Vitro Nasu

Gould’s 1957 trip to the Soviet Union, when he became, at age 24, the first North American to perform behind the Iron Curtain
(Direct link)

Describing Gould’s 1957 tour of the Soviet Union, Russian conductor and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy recalled: “He was unbelievable… deliberately playing certain music not often heard in the Soviet Union. The [concert] hall was half empty. [Gradually] people started going to the telephones…. By the second half, the hall was filled. It was like a Martian coming to earth. In Leningrad, [they] ignored fire regulations and allowed 1,100 standees. If anyone fainted, there was nowhere to fall. They listened as if their lives depended on it.” ( A Life of Music and Love)

Glenn Herbert Gould (September 25, 1932 – October 4, 1982)

Glenn in Love?

The enigma
“I think there were a lot of misconceptions about Glenn and it was partly because he was so very private. But I assure you, he was an extremely heterosexual man. Our relationship was, among other things, quite sexual.”
(Cornelia Foss )
Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Youtube documentary)

Cornelia Foss beach painting

Her paintings here.

Glenn as Umbeboshi (previous post)

Tony Smith at Mathew Marks

(photo above by Patrick Morell)

Mathew Marks showing Tony Smith
September 7 – October 27, 2012
522 W 22 Street
video – source

Drawing via

Tony Smith birthday – September 23, 1912

Tony Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture.

He is the father of Kiki Smith.

Tony Smith was asked to teach a sculpture course at the University of Hawaii in Manoa during the summer of 1969. He designed two unrealized works, Haole Crater(a recessed garden) and Hubris but eventually created The Fourth Sign that was sited on the campus. His Hawaii experience also generated fodder for his “For…” series whose initials are friends and artists he met during his time in Manoa.

My sister Fung Ching Kelling met Tony in Hawaii and became his friend. She named her older son after him. Tony and his secretary-girlfriend visited my brother’s Jazz Coffee house in Tokyo. Later Tony also greeted my sister in NY when she visited, and then sent her off in a helicopter to show her the Manhattan skyline on the way to the airport.

The Future

(photograph by Annie Liebovitz)

Everybody Knows – (Exotica – youtube) Your birthday today.

Take this Waltz (Frederico Garcia Lorca)

Cohen loved this film Up the Yantzee

Bob and Leonard Cohen

–Robert Altman and Leonard Cohen – McCabe & Mrs Miller

The real Suzanne was almost homeless. (Nina Simone sings Suzanne)

Louis Simpson
March 27, 1923 – September 14, 2012 (photo via)

Louis Simpson, Poet of Everyday Life dies, he was 89 years old

It’s complicated, being an American,
Having the money and the bad conscience, both at the same time.
Perhaps, after all, this is not the right subject for a poem.
On the Lawn at the Villa (l. 14-16) (1980)

For people may not know what they think
about politics in the Balkans,
or the vexed question of men and women,
but everyone has a definite opinion
about the flavour of shredded coconut.
Chocolates (l. 18-22) (1980) (Wikiquotes)

Whatever it is, it must have

A stomach that can digest

Rubber, coal, uranium, moons, poems.

Like the shark, it contains a shoe.

It must swim for miles through the desert

Uttering cries that are almost human.

(via NYtimes)

“All you really know is given
at moments when you’re seeing
and listening.
Being in love
is a great help.
Oh yes, but keep a dog.”

Two poems from the Struggling times (youtube)

Occupy news (from Democracy Now)

Occupy Wall Street – People’s Library

Frank O’Hara Alice Neel

Frank O’Hara read Sept 14, 1959

In Memory of My Feelings.. Frank O’Hara archive

William Gaddis painted 1987 by Julian Schnabel

For Julian Schnabel – (William Gaddis)

Gaddis on the web

Steve Nash & Julian Schnabel

Kate M by Alice Neel – 1970

Happy Birthday Kate Millett – Sept 14, 1934

Flying with Kate Millett

Sexual Politics was circulated before the publication of her thesis. Kate Millett is an artist and a feminist.

Jackson Mac Low was an American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright, known to most readers of poetry as a practioneer of systematic chance operations and other non-intentional compositional methods in his work, which Mac Low first experienced in the musical work of John Cage, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff. He was married to the artist Iris Lezak from 1962 to 1978, and to the poet Anne Tardos from 1990 until his death.

Jackson Mac Low (Photo via)
(September 12, 1922 – December 8, 2004)

Insect Assassains (his poem)

From Pearl Harbor day (via Pearlblossomhighway blog)

Jackson Mac Low (Buffalo Edu)

George Maciunas (American, 1931–1978) and Jackson Mac Low (American, b. 1922), publishers;
La Monte Young (American, b. 1935), editor
letterpress
Closed: 20.8 x 24cm (8 3/16 x 9 7/16 in.)
The Getty Research Institute, 94-B19099
By kind permission of Jackson Mac Low and La Monte Young
© 1962 Jackson Mac Low

1973: Democratically elected President Salvador Allende moments away from death during military coup at Moneda presidential palace in Chile. (World Press Photo Winners – Orlando Lagos)

Ken Loach Chile 1973

Salvador Allende Age 4 Photo via

A line from Salvador Allende

Balancing between abstract
expressionism & futurism
the calm metal instrument
of my voice tweaks the once-

sacred double-helix to create
pyramids in bold colors &
textures. Exquisite tropes. The
great avenues will open again.

Mark Young Sept 19 2011 (gamma way from Australia)

Isabel Allende (Mother Jones) interview.

Isabel Allende went into exile after her uncle, Chilean president Salvador Allende, was overthrown in a CIA-assisted coup in 1973. She traveled, worked as a journalist, and wrote her books, “The House of the Spirits,” “Of Love and Shadows,” “Eva Luna,” and “The Stories of Eva Luna.” Her latest novel, “The Infinite Plan,” is set, as is she, in Northern California.

Daniel Joseph Martinez
I Am a Verb
September 8 – October 20, 2012 – Robert & Tilton Gallery

I Am A Verb

“Martinez derives meaning from the living world in much the same manner, codifying the often disquieting visual lexicon by which we map out our lives, often turning those culturally determined roadmaps completely upside down. Rather than ascribe meaning to an image or idea, Martinez utilizes the physical body as its own sociological testing ground, at once mutated, mutilated and broken. However, these mutations are not harbingers of a darker more sinister future, but visual amplifications of human responsibility in understanding what might be possible once we move beyond our own biology. The social future possesses its own viable “body” that transcends its physicality just as Martinez’ photographs of hunchbacks propose a strange asymmetry and ultimately transform beyond the “monstrous” pushing deeper still into the social fabric of everyday modern culture.”
via Robert and Tilton

Daniel Joseph Martinez
Its just a little headache, its just a little bruise redemption of the flesh. The politics of the future as urgent as the blue sky, 2008
Prosthetics, taxidermy, metal, plastic, corn syrup, food coloring, mechanical apparatus

Selected works by Lucy Skaer

Lucy Skaer

Lucky Skaer Interview

Osip Mandelstam

Sweet Voice and Harsh Words of Osip

The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam (1881-1938) was the brightest in a room full of brilliant flares, one of an extraordinary generation of poets that included Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Blok, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Marina Tsvetayeva, who made up what is called the Silver Age of Russian poetry. No writer more than Mandelstam bore the brunt of the political experiment launched by his country in the second decade of the twentieth century. It could be said that he loved and lived for his native Russia, and died at the hands of the Soviet Union.

Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope

Hope Against Hope has been described by Martin Amis and Clive James as the essential memoir of the 20th century. It was written towards the end of her long life by Nadezhda Mandelstam, the wife of arguably Russia’s greatest modern poet, Osip Mandelstam.

This
This is what I most want
unpursued, alone
to reach beyond the light
that I am furthest from.

And for you to shine there-
no other happiness-
and learn, from starlight,
what its fire might suggest.

A star burns as a star,
light becomes light,
because our murmuring
strengthens us, and warms the night.

And I want to say to you
my little one, whispering,
I can only lift you towards the light
by means of this babbling.

Osip Mandelstam

Osip and Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova and Modigliani (scroll down)

24 city

See full film here

The film follows three generations of characters in Chengdu (in the 1950s, the 1970s and the present day) as a state-owned factory gives way to a modern apartment complex.
The apartment complex featured in the film is an actual development (also called “24 City”) built on the former site of an airplane engine manufacturing facility. Jia will also produce a documentary about the location.
The film’s narrative style is described by critics as a blend of fictional and documentary storytelling, and it consist of five authentic interviews and four fictional scenes delivered by actors (but presented in a documentary format.

Joan Chen (Photo via 24 City – Mixing and manipulating Chinese History )

Peter Bradshaw (Guardian)

His most sensational “fictional” interview is with a beautiful, lonely factory worker, who is nicknamed Little Flower on the shopfloor, because of her resemblance to the eponymous heroine of a popular 1980 film. The heroine of that genuine film was played by Joan Chen and this character is played by … Joan Chen. Using such an obviously famous star in my view exonerates Jia from the charge of dishonesty. It’s an extraordinarily audacious, even outrageous casting gesture, a day-glo post-modern joke amidst the dour factory dust: an alienation effect which is also its opposite, an identification effect, a way of dramatising how downtrodden factory workers dreamed of glamorous escape, of lives other than the ones they had.

Early film – 1997

Jia Zhang Ke photo via

“Part of the reason I started making films was to respond to cinema’s blind spots, its silences, on the kind of life I knew. I wanted to express all the memorable things that I had experienced, and I think this is still my primary responsibility as a filmmaker.” – Jia Zhangke (MUBI)

The quest for memory – documentary – (Senses of Cinema)

(via)

Malcolm Browne’s decision not to intervene and prevent Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation haunted him for many years. He felt that in those seconds he could have saved the monk’s life but he chose to take photographs instead.
Perhaps by doing so and helping to show the world what was happening in Vietnam Malcolm Browne, in his small way, hastened the end of the war thereby saving many other lives at the cost of Thich Quang Duc’s.
Of course, Thich Quang Duc must be given far more credit for changing the world’s perception of the Vietnam War, after all, his was the ultimate sacrifice.
It is said that the only part of Thich Quang Duc’s body that wasn’t burnt was his heart, even after his body was subjected to ritual cremation, and it is kept at the Reserve Bank of Vietnam as a holy relic.(via)

Malcolm Browne (wiki)

Burning Monk Photographer Malcolm Browne Dies + BBC in pictures

Browne chats with David Halberstam of the New York Times (left) (Read more: here.)

Guillaume Apollinaire’s exeperience of the war provided the material for
Jules et Jim directed by Francois Truffaut.

L’histoire d’Apollinaire et de Madeleine est racontée sans citer le nom du poète dans le film Jules et Jim de François Truffaut.
(Letters to Madeleine)

Portrait de Guillaume Apollinaire – dans l’atelier de Picasso du 11 boulevard de Clichy – Picasso, 1910(Via)

Guillaume Apollinaire – 26 August 1880

A great page on Guillaume Apollinaire here.