NYTimes' KanYe West Piece

Mr. West has had the most sui generis hip-hop career of the last decade. No rapper has embodied hip-hop’s often contradictory impulses of narcissism and social good quite as he has, and no producer has celebrated the lush and the ornate quite as he has. He has spent most of his career in additive mode, figuring out how to make music that’s majestic and thought-provoking and grand-scaled. And he’s also widened the genre’s gates, whether for middle-class values or high-fashion and high-art dreams.

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Source: The New York Times

likeafieldmouse:

Thomas Struth - Paradise (2002)

Artist’s statement: 

“Paradise rejects the usual image of ‘paradise’ as a utopian garden, immaculate and enclosed behind walls. Instead, this paradise is the wilderness of the jungle which appears as the result of unchecked and untamed growth, representing a small section of a broad network extending beyond our view.

Unlike the cityscapes in my previous works, these jungle scenes offer up no sense of perspective or depth. The photos do not rely on the same ordering principles found in the images of urban architecture. However, the expansiveness of each portion of jungle with which we are presented invokes a comprehensive system of growth that could possibly continue ad infinitum.

The sheer clutter of detail in these images presents a kind of empty space: emptied to elicit a stillness and internal dialogue. You have to be able to enjoy this silence in order to communicate with yourself – and eventually with others.”