Category Archives: art/architecture

monuments and palm trees

In Learning from Las Vegas, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s 1968 study and revindication of American commercial vernacular architecture, the architects claimed, for that oft-maligned landscape, a new monumentality. The Las Vegas Strip, the gas station, and the billboard … Continue reading

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the city

The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of … Continue reading

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in the eye of the beholder

Overheard in LACMA: conversation between child (~10 yrs old?) and parent Child: Are we almost done? Parent: Yes it looks like we are. Child: There are millions of pictures. Why would people paint so many pictures? It’s a fair question.

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categorizing life

“Giving names to objects consists in moving immediate, unreflected, perhaps ignored events on to the plane of reflection and of the objective mind.” – Being and nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre (as quoted in Home: A Short History of an Idea) … Continue reading

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viva

Las Vegas: All that money, and they use it unpredictably to do amazing or super-cheesy things (sometimes both at the same time). Amazing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystals_%28Las_Vegas%29 (designed by Daniel Libeskind of Berlin Jewish Museum fame!). Also amazing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aria_Resort_%26_Casino (the largest hotel to … Continue reading

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