Vitro Nasu

Sigmar Polke

Size A - He really liked the film Double Suicide.

Size B
“I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman….
(Saw “Capote” by Bennet Miller yesterday. )

Size C
Look they are growing, can you verify? (From Peking Duck)

Ground Bra and Adjustable Wall Bra

Two large bra constructions are by Vito Acconci.
(His new site Acconci studio is here)

Size D

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Sigmar Polke

Sigmar Polke is a brilliantly witty artist. I use the word ‘wit’ in the way it was used of English 17th-century poetry, to describe a ranging and probing intelligence that investigates everything, connecting disparate images and ideas. He can be flatly comic and slapstick. He can equally make layered and ambiguous images of great subtlety. He does not preach or hector; I have the sense that he expects his audience to participate in the rueful irony – and in the delight – with which he presents his phantasmagoria. He has constructed, arguably, the most complete language I know for describing modern reality.

(A. S. Byatt writing for Tate Modern.)

Jane Jacobs

There is perhaps no person in the 20th Century who was more influential in raising the benchmark for our quality of life in cities than Jane Jacobs, who died on April 25, 2006 at 89.
Remembering Jane Jacobs (Cool Town Studios)

She decided to leave the United States in part out of her objection to the Vietnam War and due to worry about the fate of her two draft-age sons. She chose Toronto as she found it a pleasant city and its rapid growth meant plenty of work for her architect husband. She quickly became a leading figure in her new city and was involved in stopping the Spadina Expressway. A common theme of her work has been to question whether we are building cities for people or for cars. She has been arrested twice during demonstrations. (Jane Jacobs Wikipedia)

Dark Age Ahead (Ideas That Matter Quarterly)

Jane Jacobs: Her Life and Work

D+A = nD (D is labor division in a given economic system, A new activities of entrepreneurs and nD the resulting new form of labor division.)

In the forty-plus years since her book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” appeared, her views, which then seemed wildly eccentric—basically, that New York’s future depended less on tall buildings and big projects than on the preservation of small, old blocks and catch-as-catch-can retailing—have been vindicated so many times, and in so many ways, that by now one can hardly think about this city without thinking about her, and like her.

Jacobs has closely followed the Ground Zero plans and debates, and she thinks that the right thing to do is not to do anything right away. “The significance of that site now is that we don’t know what its significance is,” she said. “We’ll know in fifteen or twenty years.”
(Cities and Songs - Adam Gopnik, New Yorker )

Happy Birthday to Cy Twombly, Bertrand Tavernier and Paul Mazursky.

Cy Twombly Thermopylae
Here is a background of Thermopylae.

See more of his sculptures here. Not many are familiar with his sculptures. It is safe to say only those who have seen his sculptures at a gallery would have identified him as the sculptor for the above image.

This is an art with a secret, which is in general not that of spreading the substance (charcoal, ink or oil) but of letting its trail behind.
I know the island of Procida, in the Bay of Naples, where Twombly has lived. I have spent a few days in the ancient house where Graziella, Lamartine’s heroine, spent her days. There, calmly united, are the light, the sky, the earth, the accent of a rock, an arch. It is Virgil and it is a Twombly paintings: there is none, in fact, where we don’t find this void of the sky, of water, and those very light marks indicating the earth (a boat, a promontory) which float in them (apparent rari nantes): the blue of the sky, the gray of the sea, the pink of sunrise.
From Wisdom of Art by Roland Barthes.

“His art is tearful, sensual, pessimistic, and on the edge of bad taste” from the Guardian Jonathan Jones.

Through his paintings trickles a current of double nostalgia - on the one hand, for the closed-off “heroic” possibilities of Modernism and, on the other, for the ancient Mediterranean world, experienced at a remove by living in modern Italy. Love (or its facsimile) among the ruins. (Robert Hughes from here)

Wilder Shores of Love

Photographs by Cy Twombly - an essay by Mario Cutajar

Three studies of Temeraine - New South Wales Australia

Cy Twombly Gallery by Renzo Piano - Italian architect (Houston, Menil Collection)

Bertrand Tavernier

In this interview of Bertrand Tavernier

T: I like to deal with subjects that attract me. I’m interested in people fighting, trying to change things, making mistakes. But I like each film to be a challenge, [as if] it’s my first. When you do a film on adoption and you arrive in a place like Cambodia, anything can happen.

On his film about French resistence “Safe Conduct” is here.

“Enemies A Love Story” by Paul Mazursky
Lena Olin was splendid and Ron Silver’s only good movie and who would have thought that Ron would lose his head after 9/11 and became a pro Iraq war talking head.

Alida Valli (May 31, 1921 – April 22, 2006)

Above still from”The Third Man” (via)

This page contains images from the famous dramatic final shot of The Third Man.

From Senso

Italian director Luchino Visconti dishes up his usual blend of elegance and decadence in Senso. The international cast includes French film star Alida Valli as a Italian countess married to a Venetian nobleman, and English leading man Farley Granger as an Austrian military officer. The two are swept up in the Austrian empire’s evacuation of Italy in 1866. Valli and Granger fall in love, but Valli ultimately realizes that the officer is interested only in her wealth and prestige, whereupon she gives him over to a firing squad. Visconti had wanted Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando for his leads, but when Bergman’s husband Roberto Rossellini would not permit her to appear in the film, Brando also bowed out.(via)
(The NYtimes made a mistake in calling Alida Valli a French film star.)

Many beautiful stills of Alida Valli who passed away yesterday on April 22, rest in peace.

Cyclone Google Trembling

This is an imaginary google tribute I created for an artist who will turn 78 years old on April 25. He is also the mystery sculptor from the quiz I posted previously.

The answer for the quiz is postponed till April 25.

Name the artist who made this sculpture.

Not by Miro.
Wait for the next post for an answer.
This artist is more famous for his paintings
Miro’s sculpture is here.

Happy M-I-R-O Day!
Thanks google for the reminder.

M-I-R-O phonetically means “Look” in Japanese - a command.

Let us go you and I to look at a few things.

Side glance at Miro’s works in Monochrome. (via)

Serigraph here

Easy Miro quiz here.

From Pompidou and many love this one.

Elswhere;
Gotas D’agua featured some wonderful portraits of our favorite artist. (Gotas D’ is from Lisbon).

What about this post on Cattelan - I have pointed to this image in my previous post.

Before we depart you can check out some new links in
my sidebar menu - esp. three new links under fashion-kimono.

Update:Google doodle watch, where did it go? oof oof, bark all you want, too late for my google Miro.

Double Suicide

See these great images from a film directed by Masahiro Shinoda.
This excellent film is a unique blend of theater and cinema. The elements of Japanese Bunraku theater, where actors are three-quarter life-sized puppets controlled by puppeteers dressed all in black (Kuroko), are intricately woven into the story.

I (Harry Kreisler) saw Double Suicide twice, and your dual performance of Koharu and Osan in that movie was extraordinary. You were able to convey the bond between the two women even though they were fighting over the same man. What were the challenges of doing that dual role?

Shima Iwashita as Koharu

“Koharu was a prostitute, and in that time the people wore very white make up, had very glamorous kimono, and I used a very high voice for her. With Osan, I contrasted that with the traditional blackening of the teeth for married women and shaving of the eyebrows and having a lower speaking tone in my voice. Koharu spoke much faster and Osan slower. But the director had told me that in the last scene that he wanted to give the impression it might have been the double suicide of the same woman. So that the two of them might have been the same woman. So toward the end, I tried to keep that in mind in thinking that Koharu’s suicide might have been Osan’s suicide as well. I tried to get that impression across.”
(from here.)

Two at the Side (two paintings) by Fung Ching Kelling

“Little body little block heart beating ash grey only upright. Little body ash grey locked right heart beating face to endlessness. Little body little block genitals overrun arse a single block grey crack overrun. Figment dawn dispeller of figments and the other called dusk.” (The last paragraph from “Lessness” by Samuel Beckett.)

A room and Samuel Beckett

The photo above is a room preserved as is from Beckett’s residence in Roussillon.
Javier Marias used the photo of Samuel Beckett shown on the bottom right to describe him in his book “Written Lives”.
He wrote about Mayakovsky and his remarkable shoes before moving forward to his impression of Beckett’s photo.

“They (shoes) are the main object in the photo of Beckett too, except that their owner, seated almost on the floor and in a corner, seems slightly terrified of them. He is another hounded man, but at least he is not surprised by the hounding: he’s ready for it; he is holding a cigarette in his right and his left hand seems to be adorned, incongruously for someone so sober, with a bracelet rather than a wristwatch. His clothes are nothing out of the ordinary, although his cufflinks look like handcuffs. It it weren’t for those large shoes, the only thing that would matter, as in any portrait of Beckett, would be his head and those eagle eyes, which stare straight out with a truly animal expression, as if they did not understand the need for this moment of eternity, or why anyone should want to photograph it…..” ( page 191 - Perfect Artists, the last chapter from “Written Lives”)

Beckett was asked by a reporter how a small country like Ireland could have produced so many great writers since the last half of the nineteenth century.

“It’s the priests and the British, Beckett replied tersely. “They have buggered us into existence. After all, when you are in the last bloody ditch, there is nothing left but to sing.” (Page 282, A biography of Samuel Beckett by Deirdre Bair.)

Samuel Beckett was a close friend of Joan Mitchell and her husband Barney Rossett was Beckett’s publisher.

Beckett at 100 from Greencine daily with many good links including one on Barney Rossett.

Samuel Beckett was born 100 years ago on April 13, 1906.
His sun is in Aries and his moon is in Sagittarius, the same combo as Vincent Van Gogh and Thomas Jefferson with whom he shares a birthday.

The combination of your Sun and Moon sign produces independence of thought, action, and speech. This is a position of dynamic ideals and popular appeal. You believe in the truth with an almost absolute devotion. This belief is perhaps not in the truths of scientific investigation, but more likely in the proper philosophies of life and other large issue abstractions. The natural tendency for Aries to be the pioneer, the fighter, the doer, and the initiator new concepts and ideas is not greatly modified by this combination. Yet the Sagittarius Moon does impose a personal code of ethics and honor that may not always be present in the brash Aries native. In you, executive powers are strongly marked, taking the form of controlling others with ideas and principles. The proper path that should be followed is so clear to you that you are not one ever to mince words in plotting the course. Your intensely emotional approach to getting something accomplished can sometimes limit your awareness of the feeling of others and you can be tough on those around you. The human frailties of pettiness, emotionalism, and jealousy are not well understood by you, and do not relate well with your totally open and frank personality. (From here, scroll down to Sagittarius Moon section.)

Let me introduce you to a nose of Dan Wade.

Who is Dan Wade?

This is what he does best

.

Dan Wade is an action gif star and his blog is here.

Getting back to more serious matter, I saw this film made in 1993 Combination Platter supplied by my favorite local library. “Combination Platter represents the directorial debut of 23-year-old Tony Chan. Himself a Hong Kong émigré, Chan draws from his own experiences in detailing the tribulations of illegal immigrant Robert (Jeff Lau), who takes a low-paying job at a Szechuan restaurant in New York (the film was shot in the restaurant owned by Chan’s parents!” (MSM movie info page).

Look who is holding the green card here.

Allan Kaprow passed away
(Man with white shirt is Allan Kaprow - from here
18 Happenings in 6 Parts - 1956)

“Yard”
View of tires in court of Martha Jackson Gallery, New York 1961.

From An old interview “And one could say today perhaps almost for twenty years now, we’ve been in a neo-conservative state with back to all kinds of prototypical modernisms, now quoted, now so called post-modernist snide tickle-tickley cutesy stuff, all of it feeding a consumerist market, of course.”

Lithograph of Allan K. Title: and so it goes make so most of it

via
no longer exist not-time hands of clock-clock without numbers (title of above lithographe)

“While modern art concerns itself with surfaces in order to transform and transcend them, Kaprow is concerned with surfaces but not with transcendence; his surfaces don’t lead anywhere except back to themselves, as deepened experiences of themselves-as-themselves.” (from Dirt and Toothpaste, or, An Approach To the Problem of Being A Self in Modern Life — Notes on Allan Kaprow)

Primavera’ is an exhibition featuring contemporary artists from Italy, the Netherlands and the UK.

Primavera

The themes of renewal and ‘first truth’ are realised in diverse formats, from made artefacts to digital projection.

The exhibition also draws from the history and character of the gallery, which is sited in a former flower shop and listed building.

Here is the announcement of this exhibition - see more artists listed on this page.
(via email from Paul Malone)

Giorgio Tentolini has an ambitious flash site, check his Object page, then to Sirene, Exhibition 05 and Settestate from his ART page.

Happy Birthday to Eric Rohmer who shared a brithday(April 4th) with Marguerite Duras who passed away ten years ago. (Duras image from my previous post is recycling today at Long Sunday thanks to Matt of Pas-audela.)

Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada
(See the beautiful Futon without a sheet and the haircut by her cruel villagers of Nevers. We will not tolerate haircut in Nevers, never, ever.)
“Hiroshima Mon Amour” is 47 years old.
Here is a reaction from today’s young viewer.
“You kind of get the feeling that Terrence Malick lifted his entire style from the opening and closing 15 minutes of the film.”
I thought lots of imagery from Hiroshima Mon Amour drifted into Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation”. She was smart enough not to mention the theft instead saying something about Wyler’s “Roman
Holiday”, Antonioni, and Wong Kar Wai.

(Two years prior to Hiroshima Mon Amour, Hollywood made “Sayonara.” That tradition of the Asian awfulness style continues today with “Memoirs of a Geisha”)

Saw Hiroshima Mon Amour last week courtesy from my local library. Was first introduced to the text of M. Duras from a French class at the college. Everything came together well for this film, the director, the script, the acting, a remarkable masterpiece.

Resnais is a cubist. I mean that he is the first modern filmmaker of the sound film.
— Eric Rohmer
You can describe Hiroshima as Faulkner plus Stravinsky.
— Jean-Luc Godard

We’ve already seen a lot of films that parallel the novel’s rules of construction. Hiroshima goes further. We are at the very core of a reflection on the narrative form itself.
— Pierre Kast

“In July 1959, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Pierre Kast, and other members of the editorial board of Cahiers du Cinema convened a roundtable on Hiroshima Mon Amour. Godard called it the first film without any cinematic references; Jacques Rivette said its rupturing of rhythm likened it to contemporary classical music; all members agreed on its status as a cinematic watershed. With his first feature, Alain Resnais created the thing they had all been looking for: a truly “modern” film. Fortunately, this illuminating discussion is included with Criterion’s new high-definition transfer DVD. ” (From Popmatters)

A look at voice-over narration: Manic Depression Mon Amour - Chris Cheng

Nice photos from the film and a photo of Emmanuelle Riva today.

“At 76 years of age, Riva demonstrates that she has lost none of her beauty or intelligence. She remembers events of over 40 years with precision and enthusiasm, and reflects on the film’s longevity and meaning with great insight. For example, she explains that her character’s double love, with the Japanese man in the present and the German soldier in the past, places her in an emotional temporal limbo.”

In Japan this film was released as ‘A Love Affair of 24 hours” without referencing Hiroshima.