Bøger af Michael Fallon

Conceived as a challenge to long–standing conventional wisdom, Creating the Future is a work of social history/cultural criticism that examines the premise that the progress of art in Los Angeles ceased during the 1970s—after the decline of the Ferus Gallery, the scattering of its stable of artists (Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, Ed Moses, Ed Rusha and others), and the economic struggles throughout the decade—and didn't resume until sometime around 1984 when Mark Tansey, Alison Saar, Judy Fiskin, Carrie Mae Weems, David Salle, Manuel Ocampo, among others became stars in an exploding art market. However, this is far from the reality of the L.A. art scene in the 1970s.The passing of those fashionable 1960s–era icons, in fact, allowed the development of a chaotic array of outlandish and independent voices, marginalized communities, and energetic, sometimes bizarre visions that thrived during the stagnant 1970s. Fallon's narrative describes and celebrates, through twelve thematically arranged chapters, the wide range of intriguing artists and the world—not just the objects—they created. He reveals the deeper, more culturally dynamic truth about a significant moment in American art history, presenting an alternative story of stubborn creativity in the face of widespread ignorance and misapprehension among the art cognoscenti, who dismissed the 1970s in Los Angeles as a time of dissipation and decline.Coming into being right before their eyes was an ardent local feminist art movement, which had lasting influence on the direction of art across the nation; an emerging Chicano Art movement, spreading Chicano murals across Los Angeles and to other major cities; a new and more modern vision for the role and look of public art; a slow consolidation of local street sensibilities, car fetishism, gang and punk aesthetics into the earliest version of what would later become the "Lowbrow" art movement; the subversive co–opting, in full view of Pop Art, of the values, aesthetics, and imagery of Tinseltown by a number of young and innovative local artists who would go on to greater national renown; and a number of independent voices who, lacking the support structures of an art movement or artist cohort, pursued their brilliant artistic visions in near–isolation.Despite the lack of attention, these artists would later reemerge as visionary signposts to many later trends in art. Their work would prove more interesting, more lastingly influential, and vastly more important than ever imagined or expected by those who saw it or even by those who created it in 1970's Los Angeles. Creating the Future is a visionary work that seeks to recapture this important decade and its influence on today's generation of artists.

But who do you say that I am? (Matthew 16:15)Jesus' question to Peter and the others is one that every disciple needs to consider, a question that is as old as the Christian tradition. And behind the question an even deeper and challenging one: Who is God?Michael Fallon argues that the response to both questions must be informed by how we read the New Testament. There, we find the portrait of a man who lived and died in our world, a human being like ourselves, someone recognised by his followers as free from the fear of God or other people - someone who taught us to respond to the divine, someone in whom they acknowledged the human expression (the incarnation) of God.The author gladly accepts that eh historical Jesus has been distorted in many ways through the centuries, with the consequence that often the Jesus presented by Christians has failed to connect with people's life-questions, as if he had lived in a world unlike our own, without doubt or struggle, without insecurity or uncertainty. A life so unlike our own as to make him inaccessible and unreal.He argues to the contrary. The Jesus portrayed in the New Testament lived in a real world. He was concerned with real people, naming and opposing anything that made it difficult for people to live. In so doing, he incurred opposition and rejection; hence his death. But he also won the confidence of the oppressed. They trusted him, and so learned to trust God, and to believe in themselves, in their world and their future. This was because Jesus revealed the powerful love of the redeemer God.This is the challenge to us, his followers. Our world has so much idolatry, false religion and even false Jesus. If we have the faith enough to present Jesus as the answer to our modern ills, we need to make sure that it is the real Jesus of Nazareth that we present.Such is the purpose of this book.

The 1977-78 Los Angeles Dodgers came close. Their tough lineup of young and ambitious players squared off with the New York Yankees in consecutive World Series. Dodgerlandis the story of those memorable teams as Chavez Ravine began to change, baseball was about to enter a new era, and American culture experienced a shift to the "me" era.