they present a daunting case for the difficulty of language.

2:50 [Comment From Frank]
Speaking of Twain, what explains the popularity and positive reviews of that book?

2:51 Adam Gopnik:: People love Mark, and with good reason -- no one more than I -- and they also love our "Founding Fathers", as every cynic with another book about 1776 knows. Twain is the closest thing we have to a literary founding father. Our writin' John Addams. Apart from that , I suppose people bought the book and didn't read it.

2:52 [Comment From doris]
As we discuss "the abolition of copyrights", the free flow of information, music, film etc… we obviously need to worry about the average musician. Can we, or should we, be - instead of fighting it and blaming record labels and/or the "perpetrators" - asking our government to approve of what is happening, agree with this flow of information, praise it; Obama talks about nationwide wireless, that is one step to our government's and generation’s willingness to embrace “this”, but it needs to go deeper. What if we created some kind of subsidization for the artists, similar as in Europe, but a 2.0 version of it where the average musician talked about earlier can have his music flowing online while still paying his rent. What do you think about the government’s approach to “how the internet gets inside of us?

2:53 Adam Gopnik: You know, I 'm mostly ignorant of the fine points. But i have been told just recently that , for instance, PANDORA, the wonderful internet , self-generation"genome" music service, is making money at last -- and I assume that some of that at least is going to the artists who make the music. The more we "monetize" , the more the muse is served.

2:54 [Comment From Brent]
How much longer will this interweb fad last?

2:54 Adam Gopnik: Wouldn't it be wonderful -- i.e. startling and appropriately comic-cosmic -- if the Internet turned out to be the CB radio of the oughts?
But it won't...

2:54 [Comment From monica]
do you think the internet and web 2.0. are blurring the lines between high and low art? are they giving more eclectism to people's way of entertainment, meaning that now people can pass easily from Shakespeare to Avatar for instance? What is the role of internet in the democratization of art?



2:56 Adam Gopnik: Hmmmn, big question. Years ago -- years and years and years ago -- I wrote, with the late Kirk Varnedoe, a big book about "High and Low" to go with an exposition at MOMA, and the theme of that book, produced by years of research, was that the dialogue between pop culture and difficult art was permanent, cyclical, and surprising. So it's less likely to produce easy passage than surprising collision. As with the amazing-looking Dante's Inferno video game, from EA.

Dore's Vision of Dante's Inferno




Electronic Arts Digital Vision of Dante's Inferno


2:56 [Comment From Nimer Rashed]
A common accusation levelled against Twitter, Facebook, et al is that whilst the technology does connect people, the connections are superficial, transient - it's esp. interesting how quickly people get riled by discussions of how social mores are evolving (frequently, but not always, with divisions across youth lines). Taking a straw poll of NYC intelligentsia/literati - the New Yorker staff! - what would you say is the general consensus (if there is one) about Facebook and/or Twitter? Do people tend towards scepticism, generally speaking? And more importantly, are deadlines being missed as a result of the echo-chamber of digital distractions?

2:57 Adam Gopnik: To take a poll of New Yorker staff would involve interfering with the writing days of a lot of scowling and exhausted-looking writers, so I won't attempt it. But on the whole I think that ours is a community of enthusiastic adopters, with uneasy consciences that what they are adopting might prove to be arsenic to what they make.

2:57 [Comment From maria]
Think more in google that in god?? hehe, I do, in fact I do not believe in God after ICT

2:58
Adam Gopnik In Google We Trust. A decent motto. Certainly Out Of Many, One, is the Internet theme as well.

2:58 [Comment From Brian Kimberling]
You can get superb bird-identification apps for your iPhone now. Which you then take deep in the forest, leagues from human contact, man alone in the wilderness, and....check your signal. Is this different to carrying a bird book in the same circumstances?



2:59 Adam Gopnik: I think not...do you know of the OCarina App, which you make music on , and can then hear other ocarina music being played simultaneously all over the world. The whole world humming in your hand! IF that isn't sublime, nothing is.

2:59 [Comment From elfe]
I'm a late comer, maybe you discussed this altready: despite all the shallowness and the lack of focus it creates, the internet is just a wonderful tool for people living in countries that does not invest much in libraries. Especially with the big tomes the ownership rights of the owners expired from the previous century that one needed to travel to lay eyes on are just a click away, same with old and new journals. Especially if you have an institution that pays for your subscriptions (I'm aware of the 'jeremiads')...

3:00 Adam Gopnik Yes, indeed. For those seeking specifics -- as opposed to those engaging in emnities - the internet is a truly Rowlingesquely magic thing. Bless it and its users, and all of you from jumping in here. Speak again soon.

3:00 [Comment From Bill]
Yes. And art is bursting out both to the people and to the others. Thank you.

3:00 Adam GopnikThanks to all you

More at:
High & Low at MOMA

Ocarina App