first friday

yesterday was first friday, which, if you're too damn lazy to click on my links, is when all the art galleries in olde city throw open their doors and lay out the wine and brie so that cretins like us can flock around like flamingoes and pretend to be cultured and haute. when it comes to art, if you drew a straight line from poser to aficionado, i think i would be somewhere two whiskers right of the median (and this is after adjusting for chronic low self-esteem. some people, by the way, like to look at things another way and say that there is no line, only an unmarked circle, a perfect democracy in the realm of critical appreciation. a theory i don't buy into, partly because the pretentious part of myself wants to believe that we don't all have one vote, and partly because if it does turn out to be true the heads of humanities scholars everywhere will explode into a million tiny pieces). six of us went - grace, daniel, wife of daniel, ewa, min and me, which is more than you might expect from a bunch of scientists (corrected for 'presence of free sangria', though, you get your p < .05).

i was most taken with the very first gallery we went into: this one had a series of paintings and sculptures that took elements of oriental art - calligraphy, sansuiga, bijinga - and re-interpreted them with strong lines and garish colors. it sounds a lot cheesier than it was, and i think that was because the artist was sensitive to the fact that "everyone" does that kind of things nowadays, and so stopped worrying about the idea being cliched, and focused on actually creating the art. also for sale: exaggeratedly slanty-eyed, obese ronaldmcdonald figurines holding placards saying 'SUPERSIZE ME'. i would have bought one but for the fact that they were $800 each.



next: "modern" "art" (read: canvas with two vertical stripes on it that sets you back $499)

then, a gallery with variations on a theme of people fellating one another (free beer).

then: a lot of very cool sculpture up for auction, including a purple sponge:



and a turtle on a mound:



not pictured: exploding squirrel, pile of dead canaries and an assortment of 70s memorabilia on roller skates.

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(two more random cool shots that didn't go anywhere else)

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after the art, we walked up and down market street for ages rejecting restaurants left and right for being too ritzy, before settling on a persian place with hookahs, farsi magazines, and what seemed like an entire staff of lesbians. we all had kabobs, and strong tea, and we talked about the templeton foundation and paul bloom who is coming to speak next week and mindfulness mediation. and min and i tried to piece together the story of hou yi for the edification of the white people (while mourning the mooncakelessness of the occasion).

and then we went to the science of sleep, which, for the last time, despite my dissertation topic, is NOT A DOCUMENTARY, but a movie by michael gondry, who is awesome.

#36 - Long walks with no destination