Something/Someone Old

I'm pretty sure I've done this one before, but I just found out something new about it. (So does that make this something old or something new? Well, it happened in around 2550 B.C., so I guess that makes it old.)

The Great Pyramid of Giza is one of the Seven Wonders of the World and notable for being the only one still standing (some, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, might not actually have existed--we don't know.) It's an amazing feat of engineering, built over the course of 27 years back in the 26th century B.C.

Wikipedia says this:

Initially standing at 146.5 metres (481 feet), the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for more than 3,800 years. Throughout history the majority of the smooth white limestone casing was removed, which lowered the pyramid's height to the present 138.5 metres (454.4 ft).

454 ft still sounds pretty tall to me. Skyscrapers are much taller, of course, but they lack grandeur. It's strange how clearly architecture conveys the motivations that went into its construction. I'm sure that part of my sense that the pyramids are grand and mysterious while skyscrapers are mundane and boring has to do with being culturally prepared to think that--but there's also the undeniable fact that skyscrapers get replicated quickly and easily, with modern technology helping along, so the accomplishment of building them is far less impressive. And they are essentially big rectangular boxes with many many small boxes inside them, designed primarily to store the greatest number of people possible in an orderly fashion. Like a warehouse of human resources. One might argue that that's still better than constructing a giant tomb for an aristocrat, but somehow, singing the praises of some Great Man (tm) still produces a better and cooler piece of architecture than storing human beings in a series of nested boxes so that you can staff and run corporations and make lots of money.

Anyway, here's the fascinating fact I just discovered:

Slaves did not build the Great Pyramid. This is one of those facts that everybody believes without even thinking about it--like Richard III being a terrible murdering psychopath. I never even asked myself *how* I knew this. Turns out, we know it because a Greek historian told us:

The classical historian Herodotus believed that the Great Pyramid had been built by 100,000 slaves. His image of men, women and children desperately toiling in the harshest of conditions has proved remarkably popular with modern film producers. It is, however, wrong.

Turns out that the people who built the Great Pyramid had better benefits than some of us do:

Archaeological evidence indicates that the Great Pyramid was in fact built by a workforce of 5,000 permanent, salaried employees and up to 20,000 temporary workers. These workers were free men, summoned under the corvée system of national service to put in a three- or four-month shift on the building site before returning home. They were housed in a temporary camp near the pyramid, where they received payment in the form of food, drink, medical attention and, for those who died on duty, burial in the nearby cemetery.

https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-egypt/facts-ancient-egypt-mu...

Shit, they even got healthcare. And their families didn't have to pay for their funerals (although I'm sure burial was a much cheaper business back then--always assuming you weren't a Pharoah.)

Something New

I have old-fashioned, lowbrow artistic taste. I still think Michelangelo's David is pretty cool. Hell, I actually love Maxfield Parrish--and he was a representational commercial artist who, an art history acquaintance of mine once said, comes perilously close to painting unicorn pictures. It's hard to get me much farther forward in the development of art than surrealism (which I often love, by the way.)

So much modernist, minimalist, and abstract art leaves me cold--as does a lot of contemporary art generally, which seems to spend a lot of its time being edgy. There's nothing wrong with being edgy, but if you're going to "subvert expectations" it's usually a good idea to have a pressing reason why you should. In my opinion, that makes more compelling art, mainly because I want a work of art to say more to me than "You know, the guy who made me is too cool for school." And the recent penchant, over the past couple of decades, for tacking prefabricated political talking points to the art like you're pinning a tail on a donkey ("You know, the gal who made me is too cool for school--and the assumptions of the patriarchy are stupid!") doesn't much help. I'm all for questioning the patriarchy, but we're living in the 2020s--at this point, simply doing so doesn't make you cool. You have to have some particular question or questions you're asking, and those particulars have to be compelling for me to feel like the art is worth my time.

But I keep looking at new art in the hopes that either my mind or the art will change--or that I will find one of the rare exceptions to the rule.

I found a couple of them today. I decided to look at recent sculpture art, and found these artists:

Tara Donovan is, I guess, not that new--she's only a year younger than me, and started exhibiting her work in the 90s. But hey, it's newer than David. Donovan creates biological and organic shapes by assembling multitudinous examples of one commonplace medium: nylon fiber, electrical cable, toothpicks, 3 X 5 cards, and countless others. This one is made out of mylar:

And this one was made by stacking thousands of index cards:

This one is made out of styrofoam cups:

Here is another one, lit up:

Donovan says: “It is not like I’m trying to simulate nature. It’s more of a mimicking of the way of nature, the way things actually grow.”

Something Borrowed

Just recently, I obtained this book from my mother, who is continually removing stuff from her house:

Some people collect postage stamps -- the small pieces of paper you place on letters or postcards before mailing them. Other people collect works of art, antiques or musical instruments. But a man in the American state of Maryland collects…secrets. For the past 10 years, people from throughout the world have been sending Frank Warren postcards and other objects with secrets written on them. He now has a million secrets.

Mr. Warren lives in Germantown, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. Ten years ago, he created an art project he calls “PostSecret.”

“I invited strangers from all around the world to write down their deepest confession on a postcard, something they’d never told anyone else before, but something that was true. And I asked them to mail it to my home anonymously.”

He has published six books full of the secrets people have shared with him. One secret in each book is his.

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/the-man-who-collects-secrets/27664...

Something Blue

I'd never heard of Toronzo Cannon. Good Chicago blues. Very good.

How are you all doing today?