Waiting for Godot

Yes, today I am absolutely sure - they will sack me any day. I just feel it. Am I paranoiac? And I begin to hate this job because of my fear. It is a paranoia. What's wrong with me? Why am I so obsesed with my English??? So under-confident?

(...)

And I cannot go back to my country neither...
How could you be back to the country where a Vice-minister of Education says: "We will manage without tolerance" or that "the theory of evolution is a lie." How??????????

"I did say that the theory of evolution is a lie. I am convinced that this is a mistake that was legalized as the prevailing truth. For me this is more of a story that belongs to the realm of fiction, you could even base a science-fiction movie on it.

The very theory of Darwin was modified while he was still alive, [the scientists] provided facts to undermine this theory. In general, you can treat Darwinism as a loose concept created by an elderly non-believer who viewed the world in this way. Maybe this is because he was vegetarian and lacked inner fire."

and

"So what is going to happen to the teachers who according to scientific findings will teach the theory of evolution? Quite recently the head of the National Teacher Training Centre lost his job because he allowed for a discussion about homosexuality in schools…

There you go! This is the most drastic form of lies: that two individuals of the same sex can form a relationship. I mean it does happen, but you cannot legalize it because it ruins our civilization.

And I will never contribute to a situation in which in school you could find a textbook that advises you to find the a representative of the gay movement, invite him to class so that he can tell that human rights are being violated because they cannot adopt children.

But this textbook only encouraged to be tolerant and posed questions...

But can there be such a question? No way! I represent the views of a civilization in which I was formed. We have to make sure this civilization survives.

Where is the space, then, for tolerance of different worldviews?

Oh, the world used to manage without tolerance and it will keep on going without it. We cannot have a couple of maniacs deciding about the fate of our civilization… "

See: http://www.crin.org/enoc/resources/infodetail.asp?id=11226

....where the news from my country appear as realted to those from Saudi Arabia and Lebanon...

New job

I have been offered a brilliant job, I cannot believe they offered it to me... and it causes problems - anytime I am at work I am so terrible stressed that I behave like Woody Allen in Play it again Sam. And my English is worse then ever - I keep losing words, mixing grammar my voice while speaking is so high that I am likely to be heard by bats... I have to take it easy (easier at least) otherwise they will sack me....but how????? I love that job so much...

Art & Market

Recently, I got drunk on an after party and talking with a Well Known Artist focused with a horrible insistence on market mechanisms which can be used to become such a known artist. I can only hope he didn't get offended. But what is striking me in that is the question why I did it. Why after a certain amount of wine I got back to the art market. Not to the idea of art, a process of creation, or reception, any of those important things I could ask him but to the market. Does it mean that I still can't place an issue of art being on the market on my matrix? I still didn't position it in relation to the other aspects of art - its value moves up and down. How important it is? How important is to be known? Important for all participants of an art world, and important for an artist. Not in simply term of material value, but in term of intellectual and cultural importance. How the position on a market influences an intellectual and cultural value of a vary piece of art? How the position held by an artist changes a meaning and value of his work?
Heh, it seems to me that finally by accident I found a thesis of my Diploma Essay :)

Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh

It's very strange what happens to the piece of art once it becomes to be percepted as a masterpiece. For all those people asking how much are Sunflowers it is not the art at all. They are excited by an artefact of richness and fame, which is actually very sad, because none of them can get into relation with a real painting. And none of them is interested in it. So what about the passion and terrible sadness which emanate from the Sunflowers?

"1987 - A painting by Vincent Van Gogh has been sold for $49m (£27m) - a world record for a work of art. The final price was more than twice what the painting, called Irises, had been expected to reach. (...)
The previous record for a painting was set in March by another Van Gogh masterpiece, Sunflowers. It was bought in London for just under $40m by a Japanese insurance company."

"In the spring of 1888 he [Reid] presented his father, James Reid, with two paintings by Van Gogh. The first was Still Life, Basket of Apples; the second was a portrait of Reid himself (...)His father later sold them to a French dealer for £10 each.
The (...) Moulin-de Blute-fin (...) was sold by Reid to another Glasgow collector, William McInnes, in July 1921 for £550. By the early 1920s, prices for Van Gogh's work were on the rise; and the first of a flurry of fakes were appearing. In 1923 Sir James Murray, an Aberdeen collector, acquired Still Life with Daisies and Poppies, which turned out to be a forgery.(...)
[Portrait of Alexander Reid] was eventually bought by Glasgow Museums in 1974 for £166,250.(...)
Olive Trees was painted outside the asylum in St-Rémy in 1889. It was first acquired in 1923 for £275. Today, the piece has strong Scottish ties, having been bought by the National Gallery for £1,600 in 1934.

Some recent figures:

1921 Gainsborough Blue Boy £148,000 (equivalent to £4.5 million today)
1970 Velasquez Juan de Pareja £2.3million (equivalent to £21million today)
1987 Van Gogh Sunflowers £22.5 million (equivalent to £39 million today)
1990 Van Gogh Dr Gachet £44 million (equivalent to £61million today)
(...)
Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents sold in 2002 for £49.5 million = £11,000 per square inch
Van Gogh’s Dr Gachet sold in 1990 for £44 million = £66,000 per square inch
Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks sold in 2004 for £35 million = £341,130 per square inch
Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe sold in 2004 for £58 million = £45,312 per square inch

2006 The New York Times said the city's Neue Galerie paid $135m (£73m) for the oil painting [The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by G. Klimt]in a private sale.

The $140m quoted as the price obtained by Sotheby's for Pollock's Number 5, 1948 would make it the highest figure known to have ever been paid for a painting.