The author and art

According to Orson Welles's F for Fake, a film essay about forgery, there are hundreds or thousands of forged pieces of art in museums worldwide. How would you feel if after having had an ecstatic moment in front of your favourite artist's work (Modigliani, Monet, Picasso, etc.) you find out that is a fake? Would you feel betrayed if you discovered that a painting that has moved you so much was not created by an artist but by an anonymous forger? Probably so.

But then the question is, are you moved by the fame of the artist or by the piece of art? In some cases the relation between the author and the work is not known, as Orson explains.

And this has been standing here for centuries. The premier work of man perhaps in the whole western world, and it's without a signature: Chartres.

A celebration to God's glory and to the dignity of man. All that's left most artists seem to feel these days, is man. Naked, poor, forked, radish. There aren't any celebrations. Ours, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe which is disposable. You know, it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand choiring shout of affirmation, which we choose when all our cities are dust, to stand intact, to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us, to accomplish.

Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared, some of them for a few decades, or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash. The triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life. We're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced -- but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.

(transcript from the video scene).

These reflections may lead to other questions: what is truth? Is it our perception and thus, only a relative concept?

Many years have passed since Orson Welles' film (27 years), especially the relationship between information, media and audience has changed. Experts still have the last word, but the truth is decided by the most powerful communication tool yet: Television. Try to persuade millions of TV viewers of a fact after they have heard it on TV. You can reach one, 10, 100, but not the majority. Welcome to 21th century dictatorship, no need for political prisoners.

The artistic experience

This has nothing to do with politics, or maybe it does. I went to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. today. It was intended to be a short visit, mainly to see Roy Lichtenstein's works, my latest passions in terms of art.

The museum itself is fantastic and it's such a privilege that people living here can just walk into so many museums and watch works of art for free, anytime as much as they want. Envy!


Part 1


Roy Lichtenstein is probably one of those artists I turned to after I exhausted my passion for Monet and the impressionists and for the Italian renaissance painters. What stroke me is the idea behind it. I found on youtube this documentary on him and maybe can help you to appreciate the artist and it also reveals its techniques.

Part 2


Pop art is always connected to Andy Warhol. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation.

Part 3


Lichtenstein used oil and Magna paint in his best known works, such as Drowning Girl (1963), which was appropriated from the lead story in DC Comics' Secret Hearts #83. Also featuring thick outlines, bold colors and Benday Dots to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction.



I love they way he uses bright colors, similar to those used in advertisements and isolates them in order to form artistic pictures. I cannot explain the compelling feeling that his works trigger. But I love it.



I will surely go back to look at it works, maybe copy them, and understand where does my passion for this form of art comes from. And it cannot be compared to Andy Warhol (he appears in part 5 of this documentary) which I am not completely crazy about.

The Great Illusion

On the 11th of November, both in the US and in some European Countries the end of World War I is celebrated. Veterans day or Armistice day. I guess that generally World War II has overshadowed the first world conflict, probably because of the leading roles, where can you find anyone playing the role of the bad guy better than Hitler and his partner Mussolini, and nobody could have come up with a crazier goal as the genocide of the Jews.

A scene from Kubrick's Paths of Glory



How it started

In a nutshell (with Wikipedia's support), this is what happened. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian-Serb student and member of Young Bosnia, assassinated the heir to the Austro–Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia. This began a period of diplomatic manoeuvring between Austria–Hungary, Germany, Russia, France and Britain called the July Crisis. Wanting to end Serbian interference in Bosnia conclusively, Austria–Hungary delivered the July Ultimatum to Serbia, a series of ten demands which were deliberately unacceptable, made with the intention of deliberately initiating a war with Serbia.When Serbia acceded to only eight of the ten demands levied against it in the ultimatum, Austria–Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914. The Russian Empire, unwilling to allow Austria–Hungary to eliminate its influence in the Balkans, and in support of its long time Serb proteges, ordered a partial mobilization one day later.[10] When the German Empire began to mobilise on 30 July 1914, France—sporting significant animosity over the German conquest of Alsace-Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War—ordered French mobilization on 1 August. Germany declared war on Russia on the same day.

The hostilities

The War way really complicated and it's very difficult to tell in a few words how it went and how it developed, including the involvement of all the countries, including Woodrow Wilson's USA.

So, looking at the statistics WWI caused 16,543,185 deaths and cost $125,690,477,000 (in 1914-1918 dollars!)

Thee BBC has a very well done website with short movies explaining the development of the conflict. Check it out here

The end of the War (on the Western Front)

The armistice treaty between the Allies and Germany was signed in a railway carriage in Compiègne Forest on 11 November 1918, and marked the end of the First World War on the Western Front. Principal signatories were Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Allied Commander-in-chief, and Matthias Erzberger, Germany's representative.

The Armistice was agreed at 5 AM on 11 November, to come into effect at 11 AM Paris time (that is 10 AM GMT), for which reason the occasion is sometimes referred to as "the eleventh (hour) of the eleventh (day) of the eleventh (month)". It was the result of a hurried and desperate process.

Acting German commander Paul von Hindenburg had requested arrangements for a meeting from Ferdinand Foch via telegram on 7 November. He was under pressure of imminent revolution in Berlin, Munich, and elsewhere across Germany.

The German delegation headed by Matthias Erzberger crossed the front line in five cars and was escorted for ten hours across the devastated war zone of Northern France. They were then entrained and taken to the secret destination, Foch's railway siding in the forest of Compiègne.



Despite the incredible loss of lives and the efforts made to create international bodies that would prevent such kind of wars. Nevertheless, a second world war happened and, even after, we never stopped seeing wars around the globe. We didn't learn anything about how war is useless and pointless and how it benefits only a few.

A Great Day for Freedom. Sure, maybe

One of the worst albums of Pink Floyd is without any doubt "The Division Bell", their second album after Roger Waters left the band. I particularly disliked, already from the title the song "A Great Day for Freedom" (On the day the wall came down, they threw the locks onto the ground, and with glasses high we raised a cry for freedom had arrived...). I just couldn't stand this rhetoric of freedom being becoming part of the western capitalist block, and their old gray system being just wrong.



I don't think that the wall should have stayed, I would oppose any wall, like the wall between Mexico and the US, Israel and Palestine, and all the other walls separating people. I do not agree with the fact that, as perceived by most, the fall of the Wall was a victory of Capitalism over Communism. The biggest victory was to get rid of the threat of a nuclear war (if that existed anymore in the eighties). Does Coca-cola, consumism, and triple velvet toilette paper really mean that we live in a better world? Capitalism was a benefit for a big chunk of the population that used to live on the other side of the iron curtain, but not for all. The truth, is probably in the middle.

Recession

It's been over a year now since the biggest recession since 1929 started. I shall not argue on the meaning of recession because it makes my blood to boil, and as I am going to sleep now I would like to stay calm. Just consider this: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) considers periods when global growth is less than 3% to be global recessions. This means that when our already rich countries don't become richer or stay as rich as the year before, that is a recession.



For this reason, in macroeconomic terms, I do not take recession seriously. As we are not getting less rich, we are just not getting richer. Please go forth explaining, the majority of the world population that Europeans and Americans are in big trouble because we decided to hang on a couple more years before changing our cars.

Nevertheless, the recession, on a smaller level can hit us hard, those that loose their jobs, their homes, those that cannot earn their living. But since we live in a rich society, all this will change and things will get better, like the sky after a storm. The clouds at last, drift away... like in the final scene of the film by Aki Kaurismaki, Drifting Clouds (Finnish: Kauas pilvet karkaavat)



The fantastic song on the credits is by Rauli Badding Somerjoki who died, much too young in 1987 (aged 39)

Healthcare as a paradigma of socialism (?)

Operation Coffee Cup was a campaign conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA) during the late 1950s and early 1960s in opposition to the Democrats' plans to extend Social Security to include health insurance for the elderly, later known as Medicare. As part of the plan, doctors' wives would organize coffee meetings in an attempt to convince acquaintances to write letters to Congress opposing the program. The operation received support from Ronald Reagan, who in 1961 produced the LP record Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine for the AMA, outlining arguments against what he called "socialized medicine". This record would be played at the coffee meetings. Michael Moore quoted Reagan's speech in the record in its 2007 documentary, Sicko.

The lobby that Reagan was supporting was basically trying to convince people that if they got free health care, their freedom would be at risk. Here's a long extract from it. Tragic and funny at the same time. But imagine a bunch of housewives sitting in a living room having tea and listening to the famous actor Ronald Reagan.



On 7 November 2009, the US house of representatives passed the bill on health care reform, 220 votes against 215 with one Republican member voting in favor. As the Washington Post says, "Democrats have sought for decades to provide universal health care, but not since the 1965 passage of Medicare and Medicaid has a chamber of Congress approved such a vast expansion of coverage. Action now shifts to the Senate, which could spend the rest of the year debating its version of the health-care overhaul".

As any person that knows that free healthcare and socialism are not closely related, I really hope for the millions of Americans living without health care coverage that the bill passes as soon as possible. One point for Europe, nowadays, nobody would ever think of depriving its citizens from healthcare, although it's not always perfect.

And if you're an American doctor, don't worry, you won't be starving.

Hagiography

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines Hagiography as the (1) biography of saints or venerated persons; (2) idealizing or idolizing biography. A biography is usually written on the achievements of one person. It seems, thought that the 44th (and current) American president Barack Hussein Obama II, is such an extraordinary character that get praise for what he will do, before he has even done anything (or, let's say, is far from having done something very substantial).

A few weeks ago, Obama won the nobel peace prize, and despite the fact that it came from a foreign country it was just difficult to understand. After all the emphasis on Obama, the cool president, the president of change, racially ecumenical, progressive and modern, this was felt here as something too much. Why did he get the prize? What did he do? He has good intentions, he demonstrated great intentions during his campaign, but now, all America, and the world wants, is change: jobs, no war, environmental protection. So far we haven't seen much (although there is a lot going on) And even the guys from SNL are pushing it.
Check this out


Almost one year and nothing to show for it. Guantanamo is still open, Iraq is still a problem, Afghanistan not better, etc...

Nevertheless we have a few hagiographies: "By the people" by Ed Norton on the electoral campaign, and the book "Art for Obama". I hope the change, the good one will arrive before the mid term elections.