tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55266288235247979302024-02-20T02:33:20.198+01:00Critics and Saints"I try to describe with love what I love. My secret ambition is to pierce through the veil: think about a work and then not just describe it but arrive at something, an underlying principal or an underlying emotion and then say what the work's true value and beauty really is."
Joan AcocellaRolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-88665185699425734892009-02-22T11:18:00.001+01:002009-02-22T11:18:30.772+01:00ARCHITECTURAL RESEARCH AND ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISMThe Nordic Association for Architectural Research and the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art, NTNU, are looking forward to arranging an international conference on the subject ARCHITECTURAL RESEARCH AND ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM in Trondheim, Norway 23-25 April 2009. Architecture is a cultural expression that to a great extent influences both public and private space. Thereby, in an important way, it creates possibilities and limitations to how people can live their lives. A critical discussion of the quality of architecture is vital to enable the creation of surroundings that give life the best possibilities to unfold and develop. Even if it already exists a public critique of architecture, this has not by far the scope that is necessary to reach this goal. The professional or academic foundations of architectural critique vary a lot as well. Consequently, one question that rises from the point of view of research in architecture, is whether research may contribute to create criticism with a more solid foundation. Consequently, the title and the topic of the conference is ARCHITECTURAL RESEARCH AND ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM. We will not deal with architectural criticism as such, but with the relationship between research and criticism, in other words how research may contribute to criticism and what criticism may offer research. -- Conference e-mail: <arkitekturkritikk@ab.ntnu.no> Conference url: <http://www.ntnu.no/ab/konferanser>Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-48909140312537773632009-01-01T16:52:00.001+01:002009-01-01T16:54:08.937+01:00At first sniff ...Is it possible to review perfume as you would the arts? Novelist Hilary Mantel takes on some of the current bestsellers<br /><br />Hilary Mantel<br />The Guardian, Thursday 1 January 2009<br /><br />In any department store at this time of year there is a reliably comic sight - buyers trying to choose discounted perfumes by sniffing the necks of the spray bottles. Scent makes sense on skin, and only on skin. Why are we such fools about fragrance? Led on by lush advertising, seduced by editorial gush in magazines dependent on their advertisers, we abandon natural discrimination and distrust our own noses. Scents are not so much objects as performances, processes, but we lack a process for appraising them. Book critics can be savagely partisan, opera critics sniffy, and film critics make you choose to stay at home. Could you review a scent as you review these art forms? Yes, I would argue. One word, for example, would sum up Beckham Signature: illiterate. Mitsouko would need a volume of essays.<br /><br />Where do they lurk, the perfume critics? There are scent blogs on the internet, often well-informed. But most bloggers write carelessly, and, in such a subjective matter, some precision is needed.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/01/fashion-women">More</a>.Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-32598008395225280122008-11-12T12:22:00.000+01:002008-11-12T12:24:32.137+01:00Age of Anxietyby Dan Fox<br />Published in frieze Issue 114 April 2008<br /><br />Would the critic be more productive writing in the morning rather than at night? Is the critic happy working at home, or do they prefer libraries and quiet cafés? Are the critic’s interpretative faculties sharpened by strong coffee, or is the glass of cheap red they are drinking easing them into a suitable frame of mind? Does the critic feel that putting Gustav Mahler on the stereo has set the right mood for their task? Perhaps Jay-Z is better? Would the critic prefer to be writing on a Mac rather than their temperamental old PC? To what extent does the missing letter ‘q’ on the PC’s keyboard affect the critic’s choice of words? Is the Internet a constant distraction for the critic? As the critic once again consults Wikipedia, does a small voice in their head chide them for losing touch with traditional research skills? How heavily does the anxiety of influence weigh on the critic?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/age_of_anxiety">More</a>.Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-34035449298613352342008-10-22T09:29:00.002+02:002008-10-22T09:31:05.542+02:00A five-star experienceTheatre critic Michael Billington explains why he stepped out of his comfort zone to try his hand at directing some of Harold Pinter's most challenging works.<br /><br />"Colleagues have variously described me as mad, foolhardy or brave to step out of the critical comfort zone. But I don't quite see it like that. It seems to me absurd that people driven by a hunger for theatre should be confined to little boxes from which they can never escape. The roles of the director and critic overlap. In both cases, the prime task is to discern an author's intention and to interpret it as clearly as possible. The big difference is that the critic does it with words, whereas the director engages in a collaborative process with actors, designers, and lighting and sound experts. What we are all trying to do is get to the root of the text."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/oct/22/pinter-theatre">Article</a> in The Guardian.Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-88560638935773806262008-10-17T10:58:00.001+02:002008-10-17T10:58:57.544+02:00Why I Blogby Andrew Sullivan<br /><br />For centuries, writers have experimented with forms that evoke the imperfection of thought, the inconstancy of human affairs, and the chastening passage of time. But as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that’s enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral, and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake: it heralds a golden era for journalism.<br /><br />Article <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/andrew-sullivan-why-i-blog">here</a>.Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-11196813022692548552008-09-25T20:47:00.001+02:002008-09-25T20:47:55.662+02:00The Personal and the Individual (Leonard Michaels)Nothing should be easier than talking about ways in which I write about myself, but I find it isn’t easy at all. Indeed, I want to say before anything else that a great problem for me, in writing about myself, is how not to write merely about myself. I think the problem is very common among writers even if they are unaware of it. Basic elements of writing–diction, grammar, tone, imagery, the patterns of sound made by your sentences–will say a good deal about you (whether you are conscious of it or not) so that it is possible for you to be writing about yourself before you even know you are writing about yourself. Regardless of your subject, these basic elements, as well as countless and immeasurable qualities of mind, are at play in your writing and will make your presence felt to a reader as palpably as your handwriting. You virtually write your name, as it were, before you literally sign your name, every time you write.<br /><br />Read more in <a href="http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2001/1/michaels.html">Partisan Review</a> 1/ 2001 VOLUME LXVIII NUMBER 1Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-32890211505467386692008-09-25T09:11:00.002+02:002008-09-25T20:46:56.692+02:00Selected further reading (first meeting):<a href="http://d.scribd.com/docs/2lkd0yzhv0nxycil33ch.pdf">Encyclopaedia of the Essay</a>, ed. Tracy Chevalier<br />Michel de Montaigne: ”On the art of conversation” (from The Complete Essays)<br />Leigh Hunt, "Getting Up on Cold Mornings" (1820)<br />Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own (1929)<br />Theodor W. Adorno “The Essay as Form”, Notes to Literature, volume one. Trans. Sherry Weber Nicholsen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991, 3-4.<br />E.B. White ”Once More to the Lake” (1941)<br />Annie Dillard, ”Living Like Weasels” (1974)<br />Roland Barthes, The Grain of the Voice: Interviews 1962-80, trans. Linda Coverdale, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1991)<br /><br />Nick Kaye, Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation (London, Routledge, 2000)<br /><br />David Foster Wallace, ”Consider the Lobster” (2004)Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-75630059400209254372008-09-25T09:04:00.002+02:002008-09-25T09:07:25.092+02:00Introduction to Critical Writing (WIRE workshop)Rolf Hughes<br />September 2008<br /><br />Workshop 1:<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">History of the essay<br /></span>Aristotle: Poetics: Longinus: On the Sublime; Plutarch: Moralia; Seneca: Moral Essays.<br />John Dryden: An Essay of Dramatic Poesy; Michel de Montaigne: The Essays; Richard Steele & Joseph Addison Spectator (1711-12, 1714); Dr. Samuel Johnson Lives of the English Poets (1779-81); Denis Diderot; Voltaire; Rousseau; Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia; William Hazlitt; Leigh Hunt; Matthew Arnold; Thomas Carlyle; Oscar Wilde; F.R. Leavis; Virginia Woolf; Henry James; Lionel Trilling; publications including Edinburgh Magazine and Review (1773-76), Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Quarterly Review, Scrutiny (1932-53), the Paris Review (1953–), the Times Literary Supplement (1902–), the New Yorker ((1925–), contemporary blogs.<br /><br />Workshop 2<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Forms of criticism</span><br />Why is there Genre and not Literature instead?<br />Creative and Critical Writing<br /><br />Forms of the essay include: The five-paragraph essay; Academic essays; Descriptive; Narrative; Exemplification; Comparison and Contrast; Cause and Effect; Classification and division; Definition; Dialectic; Dialogue. See also Non-literary essays in Visual Arts, Music, Film, Photography etc.<br />Related forms (see photocopies): Aphorism; Character Sketch; Dialogue; Journal; Letter; Personal Essay; Philosophical Essay; Propaganda.<br /><br />Workshop 3<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">After criticism?</span><br />The site(s) of writing<br />Discussion of assignment responsesRolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-24452621133754607472008-09-25T09:02:00.001+02:002008-09-25T09:02:50.250+02:00The Personal and the Individual (Leonard Michaels)Nothing should be easier than talking about ways in which I write about myself, but I find it isn’t easy at all. Indeed, I want to say before anything else that a great problem for me, in writing about myself, is how not to write merely about myself. I think the problem is very common among writers even if they are unaware of it. Basic elements of writing–diction, grammar, tone, imagery, the patterns of sound made by your sentences–will say a good deal about you (whether you are conscious of it or not) so that it is possible for you to be writing about yourself before you even know you are writing about yourself. Regardless of your subject, these basic elements, as well as countless and immeasurable qualities of mind, are at play in your writing and will make your presence felt to a reader as palpably as your handwriting. You virtually write your name, as it were, before you literally sign your name, every time you write.<br /><br />Read more in <a href="http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2001/1/michaels.html">Partisan Review</a> 1/ 2001 VOLUME LXVIII NUMBER 1Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-86483803945599724402008-01-21T19:58:00.000+01:002008-01-21T19:59:50.293+01:00Q&A with VV art critic Christian Viveros-Faune, part IIIA MAN Q&A with Village Voice art critic Christian Viveros-Faune, continued from part one and from part two...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">MAN: You're a managing director of a commercial art fair, Volta, and an organizer of another commercial art fair, Chicago's Next fair. At the same time you're a writer, a journalist, you're the art critic for the Village Voice. Why isn't that the most basic kind of conflict of interest?<br /><br />Christian Viveros-Faune:</span> I think essentially, because, I believe you can wear a lot of hats in the art world, and one needs to because, among other things, critics can't survive on the money that they make from writing. Very few critics can. And, not only that, but I'm interested in curating, and I firmly believe that there is no interest in the art world without a conflict of interest.<br />Now, that may seem counterintuitive, and it is, but I would argue that the art world is counterintuitive in the extreme. In what other industry, for example, does one of the major magazines that chronicles both the creative and the business end of the art world establish an art fair of the same name. Obviously, I'm talking about Frieze.<br />And that's nothing. Examine, for second, the practice of writing catalog essays. You know and I know that there is no such thing as a negative catalog essay and the reason for that is obvious: one way critics make money is by writing promotional copy for galleries and, hopefully, artists they like or love. And then there's the business of curators and critics slinging their asses around to universities and institutions for speaking engagements.<br />Shall I go on? I mean, again, what I'm arguing for here is honesty all the way around. Like every other business (or form of writing or discipline for that matter) this is not a pristine business, no matter what the NY Times rules of engagement say. It is full of peaks and valleys. I'm honest about my climbing those peaks and going down into those valleys. Maybe that makes me stupid, I don't know. What I do know is it doesn't affect my ethics when I write. I'd rather not write about the market, because weirdly enough, it doesn't interest me much.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.artsjournal.com/man/2008/01/qa_with_vv_art_critic_christia_2.html">More</a>.Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-48639170722421499442008-01-21T14:47:00.000+01:002008-01-21T14:50:12.116+01:00If this Space is For Rent, Who Will Move In?From Modernist to Postmodernist Forms of Criticism -- Criticism as Art or Advertisement?<br />by Menachem Feuer<br />in 1000 Days of Theory: td034<br />Date Published: 2/22/2006<br />www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=506<br />Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Editors<br /><br />Writing years in advance of television and the internet, Walter Benjamin's vision of the future places the new sensibility created by mechanical reproduction at the forefront of modernity. The most important aspect of this sensibility is the radical immediacy it lodges into the heart of modern life. Benjamin understood, quite clearly, that all aspects of life would be affected by this immediacy in a way quite similar to Karl Marx's vision of capitalism in terms of an ecological (read: total) change of society. The danger of such a change, as Benjamin and Marx understood it (both understood capitalism as creating social and cognitive changes), was the threat of homogenization and mindless consumerism. Indeed, Benjamin's colleague at the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno, believed the "culture industry" turned everyone into consumers and foreclosed the possibility of thought and heterogeneity.[2] Benjamin took a much different approach, instructive for us in our post 9/11 crisis culture wherein homogeneity is circulated by reducing the world to a Manichean struggle between democracy and terror. He argued that, rather than taking a position that merely reacts to the media, intellectuals should imitate it and use its strengths in the name of revolution and heterogeneity. For this reason, he argued that criticism should incorporate aspects of film and, strangely enough, the most open media expression of capitalism: the advertisement.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=506">More</a>.Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-34754259851101557532008-01-21T14:21:00.000+01:002008-01-21T14:23:19.899+01:00Writing, scholarship and the catalogue"The typical work of modern scholarship is intended to be read like a catalogue. But when shall we actually write books like catalogues? If the deficient content were thus to determine the outward form, an excellent piece of writing would result, in which the value of opinions would be marked without their being thereby put on sale."<br />Walter Benjamin, 'Teaching Aid' in One-Way Street, Selected Writings, p. 457, OWS p. 63fRolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-91809610766212603462007-12-09T18:14:00.000+01:002007-12-09T18:16:17.575+01:00Paul Thek Project(Thank you Ron Jones for this tip!)<br /><br />This site is dedicated to the installation work of Paul Thek. It is an ongoing project to collect and contextualize documentary photography and other relevant sources around Paul Thek’s environments.<br /><br />Various complex questions underlay the consideration and analysis of Paul Thek’s installation work, above all matters of authorship and reconstruction. Many of his installation works cannot simply be reconstructed as in its physical and ideal presence it was inextricably bound up with the artist, the co-operative and, above all, time. From a museological point of view the task to find a final home for the relics and to free them, at least temporarily, from their existence as mere inventory numbers in order to attribute them a function in the context of art mediation thus becomes all the more challenging.<br /><br />From an art historical point of view other methods come up in order to collect and contextualize information which is the more important the less Thek’s environments can be brought back to life again. From a frank interest to bring to light what was hidden for so long, this website serves not only as a prototype for media-based art historical research, but also as a tool to contextualize Thek’s process oriented use of the mythological object.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ptproject.net/introduction.php">More</a>.Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-45242939841398557952007-12-09T17:38:00.000+01:002007-12-09T17:41:09.781+01:00Paul Thek at ZKM | Museum of Contemporary ArtPaul Thek (1933–1988) is considered an artist with cult status. The hitherto most comprehensive retrospective of his oeuvre focused on the phenomenal effect of his work on contemporary art and established Thek's historical significance, from legendary outsider to the founder and center of an art movement. It has been possible to bring together more than 300 of Thek’s works, which are largely in private ownership and therefore only seldom publicly shown.<br /><br />In their anti-heroic diversity and multimediality, and with their references to art, literature, and religion, his works (painting, photography, video, sculpture, and extensive environments) are among the central sources for the revolt and eruption of art in the 1960s. It is mainly for this reason that one of the early theoretical masterpieces of this epoch, Susan Sontag's »Against Interpretation« (1962), was dedicated to him. The mold castings, also those of his own body parts, wax replicas of human tissue, hair, teeth, and bones in Plexiglas cases, which he produced between 1964 and 1967 as »Technological Reliquaries,« in their mixture of desire and repulsion, decay and pathos, held up the truth of the body to the world of commodities and the transfiguration of the everyday, as well as the idealization and dramatization of corporative minimal art. With this, Thek influenced not only contemporaries such as Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman, but also present-day artists. His obsessive, often mystical content, which made him the founder of Abject Art and Environments, or Ensembles, was presented in a formal way that opened the path for the mixture of studio situation and total spatial design, of private and general icons, of profane and religious objects, of everyday and myth, of damaged objects to fragmentary piles of found materials, as was continued by artists from Anna Oppermann through to Thomas Hirschhorn.<br /><br /><a href="http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/stories/storyReader$5593">More</a>.Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-18133580225096316082007-12-09T16:01:00.000+01:002007-12-09T16:02:48.846+01:00ARCHITECTURE REVIEW; Rem Koolhaas's New York State of MindBy HERBERT MUSCHAMP<br />Published: November 4, 1994<br />On a certain level, these buildings are about coping. Mr. Riley writes in the exhibition brochure that Mr. Koolhaas and O.M.A "perceive the city as a survivor." Survivors are not victims. They have earned the right to set their own terms. Cities shouldn't be competing with the suburbs by trying to become more like them. They don't have to turn themselves into theme parks. They have better things to do than indulge the fear that their best days are behind them by encouraging architects to design new buildings that look old.<br /><br />Mr. Koolhaas is undoubtedly right to question current urban shibboleths. But are the terms he proposes the right ones for the city today? Essentially, Mr. Koolhaas asks us to believe that spectacular public buildings, or spectacular groupings of them, contribute at least as much to the vitality of the city as do the systematic designs of urban planners. Those who crave urban life, he insists, want something more than safe, clean streets, trains that run and contextual design guidelines for new development. They're looking to be part of a legend in the making. Just as it is the business of music, film and physics to produce spectacular singers, directors and theorists, so it is the job of the city to produce wonderful, fabulous places: buildings we'd walk blocks out of our way to see.<br /><br /><a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E4D9143EF937A35752C1A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2">More</a>.Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-81494695426564016762007-11-30T15:11:00.000+01:002007-11-30T15:12:50.996+01:00Paul Thek Untitled (Tower of Babel) 1975/92<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHzNsDaJKEVi3eIbug7BtBNkmimeF6NBMHz8TZEGBElHATc9mRoPGbEhAK3AkVWrbvDMNNAkG5rHLAEGiSp2G7QTTVE2JBvbT09Kl91tJO4JFFsXFLdlJGa8agn04UkZJwQcbwV1MHq1Y/s1600-r/Untitled-(Tower-of-B_th.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_hFNjgwu0ijyyx9likEA2Z23X9wVfQwt75G06VQJqMPCQ0wkRDTjVXYal3z7lqkEmrMqTDDbg0AT_6Lf-hag13iJgBQls0Yq_cgcaiOB2EFPRMdIBi3Bpz4ndukFvWH-z6RxeqmJXWIU/s200/Untitled-(Tower-of-B_th.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138635947859793858" /></a><br /><br />etching on handmade Twinrocker paper<br />10 x 7 3/4 in / 25.5 x 20 cmRolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-21297169958963865102007-11-30T13:51:00.000+01:002007-11-30T13:54:29.677+01:00Trouble in paradiseEpic slaughters, the fate of the planet, the closeness of calamity - Anselm Kiefer's desolate landscapes address the most crucial issues of our times. Contemporary art doesn't get much better than this, argues Simon Schama.<br /><br />...Kiefer's painting, then, is not a representation of some feature of creation so much as a re-enactment of it. And if this sounds a mite up itself, well indeed it is, and none the worse for it. Even if you care not a toss for the esoterica, the richness of classical allusion (such as the catastrophic landscape of the fall of Troy, scarred with explosions of carbon and cobalt, and transmitted via a telephonic connection from Greek peak to peak in mimicry of Agamemnon's beacon signals to faithless Clytemnestra), you can still happily envelop yourself in the blanket of colour and line that fill every centimetre of Kiefer's pictures.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,1994471,00.html">More.</a>Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-3270853774243092862007-11-30T13:45:00.001+01:002007-11-30T13:46:17.561+01:00Peter Eisenman on "The End of the Classical"What can be the model for architecture when the essence of what was effective in the classical model -- the presumed rational value of structures, representations, methodologies of origin and ends and deductive processes -- have been shown to be delusory?<br /><br />What is being proposed is an expansion beyond the limitation presented by the classical model to the realization of architecture as an independent discourse, free from external values -- classical or any other; that is, the intersection of the meaning- free, the arbitrary, and the timeless in the artificial.<br /><br />Peter Eisenman, "The End of the Classical"<br />Perspecta 21, (1984):166Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-47694994081526148942007-11-30T12:55:00.000+01:002007-11-30T12:59:23.015+01:00Tower of Babel (ancient Bablylon)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk9Zk_OtkHuGHFv8I-XdV2wYkahkvK_5Jmh_7ByYyDkyz-Ti9_d_mtCVHO8VhjPCKF2nNXYYiI30utOaZiDm30OpWBuhrOvmBpafSXUTyLri1FzbSg6tzdV3UlqqAHdeS4YYXBPZ_4kq8/s1600-r/babel2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg05deipYqYz2hBpNj_Cqwv8BZU3tG4ynkdoj4q3hhc_mekjTO19mntf0CEtxG7r6zdaLC9b7XMaqUUzkDG4BwkMfsIZM9lT3k8xMzUNewxrWK831mumVsvGieA4avcDUj0gfHTrunfeBs/s400/babel2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138600913811560370" /></a><br /><br />"AND the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel..."<br /><br />Genesis XIRolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-24397900827289333822007-11-30T12:43:00.000+01:002007-11-30T12:53:24.105+01:00Inscription of King Nebuchadnezzar on Tower of Babel (Borsippa).<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdyz8-wBYe4HqjFGC0SsJ94GT8LIHQkHxCxBj4obE57W96VEDuQU8z1_SEFajRVXGk2zf7zYLODd3M12suHFWyRKhpXRWv3TIdbtb-ZHiYf25HUFFebkS2PWcYbeS9fL_IKtIRK6TqJkU/s1600-r/towerofbabel.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh82nGaj0Muv-ZcmfFiuEPgH8_kW2ayxZ3sXs3jbRgsmRY3dYUpoEPOxSBI4suojvhoTFIwZqnW5YtiHNSqxVaR7tfzMJ_UsrVWy_jlXur-htHo6ZJjR4jqXVkU-wFmayYWEKhtGxZifz4/s400/towerofbabel.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138598019003602834" /></a><br /><br /><br />I have completed its magnificence with silver, gold, other metals, stone, enameled bricks, fir and pine.<br /><br />The first which is the house of the earth’s base,<br /><br />the most ancient monument of Babylon;<br /><br />I built and finished it.<br /><br />I have highly exalted its head with bricks covered with copper.<br /><br />We say for the other, that is, this edifice, the house of the seven lights of the earth, the most ancient monument of Borsippa.<br /><br />A former king built it, (they reckon 42 ages) but he did not<br /><br />complete its head.<br /><br />Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without<br /><br />order expressing their words.<br /><br />Since that time the earthquake and the thunder had dispersed<br /><br />the sun-dried clay.<br /><br />The bricks of the casing had been split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps. Merodach, the great god, excited my mind to repair this building.<br /><br />I did not change the site nor did I take away the foundation.<br /><br />In a fortunate month, in an auspicious day,<br /><br />I undertook to build porticoes around the crude brick masses,<br /><br />and the casing of burnt bricks.<br /><br />I adapted the circuits, I put the inscription of my name in the Kitir of the portico.<br /><br />I set my hand to finish it. And to exalt its head.<br /><br />As it had been in ancient days, so I exalted its summit.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Inscription of King Nebuchadnezzar on Tower of Babel (Borsippa). </span>Cited in "The Signature of God/The Handwriting of God" by Grant R. Jeffrey (p.40)Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-5809964047381077782007-11-30T12:40:00.000+01:002007-11-30T12:51:47.945+01:00A reconstruction of the Etemenanki<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI8rsUS1eYLOB3PvHRa2rkIb0c8Pv5gnVUTY7BhECaU7Zxx9l8E_X5WLWJa0V2nEL0gc0jpr312gEft0bARnE_2BlROtw4Nz9weEdE2fmdZ72RlBAuZET684uy0wizC8q4qfwXtsvfvOA/s1600-r/etemenanki_drawing.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5JziIS6j4nk3rwBigAi45nJAiwYEo77OFBRrkaMsaq5J38TSYqWOAiljMra2Xhw6w7b5Jw7eSd6II8zcBMMrFKalzXnuMlT5xDSUp_GUNN1bGGF1sCrC5kuj5oHYDMsZ98oS-amu6GRA/s200/etemenanki_drawing.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138599801415030690" /></a>Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-13909323555025494852007-11-30T12:24:00.000+01:002007-11-30T12:26:38.884+01:00Etemenanki (The Tower of Babel)Etemenanki: name of the large temple tower in Babylon, also known as the Tower of Babel. Its Sumerian name E-temen-an-ki means "House of the foundation of heaven on earth".<br /><br />The story of the Tower of Babel, found in the Biblical book of Genesis, is one of the most famous and beloved legends of mankind.<br /><br />The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Šin'âr, and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." <br /> And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built. And the Lord said, "Behold, the people are one and they have all one language, and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be withheld from them which they have imagined to do. Come, let Us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off building the city. <br /> Therefore is the name of it called Bâbel (that is "Confusion") because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.<br />[Genesis 11.1-9; tr. King James 21st Century]<br /><br /><a href="http://www.livius.org/es-ez/etemenanki/etemenanki.html">More</a>.Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-55154734384674239482007-11-30T12:22:00.000+01:002007-11-30T12:23:37.845+01:00The Tower of Babel (according to Herodotus)The temple of Bêl, the Babylonian Zeus [...] was still in existence in my time. It has a solid central tower, one stadium square, with a second erected on top of it and then a third, and so on up to eight. All eight towers can be climbed by a spiral way running round the outside, and about half way up there are seats for those who make the ascent to rest on. On the summit of the topmost tower stands a great temple with a fine large couch in it, richly covered, and a golden table beside it. The shrine contains no image, and no one spends the night there except (if we may believe that Chaldaeans who are the priests of Bêl) one Babylonian woman, all alone, whoever it may be that the god has chosen. The Chaldaeans also say -though I do not believe them- that the god enters the temple in person and takes his rest upon the bed.<br /><br />[Herodotus, Histories 1.181-2; tr. Aubrey de Sélincourt]Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526628823524797930.post-71263770486156367892007-02-14T11:38:00.000+01:002007-02-14T11:42:27.341+01:00Critic Joan Acocella considers the gifts of artistic geniusPart of what makes Acocella so persuasive is her gift for narrative. The best of these essays tell stories that are rich with insight, observation and the drama of artists transcending their limitations. "I try to describe with love what I love," Acocella explains. "My secret ambition is to pierce through the veil: think about a work and then not just describe it but arrive at something, an underlying principal or an underlying emotion and then say what the work's true value and beauty really is."<br /><br /><a href="http://bp.booksamillion.com/ncom/bookpage/0702bp/joan_acocella.html?id=3703532358221">Interview</a>Rolf Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13072359658012005989noreply@blogger.com0