Category: ART

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Porcile and Earthly Delights


  • Porcile (Pigsty) by Pasolini.

    A savage parody of Godard, Resnais and… Pasolini, ironically chronicling the ‘existential anguish’ of the children of the bourgeoisie, it features Léaud as a mystic youth whose being finally merges with ‘nature’: he gets eaten by the pigs he loves.

    The first, “Orgia,” was originally conceived as a possible companion piece to Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert, and concerns a 15th-century cult of cannibals who must eventually reckon with Church and State. The second, “Porcile,” involves a West German industrialist and Nazi war criminal whose son (played by Truffaut and Godard regular Jean-Pierre Léaud) likes to copulate with pigs.

    Happy New Year of the Pig (or Inoshishi in Japanese, meaning wild boar)

    China heralds year of the fluorescent green Pig

    Bosch image of pig came out greenish too.
    Hieronymous Bosch Hieronymous Bosch detail from the Garden of Earthly Delights
    Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights

    Sue Coe’s Porkopolis enlarged.

    Inoshishi Inoshishi by Amikami
    (Image source)

    Pachelbel’s Canon accompanies a game of These Little Pigs by Orisinal.

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    The Noodle Place

    The Backroom HongKong dining digital image by Fung Lin Hall

    The Chinese noodle place we frequent kept the Thai decor of the previous owners which now coexists without fuss, very casual, in a setting of typical lack of Chinese propriety. Only the food matters.

    Another example of casual world we live in, here is a blog from our friend prosecutor Patrick Fritz. (I am sure he has no time to keep a blog)

    Milan Kundera has a new book which sounds like a rehash of his last essays “The Art of Novel”.
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    “The Debt to Pleasure”
    Hanif Kureishi explains how the work of the Japanese master inspired him to write the screenplay for Venus

    Tanizaki does take these ideas further, throwing open the whole question of love itself, of what it is we love about the other. The characters in his work are deeply involved with others. But in what way and what does it mean? How do perversion and love interact? Is fetish love real love? Is being excited by only a part of the other real sex? Is fetishism a version of love, or its obverse? Is it only, as Havelock Ellis designated it, “auto-erotic”?

    Much as they might like to be, Tanizaki’s characters cannot be self-sufficient. They never stop needing one another. As both characters struggle for ultimate, complete control over the other, the engagement is almost comical. Tanizaki is aware that, in the end, you are always dependent on the other; indeed, you are partly creating them, having them play a role with which you identify. This is not only the case in exhibitionism or voyeurism, but in sadism, too. Yet the freedom of the other, which resides in their words – or perhaps a diary – will ultimately elude you; it has to. Total control would end in death, or the murder, of one of the subjects, at which point the game ends.

    The Debt of Pleasure HongKong dining digital image by Fung Lin Hall
    Imagining Kundera, Kureishi and Tanizaki

    Hanif Kureishi and Joan Didion here (they share a birthday)

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    RIP Jules Olitski

    Jules Olitski was 84 years old. Jules Olitski

    American painter and sculptor Jules Olitski, a prominent representative of the postwar abstract art movement, died of cancer on Sunday, February 4, in New York, reports the Austrian paper Der Standard. (Via Artforum)

    Sand of the Sea Jules Olitski

    Olitski was born Jevel Demikovski in Snovsk, Russia, on March 27 1922, a few months after his father, a commissar, was executed by the Russian government. (via Wikipedia)

    See Jules’s painting “Volitions” from “Modern and Postmodern” (the last essay by Clement Greenberg).

    You don’t have to think that Jules Olitski is ”the best painter alive,” as an unrepentant Clement Greenberg did as late as 1990, to appreciate his current show. Mr. Olitski, who has exhibited since 1951, has never given up on Color Field painting, the art movement that Greenberg promoted as the rightful heir to Abstract Expressionism; but he has made it quirkier, more complicated and, well, less Greenbergian. (Roberta Smith’s review of his show)

    Jules Olitski aping Jean Arp
    Mushroom Perfume

    More paintings here
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    Obit from Iconia and from Jules’ granddaughter.

    More on Olitski’s motivation and how he was rescued by Clement G. from Art or Idiocy.

    The Grey Jules Olitski Xavier University Collection.

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    Anthony and Kate

    Kate Field Kate Field
    Just a few things I learned in the last 4 days of this new year.
    First about the dreamers and the romantics.
    1 Anthony Trollope had a horrid childhood.
    Trollope worked at post office but unlike Faulkner who neglected his job and lost letters, Trollope was creative and devised a traveling post so he could write novels on the train.
    2 Aging Trollope had a crush on young American Feminist Kate Field. (Kate Field looked a bit like Nancy Pelosi.)
    Though platonic Trollope wanted the world to know how he felt about her in his autobiography that was published after his death.
    (His devoted and exemplary wife was wise and understanding.)

    Jan 5 2007 Heaven digital image by Fung Lin Hall digital image

    3 David Markson‘s new Novel is coming out soon.

    4 Cate Blanchett worships Liv Ullman and Swedish films.
    (Charlie Rose interview)

    5 Mary Boone (80’s – 90’s powerful art dealer) was Alan
    Sondheim’s student, you can read the juicy detail in the link from his blog.

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    Ode à LouBou

    Happy Birthday! Louise Bourgeois is 95 years old today.

    Paddle Woman Louise Bourgois Drawing

    Louise Bourgois Drawing Eccentric Growth

    Louise Bourgois Drawing
    (2006 Drawing images from artnet.com)

    More images at Barbara Krakow gallery

    Don’t forget her sculptures, here is one.

    The Material Sublime: “Ode à L’Oubli” (Ode to the Forgotten) celebrates a new edition of twenty-five books in which Louise Bourgeois remembers a long past in abstract elements.
    Rap and celebrate Life with Louise Bourgeois (2006, 2005, 2004)
    by clicking the sidebar menu of Louise Bourgeois under Art.

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    Winter Solstice

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    Prime Suspect

    December People vitro nasu by Fung Lin Hall special edition from vitro-nonsense-nasu

    Happy Birthday Noam Chomsky!
    He is a Sagittarius/Dragon like Bruce Lee.

    An admirable but not always gentle character, the Sagittarius/Dragon is a warrior on the grand scale.

    (I was misled by a source that indicated Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky sharing a birthday. Howard is a Leo.)

    Helen is terrific as Elizabeth I (HBO) , can’t wait to see her play a Queen (Elizabeth II). (Helen Mirren was funny as Ayn Rand, she is part Russian.)

    Let’s get to know Michel Suber whose career was resurrected by Claire Denis. Jean Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat contains the torture scenes, mild compared to the recent tortures ordered by Rumsfeld. Michel Suber narrated Jules et Jim.

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    O’Hara’s Birthday

    A painted wall Trader Joe's bathroom digital image by Fung Lin Hall
    A digital montage of Trader’s Joe’s bathroom wall.

    Poets are celebrating Frank O’Hara’s 80’s birthday, first from Ron Silliman, and here.

    Let’s be frank about it, his birthday was March 27, 1926.
    His birth certificate was found twenty-five years after his death, recorded at Maryland General Hospital. (Page 14, City Poet; The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara by Brad Gooch).

    (Frank’s birthday was mentioned once before. Refresh yourself with his poem and Bill DeKooning’ s painting.)

    Brice Marden on Charlie Rose (an hour interview)

    William S. Burroughs – Thanksgiving Prayer (now on youtube)

    Happy Thanksgiving!
    Thanksgiving digital image by Fung Lin Hall
    Goose and a potato heart