"Dead Poets Society"(1989) movie -

one of my favourite movies ever.

 

John Keating: "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?" 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vK9FDLaqHg&feature=related 

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nina Power

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Dimensional-Woman-Zero-Books/dp/1846942411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288823821&sr=8-1#reader_1846942411

Philosophy Nina Power is amazing, and I use that adjective very specifically. Words spill out of her, but not just any words, but clever words, intelligent words, intimidating words and although as she might admit herself they’re not always coherent words, as I discovered tonight, to listen to one of her lectures is to find oneself at the epicentre of an intellectual tsunami, your brain sprouting its own metaphorical limbs in a vain attempt to keep afloat against the encroaching tide. It’s impossible to process everything. Often she’ll use phrases like “circuits of desire” but is so florid that her next thought is already forthcoming before the rest of us have even sensed or managed what we’ve just heard.  She's like verbal caffeine.
(what a beautiful English language! maybe someday...I will talk like that...maybe...)

The Night of living dead in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral

Event took place at 31st October 2010, Halloween night.

 It was absolutely a unique event in the main space of Liverpool Cathedral.

It was a warm and dark night, around the Cathedral was very mysterious and creepy, beautiful and biggest Anglican Cathedral in the world looks very gothic and mystical.

We came with my husband there little bet early and decided to walk around the Cathedral.

Inside the Cathedral was a lot of artificial stage-smoke for the Halloween show. Everything was a blur, and instead of a huge, famous and beautiful Cathedral altar we had seen a spectacular light-laser background with the words "DEAD". Music and special-effect of the show were amazing and very fantastic and creepy.

Listen

Read phonetically

Dictionary - View detailed dictionary

Whole that event was purpose as Halloween show and a chance to outstare fear. Fear of dead. And of course it was show for people with fascination with the “spirit world”.

We are not so religious people – me and my husband, but we like tradition of Christianity and especially architectural aspect of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and others churches in Liverpool. I think it is amazing! Other aspect about my fascinating of churches is church as an exhibiting space for artists. I realize that my religion is art. I think...it is art is religion? What is religion for people? What is the art? Last Halloween show in the Cathedral was real piece of contemporary art! Yes, it was.

What is different between art and contemporary religion?

What is the art?

 I heard  that  "Art is human effort with the purpose of encouraging an emotional reaction."  Don’t remember who the author of this “art” definition.

After today’s lesson about famous museums in the USA and around the world and especially about importance of space for contemporary and traditional art I desire to defend my position (just for myself) that art is my religion.

Maybe art is the attempt to extract the least untrue lies? There are no properly definition of anything in this world...there are no definition of art or religion?

 It is difficult to have a reaction about definition of art that did not have some emotional suggestion. For the main principle of art to be determined by an emotive reaction would deny other qualities such as duration. When I remember a painting or a work of art am I really just remembering an emotion or structure of emotion? Often times I experience a painting and the emotional factuality is just as creative if not more creative then the work. Who is responsible for that? The artwork is not living so of course it should suggest emotion. That would be one device in which we recognize beauty and there is no denying that.

“All art is quite useless” - The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

What about -  “All religious is quite useless”?

Or

“All life is quite useless”...weird and scary...but so many people who had committed suicide probably thought like that.

What is different between art and religion? I don’t know. I know about myself, that I want to create something (art) all the time…I am not ambitious and don’t need viewers to comments my creations because I don’t trust and don’t believe to anybody opinion about my art.

Do fanatic religious people create something? I don’t think so. Maybe I am wrong.

Although ... perhaps they create a mentality and mindset for people that are close to them.

Reflective Journal…what a difficult part for my study. I dislike writing only about what a heard or seen about art…everything I heard or saw makes me think.

I have thinking about art and the civilization, art and the meaning of life, art and happiness, art and the definition of beauty, art and religion, art and woman.

History of Art is very interesting subject and it is very helpful study especially for me, as I need to study English - properly, rich and sophisticated English language to have ability correctly and beautifully write my thoughts and reflections.I need it.

But I feel it as a punishment. I want to create art but I need to learn the language and art theory ...
I do not have enough time and effort to create art. This is so tragic for me right now.

 One of the reasons for the importance of creating art is because it is capable of granting me vast amounts of joy and happiness. And happiness is pretty much what me and everyone lives for.

Self-Expression in art

Expressivist theories of art tend to focus on the imagination and emotions of the artist as the sources of creativity and originality in works of art. The essential characteristic of art is not that it represents the world, but rather that it is an expression of the unique vision, feelings, or experiences of the particular artist. The problems with expressivist views are many, but several are particularly relevant for present purposes. 

What exactly it is that a work of art is thought to express?  It is a disturbing but inchoate emotion seems highly implausible when dealing with works of any degree of complexity.

An inchoate emotion seems not only woefully inadequate, but also to miss what is most essential about art work.

It is the ideas of the artist which are expressed, but this is trivially true and thus decidedly uninformative. It does nothing to explain the nature of artworks, to distinguish art from non-art, or to provide criteria of judgment, but these are all tasks which various expressive theories set out to fulfil.

Expressive art is private mental processes of an artist. It is the relationship between the inchoate emotion of the artist and the work of art itself.

If the work of art is an imaginary object there is no way for the audience members to identify the public manifestation of the work of art with the private emotion of the artist. 

There is no way of knowing from the work itself whether the artist went through a particular process. In focusing on private mental states and processes, expressive theories provide no criteria for identifying, characterizing, or making judgments about actual works.

A related problem concerns what it could mean for a work of art to express something, be it an emotion, an idea, or an experience.

In everyday life, expressions of emotion might include joy, happiness, tears, a scream…etc and an idea would likely be expressed by the simple stating of it. 

If art is self-expression, then what is the nature of the self that is expressed? What is it that does the expressing? And what distinguishes expression of self from non-expression or the expression of something other than self? 

Feminism is defined by the Encyclopaedia Britannica as ‘ the belief, largely originating in the West, in the social, economic and political equality of the sexes.’ It has its roots in the late eighteenth century, the time of the French Revolution and Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, when Mary Wollstonecraft explained her theories in A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
The abolition of the slave trade raised this issue again, but it was not until the 1870s that suffrage meetings were held in Britain. The first ‘wave’ of the movement began in the early nineteen hundreds and was focused on obtaining the vote. The militant suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst, endured ten prison hunger strikes in eighteen months. In 1913, one of her colleagues, Emily Davidson, threw herself in front of the King’s racehorse and was killed. In 1917, Mrs Pankhurst agitated for the right to work in the First World War and formed the Women’s Party, which advocated ‘equal pay for equal work, equal marriage and divorce and the same rights over children.’ British women over thirty gained the vote in 1918 and the full vote in 1928.

The second wave of the Feminist Movement, from the 1960s to the 1980s, dealt with official and everyday inequalities. Betty Friedan is credited with starting off this part of the movement with her book, The Feminine Mystique, 1963. In referring to society’s attitude to women, she is quoted as calling it a ‘problem that has no name – which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities – is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.’ Germaine Greer added to this debate in 1970 with The Female Eunuch and in 1984 with The Politics of Female Fertility. Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, which ‘delves deep into the history of women’s oppression’ (Wikipedia) and Kate Miller’s Sexual Politics have also added to the development of the movement. Some feminists view the early roots of feminism as ‘ahistoric’, while others see them as ‘a self-conscious and systematic ideology beginning in the late eighteenth century.’ (Wikipedia)
The third wave of the Feminist Movement, from the 1990s onwards, is addressing those issues not previously answered. Its influence was felt in various countries. In Japan, for example, the Kawaii Culture, or culture of cuteness, which was particularly applied to female products, slowed when faced with the third wave of feminism. The Paddington Bear Credit cards were no longer popular and designers realised women were not satisfied with being treated as large children. Amongst other issues, modern feminist activists work towards the autonomy of women in reproductive terms and sexual relationships, freedom from domestic violence, equal treatment in the work place and an end to social domination that causes women to follow stereotypes and transfer them to the next generation. Some of their aims have been partially achieved and others not, according to national culture and other factors.

All design affects the human environment and prevalent attitudes see maleness as normal and femaleness as inhabiting a separate area. Female attempts at innovation within their own sphere, the home, the children, family happiness, are called hobbies. Laura Ashley, for example,  started her huge business printing tea towels. There have been feminist attempts to raise the historical profile of female designers, such as Isabelle Anscobe’s A Woman’s Touch, but generally women designers are seen in the context of important male designers of their era. Attfield regrets this as reducing the ambitions of young women coming into the profession. She suggests that using a feminist methodology would enable the study of design history to reassess female designers. This would help to create an improved methodology, which was based upon people’s needs and would work towards ‘a general movement of reform.’
It is clear feminism has had a great influence on women’s lives, aspirations and the objects they use. Gender has to be accepted. It is the bedrock of a continuing society, but as the feminist movement took form and power, it left a wake of changes in female enfranchisement, work, fertility, ambition, rights, and many of the issues that made them subordinate to men. Men have always designed for women, but who  knows maybe there are some woman behind those man-designer and whole idea is her(?) They dominate the history of design and many feel there should be more feminist analysis and input into the prevailing process. The intention would be to enhance the quality and usefulness of male design and encourage a position that says designs are not gender-orientated but made for people.

For many years, male design has been the leading design process and those influenced by a feminine outlook, both men and women, would like the situation to become more balanced. They believe the Hunter method of design is an expression of the archaic theory that the male is automatically superior. They feel design methodology should move away from this assumption and allow design to be a suitable mixture of the two processes. In John Walker’s book, Design History and the History of Design, Judy Attfield, British designer and historian, discusses how design may be critiqued from a feminine perspective. She says: ‘If men were to take the lessons of feminism seriously, then the predominantly masculine discourse of design history would be transformed.’ Judy Attfield divides feminism into a broad spectrum, containing innate ‘female perspective’ and change seeking feminism. She says design to improve the lives of women will not necessarily improve their status. The designer may intend to make their routine easier, such as advances in kitchen equipment, and female designers may create particularly good designs, but the user will still remain in a ‘subordinate group.’
In assessing the place of a feminist methodology in the study of design history,  Attfield separates the feminist attitude to design from the body of female designers who wish to achieve recognition. These designers are not seeking to restructure society or ban degrading advertising like the Bisou jeans advert. They are part of Cheryl Buckley’s ‘patriarchy’ theory. They are trying to establish themselves in a field, which is predominantly male. They follow existing design methodology, which directs men towards the primary concept of ‘function’ (science, technology, production) and women towards ‘form’ (domestic and decorative).

Design methodology often reinforces perceived gender differences. It is mainly evolved and taught in design schools, which tend to be led by men, encouraging designers to focus on the male need for action and statement. Sometimes even modern designers will not realise that women users may be too small to use their designs. The Dyson vacuum cleaner, for example, is popular but slightly built women might find it too heavy. Its appearance is technical and appeals to men. It has moved from the domestic field into the scientific. The garage, too, contains few tools designed to serve both sexes. The average woman does not weigh enough to use a car jack easily, although we have moved past the times when male and female roles were clearly defined.
Generally, female design is seen as ‘soft’, using pastel colours, curved lines, and is clean and decorative. Examples of soft design may be seen in the design of small cars, building interiors and fabrics. Male design is more power driven with strong lines, sharp corners, dark colours and often uses technological imagery. In many industries and professions such as architecture, sports car manufacturing, engineering and landscaping, feminine design is fighting to have an influence. Male design, ‘Hunter’ design, as some designers call it, is single-minded and seeks an iconic representation of abstract thought and individualism. Female design, the ‘Nester’ approach, features multiple decisions based on experience and skills. This design intends an object to be pleasing, of good quality and functional. The innovative Ikea catalogue contains examples of both Hunter and Nester design and combinations of the two.
High heels are easily accessible and can be a statement of female inferiority. They conform to what the philosopher, Althusser, calls the practice of ‘interpellation’ or ‘hailing’. They send messages to men, hailing them as the ones with the right to judge appearance, putting the female in a submissive position.

Feminists would also see the shoes as meant to accentuate the difference between the self-perceived active, determined male and the submissive, appealing female. They believe these shoes give out semiotic signals that wearing difficult, oppressive footwear is desirable in order to please men, which they would find unnecessary. They would analyse their structure, components and use and find them an expensive stereotype reinforcement, a deplorable waste of skills and not fit for purpose, which is to aid walking. They would see them as a badge of servitude and compare them with other means of restricting females in world culture, e.g. crushing the foot in a high heel, putting pressure on the ball of the foot and toes, has similarities with the ancient practice of foot binding in China.

"The Future of Museums and Libraries: A Discussion Guide"

"The Future of Museums and Libraries: A Discussion Guide." by Dr. Anne-Imelda M. Radice, Director
Institute of Museum and Library Services
http://www.imls.gov/pdf/DiscussionGuide.pdf


pdf format


"Museums and libraries have a unique role as the primary stewards of culture and heritage
and, with this, a profound responsibility for ensuring that future generations have access to
original materials. How best to preserve and provide access to these materials in a way that
serves future generations should be a central question for museums and libraries in the
21 st century."




“We can push for change in intellectual property policies. We should
be the advocates for understanding that access isn’t enough, that
showing something on a screen is a start, but it is not the end of
what we aspire to, the people we serve want to be able to do [something]
with the material we are putting out.”
Joshua M. Greenberg, Director,
Digital Strategy and Scholarship, The New York Public Library


“Perhaps unintentionally, these institutions serve us as barometers of
our own collective humanity. It is here where our beliefs, our fears,
our hopes, and ultimately our laws about how we collect information
and share knowledge are realized publicly. It is the manifestation of
the way we believe in the process of acquiring and sharing knowledge.
To the extent that a populace uses its knowledge resources,
so too can be predicted the society’s well-being over time. One
of the most critical elements in building on lifelong learning and
fostering a nation of learners is the success or failure of engaging
broad swaths of our young people with our institutions in simple but
meaningful ways.”
—
Mark A. Wright, Director of Partnerships,
National Children’s Museum


After reading this article, I began thinking:

There are so many lonely people in the contemporary society, museums and libraries can be the special places to meet people. But probably there are. Already are.

I think there are problems…the first – security and difficulties to get there. Yes-yes! This is a problem! I am myself feeling more security home alone, especially when it is dark outside very early on the autumn-winter time…and cold…and raining…and crime-maniacs…horrible news.

Older people like to go to the Bingo clubs, there are Bingo near my home, I constantly seen buses and coaches have bringing older people to the Bingo, they are smoking outside and very happy and cheerful, they are not alone.

I like Novas CUC and A-Foundation, but it is no way I will go there when it is dark! I am scary!

Any solution?

To use own car to get to the museums and the libraries? Not everybody, especially older people and young people have car and it is again not a cheap and absolutely not “green”. Public buses? No. Not when it is dark.

I can be wrong. I am always over worried and over scared.

In this American article I found not so much new ideas but it makes me think about future of culture and society.

I like idea about beautiful and contemporary…cookies bakery(!) space inside the museum! I know, it is sound crazy! I imagine: traditional English(?) dressed older lady and gentlemen, tables and oven, children and parents…doing cupcakes, cookies and dough for biscuits. It can be edible and not edible cookies. Inedible cookies can be made for art. Dough for not edible cookies consists of flour, water and salt. When the dough dries out it can paint.

I have a lot of crazy ideas about the activities for museum and galleries!

I love to do something useful for society.

"Perhaps the greatest question for museums and libraries today is what they will need to do
to remain meaningful institutions in the future. The meeting participants spoke of sustainability
beyond economic concerns, describing how true sustainability for museums and libraries
lies in being relevant to the communities in which they reside. Museums and libraries will
be relevant as long as their work is in service to the greater needs of society. As stewards
of cultural heritage, as content and context providers of information, as central places for
people to come together to learn and share with one another, it is here that museums and
libraries will shape their future. The questions for these institutions to continually ask themselves
are what makes us unique, what makes us matter, and who cares about what we do?
These questions force us to consider what the needs of our communities are and how we can
continue to meet them and be sustainable by being relevant to the world around us."

National Gallery and Port Sunlight

I was ecstatic and delighted! Yes, it's amazing people!  Miss E G Holt, Lord Sainsbury, Lever Brothers, Sir Walker and other sponsors of British Culture.

At least in comparison to ... other very rich people from the other countries. I do not want to talk about them. And don't want to name the countries. Other...

from wiki:

The most important addition to the building in recent years has been the Sainsbury Wing, designed by the postmodernist architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown to house the collection of Renaissance paintings, and built in 1991. The building occupies the "Hampton's site" to the west of the main building, where a department store of the same name had stood until its destruction in the Blitz. The Gallery had long sought expansion into this space and in 1982 a competition was held to find a suitable architect; the shortlist included a radical high-tech proposal by Richard Rogers, among others. The design that won the most votes was by the firm Ahrends, Burton and Koralek, who then modified their proposal to include a tower, similar to that of the Rogers scheme. The proposal was dropped after the Prince of Wales compared the design to a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend",^[50] The term "monstrous carbuncle", for a modern building that clashes with its surroundings, has since become commonplace.

One of the conditions of the 1982 competition was that the new wing had to include commercial offices as well as public gallery space. However, in 1985 it became possible to devote the extension entirely to the Gallery's uses, due to a donation of almost £50 million from Lord Sainsbury and his brothers Simon and Sir Tim Sainsbury. A closed competition was held, and the schemes produced were noticeably more restrained than in the earlier competition.

 Port Sunlight

It was built by William Hesketh Lever (later Lord Leverhulme) starting in 1888 for the employees of Lever Brothers soap factory (now part of Unilever). The name is derived from Lever's most popular brand of cleaning agent, Sunlight.
I wonder are British people know about those such a great British men?

The Walker Art Gallery.
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group, and is promoted as "the National Gallery of the North" because it is not a local or regional gallery but is part of the national museums and galleries administered directly from central government funds.
Designed by local architects Cornelius Sherlock and H.H. Vale, the Walker Art Gallery was opened on 6 September 1877 by the 15th Earl of Derby. It is named after its founding benefactor, Sir Andrew Barclay Walker (1824-1893), a former mayor of Liverpool and wealthy brewer born in Ayrshire who expanded the family business to England and moved to live in Gateacre.
In 1893 the Liverpool Royal Institution placed its collection on long-term loan to the gallery and in 1948 presented William Roscoe's collection and other works. This occurred during post-war reconstruction when the gallery was closed, re-opening in 1951. During the Second World War the gallery was taken over by the Ministry of Food and the collection was dispersed for safety.
Extensions to the gallery were opened in 1884 and 1933 (following a two-year closure) when the gallery re-opened with an exhibition including Picasso and Gauguin. In 2002 the gallery re-opened following a major refurbishment.
In 1986, the gallery achieved national status, as part of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside.

The gallery, the gift to the city of Sir Walker during his mayoralty (1873), and designed by Cornelius Sherlock and H.H Vale, was opened in 1877 and enlarged by the addition of nine rooms in 1882. A further large extension was made in 1933. The Gallery is in Corinthian style, the portico consisting of a broad flight of steps. On either side are large marble statues of Raphael and Michelangelo. His portico is crowned by a figure representing the Arts. The most important part of the collection consists of the Roscoe Collection of Italian and other early masters and art unrivalled collection of works by English painters. Among the latter are examples by eighteenth and early nineteenth century masters, such as Reynolds, Gainsborough (“Viscountess Folkestone”), Romney (“Mrs Sargent”), Raeburn (“Ann Stirling” and “A Girl sketching”) Turner (“Rosenau” and the “Wreck Buoy”), Richard Wilson (“Snowdon”) and Thomas Girtin: a good selection of the Liverpool school of painting, including Richard Wright (1733-1775), Richard Caddick (about 1750-1823), and William Huggins (1820-1884), a representation of the Pre-Raphaelite group Rossetti (“Dante’s Dream”), Millais (“Lorenzo and Isabella”) and Holman Hunt (“The Triumph of the Innocents”), and among modern British artists, examples by Orpen, Augustus John, Wilson Steer, W.R Sickert, Harold Gilman and Paul Nash.

In 1933 Lord Wavertree bequeathed to the gallery £20,000 and a collection of sporting pictures and more recently these have been enhanced by the acquisition of the Walter Stone collection of British sporting pictures with which it is intended to make the basis of a gallery devoted to this subject. Another recent bequest was that of Miss E G Holt, who left the city her important collection, containing valuable examples of early English artists, and also her house at Mossley Hill, Sudley House, which has been converted into a branch Art Gallery, Museum and Library.