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Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency | Olivia Laing
17 posts | 6 read | 1 reading | 14 to read
One of the finest writers of the new non-fiction (Harpers Bazaar) explores the role of art in the tumultuous twenty-first century. In the age of Trump and Brexit, every crisis is instantly overridden by the next. The turbulent political weather of the twenty- first century generates anxiety and makes it difficult to know how to react. Olivia Laing makes a brilliant, inspiring case for why art matters more than ever, as a force of both resistance and repair. Art, she argues, changes how we see the world. It gives us X-ray vision. It reveals inequalities and offers fertile new ways of living. Funny Weather brings together a careers worth of Laings writing about art and culture, and their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia OKeeffe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Wolfgang Tillmans, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, Funny Weather celebrates art as an antidote to a terrifying political moment.
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review
BekaReid
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Pickpick

I relished this collection of essays, which felt conversational, as Laing brings to the forefront discussions on how art can and should change the world and create an openness to new ideas. (Sorry for the unrelated picture, but my cat desires my attention now.)

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Kazzie
Pickpick

Even when she‘s writing about strange, or obscure subjects, her writing is so good it pulls you along

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BekaReid
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"In the old days, art had meant things; objects to which the viewer pays solemn homage. But what if art could also be ideas, expressed by way of acts, events in time that left minimal traces in the world? Maybe a person could be a work of art. Maybe you didn‘t need a gallery at all. Maybe art could take place in the street, or in a field. Maybe it only came into being with the viewer‘s presence, and maybe it didn‘t require witnesses at all."

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BekaReid
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"We‘re so often told that art can‘t really change anything. But I think it can. It shapes our ethical landscapes; it opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities, and it offers other ways of living. Don‘t you want it, to be impregnate with all that light? And what will happen if you are?"

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Emilymdxn
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Pickpick

I love Olivia Laing‘s style and essays. I loved her style of writing here so so much, including when it was about artists I don‘t know or like loads. She makes me feel like part of an elegant yet thoughtful contemplative literati and I really hope she‘s what I‘m like when I‘m that age!

#nfn2020 @Clwojick +20

72 likes3 stack adds
blurb
Emilymdxn
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Today‘s TIL for #nfn2020 is that the tagged book by Olivia Laing has introduced me to Georgia O‘Keeffe‘s art and I‘m completely obsessed with it. I knew that there was an American artist with that name but I‘d never known what she painted. Olivia Laing‘s essay about her life and work has made me desperate to learn more! @Clwojick +5

Leftcoastzen There is a whole museum of her art in Santa Fe , NM .It‘s wonderful. 4y
Emilymdxn @Leftcoastzen I must go there!! Going back to the American desert is one of my absolute life dreams. It‘s so gorgeous there, and this is a bonus 4y
KVanRead I love her work! I haven‘t been to Santa Fe yet, but got to go to an amazing retrospective at the De Young Museum here in SF where I picked up this lovely little book on her life and work 4y
Clwojick Stunning! 4y
50 likes4 comments
review
Lindy
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Pickpick

Short, brilliant essays about art and artists. David Wojnarowicz‘s disturbing photo on the cover should alert readers that Olivia Laing is not a shrinking flower. She writes with admiration about art that matters and makes clear WHY it matters. I listened to the #audiobook narrated by Sophie Aldred. She switches from British English to American/French/Russian/etc accents for quoted passages, which gets annoying.

31 likes3 stack adds
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Lindy
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Maggie Nelson is one of the most electrifying writers in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation. Born in 1973, she has so far this century produced 9 books, knitting together what might, in heavier hands, be abstruse theory and humid confession, to create an exhilarating new language for considering both the messiness of life and the meanings of art.
(From Olivia Laing‘s review of The Argonauts in 2015)

charl08 I wouldn't disagree (although I'm still working on her back catalogue 😍) 4y
Lindy @charl08 I‘m a huge fan of Maggie Nelson too. Like you, I‘m still working on her back catalogue. 👯 4y
40 likes2 comments
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Lindy
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“Art is one of the prime ways we have of opening ourselves and going beyond ourselves.” –Ali Smith

Cathythoughts Lovely splash of colour 😁✨ 4y
BiblioLitten 😍 4y
46 likes2 comments
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Lindy
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Is gardening an art form? If it is, it‘s the kind of art I like: embedded in the material, nearly domestic, subject to happenstance and weather.

Tanisha_A Beautiful picture and description! 4y
Cathythoughts Definitely an art form ... lovely description 4y
Lindy @Tanisha_A @Cathythoughts Thanks! I agree with Olivia Laing; my garden is a messy work of art, a collaboration with nature. 4y
35 likes3 comments
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Lindy
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For our time is the passing of a shadow and our lives will run like sparks through stubble. –Derek Jarman

Cathythoughts ❤️ 4y
Lindy @Cathythoughts My sister took this photo at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Montreal a few years ago. She kept moving the phone and getting blurry pictures so we were both laughing. I like how this one turned out. 4y
Cathythoughts It‘s a lovely picture of you 4y
30 likes3 comments
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Lindy
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We‘re so often told that art can‘t really change anything, but I think it can. It shapes our ethical landscapes. It opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities and it offers other ways of living.

Sace Amen. 4y
BiblioLitten Where is this? 4y
Lindy @BiblioLitten In the Art Gallery of Alberta, in downtown Edmonton, February 2020. I usually visit the AGA every month, but that‘s the last time I was there. Damn Covid. 4y
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Lindy @Sace Art lovers unite. 😊 4y
BiblioLitten Ah! Covid has ruined quite a number of plans. 😕 4y
Sace Our local art museum is walking distance from my house and I haven't been there since January. Damn covid is right. 4y
wanderinglynn Art is so important. I can‘t imagine a society without art. How sad would that be? 4y
34 likes1 stack add8 comments
blurb
AnneCecilie
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#BookReport #WeeklyForecast

Just finished Bluebird, Bluebird and have put the next book on hold.

I‘m still reading a chapter a day of P&P and really enjoying that

I‘ve started Funny Weather and hope to finish this week. I love Laing‘s writing

Next up is Readhead by the Side of the Road and I hope to get a start on The Shadow King. Both books are due back at the library next Monday.

I also want to start looting my audio again after a break.

BiblioLitten Bluebird, Bluebird was one of my top reads of this year. 💙 4y
Cinfhen I didn‘t realize how slim of a book this one is 4y
AnneCecilie @Cinfhen I know, it‘s hardly visible, just under 180p. 4y
AnneCecilie @BiblioLitten I‘m not sure I loved it that much, but you never know. It might grow on me, especially after reading the second book in this series 4y
57 likes4 comments
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AnneCecilie
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I‘ve known Smith since I was seventeen (her partner is my cousin). In the 1990s we used to write each other letters. Recently I unearthed a blurry photograph she sent me twenty years ago of a cat‘s tail dangling over a sofa. ‘I have a long-term plan to write a novella for each season,‘ she‘d written on the back. ‘It seems to me the seasons are so gifted to us that it‘s a kind of duty, a very nice one.‘

Freespirit Wow that's pretty special!! She's a very well respected writer 4y
CarolynM So interesting. Thanks for sharing. I'm glad she fulfilled her ambition, I loved all 4 of these books. 4y
Butterfinger That is really neat. 4y
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Megabooks So cool!! 4y
AnneCecilie @Freespirit I know and I love the first 3 books in her seasonal quartet. 4y
AnneCecilie @CarolynM @Butterfinger @Megabooks And it made med think about how long authors carry ideas with them before they are turned into books. 4y
53 likes6 comments
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AnneCecilie
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There was no weekly forecast from me last week, but this week I‘ve a combined #BookReport and #WeeklyForecast

I finished The Five before work this morning and will start the tagged book.

I continue reading P&P a chapter a day.

I‘m struggling with How Much of These Hills is Gold. I read a 100 p last week in a 270p book, normally I would have finished in a couple of days. I feel like this is my mantra these days, that I want to bail on books.

Cinfhen Ohhh, I‘ve been really curious about this book 👉🏽what do u think is keeping you from wanting to finish it??? Writing? Plot? 4y
AnneCecilie @Cinfhen the writing style. To me the sentences feel a little short, there‘s hardly any adjectives and I like that. And I also think it‘s my reading mood, I have no patience these days and I‘m usually willing to give a book several chances. 4y
Cinfhen Lately, I find myself growing bored and frustrated with several of my books. It almost feels like a chore to read them. I‘m sure it‘s because I‘m feeling cooped up/ I‘m used to traveling during the summer and being so stationary is starting to take its toll. 4y
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AnneCecilie @Cinfhen I‘m used to spending the summer vacation at home, but I‘m also used to doing a lot of stuff after work. Before the social distancing, I was at the movies 1 or 2 a week with friends, I also love going to the theater. And now everything is postponed or closed. I‘ve also had 5 months where I have been reading like crazy, and maybe I have just gotten enough for a time. I‘m rewatching an old favorite these days, the TV series One Tree Hill. 4y
Cinfhen My daughter LOVED that show 💜that was Sophia Bush and Chad Michael Murray right?? 4y
AnneCecilie @Cinfhen That‘s right. I love it too, I have no idea how many times I have watched it 4y
53 likes6 comments
review
Twocougs
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Pickpick

I so wish I could write as well as Olivia Laing! I love how her brain processes people, places and things. Beautiful essays. 🥰 A true piece of art.

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AnneCecilie
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So these are the books I‘ve bought since March. Most of these are actually bought in the bookstores

The bottom to on the left was bought in March. All the books on the right was bought in April. The three books in the middle on the left was bought in May. The top three on the left are the books I‘ve bought so far this June.

I‘ve already red two of these, and hope I read more of these in the not so distant future.

Avanders Fun!! 4y
52 likes1 comment