Vitro Nasu

A Vista of Perfection
The self-dissatisfied life and art of James Agee by Adam Kirsch

James Rufus Agee (November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955) was an American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family (1957), won the author a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.

The African Queen (youtube) scripted by J. A.

Poets of Cambridge

Reason, Magic, Skill and Love,
Frankly, I think poorly of.
Flesh and Figment, Brain and Breath.
All are parodies of Death.
Death alone can’t paint it true;
Only Death can say for sure;
Who but Death can sing to you?
Death my dearest, sparse and pure.
Life is but a sorrowing haze
Through which we grope; and our five senses,
Trammeling snares. In all our way
Artists put their subtle fences:
Telling us that Life is All;
Cheating us with hints of glory;
Charming us. We fail, we fall
Stupefied, and buy their story.

James Agee the dangerous edge

“the marvel of Agee’s description of Orson Welles playing Rochester in Jane Eyre, “his eyes glinting in the Rembrandt gloom, at every chance, like side-orders of jelly.” Such a phrase was “unprecedented and inimitable” .

A Famous Man (New Yorker David Denby)

Let us now praise

A Few Good Men Previous Post

Ducks Swimming
Painting by Hong Saesub(1832-1884)

Painting by Shin Yun-bok (1758-1813) the Trip along the Clean River.

Portrait of Beauty

A Scenery of Dano Day.. (Bold and titilating!)

Wild Goose Couple
회원님의 생각을 자유롭게 말하세요.
Painting by Chang Sungup(1843-1897)
This painting symbolised conjugal love. Wild goose couple in reeds called “Noando”

A Hermit under Banana tree
Painting by Lee Jae-Gwan(1783-1837)

Thanks to Heejae Lee for introducing us to Korean Art on Facebook.

Robert Bresson’s Les Dames de Bois de Boulongne – It is a modern adaptation of a section of Diderot‘s Jacques le fataliste (1796).

Maria Casarès
21 November 1922 was a Spanish-French actress and one of the most distinguished stars of the French stage.

Camus and Maria Casarès

Camus and his women

Camus had met Maria Casares, later star of Cocteau’s Orpheus but already an established actress, in 1944. Daughter of a rich Spanish Republican, a refugee from Franco, she was a passionate, wilful, intelligent woman. She was probably the only one of his lovers who had a relationship of equality with him. In addition, Todd says, ‘If he was a Don Juan, she was a Don Juana’.

Fung Ching Kelling’s portrait of her old high school friends in Tokyo.

Dog Man (Crown Point Press)

Oliveira was most recently at work on a series of paintings inspired the by Gerard Manley Hopkins poem “The Windhover,” a work which he had hoped would be permanently housed at a contemplative center planned for Stanford University and may still be. Nathan was one of four artist in the `Ashes to Life: A Portuguese American Story in Art, which was published in English and Portuguese for the exhibit of the same name with artists Mel Ramos, Joao de Brito and John Matos in 2008. (Nathan Oliveira wiki)

Two Runners

Nathan Oliveira died at his home in Palo Alto, California on November 13, 2010.

Nytimes obit here.

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Tree of Codes slideshow here.

Over a year of writing, cutting and proto-typing later, comes Tree of Codes, a haunting new story by Jonathan Safran Foer cut from Bruno Schulz’s words.
The book is as much a sculptural object as it is a work of masterful storytelling: here is an “enormous last day of life” that looks like it feels.

Tenderloin Mini Documentaries – animated here.

Pool sounds here.

Hetch – hetchy body wraps here.

Jurgen Trautwein – Flickr photo stream. his blog here

R.I.P Henryk Gorecki (December 6, 1933 – November 12, 2010)
Obit from Independent

Henryk Gorecki: Modernist composer who enjoyed crossover success with the million-selling ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’

Guardian UK obit here.

H. M. Górecki – Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra, Op. 40 (1981) (via Jeffrey Harris)

Painting by Ward Schumaker
Note: Helena Blazusiak was a Catholic who died in a Nazi death camp.)

In a book on the Nazi occupation, he discovered words found scratched on a wall in the Gestapo prison at Zakopane: “No, mother do not weep…”, signed by “Helena Wanda Blazusiak, aged 18, detained since 25.IX.44.” To this he added a text from the 15th-century, “Holy Cross Lament”. “So I had these three songs, very sad, hence the title ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’.”

(via)

Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington Remembers Henryk Górecki

NYtimes Obit
Gorecki in Basquiat (youtube)

Baby and Wallace (via)

Happy birthday Wallace Shawn (November 12, 1943) and Patrice Leconte (November 12, 1947) Neil Young also.

Patrice makes interesting films:The Widow of St Pierre, M. Hire, The Girl on the Bridge, The Hairdresser’s husband.
Patrice Leconte films samples from youtube:

Ridicule here.

Man on the Train (with Johnny Hallyday) directed by Patrice Leconte.

Ridicule was also directed by Patrice Leconte.

Auguste Rodin (12 November 1840)

Two English Girls Epilogue a visit to Rodin Museum.

Roland Barthes (12 November 1915)
Eiffle Tower

Nectie Skirt was dedicated to R.B.

Dr Sun Yat Sen (12 November 1866)

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(L’eclipse – Antonioni)

Bon Anniversaire Alain Delon – he is 75 years old today!

Alain Delon Youtube special edition:
Le Samurai – (Jean Pierre Melville’s celebrated work)

Plein Soleil (Rene Clement – Patricia Highsmith)

Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti)

Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey)

Happy birthday Kazuo Ishiguro! – 8 November 1954

The Remains of the Day
Toyota brake pad talk show. (My old web art from Post Mutant Eggplant)

A new film based on his novel is getting released.

(House of Yes)

Happy birthday Park Posey! (She played Mary Boone in Basquiat)

She is the Party Girl! (youtube trailer)
The Best in Show (Previous post – Best in Show and a memory of a bike ride to garage sale)

This is my introduction to Avital Ronell – very stylish and sharp.

I have seen Zizek talking about Ecology in front of massive garbage many times here and there but failed to see that
this was from a very interesting and entertaining film by Astra Taylor.

Peter Singer’s thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue’s posh boutiques. Slavoj Zizek questions current beliefs about the environment while sifting through a garbage dump. Michael Hardt ponders the nature of revolution while surrounded by symbols of wealth and leisure. Judith Butler and a friend stroll through San Francisco’s Mission District questioning our culture’s fixation on individualism. And while driving through Manhattan, Cornel West—perhaps America’s best-known public intellectual—compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be.
Featuring Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor. (via)

Sunaura Taylor (Astra’s sister) and Judith Butler on the street of San Francisco.

Filmmaker – director’s interview

Going against the norm of “serious” documentaries tending to be depressing, Taylor here creates a film of substance that is nevertheless light on its feet. Neither the walking philosophers nor their conversations stop for a moment during Examined Life, so the result is physically and mentally energetic piece of filmmaking. And as the ideas in Taylor’s film are engaging and thought-provoking without being overly complex, we are left invigorated rather than bamboozled.

One of Taylor’s inspirations comes from Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Scott McLemee

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Astra was raised in a strange Bohemian family, she explained in this interivew.

Related links

Diderot shows up here: A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment. By Philipp Blom.

Diderot and L’espirit de Fance (previous post)

So the garbage from the millionaire’s mansion mixes with the garbage from the poorest favela?
—Vik Muniz

The film’s representation of this ambitious venture begins by introducing Muniz, whose own story is as unlikely as those of his subjects. He grew up in a working class family in São Paolo, he tells an audience in footage from 1998, and in 1982, he was involved in a street fight (trying to stop it, he says). “As I was going back to the car,” he says, “I get shot by a guy who thought I was one of the guys fighting with him.” As a result, Muniz received a payment from the shooter, enough to buy a ticket to New York in 1983. He sums up: “That’s why I’m talking to you today, because I got shot in the leg.”
(via Popmatters)

What is Captcha?
(captcha business cards ask: are you human?)
And who is Aram Bartholl?
Dead drops

Image via

Brian Liloia is 25-year-old currently living at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in northeastern Missouri, learning to fulfill his desires to live more sustainably and self-sufficiently.

This is The Year of Mud, a blog all about building with cob.
About Year of Mud here.