I won't be able to photograph the Christmas lights until the weekend, so can't treat you to the visual feast I promised. In the meantime, I am showcasing my home-made advent calendar. It was originally a project for the kids, but they lost interest after about seven seconds so I just did it on my own.
For the front, I cheated and printed out someone else's festive scene in which I cut the windows. Then I drew the pictures for each window on a second piece of paper and glued it behind the first. Check back on Tuesday to open window #1!
2010 Update: I've now removed all the pictures of the advent calendar, which were cluttering up the blog, but have posted the final view on a new page here.
Sunday 29 November 2009
Friday 27 November 2009
Wednesday 25 November 2009
Essay of little or no significance #4: CDO²
Luis Buñuel, by Dalí, at the Reina Sofia.
I hope it didn’t escape your attention that my tongue-in-cheek tirade against art critics reflects my genuine views on the use of overly complex language in general.
Earlier this year I suggested to someone who had “been in the industry for 30 years”* that his client might benefit from simplifying its terms and conditions so that its customers would be able to understand them. He scoffed at the suggestion, which I thought was remarkable – galling, in fact – given that by then it was widely accepted that a key factor in the collapse of the global financial system was the complexity and opacity of the instruments that had until then sustained it.
See also: “Global Asset Backed Securitisation: Towards a New Dawn of Collateral Debt Obligations and Default Swap Derivatives – Synthesizing Syndicated Securities in the post-Lehman World”, Paul Colpitts (2009).
* (Tosser.)
Holidays are coming!
To allay your (that's vuestro as opposed to tu - it's so strange having to think of the word "you" in singular and plural form) concern that I am neglecting the blog, I am proposing to do something quite brilliant. A new post for every day of December! Más o menos.
I'm not sure when it will happen, but at some point - probably the 31st? - Madrid's Christmas lights are going to be turned on. If I can take enough photos quickly enough, I can post them here and give you a sort of virtual advent calendar!
Do check back on 1 December when I should have got the ball rolling.
A restaurant near the Palacio Real. Way too expensive to actually eat there, so I took a photo instead.
Wednesday 18 November 2009
The Retiro is a huge park in the centre of Madrid. From it's beginnings in 1505, the park has been modified and extended by successive royal families to create the current 350-acre giant. It is wonderful to wander aimlessly from one sculpture to another, and in the sunshine it is easy to forget that one is only a few minutes' walk from the city. But in spite of the laughing crowds there is also a sense that in this vast park some monuments are slipping into neglect and can already only hint at the grandeur of a forgotten time. It can be melancholy, but is no less pleasant for it.
Tuesday 10 November 2009
Essay of little or no significance #3: Art
Discussion of contemporary art is deliberately opaque and inaccessible to those outside an elite inner circle. Artists and art critics are rewarded for discussing - and are encouraged to discuss - artwork with an increasingly obscure nomenclature that immediately excludes lay participation. In most cases, culprits are guilty, at best, of the sloppy use of inappropriate words and phrases and a failure to fully understand their own messages. At worst, they are guilty of being deliberately confusing and misleading. As a result, amateurs are discouraged from expressing opinions about art by faux intellectual barriers that deny the legitimacy of the reactions it can invoke.
From “Challenging the Perception of Visual Space and Other Meaningless Accusations”, Paul Colpitts (2008).
From “Challenging the Perception of Visual Space and Other Meaningless Accusations”, Paul Colpitts (2008).
