Vitro Nasu

SF Gate Obit

His DNA was in San Francisco’: Prolific photographer Fred Lyon dies at 97

Fred Lyon Portfolio

Kenji Miyazawa cultivated a life as a thinker, a practicing buddhist, a geologist/agronomist, and idealsitic educator and reformer.

From Who is Kenji?

In the introduction to his collection of short stories, The Restaurant of Many Orders, he set himself up as an experimental medium for the chaotic processes of natural phenomena. Kenji Miyazawa was born on Aug 27, 1896. Today he is known mostly for writing children’s stories.
He saw himself as a simple vehicle for reprocessing nature itself. “These stories of mine,” he wrote in 1923, “all came to me from moonlight and rainbows, at places like railroad tracks and fields and forests.”
Kenji Miyazawa, Rebel with a Cause (collection of essays)

He was 37 when he died. (wiki)
Almost totally unknown as a poet in his lifetime, Miyazawa’s work gained its reputation posthumously,[2] and enjoyed a boom by the mid-1990s on his centenary.[3] A museum dedicated to his life and works was opened in 1982 in his hometown. Many of his children’s stories have been adapted as anime, most notably Night on the Galactic Railroad. Many of his tanka and free verse poetry, translated into many languages, are still popular today.

Kame neko (oven cat- a sample story by Kenji Miyazawa)

Drawings by a buddhist/poet/geologist/agronomist/socialist

The World of Kenji Miyazaki

Mexico – high in Julio Cortazar’s list
(“Mexico is one of the countries on my list, but the years go by without me having time to visit it,” Julio Cortázar.)

Julio Cortázar or the writer who saw the world turn upside down

He is considered one of the most innovative and original authors of his time, a master of history, poetic prose and short story in general and a creator of important novels that inaugurated a new way of making literature in the Hispanic world by breaking the classical moulds through narratives that escaped temporal linearity.

Julio Cortazar
(“I love Hopscotch.and a film Antonioni made based on my story.. how cool is that.”)

Julio Cortazar named his cat Theodore Adorno.

(Leon Vitali as Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon.)

See what Mathew Modine wrote about Leon Vitali

Alec Baldwin
interviewed Leon Vitali

S is for Stanley a documentary film on Driver/Handyman (Previous post).

Michael Heizer the City to open following half century wait

The City, a colossal sculpture by Michael Heizer on which the Land artist has labored for more than fifty years in the Nevada Desert, will welcome visitors September 2.

Visit New York times (Spectacular)

New Yorker

Michael Heizer – Gagosian

When Heizer was twelve years old, his parents permitted him to take a year off school to accompany his father, a renowned field archeologist, on a dig in Mexico. As his father researched the rock sources of ancient monuments, Heizer made site drawings, an exercise that he has continued to expand upon throughout his career. In the mid-1960s he left his studies at the San Francisco Art Institute and headed to New York, where he supported himself by painting apartments, including the loft of Walter De Maria, with whom he developed a close, lasting friendship. During this time Heizer began to work on shaped canvases that he called “negative paintings.”
In the winter of 1967 Heizer made a trip to the Sierra Nevada mountains, where he dug two large pits in the woods, lining one with plywood and the other with sheet metal. He declared this work to be “ultra-modern art,” and it was a turning point in his practice. Heizer further manipulated the landscape in Double Negative (1969), a pair of cuts fifty feet deep in facing cliff edges of Mormon Mesa in Nevada, made by removing 240,000 tons of sandstone and rhyolite.

Marta Palau Bosch (See more art here)

Art News Obit

Marta Palau, Mexican Sculptor Who Found Empowerment in Textiles, Has Died at 88

Marta Palau Bosch wiki

Marta Palau Bosch (17 July 1934 – 13 August 2022)[1] was a Spanish-Mexican artist who resided in Mexico. She worked in engraving, painting, sculpture, and most prominently in tapestries, defining herself by her profound artistic use and arrangement of native Mexican natural materials.[2] She was one of the first Mexican artists to focus on themes around women’s and immigrants’ experiences during the 1970s, especially in her Ilerda series of tapestries[3] and later with her Nahual sculptures.

Wim Wenders homepage

„THE TOKYO TOILET“ Art Project with Wim Wenders, Koji Yakusho, Tadao Ando et al.
Wim Wenders announces a new art project which includes a short film about high-end public toilets in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Japan’s leading international actor, Kōji Yakusho (Memoirs of a Geisha / Babel etc.) will play the lead role.
The spaces featured in THE TOKYO TOILET (TTT) were designed by world-renowned architects like Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban,and designers like NIGO, with the idea that a pleasant public restroom could counter the common expectation of a dark, dirty and dangerous place.

“My first reaction was: What? Toilets? Chotto mattete,” said Wim Wenders during the press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday, using the Japanese expression for “wait a minute”.

For Wim Wenders, the project has high social value and he could immediately see the potential and story behind these stylish Tokyo toilets. „Because a toilet is a place where everybody is the same. There’s no rich and poor, no old and young, everybody’s part of humanity“, he said.

The film shooting will take place in Tokyo in October 2022.

Issey Miyake an influential Japanese fashion designer, dies aged 84.

BBC – see his fashion in pictures

Issey Miyake collaborated with the performance artist.. see him upside down wrapped in something.

(Joni Mitchell has been championing Issey Mayake for years.)

(Issey Miyake, 1982 Spring-Summer Collection, rattan bodice and nylon polyester skirt. The rattan is split, colored, and polished. It has been formed to follow the line of the body and bamboo has been woven in to hold the curve in place, and prevent the rattan from separating. Produced with the collaboration of the bamboo artist Kosuge Shochikudo. Photo: Eiichiro Sakata.)

via

Art News Obit

Mary Obering, Abstract Painter With a Passionate Following, Dies at 85

(See more Mary Obering artnet)

Mary Obering and David Lynch

Mary Obering and David Lynch shared a gallery space in 2018.

(Birthday Girl starring Nicole Kidman, Ben Chaplin, Vincent Cassel and Mathieu Kassovitz)

Happy birthday Mathieu Kassovitz

La Haine
Mathieu Kassovitz wrote, directed and acted in La Haine.
(Upon its release, La Haine received widespread critical acclaim and was well received in France and abroad.
The film was shown at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival where it enjoyed a standing ovation.
Kassovitz was awarded the Best Director prize at the festival and he was 27 years old.

Mathieu Kassovitz MUBI

Le Bureau French TV Series
(Exciting TV series as great as “Breaking Bad”, “Borgen”, or “The Queen’s Gambit”.

Wiki

Kwon Young Wu Between Past and Future

Via

Kwon Young-Woo’s (1926-2013) works explore the relationship between traditional materials and abstract expression. The artist is considered as a pioneer in Korean abstract art known as Dansaekhwa.

Thanks to Pascal Blanchard for introducing this artist on FB.