Category: ART

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The Emperor, Brushes and Brice Marden

Today (Nov 2) is the birthday of a famous artist/poet/Taoist Emperor who lost his kingdom for his love of art, luxury and culture.

Emperor Huizong was born on November 2, 1082.

Emperor Huizong Emperor Huizong digital image by Fung Lin Hall

Zhao Ji (Emperor Huizong) was an artistic emperor ruled from 1100 to 1126 AD. The cost of his ardor for the art and fatuity in government affairs was grievous: when his capital fell into Nuchen hands in 1127, he was taken prisoner, spending the rest of his life in a remote, bleak, desolate land.
(from the History of Chinese Calligraphy)

Finches and Bamboo

Partial view of Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk from the Museum of Fine art Boston.

The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics, subtitle of this book from Harvard Press.

Emperor Huizong and Late Sung Northern China
Huizong was an exceptional emperor who lived through momentous times.

Here is a western painter who continued in the Chinese tradition and is going around in a media blitz today.
Joseph Duemer really wants to see Brice Marden at MoMa for his retrospective exhibition.

The exhibition shows him as an artist who has spent his career assiduously converting the rule-ridden zone of Minimalist abstraction into a capacious yet disciplined place, pushing it toward landscape and the figure while reconnecting it to its roots in Abstract Expressionism and beyond, in non-Western art. It makes perfect sense that one of the greatest influences on Mr. Marden’s recent work has been Chinese art, where originality is a much fuzzier, more nuanced concept. His inspirations include calligraphy, landscape painting, scholars’ rocks and ceramics. (Roberta Smith from NYtimes.)

Brice Marden Brice Marden
Brice Marden and his studio

Etchings to Rexroth.

Here is a harsh but entertaining review by Finch on Marden at MoMa.

Jackson Pollock would have headed for that tree a lot earlier if he had painted like Brice.
Brice was at the MoMA opening Thursday in a black wool hat, quietly the center of attention, apparently still wondering if his paintings were any good, looking for validation.
He should have been in the studio, trying something new. And maybe in another 20 years, he will.

(Finch does not appreciate Chinese art? Like Finches and Bamboo or baboons)

Brice and Bounty paper towel

“How I wish I had never read this article about Brice Marden’s intimate relationship with Bounty paper towels.” (via culturegirl)

Let’s hear from Brice himself.

Basically I decided to be a painter because I loved the lifestyle. Later, at Yale’s graduate school, I had Jack Tworkov as a teacher who would come in and say, “that’s a cliché on De Kooning,” “that’s a cliché on Kline,” and so on. And I said, “well, how do you get rid of it?” Then the next thing you know you’re living on the Lower East Side . It just happened overnight.

His sister in law was Joan Baez.

And when I got into New York, my scene was the folk scene. It wasn’t really at Max’s Kansas City, because at that time I didn’t really know any artists yet. And that’s when Dylan was going around Joanie. (from In Conversation Brice Marden with Jeffrey Weisse.)

Brice Marden and Emperor Huizong were brought together once before, here.
(He does have a great name: Brice Marden. With a name like that he could have been a movie star and a lot luckier than the ill fated Taoist Emperor.)

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The Decay of the Angel

Google Halloween Night

Variation of Google Holloween 06

Throne of Blood google halloween images

Here is a film from Romania that is real scary, unromantic and full of realism.
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu directed by Cristi Puiu.

More youtube on lovers of suicide.
Sylvia Plath’s Grave

Film Clip of Anne Sexton

Life and Death of Yukio Mishima

Mishima Yukio interview in English

Mishima and Death (in Japanese)

Donald Keene has articles on Daily Yomiuri on Mishima’s death,
one , two, and three.

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Gunter Uecker

Gunter Uecker

Bottom image is the cover design of Gunter Uecker:Twenty Chapters

Coming up:
November 3 – November 24, 2006
National Gallery of Modern Art
Bombay, India
In co-operation with Goethe-Institut Bombay
Man’s Inhumanity: 14 Pacified Implements

Obstacles Path, —–White Tears—– Table —–Scourge Mill

Implements, Injuries, Bandages

Gunter’s two paintings,
Painterly Garden and Ash Garden,

Read about his early days. Yves Klein was his brother in law from
Oscillating Perception: Notes on the works of Gunter Uecker.

TV, 1963

This early nailed TV object places Günter Uecker, known for his usage of nails as sculptural material, among a series of artists who aggressively inverted the force of a medium they felt to be negative and destructive.

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RIP Marcia Tucker

“Act first, think later – that way, you have something to think about.” – Marcia Tucker

A flyer from 2005Marcia Tucker

John Walsh, then director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif., described Ms. Tucker in especially apt terms in a 1993 article in The New York Times: “There’s always been a social conscience in Marcia that’s impatient and results in a kind of alertness you can just read across her forehead like a Jenny Holzer sign.” (via NYtimes)

She took enormous risks, and was vilified for this during her tenure at the Whitney Museum. Finally, after a poorly received and reviewed Richard Tuttle Exhibition, she resigned. Besides being highly controversial in the art world, Marcia Tucker was a feminist, and it was rumored that she was one of the Guerilla Girls.

I knew Marcia Tucker. I was an undergrad at SVA and had the great fortune of attending one of her seminars in contemporary issues. She had a keen sense of the absurd, and one of her assigned class projects is certainly deeply embedded in anyone’s memory who was present. We were to all meet at Grand Central Station, but in disguise. I came as a hooker. No one recognized me, and I could have made some good money. Marcia came as a Hasidic old man with a cane, fur hat, tallis, the whole thing. She was brilliant and completely unrecognizable. (Saint Marcia via Anonymous Female Artist)

Marcia as Ms Mannerist the stand up schtick. (Kept typing standard instead of stand up, could Marcia be up there watching us and interfering?)

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Just Listed

Who is Orlando Gibbons 1583 – 1625? One of Glenn Gould’s favorites.
Listen to “Gaillard” played by Glenn Gould
Just learned this from Sylvie Guillem’s homepage.

Part I – a list on Sylvie Guillem

1 A Diva Ballerina’s Long Leap ( NYtimes)

2 Sylvie Guillem on youtube, Wet Woman

3 Wet Woman, (short version without a desk prop).

4 History of Dance page from Sylvie’s homepage with sound.

5 Blisters (Bach Organ piece?)

6 Listen to “A Room” for Piano by John Cage, Xenakis is here and Villa-Lobos is here.
On Guillaume de Machaut c.1300-1377, Sylvie wrote,
“One of the first composers, and very modern.”

7 Synopsis Sylvie’s hilarious take on silly stories from Ballet Classic.

Part II – Nothing to do with Slyvie Guillem

More listing than sold
Just Listed digital image by Fung Lin Hall

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Border Patrol

Guard DogBorder Patrol digital image by Fung-Lin Hall
Weekend at the park, many suspicious cars are parked outside the gate.

Owl and the pussy dogs or two chihuahua patrol.
Owl and Pussy dogs Digital image by Fung Lin Hall

Who are questioning the wisdom of dogmacracy?
(Daisy the brown and white cowchihuahua is a Mexican and possibly illegal. She will defend this adopted land with great determination.)

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Antonin Artaud

Artaud
(Marat played by Artaud from Abel Gance’s Napoleon.)

It’s the birthday (Sept 4, 1896-1948) of Antonin Artuad,
Actor, director, writer, artist, founder of the “theatre of cruelty”.

Patti Smith and Artaud page.

A visionary and a mystic. He saw the theatre as a ritual able to give rise to a numinous experience within the spectator.

To Have Done with the Judgement of God, a radio play by Antonin Artaud

And war is wonderful, isn’t it?
For it’s war, isn’t it, that the Americans have been preparing for
and are preparing for this way step by step.
In order to defend this senseless manufacture from all competition
that could not fail to arise on all sides,
one must have soldiers, armies, airplanes, battleships,
hence this sperm
which it seems the governments of America have had the effrontery
to think of.

In Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, Artaud acted as the monk Jean Massieu.

Vivre Sa Vie

Godard perfectly uses “The Passion of Jeanne D’Arc in Vivre Sa Vie.

Derrida and Artaud

Derrida emphasized the
performative aspect of the work, stating
that “All of Artaud’s works participate in
an urge to DO something not just EXPRESS
something.” They “produce an event in the
act of writing and drawing … they are
events directed at an addressee.” Instead
of projecting a “French” sensibility
they, evoke an “immediately universal glosso-
poetics.” Thus countering the reductive
view that Artaud’s works are signs of
pathology, Derrida asserted that they are
“not only lucid–they illuminate us on what
it means to be dispossessed.”

Derrida’s The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud

The Minotaur 1946Antonin Artaud drawing graphite and wax crayon by Antonin Artaud

A New Scène Seen Anew:Representation and Cruelty in Derrida’s Artaud
by Colin Russell

Glossopoeia, which is neither an imitative language nor a creation of names, takes us back to the borderline of the moment when the word has not yet been born, when articulation is no longer a shout but not yet discourse, when repetition is almost impossible, and along with it, language in general: the separation of concept and sound, of signified and signifier, of the pneumatical and the grammatical, the freedom of translation and tradition, the movement of interpretation, the difference between the soul and the body, the master and the slave, God and man, author and actor. This is the eve of the origin of languages, and of the dialogue between theology and humanism whose inextinguishable reoccurence has never not been maintained by the metaphysics of Western theater. (Derrida 240)

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Impromptu

  • I – Faces

    Faces digital image by Fung Lin Hall

    Faces from left, Anna Akhmatova, Meryl Streep, Patricia Clarkson and Simone Weil.

    We have the actresses to portray Anna Akhmatova and Simone Weil. Would anyone care to write scripts for these talented actresses?

    II – Ohio Impromptu – Jeremy Iron in Samuel Beckett Play.

    There are two characters, the Reader and the Listener. The Reader, it emerges, is a mysterious messenger from someone now dead and once loved by the Listener. The book the Reader reads from tells the story of the Listener mourning right up until the last moment, when the story is told for the last time and “there is nothing left to tell.” Throughout, the Listener not only listens but also regulates his companion’s reading by knocking on the table with his hand in an attempt to ensure that this will not be the final telling of the tale.

    As in Dead Ringers, Irons does a remarkable job at portraying dual natures without the need for makeup or gimmickry: you always know which is which, as if Irons has inhabited both roles from birth to present, experiencing every nuance of difference over the years and inscribing them into face, voice, posture, manner. His Listener is deeply tragic but never pathetic; lost in a barren desert of his own creation, his final, angry knock is a note struck with overtones of futile desperation and fateful resignation. His Reader is no less remarkable. Like someone trusted with the care of a terminally ill but occasionally demanding loved one, he balances tender pity with profound weariness, painfully restricted compassion with self-aware frustration. When Reader and Listener trade knowing looks, you completely forget this is the same actor.
    From the modernword

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    Desert Dog Day

    Daisy and Spike
    sitting among the brick installation for dummies.

    Enlarged version here.

    Daisy and Spike sunning on their favorite spot and Coyotes in the desert mountains salivating outside the fence.
    Silence of the Chihuahua Spike and Daisy digital photo by Fung-Lin Hall

    Here are some dog related trivia.
    Stay away from this film if you love dogs. “Address Unknown” – Kim Ki Duk’s brutal film depicts Korea after the Korean war.

    Amores Perros means “Love is a female dog”

    Nora Inu (Stray Dog) by Kurosawa
    During the opening credits, there is footage of a panting dog. However, when American censors saw the footage, they assumed that the dog had been harmed. This run-in with American censors caused Kurosawa to remark that this was the only time he wished Japan had not lost WWII.

    If only the real criminals get busted.

    A German shepard dog named Kafka

    “All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers,
    is contained in the dog.”
    – Franz Kafka – Investigations of the dog

    Johannes Kepler saw himself as a hapless lap dog.

    That man has in every way a dog-like nature. His appearance is that of a little lap dog. . . . He liked gnawing bones and dry crusts of bread, and was so greedy that whatever his eyes chanced on he grabbed. His habits were similar. He continually sought the good will of others, was dependent on others for everything, ministered to their wishes . . . and was anxious to get back into their favor. He is bored with conversation, but greets visitors just like a little dog; yet when the least thing is snatched away from him, he flares up and growls. He tenaciously persecutes wrongdoers–that is, he barks at them. He is malicious and bites people with his sarcasm. He hates many people exceedingly and they avoid him, but his masters are fond of him. His recklessness knows no limits . . . yet he takes good care of his life. In this man there are two opposite tendencies: always to regret any wasted time, and always to waste it willingly. . . . Since his caution with money kept him away from play, he often played with himself. His miserliness did not aim at acquiring riches, but at removing his fear of poverty–although, perhaps avarice results from an excess of this fear.

    Kepler’s quotations in this chapter are taken from Arthur Koestler’s classic, The Watershed: A Biography of Johannes Kepler (New York: Anchor Books, 1960).

    Koestler and Kepler; the perfect fusion, a review Written by Devin Mcintosh.