Vitro Nasu

(Sister Wendy.. so funny.. )

Click to see large Stanley Spencer

This is Spencer’s first self-portrait in oils. In its dark and rich colour harmonies and its strongly modelled form, the painting attempts to emulate the style of an Old Master painting. Spencer recalled that he was inspired to paint it in this manner after seeing a reproduction of a head of Christ by an Italian Renaissance artist called Luini. The portrait was painted in the front bedroom of Spencer’s family home, Fernlea, at Cookham, Berkshire. (via Tate)

British Film Pathe – film of Stanley Spencer

Paintings – Slideshow

Image from 5cense.com

Beattie was asked about her falling in love Wittgenstein’s Mistress, and she responded:
“I think more than just falling in love with it, or whatever, though—and I don’t mean to say this kept me removed from the book—but there was a kind of writerly awe that anybody would dare to be so uncompromising.”

( In fact, she was one of the first people to read Wittgenstein’s Mistress before it was published, as it was being rejected left and right.)

Laura Sims and Ann Beattie discussed David Markson at Strand (youtube)

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Fare Forward

In this first-ever book of letters by novelist David Markson—a quintessential “writer’s writer” whose work David Foster Wallace once lauded as “pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country”—readers will experience Markson at his wittiest and warmest. Poet Laura Sims shares her correspondence with him

Letters from David Markson

Gaddis & Markson

William Gaddis painted 1987 by Julian Schnabel

On page 107 Vanishing Point by David Markson

Tardily realizing–qualms after all.
Author would undeniably be distressed at the loss of
Schnabel’s portrait of Willim Gaddis.

Markson also wrote on the same page,

Georg Trakl was a pharmacist.
E.T. A Hoffman was a lawyer.
Kate Smith could not read music.

On page 106 Vanishing Point..

E.E.Cummings died after chopping firewood

Ann Beattie – author of Chilly Scenes of Winter (youtube)

R.I.P Eli Wallach

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Photo by Fung Lin Hall

Jennifer Wynne Reeves
(via FB)
Jennifer Wynne Reeves
(click to see large)

Two coates of paint
A Prayer for the art world.

Sad news: gifted painter Jennifer Wynne Reeves died yesterday at 51 after a relentless onslaught of tumors in her brain. Represented by BravinLee Programs, Reeves posted this prayer to the art world on her Facebook page in April.

Laughing at Snakes

See more here ..

R.I.P Charles Barsotti

Charles Barsotti, New Yorker artist was master cartoonist a true original and a nice guy to boot.

Photo by Fung Lin Hall

After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard

East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.

Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.

The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
up from the damp grass.
Into the world’s tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly.

Charles Wright

(via)

Charles Wright named American Poet Laureate..

LAtimes obit

“He was not only prolific, he was a unique composer,” said Phil Pastras, editor of Silver’s 2006 book, “Let’s Get to the Nitty Gritty: The Autobiography of Horace Silver.” “Even an ordinary 12-bar blues in his hands turned into something magical.”

Horace dies at 85.. (September 2, 1928 – June 18, 2014)

NYtimes obit – Master of Earthy Art

Last year Dec Horace Silver Update... (click to see large)

Funky and Humorous –

With Miles here.. Adios Señor Horace Silver.
(06 Mar 1954, Hackensack, New Jersey, USA — Musicians Miles Davis (left) and Horace Silver
work on the piano during a recording session for the Miles Davis Quartet. — Image by © Mosaic Images/CORBIS © Corbis. All Rights Reserved.)

Awesome Trio
Image via

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Listen to Variation:Aldous Huxley in Memoriam (youtube)

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Painting by Ward Schumaker (Composer painting series)

Mr B and Stravinksy

Enduring Friendship -Igor with Balanchine (June 17, last year’s birthday post for Igor)

Igor with Paul Hindemith

With Eliot Carter

Goes out come back the love life of my cat.

Even with insect some can sing some can’t

Kobayashi Issa (小林 一茶 born on June 15, 1763)

It’s the birthday of Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa born in Kashiwabara, Japan (1763). He’s one of the masters of the Japanese form of poetry called haiku, which uses 17 Japanese characters broken into three distinct units. He spent most of his adult life traveling around Japan, writing haiku, keeping a travel diary, and visiting shrines and temples across the country. By the end of his life, he had written more than 20,000 haiku celebrating the small wonders of everyday life.

(via Facebook Beth Levin)

Friends of Beth Levin enjoy her frequent posting of haikus by Issa.
For Issa’s birthday, two haikus hand picked by Beth Levin

1)

Looking at me the pheasant on tiptoe on tiptoe ~ Issa {year unknown}

2)

Massaging my back with the pine tree’s gnarl… evening cool 1815 .松瘤で肩たたきつつ夕涼 matsu kobu de kata tataki tsutsu yûsuzumi “Massage” here is hard, Japanese-style pounding (tataki).

P.S. Happy birthday, Issa!!! He was born in the little village of Kashiwabara in the mountains of Japan’s Shinano Province on the fifth day of Fifth Month, 1763: June 15 on the Western calendar

Beth Levin Piano (homepage)

Beth Levin plays Beethoven here. (youtube)

(Calligraphy by Issa)

Haiku Issa

Come and play,
little orphan sparrow-
play with me!
The poem was probably written years later in reflection on the incident, but Issa displayed enough literary ability in his youth to attract the attention of the proprietor of the lord’s residence, a man skilled in calligraphy and haiku poetry, who believed that Issa would be a good companion for his own son. He invited Issa to attend a school he operated in partnership with a scholar in Chinese studies who was also a haiku poet. Issa could attend the school only at night and on holidays-sometimes carrying his stepbrother on his back-when he was not compelled to assist with farm chores, but this did not prevent him from cultivating his literary inclinations.

Google Kobayashi Issa (4 haikus with illustrations here)

One of Issa’s haiku, as translated by R.H. Blyth, appears in J. D. Salinger’s 1961 novel, Franny and Zooey:
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly! (via wiki)

Previous post Robert Hass

Life magazine

(Click to see large)

Margaret Bourke-White (June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971)

See some great photos here Women at Work

Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971) was a woman of firsts: the first foreign journalist allowed to take pictures of industries in the Soviet Union; the first female photographer hired by Life magazine and its first female war correspondent. In fact, her work graced the first Life cover in November 1936. Bourke-White’s interests ranged far and wide, from photographing the drought victims of the Dust Bowl to chronicling the combat zones of World War II and the violence of the India/Pakistan partition.

Ossie and Ruby
(via Soul Mahogany)

NYtimes – Bruce Weber

Ruby Dee wiki

Ruby Dee (October 27, 1922 – June 11, 2014) was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and activist.

Ossie and Ruby – homepage

Oscar nominated actress Ruby Dee passed away

The actress, poet, playwright and an indefatigable voice for Civil Rights passed away at home on Wednesday.

(Image via)
Institute Benjamenta

Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life, released in 1996, was the first feature-length film by the Brothers Quay. It is based on Jakob von Gunten, a novel written by Robert Walser. It stars Mark Rylance, Alice Krige, and Gottfried John.

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Mark Rylance wins Tony.

Rylance, 54, won Best Featured Actor in a Play for his portrayal of Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, after taking home awards for Jerusalem and Boeing-Boeing in previous years.

Mark Rylance here. (Previous post)

Mark Rylance <> <>

Mark Rylance was fabulous as Lenoardo
(BBC)

Update: see the film from this site.. The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything.

Angels & Insects (trailer – based on a novel by A.S. Byatt)

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Chantal Akerman (Mubi)

One of the boldest cinematic visionaries of the past quarter century, the film-school dropout Chantal Akerman takes a profoundly personal and aesthetically idiosyncratic approach to the form, using it to investigate geography and identity, space and time, sexuality and religion.

Don’t Miss Chantal Akerman’s Study of Pina Bausch at Lincoln Center

What Akerman can’t express in words, she makes piercingly specific with her images.

One Day Pina Asked me (video)

Divine Delphine Seyrig as Jeanne Dielman

Colin Marshall..

Jeanne Dielman understands what all the best works of cinema do: implication and occurrence are two different things. Where so many mediocre films deal in visual shorthand that merely suggests to us that certain events have happened, this one has its events actually take place. That this builds their importance far beyond any quick-cut battle for the very future of humanity might point toward an answer to the feminist question: these are domestic duties we’re watching, and the film treats them with a gravity that somehow goes beyond aesthetics. You could call its story tragic, but just by existing it demonstrates an artistic fact that’s sadder than anything going on in its content. By letting its content dictate its form — or rather, by letting its content and form exist in symbiosis — the film achieves what most films could if they did the same. But almost no film does.

Google mapping Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai de Commerce 1080 Bruxelles

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La Captive
Here was a review by Hoberman (scroll down)

Chantal Akerman’s La Captive is another sort of psycho-epistemological inquiry that asks: How can we know another?

Aurore Clement in Rendez Vous D’Anna (youtube)

(image via)

Previous post (D’est, her photographs exhibition, Pina Bausch on youtube etc)