Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Opinion Piece in OUTLOOK

ART WITHOUT HEART appeared in this week's OUTLOOK Magazine. It's my response to the Anish Kapoor show that's on in Delhi at the moment. I know lots of people who adore his work and I did too -- well, not "adore", but I liked it, sort of. It caused an interesting tickle in the brain. Now I only want to run the other way. There's a photograph of the model for the piece called "ORBIT", being readied for the London Olympics next year, accompanying the article.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

loved the write up. so i promptly facebooked it. guess you wouldn't, using a bombay (YES bombay) colloquialism consider him a dada of dada..... gt

Unknown said...

Delighted to hear that -- haha -- "dada"! Dada is as Dada does. I don't Facebook any more but am glad to be "booked". And OF COURSE "Bombay". Once and forever.

Paul said...

Did you know Bombay is Portuguese and means Bom Bay or a "good bay"?
Mumbai is the historically correct version. Means the city of the Mother Goddess.

Anonymous said...

Too many names (Pablo Neruda)

(“Demasiados Nombres” translation Heidi Fischbach)

stolen from:
http://babayagasplace.squarespace.com/poetry-for-heart-and-soul/2009/4/3/too-many-names-by-pablo-neruda.html

Monday tangles up with Tuesday
and a week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your tired scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed away by the night.

No one can be called Pedro,
nor Rosa, nor MarĂ­a.
All of us are dust or sand,
all of us are rain within rain.
I’ve been told of Venezuelas,
of Paraguays and of Chiles,
and I don’t know of what they speak:
I know the skin of the earth
and it has no last name.

When I lived among roots
they pleased me more than flowers,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang out like a bell.

Springtime is so long
when it lasts all winter:
time has lost his shoes,
a year contains four centuries.

Every night when I sleep,
what am I called or not called?
And when I awake, who am I
if I was not myself while I slept?
What this means is that just
as we’re stepping foot in life,
just as we are newly being born,
let us not fill our mouths
with so many insecure names,
with so many sad labels,
with so many pompous letters,
with so much yours and so much mine,
with so much signing of papers.

I intend to confuse things,
to join them and newly birth them,
mix them up, undress them,
until the light of the world
has the oneness of the ocean,
a generous vast wholeness,
a fragrance that crackles.

best wishes gt

Paul said...

gt, I'm not sure if I read mp's blog for what she posts or for the comments you post.

I'm gonna blow up "Too Many Names" and put it up on my department wall. I hope to find some visual to go with the poem, though I know it isn't going to be easy.

Paul said...

Bombay to Mumbai, Madras to Chennai, Calicut to Kozhikod, I've been living through too many names too.

Anonymous said...

sire p: whilst reading an article in scientific american (jan 2011) by michael shermer entitled The Science of Right and Wrong, i came across "Is it right or wrong to force women to dress in cloth bags and to douse their faces in acid for committing adultery." ...i thought of the dizzy YESterdaze of ms. malcontent to enlighten us after she sees (or saw) sam harris at his ted lecture
http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html and perhaps provides us a fitting photo for your blow up. regards gt

amruta patil said...

Like.