Indian Bazaar

July 16th, 2012

  • Radha Giving Butter-Milk to Krishna, illustration to Bihari’s Sat Saiya, Basohli, c. 1690

    See more Basoli paintings

    Shahzia Sikander Indian Miniture

    Avatar of Vishnu
    Buddha as the 9th Avatar of Vishnu

    F. Clementi

    The words English owes to India

    A – atoll, avatar
    B – bandana, bangle, bazaar, Blighty, bungalow
    C – cashmere, catamaran, char, cheroot, cheetah, chintz, chit, chokey, chutney, cot, cummerbund, curry
    D – dinghy, doolally, dungarees
    G – guru, gymkhana
    H – hullabaloo
    J – jodhpur, jungle, juggernaut, jute
    K – khaki, kedgeree
    L – loot
    N – nirvana
    P – pariah, pashmina, polo, pukka, pundit, purdah, pyjamas
    S – sari, shampoo, shawl, swastika
    T – teak, thug, toddy, typhoon
    V – veranda
    Y – yoga

    The Original Pundits

    These early 007′s were primarily gatherers of information for mapmakers, though each received a secret code name like NA, RN, PA, GK, GM, GNM, etc. They were given the honorary designation of Pundit, meaning scholarly or wise and were the model for Rudyard Kipling’s Kim.

    Ravi Shankar and George We are missing you (youtube)

    Ali Akbar Khan

    Radha’s dance (Film within the film, the dance from The River directed by Jean Renoir)

    Alfred Jarry Bike & Mercury Retrograde

    July 10th, 2012


    (via )

    Alfred Jarry Bike
    (via I wannabe Alfred Jarry )

  • Mercury turns Retrograde on July 14 2012

    Mercury in Retrograde
    By Sheryl Luna
    The day ended badly with a broken ankle,
    a jinxed printer, and a dead car. The dry yellow grass
    against the sunset saved me. Roosters

    pranced across a lawn of shit, proudly plumed
    in black feathers, bobbing before the gray goats.
    It was the first day I saw god in the quiet,

    and found a mustard seed was very small.
    There I had been for years cursing “why?”
    and all the gold in the sun fell upon me.

    There was a white mare in the midst
    of brown smog, majestic in the refinery
    clouds. Even the radio wouldn’t work!

    My mother limps and her hair falls out.
    The faithful drive white Chevy trucks
    or yellow Camrys, and I’m here golden

    on the smoking shock-less bus.
    I lost language in this want, each poem
    dust, Spanish fluttered

    Poem Hunter

    This talented bird built a nest inside the cactus plant.

  • Federer Wimbledon Express 2012

    July 8th, 2012

    At Wimbledon, Federer shows greatness once more. Swiss great Roger Federer won his seventh Wimbledon men’s singles title at the Wimbledon.

    With his victory, Federer regained the No. 1 ranking from Novak Djokovic, allowing him to equal Sampras’ record of 286 weeks as the top-ranked player.

    Federer & Murray

    Federer Train

  • Lol – Kate & Pippa Middleton were excited by Roger Federer win
    (Gif via )

    Andy Murray gets closer to affection at Wimbledon

    Mission to Mars

    July 7th, 2012

  • Nasa Imge mission to Mars

    Nasa scientists say crater, formed by an impact billions of years ago, is the largest yet encountered

    Tom Sachs (Space Talk – previous post)

  • The Soviets used to hold atomic weapons at Vogelsang — ready to strike at a moments notice. This crumbling fresco of Russian astronauts serves as a reminder of the former might of the USSR.

    A photographic journey through an abandoned Sovient Military Base.

    Remembering Ivan Karp

    July 3rd, 2012
  • <> <> Image via

    Ivan Karp, who helped find and market Pop Art, center, flanked by the gallery owner Leo Castelli, and Andy Warhol, in 1966.

    Ivan Karp Pop art dealer dies at 86..(NY times obit)

    Thanks Ivan Karp (via Greg)

    Culture girl

    Ivan Karp, 86, the Most Uncommercial of Commercial Art Dealers

    Open Salon com

    Ivan Karp was one of those people in the NYC, Art World that you can never forget. Fast talking and quick witted, Ivan Karp was the champion of the unknown artist. Always keeping an open door policy, he would look at any and all art which would came his way, right then and there on the spot.

    Ward Schumaker & Ivan Karp

    Such a pleasant guy with such an eye
    and he had a twinkle in that eye that did not stop
    he will be much missed – Ward Schumaker via email

    Where Did the Name O. K. Harris Come From?

  • Scott Walker – 30 Century Man

    June 30th, 2012
  • Scott Walker 30 Century Man (Now full film on youtube)

    Scott Walker: 30 Century Man is a 2006 documentary film about Scott Walker. The film gets its title from the Scott 3 song “30 Century Man”. It is directed and co-produced by Stephen Kijak, with Grant Gee serving as director of photography. It charts Walker’s career in music, with a focus on his songwriting, and features exclusive footage of recording sessions for his most recent album

    Stongest Man

    Scott Walker is the recluse’s recluse – a singer and writer who went from teenage heartthrob with incredible hair to tortured soul in the space of four eponymous albums between 1967 to 1969. In the 43 intervening years he has released only four more “proper” solo albums, each more eremitic than the last (plus others of standards and country ballads he would rather expunge from history).

    Scott Walker Interview (guardian)

    His hero was the Flemish chansonnier Jacques Brel, whose music he had been turned on to by a German Bunny Girl he had picked up at a party in the Playboy Club on Park Lane. ‘I don’t listen to Brel that much now,’ he says, ‘but in those days, hearing him sing was like a hurricane blowing through the room.’

  • Pola X is the soundtrack album to Léos Carax’s film of the same name composed, and produced by the American solo artist Scott Walker. The soundtrack also includes contributions from Smog, Sonic Youth, Fairuz, Nguyên Lê, and M. Luobin Wang. It was released on 17 May 1999. It was Walker’s first full soundtrack.

    Two stars from Pola X have departed early.

    Yekaterina Golubeva (9 October 1966 – 14 August 2011)

    (29 Palms, Pola X, I Can’t Sleep – Claire Denis )


    Guillaume Depardieu(7 April 1971 – 13 October 2008)
    Previous post on Guillaume Depardieu (Tous Les Matin du Monde + Duchess of Langlois)

    Horacio Coppola

    June 27th, 2012

    Horacio Coppola who has died aged 105, worked primarily in black and white, and his photography – keenly evoking sensations of time and place – has the scent of nostalgia. With his camera, he expressed his love of the city, its architecture and its people.

    Homage to Juan Gris

  • <>

    London 1935

    Horacio Coppola – MoMa collection

    Horacio Coppola ((31 July 1906 – 18 June 2012)

    Argentine photographer and filmmaker, and the husband of the German photographer Grete Stern.
    Born in Buenos Aires, he was the author of the photographs that appeared in the first edition of “Evaristo Carriego” (biography) (1930)[3] by Jorge Luis Borges. He was one of the pioneers photographers from Argentina and key figure in the Modernism. He studied in the Bauhaus during the thirties and came back to Argentina with his German wife. He remarried later to Raquel Palomeque.

    In a clip from “Ringl and Pit” the great Argentine photographer Horacio Coppola talks about his relationship with Grete Stern (later briefly his wife) and Ellen Auerbach, who had started the “ringl + pit” photo studio in Berlin in 1929. They all worked together in a fun little film where Coppola tries to pick up a maid, played by Grete.

  • Click through his photos here

  • Gaudi by Teshigahara

    June 25th, 2012

    Antoni Gaudi Full film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara

    Gaudi Made Me Realize the Lines Between the Arts Are Insignificant – Hiroshi Teshigahara

    <> <> <> <> (via)

    Gaudi not only had a profound impact on Teshigahara’s work, but it was Gaudi who planted the seed of a cross-disciplinary approach to the arts. “Gaudi worked beyond the borders of various arts,” said Teshigahara, “and made me feel that the world in which I was living still left a great many possibilities.”

    Nature and landscape were of central importance to Hiroshi Teshigahara, even as a young boy. He was born in Tokyo, son of Sofu Teshigahara, founder and grand master of the Sogetsu School of ikebana. Sofu championed the idea of ikebana as an art form rather than a decorative craft, and he bucked tradition by including materials besides flowers in his work.

    As Dore Ashton explains in an excellent essay on the Criterion website, when Hiroshi Teshigahara was a schoolboy, Japan’s cities were firebombed during the Second World War. He “returned to a landscape of bleak ruins.” Teshigahara’s generation “was charged with building a way to exist in the desperate circumstances they had inherited,” says Ashton. “Prominent survivors of the prewar avant-garde, who had spent all their youth in Paris, exhorted young artists to build a totally new culture, expunging all memory of the militaristic milieu of their childhood.”

    Calvet Chair Antoni Gaudi

    “If any film could be described as an architectural symphony, it is Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1984 movie ANTONIO GAUDI. Much of the imagery in GAUDI is nothing less than astounding in its beauty and boldness, and the blending of a neo-Gothic mysticism and grandeur with an Art Nouveau line and a surreal apprehension of the power of nature. The erotic connotations of much of the work are so blunt as to be almost shocking.”– Stephen Holden, The New York Times

  • Hiroshi Teshigahara -(Previous post – The Face of Another)

    Kurt Schwitters in Norway + Stephen Fry in America

    June 20th, 2012

    Kurt Schwitters in Norway

    (via)

    Kurt Schwitters was born on June 20, 1887 (Previous post K.S.– Dada, sound poetry, the first installation artist)

    Kurt in Norway (via)

    On 2 January 1937 Schwitters, wanted for an ‘interview’ with the Gestapo,[26] fled Hanover for Norway to join his son Ernst, (via wiki)

    Thanks to Rie Kitagawa for the tip

    Kurt Schwitters Influences (via wiki)

    Many artists have cited Schwitters as a major influence, including Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, Damien Hirst, Al Hansen, and Arman.

    “The language of Merz now finds common acceptance and today there is scarcely an artist working with materials other than paint who does not refer to Schwitters in some way. In his bold and wide-ranging experiments he can be seen as the grandfather of Pop Art, Happenings, Concept Art, Fluxus, multimedia art and post-modernism.” Gwendolyn Webster

  • Stephen Fry in America

    When Stephen Fry visited the Nation’s capital DC he interviewed the founder of Wikipedia.

    WikiMedia was founded on June 20 2003

    Stephen Fry
    Stephen Fry enjoyed New England, South West Native American territories, and San Francisco. He did not seem to care much for the Midwest, Florida or the South.

  • O My Papa

    June 16th, 2012


    Robert Mangold in his studio 1963 Nov.

    Robert Mangold

    The Family
    (From left: James Mangold with his parents in 1965; Robert Mangold’s Irregular Gray Area With a Drawn Ellipse, 1986)

    James Mangold is son of Robert Mangold – he is a film director. (Walk the Line Girl Interrupted, Copland, Heavy)

    James Mangold about parents
    My parents have a very, very rewarding life and do beautiful work, but growing up, one of my critiques of my parents’ world was that it was elitist, that it only speaks to a small sliver of the world. Doing something that could reach everybody else was very driving to me.

    “We should be writing more great roles for women, period. – James Mangold

    Mitchel Lichtenstein directed
    Mitchel Lichtenstein’s father Roy Lichtenstein designed the cover.
    Michel Lichtenstein from the Wedding Banquet (directed by Ang Lee – the ad is annoying – a great scene from the film. )

  • Father and Son previous post (Oe Kenzaburo, Arthur Miller and Gandhi as fathers)

  • Mark Salzman (previous post)

    The Man in the Empty Boat – Mark Salzman

    Happy birthday Jim Dine (See Jim Dine’s portraits of himself + an interview)

    Fernando Pessoa

    June 12th, 2012

    Pessoa

    “It is sometimes said that the four greatest Portuguese poets of modern times are Fernando Pessoa. The statement is possible since Pessoa, whose name means ‘person’ in Portuguese, had three alter egos who wrote in styles completely different from his own. In fact Pessoa wrote under dozens of names, but Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos were – their creator claimed – full-fledged individuals who wrote things that he himself would never or could never write. He dubbed them ‘heteronyms’ rather than pseudonyms, since they were not false names but “other names”, belonging to distinct literary personalities. Not only were their styles different; they thought differently, they had different religious and political views, different aesthetic sensibilities, different social temperaments. And each produced a large body of poetry.

    Mutliple Pessoa

    Fernando
    (See more photos here)

    Fernando Pessoa – June 13, 1888

    “If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.”

    Lost Frog and the thick of Fog 1pessoa(Basho and Pessoa -previous post)

    Marguerite Yourcenar – Madame Bibliotheque

    June 8th, 2012

    “When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is complex.” Marguerite Yourcenar


    (Photo of book cover Mishima Vision of the Void via Amerika and right photo M.Y in Tokyo)

    Mishima: A Vision of the Void (1980) tried to separate the persona or shadow of great Japanese writer, and homosexual, and the human being of flesh and blood. “… let us remember that the central reality must be sought in the writer’s work: it is what the writer chose to write, or was compelled to write, that finally matters. And certainly Mishima’s carefully premeditated death is part of his work.”

    Petite M.Y.

    She never went to school. She had a few tutors, but mostly she educated herself. She taught herself Latin, ancient Greek, English, and Italian; she read everything she could find.

    Coup de Grace was her most autobiographical novel.

    Marguerite Yourcenar, the Belgian born French novelist was the first woman elected to the Académie française. She was born on 8 June 1903.

    Becoming an Emperor by Joan Acocella (New Yorker) wrote that she was an extremely isolated artist.

    M.Yourcenar, an erudite and eccentric Grande Dame of Letters, spent half of her life in USA, and even had a citizenship and taught at Sarah Lawrence.

  • She translated Virginia Woolf’s The Waves over a 10-month period in 1937. (wiki)

  • Elegant and marmoreal [these essays] have the considerable charm of a hard-worn historical sense worn lightly, with a quickening of fine discriminations into lively images. – John Updike “That Mighty Sculptor, Time”. (Marmoreal means like a marble or statue.)

    More about M. Y. “Her many meditations on the meaning of love and pleasure often had their roots in personal crisis; yet they were always filtered through historical, mythological or fictitious characters.”

  • Previous post The Dark Brain of Piranesi borrowed the title of Yourcenar’s book of essays.

  • On Jung when asked about Freud and Jung ( Paris Review )
    As a great psychologist I prefer Jung. He was sometimes strange, but there was genius in his madness. He was more a poet and had a larger perception of human nature. In his memoirs (Memories, Dreams and Reflections) you are often confronted with the mystery of life itself. For example, his mother hatred, so strong that a table breaks itself in two when they are together! A stunning para-psychological episode or a beautiful symbol?

    As for Henry James, the best definition is the one by Somerset Maugham, when he said that Henry James was an alpinist, equipped to conquer the Himalayas, and walked up Beaker Street! Henry James was crushed by his stifling milieu—his sister, his mother, even his brother who was a genius but of a more philosophical and professorial kind. James never told his own truth.

    Reading Marguerite Yourcenar

    In the Ambulatory Surgery Unit –
    Hadrian, even though he was ruling Rome, he was very low key about the whole thing. He loved power, but not drama and, reading about how he just took everything in stride logically — giving a troublesome government official a stipend and sending him to the countryside — relaxed me and helped me look at the surgery logically.

    Musee Marguerite Yourcenar my museum

    She visited Borges and spent some times with him just before he died. Her tribute to Borges became her last piece of writing.

    Here is a sample of her writing;

    Febo del Poggio
    I am awakening. What did the others say? Dawn, you who reconstruct the world each morning: complete, with naked arms that hold the universe: youth, the dawn of man. What does it matter to me what others have said, thought, believed…I am Febo del Poggio, a scoundrel. Those who speak of me say that I have a base soul; but perhaps I have no soul at all. I exist in the way a piece of fruit exists, a glass of wine, a splendid tree. When winter comes, one abandons the tree that no longer offers shade; when one’s hunger is sated. one throws away the pit; when the glass is empty, one takes another. I accept that. Summer, the lustral water of morning over lithe limbs; O joy, dew of the heart….
    I am awakening. Before me, behind me, there is eternal night. For millions of ages I have slept; for millions of ages I shall sleep again…I have but one hour. Why would you spoil it with explanations or maxims? I stretch out in the sun, on the pillow of pleasure, in a morning that will never again return.

    (Excerpt from a book “That Mighty Sculptor, Time” by M. Yourcenar).