Speed of Life

de Young Museum in fog A party was held at the new de Young Museum in San Francisco on October 20th for the local art world. The event was sponsored by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which encompasses both the de Young and the Legion of Honor, and the San Francisco Art Dealers Association. We were asked to arrive in festive attire. A heavy San Francisco fog shrouded the new building which seemed to appear briefly then vanish into the mist. The new structure looked less like a beached aircraft carrier and more like the Enterprise cloaking and uncloaking in Golden Gate Park during one of the Star Trek films. The new de Young is both spacious and elegant which gives the art room to breathe. The architects, the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects from San Francisco, have allowed the function of the building to determine its internal look and structure. "We wanted to keep the art itself in the foreground," Herzog says. Looking down on Andy Go...

Currently at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is a Huang Yong Ping retrospective entitled "House of Oracles". Huang Yong Ping "11 June 2002--The Nightmare of George V" "The title identifies the hunter as King George V of England. Huang explains that in 1911 the king, while hunting in Nepal, killed four tigers in three days, a remarkable feat. One of the tigers attacked the king, and he donated this specimen to a museum in Bristol, where Huang found it. In Paris the artist located preserved animals from other treks. He attached to a wicker howdah on the elephant’s back a tiger in the documented position of attack, but he replaced the royal howdah–an emblem of empire–with the sort used to protect well-heeled tourists. The tableau looks back to the approaching end of the colonial period." - Artforum Crate Logo for Huang Yong Ping Exhibition at the Walker Art Center Designed by Phil Docken The Walker's visual arts blog has a wonderful piece on the tr...

This Sunday on the Cal Berkeley campus, the writers of the Simpsons will come clean as closet math geeks. "We couldn't handle the pressures of academia", they might say, "but at least we kept our day jobs in animation." MSRI’s Archimedes Society invites you to this FREE public event Mathematical Writers from The Simpsons and Futurama Sunday, October 16, 2005 • 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Valley Life Sciences Building's Chan Shun Auditorium (Rm. 2050) at UC Berkeley Writers David X. Cohen, Ken Keeler, and Jeff Westbrook have kept their math habit alive by sneaking in hundreds of mathematical and scientific references into The Simpsons and Futurama. Join in as the writers discuss their mathematical backgrounds, favorite theorems from Homer and Bart, along with thoughts on the representation of mathematics in Hollywood. In honor of this event , and in anticipation of the upcoming Simpson's Halloween special, we join The Simpson's episode "Treehouse O...

(Jennifer S. Altman / LAT) "I try to find beauty in the middle of the horror, and vice versa," she says. "Sometimes, really horrible things — you can turn into a weapon of beauty." -Shirin Neshat in an interview with Tyler Green Tyler Green's article on the Iranian- American artist Shirin Neshat in the Los Angeles Times is well written and provacative. A must read: Shirin Neshat: Trapped Between Two Worlds More on Shirin Neshat: Shirin Neshat: Photo Essays- Time Europe

HAROLD LEVENTHAL 1919 - 2005 Harold Leventhal, died on Tuesday at the age of 86. A renowned folk music champion, Leventhal acted as promoter, producer, and manager for Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and countless others. Leventhal presented a 21-year-old Bob Dylan at Town Hall in New York in Dylan's first major concert hall appearance on April 12th, 1963. Harold Leventhal was featured most recently in Martin Scorcese's documentary "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" in which he provided glimpses into Dylan's early years in New York. Harold Leventhal enlisted in the US Army during World War II and was stationed in India from 1944-46. These years had a profound impact on his life both politically and artistically. In India, Harold's political interests led him to seek out members of the Indian National Congress. He met with Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. Harold Leventhal and Jawaharlal Nehru,1945 Jorge Arevalo, in the concert notes to the Tribute to...

Shahzia Sikander (detail from dissonance to detour, mixed media on paper) Shahzia Sikander, who has traveled from Pakistan, to Rhode Island, to New York is now in Los Angeles for a short time, as a guest artist at the Otis College of Art and Design. Her recent work is on view until November 12 at Otis' Ben Maltz Gallery. Shahzia Sikander's exhibition "Dissonance to Detour", curated by Meg Linton, features new paintings on paper, a digital video animation, and a large wall painting. There is a rich fluidity to this work, especially in the details which play with the idea of 17th century Mughal miniatures. There is an expectation of narrative and resolution within the paintings. But upon closer examination, the works slip into a vivid flux of color and line. By shifting the viewer's expectations from narrative to paint, Sikander refuses to create the works that might be expected. Instead Shahzia Sikander's exhibition evokes an imaginative response. While viewin...

by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick A Walk With Ganesh 72"x84" oil on linen 2005 Recently during an extended visit in Thailand, I toured the elephant parks in the mountains north of Chiang Mai. Each day the elephants are brought down to the river and bathed. As I watched these daily baths, I knew that I needed to paint these moments- the elephants, the mahouts, the river, the water, the light, the color, the heat and the air. Ganesh- (in the Hindu pantheon, known as a remover of obstacles) provided an apt title. Hokusai "Blind Men and Elephant" from the Hokusai manga series ("Random Sketches"),  volume VIII, Pages 13,14 1818 After viewing "A Walk With Ganesh", Julie Weiss brought in a treasured book on the Japanese artist Hokusai opened to Hokusai's manga -"Blind Men and Elephant". This image wonderfully illustrates Buddha's parable: Once, a group of blind men, who generally got about by holding ...