Vitro Nasu

Fransico Toledo dies

Francisco Benjamín López Toledo, one of Mexico’s most influential artists, has died. Born in Oaxaca on July 17, 1940, the painter, sculptor and activist was 79.
Toledo studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Oaxaca and the Centro Superior de Artes Aplicadas de Bellas Artes. He incorporated his Zapotec heritage in his work, whether that was through prints, collages, ceramics or paintings. Toledo also included a lot of the animals that he grew up seeing. He particularly focused on animals – such as bats, frogs, lizards and cows – that others don’t always value.

Abdul Haq Baratali

Afgan Box Camera

Has the Afghan Box Camera Finally Met Its Match?
The unique portrait-maker has survived wars, invasions, and fundamentalist tyranny. But digital photography may be too much to overcome.
by Lynzy Billing

The 69-year-old photographer is sitting on the porch outside his cluttered one-story house on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, remembering when he was six years old. Back then he had to use whatever was on hand—usually cameras from the Soviet Union, which he borrowed from his sister’s husband.

Baratali has photographed thousands of people over the years, from generals and children to popular singers and police officers. Lynzy Billing

The Taliban banned photography in the 1990s, calling it an affront to Islam. Displaying an image became a crime punishable by beating or imprisonment. Robert Nickelsberg / The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images

Artforum obit

Eliseo Mattiacci, the Italian postwar artist who over the course of his five-decade career created sculptures that grapple with the mysteries of the cosmos, died in Pesaro, Italy, on August 26.

Eliseo Mattiacci via Apollo Magazine – obit

Eliseo Mattiacci (1940–2019) | The Italian sculptor Eliseo Mattiacci, who was closely associated with Arte Povera, died on 26 August at the age of 78. Born in Cagli, Mattiacci studied at the Istituto di Belle Arti, graduating in 1959 before moving to Rome. Known for his large-scale abstract compositions, Mattiacci created sculptures and installations investigating humanity’s relationship with our environments and our place in the cosmos.

See a fabulous slide show photos of his outdoor sculptures in Florence.

(RollingStone review)

Just nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign-Language Film and for the extraordinary cinematography of Caleb Deschanel, Never Look Away concerns itself with love and war and the limitless reach of art.

It isn’t possible to look away from this imposing film for long. Maybe to check the time―it does run for over three hours―or to block out a harrowing moment, but it has a commanding and sensual beauty that isn’t around much at the moment. Top marks to the cinematographer Caleb Deschanel. And like writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s first film, The Lives of Others, it has something serious it wants to say. (via)

Ulrich Mühe played Wiesler.

Lives of Others

Wiesler is a fascinating character. His face is a mask, trained by his life to reflect no emotion. Sometimes not even his eyes move. As played in Muehe’s performance of infinite subtlety, he watches Dreyman as a cat awaits a mouse. And he begins to internalize their lives — easy, because he has no life of his own, no lover, no hobby, no distraction from his single-minded job.

Mary Abbott

Untitled 1957 (Mixed media and paper collage 23 3/4 x 18″)

From 1974-77 Abbott taught at the Univ.of Minnesosta, her courses emphasized the use of color. When she returned to NY in the late 70’s she embarked on a series of flower paintings to increase her own understanding of color.

RIP Mary Abbott via Facebook

Alvaro Enciso

Meet Alvaro Enciso, the Artist Placing Crosses in Sonoran Desert to Memorialize Migrant Deaths

Quilt
via (see his art here)

The Constant Presence of Absence Art by Alvaro Enciso

The Art of Alvaro Enciso is often overshadowed by his Crosses In the Desert project, “Where Dreams Die”. Where Alvaro places Art Crosses in honor of migrants who have died in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. His Art isn’t separate from it, rather just another extension of the creative process in channeling the concepts of “The American Dream” through various bodies of work.

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Rolling Stone obit

Rolling Stone’s film critic remembers the kindhearted countercultural rebel that came from showbiz royalty and rode off into sunset his way

Great tribute to Peter Fonda here
(Mostly on Ulee’s Gold with many interesting facts about Peter Fonda)

Peter Fonda and Jean Seberg in Lilith (Robert Rossen directed starring Warren Beatty, Seberg, Fonda and Gene Hackman)

Fonda impressed Robert Rossen, who directed the Oscar winner All the King’s Men. He cast Fonda in what would be Rossen’s last movie, Lilith (1964), alongside Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg and Gene Hackman. Fonda’s performance was well reviewed. Rossen signed Fonda to a seven-film contract which was to start with an adaptation of Bang the Drum Slowly[14] but then Rossen passed away.

Funny video
(Dennis Hopper & Peter Fonda On Jack Nicholson’s Part In EASY RIDER)

Peter Fonda wiki

Peter Henry Fonda (February 23, 1940 – August 16, 2019) was an American actor. He was the son of Henry Fonda, younger brother of Jane Fonda, and father of Bridget and Justin Fonda (by first wife, Susan Brewer, stepdaughter of Noah Dietrich). Fonda was a part of the counterculture of the 1960s.[2][3]
He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Easy Rider (1969), and the Academy Award for Best Actor for Ulee’s Gold (1997). For the latter, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. Fonda also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film for The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999).

Through his friendships with members of the band Byrds, Fonda visited The Beatles in their rented house in Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles in August 1965. While John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and Fonda were under the influence of LSD, Lennon heard Fonda say, “I know what it’s like to be dead.” Lennon used this phrase as the tag line for his song, “She Said She Said”, which was included on the Revolver (1966) album.[8]

Jessica Biel on Peter Fonda

Jessica Biel is mourning “Easy Rider” star Peter Fonda, who played her father in her first movie.

Fonda was nominated for an best actor Academy Award for his performance as a beekeeper trying to keep his family together in 1997’s “Ulee’s Gold.” Biel, who was 15 when the film released, played an “angsty teenager with a nose ring.”

Artforum obit

Nancy Kienholz, Half Wife and Husband duo, Dramatic Installations died at 75

Pushed Art Boundaries with Husband (LA Times)

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via

Pollock: Artist and physicist?

Jackson Pollock died on Aug 11 1956.

Rainbow Trouts in action – (photos by Fung Lin Hall)

Rainbow Trouts, Jackson Pollock and birds

(Jane Freilicher, Ruth Kligman and Willem De Kooning)
Ruth Kligman was romantically involved with two prominent American artists of the mid-20th century, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Artnews obit

Barbara Crane, Protean Photographer of Intimate Chicagoan Scenes, Dead at 91

Slideshow at Stephen Daiter Gallery

Her photos in China

US photographer, one of the first foreigners permitted to take pictures in China

Barbara Crane’s homepage

The issues in my work are often of a similar nature with an abstract edge. Though I build on past experience, I attempt to eradicate previous habits of seeing and thinking. I keep searching for what is visually new to me while always hoping that a fusion of form and content will take place.

Barbara Crane, 2002

wiki (Crane’s archive resides at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. )

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Via

Time Obit

Toni Morrison, Seminal Author Who Stirringly Chronicled the Black American Experience, Dies at 88

Amy Goodman – Democracy Now

“Toni Morrison Will Always Be with Us”: Angela Davis, Nikki Giovanni & Sonia Sanchez Pay Tribute

Toni Morrison (wiki)

Paris Review (Remembering Toni Morrison)

Toni Morrison

Photo via

D.A Pennebaker (Rollingstone obit)

(wiki)

Pennebaker has been described as “arguably the pre-eminent chronicler of Sixties counterculture”

See his films by year or alphabetically

JLG’s 1 AM to D.A. Pennebaker’s 1 PM – Jean Luc Godard’s unfinished film

Much more interesting to me was the film he attempted to make in 1969, tentatively titled 1 AM (or One American Movie). A collaboration with cinema-verite pioneers D. A. Pennabaker and Richard Leacock, the project was abandoned after Godard lost interest during the editing phase but Pennebaker ended up completing his own version of the existing footage which he titled 1 PM (or One Parallel Movie). This is a brief history of the film’s journey from concept to screen.

On Don’t Look Back – “What I thought was, this person is trying to generate himself,” Pennebaker told The New York Times in 2016. “He’s trying to figure out who he is and what he wants to do. So I filmed him talking to people and listening to people. When the concerts came, I would only shoot little parts of them. I didn’t want it to be a music film. I wanted it to be a film about a person who was finding out who he was.” (via Rollingstone obit)