Research on Medieval Islamic tilings

A research conducted in the U.S. revealed that geometric patterns of the medieval Islamic art reflected quasicrystalline geometry.

On the one hand, the conventional argument was that rulers and compasses were utilized for simple zigzags and geometric star-and-polygones. On the other hand, aperiodic patterns forming diffraction may reflect the artisans' intuitive perception of a complex geometry, the study underlines. Use of symmetrical polygones leads to an unlimited extension of the pattern.

The report of Peter J. Lu from Harvard University, and of Paul J. Steinhardt from Princeton University is published in the February 23, 2007 issue of the Science Magazine.

Related link.

Can I . . . ?

"Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by force," said Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech in 1972, "This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory."

Freedom of expression and its inextricable foe - censorship have been controversial for centuries. Considering the present jigsaw puzzle, Boyd Tonklin talks about examples of the moral, religious, and military censorships in his article published in The Independent newspaper.

Read the article.

Photography and the Self

In contemporary visual culture, portrait that epitomizes a wide range of identities – personal, sexual, national, ethnic, or religious, has gained a different dimension outside the commercial realm. It has become a powerful and controversial means of communication between the artist and the viewer who is invited to interpret the portrait-photograph at various levels.

From this perspective, “Photography and the Self: The Legacy of F. Holland Day” at Whitney Museum of American Art calls attention to the self-portraiture with a collection whose center-artifact is “The Seven Words” (1898) by Day. The exhibition picks up Day’s performative portraiture, and juxtaposes contemporary artists with a focus on the 1960s onward.

“[Christ] is just like a piece of art. . . the beautiful white Christ,” Oscar Wilde asserted. Deeply influenced by Wilde, F. Holland Day (1864-1933) created a series of depiction of Christ on the cross. Each of Day’s seven platinum prints at Whitney mezzanine, positions itself as a reference to Christ’s seven statements in the time between his crucifixion and his death. For his project, Day grew his hair and beard, and lost weight to capture the picturesqueness. At this point, other photographers/artists explore the performed portraiture from their point of view.

Curated by Carrie Springer, the exhibition puts together the portraits in which artists’ own bodies are used as the object/raw material. Although the size of the show remains small due to the limitation to the Whitney’s collection, the photographs introduce an elaborate investigation of the theatrical depiction of the artist-centric photographs.

Among the artists, Cindy Sherman draws attention with “Untitled” (2004) in which she depicts a nonchalant clown. Considered as a touchstone for the photographic portraiture, Sherman appears again with her play with the notion of identity and of the masquerade we live in.

Creating an antithesis of the controlled portraits, Adrian Piper articulates himself through a series of fourteen photographs that gradually blacken. In the “Food for the Spirit” (1971), Piper who faces the camera and hence the viewer, becomes almost invisible because of the darkness. The project opens up a wide range of connotations from the critique of racism to the confirmation of the self.

One of the disguised artists, Lyle Ashton Harris chooses the famous jazz vocal Billie Holiday as the centre of his self-portrait – “Billie #21” (2002). The artist’s iconographic photograph positions the African-American subject as a self-reflecting and powerful figure who stands up for life.

Moreover, Hannah Wilke (1940-1993) examines gender inequality and sexism in “S.O.S. Stratification Object Series” (1974) with a delicate discourse. The artist questions the labels used for women, and the perception of female body in the society. Wilke’s portrait arises as a part of her eight-year project that started as a performance in which the artist collected the chewing gums from her audience, molded them into vulva-shaped forms, and attached to her skin.

Besides the ones mentioned above, the exhibition includes the photographs of Chris Burden, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Charles Ray, Lucas Samaras, Carrie Mae Weems, and Francesca Woodman.

In sum, there is an important point to be underlined: Day’s intention for “The Seven Words” radically differs from the other works: it is argued that the theatrical imposture in Day’s project is related to his reverence and devotion for his subject matter, whereas his contemporaries use reactionary stances against specific discourses. However, this does not change the fact that fascinating show –“Photography and the Self: The Legacy of F. Holland Day” successfully undertakes the question of how a performative portrait functions.

On view through March 4, 2007.
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street

[Published in Free Press Binghamton, March 1, 2007]

Abu Dhabi hosts Gehry, Hadid, Nouvel and Ando

Celebrity architects Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, and Tadao Ando revealed their Abu Dhabi projects for “an audacious multi-billion dollar cultural district whose like has never been seen in the Arab world,” as New York Times wrote.

The new Cultural District of Saadiyat Island situated in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates will be hosting three museums, a biennial exhibition space, art schools, and an art college. The four venues in the cultural district are planned by famous names: Guggenheim Abu Dhabi branch by Frank Gehry, Performing Arts Center by Zaha Hadid, Louvre Abu Dhabi branch by Jean Nouvel, and Maritime Museum by Tadao Ando. Scheduled for completion by the year of 2012, the 271-hectare (670-acre) complex will include luxurious hotels, leisure facilities and golf courses as well.

Saadiyat Island (Island of Happiness) will redefine its name and its context where the high arts will find a novel space to be spread and appreciated.

Ecoboulevard from Ecosistema Urbano

Opposing to the passivity of the classical architecture, Ecosistema Urbano raises a new voice for urban space operations. Following the principle of optimization of energy resources and budgetary limits, Ecosistema Urbano triggers a new project, EcoBoulevard in Vallecas, Spain.

EcoBoulevard aims to recover uncontrolled urban planning, and creates a portable recycling system. The project consists of three "air trees" of 20 meters in diametre. The first tree can be defined as a temple of photosynthesis: the column that is covered with vegetation inside functions with the energy it creates itself thanks to the photovoltaic system. The second tree will be a similar structure, yet the third "air tree" will provide a public space where the audience will have the opportunity to sit and watch the videos projected on the huge screens inside the column.

Easy to dismantle, "air trees" present a light structure that serves as an urban recycling system as well as a regeneration of social public space.

Ecosistema Urbano website: http://www.ecosistemaurbano.com/

"Prêt à Porter" Bodies

Nicole Tran Ba Vang is a Paris-based artist who explores one of the most questioned concepts in contemporary art - the body. Her photographs examine the cult of perfection and the value of clothing. Investigating the fashion, its language, and aesthetics, Nicole Tran Ba Vang does not hesitate to critique the absurdity of trends with humor.

The artist uses the body as a space of transformation of the self and of the identity. In her works, the clothes are in an ambiguous play with the body; they transform into nudity, and they confuse the viewer. Each series of photographs paves the way for diverse reflexions on the notions of desire and bodily modifications including bronzing, pilosity, buttocks, and breasts.

Will the obsession of appearance lead to the "prêt à porter" bodies?

Artist's Website: http://www.tranbavang.com/

Look Up. Look Up.

Militia movement in the U.S., popular support for the National Front in France, rise of Neo-Nazism in Germany, and the steady increase of racism in Norway - the alleged role-model for social democracy exemplify the frigthening social trends. As the economy goes sour, we keep asking the despairing question: what does the future bring - cosmopolitanism or fascism?

In this context, Jordan Wolfson's documentation video exhibited in the Whitney Biennial of 2006 transforms the final speech of Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" (1940) into the sign language. Wolfson's silent movie introduces a contemporary reading of the fascist governments of 1920s and 1930s. The work invites the viewer to question the validity of the speech on freedom and humanity for today.

The title of the work is composed of the entire final speech of the "Great Dictator": "I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor—that’s not my business—I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls—has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people will return to the people, and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish.… Soldiers—don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you—who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate—only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers—don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty. In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written “the kingdom of God is within man”—not one man, nor a group of men—but in all men—in you, the people. You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power—let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers—in the name of democracy, let us all unite! Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting—the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality. The soul of man has been given wings—and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow—into the light of hope—into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up."
“The Great Dictator” (1940), 2005

Haluk Akakçe's new work in Deitch Projects

"Sky is the Limit," Haluk Akakçe's (b. 1970, Ankara) new work is exhibited in Deitch Projects only for two weeks. Deitch Projects hosts Akakçe's animated artwork exhibited in Las Vegas's Viva Vision that showed video art on the largest video screen of the world - 90x1500 feet, in November 2006. The gallery also provides the documentation of the Las Vegas project and essays on the artist. Fogle, a curator and art critic, interprets Akakçe's videos as the mediums that "take us through the looking glass into a world where the future is often yesterday and flatness manifests a new kind of depth.”

Deitch Projects 18 Wooster Street, New York
Through February 24, 2007.

Dangerous Beauty

As members of the mobility/globalism generation, we intuitionally choose to `become beautiful` to communicate with others. In our struggle against the monotony that is antagonistic to human nature, fashion leads the changes of our behaviors, habits, attire, make-up, and body. However, contemporary trends that set up the forms of thought, styles, changes and acceptances, create idealized role models.

Curated by Manon Slome, Dangerous Beauty, a selection of various medias – including painting, photography, sculpture, video and installation, explores the ideals of beauty, mass consumerism, and the impact of the glossy media. The group exhibition reveals the anxiety of the present beauty-oriented society.

The viewer has the chance to grasp the ambiance of the exhibition through Jacob Dahlgren's installation "Heaven is a Place on Earth" (2006) at the entrance. In the context of the exhibit, standardization and minimalism are to be mocked by Dahlgren's interactive piece.

Among the works in the exhibition, Nicola Constantino's "Savon de Corps" (2005) plays with the notions of aesthetics and ethics. Having produced soaps from her own body fat – removed through liposuction, Constantino explores the antithesis of beauty and attractiveness of female body through her anthropomorphic soaps. Trapped between disgust and admiration, the viewer hesitates to touch the exhibited soap.

E.V. Day installs two fighting cat skeletons floating in a steel cage. Her new work – "Cat Fight" (2006) reminds the "Bride Fight" (2006) which displays two quarrelling wedding gowns that are suspended in space. Carefully engineered pieces of the artist invite the viewer to make amusing readings rather than to interpret a normative discourse.

Standing against the idea of models, Orlan's photographic documentation of her own plastic surgery, "Omnipresence" (1993) shows the artist's recovery period of 40 days.

Fiction of desirability raises the questions of perfection, fashion industry, bodily manipulation, anorexia, aging phobia and violence related to beauty. In this context, Dangerous Beauty captures the moments when beauty myth meets the harsh realities.

Chelsea Art Museum, 556 West 2nd St. at 11th Avenue, through April 21.

Open Letter from Joost Lagendijk

Open letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and opposition leader Deniz Baykal



Brussels, February 1 2007



Dear Mr Erdoğan and Mr Baykal,



Tomorrow it will be two weeks since Hrant Dink was killed. Last week at his funeral more than 100,000 people made it clear they want to live in a country where writers and journalists do not have to fear for their lives if they express controversial opinions or touch on sensitive issues. Now the time has come for you to act.



After being present at the funeral I stayed for a couple of days in Istanbul: talking to people, trying to understand what the mood in the country was. Some were pessimistic, believing that there was little reason to hope for change, as similar tragedies have occurred in the past. Others were optimistic and hoped that the developments in Turkey over the last couple of years would make it possible this time to make a break with the past.



All of them made a link, in one way or another, between the murder of Hrant Dink and the climate of rising intolerance and aggressive nationalism that has been growing in Turkey over the past two years. Article 301 of the new Penal Code is a symbol, which represents this climate.



In your reaction to the many calls from the Turkish media to abolish or fundamentally change article 301 you have both used similar arguments. It is true that the Penal Codes of various EU member states contain articles penalising the denigration or insult of the state organs and the administration. The German and Austrian texts are among the most explicit. Insult of or contempt for the State is punishable by imprisonment of up to three years. In my own country, the Netherlands, insulting the authorities or a public body or institution can lead to imprisonment. So why is article 301 different?



There are two points. First there is the word 'Turkishness' (Türklüğü) in the first paragraph of article 301. This is an expression which you will not find in any European Penal Code: denigrating 'Germanness' or 'Austrianness' is not forbidden. In these countries, the issue at stake is insult of the state. It is the word Turkishness that led to the proliferation of prosecutions against journalists and writers in Turkey. It was for insulting Turkishness that Hrant Dink was convicted. The word is vague, open to various interpretations and lacks legal certainty for the Turkish citizens: what can they say, what not?



The second point concerns the reasoning behind the article. In the Netherlands and in other European states, the reason is pragmatic: it serves the orderly functioning of the public service. Due respect for the administration is important in a democratic society. It serves the general interest. Convictions on the basis of these articles in member states of the European Union concern insults of police officers on duty, threats against civil servants or against members of the government. The added value of these articles for society seems obvious, and they are consistent with the European Convention on Human Rights article on freedom of expression.



None of the high profile cases against writers and journalists brought before Turkish courts under article 301 correspond to this type of reasoning. The articles written and opinions expressed did not constitute a threat to the general interest. Prosecution of the authors was therefore not necessary in a democratic society.



You have always said: let us wait and see how the article is interpreted, let us see what the judges make of it. We cannot wait any longer. Hrant Dink was convicted for insulting Turkishness and his appeal was rejected. This conviction made him a target for his murderer. How much more proof do you need? Article 301 in its present form and with the present interpretation by the judiciary, leads to life threatening situations.



Assuming that is was not the intention of the Turkish government or the Turkish parliament to create such situations, there is only one solution. Apparently the legislators have not been clear enough. Therefore, the article needs to be withdrawn. If it is deemed that protection of the state against insult is necessary for the functioning of the Turkish democracy, an article should be adopted that no one can misinterpret or exploit for criminal purposes.



I sincerely hope both of you have the courage to confront those people in Turkey that want to break with the reforms that have brought your country closer to Europe. With so many more challenges ahead, Turkey needs political leaders that take the country forward not backward; leaders that realise that Turkey’s long term interests are not served by giving in to extreme and violent nationalism; leaders that are willing to lead the country in the direction of more democracy, tolerance and respect for divergent views.



Yours sincerely,



Joost Lagendijk MEP

La Muse

Here are Alfred de Musset's verses; they are inspiring just as Terpsichore would be.

Poète, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser;
La fleur de l'églantier sent ses bourgeons éclore.
Le printemps naît ce soir; les vents vont s'embraser,
- Et la bergeronnette, en attendant l'aurore,
Aux premiers buissons verts commence à se poser.
Poète, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser.

(Alfred de Musset, La Nuit de Mai)

What is art?

"Art is not entertainment; art is not some novel element in a 'creative' or 'knowledge' economy whose prime function is to produce placid, contented, brand-conscious consumers... Art streches and challenges us with the difficulty of what it says and how it says it."

-Chris Townsend, New Art From London (UK: Thames & Hudson, 2006)