Arts Review 05 March, 2016

Don’t Turn Away From the Art of Life

In a letter written in 1871, the Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud uttered a phrase that announces the modern age: “Je’ est un autre” (“’I’ is someone else”). Some 69 years later I entered the world as an identical twin, and Rmbaud’s claim has an uncanny truth for me, since I grew up being one of a pair. Even though our friends and family could easily tell us apart, most people could not, and I began life with a blurrier, more fluid sense of my contours than most other folks.

My brother and I live in different cities, but I have never lost my conviction that one’s outward form – the shape of people, but also of surfaces and things – may not be what it seems.

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Le Guin Steers Her Craft Into a New Century

14 February, 2016

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#Arts Review, #Radio Stories

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Ursula Le Guin has brought mainstream recognition to science fiction in a successful career that has endured for sixty years, with books that include The Left Hand of Darkness, Lavinia, and the Earthsea series for young readers.

She says she doesn't believe in a lot of do's and don'ts in writing. But she does run writing workshops in which serious writers might test what works well, and what doesn't quite do the job. Back in the '90s, Le Guin wrote a manual for aspiring writers called Steering the Craft. And she's just released a new edition of the book, updated for the 21st century.

Le Guin tells NPR's Scott Simon that sound is often forgotten in a piece of writing. "Writing is a kind of way of speaking, and I hear it," she says. "And I think a lot of readers hear it too. Even if they hear it in silence. And so the sounds of the language, and the rhythm and the cadence of the sentences are very powerful."

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Arts Review 14 February, 2016

Arab Art Redefined

#Arts Review, #Mideast Blog

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Sultan Sooud Al‑Qassemi knows media.

When the Arab Spring started sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa, Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi became a go-to source for live updates on social media. An occasional columnist with 375,000 followers on Twitter, he is now a public figure and activist. Art has become his big agenda. Eventually, he explains, his interest in breaking news had died down and he shifted his attention to collecting and promoting modern and contemporary art from the Arab world. He sees it as a continuation of the ideals of the Arab Spring, he says, because the art tends to be political — and it defies traditional definitions set by the West. Qassemi actively promotes the Barjeel Art Foundation, which he founded in 2010. It contains more than 1,000 works of art that he has collected. He has buying power because he also happens to be a member of one of the ruling families of the United Arab Emirates — though he’d rather talk about art than his family history. He stopped by NPR’s New York City bureau to do that.

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