Seven Days In the Art World - Sarah Thornton

What an interesting book!

Being somewhat obsessed by art, art museums, the creative process, and art history, I found this book really eye-opening. My reading made me aware of just how unaware I am about the actual goings on within the world of the art. Everyone has a different angle, it seems. When you walk into an art museum and see the work in the different galleries, what's there is a culmination of a series of deliberate wranglings by artist, agent, gallery owner, collector, museum trustee, curator, and yes, passive observer. All are wrapped up in this symbiotic relationship that serves to deliver 'ART' to the world. The decisions that every one of those players make help to set taste and aesthetic standards that reverberate around the world, hither and yon in an ever-changing see-saw of art shows, media events, gallery openings, museum exhibits, art auctions, fantastic thefts, news stories, social reactions, and new artistic avenues. Art is always in flux, always moving toward the next big thing, always reacting to society's thrum, always rubbing up against morals and politics and leaving paint stains or make-up smears or stone dust or film clippings for people to brush off. Look at. Laud . Ignore. Buy. Sell. Rant on. Art is all about action and reaction.

Sarah Thornton has a pretty good gig. She got to explore the different facets of the art world in order to give us a full face view of its players. Her take is like reading a cultural study in an anthropology class ... different social roles within a sub-culture get a section for exploration and discussion. When the book is considered as a whole, one gets a thought-provoking Gestalt to ponder.

If you are intrigued by the artist's world, check this book out. Highly readable, unintimidating, pretty complete in its scope, and NOT at all dry and didactic.

Poetry Jam - Tales of the Hunt

Tales of the Hunt

Scrape the stone and make the dust

Gather up the deep red rust

Mix it with the bison blood

Make a paste that feels like mud

Gather round a blazing fire

Smoky meat drips on its pyre

Feast and then turn to the wall

Draw the hunt, tell to all

The rust of ages on those rocks

Will stay until a boy unlocks

A crumbling stone, an echo deep

A world released from a long sleep

Back when I was still teaching reading and social studies and 'all that stuff ' to youngsters, I found a book called First Painter by Kathryn Lasky.  The class was doing a bit of work on oral history and how it might have progressed from telling tales to written stories so I used the book to help the kids understand how the transition might have begun. 

I found some old pieces of brick and took them, some burnt wood coals, and my stone mortar and pestles to school and read the story with the children. I gave the mortar and pestles to the children when it was circle time and every time I paused in reading the story, the children carefully passed the mortar and pestles on to the next child so that everyone got a chance to grind the brick to ochre dust and the wood coals to black ash. Then, we mixed the black and red dusts with egg whites and let things dry up a bit to make paint paste.  A friend donated old slate roof tiles and each kid got a chance to make their own stone painting ... the kids were filled with awe at what they could create with the basics from the Earth. 

The minute I opened this week's Poetry Jam challenge, I knew I would write in some fashion about that magical day in the classroom. 

The Lost City of Z - David Grann

This book was a stretch for me, as it covered multiple ventures into Amazonia by the British surveyor, cartographer, explorer, and legendary adventurer Lt. Colonel Percy H. Fawcett, in search of a lost center of ancient civilization. The book jumps back and forth between modern explorations of the Amazon River and some of it tributaries, the history of the Spanish explorers of the 1500's and their high jinks in the conquer and massacre of the native populations of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, the more modern rape of the rainforests by the rubber barons, and finally the various political endeavors to become familiar with and tame the indigenous peoples of subtropical Brazil. All these interesting back stories serve to make a tapestry on which the various explorations of Fawcett and his multiple teams of adventurers traipse. Their time of exploration ranged from 1907 until 1925. Since then, they have piqued the interest of numerous other adventurers who have followed them and either become sick and disappointed or have met the same fate as the Fawcett expedition - 'disappeared'.

Who can resist a story of adventure, exciting tanglings with snakes and insects, extreme climate challenges, hostile and mysterious natives, infighting and suspicion between different explorers, and the mystery of uncharted regions deep in the jungles of Amazonia ? I couldn't, but the book was too detailed for me. After reading five or six chapters, I started to bog down, so I got the unabridged audio version of the book at the local library. That was a much better experience.  Listening to the narrator reading quickly and with great expression helped me stay interested in the story of Fawcett's obsessive search for a mysterious lost civilization in the center of the South American jungle and a modern day reporter's research into his mysterious disappearance.

David Grann became involved with the story when he was investigating an Arthur Conan Doyle novel called 'The Lost World'. He came across the name of Percy Harrison Fawcett and became intrigued by this man, considered the last of the great territorial cartographers and explorers and Doyle's inspiration for his novel.   In his investigation of the Royal Geographic Society and Fawcett's biography, he became even more intrigued with Fawcett's drive to become the man to conquer the South American jungle and the unknown depths of the Amazon River. It's an amazing story and a continuing mystery ... is there a Lost City of Z ? Grann's investigation became somewhat of an obsession as he researched Fawcett's private papers, records of the exploration voyages into South America, and made his own Amazon exploration of Fawcett's last expedition - the one on which he was lost with his son and another family friend.

This is an intriguing story that heralds back to Conrad's novel The Heart of Darkness . Stranger than fiction, though, it's a true story of the British will to expand the empire and map the world and a man that tested his physical and psychological limits as he searched one of the last great uncharted frontiers of the world. Amazing stuff ...