themes

this week on the avantguardian \/\/ branding leads to revolution

February 22, 2010
By
this week on the avantguardian \/\/ branding leads to revolution

This week we are leading up to a special kind of climax. An epic moment in theavantguardian’s history will unveil itself properly next Monday the First of March. We will have a logo. Righteous. We are moving on up. But in order to get a logo we have decided to hold a logo competition. Thus moving on up facilitated by our readership. The artistic (wo)man we love thee. Link here: http://theavantguardian.org/2010/02/20/the-avant-guardian-logo-competition/ In honor of the logo competition we will focus our thoughts on branding. We hope to be branded. I am sure some of my fellow compatriots will have lots of interesting angles on what that means, or whether it is a good thing or not, so without bogging you down with my thoughts, I will leave you with a story from Ancient Rome. It tells of a slave revolution around the year 135 B.C. in Sicily. The slaves rose up because of cruel treatment. One of the things that was unjustly done to them was skin branding. Keep in mind that the Romans typically branded their slaves ON THEIR FACES, and the contemporary reader would understand this. The whole thing is super METAL. Nothing like a primary source badassery to [...]

Read more »

this week on the avant guardian \/\/ nature doesn’t ask your permission

January 31, 2010
By
this week on the avant guardian \/\/ nature doesn’t ask your permission

“For pity’s sake,” they’ll shout at you, “you can’t rebel: it’s two times two is four! Nature doesn’t ask your permission; it doesn’t care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You’re obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well. And so a wall is indeed a wall… etc,. etc.” My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if for some reason these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking? To be sure, I won’t break through such a wall with my forehead if I really have not got strength enough to do it, but neither will I be reconciled with it simply because I have a stone wall here and have not got strength enough.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From The Underground [nggallery id=34]

Read more »

this week on the avant guardian \/\/ external lack of cohesion is internal harmony

January 25, 2010
By
this week on the avant guardian \/\/ external lack of cohesion is internal harmony

The harmony of the new art demands a more subtle contruction than this, something that appeals less to the eye and more to the soul. This “concealed construction” may arise from an apparently fortuitous selection of forms on the canvas. Their external lack of cohesion is their internal harmony. This haphazard arrangement of forms may be the future of artistic harmony. Their fundamental relationship will finally be able to be expressed in mathematical form, but in terms irregular rather than regular. -Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art [nggallery id=33] Images via Web Museum, Paris

Read more »

composed before a million universes

January 18, 2010
By
composed before a million universes

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud, And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe, And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. -Walt Whitman, Song of Myself [nggallery id=32]

Read more »

beauty will be convulsive or it will not be at all

January 11, 2010
By
beauty will be convulsive or it will not be at all

A certain attitude necessarily follows with regard to beauty, which has obviously never been envisaged here save for emotional purposes. In no way static, that is, enclosed in Baudelaire’s “dream of stone,” lost for man in the shadow of the Odaliques, in the depth of those tragedies which claim to girdle only a single day, scarcely less dynamic –that is, subject to that wild gallop which can lead only to another wild gallop– that is, more frenzied than a snowflake in a blizzard– that is, resolved, for fear of being fettered, never to be embraced at all: neither dynamic nor static, I see beauty as I have seen you. As I have seen what, at the given hour and for a given time which I hope and with all my soul believe may recur, granted you to me. Beauty is like a train that ceaselessly roars out of the Gare de Lyon and which I know will never leave, which has not left. It consists of jolts and shocks, many of which do not have real importance, but which we know are destined to produce one Shock, which does. Which has all the importance I do not want to arrogate [...]

Read more »

this week on the avant guardian \/\/ rode hard and put up wet

January 4, 2010
By
this week on the avant guardian \/\/ rode hard and put up wet

[nggallery id=30]

Read more »

extra lucem nulla salus

December 29, 2009
By
extra lucem nulla salus

A Metaphysical Field Guide for Photographers. “Eternity is in love with the productions of time” - so wrote William Blake in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," perhaps the best-known literary witness in the West to the reality of nonduality, that rarefied realm where subject and object forever incestuously join. Given a moment’s meditation, one can see in this allegation a fairly accurate description of the art of photography, taking as its substance that utterly indestructible (hence, eternal) medium: light.

Read more »

the better you look, the more you see

December 28, 2009
By
the better you look, the more you see

“I’ve sworn off caffeine, Reed. I’m teaching myself how to relax by deep-sea visualization. I’m avoiding the urge to check my voice mail on a half-hourly basis. I’m hugging people left and right. And look.” I reach under my CK T-shirt. “My new tranquility beads.” “Far out, baby,” Reed wails, clapping his hands together. Looking into the camera, I say, “I’ve been to Radu and Pasquale Manocchia-that’s Madonna’s personal trainer, by the way, baby – and Reed is definitely the first name in celebrity training.” “I have an obsession with biceps and tricepts, with forearm flexors,” Reed admits sheepishly. “I have a major sinewy-arm fetish.” “I have the endurance of a horse but my blood sugar’s low and I need a Jolly Rancher badly.” “After the next song,” Reed says, clapping endlessly. “Powerbar time, I promise.” Suddenly Primal Scream’s “Come Together” blares out over the sound system. “Oh god,” I moan. “This song is eight minutes and four seconds long.” “How do you know things like that?” the Details girl asks. “The better you look, baby, the more you see,” I pant. “Dat’s my motto, homegirl.” -Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama [nggallery id=29]

Read more »

this week on the avant guardian \/\/ get on with the fascination

December 21, 2009
By
this week on the avant guardian \/\/ get on with the fascination

Get on with the fascination The real relation The underlying theme -Rush, Limelight [nggallery id=28]

Read more »

the gift giving guide for the perplexed

December 7, 2009
By
the gift giving guide for the perplexed

The act of giving itself assumes very solemn forms: the thing received is disclaimed and mistrusted; it is only taken up for a moment after it has been cast at one’s feet. The giver affects an exagerrated modesty: having solemnly brought on his present, to the sound of a seashell, he excuses himself for giving only the last of what remains to him, and throws down the object to be given at the feet of his rival and partner. However, the seashell and the herald proclaim the sole nature of this act of transfer. The aim of all this is to display generosity, freedom, autonomous action, as well as greatness. Yet, all in all, it is mechanisms of obligation, and even of obligation through things, that are called into play. -Marcel Mauss, The Gift [nggallery id=26] Photo Credits: Tactile Symbols

Read more »