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or, as one of the stories retold by Him Who Is Not To Be Named In This Journal, Except When He Is, puts it, "Why are you asking for more information when you have not yet learned the lessons offered by the information you already have?"
Having realized that I am now involved in no fewer than five (possibly six) artists' collaborative projects and am behind in my promised art reviewing, I think it is time for me to stop my habitual running out ahead of my available information...even though I am delighted by the predictions made by George Friedman in The Next 100 Years (which are not all that new, but I have just been reminded of them in a fresh context) regarding the future economic centrality of Poland and Turkey, those being countries that have fascinated me over the years...both of them historic empires on the lines of conflict between contending modes of civilization, very much "West versus East"...just not the same East, and not exactly the same West, either.
And it is tempting to hold forth about outsider artist Vollis Simpson now that he has gotten his unexpected due in today's New York Times...it continues to amaze me that people I know come back from North Carolina reporting on this incredible old guy with the gigantic mechanical structures, discoveries to them even though he has been on the cover of at least one book (perhaps it was an exhibition catalogue).
And I am behind on writing posts on Counterforces about my habitual favorite topics, in this case (1) the evolution of Indonesian art from Raden Saleh's subversive history painting The Arrest of Diponegoro to the present-day installation art created in a country whose woes of marginality seem strangely familiar; and (2) Yann Mingard's "East of Another Eden" documentary photos, hauntingly ironic studies of the territory stretching from the eastern borders of Poland to the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria...borderlands to be defended against illicit intrusions into the territory of the European Union. (Mingard also has a series of documentary photos dealing with another of my habitual hobbyhorses...the Russian Republic of Tuva. So I am doubly behind on this one.)
Under the circumstances, I really should shut up until I know what I am talking about, rather than gliding by on the currents of oblique irony that let me assert things without really having to mean them...except, of course, when I really do mean them. Which is another trick I seem to have acquired via Doris Lessing's much-contested and -ridiculed friend and confrere.
Having realized that I am now involved in no fewer than five (possibly six) artists' collaborative projects and am behind in my promised art reviewing, I think it is time for me to stop my habitual running out ahead of my available information...even though I am delighted by the predictions made by George Friedman in The Next 100 Years (which are not all that new, but I have just been reminded of them in a fresh context) regarding the future economic centrality of Poland and Turkey, those being countries that have fascinated me over the years...both of them historic empires on the lines of conflict between contending modes of civilization, very much "West versus East"...just not the same East, and not exactly the same West, either.
And it is tempting to hold forth about outsider artist Vollis Simpson now that he has gotten his unexpected due in today's New York Times...it continues to amaze me that people I know come back from North Carolina reporting on this incredible old guy with the gigantic mechanical structures, discoveries to them even though he has been on the cover of at least one book (perhaps it was an exhibition catalogue).
And I am behind on writing posts on Counterforces about my habitual favorite topics, in this case (1) the evolution of Indonesian art from Raden Saleh's subversive history painting The Arrest of Diponegoro to the present-day installation art created in a country whose woes of marginality seem strangely familiar; and (2) Yann Mingard's "East of Another Eden" documentary photos, hauntingly ironic studies of the territory stretching from the eastern borders of Poland to the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria...borderlands to be defended against illicit intrusions into the territory of the European Union. (Mingard also has a series of documentary photos dealing with another of my habitual hobbyhorses...the Russian Republic of Tuva. So I am doubly behind on this one.)
Under the circumstances, I really should shut up until I know what I am talking about, rather than gliding by on the currents of oblique irony that let me assert things without really having to mean them...except, of course, when I really do mean them. Which is another trick I seem to have acquired via Doris Lessing's much-contested and -ridiculed friend and confrere.
