Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville’s monumental paintings wallow in the glory of expansiveness. Jenny Saville is a real painter’s painter. She constructs painting with the weighty heft of sculpture. Her exaggerated nudes point up, with an agonizing frankness, the disparity between the way women are perceived and the way that they feel about their bodies. One of the most striking aspects of Jenny Saville’s work is the sheer physicality of it. Jenny Saville paints skin with all the subtlety of a Swedish massage; violent, painful, bruising, bone crunching.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jenny_saville.htm

article
http://www.artnet.com/magazine




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lIkMPvgENU

Subject Index - July 2008

The Aviary
Byrdsong
Subject index June 2008
Editorial: Relocation to Asia

Artists/Exhibitions
Adriaen Coorte
Marlene Dumas - LA
Blakkbyrd

Asia
Taiwan Contemporary Art Link
Taiwan Digital Art and Information Center

Tutorials
calligraphy and painting brushes

Film
The Art of Writing
Last Painting
Animated short film
The Way - Animated Sumi
Dudok de Wit

Books
Online Books in both English & Chinese
Online Books from Read Print
1984 - by George Orwell

Resources
Chinese Youtube
Skype
Learn Chinese
Byrdsong - Language Blog

Theory
Dutch Art History Links
More Dutch Painters
Dutch Pronunciation - Vermeer & Rembrandt
NAVA to produce Art Censorship Guide
Colour Theory

Graffiti/Urban Art
Berlin
Digital Graffiti Tool
Mikosa Mural Amsterdam
Namesfest - Prague graffiti festival
HOW TO READ GRAFFITI - Australia
Route 66 - Australian Graffiti Documentary
Fire Extinquisher tagging
Art Crimes - Graffiti Taiwan
Virus No 6 Crew - Taiwan

Music
Big G - Taiwan Song
TTM - Taiwan Rap

Amsterdam
Dutch and the art of bicycle maintenence.

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth

The documentary, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth has six episodes:

* Episode 1: The Hero's Adventure (first broadcast 6/21/1988 on PBS)

About Campbell, hero types, hero deeds, Jesus Christ, the Buddha, movie heroes, Star Wars as a metaphor, an Iroquois story: the refusal of suitors, dragons, dreams and Jungian psychology, “follow your bliss,” consciousness in plants, Gaia, Chartres cathedral, spirituality vs. economics, emerging myths, “Earthrise” as a symbol

* Episode 2: The Message of the Myth (first broadcast 6/22/1988 on PBS)

Creation myths, transcending duality, pairs of opposites, God vs. Nature, sin, morality, participation in sorrow, the Gospel of Thomas, Old Time Religion, computers, religion as “software,” the story of Indra: “What a great boy am I!,” participation in society

* Episode 3: The First Storytellers (first broadcast 6/23/1988 on PBS)

Animal memories, harmonization with body and life-cycle, consciousness vs. its vehicle, killing for food, story: “The Buffalo's Wife,” buffalo massacre, initiation ritual, rituals diminishing, crime increasing, artists, the Shaman, the center of the world

* Episode 4: Sacrifice and Bliss (first broadcast 6/24/1988 on PBS)

Chief Seattle, the sacred Earth, agricultural renewal, human sacrifice, sacrifice of the Mass, transcendence of death, story: “The Green Knight,” societal dictates vs. following bliss, “hidden hands” guiding life's work

* Episode 5: Love and the Goddess (first broadcast 6/25/1988 on PBS)

The Troubadours, Eros, romantic love, Tristan, libido vs. credo, separation from love, Satan, loving your enemy, the Crucifixion as atonement, virgin birth, the story of Isis, Osiris and Horus, the Madonna, the Big Bang, the correlation between the earth or mother Goddess and images of fertility (the sacred feminine).

* Episode 6: Masks of Eternity (first broadcast 6/26/1988 on PBS)

Identifying with the infinite, the circle as a symbol, clowns and masks, epiphanies and James Joyce, artistic arrest, the monstrous as sublime, the dance of Shiva, that which is beyond words.

On youtube

Ways of Seeing - John Berger

An Amazon review states

"Ways of Seeing is the book of a groundbreaking and brilliant TV series that Berger created with Mike Dibb in the 1970s. The book isn't quite as amazing as the series, but it's acquired canonical status anyway as Berger's most frequently set text on art and art criticism. Which is a pity, because while the impressive confidence of Berger's judgments was inspiring back then (Marina Warner and Michael Ondaatje have each paid tribute to it), time has passed over the last quarter of a century and the book is in danger of looking old-fashioned. The theory of desire, which Berger manages to popularise in a single succinct chapter, has been challenged, confirmed, turned upside-down and generally elaborated upon so much since the book was written that his version of it is now inadequate. Advertising is vastly more sophisticated now than it was in 1972 - the ads reproduced in the book, while perfectly representative of their time, are almost laughable in their blatant sexism and classism. (You wouldn't get away with them now, that's for sure.) But the account of the rise of oil painting is still persuasive, even if it lacks the cheek and mischievousness of the TV version. Readers expecting to find Berger's most incisive and complex criticism should look elsewhere, though, to The Sense of Sight or About Looking, because Ways of Seeing is essentially a popularisation of theories that have since become much more complex, and Berger's lapidary, no-argument tone is hardly applicable anymore. Somebody should release the series on video, then we'd get the same ideas in a more engaging and fascinating manner."

Well somebody did. Its on Youtube in 4 parts per episode.

Thanks to "man with a plan" you can see all the videos here.