Tuesday, September 04, 2007
My dealer, Saint And Sinner
The Economist profiles the Wildensteins + the powerful dealers of the art world + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9748579
Treasure Maps
Bill James (Australia) writes:
An up-to-date survey map offers rock hounds as many clues to buried treasure as any pirate chart of the Spanish Main ever did.
Contour lines make up the bulk of clues. These lines indicate the rise and fall of the land surfaces by connecting points at the same level and thus outline the shapes of hills and valleys as seen from above. The lines are drawn at regular intervals and distance between them indicates the steepness of the slope. Where the lines are spaced evenly, the land is rising gradually. Where they bunch together, the rise is abrupt, as on a cliff face.
Other details are shown by symbols explained in the margin of the map. Tiny green sketches represent scattered woodland, green patches shows the heavier bush and rivers appear as wavy blue lines. Creeks which only flow in wet weather are shown in broken blue lines. Careful study of this map tells the gem seeker where he is likely to find bare rocks above talus slopes littered with fragments from the weathered face and also the places to which streams and rivers have carried debris from the rocks.
We can trace the pattern of blue lines on the hillside where a multitude of trickles feed a brook and a multitude of brooks feed a river. Study of this drainage system shows how gemstones are gathered from thousands of acres of hillside. Checking the course of the river against contours shown on the map discloses the places where the current slows down and the gem gravels pile up.
Obviously a river cannot collect gemstones unless it flows among gem-bearing rocks. To identify rocks, the survey map must be compared against a geological map of the area. On the geological map, the rocks occurring beneath the soil level are picked out in contrasting colors and named.
If the rocks of the area are granite, there is a good chance of finding beryl, feldspar, topaz, tourmaline and gem varieties of quartz. Basalt and volcanic tuffs may contain chalcedony, opal, jasper and agate, both in the form of seams and thunder eggs. Gneiss, schists and marbles yield sapphire, garnets, spinel and zircon.
But that is not to say that rocks of any given variety must necessarily be gem-bearing. Some granites, for instance, produce no gems, but in that case the survey map again provides a clue. Strong mineralized granites are the ones which becomes weathered most quickly, forming smoothly rounded hills, well covered with the trees and bushes marked on the map.
Pale streaks of quartz veins or quartz floaters may be visible on such granites. Pegmatites may outcrop, showing glittering mica surfaces in the sunshine, or rock crystals peep among the grass roots to pinpoint a pocket of gemstones.
Almost certainly the survey map will show mines in the vicinity—mines for wolfram, or tin, or silver-lead, or any one of half-a-dozen other minerals. Given permission by the owners, fossicking on mullock heaps of mines and quarries can be a rich source of gem materials.
Treasure Map: (continued)
An up-to-date survey map offers rock hounds as many clues to buried treasure as any pirate chart of the Spanish Main ever did.
Contour lines make up the bulk of clues. These lines indicate the rise and fall of the land surfaces by connecting points at the same level and thus outline the shapes of hills and valleys as seen from above. The lines are drawn at regular intervals and distance between them indicates the steepness of the slope. Where the lines are spaced evenly, the land is rising gradually. Where they bunch together, the rise is abrupt, as on a cliff face.
Other details are shown by symbols explained in the margin of the map. Tiny green sketches represent scattered woodland, green patches shows the heavier bush and rivers appear as wavy blue lines. Creeks which only flow in wet weather are shown in broken blue lines. Careful study of this map tells the gem seeker where he is likely to find bare rocks above talus slopes littered with fragments from the weathered face and also the places to which streams and rivers have carried debris from the rocks.
We can trace the pattern of blue lines on the hillside where a multitude of trickles feed a brook and a multitude of brooks feed a river. Study of this drainage system shows how gemstones are gathered from thousands of acres of hillside. Checking the course of the river against contours shown on the map discloses the places where the current slows down and the gem gravels pile up.
Obviously a river cannot collect gemstones unless it flows among gem-bearing rocks. To identify rocks, the survey map must be compared against a geological map of the area. On the geological map, the rocks occurring beneath the soil level are picked out in contrasting colors and named.
If the rocks of the area are granite, there is a good chance of finding beryl, feldspar, topaz, tourmaline and gem varieties of quartz. Basalt and volcanic tuffs may contain chalcedony, opal, jasper and agate, both in the form of seams and thunder eggs. Gneiss, schists and marbles yield sapphire, garnets, spinel and zircon.
But that is not to say that rocks of any given variety must necessarily be gem-bearing. Some granites, for instance, produce no gems, but in that case the survey map again provides a clue. Strong mineralized granites are the ones which becomes weathered most quickly, forming smoothly rounded hills, well covered with the trees and bushes marked on the map.
Pale streaks of quartz veins or quartz floaters may be visible on such granites. Pegmatites may outcrop, showing glittering mica surfaces in the sunshine, or rock crystals peep among the grass roots to pinpoint a pocket of gemstones.
Almost certainly the survey map will show mines in the vicinity—mines for wolfram, or tin, or silver-lead, or any one of half-a-dozen other minerals. Given permission by the owners, fossicking on mullock heaps of mines and quarries can be a rich source of gem materials.
Treasure Map: (continued)
Specialty Glasses
Aventurine Glass is man-made paste with the addition of fine copper spangles. The reddish brown variety is sometimes met with under the name gold stone or gold star stone. Spangled-aventurine-effect is due to triangular or hexagonal scales of copper. The blue variety (lapis imitation) is colored by cobalt and will appear red under the Chelsea Color Filter.
Slocum Stone is a recent (1976) opal imitation named after its Canadian inventor. It is a composite paste, probably consisting of a body of crown glass of low R.I. (about 1.52) and melting point, into which are pressed fragments of thin films of blown glass of differing R.I. Colors are probably due to interference between layers of differing R.I. The diagnostic features are flow lines and bubbles distorted by pressure during manufacture. Slocum stone triplets are now on the market as well. Slocum stone has been marketed under the deceptive name 'Opal Essence'. Slocum stone can be an extraordinarily good opal simulant. It is reported that the results of production can vary from batch to batch. Some stones display pinfire-type play of color; others may show much broader triangular flashes of color. The background may be black, translucent or nearly completely transparent like fine crystal opal. Low power magnification under the gemological microscope will reveal the twisted tinsel-like nature of the color flashes.
Rhinestone refers to transparent paste which, colorless in the main, shows patches of various colors. Most specimens consist of a thin metallic film which has been vacuum-sputtered onto the surface of the glass thereby causing iridescence.
Imori Glass or Meta Jade is a partially devitrified, translucent green glass produced by Imori in Japan. Slow cooling cause partial crystallization, which often appears as a dendritic (fern-like or tree-like) structure under magnification. The stones may show gas bubbles.
In some cases asterism is obtained by engraving fine, intersecting lines, or by impressing three sets of intersecting lines, on the back of a cabochon. The stones then are frequently backed by colored foil to lend color and increase reflectivity. On the other hand, cat's-eye-like effects can be obtained by the incorporation of parallel glass fibers or by the elongation of included bubbles.
Slocum Stone is a recent (1976) opal imitation named after its Canadian inventor. It is a composite paste, probably consisting of a body of crown glass of low R.I. (about 1.52) and melting point, into which are pressed fragments of thin films of blown glass of differing R.I. Colors are probably due to interference between layers of differing R.I. The diagnostic features are flow lines and bubbles distorted by pressure during manufacture. Slocum stone triplets are now on the market as well. Slocum stone has been marketed under the deceptive name 'Opal Essence'. Slocum stone can be an extraordinarily good opal simulant. It is reported that the results of production can vary from batch to batch. Some stones display pinfire-type play of color; others may show much broader triangular flashes of color. The background may be black, translucent or nearly completely transparent like fine crystal opal. Low power magnification under the gemological microscope will reveal the twisted tinsel-like nature of the color flashes.
Rhinestone refers to transparent paste which, colorless in the main, shows patches of various colors. Most specimens consist of a thin metallic film which has been vacuum-sputtered onto the surface of the glass thereby causing iridescence.
Imori Glass or Meta Jade is a partially devitrified, translucent green glass produced by Imori in Japan. Slow cooling cause partial crystallization, which often appears as a dendritic (fern-like or tree-like) structure under magnification. The stones may show gas bubbles.
In some cases asterism is obtained by engraving fine, intersecting lines, or by impressing three sets of intersecting lines, on the back of a cabochon. The stones then are frequently backed by colored foil to lend color and increase reflectivity. On the other hand, cat's-eye-like effects can be obtained by the incorporation of parallel glass fibers or by the elongation of included bubbles.
Monday, September 03, 2007
John Huston
You walk through a series of arches, so to speak, and then, presently, at the end of a corridor, a door opens and you see backward through time, and you feel the flow of time, and realize you are only part of a great nameless procession.
Better Presentations
Good Books: (via Emergic) Cliff Atkinson book Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire. is about how to improve presentations using PowerPoint. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and reviews. I really learned a lot.
Here is one of Cliff Atkinson’s blog posts entitled Center of Gravity:
Whenever I look at a PowerPoint presentation for the first time, I go to Slide Sorter view to get the lay of the land: Can I see a clear story across the entire experience? Then I'll shift to Notes Page view: Are the projected visuals and spoken words planned together? And last I'll go to Normal view: Can I easily understand the main idea of this slide?
It's usually the case that the answer is No to all three questions. More often than not, the presentations are very difficult to understand, packed with more text and data than anyone's cognitive ability can process; and little if any narrative structure. What I commonly find is that any single presentation is actually multiple presentations that are yearning to be liberated. Where we might try to load up the slides to save time by creating a one-size-fits-all presentation, we actually end up with a situation where one-size-confuses-all. One solution to the problem is the discipline of completing Act I of your story template. When you write the statements that form the headlines of the first five slides, you are making purposeful decisions that will sort, distill and structure information in a way that makes sense to your specific audience.
Franz Dill of IFTF Future Now writes:
Atkinson's approach is very nicely tailored for important, complex presentations. His model is that of telling a story ... storyboard it, use minimal text (no bullets), engage the audience. He picks a board presentation scenario and goes through it in some detail. Very thoughtfully done. I also like the fact that he covers other parts of the process ... how you present the slides, pacing, and how to tailor it for later emailing to people that could not attend, now a very common situation. I have been saving presentations for reference for some time, and am often amazed at how incomprehensible a slideshow can become. In fact the latter situation has often made me use more text and slide detail than I would otherwise.
Lars Bergstrom adds in a review on Amazon: I believe that the book's greater contribution is pointing out that most people structure presentations as a dump of data rather than taking into account their audience and the goal of their presentation -- why are people there? What do you want them to do or believe after you're done presenting? Even if you disagree with Cliff's convincing points on removing bullets from your decks, you should take to heart his framework for developing concepts and decks.
Cliff Atkinson said in an interview with Management Consulting News:
When we start talking about text on a slide, it’s important to begin by affirming the research: presenting text that is identical to narration actually harms the ability of the audience to understand. Removing the text from the screen improves the ability of the audience to retain the information by 28%, and improves their ability to apply the information by 79%. Keeping in mind the imperative to minimize text on the screen, the bulk of writing text for a PowerPoint presentation should be in the headlines that form your story structure. Then you write the narrative explanation of each of those headlines in Notes Page view. Because the words have already been captured in the form of the headlines and notes, the screen is much less dependent on text to convey information and more dependent on you to communicate it with your spoken words and expressions. With this approach, the PowerPoint screen becomes a much more creative and interesting tool that can hold a few words, or no words at all.
Dave Pollard has an excellent analysis of the process:
What this book does is provide a process to supply the pictures to go along with the story, so your presentation becomes "a blend of movie and live performance". The process has three steps: Writing a script to focus your ideas, storyboarding the script to clarify the ideas, and producing the script to engage the audience. My previous posts have told you about the art of crafting a good story. The storyboard for a movie script is actually sketches of visuals, but for purposes of this book it's merely parsing of the critical parts of the story onto successive slides. Then you use graphics -- and few words -- to reinforce the key points of the story with memorable images.
Here is one of Cliff Atkinson’s blog posts entitled Center of Gravity:
Whenever I look at a PowerPoint presentation for the first time, I go to Slide Sorter view to get the lay of the land: Can I see a clear story across the entire experience? Then I'll shift to Notes Page view: Are the projected visuals and spoken words planned together? And last I'll go to Normal view: Can I easily understand the main idea of this slide?
It's usually the case that the answer is No to all three questions. More often than not, the presentations are very difficult to understand, packed with more text and data than anyone's cognitive ability can process; and little if any narrative structure. What I commonly find is that any single presentation is actually multiple presentations that are yearning to be liberated. Where we might try to load up the slides to save time by creating a one-size-fits-all presentation, we actually end up with a situation where one-size-confuses-all. One solution to the problem is the discipline of completing Act I of your story template. When you write the statements that form the headlines of the first five slides, you are making purposeful decisions that will sort, distill and structure information in a way that makes sense to your specific audience.
Franz Dill of IFTF Future Now writes:
Atkinson's approach is very nicely tailored for important, complex presentations. His model is that of telling a story ... storyboard it, use minimal text (no bullets), engage the audience. He picks a board presentation scenario and goes through it in some detail. Very thoughtfully done. I also like the fact that he covers other parts of the process ... how you present the slides, pacing, and how to tailor it for later emailing to people that could not attend, now a very common situation. I have been saving presentations for reference for some time, and am often amazed at how incomprehensible a slideshow can become. In fact the latter situation has often made me use more text and slide detail than I would otherwise.
Lars Bergstrom adds in a review on Amazon: I believe that the book's greater contribution is pointing out that most people structure presentations as a dump of data rather than taking into account their audience and the goal of their presentation -- why are people there? What do you want them to do or believe after you're done presenting? Even if you disagree with Cliff's convincing points on removing bullets from your decks, you should take to heart his framework for developing concepts and decks.
Cliff Atkinson said in an interview with Management Consulting News:
When we start talking about text on a slide, it’s important to begin by affirming the research: presenting text that is identical to narration actually harms the ability of the audience to understand. Removing the text from the screen improves the ability of the audience to retain the information by 28%, and improves their ability to apply the information by 79%. Keeping in mind the imperative to minimize text on the screen, the bulk of writing text for a PowerPoint presentation should be in the headlines that form your story structure. Then you write the narrative explanation of each of those headlines in Notes Page view. Because the words have already been captured in the form of the headlines and notes, the screen is much less dependent on text to convey information and more dependent on you to communicate it with your spoken words and expressions. With this approach, the PowerPoint screen becomes a much more creative and interesting tool that can hold a few words, or no words at all.
Dave Pollard has an excellent analysis of the process:
What this book does is provide a process to supply the pictures to go along with the story, so your presentation becomes "a blend of movie and live performance". The process has three steps: Writing a script to focus your ideas, storyboarding the script to clarify the ideas, and producing the script to engage the audience. My previous posts have told you about the art of crafting a good story. The storyboard for a movie script is actually sketches of visuals, but for purposes of this book it's merely parsing of the critical parts of the story onto successive slides. Then you use graphics -- and few words -- to reinforce the key points of the story with memorable images.
Provocateurs, Ghosts, Accomplices, And Starz
Konstantin Akinsha writes about the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art + interest (s) in Russian art circles about new ideas, concepts and interpretations + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1821
Hidden Glory
I liked the poem because of the inspiring note + the passion factor.
It is a feeling that Mr and Mrs Fred Richards, of Murrarie, Brisbane, Australia expressed very clearly in the poem in stone which they dedicated to Mr Gan Timur because of his love for agate.
The verse was written by Mrs Edna Richards in praise of Queensland’s beautiful rainbow agate. She calls it ‘Hidden Glory’ and it reads:
A man picked up a stone one day,
While walking beside a stream;
He looked at it, then threw it away,
It chipped and lo! a gleam.
He took it home and studied it,
And saw to his surprise,
That beauty lay beneath its crust;
It was indeed a prize.
When cut through with a diamond saw
A picture did unfold
Of hills and dales, red sunset, too,
A glory to behold.
So, whenever you see an ugly stone,
Don’t pass it by with scorn;
It may contain a treasure trove
Just waiting to be born.
These words now glitter in a panel of blue and gold at the Richard’s home. Each of the 478 letters has been cut and polished from one of a score of different Australian rocks and gemstones. It was a labor of love that took Fred Richards 300 hours. The result combines jasper, agate, chrysoprase, prase, trachyte, rhyolite, petrified wood, common opal, obsidian, onyx, grass stone, aventurine quartz, blue sodalite, tourmaline, rock crystal, amethyst, pitchstone and granite.
It is a feeling that Mr and Mrs Fred Richards, of Murrarie, Brisbane, Australia expressed very clearly in the poem in stone which they dedicated to Mr Gan Timur because of his love for agate.
The verse was written by Mrs Edna Richards in praise of Queensland’s beautiful rainbow agate. She calls it ‘Hidden Glory’ and it reads:
A man picked up a stone one day,
While walking beside a stream;
He looked at it, then threw it away,
It chipped and lo! a gleam.
He took it home and studied it,
And saw to his surprise,
That beauty lay beneath its crust;
It was indeed a prize.
When cut through with a diamond saw
A picture did unfold
Of hills and dales, red sunset, too,
A glory to behold.
So, whenever you see an ugly stone,
Don’t pass it by with scorn;
It may contain a treasure trove
Just waiting to be born.
These words now glitter in a panel of blue and gold at the Richard’s home. Each of the 478 letters has been cut and polished from one of a score of different Australian rocks and gemstones. It was a labor of love that took Fred Richards 300 hours. The result combines jasper, agate, chrysoprase, prase, trachyte, rhyolite, petrified wood, common opal, obsidian, onyx, grass stone, aventurine quartz, blue sodalite, tourmaline, rock crystal, amethyst, pitchstone and granite.
What Makes A Painting A Painting?
Linda Yablonsky writes about new interpretations of painting by the experts, and artists of all colors and disguises + the hybrid, the crossover, the many-splendored concepts in the art arena + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1824
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