Vitro Nasu

Kosinski
Photo via Jerzy Kosinski
Who was Jerzy Kosinski? (Previous post)

Jerzy Kosinski was born on June 14, 1933. He was an award-winning Polish-American novelist, best known for the novels The Painted Bird (1965) and Being There (1971), the latter of which was adapted into a film in 1979.

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Hal Ashby directed Being There.

Philip Roth on Jerzy Kosinski –

In the end, I don’t understand Jerzy Kosinski. At some level, he must have judged his life as successful. Using his talent, wits, boldness and determination, he went far, if you consider the boy growing up under the most menacing of shadows. Was he happy? There is so much darkness in his novels, I wonder how much brightness there was in his life (inside him, in the place he kept hidden). I am left with a sense of pity, which I’m sure he would not want me to feel. He would prefer respect. And I can grant him that.

Jerzey

David Foster Wallace described Steps as a “collection of unbelievably creepy little allegorical tableaux done in a terse elegant voice that’s like nothing else anywhere ever”. Wallace continued in praise: “Only Kafka’s fragments get anywhere close to where Kosiński goes in this book, which is better than everything else he ever did combined.

Polish Children

Milan Kundera was born on April 1. (His first novel was called The Joke.)

Life is Elsewhere Photo collage by Fung Lin Hall.
The above image is a photo collage of an outdoor art installation from a street near Malostranska station in Prague. The statue of Sigmund Freud hanging by one hand by David Cerny – Czech Sculptor. *
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Philip Kaufman saw Miss Julie on stage and cast Lena Olin in The Unbearable Lightness of Being for his adaptation of Milan Kundera’s most popular novel.
Daniel Day Lewis and Lena Olin

Easter Sunday – 2018

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The Rabbit knows how to relax.

Pool Bunny Fung Lin Hall (See Hotel lobbies in New Mexico and William James)

Arizona Tales

The Good, The Bad and The Rabbit

Rabbit by Henri Rousseau, Durer and others here.

Happy birthday S. Zizek March 21 1949

See young Zizek here.
Lacanian Sympton

Scroll down – Sophie Fiennes (sister of Ralph Fiennes directed Zizek.)

The Duty of Philosophy? Zizek has the answer.

Peter Brook is 93 –

Peter Brook’s Filmography

1953, The Beggar’s Opera
1960, Moderato Cantabile (UK title Seven Days… Seven Nights)
1963, Lord of the Flies
1967, Ride of the Valkyrie
1967, Marat/Sade
1968, Tell Me Lies
1971, King Lear
1979, Meetings with Remarkable Men
1979, Mesure pour mesure
1982, La Cerisaie
1983, La Tragédie de Carmen
1989, The Mahabharata
2002, The Tragedy of Hamlet (TV)

L’avventura
Moderate Cantabile
Both film nominated at Cannes 60.

Jeanne Moreau and Jean Paul Belmondo in Moderate Cantabile directed by Peter Brook, an adaptation of a story by Marguerite Duras.

See “on the bench” from Moderate Cantabile (youtube)

Happy New (Y)ear of Earth Dog! starting February 16, 2018 to February 4, 2019.
(Earth dog is Communicative, serious, and responsible in work)

Spike loved Maria Callas and his family love and miss him forever.

Ellis began working on the book in 2010 after Kubrick’s death by canine lymphoma as a way of working through his grief over the dog’s death

Independent filmmaker Sean Ellis (previous post- Metro Manila to Prague)

James Dean ‘s dog here.

Dog by Ed Ruscha

Oof oof and various cheeses

Monty and Monty Socrates
Read how Monty Socrates found his family and his brother and sister.

Best in show – A film clip + fun dog photos and a link to 8 ways to prepare your pets for war.

Noah Tayler as Hitler, John Cusack as an art dealer.

Max – trailer

The central mystery of Hitler, William Boyd writes in a recent Times Literary Supplement, is: “How on earth could a dysfunctional, deranged, down-and-out homeless person in pre-First World War Vienna become, 20 years later, Chancellor of Germany?” A peculiar and intriguing film named “Max” argues that he succeeded because he had such a burning need to be recognized–and also, of course, because of luck, good for him, bad for us. If Hitler had won fame as an artist, the century’s history might have been different. Pity about his art.

“Max” imagines a fictional scenario in which the young Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor) is befriended by a one-armed Jewish art dealer named Max Rothman (John Cusack) in Munich in the years following World War I. Both served in the German army and fought in the same battle, where Rothman lost his arm. The dealer opens an avant-garde art gallery in a vast abandoned factory, showcasing artists such as George Grosz and attracting important collectors–and Hitler, clutching his portfolio of kitsch. Rothman takes pity on this man and is friendly to him, moved by the pathos beneath his bluster. (Roger Ebert)

Considers the scripts to Max (2002) and Being John Malkovich (1999) the best he has read. (IMDB)

Cusack with Arundhati Roy (2016)

Happy birthday John Cusack, Mel Brooks and Kathy Bates.

Mel Brooks Hitler Rap (youtube)

Kathy Bates made two films based on Stephen King, Misery and Dolores Claiborne and she won an Oscar with Misery.

See funny photos from here..

(Elgawimmer)
Donald as a cross dresser
1999, charcoal and pastel on paper
10 feet x 14 feet

Donald Duck by Joyce Pensanto

Happy birthday Donald Duck June 9 1934

Donald Duck debuted – here –

Happy birthday Johnny Depp (Before Night Falls, he had double roles)
trailer here .

Fear and loathing (see Las Vegas, Hunter Thompson, Ali and Depp)

Walt Disney and Shostakovich

Act Natural
(Orange blob escaped from the white house)
(art by Miranda July)

Dolls trailer (Directed by Takeshi Kitano, Poland gave this the best film award – costume design by Yoji Yamamoto)

Name these girls – Happy Hinamatsuri album

Google Hinamatsuri

The custom of displaying dolls began during the Heian period. Formerly, people believed the dolls possessed the power to contain bad spirits. Hinamatsuri traces its origins to an ancient Japanese custom called hina-nagashi (雛流し, lit. “doll floating”), in which straw hina dolls are set afloat on a boat and sent down a river to the sea, supposedly taking troubles or bad spirits with them.(via wiki)

Meet Jesse

Captive Girls (previous post)

More delicous performances at the museum..

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year of the Fire Rooster!

André Kertész

(repost – see other photos here)

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Map of China as Rooster .. by Jurgen Trautwein

Funny Rooster on youtube .

Red Rooster 1996 by Edward Ruscha
Ed Ruscha archive here.

Year of Monkey
(see Frida Kahlo, Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn playing with monkey)

Year of Goat (Zubaran, Marguerite Yourcenar, etc)

Year of Wood horse (Turin Horse, Leonardo etc)

Year of Rabit (Pool Rabbit, Ray Johnson etc)

Year of Rat (Banksy Rat, Rat Patrol)

Year of Dog

Year of Pig (Pasolini, Kimono Pig etc)

Pathe Rooster

Then there’s the Pathé rooster, who’s been going strong for more than a hundred years and still turns up in silhouette at the end of the current Pathé “mobile” logo. So far as I know, that rooster has had the longest life of any movie symbol, in part because he originated with the Pathé Frères in France during the late 1800s, was registered in the U.S. in 1902, and adorned a record label (“I sing loud and clear” was the original slogan) as well as newsreels and feature films over the decades. It’s nice to see the company still respects its longtime mascot.

The Next Day – Marion Cortillard played a sexworker for priests – read more here.

Bowie at Berlin Wall – 1987
Take peek, David Bowie’s art collection.

David Bowie showing off his knowledge of contemporary art with Julian Schnabel here on Charlie Rose. (youtube)

Peter Cook, Bowie and Dudley Moore – via

David Bowie returned to space at 69 (Jan 10,2016 Bowie passed away 2 days after his birthday)
See more photos and links here.

The Cop, The Nun and Peter Cook – the Comic Genius
Jan 9 1995, Peter Cook died

An extremely influential figure in modern British comedy, he is regarded as the leading light of the British satire boom of the 1960s. Cook was closely associated with anti-establishment comedy that emerged in Britain and the United States in the late 1950s.

Title: Singer of Tales
Scultpure installation by Jon Isherwood

Woody would meet Dick Cavett at the Met – read Museum Hours by David Ehrenstein.

(Tony Cragg Sculpture installation)
Photos by Fung Lin Hall

Museum Hours by Jem Cohen – Art, Life & Mystery (previous post)

Dada Picabia

Picabia at MoMa..

Francis Picabia – 22 January 1879 – November 30, 1953

Poet, painter, self-described funny guy, idiot, failure, pickpocket, and anti-artist par excellence, Francis Picabia was a defining figure in the Dada movement; indeed, André Breton called Picabia one of the only “true” Dadas.

Picabia

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Daughter Born without Mother
1916-18

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L’oeil Cacodylate, 1921

Google Picabia

I Am A Beautiful Monster
Who is with me is against me.

Duchamp, Beatrice Wood at Coney Island

“Entr’acte,” the avant-garde film he made in 1924 with René Clair, and his contentious series of figurative paintings from the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s. Borrowing from art history, soft-core pornography and commercial art, they presage Pop Art, appropriation art and Neo-Expressionism.

Perpetual Movement

“Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Direction” is a Picabia aphorism consistent with another one: “The only movement is perpetual movement.” The show has a propulsive, joyous energy. Something new, different and often challenging waits in nearly every gallery.

Dada is like your hopes: nothing like your paradise: nothing like your idols: nothing like your heroes: nothing like your artists: nothing like your religions: nothing

Previous post

(Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012)

Gore Vidal would have been 91. Prolific, Elegant, Acerbic Writer – we miss you.

Anais Nin and Gore

Photos via Previous post (Goodbye Gore Vidal)

Best of Enemies (wiki)

The Best of Beasties by – David Ehrenstein

NY Magazine (Best of Enemies)

Life in Feuds: How Gore Vidal gripped a nation..