My son is a man.
Winston turns 18 today and, as luck would have it, received an offer from his college of choice last night. There could be no finer birthday gift.
All you need to know about the college is that it enjoys the same weather as his prep school (snow!) and is in the most perfect setting imaginable.
He got away with it.
The French ‘artist’ Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) started it. He would exhibit common objects – toilet bowls, dinner plates, you name it – as ‘art’ and the fools passing as critics lauded him for his insights and originality. Duchamp was a fake and he new it. He must have got a good laugh at the expense of his critics. But his fakery did not make him rich. You see, he was French where art rules over income.
Andy Warhol (1928-87) saw Duchamp’s work and, being American, smelled profit. He crafted a mysterious image for himself and proceeded to paint ridiculous canvases of Campbell’s soup cans which now sell for $50 million and up. To my considerable disgust, Cornell University’s otherwise superb Johnson Museum of Art houses one of these pieces of garbage which should be immediately sold, the proceeds applied to reducing students’ fees – and maybe, you know, letting some more Americans into STEM classes?
Warhol’s crowning cinematic achievement? A static 24 hour reel of the Empire State Building. God alone knows what chemicals his audience was ingesting. People paid good American money to watch this tripe.
Proving that there’s one born every minute, a New York Times art writer falls for it and repeats all the utter nonsense written about this skillful grifter. You can read his nonsense by clicking the ‘art’ image below. Can you believe this crap? “Given the exponential influence of Warhol, it’s hard not to think about this show of his photographs as a historic template for our current Instagram moment, in which every commonplace detail of people’s lives is recorded and posted for an anonymous audience, and the ubiquitous “selfie,” an emblem of the endless lust for fame that replaces actual lived experience. What an odd and burdensome legacy for the pantheonic artist.” . Pantheonic? Yup.
Warhol was, indeed, the supreme fake, and laughed all the way to the bank with his fakery.
For more fun quotes from Pseuds’ Corner, click here.
The virtue of carelessness.
A few days ago I wrote this to a photographer friend:
Not a couple of days later an excellent pictorial by New Zealand photographer Amos Chapple from the cultural center of the world, Murmansk in Russkieland, says this:
To see Chapple’s outstanding images and share in his iPhone 11 experience, click the image below.
It bears repeating that the quality of the Android competition is only relevant to your choice if your data either have no value or you enjoy having your device hacked by Ivan. Want security? Stick with iOS.
As regards the author’s complaint of Night Mode not always working with the telephoto lens, it actually never works with that optic. It’s currently restricted to the standard and wide lenses.
Early photographer of archaeology.
The NYT has a fine piece on this little known photographer whose output dates from the 1850sand who died at a very young age.
The author writes: “Today, Greene’s images evoke a time when travel was still an adventure, ancient civilizations were largely mysterious and the grammar of photography was just being invented.” And, I would add, before social media destroyed photography.
A fabulous birthday gift.
These biographical pieces generally run annually in time for Hanukkah and Christmas.
Words cannot express this father’s feelings when, last night, my son Winston received the below, just in time for my birthday. There could be no finer birthday gift:
Our many college visits over the past couple of years have focused on the northeast and on Ivy and Little Ivy schools, Union being one of the latter. You can read about those visits here; the index includes two visits to Union College. The little Ivies are typically one tenth of the size of the Big Ivies and focus more intensely on liberal arts studies.
To quote Winston’s illustrious namesake: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Well done, Winnie!