Glamour

I am a very much anti-glamour person. People who know me well, they can swear by the statement. Besides, I have a dead caterpillar between my nose and upper lips (by name of mustache), I am no-way qualified to talk about Glamour. Seriously, I am not interested either. But…

In a recent TED talk, cultural critic Virginia Postrel muses on the true meaning, and the powerful uses, of glamour – which she defines as any calculated, carefully polished image designed to impress and persuade.

Virginia Postrel

I must say, she has a very interesting way to look at glamour indeed! She argued, not only Merlin Monroe and racing cars are glamourous, but geekery and steel mills can be glamourous too.

Virginia Postrel looks at culture through the lens of economics, and vice versa — looking for the hidden actors and attitudes that drive us to make the choices we do. She writes frequently for the Atlantic and Forbes, and is the author of several books, including The Substance of Style and The Future and Its Enemies.

Her next book will be about glamour; she’s exploring the topic on the witty blog Deep Glamour. Her own blog, frequently updated and fascinatingly wide-ranging, is the Dynamist.

Lonely blues, originally uploaded by SoulSoup.

Lost childhood, Originally uploaded by daisyrable

Grasshopper, originally uploaded by SoulSoup.

Martin Klimas destroys a lot of clay to make his art. Combining the silence of Eadweard Muybridge’s horse pictures with the association-rich composition of a still life, Klimas breaks recognizable objects so they become something else, and stops us just at the moment of transformation.

The aspect of destroying is not the most important one in my work. Let’s say it is a catalyst to unleash and study this transformation. The hardest part of my work is to smash so many figurines until I find one that truly is showing me something new. I am in that sense a sculptor, but I have only a 5000th of a second to build my sculpture.

Can shattered real-life be an art-form too?

Chinatown : Singapore, originally uploaded by SoulSoup.

Chinatown : Singapore

Alone I drift away,
Alone I walk a thousand miles,
Alone I fall asleep,
Alone I stare at the sky,
Alone I sit under a tree,
Alone I cry.

Alone I drift away,
Alone I live today,
and alone I’ll die someday.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
“Shadow,” said he,
“Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?”

“Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,”
The shade replied-
“If you seek for Eldorado!”

~ Edgar Allan Poe

shadow, originally uploaded by SoulSoup.

Boat Quay : Singapore, originally uploaded by SoulSoup.

Dangerously Beautiful, originally uploaded by SoulSoup.