My Beauty Best Teacher

Qudus Onikeku writes:

Courtesy of Gloria Eve

Dance in Africa has since been expressed in many interpretive styles and techniques, but now, in this post-modern day, there are two types of contemporary dance in contemporary Africa; the European-inspired and the non-European-inspired. The former is also known as contemporary African dance while the latter is simply contemporary dance. This magical aggregation takes me back to the wonders of my discovery of a certain elementary mathematical magic, which says anything multiplied by one remains itself, but anything multiplied by zero is zero...[continue reading]

In Boing Boing:

Contemporary African Art Since 1980, a new book by Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu,The book explores how political, social, and cultural changes over the past thirty years have shaped urban, indigenous, and globalized "diasporic" art forms. Contemporary African Art is a roadmap of change and of evolving identities.

More here

This is my second post on Codevilla, and I am going to have to make it a point to read more of what he writes because it is becoming clear that The Mackinac Center recently said, Angelo M. Codevilla might be our era's Thomas Paine. Like Paine, Codevilla's works make a lot of things that people intuitively know and feel now clear and boldly stated in plain English. His articles are body-blows to the lies of the world- they give voice and focus to the reality of the situation. He names the unnamed.

His earlier article was about America's Ruling Class, a powerful theme that went a long way towards explaining what is happening in our nation. My post on it was Recommended Read: Codevilla's 'America's Ruling Class', and in it I could do no more than point readers toward his brilliant essay America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution that was recently in the American Spectator. If you haven't read it yet, please do so at some point.

Today, via Belmont Club, I came across another of Codevilla's essay's, and it also blew my socks off. Angelo de Codevilla recently reviewed the six accounts of Barack Obama’s life for the Claremont Review of Books, and he ends up with the conclusion that Obama was always something other than what he portrayed himself to be. What that is, in Codevilla’s summary, is this:

In sum, Barack Obama grew intertwined with the narrow, self-referential left side of the American Left. They helped one another believe they had come up the hard way, as underprivileged but brilliant, square-jawed tribunes of the common man. Their common problem, however, is that their agendas are antagonistic to people unlike themselves, and that they cannot keep from showing their contempt for the common folk in whose name they would ride to power.

Since the days of Karl Marx’s First International a century and a half ago, this very human opposition between socialist theory (egalitarianism) and socialist reality (oligarchic oppression) has bedeviled the Left. Marx laid the problem bare in his “Critique of the Gotha Program” (1875). Lenin dealt with it honestly and brutally in What Is to Be Done? (1902)—the foundational document of Communism. By acknowledging that the Communist Party is not the common people’s representative, but rather its “vanguard,” Leninists were comfortable with a party responsible only to itself and to history, a party that openly demanded deference from the humans whose habits it forcibly reshaped. Communism’s undeniable horrors forced the New Left to disassociate itself from What Is to Be Done? and once again to pretend that its socialism was neither oligarchic nor coercive, that somehow it was on the side of ordinary folks. This is a much tougher sell in the 21st century than it was in the 19th. Contemporary socialists try to explain away the common man’s suspicion of them as harbingers of oligarchy, corruption, and coercion by resorting to jargon (e.g., “false consciousness” and “socio-economic anxiety”). But that is ever less convincing. This is why the movement argues so strenuously with itself about whether and how much it should dissimulate its agenda.

Which is one reason why it plays the “race card” and seizes on recruits like Barack Obama: because many black Americans’ ancestors were slaves, must not any black American be, ipso facto, unquestionably, a member and true representative of the downtrodden? And if a skeptic should argue that this or that black man is really a representative of old, white, nasty socialism, of the Corporate State, of upscale parasites who prey on working people, it is easy enough to re-focus the argument on the skeptic’s “racism.” If blacks inclined to play this role did not exist, the Socialist movement would have every incentive to invent them. And in a sense it tries to invent them, through the “black studies” programs that now divert so many young Americans from useful lives into partisan service.

Obama is as close as one could imagine to a made-to-order front man for contemporary, upscale, shy-about-itself, nouveau socialism. From his earliest age, he shaped his dreams about himself to act out a character wholly fictitious, namely a black American from a humble background who rose up out of brilliance and merit, and who yearns to draw all of America’s low-born (plus the rest of mankind) up through the same paths. But he is none of that. Equally imaginary is his vaunted understanding of and sympathy for foreign cultures. A typical multiculturalist, Obama speaks no language other than a peculiar version of English. His native language, loves, and hates are common to some of the most leftist elements of the current American ruling class.

That class knows about America only that it must be changed, and looks at the vast majority of Americans the way carpenters look at warped pieces of lumber. Barack Obama is neither more nor less than its product and agent.

Angelo Codevilla is the author of The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It and The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility.

Founded by Sindika Dokolo, The Sindika Dokolo Foundation's goal is to open the first Centre for Contemporary art in Luanda by 2012,it success has underlined the value of exposing the African public to its contemporary production.Its collection was chosen to represent the Africa Pavilion at the 2007 Venice biennale

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Reviewed by Saha Santosh, Asian Industrialization and Africa is a collection of essays that offer a "directional" approach to achieving industrial growth within the continent. E. Wayne Nafziger's case study states the following:
"...Japan learned a lesson in the 1870's that many contemporary African countries have still not learned or only learned recently:that importing replicas of Western institutions and capital intensive technology may exacerbate unemployment and balance of payments problems if the local country lacks the capital and skills needed...Meiji Japan imitated,borrowed from, and modified techniques and approaches from advanced Western economies. Aquestion today is: Can Sub-Saharan Africa be as successful emulating,borrowing, and adapting innovations and procedures from the West and Japan?If anything, the contemporary Sub-Sahara has to be even more cautious than Meiji Japan in importing foreign capital and technology. Since present-day Sub-Saharan countries are even more technologically backward relative to the most technologically advanced economies than Japan was relative to the West in the late nineteenth century,it is probably more difficult to adapt technology to local conditions and indigenous production.For example some foreign productivity-raising textile technologies available to early developing Japan were labor-using while most technologies for today's latecoming Sub-Saharan African countries are labor-saving..."

Matt or Gloss Varnish? Rachel Shirley

Shiny and Matt Oil Paint

Oil by its nature is shiny. Pale colours, particularly titanium white are often blended with sunflower oil, as it is non-yellowing. Most other colours are blended with linseed oil. The high finish of oil paint gives a lustrous and rich finish to oil paint, particularly suited to detailed work and traditional oil painting. When wet the oil painting is particularly shiny. But the artist may notice some oil pigments dry more matt than others, resulting in a patchy appearance.

Although in some cases, this may be due to the oil paint sinking into an absorbent painting support, this is more often caused by the individual nature of the pigments and how they are blended with the oil. However, once coated with varnish, the oil painting will have equal gloss.

How to Get a Matt Oil Painting

The artist may obtain a matt finish to an oil painting in three ways:

• Adding an alkyd medium such as Liquin to the oil paint.
• Using alkyds in place of oils.
• Using a matt varnish once the painting is dry.

Using an alkyd based medium such as Liquin alters the properties of the oil paint by accelerating the drying time of the paint and giving a matt finish once dry. The alkyd medium should be added to the oil paint by a ratio of about one part to four before applying it to the painting.

Using Alkyds Instead of Oils

The artist may also consider using alkyd paints instead of oil which offer the same properties as traditional oils, but with a quick drying non-lustrous finish. A misnomer, alkyd oils, as they are sometime known, is not really a type of oil paint at all, as the vehicle is a special alkyd resin. It must be borne in mind, that a matt varnish should be applied to an alkyd painting to retain the matt look.

Matt Varnish for Oils

The third option, using a matt varnish for oil painting is the most common option.

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• Types of oil painting mediums
• Types of oil painting varnishes
• Alkyd paints and Liquin
• Wet-into-wet demonstration with oil mediums
• Oil painting varnishes
• Oil painting mediums

"...Sankusem exists to celebrate and promote the composition, performance, choreography and scholarship of contemporary music and dance that significantly derives from African Folk idioms. We do this by organizing African music and dance festivals, and by running an annual African music and dance International competition..."-website

A lot of people are talking about the recent cover story (not opinion piece) in Newsweek (that is supposed to cover the news), which was a one-sided all out endorsement of gay marriage called "Our Mutal Joy." This article claims that what the Bible teaches about love argues for gay marriages, not against them.

Gay marriage is an interesting topic. When I was wandering around the internet, I came across this blog, which seems to describe a good position to take on it:

As a libertarian, I was unfamiliar with why people thought the state should define marriage, much less why it should be defined in such a way as to limit it to a certain number or sex of people. And what I found is that there is an unbelievable wealth of argument in favor of traditional marriage. And most of it is based (no, not in the fevered imaginations of what Hollywood and the media elite think religious conservatives believe) but in Natural Law. In this way of thinking, society defines marriage as a sexual union between a husband and wife, based around the ideas that babies are created via intercourse, that procreation is necessary for the survival of society and that babies need fathers as well as mothers.

As the years have gone on, I've also decided that the Bible might just have some good ideas in it after all, and here is a passage from the Bible that is of interest here, found in the Gospel of Matthew:

And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

It appears to me that there are valid and honest positions expressed here- positions that many people agree with and which must be treated with respect, not mocked, as the Newsweek cover story does:

Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

Let's try for a minute to take liberal positions at their word, and think about the kind of respect that they have for people who share different opinions. Is it any wonder that According to a story in Folio yesterday, Newsweek is considering slashing up its rate of publication from 2.6 million to 1.0 million, because people don't want to read liberal attacks in a general news magazine? Take a look here for more analysis on this. Just something for you to think about.

Writing about remittances De Montclos, M.A.P. states (PDF)

Contemporary migrants are very much in touch with their homeland, to which they often remit money on a regular basis. They have an economic and political role to play in the countries of departure as well as arrival. In the homeland, they can contribute to development and democracy, especially in enclaves, island micro-states and war-torn countries which record disproportionate emigration flows. Yet the governments of developing countries are not fully aware of the opportunities that these migrant communities offer.

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Overview A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)

The highly anticipated follow-up to the 2,000,000 copy bestselling inspirational book, The Power of Now

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The Power of Now was a question-and-answer handbook. A New Earth has been written as a traditional narrative, offering anecdotes and philosophies in a way that is accessible to all. Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, A New Earth is a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of life—and for building a better world.

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The NYTimes on the Global Africa Project:

Bibi Seck stools courtesy of Joshua Bright

...the show presents 200 works by nearly 120 people, teams and collectives. It represents artists, designers, artisans, D.I.Y. improvisers and people engaged in various combinations of those already fuzzy job descriptions, toiling in ways that blur aesthetics, sociology and philosophy.Astoundingly ambitious for a relatively small institution, “Global Africa” aims, in the words of its news release, to explore the “impact of African visual culture on contemporary art, craft and design around the world.”

by Lowery Stokes Sims & Leslie King-Hammond

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The NYTimes reports on the “Africa Comics” show at the Studio Museum in Harlem which:

"...offers an inside view of Africa of a kind we too seldom get from museums, which, when they consider contemporary African material at all, tend to be all-purpose globalist in their thinking, drawing on a snall stock of market-approved figures. The show demands time and effort. The work is physically small and psychologically concentrated; it is as much about reading as looking; the words are often in languages other than English."

image courtesy of Africa e Mediterraneo, Bologna

Painting hair on a portrait could cause dismay if previous results look too perfect or uniform. In some cases, a head of hair may look more like one object rather than thousands of strands that yield to the touch. In others, the hair may look as springy as nylon where each root appears rather too abruptly at the hairline. How does the artist paint realistic hair?

Problems When Painting Human Hair

How to Paint Human Hair Rachel Shirley

In order to paint hair with realism, the artist must first identify painting practices at fault and make changes. Culprits to painting unconvincing hair could be any of the following:

• Using the same brown, white, beige or black colour to represent a whole head of hair.
• Trying to illustrate every strand of hair with fine linear brushstrokes.
• Painting the hair in accordance to an idealised root pattern, such as one that converges from one point at the top of the head.
• Treating the hair as a separate entity to the rest of the portrait.
• Using the same tone or colour to represent whole strands of hair from roots to tip.
• Using only white to represent the highlights on hair.
• Trying to illustrate eyebrows and eyelashes in a purely linear fashion or using the same colour throughout.
• Using black dots to represent stubble or shaved hair.

How to Paint Human Hair Realistically

Whether the artist is painting from a photograph or from life, it is important to make sensitive observations when painting hair. This means not making assumptions about how hair should look like and to paint what the eye sees. In order to paint convincing hair in portraits, the artist can make improvement by the following tips.

• Not every strand of hair will be visible from root to tip. Some will tuck under or undulate at various points. Others will stray from the head, due to static.
• Human hair often contains strands of different shades and even colours. Blond hair, for instance often contain darker strands in the lower layers. Dark hair will often appear bleached on the upper layers due to sun exposure. Some heads of hair contain flecks of salt and pepper.
• Hair will often contain the most unlikely colours. Black hair, for instance, may appear blue at the highlights. Brown hair often contains crimsons or even violets. Blond hair often contains honey shades.
• The tonal value of hair will often appear to vary according to the thickness of the hair layer. Areas around the hairline, edges of the eyebrows or at the nape will appear paler than where hair is thicker.
• Good photographic reference will help when painting hair. This means working from a sharp photo in order to maximise realism.

But one of the commonest mistakes when painting hair is to illustrate each small strand in a linear way. Stubble, for instance should never be illustrated as dark dots. From afar, it will often appear as a tone between the flesh colour and the colour of the stubble, which may be grey. The same rule applies to eyebrows and hairlines.

Techniques for Painting Hair

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Various oil painting techniques are suitable for painting hair, depending upon the effect desired. It is often better to suggest detail than illustrate every strand, or the hair could end up looking harsh. Begin by blurring the eyes to get an overall impression of the hair, breaking it down into basic areas of highlight, shade and colours. Apply large areas of colour and tone first. Using glazes will help achieve a high finish by smoothing gradations and creating rich colours in the hair. This can be done by mixing a little linseed oil into the oil paint and applying the colour in layers, allowing each to dry. Blending is also important.

If realism is the goal, picking out selected areas of the hair and illustrating them will help give the impression of overall detail and avoid the hair becoming an unwanted focal point. After glazing, drag neat paint over a selected area with a fine sable. This can be used to illustrate flyaway hair or hairs that stray over the face.

Oil Painting Materials for Painting Hair

I personally use the following oil colours for hair: burnt umber, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, pthalo blue, permanent rose, cadmium red, cadmium yellow and white. Fine sables sizes 6 for applying glazes and 1 or 3 for detail are ideal. Linseed oil or alkyd medium is ideal for thinning the paint for glazes. Of course, good photographic reference or a patient model is essential.

Related Links on Portrait Painting

• Art books on portrait painting
• Skin tones in portraits
• How to paint children from a photo
• How to paint figures from life

In 234Next Obidike Okafor reports on Bisi Silva's Art Place

In trying to break uncharted areas in the art world, the curator felt that there were few avenues for critical discourse. So, like a scientist experiments, discovers and develops, Silva set out to create a space that like a laboratory will allow artists to develop themselves, experiment on new ideas and interact with colleagues from different parts of the world and the African Continent."There was nobody out there for the teeming population of artists who needed to keep abreast of what is happening in other parts of the world," she said. Thus, the CCA was born.

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With daring and compassion, Anna Quindlen weaves a forceful, harrowing portrait of a woman and a marriage, capturing the profound intricacies of love and rage, passion and violence. At once heartbreaking and utterly riveting, BLACK AND BLUE is an extraordinary work of fiction and a brilliant achievement.

For eighteen years, Fran Benedetto kept her secret, hid her bruises, and stayed with Bobby because she wanted her son to have a father and because, in spite of everything, she loved him. Then one night, when she saw the look on her ten-year-old son's face, Fran finally made a choice--and ran for both their lives.

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NaijaBlog writes about the "Replication of Values":

If one takes a glance around the Nigerian elite, one finds that it is populated solely by corporate types who work in banking or have senior management roles within large corporate organisations.There aren't any other types of elite at work (for instance, there isn't an intelligentsia elite or a bourgeoisie chattering class). The more difficult trick therefore is how to lure back Nigerians who actually might improve the society with a different set of values - interested in ideas, culture, research and challenging social norms with more contemporary attitudes. I suspect this is a general problem in developing countries - how to create ideological development and inject fresh thinking into conservative societies.
The trouble is, those who are in power tend to select as advisors and thinkers those who share their values. So, in Nigeria, we have 'gender experts' appointed senior advisory roles who believe firmly in the evangelically motivated doctrine that women should be subservient to their husbands; or we have economists who hold that the way forward for Nigeria is to create sweat shops across the country. In other words, conservative, purely economically-motivated values attract their own. In societies such as this, people with fresh ideas will always be treated as outcasts and alienated, while mediocre talents with outdated views get rewarded.