Category: culture

Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer at the Art Institute of Chicago

In 2008, The Art Institute of Chicago will be putting on an exhibit of Edward Hopper (with a bonus exhibit of Winslow Homer going on as well). Here’s an idea of what you will see regarding Hopper:

The exhibition will be arranged chronologically and thematically, focusing on the work he executed in Gloucester and Truro, Massachusetts, Maine, and New York. Approximately 50 oils and 30 watercolors, together with literature and history of the artist’s own time, will show Hopper’s place in the tradition of American realism and modernism. Edward Hopper and its companion exhibition, Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light, will provide a survey of the American realist tradition and chart the growth of modern subject matter—from Homer, America’s first modernist, to Hopper, the nation’s best known 20th-century realist.

The world’s ugliest cars


Some of them don’t seem so bad now, while others are STILL ugly. Actually, the comments make you realize that the cars weren’t just ugly, but dangerous and deficient. Perhaps the article should be titled: The World’s Worst Cars.

It’s a fun read, and if you had one of these cars, you might cringe a little. 🙂

See The World’s Ugliest Cars over at BusinessWeek.com

Making fun on beauty queens, the importance of context and the new propaganda

I have seen this clip on a number of sites recently:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww]

While I agree her answer is poor, I think everything has to do with context. Anyone asked such a question might have a tough time answering it without saying something obvious (and negative) like: the US education system is lacking. Or the people who can the survey did a poor job. Plus you are on stage, you have a set period of time to answer it, and some of the questions you may have been preparing to answer don’t come up.

So why the popularity of the clip? I think it is because of the context. I think it allows people to vent such things as envy or disgust or anger at the Miss USA pageant, and to do so in a simple way: displaying the clip.

One of the dark sides of Web 2.0 is the ability for anyone to create propaganda. Now this clip is a fairly benign example, but it is part of a recent trend of people trying to shape political messages and spread them via YouTube and other means. Just recently it was about using YouTube to expose the truth. Now it will be about using YouTube to shape the truth.

Andy Warhol, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Ritchie all speed up time

Andy Warhol said that in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

If LL or NR were clever enough, they might say that in the future, everyone will go to jail for 15 minutes, too. See: Nicole Richie freed from jail after 82 minutes or Lohan to serve one day in jail

From the Globeandmail.com (it’s like People.com, but they also have financial stats and stuff.)

Homer Simpson quotes enter new Oxford dictionary. D’oh!

The latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations has seen in their wisdom to include quotes from the OTHER famous Homer, including:

“Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try.”

“Kids are the best, Apu. You can teach them to hate the things you hate. And they practically raise themselves, what with the internet and all.”

And to make it even better, there is a quote from Willie who once said to the French: “Bonjour, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys” .