No, it’s not about Imelda Marcos (you still remember her?). Or Princess Diana, who probably made Jimmy Choo’s career by ordering dozens of pairs of his exceedingly comfortable flats in all different colors.
The shoes I am thinking of are used by artists Doris Salcedo (b. 1958, Colombia) and Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Japan)
I examine the art piece for specific elements significant to a particular artist – brush stroke, clor, manner and favorite shapes.
– Elizabeth Kubicki, participant in MIT Physics Department Hallway Art Quiz.
This spring 2004 exhibition in Tate Britain is a triumph of beauty and horror. And if beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, so is horror. It follows then that beauty and horror can be one and the same thing – and so it goes in this garbled Garden of Eden.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information
T.S. Eliot, from “The Rock” (1934)
Since those bleak pre-war days when Eliot put down these lines, our world has galloped on at even greater speed, with a velocity ever more dizzying. This of course is in great part aided by the advent of the computer and the information age. It has created such wealth and prosperity utterly unimagined a mere seventy years ago. But has all this made our lives better? Are we wiser and happier? We should be, if information = knowledge.