DAY SEVENTEEN - BERLIN CRAM SESSION

Leaving for Berlin tomorrow morning, so very little work can get done, as clearly I need to spend as much time as possible on the internet looking at artists somehow associated with Germany so I can launch an intelligent argument about why officemate should accompany me to art museums.

So many fascinating artists coming out of Germany, and of course Berlin!  Everyone may have already known, but sometimes I'm a bit slow, and learning more details is good.

First up in George Grosz...associated with the Dada and New Objectivity movements in Berlin (who can say no to that?)...fumbling around I found quite a few I really liked, including these portraits of author/poet Max Herrmann-Neisse (1925 and 1927):

   

And then there's Otto Dix, Grosz's pal in New Objectivism...which really makes me want to be a part of something politically alternative and artistic, but alas here I am, instead writing from the trenches of economic development. But Dix...the office's security software seems to think he is a pornographer. Do you think that Sonic Wall just doesn't know art when they see it?  Or are they concerned about the latent potential of the long-passed Dadaist movement to rise once again and destroy everything upon which Sonic Wall has built its empire?!

      

Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926) and Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berman (1925).


Dörte Clara Wolff, a young Jewish woman, decided to try her hand at art and design at age 16, calling herself "Dodo." She eventually produced drawings and paintings, working for a satirical publication titled ULK. In her complicated personal life, she ditched a lawyer for a Jungian, and upon seeking out the expertise of Jung's mistress regarding her tumultuous second marriage, she followed her advice to try out a therapeutic ménage à trois. She emigrated to London in 1936, and her work has only been recently "re-discovered," as they say, with an exhibit currently running at the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin to honor her life and work. HT to the officemate: Dodo has no English language wikipedia page!

       

DAY FIFTEEN - MORE COOL CZECHS

I was going to save this post for tomorrow but I'm just too excited not to immediately overshare with my imaginary readers.

Following my re-discovery of Bohumil Hrabal this morning (one of this blog's loyal readers first suggested him a few years ago), I've become one of those annoying people that becomes momentarily obsessed with the art and literature of a country on nothing more (or less!) than a whim.

Look at these paintings by František Kupka and tell me they are not amazing! (You can use the comments to do so)

And have you ever met such a sexy surrealist as Toyen? (Perhaps NSFW)

And omg Antonín Slavíček (this too) and Josef Čapek.

Now how else to expand from Kafka and Kundera? Starting with The Good Soldier Švejk seems a good option.


Perhaps after Berlin I need to go to Prague? 

DAY NINE

Today I started learning the Arabic script. Now this post may be a little tricky to understand, because learning the Arabic script is something you can most certainly do in grad school. But the thing is I'm learning it now for funsies! And for grad school.

UPDATE: I've given up.

DAY TWO

Everyone knows that any grad student with an internet connection is probably reading a good deal of online content at best tangential to their research interests (even you, media "scholars"). It even feels so good to do this when you know you have hundreds of pages of real stuff to read.

But it also feels so good to read article after article, post after post, that lives nowhere other than in the wide world of the web and know you have absolutely nothing of intellectual substance that you'll be needing to throw yourself into afterwards. It even makes you think about doing things that for people with actual time constraints are a complete waste of time, such as leaving comments, editing wikipedia articles, and keeping up with not only the newest music and film, but what people who keep up with that kind of stuff think of it.

And conducting this endless click and click and click again research to the tune of the guitar and accordion duo that wonders around the sidestreets outside the office and serenades the neighborhood's office workers really makes it so much better.

Would you believe that running up to Turkish President Gul's visit to the Netherlands, a museum exhibit to celebrate 400 years of Turkish-Dutch relations displayed a 17th-century drawing depicting a fez as a makeshift toilet and pages of the Koran as makeshift toilet paper? Would you believe there exists a clearly superior rival to the douchebaggery of Tucker Max? Would you believe that I do not find this person particularly impressive?