Next month I am flying to Brisbane, Australia for a conference run by the Postclassicisms research network at Princeton University called ‘The Classical and the Contemporary’. I will be giving another presentation under the aegis of Minus Plato following my intervention at ICAN V (International Conference on the Ancient Novel) in Houston last Fall – […]
A belated happy 2016 to you all! It has been a late start for Minus Plato, but it is set to be a busy year ahead, so do watch this space. In addition to my regular posts on Classics and Modern/Contemporary Art, throughout 2016 I will also be documenting two exciting projects that explore the […]
On Saturday I am making a very brief visit to New York City and I thought that the best way to prepare was to pick up a copy of poet, artist and activist Kenneth Goldsmith’s immense new book Capital: New York Capital of the 20th Century (Verso 2015). On opening the pages of this gilded […]
Constantine Cavafy’s famous poem Ithaka transforms the singular event of Odysseus’ nostos to his home on the rugged island of Ithaka into a symbolic, repeatable experience epitomized by understanding what ‘Ithakas’ plural mean. Here is the final two stanzas of the poem: Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn’t have set out. […]
How to begin? And then, once you’ve started, what do your beginnings mean? What do they even look like from the middle? In 1987 the artist Lawrence Weiner mused on these very questions when he created this snazzy porcelain plate and cup set for the Fodor Museum in Amsterdam. Lawrence Weiner Ab ovo usque ad […]
David Boeno Alcibiade. 132. d. 1988. Le Site is the labyrinthine digital encyclopedia of French photographer and self-titled ‘neoplatonic copyist’ David Boeno, which was exhibited for the first time at the Dijon Consortium in 1998. It is an immense database of ancient texts in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic, ordered according to an incredible range […]
I am writing this Minus Plato post on my phone, while sitting in the car outside MOCA Cleveland, waiting for my son to wake up from a nap. Inside may lie in wait an exhibition, an artist, an artwork, that could be the subject of a future Minus Plato post. But all I can do […]
In my Classics 2220H: Classical Mythology/Contemporary Art class last week, each of the students delivered presentations that connected their exploration of myths of creation, love and art with individual art works from the exhibition Open This End: Contemporary Art from the Collection of Blake Byrne at the OSU Urban Arts Space here in Columbus. Leaving […]
Tomorrow I will be attending the 5th International Conference on the Ancient Novel (ICAN) in Houston, Texas and on Friday I will be giving my first public performance under the persona of Minus Plato. My performance – which is not an academic paper – will re-wire Apuleius’ Metamorphoses into the strange machine known as the […]
Sometimes a Minus Plato post needs to leave all discussion/explanation/analysis in the background and we should simply just admire what contemporary artists are capable of. Look, see. Richard Hawkins, Untitled (Slash/Twombly) (detail), 1992 Cy Twombly, Fifty Days at Iliam: Shades of Achilles, Patroclus, and Hector, 1978