Media: January 2008 Archives
To extrapolate from the epigraph (below) chosen for Life Studies, this collection of short stories intends to explore the questions, "What is art?" and "To whom does it belong?" Four stories in, I have yet to find the answers here.
The lives that Susan Vreeland portrays are those that circle the periphery of Western art's great masters--Renoir, Manet, Monet, among others. And despite the characters' often dire circumstances, at least the first few of the collection are perhaps too awash in imagined awe and rarefied nostalgia to allow the reader to answer those questions in truth. Yet moments of beauty do glimmer on the page and, like a moment captured in paint and canvas, live on in the memory. Favorite quotes to come all week.
"The real question is: To whom does the meaning of the art of the past properly belong? To those who can apply it to their own lives, or to a cultural hierarchy of relic specialists?" --John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1977.
Children: 4
Occupation: Unemployed
Religion: Baptized Catholic
Currently reading: Marie Claire magazine
Happiest life moment: Moving to Sao Paulo to rejoin her mother
"I admire the woman who drives a subway train. I admire female architects and journalists. I admire any woman who can do all she wants in life. That she can be herself and not wait for a man. I admire the women who do not wait for men, those who embrace the struggle."
from the book Women in the Material World
by Faith D'Allusio and Peter Menzel
Hanke CakoniAge: 38
Children: 4
Occupation: Homemaker
Religion: Islam
Favorite subject in school: Russian
Monthly family income: 5,800 lek (U.S. $64)
"And in those moments, it seems to me that the most human thing I can do is to dedicate my whole life to this one child."
from the book Women in the Material World
by Faith D'Alusio and Peter Menzel
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