Miss reading the post this video is about? Read it before you watch the video if you like—it’s right here 👉 “The one about dangerous pencils”.
If you’d rather I read it to you, I am happy to do so.👇 Reading commences as soon as you hit play. Enjoy!
Notes from the Captain
Ahoy, my sinewy, wiry, and extremely capable crew. Saluting now. Very crisp and steady. My eyes are soft. We are connecting. I love you.
The video is long (watch it tonight!). The post is long. (Read over lunch.)
Because if that, I shan’t ramble to much here.
A little news: I submitted a poem to a magazine. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that. I know the chances of publication are slim, but I just want to point out that this moment is a huge step for me. For once, I was happy enough with a poem I wrote and thought it was good enough to share with Poetry Magazine.
Weirdly, this act has made me want to write more poetry—a tangentially related theme of today’s video. Plato posits that poets and poetry is dangerous because it presents an altered view of reality. Agree? Disagree? Watch the video and hear me question everything.
Push off the dock. Let’s sail!
🫡
Thangs from this episode…
👩✈️ Dangerous Art
A short and incomplete list of things discussing troublesome, pesky art.
Art that has hurt people, physically.
From Christo’s umbrellas, to the dust from an Ai Weiwei piece, to the Blue Mustang in Denver (which unfortunately killed the artist), this is a list of art that has hurt people.
“Everything You Ever Wanted to Know Aoubt Blucifer, The Demon Horse of DIA” - CPR.org
“Bakersfield Remembers Christo’s Umbrellas 25 Years Later” - kvpr
“Nuclear Waste Art and Flying Bouncy Castles: The 8 Most Dangerous Artworks” - Art Space.
“Attention, Dangerous Art! How Art Can Hurt You” - Daily Art Magazine
“A giant crack in the Tate Modern” - Public Delivery
“Tate Modern rethinks Sunflower Seeds show after health fears” - The Guardian
Again, at the Tate
“The Unilever Series: Carsten Höller: Test site”
I love art vids for kids. 👇
Controversial Art incoming!👇
“Should we censor art?” - Aeon
Some art is very much of its time. Should we take down sexist paintings or racist sculptures?
10 Controversial Artworks That Shook The Art World
Protest art
“The 25 Most Influential Works of American Protest Since World War II” - NYT, 2020
“History’s Most Powerful Protest Art” - Magenta
“A brief history of protest art” - The Guardian
“Keith Haring: The Blueprint of Social Activism” - My Art Broker
“An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection”
“Uncovering America: Activism and Protest” - National Gallery of Art
Banksy’s Immigrant Boat at IDLES set in Glastonbury👇
I could go on forever. I’m literally only dealing with ART art in the links above. Book banning. Censored songs. Movie ratings. Woof. Let’s not get into it.
Stop looking at dangerous art—go make your own.
👩✈️ Was Plato a Karen?
“Is Poetry Dangerous? Plato’s Philosophy of Art” - The Collector
Look, as I said in this week’s video, Plato’s theory is pretty dense and I could do a whole post on my misunderstanding of what he says. Seriously, I talked myself ‘round and ‘round in circles. But… I dunno, go read this if you wanna get into it. ART AS IMITATION IN PLATO’S PHILOSOPHY: A CRITICAL APPRAISAL, by Amadi, Cornelius Chukwudi, PhD, Department of Philosophy, Rivers State University
This study examines Plato’s theory of art. In the Republic, Plato argues that all arts and in particular epic poetry is imitation of reality and the artist (poets) imitators of reality. Being mimesis, art is at two removed from True Reality (the transcendent world of the eternal Forms), or in other words, art is just a copy of a copy, and therefore it is necessarily untrue and cannot but have a bad moral effect on the public. It is on the basis of the above that Plato dismisses art and artists as useless.
👩✈️ Blackwing Pencils
👩✈️ Blue poles
I mention it briefly in the video. One of the biggest art news stories of my youth in Australia (aside from when the Weeping Woman got stolen, which I talked about here), was the uproar about how much the National Gallery of Australia paid for it.
“The last monumental abstract painting by American artist Jackson Pollock, 'Blue poles' 1952 became part of Australia’s emerging national art collection in 1973 amid much controversy. Painted four years before the artist’s death in 1956, the purchase price of US$2 million (then equivalent to A$1.3 million) set a new record for Pollock and was, at the time, the most expensive American painting ever sold.”
👩✈️ What is propaganda?
Memes teach you the wrong things. AI generated images have become a new form of propaganda. We live in the worst timeline. “Is propaganda art?” I pose this question in the video and the piece. What do you think. Hit the comments!
Anyway, here are a couple of videos on propaganda. It’s a huge subject. Too huge for this newsletter length and my brain capacity at the moment. Just being honest.
It’s propaganda, so politics talk in this one👇. TRIGGER WARNING if you’re feeling a bit… over it right now. Here’s a thought - if you’ve got 20 minutes to watch that vid below, I’d say HEY WATCH MY VIDEO FIRST, IT’S 20 MINUTES TOO! You’ll enjoy it more, though probably learn less.
👩✈️ JICYMI
I put this in the original post, but here is the Toni Morrison essay in case you missed it. “No place for self pity, no room for fear” which was published in The Nation (2015) at the time.
And let’s close this out with Laurie.
Thanks for listening/watching and sharing this week. If you want to comment on any of the concepts in last week’s post—or just in general—feel free to leave a comment for the Captain (it me.)
I remain, as always, your faithful Noodle of the Sea. Here is a photo from dawn patrol two days ago. Not too shabby.
Your Captain, Janeen 🫡
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple
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