How to Picture Your Inner Acrobat

Hemmingway wrote of courage as grace under pressure. In Private Acts: The Acrobat Sublime, Harriet Heyman writes of grace under the pressure of gravity and the courage demonstrated by those who commit themselves to that art. Accompanying the amazingly lyrical photography of Acey Harper, Heyman’s writing strikes to the soul of the acrobat, while allowing us to discover the acrobat (or at least the sublime spark of that art) within. “They are ambiguous,” Heyman explains, “both like us and unlike us. As magnificent as superheroes, acrobats are objects of desire. We want to be them, as free as they appear to be—a thought that is at once tempting and terrifying… We are thrilled to be going along for the ride—from a safe distance.” Reading Private Acts allows us to watch from a safe distance while still feeling that we’re up there on the trapeze, too, sharing in the daring intimacy of self-propelled flight. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How to Picture Your Inner Acrobat."

[Image: Acey Harper. Andrew Adams and Erica Gilfether Adams, Bolinas, California, 2008.]

[Many thanks to Rizzoli for providing me with the image above and a review copy of Private Acts: The Acrobat Sublime, with text by Harriet Heyman and photographs by Acey Harper.]

Why Andy Warhol Still Makes Headlines

Even before Occupy Wall Street invaded the National Mall in Washington, DC, and closed down the National Air and Space Museum, Andy Warhol had already occupied several other museums for the winter. In Warhol: Headlines, which runs through January 2, 2012 at the National Gallery of Art, and Andy Warhol: Shadows, at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden through January 15, 2012, American culture’s preoccupation with Warhol and how he not only continues to make headlines, but also to tell us what those headlines really mean continues. Stretching back to work done in the mid-1950s, Warhol: Headlines reminds us that the news of the past looks startlingly like the news of the present and that Warhol warned us long ago how the headlines that “get us” might eventually “get us” in a different way. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Why Andy Warhol Still Makes Headlines."

[Image: Andy Warhol. Flash - November 22, 1963, 1968. Portfolio of eleven screenprints with eleven corresponding pages of Teletype text by Phillip Greer, plus three additional screenprints and cloth cover. Sheet: 53.34 x 53.34 cm (21 x 21 in.). Overall size: 54.61 x 53.98 cm (21 1/2 x 21 1/4 in.). Other: 57.15 x 113.67 cm (22 1/2 x 44 3/4 in.). National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. © 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.]

[Many thanks to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, for providing me with the image above, press materials, and a review copy of the catalog to Warhol: Headlines, which runs through January 2, 2012.]