Arts

What do you get when you sort approximately 800,000 published papers into 776 scientific paradigms? If you have an interesting visualization expert working with you on the project then you get this map (or click here for an even larger version). Seed Magazine has more on the details and Brad Paley’s Information Esthetics Web site tells you how you can get your own copy just for paying shipping and handling charges.

This map is just one project of Katy Börner’s cool Places and Spaces: Mapping Science initiative at Indiana University. Check out that site for more goodies.

Brad also has some other intriguing projects, like this calendar (an alternative to what we usually use). One of my favorites, however, remains his TextArc work for alternative ways of visualizing text. For example, check out his representation of Alice in Wonderland.

UPDATE: I’ve been meaning to blog about Jim Moody’s related work as well so I should’ve remembered to include a link to his visualizations, too: co-citation of physical and bio sciences, dynamic visualization of sociology co-authorship network.

Via Jason Stanley, a link to some now classic photographs of philosophers taken by Steve Pyke, together with a new batch by the same photographer. Here is the much-missed David Lewis. Here is a terrific shot of Elisabeth Anscombe and husband Peter Geach. Amongst the new batch, here is Rae Langton. Here is Anthony Appiah. And here is Jason himself, looking more intense than usual, and also unusually quiet.

Throughout the first batch and for much of the second, Pyke got the philosophers to provide a little statement about themselves and their field. Some are jokey, some gnomic, others quite straightforward. (H.L.A. Hart: “To be frank I think the idea of a 50-100 word summary is an absurd idea… I advise you to drop it.”) Amongst my favorites is that of Geoffrey Warnock, which elegantly captures the virtues that the analytic tradition strives imperfectly to embody: “To be clear-headed rather than confused; lucid rather than obscure; rational rather than otherwise; and to be neither more, nor less, sure of things than is justifiable by argument or evidence. That is worth trying for.”

But if that’s all too much for you, here are some recent photos of philosophers having a blast pretending to be cowboys while riding uncertainly around on horses in the Sonoran desert. That’s what they’re _really_ like, you know, moody black-and-white headshots notwithstanding.

Well not us. But this guy.

Reggie Watts: Out Of Control Via Unfogged.

Posting has been rather light from me recently, sorry, but it’s mainly because I can’t get over how mental some of the comments are on this YouTube video of John McLaughlin playing “Cherokee”, and it’s turned into a tight little ball of rage in my stomach that’s preventing me from achieving anything else. Check out what I’m talking about below:

[click to continue…]

UPDATE: See Phil Ford’s response, on “Hot Pants,” at Dial “M”

******

While taking in the news that James Brown has died, I’ve been in transit — far away from my CDs, and unable to celebrate his life in fitting manner. It sounds like a joke in really bad taste, but in fact what I most want to hear is the album called Dead on the Heavy Funk 1974-’76. I used to have it on tape but am not sure if it’s still in print. There’s another compilation with a similar title released as part of what sounds like a worthy archival edition covering Brown’s entire career.
[click to continue…]

A casual reference to limerick-writing here last week had the effect of unleashing hitherto unexpected powers of versification among some of Crooked Timber’s readership. Seriously, I had no idea.
[click to continue…]

My old friend John Palattella is taking over as poetry editor at The Nation. The news brings to mind an image of him surrounded (menaced, even) by large sacks full of envelopes containing manuscripts that are very earnest indeed. The announcement from the editors notes that, as critic, John has shown “sensitivity to form, historical erudition, and a refusal of the provincial dogmas that so often balkanize the small world of poetry.” Quite right, and it will be interesting to see how he translates personal sensibility into editorial policy.

The fact that I am mentioning this has nothing at all to do with the considerable progress this past year on Nikolai!, my epic about Bukharin, composed entirely in limericks.

Awesome …..

(hat tip JD)

The Guardian has a lovely new arts blog that leads off with a piece about the 20 paintings to see in the flesh before you die:
“van Eyck, The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, c.1435, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Caravaggio, The Burial of St. Lucy (1608), Museo di Palazzo Bellomo, Syracuse, Sicily
Rembrandt, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1654), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
San Rock Art, South African National Museum, Cape Town
Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire from Les Lauves (1904 – 6), Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
Michelangelo, Moses (installed 1545), Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome
Leonardo da Vinci, The Adoration of the Magi, (c. 1481), Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Mark Rothko, The Rothko Chapel (paintings 1965-66; chapel opened 1971), Houston, Texas
Vermeer, View of Delft (c.1660-61), Mauritshuis, The Hague
Matthias Grünewald, The Isenheim Altarpiece (c.1509-15), Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France
Hans Holbein, The Dead Christ, (1521-2), Kunstmuseum, Basel
Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656), Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Funerary Mask of Tutankhamun (1333-1323BC), Egyptian Museum, Cairo
Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Masaccio, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (c.1427), Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.
Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937), Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid
Titian, Danaë (c. 1544-6), Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
Raphael, The School of Athens (1510-11), Stanza della Signatura, Vatican Palace, Rome
Parthenon Sculptures (“Elgin Marbles”), c. 444 BC, British Museum, London
Henri Matisse, The Dance (1910), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.”

The comments unfairly criticise Jonathan Jones’ selection as too European, but he says himself it’s a subjective list of paintings so serious or affecting as to be worth travelling to see. And he invites readers to suggest their own. It’s an interesting take in the age of mechanical reproduction. The suggestions so far lean heavily on the 20th century, with the odd old master thrown in. I hope the Guardian’s commenters take up Jones’ challenge to broaden the field.

I’ve seen maybe a quarter of Jones’ list (if we allow ‘seen’ to include works I have shuffled past in the Louvre). But I’d still add to it Chagall’s stained glass windows in the Hadassah Hospital in Israel. They are deeply moving and can only be properly experienced by going there. You haven’t experienced Chagall till you’ve experienced him with light coming through (although the Chagall gallery in Nice comes close). Secondly, I’d add Monet’s Nymphéas which have been specially hung in curved rooms at the Orangerie in Paris. A recently attempted visit confirms the Orangerie is still impossible to get into, so this addition to the list is really wishful thinking.

The Guardian’s arts blog also reminds me to post a link to a wonderful stage interview of Gael Garcia Bernal at the NFT a couple of weeks back. The character GGB most identifies with is the sweet but irresponsible Julio from Y Tu Mamá También, but his thoughtful comments about politics and inequality in Mexico show this actor has more to say for himself than your average horny teenager.

I meant to respond a few weeks ago to Matthew Yglesias’s complaints about Pitchfork Media and never got around to it thanks to work obligations and the nine month old. But since it’s not a time sensitive topic, here goes. [click to continue…]

Tyler Cowen – _Good & Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding_

Available from Powells, from Amazon.

There are two, quite different libertarian styles of writing about culture that I enjoy. One is the pop-culture variety, which uses libertarian precepts as the framework for a certain kind of flip, contrarian analysis. This can be quite entertaining, but it usually doesn’t bear up well to close examination. Libertarian nostrums all too frequently substitute for actual thought (granted, much leftist opinionating on culture has similar problems). The second style is that of Tyler Cowen. Cowen writes in an entertaining and straightforward manner. He’s enthusiastic and knowledgeable about both high and low culture. But the fun of his arguments is that they’re serious, interesting, and properly thought through. If they’re hard to fit into conventional frameworks of debate, they aren’t self-consciously contrarian either. Instead, they lead in their own directions, and Cowen isn’t afraid to follow them, even if they lead to unexpected destinations.
[click to continue…]

Over the weekend, Political Theory Daily Review linked to a recent essay on the Gang of Four. (The band, that is. Not the group in power in China thirty years ago this month, and in jail thirty years ago next month.) The title indicated it would treat the band’s work as Marxist cultural theory. Not in terms of, mind you, but as. Good call: The Gang’s lyrics were always very explicit about reification, class consciousness, and whatnot. No ex post facto Zizekian-epigone hijinks necessary, thank you very much. Makes its own gravy! A critic who understood that from the start might go far.

[click to continue…]

When I was first told by my wife about this story, I expected it would turn out to be an Internet factoid, probably much-circulated, melding the old stories of paintings hung upside down, works painted by ducks and hailed as masterpieces, and so on. But the Independent’s account gives chapter and verse. The Royal Academy, having received a sculpture by one David Hensel with the plinth packed separately, decided to reject the sculpture and exhibit the plinth.

An interesting short film on Barbie, Jews, identity and about a million other topics. It is so packed with material – some of which seems extremely random – that it is hard to know where to even start with any commentary. See what you think.