Louise Bourgeois Interview

 ‘My art is a form of restoration’

In a rare interview with one of the world’s greatest living artists, Rachel Cooke asks Louise Bourgeois to reflect on her extraordinary career

 

RC: You moved to New York early in your career. What effect did this have?

LB: I was a ‘runaway girl’ from France who married an American and moved to New York City. I’m not sure I would have continued as an artist had I remained in Paris because of the family setup. In coming to New York, I was suddenly independent from them. I did feel the affects of being French. There was both isolation and stimulation. Homesickness was the theme of the early sculptures.

Terry Eagleton on Milton’s 400th Birthday

 

Milton’s republic

Our great dissident poet, born 400 years ago today, did more than just hymn the praises of revolt

Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm. The two intersect only in such absurd anomalies as the poet laureateship. But whereas Andrew Motion does his bit to keep the monarchy in business, one of the greatest of English poets played his part in subverting it. John Milton, who was born in Cheapside 400 years ago today, published a political tract two weeks after the beheading of Charles I, arguing that all sovereignty lay with the people, who could depose and even execute a monarch if he betrayed their trust.

Tom McCarthy and Simon Critchley in conversation: Beckett, Adorno, Blanchot, Comedy, Death, and so on….

 

 

Interview with Simon Critchley, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Essex

Conducted by: Tom McCarthy (General Secretary, INS) 
Venue: Office of Anti-Matter, Austrian Cultural Institute, London 
Date: 29/03/01 
Present: Tom McCarthy, Simon Critchley, Corin Sworn, Anthony Auerbach, Penny McCarthy, Victoria Scott, Paul Perry, Alexander Hamilton, Jen wu, Others

 

Tom McCarthy: You write in your book Very Little… Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature that the task of philosophical modernity is the thinking through of the first death, the über death, which is the death of God. So my first question is: what is the meaning of this death?

Simon Critchley: It’s a big question. Nietzsche said ‘God is dead’, and that’s written on toilet walls all over the world. But he then went on to say: ‘And we have killed him.’

Jonathan Lethem on Roberto Bolano, followed by an interview with Natasha Wimmer, translator of ‘2666′ and ‘The Savage Detectives’

 

The Departed

By JONATHAN LETHEM

2666

By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer

By 898 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Cloth and paper, $30

In Philip K. Dick’s 1953 short story “The Preserving Machine,” an impassioned inventor creates a device for “preserving” the canon of classical music — the sacred and, he fears, impermanent beauties of Schubert, Chopin,Beethoven and so forth — by feeding it into a device that transforms the compositions into living creatures: birds, beetles and animals resembling armadillos and porcupines. Outfitting the classic pieces in this manner, then setting them free, the inventor means to guarantee their persistence beyond the frailties of human commemoration, to give them a set of defenses adequate to their value. Alas, the musical-animals become disagreeable and violent, turn on one another and, when the inventor attempts to reverse-engineer his creations in order to prove that the music has survived, reveal themselves as a barely recognizable cacophony, nothing like the originals. Or has the preserving machine revealed true essences — irregularities, ferocities — disguised within the classical pieces to begin with?

Richard Serra Interview

 

 

Metal Works

Richard Serra’s new show of monumental sculptures heralds the artist’s first exhibition in London for 16 years. In a rare interview, he talked with Adrian Searle about the evolution of his ideas and his plans for the future

For over 40 years, American artist Richard Serra has tested the limits and possibilities of sculpture, film and drawing. In the 1960s he began his investigation into the imaginative and physical potential of materials and their relationship with the site and viewer. Since the early 1970s Serra has become best-known for the monumental sculptures he has created for various architectural, urban and landscape settings. In 2007 New York’s Museum of Modern Art honoured Serra’s career with a retrospective and earlier this year his major work Promenade was installed at the Grand Palais, Paris. His current show at Gagosian Gallery, London, runs until 20 December, and includes three new steel sculptures. It is the first exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK since Weight and Measure was presented at the Tate Gallery in 1992. He gave a rare interview to Adrian Searle in London in late September.