Ray Charles, 1930-2004: Singer, Songwriter and Musician Extraordinaire

Source: Voice of America Special English
www.manythings.org/voa/people 

This is Faith Lapidus. And this is Doug Johnson with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English.  Today we begin a two-part report about singer, songwriter, and musician Ray Charles.  His work will continue to have a lasting influence on American music.

(MUSIC)

Ray Charles spent almost sixty years as a professional musician.  Millions of people around the world enjoy his recordings.  If Ray Charles only played the piano, he would have been considered one of the best.  If he had only sung his music, his voice would have made him famous.  If he had only played jazz music, the world would have listened.  But Ray Charles did all these things and more.

 He played and sang rock-and-roll and rhythm-and-blues songs.  He sold millions of country and western records, too.  His work brought together different kinds of music and different kinds of music fans.  His influence on much of America's popular music cannot be truly measured.

(MUSIC:  "One Mint Julep")

That was Ray Charles and "One Mint Julep."  He recorded that song in nineteen sixty-one on an album called "Genius Plus Soul Equals Jazz."  It is one of the many hundreds of records he recorded.

Ray Charles Robinson was born in nineteen thirty in Albany, Georgia.  When he was six years old, he began to suffer from the eye disease glaucoma.  The disease made him blind.  He left the world of sight forever and turned to the world of sound.  He learned to love sounds, especially music of all kinds.

Ray Charles taught himself to play the organ, alto saxophone, clarinet and trumpet.  Yet there was a special relationship between him and the piano.  Here is part of the song "Worried Mind."  The style is country and western, with a heavy influence of blues.  Listen to his work on the piano, an instrument he truly loved.   You can almost see him smiling.

(MUSIC)

Ray Charles was fifteen years old when his mother died.   Within a year, he had left school to work.  He began playing piano professionally in African American eating and drinking places in the state of Florida.

A year later, he moved to the opposite corner of America: Seattle, Washington.  While in Seattle, he made forty records.  But none was a success.

At that time, Ray Charles was trying to play the piano and sing like the famous performer Nat King Cole.  But he quickly learned there was only one Nat King Cole.  No one wanted to hear a copy, not even a good copy.

So Charles started looking for his own musical sound.  He began to experiment.  He tried mixing blues and jazz.  He used some jazz styles with the music that later was known as rock-and-roll.  His experiments soon became popular with many black Americans.

He played at dances around the country.  He also sold some records, mostly to black people.  Few white Americans had heard of a blind musician named Ray Charles.

By the middle of the nineteen fifties, he had his own band.  It was one of the most popular black dance bands in the country.  A group of women sang with the band.

One night, Charles began playing a simple song.  He told the women to sing in a style known as call and response.  In this style, the lead singer asks a question or sings some words.  The other singers answer.  This kind of singing was brought to America by black slaves from Africa.  It has remained very popular in black church music.

At the dance that night, Ray Charles put together simple piano music, traditional call and response and rock-and-roll.  The result was a revolution in American music.  Soon after, Ray recorded that song. It is called "What'd I Say?"

(MUSIC)

"What'd I Say?" sold millions of copies.  Ray Charles no longer just played at small dances for black people.  He performed in large theaters for big audiences of every color.  He had found a sound like no other.  His style of music was filled with excitement.  And those who listened shared in that excitement.

By the end of the nineteen fifties, Ray Charles had recorded many hit songs.  Most of his music was black rhythm-and-blues or soul music.  Yet white Americans were listening, too.

Charles did not want to play just one kind of music, even if it was extremely popular.  He began experimenting again, this time with jazz.  One album, "Black Coffee," is considered by experts to be one of his very best jazz recordings.  It shows that his piano work can express many different feelings.  Here is the song "Black Coffee" from that album.

(MUSIC)

Ray Charles continued to make rhythm-and-blues and jazz records.  But that was still not enough for him.  He had always loved country-and-western music.  So he decided to record a country album.

Music industry experts said he was making a mistake.  They told him not to do it.  They said he would lose many fans.  The fans, they said, would not understand or like this kind of music.  Ray Charles did not listen to the experts.  He took a chance. And he was right.  The public loved his country-and-western songs.  You can hear some of these country-and-western songs next week, when we bring you the second part of our report about Ray Charles.

(MUSIC:  "Making Whoopee")

This program was written by Paul Thompson.  It was produced by Lawan Davis.  I'm Doug Johnson. And I'm Faith Lapidus.  Join us next week for the second part of our program on Ray Charles on PEOPLE IN AMERICA, in VOA Special English.

Clara Barton,1821-1912: A Life of Caring for Others

Credits for VOA Special English www.voanews.com thank you so much for those daily visit English tips, if possible, telling for friends promoting my blog. Have a wonderful day/night all.

I'm Ray Freeman.

 

And I'm Shirley Griffith with the Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Every week we tell about a person who was important in the history of the United States. Today we tell about a woman who spent her life caring for others, Clara Barton.

 

(MUSIC)

 

Clara Barton was a small woman. Yet she made a big difference in many lives. Today her work continues to be important to thousands of people in trouble.

 

Clara Barton was an unusual woman for her time. She was born on Christmas day, December twenty-fifth, eighteen twenty-one. In those days, most women were expected to marry, have children and stay home to take care of them. Barton, however, became deeply involved in the world.

 

By the time of her death in nineteen twelve, she had begun a revolution that led to the right of women to do responsible work for society. As a nurse, she cared for thousands of Wounded soldiers. She began the American Red Cross. And, she successfully urged the American government to accept the Geneva Convention. That treaty established standards for conditions for soldiers injured or captured during wartime.

 

Clara Barton really began her life of caring for the sick when she was only eleven years old. She lived with her family on a farm in the northeastern state of Massachusetts. One of her

brothers, David, was seriously injured while helping build a barn. For two years, Clara Barton took care of David until he was healed.

 

Most eleven-year-old girls would have found the job impossible. But Clara felt a great need to help. And she was very good at it. She also seemed to feel most safe when she was at home with her mother and father, or riding a horse on her family's land.

 

As a young child, Clara had great difficulty studying and making friends at school. Her four brothers and sisters were much older than she. Several of them were teachers. For most of Clara's early years, she was taught at home. She finished school at age fifteen. Then she went to work in her brother David's clothing factory. The factory soon burned, leaving her without a job.

Clara Barton decided to teach school. In eighteen thirty-six, she passed the teacher's test and began teaching near her home in North Oxford, Massachusetts. She became an extremely popular and respected teacher.

 

After sixteen years of teaching, she realized she did not know all she wanted to know. She wanted more education. Very few universities accepted women in those days. So Clara went to a special school for girls in Massachusetts. While in that school, she became interested in public education.

 

After she graduated, a friend suggested she try to establish the first public school in the state of New Jersey. Officials there seemed to think that education was only for children whose parents had enough money to pay for private schools.

 

The officials did not want Barton to start a school for poor people. But she offered to teach without pay for three months. She told the officials that they could decide after that if she

had been successful. They gave her an old building with poor equipment. And they gave her six very active little boys to teach.

 

At the end of five weeks, the school was too small for the number of children who wanted to attend. By the end of the year, the town built her a bigger, better school. They had to give her more space. She then had six hundred students in the school.

 

(MUSIC)

 

Within a year, Clara Barton had lost her voice. She had to give up teaching. She moved to Washington, D.C. to begin a new job writing documents for the United States government.

 

Clara Barton started her life as a nurse during the early days of the Civil War in eighteen sixty-one. One day, she went to the train center in Washington to meet a group of soldiers from Massachusetts. Many of them had been her friends. She began taking care of their wounds.

 

Not long after, she left her office job. She became a full-time nurse for the wounded on their way from the fields of battle to the hospital.

 

Soon, Barton recognized that many more lives could be saved if the men had medical help immediately after they were hurt. Army rules would not permit anyone except male soldiers to be on the battlefield. But Barton took her plans for helping the wounded to a high army official. He approved her plans.

 

Barton and a few other women worked in the battle areas around Washington. She heard about the second fierce battle at Bull Run in the nearby state of Virginia. She got into a railroad car and traveled there.

 

Bull Run must have been a fearful sight. Northern forces were losing a major battle there. Everywhere Barton looked lay wounded and dying men.

 

Day and night she worked to help the suffering. When the last soldier had been placed on a train, Barton finally left. She was just in time to escape the southern army. She escaped by riding a horse, a skill she gained as a young girl.

 

(MUSIC)

 

For four years, Clara Barton was at the front lines of the bloodiest battles in the war between the North and the South. She was there at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Charleston. She

was there at Spotsylvania, Petersburg, and Richmond. She cleaned the wounds of badly injured soldiers. She eased the pain of the dying. And she fed those who survived.

 

When she returned to Washington, Clara Barton found she was a hero. She had proved that women could work in terrible conditions. She made people understand that women could provide good medical care. She also showed that nursing was an honorable

profession.

 

After the war ended, Barton's doctor sent her to Europe to rest. Instead of resting, she met with representatives of the International Red Cross. The organization had been established

in eighteen sixty-three to offer better treatment for people wounded or captured during wars. She was told that the United States was the only major nation that refused to join.

 

Barton began planning a campaign to create an American Red Cross. Before she could go home, though, the war between France and Prussia began in eighteen seventy.

 

Again, Clara Barton went to the fields of battle to nurse the wounded. After a while her eyes became infected. The woman of action was ordered to remain quiet for months in a dark room, or become blind.

 

When she returned to the United States she again suffered a serious sickness. She used the time in a hospital to write letters in support of an American Red Cross organization.

 

(MUSIC)

 

In eighteen eighty-one, Barton's campaign proved successful. The United States Congress signed the World's Treaty of the International Red Cross. This established the American Chapter of the Red Cross. Clara Barton had reached one of her major goals in life.

 

The next year she successfully urged Congress to accept the Geneva Convention. This treaty set the international rules for treatment of soldiers wounded or captured in war.

 

For twenty-five years, Clara Barton continued as the president of the American Red Cross. Under her guidance, the organization helped people in all kinds of trouble. She directed the aid efforts for victims of floods in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Galveston, Texas. She led Red Cross workers in Florida during an outbreak of the disease yellow fever. And she helped during periods when people were starving in Russia and Armenia.

 

Clara Barton retired when she was in her middle eighties. For her last home, she chose a huge old building near Washington, D.C. The building had been used for keeping Red Cross equipment and then as her office. It was made with material saved from aid centers built after the flood in Johnstown.

 

In that house on the Potomac River, Clara Barton lived her remaining days. She died after a life of service to others in April, nineteen twelve, at age ninety.

 

She often said: "You must never so much as think if you like it or not, if it is bearable or not. You must never think of anything except the need --- and how to meet it."

 

(MUSIC)

 

This Special English program was written by Jeri Watson. I'm Ray Freeman.

 

And I'm Shirley Griffith. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICAprogram on the Voice of America.

Thomas Edison, 1847-1931

Thomas Edison, 1847-1931: America's Great Inventor

Source: www.manythings.org originally posted by www.voanews.com 

Welcome to the VOA Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Today, Sarah Long and Bob Doughty tell about the inventor Thomas Alva Edison. He had a major effect on the lives of people around the world.  Thomas Edison is remembered most for the electric light, his phonograph and his work with motion pictures.

(MUSIC) 

Thomas Edison's major inventions were designed and built in the last years of the eighteen hundreds.  However, most of them had their greatest effect in the twentieth century.  His inventions made possible the progress of technology.

It is extremely difficult to find anyone living today who has not been affected in some way by Thomas Edison.  Most people on Earth have seen some kind of motion picture or heard some kind of sound recording.  And almost everyone has at least seen an electric light.

These are only three of the many devices Thomas Edison invented or helped to improve.  People living in this century have had easier and more enjoyable lives because of his inventions.

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February eleventh, eighteen forty-seven in the small town of Milan, Ohio.  He was the youngest of seven children.

Thomas Edison was self-taught.  He went to school for only three months.  His teacher thought he could not learn because he had a mental problem.  But young Tom Edison could learn.  He learned from books and he experimented.

At the age of ten, he built his own chemical laboratory.  He experimented with chemicals and electricity.  He built a telegraph machine and quickly learned to send and receive telegraph messages.  At the time, sending electric signals over wires was the fastest method of sending information long distances.  At the age of sixteen, he went to work as a telegraph operator.

He later worked in many different places.  He continued to experiment with electricity. When he was twenty-one, he sent the United States government the documents needed to request the legal protection for his first invention.  The government gave him his first patent on an electric device he called an Electrographic Vote Recorder.  It used electricity to count votes in an election.

In the summer months of eighteen sixty-nine, the Western Union Telegraph Company asked Thomas Edison to improve a device that was used to send financial information.  It was called a stock printer. Mr. Edison very quickly made great improvements in the device.  The company paid him forty thousand dollars for his effort.  That was a lot of money for the time.

This large amount of money permitted Mr. Edison to start his own company.  He announced that the company would improve existing telegraph devices and work on new inventions.

Mr. Edison told friends that his new company would invent a minor device every ten days and produce what he called a "big trick" about every six months.  He also proposed that his company would make inventions to order.  He said that if someone needed a device to do some kind of work, just ask and it would be invented.

Within a few weeks Thomas Edison and his employees were working on more than forty different projects.  They were either new inventions or would lead to improvements in other devices.  Very quickly he was asking the United States government for patents to protect more than one hundred devices or inventions each year.  He was an extremely busy man.  But then Thomas Edison was always very busy.

He almost never slept more than four or five hours a night.  He usually worked eighteen hours each day because he enjoyed what he was doing.  He believed no one really needed much sleep.  He once said that anyone could learn to go without sleep.

(MUSIC)

Thomas Edison did not enjoy taking to reporters.  He thought it was a waste of time.  However, he did talk to a reporter in nineteen seventeen.  He was seventy years old at the time and still working on new devices and inventions.

The reporter asked Mr. Edison which of his many inventions he enjoyed the most.  He answered quickly, the phonograph.  He said the phonograph was really the most interesting.  He also said it took longer to develop a machine to reproduce sound than any other of his inventions.

Thomas Edison told the reporter that he had listened to many thousands of recordings.  He especially liked music by Brahms, Verdi and Beethoven.  He also liked popular music.

Many of the recordings that Thomas Edison listened to in nineteen seventeen can still be enjoyed today.  His invention makes it possible for people around the world to enjoy the same recorded sound.

The reporter also asked Thomas Edison what was the hardest invention to develop.  He answered quickly again -- the electric light.  He said that it was the most difficult and the most important.

Before the electric light was invented, light was provided in most homes and buildings by oil or natural gas.  Both caused many fires each year.  Neither one produced much light.

Mr. Edison had seen a huge and powerful electric light.  He believed that a smaller electric light would be extremely useful.He and his employees began work on the electric light.

An electric light passes electricity through material called a filament or wire.  The electricity makes the filament burn and produce light.  Thomas Edison and his employees worked for many months to find the right material to act as the filament.

Time after time a new filament would produce light for a few moments and then burn up.  At last Mr. Edison found that a carbon fiber produced light and lasted a long time without burning up.  The electric light worked.

At first, people thought the electric light was extremely interesting but had no value.  Homes and businesses did not have electricity.  There was no need for it.

Mr. Edison started a company that provided electricity for electric lights for a small price each month.  The small company grew slowly at first.  Then it expanded rapidly.  His company was the beginning of the electric power industry.

Thomas Edison also was responsible for the very beginnings of the movie industry.  While he did not invent the idea of the motion picture, he greatly improved the process.  He also invented the modern motion picture film.

When motion pictures first were shown in the late eighteen  hundreds, people came to see movies of almost anything -- a ship, people walking on the street, new automobiles.  But in time, these moving pictures were no longer interesting.

In nineteen-oh-three, an employee of Thomas Edison's motion picture company produced a movie with a story.  It was called "The Great Train Robbery."  It told a simple story of a group of western criminals who steal money from a train.  Later they are killed by a group of police in a gun fight.  The movie was extremely popular.  "The Great Train Robbery" started the huge motion picture industry.

(MUSIC)

Thomas Alva Edison is remembered most for the electric light, his phonograph and his work with motion pictures.  However, he also invented several devices that greatly improved the telephone.  He improved several kinds of machines called generators that produced electricity.  He improved batteries that hold electricity.  He worked on many different kinds of electric motors including those for electric trains.

Mr. Edison also is remembered for making changes in the invention process.  He moved from the Nineteenth Century method of an individual doing the inventing to the Twentieth Century method using a team of researchers.

In nineteen thirteen, a popular magazine at the time called Thomas Edison the most useful man in America.  In nineteen twenty-eight, he received a special medal of honor from the Congress of the United States.

Thomas Edison died on January sixth, nineteen thirty-one.  In the months before his death he was still working very hard.  He had asked the government for legal protection for his last invention.  It was patent number one thousand ninety-three.

(MUSIC)

This Special English program was written and produced by Paul Thompson.  The announcers were Sarah Long and Bob Doughty.

I'm Mary Tillotson.  Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICAprogram on the Voice of America.

American History: A Long Conservative Period Ends With Election of 1932

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Source: VOA SPECIAL ENGLISH promote this site around the world, very useful contents.

Photo: loc.gov

Members of a poor family of nine on a New Mexico highway during the early 1930s.

BOB DOUGHTY: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

I'm Bob Doughty with Steve Ember. This week in our series, we continue the story of the administration of Herbert Hoover. And we talk about the election of nineteen thirty-two.

(MUSIC)

STEVE EMBER: President Herbert Hoover worked hard to rescue the American economy following the crash of the stock market. It happened in October of nineteen twenty-nine. Within a month, Hoover called the nation's business leaders to the White House. "Don't lower wages," the president told them.

Hoover called on the bankers at the Federal Reserve to make it easier for businesses to borrow money. He tried to provide funds to help farmers get fair prices for their crops. He pushed Congress to lower personal taxes. And above all, the president urged Americans not to lose hope in their economy or in themselves.

BOB DOUGHTY: But the economy was in ruins, falling faster with each passing day of the crisis that grew into the Great Depression. The value of stocks had collapsed. Millions of workers lost their jobs. The level of industrial production in the country was less than half of what it had been before the stock market crash.

Hoover's efforts were not enough to stop the growing crisis. In ever greater numbers, people called on the president to increase federal spending and provide jobs for people out of work.

But the president was a conservative Republican. He did not think it was the responsibility of the federal government to provide relief for poor Americans. And he thought it was wrong to increase spending above the amount of money that the government received in taxes.

STEVE EMBER: The situation seemed out of control. The nation's government and business leaders appeared to have no idea how to save the dollar and put people back to work.

Hoover was willing to take steps like spending government money to help farmers buy seeds and fertilizer. But he was not willing to give wheat to unemployed workers who were hungry.

He created an emergency committee to study the unemployment problem. But he would not launch government programs to create jobs. Hoover called on Americans to help their friends in need. But he resisted calls to spend federal funds for major relief programs to help the millions of Americans facing disaster.

BOB DOUGHTY: Leaders of the Democratic Party made the most of the situation. They accused the president of not caring about the common man. They said Hoover was willing to spend money to feed starving cattle for businessmen, but not willing to feed poor children.

Hoover tried to show the nation that he was dealing with the crisis. He worked with Congress to try to save the banks and to keep the dollar tied to the value of gold. He tried hard to balance the federal budget. And he told Americans that it was not the responsibility of the national government to solve all their problems.

(MUSIC)

STEVE EMBER: Late in nineteen thirty-one, President Hoover appointed a new committee on unemployment. He named Walter Gifford to head this committee. Gifford was chief of a big company, American Telephone and Telegraph.

But Gifford did Hoover more harm than good.

When he appeared before Congress, Gifford was unable to defend Hoover's position that relief was the responsibility of local governments and private giving. He admitted that he did not know how many people were out of work. He did not know how many of them needed help. Or how much help they needed. Or how much money local governments could raise.

loc.gov

Walter Gifford

BOB DOUGHTY: The situation grew worse. Some Americans began to completely lose faith in their government. They looked to groups with extreme political ideas to provide answers.

Some Americans joined the Communist Party. Others helped elect state leaders with extreme political ideas. And in growing numbers, people began to turn to hatred and violence.

However, most Americans remained loyal to traditional values even as conditions grew steadily worse. They looked ahead to nineteen thirty-two, when they would have a chance to vote for a new president.

STEVE EMBER: Leaders of the Democratic Party felt they had an excellent chance to capture the White House in the election. And their hopes increased when the Republicans re-nominated President Hoover and Vice President Charles Curtis in the summer of nineteen thirty-two.

For this reason, competition was fierce for the Democratic presidential nomination. The top candidate was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the governor of New York state.

Roosevelt had been re-elected to that office by a large majority just two years earlier. He came from a rich and famous family, but he was seen as a friend of the common man. Roosevelt was conservative in his economic thinking. But he was a progressive in his opinion that government should be active in helping people.

Roosevelt had suffered from polio and could not walk. He used a wheelchair, although it was rarely shown in news pictures.

fdrlibrary.marist.edu

Franklin Roosevelt in 1932

BOB DOUGHTY: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's two main opponents were Al Smith and John Garner. Smith had been the governor of New York before Roosevelt. Garner, a Texan, was the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Together, they hoped to block Roosevelt's nomination. And they succeeded the first three times that delegates voted at the Democratic nominating convention in Chicago.

Roosevelt's chief political adviser, James Farley, worked hard to find Roosevelt the votes he needed at the convention. Finally, Farley found a solution.

He made a deal with supporters of John Garner. Roosevelt would make Garner the vice presidential nominee if Garner's forces voted to make Roosevelt the presidential nominee. Garner agreed. And on the next vote, the Democratic delegates nominated Franklin Roosevelt to be their presidential candidate. Al Smith was so angry about the deal that he left Chicago without congratulating Roosevelt.

Roosevelt wanted to show the nation that he was the kind of man to take action -- that he had more imagination than Hoover. So he broke tradition and flew to Chicago. It was the first time a candidate had ever appeared at a convention to accept a nomination. And Roosevelt told the cheering crowd that together they would defeat Hoover.

STEVE EMBER: The main issue in the campaign of nineteen thirty-two was the economy. President Hoover defended his policies. Roosevelt and the Democrats attacked the administration for not taking enough action.

Roosevelt knew that most Americans were unhappy with the Hoover administration. So his plan during the campaign was to let Hoover defeat himself. He avoided saying anything that might make groups of voters think he was too extreme.

But Roosevelt did make clear that he would move the federal government into action to help people suffering from the economic crisis.

He said he was for a balanced federal budget. But he also said the government must be willing to spend extra money to prevent people from starving.

BOB DOUGHTY: Americans liked what they heard from Franklin Roosevelt. He seemed strong. He enjoyed life. And Roosevelt seemed willing to try new ideas, to experiment with government.

Hoover attacked Roosevelt bitterly during the campaign. He warned that Roosevelt and the Democrats would destroy the American system.

But Americans were tired of Hoover. They thought he was too serious, too afraid of change, too friendly with business leaders instead of the working man. Most of all, they blamed Hoover for the hard times of the Depression.

On election day, Americans voted in huge numbers for Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats. Roosevelt won forty-two of the forty-eight states at that time. The Democrats also gained a large majority in both houses of Congress.

STEVE EMBER: The election ended twelve years of Republican rule in the White House. It also marked the passing of a long conservative period in American political life.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt would become one of the strongest and most progressive presidents in the nation's history. He would serve longer than any other president, changing the face of America's political and economic systems.

In our next program, we take a look at the beginning of his administration.

(MUSIC)

BOB DOUGHTY: Our program was written by David Jarmul. I’m Bob Doughty with Steve Ember.

You can find our series online with pictures, transcripts, MP3s and podcasts at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow our series on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

___

This is program #17
9

Robert Storr

Source: Speak Up

Language level: Advanced

Standard: American accent

THE ARTS

An American in Venice

The Venice Biennial is a major contemporary art exhibition which, apart from an interruption in the Second World War, has been staged every two years since 1895. This is the 52^nd edition and it is directed by an American for the first time. The man in question is the art critic Robert Storr, who talked earlier in the year to Speak Up about his plans for the event, which will run until November:

Robert Storr:

Standard: American Accent

I think Biennales are about art, they’re not about news. Some art is news and some is not. Art is an experience that happens fast or slow, according to what the artist intends and according to what the artist makes and it also is according to how the viewer wishes to engage with the art.

In the Biennale there will be art from literally all over the world, there will be art of all media. There’ll be drawings, there’ll be cartoons, there’ll be films, there’ll be videos, there’ll be sculptures, there’ll be paintings, there’ll be art of all about generations. The oldest artist s 95 years old and the youngest artist is in his 20s. There are no dead old masters, there are only artists who are of the present.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Storr was then asked whether being an American posed any particular difficulties when it came to working with the locals:

Robert Storr:

Making these exhibitions is difficult no matter who you are. I don’t know whether being are American makes it more difficult of less, perhaps it’s more difficult for Italians to deal with an American, who knows! But in any case, the point is it’s a great honor to do it, it’s an extremely complicated process altogether, but we’re going to get there and it’s going to be, I think a very good show and it will be a collaborative effort. I would say that I have very much relied on the expertise of the permanent staff of Biennale, the people who work there all the time, and particularly the staff who’s involved in the exhibition production and the press relations and so on, they’re very, very good and they’ve made it possible.

THE MEANING OF ART

In conclusion Storr was asked to explain this edition’s slogan, “Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense.”

Robert Storr:

There is a tradition that is as old as Plato and as recent as Marcel Duchamp, to suggest that there is a categorical or decisive separation between what the senses tell us about the world and what exists as an idea. Plato believed, of course, that the senses misrepresented a more perfect reality of the mind. Marcel Duchamp believed that art was an idea before it was an object or a thing and one should concentrate on the idea and not spend too much time on the visual experience.

These kinds of divisions, I think, are fundamentally flawed, fundamentalist wrong, that all visual art is also addressed to the mind and all conceptual art is also addressed to at least one of the senses: it could be the sense of touch, it could be the sense of  sound, it could be the sense of vision, it’s usually more than one and very often four or five.

Exhibition Details (no audio)

THE 52^nd edition of the Venice Biennale’s International Art Exhibition will run until November 21^st. Other related Biennale events include the 5^th International Festival of Contemporary Dance, the 39^th, International Theatre Festival, the 64^th International Film Festival and the 51^st International Festival of Contemporary Music. For further information, visit: www.labiennale.org