The first and ultimately longest-lasting lesson I learned in the course of earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree: I hate talking about art.

Discussions about the nature, worth and philosophical underpinnings of any kind of artistic expression always seem to rapidly deteriorate into either a self-congratulatory circle jerk of spurting jargon or dueling high-decibel attempts to prove the unprovable.  What I do enjoy is a contextual analysis of a favorite artist’s work or a good survey of the cross-influences and development of a particular period in art history. As far as the latter goes, the first half of the twentieth century is about as complex, fast-paced and fascinating as it gets - due in large part to thinkers, artists and charlatans who spent vast amounts of time in precisely the kind of conversation that makes me vaguely homicidal in real life. Go figure. Full Story »

It has been alleged that Scholars & Rogues is not, strictly speaking, a political blog. Sure, we write about overtly political issues and devote our share of time to things like media policy, energy and the environment, business and the economy, and international dynamics. Yes, we were credentialed to cover the DNC, but we don’t really do hard, insider, by god politics. Daily Kos is a political blog. Firedoglake is a political blog. Little Green Footballs, The Agonist, Politico, The Seminal - these are real poliblogs.

S&R, on the other hand, writes about music. About literature and poetry. About art. Education. Sports. Culture and popular culture. The Ramsey case and what it tells us about the state of media. And now that the election is over, S&R is writing about politics less than ever.

So really, what is S&R? Full Story »

by Michael James Hawk

When is a Work of art truly original? Put another way: when is a Work not derivative of someone else’s work?

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“I’m interested in what motivates you, and how you understand the world.” He glanced sideways at her. “Rausch tells me you’ve written about music.”

“Sixties garage bands. I started writing about them when I was still in the Curfew.”"Were they an inspiration?”

She was watching a fourteen-inch display on the Maybach’s dash, the red cursor that was the car proceeding along the green line that was Sunset. She looked up at him. “Not in any linear way, musically. They were my favorite bands. Are,” she corrected herself.

He nodded.

- William Gibson, Spook Country

I’ve always been intrigued by the curious dynamic of influence. Full Story »

Grab a walking stick, sling on a backpack, grab a notebook, and don your pith helmet. Keri Smith and her inventive new book want you to go exploring in an effort to free your creativity.

How to be an Explorer of the World: Portable Art Life Museum challenges readers to look at the world around them with fresh eyes. “Creativity arises from our ability to see things from many different angles,” Smith writes.

In that vein, Smith’s book reads like a primer on how to capture everyday wonder. Full Story »

Last night we watched the Final Cut of Blade Runner again, and if you don’t have this package I can’t recommend it highly enough. 25 years on, Ridley Scott was able to finally re-craft the film as he wanted it originally, and the result is a stunning achievement. Scott has been one of our greatest directors for a very long time, but this may be his finest moment to date.

This viewing (probably my 35th or 40th - I lost count a long time ago) got me to thinking, all over again, about how little the film was acknowledged at the time of its release. Full Story »

Westword staff cartoonist Kenny Be is a bit of a legend here in Denver. He’s been caricaturing local officials and issues for years and has a great knack for picking out hilarious idiosyncracies. For the Democratic Convention, Kenny took on an ambitious project: depicting delegates from all U.S. states and territories. He just completed his project, “Delegating Denver,” and as Convention week begins, it’s well worth the time to peruse it at this link.

Some of my favorites are of course Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, and Wyoming (”The majority of Wyomingites are uneducated, foul-mouthed cretins who look like toothless meth addicts out on parole. But those are just the Republicans who hate to pay taxes and abide by federal regulations”).

When it comes to art, part of me has never fully grokked the photorealists. I mean, in an age before photography, sure, but these days if you want photorealism wouldn’t you prefer, you know, photos?

Then there’s the other part of me, the part that’s always cognizant of Keats:

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

The truth is that what some of these artists are capable of is nothing short of remarkable. Their technique is necessarily flawless and the best of them can infuse a subject, by design, with a greater degree of character, gravity, even intent than a photographer, who is more or less constrained by what’s in front of the camera. Full Story »

Napkin courtesy of Glendale’s Bull & Bush.

So, in completely unrelated news, they’re testing the Hadron Collider this weekend.

Our economy has demonstrated remarkable resilience.

— President Bush at a press conference; July 16.

We’re spending like a drunken sailor.

— Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., predicting the federal budget deficit would double this year; according to Manu Raju of The Hill newspaper, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that, for the first nine months of fiscal 2008, the government ran up a $268 billion deficit, $148 billion more the same period last year; July 17.
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A few weeks ago we showed you a painting by Miro and posed the question: is this art? The consensus opinion seemed to be that sure, I guess it’s art, although I wouldn’t pay a penny for it.

Today we look at digitally generated images and ask the same question. Specifically, have a look at Electric Sheep, my cool new screen saver program. According to the Web site:

Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver created by Scott Draves. It’s run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers “sleep”, the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as “sheep”. The result is a collective “android dream”, an homage to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Full Story »

One of my main interests is how we know what we know about the Civil War. My fascination in the topic stems not only from my work doing public history on the front lines at the battlefields in Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville but also from a public relations perspective. “The Lost Cause,” as a concept, was a basically huge public relations campaign to influence the way Americans remembered the war–or, as Robert E. Lee said, “to transmit, if possible the truth to posterity, and do justice to our brave soldiers.”

In that context, Gary Gallagher’s Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood & Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War proved to be a fascinating and fun book to read. Full Story »

Artist Michael James Hawk mines our collective unconscious for imagery that’s not only primitive, but alien.

Occasionally a visual artist who’s little known, but who seems to draw from an inexhaustible supply of creativity, comes to our attention. Whatever vein he or she has tapped — or opened — its yield is not only as malleable as gold but just as beguiling.

Why, we wonder, isn’t this artist more honored and rewarded? The question, of course, applies to many artists in America. But what if an artist’s work boasts of qualities that should appeal to not only the discerning eye, but the public? That’s the case with Seattle resident Michael James Hawk.

On one hand Hawk’s work bears evidence of his influences: Praxiteles, Moore, Brancusi, Picasso, Miro, Giacometti, and Calder. Current artists whose work speaks to him include Botero, the startling Magdalena Abakanowicz, and international architect Santiago Calatrava. On the other hand, Hawk’s work exhibits an element of — for want of a better word — the fantastic. Full Story »

We were just having fun making posters. There was no time to think about what we were doing. It was a furious time, but I think most great art is created in a furious moment.

— Stanley Mouse, artistic partner of Alton Kelley; the pair created hundreds of classic psychedelic rock posters and threw “the world’s first psychedelic dance-concerts at Longshoreman’s Hall in September 1965, essentially starting the San Francisco scene”; Mr. Kelley died this week at age 67; June 3.

When it comes to issues like this, [corporations] don’t want to be anywhere near them and they will cave very, very quickly — anything to stop the pain, anything to stop the press from calling.

— Eric Dezenhall, the head of the crisis public relations firm Dezenhall Resources, on Dunkin’ Donuts’ decision to remove an ad from its Web site featuring celebrity chef Rachael Ray after conservative bloggers complained her scarf resembled a keffiyeh, labeling it “jihadi chic“; May 30.
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by Patrick Vecchio

(CAUTION: Contains naughty words)

The cleavage of men into actors and spectators is the central fact of our time. We are obsessed with heroes who live for us and whom we punish. — Jim Morrison, from “The Lords and the New Creatures”

I’ve been a fan of Warren Zevon since his live album “Stand in the Fire” came out in 1981. But I’m nowhere as big a fan now as I used to be, and it’s got nothing to do with the music, everything to do with the musician.

At its best, “Stand in the Fire” races well past the redline on the rock ’n’ roll tachometer. Zevon’s best-known tunes — especially “Excitable Boy” – take on a fun-filled ferocity that makes the studio versions of those songs seem as safe as milk (to borrow a phrase from Captain Beefheart). Full Story »

Art?

Discuss.

Ahhhh. An unseasonably balmy day here in the flyover zone. Upstairs, my riotous infant had subsided into what passes for a nap these hellish days. Downstairs, the dogs and I were cautiously relaxing into sunshine and silence. I snapped open a can of Diet Dr. Pepper, settled into the spot on the couch that fits my rear just right, and fired up the trusty laptop to while away a blessed hour with Google as my friendly guide… and saw this:

And said this: “Good God. Jeff Koons just crapped all over my Google.”

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Most art students learn to appreciate art by studying its history. Thus they’re usually exposed to the figurative art of past centuries before they are to twentieth-century art, with its effusion of styles.

But some have a natural inclination for the avant garde. For example, jazz, with the homage it paid to old standards and show tunes, seemed too, well, straight, for this author when he was young. His gateway to its wonders, current and past, was John Coltrane. Full Story »

by greg stene, phd

We cannot continue to think of advertising as merely a print ad or TV spot. We need to include far more as advertising … including the actions of people and corporations.

Their Performance Art. And in contrast, their Performance Acts.

Real Performance Art is not just some dude dancing in a street. Or some Laurie Anderson musical performance. Or some geek sitting around reciting poetry that shows up on an HDTV screen in front of him in a restaurant while he’s eating raw buffalo meat. Full Story »