a few art comments (quotes)

[abknight@zzzzzz]

Hi Oscar,

Thank you for the quotes, hardy grist for the mill of the
mind.
It is nice to think of stone as a durable zone of
interesest as one goes into older age, as Noguchi suggests
about the men of Japan.  It is, though, an occupation some
what stoic and ascetic.  I would hear first Solomon who
requested:

comfort me with apples
when I am weary of love.

Brancusi on Brancusi:

Carving itself is not so difficult,
what is difficult is arriving at the state of mind where
carving is possible.

Or something like that.

Did anyone go to the Symposium from Hell site?
Unforgettable.  In the first place what a terrible theme:
to  each sculptor the task a designing and carving a
letter in the name of the host city.  What a poor weak,
trite, mindless exercise of boosterism, free of any
artistic conceptual invention.  Our friend from Japan
showed an interesting poverty of judgement to subject
himself to such a regime.

The capper, of course, is that when they arrive, the
artists are informed their will be no stone, or wood or
steel  or tools.  Instead polystyrene bead blocks and saws
and grinder and files.  AAGGGHHHH!  Then, they are to
spackle and sand and PAINT them so as to look like a
natural material.  Incredible.  Our poor Japanese friend
lumpily recreates his usual motif with polished surface
controposed with a body or roughened and rouged surface.
The poor fellow paints dark stars on the "polished stone"
surface to indicate, in fact, that he is dreaming of stone
grain.