Picked this up because I liked the cover a short while back, and hadn’t even checked to see who did it yet when I saw a few others flash by on the excellent 80 magazine, so I figured I’d post this one up as well.
Published in 1995 by Intercultural Publications of New York, as it’s over 50 years old the original texts may be out of copyright & available in full somewhere online, but I haven’t seen them around yet.
As per usual here’s the index:
Apparently perspectives was a periodical that was spread in a number of languages around Europe to promote ‘the American way’ (fuck yeah) of thinking about issues of art & culture at large, and i have to say it does contain some pretty interesting articles. (If you don’t mind reading stuff over 50 years removed from our current reality..)
I enjoyed “Technics and the future of Western Civilization” (I guess the author hadn’t got the ‘technology’ memo yet), which sends up a bunch of red flags regarding the issues society would be about run into what with the proliferation of all this radiotrontastic equipment everywhere.
The feel-good takeaway then comes from the fact that where we are now with our technology has well surpassed the articles predictions, and in spite of the authors worst fears and dire warnings, we don’t seem to be doing too badly.
“Ultimate terms in Contemporary Rhetoric” was also pretty interesting, though mostly for the fact that in this case the situation the author warns for has very much come to pass and reached levels beyond retarded, where political jingoism has stripped several very powerful words almost completely of their actual meanings. (Still got ‘hope’ anyone?)
Anyway, pictures dammit. Unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot to post out of this little mag, but I did like this page from “The Film Sense and the Painting Sense”, featuring a direct comparison between Wassily Kandinsky’s “Multicolor Circle” and a scene from Sergei Eigenstein’s “Ivan the Terrible”.
