Paris

your actions become more forgivable if you don’t know the rules: an interview with Harriet Alida Lye

I wanted to talk to Harriet on here because I like what Harriet is doing and I think people ought to know.  What Harriet is doing is living in Paris as a Canadian expatriate, publishing a journal that keeps getting better, writing her own fiction, and essentially just doing it.  In the last three years, I’ve watched her journal, Her Royal Majesty, grow from printer paper and staples to cardboard and printer paper and staples to letterpressed covers and hand-sewn binding to its most recent incarnation as a slick and perfect bound gem.  Something I love about the journal is how fully-considered each issue is — unlike most “journals of the arts,” the art isn’t an afterthought in Her Royal Majesty.  The layout and design — the way the thing functions and moves as a whole — seems prized above all, which makes each issue less a collection of contributors’ work and more like a large-scale collaborative project.  The journal has recently expanded its online presence with a fancy new website and very nice looking blog called HRM Daily, which I advise people to look at.  I’m thrilled that Harriet has kept the faith and never looked back.  After the jump we talk about the journal, being a foreigner, James Franco, and European MFA programs (they don’t really exist).

 

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Web Hype / 7 Comments
October 17th, 2011 / 3:06 pm

“…so thieves, sirs, you are imbeciles, now return them.”

This, from the AP, via NPR:

A lone thief stole five paintings possibly worth more than half a billion dollars, including major works by Picasso and Matisse, in a brazen overnight heist at a Paris modern art museum, police and prosecutors said Thursday.

[…]

The director of the neighboring modern art museum Palais de Tokyo, Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr, called the thief or thieves “fools.”

“You cannot do anything with these paintings. All countries in the world are aware, and no collector is stupid enough to buy a painting that, one, he can’t show to other collectors, and two, risks sending him to prison,” he said on LCI television.

“In general, you find these paintings,” he said. “These five paintings are unsellable, so thieves, sirs, you are imbeciles, now return them.”

The assumption here, of course, is that the thieves would want to sell the work. Maybe they just wanted the paintings for their living room? Maybe they just wanted to steal them, to see if they could? Such an act of daring, commodified. Shame.

What’s your fantasy heist?

Random / 14 Comments
May 20th, 2010 / 11:28 am