Posts by giovanni tiso
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Love Marian Maguire's work. Herakles was the subject of an excellent review by Adam Gifford on the Herald.
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Another is to claim that they didn't appreciate the beauty of their own works, or that they didn't know they were making objects of beauty.
I have not made this claim.
You have in fact made it several times. Which is why a dozen or so people have taken issue with you - if all you had said was that different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes art as opposed to craft, and that the modern global art world is heavily influenced by Western ideas of just what it is that constitues art (just as it is about what constitutes poetry or literature), I think nobody would have had much to object. Of course this largely uncontroversial observation says little about what art is, or about the very significant continuities that exist in the history of artistic practice. Etruscan art was almost entirely produced to be sealed inside tombs, it wasn't meant for human eyes to see; yet its technical and expressive evolution is not dissimilar from the evolution of fine art forms elsewhere, which suggests that the practice of artists, if not the perceived meaning and reception of their works, wasn't in fact radically different.
A more obvious example: you keep banging on the fact that pure aesthetic expression divorced from practical purpose is a modern European invention, but what was the practical purpose of Phidias' statue of Athena in the Acropolis? And was it all that different from the purpose of the rugby statue proposed for the Wellington waterfront?
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It's not the debate, it's how we're debating.
For what it's worth, I think it's both. One thing is to say that for instance that the ancient Greeks didn't make a distinction between artists and craftsmen, therefore art and crafts, at least not in a sense that would be intelligible to us. Another is to claim that they didn't appreciate the beauty of their own works, or that they didn't know they were making objects of beauty. In order to reach that conclusion, you need to be willing if not eager to dismiss the points of view of others, be they posters or whole cultures.
Artists throughout history have innovated, experimented, struggled to find the means to represent not only what was beautiful but also what was true of the world in which they lived. That ancient works are almost solely available to us as objects of aesthetic appreciation - for we have lost a lived connection to all their other social functions - is a limit of our perspective, not of the perspective of the people who made them or for whom they were made. Boardman et al. understand this perfectly well.
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I admit to many failings and I acknowledge that Dottore Tiso has many strengths, but I am the Art History man.
Okay, point of order, Mr Speaker. We had a couple of discussions on this very forum about what constitutes genre in literature. I would like to register that not once I introduced my doctorate in the conversation as a bludgeon, or uttered the words "I am the Literature man". I regard my academic training as having some value, hopefully it helps me to make sense of and speak critically about certain topics; and it can be a form of authority in a useful sense - as in look, I studied this for some time and I may have things of interest to say. But I also know for a fact, for it has been pointed out to me, that many of my ideas about literature and textuality are not shared by other members of this community, some of whom happen not to hold doctoral degrees in literature. When such conversations occur, I hope my views can challenge theirs, and I am quite certain that theirs challenge mine. I am also generally of the opinion that it is up to me to convince others that my views are valid and useful - especially when they are counter-intuitive or make strong and possibly sensitive claims about this or that aspect of the culture.
The other thing about being an academic of course is that it's easy to get a bit enthusiastic and shall we say wrapped up in the particular critical perspective that you have developed and how well it explains the world. The risk of becoming that guy standing in the queue behind Woody Allen should always be foremost in our minds - I hope it is in mine.
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Well I stand corrected on my interpretation of what Gio was saying. Or do I? LOL.
Derivatives existed and the financial sector could do a lot of damage to the productive sector quite quickly but nowhere close to what became technically possible on the global financial-informatic networks in the Nineties - at least that's my understanding of it.
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the reason why nz is not (yet) in a similar position to Ireland or Iceland (or UK-land) is largely explained by "our" Aussie-owned banks' ability (so far) to continue surfing atop the Aussie property tsunami.
I don't recall the specific report, but one of our ratings assessments after the subprime shit hit the fan listed amongst the country's strongest suits the fact that we didn't own "our" banks, hence their exposure to said flying excrements.
In Iceland's case, the crushing debt that the citizens have to repay was incurred by the banking sector.
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Bjork lingered enigmatically in the kitchen, devouring a large chocolate cake.
That is one of the most awesome sentences I've read all year.
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Our own embrace of neoliberalism looks sedate by comparison.
I wonder if it was all just a matter of timing. New Zealand embraced the taumaturgic powers of the financial markets just as enthusiastically in the mid-80s, but derivatives didn't exist back then.
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Oh, this just came to hand: How do you like your five metre-tall rugby lineout of the undead now?
(For non-speakers of Italian: this statue by Damien Hirst will grace the waterfront of the principality of Monaco.)
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I'd be shocked if one of them held those views.