Vitro Nasu

Jean Renoir Knitting Girl or Boy Sewing (see more here)

(A new film about the Renoirs here…)

August Renoir – 25 February 1841

George Moore – 24 February 1852

He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There, he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day.

Manet painted George Moore

This pastel, executed in one sitting, depicts the Irish critic and novelist George Moore. He used it as the frontispiece for his book Modern Painting (1893), noting that as “a fresh-complexioned, fair-haired young man, the type most suitable to Manet’s palette, [the artist] at once asked [him] to sit.” Critics ridiculed this work when it was exhibited in 1880, calling it “Le Noyé repêché” (the drowned man fished out of the water). The picture is Manet’s only completed portrait of Moore; one of his unfinished canvases, George Moore at the Café (55.193), is in the Museum’s collection.

George Moore at Cafe

Emile Zola by Manet

More about George Moore – who was influenced by Emile Zora..

As a naturalistic writer, he was amongst the first English-language authors to absorb the lessons of the French realists, and was particularly influenced by the works of Émile Zola.[2] His writings influenced James Joyce, according to the literary critic and biographer Richard Ellmann,[3] and, although Moore’s work is sometimes seen as outside the mainstream of both Irish and British literature, he is as often regarded as the first great modern Irish novelist.

Teaching is not a lost art but the regard for it is a lost tradition. Jacques Barzun

Dame Helen Mirren Praises Teachers During Bafta Speech

<> (Helen Mirren from “Savage Messiah”)

Links to Teacher men

A Midsummer Nights Dream, Poets, Teacher Man, Orientalist

Mitsuo Aoki – Hawaii’s Living Treasure

Hibiscus digital images by Fung Lin Hall

Frank and Joan

See more on Joan Mitchell installaion and her friendship with Frank O’Hara here (Poetry installaton)

At last you are tired of being single
the effort to be new does not upset you nor the effort to be other
you are not tired of life together (Frank’s poem to Joan Mitchell)

Click to see large 1941
Joan Mitchel was a junior champion.

During high school, Mitchell excels as an athlete and becomes a highly competitive figure skater, entering Midwestern and national championships. In 1941, Mitchell wins the Midwest Junior Pairs Title with ice-skating partner Bobby Specht, and in 1942, she places Fourth in the Junior Women’s Division of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. A knee injury later ends her skating career. – See more here

Trained as a pianist, he called writing “playing the typewriter.

Joan Mitchell and Barney Rosset (Part II of Barney/Michell archive)

To the Habormaster – Joan’s reponse to Frank O’Hara

To the Harbormaster (Poem by Frank O’Hara)

I wanted to be sure to reach you;

though my ship was on the way it got caught

in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

Nancy Holt click to see large.
Visionary Land Artist, Nancy Holt (1938–2014) dies at 75

Artinfo

Just last year Holt received the International Sculpture Center’s lifetime achievement award. At the ceremony, Holt described what being a sculptor meant to her. “When I say sculptor, it is a word I’ve used for myself over the years, and I realize it is the expansive word. If you say you’re a painter, it’s very limited. You are really stuck with your medium. But being a sculptor, you can breathe, you can do conceptual art, you can do video, you can do film, you can do Land Art, you can do installation pieces, you can do traditional sculpture.”

Links to titles – Nancy Holt

Art in America obit

“The natural curves can serve as a small amphitheater for events, the side tunnels providing entry to the area.” – Nancy Holt

Up and Under (fin. Yltä ja Alta)
Artist: Nancy Holt (USA)
Location: Sasintie 555, Pinsiö

Coexistent – Nancy Holt

With Smithson , her late husband.

Nancy Holt – Smithson Monolake

BENTEN CLAY drives throu NANCY HOLT (youtube)

Poetry Foundation –Maxine Kumin (1925–2014)

Angels from streets of gold
benignly looked on this,
God’s wonders to behold.
Both sides stood by unhorsed
while Nature ran its course.

Read the poem “Going to Jerusalem” by Maxine Kumin (Paris Review) (see a nice photo montage)

From story: ” …Ms. Sexton’s suicide shook Ms. Kumin deeply. “A month after your death I wear your blue jacket,” she wrote in a poem, “How It Is.” It continues:

The dog at the center of my life recognizes

you’ve come to visit, he’s ecstatic.

In the left pocket, a hole.

In the right, a parking ticket

delivered up last August on Bay State Road.

In my heart, a scatter like milkweed,

a flinging from the pods of the soul. ”

via Lilyaradiohead

Maxine Kumin dies at 88

Ms. Kumin’s style defied tidy categorization. Though her poems and essays centered on the New England countryside, she trafficked in none of the sentimental effusions of traditional pastoral poets. Her dark, ironic poem “Highway Hypothesis” made clear just what she thought of such unexamined romanticizing:

Bucophilia, I call it —

nostalgia over a pastoral vista —

where for all I know the farmer

who owns it or rents it just told his

wife he’d kill her if she left him and

she did and he did and now here come

the auctioneer, the serious bidders

and an ant-train of gawking onlookers.

The Wild Child was dedicated to Jean Pierre Leaud.

After filming was completed, Truffaut realized that The Wild Child had a strong connection to his first film The 400 Blows, not just for its depicting of frustrated children but because it mirrored his experience working with then first time actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. Truffaut said that “I was reliving somewhat the shooting of The 400 Blows, during which I initiated Jean-Pierre Léaud into cinema. I basically taught him what cinema was.” Truffaut then decided to dedicate the film to Léaud. He later added that he “realized that L”Enfant sauvage (The Wild Child) is bound up with both Les Quatre Cent Coups (400 Blows) and Fahrenheit 451. In Les Quatre Cents Coups I showed a child who missed being loved, who grows up without tenderness; in Fahrenheit 451 it was a man who longed for books, that is, culture. With Victor of Aveyron, what is missing is something more essential – language. Truffaut also considered the making of the film to be a growing experience for him as a person and as a filmmaker, stating that “until The Wild Child, when I had children in my films, I identified with them, but here, for the first time, I identified with the adult, the father.” After the film was released, Truffaut told a reporter “I did not want to spell out my message. It is simply this: man is nothing without other men.” (via wiki Wild Child)

Truffaut archive here.

Nestor Almendros with Francois

Truffaut was impressed with the cinematograpy Nestor Almendros did for Eric Rohmer’s My Night at Maude. The Wild Child was their first collaboration. Nestor Almendros continued to work for Truffaut, he filmed 9 films out of the 27 films Truffaut made in his short lifetime. Terrence Malick saw The Wild Child and hired Nestor for Days of Heaven. He did not get to finish filming Days of Heaven as he was called to do the next Truffaut film The Man Who Loved Women. Nestor became very much in demand among American filmmakers, but he always made sure to make time for Truffaut.

Truffaut -the Man who loved cinema. (youtube)

(Farenheidt 451, Julie Christie played two roles shot by Nicolas Roeg. Far from Madding Crowd was also by Roeg and later she was directed by him in Don’t Look Now).

Nicholas Roeg on Truffaut.. why he was underestimated.

Truffaut last appearance on TV on Bernard Pivot, discussing Hitchock, Polanski also in the panel.

Life Magazine cover

Shocking news.. so terribly sad.
Philip Seymour Hoffman (July 23, 1967 – February 2, 2014)

Moving obit – from Rollingstone

The Oscar-winning actor, known for playing beautiful losers, leaves behind a legacy of work that broke your heart and hit you in the gut.

NYtimes – Hoffman found dead in his West village apt

Philip Seymour Hoffman: as intense in the flesh as on screen
When I met Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2011 I found a man profoundly honest about movies, self-loathing and his struggles with addiction. (via Guardian)

Laura Linny and Hoffman on Savages (youtube)

Before the Devil knows You’re Dead – directed by Sidney Lumet (youtube)

1) The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool..Lester Bangs from Almost Famous.

2) Actors are investigators…Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Trivia via IMBD..

With the exception of There Will Be Blood (2007), he appears in all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films.

Appears in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Red Dragon (2002). Both are remakes of earlier films (Purple Noon (1960) and Manhunter (1986)), and both feature him as a character named Freddie who is killed by the villain/title character.

While working as a lifeguard, he once met musician Miles Davis. Davis appeared in an episode of the TV series Crime Story (1986), and shared a scene with Stephen Lang. Lang appeared in Manhunter (1986) as Freddy Lounds, the character Hoffman played in Red Dragon (2002).

His performance as Truman Capote in Capote (2005) is ranked #35 on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).

<> <>
Schell listening to Bernstein on Beethovan – (youtube treasure a must see repost)

I don’t actually have a profession. I wander through life and through all areas of art,” Schell once said.
Max played piano.

R.I.P Maximillian Schell Oscar-winning actor,dies aged 83.

Mr. Schell sometimes performed as a concert pianist and conductor and appeared with such classical music luminaries as Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein. In the early 1980s, he and Bernstein were co-hosts of a PBS television series in which they discussed the music of Beethoven.

(His wiki here )

His film on Marlene was great. See the trailer here (Max shared a birthday with Delmore.)

How it all started.. his film on Marlene..(Max on youtube)

Schell worked with Vanessa Redgrave in many films.. among them Little Odessa directed by John Gray.

Max & Monty both were brilliant.

Full film Judgement at Nuremberg

Click to see large
Photo via
May Sister Maria

Maria Schell’s life was filled with romances, loneliness, unrequited love, disappointments, debt, depression, suicide attempts, and an unwillingness to grow old gracefully. Her brother and confidant, actor/director/cowriter Maximilian Schell, blends interviews with staged scenes in this examination of their personal relationship, expressing his great respect for her lifework and the regret he felt at her later failures.

Schell made his Hollywood debut in 1958 in the World War II film The Young Lions (1958) quite by accident, as the producers had wanted to hire his sister Maria Schell, but lines of communication got crossed, and he was the one hired.
Schell ultimately won two more Oscar nominations for acting, in 1976 for Best Actor for The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and in 1978 as Best Supporting Actor for Julia (1977) (via IMDB)

Schell as Hamlet
Flick philosopher
(Saw his Hamlet with Japanese subtitles.. dialogue in German.)

Schell collects Josef Albers.

Maximilian Schell discovered Josef Albers’s Homages to the Square at the Sidney Janis Gallery in the early 1970s, where, every two years, Albers, by then an octogenarian, would present his latest “platters to serve color”. This was the deliberately unpretentious term the artist applied to his unique forays in color presentation that evoked the mysterious interaction of one hue beyond its boundary and into its neighbor’s territory, and that held the film and theater man captive to the poetic possibilities of pure paint applied with technical virtuosity to the panel.

Schell instantly realized that he had found a level of mastery and subtlety and nuance akin to his own ideals as a director and actor, even in his lesser-known territories of interest as a pianist and an athlete. Schell would point out to people that the difference of less than a split second could distinguish a gold medal winner from one who took a bronze medal in the Olympics, and that an equally minuscule unit of time was the decisive factor in Pollini’s or Abato’s playing of a Mozart piano sonata as opposed to that of a hack. That attention to a mere particle of a second of time represented the level of perfection that Schell sought in every arena of his own life, and he recognized that Josef Albers achieved it, to a tee, in the realm of color.(via)