A Portrait Of the Artist’s Troubled Daughter

NY Times
By Dinitia Smith
November 22, 2003

She was the light giver, the ”wonder wild,” James Joyce wrote of his daughter, Lucia. She was what Joyce scholars call the ”Rainbow girl” in his masterpiece, ”Finnegans Wake,” Issy the temptress, who magically breaks up into the colors of the rainbow. Lucia had a mind ”as clear and as unsparing as the lightning,” Joyce once wrote in a letter. ”She is a fantastic being.”

But for the most part Lucia has been a marginal figure in her father’s biographies, a sad girl with a crooked eye who was rejected by Samuel Beckett, her boyfriend and her father’s secretary, and who died in an asylum in 1982.

But now a new book, ”Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), by Carol Loeb Shloss, a professor of English at Stanford University, argues that not only was Lucia an extraordinary artist in her own right, she was also central to the creation of ”Finnegans Wake,” perhaps more so than her mother, Nora, long seen as the main inspiration for the female characters.

”Lucia was a centrally important muse to Joyce, who inspired him and whom he depended upon,” Ms. Shloss said in an interview. Their relationship ”helped to change the course of modern literature,” she said.

Read the full article »

Mere coincidence or divine truth?

Jerusalem Post
By Yocheved Miriam Russo
Dec. 3, 2009

A niggling curiosity about colors started the whole thing. “For many years, I found myself idly wondering if the name value of colors mentioned in the Bible had any relationship to their wave frequency,” says Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Professor Haim Shore.

“In the scheme of things, that’s an outrageous suggestion - why would anyone think that the Hebrew name for colors mentioned in the Bible - red, green, yellow - would bear any relationship to the wave frequency of the color itself?” he asks. “Finally, just for fun, I checked it out. When I saw the results, I was stunned. It was a heck of a coincidence, but the two were linearly related.”

“The Hebrew word for the color actually matched the color’s wave frequency,” Shore says. “How could that be?”

Shore’s methodology was relatively simple. He took the Hebrew names of five colors that appear in the Bible - red (adom), yellow (tzahov), green (yerakon), blue (tchelet) and purple or magenta (argaman) - and calculated a numerical value for each word by adding the total values of the letters, with aleph as one, bet as two, etc. Then he plotted them on a graph. The vertical axis charted the colors’ wave frequencies, which are scientifically established, while along the horizontal axis, the ‘CNV’, Color Name Value, appeared. When it was complete, “I was astonished,” Shore recalls.

“The five points on the graph formed a straight line - which means that the names of the colors related directly to their established wave frequencies.” It was a straight-out statistical analysis, Shore says. “I didn’t manipulate a single number in doing the analysis.”

“I didn’t plot anything at all until I had all the data,” he says. “But when I saw it, I was like a lion in a cage, pacing around. I couldn’t believe it. Then I went on to other words in the Hebrew Bible, plotting the value of the letters against known scientific data. The whole thing blew me away.”

“What I found is that there’s an astonishing number of ‘coincidences’ in which the Hebrew name for some ‘entity’ in the Bible relates directly to that entity’s scientifically established physical property,” Shore continues. “I began recording it all, and finally published it in a book which contains about 20 different analyses - statistical, scientifically verifiable findings.”

Read the full article »

Artist: John Currin

Born in 1965, John Currin is an American painter renowned for his exaggerated female body parts and social/sexual themes.

JC: The subject of a painting is always the author, the artist. You can only make an illusion that it’s about something other than that. I think that’s what the function of representation is: to give a painting the illusion of a subject. In the end, that’s why I started seeing no reason for me to paint abstractly. Some people would say, “Abstraction is as much a representation as anything else.” But I wanted it to be more simple-minded. Why can’t I just be forthright about saying that I’m the author, that I’m the one who determined it?

KS: Are you saying that, since you think the subjectivity of an artist is an intrinsic part of a painting, there’s no reason to paint abstractly anymore?

JC: No, I would never say that. I would never say that I’m on this “team,” that I’m on the “team” of figurative painters. I never felt a responsibility to revive or uphold the continuing validity of representation, of representational painting. I do find myself looking at old art, but it’s because those are the best pictures. I can see that there may be a historical reason to paint like Richter or someone, but I think there’s always a perverse reason behind every one of those logical, historical justifications. For example, Cubism was perverse when Picasso first did it. People justify it by talking about looking at an object from three sides and so on, but it always seemed to me much more about seeing the ass and the breast at the same time. That’s basically what Picasso used it for, and even after he gave up Cubism, he still habitually drew the ass crack, the pussy and the breast on the front. The metaphor was not about time travel, it was about total sexual domination.

When I painted those pictures of older women, partly it was a bit of a joke on the idea of the subversive nude. How many times have you read that Manet’s nudes look back at you with confidence and assertiveness? People never know how to separate the picture from what the painting is, so they look at it and think, “Oh, she’s looking at you in this assertive way.” I always think it’s exactly the opposite. It’s as if Manet is claiming even that, even their self-assertion he’s taking away, even their ability to look back at you he has claimed with his brush. A lot of painters are facile, like John Singer Sargent, but certain of them transform it into a real metaphor. With Manet, it’s not just facility, it’s a means of showing that he’s utterly ruthless in what he claims as his own creation. That’s why his flower paintings are upsetting to look at, too. Even the beauty of the flowers was claimed, as if he were claiming God’s very own creation.

To whatever extent painting can be considered a moral act, it necessarily goes in one of the worst possible directions. As an author, you have a weird, guilty authority over everything you create. You can’t make a painting without embracing your own desire as something good. You can find all kinds of examples of this with the Expressionists. There’s a perverse aspect to their saying “I made it this way, I made the shadow on her face green.” When you choose distorted or unnatural colors, it’s not lyrical or metaphorical so much as it’s infantile or atavistic. A green shadow is not “minty,” but a flaunting of the idea that you are free to do something. That’s why I’ve always thought of myself as an expressionist artist. I think in terms of expressionism because it’s involved with dumb ideas, really stupid ideas; and even if my strategy would seem to be mapped-out, some people would even say “smart,” that’s not what I mean when I say “stupid.” I’m talking about stupid urges and stupid desires, things that don’t involve any irony or anything intellectual.

(via supervert.com)

Ladies Night: Catherine Pierce & Tamaryn Reign

blackbookmag.com
By Jessica McMenamin
June 05, 2009

Women in music reigned last night in New York City. To begin with, Catherine Pierce, from the songstress-sister-duo The Pierces had an art opening at Cameo Gallery in Brooklyn. Catherine invited me to check out her latest paintings on display, so naturally I said yes to the lovely lady and friend. Nadia Koch, a huge music fan and partner in Home Sweet Home, tagged along with me for the evening. We arrived at Cameo — which sits behind The Lovin’ Cup Café — to a sea of Catherine’s friends and family, including her younger sister Louisa, plus Paige Wood, who also had artwork on display. Alison Pierce, Catherine’s better half from The Pierces was of course there as well to support. And oh! I can’t forget this bit — the girls introduced to me to their mother! After our introduction, I knew why her daughters are so sweet.

I asked Catherine what she’s been up to. “Allison and I just returned from France. We had a performance at the Nouveau Casino in Paris! It was sooo nice!” I wish I could’ve snuck inside Catherine’s suitcase and joined along for the ride. Next time perhaps.

Nadia and I quickly said our goodbyes due to the need to catch a show at Annex back in Manhattan. Tamaryn, a young and up-and-coming singer on the rise, was scheduled to perform. Think dark, think Siouxsie and the Banshees, think, gypsy—that’s Tamaryn’s look. (Surprise, surprise, her music falls within the same vein.) We walked inside to a packed house just in time to catch her set. Quite good I must say. Each time I see one of her performances, she gets better and better. Rest assured, Tamaryn is one to watch.

After the show, Nadia and I snuck off to the Cabin for a nightcap; it’s a watering hole for a slew of notable musicians in New York City. I wasn’t surprised to see Kirsten Dunst and Fab from The Strokes upon entry. Nadia and I didn’t stay too long, but rest assured, fun was had. Sans-boys nights are indeed a necessity for us ladies and should happen more often.

W magazine
by Elisa Lipsky-Karasz
December 2008

Gary Hume‘s Georgie and Orchids.

See a slideshow of more tapestries.

Dream Weavers

With a team of 14 artists, Christopher and Suzanne Sharp of the Rug Company are reviving the lost craft of tapestry.

Tapestries usually conjure images of musty weavings featuring medieval princesses and unicorns—not controversial subject matter like the lynching of a woman, the war on terror or a map of the world made of trash. But such are the offerings from Kara Walker, Grayson Perry and Gavin Turk, respectively, three of 14 artists who have created tapestries for Banners of Persuasion, a new visual arts organization launched by Christopher and Suzanne Sharp, founders of the Rug Company.

Well-known among design junkies for collaborations with such fashion icons as Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith and Diane von Furstenberg and decorating stars like Kelly Wearstler, the London-based Sharps have shifted their focus from the floor to the wall for this project. “When artists do rugs, they end up looking like blobs of color,” says Christopher, who decided that a tapestry’s finer weaving would allow for greater detail. “[Tapestry] was always a collaboration between artist and craftsman. We thought it would be wonderful to revisit that.” Three years later, the Sharps are planning to show the limited-edition works—only five of each design were produced—at the Dairy, a London exhibition space, in November before bringing them to Art Basel Miami in December.

Most of the artists the Sharps approached were new to the medium. “I never thought about tapestries before,” admits British artist Paul Noble, who is known for his intricate, wall-size drawings of imaginary urban landscapes. His design depicts fictional city Nobson Newtown in a state of abandonment.

“The idea that you can make something big and not fragile really appealed to me,” adds Perry, who has a penchant for cross-dressing and typically creates richly decorated ceramics that tackle dark issues like sadomasochism and car wrecks. Perry’s tapestry, based on Afghan war rugs, features his childhood teddy bear, Alan Measles, balancing on top of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers with the slogan VOTE ALAN MEASLES FOR GOD/HE WILL SAVE US.

Production of the tapestries—a craft that arguably peaked in the 1300s—proved a Sisyphean task. After each artist finished his or her original work, a print was sent to a workshop north of Shanghai, China. There, female artisans, employing traditional Flemish techniques, painstakingly created scale drawings of each work with specially dyed color references before they began weaving. Samples were sent to each creator to approve pigments and detail. “It’s been such a labor,” says Christopher of the undertaking. Noble’s piece took 14 months to produce and required 60 precisely calibrated shades of gray. Meanwhile, the real fig leaves in Fred Tomaselli’s original work were re-created using gold thread. “I like the warp and the woof,” he says. “It reminds me of pixels.”

Perry was so taken with the medium that he’s now making a new tapestry independently, while Noble is recommending his favorites, including Tomaselli’s, to collectors. “I’ve told people, if you want to buy some good work, this is a really special thing,” he says, pointing out that masters such as Goya often had their paintings reproduced as wall hangings. (The weavings—which range in size from 6 feet by 6 feet to 13 feet by 13 feet—will be priced from about $25,000 to $150,000.) “It’s like you are looking at the original but slightly transformed,” he says. “Really, it’s like seeing your own work but through a bottle of vodka.”

“Come Maria: velo si, burqa no”

Source: Quotidiano Nazionale Wednesday November ‘06

A call to reduce the burqa: the 100% face-covering wrap, to the chador or hijab - both wraps are unobstrusive and similar to the veil often depicted on the Virgin Mary.

(a niqab is pictured)

Journey to Siwa

From W Magazine.
By Christopher Bagley
Photographs by Philip-Lorca Dicorcia

* * *

“You don’t trust me?”

It’s an hour before sunset in the dunes of the Sahara, near the oasis of Siwa in western Egypt, and our turbaned, galabia-clad driver, Abdallah Baghi, is careering our Land Rover up and down the mountains of sand, riding them like a big-wave surfer. There are three of us in the back of the car, and judging by Baghi’s sly smile, he’s happiest when he can hear all of us yelping in terror; at one point he hurtles over a peak so steep that the car’s underside slams into the crest, threatening to leave us teetering at the top, cartoon-style.

Abdallah Baghi brewing tea on the dunes.

It helps, slightly, to learn that Baghi moonlights as a respected local official (Siwa’s superintendent of schools) and that he has accidentally flipped the car “only” once, with no resulting harm to his passengers. Still, “sometimes people get a little bit scared,” Baghi says, before steering us toward a flatter stretch where the dunes have shifted to expose a curiously jagged patch of ground, pocked with what looks like tiny white stones. When we get out to walk around, we see that the stones are actually prehistoric ocean fossils: hundreds of sand dollars and oyster shells, remnants of the era when this part of Africa was completely underwater. While we’re still contemplating our discovery of a virgin fossil field millions of years old, Baghi drives us to a high ridge, where we watch the sun drop behind the dunes as he quietly takes out his handmade hatchet, along with a few olive tree branches, and builds a small bonfire. It’s time for tea, brewed in an elegant iron pot with locally grown mint leaves.

Just another afternoon at the oasis of Siwa, in a remote part of Egypt that offers exhilaration and edification in equal measure. Few Americans have heard of Siwa, let alone considered a trip there, but in recent years the oasis has been luring a new wave of in-the-know travelers, including Prince Charles, the Duchess of Cornwall, Christian Louboutin and others craving its unique mix of ecologically sound adventure and haute-rustic style. The fact that the only way to get to Siwa is by driving nine hours from Cairo—or by hopping a private jet—has so far kept most tour buses away. But the news that a local military airport might soon open to commercial flights has some residents fretting that the place’s timeless charms are now marked with an imminent expiration date.

Our visit begins unpromisingly, with the monotonous daylong journey on the featureless road from Cairo. It’s the kind of drive that reminds me why desert road trips rarely live up to their majestic reputations. (I find myself rooting for a major sandstorm, just to ease the boredom, and the wish is granted: For an hour or so our car is pelted with blindingly thick clouds of dust that clear up only occasionally to reveal an oil rig or a wayward camel.) After nightfall we finally pull up to our hotel, Adrère Amellal, which is reputed to be the most luxurious eco-resort in Egypt. At first we wonder if we’ve taken a wrong turn. Yes, the porters greeting us are decked out in chic white robes, and they lead us up a winding pathway lined with artfully placed hurricane lanterns, but after they deposit our bags near the fire pit that apparently doubles as a reception area, they seem as confused as we are about what to do next. Eventually we figure out that we’re supposed to take a look around and choose our own rooms, which isn’t easy because the lodge, true to its eco-conscious mandate, has no electricity and nary a flashlight; the whole place is lit with torches and candles.

During dinner an hour later, I begin to suspect that everything’s going to be okay. The sandstone dining table, in the middle of a cavernous room with a domed 15-foot ceiling, is set with antique silver and French china; to ward off the winter desert chill (temperatures drop into the 30s at night), stone braziers filled with smoldering olive-wood embers have been placed at our feet. There’s no menu, but the meal is easily the best I’ve had in Egypt: roasted chicken with saffron served on traditional clay cookware, and succulent zucchini from the back garden, yellow florets still attached as proof of just-picked freshness.

The owner of the lodge and the man responsible for all of these little details, Egyptian environmentalist Mounir Neamatalla, has joined us for dinner. A genial, blue-eyed Cairo native, Neamatalla, 61, has a Ph.D. from Columbia University and the natural élan of a statesman from some mythical country where everyone can discuss, in four languages, the differences among varieties of artisanal capers. In the mid-Nineties Neamatalla, who runs a consulting firm that specializes in sustainable development, was eager to put the firm’s principles into practice and decided to open his own eco-lodge, Egypt’s first. His initial visit to Siwa was a “revelation,” he recalls, because he found a society still embracing ancient traditions that today seem downright progressive: a holistic, low-impact approach to living and a deep, instinctual respect for nature. “Generally you learn about these things in books,” says Neamatalla. “In Siwa you experience them. It was like living in medieval times.” He spent nine years building the resort on a lakeside plot dotted with palm groves and hot springs.

When I get up to explore Adrère Amellal after sunrise the next morning, I see how completely Neamatalla has achieved his vision. If Fred Flintstone had had a brother with a flair for interior design, he might have created something like this place. The 17 buildings, scattered along a slope beneath a dramatic sandstone mountain, are made with a local mud called kershef, a mixture of rock salt and clay. Hidden among the rooms and suites, which can accommodate 80 guests, are various dining spaces, bars and cavelike lounge areas, minimally decorated with a Berber rug here, a few white canvas cushions there.

More than just a fantasy compound for discerning cavemen, the lodge is a lesson in the wisdom of Siwa’s native building techniques. Solar panels? Nope—too modern. Instead there are tiny square windows framed with local palm logs, and walls made with a translucent alabaster-like rock salt that lets in daylight while keeping out heat and cold. Each night while we’re at dinner, someone sneaks into our frigid bedrooms and slides flannel-covered hot-water bottles between the sheets. (Somehow, these keep the bed warm until morning.) One problem: Every half century or so, Siwa gets soaked with torrential winter rains, and the next time that happens, this hotel, like the rest of the oasis’s traditional mud structures, is likely to melt into the ground. Asked about that prospect, Neamatalla smiles and admits that advance planning is not one of his fortes. “At least it won’t leave much debris behind,” he says.

Read on »