What can an artist teach us about working across mediums, pushing boundaries, the importance of failure, enjoying the process and innovation? A great deal, it seems, based on this incisive obituary in today’s IHT by Michael Kimmelman on Robert Rauschenberg.
Excerpts:
A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.
The process — an improvisatory, counterintuitive way of doing things — was always what mattered most to him. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” he said when he was 74. “Being correct is never the point… Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”
Still trying to figure out how to incorporate images into this blog to enhance the overall experience.
So this is a test post from Flickr… and you, lucky readers, are my guinea pigs.
This magazine spread (displayed in the window of a little wine bar in the West Village) caught my eye this morning as I biked past.
The caption (lower left) reads:
The eclectic group of artists and writers form Artistes Sans Hollywood-X, a salon that meets on the second Tuesday of each month in the West Village. “It is our responsibility as the cultural conscience of our nation to work toward consciousness-raising,” says Cintra WIlson (front right), the group’s leader.
And so history repeats itself… Hey, the Flickr thing worked!
My friends and I are brainstorming on where to go for vacation. The beach? The woods? A road trip? We’ve narrowed it down to three choices, all very different.
Soon it’ll be time to decide…
The cultured whip-cracker among us has posed an excellent question to help forge consensus: “which place is most likely to inspire us?”.
All of a sudden, sitting on a beach for a week doesn’t look so hot…
(David Whyte touches on this in one of his CDs. He says something like: “the answer to exhaustion is not rest, but the whole-heartedness”.)
Something to consider next time you go on holiday…
Q. Diving right in, you’re an Aussie, right? What brought you to NYC?
I am an Aussie. From sunny Sydney, in fact - land of the endless barbecue, wicked amber fluid, and some very fine beaches. I came to New York in August 2006 to run Riot, an Australian pop culture magazine I co-founded. I decided to put it all together from New York, what I perceived at the time to be the cultural hotspot of the world. And I wasn’t disappointed when I arrived…
Q. Judging from the photo, you left sunny Sydney a while back. Anyway, it seems you have your hands in a number of pots. Can you give us a little run-down, Zolton? My Sydney-based brother Zac and I set up an online publishing company, Conversant Media, in May last year and we now publish two websites — Lost At E Minor, a pop culture publication that unearths and promotes new talent in music, art, fashion, film, amongst other creative pursuits; and The Roar, an Australian-based sports opinion website that meshes articles written by our sports fanatic readers with those by professional sports writers. We have a saying in Australia (perhaps it’s universal?), that when it comes to sports, everyone is an armchair expert. This is what The Roar is all about: giving those armchair experts a voice. In addition to this, I do digital consulting and freelance copywriting.
One of our goals here at IBC is to explore the role of culture in our lives, as a vehicle for elevating consciousness and positive change, but also as a business opportunity for culturally-minded entrepreneurs.
I recently posed a string of questions here about culture to kick off the exploration and have some Q&As in store which will hopefully shed some light on the matter…
In the meantime, in response to my culture pop quiz posted a few days back, one of IBC’s more intrepid readers has volunteered the following:
“Personally, I think government should play a part in supporting “culture” but they also need to allocate sufficient funds to this and appoint the right people in those positions. The last I heard, the U.S. govt continued to decrease funding in the arts & humanities (which was already a pitiful amount compared to Europe), and increased military spending instead. Very sad.”
I stumbled on a free white-paper today titled “I Shop therefore I am” from the folks at David Report. It’s worth sharing - here’s a snippet:
“Luxury brands are very good at selling us ‘parts’ of the luxury lifestyle: first class travel, bespoke fragrances, and atelier worthy chocolate creations. But by accumulating all the parts, we believe they’ll somehow fit into a perfect whole. But in reality, the whole is the beginning. It has to be the starting point. Otherwise you’re trapped in the vicious cycle of always needing the next ‘part’. You’re starting with incompleteness - so it always feels like there’s a piece missing. The whole must be - and is - the sense of self from whence the journey begins.” Read the rest of this entry »
I’m lucky to have a few close friends who live/breathe the art & culture scene.
They’re constantly inviting me out to see new work, which I appreciate very much, because good art/culture always inspires me.
Like yoga, cooking, or a brisk walk in the woods, art/culture offers a doorway into self-awakening or consciousness, making it easier to stay centered and leave behind what Peter Russell calls the “hum-drum of daily existence”.
In this vein, I offer you a 30-second journey: a short clip by one of my favorite emerging artists, Robert Olsen.
How did I find out about Mr. Olsen? A tip from one of my friends. And no, I don’t own any of his work, yet…
Last week, coming off a quiet and cold Easter in Vermont, we hit the art fairs in New York. While the main Armory show left us feeling flat, things picked up Pulse and Volta, two satellite fairs teeming with indie spirit.
Upon leaving Volta, a friend handed us a magazine called Culture + Travel, “in case you need some subway reading material”. Another magazine we’ve never heard of, we thought. (There’s so much content out there.)
But the title and cover photo caught our attention. So we started flipping through C+T (our acronym) on Sunday and were immediately impressed by the quality of writing and photography. Read the rest of this entry »
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Entrepreneurship, Self-actualization | Tagged: art, artist, change, creativity, culture, failure, innovation, process | 
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Posted by Oliver
