#surreal menes

[taxusbaccata6]

[fashionlandscapeblog]

Marc Le Mené

Chambre Mental

[churchofbobrossofficial]

He looked in.

Blood trickled down his head

It was to late

He walked away so he could be there

[can-o-memes]

*insert caption here*

[amtrak12]

I don't know how to categorize it, but LiveJournal users definitely had their own brand of humor.

[boredmuse]

[svemir-u-glavi]

surrealism

ponekad posumnjam u stvarnost tvog postojanja, zapitam se da li stvarno postojiš, tu pored mene, da li me stvarno grliš tim nežnim rukama, da li stvarno tako olako odstranjuješ bol iz mog srca i duše. svakim tvojim zagrljajem u meni te ima sve više i često pomislim kako će ovo jako boleti kada se završi, a oboje znamo da ništa ne traje večno. zapitam se kako svojim poljupcima lečiš moje rane i činiš ih tako nebitnim i malim. hvala ti.

[felixdolah-blog]

Mene Tekel Upharsin (59,4cm 84,1cm) 🌚 . Infos: @nadiaarnoldltd . #expressionism #art #contemporaryart #arte #fineart #modernart #darkart #blackandwhite #melancholy #artoftheday #monochrome #darkmood #surrealism

[milanmatens-blog]

Tate Modern

Tate Modern’s Rightness Versus MoMA’s Wrongs

By ROBERTA SMITHNOV. 1, 2006

On a recent visit to London, I found myself walking around Tate Modern muttering a number: 858 million. That’s dollars: the price tag for the new Museum of Modern Art in New York.

My visit was sadly illuminating. I haven’t spent much time in the Tate in the two years since the new MoMA opened. Moving through the London museum clarified how much it got right with its big building, no-frills design and cheap eats, despite its spotty collection.

The contrast with MoMA’s overly refined building, whose poor layout shortchanges the world’s greatest collection of Modern art, is striking. That MoMA could have spent so much money on a design that seems so unaccommodating — and already feels too small — for its growing audience is a travesty.

Tate Modern has been a hit with the public since the 2000 opening of its immense Bankside building, a former power station converted by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog and de Meuron at a cost of about $200 million. The art world, though, had plenty of complaints: the cavernous Turbine Hall, the dust generated from the unfinished oak floors, the relentless progression of galleries and the weak collection.

But Tate Modern appears to have worked out many of its kinks. It is using its limitations to its advantage and evolving into a people’s palace that the art world can also love.

The lessons of Tate Modern challenge a lot of conventional wisdom, at least that expressed in many American museums these days. Most important, Tate Modern’s huge building proves that being big is not the same as being corporate: it is possible to have a large institution feel personal to its visitors.

Tate Modern is an enormously user-friendly place, physically comfortable and hospitable, with inexpensive places to eat and frequent opportunities to sit. Snack bars, restrooms, elevators, escalators and stairways are all conveniently grouped together in the core of the building. Its extensive bookstore is mostly full of books.

The galleries that initially seemed to form a relentlessly demanding path now have a new sense of flow; by breaking though some walls and leaving gaps at the ceilings, the space has been opened up and options provided. The raw wood floor is fantastic. It looks good — at once neutral and specific; it feels good underfoot and absorbs sound. Even though the floor was part of the conversion, it adds something old and enduring to a new building, softening it while evoking the flooring of traditional exhibition and public meeting halls.

A second lesson to be gleaned at Tate Modern is that masterpieces aren’t everything. Having a limited number encourages curatorial ingenuity, useful departures from recounting history as a linear narrative of winners and losers, and a healthy integration of older and contemporary art that benefits everyone, especially young artists finding their way. In the museum’s Surrealism galleries familiar names alternate with works of complete unknowns, most of them borrowed from Tate Britain, and Picasso’s fractured “Weeping Woman” (1937) reigns like the 1908 “Demoiselles d’Avignon” at MoMA.

“Material Gestures,” one of Tate Modern’s four installations of works from its permanent collection, begins with an Anish Kapoor sculpture facing two paintings by Barnett Newman. For someone accustomed to MoMA’s like-unto-like, linear collection galleries, with contemporary art segregated two floors down, this is a jolt and an exciting one. It makes the Newmans come alive. It doesn’t matter if they trounce the Kapoor; you see both artists anew, in ways that young artists especially must find thrilling.

Tate Modern’s rehanging of its collection is full of such unexpected moments. It doesn’t always work, but each gallery makes its own point, and so it is not surprising to learn that each was organized by a different curator. There are many cooks, all getting some practice, and no single curatorial viewpoint.

Lacking the chance to be the best museum of Modern, although not contemporary, art, the Tate may turn into the most effective one: a place for people with different levels of interest and sophistication to encounter and learn about art, and for curators to learn their discipline. In addition, the curators are developing a keen sense of shows that appeal to all these levels, like the museum’s excellent survey of more than two decades of work by the Swiss art team of Peter Fischli and David Weiss.

This mission starts at the front door. As is not the case with MoMA’s low-ceilinged lobby, it is physically exhilarating to enter Tate Modern. Walk down the broad, sloping ramp and into the vaulting Turbine Hall, and you feel as if you are being pulled in by gravity, or a magnet. That experience alone starts a warm-up process that continues inside (as does the ramp for a while), where the first thing you see is art in the form of the annual Unilever commission, always a bit carnivalesque.

These works almost invariably have a salutatory effect, even when they aren’t all that great, which is the case with the Carsten Höller work this year. It consists of a Höller staple: five metal and plexiglass tubular slides through which visitors (who have signed releases, donned elbow pads and positioned themselves on little canvas toboggans) can zip down from different levels of the museum to the floor of the Turbine Hall, like messages in pneumatic tubes. The subliminal message of the Unilever commissions (even if, this year, most of us will just watch) is to be open and participate, and art will reward you.

Of course nothing so carnival-like would happen at MoMA — nor should it, necessarily — but it does point up the uselessness of the museum’s big, bleak, irrevocably formal lobby atrium.

This atrium is space that the Modern could ill afford to waste, and such frivolousness continues in its visitor amenities: the hard-to-find escalators and elevators, the too-narrow glass-sided bridges, the two-star restaurant on prime garden real estate where there should be an affordable cafeteria.

There has been progress. The huge sixth-floor galleries are being better used for temporary exhibitions than at first seemed possible, as shown by the recent Dada show and the current Brice Marden retrospective.

And it’s very good news that the second-floor cafe is being expanded, a result of museum staff members’ moving into the recently finished building at the east end of the garden. But that cafe is still on the second floor, not the garden level, and all food purchased at MoMA still involves waiters.

Architecture is destiny. It forms an extremely tangible mission statement that communicates an institution’s core values. In a sense, trophy museums like MoMA are telling us all to get lost. Their design aims to impress rich collectors and, in fact, they feel rather like some rich collectors’ houses: angular, fragile and clueless about how daily life is really lived, much less how art actually happens.

Of course this is not an architectural problem alone. MoMA’s options at this point lie with hiring the best curators and giving them their heads. Let them do more than tinker with the vaunted collection: let them integrate old and new throughout the building. Let go of the idea that all the old standbys have to be on view all the time.

Yoshio Taniguchi’s MoMA is a beautiful building that plainly doesn’t work. The Tate Modern is a plain one that is working beautifully. It has redefined the nature of the Modern/contemporary art museum and, in the process, the London art scene. But as important is that its overseers have acted with the utmost responsibility to the cultural life of its public and city.

It is probably not by chance that the people behind Tate Modern include a visionary director who began his career as an accomplished curator in the field of 20th-century art, or that its board includes artists. If museums of recent art are to survive and play a meaningful role in culture and education, they need to be governed partly by the artists and curators who are their life’s blood.

Mening:

Ik wist niet goed wat mij te wachten stond toen ik het museum binnenstapte. Moest iemand mij op dit moment vragen wat hen staat te wachten in Tate Modern zou ik nog steeds niet kunnen antwoorden op die vraag maar simpelweg zeggen dat je moet gaan. 

Er was zoveel kunst te zien in alle vormen en kleuren. Van wc-papier tot een animatiefilmpje van twee mensen die op Chatroulette zitten: Het is allemaal kunst. Het museum heeft mij zeker geleerd dat kunst een zeer ruime term is. Ik vond zeker niet alles mooi maar wat zo fantastisch is aan kunst is dat je uren naar één bepaald ontwerp kan kijken en je afvraagt waarom je hier nu uren naar zou kunnen kijken. De vraag die ik vaak stelde in mijn hoofd: ‘Waarom heeft deze artiest dit gemaakt. Wat ging er om in zijn hoofd op dat moment?’

De ruimtes vulden de kunstwerken mooi aan en toonden hiermee een soort van respect voor de kunstenaars. Elke ruimte was totaal anders vol met nieuwe dingen om te ontdekken. Ik was meer fan van de surrealistische en expressionistische dingen dan van de meer realistische ontwerpen. Ook heb ik ondervonden dat Dada een kunststijl is dat niet voor mij is weggelegd. 

Tate Modern is ook zeer gastvrij. Ten eerste zijn de meeste verdiepingen gratis wat fantastisch is. Er is genoeg plaats zoals gezegd in de recensie om te zitten en genoeg mogelijkheden om lekker en goedkoop te eten. Ik ben ook akkoord dat alle mensen - maakt niet uit welke interesses - kunnen genieten van dit museum. Persoonlijk vind ik het museum beginnersvriendelijk en kun je op het gemak je kennis verrijken. 

Ik ga het museum zonder enige twijfel nog eens bezoeken want ik heb niet alles in volle glorie kunnen bewonderen. Eerlijk gezegd heb ik er zelfs spijt van dat ik niet eerder naar zo een musea ben geweest. Leren over kunst in de les is wel leuk maar je kan het pas beginnen te appreciëren als je er ook echt tijd voor maakt. Dit is zeker iets waarover ik kan pochen nu mijn kijk op de kunstwereld veel ruimer en helderder is geworden. 

[sagittariusboyfriend]

jag följer många konsttumblrs här, där majoriteten är klassisk konst och en del arkitektur, mycket ockult och mest modern rysk/polsk/östeuropeisk surrealism. älskar mörk konst, död och ångest, mardrömmar, domedag, mörka dimmor och brinnande horisonter. tungt 1600-tal eller tysk romanticism, viss mannerism, symbolism, om inte allra helst bara allt som följer beksinski. ännu hellre, vilket jag också uppskattar med beksinski, är att det är sexuellt laddat och perverst: mörk, ockult, äcklig, intensiv pervers konst. ibland morbid, men inte i kombination med död som i mord etc dock, utan mer så obehagligt och mardrömskt att man blir kåt. mycket konstigt uttryck att beskriva, men finns så sjukt många konstnärer som kan pricka det som jag följer här. och på instagram för den delen. älskar.

det gör mig inspirerad. mörker och astrologi, mytologi, tabu, sexualitet, beteenden, ångest. deep subconscious emotions. jag vill att alla ska kunna se i mörkret, vill att alla ska SE mörker, fatta att det finns, hantera det, göra något med det. inte vara rädd. står gärna på gränsen mellan mörker och dunkel, är mer än gärna den som gräver där nere och visar vad jag hittar, litar på min navigationsförmåga och min intuition. ur mörkret in i ljuset. gärna för att hjälpa. gärna för att leta runt i det undermedvetna och finna det man söker.

beteenden.

jag är ledsen över att min kärlek och uppskattning blir tung, seriös och sugande. melankolisk och intensiv på detta mörka sätt. jag KAN vara väldigt duktig på att låta den vara osagd, men kan aldrig ignorera den, för den är som ett brinnande maskinrum fyllt med gigantiska konsumerande eldugnar i mig. jag kan vara tyst om det, om jag aldrig lättar på trycket till att börja med. gör jag det kommer inte ens ett skenande ånglok att stoppa det. det har jag lärt mig, och även lärt mig hantera. är dock för tillfället något jag faller tillbaka i. gillar inte det. vill verkligen, verkligen inte bränna folk mer med det.

jag kan hålla huvudet kallt och vara rationell, när andra får panik är jag den som lugnar ner och säger realistiska saker - för att man kan inte se straight när man har panik. detta är ENBART något jag är kapabel till pga jag har levt med paniksyndrom hela mitt vuxna liv, mina största egna osäkerheter är abandonment issues och affektkontroll/irrationell rädsla, som jag har gått i terapi för. jag är INGEN doktor, jag kan INTE fixa saker, jag kan INTE ändra saker, det är absolut INGET jag hävdar, jag skulle vara en ärkeidiot om jag trodde det om mig själv - jag har inte gått i terapi för att komma fram till något humbug, jag har gått i terapi för att kunna hantera mig själv. jag vill bara lätta på folks bördor inför saker. jag vill inte dadda någon och säga massa saker som inte är på riktigt. ärlighet kommer man längst på (inser också att här blir jag fett förvirrad när en viss person är ärlig både när han tycker om mig och när han hatar mig, blir tokig på att jag inte vet vilken sida som är på riktigt). life hurts, men det är ingens fel, du kan inte hjälpa det. jag FÖRSTÅR att det gör ont men i ärlighetens namn, vad ska man göra? rida ut det. det är det enda man kan göra. och OM man inte vill göra det värre för sig själv, så inse att det inte gör någon skillnad att fucka ur. vill man fucka ur för att känna all världens hemskheter i en flodvåg över sig, så fucka ur. men snälla, för ditt eget bästa, finn tröst i att det inte är någons fel och finn tröst i att det är okej att fucka ur. det är det enda som kan hjälpa situationen. säg inte ens att "inget kommer bli bra igen", för så KÄNNS det, men det ÄR inte så. helt realistiskt. det är allt jag försöker säga. jag vill att det ska kännas BÄTTRE. menar inte att du inte ska känna saker, tvärt om, have a breakdown, sörj tills ögonen trillar ur och känn att allt är hopplöst. men vet att det ÄR inte det. detta är realistiska tankar, till för att hjälpa.

men ibland sätts jag ur spel, någon får mig att second-guessa mig själv så mycket att allt som jag vill få fram som trygga, lugnande ord blir hafsiga och taktlösa. någon blir defensiv istället, och kan inte se vart jag kommer ifrån. tror att jag försöker vara smart och prata om saker jag inte vet något om och jag upplevs som något helt annat.

jag vill bara hjälpa och känner mig missförstådd - då börjar jag agera på mina egna osäkerheter, och släpper lös min egen panik. noll affektkontroll. som jag jobbat så mycket på att navigera i. jag kan se det utifrån, hur jag kastas som i en virvelvind tillbaka till min ruta ett. däri, i den vinden, måste jag alltså berätta hur det absolut inte var menat, försöker mötas på mitten och ursäkta mig, men blir bara så fel, för nu är vi på olika sidor helt plötsligt, och jag vet inte hur vi kom dit. utgår ju ifrån att alla har goda intentioner, utgår ifrån att alla tänker samma om mig. för jag har alltid bara goda intentioner. vill aldrig någon något illa, och jag skulle kunna skära halsen av mig själv om jag någonsin ljög om det.

det är det värsta jag vet, känns som jag tappar all min mening när jag orkanblåser dit. egentligen är det ett ypperligt tillfälle att studera hur jag funkar. jag är högoktanig, men inte alls lätt antändbar. har en lång, seg jävla stubin som ska mycket till för att sätta fyr på. mycket. just nu är den ovanligt lättantändlig. för jag är inte fri att röra mig som jag vill. jag är osäker, rädd, obekväm, kättjad till en negativ spiral och jag går runt med en restless legs-känsla i hela kroppen. måste fly, jag vill inte vara fast i underjorden, även om jag uppskattar den. jag behöver min passion, jag behöver mitt mörker, men som alla som läser dessa deppiga jävla inlägg med all säkerhet har märkt, så blir man riktigt mörkerblind av att bara vandra här nere.

jag vill kunna agera på min praktiska kärlek mer. där jag känner att allt är ett äventyr, eller, det gör jag ändå, men inser väl mer och mer att min seriösa kärlek där jag investerar min själ är lite väl intensiv. vill gärna tala ångests språk, tydligen. önskar jag kunde fokuserat mer på den lättsinniga, praktiska kärleken. när jag väl hade den. jag är så rädd att jag förlorat den.

jag är väl dido i dido & aeneas antar jag. jag och många andra. kommer behöva trampa runt asphodelusängarna i hades på grund av den där jävla aeneas.

vet inte ens vad den här texten blev. började som en sak, slutade med en annan. kan jag få slippa.

[uwu-boll]

For those who don’t know, today Brand New released their new album, Science Fiction, via their record label ‘Procrastinate! Music Traitors. The record is.. interesting to say the least. One way to describe it is it’s very Brand New-y, choc full of metaphors - especially about water and drowning - in the same vein of crypticism that Brand New is known for. It’s almost eerie and kinda surreal feeling; listening to it the first time made me feel uneasy.

The tracklist is as follows: Lit Me Up* Can’t Get It Out Waste Could Never Be Heaven * Same Logic/Teeth* 137 Out of Mana* In The Water* Desert No Control 451* Batter Up

With must listen tracks being starred. Note that every track on this album is something special and should be listened to, but these are quickly becoming favorites of mine.

One of the primary criticisms I have about the album is how unoriginal a lot of the chord progressions are, as well as repetition of lyrics kinda dull the pace of some songs. With songs like I Am A Nightmare and Mene preceding this album, I expected it to be a lot heavier than it is, for which I was disappointed. However when the songs get heavy, I am nothing but satisfied.

Despite this album defying my expectations - and not in a good way - I am ultimately very very happy with this album. Is it worth the 8 year wait? Yes, very much so. Am I excited to hear it live? More than you can imagine.

I give Science Fiction a 9/10. It scratches that Brand New itch we’ve been having for years, while providing something more and something different. It provides that strange charm that I’ve come to expect from Brand New, with their cryptic lyrics and asides between songs, as well as an intro that is bound to put you on edge. They took what they learned from Daisy and they grew on it, and it shows

Ultimately, here is how I rate the Brand New albums thus far:

1. The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, 10/10

2. Science Fiction 9/10 3. Deja Entendu 9/10 4. Daisy 8/10 5. Your Favorite Weapon 7/10

A masterpiece in the making

[taxusbaccata6]

[fashionlandscapeblog]

Marc Le Mené

Chambre Mental

[churchofbobrossofficial]

Hello everyone We made this so now you have to see it.

[can-o-memes]

Gus is short for Gustard

[lookingfortroublr]

The democratization of insights

Now let’s go even further back in time. Imagine you’re in a cave in ancient time. 

You and several others are prisoners are chained facing the inner wall. It’s cold and dark in the cave and as if that wasn’t enough, then you’re chained in such a way that you can’t even turn around and see the door opening from where the only bright light can come into the cave when the sun is up.

All you can see are projections on the wall of shadows from what’s going on out in the world as wardens go by hidden from you holding up puppets that in the scarce sun light and maybe a fire lit up behind you, cast shadows on the wall in front of you.

 Or is it people and things go by on the outside in ‘the real world’? Would don’t feel sure what you see and what to think of it.

Maybe you used to only wanting to believe to be real what you could see directly, but as you hang there by the chains unable to move, all you can do is to rely on your gut feel and intuition. And as you have to trust your gut you start to put meanings to these shadows.

You only get fragments and you put them together like pieces of a puzzle. But once in a while the sun shines brighter that before and you see things in a new light, where it comes together and you get that relieving revealing feeling of  ‘Aha, so that’s probably how that fragment of human life really works in the real world.”

But most of the time you know that there is more going on than you can see and that the full meaning of human life and how the world works can only be accessed through thoughts, intuition and ideas – because you know that there is more going on than you can see.

But you may have been brought up and trained only to believe what you could see directly, so you discard your interpretations feel irrelevant, discarded and without purpose as you hang there in the dark again. If only you could catch enough of a glimpse into their world so you could let them know that you get their world and could claim how you could contribute.

Sounds like a surreal dream or is it a fair account of how confined our perception and insight into ‘reality’ is? Do we rely more of others to guard the truths and show us projections in the form of Big Data? Could we ourselves become better at intuitively interpreting what we ourselves can observe, however how limited?

Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher used the allegory of The Cavern to make the point that ‘out there’ are universal feelings  and eternal ways that human nature and life works that exists in their purest form in the ideas world - that is more true than what we usually call the real world.  What we see when we just look at the immediate surface are only poor representations of what’s driving the word and really going on.

What we can do is to hope to escape the cave by be willing to indulge in philosophy as the key to get access and insight into the ideas world and fully understand human nature – and thereby what’s driving both ourselves and ‘the others’.

The ancient greeks called these kind of insights noesis, mening to understand the inner nature of humans and things intuitively, as opposed to mere perception or rational reasoning - and so putting empathy before empiric evidence and interpreting the surfaces of the human world in ‘depth’ rather than seeing the world as flat.

An insight is often said to manifest itself suddenly in a clear and deep moment of understanding, an “aha experience” – a ‘wow I never thought about it or understood it that way before what is ‘really going on’ and what’s driving human nature.

In modern time Bill Bernbach showed us how we don’t have to rely on just what others show us in a second layer of data representations blown up with a projector in front of us. There is a world of truths and ideas we all can access with out intuition.

That is the revelation we all know from learning and ‘’now I get it!’. That you suddenly understand what you thought you already knew in a new way.

Bernbach showed that you can be creative and successful in business without the crutches from number crunchers in the first place - maybe even more so because it comes down to you feeling something to begin with. And trust that if you feel and sense something then probably there also others that will feel it the same way out in the world.  

By opening up this perspective Bernbach sparked the first creative revolution in a world of numbers by championing humanity and emotions – he warned us against believing that advertising was a science and instead he established the idea that insight into human nature wasn’t some obscure, esoteric art form, but the most vital source for creativity and in effect the most powerful force in  business. In the wake of this almost all agencies started to look for insights. 

And so can you.

Yet today there again among many seem to have sneak in the assumption that real insights is something that can only come from experts with access to more data representation of the world out there ‘we can’t see’.  

An assumption that ‘insights are undemocratic – not everybody can have them’. A self limiting belief that you are chained, while some are entitled free to have them.

But what we tend to forget is that we are all human and while we may not have the same access to scan every pixel of the out side world, then we have equal access to our inner worlds. Therefore there is an important truth we must take to our hearts:

Everybody knows how to find insights. They just need to learn.

Now that’s good news. 

Because in a world with more both challenges and opportunities than at any other time for all, we can create immense waves of positive change if we all learn how to harness, hone and share the power of insight to fuel innovation. 

Sources:

Plato: the Republic

Andrew Zobel & Jerry Panas: Power Questions. Build Relationships, Win New Business and Influence others.

https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm

Jeff Goins: Real Artists Don’t Starve