Word: artisticness
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...much closer than a museum-goer could ever be. On one spread we see butterflies or beetles arrayed by the dozen in a display drawer; the next might hold one or two of those specimens, captured with a macro lens at 10 or 20 times their size. If the artist on show here is Nature, the close-ups only increase one's awe. How many ways can you design the jaws of a beetle? How many possible patterns are there on a moth's wings? How can there be so many kinds of scales, from butterfly fuzzy to fish-sharp...
...paintings of Ahmad Zakii Anwar are best viewed from the vantage of the tropical street where the artist was born in 1955 and still lives. It is lined with rust-mottled Proton sedans and boxy concrete houses, and wedged into the forested hills above the Malaysian port city of Johor Bahru, where the Anwar family has been prominent in politics since Malaysia's independence 50 years ago. Shaded by droopy banana trees, and crisscrossed by stray cats creeping through chain-link fences, the landscape lies somewhere between a sleepy kampong, or Malay village, and a soulless American suburb. "There...
...auction in April, a lavender-colored painting of a flying male nude fetched $48,000, or triple its estimated price. Part of the reason Zakii's paintings are soaring in worth is because of their relative scarcity, which ironically also accounts for his modest profile among Southeast Asian artists. Sotheby's and Christie's have sold around half a dozen Zakii works each over the past several years. It's a trickle compared to the flood of paintings by his peers - the Indonesians Yunizar, Nyoman Masriadi or Putu Sutawijaya, for instance, all of whom have received lots of attention...
...Indeed, the artist wouldn't be ordinarily mistaken for a sexual-rights advocate. A tall man with John Lennon-style glasses, he looks more like a rumpled art lecturer than a rebel, and he cheerfully avoids the active political life of his late father, Haji Anwar, who was involved in the founding of the United Malays National Organization, Malaysia's ruling party since 1957. Even so, it is possible to imagine the directness of Zakii's compositions and calm, soothing brushstrokes as echoing his upbringing in a family of firm convictions. "I believe in certainty," he says. "Uncertainty...
...during amateur nights. The crowd’s reaction dictates all—offending acts are booed off-stage, and the winner is voted in by enthusiastic cheers. The show’s acts varied in genre as well as skill, including dance performances, a vocalist, a spoken-word artist, a guitarist, and—of course—several requisite references to Soulja Boy. Rejection wasn’t always determined by talent: the undergraduate dance group Expressions kicked off the night with a high-tech display, and the audience was quick to boo a glitch in the sound...