All dilettantes are plagiarizers. They sap the life out of and destroy all that is original and beautiful in language and in thought by repeating it, imitating it, and filling up their own void with it. Thus, more and more language becomes filled with pillaged phrases and forms that no longer say anything; one can read entire books that have a beautiful style and contain nothing at all.2
Im confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that if your name is in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because its your news and they are taking it and selling it as their product. But then they always say that they are helping you, and thats true too, but still, if people didnt give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldnt have any news. So I guess you should pay each other. But I havent figured it out fully yet.3
From this initial video message to his
preinaguration press conferences to more
recent YouTube clips and weekly talks, Obama
has transformed the function of the president
elect, just as he transfigured the presidential
campaign into an Internet phenomenon.
Streaming from the Office of the President-
Elect, a nonplace or any place, Obama
proclaims his virtual presidency. The easy
acceptance by the public and the media of this
novel authority-after some initial Wheres the
president?
Nowhere
attests to the way
people live today, in online encounters and
communities.4
C. Only to the extent that the bourgeoisie adopts concepts of value held by the aristocracy does bourgeois art have a representational function. When it is genuinely bourgeois, this art is the objectification of the self-understanding as articulated in art are no longer tied to the praxis of life. Habermas calls this the satisfaction of residual needs, that is, of needs that have become submerged in the life praxis of bourgeois society.5
I put on rouge and wash my hands in front of the whole world.6
The Soul has moments of Escape
When bursting all the doors
She dances like a bomb, abroad,
And swings upon the Hours,
As do the Bee delirious borne
Long Dungeoned from his Rose
Touch Liberty then know no more,
But Noon, and Paradise 7
Living things that we classify as gifts really grow, of course, but even inert gifts are felt to increasein worth or in livelinessas they move from hand to hand. The distinctionalive/inertis not always useful, in fact, because even when a gift is not alive it is treated as if it were, and whatever we treat as living begins to take on life.
Moreover, gifts that have taken on life can bestow it in return Even if miracles are rare, it is still true that lifelessness leaves the soul when a gift comes toward us, for the gift property serves an upward force, the goodwill or virtù of nature, the soul, and the collective. (This is one of the senses in which I mean to say that a work of art is a gift. The gifted artist contains the vitality of his gift within the work, and thereby makes it available to others ).8
The book was the first mass-produced object. It was the first repeatable and uniform product. The process by which this kind of product was to achieve was a process soon extended to many other forms of making. The process consists in the extreme fragmentation of the ancient craft of the scriber. Printing from moveable type is not only an analytic procedure of fragmentation, but it fathered similar fragmentation in many areas of human perception and human action.
It is precisely on this process of analytic fragmentation that all the fabrics of modern production, marketing, and pricing were built. It is a process that dissolves with the advent of electric circuitry. The dissolution of this process can be illustrated from the effects of xerography on book publication. Xerography makes the reader both author and publisher in tendency. The highly centralized activity of publishing naturally breaks down into extreme decentralism when anybody can, by means of xerography, assembled printed, or written, or photographic materials which can be supplied with sound tracks.9
The main facts about the Chanel show are these: the collection was inspired by writing paper Mr. Lagerfeld is a complete antique in that he doesnt use a word processor and all the clothes were white or black and white. What made the show a rare pleasure was Mr. Lagerfelds supreme ability to concentrate on a single idea and find endless ways to express it And ever so often Mr. Lagerfeld would halt his stream of thoughts across the page with a punctuation mark say a short dress embroidered all over in black sequins with a draped panel at the back.10
AND LIKE GREAT ART, words wielded well have the power to alter the way we see the world. Thats why in these rapidly changing times, the role of the calm-voiced and clear eyed reporter is more vital than ever. I didnt go to journalism school...Throughout this sometimes exhilarating, sometimes debilitating roller-coaster ride, weve kept our head and our journalistic integrity. Although I have lamented the sniping that has characterized much of my colleagues reporting during boom years which Im certain has been informed by no small dose of schadenfreude I must point out that we are by no means the industrys in-house cheerleaders, nor are we Pollyannas purveying feel-good tales and happy endings to an audience that craves them. Nevertheless, I feel our cover is justified in trumpeting the brightside identified by our estimable international editor, Souren Melikian, in his column beginning on page 45.11
Renée Vara is an independent and private curator whose interests focus on social spaces, relational aesthetics and performative practices outside the context of institutional and corporate structures. She retains a Masters degree in art history from Hunter College/CUNY and has served as an Adjunct Professor at New York University for over 10 years. Renée has also been a guest lecturer at the Guggenheim Museum (NY), Sothebys Institute, American Association of Museums and the Appraisers Association of America. As a curator, Renée has organized exhibitions at the 9th Istanbul Biennale, Scope, Hunter College Gallery, and ArtHaus Miami(07). Her voice has been heard in both printed and live media such as Forbes, Wall Street Journal, ArtNews, Flash Art, Turkish CNN, US News & World Report and Whitewall.
The following sentences are not my own. They are
someone elses words and are reprinted exactly as
found in the original
. The authors quoted here
may or may not be quoting someone elses text
properly. Quotation marks are omitted throughout
with this authors implicit goal of reading the texts
unburdened, but knowingly, that all are quoted
directly. This author takes no responsibility for this
text or for the references of sources from the
authors cited herein.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Werke. (Weimarer:
Ausgabe. Nachtrage 1768-1832), vol. 47, 313. Rpt.
in Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Theory of Modernism,
versus Theory of the Avant-Garde: Foreword,
in:
Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, (Theory
and History of Literature) vol. 4 trans. Michael
Shaw, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press:
2004) ix.
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
(From A to B and Back Again),(New York: First
Harvest, 1975), 78.
Lynn Tillman, The Virtual President,
Artforum
(January, 2009): 69.
Peter Bürger, Autonomy of Art in Bourgeois
Society,
Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael
Shaw (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press,1984), 47-48.
Marie Antoinette, July 12, 1770. As quoted in:
Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001) 67.
Emily Dickinson, Departed to the Judgement.
Emily Dickinson: Poems Selected by Ted Hughes (London: Farber and Farber, 2001) 21.
Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in
the Modern World 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books,
2007) 32-33.
Marshall McLuhan, The Emperors Old Clothes
The Man-Made Object, Ed., Gyorgy Kepes, (New
York: George Brazillier Inc., 1966), 90-95.
Rpt. in Marshall McLuhan Unbound, vol. 20 Ed. Eric
McLuhan and Terence Gordon, (Berkeley, CA: Ginko
Press, 2005) 12.
Cathy Horyn, In Paris, a Nod to Old Masters.
New York Times (January 29, 2009):E7.
Anthony Barzilay Freund, Letter from the
Editor,
ART + AUCTION (January 2009):10.
