Rosetta Mission

I was inspired by today's success of the Philae lander on comet 67P, aka the first time mankind has landed on a moving comet, and made this image to share my feelings on the subject.  Lately, some of you may be like me and have felt frustration that many of the topics from current events or controversies that burrow into our conversations with friends and coworkers, or play on our screens at night, are not actually relevant in the grand scheme of things, though we get angered and worked up about them despite our otherwise happy and glowing souls.  By grand scheme of things, I'm referring to the universe and its cosmic age as compared to say, Victoria's Secret and it's recent Perfect Body controversy.  One of those things is important, and one of those things isn't.

So congrats to the ESA.  I'm incomprehensibly proud of humankind today, and so thrilled to be alive during this enchanting time in history.  I've been feeling bogged down lately around some people, to whom it's all gloom folding in upon itself out there in the world today.  But to me, events just pass on along the thread of time as they have for at least the last 13.5 billion years, and today was one little part of it that chanced to be beautiful and exciting.  So hats off to you ESA, for looking ever forward and keeping us believing!

Interstellar

I just heard that Christopher Nolan has a new movie called "Interstellar" about trying to save civilization by finding a new habitable planet because earth has become environmentally devastated and Matthew McConaughey will pioneer the wormhole.  It looks a little cheese ball to me but, maybe that's just because Anne Hathaway is trying to act in a serious role again.

The trailer looked like they were trying to be all emotional about the end of the world, which I found boring.  I think emotions in movies in general are boring.  I like raw facts, a series of events, and people reacting with simple expressions like laughter, anger, or shock.  So really, that Nova documentary about the Siberian meteor that I watched on Sunday was my perfect movie.

Scene A: everyone's like OH MY GOD

Scene B: scientists are like WHAT HAPPENED?

Scene C: people tell scientists that some things happened

Scene D: everyone's like BOY THAT WAS AMAZING

Perfection.

Although, I'm not entirely willing to write "Interstellar" off because it does involve space travel and wormholes and stuff, which I typically go bananas over.  But they better not have too many emotions, or I'll shake my fist in their direction.  

Nope.  No emotions.  Stop it.

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Invisible Art Critic: Grand Debut

Ou, Le Critique D'Art Invisible: Un Grand Début
(si vous préférez la française)  We are talking about art here, so let's class it up, shall we?

I have had ups and downs with my relationship to art, artists, and the world of art in general.  For the last several years, I have been in a perpetual down, because I can't help but fail to see the relevance of art as having any higher performance than that of eye candy.  And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that!  Jasper Goodall is fun as shit!  Also, artists help me understand science.  However, an article has just been brought to my attention which inspired in me a new idea, a sense that I may have a relevant voice in today's equally relevant visual arts agenda.

I am going to be an invisible art critic.  That's not to insinuate that I myself will become invisible as an act of visual phenomena.  Although, I must point out that if you're reading this right now, you're likely not looking at me also, though I may claim to exist, can you yourself actually prove that you're not making up the contents of this essay inside your own head?  Perhaps I am invisible, as is my artwork.  Not in the self-help-book sense.  In the actual sense.

No!  The critique will be invisible, it is up to the reader to utilize their imagination and determine how grand a scope the topics I digest.  Am I being vulgar, or am I being passive?  To what ultimate end does my opinion lend its incomprehensible weight?  One must wonder whilst shivering into the long cold blank of my art criticism blog, which this blog will occasionally become, when the culture yearns desperately for clarification, nothing will be there.  Yet nothing is bloated with possibility.  And nothing is a constant that I can guarantee.  Alas, I have said too much already, I am allowing the muddled fever of thought to infect the perfection of invisibility, and the imagination it would otherwise allow.

I shall now select the first piece for discussion today:

Chris Bradley's "Clyde" (2011), painted cast bronze and hot glue

"




























                                                                                                                                                  "

By Beth, le critique d'art invisible
For professional credentials, please refer to the following invisible resume:

Monster

Uuuuh..... someone left their monster in my closet.

__________________________________________________

Artist

Sometimes I revel in how amazingly clever I am.
So then I drink a glass of wine to celebrate my astonishing cleverness.
I awake the following morning, slowly open my eyes and breathe in the air of a new day, and see that I'm not clever at all, that I'm actually exploiting my own mental handicap, which is the bloated ego of someone who occasionally thinks they have something clever to say.  And then I become sad, and celebrate this sadness with another glass of wine, which ends up yielding an additional handicapped/clever idea that I am incapable of keeping to myself for any duration of time.

I'm smart enough to know that I should be ashamed, but dumb enough to think my ideas can provide entertainment.  This is the cyclical obstruction of the creative mind.

In case you didn't already know, this is the only true definition of an artist.  And I say that with a certain degree of love for myself, and all other artists.

But everyone fucking hates artists, especially artists.  Maybe that's why artists all hate themselves, and lead perilously destructive lives.  We realize how bullshit we are, but we just can't seem to stop.  Somewhere in there, someone gets a kick out of it, which makes it all worth while.  So really, people who appreciate the arts are not high culture, they are enablers.

People aren't visiting the Museum of Modern Art, they're visiting the Modicum of Mediocre Attempts.

All right that's not fair.  Everything I've seen at the MOMA is profoundly more exciting than most things I see in any place at any time.  Except for when I'm watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  THAT'S the most exciting thing I've seen in a while.



Okay well here's a collage for no reason, because reading text on the internet generally requires a visual pay off.

pay off!

Mega Penguins Vital Statistics

Finally, an image clarifying the difference between a mega penguin, the common British man, and an emperor penguin. I can never keep these things straight.

Image source