{"id":255811,"date":"2023-06-27T09:38:54","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T13:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=255811"},"modified":"2024-01-04T19:09:32","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T19:09:32","slug":"what-its-like-to-steal-and-eat-a-120000-banana-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2023\/06\/27\/what-its-like-to-steal-and-eat-a-120000-banana-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What it’s like to steal and eat a $120,000 banana"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Noh Hyun-soo writes for The Guardian: “I\u2019d been to Seoul\u2019s Leeum Museum of Art years ago, but last Aprilwas my first visit to see the artwork Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan, which is a banana duct-taped to a wall. It\u2019s a work of conceptual art and comes with a certificate of authenticity giving precise diagrams and instructions for its correct display. It was famously sold for $120,000<\/a> at Art Basel Miami in 2019. The banana is changed every few days. There were a lot of visitors, and about 10 people were standing around Comedian. The atmosphere inside the museum was calm. Interestingly, when I got close to another artwork to see it more clearly an alarm sounded and the guards stopped me. But when I approached Comedian, there was no alarm. So there was nothing stopping me when I pulled off the tape to remove the banana from the wall and peeled it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How I helped create the “Dark Side of the Rainbow” Internet meme<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Charlie Savage for the New York Times: “The phenomenon of watching ‘The Wizard of Oz’ while listening to Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ is sometimes called ‘The Dark Side of the Rainbow’: If you start the album at just the right time, the music and lyrics uncannily align with the movie\u2019s visuals. Some coincidences are lyrical, as when Dorothy runs away from home at the line<\/a> ‘No one told you when to run.’ Some are tonal, as when the tornado sequence seems practically choreographed to Clare Torry\u2019s wordless vocals in ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ \u2014 rising to a frenzy as the twister rolls in and then shifting to dreaminess just as Dorothy is knocked unconscious.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The free solo climber who fell to earth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Michael Levy writes for Outside magazine: “Austin Howell soloed harder and more often than almost anyone else in the country, documenting his exploits on Instagram and a podcast. But behind the scenes his mental health was faltering. The footage is shaky, but there\u2019s no doubt what\u2019s in the frame: a man climbing a section of shining white rock. \u201cWhat in the world,\u201d the guy filming says. \u201cThis guy\u2019s fucking insane. He\u2019s soloing, climbing this route, naked, without a rope<\/a>. He\u2019s out of his damn mind.\u201d As the camera zooms out, it becomes clear that the soloist is hundreds of feet off the deck. Aside from eschewing clothes and a rope, the climber is also barefoot. All he\u2019s got on is a gray newsboy cap. The clip ends with a still frame of the climber looking back at the camera and flipping the bird.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why New Jersey has a telephone pole “farm”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Dan Lewis: “In 1928, Bell Telephone Laboratories \u2014 a precursor to AT&T \u2014 needed to better understand how telephone poles work, or more accurately, how they fail. Telephone poles are just logs from old trees, and like anything else, they\u2019re decaying. Bell didn\u2019t know which types of wood would decay the slowest, how to treat trees to minimize decay, etc. So the company decided<\/a> to plant some dead trees and find out. The company acquired 100 acres of farmland \u2014 selected, per the Chester Historical Society, because the area \u201cprovides many types of topography and harsh weather such as blazing sunshine, high winds, driving rain, sleet, and icing\u201d \u2014 to learn how each of the wood choices would stand up in various conditions. The poles are placed two feet into the ground.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes on the end of my fifteen-year friendship with a famous author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Elisabeth \u00c5sbrink writes for The Dial magazine: “I now have to say something that pains me a great deal,\u201d the controversial Swedish playwright Lars Nor\u00e9n told me. It was Aug. 30, 2015, a hot and dusty summer day in Stockholm. We hadn\u2019t seen each other all year, our communication had been limited to sporadic text messages. But finally, we had arranged a time to meet for a cup<\/a> of coffee. \u201cWe can\u2019t be friends anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cNo?\u201d I asked, surprised. I had always sensed that our acquaintance could suddenly end \u2014 and that one day it inevitably would. Still, I was unprepared. \u201cHow come?\u201d I asked. \u201cBecause of Dagens Nyheter<\/em> and its stance on the NATO issue,\u201d he answered. \u201cI cannot accept it.\u201d I took a moment to let his words sink in. They didn\u2019t make sense.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to steal a masterpiece: Advice from the world\u2019s greatest art thief<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Michael Finkel writes for Time magazine: “First, says the art thief, forget about the movies. Skylight entries, smoke bombs, and shootouts may be cinematic, but unless you want to go to jail, these are terrible tactics for stealing art. Violence and destruction in a museum only minimize your odds of success. Art crime is best accomplished when no one knows that it\u2019s happening.<\/a> St\u00e9phane Breitwieser, a 52-year-old Frenchman, is one of the greatest art thieves of all time. He stole over 300 works from museums and cathedrals across Europe, worth an estimated two billion dollars. There\u2019s never a need, he said, to force open a museum door, or crawl through a window, or rappel through a skylight. Arrive during lunch, when the crowds are thinner and the security staff rotates shorthanded to eat.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elton John’s diary entry from 1973<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

from Diaries of Note on Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Noh Hyun-soo writes for The Guardian: “I\u2019d been to Seoul\u2019s Leeum Museum of Art years ago, but last Aprilwas my first visit to see the artwork Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan, which is a banana duct-taped to a wall. It\u2019s a work of conceptual art and comes with a certificate of authenticity giving precise diagrams and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “What it’s like to steal and eat a $120,000 banana”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":true,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258033,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255811\/revisions\/258033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}