Vitro Nasu

Mike Brodie

Born 1985 in Arizona, Mike Brodie first began photographing in 2004 when he was given a Polaroid camera. Working under the moniker, The Polaroid Kidd, Brodie spent the next four years circumambulating the U.S. amassing an archive of photographs that would go on to make up one of the few, true collections of American travel photography. Having never undergone any formal training, he chose to remained untethered to the pressures and expectations of the art market.

He stopped making photographs after two projects.

See more here.

Discovered Mike Brodie’s photos from an interview on Andrea Arnold here.
American Honey
Sean O’Hagan asked Andrea Arnold –

I myself was struck by how closely the mag crew resembled the real-life itinerants, runaways and train-hoppers photographed by Mike Brodie in his 2013 book A Period of Juvenile Prosperity. “Yes!” exclaims Arnold, when I mention this. “I love his photos, they’re beautiful. When I first spoke to Shia [LaBeouf] about the film, I actually gave him a Mike Brodie photo for one of the characters I imagined him to be. But also his pictures have the Polaroid light that I love.”

Sasha Lane Photo via LA
‘American Honey’ weaves an ode to the road with Shia LaBeouf, Riley Keough and newcomer Sasha Lane.

Arnold won an Oscar for her 2003 short film “Wasp,” but her real breakthrough was “Fish Tank,” the story of a young British girl struggling to break free from the prescribed life in her tower block. (It was also among the early major glimpses of actor Michael Fassbender.) Though “Fish Tank” was not a box-office hit on initial release, Arnold’s unique blend of grit and lyricism has seen its stature only grow in the years since, cited as an influence by the likes of “Girls” creator Lena Dunham.

Forrest Bess, American, 1911 – 1977
The Hermaphrodite, 1957
Oil on canvas

See more Forrest Bess (previous post including a video)

Bruce Nauman American, born 1941,
Untitled, 1965
Fiberglas, polyester resin, and neon tubing

Poking Around Wittgenstein + Bruce Nauman (from Wittgenstein archive)

Robert Smithson American, 1938 – 1973
Christ Series: Christ in Limbo, 1961
Ink and gouache on paper

Robert Smithson died in Amarillo Texas (previous post)

EDWARD WESTON, “Three Fish-Gourds (Juguetes)”, 1926, silver print, printed ca. 1935-40, 8″ x 10” (via)

Edward Weston (1886 – 1958)

Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois on March 24, 1886.

His homepage here.

Real American Places: Edward Weston and Leaves of Grass (See great photos from here)

See photos of Charis Wilson (his model & muse)here.

See more great cat photos by Weston here.

Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, “Anniversary”, Mexico, 1924. Photographer unknown

Edward Weston the Lover

It was more than his personal charm that attracted women. His ability to write, something he often considered a shortcoming, was magical as well. Consider this response from Tina Modotti to a letter he had written,

Once more I have been reading your letter and as at every other time my eyes are full of tears – I have never realized before that a letter – a mere sheet of paper could be such a spiritual thing – could emanate so much feeling – you gave a soul to it! If I could be with you now at this hour I love so much, I would try to tell you how much beauty has been added to my life lately! When may I come over? I am waiting for your call.

The nude backs of Edward Weston (social/history blog)

Portrait of Robinson Jeffers by Weston

Philip Kaufman saw Miss Julie on stage and cast Lena Olin in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Lena Olin as Miss Julie.

Romeo is Bleeding – Lena played a psycho-killer.

Happy birthday Lena Olin (wiki)

Olin, the youngest of three children, was born in Stockholm, Sweden, Europe. She is the daughter of actress Britta Holmberg and director Stig Olin.[1] She studied acting at Sweden’s National Academy of Dramatic Art.[citation needed]

In October 1974, at age 19, Olin was crowned Miss Scandinavia 1974 in Helsinki, Finland.

n 1980, Olin was one of the earliest winners of the Ingmar Bergman Award,[3] initiated in 1978 by the director himself, who was also one of the two judges.

Film stills from Fanny and Alexander, Lena played a nanny (1982) scroll down to see her from the first comment.

Lena Olin was heartbreaking and ferocious..she won New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Paul Mazursky directed Enemies a Love Story.

With Lena Olin After the Rehearsal

(via Ingmar Bergman archive)

Trish Brown died (NY times)

wiki

5 artists speaking on Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown “Woman Walking Down a Ladder”

See Set and reset (8 min)
Set and reset (shorter version)
Set and Reset (1983)
Choreography: Trisha Brown
Music: Laurie Anderson, “Long Time No See”; Performed by Laurie Anderson and Richard Landry
Set Design: Robert Rauschenberg
Costumes: Robert Rauschenberg
Lighting: Beverly Emmons with Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg and Trisha Brown, 1983. Photo: © The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Courtesy Art + Commerce

Documentary (Bach to Monteverdi)

Collaboration of the Century – Trisha Brown, Czesow Milosz and Laurie Anderson

Solo Olos (1976) (youtube)

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January 23, 1930, Castries, Saint Lucia
Died: March 17, 2017, Saint Lucia
NYtimes obit

Derek Walcott, whose intricately metaphorical poetry captured the physical beauty of the Caribbean, the harsh legacy of colonialism and the complexities of living and writing in two cultural worlds, bringing him a Nobel Prize in Literature, died early Friday morning at his home near Gros Islet in St. Lucia. He was 87.

BBC obit

His great skill, and gift to literature, was the way in which he used his unique poetic voice to explore and explain the world from a largely unseen perspective.
He was never parochial or nationalistic, quite the opposite in fact. Derek Walcott was a master at using the specific to identify common ground and universal themes, illuminating both the individual and the collective.

Walcott wrote dozens of books of poetry and plays, among them his epic poem Omeros and his Obie-winning drama, Dream on Monkey Mountain.

From Canada (Warlus) The Stranger who has loved you.

(Mark Strand, Joseph Brodsky, Adam Zagajewski, and Derek Walcott in Brodsky’s garden)

via

Seen here with Seamus Heaney in Dún Laoghaire DART station, 1989 [photo: Matt Kavanagh]

Brilliant poets find one another: their world is very small even though their influence is wide and deep. Being a self-described “country boy” didn’t mean that Derek was cut off from so-called literary society. Derek’s closest poet friends, the Russian-born Joseph Brodsky and Irish poet Seamus Heaney, wrote about the pain and fascinating distance and longing that comes with being in exile.

A Mighty Poet has died (New Yorker)

Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott

Moring Paramin Derek Walcott and Peter Doig (See art by Peter Doig)

Photograph: From left: Tatyana Tolstaya; Mark Strand; Susan Sontag; Richard Locke, chairman of the School of the Arts Writing Division, and Derek Walcott.

Eileen Gray the Irish Designer

Sinead O’Connor
Sinead O’Connor photo by Jane Bown

Oscar Wilde

Photo by Hiroshi Sugimoto (via)

quotes

Frank McCourt

High Hopes in Ireland (see Irish art here)

Breakfast on Pluto

The wind that shakes the Barley

Happy St Patrick’s day!

Paterson

A Musical, Visual and Poetic Experience based on Paterson by William Carlos Williams

Williams said: “The Falls let out a roar as it crashed upon the rocks at its base. In the imagination this roar is a speech or a voice, a speech in particular; it is the poem itself that is the answer. “

Jonas Mekas: Where is poetry in your life?
Jim Jarmusch: It’s important to me. I read a lot of poetry. I studied with Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro at the New York School, and I’ve been guided by poets all my life.

Nagase and Adam Driver (“Nagase from Mystery Train reuninted with Jim Jarmusch in Paterson)

My journey from Marine to actor | Adam Driver

(Youtube excerpt here )

Golshifteh Farahani
(Golshifteh’s last film performance in Iran was in About Elly directed by Asghar Farhadi. According to her IMDB -Golshifteh was separated from Louis Garrel.)

LA Times on Paterson Poetry

Jim Jarmusch

Ron Padgett (Who wrote 3 poems for “Paterson”)

(Bill Berkson and Ron Padgett)

Previous post on Bill Berkson

nine poems by Ron Padgett

Night Jump

At night Chinamen jump
on Asia with a thump

Who but Frank O’Hara
could have written that?
and then gone on to speak of
love and something he calls grace.
To start out so funny
and end up with mystery and grace —
we should all be so lucky.

Jim Jarmusch: I called the character Paterson, in the film, because of the poem Paterson by William Carlos Williams. He makes a metaphor in the poem of a landscape above the waterfalls there as being like a man. And then I just kept this metaphor; “I’ll make a film about a man named ‘Paterson’ who lives in Paterson, who writes poetry,” you know.

Jim Jarmusch and Jonas Mekas on Film, Poetry and Trump

Howard Hidgkin Quicksilver Colorist dies at 84 (Art News)

Howard Hodgkin died

Sir Howard Hodgkin, regarded as one of Britain’s greatest contemporary painters, has died aged 84.

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Hodgkin paints fairly reclusively, on several paintings in parallel, most of which take years to complete. (from Rodcorp)

Do you have a Hodgkin painting? Mine is in the bathroom on top of small stack of Japanese books – two by Kawabata Yasunari. I was not thinking of Hodgkin when I painted this.

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(Photo by Fung Lin Hall)

(Repost)

2006 interview –

There is something about his work, something so delicate and instinctive and mysterious, but also so direct and simple and intense, that talking about it will not help anyone to see his paintings better. From I Hate Painting – Guardian, Colm Toibin’s interview)

But I work in a country where I think that if I didn’t talk about my work at all people might not even bother to look at it.
Howard Hodgkin

A perfect example of Hodgkin’s sharp personality is the small You Are My Sunshine, which, like a sycophant’s true feelings, contains a snide black core within effusive, almost hyper orange and yellow. (The Color of Turmoil by Ana Finel Honigman)

Colour is, of course, what characterises a Hodgkin painting. Seductive and jewel-like, it is never simply there for its own sake. In this he belongs to a distinctively European tradition, with the French post-impressionists Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, and with Henri Matisse. As Susan Sontag pointed out, he is mindful of the ancient quarrel between Michelangelo’s preference for disegno over Titian’s for colore. It is as though he wants, she said, “to give colore its most sumptuous exclusive victory”. (Living Color – Sue Hubbard)

(The Face of Another, Kyo Machiko directed by Teshigahara)

(Woman in the Dunes)

Pitfall

(Teshigahara, Abe Kobo, Toru Takemitsu)

Abe Kobo (wiki) (March 7, 1924 – January 22, 1993)

Tashigahara (The Face of Another)

(Photo by Man Ray,1968)

Catherine Deneuve said in an interview here.

“To be in his atelier, to see those objects he had made and to experience his excitement at making the photograph. I was curious about all of these things.” She remembers him as “nice, welcoming, but he didn’t talk so much. His approach was soft, gentle. The way he worked reminded me of Buñuel.”

(Gerard Depardieu was Danton directed by Wajda)
March 6 –birthday of late Andrez Wajda

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Wittgenstein and Hitler Attended the Same School in Austria, at the Same Time (1904)

Ludwig Wittgenstein archive (his photos, the house he designed etc)