Song of a Reformed Headhunter

The New Museum block party, at Sara Roosevelt Park on Saturday, was a small neighborhood affair, consisting of about 8 small tents and mineral water sponsored by Whole Foods. Good enough, I suppose, for fitting in, but not for reaching out. The museum however was crowded. GH and I watched Patrick Pleutin 's animation short Bamiyan (2008), shown as part of the REDCAT International Children's Film Festival. The 14-minute film narrated, in French and Chinese, with English subtitles, the visit of Chinese monk Xuanzang to Bamiyan, Afghanistan, where he saw the giant statues of Buddha. The statues were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, and children living in the valley told the legends of that destruction. The colors of the film were as gorgeous as stained glass, but they moved and changed. Both GH and I liked the work of Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander , but we liked different parts of it.  GH liked At a Certain Distance (Ex-Voto Paintings)  (2010) for their architec...

JMS and I went to see "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989" last Friday at 6 PM, when admission was free. According to the exhibition notes, The Third Mind refers to a "cut-ups" work by Beat writers William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, whose cult of spontaneity in art and life drew inspiration from Asian attitudes. As even this note illustrates, there was far too much generalizing about "Asian attitudes" in the exhibition than I could stand. "Asia" in the exhibition was predominantly--and predictably --Japanese, and within Japanese culture, Zen. "Asia" was presented as an ahistorical and undifferentiated Other.  Yes, the artists saw Asia that way, but I would have liked the exhibition to give more context to that way of seeing. I did not care for the post-War World II stuff (mainly installations, performance art, videos), though Ernest Fenollosa's book "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poe...