• Tag Archives Art and Culture

  • Sayonara, Weber Collection

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    79!  bar steep fall  29.62 5mph WSW dewpoint 35  Beltane, sunny

                           Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

    The final Weber tours.  A Japanese language class from Kennedy HS in Bloomington and a small group of stunned ladies of a certain age.  Neither tour was a flop, neither an engaging and vital time.  The Kennedy group had a few kids that were present the whole way, interest.  One young lady took out a notebook and started writing.  The second seemed timid, afraid to respond to inquiry, interested but reticent. 

    At the end a woman told me she’d seen a Bhutan exhibit in Honolulu.  “The objects came with five Buddhist monks.  They came to bless the statues with water each morning.  Since in Buhtan, they received this sprinkling directly, but were in cases like this,”  she indicated the Nara Buddha at the beginning of the show, “they had, oh, I don’t know, a tupperware container,”  she spread her hands out and formed a large sloppy rectangle, “It had water.  Then they had a mirror.  They got the objects reflection in the mirror and sprinkled that.”

    Sayonara, Weber collection and bon voyage.

    I have a long stretch of days with little planned.  No docent classes, no tours, no preaching, no social engagements.  The right time to garden and to write.

    Jon called while I was writing this.  They want to have the bris on June 2nd or 3rd.  Could I come?  I’m there.  I’m excited to see Gabe and Ruth, to see Jon’s garden and Jen with her new brood.

    On to the treadmill.  I try not to remember this, but apparently in Victorian jails, prisoner powered treadmills were a form of human as donkey labor.  I’m not sure but that may be where the term comes from in the first place.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Family 📎and tagged

  • Deerslayer

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    56  bar steady 29.85  9mph N dewpoint 31  Beltane  sunny

                   First Quarter of the Hare Moon

    3 hours at the museum today answering questions, instigating conversations about Chinese bronzes.  It was a fun time with children and adults, variously interested.  I set out at the beginning, before people started showing up, to learn the vessel shapes.  I looked at the shape, memorized the name and then scanned the collection for examples.  I kept that up until I’d been through all the vessel shapes.  While doing it, it struck me that it would be useful to put these shapes and their names into SuperMemo.  A perfect fit.

    I did go through the Supermemo cycle this morning while waiting for the steamroom to heat up.  It will take awhile to become facile with it, but once I do, it will become an important part of my learning environment.

    Finished Last of the Mohicans.  I love costume dramas, especially early American and this one hits the bullseye on all fronts.  It has stimulated me to order the whole Deerslayer series, five novels. 


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Cinema and Television 📎and tagged

  • He Who Dies with the Most Toys Wins?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    62  bar falls 29.85  3mph NNW dewpoint 29 Beltane

                 Waxing Crescent of the Hare Moon 

    “The capitalist bookkeepers’ theoretician was German sociologist Max Weber, whose 1910 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argued that the key feature of capitalism was that making money becomes ‘a calling’, an end in itself. The bourgeois worked for the sake of work, denying himself the fruits of his labour. The pre-modern man would have been flummoxed by this, says Weber: what is the point of this, ‘to sink into the grave weighed down with a great material load of money and goods’? ”  from an article in Spiked

    I love this quote from Weber.  What is, after all, the point of sinking into the grave weighed down with a great material load of money and goods?  None, as far I can see.

    I disagree with Weber though about the state of pre-modern people.  Many, many cultures not only thought this was a good thing, but literally did it. Those wealthy or high born enough took servants, food, furniture, money, painting, all manner of things to the grave.

    Two tours today.  Winnipeg kids on a band tour.  They had been to the Mall of America and Bubblegum, a restaurant there and had lots of other places to visit.  They didn’t think the Days Inn where they were staying were showing them very good hospitality, though they did admit that having that many teenagers in one place created a lot of ruckus.  This was a bright, attentive and thoughtful group.  We saw the installation with the children’s photos, Frank, Magritte, Van Gogh and Goya.  They were talkative and had many ideas.

    The Weber tour had three people, a couple and Stacy Pydych.  Stacy had to leave early, but the couple stayed on for the whole tour.  He had been to Japan when he was 24 years old and a serviceman.  They, too, were attentive and talkative.  We saw most of the exhibit because I skipped part of my usual tour in teaware and Tale of Genji.  They thought I was a professor of Japanese history.  I assured them the museum taught us what we needed to know.

    Got a thank-you card today from Robbinsdale Japanese language students.  The teacher wrote a nice note and each kid signed it and some offered comments.  Amazing, when you consider these are high school students.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Politics 📎and tagged

  • One Psychiatrist Says to Another

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    61 bar steep fall 29.73  6mph WSW dewpoint 33 Spring

                    Last Quarter Moon of Growing

    Some leaf curling and cupping on my lettuce and tomato.  Not sure if it’s a problem or not.  I can’t find any organisms.  No sign of mildew, virus, aphid, biting insects.  Still, it doesn’t look quite right to me.  Time will tell.

    Fed the dogs at 11:00AM and took off for the Walker to talk to Stefan.  He asked me to edit and comment on his poems. 

    I got there early and wandered through the Suburbs exhibit and the Richard Prince exhibit.  I’m not sure about Prince, as I know many others are not, but he has some funny jokes. 

    Two psychiatrists are at a bar together.  One psychiatrist says to the other, “I had dinner with my mother last night and I had a Freudian slip.”  The other psychiatrist raised an eyebrow.  “I said, ‘You ruined my life you fucking bitch!”

    Also, “You know what it means when you come home to a warm, loving embrace?  It means you’re in the wrong house.”

    These are on monochrome backgrounds, sort of pop artish.  Most of the other re-purposed photographs show an interesting angle on American culture.  I can imagine a curatorial meeting where having Richard Prince and the Suburban show together would add irony, creative tension.  I’m not so sure. I found the suburban show more provocative than the Prince.  It has an original take on a widely experienced phenomenon.  Prince recycles material from our magazines, our popular culture, but his work seems more cool, distant.  The suburban exhibition is lively, engaged with the subject either ironically or in a non-judgmental way.

    Stefan and I met in Gallery 8, the first place aside from United Theological Seminary I saw when I first came to the Twin Cities over 38 years ago.  Oddly, I had lunch with Lonnie, his wife, there many times when she and I used to keep up. 

    We talked about his poetry.  I took a slash and burn approach to editing this batch.  “I’m trying to find the line here, Stefan.  Like skiing.  I cut out everything that didn’t get me down the hill fast.”  I told him that was an idiosyncratic method and that he could do whatever he wanted with the feedback.  He gave me a few more so I guess it wasn’t too bad for him.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture 📎and tagged

  • A Vocabulary for This Age

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    69  bar steady 30.11 2mph SSE dewpoint 35 Spring

                    Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing

    On the way home from taking Kate to the airport I listened to an NPR interview with choreographer/dancer Patricia Brown.  Her company dances Friday at Northrup and she has some kind of an exhibition at the Walker.

    Here’s the takeaway for me.  She is 72+.  A newspaper announced she was about to retire.  She said, no, I haven’t said that.  Instead, she said she was “…looking for a vocabulary for my body at this age.  When I find it, I will perform again.”  This is a great strategy for aging.  We do not look at our deficits, rather, we assess our capabilities and design a vocabulary that uses them, then we get on with our life.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Faith and Spirituality 📎and tagged

  • Something Famous, That They Might See in Books

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    57  bar steep fall 29.82 3mph SSW Dewpoint 31 Spring

               Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

    A highlights tour today with kids from Hudson.  We saw Frank, the Chuck Close portrait, then the Promenade of Euclid by Magritte.  After that the teacher wanted to see “something famous, that they might see in books.”  That’s ok, so I took them to see Van Gogh’s Olive Trees, Goya’s Dr. Arrieta and Rembrandt’s Lucretia.  They had a theme of westward expansion underway in class so I then took them over to the Minnesota gallery and we looked at first, the long rifles, then the painting of Ft. Snelling with the Lakota camped on the opposite shore of the Minnesota River.  The kids were there, engaged.  Fun.

    On the way down and back I’ve continued listening to From Yao to Mao, the history of China.  I’m now on disc 17 of 18 and this is my second time through the series.  Mao has just begun to push for the peasant community in China as the vanguard of the revolution, replacing the urban worker, the industrial proletariat, whose communist members had been ousted in raids by the Nationalist Party and the tongs.  This will result in the long march and the eventual attrition of Mao’s forces by the thousands.  In this campaign Mao will create the modern guerilla war, sometimes called 4th generation warfare.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture World History 📎and tagged

  • Fireman’s Robes and an Ugly Bureaucrat

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    42  bar falls 2mph SSE dewpoint 26 Spring

              Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

    Two tours today, both Weber, but very different.  The first was a Shakopee Japanese language group who had some very sharp kids.  They were with Hotei, the Moon, the calligraphy, the tea ceremony, Genji, the Bull and the fireman’s robes.  The second group was from a city recreational center.  There were 11 kids.  They started out a bit disinterested, but I began with Shokei, the ugly man denied a job as a Chinese bureaucrat after passing the exam.  They liked that story and the fact that he rode a tiger.  They also liked the rice planting and harvesting screen, the rabbit looking at the moon, the tea bowls, the black bull and the cranes.  The fireman’s robes are a great hit with kids of all ages.  We ended by looking at Mickey Mouse on the kimono.  Good groups, engaged and interested.  Fun.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture 📎and tagged

  • Plants and a Particular Location + Gardener = Dialogue

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    40  bar falls 30.27  6mph  SSE  dewpoint 24  Spring

              Last Quarter Moon of Winds

    Ah.  Can you feel the sigh?  A weekend with no outside obligations at all.  I plan to do clean up, plant some more seeds, read, maybe watch a bit more of the NCAA.  How about that Davidson, huh?  Took out Wisconsin.  That’s a student body of 1,700 versus one of what, 30,000?  I will read chapter 3 in the Permaculture design book for sure, perhaps polish off a novel or two, maybe start writing one of my own.  I have an idea that’s been bouncing around for some time now.

    Tonight at 5PM I get to celebrate Chinese New Year again with the CIF guides.  I look forward to this each year, this one especially because I’ve done my homework on China and Japan over the last few months.  Saw MingJen, who organizes this event, on Wednesday at the Naomi Kawase film, The Mourning Forest.

    If you can, would you write Hillary and tell her to get out now?  We need a chance to even up with McCain and a bitter end to the Democratic primary race just lets him have the field to himself.  I don’t have anything against Hillary, in fact she and Obama are about a horse apiece politically, but Obama has won the field, has the delegates and deserves his chance.  Hillary will have another shot.  She’s established that a woman can run as a serious candidate, a remarkable and historic achievement in itself.  Nothing in the feminist revolution demands that women win all contests or get all the jobs. 

    Snow continues to retreat in our yard, but slowly.  As in years past, the Perlick’s grass is almost fully visible, while ours remains under 6-8 inches of snow.  They face south, we face north and that makes all the difference.  Spring comes to our property about a week later than theirs, weird as that is. 

    On Thursday I followed the dog tracks in the snow and went out to check on my trees planted last spring.  Some animal, either rabbits or deer, have eaten the tops of them down to the garden hose I put around them as protection from mice.  I didn’t think tall enough up the food chain.   These were the trees I planted nearest the area we call the park.  Further north, also on the eastern edge of our westernmost woods, another group of oaks, white pines and Norway pines look like they’ve done well over the winter. 

    This is the nature of gardening.  Try this and it works.  Try that and it doesn’t.  Listen.  Repeat what worked, change what didn’t.  Plants and a particular location engage the attentive gardener or horticulturist (as I’m beginning to think of myself) in a constant dialogue as shade patterns change, seasonal sun shifts become more understood, rain falls or does not fall and various cultivars and seeds prove well suited to the site or not.  This dialogue is multi-lingual as one party communicates in one language and the other has to translate, but it is true discourse as each can alter the others ideas.      


    📂This entry was posted in Friends Garden General Great Work Our Land and Home Politics 📎and tagged

  • An Everything-0-Meter

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    43  bar falls 30.27 0mph SSW dewpoint 12 Spring

              Last Quarter Moon of Winds

    Had a great time with the two Weber (Japanese special exhibit) tours.  Grace Googin was there for the first one and I had about 15 on the other tour.  Folks seemed to be into it and thanked me a lot after we were done.  This is the first tour in a long time where knowledge accumulated over time has begun to break through in the tours.  I know, for example, the linkage between Chan Buddhism from China and Zen in Japan.  Not like an expert of course, but certainly at a level that helps folks on the tours gain a deeper appreciation for both.

    After the tour I drove over to Interior Gardens where I picked up an everything-o-meter that will make the hydroponic part of the work so easy it will almost grow by itself.  Well, not quite.  It measures electrical conductance, ph and temperature, all three important data points for the reservoir of nutrient solution.  Also picked up 100 more pellets for starting seedlings and three bottoms for the other flats.  We’re in day three of the sprouting process.  Sometime in the next week we should see some shoots.  Fun.

    The woman at Interior Gardens I remembered because she had injured her leg in a running accident.  That was about ten months ago.  During surgery the orthopedist discovered that her cartilage had pulled a divot of bone out of the knee.  This made it difficult of reconnect everything and she’s still not fixed.  She’s a runner, too.  “Oh, well.  If they can’t fix it, I’ll get into biking!”  She has a cryogenic device she puts on it at night that takes the pain right away.

    On the way home I was, unfortunately, really hungry–back to back tours with no food in the middle–so I (you might want to cover your eyes for this part.) stopped at McDonald’s and got a McFish, which, also unfortunately, I like.  By the time I got home I was sleepy, no nap, and feeling guilty.  Guilt won and I just finished 40 minutes of aerobic workout on the treadmill. 


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Garden Great Work 📎and tagged

  • It Is a Privilege and an Honor

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    32  bar steady 30.37 0mph WNW dewpoint 28  Spring

                         Full Moon of Winds

    I got all didactic on the study of ancient bronzes post and it wasn’t where I wanted to go.  Let me try again.

    In one gallery at the Minneapolis Art Institute we have several high quality representatives of an art form that dominated Chinese material culture for 1,500 years.   Imagine if, say marble sculpture or fresco painting or mosaic had been the primary, to the exclusion of most other art forms, art of the West since 500 ACE.  That’s the length of time we’re discussing.  Or the period of time between the birth of Jesus and the colonization of the New World.  That’s a long time in people years.

    To see these objects is not only to see the aesthetic and technical prowess of  Shang and Zhou dynasty artisans; it is to see the actual object that they produced.  These very ku, kuei, jueh, ting, lei, tsun and fang i came into the existence through a complex network of Chinese people who lived over 3,500 years.   There were miners, transporters, smelters, mold makers, mold designers, foundry workers who cast the objects and broke them from their ceramic molds.  Other people sold and transported them after they were made and for years, centuries, even millennia in some cases these objects were either used in public ritual or stood by in a tomb ready to provide service in the afterlife.  Think of that. 

    Think of the journey that graceful jueh had to take both as a created work of art, then, after that, as an artifact of a long dead culture now thousands of miles from its point of origin.  That it survived all that is amazing, even if it is bronze.

    The conceptual world that brought this work into existence, a system of public cults around unseen gods and dead ancestors, a conceptual world had such a profound grip on the Chinese mentality that it stayed pretty much intact for the entire Shang dynasty, then only gradually lost its force in the later Western Zhou.  Those are powerful ideas.  Ideas can be more fragile than any ceramic; yet, these objects testify to the energizing and creative force these ideas carried, not just for a while but for hundreds of years.

    To put myself back in those times, to feel the ebb and flow of both the material culture and the beliefs that animated it, is to come alive to the human experience in a way I can’t in any other way.  It is a privilege and an honor to represent these objects and their world to the public. 


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture World History 📎and tagged