Vitro Nasu

RIP Paul Taylo, Nytimes tweeted.

Paul Taylor brought a lyrical musicality, capacity for joy and wide poetic imagination to modern dance over six decades as one its greatest choreographers

The Paul Taylor Dance Company Performing Tracer, in 1962. Robert Rauschenberg’s Bicycle Wheel was the only scenery on stage.

Paul Taylor died (Guardian obit)

Taylor, a dancer who later became one of the world’s greatest choreographers, was seen as the last of the 20th century’s titans of modern dance

NPR obit (A Giant of Modern Dance)

Kiki Smith and Paul Taylor
(via)

Kindred Spirits (youtube)

(Dogs designed by Alex Kats)
Yerba buena SF 2015

“I had seen Paul dance for the first time shortly before we met with Edwin [Denby] and thought his choreography was one of the most surprising things I had seen as an artist. Paul’s dancing seemed to be a real break with that of the previous generation: no expression, no content, no form, as he said, and with great technique and intelligence.”

Alex Kats

Paul Taylor

Paul Taylor proves staying power of ’70s and ’80s dance

(Amnesia – directed by Barbet Schroeder – His mother’s house in Ibiza was used twice in his films, Amnesia and More, his first film)

See a trailer here.

Berbet Schroeder in Conversation on Walter Benjamin, R. Housemann, Pink Floyd.

Hausmann actually had a whole colony of other German intellectuals, poets, painters. And this house [in Amnesia] was influenced by Hausmann, it was not built by him. But it was influenced by him and his group. It was built in 1936 and my mother bought it in 1951.
AKT: Was Walter Benjamin part of that group around Raoul Hausmann?
BS: Yes, he was! Walter Benjamin was actually not far from this house. He was in the fishermen village that was 15 minutes by foot from this house.

Barbet Schroeder directing his wife Bulle Ogier in Maitresse.

“It is the element of adventure in all creative activity that particularly interests Schroeder. He is a producer, a catalyst, but also a director and an actor. He is a Renaissance man. He began as a critic for Cahiers du Cinema. He gives his all to each film. When he produced La Collectuionneuse, he wento into debt to do so. He was the first to believe in Rohmer.” wrote Nestor Almendros (A Man with a Camera).

From Barbet Schroeder’s first film “More” Nestor Almendros was his D.P and also credited as set designer in some films, their collaboration continued to “The Valley, “Obscured by Clouds”, “General Idi Amin Dada”, “Maitresse”, “Koko, the Talking Gorilla”

(Barbet Schroeder with Mickey Rourke and Bukowski – on set filming Barfly)

Terror’s Advocate

NONFICTION FILM – MOVIES – Experiments in terror – Director Barbet Schroeder has a particular flair for films that expose the evil that walks among us.

Many interesting photos here for Barbet Schroeder .

French producer Barbet Schroeder (L) and German Rainer Werner Fassbinder are photographed in Cannes on May 12, 1979 during the 32nd International Film Festival where they present Fassbinder’s film “The third generation”. AFP PHOTO RALPH GATTI (Photo credit should read RALPH GATTI/AFP/Getty Images)

(Franco Zeffirelli, Olivia Hussey and Akira Fuse)

Olivia Hussey and Fuse Akira

Olivia Hussey in Japan

Building Bloc -積木の部屋 (積木の部屋 / 布施明)

His own song composed, lyrics as well.

Flamenco guitar and hear him singing (Youtube)

My way in Japanese.

1)Cyclamen Fuse’s early hit song.

2)
Playing Oboe..
Cyclamen his early hit.

Fuse’s interpretation of Aznavour song in Japanese

Doukoku

(An elegant calligraphic note is a poem written by Fuse Akira)

Fuse Akira’s Novel: Daddy

Happy birthday Leonard Berstein!

Tom Clark, 2010. Poet – photo by John Sarsgard

Beyond the Pale an extraordinary blog by Tom Clark.

Tom Clark Renowned Poet and Biographer dies in North Berkeley traffic collision.

Jacket Interview
(Tom Clark thought Ron Padgett was a far superior poet of my generation.. )
Ron Padgett and Paterson – (scroll down)

Samuel Beckett – My Family with extraordinary photos from Jakarta Indonesia here (from Tom Clark’s blog)

Aretha Franlin
(photographed by George Hurrell, 1979)

Duet with Frank Sinatra was her favorite..

Read (Independent)

Aretha Franklin: How the Queen of Soul offered to post bail for Angela Davis, saying ‘black people will be free’

Portrait by Paul Emsley at the National Portrait Gallery

The World is What it is – (The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, Patrick French, 2008 – reviewed by Agog)

Guardian obit

VS Naipaul, Nobel prize-winning British author, dies aged 85.

Ian Buruma on Naipaul (the Poet of the Displaced)

An Appraisal- NYtimes..

V.S.Naipaul wiki
5 things Probably Didn’t know about V.S.Naipaul

1) He had a nervous breakdown while studying at Oxford, and spent all his money on a trip to Spain
2)He wrote his first story collection in five weeks (read more from the above link)

Pat and V.S Naipaul

V.S.Naipal and Harold Pinter here.

Kureishi Novel echoes Life of V. S.Naipaul

Paris Review

Naipaul’s gentle side ..

MYSTIC MASSEUR, Ayesha Dharker, Om Puri, 2001(c) Think Film. . Merchant Ivory production..
story by V.S. Naipal.
Om Puri in Mystic Masseur

(Photo by Evelyn Hofer )
Andy Warhol standing in the factory with a Liz painting and several screens in the background.

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Title:Joseph Beuys in memoriam -1986

Momus Ca – Dubious Icons, Godheads, Messiahs, Artist, Celebrity

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Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys in 1980 posing in front of Lenbach’s Self Portrait with his Family
Photograph: Angela Neuke

What Andy Warhol saw in Joseph Beuys (Phaidon)

Christie – When Warhol met Beuys

Andy was in China, Iran and Bali – (previous post)

Andy and Ali (Previous post)

O Meu Retrato (My Portrait), 1966
Electromechanical object, photograph on paper (via Walker Art Center)

Artforum obit

Brazilian artist Antonio Dias, whose paintings and sculptures viscerally challenged the authoritarian regime that ruled his country for over two decades, has died at age seventy-four. While Dias’s early canvases mingled Nova Figuração (New Figuration) with graffiti and comic book influences to address urban violence, censorship, war, and Brazil’s former military dictatorship, his later works moved toward an abstraction that was less overtly political.

After Utopia

“Our Lives Are Shaped by the Quality of Our Attention” – Antonio Dias

Looking back at looking back, What Drives Me –

Confronting the double-bind,
Growing up in a predicament we get past incredulity or we take refuge in madness.

Antonio Dias and Tropicalia . (Ken Li blogged)

(“I Am Not Your Negro” Written by James Baldwin, Directed by Raoul Peck)
New Yorker –

Capturing James Baldwin’s Legacy Onscreen
With “I Am Not Your Negro,” Raoul Peck seems to be stepping in to make the movie that Baldwin couldn’t.

Baldwin was drawn to Ingmar Bergman’s films, because they were the work of a feeling thinker who mined his past—especially his troubled relationship with his authoritarian pastor father. In a 1960 Esquire profile of Bergman, Baldwin describes how, after an interview with the filmmaker, he got into his car and imagined a movie he might make about his own past. But Baldwin had neither Bergman’s studio support nor his skin color.

Nina Simone and James Baldwin (Wild is the Wind)

Part Ii<> <> <> Part III

James Baldwin Born August 2, 1924

Baldwin and Marlon (Dangerous Minds – civil rights 1963)

Go Tell It on the Mountain, which Baldwin had worked on for years under various titles, was finally finished during a trip to Switzerland. When New York publisher Alfred Knopf expressed interest in publishing the work, Baldwin returned to America on a ticket bought with a loan from Marlon Brando. His novel was published a year later in 1953 and received rave reviews. (via)

The Woman Who invented Robert Capa

Google Gerda
Google honors Gerda Taro, a pioneering female war photographer Gerda Taro

Widely considered the first female photojournalist to cover a war, she was also the first to die doing so.

Gerda Taro

(Photo of Robert Capa by Gerta Taro on the right)

Network of Stoppages – 1914 (MoMa)

Mary Reynolds and Marcel Duchamp
photo by Man Ray.
Re-thinking Marcel Duchamp by Barbara Rose.

Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp in uniform 1895

Military avoidance

The essay traces military relationships in the work of Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), paying particular attention to his notes of 1912 known as the ‘Jura-Paris Road’. These are interpreted as ‘military texts’ and the author shows how military concerns remained with Duchamp throughout his career, resulting in facetious outcomes that obscured uneasy preoccupations.

Marcel Duchamp was born on 28 July 1887.

Marcel Duchamp and Martin Friedman 1965

Ed Ruscha on Marcel Duchamp (Youtube)

John Cage met Marcel Duchamp in the 1940’s
(Only when Duchamp’s health was failing, Cage decided to seek Marcel out with the pretext of taking chess lessons. So Duchamp, his wife and Cage met and played chess.)

John Cage: Music for Marcel Duchamp (Youtube)

Arts Journal – Marcel Duchamp Interviews

“To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space seeks his way out to a clearing.”
In Artopia we think of Duchamp as one of the great poets of the last century; perhaps too much of a dandy, perhaps too much of a chess-player and a poseur, perhaps too much of a gentlemen — but always a prestidigitator of the first order.

Robert Smithson told me he once confronted Duchamp at a party: “I see you are into alchemy,” he accused. “Why, yes,” answered Marcel.

Dada Perfume Marcel Duchamp Interview

JP: Why did you keep it a secret?
MD: As we have discussed in the past, secrets have been essential to my work, which may or may not have anything to do with art.
JP: I read in Calvin Tomkins’ new biography called simply Duchamp (Henry Holt, 1996) that your brother-in-law Jean Crotti once said that how you used time was your real art work.
MD: Rather, it was how I abused time.

John Perrault and Duchamp

A.O. Scott on Mild Mannered Maniac
Born: July 25, 1941, Puerto Montt, Chile
Raúl Ruiz 1941-2011

Time Regained (Cinema Poetry – youtube)

Raoul Ruiz, a highly regarded director of more than 100 films in several different languages, has died at the age of 70.
His films, philosophical yet playful, often deal with the nature of truth and perception while utilizing the notions of parallel realities and identities; few were as willing to toy with the viewer on such a consistent basis.

One of his most ambitious projects was Mistérios de Lisboa (Mysteries of Lisbon, 2010), based on the episodic novel by the 19th-century Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco. The turning and twisting narrative of this four-and-a-half-hour film stretches through three generations and as many countries, all controlled by Ruiz’s flowing digital camerawork. (Obit: Guardian)

Mysteries of Lisbon trailer

Exiles #1 <> <> Exles #2 <> <> Exilees #3 <> <> Exiles #4 <> <> Exiles #5

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Two two enigmatic films by R. Luiz – Ce-Jour La.. and Comedy of Innocence.

But if I had to pick one anecdote (among so many) that best characterised the warmth and genuinely democratic, open spirit of Raúl, it would be from his International Rotterdam Film Festival retrospective of 2004, when I was standing next to him in a crowded foyer. Suddenly, he spotted and waved to a distant guy; they approached each other, warmly embraced, briefly chatted and parted ways in the throng. Who was he (I asked), an actor, a producer from one of his films? No: “He projected my films here in Rotterdam twenty years ago”. For Raúl, a good projectionist was just as important, just as valuable as anyone who contributed to his work, no less than a Malkovich or a Deneuve, a Jorge Arriagada (composer) or a Sacha Vierney (cinematographer). What a memory he had – and what a profoundly ethical sense, right where it most matters, in everyday life, and in the lived history of that everyday. Adrian Martin via girish