Personism

20x200's 20% More Ridiculous Sale is back! [del.icio.us]

2010-01-30T07:33:38-08:00

The sitewide 20% sale only happens but twice a year! Collectors who enter the code RIDONK at checkout get 20% off their order.

Paired: Holmes + Wetzsteon

2010-01-02T17:22:58Z

Cherry Blossoms by Joseph O. Holmes

Sakura Park

The park admits the wind,
the petals lift and scatter

like versions of myself I was on the verge
of becoming; and ten years on

and ten blocks down I still can’t tell
whether this dispersal resembles

a fist unclenching or waving goodbye.
But the petals scatter faster,

seeking the rose, the cigarette vendor,
and at least I’ve got by pumping heart

some rules of conduct: refuse to choose
between turning pages and turning heads

though the stubborn dine alone. Get over
“getting over”: dark clouds don’t fade

but drift with ever deeper colors.
Give up on rooted happiness

(the stolid trees on fire!) and sweet reprieve
(a poor park but my own) will follow.

There is still a chance the empty gazebo
will draw crowds from the greater world.

And meanwhile, meanwhile’s far from nothing:
the humming moment, the rustle of cherry trees.

—Rachel Todd Wetzsteon
in memoriam

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Paired: Krum + Paley

2009-11-10T03:23:37Z

New York (Peony) by Gregory Krum

One Day

One day
one of us
will be lost
to the other

this has been
talked about but
lightly turning
away shyness this
business of con-
fronting the
preference for
survival

            my mother said   the
            children are grown   we
            are both so sick   let us
            die together   my father
            replied    no no   you
            will be well    he lied

of course I
want you in the world
whether I’m in it or
not   your spirit
I probably mean

there is always
something to say   in
the end   speaking
without breath   one
of us will be lost
to the other

— Grace Paley

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Jonathan Melber: A Remix Manifesto for Our New Copyright Czar [del.icio.us]

2009-10-19T18:14:37-07:00

Featuring a guest appearance (via comments) by a suit from the RIAA.

Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself

2009-09-18T02:24:42Z

@caterina and @cdixon make some great points in support of NYC’s nascent tech revival.

Chris:
New York City has many of the same strengths as Silicon Valley – merit-driven capitalism, the embrace of newcomers and particularly immigrants, and a consistent willingness to reinvent itself.

Caterina:
…it may be that creativity and invention are more dependent on the networks in which the creator participates than their individual genius or their willingness to put in the hours. As we’ve so often seen, great ideas occur where there is a confluence of ideas taken from the environment surrounding the creator or creators.

Having spent a good deal of time working in technology both in NY and Silicon Valley, I’ve found that the NYC network is more diffuse and harder to find a path into. I think it has something to do with the fact that there’s so much else going on aside from technology — the valley might hold the title of the best place for start-ups in technology, but NYC is the best place for many things.

The diversity of experience on the 20×200 team is incredible and inspiring. Everyone I work with has done a bunch of other things aside from technology, and not one of them set out for a tech career to begin with. Among us are photographers, musicians, artists, writers, lawyers, teachers and wine experts. We all love the internet (a lot! too much?) but what drives us most is our love of art and the people who make it.

Does this happen in Silicon Valley? Perhaps, but my time spent there — which I loved, for the record — was about an immersion in technology. Here in NYC it’s about the thing itself.

Both environments have their merits, and like Caterina, I get to enjoy both. As readers of the 20×200 newsletters know, I spend a lot of time in the Bay area. My friends there have a fluency and familiarity with technology that I find lacking here in New York. There’s a drive for innovation that’s almost palpable, and many are the true believers who are convinced that technology will save us all.

I love that way of thinking, and I’m also willing to put my money on technology as a solver of the many things that ail us, but all that innovation speak can be exhausting and then there’s the fact that you can’t hail a cab there.

My non-techy friends in NY can be downright phobic and I often find myself making sheepish excuses for Twitter and Tumblr and Foursquare. The fear of what’s coming is incredibly exasperating, knowing as I do that it’s already here.

Then again, if you live too long inside the echo-chamber, it’s easy to forget who’s going to be using all this technology in the end. The reality check is important, almost as important as being able to hail a cab whenever I damn well please.

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Google to reincarnate digital books as paperbacks - AOL Money & Finance [del.icio.us]

2009-09-17T08:56:03-07:00

"As part of a deal announced Thursday, Google is opening up part of its index to the maker of a high-speed publishing machine that can manufacture a paperback-bound book of about 300 pages in under five minutes. The new service is an acknowledgment by the Internet search leader that not everyone wants their books served up on a computer or an electronic reader like those made by Amazon.com Inc. and Sony Inc. The "Espresso Book Machine" has been around for several years already ..."

Paired: Hido + Carver

2009-09-12T15:08:08Z

2314c by Todd Hido

The Phone Booth

She slumps in the booth, weeping
into the phone. Asking a question
or two, and weeping some more.
Her companion, an old fellow in jeans
and denim shirt, stands waiting
his turn to talk, and weep.
She hands him the phone.
For a minute they are together
in a tiny booth, his tears
dropping alongside hers. Then
she goes to lean against the fender
of their sedan and listens
to him talk about arrangements.

I watch all this from my car.
I don’t have a phone at home, either.
I sit behind the wheel,
smoking, wanting to make
my own arrangements. Pretty soon
he hangs up. Comes out and wipes his face.
They get in the car and sit
with the windows rolled up.
The glass grows steamy as she
leans into him, as he puts
his arm around her shoulders.
The workings of comfort in that cramped, public space.

I take my small change over
to the booth, and step inside.
But leaving the door open, it’s
so close in there. The phone still warm to the touch.

I hate to use a phone
that’s just brought news of death.
But I have to, it being the only phone
for miles, and one that might
listen without taking sides.

I put in coins and wait.
Those people in the car wait too.
He starts the engine then kills it.
Where to? None of us able
to figure it out. Not knowing
where the next blow might fall,
or why. The ringing at the other end

stops when she picks it up.
Before I can say two words, the phone
begins to shout, “I told you it’s over!
Finished! You can go
to hell as far as I’m concerned!”

I drop the phone and pass my hand
across my face. I close and open the door.
The couple in the sedan roll
their windows down and
watch, their tears stilled
for a moment in the face of this distraction.
Then they roll their windows up
and sit behind the glass.

We don’t go anywhere for a while.
And then we go.

— Raymond Carver

Notes:
Peter Buchanan-Smith recently redesigned Raymond Carver’s backlist for Vintage Contemporaries, using Hido’s photographs on the covers. You can read a conversation between Buchanan-Smith + Hido about the project on The Sun & Anchor.

A Road Divided, an exhibition of recent landscapes by Hido, is on view at Bruce Silverstein Gallery through October 24, 2009.

The Phone Booth is included in Hido’s stunning 2004 monograph, Roaming. (Published by Nazraeli.)

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The F STOP » Professional Photographers Discuss Their Craft » Article Archive » Movin’ On Up [del.icio.us]

2009-09-08T23:05:58-07:00

The process by which an artist’s work finds its way into a commercial gallery is often long and circumvented. Stein was gracious, politely tenacious, and smart. Professional relationships can often be analogous to marriage, and after three years of “dating,” I was certain that I liked Stein as a person. This was someone with whom I would enjoy working on a day-to-day basis; someone whom I could trust; and someone who clearly has a bright future, so that after one successful show I will not be left in the lurch with no further compelling work to promote. — Brian Clamp on Ms. Amy Stein.

Illustrator Keeps Artistic Vision Despite Eye Injury : NPR [del.icio.us]

2009-09-08T22:43:57-07:00

"Hours can go by, she says, as she draws the long, smooth lines that capture the nature of a leaf or a branch. After nearly four decades on the job, Tangerini is still trying to get it just right... Every drawing is that attempt to reach perfection," says Tangerini, who is also the curator of the Smithsonian's 5 million plant drawings. "The attempt to really make that one line that you say, 'That's exactly the way I wanted to make that line.'"

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The slow death of handwriting [del.icio.us]

2009-09-07T16:22:59-07:00

Christmas cards, shopping lists and what else? The occasions in which we write by hand are fewer and fewer.... So is the ancient art of handwriting dying out? A century from now, our handwriting may only be legible to experts. For some, that is already the case. But writer Kitty Burns Florey says the art of handwriting is declining so fast that ordinary, joined-up script may become as hard to read as a medieval manuscript. "When your great-great-grandchildren find that letter of yours in the attic, they'll have to take it to a specialist, an old guy at the library who would decipher the strange symbols for them," says Ms Florey, author of the newly-published Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting.

Art for Investment's Sake - Executive Style - Portfolio.com [del.icio.us]

2009-09-06T16:32:52-07:00

"The unforgiving recession has pummeled stock and bond markets, but an unconventional investment has Victor Cordell smiling. On a recent San Francisco morning, Cordell read aloud a letter from The Collectors Fund, a Kansas City-based investment fund that buys mostly 20th century American art. He joined in October. For the year that ended in June, the value of the fund’s holdings rose 10 percent a unit, based on multiple appraisals, following a 20 percent increase the prior year."

Paired: Thiebaud + O’Hara

2009-09-06T06:50:33Z

Celebration Cakes by Wayne Thiebaud

Lines for the Fortune Cookies

I think you’re wonderful and so does everyone else.

Just as Jackie Kennedy has a baby boy, so will you–even bigger.

You will meet a tall beautiful blonde stranger, and you will not say hello.

You will take a long trip and you will be very happy, though alone.

You will marry the first person who tells you your eyes are like scrambled eggs.

In the beginning there was YOU–there will always be YOU, I guess.

You will write a great play and it will run for three performances.

Please phone The Village Voice immediately: they want to interview you.

Roger L. Stevens and Kermit Bloomgarden have their eyes on you.

Relax a little; one of your most celebrated nervous tics will be your undoing.

Your first volume of poetry will be published as soon as you finish it.

You may be a hit uptown, but downtown you’re legendary!

Your walk has a musical quality which will bring you fame and fortune.

You will eat cake.

Who do you think you are, anyway? Jo Van Fleet?

You think your life is like Pirandello, but it’s really like O’Neill.

A few dance lessons with James Waring and who knows? Maybe something will happen.

That’s not a run in your stocking, it’s a hand on your leg.

I realize you’ve lived in France, but that doesn’t mean you know EVERYTHING!

You should wear white more often–it becomes you.

The next person to speak to you will have a very intriquing proposal to make.

A lot of people in this room wish they were you.

Have you been to Mike Goldberg’s show? Al Leslie’s? Lee Krasner’s?

At times, your disinterestedness may seem insincere, to strangers.

Now that the election’s over, what are you going to do with yourself?

You are a prisoner in a croissant factory and you love it.

You eat meat. Why do you eat meat?

Beyond the horizon there is a vale of gloom.

You too could be Premier of France, if only… if only…

—Frank O’Hara

Thanks to Andrew Long for this perfect pairing!

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Harvest by Wout Berger

2009-09-05T02:30:16Z

Harvest (2007) by Wout Berger | 120×150 cm, ed. of 6

I have nothing to pair this image with, it’s just one that I’ve loved for a few years now.

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Paired: Soth + Stevens

2009-09-04T22:53:43Z

Cone and Cigar, Falcon Heights, Minnesota by Alec Soth
From The Last Days of W

The Emperor of Ice Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

—Wallace Stevens

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Paired: Core + Arnold

2009-09-04T21:21:55Z

Early American, Blackberries (Raphaelle Peale) by Sharon Core 12 x 17.75 inch, c-print, edition of 7 (2008)

The Heart Under Your Heart

            Who gives his heart away too easily must have a heart
            under his heart.
               —James Richardson

The heart under your heart
            is not the one you share
so readily      so full of pleasantry
            & tenderness

it is a single blackberry
at the heart of a bramble
or else some larger fruit
heavy the size of a fist

it is full of things
            you have never shared with me
broken engagements      bruises
            & baking dishes

the scars on top of scars
of sixteen thousand pinpricks
the melody you want so much to carry
& always fear black fear

or so I imagine      you have never shown me
            & how could I expect you to
I also have a heart beneath my heart
            perhaps you have seen      or guessed

it is a beach at night
where the waves lap & the wind hisses
over a bank of thin
translucent orange & yellow jingle shells

on the far side of the harbor
the lighthouse beacon
shivers across the black water
& someone stands there waiting

—Craig Arnold
Published: The Paris Review No. 189 Summer 2009

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Paired: Scher + Stewart

2009-08-24T07:44:57Z

The World by Paula Scher

The Map of the World Confused with Its Territory

In a drawer I found a map of the world,
folded into eighths and then once again
and each country bore the wrong name because
the map of the world is an orphanage.

The edges of the earth had a margin
as frayed as the hem of the falling night
and a crease moved down toward the center of
the earth, halving the identical stars.

Every river ran with its thin blue
brother out from the heart of a country:
there cedars twisted toward the southern sky
and reeds plumed eastward like an augur’s pens.

No dates on the wrinkles of that broad face,
no slow grinding of mountains and sand, for—
all at once, like a knife on a whetstone—
the map of the world spoke in snakes and tongues.

The hard-topped roads of the western suburbs
and the distant lights of the capitol
each pull away from the yellowed beaches
and step into the lost sea of daybreak.

The map of the world is a canvas turning
away from the painter’s ink-stained hands
while the pigments cake in their little glass
jars and the brushes grow stiff with forgetting.

There is no model, shy and half-undressed,
no open window and flickering lamp,
yet someone has left this sealed blue letter,
this gypsy’s bandana on the darkening

Table, each corner held down by a conch
shell. What does the body remember at
dusk? That the palms of the hands are a map
of the world, erased and drawn again and

Again, then covered with rivers and earth.

—Susan Stewart

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Paired: Walker + Oliver

2009-08-17T05:34:46Z

Eglingham Children and Swan on Beach, Northumberland, England (2002) by Tim Walker

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

—Mary Oliver

Tim and I became fast friends during a slow walk under the hot sun in the South of France. We’d just been served lunch on the grounds of a fancy estate and slipped away to stroll down to a pond where two handsome and terrifying swans made their home. We were curious to have a look at those magnificent creatures, but careful not to get too close.

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Cool, Cool Water - The Morning News [del.icio.us]

2009-07-06T15:21:01-07:00

As French photographer Christian Chaize says below, “Almost all of us have at least one personal history with a beach.” His series “Praia Piquinia,” on view at Jen Bekman Gallery through July 11, 2009, is a charming portrait of a small patch of sand as it changes from day to day. The beach is what we make it, Chaize suggests below, and is never the same.

Etsy.com peddles a false feminist fantasy. [del.icio.us]

2009-06-10T17:04:10-07:00

The problem is that on Etsy, as in much of life, the promise is a fantasy. There’s little evidence that most sellers on the site make much money. This, I suspect, explains the absence of men. They are immune to the allure of this fantasy. They have evaluated the site on purely economic terms and found it wanting.

Graphics Atlas: Welcome [del.icio.us]

2009-06-01T20:18:20-07:00

Graphics Atlas is a new online resource that brings sophisticated print identification and characteristic exploration tools to archivists, curators, historians, collectors, conservators, educators, and the general public.

Archives of American Art: More Than Words: Illustrated Letters from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art [del.icio.us]

2009-05-25T19:49:13-07:00

Often the expression of joy or affection, illustrated letters represent an irrepressible urge to picture language. They are evidence of the writer's use of words and images to amplify the form and effect of a message. The letters have been selected by Archives of American Art Curator of Manuscripts Liza Kirwin. These are drawn entirely from the collections of the Archives of American Art, encompassing exuberant thank you notes, winsome love letters, lively reports of current events, graphic instructions and other personalized communiqu?s from the early nineteenth century through the 1980s, in each sender's distinctive style.

Alva Noe, You are not your brain | Salon [del.icio.us]

2009-05-08T06:07:28-07:00

"...the view that the self and consciousness can be explained in terms of the brain, that the real us is found inside our skulls, isn't just misleading and wrong, it's ugly. In that view, each of us is trapped in the caverns of his own skull and the world is just a sort of shared figment. Everything is made interior, private, rational and computational. That may not pose a practical danger, but it presents a kind of spiritual danger."

April 7, 2009 ~ On Easter and Updike | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly [del.icio.us]

2009-04-12T15:19:16-07:00

Easter is not easy for most poets and writers, the difficult mystery of resurrection being more intractable than incarnation... One of the best examples of the problem is perhaps the most famous Easter poem of the second half of the 20th century, John Updike’s “Seven Stanzas at Easter.”

Design Observer: William Klein — Contacts [del.icio.us]

2009-04-12T14:09:49-07:00

A book signing is a manifestation of an urge to recover something that we, as a culture, fear losing — namely the hand of the artist in the age of mechanical (and digital) reproduction. Now more than ever it seems that we want to get close to creativity: to hear the voice and see the skin and experience the physical presence of the person who made something that we deem to be meaningful. Is this because so much of our lives now is mediated through a screen?