kul cha
The Soul of Fine Art: Delve into: art, passion, writing, dharma, character, consciousness, culture, intuition, evolution, and the spirit we call soul.
eden's weblog
Saturday Aug 23, 2003
Wilde at Heart
In his 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” Oscar Wilde wrote:
Now, I have said that the community by means of organization of machinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made by the individual. This is not merely necessary, but it is the only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other.
An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him.
Thursday Aug 21, 2003
Is Leo Lion?
Ars gratia artis (Latin for art for art’s sake) that banners Leo, the MGM Lion, was adopted in the 1930s as the motto of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios; credited to songwriter/publicist Howard Dietz. If you mention that your movie script is art to a major studio in Hollywood, you will be shortly shown the exit—and don’t slam the door on your way out.
“Art for art’s sake” became an oft-repeated slogan. The French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792-1867) said in a lecture at the Sorbonne in 1818, “We must have religion for religion’s sake, morality for morality’s sake, as with art for art’s sake ... the beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself.”
—The Columbia World of Quotations
Sunday Aug 10, 2003
Civilization’s Noble Savage
As a brilliant, undisciplined, and unconventional thinker, the 18th Century French deistic philosopher and author Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) spent most of his life being driven by controversy—back and forth between Paris and his native Geneva. Orphaned at an early age, he left home at sixteen, working as a tutor and musician before undertaking a literary career while in his forties. Although not an immediate success (his first opera failed), the time for his ideas was ripe as unrest and change were stirring in the air of aristocratic arrogance and injustice. The French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789.
Rousseau sired but refused to support several illegitimate children and frequently initiated bitter quarrels with even the most supportive of his colleagues. His autobiographical Les Confessions (1783) offer a thorough (contagious if somewhat self-serving) account of his turbulent life.
Thursday Jul 03, 2003
Actors, not Stars
Inspired by the popular video game franchise, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) is a completely computer-generated film unlike any other. Final Fantasy is a complex science fiction drama with human-looking digital actors who, at first take, look astonishingly real.
Aki, the digitized female lead, is nearly impossible to tell apart from a live actress.
Thursday Jun 12, 2003
Pilgrim, Know Thy Self
Every day I receive spammer emails offering to sell me software that promises to let me find out nearly anything about anyone. Who cares?
Maybe this is an invasion of privacy issue, or not—but it smacks of totalitarian nonsense for people with too much time on their hands.
It would be much better to find out everything about your self—that is, if you’ve got the courage to take on such a journey. Better to live in a society where integrity is not only its own reward, but it pays to develop this quality.
As the sages have taught us: a wise man knows others; a master knows himself.
