Van Doesburg and the International Avante

Introduction The Tate Exhibit, by assembling international works and works in many media, demonstrates, to the less enthusiastic, the exhibit designer’s message that the Avante-Garde was a legitimate and wide ranging movement, and one which reverberates in its effects even today. Styles such as Neo-Plasticism, are Elementarism are examined, but the most colorful is Dada.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Van Doesburg and the International Avante-Garde: Constructing a New World specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Dadaism elicits different responses from different viewers, from the trivial, irritating, or enraging, to the profoundly liberating, and has done so since it was launched on the world. Given its anti-establishment history, and the continuing debate over whether it is really art, its glorification at the Tate is ironic. The Tate show can help demonstrate Dada’s impact on today’s design and our definitions of art. Some examples from real life include: the teaching of art to kids, stained glass in contemporary sacred spaces, home furnishings, music teaching and making. A sampling of the styles the show features includes De Stijl, Dadaism, Elementarism, and Neo-Plasticism. The multi-national selection of artists range from the biggies such as Arp and Mondrian, and obscure ones as well, with a strong Dutch presence and funding support. The media displayed are wide ranging, and reflect the intention of the Avant-Garde’s proponents to overturn old art norms and make art and design accessible to the masses. Works are arranged such that the orthogonals and diagonals are sited at either end, and artists, crafts, and disciplines affected by the Avante-Garde are on display in between. Van Doesburg’s drawings of exploded architectural detail are missing from the exhibit. Photos of the artists enrich our understanding of the human background to the art. Merchandise i n the stores is well-displayed and offers customers a chance to wear their intellectual bona fides on their blouse. The Tate has offered a selection of lectures and other fora for viewer education. The arrangement of the exhibit helps to make the point that the Avant-Garde was more than artistic crankiness or mental disorder. Conclusion: The ongoing debate over whether the works of the Avante-Garde are really art is not by any means resolved. However, the ideas of the Avante-Garde certainly liberated the making of art to our benefit today.Advertising Looking for essay on architecture? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The design ideas we see around us are deeply affected by their work. The exhibit reveals the international scope of the Avante-Garde, and highlights the connections between the Avante-Garde and what we see around us on a regular basis. Van Doesburg’s legacy is worth remembering. This Section is not Part of t he Assigned Project The following is the list of questions originally posed by the instructor for consideration, not an essay. This is set up as a checklist to allow the customer to reassure themselves that all the questions have been addressed, and to facilitate communication across the language barrier with the customer. Since the topic is an art exhibit, and secondary sources are not exhaustive, many of these answers are inferences rather than based on direct personal observation, which would have been the ideal way of responding to the questions Who organized the exhibition? Vicente Toldi, Tate Director Who curated it? Gladys Fabre, independent curator Who sponsored it? Tate Patrons, Tate International Council, The Van Doesburg Exhibition Supporters Group, The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dedalus Foundation, Inc, Mondriaan Foundation, Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation (Straver Foundation), SNS Reaal Fond Who designed it? Vicente Toldi, presumably, since no other person is mentioned. Who is it intended audience? Possibly anyone who may not have thought very much about the impact of the Avante-Garde, or who is not an avid art fan is the target. What are the aims of the exhibition? Based on the artists and works chosen; the aim is to display works not often seen, to display works by lesser known artists, and to show a wide range of media that were affected by the ideas of the Avante-Garde. What is its central argument? You can see evidence of how these artists succeeded in overturning much of what went before when you look around you at design, art, and art instruction today, and see their influence. What current debates or topical issues does the exhibition engage with? Is this stuff truly ART? What underlying assumptions are communicated by the choice of exhibits and form of display? The form of display seems to assume mostly non-disabled viewers assumes that people walking on their own two feet and looking with good vision are viewing the works. It also assumes that the viewer has not seen previously ephemera and crafts from the same period, objects which reflect similar design ideas. Is it successful in terms of fulfilling the aims of the organizers? It has been well reviewed for the most part in terms of demonstrating why lesser known names in the Avante-Garde should be studied and remembered, and documenting the enduring influence of these ideas. What if anything is excluded from its central narrative? Not sure – maybe politics, but not sure, but one reviewer mentioned the absence of certain Van Doesburg architectural drawings. How is the exhibition organized (by theme, designer, chronologically, other)? Orthogonals are sited at one end and diagonals at the other, with other materials in between that were influenced by the artistic dialogue going on at the time. How are the artifacts contextualized (i.e., through info panels, labels, graphics, catalogue, etc.)? Not sure, but there seem to be labels with sub stantial information. There are lectures and talks as well, and a workshop for a hand-on project. Is the design of the exhibition appropriate for its subject matter? It sounds like it, but not sure. Does the Tate exhibit provide an educational experience, and how does it achieve this? Lectures, talks, hands-on projects, contribute to background education. Is there a shop specifically devoted to merchandise supporting the exhibition, and how much space does it occupy in relation to the exhibits? Yes, but not sure how much space is allocated – the interactive map did not seem to specify the shop footage. What kinds of products does the shop sell, and how are they merchandised? Typical, not terribly innovative; items meet the need for items to signal the consumer’s intellectual identity, or â€Å"brand†. End of explanatory notes to customer Outline Van Doesburg and the International Avante-Garde: Constructing a New World 1. Introduction: The Tate Exhibit, by assem bling international works and works in many media, demonstrates, to the less enthusiastic, the exhibit designer’s message that the Avante-Garde was wide ranging and reverberates in its effects even today. 2. Background of Dadaism as a confusing off-shoot of the Avante-Garde a. The meaning of the word b. The reaction of the contemporary gallery visitors c. How Dada was viewed at the time d. Irony of an anti-establishment movement being displayed in Tate 3. The Tate show can help demonstrate Dada’s impact on today’s design and definition of art: examples a. Teaching of art to kids b. Stained glass c. Home furnishings d. Music making 4. Sampling of styles the show includes a. De Stijl b. Dadaism c. Elementarism d. Neo-Plasticism 5. Artists included a. Many works from off-shore b. Strong Dutch representation and sponsorship support 6. Media included a. Wide range of artistic disciplines b. Reflect the intention to make art accessible even to the oppressed 7. Arrange ment of works a. Orthogonals and diagonals at either end b. Artists affected by these in display in between c. Crafts and disciplines affected on display in between d. Drawings of exploded architectural detail missing from exhibit e. Photos enrich understanding of the human background to the art Conclusion The ongoing debate over whether the works of the Avante-Garde are really art is not by any means resolved. However, the ideas of the Avante-Garde certainly liberated the making of art to our benefit today. The design ideas we see around us are deeply affected by their work. The exhibit reveals the international scope of the Avante-Garde, and highlights the connections between the Avante-Garde and what we see around us on a regular basis.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Van Doesburg and the International Avante-Garde: Constructing a New World specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The current exhibit at the Tate Mode rn brings a host of objects together from a variety of artists, countries, and media, and styles that fall under the general category of the Avante-Garde (Dadaism, Neo-Plasticism, Elementarism, Constructivism, and Art Concret). This impressive assemblage demonstrates the multi-national nature of the Avante-Garde in its time of inception. The exhibit also provides ample basis for considering (even by those who do not live and die by art ) the wide ranging and long lasting impact on the lives of people today of the ideas fermenting in the first decades of the 20th century, even the chaotic and self-negating ideas of Dadaism. Dada is a word that can be understood differently, depending on one’s role, and where one is standing. To a proud papa, it is, he hopes, the first word spoken by a beloved toddler. To a current music aficionado, it is the name of a band (dada home page). As pointed out by Tristan Tzara, a poet and essayist of the early 1900’, the word also describes the tail of a holy cow, among the  « Kru Negroes  » (an archaic and now offensive term for an indigenous tribe in what is today called Liberia ), mother and a cube in Italian dialect, and a nurse and hobby horse in Russian, as well as in his native tongue, Romanian. However, Tzara declares in his Dada Manifesto 1918,  « The magic of a word – Dada – which has brought journalists to the gates of a world unforeseen, is of no importance to us.  »(Tzara, Dada Manifesto 1918). This paradoxical statement, and so many others, is typical of the deliberately confusing, transgressive, and challenging utterances of Tzara, ne Samuel Rosenstock, a key articulator of Dadaism. To current enthusiastic visitors to museums of modern art, the name Dada is shorthand for a sidebar to the Avante-Garde, art as goofball antic, art as thumb to nose, but also, art as something that might be easily mistaken for a bin to accommodate one’s litter, or an attractively mounted fire ext inguisher. On the other hand, to those visitors who have been dragged along by their special art fan, Dada may very well be a reason they say they think that avant-garde art is a crock. Advertising Looking for essay on architecture? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Why, they ask plaintively, don’t we just bring our rubbish to the museum and leave it here in a neat pile – who would know the difference? What sort, they ask angrily, of prat would pay good money for such stuff? Doesn’t our kid draw something just as good? Where is the cafà ©, they ask in desperation, and, more importantly, how soon may we leave? These public reactions are not novel, nor, if we are to believe their own writings, would they necessarily have been unwelcome to the first promoters of the Dada movement. The Dadaists were in reaction against just about everything . In return, they were regarded with less than approval by their contemporaries, and they knew it, and made fun of this phenomenon. In light of how disparaged they were by the art world in the first decades of the 1900’s, and especially in light of how deeply they criticized the art establishment, they might be turning in their graves at the thought of the large current exhibit at th e Tate Modern (running through May). Or, perhaps, the thought might tickle them, especially the application of Theo Van Doesburg’s colorful geometries to towels, totes and magnets in the gift shop . If a Dadaist were resurrected today, he might gleefully pluck a tea towel from the gift shop and display it as art, not because of the pattern, but as an object chosen by him, placed out of its usual context as an article of clothing, titled with whatever whimsical thought occurred, put on display, and therefore constituting ART. There would certainly be ample precedent! The submission, without comment, of a fountain, to an art show, an act of artistic anarchy attributed to Marcel Duchamp, is practically legendary. But back to the weary, less than excited visitor, wondering why on earth they should be learning about this stuff. (The museum is indeed offering a lecture series, even for the deaf, curators’ talks, and an opportunity to create a hands-on project to help both the confused and the rapt). Why should he/ she be interested at all? Art historians, on one end of the interest spectrum, are the converted, the choir, to whom it is unnecessary to preach. In answer to this question, they can point to direct lines of influence from the Dadaism of the 1910s and 1920s to the Neo-Dadaism of the post-World War II period, and well known and important names like Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns (Craft), and, it could be asserted, Andy Warhol. In another direction, connections can be drawn to Surrealism (Craft 4), a movement with its own flock of current artistic offspring, particularly in film, and animation. However, at the other end of the spectrum of interest and expertise, even the uninitiated among us can identify Dada’s impact in our lives. A swift peek into the chaos and happily self-defined art creations being crafted from re-cycled materials at the nearest grammar school would offer an answer to that question . Also of interest would be a tour of a suburban modern church building . Or take a walk-through of the wall and floor coverings department of a home store . Finally, check out GarageBand, a piece of software that allows kids to assemble music from a file of pre-recorded sound samples (Garageband). All these cultural phenomena seem to be influenced by the ideas of Dadaism. The show at the Tate may, in light of this, assist those who would preferentially spend at least some of their Sunday afternoons watching Manchester United rather than getting sore feet at galleries, to draw meaningful connections between Dadaism and current trends and manifestations of the arts, and design. The current Tate Modern show, taking up half of the fourth level of the museum, does not merely cover Dadaism. It also encompasses the movement that was one of Van Doesburg’s numerous other artistic life pursuits: among them, the ultimate in geometric abstraction, wherein any reference to the human body or realism of any sor t was anathema. Van Doesburg’s ideas on this and other isms of the day were expressed in his editorship of De Stijl, a magazine as well as the name of a style, and through peripatetic lectures and conferences (Mawer). He and Piet Mondrian espoused simplifying art to a series of geometric elements. Even this was subject to disagreement: the two colleagues split off into Elementarism (diagonals allowed) and the horizontal and vertical axes of Dutch Neo-Plasticism, a rarified movement (orthogonal horizontals and verticals only) of which Mondrian eventually found himself the only votary; (Darwent). The show includes many works on loan from elsewhere. This means that many pieces have never been seen in the UK, especially those by Theodore Van Doesburg. There is a largely Dutch roster of sponsors , which may have helped in the acquisition of so many Van Doesburg pieces. Alternatively, perhaps the inclusion of these rarely-seen works was a cunning appeal to Dutch chauvinism for r ecruiting support from Dutch funders. This strong representation from other collections may be the reason so many of the 350 items are not imaged digitally for later, more leisurely examination. In any case, the range of countries represented certainly highlights the message forcefully that the Avante -Garde was an international movement, with plenty of cross pollination among artistic communities. The Tate’s director, Vicente Todolà ­, has made a point of mounting several previous exhibits focusing on other features of Modernism (The Tate Modern Museum), perhaps as a means of ensuring the development of a future visitor base. If an audience is not raised up in the knowledge and appreciate of the arts, they will not support the arts. Gladys Fabre, an independent curator, has brought together works in a variety of media and genres. She has assembled the big names in Dada, De Stijl, and the Avante- Garde: Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp; names that even the uninf ormed might recognize. She has included, as well, less well known artists whose work was influenced, or had an influence on, De Stijl, such as Francis Picabia, Là ¡szlà ³ Moholy-Nagy, Gerrit Rietveld, Sophie Taeuber, and Kurt Schwitters. A full range of media are represented. They include traditional painting and drawings, and sculpture. This latter is defined, as in the case of the aluminum and wood robot-like Mechanical Dancing Figure, by the less familiar Vilmos Huszà ¡, or the chunky blue vaguely android figure Construction within a Sphere, by the equally under-exposed Georges Vantongerloo, by the whimsy of Dadaism. Ms. Fabre has also included less expected examples of designs that came out of the movement such as typeface, architectural interiors (for example, the explosion of color blocks on the ceiling of the University Hall, in Amsterdam, or the rocking Aubette dance space from Strasbourg), and furniture designs (such as the sculpturally limpid but uncomfortable-appearing Gerrit Reitvald chair, and the modern-looking leather and metal chairs). There are also publications, posters (one mysterious one features the letters HELI), stained glass (such as the emblematic and endlessly copied windows for the De Lange house), music, and film (The Tate Modern Museum). This assemblage of objects from all along the spectrum from utilitarian objects to fine, arts, is reminiscent of the vertical integration of some consumer products and manufacturers (the Apple company is one example, Mattel’s Barbie range could be another) wherein products for all uses and levels of complexity are produced under one corporate umbrella and with a solitary design vision. The wealth and diversity of material demonstrates that the Avante-Garde was a thoroughgoing attempt – utilizing art and design – to overturn everything that went before. Considering that in 1918 the world had just endured the soul-searing destruction of a global war, there was revolution abr oad, influenza stalked the world, and women were still wearing corsets, there was plenty to complain about. The devotees of De Stijl felt that the earlier century’s efforts to portray reality in an increasingly abstracted fashion (Impressionism, Cubism, and Expressionism, for example) never quite broke free of the reality that persisted as the subject. Somehow, even the gradual uncoupling of painting and sculpture from strict realism came in for withering scorn from the Van Doesburg cabal (Tzara, Lecture on Dada, 1922, reprinted in Tristan Tzara: Biography, DADAism, and Poetry). The proponents of De Stijl wanted to bring the healing and uplifting benefits of liberated and accessible art and design to the oppressed and the deracinated (Darwent) . In our own era, entrepreneurs such as Terence Conran, and corporations such as IKEA have adopted the notion of good-design-for-all to great and profitable effect. The exhibit is arranged such that Mondrian’s orthogonal stateme nts are at one end. These are largely color blocks, very familiar, unthreatening, in various sizes and proportions. They are so accustomed an idiom that one feels one has seen them before, even if the particular piece is clearly an import. Van Doesburg’s paintings in his Counter Proposal series are at the other end of the exhibit. These works, such as Simultaneous Counter-Composition, 1930, resemble Mondrians, but rotated by some 45 degrees, and sometimes disordered a bit. These paintings submit diagonals as an alternative to the grid (the â€Å"counter† proposal). They can remind the viewer of a close-up of the bathroom floor tiles, seen a bit too close for comfort during an episode of stomach upset. However, anyone who has ever installed floor coverings on the diagonal to stretch the visual space in a tiny room truly owes Van Doesburg a debt of gratitude for opening up a new direction and making the off-kilter seem like an inevitable option. These are serene painti ngs which add color and form without insisting on the viewer’s involvement, but they reward closer attention as well. The rooms in between bear testimony to the vast array of apparently unrelated design and craft specialties that De Stijl affected, and, by extension, the design ideas we see applied these days. As an example of lasting effect, the rationalized typography design that Van Doesburg innovated (letters fitting in a square, with no lower case letters), can be seen as enabling the development of machine readable typefaces today. The software called Wordle, which makes a graphic out of any block of text, highlighting words and phrases that repeat often, seems to be a direct descendant of Van Doesburg’s experiments with poster art (Feinberg). As an example of how De Stijl helped to break down boundaries between artistic disciplines, and the constraints of any one medium, the exhibit includes film clips animating Plasticist and Elementarist painting (Darwent). S imon Mawer of The Guardian faults the exhibit for not including drawings of collaborative architectural projects created with Cornelis van Eesteren. These sound fascinating: the drawings are exploded into three dimensions. Contemporary architects prize such drawings as the best and highest journeyman examples of their craft – it would indeed have been interesting to see how Van Doesburg handled this technique. The exhibit has been reviewed with differing responses. The impersonality of De Stijl leaves some viewers unmoved (Sooke). However, there is agreement that this is a welcome chance to see works that are not often brought together. There is also agreement that the inclusion of art and design that was influenced by ideas promulgated by Van Doesburg opens up that period to our view, and the wealth of photographs put a human face on this often austere art. The photos document the relationships that underpinned the life of these artists, especially their lovers and wives. I t is interesting to learn, for example, that Nellie Van Doesburg participated in the performance art pieces that Kurt Schwitters and Van Doesburg mounted around Europe, and that Sophie Taueber was married to Jean Arp, and that they all collaborated on the design of Strasbourg’s Aubette building (Mawer). There has been an ongoing debate regarding the seriousness and validity of the Avante-Garde since it was born. The apparent simplicity and the lack of craft of some of its most famous products leave the impression that there is nothing going on artistically. This debate is not over. Viewers, especially hoi polloi are still asking whether this is really art. It is not clear that this exhibit will answer that question finally for everyone. However, the clever choices that have been made, and the co-location of works that are different in media but related in idea, help to make the point that the concepts of the Avante-Garde had an impact across Europe, and in many different fiel ds. The specifics of the style of De Stijl (austerity, abstraction, the straight lines of the Bauhaus, on which Van Doesburg aimed to have an impact) may still not be to everyone’s taste. The merchandising of the exhibit, on the other hand, is readily accessible. An exit shop, that relatively new marketing method of extracting funds from visitor wallets, imprints the cheerful Van Doesburg diagonals on any flat, or near flat, surface (tea towels, totes, key tags, mugs, magnets, notebooks, bags), and offers books documenting the exhibit, displayed tastefully against a sober, receding, industrial gray background. This venue is supplemented by offerings in the main museum shop. In a decade when the identity of self is defined by the brands one carries or wears, perhaps toting one’s trainers and exercise kit in a Van Doesburg-emblazoned bag, or drinking one’s cocoa from a similarly decorated beaker seems a legitimate means of proclaiming one’s intellectual be nt. â€Å"You should want to marry me (or hire me, or be friends with me) because I have slogged through this intellectually challenging exhibit â€Å", trumpets the merchandise. A much coveted related sales item is a set of Dadaist poetry generators: a pre-selected collection of individual words mounted on magnet backing whose arrangement ad libitum allows people to create their own Dada-style poem on their refrigerator door (Tzara, To Make A Dadist Poem, reprinted in Tristan Tzara: Biography, DADAism, and Poetry). Happily, the overturning of the 19th century insistence on an imitation of nature (which effectively excluded from the practice of art anyone who was not a good draftsperson), has spawned a whole new style of art teachers, whose young students joyously create something, anything; confident in their belief (directly attributable to Van Doesburg and his companions) that if they call it art, IT IS, by gosh, ART. Reflecting this same joyous anarchy, Catherine Craft notes that Robert Motherwell, the essential biographer of the Avante-Garde, observed that Dada had given health and new life to painting in Europe (Craft 3-4). There is also a practical inheritance, e.g., typefaces which even a computer can read. The geographic distribution and inter-connectedness of the Avante-Garde are presented forcefully in the exhibit, and it is accessible both to the fan and the less than rapt. Van Doesburg well deserves this resurrection from oblivion. I. The catalogue of ideas, institutions, religions, and behaviors, to name a few, that Dada revolts against, is expressed here by Tristan Tzara: â€Å"The beginnings of Dada were not the beginnings of an art, but of a disgust. Disgust with the magnificence of philosophers who for 3ooo years have been explaining everything to us (what for? ), disgust with the pretensions of these artists-God’s-representatives-on-earth, disgust with passion and with real pathological wickedness where it was not worth the both er; disgust with a false form of domination and restriction *en masse*, that accentuates rather than appeases man’s instinct of domination, disgust with all the catalogued categories, with the false prophets who are nothing but a front for the interests of money, pride, disease, disgust with the lieutenants of a mercantile art made to order according to a few infantile laws, disgust with the divorce of good and evil, the beautiful and the ugly (for why is it more estimable to be red rather than green, to the left rather than the right, to be large or small?). Disgust finally with the Jesuitical dialectic which can explain everything and fill people’s minds with oblique and obtuse ideas without any physiological basis or ethnic roots, all this by means of blinding artifice and ignoble charlatans promises. â€Å"(Tzara, Lecture on Dada, 1922, reprinted in Tristan Tzara: Biography, DADAism, and Poetry) (sic) II. This impatience with art as it used to be was verbalized by Tristan Tzara in the following almost lucid quote: â€Å"We don’t accept any theories. We’ve had enough of the cubist and futurist academies: laboratories of formal ideas†¦ Cubism was born out of a simple manner of looking at objects: Cezanne painted a cup twenty centimetres lower than his eyes, the cubists look at it from above, others complicate its appearance by cutting a vertical section through it and soberly placing it to one side. (I’m not forgetting the creators, nor the seminal reasons of unformed matter that they rendered definitive.) The futurist sees the same cup in movement, a succession of objects side by side, mischievously embellished by a few guide-lines. This doesn’t stop the canvas being either a good or a bad painting destined to form an investment for intellectual capital. The new painter creates a world whose elements are also its means, a sober, definitive, irrefutable work. The new artist protests: he no longer paints (symbo lic and illusionistic reproduction) but creates directly in stone, wood, iron, tin, rocks, or locomotive structures capable of being spun in all directions by the limpid wind of the momentary sensation. Every pictorial or plastic work is unnecessary†¦A painting is the art of making two lines, which have been geometrically observed to be parallel, meet on a canvas, before our eyes, in the reality of a world that has been transposed according to new conditions and possibilities. This world is neither specified nor defined in the work, it belongs, in its innumerable variations, to the spectator. For its creator it has neither cause nor theory. Order = disorder; ego = non?ego; affirmation = negation: the supreme radiations of an absolute art. Absolute in the purity of its cosmic and regulated chaos, eternal in that globule that is a second which has no duration, no breath, no light and no control. I appreciate an old work for its novelty. It is only contrast that links us to the pa st.(Tzara, Dada Does Not Mean Anything, reprinted in Tristan Tzara: Biography, DADAism, and Poetry) (sic) III. Tristan Tzara offered the following straightforward instruction, in poetic format. He could also have mentioned that choosing several different articles with different typefaces would add a certain decorative fillip to the randomly generated poem: To Make a Dadist Poem Take a newspaper. Take some scissors. Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently. Next take out each cutting one after the other. Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag. The poem will resemble you. And there you are an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.† (Tzara, To Make A Dadist Poem, reprinted in Tristan Tzara: Biography, DADAism, and Poetry) (sic) Resources (Mod ern Dime Sized Coins of the World: Liberia) â€Å"I don’t have to tell you that for the general public and for you, the refined public, a Dadaist is the equivalent of a leper. But that is only a manner of speaking. When these same people get close to us, they treat us with that remnant of elegance that comes from their old habit of belief in progress. At ten yards distance, hatred begins again. If you ask me why, I won’t be able to tell you.† (Tzara, Lecture on Dada, 1922, reprinted in Tristan Tzara: Biography, DADAism, and Poetry) The size of gift shops has begun to rival exhibits in many museums; The Metropolitan has several and at least one off-site. This indicates just how tenuous are the traditional sources of support for museums’ operations, now seldom covered by admission sales. In an article assumed to be by Marcel Duchamp, the author defends the appropriateness for inclusion of a fountain in an art show, as follows: â€Å"He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.†(Duchamp) This could be considered a summary statement of the criteria for Dadaist art. Observe how the teacher encourages the kids to call whatever they put together, whatever they create, whatever they assemble, ART. Look at the geometric stained glass which graces so many contemporary church windows; even decades after Van Doesburg and Mondrian are gone from the scene. Equally; the geometric Mondrianization of patterns is evident everywhere in home furnishings. Art is what you choose to call art; a Dada principle! It is hard not to imagine that a high fiber diet and some yoghurt, or an anti-depressant, might have soothed these anal-compulsive-seeming obsessions just as effectively. Tate Patrons, Tate International Council, The Van Doesburg Exhibition Supporters Group, The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherla nds, Dedalus Foundation, Inc, Mondriaan Foundation, Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation (Straver Foundation), SNS Reaal Fond (The Tate Modern Museum). It should be noted that there was a distinct political (or sometimes anti-political) thread in the passions of the Avante-Garde, which did not always endear the movement to establishment institutions (Craft 3). Van Doesburg’s use of â€Å"solomite†, a building material made of straw, is a striking foreshadowing of the whole sustainability movement in home design today (Mawer). Bibliography Craft, Catherine. New York Dada? Looking Back After a Second World War, lecture given September 9, 2006. 2010. 10 March 2010 http://media.moma.org/audio/2006/pub_prog/spec_exhib/Dada/MOMA_RepresentingDadatalk.pdf. dada home page. 2010. 11 March 2010 http://dadatheband.com/. Darwent, Charles. Well-chosen works show how De Stijl – ‘The Style’ – movement led to a revolution in European art that still resonates today: Van Doesburg the International Avant-Garde, Tate Modern, London. 2010. 11 March 2010 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/van-doesburg–the-international-avantgarde-tate-modern-london-1891448.html. Duchamp, Marcel. â€Å"‘Dissent and Disorder’-Selected Essays on Dadaism.† Harrison, C. and Wood,P. Art in Theory. Trans. Ralph Mannheim. London: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. 250-275. Feinberg, Jonathan. Wordle: Beautiful Word Clouds. 2010. 12 March 2010 http://www.wordle.net/. Garageband. 2010. 10 March 2010 http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/. Mawer, Simon. Theo van Doesburg: Forgotten artist of the avant garde. 23 January 2010. 11 March 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jan/23/theo-van-doesburg-avant-garde-tate. Modern Dime Sized Coins of the World: Liberia. 2010. 10 March 2010 http://dewardt.net/dimebook/Liberia.pdf. Sooke, Alastair. Tate Modern’s new exhibition about the Dutch art movement De Stijl leave s Alastair Sooke feeling a little cold: Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde at Tate Modern, review. 11 March 2010. 11 March 2010 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/alastairsooke/7130547/Van-Doesburg-and-the-International-Avant-Garde-at-Tate-Modern-review.html. Tzara, Tristan. Dada Does Not Mean Anything, reprinted in Tristan Tzara: Biography, DADAism, and Poetry. 2010. 11 March 2010 http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/dada/Tristan-Tzara.html. Tzara, Tristan. â€Å"Dada Manifesto 1918.† Motherwell, Robert, and Arp, Jean. The Dada Painters and Poets. Trans. Ralph Mannheim. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1970. 76-82. —. Lecture on Dada, 1922, reprinted in Tristan Tzara: Biography, DADAism, and Poetry. 2010. 10 March 2010 http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/dada/Tristan-Tzara.html. —. To Make A Dadist Poem, reprinted in Tristan Tzara: Biography, DADAism, and Poetry. 2010. 11 March 2010 http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthis tory/dada/Tristan-Tzara.html. Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: About the Exhibition. 2010. 10 March 2010 http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/vandoesburg/default.shtm. This essay on Van Doesburg and the International Avante-Garde: Constructing a New World was written and submitted by user Rogelio T. to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Smoke Signals essays

Smoke Signals essays Can a reel Indian, ever be a sign for a real Indian? The question is somewhat specious, since most Caucasians imaged on American film are not signs of real people: the teeth are too white, the noses too sculpted, the bodies too buffed, the hair too perfectly coifed, the repartee too witty. To a certain extent, every movie is a smoke signal of cultural values. For this very reason, then, we should pay attention to cinematic signs generated by Native American culture itself, as in the 1998 film Smoke Signals, the first commercially successful movie written , directed, co-produced, and acted by Indians. With a comparatively modern setting, Smoke Signals is about the signs that represent Indians in contemporary culture. Not only do drumbeats associated with Indian war parties punctuate the score, but televisions in the background of several shots also display Indians on the rampage in old black-and-white Westerns. When one of the protagonists answers his question, "What is the only thing more authentic than Indians on TV? with "Indians watching Indians on TV", we realize that the film ironizes the very idea of authenticity. The desire for "authentic" movie Indians may simply generate "types" rather than complex human beings with strengths and weaknesses like our own. In contrast, Smoke Signals not only gives us flawed characters that elicit our sympathy and admiration but also displays, with affection, the dysfunction of the Coeur d'Alene Reservation in Idaho from which they come. The movie opens in 1976 with the voice of Lester Fallsapart reporting traffic for KREZ radio from atop a broken-down Winnebago. When the film cuts forward to 1998, Fallsapart, situated on the same Winnebago at the same crossroads, announces "It's a good day to be indigenous. The image, of course, forces us to question whether the "indigenous" have made any gains at all or, like the appropriately named Fallsapart and his Winne ...

Human development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Human development - Essay Example Everything that they have learned prior to adulthood essentially comes to fruition, making them an intelligent and decisive human being (Crandell & Zanden, 2009). My understanding of what it is to be an adult will change in different contexts in the sense that each human being, while going through roughly the same mental and physical changes, still has unique experiences. One adult is not entirely the same as another adult, and my understanding of what it is to be an adult will change with the knowledge of each individual. Research is important to the understanding of what it is to be a human being because humans are complex, ever-changing beings. We are not the same in adulthood as we are as infants or in childhood. As such, it is vital to understand human beings at each stage of their lives to know the types of changes that they go through and the experiences that they have. Furthermore, research allows us to discover and comprehend the changes that are not always apparent to the e ye.

Will US dollar lose its role as the global reserve currency before Essay

Will US dollar lose its role as the global reserve currency before 2050 - Essay Example There is a tendency among governments and individuals to diversify by storing the value of their wealth in other dominant currencies, other than the dollar or converting them into commodities. The BRICs development bank, weakening dollar trend, increased US budget deficit, emergence of alternative contender currencies, and shifting pricing away from the dollar elaborates on the serious threat the US dollar faces, in its position as the global reserve currency. The US Dollar has served as the dominant and world reserve currency for about seventy years today, since the adoption of the system back in the 1940s. Over the years, it gained acceptance and increased use in international transactions and by governments’ central banks for purposes of storing value, exchanges and invoicing transactions. It brought numerous advantages to the governments across the world, and especially the US citizens, whose purchases of goods or services have been at much cheaper rates compared to foreign nations. Some countries went on to peg their currencies to the dollar, but they have experienced the risks besides the benefits of the act. Though still a global reserve currency, the US dollar has been faced by numerous challenges towards the end of the 20th century and the past one decade. Inclusive to this are the exposed weakening US dollar, depreciated dollar and risk of volatility, emergence of challenging currencies to the dollar, changing monetary in stitution and dollar pricing, and diversification against the dollar. Though a debatable issue, the US Dollar is more likely to lose its role as the global reserve currency by 2050. It appears that countries are slowly changing their currencies in trading of products even at the international level. Where dollars have been used, other currencies are taking control. For example, most wise and even rich people have studied the behavior of the

Being friends before lovers can lead to a succesful relationship Research Paper

Being friends before lovers can lead to a succesful relationship - Research Paper Example â€Å"The commitment to marry is perhaps the most important and most complex decision made by individuals irrespective of geography or cultural background† (Srinivasan). The financial, emotional, and psychological implications of breakup from marriage in the life of the partners are immense. Therefore, many people want to benefit from others’ experiences and know whether friendship or love is a stronger predictor of success in marriage so that they can select the right partner for marriage. Different people hold different views regarding the strength of the role of friendship in making a marriage successful relative to that of love and vice versa, thus providing the topic ground for debate. There is no clear interface between friendship and love. Many feelings and emotions are common between friendship and love, including care, empathy, respect, sincerity, expectations, and honesty. The enormity of these similar factors incorporates subjectivity in people’s judgm ent of whether it was friendship or love that made the marriage of a particular couple successful. Therefore, there is no robust basis of people’s support for either friendship or love as the determinant of successful marriage. One thing that fundamentally differentiates between friendship and love is that friendship does not need a physical relationship to grow whereas physical relationship is a fundamental element in the growth of love between marital partners. Since sexual health of individuals may deteriorate over the time, something more important than love is required to sustain the marriages. Friendship between two people is a stronger predictor of success in their marriage than love. It is hard to mark a strict boundary between friendship and love since the two often overlap in several areas. Both friendship and love lay the basis of every successful relationship, be that a marriage, the relationship of a mother and a daughter, or any other kind of relationship. Peopl e make friends with individuals they can place confidence in and share their feelings, emotions, and secrets with and the same holds true for love. Like love, friendship removes the barriers people normally place between themselves and others to keep them from learning about their secrets. People make friends because they like each other’s personalities and characters, and accept each other along with all of their strengths and weaknesses. Love also demands pretty much the same. The most important factor that differentiates between friendship and love is sex. Sex between the marital partners is a fundamental cause and effect of love between them. When two people enter the contract of marriage because of their love for each other, the marriage is just as healthy as the physical relationship between the two. â€Å"[F]riends may engage in casual sex, but may also become involved romantically† (Barry and Madsen 1). One of the most important reasons why certain friends get married to each other is that they want to make love to each other in a way that is legitimate both in the eyes of the religion and the culture. â€Å"Marriage is a natural institution whereby a man and a woman give themselves to each other for life in a sexual relationship that is open to procreation –

The black sox scandal of 1919

The black sox scandal of 1919 Introduction During the First World War, gambling was rampant in the United States and fixing games was either assumed as harmless or tolerated. The worse was to come during the post-war period. With the closure of horse tracks, the bettors and all their accomplices shifted to their local baseball pitches where they practiced the dirty game. They cunningly spread rumors of fixes and/or injuries in a bid to move the odds in one way or the other (Zumsteg 182). The underworld operations between gamblers and other dubious characters with teams, players and funs facilitated the fix of a 1919 World Series Championship. Little known Cincinnati Red Stockings emerged victorious over the indomitable Chicago White Sox because the latter threw the game for the want of money. This paper looks at the background of the scandal, how stinginess the Black Sox boss led his players to party with gamblers. The figures behind the scum area also mentioned together with the role they played to make it a success. Nationa l Commissions ban of the eight conspirators from the game for life is one of the devastating consequences of the scandal. Lastly, it briefly looks at the profile of Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte. The Background of the Scandal The first ever World Series baseball game was played in the year 1903. Prior to that, a Mr. William C. Temple in a bid to popularize baseball offered a championship trophy to the winner and the first runners-up of the National League in the 1894 best-of-seven-game series. In 1901, the American League was established a move that surprised the insiders of the National League. A â€Å"cold war† ensued between the two teams where each league competed amongst its own members. Eventually, a deal was made two years later called the â€Å"National Agreement†. This deal other than outlining baseballs employment, salary and travel packages, it produced a blueprint that merged the two into a major league which has been in place up to today (â€Å"Baseball Almanac† para. 4). In the 1903 World Series that preceded the deal, Pittsburgh (from the defunct National League) was competing with Boston (from the defunct American League). Both teams were topping their erstwhile leagues and were to measure the prowess of the each other under one umbrella. This debut attracted the interest of the American folks and from then henceforth, the attendance of professionally played baseball games soared more so in the post-World War I period. Following this growing interest on the game, the 1919 World Series was anticipated with baited breaths and considering that the season had recorded huge attendance, one is left to imagine for ones self the anxiety that was rife (Meyer para. 2). Most funs of baseball games got involved in gambling about the outcome of a game and great games attracted professional gamblers. At this time, the post-war depression was setting in hence public despondence about the economy. Racial tensions were high, and people generally were in a pandemonium mood. It therefore came as no surprise that the players of the Chicago White Sox, also known as the Black Sox, fell prey to the traps of arch-gamblers of the time in persons of William Thomas (a.k.a. Sleepy Bill), Billy Maharg, and Billy Burns (Meyer para. 3). The Die Is Cast As has been mentioned above, the 1919 World Series charged the atmosphere before the actual game. The two teams to compete were the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Two years ago the Chicago White Sox had emerged the winners of 1917 World Series; in fact they had won 8 out of the last 9 World Series. That very year on September 24th they had clinched the pennant and hence were slated to be the likely winners of the years World Series. Therefore people were betting on the loss of Cincinnati Red Stockings. This scenario was fertile for the operations of the wily gamblers. Knowing that almost everyone was touting for the Chicago White Soxs win, reversing their position against the multitude would attract more money but some underdog deal had to be done to get the money. The internal dissension that characterized the Chicago White Sox players partly contributed to their vulnerability to the gamblers. First, among the players themselves there were two factions: one for the better-schooled members and the other for the illiterate members. Secondly there was a uniform resentment towards the club president Charles Comiskey. He was said to be underpaying his players making Chicago White Sox the poorly paying team in that period. In fact, it is said that the team acquired the name Black Sox when they continuously played with filthy jerseys after Comiskey had refused to bill their laundry; instead he asked each player to bill his. Seeing that his order was turned down, he resorted to slicing a fraction of each players salary to bill the laundry. However, no study has yet substantiated this claim. Again it was said that he used to make promises of monetary value to his players but in the long run he either reneged or shortchanged the player(s). Eddie Cicotte , pitcher, for example was to be awarded a bonus of roughly US$ 10,000 upon winning thirty games. Cicotte had won his twenty-ninth game and was then posed for his thirtieth win but was deliberately benched by his boss to avoid awarding the bonus (Weiler 36). Perhaps the gamblers might have known the frustration that was sickening the players. It argued that one member of the squad by the name Arnold Gandil (a.k.a. Chick) the first baseman who was known to have a protracted clandestine relationship with the gangsters was approached with the offer. Together with his colleague Cicotte they endorsed the deal and sort for more recruits since fixing a game of that category could not just be fixed by two players. Here it can be inferred that Gandils dubious reputation might have led him to accepting the deal but Cicotte was out for a revenge against his boss who cunningly denied him his bonus. Because they were offered US$ 100,000 to divide among themselves this was an opportunity to make an extra dollar. The duo drawn from the illiterate faction of the team went fishing for willing conspirators from among their group. Pitcher Claude Williams (a.k.a. Lefty), shortstop Charles Risberg (a.k.a. Swede), and outfielder Oscar Felsch (a.k.a. Happy) were recruited. But infielder Fred McMullin forced himself into the group after he had secretly learned about it. He demanded that unless he was allowed in, he would report. An attempt to enlist Buck Weaver, the third baseman was futile for he refused outright to be a part of the complicity. The involvement of Joe Jackson, the star outfielder, in the conspiracy has been disputed ever since the scandal came to be known. Some sources say that being illiterate Jackson participated in the deal with little knowledge of its repercussions, while others say that he received threats from some team members, yet some maintain that he did not participate at all (Albert, Bennett Cochran 84). It is said that Joe Jackson was included in the plot so as to give credibility to the gamblers that the deal was sealed. Being one of the greatest hitters in the game, his presence was very vital for it spelt success to the conspirators. In first game, Eddie Cicotte beam as the first batter of the game thereby sending signals to the other conspirators that the fix was on. As one would expect, the Chicago White Sox lose 9-1 in quite a suspicious manner. The following day still there was no improvement not only in the scores but also in the fashion in which they were playing and for this reason the team lost 4-2 to the Cincinnati Red Stockings. However in Game 3 there was a hitch occurred that pushed the White Sox to the top. A player of modest dexterity by the name Dickey Kerr, a member of the White Sox squad drew the start of the game. Unaware of the fix, the strong lefthander player ignored the calls by his scandalous team mates to roll over, instead he threw a three hit 3-0 that saved the White Sox from getting out of the race (â€Å"Baseball Almanac† para. 2). The turn of events made the Cincinnati Red Stocking players to intensify their concentration and focus. Having no idea that the game was being thrown, they pitched back-to-back shutouts during the fourth and the fifth games. Jimmy Ring steered them into winning the fourth game by 2-0 while Hod Ellers (5-0) ensured that the fifth game was taken by the Reds. Ordinarily the series would have ended at that point with the Reds win. But the commissioner of baseball extended it to a best-of-nine competition arguing that the intense following of the series during the postwar warranted more games for the entertainment of funs (â€Å"Baseball Almanac† para. 3). The following two games were won by the White Sox (5-4 and 4-1) arguably because they wanted to contain more suspicion. Real drama was experienced in the final game where the Cincinnati Red Stockings literally dominated the game. The White Sox players who were complicity resolved to let them loose, throwing the game to the oppone nt at 10 to 1 (Meyer para. 7). The Cincinnati had been aided to win their first ever World Championship in their debut into the series. After the game had been lost as expected the money was to be shared among the participants. The principal plotters reaped a good sum: Gandil received US$ 35,000; Risberg got US$ 15,000 and Cicotte US$10,000. Others were given quite a raw deal: Williams Jackson, McMullin and Felsch each got US$ 5,000. Gandil who was the ring leader refused to divide the spoils to Weaver arguing that he had failed to support the others in facilitating the fix (Chermak Bailey 9). Lefty Williams was sent with an envelop containing US$ 5,000 to give to Shoeless Jackson who turned it down. Rather than keeping the money, Williams threw it on the ground and left. The following day, Jackson decided to go and see his boss Comiskey with the money. Unfortunately for him, Mr. Comiskey was not in his office but his assistant Mr. Harry Grabiner was. He showed the money to Grabiner explaining its origin. Perhaps this was how the saga reached Charles Comiskey (Meyer para. 10). Trial and Banning of the Conspirators Following the increased cases of gambling in baseball, the National Commission chairman talked Judge Charles McDonald into convening a grand jury in Cook County, Illinois to investigate the matter; though the real intention was to look into the 1919 World Series. In September 22nd, 1920, the grand jury convened and players from the major league who had heard of the fix testified against the Black Sox players of the previous series. Eddie Cicotte broke the ice by confessing his guilt to Comiskeys attorney Alfred Austrian. Shoeless Jackson and Williams also followed suit and confessed. Those involved were revealed and Comiskey suspend them as a result of the overwhelming evidence and implications. Ultimately, the grand jury indicted the eight players for conspiring to injure the business of Comiskey as well as to defraud the public (Chermak Bailey 9). The baseball governing body was dealt a blow by these confessions and indictments. They were forced to do something and save the image of the game. In the public eye, they had failed to contain evil gamblers and dubious players from ruining baseball. In an attempt to save its face, the then incumbent chairman resigned and Kenesaw M. Landis, a Federal Judge was appointed. The criminal trial was made against the eight players but the jury acquitted then arguing that no evidence had been put forward that they attempted to defraud the public. Despite of this verdict, Landis banned the eight from playing baseball for life. He argued: â€Å"Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball† (â€Å"Baseball Almanac† para. 3). In deed the eight players did not participate in any competitive baseball game until their deaths. Weaver was also banned because although he had not participated he knew of the plot but failed to report it. Shoeless Joe Jackson He was one of the best hitters the game had ever had. As has been said, his involvement in the scandal is controversial. In fact, Walter Johnson who was once a Washington pitcher confessed that he considered Joe Jackson the greatest natural baseball player. His credibility had not been tainted before and the gusto and talent with which he was playing his position endeared him to a lot of funs. During the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, his performance did not raise suspicion for he is the one who the single score that Black Sox had in the last game with the Reds. In the series he is said to have batted .375; .71 points above his previous World Series in which he had 12 hits breaking the World Series record, hitting the only homerun in the entire World Series (Meyer para 8). But his confessions to the grand jury of his participation in the scandal as well as the envelop that he showed to Mr. Grabiner prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was a complicity, however passive. For this reason he could not be immune from Landis ban and therefore had to live the rest of his life after the incident without playing his favorite game. Eddie Cicotte He was the assistant of Gandil in the Chicago White Sox squad and one of the arch-plotters of the scandal. It is said that after the First World War the club was flourishing yet players were being underpaid. The manager William (a.k.a. Kid) tried to appeal to the owner Comiskey for the players financial relief but he refused. Comiskeys coldness particularly infuriated Cicotte who was one of the best performers (Broeg 64). Gandil heavily influenced Cicottes participation in the scandal that would ruin his career for the rest of his life. He gave in to the idea if he would get US$ 10, 000. Many historians contend that his intentions were secondary to the money but primary to a revenge on his boss Comiskey who had denied him the bonus. As a matter of fact, he was the one who opened the first game by batting out 9-1, and deliberately lost the fourth game 2-0 by committing two errors in a single inning. In the seventh game, he was probably a little disturbed by his conscience and as such had a double-cross along the line and won, 4-1 (Broeg 64). Eddie Cicotte was the player who confessed his participation in the scandal making others to follow suit. After the ban, he moved to Detroit Michigan to become a game warden and a security guard at a Ford assembly plant till his retirement (Broeg 65). Conclusion The Black Sox Scandal shook the entire fabric of baseball fraternity. Changes that were made to the National Commission leadership immediately after the discovery of the scum endeavored to redeem the reputation and the professionalism of the sport. The eight players that orchestrated it were the major casualties of the radical change that followed. The aim of the ban was a signal not only to players of baseball but also to those in other games that the sporting world requires persons of integrity and would ruthlessly deal with crooked ones. The scandal completely changed the image of the Chicago White Sox and they had to wait for forty years before winning another World Series. The performance became so dismal that fans started claiming that the team was jinxed by the scandal. World Series of the year 2005 was the last one they won in the recent history. Works Cited â€Å"Baseball Almanac.† World Series History. Retrieved on April 7, 2010 from: Albert Jim, Bennett Jay, Cochran James. â€Å"Anthology of statistics in sports† 2005, Cambridge University Press, London. Broeg, Bob. â€Å"Eddie Cicotte Paid His Debt in Full† Baseball Digest August 1969, 28 (7), pp. 64. Chermak, Steven Bailey, Frankie. â€Å"Crimes and Trials of the Century: From the Black Sox Scandal to the Attica prison riots† 2007, Greenwood Publishing Group, New York. Meyer, Jake. The Black Sox Scandal, n.d. Retrieved on April 7, 2010 from: Weiler, Paul. â€Å"Leveling the Playing Field: How the Law Can Make Sports Better for Fans,† 2001, Harvard University Press, New York. Zumsteg, Derek. â€Å"The Cheaters Guide to Baseball† 2007, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York.

Fashion Isnt Fur

Fur is not a Fashion Statement. Every year 50 million animals are violently killed for our own selfish needs to look high status in the fashion industry. Most of these helpless animals with Just as much right as us are raised on fur farms in brutal conditions. Death is really their only escape from these dreadful prisons, which is mostly caused by stress, illness and pain. Sometimes animals are caught using a trap mechanisms and can be left there to die for up to 7 days.Animals often tend to chew their own paw of Just to free themselves from death but to only die only a few days later from excessive injury. Just like we do, animals have rights and needs. Who decided that our comfort automatically comes before theirs? There are groups of people who live in the frozen steeps of Siberia or in upper Mongolia who kills eat and wear the coats of animals. These people do it for survival and it is an absolute necessary which has nothing to o with vanity.However, we are lucky enough to live i n a devolved country that has no need to hunt and kill innocent lives. We even have the choice of buying fake fur which has the exact same look and feel to it. Anytime you wear fur you should always think of the extent of pain and torture this harmless creature went through for that fur to be wrongfully wrapped around your skin. In the end it all comes down to you.

My Hobbies

My Hobbies In my life I had a lot of things to do and enjoy. According to my life besides the ordinary tasks that anyone does, I have several pastimes. Among these one is swimming, watching movies with my parents and play baseball. Swimming i use it to keep my body in good condition and get muscular endurance. the hobby of watching movies with my parents is fun and we talked and shared the evening opining about the best movie we saw.Baseball is a pastime that was implemented since my fourth years old by my dad and i never stopped practicing. My favorite pastime is the baseball, because I can show my talent playing this sport. The baseball is a sport that depends about ability and mind control. Anyone can have the tools to be the best players of ever, but If the person doesn’t have mind or self-control any couldn’t try to play this sport. The baseball have a roll in my life and that role represent my respect on the field.The respect that I purpose being a great catcher; everybody knows when I’m in there I the back of the homeplate doing my work, the work than anyone can’t do better than me, protect and command my team. Im my life this activity is so important, because my position in the game describe my self equal than me in the outside. Each people determine his position by his ability, but the catcher position that if you want to play it, any might to be a lider just only to could try it.

Free Essays on Meiji Restoration

rusting propped up against their desks as they kept the accounts of their lords. Many of these Samurai ceased being able to make a reasonable living so they went into debt to the merchants. The merchants, who were at the very bottom of the Confucian hierarchy, began to have more and more power over the Samurai who were in their debt. Merchants, once scorned under the Confucian hierarchy, became more powerful as Japan’s barter economy gave away to a new money economy. The hustle of the merchants turned the world of the Samurai upside down. Japan was a society about to explode. The coming of the West had struck the spark. In 1853, four American war ships steamed up the bay near Yedo. Commanded by Commodore Perry, the Americans had come to open up Japan. They wanted water and coal for their whaling ships and china trade. The Japanese were astounded at the power of Perry’s vessels. They called them black ships for the ominous smoke that billow... Free Essays on Meiji Restoration Free Essays on Meiji Restoration The Meiji Restoration For two centuries Japan had been locked away from the outside world. By 1615, after a century of civil war, the powerful Lord Tokugawa had defeated his enemies and declared himself Shogun, ruler of all Japan. Tokugawa divided society into four ranks: at the bottom were the merchants; then came the artisans; just above them were the farmers, who gave up half their rice harvest to those at the top, the Samurai. Only Samurai had the right to carry swords. The law of the land set them apart. The Tokugawa Shogunate was a kingdom built for war that began to crumble after 200 years of peace. It was the most orderly place imaginable. It was a completely schematized society where everybody knew who he was and what he had to do. But, in fact, because it was so idealized and so orderly and so tidy, history got away from it. The Samurai were the elite in the Tokugawa system - had not been allowed to raise its swords for 200 years. In between, had become civil servants, swords rusting propped up against their desks as they kept the accounts of their lords. Many of these Samurai ceased being able to make a reasonable living so they went into debt to the merchants. The merchants, who were at the very bottom of the Confucian hierarchy, began to have more and more power over the Samurai who were in their debt. Merchants, once scorned under the Confucian hierarchy, became more powerful as Japan’s barter economy gave away to a new money economy. The hustle of the merchants turned the world of the Samurai upside down. Japan was a society about to explode. The coming of the West had struck the spark. In 1853, four American war ships steamed up the bay near Yedo. Commanded by Commodore Perry, the Americans had come to open up Japan. They wanted water and coal for their whaling ships and china trade. The Japanese were astounded at the power of Perry’s vessels. They called them black ships for the ominous smoke that billow...

Free Essays on Sister Kate

Jean Bedford portrays the women as victims in ‘Sister Kate’. Do you agree? Discuss with detailed reference to the text. The women are portrayed in the novel ‘Sister Kate’ as victims of society and especially men. The author of the novel, Jean Bedford, is an active feminist and uses the characters in the novel to express her views on 19th Century working-class women. The text suggests that men are continuously degrading the females in the workplace and in their own homes. Police officers were constantly harassing the Kelly women when the men were gone. The women were expected to stay home and look after the house and the large numbers of children while the men were out working, stealing or just having fun. The majority of the women had dull lives due to family commitments (which the men were exempt from) and limited employment opportunities. All of the lower class women in the novel tend to be housewives, barmaids or prostitutes. Jean Bedford really stresses the point that women had no rights as employees, if they somehow managed to get a job. When Kate Kelly obtained a job at the Hotel she was told she was on ‘half wages, while you’re learning’. When she asked Ivy, a fellow barmaid, how long it would take before she was paid full wages, ‘Ivy looked around shiftily. She was not paid the full rate herself.’ Even though they despised it, most of the women in the bar had to sell their bodies after work to make enough money to live on. Prostitution became almost a routine for some of the girls in the bar. In fact Ivy kept whoring herself until she was nearly dead. Kate would often find Ivy intoxicated and ‘crumpled against a wall between the hotel and their rooms, her skirt still hitched around her waist and her hands closed tightly around the coins left by her hasty customer’. W hen Kate attended to the half-conscious and drunk woman, Ivy made ‘feeble movements towards her clothing’ and obviously thought it wa... Free Essays on Sister Kate Free Essays on Sister Kate Jean Bedford portrays the women as victims in ‘Sister Kate’. Do you agree? Discuss with detailed reference to the text. The women are portrayed in the novel ‘Sister Kate’ as victims of society and especially men. The author of the novel, Jean Bedford, is an active feminist and uses the characters in the novel to express her views on 19th Century working-class women. The text suggests that men are continuously degrading the females in the workplace and in their own homes. Police officers were constantly harassing the Kelly women when the men were gone. The women were expected to stay home and look after the house and the large numbers of children while the men were out working, stealing or just having fun. The majority of the women had dull lives due to family commitments (which the men were exempt from) and limited employment opportunities. All of the lower class women in the novel tend to be housewives, barmaids or prostitutes. Jean Bedford really stresses the point that women had no rights as employees, if they somehow managed to get a job. When Kate Kelly obtained a job at the Hotel she was told she was on ‘half wages, while you’re learning’. When she asked Ivy, a fellow barmaid, how long it would take before she was paid full wages, ‘Ivy looked around shiftily. She was not paid the full rate herself.’ Even though they despised it, most of the women in the bar had to sell their bodies after work to make enough money to live on. Prostitution became almost a routine for some of the girls in the bar. In fact Ivy kept whoring herself until she was nearly dead. Kate would often find Ivy intoxicated and ‘crumpled against a wall between the hotel and their rooms, her skirt still hitched around her waist and her hands closed tightly around the coins left by her hasty customer’. W hen Kate attended to the half-conscious and drunk woman, Ivy made ‘feeble movements towards her clothing’ and obviously thought it wa...

Sukuk and Screening of Stocks Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Sukuk and Screening of Stocks - Essay Example The challenge lies in adapting instruments such a Sukuk in these mediums without compromising on the dictates of the Shariah. Of all the financial certificates transacted in banks outside the Islamic world, bonds are most amenable to the requisites of Shariah. Already many Islamic banks are issuing a variety of Sukuk (not all of which are Shariah compliant); but the best option of satisfying Islamic principles while also being able to integrate into global markets is through Sukuks issued as bonds. Presently Islamic banks employ three mechanisms to showcase the compatibility of their Sukuks with conventional bonds. Firstly, the bond holders' ownership of Enterprise Assets clearly distinguish these Sukuks from interest-based bonds. The second mechanism is the distribution of profits generated by these enterprises at fixed percentages as per prevailing interest rates. The third mechanism is the assurance of capital protection, meaning that at least the principal will be returned to the investor. In order for these Sukuk's to be Shariah compliant they have to answer some key questions. First, is the stipulated amount â€Å"in excess of the price of interest for the manager of the enterprise under the pretense that this is an incentive for good management?† Also, will the manager purchase the assets that is nominated in the Sukuk at its face value and not at its going-rate in the markets at the time of its redemption? If the answer to any such question is in the negative then the Sukuk is considered to have breached the Shariah rules. In this respect the guidelines and deliberations given by the Shariah committee is a useful resource. Author Muhammad Taqi Usmani goes on to talk about how many banks in the Islamic world have failed in upkeeping the tradition of Shariah in order to attract investors. Presently there are loopholes in the system, exploiting which bank managers project a Sukuk as genuinely Shariah compliant, whereas in reality they are only nomin ally so. It is imperative that managers do not indulge in such practices. The paper prepared by Nizam Yaquby titled 'Participation and Trading in Equities of Companies whose Main Business is Primarily Lawful But Fraught With Some Prohibited Transaction' highlights some of the tendencies on part of Islamic banks to neglect Shariah mandates in their pursuit for greater revenues. The ubiquitousness of Joint Stock Companies and the dealing of their stocks by banks throws open several dilemmas. With the Internet making purchase, holding and selling of such stocks quite easy, many banks in the Islamic world are indirectly trading in financial instruments that do not conform to the Shariah code. Trading in stocks of Joint Stock Companies, also called Public Limited Companies, has elicited mixed reactions among Islamic scholars. One group views this practice as permissible provided â€Å"that the profits earned should be purged from unlawful gains†; while the other group finds it obj ectionable. Citing several legal maxims, scholars have either supported or opposed this practice. Some of these maxims are â€Å"The General need Takes the rule of specific Necessity; Mixture of Negligible Unlawful Part with Lawful Major Part; Majority Has the Ruling of the Whole, or the Majority Counts ; and What is Inescapable is tolerable†

Critical Thinking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 14

Critical Thinking - Essay Example As shown below these three sources are of greatest threat to our well-being. Motor vehicles have been pointed out as a major source of environmental pollution for a long time; they produce CO2 among other poisonous gases, which are responsible for the depletion of the ozone layer as well as CO, which is a non-detectable poisonous gas. Coal, which is also burned in several industries as a source of energy, has been flagged by environmentalists as a major contributor to carbon dioxide too. Other sources of pollutants include fossil fuels which act as a source of Sulfur Dioxide when burnt and Nitrogen Oxide which is produced when the fuels in vehicles are combusted (Sukhraj 18). Air pollutants have been shown to have several detrimental effects to the environment. The gases interact with the water in the atmosphere to produce acidic rain, which is corrosive and therefore erodes the paint of buildings and kills life in plants and rivers due to its poisonous nature. These fumes have also been identified as carcinogenic and over time, residents living in places with high pollution rates will have a higher prevalence rate of eyes nose and throat infections as well as the development of cancer. There reduction of air pollution is very important and several steps have been taken to do this. Vehicles have been given several standards of performance, which all companies must maintain failure to which their vehicles will not be allowed in certain countries. Catalytic converters have also been installed in vehicles and in factories where sulfur is a by-product so as to reduce the sulfur compounds released into the environment (Sukhraj 23). The introduction of harmful substances to soil and water is another problem that is being faced in many places. Most water pollutants are manmade and are a result of industrial activity too close to agricultural land and water sources. However, natural sources of water pollution include water