The NYT ran a good profile of the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, inventor of Nintendo-as-we-know-it. Most interesting fact from the article: Miyamoto, who may be best known for his signature characters (Mario, Zelda, etc.), considers characters an afterthought in his creative procedure. He prioritizes gameplay, and thinks that people fall in love with his […]
Since a common way of bashing certain forms of art is to point out that they emphasize style over content, it’s no big surprise that scientists now think people prioritize content over style when seeing art for the first time. It may also help explain why people have a hard time enjoying the style […]
There’s a good article about the Flickr aesthetic(s) by Virginia Heffernan in last weekend’s Times. In it, Heffernan talks about the sort of community rules that determine a “good” Flickr photograph, which turn out to be a hodgepodge of technical quibbles (e.g., sharp focus), subject matter (animals, erotic photos, landscapes), and over-the-top post-processing. […]
Could it be true? Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States has been adapted as a graphic novel?! Finally, offhand anti-Americanism will become an accessible option for the alt-comic crowd. Oh wait…well, whatever–at least it has its market cut out for it.
To make things even juicier, Zinn & Co. have […]
Am I the only one who’s disappointed that this Yale abortion thing seems to be a hoax? Well, it’s not a hoax, but rather a stunt, where the art is the information and documentation about the thing, rather than the thing itself–which it seems never happened.
According to the Yale Daily News, this […]
Despite the unimpressed response from the blogosphere (see here and here), I think this year’s AIPAD marks a significant improvement over last year’s. AIPAD ‘07 sticks in my mind as a bunch of galleries trying to sell the same non-vintage Kertesz and Lartigue prints around every corner. While there’s still plenty of late […]
Check out the blog here. (via Eyeteeth.)
There’s a great article in U.S. News & World Report on the photograph that won that Pulitzer prize in 1976, The Soiling of Old Glory. The article is an interview with Louis Masur, a professor of American culture at Trinity who’s written a book on the photograph. Incredibly, I’d never seen this image […]
I recently discovered Todd Wemmer’s encyclopedic blog sites about vernacular photography. In a time when a lot of attention is focused on so-called “high art” photography, Wemmer has been collecting, bookmarking, blogging, and linking to sites about photography in everyday use–the snapshot, the photo album, the photo booth, the disposable camera, etc. On […]
Waldemar Januszczak has a problem with Vanity Fair. “Vanity Fair,” he points out, is a title lifted from W. M. Thackeray’s novel; Thackeray himself lifted the phrase from John Bunyan. It is a phrase coined by Bunyan to describe a carnivalesque world of pleasures inhabited by people obsessed with themselves. Thackeray revived […]
