Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Is anybody reading the f*ckin' thing?

I look at this stat counter they give you and it looks like at least ten people a day visit but I don't see any comments. The comment function is open to anyone. let me know. Hello, helloooo.....

Monday, July 30, 2007

Lexicon..pt III




What Does Telos Mean?

For many, life is a journey with no destination. The ancient Greeks described history as an endless cycle of events, perpetually moving but never arriving. Like the Greeks, modern man drifts anchorless through life, experiencing and responding to each circumstance as it appears on the horizon but never really getting anywhere.

For the Christian, however, every event—past, present, and future—moves toward a goal. Nothing is aimless; God causes all things to work together to accomplish His purpose (Romans 8:28). To explain this concept, the New Testament uses the Greek telos, meaning “end, goal, result, completion,
fulfillment.”

History moves, not in circles, but straight toward the “end of all things” (I Peter 4:7; Matthew 24:14). It marches toward the climax of time—toward the complete fulfillment of God’s purposes. When mankind finally nears the finish line, it will find that the end is not a place, but a Person. Jesus Christ is the Telos, the End (Revelation 21:6; 22:13).

When Jesus entered human history, to the untrained eye His path seemed random, but He traveled toward one destination, one end goal. He knew that His way led directly and purposefully t Main Entry: te·los
Pronunciation: 'te-"läs, 'tE-
Function: noun



Etymology: Greek; probably akin to Greek tellein to accomplish, tlEnai to bear -- more at TOLERATE
: an ultimate endo

Golgotha, where He gave up His life to redeem the human race from sin. And nearing the end of His hours on the cross, He cried, “Tetelestai! It is finished.” He had perfectly fulfilled the goal His Father had set for Him.

God has a telos for history. He had a telos for His Son. He has a telos for His children. He wants to transform us until we become like Jesus Christ. Ephesians 4:13 expresses the telos God plans for us: “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect [teleion] man.” The adjective teleion gives the idea of “complete, mature, grown up into full age.” Just as infants grow for years before reaching maturity, we will spend our lives growing into Christ’s teleion character—all our efforts in discipleship stretch toward this destination (Colossians 1:28). God’s commands are given to encourage His children to teleion character. “Now the end [telos] of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned” (I Timothy 1:5).

The Telos Institute International aims to help you toward teleion, Christlike character, lighting the way to the glorious Telos Who waits at the end of your journey.

Telos (philosophy)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

A telos (from the Greek word for "end", "purpose", or "goal") is an end or purpose, in a fairly constrained sense used by philosophers such as Aristotle. It is the root of the term "teleology," roughly the study of purposiveness, or the study of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions. Teleology figures centrally in Aristotle's biology and in his theory of causes. It is central to nearly all philosophical theories of history, such as those of Hegel and Marx. One running debate in contemporary philosophy of biology is to what extent teleological language (as in the "purposes" of various organs or life-processes) is unavoidable, or is simply a shorthand for ideas that can ultimately be spelled out nonteleologically. Philosophy of action also makes essential use of teleological vocabulary: on Davidson's account, an action is just something an agent does with an intention--that is, looking forward to some end to be achieved by the action.

Lexicon..pt II

thymos

Thymos, one element of Plato's tripartite division of the soul — the other two being reason and desire — can be translated as spiritedness. It is the location of such feelings as pride, shame, indignation, and the need for recognition for oneself and for others.

Thymos can overrule both reason and basic animal instincts and propel one into a duel over an insult, or into a burning building to save a child, or into a war for a cause one finds just. According to Hegel, humanity is at its peak when it thymotically risks its life for the sake of a greater good. On the other hand, it is also what drives suicide bombers and other terrorists.

Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History and the Last Man, puts it thus: "Thymos is something like an innate human sense of justice."

He elaborates in two distinct directions:

  1. "...people believe that they have a certain worth, and when other people act as though they are worth less — when they do not recognize their worth at its correct value — they become angry..."
  2. "Thymos... as such is the psychological seat of all the noble virtues like selflessness, idealism, morality, self-sacrifice, courage, and honorability."

Lexicon..pt I

Agent (grammar)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

In linguistics, a grammatical agent is the participant of a situation that carries out the action in this situation. Also, agent is the name of the thematic role (also known as the thematic relation) with the above definition. The word comes from a participle of the Latin verb, agere.

Typically, the situation is denoted by a sentence, the action by a verb in the sentence, and the agent by a noun phrase.

For example, in the sentence "Jack kicked the ball", Jack is the agent. In certain languages, the agent is declined or otherwise marked to indicate its grammatical role. In Japanese, for instance, the agent is typically affixed with |ga| (the hiragana が). Although Modern English does not mark grammatical role, agency is informally represented using certain conventions; for instance, with the morphemes "-ing", "-er", or "-or", as in "eating", "user", or "prosecutor". (Cf. agent noun.)

The notion of agency is easy to grasp intuitively but notoriously difficult to define: typical qualities that a grammatical agent often has are that it has volition, is sentient or perceives, causes a change of state, or moves. These are in fact the qualities that Dowty included in his definition of a Proto-Agent, and according to his theory, the nominal with the most elements of the Proto-Agent and the fewest elements of the Proto-Patient tended to be treated as the agent in a sentence. This solves problems that most semanticists have with deciding on the number and quality of thematic roles. For example, in the sentence His energy surprised everyone, His energy is the agent, even though it does not have most of the typical agent-like qualities such as perception, movement, or volition.

The grammatical agent is often confused with the subject, but these two notions are quite distinct: the former is based explicitly on its relationship to the verb, whereas the latter is based on the flow of information, word order, and importance to the sentence. In a sentence such as "The boy kicked the ball", "the boy" is the agent and the subject. However, when the sentence is rendered in the passive voice, "The ball was kicked by the boy", "the ball" is the grammatical subject, but "the boy" is still the agent. Many sentences in English and other Indo-European languages have the agent as subject.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The Book



Written by Jed Perl
Art - Criticism; Art - History Hardcover
October 2005 $35.00 978-1-4000-4131-2 (1-4000-4131-7)
desc
A fascinating, panoramic exploration of art and culture in mid-twentieth-century New York City from one of our most important and influential art critics.

New Art City takes us from the solitude of the artist’s studio to the uproarious bars where artists gathered, from the ramshackle bohemian neighborhoods of downtown Manhattan to the Midtown streets where steel-and-glass skyscrapers were rising and art galleries were proliferating. We encounter a kaleidoscopic range of artists. There are legendary figures–Jackson Pollock, David Smith, Willem de Kooning, Joseph Cornell, Andy Warhol, and Donald Judd–as well as still undervalued ones, such as the galvanic teacher Hans Hofmann, the lyric expressionist Joan Mitchell, the adventuresome realist Fairfield Porter, and the eccentric thinker John Graham. We encounter, too, the writers, critics, patrons, and hangers-on who rounded out the artists’ world. Jed Perl helps us see what the artists were creating and understand how they confronted an exploding art audience. And he makes clear how the economic boom of the late 1950s and the increasingly enthusiastic response to Abstract Expressionism ushered in the rapacious art world of the 1960s and the theatricality of Pop Art.

Artists drew strength from the dizzying onslaught of Manhattan, and produced a tidal wave of new forms. These included Hofmann’s brazen flourishes of color; Pollock’s quicksilver skeins of paint unfurling panoramic arabesques; and the crushed, jagged, turning-back-on-itself calligraphy of de Kooning’s gnomic alphabets. And there was much more: Burgoyne Diller’s levitating rectangles; Nell Blaine’s explosive renderings of quotidian scenes; Ellsworth Kelly’s extraordinary simplifications, suggesting sails or semaphores.

A brilliant tapestry of social history, biographical portraiture, and criticism, New Art City illuminates a revolutionary, unprecedented time and place in American culture.
__###REPLACE###.name.verbose__
The New York Times Notable Book of 2005
A Christian Science Monitor Book of the Year

"There is no account of twentieth-century art in that fabled powerhouse of culture, New York, that comes anywhere near this astonishing book by Jed Perl. Perl has seen and digested everything: New Art City is the deep creative work of a decade and more; it is the story that all of us (both in the art world and out of it) have been hoping for – personal but authoritative, witty, written straight on without a syllable of the vile jargon of academe. It comes out of a deep understanding of America and its individual makers, both as artists and as people, in their relations to one another and to other cultures. I found it enthralling.”
—Robert Hughes

“The full story of how New York ‘found its place its the history of art’ has never before been told in such compelling detail. Documenting his narrative from dozens of hitherto-unexamined sources – films, diaries, letters, and novels, as well as critical writing – Jed Perl builds up a vast canvas that depicts the period in American art often called ‘heroic,’ and is as heroic as its subject.”
—John Ashbery

“This great bear-hug of a book never loses control of its dazzling account of the persons and places, the events and ideas that fused into the New York School. Vasari and Apollinaire would have welcomed New Art City.”
—Roger Shattuck

"A quirky and brilliant panorama of the triumphant Manhattan art scene in the middle of the last century."
—Sean Wilentz

“Perl matches the furor of ‘60s-era critics with his own invective. His passion is refreshing in an era that venerates every major 20th-century movement without discrimination.”
—Jonathon Keats, Forbes

“Perl’s highly readable and exhaustively researched history is bound to stand as the definitive volume on this hectic and fertile period in American art for years to come. “
—Ann Landi, ARTnews

“With ‘New Art City,’ Jed Perl has written the history of the New York art world’s rise to dominance in the 1950s. His narrative spans four decades and brings the city and its many artistic worlds alive in a vast and rich panorama. . . A delight to read. He never stoops to fashionable language to give substance to his ideas, and his avoidance of the arcane lingo that now passes for art criticism is refreshing. . . I was amazed at how engaging this story becomes in the hands of a brilliant critic who is also a painter and art historian — talents that too seldom merge. Start spreading the news — Jed Perl has given us a new standard book in the art-historical field.”
—Tom Freudenheim, The New York Sun

“In a statement from the late 50’s, the poet and art critic James Schuyler effused that to be a writer in New York was to be ‘affected most by the floods of paint in whose crashing surf we all scramble.’ In Jed Perl’s New Art City, his new book about the Manhattan art world at mid-century, he captures that same vivacity and force . . . Few critics have as much sheer passion for their subject. The pleasure of reading New Art City comes from seeing that passion channeled into a larger structure, a project that has occupied the author for more than a decade. What should one call this book, anyhow? It’s hard to imagine research any more scrupulous than Perl's, yet words like ‘history’ or ‘survey’ make it sound too dry. As its title suggests, the book is more of a virtual city . . . If New Art City were a painting, it would probably be de Kooning’s ‘Excavation,’ the artist’s grand breakthrough from 1950. That canvas . . . is a huge tapestry of intersecting vectors. Its title invokes the uncovered energies of New York City, yet it maintains the beguiling autonomy of all the best abstract art. Perl’s book creates a similarly vast panorama, an overarching structure that opens onto new surprises at every turn. It has the startling immediacy of wet paint.”
—Peter Campion, The San Francisco Chronicle

Selected as one of the six best books of 2005: “This almost impossibly rich book evokes, explores, illuminates, and analyzes the Manhattan art world of the 1940s through the early 1960s, a period that famously saw the ‘triumph of American painting’ and New York’s concomitant rise to supremacy as the world’s artistic capital . . . the sort of grand marriage of criticism, history, and biography that Edmund Wilson achieved in his finest books . . . New Art City is a thrilling achievement.”
—Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic Monthly

“Panoramic, fascinating . . . carefully researched . . . By far the most thorough account of the ‘triumph of American painting’ that we have. Perl conveys the messiness and richness of the era as the artists lived it. It is a splendid achievement and an exceptionally worthwhile read.”
—Terry W. Hartle, The Christian Science Monitor

“Only a New Yorker could have written such a pulsating book about the fascinating, panoramic exploration of art and culture in mid-century New York City. This is an art history that is crisply written and always relevant by the art critic of The New Republic, a man who hasn’t missed much since the 1980s.”
—Booklist
__###REPLACE###.name.verbose__
Jed Perl was born in New York City in 1951. He received a BA from Columbia College and studied painting at the Skowhegan School in Maine.

He was a contributing editor to Vogue in the 1980s and has been the art critic for The New Republic since 1994. Among his books are Paris Without End: On French Art Since World War I and Eyewitness: Reports from an Art World in Crisis. He lives in New York City with his wife, the painter Deborah Rosenthal.

ytj#159 being there

#158 Abstract Expressionism..De Kooning

#157 ytj Jack Kerouac.."The Beat Generation"

ytj#156 Greenwich Village

New Art City..Jed Perl


I'm really glad I just bought Jed Perl's "New Art City"..it chronicles Mid-Century New York's artistic cultural flowering. I think this is the archetype for all of us Brooklyn Wannabe's. "La vie boheme Redux".. A little more Prada than Dada (c) these days but still fun. What follows will be musings on the book's chapters by me, reviews of the book and videos that relate to the theme and or the era..

Friday, July 20, 2007

Art and engagement..


Just exchanged emails with a Dalton friend. He was talking about how a mutual friend had had a show and sold out her paintings. Nothing about the work itself, nothing about MY work..just art as decoration and activity...I look for friends who like to "take the air in a tobacco trance.."

Philosophy


I actually hate the word "philosophy". I rather like the word .."theory". Thorstein Veblen, Rousseau, Sartre, Freud,Marx,Weber,Heidegger,Hegel,Kierkegaard, Fanon..were they lovers of wisdom? Or the art of rhetoric and discourse...?

New York

New York , New York big city of dreams..why love NYC? What's the big deal? The city is desire, ambition, striving, and discovery writ large..more later.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

New York City ..here I come.


Got a job. Looking for an Apartment this weekend. Up to NYC BABY!!!!

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Melancholia Dementia You Tube Joint #129

Melancholia Dementia You Tube Joint #128

Melancholia Dementia You Tube Joint #127

Melancholia Dementia You Tube Joint #126

Melancholia Dementia You Tube Joint #125

Melancholia Dementia You Tube Joint #124

Melancholia Dementia You Tube Joint #123

Melancholia Dementia You Tube Joint #122

Dalton Schools Inc Cont'd- New York City

OK..the education itself..Dalton was a prep (aratory) school. It was meant to prepare you for University..(the better Universities, the REAL Universities, the UNIVERSAL Universities). Unfortunately I was a "bad" student. Some people go to school to learn AND be prepared. I was one of those people for whom High School was "expensive day care".. I regret. Now I can't get enuff of reading philosophy, rhetorical discussion, art, politics etc. Then I just couldn't wait until Saturday. Academics are just not that important in black society. Most of them will never use the word in a sentence in their lifetimes. It's not ALOT better in the white masses. I was talking to a policeman at the White House and he was commenting on how a kid from a major local university didn't even know what the White House was when he saw it.

The Black Underclass


Repatriation or reparations. When you think about it, speaking in the most general of terms, African-Americans are the only ethnic group that came to this continent in-voluntarily. This is a critical distinction. They are the only group who's own imagination, hopes , will-power and drive was not a factor in bringing them here. This is an important distinction and it shows. The masses of African-Americans in this country are characterized by a lethargy and perplexing maladjustment to the demands and opportunities of the social-structure. Illiteracy, bad-english, immoderate behaviour seem almost institutionalized in the mass culture. So much so that an industry has grown around aestheticizing it called "hip-hop culture". In addition to that black comedians make millions satirizing their own people's excesses and failings. Outside of the rule of law and social contract nobody owes you anything. It really is the "war of all against all". The European imperialists came to your shores and co-opted you for their own benefit? So what? Who says they couldn't? There are no REAL checks on human aggression and violence outside the agreements men make amongst themselves. The next few generations in America will be a referendum on Black-American's need to FINALLY choose their own destiny. We will be years away from any existing objective oppression as a group and the only determining factor will be our own will and responsibility.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Michelle Malkin


I think if a woman could be a DICK, then Michelle Malkin would be one. Don't get me wrong I am PRO diversity of opinion. For instance, I believe it's good that conservative opinions are broadcast. But I think the people you and I associate with it's highest profile are "dicks"..Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and Irving Kristol..etc. But the joke is on us. These people are PAID advocates and they are laughing their way to the bank. Michelle Malkin did a whole segment about her trip to Iraq. Do you think she got there on her own money and influence?\

For the recored I think James Carville, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton are the same kind of spectacle.

Minogue YTJ#121 pt 5

YTJ #120 pt 4

YTJ #119 part 3

Kenneth Minogue Pt II YTJ #118

ytj #117 Firing Line

Grasping the Affirmative




Its so standard in Contemporary Art to "critique" appearances. I like Malcolm Morley, Andy Warhol and Alex Katz in their embrace of the status quo. I have always wondered.." what if you had a black artist do painings inspired by a Lilly Pulitzer Catalogue?"

Discourse on Inequality - by Christopher Lee


My apologies to Jean Jacques Rousseau...actually in my philosophical development, Rousseau's "Discourse on Inequality" was a critical read. As a black student in America you are usually given a cliche curriculum that only includes black writers..the usual suspects like DuBois, Martin Luther King , Cornell West and Bell Hooks. I think the cannon would benefit to include Rousseau's essays.
I like to read 18th and 19th century theorists talk about their views because this is the beginnings of the European's interface with cultures exploited by their contemporary experience of European Empire.
Imagine yourself in their time. Sure they had no electricity, no penicillin, no telephone, no trojan rubbers but they still had the beginnings of the scientific method, political organization and the rule of law. They still thought that the "primitive" man was a different species.
Let's be honest. The rule of "law" is a paradoxical phenomenon. On the one hand it can put you away for the rest of your life, on the other it's only words.

Somebody "says" this land is mine, or the King's or whatever. And magically in our world, that's that . That's essential to the western world.


to be cont'd.

Dalton Schools Inc Cont'd- New York City


So in previous posts I tried to lay down my sense of the social dynamics at play in modern NYC. Enter Dalton as a private school in the NYC private school system as the Jewish alternative to the WASP dominated power culture. In the 60's and 70's you had the phenomenon that Tom Wolfe labeled as Radical Chic. This was where the well-to do aligned their sympathies with the visibly oppressed less fortunate. That was people like me. An expression of that was Leonard Bernstein hosting a fundraiser in his Park Avenue apartment for the Black Panthers and me getting an almost full scholarship in 1972 to a school that lots of "white parents" would give their right arms to send their kids to.

I came in in 5th grade a real "pickaninny". I was right off the streets. My only significant exposure to whites was being bussed to second and third grade in rural Florida while staying with my grandparents. I was happy to be out of ghetto schools. As you get older the kids got more and more violent and disruptive. The Dalton kids were beautiful, bright, genteel..you name it. To this day I don't see how ANYONE could morally send their children to an inner-city public school.

My first couple of years were culture shock, although I was too young to know it. Friends would bring me home to their upper east and west side apartments. One kid's - Jonathan Blinken-bedroom was the size of my apartment. I remember a friend- Lenny Wolfe- bringing me home and his mom taking him aside to give him a "talk", about what -to this day I don't know. Jaime Redford (son of Robert) invited me for a sleepover on a day when they were off to the Connecticutt country club. I got the worst case of diarrhea, probably from nerves, and they gave me my first tennis lesson. His mom leant me shoes. I was a natural they said. :)

Some parents were brave enuff to let their kids come to my "house" on 111th street. Peter Gelfman and I had to climb the fire escape in the back to avoid the hostile black kids hanging out on the stoop. David Walker almost jumped off my roof as we were running around up there startled by some vagrant. In retrospect I could have very easily damaged one of those kids forever by having them visit me, and damaged myself as well psychologically and physically for being the "oreo".

Coming soon.."the
education itself."

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Wish Me Luck


This hopefully will be my last full month in Washington DC. I hope to be relocated in NYC by the last week in August. By the middle of the month I hope to have a very strong lead on a job. then by early August I am looking to get a loft share either in Bushwick, Jersey City, or Long Island City. We'll see how it all plays out...

The Warehouse Gallery "Art in Heat"- Sat Nite

Warehouse Gallery was one of my first orientations to the DC artscene when I moved back here in 2000. I had a studio a couple of blocks away on I Street and met one of Molly Ruppert's granddaughters or neices or something like that. She made me aware of the ARTROMPS which I would participate in for the next couple of years until Molly pissed me off. I wanted to talk to her about mounting a show there in the lobby and she just blew me off. I didn't hear from her for months even though I would see her periodically. What insulted me was not the idea of being rejected but just her dismissive attitude. It's my complaint about alot of DC people. They are covert and two faced. They don't have the balls to just be upfront and forthright.I don't care what people say about me as long as they are honest, and she was such a phoney about it. It became unpleasant to be there. When someone is trying to "con" me I don't buy into their insincerity. I think this throws alot of them off. I just look for friendlier faces or content myself with my own thoughts, enjoy the moment and split.
I hear they are closeing up shop due to operating expenses and a HUUGE tax hike. It's a shame because objectively I think they mean alot to the community and I wish them well. As for me, I can't get out of this town soon enuff.











  • t is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct--if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." - Thomas theorem
  • "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences"" - Thomas theorem
  • "If people view somebody as great, then he is" - another, more specific version of the Thomas theorem